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

The result was keep. Stifle (talk) 13:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Donna Eden

[edit]
AfDs for this article:
Donna Eden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Sources used are almost all primary, and there don't appear to be any independent sources that could be used to make a biography. Google News has no sources and Google Scholar, once you ignore a lot of obvious false hits, comes up with no independent sources, as far as I can tell. When I investigated a couple of the claims to notability, such as the "bestselling" claim, I discovered that that was based on an unarchived, and thus completely uncheckable one-hour fluctuation in Amazon.com sales. That is, of course, not what is generally meant by bestseller.

  • Keep In addition to the arguments presented at the first AfD, there are plenty of gnews hits in the gnews archives, of course many self promotional, but some RSs [1] particularly the first one, an article about her from the St. Petersburg Times. John Z (talk) 23:55, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Feh. This post from the St. Pete Times is an community calendar advertisement. It certainly does not establish notability. By this standard, there are a number of graduate students I know who would be notable enough for Wikipedia articles on the basis of them having given talks and being interviewed by local media where they were giving the talks. We have standards for newsworthy notability and WP:PROF and WP:BIO are simply not met here. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:28, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't understand the claim that this is a community calendar advertisement - it is in the "Floridian" section, which is listed as a News section, and has an identified Times staff writer, and is somewhat skeptical. Although there is some PR type announcement mateial next to it, it seems to be a normal 'human interest' type news story. Is there real doubt about veracity or that it is paid material? The Amazon stuff seems more problematic; I wouldn't include it or base notability on it. We don't delete because of self-promotion, just self-promotion which has been unsuccessful in attracting interest from reliable sources. With the old AfD discussion, and the sources noted by Tim Vickers below, it still seems a keep.John Z (talk) 20:28, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:01, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Just read all my comments from the first deletion attempt. Not a whole lot in the article has changed. Have the policies for deletion changed? Is this an appeal? Is it necessary to go through this again? There are challenges to the sources, but not one person in over 9 months has bothered to respond to my request for clarification on what, exactly, bugs people about the original sources. See Talk:Donna Eden#Quality of Sources, although it's a bit out of date since some of the sources have been removed. As to the statement "I discovered that that was based on an unarchived, and thus completely uncheckable one-hour fluctuation in Amazon.com sales", that is an oversimplification. The book was sitting at #3 for months, and hit #2 for a while. It's still sitting at #23 in amazon energy healing after 10 months. I don't know how to archive amazon ratings ... if that's the big issue, we can figure a way around it. --Mbilitatu (talk) 21:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • WP:RS is the standard bearer and it points out that third party sources are vital for establishing notability. See also WP:PROF and WP:BIO. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:28, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I see how this works. First the skeptic deletes all the sources, claiming that they are no good. Then the skeptic claims there are no sources. Nice strategy. She is a best seller. She is well known. She is not marginal. If I care enough, I'm going to put that all BACK IN the article. I'm really not sure ... I may just let the skeptics rule wiki. This is a waste of my time and effort. --Mbilitatu (talk) 15:59, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I put back the bestselling amazon link. I do see that it changes often, thus the complaint about hourly. In the course of this discussion, I have seen it range from #2 (today) to #23. Those are all good. I also reference a comment from the PREVIOUS request for deletion that said, "Keep This author is notable within their field as evidenced by the fact that they have a book with a high Amazon ranking, she meets all of the criteria for having a Wikipedia page. The page is also sourced and cited. No valid reason for deletion. - perfectblue (talk) 21:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)". So a different person agreed that amazon had her at a high ranking back in January. I cite this as evidence of a consistently high ranking. Maybe the amazon ranks are a difficult thing because they change. But to claim that amazon is a bad source of ranking information is silly. That's who sells books. I did ask amazon if a ranking history was available, but customer service told me it is not. Maybe we need an official way to snapshot amazon ranking and get the snapshot blessed. This is a wiki procedural issue, not a notability issue for Donna Eden.--Mbilitatu (talk) 16:25, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I put back the Alternative Therapies source. This is a good source. It's peer reviews. It's clear that the issue is that skeptics don't like the peers. This is the same stupid problem all over wiki ... notability requires peer review, but when the skeptics dismiss the entire community of peers, there's no way to meet this criteria.
  • Delete As currently written and from what I can glean from possible sources, this article is of a marginal figure whose notice is derived primarily through self-promotion rather than third-party recognition. What outside source has indicated that she is an expert in this so-called "energy medicine" field? I cannot find any. Sure, there are "gnews" hits, but they all look to me to be either from unreliable primary sources meant to unduly promote energy medicine or the mention is so off-handed as to be useless in establishing notability. I point out that this particular person seems to fail WP:PROF miserably. So delete. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:24, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak delete, I could find no reliable sources that discuss Donna Eden as their subject, with the news articles simply short parts of long lists of events happening on a particular date. The books might confer notability, but I can't find any reviews of them in reliable sources - and Amazon ranks in a very restricted subset mean nothing. If this article had been published I might sway towards keeping, but I can find no mention of it in the 2007 edition of that journal see here. It is also not listed in her CV (link) Tim Vickers (talk) 16:59, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Notability requires notability in the field. Clearly the field of alternative medicine is notable. She is a bestseller in a notable field. That means that the ranking within that notable field is noteworthy. --Mbilitatu (talk) 17:15, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep, the article was published the next year, and has been listed by PubMed PMID 18251321. Coupled with the books I think that's just enough for notability. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:47, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep As I understand it, this argument is a re-run of an AfD request earlier this year. Repeated attempts like this are a waste of time, if not an abuse of process. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 17:32, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I see nothing here to suggest we should overturn the previous AFD decision. 23skidoo (talk) 18:24, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Donna Eden is demonstrably a bestselling author in the field of Alternative Therapies, just check out the ratings for any of her books on amazon. Even a book she wrote ten years ago is still in the top ten in the Energy Healing category, another is at number two in the Naturopathy cat., her books have received positive reviews from Publisher's Weekly [2] and Reed Business Review, I think this is definitely enough to consider her notable. Gatoclass (talk) 02:54, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine article (thanks, TimVickers) puts me close, but only by kinda kluging together notability guidelines; a full WP:PROF test is clearly not in order. Neither Energy Kinesiology nor the related association appear to have received any reliable coverage; it might be a variant of Applied kinesiology that should be mentioned there (with a source, of course). Publisher's Weekly, unless I am mistaken, only publishes positive reviews; the tone of a review is not really relevant, though, only whether it is substantial and reliable. Amazon is not in the business of providing scholarly critical reviews of the sort necessary for us to write an encyclopedic article rather than just another fluff piece. The obvious searches are not indicating that such reliable, substantial, independent reviews exist; an actual indication of best seller status would probably also kick me over. - Eldereft (cont.) 18:00, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You provide no evidence that PW "publishes only positive reviews". According to the Wiki article, the magazine's subscribers include "6000 publishers; 5500 public libraries and public library systems; 3800 booksellers; 1600 authors and writers; 1500 college and university libraries; 950 print, film and broad media; and 750 literary and rights agents, among others." That sounds like a reputable source to me. Gatoclass (talk) 04:16, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
an actual indication of best seller status would probably also kick me over
Okay, amazon ratings for some of her books:
That would be because the truth value of my offhand comment about the style of PW reviews is irrelevant to my actual argument. That is not a scholarly review, and does not provide the sort of analysis that we could use actually to write a decent encyclopedic article on this topic. - Eldereft (cont.) 19:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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