Talk:Unification Church of the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Unification Church of the United States article.
Article policies
 WikiProject Religion
Religion Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

[edit] Numbers of members

We actually have more reliable numbers, and much better sources, for the U.S. church membership than for the world membership. The most reliable numbers are from Melton, who is not only widely respected as one of foremost experts on this issue (membership in new religious movements), but actual did some of his own empirical investigation of the U.S. numbers. Stark is also a respected researcher. I'm adding the references. Let me know what you think of the phrasing. -Exucmember (talk) 04:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks that helped a lot. I moved the information out of the intro to the body of the article. Steve Dufour (talk) 21:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DYK Concerns over Original Research

copypasta from Wikipedia:DYK

"despite"? Maybe the "intense media and public attention" drove people away? BTW, "5,000 to" seems unnecessary. --74.13.130.46 (talk) 05:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Agree that this "despite" sounds odd - what does the first part of this sentence have to do at all with the second part? Has this sort of comparison been made in any independent WP:RS/WP:V sources - or is this conclusion being made for the first time in this sentence? Seems to be pushing something. Cirt (talk) 09:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Source doesn't agree with the hook statement anyhow, source says between 5,000 and 50,000 members. Gatoclass (talk) 09:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
  • nomination withdrawn -Sorry. Although 5,000 to 10,000 is the real figure there is no way to sift out the inflated estimates. My point was that the church made a big public impact with very few people. Steve Dufour (talk) 00:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Well perhaps there's a way to reword it then? I wouldn't give up quite yet! --JayHenry (talk) 04:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. If I come up with some other way to express it I might give it another try. Steve Dufour (talk) 01:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Look, I'm sorry, but you have cherry picked your sources in the article now to claim that the Church has never had more than 5000 members, when in fact you have several sources saying they have tens of thousands of members. Neither the new hook you have submitted nor the article as it currently stands is eligible in my opinion, as you have effectively engaged in original research. It also makes me wonder how accurate the other claims in the article might be. Struck last statement as it appears the changes to the article itself were made by another user. Gatoclass (talk) 08:21, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

--293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 14:46, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I wrote the article because I am interested in the topic. BTW I am a Unification Church member and took part in most of the events mentioned in the article. If you feel that there is anything inaccurate or left out, please make whatever changes you like. Steve Dufour (talk) 21:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[User:Steve Dufour|Steve Dufour]] wrote above: "there is no way to sift out the inflated estimates." This is not true. Melton and Stark are respected researchers in this field. There is no well-known sociologist of religion who has published a paper which merely repeats the inflated numbers put forward by church leaders (though some cult detractors have done this). Would it be "cherry picking" references to cite what neurological researchers have found about the brain, while ignoring the claims made about the brain by gurus and athletes (except perhaps to mention them since they're widespread falsehoods, explained in the published articles by the researchers)? Of course not. The 5000 member figure is well-sourced by the most respected researchers in the field. Perhaps the adherents.com reference needs to be dropped - it seems to muddle the issue and doesn't actually add anything of real value. -Exucmember (talk) 06:15, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Reposting from Steve's talk page:

Please don't dramatize. I am not accusing you of being a "liar". You may simply have made a misjudgement. But when someone says to you that a hook statement isn't supported by the sources, it isn't a solution to change the hook statement to make it conform even less to the sources. I also thought at the time you had also altered the content of the article to promote the "5,000" number, but I see that was done by another user.

It might still be possible to resurrect the article for DYK - which is why I put a "possible vote" symbol on it rather than an "ineligible" symbol - but there needs to be some sort of consensus about the numbers, and the hook cannot make an absolute statement about the numbers, as it does now, when there are clearly other estimates. I'm going to repost this at the article talk page, where I think the discussion is more appropriate. Regards, Gatoclass (talk) 06:45, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible for someone to collate the different refs and estimates at adherents.com and post them here? It's kind of hard to get an overall picture since quite a few of the refs are repeated ones. It might help to get a better picture of who actually estimated what, from which we might be able to make some progress. Gatoclass (talk) 06:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)