Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Local Church of Witness Lee


 * 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 no consensus, because there is no consensus in either direction and it could be one of the most evenly split AfD. Yamamoto Ichiro 会話 02:34, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Local Church of Witness Lee

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Procedural. An identical article, Liite Buddhism, was speedy deleted as a disputed G12 (author claims that it was his material being posted to the article) while in the midst of an AfD. Since speedy deletes are ineligible for G4, I'm nominating for AfD. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 11:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

However, now that that article has been deleted (correctly, as it turns out, but on entirely the wrong grounds) we can move onto this article, and I'll point out now what I said earlier. A Google search for 'the Local Church of Witness Lee' brings up plenty of results. While that in itself might not be sufficient to establish WP:N, it's certainly strong evidence that deletion would be rash. Those involved should be given a chance to bring the article up to scratch. Sethie is right that a lengthy external links section does not equal references and also right that the article is badly written, in the first person in places. However, those issues are probably more properly ironed out at the article's talk page. Keep it, get it better written and most importantly use the external links and whatever other reliable sources exist to properly reference what the article says. AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 11:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * This article has already been voted on, 3 to 1 in favor. Since an AfD was already in progress, and the vote was to keep, and since there was no copyright violation, it is ineligible for speedy deletion.  Further this is a duplication of that AfD, all such comments must be posted there.   Wyeson  11:22, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The previous AfD was closed as a speedy delete (which I agree turned out to have been an incorrect decision) after being open for all of an hour and five minutes. That at the time of closure there were two !votes in favour of keeping (yours wasn't entered until after the AfD had closed) and one for keeping isn't relevant to the present discussion.  To reiterate: the result of that AfD was not keep, but rather speedy delete. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 11:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Violation of the copyright policy is a non-negotiable deletable problem if there are no non-copyvio revisions to revert to. MER-C 11:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I realize that, but I see no reason to doubt User:Wighson's assertion that the material was copied from his blog, and therefore that it is his material to release under the GFDL. If an admin wants to disagree with me, he/she can go ahead and close this one as a speedy too; it just seems very unlikely to me that this article actually is a copyvio. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 11:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think that who holds the copyright depends on who's hosting the blog. Didn't google or Yahoo! catch some flak a while ago for laying claim to their members electronic writings? I don't think that we can assume that the author actually hold the copyright if it's on a blog. But I'd much rather read what was posted about this. Can somebody point me to the discussion about the copyright concerns? Pairadox (talk) 11:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm about 99% certain that you're wrong. Under Blogger's terms of service, copyright rests with the material's creator.  As for discussion about the copyright concerns, there weren't any: User:Kusma saw that the text of the article was identical to the text of the blog post and speedied it on the spot (which was a reasonable course of action at the time, I think, even if I now think it was the wrong move). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 12:01, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * * Keep. When I commented on the AfD for Liite Buddhism earlier, I was unaware of the existence of this identical article. Had I been, I would've said delete to Liite Buddhism without hesitation.
 * Mostly irrelevant correction: when you commented in the other AfD, this article didn't exist; it was created in response to the deletion of the other article. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 11:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * OK. Obviously I'm way behind the game here. :-) -- AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 12:02, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Also probably irrelevent: I logged on and couldn't figure out where the article disappeared to.  Then I thought maybe there was a problem with its title.   Wyeson  11:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. If it helps to say this, the whole discussion brought up useful feedback, and I have made improvements reflective of them.  Others, of course, are free to make further edits, as usual.  Thanks everyone for being so professional, etc.  This has been interesting, if nothing else.   Wyeson  11:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The article must be deleted unless it can be shown that it does not violate the copyright of the blog at http://liites.blogspot.com Kusma (talk) 12:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Earnest question - is there a policy somewhere that sets out burden of proof for potential copyright vios? Because on simple balance of probabilities, it currently seems very much as though there is no such violation with this article, but that obviously falls well short of proof.  On the other hand, with uploaded images we don't make people prove that they own them before releasing them under the GDFL - is it different with text? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 12:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Here, we have an assertion ("this content is mine") that could be trivially proven by Wighson by adding a note to his blog. If he can't do that, we must assume that he doesn't have copyright control over the contentKusma (talk) 12:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Great minds think alike - I just (before reading your last comment) sent an e-mail to the blog owner explaining the situation, and suggesting exactly the same solution as you (assuming Wighson and the blog owner are one and the same). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 12:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Done!  Wyeson  06:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I did just receive an e-mail from the e-mail address posted on the blog confirming that User:Wighson and the blog's author are one and the same. Hopefully this will let us stop worrying about the copyright aspect of it, and get on with debating the other bases for deletion or lack thereof. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 06:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * So that we are clear about copyright law, it allows the free expression of facts and ideas. That means the text, form, combination and structure of documents but not the facts themselves are protected by copyright. You are free to use facts and ideas reported on articles or websites, but not copy text from them. In other words, since as far as I can tell the article has not lifted text from the website in question (unless anyone can point to where it has) no copyright violation has taken place. AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 12:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The original article was lifted pretty much entirely from the website. It's since changed somewhat, but there are still significant passages that are the same ("Shunning public exposure, Liites strenuously avoid identifying themselves in any way to outsiders. Among themselves they call the organization the "Church in" and the name of a thousand different cities, or simply as the "church." Among outsiders they are often called the "Local Church.""). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 12:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Material derived from a copyright violation is still a copyright violation. Unless we get the original author's permission, we have to delete this. Kusma (talk) 13:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. But let's give User:Wighson/the blog owner 24 hours or so to demonstrate that they're one and the same.  If they don't/can't, then I'd be all for re-speedying. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 13:27, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * My content opinion is to merge everything that can be shown to be originating from reliable sources to Local churches. As Wighson noted in the original revision of the page, the section "Comparison with mainstream Buddhism" is completely original research and thus must not be included in Wikipedia unless reliable sources can be found to verifiably show a connection of the Local churches movement to Buddhism. I urge the author to add citations to every section that show where the content is from; the lengthy list of external links is a very poor substitute for references. Kusma (talk) 12:36, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * On second thought, I revise this to delete as POV fork of Local churches (which already has a "Criticism" subarticle). Kusma (talk) 13:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete Flagrant WP:OR- we don't have any RS's linking the Witness Lee movement to Buddhism, claims of "cult" and "anti-semitism" without a WP:RS anywhere in sight. Do we even have a RS for the title "Local Church of Witness Lee"? We have an article on Local Church and Witness Lee, what does cutting and pasting stuff from an un-scholarly blog add? OR, Serious POV-pushing, unsourced claims, and the opinions of non-experts. Sethie (talk) 13:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions.   -- the wub  "?!"  13:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete: I see a number of websites listed at the bottom of the article, but what I don't see is non-trivial coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources. If such sources exist and they can be produced (or if I'm missing them), then I'd change to weak keep, but for now this seems to fail WP:N. MastCell Talk 17:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment Also related to this article is Local Church controversies, which has similar problems. I'm still trying to figure out how they, and the blog, all interconnect. Pairadox (talk) 04:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep and rewrite for NPOV. As it is, this is a one-sided attack page. whatever the nature of the group, and whatever the appropriate name of the article (I suggest " Living Stream Ministry"  apparently the legal name used in its lawsuits), it deserves a fairer treatment than: "The Local Church of Chang-Shou Li is a religion that takes the basic doctrines of Chinese folk Buddhism and cloak them in Christian terminology." The sources  are sufficient to show the notability.  DGG (talk) 05:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * We already have an article about this topic at Local churches. Do you think we should have two? Kusma (talk) 07:03, 11 January 2008 (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.