Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carnism (4th nomination)

Carnism

AfDs for this article:

• Articles for deletion/Carnism
• Articles for deletion/Carnism (2nd nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Carnism (3rd nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Carnism (4th nomination)

Carnism (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This article has already been deleted twice, but was recreated without any evidence of an undeletion discussion.

The term does not have any significant usage outside of the book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, which has its own article. This article is a giant WP:COATRACK based on synthesis of sources that do not mention the term, and serves as a POV fork of the main article, advocating for the use of the term (and also for the truth of the term).

The thing is, this article is one of the most actively, intentionally misleading articles on Wikipedia as to the prominence of the term, an effective WP:HOAX that adds swathes of material not related to carnism into it in order to give the illusion of notability separate from the book's. Not every source is viewable, but let's consider every single source that is:

• Source 1 [1] A brief definition that makes it clear the term is used to define - and gives as an explicit synonym: "Melanie Joy’s view on food ethics". This doesn't justify an independent article on "carnism". (the longer, pre-publication version goes into more detail, but is still explicitly a summary of Joy's work.)
• Source 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=92Ct9iD1QTYC&pg=PA138&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false] A one paragraph mention beginning Sociologist Melanie Joy (2009) coined the term carnism..." A search of the book shows this is the only use of the term in the entire book (ignoring the title of Joy's book in the references, and a link to that page in the index)
• Source 3: [2] While almost certainly not notable (published in a low-tier journal; on a very specific subject (right-wing authoritarianism and meat-eating), this paper does, at least use the term.
• Source 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TzDZYc8SGigC&pg=PA353&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=carnism&f=false Term is used in the book five times, all within a couple pages as part of a summary of Joy's ideas. Does not show independence.
• Source 5:Why We Love Dogs... - This is the source of the term, as stated above.
• Source 6: Interview with Melanie Joy about "Why we Love Dogs..." - The author of the book using the term in an interview on the book shows nothing.
• Source 7: [3] Content entirely based off of a press release advertising Why we Love Dogs...
• Source 8: Why we Love Dogs... again.
• Source 9a: Partially inaccessible. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666315001518 "Carnism" does not appear in the abstract; may or may not in article
• Source 9b: [4] The term "carnism" does not appear in the article.
• Source 10: [5] Term only appears in the title of Joy's book.
• Source 11: [6] Term only appears in title of Joy's book.
• Source 12: [7] Term only appears in title of Joy's book.
• Source 13: [8] Term does not appear at all.
• Source 14: [9] Term does not appear at all.
• Source 15: Partially inaccessible [10] Term does not appear in abstract.
• Source 16: [11] Term does not appear at all.
• Source 17: Partially inaccessible [12] Term does not appear in abstract.
• Source 18: [13] Term does not appear at all.
• Source 19: Inaccessible, but predates term.
• Source 20: [14] Term does not appear
• Source 21: [15] Term does not appear.
• Source 22: [16] Term does not appear.
• Source 23: Inaccessible
• Source 24: [17] Term still does not appear (Same as source 20)
• Source 25: Partially inaccessible [18] Term does not appear in abstract
• Source 26: [19] Predates term
• Source 27: Partially inaccessible [20] Predates term
• Source 28: Inaccessible
• Source 29: It's Plutarch, and thus predates the term by millenia. Term does not appear.
• Source 30: [21] Term does not appear
• Source 31: [22] Term does not appear
• Source 32: [23] Term does not appear
• Source 33: Inaccessible.
• Source 34: Inaccessible, but predates term.
• Source 35: [24] Article is in French. French cognates appear, but I don't really see that helping much in a neologism article on the English term.
• Source 36: Inaccessible, but all three sources predate term.
• Source 37: [25] Article by Melanie Joy, who, again, created the term.
• Source 38: [26] Summary of Melanie Joy's work (does claim that the term will in future catch on, though)
• Source 39: [27] Term used in discussion of Melanie Joy and her book.
• Source 40: [28] Speech by Melanie Joy.
• Source 41: [29] Summary of Joy's work.
• Source 42: [30] Summary of Joy's work.
• Source 43: Why We Love Dogs... again.
• Source 44: [31] Does not use term.
• Source 45: [32] Does not use term.
• Source 46: Why We Love Dogs... again.
• Source 47: [33] Does not use term
• Source 48: Inaccessible (Same as Source 23)
• Source 49: Inaccessible,
• Source 50: Why We Love Dogs... again.
• Source 51: [34] Term does not appear
• Source 52: Partially inaccessible [35] Term not in abstract.
• Source 53: [36] Tern does not appear.
• Source 54: [37] Term appears only in title of Joy's book.
• Source 55: Inaccessible
• Source 56: Inaccessible

To summarise, of the 59 sources (there's a 9a and 9b, and Reference 36 is three sources):

• 10 are by Melanie Joy, the creator of the term (including the press release about the book)
• 5 have summaries of Joy's work, and mention the term in that context.
• 30 do not use the term (with the possible exception of including the title of Joy's book). This count includes those sources that predate the term that I couldn't check. (the three sources in Ref 36 are counted individually in this total)
• 5 are only partially accessible, but do not use the term in the text available (usually an abstract) and do not predate the term.
• 7 are inaccessible (and do not predate the term)
• 1 is in French, but includes some French cognates
• 1 uses the term, but is of no notability.

In short, this article is a massive coatrack. At best, including the articles summarising Joy's work, and the one in French, only 7 sources that aren't by Joy herself even mention the term. If we're not generous... maybe four, as you might be able to count a couple of the lengthier summaries of Joy's work. From what I can tell, however, none provide any material not better placed in the article Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. It simply hasn't grown beyond the book's content (attempts at a coatrack of original research aside).

Now, no-one is saying Joy's ideas shouldn't be on Wikipedia: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows should continue to exist. But we can't have a spinoff article that exists solely to abuse sources in order to give the appearance of a term being more prominent than it is. Indeed, by WP:COATRACKing in other information, this article does that information a disservice. For example, the section "Meat paradox" is ironically better evidence of the term "meat parodox" being a notable term than this entire article is for Carnism being a notable term, as it's pulling in sources that do use the term "meat paradox" but not carnism.

With an article on a neologism, we first need evidence the term is in reasonably widespread use. This article, instead, just throws in anything that discusses the ethical issues around meat eating to support the new term. That's original research and synthesis, and neither of those belong on Wikipedia. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 11:05, 31 December 2015 (UTC) }}

• Delete per nominator. WegianWarrior (talk) 12:19, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
• Comment. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Equity and gender feminism is a possible precedent. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 13:59, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, and can we include some kind of moratorium on this damn thing being recreated yet again in a week? Capeo (talk) 14:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
• Keep -- looks and feels like a good article to me. The rationale proposed by Adam Cuerden above looks copious and looks well-researched, but i took just a single randomly-selected part of it to look it, the comment on source 9b in the article, which was stated as Source 9b: [38] The term "carnism" does not appear in the article. I looked at the text in the article, and the source, and i find that there is nothing negative about the fact that the source doesn't contain the term carnism for it certainly does support the claim in the article, and there is no claim based on the term carnism sourced to that source. Therefore, based on a random sampling of one of this editor's copious objections, i would urge caution in accepting that large screed as evidence of the damnability of this article. I think it's very well-written and describes a notable concept with a good NPOV tone. SageRad (talk) 15:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The text may support the claim in the article, but does not support' the claim being part of carnism. If this were one or two cites, it'd be harmless, but there are whole sections of the article with absolutely no cites that can be linked to carnism in any way. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:17, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I understand that the text of that source didn't support the claim being part of carnism but that was not the requirement of that source from the claim and that does not look like an argument to delete the article, to me. So i sampled one of your points and found it lacking in merit. I don't have time to look at all of them, it's clear to me that carnism is notable enough to warrant inclusion in the encyclopedia, and that the article is well-written and the notability is sourced well enough to merit inclusion. SageRad (talk) 16:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The sources do not support your argument, given that only seven, at the most generous, mention carnism while being even the slightest bit independent of Joy - and most of those are just summarising her work. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:28, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

• Keep - article could do with a bit of a trim back but I am not convinced by the deletion rationale, which is basically a IDINTLIKEIT propped up by a wall of text and some canvassing. It's possible that the article could benefit from a merge but I believe that discussion should happen outside of an AFD context. Artw (talk) 17:23, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Propped up by evidence that this non-notable term was coined by a barely notable activist. That's what that wall of text shows if you bothered to read it. Capeo (talk) 17:47, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. For the sake of expedience I am mostly copying a response I wrote to the nominator and others here. The below is nowhere near an exhaustive list of sources.

• This German academic book by Sandra Mahlke uses the term at least 90 times, including in the title, and is clearly not about Joy's book.
• This German academic book uses the term nine times, again going beyond Joy's work.
• I have not been able to get a copy of Le végétarisme et ses ennemis, but FourViolas assures me that it uses the term throughout and that "there's actually a lot of the more useful second kind of information: carnist philosophy in Ancient Greece, Abrahamic religions, and modern society, all in lots of detail and presented in very fair-sounding ways."
• This book uses the term at least 41 times.
• This academic book by Frye contains an analysis that is clearly independent what Joy wrote.
• This essay collection uses the term at least 11 times.

• ...Mostly in the title of Joy's book. I'm not going to review all of these. Give me three citations you think - unlike this spot check - won't fall down at the slightest glance, and I'll check those. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 02:50, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• You're right, technically six out of eleven times is "mostly". I think you're ignoring the big picture. --Sammy1339 (talk) 06:15, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• This academic book chapter is about carnism and independent of Joy.
• This new paper uses the term 20 times and goes beyond Joy's book.
• This new paper is about "The presence of carnism on Portuguese television."
• This academic book uses the term at least 14 times, and again has not much to do with Joy's book.
• This paper by Gutjahr uses the term and is not about Joy's book.
• This paper "frames contrasts between vegetarianism and carnism through the phenomena of the presence of an absence and the absent referent, respectively" and whatever that means, I think it's nothing Joy wrote about.
• This paper by Greenebaum uses the term and goes beyond Joy's work.
• This definitely provocative psychological study tells us that "Animal exploitation and meat consumption are arguably part of the dominant ideological system ‘carnism’, prescribing norms and beliefs about animal treatment" and goes on to discuss this at length. --Sammy1339 (talk) 18:20, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

You are being quite generous with the term academic there. Google scholar brings up nothing but Joy or papers that reference Joy, including many of the papers above. All primary sources. All low impact or no impact journals and all the cites are minimal, if any, and circular in that they cite each other. In other words, I see no notability here. Anything here that isn't already in the Joy article should be tossed in there really. I don't see nearly enough notability for a stand-alone article. Capeo (talk) 18:43, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The fact that they cite Joy does not make them primary. Of course they cite her - they have to note that she coined the term and originated the concept. Also, these sources are all very recent, and are in humanities fields that do not publish huge numbers of papers. This may account for why some of them have not got many citations. I also could have included lots of other sources, including other papers and newspaper articles, but I never cease to be amazed by this Wikipedia culture that regards "low impact" peer-reviewed journals and academic presses as less valuable than The New York Times. --Sammy1339 (talk) 20:32, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

There's thousands of papers written every year and, over the last couple decades, a huge uptick in non-impact journals. It seems like everyone and their brother has a journal now and their "peer-review" is suspect at best. We don't write articles for every new hypothesis or theory represented in a journal because simple publication does not equate to notability or overarching acceptance in academic circles. We'd have thousands of articles on every fly by night fringe concept there is. Actually we do but that's not argument for more. I also don't know that anyone would argue that we value the NYT over academic sources but significant coverage in the press can be an argument for inclusion for even the fringiest of theories. I don't think notability here is established on either the academic nor mainstream fronts. Capeo (talk) 20:52, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

• Keep but merge or remove material as necessary to address SYNTH. Even the most uncontroversial of Sammy1339's sources above would require unacceptable mental acrobatics to be included in Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows.

There's much less OR in Carnism than people unfamiliar with the sources might think; for example, an extended form of the Plutarch quote is included verbatim in Gibert/Desaulniers' article on carnism (p. 4), and it's therefore not original research to connect it to "carnism". However, the #Meat paradox and #Ascription of limited mental capacity sections, which as nom noted are independently notable, should be moved to Draft:Psychology of eating meat, and republished once that article meets policy requirements.

What would remain would be a collection of sociological works like Freeman 2012, Gutjahr 2013, and Braunsberger 2015 which unambiguously discuss carnism and go well beyond Joy's work. The fact that these academic sources tend to have a POV different from that of the median Wikipedian is none of our legitimate business; we're not scholars or peer reviewers, we're just editors (WP:MAINSTREAM). FourViolas (talk) 19:55, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

WP:MAINSTREAM actually refutes your argument. None of the sources you cite above come anywhere close to mainstream academic sociology. So when we're deciding whether a fringe theory deserves inclusion the criteria would be notability which is sorely lacking here. Capeo (talk) 20:12, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I think it has been written about enough, in academic and non-academic outlets, that if it were "fringe" there would be someone refuting it. Per the text of WP:FRINGE a fringe theory is "an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field." So if you want to make this claim you should show mainstream sources contradicting the main points of the article's "fringe" sources. We have had this conversation ad nauseam already on the article talk page, and zero such "mainstream" sources have showed up. What's really going on here is WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT.

In response to 4V's assertion that the meat paradox papers don't belong, they are discussed in the entry on carnism in The Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics and we followed standard practice by directly citing the secondary sources instead of the tertiary source. They really do go to the heart of the concept, and if this article is about ideas and not words, I don't think it can be argued that they are out of place. --Sammy1339 (talk) 20:42, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a bad understanding of fringe. 99% of the fringe ideas out there don't get refuted in academia because academics don't waste valuable time and effort to refute things that have no traction in the first place. Capeo (talk) 20:58, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

But you still have to have sources, which may precede the allegedly "fringe" theory, contradicting the ideas. And it is furthermore my contention that the twenty or so academic sources you choose to ignore do constitute "traction." --Sammy1339 (talk) 21:06, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

No, you don't have to have preceding sources that contradict the idea because, as I said, most academics don't bother to deal with fringe ideas. That puts us into OR territory. For instance, if any theory is bandied about that contradicts mainstream thought on a subject but hasn't garnered enough traction to warrant a response we, as editors, can't say this contradicts mainstream thought if no RS has. That would be OR. That's where notability comes in as the deciding factor. To me, as I see the sources, Carnism belongs in the Joy article and not as a standalone article. Capeo (talk) 00:26, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Capeo, I am asking you to show us the "mainstream thought" that this supposedly contradicts, as I thought I made clear. When we had this discussion before on the talk page, similar high-and-mighty pronouncements were made about this being "against the mainstream", but all the sources we kept turning up were very consistent with what's written in the article. Some of them turned into Draft:Psychology of eating meat, which I had nothing to do with (and in fact opposed) and which is now being attacked as "fringe" for exactly the same reason: people simply don't want to hear what it says. --Sammy1339 (talk) 00:41, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what to say anymore. We don't decide what anything contradicts. That's basic. You keep ignoring notability. If Carnism suddenly takes off as a concept and integrates itself into ethics to a huge a degree then it deserves an article. Right now it's a concept that has made no significant inroads into the conversation. Capeo (talk) 01:27, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Sammy, that's true about some of the meat paradox papers (Bastian 2012, Bratanova 2011, Ruby and Heine 2012). My apologies. But even so, I think it would ultimately be fairer to cut those sections of Carnism to WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, keeping the main text at Psychology of eating meat, where they directly belong according to many more sources. Capeo, I don't see how an idea could be on the "fringe" of food studies while having a 7-page entry in the Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. FourViolas (talk) 21:54, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The EFAE is over 1,800 pages of literally just about anything that's ever been written about any subject tangential to food ethics. It's currently asking for suggestions from anyone graduate student and above to include in its next printing including extremely new ideas. Its inclusion criteria is more lax than WP. Capeo (talk) 22:23, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

• Undecided There is certainly a set of justifications for using animals for food, etc. WP should have an article on the topic or it should be a major part of whatever article we have on "Human carnivorism" or "Exploitation of animals." However a WP article can not start out "Carnism is a term coined by psychologist Melanie Joy..." I would have more sympathy for an article that started out: "Carnism is the justification of exploitation of other animals by humans." And later in the article: "The term was coined by psychologist Melanie Joy..." Borock (talk) 21:58, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. A WP:NEOLOGISM entirely derived from Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism (2010). This is indeed a WP:COATRACK, WP:SYNTH, and WP:POVFORK / WP:CONTENTFORK. 99% of the citations either (1) do not mention the word "carnism" at all (in fact most – 60% – of the citations predate the public use of the word), (2) mention "carnism" only in respect to the book (in fact some come from press releases for the book). In point of fact, most of the citations have nothing to do with the subject and are instead agricultural articles, statistics, etc. used in a massive WP:OR WP:SYNTH WP:POV WP:FRINGE WP:OPINION WP:ESSAY to prop up veganism. I would not object to a very selective Merge & Redirect to Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, as long as every single point is cited and every single citation is a WP:RS that visibly uses the term "carnism" and discusses the term in significant coverage. Softlavender (talk) 23:38, 31 December 2015 (UTC); edited 05:31, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and Softlavender. Not enough independent coverage/usage to establish notability. Brunton (talk) 10:38, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Keep Joy's ideas are referred to by this term in numerous books. For example, Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-animal Studies. It seems better to cover the concept on a specific page rather than on pages for the author or a particular book. Andrew D. (talk) 12:21, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Literally the only references to the term in that book is in a brief summary of Joy's work, the title of her book in the references, and the index. This is yet anotherr evidence that the people voting keep cannot rationally evaluate the evidence they're presenting. 15:37, 1 January 2016 (UTC) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:36, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

That sounds kind of insulting the Andrew Davidson, like anyone who has other opinions than you is not thinking clearly. How about sticking to the content. I think that the mention is one more tick mark for notability. It's not necessary for a source to do more than to describe the existence of this concept by this name to add to the overall notability of the concept. It's also not necessary for a concept to be "true" or "real" for it to be a real concept. A concept can be a notable thing in society even if it's not an actual thing. This is the nature of human culture. I find enough discourse to mention carnism as a concept to call this one a keeper. I repeat that it's not cool behavior to call those who disagree with you stupid or irrational. You seem frustrated but that doesn't mean that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid. SageRad (talk) 15:44, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

It does not justify a seperate entry from the book setting it out if the only references are summaries of the book. Period. There is no argument there. The argument is not whether the concept should be discussed on Wikipedia, it's whether we should have two articles on it. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:20, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• That book was just an example. My position is based upon the more general finding that the term is used in many books. For an example of an entry in another encyclopedia, see Gibert, Desaulniers (21 November 2014), "Carnism", Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, Springer, pp. 292–298, ISBN 978-94-007-0928-7. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 16:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

TWO articles. TWO. The book setting it out, that deserves an article, and the neologism foro which every reference is a summary of the book, which does not. Perhaps it wasn't clear that that was the problem, because you seriously are not providing any evidence that this deserves a second article, only that the book deserves one. Worse, the article as it stands is a WP:HOAX: throwing in at least 30 sources not about carnism in any way in order to create the illusion of a more widespread, accepted term. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:21, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• That encyclopedia article is named for the concept, not the book. In any case, that issue is not a reason to delete anything. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 17:51, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

It also literally defines the subject as "Melanie Joy's views on food ethics. [39]. You're using sources already analysed, and ignoring the analysis. I will grant that's one of the few decent sources, but it doesn't show notability, as, as I said in the nomination itself, for sources independent of Joy, there are "maybe four, as you might be able to count a couple of the lengthier summaries of Joy's work", but that doesn't stop the article being a massive WP:COATRACK and, as it includes content not related to carnism to bolster its notability, active WP:HOAX. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 22:25, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• The nominator acknowledges that the topic has decent sources. The topic is therefore notable. These sources use the word carnism to describe the topic and so this a valid title for the topic, as we see in the Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. This is all we need to establish to conclude that deletion is not appropriate. The only mystery is why the nominator can't let the matter go. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 22:57, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• Delete and redirect. This is a non-notable neologism. There is absolutely no evidence of any currency outside of its coiner, and all discussion is about the coiner and her book, not about the term. This has to be one of the most blindingly obvious cases of WP:NEO I have seen in recent times. Guy (Help!) 22:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Delete and redirect - As a WP:NEO with no notable usage outside of the book, discussion about the book, and stuff by the advocates of the book's philosophy. BMK (talk) 22:36, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Delete and redirect per Guy. This is the fourth time we have gone through this exercise and I have yet to see any evidence that somehow the world has changed as far as this neologism. Dbrodbeck (talk) 22:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Delete and redirect as per nom and NinjaRobotPirate's precedent. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:09, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• Keep - My opinion hasn't changed since the previous AfD. Regarding NinjaRobotPirate's precedent of Equity and gender feminism (seems like as good a place as any to start), in that case the subject was a set of terms Christina Hoff Sommers used to talk about concepts we already cover under other (much more popular) names. There was no novel concept. The terms' significance was therefore limited to the context of the book. Discussion of the terms was limited almost entirely to discussion of the book. In this case there is a prominent publication which brought the term to the mainstream, but (a) there is a novel concept we don't cover elsewhere, and (b) there are many secondary sources about carnism that mention the book in addition to sources about the book which mention carnism. That's an important distinction. Many notable concepts are named by and/or developed by and thus associated with a particular person. What's important is that it has significance outside of her own primary sources. And in this case there are many reliable secondary sources which talk about carnism. That many of them also talk about Joy just means she wrote the best known text about it. So if anything, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows should be merged into this article, not the other way around. Last time around I collected sources at User:Rhododendrites/Carnism. It's very possible more have been discovered since then, and as a disclaimer, I did not go back through them since then. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:12, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Comment about canvassing

When anybody evaluates this AfD, they should note carefully that there is canvassing here advocating for editors to come and vote for deletion, with the following text by the poster of that call to arms so to speak: Fringe neologism. One of the worst examples of a WP:COATRACK I've seen ever. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:07, 31 December 2015 (UTC) Therefore, the numbers of votes should be taken with a grain of salt in light of this canvassing. SageRad (talk) 15:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

That is the Fringe Theories Noticeboard. It's a normal place to discuss fringe theories. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:16, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

That very comment in itself is prejudging it to be a "fringe theory" which is a term that has come to be used in a McCarthyist way on Wikipedia, and posting it there has a clear intent to present it to a certain subset of editors who would be ideologically predisposed to a certain outlook on the article (not in terms of expertise as with a medicine or engineering board but because it's an ideological group), and lastly if that weren't enough, the phrasing itself of the call to comment on the AfD was very very very very clearly biased against the article (yes, four very's worth).... SageRad (talk) 16:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Vegan ethics isn't necessarily fringe, but a specific term, with no evidence of widespread use? It is fringe, by definition. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:44, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

A search on Google News for the word gives 215 results. Many of those are fluffy but many are good for establishing notability. It's not a term with very widespread usage in my brief survey but it's a real term with enough notability to remain an article in my opinion. There may be some case to fold it into speciesism as a specific variant, but i think the article is a great standalone article. SageRad (talk) 18:15, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Wait, I'm part of an ideological group because I have FTN on my watchlist? Didn't know that. And McCarthyist? Seriously? What next? Godwin's Law? Carnism is completely non-notable. Capeo (talk) 16:49, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I would agree that Adam Cuerden has crossed the line is using the FTN for canvassing here. Admittedly FTN gets abused like this a lot, sonething that is unfortunately very commonplace with that noticeboard. Artw (talk) 17:18, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Comment about WP:NEOLOGISM

I see many in this AfD citing WP:NEOLOGISM as if that makes all neologisms unsuitable for articles. However, the guideline itself has this section at the policy shortcut WP:WORDISSUBJECT which makes it clear that some neologisms are suitable:

When a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject

In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject. In these cases, the word or phrase in and of itself passes Wikipedia's notability criteria as the subject of verifiable coverage by reliable sources. As with any subject, articles on words must contain encyclopedic information. That is, such articles must go beyond what would be found in a dictionary entry (definition, pronunciation, etymology, use information, etc.), and include information on the social or historical significance of the term. While published dictionaries may be useful sources for lexical information on a term, the presence of a term in a dictionary does not by itself establish notability. Examples of Wikipedia articles on words and phrases include Macedonia (terminology), thou, orange (word), and no worries.

In other cases, a word or phrase is still prima facie (at first blush) about a topic other than the word or phrase itself. Often the word or phrase is a "lens" or concept through which the topic or closely related set of topics are grouped or seen. When this occurs, the article often focuses on the "lens" and may not be the main coverage of the topics which are viewed through it. World music, Political correctness, Homosexual agenda, Lake Michigan-Huron and Truthiness illustrate this.

I think this is one such case where a neologism has gained a notability and the article goes into depth far beyond a dictionary definition. SageRad (talk) 23:00, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• Comment. (edit conflict) I would like to clarify what is going on above.

• (1) This is not a deletion discussion at all - it is a merge discussion, as stated by the nominator here. The nominator previously started a merge discussion, and then WP:FORUMSHOPPED. He advertized both discussions on WP:FTN.
• (2) The nominator's allegation that all of the sources are summaries of the book, as opposed to discussing the concept, is disingenuous. For example, the beef industry source Drovers Cattle Network[40] was labeled by the nominator as "summary of Joy's work." It begins with

  "There’s a new buzzword gaining traction among the vegetarian activist community: carnism. Actually, it’s a term that’s been around awhile, since it was first coined by psychologist Melanie Joy several years ago and garnered visibility in her 2010 book “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows.” But it’s now become a topic du jour at conference sessions and discussion groups when animal activists get together at their annual “hate-the-meat-industry” meetings.

Likewise, the Piazza paper is entirely about the concept of carnism (not the book) as explained in this CNN story. Yet it was dismissed by the nominator because ""Carnism" does not appear in the abstract; may or may not in article."

• (3) In a post above, I listed 14 sources (not including the previous three) which substantively discuss the concept. All are secondary - independent of Joy. I specifically identified most of them as going beyond Joy's work. The nominator chose to criticize one which I did not make this claim about as being too closely connected to Joy's work, and use this as an excuse for ignoring the rest. All of the sources in that list are legitimate. In the words of FourViolas, who has been my most vocal adversary in the previous disputes over this topic, "it would be really artificial to shoehorn Sammy's sources into this article."[41]. Consider for example the German book by Mahlke, which is the first in my list of 14 sources. It has "carnism" in the title, and a large part of it is devoted to the subject. It would be completely silly to try to work this into the article on Joy's book. Likewise, the entry in the Encyclopedia of Agricultural and Food Ethics is not about Joy's book, it is about carnism. This is the case with many other sources that have been bluntly dismissed by the nominator.
• (4) The opponents of this article want to treat this as a fringe theory, and use this as a reason for discounting all the sources in my previous list. However, they have not been willing to provide any evidence that Joy's ideas depart significantly from mainstream scholarship. They don't. In fact, the people claiming this have either not defended their position at all, or have brought up their own citation-free fringe theories about evolutionary psychology and Anthony Bourdain's opinions. This is a case of WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT.
• (5) The perception that this article is full of original research is based on a decision by certain editors to include material which is clearly about the same subject matter but predates the term. When I first came across this article, it was a partisan screed. My rewrite did not include sources that were not clearly connected to the subject, but I understand why other editors wanted to include these sources on the grounds that the subject of the article is the idea, not the word. Furthermore it was reasonable to place the term in the context of the previous scholarship on the subject matter, such as the works of Rozin.

I hope that people will conduct searches on the term and actually read the sources they turn up, instead of buying into the idea that this is a pseudoscience "hoax".

If anyone wants to respond, please do so outside this comment rather than breaking it up. --Sammy1339 (talk) 23:26, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

This is a deletion discussion. Kindly do not put words in my mouth, which I have not said. I could see WP:HISTMERGE issues meaning that the content was not deleted outright, but see deletion as a suitable way of dealing with an article that is basically a WP:HOAX because the content that you yourself admit was added in that doesn't reference carnism serves as the only content not directly from Joy's book. WP:HISTMERGE might mean that we should look at alternatives to deletion, but, honestly, a bad depiction of Joy's views constantly going off-topic is probably unsuitable merge topic, as I learned after fully researching this and realising how bad it was. I also think your view - that going to people who, for example, explicitly talk about their conversations with Melanie Joy as reasons not to merge - means that the wider Wikipedia community should be actively excluded from a deletion discussion, keeping it to the people who are obviously non-neutral. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:36, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

That's not the person I quoted. --Sammy1339 (talk) 23:53, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• Delete The nomination does a good job of explaining the issue. The article is about a made-up-term which the author is trying to push as part of a campaign. Wikipedia should not be part of that—not until multiple independent reliable sources use the term as if it were an accepted concept not in relation to the author. The advocacy images can be put in some other article. Johnuniq (talk) 00:11, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• @Johnuniq: If you want in-depth academic analysis of the concept that doesn't even cite the person who originated it, that's obviously too much to ask. But if you want mainstream media outlets that use the word without reference to her, there are some, for example [42], [43], [44]. Please read my comment above, if you haven't already. --Sammy1339 (talk) 00:47, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Those are A. references to "carnist", B. very weak usages (used to simply mean "meat-eater", without any additional philosophy behind it) and C. in the middle case, quoting a vegan website in the only point it mentions the word. While a cognate, I'd say "carnist" is a far more narrow term than "carnism". Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:04, 2 January 2016 (UTC)