Category talk:en:Blasphemy

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Firstly — if we do keep this, it should be named "English blasphemous terms", or "English terms considered blasphemous", or something, because the current name implies that it's supposed to hold English terms on the topic of blasphemy, which does not appear to be the case.

Secondly — I don't see that there's any need to split Category:English swear words so finely. It's not a big category.

—Ruakh_TALK 14:04, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Blasphemous swears are significantly distinct from general swear and are subject to a specific interest that justifies having a category of his own. The "not a big category" argument doesn't seem to stand, as it raises the bar from what is usually expected from categories, that is more than 2 or 3 entries. English terms considered blasphemous sounds better to me.--ShedCorner (talk) 14:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) It also would need to be integrated into our normal category tree structure. A potential problem with this category is that the determination as to what is blasphemous is a theological question to which different religions may have different answers. Many muslims would consider a lot of our entries blasphemous just by virtue of having images in them. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:25, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Delete. Current content: Christ, Christ on a bike, goddamn, hell, holy shit, Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:59, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Move to Category:English blasphemous terms per Ruakh's alternative suggestion and clarify intent. I would welcome knowing which English words and expressions were considered blasphemous in some religion or other. I wouldn't hurt to have it subdivided by religion. It might even be useful for definers so as to avoid using blasphemous terms in definitions orn usage examples where not necessary or at least useful. A blasphemybot to tag entries using such words for review would be kind of handy. As an example, would it not be good to make sure that definitions ans usage examples tagged {{Judaism}} did not contain the spelled out god rather than having g-d?

I suppose we might be better off to not get involved in such matters so overtly and systematically, but there are advantages to it. DCDuring TALK 22:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary is not censored, so I don't think we should do such things. Besides, if we want to keep a neutral POV, then we would either have to avoid offending all religious sensibilities or offending none of them. Since the former is something I certainly do not want (us) to get into, I think it's better and easier to go for the second option. —CodeCat 22:52, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Delete per nom. Too narrow. bd2412 T 03:14, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

@Codecat: Yes, I would be interested in avoiding offense to any religion in defining the terms used in that religion, and in determining whether there were patterns of blasphemy-based harassment of any religion. DCDuring TALK 02:11, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

• We already have a tags for ethnic and nationalistic pejoratives and offensive terms. Blasphemy just gives a more precise delineation of one kind of offensiveness. Linguistics does include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. I see no reason why we should not include lexical content from those areas in our scope. This category supports such an objective. DCDuring TALK 02:11, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Delete --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

• What does the lemming test say? Other dictionaries label terms as offensive, vulgar, and pejorative, but do any other dictionaries label terms as blasphemous? I doubt it, and since the thing about blasphemous terms is that people are offended by them, I say we should just merge this category (and any context template that feeds it) into Category:English offensive terms. —Angr 10:11, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

  I don't think that other dictionaries are comparable in this regard in two ways:

  1. They do not have the ability to support as elaborate a system of categories as we do already.
  2. They do not as much potential for enabling diverse groups to interact with each other in near real time.
  3. They cannot readily have users provide full information about such matters.

  Other dictionaries have responded to the risk of offense (with its clarifying financial implications for them) by defining terms in ways that studiously avoid giving offense, ie, self-restraint. Most seem to even limit inclusion of terms to avoid giving offense - something I would oppose vigorously. Our population of contributors includes some who seem to lack commitment to the idea of a Wiktionary that serves all, not to mention maturity. Whenever we have a problem we attempt to use technology to solve it unobtrusively. Recording terms that give offense would enable bots or even humans to patrol for the use of such terms in user space so that the use could be reviewed and emended if necessary and possible. DCDuring TALK 13:32, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

  I'm certainly not saying we should restrict the inclusion of offensive terms, or that we shouldn't mark them and categorize them as such. I'm just not sure we really need to classify offensive terms by the specific type of offense they give. Do we have and/or want categories like "English racist terms", "English sexist terms", "English agist terms", "English homophobic terms", etc.? —Angr 15:10, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

  Over the course of this conversation, I have come to realize that what I am interested in is how to collect user input on such terms. I had thought that more tags would help, eg, {{blasphemy}}, {{racist}}, etc. But that might cause more problems than it would solve. I suppose that the combination of Feedback, entry talk pages, user edits to entries (including our existing tags) should be sufficient. But how do we ensure the collection of such instances in a useful way? Whatever we collect from users would need to be supplemented by our own researches, too, because we cannot count on users for comprehensive coverage. DCDuring TALK 16:35, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

This might be better as an Appendix than as a category. Surely an Appendix with explanatory text would be of much more use than a simple category? --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

An Appendix might be a good thing, but it does not help with the process of accumulating such terms. I am open to any thoughts about how to collect terms which might be considered offensive by the wide population of potential users, especially those whose beliefs and sensibilities are not represented by those who contribute to pages like this. DCDuring TALK 15:16, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

• Kept due to lack of action. --ElisaVan (talk) 14:28, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

• Closed in error by WF above. Consensus points to deletion, so far after the fact, I am closing this as RFDO failed. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:34, 29 April 2018 (UTC)