Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Financial astrology

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. (non-admin closure) DavidLeighEllis (talk) 20:20, 16 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Financial astrology[edit]

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I am nominating this article for deletion because the topic itself fringe science in that it lacks prominence in any sort of mainstream publication. There is no indication of any notable adherence to this idea nor is there any consistent description of this process.

If there were to be an article on the topic of Financial Astrology then it would need to be based on multiple reliable sources that give a consistent story. If an article is to exist on this subject it would need to be rewritten to the point that the current article would not be of use.

The existing references in the article are either not reliable sources or do not support the text of the article. My own search for sources revealed a series of contradictory ideas about the subject by sources that range from moderate reliability to not reliable at all.

I think that the lack of serious sources demonstrates the lack of notability of this topic. All sources I can find that describe the topic are either fluff pieces(soft news) or unreliable sources.

If this topic can be substantiated by some sort of scientific and consistent coverage by multiple independent reliable sources I will gladly reverse my position but I have made a good faith effort to find such and have come up lacking. On this basis I propose the deletion of this article. Chillum 03:38, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. ^BE _CK ^Y _SA ^{Y L}E _S 07:06, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. ^BE _CK ^Y _SA ^{Y L}E _S 07:06, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as nominator or redirect to astrology. Chillum 19:31, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reluctant keep While I still think this is a really stupid topic for an encyclopedia I also see that the burden of inclusion has been met. I wonder what happens if you play the financial markets using a random number generator or tea leaves. Chillum 04:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. WP:fringe & fraud. Pax 09:25, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. There's a Telegraph piece, but that's not enough to warrant a separate article from astrology. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:44, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:51, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep. Personally, I find the whole idea of financial astrology highly questionable. However, some of the best known market analysts use it and publish on it, include Arch Crawford and Harry Weingarten, among others. They are regularly quoted in the financial press and interviewed on mainstream business outlets such as CNBC. Gann analysis uses some of these concepts too, and there are funds that use Gann in their investing, although I cannot personally give you the lists. This is out of my field of expertise, but what is 10000% clear is it would be wrong to delete this article. It has as much validity as efficient markets do or the random walk. None of them are correct. Sposer (talk) 14:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Can't decide whether this is a valid article, but here's a related source: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1428792
I'll leave it to other editors to decide whether this source is a stray outlier and integrating it would be SYNTH. Shii (tock) 17:08, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It seems easy to find sources for this such as Financial Astrology or The Evolution of Technical Analysis: Financial Prediction from Babylonian Tablets to Bloomberg Terminals. Andrew D. (talk) 18:32, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One of the issues I brought up is that the sources that do exist do not give a consistent description of the practice. Each source that describes how it works seems to be describing something different. One of the key factors in determining if something is science or fringe science is if there are reproducible experiments to prove it. In order to combine these sources into an article we would have to engage in synthesis which amounts to original research. Chillum 19:35, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. Different practioners may have had different theories and practises but this is quite normal in many fields. For example, musicians may play a large variety of instruments in a great variety of styles but this doesn't stop us having an article about music. Synthesis would only arise if we went beyond the sources in some way and would be addressed by ordinary editing rather than deletion. Andrew D. (talk) 19:42, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your first source consists of a whopping two pages in a book from an astrology publisher; the second just has scattered mentions. I don't doubt that astrology is used by some financial analysts. Is that enough for a separate article? Not in my opinion, any more than sports astrology, political astrology (a redirect), etc. Maybe a brief mention in Astrology, but that's about all it's worth. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:03, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete~~ Keep Even if there was some consistency and notability on Financial Astrology (which there is not, what little info there is, is all fluff, as one would expect from such nonsense), should Wikipedia be a place to promote archaic thought? Any market analyst that uses astrology to make financial determinations should be banned, I can't believe that this might even be a real thing, how ridiculous. Should we also have an article about people who use the current mood of Zeus to predict weather patterns? Give me a break. Apparently more people use this than I thought, which makes me sad, but unfortunately it apparently is notable...sigh. War wizard90 (talk) 02:59, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We do not delete an article because we do not like it or because it is real or not. We keep this one, and it would be a REALLY BAD DECISION to delete it, because a lot of people use it, a lot of people follow it, and there are many practitioners. It is used in investing, even though I too think it is ridiculous. We do not delete things that are in use, even if it makes no sense to you.Sposer (talk) 01:26, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep as anyone can see, I have now gutted it and added information and sources. This meets the criteria for fringe notability, has had significant coverage from mainstream sources, and is apparently used quite often in the financial market. There's a lot more coverage out there and a lot more to be done but I am sadly busy right this second. I will get on it! And @War wizard90:, we don't have articles on just anything, but we'd be foolish to omit culturally notable phenomena or stories just because they're patently ridiculous. That's not how notability does or should work. We have good guidelines on fringe practices to assist with this. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:35, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Panyd has made the article look fine, hardly any reason to vote for delete. VandVictory (talk) 16:35, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The article looks reasonable now. Sourcing could be better but it's clear that this topic exists. Shii (tock) 17:59, 12 January 2015 (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.