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Witchcraft was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
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Current consensus on article scope:
Current consensus on organization:
Current consensus on the form of the first paragraph:
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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
Text and/or other creative content from Contemporary witchcraft was copied or moved into Witchcraft on 16 March 2017. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
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On 19 July 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved from Witchcraft to Witchcraft (classical). The result of the discussion was not moved. |
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The sub-sub-section for Witchcraft#Ancient Roman world is entirety duplicative of material in the European_witchcraft#Antiquity section. It is, by itself, as long as most of the other regions covered in this article, which seems unbalanced. It has been restored to this article twice without explanation, description, or suggestion of what it adds to coverage by being repeated in this article. - Darker Dreams ( talk) 23:39, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
What do others think of moving the word alleged in the first sentence?
...is the use of alleged supernatural powers... Vs my suggestion: ...is the alleged use of supernatural powers...
Its subtle, but I believe this is more in line with the article Malibu Sapphire ( talk) 03:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Looking for a quote I remember from a source but don't seem to have saved anywhere and found this;
- Darker Dreams ( talk) 14:13, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue watchers of this page may be interested in. - Darker Dreams ( talk) 19:20, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I know there's been a lot of discussion of the lede, so please forgive me if this is out of turn, but to my mind, the opening sentence involves a mistake: "Witchcraft, as most commonly understood in both historical and present-day communities, is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic." When believers in witchcraft say, "That is witchcraft," they are not saying that someone is making use of allegedly supernatural powers. They are saying that someone is making use of supernatural powers, period.
It is a bit understandable why someone added 'allegedly'. I think we can all agree that part of the challenge of getting this right is that we want to describe and define something that only exists according to certain worldviews, without saying on behalf of Wikipedia that this thing is real. So we need to say something like: "According to certain worldviews, witchcraft is...." There is a temptation to hedge even further, to distance the encyclopedia from any implication that witchcraft is real, by adding an adverb like "allegedly". But this actually makes the statement incorrect. When you write, "As most commonly understood in worldview X, [ ... ]," the words after the comma describe the world according to that worldview.
For the sake of accuracy, as well as clarity and brevity, the word 'alleged' should, in my opinion, be removed from the first sentence.
Compare the opening line of the article on God: "In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith." It would be a mistake to change this to: "In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the allegedly supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith." In monotheistic thought, God is not merely the allegedly supreme being; according to that kind of thought, God really is the supreme being.
I obviously want to respect the democratic process employed above, and if that has to be prioritized, so be it, but please reconsider. Omphaloscope talk 17:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Witchcraft article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11Auto-archiving period: 45 days |
Witchcraft was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Delisted good article |
This
level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Current consensus on article scope:
Current consensus on organization:
Current consensus on the form of the first paragraph:
|
This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
Text and/or other creative content from Contemporary witchcraft was copied or moved into Witchcraft on 16 March 2017. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
On 19 July 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved from Witchcraft to Witchcraft (classical). The result of the discussion was not moved. |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
The sub-sub-section for Witchcraft#Ancient Roman world is entirety duplicative of material in the European_witchcraft#Antiquity section. It is, by itself, as long as most of the other regions covered in this article, which seems unbalanced. It has been restored to this article twice without explanation, description, or suggestion of what it adds to coverage by being repeated in this article. - Darker Dreams ( talk) 23:39, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
What do others think of moving the word alleged in the first sentence?
...is the use of alleged supernatural powers... Vs my suggestion: ...is the alleged use of supernatural powers...
Its subtle, but I believe this is more in line with the article Malibu Sapphire ( talk) 03:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Looking for a quote I remember from a source but don't seem to have saved anywhere and found this;
- Darker Dreams ( talk) 14:13, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue watchers of this page may be interested in. - Darker Dreams ( talk) 19:20, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I know there's been a lot of discussion of the lede, so please forgive me if this is out of turn, but to my mind, the opening sentence involves a mistake: "Witchcraft, as most commonly understood in both historical and present-day communities, is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic." When believers in witchcraft say, "That is witchcraft," they are not saying that someone is making use of allegedly supernatural powers. They are saying that someone is making use of supernatural powers, period.
It is a bit understandable why someone added 'allegedly'. I think we can all agree that part of the challenge of getting this right is that we want to describe and define something that only exists according to certain worldviews, without saying on behalf of Wikipedia that this thing is real. So we need to say something like: "According to certain worldviews, witchcraft is...." There is a temptation to hedge even further, to distance the encyclopedia from any implication that witchcraft is real, by adding an adverb like "allegedly". But this actually makes the statement incorrect. When you write, "As most commonly understood in worldview X, [ ... ]," the words after the comma describe the world according to that worldview.
For the sake of accuracy, as well as clarity and brevity, the word 'alleged' should, in my opinion, be removed from the first sentence.
Compare the opening line of the article on God: "In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith." It would be a mistake to change this to: "In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the allegedly supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith." In monotheistic thought, God is not merely the allegedly supreme being; according to that kind of thought, God really is the supreme being.
I obviously want to respect the democratic process employed above, and if that has to be prioritized, so be it, but please reconsider. Omphaloscope talk 17:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)