Talk:Secular Shrine Theory

Gibberish -- not ready for mainspace

As of 2022-03-11, this article isn't very intelligible. The first paragraph of the §Overview section:

This is a debate that began in the early Meiji period in Japanese without a definition of Religion and religious practice. The English word "Religion" was translated as "Religion" by Kozaki Hiromichi (first published in Essentials of Religion[1]） Before that, Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote "sect" and "sectarianism" (first published in Yukichi Fukuzawa Collection).[2]）and Nakamura Masanao's "Hokkyo" (first published in the West).[3]）At the time, it was even seen as "following a certain doctrine", which was translated as.

I do not think this article should have been moved from draftspace. @Robert McClenon, you added an AFC comment using {{Copy edit}} and then added another AFC comment using {{sentback}} on 2021-12-10. @Bkissin, you then moved the article back to mainspace on 2022-01-24, with an edit comment that "Publishing accepted Articles for creation submission (AFCH 0.9.1)". However, I see no indication in the history that this article was accepted. In addition, the {{Copy edit}} concerns posted by @Robert McClenon are still very much present in the article. Indeed, I would say that the editing required for this article goes well beyond just "grammar, usage, and style" to include basic intelligibility and subject-matter expertise as well -- §Overview section cannot be reworked into understandable English without referring to some other text. The creator of the article on 2021-12-09, @SiliconProphet, seems to have been using machine translation of the Japanese Wikipedia article at ja:神社非宗教論 and has no apparent facility themselves with the Japanese language. (They "ported" various other articles in like fashion from the Japanese, German, and Russian Wikipedias as well, with similar results that include passages of nonsense text.)

Considering that 1) Robert's initial {{Copy edit}} AFC comment remains largely unaddressed, and 2) this article still fails to convey understandable meaning in much of its text, I strongly recommend that this be moved back to draftspace until it can be rendered intelligible.

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:33, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Eirikr - You wrote: However, I see no indication in the history that this article was accepted. User:Bkissin is an AFC reviewer, and they used the AFCH script to move the article from draft space to article space. Perhaps you mean that they made a mistake in accepting the draft. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

In December 2021, I gave the article a cursory review, and concluded that it had grammar and usage problems, and was not ready for mainspace. I have now given it a somewhat more thorough review, enough to conclude that I will also be putting the {{incomprehensible}} tag on it. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

There is a developing consensus that articles should not be unilaterally moved from article space to draft space if they have been in article space for an extended period of time. That is, any action to move an established article back to draft space should be done by consensus, and the consensus procedure for the purpose is AFD, with draftification being an Alternative to Deletion. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Robert McClenon:

• Re: I see no indication in the history that this article was accepted --

I am new to figuring out the process for Drafts and acceptance, and apparently I have not fully understood things. From Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Reviewing_instructions#How_to_place_a_submission_"under_review", I expected to see an edit to the page marking it as "under review". I did not see that, and did not know that User:Bkissin is an AFC reviewer; I only saw the page moved, with no clear indication (that I could find) that it had ever undergone review. So as you suggest, it seems I was incorrect earlier, and this article has apparently been accepted.

With that in mind, I still hold that this article is not ready for mainspace. I stumbled across User:SiliconProphet's contributions earlier this year while working on various topics related to Japanese terminology (I'm a Japanese-English translator and hard-core word nerd, spending most of my time over at EN Wikt as an admin there). I have been quite concerned about the low quality of SiliconProphet's machine translations, and I have been slowly following up on that user's articles to check current state.

I do think that the topic described in the Secular Shrine Theory article is notable enough to merit inclusion, and I do not advocate for its outright removal. However, in its current state, I do not think that the article is ready for prime time.

• Re: the developing consensus that articles should not be unilaterally moved from article space to draft space if they have been in article space for an extended period of time, is there anything about handling cases where a Draft article has been unilaterally moved to mainspace? Or, worse yet, just re-created?

There's a different user, User:Mare-Silverus and sock User:GinNike0000, who earned a permanent ban at EN Wikt for persistently adding incorrect information, and who remains sporadically active here at EN Wiki. I was following up on incorrect info they had added to Kinchaku and noticed issues -- if you peruse Special:History/Kinchaku and Special:History/Draft:Kinchaku, you'll see that the older article was moved to draftspace and referred for deletion; User:Mare-Silverus re-created the mainspace article and ignored the draftspace one, despite clear notifications on their user talk page. The draftspace version just languished until another user simply redirected to the still-problematic mainspace entry.

Curious as to your advice on the above two -- next steps for Secular Shrine Theory (problems with {{incomprehensible}}), and for Kinchaku (falling afoul of WP:Notability and WP:NOTDICT). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:02, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Eirikr - There is a clear indication that the page was moved from draft space to article space using the AFCH script by User:Bkissin. While the history of a document occasionally shows that it was placed under review, that step is only used occasionally, because the purpose of marking a page as under review is to "check it out" to notify other reviewers so as to avoid a conflict. Normally a reviewer either accepts the draft, using the AFCH script, which moves it from draft space to article space and performs a variety of cleanup functions, or declines it, using the AFCH script, which marks it as no longer waiting for review, and leaves information on the draft, and on the user talk page of the submitter. There is a clear indication that the page was moved from article space to draft space on 9 December 2021 by User:Trappist the monk, and then a clear indication that the page was submitted for review on 11 December 2021. It was available for review from 11 December until 24 January, when it was accepted by Bkissin. The history is clear enough if you know how to interpret it. There isn't any procedural question about the history of the article. There are substantive questions about what namespace the article should be in, and about what it says (which is partly incomprehensible). Robert McClenon (talk) 01:11, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

You ask about cases where a draft article is unilaterally moved to mainspace, or, worse yet, just re-created. I am not sure what you mean by unilaterally moved to mainspace, because that is sort of what an AFC accept does. If you would prefer some other system for handling draft articles, or that draft space be abolished, there are other editors who will agree with you and disagree with you at Village Pump. You ask about an article that is just re-created. Maybe I don't understand, because that sounds like that is what G4 is for. But this article wasn't deleted, only moved to draft space. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:11, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Eirikr - If you are asking what to do when a page is first unilaterally moved from article space into draft space, and then copied back into article space, there are various answers, one of which is AFD, which is the usual way in Wikipedia of addressing concerns that an article should not be in mainspace. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:20, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that what to do about Kinchaku can be discussed somewhere else, maybe at Talk:Kinchaku. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:11, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Robert for the walkthrough. Re: Secular Shrine Theory, I had seen Bkissin's edit comment, "Bkissin moved page Draft:Secular Shrine Theory to Secular Shrine Theory: Publishing accepted Articles for creation submission (AFCH 0.9.1)", but with no edit to the content of the page by Bkissin, and in light of the remaining issues that you'd commented on, the clear unintelligibility of much of the page, and my ignorance of Bkissin's status as a reviewer, it seemed to me that someone had used a script to move the page without actually attempting to read and understand it. I had (perhaps naively?) assumed that an actual review would take into account the content of a page and whether it is understandable. Now I am left somewhat confused as to what the review process is actually supposed to do.

Re: moving articles, I have seen other cases of pages moved from draftspace to mainspace with no apparent review, such as mentioned at User_talk:MaitreyaVaruna#Draft_status_for_multiple_articles.

Re: the Kinchaku, I do not think that the topic is notable enough for an independent article. Thank you for the pointer to AFD, I'll bring up the Kinchaku article there. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 10:22, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Eirikr - There was no edit to the content of the page because the reviewer does not usually edit the content of the page. There is a checklist for reviewers, but the main criterion is that the reviewer is supposed to make a judgment as to the likelihood of the page surviving AFD, and to accept if they think that there is a 51% change that the page will survive AFD. The most important consideration is notability, and I think that we agree that the topic is notable. I think that you are really asking whether the reviewer made a mistake. It does not appear that you have tried to discuss the Secular Shrine Theory article with the reviewer, User:Bkissin. I think that the next step is to try to discuss with the reviewer. Then if you still think that the article should be moved back to draft space, the next step is AFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:37, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I believe the topic is notable, but a lot of content in the article was more about State Shinto than about Secular Shrine Theory, and the article shouldn't have passed AFC. I am attempting to trim down the content in the article to focus on the theory itself rather than state shinto, and making it comprehensible MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 19:58, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Punting articles to draftspace is a terrible practise, they almost never improve in draftspace and often just end up being deleted after the original creator gets dejected and disapointed.★Trekker (talk) 19:13, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Completely agreed. Plus in draftspace articles get less exposure to other editors I believe too, so if they are edited they will be edited only by the single person whose writing weaknesses were the cause of the problem anyways MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 22:12, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Sources worth looking at later

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343659024_shendaofeizongjiaolunnozhankai MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 02:57, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

http://gurukun.jugem.jp/?eid=377 MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 03:03, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Scope of the article

The ideal scope of the article is difficult to ascertain. I think it's clear this theory is primarily a Meiji period idea and more related to the origin of State Shinto than an intrinsic part of State Shinto later on, but the exact level of legal disussion and discussion of State Shinto is up for debate here. MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 03:02, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Maintenance templates

Are we at a point where we can remove the maintenance templates? MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 10:17, 5 April 2022 (UTC)