- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was no consensus. slakr\ talk / 07:35, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
The Hum
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The obvious thing to do with this article is redirect it to infrasound as it is a WP:POVFORK whose title is blatant WP:OR, but fans refuse to allow that and insist it be brought to AfD even though it does not need deleting, only redirecting. The sources are largely unreliable, the title is, as I say, OR (a few places have infrasound known colloquially as The Foo Hum, most places with infrasound there is little or no coverage, it being a natural phenomenon and not necessarily constant). Many people who think they hear infrasound actually have tinnitus - that would be me, as well - but that's an aside: in the end there is only one subject, infrasound, but two articles, of which this has the worse title and content. Guy ( Help!) 23:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
- Speedy Keep per WP:SK, "fails to advance an argument for deletion—perhaps only proposing a non-deletion action...". Andrew D. ( talk) 00:00, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- And that is precisely why I redirected it and so did someonme else, as I noted above, but the artiucle's fans, as also noted above, refuse to allow this without a deletion debate because, as noted on the article's talk page, they do not understand that no AfD is necessary when an article is a
WP:POVFORK with an
WP:OR title. I should have said that in the nomination. Oh, wait, I did.
Guy (
Help!) 16:34, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- That is not an adequate reason to come forum shopping here. WP:SK clearly indicates that such inappropriate nominations should be immediately dismissed. You didn't get consensus at that talk page and you're not getting it here. Please see WP:POINT. Andrew D. ( talk) 17:07, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- As I said, the fans of the article demanded an AfD. I do actually know policy, being an admin and all, I also know that there is absolutely no point trying for consensus when the only people who give a damn are fans of the article. If we insisted on that, it would be virtually impossible to get rid of any POV fork. Guy ( Help!) 22:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Ahem. IIRC I believe I said at the time that I did not believe your rationale for blanking the article wasn't strong, so you can hardly blame me for your choice to launch this AfD or couch it in weird weasel terms. Jjust stopping edit warring and leaving the article alone was an option too, for instance. Also this is the third time you've disparaged editors participating in good faith and making policy arguments as "fans" or "fanbois", if you count the somewhat WP:CANVASy discussion on WP:FTN [1] - I would remind you to remain WP:CIVIL and avoid personal attacks on other users. Artw ( talk) 23:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- As you've posted on my Talk page, I may be one of the people you're referring to. I'm interested in this subject, not because I'm a fanboy, but because I hear (or perceive) a noise. I was surprised to find out that others do. I feel no sense of group affinity because of this. I rule out no (sensible) and reliably sourced explanation, as you might notice from the discussions I've had with a certain editor over the reliability of his work.
- You've made no effort to talk this out. That's fine if it's an accepted way of dealing with articles that attract problem editors; I can see how that might be necessary. However, please don't suggest that you were forced into a corner here, as you made no effort whatsoever to achieve anything like consensus, or even to notify interested editors of your intent ahead of time. Incidentally, as you are an admin, I'd like to register that the majority of the merge or delete comments on this page (including your OP) refer to infrasound, which has not been sourced on this page or on the Hum's. And that, without inviting trouble, you haven't responded to my querying of your assertion that the sources are largely unreliable. Bromley86 ( talk) 02:35, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
- And that is precisely why I redirected it and so did someonme else, as I noted above, but the artiucle's fans, as also noted above, refuse to allow this without a deletion debate because, as noted on the article's talk page, they do not understand that no AfD is necessary when an article is a
WP:POVFORK with an
WP:OR title. I should have said that in the nomination. Oh, wait, I did.
Guy (
Help!) 16:34, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep The reliable sources on the article seem to prove general notability. Yes, when stuff like this gets discussed on The Joe Rogan Experience it attracts FRINGE material, too. That's not a reason for deletion. Chris Troutman ( talk) 00:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- omg this is now my 2nd favorite article on WP (after Reptilians. The B-movie-ness of the title is delectable and i am all swoony. But seriously, this article must go. MERGE INTO INFRASOUND. Jytdog ( talk) 00:09, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep I'm not really seeing anything at Infrasound for it to be a POV fork of, and there's articles covering it as "The Hum" here, so I don't believe it is WP:OR: [2] [3] Artw ( talk) 00:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep. What unreliable source? Okay, the West Seattle Blog might fail, but it might not; Frosch & Deming are iffy; the rest are reliable. I've no idea what a Foo Hum is and googling it doesn't help. Incidentally, as you say, one of the current explanations given is not infrasound, it's tinnitus, which makes the suggested repointing problematic. Bromley86 ( talk) 00:42, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The sources include sound recordings ( WP:OR), personal web pages, the Daily Mail, blogs etc. The reliable sources are about infrasound (or more often they refer to low frequency noise, which we redirect there). Causes such as tinnitus, the jetstream, submarine communications etc. are discussed. Nothing establishes that there are two subjects. There is only one subject, and this is the title which is WP:OR with the content that is more inclined to be drawn from unreliable sources to advance a specific viewpoint. In other words, the WP:POVFORK. Guy ( Help!) 16:45, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The personal web page (singular) and the sound recording (singular) are both associated with Tom Moir, an academic who's looked into a hum in Auckland and who's frequently interviewed in reliable sources in relation to that (and the Wellington one). We can discuss whether or not both sources qualify as reliable WP:SPS. Likewise, the Daily Mail is usually seen as a reliable source in this sort of context; it's only used twice (both times because it supports non-controversial points). The blog (singular, again) is the West Seattle Blog. Okay, not a WP:NEWSBLOG, but seemed pretty reliable when I added it (although I now know the difference). It'll be easy enough to replace, although ironically this is one of those cases where the WP:RS will frequently repeat outdated information.
- Not sure which article you're reading, as there's no mention of the jetstream or subs in The Hum. The article mentions mechanical sources (
infrasoundlow frequency noise), fish (infrasoundlow frequency noise) and tinnitus (which you don't talk about). Bromley86 ( talk) 17:46, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep. Multiple reliable sources are evident in the article as it exists. Not the same topic as infrasound, although they are related; this article is about the various "hums" claimed to exist around the world, with such claims substantiated in reliable sources. The lede should be a little more explicit about this being a notable, but disputed and possibly fringe-science, topic. But that does not justify a defacto evisceration of all this well-sourced content by redirect. -- Arxiloxos ( talk) 00:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Come on, you all. This is so obviously a POVFORK
WP:FRINGE article - the real, relevant science is discussed in
Infrasound. See for example
Chemtrail conspiracy theory (that is treated as such!) and
Contrail. For pete's sake!
Jytdog (
talk) 00:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I get your point, those appear to be two separate articles? surely as an example you'd want to use an article that has been successfuly blanked and redirected?
Artw (
talk) 01:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Chemtrail Conspiracy theory is to Contrails as The Hum is to Infrasound. But The Hum takes itself seriously (a disaster) and should be merged into a section of Infrasound. Please note that Low frequency sound redirects to Infrasound) but The Hum"!!! The Creature from the Black Lagoon! The Blob! It would be funny it weren't so sad. Well it is funny. Jytdog ( talk) 01:09, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I get your point, those appear to be two separate articles? surely as an example you'd want to use an article that has been successfuly blanked and redirected?
Artw (
talk) 01:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Come on, you all. This is so obviously a POVFORK
WP:FRINGE article - the real, relevant science is discussed in
Infrasound. See for example
Chemtrail conspiracy theory (that is treated as such!) and
Contrail. For pete's sake!
Jytdog (
talk) 00:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Merge I support merging what little content is really necessary to the article on
infrasound. Should the outcome of this discussion not result in a merge, then it might be reasonable to add a section to the infrasound article on locations where infrasound has been broadly reported and then propose merging the articles thereafter. But I agree with Jytdog and others that this seems to be an attempt to dramatize what is apparently a natural phenomenon. There might be places where the infrasound is more notable than others, but there is no reason to think that it is not just infrasound.
John Carter (
talk) 01:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- No-one seems quite sure what the cause of this phenomenon is and tinnitus commonly appears in the sources as a possible alternative explanation. Merger into a particular cause such as infrasound would be quite improper in such circumstances. Andrew D. ( talk) 10:56, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- No one else, other than wikipedia, seems to believe that this so-called "phenomenon" is a single phenomenon, rather than a set of possibly similar, but distinct, phenomena. The fact that much low frequency sound can be counted as tinnitus is also not sufficient to say that the other possible causes of low frequency sound might not be applicable in these separate cases. John Carter ( talk) 17:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the
list of Science-related deletion discussions.
• Gene93k (
talk) 01:57, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- "The Hum" - the very title directly references' low frequency sound - Infrasound. Jytdog ( talk) 13:13, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Infrasound, by definition, is too low in frequency to be heard. A hum, on the other hand, is audible. So that we understand the term more exactly, here's the OED definition, "A low continuous sound made by a bee or other insect, also, by a spinning top, machinery in motion, etc. (Distinguished from a buzz by not being sibilant.)" We have a separate article on that topic: hum (sound) and so the proposal to merge to infrasound is clearly tendentious in that it is favouring a particular explanation of the mysterious phenomenon. None of this has any business being discussed at AFD because AFD is not cleanup. Andrew D. ( talk) 13:25, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- As already mentioned above,
Low frequency sound - sound - redirects to Infrasound, and that article talks about some people being able to hear it. The merge is the way to go. The Hum article, besides having a ridiculous title, is a mixture of hookum and poorly understood science.
Jytdog (
talk) 13:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- You're still not addressing why something that may be
tinnitus, a perceived noise in the absence of an external sound, should be merged with something that is the definition of not being tinnitus.
Bromley86 (
talk) 15:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- And you haven't addressed the rebuttal to that seemingly straw man argument which seems to be predicated on the possibility because one cause of infrasound phenomena is in some cases tinnitus. In fact, that argument seems to assume, illogically, that there can be no cases of infrasound which might not be possibly tinnitus. Nor do I see anything in the article which explicitly makes the assumption inherent in the article itself that the phenomenon is causally a single phenomenon, rather than the more likely possibility that perhaps one or more environmental conditions in distinct areas, coupled with perhaps some genetic variations in certain communities, might not be involved. In short, the article seems to be, to some extent, asserting that similar but not necessarily identical phenomena perceived in widely disparate areas by only a portion of the population in those areas must, somehow, all be at least potentially causally connected, when in fact there is nothing in any really reliable sources which seems to be making that statement.
- One might almost as seriously say that
John F. Kennedy was named after
James T. Kirk. After all, the first and last initials are the same, and the middle one has only one variation which might have some sort of hidden significance that only some people can understand. Regarding the temporal disparity and the fact that one is apparently fiction and the other, maybe, not fiction, well, people have different concepts of the meaning of "fiction" too, particularly in the fields of woo physics.
John Carter (
talk) 17:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The straw man here is this Kennedy/Kirk drivel which seems utterly irrelevant. A better example of a similar phenomenon might be the
phantom vibration syndrome. We could merge that to
vibration but that would be silly as the topic is about perception not just the basic physics.
Andrew D. (
talk) 17:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I have seen nothing to date, in the article or here, which specifically addresses the issue of how these disparate phenomena in disparate areas are somehow reasonably described as being "the hum", or, for that matter, "the" anything. The obvious implicit assumption in the title, and in the article itself, that there is some sort of common basis to these phenomena, and the attempts to somehow try to find some sort of common basis for the phenomena beyond the obvious scientific explanations for infrasound, raises very serious questions, already pointed out by others, as to whether the content of this article is some sort of SYNTH violation to try to implicitly draw a conclusion regarding these particular phenomena perhaps not even raised in the sources themselves. That being the case, in I believe any objective review of the relevant content, this article is a rather clear fork for a POV that somehow these specific phenomena are in some way causally related in a way, and, honestly, the evidence presented does not justify that implicit assumption in both the article and its title.
John Carter (
talk) 18:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Our article calls this "The Hum" because that's the common name used by sources such as the BBC and The Independent. Other types of mysterious noise have other names such as skyquake or bloop. The fact that no-one's quite sure what causes them is not a reason to delete or dismiss such topics. There are many phenomena which may have multiple causes such as headache or dizziness. It's like the title of the book I'm currently reading, I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That. Andrew D. ( talk) 12:55, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
- I have seen nothing to date, in the article or here, which specifically addresses the issue of how these disparate phenomena in disparate areas are somehow reasonably described as being "the hum", or, for that matter, "the" anything. The obvious implicit assumption in the title, and in the article itself, that there is some sort of common basis to these phenomena, and the attempts to somehow try to find some sort of common basis for the phenomena beyond the obvious scientific explanations for infrasound, raises very serious questions, already pointed out by others, as to whether the content of this article is some sort of SYNTH violation to try to implicitly draw a conclusion regarding these particular phenomena perhaps not even raised in the sources themselves. That being the case, in I believe any objective review of the relevant content, this article is a rather clear fork for a POV that somehow these specific phenomena are in some way causally related in a way, and, honestly, the evidence presented does not justify that implicit assumption in both the article and its title.
John Carter (
talk) 18:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The straw man here is this Kennedy/Kirk drivel which seems utterly irrelevant. A better example of a similar phenomenon might be the
phantom vibration syndrome. We could merge that to
vibration but that would be silly as the topic is about perception not just the basic physics.
Andrew D. (
talk) 17:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- You're still not addressing why something that may be
tinnitus, a perceived noise in the absence of an external sound, should be merged with something that is the definition of not being tinnitus.
Bromley86 (
talk) 15:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- As already mentioned above,
Low frequency sound - sound - redirects to Infrasound, and that article talks about some people being able to hear it. The merge is the way to go. The Hum article, besides having a ridiculous title, is a mixture of hookum and poorly understood science.
Jytdog (
talk) 13:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- it probably should be noted that per WP:UNDUE any kind of merge will result in at most a paragraph being added to the Infrasound article, if that.
Artw (
talk) 15:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I enjoy the irony of your noting that and failing to spot the obvious inference of
WP:FRINGE.
Guy (
Help!) 16:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The topic has been repeatedly covered by mainstream media such as New Scientist, the BBC, the Guardian &c. It is therefore not fringe to the point that we should ignore it. The infrasound article is a very general one about a particular frequency of sound. Low, penetrating sounds may be produced by a variety of causes such as
foghorns,
whale song,
thunder, &c. These all have separate articles and so should this because it is notable phenomenon which has received widespread and continuing attention.
Andrew D. (
talk) 16:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
-
WP:FRINGE absolutely would apply to both articles, as it does all articles. However
WP:FRINGE simply isn't the magic stick for deletion it's that Guy believes it to be - in the case of
The Hum he'd have to make individual edits and justify them, not blank it and run off into the sunset.
Artw (
talk) 17:16, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP:FRINGE doesn't seem especially important here because that is concerned with particular theories. The primary topic here is a phenomenon (people complaining about an annoying noise). There are a variety of theories about what's going on but, as none of them seem dominant yet, it seems to be anyone's guess as to what the truth of the matter is. Andrew D. ( talk) 17:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
-
WP:FRINGE absolutely would apply to both articles, as it does all articles. However
WP:FRINGE simply isn't the magic stick for deletion it's that Guy believes it to be - in the case of
The Hum he'd have to make individual edits and justify them, not blank it and run off into the sunset.
Artw (
talk) 17:16, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The topic has been repeatedly covered by mainstream media such as New Scientist, the BBC, the Guardian &c. It is therefore not fringe to the point that we should ignore it. The infrasound article is a very general one about a particular frequency of sound. Low, penetrating sounds may be produced by a variety of causes such as
foghorns,
whale song,
thunder, &c. These all have separate articles and so should this because it is notable phenomenon which has received widespread and continuing attention.
Andrew D. (
talk) 16:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I enjoy the irony of your noting that and failing to spot the obvious inference of
WP:FRINGE.
Guy (
Help!) 16:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- it probably should be noted that per WP:UNDUE any kind of merge will result in at most a paragraph being added to the Infrasound article, if that.
Artw (
talk) 15:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
WP:THINGSPEOPLECOMPLAINABOUT is not a notability criteria. We can only write articles on subjects that have been studied seriously. This subject has not been studied seriously and there are no
reliable sources which even identify it as a coherent phenomenon except for
fringe sources. Thus the appeal to
WP:FRINGE.
jps (
talk) 20:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP:THINGSTHATHAVESTUDIEDSERIOUSLY is not a notability criteria either. This is Wikipedia where we have WikiProject Bacon and the main page currently has a picture of someone dressed as a side of bacon (see right). The Hum is looking quite serious in this company. For example, we have the BBC - a serious mainstream organisation - reporting that the audiology department of Addenbrookes - a serious hospital - investigated the matter for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - a serious ministry. Andrew D. ( talk) 23:12, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- It takes minimal reading comprehension of WP:GNG to see that it clearly covers "things that have been studied seriously". jps ( talk) 01:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- It takes minimal reading comprehension to see that the phrase which QTxVi4bEMRbrNqOorWBV puts in quotation marks doesn't appear anywhere in WP:GNG. That guideline doesn't use the word serious at all. What the guideline requires is that we have independent, secondary sources with editorial integrity. Sources such as the BBC and New Scientist. Q.E.D. Andrew D. ( talk) 08:28, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- From that BBC article, Baguley (Addenbrooke's) said "in about two thirds of cases no external noise could be found", and the Leventhall (DEFRA) said "It's been a mystery for 40 years so it may well remain one for a lot longer." In both cases, they appear to currently believe that the Hum (or the hums that they've looked at, as distinct from, say, the hums that have been confirmed as low frequency sound (mechanical or fish)) is effectively a case of
Hyperacusis. I.e. they're not suggesting that these people can hear sounds that are below the threshold of human hearing (aka infrasound), but they are suggesting that people are fixating on something (either internal or external). The Baguley mentioned above is the same one used to cite almost the entirety of the Hyperacusis article.
Bromley86 (
talk) 00:15, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Then this is an argument that this article is a POV-fork of hyperacusis. Doesn't change the overall point that there is no evidence that this is anything. I can point to government-sponsored investigations into all sorts of things that turned out to be nothing -- for example, whether $2 fees for paying a bill online are justifiable. Wikipedia articles are not written on the basis of the government investigating a complaint. C.f., the lack of a Two dollar online payment fee article. jps ( talk) 01:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Merge - I agree with John Carter's assessment. The sources in the article don't support separating this into a separate article. If the article is kept for whatever reason, it needs to be gutted and seriously reworked, because it's a mess in no small part due to the recent flurry of edits to the page. Even in an ideal state, however, it wouldn't warrant a standalone article. - Aoidh ( talk) 14:45, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Delete with redirect per above, POVFORK of infrasound loaded with OR. The content is a mess of OR not enough quality material to merge. - - MrBill3 ( talk) 05:06, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- Comment. Merging with Infrasound (as distinct from the Low frequency noise redirect page, which the creator acknowledged was a mispointing) is further complicated by the definition of infrasound (a "sound that is lower in frequency than 20 Hz"). There's been no suggestion that the sounds covered in the current Hum article are in that range (common ranges are 40-85 Hz). The hums attributed to toadfish, for example, would have been around 100 Hz; [4] other sonic fish that have been reported in a hum context can go up to 500 Hz. [5] I.e. low frequency, but not infrasound. Bromley86 ( talk) 12:24, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- Reasonable and valid comment. Much of the sound range in question might fall outside the range of infrasound, but within the range of low frequency noise. That however, might not preclude moving this page to low frequency noise in the short term, with perhaps a merger discussion after the move if appropriate. I am assuming, perhaps unfoundedly, but I doubt it, that pretty much the entire range of sonic frequencies can be determined to be notable at some level, given the amount of information on the topic out there. John Carter ( talk) 18:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- Delete as a POVFORK of infrasound or low frequency noise. No redirect necessary as no independent sources have identified this as a phenomenon worthy of study. Once sociologists take notice of this, we can write an article. Until then, we need to remove the temptation to be on the cutting edge of describing new-fangled ideas that show up on Joe Rogan's show. jps ( talk) 20:52, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP article created in 2005. Hum section in 2003 in a UK government report into low frequency noise (there are plenty of earlier references, but that's a solid academic reference), so it's not like we're talking about a WP-fueled phrase.
[6]: 43 The point is that this is, rightly or wrongly, a phenomenon (or, more likely, a series of phenomena) that the press report on. They reported on it before WP was here, they're still reporting it (Taos is the most famous: LA Times, 1993,
[7] but there have been earlier ones (I just can't link to the reports). As mentioned above, infrasound literally makes no sense. Low frequency noise works for the majority of the explanations, but doesn't allow for the possibility that (for a number of people) it's an internally generated noise.
Bromley86 (
talk) 23:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm not arguing that this is a
neologism. I'm arguing that the topic is subsumed by other articles we have on Wikipedia. In cases such as this, what is essentially going on is a
synthesis of news-of-the-weird stories that superficially sound the same, or may have even been collated by some
Fortean or
Riplean. But inclusion of a flight-of-fancy in a collection of flight-of-fancy material is not a notability criterion at Wikipedia for good reason: we need better sources than that. If there are a dozen instances of people observing green ghosts over the course of 20 years, we don't go and write a
green ghost article. There are plenty of places to write about each notable green ghost sighting where they can be explained properly. The obvious choices for the instances measured in this piece of poorly curated tall tales are already listed as proposed redirects and instances of POV-forks.
jps (
talk) 01:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Articles do tend to be considered content forks if the topic is already covered in general by another extant article and the content of the alleged fork can be seen as being a comparatively one-sided representation of one side of a debate. There, are, I'm guessing, articles on all the places where the hum has been reported. It would certainly be possible that some of the material might be included there. There is also at least a probability (I haven't actually checked) that there is grounds for an article on low-frequency noise distinct from infrasound. If there is, that would logically be the place for most of the content relating to low-frequency noises. This article can be seen, in a sense, as being more than anything else a Low frequency sound in popular culture article. Honestly, there are so far as I can tell solid reasons to believe we could have a lot more "(whatever) in popular culture" articles than we now have. But that is a separate issue, except for perhaps renaming. The question the above editor raises is whether this is effectively a POV fork, and I think the evidence indicates it may well be. The fact that there are proposals, of various levels of rationality, for any number of unusual possibilities does not mean that those proposals need to be presented separately in what might be an UNDUE weight way. John Carter ( talk) 02:03, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Baguely says that it's low frequency noise 1/3 of the time. 2/3 of the time, he theorises, it's hyperacusis. The people who looked at the Taos hum theorise that it's an internally generated noise.
[8] One local government-funded investigation where they isolated, and reduced, a low frequency noise didn't fix the problem.
[9] So, whilst low frequency noise is an obvious cause (and indeed has been the cause of some reported hums
[10]), it's not necessarily a correct one. The point is though that these are all lumped together by reliable sources precisely because no one knows, in the majority of cases which haven't been traced to a mechanical source, what's going on.
Bromley86 (
talk) 06:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I've seen no reliable source do any "lumping". For example, I haven't seen an peer-reviewed papers on the subject. Nor have I seen any sources which do not violate
WP:FRIND or are simply news-of-the-weird compilations.
jps (
talk) 12:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I think this is a key point you raise. There are, to my knowledge, no sources that are both reliable and academic, peer-reviewed that examine all possible sources of the Hum. There was Deming,
[11] but he chose to publish in the JSE, so that doesn't qualify. There are, however, a large number of reliable news outlets that have reported, and not as part of a news-of-the-weird compilation; the BBC one linked earlier is a good example. As the possible explanations are all theories, none of which have been proved (except in a few cases that were obviously mechanical or fish), these news sources often lump all the possibilities together. Again, referring to that BBC source,
[12] we have tinnitus, hyperacusis & low frequency noise mentioned by experts, as is the fact that isolating the noise in Kokomo worked for some, but not all.
Bromley86 (
talk) 19:00, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm somehow not as impressed with the BBC magazine article as others are. It strikes me as one of those human interest stories that can be used in the
tinnitus,
hyperacusis or
low frequency noise articles but doesn't lend itself to a justification of notability.
jps (
talk) 23:17, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Not to make a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument, but we have an article on fan death. Has anyone died because of being in a closed room with a fan? No. But there are sources that talk about the phenomenon of the belief regardless that it's a fallacy. There's a belief in "the Hum" like there's a belief in fan death or Santa Claus. I think the rational people think this article is validating the belief; I think this article is merely explaining what the belief is. Chris Troutman ( talk) 16:26, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm somehow not as impressed with the BBC magazine article as others are. It strikes me as one of those human interest stories that can be used in the
tinnitus,
hyperacusis or
low frequency noise articles but doesn't lend itself to a justification of notability.
jps (
talk) 23:17, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I think this is a key point you raise. There are, to my knowledge, no sources that are both reliable and academic, peer-reviewed that examine all possible sources of the Hum. There was Deming,
[11] but he chose to publish in the JSE, so that doesn't qualify. There are, however, a large number of reliable news outlets that have reported, and not as part of a news-of-the-weird compilation; the BBC one linked earlier is a good example. As the possible explanations are all theories, none of which have been proved (except in a few cases that were obviously mechanical or fish), these news sources often lump all the possibilities together. Again, referring to that BBC source,
[12] we have tinnitus, hyperacusis & low frequency noise mentioned by experts, as is the fact that isolating the noise in Kokomo worked for some, but not all.
Bromley86 (
talk) 19:00, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I've seen no reliable source do any "lumping". For example, I haven't seen an peer-reviewed papers on the subject. Nor have I seen any sources which do not violate
WP:FRIND or are simply news-of-the-weird compilations.
jps (
talk) 12:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm not arguing that this is a
neologism. I'm arguing that the topic is subsumed by other articles we have on Wikipedia. In cases such as this, what is essentially going on is a
synthesis of news-of-the-weird stories that superficially sound the same, or may have even been collated by some
Fortean or
Riplean. But inclusion of a flight-of-fancy in a collection of flight-of-fancy material is not a notability criterion at Wikipedia for good reason: we need better sources than that. If there are a dozen instances of people observing green ghosts over the course of 20 years, we don't go and write a
green ghost article. There are plenty of places to write about each notable green ghost sighting where they can be explained properly. The obvious choices for the instances measured in this piece of poorly curated tall tales are already listed as proposed redirects and instances of POV-forks.
jps (
talk) 01:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP article created in 2005. Hum section in 2003 in a UK government report into low frequency noise (there are plenty of earlier references, but that's a solid academic reference), so it's not like we're talking about a WP-fueled phrase.
[6]: 43 The point is that this is, rightly or wrongly, a phenomenon (or, more likely, a series of phenomena) that the press report on. They reported on it before WP was here, they're still reporting it (Taos is the most famous: LA Times, 1993,
[7] but there have been earlier ones (I just can't link to the reports). As mentioned above, infrasound literally makes no sense. Low frequency noise works for the majority of the explanations, but doesn't allow for the possibility that (for a number of people) it's an internally generated noise.
Bromley86 (
talk) 23:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Redirect to Infrasound and merge some of this article's material there. The current article is just a list of places where people have been disturbed by infrasounds, together with some speculations of various quality. This could be covered more breifly and without undue weight to low notability material, in the article which actually was made for the topic, i.e. Infrasound. - Anonimski ( talk) 00:41, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- As has been said, sounds >20 Hz, as these are, are not infrasound. Bromley86 ( talk) 02:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Split The current Hum article has no clear definition. This is surprising because already 20 years ago the study of Mullins and Kelly gave the proof that Hum is an internal phenomenon. Nowadays two groups are actively impeding each other in The Hum article: The group working for an internal source and the group for an external source. Hum should be divided into these two groups. The internal source group can still be handed as “The Hum”, because Hum is not the common central tinnitus; the external group should be handed under the already existing Wikipedia-groups “Industrial noise” and “Environmental noise”. The group that wants to change “the Hum” into “Infrasound” in my opinion belongs to the new “The Hum” group of an internal sound. These Hearers are now looking for Infrasound as a realistically not existing source for their Hum: “It is “rubbish” to refer The Hum to an external noise, says Hazell, head of research at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. 'Everybody who has tinnitus complains at first of environmental noise. 'Hummers' are a group of people who cannot accept that they have tinnitus. About 4 per cent of them may genuinely be hearing low-frequency noise, but this shouldn't be a problem. Low-frequency noise has always been with us. It's caused by the wind and the rain.” Brummfrosch ( talk) 15:53, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- The title is still
WP:OR and the content is still easily handled in
infrasound and
tinnitus. There is no third subject.
Guy (
Help!) 22:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Whether you prove to be correct about the article or it's pointing, the statement that the title is WP:OR is absolutely incorrect. Ignoring all the media reports that refer to "the hum", as opposed to "the xxx hum", you have this DEFRA report on it that has a section called "The Hum" (actually "The HUM", but I assume that's a typo). [13] So not OR. Also, as has repeatedly been said, your insistence that it is infrasound is entirely at odds with what experts have stated in reliable sources. Do you have a source for that? Bromley86 ( talk) 02:53, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
- The title is still
WP:OR and the content is still easily handled in
infrasound and
tinnitus. There is no third subject.
Guy (
Help!) 22:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Redirect, merging in whatever tiny bits of actually useful content might be found in this morass of non-notable fringery, non-reliable sources and synthesis. -- Orange Mike | Talk 00:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
- A so-called reliable source says nothing about the quality of the information published. The paper has to be scientifically sound. To judge that issue, a scientific knowledge is needed. This is the general problem for Wikipedia. As long as it is not accepted that Hum is a global phenomenon, some local phenomena like “Mechanical devices” and “Fish”, and nowadays “Infrasound” as possible explanations do expose the whole article to ridicule. If we are not able to make this clear definition, I recommend deleting the whole “The Hum”, because it is of no information to hum-sufferers. Brummfrosch ( talk) 14:21, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep, the phenomenon has been widely reported. Granted, there is a lot of POV and pseudoscience mixed in, but if we delete articles over that, Wikipedia would only have a few Good Articles and otherwise be blank. A merge into infrasound would be erroneous, as by the very definition of infrasound, it's inaudible. One prior iteration of the article mentioned the source of one hum being located in an industrial air exchanger, which is gone now. A re-write of the article, with meticulous citations, from reliable sources would be worthy.
Wzrd1 (
talk) 19:16, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
- This is horrific reasoning. Oh, Wikipedia is a shitpile, let's just pile on more shit. Horrific.
Jytdog (
talk) 06:15, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
- Apparently, you have a reading comprehension problem. I said that the article would require a re-write, with meticulous citations, from reliable sources would be worthy. So, the only shitpile present is what you put forth as a response. The article as it currently stands is utter rubbish, with a few facts thrown in. It was previously of better quality (I'm thinking of around 2 years back or so), with not as much POV or pseudoscience assaulting one's intelligence. We don't delete such articles, we edit them and repair POV to NPOV, citations from reliable sources and check our opinions at the door. Wzrd1 ( talk) 07:00, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
- This is horrific reasoning. Oh, Wikipedia is a shitpile, let's just pile on more shit. Horrific.
Jytdog (
talk) 06:15, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was no consensus. slakr\ talk / 07:35, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
The Hum
- The Hum ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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The obvious thing to do with this article is redirect it to infrasound as it is a WP:POVFORK whose title is blatant WP:OR, but fans refuse to allow that and insist it be brought to AfD even though it does not need deleting, only redirecting. The sources are largely unreliable, the title is, as I say, OR (a few places have infrasound known colloquially as The Foo Hum, most places with infrasound there is little or no coverage, it being a natural phenomenon and not necessarily constant). Many people who think they hear infrasound actually have tinnitus - that would be me, as well - but that's an aside: in the end there is only one subject, infrasound, but two articles, of which this has the worse title and content. Guy ( Help!) 23:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
- Speedy Keep per WP:SK, "fails to advance an argument for deletion—perhaps only proposing a non-deletion action...". Andrew D. ( talk) 00:00, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- And that is precisely why I redirected it and so did someonme else, as I noted above, but the artiucle's fans, as also noted above, refuse to allow this without a deletion debate because, as noted on the article's talk page, they do not understand that no AfD is necessary when an article is a
WP:POVFORK with an
WP:OR title. I should have said that in the nomination. Oh, wait, I did.
Guy (
Help!) 16:34, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- That is not an adequate reason to come forum shopping here. WP:SK clearly indicates that such inappropriate nominations should be immediately dismissed. You didn't get consensus at that talk page and you're not getting it here. Please see WP:POINT. Andrew D. ( talk) 17:07, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- As I said, the fans of the article demanded an AfD. I do actually know policy, being an admin and all, I also know that there is absolutely no point trying for consensus when the only people who give a damn are fans of the article. If we insisted on that, it would be virtually impossible to get rid of any POV fork. Guy ( Help!) 22:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Ahem. IIRC I believe I said at the time that I did not believe your rationale for blanking the article wasn't strong, so you can hardly blame me for your choice to launch this AfD or couch it in weird weasel terms. Jjust stopping edit warring and leaving the article alone was an option too, for instance. Also this is the third time you've disparaged editors participating in good faith and making policy arguments as "fans" or "fanbois", if you count the somewhat WP:CANVASy discussion on WP:FTN [1] - I would remind you to remain WP:CIVIL and avoid personal attacks on other users. Artw ( talk) 23:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- As you've posted on my Talk page, I may be one of the people you're referring to. I'm interested in this subject, not because I'm a fanboy, but because I hear (or perceive) a noise. I was surprised to find out that others do. I feel no sense of group affinity because of this. I rule out no (sensible) and reliably sourced explanation, as you might notice from the discussions I've had with a certain editor over the reliability of his work.
- You've made no effort to talk this out. That's fine if it's an accepted way of dealing with articles that attract problem editors; I can see how that might be necessary. However, please don't suggest that you were forced into a corner here, as you made no effort whatsoever to achieve anything like consensus, or even to notify interested editors of your intent ahead of time. Incidentally, as you are an admin, I'd like to register that the majority of the merge or delete comments on this page (including your OP) refer to infrasound, which has not been sourced on this page or on the Hum's. And that, without inviting trouble, you haven't responded to my querying of your assertion that the sources are largely unreliable. Bromley86 ( talk) 02:35, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
- And that is precisely why I redirected it and so did someonme else, as I noted above, but the artiucle's fans, as also noted above, refuse to allow this without a deletion debate because, as noted on the article's talk page, they do not understand that no AfD is necessary when an article is a
WP:POVFORK with an
WP:OR title. I should have said that in the nomination. Oh, wait, I did.
Guy (
Help!) 16:34, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep The reliable sources on the article seem to prove general notability. Yes, when stuff like this gets discussed on The Joe Rogan Experience it attracts FRINGE material, too. That's not a reason for deletion. Chris Troutman ( talk) 00:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- omg this is now my 2nd favorite article on WP (after Reptilians. The B-movie-ness of the title is delectable and i am all swoony. But seriously, this article must go. MERGE INTO INFRASOUND. Jytdog ( talk) 00:09, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep I'm not really seeing anything at Infrasound for it to be a POV fork of, and there's articles covering it as "The Hum" here, so I don't believe it is WP:OR: [2] [3] Artw ( talk) 00:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep. What unreliable source? Okay, the West Seattle Blog might fail, but it might not; Frosch & Deming are iffy; the rest are reliable. I've no idea what a Foo Hum is and googling it doesn't help. Incidentally, as you say, one of the current explanations given is not infrasound, it's tinnitus, which makes the suggested repointing problematic. Bromley86 ( talk) 00:42, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The sources include sound recordings ( WP:OR), personal web pages, the Daily Mail, blogs etc. The reliable sources are about infrasound (or more often they refer to low frequency noise, which we redirect there). Causes such as tinnitus, the jetstream, submarine communications etc. are discussed. Nothing establishes that there are two subjects. There is only one subject, and this is the title which is WP:OR with the content that is more inclined to be drawn from unreliable sources to advance a specific viewpoint. In other words, the WP:POVFORK. Guy ( Help!) 16:45, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The personal web page (singular) and the sound recording (singular) are both associated with Tom Moir, an academic who's looked into a hum in Auckland and who's frequently interviewed in reliable sources in relation to that (and the Wellington one). We can discuss whether or not both sources qualify as reliable WP:SPS. Likewise, the Daily Mail is usually seen as a reliable source in this sort of context; it's only used twice (both times because it supports non-controversial points). The blog (singular, again) is the West Seattle Blog. Okay, not a WP:NEWSBLOG, but seemed pretty reliable when I added it (although I now know the difference). It'll be easy enough to replace, although ironically this is one of those cases where the WP:RS will frequently repeat outdated information.
- Not sure which article you're reading, as there's no mention of the jetstream or subs in The Hum. The article mentions mechanical sources (
infrasoundlow frequency noise), fish (infrasoundlow frequency noise) and tinnitus (which you don't talk about). Bromley86 ( talk) 17:46, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep. Multiple reliable sources are evident in the article as it exists. Not the same topic as infrasound, although they are related; this article is about the various "hums" claimed to exist around the world, with such claims substantiated in reliable sources. The lede should be a little more explicit about this being a notable, but disputed and possibly fringe-science, topic. But that does not justify a defacto evisceration of all this well-sourced content by redirect. -- Arxiloxos ( talk) 00:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Come on, you all. This is so obviously a POVFORK
WP:FRINGE article - the real, relevant science is discussed in
Infrasound. See for example
Chemtrail conspiracy theory (that is treated as such!) and
Contrail. For pete's sake!
Jytdog (
talk) 00:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I get your point, those appear to be two separate articles? surely as an example you'd want to use an article that has been successfuly blanked and redirected?
Artw (
talk) 01:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Chemtrail Conspiracy theory is to Contrails as The Hum is to Infrasound. But The Hum takes itself seriously (a disaster) and should be merged into a section of Infrasound. Please note that Low frequency sound redirects to Infrasound) but The Hum"!!! The Creature from the Black Lagoon! The Blob! It would be funny it weren't so sad. Well it is funny. Jytdog ( talk) 01:09, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I get your point, those appear to be two separate articles? surely as an example you'd want to use an article that has been successfuly blanked and redirected?
Artw (
talk) 01:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Come on, you all. This is so obviously a POVFORK
WP:FRINGE article - the real, relevant science is discussed in
Infrasound. See for example
Chemtrail conspiracy theory (that is treated as such!) and
Contrail. For pete's sake!
Jytdog (
talk) 00:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Merge I support merging what little content is really necessary to the article on
infrasound. Should the outcome of this discussion not result in a merge, then it might be reasonable to add a section to the infrasound article on locations where infrasound has been broadly reported and then propose merging the articles thereafter. But I agree with Jytdog and others that this seems to be an attempt to dramatize what is apparently a natural phenomenon. There might be places where the infrasound is more notable than others, but there is no reason to think that it is not just infrasound.
John Carter (
talk) 01:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- No-one seems quite sure what the cause of this phenomenon is and tinnitus commonly appears in the sources as a possible alternative explanation. Merger into a particular cause such as infrasound would be quite improper in such circumstances. Andrew D. ( talk) 10:56, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- No one else, other than wikipedia, seems to believe that this so-called "phenomenon" is a single phenomenon, rather than a set of possibly similar, but distinct, phenomena. The fact that much low frequency sound can be counted as tinnitus is also not sufficient to say that the other possible causes of low frequency sound might not be applicable in these separate cases. John Carter ( talk) 17:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the
list of Science-related deletion discussions.
• Gene93k (
talk) 01:57, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- "The Hum" - the very title directly references' low frequency sound - Infrasound. Jytdog ( talk) 13:13, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Infrasound, by definition, is too low in frequency to be heard. A hum, on the other hand, is audible. So that we understand the term more exactly, here's the OED definition, "A low continuous sound made by a bee or other insect, also, by a spinning top, machinery in motion, etc. (Distinguished from a buzz by not being sibilant.)" We have a separate article on that topic: hum (sound) and so the proposal to merge to infrasound is clearly tendentious in that it is favouring a particular explanation of the mysterious phenomenon. None of this has any business being discussed at AFD because AFD is not cleanup. Andrew D. ( talk) 13:25, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- As already mentioned above,
Low frequency sound - sound - redirects to Infrasound, and that article talks about some people being able to hear it. The merge is the way to go. The Hum article, besides having a ridiculous title, is a mixture of hookum and poorly understood science.
Jytdog (
talk) 13:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- You're still not addressing why something that may be
tinnitus, a perceived noise in the absence of an external sound, should be merged with something that is the definition of not being tinnitus.
Bromley86 (
talk) 15:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- And you haven't addressed the rebuttal to that seemingly straw man argument which seems to be predicated on the possibility because one cause of infrasound phenomena is in some cases tinnitus. In fact, that argument seems to assume, illogically, that there can be no cases of infrasound which might not be possibly tinnitus. Nor do I see anything in the article which explicitly makes the assumption inherent in the article itself that the phenomenon is causally a single phenomenon, rather than the more likely possibility that perhaps one or more environmental conditions in distinct areas, coupled with perhaps some genetic variations in certain communities, might not be involved. In short, the article seems to be, to some extent, asserting that similar but not necessarily identical phenomena perceived in widely disparate areas by only a portion of the population in those areas must, somehow, all be at least potentially causally connected, when in fact there is nothing in any really reliable sources which seems to be making that statement.
- One might almost as seriously say that
John F. Kennedy was named after
James T. Kirk. After all, the first and last initials are the same, and the middle one has only one variation which might have some sort of hidden significance that only some people can understand. Regarding the temporal disparity and the fact that one is apparently fiction and the other, maybe, not fiction, well, people have different concepts of the meaning of "fiction" too, particularly in the fields of woo physics.
John Carter (
talk) 17:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The straw man here is this Kennedy/Kirk drivel which seems utterly irrelevant. A better example of a similar phenomenon might be the
phantom vibration syndrome. We could merge that to
vibration but that would be silly as the topic is about perception not just the basic physics.
Andrew D. (
talk) 17:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I have seen nothing to date, in the article or here, which specifically addresses the issue of how these disparate phenomena in disparate areas are somehow reasonably described as being "the hum", or, for that matter, "the" anything. The obvious implicit assumption in the title, and in the article itself, that there is some sort of common basis to these phenomena, and the attempts to somehow try to find some sort of common basis for the phenomena beyond the obvious scientific explanations for infrasound, raises very serious questions, already pointed out by others, as to whether the content of this article is some sort of SYNTH violation to try to implicitly draw a conclusion regarding these particular phenomena perhaps not even raised in the sources themselves. That being the case, in I believe any objective review of the relevant content, this article is a rather clear fork for a POV that somehow these specific phenomena are in some way causally related in a way, and, honestly, the evidence presented does not justify that implicit assumption in both the article and its title.
John Carter (
talk) 18:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Our article calls this "The Hum" because that's the common name used by sources such as the BBC and The Independent. Other types of mysterious noise have other names such as skyquake or bloop. The fact that no-one's quite sure what causes them is not a reason to delete or dismiss such topics. There are many phenomena which may have multiple causes such as headache or dizziness. It's like the title of the book I'm currently reading, I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That. Andrew D. ( talk) 12:55, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
- I have seen nothing to date, in the article or here, which specifically addresses the issue of how these disparate phenomena in disparate areas are somehow reasonably described as being "the hum", or, for that matter, "the" anything. The obvious implicit assumption in the title, and in the article itself, that there is some sort of common basis to these phenomena, and the attempts to somehow try to find some sort of common basis for the phenomena beyond the obvious scientific explanations for infrasound, raises very serious questions, already pointed out by others, as to whether the content of this article is some sort of SYNTH violation to try to implicitly draw a conclusion regarding these particular phenomena perhaps not even raised in the sources themselves. That being the case, in I believe any objective review of the relevant content, this article is a rather clear fork for a POV that somehow these specific phenomena are in some way causally related in a way, and, honestly, the evidence presented does not justify that implicit assumption in both the article and its title.
John Carter (
talk) 18:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The straw man here is this Kennedy/Kirk drivel which seems utterly irrelevant. A better example of a similar phenomenon might be the
phantom vibration syndrome. We could merge that to
vibration but that would be silly as the topic is about perception not just the basic physics.
Andrew D. (
talk) 17:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- You're still not addressing why something that may be
tinnitus, a perceived noise in the absence of an external sound, should be merged with something that is the definition of not being tinnitus.
Bromley86 (
talk) 15:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- As already mentioned above,
Low frequency sound - sound - redirects to Infrasound, and that article talks about some people being able to hear it. The merge is the way to go. The Hum article, besides having a ridiculous title, is a mixture of hookum and poorly understood science.
Jytdog (
talk) 13:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- it probably should be noted that per WP:UNDUE any kind of merge will result in at most a paragraph being added to the Infrasound article, if that.
Artw (
talk) 15:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I enjoy the irony of your noting that and failing to spot the obvious inference of
WP:FRINGE.
Guy (
Help!) 16:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The topic has been repeatedly covered by mainstream media such as New Scientist, the BBC, the Guardian &c. It is therefore not fringe to the point that we should ignore it. The infrasound article is a very general one about a particular frequency of sound. Low, penetrating sounds may be produced by a variety of causes such as
foghorns,
whale song,
thunder, &c. These all have separate articles and so should this because it is notable phenomenon which has received widespread and continuing attention.
Andrew D. (
talk) 16:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
-
WP:FRINGE absolutely would apply to both articles, as it does all articles. However
WP:FRINGE simply isn't the magic stick for deletion it's that Guy believes it to be - in the case of
The Hum he'd have to make individual edits and justify them, not blank it and run off into the sunset.
Artw (
talk) 17:16, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP:FRINGE doesn't seem especially important here because that is concerned with particular theories. The primary topic here is a phenomenon (people complaining about an annoying noise). There are a variety of theories about what's going on but, as none of them seem dominant yet, it seems to be anyone's guess as to what the truth of the matter is. Andrew D. ( talk) 17:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
-
WP:FRINGE absolutely would apply to both articles, as it does all articles. However
WP:FRINGE simply isn't the magic stick for deletion it's that Guy believes it to be - in the case of
The Hum he'd have to make individual edits and justify them, not blank it and run off into the sunset.
Artw (
talk) 17:16, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- The topic has been repeatedly covered by mainstream media such as New Scientist, the BBC, the Guardian &c. It is therefore not fringe to the point that we should ignore it. The infrasound article is a very general one about a particular frequency of sound. Low, penetrating sounds may be produced by a variety of causes such as
foghorns,
whale song,
thunder, &c. These all have separate articles and so should this because it is notable phenomenon which has received widespread and continuing attention.
Andrew D. (
talk) 16:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- I enjoy the irony of your noting that and failing to spot the obvious inference of
WP:FRINGE.
Guy (
Help!) 16:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- it probably should be noted that per WP:UNDUE any kind of merge will result in at most a paragraph being added to the Infrasound article, if that.
Artw (
talk) 15:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
WP:THINGSPEOPLECOMPLAINABOUT is not a notability criteria. We can only write articles on subjects that have been studied seriously. This subject has not been studied seriously and there are no
reliable sources which even identify it as a coherent phenomenon except for
fringe sources. Thus the appeal to
WP:FRINGE.
jps (
talk) 20:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP:THINGSTHATHAVESTUDIEDSERIOUSLY is not a notability criteria either. This is Wikipedia where we have WikiProject Bacon and the main page currently has a picture of someone dressed as a side of bacon (see right). The Hum is looking quite serious in this company. For example, we have the BBC - a serious mainstream organisation - reporting that the audiology department of Addenbrookes - a serious hospital - investigated the matter for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - a serious ministry. Andrew D. ( talk) 23:12, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- It takes minimal reading comprehension of WP:GNG to see that it clearly covers "things that have been studied seriously". jps ( talk) 01:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- It takes minimal reading comprehension to see that the phrase which QTxVi4bEMRbrNqOorWBV puts in quotation marks doesn't appear anywhere in WP:GNG. That guideline doesn't use the word serious at all. What the guideline requires is that we have independent, secondary sources with editorial integrity. Sources such as the BBC and New Scientist. Q.E.D. Andrew D. ( talk) 08:28, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- From that BBC article, Baguley (Addenbrooke's) said "in about two thirds of cases no external noise could be found", and the Leventhall (DEFRA) said "It's been a mystery for 40 years so it may well remain one for a lot longer." In both cases, they appear to currently believe that the Hum (or the hums that they've looked at, as distinct from, say, the hums that have been confirmed as low frequency sound (mechanical or fish)) is effectively a case of
Hyperacusis. I.e. they're not suggesting that these people can hear sounds that are below the threshold of human hearing (aka infrasound), but they are suggesting that people are fixating on something (either internal or external). The Baguley mentioned above is the same one used to cite almost the entirety of the Hyperacusis article.
Bromley86 (
talk) 00:15, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Then this is an argument that this article is a POV-fork of hyperacusis. Doesn't change the overall point that there is no evidence that this is anything. I can point to government-sponsored investigations into all sorts of things that turned out to be nothing -- for example, whether $2 fees for paying a bill online are justifiable. Wikipedia articles are not written on the basis of the government investigating a complaint. C.f., the lack of a Two dollar online payment fee article. jps ( talk) 01:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Merge - I agree with John Carter's assessment. The sources in the article don't support separating this into a separate article. If the article is kept for whatever reason, it needs to be gutted and seriously reworked, because it's a mess in no small part due to the recent flurry of edits to the page. Even in an ideal state, however, it wouldn't warrant a standalone article. - Aoidh ( talk) 14:45, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
- Delete with redirect per above, POVFORK of infrasound loaded with OR. The content is a mess of OR not enough quality material to merge. - - MrBill3 ( talk) 05:06, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- Comment. Merging with Infrasound (as distinct from the Low frequency noise redirect page, which the creator acknowledged was a mispointing) is further complicated by the definition of infrasound (a "sound that is lower in frequency than 20 Hz"). There's been no suggestion that the sounds covered in the current Hum article are in that range (common ranges are 40-85 Hz). The hums attributed to toadfish, for example, would have been around 100 Hz; [4] other sonic fish that have been reported in a hum context can go up to 500 Hz. [5] I.e. low frequency, but not infrasound. Bromley86 ( talk) 12:24, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- Reasonable and valid comment. Much of the sound range in question might fall outside the range of infrasound, but within the range of low frequency noise. That however, might not preclude moving this page to low frequency noise in the short term, with perhaps a merger discussion after the move if appropriate. I am assuming, perhaps unfoundedly, but I doubt it, that pretty much the entire range of sonic frequencies can be determined to be notable at some level, given the amount of information on the topic out there. John Carter ( talk) 18:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- Delete as a POVFORK of infrasound or low frequency noise. No redirect necessary as no independent sources have identified this as a phenomenon worthy of study. Once sociologists take notice of this, we can write an article. Until then, we need to remove the temptation to be on the cutting edge of describing new-fangled ideas that show up on Joe Rogan's show. jps ( talk) 20:52, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP article created in 2005. Hum section in 2003 in a UK government report into low frequency noise (there are plenty of earlier references, but that's a solid academic reference), so it's not like we're talking about a WP-fueled phrase.
[6]: 43 The point is that this is, rightly or wrongly, a phenomenon (or, more likely, a series of phenomena) that the press report on. They reported on it before WP was here, they're still reporting it (Taos is the most famous: LA Times, 1993,
[7] but there have been earlier ones (I just can't link to the reports). As mentioned above, infrasound literally makes no sense. Low frequency noise works for the majority of the explanations, but doesn't allow for the possibility that (for a number of people) it's an internally generated noise.
Bromley86 (
talk) 23:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm not arguing that this is a
neologism. I'm arguing that the topic is subsumed by other articles we have on Wikipedia. In cases such as this, what is essentially going on is a
synthesis of news-of-the-weird stories that superficially sound the same, or may have even been collated by some
Fortean or
Riplean. But inclusion of a flight-of-fancy in a collection of flight-of-fancy material is not a notability criterion at Wikipedia for good reason: we need better sources than that. If there are a dozen instances of people observing green ghosts over the course of 20 years, we don't go and write a
green ghost article. There are plenty of places to write about each notable green ghost sighting where they can be explained properly. The obvious choices for the instances measured in this piece of poorly curated tall tales are already listed as proposed redirects and instances of POV-forks.
jps (
talk) 01:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Articles do tend to be considered content forks if the topic is already covered in general by another extant article and the content of the alleged fork can be seen as being a comparatively one-sided representation of one side of a debate. There, are, I'm guessing, articles on all the places where the hum has been reported. It would certainly be possible that some of the material might be included there. There is also at least a probability (I haven't actually checked) that there is grounds for an article on low-frequency noise distinct from infrasound. If there is, that would logically be the place for most of the content relating to low-frequency noises. This article can be seen, in a sense, as being more than anything else a Low frequency sound in popular culture article. Honestly, there are so far as I can tell solid reasons to believe we could have a lot more "(whatever) in popular culture" articles than we now have. But that is a separate issue, except for perhaps renaming. The question the above editor raises is whether this is effectively a POV fork, and I think the evidence indicates it may well be. The fact that there are proposals, of various levels of rationality, for any number of unusual possibilities does not mean that those proposals need to be presented separately in what might be an UNDUE weight way. John Carter ( talk) 02:03, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Baguely says that it's low frequency noise 1/3 of the time. 2/3 of the time, he theorises, it's hyperacusis. The people who looked at the Taos hum theorise that it's an internally generated noise.
[8] One local government-funded investigation where they isolated, and reduced, a low frequency noise didn't fix the problem.
[9] So, whilst low frequency noise is an obvious cause (and indeed has been the cause of some reported hums
[10]), it's not necessarily a correct one. The point is though that these are all lumped together by reliable sources precisely because no one knows, in the majority of cases which haven't been traced to a mechanical source, what's going on.
Bromley86 (
talk) 06:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I've seen no reliable source do any "lumping". For example, I haven't seen an peer-reviewed papers on the subject. Nor have I seen any sources which do not violate
WP:FRIND or are simply news-of-the-weird compilations.
jps (
talk) 12:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I think this is a key point you raise. There are, to my knowledge, no sources that are both reliable and academic, peer-reviewed that examine all possible sources of the Hum. There was Deming,
[11] but he chose to publish in the JSE, so that doesn't qualify. There are, however, a large number of reliable news outlets that have reported, and not as part of a news-of-the-weird compilation; the BBC one linked earlier is a good example. As the possible explanations are all theories, none of which have been proved (except in a few cases that were obviously mechanical or fish), these news sources often lump all the possibilities together. Again, referring to that BBC source,
[12] we have tinnitus, hyperacusis & low frequency noise mentioned by experts, as is the fact that isolating the noise in Kokomo worked for some, but not all.
Bromley86 (
talk) 19:00, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm somehow not as impressed with the BBC magazine article as others are. It strikes me as one of those human interest stories that can be used in the
tinnitus,
hyperacusis or
low frequency noise articles but doesn't lend itself to a justification of notability.
jps (
talk) 23:17, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- Not to make a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument, but we have an article on fan death. Has anyone died because of being in a closed room with a fan? No. But there are sources that talk about the phenomenon of the belief regardless that it's a fallacy. There's a belief in "the Hum" like there's a belief in fan death or Santa Claus. I think the rational people think this article is validating the belief; I think this article is merely explaining what the belief is. Chris Troutman ( talk) 16:26, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'm somehow not as impressed with the BBC magazine article as others are. It strikes me as one of those human interest stories that can be used in the
tinnitus,
hyperacusis or
low frequency noise articles but doesn't lend itself to a justification of notability.
jps (
talk) 23:17, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I think this is a key point you raise. There are, to my knowledge, no sources that are both reliable and academic, peer-reviewed that examine all possible sources of the Hum. There was Deming,
[11] but he chose to publish in the JSE, so that doesn't qualify. There are, however, a large number of reliable news outlets that have reported, and not as part of a news-of-the-weird compilation; the BBC one linked earlier is a good example. As the possible explanations are all theories, none of which have been proved (except in a few cases that were obviously mechanical or fish), these news sources often lump all the possibilities together. Again, referring to that BBC source,
[12] we have tinnitus, hyperacusis & low frequency noise mentioned by experts, as is the fact that isolating the noise in Kokomo worked for some, but not all.
Bromley86 (
talk) 19:00, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I've seen no reliable source do any "lumping". For example, I haven't seen an peer-reviewed papers on the subject. Nor have I seen any sources which do not violate
WP:FRIND or are simply news-of-the-weird compilations.
jps (
talk) 12:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm not arguing that this is a
neologism. I'm arguing that the topic is subsumed by other articles we have on Wikipedia. In cases such as this, what is essentially going on is a
synthesis of news-of-the-weird stories that superficially sound the same, or may have even been collated by some
Fortean or
Riplean. But inclusion of a flight-of-fancy in a collection of flight-of-fancy material is not a notability criterion at Wikipedia for good reason: we need better sources than that. If there are a dozen instances of people observing green ghosts over the course of 20 years, we don't go and write a
green ghost article. There are plenty of places to write about each notable green ghost sighting where they can be explained properly. The obvious choices for the instances measured in this piece of poorly curated tall tales are already listed as proposed redirects and instances of POV-forks.
jps (
talk) 01:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
- WP article created in 2005. Hum section in 2003 in a UK government report into low frequency noise (there are plenty of earlier references, but that's a solid academic reference), so it's not like we're talking about a WP-fueled phrase.
[6]: 43 The point is that this is, rightly or wrongly, a phenomenon (or, more likely, a series of phenomena) that the press report on. They reported on it before WP was here, they're still reporting it (Taos is the most famous: LA Times, 1993,
[7] but there have been earlier ones (I just can't link to the reports). As mentioned above, infrasound literally makes no sense. Low frequency noise works for the majority of the explanations, but doesn't allow for the possibility that (for a number of people) it's an internally generated noise.
Bromley86 (
talk) 23:54, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Redirect to Infrasound and merge some of this article's material there. The current article is just a list of places where people have been disturbed by infrasounds, together with some speculations of various quality. This could be covered more breifly and without undue weight to low notability material, in the article which actually was made for the topic, i.e. Infrasound. - Anonimski ( talk) 00:41, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- As has been said, sounds >20 Hz, as these are, are not infrasound. Bromley86 ( talk) 02:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Split The current Hum article has no clear definition. This is surprising because already 20 years ago the study of Mullins and Kelly gave the proof that Hum is an internal phenomenon. Nowadays two groups are actively impeding each other in The Hum article: The group working for an internal source and the group for an external source. Hum should be divided into these two groups. The internal source group can still be handed as “The Hum”, because Hum is not the common central tinnitus; the external group should be handed under the already existing Wikipedia-groups “Industrial noise” and “Environmental noise”. The group that wants to change “the Hum” into “Infrasound” in my opinion belongs to the new “The Hum” group of an internal sound. These Hearers are now looking for Infrasound as a realistically not existing source for their Hum: “It is “rubbish” to refer The Hum to an external noise, says Hazell, head of research at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. 'Everybody who has tinnitus complains at first of environmental noise. 'Hummers' are a group of people who cannot accept that they have tinnitus. About 4 per cent of them may genuinely be hearing low-frequency noise, but this shouldn't be a problem. Low-frequency noise has always been with us. It's caused by the wind and the rain.” Brummfrosch ( talk) 15:53, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- The title is still
WP:OR and the content is still easily handled in
infrasound and
tinnitus. There is no third subject.
Guy (
Help!) 22:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Whether you prove to be correct about the article or it's pointing, the statement that the title is WP:OR is absolutely incorrect. Ignoring all the media reports that refer to "the hum", as opposed to "the xxx hum", you have this DEFRA report on it that has a section called "The Hum" (actually "The HUM", but I assume that's a typo). [13] So not OR. Also, as has repeatedly been said, your insistence that it is infrasound is entirely at odds with what experts have stated in reliable sources. Do you have a source for that? Bromley86 ( talk) 02:53, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
- The title is still
WP:OR and the content is still easily handled in
infrasound and
tinnitus. There is no third subject.
Guy (
Help!) 22:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Redirect, merging in whatever tiny bits of actually useful content might be found in this morass of non-notable fringery, non-reliable sources and synthesis. -- Orange Mike | Talk 00:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
- A so-called reliable source says nothing about the quality of the information published. The paper has to be scientifically sound. To judge that issue, a scientific knowledge is needed. This is the general problem for Wikipedia. As long as it is not accepted that Hum is a global phenomenon, some local phenomena like “Mechanical devices” and “Fish”, and nowadays “Infrasound” as possible explanations do expose the whole article to ridicule. If we are not able to make this clear definition, I recommend deleting the whole “The Hum”, because it is of no information to hum-sufferers. Brummfrosch ( talk) 14:21, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
- Keep, the phenomenon has been widely reported. Granted, there is a lot of POV and pseudoscience mixed in, but if we delete articles over that, Wikipedia would only have a few Good Articles and otherwise be blank. A merge into infrasound would be erroneous, as by the very definition of infrasound, it's inaudible. One prior iteration of the article mentioned the source of one hum being located in an industrial air exchanger, which is gone now. A re-write of the article, with meticulous citations, from reliable sources would be worthy.
Wzrd1 (
talk) 19:16, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
- This is horrific reasoning. Oh, Wikipedia is a shitpile, let's just pile on more shit. Horrific.
Jytdog (
talk) 06:15, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
- Apparently, you have a reading comprehension problem. I said that the article would require a re-write, with meticulous citations, from reliable sources would be worthy. So, the only shitpile present is what you put forth as a response. The article as it currently stands is utter rubbish, with a few facts thrown in. It was previously of better quality (I'm thinking of around 2 years back or so), with not as much POV or pseudoscience assaulting one's intelligence. We don't delete such articles, we edit them and repair POV to NPOV, citations from reliable sources and check our opinions at the door. Wzrd1 ( talk) 07:00, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
- This is horrific reasoning. Oh, Wikipedia is a shitpile, let's just pile on more shit. Horrific.
Jytdog (
talk) 06:15, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.