Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ELIZA effect

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, as this article provides an excellent description of this phenomenon and is properly referenced. Essentially all of the critiques of this article in this discussion refer to a previous version of the article, which was entirely replaced. John254 14:23, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ELIZA effect

Original and very bad research. Apparently at least some features of language are arbitrary and conventional. Like the association of "+" and addition. And apparently this startling news is related to Eliza. It may be that the term "Eliza effect" is in common usage (Google suggests so), but so far the concept seems banal. (If someone else knows what it is that this "effect" is, please make appropriate changes and avoid the deletion.) Phiwum 17:51, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• The book cited in the references section of the article is ISBN 0684833484. Uncle G 02:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy Delete patent nonsense. Anomo 03:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and clean up this term is common, but may be jargon and outside our scope. ELIZA is simply the instance in which the effect was first noticed in the computer community. Anomo, I'm sorry, but you're wrong; this may be banal but it's not patent nonsense. Alba 05:35, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment The first time what effect was noticed? That words and symbols have conventional meanings and that humans use these conventions in interpreting communication? How could anyone fail to recognize this fact? Sorry, I just don't get it. But if the term is in common usage, then by all means clean it up and express clearly what this effect is supposed to be. (I am especially unclear on how naming conventions in programming languages are related to this so-called effect.) Phiwum 14:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Speedy delete. Patent nonsense. Pavel Vozenilek 22:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete I can't find a reliable source that mentions this, and therefore I have no way of cleaning this. The article as it stands does a poor job of communicating exactly what this effect is and what its implications are. If a good source crops up in the future, I would say it'd actually be better for the article to start anew than attempt to use this as a starting point. GassyGuy 09:27, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
  • That actually sounds logical. I would rather start over, and I can't disagree with the people saying this article's content stinks. Alba 11:31, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

* Page has been completely rewritten due to criticisms on this AfD. Please read new page before commenting. Alba 12:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment The page is greatly improved, but it is still hard to see which bits are original and which are sourced. The argument in the logical fallacy section, for instance: is that an argument found in one of the listed sources or is it OR? Also, I still cannot see how using a "+" to denote something "addition-like" in a programming language is an instance of the ELIZA effect. It does not seem to have anything much to do with computer behavior so much. When I write "x=1+1", I don't see how I could mistakenly infer that the computer is behaving like a human. Phiwum 13:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment I'll work more later on detailed sourcing, but I didn't realize that FA-quality sourcing was required to pass AfD, nor that description constituted OR. You asked for a better description of the effect and more explicit sourcing -- I have provided these. As for the addition explanation, it may be too confusing to keep... "x=1+1" is not an instance of the ELIZA effect. "x=a+b", while not caring if a and b are strings or numbers, is an example of the ELIZA effect. (Languages like Perl and Python let you get away with that, while C++ doesn't.) Alba 14:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

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.