Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jehovah's Witnesses and the United Nations

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 Eluchil404 02:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jehovah's Witnesses and the United Nations

Not noteworthy. A small handful of people want to make an issue of a nonissue. [1] [2] George 12:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

• Keep unless I'm missing something. Can you elaborate on the problem with the article? The JW-UN thing seems to be notable and seems to be long enough that you wouldn't want to stick it into the main JW article. Am I missing something? BigDT 13:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I don't really understand this one either. The article doesn't appear to be original research or a hoax. The references listed on the article indicate that the issue has received some media attention, the animosity is fairly well-known, and in any case, it involves two fairly prominent organizations. I'm sure the article could be improved, but you seem to feel that the subject matter itself is not noteworthy, George. I dont' really understand why. -- Captain Disdain 15:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. The Witnesses are certainly a notable group, as is the UN. The article makes a convincing case that this isn't just some passing animosity on the part of a few Witnesses but an important part of their teaching the past 4 decades. It also does a good job of using NPOV and references. I happen to strongly disagree with the Witnesses on this (no surprise), but that's no reaon for me to want to delete it. Interlingua ^talk 15:43, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Looks fine to me. David L Rattigan 16:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as per all above. Dlyons493 Talk

OK then George 18:13, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

• Merge into regular Jehovah's witnesses article. I see no reason this needs it's own article. Tychocat 20:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Notable, valid subject, written in a constructive manner. Seems acceptable to me.--Auger Martel 17:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I will try to make this clear. The only source for this "controversial issue" listed in the article is the Guardian newspaper. Everything else is research. there are no references to who is claiming this is a controversy except the guardian, which has a history of villifying JW's. There are websites which exaggerate this issue (see my link 1 above) but they mostly mirror each other and all source the Guardian.George 21:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, but are you implying that the animosity between Jehovah's Witnesses and the United Nations does not exist? Because seriously, it takes about fifteen seconds on Google to find resources that make it blatantly clear that it does exist. When I do a Google search for "Jehovah's Witnesses" "United Nations", I get over 96 000 hits, and the ones that I come across first are all about this issue on one level or another. The 1963 Watchtover Resolution against joining the United Nations is all over the web. Pointing out that the animosity exists is not original research. That said, if you have issues with the article itself, if you feel that it suffers from POV problems or some other problems, feel free to improve it. But to say that this issue is not noteworthy is just plaing wrong. If what the web sez is correct (and I see no reason to assume that it's not), the resolution was adopted at all 24 assemblies, by a grand total of 454,977 conventioners. That's almost half a million people from a single religion taking an official stand that the UN sucks. How is that not noteworthy?

Also, the recent edits on this article kind of worry me. To be honest, I have some trouble following the changes, because as far as clearly written articles go, this one isn't... but I'm a little concerned that pretty passionate people are involved with the article, which is often a signal for POV problems to begin.

(Oh, and hey, guys, I also reorganized the votes here just a little bit to make this discussion a little easier to follow -- I hope nobody minds.) -- Captain Disdain 22:07, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

By all means clean up the article. My problem is with the fact that the article is about some supposed "controversy" over JW's registering for library access at the UN, not the way they view the UN. IF it was about how JW's view the UN then I would have no problem with it. Also, animosity is not the right word. If JW's held animosity toward the UN they would not state that it goals were admirable though futile. I don't want to get into doctrine on this page. I did succeed in getting some much needed attention on this article so that whatever may happen to it is a consensus action and not that of one or two JW editors (myself included). So feel free to get involved.George 03:51, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Fair enough. Well, if you feel the article is wrong, by all means fix it. As far as I can tell, the topic is significant enough for inclusion; if it doesn't give the subject matter proper treatment, that's certainly a problem, but in any case, it's not a valid reason for deleting the article. -- Captain Disdain 14:07, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I/we will change up the article but I am going to wait to see if anyone else has something to say.George 20:17, 17 June 2006 (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.