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This doesn't seem to have been the case at the time this essay was written. A footnote (which has since been incorporated into the main text) said that a single book was almost certainly good enough. Am I missing something? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:30, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
At the time, the example in the guideline was two large books. It was later changed to one, IIRC by EEng. This essay should be updated to reflect what the guideline now says. James500 (talk) 02:26, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I just checked the April 11, 2015 version of GNG again, and it seems that when I wrote the above I was missing something. I interpret the wording of The 360-page book by Sobel and the 528-page book by Black on IBM are plainly non-trivial as implying that either one of them would be adequate, indeed so clearly adequate that no further questions would need be asked; it did not imply that two large books, or even one large book, was a minimum requirement. I should apologize as it seems I glossed over the relevant text assuming it could not be you were talking about. However, even the current version clearly marks the book-length history of IBM as "plainly" non-trivial and the single sentence on Three Blind Mice as "plainly" trivial. Trying to come up with a precise metricin terms of word-count of what the "minimum" standard of a non-trivial mention should be doesn't seem helpful, but if others want to do so I'm not going to stop them; but presenting the accepted guideline's examples as though they were a minimum standard is inappropriate.
(As an aside, I've expressed the view in a few places that a standalone article in a reputable print encyclopedia is a pretty good guide to the topics that should definitely have articles, with other topics being dealt with on a case-by-case basis. This standard apparently is not good enough for some "true" deletionists like this guy, but I've never encountered an editor acting in good faith who had a problem with it. Most of the reputable print encyclopedias I use, though, are in Japanese and their length measured in characters, not words, so this essay would not theoretically help articles on topics without significant coverage in English, which would seem to promote systemic bias.)
FTR, I wrote the above several hours ago, but forgot to save. Fortunately, for whatever reason my browser kept the text in the edit box long enough for me to save and then notice I had messages. I have not read your messages on my talk page yet, and the above has nothing to do with them. For all I know, the above may be redundant with your messages. Just saying this in case it looks like I'm actively ignoring you while engaging you elsewhere on the project. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:10, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
