Talk:Metamodernism/Archive 1

Coinage of the word
The term metamodernism was not, in fact, introduced by the hacks mentioned in the article ("Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker") and the date ("2009") is wrong also. Any search of the term in Google Books will reveal that it was coined in the 1970s and already in use -in the academy- in the 1980s. I cannot help but wonder if Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, or one of their students wrote this inaccurate rubbish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oulipal (talk • contribs) 16:42, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The article should be rewritten. User: Yogiwallah

I am aware of at least two earlier, coined in the academic and in the socio-political world, definitions of the term. The article, as it is, is bias1ed towards one definition of MM, the one by Vermeulen and van der Akker. It should be rewritten to give all uses and definitions a proper representation, and list then chronologically. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.16.100.38 (talk) 22:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

List of notable metamodernists
All of the entries to the 'notable metamodernists' list are sourced to confirm that the individuals are metamodernists, and WP notability guidelines establish these people as notable. By definition if WP:NOT establishes the person as notable, and independent sourcing confirms them to be metamodernists, they belong on the list. If anyone should wish to add to that list or remove those who do not meet the WP:NOT guidelines (for instance names in red), I understand that and it can be worked out somehow. But anonymous IP addresses blanking the entire section using an unproven claim of 'bias' whilst questioning the notability of those who have already met the WP:NOT standard is inappropriate and a vandalism of the entry.Festal82 (talk) 07:36, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

On followup, I want to be clear that the anonymous user's section blanking edits will be reverted by me every day, or more than one time a day, until this user explains the bizarre claim of 'bias' and how a list of 'notable metamodernists' is 'subjective' when nearly all entries meet the WP standard of both notability and being metamodernists by virtue of WP:NOT (they have their own WP entries) and full sourcing and attribution of the claims they are metamodernists in practice or by avowal. So we can continue to do this for the next year, which I will, or we can have a discussion about it here, as WP guidelines demand. Festal82 (talk) 10:11, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

The list of 'notable metamodernists' appears to be self-promotion by Seth Abramson and Jesse Damiani. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.223.4 (talk) 10:20, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

You blanked an entire section of an article, one containing 23 names and counting--19 of which are Wikipedia entries with fully sourced connections to metamodernism--because you were speculating that two of those names don't believe there? Can I ask why you didn't just remove those names? This list will ultimately be 100 and more names long, it is not going to be removed because you don't like two entries. That's balderdash. Festal82 (talk) 16:56, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Update, I have removed those names from the list to have us figure out separately whether they should be there. The list is what matters. I added Abramson myself, and an unknown user (108.198.114.42?) added Damiani, and I am happy to hear your objections. All I care about is the list itself, with 100+ entries coming the addition or removal of any particular names should not determine the fate of the list. Festal82 (talk) 17:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Additions to the list
As everyone who frequents Notes on Metamodernism can see, the list is largely compiled using names that have appeared on that site. The references box for many entries include links to NoM, though I understandably wanted to vary the citations so where non-NoM sources could readily be found, they were used. I hope the user who added Jesse Damiani will write in here to explain that inclusion, I saw that name mentioned in the reference link provided for Seth Abramson but do not have independent sourcing presently to justify its inclusion. As for Abramson, I found many links and chose one. If anyone wants to sound off on that inclusion, happy to discuss it. I don't feel wedded to any one inclusion to the list, only the list itself. Festal82 (talk) 17:15, 9 February 2014 (UTC) To 64.134.223.4: You say 'most' of those on the list are not notable, yet 18 of 21 are notable according to WP:NOT. If you dislike the remaining three names, remove them and we will discuss them in talk. If you think there are too few names here, add names. Do not blank the section. Festal82 (talk) 17:51, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Seth Abramson
It appears that Festal82 is either Seth Abramson or one of his associates. The repeated edits to position his name in the same league as Foster Wallace, Franzen and Murakami seems to be a clear example of self promotion. In addition, the whole idea of a list seems to serve this purpose, since the names that were added (that were not previously in the metamodernism entry) are all names that solely Abramson has introduced in his writing, and which have not appeared anywhere else in the metamodern discourse. Abramson is known for his compulsion to make lists that include and exclude certain artists, ultimately for certain individuals' gain. I suggest that the list of 'Notable metamodernists' be removed completely from this page, as it arguably serves little purpose beyond these cynical motives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.47.151.94 (talk) 22:16, 15 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I wonder if you realize how insane the above sounds. You clearly have never used WP before; alleging that an editor is "either Seth Abramson or one of his associates" is itself a violation of WP guidelines, made worse here by the fact that the claim is unsubstantiated beyond some paranoia I don't understand because I don't know the background of this issue and don't care. Whatever your personal beef is with Seth Abramson, deal with it in some other way than this. The standard for a poet's inclusion in a list of artists in many genres is not that he or she be as widely read as three of the most important novelists of the last century. Moreover, this list is based largely on names that previously appeared in this article and were also written about on Notes on Metamodernism. That's why the links are to that website, obviously. Your comments here make clear that your edits are being made based on some motive that has nothing to do with WP. This name will stay on the list, as will all others that are WP:NOT people who self-describe as metamodernists. That's a simple and verifiable standard--your "because I think so" based on personal animus is not a standard we can use to create this list--exactly the sort of list that would appear in a WP article of this sort. Festal82 (talk) 22:38, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

General Wikipedia notability alone is not grounds for inclusion on this list. Seth Abramson has been removed from the list of notable literary figures due to a plain lack of widespread significance as a poet. The persistent attempts by Festal82 to include his name makes a mockery of the whole list. (Probable attempt at self-positioning?) Esmeme (talk) 09:04, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

John Hodgman
If anyone finds an article linking the comedian Hodgman with metamodernism, please note it here. Would like to add him and am looking for sources. Festal82 (talk) 17:35, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Shia LaBeouf
I've removed Shia LaBeouf from the "In Cinema" list of metamodernists. His metamodern theory is vastly different from what is defined by the wikipedia article. His theory merely borrows the name 'metamodernism.' You can read his manifesto at http://www.metamodernism.org/ if you believe I am in error. Until a decision is made, I believe it's best for LaBeouf to be left out--citing him as a metamodernist on the wiki page may confuse those who have not had the time to review his dense manifesto. Calleguas (talk) 08:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I won't edit him back in just yet, but I couldn't disagree more. Metamodernism is a cultural paradigm with endless iterations, and Shia's take on the reality/unreality, knowledge/ignorance, and authorship/free-floating information polar spectra are well within its purview. There's a reason that his primary collaborator is Luke Turner, who literally wrote the Manifesto for metamodernism. I think if we start this micro-policing of the metamodern philosophy now, there's no end to it--we fall into madness. Shia LaBeouf is only the second American to publicly self-describe as a metamodernist, he collaborates with metamodernists, and his recent public performances create exactly the sort of oscillation between poles Vermeulen and van den Akker have written about. If you want more references added to the entry (e.g. regarding LaBeouf's current L.A. exhibit, co-developed with metamodernist scion Turner), I'll happily do that. Festal82 (talk) 17:10, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Putting Shia back in now; there seems to be no argument forthcoming for his exclusion. Festal82 (talk) 20:09, 14 February 2014 (UTC)


 * This seems reasonable. Editors can debate whether he fits the definition of a metamodernist, but there are secondary RS such as Time, the Chicago Tribune and Huff Post that cover his claim to be a metamodernist, so that claim is verifiable and is worth a mention here. --Mark viking (talk) 20:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Previous use
The following sentence doesn't make sense: "The term metamodernism was previously adopted by literary theorist Alexandra Dumitrescu to describe the contemporary paradigm, the poetry of William Blake,[10] the fiction of Arundhati Roy,[11] and Michel Tournier."[12]
 * Something has been left out. Rwood128 (talk) 15:54, 26 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I edited it to make some sense. Also changed the section to "Usage" Bhny (talk) 17:40, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Luke Turner
This page appears to have been taken over by Luke Turner or his associates. All sources used on the page are from Turner's website (which is why someone, and not me, posted six warning messages at the top of the article!), and every link that was previously here (including links from credible, WP:NOT media sources like The Huffington Post and Indiewire) have been systematically removed--apparently because Turner doesn't control their content. Any persons on the "Notable Metamodernists" list--at this point, 12 different individuals with WP:NOT pages and WP:NOT media sourcing--who were not written about on Turner's website have been removed, and even when they are replaced they get removed again by the same WP user handle. All of these edits have been made by someone under the handle "Esme". Worst of all, the most high-profile event in the U.S. in terms of metamodernism--the publishing, by actor Shia LaBeouf, of the Metamodernist Manifesto this year (2014)--has likewise been coopted by Turner or his associates. I'm just wondering at what point this handle gets blocked for its persistent vandalism. I'll keep combating this attack on the page--including by regularly sourcing my edits with WP:NOT sources like The Huffington Post, Indiewire, The Guardian, Newsday, and The Telegraph, to establish, consistent with WP guidelines, that all this info regarding "Luke Turner" is bogus--but I'd appreciate some help from other editors.24.159.240.246 (talk) 22:00, 26 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Seeing as the manifesto was first published by Turner in 2011, and was republished in the European Scientific Journal in 2013, the above is clearly incorrect. Esmeme (talk) 22:31, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * LaBeouf published the Manifesto in December of 2013 via links on his Twitter account; the link you've provided here is likewise from December of 2013, and therefore isn't of any value to the conversation probatively. If anything, it suggests that LaBeouf was passing around his Manifesto in the fall of 2013 and then published it on Twitter and in the ESJ during the same month. Luke Turner has been claiming this spring, as you have (conveniently) also this spring, that he wrote the Manifesto "in 2011", but there are no WP:NOT media sources to prove it besides his own website. Moreover, why would you insist on a link here that takes us to a website that says it's authored by Shia LaBeouf, and then claim it's proof that Luke Turner wrote it? Think for a moment: You are claiming the proof of Turner's authorship is a website that claims LaBeouf's authorship (www.metamodernism.org); why would Turner allow LaBeouf to take credit for his (Turner's) work? And even if he had a reason, we can't know it and he gives up the right to claim authorship of that page in any case. Meanwhile, you are deleting copious WP:NOT links proving that LaBeouf was the author of the Manifesto--without ever, oddly, contesting their truth except to delete them wholesale. This is ridiculous behavior. Luke Turner is an editor for a website that is trying to take over this article, yes; that he is anything more than that you have no proof whatsoever. And your continued attempts to eliminate any U.S. metamodernists from this article, and eliminate any U.S. media sources from this article, suggests a European bias that conveniently aligns with Luke Turner's own, though unlike you I won't make spurious claims about the likely identities of other WP editors, which as you know is against WP policy (WP:AGF among others). 24.159.240.246 (talk) 22:54, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The European Scientific Journal isn't that reliable of a source. Jeffrey Beall lists it (or will, soon) in his list of predatory open access publishers. ~ Crazytales (talk) (edits) 00:35, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Crazytales, I wasn't aware of this. However, it would seem that the overwhelming evidence from a large number of sources prior to 2013 confirms that Turner authored the manifesto in 2011. Esmeme (talk) 00:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * OP (i.e. Crazytales), thank you for this. I went to the site also and found it a very strange "academic" article, so hearing that it is a known predatory open access publisher (intended, I presume, to further scams of the sort "Esmeme" is running right now on the metamodernism article) is not too surprising, actually. In any case, its relevance, reliability, and notability in no way compares to the WP:NOT sources that "Esmeme" has been systematically erasing: The Guardian, The Telegraph, Indiewire, The Huffington Post, Gawker, and many, many others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Festal82 (talk • contribs) 00:46, 27 May 2014‎

Metamodernist Manifesto (Website)
Okay, everyone calm down. Can't we just agree that every single person who visits the home page of the Manifesto--http://www.metamodernism.org/ --sees that it says "by Shia LaBeouf" at the top? We don't even need the twenty-five or whatever WP:NOT U.S. and U.K. media outlets that confirm this, and/or the zero that say Luke Turner wrote the Manifesto: the very link some others are claiming should be in the article establishes LaBeouf, umambiguously, as the author of the Manifesto. Festal82 (talk) 23:03, 26 May 2014 (UTC)


 * See these additional sources that confirm the manifesto was authored by Turner in 2011 . There are numerous other sources out there. The above editor is seemingly unaware of Turner and LaBeouf's ongoing, and widely publicised artistic collaboration. Esmeme (talk) 23:11, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, how does any of that explain how or why the primary page that the section of the metamodernism article we're discussing links to (http://www.metamodernism.org) calls Shia LaBeouf the author of the Manifesto, and that the major media websites whose links you've been systematically erasing from the article--all websites that are WP:NOT, whereas none of yours are--say that LaBeouf is the author? And what does any of this have to do with you blanking from the article the name of any metamodernist who is discussed in any media outlet that is _not_ Luke Turner's personal website, Notes on Metamodernism? Festal82 (talk) 00:04, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The links cited above, especially addresses the authorship of the manifesto. Also, Luke Turner is but one of six current editors of the Notes on Metamodernism website, so it is hardly his personal website. The dubious notability of certain names on the list has been addressed above at length. Esmeme (talk) 00:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Look, we're very close to getting your handle blocked, so all of this is probably moot, but the only "dubious notability" you have established is your own personal animus toward every U.S. metamodernist and every metamodernist referenced in U.S. media. You are erasing everything that's not tied to your own non-WP:NOT website, the blog "Notes on Metamodernism." It's outrageous that you continue to conclusively state your own opinions as more important than those of Wikipedia itself: i.e., by erasing the names of 12 individuals who are WP:NOT and who publish metamodern work and essays on metamodernism in WP:NOT American media. As for authorship of the Manifesto, the probable reason you attempted to blank the header of this section of the "Talk" on metamodernism is that it draws attention to the fact that the primary link you're pushing (http://www.metamodernism.org) _calls Shia LaBeouf the author of the Manifesto_. And that's putting aside the fact that every source I've offered is a WP:NOT source, and none of yours are. The trend (for any WP administrators reading this) is that this user deletes WP:NOT names and WP:NOT sources time and time again, and in every single case--bar none--replaces them with either links to a non-WP:NOT blog, "Notes on Metamodernism," or to sources that are not WP:NOT and which claim, without proof, that "Luke Turner" authored a Manifesto _whose text itself_ says it was authored by someone else. Give me a break! Festal82 (talk) 00:21, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That the manifesto bears Turner's name in the copyright notice at the bottom (marked 2011), is perhaps the clearest indicator that the text was written by Turner in 2011 as he claims, not to mention all the additional sources I have linked to here.  Esmeme (talk) 00:58, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * See the "Dispute Resolution" tab, below. FWIW, in fact the copyright notice you reference only confirms that Luke Turner controls the _page_--which in turn confirms my assertion that he has identified the author as Shia LaBeouf (in the usual way: by putting "by Shia LaBeouf" at the top of the Manifesto). And actually, as far as I can tell there's not a single source online in which Turner himself says, "I wrote this." All I've seen is him referring to it as Shia LeBeouf's Manifesto. So I'm not sure what the phrase "as he claims" means here. All of this being separate from the countless times I've pointed out to you that _all_ WP:NOT sources we can find on this identify--unambiguously--LaBeouf as the author of the Manifesto. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Festal82 (talk • contribs) 01:06, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The above is inaccurate. As user 24.159.240.246 states above, Turner has said many times publicly that he is the author of the manifesto. See examples here . Further up this talk page, even Festal82 writes that Turner wrote the manifesto, and so the sudden about-face is most confusing. Esmeme (talk) 07:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You have unceremoniously deleted, without explanation, five WP:NOT sources establishing Shia LaBeouf as the author of the Manifesto, replaced them with two non-WP:NOT sources calling Luke Turner the author, and appear totally at peace about it. You either have intimate knowledge of the authorship of the Manifesto, and that's what's guiding your otherwise inexplicable recalcitrance--in which case you're violating WP:OR by engaging in original research--or you have a bias against Shia LaBeouf that causes you to weigh two non-WP:NOT sources as more important than five WP:NOT sources. Look at it this way: Who are you going to trust on this authorship question, a man whose claim of authorship is entirely self-aggrandizing and directly contracts what it says on the document itself, or The Guardian and twenty-five other major news outlets (and the document itself)? Honestly, give me a break. Leave this section of the article alone, or the terms of the dispute resolution proposed below are null and void and we're back to where we started. I wouldn't advise snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, however. Festal82 (talk) 02:09, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do have knowledge, since I researched Turner's manifesto at art school more than two years ago. The text is an artist manifesto by Turner, which now seems to form part of a wider artwork with LaBeouf. You are apparently entirely ignoring the fact that it has been cited on this Wiki article since 2011, and also the additional sources I have provided, which highlight the error of those mainstream news websites. Esmeme (talk) 07:55, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * All of this is a clear violation of WP:OR ("No Original Research")--and you can't use non-WP:NOT sources that are (as noted above) known predatory publishing scams. Have you _read_ the link you posted? It refers to the most famous novelist of the late twentieth century as "David Roster Waellace." _This_ is the news source that should replace The Guardian and other major media on this article? Really? In any case, I didn't remove the Manifesto--I argued against removing it--so you can have it out with that other editor as to that. As I said before, I'm willing to stand down on this ridiculous usurpation of LaBeouf's authorship if the sections of the article I consider actually constructive are either left intact or built upon. But beyond that, re: the Manifesto's appearance in the article, you're on your own. Festal82 (talk) 10:09, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Dispute Resolution
If Esmeme is willing to leave alone the "Notable Metamodernists" list--in other words, cease removing U.S. metamodernists who are already WP:NOT, and cease removing U.S. media sources that identify different metamodernists than does the OP's blog ("Notes on Metamodernism")--we can resolve this dispute. I already removed from the list, many weeks ago, any metamodernist on the list who wasn't already WP:NOT (though many will soon be), so the list should only be growing at this point--not contracting. I know that Shia LaBeouf wrote the Manifesto, as does anyone who reads major media in the U.S., but as the "Notable Metamodernists" list is my primary project on this page, as I've said previously, the OP can mis-identify the author of the Manifesto if s/he wishes. The content is what matters anyway. But I monitor this page, and of course the moment the attack on the "Notable Metamodernists" begins again, any dispute resolution agreed to here is null and void in my view. Festal82 (talk) 00:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

New to this debate. Wanted to add some painters to the Notable Metamodernists section, but they were deleted by Esmeme. Richard T. Scott, though, is a noted post-postmodernist painter, outspoken on kitsch, reconstructivist philosophy, etc. Open to discussion. Snuffleumpagus (talk) 11:13, 31 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi, Snuffleumpagus! I'm sorry you've had this experience, and we will fix it. Esmeme is an editor for the non-WP:NOT European blog "Notes on Metamodernism," which is used as a citation for most of the content on this Wikipedia article despite the fact that it violates WP:RS. For months now Esmeme has been deleting any links on this page that direct anywhere but his blog, and deleting the names of any persons not mentioned on his blog. So far I've been one of the only users combating this vandalism of the page, but I'm happy to work with you to ensure that you can add names to the "Notable Metamodernists" list. The only requirement is their discussion in a WP:NOT media source as being connected to metamodern art. This idea that we can't _possibly_ identify metamodernists is of course absurd; no one in the U.S. struggles to name the major Modernist poets, nor do scholars familiar with poststructuralist lit theory struggle to identify poets associated with postmodernism. Naming the names of artists who are working through a cultural paradigm or structure of feeling is a necessary historical task and perfect for a basic research tool like Wikipedia; Esmeme opposes this effort--despite the fact that he previously added twenty names to the main section of the article, all people mentioned on his blog--only because he is trying to control all content on the page. That will not happen. So please return your painters to the "Notable Metamodernists" list, and provided you have WP:NOT sources discussing their work as coming "through" the metamodern paradigm, they will stay. I will see to it. If Esmeme gives you any difficulty, ALL LINKS and ALL NAMES in this article associated with the non-WP:NOT blog "Notes on Metamodernism" will immediately be deleted, and will be re-deleted (as necessary) every 48 hours for the rest of recorded Time. So please don't be put off by this vandal, and welcome to the group of editors attempting to productively edit the article! Festal82 (talk) 02:04, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Viability of list of notable metamodernists
If we started to amass a list of all the painters the are WP:NOT whose work is metamodern, the entry would quickly become enormously long, since by definition a large proportion of artists working today fit into the paradigm of the contemporary age that metamodernism describes. Aside from this, there is no evidence that Richard T. Scott's work has been discussed in the wider metamodern discourse, and it appears to have little in common with those artists whose names are discussed at length, such as Peter Doig, Olafur Eliasson, etc, who might be deemed primary candidates for any future list.

However, all this is moot, since the academics who introduced the term metamodernism were adamant that the term was not intended "to group, categorize and pigeonhole the creative work of this or that architect or artist", but rather "to chart, after Jameson, the ‘cultural dominant’ of a specific stage in the development of modernity." The logic of having a list of 'Notable metamodernists' on this Wiki page seems incredibly dubious, and in practice only functions to subjectively position certain artists above others who haven't been included (as evidenced by the list's current bias towards the taste of a sole outspoken and little-supported voice, that of Seth Abramson). This is clearly missing the point of describing a cultural shift that applies to all artists. Esmeme (talk) 16:16, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

It should also be noted that Festal82 was the editor that introduced the list of notable metamodernists to the article, and that the original selection of names was hugely biased towards those championed by Seth Abramson in his Huffington Post / Indiewire articles. Festal82 also appears to be the only editor who has any desire for there to be a list. This speaks volumes. Esmeme (talk) 18:53, 31 May 2014 (UTC)


 * You've been previously warned (see the "Dispute Resolution" section) about what will happen if you continue deleting all names in this article not associated with your non-WP:NOT, non-WP:RS blog. If you want to have this out, you should prepare to have vandalizing this page become a major part of your life activities for the next five years--as you will need to be constantly re-vandalizing it in order to have things your way for even a few moments every few hours. Or--crazy alternative--you could simply move the names you yourself already put into the article (in the main section, i.e. a level of hubris no other editor here would have imagined) into the "Notable Metamodernists" list, as I've already started to do, and then permit other editors to do what Modernist and postmodernist scholars have been doing _for a century_ in that list (provided they have a WP:NOT media source to link each entry to). But given your previous conduct here, and your obvious motivations, I don't think you'll take that path. So I really, really hope you like spending a _lot_ of time on Wikipedia, and will remind you that I already have a dozen WP:NOT sources proving Shia LaBeouf wrote the Metamodernist Manifesto ready to go. I can promise you that every _scintilla_ of information from your non-WP:NOT, non-WP:RS blog will be removed from this article _on the regular_ if you touch the "Notable Metamodernists" list one more time (unless you're adding to it). Festal82 (talk) 02:14, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

My friends (if I may be so bold--as we all here seem to share a common passion, namely, metamodernism), I have a proposal. I admit I was myself frustrated to have had my additions deleted, but, upon retrospect, Esmeme's comment on 16:16 31 May makes good sense. Indeed, in addition to the theoretical issues posed by such a list, this dispute itself offers ample evidence that now may not be the best time for such a thing. I agree with Festal82 that, someday, such a list is inevitable (it's what cultural historians do). But that day is probably still some time in the future--when the truly notable figures of this present cultural era have unquestionably shown themselves. At present, however, it is proving too dubious, controversial, divisive, and too easily prone to abuse/self-promotion. Perhaps we might accept an armistice on this affair, then; allow history to take its course, and, with greater perspective, recuse ourselves from this task (at least until a more fitting time)? The paradigm shift is real; the term is but a tool--a useful rallying point which allows us better insight into the times. I fear that, if we who embrace this term and its theoretical framework fall too much into discord, we are only doing a disservice to ourselves and cultural history by muddying the waters. As ever, open to everyone's thoughts. Snuffleumpagus (talk) 04:15, 1 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I think we've gone past that point, unfortunately. The main body of this article already contains _thirty-one_ names of metamodernists added by "Esmeme": Georges Lentz, Peter Doig, Olafur Eliasson, Ragnar Kjartansson, Šejla Kamerić, Paula Doepfner, Haruki Murakami, Roberto Bolaño, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Mariechen Danz, Issa Sant, Angelika Trojnarski, Mona Hatoum, Monica Bonvicini, Andy Holden, David Thorpe, Luke Turner, Kris Lemsalu, Guido van der Werve, Pilvi Takala, Ulf Aminde, Niels van Poecke, Reina Marie Loader, Leonhard Herrman, Nadine Feßler, James MacDowell, Hanka van der Voet, Luke Butcher, David Lau, and Ankit Love. All of these people are listed here only because their names appeared once on a non-WP:NOT, non-WP:RS blog run by "Esmeme." This same editor, "Esmeme," has deleted _twenty-five_ other names from this article, all of which are mentioned in WP:NOT, WP:RS media outlets. You are confusing the opposition "Esmeme" claims he has with the real issue--he opposes _your_ list. _His_ list he will restore to this article within five minutes, should you remove it. And if we were taking the time in this article to note important sites tracking metamodernism--as "Esmeme" has dedicated a whole paragraph here to the founding of his non-WP:NOT, non-WP:RS blog as though it were an historic event--we might also note that there is presently an entire column devoted to metamodernism on a WP:NOT, WP:RS media outlet in the United States, Indiewire. But "Esmeme" has attempted to delete all references to that source, as it's not under the control of him and his. Either all names are removed from this article except that of the two theorists who coined the term "metamodernism" as we now understand it and Shia LaBeouf--who wrote the "Manifesto" for metamodernism--or the list stays and can be added to by any person who meets a very, very simple standard: Produce an article in a WP:NOT, WP:RS media outlet (not a blog) that mentions that artist in the context of metamodern Art. Festal82 (talk) 05:05, 1 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you Snuffleumpagus. I'm glad that there is some consensus building that the list is simply too divisive at this stage. And Festal82, your above statement is completely false and beyond ludicrous. I have not added 31 names. I have no idea where you plucked that from. Those names you quote were on the page years before I began editing. I have added perhaps 3 or 4 (the article edit history will show this), but regret this now, for it was adding to a list that I now see is a bad idea. I don't know how you can make such ridiculous and false accusations. I have absolutely no affiliation with the Notes on metamodernism website to which you keep referring, let alone "run" it as you claim. I also object to you referring to me as male, for obvious reasons! As is evident from the majority of comments on this talk page, Festal82 is using bullying tactics to try to get their own way, at the expense of accurate information and sources. Please cease your hostile and improper behaviour, which is in clear violation of WP guidelines, otherwise I will have to report you once again. Esmeme (talk) 08:27, 1 June 2014 (UTC)


 * So I can take from the above that you agree to 1) removal of all names from the article except Vermeulen and van den Akker (i.e., all 31 above, and all in the "Notable Metamodernists" list); 2) removal of all sources in the article that are not WP:RS, given your sudden stringent adherence to all WP policies; and 3) citation of Shia LaBeouf as the author of the Metamodernist Manifesto, given that the only WP:NOT sources discussing authorship of the Manifesto cite him as the author? If I am frustrated it is because your double-speak has become intolerable. I offered you a dispute resolution--I don't alter the main body, you don't alter the "Notable Metamodernists" list except to add to it--and you refused to respond. Now I will offer you a second dispute resolution--adherence with the three terms I laid out above--which I suspect you will also ignore. Or, you will do what you've done in the past, and slip back into the article in the dead of night to undo any changes you've agreed to but don't actually favor. I have reported you as a vandal once, and will report you again if I have to; the "tactics" you refer to are nothing than my firm public commitment to not allow you to vandalize this page further. Every time I confront you with WP policies, you ignore them--in fact you have not once responded to allegations that your sources are non-WP:NOT and non-WP:RS--so your reliance on WP policies now is especially insulting. Be confident that my commitment to aggressively block your vandalism hasn't wavered in the slightest. Festal82 (talk) 18:24, 1 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The above makes no sense at all. Especially since Snuffleumpagus agreed that the list is a bad idea. I will leave it to others to decide who the vandal is here. Esmeme (talk) 08:34, 3 June 2014 (UTC)


 * You really are remarkable. Not 72 hours ago you objected to the deletion, from the article's list of links, of a self-published website you wrote (the site that hosts The Metamodernist Manifesto) on the grounds that "it had been in the article since 2011," and then, just hours later, you deleted within minutes a link posted by Snuffleumpagus to a website of exactly the same vintage. You violate WP:NOT and WP:RS repeatedly and offer no reply when it's pointed out that you've done so, then cry "WP policies!" when you don't like the tone of another editor. You repeatedly demand the removal of about 20 names from the article because they don't link to your website, then fight to maintain 31 other names in the article because they _do_ link to your website (all the while claiming the shelter of a "principle" that says scholars can't compile lists of notable artists working within a discrete cultural paradigm). It is no violation of WP policy to point out that your edits to this article exhibit no adherence to principle or fidelity to the truth whatsoever. I am watching this article and will return the moment you seek to vandalize it further. Given that all of my edits have been consistent with WP:NOT and WP:RS, and that all of my observations on how the article can be improved have been consistent over time--meaning, I don't give preference to certain links over others for byzantine reasons involving personal animus or profit--I have no fear that future readers will see exactly where the vandalism was here. Festal82 (talk) 16:50, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Outsider's point of view
Came here via Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. I don't believe I've ever edited this page and admittedly lack expertise on the subject of metamodernist art. I do know Wikipedia, though, and after looking through the article's edit history and talk page I'm finding some things troubling.

First and foremost, edit warring is not a good solution. Both and  were in blatant violation of WP:3RR on May 26 (and probably other days, but that one was the most egregious). Wikipedia operates according to consensus. If you find that another editor is being unreasonable, take it to one of the noticeboards or to an administrator directly. Do not repeatedly revert even if you know you're right.

Second, the standard for inclusion on the list -- as with any such list on Wikipedia -- is not whether an artist's work can be interpreted as metamodernist, which would be original research but whether reliable sources explicitly characterize the artist or his/her work that way. If the list becomes unwieldy, but is entirely populated by people with Wikipedia articles (notable people) and citations connecting them to metamodernism, the solution is not to say "well I don't think this one is as important as that one and therefore the less important one should be removed." The answer is to split the list off to a stand-alone list article. We don't want to get into who is better known or who is more metamodernist, because it'll inevitably get into WP:NPOV and WP:NOR issues.

Third, as to the reliability of metamodernism.com. This is a little trickier. It is not ideal -- that much is certain. In general, Wikipedia prefers better sources with a reputation for accuracy/fact-checking, etc. For some subjects blogs are acceptable, but certainly should never take precedent over better sources. While I see plenty of evidence that Esmeme has removed sources, I have not seen sufficient evidence to suggest his/her motivation is to replace said sources with links to metamodernism.com. The question, in the end, is whether a person should be added if the only source is metamodernism.com, which I would leave up to the regular editors of this page to determine. If consensus cannot be determined or if an editor will not respect consensus, take it to the reliable sources noticeboard.

Fourth, both and  have made comments that hover between WP:OUTING and personal attacks, with accusations of off-wiki identities and assumptions of bad faith. Looking at edit summaries, I see that one of Esmeme's first reverts suggested the addition of Abramson was a "probable qattempt at self-positioning." Esmeme's later reverts mischaracterized multiple other users' edits in edit summaries by simply saying "undid vandalism," which is inappropriate. At the same time, Festal82 has accused Esmeme of promoting his/her blog/interests at the expense of the article. None of these accusations appear to be founded.

--&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  21:56, 8 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you Rhododendrites, this seems like a largely fair assessment, although my feelings of possible conflicts of interest were based on the nature and inconsistency of historical edits, the previous comments of other editors, and the user's assumption of bad faith towards others, which I was responding to. I hope that this has now stopped, and the factual integrity of the article will be preserved, as has always been my intent. Esmeme (talk) 15:13, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, thank you, Rhododendrites. I agree this is a largely fair assessment. As I noted several weeks ago under the "Dispute Resolution" sub-header, I think things can be amiable going forward if/as all parties honor WP:N, WP:RS, WP:NOR, and also (as you noted, Rhododendrites) WP:OUTING. My sense is that Esmeme is willing to do this going forward, and provided future actions match present words, all is well on my end. Thanks again for your help. Festal82 (talk) 22:13, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Thoughts on recent changes
I was asked at my talk page to comment on recent edits.

Changes I see:
 * Maintenance tags at the top removed
 * This is fine so long as they were indeed resolved, but if others feel the issues stand one or more can be restored pending a talk page discussion.
 * Lead reduced in size considerably. In general I think this is a good idea. Too much of what metamodernism is was up in the lead before which is really just supposed to summarize the rest of the article.
 * I think the lead needs work, though. In its current state it simply reads "In philosophy and aesthetics, metamodernism is a recent reaction to postmodernism informed by elements of both modernism and postmodernism."
 * Regarding style: change "recent" to be more specific (assume nobody will update it later).
 * Regarding content: I should be able to get the gist of what the subject is by just reading the lead (since it summarizes the rest of the article), so while concise is good, I frankly have no idea what to make of this subject based on this one sentence -- and I probably have more background knowledge of postmodernism and modernism than most readers.
 * Also, and this is much more minor, because of the order of the words it sounds like you're setting up some other definition of metamodernism that applies to fields other than philosophy and aesthetics.
 * File:Bjarke ingels group, BIG JDS PLOT, mountain dwellings, copenhagen 2005-2008 detail.jpg removed
 * I have no comment on this. It lacked context, for sure, but I don't know enough to say whether it should be returned.
 * Usage section expanded, moved up.
 * Ok, so this isn't necessarily inappropriate stuff to get into, but it shouldn't substitute for a thorough explanation of what the subject is (which should come first on the page and in priority). Ultimately, Wikipedia's an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, which means it's not about the term but about what it means. Often the term is important to understand what it means, yes, but it's about the idea(s) metamodernism, not different usage of the term. I'd add that not every single usage of the term will be about the same metamodernism that this article is about. If I used "metamodernism" to mean "extremely modern" or something, that wouldn't fit and shouldn't be included. What's the notable subject? (because it's not the word that's notable)
 * This may be why Esmeme mentioned on my talk page that it seemed refocused -- because Vermeulen and van den Akker are moved down, although they do still receive a little more space than the others. I personally don't know what the body of metamodernist literature looks like, but it's important to present things in proportion to their coverage in literature (e.g. if one person used the term but nobody else picked up on it, that version should be covered to a lesser degree than another person's ideas that have been demonstrably influential). From the way the article appeared before the recent edits, it looked like Vermeulen and van den Akker were by far the most influential figures here. Now they're a little less so. Remember that the important thing for determining significance is what other people say about someone's ideas, not what the originators say (which is important to include, but not for determining significance/weighting).
 * To be clear, this is not a judgment of this or that sentence/source/person/idea but a general guideline for the article.
 * Shia LaBeouf is again credited with the manifesto.
 * I wish I had saved my sources on this. I'll just say that I did some pretty diligent investigating on the matter previously and felt completely confident it was Turner. I would strongly encourage the article reflect as much, but I don't have the sources or the inclination to re-find them at the moment.
 * Notes on Metamodernism expanded to a paragraph.
 * Currently this is entirely primary sourced and so WP:UNDUE (we can't just report on everything people associated with metamodernism do/publish just by virtue of it being done/published; sources need to talk about it first). Doesn't necessarily mean it has to be removed, but I would bet there are sources talking about this, which would make it a non-issue.
 * Galerie Tanja Wagner paragraph removed. This, too, appears to have been entirely primary sourced. While that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be removed, it, like the Notes on Modernism paragraph, is certainly not ideal.

Phew. Hope that's helpful rather adding confusion. In general I hope you'll take these comments not as an opinion that recent edits should or should not be reverted but on general comments about the article and its treatment of the subject. There's some good and some that needs improvement, as is typical. One final thing that I would personally find helpful to have in the article: a clearer distinction/comparison made to/between the various -isms, especially post-postmodernism which I know is connected but is barely mentioned. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  04:57, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for all your hard work here Rhododendrites. I agree with all your points. I have rearranged the "Usage" section and presented things in proportion to their coverage/significance, and added a "Previous uses" section which I think improves the coherence of page dramatically. I have also reinstated your sources for the manifesto. I hope that these changes improve the overall quality of the page as per your recommendations, and we should all look at further improvements going forward. Esmeme (talk) 09:56, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Coinage of the word (Redux)
It does Vermeulen and van den Akker no service to claim--without evidence one way or another--that they had never ever heard the terms "metamodern" or "metamodernism" prior to 2010, when in fact those terms could have been located using any of the search engines all scholars internationally employ to conduct their research. Unless there is an interview with either man in which he says the terms "metamodern" and "metamodernism" were wholly unfamiliar to him in (say) 2009, I think the aim in this article should be to credit the two men--rightly!--with a reintroduction of the term, with new connotations, in 2010. That said, any first-year PhD. student researching metamodernism can quickly see that even the 2010 usage was very much aligned with many prior usages (including the first-ever one in 1975), so any positing here of a "radical break" with prior uses is going to be reverted by the swarm of future scholar-editors who will arrive here just as soon as the term as used by Vermeulen and van den Akker picks up steam. Better to address these issues _now_ rather than try to vainly stave off the inevitable. I have no doubt Rhododendrites would agree, especially as the "coinage" issue is such an old one re: this article that it was the very _first_ item on the "Talk" page, whether or not later editors like Esmeme chose to ignore (or even obscure, by moving around sections and changing section headers in the article) the coinage issue. Festal82 (talk) 16:45, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not clear on the disagreement on this? They weren't the first to use it, but their use seems to be the best known, right? As long as the other uses were talking about basically the same idea, they should be talked about in proportion to their coverage in reliable sources. If they're talking about different things, it may be appropriate to say, briefly, something like "It was first used by x and y to mean such and such, but it was Vermeulen and van den Akker who developed the idea and whose concept is best known today." Maybe I'm misunderstanding the disagreement or the history of the term, though. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  17:00, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I won't be home to respond until tonight, but though the present editing appears to be ultimately productive I'd really urge both of you to take a breather from editing the article until you can come to some agreements on the talk page. In my experience changing the article back and forth rather than discussing first can make things more combat-oriented. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  17:09, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi! Actually, I think the problem is more complicated than that, as the history here is more of an evolution rather than a single coinage or radical break. As the "Origins" section now details, there was no radical break following the 1975 coinage of the term, but rather a current usage that is very much related to previous usages. I think the argument here is over the historical development of the term--just as everyone would like to be the one who coined the term postmodernism, the same is true with metamodernism. The problem is that we can't interrogate primary sources and ask them their influences, we can only look at uses of the term, and as the "Origins" section details, current usage is not so different from past usage. Frankly, the most common (as in ubiquitous) usage of the term in contemporary American major media is the usage we find in The Huffington Post and Indiewire, which "Esmeme" says is distinct from the Vermeulen/van den Akker usage, and one could argue is more associated with the original usage by Zavarzadeh in 1975; meanwhile, the most common (as in ubiquitous) usage in Europe is the idea as posited by Vermeulen and van den Akker, though, again, both are intimately related to prior usages. What's the problem with simply having a chronological narrative of the development of the term, noting all relevant interventions without being obsessed with coinages and radical breaks? That's simply not how philosophy works. Different views on a philosophy do not denote different coinages, but interventions in an ongoing dialogue. Festal82 (talk) 17:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Re dialoging with "Esmeme," that's simply not possible--he refuses to address me directly. Festal82 (talk) 17:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Lead
Per the above on dictionary vs. encyclopedia and WP:REFERS, the first sentence is problematic. What is metamodernism? Because it's not a term. It's also a little too acad-speak ("describes mediations between", "rapid oscillation", "synagmatic paradigm"), which is fine for a journal/magazine article, but to me should be plainer for an encyclopedia (at least the lead).

What about something like this:

Metamodernism is an art movement and philosophical perspective characterized by an alternation between the values and techniques of modernism and those of postmodernism. It was first described in the late 20th century and has become closely associated with the work of Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker.

Just trying to give a very general gist of the most important parts. Still not ideal, probably, but I would recommend something pretty general like that until you can work out the rest of the article -- after which is a better point to work on the lead. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  16:55, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I think this is an excellent lead Rhododendrites, and I think we should adopt it. I agree that the terms in the current first sentence are very hard to understand, and make the introduction too complex and confusing as to what the main topic of the article is. Esmeme (talk) 17:06, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. I like this lead. It may need further edits, but it's a very good start. I will add it with the inclusion of a specific timeline (the "1970s") for its first introduction, as any reader of the article would want to know that. Festal82 (talk) 17:17, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 30 June 2014
I am surprised there is discussion about the validity of this concept. There have been numerous academic and journalistic debates about metamodernism the past years, amongst others in The American Book Review (which devoted a special issue to the concept), the Huffington Post, Art News, and Art Pulse. The sudden burst of editing the past month seems to have discredited the concept for all the wrong reasons. The concept is out there; whether people like it or not is another question and should not matter. Could wikipedia administrators have a look at this?

Jojojomamama (talk) 14:07, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 14:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * More SPAs? Just what this farce of a discussion was missing! Inanygivenhole (talk) 17:16, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

5 Questions
As far as I can tell there are 5 questions getting all jumbled up that maybe it would be best to take separately. Hopefully I'm not just further confusing things -- it just seems like the thread above is spiraling.
 * 1) First and foremost: What is the subject of the article? Keeping in mind this is an encyclopedia, and so a collection of utterances of a certain word is not appropriate, what is the concept of metamodernism? Is it most prominently understood in Vermeulen and van Akker's terms? Irrespective to how prolific they may be, when other people talk about metamodernism, are they most often talking about Vermeulen and van Akker's version of it? Are there other versions that are also prominently talked about? It doesn't seem like this conversation has been thoroughly fleshed out.
 * 2) If the subject is unclear or if the article exists as an exaggeration of the significance of a particular set of ideas, should it be nominated for deletion? (The key to this will be how many sources talk about it as a particular concept, regardless of whose it is). Note: That you feel editors may have a COI does not mean it should be deleted, because COI edits to an article can be fixed and deletion would mean it cannot be fixed.
 * 3) Is metamodernism.com a reliable source? I.e. are its authors considered a reliable source in this area such that they could be cited as authorities despite being a self-published source? Is it reliable for somethings but not others? If so, which? This question is not at all based on who is adding it to Wikipedia.
 * 4) Should there be a list of metamodernists (or artists whose work has been described as metamodern)? I don't think there's disagreement that at least some examples should go somewhere, but should there be a list apart from the rest of the article as there is now? (Assume ideal standards for reliable sourcing).
 * 5) If there's a separate list of metamodernists, how should it be displayed on the page? This is a question I maybe thought was more important than it actually is, but I'm including it nonetheless. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  01:21, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * note: if you feel this is a useful way to structure the discussion and choose to participate, I think it would be most productive to hold off on arguing over any specific example and really emphasize WP:AGF. let's stick with the big ideas for now. Once we get this stuff established arguing about this or that example or this or that source will be more straightforward, I think. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  |  01:23, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * To address point by point: (1) The history shows that, whether there was causation or influence or foreknowledge or not, the Vermeulen/van den Akker usage is _consistent_ with the origins of the term as laid out in the "origin" section, so both need to be in the article. And as I've said before, that first section should be chronological and include both the original and evolved uses of the term, as they are _inextricably_ intertwined--frankly, it's hard to see much difference at all. Now, having said that, the _Dumitrescu_ usage the OP complains so much about (cf. Blake) is a significant divergence, and should either be removed or put in its own section (which I've done). I think it's fine to say, for the information of readers, that this term has on occasion been used in other ways. But the origin story of the term that begins with Mas'ud Zavarzadeh _includes_ Vermeulen and van den Akker--these are _not_ two different uses of the term. Those who claim otherwise may, as some claim, have some specific allegiance to placing certain persons in a particular historical position with respect to the coinage of the term. (2) No--the subject has been covered by major media on two continents, there have been conferences on it, it is a real and observable phenomenon in the arts. It must not be deleted. But certainly the sourcing can be improved, and can be expanded to ensure that the Notes on Metamodernism blog is only one of 50 sources here rather than (as at present) one of 10. (3) Notes on Metamodernism is a reliable source, yes--but it becomes unreliable when, as "Esmeme" demands, it is used as the _only_ source in the article. (4) Everyone agrees we need names here to assist readers in locating themselves and the idea; I think all the names should be in one section, as a table, as otherwise it is (a) too scattered, and (b) too disorganized. (5) See previous. Festal82 (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Please could you stop misrepresenting me. I have never demanded anything of the sort. Please could you cease your hostility and assume good faith. I would like to see sources that give credence to "the origin story of the term that begins with Mas'ud Zavarzadeh", because it doesn't seem to make sense that a post-postmodern theory based around an early 21st century reaction to 80s and 90s postmodernism should have been written about even before such postmodern culture existed. Thank you Rhododendrites for laying out these points and hopefully we can arrive at a consensus. Esmeme (talk) 01:43, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Esmeme, I am glad you've dropped your campaign to remove every single source from this article that does not originate at the blog "Notes on Metamodernism." I'm happy to move on from that sad period in the history of this article if you are. But you are now engaged in a new misrepresentation: The claim that Vermeulen and van den Akker (a) specifically wrote of metamodernism "as a reaction to 80s and 90s postmodernism", coupled with (b), your presumption, a violation of WP:SYNTH and WP:NOR, that Vermeulen and van den Akker did not know of the term "metamodernism" prior to 2010. Here's the reality: The two men discussed metamodernism as a reaction to "postmodernism," a term coined in the 1870s (check Wikipedia), not the postmodernism of one specific decade exclusively; second, any claim on the topic one way or the other would be self-serving in any case, i.e. we don't credit someone with coining a term anew simply because they say they did. Looking at the history of the term we find no significant divergence between its uses throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and the usage discussed on NoM. It is your job to prove the divergence with sources, not anyone else's job to disprove a negative. The Dumitrescu usage is clearly divergent because Zavarzadeh called the metamodern a response to technological advancements that clearly did not exist in Blake's day. Festal82 (talk) 02:02, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) It seems as though there is no clear definition as to what "metamodernism' actually is seeing as it had (allegedly) originated in 1975, been touched on a few times from 75-2000ish, then completely revamped by Akker and Vermeulen in the interested in creating their art blog. The issue is that there is no real documented history on the evolution of this terminology aside from that on metamodernism.com, which I will touch on in a minute.
 * 2) I'm going to have to say that yes, this page should be nominated for deletion as, after looking much farther into the subject, I have found no reliable source establishing "metamodernism" as a legitimate scope of works. The few reliable sources in the page only passingly mention "metamodernism".
 * 3) Absolutely not. A blog that fails to meet WP:WEB, no matter who it is run by, is in no way a reliable source. Additionally, after attempting to look into the authors of the blog, I could hardly find any information regarding them outside of metamodernism.com and their personal social media accounts. Definitely non-notable.
 * 4) Assuming the article will be kept, no, there should not be an actual list. Examples? Certainly. These must however be worded carefully so that the article does not objectively state that any of these people listed are "metamodernists" because, as mentioned earlier, I doubt anyone referenced in that section (aside from Franco and LaBeouf) knows that "metamodernism" exists.
 * See: last point
 * felt _   friend, these comments do not make sense to me. Yes, I can agree that the "Origins" section needs to be expanded, but for you to simply read the article and say that there's no history there because the very history you're demanding is _still being added to the article_ is deeply unfair. You are proposing for deletion an article whose weak points (as you see them) are in the process of being shored up, and then using the fact that they're not shored up _yet_ as a grounds for deletion. It makes it very hard for me to adhere to WP:AGF. What makes that even harder is that your statements here have repeatedly been factually wrong. "I doubt anyone referenced in that section knows that 'metamodernism' exists?" Putting aside LaBeouf and Franco, the former of whom has used the term publicly repeatedly, you have people in that section who author columns _about_ metamodernism, who have appeared in exhibits billed as metamodern exhibits, &c. So you're simply off there. More importantly, you, like the OP "inanygivenhole," are imposing a standard on metamodernism that you would never impose on postmodernism. Was Charles Olson not a postmodern poet because he didn't use the term himself? Of course not. It has always been the case that scholars and theorists apply these terms to individuals who don't themselves use them. Yet now, _now_, we need Spike Jonze to "know that metamodernism exists" via proof from public interviews in order for a scholar or theorist to denominate him a metamodernist. Where are you getting these ideas? Festal82 (talk) 05:22, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Additional concern: Festal82 seems to be extremely familiar with Akker and Vermeulen, citing information on this talk page not mentioned in the article and that I couldn't locate elsewhere. That combined with the fact that this is clearly the only page he is here to edit and he has a documented history of attempting to own the page leads me to believe he is either Akker or Vermeulen attempting to control this article and use it as a personal advertisement. felt _   friend  04:01, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Besides violating WP:OUTING, the above is a great piece of circular logic: Because metamodernism seems stupid and unimportant to _you_, it must be stupid and unimportant to _everyone_, and therefore if someone has extensive knowledge about it, that person must be the only person _you_ think cares about metamodernism: Timotheus Vermeulen (or Robin van den Akker). But if you'd ever _read_ the article you're trying to have deleted, you'd know that metamodernism is the subject of many articles, much research, and significant interest in both the U.S. and on the European Continent. If you use a search tool called "Google" or a scholarly tool called "JSTOR" you will find all the information that I--and any other serious scholar of metamodernism--is familiar with. If you don't know even a fraction of what I do about metamodernism, and clearly you don't and have no desire to learn, why in the _world_ are you editing this page? And P.S., Jesus, do I sound _Dutch_ to you? I'd think it's obvious from everything I've ever written on this Talk page that I'm American. Festal82 (talk) 04:26, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Nowhere did I say I found it completely "stupid and unimportant". Though to clarify, I do find the concept somewhat stupid, but that doesn't inherently mean I find it "unimportant". I think 1984 is a stupid novel, but it clearly has had a large impact on American culture, thus rendering it "important". Within the scope of Wikipedia however, I do find "metamodernism" unimportant, at least for the time being. I have done quite a bit of research already (re: Google remark), and if it helps in any way, seven of the ten results I get on Google's first page of results for "metamodernism" are on metamodernism.com or its family sites (the first result being this Wikipedia entry). Many of the "articles" I have found pertaining to "metamodernism" are simply blog posts on wordpress or tumblr sites. Though "metamodernism" may someday take off, for the time being, it is far from notable. felt  _   friend  05:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * That's strange, Felt friend, because when I search for "metamodern" on Google Search and Google News, and look at more than the first ten results (hardly "research" to do otherwise), I find mentions in The Huffington Post (multiple authors), The Austin Chronicle, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Daily News, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, National Public Radio, The New York Times, Metacritic, McSweeney's, Detroit Weekly, Indiewire, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, YouTube, Vimeo, Metamodern Magazine (not affiliated with "Notes on Metamodernism"), JSTOR, Amazon, and many other places. I also see that the the Wikipedia article for metamodernism is viewed many hundreds of times per month. But hey, I will WP:AGF even as you tell me that these searches I just did _actually_ only netted "blog posts on wordpress or tumblr sites." Festal82 (talk) 07:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * And P.S., if I go back further, to when Shia LaBeouf was announcing himself to be a metamodernist and making national and international news for it--this was all the way back in February, so, about 120 days ago--I find articles in The Guardian, The Independent, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Medium, Indiewire, and dozens of other U.S. and American media outlets. All this took seconds to discover. Festal82 (talk) 07:15, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Just one minor point regarding the above, since it's something several people have done through this discussion: sources do not themselves have to pass any kind of notability guideline like WP:WEB. Notability is to gauge whether a subject should be covered on Wikipedia (by reliable sources). The relevant sourcing guidelines/policies are WP:RS and WP:SPS. Basically, to quote the latter, it's best to avoid self-published sources in most cases, but Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. While that seems likely to apply here, that same guideline goes on to say Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so. And also, the reliability of a source depends on the context. And also also, there are WP:NPOV elements in play here. So just a clarification, not a judgment. --&mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  |  04:16, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Protected
I've protected the article for a week to give all of you a chance to settle the various points in dispute. If you find a consensus on any given issue, feel free to make an edit request for that issue so that the article can be updated. And if you resolve all of the issues, leave me a note on my talk page and I'll unprotect the article. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll be happy to answer them - but make sure you ping me if you reply on this page, as I won't have it on my watchlist. Best — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 09:29, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

ANI
FYI there is now a thread at ANI about this page. As far as the article content goes, I can't tell who's right, but the talk page has gone off the rails. It doesn't seem like any thread can stay focused on content rather than veer off into ad hominems, unsubstantiated accusations, and other completely inappropriate and counter-productive territory. --&mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  |  07:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The conversation already has veered off into ad hominems! Inanygivenhole (talk) 08:47, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Sound advice
Hey guys, please calm down and avoid making personal attacks. This is an Encyclopedia, every one is welcome to contribute no matter from where he/she belongs. First of all the whole dispute seems to be due to conflict of interest of many editors regarding subject, please avoid it and consider neutral point of view which says that all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic and must be verifiable and it is most important than to prove yourself right one here. A.Minkowiski_Lets t@lk 08:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The current edit is fine
FWIW, I am basically fine with the article in its current "locked" form. I think Rhododendrites has done a great job mediating this dispute as much as possible. We've reached the point where the disagreements between Esmeme and myself are resolvable, in large part because (a) we've now seen how damaging it would be to the integrity and survival of the article if the attempts by Esmeme to make the non-WP:N blog "Notes on Metamodernism" the only source on the page had been successful (i.e., because there are those who question whether it is WP:RS, it can be a source here but by no means the primary one), and (b) the main two things Esmeme wanted, (i) for Luke Turner to be acknowledged as the author of the Metamodernist Manifesto, and (ii) for a list of names that include Luke Turner to be given privileged status in the "Popularity" section of the article rather than being relegated (as it were) to the "Notable Metamodernists" section, are both edits I'm not contesting at this point. In fact, if we could simply agree to leave the "Notable Metamodernists" table at the base of the article (thus, not obtrusive) and add to it periodically using its current table form, and if we could agree (as I know Esmeme would) to remove the Alexandra Dumitrescu content from the article--just that one sentence--because it is confusing readers about the evolution of the term as it is now used, I think we'd be in great shape. I hope Rhododendrites, Esmeme, and Cwobeel will agree that the only problem we have now, really, are two editors--"inanygivenhole" and "felt_friend"--who are either sock puppets for one another (given that they arrived here at the same moment and with the same arguments against the page and with the same desire to see it deleted) or simply untutored in metamodernism and therefore (for that reason or some other) dead-set against it, trying to wreak havoc here. I don't see there being any chance of this article going to (let alone losing) in AfD, so hopefully those editors here who are constructively working on the page can come to some sort of truce--not the word I want, but it'll do--so that we can move past the events of the last 24 hours. Festal82 (talk) 16:39, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Please stop repeatedly misrepresenting me Festal82. I have not "wanted" the things you state, as if I have some ulterior motive as you seem to suggest. My additions to the page have been extremely minimal, and I have merely sought to clean up and undo edits that are evidently factually incorrect, and have sought consensus on the talk page as to the layout or existence of a list. My edit history and the talk page show this. Esmeme (talk) 16:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Please see my note on the administrators' board, Esmeme. I am happy to move on from the past without me categorizing your past edits or you categorizing mine, provided we can work with Rhododendrites to find a way forward that preserves the integrity of the article. Disagreements we have had about things like the use of the term "origins" instead of "previous uses"--the former being consistent with my view that Vermeulen and van den Akker are part of a lineage the article must establish in detail--can be navigated by the solutions we've already found, e.g. giving van den Akker and Vermeulen primary placement in the article, as you've insisted, with references to origins further down and (I hope) the Dumitrescu material removed. Can we at least attempt to come to a consensus on these things in an effort to keep this article not just alive but vibrant and growing, as I know we (and many others) both want? Festal82 (talk) 16:50, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Seriously, STOP misrepresenting other editors. It's rude, obnoxious, and counterproductive. Either you're incapable of correctly representing those you disagree with (in which case fine, avoid doing it), or you're doing it on purpose. Either way, your consistent and obvious misrepresentation of other users needs to stop. It is becoming increasingly difficult to even speak with you, since you're so consistently oblivious to what the other side is saying! For the tenth time: slow down and read what others say!!! Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * One thing I forgot to add re: "I am happy to move on from the past without me categorizing your past edits or you categorizing mine": Frankly, your categorizations of others are the only ones that anyone is having problems with. People seem to be representing what you say just fine. This isn't a "both or none" situation, they don't need to stop properly representing you, you just need to stop misrepresenting them! Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:52, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The current edit really isn't fine, though, as both felt friend and I have pointed out. As it stands, a significant portion of the article amounts to der Akker or Vermeulen claiming that various people are "metamodernists" on their blog. We need reliable sources for these claims, not self-aggragandizing, self-published, unreliable ones. Not to mention the fact that the article itself is a mishmash of differing usages combined with der Akker and Vermeulen's newer sense of the word, nor the fact that the lede says nothing about this confused mishmash of concepts, nor the fact that laBeouf's association with der Akker and Vermeulen's sense isn't given enough weight. Your straw-manning and confused summaries of Esmeme's and my own views aside, these issues need to be addressed before anything else can be addressed: it doesn't even depict a coherent whole! All three of these issues were raised above, and you've done nothing but ignore them and claim that the newer use is consistent with the old (not providing any sources, let alone reliable ones, for that claim, might I remind you). It needs to be shown, with reliable sources, that each of the previous usages worth mentioning form some kind of coherent whole. Otherwise, I'd have to suggest removing them or demoting them to an "other uses" heading.
 * I raised the issue above of Blake being labeled a "metamodernist" to show how absurd and confused the picture painted by the article is. I think that (and the abundance of original and unreliable sources) says more about the current state of this article than anything else. Inanygivenhole (talk) 23:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * There's an essay about this, but it isn't very useful. At the risk of throwing Wikipedia's alphabet soup around, IMO this article is in opposition to the notion that Wikipedia is not for shit made up in a frat house, the aversion to sources which have been "cooked up", and Wikipedia's hesitance to perpetuate "neologisms". That this made it to ANI shows that this has gone too far. Perfect for you (talk) 00:23, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * implies that I have strong feelings about whether or not this article should exist, to the point where he only wishes to speak with me to the exclusion of other editors here, and resorts to ad hominem attacks on the other participants here instead of addressing their concerns, so perhaps it was not premature to take this to ANI. When I look at this article, it seems that the term has been used here and there by people of varying notability since 1975, but the notion that this has been some sort of movement that dates back to 1975 is laughable. In addition, the statement in the lead paragraph that "since 2010 it has become closely associated with the work of Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker" is supported by three sources, not one of them supporting that claim. The first two sources are dated 1975 and 1997, and the third source is by Vermeulen and den Akker themselves, so it can't be used to support that claim. This whole thing smells kinda fishy and I regret stating that it should not have gone to ANI. Perfect for you (talk) 02:31, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

What one hour of research on some "shit made up in a frat house" reveals
Perfect for you has made three objections to the article (quoting from the WP policies s/he cited): (1) metamodernism is "something invented in [a] school...[that] has not yet been featured in WP:RS (Reliable Sources)"; (2) metamodernism only coheres as a concept if you "combine material from multiple sources," as no individual source describes a coherent concept; and (3) Wikipedia cannot "support an article about a particular term or concept...[unless] we can cite what reliable secondary sources, such as books and [scholarly] papers, say about the term or concept, not books and papers" that simply use the term with no further discussion. The implication being made here, by Perfect for you, is that one wouldn't be able to find books or scholarly papers that talk about metamodernism rather than simply use the term with no explanation of it.

Having made, presumably, extensive research on metamodernism, Perfect for you finds that it fails each and all of these three standards and that therefore the work of three and a half years and 82 Wikipedia editors (count for yourself) should be deleted.

An alternative: The below. Which took me an hour to find. There's loads more where this came from. And to be clear: Van den Akker and Vermeulen's 2010 article on this subject described metamodernism in a manner consistent with the scores, if not hundreds of journals, scholarly papers, and book chapters citing metamodernism between 1975 and 2010, so while many (though not nearly every) article after 2010 cites Vermeulen and van den Akker by name, the notion that metamodernism is an idea cooked up by two Dutchmen rather than an ongoing dialogue now in its fortieth year (Mas'ud Zavarzadeh having coined the term in 1975) that these two men happen to have participated in simply isn't supported by any of the facts. Here's the "Origins" section of the current article, plus sixty minutes of research that anyone here could have done instead of claiming that metamodernism is only referenced by "blogs and tumblr sites" or was "made up in a frat house" and "has not yet been featured in WP:RS sources." Note how many WP:N persons, WP:N scholarly journals, and university press-published books have mentioned the term in an identical way: as a commingling of the first principles of modernism and those of postmodernism in a way that lets the contemporary subject retrieve a sense of unity and direction, an affect typically achieved through the juxtaposition of multiple realities in social science research, the arts, or scholarly criticism. (NB: Mind you, I find this obsession with a single definition preposterous, as no one here or anywhere else would be able to provide a succinct definition of either "modernism" or "postmodernism," neither of which were just some "shit made up in a frat house" that editors with no background in the terms are trying to remove from Wikipedia.)

The term metamodern was coined by University of Oregon professor Mas'ud Zavarzadeh in the Journal of American Studies in April 1975. In an article entitled "The Apocalyptic Fact and the Eclipse of Fiction in Recent American Prose Narratives," Zavarzadeh described the metamodern as a "response to the emerging realities of a technetronic culture," specifically the "overwhelming actualities of contemporary America, which render all interpretations of 'reality' arbitrary and therefore simultaneously accurate and absurd." Zavarzadeh, quoting Alain Robbe-Grillet, posited a body of literature in which daily experience was rendered as "neither significant nor absurd. It is, quite simply." According to Zavarzadeh, this rendering required such a rapid movement between the poles of fact and fiction, meaning and meaninglessness, reality and appearance, and the known and the unknown that such poles would quickly become "ridiculously naive," and therefore beside the point.

Writing in 1992 for Critical Review, Donald N. McCloskey, in an article entitled "Minimal Statism and Metamodernism," called metamodernism "necessary for serious empirical work on the role of state," noting that it constituted a brand of "common sense" that lay beyond both the conventional empiricism of modernism and the formulaic linguistic analyses derived in Europe and ultimately central to postmodernism. This view was echoed in 2014 by Stephen Knudsen, who, writing for ArtPulse, called endemic to metamodernism the idea that "any kind of information--not just scientific information--can lead to knowledge, and the artistic endeavor is no exception."

In 1995, Hank Slager, in his book The Archeology of Art Theory, described the "metamodern attitude" as "a growing awareness of a multiple view on reality and a conscious striving for expressing this awareness."

In 1996, Annette W. Balkema and Henk Slager wrote, in The Intellectual Conscience of Art, that metamodernism "account[s] for the moral meaning of art for human life...while emphasiz[ing] that that same concept of 'art' has been subject to intellectual reflection. It is not an exclusive emphasis, as in the modern or the postmodern, yet a recognition of the value of both."

The term metamodernism was again employed as a syntagmatic paradigm in 1997. Bruce Tucker incorporated this usage into his article "Narrative, Extramusical Form, and the Metamodernism of the Art Ensemble of Chicago," published in Lenox Avenue: A Journal of Interarts Inquiry.

In a 2000 article in The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Moyo Okediji again discussed the connotations of the term metamodern to position it as a mediation between modernity and postmodernity. Okediji identified as metamodern a coterie of black American artists who expanded existing definitions of form while also aiming to "transcend, fracture, subvert, circumvent, interrogate and disrupt, hijack and appropriate modernity and postmodernity at nearly every available point." He summarized the metamodern as a "extension of and challenge to modernism and postmodernism."

The term metamodernism was employed as an intervention in the post-postmodernism debate in 2003, when Andre Furlani, writing in Contemporary Literature, discussed the concept in his article "Postmodern and After." Furlani, relying on the meaning of the Greek preposition and prefix "meta-", described metamodernism as an aesthetic paradigm in art that is "after yet by means of modernism...a departure as well as a perpetuation."

In 2005, University of Wyoming professor Stephen Matthew Feldman published "Problem of Critique: Triangulating Habermas, Derrida, and Gadamer within Metamodernism" in Contemporary Political Theory, referring to metamodernism as "a philosophical paradigm opposed to both modernism and radical forms of postmodernism," and describing it as an intersection of philosophical hermeneutics, communication theory, and deconstruction. Whereas in modernism, wrote Feldman, the self or subject stands apart from the objective world, thereby enabling a correspondence theory of truth and a referential theory of language, metamodernism, per Feldman, "tends to emphasize the operation and orientation of power, particularly in language...without accepting subject-object metaphysics."

While positioning metamodernism as more circumspect of objectivity than modernism, Feldman also held metamodernism to be less circumspect of it than postmodernism, which brand of antimodernism, wrote Feldman, treats reason as merely a series of "rhetorical moves that assert the dominance of one's own cultural standpoint. There is no way to adjudicate among competing claims to truth and knowledge." Feldman therefore positioned metamodernism between modernism and postmodernism and, like Zavarzadeh, situated metamodernism as a means to "use reason, have knowledge, and discuss truth...without invoking the firm epistemological foundations of subject-object metaphysics." As an artistic and scientific practice, Feldman located metamodernism in works, hermeneutics, and methodologies that encapsulated the idea that humans are "always and already interpreting" and therefore cannot separate themselves from the objective world, rendering all accounts of the latter equally plausible and irrelevant. Most controversially, Feldman argued that "prejudices enable or empower us," as without the foundation of individuated perspective, the process of interpretation would be impossible to initiate. All data-processing events are therefore, according to Feldman, mere conversations or dialogues between data and interpreter. Through these conversations and dialogues a "consensus over meaning" or "fusion of horizons" occurs, thereby distinguishing metamodernist thought from deconstructive literary theory, which stands both temperamentally and philosophically in opposition of the notion that consensuses over meaning are possible or even desirable.

In 2007, Jean Paul Van Bendegem described the "metamodern artist" as one who merges the grand, constructive, means-conscious ambitions of the engineer with "the heterogeneity and the flexibility, contingency and irony, of society"--and doing so with a cognizance of, among other things, "globalization...and technoculture". He thus viewed the metamodern artist as one who combines the role of the engineer with that of the postmodern "bricoleur," who is "limited to small actions by those materials he has...[by] what is pre-constrained."

Bendegem further wrote, of the metamodern, that it acknowledges paradoxes in contemporary life, notably that "until recently, relatively stable conditions sustained an image of identity that, even if it was too essentialist, offered a sense of belonging somewhere, of being somebody. The technological changes, the shifting status of knowledge and the multiplicity of 'knowledge,' the loss of 'truth' and the assault on longstanding narratives, are blurring every well-constructed image of the self....[yet] cultural identity and self-knowledge seem to be the only antidotes..."

In June of 2010, John Bittinger Klompt described American hyperrealist painter Denis Peterson as a metamodernist, terming metamodernism, per Vermeulen and van den Akker, as a post-postmodern theory pursuant to which "people are viewed (once again) as individuals, though caught in the overwhelming commodification of everything, some so completely lost that they are no longer individuals." He noted that metamodern photography, form instance, simultaneously "go[es] beyond...and refer[s] back to" realist modes such as photography.

In November of 2010, the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture published Vermeulen and van den Akker's article "Notes on Metamodernism," which was consistent with the discussion of metamodernism before it and did much to inform nearly every conversation that came after it.

Late in 2010, Jacket described metamodern literature as "a literature whose immanent unease and expression of the major convulsions that subjectivity enjoys...[has] a philosophical function."

In December of 2010, Die Zeit described metamodernism as the "contrast between overt materiality and the fleeting idea," noting that by placing such conventional notions as objectivity in conversation with the transience of dialogic exchange, "the process of realization [becomes]....the leitmotif."

In mid-2011, writing in the Journal of Zhejiang University, Shandong Unuiversity professor Chen Hou-Liang "an important representative of post-postmodern theories."

In October of 2011, poet John Gallaher approvingly termed metamodernism "a version of a repopulated center, which is what everyone's been doing (or trying to do) for a great long while now."

In 2012, the Museum of Arts and Design, in the description for its program "No More Modern," called metamodernism a "skeptical, but hopeful, turn in critical theory and cultural production" that "oscillates between a proclamation of earnest desire to break from the history of modernism while also acknowledging the irony in the impossibility of such a quest."

In October of 2012, Vivid Scribe, in describing Belle and Sebastian as a metamodern band par excellence, observed that "metamodern studies and music have become a particularly popular topic."

In his 2013 book Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic (Penn State University Press), James Elkins, citing the work of Vermeulen and van den Akker, called metamodernism a direction in contemporary art theory that "stress[es] ideas such as synesthesic and immersive environments and Neoromanticism, which are compatible with strands of affect theory...and emphasize[ ] affective values."

In December of 2013, the Finnish webzine Nine declared that "the future...is a metamodern visionary world, where we are resisting superficiality, yet want everything hyper- simplified and high-tech," and labelled it one of the "top five trends that will affect the future."

In January of 2014, actor Shia LaBeouf publicly declared himself a "metamodernist," and his subsequent public stunts calling into question the dividing line between reality and artifice were covered by The Guardian, The Independent, Gawker, and dozens of other media outlets.

In April of 2014, Sturgill Simpson released his album "Metamodern Sounds in Country Music," which, according to Pitchfork, Country Music Television, other media outlets, and Simpson himself was inspired by writings on metamodernism by Seth Abramson published in The Huffington Post. "Metamodern Sounds in Country Music" has now been nominated for the 2014 Americana Music Honors & Awards.

Indiewire now runs a regular column called "Metamericana" that focuses on metamodernism. The Huffington Post has featured regular columns by both of the Series Editors of Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University Press) on metamodernism.

Again, I put almost no effort into finding this information, which calls into question just what the heck others are talking about when they say that "metamodernism" is not discussed in popular and scholarly media, was simply made up out of whole cloth in 2010 by two dudes, and has not exhibited consistent contours for four decades now. If you want thirty more WP:N citations on metamodernism, give me 60 more minutes; if you want thirty more than that, another 60 minutes. And so on. Festal82 (talk) 19:37, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Most of those links have nothing to do with the subject of the article. We've been over this already. You can't just randomly mishmash sources together: they have to depict a coherent whole. Your sources depict several. Only the last few are of any use to us. I've said this like four times now and you still don't seem to understand. I'm not going to bother responding to this in more detail until you have the common courtesy to NOT POST A WALL OF TEXT. You've made it impossible for anyone to respond to you. At least use bullet points, Jesus Christ. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:57, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Posting a speculative essay to this talk page isn't going to establish notability, especially when said post gets off on dropping the names of assorted nobodies allegedly within the sphere of academia. I could say that George McFartface said blah blah blah at University of Ugandastan and throw in some vaguely related articles to give off the impression that this is legit, but it is still meaningless buzzword soup. As I've stated, whether or not "metamodernism" is developing and may some day be taken seriously within academic circles, at this moment, it remains an irrelevant terminology coined to describe a vague mash-up of postmodernism offshoots. felt  _   friend  20:03, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Inanygivenhole, Felt friend, apologies, I should have made myself clearer: That text was in no way whatsoever for you. You are snarks and vandals acting in bad faith--I'll have nothing more to do with you. The above text was for those working on improving the article or those still unsure of what metamodernism is. Feel free to respond to this or not, I'm done with you two sock-puppets. Festal82 (talk) 21:11, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll be here when you want to contribute to the article instead of spitting venom. Please come back when you've managed to calm down. Inanygivenhole (talk) 21:58, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that you need to calm yourself before reentering this. Just accept that not everybody will share the same opinions as you, and thus expect to be challenged on a site such as Wikipedia. Additionally, you have provided no rebuttal to any argument made against your stance, you merely continue to reiterate that you feel the metamodernism blog is a notable source, but continuously provide no reason as to why other than it's the only source of information on "metamodernism". You have been lobbying this cause for what seems to be months now without the actual notability of the topic being put into question. It is quite possible, you know, that "metamodernism" might not meet WP's notability standards as it currently stands. I would also like to ask as to why you instantly chastise or attempt to marginalize anyone who expresses different views on this issue than you do. felt  _   friend  01:36, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * What I'm most concerned about is Festal's blind insistance that the previous usages of the word are consistent with der Akker & co's usage, despite his inability to back that claim up. In the above post, Festal merely presupposes their linkage in most of the links given. I brought this up with Esmeme before, and Festal has yet to provide a response to the issues that were raised there. Until he does, there's not really much I can do except repeat myself. I'm not even going to address the other content issues that the page has, since I've spoken about those to death above. Inanygivenhole (talk) 01:44, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

<div style="margin: auto 2em; border: 1px dashed #AAAAAA; padding: 4px; background-color: white; padding-left: 1em;">References

There is a problem when the lead paragraph asserts that since 2010 this movement has become closely associated with two people, and cites three sources, none of which support the assertion, one was written by the two men themselves, and the other two pre-date 2010. If I didn't AGF, this would look "cooked up", so thank goodness for AGF. The cites from Festal82 should now be visible with the addition of the reflist template for talkpages above. In addition to the question of whether metamodernism.com is usable, I don't see the utility of sortable tables with such short lists. It's a lot of extra code, for no real purpose, when simpler bullet point lists would be easier for new (and new-ish) editors to add (well sourced) entries onto that list of notables. In any case, there's a hell of a lot of reading to do from that list provided by Festal82. Anyone want to help look those over? I've got a lot going on IRL. Perfect for you (talk) 04:52, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't mind looking them over some time later. I think for now we should focus on the content which the article does have and see if any of this can supplement it, or perhaps even replace some of the lower-quality citations which need to be reevaluated. I, too, am busy IRL but might be able to look over them in some detail some time in the near future. Inanygivenhole (talk) 22:32, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

So what's the plan?
Since Festal has descended into personal attacks and isn't editing anyway, and the rest of us seem to agree that major change needs to happen, what are we to do? It sounds to me like most of us agree that the tables at the end need to be seriously looked at, and the quality of many citations needs to be reevaluated. Thoughts? Inanygivenhole (talk) 22:29, 2 July 2014 (UTC)


 * There is an agreement to change the table to a list. There is also an agreement to increase the number of citations in the article to include even more sites, the better to ensure Notes on Metamodernism is only one of many sources cited. I've already begun the latter task, above, and Rhododendrites has taken it upon himself to handle the switching over of the table to a list once the editing ban is lifted. If others have constructive ideas, they can certainly share them. Festal82 (talk) 03:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, so you will respond, despite your promise to ignore me. Excellent. There appears also to be a consensus to reevaluate the current citations as well, especially the ones from metamodernist.com. I don't see any reason to add YET ANOTHER header to this tedium, so I'm being bold and restructuring the discussion. Now, will you respond to my comments above or continue this sad fillibuster of yours? Avoiding the issues at hand won't make them go away, you know! Does anyone know what happened to ? I think it would be good to get another opinion in here again. He and I could at least talk about the issues without him calling me names. Your blatant incivility and personal attacks need to be addressed as well. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:36, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

To clarify my thoughts on cleaning up the article, and in response to Rhododendrite's and Inanygivenhole's questions (n.b. she not he) I suggest that:
 * 1) The lead should reflect the topic, which I am confident is prominently understood in Vermeulen and van Akker's terms. There are ample secondary sources to demonstrate this: publications, press reports, academic conferences, museum exhibitions, etc.
 * 2) There appears a distinct lack of any secondary sources to back up Festal82's claims linking the mishmash of previous uses of the term with the current, clearly defined usage. As I have previously suggested, if sources linking the previous and present usage cannot be found, the heading of "Previous uses of the term" should be restored, and should not be called "Origins of the term," if these uses are to be included at all––though without secondary sources, the notability of some of these previous uses is questionable.
 * 3) metamodernism.com seems quite reasonable to use as one source (of many), given the site's large number of academics writing on it (see here: []) which addresses Rhododendrite's question of whether its authors are "considered a reliable source in this area such that they could be cited as authorities". It isn't just Vermeulen and van Akker's personal blog, as has been suggested above, though given that the two of them founded the site, it should obviously be used with care as a source.
 * 4) I agree it is useful to have a list of some form of artists whose work has been described as metamodern. I agree with the consensus that the layout of this list should be simpler. It should be clear that the list is of those whose work "has been classed as metamodern," as I don't think the current title "Notable metamodernists" does, since it is generally not artists themselves who describe their work as metamodern, and nor does this matter. Metamodernism as it is prominently understood is a cultural paradigm, and not a club with notable artist members. Esmeme (talk) 11:48, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and took the notability issue of mm.com to RSN, so hopefully we can get this straightened out and finally come to a consensus about what to do here. felt _   friend  15:08, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * 1. I continue to believe that we should be guided by the precedent set by the two other points in the eternal triumverate identified by Vermeulen and van den Akker: postmodernism and modernism, both of which have Wikipedia articles that are highly regarded and have not featured as much contentious debate as this one. Both of those articles begin with a history of the term--meaning, any uses of it a historian might deem notable, as, for instance, when the term is discussed in a WP:N scholarly publication. Esmeme continues to misunderstand my claim regarding the previous uses of the term: I have not, do not, and will not say that Vermeulen and van den Akker did or did not know of these uses or were or were not aware of these uses, as the guidelines of Wikipedia won't allow us to use that as a guideline for anything in any case. The question, instead, is whether, just as the first usage of the term "postmodernism" in 1870 was nothing like how Lyotard would discuss it nearly 100 years later but was still an imagining of what follows the "modern", the usage of "metamodernism" in 1975 was, like the usage in 2010, an attempt to discuss what the term "metamodernism" could possibly mean. Esmeme has created a standard by which usages of the term "metamodernism" can only appear in the article if they not only describe "metamodernism" as originating with Vermeulen and van den Akker but also discuss it in the exact same way that those two men do--this is the reason that Esmeme systematically tried to remove any articles about metamodernism that did not appear on Notes on Metamodernism or were not somehow sanctioned, implicitly or explicitly, by Vermeulen and van den Akker (e.g., by resting the entirely of their observations on quotes from those two men). That's exactly what got us into this mess, i.e. not having enough sources and having the reliability of sources questioned by some.


 * 2. What is needed, therefore, is a "History" section of exactly the sort we find on the modernism and postmodernism articles on Wikipedia. That section would narratively chronicle, as in those other two WP articles, uses of the term that appeared in WP:N scholarly publications. We can then have another section entitled "Present Usage" (or some such) which allows for the fact that Vermeulen and van den Akker's discussion of the term is at present dominating the debate. Of course, that said, if scholars today suddenly start referring, in WP:N sources, to Mas'ud Zavarzadeh's discussion of metamodernism as the most compelling, the utility of the "History" section and also a section on the present discussion will be that it will be able to incorporate these elements of the debate. What Esmeme suggests dooms us to have this discussion again and again every few months--as he will eliminate from the article any discussion of the term (even, hypothetically, in The New Yorker) that discusses it in the terms used by, say, Zavarzadeh, under the claim that "that's not what this article is about." But the article is entitled "metamodernism," not "Vermeulen and van den Akker's metamodernism."


 * 3. I agree absolutely that metamodernism is not a "club," that it is instead a "cultural paradigm." When we call, say, Charles Olson a notable postmodernist poet we are not saying postmodernism is a "club," we are saying that he is a notable poet whose work contributes significantly to our understanding of postmodernism. So I agree the table can be made into a list, but I don't like the implication by Esmeme that a retitling of the list will somehow allow us to alter its contents rather than merely add to them--as his implication that the current list suggests a "club" is way off base. Certainly nothing about that list says that these people have self-described as metamodernists, or that they work with one another, or that they even know one another, or even that they understand metamodernism in the same way. So translate it into a list, that's fine, but all this other stuff is semantics. Festal82 (talk) 15:41, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Again, please take a moment to read exactly what I have written above, and not misrepresent my points (or my gender, as I keep having to correct you on!). I have never objected to a "History" section with previous uses of the term. What I do object to is the phrase "Origins of the term," as this is potentially misleading. You just used the exact phrase "previous uses of the term" above, and so I don't understand your objections to this. Also, please note that your continued misrepresentation of my edits is tiresome. My edit history shows that almost all my additions have been to add secondary sources, and NOT those from metamodernism.com. I have no interest in making Vermeulen and van den Akker's writing the only source, especially as there are so many other notable sources out there that echo this same prominently understood definition of the term. Esmeme (talk) 15:54, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This discussion is once more digressing to discussing metamodernism as a concept. The issue is notability, which has yet to be resolved (hence me taking it up at RSN in hopes of coming to a conclusion about this all very soon), not what is or isn't "metamodern". See: WP:NOTFORUM felt  _   friend  16:57, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Esmeme, we may have a point of agreement here, then. Assuming you are okay with word "History," if we can structure this article exactly like the Wikipedia article on postmodernism, I think it will protect the article against the sort of confusions some editors have had over its origins and ambitions. Here is the structure of the article on postmodernism: 1. History; 2 Influence on art (including subsections on Architecture, Urban planning, Literature, and Music); 3 Influential postmodernist philosophers; 4 Deconstruction; 5 Postmodernism and structuralism; 5.1 Post-structuralism; 6. Post-postmodernism; 7. Criticisms. We could begin with a narrative history of the term as it has appeared in WP:N scholarly publications, making no claims one way or another as to similarities or differences between usages or speculating on who knew about who and when. We could move then to an "Influence on art" section that discusses metamodernism in the areas we've already all acknowledged: cinema, architecture, performance art, literature, music, and so on. Under "influential metamodernist philosophers" we would emphasize heavily Vermeulen and van den Akker--the Lyotards (as it were) of metamodernism, in my view. Under what would be "deconstruction" on the postmodernism article we could instead have a section entitled "oscillation," mentioning prominently Luke Turner/Shia LaBeouf's use of that term in the Metamodernist Manifesto, and any other usages we can find in WP:N media or Notes on Metamodernism (it seems "oscillation" has the same importance to metamodernism now as the term "deconstruction" has to postmodernism). We can then have a section on "criticisms," which may satisfy some of those who find fault with usages of the term. Would this work? (P.S. I'm hoping the answer is "yes," but I suppose my question if the answer is otherwise is, "Why should the third member of the triumverate Vermeulen and van den Akker have identified--modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism--be treated with any differently on Wikipedia, in terms of the structuring of an article, than the other two? What would justify this departure?") Festal82 (talk) 17:06, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * No, I do not think the article has to be treated exactly the same as the modernism or postmodernism entries, as it is clearly a different animal at this stage. Metamodernism is one of several theories of post-postmodernism, and though it is arguably the most notable one, the page needs to reflect this. To try to set an "eternal triumverate" in stone (a phrase which I don't really understand here) would be going well beyond the purpose of an encyclopedia. We're not here to make the page a more grandiose proposition than it is at this time (although I'm not entirely opposed to some of the headings you mention, if there is sufficient grounds for inclusion). Perhaps in 20 years the page might look like the postmodernism one, but we are not here to speculate (nor is this the forum to have general discussion about metamodernism, as Felt friend points out). As I say, I am all for a "History" or "Previous uses" section, provided there are reliable, secondary sources to back up this history. Esmeme (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * , if you look at all of the objections to this article's existence above, they all come from taking the view that you have taken: That this article should focus only on a single theory of a single term invented out of whole cloth by two men 48 months ago, which has not in fact been referenced (contrary to your claim, which you keep making but do not support) by WP:N scholarly or popular sources, though we can find non-WP:N sources like Vivid Scribe that will be immediately deleted by other editors as non-reliable. This idea that we will have a "Previous uses" section is, as other editors have said, a misstep, as it suggests that we should have a section in the article that is about something completely separate from the topic of the article as you insist upon it. A JSTOR search of the term returns one result in the last decade--one. You are not going to be able to support a Wikipedia article about an allegedly 2010s-only term on that historical record. If the article is to be as you describe, I have no choice but to abide by Wikipedia's guidelines for notability and vote for the article to be deleted. I have always supported the article on the basis of decades of research that posits the notion of a "metamodernism" as providing a notable and abiding interface between postmodernism and modernism; and I have always supported it this way because nearly every WP:N source we can find that has published work about metamodernism appeared in print or online prior to 2010, when Vermeulen and van den Akker came on the scene. Other than Notes on Metamodernism, which I agree with the other editors cannot be used as a primary source here, only a secondary source--as Wikipedia does not let a term get invented from whole cloth a few months ago, have a blog get created to discuss that term, and then have Wikipedia publish an article on that term with references only to that blog and some non-WP:N sources that editors will immediately delete as unreliable--you have provided no evidence at all that other WP:N sources have discussed the term. (And certainly, even if they had, the number of such sources would pale in comparison to the number of sources we can find prior to 2010 discussing the term generally rather than in relation only to Vermeulen and van den Akker, as my so-called "wall of text" above reveals.) Attempts I made to include sourcing from The Huffington Post and Indiewire, WP:N sources, were deleted by you, and you went so far as to attempt to delete their author from the page as well (further ensuring those sources would not be seen as significant). If those sources are not acceptable in this article, and inasmuch as you have provided absolutely no WP:N sources otherwise that speak to the single usage of "metamodernism" you favor, I can't support this article as you propose and will vote for its deletion. In the future, other editors who approach the term as a philosophical concept discussed across many decades will, I'm sure, reconstruct an article on this concept responsibly. Let's move to an AfD debate. Festal82 (talk) 18:44, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not understand your position or your hostility at all. There are numerous secondary sources that use the sense of the term as described since 2010. I am not insisting on two men's sole definition at all, but almost all sources I can find point back to usage consistent with theirs, and not to any of the sources from the 70s-00s that you refer to. I am all for a thorough history, including all notable uses, and including all notable figures who have contributed to the term's popularity, as I keep repeating. Also, according to a quick Google search, Vermeulen and van Akker's 2010 "Notes on Metamodernism" essay, published in the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture (and NOT on metamodernism.com, as is being inferred by several editors above) is cited by at least 44 scholarly articles, as you will find here: . Hardly insignificant. Esmeme (talk) 18:51, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you'd like to respond to the issues that Esmeme and I have raised throughout the page that you've continuously ignored? Are you even here to contribute? Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:12, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * you are reading into my words a hostility I do not feel. And I am sorry if you do not understand my position. I will one last time summarize it in a sentence: Metamodernism is a philosophical concept that has been in use for 40 years, and in its repeated WP:N scholarly appearances over that time it has always, in general terms, denoted a mediation between the first principles of modernism and those of postmodernism in an effort to deal with the subjectivity-problematizing elements of each; Vermeulen and van den Akker have authored an important intervention in the evolving discussion of what a "metamodernism" might look like--perhaps even the most important intervention--but Wikipedia cannot and should not support an article with few WP:N sources that discusses only one usage of a philosophical concept, no more than there should be an article about postmodernism that only discusses Lyotard. That's my explanation to you. In the last three hours you have made clear that the topic of this article, in your view, is one usage of a philosophical term; you want to lede to say that, you want the ordering and titling of sections of the article to confirm that (a "Previous uses" section that is way down in the article and makes clear that none of these "previous uses" has anything to do with the term as discussed in the lede), and you continue to be unable to cite WP:N sources other than the two American ones I mentioned that discuss Vermeulen and van den Akker, even as I--on this very page--have provided more than a dozen pre-2010 WP:N sources that discuss metamodernism as an evolving philosophical concept with no single definition. Your insistence that this article is "about" a single definition of the term--even if you are willing to admit mentions to other (in your view now irrelevant) uses--is what drives me to vote for this article's deletion. I don't cast that vote out of hostility, but principle; either this article is about a concept with no single definition, that is evolving in how it is discussed over time (like every such concept), or it should not be on Wikipedia at all. As I said, let's move on to AfD now. P.S. Your positions evolve quickly enough that I can't follow them: An hour ago you said there should be a list of "artists whose work is classed as metamodern" and not a "Notable Metamodernists" list focusing on all important figures generally in metamodernism, now you say "I am all for a thorough history...including all notable figures [note the term] who have contributed to the term's popularity," which is a very different prospect. An hour ago you said maybe we should delete all the other instances of the term's appearance from the article (cf. "if these uses are to be included at all"; read your own comment if you forgot)--now you are "all for...a thorough history." Re: sourcing, as I keep repeating, we are referring to WP:N sources, scholarly or otherwise. Your recent link proves my point: of those 44 sources, 11 do not mention Vermeulen at all; of the 33 remaining, 3 are from the blog NoM created by those we are discussing; and of the 30 remaining after that, many do not cite Vermeulen and van den Akker for their propositions on metamodernism, but for other things--for instance, the very first citation merely cites Vermeulen as having said that postmodernism is dying, the second is about The New Sincerity rather than metamodernism, the third is a dead link, the fourth is an editorial and not a scholarly article, the fifth is 100% about postmodernism, and so on. Again, I move for an AfD debate. Festal82 (talk) 19:16, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * In response to Esmeme and Festal: Esmeme seems more in line with the general consensus which which our four summaries seem to paint. There seem to be four major issues at hand with that being said:
 * 1. At the very least the metamodernism.com website cannot be used to determine who is and is not a "metamodernist". It's just not reliable enough on its own in this case. With other sources to supplement it I think we can make this work.
 * 2. The lede and content mishmashing issues need to be addressed in further detail. What are we going to do about them? Should we just note that the term has been used inconsistently in the past due to its generic nature, and only have the article be about the more modern usage? Are we going to remove the older usages since there's no mention of them in the lede and because this article seems to be about several senses of the word, and not any single coherent one?
 * 3. It sounds like we all agree on trimming it to a list. Excellent. Issue #2 is the one we need to come to a clear consensus on next it seems.
 * 4. Festal: Personal attacks, wikihounding, heated editing, refusal to act like a member of community, possible OWNing issues. What are we gonna do about this kid? To be honest, I think it might be best to ignore him if he can't follow the basic community standards, and standards of basic human decency. These personal attacks are getting old.
 * I'm not sure on what grounds Festal is making the comparison between metamodernism and modernism/postmodernism, either. Those are well established movements and this one is in its infancy. Postmodernism would have had to go through the same process many decades ago on Wikipedia that metamodernism is here.
 * Again, there's a couple of more issues (which I've raised above and which Festal has made it abundantly clear that he will not respond to), but this is a good start. Thank you so much Esmeme. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:23, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * This is bizarre. You wrote multiple times, above, that you wanted the article deleted. Now you don't? The other thing that's bizarre is that you are repeating my own positions as your own: I've repeatedly said that we can't use Notes on Metamodernism as the sole source on this page, and that we need to find additional sources. I've also repeatedly urged the article to use a lede that acknowledges multiple usages, which is what you're saying now. I've also repeatedly said that I'm fine with making the table a list. So what are you disagreeing about? What do you actually want to have happen here that is at all different from what I've advocated for? Festal82 (talk) 19:29, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I would warn you once again Festal about putting words in my mouth. If you had actually spent any amount of time thinking about what I said, you would have realized that the two are not mutually exclusive. Please do not respond to me if you do not have anything substantial to say. It just makes this conversation more of a farce than it already is. Would you like to actually address the points I've raised or continue ignoring me? You've already turned this discussion into enough of a joke already as it is. (And for the love of God, cut down on the word salad.) Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Again you're misrepresenting me. I think notable figures (by which I mean theorists) should be contextualised in the body of the article, not simply put into a list. Your assesment of those 44 academic articles is obviously very different to mine. I see no evidence that metamodernism was a term widely popularised until 2010, which is the crux of the matter. Plenty of terms have been coined throughout history that don't justify a wikipedia page because they never caught on. The argument against deletion is that the term plainly has caught on. I'm tired of going round in circles, and so I will leave it to other editors to resolve these issues, since my opinion has been stated very clearly above. Esmeme (talk) 19:30, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It sounds like at least between you, myself, and felt_friend (read: the people who aren't making personal attacks, straw-manning others, and ignoring the issues at hand), we have consensus. Excellent. I will make the changes when the article is unlocked. Thank you very much for your time, and I'm sorry that Festal is so difficult to talk to. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thank you Inanygivenhole for all your time on this as well. Esmeme (talk) 19:41, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, at least reverse psychology works. I wanted to save the article, and knew Inanygivenhole would take the opposite of whatever position I took, so it looks like we've successfully moved Inanygivenhole from arguing vehemently and repeatedly (and using inappropriate language) for this article's deletion--as any review of this page will confirm in seconds--to get him to make improvements I've already agreed with. Looks like all is well, then. I'm satisfied, and I thank Inanygivenhole as well for being...consistent...enough for his actions to be predicted. Festal82 (talk) 19:45, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I'm not even sure you're writing coherent posts anymore. Either way, we have consensus with or without you. Good day.
 * Edit: Nevermind, I think I got it. You sound like some of my 5th graders saying 'I was right all along' by coming up with some convoluted series of events and saying "it was my plan all along". I get enough of that nonsense at work. Don't waste any more of our time on this article. Good day. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:48, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys, let's try to calm down a bit. Clearly, this entire argument is going to go nowhere if we continue to run in circles around loose definitions and repeating ourselves over and over and over again in literal essays. I've already pointed out that Wikipedia is not a forum, thus discussing what "metamodernism" actually is is completely futile. The only hope I see for this to be resolved is to bring in some uninvolved editors to help reach a consensus, which, once more, I've reached out to on WP:RSN. Since all of our stances on this have already been well-documented, the best thing we can all do is just wait for some UEs to give some input. felt _   friend  19:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. It appears that we already have consensus, however, between Perfect, you, Esmeme, and myself. Hopefully we can get to add his or her two cents to the bullet points we've raised so we can see what this consensus would look like in more detail (especially about what to do with the usages predating 2010). It looks like we agree on the essence of most, if not all counts. The only one who doesn't seem to agree is Festal, and he's made it clear that he's going to ignore us anyway. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Proposal
I'm throwing in my two cents on what I'll do once the protection ends. Separate subsections to discuss each topic in short detail. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Flip the sections
The sections should be history into present usage. My structure would be Origins, present usages as section, and merge popularity into both so we get a straight history. Any other views? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We've discussed this above, and it sounds like the consensus is that most if not all of the previous uses do not present a coherent picture. "They are not the subject of the article, so why are they being mentioned at all?" is more or less the question we've all asked. I for one don't see it in the future of the article. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ricky81682, I agree with you 100%. The subject of the article is a philosophical concept, not one usage of that concept by an individual theorist, and therefore the requirement that every usage of the concept throughout history be perfectly consistent in some way is in error. I believe that, as with the WP articles for other analagous (and related) philosophical concepts, like modernism or postmodernism, starting with a "History" section that chronologically catalogs usages in WP:N scholarly and popular media sources is appropriate. Festal82 (talk) 12:59, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note to uninvolved contributors: has been refusing to address this issue for some time now, going so far as to state that he would actively ignore us. There are about a half-dozen places where he needs to weigh in before he can become a part of this discussion, and on this issue in particular he has gone to great lengths to ignore us and be generally disruptive. We have consensus for major change to this section, it seems, without him. Inanygivenhole (talk) 15:41, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Repeatedly addressed this question in unambiguous terms under "So what's the plan?" subsection of this very "Talk" page (above). Answer now is same as answer then (i.e. yesterday) and same as answer provided above by Ricky81682. Festal82 (talk) 15:52, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There was more to address, and this was only one of the issues in question. You responded with an absolute mountain of verbal diarrhea, none of which any of us managed sift through and find any sources to back up your frequent, loud, and exceedingly tiresome claims. Until you want to address the posts above which you've ignored, I really don't see why you keep insisting that you've responded to us, because you haven't. I don't see the point in continuing this any further. This will be my last response to you. I am not playing your game with you anymore. You can show that you're serious about this article through your actions, through actually having discussions with other users instead of berating them, insulting them, attacking them, and most of all speaking AT them. Sheesh! Inanygivenhole (talk) 15:56, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Bruce Tucker
I'd remove this paragraph. Saying the term was "first employed as a syntagmatic paradigm" is meaningless. Was he using the Zavarzadeh definition or did he change it? You're citing a primary source that just uses the word. Either the source explains what he means by the source (and that's useful material) or there should be a secondary source or criticism about his usage. That he uses the term doesn't help if we don't know what he meant by it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. We need to cut back on the usage of primary sources for this, I agree. Inanygivenhole (talk) 08:18, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ricky81682, I agree with this as well. I was the one who originally added that citation, but I see now that there are far better (and WP:N-source) citations out there for any prospective "History" section, including ones that flesh out exactly how the source is using the term. I don't agree with the OP that we should, in general, be reducing primary source citations, however; in fact, one of the only consensuses that has been reached on the "Talk" page is that prior iterartions of the article relied too heavily on a single primary source (the non-WP:N blog-zine "Notes on Metamodernism," which is edited by those with a single view of how the term "metamodernism" can or should be used, and therefore led to this article receiving warning tags for not providing sufficiently differentiated viewpoints). Festal82 (talk) 13:04, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * NB: this editor has repeatedly refused to comment on criticism of this view of things above. What Festal is not telling you here is that we've discussed this above and WP:N was only a concern by one editor (felt_friend, I believe) for the use of the blog-zine. The remainder of the editors had a different opinion (which felt_friend shared, IIRC) and Festal has not decided to substantially respond to it yet. Until then discussion is stalled. Inanygivenhole (talk) 16:03, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Dumitrescu
I'd rewrite this section entirely. It doesn't matter who he's analyzing. What's his definition? He describes it at here under the "and Metamodernism" section. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ricky81682, I agree with you here too. Alexandra Dumitrescu's usage, while different from some other theorists' usage, is still a notable intervention in the ongoing, indeed decades-long, discussion of this philosophical concept. And as you say, it is possible to find reliable sourcing for her intervention that would permit more than just a listing of subjects analyzed, but also a brief description of the substantive intervention itself. Festal82 (talk) 13:10, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. This paragraphy is incredibly vague and adds little to the article. On top of that, it does not appear to be used coherently with the sense that is the subject of the article. I'd say it should just be removed, to be honest. Inanygivenhole (talk) 16:00, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Van den Akker and Vermeulen definition
The paragraph starting "Van den Akker and Vermeulen defined ..." contains zero sources. I'll remove it. Once sources are provided as to the definition of the key authors, then we can move forward. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)


 * There is a source for this that I've restored, along with a couple of other citations I added, which got removed (accidentally I think?) by Rhododendrites when the page got reverted before being protected. The source is The Museum of Arts and Design, and so seems sound enough . Esmeme (talk) 12:05, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ricky81682, I agree with Esmeme here, as I think we can find ample sourcing for that definition, and I think Esmeme has provided one. There are definitely others, too. Festal82 (talk) 13:07, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We had sourcing for this. The problem here was that the past usages do not appear to form a coherent whole, and in any case we're lacking sources and running dangerously close to improper synthesis. Most of the mentions in the history section are not the subject of the article, and it sounds like we are still working out what a consensus for that section will look like in the near future. For now, I've marked it and added a comment to the source. Inanygivenhole (talk) 16:06, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It doesn't have to be a coherent whole. Is there a source for that description? If there is, insert it once a source describes it. If you say "well a source says this is exactly what they said but we can't use what they said because it doesn't go with my narrative of coherence" then the narrative is wrong. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ricky81682, agree 100% that an article on a philosophical concept cannot be "about" only one narrow application or reading of that concept. The requirement mentioned by the other editor of a "coherent whole" appears to be used here as a justification, intentional or accidental, for making the article about only one recent usage of a concept that, as sources confirm, is at least 40 years old. Festal82 (talk) 19:34, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * NB: I already responded to this several days ago. Festal is just ignoring me. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:48, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the article has to be about something. Postmodernism and modernism are at times vague but well-defined and readily-citeable movements. Metamodernism is not. Metamodernism has been a more or less generic term which over time has been used in a variety of ways since the 70s, when people began to search for more prefixes to slap on to -modernism to describe the state of affairs which emerged out of the Vietnam war. The article does nothing to reflect this, because at the moment it is in large part a report on academia using original sources. We have dozens of sources reporting on the movements of modernism and postmodernism, multiple sources which link the same thinkers together over and over again. We have nothing of the sort with metamodernism. The article as it stands is a textbook violation of WP:SYNTH. If the article is about a "philosophy", why do we have no reliable, independent sources saying such a thing and citing the history back to the 70s? Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:56, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have gone through and tagged the places that need to be connected, especially where we are using sources closely associated with the subject to report on it. I have also gone through and added a comment to the paragraphs which need to be explicitly connected, by themselves or by a reliable, third-party source, with the subject. It looks like a couple of the links that Festal posted will be helpful, so if anyone notices where we can swap out an unreliable source for a reliable one, and thereby remove a tag, by all means please do so. Inanygivenhole (talk) 20:22, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Same view as Ricky81682 on this. Mz1933 (talk) 00:55, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This doesn't contribute anything. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:14, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You are ignoring what other editors are saying, Inanygivenhole. Ricky81682 wrote, "It doesn't have to be a coherent whole." I agreed. And Rhododendrites also did not insist that all citations in the article be linked. There isn't a single philosophy article on Wikipedia that is written that way. Your claim that "postmodernism and modernism are...well-defined" would astound any modernist or postmodernist of my acquaintance, and does not provide a distinguishing point between those philosophies and the philosophy that is the subject of this article. With those philosophies, as with this one, the article will have a "History" section that describes all WP:N usages of the term that are definitional rather than merely gestural, whether or not they are linked or (even more implausibly) all cite one another. Festal82 (talk) 00:28, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Festal, I will try to explain this to you in as few words as possible: the article attempts to depict it as such. WP:SYNTH explicitly states "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". That is exactly what you are trying to do. How many different ways must I phrase it for you to understand this? I have literally tried to explain this to you four or five times now. Not sure why you're trying to equate my view with Rhododendrites'. Stop putting words in my mouth. The jab at my claim about postmodernism vs modernism is ONCE AGAIN straw manning me. I'm not even going to dignify it with a response at this point. Inanygivenhole (talk) 00:31, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I will (again) be very clear: You are using your own misreading of WP:SYNTH to try to hold this article hostage. Here is how you are doing it: By creating a catch-22. Here is the catch-22 you have created, one born of circular logic: (1) You use an unsupported claim that (for some reason known only to you) all sources in this article have to be linked, though at least three editors disagree with you and analogous articles on philosophical terms have no such feature; (2) you say that if the sources cannot be linked, all of those that do not link up to Vermeulen and van den Akker's research must be removed; (3) if all sources that do not link up to Vermeulen and van den Akker's are removed, you argue (as you have on this very "Talk" page) for the deletion of the article on the grounds that it is self-promotion for a view of "metamodernism" not widely shared by others beyond its originators; (4) if anyone says to you that the sources can all stay because they need not be related (because they are not related in analogous articles on other philosophical topics), you either (a) distinguish "metamodernism" from all other philosophical topics on the grounds that all other philosophical topics are "well-defined," which is preposterous on its face and shows little understanding of philosophy, or (b) say that the moment any article uses sources that are not related, even if each source independently and without recourse to any other source adequately describes a discrete philosophical term, those disparate sources are by definition attempting to form a cohesive whole. And that last bit is how you close the loop of your circular reasoning: You attribute to disparate sources an aim of "attempting to form a cohesive whole" (a violation of WP:SYNTH) when it is only you who claim the sources are trying to do that in the first instance. Then you go and make all of it worse by misusing the term "straw man" to apply to any analogy you do not favor--i.e., I ask you to look at postmodernism and modernism because I consider those terms related to this one, as does every single scholar in a WP:N source who has discussed "metamodernism" since 1975, but because you don't consider those terms analagous to "metamodernism" (i.e., at the same level of discourse if not ubiquity) you say I am "straw manning" you. Your aim here is merely to anger me with circular logic and baseless accusations regarding my motives or methods of argumentation, the better to enable you to crow all over this "Talk" page about how uncivil I am. Meanwhile, anyone who reads the first five comments you made on this "Talk" page (above), assuming you haven't deleted those comments, will see how inappropriate you have been from the beginning of your time on this page (which has been very brief). From the start, you used, in every comment you made on an article 82 editors had worked on for four years, emotional, non-neutral terms like "self-aggrandizing" (a violation of WP:AGF and WP:OUTING, as you were applying the term to another editor who you guessed was Timotheus Vermeulen); "hogwash"; "worthless"; "masturbatory"; "vague mishmash"; "meaningless babble"; "blogspam"; "nonsense"; "ridiculous"; unsupported accusations of "self-promotion"; "incoherent"; "weaselly" (in reference to another editor); and so on. Accept this: The sources do not need to form a coherent whole and are not trying to in any way whatsoever, other than in the sense that each is addressing a single proposed philosophical concept in a discrete way that shows that this term has been in use for 40 years. Your claim that the term is "generic" is WP:OR and contradicted by the number of scholarly journals that saw fit to run major articles on it in every decade since the Ford Administration. Your claim that these uses are unrelated (i.e., your preposterous-on-its-face claim that one source is, by analogy, describing a tree while another is describing a racecar) is impermissible WP:OR. Now stop it. Festal82 (talk) 01:30, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * This is the first time I've explicitly mentioned SYNTH that you've responded to. You're just blatantly lying now. thank you so much for stepping in. This has gotten WAY out of hand. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:37, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Festal, if you say the uses are related, why aren't you able to just find the sources and put that in the article? Your page-long screeds show a lack of ability to write your point in coherent manner. I'm rewriting this as separate definitions. If we can find a connection, then it'll work. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:15, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ricky81682, I've liked all your changes, and I must not have been clear--I don't believe the uses are related beyond the fact that they are all attempts to provide prospective definitions for the metamodern. Above, you wrote "It doesn't have to be a coherent whole." I was agreeing with you, whereas Inanygivenhole strongly disagreed with you. My long note to Inanygivenhole was after a week of bullying, I think Rhododendrites alerted you to it elsewhere. Festal82 (talk) 13:47, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * , you're the one consistently posting page-long screeds, not me. Stop turning this page into a circus at every turn. It's really gotten old, give it a rest.Inanygivenhole (talk) 20:41, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Is it really correct to call it the Vermeulen and van den Akker definition? According to the article, Luke Turner and Shia LaBeuof definition is the most recent version. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the present usage is from Turner and LaBeuof? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:27, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * All editors involved so far, as far as I know, have been so occupied with the massive issues elswhere in the article that the LaBeuof/Vermeulen link was taken for granted. It is, I believe, a claim which can, and should, be more readily established. Thanks Ricky for helping out. I really appreciate it. Good call on the section headers. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:42, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The sources we already have for the manifesto here link LaBeouf/Turner with Vermeulen/den Akker--in the Telegraph article and also in the citation at the bottom of the manifesto itself . I also found this post on Vermeulen's own blog, featuring a video of LaBeouf reading both Vermeulen/den Akker's and Turner's texts, which I think confirms the link beyond doubt. Esmeme (talk) 13:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the question is, if the Turner/LaBeouf definition is distinct from Vermeulen/van den Akker, why not give it its own paragraph and subheader? And if it's the same, why is it notable enough to be mentioned here, given that it appears on what Bhny called a "weird single-purpose bloggy thing" back in May, and which would seem to be even more tightly controlled by its author as a non-peer-edited, non-WP:N single-author blog than the already controversial "Notes on Metamodernism"? Festal82 (talk) 19:57, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what kind of game Festal is trying to play here (and, my, how we're all tired of these), but the manifesto is not a 'weird bloggy thing' but simply a single web page document. It is plainly not a peer-edited literary journal or anything else. This is why Rhododendrites and myself worked to find secondary sources, including a major news outlet (one of many notable news sources mentioning the manifesto and LaBeouf/Turner's metamodernist projects), which are "excellent" citations as Inanygivenhole and others have noted. Citations of the sort, I might add, that several of the definitions Festal has contributed are still sorely lacking.

Not only this, but Festal himself has previously assigned such importance to the manifesto that just 2 days ago on this talk page he proposed making it one of the key subjects of a restructuring of the article. I quote, "we could instead have a section entitled "oscillation," mentioning prominently Luke Turner/Shia LaBeouf's use of that term in the Metamodernist Manifesto, and any other usages we can find in WP:N media or Notes on Metamodernism (it seems "oscillation" has the same importance to metamodernism now as the term "deconstruction" has to postmodernism)." His inconsistency on the subject is baffling, although I strongly suspect him of Gaming the system, since he has also openly admitted (again, on 3 July) to playing "reverse psychology" (his words) with other editors on this page to try to get his own way. This has got to stop. Esmeme (talk) 21:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Esmeme, that is a misreading of what I just wrote. I posted a hypothetical as a way of emphasizing that this new structure for the article (not a single "History" section, but a list of individual definitions) does not work. I did not argue for the Manifesto to be removed, in fact I've consistently said for months it should be put in a "Related Documents" section at the bottom of the article. Though yes, to try to be accommodating I've at times entertained other options. I won't apologize for trying to be accommodating of views I disagree with. I hope you will consider doing so as well. Festal82 (talk) 23:06, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Now Festal is being disingenuous in my opinion. We can all see what he wrote, and the implication. He has never proposed a "Related Documents" section as far as I can see [Edit: the Related Documents suggestion does in fact appear on another user's talk page--apologies]. Not to mention the fact that this goes against his proposal that the manifesto form a key part of the article's body. He appears to be the only editor that thinks a "History" section should tie together the mishmash of previous uses of the term, and there appears no consensus that the additional individual definitions he has added are notable or even relevant. We should stick to the facts, rather than hypotheticals. Esmeme (talk) 23:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Even putting aside WP:AGF, calling me a liar when you know I am not is beneath you, Esmeme. Were you not present and participating in the conversation on the "Talk" page for Rhododendrites (see link) when I said, on 17:17, 17 June 2014 (UTC)--just two weeks ago--"I think, Rhododendrites, you had previously suggested simply removing the Manifesto from the article, because it appears on a self-published website. I'm amenable to that too, though I think a better fix might be to simply put it in a 'Related Documents' section at the base of the article, thereby letting readers read it if they wish but side-stepping the issue of its sourcing and authorship altogether. Would that work?" Honestly, I know you feel a lot of aggression toward me, but please don't take words out of my mouth that I know you read, or put words in there that were never there. Festal82 (talk) 01:14, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I certainly apologize for missing that one amongst the sea of writing you have filled these pages with, and the assortment of radically different opinions you appear to have expressed. I still believe that you are being disingenuous. You stated above that you have "consistently said for months it should be put in a "Related Documents" section," which blatantly isn't true. One moment you want the text to be the centre of the article, and the next you are happy for it to be relegated to a supplementary documents section. It would be very helpful, as I have said, if you simply adhere to the spirit of wikipedia by improving the article with facts and reliable sources, and stop speculating about hypothetical scenarios. Your self-confessed use of "reverse psychology" on this page is utterly inexcusable, hence my natural distrust of anything you write here. Esmeme (talk) 01:22, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Not that you will accept what I say, Esmeme, but the one (and only) editor I directed that remark to had come onto this page wildly insisting that the whole article be deleted, and then began stalking me all over the "Talk" page just because I was someone who had worked hard (like you) to keep this article well-maintained. I maintain that if the article had been changed as this other editor insisted, it would have ended up deleted immediately--his plan at the time, it appears now--so I argued for the page's deletion on that basis, i.e. that if things were changed as the other editor insisted they be changed, the article shouldn't exist anyway (which I still believe!). It was a wise decision, as it turned out. I say that because this other editor immediately began militating for the page to be saved. I'm sorry if me trying to get out from under a mountain of abuse from another editor and help protect the work of 82 other editors over 4 years upset you. But the fact is, whatever your feeling about my edits, it would be disingenuous for you to say that you question my commitment to this article's well-being. Festal82 (talk) 01:40, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Removal of MadMuseum source
I removed the reference to MadMuseum here. MadMuseum does not seem like a reliable source for the academic description of what Vermeulen and van den Akker are talking about. The writings from an unsourced museum page blog does not strike me as something that can properly describe this philosophical concept. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:03, 4 July 2014 (UTC)