Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Less-active Mormon

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. No consensus whether to keep or merge, and both sides made good arguments. However, neither outcome would require an open AFD. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 02:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Less-active Mormon

Less-active Mormon (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Per source searches, this topic has not received enough coverage in reliable sources to qualify for a standalone article. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:22, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:22, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

• Keep: Many of the links to searches for sources above work better if you use related search terms other than the article's title. (Try "Inactive Mormon" for instance.) In any case, I think the sources used in the article demonstrate notability, particularly the "Activity in the church" entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism and this essay with a bibliography full of other very relevant scholarly sources including this article, this book chapter, and this scholarly article, just looking at the first 5 entries. In my searches I also found a lot of recent work by Jana Riess, a scholar looking at downward activity trends in Mormon Millennials. (Here's her being interviewed on a radio program.)

  Aside from all that, the fact that less-active/inactive Mormons account for a majority of Mormons worldwide, I think the subject matter is notable, though needing expansion, and probably too detailed to include in the Mormons article. As for the inevitable OTHERSTUFF argument, see Lapsed Catholic. ~Awilley (talk) 04:36, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

• Comment – @Awilley: This source has some content, but other sources all seem to cover disaffiliation and disengagement, as in entirely leaving the faith/church, rather than being "less active". North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:49, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

• @Northamerica1000: That's part of the problem. "Inactive" and "Less-active" are used interchangeably. "Inactive" is probably the best description of what people are actually doing, while "Less active" was the term more often used in church literature to describe "inactive" people. I wouldn't oppose moving the article to "Inactive". ~Awilley (talk) 04:22, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

• Keep this article is totally about disaffiliation and disengagement, although it could use significant cleanup to make that point. At the moment it is focusing too heavily on a definition, when it should be about a full topic. There is no shortage of good sources for this topic and related topics, and given that this is a relevant issue, it is notable. That being said, obviously the church would like this covered up, so if this is deleted, no complaints. Dysklyver 08:59, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
• merge into the main LDS article and start a section on membership numbers. There's no mention of numbers that I can see, and this would make a good start on such a paragraph. Mangoe (talk) 14:55, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

  See The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints#Geographic_distribution_and_membership for the relevant section that mentions some numbers but not percentages (this needs to be fixed). Also see Mormons#Latter-day_Saints that is a fairly direct summary of this article. But it's not a problem to have some material duplicated across articles (WP:NOTPAPER) and it would be impractical to merge all the material in this article. That's why I broke it out in the first place, to have a place where it could be discussed in more depth than is allowed in a top-level subject article. ~Awilley (talk) 04:39, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

• Merge or redirect - in its present form, it is difficult to justify its existence. Deb (talk) 15:13, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
• Merge this is WP:DICTDEF currently, and it's hard to see a significant amount of material existing on the topic. Mormons#Groups_within_Mormonism is an acceptable target, but I have no strong preference as to the target. power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:02, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
• Keep - A little bit towards the dictionary definition side of things as the piece now sits, but (much to my surprise), this strikes me as documented, encyclopedic treatment of a defined category of LDS church membership. Passes GNG. Carrite (talk) 14:43, 29 October 2017 (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 article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.