Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Christian militants

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was DELETE. dbenbenn | talk 19:48, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

List of Christian militants

Intended to be a list of "Christian militants". Inevitably an incoherent list with no clear criterion for inclusion. The entries will inevitably be POV and original research.

The inherent problems with the list are already evident from even the first two entries: Oliver Cromwell, the seventeenth century leader of the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War, who defeated the monarchy, and became Lord Protector of England; and Eric Robert Rudolph a contemporary American fugitive charged with bombing an abortion clinic and killing a doctor and a nurse. Delete as unencyclopedic list. --BM 18:49, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Delete. Meaningless list. Capitalistroadster 19:33, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Wanna bet that our old friend Footfootfoot is on there? Delete as per pointless list. Radiant! 22:14, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
Delete, POV useless list. Megan1967 23:32, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
delete Yuckfoo 04:14, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Trash. Delete. DJ Clayworth 04:34, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete Apparently created by someone with an axe to grind. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 01:18, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
Abstain. I will now use this to justify my creation. I have been watching the discussions about List_of_Muslims#Militants (here) and when I saw no parallel list for Christianity it did trouble me. I have no axe to grind just a sense of curiosity about how this will be dealt with and how this will affect the afore mentioned list. I likely should have thought out my entries better but I would like to know if the list is bad because the subject matter is inherently worthless (which would then have to apply to List_of_Muslims#Militants) or if my shoddy attempts at starting this list are the problem. I hope someone acknowledges the point I am trying to make (and the resolution through that) although I don't fully agree that it must always be POV because militancy is not as subjective as terrorism. gren 01:58, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Comment. The basic problem with a list like this is that the criterion for inclusion is not clear or coherent. On the current list, the fact that Cromwell and Rudolph are both "militants", just illustrates that the concept of "militant" being applied is so broad as to be almost meaningless. Furthermore, even if one could agree on a coherent criterion, it is likely that there will still be a range of opinion as to whether a particular person fits the criterion. That is, whether someone should be included on a list of "Christian militants" is probably going to be a matter of opinion, a point of view. With a normal article, e.g. Christian militancy, editors can present possible rival definitions of the term. They can describe how manifestations of Christian militancy have evolved over the last 2000 years, and they can present arguments and facts for and against inclusion of various individuals as examples of militancy. A list is binary: someone is either included or not included. This means that any editor with an intermediate position regarding a particular person is necessarily not served by the format: they must come down on one side or another and that may not reflect their opinion correctly. And, as between the inclusion POV versus the non-inclusion POV, someone must win and someone must lose, since a particular person cannot be both in the list and not in the list at the same time. Generally the editors aiming for inclusion will win, because removing a name from a list will be decreed to be "removal of information" and therefore vandalism. So, a list like this is inherently opposed to NPOV. The same applies to List_of_Muslims#Militants. --BM 18:04, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I definitely see your point and that is why I had reservations about this. Since no progress was being made on the Muslim militancy debate and no VfD would work since it is only a section I figured I'd do this. My only hope is that the admin who deals with this deals the same way with List_of_Muslims#Militants and any other such pages. That, in the end, is the most important outcome of this, not only NPOV in an article, but NPOV among separate articles and leaving one but not the other brings a POV into wikipedia as a whole and I hope everyone who voted here will help press the issue there as well. gren 20:57, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

- Keep and Cleanup The problem is that this article needs to have much more focused criteria on what they mean by militant. ScottM 00:25, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.