Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)/Archive 5

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Reference works

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Notability requirements for reference books and other reference materials to develop notability guidelines for reference works. Maurreen (talk) 07:04, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed revision to criterion #3 language

I propose to revise this language in criterion #3:

notable motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement

as follows:

notable work of art, event, social movement, or field of endeavor

Besides tightening up the dodgy grammar, this subsumes the redundant "motion picture" in the category that encompasses it, "work of art", merges and generalizes "political or religious movement" into "social movement" rather than specially privileging politics and religion, and adds "field of endeavor". This last, I want to include because, without getting into tedious debates about what's "art" and what's not, it seems clear to me that the contribution to and impact on the world represented by, for example, The Art of Computer Programming far exceeds that represented by a novel being adapted as a movie. (This isn't to say that TAoCP doesn't easily pass other criteria, but it should be a no-brainer for criterion #3 as well.) Thoughts? —chaos5023 (talk) 11:21, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't mind grammar clean up, but what exactly is meant by "field of endeavor"? Also I think "notable motion picture, or other art form" should be kept as is, or art form clarified so people understand by example what that means. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 13:35, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Hmm. Funny thing, people use "field of endeavor" all the time but hardly ever define it. One might look at it as like "profession", but generalized to clearly include things people do for reasons other than money. Call it profession and/or avocation, perhaps, or whatever people work at. So in our case, whatever people notably work at. On consideration, I think you're right about the movie bit, since film adaptations will probably always be the bulk of cases where the criterion is important. New version:

notable motion picture, other work of art, event, social movement, or field of endeavor

How's that look? —chaos5023 (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
On further reflection, I think that with the inclusion of "field of endeavor", the phrase "significant contribution" earlier in the sentence should also be replaced with "highly influential or definitive contribution". This covers film adaptations and TAoCP fine, and somewhat forestalls arguments that Windows Widget Programming for Dummies was a "significant" contribution to the field of computer programming. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:14, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree on the change to "highly influential or definitive contribution" but am still struggling with "field of endeavor"...how does one prove a book has made a significant contribution to any particular field, and if one can prove it, it would seem to already have notability as it would have very significant coverage. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 14:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
One would demonstrate it by reliable sources describing how it is highly influential or definitive to a field. Usually that would also mean it was notable under criterion #1, sure. The exception would be in niche fields; the model railroading you mentioned in the "general audience" discussion is probably a fine example. We possibly don't want every random book in the model railroading field that has a couple reviews, but a book that defined what it meant to be a model railroader for a generation, yeah, that I'm thinking we want. That book may very well not have reliable coverage outside its niche. So, other than as a belt-and-suspenders notability qualification for influential works, this prevents the "general audience" clause from knocking out a few things it shouldn't. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:53, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Oh, and it also prevents the language change from "art form" to "work of art" from devaluing works that contributed to an artistic field rather than any specific work. —chaos5023 (talk) 00:02, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

checkY Done —chaos5023 (talk) 16:12, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

reverted - thus far, only you have agreed with the change. That isn't consensus. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:54, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Would you care to articulate what, if anything, you still object to in it, then? —chaos5023 (talk) 16:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Still have not received a satisfactory answer to "field of endeavor" and how it would prevent unnotable books from being slipped in by that claim. Also, no one else has supported this or even commented on it. Such a major change in meaning on a notability guideline should never be decided by a single editor, or just two going back and forth, but by a thorough discussion amongst a group of editors, else it renders it all but useless and indefensible. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 17:19, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I answered you regarding "field of endeavor" and received no reply, so I have little way of understanding what's unsatisfactory about it. I don't see how it would allow "unnotable books ... being slipped in", though that relies on the core idea that if a book made a "highly influential or definitive" contribution to a notable field of endeavor, that means the book is notable. Though that, if we accept the reasoning that leads to criterion #3 existing at all, seems inescapable; if the field is notable, and the book was a critical contribution to the field, then the book is notable. Shall we really say that the notability of such a work, affecting an entire area of how people spend their lives, is inherently less than that of some random book that gets adapted as some random movie that's "notable" solely because it's a mass-market production and somebody spent a bunch of money on it? —chaos5023 (talk) 18:37, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I didn't respond as there seemed no point and I was waiting to see if anyone else would express a view. As no one did, I figured there was no point in continuing the discussion as there was no consensus for the change. If a book "affects an entire area of how people spends their lives" and is that influential, it is highly unlikely that it cannot already meet WP:N and/or WP:BK, while your proposal seems to open the door for anyone to make such a claim without actual verifiability. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 20:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Not at all. Just as the criterion does currently, it requires verifiable substantiation of the book's contribution to the other entity by multiple reliable sources, and of course the notability of the other entity is subject to standard, verifiable requirements. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:01, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
In re consensus, I would argue that my position is supported by the consensus represented in WP:N itself, which has consistently evolved away from picking out specific, systemic-bias-causing categories of sources as indicating or failing to indicate notability, such as specially privileging movies and one-time events, and moved toward more general and objective standards, such as the GNG. I'm basically attempting to bring WP:NB more in line with the mainstream consensus. In that light, the WP:SILENCE here speaks louder than it might otherwise. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:48, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Silence does not equal consensus in changing a guideline, particularly when it has been opposed, nor do I agree that your position and wording changes bring the policy more in-line with WP:N, rather it seems to make this guideline more permissive than WP:N, which of course it not acceptable. Without anyone actually commenting or discussing otherwise, it seems to be only to your benefit to claim that silence means your view is correct and somehow represents mainstream consensus. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 20:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
The revert was the first time you registered opposition to the proposal rather than requesting clarification and refinement of it, which I believed I had provided. I guess it's clear now that you outright oppose it. If my proposal is in fact more permissive than WP:N, it's only to the extent that criterion #3 already is so, in that it arguably constitutes a codified exception to "notability is not inherited". I maintain that it brings criterion #3 closer to WP:N in leveling the playing field for books that made meaningful contributions to human existence in a variety of ways rather than focusing in on an arbitrary and bias-producing set of specially privileged cases. This is, obviously, a matter of interpretation. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:01, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

How to handle?

How to handle unreferenced one or two line stubs of book articles? Should they simply be turned into a redirect to the author? (See also this discussion) Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 16:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If the author is notable, yes. I'd make sure the stub book title is mentioned (even if not bluelinked) in the target article, following the principle of least astonishment. :-) Jclemens (talk) 22:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Criterion out of context

This criterion appears here:

  1. The book has been the subject[1] of multiple, non-trivial[2] published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself,[3] with at least some of these works serving a general audience. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews. Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.[4]

Somewhat strangely, this got cited at this page, discussing the unorthodox book Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach by H. Jerome Keisler. The book caused a stir in the '70s and still gets some attention today. Even now, it may be the only book that attempts to bring to the first-year undergraduate level the results of Abraham Robinson's work. The phrase "at least some of these works serving a general audience" seems to be cited outside the context in which such a thing could be appropriate. This is not a novel; its purposes are quite different from those of a work of fiction.

I think this criterion should get qualified further, in the interest of sanity. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:22, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Did you read Wikipedia:Notability (books)#Academic books?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:56, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
I hadn't seen that. I've cited it now in that AfD discussion. Thanks. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:13, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
Anyone care to rename it to include technical books. I bet that was the reason it was overlooked in the recent Perl book discussions. Jclemens (talk) 14:43, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I have deleted the "with at least some of these works serving a general audience" part. As pointed out above and in other discussion on specialized books, that criterion wss ignored in AfDs for those types of books. The recent crop of Perl books, all of which are kept, is another set of examples. Geekipedia wins. FuFoFuEd (talk) 11:07, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

While I wasn't following the previous discussion, I agree that the clause should be removed. I don't see that it serves any purpose, and is not congruent with the expectation of the GNG--if a book gets multiple non-trivial independent RS coverage in niche press, it still meets the GNG, so why draw BK's criteria so much more narrowly? Jclemens (talk) 14:42, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
I reverted the removal because it was based on AfD discussions that appear to have misapplied the criteria by failing to note the academic section. However there's further support for removal at Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)/Archive 2#Not a general interest encylopedia and Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)/Archive 2#Not a general interest encylopedia. The original reason for its addition (here) comes from this discussion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:56, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the links. So the "general audience" criterion was added after a two day discussion period involving only three people, and the specific phrase "general audience" did not actually appear in that discussion. Doesn't look to me like a consensus, rather something that stuck around by sheer inertia. I support removing it, since it's not really in the spirit of WP:GNG: specialist material can still be notable if supported by reliable sources. I'd also suggest adding one sentence at the end of the "this page in a nutshell" box drawing attention to the section "other considerations" below. And renaming the section "Academic books" to "Academic and technical books" sounds reasonable too. Jowa fan (talk) 04:49, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
I have removed it again because the consensus now is against it. Can you point out some deletion discussion where the closing administrator deleted the article on a book which had independent reviews just because they were not in a venue of general interest? If not, I think this clause in violation of the WP:POLICY policy, "Wikipedia policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-known practices", which is alone a good reason to remove it. Please provide some actual examples of this clause being successfully used to delete articles, instead of WP:POINTY reverts. FuFoFuEd (talk) 01:10, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree it serves no purpose and should be removed. If it meets the general notability guidelines, which I don't think were around when that part was written, then its notable anyway. Having that bit in it just causes confusion and unnecessary conflict. Dream Focus 00:39, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Agree with removing "at least some of these works serving a general audience". There's no reason to make this a blanket requirement, and no reason why we can't/shouldn't cover a book which is influential in its field but not aimed at a general audience. Kingdon (talk) 01:56, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I also disagree with this clause, as it seems (to me) to contradict the GNG. I've removed it from the main list of criteria. Ozob (talk) 10:37, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Rewrite: Inclusion is too restrictive and removal isn't restrictive enough. In general the guideline is geared toward fiction and books for a popular audience and this makes guideline open to interpretation for technical books. There are technical books that should have articles since they are influential in their fields, but have too narrow an audience to get a review in any but a technical journal. On the other hand publishers churn out nearly identical freshman level textbooks on standard subjects (calculus, physics, chemistry, biology etc.) every year, many of which get reviews in technical journals. My thinking is to leave the phrase but to add a new criterion (paraphrasing WP:ACADEMIC) "The book has made significant impact in its scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources."--RDBury (talk) 10:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Drop the General Audience language. I don't know what that means. Everything that is written and has been written, has been written with a particular audience in mind. The particular audience may be very broad as with the NY Times (yet I would contend if you look at their demographic studies, their audience is somewhat restrictive). Or the particular audience may be finely defined. Fly fishing books are written for fly anglers, which is not is any sense a general audience. Drop it, it is undefinable and therefore useless in a guideline. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Support dropping the general audience clause, as I did with DGG's proposal in a previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)/Archive 4#What is a "general audience"? So glad it's finally been killed. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:57, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose dropping the general audience clause, lacking a meaningful replacement -- per Pascal.Tesson's argument in Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)/Archive 2#Not a general interest encylopedia. I do not think that having some form of restriction conflicts with either policy (WP:GNG requires "significant coverage") or practice (AfDs typically place greater weight in prominent sources with a wide readership than those with a very narrow, niche readership). HrafnTalkStalk(P) 02:36, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I see one person stating his opinion in that link, that he personally wants to see books he considers notable and not others, and other people against him adding that bit in. You are against something being here if it gets coverage in magazines and tech related television shows. [1] As I have said, there is no such thing as a general audience. Most people aren't interested in History, or articles about species of plants or animals. We don't erase them though. A book about a famous woman gets ample reviews in the news media, that is obsessed with celebrities, while tech shows and magazines never cover that sort of thing at all. Which should Wikipedia use as a reason to include? Do we eliminate intelligent things, while focusing on pop culture? Dream Focus 10:14, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I would suggest that you look closer and with less blinkered vision. You will see an editor arguing against the notability of books that are both owned by him and on a topic that he's highly interested in. He is arguing against notability in spite of the fact that he WP:ILIKEIT. Such an opinion should be taken seriously. Likewise I am in fact an Amiga enthusiast from way back when -- my family's first computer was an Amiga. I still have a strong affection for the architecture -- but that does not lead me to assume that a hobbyist recreation of it is necessarily notable. Our judgements of notability need to be intersubjective, and thus have some sort of objective basis. This will mean that vapid topics that garner considerable interest will be favoured over worthy topics that don't. I've bought or borrowed, and read, all sorts of largely-unheard-of publications on all sorts of obscure topics -- but see no reason to consider the books, and other items, reviewed in them to be notable. To do otherwise would lead Wikipedia open to a near-infinity of articles on briefly-noticed but now long-forgotten and minimally-documented obscurities of very transitory impact. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 10:36, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I agree with you that we need something to filter out just every book that gets a review somewhere, but I don't think this criterion is any good. I don't see how The Art of Computer Programming meets it for instance. It clearly has some coverage in press aimed at a general (but plausibly just general-scientific) audience, but coverage is not in depth those venues. I'd venture a guess that a book like that is notable if it's just mentioned in such venues, rather than having reviews there, which you'll never find. FuFoFuEd (talk) 06:08, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Agree that this criterion was useless, disagree per WP:NOTPAPER that we need to filter out every book that gets a review somewhere. Such filtering criteria are, in practice, nothing more than a vehicle for WP:NIME snobbiness, and I have no patience for it. It is entirely practical for Wikipedia to cover every topic of the slightest interest, so let's. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:22, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • No shortage of space on Wikipedia. Having some extra book articles can't possible hurt anything at all. Relying on just reviews to prove something is notable causes problems. There are some bestselling novels that aren't reviewed anywhere, while far less successful books are. Its all based on what target audience the newspapers and magazines are going after, if that publishing company regularly buys ads in them, and whatever the reviewer either feels like reviewing or those who sign his paycheck tell him to review. Dream Focus 18:08, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Proposal of complete review - Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)

Having recently been involved in two recent Articles for Deletion that involved books, and having had good reason to read the Notability (books) section from top to bottom, I can state un-categorically that it is a complete and utter mess.

I'm a writer and publisher. No, I'm not as big as Random House, but I know a fair amount about the industry, and where it is going. The current section is a great 20th Century Notability (books) section. It's a disaster for the 21st century, which when I look at my last bank statement, was the century we are living in.

We have a choice. We either fix it. Or we leave a mess behind us, and keep having problems. UrbanTerrorist (talk) 05:27, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Urban, please be specific. Tell us what should be changed, what is wrong, what is a problem, suggest alternatives, removals, revisions, additions and reorganization. You may be right on the money, or you may be completely wrongheaded. I have no idea from your post because all you told us was your opinion without citing any substance.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm working on a re-write that I hope will address the issues, rather than listing what I think are the problems. I've found it's better to propose a solution, than to drop a list of complaints on the table. Be constructive, not destructive. I did however want to mention that I saw there was a problem, to warn everyone I was thinking about doing this, and to get us all thinking about what Notability (books) should be. UrbanTerrorist (talk) 13:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
  • My apologies. I'm in the process of getting a couple of books up on Amazon. As a reference here's my listing on Collections Canada. I've gone over the current one several times. If I give you my re-write, it will not be accepted, unless I explain to you first why I'm making my suggestions, so here it comes.


This page in a nutshell: A book is generally notable if it verifiably meets through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria:

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

  • This entire sentence is useless. J.K. Rowling has become her own publisher. I'm my own publisher, as well as publishing other people, i.e. I'm supplying them ISBNs. Writers either publish themselves, or have a friend be the publisher of record. Exceptions are people like Amanda Hocking who the publishers were willing to toss money at.

This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews. Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.

  • This paragraph is mostly OK, it needs minor tweaking to include audio (radio, podcasts), and clean up the definition of the excludes so that it is clearer that the excludes only cover First and Second party material, that they don't cover third party (i.e. press interviews), I recently saw a fight break out over a press interview where several editors took this to mean that since the interview included the writer that it should be excluded.

The book has won a major literary award.

  • Perfectly clear.

The book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to a notable motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement.

  • Total disaster. There is a battle going on right now in Wikipedia over what is a reliable source. I for one do not regard IMDB as a reliable source (the information is supplied by industry). There is no agreement anywhere on Wikipedia as to what a "Reliable Source" is. Some people regard my website as a reliable source, some don't. I know it is cited on Wikipedia in a couple of places. People who were at one time were considered reliable sources later ended up serving jail sentences, like Alan Eagleson.

The book is the subject of instruction at multiple elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges/universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country.

  • This is impossible to document.

The book's author is so historically significant that any of his or her written works may be considered notable. This does not simply mean that the book's author is him/herself notable by Wikipedia's standards; rather, the book's author is of exceptional significance and the author's life and body of work would be a common study subject in literature classes.

  • This paragraph is nonsensical. Any writer who's body of work "would be a common study subject in literature classes" would also be notable by Wikipedia's standards.

I'll try to finish the rest tomorrow. — Preceding unsigned comment added by UrbanTerrorist (talk • contribs) 15:52, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Strawpoll. How many want to make being on the bestseller's list proof of notability for a book?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Proposal as written does not have consensus for adoption. However, there was significant discussion from those opposed that the problem is with the wording. Several topics were brought up including that the lists should be from major best seller lists such as the New York Times, USA Today, The Globe and Mail. Concern was also brought up about targeted best seller lists and best seller lists based on short term sales bubbles or interest. The significant theme from the supporters is that this criteria should be on par with the music criteria and that the criteria is an "assumption of notability". Some opposers feel that this criteria should not be an all-discussion-ending stamp of notability.
All in all, there is marginal consensus to adopt a similar proposal and another proposal should follow this one discussing the language that should be used attending to these above mentioned concerns.--v/r - TP 16:35, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Since this has once again come up in yet another AFD, where a group of bestselling novels was nominated for deletion, and I don't recall it being discussed here in quite a while, figured I'd bring it up.

Albums are considered notable if they are a gold record. I see no reason why books wouldn't be also. Not every book gets reviews, even those selling millions of confirmed copies. Some genres of books aren't reviewed often at all. So we can't just rely on reviews to establish notability.

How many would like like being on the New York Times bestseller's list, or any other list deemed equally trustworthy, to equal instant proof of notability?

  • Support of course. Dream Focus 00:17, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support The Wikipedia community at AFD has frequently kept articles about books on the basis of editors stating that in their view, being on The New York Times Best Seller list is an indication of notability. This is comparable to WP:MUSIC, where meeting any one of such criteria as "Has had a single or album on any country's national music chart," or "Has had a record certified gold or higher in at least one country," implies that the musician or ensemble may be notable, and "Songs that have been ranked on national or significant music charts, that have won significant awards or honors or that have been independently released as a recording by several notable artists, bands or groups are probably notable." Books are an important part of popular culture, and are not inherently less notable than musical works. Guidelines such as this should be descriptive of the community's consensus as to what make something notable, not proscriptive, such as the opinion of a couple of editors in the archives in earlier discussions here. Edison (talk) 02:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:NRVE. Any book on a 'Bestseller list' allows us the quite reasonable presumption that such a book has been the recipient of enough independent critical commentary to meet WP:GNG. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 03:24, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support Being on the best seller's list is a heavy implication in and of itself that a book is notable, because it has to have sold well to get to that point and is of importance to the general public. Furthermore, any book on the best seller's list is very highly likely to get a number of reviews written about it just because it was on the list, meeting our requirements for references as well. SilverserenC 14:35, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support for all the reasons above with the minor caveat that it will usually be the work rather than the edition that deserves the article - some bestseller lists aimed at readers in the book retail business will specify the particular edition. For example, the charts (http://www.thebookseller.com/node/52166) in the British magazine The Bookseller are currently topped by two different editions of One Day (novel). This is a technical detail of marketing and doesn't necessarily mean the two editions deserve separate articles (though I could imagine circumstances where they would). Barnabypage (talk) 17:16, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support for all the reasons above. Regarding different editions of a book, I think it would be sufficient to mention in a Reception section in the book's article that it made the best seller list multiple times under multiple editions (obviously being more specific than that). As the Music charts are based on sales as well, it only makes sense to have the similar charts for books be acceptable for establishing notability. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 17:50, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Qualified support. It depends on which bestseller list we're talking about, but yes bestseller status is notable as long as the list itself is notable. The article itself still needs outside sources, etc., to justify its existence as an article. Doczilla STOMP! 04:06, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose as the proposal is worded currently Neutral - I would oppose this without some kind of clarrification about which bestseller lists matter. In addition, certain manga routinely bestsellers for each volume, but we shouldn't then say "Each volume automatically passes this guideline. In that case, not one has gotten a review nor the whole series. You also have instances like List of Naruto manga volumes where they all are on the bestseller list (in fact the NYT list had at a time almost all of its top 10 books as Naruto books. That doesn't mean we need a seperate article for each volume of a manga.陣内Jinnai 17:52, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
    • I agree; in the case that you mention, since manga series are put into one article per MOS:ANIME, this could simply be used to establish the notability of the manga series. I also agree that we should specify which best seller lists are acceptable for this. The only two which come to mind for me are the NYT lists and the US News & World Report (I think that's what it's called). They both use similar metrics to establish the lists they create. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 18:08, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
      • If that is the case, then I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other. I just didn't want to see hundreds of spinout articles about each comic or manga.陣内Jinnai 03:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - If you're going to make this a single criteria, as it negates WP:GNG, which requires significant coverage from third-party sources. There are a lot of books that make the best seller list but don't get significant coverage afterward. If this was A criteria, then sure, but as a sole criteria where someone can say "see it's on the list so lets make an article for it" then I would say no.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 18:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Notability should be conferred by discussion in reliable sources, and not just statistics. We shouldn't presume that a book has received discussion just because it has made it on the bestseller's list. ThemFromSpace 18:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) x 2 - Comment. I notified WikiProject Literature, WikiProject Novels, WikiProject Comics, WikiProject Anime and manga, WikiProject Children's literature, WikiProject Books, WikiProject Horror, and WikiProject Science Fiction of this discussion. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 18:02, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I would support with more refined criteria. I came here from the notification at WikiProject Books. The NYT Bestseller list is a national (United States) compilation of book sales and there are numerous "NYT Bestseller" lists: hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, paperback fiction, paperback mass-market fiction, paperback non-fiction, Children's Picture Books, Children's Chapter Books, E-Book Fiction, etc. The USA Today's bestseller list is more generic. In Canada there is The Globe and Mail list which takes national sales. maclean (talk) 18:28, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as written, overbroad. The New York Times has about two dozen bestseller lists right now [2], and the significance of the individual lists varies greatly. And some things have made the lists based on short-term sales bubbles, particularly when they're parts of larger series that don't really have individual significance -- newspaper comics compilations, media tie-ins, complete-idiots-guide type books, etc. Using these lists, especially the nonspecialized-subject ones, to establish a presumption of notability, is a very good idea, but we need a qualifier about "components" (for lack of a better word) that don't merit articles apart from their underlying subject. The first "Garfield" book was a big deal, with a two-year run on the NYT list, but most of the dozens that followed, although hitting the list, don't really merit being broken out from a general article. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:31, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - per above reasons, but especially Edison's. However, that is with the understanding that this straw poll was designed for feedback, and significant discussion would follow about the exact wording of the criteria. (Came here from Nihonjoe's notification at WikiProject Novels) PrincessofLlyr royal court 1:36 pm, Today (UTC−5)
  • Support, although hopefully a clarification about individual volumes in series would be added. --Gwern (contribs) 18:38 5 September 2011 (GMT)
  • Support, This seems like common sense. The manga argument is a fail; they're part of a series, generally, & will (or should) be judged on the series. (OTOH, do you suggest the Watchmen graphic novel shouldn't get its own page?) In the same way, while individual issues of X-Men might have sold 600K copies a month, that wouldn't necessarily entitle each one to a page. The same applies to the Garfield books IMO: they're serials or collections, so unless they're independently notable (very high sales, the first or last), they fail. In addition, in popular imagination, making the NYT list, at least, is functionally notable, especially if it stays on the list or sells especially well. (I'd also say, the NYT's "main list", the one most associated with the term, is probably the one a book needs to make to be considered.) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 19:02, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Just because a book has made it onto a best sellers list doesn't mean that it has received the significant coverage to write a proper article about the book. —Farix (t | c) 19:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Until it is shown that there is a high correlation between "appearing on a best-seller list" and "receiving significant secondary coverage", this is an inappropriate criteria. There is certainly a likelihood that for certain best-seller lists, its appearance there is a sign that it has or will be critically reviewed to meet the GNG, but there's no assurance for all such lists; perhaps this may work in a more narrowly defined fashion. Contrary, there are fewer billboard charts for musical artists and albums and songs, and from these certainly strong assurance that there are music reviews of such albums. --MASEM (t) 20:03, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose use of appearance on such a list as a single, automatic criterion of notability. Putting aside that the list in question should be a notable or reliable list, like the New York Times Bestseller list, if a book appears on such a list, then there must be other sources in which it is covered. I would find it suspicious if a book appeared on the list, and not in other sources as well. So if a book truly is notable, appearance on one list is unnecessary as a single criterion anyway. Nightscream (talk) 21:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Its impossible to find those sources, since most sources are not online, and if we can't prove they exist, people will argue to delete valid articles(even those with coverage saying they have sold over a million copies in less than two weeks). So we end up arguing in one AFD after another, and its just a huge waste of time. Best to just say, hey, it was a bestseller, plenty of people bought it, so leave it be and find some other articles to try to destroy. Dream Focus 00:03, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Neither WP:V or WP:N require sources to be online, only that they have been identified (they don't even need to be cited, just known). Editors that refuse to accept this need to review WP:V and WP:N and/or be taken to RFC/U. --MASEM (t) 01:11, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
But you can't know for certain they exist. Thus the problem. Dream Focus 01:16, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
It's called assuming good faith. If you create a book article w/o any sources, and claim that there's reviews of it in some obscure but reliable sources, but no one but you has access to those sources, we should be able to accept that, at least initially. If someone claims they can't find those sources (not just online, again) and challenges them, then and only then do we need to actually show that. --MASEM (t) 01:38, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
It is not "impossible" to find a non-web source. I use magazines, newspapers and TV programs as sources all the time. Editors should not be creating articles without sources that establish notability anyway (and yes, Masem, they most certainly do have to be cited), so if reliable sources cannot be found, in any medium, then the articles in question are not "valid" to begin with. Nightscream (talk) 03:13, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Strong oppose -- The books need to have significant coverage in multiple reliable sources, not simply be listed, as that won't make for a good article.--Yaksar (let's chat) 00:15, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

  • Support to the extent that we limit this to known, major, bestseller lists. I just don't get the opposes, honestly. Masem, how about a challenge: try to find one NYT bestseller in the past 20 years that DID NOT receive multiple, independent RS coverage. If you can, I'll withdraw my support. Jclemens (talk) 00:35, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Right, but that's exactly the issue. If it's on a bestseller list and is getting coverage, then we can have an article on it. But I don't see a reason to add a loophole that would allow articles who somehow make it to the bestseller list without GNG worthy coverage to be automatically notable; it would just make for weaker articles.--Yaksar (let's chat) 00:39, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
So you're essentially arguing against all SNG's? The point of this is that being on the best seller's list gives a presumption of notability, in that it is presumed that books on it have reliable sources covering them. If it can be proved through a thorough search that they do not exist, then such an article can be deleted, but the point of this is to add a criteria from which one can assume RS's exist, just like we do for almost every other subject. SilverserenC 01:12, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
But there are plenty of books that make bestseller lists without getting coverage from RS it seems. I can find quite a few complaints by Dream Focus about AfDs where the book was a bestseller but there were no reliable sources and so the page was deleted.--Yaksar (let's chat) 01:15, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Assumption, unfounded: that just because no source was found during an AfD, that no source exists. Google doesn't know about every RS that was ever printed, and a mere two newspaper book reviews meet the GNG (although not this SNG, interestingly enough....) Jclemens (talk) 01:21, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
I mean, yeah. But you can say that about basically any topic. Being on a bestseller list is a good sign, but not a guarantee, that reliable coverage exists. But it's not strong enough that we should be making the blanket statement that being on a best seller list alone is enough of a reason to assume that a book must have reliable sources, and therefore should not be deleted.--Yaksar (let's chat) 05:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
I have no problem if it is limited to lists where its entries are routinely covered by reviews: the NYTimes Fiction and Non-Fiction lists would seem reasonable starting points. But just saying "NYTimes Bestseller List" covers many possible lists, all which don't necessary "grant" notability to any book or author on it (like the Manga list, or perhaps the Children's list).
Remember, Notability is not about popularity, which these lists effectively are (sales rankings). Which is why it is necessary to distill to those lists where being listed is pretty strong assurance that eventually good sources can be found. I'm not wholly against the use of being on these lists as an SNG, but they need to be specifically chosen. --MASEM (t) 01:29, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
If there was a place to just see actual sales figures and set a minimum number to prove notability, that'd be better, but I don't know of any such reliable source out there. Dream Focus 01:30, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
  • There is Nielsen BookScan. maclean (talk) 03:33, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
    Yaksar find even one of those times. I complain about having to go through the AFD for bestsellers at various times, and link to a few instances on my user page, but those all ended in keep or no consensus. You aren't likely to ever get a bestseller deleted, you just waste everyone's time by bothering with it. Dream Focus 01:30, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose There is already too much focus on "important == notable" in our SNGs. We shouldn't codify additional elements of the guideline to support this misconception. Protonk (talk) 16:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - with the assumption that this will be refined a bit in the subsequent discussion (chiefly, caveats above about serial works, and I am concerned that this may lead to an Anglocentric/US-centric bias in terms of which bestseller lists are acceptable). This would bring WP:BK into line with the music SNG. I believe this would encourage articles about new books - while a new book would get on the bestseller list relatively quickly, the kind of analysis that the GNGs require takes a bit longer to produce. This would enable articles about new books to be notable enough for them to be created and worked on while we wait for the in-depth analyses to come through. --Malkinann (talk) 04:02, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support for major lists, as set out by Jclemens. The GNG isn't the be all and end all. We should accept inherent notability for certain subjects and this is one. But lets define the lists tightly, please. --Mkativerata (talk) 07:49, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Support but only once we define what "best selling" lists we are going to use. Certainly not every NYT list makes for a notable book. I'd prefer to keep this really narrow. But I do think the analogy to albums charting is reasonable. Basically I suggest that once this straw poll gets done we need to come to consensus on "which lists". The top 10 fiction and non-fiction NYT lists are obvious and should start immediately. I'd personally prefer to stop there though. Hobit (talk) 12:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - being verifiably listed as a best-seller demonstrates a strong presumption that the book is widely available and commercially popular. Dolovis (talk) 14:04, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Partially - As it stants and is written currently, if the book is a best seller on a reputable list (New York Times, etc.) then we'll probably already have it. This doesn't prevent people from publishing "Ye Old Alchemy Shoppe" Bestseller list with random crap on it and using the "Bestseller" exception to load clearly unreputable books into WP. Hasteur (talk) 14:19, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is it just me or...

This page appears to provide little guidance for books outside the field of literature. I'm not sure how to evaluate Smart Inventory Solutions against this guideline, for instance. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 12:10, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Does major newspaper mention of a book alone qualify the book?

Reading the following and its footnotes:

The book has been the subject[1] of multiple, non-trivial[2] published works whose sources are independent of the book itself.[3] This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews. Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.[4]

The criterion excludes "media re-prints of press releases" which I take to refer to these one-paragraph press releases one sees on news.yahoo.com or Reuters along the lines of "Sharlotte Donte has told the gripping story of two hostages in a Tesco. The book will be released by McMaw-Jill."

But how far does the concept of a "press release" go? If the New York Review of Books decides to talk about a new book -- does that make it notable? Or is that just another form of press release? We can't be sure to what degree the choice is editorial and to what degree large publishers have deals with major publications to *make sure* what they put out achieves notability.

I also don't like the exclusion of personal blogs. If some literati regularly reviews books on her blog, why does that become less significant than e.g. this article in Slate -- clearly a piece promoting Frank's book? For example Cosma Shalizi reviews books on his personal blog. But I would consider any member of that list to be a notable book (worth knowing about).

Crasshopper (talk) 17:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Opinions sought on notability of academic book

Hi. I've just made some corrections and additions to The Primordial Emotions: The Dawning of Consciousness. The article has a notability template. Could I please have some opinions as to whether it passes muster? I've listed reviews from the Times of London and two academic journals on the article's talk page, and it's been cited 50 times in academic journals. The article's been viewed 64 times in the last 30 days. 'neath the wings (talk) 17:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Of those issues, the 3 reviews are the ones enough to assert notability. Sounds like you've met the GNG to me, based on what you've written here. Jclemens (talk) 04:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
50 citations also doesn't hurt (and is a pretty decent number), as that can be used to support notability as well. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I've removed the notability notice for now. 'neath the wings (talk) 11:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

BKCRIT 3

BKCRIT 3 states, "The book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to a notable motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement." Why not include social and cultural movement also? --SupernovaExplosion Talk 00:10, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

"Literature classes"

Why only literature classes? (Point #5 of WP:BKCRIT.) Surely this attaches a greater assumed importance to authors of fiction than to authors of, for instance, philosophy (whose work is taught in philosophy classes)? – Arms & Hearts (talk) 21:17, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

This has been touched on before, with some valid points made but no real resolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(books)/Archive_4#Non-literary_authors Barnabypage (talk) 11:03, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. That discussion seems to have been somewhat derailed before a consensus (or lack thereof) could be found for a wording like "the author's life and body of written work would be a common subject of academic study." I'd be interested in reopening a discussion along those lines. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Best Sellers - continued discussion per RfC closure

OK... the above RfC was closed with the comment that while the specific wording of the proposal did not have consensus, there was a narrow consensus that the guideline should say something about Best Sellers... and that we should continue the discussion. So let's discuss.

I agree with the closer, the guideline should say something about best sellers (if only to address a perennial question). Our job is, therefor, to reach a consensus (or at least attempt to do so) on what to say. Blueboar (talk) 12:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

As long as we are clear on which bestseller lists are acceptable, then I don't see a problem. The three mentioned by the closer are a good start. Outside of those, however, I don't think we should be using them to establish notability. It might be good to establish something like "Being #1 on an established and trusted bestseller list establishes notability. Remaining on one of those bestseller lists for 5 or more weeks, regardless of initial position, also establishes notability." I think that the # of weeks is negotiable as a book on the list for 3 weeks or more is not a super common occurrence. Thoughts? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:57, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
While I don't disagree, I wonder if it's really worth hashing it out, given that any book that appears on the consensus list of major bestseller lists will undoubtedly have sufficient numbers and depths of Internet-accessible book reviews to meet the GNG. Jclemens (talk) 21:15, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Possibly. Some genres garner less reviews (such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror), however. On another note, it may also be good to limit to appearance in the top 10 on the list (for establishing notability) as some lists show more than that (35 for the hardcover fiction list), while others only list the top 10 (children's chapter books). ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:54, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
I think the Top 15 in the New York Times bestsellers lists is a reasonable demarcation. After all, it is the Top 15 that they list by name in the hard copy edition of the newspaper.OnlySwissMiss (talk) 21:45, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

RfC notification: Expanding A9

A new Request for Comment has been created in regard to expanding the A9 speedy deletion criterion to also include books. Please comment at the CSD criteria talk page. Thanks! —Theopolisme (talk) 16:01, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Bestseller lists

For future reference: [3] The WSJ just put out an article about buying your way onto, ironically, the WSJ's bestseller list. Given that these lists are gamed, should we put a caution against using them in the guideline? RayTalk 18:39, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Nutshell proposal

A nutshell is supposed to be a concise summary to make Wikipedia more inviting to new users. There's other criteria listed at nutshell. The current Notability (books) nutshell[4] seems too complex and does not meet that listed nutshell criteria. The current nutshell should be replace with something like:

A book generally may be treated in a standalone article if it received reviews with enough coverage to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary and/or received enough reliable source coverage about something other than a review of the book (award, turned into a movie, usage such as by a movement, school, other writers, etc.).

Other than review of the book and cites by others to passages in the book, what else is there? For films and music, people can have a jointly shared experience which reliable sources can write about. Books are different in that reactions are individual, not part of an audience in theater or concert hall, and reliable sources are not going to write about any one individual reaction to a book. Also, unlike films and music, the creation of the book is individual and not something reliable sources generally are going to write about. A few reviews from when the book is first published and perhaps some other reliable source coverage of the book a year or several years later about something other than a review of the book (award, turned into a movie, usage such as by a movement, school, other writers, etc.) essentially is what the reilable sources will provide as source information for a book topic. Citations of passages in the book by others is covered in 'usage by other writers' part of the above proposed nutshell. The book's author being so historically significant is an exception that does not need to be covered in the nutshell other than in the "etc." part.-- Uzma Gamal (talk) 11:50, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Third-party reliable-source articles about the cultural impact of particular books and (particularly in the case of fiction) the process of writing them are quite commonplace. Barnabypage (talk) 13:12, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Author's article

Is a book inherently not notable if the author doesn't have an article? Ryan Vesey Review me! 17:12, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

No, it is not inherently not notable. James500 (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Talking books/audio dramas

There are a couple of current AfDs on audio dramas: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zagreus (audio drama), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tales from the Vault, both by the same publisher. These are not radio broadcasts, but straight-to-CD audio dramas. They're a bit like audiobooks, but more dramatised, with a (small) cast. So, they're not covered by any subject-specific notability guidelines, but I wondered if the good people here had any ideas/thoughts on notability criteria for audiobooks or audio dramas more generally? Should the book criteria be expanded to cover audiobooks? Bondegezou (talk) 15:09, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Raising the bar?

As it is now all of the criteria except 1 are redundant since the definition of "coverage" is so vague any book that fulfills criteria 2-5 automatically also fulfills criteria 1. Pretty much any book that is published by a major publishing house or press, and even most of thos published by small presses are the subject of at least one or two reviews. Does this mean that all non-selfpublished books are notable? I don't think it should. We ought to define "coverage" in a way so that the requirement is not fulfilled simply by a couple of published reviews and a publishers press notice. I'd suggest to define "significant coverage" not to include those reviews that are essentially evaluations of a recent publication, significant reviews should be those that evaluate the books impact sometime after publication, or which evidences an actual debate about the book between reviewers. Reviews that are simply "New book out, read it, I (didn't) like it" should not be considered significant coverage as this is simply to be expected for any book, and does not show or promise that the book has had any impact whatsoever. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:24, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I do not think that that is a good idea. If I look at an article on a textbook, I am not primarily interested in its long term "impact". I am primarily interested in its utility. I don't think that your proposal it is compatible with NOT TEMP either. James500 (talk) 18:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I concur with ·ʍaunus. Most non-fiction books that are published by a respectable or university press will eventually be reviewed in one, two, or several academic journals (as there are a hundreds of them out there). That, in my opinion, does not make a book notable. Unless we are willing to take on Open Library's job and provide a page for every published book. (I am very conflicted on this issue, as I am generally an inclusionist, but something strikes me as off that almost any book can be considered notable. That denudes the definition of the word "notable.") TuckerResearch (talk) 21:14, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

All serious scholarly literature is "worthy of notice" for being what it is. It is also very important to what we do here.

The Open Library is not trying to produce an encyclopedia article for every book. Their web pages are more like catalogue entries. They don't contain critical commentary. They don't evaluate the book's merits. They don't try to compile or summarize the opinions expressed in published reviews. In any event, I have been told that the Wikimedia community has monopolistic intentions, so we presumably are interested in "doing the job" of any non-WIkimedia website.

The purpose of notability guidelines is to prevent people from writing articles about their pets and things like that. It is not to enforce some elitist notion that we should only include the top 0.1% (or whatever) of textbooks simply for the sake of excluding anything that isn't sufficiently elite according to some completely arbitrary standard.

If I cite a book as a source in a Wikipedia article I need, if possible, to be able to link that citation to a Wikipedia article that provides an evaluation of the merits of that book. This is very important to provide context. Our readers want and need to know why they should believe what that book says. A link to a Wikipedia article compiling reviews of that book is the most effective way to explain that.

Articles compiling reviews of textbooks are also necessary to assist our editors in deciding what sources to use. Conducting a direct search takes too long. The information needs to be summarized somewhere readily accesible.

In any event, deletionism is said to be the cause of the decline in the number of editors. That being the case, the last thing we should do now is make the notability guidelines more restrictive simply for the sake of doing so. James500 (talk) 16:45, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I should also say that if a book has received two (reliable and independent) reviews that are of reasonable length, it will satisfy GNG anyway. Criteria 1 is a restatement of GNG. Any difference between them is very slight. James500 (talk) 09:29, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Articles on sources. James500 (talk) 10:09, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Why notability for books?

Maybe this has been hashed out to death elsewhere; if so, feel free to direct me there. I'm just curious - why require that a book be notable at all? In other words, what exactly is the downside of keeping an article about some obscure book that maybe only one person cares about? Those who don't care about it will never see it, and the one who does will be satisfied. Obvious self-promotion by authors could still be discouraged without going to extra effort to actually delete articles about older books that are clearly not examples of self-promotion. Yeah, I realize this same argument could be made about other subjects, and why not? Thanks for any feedback! Branchc (talk) 18:56, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. The fact that a book exists doesn't necessarily warrant an article, especially if it's merely a stub that says essentially "this book was written and published". A browsing of library catalogs or book lists on other sites might provide the same information in a better format. As I see it, the notability criterion is important to prevent the slippery slope of massive amounts of unhelpful data, lists, facts, and stubs lacking context and relevance, and keeping the notability criterion reduces the need for arbitrary decisions. --Animalparty-- (talk) 08:42, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Notability has nothing to do with WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Being unworthy of notice is not the same thing as being indiscriminate. If we allowed articles on all printed books commercially published that would not be indiscriminate because it is a finite category with a reasonably clear boundary. The purpose of INDISCRIMINATE is to prevent random collections of miscellaneous facts assembled in no particular order. Notability, on the other hand, does exactly what it says on the tin. It excludes topics that are unworthy of notice because they are unworthy of notice (and not for some other reason). And since a book that fails GNG and NBOOK can still be deemed notable by sufficient local consensus that it is worthy of notice, there is scope for including all books (though such a consensus is not likely to arise in the near future). James500 (talk) 10:19, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Actually indiscimininate information applies to bounded sets with very high numbers (thousands to millions) of potential entries, such as all published books; we could have articles on each, but it is clear from an encyclopedic standpoint that not all published books are equal in terms of overall importance to the rest of the world. We discriminate our coverage of books (or other topics) using notability to do that. --MASEM (t) 13:01, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
That makes no sense. "Very high numbers" is meaningless. "Very high" relative to what? And if we can't have "thousands to millions" of articles, why do we already have in excess of 4.5 million? Being indiscriminate is not the same thing as being less selective. We could ditch the requirement for notability without necessarily becoming indiscriminate (though it might not be a good idea). What you are saying would also imply an unnecessary overlap between the policy and guideline that might justify eliminating or restricting one of them on grounds of redundancy. James500 (talk) 01:35, 10 August 2014 (UTC) For the avoidance of doubt, WP:NOTPLOT does not explain the form that this guideline takes, the guideline being more restrictive than the policy actually requires. James500 (talk) 22:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Having giveful the matter consideration over a long period of time, I recommend removing the word "multiple" from criteria 1 as it appears to serve no useful purpose whatsoever. It does not affect our ability to write an adequate article. I don't believe it indicates that a book is significantly more important. James500 (talk) 19:22, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Non-contemporary books

Sources suggesting that the historical value or importance of literary works increases with age: [5] [6] [7] [8]. Certain public records enactments are apparently also based on this idea. James500 (talk) 01:37, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I think these sources are at least partly talking about the historical value of physical copies rather than of the works as such, and in any case, while the principle is sometimes applicable it's certainly not universal. Consider for example the thousands of junky novels published in the 1890s-1910s. While they may have gained a little historical value (in that they have become documents for social history, which they weren't when published), would anybody seriously suggest that individual titles have gained notability purely through that? Barnabypage (talk) 11:09, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Threshold standards

According to PC World, ISBNs tend only to be used in Western countries: [9]. I intend to modify the threshold standards so that the requirement for an ISBN applies only to countries where ISBNs are normally used. It is clear to me the present standards were based on an erroneous assumption that ISBNs were a worldwide phenomenon. James500 (talk) 14:43, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

 Done with this edit. The standards may require further modification, as the reference to 1975 may not be applicable to all countries. James500 (talk) 14:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The standards presently refer to a book being available at a dozen or more libraries. The problem is that libraries are selling and throwing books away all the time. Even University libraries are doing this. A book available at a dozen libraries today might not be in the future. This conflicts with the principle that notability is not temporary (WP:NTEMP). I intend to modify the requirement so that it does not refer to present holdings. If it is not possible to verify past holdings, this requirement will have to be omitted altogether. James500 (talk) 20:27, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Whilst "WorldCat Identities" gives a figure for the number of libraries that hold copies of a particular book at the moment, it does not appear to give any indcation of the number of libraries that held copies of that book on any particular date in the past. I can find no indication that such information can be obtained anywhere. Since it does not appear to be possible to verify past holdings, this criteria appears to be incompatible with WP:NTEMP and must therefore be removed. James500 (talk) 05:46, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Doctoral theses?

I know of a novel regarding which I have found one long review, one case study chapter, two page review/discussion in a chapter, and frequent mention/discussion in two doctoral theses (including one dedicated chapter). Theses are traditionally described as "unpublished", but this is only true in the sense that they have not been subject to the usual independent peer review process. With rare exceptions, theses are "published" in the sense that they are available, and nowadays are typically on-line (including the two I've referred to). Citing them has certainly been a long accepted practice in academic studies.

My question is whether doctoral theses count towards book notability? Choor monster (talk) 12:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Presumably any source that is verifiable, reliable and independent, by Wikipedia's own standards, will suffice, regardless of how it is described outside of Wikipedia. It may be that the word "published" should be omitted. James500 (talk) 15:44, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
I'm happy if the guidelines are a little bit vague. The word "published" has more than one meaning, not just the traditional mass-production paper systems that used to be the norm and are still dominant, and it was on this detail I wanted clarification. For example, WP:RS allows for on-line only sources, so long as there is editorial oversight at some level, in contrast with random blogs. Furthermore, doctoral theses are usually considered WP:RS. Choor monster (talk) 15:59, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Criteria for notability is prohibitively strict

I have been attempting to add articles for some novels and their notability has been called into question by another user. The series in question has sold millions of copies (see citation in article), is popular amongst readers of Fantasy (anecdotal, citation needed), and is published by two of the largest publishers of science fiction and fantasy in the world (Tor, Bantam). As of yesterday, twelve of the seventeen novels contained individual articles and I attempted do some good and create articles for the remaining five. Another user (Deb) has repeatedly called the notability of the novels into question and has redirected many of them to the article for the series. My main issue here is that the criteria for establishing notability of a book, as currently stated, is prohibitively strict, subjective, and vague. The criteria listed seem rather strict and I can think of a number of novels which currently have articles that do not meet these requirements. However, it goes on to say that these are rules of thumb and implies that some other sort of criteria can presumably be used to establish notability. Consider The Wheel of Time, another popular series also published by Tor. It currently meets none of the criteria stated in this article, despite selling somewhere in the league of 50 million copies and being considered by many a staple of modern fantasy. It was nominated for a Hugo award (which may be considered a major literary award), which it did not win, and prior to that nomination had never won any other literary awards. Yet apparently someone thought it notable enough to warrant a main series article, an individual article for each of its fifteen books, an article for its fictional geography, etc.

Back to my main point, someone presumably previously thought that other novels in the series I have been modifying were notable enough to warrant individual articles, but now that more are being added (since more have been published) another user disagrees. This tells me that the current criteria leave too much to interpretation. It seems odd that Wikipedia would fail to acknowledge a series that has sold millions of copies and is published by a major publisher as notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Knmorgan08 (talk • contribs) 13:20, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Let's be clear. I have never said that the novels were not notable, only that you have not supplied any reliable evidence that they are notable. Even now, you are making subjective comments such as "has sold millions of copies" (where is the evidence for this?) and "is popular amongst readers of Fantasy" (at least you recognise that the evidence for this is entirely anecdotal). I would not disagree with you when you say that the criteria are strict, and perhaps too strict. I was looking for references for Howard Spring's classic, Fame is the Spur, the other day and it was very difficult to find anything on-line from a reliable source. But you are getting confused here, trying to change the existing guidelines without having any idea what you want to put in place of them, and bringing my actions into question in the wrong arena. If you have a proposal for a change to the notability criteria, then let's hear it. If not, I'll continue to try to enforce the criteria as they stand. Deb (talk) 13:47, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
I was hoping to garner some general discussion on this before making any recommendations. However, the discussion on this page seems to indicate that being published by a major publisher was formerly sufficient for establishing notability, and it seems to me that this would be a good criterion to keep. Regarding subjective comments, I have mentioned (here and elsewhere) that sales numbers are covered in a citation in the main series page. Unfortunately, the statistic is printed on copyrighted material (the book cover) and is difficult to cite. I can only find references to it in various blogs online, which aren't exactly reputable. I am not attempting to bring your actions into question; I am merely stating that your assessment of the notability of these novels is clearly at odds with whomever has looked at them previously, and that the criteria, as currently written, leave too much to interpretation. Knmorgan08 (talk) 14:03, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
If you are using The Wheel of Time as an example that meets "none of the criteria", then you misunderstand them. Are you maybe reading them in the conjunctive rather than the disjunctive, as a topic needing to meet them all? The Wheel of Time massively, transparently, meets the main criterion (basically the GNG) of being "the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:22, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps what I'm saying is that The Wheel of Time article, as currently written, does not seem to credibly satisfy any of the criteria. To be quite honest, I am not certain what exactly constitutes a "non-trivial published work", but the citations on the article are largely Amazon.com links, links to the author's blog/Facebook/Twitter, links to a fan site, links to the publisher's site, etc. I do not consider any of these reputable or satisfying the "non-trivial published work" criterion. Perhaps the LA Times and CNN citations count (this is certainly up to interpretation), but they're largely covering the novels because the original author died and a second author finished the work. Does this mean that the individual novels are notable and warrant individual articles? Knmorgan08 (talk) 14:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources offers guidance. Deb (talk) 15:11, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the present criteria are too strict. In my view the first step is to delete the word "multiple" from criteria 1 as it serves no useful purpose whatsoever. Additional criteria relating to the level of sales and the publisher might be a good idea. James500 (talk) 14:56, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Additional criteria for novels from a major publisher or ones that appear on a reputable best seller list sound very sensible. Knmorgan08 (talk) 00:19, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Can we come to a consensus on this? The following criteria have been suggested.

  • The book has been published by a major publisher.
  • The book has been published on a reputable third-party bestseller list.

There has been very little administrative feedback on these proposed criteria thus far. Knmorgan08 (talk) 12:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

We have already had an RfC on bestsellers (see the section whose heading begins with "strawpoll" in archive 5). The result, IIRC, was that the guideline should say something about them, the gist of which was to be that level of sales is an indicator of notability. This has not been implemented yet.
There are a number of definitions of "bestseller" which have been proposed by academics (which do not necessarily involve lists), and there are various lists of "bestsellers". If I was going to create a criteria for this, it might read: "6. The book is a bestseller." This would leave it open to the community to decide which definitons and lists are suitable for determining whether a book is a "bestseller" on a case by case basis, presumably by looking at the credentials, reputation etc of the source and the degree of acceptance the definition or list has amongst other reliable sources. James500 (talk) 01:58, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Self-published books

According to a new analysis:

Self-publishing is becoming "mainstream", with new figures revealing the number of do-it-yourself books published in the US has exploded, tripling in the last five years to reach almost quarter of a million titles in 2011. "This is no longer just vanity presses at work".. earlier this summer, four self-published authors had seven novels on the New York Times ebook bestseller list. In 2011, America's 148,424 self-published print books accounted for 43% of the total print output.

Wikipedia has long treated self-published like radiation. It appears reality may be passing by, within a year or two, there will be more self-published books than otherwise. There may need to be some sort of mechanism for dealing with the reality of the market. I have personally seen self published non-fiction that is serious and well done. I have seen traditional published non-fiction that is full of errors and even fabrications. The idea that one is inherently better than the other is a weak argument. In the past it wasn't a big deal because self-published was a small market, now it's becoming the majority market, at least in number of titles. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 19:53, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I second this comment. Bondegezou (talk) 14:10, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I third this comment, so to speak. I am part of a growing community of self-published authors who eschew the gated community that is traditional publishing but also recognize the lack of quality that has been the hallmark of many indie authors in the past. Our mantra is "good writing, good editing, good cover design, great books." There is no longer any validity to the reasoning behind Wikipedia's rejection of independent authors. Aaseeger (talk) 00:57, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Plays and Theatre

Are plays considered books, if currently being performed in theatres?--DThomsen8 (talk) 13:19, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

@Dthomsen8: I would say that plays are not books, whether they are currently being performed or not, as performance is an integral part of a play. Certainly, the script of a play can be published in a book, but the script of a film can be published in a book also. Articles on plays should not fall under book guidelines any more than article on films should. Egsan Bacon (talk) 17:35, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Why is manga different?

This guideline says "this guideline does not yet provide specific notability criteria for the following types of publications: comic books; graphic novels (although it does apply to manga)..." Why is there an exception for manga? Richard75 (talk) 12:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Because there was a consensus to include manga along with other books. I will agree that other forms of comics should be included as well, but the Comics Wikiproject wanted to stick with just the General Notability Guideline. Their general reasoning was that while manga are regularly published in book form, graphic novels are "too ill-defined in nature". There was even the comment that graphic novels are defined by content and not publication format, thus were not books. —Farix (t | c) 12:52, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Children's Books?

Very few children's books are used as textbooks or the like, but they do form a significant genre. Should children's books which do not have Newbery or Caldecott behind them be allowed to be considered "notable"? What criteria ought be used? Collect (talk) 16:57, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

There seem to be plenty of non-fiction children's books, including plenty of school textbooks. I don't see any reason why children's books which do not have exceptionally famous author behind them should ipso facto not be allowed to be considered "notable". They do appear to receive reviews in periodicals that appear to be written for librarians, so they may be notable on the basis of coverage received. We could also look at things like awards, the level of sales and circulation, the number of editions and reprints, possibly whether they have been adapted for film, and so forth. James500 (talk) 15:43, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
Hard to find data on sales, alas, except for an occasional newspaper best seller list. Many older and well-loved children's books got no reviews when issued, and fail "notability" unless this is emended. Example "Miss Suzy" by Miriam Young (whose own notability is questioned on Wikipedia). Which I commend you to Google. Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
The number of editions can be used as a proxy for data on sales, because it normally indicates a books popularity. As for older books, those published before 1945 fall under WP:OBK under its present wording. If there is a problem with the present criteria, we could have a set of alternative criteria for children's books including a direction to "use common sense" (such as appears in OBK and TBK) instead of just relying on the present main criteria, or a closed list of criteria, alone. I would support such an amendment of this guideline. The primary purpose of this guideline was to exclude self-published vanity press books with ISBNs and "user-generated" or otherwise clearly unreliable reviews. Another possible criteria might be inclusion in select bibliographies (like the "selective database" argument of NJOURNALS). There are also proposals above for criteria based on the publisher. A search for "miss suzy"+miriam+young in GBooks yields coverage including things that look like book reviews. Her own notability appears to be beyond doubt as she has an obituary in the NYT. Template:Notability should probably be sent to TfD, because it appears its primary use is to deface articles on notable topics. James500 (talk) 06:01, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
Best seller status as shown by RSs like the NYT remains a useful criterion. Reviews are relevant also--childrens books have been reviewed for many decades now; library holdings can act as a proxy for reviews for recent books, because all public and school librarians buy almost exclusively on the basis of the standard review sources. The only caveat is that low library holdings for older books are not a sign of non-notability, because few libraries keep those not in current demand. DGG ( talk ) 08:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
The NYT reviews ~120 children's books p.a., but its a "Best Seller" list for them list 10 at a time - with the average time on it being over a year. But it began somewhere around 1980 if the NYT search function worked. And was very occasional until 2000 when the NYT did not want Harry Potter hogging the main list, so it was monthly until 2011 with Harry Potter still hogging that list <g>. So while reviews would work, the NYT Best Seller list etc. won't. And their annual "notable" list has all of 25 books from picture books to young adult - making the number of "NYT Notable" books minimal, and, as I noted, until 2000 non-existent. I suggest we call a children's book "notable" if it has at least five reviews for post 1980 books, and two for those before 1980 (including "trivial reviews"). Collect (talk) 12:54, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
Five reviews is excessive, even for a book published today. This guideline is already too restrictive without making it worse. I don't think that there is any inherent need for more than one review for a book, because that silly requirement is meaningless and is just sorting the sheep from the goats. James500 (talk) 04:34, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
The requirement of "two non-trivial reviews" ends up being a lot more than two per AfD discussions, alas. Collect (talk) 13:20, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

That isn't my experience at all. I've not seen a normal book review characterised as trivial. Trivial treatment would be something like a mere citation or listing, or possibly some very, very, very brief discussion. The average book review in an academic journal is certainly not trivial at all. If someone is advancing these sort of nonsense arguments at the moment, the solution is to clarify "non-trivial treatment" so that they simply can't continue to do so. Adding the words "The average periodical book review is not trivial" might suffice. I don't think that "non substantive detail treatment" is even clearly aimed at the length of the review at all. I think it is likely aimed at certain types of information such as size (eg octavo), number of pages, date and place of publication and printing, name of author, publisher and printer, ISBN, price, method of binding (eg paperback; though some old books may be notable for their rebinding if it required particularly innovative techniques), and so forth. The wholepoint of criteria 1 is that two normal book reviews equal notability. James500 (talk) 18:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I must have run into an outlier then. I shall cite this if I run across another AfD for a book. Checking some deletions "no awards" seems a common reason for deletion for children's books - Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:12, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:TEXTBOOKS

I ask to add something like An academic textbook being translated and published from or in two foreign languages is being deemed noteable. Serten 10:26, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I have no objection to the inclusion of such a criteria, except that, prima facie, the number of foreign languages should be one, not two. There is nothing special about the number two. I am going to add "whether a translation of the book has been published" to the present list of 'common sense' criteria as a first step. I think this is already included in the "number of editions" criteria, but it doesn't hurt to clarify the guideline. James500 (talk) 10:07, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, agreed, a translation may count like a further edition, but by another publisher. Serten Talk 11:02, 15 May 2015 (UTC) Thanks!

Notability question

I have a question regarding WP:NBOOK. Point 1 for notability indicates: 'The book has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book' Does this refer to book reviews? This means effectively any book published by a mainstream publisher is entitled to an article... AusLondonder (talk) 17:04, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Book reviews are the most common example of evidence of notability. But not always. And no, your conclusion does not follow. Not all mainstream publishers' books get reviewed, or at least, not in any easy-to-find locations. Choor monster (talk) 12:30, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
I think that Choor monster is correct in saying that not all mainstream publishers' books get reviewed. But even if the criteria did mean effectively any book published by a mainstream publisher is entitled to an article ... so what? This guideline was specifically intended to exclude self-published books. It was created because and only because it was discovered that such books can have ISBNs and be found in libraries. There are suggestions that we should have a new criteria for all books published by "major publishers" above on this talk page. James500 (talk) 10:35, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Roughly speaking, the criteria we have block a potential WP:NOTHERE loophole. They also block a wide number of minor books by notable authors. For exmaple, most of Isaac Asimov's earlier non-fiction, before he became an institute, is difficult to find reviews for. But see this happy discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Books#Kirkus_reviews that led to Inside the Atom being "pre-approved", and also provided usable content. Trevanian published under several pseudonyms and didn't tell anybody, and the only MSM mention of that work seems to be in his obituaries. Choor monster (talk) 11:06, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
As NOTHERE is only an essay, I don't see how it can have any 'loopholes', it being entirely non-binding. (Information pages have no official status here as, unlike policies and guidelines, they have not gone through the proposal process). One could argue that blocking "minor books by notable authors" is 'not here', it being an activity that contributes nothing to the project. James500 (talk) 02:14, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Redundant section on 'plot summaries'

@User:Nikkimaria: The removal of the section was copy editing. The lead section of this guideline (which reproduces the wording of WP:N exactly) says that if a topic is excluded by WP:NOT (including NOTPLOT), it doesn't get an article. The section headed "Articles that are plot summaries" merely repeats that without adding any additional instructions at all. If you look at WP:N you will notice that it doesn't contain anything like that section because mere repetition serves no useful purpose. I should also point out that edits do not need to be discussed only because they are not copy editing (PGEBOLD). They should only be reverted if there is a substantive objection (eg. I think this change would be harmful because ...). And if you can't think of a substantive objection, the edit has to be allowed to stand. So, why would this change be harmful? I can't think of any reason, since it isn't substantive, and would only change the length of the guideline. James500 (talk) 15:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

James, the lead is intended to be a summary of the guideline - this section provides an important elaboration on the simple "not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy" of the lead, and I think it warrants being explicitly explained. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:31, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I'll support having the longer version. It's not onerously longer, and it's not mere repetition. In general, the lede is not meant to provide guidance, it's meant to give an extra quick overview. Choor monster (talk) 15:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section only applies to articles. It does not apply to policies or guidelines, which as far as I can see, have never been written that way. In any event, the "nutshell" is the summary, not the lead section. I don't see what elaboration the 'plot summaries' section provides, or how it isn't mere repetition. All it says is "we don't violate NOTPLOT". It may not be onerously long now, but how long would it be if we included all relevant provisions of NOT? Probably very long indeed. Notability guidelines are not the place to restate NOT, one provision at a time. James500 (talk) 16:05, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Actually, most policies and guidelines are written with the same type of lead as articles - a summary of what is further explained in the body of the page. This particular provision of NOT frequently comes up with regards to books, so it's helpful to summarize it as part of the guidance here. I don't expect we'll follow the slippery slope of including all provisions of everything here just because we include this one small section. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:11, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
(ec) James: nobody cares if we're calling it lede or lead or summary or nutshell. Nikki overlinked, perhaps, but it's completely irrelevant, since it's simply a matter of common sense, not policy: introductions are abbreviated, ipso facto, there will be redundancy. It's not an issue, and you were definitely not "copy editing".
Regarding books, we repeat the relevant WP:NOT, we do not expand on all possible WP:NOT issues. That is why there's a mention about plots, because plots are central to books in general. We also warn against creating book articles prematurely, because that too is an issue with books. Meanwhile, no one is warning against or going to warn against extensive logs of software updates, since that is normally not an issue with books. Your concerns about instruction creep are groundless. We emphasize precisely what ought to be emphasized, and that is a good thing. Choor monster (talk) 16:24, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I far as I can see, most policies and guidelines are not written with the same type of lead as articles. I doubt that could be statistically proved, in a practical way, in view of their number. Nor would it be desirable for them to be written that way. The 'summary style' is a very bad way to write an instruction manual. Re-stating instructions is likely to result in contradictions, in a loss of internal consistency. It provides more 'food' for editors who are looking to put a 'spin' on our instructions. And the more instructions we have, the more editors are likely to simply refuse to read them. Thus they must be kept to a minimum. It is not common sense, and it is an issue. Copy editing is any editing that does not affect the substance of the instructions, as opposed to their form. As in this case, where the change was purely stylistic. NOTPLOT is not often advanced as an argument for deletion of a book, independent of notability. If it was, such as for a book that satisfies criteria 5, it would likely be rejected. It is primarily concerned with the way articles are written, not the acceptability of their topic. Plots are not central to whether books have an article, because the policy is not likely to be invoked in that context. The fact that NOTPLOT is probably the only part of NOT that could be plausibly used to exclude a book does not make it important. The section on unpublished books is not included merely to emphasise instructions already contained in another policy or guideline. It creates additional instructions, not found anywhere else, the gist of which is "criteria 1 to 5 above do not apply to unpublished books, which must satisfy GNG instead". Those instructions don't automatically follow from any other policy or guideline. So there is no analogy there. (Bear in mind that the manuscript of an unpublished book is a real object, that actually exists in the author's possession, so that document can't be excluded only on grounds that it is 'speculation', because it isn't). James500 (talk) 01:59, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Both policies and guidelines are written in the same broad style of starting with a summary and then an elaboration. That you think it is very bad is your personal opinion. There is no problem with inconsistency, since the more elaborate takes precedence, and this is explicitly pointed out frequently on WP. Moreover, you have not identified an inconsistency, you have simply lead-footedly edited you were "copyediting" when you were manifestly were not and are now making up hypothetical objections. We do object to instruction keep, yes. With this in mind, the beyond-plot-summary guideline certainly belongs here, and makes clear something that isn't so obvious: if the only sources one can find in favor of "notability" are not good for going beyond mere plot summaries, the book is probably not notable. As for the rest of what you're saying, you're just rambling, pulling in brand-new excuses to justify your "copyediting". Choor monster (talk) 14:44, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
      • (1) I can see no evidence that policies and guidelines are generally written in the way you describe. As far as I can see, most are not. Their introductions contain instructions that are not repeated or elaborated on. (2) The more elaborate does not take precedence. There is no policy or guideline to that effect and there is no reason why it should take precedence. In fact, if a guideline is more elaborate than a policy, the policy takes precedence, and controls the interpretation of the guideline, unless that policy or another policy expressly confers what are sometimes called 'Henry VIII powers' on the guideline to control the interpretation of the policy. If a guideline conflicts with policy, it is not valid, no matter how elaborate it is. (3) As for the inconsistency, it is not clear that it is possible, let alone likely, for the situation described by the 'plot summary' section of this guideline to arise. Books generally contain information such as the name of the author, publisher and printer, the date and place of publication and printing, and so on. Non of this is a plot summary or recap of the book's contents. It is historical information about the origin of the book, and it might be enough to propel any book over the hurdle of NOTPLOT (though it doesn't create notability). (4) NOTPLOT has nothing to do with notability; they are completely separate requirements, and the present rubric of N and NOT is that a topic can be notable, and fail NOT, at the same time (in which case it doesn't get an article, but not because it isn't notable). (5) I was not "rambling" or "pulling in excuses" at any point in my comment above: you have simply failed to answer the points that I made. James500 (talk) 03:41, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
        • Lots of opinion, very little sense. Or point. Policies are stated in broad terms, and they get spelled out in guidelines explaining the consensus as to what it means in cases that have arisen.
        • I have refused to create book articles because of NOTPLOT. Divvying up the "credit" to whether this is a failure of "notability" or of something else is completely pointless. You seem obsessed with creating "purity of essence" in the guidelines, citing hypothetical confusions rather than actual usage. Based on my experience of creating about 40 articles on books of fiction, and not creating at least a dozen more, I regularly doublecheck this page, not some other page that simply doesn't occur to me. Choor monster (talk) 22:40, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

RfC

There is an RfC on the subject of whether Wikipedia:Notability (publishing) should become a guideline, which is taking place at Wikipedia talk:Notability (publishing)#Should this become a guideline?. James500 (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

RfC

There is an RfC on the subject of whether Wikipedia:Notability (history) should become a guideline, which is taking place at Wikipedia talk:Notability (history)#Should this become a guideline?. James500 (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Bestsellers as an indication of notability

Over at WP:NAUTHOR I'm trying to have the notability guidelines expanded to make it slightly easier for authors to be included in Wikipedia. The current debate is over whether or not a bestseller list could be used to help establish notability for an author and someone mentioned that it would be something that could/should more apply to NBOOK.

I'm proposing that the guidelines be expanded to allow selected bestseller lists to be used as a reliable source to assert notability. This would be in keeping with policies like the ones for WP:NALBUM and WP:NBAND where placing on a notable music chart can help assert notability for an album/single and/or a performer. This guideline would not include all bestseller lists and would instead apply only to those lists that are consistently referred to by reliable sources. For example, the New York Times Bestseller List is a list that has achieved enough notability to where it has its own article. However there are also others like the USA Today Bestseller List and the Wall Street Journal's Bestseller List that are also very well thought of, enough to where their lists are reprinted in multiple media outlets. I'm not as familiar with foreign language lists, but apparently the bestseller list for Corriere della Sera is fairly well thought of as well.

As with any other source, rankings in places that would not be considered a reliable source (Amazon, social media outlets like Goodreads, blogs, etc) would not be usable. Most of this is because many of these outlets have an almost limitless amount of categories for "bestsellers" and because they're essentially self-published sources because they rely on random user accounts/purchases to judge the rankings. There's no true oversight to these lists.

This would not be used in the exact same way as the chart rankings are for albums in that a bestseller list would only give partial notability akin to how a RS review would only give partial notability. I wouldn't mind it being used as a sign for total notability, but I'd settle for it as something that would give partial notability. If approved, this should also only count for people who have placed within the top 20 spaces of any given list. I'm gauging this by the New York Times lists, which only rank up to the top 20 titles for any given list.

My idea is that this would be added to the first criteria, which would (if approved) read as follows:

The book has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries, notable bestseller lists, and reviews. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.

The footnote would read as follows:

"Notable bestseller lists" are bestseller lists where the list passes notability guidelines on Wikipedia or is published by a notable media outlet and is republished or covered by other reliable sources. Bestseller lists on merchant sources like Amazon or self-published sources like personal websites, blogs, bulletin boards, wikis, and similar media are not considered to be reliable. Social media review sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing do not qualify for this criteria.

So that's my proposal. What does everyone think? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:08, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

  • I'm in full support. A precedence has been set with musicians and I don't see a reason why it shouldn't apply here.plange (talk) 12:17, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Same here — Support. I've not got anything to add. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 12:45, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Simply put people are not books and the wider community through BLP have made it clear they expect articles about living people to be held to a higher standard than inanimate objects. Consequently, unless there is reasonable expectation that notability can reasonably be assumed from this standard it falls short of wider expectations. I simply haven't seen evidence that people meeting this can be inferred to pass GNG. Spartaz Humbug! 13:04, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
  • My argument here is that it can be used to show notability for books and to be honest, it should be considered a RS. A book landing on the New York Times or one of the very major book lists is the equivalent to a singer/band charting on the top 50 for Billboard. It's not a small thing in the slightest. Something else to take into consideration is that this is also not intended to turn into a situation where someone would establish notability for a book or an author by only listing bestseller lists. The expectation is that a book that places within the top 20 on the NYT lists (for example) would also have coverage in other sources that could back up notability for the book. The same expectation would be placed on authors: if an author's book is on the lists then it'd be extremely likely that they have other coverage as well. The idea of adding this is to make it easier for WP:COMMONSENSE cases of notability to be established, where the author/book has a handful of sources and is treading that thin line of notability. The book/author is known and the books have landed on the bestseller list, but has only received about 1 review and 1 article that can be found. It might not affect more recent authors that much, but it would absolutely help out older authors who have received coverage but the majority of it is now lost to the pre-Internet wasteland. This is intended to eliminate the obviously unusable lists like Amazon and Goodreads, so it isn't something that some self-promoting SPA could use to back up their claims of notability. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
  • We could probably add "Achieving bestseller status without other forms of coverage (reviews, articles, etc) will not be enough to satisfy notability." if this is a particularly huge problem, though. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:55, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Why is it desirable to have this as a standard for inclusion above the GNG? I'm sorry, I can't see the logic why we want BLPs that are not sourceable to something that meets the GNG? Spartaz Humbug! 19:47, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Because it's a common sense issue. While we don't know the entire process that the NYT uses for its rankings, it is based on sales and someone has to sell a lot in order to get on this list. It's not like Amazon, where there are thousands of categories where it'd be easy to manipulate your way into the top rankings. Selling that much is a pretty big indicator of notability- enough to where books, authors, publishers, and other outlets will have this prominently displayed. It's not a Pulitzer, but I'm not asking that it be treated as such. I'm just asking that notable bestseller lists get treated akin to a review or article in a reliable source. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Support. I absolutely do not understand Spartaz's objection. We're discussing books, not people. What is the point of mentioning BLP? I think it's something of a scandal that as it stands now, we cannot have articles on most of the works of Catherine Cookson. (Just to clarify, she's been dead for 17 years already.)
  • I also see no problem with leaving things as is, supplemented with more aggressive consensus-driven IAR exceptions. We're not some Supreme Court agonizing over articulating principles that are going to carry consequences, but can indeed leave things in a mostly-good-enough formulation. Choor monster (talk) 11:27, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
  • It's because right now it's extremely, extremely difficult for common sense keeps to happen. It used to be that two sources were enough to show notability for a book or author. Anyone who has participated in an AfD will openly say that this is far from the case in today's articles and most articles need at least 3-4 sources to really assert strong notability. The problem with saying that community consensus will take care of the common sense cases is that in most cases it doesn't work that way. It's far more likely that people will vote according to the guidelines and it's also more likely that people will follow the guidelines in order to give a sense of equality. You're more likely to find people forming a community consensus based on exact wording of the guidelines than not- the idea of "ignore all rules" isn't really all that commonly used around here and people who do state it end up getting relatively solidly ignored or in the minority. There are a lot of people who accuse Wikipedia of playing favoritism and point towards articles that have survived deletion, as the articles had such poor sourcing that they should have been deleted per the guidelines. Adding this to the article helps make it easier for common sense articles to be kept but it also helps show more transparency to the process. In other words, it helps show that we're keeping an article based on obvious signs of notability and not because we prefer a book because it was published through publishers that we like. It helps make it more clear for newcomers and let's face it- we NEED people to stick around. We lose far too many newbies because our rules are pretty confusing. I know that many feel that if they can't understand the rules then they should leave, but we need to stop thinking along those lines. I don't want spammers to stick around, but it would help if the rules could be changed to be more transparent and obvious. Adding bestsellers lists to the criteria really won't change much, to be honest. It might spark a small flood of articles, but it wouldn't start any Mad Max style chaos because articles would still require multiple sources to show notability. It'd just make it slightly easier and clearer. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:17, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Support. A book in the top 20 of the NYT Bestseller List or the USAToday Bestseller List is notable, and inclusion on the list should be considered a reliable source. Currently, in AFDs this is not always the case. I know of romance novels, for example, which do not have articles although they made both the NYT and the USAToday bestseller list and won one or more of the second-tier awards in the industry. Because those books aren't often the subject of in-depth reviews, the articles don't get created. This change would at least allow a stub. Karanacs (talk) 21:36, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Support Being on a legitimate bestseller's list, makes the book and its author notable. Dream Focus 21:41, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm pinging @Piotrus:, as he expressed interest at this AfD. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:26, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Support per succinct explanation by Dream Focus. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment. Initially I was going to support this proposal but after reading the criticisms and controversies at The New York Times Best Seller list I am not so sure; it seems as if you only need to spend around $200th to manipulate the list to get to no. 1 and they are not objective but it is editorial (read arbitrary)? Also, we may as well allow Oprah endorsed titles, because don't they all become bestsellers? Why not allow Publishers Weekly's lists - we currently use their book reviews? Also, what about lists from other countries, can't think of any just now (London times?), but how about including words like 'notable bestseller lists from any country' to preclude possible reader perception of US bias. Coolabahapple (talk) 17:31, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Hmm... we could probably counter that by maybe only including the top 10 of each list on the NYT and/or only using the lists from the combined lists. It's possible that someone could buy their way onto the top 10 of a more specific list but it'd be way more difficult for them to accomplish this with the top 10 of a combined list. I'd support using lists from foreign countries and the main reason I haven't put as big of an emphasis on them here is because I'm not really aware of all of the equivalents overseas. My general rule of thumb is if the list is reprinted in enough secondary, reliable sources then it should be considered a usable list. For example, the NYT list is frequently published in other newspapers, as is Forbes and the USA Today list. I think that even the PW list is published as well, although I think that if the list is notable enough for an article then it'd be considered usable as a RS. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:12, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment It should be similar to WP:NSONG which allows for the "chart" (best-seller lists) to be a factor in determining whether it is notable, yet defer to the "album" (the author, or the franchise if it's an adaptation/novelization) per "Notability aside, a standalone article is only appropriate when there is enough material to warrant a reasonably detailed article; articles unlikely ever to grow beyond stubs should be merged to articles about an artist or album." AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 16:19, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
  • In my view, a book is notable if it is verifiably a bestseller. I would not require the source that calls the book a bestseller to be notable, I would merely require it to be credible (many bestseller lists may not be credible). I would treat as notable a book that verifiably satisfies an objective definition of "bestseller" proposed by a credible source (probably an academic source). So I have seen academics define a bestseller as a book that sells X number of copies (I think it was one million), that accounts for X percent of all sales (it might have been one percent) or even as a book which, within a short time of its initial publication, far exceeds what are at the time considered good or even large sales. My approach would be to add a new criteria that read "6. The book is a bestseller", and leave it to AfD to decide what a bestseller is. That said, I will support any proposal that allows us to include more bestsellers, so I probably support this one. James500 (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Please read, this is important: @User:Tokyogirl79 in particular: On second thoughts, I notice that we are proposing to insert "notable bestseller lists" into a list of "published works in all forms" (my emphasis). But that already includes all bestseller lists, not just notable ones. Even if we wanted to exclude certain bestseller lists, the word "notable" does not belong in that sentence, as it makes no sense in that context. Accordingly I support the inclusion of "bestseller lists" in that sentence, but I oppose the inclusion of the word "notable" in that sentence, as it would be an error of sense. Any such restriction should go somewhere else in the guideline. I suggest instead rewriting the proposed footnote so that it begins "A bestseller list is non-trivial if it is notable or it is published by a notable media outlet and is republished or covered by other reliable sources" (emphasis added). (The inclusion of the words "non-trivial" in that sentence will produce the desired exclusion without a grammatical error). James500 (talk) 11:01, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I heartily agree with the way you've phrased this since it allows for things to be more inclusive without being a little too overly specific. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:06, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment. The consensus of this discussion has been implemented. James500 (talk) 23:53, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment - My belated, I guess, comment is that I support the proposal, but "bestseller list" should be better or more narrowly defined. Such as specifically limited to the top 10 or 15 of the NYT Combined Print/Ebook Fiction list and the NYT Combined Print/Ebook Non-Fiction list. The point or indicator should be that the book is popular, not the list. While Publishers Weekly's use of Nielsen BookScan or the NYT's various lists are probably the best reflection of the American market, the best reflection of the Canadian market is the Globe & Mail list but they have "hardcover fiction", "paperback fiction", "hardcover non-fiction" and "paperback non-fiction" (all of which is http://www.booknetcanada.ca/ Booknet Canada sales data). Which, if any, of these G&M lists would qualify under this?
  • I would say that the main lists would be notable, meaning that the lists that compile all of the fiction or non-fiction books would be the ones that would show notability. I do think that we should probably include paperback on this since some books were never released in hardback and were only available via paperback. (For example, Adam Nevill's work has never been in hardback from what I can remember.) I'd like to use the other lists on the NYT, but I am worried that it could become a little too inclusive that way. In any case, of the main lists I'd agree that only the top 10-15 spots should be the type that would give notability. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:52, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I do think that we should also clarify that if a book lands on a bestseller list, the list will only count as one reliable source - meaning that multiple weeks will not count as multiple sources, although landing on multiple notable lists would count as multiple sources. I think that this is somewhat implied in the wording but I wanted to state that here in case anyone tries to pull something like that. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:54, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Criteria for Notability does not reflect current consensus

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
☒N Not done and not likely to be done. Esquivalience t 04:35, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was a paid editor on an AfD'd book article, this RfC discussion is not paid.

A recent AfD, (closed -- latest article article revision here [10]) has revealed that the notability expectations of the community is not represented in NBOOK/NBCRIT. This failure to communicate is likely causing extra work for AfC and AfD and causing new editors to write articles that cannot get published.

My reading of BKCRIT/NBOOK #5 indicates that a thinly referenced book article should fall under the author's notability as a "discriminate collection" in WP:DISCRIMINATE. This was not my experience, the community adds the caveat that the author's notability must be for books.

changes proposed that reflect the information gathered from the AfD in strike/bold

WP:BKCRIT A book is notable if it verifiably meets, through reliable sources, at least one of the following criteria:

  1. The book has been the subject[1] of two or more non-trivial[2] published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself.[3] This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries, bestseller lists,[5] and reviews . Or six professional reviews. This excludes student and college newspapers,[11] media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.[4]
  2. ...
  3. ...
  4. ...
  5. The book's author's books are is so historically significant that any of the author's written works may be considered notable. This does not simply mean that the book's author is notable by Wikipedia's standards; rather, the book's author is of exceptional significance and the author's life and body of written work would be a common subject of academic study.

The five preceding criteria do not necessarily apply to books excluded by the threshold standards, and do not apply to books not yet published.

Other considerations

Threshold standards

A book should have, at a minimum, an ISBN (for books published after 1975 in a country where ISBNs are normally used), and should be catalogued by its country of origin's official or de facto national library (if that country has such a national library). For example, in the United States books are catalogued by the Library of Congress; in the United Kingdom at the British Library; in Australia at the National Library of Australia; in Canada at the Library and Archives Canada; in France at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; in Singapore at the National Library Board; in Brazil by the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional; in Argentina at Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina; and in India at the National Library of India. For a complete list, see List of national libraries.

Advisory: The current consensus is that WorldCat entries should number in the hundreds for fiction and non-fiction titles.

However, these criteria are exclusionary rather than inclusionary; meeting these threshold standards does not imply that a book is notable, whereas a book which does not meet them, most likely is not. There will be exceptions—books that are notable despite not meeting these threshold standards—but good reasons for the notability of such books should be clear.

  1. ^ a b The "subject" of a work means non-trivial treatment and excludes mere mention of the book, its author or of its publication, price listings and other nonsubstantive detail treatment.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference nontrivial was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference independent was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference selfpromotion was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference bestseller was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


— [[User:009o9 (talk) 00:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)]]

009o9 (talk) 00:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)


  • Oppose suggested changes. The OP is a paid editor going bat$#hit crazy that his non-notable article is being AfDed. He won't drop the stick or accept the consensus at the AfD, and is trying to blame the WP:NBOOK guidelines. In particular, his assertion that the author of the book in question is notable ("historically significant") enough that any of his works have an inherent notability is delusional. The problem isn't the WP:NBOOK guidelines, but the OP's delusion of its author's level of historical significance. Softlavender (talk) 01:39, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
  • As far as I can tell the article is a goner and as the author my input is inconsequential in AfD. Just waiting for a neutral administrator to close the AfD. I'm done commenting there, but I did need to go through the exercise to learn the current expectations of the community. Thanks for your input. --Cheers-- 009o9 (talk) 01:53, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
Since you bring it up, the author (Eringer) went undercover to expose and breakup the KKK (klavern) in Europe and again to expose the anti-semetic Liberty Lobby. He was fascinated with the Bilderberg Group and published some of the early work that proved their annual meetings -- way back when Bildergerg was a conspiracy theory. He went undercover in Russia, Cuba, France and elsewhere to meet and track the Unicorn Killer and CIA defector Edward Lee Howard as a private citizen working with the FBI. His work also exposed Cuban co-intel operatives working in Washington D.C. and when Senator Bob Menendez was falsely accused, one of Eringer's books had already documented a Cuban plot to spy on and discredit the man. There is also the public feud that Prince Albert caused when he refused to finish paying Eringer for services rendered. And a strange story that Salon gave a lot of ink to about a tabloid journalist that Clair George hired Eringer to ruse. And then wrote books about it all. Notable? 009o9 (talk) 03:22, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose and speedily close this pointed RfC. Suggested changes like "and reviews . Or six professional reviews" are clearly bitter attempts at proving a point, and Softlavender's response shows the provocation is working. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 17:33, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes, there is a point to be made here WP:POINTy and I believe that it is being made in the proper forum, and not intended to be disruptive. From WP:POINT: If you feel that a policy is problematic, the policy's talk page is the proper place to raise your concerns. I do realize that technically NBOOK is a guideline, regardless, I still believe that this is the correct forum.
In the Afd, Softlavender stated that a handful of reviews like the Argus Observer might infer notability, and that college newspaper reviews (with nationally ranked journalism programs) could not. (I interpreted "handful" to mean six reviews, is six incorrect?) The need to exceed the NBOOK stated two reviews (from a narrow range of RS) was also communicated to me from another voting editor. I get it that the community does not want the lightly sourced book articles, but something needs to be done to inform future editors not to bother reading, researching, writing and submitting the piece.
Unless there is some other parameter, the NBOOK guideline does not reflect the (apparent) consensus I've encountered and citing the guideline(s) have proven fruitless, I can only conclude that the guideline must not be representative. I'm not certain that "a handful" is fairly interpreted as six, but the community seems to feel that two book reviews is too few to establish notability. --Cheers--009o9 (talk) 23:39, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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