Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The National Memorial

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 delete per WP:SNOW and my comments below. The article creator also blanked the page at one point, so I'm going to count that as an endorsement of the article's deletion. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:10, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The National Memorial

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Article by the book's author about a self-published book (via CreateSpace) that fails WP:GNG, with virtually no coverage found from a Google search on "national memorial" "john barth jr".

As for WP:NBOOK, more specifically WP:BKCRIT, criteria 1, 2, and 5 relate to claims in the article.

Criterion 1: "The book has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself [which may be reviews]." The article provides links to a number of reviews.

Foreword Reviews: Beneath the review is written the following: "Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The author of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have his/her book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Review make no guarantee that the author will receive a positive review." While no guarantee of a positive review is claimed, it stands that this was a paid-for review. Not independent.
GoodReads: User-generated reviews, not a non-trivial published work.
BookLife: This isn't a review. It's a collection of two- to four-line snippets from reviews elsewhere, by unidentified authors—other than the one ascribed to an editor from the book's self-publishing company, CreateSpace. Not a non-trivial published work.
Counterpunch: This, I think, may qualify as a nontrivial published work.
Readers' Favorite Reviews: User-generated reviews, not a non-trivial published work.
USA Book News: Another compilation of quotes from other reviews—mostly the same collection as the one that appears on the BookLife page.

Conclusion: There is, at best, one non-trivial review. Criterion 1 is not met.

Criterion 2: "The book has won a major literary award." The article refers to "honorable mention awards". Though some speak of honorable mentions as awards, the whole point of an honorable mention is to say that "Even though this entry didn't win an award, we would like to give it a special mention." Anyway, at each of the events where it received an honorable mention, it was one of a dozen or so books in its category to receive one. These don't qualify as "major literary award[s]".
Criterion 5: "The book's author is so historically significant that any of the author's written works may be considered notable." John Barth jr doesn't meet WP:GNG. The user John Barth jr has suggested that his being the son of John Barth contributes to the merits of including him, but notability is not inherited. —Largo Plazo (talk) 23:58, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. SwisterTwister talk 06:15, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. SwisterTwister talk 06:15, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as this is still questionable for the applicable notability, this would be best restarted as all of this is still questionable at best. SwisterTwister talk 06:16, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the extremely thorough analysis of Largo Plazo above, and per the problematic COI. If and when this author or his work becomes notable in his own right, someone can write about them here. —swpb^T 13:09, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The diatribe on the talk page of this debate does a rather good job of (a) showing the article creator's COI and (b) the lack of notability of this book. --Randykitty (talk) 13:45, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- To editor Randykitty: "Diatribe" is definitely not the word you are looking for. "Reasoned analysis" would be accurate. —swpb^T 17:45, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - To editor Swpb: "Diatribe" is definitely the word I was looking for, but if you don't like it, you're free to replace it with "rant". "Reasoned analysis" this is not. --Randykitty (talk) 17:58, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - To editor Swpb: Given that you !voted Delete, I'm wondering whether you misunderstood Randykitty's remark to be about my opening presentation above rather than the comments at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/The National Memorial to which he/she was referring. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:19, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    - To editor Largoplazo: Wow, yes, that is exactly what happened. I did not see the talk page; it's easy to forget that AfD's have talk pages, since they shouldn't normally be used. My apologies to To editor Randykitty: That is indeed a diatribe. —swpb^T 20:00, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

:-)) --Randykitty (talk) 06:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, see above by Largo Plazo --Erick Shepherd (talk) 14:00, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - self-published book with no notability. //nepaxt 01:57, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I'm thinking of closing this one early. The problem here is that ultimately none of the sources firmly establish how the book passes NBOOK, which is an incredibly difficult guideline to pass. Here's the gist of the issues with the article's sourcing:

If a review is paid for, this makes the review primary. The tone of the review doesn't matter, as they could be asserting that the book is the literary equivalent of an Ed Wood movie. Although in my experience these reviews are almost always positive, which is part of the reason why Foreword's Clarion Reviews is listed in the vanity awards article. Writer Beware also discusses why paid reviews are problematic from a general perspective. The bottom line is that paid reviewers have a strong conflict of interest, making it nearly impossible for Wikipedia to be able to ever see them as an independent and reliable source.
Awards don't always mean that something is notable. The reason for this is that there are so many awards out there and some of them are actually fairly easy to get. Some of them will give out a prize to whomever can pay their fee and others are contests so small that there's really no prestige to the awards, at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned. There's a saying on here that less than 5% of awards are notable - and that's all awards in all categories, from books to science. Of those awards, less than 1% would be a major enough award to give complete notability. Honor awards usually don't count towards notability on here unless the award is particularly noteworthy, like the Belpré Medal or Newbery Medal. These are considered to be pretty prestigious and books given honor awards for these awards because there are so very few honor awards given out - assuming that they give them out that year at all. Book festival awards are rarely considered to be prestigious enough to give notability even if they win the top award, so being honored is usually not seen as a sign of notability on here. The general rule of thumb is to look at the festival and the award coverage. If the festival is extremely noteworthy (like the literary equivalent of Cannes) and the awards get a ton of coverage, the award is more likely to be seen as notable. A search for the book festivals mentioned in the article brings up very little coverage. This means that these festivals would not be considered to be notable festivals on Wikipedia. Don't take this badly - most festivals and awards are non-notable on Wikipedia. This doesn't mean that the awards aren't impressive, just that they don't meet Wikipedia's guidelines for award and event notability.
Reviews posted on social media outlets and blogs are seen as self-published sources and will almost never be seen as notability giving. Many of the social media-esque outlets aren't even usable as even a RS to establish basic details, so reviews on them will not be seen as reliable - especially since user reviews can be easily swayed. Robert Stanek is one of the most well known examples of why reviews on places like Goodreads or Amazon (an e-commerce site but similar review rules) will not be seen as usable.

Also, please do not make WP:ADHOMINEM attacks on Wikipedia. Not only is this not acceptable on Wikipedia but it also makes incoming editors on the defensive. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:08, 7 April 2016 (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.