Talk:List of books by John Piper

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[edit] Proposed deletion

On April 17, 2007, soon after this article's creation, it was proposed for deletion, for the reason that this article is not particularly encyclopedic. However, I disagree with this proposal. On the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not, the policy states that "After a point, splitting an article into separate articles and leaving adequate summaries is a natural part of growth for a topic." This page is simply a result of splitting up the John Piper page, which was too long with the inclusion of all of his books, and did not allow for a simple overview of his significant works. Snow1215 15:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I meant by the prod that a comprehensive list of all the books someone has written is not particularly encyclopedic. That's more the job of a CV or Amazon.com, not the Wikipedia. Of course, the more important works should be listed on the author's page, but we're not here to provide a CV for anyone. --Flex (talk|contribs) 16:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but this is actually common practice for Wikipedia. Consider the bibliographies/books by author category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bibliographies_by_author Snow1215 17:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I asked over at Wikipedia talk:List guideline#Bibliographies to get more opinions, but Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists)#Selection criteria seems to indicate that most of the elements of the list should have their own articles (compare The Oz books or List of books by P. G. Wodehouse to pick two semi-random examples), but I daresay that not more than one or two of Piper's books besides Desiring God qualify under WP:BK for separate articles. --Flex (talk|contribs) 19:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, but do you think that every single book he wrote should appear on the John Piper page, or only the most significant/bestselling? I'm a completist, so I like to see them all, but it seems rather long for the main article. Maybe not though. Snow1215 19:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a tough call. It does get a bit listy to have all of them in the main article, and to give the most significant their due, they should somehow be emphasized (and there should be objective metrics like sales or whatever for determining that significance -- we can't base it on anecdotes or personal opinion). Over at Talk:Abraham Kuyper#External link, I suggested that a bibliography (containing primary and secondary sources) should be kept as an external link rather than incorporated into the article. In this case, all of the books are primary sources, so it is a bit different. In any case, I would suggest that if this article sticks around, we should rename it to List of books by John Piper or similar (pursuant WP:NAME#Lists). --Flex (talk|contribs) 19:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I nominated List of apologetic works and List of Christian Apologetic Works for deletion for similar reasoning. I suspect this one will pass or fail on the same grounds. --Flex (talk|contribs) 14:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

How else i we gonna know what books he wrote!? thats stupid to delete it...Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which should have everything...(btw the list is not complete) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.146.170 (talk • contribs)

First, the Wikipedia is not for everything. Second, please be more civil. Third, this discussion was over a while ago -- in the direction of "don't delete" manifestly. --Flex (talk/contribs) 02:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC)