Talk:Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

Disclosure of conflict of interest
I have a personal connection to Luke Burgis, the author of this book. I'm not being paid. Jc702bxg (talk) 19:24, 23 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello, thank you for disclosing your conflict of interest. I've gone ahead and added disclosure tags to your userpage, this talk page, and the mainspace article for transparency. The article does appear to be written in a slightly promotional tone and could be seen as a potential violation of WP:NPOV. I would recommend improving the tone of the article and perhaps using edit requests to avoid introducing further issues. TipsyElephant (talk) 11:27, 25 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi, thank you very much for reviewing the draft for Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life and moving it to the mainspace. As you suggested, I’ve come up with a number of proposed edits below to make the tone of the article more neutral. I’ve also proposed removing about 30% of the article in case the length is part of the issue. I might even be proposing deeper cuts than are required. I still followed the format of Wikipedia Good Articles for similar non-fiction books such as The Ingenuity Gap, The Road to Total Freedom, Beyond the First Amendment.

Since you did the initial review and placed the warning tag atop the article, I hoped you might review these to see if they are sufficient to address the issues. Please let me know how else I can help. Jc702bxg (talk) 16:58, 10 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I haven't really ever responded to an edit request before and I haven't ever gotten a page to good or featured status. I've added the request edit template below in hopes that someone else will take a look at it, but if you don't get a response in the next week or so I might consider doing it myself. You may have already read these, but I thought I'd mention WP:COIREQ,WP:SAMPLEER, and Guide to effective COI edit requests. TipsyElephant (talk) 11:32, 11 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Looks like after 2 weeks there are no takers for doing the edit requests I made in response to your request to improve the article. You said you might consider doing it yourself if no one responded in a week or so? No good deed goes unpunished, but I really appreciate the help you’ve provided. Thanks too for giving me the links to the policies. Cheers Jc702bxg (talk) 00:58, 27 October 2022 (UTC)


 * A. In the Lead’s second sentence, beginning with “The book was inspired…” please change the word “inspired” to the word “prompted”, which is more neutral in tone.
 * ✅ see . I agree, "inspired" has a positive connotation, but I would assume losing a deal would in fact be negative. The word prompted seems more neutral in this context. I don't see either of these words at MOS:WTW and I don't think the change is controversial. TipsyElephant (talk) 11:28, 3 November 2022 (UTC)


 * B. Shorten the lead so it contains less detail:


 * Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life is a non-fiction book by entrepreneur and academic Luke Burgis. The book explains and extends the work of  Stanford historian and philosopher René Girard's mimetic theory, which posits that people desire forms through mimicking what others desire.
 * see . The style guideline regarding the length of a typical article's lede, MOS:LEADLENGTH, suggests that the current length is acceptable. However, MOS:LEADCITE suggests that inline citations are unnecessary in a lede paragraph if the contents of the lede are adequetly sourced within the body of the article. I have removed the inline citations from the leded because they are all cited multiple times in the body of the article and adequetly support the statements in the lede. I've also done some copyediting for neutrality and tone. TipsyElephant (talk) 11:43, 3 November 2022 (UTC)


 * C. Shorten the Background section so it contains less detail:


 * In 2022 Burgis was director of programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at Catholic University of America. After attending New York University, he worked on Wall Street, and helped start several companies. In 2008, Fit Fuel, a business Burgis founded, failed when a deal fell through to sell it to Tony Hsieh, then the CEO of Zappos. Burgis, according to the book, was surprised the failure left him feeling relieved. He said he lost the desire to lead his company as a result of vacillating between living up to his own ideals and trying to live up to the example of his rich and successful idols. The episode eventually led him to Girard's mimetic theory.
 * see . I rewrote most of it and attempted to improve the neutrality and tone. It is now a single paragraph instead of two, and I simply placed the references from The New Zealand Listener and The Times at the end of the paragraph to indicate that the sources support the entire paragraph rather than littering the page with inline citations. I removed the inline citation from Strategy-Business because I wasn't entirely sure what it added to the paragraph. If I did so erroneously please let me know and clarify why it was needed. TipsyElephant (talk) 12:26, 3 November 2022 (UTC)


 * D. Shorten the Contents section so it contains less detail:


 * The book argues, following Girard, that much unhappiness and conflict arises because people form desires by mimicking what others desire. Mimicked desires are, for Burgis, "thin desires" that tend to be misdirected, shallow, and unfulfilling. Our world, the book says, is shaped by the "movements of desire." These are often stimulated by marketers and politicians who help shape what people buy, where they go, and who they form relationships with. For the individual, the result is a life more caught up in pursuing mimicked desires than in fulfilling desires which are more intrinsic. Mimetic desire also encourages social disharmony and conflict, Burgis says. He ties mimetic desire into "scapegoating", arguing that scapegoating is a byproduct of conflict spawned by mimicking.
 * see . I changed some of the wording, but did shorten the paragraph. I also added a couple wikilinks and decided to condense the citations into the three that appeared to support the paragraph (The Times, Financial Times, and Publishers Weekly). Again, I'm not sure what the Strategy-Business source supports. I left the citation in the article, but moved it lower in the contents section. I'll probably add it to the following section in a later edit. TipsyElephant (talk) 12:47, 3 November 2022 (UTC)


 * E. In the “Publication and reception” section, please remove the final sentence beginning with “The Washington Examiner’s review…” Since the line between substantiating a claim and expressing an attributed opinion can be blurry, it’s easiest just to omit this source altogether.
 * ✅ see . I previously suggested this change and another editor tagged the source as well. I'd say that demonstrates that there was clear consensus that it should be removed. The source appeared to be permanently dead and of questionable reliability. TipsyElephant (talk) 12:51, 3 November 2022 (UTC)


 * F. Please remove the warning box on the home page if these changes are sufficient. Jc702bxg (talk) 16:58, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ see . I felt that the reception still needed some work so I first made . TipsyElephant (talk) 13:00, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Notability
Under WP: Notability (books),a book is presumed notable if: “The book has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself. This can include published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries, bestseller lists, and reviews.”

This book has been reviewed in The Financial Times, The Times (UK) Publishers Weekly, Strategy + Business, Washington Examiner, Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, New Zealand Listener.Jc702bxg (talk) 19:27, 23 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I've decided to accept your draft and move it to mainspace because I believe the sources you've cited adequately demonstrate the notability of the book. Financial Times and The Sunday Times are listed at WP:RSP as generally reliable and Publishers Weekly is definitely a reliable source, but I thought I should mention that the Washington Examiner has been listed as having "No Consensus" (see Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources). Do not use the source to substantiate any exceptional claims and provide attribution when using the source. I also noticed that the source is dead and I've been unable to locate an archive so perhaps the source should simply be removed. TipsyElephant (talk) 11:33, 25 September 2022 (UTC)