Talk:Catholic Church

Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church

The introduction should note that the church organization refers to itself formally in English as the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Acsenray (talk) 21:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

There are certainly historical examples of this kind of formal name but I doubt that there has been any significant official use of this name in more recent decades. Therefore it can now probably be considered redundant. Afterwriting (talk) 07:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Catholic Church/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

closed section

Per the GA criteria, this article currently fails 1, 4, and 5. It fails 1 because it's anything but well-written: it's filled with choppy prose and it fails WP:MOS on many levels, including an ugly and bloated TOC. It fails 4 because several editors have raised important and valid objections about its neutrality (see the article's talk page). Finally, it absolutely fails 5 because it's been the subject of massive revisions and edit wars in the last few weeks. To call this article "stable" would be a joke. I recommend that it be removed from the GA list.UberCryxic (talk) 02:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC) GA Reassessment review and comments This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Catholic Church/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment. This article no longer meets the Good Article Criteria on several grounds. The article is not well-written. It fails to inform the reader and is little more than a hodgepodge of lists or an apologetic tract. The article is not factually accurate. There are misleading sentences and numerous instances of sketchy sourcing. While the coverage is exceedingly broad it goes too much into unnecesarry detail. There are subarticles on every topic in every section, yet these subarticles do not go into the level of detail that the parent article goes into. Simply put, this piece is not written in Summary-style The article is plagued with POV issues, which would be unneccesary if it were not written down to the level of detail that it finds itself, in. The article is plagued by edit-warring and ownership. There are image copyright issues as well The only criteria which it does not fail is on the use of images.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 02:13, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Well hang on there Mike. It might actually fail images too because I couldn't verify the source for one of them during my revisions, raising copyright issues.UberCryxic (talk) 02:16, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Yes take a look at the photograph of Pope Benedict. The external link is broken; source can't be verified. My oh my it fails them all. It's a home run!UberCryxic (talk) 02:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Comment. Hmm. When i first came to the article late last year, i could understand why someone might query its GA status, as I had thought it did not meet at least a couple of the criteria. At the same time, i thought the intensive level of work on the article, and the careful (if not always reliable) footnoting, suggested that a GAR would not be productive. While I am inclined to agree with Uber on this, I think UberMike may wish to make some comments here on how s/he intends to handle the GAR process in light of the temporary stop on editing in the article space, and on how the GAR would proceed if the alternative framework for the article becomes the base for editing, instead of the present one. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Question. UberCryxic, are you sure that you followed the correct instructions to initiate this as a community GAR rather than as an individual GAR? So far this sub-page hasn't shown up over at GAR. Please check to see that you've followed the correct instructions; if this isn't cross-posting to WP:GAR it needs to be fixed. Thanks, Majoreditor (talk) 03:22, 11 March 2010 (UTC) I did not start this GAR. Mike did. I only suggested we needed one. I think the method is appropriate, but I'm not fully sure. Since he started the process, it's up to Mike to determine whether this article stays as GA anyway.UberCryxic (talk) 03:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry, it looked like you had because your posting is at the top. In any case, this is best handled as a proper community GAR. Mike, can you switch this over to community so it cross-posts at WP:GAR? Thanks, Majoreditor (talk) 03:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Comment. This article does not presently meet GA criterion 5 (Stability). It is proper to delist it for now; once edit warring and the like have settled down it can be re-nominated at WP:GAN. However - and this is important - involved editors should not move to delist this article. Let this go to community GAR for an uninvolved party to close. Majoreditor (talk) 03:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Mike can speak for himself too, but I'm actually going to preempt him because I'm on solid turf when I say he has not been that involved with editing the actual article recently. I think it's more than appropriate that he started the GAR.UberCryxic (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Majoreditor, I have no idea what you're saying: I don't speak GA, and every time I look, it's changed. This article is not GA; how can it be delisted? I had to do MOS cleanup at five different FACs, so I show as a contributor even though Nancy & Co had me doing secretarial cleanup every time it came to FAC. I have never entered any discussion here other than to advocate that the article is too long, nor have I edited any content. Am I considered "involved" for GA purposes? Should I delist? What happened to speedy delist? This article is not GA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC) (ec) Sandy, this article appears to be currently listted as a Good Article; see the top of this talk page. It will be best for this GAR to run its course as a community GAR. Please let Geometry guy ensure that it's properly posted at WP:GAR. I will contact him. Thanks, Majoreditor (talk) 03:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Ok. I'm just not exactly sure what should happen. Mike, since you started it, do whatever needs to be done so that this article gets proper attention from GA reviewers. Or Major can handle it too if that would be faster.UberCryxic (talk) 04:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Thanks, Uber. I've contacted Geomentry guy for his guidance, given his experience with the GAR process. I think that you, Mike and Sandy are rightfully concerned that this article no longer meets GA criteria, but let's ensure that the GAR process is open to the greater community and that it's closed by an uninvolved party. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 04:34, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry, just got in from training. I have been a major contributor to this article, mostly reverting vandalism, I have not been that active recently on it, but I think my name still shows in the "Top 10 list"; so I want to make sure there is no COI. I thought I clicked Community, but Uber may have hit enter a few seconds before me, so I just followed what he did on GA1. What do i need to do, this is new territory for me, I'm usually trying to get articles promoted?--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 04:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Well I don't think it has to be a community reassessment. They give you the option for an individual reassessment and leave the ultimate decision up to the person who initiated the process. That's my understanding of it.UberCryxic (talk) 04:47, 11 March 2010 (UTC) (ec) Majoreditor has asked User:Geometry guy, one of the most experienced editors with the GA process, for advice. It's probably good to wait what he has to say. Ucucha 04:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Sounds good to me. I can wait.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 04:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC) (undent) Comment Revert to stable version. Protect. KEEP GA. Are there admins watching for trolls and POV warriors here? • Ling.Nut 02:29, 12 March 2010 (UTC) It is a very bad article; it makes assertions unsupported even by the sources it quotes; it is (and has been for months, if not years), the product of revert-warring, chiefly for the (often avowed) purpose of speaking "positively" about its subject (three of the faction involved dared say so to ArbCom). It is unstable because the present text is long, bloated, inaccurate, and partisan - and some people want it that way; there is no stable version, unless revert-warring can constitute one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:16, 12 March 2010 (UTC) In short, it is a huge freaking poster boy for flagged revisions. Or flagged revisions and then some. Meanwhile, however: I'm not saying it is the Correct Version; I'm saying pick the best recent version (immediately after its most recent FAC, perhaps), revert, and protect. • Ling.Nut 07:39, 12 March 2010 (UTC) It failed FAC; the dubious claims and POV defensiveness were already included before ever it came there. In order to get rid of them, we would have to go back to the last period of stability, two years and more ago, and even then edit extensively; otherwise FR or protection would freeze in the propaganda. The propagandists want it frozen - but without a tag to suggest to the reader that their version may lack something of consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Joint GAR

There are concerns that the article does not meet GA criteria for stability and other issues. User:EyeSerene and I will conduct a joint GAR, and any decision regarding delisting or keeping will be a joint decision. Due to stability concerns this GAR will run until at least 13 April 2010; if there are disruptive edits between now and the end of this GAR the article will be delisted as unstable. As there are significant positive edits and changes being made to the article at the moment, this GAR is put onhold until 20 March to allow editors to proceed unhindered. EyeSerene and I will start to look closely at the article after that date, and make observations as to how we feel the article meets GA criteria. SilkTork *^YES! 18:57, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

• As editing is still in progress, and a RfC is in place, the outcome of which will impact upon the article, we are extending the hold period for another 7 days. This is in line with Wikipedia:Good article criteria, in particular the footnote to criteria 5, the relevant part of which reads: " Nominations for articles that are unstable because of constructive editing should be placed on hold."
• Our view is that while there is a dispute in place, so far this dispute is being carried on appropriately on the talkpage or in other locations, and has not seriously impacted the article itself recently. Edits to the article appear to us to be constructive and in good faith; though we haven't closely examined the article, so we are not making a comment on the current contents in relation to meeting GA criteria, particularly NPOV, and our inaction should not be taken as an endorsement of the current version of the article.
• We are aware that there is some concern that an article over which there is a dispute regarding NPOV, should be listed as a Good Article, and that putting an article on hold indefinitely would not be acceptable, so when we look at the situation again in seven days we will be looking for significant progress on resolving this issue. SilkTork *^YES! 08:08, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Extend hold to April 13

The hold has been extended to April 13. This will be after the planned closure of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Catholic Church, and after the return of EyeSerene who is currently on a break. SilkTork *^YES! 14:10, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment

I note that the RfC has now closed with a consensus to build on the existing "short" version. The article appears to be stable, though I note that there are several citation needed tags. After having this GAR on hold for over a month I feel that it is time for EyeSerene and myself to look at the article, give some comments and make a decision. SilkTork *^YES! 16:09, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right place for comments, but I don't believe the article as it currently stands achieves Good Article status. 1) It is not yet stable, with many areas under construction. 2) Numerous elements of the text are disputed, as can be seen from talk page posts. 3) The article is not fully comprehensive, omitting large elements on Catholic beliefs and structures that were formerly detailed. In addition sections on important elements such as pilgrimage are absent, as well as material on the long-term cultural influence of the Church and its modern work including schools, charities, hospitals and missions. 4) The article is poorly illustrated. Xandar 19:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Review by EyeSerene

Per WP:WIAGA:

1. Prose and MoS compliance
   • Overall this looks pretty good to me and is almost at what I'd term GA standard. There are a few sentences that read as though detached from their surroundings but it's not a significant issue; probably the result of multiple writers and the need to summarise vast swathes of information for what is an overview article.
   • The lead section adequately does its job, although the presence of citation needed tags raises a small red flag (not so much regarding the text itself, but whether that text is in fact a summary of sourced information in the article body and, if so, why cites would then be needed in the lead too).
   • Nitpick re the last sentence of the lead, "...and that it is called to work for unity among Christians." Presumably 'it' refers to the Catholic Church, although I didn't parse it this way until the third reading. Can the sentence be made less ambiguous?
   • The Doctrine section came over to me as the weakest prose-wise mainly due to the amount of repetition of certain phrases (see Neutrality below). A light copyedit would, I think solve this.
2. Accuracy and verifiability
   • I think this falls within GA tolerances. There are a few {{fact}} tags, but not many (and I question the need for those in the lead - see above).
   • All external links seem good
   • My limited sample of those sources I can access seemed fine, though I did notice cite 173 (at time of writing, "Paragraph number 1233 (1994). "Catechism of the Catholic Church". Libreria Editrice Vaticana. http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a1.htm. Retrieved 12 May 2008.") appears to be sourced to a sourced footnote ("37 Cf. AG 14; CIC, cann. 851; 865; 866." here). Might sourcing the article sentence to the original source be better?
3. Coverage
   • Bearing in mind that the GA requirement for broadness is considerably weaker than the FA requirement for comprehensiveness, on reading the article I felt I came away with a decent grasp of the subject. The article seemed slightly uneven in places (the amount of detail in, for example, the Middle Ages section as opposed to the Contemporary section), but not enough to fail this criterion.
4. Neutrality
   • This is, I think, one of the two contentious issues as far as GA is concerned (the other being the criterion below). Thanks to the sterling efforts of the many editors involved, the article seems to me to be sufficiently neutral - in fact, I'd say in places there is perhaps too much qualification (for example, I lost count of how many times I read "The Church teaches..."!).
5. Stability
   • There have been over 500 edits to the article since this GAR was initiated and these have involved significant changes. This process still seems to be underway, so I'd like the advice of the article writers as to how close they are to settling on a 'finished' version before making a final decision here. However, on present form I'd say the article fails this criterion.
6. Images
   • Although not required at GA, for a subject like this images are very desirable and probably expected. If present images should be suitably licensed, captioned, and relevant to the topic. I have no issues here other than to say that a wider selection of illustrations throughout would be nice :) This is not a GA blocker.

Conclusion: I believe the major issue for this GA assessment is the article stability; I think at some point we must close this GAR, so my inclination is to delist the article for now with the recommendation that it be submitted for a new GA review once major work has finished. Please note, however, that this conclusion is tentative and subject to modification in the light of SilkTork's comments. I also sincerely wish the article writers well with its development and congratulate them for making such fine progress with this difficult subject. EyeSerene^talk 14:15, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Review by SilkTork

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

• I am doing this review independent of EyeSerene, and have not at this point read his comments.
• Prose is mostly clear and readable, conveying complex information in an understandable manner. There are places where it is abrupt and choppy - the Name section is particularly poor, as it a series of very short sentences that could be run together to make that section flow more elegantly. There are little mistakes which show a need for some copyediting, such as this misplaced comma - "The first known, state sponsored case of Christian persecution". There are some very short paragraphs in the Late Antiquity section, and why does Antiguity have a capital letter? The prose needs tidying up to gain an unambiguous Pass.
• MoS guidelines that apply to GA are not completely satisfied. There is an excessive use of unexplained WP:Jargon, such as "the Apostles" in the first sentence of the History section. There is a feeling that there is so much information that the editors are trying to cram in as much as possible in as short a space as possible and this is leading to such a tight compression that it is leading to a form of ellipsis for the less informed. I find the WP:Lead to be inadequate to the needs of the article as it stands, and certainly to the article as it should be when properly developed. The Traditions of worship, particularly the Mass, are not mentioned in the lead, nor is the Schism, and I feel the history of the church could be better presented than the throwaway sentence: "With a history spanning almost two thousand years, the Church is the western world's oldest and largest institution, having played a prominent role in the politics and history of Western civilization since the 4th century." The lead should be able to stand on its own, and that sentence is more of a tease than encyclopedic information. What prominent role? A few significant facts should be given here in summary form, such as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation which were the cause of various wars. Much work needs to be done in this area, and my experience is that this is unlikely to be done in a short period, though I would be willing to hold on evidence of solid work in the right direction.
• Referencing appears solid. The tags in the lead appear to be inappropriate and could be removed. The information in the "programs and institutions" sentence is scattered throughout the article, and each piece of that information I examined had an appropriate cite. In this modern age where many of the texts used as references are available on Googlebooks it is helpful to the general reader to have a direct link to that book. While it is possible to click on the cite number, be bought down to the References section where one can then make a note of the author and page number, then scroll down to look in the Sources section to find the book, note the name and then go to Googlebooks and do a search, it would be easier to include a direct link to the relevant page where possible. This is not, however, a GA requirement, just a personal comment. Ah! I see it has been done in places. I assume it has been done where it was possible to provide a direct link, and the other books have not yet been scanned. Anyway, I feel that
• Broad coverage is going to be a problematic criteria to meet and some common sense has to prevail. I found that I would have appreciated more information in the Early Christianity section, and I found it exceedingly odd that Jesus is barely mentioned. There is more mention of Jesus and his creation of the church in the Doctrine section. Indeed, that section seems disproportionally long, and on examination some of the material (such as "Jesus designated Simon Peter as the leader of the apostles by proclaiming 'upon this rock I will build my church'") can be transferred to the Early Christianity section. I haven't made a final decision on if the article is broad enough for the general reader as my feeling at this stage is that overall the article is not going to meet the GA criteria as there is work to be done, and I think I would rather examine the article more critically and thoroughly when it is in a more developed state.
• I feel that the article is worded and presented in an appropriately neutral manner. The tone is encyclopedic and reassuring. Admirably factual.
• The article has been stable during the period of the GAR even though a dispute was waging on the talkpage. The article has developed positively. The GAR criteria does not give a fail for productive changes. What should be bourne in mind however, is that this is an article which still needs a bit of work, however the work that needs doing is covered by other GA criteria - it currently meets the GA stability citeria.
• The images pass, though the WP:Captions are rather long and could be trimmed as per the caption guideline.
• I admire the development of this article, and the commitment of all those involved. Looking back at the earlier version there is much to admire, though some good stuff has been lost - I found the March 13 version of Early Christianity to be more informative. This article reads like a work in progress, and I feel there is too much work to be done within a short time to bring it to GA standard. Initially my thought was that it might be possible to get the work done while this GA was put on hold again, but given how development has slowed down during April I feel that it would be an unreasonable expectation for the amount of work needed to be completed within even a month. This is a big topic, and shouldn't be hastened. Working toward a GA status is more positively motivating than working to save a GA status. I will read EyeSerene's comments then consult with him on what to do. SilkTork *^YES! 11:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Conclusion

I have read through EyeSerene's review. Interesting to note the areas where we have different views and the areas where we concur. Our conclusions, though arrived at via different routes, are the same, that the article should be delisted at this stage as it is still being developed. As such I will delist. SilkTork *^YES! 11:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Source verification

Does anyone have easy access to the sources used in the article? Nancy has expressed on her talk page a fear that after the changes the article won't match the sources. Others have expressed concern on this page that the article didn't match the sources before. The easiest way to figure this out is to get the sources. I've copied the list of sources to User:Karanacs/Catholic Sources. Please strike through any books on this list that you've used to verify and sign that line. I ask that if you find a discrepancy, tag that sentence in the article and create a section on the talk page to discuss rather than just remove. Ideally, we should have several editors agree that the interpretation in the article doesn't match the text before we take further action. Karanacs (talk) 20:01, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, looks like quite a few of those were not used. I have Madrid's book and he is also a personal friend, I can look and see on the others.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 23:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 6: Sacred Scripture

This sentence The Catholic Church teaches that the Holy Spirit reveals God's truth through Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium. cannot be verified in the cited source. Karanacs (talk) 14:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 8: Liberation theology

The sentence on Liberation theology (Pope John Paul II criticised the emergence of liberation theology among some clergy in South America, asserting that the Church should champion the poor unconnected to radicalism and violence.) is cited to a BBC religion overview [1]. Do we consider this an appropriate source for the statement, or should we look for a higher-quality source? Karanacs (talk) 15:01, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Or should we delete? It is indeed a news item that John Paul II said this; it is indicative of church policy under the last pontiff, but that statement does not constitute policy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

This is too recent for me - without reading more books on the Church in the 20th century I have no idea whether this is important or not. Karanacs (talk) 15:10, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd move to strike it.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree. To put the case in full: I do not know whether this is present policy or not - as opposed to one news conference. If it is, it needs a better, secondary, source; if it is not, it has no business here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:04, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 10: Bauckham?

There is a citation called "Bauckham, p. 373. ", but no corresponding book by that author listed. It's the sole source for Reception of the council has formed the basis of multifaceted internal positions within the Catholic Church since then. A so-called spirit of the times followed the council, influenced by exponents of Nouvelle Théologie such as Karl Rahner. Some dissident liberals such as Hans Küng even claimed Vatican II had not gone far enough. I searched for author=Bauckham in Google Books, and he's written a lot of books; I'm not sure which one this is referring to. Karanacs (talk) 15:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 12: U of M website

This U of M description of a historical document collection[2] is really not an appropriate source for The Curia functioned as the civil government of the Papal States until 1870.. Surely we can find a better source for this? Karanacs (talk) 15:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Needs rewording anyway; the Papal States did have officials. Almost all of the highest ones were Cardinals, but that's not quite the same. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:21, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

/* Industrial age */ Terrible Triangle

The current text reads "The La Reforma regime which came to power in Mexico in 1860 passed the anti-clerical Calles Law and in the 1926–29 Cristero War[202] over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated,[203][204] churches desecrated, services mocked, nuns raped and captured priests shot.[202] In the Soviet Union persecution of the Church and Catholics continued well into the 1930s.[205] In addition to the execution and exiling of clerics, monks and laymen, the confiscation of religious implements and closure of churches was common.[206] During the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, the Catholic hierarchy supported Francisco Franco's rebel Nationalist forces against the Popular Front government,[207] citing Republican violence directed against the Church.[208]"

First of all, mentioning the La Reforma regime of 1860 and the 1926-29 Cristero War together in the same breath is probably conflating too much. Secondly, the text confuses the Calles Law of 1926 with the Lerdo Law of 1856. Finally, what ties persecution of Catholics in Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain is that Pius XI called this the Terrible Triangle and expressed with bitterness his disappointment regarding the failure of Western democracies to publicly oppose and halt them. I know we're trying to keep the History section short but I think it's important to mention the phrase "Terrible Triangle".

Also, this is a bit of OR but I still think the anti-clericalism of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century is part of what drove the Catholic Church to continue seeking accommodation with more conservative governments which could possibly protect it from attacks by Marxists and anarchists. (no POV attack or defense intended here, I'm just stating what I think was going on). Does anybody know of sources which make a similar assertion?

--Richard S (talk) 09:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Richard, I agree about the problems with the original para. I pulled together Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain with Pius' 'Terrible Triangle' idea in mind but as you say it needed a sentence making that explicit. I've also made a couple of edits for NPOV and brevity. Haldraper (talk) 16:24, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

We have an article on the Terrible Triangle, but Pius XI was a prelate - and in this context a politician - not a historian. I doubt these should be a single paragraph containing Juarez and Lenin; a phrase linking the words Terrible Triangle (Pius XI spoke of the events of his time as...) may be reasonable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:35, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Early Christianity

In the early Xty section of the history it says " Early Christians refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods or to worship Roman rulers as gods and were thus subject to persecution". This is supported by a ref from Wilken.But I can't work out which book it is.. when the first big persecution came it was because Nero said they set Rome on fire, for terrorism. Which Wilken book is it? And a minor point could it be spelt out when Constantine is mentioned what this meant.." With the conversion of Constantine Xty turned the corner - from heresy to orthodoxy.". With all that implies. Sayerslle (talk) 01:08, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The terms "heresy" and "orthodoxy" can be be loaded. The current text describes the situation with neutral terms:

Christianity was legalized in 313 under Constantine's Edict of Milan,[36] and declared the state religion of the Empire in 380.[37]

I think that the current text works well. Is there a need to say more? Majoreditor (talk) 01:39, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

To not underline that this conversion is a big deal is loaded too..etc etc..Sayerslle (talk) 01:58, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Some would maintain that the corner wasn't completely turned until the death of Julian. The article on History of late ancient Christianity says that "Christianity came to dominance during the reign of Julian's successors, Jovian, Valentinian I, and Valens (the last Eastern Arian Christian Emperor)." Constantine's conversion, Julian's premature death and the subsequent declaration of Christianity as the Empires official religion all appear to be important events. But perhaps the exact details should remain in the daughter articles. Majoreditor (talk) 02:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Given the desire to keep the History section short, I would leave the details of Julian and his successors to subsidiary articles. --Richard S (talk) 03:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Any full explanation would also include the edicts of Theodosius I against public pagan worship; the final text should certainly include the word gradual, and link to a subarticle. This is not on topic here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

On a separate note, I have to confess to some confusion about the persecution of the Christians bit. Our text provides the standard party line ... "Early Christians refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods or to worship Roman rulers as gods". So what gives here? The Jews refused to do this also and they weren't persecuted for it. AFACICT, they actually had a fairly cozy relationship with the Romans in which the Sanhedrin had a fairly autonomous authority over the practice of their religion and the Jews only got stepped upon as a people for repeated rebellion (ROMANUS EUNT DOMUS!). The picture I have of the Roman empire is that it was generally tolerant of the religions of the various cultures that made up the Empire. The idea of a monolithic worship of "Roman gods and divine rulers" seems to contradict that picture. Perhaps the rule was "OK, you can worship all the gods you want but you also have to sacrifice to our gods and worship our rulers as divine". Wouldn't it be better to clarify this issue? And, why did the Jews get an exception and the Christians didn't? --Richard S (talk) 03:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

"People called Romani, they go the house?" :). I think it had more to do with the Christians rejecting the pluralism of the Romans. The Jews didn't try to win converts, but the Christians did, and would do so by telling people they were wrong. When you tell that to the "Cult of the Emporer" you're going to get crushed. Plus to the Romans, the Christian religion was founded by a condemned criminal and in the 1st-3rd centuries what cultural contributions were they making toward the Empire? Bear in mind to that point in history that religions for the most part were associated with a particular tribe or country, Christianity, once it spread past the Jews was not.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 04:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Mike, your Latin translation of what I wrote is correct. "ROMANES EUNT DOMUS!" (oops, sorry for the typo in the original comment) is a reference to a Monty Python sketch in "Life of Brian". Go find it on YouTube. It's hilarious. --Richard S (talk) 15:46, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Very familiar with it. Centurion reminds me of my Latin teacher from the seminary.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:45, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The Jews weren't persecuted since they were a "nation", with its own national God. Christians on the other hand were Romans and subverting other Romans to join them and abandon their old gods. Xandar 10:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

But some Romans followed Mithras,the Persian God, soldiers and that, and they followed mystery cults, and Sol, the Sun God? Even in Pompeii there were Christians and that was detstroyed in 79AD, they seemed quite open to religions of the Empire. Anyway, the Wilken is Robert Louis Wilken , but it still isn't clear to me which book is being referenced. Sayerslle (talk) 11:58, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses. Yes, I knew most of that but I didn't want to go too far out on a limb without sources for fear of being accused of Original Research. Collectively, you have exactly hit the point I am raising. Our text doesn't mention the points that you have made in response to my query. Our text suggests that the Christians were poor, noble innocents who were persecuted because they refused to worship false gods. This is the Christian POV which is a legacy from the Jewish meme (think of Daniel in the lion's den as perhaps the most widely known example from the Old Testament). However, the Roman POV would view the Christians as a subversive religion which was corrosive to the tolerant pluralism of the Roman Empire. This Roman POV and is not presented at all in this article. This is an example of the pro-Catholic (pro-Christian) POV that permeates the article. An NPOV treatment would present both POVs. It seems to me that a neutral, secular historian would be more likely to credit the Roman POV over the Christian POV. But, you know,... the victor writes the history and so we have been fed the Christian POV for centuries.... Are there any reliable sources that support a more neutral view of why the Romans persecuted the Christians? Do we want to get into a detailed discussion of that question here or should we simply state that Christians were persecuted by the Romans without mentioning a reason why? --Richard S (talk) 15:46, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The Romnan point of view is clear, and documentable from the correspondence between Trajan and Pliny the Younger - and the life of Decius. The Romans regarded the oath to the Emperor, which was an act of worship, as one of the major ties binding the Empire together; refusal to take it was contumacy. The Jews had special license, since the Empire also approved of everybody keeping to their ancestral traditions; but even this was not always enough; Bar-Cochba's rebellion of about 116 AD was sparked in part by tensions over Emperor-worship.

The Christians, however, were most of them converts, leaving their various ancestral traditions; they were then gathering together to foment resistance to the fundamental structures of the Empire. (And the Emperors hated spontaneous gatherings; Trajan refused to permit Nicomedia to run a fire company lest it become a focus for civil disorder.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Is it worthwhile using a lot of space presenting a now non-existent POV. This could go to excesses... "The babylonians slaughtered the jews because they thought they were a pestilential nuisance who might ally with the Egyptians." The question deserves half a sentence at most. Xandar 20:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is; to do otherwise is recentism. To present the Hollywood version of the Roman Rmpire is to misstate the history of the Church Whether it is useful in this article to explain the Roman point of view is a matter of convenience; but the editors should know what they are summarizing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:45, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Is this a Joke?

I have just noticed the Constantine picture that has recently replaced the picture of martyrs in the Colliseum. It has a ridiculous caption quoting a throwaway line from an atheist TV presenter. The picture itself is inappropriate and POV, subtly reinforcing popular conspiracy theories that Constantine "founded" the Church. The caption with its stupid unhistoric "now it was dangerous not to believe" line, is a joke. Xandar 20:13, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I would support ditching both pictures in favor of one that we can all agree is neutral (I don't see the Constantine one as being POV, but I'm sure there are plenty of other images we could choose from to avoid this controversy). I consider the "martyr" picture to be POV. If the Constantine picture stays, it needs a better caption, perhaps just that he legalized Christianity. Karanacs (talk) 20:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

popular conspiracy theories that Constantine founded the Church ? What are you on about? I think the point Gascoigne was making was that once Catholicism became the official religion of the state it was a step down a particular road - with Charlemagne , if you refused baptism, it carried the death penalty, once something becomes the orthodoxy , it becomes more dangerous to support the heterodox , - but whatever the deficiencies of the caption, the 'picture itself is POV' is really strange thing to say. Waht is overwhelmingly apparent is your POV, relentless..like the painting of a big Caucasian man (God) handing a ginormous key to a kneeling caucasian in some quattrocento piazza ? is not POV.Sayerslle (talk) 22:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Again, you're turning a content issue to one of personal attacks. Sayerslle. Stop it. Dan Brown and dozens of others have pushed the ahistorical idea that somehow Constantine corrupted or massively altered the Church and its teachings. So to select a slightly menacing carving of Constantine as the image to represent the early Church is not neutral IMO. In any event Constantine did not force anyone to become Christian - he legalised Christianity, and gave it its properties back. Xandar 00:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think this thread shifted from content to ad hominem attacks at "Is this a joke?" Hesperian 01:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, Constantine did not just legalize Christianity and give its properties back. He also made Catholicism the only legal form of Christianity, forbade non-Catholic Christians to meet for religious purposes even in private homes, confiscated and destroyed their books, and signed over all their buildings to the Catholic Church. So while he did not "force anyone to become Christian", he forced all Christians to either become Catholics or cease being Christians at all. All this is documented (and celebrated with great glee) by Eusebius Pamphilius in his life of Constantine. [3] [4] [5] [6]Harmakheru ✍ 02:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, what these snippets are referring to is not persecution of pagans or unbelievers, but actions taken AFTER the Council of Nicea against those Christians who refused to accept it. Something quite different to what is being implied in the caption. As most sources agree, Constantine called the Council to get rid of dissension among Christians and so help unite his empire. This was an aim of the State. No brand of Christian had "houses" before Constantine's legalisation, since Diocletian and Galerian had systematically destroyed them all. So the caption is indeed very misleading, and in such a way, as (Yes, Hesperian) it seemed that somebody had installed it as a joke. Xandar 11:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

No, Dicletian and Galerius did not destroy them all, even in the regions of the Empire they controlled; and did Constantinus Chlorus destroy any?

It is largely true that the persecution of Jews, pagans, and unbelievers was not systematic before Theodosius I, half a century later; but Constantine did close pagan temples, confiscated their treasuries, and gave the buildings to Christian bishops (again, not all); all this is Eusebius.

Constantine was also able to stabilize the Roman coinage, and put it on a gold standard for the first time in history. Conincidence? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Recent Major and Substantive Changes to this Article

Since 9th March, major, substantive, and largely undiscussed, changes have been made to this article that totally re-order it and reduce its size by more than half, removing key sections and decimating others. I am not at this point going to divert into the manner in which these changes have been introduced. I am, however, going to say why these hastily made changes are not only fundamentally ill-judged, but make the article completely unfit for purpose. I will make proposals for a better and consensus way forward for this article.

If we compare the Longstanding Text of this article with that newly introduced, the principal changes have been:

• Removal of the History section from the bottom of the article to the top.

• Completely removing entire referenced sections, including Origin and Mission and Cultural Influence.

• Massively cutting, merging and re-writing the Prayer and Worship, the Beliefs, and the Church organisation sections, along with their subsections.

• Many parts of the History section have also been substantially altered.

These changes amount to what one editor called a "Hiroshima" of the article. The rationale for these changes has been extremely vague. The main ostensible reason put forward has been that the article was too long. However this is not the way to make cuts. What has been cut is largely the unique core material of the article, and what has been left is mnaterial largely duplicated by other articles.

This has happened because enormous changes and cuts have not been properly discussed and agreed. They have been hastily and arbitrarily implemented, and therefore have caused the article to fail. If I was currently grading this article (which has been a Good Article for years), I would have to rate it at no more thanClass C ie. Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study.

The changes seem to have been inspired by a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of this article. The principal purpose of this article is to inform the reader about the Structure, beliefs, practices and organisation of the Catholic Church TODAY. The current article fails to do this. The sections that should form the core of the article, and which contain most of the unique core material on the subject have been moved to the end of the article and decimated.

• The sections covering organisation, membership and structure have been cut from 2,650 words to (as of 17th March) 660 words. Less than a QUARTER of the previous total! This is not "editing" it is removal of 75% of content!
• The sections on Beliefs and Practices have been cut from 3,450 words to 1436 words - barely a THIRD of the total in the longstanding article.

In order to do this, the subsections have been removed and there is a mass of unreadable text. The content itself has had all its logic removed, leaping seemingly at random from subject to ill-explained subject. Coverage of important and vital issues such as Mary and the Saints, Pilgrimage, purgatory, social teaching, creation, angels, salvation and free will has vanished completely. Coverage of Monasticism has also gone, as well as coverage of the Church's educational and social work. Most of this material is not only necessary, but totally uncontroversial and there has never been a proposal to remove it! All such changes would need proper discussion on their substance and consensus on their substance before implementation. The tiny remnants of what should be the core sections of the article have been further downgraded by being tagged on as a sort of postscript to the article, behind a lengthy History section.

I'm afraid the people who have overhastily made these changes, have produced an article which may reflect THEIR personal interests, but it does not reflect the needs of readers or the requirement that this MAJOR Wikipedia article be full, balanced and comprehensive. At present it has become a cut-down duplication of the History of the Catholic Church article, with a little garbled information on the present day Church tagged on the end. This really is an embarrassment to its subject, and to Wikipedia.

Let us compare the Longstanding text and the current UBER/Karanacs text with the coverage on the major foreign language Wikipedias. Here are the Spanish Language, the Italian Language, the French Language, the German Language, the Portuguese Language and the Dutch Language articles. We can also look at the English Wikipedia articles on Anglicanism, the Orthodox Church, the Featured Article, Islam, and Buddhism. They are ALL immensely closer in format, content and weighting to the Longstanding Text of this page. So WHO is out of step? Is everybody wrong except the group of editors supporting this hacked to shreds version? Do their plans include parachuting into Islam or Orthodox Church and Anglicanism and perform the same level of cutting and reorganisation? If not, why not?

Since the version now on the page has lost its slowly built-up, logical and referenced core material, I propose that we restore the Longstanding article text, and work co-operatively on that. In the interests of providing an easy and substantial cut to the length of the article, I would simultaneously agree to the complete removal of the History section with the exception of a section each on Origin and Mission and the Contemporary Church. The "History of the Catholic Church" article, which is at last in a good state, would then be directly linked from the top of this article in the manner of the French and Portuguese Wikipedia articles. This would also have the benefit of removing many of the major POV bones of contention in the present article. (Example available here.) This would not be to set the reverted portions of text in stone, but to return to a better basis for further collegial and discussed improvement. Xandar 10:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Once again you only confirm that you just don't understand the substantial problems with this article and seem determined to prevent other editors from doing anything to significantly improve it. Have a look at the Orthodox Church and Anglicanism articles and you will see that there these are considerably shorter, much easier to read and attract considerably less conflict. Let's make this quite clear - the level of conflict regarding this article is largely if not mostly due to its ridiculous length. Afterwriting (talk) 11:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I have proposed a solution to deal with the length - which you will see if you read my whole comment above. Dealing with the length does not mean decimating and relegating the core content without discussion. All the articles I have linked to above give priority to the core content, and explain it comprehensively. That is what this article must go back to doing. On the other articles, look again. For your information, the Orthodox Church article has 10,800 words on beliefs and practices. The Longstanding version of this article had 3,450. (UBER's version has a third of that!). The Anglicanism article currently has 5,200 words on beliefs and practices. Again substantially more than our longstanding text. Xandar 11:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Please read WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, and note that the "long-standing" version has never enjoyed consensus. The article's Good Article status has not been reassessed since July 2008, the page changes have been highly discussed and very collaborative, and long-standing issues with length and POV have been noted, as far back as the first FAC, and throughout every FAC. I believe continued cuts should be made to the History section, work should continue on correcting the poor sourcing and linking that led to patchwork building of an article attempting to balance POV, and that summary style should be better employed by developing content in the daughter articles and summarizing that content back to this article. At any rate, the current version is the first time the article has been readable in over two years, and the poor sourcing that was in all previous versions is being addressed. In particular, because such collaborative work has been underway, I hope the post above is not a signal that the battleground will continue here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:46, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure others will have responses to your lengthy proposals - at present all I want to ask is what sort of timeline do you have in mind? Based on the article's editing history the parousia will have come and gone before we achieve any sort of "solution" based on these proposals. I am not wanting to be incivil, I just want some practical way forward - not endless so-called "discussion". Afterwriting (talk) 11:51, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Agreed: articles are not built by pinging in sympathetic editors to "vote" on every proposed change. Also, the current article is not "UBER/Karanacs text" as Xandar's states: over two dozen editors have been involved in collaborative editing over the last five days, with no talk page acrimony. Xandar, please refrain from personalizing talk page discussions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You may not like it, Afterwriting, but discussion and consensus are the basis of Wikipedia changes, especially MAJOR alterations like this. The longstanding version has enjoyed consensus and stability through all its FACs - or it would not have qualified to begin the process. Sandy's contention that the enormous page changes have been "highly discussed and very collaborative" simply defies credible belief! Kindly point me to this long discussion. What happened was that UBER decided to "break all rules" and decided to slash up to three quarters of the core content - content which had never been challenged without discussion. A brief and inconclusive straw poll was held for just over one day - with no discussion, limited participation, and key points of view prevented from participating. The page moderator closed the poll and left in disgust. This is not how Wikipedia consensus on major changes is obtained. Let me remind you that Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. It is the start of the process for consensus-building. There has been no consensus for the massive changes made by UBER and Karanacs, and that is why they are such a disaster. The WP:BATTLEGROUND was introduced by people who decided to abandon discussion and consensus and try to impose unthought-out changes by other means. Now please, Sandy, you are the one personalising this. The "vote" was the idea of those wanting to bring in the changes without discussion, and was held in a manner that meant it was restricted to those who knew about it at the time. Stop diverting the discussion, and address the SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT ISSUES I have raised. Simply stating OtherStuffExists does not answer the point that the quoted articles are the NORM. It is the changes Sandy and others are defending that are out of line, and obliterate the quality of the article. Xandar 12:06, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The longstanding version has enjoyed consensus and stability through all its FACs - or it would not have qualified to begin the process. This is not an accurate statement. Any article can begin the FAC process, regardless of its state or stability. Unless the article meets FAC criteria, the nomination is archived. This article has yet to meet the FAC criteria, and, unanimous agreement of frequent FAC reviewers, a failed FAC nomination only provides consensus that the article did not meet the criteria, not that there is consensus for anything else. There are other factual inaccuracies in your initial statement (including that the cultural influence and origins/missions sections were removed - they were actually folded into the other sections) and that there was no discussion on the changes (there certainly was before the initial reversion and straw poll, with the majority clearly supporting the new structure). A great deal of work has been done on the article in the last few days, including uncontroversial ref cleanup and copyediting. A mass revert is not the way forward. Karanacs (talk) 13:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree, and find it troubling that misunderstandings about archived FAC still persist to this day. The only thing that can be said from four (five) archived FACs is that there has never been consensus for this article, it never met criteria, and the opposes were unprecedented, both in number and scope. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar has asked for my comments, although he must expect that they will be contrary to his argument; this should be noted.

• Xandar's "long-standing text" was never consensus. Consensus text does not provoke 46 long pages of talk, largely consisting of the objections of many different editors; nor does it provoke a widely supported appeal to ArbCom. Perhaps he has a private definition which he has not shared; mine is "approved by general, [almost] unanimous agreement."
• It was stable only because a half-dozen editors revert-warred for it. Xandar himself was the most frequent of these; the last three protections, at least, were provoked by Xandar revert-warring with different editors over different points. This is not the atability Wikipedia desires.
• Stability and consensus, even where they exist, are not our chief goals. No consensus can warrant violations of neutrality; no consensus can warrant citing sources for what they do not say or citing sources on one side of a question with undue weight; and all of that is clear policy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

What is the purpose of this article?

Xandar is going about this the right way inasmuch as he starts by asserting the purpose of the article, and then proposes actions to move towards that purpose. Naturally if we accept Xandar's premise that the purpose of this article is

"to inform the reader about the Structure, beliefs, practices and organisation of the Catholic Church TODAY"

then of course it makes sense to cut the history section to make room for more discussion of structure and beliefs. But I for one do not accept that premise. I think it ought to go without saying that this is an overview article, and therefore its purpose is

to give a brief overview of the Catholic Church.

If that is our purpose, then cutting it down from 195kB to 100kB was a step in the right direction, reverting it would be a mistake, and cutting out the history section altogether would be just plain silly.

What do others think? What is the purpose of this article? Since there is dispute on this most fundamental point, there hardly seems any point in discussing anything else until we have settled it.

Hesperian 12:47, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of any Wiki article is laid out in Wiki pillars: WP:5P. Wikipedia is a neutral encyclopedia, not an advocacy piece for church positions or beliefs, where "Wikipedians should interact in a respectful and civil manner", understand consensus (for example, by not pinging in "votes" sympathetic to one's own POV or thinking Wiki is a "vote", terminology which has not been eradicated from this article's discussion in spite of more than two years of reminders of same), not edit war, and not create a battleground. I'm afraid there is no basis for Xandar's views about the purpose of this article, to advocate in favor of "inform[ing] the reader about the Structure, beliefs, practices and organisation of the Catholic Church TODAY", which has been to the exclusion of other Wiki policies and guidelines. It is that misunderstanding that has resulted in this article being mired for years: Wiki is an encyclopedia, not an advocacy website. Not all readers coming to this article are primarily concerned about "beliefs and practices"; for example, many will be looking for history. This should be a broad overview article, befitting of the size and duration of the organization, using summary style to lead readers who are seeking more detail to daughter aricles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately Sandy keeps insisting on personalising the issues. I'm not sure how explaining the structure, function and beliefs of Catholic Church count as "advocacy"? I don't want to divert into her unfounded allegations about "piping in votes", however the less said about the running of the straw poll used as excuse for thiese changes, the better. The people holding a "Vote", and trying to enforce changes on their interpretation of it are NOT those who oppose the current disembowellment of the article.

In any event Hesperian does not actually capture my position. My position is that the description of the current day Catholic Church is the PRIMARY purpose of the article. I have long supported retaining a subsidiary history section as part of the article. In fact the suggestions to remove it have generally come from critics of the Longstanding Article. However, in view of the persistent and strident claims that the article is too long and that something must be cut, I think it is time to accept the views of those who have long suggested that removing the History section would remove 90% of the POV conflict and also shorten the article relatively painlessly. I opposed this in the past because we didn't have a well-ordered and comprehensive History Article. Now we do. So there is no point eradicating the core and unique material of the article in order to duplicate an article already in existence. Xandar 13:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I disagree with your premise here, Xandar. The primary purpose shouldn't be a description of the _current day_ Church, but of the Church in general.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:21, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Although I do not agree with the exact phrasing of Xandar's purpose of this article I agree with him that that history of the Catholic church is being given undue weight. The purpose is to give the reader an overview of the Catholic church. That includes its history, tenants, beliefs, structure, and everything about it. The history is one aspect and cannot be overlooked but the history is also covered in an entirely seperate article. I agree with Xandar that the format of this article should be closer to the format of the Islam article which is a FA and it hasn't been that long since it went through its last FAR. Marauder40 (talk) 13:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

There has been no WP:FAR because the article has never been an WP:FA. I agree that History needs to be cut and better summarized, and that there are several issues that need to be better summarized from daughter articles so that this can be an overview of all of the aspects mentioned, but of a readable size. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I was talking about the Islam article when I mentioned the WP:FAR.

ah, ha, I see ... my apologies for misreading. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Ack. I just looked at Islam, which is in very bad shape, and needs a FAR. It has been a long time since it was reviewed (more than two years), and it has significantly deteriorated from the 6400-word version that passed FAR in January 2008. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The size may have changed since the last FAR but the basic structure and format haven't. Marauder40 (talk) 13:42, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Independently of how the article is structured, the version of Islam that passed FAR is a good example of how to use Summary Style correctly, and provide a broad overview in under 7,000 words of a long-standing institution with an important place in world history. This article, at 12,000 words before the changes, didn't succeed in doing that, was mired in POV and combatting and poor citations, and was largely unreadable. I agree with Marskell's statments from 2008 that the Islam article provides a good example of how to more effectively use summary style here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, if I might offer a suggestion, please read all of the advice given on your talk page. Work on this article was proceeding collaboratively, and discussion has been sidetracked again by your posts, which stalls the work that was proceeding. Many suggestions for how you might proceed are on your talk page and Nancy's talk page: sidetracking progress here is not in yours or the article's best interest, considering the collaborative progress that has been made in the last few days, and the harmonious tone that existed on the talk page. It is your contention that a "description of the current day Catholic Church" is the primary purpose of the article: you are entitled to your opinion, but others believe this should be a broad overview article of a long-standing organization that has had a significant impact on the world. Current practices are covered in The Catechism; it is not up to Wiki to replicate that. Wiki is an encyclopedia. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec x2) I agree with Hesperian. The purpose of this article is to give a brief overview of the Church, including its history (although Marauder is right that the history section is currently still too long). It's WP:RECENTISM to focus primarily on what the Church is like today, and this fact is part of what made the previous article seem like an advocacy piece. Xandar, if you are interested in providing constructive feedback, there are several sections above under Verification Issues that could use your input. Karanacs (talk) 13:43, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by "It's WP:RECENTISM to focus on what the church is like today" If you mean it is recentism to focus on events that are currently happening then yes it is recentism. But if you are talking about talking about what the beliefs are, structure is, etc. currently then it isn't recentism. Those types of things should have equal if not more weight then the history because history has its own article. Marauder40 (talk) 14:11, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

In your mind the work may be going well, the problem is that me and many other editors (i.e. Tom) have been taking time off or quit the article specifically because we feel that the entire situtation as it has been going on stinks. IMHO the fact that Nancy and Xandar were banned but PMA (among others) have continued editing shows just how bad the WP systems can be subverted by a few. I know there are several other editors that feel the same way. I believe many of the routine contributors of this page are taking the sink or swim approach to the current situation of this page. Marauder40 (talk) 13:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy and Xandar were not banned. Tom who? If you're referring to Tom harrison, he was operating on this article as an admin, and should have been neutral. If others continue the same behaviors, they will likely be blocked as well. It has not been demonstrated to my knowledge that Pmanderson has engaged in the same behaviors that led to the blocks. More importantly, content work was happening here, and now we're back to discussing meta issues that turn the article into a battleground and belong elsewhere, like at dispute resolution. Let's please use this talk page for focusing on improving the article, not making allegations about what some believe were unjust blocks. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:42, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I am sad to see editors leave the page due to the recent events. Quite frankly, though, the previous version of the article was nowhere close to gaining FA status, and the talk page environment was toxic (not just due to Xandar and Nancy). If there is any hope of making this a featured article that can appear on the Main Page, something needed to change. This is an attempt at steering the article closer to that stated goal, and other opinions are welcome and needed to get the article the rest of the way. Karanacs (talk) 13:43, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem was that it was a one-sided ban. Sandy can defend people that weren't banned all they want and say this is a side topic but several people are still bad-mouthing people on this page either directly or indirectly by saying things similar to "people that currently are banned would say x,y, and z." I am trying to bring up in a diplomatic way that the environment on this page is still toxic. It may feel that it isn't to the people currently commenting but that is because you are basically just talking among yourselves. Other people that could be contributing are still staying away. Until people can start addressing the topics without addressing personalities or the people then it will continue to be so.Marauder40 (talk) 13:52, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Second request: Could you please take those issues to dispute resolution, so this talk page can stay focused on article content? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Do I have to point to the numerous times on this page when you tell someone not to do something like this and then you or someone else do the same exact thing you are complaing about? Do you really want me to take the time to fill out dispute resolutions forms and go through the diffs. Typical example of people bringing up a complaint but not wanting to hear the other side of the situation. Typical example of why this page is still toxic. Marauder40 (talk) 14:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I don't disagree with you that the environment here is still not great (and Sandy and I have both noted that in sections above). If it doesn't get better here, then someone absolutely need to start dispute resolution procedures for user conduct. That's what it is there for, and that's what I tried to do and have been excoriated for. It's better to go through dispute resolution (even as simple as bringing up a potential issue at ANI) than to constantly complain here. I welcome an RfC on my own behavior and would participate as fairly as possible in one on any of the others who regularly post here. Karanacs (talk) 14:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

My point is that Sandy's claim that the article never achieved consensus is manifestly wrong. In order to START FAC, and to gain GA, an article has to be STABLE and consensus in form. These grounds were clearly met and not challenged at the time. It would not have lasted five minutes on the FAc list if it had been in the middle of edit-war or consensus wrangles. The article has been stable and in consensus for long periods in its present form. That is a fact. Simply because people have come to the article raising disagreements does not mean that the article wording was not and has not been clearly consensus. Xandar 14:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, you have misunderstood the FAC process. The article might have met the stability criterion (meaning no ongoing edit wars), but that does not mean that it enjoyed consensus. While stability is a criteria, that doesn't mean that all articles meet it to even begin the process, either. Karanacs (talk) 14:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Xandar is still incorrect about FAC, but that's history and we need to move on. It doesn't seem that he will understand. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

So we now have five people who think the purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the Catholic Church; no dissenters; and I no longer have any idea what Xandar thinks the purpose of this article is, as he has repudiated my understanding of his position without offering something else in its stead.

Is this consensus? If there is strong consensus that the purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the Catholic Church, do we have to right to ask that people buy in or bugger off? Disagreements on how to achieve our purpose can be worked through, but I don't see how collaboration is even possible without a shared purpose. It seems to me that knowingly editing to a purpose other than the consensus purpose is the very epitome of "editing against consensus".

What say you, Xandar? Are you prepared to work towards the consensus goal of making this article a brief overview of the Catholic Church?

Hesperian 14:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Depends what you mean. I want a properly balanced article in line with all the others on other Wikipedias and on this one. I think we could lose History by Wikilinking if this solves the alleged problem of length, since we have an article ready and waiting. Xandar 22:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

As soon as he was unblocked, Xandar pinged in other editors who support his POV; he is now blocked again, having continued the same battleground behaviors that led to his first block. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Unlike Xandar, my opposition is centred on the way the changes were brought about, not on the changes themselves. All editors, with the exception of Xandar, who was blocked, agreed that the straw poll should decide whether or there was consensus for the new version. That poll didn't come close to establishing consensus yet the new version replaced the old.

Since then Sandy and SV have argued vehemently that the current version should remain in place. Their argument is simply that the end justifies the means. They argue that the article is better now that in was, so it doesn't matter that it was pushed through without consensus. That's not their decision to make. It's not a decision for any individual editor or group of editors to make. A change of this magnitude clearly deserves broader community input.

It does now look as though there will be an RfC at some point, and I think that should be the end of it. If that had happened before the change rather than after it much of the acrimony could have been avoided, and perhaps WP wouldn't have a lost a good admin. The whole thing has been handled very poorly, some experienced editors seem to have been acting completely out of character, and Nancy and Xandar have been given a very raw deal. But what's done is done; there's no point in raking over the coals. I say give Nancy, Xandar, et al, time to prepare their arguments and their alternative versions, have the RfC, and move on.--MoreThings (talk) 15:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Short story: Nancy and Xandar canvassed, effectively ending the poll. Why are we still revisiting this? I have argued vehemently one thing: this talk page was a battleground, the previous version was poorly cited and poorly written, and I'm in favor of a shorter version that uses summary style. Other than that, you are overextending with the statement that "Sandy and SV have argued vehemently ... "; I argue that the battleground stops, and participants understand Wiki policies, and summary style be used. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Well perhaps the RfC will make quiet the battleground. [And perhaps someday world peace will break out :) ]--MoreThings (talk) 15:42, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

It was proposed that the straw poll decide the question of which version was the basis of further work, and that it do so by majority vote since it was a yes/no question. The vote was 11-7 for the new version, Xandar and Nancy not voting, when it was abandoned due to canvassing. So some parts of the article were changed over to Uber's revised text, and invitations to discuss were broadcast. However, the History section was almost immediately restored to the old text, because Yorkshirian asked for that; it has been revised since, to some extent. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:11, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

It was abandoned due to key editors having been controversially blocked, and unable to argue their corner. My position was not counted, nor were others. A straw poll, being no substitute for discussion, cannot produce a "consensus" anyhow - even if it came up with a supermajority. The discussion on these massive removals has not taken place, and no consensus has formed to support them. Xandar 22:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar's humility prevents him from clarifying that he and Nancy were the "key" editors blocked, and that they were blocked, among other things, for violating Wikipedia policies on canvassing. I have always counted Xandar's position (and Nancy's); they are still the minority - and nobody claims that poll was consensus. It is indeed one of the key pieces of evidence that the old text never was consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It was indeed proposed that it be a simple majority poll. Uber made that proposal and he attached various other conditions regarding suffrage. Tom disagreed with the proposal:

It's not legitimate to exclude ip accounts or newish accounts, so I'm striking that. It's not a simple vote. The reasoning is important, and the user's experience and editing history can be weighed. If there's puppetry, that has to be recognized and dealt with. The poll needs to be up over the weekend, and needs to involve enough people to be meaningful. Absent clear consensus, a super-majority may work, but it needs to be 70 or 80 percent - the fewer who take part, the higher it needs to be. I can't see closing it before next Wednesday. It's likely that some people follow the page but have given up trying to contribute. They should be heard if they want to comment.

The vote finished with 10 supports, 7 opposes, and 1 neutral, however Uber had removed one vote, disregarding Tom's guidelines. Including that would make it 10/8/1

10 is 52% of 19, and 55% of 18. I'm sure somebody suggested that Xandar's vote be counted as an oppose, which surely would have been fair and would have added another oppose. (And if I'd known how my vote was going to be used I certainly would have opposed). So however you slice it, I honestly don't see how it could be said that there was consensus for putting the new version live.

To accept that it was a majority vote is to accept Uber's guidelines in preference to Tom's. I felt that Tom had the support of all sides. Uber wrote the new version, initiated the poll, deleted a vote, totted up the totals and declared that he would be operating "in IAR" until the article was in a state he deemed satisfactory.--MoreThings (talk) 22:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify this rather one-sided account: the vote I removed was from an anonymous editor who had never edited Wikipedia before and who I suspected of being a meat puppet at the time (for good reasons, which I won't get into here). Tom did say puppetry had to be recognized and appropriately handled, and that's what I was doing given the information I possessed. Sorry, but when an anonymous editor with no single prior contribution magically comes into Wikipedia and votes at a straw poll for the first time, the alarm needs to go off. The editor that you're counting as neutral strongly supported a shorter version of the article and absolutely rejected the old version. Finally, you yourself supported my version, and I quote you: "I support UberCryxic's version."UBER ^(talk) 22:50, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

If you feel that it was appropriate for you to remove votes we'll simply have to agree to disagree on that. Sandy's vote was neutral. You counted it as support. I did vote for your version. I thought a trimmed version was clearly the way forward, and I still do. If I'd known that my vote would be used to push though the change with no consensus, I'd have opposed.--MoreThings (talk) 23:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

What do they do?

It is ridiculous really. This article does not discuss the activities of the Catholic Church. Do they, perchance, make a major contribution to primary, secondary and tertiary education in most parts of the world? Yes? That's funny: the word "education" does not occur outside of the history section. Do they, perchance, send out missionaries? Yes? Run charities? Yes? Welfare agencies? Yes? Hospitals? Yes?

This should be 10% of the article. Instead it is one sentence in the lead: "It operates social programs and institutions throughout the world, including Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, missions and shelters, and the charity confederation Caritas Internationalis."

Hesperian 03:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, there's something else the Church has been doing rather a lot of and is receiving plenty of media coverage for at the moment. Funnily enough, that's only gets one sentence as well... Haldraper (talk) 08:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

If that's what I think it is, we had more, but it was agreed to have one sentence and link to the main article. Nancy opposed that as I recall. On hesperians point on the missionaries Charities and agencies, that does require a separate section or mini-section, sinc e it is an important part of what the Church is. Xandar 09:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

[Discussion of RFC/New straw poll moved to new section below this one]

Refocusing on the original post: education

Let's get back to the original issue, shall we? As Hesperian says, there needs to be some mention in the article of the institutions that the Church runs. The previous version of the article had only a single sentence on this issue: As part of its ministry of charity the Church runs Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, Caritas Internationalis, Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, shelters and ministries to the poor, as well as ministries to families, the elderly and the marginalized. The ideal way to do this would be a few sentences that explain the table that is in the organization section. Unfortunately, that table is uncited. How shall we present this information? Karanacs (talk) 14:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

A lot of those things are linked to other pages though. It seems enough weight to me given we only have one sentence on the whole sex abuse crisis. Haldraper (talk) 18:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Can we take a step back and ask what it is we are really trying to say? That is, what is truly notable about the Church's involvement in these ministries? I'm going to throw out a few ideas off-the-cuff based on a very limited knowledge of the topic. Hopefully, those who are more knowledgeable can flesh this out and correct me if I go off the rails.

In many countries, the first social services (hospitals, schools, etc) were provided by the Catholic Church, especially Catholic missionaries in non-Christian countries but also among the poor in Christian countries. Actually, even the elite received education from Catholic clergy and religious.

In effect, the Church served as the social welfare service of the society before government took on this role. The Church still plays an important role in the provision of social welfare in many countries even those where the government plays a role with public hospitals, schools and universities.

Now, we must distinguish between the Catholic Church and Christianity. After all, Protestants have also established and operated schools, hospitals, universities, etc. This is a core tenet of the Christian faith and the Anglicans and Protestants have continued it. (Alas, I cannot speak to the record of the Orthodox in this regard but I would be surprised if it were far different from that of the Western Churches). So we have a somewhat delicate task of wording what we write in an NPOV way so as not to suggest that only Catholics do this kind of ministry. I suspect that the Catholic ministries are larger and more numerous because the Catholic Church is the single largest branch/denomination. Of course, it would be very interesting if someone offered data to suggest that the Catholics engage in these ministries more than the other branches/denominations do.

It would be great if we could get a handle on how what percentage of social services are provided by the Catholic Church compared to by the national, regional and local governments and compared to other religions and Christian denominations.

Having spent almost my entire life in the United States, I'm used to seeing Catholic schools and hospitals but also Protestant schools and hospitals. Since the U.S. is more Protestant than Catholic, I would not expect that the Catholics would be predominant in providing social services although they are probably better organized just by dint of being a larger organization than any single Protestant denomination (i.e. economies of scale).

I have no idea what the situation is in other countries although I would expect significant presence in Catholic countries in the Third World and little presence in the Orthodox and Muslim countries.

What I'm getting at is that we should focus on presenting ideas to the reader which are backed up by reliable sources and by data. Just presenting raw data imparts little information to the reader unless we tell the reader how reliable sources interpret that data.

--Richard S (talk) 19:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

RFC/New Straw poll

Hesperian brings up a very important point here. In an effort to make the article fit a preconceived notion of size, a lot of important stuff has been cut out completely. Several editors have made this same comment since the cut went into effect. Because of this lack of a clear consensus regarding article size and comprehenisveness, I have proposed a new straw poll and/or an RFC to be advertised to the wider Wikipedia community and administered by an admin with mediation experience. I placed a note on user:Sunray's talk page since he is an uninvolved admin who successfully administered our mediation on the name issue. Per user:SlimVirgin's request, I created a user sub page with the longer version (here User:NancyHeise/Catholic Church) to be compared with the shorter article in place on the page Catholic Church right now. Maybe this will bring new and interesting editors to the page and ultimately help us discover what kind of article the wider Wikipedia community would like to see here. More eyes are better. NancyHeise ^talk 04:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

No, a lot of useless, point-scoring, apologetic cruft has been removed to make this article load in reasonable time on most computers.

Sunray's "mediation" was a disaster; Nancy may regard successfully stacking a mediation to be a success, but I know - having been brought into this mess at that point - that it resolved nothing. Several editors complained immediately that there was no consensus, and that they were being quoted as approving what they bitterly opposed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Funny I don't remember any of the actual participants in the mediation saying "it was a disaster." I don't even remember any of the participants on either "side" saying it was stacked. I remember some people complaining they didn't get their way (which happens when you are dealing with consensus), but no complaints about it being stacked. Marauder40 (talk) 13:05, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Consulr Gimmetrow's comments, then and since; I believe they were others. What is true is that Nancy's tactics drove them away from the article, so they haven't been heard from lately; but this is a bug, not a feature. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:29, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

FFS, why do you always have to jump straight to a vote? There are plenty of fair-minded, even-handed people here, who are perfectly capable of reading what I have written and saying "Yes, there is something very wrong with a Catholic Church article that doesn't mention that they are heavily involved in education. Let's fix it." Hesperian 04:52, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Hesperian that it is not productive to jump to vote everytime there is a disagreement. Similarly, Nancy's attempt to "re-do" the poll/vote by issuing an RFC is not likely to be productive. This highlights one weakness of the idea of consensus. If there was no consensus to shorten the article dramatically, there is equally likely to be no consensus to bring it back to its old length. Nancy's comments on her Talk Page during her block seem to indicate that she is hanging her hopes on hordes of "silent majority" editors descending on the RFC to vindicate her and Xandar's position. In fact, the failure to publicize the previous poll on the Main Page is probably the reason that the first poll was even close. Nancy proposes to rectify this omission when publicizing the RFC. Even if this sudden horde of editors does materialize to support Nancy and Xandar, there are enough editors on the "shorter version" side to make consensus by polling impossible. After all, what is she expecting? A 30-11 vote for the previous version? Come on now, let's be realistic. At best, she might wind up with 20-15 in her favor. What would that prove? And, if the !vote on the RFC turned out to be 20-15 against her, would she then concede or would she argue that 4/7 is not a consensus? (Which it isn't)

Besides, this desire to "re-do the vote" is just trying to get revenge for hurt feelings and a desire to win rather than to be unceremoniously and rudely trampled on.

The truth is... the right article length is probably somewhere between 130kb and 160kb (please, I understand that words of readable prose is a better measure but kb is the easy count to get from Wikimedia software so that's what I use). What the 130-160kb target means is that we can either add to the shorter version or trim from the longer version. If we work together collegially and collaboratively, either approach should arrive at more or less the same result. (If you don't believe this, then please explain to me why they wouldn't.)

The key phrase here is collegially and collaboratively. One of the main problems has been an absolute intransigence on the part of some editors towards trimming the article (based on claims regarding consensus and NPOV) and towards fixing some of the perceived issues with NPOV. If we can talk to each other and hash out the issues, we should be able to arrive at an article of the appropriate length that is also NPOV. But, we have to get past the yuckiness caused by the IAR approach which, while effective, trampled over a lot of Wikipedia policies (that's what IAR does, you know) and bruised some egos.

--Richard S (talk) 05:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

On consensus issues. No consensus has been gained for the drastic changes of March 9th to 11th. So an RfC would be to see if there was real consensus for that change. I know some people are going to swing in here and say the inconclusive one-day straw poll provided consensus. They need to thoroughly read Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. There are substantive issues here of swathes of important material removed overnight without any discussion. I agree with Richard on article length. To be comprehensive (including the History section) the article needs to be no less than 130k. And if we are to trim it is best to start from the full version and cut, rather than the mish-mash of the Beliefs and Organisation sections currently on the page, and try to reorder and reconstruct something clear and logical. I've tried to put down alternative suggestions (such as removing the History section) which would solve most of the perceived problems of length and POV at a stroke. But I'm happy to keep a History section. I just don't want a long History Section at the top of the article making it look a clone of "History of the Catholic Church". And it musn't be at the expense of coverage of the Church TODAY. Wikipedia is not a tabloid. To be taken seriously it needs good and comprehensive articles. Xandar 10:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

My point is that a new straw poll or RFC that revisits and attempts to undo the results the first straw poll would seem revanchist to many editors. I would much prefer that we try to move forward from where we are than to engage in an effort to undo past history. Attempting to do that is more likely to inflame emotions than to attain collegiality and collaboration. If the goal is a shortened article which is both readable and NPOV, I would much prefer discussing how to get there from where we are than to spend more energy fighting about where we should go back to in order to go forward from there.

That doesn't mean that we can't undo some of what has been done since the straw poll. For example, I think individual decisions are subject to review including the one to put the History section first. One of the problems with the original straw poll was that it also asked for a !vote on a whole mess of issues including putting History first. I supported radical triimming but I was lukewarm at best wrt putting History first. Similarly, I didn't review each and every one of UberCryxic's edits and he pulled some stuff out that should have been left in while leaving in some stuff that should have been taken out. Some of these issues have since been resolved and others have not. I would prefer that we start discussing the issues individually rather than starting another omnibus straw poll/RFC that requires an up-or-down !vote on two versions of the article. Such an effort would tend to be divisive rather than collegial. Yes, "winning" such an RFC would be a lot simpler than working out each issue one-by-one but it's a bit unrealistic to expect that there will be a clear-cut result to any RFC of this nature. I expect that any such RFC would have a mixed result with a slight majority in favor of one option but no clear-cut victory resembling a consensus. And, given the opinions already expressed on the Talk Page, even a hefty majority would not be indicative of consensus since it's clear that several significant contributors would object no matter which way the RFC went. This is why voting is evil. Better to discuss the issues and compromise than to try to resolve them by a vote. --Richard S (talk) 13:07, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Richard, one thing you might want to do to help things out is referring to the original straw poll as if it actually meant anything. You, me, and most of the parties involved know that "poll" didn't mean a thing. Any poll that is only up for a couple days with some of the important players not even allowed to vote does not even make a poll valid. Saying things like "undo the results the first straw poll" just inflames the other side. The real "result of straw poll" was a couple editors making a IAR decision and unilaterally changing the page. It might be better to come up with some better way of referring to the massive change in the article. Marauder40 (talk) 13:16, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Um, yeh, I agree with you. But, what term do you suggest? "the IAR Insurgency", "the coup d'etat" or "the Glorious Revolution"? I agree that the straw poll didn't follow the rules and the assertion of simple majority as decisive was certainly ignoring the goal of consensus decision-making. My point is that I would prefer to say, "OK, what's past is past. Let's try to figure out how to salvage a good article from the wreckage of the past." That is constructive discussion. Trying to turn back the clock is not. And I say this even though I would have preferred to discuss the concerns in the original, long article one-by-one the way we had been doing before UberCryxic's IAR revolution. --Richard S (talk) 13:31, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, maybe referring the article as it is now as the "current state of the article". And when referring to the base version just saying "UberCryxic's version". Or if we don't want to give "ownership" to a version just refer to it by the date it happened or something like that. Maybe "original" vs. "current" but that could cause some ruffles to. Probably the best would be the date of the version and refer to the old one as pre-x/x date version and the new version as the x/x date version. (x/x since I haven't looked up the date the version happened while writing this.) Marauder40 (talk) 14:05, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Let me just clarify one point that's been nagging me for some time: Nancy participated in the straw poll, so Xandar was the only "important player" who wasn't there. I've heard lots of people saying things like Nancy and Xandar were left out of the poll when that's just not true. Please, we're already having problems with the History section of this article; let's try to avoid rewriting history on the talk page as well.UBER ^(talk) 15:05, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Partipation means more then being able to vote. To be fair it means everyone has equal chances to comment, change their vote, etc. I will let you guys go back to patting yourself on your back and thinking everything is great in here. Marauder40 (talk) 15:10, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Participation means entering into real dialogue on the substantive issues. My concern is getting a comprehensive, balanced article, which doesn't just try to chuck everybody's contributions of the last few years on the tip for no good reason. Xandar 20:08, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

A straw poll will help us know what kind of page length and content are most desired by the most Wikipedia editors. The last straw poll, open for a single day, produced a deadlock and we want to move forward with the version of the article that most people would want. Simple and easy - just ask people to come have a look. NancyHeise ^talk 02:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"we want to move forward with the version of the article that most people would want." Rubbish. If you and Xandar were the only two neutral editors in a sea of anti-Catholic editors seeking to turn the article into an anti-Catholic rant (which seems to have been your view in the past), would be appropriate to turn this article into the ant-Catholic rant "version of the article that most people would want"? Hesperian 02:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Could you all please stop this? An RFC is going to generate another big fat nothing, while work on both versions of the article goes lacking. Everyone who cares about this article has already either been chased off or is still here. There are still problems with both versions, and focus is being put on a silly RFC rather than where it belongs-- on getting either version of the article even up to GA status. Focus was on the article until today: refocus!! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:45, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's just make something very clear, for anyone who may be confused on this point: Wikipedia is not a democracy. We do not have to move forward with the version of the article that "most people would want." If it doesn't comply with Wikipedia policies, I don't care what most people want. The straw poll happened to have more votes supporting the revised version than the old version, but I would have implemented those necessary changes regardless of the result. Even if the poll had gone 100 to 1 against the revised version, I would have implemented those changes and risked a ban, which is something I made very clear to Tom: I am not afraid of doing the right thing. Those editors who think that getting a majority on a straw poll is somehow a license to return to the previous monstrosity that we just demolished are operating under seriously flawed assumptions. I urge us all to move forward in the context of what we have now, not to rehash old fights that will only contribute to more anguish and conflict.UBER ^(talk) 02:49, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree; get focus back on improving the article, which has never been even at GA status, no matter which version one examines, rather than on wikilawyering. It is exactly such tactics that have resulted in a battleground here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I can not imagine why anyone would not want to know what the wider Wikipedia community would want for the article. MoreThings, Xandar and myself want an RFC/straw poll, we do not need a consensus to conduct one. Please consider that a poll is most necessary because during the past four FAC's we trimmed the article up nice and neat before bringing it to FAC only to discover that every single FAC reviewer asked us to include more information into the article - never was there a request for less information. Once again, the same scenario is playing out here. Before we potentially waste any more time improving the short version, let's find out if that version is preferred by the wider community. I am unwilling to work on it until we know the results of a simple straw poll asking this easy question. It will take zero effort to set up and a week of waiting to see the results. I have asked a neutral admin to conduct the poll. I would appreciate your cooperation instead of the attacks that seem to be continuing to characterized your conversations with me. I am not attacking you, please do the same. Thanks. NancyHeise ^talk 02:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I see that it wasn't clear the first time, so let's try it again: we don't care what the "wider Wikipedia community" (whatever that means, speaking of WP:PEACOCK on the talk page) thinks about this article. I have no problem with another straw poll or RFC, as long as we limit the scope of these adventures to addressing the problems with the current version, not to reinstating the behemoth.UBER ^(talk) 03:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"MoreThings, Xandar and myself want an RFC/straw poll, we do not need a consensus to conduct one." I beg to differ. Since there is disagreement on whether or not we should call a straw poll, I think you ought to call a straw poll on whether or not a straw poll ought to be called. Hesperian 03:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with Uber and Hesperian. The point of asking the wider community is so we can begin to work on the article that most of them prefer. If they choose the shorter version or the longer version I will be glad to help improve whichever one they choose. I just don't want to waste my time improving something that I believe is too short unless the wider community can convince me that it is preferred. If they prefer the longer version, then maybe it is you who needs convincing - let's hear from the wider community and find out the answer to that interesting and important question. NancyHeise ^talk 03:10, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Or we could just agree to follow Wikipedia:Article size#A rule of thumb. Hesperian 03:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I still think the loading issues are paramount—it's simply impossible to ignore the necessity for the reader that the article must load, and load within a reasonable time. Has anyone considered giving some effort toward troubleshooting the loading issues? For example, I've found citation templates embedded in the article for some of the books also listed in citation templates in the "Sources" section. Haven't had the time to check to see whether that's true of all the sources, but why are citation templates in the article duplicated? To maximize loading time, delete the templates from the article and keep them in the sources section. Clean-up tasks such as these will be necessary regardless of the version and free up space to re-add content. In my view good writing is often achieved by cutting to the bone and then rebuilding. That effort had started here but seems to have stalled. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 03:19, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Anyone who thinks an RFC will bring wider input to this article just doesn't have much experience with RFC: it doesn't, and it rarely brings in more than a few new voices. For some reason Nancy thinks it's a panacea that it's not: I suggest, Nancy, you might not have much experience with RFCs? All Wiki processes are backlogged, and most editors who care about this article have already weighed in at one time or another, and either given up or stayed. They have already spoken in large numbers, across multiple processes, and rejected the previous version. Nancy, do you see any new voices at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/NancyHeise? That's a typical RFC: same issues from same players get rehashed, which is why this article will end up back at ArbCom if collaborative work is disrupted. In the meantime, it is clear that any version of this article needs work, the current version has received some of the necessary work, and you have put up a version that is overcited and poorly cited, the consensus at FAC was that it is POV, synthesis is likely present, MOS issues are present, overlinking, too long, doesn't use summary style correctly, a literature survey still hasn't been done in spite of Awadewit's offer days ago, and on and on. I also wonder how you plan to resolve the fact that you put up one version, while Xandar put up another: which one do y'all intend to RFC btw? By all means, go conduct an RFC-- that takes 30 days-- in the meantime, the work on this page needs to stay focused on fixing the article, and there is much work to be done. The current article is being fixed: you're putting up a version that was already rejected at FAC as having issues unprecedented in scope. So please let the focus on this page stay on identifying and fixing issues (such as those that Truthkeeper88 just mentioned). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:13, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy has run RFCs before; the last one was severely flawed. A new effort with the same flaws, which included canvassing, would not be helpful. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:30, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, my. "Please do not clutter up voting area, discussion takes place below, just give us your vote here:" is a rather remarkable statement !!!! Consensus is based on a read of the strength of each editors' argument, and whether it is grounded in policy, guideline, and best practice. Is there any chance we can banish the word "vote" from the Catholic Church vocabulary? Wiki_Is_Not_A_Vote; no amount of voting can overturn policy like NPOV. This mistaken "voting" notion is what has turned this article into a battleground. Anyway, I see no new voices there, and the split along the usual lines; I also see that multiple experienced editors explained the flaws and faulty logic in the framing of that RFC in the discussion section, but this message HasNotBeenHeard. The page continues to be mired in the notion that Wiki Is A Vote. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The saddest thing about that poll was that it was designed to overcome objections that certain sources do not say what they were claimed to say, and therefore a certain sentence had failed verification. Apparently the question of whether a source really supports an assertion attributed to it can be solved by recourse to a poll. :-( Hesperian 04:45, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

UBER's apparent position - that he's the dictator of the article and that it goes the way HE wants, no matter what anybody else thinks, or however unfit that makes the article for purpose, is unacceptable on Wikipedia. There is no agreement on his swingeing cuts, and the argument that we proceed on the basis of a fatally flawed and highly contentious version of the article just doesn't stand up. There is no good reason to start re-inventing the wheel and junk all the editors contributions of the past few years, especially when it produces a Class C article. Sandy's acknowledgement of what consensus is, is nice, but should have been boldly stated when the article was slashed by over half following a one day poll with no discussion on the substantive issues. And if people are falling back on NPOV, they have to prove their case of NPOV in specific instances with specific sourced information. You don't just WP:IDON'TLIKEIT and trash the lot. I have already offerred one compromise on page length that would sort out all the problems in that area without cutting the meat of the article. Not much interest was shown in it. The version I put up was offerred as a COMPROMISE to solve the alleged problems of length. It was not "my" version. The issue of article length is NOT more important than content, and can in any event be solved, and the article reduced to the 130k - 150k level suggested by Richard in more reasonable and consensus ways. So if there is intransigence from editors in producing a real article using consensus, then the possibility of RFC as the only way forward becomes more likely. Xandar 11:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, it is not true to say of Uber's rewrite that there "is no agreement on his swingeing cuts, and the argument that we proceed on the basis of a fatally flawed and highly contentious version of the article just doesn't stand up". Most editors, apart from you, Nancy and Yorkshirian, support it as both NPOV and the basis for an article that could achieve FA status, something the old version you're so attached could never have done. Far from being "dictator of the article", Uber doesn't even come close to the WP:OWN attitudes displayed by some Catholic editors here over the last few years. Haldraper (talk) 14:18, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, you mention that the argument that we proceed on the basis of a fatally flawed and highly contentious version of the article just doesn't stand up. A great many editors belive the previous version was fatally flawed, and it was obviously a highly contentious version (think of all the tagging wars!). Beyond the cuts, a lot of cleanup has been done on this version of the article in terms of sorting out and formatting references and checking to see if content is actually represented in the sources it cites. I think it's time for all of us to stop worrying about the process that occurred over the last few weeks, as well as the process that occurred over the last few years, and move on to developing this version into an excellent article. Can we please focus on fixing specific issues in this article? Karanacs (talk) 14:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree. Xandar, one constructive way to move forward would be for you to answer the query I made here, regarding the differences between the versions and how to go about considering merging them. Issues are not helped by Nancy and you having put up two different versions, while work subjected to broad and long-standing agreement has proceeded on the current version. Could you please answer my query above as to exactly what changes you would like to see in this version as compared to your version? I won't ask same for Nancy's version, because it is simply not workable-- she has put up a version that suffers from too many issues to work with, and has long been rejected (poor sourcing, oversourcing, POV, too long, etc.) On a separate matter, since it has now come to light that Yorkshirian frequently misrepresents sources on other articles,[7] I'm afraid much more in-depth source checking will be needed here, and if this article is to retain GA status, that work needs to get underway. Re-hashing the idea that Wiki articles are built by vote is only stalling progress here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

First of all, Xandar and Nancy have every right to call for a new RFC/straw poll. This is part of the dispute resolution procedure. If you don't like creating an RFC, the only alternative is mediation.

That said, I think Xandar and Nancy would do well to consider that issuing an RFC is contentious and disruptive. Heck, we're wasting time talking about whether or not to waste time on a new RFC.

Whether it's consensus or not, there is a very significant body of editors that doesn't want to go back there. There are very few people who are actively involved in this article that do seem to want to go back there. Off the cuff, I would guess that the number is approximately 5 including Nancy and Xandar. Consider that there seem to be about 10 editors here that have been working off of UberCryxic's trimmed down version. How many editors do you need to !outvote those 10 editors? 15? 20? 30? Are you so sure of your position that you think you can get that many editors to support you? I think the best you could hope for would be a "no consensus" majority.

I would ask, however, than Xandar and Nancy consider that a more collegial and collaborative approach would be to try to improve the article from where it stands than to try to roll back the clock and trim from where we were.

Would I have gone down the UberCryxic road myself? No. I went through the entire History section and only found about 10kb to trim so it's clear what my style is. I like verbosity. However, I was very frustrated at not finding more to cut so I'm glad that someone was able to be more aggressive than me in cutting. Since nothing in Wikipedia is ever final, we can restore anything that was cut inappropriately.

Good arguments have been made for the fact that the previous article was too long to read (dense, heavy prose full of jargon and other coded phrases hinting but not explaining deeper meanings) and too long to load for dialup modems.

Look, at the end of the day, we could write a good article of 50k in length if we had to. Or 100k or 150k. It's only the seemingly infinite length of Wikipedia articles that encourages us to be self-indulgent and write gobs and gobs of prose and have hundreds of citations. 130-150k is already plenty long over the limits suggested by WP:SIZE. Instead of issuing an RFC over the overly long 195kb article, why not trim that version down to 130-150kb and then ask us how we like that? If we can agree that your trimmed down version has merit, all we have to do is reconcile it with UberCryxic's drastically reduced 115kb version. And, we'll all like you a lot better. And, if that's not one of your goals, well, it should be.

--Richard S (talk) 14:43, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Alternately, starting from the current, trimmer version, make policy-based arguments after a literature survey and considering due weight of text that should be re-added from older versions. Arguing over versions isn't progress: basing decisions on what to re-add on due weight according to a survey of literature will be more helpful. It would also be helpful if Nancy and Xandar agreed on a version, because three different versions are now under discussion, and the current version is still the cleanest starting place. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Please, no straw polls! The article is progressing so an RFC right now serves no useful purpose. --RelHistBuff (talk) 16:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

There's lots of talk about polls and votes. I'm not sure that everyone is talking about the same thing. I'm not in favour "should we go with version a or b". The kind of thing I was thinking of is something that simply invites people to come in and have their say. E.g.

The CC article has recently undergone significant change. This RfC is an invitation to interested editors to discuss the changes and help determine the best way forward. Is the changed version an improvement? Should the pre-change version be restored? Do you have any other suggestions?

And if we end up with extra versions kicking around: Editors Eeny, Meeny, Miny, and Moe have suggested alternative versions here, here, here and here. --MoreThings (talk) 23:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Many longstanding editors have been driven away from the page in disgust at the way this travesty was edit-warred onto the page. The simple fact is that there are two excellent reasons for opposing this hatchet job. 1) The manic hacking without any consensus or even thought has reduced an excellent article into a risible Stub in most of the important areas. The article now on the page does not meet basic Wikipedia standards of comprehensiveness, content and balance. 2) the present article was placed on the page in a direct flouting of proper Wikipedia process and consensus. This sort of thing must not be rewarded. The article is not "progressing" - since it has regressed with the removal of material on beliefs, Organisation, Structure and Catholic practice, that many editors have worked on over a period of years. This has been ripped out without discussion, or even consideration of the substantive issues, by people with no knowledge and seemingly no interest in the subject matter! I don't know why ANYONE could imagine for one minute that this was acceptable. If the consensus article was too long, then there were ways of solving it that do not involve ripping its heart out without discussion. Sorry. that is not on. The article on the page is not close to satisfactory, and fiddling with it is like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Unless these matters are addressed to consensus standards there is no alternative but dispute resolution. Xandar 01:58, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, you and Nancy have no one to blame but yourselves for the way this thing has gone. You two can bleat all you want about "civility" and "collegiality" and "consensus", but in practice this is empty rhetoric which serves mainly to mask your own incivility, lack of collegiality, and disinterest in building consensus. You talk about your commitment to scholarly sources, but then attempt to write confessional positions into the article and prop them up with citations to coffee-table books and ecclesiastical propaganda. When people with some actual knowledge of the field point this out, you start yelling about how you aren't going to tolerate any more nitpicking and pettifogging about sources. When better sources are brought to the table--including recognized leaders in the scholarly mainstream who have dominated the field for decades--you either try to turn them into apologists for positions they clearly do not hold, or else rudely dismiss them as "fringe historians" and "liberal revisionists", while traducing their proponents as ignoramuses and anti-Catholic bigots. When all else fails you firmly tell everyone else that this or that is "not on", as if you are the ultimate arbiter of what is or is not going to happen. And now you're angry because, for once, those tactics aren't working and a critical mass of editors has decided to simply ignore you and all your bluster, and get the job done without you. To draw a parallel from American politics, if you misuse the filibuster to frustrate the will of the majority long enough, you run the risk that someone will eventually "go nuclear" to get things moving again. That is what has happened here. It may not be pretty, and it may take a long time for the dust to settle, but it had to be done. The only alternatives were either to allow the article to remain in gridlock forever, or else to allow you and Nancy and a handful of similarly minded ideologues to turn it into an apologetics puff piece. My hat is off to those who found both those alternatives unacceptable, and decided to do something about it. Harmakheru ✍ 04:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Harmakheru. You are totally misrepresenting my position and my actions. You also seem to be once again following the pattern of many of the people supporting the improper process on this page by trying to divert attention from their own actions and content issues by launching a series of Personal Attacks. This is against central Wikipedia Policy, and is NOT the way to discuss such issues - but unfortunately represents the attitude of some people here. Your breaches of Wikipedia policy are symptomatic. Time and time again we have tried to pin down vague allegations about POV, and get people to back them up with sources. Time and again this has not happened. Instead we have had people with one POV insisting that their POV dominate - and that the other side not be put. Most recently this has occurred in the attempt to hide the killing of 7,000 priest, monks, nuns and bishops by Spanish Republicans, and the attempt to oppose evidence supporting the Catholic Church's position on AIDS appearing on the page. As far as rubbishing the other side's sources is concerned, and saying yours are "better", that too is nonsense. One of the reasons for over-citation of this page is that editors have bent over backwards to include extra sources. I have challenged people time and again to come forward and point out instances where the cited sources are untrue. Again no response. We have offered mediation on all extant POV issues. Again spurned. There is a pattern of just wanting your own way at any cost - even the destruction of the article, and sections that have never been in dispute. It is also quite proper - as with claims that the Church did not exist till the time of Constantine - to point out that such views are NOT consensus or the majority, but represent ONE viewpoint. Time and again we have made attempts to go logically through POV allegations and sort them out, time and again this has been thwarted by personal attacks and an attitude that only your preconceptions and positions are valid, and that anyone supporting anything else must be a liar or apologist. This total failure to WP:Assume Good Faith is what has led to the toxic atmosphere here - and to the assumption that you can break any rule and get away with it. Civility, collegiality and consensus are not things to "bleat" about, they are core principles of Wikipedia. You however think you are above them. There was no consensus - or even majority of editors for the improper massacre of the article. Due process is available for content dispute resolution. You have decided not to use it, bit instead to breach the core rules of Wikipedia. However much bluster you use, that is unacceptable. Xandar 11:24, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

That is exactly what happened, Harmakheru. Someone went nuclear. An editor found it impossible to install his preferred content through consensus and in accordance with policy, so policy and consensus were ignored. Now that's done, a concerted effort to prevent discussion of what happened is under way.

"I see that it wasn't clear the first time, so let's try it again: we don't care what the "wider Wikipedia community" (whatever that means, speaking of WP:PEACOCK on the talk page) thinks about this article."

Can anyone other than Uber honestly stand behind a statement like that? SlimVirgin has expressed concern. Unfortunately the object of her concern is Nancy. Sandy is working hard to prevent an RfC. Does no one else see this as a travesty of the spirit of WP? Who is the we in Uber's statement? Is it the royal we? Or is he speaking on behalf of all those opposing an RfC? --MoreThings (talk) 12:10, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Sandy is working hard to prevent an RfC. Excuse me? Got a diff for that statement? I have 1) asked that Nancy and Xandar get in agreement on their version, 2) asked them for how the three versions can be merged, 3) asked that the bickering stop on this talk page and that article work progresses, 4) asked for a literature search and due weight on sources which will be needed for any version, and 5) pointed out that an RFC is unlikely to resolve issues, not a panacea, and will never be run on the main page. So, um, where am I "working hard to prevent an RFC" ... Nancy and Xandar should go RFC all they want, if that's how they want to spend their time, but an RFC will not solve this article's problems (because they are behavioral), nor will it get the work done that needs to be done on any version. Please stop this bickering: work was progressing while blocks were in place, and now this talk is returning to the same bickering toxicity that caused scores of editors to leave in the past. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Well it's there in that very reply, Sandy. "...an RFC will not solve this article's problems (because they are behavioral), nor will it get the work done that needs to be done on any version." Further up this page you tell us that a "silly RfC" is going to "generate another big fat Nothing.". Nancy approached SunRay to set up the RfC and you've made several posts there which seemed to me to be putting the case that he should decline the request. I can't see any other way to construe those posts. If you tell me that that was not your intention, then I'm happy to accept that. I'm not trying to misrepresent your position, Sandy. My understanding from your posts is that you are strongly opposed to an RfC, and are arguing that we shouldn't hold one. Is that not the case? Do you think we should hold an RfC? Do you think SunRay should agree to Nancy's request?

I don't see this as bickering. I agree with H that someone went nuclear, and you're acting as though that didn't happen. How come Uber isn't in your lists on AN/I? (Thanks for labelling me POV, btw). There have been huge changes to this article and I can't understand why anyone would be against seeking broader input. I'd be interested to know whether or not you support Uber's statement quoted above.--MoreThings (talk) 15:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you have misunderstood; my posts to Sunray's page do not say an RFC should not be launched: they say Nancy should not admin shop for a friendly admin when others are already on board and know the issues. For example, did Sunray know that Xandar and Nancy are each proposing two different versions? So, how will Sunray help with an RFC? Did Sunray know the issues with canvassing, battleground, ownership, etc. that led to the issues? If no, how will Sunray help compose an RFC. And it is simply wrong for others to day that what UBER did here was any violation of anything or that he "went nuclear": with a good deal of community support, including an ANI, Uber instated a workable version of text. On the other hand, what has gone on here for two years did violate multiple policies and behavioral guidelines. Any time y'all want to stop bickering and start editing, answering the queries above, resolving issues in all three versions, I think that would be a more productive use of this talk page than using it to further the battleground that has long existed here. It is silly because it's unlikely to yield any productive results, but Nancy is certainly entitled to spend her time that way. But talk page disruption here should stop, and the focus here should be on working on the article, not an RFC about an RFC. When Nancy and Xandar get on the same page, and put up a version in which all of the issues raised here are addressed, then their RFC will be ready. And that is just what Slim suggested they do: it hasn't been done. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

"And it is simply wrong for others to day that what UBER did here was any violation of anything...". I'm glad you posted that. It saves me wasting any more time on this daft conversation. --MoreThings (talk) 23:50, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

On the Spanish 7,000 - 'hide the killing..' I asked for context, had the Church been a-political perchance until this out of the blue assault?, and the 'when' these killings occured..on the 'when' you never answered, perhaps you don't know, I asked for months, how many before , how many after the rebellion , ..silence. How is ..'this has been done by people with no knowledge and seemingly no interest in the subject matter', how is that WP:Assume Good Faith..how can editors be ' driven away in disgust'?? I can understand 'driven away by soldiers', or 'driven away by force'..but 'driven away in disgust'..it's strange..The article for Hogwarts School has a warning at the top that it is written too much in the thought world of the subject and it seems to me you want that for this article - not the warning , but the thing itself, you want an article that because it is about the Catholic Church, has to be written by those who want to explain it, from the inside, to people in their own words, in their own time, with their own spin..but is that Wikipedia. and Oscar Wilde said we kill the thing we love so maybe it's not even wise.Sayerslle (talk) 12:59, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not exactly certain but it appeared to me that the Catholic Church Wikipedia page was being watched by certain universities as part of an experiment. What seems to be happening here is perfectly illustrated by MoreThings and Xandar's comments above. Wikipedia's reputation as a fair place with fair minded rules may be damaged if we do not hold a widely advertised RFC in this matter. Sandy, Uber, - a lot of people have voiced their disapproval of the way you have handled things regarding this article lately by flagrant violation of core Wikipedia rules. My request for an RFC is nothing more than a peaceful and easy way to put this ongoing conflict to rest and allow the page to move forward in accordance with Wikipedia rules. That said, I am perplexed, flabbergasted, amazed, etc wondering why people on this page would not want to know which version is more preferred by the Wider Wikipedia Community. This page is an important page, the previous version can be found on many other websites. Apparently Wikipedia makes money on some of their articles and I believe it may have made money on our well sourced, and thoroughly vetted previous version of the article. Even though it did not pass FA, it passed something better than FA. Do we now want to install something that has had virtually no input from the Wider Wikipedia Community, something that has been installed via violation of core Wikipedia policies and risk the reputation of Wikipedia itself? NancyHeise ^talk 14:53, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, once again you misrepresent the history of the conflict. "Time and time again we have tried to pin down vague allegations about POV, and get people to back them up with sources. Time and again this has not happened." Hogwash. You gave the game away when you and Nancy spent weeks holding out for your claim that "many historians" support the traditional narrative of the Church's origins. This was clearly POV, not least because you did not have a single source which properly backed it up. When this was repeatedly pointed out to you, you refused to acknowledge what was obvious to everyone else; instead you began blustering (as you just did again) about people "rubbishing" your sources, and both you and Nancy accused the other side of pushing an anti-Catholic POV simply because they refused to allow you to push a pro-Catholic POV. But it is not "rubbishing sources" to insist that the sources actually support the statement they are being cited in support of; that is more properly called vetting or verifying sources, and it is what real scholars (as opposed to apologists) routinely do. "I have challenged people time and again to come forward and point out instances where the cited sources are untrue. Again no response." More hogwash. This has been done again, and again, and again, to no effect; the problem is simply that you and Nancy refuse to hear it. "One of the reasons for over-citation of this page is that editors have bent over backwards to include extra sources." But the solution to bad sources is not to pile up more bad sources; it is to replace the bad sources with good ones. That is what you have been repeatedly asked to do, and in many cases you have been unwilling or unable to do it. That is, in fact, one of the core issues here, and one of the major sources of contention. "Civility, collegiality and consensus are not things to "bleat" about, they are core principles of Wikipedia." Indeed. But part of the complaint against you and Nancy is that while you demand civility from others, you can't manage to be civil yourselves. While you demand that others behave collegially, you do not consistently behave collegially yourselves. While you (and especially Nancy) talk endlessly about "consensus", in practice it is a sword that only cuts one way. Ditto for "good faith" and all the rest. You are in no position to impose these standards on others when you repeatedly violate them yourselves. Harmakheru ✍ 15:57, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Strongly worded but also - sadly - very true. The article will never improve until Xandar and Nancy take a long and hard look in the mirror and recognise that their behaviour is one of the principal problems holding it back. I would like to be more involved with the article but from experience I can only expect to be frustrated at every turn by their obstinance. Life is too short ( but the article is too long ). Afterwriting (talk) 16:32, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I find it unbelievable that people can see what has occurred on this page in the past few days, including eye-watering breaches of Wikipedia policy and the edit-warring of a travesty onto the page against consensus - and suggest the problem is me and Nancy! As for harmakheru, I'm afraid that many neutral editors have supported our contention that the incivility and personal attacks have come largely from the party that he supports. I will not go deeply into the discussion of the origins of the Church on this thread - but it illustrates my point about the attitude some editors have adopted in coming to the page. Harmakheru continues to claim, and presumably continues to wish to place in the article, wording to the effect that all historians dismiss the traditional narrative of the Church's origins. Quite an important supposition. In fact many historians were put forward who say the contrary. Most of these, however, were then dismissed as either "catholic" or for other reasons, even notable non-Catholic academic historians such as Chadwick. People didn't just want the viewpoint of academics who support his viewpoint in the article (acceptable). But wanted to exclude academics who disagreed with his viewpoint. (Not acceptable or proper.) Xandar 21:53, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, this is a perfect example of the endemic dishonesty with which both you and Nancy have approached the conflicts on this page. I have never claimed that "all historians" dismiss the traditional narrative, and several times when you and Nancy have accused me of this I have specifically disclaimed that position, only to have the accusation repeated yet again the next time around. (The technical term for this sort of behavior is "lying".) Nor have I ever wished or attempted to put wording to that effect into the article. What I suggested, asked for, almost pleaded for, was that the "historians agree" part should simply be removed from the article entirely, because it was both unnecessary and very nearly impossible to quantify without violating Wikipedia standards on synthesis and original research. But that quite reasonable approach, which would have spared all of us weeks of bitter and pointless conflict, was repeatedly rejected by both you and Nancy on the grounds that to remove your unsourced and unverifiable assertion would be "suppressing facts" and depriving dear Reader of "the right to know the truth" that "many historians" support the Church's traditional narrative, blah, blah, blah. This is not "collegiality" or "building consensus"; it is shameless filibustering in an attempt to hijack the article for apologetic purposes. It is also not at all a "fact" that "many historians were put forward" in support of your position. What you offered were POV statements from coffee-table books, snippets of prooftexting harvested from Google Books, quotations (e.g., from Chadwick) taken out context or tendentiously misinterpreted, and similar detritus which would not pass muster for thirty seconds in a freshman composition class. For most of the discussion you didn't have a single proper scholarly source which actually said what you and Nancy were claiming--while those who were opposing your position did bring forward source after source after source from mainstream scholars debunking your position, only to have those sources "rubbished" by you and Nancy because you simply didn't like what they said. If you genuinely want the civility, collegiality, and consensus you and Nancy claim to be so much in favor of, then stop lying about other people's behavior, stop misrepresenting their positions, and stop trying to use the article as a vehicle for Catholic apologetics. Otherwise, this war is never going to end. Harmakheru ✍ 22:58, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately Harmakheru seems incapable of arguing without breaching WP:Civil. This I think reflects more upon the value of his arguments than his words do. The point is that he resisted reporting historical and archaeological backing for the Church's origin. That would seriously mislead the reader into assuming there was no such backing. Xandar 20:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, I am civil to those who respond to civility, but liars and bullies sometimes need a two-by-four between the eyes to get their attention. Here you write only four sentences, and still you manage to combine blatant falsehood with an implicit misrepresentation of Wikipedia policy and an attempt to redirect attention away from your own bad behavior. (1) I never resisted reporting historical and archaeological backing for the Church's origin; I simply pointed out--correctly--that at the time you did not have any such backing, because none of your alleged sources actually supported the position you were trying to stake out. (2) Per core Wikipedia policy (as well as basic logic) the burden of proof rests on the party making the assertion, not on those disputing it. It was therefore not my job, or anyone else's, to prove that your assertions were false; it was your job (and Nancy's) to prove that your assertions were correct. Until you could do that, there was no historical or archaeological backing to be "resisted", by myself or anyone else, because you had not yet shown that any such backing actually existed. (3) Also in that particular dispute, you and Nancy are the ones who began the incivility by name-calling your opponents, "rubbishing" perfectly respectable mainstream sources as "fringe historians" and "liberal revisionists", and performing some of the most amazing feats of wikilawyering and fallacious argument that I have ever encountered. I think the evidence shows that I remained patient and civil with both of you above and beyond the call of duty (hence the "Socratic Barnstar" that Karanacs awarded me, much to Nancy's annoyance), until it finally became clear that neither you nor Nancy was going to respond to the substance of my arguments unless you got the above-mentioned two-by-four. That's not my preferred mode of discussion, but sometimes it's the only thing that works ... and that's not my fault. Harmakheru ✍ 23:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Uber's version has two advantages: it is shorter and it avoids the POV issues that plagued the old page. Of course it can be be improved: I agree that the Beliefs section was underdeveloped which is why I have been working on expanding it, as well as assisting Karanacs in cutting back the overciting that had spread across all the sections. Instead of squabbling over past debates - and text on the origins of the Church that no-one now objects to afaik - would it not be better to address yourself to such work as well? Haldraper (talk) 22:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I just made two small edits: a MoS fix and a disambiguation fix. For each edit I had to wait more than 30 seconds for the saved page to load. I don't understand why that isn't perceived as a problem. The article can be fixed and fixed and fixed until everyone has their way, but if nobody can open the page, all the fixing in the world will be for naught. I believe it's time for me to unwatch and let you all work this out... Oh, according to the toolbox diagnostics this page seems to go to a redirect that points back here. Might be worth investigation. I don't know whether that impedes loading but it can't help. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:34, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The redirect should not be a loading problem; they are advised against as wasting the reader's time.

But, yes, loading time is generally seen as a problem (with the usual pair of exceptions); it's one reason we have length guidelines in the first place. The other is to encourage one article to one subject, so that they can be conveniently read; if the reader wants more on a subsubject, that's what links exist to do. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:01, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Enough... time to close this discussion

I think it is time to close the discussion as I really think everybody who has something to say about the proposed RFC/straw poll has already said it at least once and, in some cases, more than once. In case anyone cares who hasn't already noticed, this discussion has also been held at User talk:Xandar and User talk:NancyHeise. Quite a few innocent bytes have been massacred in the furtherance of the cause and it's time to shift the battlefield and find a different altar at which to sacrifice more innocent bytes.

If Xandar and NancyHeise have not been convinced of the futility of an RFC/straw poll by now, they probably never will be. So, the only way I can see to go forward is to let them issue the RFC, get an uninvolved admin to publicize it (really any editor with a remote acquaintance with the concept of neutrality could do that) and then see how things develop.

Xandar proposed the format used in Talk:Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom/Article title and I agree that it's pretty good. I suggest that we have only three "Statements", one for each major version of the article. The "statement" should be made by the author/proponent of that version.

As a closure guideline, I would suggest that "plurality wins". That means that UberCryxic's version could win if it gathers more !votes than either Xandar or NancyHeise's version does alone. If this is not acceptable to Xandar and NancyHeise, then I suggest that they combine their versions into a single version so that a clearer decision can be posed to those responding to the RFC. An alternative would be to hold a run-off between the top two !vote-getters but I gotta say that, in my book, only a masochist would want to prolong the agony in that manner.

Finally, there have been suggestions that this RFC/straw poll should poll the Wiki-wide community. Forgive my bluntness but gimme a break already. It's just a hubristic sense of self-importance that would make one think that this issue is one which should be advertised to every last reader of Wikipedia. What could be the reasoning here? Well, there's 1 billion some odd Catholics and if 1% of those read Wikipedia, then we're talking about 10 million people, right? And if 1% of those respond to the RFC, we're talking about 100,000 people responding to the RFC, right? Nah, not on your life. If you get over 50 people responding to the RFC, that's a lot and we shouldn't go combing through all the nooks and crannies of Wikipedia on the off-chance that we might find one more person who has a remote interest in our dispute. I've been involved in disputes on a number of articles and nobody has ever had the temerity to suggest that their dispute required the attention of the entire Wikipedia community.

Do we even think the editors of the articles related to the Orthodox Church or the Protestant denominations are really going to care about our RFC? I doubt many of those editors will care about our little "tempest in a teapot". I suggest that this new RFC should be advertised on Talk:Catholic Church, the Catholic portal, relevant Wikiprojects and a few articles related to the Catholic Church such as Talk:History of the Catholic Church, etc.

--Richard S (talk) 02:32, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

We do need to close this silly discussion, but holding the proposed RFC now won't solve anything. Second, and this has been mentioned enough times to make a sane human being want to shoot herself, Wikipedia is not a democracy and there are no "votes" to speak of, in RFCs or other processes. If other editors keep insisting on a return to the old version of nearly 200 kb, it doesn't matter how many "votes" they get or how many RFCs they "win": it will never happen. Banish that thought from your head. The ideal way forward for Nancy and Xandar is to help the rest of us improve the current version, not to bicker about what happened in the past.UBER ^(talk) 02:40, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

UberCryxic, IAR mode cannot last forever. At some point, we have to go back to standard established processes and procedures or else you are asserting that some combination of anarchy and dictatorship holds over this corner of Wikipedia.

You cannot stop an RFC from being issued. Xandar or Nancy could issue one right now and you would be ill-advised to delete it from this page. However, you can try to dissuade people from issuing an RFC. You can also make suggestions on how the RFC is to be phrased and structured. That is what my intent was in starting this subsection.

You are right, an RFC is not a vote and Wikipedia is not a democracy. What an RFC does is provide input from a wider group of editors with the hopes that this input will convince one or more sides to be more willing to compromise.

If insufficient compromise occurs after an RFC, then the next step in Dispute Resolution is mediation which consumes even more time and energy. You can refuse to enter into mediation but the next stop is ARBCOM and refusal to enter into mediation could be considered as obstructionist and disruptive.

Xandar and NancyHeise seem willing to enter into mediation. I would prefer that we find a solution that avoids both RFC and mediation as the last mediation cost me an arm and a leg and I only got one each of those left. However, at the moment, I don't see the flexibility and willingness to compromise that would allow such a solution.

What I see is a lot of jawboning about whether or not to have an RFC. At some point, we should give up the jawboning and just have the stupid RFC already. It might tell us something or it might not. But chasing our tails in a circle arguing about whether it will or not is truly pointless.

--Richard S (talk) 04:48, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Let me make clear that I have no problem if they hold the proposed RFC. I just think it's premature and unnecessary. My real concern is determining what executive authority, if any, the RFC assumes. If it's a general RFC about making improvements to the current version, I'll gladly participate. If it devolves into a vengeful attempt to restore the old version, it's completely illegitimate and will be dutifully ignored.UBER ^(talk) 04:59, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

An RfC at this time is most likely going to be counterproductive. We're better off working through issues on this talk page. Majoreditor (talk) 18:23, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Which would be fine, if there was any willingness to discuss rationally, or make meaningful compromise on the part of the backers of the disembowelled version. The hacking to shreds of the beliefs and organisation sections has no rationale whatsoever, had no discussion whatsoever, and the only reason given was that certain persons considered the article too long! Yet the hacking has been defended fanatically, and other less damaging proposals to shorten the article - such as the Main Article-History split have been rejected. This ain't on, folks.

As far as Richard's comments: The hacking to pieces of the article and the way it has ocurred DO have implications that spread across Wikipedia, and especially to the other religious projects. If this is to be the new way to amend articles, perhaps we need to see if it has community consensus? if the format this article has had for the past few years is so wrong - what does it mean for other articles such as Orthodoxy and Islam which adopt the same format? In particular, UBER's promises to ignore RFCs and other Wikipedia procedures don't bode well for the project if left unchecked. UBER's "current version" is a mess, which doesn't do the job of a CC article. And again, I don't have a version. The cut-down version I highlighted was an attempt at compromise to deal with the problems of article length alleged to be behind the massive cuts of referenced material. Xandar 19:59, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

There is opportunity to selectively add material to the current article. For example, the section on Catholic organizations has been pruned too far. Xandar, it may be more constructive to focus on incremental changes. A first step could be that the current version doesn't (as far as I can tell) summarize the role of Catholic educational institutions. That is an obvious gap. Perhaps someone can propose or insert a summarized, neutral sentence or two on Catholic educational institutions? Majoreditor (talk) 23:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

A model for progress

I think everyone will agree that an RfC as currently scoped cannot produce an outcome that leaves most people happy. I propose the Source verification section above as a model for how progress can be made here. Instead of trying to decide between two monolithic versions, both of which have their faults, it would be better to identify small, specific, actionable issues and deal with them individually. They don't have to be done one-by-one. You could dump a hundred of them here if you wanted. You could capture every single objection that you have with either version of the article. Discussion of each individual point can then proceed, hopefully without the incessant ad hominem remarks and process wonkery. Some will be resolved immediately and amicably. Some will be resolved over time. Some may need to proceed, eventually, to RfC. Hesperian 05:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

(P.S. The first person to hijack this section and turn it into a discussion of how badly behaved their enemies are, is officially a complete and utter dickhead. Hesperian 05:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC))

I agree with this approach.UBER ^(talk) 05:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

The RFC is needed to determine whether or not the long form or short form of the article is to be used as a base to proceed with improvements. The long form as I have submitted it to user:Sunray represents the form of the article as it was after the last FAC plus the results of consensus agreements reached after the last FAC.([[8]]) That article's cited sources accurately reflect the sentences to which they are referenced. The article that Uber and others on this page replaced it with does not. In fact, the new article contains a variety of factual inaccuracies and serious omissions and because of this I think it was created by people who are not very knowledgable about the article's subject. I have asked for an RFC because the present, more erroneous article was inserted by a disputed process that is described here [9]. Because of this violation of due process that produced the current, erroneous form of the article, we need to hold an RFC to either legitimize the present form or return the article to its previous form. I have offered to leave the project willingly if the RFC produces a result in favor of the current article. An attempt at RFC is a necessary step before going to Arbcom. If we do not proceed with the RFC, I will go to Arbcom and point to this section as my effort to resolve the dispute without going to Arbcom. NancyHeise ^talk 16:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy, I have looked at the version you are proposing. Its total size is 183 kb: it's an absolute non-starter. If that's your "consensus" version, then you really should go to Arbcom immediately because RFC will do nothing and we're just wasting time. I'm not going to prejudge their response, but it's your prerogative as a Wikipedia editor to look for a solution to this problem.UBER ^(talk) 16:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I have asked a neutral admin to determine that decision. Thanks for your opinion anyways. Also, Wikipedia allows us to seek guidance from tertiary sources (like other encyclopedias) to determine things like article size, what to include and due weight as well as discovering scholarly consensus on certain issues. Per other encyclopeidas' guidance, the article I have submitted is more reflective of the subject than what you are submitting. The subject matter warrants a longer article. Like I said below, your and SandyGeorgia's approach to this subject is akin to a person trying to fit a size nine foot into a size five shoe and I dont thinks its an improvement. Numerous factual inaccuracies exist in the article as a result of doing this. NancyHeise ^talk 16:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia allows us to cite content from reputable secondary sources (like established encyclopedias), but it has separate policies and guidelines for fundamental features like length (ie. this article should never be 183 kb), structure (it shouldn't have a stuffed and confusing TOC), and neutrality (it shouldn't credit the Catholic Church for helping to end slavery). Your version violates all of these standards, and the last one is particularly infuriating as it repeats the same old lie with the word "eventually," even though what ended slavery eventually were secular governments often led by radical liberal and leftist coalitions (in France, in Britain) or through outright war (in the US). The Catholic Church had absolutely nothing to do with ending slavery in modern times. Abolitionism was an ideological offshoot of the French Revolution, as was most of the modern world in general.UBER ^(talk) 16:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Thank you for that, UBER. That really needed saying although we've been around that block many times before. Some editors just seem to have a hearing problem. I don't care if History comes first or last but pro-Church apologetics like that have got to go. --Richard S (talk) 18:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that I started the source verification section above, and in every case, the issue I found also existed in the previous version of the article that Nancy is holding up as properly representing the sources. And the issues I found are just a subset - I haven't managed to get most of the books yet and have been working off sources to which I have (full) online access. In the longer version of the article, some sources were being used inappropriately in previously uncontroversial sections, including beliefs. While the text they cite might be "TRUE", the sources did not verify them. Karanacs (talk) 15:43, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, in almost every case, Karanacs is dealing with the same text as the "previous version"; the History sections were, aside from a short linking passage, identical. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

=digression into discussing slavery

Errh - not exactly, Uber. The Catholic Church had some involvement in ending modern slavery, as well as some involvement in promoting modern slavery. I think the key question is whether this article should credit the Church with substantial efforts toward ending slavery. Majoreditor (talk) 18:20, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Slavery was not ended by issuing papal statements. It ended after hard legislative votes and brutal wars, none of which occurred at the behest of the Catholic Church.UBER ^(talk) 18:32, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

[multiple edit conflicts]

Majoreditor, could you elaborate on your assertion at Talk:Catholic Church and slavery? I'd like to understand the assertion better and make sure that it is accurately captured in that article. However, I fear a discussion of the details is off-topic for this article so let's move the discussion to that article's Talk Page.

In the meantime, the problem that faces us is coming up with an NPOV way of capturing the complexity of the Church's 2000 year experience with slavery without the oversimplification of Nancy's proposed text.

Here is one rendition (I'm not sure whose it is)

On other social fronts, Catholic teaching turned towards the abolition of slavery in the 15th and 16th centuries, although the papacy continued to endorse Portuguese and Spanish taking of Muslim slaves.[12]

There is a very good discussion which has now been archived here. How do we summarize that discussion into one or two concise and pithy sentences?

This is a sentence I proposed during that discussion...

Although the Church initially accepted slavery as an established social institution and worked primarily to mitigate abuse of slaves, it later opposed slavery first of Christians and eventually of all human beings.

I'm more than open to suggestions for improving this text.

--Richard S (talk) 18:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I should say "ended" since I've made clear before that slavery technically has not ended. It's much less of a problem than it was in the past, but it hasn't ended.UBER ^(talk) 18:33, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

To be precise, slavery has been made illegal in most countries of the world (at least, I don't know of any where it is legal as such). So perhaps we should not so much say "eliminated slavery" as "participated in the global recognition of slavery as evil and impermissible in a civilized society". --Richard S (talk) 18:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

←Richard, I like the sentence you've proposed. It's a good, balanced overview. I've not tended to comment on the topic of slavery and the Catholic church, but I found Uber's statements to be so off-base that I felt the need to say something. (Uber's assertion that "Abolitionism was an ideological offshoot of the French Revolution" doesn't square with the reality of abolitionism in countries such as the United States, which had an active abolitionist movement prior to the French Revolution - see the U.S. section of the Abolitionism article, for example.) Majoreditor (talk) 20:03, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Insofar as that movement had a religious linkage, however, it was to the Quakers; as a non-denominational movement (which most of it was) it was a product of the Enlightenment (as was the French Revolution). What has either of these to do with this article?

The Church did not, in general, oppose the slavery of Christians - until the rest of the world did; it opposed non-Christians making free Christians into slaves, a much more limited stance. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:14, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I agree, PMA. The abolitionist movement was primarily inspired by the Enlightenment, not the French Revolution nor the Catholic Church. Accordingly, not much needs to be said about slavery in this article. Richard's minimalist approach looks good. Majoreditor (talk) 20:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I think Richard's sentence was pretty close to acceptance before all this started. The fact is that PMAnderson is wrong. the ending of slavery had huge Christian input, both in the medieval period the 1th-19th century.

How we got on to this, however, was UBER defefending his massive slashing of the Beliefs, Practices, Mission, Organisation, Demographics and Cultural Influencess sections on the basis of raising an old and virtually settled argument relevant to the History section. The point is that the majority of the decimated sections were non-controversial and in any event, wrongly removed. The current article on the page is not Wikipedia-worthy, and does not do its job. To do that we would have to re-write virtually all the missing material-which is a ridiculous waste of time and effort, since there is nothing wrong with the removed material, rpoduced over several years by good and knowledgeable editors. I think some people here need to face the fact that the swingeing cuts made by UBER and Karanacs were a mistake. Xandar 20:17, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Major, abolitionism as an ideology was a product of the French Revolution, although yes there were plenty of people before the French Revolution who rejected slavery. Alcidamas in Ancient Greece is one of the best examples, preceding everyone who we're talking about here. But abolitionism only became both a powerful movement and ideology starting in the 1790s, and eventually crescendoed in the 19th century. The reason why this last fact is important is because only once abolitionism became ideological (ie. was unwilling to accept anything but total victory) was slavery finally removed from human history (mostly anyway). Before then, you might have had silly pronouncements and statements of opinion by various people throughout history (popes, writers, etc), but none really led to the kinds of fundamental changes produced in the modern world...and in just two centuries too.UBER ^(talk) 20:32, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania abolished slavery, New York abolished the slave trade, before the (French) Revolution. Massachusetts, at least, did so on straight ideological grounds, as an interpretation of the clause of the state Constitution, that all men have a right to liberty. That all of these, including the Society of Friends of the Blacks, were products of the Enlightement is a defensible position. (The extent of Catholic influence on MA in 1780 is left as an exercise for the reader; it was scarcely larger in New York or Pennsylvania.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:43, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, certainly there was Christian input to the Abolitionist movement - both for and against. That's why I disagree with Uber's blanket comment that The Catholic Church had absolutely nothing to do with ending slavery in modern times. However, to imply that the Catholic Church per se was a prime factor in abolishing slavery is reaching a bit too far. Some of the statements which have been removed implied that the Church was central to the movement, and removing them was appropriate. Majoreditor (talk) 20:39, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Some of the Christians were Catholics; to say that the Church had something to do with it, however, implies, at a minimum, that the hierarchy supported them; I cannot think of an example - it certainly opposed O'Connell, who may be the most prominent of Catholic abolitionists. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:46, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

And in reply to Xandar: the text that has been removed had a few minor problems:

1. It was drawn, largely, from tendentious sources, and all of those on one side.
2. It made claims unsupported even by those sources (or by any others); the list of verification issues above should be instructive, and it is far from complete.
3. It was phrased as a dishonest and polemical series of half-truths and untruths.

The "good and knowledgeable" editors that produced this mess have yet to produce any sources for their more sweeping and less accurate claims; but then this is the editor who asserted in public, that there's no such thing as "Christian" anti-Semitism. Let us see a source for that, or his claim that the American abolitionists (Woolman? Franklin? Jay? Garrison? Brown?) were Catholics, before we have to deal with any more of this self-praise. There is a German proverb on the subject... Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:55, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

As an aside, since I know a little German, I'd like to hear what the German proverb is. If it would be uncivil, then just leave it on my Talk Page. --Richard S (talk) 14:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm reading a book called Aftermath at the moment , about the work of UNRRA after the war and it says here " Hardly any Germans felt guilty for the bringing in of the millions of slaves - and yet almost every family had profited from them." And this mass slavery in the mdddle of the last century was prepared for by the defeat of anti-fascists in the lead up to the war, in Spain, in France, where the Church because of its hatred for the left , facilitated the rise of right wing totalitarianism. The trouble with Richards sentence too is that it complaisantly wants to imply ' The moral progress we made, you know, the Church certainly played its part" But the proposition that any moral progress has been made since Christianity arrived on the scene is dubious at best. In St Pauls teaching, 'all one in Christ etc', its definitely, equality after death, and as an ideology points to social quietism . I don't think there should be any sentence, just keep looking at what the Church did, and what it supported, tolerated through history - reality is the master - the rest is propaganda. Sayerslle (talk) 21:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know... it seems a stretch to connect the Church's support for right-wing regimes with German slave labor. Certainly some German bishops supported the Nazi regime but I think the German hierarchy split on this question and so it's not reasonable in my book to charge the Church with supporting Nazi policies in this regard. --Richard S (talk) 14:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy's proposed long version is so riddled with POV on almost every conceivable point - slavery, the Albigensian crusade, colonialism, 'Mit brennender Sorge', WWII, organisation/demographics, sex abuse to name a few - it'd definitely need a POV tag on the page if it was ever accepted. Haldraper (talk) 12:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

The POV is fixable. It's the length that is of concern. The question is whether it makes more sense to mention fewer issues and go into detail on those or just mention the issues with a very brief summary and direct the reader to subsidiary articles for further details. --Richard S (talk) 14:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Church vs. Empire

The question has been asked as to why there was such intense conflict between the Church and the Roman Empire. The cutting-edge authority on this is Allen Brent, who has written extensively on the subject:

• Brent, Allen. A Political History of Early Christianity (T & T Clark, 2009).

• Brent, Allen. Ignatius of Antioch: A Martyr Bishop and the Origin of Episcopacy (T & T Clark, 2007).

• Brent, Allen. The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity Before the Age of Cyprian (Brill, 1999).

• Brent, Allen. Ignatius of Antioch & The Second Sophistic: A Study of the Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture (Mohr, 2006).

• Brent, Allen. Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century: Communities in Tension Before the Emergence of a Monarch-Bishop (Brill, 1995).

The first book listed above is his latest and most comprehensive, and the first two are the most accessible to the general reader (and also the cheapest and easiest to get). Parts of them can be read online at Amazon: [10] [11]

The others are more convoluted scholarly works (and hideously expensive) but provide the detailed evidence and arguments to support the positions he is articulating in the other two.

Also of interest:

• Richey, Lance Byron. Roman Imperial Ideology and the Gospel of John (Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2007).

• Friesen, Steven J. Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford, 2006).

• McBrien, Richard. "Pope Clement I, Model of Imperial Rome" (National Catholic Reporter, 2008). [12]

All of this has important implications not only for the conflict between Church and Empire but also for giving an account of how the primitive "Jesus movement" turned into the hierarchically organized Catholic Church. In particular it explains why that Church so closely resembles in structure and ideology the Empire with which it was locked in conflict for three centuries (an issue which I believe was raised earlier by Haldraper). Harmakheru ✍ 19:56, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the list of sources! Just for clarification, when you say "cutting-edge authority" do you mean that he's the voice of mainstream opinion, or that he's the newest and most interesting voice with new theories? I read what you wrote as the former, but I want to make sure it isn't the latter. Thanks! Karanacs (talk) 19:59, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The cutting edge by definition is not the mainstream, but he is building on the work of a long list of other experts in the field, and his own work has generally been well received. His books are published by the most prestigious publishers, his articles are published in top-flight peer-reviewed journals, and most of the reviews range from cautiously positive to wildly enthusiastic. If nothing else, the bibliographies provide a useful resource for digging into the issue further. Harmakheru ✍ 20:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Fergus Millar should be useful also, as an established authority on the governance of the Empire. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I unfortunately don't have easy access to any of those works short of ILL. I can easily get Ramsay MacMullen's Christianizing the Roman Empire : (A.D. 100-400) (published 1984) and the followup Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (pub 1997). I've also read Warwick Ball's Rome in the East : The Transformation of an Empire, which summarize a bit how Christianity was perceived as a political threat. He's an archealogist rather than a historian, however, so not sure whether we should use that one. Thoughts on McMullen before I go read those? Karanacs (talk) 15:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

MacMullen's dense reading, but very informative. Whether he reflects the mainstream or the fringe of scholarly opinion in the area, I don't know, as it's not my area of specialty. (I do own both works, as I "dabble" in the area). Ealdgyth - Talk 15:21, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

My university library has all of Brent's books in the list except for the first one. As the subject is of interest to me, I might make the journey into town. --RelHistBuff (talk) 16:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

That would be excellent, RelHistBuff - this isn't a timeframe I'm particularly interested in. If you could get a few of those, I'll work my way through MacMullen. Karanacs (talk) 18:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Organization and demographics

Resolved

There's a table in the organization and demographics section that is not particularly helpful to the average reader and can easily be reproduced in the Catholic Church hierarchy article. As a reader, I would prefer not to see this table. I also found the listing of "leprosaries" somewhat strange, considering that medical science has offered effective treatment for leprosy since 1982, but for political and economic reasons, it is apparently not getting to the victims of the disease. Viriditas (talk) 09:07, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

That's the sort of fix Summary Style encourages. It might be a good idea to check the sources first; this article does not have a good record on representing them.

Agreed. Is there any objection to moving it out of the article? Viriditas (talk) 11:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

None by me. Go right ahead if you want.UBER ^(talk) 16:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

The only problem is that if the table is unsourced as it appears, it would be foolish of me to add it to another article. Would it be acceptable for me to remove it from this one, and place it on the talk page of the subarticle with a note? Viriditas (talk) 20:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Perfectly acceptable. The only policy against putting things on Talk pages is BLP, and if that applied, we should remove the table altogether. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Done.[13][14]. Viriditas (talk) 02:35, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

How long should this article be?

Can we come to an agreement on some kind of target size please? Many of the disputes here boil down to differences over how long the article ought to be.

For those who are unfamiliar with the issues, please familiarise yourself with the "readability issues" and "technical issues" sections of Wikipedia:Article size.

Sandy, can you provide rough statistics on FA length please?

Hesperian 05:21, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• For my part, I feel that 50kB is appropriate for this article, which is, after all, merely a summary article that serves as a gateway to many more detailed articles. Should others want a larger article, I would consider anything less than 100kB an acceptable compromise, and anything larger than 100kB not so. Hesperian 05:21, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
• In terms of bytes, roughly 100 kb is fine by me, give or take a few thousand bytes. In terms of readable prose, I'd be ok with around 7,000 words for an article of such importance, although I'd max it out at 8,000 if people had some really good reasons for including additional content.UBER ^(talk) 05:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
• Reply to Hesperian
  • Here's a graph of FA and GA size: File:FA and GA prose size.svg
  • Here are Dr pda's latest FA stats: User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics. Some of that data is old, and it must be noted that many of the Dynasty articles on that list did not pass FAC at that size (they were expanded post-FAC, to my dismay). Average FA size is about 25KB prose.
  • For this article (unlike other FAs on that list), this is the broad overview that covers the Catholic Church. I continue to believe that it can only be done with appropriate use of summary style, with content developed in daughter articles. I believe that can only be done adequately and neutrally in the 6,000 to 7,000 word range. Less than that won't cover it, and more than that gets into accessibility and readability issues, undue weight, synthesis, or conflicting POV issues about what to include here. In terms of the current version, I still believe History is too long, and other areas are underdeveloped, but that to resolve those issues, attention must be shifted to a literature survey to determine what is included here, and development of sub-topics in the daughter articles, summarized back to here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:33, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

The raw byte counts for the top three longest articles on Dr. Pda's list are 138kb, 136kb and 138kb long respectively for an article length not to exceed 130-140kb (of course, we need to look at readable prose and word count but total article length in raw bytes is a reasonable first approximation for lazy people like me). The article could be shorter than that but it should not be appreciably longer. --Richard S (talk) 22:02, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• SandyGeorgia provided this information earlier, but here's the current prose size report:

• File size: 456 kB
• Prose size (including all HTML code): 90 kB
• References (including all HTML code): 104 kB
• Wiki text: 99 kB
• Prose size (text only): 44 kB (7113 words) "readable prose size"
• References (text only): 18 kB

• Note, the reference templates exceed prose. If the templates were removed the space could be used for content. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• • Wikipedia allows us to use tertiary sources (like other encyclopedias) to determine what to include in our articles. Accordingly, if you look at other encyclopedias articles on the Catholic Church, you will see huge articles some with very lengthy lead sections that might be called "apologetics" to some of the editors on this page but are really just simply factual statements about the Church. (I recently noted this in Worldbook Encyclopedia) What Sandy is trying to do to this article is akin to trying to fit a size nine foot into a size five shoe. I disagree that this will improve the article or make it more attractive to Wikipedia's paying and nonpaying readers. NancyHeise ^talk 16:13, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

    Why is it "what Sandy is trying to do"? I started this section. I directly asked Sandy for data on FA size. Sandy responded with that data, and shared her opinion. This demonisation of Sandy is unacceptable. Hesperian 01:12, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Richard suggested that the target size for the article should be somewhere in the 130k to 150k range. I agree with that. This is the size range of many, perhaps most, comparable articles covering a broad and complex subject like this. Just a quick look-round produces: England at 172k, USA at 163k, Orthodox Church at 145k and Evolution at 153k. The article must also be balanced and properly weighted between sections. The article cannot go for extreme summary style, since that format would end up as little more than a list of links. It needs to be a readable clear article that is informative and useful in its own right. This is particularly so, since the article appears in many versions which do not have the extensive subsidiary-article linking as main Wikipedia. In any event, content comprehensiveness must not play second fiddle to arbitrary size quotas. Size reductions should be achieved by consensus trimming, not randomly hacking away important elements of the article. Xandar 20:30, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

The length guidelines aren't arbitrary. This article is too long to load in a reasonable time (as is remarked a few sections up); too long to edit without edit-conflicting with oneself; too long to read at a sitting.

Xandar's parallels are all notoriously bad troubled articles; England and the United States driven by patriotism, Evolution by the creationist controversy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:35, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the most relevant policy to bring up would be WP:OTHERSTUFF, but it's been mentioned enough times already. Incidentally, I love the article on Evolution; I think it's one of our best in its level of detail and professionalism (it's also featured by the way). It is, however, very long, and I think unjustifiably so. Someone should really trim that down.UBER ^(talk) 23:32, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Emendavi. I was concentrating on the one aspect; length produced by POV-pushing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Yet another breach of WP:AssumeGood Faith, PMA. And people wonder why there is a toxic atmosphere - and who is to blame for it. The length of an article is primarily driven by the need to cover the content properly and in balance. Hacking out important elements of an article to achieve an arbitrary number is ridiculous. Start from the article, then trim to reach a decent size while retainong optimum coverage. Xandar 20:20, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

How odd; I was talking about the POV-pushing on Evolution; does Xandar mean to deny that it exists? (Which side does more is off topic for this page.) But if Xandar wishes to embrace the accusation, he is welcome to do so; I have already expressed my judgment of the long asides quoting sources which do not support the text, the tedious and inaccurate political polemics, and the tendentious claims that the Church did everything good and didn't really do anything bad. I'm waiting for the Catholic discovery of fire, logarithms, and sliced bread. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:41, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Product - Process - People

There is a model of teamwork which suggests that people have three different ways of viewing how work should get done. (I forget who came up with the model but that's not important here.)

According to this model, one view is primarily interested in the final Product, the result of the effort. If standard Processes and procedures have to be circumvented to get a good final Product out on time and under budget, then so be it. If interpersonal relationships with other People on the team have to be sacrificed in the interest of achieving the end result, then so be it.

Another view is primarily interested in making sure that the standard Processes and procedures are followed. If the product quality, schedule or budget suffer, then so be it. At least the SOP was followed. If interpersonal relationships suffer, so be it.

The last view is primarily interested in fostering good relationships among People; (i.e. among team members and with clients and suppliers) even if Product and Processes suffer in the process.

UberCryxic's IAR mode focused on Product at the expense of Process and People.

Xandar and NancyHeise are not impressed with the Product and moreover feel that Process has been flouted.

And, there has been darn little concern about the People aspect of a collaborative and collegial team working together to write an article.

I raise this perspective because it occurs to me that there are several levels of discussion. There are two levels of Product-relevant queries. There are macro questions such as "how long should this article be?", "how heavily should the assertions be cited?", "should we have a long History section or a short one?". To me, these high-level macro questions are candidates for an RFC although I think we could resolve them amongst ourselves if we could work collegially and collaboratively.

Micro-questions such as "How should we present the Church's influence on slavery over 2000 years?" could be subjects of RFCs except that there are so many such issues that we would be in RFC-land forever. Here, I think we are far better off trying to resolve the issues amongst ourselves and only resorting to an RFC if we hit a true impasse.

Now, Xandar raises a different point. He thinks UberCryxic's flouting of Process and Policy should get a smackdown and that a Wiki-wide RFC should be issued to put the question before the wider Wiki community. I'm none too happy about the way we got where we are but, being more interested in Product than Process, I haven't been as "up in arms" about it as Xandar is. (i.e. I like the Product of what UberCryxic did even though I don't like the Process that she used)

My point here is that we should be very clear on what we are asking people to comment on in any RFC that may be issued. If we ask the commenter to decide between the short version with flaws and the long version with different flaws, we get a tactical answer and it will be hard to get a clear answer to the strategic questions of "long vs. short", "heavy citation vs. lighter citation", etc.

More importantly, we will not get an answer about the Process. People might prefer the shorter version but hate the Process which brought it about.

So, if you want an answer about the IAR process that UberCryxic used, please don't ask "Version A or Version B?". Just talk about the process and don't ask for any opinion on the version of the article that ensued.

Similarly, if you really want an answer about how the article should be written, please don't just say "Version A or Version B?". Ask the specific question you want answered (e.g. "as long as Version A or as short as Version B?", "heavily cited like Version A or lightly cited like Version B").

We should not be looking to bless any specific version, we should be looking for comments on what criteria to use in improving the article.

--Richard S (talk) 21:41, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you said, although I am a he. But since I have a higher opinion of women than of men, I'll take that as a compliment of sorts.UBER ^(talk) 21:50, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

The RFC is needed to determine whether or not the long form or short form of the article is to be used as a base to proceed with improvements. The long form as I have submitted it to user:Sunray represents the form of the article as it was after the last FAC plus the results of consensus agreements reached after the last FAC.([[15]]) That article's cited sources accurately reflect the sentences to which they are referenced. The short article that Uber and others on this page replaced it with does not. In fact, the short article contains a variety of factual inaccuracies and serious omissions and because of this I think it was created by people who are not very knowledgable about the article's subject. I have asked for an RFC because the present, more erroneous article was inserted by a disputed process that is described here [16]. Because of this violation of due process that produced the current, erroneous form of the article, we need to hold an RFC to either legitimize the present form or return the article to its previous form. I have offered to leave the project willingly if the RFC produces a result in favor of the current article. An attempt at RFC is a necessary step before going to Arbcom. NancyHeise ^talk 00:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

You already said that, Nancy.[17][18] Have we reached the point where you are simply copy-pasting your point of view over and over again? Generally, the way mature discourse works is: you say what you think, others listen, consider, agree with the points they find convincing, point out difficulties with the points they find unconvincing, and express their own point of view. It is then your turn to listen, consider, concede, defend, refine your views. And so it goes, around and around, until we find common ground. It is simply infuriating to try to engage in mature discourse with someone who follows the alternative process of: say what you think, say it again, say it again, say it again, say it again, say it again, ad infinitum, without ever taking the time to read, consider and refine. When somebody simply copy-pastes a comment they made the day before into a new section, it rather looks like this latter process is being followed. Hesperian 01:26, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy, if you think there are "factual inaccuracies and serious omissions" in the current article, the most helpful thing you could do would be to tell us what they are so they can be discussed and fixed, rather than insisting on a showdown between your preferred article and the present one. The former course would be genuinely collegial; the latter is a continuation of the "battleground mentality" which you yourself have been complaining about. As for your claim that the current article was "created by people who are not very knowledgable" about the Catholic Church, past experience has shown that you are a very poor judge of the state of other people's knowledge, so I'm afraid that's not going to carry much weight with anyone who isn't already in your camp. Harmakheru ✍ 01:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy, have you forgotten that we've been to ArbCom, and they declined to hear any of this? It's not a credible threat, especially with the recent wave of cooperative editing and discussion.

If you want to add back even more of the long version than Yorkshirian already has (we haven't heard from him, btw, because he's been banned for falsifying sources - on a completely different set of articles), then you might consider listing the points with which you disagree, much as Karanacs did at #Source verification above. She was answered on some, gor revisions on others, and fot still others deleted; that's a better average than the .000 this discussion has gathered. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I calls dibs on phrasing the RFC: "Hey people, instead of making the article not crap, we've been arguing over which crap version of the article we should work from. Come join us!" Hesperian 00:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm unclear why Uber's version is consistently referred to as IAR, when in fact, he instated a version that respects Wiki guidelines and policy, and removed a long-standing version which didn't. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:11, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I posted my comment in response to Richard's post. The present article's inaccuracies are numerous. I will certainly participate in correcting them if this version is decided upon after we hold our RFC to discover which version of the article is preferred by the Wider Wikipedia Community. The WWC should have been alerted to the discussion before but were not due to the one day straw poll that was declared a failure [19][20] [21] by the adminstrating admin, Tom Harrison. That straw poll which produced the new version is invalid, the new version has no legitimacy until we hold a valid, properly advertised and conducted RFC. I am unwilling to spend time on the new version until it has been properly installed following Wikipedia rules that incorporates the views of the many editors who worked on the previous version and have not been given a chance to cast an opinion about these abrupt and comprehensive (and really lousy) changes. NancyHeise ^talk 03:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Can I get a reconciliation of

"I have offered to leave the project willingly if the RFC produces a result in favor of the current article."[22]

with

"I will certainly participate in correcting them if this version is decided upon after we hold our RFC"[23]

please? Hesperian 03:28, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

There is also Nancy's comment... "An attempt at RFC is a necessary step before going to Arbcom." Why would we need to go to Arbcom if Nancy would participate in correcting the current version if the shorter version is decided upon? Alternatively, who would take it to Arbcom if Nancy leaves the project as she has offered? Presumably that would be Xandar.

Look, ARBCOM has a general policy of not getting involved in content disputes. Even if you issue an RFC on which version to fix, that RFC will not constitute grounds for an RFARB unless some editors refuse to abide by an overwhelming consensus expressed by responders to the RFC. That would be grounds for an RFARB on conduct. If you want ARBCOM to comment on conduct such as UberCryxic's IAR mode, then issue a User RFC specifically focusing on the Process, not on the Product.

Please, Nancy and Xandar, for your own sanity and ours, try to separate your issues with the Product (i.e. the article content) from the Process (i.e. UberCryxic's IAR mode). If you wish to issue an RFC on content, then phrase it as such and abide by the results. If you wish to issue an RFC on the conduct of a specific user, then phrase it as such. Please don't mix the two and also don't mix multiple content questions into a single RFC or the results will be extremely difficult if not impossible to interpret.

--Richard S (talk) 05:17, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Further comments on Nancy's post...

First of all, the phrase "the project" is often construed to mean "Wikipedia". I don't think people want you to leave Wikipedia or even leave this article permanently. SlimVirgin has suggested on your Talk Page that you step back from the article for a while (her suggestion was 3 months). I would not have thought such a long time was necessary although the attitudes you have expressed do seem to confirm the idea that some time off would do you good. Offering (or threatening) to leave the project is often perceived as drama. There's already been a lot of unnecessary drama, let's not add to it.

Secondly, why is it so important to decide which version to correct? If we had simply worked on improving the current version instead of debating which version to fix, wouldn't we have been well on our way to fixing the issues by now? Why isn't it just as possible to expand the current version as to trim the previous one?

Or, is there a hidden agenda that assumes that it is easier to defend against taking something out than it is to get it put in? That somehow the current shorter version risks being "blessed by consensus" while you wish the longer version to be blessed by the consensus of a new RFC? If this last is what you're looking for, please consult what I said above about the difficulty of drawing conclusions from an RFC that simply asks "Version A" or "Version B"? Would a !vote for Version A mean "I think the article should be about as long as Version A" or "I think the article should be as heavily cited as Version A" or "I think Version A is pretty much NPOV"? Or would you want to conclude all of the above from a !vote for Version A?

--Richard S (talk) 05:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Firstly the huge cuts of material from the longstanding version are both misguided and illegitimate, since they never achieved consensus, and have eviscerated the article. Like it or not, the Longstanding version remains in place until there is CONSENSUS to change it. You all know that, or should know that. An RFC may be made necessary by continued intransigence of editors in keeping damaging non-consensus changes on the page. The RFc would test whether the cut-down version has consensus. ARBCOM is a last resort measure - and would not be asked to consider content issues.

As far as which version is "blessed by consensus", that is quite clear. Substantive CHANGES must be made by consensus. This is a foundation principle of Wikipedia - and is not to be flouted by anyone - even groups who consider themselves right and everyone else wrong. The longstanding version needs no new blessing. It is the working version until changed by consensus. Any allegation that sections are POV, or too long, need to go through proper processes in which substantive issues are agreed on. However certain editors decided that they were too impatient or ill-willed to discuss substantive matters and go through WP procedures, and instead decided to edit-war "their" hastily cobbled-together and sub-standard version onto main-space. This is illegitimate and there is no justification for it. The longstanding version has Good Article status, whether some people like it or not. There was no reason for this attack on it but POV and hubris. A settlement and size-reduction can be achieved but only with good will and acknowledging that collegiality, Assuming Good faith and working together are the key to getting a better article. Xandar 20:51, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, can you support the assertion that "Substantive changes must be made by consensus"? You assert that this is a "fundamental principle of Wikipedia". Consensus is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia. I can't find support for your assertion at WP:CONSENSUS. Can you? What I do find is the assertion that consensus can change. Now, I agree with you that it would be nice if editors respected long-standing versions but, given the number of policies and guidelines at Wikipedia, it speaks volumes that this principle is not stated in the policy documents. If I am wrong and you can find your assertion explicitly stated in a policy or guideline, please enlighten me and correct me of my error. --Richard S (talk) 03:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Richard states that he cannot find support for my assertions on consensus in policy. let me help him:

From Wikipedia:Editing policy:

Talking and editing

Be bold in updating articles, especially for minor changes and fixing problems. Previous authors do not need to be consulted before making changes: nobody owns articles. If you see a problem that you can fix, do so. Discussion is, however, called for if someone indicates disagreement with your edit (either by reverting your edit and/or raising an issue on the talk page). A BOLD, revert, discuss cycle is used on many pages where changes might often be contentious. Boldness should not mean trying to impose edits against existing consensus or in violation of core policies, such as Neutral point of view and Verifiability.

Be cautious with major changes: discuss

Be cautious with major changes: consider discussing them first. With large proposed deletions or replacements, it may be best to suggest changes in a discussion, to prevent edit warring and disillusioning either other editors or yourself (if your hard work is rejected by others). One person's improvement is another's desecration, and nobody likes to see their work "destroyed" without prior notice. If you choose to be very bold, take extra care to justify your changes in detail on the article talk page. This will make it less likely that editors will end up reverting the article back and forth between their preferred versions.

The linked section of Wikipedia Consensus is also instructive. A brief extract from the section illustrating due process:

Consensus develops from agreement of the parties involved. This can happen through discussion, editing, or more often, a combination of the two. Consensus can only work among reasonable editors who make a good faith effort to work together in a civil manner. Developing consensus requires special attention to neutrality and verifiability in an effort to reach a compromise that everyone can agree on.

Several processes can attract editors to resolve differences:... Mediation involves a neutral third party in a dispute among multiple editors ... Requests for Comment invites greater participation ... Village pump invites greater participation ... Resolving disputes offers other options

There is quite a bit more, none of which endorses trying to impose drastic wholesale changes without discussion or agreeement. Xandar 19:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Old version vs. new version

Richard, I just looked at the page again and I can not believe the errors abounding. Do you honestly support this new version?

• There are whole paragraphs in Beliefs that have no citations or that are only cited to the Catechism and some of the random ones of these I checked do not even match the citation.
• WP:OR is when you create something yourself and that is what the Beliefs section is approaching now. We used to have citations to Kreeft to match the citations to the Catechism so it would show we were using secondary sources not primary ones. The secondary sources have now been eliminated and the primary ones do not match the sentences.
• I offered to help improve the new version if the Wider Wikipedia Community prefers this one to the previous one but am clearly being reminded of my offer to leave the project if that decision was made. Can a person leave and still help improve the new version before going? Yes, they can by providing a breakdown of problems they see with the new article. That is what I had in mind when I offered to help but the incivility and wrath of these editors here is really out of line. NancyHeise ^talk 18:32, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy, is there anything in the shortened version which you believe to be flat wrong or inaccurate to the point that it requires complete rewriting to be accurate? Is there anything that you believe cannot be supported by citations with some effort? After all, we have a rich source of citations, the previous version of the article. I have been led to believe that most of the current article text is either taken from the previous version of the article or a condensed summary of it. Therefore, the citations should still apply. I have taken this assertion on good faith as I have not myself inspected the article outside the History section. I did find one horrible mistake regarding Plutarco/Calles and the Terrible Triangle which I fixed. At the end of the day, I support a "new day" in which we discuss what to put back into the shortened article instead of the tooth-and-nail knockdown dragout fights it took to remove even a single sentence from the previous version. If the goal is loadability-via-dialup and readability by the average reader, I see no prospect of achieving this goal starting from the previous version as finely written and cited as it was. I'm sorry but you seem to have written for the wrong audience. I'm not convinced that a 150kb article will meet our goals but I suspect that is really pushing the outer limits of loadability and readability and that 120kb is probably more suitable to our needs. --Richard S (talk) 19:28, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not Nancy, but my comments on this are as follows: Firstly, the changes made to the History section up till now are the least damaging of the changes illicitly made to the article since 9th March. The evisceration of the Beliefs, practices, Organisation and Demographics section reach 75% removal in many cases! And all without any discussion or justification! This removal is beyond words, destroying sections it has taken many editors years to assemble and put together. Add to this the complete removal of Mission and Church activity sections - as well as the Cutural influence section. This is not acceptable practice. It means that these the most important sections of the article, have been reduced to an incoherent stub. That is why that version is no basis for editing. If there were tooth and nail kinockdown fights on removing material. What sort of fights would there be for putting this vital information back, piece by piece? Why should we waste time arguing and re-inventing the wheel when we already have these sections in place? There is ZERO justification for removing this material without discussion. It is vandalism, pure and simple. There have never been serious objections to 95% of this material, and to hack out this core material to meet some arbitrary article size limit of your own devising is not on.

That is not to say that the material does not need to be reduced. However, as Johnbod says, it is easier to trim than to recreate these sections. If size really is the main factor here, then there are many better ways to get a quick cut. 1) As I suggested, splitting the article by removing History entirely. 2) Cutting down History significantly by using summary style. 3) Working through all sections by consensus with the aim of achieving a 30% reduction. Any of these would be acceptable, but not arbitrary evisceration. Xandar 20:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Richard, much of the current text is taken from the previous article. However, there is also a lot of rewriting both uncited and cited to the old refs - that does not support the rewritten version. As I said before, secondary sources have been completely eliminated and primary sources kept to sentences that are not even supported by the citations. The beliefs section alone is really unacceptable. Our previous version followed the outline of the Catechism as presented by Kreeft. Uber, in his zeal to shorten the article has eliminated whole sections of beliefs like prayer and others and added information about Mary that makes it sound like she is someone on an equal footing with God. I could not believe what has been done here and supported by you and others on this page. None of you are educated in Catholic beliefs it seems and you can not just put stuff like this on the page and say it is a solid representation of Church beliefs. The information previously contained in the Cultural Influence section was supposed to be incorporated into the history section but in large part, that has not been done. The influence of the Church upon the status of women is a subject that is greatly expounded upon at length in university textbooks as well as secondary sources on the history of the Church. The influence of the Church in science, architecture, legal system and cultural practices such as polygamy, divorce, human sacrifice, infanticide (especially female infanticide), abortion, are not small matters - they are part of the core of this article's topic. Neither are these POV matters as you will find them discussed in all scholarly works that include a discussion about the Church's influence upon Western Civilization. People should not have to read the entire history section to understand how the Church influenced Western Civilization but the new approach makes them do that and then does not even tell them. I consider this a huge omission, a violation of FAC criteria and the other problems listed above make the new version quite a headache which is why I would like to leave the project if people want to keep Uber's version. Its just too much stuff to try to correct. Why not use the correct older version and trim/reword problem areas, not hack. Hacking was not proposed in the last FAC, neither was it ever proposed before we did the invalid single day straw poll. NancyHeise ^talk 19:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Some of the things you mention are issues that have been hotly debated on this page and there was no consensus for their inclusion in their previous form (the effect on women, for example, was contested for POV reasons, and there was opposition to attributing soem of the cultural practices to the Church as these were, for the most part, already common in the Roman Empire). I don't see that whether or not "hacking" was proposed in the last FAC is the least bit relevant. The last FAC was 15 months ago - FA standards have risen, and the only consensus that can be drawn from that FAC now is that at the time, the article did not meet WP:WIAFA. There ought to be serious reworking of the beliefs section, but that needs to be done with multiple sources at hand to see what they focus on - the previous version was too heavy on Kreeft (although I don't understand why those citations were removed, and I think they need to be reinstated). Karanacs (talk) 20:36, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

There was never a consensus to remove the Cultural Influence section. There was only an invalid one day straw poll that produced almost a 50/50 stalemate. If we followed Wikipedia policy, which we didn't, that would not have replaced the old consensus. Karanacs, the old beliefs section had many sources besides Kreeft but I liked Kreeft because he was the easiest to understand and most concise. I would like to know if there is anyone on this page besides myself who has any sources or personal training needed to improve the Beliefs section? NancyHeise ^talk 20:57, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Silence can be construed as assent

The CONSENSUS to change the article has been shown by the fact that the long version hasn't been restored, so STOP SAYING THERE'S NO CONSEnsuS foR thIS VeRsIoN, MmmMMMMmMKay? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:58, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Sarek and Richard. If there has to be an RFC, then please narrow it to a particular content issue. A RFC to decide on a wholesale reversion serves no useful purpose other than to cause the current editing activity to fall. Contributors would be reluctant to put much effort on the current version if there is a "threat" that all their work is for nought. --RelHistBuff (talk) 21:37, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Sarek. There has not been an uproar of people clamoring for a reversion to the previous text. A review of the original straw poll reveals the following to have opposed UberCryxic's new text: Johnbod, History2007,NancyHeise,Yorkshirian,Benkenobi18 and StormRider. Although Xandar did not express an opinion in the straw poll, it's clear that he opposes the current version. Since silence can be construed to be assent (yes, yes, I know it's just an essay), we might, at a first approximation, assume that Xandar and NancyHeise are the only ones to strenuously oppose the current version (i.e. UberCryxic's version with the subsequent edits to fix the flaws) as the basis for ongoing work. If it would be inappropriate to construe your silence as assent to the current version, please speak up now. This is, in effect, an informal straw poll. If there turns out to be a substantial undercurrent of sentiment for ditching the current version for either Xandar's version or Nancy's version. This straw poll is informal in the sense that we are not really deciding anything except gauging the level of opposition to the current version as the basis for moving forward. If there is a strong expression of opposition to working with the current version, that would suggest that a formal straw poll to determine an alternate approach would be in order. If there is no such expression of opposition, that would suggest that there is, in fact, a consensus for moving forward as we have been. I would suggest that it is perfectly appropriate to contact the editors who expressed opinions on the original straw poll for their opinions on this question. --Richard S (talk) 01:41, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I have left notices on the Talk Pages of the editors who opposed UberCryxic's version during the straw poll except for Yorkshirian (banned) and NancyHeise (seems unnecessary).

It seems obvious from his Talk Page that Storm Rider objects although I hope he might reconsider after we have worked on the article for a while.

--Richard S (talk) 02:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I have been asked by Richard to comment. I certainly opposed Uber's changes, both in substance and the ridiculous way they were done, and on a quickish look its defects seem to have been only slightly reduced by the intervening changes. On the other hand if "Nancy's version" is reverted to, which seems very unlikely at this point, she will thereafter claim the whole text is established "by consensus" and resist the changes which it certainly needed. Of the two, on balance the old one was less bad, and I think it is easier to change things by subtraction than by addition, although the history of this page over the last year or so tends to cast doubt on that theory. Personally I'd rather have an article that is too long than too short. We can surely forget about FA staus for a long long time, whichever version is proceeded with. Johnbod (talk) 03:18, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Richard, Regarding your question to me that:

• "Sarek and I have asserted that silence can be construed as assent"

I totally disagree. I have not consented at all. I view the changes made inappropriate, the quality of the new set of words (I can not really call it an article) "a total shame on Wikipedia" and the behavior of the parties involved beyond belief. And I can not really figure out Sarek since I have seen his handwork only briefly. Is he an uninvolved administrator? If so why is he advocating one version over another so aggressively, and go around slapping Xander with blocks etc. at the same time? I have not watched this page not because I consent to the changes, but because logic seems to have no place here. How can I talk logic in an atmosphere where, as I said on Xandar's talk page, the basic viewpoint is that the article on a 2,000 year old institution should be shorter than an encyclopedic gem like the article on Britney Spears? It seems that if the current group of "powers that be" has their way, this article will even be shorter than Britney Spears products. But in fairness, the page on Britney Spears is much better written than the set of words that appear on the Catholic Church page now. The page shows a lack of knowledge of the topic, lack of organization and in my view should be carefully shipped to the closest toxic dump. It has no hope. That "snap election" was surprising in fact, given that people here talk for ever, then suddenly declare victory and change a whole page (constructed with much effort) when the time is right for them. And again, in my view the fact that Xandar was quickly told to "admit the errors of his ways" when he objected too hard to the changes was just beyond words. I also noticed that StormRider was given notice to "behave or else" when in my view he had done nothing inappropriate. I do not know who manages Wikipedia policies - I guess no one. And it shows. In fact, I advised Xandar to walk away from this talk page, as I have. The reason I did not comment was not that I consented, but that talking and talking and talking and talking and talking on this page seems to be a waste of life, because the policies of Wikipedia are inadequate to manage this type of chaos. Winning here is not a question of logic or knowledge but persistence, persistence, persistence, until the opposition gets tired and the result is achieved through their attrition from this page altogether, for they will begin to view Wikipedia policies as a sad comedy, as I have started to view them. Cheers. History2007 (talk) 05:57, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Where is the 'lack of knowledge' most damaging to the article - why not point these areas out and help. What about the NPOV policy, don't you care about that?. As for persistence, check the revision history statistics. I'd like to think you really cared about the article, but I just think, here's someone who shares X POV, and will deprecate all other efforts, 'ship to closest toxic dump, there is no hope,.. blimeySayerslle (talk) 12:08, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with History2007's assesement of this article and disagree with Sarek and Richard's implication that silence equals consent. Anyone following this page knows that if they reverted the edits to the earlier version the would get into an edit war. Since the "owners" of this page have a tendancy to throw stones, ban and/or slap them down in some other way people are just avoiding things. As as I said before most editors that I have dealt with are just taking a sink or swim approach to this article. In no way does silence equal consent. Marauder40 (talk) 13:55, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

At the risk of being accused of bad faith in starting this dialogue, I have to say that you guys can't have it both ways. I wasn't trying to be sneaky. I didn't set this up as a "gotcha" but what follows is an insight that just came to me.

First of all, I think we really have to concede that silence does generally signal consent. That is, consensus is generally assumed until someone indicates that they do not consent. (NB: Silence isn't equivalent to assent. It just implies or signals it.) That's the purpose of straw polls and RFCs. It is to figure out who agrees and who does not. If someone does not care enough to express an opinion on a straw poll or an RFC, one can assume that they don't care enough to have their opinion considered and that they therefore assent to whatever transpires from that point forward.

Xandar and NancyHeise have repeatedly invoked "longstanding consensus" as being evidenced by all sorts of silence e.g. a particular piece of text has been in the article for a long time or that text was not criticized during multiple FAC reviews. They have also argued that the entire previous version of the article (the long version prior to UberCryxic's IAR mode edits) was blessed by this "longstanding consensus".

If you truly believe that "silence does not imply assent" then those arguments by Xandar and NancyHeise hold no water (which is what a bunch of editors have been saying).

If you agree with Xandar and NancyHeise's theories about "longstanding consensus", I think it would be better for you to say "Silence does imply assent" BUT "I am no longer silent. I oppose what's been going on since UberCryxic's IAR edits".

That was what I thought you guys would say and why I pinged you on your Talk Pages. We hadn't heard from you since the last straw poll and I honestly wasn't sure whether you were being silent out of disgust (as Xandar and NancyHeise asserted) or if you endorsed or at least did not object to the recent proceedings. Now we know and I thank you for responding.

My personal position is closest to the one expressed by Johnbod. I'm not too happy about the way things were done but I would hate to see the previous version "blessed by consensus" and thereby become impervious to correction of the many issues which have been identified and some of which have been fixed.

--Richard S (talk) 16:27, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I can't agree with this - there are a large number of "departed souls" on this page who had given up in disgust & some of whose whose names were regularly invoked like a litany by Karanacs, SG etc to support their position - but there are plenty of others of widely varying views. A couple have recently returned but most have not. Presumably they still hold pretty much the views they expressed at the time they were commenting here. If experience has taught us anything here it is that there is no wide consensus on the contents of the article & never has been. The very few people who have expressed some degree of approval of the current version mean little or nothing in the long term. Johnbod (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Richard what you are stating here makes it sound like those of us that are staying away or are silent agree with EVERYTHING that Nancy and/or Xandar do or say. I can only speak for myself but I for one do not. I hold Nancy in great respect,her knowledge and access to the resources is incredible. I personally have access to tons of resources since I have access to an entire Franciscan library, but other then a simple out of date card catalog have no easy way to search and find the resources that are needed. But I do disagree with what I believe to be a little to much pro-church POV. Notice I say a little. I believe that both the good stuff the church does and its warts need to be shown. As for Xandar I agree with a lot of what he says but disagree with how he says it. Drawing the parallel doesn't work. IMHO, saying silence equals consent in this particular case equals silence equals consent in other cases is not necessarily true. An example is if a RFC/straw poll/FAC is up for a month and a known contributor doesn't cast a vote in it, then silence can imply consent. If a thing is brought up on a talk page and someone doesn't comment on it within a day or two that doesn't imply anything. It all depends on the conditions. Marauder40 (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Johnbod, History2007, Maurauder40, Tom Harrison, Xandar, More Things and Storm Rider that the article was not legitimately replaced and is not an improvement over the previous version. Since there are so many of us who keep saying this I propose we open an RFC to put the question to the wider Wikipedia community. NancyHeise ^talk 18:23, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

In that case, can you please answer Richard's question above about what, exactly, you are proposing to ask, and what, exactly, you expect to have happen? Which versions do you intend to put forward as part of the RfC? Do you want to know whether people like the length or version A or B? Whether they like the organization of version A or B (and which pieces of the organization they like or dislike - maybe they like History first but don't want an Etymology section)? Whether they like the citation density of version A or B? Whether they think A or B is easier to improve? I'm struggling to understand how the RfC will be framed so that we can draw meaningful information from it. Karanacs (talk) 18:59, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

The "Silence implies consent" argument is and was utterly fallacious. When I reverted the article after it was improperly changed and re-reverted, I got blocked for a week - a week in which a straw poll was held, and the hacked-to-shreds page improperly returned to Mainspace. Curiously the people who had improperly changed the article and re-reverted and insisted they were above all Wikipedia rules, did not get blocked - or even criticised by the same mods. Sarek of Vulcan took it upon himself to block another editor who reverted the page to its original form. And then he complains that not ebough people have reverted the page. It is very hard to see S of V as being a neutral mod on the page after these interventions.

To respond to karanacs, the simple and obvious question, is whether there is any consensus for the massive unagreed changes made to the article since 9th March? If Karanacs doesn't like the changes to be voted on eb-bloc, she shouldn't have supported the making of those changes en-bloc. This is one of the chief objections to what happened. Enormous changes were made to all sections of the article without ANY discussion or debate on ANY of them - let alone consensus. This is not the way to alter major Wikipedia articles, and particularly not those classed as Good Articles. It is quite simply counter to everything that Wikipedia process stands for. Tye changes were appalling, drastic and made seemingly without knowledge of or care for the topic. Xandar 19:12, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

No one is saying that the current article is perfect (in fact, pretty much everyone has said it's not). What has been repeatedly requested on this page is help in fixing it, but you are so focused on the process that you are unwilling to even look at what might be good in this version vs what might be good in another version. The previous article was likely going to be stripped of its GA status due to POV and edit-warring issues. An RfC on the process is very different from an RfC on the content, and should be framed as a user RfC against UberCryxic and/or me. Editors can agree that the process was really wrong without agreeing that the product that resulted needs to be overturned. You are trying to confuse the two issues. If you dislike the process, file an RfC on me and/or Uber. If you dislike the product, then we need to identify particular issues with that product that we can ask for comment on. To reiterate yet again, if the issue is the content, then WHICH PART of the content do we want to ask about? Size? Citation density? Structure (and which part)? If you roll all those into one question, we will not get any usable information. If you are truly concerned about the product, then stop arguing about the process and let's get moving on fixing the content. Karanacs (talk) 19:28, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

• I agree with Xandar, many others have also expressed the same things, many of them very uninvolved admins who saw what happened and have expressed it on various user's talk pages, here and at the ANI. This event is viewed as an illegitimate replacement of a good article without due process.
• To answer Karanacs question, I am proposing wording to Sunray for a content RFC and have asked More Things and Xandar to help. Sunray has agreed to oversee the discussion of the RFC.
• I agree that we could also open a user RFC against you and Uber but I do not think that will be productive. I think that will just result in hard feelings and will exacerbate rather than remove any remaining incivility on this talk page. Everything that can be said about your and Uber's actions has already been said and it is up to you to learn from it or toss it if you prefer.
• More Things previously has had nothing to do with this article, he voted to support the change and expressed that he would have voted to oppose it after he saw how it was handled and what resulted. Please understand that this change was a great violation of Wikipedia rules and there will be no legitimacy of this article until rules are followed. A content RFC is agreed by many to be the way to restore legitimacy to the article by allowing the community to see each version of the article and comment on which one is preferred.
• I do not dispute that the previous version can be trimmed (I do not endorse hacking). But trimming that version is going to be far easier and more accurate than trying to correct the errors that exist in the current version created by Uber. There are so many problems with it Karanacs that if the current version by Uber is preferred, I have offered to leave the page and provide a review of the problems with Uber's version before I leave so that editors will know of the serious errors and deficiencies that his article currently incorporates. There are so many citation errors alone that the entire page would have to be recited. There are huge omissions of the most basic facts a person would expect to see in an article on the Church. There are violations of citation policy, violations of WP:OR, there are so many erroneous statements in beliefs and organization that it is too much to ask us to just go and fix them for you. We do not agree to what has been done to the article and many others disagree with it as well. Let's find out which version is preferred before we waste our time correcting a version that may not be what most Wikipedia editors want from the Catholic Church article. NancyHeise ^talk 19:42, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Once again, you have not answered the question of what you want people to comment on. Which part of the articles are they supposed to compare? If you ask them to compare version A vs version B in its entirety, what conclusions can we draw from that? Does that mean that if they only say "I like version A" with no details about specific details, then we assume that the person is speaking about length, citation density, structure, and particular content wording? Do we assume that the person simply means "let's start with Version A but I don't really agree with any piece of it, I'm just mad about the process?" You have to know exactly what you want to find out before you can craft a useful RfC, and I'm at least very unclear on what you are wanting to know. Karanacs (talk) 19:57, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

A content RFC is not a straw poll. People can look at each version and comment on what they like or dislike about each version. Ultimately, we want to put in place an article structure that is either Uber's version or my version and then incorporate the comments that the RFC produces with regard to how that preferred version could be improved. So far, there are quite a lot of editors saying that Uber's version was installed "illegally". I am not sure if I am going to discuss how it was installed because really, I just want to know which format, content and length is most preferred by the wider community. NancyHeise ^talk 20:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, that is a little more specific. Again, though, how are you planning to interpret the comments. If an editor does not specifically mention the length, for example, while otherwise discussing version A, do we assume that they approve of the length of version A, assume they have no opinion of version A, or assume that they disapprove of it? Karanacs (talk) 20:25, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the length issue should be specifically addressed by asking them to approve of Uber's version or my version. We should allow discussion on the fact that there are some very long articles that have passed FAC and that some subject matters may allow for longer articles. We should discuss this as well as arguments to the contrary and come to an agreed conclusion at the RFC. I did not see anyone at the last FAC comment on the length did you? All I could see was reviewer after reviewer from all of the FACs asking for more, not less information in the article. NancyHeise ^talk 20:29, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Last FAC not relevant - 15 months ago, standards have changed, only consensus to be drawn was that it didn't meet the criteria at the time. I do not agree that the length issue should be specifically addressed by asking them to approve of Uber's version or [Nancy's] version unless that is specifically what you are asking people to comment on. Editors could instead be looking at structure, looking at a particular section (maybe they like the current History section but the previous Beliefs section), looking at citation density, etc. Maybe editor J comments "I like version A."; in their mind, the editor could mean that A's structure is great, but that they really wouldn't mind if it were shorter. Or they could mean that they really like the length of A, but the structure isn't that great and they wouldn't mind if that got changed. Or they could mean they love version A and never want to change a single word of it. Unless editor J's comments are very specific (meaning that we need to ask them specific questions, in most cases), then we don't know what J actually meant, and we can't reliably draw any conclusions from the comment. Karanacs (talk) 20:42, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

We will all be free to ask participants to clarify what they want. I believe the last FAC is very relevant, there were 34 reviewers, 25 of whom supported. The opposer's comments are still relevant if we keep that version of the article and I would like to incorporate their comments unless we hold a discussion on this talk page to ignore them. Such discussion has never taken place here and your responsibilities do not include being the sole judge of what happens to those comments with regard to this article. WP:consensus is the policy we have to follow. We can address that after the RFC is that version is preferred. NancyHeise ^talk 20:48, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be the sole judge of how to interpet comments. I'm trying to figure out how you think the results ought to be interpreted, while at the same time echoing Richard's concerns about what can reasonably be interpreted from this. We need to figure out beforehand a consensus method of interpreting the results or we'll spend the next 2 years arguing about them. I'm unclear on what you meant in the previous post. Are you trying to say that if someone doesn't specifically comment on, say, the length, we need to ask them to clarify their comments, and if there is no clarification we draw no conclusions about their opinion on (in this example) the length? Karanacs (talk) 20:54, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Earthly authority

In the lead section it says that the Pope is the Church's highest earthly authority. I realize that this kind of archaic language might be acceptable in the appropriate context, but does it really belong in the lead section? For me, this kind of 19th century verbiage reads like purple prose. Viriditas (talk) 00:02, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the phrasing should be that the Pope is the "Church's highest official" - would that be OK with everyone? Majoreditor (talk) 00:25, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that you still must clarify the Pope as an "earthly" official, authority, whatever. Although you can use words other than earthy if they seem less archaic to you, this is a crucial distinction for the Catholic Church (and many other religions). Personally, I think that the current wording is fine, and is in fact the most common phrasing for the Pope's position int he Church. Vercingetorix08 (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Interfaith dialogue

I see nothing in the article about interfaith dialogue, and I'm sure the Church has done quite a bit of work in this area. I expected to see something about it in the lead, and found nothing in the body of the article. What is the reason for this glaring omission? Viriditas (talk) 00:14, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of this article is to serve as a (relatively) brief "introduction" to the topic of the Catholic Church, which will then direct people out to more specific pages based upon the links contained in it; as such, I don't think that that the omission is "glaring." I'm not certain that this should be mentioned in the lead, although it might deserve a sentence in the Contemporary subsection, which links out to the Interfaith Dialogue page. What does anyone else think? Vercingetorix08 (talk) 14:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Definitely not in the lead, but a sentence in Contemporary linking to the full article sounds good. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:37, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't really see a point in putting this information in this article - althought it may well be appropriate in a child article. Yes, the Catholic Church has dialogued with other religions and other denominations. Most of them do this. Has there been any significant impact from the Catholic Church's participation? Karanacs (talk) 14:39, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

The Catholic Church has been a major proponent of interfaith dialogue in the 20th century, and several of the Popes (including but not limited to John Paul II) have been noted by a variety of outside sources to have been loud voices for interfaith dialogue. This seems to be born out in the Interfaith Dialogue article; I am not suggesting mroe than a sentence and a link, at most, under the conntemporary subsection. Vercingetorix08 (talk) 14:45, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Viriditas and Vercingetorix08. There should be a mention of Interfaith dialogue. Karanacs asks if there has been any significant impact from the Catholic Church's participation. That would be hard to quantify. Some people might argue that the interfaith dialogue consists of "photo ops" and panels of theologians writing nice-sounding but empty statements which are released every few years.

If Karanacs is looking for clear steps towards reconciliation, she would be justified in being skeptical. The only clear impact that I know of is the decision regarding the Uniate churches which basically said that Uniatism is wrong but that existing Uniate churches should be left alone and not abolished or otherwise harassed. (Actually, I think there's also been some common statement about marriages between Catholic and Orthodox but my memory of the details are a bit fuzzy.) On the other hand, dialogue with the intent to understand where two sides share commonalities and how they differ where they differ can only be considered to improve relations and to be superior to the absence of dialogue.

If one considers the history of active enmity and outright hostility over the last 500-1000 years, a spirit of ecumenism is a welcome breath of fresh air. That it has taken longer than 50 years to accomplish so little is a question of the glass being mostly empty or "at least not dry".

--Richard S (talk) 16:06, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, another impact that is difficult to quantify is that Catholics now know that they are not supposed to be anti-Semitic --Richard S (talk) 16:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all your comments. The lead section (introduction) for the Roman Catholicism article in the Britannica says: "As a world religion among world religions, Roman Catholicism encompasses, within the range of its multicoloured life, features of many other world faiths; thus only the methodology of comparative religion can address them all." While this doesn't address the issue directly, it sets the stage for considering the importance of ecumenism and interfaith dialogue between the Church and other religions. In several different articles, including one on the church since Vatican II and another on the modern papacy, Britannica writes:

The pontificate of John Paul II, one of the longest in history, left a profound mark on the church and the papacy. A charismatic and beloved figure, John Paul traveled more than all other popes combined, played a crucial role in the collapse of communism in Poland and the rest of eastern Europe, canonized numerous new saints, and made great strides toward interfaith dialogue with non-Christians. He established formal and full diplomatic relations with Israel and sought greater reconciliation with the Jews and Judaism; he was the first pope to worship in a synagogue, and he made a historic pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he prayed at the Western Wall.

In accordance with Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church officially abandoned its “one true church” position and formally ended the thousand-year schism with the Greek Orthodox Church. It also entered into ecumenical conversations with other churches with the hope of establishing greater Christian unity. The church has assumed observer status in the World Council of Churches and has participated in groups associated with the World Council. Representatives of the church participated in the discussions sponsored by the World Council that led to the publication of the important document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (1982), which identified areas of agreement between the churches on several core teachings; the church responded positively, though with qualification, to the text. Steps to improve relations with non-Christian religions were made at Vatican II and by the popes of the later 20th century. The council's declaration Nostra aetate (October 28, 1965; “In Our Era”) rejected the traditional accusation that the Jews killed Christ, recognized the legitimacy of Judaism, and condemned anti-Semitism. Efforts at improving relations with other religions, especially Judaism, were pivotal to the papacy of John Paul II, who prayed with world religious leaders in 1986, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and prayed in a mosque and a synagogue.

One of the best places for mentioning interfaith dialogue is in the Industrial age or contemporary sections. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 20:55, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Talk Page Archiving

This page is about 250kB, and it's starting to load slow and generally frustrate me, and I am sure everyone else. Does anyone object to archiving some older discussions? Vercingetorix08 (talk) 14:36, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll archive some of the resolved verification issues. Karanacs (talk) 14:42, 23 March 2010 (UTC)