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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 Delete --Anthony.bradbury"talk" 20:11, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Eidon[edit]

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

The Greek verb εἶδον is not a notable encyclopedic topic and is being used as the vehicle for original research (e.g. "Plato's philosophy is that 'eidon' is the immutable genuine nature of a thing"; connection to Morpheus; etc. etc.). At best, it is an attempt to open a new-article backdoor for the unsound ideas the same editor has pursued at Good sense (deleted), Nous, Divine Nous, Idea, Eidos, Theory of forms, etc. The author's ideas, if they were not original research, would belong at Theory of forms. Wareh 14:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep, Since there is no specifics as to what parts or sentences are being objected to I believe the article should be kept for the following reasons. The main source of the information (80% +/-) for this article was obtained from Professor Joseph Novak's essay on the meaning of "Eidos", available online to a PDF file from the Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo. It is number 14 in Notes. I also used Google to get additional references to back up this references and provided these as inline citations on the majority of the sentences throughout the article. If any source of these definitions are in dispute, there has not been any editor that has said such specifically. These definitions are the same for "eidon" and "edos" with many other sources.
  1. If there was a specific phrase or sentence objected to in the article, let me know and I will provide additional sources besides those already provided.
  2. Then if these are still objections by a consenses then that part could be taken out. Most sentences however have inline citations for references.
  3. There is so much information in various philosophy books and online on this subject that it warrants an article by itself or its associated term "eidos."
  4. Professor Novak's essay on the first page says, "anyone familiar with the history of philosophy, the term \eidos" is one of great significance. Along with its associated linguistic derivatives, the term \eidos" contains a nexus of concepts that are probably the most important to philosophizing as such."
  5. Novak's essay also says, "For Plato himself it serves to designate any of those primary realities which have come to be known as the Forms." He then points out that the term Idea" and eidos" share the same root.
  6. According to this source it is a verb and of the definitions I provided. Novak's essay says, "The term \eidos" (plural: \eide") is of Greek origin, \eidos" and it basically means \something that is seen." The term is a noun that is derived from the verb "eido" which means "to see."
  7. In footnote 5 the source says: "In the philosophy of Plato, the eidos is the immutable genuine nature of a thing, one of the eternal, transcendent Forms apprehended by human reason {Gk. nouV [nous]}. Aristotle rejected the notion of independently existing Forms and understood them instead as abstract universals."
  8. Since the main reference source is Professor Novak's essay, I believe those that think any parts are original research and not attributable should read this essay first (7 pages); since most of the article is from this essay. It is then backed up with no less that a dozen more references, all easily obtainable (or online). Most are in large public libraries or university libraries or through ILL.
  9. There are a dozen sources that Professor Novak used for his essay written specifically on the subjects "eidos", "eidon', and "eidolon". --Doug talk 15:54, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Doug, your points relate to the noun εἶδος, not the verb εἶδον. In fact, most of the content of eidon is about the noun, as is Novak's essay. Now, I notice that you made an attempt to include some material in eidos (philosophy) ([1]) that's related to the material in eidon; your changes were reverted by Wareh ([2]), and rather than try to work something out on that article, you've created this article instead. That's a textbook example of a POV fork, and we haven't even examined your contributions to idea, Theory of forms, Nous, Noesis, and other philosophy articles where you're contributing very similar material.
    • As for why we're not objecting to specific sentences of the article, it's because it's an unsalvageable mess. Well, no, the direct quotes are ok, but the rest of the article makes it clear that you have no understanding of classical Greek (the missing/incorrect breathing marks and accents are just the most obvious indicator of this) and a tenuous grasp, at best, of the history of ancient philosophy. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but this article is just crap. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To be a bit more specific, there is no Greek verb (in dictionary-entry form) είδον. That spelling—with a lenis and circumflex, not an acute, over the initial diphthong—could be the first-person singular second aorist form of the verb meaning "to see," or it could be the accusative singular form of the noun ειδος—again with lenis and circumflex, which WP doesn't provide for, apparently)—so the very first sentence of the article is hopelessly bollixed up, to begin with. And matters don't improve from there. (If anyone can tell me what the heck "Since eidos (ειδος), eide (ειδε), and idea (ιδεα) are similar in English, one can use them in their Cyrillic form" is supposed to mean, I'd be grateful.) You simply don't understand what you're writing about, and that's a poor basis for creating an article. Deor 18:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP allows for the circumflex (at least in the font I'm using): εἶδον. This could also be 3rd person plural aorist indicative ("they saw"), but εἶδος is neuter, so its accusative singular is also εἶδος. Sorry to be nitpicky, but I don't want to give Doug any erroneous information--you'll notice that he frequently asks language questions on the Reference Desk, and the answers often form the kernel of some odd idea that he slips into an article. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was relying on my aged memory for the gender of εἶδος. I should have looked it up. And I'm just getting a little empty box in place of the iota-with-circumflex on my screen. Deor 18:41, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Deor, don't apologize--I'm sort of embarrassed that I brought it up, actually. As for the empty box, I think it's a font issue--some fonts have the appropriate polytonic characters, others don't. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:01, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: It so happens that this article of Eidon was found in "Good" articles proposed by bot for June 15 to be considered for the Main Page of Wikipedia in the section Did You Know. Another article that I wrote lately is Francesco Dionigi which shows up for "Good" articles on June 18. Here are some other articles I wrote lately.

Comment: Just showing up in the bot list is not much of an achievement. It mostly checks for length, the existence of references and a few other things, so I could write a completely nonsense topic formatted properly and it would still get picked up by the bot. howcheng {chat} 23:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep judging the article in its own right, it seems adequately sourced, and a reasonably distinct subject. DGG 00:20, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • DGG, I don't mean to be bothersome, but I must point out that the ostensible subject of the article is the verb eidon, but the actual subject of the text is the noun eidos and its use in ancient Greek philosophy. The difference between verb and noun may seem trivial if you're not familiar with ancient Greek, but the verb has no significance as a technical term and doesn't merit an encyclopedia article, whereas eidos (philosophy) has one. The confusion between noun and verb is merely the most obvious sign of an unfamiliarity with ancient Greek that runs throughout an article that (badly) discusses words that share an etymological root with eidon.
    • Note further that Doug apparently created this article to expound ideas that he has been unsuccessfully trying to put in eidos (philosophy), idea, Theory of forms, Nous, and Divine Nous, making it a POV fork.
    • Lastly, the sourcing for this article includes a treatise hosted by the Unification Church--(Eidon#_note-9), hardly an authority on ancient Greek philosophy. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As the original author of the article I didn't realize that a "verb" could not be an article. So apparently then only "nouns" can be an article? I see many articles in Wikipedia that have been around for years with similar themes; i.e. noosphere, noetic, noesis. I am not sure which ones are nouns or which ones are verbs (as they didn't say). However these three have as a common theme the word nous, meaning "mind", "intellect", "logos", or "reasoning." These three present very similar themes and they all exist and have been around for years.

If there was a POV fork on my part, it was unintentional - as the fork policy points out what happens in many cases. It further points out "A POV fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts." I also didn't realize that my article presented a "point of view" that was either negative or positive. The article is about a theme being the definition of the term "eidon" and/or "eidos" - no positive or negative viewpoint. Its just straight definitions by several sources and references (besides Professor Novak's essay on Eidos). If there is another viewpoint to this, then please feel free to present it - I have no objection.

If it should go under eidos (philosophy), then lets put this article here - since it is well sourced and referenced as DGG points out. All it would take is a little rewording in the lead, like this:

Eidos (noun, Greek: είδος) means that which is seen. Eidon (verb, Greek είδον) means "to see" or "to recognize" or "to know." It is like the Latin word video for "I see" (first person singular present, indicative of videre, "to see"). Eidos is derived from eido (root rid) which in Greek and Latin is the original terms for form, figure, shape, and genus. Eidos is the images of the sensible world, the poor, inexact copies of the perfect eid[1]. From eidos ("see") comes the word idea (Greek: ίδέα).

Any other minor items that may be left could then just be edited out and corrected by any other Wikipedian, just like all articles are done. When a Wikipedian sees something that should be expanded or corrected they just go ahead and edit it accordingly. That's what would happen then on this "new" article as [Eidos (philosophy)], There, the problem is now solved.--Doug talk 12:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Doug, you seem to have missed the point, which is not that verbs can't have Wikipedia articles; the point is that this particular verb (εἶδον) is not a significant term in ancient Greek philosophy (or any other field of study), and therefore doesn't merit an article.
As for whether eidos (philosophy) should be expanded, I'll say once more that you've already given that a shot ([3]), and your changes were reverted by another editor ([4]). Rather than try to work something out on that article, you created eidon. That's a WP:POVFORK--as that policy says, "POV forks usually arise when two or more contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page, and instead of resolving that disagreement, someone creates another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) to be developed according to their personal views rather than according to consensus."
At any rate, it's good to see that you've acknowledged that you "unintentionally" created a POV fork, and you can cut this AfD short by requesting the speedy deletion of eidon--just place {{db-author}} at the top of the article. --Akhilleus (talk) 14:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Move/Merge. By "Eidon" then becoming "Eidos" (since Eidos merits an article, especially since it is now a stub) then this solves everyone's problem from any and all points of view. I think its best to use the suggested lead above and just merge "Eidon" to "Eidos". "Eidos" has been a stub for 2 years now, so this would be a good chance to expand it into a full article. Keep in mind that these definitions are not my personal views, but referenced sources of these terms (attributable). Someday a Wikipedian will write up a full article on this subject and come up with basically the same material (from these references as well as additional sources). Why wait for another 2 years before an article is fully written on this subject, especially since it is already here ready to go. There is plenty of information available on "eidos" for a very large article on the subject; so this heads start would be a springboad to start from that other Wikipedians can expand upon. It then becomes a normal real article (not stub), like any other article. Suggestion: Merge and let the community work on the article. I would even agree with a 6 month ban not to edit the article, if you all's would agree with that too. I believe that is more than fair. What do you say? Let's make it a real article! The community of Wikipedians can then modify, change, expand, and edit accordingly to their heart's content. Even Professor Novak from the University of Waterloo says (as is now in the article itself),

along with its associated linguistic derivatives, the term 'eidos' contains a nexus of concepts that are probably the most important to philosophising as such.

This then is a very easy solution to the problem. I can do these simple steps (change lead) or others can do this (i.e. administrators resolving the dispute).--Doug talk 15:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In short, this is a rewrite of Novak's essay, which is a carelessly written ad for his magazine: it has two typos in the initial Greek quote, and his treatment of the digamma is confusing - perhaps confused. Most of it is an inflation of this entry from LSJ and the corresponding entry for species from Lewis and Short, or possibly OLD. If he had consulted the middle LSJ or Autenreith, he would have understood that Homer also uses eidos for "image".
This article has the same flaws, and the same fundamental weakness: we don't do articles on words. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:07, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion: Merge and let the community genuinely work on the article in Good Faith. Let's make it a real article under the title "Eidos"". The community of Wikipedians can then modify, change, expand, and edit accordingly to their heart's content improving on any weaknesses. Does that sound fair to you? --Doug talk 18:12, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. No one seems to have hit on this point yet but Doug Coldwell says he based this article largely on an essay "A Sense of Eidos" by Joseph Novack. First of all, that's not a good idea - articles should not be "based" on a source but rather be written by the author, after learning what they can learn through various sources. Second, though, this particular essay by Joseph Novack is not peer-reviewed, but rather is like a foreword to a journal called Eidos, partly to give information, and partly to explain to the audience why Eidos is a good name for a journal of philosophy. I oppose merging because this is so heavily based on a single, self-published source: this is OR (or perhaps "unoriginal research"?). As for covering the topic, I'm not quite sure. A mere etymology is not worth an article, but would be worthwhile at Wiktionary. An article on the philosophical concept is better, but I'd rather see us improve the Eidos (philosophy) article rather than starting with this. Not wholly convinced we need an article separate from Theory of forms. Mangojuicetalk 17:37, 21 June 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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