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 with no prejudice to creation of a redirect or dab page as Uanfala suggests. ansh 666 02:45, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Absent referent[edit]

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Googling "useful idea" produces many hits. So why don't we have a Wikipedia article about it, with sections In agriculture, In biology, In chemistry...? The reason is that the term just means "an idea that happens to be useful". Beyond that, nothing coherent can be said about it in general, and any attempt at an article will produce a haphazard mishmosh of unrelated stuff. Same story for "absent referent", a term that also has many ghits, but for which the only commonality in the various uses is the meaning of "a referent that happens to be not physically present". Much if not most of the article's content is original research, mostly in the form of synthesis. I've never seen the term used in a mathematical text. --Lambiam 19:59, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. PriceDL (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. PriceDL (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. PriceDL (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. – Uanfala (talk) 20:49, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. – Uanfala (talk) 21:58, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been mentioned at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Deaf. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 16:32, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - fails the basic GNG, and smells alot like OR to me. ^{Atsme📞📧} 20:32, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Do not delete. Yes, the phrase "absent referent" can be used in any odd context to refer to a referent that is not present, but there does additionally exist a well-defined concept known by that name. I don't know if it's notable enough to ultimately have its own article. The one we currently have is absolutely hopeless, so we should at least turn it into a redirect to the article about the apparent originator of the term Carol J. Adams, where the concept is explained. An alternative would be to create a dab page listing that, as well as pointing to Failure to refer, which I reckon is the topic most relevantly representing the more generic uses of the phrase. – Uanfala (talk) 22:09, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment As best as I can tell, the supposed connection to mathematics is WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. Accordingly, I cut it out. XOR'easter (talk) 22:25, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Complicated. First, I think Xor's removal was totally justified, so I'm just looking at what's left now. Unafala brought up an interesting point about use of the term by Carol Adams. But apparently she didn't coin this term; in her own words, she "politicized" it. I honestly don't know if it would merit an article on its own (my guess is no, but I could be wrong), but there's nothing in there now, so it's kind of moot for the time being. A redirect wouldn't be terrible, but I'd say wait until the article gets deleted (if it gets deleted) before making a new one. The stuff about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is bunk. That just leaves the bit about ASL. It does actually seem to be a technical term used in talking about sign language. Again, I don't know if it warrants its own article though, or if it could redirect to something else. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 16:25, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
As far as ASL is concerned, the notion of absent referent is only meaningful in the context of indexing (pointing), a form of signing that is not even mentioned on Wikipedia. While interesting, the handling of space-absent versus space-present referents by indexing is at a deeper level of detail than the current treatment of other aspects of ASL. --Lambiam 11:58, 1 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I see. In that case, I'd probably just say go ahead and delete, and if anyone wanted to take a stab at the Carol Adams usage, they'd certainly be welcome. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:54, 1 January 2018 (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.