Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Witchcraft (traditional)

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

The result was delete‎. I see the consensus among editors here to be that this article is a POV fork and should be Deleted. However, I am open to Userfying the content of the article. But if it is then just moved into main space with further review, it can legitimately be tagged for CSD G4 speedy deletion.

I hope this AFD discussion closure doesn't impact the efforts being made at Dispute Resolution as this disagreement is not simply about this one article but the approach editors are taking towards writing about a potentially contentious subject. That discussion, which I looked over, should continue. Liz Read! Talk! 04:34, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Witchcraft (traditional)[edit]

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Witchcraft (traditional) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Appears to be a SYNTH. This topic is already covered in relevant articles. Oaktree b (talk) 16:31, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I realized I didn't answer the original WP:SYNTH complaint. While I created this article from pieces of other articles, no individual claim is synthesized outside the cited material. The framework for this article as independent from other article topics comes from Hutton,[1] Bonewits,[2] and others, who not only acknowledge types of witchcraft beyond “diabolical” and “neopagan,” but generally list this specifically as one of those types. I understand that others don’t recognize that these “additional” definitions for witchcraft exist, but the idea of a non-neopagan non-diabolical witch is present in reliable sources without any synthesis. [3][4][5] -- Darker Dreams (talk) 23:24, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy Delete as WP:A10 This user is creating POV forks for changes they can't get consensus for at Witchcraft. They just tried the same tactic at Witchcraft (diabolic) which was appropriately deleted by @Versageek: as A10: Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic, Witchcraft. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:56, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Additional data: The consensus also expressed at the failed page move discussion was that the traditional meaning of "Witchcraft" is an attempt to use metaphysical means to cause harm. So titling this copy paste POV fork with the Wiccan redefinition of "traditional" (See: Neopagan witchcraft#Traditional Witchcraft) is not only a blatant move against consensus but again, a duplication of an existing article that is right now under full protection, with the POV fork being edited against the spirit of the dispute resolution process, where users have been asked to leave the surrounding articles alone. As edits have continued, I added the systemic bias templates Darker Dreams did not copy over, as well as aligned the opening sentence with what is actually in the source, and edit-warrior Darker Dreams just reverted this addition.[1] Demonstrating once again what this is. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 23:31, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Complaining that I'm not supposed to be editing articles around the subject seems strange given that a) user:Asarlaí has continued to do so [2] without you feeling it necessary to comment and b) you haven't bothered to engage with the dispute resolution process in more than 48 hours. Darker Dreams (talk) 23:43, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Whether or not the current main witchcraft article remains as is or is made more broad, it is clear in reliable sources there are more definitions / usages for the term than are being fully covered in that article. While Witchcraft (diabolic) was arguably a repetition of the current witchcraft main article topic, which I now understand to be a major part of the disagreement, this article is an attempt to give space to one of the usages outside of that conflict. This method was considered fine for Neopagan witchcraft. I am unclear what POV you believe that I am pushing. If you think my POV is that there are definitions beyond "diabolic" and "pagan," then you should read the repeatedly provided quotes from sources you were using which explicitly state that. No "righting great wrongs," simply trying to cover sourced material. Darker Dreams (talk) 20:33, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:CONSPLIT Sometimes two or more distinct topics may share the same base title or similar titles [...] Sometimes the distinct topics may be closely related [...] When two or more distinct topics with the same or a similar titles are being written about on the same page, even if they are closely related, a content split may be considered. WP:DEL-CONTENT Disputes over page content are usually not dealt with by deleting the page, except in severe cases. WP:WIKIVOICE Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. The aim is to inform, not influence. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean the exclusion of certain points of view. It means including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight. Darker Dreams (talk) 03:05, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I have opened a case on the dispute resolution noticeboard at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Witchcraft which I believe is relevant to this discussion. Darker Dreams (talk) 00:06, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    And you were told not to edit the articles while the process is ongoing. When you copied and pasted the article, you did not include the systemic bias tags, and you added a ridiculous opening sentence that does not align with the source. As the text is sitting there, I returned the flag and took out your inappropriate link to Indigenous cultures, but you are now reverting.[3] - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 23:34, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: per WP:A10 - we don't need half a dozen parenthetically disambiguated pages about witchcraft because a clutch of scholars often some academic opinions about the different categories of classification that can be applied to the subject. Hutton, in the source quoted above, makes clear what the main scholarly consensus is. That's exactly the sort of material that should be hosted on the base name page. That parenthetical disambiguation is used here is indicative of the fact that no term to naturally distinguish, while the obviously separate Neopagan witchcraft is already readily distinguished. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:50, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note about A10: the title is "a plausible redirect", imo. But not to Witchcraft as it now stands (since that is about malevolent witchcraft: see ongoing dispute resolution). Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:31, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Conversation has now been started (not by me) about the length of Witchcraft and whether it needs to be split into sub pages just on that basis. Talk:Witchcraft#Article_length. Darker Dreams (talk) 22:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - different topic than witchcraft, which is about "Worldwide historical and traditional views of witchcraft", while this one seems intended to be about the witchcraft itself rather than views of it. Possibly there is some other article it could be merged into, or more likely, there are articles or article sections that should be merged here. Still I don't think it's a fork, so those arguments should be dismissed. Skyerise (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 23:26, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep.Comment But keep the discussion going. Witchcraft is over 11000 words long and still incomplete. AFD should not be a place to prevent long articles from being split. It sounds like there needs to be further discussion in that topic area about how to cover the broad worldwide history of witchcraft in multiple articles. I'm not even remotely an expert on Eastern Slavic traditions of witchcraft, but even I can tell from reading the Witchcraft article that it's woefully underrepresented in that article and not given WP:DUE weight. I see other under-representation as well, including many cultures primarily represented by witch-hunts with little to no mention of traditional cultural understanding of witchcraft. It seems like this article is in part an attempt to remedy those types of concerns. I'm hopeful that editors with more knowledge in that domain can figure out the right solution.
As an aside, as an outsider to this topic area, I'd lean toward splitting on cultural traditions rather than "categories" of witchcraft, with plenty of wikilinks back and forth where there is overlap, influence, or similarity documented in secondary sources. —siroχo 08:25, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - per WP:A10, spin off duplication from main topic. It seems to be created for the same purpose as the DRN, as a work-around to a discussion and current consensus on Witchcraft talk. Netherzone (talk) 03:41, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment (again): I thought you couldn't apply WP:A10 where the title is a plausible redirect? And CorbieVreccan recently made it a redirect during the AfD but was reverted, as the article should remain visible during AfD. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 07:09, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: I agree with Skyerise that Witchcraft is about "Worldwide historical and traditional views of witchcraft", while this article is about "the witchcraft itself". CorbieVreccan insisted on copying the "systemic bias" and "unbalanced" templates over to this article. As Witchcraft stands, with its overarching and biased theme of witchcraft being malevolent according to scholarly consensus, that article does deserve those templates, but this new article treats the topic much differently and does not deserve those tags. This all started as ownership of the Witchcraft article, and a hostile WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality, which now extends over multiple satellite articles, disambiguation pages, redirects, and templates. This nomination is a continuation of these ongoing hostilities. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 08:47, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also concerned about ongoing changes to the article which should be aimed at improving the article. Is Asarlaí's recent edit (now backed-up by the AfD nominator, CorbieVreccan) with the summary "added more sources, and quotes from existing sources, which undermine the whole premise of this article" meant to indicate good faith, or an attempt to deliberately undermine the creative process? This is surely inappropriate behaviour. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 17:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Esowteric, please assume good faith. I've looked at the "recent edit" changes you linked in your edit directly above this comment, and I see them as improvements to the sources; the changes also attribute certain statement to specific authors, adds page numbers, clarifies quotes and improves sourced content. Respectfully, it will help if we all stop looking at this as a hostile us-versus-them polarized situation and look through a neutral lens. Netherzone (talk) 21:37, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, you're characterizing an edit summary self-describing as "[...] undermine the whole premise of this article"[4] as "good faith?" - Darker Dreams (talk) 22:22, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I was not more clear - I am not describing the edit summary, I am describing at the actual content of the edit itself that was linked above as "Asarlaí's recent edit." The edit itself was a good faith edit that improved the article. Netherzone (talk) 22:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still not clear. My point was; doesn't the edit summary indicate the intent of those edits? We can have a discussion about what was done with the citations, and some of that is fine. But, if we do that we also need to have a discussion about some of the changes made with that edit to article content. Changes that go beyond citation improvement and do not inherently required by the changes in citation... which also seem to support the intent stated in the edit summary. I'm confused how some improvements to citation outweigh stated intent and additional aspects of the edit to make it "good faith." - Darker Dreams (talk) 23:18, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's probably better not to dwell on hypothetical intentions rather than focusing on the actual content in the edit. Netherzone (talk) 03:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've explained my edit on the article talkpage, here. – Asarlaí (talk) 09:54, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete bordering on Speedy per WP:POVFORK. Comment - Please see discussion below. I cannot find a single thing in this article or its approach to the topic that does not belong in primary article. If it is meant as a WP:CONSPLIT, the editor has approached it in a very WP:SYNTH manner and WP:A10 probably applies. The differentiation between the articles is not apparent from the lede (or the body, imo). If you want to split Witchcraft, the natural place is the geographical section that is roughly half the article. If Esowteric's assertion that this is about "the witchcraft itself" is valid (which I doubt), this article needs a serious dose of TNT and a title change to something like Witchcraft (practice). Cheers, Last1in (talk) 12:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, signed, Rosguill talk 04:28, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Edit warring: There is an ongoing edit war between CorbieVreccan (AfD nominator and involved admin, opposing changes and issuing 3RR warnings) and Darker Dreams (article creator, attempting to improve the article). Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:44, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Darker Dreams has repeatedly reverted several of us, to insert material (witchcraft as "traditional knowledge"), that is not in the sources, and to remove RS sourced content. Darker Dreams is even going against what they agreed to on the talk page of Witchcraft - that it is uncontested/consensus that Indigenous people do not use the neopagan redefinition of "witchcraft".[5] Your statement that Darker Dreams' disruption is "attempting to improve the article" is heavily POV and incorrect, even by what Darker Dreams agreed to. I am sick of DD wasting all of our time with this. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Based on a review of the actions of various editors, including the edit war commentary here, I withdraw my Delete !vote. I believe that the entire group of witchcraft-related articles requires mediation and that no valid AfD consensus on one article is attainable or reasonable. I believe that the articles' content as well as their focus, their conceptualisation, and their structure are problematic in the extreme. The behaviour of their editors is even more unsettling. IMO, this clearly POVFORK article may actually be naught more than a symptom of WP:OWN behaviour and inflexibility on all sides. If mediation fails, I think that this article should be deleted and that Witchcraft should be TNTed to cover witchcraft in its entirety, not the article's "good versus evil" dichotomy artificially imposed upon it.

References

  1. ^ Hutton, Ronald (2017). The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present. Yale University Press. What is a witch? [...] Anglo-American senses of it now take at least four different forms, although the one discussed above seems still to be the most widespread and frequent. The others define the witch figure as any person who uses magic ... or as the practitioner of nature-based Pagan religion; or as a symbol of independent female authority and resistance to male domination. All have validity in the present, and to call anybody wrong for using any one of them would be to reveal oneself as bereft of general knowledge, as well as scholarship. ... [I]n this book the mainstream scholarly convention will be followed, and the word used only for an alleged worker of such destructive magic.
  2. ^ quoting by way of Adler Adler, Margot (2006). Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. New York City: Pinguin Press. p. 40. "Is a "witch" anyone who does magic or who reads fortunes? Is a "witch" someone who worships the Christian Devil? Is a Witch (capital letters this time) a member of a specific Pagan faith called "Wicca"? Is a "witch" someone who practices Voodoo, or Macumba, or Candomblé? Are the anthropologists correct when they define a "witch" as anyone doing magic (usually evil)outside an approved social structure?" Bonewits does away with some of this confusion, as we shall see, by dividing Witches into many types[...]
  3. ^ Lawrence, Salmah Eva-Lina (2015). Witchcraft, Sorcery, Violence: Matrilineal and Decolonial Reflections. Australian National University Press. I challenge the notions that witchcraft and sorcery invariably lead to violence, that there is only one type of witchcraft and sorcery, and that what is labelled witchcraft and sorcery in English is entirely superstitious nonsense. [...] Despite early Christianisation, belief and practice of witchcraft continues to be prevalent in this primarily matrilineal province. Even outside the province, the flying witches of Milne Bay are legendary and Milne Bay itself has been described anecdotally as the witchcraft centre of [Papau New Guinea]. In contrast to other chapters from PNG in this volume which speak of witchcraft and sorcery accusations that generate brutal violence on the accused, violence against women is much less in this province where witchcraft is highly articulated, and it is said to empower and contribute to the status of Milne Bay women.
  4. ^ Kouvola, Karolina (2020). "Travellers, Easter Witches and Cunning Folk: Regulators of Fortune and Misfortune in Ostrobothnian Folklore in Finland". Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics. 14 (1): 121–139. doi:10.2478/jef-2020-0008. Certain people, sometimes named but frequently referred to simply as trollgubbe 'witchman' or kloka gumma, 'wise woman', had special knowledge enabling them to carryout important and necessary supranormal tasks in the community. These people, also called cunning folk in the academic literature, were respected by their local communities for their skills in healing (37/299) and other matters (57/299) that required specialised knowledge (see also Midelfort 1974: 195–196). They are referred to in the archived material as trollkunniga or trolldomskunniga 'skilled in witchcraft', which does not translate well into English. Words such as trollkarl, trollkäring and trollgubbe are used in the data for different groups of people, both ingroup and outgroup. The informants do not make clear which of these pose a threat to the community, and which do not, and for this reason I would rather consider the word neutral without strong connotations.
  5. ^ Moro, P.A. (2017). Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic. In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, H. Callan (Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1915 “the term witch has a bifurcated use similar to that of shaman, with scholarly consensus diverging from some popular adoption. Even among anthropologists, some use the terms witch and sorcerer, like shaman, widely—as broad labels that help make sense of patterns in the ethnographic literature—while others reserve them for more narrowly delineated, geographically or historically specific examples.”
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.
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