Talk:Jehovah's Witnesses and salvation/Archive 2

Trying to clarify doctrine
I went ahead and made edits that I felt were not harmful to the article. I added refs and tried to make the language more in line with them. Revert if it is felt necessary. --Brotherlawrence (talk) 22:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal
This article currently relies almost completely on The Watchtower and other Jehovah's Witness publications for references. This is a violation of the third-party requirements of the reliable sources policy. With all unacceptable sources removed, the article would be reduced to stub status and should be moved back to the parent article until sufficient research for a split is complete. --Explodicle (talk) 19:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Note: I was confusing "first-party, second-party, third-party" with "primary, secondary, and tertiary" sources, and we'd actuatlly want secondary, not tertiary sources anyways. --Explodicle (talk) 20:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * After looking at it again, I don't see any non-JW sources. Since I haven't gotten any responses here I propose deletion. --Explodicle (talk) 19:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Though it may not be quite in line with the reliable sources guideline (not "policy"), the topic is one which is intrinsically going to have primarily JW sources for their own hypothetical religious beliefs about salvation, just as any other religious doctrine specific to a certain religion. The article on Beatification only has Catholic sources. Does this mean that article should be deleted? The reason this article is not merged with the 'Beliefs and Practices article' is because that article will become too lengthy.--Jeffro77 (talk) 01:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops! I was wrong to list as a PROD (since it was already listed once) and also wrong to think WP:RS was a policy. However, WP:V is a policy, and it states: "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." --Explodicle (talk) 21:21, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, now that the AfD has decided to keep without any prejudice to the merger proposal, are there any objections? --Explodicle (talk) 02:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * As stated during the AfD discussion, I believe the article is well referenced by sources that are reliable in their own right. There's enough information for a stand alone article and merging it with Beliefs and practices of Jehovah's Witnesses would make for too long of an article. SWik78 (talk • contribs) 17:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * My concern is that by basing the article primarily on JW sources, we are giving undue weight towards the Jehovah's Witness POV. This article shouldn't just list what they believe, but also include the reactions of others to these beliefs and the impact all this has made on the rest of the world. I think we've got two potential paths:
 * Leave the article here, keeping the Witness perspective clear while elaborating on others, or
 * Merge into the parent article, get it neutral, and then expand out as an essentially rewritten version.
 * Ultimately both will result in a neutral and comprehensive article, but either will take a long time and will be difficult. Since neutrality is one of the five pillars that defines the character of Wikipedia, I think it should come first - our primary focus. --Explodicle (talk) 19:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Why would the article have to be merged in order to make it more neutral and then separate it again? Why can't it be "neutralized" right here, without 2 moves? SWik78 (talk • contribs) 20:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't get me wrong, that's possible; I've seen neutral articles come out of biased ones before. I've had a tough time finding reliable secondary sources for this subject, so if it were left up to me it would be more neutral but very short (and thus better to merge). If you can neutralize what we've got here, I'd be happy with that too. --Explodicle (talk) 20:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Based on the consensus reached due to discussion at Talk:Beliefs and practices of Jehovah's Witnesses, I am withdrawing the merge proposal. --Explodicle (talk) 14:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)