Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cults and new religious movements in literature and popular culture (3rd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. Pretty clear-cut consensus to keep the article at this time. The main concerns--about the title, the overall scope, original research, etc.--seem valid and are acknowledged by most participants, but those are the kind of things we should deal with via the editing process. Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 03:07, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Cults and new religious movements in literature and popular culture
AfDs for this article: 
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Topic fails WP:SIGCOV, there are couple of journal articles that are cited but for a large part alot of WP:OR and Synth. The Terminology section is totally off topic and largely unrelated material. The literature section mostly lists examples using WP:PRIMARY sourcing /WP:SYNTH methodology. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 21:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 21:50, 1 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. WP:NOR is not a reason to delete or keep an article - that's a content issue. There are numerous sources for the article, many of them scholarly publications. The article easily passed the last AFD, and there do not appear to be any new reasons for deletion.   Will Beback    talk    22:02, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * most of those scholarly sources are in the Terminology section which is completely unrelated to the rest of the article. The only serious source outside the section is when Stephen A. Kent compares the founder of a movement to a fictional character. The rest of the article is almost completely WP:SYNTH off Primary sourcing (i.e. simply describing them naming them and citing the fictional work.) The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 22:13, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * If Synth is a problem then delete that material. It's irrelevant to this discussion.   Will Beback    talk    23:17, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 01:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

As for keeping it.. all these "in popular culture" stubs sound like an open invitation to collect "sourced" comments from trash sources which don't meet WP:RS. Unless the intention is to build an article giving precedence to respectable university professors giving secondary analysis of the general redneckiness of popular culture what are such articles going to acheive? In ictu oculi (talk) 17:07, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Literature is a fertile source of historical attitudes toward a subject. A "cult" is defined in Merriam-Webster's (unabridged) as "a religion regarded as spurious" - not, by the way, as "a spurious religion". The emphasis is on regarded as - which requires a subject: WHO regards it as spurious, and did they give any reasons? We need more information on why people support one religion as valid and dismiss others as spurious. Literature will help us in this examination of the new religious movements. The last thing we need is to sweep the controversy under the rug. That's not what NPOV was created for. --Uncle Ed (talk) 03:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep This article already has good historical perspective and there's more to say on this as Christianity was a new religious movement back in the day. For an example of a source covering that era, see Popular culture in ancient Rome. Warden (talk) 13:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Rename - Wikipedia doesn't have an article Cults and new religious movements for a good reason, it is duplication: Cults is redneck-speak for "new religious movements" in non-redneck.
 * Partial Keep - this article seems like a combination of two basically separate topics: literature featuring cults/new religious movements, and literature by founders of cults/new religious movements. I don't see what the latter really has to do with the former: 'Altas Shrugged' and 'Battlefield Earth' aren't examples of 'Cults and new religious movements in literature and popular culture', are they? I would say Keep the first part of the article, but spin-off the sections about works by founders of movements into a separate article (or delete it entirely). Robofish (talk) 15:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep to me, the nomination of this article indicates the lack of  understanding of Wikipedia that resulted in the two previous nominations also, as well as failure to discriminate between the different sorts of articles on the subject which can only represent a general opposition to covering the subject at all.  This, unlike most such articles, is not basically   a list or combination article, but a   discussion of the subject, and a good one too. So  and none of the usual criticisms of such lists apply.That the nominator did not see this implies that he is dis-satisfied with the entire general concept of having Wikipedia  articles of any sort about popular culture. I might as usefully say we ought not have Wikipedia articles about computers, the other great specialty that Wikipedia does particularly well, and that the world uses us for.    With respect to sources, the nom. claims only "a few journal articles"; I count 86 references, including  entire books about the subject, and major encyclopedia articles--such sources are enough to establish any article subject.   The proper scope of the article is for discussion on the talk p.     DGG ( talk ) 03:07, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, and possibly partial keep per Robofish. Although I share the stated concerns over the POV-ness of the term "cult", some of the groups / movements mentioned in this article are anything but new.  Calling Alexander of Abonoteichus the leader of a "new religious movement", for example, would be just plain silly.  If a better name could be chosen for the article — something not using the word "cult" at all — I think that would be an improvement, but I think there is justification for including the content in Wikipedia.   Rich wales (talk · contribs) 03:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thats actually the only instance that of all the scholar references that use cult in the pejorative sense meaning psudeo-scientist and neither is it discussing popular culture. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 04:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not currently cited in this article, but this book is mostly devoted to reviewing coverage of cults and new religious movements in the mainstream media.    Will Beback    talk    04:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.