Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)

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Contents 1 Concerns about some of the criteria 2 Oppose nearly the whole thing 3 Consensus building/suggestions/concerns 4 Are these really needed? 4.1 Words of one syllable 5 A "novel" approach 6 Great project: here's an eg I prepared earlier. 7 Temporary measures 8 Trying to address Steve's points 8.1 What deserves an article 9 Thoughts 10 Criteria as of today 11 Concerns 12 Little test case 12.1 Thoughts 13 Proposal rejected? 14 Time to review the comments and update the guideline 15 Archiving 16 Are there any broader notability guidelines? 17 Some suggestions 18 Looking good 19 Additional criteria? 20 Exam books 21 textbook proposal 22 Not a general interest encylopedia 23 presumption of notability 24 threshold standards: "dozen or more libraries" 25 Greg Green

[edit] Concerns about some of the criteria

Since meeting one criterion is supposed to make the book generally notable, I think some of them need to be raised higher. The other criteria are okay at first glance.

I found this to be too high before these changes. Thoughts within. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• The book has been made into a major motion picture that was released into multiple, commercial theaters.
  • I suggest that this be changed into a nationwide release (any nation will do except for the tiniest ones).
    • So are we considering New York and LA "nationwide?" What about the DVD release? Way too strict for a criteria. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• The book has been translated into multiple languages.
  • I suggest that some kind of minimum sales number in each language be included. A multilingual author could easily translate a work into another language or two, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the book is notable. Also, if the book is in the public domain due to age, or is under a free or free for non-commercial license, then fans might be able to translate the book into one or more different languages, especially in electronic form.
    • Not all books get translated into another language, merely important ones, noted ones, or the occasional bilingual author. If a book is published in multiple languages by reputable houses, that should be more than enough. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• The book has been the subject of multiple, independent, non-trivial reviews.
  • I think that what counts as a non-trivial review needs more explanation. What is considered trivial is explained somewhat. Would a review in a medium-sized newspaper count? If so, I think the criterion should be made more strict or removed.
    • The "multiple, independent, non-trivial" clause is in wide use around the wiki. It's consistent. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• The book is listed on any major newspaper's or major online bookstore's bestseller list.
  • Whether this criterion is okay depends on what is being measured and what is being counted as a major newspaper and a major online bookstore. Are the newspapers measuring the number of books sold worldwide, in the country, in a wide region or just in their area? How large does the newspaper have to be and how big does its book sales coverage have to be? Do online bookstores' list only count what they sell? If so, we must make sure that the store is very large to get a more accurate sample. What counts as a large online bookstore? I can think of only one that I would count as definitely large, Amazon.com. After that, I don't know. Perhaps Barnes & Noble could be considered big, but I don't know how big and I would be at a loss trying to determine the size of other online bookstores. If we just go by name recognition, I think it would be quite inaccurate, especially since a recognizable company may have few online sales compared to offline, which would make its online bestseller list questionable if only online purchases are counted. Also, we aren't given a time-frame and a cut-off point. Would a book be notable if it was #5 on a single bestseller list for a day and then not on the list or any other list at all? Some bestseller lists are probably very long. If a book is #370 for a week on a list, is it notable enough for an article? There may be a spike on any list due to a news mention or other event that increases awareness. Bookstore lists are especially vulnerable to spikes when someone buys a bunch of copies at one time. An author or publisher might even try to manipulate the book's ranking in this manner. I think that appearing on multiple bestseller lists, having a minimum ranking and maintaining that ranking for a certain amount of time should be necessary. -- Kjkolb 09:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Bestseller lists aren't the best guide anyway. For instance, a notable science fiction book isn't exactly likely to make the NYT fiction list unless it's by a big-name author. Are we really going to exclude minor genres for the sake of what the public considers popular? --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

1) Nationwide release: Took your suggestion, but I think nationwide is too restrictive--a book made into a film released in 200 theaters (1/3 of a nationwide release in the U.S.) would seem manifestly notable, so I made it nationwide, or 200 theaters, but not less than 50 theaters.

2) Multiple Languages: Yep, we need to dam that loophole. Made it ten languages.

3) Bestseller List: Having read all your concerns on this point, and agreeing with your analysis, but thinking it would be quite convoluted to dam all those leaks, I got rid of it altogether. Seems to me this standard was simply an adjunct to those already existing--someone can still use a besteller list to show sales, so we don't need to make this a separate criterion and necessarily spend much text page qualifying what it does and doesn't mean.

4) Non-Trivial: Have to think about this--Fuhghettaboutit 15:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)l

• The author meets biography notability standards
  • Authors are notable just by getting a book published and doing a press interview somewhere, or alternatively for getting into the news for some non-book-related reason. Such an author might write a dozen books. Since the author is notable, is each of the dozen books supposed to get an article? It means almost every book becomes notable and article-worthy just by virtue of being published. Wikipedia is not "Books in Print". In general, books should be mentioned in the author's biography page. There shouldn't be a separate article about the book unless the book is really significant in some way. "Notable author" should be taken off the list of criteria--just because the author is notable doesn't make the book notable. See the book list at Sam Sloan for example--does anyone really think Wikipedia needs an article for each book mentioned there? Phr (talk) 05:53, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose nearly the whole thing

The more I think about it, the less I like this. We're being exclusionary for no apparent reason, when we could just as easily make a standard that says "Books released by reputable publishers, and that are not-self published" or something similar. Obviously, a self-published house (iUniverse, XLibris) has no content control, no editorial board, and thus the books are rarely notable except in specific circumstances, but it's fairly easy to figure out which books aren't self-published, it makes an easy criteria, and we don't have to bother with this "Did it make the Akron, Ohio bestseller list for alternate history" stuff. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

So you think it is a good idea for Wikipedia to have an article about every one of the 55,000+ books that are published each year in the US? (Yeah, I'm being US-centric here, but the same point could be made about every national market.) One of the dirty secrets of the publishing business is that because 8-9 of every 10 books lose money, there are a certain percentage published which appear in print for reasons other than the importance of the work (for example, an editor green-lights a friend's friend hopelessly bad book because his imprint needed at least 21 titles to keep from being axed by the higher-ups). And while it seems we could exclude some categories (for example, I see no reason for a separate article on each edition of the Chemical Rubber Publishing Handbook -- which is revised almost every year), even some categories present important exceptions (again, for example, The Joy of Cooking is important enough to argue against all cookbooks being judged as "non-notable").

PS - I'm a bit amazed that Joy of Cooking already has an article, yet at the moment the CRP Handbook is a red link. I guess the Wikipedians who are chemistry experts haven't gotten around to that omission. -- llywrch 18:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Even if we were in danger of having all 55k books published being added here (and the liklihood of such an occurance is, fortunately or unfortunately, very low), the question has to remain: who does it hurt? A book isn't a rock band or a local politician, and a published book is more than reputable for the purposes of sourcing for articles here, so I'm not sure why it would be a problem.

I've worked in publishing and on the retail end, all in books over the last 7+ years. I've seen my share of books come and go with barely a whimper, but I don't see the reason why they shouldn't be represented. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

This of course is a debate that goes beyond this mere proposal. But let me still reply with my own point of view on this. That Wikipedia is not paper is of course great because it means no space limit but the problem with 55k new book entries per year is that there is absolutely no way that this content will be maintained properly. As many have said before the limits of Wikipedia are not size-related but maintenance-time related. As you know there is a considerable time-cost to protecting pages from vandalism, categorizing things properly, maintaining NPOV, removing spam and so on. It's not like this guideline is imposing criteria that will limit the new book entries to two per month. Moreover, defenders of a book can always provide arguments on the AfD debate that the book is deserving of an entry despite not meeting the criteria. Pascal.Tesson 23:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

To extend this argument, the criteria takes pains to set forth that these are rules of thumb, useful in identifying the clearly notable, and that an article can still be kept despite not meeting any one ctiterion. On a separate point. I don't agree with limiting the sales figures to books that have been translated into English (a recent change). If a book is notable enough to sell up to the standared, why is that not notable just because it hasn't been translated into english?--Fuhghettaboutit 23:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

But we all know it never works that way. If folks see a notability guideline, it's rarely ignored for the sake of keeping. Managable? We have 1m articles as is, and the struggle still remains. Possible vandalism is not a reason to pervert article creation, and certainly isn't a good defense of this in particular. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you agree that 1m articles is already hard to manage, how is adding 55k new ones a year going to help? And let me make sure you understand my point: I am not advocating "perverting article creation because of possible vandalism", just saying that it makes sense to balance the benefit of having multiple articles about completely obscure books against the burden of upkeeping these same articles and what I believe is the inevitable hit to Wikipedia's reputation which is already often seen as the perfect place to get some useless info and the wrong place to get quality info. Pascal.Tesson 00:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

And although I have a predisposition to stand against catagorising books (my particular interest is wp:novels) I can clearly see that there is a need to keep an online co-op encyclopedia like this to "notable" titles only. In trawly through vast numbers of the "Novel" article on wikipedia I have seen large numbers of orphaned article. i.e ones written by author's, ones written by solitary readers and ones written by an agent of the publisher (hard to prove but I believe it is true), most of these have been written and with few minor edits by people like myself trying to keep things in order are basically just left. This is nothing new if book shops stocked all titles published they would go out of business, if all libraries held all books published they would fail to store their stock. Also if we are seen as an easy place to get webspace for promotional material all will be lost. I don't believe we can back off the notability issue it is just about how we properly define it and how we use that definition. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 06:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

If a single person (with the possible exception of the book's author) thinks that a book is important or interesting enough that it should have an article and then goes and actually writes that article, then I think that's all we need to decide if we want that article. Somebody wants it, so therefore we want it. The entire concept of "notability guidelines" smells of narrow-minded high-literate exclusionism to me. Stop this nonsense already! Hans Persson 11:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Considering How hard it is to get published at all, that's notable enough for most people. Any other criteria is frankly, sophmorically naive. This 'criteria' is poorly considered. A publisher willing to bet real dollars on an author is noteworthy enough to be notable, even if the poor sod never sells more than a few copies. // FrankB 00:09, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see any reason not to have an article on any given book by a major and reputable publisher (like a Random House or a Simon & Schuster). The vast majority of these are going to meet the "multiple non-trivial published works" standard or the "author merits an article" standard anyway. As for the space concerns, there's a general consensus that all distinct species deserve their own article, which will ultimately lead to literally billions of stubs. Worrying about scalability with regard to books seems like a comparatively strange place to start. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 02:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I also strongly oppose this in nearly its entirety. Any book published by a major non-vanity press, and with at least one mainstream secondary source (including e.g. Publisher's Weekly), is plenty notable enough in my view. The only real concern there is if a page is being used promotionally, and anything reasonably suspected of that should simply be tagged with a template or gutted to a stub. In a sense, I'm arguing that the more fundamental debate should be what constitutes a vanity press. The definition might need to be broader, including for example in-house presses by organizations dedicated to promoting a particular point of view (some cults, political parties, etc surely have such things).

The maintenance article impresses me none at all. It probably takes well more effort to go through AFD than an obscure article would ever require for maintenance. For routine stuff, we have bots. The vandalism rate is proportional to readership rate and so is the correction rate. On net, I doubt whether the proportion of readers who see a vandalized article version is any higher at an obscure article than at a common one. My guess is that deleting a good faith article contribution is on net self-defeating on the maintenance front. One of the quickest ways to lose a new editor is to delete his brand-new well-intentioned article on a seemingly reasonable topic.

Sure would be nice if we could quit wrapping ourselves in rules, and use some common sense. That common sense is that there should be some affirmative good in deleting a specific article. Perhaps the article is clearly promotional. Perhaps the book is clearly promotional of a group or cause, and published for that reason alone, which would make an article on the book ipso facto promotional. For the most part, the simple requirement that we reference at least one mainstream secondary source will prevent these. Derex 22:16, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus building/suggestions/concerns

I have added this page to Wikipedia:Surveys to attempt to gather further consensus on both the content of the current proposal and whether it should be adopted as a guideline. Please add any commentary below. Although you may indicate your unconditional/conditional opposition or endorsement, suggestions are welcomed and discussion is encouraged; this is not intending to be a vote.--Fuhghettaboutit 18:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth I fully endorse the current proposal. This should not surprise anyone given that I was involved in its creation and have watched the page develop since its creation by the above user. Pascal.Tesson 20:52, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I still oppose. It's going to eliminate too many otherwise notable books, and the sales numbers in particular are especially jarring. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't misconstrue this as a personnal attack but what books are you talking about? I would really like to have an example on which we could base this discussion. Thanks. Pascal.Tesson 21:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

All the criteria listed for the modern era are in the disjunctive—meeting any one establishes notability and, in any case are set to establish clear notability, not to define a line in the the sand cutoff point. You have made your opposition here and proclivities in afd debates well known.--Fuhghettaboutit 21:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

(repeating a short note above) Your criteria for sales is so totally unrealistic as to be hilarious. You're off by at least a factor of ten. See the prime Palaver discourses in the Baen Free Library. Besides, the whole idea of restricting article make-up on most any notability grounds flys in the face of JIMBO's take on the matter. Sales above 100,000... in an era following 50 years of television poisoning now exacerbated by video distractions like X-boxes, and Personal Computers? Gawd, you need a few more years of perspective. The biggest problem faced by us in this modern world is the lack of readers. What few fiction pieces I dabble at editing I do so hoping against hope to get at least one other person to read some book, any book. We're shoveling back the tide with a bent fork and you want to freeze us into even more illiteracy??? Count me out.

Besides, Who are you, (or anyone) to decide the tastes of the rest of us? If someone cares enough to put together a reasonable looking article on something that's published by a reputable publisher, that's notable enough. That was Jimbo's take in an interview ca late May, as published in our Village Pump. We don't need additional guidelines—the fact speaks for itself. If no one cares, and there is no article on the book, then that fact speaks loudly enough too. Sorry. I'm filing this one under YAGDGPTSHH— 'Yet another God Damned Guideline proposal that shouldn't have happened' Best regards, // FrankB 00:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Responding seriatim to this scattershot of points:

• Nothing on Baen Free Library about "prime palaver"; come again?
• Jimbo: An appeal to authority and referencing his take without providing enough information to check the source even were it relevant. That argument's logical extension is that all notability guidelines/policies that have been accepted shouldn't have been because Jimbo categorically opposes.
• Illiteracy/lack of readers screed (with nested ad hominem): I agree with you 100% that illiteracy and lack of reading are terrible problems but this is one big non sequitur; how you get from this notability standard proposal to those problems confounds explanation.
• Grow up ad hominem: Pot, meet kettle.
• Who are you to decide our tastes!: Again, a non sequitur. This has nothing to do with tastes. In context, I think what you meant to say was something to the effect of "who are you to try to set policy." If that's not a mischaracterization, the answer to that question is, this guideline either will or will not be accepted by community consensus, I don't own the article but most pages, including policy/guideline pages, have as their germination a majority contributor. "Who are these people to write all that stuff!"
• The effort and money poured into a book/the effort in writing the Wikipedia article substantiates its notability: Notability is not conferred by the efforts involved or money poured into something, nor is the fact that an editor spent however many hours writing an article. If this were true, every failed endeavor, be it a restaurant, business or a book would deserve an article. So you would have every book that was ever published deserving of an article regardless of its impact/fame/influence. We'll just have to disagree on that.
• Back to Jimbo; see above on both relevancy and failure again to pinpoint the source of the statement.

If this policy is rejected by the community, so be it. If people have criticisms, I (or others) will be happy to respond. But please make constructive arguments and not diatribes. By the way, it is not lost on me that you invited the poster below to come here on his talk page. There is one constructive thing you have said (though in a rancorous manner). It may very well be that the number of sales are too high or even a magnitude of order too high. I'll leave that for another day.--Fuhghettaboutit 04:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if I get hot under the collar, but if all the gabble around here were work adding content then the Wikipedia Maintainance categorys would be a lot less full. Guidelines don't add content, nor improve it. Usually, they delete or prevent or constrain it—sometime in good ways—sometimes in bad. Any published work (commercially, not self-published) is defacto notable as the bar is so high to get out of the publishers slushpile and have someone's real money risked at putting the work out as to dwarf any psuedo-statistical artificial criteria that you seem bent on imposing. That section is the sole section I dispute. 'Nuff said.

As to your strawman arguement below... I just met 'Eagle 101' yesterday, and that talk 'exchange' was mostly mutual miscommunication at cross purposes. I hardly think that creates an influence from me on him as you mean deliberately to imply above. I don't think btw- I reactivated the Wikiproject:Book Series per Peg's suggestion. Can use someone to look over things and add 'standards' from the parent projects - Books and Novels. Get your two cents worth in on the Books notability guideline proposal. does anything at all to influence his input, but you present it as if I were advocating his voice. Since it's been mentioned at least twice on the Novels project talk page, he hardly needed the news. Pretty uncool!

You didn't follow the External links on Baen's to the library. But here's the specific essay on the matter. I think there are a few mentions in some of the others, but this one is pretty much the nuts and bolts of the reality of publishing. The Clancy's, Rowling's and such are the rare exceptions, the tipity-top fractional percentage at the right side of the bell curve, not basis numbers suitable for your psuedo-criteria. Were those proposals made retroactively, I'd guesstimate we'd be have 95% of all fiction articles in Afd... which is creating work... and gabble.

What you take as non-sequitar and appeals to authority are on point 'in philosophy revealed' (which changed my own pov) in the interview with Jimbo, which alas, I cannot relocate. IIRC, was an interview 'headlined' in the SignPost's 'In the News' section I'd thought in late April or early May—but I cannot relocate it. Perhaps the link went away, or some such, causing them to purge the framing sentence here on the Signpost. I trust you'll agree that looking for an hour was a good faith effort, however frustrating it was to me personally. (If someone finds it please email me the link ASAP!)

I seem to recollect it as an interview by an Australian magazine or paper. (Or New Zealand???) Jimbo was asked what was most surprising thing to him about the Wikipedia experience. His response was something along the lines of "All the amazing little areas of human culture that I'd never even heard of yet each has a body of followers that care enough to take the time and put together an article to inform the rest of us about their interest and that simply astonishes and delights me". Now this closing question was not in something other than a plain vanilla interview, but the sentiment and approval of oddball articles comes through loud and clear, wouldn't you agree?

Since then I've become very anti-deletionist. He's got a point. If you want this project to be nothing other than another 'cookie cutter publication', a 'high minded intellectuals only' bastion, then stay with 'notability', but I infer it's against Jimbo's fundamental beliefs about what should be included. Better yet, lobby for some standards of locking down articles that are matured (yeah, even to pursuading Jimbo and the Foundation board to change policy—I consider the way the current setup misuses Admins time to combat vandalism a sort of especially uncaring slavery—all negative connotations meant sincerely, despite the voluntary servitude, the matter is shamefully disrespectful of a volunteer's time! i.e. I see no issue with requiring an editor to register and prove a bonifide email, nor to lock things unless one is such. Things seem to be trending that way already, thankfully!)

If I resort to the pov of the 'high minded intellectual elitest', I'd have to nominate to Afd just about every thing that is cultural to be intellectually honest and consistant—all entertainers, all writers, all literature, all arts an humanities, all sports, etc. articles go to the chopping block in my philoposophy, for all entertainment is mere decoration in the struggle of life. But since that decoration is what makes it worth fighting life's battles, what living is all about, then the classics (and sports and shudder, actors and bedamned television articles) stay and should have their contemporary companions todays popular equivilents. Shelly's Frankenstein wasn't an immediate hit, nor was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Both were humble fringe niche markets that the years raised in stature. So I'm not going to sit in judgement, an neither should anyone else here in this community. Best wishes to all. // FrankB 16:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments FrankB (although you might want to stay civil when expressing them). I think you make a valid point about specific numbers being too high and this is certainly something that anyone on this talk page is ready to discuss. However I would like to point out two things which I believe to be important in light of your two comments. First, (and the point has already been made by Fuhgh) there is an OR underlying the criteria and although there will only be few books that meet the proposed sales numbers, the criteria concerning independent reviews and media coverage are likely to be quite inclusive. This guideline is mostly intended to prevent the use of Wikipedia as a vehicle for free advertising by authors and publishers and even by a very limited fanbase of a particular book. The danger I see is to let Wikipedia transform into a place that promotes the importance of a particular piece of art rathen than a place that reflects it. I understand and share your concerns about declining readership but I strongly feel, for instance, that literature in Wikipedia is better served by imposing some reasonnable guidelines. My second point concerns your reference to Jimbo Wales' opinion on the matter. I think it's very important for the sake of the Wikipedia community to have a mind of its own. Ironically enough Jimbo says so himself!: "as a general rule, I think that almost any argument, on any topic, which has premises beginning with "Jimbo said..." is a pretty weak argument. Surely the merits of the proposal should be primary, not what I happen to think". (Clarification: he is not refering to the notability of books proposal) Now of course I understand that your main point is not that we should follow his word blindly but even putting him on your side of the debate might be unreasonnable: if he has an opinion on it, he will have full opportunity to express it. Pascal.Tesson 23:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Are these really needed?

Exactly that... I have yet to run across a book that is non-notable... that could not be stated as such by other notibility requirements. I believe that all of our existing policies and guidelines are sufficent for our purposes. Eagle talk 00:32, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/America Deceived, the debate that was the spur to begin drafting this proposal. There, though the book appeared eminently non-notable, the existing guideline standards were discussed and found to have problems, plus a number of the issues addressed in this proposal were debated.--Fuhghettaboutit 04:43, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Words of one syllable

Guildeline says meeting one criterion = inclusion. The guideline does not say failing one criterion = exclusion.

So more criteria = more chances for inclusion. OK, those had more than one syllable. :-P JackyR | Talk 10:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A "novel" approach

I want to revamp this whole thing, because I find it scary, and biased toward mainstream fiction in particular.

The current debate surrounding books is where that threshold lies. There are some people who would include everyhting ever published, which would never happen even if we allowed it and makes no sense given the explosion of self publishing in the last 10-15 years.

Thus, we should be working from the smaller end and head up, not start from the top down. We know that sales figures can be misleading - whatever number is thrown out there will be biased toward particular genres, and will typically be Ameri-centric. We know that the older the book, the less likely it will be able to get a grasp on its importance to the time or its affect on the future. We know that children's books are an entriely different beast than "adult" fiction, requiring further adjustment. I can go on and on, but between this and the discussion above, I think you can figure out my issues with this.

So here's what I want to see us do. Instead of making a blanket notability standard which will be impossible to cover all genres and languages, we keep it simple:

• If a book is published by a non-vanity publishing house, it is notable enough for inclusion.
• If a book is self-published, or self-published through a vanity press (XLibris, iUniverse), notability must be demonstrated by coverage through an independent third party reliable source.
• If a book was published prior to 19XX, it is notable enough for inclusion.

Much like we don't want Wikipedia to become inundated with garage bands, we don't want Wikipedia to be plagued with the book some guy has written without an editor and sells out of the trunk of his car at flea markets. It doesn't mean that all vanity books are bad - Eragon probably would have met this before getting picked up - but it means that, in absence of a worthwhile editorial process, vanity books would need some extra oomph to be granted inclusion.

To cut some of you off at the pass, Wikipedia is never going to run into a situation where every book printed is accounted for. Even if 25k books are printed in a given year, the chances of us having 10% of those become articles is low, and if we're able to get 25k decent articles out of it, we're in better shape as an encyclopedia as a result. I worry about older books, but if a new book doesn't meet basic verifiability standards, it wouldn't be kept around, and older books really aren't much different.

So let's be realistic, and let's be smart about it. If we're concerned about including books, let's include books and not make a bunch of hoops to jump through. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:10, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Badlydrawnjeff. The current proposal is way too strict, and bordering on rulecruft. Way, way, way too strict. I'd personally set the bar at being covered in a third party reliable source, but Badlydrawnjeff's ideas above have merit. I can't support the current page. Steve block Talk 20:25, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know where you get this idea that most books won't end up with an article. Once word gets out that every book is allowed its own WP article, publicity departments in the Highly Connected World will be all over it, Christmas joke books an' all. Jeff, you've worked in the trade so you know this is true. Smaller companies are already doing it. Only the Less Connected World will be left out. JackyR | Talk 22:51, 12 July 2006 (UTC).

You're right, I've worked and continue to work in the trade. Most books which would fit this criteria would NOT get articles purely because no one would bother to make them. If what you were saying was true, I wouldn't have had to create as many album, musician, and author pages as I have thus far, though. And, again, more articles = no harm. I can't stress that enough. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course I strongly disagree with this approach and I fully agree that JackyR: Wikipedia is already a prime spam and advertisement target because of its open structure. The solution of course is not to close shop or lock down all articles but rather lies in creating some reasonnable standards as guidelines. Now although some may think that more articles = no harm, I would say that the support that a number of notability guidelines have received indicate that this is not a point of view shared by a majority of editors around here. Pascal.Tesson 02:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The reason we've had to create articles is that word hasn't got round yet. You and I are already on WP, but much of the universe has never heard of us, or has only heard that we're a Bad Thing (newspapers enjoy drama). I'm not just in the trade (when not ill), I'm an editor who has created marketing campaigns in London for a very small, independent press. This is a place where the mega-PR departments have paid students to be seen reading titles on the tube to create viral marketing. Once The Bookseller picks up on WP, we'll be trampled in the rush. There'll even be lovely money to be made giving little seminars on WP for nervous first-timers whose bosses aren't sure about this dodgy wiki thing (hey, I could be doing that), and then we'll be hit with puff articles for every little novelty book cooked up before Xmas or on the latest bandwagon. Encouraging this directly contradicts the spirit of the message that appears when one starts an article:

Wikipedia is not an advertising service. Promotional articles about yourself, your friends, your company or products; or articles created as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted in accordance with our deletion policies.

Sorry, rant over. We do seem to be moving a little closer together, below. But please, no undue reverence for items in print! JackyR | Talk 09:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree with these proposed guidelines. They're simple, but enough to keep many- er- non-notable books out of Wikipedia. As for the 19XX, how about 1923, as proposed in the "Modern Era" section? --Gray Porpoise 15:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I've done some re-thinking since I put my two cents in about the academic texts a while ago. I see some persistent ways of thinking here that may not be justified, and I think sometimes our basic approach is wrong. So what if we gat 25k articles....or 50k articles? We're not a paper encyclopedia...there's plenty of electrons to go around, folks. As for basic approach, I think we're missing the point. We're looking at life like we're editors of paper (which I also am in real life), and like the Wikipedia is our own private playground. It's not. We need to be thinking from a customer-centric point of view. In other words, our thoughts should be motivated by the desire to meet the general public's research needs. If there's a book or author out there, someone will likely be reading it, and there's a chance that someone at some time will want to look up information on that book or author. Unfortunately, around here, the word "notable" has somehow become equated with "popular". It's not. Even a very obscure author or book can be notable (heck look at Dumas when he died). The point is, we need to be asking ourselves "Will this information be useful to someone somewhere in the English-speaking world someday?" One editor (sorry, forgot who) had on his user page a quote from one of our Customers, and it said something like "I searched all over for information only to finally find it on Wikipedia, and to find that the article that I needed was proposed for deletion." When that happens, folks, we have failed in our basic mission. Our job is to provide concise, valuable information to our customers. Period. Let's not forget that, and let's craft our guidelines with that foremost in our minds. I'm stepping off my soapbox now. Akradecki 15:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I generally agree with Jeff's proposed standard here. "Because it's hard" should never be a reason for us not to try and provide the best and most useful encyclopedia possible. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 02:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Great project: here's an eg I prepared earlier.

In practice there are probably very few Czech novels which will ever be the subject of AfD debate (above)

Actually in practice, Czech novels are more likely to be the subject of AfD, if the experience of Hungarian playwrights is anything to go by. I do a lot of WP:CSB stuff, and the "I haven't heard of it, it must be unimportant or a hoax" attitude is rife. That's before we get onto the "en.Wiki should be about en.world" folks. So I'm anticipating lots of horrid Wiki-lawyering and guideline-quoting no matter how many caveats we put.

Huge congrats on the project, by the way. This is something I've wanted to see since joining WP. I'm a professional editor/writer myself (when not ill), and I really don't believe all books should be on WP. Plenty of dross appears every year and is pulped within 12 months (some of mine have lasted longer, and even had newspaper or trade press reviews, but trust me Jeff, you don't want them on WP). Besides, WP is an encyclopedia, not a book catalogue: what would an article on a non-notable title contain? Just the ISBN and publication info, same as Amazon?

A word of caution about Amazon ratings, btw. Some UK specialist publishers sell only or mainly direct to their target audience, due to the huge discounts demanded by the resellers. This compounds the issues about academic and specialist books already mentioned at the top.

I haven't added anything to the project page, as I think you've covered the bases very well indeed. Let's watch it in action for a while, and see what Qs come up. Once again, congrats all round on a great start to a vital project. JackyR | Talk 22:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the support Jacky. Though many who have commented so far, as best I can tell, very much in the inclusionist camp, I am concerned that the standards are too high (though I will note again, and am still puzzled by the continued arguments that implicity ignore the fact that meeting any one criteria is enough so not meeting one criterion has no affect on meeting another). I can't imagine turning this into "any book, if published by a non-vanity press, should be included"—as suggested higher above. That appears totally indiscriminate--no standard at all. As an example, according to this site, during 1996, 67,000+ books were published in the U.S. and 800,000+ worlwide. They are not all notable. I am going to make some unilateral edits taking this down a notch, but hopefully not to so low a standard that it allows pretty much any book to be included. --Fuhghettaboutit 23:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

No one's ignoring it, trust me. We're simply pointing out that the standards are much too high. And, following your canges, still are. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Well Jeff, I've seen you around afd and your standards are at the point where you are often the sole voice for keep, where other people think the subject is patently not-notable. You are certainly entitled to your dissenting opinion there and here, but I, and I would dare say many editors, find your standards immoderately low.--Fuhghettaboutit 00:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps so. That still doesn't mean anything here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 10:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, just a few days ago you said "Since meeting one criterion is supposed to make the book generally notable, I think some of them need to be raised higher." Now you're saying that the standards are too high. Frankly, I don't get it. Pascal.Tesson 03:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

That wasn't me, I replied to someone else who said that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 10:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but we're not getting at Jeff, of course. It's good to have voices of dissent to help a project examine itself. Even if the consensus ends up quite far from individual views. :-) JackyR | Talk 09:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• I seem to have trouble with believing that existing policy won't stop people promoting newly published books in a wikipedia article. How would they be viable based on WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV and the guidance at WP:VANITY? The problem attemting to be addressed here is not one that exists, to my mind, and I feel the current page is instruction creep. I can see the value in for example, 1, 7 and 9 in the modern era criteria, although I'm not keen on multiple sources, policy requires only one, but the rest have little value. Steve block Talk 13:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't understand. If Random House publishes an Xmas stocking-filler about David Beckham's socks, which it fully expects to be chip-wrappers by 31 Jan, how will any of those guidelines stop the book getting an article?

Also, why do we need notability guidelines for any topic, like music, if these policies are sufficient? JackyR | Talk 14:58, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't understand your point regarding the Beckham book at all. As to the second point, the status of notability on Wikipedia is not a guideline, it's an essay. Those notability guidelines have no meaning beyond a list people can point to at an afd. When closing an afd an admin should not lean on those guidelines to decide the consensus. Steve block Talk 09:54, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Temporary measures

It breaks my heart to say this, but after following this the last few weeks, this proposal appears to be going nowhere. Sorry for this bluntness.

I've updated Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria, with a few ideas I picked up here, and transformed in a fairly simple "notability" description in that section on the "books" naming conventions page.

That section still links to this new proposal, but I removed the too optimistic comment that the new proposal would soon replace the notability description provided by the active NC guideline.

My personal opinion is that this separate books notability proposal is sinking away in unnecessary (and too confusing) complexity.

So also, for the time being, I re-introduced the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria link in Template:Notabilityguide. Again, after clicking the NC deep link from the template, one will see the boilerplate link drawing attention to this new proposal, but I prefer to keep "active" what is "active", and "proposal" what is "proposal". Anyway this also alleviates time pressure on making this new proposal work. If I've been too bold in my (temporary) "notability" update of the active NC guideline, I would like to invite you all to direct your comments at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (books). --Francis Schonken 11:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, any ideas on how to simplify it? I don't understand why it would actually be so bad to have a guideline which is precise. Note that the length of the guideline is due to the fact that things are explained in full detail to prevent any abuse of the guideline by overzealous deletionists or overzealous inclusionists but the spirit still is a short list of 9 criteria which a five year old can understand. Can you be more precise as to what part of the guideline you think represent unnecessary and confusing complexity? Pascal.Tesson 13:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, realizing I sounded a bit harsh. Should've emphasized that the exchange of thoughts on this talk page and the collaboration on the proposal page is and was really fruitful. Anyway, if I described the "short updated version" at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria as a temporary solution, this implies I have no problem whatsoever with a more elaborate guideline, if consensus can be found on it.

Anyway, in the temporary solution I replaced the nine criteria (+ the other set of criteria for books older than an -arbitrarily chosen- date) by a single one: the need of several reliable independent sources describing or evaluating the book. This is consistent with WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, etc...

If you want a suggestion, I'd move the "sales number" criterion to Wikipedia:Notability (books)#Other considerations, and describe it as an indicia (preferably without mentioning an exact number, while even within the fiction and the non-fiction categories the margin is quite variable depending on type of book: for instance I suppose there must have been millions of 2CV user manuals distributed: I don't think that warrants a separate article on the "2CV users manual", the existence of that book is so self-evident it doesn't even need to be mentioned in the 2CV article - on the other hand significant albums of poetry may have been distributed on much lower circulation than an average "fiction" book, and still be notable enough for a separate article), not a criterion.

Also, please fold the "modern" and "pre-1900" books in a single description, there's no need to keep these separate: the "1900" distinction is artificial, and might be quite incompatible with several cultures. --Francis Schonken 14:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Where's the consensus for moving these changes? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Deeply depressing. Having a single criterion like "multiple independent reviews" is heavily weighted towards countries which produce lots of media, media about media, and media about media about media. I'm quite sure a 2CV users' manual could meet the review requirement (just one example). And local papers, in the UK at least, will happily fill their pages with profiles of vanity-published local authors, particularly on local topics.

Meanwhile, I'd be astonished if Setswana literature taught nationally in Botswana would satisfy the criterion, particularly if we require multiple reviews. There just isn't the same level of media coverage -- and the national collection doesn't have an online catalogue. I don't want WP to turn into one big book catalogue, but I think we're keeping out the wrong titles. JackyR | Talk 14:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

But then Setswana literature isn't coverable anyway, per WP:V. As to your suggestion that some things which have verifiable, independent, reliable sources should not have articles, that appears to cut right across the rationale of Wikipedia and the three key policies. What is trying to be prevented here is already guided against at WP:VANITY. Steve block Talk 14:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

If I can give an ISBN for a Setswana book, then it is verifiable. It might or might not be verifiable from your bedroom, or by you at all if you don't have the right library accesses. But it is verifiable. Which is not the same as having two or more independent reviews. JackyR | Talk 15:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Um, have another look at WP:V, articles require an independent third party reliable source to exist. I'm not of the opinion that an ISBN number is a third party reliable source. You also don't address any of my other points. Steve block Talk 20:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Many Wikipedians tend to confuse verifiability and verifiability through Google. The point is (again...) that different books will meet the criteria in different ways. Typical poetry books for instance will never make the sales threshold, will never be made into a movie and will never be translated into another, let alone 4 other languages. If it sufficiently significant it might be widely taught in literature departments. It might be written by a notable author. It might be good enough that multiple independent reviewers have talked about it. Setswana books can make it through the sales number footnote or criteria 4 or 5 (assuming that Botswana has a literary award which, come to think of it, may not be the case). As for the 2CV manual, its only chance is the sales threshold. Nothing wrong with that. I'm also afraid that opponents assume that we are advocating the creation of an article for every book that meets the criteria. As for the idea of having a separate note for books published before 1900, again I don't see what's so problematic. Maybe it does complexify the page a bit but it still makes sense to add at the very least a note that the criteria might not be well-suited to judge the notability of older books. 1900 is indeed an artificial cut-off and that fact is acknowledged in the intro. Pascal.Tesson 15:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

(I am at work, have to keep this short). Frankly I am quite confused by how this section started--consensus is not an overnight process. There have been, what, six people other than me and Pascal who have added any feedback on this page? That's not even close to consensus or community opinion. I'm really not sure what time urgency there is or what you expected Francis, but guidelines are not normally quickly achieved because feedback and consensus take time. Just to shed some light onto this, I just checked and Wikipedia:Notability (people) was proposed on August 1, 2003 and adopted as guideline almost two years later on June 13, 2005. Wikipedia:Notability (web) was proposed on July 2, 2005 and adopted as guideline on December 12, 2005 (five months, ten days later). I posted the first draft of this on June 30, 2006—13 days ago. --Fuhghettaboutit 15:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, today is the first time I've seen this proposal, since it's the first time there's been a link to it from the "centralized discussion" box on AFD (or at least, if there was one before I didn't see it) -- so it's quite likely that a lot of the people who would be interested in this have not yet seen it. Yes, it's much too soon to begin saying that the proposal is going nowhere. — Haeleth Talk 17:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trying to address Steve's points

Btw, I may not have understood your points, so please excuse and just put them again if I've got something wrong.

1. ISBNs. An ISBN is an independent, third party, reliable source that a title exists, was published by who it says it was, in the country it says it was (read the article).
   It is not an indication of notability. So a nationally taught Setswana book could pass WP:V but "fail" notability if we used Francis' current version at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria:
   If a book is influential several third-party reliable sources will discuss it. If there are no widely available reliable external sources describing, reviewing or evaluating the book ...there is generally no reason why the book would need to be described
   I should point out that "study note" type materials in a country of fewer than 2 million people are often workshopped with the in-service teacher training teams and distributed as p/copies or probably computer printouts these days.

   Sorry, can't you even quote correctly? Truncating the quote from the NC books guideline is a bit deplorable here:

   If a book is influential several third-party reliable sources will discuss it. If there are no widely available reliable external sources describing, reviewing or evaluating the book ...there is generally no reason why the book would need to be described in a separate Wikipedia article.

   I'd be happy to learn about Botswana schooling programs, although I suppose you'd be hardly interested in the books of native authors we were reading in school, naming the De Muur by Jos Vandeloo as one of the more notable ones. Even in that case I'd rather have the article on the author first in English Wikipedia - which article could expand a bit on the content of his most notable books. Similarly for Botswana, if you have a reliable source for their schooling program on indigenous literature, I don't see why you shouldn't start an article on Literature in Setswana language, describing the important books, and spinning off articles on the most notable individual authors and books in a next step. But always you'd need reliable sources, for each separate article. --Francis Schonken 22:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't be uncivil, Francis. I'm at least as irked as you, but have been letting my posts sit for a few minutes before hitting Save. Partial quote only for brevity - thank you for adding more that you felt was important.

1. And, PS, who was talking about a "source that a title exists"? ...that's not by far an author-, publisher-, and vendor-independent source that describes, reviews or evaluates a book. It is the registration of a name, nothing more. If I give you the name and registration number of a pet, that is not by far the same as the description of a particular animal. Unless such animal gets some other press coverage like Laika or Snowball it's not going to get a separate Wikipedia article. --Francis Schonken 23:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Steve might have been. Or might not - I didn't understand him, so covered all bases: hence part of the answer should be redundant. It is not intended to imply anything.

1. My "suggestion that some things which have verifiable, independent, reliable sources should not have articles". I'm not sure that's what I said, but I certainly agree with it, as does WP: I refer you to Wikipedia:Verifiability#Other comments.
2. "three key policies" sorry, could you say which three - this is just my ignorance, as I follow way more than three WP policies!
3. "What is trying to be prevented here is already guided against at WP:VANITY". No, that's your personal take. Discussing "what is trying to be prevented" is, or should be, the main purpose of this project. Actually, I don't think it's been expressly determined: we ought to do that -- it's good you raised it.

If I've misunderstood you, please correct me: I do wonder if we're at cross-purposes in some of this. I think an explicit discussion of what deserves an article will help everyone. JackyR | Talk 22:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

On point one, I agree with Francis. I'm not sure what's being addressed or said at point two, but if you say we agree that's fair enough. On point three, my bad, I assume everyone thinks of WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR as the three key policies with regards to content. On point four, it's not a personal take, the reasons you raise for creating this page are the reasons that WP:VANITY was created to address. Steve block Talk 09:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Point 2: I don't agree with you: I agree with Wikipedia, which fundamentally diasgrees with you. Please read what you said, and follow the link I provided: "Just because some information is verifiable, it doesn't mean that Wikipedia is the right place to publish it." JackyR | Talk 12:33, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm still confused as to what we are arguing about here. WP:NOT outlines the vanity stuff I thought we were dickering over? What did I say that you are countering? It's certainly true that WP:NOT precludes certain types of information, yes, but I thought I was arguing the point with that included. Again, I'm not sure what we are arguing at which point. Do we agree that vanity and self promotion are precluded at WP:NOT? That's my broad thrust, that what is being sought to bar against here is already barred. Steve block Talk 18:51, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Btw, in return could you address my points at the bottom of #Great project: here's an eg I prepared earlier., which you probably didn't see. Cheers, JackyR | Talk 22:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What deserves an article

Good idea that we should discuss this. I'm of the opinion that anything which is verifiable, does not constitute original research and is written from a neutral point of view has a place on Wikipedia. Any other notions of inclusion or exclusion criteria, to my mind, represent a point of view and thus should be guarded against, since we should maintain a neutral point of view when writing an article. Just as it is a point of view to write that something is the best thing since sliced bread, so it is point of view to suppress the existence of the thing. Interested in other people's opinions. Steve block Talk 10:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm getting together some book industry data that will help us see where we're coming from, and then we can identify and thrash out issues that have emerged above. Currently we're all talking about subtly different things! JackyR | Talk 10:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, both my internet connection and my health are crap today, so will have to delay posting the info I promised.

Last plea for today: READ each others' posts before replying; and read the POST SOMEONE IS REPLYING TO before commenting. This is going in circles because people aren't doing so. JackyR | Talk 12:31, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

"Has a place on Wikipedia" does not mean the same thing as "deserves an article". — Haeleth Talk 17:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Hah. I mean this gently, but I confess it's funny how you pick up on that and down below you are noting people should moderate language to avoid wiki-lawyering. I'm not looking for a wiki-lawyer debate here. Time and time again people at afd refuse to merge info because WP:MUSIC or whatever states that it doesn't meet the guidelines for an article and so it must be deleted. Redirects are free, stubs are perfectly acceptable and if something meets the policies above and doesn't meet the criteria at WP:NOT, we've got a place for it or we need to discuss amending WP:NOT. Steve block Talk 18:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts

Okay, so we've all kind of stepped away from this the last few weeks, but I was reading this over today and realized that, while some of us have fundamental disagreements on the how, we're all in agreement that we want some sort of guideline for book notability, something that doesn't happen at other proposals. This is a positive thing, IMO, and I believe that we're all bright enough to pursue this further.

As I read this, there appears to be a few proposals.

1. The proposal currently at the project page.
2. The proposal where non-vanity books, pre-"modern era" books, and self-published books with obvious claims to notability are included.
3. The proposal where any book that recieves an ISBN is included.
4. A proposal I just came up with, similar to the unwritten standard regarding musicians - if a musician is notable, his works are as well, and can have their own articles.

Now, I've been the chief proponent of the second option, and I still am - it seems to me, honestly, to be the most reasonable offering as it doesn't rely on arbitrary numbers and Americ-centric terminology. Many here want a variation on the first option, which would still need some discussion to get it to be as useful as possible without forcing people to exploit loopholes. I also know there are proponents of the third, which I personally consider unreasonable, but has a legitimate argument in that ISBN numbers are handed out by a third party, and infer some notability from it. The fourth may, in fact, be a worthwhile compromise of the current proposal and mine, as it allows for notable books by notable authors, but doesn't go too crazy about it.

So the question is where to go from here. I know polls are evil, and I don't want to go down that road, but I think the next step for us is to figure out which proposal we can all live with, and run with it. I'd like to see us toss some coherent arguments for and against these proposals to try and narrow it down, but we need to keep some things in mind:

1. Verifiability is non-negotiable. Period. We can't abandon it as much as we might want to, but the policy on verifiability is, in fact, much more flexible than you might think.
2. Possible vandalism should be treated as a non-starter. Concern about vandalism in "little watched" articles is not a reason to use a guideline to discourage article creations. Vandalism is a fact of reality at Wikipedia, and is best dealt with in other areas.
3. Wikipedia is worldwide. We must be aware of this when discussing possible proposals - sales numbers cannot be treated the same from country to country, and mean different things to different markets.

So I just got long-winded there, but I think you get it. Shall we have at it? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I think such a poll would be very deceptive indeed because the alternatives, as you have stated them, are not at all well established. This proposal has only been commented on by 19 people, the majority of which have not been with regard to the alternative proposals you refer to above. I'd note also that about 80% of all of the text on this talk page is by you, me, Pascal and Francis. Probably 60% of that text has been you stating your opposition in various ways and others responding.

Only one person, as far as I see, has called for including any book assigned an ISBN which is frankly a ludicrous argument. In any event, just because one person throws out that thought in one sentence does not a poll alternative make. I don't understand your fourth stated alternative you propose as a compromise position since it happens to be already included as the first listed criterion—"The book is authored by a person meeting Wikipedia's notability criteria for people."

Your standard, the second you list, isn't a notability standard at all. Instead, it is a statement of pure inclusionism, allowing any book article not written by the author or other self-interested party that asserts notability to be included. I'm not saying you don't have your right to believe that. But it's not a notability standard. It's an argument against having notability standards.

This may never be adopted as policy but as I noted in response to Francis, other notability proposals have taken more than two years to adopt (or reject). I think we need more than 19 people (most of which is four or five people) commenting before we have a poll. Certainly, in deciding to adopt the proposal as drafted, placed against three defined alternatives, each of those alternatives needs to be well respresented as supported alternatives. That is not the case. For what's it's worth, in thinking about your post, I reviewed this entire talk page to see who has said what and in relation to which issues. Here's what I found (excluding me, Pascal and Francis):

1. Akradecki: commented on academic books criteria and endorsed an earlier version. No discernible pro or con stance.
2. Jenny Rad: Made an academic criterion suggestion. No discernible pro or con stance.
3. FrankB: stated his opposition.
4. Kdammers: Made an academic section suggestion. No discernible pro or con stance.
5. Metropolitan90 said he is watching the page. No discernible pro or con stance.
6. You stated your opposition at great, great length.
7. Kjkolb: made some suggestions. No discernible pro or con stance.
8. Phr: suggested that the standards are not strict enough
9. Kevinalewis: did not comment on the proposal as a whole but appears to feel a stringent standard is necessary.
10. llywrch: Commented mostly on the sales figures, which I have removed.
11. Eagle talk: Stated essentially that all books are notable (probably countable as a con, then).
12. JackyR: Appears to endorse stringent standards, not sure of stance on present criteria.
13. Steve block: Appears to be against notability criteria in general.
14. Haeleth: Commented on Francis' haste. No endorsement either pro or con but appears to want some standards.
15. Rossami: appears to have endorsed criteria.

Fuhghettaboutit 17:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria as of today

Sorry for ducking out. The project page is looking very good indeed. My gut instinct is still to go with Francis and say that books should show influence (sorry for getting tangled trying to express that such influence might manifest itself by being taught in schools, instead of having reviews), but I fully accept that that would be setting the bar rather higher than elsewhere in WP. So very happy with what we have, or can probably be persuaded to support changes in line with other WP projects.

(And it would be wonderful to have an article on De Muur by Jos Vandeloo. :-) Not the starting place for a planned project on Dutch lit, I agree, but we certainly wouldn't delete it if some keen student wrote it.)

Below I offer two pieces of food for thought. JackyR | Talk 19:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, poo! I've justt deleted several hours work on the second piece (entirely different). Will post anon. JackyR | Talk 22:38, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Concerns

From reading this talk page, it appears this proposal is going nowhere. But, I think maybe Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(books)#Note_on_notability_criteria can be improved with a few key points.

First, on the "Note on notability criteria", it states:

Usually, books with an ISBN-number and/or availability in a couple dozen 
of libraries and/or a Project Gutenberg type website, and with a notability 
above that of an average cookbook or programmers manual would qualify.

Just about anything published (and listed on Amazon.com) these days has an ISBN number, right? This contradicts the notion of having limits on what's considered notable.

From Wikipedia:Notability (books)#Criteria_.28modern_era.29

• I'm okay with criteria #3, 4, 5.
• Criteria #1 and #2 are largely redundant. If an author is best-selling or otherwise notable, then the author meets #1.
• However, I don't entirely agree #1. Category:Writer stubs is extremely large, with many very large subcategories. If an author is listed here, then I think there is room to include discussion of the book on the author page. I would make exceptions if the book meets criteria #3, #4, or #5 (and perhaps #6/7).
• For criteria #6 and #7, "multiple, independent, non-trivial" is key. But, I would also like to add the requirement that they are reliable sources. A few independent, reliable sources are necessary (per WP:V and WP:CITE) to write a properly sourced, verifiable non-stub article.

As for using sales to help gauge notability, I would only do so if comparing multiple books in the same genre/topic. Right now, there is an AFD going on for a 9/11 conspiracy theories book. I have compared the sales rank of several books on the topic and find some fairly notable, and some not with relatively much lower sales.

I've put out here several different points of discussion. The most important I think to add to the current notability criteria, are (1) reliable sources, and (2) get rid of the ISBN-number criteria. --Aude (talk contribs as tagcloud) 14:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

ISBN number is poor, I think there's a general, albeit unclear, consensus on that. However, since you seem to have a good idea as to what you're looking for, how do you feel about keeping it simple and placing the threshold at non-vanity presses? --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

That's the point of the figures above. They give a tiny glimpse of the fact that an enormous number of non-vanity books are toilet paper by the end of the year. Wikipedia is, we hope, going to be around for decades. Besides, entering all titles would precisely duplicate the work of the Internet Book List, which is designed to be the universal catalogue (you may be interested in contributing there, if you don't already). Let the iblist and WP do their different jobs - with lovely links between the two, of course.

What Aude says is good (I think ISBNs were only there to keep out pamphlets, etc. But actually those issues are dealt with by the other criteria anyway.) JackyR | Talk 15:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Just to add how common ISBNs are, even U.S. government publications such as "Are You Ready?: A Guide to Citizen Preparedness (see also [1]) have ISBN numbers. It would be silly for Wikipedia to have an article about that publication, and everything else that has an ISBN number. Yet, I've seen the ISBN point used to justify the existance of articles on non-notable books. While this discussion page seems much more active, I'll post a message over on Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(books) concerning this. --Aude (talk contribs as tagcloud) 15:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Little test case

OK, here's the thing I was going to post last week. It's a recent case which caused some friction and provides a Beginners' Guide to Astroturfing; I thought this a nice chance to try out the project guidelines, and check if WP:VANITY, WP:VERIFY and WP:Reliable sources would have reached the same result – and if it would be a result people would feel comfortable with.

User:Cherylktardif created an article about herself (Cheryl Kaye Tardif), and edited articles about her book (Whale Song (novel)) and its self-publisher (Trafford Publishing).

Cheryl Kaye Tardif survived AfD thanks to the efforts of Ms Tardif and two other editors to clean it up in accordance with WP:NPOV and WP:VERIFY. But WP:Reliable sources has not been applied – possibly no one involved was aware of it.

Whale Song (novel) also survived survived AfD, for similar reasons.

Ms Tardif is very open about the fact that she owns two groups to promote authors (BookAdz.com and AlbertaAuthors, owned by Imajin Creations) and is involved with several others (AuthorsRow AuthorsDen, Writers Guild of Alberta) and the international group, Sisters in Crime.

Many of the reviews of Ms Tardif's three books on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk and Barnes and Noble.com are by members of the above groups (BookAdz members) or by Jimmy Fox, for whom Ms Tardif has returned the favour (Tardif on Fox, Fox on Tardif). Similar or identical reviews appear on multiple sites. In some cases the same reviewers appear twice in the same listing, under both Editorial Reviews (submitted by the author/publisher) and Customer Reviews (normally submitted directly to Amazon by individual customers). There is also evidence to suggest that at least one other of the customer reviews was submitted by the author/publisher (compare Customer Reviews/"MsTeeq (USA)" with Editorial Reviews/About the author).

In this case, therefore, the reviews are not a guide to popularity of the titles. The actual Amazon sales ratings, although not an absolute indicator, are low for the novels on all three Amazons (the highest being 332,816 on Amazon.ca for Whale Song).

Some of the sources used in the Cheryl Kaye Tardif appear to be independent, for example the California Chronicle. Scrub that: the California Chronicle is some sort of posting board for writers [2], so there's no way to tell whether an article is independent or not. And lo, this particular article was written by a Canadian connected to Edmonten (Ms Tardif's patch).

Others are related to the promotional groups mentioned above:

• Silver Moon Magazine's small staff includes T.C. McMullen and Sheryl L. Bartlet, members of BookAdz.
• 'WestWord Magazine' is the members' newsletter of the Writer's Guild of Alberta (Westwood Magazine).
• InSinC newsletter is the members-only newsletter of Sisters in Crime (InSinC newsletter).

(There is also a claim that one of Ms Tardif's books has attracted possible movie interest, so the notability assessment would obviously change if a movie came to pass, but since it hasn't yet it's not useful for this exercise.[3])

So my questions are:

1. Should any of the articles Cheryl Kaye Tardif, Whale Song (novel) and Trafford Publishing be on Wikipedia?
2. If so, in what form? (Individual articles? Single article, perhaps on Canadian lit/writers?)
3. If not, under which criteria would they be excluded?

NB This is not an attempt to re-run AfD on these articles, but to test-run the project criteria. And of course we are dealing with a living person who is a Wikipedia editor, so as usual comments relate to the notability of these topics as articles, not the personal merits of Ms Tardif or quality of her books. JackyR | Talk 19:22, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts

My compromise criteria is "Books by non-vanity presses." Thus, using that litmus test, the author should probably continue to exist as it seems that there's enough to keep her around beside her book. The publisher absolutely should remain. Now, the book, it seems pretty open and shut on its own. I tend to handle books like I do musicians - the musician is notable enough for an article, so the musician's albums get added. Since the author probably makes the cut, her book should as well, but if the author didn't, than the book obviously shouldn't. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:36, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

My feeling is that the author should have been deleted. In general I'd rather not go against the consensus but the closing admin is wrong to conclude that there is a consensus to keep. At best it's a no consensus especially since the keep votes include the author itself! The book should be a definite delete and again I'm not sure that the closing admin's opinion that the result is a no consensus is entirely justified. Actually, this test case I think is a good example of why we need these guidelines. Pascal.Tesson 00:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Another AfD could happen, of course. But right now an AfD can get bogged down by editors there wikilawyering over these guidelines! There were suggestions above that WP:NOT, WP:VANITY, WP:VERIFY and WP:Reliable sources should be enough without specialized guidelines: do you think that's the case with these examples? JackyR | Talk 00:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, it would be nice if we ditched all notability guidelines and strictly went by NOT and WP:V, but it won't happen. The community has, fortunately or unfortunately, decided that we need some sort of notability guidelines. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:37, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

There's a key problem in relying on WP:Verifiability/WP:Reliable sources. Many things are reliably verifiable, by virtue of telephone directories, re-printed press releases, etc. The notability projects exclude these sources as sufficient (although presumably they're good for detail in independently notable articles). In this case, I don't think the book and author articles would have more than one line if we excluded this type of information and insisted on a decent level of Verifiable and Reliable Sources (what is the status of in-house magazines in terms of V and RS?). The company would also fall by the wayside as being reffed only by the company web-site.

WP:Vanity and WP:Auto are very clear (Wikipedia is not, therefore, a forum for advertising or a vanity press), but have no teeth whatsoever. They just recommend good practice: if an editor is ignorant of or chooses to ignore these recommendations, so be it.

WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a soapbox is contradictory. It states that "Wikipedia is not a soapbox or a vehicle for propaganda and advertising." In this case, the editor/subject of the articles is open about why she came to Wikipedia [4][5]. This is so far borne out by her contributions (read them if in doubt). However, NOT then falls back on WP:Auto, WP:Vanity and WP:Notability, so things are no clearer.

Again, this is not an AfD: I'm trying to elicit comments on which guidelines are working. My personal answer to my own questions, however, is that on consideration I'm pretty damn sure the book (not yet published by non-vanity press) and author do not belong on WP (achievements claimed are not high, especially when you check the details from the references), unless we had an article on non-notable writers in Alberta. With WP:NOT, WP:V, etc one could probably reach this conclustion, but with lots of wiki-lawyering. However, I think the project guidelines would work well, and I'm with Pascal that this shows why we need them.

I think it's also clear that these WP articles and links are part of a larger publicity (ie spamming) campaign. Again, the editor is open that she does this:

" In order to successfully market yourself and your work, you need to establish an Internet Identity (I believe I have an article on exactly that can be found along with some other articles of mine at EZINE ARTICES.)

Write articles and include a link back to your site."Cheryl K Tardif

And I think we need to wise up to some of the techniques people may use and be a bit more sceptical about sources. I had no idea there were so many "write a free article about yourself and your friends" sites out there! JackyR | Talk 14:45, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a cut and dried case of self-promotion, vanity press, and non-notable reviews, and a clear illustration of why Amazon reviews, as a rule, should not be considered reliable, with exceptions only for notable, confirmed notable reviewers. Regardless of whether or not the author should be on wiki, the book should not. --Mmx1 19:53, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem I'm having here is that Cheryl Tardif *is* notable in her local area. I haven't read any of her books but her name is absolutely familiar to me. She's always in the papers, she has been a keynote speaker at dozens of conferences (including many held by the City of Edmonton and by independent organizations), and her name is close to a household word. I'm worried that people are thinking "she's not notable to us so she isn't notable, period", which concerns me a bit. Notability shouldn't mean notability in the United States or notability among men 18-35 (who I suspect aren't a large market for mystery fiction anyway). Yes, she seems to be using Wikipedia as a public relations tool to gain notability outside her local area, but that doesn't automatically mean she's non-notable. It means she has to stop using Wikipedia as a public relations tool.

It's almost as worrisome as the person up top who was amazed that the Joy of Cooking was notable as compared to a chemical reference that perhaps one in 20,000 people knows exists. Joy changed American society; it's one of the most notable American books ever, even on a sociological basis alone. --Charlene.fic 13:35, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

In all fairness I think you misread that comment. Although he (whoever it was) said he was surprised to see it already had an article, he also said that it was the perfect example of a cookbook that should have its article. Pascal.Tesson 13:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely about the potential problem of "notable to us". However, in this case there's a distinct lack of independent material, which I find puzzling. If Cheryl Tardiff has that much presence in the real world, why are there not more independent local newspaper reports on her? She is editing the articles on herself, and surely she of all people knows what media reports about her exist?

Focussing on these guidelines: do you feel the current guidelines would exclude Cheryl Tardif? Why? Is the issue prinicipally that the articles about her haven't been well-referenced?JackyR | Talk 12:12, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal rejected?

How can one person simply come here and say that this has been rejected? Francis, you don't own this page. Pascal.Tesson 07:31, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

As I said before, the gallons of ink spilled above are by a very circumscribed group of editors (19 at last count; majority are only six editors), and a large portion are from some of the most inclusionist editors the pedia has. As I also noted, with a detailed summary, the positions of those who have contributed are not clear, with the majority making suggestions (many implemented) and which do not even comment with respect to acceptance or rejection. Finally, and as I also noted to Francis in particular in response to previously jumping the gun (at that time 13 days after the first draft was started), the notability guidelines that have been accepted or rejected have taken as long as two years for that process. We are now two and one half months out. I do think we need to archive this talk page and have a straw poll or similar mechanism in the not too distant future, but to mark this as rejected when there has been few commentators, barely a discussion of adoption or rejection and in context only a short time period since proposal, is inappropriate and out of process.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:20, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Could you possibly comment on the eg above - which might pass WP:V, etc, but fail these guidelines? I introduced it precisely to demonstrate whether these guidelines have mileage. JackyR | Talk 19:36, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I have been editing slightly less than usual these past two weeks. I commented on it in the next section.--Fuhghettaboutit 04:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

As a reminder, there are multiple ways for things to become a standard (policy, guideline, or other if we ever introduce it). One of those ways is if people use it for a while and it becomes generally accepted. (A while means months; WP:BLP which is now policy was a proposed policy for 4-6 months before it became a guideline and then a guideline for about 6 months before it became a policy.) This is not rejected; come back in a few months and if nobody is using it or discussing it, then it can be called rejected. GRBerry 01:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

• Concerning JackyR's question, I think the Whale Song book would definitely fail to meet the proposed criteria. Moreover, I'm convinced (although I certainly could be wrong) that the AfD would have resulted in deletion had more people been involved. The fact is that a fair majority of Wikipedians consider that there shoud be some criteria for inclusion, be it for people, companies, music... Pascal.Tesson 17:20, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Time to review the comments and update the guideline

Ok, so Francis Schonken's weak attempt at stifling the debate has convinced me that it's time to update once again the guideline taking into account some of the comments on this page. My feeling is that in order to achieve consensus the two important things to do are

1. Making the criteria a bit looser, probably looser than a few of us would like them but not to the point of being meaningless.
2. Simplifying the guideline. I don't remember who made that point but I've come to agree with the idea that we shouldn't worry about "loopholes" since we are indeed not writing a text of law but trying to sketch a rough description of what is consensually acceptable.

Of course, point 1 has already been adressed in many respects (as one could easily judge by looking at the much more stringent original proposal). Still, I will go over the talk page and adjust the proposal. The other thing we need to do is to continue our search for input from other editors. I have requested that a link to this proposal be posted on the WikiProject Books page and am also trying to mention the proposal in the relevant AfDs. Pascal.Tesson 17:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't you think the lesson learned by Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Big Wedding is that we are too loose, and not the other way around and must get rid of criteria 1 at the very least? Review carefully--there are at least two comments that the criteria are not stringent enough even here. Much of the criticism regarding strictness is from possibly some the most inclusionist editor on the pedia (yes I know I said this in my last post for different purposes but it's true). It is unfortunate that this has been commented on by very few people, but I think we do better to reflect community consensus by looking at the result of a real debate at afd regarding this proposal, than we do to water this down to some milquetoast, non-standard that would function not unlike a sieve and thus serve no function whatever.--Fuhghettaboutit 18:01, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

• Reply to myself: I've gone ahead and simplified the whole thing. I dropped the 3 classes of books approach although I kept common sense notes for academic books or non-modern books. Feel free to undo these changes but I think they make the guideline more readable and simpler if less precise. Pascal.Tesson 18:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Reply to Fugh: I did not notice your message so let me reply to it now! There are two issues here: whether or not I think we are stringent enough (the answer would be "no") and whether or not these criteria are consensually acceptable. Even in the slightly simplified version I think the criteria are not milquestoast. The case of The Big Wedding shows that there might be a problem with criterion 1, especially for the case where the author is borderline notable such as Sander Hicks which only has his own page because of 9/11 conspiracy cruftists. Maybe we should rewrite that criterion as "The book is authored by a person meeting Wikipedia's notability criteria for people in link with his writing" or something like that. Pascal.Tesson 18:12, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Extra comment: to a certain extent I have also come to accept that garbage like The Big Wedding will be kept on Wikipedia because it has some sort of cult following. Sad, yes, but probably inevitable no matter how stringent we make these guidelines. On the other hand, I don't know if you've been following the recent wave of AfD debates on the 9/11 cruft but it is reassuring that common sense has often prevailed, despite claims that these articles met the various guidelines out there. Pascal.Tesson 18:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I like your idea with regard to criteria one.--Fuhghettaboutit 18:27, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I was invited to participiate in this debate, but reading the above, i rather not. Peace. --Striver 19:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm also trying to mention it to folk such as Striver involved at AfDs (regardless of opinion expressed there - tis all grist). JackyR | Talk 19:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

And, again, what's the problem with using a simple criteria instead of having so many things? --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:15, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea of having multiple criteria is that this is the best way we can come to something that is consensual. Any one-criterion attempt is sure to leave a bunch of people dissatisfied and the criticism would certainly be warranted since I see no way of finding proper balance in that way. Also a note to Striver: I understand that our views may differ on what constitutes "garbage" and whether or not The Big Wedding should have been kept but neither Fugh nor I meant to exclude you from the discussion. Cheers all. Pascal.Tesson 21:16, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of drawing a bunch of flies here, I'll say this: the criteria as currently stated are helpful, as they serve to sieve-out works that outside of Wikipedia wouldn't be notable. Aren't we trying to achieve a balance here where we include books that the outside world believes are notable, and exclude those that don't get noteworthy mention? That way, it's not we at Wikipedia that make the decision (encouraging an original research kind of perspective), but we rely upon notability and reliable sources coming from others, much as we do for every other article. Morton devonshire 01:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Well put. Of course if we want the criteria to be a truly usefule tool, then one has to find the right balance between their meaningfullness and their simplicity. I'm not saying we've found that optimal balance but keeping a single set of criteria instead of three helps. I believe Badlydrawnjeff's solution, on the other hand, would not.

[edit] Archiving

As Frankb noted a while back, much of the talk for this page has been addressed or has become obsolete as the proposal evolved. I propose archiving but wanted to put that up for debate here before doing so unilaterally. Any objections? Any thoughts on whether we should archive it all, including this post, or at what specific post should the archived section begin? I will not archive before September 19, regardless of response.--Fuhghettaboutit 20:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

It would make sense is to archive all of the obsolete discussions. The only problem is, as you mention, deciding what that is. I think it's safe to say that everything up until "Concerns about some of the criteria" is obsolete. All the discussion about sales can also be archived. For now, I think it's best to leave anything that could possibly be considered as active discussion or objections/suggestions that have not been implemented. Pascal.Tesson 21:11, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok so I went ahead and archived what seemed like unquestionnably dead discussions. But please feel free to review this and move stuff back in if you feel that is needed. Pascal.Tesson 22:41, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Are there any broader notability guidelines?

I'm having a hard time getting my head around this proposal, mostly because I'm not sure what the core principles of notability are. I agree that there probably are some books that don't belong on Wikipedia, but also note that the overall notability rule itself has failed to reach enough consensus even to reach guideline status, and that the notability guidelines that do exist are phenomenally broad. Are there any core principles that we can agree on? Thanks, TheronJ 13:50, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'm not sure there are. The only real rough consensus I can see is that having an ISBN number alone is not enough for inclusion. I still haven't seen a real compelling argument against limiting inclusion to modern-era books published by a non-vanity press, but that doesn't seem to have much traction, either. I just wish people would look at this from an inclusionary as opposed to an exclusionary standpoint. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:53, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Your best bet is to look at what articles exist (for creation precedent) and what are deleted (for deletion precedent). A reasonable start would be along the lines of WP:FICT: list books in the article on their author, unless this would make the article too long. List characters in the articles on the book, unless this would make the article too long. Of course, if the author fails WP:BIO, the lot of it gets deleted. Any self-published book is going to fail the notability standard (except in extreme exceptions). >Radiant< 21:28, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I would never do that, as there are a) no binding precedents, and b) because we don't have a workable guideline to guide people with. The "votes" aren't based in anything other than people's personal feelings, some of which are extremely inclusionary (any book with an ISBN) and some which are extremely exclusionary (not many books are "notable," not even all of Stephen Kings would be, etc). Books should, at worst, be handled like albums are - if an author is notable, so are their works. At best, we should go with a logical position like we do our typical verifiability policy for sourcing, namely independent review - if a book is published by a non-vanity house, it's suitable for inclusion. It shouldn't be this difficult to pull together, and I worry that when we start adding in sales figures and reviews and whatnot, it starts being pulled together by people who have a limited understanding regarding how publishing works, which is not helpful. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:55, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• We're talking about creating a guideline here, so of course we don't have one yet. We base guidelines on precedent; that doesn't imply they're set in stone. A point of importance is being published by an established publisher, as opposed to vanity press or just sticking it on your website. >Radiant< 22:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, we base guidelines on what makes sense, and "precedent" (a beast that doesn't really exist here) isn't always sensible. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:28, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• So we base them on the sensible part of precedent, duh :) >Radiant< 22:43, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I really like Radiant's suggestion that books belong in the author's article, unless the book is itself notable. And since it fits with practices elsewhere, let's just do this. It's much more rational than having a tiny, unexpandable article for each book. (Or are we already doing this and I missed it?) Further, I'm in a discussion about Andrea di Robilant (non-fiction) about whether the author should be at the book name, or vice versa: this guideline would solve the problem - although I can imagine exceptions on a case-by-case basis. JackyR | Talk 23:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
    • The problem is, if there was' precedent set elsewhere, "books belong in the authors article" does not fit precedent. We do not put movies in the articles of directors, albums in the articles of bands, television shows in the articles of creators. Why would we ever single books out that way? --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Jeff, I'm trying to see what you could be referring to about Stephen King books. Every Stephen King book is notable and every one meets multiple criteria bases (even though a book need meet only one), and also would have met all or most of the bygone criteria which you are still referring to as if they are present.--Fuhghettaboutit 23:39, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
      • We both know this is true, but there are plenty of people who believe otherwise. If people actually thought sensibly about when an article should stick around, we wouldn't need notability criteria. Thus the double-edged sword of consensus, I suppose. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
  • There's no precedent to go off of, though. Duh? (that's meant as a light-hearted duh, for the record) --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
    • What I said was that books belong in the author's page unless that would make the page too large (which is obviously true for Stephen King). >Radiant< 07:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
      • That, again, does not mirror what's done with any other medium. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
        • That is not true. It works for television episodes, for instance, as well as characters from books, as well as songs on a record. >Radiant< 21:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
          • But you're not comparing like things. Author -> book -> chapter/scene/event. Band -> album -> song. Director/actor -> movie -> role/scene. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Pretty much every music album, movie, and television show that is published nationally is notable enough for its own page, right? I don't have any problem with compressing the books onto the author page as long as there's room as a stylistic issue, but the "as long as there's room" doesn't really affect whether the books are notable. Notable but stubby books like The Corsican Brothers (there's actually no entry, so it's a sub-stub at this point) might go on the Dumas page until there's enough text to spin them off, but that's true whether or not they are notable. TheronJ

• Well, yes. But the point of guidelines isn't just a blanket "include or not", it's also a matter of organizing content. If some kind of content would make more sense merged into context, we might as well state that in the guideline. >Radiant< 21:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Agree that "Author article too long" is not the same as "Individual title is notable". And I also agree that length and reader-friendliness are important when organising material. Which leaves me still just about in favour of compacting the material (with redirects, of course) when there really isn't much to say about either. Otherwise the author article and book articles will overlap significantly without really adding value. (There is also a mild correlation with notability, in that a minor work of a major author may have generated a lot of independent reviews or refs in lit crit; whereas a minor work of a minor author probably hasn't. So notability will tend to yield longer Verifiable articles.) JackyR | Talk 23:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some suggestions

It seems like some good progress has been made on this criteria since the last time I looked at it and I appreciate the effort even if I don't agree with every point. I wanted to make one suggestion with regard to criteria six based on some recent AfD debates.

6 The book has been the subject[3] of multiple, non-trivial[4] published works whose sources are independent of the book itself.

The immediately preceding criterion excludes media re-prints of press releases, flapcopy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book[5], but includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews.

Specifically, I think its important to specify that these published works should not come exclusively from sources within the same area of study as the book in question but must include general works. The goal here is to cut down on cruft. If a book has only attracted attention from within its own field it really isn't notable. For example we've seen a number of conspiracy theory books that get reviewed or discussed by many other conspiracy theorists but which barely attract any mainstream attention at all.

Secondly, criteria 6 should exclude publications such as Publishers Weekly which review enormous numbers of books (in PW's case 7000 a year) without much of a selection bias. Surely a good number of those 7000 books a year are not notable.

Finally, I want to make a more general point about WP:BK. Lets say that about 1000 books a year pass this criteria. Of these, there will be wikipedia articles on say the 100 most notable (bestsellers, won major prizes, etc) and those less notable books that serve to push someones POV (the conspiracy theory books, polemics on various controversial topics, etc.) but nobody is going to write up articles for vast majority of the (say 800) books that fall into neither of these categories. As a result, it will seem to our readers as if we are giving undue weight to controversial material. This will contribute to the feeling that wikipedia is becoming less of an encyclopedia and more of a compendium of diatribes and controversial ideas that have no other outlet. I would urge you all to consider a stricter inclusion criteria. GabrielF 16:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the constructive comments. I do however disagree with your last point, at least to a certain extent. There is a philosophical debate here that is recurrent on Wikipedia: controversial topics/people/books/ideas or subjects with a dedicated fanbase indeed tend to get more developped articles on Wikipedia. I agree that it tends to give it a bad reputation but fundamentally I think we have to dismiss these criticisms and just accept that the way to solve the problem is not through stricter criteria. I think we have to say "ideally all of these 1000 books a year should get an article. The 200 that do end up having an article may not have been the highest priority but hey, it's a start". The same happens for featured articles: sure it's a bit sad that Mariah Carey was built up to FA quality before Napoleon but in the end, our objective is still to have both as FAs so the FA status of the first one is still good news. Pascal.Tesson 16:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking up my invitation Garbriel. We need new voices here. Maybe searching out AFD debates on books and leaving a short aside about helping construct these criteria (in addition to addressing the article up for deletion) is a good way to get more interest going; it worked here. I for one find it dissapointing that so few editors have shared their thoughts. I am still ambivalent about the article I went to bat for. I know we must put aside our likes and dislikes but I would have wished the book at issue wasn't such a repugnant one though I still think the Naples award puts the book over the edge. Enough disgression. I think the [now implemented] suggestions are good ones and have to agree with Pascal on the last point. By anaology, it is a shame that we have so much pop culture coverage and such holes in so many other areas but we can't get rid of the former because it overbalances the latter, and have to hope that eventually they will equalize.--Fuhghettaboutit 22:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Looking good

I just came across this proposal. Kudos to these that worked on it. It is a much needed guideline. What are the plans for upgrading this to official guideline? ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 22:28, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

It still has a lot of problems. I think it's still too focused on fiction, and too Ameri-centric, and I think it's much stricter than our already too strict standards in other areas. Discussion above shows people in at least three separate camps, to boot. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:26, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jossi. Thanks for stopping by! Well, in order to update to guideline it needs to gain consensus so we need more people like you posting their support. Our problem is that relatively few people have commented at all. A related problem is that the {{IncGuide}} already lists an "official" book notability standard (the germ for drafting this was specifically because that was so inadequate) which I think has functioned to hide this proposed guideline from view; people see that and don't look further down the list and find this.That section, at the end of a naming convention, was elevated to policy apparently in a manner akin to porkbarrel legislation.

Another problem is that those who have commented here have mostly been of an inclusionist stripe, with the above post from the most vociferous in that camp, and have drowned this page with their objections that the standard is too stringent, while recently in a few afd debates, others, who have not commented here, have voiced their displeasure that the standard is too lax. It's a bit frustrating.--Fuhghettaboutit 23:40, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, what's americentric about it. I see you're still talking about the three camps idea which I have debunked a few times.--Fuhghettaboutit 23:44, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

You actually haven't debunked anything, upon further reading. Regardless, I've addressed it above, and considering that you've dismissed much of the contributors by considering our contributions a "problem" because we allegedly act via an "inclusionist stripe" doesn't help. This page is massive, and could be easily simplified with some logic and good faith. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:49, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I can understand some of the objections to the proposal but ameri-centric? The only thing you might say is that american books are more likely to be adapted to the big screen but that's hardly a significant bias: novels written in English or translated into English do have a better chance but how is that even Ameri-centric? You did mention that concern earlier but it dealt with sales number which have been removed from the current proposal. Pascal.Tesson 23:56, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Jossi, thanks for the comments. I think the best you can do if you feel that this proposal is useful is to use it. This is how most of the notability guidelines went from being proposals to being guidelines. I use it quite often as do a number of other editors. This is also the best way to obtain continued input on how to make it more inline with the consensus opinion. Pascal.Tesson 23:56, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Jeff: I also want to say that you're exagerating when you say that the page is "massive". Sure it could be leaner but a large section of it concerns previous AfD cases so that we can establish what the current practice is. There would be no need for it once this is accepted as a guideline. It's also true that the layout makes it longish but that's not a fundamental issue. Of course, your proposal of "anything published except publications of vanity presses" would be much shorter but I urge you to honestly accept the fact that this is way below most people's desired standards. Pascal.Tesson 00:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

No Jeff. Others' constructive criticism has been responded to and suggestions implemented. What I see from you is not that. Logic and good faith? Like referring to topics that have been moot for ages as opposition bases? By posting your strident opposition—for the most part not criticism of what's actually under construction—but unparticularized pretextual opposition in favor of allowing all books assigned an ISBN number; a stand in for "let's not have this page at all," and representing that non-standard as one "camp." You don't want there to be any criteria. I get it. So now you've asserted Americentrism; point to something.--Fuhghettaboutit 03:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Now you're misrepresenting my own position on the matter numerous times. Thanks for proving my point. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

No, for a notability guideline, even if we eliminated the unnecessary and irrelevant prior AfDs, it's rather large. It can easily be condesned down. As for my personal position, I will note that I had at least 4 people actively agree with me on that criterion above, which is actually more than any other possibility can say at this stage, further muddying the waters a bit. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. My view is that "community consensus" about a guideline or policy is reached when enough editors are aware of it. At a certain point one has to promote the proposal to guideline status, and announce this in the Village pump, the Wiki-EN mailing list and other fora. At that moment, those that would oppose such guideline will most probably engage and make their views known. That is the way we prompted WP:BLP to policy, and since it was promoted, it has substantially improved by other editors that were not part of the initial group that worked on it. So, be bold... when you feel confident enough that you can respond to most, if not all, arguments made against the proposal. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 03:28, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, BLP was pretty much forced through, and it's turned out that it's rather sloppy and still experiencing some growing pains. There's no rush to do this like there allegedly was with BLP. At a certain point, when there's actual agreement, then we promote it, not before. We can't even agree on a wording to promote to the pump and the lists yet. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additional criteria?

I don't have much time right now, (have to leave the house in about 3 minutes) so I'll be brief: One qualification that I believe might be useful to add to this page is commercial publication in multiple languages as an evidence of notability. Would there be any objection to this? --tjstrf Now on editor review! 00:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Well actually (people help me out here) I think it was at some point part of the criteria. But we decided to drop it to compromise with badlydrawnjeff who wants a simpler set of criteria. The question we must ask ourselves is: will adding this criterion really add anything? I'm tempted to think that any book which has multiple translations will have plenty of third-party coverage in any case. Pascal.Tesson 01:21, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The relevant question would be, is that coverage in English? --tjstrf Now on editor review! 03:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The relevant counter point would be: don't we accept reliable sources even if they're not in English? :-) Pascal.Tesson 03:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Which, while true, is relatively useless if I don't speak other languages. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 00:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I happen to disagree: unless it's a very obscure language spoken by a handful you can trust editors who speak other languages to check that non-English sources do indeed say what an article claims. Pascal.Tesson 01:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we dropped it because it was too much to begin with (someone recommended 10 translations, which rarely happens), and it didn't add anything. It still doesn't, IMO. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Come on man, be fair... The suggestion of 10 translations stood for less than a week. Pascal.Tesson 01:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Exam books

Is there a difference between text books and Exam-oriented-books (Like the Self Assessment and Board Review) as far as notability is concerned. Doctor Bruno 22:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I have added it to the coverage exclusion section.--Fuhghettaboutit 22:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

But Why ?? WHy it has been added to exclusion ?? Why not to inclusion. And what is the definition of Exam Preparation Books ?? For passing any exam we read a lot of books. Most of the books are text books. We cannot say that ALL those are non-notable. We cannot also say that ALL those are notable. I don't want a umbrella inclusion or umbrella exclusion. I asked this question to have a complete analysis and not a hasty change in policy. We need to formulate more specific criteria for Text Books and other books. Doctor Bruno 23:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh no. What I did as add it to exclusions from coverage, meaning, that the page does not provide guidance for evaluating the notability of exam prep books! As for adding a section on them, well, until such time as someone drafts a criteria for them, they should not be included as they do not fit into the criteria presently written. You'll also note that the "exclusion" from coverage section I was referring to, states that the criteria do not presently provide guidance. If you want to make some suggestions for what standards we should have for prep books, by all means.--Fuhghettaboutit 23:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok. We can ask for the consensus of the community and then formulate something. For a start

1. The book should have a ISBN Number
2. The book should be published by a publisher known for publishing text books and not stapled sheets of xeroxed papers.
3. It should have a long life like this book and not like this book which has a life of six months only

[edit] textbook proposal

The last question got me thinking about specific criteria for textbooks. Specifically, criterion 4 (the book is taught...) could be interpreted to mean that any textbook is notable since a textbook is by definition taught at multiple schools. I'm not sure we want this. I guess having articles on obscure textbooks couldn't hurt but is a 3rd grade math textbook or an obscure graduate level herpetology textbook inherently notable? Perhaps a specific guideline for textbooks is in order. I propose the following as a place to start:

Exclusionary criteria:

• The book is intended for a class which is:
  • A graduation requirement for primary or secondary-school in any country
  • A standard requirement for any particular undergraduate major (such as a first-level course in that major)
  • A standard secondary-school elective (such as Civics or AP US History in the United States)
  • A standard elective for a particular undergraduate major (such as Artificial Intelligence for Computer Science)

A textbook is notable if it fulfills one of the following criteria:

• It is the standard book for a particular course (for example Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach)
• It is written by an author who meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines (for example Economics by Paul Krugman or Microeconomics by Ben Bernanke)
• It has been described by multiple Reliable Sources as having historical significance.
• It is widely cited in scholarly publications in a particular field.
• It has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works

I can't think of anything else. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts. GabrielF 23:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Not to dodge the subject (have to look at these more carefully), but the page is page is pretty long (especially with the afd examples). What do people think about branching out topics such as that above into Wikipedia:Notability (books)/Textbooks (WP:BK/TXT), and the like, similar to the way we have WP:MUSIC and WP:MUSIC/SONG?--Fuhghettaboutit 23:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Good Idea Doctor Bruno 00:05, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Gabriel: for the first section, do you really mean "exclusionary criteria," or something along the lines of "the following is a list of claims that are often made for textbooks to assert their notability which do not, by themselves, mean a particular textbook is notable"? If the former, I can't see why any of them should form the basis for an exclusion.

With regard to the inclusion bases, I suggest expanding the first to: "It is the standard book for a particular course at multiple schools in different districts of a geographic region..." Expanding the second to "It is written by an author who meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines on the basis of his or her writing; or where the person is not know for writing, the book is specific to subject matter directly related the field for which they are notable.--Fuhghettaboutit 18:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not a general interest encylopedia

Wikipedia is not merely a general interest encylopedia, so a requirement that books be covered by sources serving a general audience is unacceptable. Kappa 02:04, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you are misunderstanding the intention here. The idea is to avoid claims that a book deserves an article when it has only been discussed in ridiculously small circles. Wikipedia, after all, is meant to be an encyclopedia not a database of books. I have in my bookcase right here tons of specialized math books. All of them, at some point, have been reviewed and I do mean all. And all of them have been reviewed in perfectly reasonnable, credible publications but extremely specialized ones that target a very very restricted audience. I see absolutely no point in keeping articles on all of these books. When I browse category:mathematics books I want to have articles with meaningful content, not an eternal stub that says "this book is about that". I want to read about books that have had some importance, are widely recognized as foundational works or as the reference on a given topic. To a certain extent the same goes for any book: without general audience sources, there is nothing that we can use to build an article with meaningful content. And while Wikipedia is not merely a general interest encyclopedia, it does strive to write articles that are accessible to a general public (see Wikipedia:The perfect article) so that does have to factor in to some extent. Pascal.Tesson 05:45, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

So what if it has? I gotta agree with Kappa, not only is it unaccpetable, but it's amazingly subjective. I can see the battles now. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

So far, the non-notable book deletions arguments I've been involved with have involved articles added solely to promote books by single purpose authors spamming Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to get a vanity article deleted if the subject is notable.

I'm all in favor of the more restrictive requirement.

[edit] presumption of notability

There's an interesting approach to US Constitutional interpretation that says that disputed borderline issues should be decided on the side that favors individual liberty. I suggest an analogy, based on the presumed agreement to the general ideas of free speech among anyone who would be writing here.

"A book that has any public attention other than a WP discussion and other than from its author should be kept, if someone other than the author of the book, or an associate such as that person's publisher, is prepared to write a non-trivial article."

One of the comments mentioned finding that almost all the Google listings were to WP. WP is so much a part of popular culture that to be discussed here is almost enough to make something notable.

As mentioned above, LJ lists all novels, and gives a plot summary, under the assumption that you never can tell. DGG 06:29, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I think this presumption would swallow the entire notion of notability. But you've hit on a core point, I think, which is trusting in the collective wp editorial body. Perhaps one could include this as "Other considerations" -- evidence of significant interest from multiple wp editors suggests, but not conclusively, notability. (It seems like this whole concept must have been considered in other notability discussions before, but I'm not familiar enough with them to say.) --LQ 17:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] threshold standards: "dozen or more libraries"

The problem with the "threshold" standard of a dozen or more libraries is that it disadvantages books like, say, The Gutenberg Bible (eleven complete copies). Other notable writers might have written an early text that is rare and, because of copyright law or the exigencies of publishing, out of print. Other notable writers might issue a limited edition work that is distributed only at a conference, for instance. I'd propose that this "threshold" be limited with a "rare, old, or out of print" exception, or possibly something like (a) independently historically notable; (b) notable in the history of publishing; (c) notable within a particular notable writer's oeuvre. --LQ 13:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

We're not writing a text of law here. Common sense will always prevail in these cases. Pascal.Tesson 14:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

In theory, common sense sometimes prevails in law too. ;-) But some people will attempt to apply rules rigidly, so if there are "common sense" exemptions then they ought to be mentioned. I used The Gutenberg Bible as an example because it is obvious, but there are less obvious examples, where notability will be harder for non-experts to ascertain; in those instances a little more greyness in the rule would be helpful to avoid non-common-sensical disputes and edit/revert wars. IMO. --LQ 16:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean but this is a guideline and should be used as a rough first step in assessing the importance of a book subject. If we start chipping away at every little exception, the guideline will turn into a maze of exceptions and counter-exceptions, making it useless as a tool in AfD. If a book is not widely accessible and has not been written about in multiple non-trivial sources then it will be kept and that's all we care about. Nobody will ever seriously argue "but we should delete the Gutenberg Bible because it has only 11 copies and WP:BK says it should be 12." Actually, somebody might but that person will be blocked for trolling. :-) Pascal.Tesson 16:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

You're right to remind me that this is a guideline. I think that I may be getting hung up on the "threshold" term, which in law means a bar; "threshold" to me therefore stands in opposition to the "guideline" aspect. Perhaps, rather than pointing out the various potential exceptions, changing the heading from "Threshold standards" to "Commercial publication and distribution" (for example) would not trigger that confusion for legally-inclined folks. Also, the last sentence in the "threshold standards" criteria cuts against the "guideline" aspect of the overall document. How about changing the last sentence from However, these are exclusionary criteria rather than inclusionary; meeting these threshold standards does not imply that a book is notable, whereas a book which does not meet them, most likely is not. to Meeting commercial publication and distribution criteria does not imply a book is notable, but most modern books which do not meet these criteria would likely not be notable. Or just eliminate the second half of the sentence entirely. --LQ 17:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greg Green

Maybe a specialist here can take a look at Greg Green and tell us how to proceed. Thanks. (F0xfree 13:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC))