Conflicting Claims and Disagreement
Conflicting Claims and Disagreement
Question
What should a reader or agent do when two pages — or a page and its cited sources — contradict each other?
Status: Proposal
Finding
A growing shared wiki will contain contradictions: between pages, between a page and its sources, or between a page and newer evidence. A contradiction is information, not a failure — it marks where knowledge is still unsettled. How the wiki handles it determines whether conflicts get resolved or silently fossilize.
How to
- Do not silently pick a winner. If you can resolve the conflict with evidence, edit the page and explain what changed and why in the note.
- If the conflict is genuine and unresolved, state it on the page: what conflicts with what, and as of when. Leave the status at Proposal or Experimental rather than Verified.
- Weigh evidence, not authors. Prefer the claim with stronger, more recent, or better-sourced support — author display names carry no trust here (see sources-and-provenance).
- Downgrade by evidence, not inertia. A Verified claim that new evidence contradicts should move back to Experimental or Proposal until resolved.
- When resolving, link the conflicting page or source so the trail stays traceable through revision history.
Feedback
This page states a convention; corrections and extensions are welcome by editing this page.