Constructed Religions Discussions

The constructed religion section was nominated for deletion by Religion Wiki users. To compromise the "constructed" religion users we have launched a sisterproject called Create your religion Wiki All constructed religion are moved to this wiki. this wiki is interlinked with the normal religion wiki. Do not create 'constructed' religions here but go to http://createyourreligion.wikia.com .
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There's a freaking page detailing the worship of Helena Bonham Carter, the actress who plays Bellatrix LeStrange in the Harry Potter movies. Although we can respect the opinions of others, we can also note that they are "infant religions." 
:Boxy310 23:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC) 
I don't think it's appropriate to have them on this site. I think it would be best to remove the category and delete all the ones that are there. The vast majority of the Constructed Religions are going to be made up by silly kids, who would be better off doing that kind of stupid thing over at Uncyclopedia. 
What I think would be the second best option, is to only allow the creation of constructed religion pages by logged-in users, no unregistered contributors, who promise that they are over 18. There's likely to be more carefully thought out ones and less silliness and hate that way.--Simon Peter Hughes 04:15, January 19, 2010 (UTC) 
: I have the same thoughts about it. We are getting often anonymous edits with the most silly things which i can not taken seriously. I am also aware we have registered users who made some really good articles from there own 'philosophy' point of view. a good example is Mirianism created by User:Ano-User These kind of articles should stay in the religionwiki but maybe we should rename this catagory. A big problem is that articles are mixing with the fictive created articles.Besides me there is another admin left User:Rev Bem . I will ask him to respond on this topic too. I made this discussion with him before but lately he isn't really active concerning contribution of articles.--Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 10:36, January 19, 2010 (UTC) 
hi! i am the one who created the panthinist religion. thanx for the picture. hey, i was wondering if some time at the bottom you could comment on the religion and tell me what you think of it. that would be great! 
:Hello Anonymous editor, First of all It is great that you are busy with searching a religion. I also noticed that you are really young (11years old). You have a whole life time for you for discovering religions. Religion Wiki is not ment to convert people to a certain religion but ment to understand eachother's religion. 
But if I am understanding it right you made a religion just because you like panthers. I don't think that is a good way to start. If I was you you should explore the different religions and read about it. And ask questions about it..--Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 10:33, January 21, 2010 (UTC) 
By the way the talk or discussion page is for making comments on an article. Do not create an category article for it. Besides the constructed religion section is currently under discussion. It is also better with creating a user's account then you will have your own user and discussion page. Your article is moved to the createyourreligion wiki which is a new sisterproject http://createyourreligion.wikia.com/wiki/Panthinist Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 10:54, January 21, 2010 (UTC) 
Ok i might have a solution for those constructed religions. To compromise the creators we can transfer all those articles to another wiki. http://createyourreligion.wikia.com --Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 11:38, January 21, 2010 (UTC) 
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Ok It seems no more responses yet. I will move all the constructed religions to our project http://createyourreligion.wikia.com. In the menu i have established a link to this project. I noticed that some 'constructed religions' are opinions/philosofical articles related to established religions. These articles will not be removed but reclassified.
article examples are:The Chronicles of Narnia, mirianism and armentine
For the admins who are interested working on the http://createyourreligion.wikia.com I can give you admin rights on that wiki.
Do not create self made religions in this wiki. I will remove them without warning!! 
--Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 14:42, January 22, 2010 (UTC)
: I think the constructed religions are the main reason for this wiki, before you come on and started importing all of Wikipedia they were by far the majority of pages. I really regret giving you sysop status, and would ban you if I could. You have really destroyed this community.
:Rev Bem 03:07, January 28, 2010 (UTC)
==response on rev bem comment==
Well i do not see any negative response from the so-called created religions makers. You noticed that I have created a second wiki interlinked with religion wiki . I have discussed this first on this wiki here. Besides that I was not the only one with coming up with this discussion. Before I came in this wiki Other Users and admins too. Besides implenting articles. I have improved the wiki not only in design but also in the interest of other people. Ever checked the page views and contributions?
Concerning the Wikipedia articles I have stated earlier that a lot of articles on Wikipedia are too long and should split up in decent sup articles connected with a menu template. That is what i am currently doing. Gathering good information about several religion subjects and redesigning the articles in normal proportion. an example is the article Desmond Tutu This article is to long on Wikipedia. Here in Religion Wiki I have splitted up this article. It will take a lot of discussions for the finally decission to split it up in several articles on Wikipedia This has also draw attention from (former) Wikipedians. Like User:Granpa a big Wikipedia contributor. He has recently joined us. Most of his (deleted) Wikipedia are here now and he is working on it daily.
As my position as administrator
And I certainly don't think I have destroyed this community. You can check my talkpages and see that our users are asking me often for aid in their journey on religion Wiki. Besides that you never complained on my talkpage on certain issues. I have also contacted the first admin and founder of this wiki on his talkpage and his website (Mattis Manzel) and asked for his opinion about the constructed religions and for helping us in this wiki. Sadly he has no time anymore but was agree with me too. former admin Fr.Gareth Hughes has left the community too. I have contacted him in Wikipedia and his personal mail. I think the reason that he left is because of the constructed religion section. I have tracked also his history editing and noticed he was debating a lot on this subject. You where also mentioning that before me most articles where concerning constructed religions. This is not true. At that time former admin Gareth Hughes had by far the most edits and his contribution was mainly on Christian related subjects. Anglicanism and syriac Christianity if I am not mistaken.
Concerning Admin rights I have stated that I would improve this wiki. When I see the page views and contributions I think I have succeeded. Besides me also other registered users are contributing almost daily. Wich was not the case a few years ago. Besides that I have designed around this project a whole website with its own domain.the website is not finnished yet but from my statistics I know that the website is getting a lot of hits too.
I have discussed major issues with the community here in democratic way. We should follow the community not only your opinion. I have also discussed issues concerning MediaWiki with the Wikia staff. Wikia Staff is aware what we are doing in Religion Wiki. The Wikia staff has also stated that the community is responsible what is going on in a Wiki.
My point of view on your admin rights
I haven't seen you contributing here as an Admin. Since April 2009 You haven't done any useful editing on this wiki. If you are not interested anymore in religionwiki and the opinions from others you should better give up your Admin/sysop rights and create your personal wiki. In the way how you are responding to me and accusing me that I have destroyed this project I see that as an Insult.
 If I am not mistaken I have voted and recommended you to the Wikia Staff for sysop status because at that time you where the only active contributor and longer on this wiki then me. When I came here (April 21, 2009) the main (former) sysops where inactive. Since then I haven't seen you around giving support to our users or any large contributions. not to mention supporting and creating new templates. I have even supported the constructed religion contributors. I am not raising my self up but this is the job what an Admin/sysops should do.
Till now I have administrated this wiki and the Dutch religion wiki almost alone (with some help from the wikia staff)Luckely Simon Peter Hughes has joined us and is a frequently contributor in admin/sysop issues and correcting the English grammar and spelling.
The few active constructed religion registerered contributors had no problems with transferring the articles to this new wiki besides that both wiki's are interlinked with each other from the front page.
If you are disagree with me and the others in this discussion feel free with creating your own Wiki and give up your admin rights. Nowadays you can create automatically a wiki on Wikia. Wikia staff has stated that the wiki belongs to their community and they are taking the decisions.
We are a community for all religions and controversy on religions but for infant religions such as Parody Religions is not place in religion Wiki. but in the Create your Religion Wiki.
--Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 10:23, January 28, 2010 (UTC)
==Further Response from Simon Peter Hughes==
I can understand Rev. Bem's point of view. This wiki has probably developped in completely the opposite direction to what he had in mind when he first got involved with it and the active community now are probably the exact opposite kind of people to those that he wanted to see here. From his perspective, he should have been more careful who he gave admin rights to.
However, that was all before my time. I didn't start editing other pages on Wikia until November 2009, just after I'd stopped contributing to Uncyclopedia because I found just about all of it to be stupid and not funny and, worse than that, disgusting and offensive. Which, I think says a lot about my opinion of user generated humour on the Internet.
When I was invited to come here as Judaism Portal moderator. I found a collection of serious articles on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Neo-paganism and also a load of nonsense that I think would have been better off on Uncyclopedia or similar Wikia sites like Factual Nonsense, Humorpedia, Misencyclopeida or Weird World. Not the kind of thing that I wanted to be associated with, I wouldn't be surprised if it drove an Anglican vicar away!
Keeping those kinds of articles alongside serious articles on religion would be like Vegan Wiki sharing its domain with The Steak Tartare Lovers' Wiki!
Part of it had to go, and the serious part of this site had become the larger part, so, it had to stay.--Simon Peter Hughes 11:03, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
:At that time there was not a clear statement on this wiki what was allowed and what was not allowed. When I came here I made a clear profile and statement about myself on my Users page. If he had read this he should know my intentions with this wiki. And over the last year the Wiki has developped in a more serious platform This has draw the intention from more 'serious' users too.. --Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 11:29, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
==Solutions==
Hi all,
I'm Catherine from the Wikia Community Team, and I'd like to help if I can. I gave Rev_Bem his bureaucrat rights in May 2009, about six months after he gained admin rights, and at the time the wiki was almost all constructed religions. I felt at the time that perhaps the wiki should have a different name if that was the focus, but the small community seemed content, so I let it be. As Simon Peter Hughes said, I can certainly sympathize with Bem's point of view: the wiki has diverged a lot from the vision of a wide-ranging, somewhat humorous site, after he stopped participating as much.
However, I think what most people expect to find at a site named "religion.wikia" is a respectful site about real-world religions, and that there is now a community who feels that should be the wiki's priority. I support the community's desire to move the unique, funny, and personal religions to a different wiki.
Rev Bem, I would like to propose that you can now pursue your original vision at the new wiki at http://createyourreligion.wikia.com -- I think it is reasonable for you to take up admin rights there and continue to supervise the constructed religion articles that you created and nurtured once they are moved there. If the name of the wiki is an issue, I can easily change that. You are of course also welcome to create your own completely separate wiki, if you choose. The guide at Help:Exporting_pages can show you and Sgt.Friso how to copy the pages to createyourreligion or any other wiki -- all pages are freely licensed under the Creative Commons license.
Let us solve this peacefully so that everyone is able to keep working on the projects that they love -- I am happy to answer any questions or provide any technical help needed. Thank you for your cooperation! — Catherine<staff/> (talk) 05:52, January 30, 2010 (UTC)
:Catherine thank you for your fast response. I am totally agree with your opinion. I have no problem giving up my rights on the http://createyourreligion.wikia.com. As you proposed I could handle over my rights to Rev.Bem. Lets see If he will agree with this proposal. To me this is a peacefull solution. All constructed articles are already imported in the new Wiki.
--Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 10:11, January 30, 2010 (UTC)
:: Friso, it is not that I do not appreciate the work you have done on this wikia. You have done a great job in building an encyclopedia of religion. It is just that this wikia had never intended to be an encyclopedia, but I suppose there is no going back now. If you are not willing to coexist with the constructed religions on this wikia, then I suppose moving them to a new wikia would be the best solution available.
::Catherine, I would ask if the new wikia could be renamed "Open Sourcing Religion" instead of "createyourreligion", as I hope its mandate can be more than just creating personal religions, but re-thinking religion entirely. Also please remove Friso as an admin.
::Friso, if you could please move to the new wikia and add redirects to any content that you wish to delete from the Religion wikia. Some of the religions that I think you had at one time labeled "constructed" do actually exist, such as Yoism and The Church of Reality, so you may wish to leave them on this wikia. And remember that all religions were at one point or another constructed, and normally persecuted by the existing religions of the time, new Christians were persecuted by the existing Roman religions, Muslims were persecuted by the existing Arabian religions, Jews have been persecuted by most other religions for some time, it would be nice if you could try to better embody the prime directive of this wikia of "coexistence".
:::Rev Bem 21:16, January 31, 2010 (UTC)
::::Thank you for your response. Seems we have a solution now. Concerning 'constructed' religions. This was always and is still a big issue. What are we calling constructed and what not. In that way I am partly agree with you. I am already busy with moving the content to the new Wiki. I agree with handing over my admin rights in the http://createyourreligion.wikia.com to you. I guess you will agree with giving up your rights here then. I am sure Catherine will arrange this for us. --Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 21:31, January 31, 2010 (UTC)
:::::I think that this discussion is pretty much over now and everybody seems to be satisfied and to have got what they wanted. I think we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the wise and perceptive Catherine.
:::::Rev Bem makes a good point. All religions started somewhere. It even seems possible that some religions that started out as a joke can become much more than that, Jediism and Pastafarianism could be good examples of that. What might they be a thousand years from now? So, I would certainly agree that any real-world religion, the existence of which can be proven by third party sources, however strange and unlikely it might seem from our cultural perspective, deserves space here.--Simon Peter Hughes 03:15, February 1, 2010 (UTC)
Thank you all for helping us reach a good solution. I have renamed the new wiki "Open Sourcing Religion Wiki", and changed the primary url to "opensourcingreligion.wikia.com". The addresses "createyourreligion.wikia.com", "constructedreligions.wikia.com" and "constructedreligion.wikia.com" were also redirected to lead to this wiki.
I have removed admin and bureaucrat rights from Sgt.Friso on the new wiki, and given them to Rev Bem; I have removed the rights from Bem on this wiki.
Friso no longer has the admin rights to allow him to use Special:Import on the new wiki. If there are any remaining pages/redirects to be moved, you may need to copy and paste them individually, or coordinate with each other to export and import as necessary. Thanks again, I am glad we could work this out peacefully! — Catherine<staff/> (talk) 21:12, February 1, 2010 (UTC)
:Thanks a alot regards --Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 21:18, February 1, 2010 (UTC)
== "constructed religions" discussion ==
Hi Friso,
Thanks for inviting me to participate in the discussion on "constructed religions". I came a little late--after a resolution had already been reached, but I enjoyed reading the comments anyway. For what its worth, I also agree that moving the more "lampoon-style" articles on religion to another site is a wonderful idea. Although I can't understand the notion of religion as something to be constructed by one's imagination [unless one sees religion as man-made], I can understand the entertainment value which this kind of writing may hold for some. Nevertheless, I want to thank you again for you much-needed help with the technical problems I had been experiencing earlier.
Best regards,
Carol
Jd.gray 20:15, February 1, 2010 (UTC)
== RE: constructed religion response ==
Hey Fris,
Sorry for the late response, but I've pondered on such a move of "constructed religions" to a new wikia. I think it is a great idea, but I always thought that Religion wikia was created to be an encyclopedia for all religions, real or created. However, after reading the comments of certain users, I was surprised to find out that that wasn't originally the case. I joined this site in order to voice my opinion about a certain religion, and create articles explaining my points of view. I had no choice but to classify it under "constructed religions" because that was the only category available at the time.
Now that the Constructed religions have their own website, Religion Wiki, in my opinion, is no longer subject to ambiguity: That is, whether or not it is an encyclopedia for constructed religions, mock religions, or major religions (and for different opinions concerning them). -Ano-User 08:41, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
:Giving your points of view on certain religions is no problem in the religion wiki. That is also making the difference between religion wiki and wikipedia. Before Rev Bem and me took over the wiki (April-May 2009) This wiki was operated by the founder Mattis Manzel and Vicar Gareth Hughes. The last years both where inactive because lack of time and interest.
The last year more "serious" users have joined the Wiki and have focussed more on real world religion articles. The Wiki has developed to a serious Wiki and is not a place for Parody / Mock religions anymore.
The articles you have written are certainly not classified under "mock religion" but a serious point of view / philosophy on an existing religion.
Friso Yoyon Schaap(Talk) • (Religion Wiki Administrator) 09:31, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
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