Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Collective (Ayn Rand)


 * 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   keep. Discussion to merge should take place at the talk page. – Juliancolton  | Talk 00:13, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

The Collective (Ayn Rand)

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Reason the page should be deleted": Fails to meet Wikipedia standard for [Notability]. "The Collective" is a name used by Ayn Rand for a group of her friends, as an "in joke" (per Greenspan, The War on Turbulence page 40), also referred to by Peikoff as something which "amused" Rand.  Scholarly and other third party sources do not use this term: compare "the George Circle" (group around poet Stefan George), not only the group's own name but standard in scholarly studies of George - but doesn't merit a separate page.  An in-joke, cited in only three references (in two of those as a joke) is not the basis for an article, and given the absence of the term from reliable third party literature generally, the article can be neither expanded nor improved.KD Tries Again (talk) 15:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)KD Tries Again


 * Merge with Ayn Rand and/or Objectivism- There seems to be enough info thats verified/verifiable, that putting it somewhere would be a good idea, but I agree with the nom that it doesn't really deserve its own seperate article. Umbralcorax (talk) 16:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Merge with Ayn Rand and/or Objectivism- Agree with Umbra, while the content is verifiable, its not notable enough to have its own article. Idag (talk) 17:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Well known term for the group, used by many third party sources.. Many gbooks hits (Of course some false pos, but many true usages of this term.)John Z (talk) 17:46, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge as above. Peter Damian (talk) 19:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. There is no pressing need to merge this article, and while it is short, it is more than a stub. I do not find the argument that the name originated as a joke a valid reason for deletion either, the group existed, that is what they were called, and it is the common name so complies with Wikipedia naming conventions.  Nor does the joke origin mean that it fails WP:N, it is substantially covered in several books  and in any case I am dubious that the claim it is not used in academic sources is true having found this.  I suspect that many more academic mentions can be found on the other side of paywalls.  The extent and variety of the sources I think put the lie to the claim that the article could never be expanded.  The involvement of such notables as Alan Greenspan and Leonard Peikoff show that the group, although undoubtedly Rand's group, went beyond her and can stand as an article in its own right.  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  19:21, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge as above --Snowded (talk) 20:23, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * keep the ayn rand page is a mess enough without people merging stuff into it.Brushcherry (talk) 06:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)brushcherry
 * Comment The merge target ought to be Objectivist movement. There's no point merging into the Rand article, as the same info would then be needed in the articles of all the participants, and the Objectivism (Ayn Rand) is meant to detail philosophy, not personalities. Skomorokh  07:18, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: (1) I don't think we can proceed on the basis that there might be academic references to the Collective if only we could find them. (2) The parent article, Ayn Rand, might well be a mess, but this doesn't argue for allowing the mess to spread through a series of sub-articles too.  (3) I glanced through the first ten pages of the Google search results.  Yes, there are maybe twenty or so positive hits, mostly biographies of Greenspan regurgitating the same material.  I also see the term described as "facetious" and "tongue-in-cheek" - but the majority of hits are references to the (political) collective.KD Tries Again (talk) 15:30, 3 April 2009 (UTC)KD Tries Again
 * Merge either to Rand or the movement, but in any case not a separate article. DGG (talk) 18:43, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Independently notable per guidelines. The Ayn Rand article is long enough without trying to merge in new material. ChildofMidnight (talk) 04:16, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge with Objectivist movement, where much of this content already seems to exist. -- Scjessey (talk) 04:22, 5 April 2009 (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.