Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)

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[edit] Survey: Is this proposal historical, a guideline, or what?

In light of Radiant!'s tagging of this page as historical,[1], I thought I would canvas whether people think the notability (books) proposal is historical, a live proposal, a guideline, or what?

  • Guideline: If it were up to me, I would say make this page a guideline. IMHO, it's a better and more accurate notability guideline for books than notability. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria is arguably more accurate than WP:BK, but is no longer linked as a notability guideline in template:Notabilityguide. TheronJ 19:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Guideline or live proposal either way it should not be labeled historical since it is in use in AfDs. GabrielF 19:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • What's the standard? I agree with Gabriel that if it's in use it should be kept live. As for guideline status or not, the question I would think needs to be answered is its degree of use. I have been absent from afd for months writing articles so is it being cited when book debates come up? How often? Or are we left with trying to find consensus from the small cross section of people who have commented here? If we need constant use we'll never have it because book afds are not as common as many other subjects; probably in large part responsible for the lack of commentary as well. Strawpoll as to support or reject?--Fuhghettaboutit 23:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I think the best bet would be to merge this into WP:FICT which largely covers the same area. We could take the part from the naming convention along. >Radiant< 10:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Historical. There's no way this has, or will come close to having, guideline consensus. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually this survey is a bit silly, since you can't vote on whether something it's historical (if we're discussing it, it by definition isn't historical) and neither can you vote on whether something is a guideline (see WP:POL). >Radiant< 12:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Proposal still in dispute. No way can this be a Guideline, it needs ALOT of work RiseRobotRise 19:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent citations to WP:BK

Relevant to the discussion above, a review of the AFD pages that link to WP:BK indicates that the guideline is cited relatively frequently on AFD (at least, given the relatively low rate of book nominations), and that prior to the edit marking it as historical, it was usually cited without objection, although it rarely seems to have been dispositive to the discussion. In a review of citations from the last month, I haven't seen any cases where the result came out contrary to the guideline, but I also haven't found any where someone argued to keep a book page per WP:BK. Recent citations to WP:BK in AFD:

  • December 29.
  • December 24
  • December 14
  • December 12
  • December 11
  • November 29 (This one is the closest of the bunch to going against WP:BK - it was cited as "weak keep: not sure this meets WP:BK . . but Worldcat shows that this book is in many university libraries which indicates some interest." The result was "no consensus," which is arguably consistent with "not sure this meets WP:BK."

Thoughts? TheronJ 04:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I think the best bet would be to merge this into WP:FICT which largely covers the same area. We could take the part from the naming convention along. >Radiant< 12:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I think you're missing quite a few points here:
      • There's a category of books usually indicated as "non-fiction" - the discussion of the Wikipedia notability of these books doesn't belong in WP:FICT by far;
      • WP:FICT is about whether Anakin Skywalker or 1st Battle of Sarapin (etc) deserve a separate article, not about whether or not a film like Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure deserves a separate article. Similarly, WP:FICT is about whether Porthos deserves a separate article, not about whether the novel The Three Musketeers deserves a separate article. Films and books can be about fiction or non-fiction topics (or a mixture of both, e.g. Augustan History): if fictional topics, these topics are treated by WP:FICT. The books and the films that treat these topics are neither "fiction" (they can be "virtual", in the case of e-books, but that's not the same as "fiction"), nor are they currently treated by WP:FICT, nor do I think they could very well be treated by that notability criteria guideline, without creating a lot of mess. Note that fictional books exist (e.g. the fictional book The Fountain in the film The Fountain): WP:FICT applies to such fictional books, not to the real life books and films in which they figure.
      • Combining the "notability" and "naming conventions" aspect of books in a single guideline has been attempted. By me. It was not one of my most successful moves, there's little disagreement about that. I only defend the "notability" section in the "naming conventions" guideline on books (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria), as long as there's no separate guideline about book notability. Rehashing the combined content and then pasting a title on top of it as if it was part of the notability series of guidelines, what would that solve, honestly?
      • Leaving aside the "notability" section of the books NC guideline, there's no reasonable prospect of condensing the (core) "naming conventions" content of that guideline to a part of another guideline: the books NC guideline is already quite long as it is. And saying all that text is redundant would be a quite cheap argument. "Why don't we condense Wikipedia:Notability for starters?" would be a comparably cheap counter-argument. Or: "Why don't we condense all policies and guidelines to a single page, and while we're at it, add the Theory of All to that page?" Noble goals, but misses a dint of practicality. --Francis Schonken 13:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I also oppose merging with WP:FICT because of the non-fiction works covered by this proposal. Lyrl Talk C 20:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose merge. They're related but only in the sense that books are sometimes but not always, on fictional topics. Other than that, they're completely apples and oranges. This is entirely tailored to books. Fiction is a supercategory covering a huge number of topics and media.--Fuhghettaboutit 03:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prune it

Okay, then let's not merge, per the above. It was just a suggestion :) regarding this page itself, I don't have a particular problem with it except that it is way too long. For instance, it's over twice as long as WP:CORP or WP:LOCAL. I would recommend some severe pruning, because the longer a page is, the smaller the chance that people will actually read it. >Radiant< 09:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

In what way is it way too long? Pages are read from the top down, not perused for length and then read. The criteria are right up front. Generally garden pruning is approached from a let's-remove-the- weeds basis, not this garden is too big, let's cut down the trees because gardens should be smaller. Do you have any weeds to suggest and a basis for why they are weeds? I'm not sure why the length of other notability criterias is relevant at all. They may simply be less complete. Two sections, for example, that this proposal has that others generally don't is the debate precedents section and the resources section. They seem useful but taking them out would make this about the same size as others and smaller than some such as WP:SCI. Shall we just snip them over "people can't be bothered to read" concerns?--Fuhghettaboutit 00:21, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
As has been said many times before, once this is accepted as a guideline (which despite what badlydrawnjeff seems to think might very well happen) the section on examples can go entirely. It was left there to illustrate that the guideline does in fact seem to match the current practice on AfD. It's also true that a couple of things could be much shortened. The lead could rely on the updated WP:NN article for instance. The section on derivative articles could also become just a wikilink to WP:FICT. Still, I agree with Fugh's overall assessment that length is not really that big a problem since the core principles are stated right up front. Pascal.Tesson 05:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criterion 1 comment

I'm new to this topic, and a skim of the talk history is only a little enlightning, so I'll throw my comment out here: Is it really true that EVERY book written by a notable person is automatically notable? This seems a big departure from what seem to be parallels in other areas of WP: e.g. in WP:CORP not every product of a notable company is notable, and not every actor/actress in a notable movie is notable. I think the rest of the criterion is great, very helpful, but #1 seems way too loose - I would suggest deleting it. Comments? 66.108.49.158 04:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a good question, and I don't know the answer. I'd say the closest parallel is music, for which this specific issue is currently in dispute. Compare WP:MUSIC#Albums with Wikipedia:Notability (albums). In practice, my anecdotal guess is that you are going to have a very hard time getting a decent article on a book by a notable author deleted, even if there aren't sources other than worldcat and the book itself. The book itself and worldcat are reliable sources for a lot of the basic information, so if you can come up with an article on a "lost book" like Neal Stephenson's first novel The Big U, my guess is no consensus is likely to form to delete. Even nominating a poorly written book article like Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs or a stub like Mark Twain's How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (which doesn't assert notability other than as a result of being written by Twain) is likely to produce a clean-up instruction or no consensus, rather than delete. TheronJ 22:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the problem is that there are degrees of notability. Surely every work of a major figure in the history of literature such as Mark Twain is notable, but what about a guy who wrote 30 books on conspiracy theories (e.g. James Fetzer)? Fetzer is notable because of his work on conspiracy theories, especially his involvement in Scholars for 9/11 Truth. He has also written "scholarly" books about subjects such as philosophy of science, and these books are no more notable than the average philosophy book. Not too long ago, one user created stubs for a number of Fetzer's academic and conspiracy theory books. Is a book with an amazon sales rank above 1 million notable because its author is (barely) notable for writing something in a completely unrelated genre? (For the actual AFDs see ([2], [3], [4], [5]). What about a guy who sells get-rich-quick books like Matthew Lesko. One could argue that he is notable for his writing, but are ALL of his books notable on their own? I agree that this criterion should be tightened somewhat, but I'm not sure how to do it. GabrielF 23:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
There has been afd opposition to criteria 1 and I also suggested that we should get rid of it in a section above. Specifically, it was pointed out in that afd that:
  1. "[criteria 1] is not reasonable. Do we want articles for all 600 of Isaac Asimov's books?" (originally posted by Arthur Rubin)
  2. "...Take a look at Category:Writer stubs. All these writers are apparently notable enough for articles, yet only notable enough to have stub articles. Now, do we want to compound these writer stubs by creating stub articles on each of their books? For that reason, I disagree with proposed criteria #1. I highly suggest we keep details of a writer's books in the writer article, unless the book is so notable that it meets criteria #3, #4, or #5, or the article gets to be so long that (per WP:SUMMARY), sections need to be split off. That's the case with articles such as Michael Moore, but not writer-stub articles."(originally posted by Aude
So if it shouldn't be thrown out entirely, it needs to be significantly changed. No way to modify it to address these concerns comes to mind.--Fuhghettaboutit 01:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
The more I think about it, the more I agree that it should be removed. Even the most minor works by truly notable authors should at least fall under criteria 5 and 6. If the author is notable enough to have a biography written about him/her than the book will be discussed in that bio, which will qualify under #6. If there are no sources out there discussing the book than it probably shouldn't have a separate article anyway. How much NOR content can be written about a book that nobody has reviewed or discussed. GabrielF 01:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm more inclined to say it should be tightened, but I'm not sure exactly how. To go back to my examples, would you !vote to delete The Big U or How to Tell a Story and Other Essays? TheronJ 14:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, after reading your comment, I googled The Big U. Here's a slashdot review: [6], here's the NYTimes review [7]. There's a blurb at Amazon from an LATimes review as well. My point is that its hard to imagine that a lesser-known book from a major author won't meet notability guidelines on the basis of reviews or published works. The only way I can think of reforming the criterion is to change from "notable" authors to authors who would be assessed at Top (or if you prefer) High priority at Wikipedia:WikiProject Books, meaning that the author would be a must-have for a paper encyclopedia. (By the way, would you recommend The Big U? I love Stephenson and the topic that sounds great, but I'm a little turned off by Stephenson's own opinion about the book.) GabrielF 14:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I think your compromise proposal is a good one. (Although, now that I think about it, frankly editors should be able to find reliable secondary sources for all works by true top-importance authors. Even the lesser works by Twain or Voltaire must have some analysis somewhere.) The only downsides are: (1) I am a little concerned about a wave of speedy deletes, since the current book pages authors didn't know to write their articles in such a way as to assert notability under a standard that didn't exist at the time; and (2) the more we tighten notability requirements, the more objections we will get from Jeff and his fellow inclusionists. I would get The Big U by interlibrary loan - it is actually a very bad book (fanfic level bad), but it's short, it has some fun bits, and if you're a Stephenson fan, it is interesting to see his development from mostly flippant, with a few big thoughts to mostly big thoughts, with a few funny bits. TheronJ 15:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
TheronJ, thanks for the attempt at a new formulation of criterion 1. However I can't say I'm convinced by the wording. I would much prefer something that for one thing doesn't rely on a complicated judgement call about "historical significance". For one thing, I'm pretty sure that this won't go down well if we want this proposal to become a guideline. Also, I think a better choice would be to return to some old version of that criterion where we asked that the book be considered as a significant part of that author's works. Note also the paradox: if we keep your wording, the criterion becomes useless because any book by an author of undeniable historical significance is bound to have been written about extensively. For one thing, all such authors have spawned biographies and analysis of their body of work and will fit the criteria below. Actually, this paradox also hold for my own suggestion. Since the guideline is criticized for its length and complexity, how about dropping the criterion entirely? I know this may sound unreasonable but I have a hard time imagining a books that would then not meet the criteria although common sense dictates that it is notable. Pascal.Tesson 15:32, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I tightened criterion 1 (see here) per our discussion above. I think that although this criterion is somewhat vague, it's helpfully vague - books that assert authorship by a historically significant author can't be speedied but need to go to AFD, and the AFD debates can sort out whether an individual author is so significant as to merit inclusion of his or her works on that basis alone. Once we see how several of these debats play out, maybe we can tweak it, but for now, I propose that we leave "criterion 1" deletions up to the sound judgment of the AFD participants. TheronJ 15:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The only immediate objection that I have to this is that by referring to the absence of secondary sources #1 now feels out of place at the top of the list and more like a caveat to #5 and #6. I would advocate reordering the list to place the old #1 at the end unless there is a concern about breaking old citations to this article in AfDs. GabrielF 15:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Done. (The article isn't guideline yet, and although it does get cited fairly frequently, even actualy policies get their numbered paragraphs removed, edited, and renumbered when appropriate). TheronJ 15:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Good call GabrielF. It's amazing what a little reordering can do. Looks good to me now. For suggestions on the next wave of improvements see new section below. Pascal.Tesson 15:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Image:Thumb-up.pngMuch, much, much improved.--Fuhghettaboutit 23:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] review of requirement 2

"2 The book has been made or adapted with attribution into a motion picture that was released into multiple commercial theatres.

Why not add televion viewing along to the list? Such as made for TV movies, or cable channel exculsives. Surely if the novel-adopted-film is shown on NBC, HBO or IFC it should be enough to prove its notability. RiseRobotRise 05:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I second that. Examples that immediately come to mind include Cyborg (novel) and Peyton Place (novel), not to mention the hundreds of novels that have been adapted for television by the BBC, PBS, CBC etc etc. 23skidoo 23:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
  • A counterexample would be Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Franklin Coverup, a conspiracy theory book that was the basis for the failed TV documentary Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conspiracy of Silence (second nomination). If we're going to include TV we should restrict the guideline to TV shows that were actually produced and broadcast for a major television network or channel in any particular country. Also, there may be some question about TV documentaries that are based on multiple sources. A less-than-honest writer could claim that his book was used as the basis for a documentary when in fact it was one of multiple sources. There should be a clause in the criterion that anticipates this and restricts books that claim notability on the basis of a documentary to books that actually played a major role in the television production. Perhaps the guideline should be stronger than that. GabrielF 23:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm not that concerned about an author lying about his/her book was used as a primary source for a documentary. However, if this question arises, we should look at the documentary itself to see if book was the primary resource. Seeing how there is a general consensus, I think we should tac on "... or was aired on a nationally televised network or cable station in any country."

Any thoughts? RiseRobotRise 06:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Again I must warn against the temptation to write something like a text of law. The objective is to write a guideline, one that can and should be used with common sense. I say leave it as it is and expect people to argue (correctly) that a major made-for-TV adaptation indicates notability. Pascal.Tesson 06:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with that. Guidelines aren't law. >Radiant< 10:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
How would that confuse somebody? If the film was aired on national Television, it should would wield some sort of notability. Why exclude the suggestion of any novel adopted film on national TV? If your worried that the guideline is written like law, you should question the first statement written on top "A book is generally notable if it verifiably meets one or more of the following criteria:". Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with that suggestion, Its not written any differently than the rest of the criteria, and its not opening any flood gates. It’s not an unreasonable suggestion. Its merely stating that if it was aired on a nationally televised network, then it may be considered notable. RiseRobotRise 19:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current book AfDs

I just noticed that there are four anti-Islam books up for AfD at the moment. I haven't studied the books enough to decide whether I support keeping or deleting, but I thought I'd post the links since this seems to be the type of book that gets AfD'd most often (see my links to the James Fetzer AfDs in the section immediately above. GabrielF 15:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

  1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Onward Muslim Soldiers
  2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Islam Unveiled
  3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics
  4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion
Oh boy... these could get ugly. Interestingly, my own preference would be to merge and redirect all of these to the author's article but I'm not sure I can really argue for it in terms of policies and guidelines. Pascal.Tesson 15:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
All those are WP:POINT nominations I think? Practice from my years of reading here is that we are expansive. If an author is notable there is no reason NOT to cover the body of his work. If it has to be only a stub, so be it. Stephen King has written 90+ published works in various media, all of which have articles. Are we going to make a new Stephen King's Books article based on this and redirect them all? F.F.McGurk 15:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Well as I said, my own preference would be for a merge but I must agree it's not really the current practice. Then again, Robert Spencer is not exactly Stephen King. These books may or may not be notable, I haven't seriously given it much thought but I think their notability can reasonably be questioned and I see no evidence of intentional, bad-faith disruption to prove a point on the nominator's part. Pascal.Tesson 16:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for further improvement

The guideline has been extensively criticized for its length and complexity. I tend to disagree about its complexity but there are some things we could do with respect to length. I don't want to start making changes without a bit of discussion but I think that we could do without a few things. First, as I mentioned before, the list of precedents was more an artifact of the building process than an actual intended part of the guideline. Maybe we can create a subpage for them if we want to keep them around for consultation. The second obvious target is the bloated lead which can certainly be cut down if we rely on WP:NN some more. Finally, we should look for ways of relaxing the whole thing so that it's not overly technical and concerned with every little loophole. In fact, the notion of "loophole" itself does not make that much sense because we're not writing a text of law. Do we really need to recall the Google test caveat? The Amazon listing caveat? I can also see us getting rid of the crystallballism note since, after all, we have a specific policy on that anyways. In general, coming back to this guideline after a few months of neglecting it, I think we somewhat fail to deliver a "rough" guideline. At the time I felt it made sense to have a "precise" one instead but then this entails costs in terms of complexity. Thoughts? Pascal.Tesson 16:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I see no problem with making the google test a link in see also or made into one sentence, and the precedents can be a subpage. I also think we can get rid of the afterthought section on sales numbers. In fact, thinking about I think it should be gotten rid of. But I would oppose removal of the amazon test, as it is highly misunderstood and not duplicated on any other guideline or policy page. Another words, it's both relevant and not redundant with any existing guideline or policy. It also works hand-in-hand with the section on vanity presses. People need to know that a listing on amazon (etc.) does not mean or even indicate that a book is not a vanity publication. In general though, I simply disagree with the notion that we need to cut this down purely for length reasons. I say remove only that which doesn't belong. Again, people read from the top down. By the way, where have you seen extensive criticism on the length issue?--Fuhghettaboutit 23:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, the Amazon thing is probably a keeper. Still there's a way to streamline everything a bit more instead of having multiple subsubsections. oh and as far as "extensiveness" goes, you got me. Ahem... then shall we say "frequent"? :-) Pascal.Tesson 23:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
(smiling as I write this) Where have you seen frequent?--Fuhghettaboutit 00:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Did I say frequent? I meant occasional. Pascal.Tesson 01:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The whole thing needs to be dumped and started anew. Something this exclusionary is simply never going to be accepted wholesale. --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:38, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I don't think it's particularly different in inclusion/exclusion terms from other notability guidelines. All of them rely basically on the same idea: we are looking for subjects for which non-trivial, reliable sources exist or are very likely to exist in the near future and subjects that can reasonably be expected to expand beyond stub-status. I don't really see the current proposal as deviating significantly from this. Pascal.Tesson 02:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll tell you what kills it - Criterion #2. By excluding the most notable publications for books, it's specifically saying "we want to exclude as many books as possible." Publisher's Weekly would be exactly the kind of publication we'd want to use for reviews - it's like saying a band can't meet WP:MUSIC if their stuff was written up in Rolling Stone. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the concerns with Publisher's Weekly reviews are warranted. Reviews are typically extremely short and offer little else than a plot summary, nothing to actually build upon. They are by design written (typically) to allow librarians to know what's what. In that sense, the analogy to Rolling Stone is flawed. Pascal.Tesson 07:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
But that's not what these "notability guidelines" are based upon, the ability to "build upon," but rather to judge notability. We're effectively saying "A book is notable if it's reviewed, but not if it's reviewed by one of the top publications for book publishing." That's why the Rolling Stone analogy is apt - hell, you can pretty much say the same thing about RS reviews. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. I think we're discounting Publisher's Weekly because they don't care about notability when they review a book, they'll review anything. Getting reviewed in Publisher's Weekly is only slightly more evidence of notability than a customer review on amazon.com. GabrielF 14:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, we're touching a sort of wikiphilosophical issue here. The point of having notability guidelines is certainly not (I think) to provide a tool to make the judgement on a book's worth but rather to decide whether or not the book should have an article on Wikipedia. In that sense, the absence of reliable sources on which to build an article should definitely be taken into consideration. Now (again this is my personnal take) in some cases we might not be aware of scholarly work on a book but we can presume that such work does exist if the book has been the object of multiple non-trivial reviews, especially if these are from publications that review a selected few books. Pascal.Tesson 16:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll tell you what else kills it in more general terms - it's too based in the now. A book published in 1999 has a much larger chance at inclusion than a book published in 1899, based solely on the fact that our convoluted idea of "notability" in a book comes only from awards, reviews, or that someone else mentioned it in a publication we arbitrarily deem worthy. Especially for publications that have lapsed into the public domain, it completely disregards the smaller opportunities for notability, even if it meets the more overreaching core criteria. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:59, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
If anything, a book written in 1899 has more chances of having "been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself". There are thousands of people everyday writing scholarly books on the history of literature, Masters and PhD theses in literature, comparative literature, cultural studies etc and the vast majority of them are not writing about Moby Dick. Pascal.Tesson 07:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I think you may have missed my point on this. I'm thinking of how to rephrase it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Jeff, the whole thing is too narrow, and too exclusionary, I don't think its ready to go, and would be ready for a long time now. I'm not even sure if this guideline is even necessary. RiseRobotRise 23:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Pascal, imho you're still starting from a total misconception regarding pre-1900 books. What was published in those days was *not* having more chances of having "been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself". There's no reason to assume that a larger fraction of what was published in those days is remotely eligible for being discussed in "scholarly books on the history of literature, Masters and PhD theses in literature, comparative literature, cultural studies". Quite the contrary I think.

Remember that what you know about pre-1900 books probably depends exclusively on publications you've seen yourself: that would include (1) re-publications (non-notable books don't tend to be republished all that often); (2) mentionings in non-trivial published works (they wouldn't mention thoroughly non-notable books, would they?); (3) what is still extant in publicly accessible libraries (libraries don't usually keep thoroughly non-notable works for more than 100 years, and for the books that weren't notable in their own day, these wouldn't even have been acquired by most libraries).

So where would you encounter a non-notable book from 1899? Chances are pretty small... unless, perhaps, your grandparents have an attic containing pre-1900 books. Mine did. Most of it rubbish. Sure, they had some interesting ones (the ones you'd also see in libraries, or mentioned in non-trivial published works, or that are still re-published today). But no reason to assume that the amount of books published in the 19th century that are still notable today is comparatively larger than for books from the 20th century on. 19th century publishers (and assumably their audience) had this predilection for trivial rehashings of content they had found elsewhere. The authors of such compilations, if named, had often very non-notable characteristics. The number of novels published in installments in periodicals, whose notability (and of their authors) ended when the next stove was lit is near uncountable. Let's not get all rosy about the *average* notability of what happened before the 20th century. There's no real distinction (if any, I'd surmise the 19th century was comparatively particularily abundant of non-notable content: that could also be backed up by for instance Flaubert, who made fun of the average triviality of his contemporaries and what they published, in his Bouvard et Pécuchet and his Dictionary of Received Ideas). --Francis Schonken 16:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Francis, I'm puzzled because I sort of agree with what you're saying (and I'm a big fan of the Dictionnary of Received Ideas). So I am definitely missing your point or at least the conclusions that your point should lead me to. Sorry for being dense but could you add an extra sentence starting with "therefore"? :-) Pascal.Tesson 16:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Therefore,

If anything, a book written in 1899 has more chances of having "been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself".

makes no sense. I don't know where you got that (received?) idea about 1899 books, but it makes no sense. --Francis Schonken 17:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn't have asked! :-) But I do get your point now. What I mean to say, though, is that books which are significant enough that they should have entries on Wikipedia probably will have been the subject of scholarly work since 1899. Take 19th century French literature: for all the Balzac, Maupassant, Flaubert, Eugene Sue, Alexandre Dumas, there were hundreds of minor writers who wrote novels for various newspapers at the time. Most of these novels I've never heard of. That certainly does not make their work non-notable. Some of them were never re-printed. That also does not suffice to make them non-notable. Some of them were never reviewed even at the time and even then and even that does not quite kill it. But if in the 100+ years since they have never been the subject of third-party scholarly work then I say leave them to fill the ranks of the forgotten literary works. Pascal.Tesson 17:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
A bold guess, I think we basically agree: there's only one ("one") notability criterion for books in Wikipedia context, that is: "having been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself". Since that identifies with the general over-all notability criterion (which is in fact a straight derivation of WP:NOR and WP:V: these policies only add that said "non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself" still need to be available, without which the WP:V/WP:NOR policies would be unapplicable), why do we need a separate book notability guideline? Maybe, in order to explain that a book itself, its listing in whatever book catalog, or the eulogies and publicity about the book spread by its publisher are not "non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself"? Seems a bit self-evident to me... --Francis Schonken 18:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Personally, one of the reasons I like the current proposal is that it's broader than the general guideline -- for example, if a book is a major award winner, I am willing to call it notable even if no one can find a multiple, non-trivial, independent published discussions of the book. Given the ssix ffactors and other qualifiers, the current proposal is somewhat narrower than the standard in practice for TV episodes, somewhat broader than the general standard, and, IMHO, pretty close to on target with the de facto standard being applied to books on AFD. TheronJ 19:08, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
If a book wins a "major award",
  1. you have at least "one" non-trivial, independent, published discussion of the book, the jury report (or, at a bare minimum, that this book was deemed the best in whatever the criteria of the award);
  2. If there's no independent press coverage about that book and what it is worth in the eyes of the various journalists/commentators after it has won an award, then we're not talking about a "major" award, are we? And you'd need such sources (if that would be the only sources available), or there's no way the article could be made to conform to Wikipedia:Verifiability.
In sum winning a "major" award leads automatically to "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book". If you think that's something that's useful to explicitate in a notability guideline, there's something to be said for it. I'm not sure yet. But anyway, the guideline should not present it as if "winning a major award" is a different sort of notability criterion. --Francis Schonken 19:29, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I *do* think that almost every book that verifiably satisfies any of the current six categories will also satisfy the "two or more independent, non-trivial, published discussions" test, but I think the value of the current categories is that editors can start articles without finding those two independent, non-trivial accounts, or about arguing whether, for example, a Nebula Award for Best Novel constitutes a "non-trivial" discussion. TheronJ 19:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

No, overall it's not such a good idea to give wikipedians the deceptive idea that it's OK to start writing an article about a book without being sure there would be "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book". Only leads to frustration: then the article is hit by AfD or PROD, and the original author has no clue what is wrong with it. The article mentioned the "Nebula Award" didn't it... So that Wikipedian gets only more frustrated, as some AfD voters say that prize is non-notable, and then the original author starts boasting about the "Nebula Award" in various ways (still not knowing that we don't "prove" notability by boasting, but simply by referring to reliable sources). Then the article is still voted down, and the original author does still not know that all that was needed was mentioning of the press reviews about the book he had on his desk all the time. We should stop these scenarios that have played all too often in Wikipedia, we lose valuable contributors in that way. --Francis Schonken 20:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

If AFD discussions started deleting Nebula Award winners on the grounds that they are not notable, I would support removing the criterion. However, to the extent that any readers hold to the "guidelines should be descriptive" philosophy, I seriously doubt that an AFD would be successful regarding any Nebula winning novel, regardless of other coverage. (I'd nominate one or two as a test, but I think it would be a WP:POINT violation). To those who think "guidelines should reflect best practices", I don't think we should be deleting Nebula award winners (or even nominees). (Also, in my experience, new editors are most often frustrated when their page gets deleted as a result of WP:N -- I've never seen someone complaining "Although my page met WP:MUSIC, it was nevertheless deleted as a result of WP:N!! I'm leaving, and dating my valuable contributions with me!!!", or anything of the sort). TheronJ 20:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • As an example, do you really think that if you nominated Man Plus for deletion, the result would be likely to be "delete"? TheronJ 20:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

If "major award" is one of the "book notability" criteria, it's you who would be triggering the "non trivial" discussions about the Nebula Award, not me.

People shouldn't be discussing about whether Nebula is a trivial or a major award to prove the notability of a book in Wikipedia context: if the article on the book mentions a few non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book, there wouldn't be an AfD in the first place. And if the Nebula awarded to the book didn't trigger "non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book", and there aren't any other of such sources about the book available, we simply shouldn't have an article about that book in the first place, and the "Nebula notability" discussion would even be more loss of time and source of useless frustration. --Francis Schonken 21:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW, if you hadn't noticed yet, I'm not interested in the Nebula award. This page is also not a place to discuss the notability of the Nebula award. If you want to discuss the notability of the Nebula award, move to Talk:Nebula Award for Best Novel, or start an AfD about the Nebula Award for Best Novel article. To approach the notability of books via "award" notability discussions is just bad way of proceeding, imho. Unneccessary complexity, not needed for people who want to start an article about an interesting book. --Francis Schonken 21:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Francis. Would you mind taking a look at the Man Plus article and answering a couple questions? (1) Would you vote to delete it? (2) Do you think an AFD for the article would be successful? If the answer to both questions is yes, it wouldn't be WP:POINT for you to nominate it, and it would be helpful guidance for us in deciding how broad Wikipedia's standards for book notability are in everyday practice. TheronJ 21:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I learn from Talk:Man Plus that it is a "a much-written-about novel". Surprises me all the more there isn't a single external reference in the Man Plus article. The article is not OK with Wikipedia's core content policies (WP:V most obviously), and that's more important than whether or not it complies to a series of notability related guidelines/proposals/essays. Also, it's marked a stub, don't shoot infants with potential.

Re. your questions: (1) quite unlikely, the chances that I would know the article was up at AfD would be near to zero, the chances that I would vote, or even leave a *comment* on an AfD for this article, if I knew it was at AfD would be even smaller; (2) Whatever the result of an AfD, those who would see their choice honored would indicate the AfD as "successful". Since I wouldn't vote, this second question is too hypothetical for me to answer.

Here's some other questions, which I'll answer:

  • Does Man Plus deserve a Wikipedia article? - I suppose so, it is allegedly "a much-written-about novel" (although proof for that is lacking).
  • Is the current Man Plus article OK? - No, it is a stub, and it has no references.
  • Will I improve the article? - Not likely, I don't know anything about it, I have many other interests.
  • To what lengths would I go to save the article if someone wanted it out of Wikipedia? - Currently, to none whatsoever. I have a few hundred articles on my watchlist, and several thousand others I'd defend not to get deleted. Man Plus is not among these.
  • Does that mean I would never go vote "keep" for an article I know little about? - On the contrary, if, perchance, I arrived at such an article with sound references, that I can check whether the content of the article reflects them, and that has an AfD template on top (which is a bit unlikely under such conditions, and after checking all these references I wouldn't be an ignoramus any more), I might go vote keep.
  • Would an AfD on Man Plus learn something which we didn't know already from the examples at Wikipedia:Notability (books)#Examples and precedents? - Seems unlikely to me.

--Francis Schonken 21:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I should restate my point for clarity. (1) I seriously doubt that any book with a verifiable major award, such as the Nebula, would be deleted, even in the absense of other published discussion. (2) I don't think that any book with a verifiable major award, such as the Nebula, should be deleted, even in the absense of other published discussion. While it's true that there are probably plenty of published secondary sources for Man Plus, it's also true that finding those sources may be difficult for people who don't have access to specialized news or scholarship archives. I'm inclined to let the articles come in, since they meet WP:V, albiet with a primary source, as a result of the books themselves, together with limited secondary sources such as WorldCat. TheronJ 22:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Again, you presuppose that anybody, in advance and without references in the article would know (and consent to) that Nebula *IS* a major award. I'm not in that category of people. I never heard about the Nebula award before, and I didn't click to the article on it yet. Above, I thought you used the Nebula award as an example of a borderline notable/non-notable prize, which would trigger discussion about that notability of the prize if it were mentioned in a book notability discussion. Sorry for that misunderstanding, but it only strenghtens my point that "prize notability" discussions are irrelevant for "book notability" assessment.

The Man Plus article should preferably be written by those having access to sources on it. Describing the sources on Man Plus as enveloped in shrouds of unaccessible specialism doesn't help. Either a verifiable article can be written about that book, and then those writing that article should *mention* the sources they have been using in the Wikipedia article on the book, either there are no *accessible* (I used the word "available" above, same concept) multiple non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book, and then Wikipedia does not need an article about it (in which case "a much-written-about novel" would be a hoax, and in which case it would also be irrelevant whether or not it received a prize). --Francis Schonken 22:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


Francis, I want to go back to a point of yours from a few kB earlier.

No, overall it's not such a good idea to give wikipedians the deceptive idea that it's OK to start writing an article about a book without being sure there would be "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book". Only leads to frustration: then the article is hit by AfD or PROD, and the original author has no clue what is wrong with it.

I disagree with you on this one, at least to a certain extent. Not that we should encourage the creation of such stubs but a guideline also helps in limiting frustrations by outlining relatively simple criteria which newbies can understand without extensive experience with the AfD process. Furthermore an absence of reliable sources in the article is no reason to delete but serious evidence that such sources are basically non-existent most definitely should lead to deletion. Where I think you and I disagree is that I believe it's best to keep a book on which these sources are likely to exist (although as individual editors we may not know about them) or are very likely to come up in the near future. I don't think there's much to gain by applying the content policies without some (limited) degree of laxity. In the same line of thought, I think it might make sense to note in the guideline that since (quoting from WP:NOT) "Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot." one criteria should be the existence of third-party work that does significantly more than giving a plot summary. (which, in my mind, is exactly what the shortish Publishers' Weekly reviews do. Pascal.Tesson 22:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

All I wanted to say: don't write the guideline in a fashion that it leads quite predictably to new frustration. Indeed, a guideline *should* help in limiting frustrations by outlining relatively simple criteria, that is exactly the way I think about guidelines. The current version of the Wikipedia:Notability (books) is still too far from that ideal imho. It muddies the waters instead of leading quite straightforwardly to the *relatively simple* criterion that one should mention the sources on which the article is based, and that for books, like for any other topic one is writing an article about, one needs some sources external to the topic one is describing.
Re.

"Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot."

"Relatively simple"? --Francis Schonken 22:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other example (and section break)

François Weyergans (born Brussels, 1941) received the Prix Goncourt in 2005 for Trois jours chez ma mère

The "Prix Goncourt" is somewhat difficult, because they don't publish criteria on the base of which the prize is awarded.

Weyergans (and his book) were relatively unknown when he received the prize, and most sources would be in French.

Nonetheless, I'd never start an article on Weyergans or on the prize-winning book - both of which I still plan to do in some distant future if nobody beats me to it - unless I had access to sound sources. I could imagine starting an article on the book without having read it (I didn't thus far), but not without having access to sound sources on it. --Francis Schonken 23:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I certainly won't criticize you for not starting an article without sound sources. Nevertheless it is a fact that most articles are and I think that the present guideline sort of draws the line between articles hopelessly obscure books on which reliable critical commentary is and most likely always will be absent and stubs that we want to tolerate despite the lack of sources. As far as the example is concerned, I think it is absolutely excellent in the following sense. Suppose that 2 minutes after the announcement of the 2005 Goncourt I had for some reason decided to start an article on Weyergans and his (overrated by the way) book. Suppose also that at the time there were no sound sources of critical commentary (which probably wasn't quite the case, but Gedankenexperiment...), we would have been absolutely certain that such commentary would become abundantly available within a matter of weeks and keeping the article would have definitely made sense. Pascal.Tesson 01:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
A "stub" is ... a stub, it means it lacks something. Re. "Suppose also that at the time there were no sound sources of critical commentary (...), we would have been absolutely certain that such commentary would become abundantly available within a matter of weeks and keeping the article would have definitely made sense": of course, so again there's only one criterion, on which we agree: "commentary being available". And we agree on the article being a "stub" as long as no commentary reflects in the article. Subject-specific notability guides (as I know them) don't make specific rulings about stubs, nor should they rehash the content of Wikipedia:stub. Wikipedia:Notability (books) would better not be an exception to that, imho. --Francis Schonken 10:40, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] And another section break

...because a lot has happened in 12 hours and I can't find all the places to reply.

  1. I did some number crunching based on the idea that PW doesn't factor "notability" or whatever. According to my calculations of the 18 Decemberish issue of Publisher's Weekly at my desk today, they cover roughly 125 books per week. Give or take that number times 50 (since you assume they take a week off and there are slow weeks in publishing), and you get approximately 6500 reviews. Now, according to this list, the United States alone published 172k books in 2005. Thus, if PW reviewed 7000 books in 2005, they didn't even touch 10% of the total amount of books published in the United States. Factor in that many of these titles are reviews of reprints (the 172 is new publications), and that the United Kingdom publishes more books than the United States, and PW isn't reviewing them, and we're starting to get an idea of what we're looking at. Eliminating mags such as PW is, frankly, silly. If PW is finding only 6000-7000 books worthy of review out of the literally tens, possibly hundreds of thousands that it's sent per year, they obviously have some sort of process to decide what gets reviewed, and that doesn't even factor in other things.
  2. To answer the question above, Man Plus not only deserves an article, but is an okay stub. Could use a couple references for expansion, but is a good start. Besides, the author is highly notable, and all his books would be notable by extension per criterion #6. The fact that there's any question that a Frederik Pohl book would not be worthy of inclusion based on a reading of this criteria shows how really poor it is.
  3. We're here to figure out that stupid word "notability." No one's suggesting we abandon the core precepts of the project (WP:V being the most important), but what makes a book worthy of inclusion past the verifiability point. If we're going to start eliminating books that have gotten attention from the criteria, or books that are written by obviously notable authors, we're failing. Point blank.

I've been working with books for nearly 10 years now. It's my life, it's my passion. I think there's a lot people aren't taking into effect here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noticed you are passionate! (smile) I still disagree about the PW but perhaps not with such fervor as it might seem. As I said earlier (I think) my main concern is that these reviews being typically very short tend to be akin to plot summaries (as far as I remember but since you have it in hand you might want to correct me if I'm wrong). They thus offer very little as a basis for articles. Moreover, I would go as far as saying that if PW publishes reviews on 10% of books published every year in the US then they inevitably review a number of completely non-notable books about which little or no critical commentary will ever be written in scholarly or otherwise reliable fashion. Now I know you'd want us to consider every book published by a non-vanity press as notable and (second correct me if I'm wrong disclaimer) but I gather that it's because you feel that getting a book published by a non-vanity press is an incredible achievement in its own right given the status of literature today. However, we're not actually trying to establish the book's worth but rather the likelihood that sufficient sources will exist to build a decent article beyond a simple "this book exists".
As a compromise, how would you (and others watching this talk page) feel about replacing this with a more general statement that under some formulation or another exclude or at the very least limits the weight of reviews which provide only marginal critical commentary? Pascal.Tesson 04:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd say that whatsoever PW does not constitute "multiple non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book" by itself - so at least you'd need some (other) non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book.
So, first you'd need to establish there are "multiple non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book" available. Once that is done and you're writing the "plot summary" section in the Wikipedia article on the book, it might be a good idea to reference such plot summary to a PW-like publication if available: referenced is always better than unreferenced. Unless there's a problem that PW would not be a "reliable source" in WP:RS sense. --Francis Schonken 11:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
To Pascal, msot reviews are just that - a small thing with only three of four paragraphs. Some journals and specific book review periodicals like the New York Times Book Review or the Clairemont Review of Books go a bit deeper, but most reviews simply don't. A "notability" guideline isn't there to figure out if there's "sufficient sources" to buld an article (after all, WP:V allows for primary sourcing in many cases), but simply if there's enough attention to warrant an article. Thus, the "compromise" should be not placing limitations on what publications do the reviewing. I still think a guideline that excludes 99%+ of published works in a given year to be extra super exclusionary, but I'm not actively pursuing my personal belief on the matter at the moment as mcuh as trying to repair what's there.
As for Francis, there's no reason PW wouldn't be a "reliable" source, and, you're right - we still would need something else to meet the "multiple" criterion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A quote

Is [XYZ] "notable"? Impossible question to answer...
Are there reliable sources for the information in question? Ah, now we have something that we have long success in at least using to move forward successfully to a reasonable degree. [8]

--Francis Schonken 10:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

  • There are always two reliable sources for any modern book; the book itself and WorldCat. The whole point of notability is that the requirement goes beyond the mere requirements of verifiability by reliable sources. There is no requirement in WP:RS that discussions be "non-trivial" to be reliable or that discussions be independent of the subject itself. (To the contrary, non-independent sources are fine under WP:RS for "non-controversial" claims). I would expect Jeff to be using that Jimbo quote to say that we shouldn't be using notability as a criterion at all . . . TheronJ 12:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I grudgingly accept "notability" standards because the community has overwhelmingly approved of them. They're stupid, they hurt the encyclopedia, but it's what people want. You're right about WorldCat to a point, but I know WorldCat isn't listing 300k books a year, either. More to bolster my point than ruin it, IMO - expanding the criteria to allow for any publication isn't going to put a dent in a) all the books published, or b) sadly, all the "notable" books published. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

@TheronJ:

  • "non-independent" sources are not fine under the WP:RS guideline if they're used for "self-aggrandizing", see WP:RS#Self-published sources in articles about themselves. In other words, non-independent sources can't be used for "proving" that something is notable to have its own Wikipedia article, per the WP:RS guideline. Therefore, the description "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book" is useful, and in harmony with WP:RS.
  • If for a book directories like WorldCat are the only external available sources, then you'd only be able to write an article... that replicates directory info (apart from the non-independent info, that doesn't help in demonstrating notability either). Then the *policy* WP:NOT has its say: WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a directory. I've always contended (maybe not yet on this page, but here it is:) that WP:NOT is *also* one of the content policies that are quite fundamental as the practical application in Wikipedia of what falls under the vague term "notability". Again, the standard notability formulation covers that quite well: "multiple, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book". I'm not bothered that Jimbo didn't explicitly refer to that aspect in the quote I copied above. The article he was talking about (for which I used "[XYZ]" as a placeholder) has been made a redirect, because there was no more than marginal "Reliable source" info about the topic (there was some RS material, but "marginal"). That "marginal" RS material didn't justify a stand-alone article. Similarly, for books that have only marginal external info, that info can often be included in the article about the author. If you make the book title a redirect to the article on the author in that case, I've never seen anybody complain. If the author is not notable enough for a separate Wikipedia article, and even listing on pages like Prix Goncourt or Restoration comedy or whatever is not an option, then too bad: the book is not notable, Wikipedia is not a directory. --Francis Schonken 13:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • On your first point, RS still contradicts WP:V, which states that "Material from self-published sources, and published sources of dubious reliability, may be used as sources in articles about the author(s) of the material," with some caveats to follow. If we have the inside flap of the book which says that it was nominated for Award X, we can use that (although we'd most certainly be able to find another source about it regardless).
      • A reference in the format <ref>The inside flap says it</ref> would not be a good idea imho (for many reasons, but for example also because the inside flap of the first sold copies of the book might not yet mention the prize, or it might be a dustjacket flap that easily gets separated from the book, etc). You'd always do that in a format like <ref><link to website of the organisation that hands out the prize></ref>, or <ref>As mentioned in Article ABC in Newspaper XYZ</ref> or something in that vein. At least, that's what I'd expect, not any of the bad habits.
      • Re. the "caveats" in the WP:V list of criteria for using self-published material: they're a bit differently formulated, but I don't see a "contradiction" with WP:RS. WP:V says "not unduly self-serving", WP:RS says "not unduly self-serving or self-aggrandizing" which as far as I can see covers the same ground, or is there a variety of "self-aggrandizing" that is not "unduly self-serving"? --Francis Schonken 13:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • For the second, you're still describing a stub. A stub about a book which gives basic information isn't a directory listing, it's simply a stub that needs expansion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some baseline thoughts about notability

With all due respect, Francis, I think you're ascribing more importance to WP:N than it merits. It was a contentious guideline that was ultimately adopted because it was felt that it was important to have a guideline that reflected current AFD practice. That's fine and appropriate, but AFD practice regarding books has always been and currently is broader than the general notability guideline. This isn't at all unreasonable -- numerous widely accepted subject-specific guidelines recognize notability in their field, even in the absense of two independent non-trivial published references. For example:

  1. Corporations
  2. English men's football clubs
  3. Web content
  4. Musical composers
  5. People
  6. Pornographic actors

Notability is by its nature a requirement over and above verifiability or reliable sourcing, and the precise scope of it is really based on the community's intuition about what belongs in an encyclopedia. IMHO, the six book notability criteria as phrased reflect Wikipedia's operational consensus pretty well. Thanks, TheronJ 14:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Pardon?
  • I'm not "ascribing more importance to WP:N than it merits", above I described Wikipedia notability concepts as a slave to Content Policies (primarily WP:V, WP:NOR, but also WP:NOT, and even WP:NPOV is part of the game [9]) and as a fellow to other content guidelines like WP:RS. I agree completely to WP:N as "a guideline that reflects AFD practice", as a "practical steps" summary that takes you through the more elaborate content guidance with respect to the "notability" theme, although I must admit I think that the current version of WP:N, taking the whole content of that page, not really lives up to that ambition.
  • If you say that WP:N (a guideline with a somewhat thin consensus foundation) *supersedes* core content policies ("a requirement over and above verifiability or reliable sourcing"), you're getting something quite wrong I suppose. I, for one, never overestimated WP:N in that sense. I'd rather have all notability pages deleted than people thinking that notability is a requirement over and above core content policies. --Francis Schonken 14:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. I'm not sure I understand you, Francis. I apologize for being slow, but let me ask another Man Plus question. (1) I've edited Man Plus to identify sources for the factual statements in the article. (2) Assuming that no one is able to provide multiple, non-trivial, independent publications for the article as it currently stands, are you arguing that the current version of Man Plus doesn't meet WP:V? Why? (I understand that you may have problems with one sentence or another -- my question is whether you think that the entire article violates WP:V). Thanks! TheronJ 15:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
(1) is not a question;
(2)a - (2)b The section Man Plus#Major themes still misses foundation in external sources. I mean, I understand that the book is a novel, and that there's not a chapter named "major themes of this novel" or something in that vein. So someone (the author? a commentator?) analysed the two themes mentioned in that Wikipedia article section to be the "main" themes, all other themes in the book would then be subsidiary. If you don't give a source on *where it is written or said* that these are the *main* themes (or even significant themes at all), that's still Original Research (as in: WP:NOR). And lacks verfiability.
(2)c (I mean: "my question is whether you think that the entire article violates WP:V") - how could an article that has a few sound references (it has), be described as "entire article violates WP:V"? I'd add a section-needs-verification kind of tag, or two "citation needed" tags to each of the two paragraphs of the Man Plus#Major themes section. An "unverified" tag for the whole article would be out of order here.
Finally, the article is a stub, I also expect there's still more possible verifiable content for the article per the "a much-written-about novel" someone put on the talk page. It is an OK stub (as someone wrote above), but a stub is not an OK article over-all (as I wrote above: a stub means something is missing still). Other "over-all" appreciations of the article are very difficult, and should be used sparingly, as long as it is a stub-with-potential imho. --Francis Schonken 15:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I may still be misunderstanding you. My understanding was that you thought that (1) Notability does not require anything that is not also required by WP:V and WP:RS and that (2) books that don't have two independent, published, non-trivial, references are not notable and should be deleted from the encyclopedia, regardless of whether they have won a "major award." In your opinion, are both of those statements correct? Thanks. TheronJ 16:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Re. (1) Notability does not require anything that is not also required by content policies is what I said. I clarified that: "primarily WP:V, WP:NOR, but also WP:NOT, and even WP:NPOV is part of the game [10]". From which follows that Notability is not "above" WP:V (WP:V is "policy", no guideline is "above" policy). Note that there is an explicit warning to not see the core content policies as "separate", that warning is on all the core content policy pages (WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV). The "notability" concept maybe hinges primarily on WP:V and WP:NOR, but as I've shown above at some points also WP:NOT and WP:NPOV kick in as more appropriate to point out the foundations of the Notability concept. Where's the problem.
Re. (2) Again, AGAIN, Man Plus is a stub, *IT IS A STUB*, no general conclusions can be drawn from it w.r.t. to core content policies, while no stub even pretends to be all complete content-wise (we're talking *content* policies and *content* guidelines here). For stubs, see Wikipedia:stub, notability guidelines have not the habit of redoing the content of that guideline. The rest of your "(2)" is so badly written that I don't even see why I bother to answer it. I HAVE said above that when WP:NOT, or a severe limitation of *existing* sources (not: *effectively used* sources), is a problem, that in that case a redirect, with inclusion of the limited base material in another article is often a very elegant solution (not necessarily a "delete"). One needs "multiple available, non-trivial, independent, published discussions of the book" to *exist* for a topic that deserves a separate article. I did not mention how many references are effectively used in the article. If only one "available, non-trivial, independent, published discussion of the book" *exists*, then merge the book in another article, where that single "available, non-trivial, independent, published discussion of the book" becomes one of the multiple sources for that article. If you have sources, and you don't use them, so that Wikipedia contains unreferenced content, then that's a WP:V infringement: if the unreferenced content is unlikely, or defamatory, it should be removed on sight. If you, personally, have only access to one source (while you know there is another that normally would qualify), you can of course write the article only using a single source for the references, the one you have. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort, and someone else will come along to add the other source (hopefully, before someone tags it for AfD). If only one "available, non-trivial, independent, published discussion of the book" *exists* (and you're really sure there's not a second one available anywhere where usual starvelings would have easy access to it), and there is no related Wikipedia article with which to merge (nor is there any to be expected), then no, you've reached the under limit, don't start an article about that topic, it will be deleted. --Francis Schonken 17:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Wait. I am just getting more confused. Are you saying that you think stubs are not subject to notability requirements? TheronJ 17:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
No, I said stubs are subject to Wikipedia:stub (which nowhere says that a stub that has the potential of growing beyond the stub stage should be deleted - but that the "stub" qualification entails that an article is "incomplete", i.e. it has not yet the content it should have, so no conclusions can be drawn on whether the stub article can be deleted for notability or content policy reasons), I only said that Notability guidelines (WP:N, or whatever that can be found in category:Wikipedia notability criteria) usually contain no content that *alters* or *modifies* the guidance of Wikipedia:stub. --Francis Schonken 17:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Holy Moley

That is a long string of words, and is very hard to read. I hope you don't mind, but i'm making a section break.

I hope i'm not intruding on the conversation here, but to me an ISBN number is a good benchmark for a book that's "notable", as well as having it published by a notable publishing company(I know, I know, what is a notable publishing company, that's probably around somewhere here).

It's best to keep it simple, IMO. Just H 23:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I do believe that vanity press also gives out ISBN. >Radiant< 09:19, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Testing for guideline consensus

IMHO, we should tag this page as guideline because (1) it is an accurate representation of the notability guidelines used in book AFDs and (2) its a good guideline that people should continue to apply in determining whether to delete a book page as non-notable. I am interested in people's thoughts. Can anyone who would oppose a guideline tag drop a note explaining:

  1. Are you so opposed that if we tag it as guideline, you will revert?
  2. Why are you opposed to tagging this page as guideline?
  3. Are there any improvements that would cause you to cease to oppose the guideline tag?

Thanks! TheronJ 15:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Well it's no secret that I like it. I think we could find a better way to deal with the issue of Publishers Weekly which Jeff opposes so strongly. Then again, I don't think there's much that we can do that would make him lend support for this as a guideline (not that I want to speak for him, but he's also not made that a big secret). Also, I suggest that if you want to get input (again) this discussion should be advertised on the village pump and there should be a stronger case made that this proposal is already being used routinely as a yardstick on AfD. Pascal.Tesson 16:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
It's not accurate as to how we do things at AfD, nor does it reflect reality. I've been very detailed up top as to my issues with this as a guideline, but I'd compromise with two concessions:
  1. Removing the restriction on where the reviews come from - reviews are reviews, plain and simple, and eliminating the largest pool of reviews is not bright.
  2. Removing the "multiple, non-trivial" part, as that consistently gets twisted and we don't need it.
If people can agree to remove those, I will not oppose this becoming a guideline, although I still believe this to be way too exclusionary. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
One idea would be to remove the criterion of existing reviews entirely. Again, the argument can be made that if the only existing sources discussing the book don't contain significant critical commentary then there simply doesn't exist any material to build an article that's anything more than a plot summary. How about replacing it with something like The book has been the subject of multiple, independent, non-trivial reviews in works meeting our standards for reliable sources. Moreover, some of these reviews contain significant critical commentary and can reasonably be used to construct an article that consists of more than a plot summary for the book. Pascal.Tesson 18:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I still dislike "multiple, non-trivial," but I'm not necessarily against the rest of it. I also don't want "independent" to be construed as "independent of the publishing industry," because some will try to play that game. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
We'll see how others feel about it but something along those lines would, I think, be a reasonable compromise. As for "independent", I think we have to assume good faith and common sense from AfD participants. Although the problem is not as bad in the publishing business than, say, in the film industry, there are unquestionably cases in which reviews are remote-controlled by the publisher and these should be discarded as publicity material. Sure, the difference is sometimes hard to tell when looking at it from a distance but we have to assume that the overwhelming majority of AfD participants act in good faith and can discuss these issues rationally on a case by case basis. Pascal.Tesson 18:57, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria 1 and 2 - merge?

I can't see why the first and second criteria are split. Each calls for multiple, non-trivial, independent and about the book. #1 further calls for "at least some serving a general audience" (why do we care; take a hypothetical book on the maritime history of Maine that has been reviewed in both an academic journal about Maine history and a journal on naval engineering - those ought to be good enough), and explicitly includes reviews. #2 further calls for being a reliable source (why isn't this in #1?) and excludes only reviews in sources that do thousands of reviews a year. I don't see anything here that can't be combined, whether or not that exception in #2 is kept as an exception.

I suggest merging as:

The book has been the subject[3] of multiple, non-trivial[4], reliable published works whose sources are independent[5] of the book's owners and sellers. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews.

and keeping the bullet about what is excluded.

Then have the independent footnote say something more like:

Independent does not mean independent of the publishing industry, but only refers to those actually involved with the particular book. Someone offering the book for sale is involved for the purpose of independence, as are the author(s), their agent(s), the book's publisher(s), and anyone else owning the copyright to the material.

An aside: given what our Publisher's Weekly article says, I'm not sure it would count as a reliable source for the opinions of the reviewers, but I have no idea how extensive the problem mentioned there is.

I think this would simplify the text, without changing it significantly what do all of you think? GRBerry 19:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense, although it shouldn't be bothering with multiple and should still lose the restrictions regarding where reviews come from. As for the aside, nothing in the PW article is giving me pause. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Subject matter: I think it's important

Should the subject matter of non-fiction books be taken into account? This occurred to me in a recent AfD discussion (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Only Three Questions That Count) concerning a book presenting some stock market guru's latest investment system. The book was published by a reputable publisher, and reviewed in Forbes magazine, and as such seems to meet the requirements of verifiability through reliable sources. The book was undeniably the subject of disinterested third party commentary. I still can't shake the sneaking feeling that the article on the book is thinly veiled spam, especially given the nominator's concerns that the author's article has attracted spam in the past.

I tend to think that certain types of book count as ephemera that probably aren't going to be worthy of an encyclopedia article, even if during their moment in the sun they appear on best seller lists and are the subjects of third party reviews in print. In my opinion, non-scholarly books that are:

  • Diet books
  • Cookbooks
  • Exercise methods
  • Sex manuals
  • Investment guides
  • Salesmanship texts
  • Popular business management methods
  • Gambling systems
  • Self-help books
  • Pop psychology books

ought to be required to show a bit more "leg" than the typical such book before meeting the bar. Spam is one concern with this sort of material: but complete bollocks is another.

What additional requirements ought to be made of this sort of literature is something I'd be open to consider. "Remaining in print for five years" sounds like a plausible one initially; obviously we want to keep an entry on The Joy of Cooking. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I'd rather see a style guideline to make sure that the articles are well written. TheronJ 21:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not interested in anything that makes this more exclusionary than it already is as written. Subject matter shouldn't be relevant. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
The policy underlying all of notability is non-trivial treatment in multiple, independent, reliable sources, which is the single best basis we have to understand whether the outside world has deemed a subject notable; an objective standard. Notability guidelines as I see it, function to define the parameters of that as well as define additional sources of notability tailored to the subject matter. If I understand you, you're proposing that some books, even if they have been the subject of non-trivial treatment in...reliable sources, should have to meet a higher burden. I think by doing so we would be straying beyond our role; we would be defining what we think is notable.--Fuhghettaboutit 22:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
The concerns about notability and about spam should be kept separate. Articles about perfectly notable books meeting all of our criteria could be written as shameless pieces of spam. Conversely, articles on perfectly non-notable books (by our standards) could be written as perfectly neutral. Even if the book has an ephemeral life, it's useful to be able to figure out a few years later what all the hoopla was about. Pascal.Tesson 00:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Only if actual hoopla was involved, like with, say, the low-carb craze (it's dead now, right?), and only if there's enough to say outside of articles directly discussing the actual hoopla: otherwise its pointless duplication.
we would be defining what "we think is notable". Guy, that's done every millisecond on Wikipedia, given that we don't have 300,000 word biographical articles regurgitating every factoid about a subject. --Calton | Talk 06:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Spam is a non-issue here, and we're already using a subjective criteria. It's not objective, we've pulled something out of the air. --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Spam is completely an issue, given Wikipedia's draw as a spam-magnet. --Calton | Talk 06:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Testing for consensus, part two

Does anyone currently have an objection to tagging the book notability page as guideline, and if so, (1) why and (2) are there any changes to the current page that would satisfy your objection?

Last time, only Jeff raised an objection -- there were some edits to the page in response to Jeff's concerns, but I'm not sure whether they satisfied Jeff's concerns or not. Thanks, TheronJ 15:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC) I would just like to add that the exemples section will be removed once the proposal becomes a guideline. Its current purpose is to illustrate how the proposal fits in with current practice on AfD. Pascal.Tesson 17:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I have no objection. >Radiant< 16:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • For the 100th time, I have no objections and in fact, I've long supported this move. I've simplified the guideline by merging the first two criteria as suggested above. This also removes the specific caveat against Publisher's Weekly which Jeff was so incensed about. I have replaced it (as I had suggested earlier) by a reminder about articles consisting of plot summaries. I'm fairly confident that the proposal represents community consensus, although I doubt that Jeff will be so thrilled about it. In any case, I will advertise (again) this discussion at the village pump. Pascal.Tesson 16:30, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I generally have no objections and fully support the promotion of this proposal. However, I suggest criteria 5 to be reworded into: "The book's author is historically significant enough for his or her works to be considered notable, even in the absence of secondary sources". Michaelas10 (Talk) 18:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    Done. TheronJ 02:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Object to criterion 4 which allows articles on almost any textbook and I don't think that's what was intended. Other than that seems reasonble to promote. JoshuaZ 01:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
    Done. TheronJ 02:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Full support of course. As no one objected when I suggested it a while back, I am removing the last vestige of sales numbers.--Fuhghettaboutit 02:55, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • (comment) Please note that badlydrawnjeff (talk • contribs), who has long fought against various versions of this proposal is (apparently) leaving Wikipedia. While I don't want to speak in his name, I'm sure he would be opposed to making this proposal a guideline although this version is probably the closest it's ever been to something he would support tolerate. Pascal.Tesson 06:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm essentially done with the exception of one article, but I said that I'd compromise if the text regarding the publications was eliminated, and it was. So if it matters, while I don't love it, it's something I would grudgingly support. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Does anything meet 3,4 or 5 and not 1?

Can anyone give an example of something? JoshuaZ 02:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I can definitely see something meeting 5 quite obviously without visibly meeting 1. Actually establishing 1 is kinda tricky, especially for not-so-recent books, and 5 can come in handy. There are also most certainly books meeting 3 without meeting 1 (although, sure, they're not that common). Here again, 3 (and 2 for that matter) make it easier to just establish the need to keep an article without digging up the multiple references. As for 4, well that one is a bit different as it is meant to capture widely used textbooks. ...well, nevermind... TheronJ has changed it to something quite reasonable. Pascal.Tesson 02:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I think that is impossible in theory but not in practice. For 3, 4 and 5, imagine a Chinese/Nigerian/Tibetan, etc. example that has never been translated into English. Very hard in practice to find published references for outsiders, but we can impute the existence of scads in home country if we have reliable sources verifying the secondary basis that the book was indeed the source of the major film/is taught across the country/the book's author is preeminent.--Fuhghettaboutit 03:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
In practice, just about anything that meets 3, 4, or 5 (or 2, for that matter) will meet 1 as well. As I see it, the main purpose of those is to keep stubs from getting deleted if people can't find the external sources in time -- some older or foreign books require a skilled researcher and/or an editor with access to specialized resources to find the materials. (Finding those sources is necessary to write a good article, but that's a clean-up issue more than a deletion issue, IMHO). TheronJ 03:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
On number 5, I cant think of many children's books, especially young adult books, that would meet this criterion but not the first one. YA in particular, while having fifty years of organized attention, has only really become a strong focus in the last ten years or so, which will make it difficult, if not impossible, for otherwise notable authors to have that occur. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm somewhat leery of criteria 5, if I'm reading it correctly ("The book's author is historically significant enough for his or her works to be considered notable, even in the absence of secondary sources"), for two reasons: first, I doubt there really are no secondary sources for obscure or minor works by actually famous authors; and second, if there really ARE no secondary sources, what can you possibly write other than a directory listing of the form "XXXX is a book by AUTHOR, published in DATE"? Given my first misgiving, I'd suggest:

The book's author is historically significant enough for his or her works to be considered notable, even in the immediate absence of secondary sources

This leaves the door open for someone to locate actual secondary sources without enabling the existence of permanent directory-style stubs. --Calton | Talk 06:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

But why are stubs bad? No, I'm not being a dick to you, this is an honest to goodness question, put aside whatever sniping we've done in the past for this one, please. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm with Jeff on this one. If we have strong reason to believe that secondary sources exist, then I can't see deleting articles because they don't contain those secondary sources today. I'm open to proposals that we start deleting articles that don't meet style guidelines, but as far as I know, the editors are fairly averse to using AFD as a spur to article clean-up so far, and I'd rather not start with books. Also, I would note that a lot of the stuff in the current book and novel article templates and infoboxes can be filled in using primary sources (the book itself) and "trivial" but still reliable sources such as WorldCat. TheronJ 16:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conciseness

Note that both Fuhghettaboutit and myself have cut some of the less useful fat out of the proposal, including the notes on sales number, on the Google Test and on flexibility. Most significantly (in terms of sheer kilobytes) I've cut the examples and precedents section since it was always intended to go eventually. If anyone feels that this is too drastic, please feel free to revert. Pascal.Tesson 06:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kudos, and question

First, great job to all in tightening up the criterion, getting it "promoted" to a guideline, and all of that with keeping the discussion (mostly) civilized. One question: I found the phrase from the old criterion: "Reviews in periodicals that review thousands of books a year with little regard for notability, such as Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews do not meet this (the notability) criterion." very useful and appropriate; it is now gone, and in reviewing the discussion, I don't see that consensus was reached on pulling this out: are we saying that these reviews now ARE sufficient to establish notability? Can someone patiently fill me in on the history of consensus on removing this phrase? If it should be in, I think it would work in a footnote, footnote 3. Thanks in advance. UnitedStatesian 04:21, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure. The quick and easy answer to the question would be "we removed it because Badlydrawnjeff wined long enough to have it removed" but although I find that answer pretty funny, I know it's incorrect. True, Bdj did complain pretty vocally about that criterion but he did have a point, at least partially. The original rationale for this provision (I'm guessing because I think Fuhghettaboutit first put that in) was that we did not want to include gazillions of obscure books about which all we have in terms of sources are the book and these shortish reviews. But it is true that the above journals are fairly reliable sources so it is a bit silly to exclude them solely on the basis that they review a lot of books. The compromise that was eventually hacked out was to insist that some of the reviews used to establish notability contain "sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary." In the end that's really the kind of criterion we're looking for because it's inclusive enough to avoid discriminating too much against these "high output" reviewers without actually opening the door too much to books about which we can't write a meaningful article. Hope that clears it up somewhat. Pascal.Tesson 05:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I know I'm easy to default to, but it was GabrielF's suggestion and implementation:-) There may not have been consensus to remove, but there was little discussion about its addition as well; see Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)/Archive 2#Some suggestions. --Fuhghettaboutit 12:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I stand corrected. In any case, I think all three of use felt it was a good idea originally. Pascal.Tesson 15:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I view it as a compromise to keep me from bitching to the point that it would get rejected. d;-). In all seriousness, I don't like this guideline, but the removal of it helped and I support its promotion without the clause included - if "notability" is what we seek, we can't limit the types of reliable sources such "notability" can be derived from. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:35, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
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