RationalWiki:Articles for deletion/Oxymoron

Oxymoron | Result: Keep

Oxymoron (edit|talk|history|protect|delete|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete

1. Troll magnet as a fabulist sycophant who made themselves plenty of enemies here and outside named themselves after an extinct feline, so it kind of rhymes with this article's name. And the article itself is a stub for a decade, it has no redeeming quality whatsoever to keep. (Profile) - (Spoke!) 11:03, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

   I should note that the trolls use it frequently as a redirect page, they redirect the page to user:Oxyaena, but if it was the only issue I wouldn't care that much, but the article itself is dross. (Profile) - (Spoke!) 11:05, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

2. I didn't know it was THAT bad, so imo. Senioritas (talk) 11:28, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
3. Being a troll magnet is non issue, since trolls can be stopped by protecting the page. This one is such a sad stub of a terrible article though that there's no point in keeping it. Knight Commander^{In Service}_{To Her}^Goatness 11:37, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

   Only agreeing with the above by KC. Kntai (talk) 11:47, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

   Withdrawing my Delete vote, given how the Keeps seem invested in making the article better. Kntai (talk) 10:10, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

4. Its not that much of a troll magnet, and even if it was it could be protected, but the article is very low quality. Christopher (talk) 11:50, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

   @Christopher See below. Poor quality is not a reason for deletion, but expansion.Andrew5 (talk) 01:35, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

   Per Christopher. If kept, please move to draftspace. Andrew5 (talk) 13:07, 15 September 2021 (UTC) Moving to keep per GrammarCommie below. Andrew5 (talk) 18:43, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

5. Long-term stub, no references, and what’s there is low quality. If it wouldn’t be easier to start from scratch, it’s only because there’s so little to clear out. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 13:23, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
6. Even the pronunciation guide is wrong per Merriam-Webster[1] so it's very hard to see what's worth saving. It might seem on-mission but if so, what should it say? --Annanoon (talk) 15:03, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
7. Nothing worth keeping here. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 17:24, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
8. Article has no content. Hard to see it become anything other than an endless list of examples and in case it isn't known, I hate those. Maybe redirect any redlinks created by this deletion to articles like cognitive dissonance-Hastur! (talk) 02:59, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Keep

1. On mission, needs a touch up, being a troll magnet is not a reason for deletion. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 12:17, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
2. Come the fuck on. This assassination attempt is asinine. Blatantly on-mission, even if it's slightly stubby. -- Techpriest (talk) 12:18, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
3. Being a troll magnet isn't grounds for deletion. Protection sure, but not deletion. Otherwise, we'd have deleted pages for, e.g., Biden or Hillary a long time ago. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 16:10, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
4. Article is bad, but not irredeemable. GeeJayK (talk) 17:35, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
5. Per GeeJayK, GrammarCommie. Short articles that are missional require expansion, deletion is not the answer. However, I am not opposed to a wp:WP:TNT method. (Delete and start from scratch). Andrew5 (talk) 18:43, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
6. People ought to stop voting to delete pages that merely need expansion.--April ^Chat? 00:18, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
7. What April said.-Flandres (talk) 00:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
8. A stub but that's no reason to delete. Why not expand it instead.Scream!! (talk) 01:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
9. It should be protected to stop trolls though. Plutocow (talk) 02:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
10. Missional BeardOfZeus (talk) 04:33, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
11. Changed vote in hopes there will be expansion. Kntai (talk) 10:11, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
12. Bongolian (talk) 04:33, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Goat

• As I'm ineligible for any votes at all but very ticked off at your shenanigans: for fuck's sake. Thanks for at least teaching me what said long-gone editor's username was referring to, but this is absolute garbage and sterno-level flaming. Go find another bridge. Kntai (talk) 11:12, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  No one’s ineligible to vote in AfDs. Christopher (talk) 11:24, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  Good to know. Kntai (talk) 11:41, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  It's not flaming, it's my second afd on here. You should review the page's fossil record. (Profile) - (Spoke!) 11:24, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  I see your point with this one. Kntai (talk) 11:44, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  Or, nah, the uselessness of the article for sure, but emegerding why it shouldn't be here in peak fabulist way, no. Kntai (talk) 11:50, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

• Just gonna add that I'm surprised nobody bothered to do some research to include a basic etymology section. Senioritas (talk) 11:58, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
• Sorry but "vandals liked to redirect this article to Oxy's userpage" has to be the dumbest reason for an AfD I've ever read. -- Techpriest (talk) 12:21, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
• Never nominate articles for deletion due to vandalism or trolling. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 12:27, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  It's a stub too, and one that has been stuck being a stub for a decade. As I said: It is irredeemable. (Profile) - (Spoke!) 12:56, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  It's not necessarily irredeemable. I agree that it would be missional, but in its current shape it's an embarrassment to our mission. Even some of the examples provided are just bad. Needs a complete rewrite at least, and until someone's willing to make the effort, it needs to have everything after the second sentence (except maybe the "See Also" part, which has much better examples than the bread text) wiped and be turned into a draft. Or just nuked from orbit. Knight Commander^{In Service}_{To Her}^Goatness 13:06, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  @TransChicken Reason for deletion "Troll magnet as a fabulist sycophant who made themselves plenty of enemies here and outside named themselves after an extinct feline, so it kind of rhymes with this article's name. And the article itself is a stub for a decade, it has no redeeming quality whatsoever to keep." Over half of that reason is "troll magnet" with the stub part thrown in as an afterthought. @Knight Commander I already put in some effort, though it would be nice if those complaining about the article's state also contributed. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:45, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  'Stub' is never a legitimate reason to delete anything. This is not how wikis work. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 14:49, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  well, this is weird since many articles here got deleted on the premise that they were not good enough. What happened to articles on some Youtubers like Keemstar and Count Dankula? They definitely were missional, but they were deleted because everyone deemed them not good enough. And don't forget to vote. (Profile) - (Spoke!) 15:24, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

• What potential does this article have? Oxymorons in general don't seem to be missional (where do things like deafening silence, original copy, etc. fit?), so the relevance is only as the concept applies to already-missional things. That leaves things like creation science, but what's to say that wouldn't fit better in the article we already have? 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 21:00, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  Logic. The main problem perhaps is the fact that the article covers only the linguistic aspects of an oxymoron, which aren't very missional, but not the logical aspects. GeeJayK (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  @GeeJayK I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the logical aspects of oxymoron; it seems to me that oxymoron is largely tied up with linguistics. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 13:12, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  @GeeJayK In natural language, oxymorons are grammatical and unproblematic. Oxymoron’s are formed by juxtaposing two mutually contradictory predicates e.g. (Serene’s example) ‘original copy’. Predicates are: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Predicates are predicated of objects. For instance: ‘original copy’ occurs in sentences such as ‘this is the original copy’, or ‘an original copy’, where the italics signify the object, or subject, that the predicates are predicated of (in this case ‘an’ and ‘this’ both signify objects). The sentences formed by predicates are either true or false of a given object; this is where pronouns come into the picture. Pronouns: be they masculine, feminine, neuter, or epicine (viz. non-binary)—are the objects of which predicates are either true or false. Pronouns are signified in first-order logic by variables e.g. ‘x’, ‘y’, ‘z’, …etc. Thus, in first-order logic, predicates are predicated of variables, for instance ‘Fx’ where ‘F’ signifies a predicate and ‘x’ signifies a variable. Therefore, to construct an oxymoron in first-order logic (viz. in scientific language), would require predicating two contradictory properties of the same object, that is, the same variable. Hence, with the example ‘an original copy’, is paraphrased into FOL as ‘(Ox . ~Ox), where ‘O’ shall be interpreted as ‘is original’, ‘x’ as the object in question, ‘.’ as conjunction, and ‘~’ as negation; I have paraphrased the original sentence in this way, since relative to the concept ‘original’, a copy is, by definition, not an original, and is thus represented by the negation of the predicate ‘O’. However, the formula formed ‘(Ox . ~Ox)’ violates the Law of Noncontradiction: the formula is invalid, since no object in the domain can satisfy it. It is literally impossible for something to be both ‘p and not p’. Thus we may represent this contradiction as ‘Ox . ~Ox ⊢ ⊥’ (which means this formula implies absolute falsehood). So, oxymorons are paraphrased into scientific language as invalid formulae.
  

Oxymorons are pervasive. We will continue to come across oxymorons on our website, and we will continue to interpret them so as to make sense of them, and so as to incorporate them into the scientific lexicon of our articles. Moreover, if we are interpreting (or for those of us who are translating) a given interlocutors sentences into scientific language, we ought to interpret our interlocutors in a way that preserves the logical laws e.g. the Law of noncontradiction. For example, if our interlocutors appears to hold the sentence “an original copy” as true (a sentence which is absurd once paraphrased into scientific language), then the apparent “problem” is more likely to be the result of an uncharitable interpretation, than our interlocutors actually being irrational.

Relative to scientific language, Oxymorons are absurd; relative to ordinary language, as figures of speech, they are flexible enough to avoid absurdity and maintain important pragmatic functions. To use an engineering metaphor: it is only when Oxymorons are employed in science that we become aware of their constative weakness, in response to the burden of rationality and rigour. Only in ordinary language, if oxymorons are taken literally, does absurdity arise; people forget that ordinary language is primarily a figurative artform (as opposed to literal). Absurd or not—in both cases—oxymorons remain meaningful and pragmatically indispensable. Leucippus^{Sapere aude} 17:44, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

• Even the keeps seem to agree it's low quality. Would moving to be a possible comprimise? Or would that require another discussion. Andrew5 (talk) 13:25, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  I'm cool with the idea. (Profile) - (Spoke!) 13:26, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

• This is a bad stub that requires a substantial re-write. Since it’s a stub, I don’t see the problem with deleting it: If someone wants to re-write it, all they have to do is recreate the article with their desired amendments. Leucippus^{Salva veritate} 22:33, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  What you're saying is a WP:TNT like method. I wouldn't be opposed to it in this case, but I'd like to see what is drafted before it is set. Stuff, both here and on WP, gets abandoned. I've seen it on both sites. Andrew5 (talk) 18:33, 17 September 2021 (UTC)