Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Books of Swords

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 no consensus. I feel that there is a borderline consensus to delete but there appears to be editors willing to work on this and I see no harm giving them a chance to do this. If sourcing is not improved and this is renominated then the outcome will undoubtedly go the other way. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:43, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Books of Swords

Books of Swords (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This detailed overview of the fantasy series is based on primary sources and fan sites. Searching for independent reliable sources turned up some reviews of individual books, so perhaps a few of the 12 books might be individually notable, but the series as a whole is not the subject of those reviews and does not appear to be notable. RL0919 (talk) 00:11, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. RL0919 (talk) 00:11, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep. Fred Saberhagen's obituary in The Guardian devotes a paragraph to the series, plus it gets a bit of attention in his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction article. That plus the reviews the nominator mentioned is (barely) enough. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:30, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 14:37, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I think a series of twelve books by a notable author is clearly notable enough for an article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:39, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to List of works by Fred Saberhagen: I don't think that the sources in the article, or the sources identified by Clarityfiend, or any other sources I've been able to find, constitute significant coverage. I also don't think that reviews of individual works in a series can contribute to establishing notability for the series as a whole, though I concur with the nominator that some of the individual works may be notable. Still, this is probably a plausible search term, and is covered in the list of works (the lede of this article could perhaps be added there to provide some context), so redirecting makes sense. (Whether the list should be trimmed and/or merged into Fred Saberhagen article is another matter.) – Arms & Hearts (talk) 22:38, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. The article needs to be revised and seriously shortened. But the series meets the criteria of notability and has won several awards. I think the warning about content/style should stay as a guideline for future editors, but removing the article in its entirety will just create a vacuum for a new version shortly thereafter. GimmeChoco44 (talk) 04:59, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. If some individual books are independently notable but not all, it seems preferable to have one page on the series as a whole, emphasizing the notable works, rather than several individual articles. My thinking here is influenced by the idea that a book might not merit its own article but might merit mention on an author's biography article. The existing article clearly needs substantial editing to focus on the encyclopedic content about these books, but I think a suitable version of this article could exist. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 20:51, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to List of works by Fred Saberhagen for now. I think the series might just barely clear the bar for notability, per Clarityfiend's argument, however at this time, the current article is pretty unworkable. Aside from the listing of books, the rest of the article is comprised entirely of non-sourced plot material. We really can't keep that, and the article needs to be completely rewritten to be more about the series' real world notability. Until that is done, it would be far more useful to just Redirect searches to the author's page, as the list of books is the only content currently here that would really be worth keeping. If the article is ever rewritten with reliable sources, it can then be split back out. Rorshacma (talk) 20:49, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I tried to do some of the basic rescue work, deleting a lot of fancruft and adding information about the series as a series. Compare the current version to its state when nominated. I think the consensus above has been that the series itself _is_ notable; I'd say that the argument for deletion/redirect was, essentially, that the state of the article was so poor that when someone wanted to make a properly encyclopedic article on this notable topic, it would be easier for them to start from nothing. (And that in the mean time, it was undesirable for readers to encounter the poor-quality article.) I think the article is now improved enough not to bring shame upon our heads, such that when an editor wants to dedicate their time to this topic, they will be better served by beginning from the current version than starting from nothing. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 21:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely a major improvement on the article. The new version is in a much better state for rebuilding and adding additional citations re: the reception/impact of the body of work. -- GimmeChoco44 (talk) 21:41, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Looking again I think my summary of consensus is a bit inaccurate -- some of the arguments for deletion/merging are on the grounds that there is not enough significant coverage to prove the series' notability. My own position is that the series is notable. I can see how the four sources cited in the article (two of which are new) might still be somewhat flimsy grounds for notability, but my relatively causal research has persuaded me that sufficient sourcing almost certainly does exist. I also think the coverage in the obituary and encyclopedia entry constitute "significant coverage" in context: by definition these articles will be very brief and mention very few things; a few sentences which would be a passing reference in a very long article become a high percentage of the total impact in these short pieces. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 21:52, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• While I appreciate your work on the article, the sourcing still strikes me as very weak. The introduction by Saberhagen's wife isn't an independent source and doesn't contribute to establishing notability, and two of the other sources contain, as you say, only brief mentions of the series. Only the Tor.com article goes into the kind of depth we'd need in order to be able to write an encyclopaedia article based on reliable sources. If multiple sources along those lines existed that would tip this over into notability, but if they existed someone probably would have identified them by now. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:23, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree that the Tor article is the best source currently cited (good catch on the Joan Spicci one-- somehow despite the name I hadn't pinged that she was his wife), but I disagree with the conclusion that it's the only good one that likely exists. I think I've been the one mostly looking for sources, and frankly, I haven't been looking very hard. I noodle on this article, which I'm not particularly invested in, after I'm done with my real research for the day. Every time I look, I turn up new sources (like the AV club history of "science fantasy"), which suggests to me that there is more to be found, especially in print sources (since the books are from a print era), giving grounds for WP:NEXIST. A lot of my thinking is also shaped by the fact that, e.g., An Armory of Swords satisfies WP:BOOKCRIT all by itself (just added two reviews), and it looks like almost all the individual books got Kirkus reviews (getting them halfway to their own articles), but it seems much less desirable to have twelve individual articles for each book. It seems more appropriate to discuss them as a series, since the reviews of each book always reference the series. And more can be usefully written about them as a series -- I think a really worthwhile version of this article could exist someday, but I don't think the Armory of Swords article could ever be anything special. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 05:27, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• "...It seems more appropriate to discuss them as a series, since the reviews of each book always reference the series." Totally 100% agree with this assessment. Better to strip the article down to a base foundation and rebuild it than delete it completely.--GimmeChoco44 (talk) 06:27, 17 June 2020 (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.