RationalWiki:Articles for demotion/Nudity

Nudity | Result: Silver

Nudity (edit|talk|history|protect|delete|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Promote to silver

1. Trying to demote again. The November attempt did not pass, mainly because the primary author, WriterArtistDC, did not want demotion because of not being finished with the project. WriterArtistDC would seem to have abandoned the article. The major changes that I've made since then are:
   • The addition of the sex section (Nudity#Do ya think I'm sexy?)
   • The addition an important section on German nudism (Nudity#Naturism in Germany). It's important because German nudism was the progenitor of modern nudism, and because it includes discussion of the alternative medicine (particularly homeopathy) aspects of nudity in Germany and discussion of the eugenic/fascistic elements of German nudism. The alt-med and eugenic aspects appear to be not discussed at all on Wikipedia (Naturism and Freikörperkultur) and the fascistic elements only get discussed on the German nudist page (Freikörperkultur). Bongolian (talk) 06:04, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
2. Yes!!! I fully and enthusiastically support demotion to silver now. Spud (talk) 11:23, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
3. --Goatspeed. _{Stalk me}CircularRasoning^{My experiments} 22:22, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
4. Article seems quite okay to me. Justarandomliberal (talk) 21:53, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
5. It's missional, well-cited, etc etc. I don't think it'd be controversial for this to be a gold article at some point. So yeah, I support nudity. CorruptUser 06:15, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Status quo

1. I would like to preface this no vote with a clarification of intentions: I am NOT trying to insult anyone who likes this article, nor the editors who very clearly put a lot of work into it. My disagreement comes not form a place of contrarianism and malice, but rather a desire to offer honest feedback on this piece in particular and also the need to voice my opinion on the topic of RationalWiki articles in general. So if at any time during this wall of text you feel like I have insulted you, please forgive me; it was not what I set out to do.

For me this article does not meet the criteria of (what I personally envision) a silver article due to the following qualities:

• Length of article and density of the information presented: I'm not so lacking in self awareness that I don't see the irony in me, of all people, complaining about verbosity. As you can see from the length of this no vote, I'm pretty verbose. I would never say in two words what I could say in ten. Perhaps @Spud recalls that my first ever interaction with the mob was a giant wall of text. So perhaps you might think this very hypocritical of me, but I'll go ahead and say it anyway: This article is really long and dense. EYE-WATERINGLY so. When I saw that this was nominated for silver I was thinking "Well, this must be a good read so!" It's soooooooo long. The act of wading through it was like a slog through a bog:

“”The technology for making clothes evolved slowly, having originated for other purposes. Animal skins and woven mats used for sleeping became decorative when draped on the body, but might not cover the genitals.[20] Complex, fitted clothing needed to survive in cold climates required the invention of fine stone knives for cutting animal skins into specific shapes, and the eyed needle for sewing. Evidence has been found that this was done by Cro-Magnons in Europe around 35,000 years ago.[21]

Okay? Cool? I didn't really want to read about that when I clicked on an article about nudity, but fine...

“”Between private and public spaces, there are activities where complete or partial nudity may be the norm. Places for these activities often limit access based upon age, gender, or other social characteristics, but generally include others who are not known, so behavior depends upon shared norms rather than prior relationships. Many of these spaces are facilities for athletics or hygiene; changing rooms, sports locker rooms and showers, steam rooms and saunas. However, communal nudity has served purely social functions as well.

Yeah, thanks Captain Obvious, I really...

“”Pudor published Nackende Menschen: Jauchzen der Zukunft in 1893[97] and Nackt-Kultur in 1906[98] (the title translates as "Naked Culture", but is often mistranslated as "The Cult of the Nude"). From 1912 onward, Pudor exclusively published his own antisemitic writings, starting with his Deutschland für die Deutschen! Vorarbeiten zu Gesetzen gegen die jüdische Ansiedlung in Deutschland ("Germany for the Germans! Preparatory work on laws against Jewish settlement in Germany") in 1912.[99]

Okay, okay, I get it! Jeez. It was at this point that I was seriously considering not finishing the article, but I don't vote on articles I haven't read, so I soldiered on. And I don't think reading our articles should feel like a chore to people. If this is going in the shop front, it should be digestible. This article (for me, at least) outstays it's welcome.

• It's incredibly dry and academic: I was waiting for a joke. Just ONE, just a single, fleeting of moment of happiness while reading this thing. It didn't arrive until three quarters of the way through:

“”In 1942, Surén was expelled from the Nazi Party for public masturbation.[111]:161

That's f@cking funny as shit! "Good stuff" I thought "we're picking up now. More giggles along the way." Alas, the drought continued.

“”In film, simulated nudity appeared as early as 1897 in Georges Méliès' Après le Bal.[123] The first erotic film with nudity appeared in 1899 with Albert Kirchner's Le Coucher de la Mariée.[124] Is Your Daughter Safe? (1927) was the first exploitation film with nudity,[125] and nude photographer Albert Arthur Allen directed the forerunner of the "nudie-cutie" film with his 1927 Forbidden Daughters.[126] By 1934, the Hays Code effectively eliminated nudity in films produced by Hollywood studios until 1968, but non-Hollywood films with nudity continued to be produced. Dziga Vertov's groundbreaking 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera featured the first film showing naturism (non-erotic).[127]

I feel like if our readers wanted stuff like this, they could go and get it over at Wikipedia. Or the "International Journal of Film Studies" (I made that up) where the humourless scholars of avant-garde early 20th century French cinema DROP THEIR MONOCLES IN SHOCK the moment someone briefly flashes a smile. I fell in love with this place when I saw this:

It's as if Inigo Montoya woke up in Coruscant.

The moment I realised there existed a place where I could learn something interesting AND have a good time. A place that din't take itself too seriously. This article on nudity is run of the mill. It lacks chaos. Nonsense. The type of qualities the connoisseur of an internet shit post looks for. We reel them in with our jokes and BAM, you learned something by accident, motherf@cka. You're welcome. Why would anyone who likes our website like this article? Who is this aimed at?

So, in summary, for this article to be a silver for me it needs to a) shorter and more digestible and b) funnier. A lot funnier. When I read "Although there is no consensus on a definition of behavioral modernity, four sets of behaviors are included; abstract thinking, planning in depth, innovativeness, and symbolic representation." I was like, wait, did I write this? This is the kind of boring, overly long crap that I inflict on the mainspace, and nothing I have ever written is even close to being bronze, never mind silver. I see my style of overly formal writing in this article and it turns me off big time.

Arrivederci. - Rairyu75 (Talk) 19:53, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book

There was another nugget on German nudist misdeeds that I left out. At one point, Koch got into trouble for teaching a roomful of naked girls behind closed doors. It wasn't clear what exactly was alleged, and he was never indicted on anything. Perhaps you were looking for The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book in this article? Seriously, though if you think there are non-missional bits that could be removed or shortened, then have at it. Bongolian (talk) 21:30, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@Bongolian I serve the will of the mob. If others think it's good like this, then let it be so. Yeehaw! - Rairyu75 (Talk) 03:07, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The casual reader does not need to read the whole page, that's what the table of contents is for. Regarding your statement, "I feel like if our readers wanted stuff like this, they could go and get it over at Wikipedia." That's amusing because the person who wrote most of the article as it is now, the dry stuff, also wrote the the bulk of the two Wikipedia pages! Bongolian (talk) 05:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Silver-level articles are also meant to be expansive. If you don't like the tone of vital context, don't unilaterally delete it! Add goat. Carthage (talk) 05:29, 30 December 2023 (UTC)