Talk:Densa

This article fails WP:N and WP:V
I bought and printed out the full Sarah Boxer article, which is the only article in existence that seems to mention this "organization". The article is about Mensa. "Densa" is only given a trivial mention. This article is not a legitimate source to establish WP:N and WP:V and I have deleted it. The Parsnip! 15:21, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As I said in the second deletion discussion, the Sarah Boxer article is a humor piece, not intended to convey actual information about the organization. Hopefully someone will find something else; I haven't managed to as of yet. --CA387 15:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that since people seem to want this article, it's fair to let it be for now in hopes that those people will introduce acceptable references/citations (not trivial passing mentions like the Boxer article, which would be fine as an ADDITIONAL source but can't establish WP:N and WP:V as a primary source). If no quality primary sources can be added by the end of June, I'll relist at AFD. The Parsnip! 13:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The end of June is upon us and it looks like nobody has found any non-trivial, acceptable third-party references. The article currently fails WP:N, in that the sources provided do not establish notability of the subject. The group's homepage seems to be a personal Comcast customer page. I will soon renominate Densa for AFD unless Notability and Verifiability can be established. Please note by comments regarding the Boxer article above: it only provides a trivial passing mention and is therefore unsuitable to establish the basis of Notability. The Parsnip! 16:59, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Even if you feel a few sentences in a major national newspaper does not satisfy WP:N or WP:V in your understanding of those guidelines. it is not legitimate for you to remove the references from an article, as long as they discuss the subject of the article. Nor is it legitimatee for you to remove references, then remove the reference section. That is a tactic which degrades articles. Leave the reference and in the next AFD you can note that it iI see the Boxer article as more than a "passing trivial reference." It is not good faith editing to remove a reference then complain there are no references. You also removed the McGowan New York Times article and denied that it exists. I just looked at it again. Try using Proquest. Not every indexing system, even the newspaper's own, includes every article in a given publication.(to err is all too human). Whether you feel references are enough to prove notability or not, you are absolutely not entitled to go around removing them in preparation to launching another AFD. You might also try contacting the editor who added a reference (me) if you are unable to find it, rather than assuming I just made it up and deleting it. Did you look for the additional references someone cited in the previous AFD, to quote UncleG: "As pointed out above, the nominator, CA387, and Adrian_M._H. are making the error that Google Web is the be-all-and-end-all of looking for sources. In addition to the NYT articles, which (as pointed out) the NYT's own search tool finds quite happily, there are articles by The Colorado Springs Gazette ("Mensa sound too tough? Densa may be more your style", 1994-09-22), The Miami Herald ("Are you Mensa or a Densa?", Don Shoemaker, 1983-10-12), and The Syracuse Herald-Journal ("Densa: The club for people who dare to be dense", Maryln Schwartz, 1983-09-13). Please put more effort into looking for sources, especially when the citations hand their locations to you on a platter. The PNC is satisfied. Keep. Uncle G 16:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)"  Edison 19:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Sadly, the source is too old to be handy on the internet, but according to "Meredy Amyx" in a letter of 5/15/2005 the origin of Densa was "the August 1974 issue of BOMB (Boston & Outskirts Mensa Bulletin), the newsletter of the Boston chapter of Mensa" of which she was the editor. John D. Coons, a contributor to that newsletter, started writing about Densa in that issue, and continued in following issues, which were reprinted in other Mensa newsletters, before the term became common in the general public. This was about the first time I read about it, in a campus newspaper. She said in the letter she has those 1974 issues. Would that she were a Wikipedian. This is a promising area for research. Amyx provides further info at with a reprint of some of the original Densa material. A substantial reference about a Mensa origin for Densa would be "The Origin of Densa" Copyright © 2005 Meredy Amyx, originally printed in the June-July 2005 issue of Interloc, a publication of American Mensa, Ltd. Once the Densa meme was out, various quizzes were written, websites created, etc.  and it has continued to have a life of its own for the following 33 years. It may be hard to come up with a membership roster, or to find a meeting or the organization, but the same might be said about the Illuminati another fictional group (or is it real?). Edison 20:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I strongly recommend that you desist from your accusations of bad faith. I'm tired of arguing with people over their interpretations of policy and I don't appreciate your personal attacks. I did NOT delete the references in "preparation for another AFD", and your accusation as such is completely absurd. It is not my job to hunt down people who added individual references to an article and ask them to verify if it is true. The article has sat dormant for a MONTH, since the last AFD, after which I clearly stated that I would re-AFD if no suitable references had been provided, and they were NOT provided and they ARE STILL NOT PROVIDED. All you've done is revert to an old version of the page with a bunch of references of questionable merit. I do not have to add the references, the people whop want to KEEP THE ARTICLE need to add them. Different people on Wikipedia perform different tasks. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with removing a reference article that does not cover the topic being discussed. The Boxer article IS ABOUT MENSA, NOT DENSA. I have the article here in front of me and there are exactly two sentences that have to do with "Densa", they are put forth in a humorous light and they do not add a thing to the Wikipedia article about Densa. The McGowan article does not exist, as far as I'm concerned. Why doesnt the New York Times have it's own article in it's own database? You can't expect people to come here and purchase proquest subscriptions to try and verify that these articles actually exist. This is not about Illuminati, is is about Densa. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. The Parsnip! 20:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The reference to the Illiminati was to show that a group does not even have to really exist to be notable. The Illuminati article is a fine one and hardly the thing one points to to justify keeping another poor article. I deny making any personal attack. I'm sure that when you repeatedly claim that the article I referenced by McGowan does not exist, you do not intend to make a personal attack either, and you're surely not repeatedly calling me a liar. If the article by Boxer talks about Densa, however briefly, it may certainly be added to an article about Densa. If it is a humorous reference, that fits right in with the origin and spirit of Densa, which may in fact be a fictional organization, except in so far as people buy t-shirts or diplomas to display their "membership.' I do not understand your logic in claiming a right to remove it because it does not "cover the topic being discussed." It talks about Densa. It talks about Mensa. The fact that the main subject is Mensa does not allow you to delete it. There is no policy that says you may delete a reference that talks about something, just because it says more about something else. Because you think it does not, on its own, prove notability does not give you any right to delete it. If you nominate an article for deletion, your nomination fails, then you go and delete all the references and renominate it stating that it lacks references, I do not need to make any personal attack, because the actions speak for themselves. The fact that you do not subscribe to Proquest is irrelevant. There is no Wikipedia policy that says every reference must be available on every indexing service, and there is no policy that says the New York Times indexing service is perfect in its inclusion of things published many years ago. You should ask the New York Times why their index is imperfect, not me. I provided the full citation info from Proquest. Many libraries have the New York Times on microfilm, or allow search of online files. For issues before full computerization, the image may be captured but the optical character recognition or the indexing may be flawed. If it does not show up digitally, it might still show up on microfilm. This is far from the only puzzling indexing case. A while back I had 2 different Proquest subscriptions through different organizations, and some New York Times articles would show up in one Proquest search but not the other. Edison 20:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Densa = Definition
I joined Mensa in the 1980s. The word "Densa" is obviously a play on the word "Mensa" and the word "dense." I have heard the word used often both by Mensans and non-Mensans. Contrary to what is stated in the article, when most people use it, they mean a group analgous to Mensa. Just as Mensa is a society for people who have an exceptionally high IQ, "Densa" is a group for people who have an exceptionally low IQ. This is what the word has always been intended to convey when ever I heard it used. Just because a person is not qualified for Mensa would not necessarily imply they would qualify for Densa. If some one belongs to Densa, the implication is they are exceptionally studpid. This is not true for someone whose IQ falls in the 97 percentile range. Please note that Densa is a low IQ society. People whose IQ fall in the 97 percentile range do not have a low IQ, and therefore would not qualify for Densa. I am trying to post this anonymously as I swore I would have nothing more to do with Wikipedia which in my opinion has too many editors with small minds, little knowledge, too much time on their hands. Not to mention too much hostility. Since Densa is a fictional society, I reverted the line that made reference to one particular individual who estimated how many members it might have had at some particular point in the past. If there were such a society, that estimate would most likely have been incorrect as only one in ten members eligible for Mensa actually join Mensa. I imagine the percentage of dunces to join Densa would be much lower, especially if their dues were as high as Mensa dues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.229.61.232 (talk) 20:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you seriously think that people with a 3rd percentile IQ would be able to function, much less join any club? That is the level of severely handicapped. Densa is a spoof of Mensa, so who cares what the membership requirements would be?--Flunkerton (talk) 20:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I just had to comment on the sheer lolz of the first post above. Someone from Mensa showing up to critique a parody in a truly "SERIOUS BIZNESS" manner and along the way whine about Wikipedians being "small-minded."  --GenkiNeko (talk) 11:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think Densa is for the exceptionally stupid. The term is used in Mensa South Africa for the non-2%-er spouses and friends of Mensans who would sometimes join in Mensa-related activities which would otherwise have been for 2%-ers only.  Such an event would then be a joint-event of Mensa and Densa.  On other occassions, when there is an exclusive Mensa activity, the spouses of those who can't attend would organise a get-together of their own on the same night, i.e. for members of Densa. -- leuce (talk) 17:34, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * In Perth, Australia, the term was exclusively used (by Mensans) to refer to particularly stupid people, not just non-Mensans. (Although I haven't heard it for a few years now.) Mitch Ames (talk) 12:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Densa = Origin
Meredy Amyx here. I just ran across my name mentioned above and signed on so I could respond. What do you want to know? MeredyAmyx (talk) 19:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Can someone explain this?
"However, in contrast to the implied aims of Densa, one group - the Densa Special Interest Group (Densa SIG), in fact requires Mensa membership."

If this is true, one must be both in the 98th percentile AND below it to be in this subsection of DENSA? Am I understanding this correctly? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.229.126.145 (talk) 12:16, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a joke. A SIG (special interest group) is an informal sub-group within Mensa, where Mensa members sharing a certain common interest get together. There are dozens of them, but since they are groups within Mensa, they require Mensa membership to join. The Densa SIG is not meant, by the Mensans who formed it, to be a serious organisation. SchnitteUK (talk) 17:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I will reformulate the article to make this point clearer. SchnitteUK (talk) 17:37, 3 July 2010 (UTC)