Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Menstruation and the origins of culture (2nd nomination)


 * 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 no consensus to delete. I've re-directed to Culture and menstruation for now, this isn't meant to imply that more merging can't be done (that's an editorial, not deletion decision). Petros471 14:27, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Menstruation and the origins of culture (2nd nomination)

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Non-notable theory. The first AfD ended with no consensus. The only recent editor uses a dynamic IP address; from comments on the talk page I suspect (but am not sure) that the dynamic IP and the page's original authors (Martinklopstock and Chris d knight} are all one person.

An important consideration in the first AfD was the heavy citation the work of Knight, Power, and Watts has received in scientific journals, though examples of how the citation was used could not be found. I now believe that these author's work with ocher is regarded as important in determining the origins of culture - but that their theory on menstruation and culture has nevertheless been largely ignored and is not notable. A Google search for "ritual" and "ocher" gets 27,000 hits talking about the earliest archaeological evidence of human culture. An article they co-authored on ritual and ocher (list of authors) was written about in BBC news. This article that was published in Human Nature on p.346 talks about ocher as evidence of early human ritual and cites Knight and Watts. Menstruation is not mentioned once through the entire article.

It has been four months since the last AfD. Despite requests both through a tag on the article and discussion on the talk page beginning in January, no evidence of notability for this theory regarding menstruation has been provided. Lyrl Talk C 13:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. Whatever its scientific merits, dedicating whole articles to particular scientific theories overdoes it, unless they are widely accepted and the basis of much other research in their field. Possibly merge some content to appropriate articles. Sandstein 14:34, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - fails WP:N dposse 17:12, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep It is a real theory, as demonstrated by the references, many of which are exactly on point, and published by academic publishers such as Yale University Press -- this is not fringe social science. There are additional references to be found--I added a few. IThe article needs a little rewriting to de-emphasize personalities, which I have just started. The question is not whether the specific hypothesis as published by specific people listed here is notable; the article is about a subject: Menstruation and culture, and the question is whether that subject is notable.   Books about the subject show notability. To demonstrate that scholarly books are RS, we look at the publishers.  Is the problem that we need to find books  that are about the books on the subject? That's not the standard. (Though I undoubtedly can find some book reviews).  DGG 22:39, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * An additional objection was that of the several hundred articles citing the ones listed here, one of them was not on point. DGG 23:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem isn't notability. The problems are WP:UNDUE and WP:POVFORK of the currently barely existent Culture and menstruation. It's analogous to having a "Quantum physics and gravity" article that deals soley with Loop quantum gravity while "Quantum mechanics" and "theory of relativity" lie empty. Obviously you'll find a lot of citations of the hypothesis, but it's ridiculous to devote so much space to it without first mentioning the general theories that have consensus. nadav 01:22, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - there is already an article culture and menstruation. Obviously a notable topic.  By contrast, the article I nominated for deletion is about "the specific hypothesis as published by specific people listed here" and as such has to establish notability of that hypothesis in order to remain on Wikipedia. Lyrl  Talk C 23:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Redirect to culture and menstruation, it is already merged. The googletest shows no special notability for this amazing theory.--Ioannes Pragensis 11:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * comment Merging might seem good if you go just by the titles. But the article on "culture and menstruation" is entirely devoted to menstruation as related to various religions: all one or two sentences, almost none with a link to a substantial article. At the end of them all, there's a cross reference to this article, which is the only place where there is actually a substantial discussion.   What would be appropriate is not to delete this article but expand it to include other approaches.   DGG 02:40, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - is there any reason the article culture and menstruation should not contain information on cultural aspects other than religion? It has been tagged asking for such information (see its talk page) for some time now and no one has objected.  The article in question here is not an encyclopedic discussion of culture and menstruation - it is a discussion of three people's theory.  The title of the book presenting the theory is "Blood Relations:Menstruation and the origins of culture".  I believe by titling the article after their book the original author(s) pretty clearly intended it to be an article only on their theory, not on the general topic of menstruation and culture.  I would support a merge/redirect decision, and would help implement it.  That was actually my original proposal when the article was created (diff), but the author(s) refused. Lyrl  Talk C 21:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong merge & redirect per Lyrl. Culture and menstruation article is a bunch of stub sections begging for expansion and more coverage. This article on the other hand, focuses on just one theory and suffers from a terrible case of Undue weight. Perhaps in future, when we have much broader coverage of all the scientific views on the connection between menstruation and culture, we will be able to justify giving this much coverage just to one theory on the topic. nadav 01:07, 11 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.