Template talk:Christianity sidebar

Crusades and Crusading

Apologies, added Crusading to the side bar before I noticed the instructions. This is subject to a long tortuous discussion on both pages talk pages around scope, geographic spread and historical periods. It seems to be developing that the subject needs more than just the Crusades article which is predominantly about Crusades in the Holy Land with very slight summaries of other periods and geographies. Any feedback and comment on that is welcome, there are some very set positions and consensus would be assisted by a wider range of views.

Hopefully, there are no real objections to the change of the side bar, let me know if there are any major issues and perhaps there is another solution to linking to both articles. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 10:03, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

The ongoing RfC and sporadic references at Talk pages ([1], [2]) show that most editors say that the Crusades article should be kept as the main article of the general topic "Crusades" instead of transforming it into an article about the Levantine Crusades or the Crusades in the Holy Land. Before the RfC is closed, there is no point in starting new and new discussions. Borsoka (talk) 03:48, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

"Books of the bible"

For reference, I have removed the link to Books of the Bible. That article topic was with Biblical canon in August 2020. There obviously is no need for two links to the same article. It might be desirable to link "Books of the Bible" to a subsection of the article? --Hazhk (talk) 00:02, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Crusades and/or Crusading movement

Personally, I think both have a place in the side bar. Crusades is largely (but not completely) MILHIST, predominately (but again not completely) focussed on wars in the Middle-East against Muslims for the Holy Land during the 11th/12th/13th centuries. Crusading movement is about the instituition of Crusade, focussed on the ideology of the papacy and runs until the dawn of the 19th century. In true WP fashion, all opinions are welcome. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 12:44, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Agree, seems that it should be one of the entries under history and traditions. The "core 100" should be expanded a bit as obviously relevant pages show up (the consensus history at the start of the 100 limit is scarce or just decided on by one or a couple editors). Earlier I added Ministry of Jesus as 'Ministry' to bridge the gap between Jesus' Nativity and Crucifixion, and seems to me another obvious addition to an expanded-100. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:07, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Hey Randy Kryn—you've confused me now :-). Are you agreeing Crusading movement should be on the sidebar after all? I wouldn't object to both but if it came to a choice I think it fits better than Crusades which contains a lot of fighting with only tenuous links to Christianity, although possibly caused by religious intolerance. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 13:38, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

My revert rests on both the earlier discussion above and this thing about "100 core topics and no others" which some of us question, so thought that others should comment. I'd personally list the two as one entry and one subsection: Crusading movement (crusades). Randy Kryn (talk) 16:39, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Core topics work group appears to be inactive, so I suspect we are the only two talking about this. On that basis I'll take your preference and be WP:BOLD. Should anyone wish to question this we can debate then. It would be interesting to know what people think about the topic in any case. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 21:52, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Rollback proposed

Am I the only one that thinks there's a whole lot of nonsense being added or moved around here lately? I see very little in the last five dozen edits that's an improvement, and none of it was discussed here on the Talk page, or justified in the edit summaries, of which there are none. I'm proposing a rollback to rev. 1042414672‎ (diff) of 21:53, 4 September by Norfolkbigfish. The current version doesn't have consensus, so one could just as well revert without discussion based on WP:BRD, but I thought I'd poll the regulars to get some feedback first. Mathglot (talk) 08:46, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree—probably this is the last good state for the sidebar, but I have only quickly flicked through the changes. If after the rollback Softwarestatistik wants to discuss here on the Talk Page the purpose of the recent edits would be better understood. I suspect there are very few regulars though. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 10:02, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree as well, way too much too quick. Maybe Softwarestatistik can pick three or four of the edits that they think essential and present those as suggestions here. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:09, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree strongly Although I am not a "regular", I have noticed these and, personally, I have wanted to make some changes, but have not yet because I have failed to formulate justifications to post here, noting the "Warning: Before changing, adding or removing any links..."; thus, seeing these changes without discussion has bothered me. Now that I look at them, I entirely agree that "very little in the last five dozen edits that's an improvement". Vincent J. Lipsio (talk) 16:03, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Comment – I've left a talkback-style message at their Talk page; also, if they have notifications turned on in preferences, the two reverts at the template should have alerted them, so let's give them a bit of time to respond. I don't doubt their good faith in making these additions, and their edits raise an important question: going forward, we might want to have a discussion concerning approximately how many links would be appropriate in the sidebar, and how to select them. I've started a discussion about this, at the #Inclusion criteria section below. Mathglot (talk) 17:30, 19 October 2021 (UTC) udpated; by Mathglot (talk) 17:56, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Rolled back to revision 1042414672‎ as proposed after no further response. User:Softwarestatistik, please hold off making changes until there's a discussion about what kinds of things we wish to include in the template. That could take place in the following section regarding Inclusion criteria, or you could start a new section. Mathglot (talk) 17:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Vincent J. Lipsio (talk) 17:36, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Rolled back again. Softwarestatistik—I am sure there are a number of editors willing to discuss this here, but you need to engage. I make no comment on the edits, this is a matter of manners and process Norfolkbigfish (talk) 19:16, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Now raised this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Christianity_Side-boxes. Will hold off rolling back again until that case has been action. SoftwarestatistikLipsioMathglot Norfolkbigfish (talk) 07:24, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

And yet again. (I didn't notice your raising the ANI thread, and just missed an {{ec}} here.) Mathglot (talk) 07:27, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Update: Softwarestatistik has been blocked for 24 hours by an admin. Hopefully, this will get their attention, and they'll respond here in the future. Mathglot (talk) 08:50, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

How do we choose what subheadings, and what articles should be included in the sidebar? There are 70,000 articles in WikiProject Christianity so we obviously can't include everything. Rather than have the sidebar evolve idiosyncratically, based on whatever the last person to drop by felt like adding to it based on their own interests, let's have a discussion about inclusion criteria—namely, some guidance to editors about what kinds of things belong here, and which do not.List articles have a guideline about how to define WP:LISTCRITERIA for what should be in the list, and maybe we could do something analogous here.

Let's brainstorm some ideas about inclusion criteria, so that the sidebar is as useful and helpful to readers as possible on the articles on which it appears. See the five numbered bullet items at WP:SIDEBAR for starters. If we can achieve some consensus on this, it would give editors at the Template more confidence going forward that their additions or changes are on the right track. Mathglot (talk) 17:54, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I have restored this version https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Christianity_sidebar&oldid=1050685195 by Mathglot. As the content and format of this template is now up for debate it would be good manners to discuss before editing Softwarestatistik. I make no comment on the validity of the edits. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 16:17, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

So, I'm starting to think about how to kick-start this conversation. I think the introductory point is the one made above about size and scope; that is, some topics are so huge, that we are going to have to pick and choose only the most important points to cover. Clearly, "Christianity" is such a topic. So the question becomes, "how do we decide what belongs?" The point I wanted to raise in this discussion, is while we could, I suppose, argue whether individual articles merit being in the template, I think that would become a time sink or devolve into useless bickering that would never end; there's always one other article to argue about. Rather than do that, we should try and come up with some broad-brush guidelines of what ought to be there, and then if and when questions come up about some individual article, we can base the discussion on those guidelines.

If there's agreement on that much, then the question becomes, "how" do we decide what's "important" enough? In starting to examine this, I've come up with some ideas. Since there are various approaches, to keep the topic from getting too long or splintering, I'll try to define some subsections here to address the topic.

Top-level sectioning approaches

The first broad-brush decision to make, is what should the top-level sections be? Currently, we have the following six top-level sections in the sidebar:

• Jesus • Christ, Bible • Foundations, Theology, History • Tradition, Denominations • Groups, Related topics

We could look at how well this breakdown works for the "Christianity" topic, or we could look at how Wikipedia handles top-level sections in sidebars of other religions. The latter is easier:

• Christianity (6) – Jesus • Christ, Bible • Foundations, Theology, History • Tradition, Denominations • Groups, Related topics
• Buddhism (7) – History, Dharma • Concepts, Buddhist texts, Practices, Nirvana, Traditions, Buddhism by country
• Catholicism (10) – Background, Organisation, Theologies • Doctrine, Texts, Philosophy, Worship, Rites, Miscellaneous, Societal issues, Links and resources.
• Hinduism (9) – Origins, Traditions, Deities, Concepts, Practices, Philosophical schools, Gurus • saints • philosophers, Texts, Society
• Islam (6) – Beliefs, Practices, Texts • Foundations, History, Culture and Society, Related topics
• Judaism (13) – Movements, Philosophy, Texts, Law, Holy cities/places, Important figures, Religious roles, Culture and education, Ritual objects, Prayers, Major holidays, Other religions, Related topics

My first-glance thoughts are that six major headers isn't enough for such a huge topic as Christianity, and I'd like to see it grow. Thoughts? Mathglot (talk) 19:18, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Disclaimer first, I have rocked up here via an interest in the Crusading movement and there is enough argument to be had there to test even the most patient editor. That said it would be sensible if this sidebar reflected a top level article on the subject. Unfortunately having looked at Christianity, it is a bit of a car wreck B/C level former FA, former GA. However, Outline of Christianity does seem well structured and a good place to start Norfolkbigfish (talk) 13:40, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Eucharist

Softwarestatistik, I see you're back, with the addition of Eucharist. It's a sacrament; if it meets with consensus to add it to the sidebar, then for starters, why this one, and not the other six, or just a link to the generic article? As far as whether to add it at all, I'm not sure. Sidebars are by nature usually much briefer than footer nav bars, and cover just the top-level, most important concepts. Eucharist would probably be necessary for a Catholicism sidebar (there doesn't seem to be one). The {{Catholic Church footer}} includes "Eucharist" (along with the others) in subgroup "Sacraments", but there are dozens of other links under "Theology" there, and clearly we don't want to import all of that here to the sidebar. Conversely, the Eucharist is not celebrated in every denomination. Let's see what others say (and this time, please respond; you were already blocked once for not doing so). The section above could benefit from your thoughts as well. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:29, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

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