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*'''Comment''': It is amazing and laughable that every 6 months we have to go through this ritual of deciding whether to keep these religion lists or not on AfD's that have been voted "delete" or initiated by people who havent read the previous AfD's. Funny, these people think they'll actually get these lists deleted. --] <sup>(]•])</sup> 03:33, 1 January 2010 (UTC) | *'''Comment''': It is amazing and laughable that every 6 months we have to go through this ritual of deciding whether to keep these religion lists or not on AfD's that have been voted "delete" or initiated by people who havent read the previous AfD's. Funny, these people think they'll actually get these lists deleted. --] <sup>(]•])</sup> 03:33, 1 January 2010 (UTC) | ||
'''Delete'''. Violates |
'''Delete'''. Violates ], what are "former Jews" EXACTLY since according to ] being ]ish is both a religion and an ethnicity. This is also directly similar to violations of ] and ]. See also ] ] (]) 04:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC) | ||
*'''NOTE''': <u>'''Names of lists of Jews deleted and deletion dates'''</u>: | *'''NOTE''': <u>'''Names of lists of Jews deleted and deletion dates'''</u>: | ||
*] | *] |
Revision as of 13:08, 1 January 2010
List of former Jews
- List of former Jews (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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I am nominating these articles for deletion since they seem to me to violate the spirit of several important WP policies. One is neutral point of view WP:NPOV since out of the millions of people in history who have changed or left their religion only a few will ever be listed here, and the ones listed seem to be so (in many cases) to push various points of view. Another is no fringe theories WP:Fringe since it is not at all established that a Jew who leaves his religion is a “former Jew” (most people, Jewish or not, would not say so), or that being a member of a church makes a person a Christian or leaving one a “former Christian”, and Muslims (if I understand correctly) do not consider a person who renounces Islam a “former Muslim” but a lapsed one. Another issue is with WP’s policies on living people WP:BLP. Not everyone on the lists is living but for those who are being listed could cause problems, which is one thing WP tries to avoid if possible. Kitfoxxe (talk) 14:44, 31 December 2009 (UTC) I am also nominating the following related pages:
- List of former Christians (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
- List of former Muslims (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
- I don't see that these lists are inherently POV in nature. If some current entires are included to advocate some particular point of view then by all means remove them, but why delete the whole lists? It should be possible to restrict them to entries for which reliable sourcing supports inclusion. Likewise BLP is a reason to take extra care with the inclusion of living people but where sourcing does exist there's no reason not to include them. As for your other point, I wouldn't have thought it particularly controversial to say that someone who once professed belief in Christianity but no longer does is a 'former Christian'; likewise Muslims. Whether Muslims prefer the term 'lapsed' to 'former' is surely not the relevant question: what matters is whether general English useage and reliable sources use the term and I'm pretty sure they do. I'm on less certain ground with the other list since 'Jew' does not refer solely to religious persuasion, but your argument would seem to justify at the very most a rename to 'list of formerly religious Jews' or something similar. Olaf Davis (talk) 15:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Speedy Keep and Close: You did read all the previous AfD discussions on these articles, right? If you did not, I suggest you read them now and then if your objections havent been dealt with there, keep the AfD otherwise withdraw it right away. I'm not going to bother responding to your arguments as they have all been dealt with in previous AfDs. Since you seem to not have investigated this fully, here's a good starting point for you: Lists of people by belief which links to atleast 20 different lists. You should look into nominating all of them. Your AfD isnt valid unless it does that. --Matt57 16:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Nominating all of them might be a good idea. I nominated these because they seemed the most "high profile."Kitfoxxe (talk) 16:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Where would you find former AfDs? I know sometimes they are listed on the talk page but I didn't see any for these.Kitfoxxe (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- 1) Who says what list is high profile and whats not? Thats a subjective criteria. 2) Look again and this time a little bit more carefully: Talk:List of former Muslims. There were 3 AfD's for this page alone. --Matt57 17:22, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- "High profile" = "easy targets" ;-) Kitfoxxe (talk) 22:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- 1) Who says what list is high profile and whats not? Thats a subjective criteria. 2) Look again and this time a little bit more carefully: Talk:List of former Muslims. There were 3 AfD's for this page alone. --Matt57 17:22, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Where would you find former AfDs? I know sometimes they are listed on the talk page but I didn't see any for these.Kitfoxxe (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Keep – On the condition it is renamed “List of notable Jews who converted to other religions”. As it now stands, any individual who converts from Judaism would be included in the list. That is not only impracticable but would be unattainable to upkeep. If inclusion in the list requires that the individual already having gained notability by our current standards I see no problem. JAAG 16:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- It's fairly usual to have pages called 'list of X' with the implicit assumption that it actual means 'list of X which are notable' but without actually stating so in the title - see for example the pages listed at Lists of Jews. Olaf Davis (talk) 17:14, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Delete. These articles can never do more than scratch the surface, and no argument is ever made as to why such lists would ever be notable. SlimVirgin 17:42, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Since when did lists have to be 'notable'? If thats true we would have to start applying that (non-existent) policy to the 1000's of lists on Misplaced Pages --Matt57 12:55, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Delete This article is never on the level, straightforward, and neutral. Its parameters are extremely poorly defined, and unfortunately that is taken advantage of. Bus stop (talk) 18:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Delete What Bus Stop said. Also, in regard to the "former Jew" in particular, Groucho Marx indicated there is no such thing. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 18:22, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- If Groucho said it, that's good enough for me. — Malik Shabazz /Stalk 19:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Speedy Keep and close if a person has publicly stated that they no longer consider themselves of the jewish faith, and they meet WP notability, then they can be described that way, even if the jewish faith still claims them. and if there are more than 2 such people, a list is appropriate for these people. there is no violation that i can see of any WP policy for such a list, as long as it is well maintained (as all articles must be). saying that we cannot have a list of people because it either excludes nonnotable people or is too long, is simply absurd. WP is ONLY about notable subjects. and we have "dynamic list" tags to remind readers when lists are not complete, and may never be. the lists dont have to be notable, the individuals listed must be, and their conversion a matter of public record. the requirement for lists at WP is different than articles. we need such things as objective inclusion criteria, and they must either sourced or have articles for each item listed. they also cant be a random collection of facts. this list seems to meet all criteria for a good list at wp. im frankly baffled why this isnt patently obvious.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 18:24, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Comment: To SlimVirgin, Bustop and others who think these lists should be deleted: do you think all articles linked in Lists of people by belief should be deleted? Why should we delete a few and leave the rest? Anyone care to answer that question? --Matt57 18:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Those kinds of lists smack of ethnicism. And this AFD is about a list of "former"-whatevers. Who decides that so-and-so is a "former"? And where does it stop? Former Zen-Buddhists? Former believers in the Church of Baseball? And as I said, there is no such thing as a "former Jew". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 18:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- What does Christianity or Islam have to do with ethnicism? Who decides that they are former? Reliable sources, surely - if we can say that Tony Blair is a Christian based on RS we can say that Richard Dawkins was one. As for Zen-Buddhists and Baseballists - show me some RSes discussing their apostates and I'll start up a list. Why not? Olaf Davis (talk) 22:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Baseball, so is it now 'ethnicistic' to call a person a Muslim or a Christian too? Category:Muslims. Who decides whether a person is a Muslim or not? Should we go then deleting the List of Muslims articles and its sub-articles too? Why not? Could you please apply your arguments to all the religion list articles and not have me do it for you? You've heard the case of Rifqa Bary, right? Are you going to say "there's no such as a former Muslim" too? --Matt57 02:32, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Those kinds of lists smack of ethnicism. And this AFD is about a list of "former"-whatevers. Who decides that so-and-so is a "former"? And where does it stop? Former Zen-Buddhists? Former believers in the Church of Baseball? And as I said, there is no such thing as a "former Jew". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 18:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Keep per Mercurywoodrose. — Malik Shabazz /Stalk 19:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Delete The names are unexplainable in this list, also if living people are to be included which they are one of the problems imo is that for example a person becomes a Buddhist, OK..we have the citation..harry has become a Buddhist, he was a Christian, but this doesn't make him an ex Christian unless we have a clear citation from him saying explicitly that he denounces the previous religion, taking a new religion does not reflect a guaranteed rejection of the previous one, so you need very strong citations to claim that john is an ex anything. Off2riorob (talk) 19:21, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Comment Actually, it is not a list. It is a semi-list. If it were a list none of the comments next to each name would be necessary, yet they are de rigueur. Bus stop (talk) 20:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Keep There may be arguments about particular individuals on or not on the list; but presence on the list is clearly verifiable. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Delete as unencyclopedic cross-categorization of notability and former jewishness. Misplaced Pages:Stand-alone lists#Lists_of_people states that "Selected lists of people should be selected for importance/notability in that category". This is in keeping with the WP:NOTDIRECTORY prohibition of unencyclopedic cross-categorizations; in particular, it is unencyclopedic to have a list that crosscategorizes the set of people who are former jews with the set of people who are notable for an unrelated reason. Thus, only a list of former jews known for their conversion could be an appropriate topic for a list even in principle. This list does not satisfy that requirement in any way, as it consists mainly of people notable for any number of other reasons. Locke9k (talk) 20:56, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- I see the conflict, but I think that the problem might stand with the guideline itself. That is, if I were to arrive at a page called "List of Atheists", I would not expect to receive a presentation of individuals limited to those notable for their faith as opposed to a page whose content works best to reflect the title. I also question the suggestion for the inclusion of non-notable individuals when considered in light of the aforementioned guideline. This combination would seem to put an unnecessary gaping whole in the information provided. Then again, this probably isn't the place to argue over the validity of the guidelines.--C.Logan (talk) 22:34, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Keep. Has received significant coverage in secondary WP:RS sources. It is possible and not difficult to find sources to make it a requirement that each entry on each list be properly sourced. Cirt (talk) 21:43, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Keep. The lists are equally notable and noteworthy to List of converts to Judaism, List of converts to Christianity and List of converts to Islam, which can be seen as the flip side of these lists. Since religious conversion is a legitimate encyclopedic topic, the list is not an unencyclopedic cross-categorization in the way that, say, List of Portugese ballerinas would be. As for the Groucho objection, I think that concern is addressed by the link to Who is a Jew? in the first paragraph of List of former Jews, but if that is inadequate a name change to List of former adherents of Judaism could help. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:20, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- I think that this suggestion for a change of name is a good one.--C.Logan (talk) 22:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Weak Keep. Ignoring the possibility that these lists are superfluous to their respective "Conversion to" lists, I would have to move towards keeping these articles. We have to remember that the outright deletion of information should not come as a result of agenda-pushing; rather, we should make more of an effort to neutralize the inevitable tampering by some editors (which so often comes with the emotional investment that religious topics tend to inspire). Stricter source-checking, and for the living, a requirement of self-identification, is needed. There should really be a more exclusive attitude toward the information presented. So far as the question of what defines an "ex"-anything, I feel that it would be wise to take more space in the article to explain the possibility of syncretism, and possibly concerning the intrinsic limitation of this style of article. I do not feel that there is enough of a case for deletion, but it might be good to consider the possibility of re-examining the purpose and style of these articles.--C.Logan (talk) 22:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Delete All 3 Besides the mean spiritedness and potential problems for living people and their families already mentioned, these lists (and others on WP) try to reduce the complexity of human spritiuality, belief, or whatever to an entry on a list. For instance here is a quote from the first citation on List of former Christians (I earlier made some comments on its talk page as well), from an interview with Omar Sharif which is supposed to establish his atheism:
- I have none that I can prove. I believe in everything and in nothing. I don’t disbelieve in anything. I mean everything is possible. As far as my brain tells me I don’t believe because I believe that God is justice. The first thing that I was taught at catechist, catechism was that God is justice and I don’t see justice in the world. I see terrible injustice. I saw my mother when on her deathbed, she just died four years ago, she was a great believer and I sat next to her fifteen days while she suffered terribly before she died and I saw what relief she got from believing, from calling the Virgin Mary, from calling Jesus Christ to her help. From calling Saint Anthony of Padua who was our Saint, favourite Saint. It relieved her pain and I use to think what shall I say on my deathbed or who shall I call for help? And I decided that I will call my mother for help. That’s what I’ll say, I’ll say “mother come and get me wherever you are”.
Sorry it's so long but I think it illustrates the problem with these lists. I also noticed on the List of former Muslims many people were minor criminals/terrorists, people not usually noted for their religious beliefs. Who cares if a criminal in prison adopts a new religion? (God cares, but He does not need WP to tell Him.) At least limit the lists to people noted for their faith, but prefer delete all.Steve Dufour (talk) 22:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- A question: would you for the same reason be against classification of people by their current religion? If not, what's the fundamental difference? That seems equally hard to me as this. Perhaps we can't definitively say that Sharif is or isn't Christian, but we can certainly do so for the Pope: the existence of difficult cases does not mean we should ignore the easy ones. Olaf Davis (talk) 23:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- No, the pope would obviously be an important person to read about in the study of Christianity. Not so a famous ax murderer who converted while in prison, unless of course he later became notable as a Christian. Also "converts to..." lists could take up the slack if "former..." lists were gotten rid of.Steve Dufour (talk) 02:42, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- A question: would you for the same reason be against classification of people by their current religion? If not, what's the fundamental difference? That seems equally hard to me as this. Perhaps we can't definitively say that Sharif is or isn't Christian, but we can certainly do so for the Pope: the existence of difficult cases does not mean we should ignore the easy ones. Olaf Davis (talk) 23:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Weak Keep. Reform Judaism considers any Jew who converts to another religion to be a former Jew. Best, A Sniper (talk) 22:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
- Keep. Have to agree with A Sniper on this one. Reform Judaism makes a strong claim for a person who turns their back on the religion to be "former". This makes sense to me. Jim Steele (talk) 00:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Comment Well then maybe for the sake of clarity it should be stated somewhere — in the title, or in an introductory paragraph — that the criteria used for inclusion and exclusion are the criteria that are held by Reform Judaism. There is no sense in leaving the reader guessing what sort of guidelines are being followed. The standards of the article need to be articulated somewhere. Bus stop (talk) 00:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Except that this is not Wiki-reform-judaism-opedia.Steve Dufour (talk) 02:49, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Delete. Arbitrary and selective. --jpgordon 01:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Weak keep per Mercurywoodrose. The inclusion criteria are clear; editors just need to be careful with sourcing. Weak support of rename to List of former adherents of Judaism for the first list only, since "Jew" doesn't necessarily refer to the person's religion. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 03:03, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Related discussions (some about categories):
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of former Muslims Result: "Keep". (one comment: "approaching a snowball".) 11 April 2009.
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of people who left Islam Result: "no consensus to delete". 11 November 2006.
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of people who left Islam (2nd nomination) Result: "Keep". 21 December 2006
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 28#Category:Former Jews Result: "rename to Category:People who have renounced Judaism."
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 July 9#Category:Former Jews Result: "Delete with prejudice (already emptied)" (specifically re "former Jews" as opposed to e.g. "former Catholics" –CT)
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 1#Subcats of Category:People by Former Religion (delete), and on the same page:
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 1#Category:Former Scientologists (keep)
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 1#Category:Former Jehovah's Witnesses (no consensus)
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 1#Category:Former Muslims (no consensus)
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 1#Category:Former Christians (delete)
- Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 1#Category:Former Hindus (delete)
- Related discussions (some about categories):
- Comment: It is amazing and laughable that every 6 months we have to go through this ritual of deciding whether to keep these religion lists or not on AfD's that have been voted "delete" or initiated by people who havent read the previous AfD's. Funny, these people think they'll actually get these lists deleted. --Matt57 03:33, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
Delete. Violates WP:NOR, what are "former Jews" EXACTLY since according to Judaism being Jewish is both a religion and an ethnicity. This is also directly similar to violations of Overcategorization: Non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference and Overcategorization: Opinion about a question or issue. See also Misplaced Pages:Listcruft IZAK (talk) 04:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- NOTE: Names of lists of Jews deleted and deletion dates:
- Jewish Nobel Prize winners Sep/04
- Jewish engineers Oct/05
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society (2nd nomination) (November 2005)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish American criminals and victims (March 2006)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jews in the media (June 2006)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish Peruvian activists (and other trivialised lists of Peruvian Jews) (February 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of atheist Nobel laureates (2nd nomination): List of Jewish Nobel laureates (July 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Messianic Jews and Hebrew Christians (July 2007)
- List of people of Polish Jewish descent (July 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of religious leaders with Jewish background (August 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish American social and political scientists (August 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish American engineers (October 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish American fashion designers (October 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish Foreign Ministers (October 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish Orthodox anti-Zionists (October 2007)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Jewish jurists (2nd nomination) (May 2008)
- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Jews in the history of business (August 2008) IZAK (talk) 04:49, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. IZAK (talk) 04:51, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Did you see that big template at the top of Misplaced Pages:Listcruft which says "This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Misplaced Pages contributors on the Misplaced Pages is not a directory policy. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints." Just because a page starts with WP:, doesnt mean its a policy. It means nothing. Also its interesting that List of Jewish engineers was deleted but List of Muslim astronomers is still there (along with some more linked from Lists of Muslims). Could you nominate that for deletion, IZAK? To get to the point though, I dont see anything wrong with these lists if they're well sourced. Plus "List of Jewish potato chip bag stuffers" is different from the core religion lists like Lists of Muslims and so on. Once again no one is nominating that page and avoiding talking about it, which is interesting. Anyone, hello? If you think we should delete these lists, should we also delete Lists of Muslims? --Matt57 04:59, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Delete all of these unmaintainable, massive examples of utter listcruft. Handschuh- 08:10, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- So could you explain your deletion reason there? —Preceding comment added 12:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC) to my talk page. Transferred here. Handschuh- 12:53, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Please do not take AfD discussions onto user talk pages. WP:LISTCRUFT may not be policy, but WP:NOT is. These lists are massive and frankly, unencyclopaedic. What possible encyclopaedic use could there be for a list of all former jews/christians/muslims or any other religion? Handschuh- 12:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- According to WP:Lists (which is a style guideline as opposed to this WP:Listcruft which is a disputed essay), Lists can have standalone articles when they get big enough. I'm not sure what your "these lists are massive" argument is about. And what possible encyclopaedic use could there be for all the other lists on Misplaced Pages? --Matt57 13:03, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Please do not take AfD discussions onto user talk pages. WP:LISTCRUFT may not be policy, but WP:NOT is. These lists are massive and frankly, unencyclopaedic. What possible encyclopaedic use could there be for a list of all former jews/christians/muslims or any other religion? Handschuh- 12:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- Rename for the Jewish one. Possibly "People who converted from Judaism" or something less awkward if that's at all possible. The idea of "former Jews" is arguable as being Jewish can also be an ethnic or cultural identifier. I guess keep the others as long as they're restrained in the way required of lists. Meaning the people's former Christianity or former Islam needs to relate to their notability. Finally "Listcruft" is a bumper-sticker, it's not a good reason to do or not do anything. Lists have certain functions categories don't and on something like this I think lists are inherently better than categories because they can be sourced. (You put Category:Former Christians on a lesser-known individual who died before 1980 and it could stay there practically forever)--T. Anthony (talk) 10:42, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
- If the term is a problem then rename it to "former", "lapsed", "secular", "converted" or whatever. // Liftarn (talk) 12:18, 1 January 2010 (UTC)