Talk:Tyler Hendricks

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Tyler Hendricks is one of the 3 most prominent members of the Unification Church of America - second only to Rev. Moon himself and current church president Michael Jenkins.

This article might only be a stub, but that's no reason to delete it.

• Thanks to Dr. Hendricks for expanding this article. But (watch out) someone might come along and trim the "resume-ish" portions. You can always add those to http://churchwiki.net though. :-) --Uncle Ed 16:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the list of all the articles he wrote is a little too much for an encyclopedia article. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 12:46, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

If he is "one of the 3 most prominent members of the Unification Church of America", then why don't any third party sources make mention of him (let alone provide substantial coverage on him)? Either he's not as important to the church as you claim he is, or the UCofA is not important. Either way, this article requires third party sources in order to survive. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 16:42, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

What is he famous for?

• What were his most prominent actions as President of the Unification Church of the United States?
• Has he written anything prominent as an academic/theologian (given his position as President of the Unification Theological Seminary)?

The article currently gives no impression that he was more than a mere administrator/front-man for Moon, who moved him from position to position like a pawn on a chessboard. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, you sometimes misunderstand the real situation regarding some person or issue in the Unification Church (easy to do given its unusual nature), but in this case I'd have to say you pretty much hit the nail on the head - even if Unificationists would bristle at the wording you chose (he does have a Ph.D. from a top university and runs an accredited graduate school, so he has a certain level of competency - though not real notability apart from his positions in the UC). Unlike a few others, he's done little to distinguish himself in terms of what matters to people in "the outside world" (the world outside Unificationism).

There were many mentions of him in passing in the media when he was president of the UC of the US, and some such mentions of his being president of UTS. The office of vice-president of the American church is not very important. I don't think you'd find a reference in a non-Unification publication, unless there was a surprisingly insightful discussion (outsiders rarely have the patience for sensitive or insightful discussions of the UC) of whether or not he undermined James Baughman's presidency. Other references to his notability, such as answers to the bulleted points Hrafn suggests above, would probably be extremely thin. -Exucmember (talk) 14:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, he was president of an American church, one that gets a lot more discussion in the media and by scholars than one would expect from its membership numbers. One commonly cited guideline for Wikipedia notability is that of an average professor. Given that some professors don't publish, Hendrick's long but insular list of publications puts him somewhere near the cutoff, as some of these are important within his narrow sphere. Perhaps most importantly, he is currently the president of an accredited graduate school.

Though we might feel the level of notability is barely enough, the AfD decision was "keep", so the best thing to do is to improve the article. Unlike Michael Mickler, Frank Kaufmann, and (especially) Andrew Wilson, he may not have any publications that are widely held in high regard, but again, some are important within the narrower sphere of Unificationism. His long list of publications should have been pruned and the most important ones selected, which is done for every other professor on Wikipedia, but Hrafn overzealously deleted them all, with the justification that they were an "embedded list." Most of the significant/serious discussion of the UC is in scholarly books (mostly not on the web). It will take some effort for someone to find references, but it should be done. -Exucmember (talk) 07:40, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Ummm, the guideline is not "that of an average professor", but WP:ACADEMIC, which requires something above "an average professor". A "long but insular list of publications" means that there has been little in the way of third party coverage, which is the bedrock requirement for inclusion in wikipedia per WP:V. Hence the caveat in WP:ACADEMIC: "It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject." Hendricks fails on this point miserably.

The AfD was only sparsely (only three comments) and superficially (no discussion of policy or sources) discussed. It probably should have been extended to allow greater scrutiny. We actually have two further options, if significant improvement is not possible -- redirection or a second AfD.

Yes, I removed this lengthy and unverifiable piece of trivial resume-list-spam. If there was anything notable in it, it certainly wasn't immediately apparent -- and there's nothing to stop anybody from restoring some of it, as long as they (i) render it verifiable & (ii) can mount some defence of its notability. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 11:04, 24 February 2009 (UTC)