Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Imamat or Successorship After the Last Prophet of God

Imamat or Successorship After the Last Prophet of God
I don't believe there is any hope for this book to become truly NPOV. In nearly every sentence there are signs of muslim-POV ("great Prophet (SAS)", "Rationally speaking, It was necessary that by God's permission the Prophet (SAS) had appointed someone(...)", "No intelligent person can believe that the Omniscient, all-wise God has ordered people to obey transgressors, adulterers, homosexuals, wine-drinkers and those who forsake prayer and fasting are entitled to rule over the muslims.").

Again, Wikibooks is not for advocacy and books made only for muslims from muslim point of view should be move elsewhere. --Derbeth talk 08:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Weak delete I'd prefer to see an attempt to NPOV-ify this bok, but its religious assumption is so entrenched that such efforts might amount to a rewrite. How about putting up a NPOV banner on the page, contacting contributors and attempt to raise awareness among interested parties to see if it can be fixed. OK, there is little hope of success, but it would be nice to go out of our way a bit. You know; to show that we care.  --Swift 09:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that the contributors want to see it in current shape. And as for me... well, I do not care about such books. --Derbeth talk 10:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Have you asked them?
 * "I do not care about such books" Woha! Getting a little intolerant to certain subjects, are we?  --Swift 19:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Unlike the book above, I do think that this book is irreparably the victim of a bad POV. This book is clearly about advocacy for a particular viewpoint. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't Delete. I will do my best to make it NPOV as possible, Ok? This document actually targets muslims. Most of the point of views are left to human intelligence and not a particular point of view: "No intelligent person can believe that the Omniscient, all-wise God has ordered people to obey transgressors, adulterers, homosexuals, wine-drinkers and those who forsake prayer and fasting are entitled to rule over the muslims." So we can not consider this as not being NPOV. For example, if one believes in God, then believes in a Merciful God, God cannot be Evil! Any Intelligent human knows that. But if you consider these facts as being in a particular point of view such as God being the Creator of Earth and Heavens, then There is a serious problem in the NPOV! Then NPOV means everyone has the right to tell anything, and we have ommited the human inteligence and reasoning here. We can write a statement and leave the reasoning for the reader to think. If you still think statements like the mentioned one, is not NPOV then I have to remove it from wikibooks, myself. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Believer (talk • contribs).
 * I understand your point, but your argument disregards people who are not muslim, and who do not think like muslims think. If I do not beleive the way you believe, then your statement implies that I am not intellegent. NPOV, by definition, should not mean different things to different groups of people, that it should not be biased for or against any disputable viewpoint. There is a difference in saying "Muslims believe that god is fantastic" and saying "If you don't believe that god is fantastic, you are stupid". Also, there is a difference between a book that explains the religion and tells facts about that religion, and a book that tries to convince people to accept that religion. Now, if you think you can make this satisfactorily NPOV, then I will vote to let you try. If it doesnt meet the general standards of NPOV (and i'm sorry to say that I dont think it will), then I am sorry but it must be deleted. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete -- The statement: "...if you consider these facts as being in a particular point of view such as God being the Creator of Earth and Heavens, then There is a serious problem in the NPOV!" leads me to believe that there will be no constructive way to re-do this book in it's current form, and it would be better to just start from scratch. (BTW: I'm not an atheist, but I do recognize that my non-atheism is in fact a POV. NPOV is neither "Numerically-(demographically)-signifigant Point Of View" nor "Not-your Point Of View". -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:08, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment -- User:Believer has been inactive since a few days after this nomination, so apparently will not be modifying this book. -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment. I agree, I only was hesitant because that user had promised to fix the problem. No user = no fix. This is a violation of policy, and needs to be deleted. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)--Whiteknight (Discuss this) 23:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment Since the user in question isn't here, and doesnt appear to be returning, I would like to put an Impending Doom template on this book, and move to have it deleted within a week or so. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Marked per Whiteknight's comment -- Herby talk thyme 18:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. I am strongly against deleting this page. I have only read the introduction so far, but that alone has explained to me better than anything before the difference in beliefs between Sunnites and Shiites. I agree that many parts are written with a strong point of view, but for me that means that we have to remedy that, and not delete it! I also disagree with the opinion that this is the original contributers job, as I think he has presumably already put some effort into formulating it neutrally. I for one will be working towards a more neutral form of the article, and hope to get some help from others here. Regards Sean Heron 14:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment If you are willing to work to fix this book, by all means try. It is definately better to fix bad material then to delete it outright. However, the point stands that the book--as it stands currently--is in violation of project policy, and if it is not fixed soon (by you or somebody else), it must be deleted. Good luck, if you are going to try. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. The page seems to have changed slightly recently but I'm in favour of keeping it. There are many books here with, in my opinion, a horrible bias but this book's not as bad as some.  Has potential. Xania 22:36, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment There has been no activity by this past week since he joined on the 16th and did some edits on Imamat. I have contacted him on his user page and asked about the future of this. I too liked the direction this was heading in but if it has already stalled, I'd say the potential has fallen again. --Swift 02:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Resumed
This has now had a month for an editor to work on and so is returned here for a decision


 * Comment Sadly no editing has taken place in this time so I suggest it can be closed quite quickly as delete unless there are fresh views -- Herby  talk thyme 13:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment My vote stands as before - keep. The book cites some of its sources and what's there makes for interesting reading.  Why the rush to delete everything in sight? Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Poland_2.svg|15px]]talk 13:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * A rush to delete things here is based upon the huge amount of cruft/POV we have accumulated by only a few years of laxity. If the contributor makes only minimal attempts to create the book, then appears to abandon it, and that book is POV or otherwise incompatible with WB in its current form, we shouldn't keep it around just because somebody somewhere might come and fix it. Kellen T 16:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete for me. The loss of the 10 lines written here will not harm anyone; the subject of who is the rightful heir to Mohammed has been covered in greater detail and with greater eloquence than what we've got. Kellen T 16:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment given this has been in VfD since mid September (only 2006 I grant you) how can this be called a "rush" even on Wikibooks? (you should be aware that some of my postings may contain humor ) -- Herby talk thyme 19:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Proposal for compromise. It seems that some would like this deleted for its lack of content, while others want it kept for its potential. All seem to agree that the version at nomination is unacceptable. Were it not for the policy violations, this page would have been kept since there exists no community consensus between deletionists and inclusionists. As a compromise, I suggest we put up a nice message at the top with something like:
 * This page was nominated for it's violation of Wikibooks' NPOV policy (see the discussion arcive for details). It narrowly survived after the offending content was blanked. Some useful material for future contributors may lie in the page history, but any work on this must adhere to NPOV or it will be deleted.
 * My vote still stands as delete, but this compromise would satisfy me. --Swift 06:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think this is a very good idea -- we end up with a blank page and a POV history. There are no grounds for compromise here; the material violates NPOV, is extremely basic, and poorly written. We have two inactive users who want it and one active user who thinks it could possibly be turned into something useful eventually. Kellen T 08:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * "we end up with a blank page". Xania seems to disagree. The page ins't blank and what is there is interesting.
 * "the material violates NPOV". Do you think the present content violates NPOV? As you mentioned, the history is POV, but it contains seeds for future work and the state of the history is not a criteria for deletion.
 * I agree that it doesn't seem likely that or  are coming back to fix this. But another user has expressed the opinion that this book is currently a valuable stub. I don't see the need for it, but neither the gain in deleting it.
 * Could you please either explain why the current state of the article warrants its deletion, or why the past state should determine it's deletion? --Swift 09:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Support Kudos to you Swift, as I see the problem, this compromise will resolve the block to the deletion that is now only defended by User:Xania (since the parameters for the first poll were changed and this constitutes a new call for objections to a delete), this would solve the problem (no delete), but User:Xania could also agree in giving a more extensive timeout for the evolution of the work (some months) failing that, another VfD, if not we risk having a book that no one wants to take on and will remain stale forever. Any way the proposed tag will only leave to the interpretation of a future users what constitutes a good enough time/change to put it here again, we can address this by providing a new extended timeout... --Panic 08:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Xania would like to keep this book but isn't especially interested in it. If the majority here want it deleting then that's no problem.  I think our decision should be 'delete' or 'keep and anything in between is just wishy-washy. Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Poland_2.svg|15px]]talk 12:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Panic, but I don't think that any extensions should be given (I didn't even like the first one and think we should have voted keep and then revisited this a little later). This has been going on for far too long. I really think we can solve this by seeing the merit in each others arguments (of which neither side is void of) and compromising. --Swift 09:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Closing Rationale

I have reviewed these comments thoroughly. No work has been carried out on this since it was placed on hold (prior to that it was actually closed as delete and then re-opened by someone wanting to work on it). In practice the only current vote in favour of keeping is Xania's. Swift's compromise is very good indeed if a compromise were needed. However Kellen's view, Swift's restatement of delete and previous views such as Johnny's and Whiteknight's leave me quite happy with closing this as a delete. I will put it out of our misery shortly! I'm sure the topic will return in some form - at some stage in the future it would be good to think we could achieve a quality book in this field. This is not that book. -- Herby talk thyme 12:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)