Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cultures of silence


 * 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   moot. Article has already been redirected and userfied. Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:24, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Cultures of silence
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log )

This page reads like an essay, and barely ties in with the subject of the article. A better article for this topic is at Conspiracy of silence (expression), which this article wavers on covering. This article would be more aptly named, "Silence in Culture," but again, it would be a lot of OR for it to work as an article. Angryapathy (talk) 16:20, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete. This is an essay founded on an equivocation between two different meanings of silence: "utter quiet" and "secrecy". Anything salvageable is already discussed at Secrecy and Silence. Hairhorn (talk) 22:26, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 14:11, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 14:11, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 14:11, 24 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Smerge per Gene93k to Silence and/or Secrecy. This is an odd mix of redundancy and original research.  None of the sources appear reliable to me. Bearian (talk) 19:03, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose delete haste. Please Wait/Revise. I agree there is a fine edge of OR (Original Synthesis). But IMO SYNTH should not be as rigorously prohibited as OR. Nevertheless, I agree that needs to be rectified or the text needs to be clarified and rooted in citations of work that others have done on the topics. Which is the perfect segue to the other valid issue, which is whether it needs SPLIT or SPLIT/MERGE. I think the term "equivocation" is not helpful, nor is the word "odd" quite on the money, but IMO it is creativity, and creativity is not really what wikipedia is for. Even wikiversity would make more sense for an exhaustive exegesis of the different categories of silence in groups or in cultures.
 * However, it is likely that there are more writers out there who have explored the work of Paulo Friere and others. It might be better for the project to wait a few days and receive a report back or edits sustaining that there is sufficient research out there to sustain the article. Pending the result of that literature search, I may very well concede to the afd, and gladly userfy. But it would be too hasty given that there is a seminal work on the topic, Culture of Silence, and that numerous writers have complained about cultures of silence in terms of trade secrets and corporate malfeasance, police agencies. There is, contrary to what apparently is argued above, a basis for unequivocal or unification of the putative "equivocation", which is the degeneration of cultures of spiritual silence practice into situations where abuses have occured. Where those abuses have occurred, it has been alleged that the culture of silence, which was supposed to be for promotion of spiritual purposes, allowed the abuse or sexual misconduct, to continue. This would be a very serious matter indeed, and therefore this discussion should not be closed in a hasty manner. TO FOLLOW: citations and possible modifications to mainspace text. Thank you in advance for your patience.
 * Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Talk:Cultures_of_silence
 * Update: I am finding that this will probably not be a SYNTH dunkshot, at all. There appears to be a body of scholarly literature theorizing upon an abstract concept of silence.  Also separate writing about eradicating bad cultures of it...I am trimming the fat and maybe the problem is that this is two or three articles mixed up into one. Cf for example
 * Silence: interdisciplinary perspectives. There are many others. In other words, there are plenty of people who were thinking what I was thinking. So my job is to aggregate and order those scholarly writers to the ::extent that they have created an encyclopediable common body of knowledge.
 * By Adam Jaworski

Bard गीता 21:46, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment It seems to me that the only original idea for this article is Paulo Freire's book titled "Cultures of Silence", and then Conspiracy of silence (expression) and Secrecy are lumped in. As it seems that Freire is the main person to use the term, the information might be better off as a section on his article instead of having a seperate article. "Cultures of silence" in this context would be a neologism that doesn't need it's own article just yet. Angryapathy (talk) 13:26, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your insight, the article when you first templated it was really not up to my usual standards not was it policy compliant. I thing the operative term or area of agreements are as follows
 * *Yes there is a deficiency in Wikipedia coverage of Paulo Freire's book titled "Cultures of Silence"
 * Yes the next step (in that thread/in the process of rectifying that specific issue) is a section in Paulo Freire
 * Not to imply that an independent article Culture of Silence (bboK is in any way discouraged, provided that (a) there is at least a sentence or a few in Paulo Freire, linking to Culture of silence
 * and (b) there is a sufficient amount of policy-compliant (cited, reasonably well written, English language) content in Cultures of silence which is not simply a verbatim repetition of the section
 * Bard गीता 18:21, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Status update Implementing the well taken criticisms. Narrowing focus to Friere, and those academics who declare specific conintuance of this exact topic.Next will add summary of references and citations from probably dissertations and peer reviewed articles by MSW or other social workers. Bard गीता 04:01, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete  Unfortunately, I can find no evidence that Friere has ever written a book by the title Culture of Silence or Cultures of Silence. ,  The topic is indeed real, and the phrase appears in many other book titles: ,  , but , as far as I am confused, that shows the irretrievable confusion of the present article. I think the many books show that it is a notable topic, but would suggest rewriting from scratch, after a proper review of the literature--at least sufficient of a review to know what books there actually are, and who wrote them. The next step will be to figure out what it actually means, and an AfD is not the place to work it out.      DGG ( talk ) 05:08, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   05:33, 31 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Relist note: the article is being continuously edited, do the arguments above still apply?  Sandstein   05:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I would have suggested that we just userfy the article in the meantime, but I doubt Bard would be OK with that. He has split most of the redundant concepts, but the article still has numerous issues. But let's let the AfD run its course, and if the article has improved, then hopefully the closing admin will be able to decide if the article should stay. If not, it can be userfied and then resubmitted once the necessary research has been completed. Angryapathy (talk) 13:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey hold on
Yes it is being updated. Yes the concept is legit. Freire originated the concept. The article will be fixed. Please no surprises. Userfy as last resort.I will be back online tommorow thanks. Bard गीता 07:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment It seems Conspiracy of Silence and Culture of Silence are combined into one article. I've heard "Culture of Silence" in use, but never "Conspiracy of Silence". While I do not think there should be two separate articles, I question why the main article is called "Conspiracy of Silence" - should it be renamed? Denaar (talk) 18:20, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * These articles have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Culture of silence is a term from Pablo Freire. Bard गीता 19:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Enough already/ voluntarily MOVED to userspace
The problem with the article is that it looks like OR. It is not necessary to be OR because some researchers such as Armstrong and others have extended the concept. That article "Cultures of silence" is doable but takes advanced search work to find those obscure articles which have actually extended Friere's origination of the concept. HOWEVER, an article Culture of silence is implied by the lead paragraphs. For the sake of directness, i had earlier moved the article from Cultures of silence to Culture of silence however that was a bad idea because it was guaranteed to confuse people to no end.

Per Aa's suggestion i have no objection to userfying the article until it is ready for mainspace. In fact, i am going to develope all of my articles in userspace or off-wikipedia because in more than one other instance perfectly viable articles were deleted onsite within minutes of creation as either too-little-content or as believed redundant by trigger happy admins.

In the instant case, Cultures..., the article was actually not OR but rather SYNTH. It was written as synth. However, it is NOT actually original SYNTH because there are academics who have worked the concept. Buuut i was actually doing an Original Synthesis on my own. Note that there are probably thousands of articles which do that on WP, go figure. But in any case there is no need for me to re-invent the wheel there are people out there who have written extending the Friere concept.

Obviously, the article on the original Friere concept should be written before the more ambitious project of surveying academic synthesis of the concept.

Bard गीता 20:05, 1 June 2011 (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.