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Mega Society Deletion

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If a person is asked to leave a room or is forcibly removed does that mean they will cease to exist? If a word is removed from a dictionary does the word lose its's meaning or rather does the dictionary become incomplete? If Wikipedia had a limited amount of empty space I could understand that a hierarchy of ideas, principles, persons, places and things would merit consideration; but since that is not the case and Wikipedia's universe can expand with no penalty or Super Crunch then exorcising any Society regardless of it's size is pointless unless we want to begin a witch hunt that will grow exponentially until Wikipedia is sucked into the very black hole it is attempting to create. Nothing has energy.

Fred —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.183.34.27 (talk) 04:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crowning Glory

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Wikipedia started in 2001 and has grown with contributions from people who peer review others work. The truth of the truth comes out as the clash of differing opinions comes forth and is accepted by those that know. Those that do not know and visit observe and just nod their heads. But a percentage of the wikipedia community become self appointed deleters' of other people's work. This death of information is only superseded by the life of information generated by other persons who know and can defend the truth. The retention of this wikipedia page marks the maturation of wikipedia and crowns the medium and gives other hope and strength that the truth will prevail. RoddyYoung (talk) 06:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

article's delete debate mentioned in Noesis

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this article's delete debate was mentioned in the Noesis The Journal of the Mega Society, which I found on Google scholars travb (talk) 18:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, they are biased. They don't understand common sense stuff, I doubt anyone who can pass the Titan test could pass an RFA. They live in their own world, its a shame they don't get more active and coordinate more events and such as. 198.70.210.143 (talk) 18:29, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a reference that was pwned from the final version of this article. ~Ex ante member--go gators! 66.231.146.7 (talk) 01:27, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in those issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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I removed a paragraph that seems identical to the material here including the references. Robsavoie (talk) 23:41, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a copyright sign on the website. Anyway, limited quotation is permitted. --Michael C. Price talk 00:08, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know much about this, but I think no explicit copyright notice is required, see WP:COPYVIO. I interpret this to mean it's copyrighted unless it says it's NOT. Also, from WP:NFC, "Copyrighted text that is used verbatim must be attributed with quotation marks or other standard notation, such as block quotes. ". A quick search turned up this which says "Developing text for a web page. The guidelines for text development are similar to those for obtaining images. Truly original text, developed by the creator of the web-site, may be used without copyright concerns. As with images, appropriating text from third-parties without permission is illegal, unless there is some substantial "fair use" justification for the taking. ". The #1 myth discussed here is "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not copyrighted.". Perhaps a more knowledgeable editor will comment. Robsavoie (talk) 01:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've rephrased some of the material. Can do more if required. --Michael C. Price talk 07:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the correct assumption under Wikipedia policies (and United States federal law) is that you should assume that material on other websites is copyrighted and may not be copied into Wikipedia articles. In any event, any source you use must be properly cited to the source you actually saw, without exception. In general, most Wikipedia articles need a lot more carefully checked, reliable sources than they now have, but their use must still be according to copyright law and principles against plagiarism. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria for acceptance

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The picture of the questionable criteria is sounding a little critical but that is already euphemistic as I think there is no scientist in the fields of psychology or any other science concerned with human traits or behavior of good reputation who writes in favor of any testing past four sigma (and that is already questioned by most). The discussion in the references about the sample data from Mega Test in Omni magazine is obviously irrelevant as the data is already invalid as it was not taken under supervision. A valid reference would be a source providing a reliable test for the range of IQ values in question. I am not aware of any such source and the article certainly does not provide any. As I see no valid reference I think the whole article is not any more relevant than one about some society I might invent right now. And Grady Towers himself can hardly be taken as a valid reference. 178.201.84.210 (talk) 01:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct that the extraordinary claims in the article about any IQ test reliably distinguishing a category of one-in-a-million test-takes requires extraordinary evidence, and such evidence should consist of something much more than the self-promotion claims of a membership organization. See Wikipedia's guide to identifying sources that are usually not reliable for more on what kind of sources are needed here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:11, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Revision of Criticism Section

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It is unclear to me why this section proclaims the absence of standardized tests discriminating at the one-in-a-million level, or the futility of such an endeavor. There exist numerous intelligence tests issuing scores above 160, and a few issuing scores above 171. In the former category but not the latter: the pre-1994 SAT, the GRE of the same period, and the DAS-II. In the latter category: SB5 EXIQ, WISC-IV Extended, CFIT, the Miller Analogies Test, and Terman's Concept Mastery Test Form A. Additionally, the Mega and Titan tests were recently reanalyzed by Redvaldsen and found to discriminate at the appropriate level, albeit with some possible inflation. Redvaldsen's analysis was largely based on score pairs with an old edition of the Stanford-Binet, which is known to be a poor measure of intelligence, whereas the original norms of these tests were based upon more robust data from the pre-1994 SAT (with which they better correlate). This presents several factual errors in the article as written, which I am unsure of precisely how to appropriately address. The current language of this article seems biased, as the scores issued by Hoeflin's tests are limited by nonrandom sample selection rather than any deliberate distortion or self-promotion. 67.168.135.149 (talk) 07:29, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV // How bad is this article, really

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The Mega Society is a high IQ society open to people who have scored at the one-in-a-million level or more on a particular test of general intelligence, called the Mega Test, claimed to be able to discriminate at that level.

is currently the first sentence of this article.

who have scored at the one-in-a-million level... We can't repeat this WP:DISPUTED (and false) claim in wiki voice. Dude is extrapolating from a tiny group.

a particular test of general intelligence, called the Mega Test... akshually the Mega test was retired, according to https://megasociety.org/about.html (search for "retirement")

claimed to be able to discriminate at that level... by its creator and less than 30 people, all of whom happen to have scored very highly on it.

This "society" has 26 alleged members... https://megasociety.org/about.html (search for "26")

The test was self-authored by an amateur. There is no supervision of test-takers or control of whether the reported scores on the standard tests were accurate. Its creator dispensed with a time limit and permitted the use of reference materials and, in one case, pocket calculators. The Mega Test correlates only 0.374 with the Stanford–Binet and a mere 0.137 with the WAIS. (source: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-8611/2/2/10 written by the only person who "reviewed" this nonsense in anything approaching academic style, someone who is described as "a historian of Britain and Norway in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries"; not the kind of background I'd expect for someone who reviews an IQ test).

That was the first sentence and the rest of the article is just a bunch of criticism, other than 2 sentences about its newsletter. The article has been AfD-ed multiple times already. Polygnotus (talk) 08:46, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry it's gotten worse. Transgenderoriole (talk) 08:52, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah this article is a mess. Jjazz76 (talk) 18:33, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Polygnotus It has indeed been AfD-ed multiple times and it was mostly deleted. It had a keep in 2008, but that was a long time ago and standards may have sharpened up. The Guinness book of records source is not independent as Noesis sources (which are primary for this subject, of course) indicate that Hoeflin approached the Guinness book of records with his information. That, to me, makes the claim to notability from that source not independent. Omni magazine is clearly not independent. The only other sources mentioning it are stuff about Langan and Keith Raniere, both of whom are independently notable, I believe, but the society's notability is not inherited. Hoeflin's claim to notability is marginal, but again, notability for this article is not inherited. Should we take it back to AfD again? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:29, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Sirfurboy: Yup; I think the Mega Society is non-notable. Guinnness World Record are not real world records; anyone with a bit of money can buy one. And they are even less accurate than Twin Galaxies was back in the day. We should also update the Guinness World Records article; I assume there is criticism in reliable sources.[1] Polygnotus (talk) 21:19, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Polygnotus - my sense was that Guinness did change their business model such that basically all their records now are pay to play, but my understanding was this was less true in the past.
@Sirfurboy - I would support and AfD discussion on this particular piece. Also was totally shocked to see Raniere in the Guinness book! Totally missed that connection. Jjazz76 (talk) 05:58, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion they know they'll be obsolete soon so they are cashing out any remaining belief in reliability and brand recognition. Polygnotus (talk) 06:03, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see two problems with this article. The first is that the "one in a million" IQ claim of the society is obviously bullshit. The other is that, annoying as it is, the society has been referenced by real, quality publications which could establish WP:NOTABILITY. I don't see an AfD as likely to delete it, as much as I would like that outcome. CAVincent (talk) 07:49, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to do a WP:BEFORE today. The question will be whether the referencing to the society is really about the society or about figures for whom we have pages. I am also wondering which SNGs this might fall under. Does an organisation like this fall under WP:NORG? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:34, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone have the full text of this article? [2] Paul Maxim took legal action against Mega Society, arguing they were running an unlicensed IQ testing service in California and New York, because they would not accept his IQ scores on other tests. Chris Langan attempted to see off the action by accepting him in the society by fiat, but was rebuffed by the procedures and officers of the organisation. The article appears to be about that, which is thus about the society. But it is not clear how much of that article can be used. I'd like to see it as part of my initial source assessment. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:54, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Sirfurboy: Bookmark https://paywallreader.com/ (put the URL in the textbox then press the buttons, in this case archive.ph works. Polygnotus (talk) 11:58, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent, thanks. I always try Wayback Machine but yes, this time a different archive worked. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 12:04, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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