Wiki143:Articles for deletion/Criticisms of Mega Churches

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 MERGE and REDIRECT. Harro5 22:28, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Criticisms of Mega Churches

Some of you familiar with me may think you're catching me in a contradiction here, since I've stated many times that "Criticism of X" articles are not necessarily POV forks. Well, no contradiction at all; such articles, I still say, are not necessarily POV forks. However, this one is one paragraph of text, three quotes, and twenty-three external links, and none of it actually originated in Megachurch, so it doesn't represent any sort of consensus process. (Late note: The creator of the page has just put a note on the talk page explaining that the material was moved out of Willow Creek Community Church. It still seems to me that it should be treated as a POV fork: the useful parts of it, but only the useful parts, should be merged to the main article.) -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:00, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Merge very selectively and redirect per own nom. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:00, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
• Merge with Megachurch and redirect; agree that it also requires heavy editing. Also strongly consider merging and redirecting the article McChurch, which covers similar ground, and does so somewhat better than this'n. Smerdis of Tlön 05:01, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I second Merge with McChurch (the McChurch article has been suggested to merge with Megachurch as well, but merging them would make a more worthy article. --TexasDex 18:18, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment I think we have other channels for dealing with pages needing merges. That said, I would merge per nom. (ESkog)^(Talk) 07:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment Unfortunately, all those other channels seem to assume that the most they will have to deal with is the merging of an accidentally created duplicate article, created in good faith and about as NPOV as any other newly-created article. The kinds of people who deliberately create content forks regard this and exploit this as a loophole: Faced with the knowledge that the editors watching Foobar won't accept the partisan arguments they want the article to contain, they create an article with a title like Unanswered questions about Foobar or What critics say about Foobar or the like. They figure they can't lose: if it slips under everybody's radar, that's a great outcome for them (and bad for Wikipedia); if someone spots it and tags it for merging, they put a big smile on their face and say "Merge? Sure, I can do that!" and they edit their POV fork material directly into the main article. If anyone protests that none of that material was accepted by consensus, they go on the attack. "How can you defy the will of the community? The will of the community was clearly 'Merge' and I merged it! You're acting in bad faith, by resisting that!" What we really need is a definitive policy statement that when an article is determined to be a POV fork, the burden of proof must be to prove that any of the material actually deserves to be merged. Until then, there's endless incentive for POV-pushers to create as many POV forks as they can. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:14, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Fair enough, that makes sense to me. (ESkog)^(Talk) 21:11, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Move offsite: Perhaps we might like to host this list of links offsite and provide a link to it in the Megachurch article. I'll put it in a blog somewhere if people would like me to, though I don't promise to maintain it particularly well. BreathingMeat 08:59, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
• Merge very selectively and redirect I agree, I created the article, however, none of the content is mine. I didnt know what to do with the content (sorry, I am new to this), since it was messy and mostly just links and quotes, but i knew that is was not NPOV and that it shouldnt be on the Willow Creek Community Church page. I did take the relevent links and put them on the Willow Creek Community Church page and so there is no need to merge anymore with the Willow Creek Community Church page, however, it might do some good to selectively merge this with McChurch and Megachurch. thanks, --Mshuflin 15:03, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
• read the talk pages if you read the talk pages Talk:Willow Creek Community Church and Talk:Criticisms of Mega Churches you will see that this was created as a solution to some informal mediation and the user Fides Viva is the person who created the content and wanted the content there. I tried deleting it but I didnt want to get into an edit war so this was our solution. I created the page not to make a POV fork or be a "POV-pusher," but rather to make a legitimate place for the criticisms. That is why it should probably be merged into McChurch and Megachurch. --Mshuflin 17:55, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Merge - Clean up grammar the and pare down some of the links. --Claygate 23:49, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
• Merge anything worthwhile here back into Megachurch, and then leave as a redirect. If that article gets too big, we can consider splitting it back out. Crotalus horridus (TALK ● CONTRIBS) 02:44, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect per Mshuflin. I don't like POV forks either. Stifle 13:08, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
• Merge with Megachurch and redirect as discussed above. Criticism could fit in with Megachurch article. Sure, it needs cleanup some, but it's a valid sociological discussion occuring in the US that could stand to be captured. Taniwha 20:32, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

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.