Template talk:Religion and topic

Slightly awkward wording

Hi Mathglot. It took me a while to work out that this template was not added in error to Religion and abortion, I think because your use of <topic> looks like an error in including the actual topic. I can see it is a useful grouping of articles and categories, but wonder if the title and wording needs to change to make it seem more natural.

I think the title would be better without inclusion of <topic> something like "Religion in context", or "Relationship of religion to other topics". Both are a little clunky and I'm sure could be improved upon.

The grouping of "<Topic> and religion" vs "Religion and <topic>" also seems arbitrary - probably more linked to whatever the original article creator chose than any intrinsic differences. As such, I'm not sure this is the most useful way to subdivide the relevant articles. Removing this subdivide (top-level divisions could be "Articles" and "Categories") would then allow you to subgroup articles like potentially "Gender (Transgender, LGBT) or similar.

Anyway, I hope you find these constructive suggestions, and I can see worth in grouping the articles. |→ Spaully ^~talk~  11:41, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi. Spaully, thanks for your comment. Before and while creating the template, I thought quite a bit about both of your questions, so let me address them now. (Apologies; this got really long, but I really did think about this, and it's going to take a while to explain, so hold on to your hat. Tl;dr: it is awkward; here's how it got this way—now, how do we fix it? Eager to hear your ideas.)

First, regarding the name: yes, I totally agree with you. The name is definitely odd, and I tried to think of a better name, but couldn't find anything. I hope you can come up with something better. When I tried, all the alternatives were worse: either they were too long, or just as clunky, or clunkier than your examples, or both. What the template basically is about, is: "Religion plus one other thing connected by 'and', but not where 'and' is part of the title of something". That's really hard to say briefly. It's also why things like "Religion and American Culture" and "Religion and Dharma" are not included: they are not *two* things connected by and—they are just *one* thing, an [article about an] original work which happens to be titled that way: the first is a book, and the second is an academic journal. Additionally, the template doesn't include articles with connectors other than and in the title, such as in: (e.g., Religion in prehistory, or Religion in China are not included); of: (e.g., Religion of Black Americans), or as: (e.g., Religion as mental illness). That's on purpose, because the meaning would be different: "Religion and mental illness" is clearly not the same thing as "Religion as mental illness"; "Religion of Black Americans" is limited to religions that Black Americans belong to, whereas "Religion and Black Americans" would not be; and so on. So it's definitely just the "A and B" articles, where either term A or term B is Religion.

I had thought about your second question as well. At first, I was just going to create one big list, alphabetized by the "non-Religion" word, regardless whether it was first or last position; so the list might include these four in sequence: "Anarchism, animal rights, Astronomy, authoritarianism" (note that these alternate between "X and religion", and "Religion and X"), and so on, also thinking something like you did, that it didn't matter, or that the order was arbitrary. But then I decided that that was wrong, and it should be separated into two rows. I'm still open to being persuaded to your position, but let me explain why I rejected it for the first version, after considering both ways of doing it. One reason (the weaker one) was just based on the fact that combining them all, would make a very fat row with a very long list of items, and it was just esthetically more pleasing to break it up. It just kind of looked ugly, in the longer version. But I admit, that's not a very good reason.

The main reason, was that when thinking of combining the entries because the separation was arbitrary, I decided that that went against article title policy, consensus, and assumption of good faith; perhaps not directly, but at one remove. Before it's possible to explain that, there's a perhaps subtle point that has to be made about the and connector, which grammatically speaking, connects two or more items; a grammar might say something like, "Conjunctions are words that link other words, phrases, or clauses together." But that is a weak relation, and doesn't mean that each item has equal weight or power in the real world outside of grammar; sometimes they do ("salt and pepper") and sometimes they don't ("nobility and serfdom"). So, in some cases, maybe it really doesn't matter which order they are in, but in other cases, it does.

Take the example of a topic like "Law and religion": this title feels to me like it has to do with public law, and how it deals with religion. In fact, that squares with the article, which says it is the: "study of relationships between law, especially public law, and religion", and that feels right to me. Does it to you, too? That article then talks about things like whether the Jehovah's witness get exemptions from blood transfusions, there's also a mention of the banning of Muslim headscarves in French schools, and so on. If there were an article, "Religion and law", that feels to me like a topic that might be about the attitudes of religious authorities, hierarchies, or dogma towards governmental authority. One section might be a parent summary of Render unto Caesar; another section might be about whether Catholic bishops should cooperate with civil investigations about predatory priests, or recognize governmental authority for legal discovery of secret Church documents. Now, because and is a conjunction that loosely connects two items, I think it would be very confusing to have *both* the existing article, "Law and religion", as well as another article called "Religion and law" (currently, a redirect to the former). In fact, in doing my research for the template, I couldn't find a single case of a pair of articles like that (i.e., there is no pair of articles like "Religion and X" as well as "X and religion"), which I think is an implicit recognition by editors that that would be too confusing. In this case, if someone wanted to create the "Religion and law" topic, they'd probably have to call it something like, "Religious attitudes towards the law" or "Views of religions toward secular authority" or something like that. What one loses in brevity, one gains in precision; but note how they are longer and clunkier. It seems like for the "Religion and xyz" / "Xyz and religion" issue, whatever editor gets there first, gets to pick the topic and the short name with and; and then if someone comes along and wants to create the other topic later, they are stuck with coming up with the clunkier name.

The final, and most important point is about article title policy. I felt that as editors of this template, we don't get to say that editors at some article got the title wrong, and an article named "Religion and xyz" should have been named "Xyz and religion", or that both names are equivalent and it doesn't matter which way it is named. Per WP:Article title policy, "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles. Deciding here that the order of the words connected with and in some other article about religion isn't important, is wrong, or doesn't matter goes against the consensus of the editors of the other article; either explicitly, by a discussion that decided or upheld the name, or an Rfc or Move request that changed it, or else implicitly, by WP:EDITCONSENSUS established by the long-standing presence of the same article title over time. It also would be contrary to the assumption of good faith that editors at those articles respected policy and tried to come up with the best article title they could, in each case. So I think those decisions should be respected at this template, and not regarded as "arbitrary".

If you accept that premise, then the question becomes, how do we demonstrate respect for consensus at those articles? One way, would be simply to list out the name of every article out the long way, i.e., that list of four above would show up all together as:

Anarchism and religion, Religion and animal rights, Astronomy and religion, Religion and authoritarianism"...

and the other way, would be to list them in two different rows, as:

Anarchism, Astronomy,...

animal rights, authoritarianism, ...

the top one in the "X and Religion" row, and the bottom one in the "Religion and X" row.

Perhaps there are other, better ways; I'm all ears. Sorry to bend your ear on this, but I thought that this template was definitely worth creating, for all the usual reasons, as well as to provide a bit more visibility to articles that have very few page views, indicating that they are largely overlooked. It may also draw the attention of additional editors to some of the brief stubs that would benefit from expansion; possibly others might be merged if deemed not worthy of a stand-alone article. So, if it's worth having, then we just have to solve the problems you pointed out, to make it even more useful. The main thing I object to, is the use of the angle brackets around Topic; that seems pretty non-standard, and I don't like it, but it was the best I could come up with past my bedtime; if you have some suggestions on how to improve on it, I'd really like to hear. Or, just be WP:BOLD and change it, and we can discuss how it looks after. Thanks again for your comment; I was worried no one would even notice the template; it took longer to write this, than to think it. Oh, and thanks for calling it only "slightly" awkward, . Okay, you can come up for air, now! Mathglot (talk) 19:15, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I see I forgot to respond to your point about subgrouping. Thought (briefly) about that, too. Not sure if you noticed that currently, subgrouping is by second level bullet items in the wikicode; this is rendered by the template as a parenthetical sublist. Search for mental health, sexuality, or Mythology for examples. This is one standard method of rendering sublists in templates, but I'm not averse to doing it a different way; perhaps with subgroups (additional labels in a second label column at the left). A group headed, Sex and gender might get you a row with six elements, for example. Mathglot (talk) 19:30, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Instead of "Religion and <topic>", what do you think about just dropping topic and ending with and: ""Religion and". Or, what about ellipses: "Religion and ..."? See test version 1022837285‎, for example. Mathglot (talk) 19:44, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

I follow your reasoning, though I think that the utility of the list in the template for readers outweighs the subtleties of Religion and ... vs ... and Religion. I am straying out of my comfort zone here, as you might have noticed from the gender/sexuality grouping suggestion.

In thinking a little more about it I went looking for other existing templates, Template:Religion topics makes an effort to group on a larger scale though does overlap a little with this one. I imagine you have considered this also, and as mentioned religion is very much not my area. If you wanted to solicit more involved editors in this area the Portal talk:Religion looks pretty active. |→ Spaully ^~talk~  21:09, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

PS - If keeping this same style I do prefer ellipses, it looks less like a coding error! |→ Spaully ^~talk~  21:09, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

@Spaully:, mobile now so can’t respond at length. Feel free to go back to the ellipsis version; a simple 'Undo' of the last edit will restore it. Mathglot (talk) 21:30, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Back to ellipsis version, per your suggestion. Can you improve it further? Mathglot (talk) 00:23, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Another try: see rev 1022873421‎. I unfolded the labels in the group column, and added parenthetical '(Some topic)' on the article rows. It makes the List section a bit narrower, but I think that's an acceptable trade-off, for (hopefully) increased clarity. What do you think? Mathglot (talk) 00:44, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I did notice Template:Religion topics, which is large, with multiple collapsible subsections. As you say, there is some overlap with this template, notably these eight items in collapsible section 3, "Topics" under group 4, "Religion and society": agriculture, business, Disability, happiness, Homosexuality, Vegetarianism, video games, and Wealth; but the other 29 article links in that section don't overlap, as most of them don't have the dyadic, "A and B" format. Mathglot (talk) 19:00, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Three issues

Spaully, thanks for your input and feedback in the discussion above. As a result, I think we've identified some issues that need attention. Because that discussion is long and rambling, I'm going to try and refactor and briefly describe the issues I see, in order to make it easier for other editors to come on board, understand the issues, and offer their own thoughts. The three issues I see, are:

1. What should the group names (left-column labels) be?
2. What should the displayed title bar label be?
3. What should the template filename be?

I'll start individual subsections for each of these subtopics, so that each discussion can stay more on point. Mathglot (talk) 19:27, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Group names

The group names are the labels that appear in the left column of the nav template, naming the list of articles that appear on the right side. User:Spaully originally raised the issue of the awkwardness of the original group names at the discussion above. Some alternatives are:

• "Religion and <topic>" / "<Topic> and religion" – this was the original version. Example: rev. 1022751404.
• "Religion and x" / "X and religion" – use of some metasyntactic variable: 'X', 'Foo', 'ABC', etc.
• "Religion and ..." / "... and religion" – use of ellipses as a substitute. Example: rev. 1022837285‎ .
• "Religion and (some topic)" / "(Some topic...) and religion" – italicized descriptive metavariable. Example: rev. 1022873421‎.

Another issue is whether to fold the names with a break tag, to narrow the label column and make more room for the list links, but I don't see this is a major issue, as it seems to work fine either way. Mathglot (talk) 20:42, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

For another approach, see how Template:Wikipedia policies and guidelines handles group names, with tooltips associated with a question mark in the group name label column. Mathglot (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Displayed title

The |title= param specifies the text that appears centered in the title bar at the top of the template. Normally, this param is not needed for most nav templates, and defaults to the template BASEPAGENAME (filename, less namespace), but it might be needed for this one, as the title bar may have angle brackets, ellipses, italics or other formatting, but there are some technical restrictions on the naming of files, so the title and filename may diverge.

The title bar name currently (as of rev. 1023001782‎) defaults to "Religion and..." or "... and religion", depending on the name of the page in which the template appears. Mathglot (talk) 20:53, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Template filename

This template was created with the name, Template:Religion and topic. I'm not sure how much article title policy applies to WP:Template namespace, but its ideals seem relevant: The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles. This template lists articles that are the intersection of exactly two topics, where religion is one of them; i.e., articles of the form Religion and foo, or Foo and religion. "Religion and topic" is obscure; at least, without placing topic in quotes or other punctuation to indicate its meta character; but that doesn't work in a template filename due to technical restrictions on naming (although it could, in the title bar).

"Religion and topic" doesn't seem adequate. In a sense, it's an abbreviation of the awkward, "Religion and one other topic". Possibly it could be something like, {{Religion and society}}. (As an aside: that would match the title bar id in section 3, group 4 of the giant {{Religion topics}} template; which is however used for a different purpose.) The "society" sobriquet does seem to cover the vast majority of the links in this template. There are a few that at first blush don't quite seem to fit: is Religion and climate change really a "society issue" rather than a scientific one? Given the quotation in the first section, "[T]he environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of values," maybe it is.

The downside of "Religion and society" as a title, is that it lacks WP:PRECISION for the stated purpose and vaguely increases the scope to a point where the template would lose its raison d'etre, and become some kind of amorphous, undefined subset of the huge {{Religion}} template. For example: the "Religion and society" section in {{Religion}} §3 group 4 currently includes Clergy, Religious conversion, Syncretism, and Universalism, and none of those links are appropriate in this template.

"Dyad" might work, but is uncommon and rather jargony. "Religion and society doublets" (or, pairings)? Neither term is all that common, but at least are understandable. One source I saw used the word intersection for a case somewhat analogous to this. Mathglot (talk) 20:19, 13 May 2021 (UTC)