Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aristasia

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 of the nomination was delete. Keep votes are very weak, sadly, and WP:V is non-negotiable. Proto///type 15:06, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aristasia

Aristasia is a fictional world of all females, that is, if notable at all, notable as a BDSM role-playing setting, and is also an anti-feminist group. This article probably should have been deleted almost 2 years ago; See Talk:Aristasia for the VFD debate from September 2004; I count 6 delete vs. 3 cleanup. I did a thorough websearch on Aristasia and found only one thing that looks like a reliable reference: This book apparently discusses Aristasia, but I couldn't determine, online, what it says about it. Otherwise this article cites very unreliable sources: the Aristasia web site and their source text, The Feminine Universe, which is web-published only as far as I can tell, and isn't even complete. The article has two citations that are broken, and the rest are forum postings. There are references to Aristasia in other articles, but they are mainly of a throw-away sort: appearing in a "see also" list, for instance; none have references outside of the Aristasia web site. I had never heard of this topic before I found it via that {{hoax}} tag, and I apologize if my ignorance offends anyone who does know about this topic... but this article really doesn't conform to WP:V or WP:NPOV at all. I'm an eventualist normally, but this article has been around since Sept. 2004; I think it's better if we delete this if it can't be improved now. Mangojuice^talk 17:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• Delete As far as I can tell, this is nothing more than an internet community, consisting of a message board, and some sort of virtual reality chatroom. Based on the tiny number of messages on the message board, this community likely consists of one or two dozen people. The website has an alexa ranking of 1,845,845. On the other hand, there is a video link from some unspecified british tv show from 10 years ago about this, at http://aristasia.co.uk/MM1.htm if anyone wants to place some value on that. --Xyzzyplugh 20:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment Ok, after reading a bit further, this isn't just a web based community, it's run by the woman featured in the video clip I mentioned above, who runs some sort of BDSM club out of her home. So it's a BDSM community taking place inside a house, with a small web based community as well. --Xyzzyplugh 20:27, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• Delete not notable, reads like something come up with as an "anti-Gor". The pre-21st century refs smell hoaxy. Danny Lilithborne 21:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day, even if it escalates to an obscure 1950s-themed BDSM/fetish lesbian club that gets a little "news of the weird" tv coverage. Bwithh 22:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep I believe there is a misunderstanding of Aristasia. I too have done extensive research. Aristasia does not exist. The article need to be rewritten. It is actually a counter-femist concept which arose in pop culture. Urbandictionary and other websites, also acknowledges the existance of this society as a mythical fastasy of male submission. Its ideology is one that formed from modernization and is very real. Some information on that page is false and need to be edited not deleted. However this article has passed deletion once before and should not be targeted again.Killerhun00 06:47, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a concept contained entirely within a website with an alexa ranking of 1,845,845. What makes this notable? --Xyzzyplugh 12:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• • • There are other websites [1], [2], [3], and others, including an urbandictionary entry. Also if you search in google, this subject returns a large number of results. This is notable in cult cutural. Killerhun00 18:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
      • You again. Why am I not surprised that you would think a GeoCities site and an UrbanDictionary entry would make something notable? Danny Lilithborne 19:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete A friend of mine got to actually meet these women who claim to live a "racinated" life. They claim there are several Aristasian households in England and Europe and that they don't allow anything made after 1960 into their house. It turns out there are about four of them, living in two houses, and while they do have a lot of antiques, they also have plenty of contemporary stuff in their houses. They come up with all kinds of excuses for why they make exceptions. Basically, this is their fantasy, not something they actually do. Mrs Baggins —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.188.19.203 (talk • contribs)
• Curious lesbian subculture. Keep —Ashley Y 03:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, nn notable.--John Lake 04:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
• Comment How many of the Ghits are due to our page being around for years?--Cúchullain ^t/c 06:29, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep (having problems highlighting with this keyboard) I recognise this may look hoaxy, but I assure you the movement does exist, and has received some significant media attention in Britain, and published not one but several books. If we deleted it because some US readers have never heard of it this makes Wikipedia US-centric. I could give more detailed citations given time. PatGallacher —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PatGallacher (talk • contribs) .

No one is disputing that the website exists, or that there are indeed several lesbians living in a house practicing this. If you have evidence pointing to the notability of this topic, if you have reliable sources of information on it, post them here. Merely claiming that they exist doesn't help us. The book, for example, seems to exist only online. If you can point to where it was published in some mainstream way with widespread distribution, please do so. --Xyzzyplugh 18:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Keep I've seen stuff with less notability in the wiki, and even surviving AfD. On that basis, and since there seems to be some crosslinking to it, I don't see why it should be removed. --Svartalf 20:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment I really don't think we should take crosslinking into account here. If this article is on a topic Wikipedia can't realistically include, the crosslinking that does exist is likely the result of the Aristasia article being allowed to exist here for so long (as I pointed out above, it probably should have been deleted after its first VfD). Besides, most of the crosslinking is non-useful; inclusion in see also lists and such. Mangojuice^talk 05:09, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Keep the "delete" arguments seem woefully under-informed. The Feminine Universe has been available in book form for over ten years. Several other Aristasian books have been published over the years. Here is a list of three of them on Amazon [4] including Children of the Void - a full length novel about Aristasians in London which is said to be only slightly fictionalised. The list is not complete. It excldes, for example, The Feminine Regime. Britain's Channel 4 did a full-length documentary on Aristasia that made such an impact that there is a Yahoo group (not run by Aristasians) devoted solely to trvia about this one documentary [5]. There were numerous other television apearances. Articles about Aristasia have appeared this year in the Fortean Times and Bizarre Magazine.

Claims that Aristasians do not live according to their own priciples, aside from being irrelevant, are based on a misunderstanding of what those principles are. Aristasians have repeatedly stated that imitating the past is not their aim. Pre-21st-century existence of Aristasia is well documented and many Aristasians live in private households and are not online. The stress on discipline is much less among current Aristasians, though even the previous generation despised BDSM. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.153.88.14 (talk • contribs) .

• Comment. The books on Amazon are not actually available through Amazon, but rather are only available through affiliated resellers, which really doesn't mean much. I couldn't locate the publisher. When was the article in Fortean Times? Unfortunately, the article doesn't appear in their online archives, but then, not all articles do, apparently. Mangojuice^talk 05:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. I believe the books may be out of print, like the Gor books. The point is that they do exist and have had influence. The prices that second-hand copies are going for indicates the strength of demand among a "cult" market. These books are mid-90s (for the time-sceptics) and earlier versions of two of them appeared in paperback editons during the late 80s. There have now been three "generations" of Aristasians. Admittedly the first is not very documented as they didn't publish books or give media interviews, but the second generation certainly seems already to have a history behind it. A number of different Aristasian sites have come and gone over the last ten years, with rather different styles, that certainly seem to have been run and habituated by different groups of people. In other words, a core set of ideas and philosophies has motivated a number of people over likely three decades (they claim four) in a variety of ways. Various spin-offs and quasi-Aristasian groups have sprung up over the years, but there has always been an accepted "official" Aristasian group. Aristasia has decidedly (and by choice) been fairly small and exclusive and existed outside the mainstream, but it does seem to be a distinct minor cultural phenomenon.

Re prehistory: in the early to mid 80s a series of stories about a character called Amelia Bingham appeared in the British lesbian magazine Artemis. These stories have decidedly proto-Aristasian characteristics and were written by one of the first-generation Aristasians. The series has recently been privately published as a "novel" and can be seen here [6]. The introduction (apparently written in the late '80s for an abortive attempt at publication in book-form at that time) throws some light on proto-Aristasians at Oxford in the late '70s/early '80s.

Keep I first encountered Aristasia through an interview on the radio and have read several newspaper and magazine articles relating to it. It is counter-cultural, so you would not expect widespread coverage. It is unusual, well-thought-out and highly literate. The Feminine Universe certainly exists in published form. The Wikipedia article does not come across as particularly partisan.

Comment Based on all debate so far, it's highly likely this article will be kept. The problem I have with this is that the article as it currently stands is entirely unsourced. That is, we have no reliable sources on this. Out of print books by the head of this Aristasia movement/whatever, an online book by the same person, and other text on the woman's website, none of these are reliable sources. I tried to find info online on the channel 4 program on Aristasia, and I did find this: http://members.aol.com/bonfessee/cinema.htm While this source may not be the best either, according to it the channel 4 program was not about Aristasian philosophy, but instead about spanking and other BDSM activities. We seem to have enough info to state that this woman is a dominatrix, I suppose. --Xyzzyplugh 13:02, 10 July 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.