Talk:Perspicacity

Restoration
I have restored this article at the request of Colonel Warden, who stated that he wished to work on it. In my view it is a borderline dictionary entry (which exists in wiktionary) and borderline WP:NN. If any other admin wishes to comment I shall not object.--Anthony Bradbury"talk" 17:23, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Contested deletion
This page should not be speedily deleted because... The topic is notable. --Warden (talk) 19:07, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe that this article was correctly speedy deleted under criteria for speedy deletion A.5.. Even with all the new text, it is still a glorified dictionary definition, not an encyclopedia article. The new text and sources are merely examples of where the term has been used, and has the appearance of being a very awkward attempt to stretch a dictionary definition into an article. Mmyers1976 (talk) 20:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Since the core of this dispute is whether or not "perspicacity" is notable enough to qualify as an encyclopedia article, I think it is salient to point out that Warden has a category on his page which states that he is a member of Wikipedians against notability, a category of wikipedians that "believe that the notability guideline hurts Wikipedia for various reasons" and "reject using notability as a criterion for inclusion in Wikipedia."Mmyers1976 (talk) 23:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Serious Concerns About the Use of Sources
Assuming this article will survive the current AfD, then serious scrutiny must be given to the use of all the sources Warden has added in his attempt to expand this page from a dictionary definition into a full article after he had the speedy delete reversed. The most conspicuously troubling is this verbage of Warden's:
 * "In selecting candidates for the NASA's scientist-astronaut program, the National Academy of Sciences said that perspicacity was the most important quality required(footnote)"

This is a distortion of the source. The source is one of the light, short general interest pieces Science publishes in its first few pages, before the peer-reviewed articles. It is dated October 7, 1966. The article never says that perspicacity was the most important quality required. The article quotes a recruitment brochure that uses the word "perspicacity." To further show how dated this source is, the article states:
 * "Women scientists are not ineligible, but, as one NAS panel member put it, they have a strike against them. An astronaut's training is long and costly, he observed, and there will be 'no time off for having babies.'"

The training brochure's choice of the word "perspicacity" is likely nothing more than an artifact of the general writing style at the time, a style that also included phrases like "vim and vigor", even in cigarette ads. The words "acumen" or "discernment" might have just as easily been chosen by the copy writer, the article does nothing to establish "perspicacity" as a notable concept. It seems Warden is just seeking out examples where the word was used in a sentence to pad the article, and his misuse of the above source is very troubling. Mmyers1976 (talk) 14:41, 13 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The source provided for this is titled 'Scientist-Astronauts: Only the "Perspicacious" Need Apply' and says that 'The quality most needed by a scientist-astronaut is "perspicacity."' There is therefore no distortion.  We use a superlative just as the source does and the meaning of "perspicacity" is shown to be much the same as our topic by the further details which we quote: "He must ... be able to quickly pick out, from among the thousands of things he sees, those that are significant, and to synthesize observations and develop and test working hypotheses".


 * The point about sexism seems quite irrelevant. The article in question was not a cigarette ad but recruiting material prepared by the National Academy of Sciences.  The exact language used is not especially important because we are not writing a dictionary entry here.  The topic here is the quality of having a penetrating power of observation and understanding.  It is not surprising that this should be sought in scientist-astronauts.  They obviously were expected to be quick on the uptake because they would not have much time to ponder and probe.


 * Warden (talk) 18:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem with the verbage as written is it is very misleading. First, can give the impression that "perspicacity" is a value NASA has recently stated it searches for. Second, it can give the impression that "perspicacity" was a specified quality that NASA astronaut-candidate evaluators had a test to measure, when actually it was merely a word used by a copy writer who was writing a recruitment brochure. 5'll get you 10 that copy writer was an english major who pulled "perspicacity" out of a thesaurus when writing the brochure. It was also more common to use a word like that back then because commercial writing style was quite different back then. Times have changed, attitudes have changed (hence the relevance of pointing out the sexism), writing styles and word choices have changed. There is NOTHING in that article that indicates that "perspicacity" was anything more than the word a copy writer writing a recruitment brochure happened to use, therefore it is not proper to try to use this source to establish the notability of "perspicacity" as an important psychological concept. Mmyers1976 (talk) 22:20, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Advertisement ?
The image used is not very informative.

It appears to be from some currently-marketed 'adventure kit'. Whatever the virtue of that publication  may be, it is not a particularly significant one in the context of the property of perspicacity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.63.104 (talk) 01:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to have used Magritte's painting but that's still subject to copyright, I think. The image we currently have was freely provided and so is not commercial. Warden (talk) 01:53, 19 February 2012 (UTC)