Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Religious denominations in Leicester


 * 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 delete. The most compelling keep argument relates to sourcing for baptists in Leicester but didn't gain traction. Otherwise the delete arguments have a stronger policy basis. Consensus was clear enough but in general I wouldn't advocate nominating an article shortly after a move from one title to another as that can change the scope of the article quite significantly and be seen as gaming. Spartaz Humbug! 22:37, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Religious denominations in Leicester
AfDs for this article: 
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Maybe this is not entirely fair, since the article has just been moved to title "Religious denominations in Leicester" from longstanding(?) title "Places of worship in Leicester". But we don't want such a list. The current title is a fair description/title for this article, currently titled "Religious denominations in Leicester", created in 2012 by editor User:8tennyson and brought up to this version by them. It is just not encyclopedic, has not been discussed in any sources AFAIK about what are all the religions that have ever been practiced in Leicester. Note it mentions modern "Chinese Christian Church" but not Celtic or Angle or Saxon or whatever earlier peoples whose religions were probably practiced in this geographical area. There are no sources at all addressing the topic of which religions have been practiced here (negative-wise at least, though sure, existence of a church building of one denomination does establish that denomination existed here). But still we don't want such fabrications about this and every other town/city area that exists on this globe. It is pure wp:OR AFAICT, and non-encyclopedic. Doncram (talk) 12:38, 10 April 2020 (UTC) P.S. Note if we did want list-articles sort of like this, then doing it at the level of say, Leicestershire, would be better, I think, sort of. Or at levels set by a U.K.-wide or England-wide system of similar list-articles. But I don't think we can know, or that it is useful to assert that we "know" what are all the denominations which might have been practiced in a given area. --Doncram (talk) 12:42, 10 April 2020 (UTC) Note the title Places of worship in Leicester could conceivably be a good topic to recycle for usage about specific individual churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, etc., at least that is the view of some editors at ongoing Deletion review/Log/2020 April 9 (though i don't necessarily agree). --Doncram (talk) 12:45, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2020 April 10.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 12:48, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 12:49, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 12:49, 10 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete (Confession: I moved it to its current page). Very much per nom: as well as original research, also per WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE. Are there, for instance, no Zen Buddhists or Hare Krishna? A page under its original name listing notable places of worship might be a going concern, but a list of the various religions in any big Western city would effectively be a list of all religions.  ——  SN  54129  12:50, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep The nomination is blatantly false because there are lots of sources which list the various denominations and places of worship in Leicester. The article lists a good selection and it's not difficult to find more.  The exact way that we present this information is debatable but what we don't need are endless AfD's to keep flogging this dead horse.  See WP:STICK, WP:PRESERVE, &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:28, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOTDIRECTORY. A list for just a single city, with the possible exception of Jerusalem, makes no sense. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:32, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * 'Keep --Leicester is sufficiently large, to merge this article into it seems inappropriate. The topic is notable as there are equivalent cultural articles about lots of places, especially when there is more to write than will fit in the main article. Why not Leicester?Epiphyllumlover (talk) 03:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Fitting there is not a problem, because there is no usable content here. The list naming all or most of the religions in the world should be deleted, then there is nothing else remaining.  Oh, the list of purported sources could be pasted to the Talk page of the Leicester article. --Doncram (talk) 02:03, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Update: the purported sources have been copied to Talk:Leicester. --Doncram (talk) 06:08, 22 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Are there actually equivalent articles about “Religion in X” for similarly sized cities as Leicester? Not even New York City has one. The only examples that I know of are Religion in London and Religion in Rome, which are quite special. — MarkH21talk 03:51, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean like Culture of New York City. The space on the main New York City page for culture is basically maxed out. So it makes sense to have a separate article. Same with this city; the section on the main city article page is already about as big as it should be.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 21:20, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah thanks for the clarification. Isn't the description of religious denominations in a city/country usually covered by articles on demographics? For instance, Demography of Leicester is quite a short section and seems appropriate for such information. Although, if we're using the old title on places of worship and we shift the focus to the architecture, then demography is no longer the right place. — MarkH21talk 21:34, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I would not necessarily be opposed to merging this into Demography of Leicester; some architectual non-demography stuff could possibly fit. I guess it would depend on what others say.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 04:58, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Most of this article is just an alphabetical list of religious denominations which have or had a presence in Leicester. Many of the entries are unsourced, and those that are sourced are often just cited to the website of a local church. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:44, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep and revert to Places of worship in Leicester as article name change was not adequately discussed - see talkpage for the single question (i could be WP:BOLD and just revert it but dont want to confuse things). Coolabahapple (talk) 05:24, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * What is your reasoning for keep though? — MarkH21talk 05:46, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * sorry, maybe i should have prefaced it with the word "Procedural"? just to enable the title to be reverted to one that is used in similar list articles, see Lists of churches in England category. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:15, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It would certainly be an interesting move discussion: "I want to move a page that doesn't mention places of worship in Leicester to a page called 'Places of Worship in Leicester'".  ——  SN  54129  13:20, 11 April 2020 (UTC)


 * TNT Not meaningful to list every major religious denomination there is, every major city has places of worship of a variety of religions and denominations. The rest serves no purpose beyond Leicester whatsoever. I can certainly see a religion-specific article, but this is certainly not it, just another stupid directory saying "This city has Sikhs, Muslims, and a bunch of diverse Christians]]." Reywas92Talk 18:06, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: The list of religious denominations here is a directory-like list that would be appropriate within Leicester or Demography of Leicester, but not as a standalone article. Likewise, the previous article name of Places of worship in Leicester isn't much better from a NOTDIR point of view (unless we had a large list of notable non-church places of worship in Leicester). — MarkH21talk 21:13, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment --*Extensive, reliable sources that prove Baptist churches in this city are notable: here, here, and here. A somewhat less extensive source is here. Granted, this is just one denomination, but it is a start.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That doesn't seem directly related to whether we should have a list of religious denominations in Leicester though. — MarkH21talk 21:35, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It proves that that the general topic meets GNG.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 04:52, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I see, but I don’t think anyone doubted that there is significant coverage on some religious denominations in Leicester. In this case, the deletion arguments stem from WP:NOTDIR and/or the content being better suited elsewhere. — MarkH21talk 05:39, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: Having second thoughts. [Came back to clear preference for "Delete", after considering an alternative. -Doncram (talk) 16:04, 24 April 2020 (UTC)]. Maybe it would have been better to move this article back to "Places of worship in Leicester" and address the issues by editing processes (i.e. drop the ridiculous list of denominations, add the actual places of worship which have articles, fight against editors who might try to paste in the ridiculous directories of non-notable places), rather than have this AFD discussion.  And fine, cite the stupid Rimmington articles to say something bland like "at one time there were many Baptist churches" even though Rimmington agrees that is no different than anywhere else.  And try nonetheless to weave a constructive article.  (Which by the way would naturally include coordinates and linked map, and I think would naturally be organized by area within Leicester, not by denomination).  But if that would involve too much fighting I don't want to do it.  The whole series of related AFDs has been pretty awful IMO in the _extremism_ of arguments made (that every church must be mentioned, just because it existed, even tho there is nothing to say about it and it is making the list just like a stupid list of businesses that for some reason Wikipedia feels compelled to promote).  Argh, I can't bring myself to actually try to develop positively here, expecting so much kneejerk opposition in the process, based on how people have been.  It would be so much better if those with extreme positions would have made some sensible concessions. Okay, back to thinking this just needs to be torched, due to impossibility of me or anyone else building a constructive "Places of worship in Leicester" article. --Doncram (talk) 07:31, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * If "Places of worship in Leicester" were to be constructed, that would address concerns of those who didn't like to see everything thrown out in the series of five AFDs on "List of DENOMINATION churches in Leicester": the Baptist one which ended "Draftify"; the Methodist and Congregational ones which ended "Delete"; the Roman Catholic and Anglican ones which ended "Keep" but for which editing processes are going on to eliminate them (the RC one is being morphed into something different, not focused on city of Leicester; the Anglican one will be eliminated by editing processes next).  So within the 5 AFDd lists, there were a number of notable churches that could appear in a Places of worship list (maybe 30 or 40?), but there were also about ten times that many items that just name a non-notable current or past church that should not be mentioned.  It is just insurmountable that editors involved will just battle to make a combo article into a 5 times worse massive, embarrassing directory of non-notables.  It would be bad enough to make a stupid list of the 44 businesses based in Leicester that have Wikipedia articles.  It would be far worse to make an extremely stupid list of _all_ businesses in Leicester that can be verified to exist.  Which is what would happen. So nothing can be done. Torch. --Doncram (talk) 08:18, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The various list articles very likely were derivatives of a UK heritage survey database. The buildings and former-church sites had some government recognition, with what appears to be a looser standard is used for national historic register listing in the US. At the very least, statistics derived from this database could be compiled. You could start by counting the number of entries in each article. Each denomination could be listed by # of open and closed congregations and sites, with a total for all of them.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 17:40, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I dunno if that could be used to fabricate any usable info at all for an article about places of worship in Leicester. But this is an article about "Religious denominations in Leicester" and such would be unusable, unconvincing, wp:OR-type evidence, if it was supposed to say anything about prevalence of various denominations locally, based upon existence of buildings!  At whatever random date that database was compiled.  I'm not even sure if it is very clear about the denomination(s) associated with its buildings.  So this is no help for this article.
 * Epiphyllumlover, you were a participant arguing for keeping all content, including stuff I consider non-notable junk, in the Articles for deletion/List of Baptist churches in Leicester. If I did choose to try to create a proper "Places of worship in Leicester" article, would you accept that only notable Baptist churches (having an article and/or significant descriptive content making clear the importance of a given church in development of Leicester, say) belong, or would you edit war or otherwise argue to add the non-notable junk (my term)?  Honestly? --Doncram (talk) 03:09, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I might argue if I am asked to join in by others; but I am generally busy with other things and was not planning on it currently. I am of the opinion that if you remove the ones without wikilinks, the missing information should be replaced with statistics. Counting entries is not original research. The thearda database commonly includes congregation counts per denomination in the US so it is within generally accepted practices for religious reporting. Maybe you could find the national heritage inventory database online somewhere. Denominational adherence statistics are commonly available from denominations--they are usually reported in annual or semi-annual directories; you'd have to possibly contact them though. In person visits and phone calls would be fairly easy if you or someone you collaborate with lives in Leicester, or at least the UK.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 19:41, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok neither u nor i will do it. This is hypothetical, about what a future editor could do, if they went to create an article actually about the notable places of worship in Leicester. Not sure the world needs that, but that editor is better off if this one is gone. --Doncram (talk) 02:07, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   21:39, 18 April 2020 (UTC) WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Alex-h (talk) 10:08, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Agree with above comments. Does not meet WP:NOTDIRECTORY. ClaudeDavid (talk) 06:28, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, The article does not provide information about religion, worship or ...,


 * 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.