Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Technomancy (2nd nomination): Difference between revisions

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Technomancy

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Appears to be a non-notable neologism that fails WP:NEO. I tried to find a way to merge it into magic in fiction but couldn't even find sufficient sources for that. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 12:06, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements and Science fiction and fantasy. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 12:06, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Move to draft. The idea of magic interacting with technology is reasonably well-established, but this is clearly not in mainspace article shape. BD2412 T 16:43, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The idea might be established, but Wikipedia isn't TVTropes and not the place for indiscriminate original research. If the idea is not discussed in a detailed fashion then it's probably not fit to be anywhere on Wikipedia. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 00:18, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This is important and makes a cool article. Ghost of Kiev (talk) 17:23, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:ILIKEIT for why that isn't a valid argument in deletion discussions. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 00:11, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep a Google Scholar search shows it widely used in academic literature. There may well be ways to merge this with similar concepts, but outright deletion is almost certainly not warranted. I'll note that 2 of the 3 literary examples that immediately came to mind when reading the article title are covered appropriately in the article, although not with the depth I think is likely supported by RS'es. Jclemens (talk) 18:37, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:THEREMUSTBESOURCES. Without proof that it is widely discussed in reliable sources, a keep vote holds no weight really, and is outright speculation at best. Many things pop up in Google searches, much of it unusable on Wikipedia. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 00:16, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:BEFORE for why the failure to find and engage with these uses is your problem, not mine. That is, if you can't click on the scholar link above and see that my statement is accurate, that is your problem, not mine. Jclemens (talk) 03:57, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jclemens Seriously, no, and you know better. Requirement to provide sources, per WP:V, is on editors who want to keep the article. Anyway, I did BEFORE and I claim there are next to no sources, this is a niche term with next to zero notability. Few uses are confused and don't define the concept, nor do they discuss it at any lenght. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:02, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
piotrus So what are you going to give me if I prove your statement wrong? If you can't click 'scholar' and see that there are plenty of uses of the word--which demonstrates that it is not a neologism--then we've got a problem here. The reason I didn't post a source analysis is that none is needed. The nomination does not argue that the word is non-notable, but that it's "a non-notable neologism that fails WP:NEO" and the bar for refuting that is far lower than proving the concept is actually notable. Allow me to quote, to save you a precious click: Articles on neologisms that have little or no usage in reliable sources are commonly deleted, as these articles are often created in an attempt to use Wikipedia to increase usage of the term. This has RS usage; it is not a neologism. Now, if you want to re-nominate this article on a different basis, please do so, but I do not see the value of doing any more work than necessary to prove that the nomination basis is incorrect. Jclemens (talk) 19:36, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Scholar shows there are few passing mentions, with no attempt to define the subject, and that these mentions occur in more than one context. It is a neologism, with no universal definition. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:26, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"You may have not found sources, but I did - I'm keeping them to myself!" if you think that sounds ridiculous, I'm just paraphrasing your response. Suffice it to say it is nonsensical. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 16:30, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, Zxcvbnm the fact that you can't see enough sources to eviscerate your nomination rationale (see my above response to Piotrus) is not a failure on my part, but one of yours to understand the rationale upon which you're advocating deletion: clicking Google Scholar and seeing all those isolated mentions is all I need, or you need, to see that your WP:NEO rationale is in error. Copying a bunch of them into the AfD debate 1) isn't my job per WP:BEFORE, and 2) wouldn't help anyways because the issue appears to be one of you expecting more from the sourcing than policy actually requires. Jclemens (talk) 19:36, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As it states in WP:NEO, "Neologisms that are in wide use but for which there are no treatments in secondary sources are not yet ready for use and coverage in Wikipedia." This is what I meant in my rationale, which never attempted to claim that it was not widely used. However, it is not notable as a term either, a fact which has been confirmed by others. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:05, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. A well-established and well-covered concept in fantasy fiction and gaming. Certainly not any sort of neologism. Easily satisfies WP:GNG. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:39, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Necrothesp: I will gladly withdraw my deletion nomination if I see WP:THREE reliable sources that discuss technomancy in significant detail. So far, none have been shown, just assertions that sources likely exist somewhere because people have heard of the word one day. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:00, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You do know that WP:THREE is just an essay and has no standing on Wikipedia? WP:GNG is the standard we use. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:14, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it is "just an essay". Sometimes articles are contingent on a couple of sources, or even one source. However, these are usually very indepth and large. I do not see evidence of such, nor any source really. Just back and forth Wikilawyering about nonexistent sources that may exist somewhere. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 16:37, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Zxcvbnm,WP:NEO is part of WP:NOTDICT and not part of WP:N at all. Did you mean to raise a notability argument in the nomination? Jclemens (talk) 04:01, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is NOT an well-estabilished term. It's a super niche, super rare term. If you want to prove me wrong, cite your sources. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:59, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep While this article could use a lot of improvement, there are a number of sources which use and discuss the term, e.g. [1], [2], and [3]. The concepts appearing in those sources as "technomancy" are not identical, which is reflected in the differences between the sections of our article here. Daranios (talk) 20:25, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Daranios: I am not seeing much to salvage here, nor SIGCOV of this topic; worse, your last source that has a few sentences about this seems to discuss not literary genre but some pseudoscience? BUT Encyclopedia of Fantasy has an entry on technofantasy [4], which seems to be the a related concept. In either case, I checked several encyclopedias of sf and such and neither of these terms is used (well, outside technofantasy in EoF). As such, I am afraid I have to lean delete due to failure to estabilish WP:GNG and significant WP:OR. The discussed term "technomancy" doesn't seem to be either discussed or even defined anywhere, and that's a major strike. Do let me know if I missed a source which defines it and discusses it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:39, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus: Based on the the publisher and the the author, I had no reason to assume the third source to be pseudoscience. I don't claim to completely understand it, nor have I read the whole thing, but I still think this is a valid sociological examination of quasi-magical practices, and sees practitioners of technomancy as having some understanding of the world ("ability to read and represent the signs of time and nature"), but clad it in a magical guise appropriate to their time/culture. Daranios (talk) 21:14, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

- Your first source says [...] beginning to blur the lines between technology as medium and techonology as magical tool. This theory of technomancy is a useful one to at least be aware of in your own occult research., the second source says we'll consider what would happen if God or his surrogate were all knowing but constrained to perform miracles by natural means. Borrowing from fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett, we'll call this kind of explanation "technomancy"., and the third source says Technomancy is a postmodern fusion of the art of schematisation and sympathetic picturisation (téchne) with the embodied craft of divination (manteía). A relevant technomancy of the world is fēng shui [...]). Those concepts are not just "not identical", they are fundamentally different concepts to the point of equivocation. Nor do they really correspond to the different sections in the article ("Theme", "Non-mystical technomancy", and "Non-scientific technology"). Those sources might make a case for a disambiguation page (if appropriate targets exist), but they don't make a case for keeping this article as it is currently constructed. The current state of the article is an WP:OR mess. What would you keep? TompaDompa (talk) 12:46, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Exactly. Three authors cited use the term in three differnet ways. It's a mess, clearly, nobody knows what this term is suppoed to mean, people use it as synonym for various other stuff. Only the third source tries to define it, and well, it treats it as a synonym of feng shui. Seriously, this is a mess. I can't even seriously suggest we make it into a disambig, as the cited uses are inconsistent and based on a single source. Note I've created an entry on technofantasy now, but it is not the same concept as the one discussed here, or in the sources cited. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:30, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  I agree that the term is used in different ways. I did not mean to say the three sources I picked as examples correspond to the three sections of our article, but rather that the article recognized that the term has been used differently. So if I come to Wikipedia to learn what the term means, I'd like to see an article that does explain the different variations out there. If this could be done by a disambiguation page, that would be fine with me, but I doubt that there are appropriate target pages - Non-scientific technology would correspond to Magitech, though. I did not have the time to thoroughly go through the numerous sources available (that's why it would be so helpful to learn what the nominator found out on individual sources in the required WP:BEFORE search before getting to their overall conclusion). [5] uses the term in the sense of Clarke's third law, so I would keep the paragraph surrounding that, with the sourced Technomages from Babylon 5 as a good example. Terry Pratchett: Titan of Technomancy confirms that the Non-scientific technology is one important part of what the author describes as Pratchett's technomancy. (Unfortunately I don't have access to p. 230.) The Shadowrun example should be double-checked and corrected or expanded with regard to the short definition in this secondary source, chapter 25.3. that the characteristicon of a technomancer is their "embodied magical ability to manipulate the ghost in the machine". Daranios (talk) 21:34, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Just so we understand each other, what would you say this article is about: the word "technomancy" (i.e. WP:WORDISSUBJECT) or the concept of technomancy? TompaDompa (talk) 22:42, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure. What I'd expect from a cleaned page was to explain that technomancy has been used to describe a, b, c, give the word origin, background on the concepts where available, examples where appropriate. Maybe not unlike the Minority article before it became a disambig page. Which would you say that is? Daranios (talk) 20:52, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 30: / Line 30: @@
 *'''Keep''' While this article could use a lot of improvement, there are a number of sources which use and discuss the term, e.g. [https://www.google.de/books/edition/Researching_the_Paranormal/Y2nnDwAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=technomancy+definition&pg=PA276&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.de/books/edition/It_s_a_Miracle/SMZlDwAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=technomancy+definition&pg=PT17&printsec=frontcover], and [https://www.google.de/books/edition/Magical_Realist_Sociologies_of_Belonging/FGnTDwAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=%22Technomancy%22+-wikipedia+definition&pg=PT150&printsec=frontcover]. The concepts appearing in those sources as "technomancy" are not identical, which is reflected in the differences between the sections of our article here. [[User:Daranios|Daranios]] ([[User talk:Daranios|talk]]) 20:25, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
 **{{rto|Daranios}} I am not seeing much to salvage here,  nor SIGCOV of this topic; worse, your last source that has a few sentences about this seems to discuss not literary genre but some pseudoscience? BUT ''[[Encyclopedia of Fantasy]]'' has an entry on [[technofantasy]] [https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/technofantasy], which seems to be the a related concept. In either case, I checked several encyclopedias of sf and such and neither of these terms is used (well, outside technofantasy in EoF). As such, I am afraid I have to lean '''delete''' due to failure to estabilish [[WP:GNG]] and significant [[WP:OR]]. The discussed term "technomancy" doesn't seem to be either discussed or even defined anywhere, and that's a major strike. Do let me know if I missed a source which defines it and discusses it? --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">[[User:Piotrus|Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus]]&#124;[[User talk:Piotrus|<span style="color:#7CFC00;background:#006400;"> reply here</span>]]</sub> 11:39, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
+:::{{re|Piotrus}} Based on the [[Taylor & Francis|the publisher]] and the [https://www.routledge.com/authors/i8140-rodanthi-tzanelli the author], I had no reason to assume the third source to be pseudoscience. I don't claim to completely understand it, nor have I read the whole thing, but I still think this is a valid sociological examination of quasi-magical practices, and sees practitioners of ''technomancy'' as having some understanding of the world ("ability to read and represent the signs of time and nature"), but clad it in a magical guise appropriate to their time/culture. [[User:Daranios|Daranios]] ([[User talk:Daranios|talk]]) 21:14, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
 **Your first source says {{tq|[...] beginning to blur the lines between technology as medium and techonology as magical tool. This theory of technomancy is a useful one to at least be aware of in your own occult research.}}, the second source says {{tq|we'll consider what would happen if God or his surrogate were all knowing but constrained to perform miracles by natural means. Borrowing from fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett, we'll call this kind of explanation "technomancy".}}, and the third source says {{tq|''Technomancy'' is a postmodern fusion of the art of schematisation and sympathetic picturisation (''téchne'') with the embodied craft of divination (''manteía''). A relevant technomancy of the world is ''fēng shui'' [...])}}. Those concepts are not just "not identical", they are fundamentally different concepts to the point of equivocation. Nor do they really correspond to the different sections in the article ("Theme", "Non-mystical technomancy", and "Non-scientific technology"). Those sources might make a case for a disambiguation page (if appropriate targets exist), but they don't make a case for keeping this article as it is currently constructed. The current state of the article is an [[WP:OR]] mess. What would you keep? [[User:TompaDompa|TompaDompa]] ([[User talk:TompaDompa|talk]]) 12:46, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 **:Exactly. Three authors cited use the term in three differnet ways. It's a mess, clearly, nobody knows what this term is suppoed to mean, people use it as synonym for various other stuff. Only the third source tries to define it, and well, it treats it as a synonym of [[feng shui]]. Seriously, this is a mess. I can't even seriously suggest we make it into a disambig, as the cited uses are inconsistent and based on a single source. Note I've created an entry on technofantasy now, but it is not the same concept as the one discussed here, or in the sources cited. <sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">[[User:Piotrus|Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus]]&#124;[[User talk:Piotrus|<span style="color:#7CFC00;background:#006400;"> reply here</span>]]</sub> 03:30, 26 November 2022 (UTC)