Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Don’t Suppress or Separate Controversy

People have different ideas about what they believe is true. That’s a good thing. Discussing controversial issues makes articles—and life—more interesting. It’s not your job as a Wikipedia editor to decide the truth about a subject: What’s fair, what happened, who’s responsible, who’s to blame, or whatever. It’s your job, however, to let the reader know that a point has been publicly debated, if the debate itself was newsworthy.

The issue of reliable sources is more relevant than ever when controversies are involved. You should ignore, for example, a self-published book attacking the theory of gravity. It isn’t citable in and of itself, though you might include it in the biographical article of its author, if the author was notable. On the other hand, if there are a number of major newspaper articles about the book, then the controversy (as reported in the newspapers) is worth mentioning. (See Wikipedia:Fringe theories—shortcut WP:FRINGE—for details.)

When citing controversy or criticism, integrate it into the article. Suppose a politician had a major role in getting a particular controversial policy implemented. If you describe that policy in one section of the article (“Accomplishments”) and put criticisms of the policy together with other criticisms of that politician in a separate section, you harm the narrative of the article. It’s easy to throw all the negative stuff into one section of an article, or even ...