Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Objectivist metaphysics

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. I note that any content forking can be remedied by merging, which does not require AfD. Sandstein 09:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Objectivist metaphysics

Bundling these articles with this nomination:

Content fork of Objectivism (Ayn Rand) --Karbinski (talk) 11:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete These are all restatements of Ms Rand's writings, not articles about the topics. If people want to read her works they should do so in the original. Also there is nothing that says all objectivists have the same opinions on these topics as Rand. Steve Dufour (talk) 11:54, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. This is not a content fork, because it clearly goes beyond what is stated at Objectivism (Ayn Rand), as is its intention. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not paper states that long articles ought to be considered for splits; that is exactly what has been done here (the main article is 58kB long: long by any measure for a non-list). There is a Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, as well as myriad libertarian journals that include her work within their remit, so I'm sure objectivist metaphysics have received a great deal of coverage. The correct response to the article being a reworking of primary sources (i.e. Rand's work) is to use the {{fact}} tag and request that secondary sources be used. It is no justification to delete. Bastin 12:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Delete Per nomination, too much repetition of material between articles. Need to separate Objectivist articles from those about Ayn Rand. --Snowded (talk) 12:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I tend to see Rand's philosophy as somewhat of a fringe position, unoriginal to the extent that it's right, and wrong to the extent that it's original. Rand and her followers' vehemence in judgments on their critics tended to diminish her ideas' chances of being taken seriously as well. Any trepidation I'd have about such articles comes not from the fact that they rehash Rand, but that Rand doesn't merit that depth of coverage.

That said, she acquired enough of a following that there has come into being a small industry of academics who seek to rehabilitate the reputation of Rand's ideas. And any idea about Rand's thought is only worthwhile to the extent that it communicates the substance of Rand's thought. And to the extent that there is a scope of objectivist opinion, that itself is worth coverage, given that the core of Randian objectivism seems to be to claim that reason dictates a single correct answer to every question. I am not prepared to endorse the deletion of encyclopedia articles on the epistemology, ethics, or political philosophy of Rand and her followers; she was not a major philosopher, but she is a well known philosopher. The rest seems a content dispute beyond our bailiwick. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Definite keep on procedural grounds. This is not an issue for AfD: "If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD". Wikipedia without doubt should have content somewhere on these topics, as they surpass the threshold for notability beyond reasonable doubt (see bibliography of work on Objectivism). The only question here is whether or not the branches of Objectivist philosophy should have stand-alone articles or not, and that is a question of merging, not deletion, and so belongs on the article talkpages, not here. Even if it were judged appropriate to have these articles deleted, the titles would still be redirects to Objectivism (Ayn Rand), and as that article covers some of the same content as these, content from the sub-articles would need to be moved to preserve the best content the encyclopaedia has to offer on the topic. In other words, if the articles are not kept, merging (however selective) is the only realistic outcome. I've gone ahead and redirected Objectivist politics to the main article, without prejudice against recreation, because the summary in the main article was more extensive and better cited. The Objectivist metaphysics and Objectivist epistemology articles offer valuable analyses beyond what is present in Objectivism (Ayn Rand); granted, they are lacking in references, but there are a wealth of reliable sources that can be used to support and expand the articles. It's disheartening again to see the Pokemon fallacy ("topic x is less important than these other topics, but has more articles; delete them") raise it's ugly head here; there is enough space and coverage to write dozens of verifiable, neutral articles on hundreds of philosophical schools of thought. It's a good thing that Wikipedia's coverage of Objectivism, transhumanism and {{Nietzsche}} is so extensive, because it does not come at the expense of the poor coverage of communitarianism, German idealism, Kripke and so on. Wikipedia:Content forking refers primarily to non-neutral versions of existing articles – which is clearly not the case here: "Summary style articles, with sub-articles giving greater detail, are not content forking, provided that all the sub-articles, and the summary conform to Neutral Point of View." In summary, this nomination fundamentally fails to address the potential rather than current state of the coverage of the topic. Skomorokh 17:15, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep The nomination provides no reason to delete. AFD is not a guessing game or fishing trip. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:30, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete There is nothing here that should not be put shorter and sweeter on the objectivist page. The reason to delete is actually pretty simple... the material in question has little to no citation count, less interest in the related topical fields, and as such is not notable separate from the primary category. objectivist metaphysics being the easy example... most of what you'll find there is a walled garden, that is a very small group of people citing each other to drive up apparent notability, but very little if any interaction with larger fields. --Buridan (talk) 18:38, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. That's kind of my impression of what little I've read in the works of academics studying Rand. There aren't many of them, and they talk mostly to each other. Still, they hold appropriate degrees and teach at various universities. Were they nothing other than a circle of Wikipedia editors, I wouldn't hesitate to call it a "walled garden". But there are many more such walled gardens in academia. Do we call the twentieth century corpus of serialist music a walled garden? It was one, in the broad sense: it was made by academics and its only real audience was other academics. Rand's followers have established networks of peer-reviewed journals in the standard manner. It may be all an imposture: then again, I get the same impression from attempts to surround schoolteaching, "management science", advertising, and similar crafts with the folderol of academia. But is it our place to make judgments about these enterprises? - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 21:22, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yes. it is our place, especially when objectivism and rand mentions creep across the pages of wikipedia. on any given day you are likely to find a link to objectivism or objectivist metaphysics on the abraham lincoln page or the aristotle pages, the monetary policy pages, a listing of terry pratchett's books, etc. etc. now i am not one to deny anyone their particular academic industry, but... we don't find serialist music or management science really doing much of that, do we? so i'm thinking that when such a small community has such a large set of let's say... 'enthusiastic' followers, keeping the pages that it occupies and references to reasonable size... seems reasonable? it is sort of a a NPOV reasonableness on the one hand and a systematic bias reasonableness on the other.. no? --Buridan (talk) 01:00, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No.

I have never seen such mentions of Objectivist metaphysics spreading across Wikipedia unrequited and unwarranted.
If they did appear, they may well have been warranted. You may think of Objectivism as some sort of cult (and why not?), but it's a set of beliefs that affects a lot of people. Such as, for example, Alan Greenspan, who was an Objectivist and on whom Rand had a huge personal and professional effect; sometimes, reference to Objectivism on articles related to monetary policy may not be irrelevant.
If the references are irrelevant, remove them. Do not delete these articles because other articles have flaws.

Please cite policy or guideline before advocating the deletion of material. Bastin 02:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

oh i did, i cited notability. the articles are less notable than their parent, they contain material that should appear in the parent, and other than citing a walled garden, are closer to original research than wp should have. they don't inherit notability from their parent. Kindly don't run up the greenspan flag, the man clearly said her ideals had no affect on his policymaking. --Buridan (talk) 12:24, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nowhere within the Wikipedia:Article size policy is notability mentioned. It mentions that the criterion that a split must fulfil is Wikipedia:Neutral point of view to prevent Wikipedia:Content forking. The original assertion is one of content-forking: without any evidence that that is the case. Without an argument being made for the rationale given for deletion, the article cannot be deleted.

If you have a problem with the lack of references to prove notability, you will quite easily find a range of articles related to Objectivist metaphysics in academic journals and other verifiable secondary sources, which will be forthcoming if you make that request. Once again, the correct response to this flaw is to use the {{Notability}} tag.

Greenspan's views on economics were highly influenced by Rand. So... Greenspan said what now? Bastin 23:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

the articles were not nominated for deletion because they were improvable, they are nominated because even if you improve them, the content and citations that you add would be better used to improve the main objectivism page. As for your argument that they aren't a content fork, actually they were, i was around when it happened. People were fussing about the lack of quality and improving content of the subsections of the article and when people deleted the uncited materials and cut the content down to reasonable length, another editor created new articles and linked them. these are clearly content forks. my position is that they are not notable enough to stand on their own. they might be extremely popular, you might find some citations for some of their content, but these categories, and i just don't mean the metaphysics one, are not categories that are notable in the world. They are far closer to say... virtue metaphysics which also is not notable enough to have a category then say nihilist metaphysics which may be notable enough. --Buridan (talk) 16:53, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.