Talk:Mega Society

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Contents 1 Rejoinders to the proponents of deleting the Mega Society article 1.1 Conflict of interest 1.2 Vanity 1.3 Size of Society 1.4 Verification 1.5 Notability 2 So what? It still does not satisfy WP:ORG for notability

[edit] Rejoinders to the proponents of deleting the Mega Society article

What follows are rejoinders to the proponents of deleting the Mega Society article, which for the moment can only be viewed here:

User:MichaelCPrice/mega

[edit] Conflict of interest

It has been asserted that since the members of the Society have a conflict of interest, their arguments should be discounted. In a discussion involving value judgments, such as whether an article is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, it is of course important to establish whether the person expressing an opinion has something at stake in expressing that opinion. Since I am the Internet Officer of the Society it is reasonable to assume that I have a bias toward having an article about the Society in Wikipedia. In what follows therefore I will avoid stating my opinion about the importance or significance of the Society. Thus readers may focus on what I say and not on why I say it.

[edit] Vanity

It has been asserted that the Society is merely a vanity club. One phrase that has been used implying this is that the members are "self-selected." The only way to gain admission is by scoring at the 4.75 sigma level on a test capable of discriminating at that level. No existing timed, supervised test is valid above 4 sigma. A number of people have explored testing above this range, and three of these people are members of the Society. However, there have been about 100 people who have scored highly enough on these experimental tests to be admitted since the founding in 1982, out of over 30,000 people who have completed the tests and submitted answer sheets and several million people who have been exposed to the tests in publications and on the Web. The norms of the tests have been determined by non-members using several different, generally accepted psychometric techniques. The details are contained in the reports available on the Web and referenced in the article. No one proposing deleting this article has criticized these reports.

[edit] Size of Society

It has been claimed that the Society is too small to be included in Wikipedia. However, there are other small groups that have articles, such as the Order of the Garter and Institute for Advanced Study, both with 26 members. The Society is part of a pyramid of societies, each with increasingly high entrance requirements, and each with many times more members, so the Society is part of this pyramid and its size is constrained by the shape of the pyramid. If the size of a society is limited by its definition, then size alone cannot be a criterion for exclusion.

[edit] Verification

The article contains about twenty references to mainstream publications that can be used to verify that the Society has existed for over twenty years and has had the entrance requirement that is stated in the article. The other specific statements in the article can likewise be verified. It has been argued that more is required than mentioning the Society in a reference; the Society must be the subject of the reference. This seems like an unduly restrictive definition of the purpose of a reference, which is after all supposed to function as a way to verify statements made in an article. For this purpose it is not necessary that the referenced material be solely about the same subject matter as the Wikipedia article. Nonetheless, some of the references are titularly about the Society (for example, the Wall Street Journal and San Diego Union-Tribune articles), but that does not mean they do not also discuss members. Some of the articles discuss the Society in the context of the lives of the founders and members. Some of the references are about people who are discussed because they are members. All of the references make one or more statements about the Society that serve to verify a statement made in the article. None of the references mention the Society in passing or as an item in a list of societies.

[edit] Notability

According to WP:NOTE: "a subject is notable if it has been been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself". The references in the article are multiple (about twenty), non-trivial (some are full-length articles), published (all are mainstream books or magazines), and independent of the subject (none are written by members). Also from WP:NOTE: "The notability of a subject is judged by the world outside of Wikipedia: a subject is notable if people in the world deem it notable enough to publish non-trivial works about it". The listings in the Guinness Book of World Records over a period of years establish that people in the world outside of Wikipedia judge the Society to be notable.

WP:ORG is not policy, but even if it were, it states: "Organizations are usually notable if the scope of activities are national or international in scale and information can be verified by a third party source". This requirement is met since the Society has members on three continents and the references include publications in England, Australia, Israel, and Germany.

-- Canon 00:47, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] So what? It still does not satisfy WP:ORG for notability

The citations on that page take up more room than the article ... not a Good Sign. The problem has never been WP:VERIFY, it's WP:NOTE where the society fails. When it reaches the level of public awareness where the membership of fictional characters is mentioned in TV shows and feature films (and in their Wikipedia articles, like Lisa Simpson and Rodney McKay), then maybe it will be notable enough.

Take the time to read Notability is not subjective ... it may be "an inherently subjective concept" in your narrow view of reality, but the fact remains that the "additional subject-specific criteria" for Wikipedia:Notability (organizations) is what applies here, not the "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published sources" you seem fixated upon.

By Wikipedia standards, a social organization is "notable if the scope of activities are national or international in scale" ... just what has Mega Society done except publish some dubious IQ tests in high-profile magazines? Have they got a scholarship fund? Do they publish a reputable, peer-reviewed research journal that is cited by other publications? That's objective criteria, and it has not been met, no matter how long the "club" has been around ... the fact remains that they have not DONE anything worthy of note. —72.75.93.131 (talk • contribs) 20:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Being notable means to be noted: i.e. media coverage by the commercial vendors the WSJ and Omni (for example) is by definition an indication of notability. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The requirement that fictional characters must be members (e.g., Lisa Simpson and Rodney McKay are listed as being in Mensa) is not part of Wikipedia guidelines and hence is an expression of personal opinion, not Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia:Notability (organizations) is not policy, but even if it were, the requirement of national or international scope is met since the Society has several members in Europe and (as the references show) has received coverage in England, Australia, Israel, and Germany. There is no policy, draft or otherwise, requiring that an organization give out scholarships or publish peer-reviewed journals. This is because many organizations that have Wikipedia articles would fail this test. Canon 23:18, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Not here it doesn't. Yes, other organisations would fail the test - Wikipedia is full of articles which nobody has noticed ought not to be there. Foo has an article therefore bar should have an article is a frequently used but ultimately unpersuasive argument, especially when raised by individuals with a close connection to the subject. Guy (Help!) 23:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Arguments should be judged on merit, not ad hominem. Interesting that 72.75.93.131 (talk • contribs) implies that the Mega Society meets the requirement based on "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published sources" criterion that Guy asserts is deficient; clearly a debate is required. Instead of the abuse of arbitrary admin power we should follow procedures: that is their function. --Michael C. Price ^talk 23:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it is a fallacy to argue that because there are some tolerated wrongs then all wrongs are rights, and that is not the argument. The argument is that there are many organizations that have entries in Wikipedia because they satisfy the Wikipedia criteria of notability and yet this notability is not a product of their activities. Examples in addition to those already cited are: National Puzzlers League, Society of Fellows, and, for that matter, Mensa. By the way, it is a fallacy to argue that arguments are invalid because of who makes them. It is fine to argue that I am biased in my value judgements, but I am not making any value judgements. A value judgment would look like this: "I think the Mega Society is important". What I am instead saying is: "The Wikipedia criteria for notability are such-and-so, and the Mega Society meets those criteria". Canon 00:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

These groups have more than a couple of dozen members. Guy (Help!) 17:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Which is irrelevant to the issue of notability. --Michael C. Price ^talk 05:11, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

This whole thing reminds me of that scene in Tootsie, with Dustin Hoffman on the receiving end. (- We want somebody taller. - I can be taller. - No, we want somebody shorter. - I can be shorter. - We want somebody else.) As soon as the requirements are met, the bar is raised, and so it goes ad infinitum. I've seen it all before in some form, but requiring national scholarships and/or references by The Simpsons is the new level of ludicrousness. It is true that foo is not automatically notable just because bar has an article; the point here is something else: when bar stands without any objections while foo gets deleted with bizarre argumentation, it looks as if someone has a pique against this article, and it is objectivity of those who advocate deletion that looks a bit suspect. So, you see, this kind of argument cuts both ways. GregorB 19:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

So what so what? WP:ORG in only a proposed guideline. Also it does lean heavily on WP:VERIFY "information can be verified by a third party source." Rich Farmbrough, 11:50 8 December 2006 (GMT).