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Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Methodism

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The following discussion is an archived proposal of the WikiProject below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.

The resulting WikiProject was not created.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Methodism
Wikipedia:Methodism

Description

An expansion of the Work Group to a full Child Project Jerodlycett (talk) 09:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

List of important pages and categories for this proposed group

List of WikiProjects currently on the talk pages of those articles
Please invite these and any other similar groups to join the discussion about this proposal. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory to find similar WikiProjects.
Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
I feel that much like the group Anglicanism above (which we split from, read our lovely lovely articles to find out more), we are a large enough group (28 of the Denominations or more have an article) and have an entire portal already. If we don't qualify for an entire new Project, then why do other super-denominations Lutheranism for example?

Support

Also, specify whether or not you would join the project.

  1. Jerodlycett (talk) 09:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  2. Bellerophon5685 - I support the project. Methodism and its various organizations is certainly a wide enough subject to warrant a WikiProject. I do not know how much time I could devote to such a project though.--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 04:26, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

I guess the main question in my eyes is in which way the simple act of creation of a separate project would actually benefit the development of the topic area. For all practical purposes, the only difference between a WikiProject and work group is the name itself. And, honestly, there tends to be a lot of effort in renaming relevant categories, pages, etc., to formalize the proposed name change. I would be interested in knowing in what ways people would think that a simple change in the name of the extant group would in and of itself help to develop the content or increase the level of collaboration on it. John Carter (talk) 16:31, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I feel it would help with the organization and add validation. Creating and maintaining the pages for the Category:Methodist bishops (there are hundreds of note) is large enough to be a workgroup or project of its own. The United Methodist Church is one of the largest denominations, and could qualify as its own work group. Being able to have these two (and other) workgroups would help focus those. Most of the categories and pages already have the correct name, the trouble would be changing the template on them from WikiProject Christianity/Methodism work group to just WikiProject Methodism.
As someone who has set up somewhere in the neighborhood of several hundred wikiprojects and work groups, I have to say that in my experience I have rarely if ever seen that in even the intermediate term the simple existence of a separate project in any way helps get more attention to the pages. And there is rather a lot of effort involved in the changeover of terminology. Certainly, if there can be demonstrated a sufficient number of editors to support the topic, it would probably be best to see an increase of the level of activity of the work group first. I rather doubt the editors at WikiProject Christianity would necessarily oppose spinout of a separate group if the editors of the group were willing to undertake the effort in renaming on themselves. Regarding the amount of work possible for this topic, or, for that matter, the Assyrian Church of the East, any or all of the Eastern Catholic churches, the individual churches of the Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox traditions, or, for that matter, pretty much any denomination or group of denominations out there, I would agree that there is more than sufficient work to justify a separate project for each one. But it is not the amount of work involved which is the primary factor in the creation of a wikiproject, it is the number of editors willing to expend their time and efforts in the topic area that is of primary importance. As someone who has been really, really active in the religion topics for a long time, I regret to say that I can't remember ever seeing enough even intermediate term interest in any topic to continue to support the existence of a large number of them. Unfortunately. John Carter (talk) 18:33, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm hoping that this proposal will show the support needed. If it doesn't I'll continue my work regardless. I do plan to work on Methodism. If I'm alone, I'm alone. If not, then hopefully this will get support enough to branch out. Jerodlycett (talk) 09:45, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
I think you have a bit of a misconception about being "alone". Work groups are in general seen as being a part of the larger group, although, admittedly, in the field of Christianity, there is a freaking huge number of extant and potential articles out there and not that many people working on them. One of the reasons why the talk page of the Methodism work group is a redirect to WT:X is to hope to get more attention to any questions raised about it. Unfortunately, the lack of activity can just as easily be demonstrated in projects like the Oriental Orthodoxy project, even with their name. Maybe the best thing to do in general, and I can and I think the other comparatively few remaining editors at WikiProject Christianity would probably be willing to help to the degree circumstances permit, would be to find sources which relate specifically to the topics covered in Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Methodism work group/Encyclopedic articles, and to a lesser extent Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Encyclopedic articles that have particular relevance to Methodism. Those would probably be, in general, the most important articles and topics for wikipedia to cover. But, like history will show with a lot of other projects, the simple act of creation of a project doesn't mean that anyone who "joins" will actually do anything. SOme just like having their names on all sorts of lists. I could be counted as one of them, but for the most part the ones I've "joined" are the ones whose project pages I set up myself, and being a member makes it more likely I will get notified if the project is proposed for deletion or merger. John Carter (talk) 00:38, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
I have been a bit out of touch regarding my contributions to Wikipedia because life has been a bit busy on other fronts over the past year, so I am a month late in picking up on this proposal. It would be good for me to focus my Wikipedia interests on some aspects of Methodism, since that is in my ancestry (a Gt gt gt gt grandfather was one of John Wesley's Traveling Preachers). Reviewing my contributions (for another purpose) I found my "family tree" diagram of one of the Methodist Circuits, . Because of the origins of Methodism being primarily a revival movement in 18th century Britain, of which Wesleyan Methodism, exported to the USA, became dominant primarily through the organisational abilities of John Wesley, I ought to produce a similar diagram showing these main branches of British Methodism. In particular, it is notable that Welsh Calvinistic Methodism grew out of the work of Howell Harris, starting in 1735, and thus pre-dating the work of John Wesley. However, the "Methodist" label dated from Wesley's time as a student at Oxford, so there is no totally clear pattern. But the point is that we need to be able to convey the various strands, to disambiguate "Methodism".

So much for an introduction. It may make life easier for those of us with interests in Methodism to function as a separate group rather than as a sub-group of something else, so if pushed to a decision, I would favour this change, but my first instinct as to how to vote is "abstain".

BTW, one project waiting adequate time is to catalogue my private library of Methodism, between 50 and 100 volumes, starting with 17 annual volumes of the Methodist Magazine, and one of the Primitive Methodist Magazine ranging from 1794 to 1891. Unfortunately, I don't have time to read them all, but at least I can look up specific items if needed to add references in our articles. -- Robert of Ramsor (talk) 22:25, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

@Robert of Ramsor: alternately, if you like and have the capacity to do so, upload them to wikimedia commons, preferably in .djvu format or maybe .pdf, and we can try to start transcribing them and possibly adding the relevant material to articles. Particularly for Public Domain works only, but the annuals you mentioned would all be in PD given when they were printed. John Carter (talk) 22:35, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
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 project's talk page (if created) or at the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.

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