Talk:Open relationship

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2021 and 8 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eanneyrey. Peer reviewers: FranklinLu, Charris0524.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Sources

 Note: New worl removed this section from a talk page archive and put it here. I've put it back. Don't alter talk page archives; by all means link to sections, quote them at length (perhaps using {{Talkquote}}) or even in their entirely. But don't take sections out and drop them back on live talk pages. They've usually been archived for a reason; in this case, because the comment was specifically addressing the article in the appalling state it was in before I did some work to fix it.

The concern expressed by an anonymous editor in the now re-archived section was that the article relies too heavily on a single source (Tristan Taormino (1 May 2008). Opening up: a guide to creating and sustaining open relationships. Cleis Press. ISBN 978-1-57344-295-4.), which they felt to be unreliable. — Scott • talk 18:30, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Original comment following removed section:

I also agree. I will put some tag on the article. New worl (talk) 02:00, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

You put {{POV}} on the article, but this isn't really about the article itself expressing a POV; it doesn't. What it does is report the conclusions of the source mentioned above in a very straightforward manner. The source was written by a recognized author and published by a legitimate publishing house. If you feel it does not accurately represent the topic of the article, you need to find other reliable sources that do, and explain the disagreement. So this is a dispute over source quality. Consequently I've retagged the article with {{One source}} to mark that it needs more (or better) sources.

Incidentally, my only stake in this article is that I spent a while editing it down from a giant, incoherent mess, and would like to see it remain readable. Apart from that I don't have any particular opinion on the topic it covers. — Scott • talk 18:30, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

• Scott Martin, on the one hand you told me on 30 May 2013 that 'Deleting is clearly easier than thinking for some lazy editors'.
• On the other hand, you deleted ten times of the amount of text on 16 June without specific reasons for the removal. You edits and talks are confusing. So what do you really want in this article? New worl (talk) 08:52, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

First point: You removed a referenced sentence claiming "This sentence is not supported in the rest of the article", which was untrue. Then you removed it again on the justification that it wasn't appropriate for the lede. If it's not appropriate for the lede, move it somewhere else, don't delete it. That's lazy.

Second point: You copied that paragraph out of the garbage version of this article from last year. All it did was rephrase, poorly, points made elsewhere (including in the very next paragraph), in the same waffling, copy-and-paste mish-mash fashion that the entire article was once written in. It had grammatical errors, no logical structure, repeated itself, and was padded with useless high school essay-style verbiage. In other words, it was utter crap. — Scott • talk 12:57, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with your both points:

1) Please explain how it was 'untrue'? You need to show reasons, not the usage of adjective which carries no weight to rational readers. In Wikipedia articles, any key sentence in the lede must be supported by many other sentences in the rest of the article. In this particular article the removed sentence (For persons in open relationships sex may be more pleasing and they may engage in it more frequently than the average couple.) was not. Regardless of my clear explanation, you used 'dubious justification' (another adjective) to revert my edit. Then you used a bad adjective against an editor because his idea was different from yours.

2) Are you an expert in open relationship or in 'fear', 'guilt' or anything which was removed? New worl (talk) 18:53, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

This looked better when it was a GA

The GA version seems better. Cursory looks suggests that changes since removed useful content (ex. statistics) section, and decreased the prose quality (ex. reasons for entering has been changed from a well-referenced paragraph into a poorly referenced list [1]). The gutting done in 2012 by User:Scott did not, in my opinion, improve the quality of this article. While there were some errors in the old version (ex. in statistics), wholesale removal such as [2] does not seemed justified (why was that section dubious?). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:42, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

proposed merge

The articles Open marriage, Open marriage relationship, Open marriage styles, Open marriage acceptance, Open marriage incidence, and Open marriage jealousy ought to be merged into Open relationship.

The destination article clearly encompasses the subject matter of all six articles. These are content forks, and these have in fact become interleaved and self-referential; for instance, sections have been added to Open marriage simply to justify the existence of other articles, and likewise sections have been put into the smaller articles to point back to each other.

When the merge is completed, the significant redundancies can be readily removed, leaving a single credible destination for the topic.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 22:41, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

supportive evidence for merge

Set aside for a moment that most of the articles appear derivative right from the title. The fact is that most of the content is of little (perhaps no) interest to Wikipedia users.

• Open relationship
  • page views in past 30 days: 25,246
  • number of page watchers: 76
  • number of redirects to this page: 4
  • page creator: Branddobbe

• Open marriage
  • page views in past 30 days: 17,027
  • number of page watchers: 113
  • number of redirects to this page: 2
  • page creator: Kerada

• Open marriage relationship
  • page views in past 30 days: 929
  • number of page watchers: <30
  • number of redirects to this page: 0
  • page creator: Kc62301

• Open marriage styles
  • page views in past 30 days: 1,980
  • number of page watchers: <30
  • number of redirects to this page: 0
  • page creator: Kc62301 merged to Open marriage

• Open marriage acceptance
  • page views in past 30 days: 429
  • number of page watchers: <30
  • number of redirects to this page: 0
  • page creator: Kc62301 merged to Open marriage

• Open marriage incidence
  • page views in past 30 days: 544
  • number of page watchers: <30
  • number of redirects to this page: 0
  • page creator: Kc62301 merged to Open marriage

• Open marriage jealousy
  • page views in past 30 days: 410
  • number of page watchers: <30
  • number of redirects to this page: 0
  • page creator: Kc62301 merged to Open marriage

Clearly, defunct editor Kc62301 was a serial forker, spawning questionable articles to support his own theories of interpersonal relating (e.g., Outline of relationships). Most of them show a tiny visitorship, most of those likely arriving from the superior articles in hopes of further enlightenment.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 15:45, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

• Seems like common sense to merge these to me! With all these sources you could possibly even get it to WP:GA without too much more work! Reywas92^Talk 06:27, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

note about terminology

An "open relationship" is an interpersonal (assumedly intimate) relationship that happens to be not strictly monogamous. By comparison, an "open marriage" is treated as a subset, and problematic from the outset because (by definition) marriage is strictly monogamous, so the term is as irrational as would be "nonmonogamous monogamy."

Logically, "open marriage" is more properly a subset of "marriage" than of "open relationship." However, for encyclopedic purposes, that propriety is completely reversed: few users will look up a subject (marriage) seeking information about its apparent negation. With that in mind, "open marriage" is treated as a subset of "open relationship."
Weeb Dingle (talk) 07:39, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I could try. I'm a rather new editor, but as someone in a fairly open relationship, I'm possibly in a place of knowledge on the subject. Anoraktrend (talk) 07:41, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

I just added a bit trying to explain the difference to the main section, feel free to move it or find a source to cite for it. Anoraktrend (talk) 08:37, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

needs more even-handedness

I note there's a section entitled Reasons for avoiding an open relationship.

Until similar sections appear in other articles about relationships and sex — perhaps begin with Marriage and Homosexuality and Heterosexuality and Celibacy and Monogamy — then such comments ought be viewed askance as likely expression of petty moralizing a.k.a. original research. Some fancy use of "According to" had better be in evidence.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 16:57, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

And at the other extreme, the article as it stands relies too significantly on one book, namely Taormino's Opening Up, inarguably raising the yellow flag of POV doubts, not to mention whether it might have advert or fansite bias. Since that book is a marketing brochure for open relating, rather than any sort of scholarly study, the article relies heavily on a primary source; I'd say the flag becomes red.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 08:13, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Only now does it strike me that the "relationship" referred to throughout this article specifically refers to two people in "a committed relationship" (never defined). This seems to indicate a strong "couplist" or "monogamist" bias against stable nonmonogamist forms, that everything is about a "real" relationship with "a little something on the side," so just a gussied-up form of adultery a.k.a. cheating or affair. Unless that's intended, then correction is in order.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 08:41, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

explain the concepts!

How is it possible to make clear w.t.f. "open" when nowhere is "closed" mentioned, much less defined? This is yet another article sex-related article that fails the "average reader" test. Could someone preen through here and clean it up?
Weeb Dingle (talk) 19:09, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I could try. I'm a rather new editor, but as someone in a fairly open relationship, I'm possibly in a place of knowledge on the subject. Anoraktrend (talk) 07:41, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

I just added a bit trying to explain the difference to the main section, feel free to move it or find a source to cite for it. Anoraktrend (talk) 08:37, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Lede wrongly (IMHO) representing polyamory

The lede states that the primary difference between open relationships and polyamory is that polyamory focusses on a primary relationship, with other -- secondary -- relationships a possibility.

I think that is a very wrong representation of polyamory. Yes, most polycules originated from a mono relationship opening up, with the original relationship remaining "primary" (just as most "open" relationships originate from a "mono" relationship opening up as well). But the main difference (IMHO) is the informed consent, and that additional relationships are meant to be meaningful and long-term. Having equal relationships does not turn polyamory into something else, "fooling around" does. I feel the lede is not informing on the closely related subject correctly. -- DevSolar2 (talk) 14:38, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

That's fair. What would your proposed rewrite be? Historyday01 (talk) 15:28, 16 November 2023 (UTC)