Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fractomancy


 * 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  d elete. - Mailer Diablo 05:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Fractomancy

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I believe this to be a non notable neologism. A quick google search turns up only links to this one and one link to a book by a man named Clifford Pickover. There are no sources given, no attempt at an explanation. There is no mention of widespread use in the occult community. DeleteTheRingess (talk) 20:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - this has basically no context, no references, and I can't seem to find anything to indicate it's notable. --Haemo 01:42, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:FRINGE. The only reference given is a bullet-point list of "foo-mancies" with no indication of how popular or well-known any of them are.  Anville 16:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep I have improved the article by adding some explanation and a few more references. Apparently, there are 75 or so ghts for fractomancy, many in occult or divination dictionaries. Clearly, fractomancy does not have the popularity of many well-known methods, but it is known and referenced. Electric2006 19:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm not convinced. Several of the links added simply state the same basic sentence that appears at the beginning of the article, so I don't see the necessity for them.  The article seems to exist to promote the author and the book.  At best this topic is a 1 or 2 sentence entry on the author's entry, not a separate article.  I still think it should be deleted.TheRingess (talk) 21:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment You have done a very nice job of putting the entry into proper form. Electric2006 15:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete — It's not clear to me that the term had any currency whatsoever before Clifford Pickover published Dreaming the Future: The Fantastic Story of Prediction in 2001. Now, six years on, Google searches turn up no traces of anyone having written an implementation, or in any way carrying on independent discussion of this particular method of divination. I find only references pointing to the Wikipedia article, either here or in mirrors, references pointing to Amazon.com book reviews of Pickering's work, or mirrors of the same, or references to a one line definition: Divination by interpreting the structure of fractal geometric patterns. An editor in search of secondary references that put to rest the dangling concepts in the present article, to wit: which strange attractor, in what system of parameterization do the four random numbers operate, for how many iterations must one allow the dynamic system to operate before one can base an interpretation on a generated pattern, would have, at present, a hard time developing this article from a stub. There appears to be no published sources that document how this particular divination method proceeds. Even Pickover, when posting the possible demise of this article at The Wikipedia Knowledge Dump offered nothing detailed beyond what is in the present article, though if anyone were able to expand on this topic, it would likely be him. So how might an editor flesh this article out, barring original research? I cannot see how. The concept seems still-born and in an incomplete state at present, and with Wikipedia itself being one of the few sources of information — such as it is — on the topic. That's not a role a tertiary source should assume. Take care. Gosgood 17:19, 10 May 2007 (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.