Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Self-replicating machines in fiction (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 merge‎ to Self-replicating machine. In the now cleaned up / stubbified form. Sandstein 07:43, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Self-replicating machines in fiction

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No consensus two years ago, and zero improvement since. The topic may be notable, but our execution is abysmally bad and begs for WP:TNT - after tiny prose lead, this is just a WP:IPC-violating list of random examples. I.e. this is another de facto list that fails WP:LISTN, a simple WP:INDISCRIMINATE listing of all instances self-replicating machines appeared in a work of fiction (WP:NOTTVTROPES). If we were to approach it as an article, it falls WP:GNG, mostly WP:V and WP:OR). No prejudice to this being turned into a prose-based stub if anyone wants to work on this, but otherwise I think blanking/redirecting this would be best as 100% of the content we have here is unencyclopedic (TVTROPIS lists and OR). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:10, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Science fiction and fantasy, Popular culture, and Lists. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:10, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep / (Oppose Merge per below The existence of these in literature, esp. science fiction, is hopefully obvious. Immediately, the topic reminded me of the fictional story by Philip K. Dick titled Autofac. If the article has problems, just work to improve it. I have not looked extensively at the WP:RS, but a quick search on Google scholar seemed to find a relevant article. Also [1], "Science fiction writers have kept pace. Phillip K Dick, Arthur C Clarke and Nobel-nominated Karel Capek have all toyed with the idea, before John Sladek based his 1968 satirical novel, the Reproductive System, on a self-replicating machine that goes wild. It set the scene for movies like the Terminator to tap into fears of robots capable of reproducing and taking over." Chapter 4 of this book starts "The growing popularity of the dystopian genre in early twentieth century literature was fuelled in part by a fear of how technology might negatively influence the development of human society [24]. Here we highlight works from the genre that involved ideas of machine self-reproduction and evolution". I think that WP:RS shows it is notable. I'm not a big fan of WP:TNT. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:17, 5 April 2024 (UTC) [revised 00:54, 10 April 2024 (UTC)][reply]

Piotrus Rather than WP:TNT, why not tag the portions you think could use sourcing and/or contact the editors who put the material in and put them on notice that if they can't find sourcing, their addition(s) will go. And when a new editor comes in and tries to add unsourced material, let then know right away that won't work. I have a similar article on my watchlist List_of_films_impacted_by_the_COVID-19_pandemic in which editors, esp. IP's, come in and add films about to be released that have no evidence they were impacted by the pandemic. I revert them and warn them. And I am slowly purging the list of films whose RS does not mention the pandemic. I'd rather teach the new editors to behave rather than destroy their "work". I have added this one, and can help in that regard.... --David Tornheim (talk) 10:43, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim The problem is that I think nothing here is rescuable except maybe the unreferenced lead. And if we let it be, nobody will bother working on this - this needs to be cut down to a sentence or two, and built up again from it. I'll ping User:TompaDompa who has rewritten and rescued more similar articles than me so the can give you a few examples (I am falling asleep now). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:57, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim: I don't know if you regularly edit X in fiction articles and are familiar with the rather specific set of common problems associated with them, but in case you do not and are not (as well as for the benefit of others reading this): Newcomers adding unsourced material because they genuinely haven't yet learned how sourcing works on Wikipedia is certainly a problem, but it is generally speaking a relatively minor one. The most common reason these articles are so bad is that they were created long ago when standards were either lower or not as diligently enforced, and have never been cleaned up properly. This article is a case in point: the (terrible) list existed on self-replicating machine until it was (correctly) removed by Harizotoh9 back in March 2017. That would have been the end of it, except Fixuture restored it to this stand-alone article in May 2017. It languished in this form until it was nominated for deletion by Piotrus in June 2022. That eventually went to deletion review—the upshot was that there was agreement that the article was not in a satisfactory state but disagreement about whether it should be fixed or deleted entirely (both the AfD and the Deletion Review were closed as "no consensus"). Nearly two years later, the article has still not been improved. This is, unfortunately, par for the course.

The core problem is that most editors do not know how to write articles on topics like this, and their intuitive best guess—emulating TV Tropes—is wrong. This problem was outlined by Uncle G back in 2008 in the essay WP:CARGO. The way to do it properly (also mentioned in WP:CARGO, though both the problem and solution are described in a slightly different way there than I do it here) is to find sources on the overarching topic (in this case, that would be self-replicating machines in fiction) and then use those sources to write about the topic, taking care to abide by WP:PROPORTION by presenting each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. This, of course, takes a lot more time, effort, and—frankly—skill than the typical TV Tropes approach.

The hope is that when people see what it looks like when done properly, they will at minimum stop doing it improperly, and perhaps even start doing it properly. To some extent it seems to have worked: there are now a handful of editors who know how to write such articles and are willing to do so. Their levels of proficiency vary of course, but that's not a problem since it is a trainable skill—when I look at some of my earlier efforts I find them to be rather mediocre (which is still way preferable to outright bad, as the TV Tropes-style lists are). On the other hand it has not worked nearly as well as I would have liked it to—there are still a large number of editors, even experienced ones who should really know better, who do not understand or do not accept that WP:PROPORTION applies to fiction-related content and that such content thus needs to be demonstrated to be a significant aspect of the overarching topic by citing sources on the overarching topic. Removing unsourced (or inadequately-sourced) content and explaining the sourcing requirements sounds like it should be a straightforward way to maintain these kinds of articles, but it isn't always. In my experience, it is usually easier to get through to the editors who want to include something without the proper sourcing when the article is already in decent shape than during the cleanup stage. TompaDompa (talk) 22:57, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. ~~I'm still reading the rest of your response.~~ Are you willing to help us fix the current article? Or consider the solution I suggested? I looked again at the history and saw that it appeared to be a fork off of the "self-replicating machines" article. No, I have not edited much on the SciFi stuff. But I know the problems from teenagers coming in and not knowing the rules. I'm all for teaching them. Will finish reading the rest of your response soon. One reason I can't stand WP:TNT, is because then we lose *EVERYTHING* that was written before and who wrote it. I would much prefer just seeing all the text that is poorly sourced removed and editors who put it in notified about the problem of adding unsourced material. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:19, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim As someone who invoked TNT, note that I also favor preserving the history of a page, hence the suggestion of a redirect to the main article. Sooner or later someone will restore this, in a proper way. Maybe even now - TompaDompa just recently did so with regards at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mind uploading in fiction, which in theory is still ongoing, but it will certainly end as keep. Note that the new article has next to nothign in common with the mess that I nominated (but said messis preserved in the history in case someone wants to check if there is something useful there). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:14, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you want to preserve the history. --David Tornheim (talk) 07:41, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly is the benefit to leaving Mind uploading in fiction as a sub-stub-level separate article as opposed to a section at Mind uploading (and it currently happens to be wholly duplicated at Mind uploading#In fiction). Axem Titanium (talk) 21:44, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@TompaDompa: I finally found a moment to review the rest of your explanation. Thanks. I agree about the problem of WP:CARGO of amassing pointless lists. I have no reason to believe it should be difficult to clean this one up by focusing on what the WP:RS says about the significance the item has in fiction rather than just a list of things editors decided had the item (self-replicating machine). As in the examples you gave.

In this case, as I showed in my post, there are clearly reliable sources that discuss this. Why don't we amass a bunch of the best WP:RS and put it on the talk page? Then, attach the WP:RS to those items that are listed in the WP:RS--minimizing the current description to what the WP:RS says, and then delete all the items that have no WP:RS? And summarize what the WP:RS says about the topic. The result of that would a little like List_of_utopian_literature.

With more work it could evolve to be not even be a list at all--like the examples you gave--or like Postmodern literature, Literary modernism, Utopian and dystopian fiction.

As for stopping new additions, as long as it is on our watchlists, it should be no problem IMHO. I am willing to start doing that now, unless that would somehow mess up this AfD. Does anyone object to my moving forward with this plan? --David Tornheim (talk) 07:41, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Attaching sources to examples that were originally added without them is an approach that well-meaning editors have taken in the past with articles like this, but unfortunately it is merely a cosmetic fix that does pretty much nothing to ensure properly reflecting the balance given to different aspects by the sources. When we start with material added by editors based on what they personally felt were important and add sources after the fact, we end up reproducing and compounding those editorial biases. The way to get articles to reflect the balance of the sources is to use the sources as a starting point from which the article is built.

Turning this into a prose article is definitely the way to go. Experience tells us that the list format itself encourages the addition of content that lacks proper sourcing. The four articles you mention are not really examples to emulate—they are all (at time of writing) rife with unsourced (and likely also inadequately-sourced, though I haven't taken a close enough look to say that for certain) material. TompaDompa (talk) 08:23, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the entire list, since it needed to go anyway. Feel free to start building an article based on proper sources unencumbered by the previous mess. TompaDompa (talk) 08:28, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I might add that based on the sources I've found, this seems to mostly be discussed in the context of nanotechnology, so covering it at Nanotechnology in fiction (itself an article that needs to be rewritten from scratch) might be an alternative. TompaDompa (talk) 08:31, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@TompaDompa: I do see your point about working from the WP:RS first rather than attaching ref to the list. It doesn't bother me that you deleted all the entries in the list that were not properly referenced. Those who want them back can ask.

I put in the three refs I found.

I disagree that this is primarily about nano-technology--even though that is mentioned in some of the sources. If you look at something like Autofac, those machines were not nano. I imagine there are countless other examples that are not nano. But it might be a subgenre of the self-replicating machines. --David Tornheim (talk) 11:06, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just so we're clear, it's not whether the stories are about nanotechnology but about whether the sources are. Gary Westfahl's Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia covers it in the "Nanotechnology" entry, for instance. Stephen Webb's All the Wonder that Would Be: Exploring Past Notions of the Future likewise covers self-replicating machines in the context of nanotechnology. George Mann's The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction does too. And so on, and so on, and so on. Of course, these may not be representative of the overall literature on the topic. The gray goo scenario probably goes a long way towards explaining why this is the context in which so many sources discuss self-replicating machines. TompaDompa (talk) 13:18, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Move to draft. I think there is tremendous potential here, with self-replicating machines being something of a fictional trope, but this largely unsourced list isn't it. BD2412 T 15:12, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment since no such things exist, why is this a separate topic? Isn't the von Neumann probe just a particular instance published in academic, rather than popular, literature? Jclemens (talk) 15:21, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I see the article has been effectively TNTed and is being rewritten. As such my initial rationale no longer applies. Unless the article reverted to its older version, I also favour keeping the new version. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:41, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Self-replicating machine. The original article was, obviously, useless - this one is better but enough of a stub it simply does not merit a split. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:34, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect or merge to Self-replicating machine per Zxcvbnm. There isn't much to say here, now that the unreliable sources are cleaned-up. Shooterwalker (talk) 19:41, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There is one good source that covers the topic in-depth and at length: Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve [Wikidata] (2020) by Tim Taylor [Wikidata] and Alan Dorin [Wikidata]. Part of chapter 4 (pp. 29–34) deals specifically with the topic of self-replicating machines in fiction, and part of chapter 7 (pp. 83–89) touches upon it a bit more. If there are more sources of this caliber it should be possible to write a pretty good article on the topic. With only this and sources where the coverage is a lot briefer and/or surface-level (or indeed lower-quality sources) however, I don't think there's a realistic approach to doing so without falling into over-reliance on a single source. TompaDompa (talk) 22:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Self-replicating machine - With the cleaned up version of the article effectively eliminating the reason why a split occurred initially, it makes sense to merge it back into a single article. Rorshacma (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Self-replicating machine. GreenishPickle! (🔔) 00:15, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I changed my original !vote to include "oppose merge" [2]. Why? Although I agree the new version is short enough to justify a merge, that was after a huge deletion was just made on 4/6/24. Also, I appear to be the only one did a search and found some WP:RS. I would be surprised if there is not significantly more in literature books about science fiction and dystopic novels.

Also, the merge suggestion is to bring it back to "self-replicating machines" where I believe it was originally forked from. Although relevant to that article, I believe this topic is not primarily about abstract or theoretical concepts about such machines (as proposed by inventors like Descartes, von Neumann, Alan Turing, or recent discoveries in Nano-tech) that just happened to be fictionalized with the idea that these might be technologically feasible and desirable. Some of the most notable fiction writers like Philip K. Dick and Stanley Kubrick (or writers of Terminator) that use them frequently portray these with a clear sense of dread about what these machines might do if "left to their own devices", similar to a works like 1984, We_(novel), Logan's Run (film), and countless dystopic novels and films. These themes suggests to me that the portrayal of the machines in fiction is not about primarily about the technology itself, but is instead about telling important stories about humans and their relationship with technology and warning about perceived dangers.

Hence, I believe it should be available from both directions (fiction and technology) rather just technology side.

@Zxcvbnm,Shooterwalker,Rorshacma,Greenish Pickle!: Those of you suggesting a merge, can you please address my concerns? Some of you didn't give much reason for your !vote and few discussed what is in the WP:RS. --David Tornheim (talk) 00:51, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because as it stands, it offers no benefit to readers to have this as a separate article. It is a stub that half of is simply repeating the information found in the first couple of sentences in the Self-replicating machine article. Per WP:NOPAGE, even notable topics don't automatically need to have stand-alone articles when covering it as part of a broader topic gives greater context, which I believe is the case here after the terrible TV Tropes style list was correctly removed by TompaDompa. It is also important to note that merging now does now preclude it being split back out in the future - if a full prose article that is not just a list of examples can be developed, it can be easily restored as a separate article then. But until that is done, I would not advocate keeping this as a separate article. Rorshacma (talk) 02:41, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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.