Wikipedia talk:List of controversial issues

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[edit] New Section on Scientific Controversies

I was surprised to see that this did not have a separate section on "Science" articles in Wikipedia that may be judged controversial. The article on parapsychology would be good to include here. ACEO 19:27, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

See also : Wikipedia:Utilities

There are several articles in here which do not seem to be particularly controversial. Counties of England is an egregiously normal article. Tenenit is just barely controversial. Is there something about these I don't know, or should I feel free to remove them? Quadell (talk) 14:57, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

English counties have been the subject of controversy on Wikipedia, certainly, as those who prefer traditional counties and those who prefer modern counties took a long time to find ways of accommodating each other. So although that article may have a dull history, others in that topic area do not. I think Warwickshire may be one example.
I think it is probably worth keeping for historical reasons if nothing else. Pcb21| Pete 15:11, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Attaching the sentence

I like the idea of attaching the following sentence to the opening parapgraph of hotly-contested pages:

This is a controversial issue.

This might be better than flagging or locking such pages.

We are adults. We have to learn how to write about controversial issues from a neutral point of view: e.g., "According to Arafat, all the land west of the Jordan is the rightful property of the Palestinian people" (assuming he really did say that) -- rather than stating flatly that it belongs to them. Ed Poor

[edit] Baghdad Airport

I removed this link since it appears that the controversy over this article has been gone for at least 6 months (I can't find any clear sign what the controversy originally was about) & the article itself has been moved to Baghdad International Airport. -- llywrch 21:44, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Controversial category?

Should a category be created for controversial articles? There are already a lot of categories that could fit into that. If such a category was created, it could be added to the template, which would cause all the articles containing the template to eventually be in the category. --ssd 04:20, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Controversial issue custom message?

How about a controversial issue custom message for talk pages? Something like {{msg:controversial}} that can be used on discussion pages only? Sounds like a neat idea! :)

A few Wikipedians are using a similar message for the Puerto Rico discussion page. That way, the first thing that Wikipedians notice is that the article has been a controversial issue, and therefore should research more the information to be submitted, removed, or edited. Just check out how the Puerto Rico controversial issues got resolved, including *future* objections.

I know this is not the correct place for requesting a feature, but I would like to hear other Wikipedians opinions about it.

-- Maio 09:22, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

boo... Jack 10:25, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Why boo? :(
The purpose of the custom message would be to:
  • provide a way to automatically track controversial issues, by having a link on the article's Talk page that links to Wikipedia:List of controversial issues.
    • by using the "What links here" utility, there will be no need to maintain the list. It is a reverse engineering of what the list is currently: Talk pages will point to the list, instead of the list pointing to articles.
  • give an informal notice to other Wikipedians that the article should be rigorously edited from a NPOV.. which is lacking right now, as the same issues keep rising up since no warnings or explanations are archived
Check out what a few Wikipedians did with Puerto Rico's discussion page. They archived all the past controversial issues on Talk:Puerto Rico/Controversial issues, including an easy to access list of past controversial issues (to eliminate the repetitive alterations of the article). And then later put up a warning notice on the Talk's main page pointing to the archive.
It is a simple idea, with great possibilities. :)
Peace out man,
--Maio 09:14, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

The boilerplate warning is a good thing, but it would probably be a bit more effective if we could have it displayed not just on the Talk pages, but instead on the page displayed after someone clicks "Edit this page". It's somewhat delusional to believe that someone anxious to litter a page would go to see the discussion first. --Shallot 11:10, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Kate told me just now what the problem is: "templates don't expand in edit view - and using subst is a pain". Further help from developers would be appreciated... --Joy [shallot] 04:06, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I dont' think subst would be that hard..see the Additional Boilerplates section referencing a template I just created for this, I have NOT started using it yet, pending comments from people concered with this project. xaosflux T/C 06:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Corsica

I removed Corsica because there is no evidence of any major controversy surrounding the article. I know the subject is controversial at times, and an edit war could certainly break out, but it hasn't. See Talk:Corsica. Tuf-Kat 08:51, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Creationism: from "Religion" to "Biology/Health"

I move that the Creationism article be moved from the "Religion" section to the "Biology/Health" section. If you want to know my reasons, scroll to the bottom of Talk:Creationism. Revolver 10 Nov 2003

[edit] Deaf & Deafness as Controversial words

I've been writing on cultural and medical models of the words "deaf" and "deafness" most of my adult life and there is a constant blaze of conflict surrounding them. The conflict is so pronounced that to list these two terms under "Biology and Health" on this Controversial Issues article would, itself, create argument. The reason is that both "deaf" and "deafness" are terms of personal identity and descriptions of that identity for people who take a cultural view of deafness, and many professionals within the biological and health sciences, and the human services professions, seek to steer parents of deaf children away from adaptations to deafness that involve sign language because sign language is though not to foster a need to focus on learing to speak. In fact, some people who hold to a medical model of deaf or deafness would deny this controvery even exists, so strong is their adherence to the medical model. I should add, that the conflict is not limited to the medical and cultural models of deafness. There is also conflict between the cultural model of deafness and the social model of disability that creates endless heated debate. For people who identify as "deaf" in a cultural sense, the choice of having the listing here under Biology would not be acceptable. It would more likely be listed under "Sociology" or "Social Science" to distance the view from an association with medicine. This view arise from deafness as a language and cultural minority. In a nutshell, people who hold to a medical model of deafness as the only possible truth of the terms would, from the available list of categories, probably choose "Biology - Health", while those who hold to a cultural model of deafness would probably choose "Social Science," a category that is not available on the list. What should I do about this? I, personally, would list "deaf" and "deafness" under both categories. I know. It's a dreadful controversey, but it's one that has existed for over two centuries. Would listing the topic in two categories be an appropriate solution, or would the creation of a category like "Biology -Social Science" be preferable? Any other ideas are greatly appreciated Ray Foster 00:50, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How do you eliminate something from the controversial issues list?

Just wondering, anyone knows the answer?. or better, who do I talk to ?.. Cjrs 79 21:31, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't believe there's a straightforward, generic answer to that question. You can probably remove a page once the history of the article and of the talk page shows a long period of stability — say a couple of months. Although there are probably some inherently controversial issues which can't be removed even after a long stable period because it may indicate just a stroke of luck in avoiding trouble, not actual lack of controversy. Sometimes an external event related to an article will re-trigger latent controversy, too. --Joy [shallot] 04:09, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] List of related talk pages

It would be neat if someone could automate a list of talk pages with the most archives. Not to replace the list here, but to supplement it. I would be interested in knowing which subjects have had the most talk -- I think Anti-Semitism wins, with Richard Wagner, List of famous Canadians, List of footballers and some other strange ones coming in close behind. Tuf-Kat

Here ya go: Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages --Brion 23:54 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Media bias

While just one article, Media bias, is referenced herein under Controversial Issues (as of July 2005), there are other articles where problems such as -- POV pushing, political agendas, propogandizing, sope boxing, vandalism, weaseal wording, vanity 'promo-ization' and other matters, often under the heading of What Wikipedia is not, have come up and likely will in future. Therefore, while just a single article is placed under this new section, Media, my hope is that the article, Media bias (now badly in need of attention itself) might evolve and be eminetly useful as 1) a disambiguation for Media bias related questions and 2) a relatively stable, unquestionably neutral reference for the subject of bias in Media, worldwide. In other words, this is done not to foment controversy but to help the Wikipedia project in dealing with those articles regarding Media, such as in -- advertising, censorship, editorial systems and practices, entertainment, journalism, media economics, media ethics, media law, media ownership, political and social media questions related to public figures, major news, policy and regulatory issues, press freedom, private sector media, propaganda, public media, public relations, systems of storage, retrieval and delivery. I'm defining Media herein broadly so as to include and encompass all commonly known forms of communication which are standardly known, worldwide, as "Media" and "The Media" in any and all forms, print, electronic or electromechanical in nature. Calicocat 06:48, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Articles with Media bias controvery

[edit] Proposal for controversial issues

I wasn't a debater, and I haven't seen one of these things in awhile, but intramural debate topics are set in advance and teams are expected to be able to debate either side of an issue. Each topic comes with a sort of handbook on the topic, stating the main question, rebuttals, responses to rebuttals, all in a fairly standard format.

How about a similar setup for these tough issues with strong feelings, like so:

Y, the article, describing the general situation while maintaining NPOV
Sidebar: The debate about Y
A-side
B-side

That way, the A's could state their case and in true wikipedia fashion the B's could dive in on the A-side page and Talk:A-side and debate what the A's *really* stand for, and the same thing could happen on the B-side, with various points and rebuttals appropriately distributed. As a point became clearer and clearer (or time worked its magic) the point could be promoted to the NPOV main article.

Just saying "This is a controversial issue" is kind of a cop out, but some topics may never cool off, but the debate could be fairly presented in a reasonable context.

Ortolan88

It's like a year and a half after Ortolan wrote the above, but for any future readers interested, something somewhat similar is in place at War on Drugs. Tuf-Kat

[edit] Whether this is needed

In theory, not all pages on controversial subjects need attention, and not all pages needing attention are on controversial subjects.

Frankly, for simplicity's sake, I wouldn't have created this page or the "Pages needing attention" page. --LMS

"Some topics" tend to generate a lot of heat and light, most of which seems to be totally incomprehensible to those not directly involved. When those involved get sufficiently annoyed they will not accept a third party writing "what the bare facts are and the areas of dispute" (see, for example, the arguments over what names should be used - Gdansk is a particular case in point). This list is needed for such topics.

Other areas are controversial but people are prepared to accept the ambiguous nature of the of the information - for example what happened to the Princes in the Tower or how exactly Jan Masaryk died. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.85.15.68 (talk)

[edit] Editorializing

"David Irving - constant censorship of this article by Zionist elements "

Is that last bit supposed to be there? I'm a Wikipedia newbie, so I'm not sure, but it seems a little...defensive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.26.92.4 (talk)

I way agree and added a POV to the top. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.161.4.7 (talk)
I removed the POV tag (POV applies only to articles) and removed the listing, which was added just last week by an anon. If anyone wants to re-add the listing with a less biased description, feel free. JYolkowski // talk 12:59, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Additional Boilerplate

In response to the note that "It should be placed at the top of a controversial article's discussion page. It should not be placed on top of the article itself. Ideally it would be placed on the page displayed after one starts editing the page, but for technical reasons this is not possible, yet.". This is at least mostly possible. I've made a template {{subst:Controversial-Article}} to deal with this issue. Please review the Template talk:Controversial-Article and see if this will meet the needs. xaosflux T/C 06:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tobbaco Smoking

Tobacco smoking is not a very controversial issue and the article dealing with it is not very biased. --GoOdCoNtEnT 03:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The frequency with which the page is edited and the {{unbalanced}} link at the top suggest otherwise – Qxz 17:59, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conservapedia

Conservapedia is an inherently Wikipedia controversial topic. Would like to list Conservapedia under the List of Controversial Issues, but Conservapedia fits many Controversial Issue categories and seek input. paradoxos 01:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Topic to consider adding under "Religion"

To an outside observer, the article for the topic "Eckankar" appears fairly biased/unscholarly and might warrant a look by some experienced Wikipedia editors. There are a lot of statements and whole sections of the article that aren't cited. I want to recommend adding this to the list of controversial subjects. Krudd01 (talk) 00:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)