June 2009 (UTC) 

 :You have to be careful about meanings of words. A word can have more than 1 meaning. When 1 source says x is y & another source says x is z, they're not necessarily disagreeing with each other. They may be talking about different senses of x. That's what seems to be happening here. 

 :A bit more detail. When a Buddhist talks about "Buddhism", they often/usually mean whatever that particular Buddhist thinks is "true" Buddhism. When scholars talk about "Buddhism", they mean the totality of what all different Buddhists think is "true" Buddhism. WP neutrality policy forbids it to take sides in disputes between Buddhists about what "true" Buddhism is. Instead, the policy is to cover all significant bodies of opinion among Buddhists about what "true" Buddhism is. To avoid confusion, the article would have to stick to 1 particular meaning of the word "Buddhism".  

 :If the article were to use "Buddhism" in the sense of "true" Buddhism, then a lot of things would have to be rephrased. You couldn't say, for example, there are 2 or 3 main forms of Buddhism. You'd have to say instead there are 2 or 3 main different views about what Buddhism is. And so on. 

 :It seems more sensible to use the term "Buddhism" in the scholarly sense, which is also probably the way most ordinary people use the term: as referring to the totality of all the different ideas different Buddhists have about what "true" Buddhism is. 

 :So it seems to me that the appropriate way of stating the facts you refer to would be to say that some forms of Buddhism are philosophies, or claim to be. I'm not sure whether all such claims would be recognized by philosophers.  

 :What you say about weasel words has some validity. The actual words of the sources here are given in a section near the bottom of this page.   10:21, 15