The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Short story collection, tagged with unrefenced for 10+ years and notability for over half a year. I prodded this with "The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing
Wikipedia:General notability guideline requirementnor the more detailed
Wikipedia:Notability (books) supplement.
WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar." There is no evidence this collection generated any coverage (no awards, reviews, etc.). It was deprodded by
User:Andrew Davidson with boilerplate edit summary that did nothing to resolve problems this article has. At best, I think this could be redirected to the author,
Alice Munro. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here08:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Speedy Keep Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her short stories. The topic therefore passes
WP:NBOOK, "The book's author is so historically significant that any of the author's written works may be considered notable." See also
WP:NOTCLEANUP.
Andrew🐉(
talk)
10:19, 2 October 2021 (UTC)reply
NOTINHERITED is not appropriate because the author's short stories are not some incidental association; they are the basis of her fame and the reason that she won all those prizes. NOTINHERITED is also not a policy or guideline. It's just an essay whereas
WP:NBOOK is the appropriate guideline and so outranks it. And, in any case, the issue takes the topic well outside the scope of
WP:PROD which is only for "uncontroversial deletion". As the nominator is now backtracking and only proposing redirection, they are wasting our time by abusing our deletion processes. My !vote stands.
Andrew🐉(
talk)
08:10, 3 October 2021 (UTC)reply
NOTINHERITED is still not relevant no matter how many times you spam it here. Sources have been found, as noted below and, in any case,
WP:NBOOK tells us that they are not needed. A further consideration is that this author is noted for reworking their stories quite radically when they are republished and so each publication is a separate literary event. My !vote stands.
Andrew🐉(
talk)
16:07, 6 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Redirect per nom. Although I was the original creator of this, I did so at a very different time in Wikipedia's history — once upon a time the only notability criterion a book had to clear was that it verifiably existed as a book by a notable writer, and actually showing any evidence of
reliable source coverage about the book was strictly optional. But we've tightened up our rules a lot in the intervening 15 years; the bar is now a lot higher than just "the book exists", and does require a lot more analysis of the book's significance in reliable sources. This was essentially a sort of "greatest hits" book, just repackaging a selection of previously published stories that were already and are still all available in other books, and didn't include any new stories — but on analogy to music, greatest hits albums aren't all considered inherently notable in the absence of some meaningful evidence of significance. Precisely because they're just a repackaging of existing material, "greatest hits" don't normally get analyzed by critics as artistic statements the way albums of new original work do, and thus don't necessarily need or warrant their own standalone articles separately from being mentioned in the artist's discography — and "greatest hits" books should be treated the same. If there had been stories in this book that were new, and weren't already available in any of her other collections, then there would be a stronger basis for keeping this, but if it's just a compilation of previously published "greatest hits" then it does need to clear a higher bar than just existing. And yes, I've searched for other sources to see if this can be brought up to a contemporary reading of
WP:GNG instead of a 2005 reading of GNG — and it just can't, because all I actually get is glancing namechecks of its existence in lists of her overall body of work.
Bearcat (
talk)
12:57, 2 October 2021 (UTC)reply
This is an excellent illustration of why we have NBOOK#5. Nobel Prize winning authors are extensively studied. Even their lesser works have SIGCOV. Prodding and AFDing them wastes everybody's time.
pburka (
talk)
13:39, 3 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Books, yes. Short stories, yes. Anthologies, much less so, as there is nothing to say about them usually. They are just packaging. I am all for creating articles about books and short stories, and have done so many times. But I am increasingly thinking we have an 'anthology' problem, many pages are just ISBN numbers and list of short stories. That's not encyclopedic. Probably - now that I think of it, one could perhaps argue that table of contents could be a form of a navigational list... but that's a discussion for the VP or NBOOK page. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here14:15, 5 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Merge If there is no coverage of this particular collection then it should be redirected to the main article, because there is nothing to write the article with. The closer should disregard votes that are contrary to policy.
Hemiauchenia (
talk)
00:18, 7 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Redirect to
List of short stories by Alice Munro#No Love Lost (2003), which already contains pretty much the entirety of what is at this current article. While this collection technically passes point number 5 of our
WP:NBOOK guideline, that does not automatically mean that a standalone page is guaranteed or required, per
WP:PAGEDECIDE. In this case, a book that is merely a collection of previously published stories does not have enough significant coverage written about it that a
WP:SPLIT into a separate article is really warranted. There are some bits of information in the source found by pburka above that should be added to the collection's section on the target article (namely that Jane Urquhart is the one that selected the stories included per a specific theme, as the current section merely states that she wrote the afterward), but as there is no real sourced information at this article that is not already included in the main list, merging seems unnecessary.
Rorshacma (
talk)
16:10, 7 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Redirect per Reywas92 and Rorshacma. It's a collection of reprinted stories from previous collections - rather like a literary greatest hits - which is likely why there's such a complete dearth of critical commentary on it specifically. ♠
PMC♠
(talk)07:01, 19 October 2021 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Short story collection, tagged with unrefenced for 10+ years and notability for over half a year. I prodded this with "The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing
Wikipedia:General notability guideline requirementnor the more detailed
Wikipedia:Notability (books) supplement.
WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar." There is no evidence this collection generated any coverage (no awards, reviews, etc.). It was deprodded by
User:Andrew Davidson with boilerplate edit summary that did nothing to resolve problems this article has. At best, I think this could be redirected to the author,
Alice Munro. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here08:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Speedy Keep Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her short stories. The topic therefore passes
WP:NBOOK, "The book's author is so historically significant that any of the author's written works may be considered notable." See also
WP:NOTCLEANUP.
Andrew🐉(
talk)
10:19, 2 October 2021 (UTC)reply
NOTINHERITED is not appropriate because the author's short stories are not some incidental association; they are the basis of her fame and the reason that she won all those prizes. NOTINHERITED is also not a policy or guideline. It's just an essay whereas
WP:NBOOK is the appropriate guideline and so outranks it. And, in any case, the issue takes the topic well outside the scope of
WP:PROD which is only for "uncontroversial deletion". As the nominator is now backtracking and only proposing redirection, they are wasting our time by abusing our deletion processes. My !vote stands.
Andrew🐉(
talk)
08:10, 3 October 2021 (UTC)reply
NOTINHERITED is still not relevant no matter how many times you spam it here. Sources have been found, as noted below and, in any case,
WP:NBOOK tells us that they are not needed. A further consideration is that this author is noted for reworking their stories quite radically when they are republished and so each publication is a separate literary event. My !vote stands.
Andrew🐉(
talk)
16:07, 6 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Redirect per nom. Although I was the original creator of this, I did so at a very different time in Wikipedia's history — once upon a time the only notability criterion a book had to clear was that it verifiably existed as a book by a notable writer, and actually showing any evidence of
reliable source coverage about the book was strictly optional. But we've tightened up our rules a lot in the intervening 15 years; the bar is now a lot higher than just "the book exists", and does require a lot more analysis of the book's significance in reliable sources. This was essentially a sort of "greatest hits" book, just repackaging a selection of previously published stories that were already and are still all available in other books, and didn't include any new stories — but on analogy to music, greatest hits albums aren't all considered inherently notable in the absence of some meaningful evidence of significance. Precisely because they're just a repackaging of existing material, "greatest hits" don't normally get analyzed by critics as artistic statements the way albums of new original work do, and thus don't necessarily need or warrant their own standalone articles separately from being mentioned in the artist's discography — and "greatest hits" books should be treated the same. If there had been stories in this book that were new, and weren't already available in any of her other collections, then there would be a stronger basis for keeping this, but if it's just a compilation of previously published "greatest hits" then it does need to clear a higher bar than just existing. And yes, I've searched for other sources to see if this can be brought up to a contemporary reading of
WP:GNG instead of a 2005 reading of GNG — and it just can't, because all I actually get is glancing namechecks of its existence in lists of her overall body of work.
Bearcat (
talk)
12:57, 2 October 2021 (UTC)reply
This is an excellent illustration of why we have NBOOK#5. Nobel Prize winning authors are extensively studied. Even their lesser works have SIGCOV. Prodding and AFDing them wastes everybody's time.
pburka (
talk)
13:39, 3 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Books, yes. Short stories, yes. Anthologies, much less so, as there is nothing to say about them usually. They are just packaging. I am all for creating articles about books and short stories, and have done so many times. But I am increasingly thinking we have an 'anthology' problem, many pages are just ISBN numbers and list of short stories. That's not encyclopedic. Probably - now that I think of it, one could perhaps argue that table of contents could be a form of a navigational list... but that's a discussion for the VP or NBOOK page. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here14:15, 5 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Merge If there is no coverage of this particular collection then it should be redirected to the main article, because there is nothing to write the article with. The closer should disregard votes that are contrary to policy.
Hemiauchenia (
talk)
00:18, 7 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Redirect to
List of short stories by Alice Munro#No Love Lost (2003), which already contains pretty much the entirety of what is at this current article. While this collection technically passes point number 5 of our
WP:NBOOK guideline, that does not automatically mean that a standalone page is guaranteed or required, per
WP:PAGEDECIDE. In this case, a book that is merely a collection of previously published stories does not have enough significant coverage written about it that a
WP:SPLIT into a separate article is really warranted. There are some bits of information in the source found by pburka above that should be added to the collection's section on the target article (namely that Jane Urquhart is the one that selected the stories included per a specific theme, as the current section merely states that she wrote the afterward), but as there is no real sourced information at this article that is not already included in the main list, merging seems unnecessary.
Rorshacma (
talk)
16:10, 7 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Redirect per Reywas92 and Rorshacma. It's a collection of reprinted stories from previous collections - rather like a literary greatest hits - which is likely why there's such a complete dearth of critical commentary on it specifically. ♠
PMC♠
(talk)07:01, 19 October 2021 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.