Meme should be pronounced miːm to rhyme with gene, not mɛm
 | This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. The citation is in: | | This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. The citation is in: | e · h · w · r  To-do: | | - Don't merge Memetics ⇒ Meme. Move content where appropriate. Think Gene and Genetics.
- Supply missing citations to sources, preferably (and always in the case of direct quotations or attributions) with page references where they exist.
- Remove all of the weasel words and provide sources for statements that contain "one can..." and "for example...".
- Clean up grammar and sentence structure. Isn't this one resolved by now?
- Prune the list of memes to include only salient examples of specific phenomena.
- Quote from more artistic works themselves — books, films and popular media — for more direct examples to make it more easly comprehensible or illustrative, etc.
- Incorporate scientific community criticism of the concept (ex. James Polichak's "Memes as Pseudoscience", a response to the article "Memes as Good Science". Also include input from the anthropological community such as Kuper, Sperber, Bloch.
- Explain why culture is discrete, and hence analysable in memetic terms.
- Address if intention does or does not make the development of ideas fundamentally different from random mutation.
- Provide examples of applied memetic engineering, if any can be found, such as Godwin's Law or various propaganda/advertising efforts (André the Giant Has a Posse, etc.)
- Clarify Darwin's ideas on social Darwinism; he himself was not a social Darwinist.
- There seems to be a lack of coherence between the 'Origins of the concept' section and the subsection 'Etymology'. At least, a further clarification is needed.
- Reference snowclones.
| | Priority 1 (top) | [edit] Confusing opening paragraph Right now this is the opening paragraph: - A meme (pronounced /miːm/) comprises a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices; such units or elements transmit from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for mimic.[1] Memes act as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.[2]
This is most confusing since it fails to assert beyond any doubt what a meme is understood to be. I would like to know what a meme is asserted to be so that one can base one on such description to identify memes. A better alternative might be this: - A meme (pronounced /miːm/) is understood to comprises a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that IS transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena and that acts as A cultural analogue to A gene in that it self-replicates and responds to selective pressures.[2] The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for mimic.[1]
I'm not contending this description is at all correct, but if it would be correct it would leave no mistake as to what a meme is and it would allow one to test whether or not anything in particular is a meme or not. The existing opening reads too casual, and asserts less powerfully than is possible what a meme is understood to be.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.193.54.119 (talk) 01:19, 15 January 2009 - Why are there no references to Susan Blackmore book, The Meme Machine" here? (page 43) "The new Oxford Dictionary; meme An element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation" She mention that imitation is a kind of replication or copying. Memes are replicators. She also devotes a chapter to the fact that not everything is a meme just also clarifies what are.
- Dawkins "We need a new name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a UNIT OF CULTURAL TRANSMISSION, OR UNIT OF IMITATION." :I am using caps where I think the definition above varies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.194.159 (talk) 03:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
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- The opening does speak of it as a "unit" of culture that replicates by imitation. The definition probably sounds hedgy trying to be NPOV but it can stand improvement. The trick is that science of memes is considered pseudoscience, and many dispute they exist at all. Professor marginalia (talk) 13:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree transmission can occur via vectors such as writing/reading as well. Exnewfie (talk) 16:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC) [edit] Rhyming with Dawkins invented the word "meme" and wrote "It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'." That seems an excellent reason to keep the word "cream" in the lead. There have been a number of edits to the "rhyming with" word recently. Most have been without edit summaries so it is not clear what the motivation for proposed changes is. Would anyone care to comment on what word should be used in the lead? Meanwhile I think changes with no stated reason should be reverted. Johnuniq (talk) 01:56, 16 May 2009 (UTC) - There is no difference between "cream", "steam", "team", "beam", "stream", "deem", or "scream"--they all rhyme, they all do they job. It's not a big deal, it's not worth edit warring about. Professor marginalia (talk) 03:42, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
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- You're right of course, however I was hoping that if some consensus could be reached here, then a week of reverting to the consensus would stop the excitement. In the last two weeks we have had edits inserting: beam, cream, dream, scream, seamy, seem, team. There are three other suggestions in your message above. What do you suggest? Should we accept any new word that is reasonably correct? Maybe it would have settled down if I hadn't got involved, but it looked as if we were going to have at least one edit per day just to change that one word. Johnuniq (talk) 04:15, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
- I think most are drive-by test edits, harmless enough. There's no reason to play with it like they have been, but then again building a consensus here is unlikely to discourage these edits. I doubt drive-by IPs pay much attention to talk page consensus. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
- As you say, drive-by editors won't notice or care what is written here. My point was that I have seen cases where a couple of days of reverting to consensus was enough to bore joke editors who then moved elsewhere. Another approach would be to wait a couple of weeks for the jokes to subside – I'm happy either way. Johnuniq (talk) 00:25, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
- One way to make edits less likely is to simply include the direct quote from Dawkins. Then, when drive-by editors change it, it can simply be reverted on the grounds that the section is Dawkins' own words, and direct quotes should not be edited, unless they are incorrectly copied from the source. This might help to deal with this. As such, it might even be considered vandalism and the three revert rule wouldn't apply. Edhubbard (talk) 17:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, the pronunciation immediately follows the first use of the term meme, and that's an awkward and overly-wordy place for the quote (which would need an inline cite link right there as well). I think it's fine to leave any alternative in place so long as it's correct. This article was blanketed with tags and non-compliance warnings for such an extended period of time, and some of it still remains to be cleaned up. So I'm inclined at this point not to sweat over the small stuff. Professor marginalia (talk) 20:57, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Relevent image? For some reason, this image was removed from the main page. Does anyone have any opinions on how to better integrate it into the article? Redwoodneo (talk) 23:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC) - I don't see how this image would help the article. Further, it's rather unencyclopedic to have a picture with overwritten text, particularly somewhat in-your-face text. Is there a reason for the text? Did Dawkins say that? Johnuniq (talk) 02:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- It's VERY meaningful. It's a self-referential statement, presenting the concept of a meme as a meme itself. If you understand the the picture you have understood the concept of a meme. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.152.169.80 (talk) 14:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
- I don't think this image should be included. It's not very encyclopedic for the reasons as Johnuniq pointed out. I don't think it's an actual quote from Dawkins as the image might imply, and if it is, chances are it's not in a tone he would of used (I would think). Moreover, I wouldn't classify this image as bing “VERY meaningful” as its more like a humorous anecdote better suited for icanhascheezburger or failblog. Since I don't see how it adds anything to the understanding of the article and I'm not alone in this I have removed it. LeGrosW (talk) 20:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
- I recently noticed that the original image (without made-up text) is used here with caption "Dawkins lecturing on his book The God Delusion, June 24, 2006." The made-up text appears in File:Dawkins-Memes.jpg which is also used at Internet meme. I think that Wikipedia should not take Flickr pictures and overlay text as if spoken by the subject of the picture. It could be argued that as a parody there is no problem, but whereas many web sites feature stuff like this, it seems rather non-encyclopedic and out of place on WP. Johnuniq (talk) 02:12, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
well that is what a meme pic is174.131.0.138 (talk) 19:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC) otoh it sure spices up the talk page --Utopianfiat (talk) 20:46, 27 October 2009 (UTC) [edit] Eco memes This edit on 7 June added the Environmentalism (eco-memes) section. I think the section is out of place. The article is an attempt to explain what is meant by "meme", with some reference to how the concept has been developed and applied. The eco memes section is based on a book which describes memes in a section about how to influence people. The book does not appear to use "meme" in any academic sense (it's not commenting on whether the concept is valid; it's not using the concept for any explanation). Three references are given. A note has been aded to the first two (GM crops and Earth pledge) to point out that they do not mention "meme". The third reference (chapter 16 of online book) includes the suggestion that Eco-Memes would be useful to promote better environmental behavior. If the section is kept (I would be quite happy to see it removed), I think it should be significantly trimmed, and the first two references omitted. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 01:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC) -- Agree, this section is not NPOV, and does not support a distinction between 'eco-memes' and 'memes'. all in all it seems arbitrary and not relevant to this article 83.108.205.27 (talk) 02:31, 14 June 2009 (UTC) [edit] Strictly theoretical I see most of these article does not make clearly that this is purely a theory, but the term is being bandied about as if it is fact.--MacRusgail (talk) 21:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC) - Agreed.--Jesse (talk) 17:00, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
- I think the following lines, all from the lead of the article, do a pretty good job of showing that the status of memes is still open to debate and discussion:
- A meme ... is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas...
- Supporters of the concept regard memes...
- Meme-theorists contend that memes...
- Also, when you say "theoretical" do you this in the strict scientific sense of theory, like Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, or do you mean it in the common everyday meaning, which should actually be hypothetical? Your whole comment means something radically different depending on how you mean "theoretical". Edhubbard (talk) 04:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
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- The theoretical terminology should be removed from the definition of 'meme' altogether, especially the word postulated. 'Meme' is a label we put on ideas that are communicated between minds. Since ideas obviously are transmitted between minds then memes exist by definition, this much is self-evident. It is not postulated that this is what memes are, this is what memes are because that's how the word is defined. The theoretical part only comes in when you start discussing how memes work, not whether they exist. Xep (talk) 02:35, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Rhyming with Cream I'd like to point out that meme and cream don't necessarily rhyme. The Hiberno-English article reads: "In some highly conservative varieties, words spelled with ea and pronounced with [iː] in RP are pronounced with [eː], for example meat, beat." I assume this extends to the cream, that meme is said to rhyme with. Granted, most nowaday forms of English don't differentiate between "long" e and ea, but as long as the difference lives on, i don't like the idea of ignoring those who speak that way. --Leif Runenritzer (talk) 18:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC) - Please see Talk:Meme#Rhyming_with above. As you will note there, the choice of the word cream comes from Dawkins himself, so whatever variant of English he speaks, he expected the word meme to rhyme with his pronunciation of cream. Edhubbard (talk) 21:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
- Also, per the reference given in the article, "meme" rhymes with "cream" because it is supposed to sound like "gene" (a very roughly similar concept). While a trivial issue, other pronunciations miss the point of what the word is about. Johnuniq (talk) 02:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
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