Talk:Baháʼí Faith/Archive NPOV

NPOV Problem

I noticed that Bahalluah is referred to in the 'proper pronoun' sence as in "He formally announced His mission to His family " Is there actually precident to do this? I am reading this article as a curious third party and the use of the 'proper pronoun' instantly told me that the writer is a follower of the faith. The rest of the text is factual and informative though (like others I would like to see some qualification for the "second most wide-spread religion claim"... as in how the spread of a religion is counted).

The text made me think that followers consider Bahalluah as the latest (final?) in a string of prophets from Moses to Jesus to Mohammed... etc.. and I dont think the proper pronoun would be used in referring to any of them.

I recommend to just use the lowercase form in the article.

-anonymous user 6-29-2004

Well, it is the case that Baha'i do tend to uppercase pronouns when refering to Baha'u'llah. But then, we tend to upper case pronouns when refering to Mohammed, Jesus, The Buddha, Zoroaster, & Etc. Moslems do the same thing. I note that christians are inconsistant in this matter. It really bothers you? Rick Boatright 23:33, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

about the seccond most widespread please see the section above. Baha´is consider Baha'u'llah to be the most recent but not the last of the manifestations of God. - --Cyprus2k1 13:51, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I raised this earlier this year (see discussion here a little further up) and was revisiting some old contributions to see what had happened afterwards (yeah, I know it takes a while...) I looked up policy, to see if there was one on this issue, and, as I suspected, there is.

The Manual of Style has a section on this very issue. Officially, Bahaullah and the others aren't meant to be referred to with capitals for pronouns. I guess someone with the will and the time could knuckle down and make sure we've got an article which is consistent here.

For the record, it doesn't offend me particularly, although I could well understand the reaction of someone who was offended. I was rather surprised to notice the discrepancy, and that's really my motivation for bringing this up. My concern is that the 'Pedia be seen to be being consistent in its usage--and this is an area where I would feel more strongly than some others. Wooster 17:31, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This just in. I decided to have a bash at making this article consistent with policy (frankly, I wonder whether it wouldn't be less hassle to make policy consistent with this article and give the folks over at Christianity what for...). I hope I got it right. If it was in quote marks, I left it. I decapitalised He, Him, His, Father, Grandfather. Probably a Himself, too. I didn't do Guardian or Messenger. I toyed with One and decided against it--The_Matrix being a precedent : ) Wooster 14:39, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Be more specific

This article does indeed look like an advertisement pamphlet in some places. I think that giving factual evidence for all that praise would surely help. One example: "Bahá'ís have also become increasingly involved in projects of social and economic development around the world." is absolutely not factual. It's just a statement that is quite biased. Is this a claim of some Bahai guy or is it a fact? And if it's a fact, you need to qualify it by saying "Bahais spent 10 zillions of dollars building hydroelectric plants in poor countries" or "Bahais printed 10 trillions of copies of multiplication tables and gave them to poor children", stuff like that. :) Any evidence that Bahais are in fact involved, preferably with some references.

I would not dive in editing this article, because my knowledge of Bahai religion is limited, so I could only go through the text and delete all such unstubstantiated claims. It would be better if someone more familiar with the subject would try to locate some facts and references first. Paranoid 14:18, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

FAC

I think something needs to be done before it can be a featured article. I am not saying there are factual errors in this article, but I think lack of external perspective prevents it from being of a featured article. There is an inherent bias in writing an article from the position of an insider. What do people outside of this religion think about Bahai Faith? Paranoid 17:51, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

i want to help, but im afraid i dont understand what you mean... i tryed comparing other religon articles like Buddhism( which was a featured article) and see nothing like "what people outside think" - --Cyprus2k1 18:32, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Check out Scientology instead. :))) Of course, in no way do I imply that Bahai is an evil totalitarian sect, I just think that it would help you understand my point. Buddhism, IMHO, is slightly more neutral and factual, it doesn't say that the religion is "good" as often. Also, it's an established (so it's well known) religion and relatively uncontroversial. I should clearly state that I don't see any significant problems in the article, it's more a matter of style and the feeling when reading it. I thought that it's caused by the fact that the Buddism article was (probably to a large extent) written from the position of outsiders (and what bias was initially there was probably removed by intensive editing), while Baha'i Faith article was probably written mostly by people connected with this religion and wasn't edited that much. For me the impression that it's a slightly sugary and PRy text was noticeable.

So I think that an unbiased editor could really help this article to improve. Paranoid 19:17, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But where does it say the religion is "good" :)? note that a religion does not necessary has to be or have something "bad" (a common view, at least in someparts of europe), if the article has something stating (as a fact) the religion is "good" (or "bad") that such is POV and should be corrected, so please point out... :)

i think that an article on independent religion could clarify things, since it seems to confuse people.

just to clarify something( this is not criticism..),the term "sect" is often confused with the term "cult", a sect is a branch from a main religion (so technically we could say the catholic church is one of the sects of christianity), the Bahai Faith is not considered a sect (of islam) the same way Christianity is not considered a sect of Judaism. (and thus the term "independent religion") - --Cyprus2k1 20:41, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As I said, there are no glaring POV errors, but it appears to me that there is bias (because the article was written by the supporters). BTW, personally I think that any religion is very bad and all believers should be reeducated (though, from what little I know about Bahai, it's much better than most religions), but that should not distract us. Let me say it again, there aren't glaring errors and most sections are actually fine. But overall the article looks to me like it could benefit from someone unrelated to Bahai carefully going through it and correcting the style (and possibly some content) slightly. Sorry, it's not very constructive. :(

Thanks for correcting my wrong use of "sect". In my native language the term "sekta" is usually used to mean cults like scientology, Moon's church, etc. Paranoid 22:31, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)