Talk:Maker culture

Maker subculture or maker culture?
Just a thought on what is a better name here? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 19:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Culture seems a better term to me. The wise ones at reference desk humanities, language, or science, may know a proper english format. I will ask in language first.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:06, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * We define a subculture as "a group of people within a culture... which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong." Here, we're defining a group of people who like to make things. That's a vague way of putting it, but I don't think that most people frequently make things, broadly speaking. Cultures generally have close ties to a nation or ethnic group. Browse the List of subcultures and I think you'll see the current title is appropriate. There's nothing really grammatically or semantically wrong about "Maker culture," just as you'd know what I was talking about if I mentioned "punk culture" or "hacker culture." But I think this amounts to clipping. --BDD (talk) 17:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Our article Subculture, although tagged as controversial, does state there is a movement to refer to them as 'co-cultures'- "to avoid the connotations of inferiority associated with the 'sub-' prefix." Should we just clip it to culture then? I can't think of any culture that it is actually a sub-group of. Art, computer tech, DIY, etc, can all be considered cultures but this one doesn't directly fit in any. I would think that sub- should refer to one culture, not many.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:53, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it the subculture is the correct technical term, but we also have to take into account the WP:COMMONNAME. While Google Books are of little help, a Google search suggests that the term "maker culture" is used in this context several times more than the "maker subculture". I get about 4k hits for ["maker culture" diy -wikipedia] and about 900 for ["maker subculture" diy -wikipedia]. Without the diy it's about 27k to 2200. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:54, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I see no problem if you want to move it to Maker culture then. If it is reverted then follow normal procedure: Edit war, get all involved blocked, then seek consensus after all blocks expire. Don't forget to cross-post and canvas at least 10 dispute fora as well.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:43, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
 * "Maker Circle-Jerk" would probably be more appropriate :D Humans have been doing everything described in this self-congratulatory article for the past several thousand years without patting themselves on the back like this. Is this the end result of turning janitors into sanitation engineers, or will we go even farther down this road ? Scary :( 210.22.142.82 (talk) 08:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: RESULT. The proposed name appears to be far more common. Cúchullain t/ c 13:25, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Maker subculture → Maker culture – As discussed in the section above, while it may be argued that subculture is more correct on the technical grounds, the word culture is much more common in this context. Not that any sources have been presented regarding the correctness of one name over the other; the only data we have is that on popularity of the names. Hence I invoke WP:COMMONNAME and propose this move to the more popular name. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 13:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support.--Canoe1967 (talk) 15:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose: This would be a blatant abuse of the world "culture", under any commonly accepted definition (other than slang usage withing subcultures themselves, which frequently like to label themselves "cultures", but this is not Slangipedia or Neologismpedia). This is absolutely, positively a subculture in the anthropological sense (barely; it's really an affinity group), the sociological sense, the political sense (barely; the subculture has very little in the way of a defined political outlook, other than being vaguely entrepreneurial and libertarianish and pro-technology), and the general public sense as used by mass media. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.  18:53, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * You should read some of the articles in Subculture (disambiguation) and Culture (disambiguation). As I mentioned in the section above, sub-cultures need to be sub- of an extising culture. This culture is not. "Affinity group" as you mention above would place it as an Organizational culture considering their Collective identity. --Canoe1967 (talk) 19:40, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * "This culture [sic] is not"? Of course it is!  It's actually a subsubculture, the surrounding subculture being geekdom, and the culture being modern, Western technological society.  You're also mix-and-matching different uses of "culture" here. Precisely  there are slangish, arch/ironic/self-conscious, plain ignorant/mistaken, humorous, and figurative uses and misuses of the word "culture", but very clear definitions of subculture and a dearth of misuses of that word, we need to use it and not a poorly thought-out warping of the former term. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.  22:11, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * "Ignorant/mistaken" my ass! You seem to be beaking off far to much about your opinion of the definition of culture. This discussion is about the definition that readers expect. You will note in the google hits above that society has changed your archaic defintion and has written a new one. Dictionaries don't dictate the usage, but just record it historically. We should be doing the same at wikipedia, unless you want to retro-translate it all back to Old English, Germaic or even Latin.--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:50, 5 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The notion of culture is fraught historically and, um, culturally. One probably can't expect all encyclopedia users to understand the term in the way that anthropologists or sociologists use it. But, the lead of this article suggests that "Makers" are a subset of "DIY culture", ergo a subculture by either of the definitions suggested above. The current redirect seems appropriate to me. Cnilep (talk) 08:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Which, by the way, lead me to the following two questions: why is the DIY a culture, and not a subculture, and 2) are all non-mainstream cultures subcultures? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 14:40, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support We can quibble over whether this a a culture or a sub-culture but it is not really for us to decide, we have to go by what the literature uses. There seem to be more instance of Maker culture than Maker subculture. Google hits for "Maker culture" give 73K  but "Maker subculture" only has 15K . The latter seem to frequently reference wikipedia. I've also noticed that you often get "Maker Culture" with capitals and no preceding the implying is being treated as a name whereas its often "the maker subculture". The other term used is "Maker movement" which get 240K .--Salix (talk): 18:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

ABout answers to criticism :
Advocates of maker culture claim that a greater emphasis on some memes distinguishes the newer "Maker-Culture" from earlier hobbyist learning environments:


 * If it can be imagined it can be made. ==> definitely not true and oversold. I can imagine a hat as big as a planet. Please makers, show me the way to make it.
 * The first step in making a thing, even a non-physical thing, is visualizing it. ==> the first step actually is imagining it. Making a couple of blueprints and drawings can help, it helped for centuries
 * ... and computers can greatly aid that visualization, including sketching, drawing, simulation, analysis, and prototyping.
 * A most effective step in refining/developing a thing is collaborating with others on it. => teamwork has been around since prehistory. Humans are social. Nothing new indeed.
 * ... and Internet can greatly aid that collaboration
 * ... and digital repositories are especially useful where data is used to directly reproduce objects and their derivatives.
 * Begin with the end in mind. ==> OIne the the 7 principles of highly effective people. Nothning special to the maker culture.
 * Making things always combines form with function. ==> Designer know it for decades
 * The art of making should be appreciated and celebrated. ===> That's right. So what ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.85.173.114 (talk • contribs) 18 June 2014

The above was removed from article by an IP who added some comments. It all seems to be OR without reference so I'm not putting it back. But there might be scope for this. The "If it can be imagined it can be made" is used by various maker groups for example  and  looks like it might be a reliable source. memphisdailynews has an article mentioning the quote, but I can't read it it for some reason.--Salix alba (talk): 21:27, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Merge of Maker movement

 * support Just a dupe article that appeared in May. Merge and redirect. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:58, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * 'support’ --Ptroxler (talk) 10:48, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * support --Laikalynx (talk) 21:20, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Request for improvement
I think the article's first sentence needs some clarification/simplification. The grammatical subject of "which" is unclear and it's not clear if "(opposed to ...)" means "(as opposed to ...)" (and if not, I don't know what it does mean). Please delete this comment if you make such a change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:390:A001:1030:39E0:1957:E187:6631 (talk) 14:10, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

-- I think I fixed this --Torteally (talk) 03:21, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Attempted cleanup in 'Music' section
Alright, so I've rewritten the Music section under "Other Areas", while trying to keep relevant links and content. Let me know how it looks; feel free to change it (obviously). Hopefully we can get rid of the "written like an ad" orange banner/ Tpdwkouaa (talk) 05:52, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it is ok - I am removing both of the banners and am going to try to clean up the whole Other Areas section to make it more logical. -- Torteally (talk) 03:22, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Maker Origins : Bad Products
Its seems so obvious I don't know why the article has not mentioned the dissatisfaction with mainstream products that Maker culture arises from. This is the mainspring of the whole movement and is a reaction to the price fixing cartels within tech industries that have been fined heavily all over the world, and the suspicion that these cartels also support rationing of technological advances. Also the lowest common denominator, one size fits all devices that maximize shareholder profit, minimize elite creatives scope for innovation. 86.143.210.142 (talk) 23:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

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Merger Proposal
I propose to merge DIY Ethic into Maker Culture. I think that the content in the DIY Ethic article can easily be explained in the context of Maker Culture, and the DIY Ethic article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Maker Culture will not cause any problems as far as article size is concerned. I think that the Worldwide section of the DIY Ethic article could be best used in Maker Culture to give a history on it since there isn’t one already made and can give some background to how it began.

I think it can also be noted that Maker Culture is noted as a contemporary culture/subculture of DIY Ethic so by merging these two pages may be beneficial since they’re already seen as too similar.

When thinking about the DIY Ethic page and it’s function it’s hard to put your finger on it. It doesn’t feel like an Ethics page that discusses the moral of those that use DIY Ethic. If this page were to be truly about people being “self-sufficient” and the morals that people that identify as this type of person use, I think it would be a different story.I also think this a suitable merger because there is constant reference to the DIY Ethic which I think gives it a clearer understanding than the actual DIY Ethic page.

Thoughts on this? Lostxxjustina (talk) 17:14, 29 April 2019 (UTC)