Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion/Interfaith work group

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1 Scope
2 Jew/MJ
3 Inter-religious content discussion from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals
4 Tagging Project
5 Totally undiscussed "renaming" of project
6 Mass-tagging
7 DeMatha Catholic High School?

[edit] Scope

Better come up with a scope for this project.--Sefringle 23:56, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jew/MJ

This category is something that is probably of interest to this TF. ⇔ ChristTrekker 18:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inter-religious content discussion from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals

Description: There are a number of articles which relate to religion which clearly deal with more than one religion. Unfortunately, the majority of the religion projects deal specifically with only a single religion, and may not be qualified to provide a fair view of a given inter-religious article. This proposed group would attempt to deal with these subjects by trying to bring together good editors familiar with a variety of religions who could try to hammer out a way to present all the faiths involved in these articles, in a fair, non-POV, accurate way. I acknowledge that this may be rather difficult to do, but that is all the more reason that the attempt should at least be made.

Temporary page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Inter-religious content task force

Interested wikipedians (please add your name)

John Carter 16:26, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
C.Logan 02:02, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Sefringle 01:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
George 15:55, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Richard 17:54, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Itsmejudith 22:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Fullstop 08:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Comments

How is this any different from Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion?--Sefringle 22:26, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
- The project you mentioned deals with this content, but also deals with several other kinds of content as well. I think this proposal would actually best fit as a subproject (task force) of that project. Its specific goals would be more focused than those of that project, specifically dealing exclusively with content that crosses religious lines. John Carter 13:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I have created the page. Why don't you expand the task force page.--Sefringle 01:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this would probably work best as a TF of WP Religion. Pastordavid 15:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I've long been wanting to create a Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy of religion to unite theist and atheist Wikipedians who want to work on neutral and high quality articles on issues related to the existence of God. I'm currently very busy in real life, but I still wonder what people think about this idea. It's a bit related to inter-religious content, but the focus would be on the intersection of philosophy and theology, so it would be a sub-project of WikiProject Philosophy. Any comments? --Merzul 17:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Philosophy of religion below. John Carter 17:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

- Given that WikiProject Religion is not a large project in terms of members or frequency of postings to its forum. Suggest having one and only one place where issues of concern affecting other religions can be addressed. Not all Wikipedians interested in religion are also interested in inter-religion issues. Having multiple small and specialized task forces to address various sub-concerns would likely confuse general editors, who wouldn't know where to take a concern to, could lead to overlapping forums for the same issues, and could exclude essential points of view, resulting in administrative POV forks with folks of particular views coalescing into particular groups. Right now WikiProject religion, while not moribund, doesn't have such a large amount of activity as a forum for discussion of issues to make subdivision practical. Best, --Shirahadasha 16:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  - Could the proposers of this project identify a single specific example of a problem that such a proposal could solve and why this approach could solve it better than present methods? Currently each religion more or less has autonomy over its own issues, with cooperation on obvious joing articles like Abraham and Bible. How would the proposed approach create an improvement? Best, --Shirahadasha 16:37, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
    - Saint contains material relevant to a variety of religions, but is to date tagged with the banners of few if any of them, leaving the remaining content handled by people who could easily misstate something. Also, there will be specific cases where, from for example my field of saints, a statement regarding the subject's previous religious affiliation, which might be non-Christian, could be stated in sources in a way which is less than completely clear in sources. This might be particularly relevant if that religion has no specific attendant WikiProject, and a lot of faiths qualify in that area. It would also allow for editors who are primarily interested in a given faith, which may or may not have its own separate project, to address these religion-specific matters, without also having to deal with articles dealing with Santeira, Bahai, and some of the other specific religions the parent project deals with. John Carter 17:08, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tagging Project

I have made it clear I am against a mass-tagging, but since it has happened, and John carter has made it clear he is not responsive to the many critics of the general process, I have joined the project - let's face it new members are needed, since there only appears to be one active one at present - to make the best of the process.

Beta tells me 3096 articles were tagged, and JC says he is going to go through them all to assess, check, and tidy them. I have some comments on this process, and will no doubt as more as we progress. I have made some edits myself. Johnbod (talk) 23:34, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Al-Khidr

Wikiproj Christianity banner retained - surely this is wrong? Workgroup banner still at top, above WP Islam, which is hardly justifiable. The number of articles where our banner can justify top spot is relatively low. Johnbod (talk) 23:34, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] First time converts

To clarify, I think it is clear that converts from no previous religion do not fall under this workgroup, only those who had at least some type of commitment, or even connection, with a different faith before conversion. Are we agreed on this? Johnbod (talk) 18:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Culture heroes

Nothing to do with religion, like many of the mythological categories tagged. Johnbod (talk) 01:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Totally undiscussed "renaming" of project

Did anyone notice that "Interfaith Work Group" conjures up a vastly different mental picture to "Inter-religion content task force"? This is by no means a "minor" change at all; it seems to stake an entirely different purpose now. More specifically: the old name describes ostensibly neutral editors, whose own background is irrelevant, working out compromise solutions for those articles whose content happens to cover more than one religion or faith. Now that the word "content" has been removed from the new title, it sounds more like some kind of Council made up of representatives of the major world faiths, each one "representing" his own faith, making joint "decisions" to apply to everyone else in wikipedia. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 13:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

When in fact the "workgroup" has recently consisted entirely of John Carter, afaik! Johnbod (talk) 13:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mass-tagging

Lest we forget, here are all the categories that were tagged "on behalf of" this work group, without any notice here [1]:

I think the question of what is intended to be accomplished by this tagging has not been discussed, certainly not here. Is there any point to it? If there is, are all these categories really appropriate? Tagging and project assessing for their own sake, by a workgroup that does nothing else, would seem not to be justified. The AN discussion is here - it will end up in Archive 128 maybe. I was rather surprised to see that John Carter has subsequently ordered another huge tagging effort on Indian Christianity, and seems to be spending his time on that area currently, despite repeated promises to work on this area. Johnbod (talk) 01:52, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I have added to the template a link to comment here: "If you have any comments regarding the appropriateness or positioning of this template, please let us know at our talk page". I think it would be a good idea if all banners had such a note. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Here is a partial list of categories the tagging of which for this project was clearly erroneous. Category:Antisemitic attacks and incidents; Category:Antisemitic canards; Category:Antisemitic forgeries; Category:Antisemitic propaganda; Category:Antisemitic publications; Category:Antisemitism; Category:Nazi antisemitic propaganda films; Category:Scholars of antisemitism. Can anyone point out any more? The vast majority of articles in these categories plainly have nothing to do with interfaith matters; most of them have nothing to do with religion at all. Although this was pointed out to John Carter on another talk page, he removed the tag from only a very, very few of them. Is there any logistical way for the bot to retrace its steps and undo what it did when tagging those articles, or will it all have to be done by human editors? --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 04:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Anti-Defamation League is another; and Category:Classical elements, what's that doing there? --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 02:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

A de-tagging run can be requested, in the same way as a tagging one. All the categories selected fed into categories deemed (by JC) to be relevant. Apart from the question of relevance - and I can see some "interfaith" relevance to Anti-Semitism categories - there is also the question of utility. What is the point of the tagging, especially when no activity other than tagging and JC's assessments takes place here? Johnbod (talk) 03:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DeMatha Catholic High School?

Should we mention this school in this article? After all, I think it's the only Trinitarian High School in the U.S. and I think it's a big part of this since it's been doing so well... 68.55.235.179 (talk) 17:43, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories: Non-article Religion pages