Talk:List of missiologists

Sourcing (and notability)
In a recent edit, I changed the intro from "This is a list of notable missiologists." to "This is a list of missiologists having Wikipedia articles." My edit comment says I "solved the 'unsourced' problem" [4 years old] "by redefining the list." I'm pretty sure I solved the notability question: The notability of each missiologist is already, individually decided by the existence of their article. (If I'm wrong, then we can add a section for "Non-notable missiologists", and then wonder why they have articles, or why "missiologist" is mentioned in their articles.) The existence of an article (which presumably mentions that the person is a missiologist) is also the source (the reason they are in this list).

The talk page says "a reliable source that justifies inclusion in this list must be provided for any new entry", something that never existed for any entry in this list. (Except for the new blanket justification, that these people have Wikipedia articles.) -A876 (talk) 04:43, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Should "missiologists" be a category?
Wikipedia has a systematic way of adding people (and articles) to a specific kind of lists, called categories. Categorization is done in each article; that is the standard (and best) place for it. Justification for each categorization would also belong in the article. (I have never seen justification NEXT TO a categorization. One would have to look for a similar term in the intro or body of the article, and find a reference there.)

My edit comment also says "maybe this should be a category." In that this article WOULD BE DELETED after Category:Missiologists is created and populated.

Confusion: There already exists Category:Missionaries. How much overlap exists between missiologists and missionaries? Are they one category? Should one category be a parent of the other? Can people be both? Are any people mis-categorized? Parent categories of "Missionaries" are "Religious workers" and "Religious activists". The Missiology article is categorized under "Practical theology" and others, so a missiologist must be a theologian, not necessarily a worker or activist.

I have not elected to make these changes myself. I'm not conversant in these fields. I'm not very experienced with categorization. There is not a lot of traffic on this category, so there is not much disadvantage to the list as it is. Also, I have seen an absurd degree of resistance to reasonable deletion requests. If the list does not get deleted, what is the point of adding a category to replace it? I WILL NOT BEGIN adding the proposed category unless I know that the list WILL BE deleted. The category would probably be an improvement, but, if the list cannot be deleted, improvement be damned. Call this defensive editing. I will not add cruft, so I will not construct a replacement for cruft unless I can actually remove that cruft. -A876 (talk) 04:43, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

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Yes, the list page should be deleted and the Category:Missiologists be used instead. No, the Category:Missiologists is not the same as the Category:Missionaries. The difference between "Missiologist" and "Missionary" is similar to the difference between "Lawyer" and "Legal Staff." While missionaries do the task of mission, missiologists, while having a range of specialities, are trained in the science of the study of mission. Missionaries are practitioners primarily, missiologists apply the academic discipline of missiology as the basis for reflection, research, and publication. -DrMissio 22 Feb 2021