Help talk:Maintenance template removal

This talk page is for discussion on how to improve the guide Help:Maintenance template removal. Please note that there is no single policy or guideline associated with this subject. If you want to raise an issue related to the policies or guidelines reflected herein, please post on the respective talk page. If you do not know where that would be, you may ask here. If you would like to ask further questions about the subject, please use the Help Desk. To ask a question not related to Help:Maintenance template removal, see WP:Questions.

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Removal of POV tag based on 'the discussion being dormant'.

'If the tagging editor failed to do so, or the discussion is dormant, and there is no other support for the template, it can be removed.'

'removing POV-related templates whose discussions have gone dormant is encouraged, as addressed in the bullet point immediately above'

This is a horrible principle. A discussion being dormant does not mean that there is consensus that the article is not POV. A discussion very often becomes dormant just because nobody bothers to edit the article. Sometimes roughly 50% of the comments agree with a position, sometimes even a majority agrees that 'something ought to be done about this' and yet nobody actually takes the time to do something - everybody just goes on with their other business and forgets about the issue. Why, a discussion can even be dormant because nobody was around to respond to the motivation on the talk page in the first place. The rule seems to be formulated with the assumption that all Wikipedia articles are constantly monitored by numerous alert and highly industrious editors with a keen interest in the topic. In fact, there are many articles that few editors are interested in or pay attention to, so years or even decades can pass before somebody even reads a talk page message. And Wikipedia editors are not paid, so they cannot be expected to be constantly alert and to proceed to solve every problem that has been highlighted. A lack of interest or activity doesn't mean that the problem is solved or that there is no problem. Anonymous44 (talk) 08:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This page is just a how-to guide; it doesn't set the policy. You can post on the respective policy/guideline page instead. I'm not sure where that would be myself. BTW, I edited the talk page message box at the top to clarify that this is just a guide. — W.andrea (talk) 14:17, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Remove the maintenance template

I have added citations for the information in this article and would like to remove the maintenance template that indicated no citations. Doglover.Coton (talk) 00:50, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're in the wrong place. This isn't an article, it's the how-to guide about removing maintenance templates. You probably meant to post on the talk page of the article that you edited. That said, this guide explains the process, including that if you've fixed the issue and don't expect it to be contentious, you can just remove the maintenance template yourself - no need to discuss it first. — W.andrea (talk) 14:03, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]