Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Who’s Who in Nebraska (2nd nomination)

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. —fetch ·comms 01:39, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Who’s Who in Nebraska[edit]

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This book does not meet WP:NB to the extent it applies or WP:GNG to the extent it applies. There is one listed review of the book, but not in a general audience publication. And one piece of coverage is not enough anyway. There just don't seem to be the multiple reliable sources covering the book that are necessary. It also appears to only be held in microform or print or any other format in 48 libraries world-wide according to WorldCat. ALXVA (talk) 06:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Does not satisfy WP:NB.Dejvid (talk) 13:16, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NB does not apply, see my comment below. --Fiftytwo thirty (talk) 22:49, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Nebraska-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 22:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 22:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep reasonable article on a real historical reference. This isn't some fly-by-night who's who that's published for profit as modern equivalents are, but a relatively interesting-looking reference published long before the emergence of the Information Society. It's got a reasonable few refs for a stub, and there are a bazillion less interesting and historically useful things documented on Wikipedia. Jclemens (talk) 23:02, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reply It actually only has a ref to the book itself, an irrelevant ref to the U.S. census, and a ref to the review I mentioned in the nom. I could find no more, and the article has sat without more for months. How does that meet WP:NB or WP:GNG? ALXVA (talk) 05:25, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Doesn't meet notability for books, Sadads (talk) 00:16, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is not covered in the notability for books. It actually specifically says that they are not covered in it. Silver seren^C 23:46, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral to Weak Keep I have done extensive work with regard to the first AfD, and despite being somewhat ambivalant as to whether or not this should be deleted, I should mention a few things that have pulled me in both directions. The long, drawn out battle in the first AfD lead to a lengthy WP:VPP discussion here. The root of this discussion was to figure out notability criteria for reference books, which, contrary to some opinions, is not covered by WP:NB (See WP:NB#Coverage notes and WP:NB#Academic Books). A proposal was formed which said that a Reference book was notable if:

They are cited by a significant number of other reliable sources and scholars for its informational content, and
There is at least one review of the work or other non-trivial source independent of the book itself (so the article can have sufficient content).

Once this proposal was finalized, two to three people liked it (Including the Author of the Article), two people wanted ref books under WP:NB (Including the Nominator), and one did not want to require any independent reliable sources at all. By these standards, this book would squeak by, because there is one independent review, and it is significantly cited as a reliable source elsewhere. Aside from this, whether or not significant citations helps this book reach the GNG standards is dubious, but due to the quality of the article and putting notability aside, I see no reason for deletion. Before reaching any conclusions, Please take into account all of these older discussions. --Fiftytwo thirty (talk) 19:42, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Per the old policy discussion on this issue, I feel that, as reference books are currently not covered under the notability policy for books, that this article meets the requirements that we were in the process of making back then. Silver seren^C 23:48, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment So it meets a nonexistent policy? If WP:NB does not apply, and I agree it does not other than maybe by analogy or something, then WP:GNG is the only way I can think of, and this book fails WP:GNG? So what notability guideline (not non-consensus proposed guideline) does it meet? This article literally has one (1) related WP:RS and no indication more are to be found. ALXVA (talk) 03:40, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked at the article recently? I updated it. Silver seren^C 16:38, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are not arguing that those sources meet WP:GNG are you? They are very minimal mentions at best. The Avery self-published book (putting aside the question of whether it is a reliable source), mentions the book in no more than a sentence and seems to attribute authorship to "Guy V. Doran", a person not mentioned in the credits for the Who's Who book. ~~Perhaps this is a different book. Either way,~~ the mention is too minimal for GNG. The Nebraska Ancestree source is nothing more than a one sentence bibliographic entry. The Nebraska Medical Association meeting minutes is an interesting source, predating the publication of this book. It does note that the book's authors asked for an endorsement and that it was refused. This sort of two-sentence mention in a primary source, though, seems far too minimal to qualify as one of the multiple sources needed per WP:GNG. I also removed one of the external links Silver seren added because it was dealing with a different book (and trivially at that). So, the three new sources -- one possibly not referring to this book in an arguably non-RS source, a bibliographic listing in a genealogy finding aid, and minutes of a meeting of a medical society recording the society's unwillingness to get behind a proposed book -- strike me a far too minimal to meet WP:GNG. That leaves the one review in a Nebraska State Historical Society quarterly magazine in anticipation of the book’s release as the only non-trivial mention. Since there seems to be agreement that WP:NB does not apply to this book, WP:GNG must apply; this book still does not meet WP:GNG. ALXVA (talk) 14:59, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Upon going through the text of the subject book, it looks like Guy Doran did write the Cheyenne County section. (Each county's section seems to have had individual authors, while the whole book had the editors mentioned in the forward, etc.) Sidney, Nebraska is a town in the county, so that part of the newly added text in the article is wrong and not supported by any source. In light of the fact that the source (the Avery book) did not say anything about the Doran entries unique to those entries (that he wrote about the early residents of the county as part of the Who's Who project), I removed the sentence and the source (here is the source for anyone interested). I also reworked the next sentence to make clear there was only one version of the book. All of this further call into question whether the sources support notability per WP:GNG or any other notability guideline. I do not think so. ALXVA (talk) 20:37, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Notability may be borderline, but I am prepared to interpret the notability standards very broadly in the case of reference books of this sort, because of the value of articles such as this to Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 05:36, 10 September 2010 (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.