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 redirect to Evolution of sex. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 20:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evolutionary theory of sex[edit]

Evolutionary theory of sex (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This article appears to be a crank theory, as well as incoherent. All the links are either by this theory's creator or unrelated. I recommend that this title be redirected to sex.

- The way, the truth, and the light (talk) 14:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to 'Sex' Reads like gibberish to me. --Alchemy12 (talk) 14:54, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Clean up I don't know what's happened, but by looking at older versions (i.e. towards the bottom of the first history page) it used to be a pretty coherent article. Some reverting might fix things. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 15:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge and redirect, you'd need to redirect to Evolution of sex and merge only a bare summary of this material. This article has always been of borderline notability "However, not all of these ideas are widely-known or accepted, and remain almost unknown outside of Russia" see also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Principle of Conjugated Subsystems Tim Vickers (talk) 15:35, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• redirect per the directly above...--Cameron (t|p|c) 16:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and Rewrite it isn't gibberish, but a slightly off-center presentation of ideas which are not fundamentally nonsense--there is after all an evolutionary reason why essentially all higher organisms have two and only two sexes. Evolutionary theory of sex discusses at this point only why there are sexes, not why there are two, or why the two sexes are different. There is a literature here, and this article should be modified to discuss it more fully. DGG (talk) 22:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I'm unclear on what you mean. The literature surrounding this topic is very sparse, mostly the work of one man, and mostly published in Russian physics journals, are you thinking of the literature on the evolution of sex or sexual dimorphism, which are highly notable but separate topics? Tim Vickers (talk) 22:25, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was talking more generally,not about this particular guy's special theory. Postpone till another time. DGG (talk) 23:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete It is a crank theory and incoherent gibberish as suggested above. The Y chromosome, for example, has very few genes on it and is not a platform for experimentation as suggested. This is well known empirical fact. Also, in some animals the chromosome that functioned in a role similar to that the Y fulfils in humans has long since disappeared, as there is no real need to have a special chromosome to have the separate sex. The Y in humans is, itself, predicted to disappear with the few functions it is currently responsible for relocating elsewhere. When the Y disappears there will still be males and females. Males will be X and females XX. The evolutionary advantage of sexual reproduction versus asexual reproduction is the same as for less complex organisms. Sexual reproduction provides greater genetic variation among the individuals which makes the species more robust to attacks from things like viruses and so on, and other rapid changes in an environment. The advantage of asexual reproduction is the rapid elimination of less optimal variations, as they are replaced (outcompeted) by the most optimal variation. However, asexual reproduction risks the line being extinguished if some threat that is tuned into the narrow range of ‘optimal’ variations comes along. This is not so much of a problem for less complex organisms, as new lines are being created at a reasonable rate. However, as more complex organisms take longer to develop from the less complex organisms, they need to be using sexual reproduction to get to the more complex stage (without being extinguished at some earlier stage). --203.214.3.114 (talk) 23:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

yes, there are organism where its XO vs XX. They're the exception, though. DGG (talk) 23:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Why are there only two sexes for more complex organisms rather than three? Three sexes really add nothing as far as increasing variation among offspring and if all three sexes need to be involved in reproduction a species having three sexes would be at a disadvantage in species against species competition, because two sexes getting together for reproduction is easier than needing three. --203.214.3.114 (talk) 23:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

thee are many other possibilities, and some fungi exhibit them. eg a, b, c, where ab ac and bc are all possible matings. DGG (talk) 23:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Evolution of sex, and integrate any of the sourced content from this article there in consultation with the editors of that article. Blast Ulna (talk) 04:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• redirect per Blast Ulna. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• 'comment'; I'm not goign to defend this particular article, what I said above was talking more generallyDGG (talk) 23:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I am very torn about this article. It is probably notable, but it describes a theory that is not widely known outside Russia. It definitely is not mainstream, at least in the West, but I would not go so far as to claim it is a "crank theory": that strikes me as a bit harsh. There are numerous scientific theories that are far more popular in one country than another, or one language than another. That said, I do think that this article (and its set of associated articles) suffers from unclear writing, mainly because the author is not a native English speaker. I have, since I found out about these articles on Wikipedia, encouraged people more expert than myself to try to cut away some of the verbal undergrowth and boil these articles down to something more comprehensible, but it is a daunting task. Someone who knows the theories, probably from reading and fully understanding them in the original Russian, and who speaks and writes good English is required. We just do not have such a person readily available on English Wikipedia, as far as I know. So I do not know what to do; as they stand, the articles are pretty incomprehensible, at least to me. They were even worse before we cleaned them up a bit. On the other hand, I do not think they are worthless either, but I am not sure how to salvage them without the right kind of resources to throw at them. So, I am not sure what to do. This is a far more complicated question than dealing with something that has almost no scientific merit, like Electronic Voice Phenomenon. It is a WP:FRINGE theory in a certain way, but not in the same way EVP is or intelligent design; it is real science, and respectable. But still...--Filll (talk) 23:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have heard of some of the ideas, and the Evolution of sex article is the place for them. In fact, I recall being disappointed not to find mention of the idea of the evolutionary expendability of males there. Blast Ulna (talk) 06:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, these ideas have been published, so they're not simply original research, but they are of minimal importance and notability in the field of evolutionary biology and might only merit a paragraph or even a few sentences in a more general article. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Afd reason given here by nominator is lightweight. ChessCreator (talk) 23:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Yes, redirect it to evolution of sex rather than to sex; it's a possible search term for that anyway. The way, the truth, and the light (talk) 11:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per WP:HEY. Bearian (talk) 19:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit confused by your comment. Nobody has edited the article since it was nominated for deletion, so how can you say keep per the The Heymann Standard? Could you expand on your reasoning a little? Tim Vickers (talk) 20:06, 8 April 2008 (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.