Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pre-sectarian Buddhism

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 was Keep. --Luigi30 (Taλk) 13:09, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-sectarian Buddhism

Pre-sectarian Buddhism (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Reason Peter jackson 10:43, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Something seems to have gone wrong here. Reason is neologism. Peter jackson 10:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Can somebody sort this out? The instructions are very complicated and confusing. I want to create a discussion page on this. Is it meant to go here? Peter jackson 10:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

• I think you've got it right now. I'm going with Keep on this one -- it's an established article, the term shows up on google pretty well, it's referenced on template:buddhism, and you as the nominator seem to have a history of vandalizing this page which makes it hard for me to assume good faith. Judging from your talk page, you seem capable of some really good contributions, so maybe you could provide a more verbose reason that you're nominating this? Deltopia 12:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - this has been thoroughly discussed on the talk page with general agreement that this is not a neologism but a term actually used by some academic or scholarly sources. GlassFET 17:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - I still have some reservations about the titling of the article and some POV concerns (particularly the "Later elaborations on the original teachings" section), but I think that these can be addressed and that several compromises have been proposed in Talk. What the article needs now is for additional material to be added that balances out the POV. A title change might also be necessary, but Wikipedia definitely should include an article covering theories and current research on the earliest periods of Buddhism, and there's no reason that this article can't be a jumping off point for that. --Clay Collier 21:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Upon further review, I suspect that most of Peter's angst comes from the nomenclature and a few other issues. I would recommend looking into the Dispute Resolution process if the talk page isn't reaching consensus; it might work better than the AfD process... (not that I want to tell a bunch of experts on Buddhism how to run their Buddhism page) :) Deltopia 23:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep off course. Peter indeed has a history of vandalising this page. Also, why wasn't I informed of this proposal? previously people were so polite as to inform when proposing for deletion, it's part of the Wikipedia policy. Greetings, Sacca 08:48, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't regard what I was doing as vandalism. I was trying to deal with what looked like propaganda on a non-existent subject. I must say that the article has improved quite a bit. However, contrary to what GlassFET says above, I've just looked through the talk page & found no citation of any scholar who uses the term. As far as I can see this is a term used only by a probably very small number of Buddhists. I leave it to the administrators to decide whether this is a neologism that should be deleted; I simply draw it to their attention. The normal term used by scholars is early Buddhism, though that is of course ambiguous as to just how early. Original Buddhism is a weasel term in this context. Its only logical meaning is the original teaching of the Buddha himself. To treat it as synonymous with PSB is sneaking in a POV. Few scholars actually maintain that this original teaching was substantially the same as that just before the 1st schism. I suspect most Western scholars are agnostic on this, but in Japan it might be different.

I don't know whether it's relevant to the question of deletion under WP rules, but at least it's an argument for using a different term, that PSB is offensive, implying Buddhists are sectarian, one of whose dictionary meanings is bigoted.

My recommendation, whether or not this article is actually deleted, is that we go for early Buddhism. Peter jackson 10:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Keep - So evidently your argument is not necessarily that the article be deleted, but rather that it be renamed, Unfortunately, this may not be the best place to make such a recommendation. Personally, I prefer the existing title, as I find it to be much more specific and clearly defined than "early Buddhism". Also, there does seem to be at least some evidence that the term is not in fact a neologism. John Carter 14:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Right John, the term has been used in scholarly articles, I have added the reference now. Greetings, Sacca 11:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

As you say, not necessarily. I'd never heard of this term before I came across it here. I put in citation requests, here and elsewhere. Months later, a citation of a Buddhist monk appeared. This suggests the term is pretty rare. Just how rare I don't know, nor would it help if I did, as the guidelines are vague on how rare something has to be to be deleted, so the administrators will have to decide in whatever way they do. Whether or not the article is deleted I think the content should be moved to Early Buddhism, as I understand that WP's policy is to follow standard terminology, but as you say this is not the place to discuss that. Peter jackson 10:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

According to Nat Krause on Talk:Pre-sectarian Buddhism most of the Google hits for PSB are simply WP itself. This seems to support my suggestion that this term has little existence in the real world. Peter jackson 17:14, 4 October 2007 (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.