Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Holographic Universe

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 merge to Michael Talbot. Sandstein 23:06, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Holographic Universe[edit]

Fails WP:BK. Not a notable book. Attempt by a marginal writer who is fairly ignorant of science to make some pseudoscientific claims, but the book has not engendered the press or the publicity needed for a Wikipedia article. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - As of today, this is #1 on the Amazon Metaphysics best-seller list. According to Amazon, it has been reviewed by Library Journal and is cited in 100 other books. The 180,000 ghits should be taken with a grain of salt, as many are for the phrase and not the book, but even adding the name of the author preserves over 27K of them. Disclaimer: this doesn't mean I think he's right

Comment - does it make sense to merge this with the Michael Talbot deletion discussion? Ma^t_chups

Nah, that just gets complicated. -Verdatum (talk) 20:24, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - 27k raw hits Perhaps, but only 812 unique ghits. Ah the perils of Google. -Verdatum (talk) 20:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Fails WP:BK. The only notable review that I could find was the one in Library Journal, and I couldn't even read the entire piece, just an excerpt. But the notability guidelines specify that there must be 2 independent reviews. Popularity listings at online bookstores such as Amazon.com are not a good indicator of notability. For instance, Being and Nothingness is listed as 11th in popularity for metaphysics and Meditations on First Philosophy as 23rd — both of which are much more notable than The Holographic Universe. Google hits are a poor way to judge notability for fringe topics. Websites are cheap/free, so anyone can make one by repeating the same non-notable material found on the other 1000s just like them. The fact that you can find links to fringy stuff on Google is a lot like finding porn: If you didn't see it before, you weren't even pretending to look. In my opinion, none of the links provided in the Google search link above could be a reliable source in the article. -Atmoz (talk) 20:26, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge anything useful to Michael Talbot, since I think the author's notability is easier to establish. (I tried to do that at his AFD.) Zagalejo^^^ 20:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep If a big publishing house like HarperCollins is willing to publish it, it already transcends multiple crackpot theory books, combined with the high Amazon sales ranking, I can see no valid reason to delete this. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Michael Talbot or else delete; nothing here to establish notability (as noted by proposer, fails WP:BK). --Lambiam 21:46, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Michael Talbot for above listed reasons. Mangoe (talk) 23:59, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Michael Talbot per dearth of independent critical coverage - WP:NB; the author looks notable enough for WP:CREATIVE, and the book is certainly notable to him. - Eldereft (cont.) 23:44, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- Raven1977 (talk) 06:49, 5 December 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.