Talk:Vicious circle

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Requested move 12 July 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved per request. Favonian (talk) 09:07, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

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Virtuous circle and vicious circle → Vicious circle – This archived 2019 comment from User:Nareek suggests that the title should be the other way around, as "vicious circle" is the much more common phrase. I'd go further and suggest moving the article to vicious circle and noting the (presumably later and derived?) variant in bold in the lead, per WP:OTHERNAMES. Lord Belbury (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:24, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

• Support. "Vicious circle" is a much more widely used phrase, and most of the article (as currently written) is about vicious circles rather than virtuous ones. "Virtuous circle" should definitely remain as a redirect, but I don't think we need it in the title. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 20:43, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
• Support alternate move to Vicious cycle, which has about the same usage as "vicious circle", but has been steadily increasing over time while usage of "vicious circle" has been steadily decreasing. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:05, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
• Support circle or cycle. Not that I think I'm representative of anyone beyond myself, but I'm not sure I've ever heard or read the term "virtuous circle". Primergrey (talk) 01:28, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose there are 2 separate but linked concepts. It would be wrong to give 1 precedence over the other. Wp:Common is not applicable here. Redirects can cater for them. Laurel Lodged (talk) 21:19, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
• Support. What is shared between the two topics is the link to Positive feedback, which has its own article (in fact, Positive feedback loop redirects there instead of here). Given that the content of this article is about the far more common concept of a vicious circle, this seems like an advisable move. I suggest adding a hatnote to Positive feedback for readers interested in the mechanism itself. That article notes that positive feedback is not inherently good or bad; fair enough, but adding "good" to "positive feedback" is not necessarily sufficient justification for having a separate article on virtuous circles. Dekimasuよ! 18:51, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
• Support move to vicious circle as proposed. All the other terms are obscure IMO, but this one is reasonably common. Andrewa (talk) 06:12, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification needed

The unsourced single sentence: A virtuous circle is an equivalent system with a favorable outcome, was moved here for discussion. Other than sharing some words I cannot see a correlation.

I see a move request comment indicating that the first (vicious circle) is the more common and the second (virtuous circle) is a variant, with the sentence showing equality. A closer example would be hamster wheel, except the end result is usually that a situation becomes worse, more serious, or more severe, resulting in deleterious effects.

I think this move was an error because the words actually have a different meaning so are antitheses to each other or oxymorons. Consider: virtuous versus vicious.

The metaphor rabbit hole (no, not the animal behavioral enrichment) that people fall into usually involves a revolving downward spiral. People in this situation often feel despair seeing no way out.

The term vicious circle is not generally (actually in the real world -- not at all) associated with having a favorable outcome. By definition, and according to the opening in the lead, "A vicious circle (or cycle) is a complex chain of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop, with detrimental results. The term, as commonly used, does not have an uptick, or "favorable" outcome.

• Webster's definition of "vicious circle": "A chain of events in which the response to one difficulty creates a new problem that aggravates the original."
• Webster's definition of "virtuous circle": "A chain of events in which one desirable occurrence leads to another which further promotes the first occurrence and so on resulting in a continuous process of improvement".

In economics it is a system with no tendency toward equilibrium. The words are contradictory. Wiktionary lists them as antonyms because they are actually opposites so one cannot be a variant of the other.

• In financial news
• Virtue. -- Otr500 (talk) 19:38, 25 June 2023 (UTC)