Category talk:Religion

Do we need this as well as spirituality? There is a lot of overlap. In addition, I'm not a fan of categories which include disparate items. (See Category talk:Podcasts for an example.) This one includes websites, general articles, social groups, and a subcategory of people. -- Sine 18:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It's important to note that for many people, religion and spirituality aren't the same thing at all. In fact, the Christian furs entry was originally NOT in Category:Spirituality. There is religion and there is spirituality, and while they have overlap, that's like saying that we might as well fold both into Category:Philosophy. The Christian-fur related entries, for example, were scattered all over and not organized, and the Jewish-fur entry was off by its lonesome. These are related entries, and I think a grouping is as natural as anything else in a category.

However, if people disagree strongly, we could always get rid of the category. I think lumping it all under Spirituality is a bad idea, though. Christian Fur belief systems and Otherkin belief systems are orthagonal (and sometimes intersecting!) and don't really share the same category in the way that Christian furs and Jewish Furs do. --Lynn Onyx 01:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Groups vs. belief

I think it would makes sense to have one page for discussion of faith and religion in furry fandom, while keeping the articles pages (and member categories) on specific groups (e.g. FurryJews, Christian Furs, Atheist Furs).

My main motivation for this is the fuss over at Category talk:Atheist furs and previous discussion elsewhere. Right now we have confusion over whether articles like christian fur (and categories like Category:Christian furs) are talking about a particular group or "furs who are Christian" or whatever. I think that if people are part of a defined group, it's reasonable to have a category for that, but it's inappropriate to have categories that should contain every fur that happens to be Christian (or atheist, or whatever), because we don't know who should belong to them. --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the above. I think that it's wider than religion, and like to widen this discussion to describing groups / particular interests, and the extent to which we want to have categories about people's interests, involvements, and ways of identifying themselves.

There's been discussion in the past, I recall about Category:Babyfurs, and I see some at Category talk:Nazi Furs. (Category talk:LAFFurs has a little discussion about regional group categories as of today.) Category talk:Furry pilots is another example.

All of these have to do with what categories we want to have here on WikiFur for articles about people, and I'm finding that hard to separate from what we want to do in terms of describing people's interests. People like proclaiming their interest in certain things: see the subcategories of Category:Wikifurries!

There are some interests that intersect with furry in an interesting way in sufficient numbers to document, and we can document specifics (such as particular websites or discussion groups) perhaps rather more easily, and with less contention, than more general statements about such interests. It's complicated, in my view, by people identifying to different extents: "I'm a furry and I'm x." / "I'm an xfur." / "I like x and I like furry stuff." And so forth... heck, that very range of interest, association, and identity is an issue in furry itself. -- Sine 04:46, 29 November 2008 (UTC)