WORKING TITLE: No consensus. Now what?
 | This is an explanatory essay about the Wikipedia:Consensus and Wikipedia:Verifiability pages. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. |
 | This page in a nutshell: When good faith discussion fails to reach consensus [more text] |
What happens when, after a good faith discussion, editors cannot agree on a course of action?
No "no consensus" until discussion fails edit
"No consensus" occurs only when good faith discussion reaches an insurmountable impasse. If you believe a discussion has reached an impasse, consider making a dispute resolution request before concluding that the impasse is, in fact, insurmountable.
What happens during discussion edit
As a general rule, the pre-dispute version of the article 'temporarily remains in place while discussion takes place. An editor reverting back to the pre-dispute text should add an appropriate tag indicating the text is under discussion. For example, {{Dubious}}, which produces [dubious ].
Exceptions to this rule include (a) contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced and (b) external links. In those cases the disputed material is temporarily removed.
Disputes about changes to article content edit
Wikipedia uses the word "article" to refer to encyclopedia webpages. See WP:ARTICLE for more information.
What policy says edit
The consensus poicy provides (bold in original):
- In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.
The policy lists a few exceptions.
The verifiability policy provides:
- The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion [of information in articles] is on those seeking to include disputed content.
The policy lists no exceptions. The meaning of this sentence is unclear.
Best Practice edit
- Once again, to make this perfectly clear, "no consensus" occurs only after a good faith discussion takes place and fails to result in an agreement. Don't be a status quo stonewaller.
Adding new material. Unless there is a compelling reason to proceed otherwise, under both policies a lack of consensus results in the new material not being added.
Modifying or removing existing material. While the meaning of the verifiability policy is unclear, the text appears to conflict with the consensus policy. Unless there is a compelling reason to proceed otherwise, this essay recommends -
When a content dispute relating to verifiability, notability. or original research reaches a point of no consensus, follow the verifiability policy and remove existing material (or modify it to eliminate the disputed information). See wp:NOT as of June 2022: "A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject."
When a content dispute relates to some other issue (such as grammar or layout), follow the consensus policy and leave the status quo ante bellum version intact.
Disputes about changes to policy and guidance content edit
Wikipedia policy and guideline webpages are not "articles." Instead, along with essays and help pages, they are called "Project pages" or "Wikipedia pages." See Wikipedia:Project namespace#Terminology for more information.
See wp:CREEP for disputes relating to Wikipedia ...
Disputes about changes to other content edit
See wp:NOCON for the practice relating to (1) disputes regarding proposals to delete articles, media, or other pages, and (2) disputes regarding article titles.