Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jesus as understood by influential leaders

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 delete. Johnleemk | Talk 16:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus as understood by influential leaders

What defines "influential"? Or a "leader" for that matter.(Leader of a nation or a prayer group?) This is an unmaintainable list, unlikely ever to escape WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. karmafist 14:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Delete I've never heard of most of those people...XYaAsehShalomX 15:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Strong keep - but this list should be renamed as : Jesus as understood by influential people; because the word "leader" is bit too strong. JoJan 15:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • JoJan, is your vote a Delete in regards to the article itself and a Keep on the content then? karmafist 21:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
    • It's a delete to the article name but a strong keep to the content. Perhaps this list can be merged, as suggested below, in The Quest for the Historical Jesus. This list should not contain, as suggested below, every notable person (according to Wikipedia guidelines) who wrote about Jesus, but just a selection of representive people. Without this list, I would, for instance, never have known that Albert Schweitzer wrote a book about Jezus. This list is valuable. JoJan 09:51, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete the very title is POV - "understood" and "influential"? It can only be a list of questionable assertions. KillerChihuahua^?!? 15:45, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as too diffuse and POV. Makes no attempt to define influence or leadership, spans two millennia. If one applies Wikipedia guidelines of notability then every author of a book about Jesus that sold 5000 copies would qualify. Certainly there is room in Wikipedia for lists about Jesus. This isn't one of them, nor can it be. Most of the people here, I suspect, are already on related and better named lists. Durova 15:55, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Keep, Keep (and Move). This is an extremely useful list. It is a great source for the research question "Where on Wikipedia can I find out what important thinkers had to say about Jesus", and guide a user to the articles, where she can find out more about where to find these people's writings on Jesus. This seems (1) likely to be a quite common research need for college students etc., and (2) hella lot more worthwhile than research questions like "Where can I found out the names of all the monsters in the Dragonball Z movies", which type of info Wikipedia has aplenty.

XYaAsehShalomX, it looks like most of these people were reaonsably significant thinkers. They all have Wikipedia articles, anyway.

KillerChihuahua, the title is offputting, and a bad title. So I recommend a Move to something like List of Wikipedia biographies of people who wrote significantly about Jesus or whatever. If the title was changed would that affect your vote?

Sheesh there is really a current going against all lists here, on the grounds that categorizing anyone as "important", "influential", or whatever is inherently POV. I really think that's getting overworked a bit. Reasonable people can generally agree about most of the entries in a list like that; the rest is details. The person using the list for research can decide if a given entry is not important, too. (Also, in this list, the person used a pretty solid criteria: people who have Wikipedia articles.) Somebody did some serious work here; it looks to be pretty fairly constructed. Why throw away someone's good, hard work??? Herostratus 18:05, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a category for Jesus, Religious perspectives on Jesus, Jewish view of Jesus, Christian views of Jesus, Cultural and historical background of Jesus, and many other fine articles on the subject. A list that amounts to an undifferentiated dumping ground for material already well presented elsewhere is a hindrance to scholarship, not an aid. Durova 19:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's a good point. I'm not sure I agree, though, because different people use different internal mechanism for finding information. It's like, if you're writing a hardware manual, and you reference Printer Failure under Printer, because that makes sense to you, but some people might look under Failure or Error, even if that's not how you think. But after looking up the lists and categories you pointed out, I see your point, and I'll remove the "Strong" from my keep, thanks for the info. Herostratus

• Delete We gonna put every theologian on there? Is this part of an Alpha course ? Jesus much talked about by many thinkers -max rspct 18:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. Are you asking if this list is part of an Alpha Course? Doesn't look anything like that to me. Herostratus

• Delete. What does this offer that List of Christian theologians doesn't already have, along with better-defined inclusion criteria and considerable more comprehensivity? — Haeleth Talk 20:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I wasn't aware of List of Christian theologians. But that list doens'nt include Jefferson, Mikhail Bulgakov. etc.; it only includes professional theologians, so to speak. Herostratus

• Delete. This article says nothing at all about how the people listed "understood" Jesus (nor does it explain what it means by "understood" - I doubt many of the people on the list speak or spoke Aramaic). It appears to be a Fairly random list of people who have probably heard of Jesus. Come to that, it is even ambiguous as to which Jesus is "understood". Jesus Jones? Jesús_Alou? Tonywalton  | Talk 21:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, (1) It's a list, not an article, so it doesn't need to explain what they thought; again, if renamed, the issue of "understood" won't come up 'cause that won't be in the name (2)I think everone on the list wrote about Jesus (of Nazareth) and had something useful and important or at least interesting to say, rather than just having heard of Jesus (of Nazareth). (3) as for the possible confusion, if the renamer thinks it necessary, they can use specify "Jesus of Nazareth" to avoid confusion with Jesus Alou etc. Herostratus

• Renamed and Cleaned up. I think there's a glimmer of hope in it, if it would be changed to "interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus by various leaders" or something of the sort, and quality would be improved greatly. As it stands now, it is not an acceptable article for reasons others have outlined. Trilemma 22:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete per Tonywalton and others, useless listcruft. Pavel Vozenilek 22:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete per above. There are several issues with this article. The first is that there is no real information in it apart from a list of several items (some are leaders, some are authors, and two are books). While the topic does seem interesting, the article fails to explore it or even define it. Given the 2000 years of Christian history, a complete listing of what leaders thought about Jesus would be mind-numbingly long, it would be nice as an essay or paper, but sems far too broad for an encyclopedia article. DeathThoreau 04:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete but part of the list could be used The Quest for the Historical Jesus (which is a theological subject of its own) and should be expanded there. I moved the list to the talk page there for this purpose. Irmgard 07:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, useless list that makes no attempt to really define what it is trying to do. Andrew Levine 19:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - Linkcruft. It's just a list to a bunch of people; if it actually sad what their various opinions of Jesus was, it'd be useful. --Cyde Weys _talk^contribs 10:55, 14 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.