User talk:Clan-destine
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[edit] Church of Reality
The best thing to do would be to write up a detailed and polite request at the Wikipedia:Deletion review. The key issue will be whether it is "notable" enough to have a Wikipedia article about it. If I were you, I would emphasize:
- number of people involved
- whether it has attracted attention by those outside of it in any significant amount (mentioned in mainstream presses would be the biggest thing)
- some plausible argument for why it would have been seen as non-notable once but is notable now (there are options for this—one is that those who voted against it were simply wrong, another is that its notability has changed since it was last up for a vote, another, and the one that I personally would try if I were you, is that its notability was borderline at the time but the tactics used by Perkel and his forum members were antagonistic and unfortunately colored the opinions of the Wikipedians against it).
I would not emphasize it on the lines of subject matter (nobody here ever disputed it on the basis of subject matter and honestly almost nobody cares about the specifics in cases like this, myself included). If you can establish that the site/church/whatever can fit under our notability guidelines, and do so politely and in good faith, then your chances of getting an article on it (one written within our content guidelines, which you seem to understand well enough) are fairly good. If the request comes off as entitled, if it smacks of conspiracy theories (i.e. Wikipedia is oppressing CoR because it is full of religious zealots), or if it includes a hundred votes from brand new users, it will probably fail. I can see you have thought about this aspect of it from your post but I thought I would just emphasize that.
Even a very carefully worded request may fail. Such is how things like this sometimes work around here—(what I consider to be) reason does not always win out. There is no way around this, because these sorts of community hearings are the way things work on here. So it will be somewhat of a gamble even under ideal circumstances, and you should know this before investing too much energy into it.
I did not think the CoR was "notable" when the article was first created. Things may have changed since then. Also, I am always happy to change my mind about things. Despite Perkel's thoughts to the contrary, I am actually a pretty reasonable person. I do not agree with the tenets of the CoR, but not on the grounds that I am religious (I am an agnostic and am more cautious about what is defined as "reality" and how one knows what that is supposed to mean than Perkel is). Regardless, I edit many articles on people and organizations on which I do not agree with the tenets they espoused and I do not think that this seriously inhibits my neutrality on such topics.
These are just my thoughts on it, the best of luck to you. You may feel free to contact me if you have any questions, either on the wiki or by e-mail (fastfission@gmail.com). --Fastfission 20:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you very much for the advice. I will take it all to heart when and if I attempt to create the article. You did seem to be reasonable with Perkel and I agree that his tactics and misunderstandings about the Wikipedia contributed much to coloring the community against him. I will be certain to mention this in the deletion review because I think, aside from his unencyclopedic writing style, they were the primary reasons no article was published. Thanks again, Clan-destine 01:51, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
