Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Success as a Mediator for Dummies

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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 redirect to For Dummies. Sam Walton (talk) 11:28, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Success as a Mediator for Dummies[edit]

Success as a Mediator for Dummies (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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None of the For Dummies series are notable, and this is one of the more marginal in the series. Choor monster (talk) 15:06, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk to me 15:31, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do not delete. As an obvious redirect to For Dummies, this page is not eligible for deletion on grounds of notability as long as that article exists (WP:R). If the series is collectively notable, they will also satisfy LISTN. Since AfD isn't for merger proposals, and the parent article has not been successfully nominated for deletion, I suggest this AfD be procedurally closed and the discussion resumed on the talk page of the article, which is the correct forum for discussing a redirect. James500 (talk) 17:29, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The relevant list article was deleted way back when: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of ...for Dummies books (2 nomination). I see absolutely no reason to even bother with a redirect to the series page. Nothing in WP:R comes even close to encouraging us to avoid an AFD here. Choor monster (talk) 17:59, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • That is nonsense. The outcome of that AfD is irrelevant. It took place in 2006. The notability guidelines were extensively overhauled in 2007. No AfD from that period is relevant today. WP:R clearly mandates a redirect. James500 (talk) 18:09, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • OK, correct on the first point, but the reasons there still seem relevant. As for WP:R, it does not mandate a redirect. It gives a short list of reasons, no "mandates", btw, which is ridiculously strong language. None of the listed reasons are applicable here. Choor monster (talk) 18:16, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • No, the correct section is not POFRED, the correct section is R#CRD, which says that redirects should only be deleted if they are positively harmful. This page doesn't fit any of the deletion criteria. Bear in mind also BKD which advises including individual books in broader topics: this requires that the title be redirected. James500 (talk) 18:35, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • This isn't a redirect, R#CRD is completely irrelevant. Your "bear in mind" is essentially asking that we recreate List of Dummies, just not as a separate standalone. Choor monster (talk) 18:49, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
              • R#CRD applies to any page that is eligible for "blank and redirect" (WP:BLAR). Many of the reasons given by R#HARMFUL explicily envisage this (eg the argument that the page history of a redirect may be useful (because it was formerly a substantive article) and thus deletion will be harmful). We have an extremely strong presumption against deleting any page that might be a plausible redirect. Moreover since embedded lists have different criteria for standalone lists, the deletion of a standalone list does not prejudice the creation of an embedded list. And, of course, if that list was nominated today, it would found to satisfy LISTN anyway, unless For Dummies is itself eligible for deletion, which has yet to be asserted by anyone. It may well be that the standalone list should be recreated. James500 (talk) 20:58, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                • James, you're just making up policy. WP:R#CRD says it applies to redirects, not blank-and-redirect candidates. Any page that gets deleted has a page history. We do sacrifice them sometimes. As it is, this page history is not worth keeping, because the most worth keeping is a redirect. We don't refuse to have an AFD on procedural grounds because maybe there might be a suitable list worth redirecting to. We have an AFD because the topic apparently fails WP:GNG. The outcome might be an agreement to redirect. Choor monster (talk) 22:20, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                  • I cannot subscribe to your interpretation of R because it would produce an absurd result ("delete and then redirect"). Any reference to the deletion of redirects must include a reference to the deletion of a page eligible to be blanked and redirected a fortiori. In any event, anyone could boldly redirect the page right now, which would certainly bring R#CRD into play (which is one of the reasons your interpretation is simply not workable). Criteria C1 and C4 of WP:BEFORE also indicate that pages obviously eligible for redirection (as this one is) are not to be nominated for deletion on grounds of notability, as indeed does WP:ATD. James500 (talk) 00:09, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                    • My "interpretation" is simply what it says. This article is not obviously eligible for redirection, since it completely fails every last aspect of WP:POFRED. The article was created as part of the Victoria Pynchon spamming, no more, no less. Your suggestions on how to force yourself to be "right" by BLARing the article are purely recommendations to game the system. What next, we go through the redirect deletion procedure, then someone boldly restores the page? Really, you are beyond ridiculous. Choor monster (talk) 15:47, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                      • WP:POFRED doesn't profess to be an exhaustive list. The motive for the creation of this article has no relevance to whether it is a plausible redirect. As to "literal" interpretations of guidelines, you might like to read WP:IAR, which is analogous to the golden rule. I would be grateful if you would refrain from calling me ridiculous or anything else. James500 (talk) 05:40, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                        • If the article does not meet the existing list of reasons to redirect, then it does not "obviously" satisfy the requirements for being a redirect, as you claimed. And if at first you claim the existing rules support your claims of what the guidelines say, and you pull out the trump card of "ignore all rules", along with your suggestions that WP:POINTy behavior has to be taken into account, yes, that's patently ridiculous. Choor monster (talk) 15:41, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                          • It does satisfy POFRED as a sub topic described by a wider article. The word "described" doesn't imply that it be explicitly named. You can, in ordinary language, describe something without naming it, such as by describing the characteristics it possesses in common with other members of a class of objects to which it belongs (eg the characteristics it shares with the other books). In any event, there isn't anything to stop it from being explicitly named in that article. (The logical consequence of rejecting that argument would be that if someone blanks the page, all redirects would be deleted). Since articles and mainspace redirects are interchangeable, insisting that we only look at the criteria for one or the other would arguably be "pointy". (There is actually a strong case for turning AfD and part of RfD to "mainspace for deletion"). In any event, something doesn't have to be expressly listed in a professedly non-exhaustive guideline, which happens, like most of them, to be poorly drafted and replete with obvious errors, in order to be obvious. The whole point of IAR is that there is such a thing as common sense. It is obvious in the sense that the possibility and utility of redirecting it would immediately occur to any intelligent person who looked at the thing, and such a person would immediately conclude that it ought to be done because it is really, really, really obvious common sense. James500 (talk) 23:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's even more common super-duper common sense that nobody has any reason to look up this book on WP, and if they really really wanted to, finding out that it's a For Dummies book will not be news, and not be of any use to them whatsoever, so it fails POFRED on this subtopic. This reputed utility of making this book a redirect remains completely non-obvious. Also note that the AFD template message explicitly forbids blanking as an option, so in fact no BLARing is allowed as you suggested.
  • Again, you are being patently ridiculous. Nobody has cited the book in two years except as part of the now deleted VP spam. We don't call off an AFD on procedural grounds because somebody might someday find a legitimate reason to cite the book and then for some reason actually wikilink it. The template message is part of the consensus of the accepted procedure for an AFD, therefore we follow it. It is not an absurd and damaging restriction to exclude BLARing: perhaps the article should NOT be deleted whatsoever? To make it straightforward for interested editors to evaluate the merits of the article is actual practice, if anything, the template message should be expanded to rule out BLARing. If the consensus is that the AFD-article is not worth keeping, but it's worth turning into a redirect, that will be the outcome of the discussion and it's all good. I mentioned POFRED because you brought up this ridiculous idea that we can't have an AFD if somebody somewhere might make a redirect, which you claimed was an "obvious" fate for this article, so I pointed out your claim that it was "obvious" can't be correct, because it fails POFRED as written. At this rate, you're just being contentious and trollish. Choor monster (talk) 14:20, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not agree with your opinions about redirects or the deletion process. As far as I'm aware template messages do not necessarily reflect consensus as they have not gone through the proposal process. Whilst a functioning redirect would certainly be a faux pas (the AfD template has to stay), in my view it may sometimes be absolutely necessary or expedient to insert the code for a redirect, particularly where there has been a merge during the AfD, especially one done under the "pokemon test". So I would not support changing the template message in the way you propose. James500 (talk) 01:13, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • You can discuss your concerns on Template talk:Article for deletion. The existing message is consensus. If you can make a convincing case that sometimes making it annoyingly complicated for editors to evaluate an AFD in progress is a good thing, then sure. This page is just a waste of time for such concerns. Choor monster (talk) 18:39, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica1000 19:04, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I had a look for sources, and I can't find anything that's all three of significant coverage, reliable and independent of the subject. There are a whole bunch of news hits in Forbes and CNN as well as already on the article, but all of them seem to be either written by the book's author, Victoria Pynchon, or are otherwise directly connected to her. A redirect would be a good option, but there's nothing suitable to redirect to, since an article on Pynchon would be difficult to create and survive AfD for the same problems, and the "... for Dummies" list article probably fails WP:INDISCRIMINATE as there's so many of them now. I think the only option left is to delete. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 20:49, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • INDISCRIMINATE says absolutely nothing about lengthy bibliographies. If you are once again referring to criteria 3, you have been told before that the name of a publication is not a statistic. A statistic is a real valued function of the observations in a random sample (DeGroot and Schervish, Probability and Statistics, Third Edition, Addison Wesley, 2002, pp 370 & 371). The name of a publication simply doesn't qualify as a statistic. In any event, we don't need a list of a set of books to have a redirect to the article about that set of books. A redirect still provides context by identifying what the redirected book is. James500 (talk) 21:17, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am not particularly against somebody creating List of ...for Dummies books, but until somebody does and it fits the inclusion policies, we can't redirect to it. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:17, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have created List of ...for Dummies books. It is currently a redirect to a section within the "For Dummies" article (and I also created redirect List of For Dummies books. If/when that section becomes too large, it can be split out. There is nothing wrong with having a list of notable items within a large population. Hence there is now a list that "fits the inclusion policies". --doncram 17:09, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have nominated List of ...for Dummies books for discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2014_November_30#List_of_...for_Dummies_books. Choor monster (talk) 19:17, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would oppose any attempt to create 2500 redirects. But since this one exists, I'm fine with redirecting it, I probably would have just done it without doing a PROD or AFD if I had come across it.--Milowent • hasspoken 21:20, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I thought of that, but it was put in here as part of the Victoria Pynchon spam, and truly seems to be entirely non-notable. Choor monster (talk) 15:41, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now "Success as a Mediator for Dummies" can be redirected to List of For Dummies books, if that list is edited to include mention of it. --doncram 17:09, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a double redirect. You know, doubleplusungood. As I cited above, a previous such List article was deleted in 2006, when standards were looser. The current section you created seems to be not a nascent "list", but "trivia". Choor monster (talk) 18:13, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
User:Choor monster, technically a redirect would go to the list where it is now, at For Dummies#List of For Dummies books, and not be a double redirect. Double redirects are not "bad" or "ungood"; they are temporary and are fixed by a bot so no one has to worry about them. --doncram 03:46, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: We have millions of pages and we have lists with hundreds of thousands of entries. The number of these books is irrelevant because we are WP:NOTPAPER.
    • We are also not spam and not resumes and other things. No one is arguing for deletion on the grounds that some tough choices have to made because we're running out of server space. We have notability requirements and the like. If you are explicitly calling for 2500 some redirects for the entire Dummies series, say so. If not, please explain why this one stays. Milowent's argument looks to me like "spam gets grandfathered in". Choor monster (talk) 13:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I did say so. Since we have already decided to create 300,000+ redirects to one list (and it might eventually be millions), I have no problem with 2500+ redirects which is not a large number. Our notability requirements are irrelevant because they do not apply to redirects.

James500 (talk) 22:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

      • I have no idea of what you are talking about. Redirects have their own requirements, and I claim this book fails them. Choor monster (talk) 14:32, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • On Wikipedia, the word "notability" specifically refers to the criteria of WP:N and the various WP:SNG. The contents of WP:R are not normally called "notability requirements", so I thought you were referring to something else. James500 (talk) 01:45, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • I have no idea of what you are talking about when you mention 300,000+ etc. Choor monster (talk) 18:39, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Non-notability is not an argument for not having a redirect. The whole point of a redirect is that the redirected topic is not independently notable. James500 (talk) 05:40, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Uh, no. The point of a redirect is to be helpful in various ways, mostly for things that have some chance of being looked for by editors and are best written up somewhere else. Where, exactly, are the hordes of readers who come to WP to find information about any particular For Dummies book? If someone wants information about Sewing for Dummies the book, he goes to amazon.com, not WP. Choor monster (talk) 13:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • I am told that, like most websites, the wikimedia community has monopolistic intentions. This seems to mean that we will not refrain from covering a topic just because there is competition from Amazon. James500 (talk) 23:13, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • 100% utterly pointless non sequitur. My statement remains correct. Amazon's rules for listing books and allowing commentary are entirely different from WP's, and because of that, it provides the information most people want regarding any random book. In fact, Wikipedia:Book sources near the top recommends that WP editors doublecheck cited books on Amazon, and provides numerous links to that end. Choor monster (talk) 14:32, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • What Amazon does is irrelevant. James500 (talk) 01:45, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • And what our readers do is relevant. In the case of seeking information about Sewing for Dummies, they typically go to amazon.com. Choor monster (talk) 18:39, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or move to Victoria Pynchon and develop. Note this AFD is a follow-on to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victoria Pynchon (2nd nomination) which ended with the Pynchon article being deleted. There was/is enough for an article on Victoria Pynchon, one of whose credentials is being the "go-to" person on mediation who could be one of the persons to author the Dummies book on the topic. This is a vicious cycle of AFDs that should be stopped. --doncram 21:01, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There's not a lot of overlap from this AFD to the 2nd Victoria Pynchon one: I see just Milowent, AuthorAuthor, and myself having participated in both. It seemed like direct follow-on based on timing. But still, it seems wrong to delete one article perhaps partly because of existence of another article, then to delete the other article partly because absence of first article. --doncram 17:09, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I participated, but only to comment. As it is, this most certainly is a direct followup. I had proposed in the VP AFD that the book should be merged with VP if VP was kept, it seemed obvious to me that it has no notability on its own. Choor monster (talk) 18:13, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If there really is enough to write a Pynchon, then you need to go to deletion review and request undeletion of that article ... if Pynchon's article can survive in mainspace, I'm okay with redirecting this article there. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 09:57, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The amount of VP material is irrelevant, there just isn't enough notability. Being an author of a Dummies book, in my eyes, is grounds right there that the person is not notable. The notable people are too busy doing the things that make them notable, or at least they write books whose titles and book design don't suggest the author is slumming. "Vicious cycle"? The VP promoters way back when apparently just spammed her into WP, and now we're in clean-up mode. Choor monster (talk) 13:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: There is too much commenting upon others' comments going on. Don't over-argue, please. --doncram 03:46, 27 November 2014 (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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