Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scriptural reasoning

Scriptural reasoning

The term "scriptural reasoning" gets around 8,000 Google hits, many of which are not actually about this topic but simply occurrences of "scriptural" and "reasoning" together. The subject exists, it was promulgated in 1995 by the Society for Scriptural reasoning, but the article itself cites no real sources independent of that society, and is heavily WP:OWNed by user:scripturalreaosning, who claims that his organisaiton are sole owners of the name "Scriptural Reasoning". The article itself is an atrocious mess, as you'd expect given the WP:COI / WP:SPA issues (virtually every edit is a conflicted SPA or a Wikipedian trying to clean up after them and being resisted) combined with a religious topic, that is not really a surprise. It also reads as a mix of WP:OR and WP:HOWTO, with a liberal sprinkling of promotion over the top. I have no idea whether this can actually be rendered down to a decent article, but this certainly is not one, it looks like a job for Wikipedia:Delete the junk to me. The edit warring of the WP:SPA is enough of a problem even without his taking it off-wiki (http://www.scripturalreasoning.org.uk/statement.pdf). Whether this is redeemable with a rewrite and topic-ban for user:Scripturalreasoning or not, I can't really tell, because the user has polluted the article and the talk page to such an extent as to make it virtually impossible to view the article in a context separate from his tendentiousness and disruption. One editor on ANI described it as "very much written from an insider perspective, and there's a lot of exposition that seems to be expand sourced statements in a loose OR way (akin to describing a tea-party and citing it to the Brewing Instructions on a teabag box)" - that sums it up perfectly. Guy (Help!) 19:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete into a doorknob. I searched for refs myself (as well as those found on the page). "significant third party references" is the phrase; the references found are divided into 1) things that mention it in passing (not significant) 2) statements by involved organisations (not third party) and 3) things that mention it when discussing something else (not a valid reference). It is filled with WP:OR and (although they don't matter) the intentions of the editor in question call the validity of this into doubt all on its own (normally if something is "important" per wiki-guidelines it will be important enough for someone not associtated with the thing in question to write an article). At some point this may become a widely used term/process, and at that point we can have an article on it, a neutral, well-referenced article edited by independent and neutral people. But this is not that point and this is definitely not that article. Ironholds (talk) 19:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep I think it'd be redeemable if a few rigorous and fresh editors could get to it with the battleground aspects removed. JzG, presumably that Google was without quotes? With quotes, it gets 8900 hits, with 450+ Google Books hits of which the majority refer specifically to it as a theological approach (many also give enough preview access to consult as sources).
More or less as JzG says, it does have an insider-written flavour, with a lot of how-to exposition that rather goes beyond what the cited sources say (rather as if someone wrote about a tea-party and cited as source the brewing instructions on the teabag box). Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]