Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unsolved problems in cognitive science (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   delete. Keeper |  76  02:48, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Unsolved problems in cognitive science
AfDs for this article: 
 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Listcruft. The list was previously nominated in 2006 (also see this one and this one), with a decision to keep based on the assumption that people would find references for these supposed problems. However, in the last 3 years, no references have been found and the list has accumulated even more silliness than it began with.

Some of the things in the list are complete nonsense ("How much time is needed by the brain to comprehend its insufficiency?"), some are obvious non-problems ("What is death?" it's when you stop living), and the rest are either POV or OR.

It seems to me that this article is not likely to be improved any time soon (based on its track record since the last AfD nomination) and would be better off not existing until someone has actual, sourced, verifiable information to add to it. Arthree (talk) 15:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete — firstly because it reads as nonsense, or pseudoscience, and secondly because it has lain unreferenced and unimproved for over 2 years, enough time for any contiributor to make their improvement. As this has not happened, we can say this article has little chance of improving in the near future to reach the threshold of acceptability. —fudoreaper (talk) 00:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 13:58, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:OR. — Rankiri (talk) 16:58, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 17:16, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 17:16, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as having never been sourced. I think we can find the solution to the problem-- "What is this still doing here?"  Mandsford (talk) 17:22, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect. Merge any of the reasonable entries to Unsolved problems in neuroscience, if they're not already mentioned there in different language. (I've left a note at Talk:Unsolved problems in neuroscience asking for feedback.) -- Quiddity (talk) 17:38, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect. I've come here in response to Quiddity's note, and agree with that solution. I agree that there is little need for the page here, and demoting it to a redirect would make sense, but merging some of the material (just some, not most) would be a positive step to take. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. I have done what I suspect is all the incorporating into the other page that is justified, and at this point do not see anything left worth keeping. However, nothing wrong with a redirect. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete I don't see anything here worth keeping, and there aren't any sources. Looie496 (talk) 18:48, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment, and not in any sense a !vote: Certainly don't merge it to unsolved problems in neuroscience; cognitive science is a very different thing. (Edit: Oh... too late!) It's agreed that the article as it stands is hopeless.  However, I would just note that there do exist sources for an article with this title.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  23:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions.  -- &mdash; G716  &lt;T·C&gt; 01:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Mildly amusing but essentially non-encyclopedic nonsense. When someone has at least a stub article, it can be recreated. Johnuniq (talk) 04:44, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete:Topic has no sense since there are hundreds of unsolved problems, but only few are mentioned (and unreferenced).--Garrondo (talk) 07:04, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as random, WP:OR-ish, unmaintainable list. Eusebeus (talk) 13:19, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep as the problems are editorial in nature. Yes, the list in its current state is a travesty, but just like Unsolved problems in neuroscience it is a topic that has been written on extensively, and the introductory chapter of any volume on cognitive science will list many real unsolved problems (and in a much more well-defined way than this article currently does...the things in the current list are just vague, pop-culture science things). My own field is closer to neuroscience than cognitive science so I don't have a lot of books like that handy just now, but off the top of my head I can think of things like Brown & Hagoort's The Neurocognition of Language (1999) and and Anne Cutler's Twenty-First Century Psycholinguitics (2005), both of which have chapters that list lots of unsolved issues...and that's just in language processing, one tiny corner of cognitive science. Yes this article is horribly in need of cleanup (and cleanup that I'm not capable of doing at the moment), but it does have the potential to be a real article with a little love and care. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 17:25, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Some examples of real things that could be listed in this article, rather than the love/hurt/death mumbo-jumbo there currently (these are all from David Carrol's Psychology of Language, 2008...another language thing, but hey, that's where my expertise is so it's about all I can contribute, and most of these questions apply to things other than just language processing): serial vs. parallel processing (in language or whatever), top-down vs. bottom-up processing, automaticity and control, and the issue of modularity. That's just a few of the sorts of things that this article could be about if it is cleaned up. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 17:34, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Just to be clear, the reason I'm endorsing deletion is because the article would have to be fundamentally rewritten to be of any use. There should be no hesitation in restarting this article-title in the future (or now). Just without any of the current content :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:10, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a good point; given that the article does need to be totally rewritten to be valid, and who knows when that rewrite will happen (it will be a while before I'm able to work on any of that, and if I do it I would need to recruit some editors from other fields of cognitive science to help me), there's no huge harm if the article gets deleted&mdash;in fact, the redlink might even help get people's attention. Mainly I just wanted to point out that this can be a good article someday...but I won't kick up a huge fuss when it does get deleted (since the consensus is very strong in that direction anyway). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 18:16, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Give me a poke when you want to do the rewrite, Rjanag. I've got a fairly decent bookshelf on cognitive science—but plenty of other projects to work on, too.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  19:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as nothing but unreferenced original research. While an article on this topic might be acceptable, it would need to be rewritten from the ground up. What's here isn't even a decent start.  Them  From  Space  06:28, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - I would prefer this article to be rescued, but I am not an expert on this. Please, can anyone copy it onto userspace and work on it? Bearian (talk) 15:35, 13 June 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.