Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Max Weber

Max Weber

Article is still a featured article.

Embarassingly neglects to mention his concept of rationalization, which was the primary focus of his work and is reflected in each of his major writings. While this article does well to cover his contributions to other fields, it neglects to even allude to the real interests of his writings and his primary contribution to the field of sociology. Until a substantive overhaul is made to clarify this aspect of his studies, I do not feel this article warrants special recognition. Sarge Baldy 19:30, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. I don't know anything about the topic, but that sounds like a pretty large claim, that the article missed coverage of the primary focus of his work. Do you have something to back up that that was Weber's primary focus? If so, that sounds like a serious deficiency and possibly worth defeaturing. - Taxman 22:52, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

The entirely unscientific Google test gives convincing results ;-) - Fredrik | talk 22:58, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Being a student of sociology myself, this appears to be fairly widely evident within the field. George Ritzer, himself having used rationalization in many of his own studies, notes in his text Sociological Theory that "There has been a growing realization in recent years that rationalization lies at the heart of Weber's substantive sociology", listing ten sources, including Rogers Brubaker's 1984 publication The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber, Lawrence Scaff's Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber, and Alan Sica's Weber, Irrationality and Social Order. He also quotes Stephen Kalberg's 1994 Max Weber's Comparative-Historical Sociology: "It is the case that Weber's interest in a broad and overarching theme — the 'specific and peculiar "rationalism" of Western culture' and its unique origins and development — stands at the center of his sociology." Also having read a number of Weber essays myself, the theme does appear clearly evident. If more sources are needed to underscore the point, I could list many others. Sarge Baldy 00:20, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. Everyking 00:26, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. I'd be OK with removal, but I hope Sarge Baldy will be able to bring the article back up to featured status. Hydriotaphia 02:08, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'll certainly see what I can do to help it, though I've never been all that great at making large structural changes to huge articles. Sarge Baldy 03:17, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. Ambi 23:00, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, hopefully. I have added a note on rationalisation to the lead and a para to the article. While the old article (which, btw, is mostly my doing) did not use the term rationalisation (my mistake), the entire theory was mostly described anyway - it was simply missing a link to rationalisation article - and no suprise, since it was created by Sarge Baldy on 20:57, 25 Apr 2005. With the addition of the above inf and ilink I believe this is sufficiently covered. Feel free to expand this, but I believe Weber's article is sufficiently comprehensive for a FA. A sidenote: while writing the Weber article (almost a year ago now...) I am pretty sure I read many biographies, and none of them stressed the term 'rationalisation'. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:56, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, migrating that paragraph in does fix things somewhat, and I guess it does allude to rationalization in other points, although calling it more specifically bureaucratisation.. although a big part of the concept, there's a lot more to it than that, including trends towards globalization, commercialism, rational capitalism, and so on. The article should try to tie the two concepts together somehow, so people get an idea of the basic aims of his studies, and that he was studying bureaucracies because they were an ideal example of that larger process and not because of a specific interest in them (in the same way Durkheim was interested in suicide as a way to look at the larger concept of social integration and regulation). Does that make sense at all? I just think it needs a bit more streamlining so it makes some consistent sense. Sarge Baldy 16:49, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

The article, being *just* under 40kb, could use expantion - but I think it is already good enough for a FA. Details on what needs to be added/expanded should go to the article talk page, this is not the place for it. Can we discard this FARC nomination now? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 00:31, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying it needs expansion, I'm saying it needs to be more consistent and clarity, so that the reader can understand the general direction of his sociological interests without having to know a lot of jargon. Right now it's a pretty bumpy read. If I'd thought adding that paragraph in would in any way fix the article, I would have just done so myself. It's more of a structural problem, and I think the article needs more substantial streamlining before it's ready to be a featured article. Sarge Baldy 14:30, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it would help if you could give more examples. With the exception of the few sentences about conservatives attacks, which you have showed on the talk page, I see no significant problems with the article. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:56, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

That was just a sidenote and not related to my point here. Though actually on closer examination it didn't look that bad, but it was missing a little information and was using more specific terminology than it should have been. Look over my changes here to see what I changed. Sarge Baldy 20:28, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Good changes. I am always happy to see this article futhter improved. But the question remaina - do you still think it is not good enough for FA and should be removed? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 11:25, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

No, like most articles it could use some additional work but I think my basic complaint is resolved. I just wanted to make sure the changes made sense to you before formally closing the request. Feel free to do so yourself as soon as you've read this reply. Sarge Baldy 19:11, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. just for the record I'll vote keep then. I don't think we should remove this since it has remove votes, so I'll add my say to balance it out. - Taxman 02:30, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I'm with Taxman on this one. Filiocht | Blarneyman 09:19, May 10, 2005 (UTC)