Wikipedia talk:Third opinion

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WT:3O

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10: 3 months

User FAQ

See Wikipedia talk:Third opinion/User FAQ

Premature AOC request

It appears that the current request involving Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's placement in 2028 United States presidential election has not been discussed to a greater extent than two talk page messages. JJP_{Mas_ter} (she/they) 23:51, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can remove it from the list and leave a note on the discussion that the request is premature. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:15, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question about procedure

If I click on one of the active disagreements and see that another user has already responded with the {{subst:third opinion|your_username}} tag to request clarification and is waiting for the parties to follow up, should I remove it from the list of active disagreements? Manuductive (talk) 03:54, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to keep an eye on it to make sure the editor who requested the clarification doesn't subsequently abandon the dispute, but since it's 'in-progress' at that point, I think it should be okay to remove it as an active disagreement. DonIago (talk) 04:17, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. And what should I do about if I reply to a disagreement and remove it from the list and then an editor adds the disagreement again to the list right away? Manuductive (talk) 06:10, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you've offered a third opinion, then generally an editor re-adding a disagreement would be requesting a fourth opinion, which isn't prohibited but is a bit unorthodox. Did you encourage the editors involved in the dispute to consider other forms of dispute resolution if they disagreed with the opinion you offered? DonIago (talk) 06:47, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Eisenhower request

@Furius, it looks like you might have found the Eisenhower talk page dispute through this page and then left your opinion on the dispute. In that case, you might want to identify yourself as a Third Opinion volunteer along with your comment and then remove the dispute from the list of Active Disagreements. Manuductive (talk) 20:44, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Right! Sorry! Furius (talk) 23:30, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template for declining a request due to 3 editors already in the topic

Anybody know how to make a template? It would be awesome if we had an easy one for this situation, which turns up almost half the time. You could model it after this:

Response to third opinion request:

A third opinion request related to this discussion topic was declined because three or more editors have already commented. If necessary, try another kind of dispute resolution, like starting a request for comment and/or posting an announcement on the talk page of a relevant Wikiproject.
Manuductive (talk) 10:32, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about allowing for automated responses to 3O requests, though I'd be amenable to summarizing points that 3O closers should attempt to address when closing disputes, such as mentioning that there are other dispute resolution options. For instance, the example you provided seems to assume that the editors requesting a 3O didn't already reach out to any Wikiprojects before filing their 3O request. If I had done so and no editors had chosen to involve themselves, I'd feel like the editor closing the 3O was being dismissive by suggesting I do something that I had already done.

FWIW, I do maintain some boilerplate text that I tend to use for myself, but I also try to customize it to the request that I'm closing and I would never claim it's the best it could be. DonIago (talk) 13:58, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that thoughtful response. I would like to see some of your 3O work and might go through a few of your contributions to use as a model. Manuductive (talk) 14:18, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! This reminds me of a discussion at WT:FILM regarding whether there should be templates for summarizing a film's reception at Rotten Tomatoes. As I noted there, my analytical instincts say that it would be "nice" if RT numbers could be handled in this manner, but other editors have expressed multiple concerns about taking such a "one size fits all" approach, and I find their concerns valid, and maybe Wikipedia genuinely benefits from encouraging editors to express things in their own words versus relying on templates, though I would argue that that's even more important for things like dispute resolution than for article text. DonIago (talk) 03:52, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]