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In light of Radiant!'s tagging of this page as historical, [1], I thought I would canvas whether people think the notability (books) proposal is historical, a live proposal, a guideline, or what?
Relevant to the discussion above, a review of the AFD pages that link to WP:BK indicates that the guideline is cited relatively frequently on AFD (at least, given the relatively low rate of book nominations), and that prior to the edit marking it as historical, it was usually cited without objection, although it rarely seems to have been dispositive to the discussion. In a review of citations from the last month, I haven't seen any cases where the result came out contrary to the guideline, but I also haven't found any where someone argued to keep a book page per WP:BK. Recent citations to WP:BK in AFD:
Thoughts? TheronJ 04:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I also oppose merging with WP:FICT because of the non-fiction works covered by this proposal. Lyrl Talk C 20:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, then let's not merge, per the above. It was just a suggestion :) regarding this page itself, I don't have a particular problem with it except that it is way too long. For instance, it's over twice as long as WP:CORP or WP:LOCAL. I would recommend some severe pruning, because the longer a page is, the smaller the chance that people will actually read it. >Radiant< 09:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm new to this topic, and a skim of the talk history is only a little enlightning, so I'll throw my comment out here: Is it really true that EVERY book written by a notable person is automatically notable? This seems a big departure from what seem to be parallels in other areas of WP: e.g. in WP:CORP not every product of a notable company is notable, and not every actor/actress in a notable movie is notable. I think the rest of the criterion is great, very helpful, but #1 seems way too loose - I would suggest deleting it. Comments? 66.108.49.158 04:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I tightened criterion 1 (see here) per our discussion above. I think that although this criterion is somewhat vague, it's helpfully vague - books that assert authorship by a historically significant author can't be speedied but need to go to AFD, and the AFD debates can sort out whether an individual author is so significant as to merit inclusion of his or her works on that basis alone. Once we see how several of these debats play out, maybe we can tweak it, but for now, I propose that we leave "criterion 1" deletions up to the sound judgment of the AFD participants. TheronJ 15:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
"2 The book has been made or adapted with attribution into a motion picture that was released into multiple commercial theatres.
Why not add televion viewing along to the list? Such as made for TV movies, or cable channel exculsives. Surely if the novel-adopted-film is shown on NBC, HBO or IFC it should be enough to prove its notability. RiseRobotRise 05:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Any thoughts? RiseRobotRise 06:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I just noticed that there are four anti-Islam books up for AfD at the moment. I haven't studied the books enough to decide whether I support keeping or deleting, but I thought I'd post the links since this seems to be the type of book that gets AfD'd most often (see my links to the James Fetzer AfDs in the section immediately above. GabrielF 15:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
The guideline has been extensively criticized for its length and complexity. I tend to disagree about its complexity but there are some things we could do with respect to length. I don't want to start making changes without a bit of discussion but I think that we could do without a few things. First, as I mentioned before, the list of precedents was more an artifact of the building process than an actual intended part of the guideline. Maybe we can create a subpage for them if we want to keep them around for consultation. The second obvious target is the bloated lead which can certainly be cut down if we rely on WP:NN some more. Finally, we should look for ways of relaxing the whole thing so that it's not overly technical and concerned with every little loophole. In fact, the notion of "loophole" itself does not make that much sense because we're not writing a text of law. Do we really need to recall the Google test caveat? The Amazon listing caveat? I can also see us getting rid of the crystallballism note since, after all, we have a specific policy on that anyways. In general, coming back to this guideline after a few months of neglecting it, I think we somewhat fail to deliver a "rough" guideline. At the time I felt it made sense to have a "precise" one instead but then this entails costs in terms of complexity. Thoughts? Pascal.Tesson 16:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Pascal, imho you're still starting from a total misconception regarding pre-1900 books. What was published in those days was *not* having more chances of having "been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself". There's no reason to assume that a larger fraction of what was published in those days is remotely eligible for being discussed in "scholarly books on the history of literature, Masters and PhD theses in literature, comparative literature, cultural studies". Quite the contrary I think.
Remember that what you know about pre-1900 books probably depends exclusively on publications you've seen yourself: that would include (1) re-publications (non-notable books don't tend to be republished all that often); (2) mentionings in non-trivial published works (they wouldn't mention thoroughly non-notable books, would they?); (3) what is still extant in publicly accessible libraries (libraries don't usually keep thoroughly non-notable works for more than 100 years, and for the books that weren't notable in their own day, these wouldn't even have been acquired by most libraries).
So where would you encounter a non-notable book from 1899? Chances are pretty small... unless, perhaps, your grandparents have an attic containing pre-1900 books. Mine did. Most of it rubbish. Sure, they had some interesting ones (the ones you'd also see in libraries, or mentioned in non-trivial published works, or that are still re-published today). But no reason to assume that the amount of books published in the 19th century that are still notable today is comparatively larger than for books from the 20th century on. 19th century publishers (and assumably their audience) had this predilection for trivial rehashings of content they had found elsewhere. The authors of such compilations, if named, had often very non-notable characteristics. The number of novels published in installments in periodicals, whose notability (and of their authors) ended when the next stove was lit is near uncountable. Let's not get all rosy about the *average* notability of what happened before the 20th century. There's no real distinction (if any, I'd surmise the 19th century was comparatively particularily abundant of non-notable content: that could also be backed up by for instance Flaubert, who made fun of the average triviality of his contemporaries and what they published, in his Bouvard et Pécuchet and his Dictionary of Received Ideas). -- Francis Schonken 16:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
makes no sense. I don't know where you got that (received?) idea about 1899 books, but it makes no sense. -- Francis Schonken 17:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)If anything, a book written in 1899 has more chances of having "been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself".
No, overall it's not such a good idea to give wikipedians the deceptive idea that it's OK to start writing an article about a book without being sure there would be "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book". Only leads to frustration: then the article is hit by AfD or PROD, and the original author has no clue what is wrong with it. The article mentioned the "Nebula Award" didn't it... So that Wikipedian gets only more frustrated, as some AfD voters say that prize is non-notable, and then the original author starts boasting about the "Nebula Award" in various ways (still not knowing that we don't "prove" notability by boasting, but simply by referring to reliable sources). Then the article is still voted down, and the original author does still not know that all that was needed was mentioning of the press reviews about the book he had on his desk all the time. We should stop these scenarios that have played all too often in Wikipedia, we lose valuable contributors in that way. -- Francis Schonken 20:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
If "major award" is one of the "book notability" criteria, it's you who would be triggering the "non trivial" discussions about the Nebula Award, not me.
People shouldn't be discussing about whether Nebula is a trivial or a major award to prove the notability of a book in Wikipedia context: if the article on the book mentions a few non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book, there wouldn't be an AfD in the first place. And if the Nebula awarded to the book didn't trigger "non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book", and there aren't any other of such sources about the book available, we simply shouldn't have an article about that book in the first place, and the "Nebula notability" discussion would even be more loss of time and source of useless frustration. -- Francis Schonken 21:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
BTW, if you hadn't noticed yet, I'm not interested in the Nebula award. This page is also not a place to discuss the notability of the Nebula award. If you want to discuss the notability of the Nebula award, move to Talk:Nebula Award for Best Novel, or start an AfD about the Nebula Award for Best Novel article. To approach the notability of books via "award" notability discussions is just bad way of proceeding, imho. Unneccessary complexity, not needed for people who want to start an article about an interesting book. -- Francis Schonken 21:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I learn from Talk:Man Plus that it is a "a much-written-about novel". Surprises me all the more there isn't a single external reference in the Man Plus article. The article is not OK with Wikipedia's core content policies ( WP:V most obviously), and that's more important than whether or not it complies to a series of notability related guidelines/proposals/essays. Also, it's marked a stub, don't shoot infants with potential.
Re. your questions: (1) quite unlikely, the chances that I would know the article was up at AfD would be near to zero, the chances that I would vote, or even leave a *comment* on an AfD for this article, if I knew it was at AfD would be even smaller; (2) Whatever the result of an AfD, those who would see their choice honored would indicate the AfD as "successful". Since I wouldn't vote, this second question is too hypothetical for me to answer.
Here's some other questions, which I'll answer:
-- Francis Schonken 21:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Again, you presuppose that anybody, in advance and without references in the article would know (and consent to) that Nebula *IS* a major award. I'm not in that category of people. I never heard about the Nebula award before, and I didn't click to the article on it yet. Above, I thought you used the Nebula award as an example of a borderline notable/non-notable prize, which would trigger discussion about that notability of the prize if it were mentioned in a book notability discussion. Sorry for that misunderstanding, but it only strenghtens my point that "prize notability" discussions are irrelevant for "book notability" assessment.
The Man Plus article should preferably be written by those having access to sources on it. Describing the sources on Man Plus as enveloped in shrouds of unaccessible specialism doesn't help. Either a verifiable article can be written about that book, and then those writing that article should *mention* the sources they have been using in the Wikipedia article on the book, either there are no *accessible* (I used the word "available" above, same concept) multiple non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book, and then Wikipedia does not need an article about it (in which case "a much-written-about novel" would be a hoax, and in which case it would also be irrelevant whether or not it received a prize). -- Francis Schonken 22:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Francis, I want to go back to a point of yours from a few kB earlier.
I disagree with you on this one, at least to a certain extent. Not that we should encourage the creation of such stubs but a guideline also helps in limiting frustrations by outlining relatively simple criteria which newbies can understand without extensive experience with the AfD process. Furthermore an absence of reliable sources in the article is no reason to delete but serious evidence that such sources are basically non-existent most definitely should lead to deletion. Where I think you and I disagree is that I believe it's best to keep a book on which these sources are likely to exist (although as individual editors we may not know about them) or are very likely to come up in the near future. I don't think there's much to gain by applying the content policies without some (limited) degree of laxity. In the same line of thought, I think it might make sense to note in the guideline that since (quoting from WP:NOT) "Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot." one criteria should be the existence of third-party work that does significantly more than giving a plot summary. (which, in my mind, is exactly what the shortish Publishers' Weekly reviews do. Pascal.Tesson 22:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
"Relatively simple"? -- Francis Schonken 22:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)"Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot."
François Weyergans (born Brussels, 1941) received the Prix Goncourt in 2005 for Trois jours chez ma mère
The "Prix Goncourt" is somewhat difficult, because they don't publish criteria on the base of which the prize is awarded.
Weyergans (and his book) were relatively unknown when he received the prize, and most sources would be in French.
Nonetheless, I'd never start an article on Weyergans or on the prize-winning book - both of which I still plan to do in some distant future if nobody beats me to it - unless I had access to sound sources. I could imagine starting an article on the book without having read it (I didn't thus far), but not without having access to sound sources on it. -- Francis Schonken 23:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
...because a lot has happened in 12 hours and I can't find all the places to reply.
I've been working with books for nearly 10 years now. It's my life, it's my passion. I think there's a lot people aren't taking into effect here. -- badlydrawnjeff talk 03:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
-- Francis Schonken 10:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
@TheronJ:
With all due respect, Francis, I think you're ascribing more importance to WP:N than it merits. It was a contentious guideline that was ultimately adopted because it was felt that it was important to have a guideline that reflected current AFD practice. That's fine and appropriate, but AFD practice regarding books has always been and currently is broader than the general notability guideline. This isn't at all unreasonable -- numerous widely accepted subject-specific guidelines recognize notability in their field, even in the absense of two independent non-trivial published references. For example:
Notability is by its nature a requirement over and above verifiability or reliable sourcing, and the precise scope of it is really based on the community's intuition about what belongs in an encyclopedia. IMHO, the six book notability criteria as phrased reflect Wikipedia's operational consensus pretty well. Thanks, TheronJ 14:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
That is a long string of words, and is very hard to read. I hope you don't mind, but i'm making a section break.
I hope i'm not intruding on the conversation here, but to me an ISBN number is a good benchmark for a book that's "notable", as well as having it published by a notable publishing company(I know, I know, what is a notable publishing company, that's probably around somewhere here).
It's best to keep it simple, IMO. Just H 23:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
IMHO, we should tag this page as guideline because (1) it is an accurate representation of the notability guidelines used in book AFDs and (2) its a good guideline that people should continue to apply in determining whether to delete a book page as non-notable. I am interested in people's thoughts. Can anyone who would oppose a guideline tag drop a note explaining:
Thanks! TheronJ 15:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I can't see why the first and second criteria are split. Each calls for multiple, non-trivial, independent and about the book. #1 further calls for "at least some serving a general audience" (why do we care; take a hypothetical book on the maritime history of Maine that has been reviewed in both an academic journal about Maine history and a journal on naval engineering - those ought to be good enough), and explicitly includes reviews. #2 further calls for being a reliable source (why isn't this in #1?) and excludes only reviews in sources that do thousands of reviews a year. I don't see anything here that can't be combined, whether or not that exception in #2 is kept as an exception.
I suggest merging as:
The book has been the subject[3] of multiple, non-trivial[4], reliable published works whose sources are independent[5] of the book's owners and sellers. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews.
and keeping the bullet about what is excluded.
Then have the independent footnote say something more like:
Independent does not mean independent of the publishing industry, but only refers to those actually involved with the particular book. Someone offering the book for sale is involved for the purpose of independence, as are the author(s), their agent(s), the book's publisher(s), and anyone else owning the copyright to the material.
An aside: given what our Publisher's Weekly article says, I'm not sure it would count as a reliable source for the opinions of the reviewers, but I have no idea how extensive the problem mentioned there is.
I think this would simplify the text, without changing it significantly what do all of you think? GRBerry 19:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Should the subject matter of non-fiction books be taken into account? This occurred to me in a recent AfD discussion ( Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Only Three Questions That Count) concerning a book presenting some stock market guru's latest investment system. The book was published by a reputable publisher, and reviewed in Forbes magazine, and as such seems to meet the requirements of verifiability through reliable sources. The book was undeniably the subject of disinterested third party commentary. I still can't shake the sneaking feeling that the article on the book is thinly veiled spam, especially given the nominator's concerns that the author's article has attracted spam in the past.
I tend to think that certain types of book count as ephemera that probably aren't going to be worthy of an encyclopedia article, even if during their moment in the sun they appear on best seller lists and are the subjects of third party reviews in print. In my opinion, non-scholarly books that are:
ought to be required to show a bit more "leg" than the typical such book before meeting the bar. Spam is one concern with this sort of material: but complete bollocks is another.
What additional requirements ought to be made of this sort of literature is something I'd be open to consider. "Remaining in print for five years" sounds like a plausible one initially; obviously we want to keep an entry on The Joy of Cooking. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone currently have an objection to tagging the book notability page as guideline, and if so, (1) why and (2) are there any changes to the current page that would satisfy your objection?
Last time, only Jeff raised an objection -- there were some edits to the page in response to Jeff's concerns, but I'm not sure whether they satisfied Jeff's concerns or not. Thanks, TheronJ 15:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC) I would just like to add that the exemples section will be removed once the proposal becomes a guideline. Its current purpose is to illustrate how the proposal fits in with current practice on AfD. Pascal.Tesson 17:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Can anyone give an example of something? JoshuaZ 02:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm somewhat leery of criteria 5, if I'm reading it correctly ("The book's author is historically significant enough for his or her works to be considered notable, even in the absence of secondary sources"), for two reasons: first, I doubt there really are no secondary sources for obscure or minor works by actually famous authors; and second, if there really ARE no secondary sources, what can you possibly write other than a directory listing of the form "XXXX is a book by AUTHOR, published in DATE"? Given my first misgiving, I'd suggest:
This leaves the door open for someone to locate actual secondary sources without enabling the existence of permanent directory-style stubs. -- Calton | Talk 06:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Note that both Fuhghettaboutit and myself have cut some of the less useful fat out of the proposal, including the notes on sales number, on the Google Test and on flexibility. Most significantly (in terms of sheer kilobytes) I've cut the examples and precedents section since it was always intended to go eventually. If anyone feels that this is too drastic, please feel free to revert. Pascal.Tesson 06:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
First, great job to all in tightening up the criterion, getting it "promoted" to a guideline, and all of that with keeping the discussion (mostly) civilized. One question: I found the phrase from the old criterion: "Reviews in periodicals that review thousands of books a year with little regard for notability, such as Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews do not meet this (the notability) criterion." very useful and appropriate; it is now gone, and in reviewing the discussion, I don't see that consensus was reached on pulling this out: are we saying that these reviews now ARE sufficient to establish notability? Can someone patiently fill me in on the history of consensus on removing this phrase? If it should be in, I think it would work in a footnote, footnote 3. Thanks in advance. UnitedStatesian 04:21, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Would some extra eyes take a look at Attitude: The New Subversive Cartoonists? Following a somewhat interesting DRV, an attempt to merge all three books into one article was done, rejected, proposed again, and then, with minimal discussion, merged back together. I don't want to be the one to overturn this again at this point, so perhaps some extra eyes to see if I'm simply crazy or not would be helpful. I don't think the page, as written, is really all that easy to use or easy on the eyes, nor does it follow general convention, but I have no problem with what other people think, as long as we know what other people think. Thanks. -- badlydrawnjeff talk 14:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
I've added the disputed section tag to the guideline section-if anything, it seems to dispute itself. Mainly problematic is number 5, which states that a book can be notable "even in the absence of secondary sources", if notability only can "rub off" from the author. This isn't necessarily the case. Most really big-time authors (i.e. a Stephen King, Terry Pratchett or J.K. Rowling) will see any book they write receive tons of attention anyway, and generally even books they wrote before becoming famous will be covered in retrospect. On the other hand, that isn't necessarily the case with smaller-time authors, and generally such books would be best-served by a brief mention in that author's article. The big problem here, however, is the self-contradiction. The main header states that content must be attributable to reliable sources (which is of course true, and which is core policy), so it is beyond me how it can go on to advocate writing without those very sources. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
How about this (tweaked the language slightly):
-- Fuhghettaboutit 02:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm coming in late in the game but I think part of the problem here is the method of determining whether or not something is sourced. Ghits shouldn't be any sort of test for notability for a book; MLA and\or Academic Search Premier hits should be. The MLA bibliography presents a very different picture of notability than Google: JK Rowling has an enormous web presence but she only has half the MLA citations of, say, Don Delillo. At least in academia, Don Delillo is considered a more "notable" author. There are undoubtedly a number of other books or authors who aren't mentioned on google but who have received some amount of critical attention & are therefore sourced (and perhaps even better sourced that some Google favorites). I would also argue that the MLA bibliography would be a good litmus test for whether or not something is often studied in the classroom. Jordansc 16:39, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Does criterion 5 mean, effectively, that if an author is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, then all the author's books are notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article? For example, look at the article Bratfest at Tiffany's. I understand that fans of that author think the book (as yet unpublished) deserves its own article, so that deleting the article would be contentious, but does the book meet Wikipedia's overall notability standards? -- Mathew5000 00:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I propose removing this from the baseline. They now list even vanity press books--It's not even an indication that it's a book, or any form of media--Amazon in particular will sell anything that can be shipped to a buyer, including kitchen appliances. Having them as a criterion is like having eBay as a criterion. DGG 03:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | → | Archive 7 |
In light of Radiant!'s tagging of this page as historical, [1], I thought I would canvas whether people think the notability (books) proposal is historical, a live proposal, a guideline, or what?
Relevant to the discussion above, a review of the AFD pages that link to WP:BK indicates that the guideline is cited relatively frequently on AFD (at least, given the relatively low rate of book nominations), and that prior to the edit marking it as historical, it was usually cited without objection, although it rarely seems to have been dispositive to the discussion. In a review of citations from the last month, I haven't seen any cases where the result came out contrary to the guideline, but I also haven't found any where someone argued to keep a book page per WP:BK. Recent citations to WP:BK in AFD:
Thoughts? TheronJ 04:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I also oppose merging with WP:FICT because of the non-fiction works covered by this proposal. Lyrl Talk C 20:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, then let's not merge, per the above. It was just a suggestion :) regarding this page itself, I don't have a particular problem with it except that it is way too long. For instance, it's over twice as long as WP:CORP or WP:LOCAL. I would recommend some severe pruning, because the longer a page is, the smaller the chance that people will actually read it. >Radiant< 09:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm new to this topic, and a skim of the talk history is only a little enlightning, so I'll throw my comment out here: Is it really true that EVERY book written by a notable person is automatically notable? This seems a big departure from what seem to be parallels in other areas of WP: e.g. in WP:CORP not every product of a notable company is notable, and not every actor/actress in a notable movie is notable. I think the rest of the criterion is great, very helpful, but #1 seems way too loose - I would suggest deleting it. Comments? 66.108.49.158 04:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I tightened criterion 1 (see here) per our discussion above. I think that although this criterion is somewhat vague, it's helpfully vague - books that assert authorship by a historically significant author can't be speedied but need to go to AFD, and the AFD debates can sort out whether an individual author is so significant as to merit inclusion of his or her works on that basis alone. Once we see how several of these debats play out, maybe we can tweak it, but for now, I propose that we leave "criterion 1" deletions up to the sound judgment of the AFD participants. TheronJ 15:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
"2 The book has been made or adapted with attribution into a motion picture that was released into multiple commercial theatres.
Why not add televion viewing along to the list? Such as made for TV movies, or cable channel exculsives. Surely if the novel-adopted-film is shown on NBC, HBO or IFC it should be enough to prove its notability. RiseRobotRise 05:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Any thoughts? RiseRobotRise 06:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I just noticed that there are four anti-Islam books up for AfD at the moment. I haven't studied the books enough to decide whether I support keeping or deleting, but I thought I'd post the links since this seems to be the type of book that gets AfD'd most often (see my links to the James Fetzer AfDs in the section immediately above. GabrielF 15:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
The guideline has been extensively criticized for its length and complexity. I tend to disagree about its complexity but there are some things we could do with respect to length. I don't want to start making changes without a bit of discussion but I think that we could do without a few things. First, as I mentioned before, the list of precedents was more an artifact of the building process than an actual intended part of the guideline. Maybe we can create a subpage for them if we want to keep them around for consultation. The second obvious target is the bloated lead which can certainly be cut down if we rely on WP:NN some more. Finally, we should look for ways of relaxing the whole thing so that it's not overly technical and concerned with every little loophole. In fact, the notion of "loophole" itself does not make that much sense because we're not writing a text of law. Do we really need to recall the Google test caveat? The Amazon listing caveat? I can also see us getting rid of the crystallballism note since, after all, we have a specific policy on that anyways. In general, coming back to this guideline after a few months of neglecting it, I think we somewhat fail to deliver a "rough" guideline. At the time I felt it made sense to have a "precise" one instead but then this entails costs in terms of complexity. Thoughts? Pascal.Tesson 16:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Pascal, imho you're still starting from a total misconception regarding pre-1900 books. What was published in those days was *not* having more chances of having "been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself". There's no reason to assume that a larger fraction of what was published in those days is remotely eligible for being discussed in "scholarly books on the history of literature, Masters and PhD theses in literature, comparative literature, cultural studies". Quite the contrary I think.
Remember that what you know about pre-1900 books probably depends exclusively on publications you've seen yourself: that would include (1) re-publications (non-notable books don't tend to be republished all that often); (2) mentionings in non-trivial published works (they wouldn't mention thoroughly non-notable books, would they?); (3) what is still extant in publicly accessible libraries (libraries don't usually keep thoroughly non-notable works for more than 100 years, and for the books that weren't notable in their own day, these wouldn't even have been acquired by most libraries).
So where would you encounter a non-notable book from 1899? Chances are pretty small... unless, perhaps, your grandparents have an attic containing pre-1900 books. Mine did. Most of it rubbish. Sure, they had some interesting ones (the ones you'd also see in libraries, or mentioned in non-trivial published works, or that are still re-published today). But no reason to assume that the amount of books published in the 19th century that are still notable today is comparatively larger than for books from the 20th century on. 19th century publishers (and assumably their audience) had this predilection for trivial rehashings of content they had found elsewhere. The authors of such compilations, if named, had often very non-notable characteristics. The number of novels published in installments in periodicals, whose notability (and of their authors) ended when the next stove was lit is near uncountable. Let's not get all rosy about the *average* notability of what happened before the 20th century. There's no real distinction (if any, I'd surmise the 19th century was comparatively particularily abundant of non-notable content: that could also be backed up by for instance Flaubert, who made fun of the average triviality of his contemporaries and what they published, in his Bouvard et Pécuchet and his Dictionary of Received Ideas). -- Francis Schonken 16:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
makes no sense. I don't know where you got that (received?) idea about 1899 books, but it makes no sense. -- Francis Schonken 17:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)If anything, a book written in 1899 has more chances of having "been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself".
No, overall it's not such a good idea to give wikipedians the deceptive idea that it's OK to start writing an article about a book without being sure there would be "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book". Only leads to frustration: then the article is hit by AfD or PROD, and the original author has no clue what is wrong with it. The article mentioned the "Nebula Award" didn't it... So that Wikipedian gets only more frustrated, as some AfD voters say that prize is non-notable, and then the original author starts boasting about the "Nebula Award" in various ways (still not knowing that we don't "prove" notability by boasting, but simply by referring to reliable sources). Then the article is still voted down, and the original author does still not know that all that was needed was mentioning of the press reviews about the book he had on his desk all the time. We should stop these scenarios that have played all too often in Wikipedia, we lose valuable contributors in that way. -- Francis Schonken 20:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
If "major award" is one of the "book notability" criteria, it's you who would be triggering the "non trivial" discussions about the Nebula Award, not me.
People shouldn't be discussing about whether Nebula is a trivial or a major award to prove the notability of a book in Wikipedia context: if the article on the book mentions a few non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book, there wouldn't be an AfD in the first place. And if the Nebula awarded to the book didn't trigger "non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book", and there aren't any other of such sources about the book available, we simply shouldn't have an article about that book in the first place, and the "Nebula notability" discussion would even be more loss of time and source of useless frustration. -- Francis Schonken 21:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
BTW, if you hadn't noticed yet, I'm not interested in the Nebula award. This page is also not a place to discuss the notability of the Nebula award. If you want to discuss the notability of the Nebula award, move to Talk:Nebula Award for Best Novel, or start an AfD about the Nebula Award for Best Novel article. To approach the notability of books via "award" notability discussions is just bad way of proceeding, imho. Unneccessary complexity, not needed for people who want to start an article about an interesting book. -- Francis Schonken 21:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I learn from Talk:Man Plus that it is a "a much-written-about novel". Surprises me all the more there isn't a single external reference in the Man Plus article. The article is not OK with Wikipedia's core content policies ( WP:V most obviously), and that's more important than whether or not it complies to a series of notability related guidelines/proposals/essays. Also, it's marked a stub, don't shoot infants with potential.
Re. your questions: (1) quite unlikely, the chances that I would know the article was up at AfD would be near to zero, the chances that I would vote, or even leave a *comment* on an AfD for this article, if I knew it was at AfD would be even smaller; (2) Whatever the result of an AfD, those who would see their choice honored would indicate the AfD as "successful". Since I wouldn't vote, this second question is too hypothetical for me to answer.
Here's some other questions, which I'll answer:
-- Francis Schonken 21:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Again, you presuppose that anybody, in advance and without references in the article would know (and consent to) that Nebula *IS* a major award. I'm not in that category of people. I never heard about the Nebula award before, and I didn't click to the article on it yet. Above, I thought you used the Nebula award as an example of a borderline notable/non-notable prize, which would trigger discussion about that notability of the prize if it were mentioned in a book notability discussion. Sorry for that misunderstanding, but it only strenghtens my point that "prize notability" discussions are irrelevant for "book notability" assessment.
The Man Plus article should preferably be written by those having access to sources on it. Describing the sources on Man Plus as enveloped in shrouds of unaccessible specialism doesn't help. Either a verifiable article can be written about that book, and then those writing that article should *mention* the sources they have been using in the Wikipedia article on the book, either there are no *accessible* (I used the word "available" above, same concept) multiple non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book, and then Wikipedia does not need an article about it (in which case "a much-written-about novel" would be a hoax, and in which case it would also be irrelevant whether or not it received a prize). -- Francis Schonken 22:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Francis, I want to go back to a point of yours from a few kB earlier.
I disagree with you on this one, at least to a certain extent. Not that we should encourage the creation of such stubs but a guideline also helps in limiting frustrations by outlining relatively simple criteria which newbies can understand without extensive experience with the AfD process. Furthermore an absence of reliable sources in the article is no reason to delete but serious evidence that such sources are basically non-existent most definitely should lead to deletion. Where I think you and I disagree is that I believe it's best to keep a book on which these sources are likely to exist (although as individual editors we may not know about them) or are very likely to come up in the near future. I don't think there's much to gain by applying the content policies without some (limited) degree of laxity. In the same line of thought, I think it might make sense to note in the guideline that since (quoting from WP:NOT) "Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot." one criteria should be the existence of third-party work that does significantly more than giving a plot summary. (which, in my mind, is exactly what the shortish Publishers' Weekly reviews do. Pascal.Tesson 22:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
"Relatively simple"? -- Francis Schonken 22:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)"Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot."
François Weyergans (born Brussels, 1941) received the Prix Goncourt in 2005 for Trois jours chez ma mère
The "Prix Goncourt" is somewhat difficult, because they don't publish criteria on the base of which the prize is awarded.
Weyergans (and his book) were relatively unknown when he received the prize, and most sources would be in French.
Nonetheless, I'd never start an article on Weyergans or on the prize-winning book - both of which I still plan to do in some distant future if nobody beats me to it - unless I had access to sound sources. I could imagine starting an article on the book without having read it (I didn't thus far), but not without having access to sound sources on it. -- Francis Schonken 23:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
...because a lot has happened in 12 hours and I can't find all the places to reply.
I've been working with books for nearly 10 years now. It's my life, it's my passion. I think there's a lot people aren't taking into effect here. -- badlydrawnjeff talk 03:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
-- Francis Schonken 10:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
@TheronJ:
With all due respect, Francis, I think you're ascribing more importance to WP:N than it merits. It was a contentious guideline that was ultimately adopted because it was felt that it was important to have a guideline that reflected current AFD practice. That's fine and appropriate, but AFD practice regarding books has always been and currently is broader than the general notability guideline. This isn't at all unreasonable -- numerous widely accepted subject-specific guidelines recognize notability in their field, even in the absense of two independent non-trivial published references. For example:
Notability is by its nature a requirement over and above verifiability or reliable sourcing, and the precise scope of it is really based on the community's intuition about what belongs in an encyclopedia. IMHO, the six book notability criteria as phrased reflect Wikipedia's operational consensus pretty well. Thanks, TheronJ 14:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
That is a long string of words, and is very hard to read. I hope you don't mind, but i'm making a section break.
I hope i'm not intruding on the conversation here, but to me an ISBN number is a good benchmark for a book that's "notable", as well as having it published by a notable publishing company(I know, I know, what is a notable publishing company, that's probably around somewhere here).
It's best to keep it simple, IMO. Just H 23:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
IMHO, we should tag this page as guideline because (1) it is an accurate representation of the notability guidelines used in book AFDs and (2) its a good guideline that people should continue to apply in determining whether to delete a book page as non-notable. I am interested in people's thoughts. Can anyone who would oppose a guideline tag drop a note explaining:
Thanks! TheronJ 15:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I can't see why the first and second criteria are split. Each calls for multiple, non-trivial, independent and about the book. #1 further calls for "at least some serving a general audience" (why do we care; take a hypothetical book on the maritime history of Maine that has been reviewed in both an academic journal about Maine history and a journal on naval engineering - those ought to be good enough), and explicitly includes reviews. #2 further calls for being a reliable source (why isn't this in #1?) and excludes only reviews in sources that do thousands of reviews a year. I don't see anything here that can't be combined, whether or not that exception in #2 is kept as an exception.
I suggest merging as:
The book has been the subject[3] of multiple, non-trivial[4], reliable published works whose sources are independent[5] of the book's owners and sellers. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews.
and keeping the bullet about what is excluded.
Then have the independent footnote say something more like:
Independent does not mean independent of the publishing industry, but only refers to those actually involved with the particular book. Someone offering the book for sale is involved for the purpose of independence, as are the author(s), their agent(s), the book's publisher(s), and anyone else owning the copyright to the material.
An aside: given what our Publisher's Weekly article says, I'm not sure it would count as a reliable source for the opinions of the reviewers, but I have no idea how extensive the problem mentioned there is.
I think this would simplify the text, without changing it significantly what do all of you think? GRBerry 19:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Should the subject matter of non-fiction books be taken into account? This occurred to me in a recent AfD discussion ( Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Only Three Questions That Count) concerning a book presenting some stock market guru's latest investment system. The book was published by a reputable publisher, and reviewed in Forbes magazine, and as such seems to meet the requirements of verifiability through reliable sources. The book was undeniably the subject of disinterested third party commentary. I still can't shake the sneaking feeling that the article on the book is thinly veiled spam, especially given the nominator's concerns that the author's article has attracted spam in the past.
I tend to think that certain types of book count as ephemera that probably aren't going to be worthy of an encyclopedia article, even if during their moment in the sun they appear on best seller lists and are the subjects of third party reviews in print. In my opinion, non-scholarly books that are:
ought to be required to show a bit more "leg" than the typical such book before meeting the bar. Spam is one concern with this sort of material: but complete bollocks is another.
What additional requirements ought to be made of this sort of literature is something I'd be open to consider. "Remaining in print for five years" sounds like a plausible one initially; obviously we want to keep an entry on The Joy of Cooking. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone currently have an objection to tagging the book notability page as guideline, and if so, (1) why and (2) are there any changes to the current page that would satisfy your objection?
Last time, only Jeff raised an objection -- there were some edits to the page in response to Jeff's concerns, but I'm not sure whether they satisfied Jeff's concerns or not. Thanks, TheronJ 15:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC) I would just like to add that the exemples section will be removed once the proposal becomes a guideline. Its current purpose is to illustrate how the proposal fits in with current practice on AfD. Pascal.Tesson 17:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Can anyone give an example of something? JoshuaZ 02:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm somewhat leery of criteria 5, if I'm reading it correctly ("The book's author is historically significant enough for his or her works to be considered notable, even in the absence of secondary sources"), for two reasons: first, I doubt there really are no secondary sources for obscure or minor works by actually famous authors; and second, if there really ARE no secondary sources, what can you possibly write other than a directory listing of the form "XXXX is a book by AUTHOR, published in DATE"? Given my first misgiving, I'd suggest:
This leaves the door open for someone to locate actual secondary sources without enabling the existence of permanent directory-style stubs. -- Calton | Talk 06:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Note that both Fuhghettaboutit and myself have cut some of the less useful fat out of the proposal, including the notes on sales number, on the Google Test and on flexibility. Most significantly (in terms of sheer kilobytes) I've cut the examples and precedents section since it was always intended to go eventually. If anyone feels that this is too drastic, please feel free to revert. Pascal.Tesson 06:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
First, great job to all in tightening up the criterion, getting it "promoted" to a guideline, and all of that with keeping the discussion (mostly) civilized. One question: I found the phrase from the old criterion: "Reviews in periodicals that review thousands of books a year with little regard for notability, such as Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews do not meet this (the notability) criterion." very useful and appropriate; it is now gone, and in reviewing the discussion, I don't see that consensus was reached on pulling this out: are we saying that these reviews now ARE sufficient to establish notability? Can someone patiently fill me in on the history of consensus on removing this phrase? If it should be in, I think it would work in a footnote, footnote 3. Thanks in advance. UnitedStatesian 04:21, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Would some extra eyes take a look at Attitude: The New Subversive Cartoonists? Following a somewhat interesting DRV, an attempt to merge all three books into one article was done, rejected, proposed again, and then, with minimal discussion, merged back together. I don't want to be the one to overturn this again at this point, so perhaps some extra eyes to see if I'm simply crazy or not would be helpful. I don't think the page, as written, is really all that easy to use or easy on the eyes, nor does it follow general convention, but I have no problem with what other people think, as long as we know what other people think. Thanks. -- badlydrawnjeff talk 14:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
I've added the disputed section tag to the guideline section-if anything, it seems to dispute itself. Mainly problematic is number 5, which states that a book can be notable "even in the absence of secondary sources", if notability only can "rub off" from the author. This isn't necessarily the case. Most really big-time authors (i.e. a Stephen King, Terry Pratchett or J.K. Rowling) will see any book they write receive tons of attention anyway, and generally even books they wrote before becoming famous will be covered in retrospect. On the other hand, that isn't necessarily the case with smaller-time authors, and generally such books would be best-served by a brief mention in that author's article. The big problem here, however, is the self-contradiction. The main header states that content must be attributable to reliable sources (which is of course true, and which is core policy), so it is beyond me how it can go on to advocate writing without those very sources. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
How about this (tweaked the language slightly):
-- Fuhghettaboutit 02:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm coming in late in the game but I think part of the problem here is the method of determining whether or not something is sourced. Ghits shouldn't be any sort of test for notability for a book; MLA and\or Academic Search Premier hits should be. The MLA bibliography presents a very different picture of notability than Google: JK Rowling has an enormous web presence but she only has half the MLA citations of, say, Don Delillo. At least in academia, Don Delillo is considered a more "notable" author. There are undoubtedly a number of other books or authors who aren't mentioned on google but who have received some amount of critical attention & are therefore sourced (and perhaps even better sourced that some Google favorites). I would also argue that the MLA bibliography would be a good litmus test for whether or not something is often studied in the classroom. Jordansc 16:39, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Does criterion 5 mean, effectively, that if an author is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, then all the author's books are notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article? For example, look at the article Bratfest at Tiffany's. I understand that fans of that author think the book (as yet unpublished) deserves its own article, so that deleting the article would be contentious, but does the book meet Wikipedia's overall notability standards? -- Mathew5000 00:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I propose removing this from the baseline. They now list even vanity press books--It's not even an indication that it's a book, or any form of media--Amazon in particular will sell anything that can be shipped to a buyer, including kitchen appliances. Having them as a criterion is like having eBay as a criterion. DGG 03:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)