Talk:Unfulfilled historical predictions by Christians/Archive 3

message: Since, obviously, there is no consensus, and no attempt was made to bring in the larger community, I'm going to request that an admin restore this page to its original name. Please, leave the page alone until there is a clear consensus. For the record, I still feel that the original name was quite acceptable, and any offense taken seems to be grounded in a desire to remove potential credibility from those making the prophesies in question, not any actual historical or encyclopedic value. -Harmil 16:39, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. I'll file an RfC to get some more opinions then. Homestarmy 16:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: For what its worth I agree that renaming the page before forming consensus is a very bad idea.  I don't agree that the original name was acceptable but if there is going to be a edit war moving the page around that causes a big mess that someon has to clean up and is not likley to result in an acceptable resolution.  Reagarding some of what people said above the reason I liked a title with the word eschatological in it is because as is discussed above I do not think Pat Robertson saying who he thinks will win the next election represents qualitativly the same phenomana as someone who thinks the world is going to end in 2012 or that Jessus was going to return to earth in 1975.  Eschatology is basically (and I am simplifying) the theology of the end times.  It is not restricted to any single religion though many religions share some ideas about it.  People predicting the end of the universe/world whatever is a major historical theam and even narowing it down to people doing so from a claimed biblical/christian perspective woudl make a good article.  I don't think the original title conveys that however, and I think we need to reach consensus on the title (and approprate content even if we dicide that the current content is ok). Dalf | Talk 02:52, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I have been watching this page (after Aiden's invitation). It makes it hard to find when it keeps jumping around. Arch O. La 23:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Stop re-naming this page

message: People, I hope you will forgive my bold action of changing the title.  I may have jumped the gun and if so, let us change to title back.  I acknowledge that I can be impatient and this may be an example of just such a weakness.
I have corrected most of the links, but did not address User pages for:  Gracefool, One Salient Oversight, William M. Barnham, and CTSWyneken.  I may be wrong, but I feel uncomfortable changing peoples individual pages.  I think I caught all the rest.  Storm Rider 00:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eh, I think your fine. Now then, let's get to work and see what exactly we're working with here, I haven't actually been here very long, I haven't really critically looked at the article much :/. Homestarmy 00:50, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I think the logical next step would be to look up and denote the various denominations that these people are tied to...(who is Catholic, who is a Jahovas witness, who works mainly with the American United Epistpical Church etc...) It's going to be a week or two before I'll have enough time to really help myself, but good luck --T-rex 01:59, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just looking over some of this, a few of them seem ambiguous, and a couple didn't even see to me to be prophecies at all. Since the article is more historical now, we might need to remove the timeline format and turn it into paragraphs by time period or (Such as in Mr. Hinn's case) paragraphs denoting certain people. We can clean this all up soon though I suppose. Homestarmy 02:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Who changed the name to this convoluted name? I think it's obvious to anyone that if a prophecy isn't fulfilled and a Christian says it, then it's not in the Bible nor is the person probably a prophet. What's the problem? Homestarmy 15:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, someone named martian something or another. Listen, if your there, if a Christian prophecies something and it does not come true, It is not Biblical, it doesn't matter if a Christian said it or not, just because people say something is Biblical doesn't mean their right. Homestarmy 15:59, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved it back. However, due to the way the software works I beleive that killed all the links so we need to take care of this first now --T-rex 16:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hold on a second, now it doesn't have anything to do with prophecy, I could predict that in a couple years the world will be at war in the middle east as a mere historical observation based on probabilities, and if I got it wrong, I could go on this page. We need something about prophecy in the title or it could list almost anything, we can't get into an edit war over page title or like you've pointed out, all the links get all blown to bits. Homestarmy 16:16, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've got an idea, what if we file an RfC to see what other people think? we don't have many editors for this article and of those we got, apparently we all have very different opinions on the title :/. Homestarmy 16:37, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Took Bold step of Changing the Article Title

message: Originally I'd just done a quick driveby to fix capitalization without even looking in on this talk page, but I've been asked by Harmil to move the page back to its original location while the discussion here is still being hashed out. I've taken a glance through the discussion so far and since it looks like there is indeed still substansive unresolved issues I'm going to go along with that. Everyone keep in mind that this article has sat at Timeline of unfulfilled Christian Prophecy for a year and a half already so a few more weeks isn't going to cause any extra harm. :) Bryan 05:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the other titles were at least an effort to maintain NPOV. This, however, is not. —Aiden 07:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, it's not. Instead it's an effort to say "rather than moving this page all over the place while in the midst of heated discussions, why not come to some sort of an agreement first?" There are some areas where boldness can result in more of a mess than others. The more moves this page undergoes the more redirects there are to keep cleaning up each time. Bryan 07:51, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you Bryan. I'll continue to monitor the disucssion, and once (if) there is some consensus I'll make an attempt to bring the matter to the attention of the broader religion community on Wikipedia for feedback. -Harmil 16:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any reason not to pull anyone who you think might be intresed in to the conversation now.  Sometimes forming consensus is easier that way (some times a lot harder but still probbly a good idea). Dalf | Talk 17:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dalf, it's easy to get a bunch of people for an up-or-down vote on a few options. It's much harder (impossible?) to get that many for a prolonged discussion of a minor topic. Hence, my original suggestion (WAY up above) that you all develop a consensus among yourselves as to the appropriate title (or two if you can't settle on one) and then make a vote out of it. Just do keep in mind that titles aren't nearly as important as they may seem at first. Good sources and clear articles are always more important than the perfect title. -Harmil 20:27, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, thanks for trying StormRider, it looks like we're going the long route though.  Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but the problem with the title is the phrase "Christian Prophecy"  correct?  --T-rex 18:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears to be so :/. I mean, I can sort of understand how it would be a problem until you actually read the introduction to the article. Homestarmy 18:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears that Christain prophecy raises the hackles of some Christians because the label appears to be saying that all Christians hold these predictions as prophecy, which is not a correct perception.  Saying that there are prophecies by a Christians is a more neutral phrase.  Not for everyone, i.e. my favorite editor of late Mr. Martianlostinspace, had a knee jerk reaction to a similar title.  Further, although I prefer the term prophecy because the individuals are speaking as if God spoke to them, I am not completely opposed to the term prediction.  I suspect by June 1, 2006 we might have a firm direction and a conclusion to this process.  Concensus is not efficient, but it does eventually prevent edit wars.  Storm Rider 20:52, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: THe problem with the term Christain prophecy also the ambiguity between weather Christian means People who are christian or The religion itself, doctrin, scripture.  This second meanning is the part that is at conflict with the disclaimer in the opening paragraphs.  I suggest that we may want to do a poll to see two things.  Support for changing the title (which I suspect there is), and support for changing the scope of the article to something more well defined and more fitting of an article (which it seems I may be the only person advocating).  In the name of doing this right I think we should open a poll first to see how mahy people feel the current title is approprate and second to see how many people feel the scope of the article is appropratly defined.  Then we can work from those results to get more specific proposals. I suppose I could just put the poll up but I wanted to make sure that everyone feels that it woudl be a good step twards reacing consensus first, or that we should go about it diffrently.  Does anyone have strong feelings about this proposal? Dalf | Talk 01:47, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

text: June 1st? Now that is severe :/. I understand how people might want to vandalise the article because they might not read the introduction or might not even have enough faith to think "Hmm, if the prophecies didn't come true, they aren't Christian prophecy!", but vandalism in Wikipedia is nothing new :/. Articles like evolution, Jesus, (Well, that one got locked cus we got in a fight) RuneScape, World of Warcraft, articles get vandalised all the time at very excessive rates, I can't imagine a little vandalism to this article would be much worse, I can revert fast :/. Besides, if someone does vandalise it and thinks their somehow doing Christ a favor, then there's my chance to spam give out evangelistic propaganda material, citing the verses in favor of creating this article, and all around making Christians who don't have much idea into more informed people. And besides, if martian doesn't come here, it doesn't matter how much consensus we get. Can't we just leave the page title locked or something whenever we decide what to make it? Homestarmy 22:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that there is a way to lock page titles, and I think the June 1st comment was sacrcasm see WP:WLASOH.  I think we all need to just calm down and come up with a NPOV title that describes the contents of the article. And please don't spam anyone... --T-rex 00:36, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well if I don't spam vandals I have to use that boring "test1" template thing or whatever, i'd rather personalize it with a Biblically evangelistic touch if their offended by the title of this article. CTSW mentioned a method of consensus-building I can live with above somewhere. Homestarmy 02:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving it back to the original title just for the time being 

message: :Please make sure you have read and understand the rules before voting.
Timeline of unfulfilled Christian Prophecy (Current version, no change)
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Timeline of unfulfilled Christian prophecy (Current version, but with lower-case "prophecy")
#Harmil 07:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible Titles

message: Hi. I've read several comments on the talk page and the article itself.
# It is my impression that T-Rex has a point in that "Christian Prophecies" makes me expect to be official Christian prophecies. These would be issued by the Pope, the Lutheran head of church, archbishop or similar. 
# I notice the lack of the prophecies made by Isaac Newton and the host of judgement day prophies (virtually hundreds) made throughout the centuries.
# What's Jehovah's Witnesses got to do with Christianity? 
# Since these aren't Christian Prophecies as there is no such thing (only God knows the future) a better name would be "Timeline of unfulfilled prophecies based on Christianity", or possible "...based on the Bible". 
Fred-Chess 17:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Fred chessplayer, thanks for dropping in. A few points to clear up: first, Jehovah's Witnesses, to quote Wikipedia, "are members of an international religious organization who believe themselves to be the restoration of first-century Christianity. Founded in the 1870s by Charles Taze Russell, official membership now stands at over 6 million." I can't think of how a group could be more appropriate for inclusion on this page. Now, granted, they don't consider other modern Christians to actually be Christian, nor do most modern Christians acknowledge JWs, but as they are a group whose religion is based on a belief in the teachings of Jesus, from a purly objective standpoint, they are Christians. As for your comment about only God knowing the future... well, that's fundamentally an element of belief, and higly dependent on your POV. Still, these are people who claimed to have knowledge of the Christian God's view of the future, either because he communicated with them, or they were given foreknowlege by him. In every case, they are notable people whose prophecies were believed by many, and therein lies the nature of such prophecy. Now, you comment about Newton. I was not aware of any prophecies by Newton, only that he had written about the prophecies of the  Bible. If he actually claimed to have divine insight into future events at any point, then we should certainly note that with appropriate citations here. Judgement day prophesies are noted here only where the meet the criteria listed at the top of the article. That is, they must be notable and measurable, and they must predict and event which did not occur when it was predicted to. There are some such prophecies listed. -Harmil 18:57, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

text: User:Fred chessplayer, hi. I wasn't aware there were "official" Christian prophecies issued by the Pope or the prelates of other churches. If so, and they qualify otherwise, they should certainly be included. The Pope and his counterparts don't claim to have a monopoly on divine inspiration. As far as I know, the only received body of prophecy is Biblical, and that is ruled out by the article's introduction.  And as for who's a Christian and who isn't, for the purposes of this article, I'm prepared to accept anyone who self-identifies as a Christian.  It may or may not be that no one has knowledge of the future but God, but some Christians have claimed to, and issued prophecies apparently on God's behalf. Indeed, some continue to do so today. These are the people this article is concerned with.  Tex 00:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Responding to request for comment 

message: Not only are we in disagreement about the title; we are not even sure what the article should be about.  So what if instead of voting on a set of proposed titles, we vote on what the article should be about in separate polls?  I propose the following set of polls:
* Restrict the article to predictions about past dates?
* Restrict the article to relatively modern predictions?  (In particular, this would exclude Biblical prophecy.)
* Restrict the article to predictions that did not or has not yet come true?
* Restrict the article to predictions made under divine inspiration (i.e., “prophecy”)?
* Restrict the article to predictions made under Christian divine inspiration?
* Restrict the article to predictions made by Christians?  (For the purpose of this poll, anyone under Christian divine inspiration shall be considered a Christian.)
The restrictions would all be combined to form the final subject matter of the article.  Of course, standard Wikipedia restrictions (like that of notability) would still apply.
Once we have decided on those questions, we can move on to things like “Christian prophecy” vs. “prophecy by Christians” vs. “prophecy uttered by Christians”, “timeline of” vs. “history of”, and “failed” vs. “unfulfilled”.
What do you think?  Do we first take a vote on what kind of vote to take? — Daniel Brockman 06:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the idea is to name the article that we currently have, not to do something new --T-rex 07:03, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, I do like the article now and with a new title, hopefully we clarify the topic simultaneously.  Storm Rider 07:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

text: And there it is. Rather than discussing how you can transform this article into some other article, why not simply write another article. As far as I can see, most of this discussion has centered around concepts that are useful in their own right, and scope-creeping this article to the point that it's about entities which may or may not have thought that something might or might not happen, isn't really going to do as much for Wikipedia as starting useful articles. -Harmil 15:37, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to first vote on topic of the article

message: Since we don’t seem to have enough examples of Christian predictions that came true for those to get their own article, why don’t we put them in this article? — Daniel Brockman 08:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because that's a pretty long list itself i'd think, the article would become far too long and it would lose focus between failures and successes. At least it seems to me it might.Homestarmy 13:49, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is Native Americans in the United States restricted to just the natives? Why don't we list the French fur trappers that settled Canada and Louisiana? Well, because that's the scope of the article. We could broaden this page until it covered every statement ever made by anyone, but I'm not sure I see the point.... -Harmil 15:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

text:  So make it. This article is about unfulfilled Christian prophecy. Another article can be about fulfilled Christian prophecy. I'm sure we'd even put See Also links on both. Chris (talk) 19:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is the article restricted to failed predictions? 

message: For a list of some (self-identified) Christians who are specifically described as prophets, preaching prophetically, bringing prophetic words, etc., readers might be interested in the 
[Prophet's Page]. There are quite a few of them. Tex 16:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I took a look at that site, scary.  Besides being a lesson on how not to design an html page, the only name I recognized on the list I have a hard time buying into his psuedo-christian beliefs.  On a totally unrelated note, would anyone object to moving the anti-page move notice to either the bottom of the article or the talk page?  It looks horiable on top, and is of no interest to non-editors --T-rex 18:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Technically, do we need that warning message on the article at all, can't it just be hidden or something? And so is that website not useful then? :/ Homestarmy 19:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The site is hard on the eyes, the name I recongnized Jonathan Maracle has no wikipedia entry, so I would assume most of them are not well, known.  There may be some other parts of that site that could turn up some information that is usefull to the article though, it did seem to be on a similar topic --T-rex 20:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some current prophets 

message: :Please make sure you have read and understand the rules before voting.
 
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History of unfulfilled prophecy by Christians 
#T-rex 04:59, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible Titles

message: It seems as if it is time to finally finish this disscussion. Final round between 
Unfulfilled historical predictions by Christians and Timeline of unfulfilled Christian prophecy. Voteing will last one week(?)  Although, I am actually going to request for either Homestarmy or Tex to open the vote to avoid any accusations of doing this wrong (although I don't see how anyone will find this round debatable)...
I think we ought to wait until most people realize we're about to vote because the talk page activity has become stagnent :/. Homestarmy 19:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yup. —Aiden 23:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am back and I am certainly ready to move forward.  I think a vote would be an excellent step.  T-rex, will you do the honors?  Storm Rider (talk) 04:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was trying to get someone else to set up the vote, but I guess I'll do it --T-rex 13:05, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I would agree that the two choices don't represent my preferred choice:  Timeline of unfulfilled prophecy by Christians.  The current first choice connotes that all Christians agree that it is prophecy.  I think you will find that the majority of Christians would disagree with that statement.  Storm Rider (talk) 04:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. —Aiden 20:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it was Woohookitty who locked it. I'll unlock it since it's been a whole month, but the poll above looked evenly split so it doesn't seem like a consensus has been developed. As such I won't move it myself, leaving it to others to stick their faces into this potential hornet's nest. Remember: there's no deadline for any of this. :) Bryan 02:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

text: There are several schools of thought on that. A generally accepted guideline of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia:Voting is evil, though, and that consensus can't be decided by a simple 50% + 1 majority. Unfortunately that doesn't say much about what is a good way to establish consensus. It could well be that moving the page is ultimately the right thing to do, feel free to give it a shot and perhaps those who oppose the move won't oppose it strongly enough to raise further objections. Just don't expect to be able to point to this poll and say "but it's settled!" if argument does continue afterward, is all I'm saying. I wish I had a better suggestion for resolving disputes like this, usually when I'm involved in a dispute that hits an impasse I just leave it alone for six months or so and come back to see if the situation's resolved itself in the interim. Bryan 04:59, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not objecting, I don't really have a strong opinion on this issue. I've just chosen to not be the one who pushes the button. :) Bryan 00:35, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: T-rex, let's go for it and move on.  Storm Rider (talk) 00:39, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Final Round of Voting 

message: Voting will last for one week (7 days). A simple majority is all that is needed to determine the new title.  Pray that there will not be a tie. All editors are required to respect the results of this vote and this discussion really shouldn't be brought up again anytime soon.
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Timeline of unfulfilled Christian prophecy
# I don't really see any other choice :/ Homestarmy 13:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Voting

message: The poll has concluded (yesterday actually), so I'm going to ask Bryan (the admin who locked the page moves) to move this for us, I trust that we will no longer need the page move lock anymore either.  Now we just need to worry about getting the rest of these referenced (see below) --T-rex 01:22, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it was Woohookitty who locked it. I'll unlock it since it's been a whole month, but the poll above looked evenly split so it doesn't seem like a consensus has been developed. As such I won't move it myself, leaving it to others to stick their faces into this potential hornet's nest. Remember: there's no deadline for any of this. :) Bryan 02:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

text: There are several schools of thought on that. A generally accepted guideline of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia:Voting is evil, though, and that consensus can't be decided by a simple 50% + 1 majority. Unfortunately that doesn't say much about what is a good way to establish consensus. It could well be that moving the page is ultimately the right thing to do, feel free to give it a shot and perhaps those who oppose the move won't oppose it strongly enough to raise further objections. Just don't expect to be able to point to this poll and say "but it's settled!" if argument does continue afterward, is all I'm saying. I wish I had a better suggestion for resolving disputes like this, usually when I'm involved in a dispute that hits an impasse I just leave it alone for six months or so and come back to see if the situation's resolved itself in the interim. Bryan 04:59, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not objecting, I don't really have a strong opinion on this issue. I've just chosen to not be the one who pushes the button. :) Bryan 00:35, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: T-rex, let's go for it and move on.  Storm Rider (talk) 00:39, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: End of Poll