Talk:Friend of a friend

Circular definition
"Friend of a friend (FOAF) is a phrase used to refer to someone that one does not know well — literally, a friend of a friend."

This definition is nonsensical. Someone you don't know well is not literally a friend of a friend &mdash; for this to be true, a friend of yours would have to know them, and this need not be true.

Furthermore, the definition says that a friend of a friend is literally a friend of a friend. You don't say. What is the point of this circular definition? &mdash; Paul G (talk) 14:59, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

French film name
To establish that the French phase in this article exists, a reliable source needs to point to the existence of that phrase in public use. Links to listings of a 2013 French movie that uses the name performs such a act. We don't need a secondary source that discusses the film (which does not appear to have been released in translation/subtitles, hence lack of English-language discussion - there's plenty of French discussion) you only need to establish its existence. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, it's not my intention to edit war over something so inconsequential, but the proffered sources are really kind of underwhelming. Surely there must be something that actually discusses the term itself.  If there isn't, then it's perhaps WP:UNDUE to state these things.  For example, if I said that "Il est fou" is a famous French proverb, and then cited a random database entry that has that as a title, it really proves nothing.  It just means that someone strung those words together eventually to form the title of a film.  Someone on fr.wikipedia could say that "Die Harder" is a common English proverb with a citation to the IMDb.  I think you get where I'm going with this.  What we really need is an article that discusses the phrase itself, not an example of its use in a film title.  For example, A Penny Earned is a 2011 film listed on the IMDb.  That doesn't prove anything.  However, this article specifically labels it as an common aphorism. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:26, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this is hardly worth much wiki-time, is it?
 * I agree with your comments ... but - in this case, the lack of English-translation version appears to have squelched any English-language discussion, at least as far as I can Google-find (which doesn't mean all that much, of course). So the question is whether the IMDB listing is of value despite its limits. And it is valuable in showing that this unlikely combination of words (a bear?) is well enough known to resonate with the casual movie goer. It's not just something that a single editor dreamed up. That adds value to the article, even if it falls well short of what we'd like. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 16:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Trivialization
To say that this article is merely about a meme, and not about the inherent concept of a human connection through a mutual friend, trivializes the article and separates it from the full meaning of the phrase. For example, WP:ARTICLE calls for comprehensive summary of the topic identified by the title of the article. Funnelling down to the meme represents your point of view. Since 1870 binary relations have been considered logic of relatives (C.C. Peirce), though that term has been regretted. The contribution is not OR but historic. Yes, there is some technicality involved, but it is implicit in the title of this article, and gives readers opportunity to better comprehend the meme. Readers may well be concerned with their personal popularity, wanting to make friends with popular people, and reaching for an understanding of relationships like FOAF. Asserting "this isn’t an article about networks" is contradicted by the line "The rise of social network services has led to an increased use of this term. Six degrees of separation is a related concept" that you left in the article. True, we are not discussing FOAF (ontology), but trivializing the title dumbs down article content. — Rgdboer (talk) 21:56, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * FOAF (ontology), an article I didn't realize existed, would be fine for the material you submitted, although it still appears to be original research and would need a reference. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 01:04, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * For others, this is the paragraph in question that I removed and has been reverted: "Considering friendship between people to be a binary relation, the connection to a friend of a friend is a composition of the relationship with itself. Composed relations are used to describe kinship, so it may be natural to apply composition to friendship. One consequence is that frequently a person’s friends have more friends than him (the friendship paradox), which accents the reach of the compound connection." No references. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 01:05, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Today's rewrite was spurred by the old lead sentence which was inadequate. The link to balance theory was expanded to a section with appropriate references for this sociology topic. — Rgdboer (talk) 23:16, 31 May 2018 (UTC)