Talk:Lists of people by belief

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Disclaimers

Some pages have a section like that below included:

In presenting this list, we do not mean to imply that the fact that these people are Pagans makes Paganism any more likely--that would be a clearly bogus argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad vericundiam (see logical fallacy). Please note that these people have been selected for this list because their notoriety was in some way due or connected to their Paganism.

• Don't know, not sure: Martin
• No, this is a bad idea: Hotlorp
• It's a good idea, but the wording needs changing:

I can see the idea behind it: we don't want to have a massive list of everyone, everywhere, who has ever been christian/pagan/whatever. Also, we don't want to make people think we're taking sides by compiling such lists. But quite a few people don't like them, and surely it should be taken as read? Martin

The word "notoriety" is certainly biased and should be removed. I don't think the paragraph is anything but an attempt to undermine the particular belief, which in any case should go in the main page about that religion, correctly rephrased. A list of flat earth theorists would not need a disclaimer about is likelihood. Note that list of Christians does not have these words, perhaps revealing the bias of whoever wrote the paragraph. Hotlorp

What is clear is that the disclaimer should either go on all relevant or none - there's no justification for having a disclaimer on only some of the lists.

I was itching to rewrite the intro to list of pagans, so it's not there any more. -- Hotlorp

The disclaimer is still in List of atheists and List of agnostics. // Liftarn

Do I take it you think it's a bad idea? I guess we should delete/reword/change them, then?

All or none. Take your pick. I don't see the need for double standards. // Liftarn

---

Btw, I noticed that the list says "List of Buddhists" and "List of Christians", but "List of pagans". It also says "see Confucianism" and "see Islam", but "see paganism". I don't know, but I think those who call themself Pagans may object to it. // Liftarn

This entry is terrible. What possible question can a reader have that could be answered with a list of all Christians, or all Jews, or all XYZians throughout history? There is no such question. Do we really want to make an entry that will grow to include millions of people, who have absolutely nothing in common at all except for the fact that they profess to be Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim, etc.)? There is no reasonable explanation for this entry to exist. Obviously, there are uses for meaningful lists, such as a list of Christian theologians, Christian philosophers, Jewish philosophers, etc. But what we have here is a joke. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a phone book. I vote for deletion. RK

Where do you get the word all from? There are no entries called list of all Jews. There is no reason to assume that these lists need to be comprehensive. Martin

Sorry, that was a little flippant. Have you seen list of Buddhists? That's been organised along the lines you suggest - seperate lists for celebrity Buddhists, historical Buddhist thinkers, and contemporary Buddhist thinkers. One could certainly look at organising list of Jews in a similar manner.

as it happens list of agnostics and list of pagans have already been listed on VfD - they weren't deleted (Eloquence made the decision). What I said at the time in diffence of agnostics was: "Example of uses: person wondering about key agnostic philosophers, or looking for common features in the lives of agnostics, or wanting not to be alone". I certainly agree that some of these pages need to be better organised, but I don't think they should be deleted. I also agree that these lists should not be considered exhaustive - I'll add a comment to that effect. Martin

[edit] Comment removed from article page

I removed the following from the article page, as it seems more like a comment on the page than a part of the content of the page:

These lists are not exhaustive: there is no encyclopedic benefit to listing every single member of each religion. People are selected on various criteria - ideally they should have articles of their own, and be in some way noteworthy for their belief.

-Rholton 21:02, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] What's the point?

Some of the people included in these lists, particularly political leaders, have been characterized as proponents of a belief simply because that belief is the preponderant one of their culture. Is listing Tojo as a Buddhist (for which I haven't seen any evidence in any case) somehow supposed to be representative or indicative of Buddhism? In what way? And then of course, before my edits just now, not even Emperor_Wu_of_Liang_China islisted, whose policies were actually informed by the teachings. Shouldn't these lists only apply when the religion had some bearing on the actual life or actions? --Reagle 11:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)