Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moral compass

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:00, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moral compass

"Moral compass" is simply a figure of speech that concretizes our moral principles. This article is just an excuse for personal-essay observations ("In some cases, failure to comply with one's own moral compass may leave emotional scars which could take years to heal, if they ever do."), a soapbox-full of quotes, and linkspamming for Holonomic brain theory(!) Delete. -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:37, 16 July 2005 (UTC) and redirect to Morality. -- Antaeus Feldspar 11:44, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the genesis of the article was a statement, in a May 31 e-mail, from a UK physician expressing concern about another MD promoting software that filters out the comments of vaccine policy critics from BMJ 'rapid responses': "I have no way of knowing how his mind works or what motivates him - though he does seem to take the medical establishment line on vaccines. It seems to me that the only sensible line to take is an open one, because no one can say for certain whether MMR and/or thiomersal is implicated or not in the cause of autism. It seems quite plausible to me that mercury may play a role in ASDs. The few doctors who bother to contribute to the debates on vaccines at the BMJ tend to be patronisingly certain about their safety." Thoughts along the lines of how rose colored glasses may often be used by doctors, to shield themselves from common sense, came to mind. Initially he article's content was largely limited to relevant quotes, rather than "essay observation," due to the relative dearth of available material defining 'moral compass'. An article on the topic is quite necessary to fill the void. Wikipedia, as an institutional memory resource, is well suited to helping rectify this glaring blind spot. Ombudsman 04:39, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for that digression on thimersol and vaccines and autism. Responding to the portion of your statement relating to the VfD, "the dearth of available material defining 'moral compass'" would seem to be an argument not to have an article on "moral compass", not to fill up the article with personal essay, quotations and links. Perhaps the reason there is a dearth of material defining "moral compass" is because the simple dictionary definition says all that needs to be said. -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:35, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Without the POV and irrelevant bits it's a dicdef. — mendel ☎ 04:28, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
• keep: An interesting observation, Antaeus, but not one that justifies deletion. The concept is inherently thought provoking, quite useful as an anchor for Socratic discourse, and one that has been around a long time. The divergence between relativistic and absolutist morality strikes to the heart of POV issues, a matter that the complementary article could not fully address, and would have to treat as an aside. Please feel free to discuss your concerns on talk pages, improve upon content, or contribute salient material, rather than using reverts, edit summaries and deletion proposals to fork discussion by inappropriate means. Ombudsman 04:33, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

  Please explain exactly what it means to "fork discussion", since you are tossing that accusation. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:28, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

The passage that disconcerted you has been revised. A request for discussion, preferably sans stemwinding, is not an accusation. There are no entries yet on the article's discussion page, where your concerns might have been worked out collegially in lieu of a premature VfD. Ombudsman 22:47, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

And then again they might just have gotten patronized with responses heavy in words like "collegially" and "stemwinding", and accusations of "fork[ing] discussion by inappropriate means". I ask you once again, what is "forking discussion"? Please don't pretend that you wrote everything after "rather than" in that sentence in a purely hypothetical spirit and had no idea it could possibly be interpreted as an accusation; that's insultingly false and uncivil. -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:27, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

• Deleteper Antaeus Feldspar. Howabout1 ^{Talk to me!} 04:37, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as material well covered in Morality. And a bit of WP:CIV would not go astray. brenneman^(t)(c) 06:00, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Colloquial and un-encyclopedic. This has no philosophical relevance. --malathion ^talk 10:25, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. POV essay. Kaibabsquirrel 20:06, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, original research. Dcarrano 22:15, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, original research. Pavel Vozenilek 22:58, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete and Redirect to Morality. --Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs) 23:00, 16 July 2005 (UTC)}
• Keep but rewrite. Notable term, gets 209,000 Google hits, and I've heard of it often on the radio (mainly conservatively oriented stations). --Idont Havaname 05:35, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. POV essay, no citations. Stephenhumphry 07:01, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete/redirect per BluAardvark. Radiant_>|< 13:04, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep usefull information. Ravedave 21:10, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

What's useful about it? -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:27, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the information will be useful for anthropological analysis as to whether or not editors of the Wikipedia, collectively, have any semblance of a moral compass. Ombudsman 04:44, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

• Redirect to Guilt and merge anything useful there that isn't already covered. — RJH 23:13, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete POV essay. JamesBurns 02:46, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: The term is real in the sense that it is often used rhetorical devise. It is often used in accusations that the opposing faction or person lacks the moral compass (presumably similar to that of the speaker) for whatever reason. In this form this is POV musings, referring to moral compass as something more absolute. It would require an extensive rewrite to include the rhetorical use. - Skysmith"
• Delete, per the dicta of my moral compass--original research, for one thing. Iralith 22:16, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
• Weak keep or merge into Morality. Add a definition to Wiktionary as well. Thryduulf 11:40, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, per JamesBurns, it's a POV essay. Willmcw 01:08, 23 July 2005
  • So, are you saying the Wikipedia doesn't have room for articles about the moral bearings of POV? With so much discussion on the Wiki about POV, and tens of thousands of goofle hits providing secondary evidence of the significance of the concept, such a conclusion seems odd. Ombudsman 05:03, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Thanks for adding my signature. A NPOV, sourced article about a POV is perfectly acceptable. Article like Conservatism, Liberalism, Antidisestablishmentarianism, you name it. But we don't have room for POV, unsourced essays.
      
• Delete / salvage to Morality: I went through an NPOV battle myself; not worth the time to defend. Take whats encyclopedic and merge it before it gets deleted. Cwolfsheep 15:35, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep but slap a complete rewrite notice on it and copy this debate to the talk page. A moral compass is a thing, maybe distinguishable from morality proper. Decide whether to merge after it's been rewritten. I couldn't resist a bit of copyediting cleanup on it, although I'm aware typos pale to nothing in the list of objections to the article as it stands. ~ Veledan | Talk | c. 18:33, 25 July 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.