Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dogs in 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 Keep. Synergy 07:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dogs in religion[edit]

Violates Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of informatio. The opening sentence of the article is: "Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) , humankind's first and most common domestic animal, have featured prominently in many religious traditions." However the article itself does not back this up. It is a collection of trivia from various religious traditions which ends up showing how minor the role of dogs is in religion. Northwestgnome (talk) 01:38, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and fix - Meets notability guidelines, though I see where the nom is coming from this, though the article just needs to be fixed and expanded more to rephrase the article and refrain from the trivia.--S_RX 03:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Maybe the solution is to remove that sentence then? As the nom says, the article shows the minor role of dogs in religion. Maxa megalon 2000 05:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That one sentence is the entire introduction. If you take it out the article is just a collection of subsections. Northwestgnome (talk) 05:38, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't you write a better introduction, then? SYSS Mouse (talk) 18:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because there is no central point to the article about which to write an introduction. Northwestgnome (talk) 00:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

strong keep- article as it stands is dire, but there's no reason why the subject couldn't make a perfectly valid article. Sticky Parkin 13:49, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This seems a perfectly valid compilation on the subject. The grounds alleged for deleting this are almost entirely subjective. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 14:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Valid subject of an article. SYSS Mouse (talk) 18:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
strong keep. The page just needs a little work, but the subject matter is valid and deserves a Wikipedia page. Tuxraider reloaded (talk) 19:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. -- the wub "?!" 20:22, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The difficulty with this article is it doesn't seem to have any sources at all -- independent or otherwise -- demonstrating that the topic as such has been previously researched or been the subject of publications. Some people have noted that dogs have a role in particular religions or expressed religious ideas and feelings about or involving dogs, but so far as the sources identified so far tell us, nobody before this editor has written a comparative study of the role of dogs in religion or examined the general subject in anything like this article's attempted scope. I believe we need sources telling us that the subject itself has been previously researched to demonstrate notability and avoid WP:NOR issues, particularly WP:SYN. So far as I know "validity" (the idea that a topic could or should or really ought to be the subject of research and publication) is not one of Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. The policy inclusion criteria require that the topic must have actually been the subject of actual previous research and publication. I believe we need sources demonstrating this to justify a keep. There are noncontroversial popular-culture subjects where this kind of issue isn't enforced strongly, but religion is a controversial subject with a lot of scholarly interest, and for this reason the core policy inclusion criteria have been enforced more strictly. We might be liberal about guideline issues like what we call a reliable source and so forth, but SOMEONE must have previously written about this subject or else we bump squarely into WP:NOR, which is core policy. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 20:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge back to Dog. I worked on this article when it was a section of Dog, although I didn't start the section. Back then it was like a collection of trivia, which I think is okay within an article. (The Islam section does have some important information for Muslim kids who want to talk their parents into getting a dog.) Steve Dufour (talk) 20:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep sufficiently distinct topic, and sufficient material. DGG (talk) 00:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notable. Suggestion rename as Cultural depictions of dogs like Cultural depictions of spiders as topics like those discussed in "Chinese tradition" are not related to religion.Redtigerxyz (talk) 14:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it the 12 animals in Chinese astrology were supposed to be the ones who greated Buddha at his birth, so that is related to religion. Steve Dufour (talk) 14:40, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep -- This is a legitimate compilation. Merging it with dog would probably unbalance that article. However, the section on atheism at the end adds nothing useful and should be deleted. The Byron quotation is off-subject. The Richard Dawkins item is merely an attack of Bishop Usher's chronology of the Bible and adds nothing useful. The lack of referneces should be dealt with by tagging, not deletion. Peterkingiron (talk) 23:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Interesting article. It is notable, and its sourced. Every religion has a view about dogs. Lehoiberri (talk) 18:45, 25 July 2008 (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.