Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The First Book of Napoleon

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. Randykitty (talk) 12:53, 14 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The First Book of Napoleon[edit]

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No indication of notability is given and the book doesn't appear to meet any of the five criteria listed at WP:BKCRIT. FyzixFighter (talk) 03:27, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:03, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:03, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:03, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Satisfies GNG. Recently reprinted (NBOOKS suggests this is an indicator of notability for non-contemporary books). James500 (talk) 10:13, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions. First, how does this satisfy GNG? GNG requires "significant coverage in reliable sources", which I am currently not seeing. All I see are a few trivial mentions, so where is the "significant coverage"? Second, WP:NBOOKS lists being recently reprinted as one of four condition when considering non-contemporary books, the other three being whether the book has been widely cited or written about, the fame that the book enjoyed in the past and its place in the history of literature. Is satisfying only one of these sufficient, or are we to consider all four in conjunction (as suggested IMO by the "and" in the list instead of an "or") when applying NBOOKS? I ask because I don't see any indication that it meets those other three conditions. --FyzixFighter (talk) 14:31, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There aren't any hard and fast criteria, the page suggests a "more common sense approach". —innotata 15:18, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And by that common sense approach, this book has not enjoyed "fame" or a "place in the history of literature". That a company runs copies of this public domain text (as it does to many other non-notable texts) is not an indicator of notability. czar ♔ 16:25, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Except that if there is coverage extending over hundreds of years, such as the periodical from 1908 and the various bibliographies in GBooks, it clearly has enjoyed fame and a place in the history of literature. If there were only contemporary sources you might have a point, but when something is still getting coverage 99 years later, you can infer that it has become part of history (and not just yesterday's news). James500 (talk) 16:47, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article cites multiple in-depth reviews, satisfying WP:GNG/WP:NBOOKS. —innotata 15:18, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So [1] and [2] qualify as in-depth reviews? To me, one sentence mentioning the text is not an "in-depth review", leaving only a single review of arguable substance (two pages in a quarterly of 600+ pages). Is that sufficient to satisfy "significant coverage"? --FyzixFighter (talk) 15:36, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The review is four pages long and clearly amounts to significant coverage. James500 (talk) 16:35, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't mean to misrepresent. Let me clarify and show my math, the text of the 1810 review is 2+2*(1/2) pages with one page being 99% quoting of text from the book, which is where I got the count of 2 pages of actual review. I would still maintain that this is not a detailed review, but more like an grade school book report based on a hasty perusal of the text. It certainly is coverage, but not significant. --FyzixFighter (talk) 17:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unless I am mistaken, what the reviewer actually says is that a hasty perusal convinced him that his initial suspicions about the author's motives were misplaced. But on the next page of the review, the reviewer says that he has "perused the whole with some attention". So presumably he has read it carefully and given it careful thought. I think the length is fine. I would accept decent sized paragraphs, never mind whole pages. The canonical example of insignificant coverage is a single sentence. The guideline also refers to half a paragraph. We clearly have more than that. James500 (talk) 18:39, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The "half a paragraph" is about the WP article, not the amount of coverage in the ref: We require "significant coverage" in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. Note that my argument has been that we have half a paragraph and no seeds for a whole article. Anyway, I bow out at this point. czar ♔ 19:08, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The WP article already has more than half a paragraph, and there is enough source material to write a lot more than that. James500 (talk) 14:07, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. No substantive hits in Book Review Digest online or JSTOR (that's coverage or reviews) for either the author or the title (a bit more for "tyrant of the earth", though). I can try to hit up the bound BRD eventually. The uses in the article are all single-sentence mentions (apart from the one review) culled from a Google Books search. No sig cov in multiple reliable, secondary sources. No worthwhile redirect targets (unclear who the author is). Please ping me if more offline sources are uncovered. czar ♔ 16:19, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please read Wikipedia:Don't cite WP42 at AfD. Significant coverage refers to the totality of coverage. GNG doesn't actually require multiple sources, though we do have them in this case. Why would we want to delete a book published in 1809? Bearing in mind our problems with recentism (systematic bias). Don't you think it is unreasonable to nitpick over thew precise level of coverage in a case like this? We have at least one very detailed review and coverage extending over hundreds of years. James500 (talk) 16:35, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Even with that definition of totality of coverage rather than multiple sources, there is no totality here. Hundreds of years and the best we can find is a single review and a handful of mentions? It doesn't pass any of our notability standards by any measure. (We also don't fight systemic bias by weakening established consensus but by looking harder for sources: I searched several academic databases.) NOT42 is sour grapes—I think it's much smarter to link to 42 than to directly link to the individual pages. Anyone who hasn't already read the pages is better served by the guidance of 42 than by the shell shock of a tome of policy. czar ♔ 17:02, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It also wasn't a notable book in its time. In a search of 50 ProQuest databases, there were eight hits from the early 1800s and they were almost all "lists of new publications" (no commentary). The journal hit was a letter/commentary on wondering who the author was. You can read it in HathiTrust. No hits in LexisNexis. This article topic is not notable. czar ♔ 17:12, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is no established consensus that four pages of coverage is not significant. There is a need to rewrite GNG to stop people from arguing that no matter how much coverage there is it is not significant. The truth of the matter is that there is plenty of coverage. More than is actually necessary. The reason for systematic bias is that there was much less publishing going on in the distant past in the first place due to poverty and that a lot of sources have been destroyed. The only way to avoid that is to accept a reduced standard of coverage. "Virtual representation" cannot be taken for granted. There could be other reviews. GBook's search engine's OCR does not appear to be perfect. And it doesn't contain all books anyway (as of the last time I checked). So we can also invoke NRVE, if it comes down to that. James500 (talk) 17:44, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I read the sources (wasn't worth it, don't recommend it), and I disagree that the four-page article (which says little about the book) and a few passing mentions is both "plenty of coverage ... more than is actually necessary" or enough to "address the topic directly and in detail" (significant coverage). Can't discuss the rest without getting off-topic. czar ♔ 19:08, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The four page book review says an enormous amount about the book. The Australian source also seems to say quite a bit about the manuscript. All of this is direct and detailed. The remain sources are not passing mentions. They might be relatively brief, but their mention of this topic cannot be regarded as purely incidental. Inclusion in a select bibliography, for example, appears to be a deliberate recommendation. And lots of brief mentions can contribute to notability. Advising people not to look at the sources is not helpful. It is important that participants look at sources in order to subject the nomination to adequate scrutiny. James500 (talk) 10:02, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete- per the thorough research done by Czar, demonstrating the subject's non-notability. Reyk _YO! 05:17, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He hasn't demonstrated anything. His argument depends entirely on his interpretation of "significant coverage" (his opinions), which others do not agree with. James500 (talk) 10:02, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And I do agree with it, because it is based on sound reasoning and thorough consideration of the sources. Reyk _YO! 10:21, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Would I be correct in thinking that that argument is essentially that the amount of coverage isn't enough because it isn't? BKCRIT suggests that two reviews is enough for a modern book. But the overall number of book reviews published in 1809 must (for economic reasons that are not relevant to notability) have been less than half the overall number published in 2013. So common sense (which is what NBOOKS recommends) requires that we accept a single review for any book published before the date on which the overall number of reviews first exceeded half of what it is now (which must have been long after 1809). And of course, when you actually look at the definition of "subject" in NBOOKS, you'll notice that it is not obvious that it does exclude all of the other sources anyway. James500 (talk) 14:45, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop badgering. Reyk _YO! 19:59, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I don't accept the coverage provided meets GNG. Ultimately, that the book existed does not give the reader any reason the book was important. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:02, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The person who wrote this review of 1810 seems to have thought the book was culturally important, or something like that. They say that they "really regret" that the book is too expensive for people of limited means and would like to see it more widely distributed. James500 (talk) 17:03, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete — If you look at the state of the article from this edit (after the creator of this article made his/her final edit to it), it is clearly evident that the original intent of this article was to "showcase" polmic discussions about this work found in anti-Mormon internet forums. That material was correctly removed by other editors in subsequent edits, which didn't leave much left. Just as that self-published internet forum material was not pertinent to an encyclopedia article, there is no real reason at this point for any WP article about this obscure work, given the dearth of reputable reliable sources that indicate any reasonable form of notability, notoriety, fame/infamy, influence, or really anything above the level of confirming it's existence. ^—^Asterisk*^Splat^→ 16:04, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The original intent of the WP article is irrelevant. We should not exclude a topic just because someone hijacked it and used it as a coatrack and vehicle for unreliable sources. That problem has already been dealt with by editing out the offending material. If need be, the page can be protected to prevent re-insertion. There are apparently reliable sources (from 1810 and 1908) providing critical appraisal that goes beyond confirmation of mere existence. And as for criticism directed at perceived lack of importance, this topic is not obviously more objectionable than a lot of the stuff we have on contemporary popular culture, especially the stuff we let in under WP:ATHLETE. James500 (talk) 16:45, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Really?!? An other stuff exists argument? ^—^Asterisk*^Splat^→ 20:47, 13 October 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.