Talk:Scientology
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ANI notice about editing on Scientology topic
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding the derailing of content discussions. The thread is Cambial Yellowing on Scientology. The discussion is about the topic Scientology. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:54, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
- Apologies for the late notice. I had initially posted the notice at WikiProject:Scientology, which had been inactivated 10 years ago, and though I reactivated it 2 years ago now, it still has less than 5% of the page watchers that this article has—meaning this subject has far more interest than an old WikiProject does. Since the editing of this article is of substantial focus in the ANI thread, I am placing a notice here as well. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:54, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
- The ANI thread and its result was archived at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1209 § Cambial Yellowing on Scientology. Today, I am archiving several of the mega-threads here on this talk page that were related to the ANI but which are probably no longer needed as a working copy for the Scientology article. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 03:46, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
Fixing the article
I see several things need to occur based on earlier talk page issues brought up. These might include:
- rewording so that the article is written more in plain English and less in academic-style writing (per INTRO, TECHNICAL, NOTJOURNAL, PLAINENGLISH);
- dealing with the citation overkill occurrences;
- simplifying and shortening the lead so it actually gives a summary of what Scientology is, and bumping from the lead any content which is better covered in the body and is not a major defining characteristic of the topic;
- removing or changing content which violates UNDUE, or at least get the article to a point where people are not continuing to post that the article fails NPOV.
Feel free to add to this list if you think of anything. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 01:26, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
I did a major trim of the lead. I tried to work on each paragraph in sequence, leaving the same topic for each paragraph, rather than an entire rewrite. It does read entirely different, though, since I simplified it greatly. The "details" should be in the body, not the lead. Let me know what you think about the new lead so far. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 03:21, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
Summary style
Per WP:SUMMARY, it is recommended that when an article is large (as this one is), one should split out subtopics to other standalone articles. Earlier talk page discussions settled that Scientology is the topmost article for the subject, with major articles Church of Scientology and Scientology beliefs and practices tied for second. It had been mentioned that "Scientology" was being used for content about the belief system while "Church of Scientology" was a spin-out for the organizations. However, I posit instead that "Scientology beliefs and practices" should be used for the belief system, while "Scientology" be designated the overarching label for all the topics.
There have been several earlier attempts at reducing the content in the Scientology article, while actually using the other articles to contain the detailed material while leaving short summaries in the Scientology article... per WP:SUMMARY. However, any attempts to reduce Scientology were met with a gatekeeper, and attempts were abandoned. Now that we are free to constructively work on this article, I think it's time to revisit the SUMMARY project.
Recently, I used the summary style and the template {{excerpt}}. I move some detailed content about real estate properties from Scientology as a business into the Scientology properties article, then modified "Scientology properties" so that there was a lead paragraph without any citations (citations were moved into the body of the article, leaving the lead as a true summary). Then I used {{excerpt}} to dynamically copy the lead paragraph into "Scientology as a business". It worked like a charm. (Citations in the lead can cause a problem in the target article, especially if the citations are "named" references, and they collide with similarly named ones. It's just cleaner to summarize the lead properly and leave citations in the body.)
We can use this method to reduce the content of Scientology so that it actually is a top-level article; a summary of the subject. Of course that means cleaning up the excerpt-source articles and working up their leads.
I'm willing to start working on this, but it would be helpful if others at least chime in. What say you guys? ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 06:41, 29 December 2025 (UTC)
- Makes sense to me. The article needs lots of work, and looks like you have a plan for it. Feoffer (talk) 11:36, 31 December 2025 (UTC)
- Yes I do, Feoffer. Right now I'm splitting up the huge template TM:Scientology (previously 184 articles) into major subtopic templates and this is helping me straighten out in my head the "topic tree" (hierarchical organization) that will be the framework for the summary style structure. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 17:58, 31 December 2025 (UTC)