Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anagrammatic dispersion


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Shimeru (talk) 21:52, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Anagrammatic dispersion

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This started out life as a WP:COATRACK for a fringe book on hidden meanings in scripture. With that removed, it isn't clear that it is a legitimate term-of-art. With the religious fringe out of the way, it traces back to perhaps no more than one other author talking about Jean Baudrillard's rather opaque post-structuralism, but thus far nobody has been able to find much evidence that Baudrillard himself used an equivalent term. Given the mess that is Baudrillard's writing, that is perhaps not surprising. The current claim that it has something to do with cryptography seems inaccurate. In any case searching by various participants in the WP:FT/N has failed to come up with a really convincing case that this refers to something definite and widely understood, even within the textual criticism world. Mangoe (talk) 16:57, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * DeleteThe phrase is not used by any reliable source I could find in relationship to cryptography. Those reliable sources I could find are about literature and fail to define what it means or in fact even discuss it. Dougweller (talk) 17:56, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Remark. The mention of cryptography is a red herring which should not have been introduced in the article to start with. The term is used by Baudrillard in his Symbolic exchange and death, and another use by Baudrillard is here. Next to Gary Genosko (I assume he is the "one other author"), also Victoria Grace uses the term in Baudrillard's Challenge, and Charles A. Perrone uses it in Seven Faces – Brazilian Poetry since Modernism (the latter not referencing Baudrillard). I am not convinced that the concept is notable, but it is also not entirely obvious to me that it is not notable – but if the article is kept it needs to be rewritten completely, focussing on Baudrillard's concept and his analysis of Starobinski's analysis of Saussure's anagrams in Les Mots sous les mots: les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure. See also Mike Gane, Baudrillard's Bestiary: Baudrillard and Culture, Chapter 9: Anagrammatic resolutions. --Lambiam 19:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment If you look at earlier versions you will see they are basically all from a fringe writer arguing that anagrammatic dispersion is about cryptography in the Bible. It was never actually about Baudrillard's concept, that was a minor part of it used to support the biblical nonsense. It will be an entirely different article if it is rewritten to be about his concept. Dougweller (talk) 19:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment It seems clear that Baudrillard does have something having to do with anagrams; it's the kind of word play that he and his ilk like to claim is significant. The issue as far as deletion is concerned is whether he calls it thusly or even gives it a particular name at all. Mangoe (talk) 20:02, 8 April 2010 (UTC)


 * delete - unless some additional uses/sources discussing it are found. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:09, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you mean in addition to the five I provided references to in my remark above? There are also other uses by Mike Gane and several uses by Gary Genosko I did not give references for. How many reliable sources using and discussing this do you need in total? --Lambiam 22:52, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete - there are no reliable sources to show notability. Bearian (talk) 00:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you mean to say that the five sources I provided references to in my remark above are not reliable?? --Lambiam 01:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete the current article, but allow recreation of an article on the Baudrillard angle, which is quite different. There is no need to keep fringe nonsense in the history of an article because a completely different article with the same title may be written. Fram (talk) 06:32, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Bows toward the brilliance of Fram's suggestion - the best solution, I agree entirely that a clean start is the way to go if anyone thinks an article can be created on the Baudrillard stuff. Dougweller (talk) 07:21, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * delete and start over, the present article is just a pompous explanation of anagram. --dab (𒁳) 08:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Original version restored by its author. Dougweller (talk) 18:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Further comment As he restored some copyvio (in a couple of cases he tweaked a word or two, just copyvio), I reverted it all, I'm not sorting through it again for copyvio. Dougweller (talk) 18:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.