Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Memetic engineering

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 no consensus whether to merge or delete; but editors are free to pursue merging in the usual way. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 15:43, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Memetic engineering

Article is a neologism and presents the terms from a minor (and unreferenced) social theorist as a full-blown theory. These ideas are presented as 'the way the world works' since they are unattributed, for example by stating that "philosophy attempts to describe, and find correct methods of reasoning about novel, or puzzling memeplexes". While this is an interesting idea, without attributing the statement this conflicts with WP:AWW Antonrojo 23:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, moving any sourced and non-jaron content to Meme. Antonrojo 04:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Rewrite, merge and redirect to Meme. Surprisingly, this gets 46K google hits (although not all from reputable sites). As written, the article has severe problems, including POV and WP:OR. With some work, it could become a reasonable part of the Meme article, I believe. I don't recommend leaving it as its own article because it's not a real subject in and of itself in my opinion. I'm sure others will disagree.... N Shar 23:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • James Gardner would disagree. Uncle G 00:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - crank sociology, unsourced. Michael K. Edwards 23:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • But not unsourceable. See the aforementioned, this, this, this, and this for examples. Then there are the books include memetic engineering in their discussions: ISBN 0802139175 (page 172) ISBN 1402012543 (pages 321–322) ISBN 0802038018 (pages 203–204) Uncle G 00:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
    • The last (science fiction) cite provides some evidence that the term is 'old wine in a new bottle' since the ideas in most of these books are adequately explained by prior theories of 'mental control'. Very similar approaches apparently seen as outdated by the Meme crowd include propaganda studies, Media studies including the work of Marshall McLuhan, and for that matter Marxian studies of ideology going back further in history (e.g. Althusser)...in each case adding an idiosyncratic set of jargon rather than building on prior research and theories. Antonrojo 03:40, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Merge, per N Shar commentary above. Smeelgova 04:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC).
• Merge, per N Shar commentary above. NIvory 01:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC).
• Speedy Delete purely a neologism. Anomo 02:00, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
• Merge, per N Shar commentary above.Fsdemir 09:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• Merge, per N Shar commentary above.--Colindownes 06:13, 27 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.