Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional books

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 20:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of fictional books

This is yet another near-infinite list of objects of an exceedingly broad class which have nothing in common save that they are fictional. It includes books that are one-off jokes and books that are themselves the main subjects of the works in which they appear and fictional books that you actually get to read all or portions of and books which are mentioned only in passing by their titles and...well, it suffers from the same basic problems of indiscriminate fictional lists, in that it's too huge to be usefully complete, that new entries are made all the time, and that the list is so broad that most of the subjects have nothing whatsoever in common other than that they're fictional books.

There is relevant precedent in a list of fictional weapons, and a pair of lists of weapons in fiction. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 18:52, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Also a list of fictional rulers and a list of fictional characters arranged by political stance. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 18:57, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strong keep. To recap my remarks from Talk:Fictional book, while it's true that it is a rather broad and diverse list, it is also well-organized, interesting, entertaining and useful. The fact that the fictional books serve different purposes as outlined above (jokes, plot elements, excerpted works etc.) only makes the subject more compelling from a literary standpoint. Looking over titles in a section related to Adams, Borges or King helps to give a sense of the tone of their books as well as how extensively they use this literary device compared to other authors with only a few fictional books listed. I realize this article is just a list, but further perspective "is provided in the parent article, Fictional book. Frankly, I think the parent article needs work, but the list article is fine, and should be retained and added to as needed. Karen | Talk | contribs 20:21, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

  It rather seems to me that the place to talk about the works of Douglas Adams, Borges (whose first name I can't spell from memory), or Stephen King is in their their articles. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 20:29, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strong keep per Karen. This is a supplementary list to the parent article. The only alternative would be to split this page into ~58 tiny pages (which noone wants), or split the lists amongst their author articles as A Man In Black suggests, but that would make it very hard indeed to browse the entries as a collected genre device.
  There are dozens and dozens of large lists, like Lists of fictional things, and I certainly hope you don't intend to AfD them all. Or if you do, then a Village Pump discussion would be much more appropriate, than an individual deletionism rampage ;) --Quiddity 20:50, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as per nom. Literarylistcruft with a strong dash of popculturelistcruft to boot. To avoid just being a pointless list, this article would have to put all these books in context and explain their significance - but that kind of discussion only belongs in the article about the author or the actual work of fiction. It may not belong there if the detail is not a significant narrative device (e.g. the one-time gag punning book titles in Wallace & Gromit.) . If the discussion of each book was included on one page, this would be too unwieldy Bwithh 22:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, Bwithh and WP:NOT's comments on indiscriminate lists. I don't see how "fictional book" can constitute a genre as claimed. A list of works about fictional books would be something else. Angus McLellan (Talk) 15:04, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - it is not a genre, but a literary device, serving several purposes depending on the needs of the writer. Dispersing this material into individual authors' or books' articles or, worse, deleting the material entirely, would not only undo the work of many Wikipedians who consider this list worthwhile, but also make it harder to consider the scope and value of this convention. Nor would a list of works about fictional books serve, because only a few are the subject of the real books in which they appear. As for being "pointless" (I hope you folks don't mind my consolidating my rejoinders here), I did not consider the Invisible Library pointless when I first came across it years ago. This article improves on that site by organizing the data better, and providing a little background on some of the individual titles. More of this detail would make it better still. Deleting the article would merely leave a large hole in a reader's resources on the subject. Karen | Talk | contribs 15:43, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I agree that's it's an unwieldy page and lists things that have little in common, but also its information is handy and amusing and thought-provoking and, most important, not found elsewhere (since Invisible Books went under). I would love for the list, or its sections, to be linked to from the authors' (or the books') main pages, so that discussion of Borges' or Vonnegut's fictional books as a construct could happen at a more logical place and in context. This has already happened with books from the Harry Potter universe, probably because of their number and popularity, and at least a few others from this page, like Stephen King and Tolkien, could support similar pages. But I think it would be a pity if a reader could not jump from page to page of fictional books to get an idea for the popularity and variety of the device.Ljhliesl 21:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Entertaining to many and useful to some and encyclopedic enough.Noroton 00:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Fictional books have a long and noble history as literary devices. They are far from being fancruft ("extraneous or of low quality") not only for their position in literature but also from the point of lit crit, lit research, and lit theory. There's even a quite scholarly book on the topic: Fictitious Authors and Imaginary Novels in French, English and American Fiction from the 18th to the Start of the 21st Century by George A. Kennedy [1] As a final bit of supporting evidence, the Library of Congress recognizes the phrase "Imaginary books and libraries" as a legitimate subject heading (with a "see also" reference to "Literary forgeries and mystifications" !!) [2] --Bookgrrl 02:59, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I agree that some of the lengthier sections could be split off, as per List of fictional books within the Discworld series and List of fictional books within the Harry Potter series. Daibhid C 11:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)]
• Strong Keep—per Karen and Quiddity, et. al. Lists of this sort have a lot of value to the customer-reader. Just scanning it was better than a weeks jokes by email! Brings back many fond memories and smiles!
     If the Admins who patrol vandalism can't keep it under control, then it's past time to face the fact we need to lock more things down to registered editors only, and that Jimbo's ideal's are in the long run, abusive of the admins time.
     There is no reason to not provide limited protection for more articles save unworkable starry-eyed idealism that will cave to a more pragmatic policy sooner or later, and this is one such class where that applies. Yes such are prone to vandalism, but it also represents a lot of love by a lot of contributing editor's and to delete such spits on their contributions. (Did you really mean to be so Baldly antisocially BOLD, you anom nominator? (Did I miss some policy change—where's your signature?)
     I say it's much better to contemplate deleting the nominator of this very nice example of care and affection than such a well presented compendium—he or she can be replaced far more easily, and can walk anytime no matter what we decide! (Given the size of our wiki-paycheck, who could blame them! <g>)
     Not all data need be limited to dead tree standards, and Dead tree encyclopedia's can't do this type of dynamic listing job; it's one wikipedia should take on proudly as additional value added for our readers.
     Whether or not it's ever 'complete' is irrelevant—any wiki user needs to face the fact that they evolve, so that is a non-starter.
     As a father of two teens, I marvel at how often they dive to look up social minutia (Band, a baseball or football stat/fact, etc.) which the old lady and I just throw out in passing casual converstation (normally in a prone position!)... usually as a 'do you remember so-and-so when he did such-and-such? When was that anyway? While we search the failing grey matter for clues, the kids dive in and most frequently give us a date or whatever from wikipedia. So like it or not, wikipedia's become a go-to resource for the now-maturing generation... as well as the rest of us. God knows, even as a computer engineer of mature years, I wouldn't think of researching such on the web—at least not for a long while—and to them and many of you, that is now second nature. That is why this is a typical article type one now would expect to find herein, and each are little treasures to brag over, not delete. Best regards to all! // FrankB 13:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - Um, A Man in Black did sign his nomination. I strongly disagree with it, but it was done correctly and in good faith. Unless I missed something, no one else has brought up vandalism as an issue with respect to this article. I actually haven't seen much, compared to articles with more specific subjects to target, e.g. Nickelodeon (TV channel)‎‎ or Madeleine L'Engle. Also, there are a fair number of people working on this article, which makes it harder for vandal edits to stand for long. I happen to agree that requiring registration would reduce vandalism slightly, but this is not really the venue for that suggestion. Let's please stick to the merits of this particular article. Thanks. Karen | Talk | contribs 16:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strong keep. Fascinating to those who dig all things bibliographic, fictional or not, and of no interest to others, who can leave the list alone and get on with their lives. Encyclopedic in that it includes links to the actual works which include the fictional titles, so that readers can then go to the pertinent article per Bwithh for context. And although "the list is so broad that most of the subjects have nothing whatsoever in common other than that they're fictional books"...does having apparently only one thing in common make it less worthy of note? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pegship (talk • contribs) 10:30, Oct 17, 2006 (UTC).

CommentIndeed. And is that not the raison d'être of a list -- to collect things that have something in common? (List of redheads, anyone?) --Bookgrrl 18:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Strong Keep. The question is whether this list is useful. To start, it is useful in the sense of being fascinating--I had never imagined such a list or List of redheads-- I find it refreshes the imagination for those who remember the original works well, serves as a hint to reread for those who remember the original work but not the fictional ones within it, and is suggestive for those who see something that looks worth following them up. It's useful in the sense of suggesting other things to include--I havea few in mind--or in seeing if perhaps the people who wrote the WP missed one. WP is not a list. This does not mean that WP does not contain lists, when they have a purpose. Nor is it a place for bare lists alone, without articles From WP:List

Information. The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists.

• Keep, as per Karen | Talk | contribs above. Yours, Smeelgova 04:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC).
• Strong keep. Speaking personally, I use this list for reference purposes all the time. I fail to understand why the possibility for infinite expansion is a reason to delete a list of data that is otherwise difficult to come by. I think it's so useful (and interesting) that the Fictional books parent article should be strengthened, and if anything, the list broken off into comprehensive articles about various authors' fictional books. I can't speak to the articles of every single author listed, but the Stephen King article for example is far too long as-is, and if the list were dismantled an entire new article would be written. Chris Stangl 09:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep. Much as I dislike articles consisting of nothing more than a large list, I have to admit this one is rather interesting and informative. -Amatulic 22:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
• keep. Sure its a long list, but its interesting and a useful reference. Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo 03:28, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.