Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard H. Campbell, co-author, The Bible On Film: A Checklist, 1897-1980

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 delete. Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:33, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Richard H. Campbell, co-author, The Bible On Film: A Checklist, 1897-1980

Richard H. Campbell, co-author, The Bible On Film: A Checklist, 1897-1980 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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Unremarkable book. Notability Issues? Dengero (talk) 06:31, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

If nothing else, it fails prod blp. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 06:32, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

• Delete - fails WP:BLP, WP:AUTHOR and WP:SCHOLAR WP:ACADEMIC.--70.80.234.196 (talk) 14:27, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
  • WP:SCHOLAR is a script, not something an article can pass or fail. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
    • Comment - oops, sorry, my bad. Meant the guidelines for academics/scholars, as those are the three guidelines that could possibly apply here. I fixed my vote in consequence.--70.80.234.196 (talk) 00:06, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
• Hi, I'm Abbythecat, who wrote this submission. I hope you won't delete this page. I feel I only have a little time to state my case, as the page could be deleted at any second, so this is hurried. 1) if you google THE BIBLE ON FILM: A CHECKLIST, 1897-1980, 7 pages come up, not bad. 2)many books in recent years have been written about this subject (check amazon.com) and this was the FIRST of its kind. 3)some documentaries have been made on the subject, a subject that was created here. 4) the co-author (Michael R. Pitts) has written about 25 other books (again, see amazon.com). 5)the author (Campbell) was 22 when this was published -- again, not bad, especially since he had ulcerative colitis since age 6 and an ileostomy since age 19. 6) the book was successful enough for the author to retire at age 22. he hasn't worked in 29 years now. and probably will never have to. all because of this book. i dare say we should all be this notable! 7) he filmed a scene for a KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER episode at age 16. It wasn't used, but pretty impressive (see IMDB.COM under THE SENTRY episode "trivia"). 8) his unfinished fan film was impressive enough to inspire the movie TOOMORROW (see IMDB.COM TOOMORROW "trivia" section). 9) his book is used in a study at south carolina by dr. cynthia rhodes (see google search). 10) his book was noted in the best-selling book THE JESUS I NEVER KNEW by award-winning author Philip Yancey. 10) this is an educational book which deserves, I think, special consideration, especially today. 11) his is an inspiration success story of the American dream -- overcoming illness and a disability (and even colon cancer) to achieve his dream of writing a book -- and it being rewarding enough for him to retire at age 22. 12)some of the google searches show sites that use his book in the U.K., Italy, France, Canada, China, Korea. 13) he had written for many fanzines before his book was published; see "authors page" in his BIBLE ON FILM book. 14) Is it fair to not accept a page about an author and creator of an educational book, yet leave intact pages about people who are "famous" simply because they disrobe for men's magazines or pornographic movies? 15) the author created the VERY IDEA for the CONCEPT about a book about biblical film history -- THE IDEA is his -- all other books (all done later) are simply re-using his idea. 16) please check the book at amazon.com and read the review there BY THE AUTHOR and it will tell you some more about him. Well, I no doubt overdid this appeal, but I can tell you that here in Latrobe, PA, the author is a well-respected and famous citizen who deserves this defense. I HOPE YOU'LL NOT DELETE THIS PAGE! I cannot think of any "non-notable" person who you can google 7 pages about or who can retire at 22 and never work again because of this book's popularity. ANYWAY, I apologize for rambling, but I'm typing as fast as I can as I'm afraid it may already be deleted. Please excuse any typing errors. AGF! Abbythecat. PS - since I'm throwing in everything but the kitchen sink here, may as well add this question: does EVERY book have to be GONE WITH THE WIND to be included?> Does EVERY author have to be J.K. Rawlings to be included? If so, that eliminates 90% of all published authors, which is really unfair. By the way, the book was NEVER REPRINTED BY ANOTHER PUBLISHER, and, yes, the author IS retired (again, see his "review" at Amazon.com under the book's listing AND READ IT FOR YOURSELF -- IT IS TRUE.)as for the amount made from the book, one well-invested royality check can do wonders. abbythecat.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Abbythecat (talk • contribs) 23:13, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
• Delete book is a legitimate reference work, but has not gotten a lot of mention. it is probably a good source text for WP articles (article creator added a paragraph at The Bible in film), but i say it doesnt qualify as a notable work by itself. article creator has tried twice to create articles on this subject, both deleted, this title games the system severely. title was reprinted by a different publisher. IF THIS is kept as notable, it needs a total (from title through to category) rewrite, so should be deleted and rewritten from scratch, and probably not by the article creator, who has a poor history here. refs provided are trivial. i have no idea where the article creator gets the idea that this author was so successful he retired at age 22. no one has done that on an obscure reference book, no matter how well researched. pure promotion, and probable COI.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 00:52, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. I support having this article be kept around for the full seven-day period of this deletion discussion, to give the article creator time to get the article in better shape. Perhaps it will be good enough by then that I could support a "keep" recommendation. For now I am going to hold off on making a decision. I would recommend that the article creator look at Category:Film historians for articles on people who may be somewhat comparable, and see if they can get the writing style of this article closer to standard Wikipedia biography style. (See WP:MOSBIO and WP:BIOG.) We are going to judge this article by the standards applicable to authors, not nude models, and those standards principally involve finding published sources that specifically discuss this author and his works. I am also skeptical of the idea that Campbell retired at age 22. I saw his comment on his book at Amazon.com, and he says that he is now retired -- but the comment was written almost 29 years after his book came out. (For that matter, how do we know he published this book when he was 22?) So let's see if the article creator, or someone else, can get this article into decent shape. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:57, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
  • If I may add here, the book lists his date of birth as feb. 7, 1959, and it was published in 1981 (copyrighted by Campbell & Pitts), look at the book and see it yourself -- or maybe this information is available from the Library of Congress, as it is listed under their information in the book. I can honestly tell you he retired at age 22 (don't know why this is really an issue) due to investments he made from royality checks. so perhaps i should have said he retired from investments that he was able to make from the books royality checks. sorry i wasn't more clear. abbythecat, i submited this entry (and yes, i know NOTHING about submiting this stuff, as is painfully obvious!). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.3.19.1 (talk • contribs)
    • Please make sure to log in when editing Wikipedia, so we can confirm who is writing these comments. Also, you can sign your comments in this discussion (as other participants do) by ending them with four tildes like this: ~~~~ The reason the idea of Campbell retiring at age 22 is an issue is that it implies that this book was a major best-seller or at least very lucrative for him, while specialized reference books of this sort are not thought of as being major best-sellers, so we would want to see reliable independent sources to establish how successful the book was. Finally, if Campbell was indeed born in 1959, this continues to raise questions in my mind about the circumstances under which his work is claimed to have been adapted into the film Toomorrow in 1970, when he would have been only 11 years old. I would want to see sources to establish that as well. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
      • ~~Argh, i just spent 4 hours on this edit, typed enough to fill a book, and when i hit "save" it said an error had caused it not to go through! So I'll try a quick summary instead. 1)I don't know how well it sold. Certainly NOT a best-seller.I'm going by QUALITY not QUANTITY. Again, the money came from investing the royality checks, not the actual checks. When considering "notable", please consider how GOOD a book is instead of how well it sells. A piece-of-junk skin mag can sell millions, but it's still garbage. 2) the TOOMORROW thing,ahh, this is why i wrote so much originally, as it is so hard to explain this without writing his whole life story. With this in mind, I'll try -- in 3rd grade, age 8,1967, created FAN comic called THE GANG, was about superheroes fighting supervillains. Also made a fan home movie about it, no sound, unfinished because that cost a lot then. Someone sees it. Gives him an idea. Idea (in roundabout way) helps TOOMORROW get made. Guy sends him a note saying the film was based on THE GANG. Wasn't officially. No credit. No money. Just the note of thanks. 3)May as well mention the KOLCHAK thing. He's in 10th grade, been doing this THE GANG stuff since 3rd grade, writing FAN comics and singing with another kid, teacher notices them, thinks he can use his connections to make them weeny-bopper idols. Teacher calls in a favor, the 2 kids are sent to CA for 2 days, film a scene that was maybe 30 seconds. (Scene: Kolchak walks pass the 2 kids singing, instead of putting money in their hat, says "they'll never make it" and walks away). When episode aired, scene was NOT used. Has never showed up on VHS or DVD. Almost certainly gone forever. 4)The "proof" issue.This is tough. All happened so long ago. I've cited sources and even the sources get questioned. Can't give you his personal bank information. I've given some people enough proof to fill a museum that the holocaust really happened and they still don't believe it. I don't know ... you have to have some trust. AGF. I just can't give you what I don't have. I certainly understand this puts you in a tough position. I'm sorry for that. I thought my sources were proof enough. Google it. Buy a used copy of Amazon or B&N. Abbythecat.03:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)03:53.
• Comment The question here is if the subject of the article is notable - in short, looking at WP:N significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Other concerns can be carried out with normal editing tools. The author is a newbie, so perhaps needs some help in creating their first article. The article name is wrong, but that's a common mistake to make.

The question I have with something like this is there (or likely to be) a review by a reliable source? This will be needed to be able to write a balanced article; without this we just end up with a summary of the primary source (the book), which is hardly an encyclopedic article.

So, my analysis of the sources in the article:

• The Library Of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data, ISBN 0-8108-1473-0, LC 81-13560, PN1995.9.B53C3 011'.37.
  • It's a published book, it will be (it's on amazon as well)
• Sourced in "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Philip Yancey, chapter 1, footnote 15.
  • minor point ...
• IMDB.COM, under "trivia" sections for "Leslie Charleson", "The Sentry", "Toomorrow", and "Jesus Christ Superstar".
  • imdb is not a reliable source, look at the article to see why.
• Listed under "book index" at biblefilms.blogspot.com.
• Referenced in "Postmodernism, Christianity And The Hollywood Hermeneutic" by Anton Karl Kozlovic, intertheory.org.
• Used by Dr. Cheryl B. Rhodes at the University of South Carolina's "Religion Through Film" course, people.cas.sc.edu.
  • It's a reference book, it will be
• Cited by James Whitlark, Ph.d, "The Big Picture: A Post-Jungian Map Of Global Cinema", human-threshold-systems.whitlarks.com.
  • Does he say anything about the book?
• reviewed in The Latrobe Bulletin newspaper, December 5, 1981 issue.
  • This looks like a minor local newspaper, is the review notable?
• reviewed in "The Big Reel" and "Video Magazine".
  • This look like what we need. Can the author be more specific about these publications so we can determine if they are reliable, and so someone else could find these reviews?

Edgepedia (talk) 13:07, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

• Delete there seems no demonstration of notability, especially given Edgepedia's dissection of the sources. What we really need are awards or coverage of the author in reliable sources - if he is notable (and it sounds like an interesting personal story, I am surprised no one has done an article on his) then they will surely be there. If it does get deleted the article creator can ask for a version to be moved to their sandbox where they can work on it, I'm sure editors or the relevant projects look it over and see if it meets the guidelines for inclusion. So this wouldn't be the end of the line and I have seen a number of articles come back from deletion (I've helped on quite a few of them) (Emperor (talk) 15:12, 14 June 2010 (UTC))
• Delete This article is hopeless, starting with the title. The author might consider creating a new article about the book, called The Bible on Film or The Bible on Film (book), and see if it passes muster as notable, but this article about the co-author is going nowhere. --MelanieN (talk) 01:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Is this the same Richard H. Campbell who has written several books on military history? [1] [2] If so, maybe an article could be created under the name Richard H. Campbell to see if the man is more notable when a fuller picture of him is presented. Abbythecat, I would be willing to help you with it - I can see you need help with references and things. --MelanieN (talk) 18:28, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

.Thank you for the offer. No,he's not the "military history" author. As for the title, it was done because I had no choice. When I originally joined Wikipedia, I sent 4 submissions in instantly. All 4 were rejected, I was falsely accused of "hoaxes" and "vandalism", and was blocked -- all within 24 hours. It took several e-mails and phone calls to finally get unblocked. When I tried to resubmit this current page under any of the old titles (like RICHARD H. CAMPBELL or THE BIBLE ON FILM) a warning came up saying I wasn't allowed to do so because I had already tried. So I created this "combo-title" in order to try again. I fully expect this page will be deleted, but I don't know why. I read all the guidelines and followed them perfectly: "be bold", "concise", "brief" (it's only 1 sentence!), show no "personal bias", present the facts only ("just the facts, ma'am" as they said on DRAGNET) and offer no opinion. It also says to list as many references as possible. I listed 11 references! I could list more, as when I google the book's title, 7 pages come up (from all over the globe). But I think 11 is enough (if you don't take the Library of Congress, then you won't take anything). Any help you can give to make it look better is appreciated. I never even heard of Wikipedia until March 2010, so I am new to this. But I tried. And everyone has been really fair. Thank you. Abbythecat.~~ ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abbythecat (talk • contribs) 22:41, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Abby, I can tell you are very frustrated because of not understanding the system or requirements here. The problem is that not everyone, and not every book, is considered noteworthy enough to be included in an international encyclopedia. Your references (such as the library of congress) prove that the book exists; that satisfies the requirement of WP:V verifiability. The problem we are having is what Wikipedia calls notability. I really don't think Mr. Campbell himself is notable by Wikipedia standards (see WP:PEOPLE, but it's possible the book might be. The criteria for a book to be notable are here: WP:NBOOK.

Specifically, a book is notable if:

• "The book has been the subject[1] of multiple, non-trivial[2] published works whose sources 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]
• The book has won a major literary award.
• 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.
• The book is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country.[5]
• The book's author is so historically significant that any of his or her written works may be considered notable.[6]"

It's possible the book might slide by under "significant contribution" to the genre of writing about movies, but we would have to see where someone (other than you or Mr. Campbell himself) says so. Or it's possible that the reviews you mentioned would do the trick - but we have to see them. Can you provide any kind of link to where those references are? Or how do you know about them?

I have put the article into proper Wikipedia form, that's a start; but unfortunately I think it is likely to be deleted. Not because of how it is written or anything you could do differently, just because the man himself is not "notable" as Wikipedia understands it. --MelanieN (talk) 00:18, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I know the University of South Carolina uses it in the "Religion Through Film" course taught by Dr. Cheryl Rhodes. I know it never won an award.I just now noticed how it was changed (guessing by you) and it looks much better, thank you. Perhaps it will now be saved. "Notable" is such a tough word to define. Some of my favorite songs/books/TV shows/movies are ones that most people have never heard of, but they are "notable" to me. Example: one of my favorite songs is A LITTLE DIFFERENT by THE REASON WHY. Old 45 on Chatham label. Most people would say "never heard of it". But it is "notable" in that I like it. Very difficult job you have in "defining" the word "notable".I'd think this book is notable in that so many copycat books have come from it. But perhaps none of them are even notable. Again, everyone here has been kind and professional. As to the old reviews, my goodness, you are going back to 1981 or '82 ... no internet then ... really impossible to pinpoint those. What good would they really do? So a guy at THE BIG REEL writes a paragraph about it, likes it, gives information on how people can buy it. I'm not sure how that differs from seeing it listed at FAQS.ORG. The reviews just acknowledge it exists too. Again, I understand this is a tough call. It's easy to decide to list THE BEATLES, but tough to decide if TIM TAM AND THE TURN-ONS should be listed. I get it. Thanks for all your input. Now if I can figure out these tiles ... Abbythecat. 08:50, 20 June 2010 (UTC)~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abbythecat (talk • contribs)

Rename/Reclassify? The book is definitely notable. Prior to its release there was almost no discussion about the subject of the bible in film, but since then interest and study of the subject has increased exponentially, with many books being written on the subject and numerous university courses studying it as well (Google ' "The Bible On Film" Campbell site:edu' for example). This was the first book to list, detail and excerpt reviews from the various biblical films and remains an important reference work for those of us studying in the field of Theology and film. MattPage (talk) 09:12, 21 June 2010 (UTC) — MattPage (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

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.