Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Strands Series

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 Gael Baudino. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:47, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Strands Series[edit]

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A bit of a large one - I'm wondering if *any* of these books as well as this "series" page should have pages. From what I can tell this is a minor fantasy series with very little engagement over time. Every book as well as the "series" page cites the same 2 references, both of which come from the same niche journal. Most all content on these pages is summarizing plot events rather than denoting any particular notability of the works. While not a formal metric, searching the books today results in "fan groups" of <100 people, suggesting the books also don't carry much widespread consumer notability.

If the consensus is to delete - I am unclear on if an XfD must be made for each book, as it seems to be an "all or nothing" situation. A MINOTAUR (talk) 16:58, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 19:48, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is the author's notability clearly established? I can't really tell from the extant article. If so, merging there might be preferable to a standalone article series. Jclemens (talk) 21:39, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
From what I can tell no - she does not appear to have any other works that are more popular than this series (though a few others do have their own pages, also with the same 2 references). They also seem to be almost exclusively composed of plot summaries - and further searching does not seem to bring up much in terms of actual real world notability outside these wikipedia pages and various websites that seem to be directly grabbing Wikipedia information. The author's page is almost entirely just a list of her books.

It's a bit perplexing as there are quite a few pages and they've been around for some time, but It truly appears that these books are very minor publications with no real notability. A MINOTAUR (talk) 21:50, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't call Interzone niche - it's a very important British SF/F magazine. I also find that the author is definitely notable. She's in Contemporary Authors (sorry, my library subscribes to the Gale DB so the best I can give is Gale H1000122296 for a link) and the St James Guide to Fantasy Writers (Gale K2408000026). Gossamer Axe has many reviews, and at least one academic article about it (doi:10.1080/14735789509366588). The Strands is almost certainly out of print, so I wouldn't expect much of an online footprint for it. -- asilvering (talk) 00:45, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the response. I'm admittedly not very well versed in the genre - and had assumed it to be rather niche given the subject matter. I don't have any strong feelings towards deletion - but given the lack of online presence of the author or much discussion of her works it appeared at face value to be non-notable. A MINOTAUR (talk) 02:13, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
She falls into the '80s/'90s digital black hole - not recent enough to be online by default, but too recent to have been picked up in many digitization sweeps. They were more concerned with older material that was out of print or out of copyright at the time (20 years ago). Incidentally, that's about when these articles were originally written! Now those books are out of print and we're a bit SOL. Strangely, each book in this series does have its own individual article (with enough reviews to show notability), and this article doesn't even appear to be linked on Gael Baudino. It looks like this series article is almost entirely in-universe descriptions, which was normal around here in 2006 but isn't anymore. Since we have articles for the author and the individual books, this one seems a bit superfluous. We should probably redirect to author in this case. -- asilvering (talk) 00:05, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to author, Gael Baudino. See my above comment - we already have articles for each individual book, which readers will find linked on the author page when they get redirected to this article instead. -- asilvering (talk) 00:07, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Gael Baudino. There don't seem to be any sources discussing this series as a whole. There does seem to be some coverage of individual books (e.g. Crosby 2000, which discusses Strands of Starlight, p. 92 onwards), but this doesn't confer notability to the series. Redirecting any interested readers to the author's article, which provides some background information and points to the individual articles, is appropriate. I'd recommend the nominator create separate discussions for each of the novels if they don't think they're notable. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:54, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Thoughts on redirecting to Gael Baudino?
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dusti ^{*Let's talk!*} 01:17, 21 August 2023 (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.