Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Messianic Judaism/2

Messianic Judaism

 * • Watch article reassessment page
 * Result: Delist. Manifestly fails to be an encyclopedic treatment. Instead it concentrates on arguments over the status of Messianic Judaism and advances arguments rather than describing them. As a result it fails numerous GA criteria (such as WP:LEAD) as detailed below. Geometry guy 23:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Rationale for delisting
As a major editor to the article, I am requesting a community reassessment of this article's GA status. Let me preface my remarks by saying that having been absent from the GA process for a long time, I was under the mistaken impression that any editor could remove the GA status, and was unaware of the GAR process, so I delisted the article, inappropriately, last week, and was educated as to the process, which I am now following.

The good article criteria include factual accuracy (#2), neutrality (#4), and stability (#5). This article fails those three points, in my opinion.

The article had been failing factual accuracy on many points, please check the edit history for some major corrections and proper restatements of various sources. While it is better now, the lead of the article is still under intense discussion and is viewed as inaccurate by both Messianic adherents and non-adherents.

As can be seen from the talk page, this debate also indicates that both adherents and non-adherents believe that the article is not neutral, each from their own perspective.

Lastly, the article has become dangerously unstable, with reversions and counter reversions, and blocks for 3RR have actually had to have been applied recently.

As such, I believe this article now fails GA criteria and should be delisted. -- Avi (talk) 15:41, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Delist. This article is clearly unstable and shows no obvious signs of stabilising any time soon. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 15:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. This article is stable aside from the dispute over the lead sentence at the moment, which only recently (last week) was changed without consensus. Since the parties who changed it outnumber the parties who were just fine with the previous lead sentence for well over a year, the dispute has been ongoing since and is currently listed on WP:MEDCAB for resolution. Aside from this, the rest of the article is in fact stable and meets GA guidelines fully. inigmatus (talk) 16:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The very fact that it needs to go to MedCab underscores the lack of stability and neutrality, in my opinion. -- Avi (talk) 16:24, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The lead is a summary of the article. If that is not stable, then how can the article be stable? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 16:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 *  Keep (for now)  I don't feel that one short term edit war is sufficent to force a delisting under the stability guideline, for an article that was a stable GA for a long time. If it does go on for a longer time (eg, a month), then i would change my mind maybe. But the tiniest things can result in a weeks worth of reverting - if that caused delisted, it would be very easy to get a controversial article delisted.Yobmod (talk) 08:27, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually delist for other reasons. The article is full of one sentence paragraphs and one paragraph sections, and unreferenced whole paragraphs, and has citation tags and templates. A few of these problems would get by any GA review from me, but not this many. Editors need to spend less time arguing, and more time improving on non-contention MoS issues. At the moment, this is not a good read, and needs thorough copyediting.Yobmod (talk) 13:04, 24 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment. I lean toward delisting. Firstly, the quality of the article's references is questionable. Secondly, the article has far too many stubby sub-sections. It's quite distracting to have the prose shattered into fragmented sections. Thirdly, I also find myself agreeing with Jayjg (yes, you read that right :o ) that the lead isn't a proper encapsulation of the article. Messianic Judaism is controversial, and the lead should not gloss over controversy and criticism. Finally, I'm puzzled as to why the article's first section, "Identity", make no mention of how virtually all branches of Judaism and the vast number of religious scholars do not consider the movement to be part of Judaism. That omission from the Identity section raises NPOV concerns. Majoreditor (talk) 18:29, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Delist. The current lead is disgraceful. It fails to summarize the article and advocates a point of view. Messianic Judaism is indeed not a branch of modern Judaism, but it isn't the job of Wikipedia to thrust this down readers' throats at every turn. We describe, we don't editorialize. We don't say "The central characteristic defining the Messianic Jewish movement as Christian, rather than Jewish, is its belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ.", we say "Messianic Judaism is commonly regarded as a Christian movement, because it believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ", and we support this with reference to very reliable secondary sources, not a Jewish or Christian webpage. Please, please, in everything you write, let the reader decide. Geometry guy 20:18, 24 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Delist per my above comments. Majoreditor (talk) 20:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)