On the main page I see a category called "Cults".



I was hoping to have this changed to "Religions" due to the fact that many of the topics selected for this section include all faiths.

Just one example from the list, Islam:
Does anyone here think Islam is a cult

The word cult is most offensive to those that belong to minority religions, and any one person's belief system should ever be called by a derogatory term.

To each his own....


Would the Editors consider making this small change so that the topic is inclusive of all faiths ?



Edit: Change for clarity.




[edit on 15/7/2008 by anxietydisorder]

There isn't any real need, we already have a "Religions and related subjects" category. I mean if you manage to convince WOS or Optimist there may be a front page change, Cults for Religious and related subjects.

Fox

I agree that many so called "cults" might better fall under the topic of Religions and related subjects, there are some on that page that deifinitely do fall under the category of cults, like the Branch Davidians (I know, big conspiracy topic) and Heavens Gate. Also, Islam is not listed as a cult on that page, but rather it is the Nation of Islam. However I am not too sure about that subject, so I will need to read up a bit more on that before I come to any conclusion. This is not to say I disagree with you anxietydisorder, I can see the logic in your thoughts. But I would like to have Optimist weigh in with his opinion on this as well before we make any changes.

What I have done for now is made subcategories of cults and Religions of each other. I do think that perhaps the category "Religions and related subjects" is very inclusive and could perhaps be read as including cults, so that they won't be singled out.

Hm.

What I think is the central topic, is the conspiracy and such things focus of the encyclopedia, on the one hand, and being courteous and polite, on the other. I definitely agree that cults as a topic is one of the topics that are found under the general topic of religion and so on, and so definitely think it's good to make the category Cults a sub category under the category Religions and related subjects, and also agree with the other thing I understand WOS to suggest, that out of courteousness could the articles in Cults just be moved right into Religions and related subjects, so not to label any group a "cult".

That's sort of the politeness side of it, though. The reason some categories were selected to appear on the Main Page, is, I imagine, that those particular categories are about topics that are like tinWiki's most interesting topics to those who visit. Now, the main category Species may have as a sub category Extraterrestrial intelligent life forms. But, keeping in mind what type of encyclopedia tinWiki is, it doesn't necessarily make sense to put a category like Species on the front page, since that category is so general that it contains many of those tinWiki articles that may not be about what you might call tinWiki's core area of focus.

If anything, I think it's important for tinWiki to "sharpen" the profile more and more, not blur things out and risk looking like simply a small Wikipedia. So, from how at least I think about the general topic of religion, I think it's not necessarily a good idea to replace the cults category with the religions category in the listing on the Main Page. Instead, I think it could be a good idea to discuss a little bit how to change the Cults category so that it doesn't offend people more than what is wanted here, if the category is at all considered warranted and to belong in tinWiki. I don't know too much about the topic of cults, but as I picture it, the notion of cults is very much appropriate to have as a category in tinWiki. Lots of issues that tinWiki is about seem to be related to the notion of cults, like secrets, magic, and probably lots of other stuff, which I would say means that type of category should be a part of tinWiki. Maybe the name can be changed to something less offensive, or something, or perhaps certain articles can be considered moved to another category so the memebers of that group or whatever is talked about in the article would not feel unreasonably negatively labelled by the article about them being in the cults category.

Guess that was a bit of thinking out loud, and not necessarily helpful in any specific way. That's pretty much what I can think of to comment for now, though.

To conclude: I think a couple of more ideas in this discussion thread could maybe give ideas for just enough change to the Cults category for still keeping it in a form that makes it an "asset" to tinWiki, but also avoiding being unwantedly offensive. I'd agree that "fine tuning" the category name, and/or moving specific articles out and to other categories could help with that.

Optimist