Talk:List of Anglo-Catholic Churches

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Anglicanism
Anglicanism Portal
List of Anglo-Catholic Churches is part of WikiProject Anglicanism, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
List This article has been rated as List-class on the quality scale.
Low This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.
WikiProject Anglicanism To-do:

This article is within the scope of the National Register of Historic Places WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of listings on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Stub This article has been rated as stub-Class on the assessment scale.
Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 23 March 2008. The result of the discussion was keep, nomination withdrawn.

Contents

[edit] District of Columbia or Washington, D.C.?

Image:Dctaxation.jpg I think this says it all. clariosophic (talk) 22:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greeneville SC church

The church in Greeneville, SC, is it the "Christ Episcopal Church, North Church Street, Greenville, Greenville County, SC" which is covered in HABS? If so, it is individually notable. There are pictures and data pages available for it. doncram (talk) 19:04, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

No, it is separate from St. Andrew's which is at 400 Pendleton Street. It is at 10 North Church Street in Greenville, SC and is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina. clariosophic (talk) 13:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Which churches are individually notable, for inclusion in this list?

Individually notable churches include, in the United States, those whose building is separately listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). In the UK, the equivalent is listed building.

Otherwise, what makes some churches notable and others not? doncram (talk) 15:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

By individually notable, what i basically mean is whether it is notable enough to have its own article in wikipedia. My question is: what are the current wikipedia standards to allow an individual church article to exist? I have created many church articles, but only for churches that are notable by reason of being listed on the NRHP. P.S. I do expect that some of the churches now included in the list are NOT individually notable, and should be deleted from this list-article. doncram (talk) 15:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
If it red links and is unlikely to be created anytime soon it should not be on the list. All blue links should stay. -- Secisek (talk) 19:18, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the first part of what you say. But some blue links which go to external sites are like red links, and some of these probably should be removed. For either red-links or these, I can't determine from information in this article which are notable / deserving of having an article / likely to have an article soon, and which are not. I did already create articles for all of these that relate to a U.S. NRHP site. Eventually, if there is not other information and criteria forthcoming, I would think it would be reasonable to delete all the other U.S. church links. But I'd rather hear from editors who contributed to this list, first. doncram (talk) 19:45, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
External links show up as green on my browser. Yes, treat them as per red above. -- Secisek (talk) 21:28, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining that. doncram (talk) 02:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I browsed in WP:NOTABLE and the most relevant guidance about notability of any kind of places is, oddly enough Wikipedia:Notability (breweries). That essay suggests that stub articles ought not to be encouraged, but rather editors should be encouraged to write "full articles". And articles with overviews about regions should be encouraged, with articles about specific places only being separated out of those regional overviews as enough specific information and sources and size of section justifies it. I interpret that it would be appropriate to link to, and encourage, articles on Anglicanism in Canada, in the U.S., in other big areas, rather than work on creating stub articles for individual churches. I make an exception for stubs about churches that are NRHPs, because I know that there really are extensive, objective, appropriate sources available for NRHPs, including their NRHP nomination documents written by historians and edited by many. Thoughts about breweries and churches, anyone? :) doncram (talk) 02:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External links to U.S. churches removed from article

The following links were removed from the article, and are probably a mix of notable and non-notable churches in the U.S. The article is not intended to be a directory though, so it is probably best to remove any external links like these immediately. In the future, I may just delete them, or revert their addition, without keeping track of them. doncram (talk) 23:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] links to Canada churches removed from article

[edit] Name change

I am partly regretting getting involved with this list-article, having joined in opposing its elimination in an AfD. Its name simply attracts people adding a church they know, which probably isn't notable by wikipedia's current notability standards. I don't want to invite people effectively to contribute, then delete their contributions. How about a name change: "Historic Anglo-Catholic Churches"? "Very historic Anglo-Catholic Churches"? Naming it "List of Notable Anglo-Catholic Churches" is inadequate as "notable" does not convey anything strong enough. Anything is notable if you feel like noting it. Maybe people would pause about whether a place is "very historic" or not though. Or maybe this list-article should be deleted after all. doncram (talk) 21:47, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe should make the list into a table, with a column for name, a column for an image if available, and a description column that explains notability. If notability of churches on the list is not evident, how is the typical wikipedia article who knows of one particular church to know that it is not of the same type. If they'd have to add a table row, with a notability column to fill out, that could slow 'em down. I don't know if i want to fill out the table, either, though. doncram (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

No, List of notable Anglo-Catholic churches is appropriate, since "notable" has a technical meaning in Wikipedia. And it means we get rid of all the red links - notable means the church has an article in Wikipedia. StAnselm (talk) 23:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. For you and me, "notable" is meaningful in a wikipedia way, but what I meant to say was that it does not have that meaning to the average reader, for whom something may be notable if in fact it is noted. Few want to say their own church is not notable. Per WP:SELF, refering to a wikipedia-specific definition of notable is probably not appropriate to mention in an article at all, much less in an article title. (The mention of wikipedia definition of notable in the footnote, which i had added, should probably be eliminated, too.) "List of important churches"? Important is vague. I think we have a problem that there is no one (unless you are the one?) who is that interested in actually developing this into a proper list-article. I wouldn't mind doing some work on it if it was "List of Historic Anglican Churches" though. But I am not even clear on what would be the difference between Anglo-Catholic vs. Anglican. doncram (talk) 23:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I hadn't seen WP:SELF before, but I don't think it applies. In any case, we have List of notable asteroids - but doing a quick search doesn't produce a lot of occurrences of "notable" in a title. Instead, it's usually in the lead paragraph - e.g. List of Melburnians. Notice that the article doesn't define notable, but if anyone adds their own item, it can be easily removed. StAnselm (talk) 00:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, glad you looked at WP:SELF then. I think it does apply, why wouldn't it apply? Your pointer to List of notable asteroids is helpful. In that article, the notability is effectively defined in tables explaining each of 10 types of notability: 1 Largest known, 2 Brightest, 3 Retrograde and high-inclination,... 9 Record-setting close approaches to Earth, 10 Exceptionally slow-rotating objects. For this article on churches, I would be fine for notable to be in the title, if we tabulated all the entries in similar ways, e.g. one table being "Churches that are Registered Historic Places in the U.S.". I don't know what other tables would serve to define the other churches' notability. doncram (talk) 00:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, List of Melburnians made me think we don't need a name change - we just go ahead and delete all the red-links. Thinking it over, maybe WP:SELF does apply - it means we don't define notability in the article itself. StAnselm (talk) 02:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
If a definition of notability is not explicit and not strongly implicit (like in the List of notable asteroids), then people will keep adding their local church. I don't like the setup, in which we would keep implicitly inviting but then "biting" the newbies, by our deleting their well-meant contributions. List of Melburnians is not a great model, i wouldn't want to have an article like that, and its Talk page describes a litany of adds and deletes and disagreements, too, due to its poor definition. It's like lists of notable alumni at various university webpages, too, which are very unsatisfying. Let's try tabulating the list and including descriptions that get at each site's notability? doncram (talk) 20:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Propose to delete this list-article

I am further regretting getting involved with this article, and am planning to put this back into Articles-For-Deletion. This notice is to consider any comments before doing so. Please add or respond to these reasons why it should be deleted:

1. The list-article keeps attracting IP-editor additions of their local church. The name of the article and everything about it tends to suggest it is a directory, and to attract directory additions.

2. I and other editors have sought to define notability but struggle with that. There is no satisfactory definition available. Currently, the definition is to accept any churches that get through the wikipedia article creation process and are not deleted by AFDs. This may attract efforts for others to create articles on not-really-notable churches and puts an inappropriate burden on the AfD process. This creates an invalid list, which is only definable in terms that violate WP:SELF. Currently the list-article can only be described as a list of churches that survive the Wikipedia Articles-For-Deletion process.

3. The title of the article is "Anglo-Catholic", which apparently has to do with one strain within Anglicanism and/or Episcopalianism. The distinctions escape me, and the term is vague and is not applied to the inclusion of churches in the list. It is not possible to determine which are acceptable, by any critera. There exists a wikipedia article on Anglo-Catholic, not necessarily an authoritative article, which includes a link to one website http://www.anglocatholic.net/ having a subpage listing some Anglo-Catholic churches. The churches on that list, I guess, are those that someone unofficially approves of, but that does not seem to be an official list and there is no obligation by anyone to determine whether a proposed addition to this list-article is valid or not.

4. the list-article cannot ever become a useful list meeting the criteria of a Featured List. I see no way to define the list-article to become anything worthwhile. It is non-encyclopedic and destined to stay that way, and would best be deleted, in my view. doncram (talk) 17:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not think this list is that different from many other lists. Point (1) is not a reason for deletion, any more than continuous vandalism is. Just delete non-notable additions. Point (2) is not a reason either. Lots of lists are for stuff defined by having their own article, as that assures notability. Inclusion should have nothing to do with any supposed imposition of a burden on AfD. Point (3) can be covered if the information the Church puts out says something like "St Peter's Eastern Hill is a community of Anglican Christians who worship in the Anglo-Catholic tradition" which comes from the web site of the only entry for Melbourne, Australia. Point (4) is a matter of opinion and again I do not see it as a reason for deletion. Let me say I have no attachment to Anglo-Catholicism. I just got this on my watch list because of my interest in the role of St Peter's in the history of Melbourne. --Bduke (talk) 23:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think point 3 is important. I guess we need to restrict ourselves to those who are explicitly self-designated as Anglo-Catholic. Remember verifiability. But St Peter's, Eastern Hill is definitely on the list. Presumably there are others which belong as well, so the list needs to stay. StAnselm (talk) 23:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict, this response to Bduke) Thanks for responding. I have not allied myself ever with pages subject to continuous vandalism, so perhaps the directory-type additions bother me excessively. But, by the way, I don't see that quote in the website http://www.stpeters.org.au/. I do see a statement that it is an Anglican church, not immediately distinguishing between the various strains that some may assert exist. I don't necessarily believe that there are different strains at all, currently, or if there are substantially different strains, I don't think it is clear enough for definition in wikipedia. It would be like having one list or category for churches that include folk music in their services; wikipedia cannot verify that especially as the it may change that every week, or local church websites may choose to highlight their musical choices to varying degrees, unsatisfactorily for anyone to classify churches based on those self-reports. Specifically, I don't see any good overall source making the distinction of Anglo-Catholic churches vs. other Anglican churches or vs. Episcopal churches. Please clarify, if you can. We may end up continuing this discussion in AFD, but I am happy to hear from you.
The sentence I quoted is the very first sentence in the "About us" link from the home page you give. It is here. --Bduke (talk) 23:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
About restricting the list to churches that "self-designate" as Anglo-Catholic: I imagine there is disagreement, that a member of one such church visiting another would not classify it also as Anglo-Catholic. For whatever distinctions each makes important. If it can't be defined clearly, then no organized religious body will classify them reliably, and we can't either. Let's not.
You say above "'Anglo-Catholic', which apparently has to do with one strain.. ". I think that points to you not knowing much about Anglicanism. Churches in the Anglo-Catholic tradition stay that way. It is not a fad. --Bduke (talk) 23:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
But, if you want to try to make the distinction, could you at least try to edit into the article. I won't promise not to put this up to AFD, even if you do, but it is especially pathetic of us to have this article if we don't even attempt to define terms. I am 100% certain that some of the U.S. listed churches do not meet your criteria now, by the way. doncram (talk) 23:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Having an opinion is possible without editing an article. I see that it is actually on my watch list because I closed the last AfD which was actually withdrawn by the nominator. --Bduke (talk) 23:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)