Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Socionomics

message: Excerpts from "I Know What You'll Do Next Summer," New Scientist, 31 August 2002.
"Prechter's theory, which he calls socionomics, is that the units in a social system, whether they are investors, voters, music fans or shoppers, tend to base their decisions on what they see others doing. In other words, they herd. These decisions are then translated into a social mood, which shows up in indicators such as the Dow Jones, hemlines, lyrics in songs, and so on. Armed with Elliott waves, you can start forecasting all sorts of things. Indeed, Prechter has had astonishing successes with the method in areas where no one else is even trying."
"Take Major League Baseball, for example. In 1991, the sport enjoyed what some commentators felt was its most exciting season ever. Fans got so enthusiastic that a record 760,000 of them turned out to welcome the two teams returning to Atlanta and Minneapolis from the World Series, despite the fact that it was sleeting in Minneapolis. Players, owners and leagues predicted ever-increasing popularity for the sport, and cities began building new stadiums."
"But socionomics predicted exactly the opposite. Prechter plotted the go-year annual ticket sales for Major League Baseball and identified an unmistakable Elliott wave. Immediately following the 1992 season, he wrote: "If you're an investor, take profits on baseball cards. If you're a player, sign a longterm contract. If you're an owner, sell your club." In the ensuing months, the speculative bubble in baseball-card prices burst, the stock price of card maker Topps collapsed, a players' strike cancelled the 1994 World Series and the TV ratings for the World Series began a steady fall to an all-time low."
"Socionomics completely turns on its head the idea that events shape social mood. Since trends in social mood produce Elliott-wave patterns, the mood itself must follow a definite pattern. And if that's true, it certainly cannot be the result of external events, which are random and don't follow set trends. The only possible conclusion, Prechter argues, is that the direction of causation goes the other way: social mood actually shapes events. Work out the social mood by looking at stock market data, Prechter says, and you can then predict future social events."
"The accounting scandal that emerged within Enron could not have been what discouraged investors and collapsed the company. The stock market was declining in the period before the malpractice came to light, and most investors knew nothing about the shady dealing prior to or anytime during the stock market's fall. And while the scandal unfolded, primarily from November to March, the market actually grew again. Even as the Enron drama developed, investor and consumer psychology improved and stock prices rose. So what really happened? From the socionomic point of view, it was the investors who precipitated the Enron scandal, not the other way round. Stock prices had been falling for a full 18 months prior to the event. Enron stock also retreated, undermining investor support. By the time the controversy came to light, the trend toward an increasingly negative mood was already over. In fact, by late September of last year, it was time for the market to make its largest move upward in over a year-and-a-half. The psychological climate of this bull market encouraged companies to mislead investors. The mass psychology of the stock mania prompted investors to accept all manner of corporate falsehoods that reflected and reinforced their ebullient mood. So it wasn't misdoings that killed the stock prices, it was simply that crashing stock prices eventually drew attention to the corporate misdeeds. That's socionomic thinking for you."
From Technical Analysis Plain and Simple, pp. 127-128.
Another new social science, called socionomics, has gotten a following as an extension of one method of technical analysis called Elliott Wave analysis. Robert Prechter, CMT, is credited with the unique view that social mood causes events in the world, and not the other way around.
For example, stock market crashes do not make people gloomy, but gloomy people act in such a way that sets up stock market crashes.
Wars, government intervention in business, corporate scandals, fashion, movies, sports, and many other non-market related trends all have their place in the ebb and flow of social mood. Prechter says that the stock market is the single best indicator of this mood in that it is immediate and has analyzable history going back for centuries. No other data stream can match that.
With that in mind, he found that wars break out when bear markets are at their worst, and bubble gum music and pop culture is at its peak as bull markets approach their climaxes. Bull market sports do well when stocks do well, but the more violent major sports do better in bear markets.
It is not the waxing and waning of different parts of culture and society that affect the stock market and social mood, but social mood, as evidenced in the stock market, which creates changes in culture and society.
Again, this is beyond the scope of this book, but even novice technical analysts can use many of its observations as subjective sentiment indicators with regard to how they invest. Did the last boy band music CD do well or was the latest number-one hit darker industrial fare? Was the last blockbuster movie a Disney cartoon or a Friday the 13th gore fest? The answers help determine if the social mood is positive or negative, and may help investors determine how aggressive to be no matter if they are bull or bear.
From Behavioral Trading, p. 26.
Chaos Whups the Walk
Chaos theory actually provided a basis for directly refuting the random walk. Robert Prechter, in his book, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics, referring to Cunningham's 1993 paper, "Unit Root Testing: A Critique from Chaos Theory" came to the following conclusion: "Neither the Samuelson-Fama tests for efficient markets nor the popularly used Dickey-Fuller (1979) test for unit roots can successfully discriminate between a fully deterministic time series, generated from a nonlinear (chaotic) process, and a random walk. A researcher applying these methods to a simple nonlinear price process would be misled into believing that such a series is a random walk." What appears to be random may never in fact be random.
--Rgfolsom 08:31, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

message: I am a relative newbie who is impressed by the smart and articulate people who are volunteering massive amounts of time to try to make wikipedia work. Progress (in anything) is always messy, and this nomination is a study in that. If I can make an observation, please, without stepping on any of those well-meaning toes: It seems clear that an assumption of good faith by an initiating party generally begets good faith in response. On the other hand, an assumption of bad faith on the part of an initiator is almost guaranteed bad faith in response. This must be as true on wikipedia as it is in the real world, if not moreso because of wikipedia's anonymity.  Anyway, when a move to delete clearly assumes good faith on the part of contributors to an article, then the nominating editor has a right to expect that assumption in return -- despite the fact his nominating act is implicitly aggressive in nature. But when the nominator’s implied (or stated) stance is that the contributor has labored in bad faith, well, he should pretty much expect bad faith in return. We (or the wikipedia community) should not then hold the respondent to a higher standard of conduct than the initiator! In fact, some might argue the reverse is closer to the appropriate stance. 
I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise this issue on wikipedia. It seems particularly applicable here. Thanks for the chance to articulate it.--MarkA12 19:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you had a chance to read assume the assumption of good faith?  There's a few good points there.  Semperf 23:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Semperf. Points taken. If you don't mind my asking: Are you aware of anything within wikipedia that helps an editor establish and communicate a sincere assumption of good faith when initiating an action as contentious as an AfD motion?--MarkA12 02:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Hi Sdedeo, good of you to say that. Would that we could go back and refocus the nom/reaction at this late date! Anyway, perhaps some experienced nominators like you would be willing to develop a list of nom guidelines from this perspective (unless one exists already?). Maybe I'm showing my inexperience again here -- but it seems as though such a, what, "AfD Nomination Tone" guideline might end up saving time in the long run, especially as wikipedia ends up with more of these noms as the encyclopedia continues to mature and the greater need shifts away from volume. Crafting an AfD nom that does not generate an angry reaction from active contributors -- now there's an idyllic goal! But one worth striving for, for many practical and ideal reasons. Best. --MarkA12 09:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, you may be right. Hope you consider my suggestion; you'd do a good job. Best.--MarkA12 01:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  '''Good Faith/Bad Faith Standard(s)'''