Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stan Nicholls

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 per WP:SNOW. Non-admin closure. Pastor Theo (talk) 02:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Stan Nicholls

Stan Nicholls (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Delete. The article is severely under referenced. It has not been edited in almost half a year, and nobody seems to have the urge to change this. The original deletion tag was removed because the user thought that Stan Nicholls seemed notable. I think this is debatable. He has wrote one trilogy, which was a moderate commercial success. The series, however, was not that well received by critics. In a literary sense, I think he is of low importance, and really of no importance. I don't think his books are successful enough, or influential enough to merit having a half-baked attempted article written about him. I think it should be deleted because it is awfully sourced, badly written, of no importance, and seems to have very little interest to users. Alan16 (talk) 00:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• Weak keep adequately notable author. JJL (talk) 00:52, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• Keep. Author has published dozens of books, distributed in over 20 countries, including titles that have sold millions of copies, and has been nominated for multiple awards, demonstrating the respect of his peers. As such, he easily satisfies the notability requirements of WP:CREATIVE. None of the other issues cited in the nomination are valid reasons for deletion: AfD is not cleanup, and there is no time limit for improving Wikipedia articles. Baileypalblue (talk) 04:06, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
  • "has published dozens of books". He has not published dozens of books. He has only this year published his twelth. You could say you he has published over a dozen if you counted two things. 1) The Orcs trilogy being republished in one book. (Twice). 2) If you counted the American and UK releases of the Quicksilver Trilogy. They have been published on both sides of the Atlantic under different titles.
  • Also, you're claim that he has "the respect of his peers" is doubtful. He has one the BFA, which is not decided by fellow authors. And I find it hard to "dis" the other awards he has got, because it is hard to find out any info on them. Now this is obviously because they are so hugely influential...
  • And yes, AfD is not a cleanup, and there is not time limit for improving Wikipedia. But surely there has to be some showing of life in an article for you to keep such a useless one. Alan16 (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
• Weak keep Added a reference - if the source is questionable, the same info appears in other references, also. There are enough ghits that more can prolly be gleaned. Seems notable enough.Vulture19 (talk) 04:44, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep. Winner of an award given by a notable festival. JulesH (talk) 09:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
  • No it isn't. If you looked at the page, instead of just searching in Google for it, then you might realise how un-notable it is. Alan16 (talk) 16:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The method to judge notability is via independent sources. There are plenty of them in the search I gave you, hence the festival is notable, unless you can specify some reason otherwise. JulesH (talk) 09:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as per everyone but nominator. Edward321 (talk) 15:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep - Meets WP:CREATIVE as a winner of a notable award, and a nominee for multiple notable awards. — neuro^(talk) 15:43, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• • In response to everyone: if he is such a "notable" author, who has sold all these books you claim he has sold, surely there would be at least one fan on Wikipedia who would improve his page? The page was created 2 and a half years ago.
  • And I have just done a quick search on amazon, and his best selling book there is around 69000th on the list. I compared that to Gardens of the Moon, the first novel in Steven Erikson's series. (A series which by 2006 had sold approx 250,000 novels), and it ranked 11000th. So you are all trying to tell me that he is so successful, yet he is fifty thousand places lower on the list of best sellers on amazon (one of the biggest sellers of novels these days) than a book by an author who has sold approximately a quarter of a thousand novels?Alan16 (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The Amazon sales rank of a book that is not currently a bestseller is basically meaningless. The book you have chosen for a comparison had a reprint released less than 2 weeks ago, an action that often results in a temporary increase in sales. This is basically meaningless. JulesH (talk) 09:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep being badly written means that someone should improve it, not delete it. Defaulting keep because I can't find any policies that he fails. Tavix (talk) 17:53, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep. Sure, he may not be terribly notable, but he's easily notable enough -- the awards nominations are good, and having his novels published in several countries is another fairly decent indication. (The "wouldn't there be at least one fan on Wikipedia?" argument certainly doesn't hold water, if only because it's not among the notability criteria. Ditto for Amazon sales.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
  • The amazon sales was there because somebody claimed that he had sold millions, and I was trying to prove that that was an inaccurate statement. Alan16 (talk) 20:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The following is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CREATIVE#Creative_professionals:

• • • "The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by their peers or successors. (1)
    • The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique. (2)
    • The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, which has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews. (3)
    • The person's work either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums, or had works in many significant libraries. (4)"

• (1) Is not met. His books are not regarded as having any importance in his genre, never mind in the larger literary field.
• (2) Certainly not met. Reviews cite his books as derivative, and clichéd. [1][2]
• (3) "well-known work" - Not really. I don't think his name is well known, nor his books particularly well known. Just because there are a lot of them, doesn't mean they are well known. "multiple independent... reviews". Almost any book in print is reviewed these days. So does that mean anybody who gets a book reviewed should be included?
• (4)(a) No. (b) No. (c) Sketchy. He has been the subject of some reviews (generally negative or neutral, very few particularly positive), and won some minor awards. (d) No.
• I think at best he almost half-meets some of these. I didn't think that was enough to keep such an article, but there you go. I think my responses to the above points are enough reason to delete the article. Sorry about how badly I set that last bit out.Alan16 (talk) 20:21, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Notability has little to do with quality. The reviews may be lukewarm or bad, sure, but they exist. Also, you don't necessarily have to be well-known; it's enough that you're not an unknown. I'm not saying the man is a superstar, but he doesn't have to be. The notability requirement not there to make sure that only the famous get in so much as it is to raise the bar to a point where every self-published "barely a blip on the radar for two months" guy can be excluded without a huge argument. If you write a couple of books that get reviewed, get some awards nominations and get published in several countries, you're probably good. It's enough. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 07:47, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:01, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

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