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Removal of tables

Why the removal? This is good material, think of the reader. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:59, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more, Cwobeel (talk)! Not only is the material critical, the sources--The Independent, The Huffington Post, The Poetry Foundation--are largely if not entirely WP:RS, making their removal on grounds of "WP:RS" doubly erroneous. Thanks for the reversion! Festal82 (talk) 17:03, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

As the remover of those, I would like to comment that I had kept the info referenced by HuffPo, Independent, etc. Most of what I removed used metamodernism.com as a source; the rest was cited by related blogs. Not only do these obviously fail WP:RS, but, seeing as the website in question was founded by the same pair who coined the "metamodernism" terminology, seems to also be a violation of WP:NOTADVERTISING. felt_friend 20:15, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

The removal seems to be of one source only: metamodernism.com, which is described as a "webzine". This one might actually fall under synthesized sourcing. Perfect for you (talk) 20:59, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

@Felt friend: Maybe I'm misunderstanding the situation. Metamodernism.com is a site maintained by the same academics we cite in the article as the foremost authorities on this topic, right? And it's indeed their version of the topic that's the predominantly the subject of this article? Why then would what/who they describe as "metamodernist" be unreliable or, more oddly, advertising? If it were one of them who added the source to Misplaced Pages, I could understand a WP:COI claim, but certainly the same claims wouldn't be made about using a Lyotard quote on the postmodernism article, assuming it was verifiably his statement, even if made in a self-published source. I understand that's quite a comparison to make -- just trying to understand the problem. --— Rhododendrites |  21:27, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

WP:SYNTH has nothing to do with this issue. There is absolutely no harm in using self-published sources providing these are sources by subject matter experts and no unduly self-serving. - Cwobeel (talk) 21:57, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

SYNTH has everything to do with it. The issue is that most of the information for these tables comes from an unreliable source, namely metamodernism.com. All those citations amount to is metamodernism.com claiming that various movies, books, etc. are "metamodernist". It's unreliable and self-aggragandizing. This entire article needs to be seriously reevaluated IMO. Inanygivenhole (talk) 23:59, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Ok so to be clear, the issue is that the article uses their "webzine" to establish fact. For instance, all the information I removed had used their website to state several people and their respective works as objectively confirming to the terminology they themselves invented. Had the information been worded as " identifies as having these features of ", then I don't think it would have been an issue. The COI issue comes up when reviewing the edit history. Most of the page was authored by a handful the same editors, most of which edit very few or no other pages on the site. What it seems like is going on is that the inventors of the "metamodernism" term, who also maintain metamodernism.com, are using Misplaced Pages as a soapbox to promote their own publications. The extremely low alexa ranking of the site leads me to believe the authors/editors/bloggers themselves are adding this information as opposed to unrelated site readers/enthusiasts. @Cwobeel:, I didn't think of the WP:SYNTH issue until @Perfect for you: had brought it up, but it also seems like a bit of that is going on by the page editors mixing in information cited on non-notable blogs with small bits from established sources such as HuffPo. felt_friend 22:25, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Before the introduction of the list of notable metamodernists, the article instead stated those that van den Akker and Vermeulen considered metamodern--a useful inclusion to help readers better understand the theories and identify the practitioners that are the topic of the article. This was included in the main body of the article as: "artists and cultural practices they consider metamodern include…" This seemed sensible. As I wrote in the Viability of list of notable metamodernists section above, I tend to agree that the list as it stands is too contentious and open to abuse. Esmeme (talk) 22:59, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Felt friend: Well, first thing: You may or may not be right about COI, but all of that is circumstantial evidence and not, to me, enough to bypass WP:AGF. Most pages on little-known topics like this are written by very few editors with niche knowledge/perspectives, but it doesn't mean there's some ulterior motive necessarily.

More on point, though: In the eyes of Misplaced Pages, nobody is "objectively" or "factually" anything at all except insofar as reliable sources say they are. As a subject that not a whole lot has been written about, what reliable texts do exist out there are going to get more play than they would elsewhere. I gave a Lyotard example above, but postmodernism is such a well-developed, if messy, subject that a blog post even by an expert probably wouldn't go all that far unless supported by other sources. By that I mean there are plenty of sources to say Warhol or Koons are postmodern artists, so one source saying a relative newcomer is postmodern wouldn't likely be due to include in the article on postmodernism. With metamodernism, there's less work to draw from so, again, what reliable sources are there will likely be included. Even if a self-published "webzine," it's written by the foremost among the few researchers in this nascent field, which makes them a pretty good source for what counts as metamodern.

Maybe a compromise could be found in the style of presentation used. There's the section heading, which could be changed from "Notable metamodernists" to something akin to "Artists whose work has been characterized as metamodern" (but preferably with fewer words than that). The use of tables also makes it so the lists occupy a great deal of real estate. What if we took the same names and sources, cut down descriptions, and formatted it as a two- or three-column list (sans table)? --— Rhododendrites |  23:07, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I had written the above before seeing Esmeme also proposed something in the same neighborhood. --— Rhododendrites |  23:09, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I think we're muddling a number of issues here. First, there's the "cosmetic" question, which seems to come down to whether the list of people considered metamodern has prime real estate in the article or not. What Esmeme is suggesting, i.e. putting that information in the main body of the very first section of the article, gives the list prime real estate, i.e. what is _not_ wanted, whereas what is presently the state of things, and what I've suggested, which is that the information be contained in a separate section towards the bottom of the article, meets everyone's goals. I am confused by this idea that moving all this information up in the article makes it _less_ dominant rather than more; clearly, it should stay as it is. The second issue is sourcing, and once again the recommendation made by Esmeme is exactly the opposite of what other editors are suggesting. One editor, for instance, wants no citations from the non-WP:RS blog "Notes on Metamodernism"; in response, strangely, Esmeme proposes that we return the article to a prior state in which the _only_ citations were from that non-WP:RS blog, _and_ (moreover) says we should make that single-sourcing situation (which previously led to this article getting five warnings from the Wikiproject:Philosophy Work Group) _more_ evident by moving up all the "Notes on Metamodernism" names to the head of the article. Meanwhile, User:Felt friend is saying that s/he "only" removed information from "Notes on Metamodernism" but that's clearly not the case--as information from Indiewire, As It Ought to Be, The American Reader, and The Journal of 21st Century Writing was also removed. None of those independent, non-self-published sources are, as the OP claimed, in any way related to "Notes on Metamodernism." So given that we want the list not to have prime real estate, and want to allow Notes on Metamodernism as a source but in no way the _only_ source, why in the world don't we leave things exactly as they are? Festal82 (talk) 23:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: To be more clear (again), the issue is that it seems as though using metamodernism.com as a source outside of (as per suggested) clarifying the founders' views would be a violation of WP:SOAP as the website, as pointed out, is founded and maintained by the creators of "metamodernism" as a terminology, which would be akin to Gabriel Marcel editing the entry for existentialism and using Mystery of Being as the page's primary source. I do agree that whether or not the article is being edited by the owners of metamodernism.com or not is irrelevant for the time being, so long as WP:RS is adequately observed. Additionally, the section in question provided no actual material aiding explanation of the subject as it never rationalized why any of the list entries were relevant to "metamodernism". Ultimately, the page, as it stands now, seems to be no more than a rehash of metamodernism.com. felt_friend 23:52, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I think Rhododendrites's suggestion for reformatting and renaming the list is an excellent one. I think Festal82 has misunderstood my last comment, as I was simply stating how the information was previously listed in an effort to arrive at a better solution, but I agree with the need for giving the list less real estate. I also agree with Felt friend that it would be good if there were rationalization as to why these artists are relevant to metamodernism, which was not so much a problem for the pre-list layout that I referred to in my last comment. Esmeme (talk) 00:07, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

@Felt_friend, I think that if the only sources that can appear in the article are WP:N sources, yes, we'd have to remove everything from Notes on Metamodernism, in fact everything but content sourced to places like Indiewire, The Huffington Post, The Independent, and so on. If the question is simply whether the information contained in the article is generally reliable, I think that right now all of it is, and therefore there'd be no need to amend the article in the ways you're suggesting. What simply makes no sense to me is re-inserting a list of 32 people identified as "metamodernists" in the main body of the first section of the article, with the only justification being that we can append the phrase "Vermeulen and van den Akker think..." before it. That's simply nonsense on its face, but more importantly it's also untrue--the articles on Notes on Metamodernism identifying those 32 people as "metamodernists" were _not_ written by Vermeulen _or_ Van den Akker, simply freelance writers who had work published on Notes on Metamodernism, so the suggestion by Rhododendrites that this information somehow clarifies the views of Vermeulen and van den Akker simply isn't correct factually (and when Esmeme says, "the article instead stated those that van den Akker and Vermeulen considered metamodern," that is manifestly untrue). Meanwhile, the position taken by Esmeme now is the same he has taken for months now: Drop all names from the article except those sanctioned by the non-WP:N blog Notes on Metamodernism. But we're not going back down that road. User_talk:Rhododendrites, can you explain more why making "Notable Metamodernists" a list rather than a table substantively changes the article for the better? It seems to me it would simply be harder to read, and less organized. That's especially so if we randomly pick half the names from the list and put them in another section they a) don't belong in, and b) using a justification from Esmeme (that those names were supplied by Vermeulen and van den Akker) that is simply inaccurate. Festal82 (talk) 00:21, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Felt Friend: It's not even a little bit like the Marcel example. It's like if someone else said "Marcel is a reliable source" and then cited Marcel. You're still operating under the assumption that other editors have a COI. @Festal82: sources don't have to be notable, only reliable. But more to the point, I haven't said having a list clarifies their views, only that if we are to have a list, they seem to be a reliable source. In a previous discussion I had said it did seem to make sense to give examples so long as they're reliably sourced, but I'm not saying a list is necessarily the best way to do that (nor am I saying the opposite :) ). To your point about turning the tables into lists, I didn't intend to make things more complicated; only that it seemed like there was griping that they're too prominent. I may have misunderstood. Now that people see what I mean (i.e. not moving it up, just cleaning it up and reducing its size), if you don't feel it's an improvement you can go ahead and revert. --— Rhododendrites |  00:57, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

This article is in SERIOUS need of help

Oh come now, you don't actually buy this hogwash do you? The fact that the metamodernists claim William Blake as one of their own, despite being described as "characterized by an alternation between the values and techniques of modernism and those of postmodernism", and despite the fact that Blake not only predated those eras by a century, but belonged staunchly to the Romantic era, *combined* with the fact that most of the people in those list aren't even aware that the word "metamodernist" exists, let alone that it apparently applies to their work, combined with the fact that much of the citations are unreliable and come from metamodernism.com lead me to believe that the section is not only worthless, but purely masturbatory. Do you want to know the truth? After reading the article and looking over its contribution history, it sounds like der Akker and Vermeulen are a couple of professors who decided to make a Misplaced Pages article so that more people read their blog. To make matters worse, it sounds like they decided to go about that by writing about their own work in the article to make it seem more important than it really is. Where's the meat? If metamodernism is so notable (and not just a vague mishmash of meaningless babble), then where's the meat? It sure isn't in this article. tl;dr: The vast majority of the article is somehow more masturbatory than it is vague (and it's pretty darn vague). This article is in desperate need of being gutted, deleted, or reviewed by many editors. Anyone who looks at this article and sees anything other than what would happen if WP:FRINGE and blogspam had a baby is severely deluding themselves. The fact that Blake is being labeled a metamodernist should show anyone that this article is absolute nonsense. Inanygivenhole (talk) 00:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

@Inanygivenhole: I agree with quite a bit of your stance. I was a bit afraid to put it so bluntly, but this article does seem like something written by der Akker and Vermeulen to drum up support/notability for their blog. Whether or not William Blake could be considered "metamodern" (a question which I would have to reply "no" to) is irrelevant to the stance of the article on WP. It does however help demonstrate the WP:SYNTH issue: all the information pulled from the reliable sources mentioned is being mixed in with der Akker and Vermeulen's personal blog's opinions to aid in promoting their vanity website. After reviewing more of metamodernism.com, I have changed my stance on the issue at hand. I now agree that the website should be excluded as a source completely as it fails to meet WP:WEB and the background of the blog authors is completely irrelevant to the notability status of metamodernism.com. Sorry guys, but if you want your thoughts taken seriously, try publishing them in a serious manner. felt_friend 00:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I probably should have been clearer: I was only using the Blake claim as an example of how ridiculous and arbitrary the subject of the article is. And while I agree with most of the rest of what you say, I would have to add that they have published in more serious formats and even that isn't enough. We need third party sources reporting on their work, and showing that it's notable enough to be reported on. We need to know that their claims are being taken seriously, too. If we were able to treat every journal article or book like a notable source, we'd be forced to say that Christianity is a shroom-fueled fertility cult because of Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. They need to do more than publish in reputable places: they need to be taken seriously! Inanygivenhole (talk) 00:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Inanygivenhole, the mention of William Blake is in a section that I have now retitled "Previous uses of the term" to avoid confusion. This seems unrelated to the metamodernist theory of Vermeulen and van den Akker, but seems to be included in the article for thoroughness. Obviously, Blake's work does not fit within the early 21st century cultural theory that is the topic of this article, and it is not referenced by those theorists. If there is consensus, then perhaps these seemingly unrelated uses of the term should be given less prominence or removed, as they are potentially confusing. Esmeme (talk) 00:49, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

This just exacerbates the issue, in my opinion. Now we have a large portion of the article which is about a (at least one!) separate thing, and now the lede makes no mention of this. Even if we were to add this to the lede the question remains, why not make two separate articles since the two have little (if anything) in common? Yet it's not at all clear (I'd go as far to say they aren't) that the older uses form a coherent whole. So now we have the article split into many different subjects, no single one being very notable by itself. In short, this article appears to be an incoherent mishmash of several different meanings of a buzzword, mixed in with der Akker and Vermeulen's self-promotion of their own work. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I'm starting to think that this article should just be deleted. Inanygivenhole (talk) 01:00, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

@Inanygivenhole:, I agree that the older uses do not form a coherent whole, as they appear unrelated to one another. However, the current use of the term is demonstrably notable, coherent and has reliable sources. I have restored the lead in the meantime, while we build consensus about how to address the issue of previous uses of the term. Esmeme (talk) 01:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

User talk:Esmeme, you can say the Dumitrescu usage is divergent and I agree. If it goes, I'm fine with that; if it gets its own section entitled "Previous uses of the term," I'm fine with that. But your claim that Mas'ud Zavarzadeh used the term differently than Vermeulen and van den Akker, rather than that the latter men (inadvertently or otherwise) built on that existing usage, is _killing_ this article's chance of survival because it plays into every single claim the OPs are making about this really being a fight for one blog-zine to get its views codified on Misplaced Pages. If, in contrast, we say that this term has been around for 40 years and NoM and its editors have made a valuable--in fact indispensible--contribution to an ongoing dialogue, we can see _why_ this article is so important and needs to stay. Don't jeopardize the existence of the article for the sake of your pro-NoM agenda. Festal82 (talk) 01:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

If they built on its previous usage, that needs to be cited. If not, it can't be included. It doesn't matter if that "kills" the article. That's how Misplaced Pages works, we cite things. Inanygivenhole (talk) 02:34, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Inanygivenhole, I don't know what your agenda is, but I'm reasonably certain that you have not read the "History" section of the Misplaced Pages article entitled postmodernism. Because the project afoot here, to tell the sequential history of uses of the term "metamodernism"--a history now in its fortieth year--is identical, yet you object to it so strenuously. Festal82 (talk) 02:46, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

If you had read what I said a little slower, you would have noticed that it meant that I looked at the history of this article. Why are you begging the question (a logical fallacy I should remind you) and raising the irrelevant histories of other articles here? I was concerned about the contributors to this page because it looked masturbatory and self-referrential, and the history only further added to my suspicions. Please assume good faith in the future, as well. This is a community, not a court of law.

I would also like to point out that the term only has a history older than 2010 because of the generic nature of the name (which further leads me to suspect that, because the term's been used in so many different ways, that it's a nonsense buzzword). Unless you'd like to provide a source which links the two (doubtful--they're used pretty differently)? Until then, that claim is at worst false, and at best weaselly. Inanygivenhole (talk) 04:20, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

In two comments whose foundational premise is "WP:AGF," you call the prior contributions of WP editors on this page "nonsense," "masturbatory," and "self-referential" (an unproven claim of conflict-of-interest), and then go on to call my own statements either "false" or "weasel." No, this isn't a court of law--it's also not an elementary school playground, so please act like it. Go, as I suggested, to the Misplaced Pages page for postmodernism, and tell me if, at every single stage in the history of that term, every single person who's used it has begun their usage with something like, "Building upon the statements made by my predecessors _______ and _______..." You see, that's nonsense. A term is developed by somebody, and then it gets talked about by many others without direct reference to any/all previous references. Sometimes a dialogue gets started, sometimes everyone is writing about the term on their own. If Metamodernist A called metamodernism a spaceship, and Metamodernist B called metamodernism a piece of broccoli, any editor of good faith would do well to say these people are speaking of two separate ideas. But when you read--as you claim to have read--_this_ article, you see a continuity of thought and rhetoric and argument between Mas'ud Zavarzadeh and Vermeulen and van den Akker that makes clear that this is not (say) one person describing postmodernism as an Oldsmobile, and another describing it as a new iteration of the tango. Your bias here is clear and loudly announced: You think the term means nothing. Great. You are of course entitled to your opinion. Scholars, artists, and major media outlets by the scores disagree with you. So again, your presence on this page to further (yes, I'll say it) your own clearly articulated agenda is confounding to me. Festal82 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 05:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

Your own statements are false. The usages of the term "metamodernism" predating 2010 are precisely because the word is generic. You are attempting to tie previous uses of a word together inappropriately. That would be like claiming that the word for the bark of a tree is just an extension of the word for the bark of a dog: you're conflating different meanings. You continue to beg the question, how is the way I treat the article for postmodernism, a well-established and well-known movement at all relevant to the way I treat an article about a tiny, unimportant fringe movement? Why do you continue to beg the question? Besides, the matter which is at hand, namely the insertion of unreliable blogs as sources, would be treated the same in both instances: immediate removal.

Irrelevant hypotheticals aside, you continue to accuse me of bias. Since you provide to provide any evidence whatsoever (beyond the nonsensical implication that finding a word which isn't used consistently to be meaningless means that I have bias), I don't see any need to stoop to your level and sling mud. I think my templates have spoken for themselves: you need to calm down. You're so angry that you aren't even signing your comments! Why are you so invested in this article? You really need to sit back and take a breather. This might not be a playground, but I think you could learn something from that analogy: don't take dumb things so seriously. Inanygivenhole (talk) 05:41, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

On the talk page of @felt_friend I've detailed how uncivil you've been since you arrived here; please do not lecture me. Most of your comments here are either ad hominem, factually false, or violate WP:AGF, WP:OUTING, or WP:NOR. You've also twice deleted my comments from this Talk page, for which (among all the other things) I could report you. All that said, I'm happy to interface with you about this topic because I've been working on this article for months and happen to have a background in its subject; meanwhile, you admit to having no background and yet are lecturing me. The word "metamodernism" is not a "generic" word under any definition of that term, and I accuse you of an agenda for a very simple reason: You admit to knowing nothing about metamodernism in the same breath as saying that it is "a tiny, unimportant fringe movement." It doesn't take original research, or even an assumption of bad faith, to see that you are contradicting yourself--i.e., you feel strongly about a subject you claim to know nothing about, which suggests an unrevealed bias. And I'm not angry, I'm annoyed; also, the person not signing their comments is your friend, @felt_friend. My "unsigned" comments are the ones you removed, which were then put back in by another editor without my signature. As for the "fringe" thing, "metamodernism" was (for starters) covered this year in nearly every single major media outlet in the U.S. and England--just look up "Shia LaBeouf" and you'll find it. Festal82 (talk) 07:00, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

And I, too, have responded to your comment on that talk page. In your comment, you demonstrated immense ignorance as to what an "ad homenim" actually is, and managed to straw-man or otherwise confuse each and every point I made. I will let that comment speak for itself. Otherwise, you've managed to continuously escalate this discussion by throwing out accusations of bias and ad homenim, and I'm going to remove myself from conversing with you before you manage to somehow escalate it even more (by threatening or otherwise abusing me, I fear). Coverage says nothing about WP:FRINGE. Hell, Ancient Aliens exists... Inanygivenhole (talk) 07:16, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I never have, and never would, threaten you, nor have I ever threatened anyone on Misplaced Pages; the thought would not occur to me. I feel you've acted rudely, and I've said so; you and @Felt_friend, who I suspect are the same person, asked for examples of that, and I gave some. Your comments here cross so quickly from ad hominem attacks to other forms of fallacious argument that I'm certain at times I muddled which comments I was describing with which term--but my feeling stands, that you've acted poorly here and have evinced no real interest in, or understanding of, the topic you're trying to edit. Or--now, suddenly--see deleted. But I'm happy to have us not interact; I see "Rhododendrites" as adding a great deal to this conversation, and I disagree with "Esmeme" on nearly everything but nevertheless believe him committed to improving this article (in his own way), but you and @Felt_friend are late arrivers who seem to want nothing more than to make the uneasy peace between the editors here fall apart. In any case, good luck to you. Festal82 (talk) 07:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

You don't know what an ad homenim attack is. It is very clear from the way you use it. Your repeated baseless accusations, and straw-mannings of what I say are getting tired. Don't bother responding to me until you can respond to what I've actually said (read: have a conversation) with something that actually makes sense. My response on felt_friend's talkpage still speaks for itself: your responses are confused and incoherent, and I would strongly suggest that you take a break from Misplaced Pages until you can learn to edit it calmly. Inanygivenhole (talk) 07:58, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

5 Questions

As far as I can tell there are 5 questions getting all jumbled up that maybe it would be best to take separately. Hopefully I'm not just further confusing things -- it just seems like the thread above is spiraling.

1. First and foremost: What is the subject of the article? Keeping in mind this is an encyclopedia, and so a collection of utterances of a certain word is not appropriate, what is the concept of metamodernism? Is it most prominently understood in Vermeulen and van Akker's terms? Irrespective to how prolific they may be, when other people talk about metamodernism, are they most often talking about Vermeulen and van Akker's version of it? Are there other versions that are also prominently talked about? It doesn't seem like this conversation has been thoroughly fleshed out.
2. If the subject is unclear or if the article exists as an exaggeration of the significance of a particular set of ideas, should it be nominated for deletion? (The key to this will be how many sources talk about it as a particular concept, regardless of whose it is). Note: That you feel editors may have a COI does not mean it should be deleted, because COI edits to an article can be fixed and deletion would mean it cannot be fixed.
3. Is metamodernism.com a reliable source? I.e. are its authors considered a reliable source in this area such that they could be cited as authorities despite being a self-published source? Is it reliable for somethings but not others? If so, which? This question is not at all based on who is adding it to Misplaced Pages.
4. Should there be a list of metamodernists (or artists whose work has been described as metamodern)? I don't think there's disagreement that at least some examples should go somewhere, but should there be a list apart from the rest of the article as there is now? (Assume ideal standards for reliable sourcing).
5. If there's a separate list of metamodernists, how should it be displayed on the page? This is a question I maybe thought was more important than it actually is, but I'm including it nonetheless. --— Rhododendrites |  01:21, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

• note: if you feel this is a useful way to structure the discussion and choose to participate, I think it would be most productive to hold off on arguing over any specific example and really emphasize WP:AGF. let's stick with the big ideas for now. Once we get this stuff established arguing about this or that example or this or that source will be more straightforward, I think. --— Rhododendrites |  01:23, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

To address point by point: (1) The history shows that, whether there was causation or influence or foreknowledge or not, the Vermeulen/van den Akker usage is _consistent_ with the origins of the term as laid out in the "origin" section, so both need to be in the article. And as I've said before, that first section should be chronological and include both the original and evolved uses of the term, as they are _inextricably_ intertwined--frankly, it's hard to see much difference at all. Now, having said that, the _Dumitrescu_ usage the OP complains so much about (cf. Blake) is a significant divergence, and should either be removed or put in its own section (which I've done). I think it's fine to say, for the information of readers, that this term has on occasion been used in other ways. But the origin story of the term that begins with Mas'ud Zavarzadeh _includes_ Vermeulen and van den Akker--these are _not_ two different uses of the term. Those who claim otherwise may, as some claim, have some specific allegiance to placing certain persons in a particular historical position with respect to the coinage of the term. (2) No--the subject has been covered by major media on two continents, there have been conferences on it, it is a real and observable phenomenon in the arts. It must not be deleted. But certainly the sourcing can be improved, and can be expanded to ensure that the Notes on Metamodernism blog is only one of 50 sources here rather than (as at present) one of 10. (3) Notes on Metamodernism is a reliable source, yes--but it becomes unreliable when, as "Esmeme" demands, it is used as the _only_ source in the article. (4) Everyone agrees we need names here to assist readers in locating themselves and the idea; I think all the names should be in one section, as a table, as otherwise it is (a) too scattered, and (b) too disorganized. (5) See previous. Festal82 (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

@Festal82: Please could you stop misrepresenting me. I have never demanded anything of the sort. Please could you cease your hostility and assume good faith. I would like to see sources that give credence to "the origin story of the term that begins with Mas'ud Zavarzadeh", because it doesn't seem to make sense that a post-postmodern theory based around an early 21st century reaction to 80s and 90s postmodernism should have been written about even before such postmodern culture existed. Thank you Rhododendrites for laying out these points and hopefully we can arrive at a consensus. Esmeme (talk) 01:43, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Esmeme, I am glad you've dropped your campaign to remove every single source from this article that does not originate at the blog "Notes on Metamodernism." I'm happy to move on from that sad period in the history of this article if you are. But you are now engaged in a new misrepresentation: The claim that Vermeulen and van den Akker (a) specifically wrote of metamodernism "as a reaction to 80s and 90s postmodernism", coupled with (b), your presumption, a violation of WP:SYNTH and WP:NOR, that Vermeulen and van den Akker did not know of the term "metamodernism" prior to 2010. Here's the reality: The two men discussed metamodernism as a reaction to "postmodernism," a term coined in the 1870s (check Misplaced Pages), not the postmodernism of one specific decade exclusively; second, any claim on the topic one way or the other would be self-serving in any case, i.e. we don't credit someone with coining a term anew simply because they say they did. Looking at the history of the term we find no significant divergence between its uses throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and the usage discussed on NoM. It is your job to prove the divergence with sources, not anyone else's job to disprove a negative. The Dumitrescu usage is clearly divergent because Zavarzadeh called the metamodern a response to technological advancements that clearly did not exist in Blake's day. Festal82 (talk) 02:02, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

1. It seems as though there is no clear definition as to what "metamodernism' actually is seeing as it had (allegedly) originated in 1975, been touched on a few times from 75-2000ish, then completely revamped by Akker and Vermeulen in the interested in creating their art blog. The issue is that there is no real documented history on the evolution of this terminology aside from that on metamodernism.com, which I will touch on in a minute.
2. I'm going to have to say that yes, this page should be nominated for deletion as, after looking much farther into the subject, I have found no reliable source establishing "metamodernism" as a legitimate scope of works. The few reliable sources in the page only passingly mention "metamodernism".
3. Absolutely not. A blog that fails to meet WP:WEB, no matter who it is run by, is in no way a reliable source. Additionally, after attempting to look into the authors of the blog, I could hardly find any information regarding them outside of metamodernism.com and their personal social media accounts. Definitely non-notable.
4. Assuming the article will be kept, no, there should not be an actual list. Examples? Certainly. These must however be worded carefully so that the article does not objectively state that any of these people listed are "metamodernists" because, as mentioned earlier, I doubt anyone referenced in that section (aside from Franco and LaBeouf) knows that "metamodernism" exists.
5. See: last point

felt_friend, these comments do not make sense to me. Yes, I can agree that the "Origins" section needs to be expanded, but for you to simply read the article and say that there's no history there because the very history you're demanding is _still being added to the article_ is deeply unfair. You are proposing for deletion an article whose weak points (as you see them) are in the process of being shored up, and then using the fact that they're not shored up _yet_ as a grounds for deletion. It makes it very hard for me to adhere to WP:AGF. What makes that even harder is that your statements here have repeatedly been factually wrong. "I doubt anyone referenced in that section knows that 'metamodernism' exists?" Putting aside LaBeouf and Franco, the former of whom has used the term publicly repeatedly, you have people in that section who author columns _about_ metamodernism, who have appeared in exhibits billed as metamodern exhibits, &c. So you're simply off there. More importantly, you, like the OP "inanygivenhole," are imposing a standard on metamodernism that you would never impose on postmodernism. Was Charles Olson not a postmodern poet because he didn't use the term himself? Of course not. It has always been the case that scholars and theorists apply these terms to individuals who don't themselves use them. Yet now, _now_, we need Spike Jonze to "know that metamodernism exists" via proof from public interviews in order for a scholar or theorist to denominate him a metamodernist. Where are you getting these ideas? Festal82 (talk) 05:22, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Additional concern: Festal82 seems to be extremely familiar with Akker and Vermeulen, citing information on this talk page not mentioned in the article and that I couldn't locate elsewhere. That combined with the fact that this is clearly the only page he is here to edit and he has a documented history of attempting to own the page leads me to believe he is either Akker or Vermeulen attempting to control this article and use it as a personal advertisement. felt_friend 04:01, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Besides violating WP:OUTING, the above is a great piece of circular logic: Because metamodernism seems stupid and unimportant to _you_, it must be stupid and unimportant to _everyone_, and therefore if someone has extensive knowledge about it, that person must be the only person _you_ think cares about metamodernism: Timotheus Vermeulen (or Robin van den Akker). But if you'd ever _read_ the article you're trying to have deleted, you'd know that metamodernism is the subject of many articles, much research, and significant interest in both the U.S. and on the European Continent. If you use a search tool called "Google" or a scholarly tool called "JSTOR" you will find all the information that I--and any other serious scholar of metamodernism--is familiar with. If you don't know even a fraction of what I do about metamodernism, and clearly you don't and have no desire to learn, why in the _world_ are you editing this page? And P.S., Jesus, do I sound _Dutch_ to you? I'd think it's obvious from everything I've ever written on this Talk page that I'm American. Festal82 (talk) 04:26, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Nowhere did I say I found it completely "stupid and unimportant". Though to clarify, I do find the concept somewhat stupid, but that doesn't inherently mean I find it "unimportant". I think 1984 is a stupid novel, but it clearly has had a large impact on American culture, thus rendering it "important". Within the scope of Misplaced Pages however, I do find "metamodernism" unimportant, at least for the time being. I have done quite a bit of research already (re: Google remark), and if it helps in any way, seven of the ten results I get on Google's first page of results for "metamodernism" are on metamodernism.com or its family sites (the first result being this Misplaced Pages entry). Many of the "articles" I have found pertaining to "metamodernism" are simply blog posts on wordpress or tumblr sites. Though "metamodernism" may someday take off, for the time being, it is far from notable. felt_friend 05:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

That's strange, Felt friend, because when I search for "metamodern" on Google Search and Google News, and look at more than the first ten results (hardly "research" to do otherwise), I find mentions in The Huffington Post (multiple authors), The Austin Chronicle, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Daily News, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, National Public Radio, The New York Times, Metacritic, McSweeney's, Detroit Weekly, Indiewire, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, YouTube, Vimeo, Metamodern Magazine (not affiliated with "Notes on Metamodernism"), JSTOR, Amazon, and many other places. I also see that the the Misplaced Pages article for metamodernism is viewed many hundreds of times per month. But hey, I will WP:AGF even as you tell me that these searches I just did _actually_ only netted "blog posts on wordpress or tumblr sites." Festal82 (talk) 07:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

And P.S., if I go back further, to when Shia LaBeouf was announcing himself to be a metamodernist and making national and international news for it--this was all the way back in February, so, about 120 days ago--I find articles in The Guardian, The Independent, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Medium, Indiewire, and dozens of other U.S. and American media outlets. All this took seconds to discover. Festal82 (talk) 07:15, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Just one minor point regarding the above, since it's something several people have done through this discussion: sources do not themselves have to pass any kind of notability guideline like WP:WEB. Notability is to gauge whether a subject should be covered on Misplaced Pages (by reliable sources). The relevant sourcing guidelines/policies are WP:RS and WP:SPS. Basically, to quote the latter, it's best to avoid self-published sources in most cases, but Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. While that seems likely to apply here, that same guideline goes on to say Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so. And also, the reliability of a source depends on the context. And also also, there are WP:NPOV elements in play here. So just a clarification, not a judgment. --— Rhododendrites |  04:16, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Protected

I've protected the article for a week to give all of you a chance to settle the various points in dispute. If you find a consensus on any given issue, feel free to make an edit request for that issue so that the article can be updated. And if you resolve all of the issues, leave me a note on my talk page and I'll unprotect the article. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll be happy to answer them - but make sure you {{ping}} me if you reply on this page, as I won't have it on my watchlist. Best — Mr. Stradivarius 09:29, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

ANI

FYI there is now a thread at ANI about this page. As far as the article content goes, I can't tell who's right, but the talk page has gone off the rails. It doesn't seem like any thread can stay focused on content rather than veer off into ad hominems, unsubstantiated accusations, and other completely inappropriate and counter-productive territory. --— Rhododendrites |  07:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: The conversation already has veered off into ad hominems! Inanygivenhole (talk) 08:47, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Sound advice

Hey guys, please calm down and avoid making personal attacks. This is an Encyclopedia, every one is welcome to contribute no matter from where he/she belongs. First of all the whole dispute seems to be due to conflict of interest of many editors regarding subject, please avoid it and consider neutral point of view which says that all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic and must be verifiable and it is most important than to prove yourself right one here. A.Minkowiski 08:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The current edit is fine

FWIW, I am basically fine with the article in its current "locked" form. I think Rhododendrites has done a great job mediating this dispute as much as possible. We've reached the point where the disagreements between Esmeme and myself are resolvable, in large part because (a) we've now seen how damaging it would be to the integrity and survival of the article if the attempts by Esmeme to make the non-WP:N blog "Notes on Metamodernism" the only source on the page had been successful (i.e., because there are those who question whether it is WP:RS, it can be a source here but by no means the primary one), and (b) the main two things Esmeme wanted, (i) for Luke Turner to be acknowledged as the author of the Metamodernist Manifesto, and (ii) for a list of names that include Luke Turner to be given privileged status in the "Popularity" section of the article rather than being relegated (as it were) to the "Notable Metamodernists" section, are both edits I'm not contesting at this point. In fact, if we could simply agree to leave the "Notable Metamodernists" table at the base of the article (thus, not obtrusive) and add to it periodically using its current table form, and if we could agree (as I know Esmeme would) to remove the Alexandra Dumitrescu content from the article--just that one sentence--because it is confusing readers about the evolution of the term as it is now used, I think we'd be in great shape. I hope Rhododendrites, Esmeme, and Cwobeel will agree that the only problem we have now, really, are two editors--"inanygivenhole" and "felt_friend"--who are either sock puppets for one another (given that they arrived here at the same moment and with the same arguments against the page and with the same desire to see it deleted) or simply untutored in metamodernism and therefore (for that reason or some other) dead-set against it, trying to wreak havoc here. I don't see there being any chance of this article going to (let alone losing) in AfD, so hopefully those editors here who are constructively working on the page can come to some sort of truce--not the word I want, but it'll do--so that we can move past the events of the last 24 hours. Festal82 (talk) 16:39, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Please stop repeatedly misrepresenting me Festal82. I have not "wanted" the things you state, as if I have some ulterior motive as you seem to suggest. My additions to the page have been extremely minimal, and I have merely sought to clean up and undo edits that are evidently factually incorrect, and have sought consensus on the talk page as to the layout or existence of a list. My edit history and the talk page show this. Esmeme (talk) 16:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Please see my note on the administrators' board, Esmeme. I am happy to move on from the past without me categorizing your past edits or you categorizing mine, provided we can work with Rhododendrites to find a way forward that preserves the integrity of the article. Disagreements we have had about things like the use of the term "origins" instead of "previous uses"--the former being consistent with my view that Vermeulen and van den Akker are part of a lineage the article must establish in detail--can be navigated by the solutions we've already found, e.g. giving van den Akker and Vermeulen primary placement in the article, as you've insisted, with references to origins further down and (I hope) the Dumitrescu material removed. Can we at least attempt to come to a consensus on these things in an effort to keep this article not just alive but vibrant and growing, as I know we (and many others) both want? Festal82 (talk) 16:50, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Seriously, STOP misrepresenting other editors. It's rude, obnoxious, and counterproductive. Either you're incapable of correctly representing those you disagree with (in which case fine, avoid doing it), or you're doing it on purpose. Either way, your consistent and obvious misrepresentation of other users needs to stop. It is becoming increasingly difficult to even speak with you, since you're so consistently oblivious to what the other side is saying! For the tenth time: slow down and read what others say!!! Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

One thing I forgot to add re: "I am happy to move on from the past without me categorizing your past edits or you categorizing mine": Frankly, your categorizations of others are the only ones that anyone is having problems with. People seem to be representing what you say just fine. This isn't a "both or none" situation, they don't need to stop properly representing you, you just need to stop misrepresenting them! Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:52, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The current edit really isn't fine, though, as both felt friend and I have pointed out. As it stands, a significant portion of the article amounts to der Akker or Vermeulen claiming that various people are "metamodernists" on their blog. We need reliable sources for these claims, not self-aggragandizing, self-published, unreliable ones. Not to mention the fact that the article itself is a mishmash of differing usages combined with der Akker and Vermeulen's newer sense of the word, nor the fact that the lede says nothing about this confused mishmash of concepts, nor the fact that laBeouf's association with der Akker and Vermeulen's sense isn't given enough weight. Your straw-manning and confused summaries of Esmeme's and my own views aside, these issues need to be addressed before anything else can be addressed: it doesn't even depict a coherent whole! All three of these issues were raised above, and you've done nothing but ignore them and claim that the newer use is consistent with the old (not providing any sources, let alone reliable ones, for that claim, might I remind you). It needs to be shown, with reliable sources, that each of the previous usages worth mentioning form some kind of coherent whole. Otherwise, I'd have to suggest removing them or demoting them to an "other uses" heading.

I raised the issue above of Blake being labeled a "metamodernist" to show how absurd and confused the picture painted by the article is. I think that (and the abundance of original and unreliable sources) says more about the current state of this article than anything else. Inanygivenhole (talk) 23:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

There's an essay about this , but it isn't very useful. At the risk of throwing Misplaced Pages's alphabet soup around, IMO this article is in opposition to the notion that Misplaced Pages is not for shit made up in a frat house, the aversion to sources which have been "cooked up", and Misplaced Pages's hesitance to perpetuate "neologisms". That this made it to ANI shows that this has gone too far. Perfect for you (talk) 00:23, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Festal82 implies that I have strong feelings about whether or not this article should exist, to the point where he only wishes to speak with me to the exclusion of other editors here, and resorts to ad hominem attacks on the other participants here instead of addressing their concerns, so perhaps it was not premature to take this to ANI. When I look at this article, it seems that the term has been used here and there by people of varying notability since 1975, but the notion that this has been some sort of movement that dates back to 1975 is laughable. In addition, the statement in the lead paragraph that "since 2010 it has become closely associated with the work of Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker" is supported by three sources, not one of them supporting that claim. The first two sources are dated 1975 and 1997, and the third source is by Vermeulen and den Akker themselves, so it can't be used to support that claim. This whole thing smells kinda fishy and I regret stating that it should not have gone to ANI. Perfect for you (talk) 02:31, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

What one hour of research on some "shit made up in a frat house" reveals

Perfect for you has made three objections to the article (quoting from the WP policies s/he cited): (1) metamodernism is "something invented in school... has not yet been featured in WP:RS (Reliable Sources)"; (2) metamodernism only coheres as a concept if you "combine material from multiple sources," as no individual source describes a coherent concept; and (3) Misplaced Pages cannot "support an article about a particular term or concept... we can cite what reliable secondary sources, such as books and papers, say about the term or concept, not books and papers" that simply use the term with no further discussion. The implication being made here, by Perfect for you, is that one wouldn't be able to find books or scholarly papers that talk about metamodernism rather than simply use the term with no explanation of it.

Having made, presumably, extensive research on metamodernism, Perfect for you finds that it fails each and all of these three standards and that therefore the work of three and a half years and 82 Misplaced Pages editors (count for yourself) should be deleted.

An alternative: The below. Which took me an hour to find. There's loads more where this came from. And to be clear: Van den Akker and Vermeulen's 2010 article on this subject described metamodernism in a manner consistent with the scores, if not hundreds of journals, scholarly papers, and book chapters citing metamodernism between 1975 and 2010, so while many (though not nearly every) article after 2010 cites Vermeulen and van den Akker by name, the notion that metamodernism is an idea cooked up by two Dutchmen rather than an ongoing dialogue now in its fortieth year (Mas'ud Zavarzadeh having coined the term in 1975) that these two men happen to have participated in simply isn't supported by any of the facts. Here's the "Origins" section of the current article, plus sixty minutes of research that anyone here could have done instead of claiming that metamodernism is only referenced by "blogs and tumblr sites" or was "made up in a frat house" and "has not yet been featured in WP:RS sources." Note how many WP:N persons, WP:N scholarly journals, and university press-published books have mentioned the term in an identical way: as a commingling of the first principles of modernism and those of postmodernism in a way that lets the contemporary subject retrieve a sense of unity and direction, an affect typically achieved through the juxtaposition of multiple realities in social science research, the arts, or scholarly criticism. (NB: Mind you, I find this obsession with a single definition preposterous, as no one here or anywhere else would be able to provide a succinct definition of either "modernism" or "postmodernism," neither of which were just some "shit made up in a frat house" that editors with no background in the terms are trying to remove from Misplaced Pages.)

The term metamodern was coined by University of Oregon professor Mas'ud Zavarzadeh in the Journal of American Studies in April 1975. In an article entitled "The Apocalyptic Fact and the Eclipse of Fiction in Recent American Prose Narratives," Zavarzadeh described the metamodern as a "response to the emerging realities of a technetronic culture," specifically the "overwhelming actualities of contemporary America, which render all interpretations of 'reality' arbitrary and therefore simultaneously accurate and absurd." Zavarzadeh, quoting Alain Robbe-Grillet, posited a body of literature in which daily experience was rendered as "neither significant nor absurd. It is, quite simply." According to Zavarzadeh, this rendering required such a rapid movement between the poles of fact and fiction, meaning and meaninglessness, reality and appearance, and the known and the unknown that such poles would quickly become "ridiculously naive," and therefore beside the point.

Writing in 1992 for Critical Review, Donald N. McCloskey, in an article entitled "Minimal Statism and Metamodernism," called metamodernism "necessary for serious empirical work on the role of state," noting that it constituted a brand of "common sense" that lay beyond both the conventional empiricism of modernism and the formulaic linguistic analyses derived in Europe and ultimately central to postmodernism. This view was echoed in 2014 by Stephen Knudsen, who, writing for ArtPulse, called endemic to metamodernism the idea that "any kind of information--not just scientific information--can lead to knowledge, and the artistic endeavor is no exception."

In 1995, Hank Slager, in his book The Archeology of Art Theory, described the "metamodern attitude" as "a growing awareness of a multiple view on reality and a conscious striving for expressing this awareness."

In 1996, Annette W. Balkema and Henk Slager wrote, in The Intellectual Conscience of Art, that metamodernism "account for the moral meaning of art for human life...while emphasiz that that same concept of 'art' has been subject to intellectual reflection. It is not an exclusive emphasis, as in the modern or the postmodern, yet a recognition of the value of both."

The term metamodernism was again employed as a syntagmatic paradigm in 1997. Bruce Tucker incorporated this usage into his article "Narrative, Extramusical Form, and the Metamodernism of the Art Ensemble of Chicago," published in Lenox Avenue: A Journal of Interarts Inquiry.

In a 2000 article in The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Moyo Okediji again discussed the connotations of the term metamodern to position it as a mediation between modernity and postmodernity. Okediji identified as metamodern a coterie of black American artists who expanded existing definitions of form while also aiming to "transcend, fracture, subvert, circumvent, interrogate and disrupt, hijack and appropriate modernity and postmodernity at nearly every available point." He summarized the metamodern as a "extension of and challenge to modernism and postmodernism."

The term metamodernism was employed as an intervention in the post-postmodernism debate in 2003, when Andre Furlani, writing in Contemporary Literature, discussed the concept in his article "Postmodern and After." Furlani, relying on the meaning of the Greek preposition and prefix "meta-", described metamodernism as an aesthetic paradigm in art that is "after yet by means of modernism...a departure as well as a perpetuation."

In 2005, University of Wyoming professor Stephen Matthew Feldman published "Problem of Critique: Triangulating Habermas, Derrida, and Gadamer within Metamodernism" in Contemporary Political Theory, referring to metamodernism as "a philosophical paradigm opposed to both modernism and radical forms of postmodernism," and describing it as an intersection of philosophical hermeneutics, communication theory, and deconstruction. Whereas in modernism, wrote Feldman, the self or subject stands apart from the objective world, thereby enabling a correspondence theory of truth and a referential theory of language, metamodernism, per Feldman, "tends to emphasize the operation and orientation of power, particularly in language...without accepting subject-object metaphysics."

While positioning metamodernism as more circumspect of objectivity than modernism, Feldman also held metamodernism to be less circumspect of it than postmodernism, which brand of antimodernism, wrote Feldman, treats reason as merely a series of "rhetorical moves that assert the dominance of one's own cultural standpoint. There is no way to adjudicate among competing claims to truth and knowledge." Feldman therefore positioned metamodernism between modernism and postmodernism and, like Zavarzadeh, situated metamodernism as a means to "use reason, have knowledge, and discuss truth...without invoking the firm epistemological foundations of subject-object metaphysics." As an artistic and scientific practice, Feldman located metamodernism in works, hermeneutics, and methodologies that encapsulated the idea that humans are "always and already interpreting" and therefore cannot separate themselves from the objective world, rendering all accounts of the latter equally plausible and irrelevant. Most controversially, Feldman argued that "prejudices enable or empower us," as without the foundation of individuated perspective, the process of interpretation would be impossible to initiate. All data-processing events are therefore, according to Feldman, mere conversations or dialogues between data and interpreter. Through these conversations and dialogues a "consensus over meaning" or "fusion of horizons" occurs, thereby distinguishing metamodernist thought from deconstructive literary theory, which stands both temperamentally and philosophically in opposition of the notion that consensuses over meaning are possible or even desirable.

In 2007, Jean Paul Van Bendegem described the "metamodern artist" as one who merges the grand, constructive, means-conscious ambitions of the engineer with "the heterogeneity and the flexibility, contingency and irony, of society"--and doing so with a cognizance of, among other things, "globalization...and technoculture". He thus viewed the metamodern artist as one who combines the role of the engineer with that of the postmodern "bricoleur," who is "limited to small actions by those materials he has... what is pre-constrained."

Bendegem further wrote, of the metamodern, that it acknowledges paradoxes in contemporary life, notably that "until recently, relatively stable conditions sustained an image of identity that, even if it was too essentialist, offered a sense of belonging somewhere, of being somebody. The technological changes, the shifting status of knowledge and the multiplicity of 'knowledge,' the loss of 'truth' and the assault on longstanding narratives, are blurring every well-constructed image of the self.... cultural identity and self-knowledge seem to be the only antidotes..."

In June of 2010, John Bittinger Klompt described American hyperrealist painter Denis Peterson as a metamodernist, terming metamodernism, per Vermeulen and van den Akker, as a post-postmodern theory pursuant to which "people are viewed (once again) as individuals, though caught in the overwhelming commodification of everything, some so completely lost that they are no longer individuals." He noted that metamodern photography, form instance, simultaneously "go beyond...and refer back to" realist modes such as photography.

In November of 2010, the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture published Vermeulen and van den Akker's article "Notes on Metamodernism," which was consistent with the discussion of metamodernism before it and did much to inform nearly every conversation that came after it.

Late in 2010, Jacket described metamodern literature as "a literature whose immanent unease and expression of the major convulsions that subjectivity enjoys... a philosophical function."

In December of 2010, Die Zeit described metamodernism as the "contrast between overt materiality and the fleeting idea," noting that by placing such conventional notions as objectivity in conversation with the transience of dialogic exchange, "the process of realization ....the leitmotif."

In mid-2011, writing in the Journal of Zhejiang University, Shandong Unuiversity professor Chen Hou-Liang "an important representative of post-postmodern theories."

In October of 2011, poet John Gallaher approvingly termed metamodernism "a version of a repopulated center, which is what everyone's been doing (or trying to do) for a great long while now."

In 2012, the Museum of Arts and Design, in the description for its program "No More Modern," called metamodernism a "skeptical, but hopeful, turn in critical theory and cultural production" that "oscillates between a proclamation of earnest desire to break from the history of modernism while also acknowledging the irony in the impossibility of such a quest."

In October of 2012, Vivid Scribe, in describing Belle and Sebastian as a metamodern band par excellence, observed that "metamodern studies and music have become a particularly popular topic."

In his 2013 book Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic (Penn State University Press), James Elkins, citing the work of Vermeulen and van den Akker, called metamodernism a direction in contemporary art theory that "stress ideas such as synesthesic and immersive environments and Neoromanticism, which are compatible with strands of affect theory...and emphasize affective values."

In December of 2013, the Finnish webzine Nine declared that "the future...is a metamodern visionary world, where we are resisting superficiality, yet want everything hyper- simplified and high-tech," and labelled it one of the "top five trends that will affect the future."

In January of 2014, actor Shia LaBeouf publicly declared himself a "metamodernist," and his subsequent public stunts calling into question the dividing line between reality and artifice were covered by The Guardian, The Independent, Gawker, and dozens of other media outlets.

In April of 2014, Sturgill Simpson released his album "Metamodern Sounds in Country Music," which, according to Pitchfork, Country Music Television, other media outlets, and Simpson himself was inspired by writings on metamodernism by Seth Abramson published in The Huffington Post. "Metamodern Sounds in Country Music" has now been nominated for the 2014 Americana Music Honors & Awards.

Indiewire now runs a regular column called "Metamericana" that focuses on metamodernism. The Huffington Post has featured regular columns by both of the Series Editors of Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University Press) on metamodernism.

Again, I put almost no effort into finding this information, which calls into question just what the heck others are talking about when they say that "metamodernism" is not discussed in popular and scholarly media, was simply made up out of whole cloth in 2010 by two dudes, and has not exhibited consistent contours for four decades now. If you want thirty more WP:N citations on metamodernism, give me 60 more minutes; if you want thirty more than that, another 60 minutes. And so on. Festal82 (talk) 19:37, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Most of those links have nothing to do with the subject of the article. We've been over this already. You can't just randomly mishmash sources together: they have to depict a coherent whole. Your sources depict several. Only the last few are of any use to us. I've said this like four times now and you still don't seem to understand. I'm not going to bother responding to this in more detail until you have the common courtesy to NOT POST A WALL OF TEXT. You've made it impossible for anyone to respond to you. At least use bullet points, Jesus Christ. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:57, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Posting a speculative essay to this talk page isn't going to establish notability, especially when said post gets off on dropping the names of assorted nobodies allegedly within the sphere of academia. I could say that George McFartface said blah blah blah at University of Ugandastan and throw in some vaguely related articles to give off the impression that this is legit, but it is still meaningless buzzword soup. As I've stated, whether or not "metamodernism" is developing and may some day be taken seriously within academic circles, at this moment, it remains an irrelevant terminology coined to describe a vague mash-up of postmodernism offshoots. felt_friend 20:03, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Inanygivenhole, Felt friend, apologies, I should have made myself clearer: That text was in no way whatsoever for you. You are snarks and vandals acting in bad faith--I'll have nothing more to do with you. The above text was for those working on improving the article or those still unsure of what metamodernism is. Feel free to respond to this or not, I'm done with you two sock-puppets. Festal82 (talk) 21:11, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I'll be here when you want to contribute to the article instead of spitting venom. Please come back when you've managed to calm down. Inanygivenhole (talk) 21:58, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree that you need to calm yourself before reentering this. Just accept that not everybody will share the same opinions as you, and thus expect to be challenged on a site such as Misplaced Pages. Additionally, you have provided no rebuttal to any argument made against your stance, you merely continue to reiterate that you feel the metamodernism blog is a notable source, but continuously provide no reason as to why other than it's the only source of information on "metamodernism". You have been lobbying this cause for what seems to be months now without the actual notability of the topic being put into question. It is quite possible, you know, that "metamodernism" might not meet WP's notability standards as it currently stands. I would also like to ask as to why you instantly chastise or attempt to marginalize anyone who expresses different views on this issue than you do. felt_friend 01:36, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

What I'm most concerned about is Festal's blind insistance that the previous usages of the word are consistent with der Akker & co's usage, despite his inability to back that claim up. In the above post, Festal merely presupposes their linkage in most of the links given. I brought this up with Esmeme before, and Festal has yet to provide a response to the issues that were raised there. Until he does, there's not really much I can do except repeat myself. I'm not even going to address the other content issues that the page has, since I've spoken about those to death above. Inanygivenhole (talk) 01:44, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

1. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08913819208443256#.U69N95RdX84
2. http://artpulsemagazine.com/beyond-postmodernism-putting-a-face-on-metamodernism-without-the-easy-cliches
3. http://books.google.com/books?id=eZSq2QHa1sEC&pg=SL20-PA33&dq=metamodern&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OGKwU-qmC9iuyASz9oKwDA&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=metamodern&f=false
4. http://books.google.com/books?id=RTYnIBnBJaQC&pg=PA98&dq=metamodern&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IFmwU4gljKjIBLLZgPAH&ved=0CEoQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=metamodern&f=false
5. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1522251
6. http://books.google.com/books?id=A5zvFf7ib_gC&pg=PA80&dq=metamodern&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q12wU9fRJY2kyATX-IG4Dw&ved=0CBsQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=metamodern&f=false
7. http://books.google.com/books?id=A5zvFf7ib_gC&pg=PA80&dq=metamodern&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q12wU9fRJY2kyATX-IG4Dw&ved=0CBsQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=metamodern&f=false
8. http://www.denispeterson.com/Pressexp.html
9. http://www.aestheticsandculture.net/index.php/jac/article/view/5677
10. http://jacketmagazine.com/40/middleton-long-poem.shtml#fn30
11. http://blog.zeit.de/filter/2010/12/17/beyondwithbetweenmetamodernism/
12. http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTotal-ZSDB201106010.htm
13. http://jjgallaher.blogspot.com/2011/10/metamodernist-manifesto.html
14. http://madmuseum.org/events/no-more-modern-notes-metamodernism
15. http://www.psupress.org/books/SampleChapters/978-0-271-06072-9sc.html
16. http://www.billerud.com/Media/News/2013/Meta-Modernism-reality-and-Reggie-Watts/
17. http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/metamericana-the-lego-movie-metamodernism-for-kids
18. July 20, 2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/on-literary-metamodernism_b_3629021.html
19. June 13, 2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-damiani/because-the-internet-chil_b_5485075.html

There is a problem when the lead paragraph asserts that since 2010 this movement has become closely associated with two people, and cites three sources, none of which support the assertion, one was written by the two men themselves, and the other two pre-date 2010. If I didn't AGF, this would look "cooked up", so thank goodness for AGF. The cites from Festal82 should now be visible with the addition of the reflist template for talkpages above. In addition to the question of whether metamodernism.com is usable, I don't see the utility of sortable tables with such short lists. It's a lot of extra code, for no real purpose, when simpler bullet point lists would be easier for new (and new-ish) editors to add (well sourced) entries onto that list of notables. In any case, there's a hell of a lot of reading to do from that list provided by Festal82. Anyone want to help look those over? I've got a lot going on IRL. Perfect for you (talk) 04:52, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind looking them over some time later. I think for now we should focus on the content which the article does have and see if any of this can supplement it, or perhaps even replace some of the lower-quality citations which need to be reevaluated. I, too, am busy IRL but might be able to look over them in some detail some time in the near future. Inanygivenhole (talk) 22:32, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

So what's the plan?

Since Festal has descended into personal attacks and isn't editing anyway, and the rest of us seem to agree that major change needs to happen, what are we to do? It sounds to me like most of us agree that the tables at the end need to be seriously looked at, and the quality of many citations needs to be reevaluated. Thoughts? Inanygivenhole (talk) 22:29, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

There is an agreement to change the table to a list. There is also an agreement to increase the number of citations in the article to include even more sites, the better to ensure Notes on Metamodernism is only one of many sources cited. I've already begun the latter task, above, and Rhododendrites has taken it upon himself to handle the switching over of the table to a list once the editing ban is lifted. If others have constructive ideas, they can certainly share them. Festal82 (talk) 03:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Oh, so you will respond, despite your promise to ignore me. Excellent. There appears also to be a consensus to reevaluate the current citations as well, especially the ones from metamodernist.com. I don't see any reason to add YET ANOTHER header to this tedium, so I'm being bold and restructuring the discussion. Now, will you respond to my comments above or continue this sad fillibuster of yours? Avoiding the issues at hand won't make them go away, you know! Does anyone know what happened to @Esmeme:? I think it would be good to get another opinion in here again. He and I could at least talk about the issues without him calling me names. Your blatant incivility and personal attacks need to be addressed as well. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:36, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

To clarify my thoughts on cleaning up the article, and in response to Rhododendrite's and Inanygivenhole's questions (n.b. she not he) I suggest that:

1. The lead should reflect the topic, which I am confident is prominently understood in Vermeulen and van Akker's terms. There are ample secondary sources to demonstrate this: publications, press reports, academic conferences, museum exhibitions, etc.
2. There appears a distinct lack of any secondary sources to back up Festal82's claims linking the mishmash of previous uses of the term with the current, clearly defined usage. As I have previously suggested, if sources linking the previous and present usage cannot be found, the heading of "Previous uses of the term" should be restored, and should not be called "Origins of the term," if these uses are to be included at all––though without secondary sources, the notability of some of these previous uses is questionable.
3. metamodernism.com seems quite reasonable to use as one source (of many), given the site's large number of academics writing on it (see here: ]) which addresses Rhododendrite's question of whether its authors are "considered a reliable source in this area such that they could be cited as authorities". It isn't just Vermeulen and van Akker's personal blog, as has been suggested above, though given that the two of them founded the site, it should obviously be used with care as a source.
4. I agree it is useful to have a list of some form of artists whose work has been described as metamodern. I agree with the consensus that the layout of this list should be simpler. It should be clear that the list is of those whose work "has been classed as metamodern," as I don't think the current title "Notable metamodernists" does, since it is generally not artists themselves who describe their work as metamodern, and nor does this matter. Metamodernism as it is prominently understood is a cultural paradigm, and not a club with notable artist members. Esmeme (talk) 11:48, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and took the notability issue of mm.com to RSN, so hopefully we can get this straightened out and finally come to a consensus about what to do here. felt_friend 15:08, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

1. I continue to believe that we should be guided by the precedent set by the two other points in the eternal triumverate identified by Vermeulen and van den Akker: postmodernism and modernism, both of which have Misplaced Pages articles that are highly regarded and have not featured as much contentious debate as this one. Both of those articles begin with a history of the term--meaning, any uses of it a historian might deem notable, as, for instance, when the term is discussed in a WP:N scholarly publication. Esmeme continues to misunderstand my claim regarding the previous uses of the term: I have not, do not, and will not say that Vermeulen and van den Akker did or did not know of these uses or were or were not aware of these uses, as the guidelines of Misplaced Pages won't allow us to use that as a guideline for anything in any case. The question, instead, is whether, just as the first usage of the term "postmodernism" in 1870 was nothing like how Lyotard would discuss it nearly 100 years later but was still an imagining of what follows the "modern", the usage of "metamodernism" in 1975 was, like the usage in 2010, an attempt to discuss what the term "metamodernism" could possibly mean. Esmeme has created a standard by which usages of the term "metamodernism" can only appear in the article if they not only describe "metamodernism" as originating with Vermeulen and van den Akker but also discuss it in the exact same way that those two men do--this is the reason that Esmeme systematically tried to remove any articles about metamodernism that did not appear on Notes on Metamodernism or were not somehow sanctioned, implicitly or explicitly, by Vermeulen and van den Akker (e.g., by resting the entirely of their observations on quotes from those two men). That's exactly what got us into this mess, i.e. not having enough sources and having the reliability of sources questioned by some.

2. What is needed, therefore, is a "History" section of exactly the sort we find on the modernism and postmodernism articles on Misplaced Pages. That section would narratively chronicle, as in those other two WP articles, uses of the term that appeared in WP:N scholarly publications. We can then have another section entitled "Present Usage" (or some such) which allows for the fact that Vermeulen and van den Akker's discussion of the term is at present dominating the debate. Of course, that said, if scholars today suddenly start referring, in WP:N sources, to Mas'ud Zavarzadeh's discussion of metamodernism as the most compelling, the utility of the "History" section and also a section on the present discussion will be that it will be able to incorporate these elements of the debate. What Esmeme suggests dooms us to have this discussion again and again every few months--as he will eliminate from the article any discussion of the term (even, hypothetically, in The New Yorker) that discusses it in the terms used by, say, Zavarzadeh, under the claim that "that's not what this article is about." But the article is entitled "metamodernism," not "Vermeulen and van den Akker's metamodernism."

3. I agree absolutely that metamodernism is not a "club," that it is instead a "cultural paradigm." When we call, say, Charles Olson a notable postmodernist poet we are not saying postmodernism is a "club," we are saying that he is a notable poet whose work contributes significantly to our understanding of postmodernism. So I agree the table can be made into a list, but I don't like the implication by Esmeme that a retitling of the list will somehow allow us to alter its contents rather than merely add to them--as his implication that the current list suggests a "club" is way off base. Certainly nothing about that list says that these people have self-described as metamodernists, or that they work with one another, or that they even know one another, or even that they understand metamodernism in the same way. So translate it into a list, that's fine, but all this other stuff is semantics. Festal82 (talk) 15:41, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Again, please take a moment to read exactly what I have written above, and not misrepresent my points (or my gender, as I keep having to correct you on!). I have never objected to a "History" section with previous uses of the term. What I do object to is the phrase "Origins of the term," as this is potentially misleading. You just used the exact phrase "previous uses of the term" above, and so I don't understand your objections to this. Also, please note that your continued misrepresentation of my edits is tiresome. My edit history shows that almost all my additions have been to add secondary sources, and NOT those from metamodernism.com. I have no interest in making Vermeulen and van den Akker's writing the only source, especially as there are so many other notable sources out there that echo this same prominently understood definition of the term. Esmeme (talk) 15:54, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is once more digressing to discussing metamodernism as a concept. The issue is notability, which has yet to be resolved (hence me taking it up at RSN in hopes of coming to a conclusion about this all very soon), not what is or isn't "metamodern". See: WP:NOTFORUM felt_friend 16:57, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Esmeme, we may have a point of agreement here, then. Assuming you are okay with word "History," if we can structure this article exactly like the Misplaced Pages article on postmodernism, I think it will protect the article against the sort of confusions some editors have had over its origins and ambitions. Here is the structure of the article on postmodernism: 1. History; 2 Influence on art (including subsections on Architecture, Urban planning, Literature, and Music); 3 Influential postmodernist philosophers; 4 Deconstruction; 5 Postmodernism and structuralism; 5.1 Post-structuralism; 6. Post-postmodernism; 7. Criticisms. We could begin with a narrative history of the term as it has appeared in WP:N scholarly publications, making no claims one way or another as to similarities or differences between usages or speculating on who knew about who and when. We could move then to an "Influence on art" section that discusses metamodernism in the areas we've already all acknowledged: cinema, architecture, performance art, literature, music, and so on. Under "influential metamodernist philosophers" we would emphasize heavily Vermeulen and van den Akker--the Lyotards (as it were) of metamodernism, in my view. Under what would be "deconstruction" on the postmodernism article we could instead have a section entitled "oscillation," mentioning prominently Luke Turner/Shia LaBeouf's use of that term in the Metamodernist Manifesto, and any other usages we can find in WP:N media or Notes on Metamodernism (it seems "oscillation" has the same importance to metamodernism now as the term "deconstruction" has to postmodernism). We can then have a section on "criticisms," which may satisfy some of those who find fault with usages of the term. Would this work? (P.S. I'm hoping the answer is "yes," but I suppose my question if the answer is otherwise is, "Why should the third member of the triumverate Vermeulen and van den Akker have identified--modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism--be treated with any differently on Misplaced Pages, in terms of the structuring of an article, than the other two? What would justify this departure?") Festal82 (talk) 17:06, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Festal82: No, I do not think the article has to be treated exactly the same as the modernism or postmodernism entries, as it is clearly a different animal at this stage. Metamodernism is one of several theories of post-postmodernism, and though it is arguably the most notable one, the page needs to reflect this. To try to set an "eternal triumverate" in stone (a phrase which I don't really understand here) would be going well beyond the purpose of an encyclopedia. We're not here to make the page a more grandiose proposition than it is at this time (although I'm not entirely opposed to some of the headings you mention, if there is sufficient grounds for inclusion). Perhaps in 20 years the page might look like the postmodernism one, but we are not here to speculate (nor is this the forum to have general discussion about metamodernism, as Felt friend points out). As I say, I am all for a "History" or "Previous uses" section, provided there are reliable, secondary sources to back up this history. Esmeme (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Esmeme:, if you look at all of the objections to this article's existence above, they all come from taking the view that you have taken: That this article should focus only on a single theory of a single term invented out of whole cloth by two men 48 months ago, which has not in fact been referenced (contrary to your claim, which you keep making but do not support) by WP:N scholarly or popular sources, though we can find non-WP:N sources like Vivid Scribe that will be immediately deleted by other editors as non-reliable. This idea that we will have a "Previous uses" section is, as other editors have said, a misstep, as it suggests that we should have a section in the article that is about something completely separate from the topic of the article as you insist upon it. A JSTOR search of the term returns one result in the last decade--one. You are not going to be able to support a Misplaced Pages article about an allegedly 2010s-only term on that historical record. If the article is to be as you describe, I have no choice but to abide by Misplaced Pages's guidelines for notability and vote for the article to be deleted. I have always supported the article on the basis of decades of research that posits the notion of a "metamodernism" as providing a notable and abiding interface between postmodernism and modernism; and I have always supported it this way because nearly every WP:N source we can find that has published work about metamodernism appeared in print or online prior to 2010, when Vermeulen and van den Akker came on the scene. Other than Notes on Metamodernism, which I agree with the other editors cannot be used as a primary source here, only a secondary source--as Misplaced Pages does not let a term get invented from whole cloth a few months ago, have a blog get created to discuss that term, and then have Misplaced Pages publish an article on that term with references only to that blog and some non-WP:N sources that editors will immediately delete as unreliable--you have provided no evidence at all that other WP:N sources have discussed the term. (And certainly, even if they had, the number of such sources would pale in comparison to the number of sources we can find prior to 2010 discussing the term generally rather than in relation only to Vermeulen and van den Akker, as my so-called "wall of text" above reveals.) Attempts I made to include sourcing from The Huffington Post and Indiewire, WP:N sources, were deleted by you, and you went so far as to attempt to delete their author from the page as well (further ensuring those sources would not be seen as significant). If those sources are not acceptable in this article, and inasmuch as you have provided absolutely no WP:N sources otherwise that speak to the single usage of "metamodernism" you favor, I can't support this article as you propose and will vote for its deletion. In the future, other editors who approach the term as a philosophical concept discussed across many decades will, I'm sure, reconstruct an article on this concept responsibly. Let's move to an AfD debate. Festal82 (talk) 18:44, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Festal82: I do not understand your position or your hostility at all. There are numerous secondary sources that use the sense of the term as described since 2010. I am not insisting on two men's sole definition at all, but almost all sources I can find point back to usage consistent with theirs, and not to any of the sources from the 70s-00s that you refer to. I am all for a thorough history, including all notable uses, and including all notable figures who have contributed to the term's popularity, as I keep repeating. Also, according to a quick Google search, Vermeulen and van Akker's 2010 "Notes on Metamodernism" essay, published in the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture (and NOT on metamodernism.com, as is being inferred by several editors above) is cited by at least 44 scholarly articles, as you will find here: . Hardly insignificant. Esmeme (talk) 18:51, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Festal82: Perhaps you'd like to respond to the issues that Esmeme and I have raised throughout the page that you've continuously ignored? Are you even here to contribute? Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:12, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Esmeme: you are reading into my words a hostility I do not feel. And I am sorry if you do not understand my position. I will one last time summarize it in a sentence: Metamodernism is a philosophical concept that has been in use for 40 years, and in its repeated WP:N scholarly appearances over that time it has always, in general terms, denoted a mediation between the first principles of modernism and those of postmodernism in an effort to deal with the subjectivity-problematizing elements of each; Vermeulen and van den Akker have authored an important intervention in the evolving discussion of what a "metamodernism" might look like--perhaps even the most important intervention--but Misplaced Pages cannot and should not support an article with few WP:N sources that discusses only one usage of a philosophical concept, no more than there should be an article about postmodernism that only discusses Lyotard. That's my explanation to you. In the last three hours you have made clear that the topic of this article, in your view, is one usage of a philosophical term; you want to lede to say that, you want the ordering and titling of sections of the article to confirm that (a "Previous uses" section that is way down in the article and makes clear that none of these "previous uses" has anything to do with the term as discussed in the lede), and you continue to be unable to cite WP:N sources other than the two American ones I mentioned that discuss Vermeulen and van den Akker, even as I--on this very page--have provided more than a dozen pre-2010 WP:N sources that discuss metamodernism as an evolving philosophical concept with no single definition. Your insistence that this article is "about" a single definition of the term--even if you are willing to admit mentions to other (in your view now irrelevant) uses--is what drives me to vote for this article's deletion. I don't cast that vote out of hostility, but principle; either this article is about a concept with no single definition, that is evolving in how it is discussed over time (like every such concept), or it should not be on Misplaced Pages at all. As I said, let's move on to AfD now. P.S. Your positions evolve quickly enough that I can't follow them: An hour ago you said there should be a list of "artists whose work is classed as metamodern" and not a "Notable Metamodernists" list focusing on all important figures generally in metamodernism, now you say "I am all for a thorough history...including all notable figures who have contributed to the term's popularity," which is a very different prospect. An hour ago you said maybe we should delete all the other instances of the term's appearance from the article (cf. "if these uses are to be included at all"; read your own comment if you forgot)--now you are "all for...a thorough history." Re: sourcing, as I keep repeating, we are referring to WP:N sources, scholarly or otherwise. Your recent link proves my point: of those 44 sources, 11 do not mention Vermeulen at all; of the 33 remaining, 3 are from the blog NoM created by those we are discussing; and of the 30 remaining after that, many do not cite Vermeulen and van den Akker for their propositions on metamodernism, but for other things--for instance, the very first citation merely cites Vermeulen as having said that postmodernism is dying, the second is about The New Sincerity rather than metamodernism, the third is a dead link, the fourth is an editorial and not a scholarly article, the fifth is 100% about postmodernism, and so on. Again, I move for an AfD debate. Festal82 (talk) 19:16, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

In response to Esmeme and Festal: Esmeme seems more in line with the general consensus which which our four summaries seem to paint. There seem to be four major issues at hand with that being said:

1. At the very least the metamodernism.com website cannot be used to determine who is and is not a "metamodernist". It's just not reliable enough on its own in this case. With other sources to supplement it I think we can make this work.

2. The lede and content mishmashing issues need to be addressed in further detail. What are we going to do about them? Should we just note that the term has been used inconsistently in the past due to its generic nature, and only have the article be about the more modern usage? Are we going to remove the older usages since there's no mention of them in the lede and because this article seems to be about several senses of the word, and not any single coherent one?

3. It sounds like we all agree on trimming it to a list. Excellent. Issue #2 is the one we need to come to a clear consensus on next it seems.

4. Festal: Personal attacks, wikihounding, heated editing, refusal to act like a member of community, possible OWNing issues. What are we gonna do about this kid? To be honest, I think it might be best to ignore him if he can't follow the basic community standards, and standards of basic human decency. These personal attacks are getting old.

I'm not sure on what grounds Festal is making the comparison between metamodernism and modernism/postmodernism, either. Those are well established movements and this one is in its infancy. Postmodernism would have had to go through the same process many decades ago on Misplaced Pages that metamodernism is here.

Again, there's a couple of more issues (which I've raised above and which Festal has made it abundantly clear that he will not respond to), but this is a good start. Thank you so much Esmeme. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:23, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

This is bizarre. You wrote multiple times, above, that you wanted the article deleted. Now you don't? The other thing that's bizarre is that you are repeating my own positions as your own: I've repeatedly said that we can't use Notes on Metamodernism as the sole source on this page, and that we need to find additional sources. I've also repeatedly urged the article to use a lede that acknowledges multiple usages, which is what you're saying now. I've also repeatedly said that I'm fine with making the table a list. So what are you disagreeing about? What do you actually want to have happen here that is at all different from what I've advocated for? Festal82 (talk) 19:29, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Festal82: I would warn you once again Festal about putting words in my mouth. If you had actually spent any amount of time thinking about what I said, you would have realized that the two are not mutually exclusive. Please do not respond to me if you do not have anything substantial to say. It just makes this conversation more of a farce than it already is. Would you like to actually address the points I've raised or continue ignoring me? You've already turned this discussion into enough of a joke already as it is. (And for the love of God, cut down on the word salad.) Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@Festal82: Again you're misrepresenting me. I think notable figures (by which I mean theorists) should be contextualised in the body of the article, not simply put into a list. Your assesment of those 44 academic articles is obviously very different to mine. I see no evidence that metamodernism was a term widely popularised until 2010, which is the crux of the matter. Plenty of terms have been coined throughout history that don't justify a wikipedia page because they never caught on. The argument against deletion is that the term plainly has caught on. I'm tired of going round in circles, and so I will leave it to other editors to resolve these issues, since my opinion has been stated very clearly above. Esmeme (talk) 19:30, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

It sounds like at least between you, myself, and felt_friend (read: the people who aren't making personal attacks, straw-manning others, and ignoring the issues at hand), we have consensus. Excellent. I will make the changes when the article is unlocked. Thank you very much for your time, and I'm sorry that Festal is so difficult to talk to. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you Inanygivenhole for all your time on this as well. Esmeme (talk) 19:41, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, at least reverse psychology works. I wanted to save the article, and knew Inanygivenhole would take the opposite of whatever position I took, so it looks like we've successfully moved Inanygivenhole from arguing vehemently and repeatedly (and using inappropriate language) for this article's deletion--as any review of this page will confirm in seconds--to get him to make improvements I've already agreed with. Looks like all is well, then. I'm satisfied, and I thank Inanygivenhole as well for being...consistent...enough for his actions to be predicted. Festal82 (talk) 19:45, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not even sure you're writing coherent posts anymore. Either way, we have consensus with or without you. Good day.

Edit: Nevermind, I think I got it. You sound like some of my 5th graders saying 'I was right all along' by coming up with some convoluted series of events and saying "it was my plan all along". I get enough of that nonsense at work. Don't waste any more of our time on this article. Good day. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:48, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys, let's try to calm down a bit. Clearly, this entire argument is going to go nowhere if we continue to run in circles around loose definitions and repeating ourselves over and over and over again in literal essays. I've already pointed out that Misplaced Pages is not a forum, thus discussing what "metamodernism" actually is is completely futile. The only hope I see for this to be resolved is to bring in some uninvolved editors to help reach a consensus, which, once more, I've reached out to on WP:RSN. Since all of our stances on this have already been well-documented, the best thing we can all do is just wait for some UEs to give some input. felt_friend 19:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. It appears that we already have consensus, however, between Perfect, you, Esmeme, and myself. Hopefully we can get @Perfect for you: to add his or her two cents to the bullet points we've raised so we can see what this consensus would look like in more detail (especially about what to do with the usages predating 2010). It looks like we agree on the essence of most, if not all counts. The only one who doesn't seem to agree is Festal, and he's made it clear that he's going to ignore us anyway. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Proposal

I'm throwing in my two cents on what I'll do once the protection ends. Separate subsections to discuss each topic in short detail. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Flip the sections

The sections should be history into present usage. My structure would be Origins, present usages as section, and merge popularity into both so we get a straight history. Any other views? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

We've discussed this above, and it sounds like the consensus is that most if not all of the previous uses do not present a coherent picture. "They are not the subject of the article, so why are they being mentioned at all?" is more or less the question we've all asked. I for one don't see it in the future of the article. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ricky81682, I agree with you 100%. The subject of the article is a philosophical concept, not one usage of that concept by an individual theorist, and therefore the requirement that every usage of the concept throughout history be perfectly consistent in some way is in error. I believe that, as with the WP articles for other analagous (and related) philosophical concepts, like modernism or postmodernism, starting with a "History" section that chronologically catalogs usages in WP:N scholarly and popular media sources is appropriate. Festal82 (talk) 12:59, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Note to uninvolved contributors: @Festal82: has been refusing to address this issue for some time now, going so far as to state that he would actively ignore us. There are about a half-dozen places where he needs to weigh in before he can become a part of this discussion, and on this issue in particular he has gone to great lengths to ignore us and be generally disruptive. We have consensus for major change to this section, it seems, without him. Inanygivenhole (talk) 15:41, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Repeatedly addressed this question in unambiguous terms under "So what's the plan?" subsection of this very "Talk" page (above). Answer now is same as answer then (i.e. yesterday) and same as answer provided above by Ricky81682. Festal82 (talk) 15:52, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

There was more to address, and this was only one of the issues in question. You responded with an absolute mountain of verbal diarrhea, none of which any of us managed sift through and find any sources to back up your frequent, loud, and exceedingly tiresome claims. Until you want to address the posts above which you've ignored, I really don't see why you keep insisting that you've responded to us, because you haven't. I don't see the point in continuing this any further. This will be my last response to you. I am not playing your game with you anymore. You can show that you're serious about this article through your actions, through actually having discussions with other users instead of berating them, insulting them, attacking them, and most of all speaking AT them. Sheesh! Inanygivenhole (talk) 15:56, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Bruce Tucker

I'd remove this paragraph. Saying the term was "first employed as a syntagmatic paradigm" is meaningless. Was he using the Zavarzadeh definition or did he change it? You're citing a primary source that just uses the word. Either the source explains what he means by the source (and that's useful material) or there should be a secondary source or criticism about his usage. That he uses the term doesn't help if we don't know what he meant by it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely. We need to cut back on the usage of primary sources for this, I agree. Inanygivenhole (talk) 08:18, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ricky81682, I agree with this as well. I was the one who originally added that citation, but I see now that there are far better (and WP:N-source) citations out there for any prospective "History" section, including ones that flesh out exactly how the source is using the term. I don't agree with the OP that we should, in general, be reducing primary source citations, however; in fact, one of the only consensuses that has been reached on the "Talk" page is that prior iterartions of the article relied too heavily on a single primary source (the non-WP:N blog-zine "Notes on Metamodernism," which is edited by those with a single view of how the term "metamodernism" can or should be used, and therefore led to this article receiving warning tags for not providing sufficiently differentiated viewpoints). Festal82 (talk) 13:04, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

NB: this editor has repeatedly refused to comment on criticism of this view of things above. What Festal is not telling you here is that we've discussed this above and WP:N was only a concern by one editor (felt_friend, I believe) for the use of the blog-zine. The remainder of the editors had a different opinion (which felt_friend shared, IIRC) and Festal has not decided to substantially respond to it yet. Until then discussion is stalled. Inanygivenhole (talk) 16:03, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Dumitrescu

I'd rewrite this section entirely. It doesn't matter who he's analyzing. What's his definition? He describes it at here under the "and Metamodernism" section. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ricky81682, I agree with you here too. Alexandra Dumitrescu's usage, while different from some other theorists' usage, is still a notable intervention in the ongoing, indeed decades-long, discussion of this philosophical concept. And as you say, it is possible to find reliable sourcing for her intervention that would permit more than just a listing of subjects analyzed, but also a brief description of the substantive intervention itself. Festal82 (talk) 13:10, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. This paragraphy is incredibly vague and adds little to the article. On top of that, it does not appear to be used coherently with the sense that is the subject of the article. I'd say it should just be removed, to be honest. Inanygivenhole (talk) 16:00, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Van den Akker and Vermeulen definition

The paragraph starting "Van den Akker and Vermeulen defined ..." contains zero sources. I'll remove it. Once sources are provided as to the definition of the key authors, then we can move forward. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

@Ricky81682: There is a source for this that I've restored, along with a couple of other citations I added, which got removed (accidentally I think?) by Rhododendrites when the page got reverted before being protected. The source is The Museum of Arts and Design, and so seems sound enough . Esmeme (talk) 12:05, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ricky81682, I agree with Esmeme here, as I think we can find ample sourcing for that definition, and I think Esmeme has provided one. There are definitely others, too. Festal82 (talk) 13:07, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

We had sourcing for this. The problem here was that the past usages do not appear to form a coherent whole, and in any case we're lacking sources and running dangerously close to improper synthesis. Most of the mentions in the history section are not the subject of the article, and it sounds like we are still working out what a consensus for that section will look like in the near future. For now, I've marked it and added a comment to the source. Inanygivenhole (talk) 16:06, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be a coherent whole. Is there a source for that description? If there is, insert it once a source describes it. If you say "well a source says this is exactly what they said but we can't use what they said because it doesn't go with my narrative of coherence" then the narrative is wrong. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Ricky81682, agree 100% that an article on a philosophical concept cannot be "about" only one narrow application or reading of that concept. The requirement mentioned by the other editor of a "coherent whole" appears to be used here as a justification, intentional or accidental, for making the article about only one recent usage of a concept that, as sources confirm, is at least 40 years old. Festal82 (talk) 19:34, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

NB: I already responded to this several days ago. Festal is just ignoring me. Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:48, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the article has to be about something. Postmodernism and modernism are at times vague but well-defined and readily-citeable movements. Metamodernism is not. Metamodernism has been a more or less generic term which over time has been used in a variety of ways since the 70s, when people began to search for more prefixes to slap on to -modernism to describe the state of affairs which emerged out of the Vietnam war. The article does nothing to reflect this, because at the moment it is in large part a report on academia using original sources. We have dozens of sources reporting on the movements of modernism and postmodernism, multiple sources which link the same thinkers together over and over again. We have nothing of the sort with metamodernism. The article as it stands is a textbook violation of WP:SYNTH. If the article is about a "philosophy", why do we have no reliable, independent sources saying such a thing and citing the history back to the 70s? Inanygivenhole (talk) 19:56, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I have gone through and tagged the places that need to be connected, especially where we are using sources closely associated with the subject to report on it. I have also gone through and added a comment to the paragraphs which need to be explicitly connected, by themselves or by a reliable, third-party source, with the subject. It looks like a couple of the links that Festal posted will be helpful, so if anyone notices where we can swap out an unreliable source for a reliable one, and thereby remove a tag, by all means please do so. Inanygivenhole (talk) 20:22, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

@Inanygivenhole: Same view as Ricky81682 on this. Mz1933 (talk) 00:55, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

This doesn't contribute anything. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:14, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

You are ignoring what other editors are saying, Inanygivenhole. Ricky81682 wrote, "It doesn't have to be a coherent whole." I agreed. And Rhododendrites also did not insist that all citations in the article be linked. There isn't a single philosophy article on Misplaced Pages that is written that way. Your claim that "postmodernism and modernism are...well-defined" would astound any modernist or postmodernist of my acquaintance, and does not provide a distinguishing point between those philosophies and the philosophy that is the subject of this article. With those philosophies, as with this one, the article will have a "History" section that describes all WP:N usages of the term that are definitional rather than merely gestural, whether or not they are linked or (even more implausibly) all cite one another. Festal82 (talk) 00:28, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Festal, I will try to explain this to you in as few words as possible: the article attempts to depict it as such. WP:SYNTH explicitly states "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". That is exactly what you are trying to do. How many different ways must I phrase it for you to understand this? I have literally tried to explain this to you four or five times now. Not sure why you're trying to equate my view with Rhododendrites'. Stop putting words in my mouth. The jab at my claim about postmodernism vs modernism is ONCE AGAIN straw manning me. I'm not even going to dignify it with a response at this point. Inanygivenhole (talk) 00:31, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I will (again) be very clear: You are using your own misreading of WP:SYNTH to try to hold this article hostage. Here is how you are doing it: By creating a catch-22. Here is the catch-22 you have created, one born of circular logic: (1) You use an unsupported claim that (for some reason known only to you) all sources in this article have to be linked, though at least three editors disagree with you and analogous articles on philosophical terms have no such feature; (2) you say that if the sources cannot be linked, all of those that do not link up to Vermeulen and van den Akker's research must be removed; (3) if all sources that do not link up to Vermeulen and van den Akker's are removed, you argue (as you have on this very "Talk" page) for the deletion of the article on the grounds that it is self-promotion for a view of "metamodernism" not widely shared by others beyond its originators; (4) if anyone says to you that the sources can all stay because they need not be related (because they are not related in analogous articles on other philosophical topics), you either (a) distinguish "metamodernism" from all other philosophical topics on the grounds that all other philosophical topics are "well-defined," which is preposterous on its face and shows little understanding of philosophy, or (b) say that the moment any article uses sources that are not related, even if each source independently and without recourse to any other source adequately describes a discrete philosophical term, those disparate sources are by definition attempting to form a cohesive whole. And that last bit is how you close the loop of your circular reasoning: You attribute to disparate sources an aim of "attempting to form a cohesive whole" (a violation of WP:SYNTH) when it is only you who claim the sources are trying to do that in the first instance. Then you go and make all of it worse by misusing the term "straw man" to apply to any analogy you do not favor--i.e., I ask you to look at postmodernism and modernism because I consider those terms related to this one, as does every single scholar in a WP:N source who has discussed "metamodernism" since 1975, but because you don't consider those terms analagous to "metamodernism" (i.e., at the same level of discourse if not ubiquity) you say I am "straw manning" you. Your aim here is merely to anger me with circular logic and baseless accusations regarding my motives or methods of argumentation, the better to enable you to crow all over this "Talk" page about how uncivil I am. Meanwhile, anyone who reads the first five comments you made on this "Talk" page (above), assuming you haven't deleted those comments, will see how inappropriate you have been from the beginning of your time on this page (which has been very brief). From the start, you used, in every comment you made on an article 82 editors had worked on for four years, emotional, non-neutral terms like "self-aggrandizing" (a violation of WP:AGF and WP:OUTING, as you were applying the term to another editor who you guessed was Timotheus Vermeulen); "hogwash"; "worthless"; "masturbatory"; "vague mishmash"; "meaningless babble"; "blogspam"; "nonsense"; "ridiculous"; unsupported accusations of "self-promotion"; "incoherent"; "weaselly" (in reference to another editor); and so on. Accept this: The sources do not need to form a coherent whole and are not trying to in any way whatsoever, other than in the sense that each is addressing a single proposed philosophical concept in a discrete way that shows that this term has been in use for 40 years. Your claim that the term is "generic" is WP:OR and contradicted by the number of scholarly journals that saw fit to run major articles on it in every decade since the Ford Administration. Your claim that these uses are unrelated (i.e., your preposterous-on-its-face claim that one source is, by analogy, describing a tree while another is describing a racecar) is impermissible WP:OR. Now stop it. Festal82 (talk) 01:30, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

This is the first time I've explicitly mentioned SYNTH that you've responded to. You're just blatantly lying now. @Ricky81682: thank you so much for stepping in. This has gotten WAY out of hand. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:37, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Festal, if you say the uses are related, why aren't you able to just find the sources and put that in the article? Your page-long screeds show a lack of ability to write your point in coherent manner. I'm rewriting this as separate definitions. If we can find a connection, then it'll work. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:15, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Ricky81682, I've liked all your changes, and I must not have been clear--I don't believe the uses are related beyond the fact that they are all attempts to provide prospective definitions for the metamodern. Above, you wrote "It doesn't have to be a coherent whole." I was agreeing with you, whereas Inanygivenhole strongly disagreed with you. My long note to Inanygivenhole was after a week of bullying, I think Rhododendrites alerted you to it elsewhere. Festal82 (talk) 13:47, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

@Festal82:, you're the one consistently posting page-long screeds, not me. Stop turning this page into a circus at every turn. It's really gotten old, give it a rest.Inanygivenhole (talk) 20:41, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Is it really correct to call it the Vermeulen and van den Akker definition? According to the article, Luke Turner and Shia LaBeuof definition is the most recent version. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the present usage is from Turner and LaBeuof? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:27, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

All editors involved so far, as far as I know, have been so occupied with the massive issues elswhere in the article that the LaBeuof/Vermeulen link was taken for granted. It is, I believe, a claim which can, and should, be more readily established. Thanks Ricky for helping out. I really appreciate it. Good call on the section headers. Inanygivenhole (talk) 06:42, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

The sources we already have for the manifesto here link LaBeouf/Turner with Vermeulen/den Akker--in the Telegraph article and also in the citation at the bottom of the manifesto itself . I also found this post on Vermeulen's own blog , featuring a video of LaBeouf reading both Vermeulen/den Akker's and Turner's texts, which I think confirms the link beyond doubt. Esmeme (talk) 13:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the question is, if the Turner/LaBeouf definition is distinct from Vermeulen/van den Akker, why not give it its own paragraph and subheader? And if it's the same, why is it notable enough to be mentioned here, given that it appears on what Bhny called a "weird single-purpose bloggy thing" back in May, and which would seem to be even more tightly controlled by its author as a non-peer-edited, non-WP:N single-author blog than the already controversial "Notes on Metamodernism"? Festal82 (talk) 19:57, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what kind of game Festal is trying to play here (and, my, how we're all tired of these), but the manifesto is not a 'weird bloggy thing' but simply a single web page document. It is plainly not a peer-edited literary journal or anything else. This is why Rhododendrites and myself worked to find secondary sources, including a major news outlet (one of many notable news sources mentioning the manifesto and LaBeouf/Turner's metamodernist projects), which are "excellent" citations as Inanygivenhole and others have noted. Citations of the sort, I might add, that several of the definitions Festal has contributed are still sorely lacking.

Not only this, but Festal himself has previously assigned such importance to the manifesto that just 2 days ago on this talk page he proposed making it one of the key subjects of a restructuring of the article. I quote, "we could instead have a section entitled "oscillation," mentioning prominently Luke Turner/Shia LaBeouf's use of that term in the Metamodernist Manifesto, and any other usages we can find in WP:N media or Notes on Metamodernism (it seems "oscillation" has the same importance to metamodernism now as the term "deconstruction" has to postmodernism)." His inconsistency on the subject is baffling, although I strongly suspect him of Misplaced Pages:Gaming the system, since he has also openly admitted (again, on 3 July) to playing "reverse psychology" (his words) with other editors on this page to try to get his own way. This has got to stop. Esmeme (talk) 21:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Esmeme, that is a misreading of what I just wrote. I posted a hypothetical as a way of emphasizing that this new structure for the article (not a single "History" section, but a list of individual definitions) does not work. I did not argue for the Manifesto to be removed, in fact I've consistently said for months it should be put in a "Related Documents" section at the bottom of the article. Though yes, to try to be accommodating I've at times entertained other options. I won't apologize for trying to be accommodating of views I disagree with. I hope you will consider doing so as well. Festal82 (talk) 23:06, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Now Festal is being disingenuous in my opinion. We can all see what he wrote, and the implication. He has never proposed a "Related Documents" section as far as I can see . Not to mention the fact that this goes against his proposal that the manifesto form a key part of the article's body. He appears to be the only editor that thinks a "History" section should tie together the mishmash of previous uses of the term, and there appears no consensus that the additional individual definitions he has added are notable or even relevant. We should stick to the facts, rather than hypotheticals. Esmeme (talk) 23:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Even putting aside WP:AGF, calling me a liar when you know I am not is beneath you, Esmeme. Were you not present and participating in the conversation on the "Talk" page for Rhododendrites (see link) when I said, on 17:17, 17 June 2014 (UTC)--just two weeks ago--"I think, Rhododendrites, you had previously suggested simply removing the Manifesto from the article, because it appears on a self-published website. I'm amenable to that too, though I think a better fix might be to simply put it in a 'Related Documents' section at the base of the article, thereby letting readers read it if they wish but side-stepping the issue of its sourcing and authorship altogether. Would that work?" Honestly, I know you feel a lot of aggression toward me, but please don't take words out of my mouth that I know you read, or put words in there that were never there. Festal82 (talk) 01:14, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, I certainly apologize for missing that one amongst the sea of writing you have filled these pages with, and the assortment of radically different opinions you appear to have expressed. I still believe that you are being disingenuous. You stated above that you have "consistently said for months it should be put in a "Related Documents" section," which blatantly isn't true. One moment you want the text to be the centre of the article, and the next you are happy for it to be relegated to a supplementary documents section. It would be very helpful, as I have said, if you simply adhere to the spirit of wikipedia by improving the article with facts and reliable sources, and stop speculating about hypothetical scenarios. Your self-confessed use of "reverse psychology" on this page is utterly inexcusable, hence my natural distrust of anything you write here. Esmeme (talk) 01:22, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Not that you will accept what I say, Esmeme, but the one (and only) editor I directed that remark to had come onto this page wildly insisting that the whole article be deleted, and then began stalking me all over the "Talk" page just because I was someone who had worked hard (like you) to keep this article well-maintained. I maintain that if the article had been changed as this other editor insisted, it would have ended up deleted immediately--his plan at the time, it appears now--so I argued for the page's deletion on that basis, i.e. that if things were changed as the other editor insisted they be changed, the article shouldn't exist anyway (which I still believe!). It was a wise decision, as it turned out. I say that because this other editor immediately began militating for the page to be saved. I'm sorry if me trying to get out from under a mountain of abuse from another editor and help protect the work of 82 other editors over 4 years upset you. But the fact is, whatever your feeling about my edits, it would be disingenuous for you to say that you question my commitment to this article's well-being. Festal82 (talk) 01:40, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Removal of MadMuseum source

I removed the reference to MadMuseum here. MadMuseum does not seem like a reliable source for the academic description of what Vermeulen and van den Akker are talking about. The writings from an unsourced museum page blog does not strike me as something that can properly describe this philosophical concept. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:03, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

(not) Notable metamodernists

If something is notable it would have more than one source. Basically this list is from metamodernism.com, with an additional eight people. This should be made clear in prose form- "Metamodernism.com says that ...." "Other people whose work has been labelled metamodernist are..." The section heading could be "Artists associated with metamodernism" (though very strangely there are no artists in the list). Bhny (talk) 16:02, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

@Bhny: I've mentioned this all up and down this talk page, but I've opened a thread about the reliability of metamodernism.com here on RSN. Since you seem to have some input on the subject, it would greatly help resolve the conflict relating to this page if we could get some other editors to share their ideas on the matter of whether or not mm.com is reliable. felt_friend 20:41, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I've included the prose. Whether or not it's reliable is separate from identifying the bias of the source. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:48, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

@Ricky81682: I strongly agree with Bhny's suggestion that the heading be changed to "Artists associated with metamodernism", as this is much less contentious, and there is consensus for this above. With the new layout, however, now that the topic of the entire article has shifted towards being about the term metamodernism in general, and not the prominently understood definition as introduced by Vermeulen/den Akker, it is not clear which definition these artists are associated with. Is it all or any of them? Should we add William Blake? (This would seem pretty absurd.) I think the layout needs to be adjusted somehow to avoid such ambiguity. Any suggestions? Esmeme (talk) 10:53, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

@Esmeme: I suggest we add "artists associated with metamodernism by " to the relevant sections. For instance, those identified as "metamodern" by Vermeulen and den Akker would be listed under their section. Since the article now divides the separate definitions provided by various individuals, it would make more sense in my opinion to list their examples under their sections. I strongly believe this would help the clarity of the article as it doesn't make much sense to detail the different definitions provided right before a section that could be interpreted as implying everyone listed in it is objectively "metamodern". felt_friend 15:20, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

@Esmeme:, @Ricky81682:, and @Bhny:, I agree with Felt friend, which makes me think we might be making progress here. I think that if we're going to provide various readings of the term, we can attach names mentioned in/by that reading with/to each reading. Zavarzadeh mentions names, as does Dumitrescu, as do Vermuelen and van den Akker, et cetera. That way we still have the names in the article to help guide scholarly and popular conversation of the term for those using the article for that purpose, but don't give the impression that there is a consensus as to where metamodernism manifests when no such consensus exists. Festal82 (talk) 16:28, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

The Lede

In trying to come up with a lede for metamodernism, I've been looking at other philosophical terms of a related genus: postmodernism and modernism. As all of the definitions for metamodernism presently in the Misplaced Pages article position metamodernism relative to these other two concepts, that seems like a sensible way to go forward. Here's the opening to the postmodernism article on Misplaced Pages:

Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism.

And here's the opening for modernism:

Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped Modernism was the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I.

So I am suggesting this for metamodernism, a sort of melange of the two options above:

Metamodernism is a post-postmodern movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that both departs from and is informed by modernism and postmodernism. While divergent readings of the term in the arts and in criticism have been offered since the 1970s, a common feature of its usage is treatment of metamodernism as a mediation between important principles of modernism and postmodernism.

Thoughts?Festal82 (talk) 16:23, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Definite improvement, centers lede on most salient consensus detail: being post- Postmodernism. I made the change. Darmokand (talk) 16:34, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Updated article

I tried to synthesize the consensuses reached here in the latest update of the article: moved "notable" names to paragraphs associated with specific theorists or critics; changed lede per above discussion with Darmokand; removed header tags that no longer apply; moved "notable" names not attached to any specific theorist or critic, but merely to notable media outlets, to the slightly elongated "Reception" section. I hope this is all right, and that I've read the consensus correctly based on what everyone is saying above. I'm sure additional sourcing can/should be added at various points just to strengthen the article, and certainly there are names of metamodernists associated with Zavarzadeh's and Dumitrescu's analyses that need to be added, but all in all it seems an improvement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Festal82 (talk • contribs) 17:29, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Finally, some progress

It sounds like most of the issues addressed above have been nicely dealt with. A couple of things seem to remain, however.

1. The "History" section is now enormous, and it's not clear why it's called "history" when it deals with things in the very recent past. I propose splitting the usage from 2010 and onwards, but only the uses which can be linked via authors attributing each other (academic citations as well as namedropping in articles works just fine, and does not at all violate WP:SYNTH), or by reliable independent sources lumping them together. The Vermeulen/der Akker-LaBeouf link seems pretty solid, and anyone associating themselves with them should be included there as well, IMO.

2. LaBeouf's involvement, and especially his brand of metamodernism as given in the manifesto, should be given more attention. LaBeouf's involvement has attracted a lot of coverage, and is a clear example of an artist who self-identifies as a "metamodernist". Perhaps giving der Akker and Vermeulen's section a subsection about LaBeouf and Turner would be in order.

I see something along the lines of:

==History==
Everything until 2010. Uses not associated with the below antedating 2010.
==Vermeulen-der Akker==
Words about their articles and perhaps things from their blog.
===LaBeouf, Turner and the ''Metamodernist Manifesto''===
More words, ]-material about it, with cautious inclusion of text from the Manifesto itself.
===Others===
People directly associated with either of the above.

Excellent work boys. Inanygivenhole (talk) 20:42, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know where you are getting this "they have to be linked together" thing from. The article clearly states that they may not be linked together. If they exist, then it can be rewritten but it's entirely possible for there to be multiple independent meanings until a philosophy is really developed (see Posthumanism for example). A fair article can say "here's a term that has multiple different meanings and their separate uses." It's not like we're only using the Vermeulen/der Akker-LaBeouf definition on its own. To deny the different past faded meanings would be giving WP:UNDUE impact to the current one unless those things go so far away to be considered WP:FRINGE (and they aren't that). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:53, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

You are misinterpreting what I am saying. The way that the material is presented right now is fine, since it has been substantially rephrased. Now what I am suggesting is moving some of the more closely associated material into one section. Putting these things under any more specific header than, say, "History", implies that they are related, and we need to be aware of this. With that in mind, I am suggesting a way of restructuring the article so that it is not essentially a prose list of people who have used the word "metamodernism", but rather an article broken up into several , well-defined sections. Inanygivenhole (talk) 20:59, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

It definitely is a sign of progress that I think I'm on the same page as Inanygivenhole on this. The "History" section could definitely use subheaders to make it more readable, provided they're not hyper-literal--e.g., just dividing the history of the term's usage by definition. What I've done is made four headers that I hope are consistent with what's being discussed here: (1) Origins (i.e., 1975-2010); (2) Vermeulen and van den Akker (i.e., 2010); (3) The Metamodernist Manifesto (i.e., 2011); and (4) Recent Usages (i.e., usages from the last couple years, which I'm sure will be added to as other artists and scholars use the term in high-profile ways).

I feel like we could then beef up the Metamodernist Manifesto section with some articles on Shia LaBeouf from major media sources, and the "Origins" section by noting some of those Zavarzadeh identified as metamodern (just as has been done with others who've used the term). Also, notes on major exhibitions, et cetera, seem to go well in the previously far-too-small "Reception" section, so I tried them out there. Festal82 (talk) 22:15, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

As someone who has been researching metamodernism for some years now, I was quite surprised to read the updated Misplaced Pages page – so much so, indeed, that I felt necessitated to create a wiki account and edit this page. Though I am pleased to see a history of the various uses of the notion of metamodernism, I am less impressed by the suggestive tone. The entry now seems to be nothing more than an introduction to Seth Abramson’s underdeveloped, derivative use of metamodernism – which is strange, given that all of the theories described are academic theories that have passed peer review, except for Abramson’s, which has been formulated, as far as I can tell, across a number of blog posts. If we are to believe the changes made by Festal, which I understand from the talk page to be Abramson, all other uses of metamodernism are premised on the same notion (mediation), except for his, which is the first “different” definition. I very much doubt Dumitrescu, Velmeulen and Van Den Akker, and James and Seshagiri would agree, seeing as each of their conceptualizations addresses an entirely different phenomenon in entirely different ways. Each of these to me seems to be a different definition, one proposing harmony in literature (Dumitrescu), one mapping a shifting cultural and political paradigm (Velmeulen and Van Den Akker) and one describing, evocatively and in some detail, the return of modernist tropes in contemporary literature (James and Seshagiri). The reductive selection of phrases and normative words use to describe these theories give an unfair image. To describe James and Seshagiri’s theory – written in the influential journal PMLA – as “merely a reaction” is exemplary here. I also cannot imagine Velmeulen and Van Den Akker, whose theory has had quite an impact, to be happy with the description of their use of metamodernism as simply the return of modernist positions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Metamodernwoman (talk • contribs) 06:48, 8 July 2014 (UTC) Metamodernwoman (talk) 07:10, 8 July 2014 (UTC) I have made some minor changes that make the entry more objective.Metamodernwoman (talk) 07:12, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

This all feels very familiar. An SPA WP account comes to the article with a bizarre obsession with Seth Abramson. Sure, the article on metamodernism is 10,000 words about various people in metamodernism and just a couple hundred or so about Abramson, but somehow "the entry now seems to be nothing more than an introduction to Seth Abramson's underdeveloped, derivative use of metamodernism." The new editor assures the "Talk" page that some edits will be made simply to ensure the article is "unbiased"--and goes on to add loaded language to only one section of the article, the section pertaining to Abramson. This new SPA also begins using charged language about Abramson right on the "Talk" page--adjectives like "suggestive," "strange," derivative." Anyone reading the "Talk" page would think Festal82 was Timotheus Vermeulen--as that is the allegation that keeps floating around here--but no, this SPA has special insight: Festal82 is Abramson, the SPA cries! There are also strange (dare I say derivative?) inconsistencies in the SPA's account of things: For instance, the SPA is obsessed with focusing on "peer-reviewed" publications, but somehow manages to find a blog that is not considered an academic journal (sacre bleu! could it be Notes on Metamodernism?) to be not only peer-reviewed but "academic." Those words are quickly added to the entry. Meanwhile, WP:N publications that are edited, like The Huffington Post and Indiewire, are wrongly denominated "blogs," likely in preparation for the next "stage" of edits, in which these WP:N publications will be removed from the entry, even as Notes on Metamodernism is given additional focus in the article and--most amazingly--a theory of metamodernism that describes it as simply an adjunct of modernism is given additional prominence in an article establishing metamodernism as a discrete concept. I'd dispute with you about which definitions above are derivative, but (a) you're an SPA with the same agenda, conveniently, as several other accounts editing here, and (b) this isn't a forum to discuss metamodernism, though you've done that here. For all that, I've retained your edits (e.g., the removal of "different," the insistence that James have his own section) but removed all your WP:SYNTH content per WP guidelines. Festal82 (talk) 14:13, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I do not believe my doubts and comments should be discarded just because I am a SPA - there is something very undemocratic to this reasoning. As a PhD student working on metamodernism, I am a concerned citizen. There was talk at a conference about the recent changes to this page mentioned above and I felt the need to nuance some amendments. There has been so much academic discourse around various metamodernisms the past years of which Abramson's theory is not a part yet for some reason he is both 1. the endpoint of the debate; and 2. one of the most cited authors of this entry. This is not at all to discount Abramson or the quality of his writing, or have a discussion about what metamodernism means and for whom. This is just to back-up the claims made above. In response to your unnecessarily cynical remarks about Notes on metamodernism: as far as I can see it is archived by google scholar and the British Library: http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/65208786/source/alpha Articles published on the site are further referenced in academic articles. I have no stake in defending this website - nor did I, by the way, at any point list it under the peer review journals - but some of the repeated criticism here is unfounded and needs to be put into perspective. Also, although my use of the word derivative was indeed charged (and I duly apologize), I think the editing history shows I have done nothing but remove suggestive language and nuanced one or two phrasings. I am surprised to see Festal has removed mention of Dumitrescu and Turner within the section on Abramson, since it is clear to all scholars working on metamodernism that their proactive use of the term precedes Abramson's. What could be the reason for its removal? I will not add the names again, because I have a feeling Festal will remove them again. So I have no intention to make any further edits here as it stands. Metamodernwoman (talk) 15:53, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I did not mean to discard your doubts or comments; in fact, I maintained your edits and merely removed WP:SYNTH content--and as little as I could, at that. Re: academicism, let us be honest: Far and away the most vibrant conversation (globally) surrounding metamodernism right now is that sponsored by actor Shia LaBeouf, a non-academic who is now collaborating in highly visible ways with other non-academics. In this context, articles on metamodernism in popular media become a part of the conversation. That said, it's only a minor part--I agree with you. That's probably why all of the Abramson material is confined to a single, small section well down in the article. If I put the James material below it, it was only because the "History" section is chronological, just like the "History" section of the articles on postmodernism and modernism. Note that there has been criticism of NoM on the "Talk" page, but not in the article; and frankly, were anyone to put it in there I would join you in removing it, as once NoM is/is not deemed a WP:RS (reliable source) its presence or absence in the article must be entirely neutral. In any case, I don't intend any ill will; the problem is that Abramson has never cited Dumitrescu, as far as I can see, and Luke Turner has been so public about saying that Abramson has nothing to do with his reading of metamodernism that we can't justify lumping him in with Abramson. Re: derivative, one of the controlling debates in metamodernism, as you surely know, regards the metaphoric analogy attached thereto, and right now there are only three models: "fusion" (Zavarzadeh and his immediate successors); "oscillation" and "polarity" (mentioned repeatedly by Dumitrescu, Vermeulen, van den Akker, and Turner); and "transcendence," mentioned only by Abramson. You may find the argument that metamodernism produces the transcendence of what Abramson calls "polar spectra" unpersuasive, but that does not make it not new. Even so, per your suggestion I agree with the removal of "different," as it risks WP:SYNTH or WP:OR. Festal82 (talk) 16:40, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

@Metamodernwoman: see WP:NOTHERE and WP:You are not a reliable source felt_friend 22:52, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

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