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[edit]

Previous AfD discussions:

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]

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]
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]
  • Keep and narrow the citera for inclusion to news programs, papers and periodicals only.--HistoricalPisces 20:09, 11 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.
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