Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Discordian Works (2nd nomination)

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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 keep. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discordian Works[edit]

Discordian Works (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Currently, this article is not reliably sourced but rather relies on a bunch of fan websites. That by itself is enough to justify deletion. Additionally, I believe finding reliable sources for this is impossible, because:

  1. Although Discordianism is a headless and anarchistic philosophy, calling anything other than the Principia Discordia a "Discordian work" is a statement of bias, since it is an assertion that the work is wholly Discordian. Wikipedia simply cannot state whether or not something is Discordian without a reliable reference to back that up. And that's serious business.
  2. The works listed on this page are clearly not Discordian, but some sort of loopy neo-paganism masqueraded as Discordianism.
  • I always thought Discordianism is loopy neo-paganism. MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • That is one of the fallacies promoted by this article. Ashibaka (tock) 13:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, the parts of the article which one might find a source for if one looks hard enough do not belong in the article.

There was a previous AfD which kept this article but I seriously do not see how it is grounded in policy. Ashibaka (tock) 20:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • delete There is a reasonably good article on the philosophy, where many o fthe works are mentioned, and some articles on the individual works. That is all that is needed, and all that other similar subjects use.DGG 03:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep Article needs a big clean-up, and much of it could be removed as cruft, but the phenomena of the recent generation of "Holy Tracts" by Discordians is a genuine one, and deserves mention as an important and notable part of modern Discordianism. I think it is demonstrable that each of the works listed identifies itself as a "Discordian Work" -- I'm not sure how the assertion that such a work is *not* a "Discordian Work" would be made (short of the possesion of a magic wand which reveals the Hidden Nature of things laff), but to say they are "clearly not Discordian" is a statement of opinion, not fact.
Further, if I offended you by the reverts I made to your additions to the article, just before you nominated AfD, I apologise. DrJon 04:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • So, can I just write my own self-published book and it's automatically Discordian? In that case, how is this article useful at all?! Ashibaka (tock) 05:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, and it's not automatically Greek Orthodox, either. But if you self-publish a book called "Greek Orthodoxia" and write about the Greek Orthodox church, then that's a Greek Orthodox work. If somebody wrote an article on Wikipedia about there's been a bunch of books, including self-published ones, about Greek Orthodoxy, then someone could mention and describe your book in the article. MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't think you understand what I'm talking about. The books on this page are original essays that claim to be Discordian. But you could, for example, write an essay that claims you are a Discordian and the true nature of the religion is Satan worship. Who says whether you are right or wrong? Ashibaka (tock) 13:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • A Discordian work (self-identifying as Discordian) which was accepted by other Discordians as being a Discordian Work is probably going to be Discordian. And that might include your hypothetical Discordian Work which postulates that Discordianism was "Satan Worship". This is kinda self-evident, I'm afraid, given the meta-religious nature of Discordianism.

Here's some links which might prove enlightening when it comes to your assertion of a lack of reliable sources:

http://www.ohmyeris.com/4.html http://pages.videotron.com/drroots/DiscordianReferences.htm http://batlock666.blogspot.com/2006/11/scripture.html http://discordia.loveshade.org/ek-sen-trik-kuh/5books.html http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=9743.0

Given that these are lists compiled by practicing Discordians and Discordian Cabals, I'm rather afraid that they count as "reliable sources". I do not understand why you might think that they are not, unless you chose to view them as "fan sites", an epithet which I am pretty sure they would object to vehemently. Drjon 15:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • keep Are we going through all this again? It is reliably sourced--many of the links are to the original sites and even where you can buy a lot of these. And your argument that anything that isn't Principia Discordia isn't a Discordian work is like saying anything that isn't the Bible isn't a Christian work! And then you say the works aren't Discordian but are something else? Based on what?
I have to ask. Is this deletion some kind of joke or are you really serious?
DGG sounds perfectly reasonable, but I do disagree. Many subjects have a lot of articles. For example of something that's a belief system that's only done by a small minority, Nudism, Public nudity, Nude beach, List of public outdoor clothes free places, Gay naturism, Clothing-optional bike rides, American Nudist Research Library, Timeline of non-sexual social nudity (prehistory - 1999), Timeline of non-sexual social nudity (2000 - present), etc. Those are all about the same topic. For another faith that has a relatively small number of followers, Bahá'í, there are Bahá'í, Bahá'í apologetics, Bahá'í individuals, Bahá'í orthography, Orthodox_Bahais,

Bahá'í Faith in fiction, etc. A google search gave 1,400,000 hits for Bahá'í, but 3,330,000 for Discordia. Binky The WonderSkull 06:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    • Look, I'm not deleting Discordianism. Read this closely. I want reliable sources for this article or else it is totally useless. Ashibaka (tock) 05:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep So User:Ashibaka thinks this article is worth editing (check its history), but then when somebody reverses his edits, he says it should be deleted? OK.
To comment on something actually worthwhile, we've already had this discussion before, so this is deja vu all over again. If I recall, the only arguments against the article originally were that it only talked about a couple or so Discordian works. Several more were added, the objectors were satisfied, and the situation was resolved. The article stayed.
And by the way, Binky, if you do a search on Wikipedia for Nudism and Bahai, you'll find several more articles, which back you up even more. And if anybody checks, I have made at least 100 posts here, so I have the right to an opinion. Even if I am the one who created this article. IamthatIam 09:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • You did not address my arguments at all. Ashibaka (tock) 05:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Which argument? You said it's impossible to find reliable sources because "Discordianism is a headless and anarchistic philosophy, calling anything other than the Principia Discordia a "Discordian work" is a statement of bias." So in another words, it's impossible to justify any article having to do with Discordianism that isn't about Principia Discordia. OK.
        • It's not impossible to justify it, but you need reliable sources. Ashibaka (tock) 01:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • That's not what you said, Ashibaka. You said "I believe finding reliable sources for this is impossible...." MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • I believe it is impossible because there aren't any sources. Ashibaka (tock) 13:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Or "The works listed on this page are clearly not Discordian, but some sort of loopy neo-paganism masqueraded as Discordianism." -- now that's a logical argument, right?
        • It is my opinion, but I think it is a reasonable one. Ashibaka (tock) 01:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • So those who argue in support of this article have to have facts, but you can stand on your personal opinion? MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Or "this article is not reliably sourced but rather relies on a bunch of fan websites." Most of the sites are the original sources. How can you get any more "sourced" than that?
        • Original sources are not reliable sources, but original research which cannot be included on this encyclopedia. Ashibaka (tock) 01:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • So if there's an article on the U.S. Government, for example, we can't use any government site or publication or announcement, etc., as a source? Or if an article talks about the micronation of Sealand (which has maybe one or two residents), we can't use the official Sealand site as a source? I'd like to see that Wikipedia policy. MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • The only point I see even worth considering is the one DenisMoskowitz mentioned, which is which works are worthy of staying in the article. But if this is deleted, we'll have half a dozen stubs about various Discordian works, just like we did before. This article was created to correct that problem, which DenisMoskowitz had pointed out before. IamthatIam 19:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • But this article is useless. Ashibaka (tock) 01:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • Specifically why is this particular article useless? What Wikipedia policy number does "useless" come under? MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Why is this up for debate again? If anything the article has improved. Having this page keeps us from having pages on each and every minor Discordian work - which used to be the case. DenisMoskowitz 20:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]


  • Comment Ashibaka has an interesting point - what makes a work notable enough to appear on this page? It's difficult to know how widespread a Discordian work is, but just throwing some text up on a site shouldn't be enough to get you listed here. DenisMoskowitz 19:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep DrJon points out that the great number of Discordian works IS the main point of this article. That's what this article is about--there are a lot of them that have been created in the 21st century. But just saying this is true is not a Wikipedia article. Listing the works, describing them, and showing websites where they can be found, is documentation that this is a real phenomenon and makes this a real Wikipedia article. The growth of Discordianism from works other than Principia Discordia was a big part of Robert Anton Wilson keeping his home during his last days RAW Bedside Update October 10, 2006, and the naming of Planet Eris. If that's not real, then what is?
Face it. Someone thought it would be funny to put up a Discordian article up for deletion by using silly Discordian-type arguments. Nice joke. Problem is, this is a real online encyclopedia, and not everyone thinks deleting articles is funny. Although I do think Wikipedia has a lot of loopy neo-paganism. MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep don't delete an article because you dispute it's category status also who are you to delete an article simply because you see it as uncanonical --Jesusmyth 06:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I could actually blank this article myself because there is no reliable evidence that anything on it is true. Ashibaka (tock) 13:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Somebody needs to add a section on The Book of Eris. MRN 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Due to my obvious bias (my work is included in four of the mentioned works and I'm mentioned in a fifth), I will not comment on whether this article should be marked keep or delete.
However, I believe I am not overstepping my bounds in posting Ashibaka's removed edits to the article as they are mentioned above by DrJon (and yes, if this were used as part of an argument, this could be considered ad hominem; but I'm not making an argument, so judge for yourself):
20:21, 31 January 2007: This is evidence that the book is taking itself far too seriously to be a true Discordian work, since obviously it will have no impact on the use of traditional third-person pronouns in Western society. Genderless neologisms are frequently seen in neo-pagan literature, not Discordian literature.
20:22, 31 January 2007: This, too, is far too serious and self-important to be considered a Discordian belief.
Reverend Loveshade 15:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • My comments are just as accurate as anything else in that article. Ashibaka (tock) 17:54, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep For the same reasons it was kept the last time. Kmusser 14:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a vote. Ashibaka (tock) 20:31, 6 February 2007 (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.
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