Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Scientologist celebrities

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 No consensus, default to Keep. Walton^One 15:24, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Scientologist celebrities[edit]

Two reasons here: one, there's not clear cut definition for what a "celebrity" is, and two, it's essentially a fork of List of Scientologists, just for "celebrities". Kwsn^(Ni!) 23:28, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep List of Scientologists (five dollars says that it gets nominated today or tomorrow, otherwise I'd say "Merge") incorporates former members and church officials. Most of the names on here are recognizable; many are a surprise, but every one is sourced, which we tend to like in an article. A celebrity is generally considered to be a person who gets 1,000 or more ghits, based on WP:GHITS (which doesn't exist, but it ought to) Mandsford 23:35, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like you are five dollars richer, it has now been listed. Onto this AfD! You didn't guess that part, but you were still right..... Mathmo ^Talk 01:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom. Slartibartfast (19 92) 23:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom, WP:LISTCRUFT, and WP:V Rackabello 23:44, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. We already have this in the form of a category, and every one of those celebrities should already be tagged accordingly. --Dennis The Tiger (Rawr and stuff) 23:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep List of Scientologists and Merge List of Scientologist celebrities with List of Scientologists per this ongoing discussion [[1]] . I really would rather have had these two done as individual AfDs(!). Bigdaddy1981 00:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - normally these lists are, in my opinion, of no value as they simply imply a causal link between two orthogonal characteristics of the list members. However; here I do not believe it to be the case. The existence of a special Celebrity Centre run by the Church of Scientology and its apparent strong interest in recruiting celebrities (as well as the disproportionate number of scientologists in the movie industry) make this a non-trivial intersection. I do not; however, that some text might be valuable elucidating the linkage(s). Bigdaddy1981 20:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge back in with List of Scientologists (this is already tagged and has consensus) This list is properly referenced for membership in Scientology, unlike most of the category entries. It has also been proposed, after the merge, to change celebrity to notable, and require references for notability. By the time this nomination is done, it'll be over a #redirect stub. AndroidCat 00:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to the general list or else delete them both in favor of Category:Scientologists. Otto4711 00:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge into either (or both?) List of Scientologists or Scientology and celebrities. As the latter article discusses, Scientology actively promotes itself among celebrities (and advertises itself by way of its celebrity members), making the topic notable, even when "List of Christian celebrities," "List of Islam celebrities," "List of Jewish celebrities," "List of agnostic celebrities," or any other hypothetical list of that form would not be notable. Although I think the topic is notable, I think this list does not need to be its own article. It would work better in combination with one of those other articles.--orlady 01:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, please remove List of Scientologists from the AfD. This is not correct process, as you are including it after the AfD has already started. Please strike it out yourself. Thanks. 01:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Keep roughly based on what Mandsford said. Mathmo ^Talk 01:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge per above, as I've been suggesting for a long long time now. wikipediatrix 01:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge those names not on the List of Scientologists. "Celebrity" is not a precisely defined word.--Fahrenheit451 01:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The scope of the article could be better defined at the start of the article, or alternatively moved to a better named article. Either way, while this is a problem.... it is not particularly big one. And such list of celebrities who are scientologists is very important, due to their linking with each other. We even have an article dealing entirely with this, Scientology and celebrities. I'd even say that is a better place to merge to, however I still believe it is better to not merge and have this as a stand alone article for purposes of increased navigation and readability. Mathmo ^Talk 01:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep the existence of the article Scientology and celebrities speaks in favor of this list. Mukadderat 02:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The existence of the supposed practice of Scientology to recruit celebrities doesn't mean that a list of celebrities is encyclopedic. Otto4711 03:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- It is a very natural qestion who was recruited. It is always the case: if we have an article Xxx yy, then List of Xxx yy is reasonable, if the entries in the List are wikipedia articles, but creating a category would be pointles, if the criterion is not really definitive. Planet->List of planets but not Table->List of tables Mukadderat 21:35, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This is what categories are for.--Dacium 03:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Categories and lists are not exactly the same. Do not get all of one because the other exists. Mathmo ^Talk 03:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please remove List of Scientologists from this AFD. It was added quietly after 8 people had commented. This is making it almost impossible to figure out what people are commenting on.--orlady 03:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can see people are still making comments to merge into this list which has been incorrectly. There is even a merge directly underneath your very prominent comment! Mathmo ^Talk 04:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge the celebrities list into List of Scientologists per above. --musicpvm 04:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Delete Trivial intersection of religion + celebrity status (WP:OCAT) Corpx 04:51, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not trivial at all, far from it. Scientology has very strong links with many celebrities. Mathmo ^Talk 04:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not saying its trivial, but it is a trivial intersection Corpx 05:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How is it a trivial intersection? There is an entire article based on the connection between Scientologist and celebrities (Scientology and celebrities). --musicpvm 09:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Which would make it "a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right." per WP:OCAT. Kappa 09:29, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. This to me is no different than celebrity fans of a sports team. This is not based on the connection between Scientology and celebs, but rather is a list of famous people who follow this religion, which is a trivial intersection, just like it'd be for List of Christian celebrities Corpx 14:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How many articles do we have about celebrity fans of sports teams? Kappa 20:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Only time I've seen them is when they end up on AFD and they get deleted. Corpx 22:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well there you go, or you do think Scientology and celebrities is deleteable? Kappa 21:51, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or merge. Notable intersection. I don't actually think a category is a good idea, because people will already be in something like Category:American Scientologists. Kappa 09:29, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also Category:Celebrities tells us "Individuals should only included in this category if they do not fit into another occupational category" (ie "famous for being famous") so making this a subcat would break that. Kappa 09:32, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or Merge into Scientology and celebrities. Many delete votes are saying this is a trivial intersection between two unrelated topics, however Scientology actively uses media and arts celebrities to publicise itself as a matter of policy, therefore it is valuable to have a well sourced list of which 'celebrities' are scientologists. "Recruitment and endorsements by Scientologist celebrities have always been very important to the Church of Scientology. Scientology actively recruits celebrities to promote Scientology to the public at large. Written Scientology policies describe recruiting celebrities in great detail. Scientology has had a written program governing celebrity recruitment since at least 1955, when L. Ron Hubbard created "Project Celebrity", offering rewards to Scientologists who recruited targeted celebrities. A Scientology policy letter of 1976 states that "rehabilitation of celebrities who are just beyond or just approaching their prime" enables the "rapid dissemination" of Scientology." Nick mallory 23:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The concept of celebrity might be fuzzy in real life, but -- even ignoring the fact that so is notability -- in context of Scientology, celebrities are very clearly defined through the use of the Celebrity Centres. Accordingly, the original nomination's first clause is laid to an invalid premise.

As for the second clause -- this happens to be incorrect as well. For an obvious counterexample, Lisa McPherson was certainly a notable Scientologist, but she does not fit into the Scientologist celebrity category. Digwuren 10:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - As others have noted, the Church of Scientology has a specific relationship to celebrities which makes this a meaningful category. john k 23:36, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The CoS has specific policies regarding the recruitment of celebrities, including Celebrity Centres and Hubbard made a list of celebrities to recruit in 1963. So this is relevant. On the other hand List of Scientologists can be deleted. --Leocomix 08:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - It does seem to me that the two lists are redundant to each other. However, there are already two pages, Celebrity Centre and Scientology and celebrities, which show that this organization makes a particular effort to "recruit" celebrities. Presumably, involvement in one of these centres qualifies as its definition of celebrities. I'm not sure the other list couldn't be deleted, unless we have evidence that a fair number of non-celebrity academics or others who the church doesn't consider "celebrities" can be added to it. John Carter 15:16, 16 August 2007 (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.