Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of groups referred to as cults (3rd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. - Mailer Diablo 02:48, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List of purported cults

Previous AfD discussions:

Talk:List of purported cults/Delete
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of purported cults/2

See also:

I re-nominate the article for deletion due to inherent WP:NPOV and WP:NOR problems. The four months since the last debate have proven, that it is beyond repair.

The intention of the article is to present a list groups which are named "cult" in the media. No reference to scholarly research on this topic has been provided by the contributors, so they replace that with their own research. Starting with a selection, which media outlets should be considered most authorative. (British Broadcasting Corporation, Encarta online encyclopedia, The Guardian, The New York Times, Salon.com, Washington Post, if you bother). Then there is the equivalent of the one drop rule in place: A group is added to the list, if it is named "cult" in one article of one source.

Pjacobi 16:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete All attempts and proposals have been rejected, with the negative result of a status-quo that is not acceptable. Delete as per nom or implement one of many proposals raised to NPOV the article. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 17:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and move to List of groups referred to as cults, a list sorted by the number of reputable sources as per WP:V. Those groups with more sources at the top, thpoose with less at the bottom) ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 16:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep So if it's hard to make a certain list, we shouldn't try? Or not try until every last person is happy, which again reduces to never making the list, or making an empty list, since members of groups so fingered would always complain, no matter how it is done? Does anyone envision us ever making a list of, not cults, but even purported cults, that everyone is going to agree on, especially members of the groups listed? Should we just remove 'negative' words from the language, since those described by them disagree with those words being applied to them? In any case, I don't think it is a violation of NPOV to state that a certain source has declared a certain group to be a cult, it's just a fact. Whether the original source is NPOV or not is a different question for a much different day. We shouldn't avoid hard subjects just because we're always going to have bitching and moaning. Or should we?Tommstein 18:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Those are good questions but not applicable here, IMO. There where proposals made that could have resolved the dispute that you, amongst others, chose to ignore and continued editing the article without attempting to find a resolution. I find your characterization of "bitching and moaning", unacceptable as it assumes bad faith on the part of many editors that have attempted constructively to resolve the dispute. Status quo is not an option, not when a disputed tag is on the page for several months. We either find a solution that gains consensus, or this article will remain in disputed land and will end up on AFD again and again. Note that the issue is not that is not NPOV to say that the Guardian referred to People's Temple as a cult. The issue is that to have NPOV, all conflicting views needs to be presented, and that is not the case here. One small mention in a periodical is enough for inclusion, a one drop rule that is unacceptable in such a controversial article. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 22:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't go around falsely accusing people of crap. I only recently made my first edit to that page (a couple of weeks or so ago, I would guess), and I haven't seen any grand proposals for fixing it; in fact, when I asked a question, I never got a response from anyone. It's undoubtedly easier to make up false accusations against people, but please don't. As to the Jehovah's Witness that keeps messing up the article, he hasn't presented any solutions to fix the article, he's just trying like hell to put his group in the most favorable light possible by making up all-new 'non-unanimous' categories pretty much just for his group, while apparently being unaware that his proposed category is exactly the way the present categories work (and that there are a lot of groups on there that have a lot less sources next to them than his). Are you saying that if I want an article to change, I just have to slap a disputed tag on there, and leave it "for several months" until I get whatever it is I want? Members of these groups are going to dispute the article no matter what we do. I do not foresee all such members coming to a consensus that they are in fact cult members. In such a case, the decisions have to be made without them, whether everyone is happy or not. How do you propose presenting their side of this, posting statements next to each source where each group declares 'we say that we're not a cult?'Tommstein 07:23, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep with POV tag. We cannot have a precedent that equates citing sources with original research. There is an article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and there can be an article about this. This list has improved over time. Gazpacho 23:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In my not so humble opinion, citing sources can be original research. This is not only a serious problem in the cult articles, but in the pseudoscience category as well. There are zillions of primary sources for all sort of positions. Selecting and weighting these, instead of relying on secondary sources (academic studies of the topic, review articles) is original research. --Pjacobi 07:41, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, that doesn't make something original research, unless we outlaw primary sources as being against the original research policy. Then again, these sources in question aren't raw scientific studies or anything of the sort anyway; the authors presumably obtained facts from wherever, and evaluated them; those facts were presumably obtained from somewhere else also, etc.Tommstein 07:53, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is exactly my point. An encyclopedia would better outlaw raw primary sources as as original research in non-trivial cases. --Pjacobi 07:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, but this isn't the place to discuss changing the encyclopedia's original research policy. Press articles aren't raw primary sources anyway.Tommstein 08:00, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Press articles wouldn't necessarily be raw primary sources for List of cults, but they are for List of purported cults. See arguments at previous AfD. Also note, that the current list doesn't care at all, what the article in question is saying about the group in question, but only whether it is called "cult" somewhere in it. --Pjacobi 08:05, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The "purported" is there to make it clear that the "cult" designation is not absolute, and that people have to source entries. It supports the very policies you claim that it violates. Gazpacho 09:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A proposal was made to name the article List of groups referred to as cults in the media but was not accepted. If it was accepted, this AfD, would have been redundant. Such a name for the article would made it clear that the groups included may or may not be cults, only that they were referred as such in the media. Why do you think it was not accepted? That is the real question.... ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 16:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the article would then be misnamed probably had something to do with it. There are government reports, cult-watching organizations, all kinds of other stuff besides the media. "Purported" serves the purpose just fine, as Gazpacho pointed out above.Tommstein 06:54, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep and protect page from further nominations for deletion. Come on, if its survived twice, does it really need a third try? Its obviously valid. POV it and get on with trying to improve it. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 23:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep -- the article as written seems to be about as NPOV as it can get, it serves a useful purpose to people studying New Religious Movements, and the system is designed to err on the side of inclusion when no consensus can be reached. IMHO that is a reasonable position to take -- keep as is, NPOV tag and all. Haikupoet 04:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep — nicely referenced list; encyclopedic information. — RJH 17:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep per Haikupoet and RJH --Irmgard 22:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep --but narrow list of cults to those assemblies whose founder has not died and still guides the cult. Any organization with enough stability to survive the death of its founder has passed from cult to movement. Endomion 06:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - hating the idea of the article does not make it deletable - David Gerard 14:25, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and narrow the citera for inclusion to news programs, papers and periodicals only.--HistoricalPisces 20:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep will always be controversial, but intro gives adequate context to understand the inherent POV nature of "purported" CarbonCopy 22:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per others who voted keep in this and two previous AfDs. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 00:51, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.