Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Claims to be the fastest-growing religion

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

The result was no consensus. There is narrowly no consensus for deletion. Most participants agree that the article is of poor quality and should, if at all, exist under a title such as Growth of religion. However, many "delete" opinions focus on issues that are fixable by editing or other actions other than deletion, such as editor misconduct. That's why I assign less weight to them and find that we don't have consensus to delete yet. If the article is not improved, a second deletion nomination might be successful. Sandstein 11:04, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Claims to be the fastest-growing religion[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Non-encyclopaedic topic: we don't have "Claims to be ..." or "Claims to have ..." articles. Non-notable topic: 0 hits on JSTOR; 12 hits on Google books. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:56, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete – not encyclopedic; likely to be a coatrack for poorly-sourced claims and counter-claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexbrn (talk • contribs)
Undecided - it is certainly a place for arguments yet it is also a very watched page with 6-800 visits per day and the idea of the page certainly seems notable. I think "claims" speaks to the difficulty of the topic. Search Google scholar for "fastest growing religion" and you get 2070 hits - http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22fastest+growing+religion%22&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34 - vs 1600 if you just add the word "claims" - http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=claims+%22fastest+growing+religion%22&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34 yet it is also obvious it is talking about claims. Wikipedia has tackled controversial claims and reactions to claims (global warming for example) so it seems this could be done. It is just going to be a lot of work. But I'm open to see what people say. --Smkolins (talk) 10:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. The article has already seen more than its fair share of edit warring and unsourced or improperly sourced propaganda, from all sides, being used more as a forum than as anything else. Thomas.W ^{talk to me} 10:06, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep/Rename to "Growth of Religion" per evidence cited by User:Smkolins. Also the section hasn't seen much edit warring in the last few days since I came in and supplied scholarly sources on the controversial sections and discussed criteria for source inclusion (only two persons however contributed). Idiotic edits just need to be reverted, as is the case with most articles. It seems like a relevant subject but needs to be kept within the realms of the theme at hand, and there's plenty of sources on it. This includes polls and survey's. The public is also very much interested in this article it seems. It has about 23,000+ hit per month (270,000+ a year). Based on relevance and sources alone it's an obvious speedy keep. Also that citation nom gave for Google Books is incorrect. It has 36 books listed not 12. The Pew Forum has also extensively done research on the topic in recent years too. NarSakSasLee (talk) 10:53, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Click the link, count the books. How many do you see? Perhaps you forgot to exclude all the "books" that are in fact just rehashes of the Wikipedia article? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:43, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This and this discount your assertions. NarSakSasLee (talk) 15:14, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and Rename growth of religion. There is an encyclopedic article here, although there needs to be some work to get it into shape, particularly a full rewrite of the intro. This is part of the normal editing process, however. Carrite (talk) 18:01, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, rename, rework per above to remove the encyclopedia-inappropriate "claims"-type content. Ansh6 6 6 18:45, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as WP:SYNTH: arbitrary cross-section of a certain aspect of a certain class ob objects. While each article about a religion may and should have its own section about its growth, but wikipedia is not a place to generate pissing contests, unless there are scholarly sources which deal with this particular pissing contest (growth speed). Staszek Lem (talk) 20:24, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 22:48, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously the content should be based on measurable change in independently conducted surveys of self-identification among the general public, not any claims made from within a particular religious complex. Also if kept, the title should reflect mention of religions mathematically demonstrated to be declining (which is equally noteworthy) so the word "growth" might not be adequate. ―cobaltcigs 15:08, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and Rename(?) A really ignorant suggestion. Obviously the title is there to bring some sort of clarity to a very subjective and often delicate entry. But it would be more encyclopedic to remove that part. It could possible be merged with "Religion" itself as a subsection of growth while also including a subsection on historic growth. 37.123.149.65 (talk) 16:02, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete because this article is a MESS, some religious editors tried to promote their religion priority (Islam is the most witnessed example). Some editors don't respect each other, they delete all negative point of views toward their religion and keep positive (sometimes it's very biased) information. Angelo De La Paz (talk) 20:05, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That isn't an excuse for deletion. Biased issues can be discussed on talk page. Although I agree that in the past certain editors did not wish to engage in neutrality. But they have mostly been dealt with. NarSakSasLee (talk) 20:13, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, absolutely. This incarnation of the argumentum ad populum is a vital element of religious propaganda. Its persistent use is important evendence that religious movements must rely upon logical fallacies to perpetuate their influence upon the sort of people who are inclined to fall for logical fallacies. Plus, by any percentile measure the fastest growing religion is Pandeism, which has gone from zero to sixty!! Blessings!! DeistCosmos (talk) 20:48, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to List of religious populations, and change the title of that article somewhat to better reflect the change in its content. John Carter (talk) 21:17, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The Definition section of the article itself indicates why the article should not be kept.--101.162.156.11 (talk) 02:21, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to List of religious populations which is the closest article that we have. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:43, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, and don't redirect to the list of religious populations, since it's not a likely redirect. Different people's opinions of which religion is growing fastest might deserve a little attention in those religions' articles or in articles about religious history or comparative religion, but they definitely don't deserve a separate article. I'd agree with a keep if this were to be rewritten completely as a "growth of religion" article, but I'd suggest to the potential authors that they simply start completely anew. Nyttend (talk) 21:06, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- It can be rewritten, probably by basing it on the article as it was about 2009. [1] Don't delete it as it will then be very difficult to create it again.Mike Young (talk) 22:15, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - per Nyttend and Angelo De La Paz. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:50, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - per Nyttend AIRcorn (talk) 07:29, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Very little of this content actually addresses the subject of the article, which religion is the world's fastest growing? There are a number of problems here. First, the sections on Mormonism or Hinduism address the growth rates of those religions, but they don't make any kind of claim that these religions are the fastest growing in the world. Second, in many places the article discusses the growth rates of specific subgroups (my favorite: Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in England's jails) but how does that effect global growth rates? Third, the section on Christianity lumps many different denominations together. The subheading of "Christianity" appears to be discussing claims that Christianity as a whole is the fastest-growing religion, but in fact much of the text, particularly the third paragraph, discusses cases where one denomination of Christianity is growing at the expense of another. Fourth, what's the relevance of all this stuff about forced conversion in the first centuries of Islam? Fifth, I looked at the ARIS findings[2] and the summary report doesn't even list Deism as a separate group, it just lumps it in with New Religious Movements and Other. One wonders whether or not the growth rates of Deism in the survey are statistically significant. This article is just badly conceived and badly executed. WP:NUKEANDPAVE. GabrielF (talk) 07:58, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

These concerns don't address the question of whether this is an encyclopedic topic. Everyone agrees the article has major issues, but if we delete it now it will almost certainly reappear again under a different title. WP:TNT and renaming are more productive solutions than deletion. There are academic published sources, such as the WRD and WCD, that provide information on average annual growth and absolute annual growth. (I don't know whether these databases also list conversion estimates.) If other editors know of databases that provide current and projected religious statistics, we should include those as well. It seems clear to me the topic is encyclopedic and could be adequately referenced. --Life is like a box of chocolates (talk) 18:39, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Agreed with GabrielF, this whole article is really based on propaganda, especially on the Islam, and also others. It's not presenting the actual value, and if we start writing that how many have become apostate from the religion it wouldn't be possible to get agreement of all active editors, because much of these articles are edited by the supporter of these propaganda. The predictions are also very irrelevant that have been given inside this page. Better to get rid of it. Bladesmulti (talk) 12:45, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep, but revert back to earlier version Although this article is constantly edited, and even when it is in a poor shape, it is much better for the general reader than not having anything. At least it counters the "Islam is the fastest growing religion" zombie fact. The problem comes that many claims in things such as the Guinness book of records or copied out. There are some verifiable claims, such as Australian Census and ARIS data that give some insights.
Also, this article is much worse than it was when first written. It seems to have degenerated from what was quite a good article in 2009 into a list of competitive facts. Look at some earlier revisions for better versions of this article. Somebody could take this one [3] and revise it adding any relevant / better facts from the present article and we'd have something pretty good. (talk) 22:01, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Clearly an encyclopedic topic. The article needs to be reworked and probably renamed per above. WP:ORIGINAL and WP:CRYSTALBALL concerns are unfounded. There are clearly reliable published sources in the article, such as the World Religion Database and the Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. The WRD, in particular, provides information on current and projected average annual growth rates and absolute growth rates. --Life is like a box of chocolates (talk) 23:34, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per GabrielF. We need some WP:TNT, but I won't be particularly upset if no one builds it again. --BDD (talk) 21:24, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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