Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Science of Soulmates

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 of the debate was Delete. --Darth Deskana (talk page) 09:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Science of Soulmates

This is patent self-promotion of a book. (Using three different user IDs but one of them claims pd-self for the book cover image.) Is the book notable? -- RHaworth 06:31, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep but needs to be rewritten (the article, not the book that is). I have put cleanup tag on it. There seems to be interest in this book out there. Tyrenius 14:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Possibly vanity, but more to the point nn book. Ranked almost one millionth on Amazon.com. Batmanand | Talk 19:04, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why Wiki can't end up with articles on a million books. Besides which, books which have a niche market can be notable within that and not have mass appeal. The numbers game is only one yardstick. This book has been given a good accolade in the review of it. The current article is not good, I agree. Tyrenius 12:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The guideline for inclusion in Wikipedia is notability, not truth. Whilst it is true that this book exists, you need to (at least) assert what makes it notable. Batmanand | Talk 01:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I feel it has recognition within the market that would be interested in the genre, as in the review: "by far the most outstanding piece of work I have read in the genré of soul-mates." Interestingly Notability talks of authors, "who have written books with an audience of 5,000" (as opposed to sales—which are less than "audience" figures). The web site for the book has had 15,955 unique visitors to date, so the author may qualify for an article, even if the book doesn't. Tyrenius 04:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Audience is usually defined as people who have read the book, or studied it, or in some way has significant interaction with it. Going to a website is not significant interaction. So let us - conservatively - divide the number of website views by ten, and then - liberally - triple the sales (cos people might buy it anyway). Even on that measure, we are not yet up to 5,000. Batmanand | Talk 23:39, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Audiences come in all types and some are very inattentive. All we know is that there are as of today's date 16017 "unique" visitors, and 17333 including reloads. The latter figure using your calculations actually comes to 5199. But, hey, let's not get all legalistic about it. The book might even help someone to find their soulmate - that would be useful. Tyrenius 00:12, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete — Non-notable; very, very low Amazon sales rating. The Amazon rank would appear to indicate the book rank among present books in print. Overall rank would be much lower. So how is this notable? It's more likely that this is a promotional page. As for the review by a Dr. Maryel McKinlay, I found exactly one link to her name in google. Guess where that linked? :-) — RJH 18:44, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

That is because it's McKinley, not McKinlay. She seems well enough qualified on her website, and this is Awareness magazine. Notability is not the only, nor a rigid, criterion for inclusion.

Tyrenius 20:40, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but I still have to agree with the nom. Sorry. — RJH 16:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. My only reason for wanting to keep this is the review by the good Dr McKinley, who is established in this field, and rates the work:"“The Science of Soulmates” is by far the most outstanding piece of work I have read in the genré of soul-mates. Henderson literally takes off where Redfield’s Celestine Prophecy ended, exploring some of the most challenging studies on life and love I have seen." This evaluation to me makes it notable in a different way to the usual standard. I would like to think Wiki has the flexibility to take each case on its own merits. It is not vanity (any more) as I have copy-edited the article. I expect consensus will be to delete, and, if so, full accept this. However, I have to be honest, that I would like to retain this article. Tyrenius 16:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete No signs of notability. IrishGuy 12:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: Blatant advertising, no encyclopedic content. Peter Grey 18:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I edited out some of the "vanity" links, so article is just informative. There are some decent reviews. I think notoriaty should not equal popular culture, as this is often served to us ready-made by corporations for our mindless consumption. Do we let corporations control what we put on a "free" encylopedia?Darxsilver

"The web site for the book has had 15,955 unique visitors to date, so the author may qualify for an article, even if the book doesn't. Tyrenius 04:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)" Perhaps just change the title of the article to the Authors name if this is the case?

comment 16,000 visitors since 3 June 2003 isn't really that amazing. That's really only about 5,500 hits a year. Not exactly notable. IrishGuy 21:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, non-notable book. Sandstein 05:43, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per low amazong ranking, and observation by Irishguy, the author could maybe count for an article, the book by itself certainly not. JoshuaZ 06:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete since the book's publisher, "BookSurge Publishing", appears to actually be a vanity press. And regarding the 5,500-website-hits-a-year claim above, that's really nothing by modern web standards. My personal website, which also isn't notable, got about 200,000 hits last month alone. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 15:47, 1 May 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.