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Yes, the current version looks like a violation of WP:PROPORTION. Unless this material actually is well-covered by secondary overview sources, it probably does not deserve its own section in this high-level article. I'm reverting per WP:CYCLE, but have no objection to the material being included in a more concise form. Pinging User:Golikom to be sure they see this conversation.
Support that removal as worded. Statements such as "suggests", "likely", and "while he does not directly address" do not bring confidence to the argument of inclusion.--☾Loriendrew☽☏(ring-ring)22:55, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It does feel WP:UNDUE, especially in combination with the true statement that Aristotle never mentioned the subject. He covered a very wide range of subjects in his writings, and we should focus on what he did say, not what he didn't (but might possibly have meant in an early 21st century interpretation). Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:07, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From time to time, some drive-by editors may come and expand that subsection with more content, which, as everyone in this discussion seems to agree, raises some WP:DUE questions. As Chiswick Chap noted, unlike the topics of the other subsections, such as ethics, politics, rhetorics etc. "gender and sexuality" are not the subjects or the main focus of any of Aristotle's works. In fact, the points mentioned there seem to have been picked and put together out of various (and unrelated) works. Not so long ago, I had also trimmed an undue quote that had been added around that time. I had mostly restored the 'stable version', with more emphasis on the things that Aristotle actually said, and not so much on what he could've implied, or how that could be interpreted in modern contexts. With those things in mind, even the shorter version might be a little undue in comparison to the size of the preceding subsections (e.g. it's even larger than "rhetorics"), although I previously never bothered opening a discussion myself, because I didn't think the issue was that important. Piccco (talk) 21:14, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
He has also classified states on quantitative as well as qualitative basis . according to him the first was one which was based on the number of people who run the government weather the number is one few or many according to second classification it was to be seen whether those and power authority use their power for their selfish and or for common welfare in other word 2nd basis as to depict the ends of the state when the power is used to the welfare of the community as a whole it is called normal .. but when that is used for selfish and government becomes it according to him monarchy else to receive and polity was normal form of Government and their corresponding private he also believe that monarchy was the best form of Government . when the monarchy aristocracy and polity were normal form of Government. Oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy and democracy of the needy. 2409:4085:68D:9ED4:0:0:18C:E8A4 (talk) 07:39, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Reading through this article, I've noticed that the biology/psychology coverage seems much more in depth than any of the rest of the sections? For example, the section on dreams alone is 544 words, and the section on memory is a similar size, despite these coming from two of the short treatises in Parva naturalia, while the entire discussion of Aristotelian astronomy is only 93 words. While some other sections could be expanded, the article is already close to 10000 words total, any objections to adopting more of a WP:SUMMARYSTYLE in the biology parts? Psychastes (talk) 03:00, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, astronomy is a bit short, though Aristotle's hardly remembered much for this. You may well be right that some other small subsections could be developed slightly (I hate the wiki-word "expanded", it suggests bloating without substance, the opposite of what is required), so to that extent I agree.
On the other hand, the article's statement that biology forms a large part of Aristotle's writings is true, however disdainfully these are classified by some scholars, and the article's balance should reflect this, arguably already does so. In addition, any trimming needs to be done carefully as this is a reviewed text which has stood up well for years now. The article is quite long, but this is a major topic and there isn't a hard word limit. I'll take a look at some judicious trimming; severe pruning would be a mistake. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:30, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that a text has been here for years certainly doesn't imply that it doesn't need any improvement! Especially when comparing this page with Aristotle's biology, which has more or less exactly identical coverage, which suggests much of the content here could stand to be trimmed. This is currently a "Good Article" but this seems like it's very out of proportion for criteria 3; it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail and I'm not sure that Aristotle's biological writings being looked down upon by modern scholars is a particularly great argument for having *more* coverage here. Psychastes (talk) 05:00, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, I partly agree; you attack a strawman implying that I refuse all change, which is untrue: I said I'd look and I have already trimmed the Biology section, and am working on Psychology and Memory now. You have misprised my statement about scholars: the reason for coverage is Aristotle's own emphasis, which the article reflects (where non-biology scholars such as classicists and philosophers tended to overlook this side of Aristotle's work). That an article has been read by thousands of readers over several years is not a reason for *no* change but it is a definite reason for changing very cautiously, especially in a domain as mature as this one; people are quick to attack bad chapters, like the one on feminism (see the thread above). You judiciously ignore the core statement that much of A's writing is on biology: this remains true, and is the reason why the article correctly emphasises the science. As for the statement about an exact match with Aristotle's biology, that article provides *much* more detail than is given here, including a detailed series of (mathematical) models, so it is simply untrue that the coverage there is directly matched here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:46, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You make a lot of fair points here; having looked at the rest of the article in more detail I think it probably doesn't make sense to cut any more of this much more thorough treatment of biology, and instead focus on improving/rewriting the other sections first and then re-evaluating. the biology section looks very disproportionate now (though I agree, it is a large portion of Aristotle's work), but that may just be because the other subjects aren't covered as much as they should be. if there are problems of relative coverage it may make more sense to deal with it when the other subjects are actually covered in-depth (this is *Aristotle* after all, we can probably push 15000 or more before being considered WP:TOOLONG) Psychastes (talk) 15:27, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The biology section is, I agree, the right length, and we aren't desperately short of space (bits are cheap, and people can dip into a well-structured article on this sort of topic anyway). There is a profusion of sources on the philosophical aspects of his work, including good summaries at SEP and suchlike places, so it should not be hard to provide slightly deeper coverage of those topics. A worthwile goal would be to cut down on the number of philosophical sources used; we can't (and shouldn't) try to cover all the arguments about the meaning of his philosophy or its "Aristotelianism" derivatives, so a solid basic grounding from a few tertiary sources would be an improvement. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:44, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One other thing: the coverage on 'Empirical research' and 'Scientific style', while discussed in the context of biology, say something about Aristotle's actual scientific approach more generally, so the sections are doubly justified; once again, he did a lot of biology, so it's the correct context; I've already argued it's the correct proportion, too. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The short section on optics has wrongly been deleted. A quick look at Scholar shows that this is covered by many authorities, and certainly deserves at least brief coverage. I'll work something up. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:10, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
i had removed what was there because it only referenced the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, which probably contains a lot of work written after Aristotle, and the only source cited was a self-published website, so it seemed rather dubious to attribute that to Aristotle. but I have no objections to more coverage on Aristotle's optics. Psychastes (talk) 05:34, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've now run into a few cases in the legacy section and the logic section where the material written in the article is completely different from what the cited source says. So far I've limited myself to material I felt was dubious or inaccurate to begin with, and I'm going to go through that further. but it might not hurt to spot-check many of the other sources as well. Psychastes (talk) 15:31, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We should continue to fix anything that isn't properly sourced. As I've said elsewhere, I suggest we use a small number of tertiary sources such as Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to simplify the article's use of sources; this will make verification easier. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:04, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've reverted an attempt to widen the transmission of Aristotle's own work to "Legacy" as that would include all the subsidiary philosophy of later Aristotelianism. We can briefly mention how his philosophy came down to us, but the full monty of how it got developed in many directions is not on the "Aristotle" topic as such, and we mustn't try to cover all that here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:50, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's potentially 2300 years of coverage, yeah, so I certainly don't think that we need to cover anything in very much detail, but we've already got a lot in that section that doesn't relate to "transmission" so that label's not accurate. But I think saying we shouldn't cover a topic at all because there's too much material on it is also very backwards! Psychastes (talk) 16:13, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, a needless misprisal. It's massive, and almost wholly off-topic, so we should at most mention that it exists and link to it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:15, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
this is a normal section to include on any ancient philosopher. especially given the in-depth treatments of other subjects on the page, it's very hard to justify its exclusion Psychastes (talk) 16:20, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection to dealing with direct legacy; my concern, as I said at the top of this thread, was any attempt to repeat the coverage of Aristotelinism here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:00, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are you alright with changing the title of the section to "Legacy" then? because the content is already much broader than "transmission" Edit: noticed section below. Psychastes (talk) 19:07, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also sympathetic to not rehashing all of Aristotelianism on this page, probably our coverage of e.g. medieval catholic europe is sufficient as is with Aquinas and Albert Magnus.
The main information I'd think of adding here would be:
should be mostly complete now pending some tweaking/minor wording changes, i've tried to blend it into the existing material as much as possible, I trimmed down a lot of the discussion of the corpus between the hellenistic period and the 1st century that was in a separate "works" section as it potentially gives the incorrect impression that the exoteric works didn't survive into late antiquity (we know they did because later people quote from them), and that they were never copied into parchment codices (they well could have been). Also didn't end up mentioning Themistius as he's somewhat of an outlier, but it's probably fine to leave him out. please let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvements! Psychastes (talk) 16:33, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
it seems there's a lot of resistance to making necessary improvements to this article, so I'm likely going to nominate it for a good article reassessment soon - it's clear that many of the topics here are barely touched on at all, and that basic sections that are usually included in articles on philosophers, such as "Legacy" are missing. Psychastes (talk) 16:16, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Criteria 3 - the article covers Aristotle's biology in quite a lot of detail compared to the other topics in his philosophy. Other sections, such as "Legacy" are not covered, with the strange justification being that there is too much material to include it at all. My concerns raised on the talk page have met with a significant amount of resistance, so I believe that this article should be delisted. Psychastes (talk) 16:18, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
the "content dispute" is solely an attempt to make improvements to the article to make it meet the Good Article criteria. i certainly could have simply nominated it for an assessment, but i was under the impression that it was appropriate to attempt to make improvements first? Psychastes (talk) 16:35, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if engaging on the talk page has poisoned the well, I suppose next time I will simply perform an analysis and nominate for reassessment; that was my original intention, as I hope this early reply on the talk page makes clear. But this still seems very counter to the whole intent of the process to me. Psychastes (talk) 16:54, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The "poisoning the well" is the sudden GAR, with no notice whatsoever. Since collaborative improvement work was already in progress, even notice of GAR would have seemed rather out of place. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:55, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
DelistKeep: Would have nominated myself months ago, but don't have the patience to argue with the steward. Also, just in passing, with respect to WP:DUE/WP:PROPORTION, I would rather see the treatment of natural philosophy cut back than the treatment of other areas extended. I don't always practice what I preach, but shorter is usually better on WP. Let's let WP:SUMMARYSTYLE do some of the lifting here. --Patrick 🐈⬛ (talk) 17:07, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The single cited reason is insufficient to delist.
Keep, no good reason to delist. Both Psychastes and I have already made many agreed changes to the article, and had already agreed further changes before this over-hasty decision to apply for delisting. My understanding is that Psychastes had undertaken to rework and extend some of the philosophy sections. Earlier today I proposed that we use Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy a bit more to support those changes, so as to provide both a secure basis for the sections, and to reduce the number of citations that we're relying on. In addition, I yesterday trimmed the whole biology chapter; today I fixed some citations. This strikes me as good collaborative work on a mature article, and indeed rapid and continuing progress, so I find the sudden GAR bizarre, uncollegiate, and ill-judged. Expecting everyone to agree to everything is simply unreasonable, and threatening anyone who disagrees with anything with delisting is straightforwardly inappropriate: discussion is just that, the sharing of opinions to reach consensus. I'll continue to work to improve the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:47, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the reactions so far, I have to wonder if the description of the process described at WP:GAR doesn't match the community's current values; i.e. Editors should discuss the article's issues with reference to the good article criteria, and work cooperatively to resolve them. Comments should focus on the article's contents and adherence to the good article criteria. The priority should be to improve articles and retain them as GAs rather than to delist them, wherever reasonably possible. Interested editors can indicate their intention to fix the article and give updates on their progress in the GAR. My intention in nominating this was to get more eyes on it and work towards a consensus, which I only did after being told that having a "Legacy" section was "off-topic" for the article, which led me to believe that the getting the necessary improvements would prove intractable. Psychastes (talk) 19:24, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The thing that'd be off-topic was and is a protracted essay on Aristotelianism. Straight legacy is plainly relevant, and indeed the chapter already covers a broad span of that. If all you wanted was more eyes on it, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History of Science is the obvious place. But as several pairs of eyes are already on the case, and progress is actively being made, you are completely free to withdraw the GAR nomination so we can get on with improving the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:53, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, I can't fully withdraw the nomination when there's another vote for delisting, but I've struckthrough my nomination since it seems like enough progress is being made. Legacy, biology, and Life sections are all fine as they are now, I believe the other philosophy sections can be improved more relatively speaking (in density of information more than length), but there's nothing unsalvageable. Psychastes (talk) 16:02, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I don't see anything problematic about the Biology and Legacy sections. Probably someone can help to improve instead of heading to the GAR without saying any specific comments, like how one can search for problems and fix them on their own. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:41, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The section oddly titled "Transmission" contains material that, in many other articles in wikipedia, would be labeled "Legacy". I propose to rename the section. This would also address complaints about a missing section with the name "Legacy". Please comment with rename or keep. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:22, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-3 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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Done Johnjbarton (talk) 16:17, 19 May 2025 (UTC)