Talk:Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry/Mergedraft

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Folks, I hereby present the rough draft for proposed merge. I've dome my best to keep an even tone, noting both the pro-CARM and anti-CARM point of view, however, because of Wikipedia's notability guidelines, I've taken a severe meat-cleaver to both articles to come up with the finished result. Frankly, there was a lot more material here than is actually necessary for either article.

Now, truth to tell, I really don't expect either side to be happy with the results. But I'm hoping the proposed merge will be a starting place where all of us can come to some form of consensus. Remeber, please: this discussion is not for CARM's benefit, or for Matt Slicks, or for AARM's-- this discussion is SOLELY AND SIMPLY for Wikipedia's benefit, and an examination of how we can make an excellent article that meets the guidelines. Justin Eiler 05:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

CARM apparently wants the article entirely deleted, though they have not yet bothered to nominate it for deletion. As such, it strikes me as extremely unlikely they will be happy with this article whatever its form. Do we have a source for CARM's belief that Catholics are a cult? I'll add a fact tag to this, but I believe this bit may not be accurate. Is it possible to confirm the number of hits that the site gets? I don't know if this information is available from a third party, I'm guessing not. Does CARM publish the number of unique visitors? I moved the Books and Writings section into a second-level header because it was previously part of the critical views section which I think is incorrect. In the opposing links section, we have "CARM response to Evangelical Outreach" but don't seem to have a link to Evangelical Outreach. Am I missing something here? Also, we have a link to "A rebuttal to CARM's texts on Mormonism". Is this sufficiently notable? I'm not sure. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying I don't know. The one criticising CARM's views on atheism seems to be notable as CARM specifically refuted it. In general, any external link is a reasonable link if CARM specifically refutes it, which makes the links to AARM reasonable in my opinion. --Yamla 16:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Is there anything more we can say about their radio show? --Yamla 16:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Critical views

I believe the critical views section is now too long. Anything not currently cited but needing a citation should be removed. It is not clear to me that it is worth keeping the paragraph about the 2001 shutdown of the Universalism board; the paragraph should be rewritten to express why this was a big deal, or removed altogether. The information about John Ratcliff, on the other hand, seems to me to be worth keeping around. As to the controversy about CARM reading users' private messages, did they actually read these messages prior to noting this in their conditions of use? I know this is now part of the conditions and if they waited until after noting this, we should remove the paragraph. On the other hand, if they did not wait until then, it may be worth keeping. In Canada (though not in the U.S. where they are located), this would be a serious act in violation of privacy laws. --Yamla 05:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I can tell you what happened regarding reading users' private messages, but I can't really source it for the article, since it played out on forums, which are unreliable. No, CARM did not inform their users, or even most of their administrators, that users' private messages were being read. Two administrators discovered it and protested, at which point they were banned and their messages were deleted to cover up what had happened. One of those administrators then reposted what had happened at AARM and on another discussion board. CARM subsequently changed its conditions of use and wrote an announcement explaining that reading private messages was necessary to protect the ministry. --Hyperbole 05:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I cut the Universalism paragraph and merged two paragraphs together, since I think the latter provides evidentiary support for the former. Still too long? --Hyperbole 05:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)