Talk:Social engineering (political science)

message: the first paragraph is blatantly contradicted by the second paragraph.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.16.175.157 (talk) 04:06, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

message: The following sentence actually appears currently in this article:
"Social engineering without consent is a violation of the culture, and constitutes an assault tantamount to a rape, or seizing by force of that culture raptio."
It goes on like that for a bit actually stating at one point "In defense of the comparison to rape, ..." 
This is argumentative, purely opinion, in bad taste, is tonally wrong, and does not belong in an encyclopedia. Argument by analogy should not be in an encyclopedia and comparing things to rape really shouldn't happen anywhere. 
As it currently is the history section of this article is full of anti-engineering moral grandstanding and is in need of major revision to achieve an appropriate non-biased scientific tone about the phenomenon.
129.32.224.74 (talk) 16:32, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Outlandish Bias

message: This articles start, if not its entirety, is clearly biased toward the governments position.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.198.128.158 (talk) 09:07, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Blatant Bias

message: Consideration of "social engineering" need not be restricted to its negative implications.  For instance, the discipline of practical interventions in intergroup conflicts propose manipulating group dynamics, cognitive processes, situational variables, economic rewards, and other macro level factors to moderate the negative outcomes of intergroup behavior (e.g., stereotyping, prejudice).  Indeed, one could argue that some social engineering attempts, such as affirmative action programs in the US, actually produce benefits for the society at large.  
In a democratic society, social engineering is a tool of governance, and it can be a particularly powerful one.  The use of the tool to achieve specific ends is typically driven by policy, and its impacts interpreted according to values.  As G.W. Allport noted in his 1954 volume The Nature of Prejudice: 
Democracy ...places a heavy burden upon the personality, sometimes too great to bear.  The maturely democratic person must possess subtle virtues and capacities:  an ability to think rationally about causes and effects, an ability to form properly differentiated categories in respect to ethnic groups and their traits, a willingness to award freedom to others, and a capacity to employ it constructively for oneself.  All these qualities are difficult to achieve and maintain.  It is easier to succumb to oversimplification and dogmatism, to repudiate the ambiguities inherent in a democratic society, to demand definiteness, to "escape from freedom" (pp.. 477-478).
Twenty-first century democracies leave little time for the average citizen to maintain a "maturely democratic personality."  
Just as with any other tool, persons applying social engineering in governance are ultimately responsible for the ramifications of them.  The complex and chaotic nature of society complicates forecasting these ramifications beyond the overt and immediate.  A practicioner of the science of social engineering ultimately relies on his or her own values, and of those groups they represent, to direct the application of their craft to serve what he or she considers desirable social policy.
Therefore, even though social engineering can be used to manipulate individuals and groups for selfish gain (e.g., demagoguery), it can also be used to encourage behaviors for a greater good (e.g., conservation and pollution control).  Our conviction must be that if we can control the forces of society, we must also practice mature democracy. User:DrCotton (sig added by Sam Spade  16:01, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the article is less than neutral in its presentation of the subject. it also focuses overmuch on a large quote. Sam Spade  16:01, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

text: I also agree that the article is much much too negative and one-sided. Added NPOV tag. The general quality and detail of the article also needs significant work Bwithh 14:11, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree too, more that the article is of poor standard, as I believe that countering civil liberties will inherently give a bias regardless of the views of the author. --62.190.198.154 10:18, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Article is negative

message: I've cleaned up the page formatting slightly and changed the cleanup for an expand tag. It doesn't need a cleanup as so much as a lot more info. - FrancisTyers 12:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup

message: Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (2001) by Benjamin Nathans quotes Terence Emmons (himself cited in Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (1994), p. vii), who describes Tsar Alexander II's domestic policies as "the greatest single piece of state-directed social engineering in modern European history before the twentieth century" (p 69).
The term social engineering is used here with particular reference to Alex. II's use of (1) policies that promoted the political and geographic integration of Jews, their commercial markets and social lives into the Russian mainstream, and (2) the selective use of these policies toward Jews deemed good for the Empire, i.e., university graduates, successful merchants, highly proficient artisans or retired Russian soldiers, so as encourage scholarship, commerce, and military service.
Social engineering? Please comment.
Omphaloscope » talk 22:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social engineering of Jews in Imperial Russia 

message: First it fails to capture the real essence of the term and it's commonest connotation which is literally the engineering of society, i.e. as a particular social structure. Second, it fails to capture the fact the term was coined as a right wing reaction specifically to the directives of the U.S. Judiciary to enforce racial integration. Finally, and a result of the first, it ignores specific real conscious attempts at social engineering. like those of Skinner and others. For the en:wp to indicate that the common connotation of this term is social engineering (computer security) is a glaring fault. Lycurgus 02:38, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deficiencies 

message: The following was left on the disambiguation page for Social engineering, and may prove useful in relation to this article:
:"We've come to understand that almost any high impact media event is going to be used as a social engineering tool for malware," said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee. "It's such a horrible event, but at the end of the day, it's a very good social engineering tactic."Malware Sites Exploit Bhutto Assassination
--Risker (talk) 06:12, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I placed this quote because the Social engineering page requested citation and confused me, that the actual page is Wikipedia:Disambiguation. I will look at how to incorporate the quotation ny McAfee engineer into the actual article. Thank you, Igor Berger (talk) 07:19, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment placed on dab page - for consideration to be included in article 

message: The image :File:1984first.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here.  In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page.  Please check
:* That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
:* That this article is linked to from the image description page.
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --01:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Image copyright problem with File:1984first.jpg

message: This article is far from reaching its potential, I believe it needs much work. A lot of the information here seems to be misunderstood as social engineering when it is in fact describing political engineering. I've made some changes but don't want to make too many until receiving feedback and differing points of view. Thanks everyone!
--FusionHalo 05:36, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Major Revamp Needed

message: I will remove the secction "The O'Brien and Gandon theory" because:
A) It was included -without sources o references, by an IP, according to whom: "This theory was unveiled at Dublin Institute of Technology on the 10th of March 2010."
There is no data regarding any such "unveiling" in the new's archive of said institute - see Newsroom Archive 2010
The only reference in google about "the theory" is to be found in here or mirrors.
There are no reference en Google scholar about the alleged authors.
No other reference can be found in any academic literature.
All that makes me believe it was vandalism. If you know better, restore and add references. Cheers Lnegro (talk) 23:25, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing possible vandalism 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20140225211609/http://www.ideasinhistory.org/cms/index.php?page=a-knower-and-friend-of-human-beings to http://www.ideasinhistory.org/cms/index.php?page=a-knower-and-friend-of-human-beings
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 15:38, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: There is a blatant contradiction between this page, which affirms the term appeared in the late 19th century, and the French page, according to which the term should be attributed to Frédéric Leplay, who used it first at the beginning of the 19th century. There needs to be a harmonization.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.166.187.138 (talk) 19:21, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of the term 

message: I am very disappointed to have been redirected away from "Social Planning" to "Social Engineering". These are not comparable concepts. Social Engineering has the connotative meaning of being something that is done TO people from above via manipulation and authoritarian means. Social Planning is something which is done primarily at the local level with a high degree of public participation whereby a Local Government or a United Way organization allocates its resources to develop and fund programs of community service. I was involved in Social Planning for many years and we never ever attempted to "engineer" people.LAWinans (talk) 05:34, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social Planning is not Social Engineering 

message: I recommend reading Wikipedia's own entry on social planning in Toronto to get an idea as to what Social Planning involves. Also the WIKIPEDIA entry Community practice identifies Social Planning as an activity within the Social Work subfield. A quick read reveals that Social Engineering is NOT what is involved as part of Community Practice. LAWinans (talk) 05:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  See [[Social Planning Toronto]] in WIKIPEDIA 

message: See these passages:
 The video was shared on social media Facebook and viewed by 1.5 million viewers. It is believed by many Egyptians it is an act to imprint on children in order to shift their behavior... 
And then Godwin's law in action. Zezen (talk) 06:19, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pov on Egypt and maybe India