Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2014 May 28

28 May 2014

involuntary celibacy

involuntary celibacy (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Briefly: The decision was a compromise that did not represent the consensus of the participants in the discussion. I attempted to consult the admin responsible for the decision Coffee before initiating this review, but was ignored.

• There was never a consensus to delete this article. Instead, the (unilateral admin) decision was to merge it into celibacy, but the celibacy editors disagreed and removed all of the new content.
• The closing admin stated that "there's absolutely no way to close this that will make everyone pleased with the outcome" and then made the decision that the "best possible course of action here (per the discussion) is to merge this", and further stated that "the concept of a merge requires the newly merged article be changed." But it wasn't.
• The disposition of this material has not proceeded according to a consensus about the material itself. There was an admin decision as a result of a lack of consensus. And then there was a consensus about other material, i.e. that it should not include this material. But it seems to me that in the absence of a consensus about a change, the status quo should be maintained. What happened instead was that the decision was thrown over the wall to a set of decisionmakers who made a "consensus" decision without knowing or caring about the material itself. This is lazy at best, dishonest at worst, and not in the best interests of Wikipedia.
• "In deletion discussions, no consensus normally results in the article, image, or other content being kept."
• Even if it had been a consensus decision, then the fact that it was blocked by an opposing consensus should have triggered further discussion, not simply a "default to delete" response.
• Philosophically, consensus is not the same thing as compromise. Maybe 3 out of 10+ contributors were in favor of the so-called "consensus" decision. If a deletion discussion doesn't reach a consensus, then a compromise may be possible. But it is not appropriate for the closing admin to simply choose his own idea of a compromise and call that a consensus. If merging is a possible compromise, then he should initiate a proper discussion of that possible compromise, bringing in people from both affected articles to discuss it. If all compromises are rejected, then there is no consensus, and WP:No consensus applies, and the article is kept, not deleted. To illustrate the point, think of the story of the Judgment of Solomon. He listened to both parties' arguments, and proposed as a compromise that the baby be cut in half. But was that a consensus? No. Only when the real mother relented and offered to give up the baby rather than have it killed, was there a consensus. That's whwere the analogy ends; Israel was not governed by consensus, so Solomon exercised his judgement. 2602:30A:2EA4:2B90:A92E:C8E4:3B62:AC87 (talk) 02:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

• Endorse - Either merge or delete were the only two options on the table following that deletion discussion. This is armchair pseudo-science pushed by an off-wiki clique of special interests, nothing more. Editors at Talk:celibacy eventually decided that the material did not legitimately fit into that topic, so it was excised. That does not mean we default "incel" back into a standalone article. It simply goes away. Tarc (talk) 03:00, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
• Comment There is more to this saga, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denise Donnelly. I'll ponder this some more but I'm thinking merge was a reasonable close (although I can't see any close as being wholly unreasonable!). Whether the topic is "armchair pseudo-science" is not of concern here – plenty of responsible editors were seeing sources they thought relevant. It is clear to me that merged material can be removed from the target article, especially after an RFC, and it seems a merge is still a merge even there was merely a redirect in the first place – "If there is no information to be added to the destination page, you can simply redirect the other page there, but please make this clear in the edit summary".[1] Thincat (talk) 14:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
• Closing admin comment - This SPA is deliberately taking the entire situation out of context. This close was not a compromise but a close based on the best consensus available. Keep in mind, consensus is derived from our policies and best practices as well as what is in the particular discussion itself. This is done in order to prevent a skewed consensus from being created by a swath of SPAs (as was attempted multiple times here), and to ensure context is covered over from one discussion to the next instead of treating every discussion as separate from each other. But, whether or not we can consider this initial close as the best route at the time it matters not anymore. The community has made very clear that it does not consider "incel" to be more than an unencyclopedic fringe theory (and no sources have ever produced to prove otherwise), so it simply has no place on this site. It's that simple, and it doesn't require trying to use bible verses to explain. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 15:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

• I request that you observe WP:AGF, even though I'm not an established Wikipedia editor. I am not "deliberately taking the entire situation out of context", although that may be what I achieved. I was not aware of the concept of WP:Local consensus that you are referring to, nor of the responsibility of admins to monitor and enforce higher levels of consensus; this latter is not mentioned on the WP:Consensus page, but I would recommend that it be added. Such a power could be abused (not that I am in any way accusing you of abusing it) and so the policy should itself be subject to consensus. I have no reason to doubt your claim that you have been exercising this responsibility and in your judgement there is a higher level of consensus than what was represented in the AfD. So I accept your word, and withdraw my objection to the decision.

However, the consensus is wrong. The topic does not qualify for WP:Fringe. First of all, it's not a theory; the existence of the phenomenon is well-documented and indisputable. Secondly, the sociological research on the topic does not in any way "depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field" (sociology). Donnelly's research, for example, is a straightforward study that 99% of sociologists wouldn't even bat an eye at. Editors claiming WP:Fringe seem to be hung up on Donnelly's choice of the awkward term "involuntary celibacy" — the idea being that, since traditional celibacy is fundamentally voluntary, the concept of "involuntary celibacy" is nonsense. However, despite the similar terminology, the topic has nothing to do with priests or monks. Any statements about Donelly's research departing from the mainstream study of priests and monks are not really relevant in claiming WP:Fringe. Other sources have used other terms such as "sexlessness" when referencing the same topic. I ask you to please justify the WP:Fringe claim, with specific reference to the WP:Fringe article.

Since different sources have used different terms to refer to the same phenomenon, I thought there might be an objection based on WP:Synthesis. But reading that policy article, it doesn't seem applicable, since we're merely aggregating the sources, and not trying to combine them to draw a conclusion.

Other editors just seem to find the subject distasteful. It is "icky" and attracts trolls, so they just want it to go away. I understand this point of view, but I don't think it's in the best interest of Wikipedia. I have lots of experience dealing with some of the worst, most hateful people in the world when discussing this topic, so it has been a relief dealing with Wikipedia editors, who seem to largely be decent folk, even if they sometimes fall short of Wikipedia's lofty ideals. I am confident that they will eventually decide upon an appropriate way to include this material.

Your apparent dislike of biblical analogies is noted. I thought the story illustrated my point and would be well-known to many people. [Note: My IP address has changed (again), but I am the one who initiated this review.] 2602:30A:2EA4:2B90:C093:E410:45B7:B315 (talk) 06:31, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• I don't see good grounds for overturning this particular close, but I wonder if Coffee isn't making the case a little bit too strongly. I don't think involuntary celibacy is a completely verboten topic on Wikipedia. Nor do I think it's always inevitably a fringe topic; User:Tokyogirl79/Sandbox 2 seems like an intelligently-written beginning that might be developed into something useful. Look, I think it's important that we understand how popular this topic area of Wikipedia is (our articles on sexual topics typically have very high hit counts)----there's a lot of really profound ignorance about love and sex in the world. We who come from Western democracies with our sex education in schools and our casual attitude to displaying quite a lot of skin and our sophisticated and cynical understanding/enjoyment of the soft porn advertising that bombards us 24/7, probably don't know anyone who needs to read about this topic area... but there's more to it. So I'll endorse the close but I would see a different article on the same topic as potentially permissible (and about a million times more worthy of a Wikipedia article than all the pornstar biographies we keep having to review here).—S Marshall T/C 00:36, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

S Marshall: Ah but see, I'm not stating a personal opinion on the matter or trying to make a case... It's the community that has spoken. My role here is to be nothing more than a medium for that consensus (regardless of whether or not I personally agree with it). — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:33, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

• Overturn Looking at all the past discussions, what I mainly see is a prejudice by some individuals, either to avoid discussing this aspect of sexuality, or to make too much of it. She met WP:PROF from the start, and it would have been uncontroversial had she worked on anything else. DGG ( talk ) 03:44, 30 May 2014 (UTC)