Wiki143:Articles for deletion/The Wise and the Foolish Builders

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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 was Keep all Naconkantari 02:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The Wise and the Foolish Builders

Articles consist of straight quotes from the Bible, with at most two lines of interpretation, unsourced. Wikipedia is not a directory. Samsara (talk • contribs) 21:11, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


The following are also nominated for the same reason:

The following is a navigational template linking to all of these articles (and others, sometimes more than once):

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Samsara (talk • contribs) .

Others similar Articles
  • Comment. Can we just be clear on the fact that the articles added by Harisingh and Ezeu below are not the subject of this AfD? If you wish to nominate these articles, my opinion is that you should do so in a separate request. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 00:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Harisingh (talk • contribs) 04:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC).

And while we are listing Biblical parables, why not list some good ones that show that these stubs can be expanded into proper encydlopedic articles. Why, may I ask, did the nomintor not list these?

Because they stand on their own. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 00:08, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

--Ezeu 05:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Strong Keep - For all the above and SGGS on Meat - The point of these quotations is to inform the reader of what these Holy texts have to say – that I hope you will agree is an important point; an important issue and a mechanism that needs to be preserved. The job of Encyclopaedias is to correctly inform!! Without quotations you get to a situation when wrong messages of the holy text can be conveyed as is happening with some aspects of Islam. So its is very important that we are allowed to quote these holy text verbatim so that the message is not interfered with – Discussion can be NPOV or POV, etc and these can be added to these articles if required. The quotations in themselves do not have a POV or NPOV – They are a FACT. The quote from the holy Bible is a FACT which has existed for 2000 years. Whether you believe it or not is another matter – Many billions believe in these facts. The writings of the Bible, Koran, SGGS, etc are all FACTS – They are NOT NPOV or POV. If I write that the SGGS says "There is one God" – That is a factual statement. If you go and look in the SGGS, then you will find that statement there. Whether you want to believe the statement or not – is another matter. Verbatim quotations are facts not subject to the POV or NPOV criterion. When we start making our own comments and have discussions on these texts, it can becomes POV or NPOV. I urge all participants here to vote and argue to keep the SGGS on Meat article as well. Many thanks --Hari Singh 23:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep all - the articles are terrible - some of them need renamed - some could perhaps be merged. But these are notable (and I don't even need to cite WP:Pokémon test). Bad content gets cleaned up - not deleted. I'm willing to work on this when I get some time (not this week). We always end up keeping these things, so I suggest this is withdrawn. If deletion was to proceed, we'd need to debate each seperately, as some of these have had huge imact on art, literature and cuture (leave aside religion). --Doc 21:31, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep all per Doc. --Daniel Olsen 21:48, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep all - as per Doc. All (or almost all) of these are definitely expandable. Heck, I sure people have written disserations on many of these.... --Rangek 21:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep all. None of them is merely a dictionary definition, and all of them have potential for expansion. --Ezeu 23:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete All or Merge together. They are just quotes from a fictional book(yes I believe the Bible is fictional) with at most a 2 sentence explanation, no need for seperate articles. TJ Spyke 23:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
    • The fact is that over 2 billion people are Christians worldwide (see Major religious groups) and rely on the holy bible for guidance and enlightenment and for them this issue is of serious relevance – 2 sentences of explanation without the original text will not do! Also, this subject matter is important for them and so I feel there is justification for spreading the parables. - Your personal POV does not come into it. It's what the whole world believes in and thinks - that is significant!
      Further, these holy texts have been around for 1000s of years and many millions of Bibles have been printed giving this subject matter inherent magnitude. And finally, the issue of morality and spirituality is very relevant to the world and should be enhanced by coverage in an encyclopaedia. I ask you please, to be objective in your discussion and unbiased in the points that you make. --Hari Singh 00:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
    • What you (or I) believe about the Bible is (or should be) beside the point. These parables (fiction or not) are worthy of distinct articles. However, as it stands, in many cases, the content could be merged for the time being (until proper neutral verifiable information can fill them out - it certainly exists).--Doc 23:40, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • The parables by themselves without interpretation belong on Wikisource. If they have interpretation, they need sourcing for that interpretation (which I don't see in the ones I spot checked, didn't look at all of them). Delete or transwiki but they don't belong here, this is not the place for sources. ++Lar: t/c 00:23, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
    • This doesn't make much sense. The text themselves will already be on wikisource, so there's no point in a transwiki. So the question is what to do with the articles. We don't delete things because the current content is crap, we generally redirect elsewhere or stubify. Given we've plenty of sub-stubs, on much less noteworthy thing, that such as 'x is a school in New Hampshire' or 'Y is a film directed by Z', there seems little problem in stubifying these to 'is a parrable found in the gospel of Matthew at...' (if there is indeed no other information currently in the article) that allows for someone (perhaps me) to write an article later, without someone deleting it as a recreation. Let's just treat Bible articles like an others. If the closing admin wants to notify me, I'll clean these up myself. --Doc 01:22, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
      • I'm not seeing the strong argument for keeping articles at the individual verse level. When I look at Gospel of Matthew for example, which is an entire book, the article is well sourced and ties themes of the book to other books via theme articles. I can see an article on all the parables, or on specific parables as they are told in several books, but not verses. Verses belong on Wikisource, where they already are, so scratch my suggestion to transwiki and just delete. I don't buy the "a crap article is better than no article" argument. I'm willing to revise my thinking for any of these that are substantially improved (remove the verse itself, point to source, and give cited references to the significance, meaning or connection of the parable) but in this state? No. They must go. We had individual verse articles before, and I remember them being on AfD. I thought they went. I certainly can't find them now, and I spent some time looking. WP is not a bible, and it is not an annotated bible. These must go unless they change a lot before the end of the AfD. ++Lar: t/c 03:49, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
        • I wasn't looking hard enough for the verses.. here is the history of one (thank you pschemp for the ref): [1] ... note that the verse is now a redirect to a more appropriate higher level place rather than bibletext. I feel that strengthens my argument. ++Lar: t/c 03:58, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
          • These are not merely random biblical verses or "straight quotes" as the nominator calls them, but parables of Jesus. Parables of Jesus are paramount to Christianity and are thereby notable. The articles are stubs, some of them badly written, but with your logic we should delete all stubs. The issue in question is the subject, not the quality of these articles. --Ezeu 03:23, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong keep Quality of articles should not dictate whether they are kept. Subjects are clearly notable. -Elmer Clark 00:31, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. I'm going to run with TJ Spyke's comment here for a second. If were discussing episodes of a TV series, we would be deciding whether there is enough information to go into the article to make it stand on its own. Even if we were talking, say, speeches of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., the standard would be, is the speech individually notable? That's why I see these articles as having been nominated: they are minor parables with either no discussion or only original research about an editor's perceived meaning of the parable. Based on that, the articles do not stand on their own and assert the notability of the individual parables, and that's why I favor deletion. That said, if an editor does have enough information to expand the articles that hasn't been brought to the table yet, then I favor the new, expanded article being allowed to exist. —C.Fred (talk) 03:00, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. These articles rock, or at least will one day. Roy Brumback 11:10, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep all per Doc. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:38, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, per Doc Carl.bunderson 06:57, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: Please note the relationship of this AfD to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SGGS on Meat. Thank you. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:14, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Hm, the linking is spurious (see my reasoning on the other AfD - which I'm not voting on). This seems to confirm my fear that this nomination is some form of WP:POINT. --Doc 09:36, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • This has nothing to do with WP:POINT. Each AfD is bringing forward a valid concern, let me repeat the concerns I had with these articles:
  1. 95% of articles are straight quotes from the Bible.
  2. Little actual context.
  3. What context exists is unsourced.
Please note that those parable articles that had sufficient context to stand on their own have not been nominated. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:45, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, all that you say is true - so mark the articles for expansion, referencing and clean-up. None of these are deletion criteria - as there is sufficient context to know what subject matter is and to know that it is significant enough that a reasonable article can be written. --Doc 10:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep all and stubify, as per Doc and Elmer Clark.--Atemperman 18:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep All-The articles are a part of the teachings of Jesus and should be added to Wiki pjct. Christianity as well as links to/from Jesus. They are in need of review and improvement, no doubt, but should still stand as a significant part of Jesus and Christianity. Also, ditto to Doc. Jazzdude00021 04:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete unless improved - at the moment it is a transcript of a religious text - we need information on who it is referring to, when these people lived, where they lived and where did this occur - what it tells us, what the scholars want us to see in this, what are the opposing viewpoints and what is the moral/ethical principles of the religion described in this .If this doesn't happen, then delete, as the effort put into this appears to be derived from using the sut and paste buttons. Blnguyen | rant-line 08:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
We don't do that. We keep things that should have good articles but havn't yet. We call them stubs. The existence of a stubified article is an invitation for someone to provide just the material you have indicated. Let's just treat Bible articles in the dull (but tried and tested) way we treat all others. The wiki-sower scatters the seed, and waits for the harvest.--Doc 08:34, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad you're now seeing the benefits of waiting, given our recent discussion on WP:SNOW. :) - Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Strong Keep - I agree that they seriously need to be improved so that they are more than just quotations from a particular religious source. However, given that these stories and parables are alluded to in all manner of litertaure and art, people will certainly look to an encyclopaedia to find out what the story is rather than try to find it in a Bible. I intend to improve a few of these, for example add an explanation of what the Unjust Steward actually does that is unjust, as well as what his solution actually implies. Whether we merge or keep them, they need to be here for people who will naturally look to an encyclopaedia to tell them in a neutral way what these stories are.--Lloegr-Cymru£ ¥ 12:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Strong Keep - Today I have added some very useful references and commentary on The Vine, i vote that at the very least this article should stay, but i think we should give all of the articles a little more time, people will add to them. - — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.130.127.53 (talk • contribs) 01:24, 24 August 2006

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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