Talk:Augsburg Confession

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Feel free to discuss the Augsburg Confession here.

[edit] External Links

A couple of links to Lutheran articles written about the Augsburg Confession were recently deleted. The person deleting them said, "Links to private commentary may be a violation of Wiki NOR and/or NPOV policies. The person providing these links needs to discuss them first. Thanks."

In looking through the NOR and NPOV material, it seems that its main focus is upon the page content and that the status of external links, whether factual or interpretive, is somewhat more open. A number of interpretive links exist throughout Wikipedia, usually clearly marked that they represent the views of a person or persons having "a dog in the fight." This is true with the article cited in the NPOV discussion, that on Abortion, which directs readers to such diverse sites as the American Life League and Planned Parenthood.

The deleted links clearly stated that they pointed to "Lutheran commentary on the presentation of the Augsburg Confession and the Variata versus the U.A.C.." I'm not quite sure how to address the NOR question, although the "original research" prohibition seems to be directed specifically at the content of the article itself and any supporting links or notes dealing with specific information that some might believe open to interpretation. Neither of the deleted links appear to have been used by any editors in establishing "proofs" for the articles.

Both of them, instead, address how Lutherans have traditionally treated the Augsburg Confession and they, themselves, are grounded in objective history, with any interpretive material plainly discernable. If the Abortion links are correct, I think that the Augsburg Confession links should be, also—perhaps with a preface similar to those used on the Abortion page, perhaps "The following links involve specific religious interpretations of the Augsburg Confession:"

I welcome any clarification other editors might provide.

--64.192.66.220 05:53, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Hieronymus

Wikipedia prefers to use well documented research from reputable scholars. Your opinions on the Augsburg Confession are certainly ones I share, entirely, and the articles to which you refer are very nice, but they represent original research, and are not well documented. As such they are simply a blogger's private opinions, which is not preferred on Wikipedia as reliable sources of scholarship and information. By the way, please create an account on Wikipedia and if you are able, please identify yourself, your background, etc. Thanks. The other factor here in not recommending the "external link" is that it does give every appearance of being more promotion of a particular blog site, the blog owner being rather famous for aggresive self-promotion of his blog site, than actually referring to an external scholarly source on the Augsburg Confession. Ptmccain 00:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)