Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Golden Mean


 * 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 on a Votes for Undeletion nomination).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was redirect to Golden mean. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Golden Mean
This article is a crime. First it has four long paragraphs saying the golden mean is something in mathematics that is much celebrated, without the slightest attempt to even hint at what it is, even getting into a poet's view of the matter without having attempted to inform the reader of what it is, which would be very easy. A different article, golden ratio, already gives a very clear account of this concept. Then it goes on to a section on the Pythagorean theory of music, which is not even tangentially relevant, but looks (very) superficially related only because it deals with ratios in esthetics. The rest of the article doesn't look as if it informs the reader of what the golden ratio is either. Michael Hardy 23:54, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

*Well, keep the article title, if only as a redirect, and perhaps after moving it to Golden mean? AFAIK "golden mean" is a legitimate synonym or near-synonym for "golden ratio" and a plausible entry term. The golden ratio article is heavy on math and light on aesthetics, philosophy, etc. The golden mean article is, uh, completely free from math and heavy on rather soft aesthetics and philosophy. I'm not enough of a classicist to judge its quality. And I haven't combed through the rest of Wikipedia to see how much of the material here is adequately treated elsewhere. Phyllotaxis is just a stub! But I don't see deleting all the content in this article. There needs to be some kind of refactoring and redistribution of its content, quite possibly deleting some of it, merging some of it elsewhere, and quite possibly leaving nothing but a redirect. The Pythagorean stuff needs to go elsewhere or just go. What sort of musical interval is 1.618? A minor sixth and change? Mmmm, mmmm, not good. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:08, 3 October 2005 (UTC) Try to clarify, see below
 * Comment (not actually a vote, since I expressed myself above): Looking at which pages link to this execrable article, I find two entirely distinct topics, both sometimes called the golden mean. Maybe this should become a disambiguation page.  Or redirect to golden mean with a lower-case m, now a redirect page to golden ratio, and make golden mean a disambiguation page? Michael Hardy 00:07, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * So I take it you don't like the article? I'm voting Conditional Keep on the basis that this has been flagged for attention for 1 day (by the AfD nominator) and now is being AfD nom'd.  I agree that the article is a complete mess of random topics and is in need of some serious editing, but you cannot expect that to happen in 1 day.  If after 30 days this article doesn't get updated into a coherent article with a point, I agree it should be deleted, but for now I'd say let the article have on last chance to be cleaned up.--Isotope23 19:08, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with golden ratio. This will require quite a bit of cleanup but I think there is some salvageable information in this article which is not covered in the other. ESkog 20:16, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Redirect to golden ratio. This article is one of WHEELERs leftovers, and doesn't contain much worth merging. - SimonP 21:27, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree that the Golden Ratio article is much more concise. I vote to move the few unique bits from the Golden Ratio article to the Golden Mean article.  Because the word ratio is more descriptive of its definition, it seems that Golden Ratio should be the title and the alternate names Golden Mean, Divine Proportion, and Golden Section should appear in the first few lines of the article.  Tr0gd0rr 21:30, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Redirect to golden ratio per SimonP and Dpbsmith. Dottore So 22:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * STRONG KEEP. Do not redirect Besides the mathematical definition, there's Horace, the Roman poet, and his use of this term philosophically.  This is the sort of thing even Brittanica would have as disamb. for.  Kill the current content as you wish, but this needs to be kept for clarification and probable disamb. -- or maybe expansion, since ratio is more precisely mathematically, but mean is exclusive philosophically. Xoloz 05:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with golden ratio. --Angr/undefined 07:02, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with golden ratio unless someone knows about the whole Horace useage mentioned by Xoloz and is willing to put it in the article. --Apyule 07:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Please don't merge or redirect: I agree that this article needs substantial improvement. However, most of it deals with the philosophical meaning of golden mean (essentially not too much, not too little), which has nothing to do with the mathematical subject of the golden ratio article; therefore, it should not be merged with that article. The confusion, which is not of our making, is that the outside world uses golden mean ambiguously: sometimes in its philosophical sense (above); other times as a synonym for the golden ratio. Golden ratio, on the other hand, is unambibuous: it refers only to the subject of the golden ratio article, which is another reason that the articles should not be merged.  The Wikified solution for dealing an ambiguous term is disambiguation, and that is part of the solution for this article. Indeed Michael Hardy, who made the first post on this page (does that mean he is the one who nominated the article for deletion?) raised much the same point in a comment following his original post.  The rest of the solution is (1) to delete from this article all discussion of material that is treated in the golden ratio article (and treated much better there), with an appropriate cross-reference on this page to golden ratio as another meaning of golden mean; and (2) to edit what is left of this article, dealing solely with the philosophical meaning, to improve its quality. Finell 10:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, then redirect to Golden mean and make that into a disambiguation page. -- Egil 13:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, let me see if I can be coherent. Basically: concur with Finell. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep the article title itself, since I think the term really is frequently used with that capitalization.
 * Keep the article Golden mean, which currently happens to be a redirect to Golden ratio.
 * Hope for a quick edit of the article to remove anything obviously erroneous or less useful than Golden ratio, and clarify whatever relationships there are between the Golden Mean and Golden ratio articles. Basically, separate them into a philosophy article and a math article even if there is really some overlap in the respective concepts.
 * Keep a cleanup tag on the article.
 * Copy Finell's comment above to the Talk page as a reasonable program for what needs to be done.
 * Hope for editing of the page by people knowledgable in classics and philosophy
 * Defer all the issues of which pages should be redirects, which should be dabs, etc. as normal editing issues. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge (if necessary) and Redirect Golden Ratio is a good article, but I call it the golden mean (or the Golden Section at times. The entry is perfectly valid, but the concept isn't really different from Golden Ratio McKay 17:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. As per Finell. It also needs to be moved to "Golden section" a more correct title, IMO . &asymp; jossi fresco &asymp; 02:03, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: In addition to the above, I know that Aristotle uses the idea of the "golden mean" as the point of virute in his Nicomachean Ethics. One example: He describes courage as the virtue being at golden mean between cowardice and fool-hardiness.  David Bergan 04:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep There needs to be better disambiguation between this article and Golden Ratio/golden mean. A new introductory paragraph should be put in to make clear the different uses of 'golden mean' (not just mathematical term), and its relationship with 'golden ratio' and perhaps difference from 'golden rule'.  I agree with the above comment that more work on the philosophical section needs to be done too.  Perhaps some of the sections should be merged with appropriate articles--golden ratio seems a good target for this--but in general, the article still needs work but should be kept.  WhiteC 14:59, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

New complication
Now there is a new Golden mean article that is solely a redirect to Golden ratio in addition to the present Golden Mean article (note the difference in capitalization) being discussed here (which no one will find in a search now unless they capitalize Mean). Talk about a need for disambiguation! Angela, a Board of Trustees member, apparently created the new Golden mean redirect page. I will leave a note on her Talk page. Finell 20:55, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Doesn't sound like a serious complication. It can all be dealt with as normal editing. But we might as well start tabulating just how many pages should be involved. I just checked and Golden Section and Golden section both redirect to Golden ratio. Good. And Phi is a dab with Golden ratio as the first alternative. Also good.
 * I think we need about two separate articles, with math in one and philosophy/classics in the other. Not sure which one aesthetics best belongs in. I don't think it much matters whether there's a "central" disambiguation page, or whether each of the two articles has a short, pithy cross-reference to the other. What matters is that a reader searching for any of this stuff should be able to type in any of these terms and find what they're looking for. And that the articles be good.
 * Phyllotaxis should be woven into this web, too.
 * Do we have an article on the Goldena medina? Apparently not... Dpbsmith (talk) 22:59, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Than can be easily fixed after the conclusion of the AfD. &asymp; jossi fresco &asymp; 02:04, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
 * NOTE: Angela responded, on her Talk page, to Finell 20:55, 4 October 2005 (UTC) as follows: "Sorry, but I don't remember why I moved the page to that title. I have no opinion on whether it needs deleting. Angela 14:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)"

In view Angela's response, and to reduce confusion of users who search for "golden mean," I edited the Golden mean page to redirect to the Golden Mean article. However, consistent with Wiki capitalization guidelines, Golden Mean should be renamed Golden mean. Because Golden mean already exists, this change requires an Administrator. Finell 04:58, 8 October 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.