Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/"A" Is for Alibi

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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. "K" is for "keep the whole shebang" per WP:SNOW. Ron Ritzman (talk) 18:29, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"A" Is for Alibi

AfDs for this article:
"A" Is for Alibi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Fails WP:NBOOK; should be merged into some List of Kinsey Millhone series books or others. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:53, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Speedy Keep as these books are all notable having been the "subject of multiple, non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself" and quite a number have "won a major literary award". In addition, all of them have been New York Times best-sellers and the "Alphabet series" is one of the most widely recognized mystery series of the last 50 years. I genuinely do not understand this nomination. - Dravecky (talk) 06:51, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note: Only 1 of the 21 articles nominated here has actually been tagged for deletion. - Dravecky (talk) 06:55, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note 2: A proper nomination would have noted that earlier "H" Is for Homicide AfD and "G" Is for Gumshoe AfD nominations were both closed "Keep per WP:SNOW" in March 2008 and the "R" Is for Ricochet AfD discussion was closed "Speedy Keep per WP:BOOK; notability clearly established, with verifiable and reliable sources" in August 2008. - Dravecky (talk) 08:36, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I thought we were discussing the suitability of the topics for encyclopedia articles, not the propriety of the nominations. BTW am I the only one who sees something wrong with articles which mainly consist of plot details of mystery stories? Jaque Hammer (talk) 08:44, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Really? I'd like to see where you get this information. Notability may be established for one or two books sure, but for all of them? For example, do you see that "C" Is for Corpse cites an article about the separate and unrelated "G" Is for Gumshoe and that a google search turns up pretty much the same thing? "C" Is for Corpse isn't notable. And you're forgetting the second part of the criteria that you are citing: namely that "Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary." This is something I see extremely lacking in each of these articles; they contain only plot summaries, and that's why I called for them to be merged into a single article about the entire series. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 19:06, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • The works cited do "contain sufficient critical commentary" to expand these articles about award-winning, best-selling novels. That some of the article are stubs in need of expansion is not in question but that's a matter for tagging, not AfD. - Dravecky (talk) 21:50, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per User:Dravecky. A notable book series. JIP | Talk 07:10, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete All Although the author and the series are very notable, there is really nothing to say about each book besides a plot summary and sales figures. (Yes, I would say the same about articles about TV series episodes and other stuff.)Jaque Hammer (talk) 08:17, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment While several of the articles are currently referenced stubs, that's a reason to expand the articles, not to delete them. They all meet the clear WP:NBOOK guidelines. Please note that the nominator has jumped right to AfD without tagging any of the articles or working to improve them (WP:BEFORE). - Dravecky (talk) 08:28, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment on comment All popular books (films and TV episodes too, as well as sports events, concerts, snowstorms, earthquakes, and many other things) are covered in multiple reliable sources. If the Mets and the Dodgers play a baseball game the details will be reported in depth by some of the most respected reliable sources in the world. The same with these individual books. Newspaper book reviewers are paid to do just that. That in itself does not make them worthy of encyclopedia articles. All readers need to know about the series can be given in one article. After that they should read the books themselves if they are interested. Jaque Hammer (talk) 08:35, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • P.S. It takes very little intelligence or creativity to "expand" an article by Googling for book reviews and celebrity interviews, etc. and adding material from them. That does not make the topic notable or the article worth reading however. pps "Expand" in WPspeak usually means "take a trivial topic and add more trivial information so that it looks less trivial." Jaque Hammer (talk) 08:39, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Ah, you're looking for a debate on WP:NBOOK and this is not that. Books are not individual baseball games or single television episodes. Nor are they living people, licensed radio stations, census designated places, or any of the other things that have firmly established notability criteria. Books are books and WP:NBOOK is the Wikipedia notability guideline at issue. - Dravecky (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • I think an individual "mystery" is more akin to a TV series episode than to a"literary" novel. I also don't think a sub-policy compels us to keep something that is not in the interest of WP, its readers, or the books themselves. Jaque Hammer (talk) 08:46, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
              • Ahhh, the "I know what's best for the WP" argument. Surely someone has an analog of Godwin's Law for this by now? Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                • Well, yes I do know what's best for Wikipedia. "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia." -User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles "An encyclopedia (also spelled encyclopaedia or encyclopædia) is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge." -Encyclopedia Nothing about being a collection of plot summaries of mystery novels.Jaque Hammer (talk) 15:32, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. —Dravecky (talk) 09:17, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep all A check of three of these shows 2+ RS for each, clearly meeting the GNG. A much more reasonable approach would have been a merge proposal into a series article, but even then, I don't see how any of these will fail WP:BK criterion 1. Jclemens (talk) 09:23, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy close Every article indeed has sufficient secondary sources, as pointed out by Jclemens. And for the 9,001st time, THIS IS ARTICLES FOR DELETION, NOT ARTICLES FOR MERGING. DELETION, NOT MERGING. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 23:42, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy close - extremely notable series. Each, if not all, of Grafton's alphabet books have been New York Times bestsellers. First editions of the early entries - A through D or so - sell for astronomical prices, and there's plenty of sources for each page. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:56, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Speedy Close' very notable series with lots of publicity and film reproductions, Sadads (talk) 01:52, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy Keep Not here. You discuss fixes and merges to articles on their talk page, not in an an AFD. Also, probably notable enough to warrant its own article. Another ill-concidered disruptive AFD by TeleCom Purplebackpack89 02:02, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"I don't like the nom" is not a reason to speedy keep articles. Jaque Hammer (talk) 14:11, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My reasons for keeping are more than "I don't like the nom", Jaque Purplebackpack89 17:46, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy Keep As per Draveck and others. WP has a wealth of material about books by popular authors, and many such books are grouped in series. Unless we are also going to go through and replace (for example) all of our Tolkien articles with one massive mega-article "Middle-Earth series by Tolkien", and so on for Pratchett's Disc world books and so on, etc. etc. I think these articles should be kept. betsythedevine (talk) 14:23, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do think we should have one article on The Lord of the Rings rather than one on each volume. Jaque Hammer (talk) 14:50, 28 December 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.
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