Wikiversity talk:Draft policy on religious content

Discussion from author's page
the following contains pertinent parts of the thread from the initial draft's author's page (wow that's a mouthful) --Opensourcejunkie 11:47, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Draft Questions
Hey, I'm most of the way done the first draft, but I want to include a couple more things, not the least of which is a section on unacceptable content. Is there any system at present for marking potentially unacceptable content? I know Wikipedia has a series of templates; do we have anything comparable? I couldn't find anything on Policies. --Opensourcejunkie 11:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I suggest that to continue this draft, we look at some possible problem cases and see how policy would cope (or would have to be developed to cope) with them. A good policy on religious content will be difficult. (1) The Ásatrú religion, which seems to really exist, but has alleged controversial political associations - to what extent could WV be a platform for teaching the tenets of this religion (not informing about, which is what an encyclopedia does, but teaching). (2) Many of the world's "great" religions have had sects in the past which have engaged in practices which seriously offend against what we might call "universal moral values" (so far as they exist) - e.g. flagellation, cannibalism, suicide. The trend in American prisons to invent or rediscover such sects and then sue the prisons under freedom of religion laws is an example of the abuse of one legal rule to evade another. Surely, again, it is one thing to inform about, another to teach these religions. Would a simple disclosure box be adequate? (3) Hinduism, in its mainstream form, includes the caste system and arranged marriages - can we teach these things as well as informing about them? Surely teaching involves an element of persuasion, or at least an intent that the learner should accept the truth of what is being taught. Do you see this as an issue? Should we be setting up a gatekeeper system here for what can acceptably be taught? Or is a mere disclosure box adequate? --McCormack 12:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback; I can definitely see your point. I was actually going to post a justification of the draft's (initial) neutral stance on the discussion page - I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  So, I'll post one here that I can later morph on over to the disc. page.


 * My reservation with a gatekeeper system is that it relies upon, as you noted, a "universal morality". Now I personally believe that there is, fundamentally, a universal morality among humans.  However finding one that every religion/sect outwardly agrees upon is, as far as I can tell, fairly intractable.  Even the much acclaimed commonality of "love" between religions is not universal; I once read about a tribe in South America that endorses hatred and individuality instead.  No, the fact that such a gatekeeper system is necessary demonstrates well that there are groups in disagreement with majority morality.


 * Thus in order to enforce such a system, we would have to exclude fringe viewpoints, and frankly I'm concerned that such exclusion will hinder the advancement of Wikiversity. Take for instance what JWSchmidt said on the discussion of scholarly ethics: "we know from our history that important ideas initially arising as minority points of view are sometimes eventually adopted by the vast majority once those ideas have a chance to be explored and understood. Many great ideas start out as fragile ideas that need to be protected. If we fully support the search for knowledge then scholars need to be given the freedom to explore and discuss unusual and unpopular ideas."


 * An obvious example would be evolution. If Wikiversity were around in the time of Darwin, would his Origin of Species have been accepted here?  "Universal morality" (at least in western culture) was predominantly Judeo-Christian; thus an anti-Creation (translated anti-God) work would likely have been discarded.  In the pursuit of unbridled knowledge, can we really afford to install such censure?  For all we know, society's morality may change in the upcoming years to include flagellation, suicide, or (God forbid) cannibalism.  (With the advent of Euthanasia, we may not be far from accepting suicide).


 * Thus I decided in the draft (and of course this is subject to change with the flow of consensus) to disallow any restrictions on the type of religion written about. The gatekeeper then lies downstream, at the requirement for scholarship (which will hopefully be objectively defined).  If a fringe religion/cult can write persuasively from a scholarly standpoint, then I cannot see how censuring it will further the goals of Wikiversity, let alone scholarship in general.  My opinion, anyway :-)


 * --Opensourcejunkie 15:32, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Gatekeeping
On the whole WP is very tolerant as regards gatekeeping and accepts pretty well all the examples I gave above. However WP draws the line (for example) at religious articles of a "my latest guru" style - i.e. when a guy comes along and someone else (or perhaps the guy himself) declares him a religious leader of a new religion and decides to use Wikimedia projects to proclaim his message. Where would you stand on WV's acceptance of religious articles on religions and topics that WP refuses? --McCormack 16:13, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Has anyone ever told you that you reply incredibly quickly? It's uncanny!


 * To be completely honest, I'm not sure where I stand. Mostly that's because I only have a fuzzy, incomplete picture of what people perceive Wikiversity to be.  In my few travels to discussion pages, I have read analogies similar to the idea of a Greek philosopher on a hill, dialoguing with whomever comes to him.  Such a model of Wikiversity would allow for new ideas, unsubstantiated by third-party sources.  In the same quote I mentioned above, JWSchmidt continues, "Fragile new ideas are not subject to verifiability in the traditional way that Wikipedia editors verify sources and citations."  Some people seem to see Wikiversity as a place to foster and research new ideas that may or may not have verifiable reliable sources attached to them.


 * At other times people seem more concerned with Wikiversity's reputation with respect to the outside world, as well as the other Wikimedia projects. Allowing Joe Thinksalot to come onto Wikiversity and just reel off his opinions can certainly denigrate people's perception of our scholarship, and this is exactly what an open-gate policy (such as the one I've written) would allow.


 * I have a tentative idea as to my stance on the matter - may I emphasize tentative; my perception of Wikiversity is as "under construction" as much of its policies. To answer your question outright, I do not believe that Wikiversity should define its acceptance policies based on those of Wikipedia; we have different goals (we obviously breach policy by merely breaching NPOV and NOR).  That being said, we have similar goals in that we both want to produce high quality, scholarly content.  Thus I think that we can elicit many lessons from studying (and adapting) Wikipedia's policies.


 * Personally, I sway more toward the "philosopher on a hill" perception of allowing new ideas, both unverifiable and obscure. I mostly tend this way because academia tend that way; it's how knowledge advances (in our current system).  Yet in spite of the openness to new ideas, universities are able to maintain a high level of scholarship; in fact they define scholarship.  How are they able to balance openness to ideas with close mindedness toward unscholarly works?  I think that the key to organizing Wikiversity's policies lies in understanding Academia's policies.


 * Without claiming to understand completely academia's solution, I will make a stab at it.
 * Academic publishing is subject to peer review
 * Peer review is performed by people familiar with the subject area (i.e. people who study mathematics don't judge the scholarship of a psychological study)
 * Each subject area has a set of criteria that help to objectively judge a work's scholarship.


 * I suspect that if we mimic the solution provided above, we may be able to enforce scholarship on all the Joe Thinksalot's of Wikiversity. Here's one possible solution:
 * If a learning plan's scholarship is called into question, a "peer review template" is placed at the top of the page/section. (the template would automatically place the page in a "peer review" category to make it easier for reviewers to find)
 * The community at large (or perhaps one of the subject matter experts / "referees" mentioned at Review board) would then classify the type of work (e.g. religious primary source/OR), and analyse it according to a set of criteria developed for that specific classification.
 * If consensus thus deems the work "unscholarly", either in whole or in part, it will then be subject to removal or revision.


 * It's one approach at any rate. I suppose I present it to demonstrate that there are methods to ensure that self-proclaimed philosophers etc. can be forced to do scholarly work.  Those who do not conform their writings to provided standards will be frustrated away, leaving the good philosophers to generate new ideas, and thus further the quest for knowledge.  (Of course I believe that all the philosophical knowledge one could ever need can be found in scripture, but that's just me :-D ) --Opensourcejunkie 17:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Would Darwin have been accepted by WV?
I hope so. One of the ideas I've been playing with (in a very formative sense) is that for science-related topics, there should be something like a fringe science percentage quota. For example, policy could state that no more than 10% of resources on a specific topic can be "fringe", and the fringe resources are tagged as such. The result of such a rule would be that if somebody wanted to add their latest fringe theory and the quota had been reached, they would have to add about 9 mainstream educational resources first. In other words, fringe theorists (who often know a lot about mainstream stuff as well) would be motivated to contribute primarily (boring) mainstream stuff. A rule like that would have allowed in Darwin. --McCormack 16:18, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What an innovative way to ensure quality! It attacks the issue from a direction that I never would have thought of.


 * How would that work from a technological standpoint? Would the author need to place the publication in a "fringe" category, upon which the quota was placed? --Opensourcejunkie 17:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * At the moment it's just an idea. But yes, it would depend on tagging (and therefore categorisation) of fringe material. A template would go onto any such resource, automatically categorising it. The idea behind this is complex. People want to post fringe material on Wikimedia projects because Wikimedia has a (good-ish) reputation and you can be seen there; but the reputation of Wikimedia projects turns on the mainstream stuff; by ensuring that fringe material remains on the edge and that the core is still strong, the fringe authors gain. --McCormack 20:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Unique content?
I think this policy should concentrate on what unique Wikiversity policy is specific and pertaining to religious content. Currently, for example, there is no religious-specific content in the Draft policy on religious content and therefore I would suggest this content get moved to NPOV. The religious content policy can then reference NPOV. I'm personally of the view that there is nothing unique about religious content which isn't covered by other policies. If we go creating special policy for religious content, then do we also need special policy for scientific content, etc.?? -- Jtneill - Talk 10:20, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that the current draft hasn't yet got to grips with specifically religion-related issues on acceptable and unacceptable teaching and learning materials. However I hope that the draft will get there, and I have left a post on the author's talk page to keep the ball rolling in the right direction. The second of the issues you raise (jtneill) is an implied slippery slope argument about the number of NPOV sub-policies we will require - i.e. you argue "if we have one subject-related sub-policy, we'll need an indefinite number" (or something like that). I think the answer here is quite clear: in the history of education, the relation of religion and education has been by far the most difficult of all, and so there is an absolutely clear case for a policy here. And yes, we will probably also need a policy on something around the area of science/research/fringe issues as well, but perhaps not quite so dramatically necessary; and after that I don't see any candidates for further subject-related special policies. --McCormack 16:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the NPOV section was created more to review the principles of NPOV than to write a policy on them. I'm curious as to why Wikiversity doesn't contain its own NPOV policy (WV:NPOV redirects to disclosures, which barely defines it, although it does refer to the definition at Meta).  The NPOv policy on Wikipedia is WP-specific, and the one on Meta leaves much to be desired. --Opensourcejunkie 12:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

cruelty/hate/violence/illegal acts
What if someone's religion promotes cruelty/hate/violence/illegal acts? How would this policy apply to them? --Remi 19:09, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I talked about this on opensourcejunkie's talk page. The moral problem here is quite great, particularly where mainstream religion promotes controversial behaviour - Hinduism's caste system and arranged marriages are a case in point. --McCormack 20:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The discussion on my talk page has been moved here, and I'm hoping to get some feedback on it. I tried to argue in favor of allowing such religions on WV, but if consensus decides to exclude them, I'll work on an exceptions clause. (or someone else can :-) --Opensourcejunkie 12:05, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Definition of scholarly works
I added a working definition of "scholarly" (as pertains to religious works) to the policy, to provide a set of objective criteria that can be used to weed out "unscholarly" religious material. I suspect that the definition is vastly insufficient in that it (A) probably doesn't specify all major categories of scholarly religious writings, and (B) probably doesn't specify adequate criteria for scholarship. However it's a working draft, and if anyone else can think of objective criteria for evaluating religious scholarship, please, add it. Or perhaps the issues faced in the future will help define what is scholarly and what isn't.
 * --Opensourcejunkie 15:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Gatekeeper based on WV goals
I installed a slight amount of censure at the beginning of the page: "A religion may be written about individually, or in comparison to others, with no limit to its type, number of constituents, or general acceptance among a population, except when such writings disrupt or destroy the Wikiversity learning environment"

I realize that this falls very short of excluding religions with questionable morality, so I'm sure it won't be enough. But perhaps it's a step in the "right" direction?

I am not opposed to this censure, because it appeals to the goals of Wikiversity rather than the ever-fluctuating "universal morality". Because of that, the policy is less likely to be challenged in the future than one based on shifting sands.


 * --Opensourcejunkie 12:32, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment
I think something like this is important, but I think improvements need to still be made and it's very important that we be both very clear and very careful with what we put here. One thing I find troubling is the chart at the bottom discussing hamsters; how are the second and third examples different in terms of scholarly tone? Neither are scholarly, IMO. As a matter of fact, none of the examples given use scholarly language—"coolness" is not something that has been systematized for animals AFAIK. The Jade Knight 05:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Proselytizing
I would say that there should probably be a specific mention that proselytizing is not allowed as part of any project, as a NPOV violation. Otherwise, it seems likely that someone will go through the motions of declaring their biases only to write something primarily designed to convert others to their beliefs. Sχeptomaniacχαιρετε 19:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * NPOV is not a Wikiversity policy. I favor an MPOV approach.  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 20:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should ban proselyting, as there's a very fine (and highly POV) line between simply informing someone about a religion from an emic perspective, and proselyting. However, we do need to be careful about it.  I am worried that if much proselyting goes on here, then anti- projects will spring up to counteract the proselyting and Wikiversity will end up like every other religious forum which is devoted to hot-headed apologetics and bashing.  I don't want to see that here.  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 20:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That's one half of my concern. The other half is that, if we don't specifically say "no" to proselytizing, we'll attract editors more interested in a free platform than scholarly work.
 * I agree that it's not going to always be clear-cut, but I think we should still state, in one way or another, that projects should not be primarily devoted to proselytizing. The community can make the decision as to whether something is over that fuzzy line or not. After all, there's going to have to be some kind of regular forum for comments as to whether projects created here are within the scope of WV's purpose, anyway. Sχeptomaniacχαιρετε 22:54, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Whatever we draft, we should make sure that it doesn't hinder those whose intention is simply to provide an emic perspective on their religion. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 00:00, 23 October 2008 (UTC)