Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)

Does a pass of WP:TBK confer notability when there is absolutely no sigcov?

I've nominated a few book articles for deletion where there was no coverage of them at all, no reviews or commentary, and they were kept purely due to high citation counts (though, in all cases, there was only one other contributor to the discussion). This idea is similar in some ways to WP:NACADEMIC, however I don't think the same reasons for this guideline apply to books - it is impossible to write a satisfactory book article given only the content of the book. Wikipedia is not a place for just the summaries of works. My interpretation of WP:TBK is that it was a reason to recognize it may be harder to find coverage of technical books so relax a bit on that front, but not an excuse for literally no coverage. Thoughts? PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:08, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I share your concern. I suppose the counterargument is that some of the many citations ought to include information about the book they’re citing? It strikes me as possible that citations could be sufficiently informative, but that would require investigation, and if they’re all passing references then WP:NOTPLOT would apply and point to deletion.

I also seriously question the idea that academic books and textbooks “naturally” get less coverage— it’s quite common for monographs to be reviewed in the relevant academic journals, and instructional textbooks in library and pedagogical magazines. A notable book ought to have those kinds of reviews. So I’d say the better guidance would be to point people to these more specialized and potentially paywalled venues when there’s no newspaper coverage, rather than suggesting that such books don’t need coverage. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 15:51, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I kind of dispute the fact that they get less coverage too - I mean, certainly less coverage of the kind that you would usually find in a Google search, but if you know where to look it's not hard to find and for most academic/technical books I've checked where notability is questioned there usually are reviews, not any less than novels or such. But that's what the guideline says. And yes, a few especially detailed citations may in some way count as sigcov if the book is discussed, but at that point that's just discussion of it in the text and is quite uncommon. I don't think that's the reason behind the idea, I think it's supposed to be more along the lines of NACADEMIC where it's trying to measure "importance", which kind of works for academics but doesn't work so well for books. PARAKANYAA (talk) 15:57, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess that "common sense should prevail" is intended to do a lot of heavy lifting. -- asilvering (talk) 16:14, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

My time here has taught me that my common sense may not be the same as another's, haha PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:15, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. My own sense suggests to me that this section was added to prevent obviously famous and frequently assigned textbooks from being deleted for lack of obvious sigcov. While I can't remember any in specific, I'm sure I've been in deletion discussions where it was surprisingly difficult to find relevant sigcov for a textbook that was in its 10th edition (or whatever). No textbook is going through that many editions without being assigned to thousands upon thousands of university students. I would hazard a guess that sigcov does exist in these cases. But it can be unexpectedly hard to find, buried under thousands of passing mentions. -- asilvering (talk) 16:24, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Mhm, yeah with actual textbooks I have encountered that problem while trying to find sources. The way this is phrased applies it to all "academic books" though, when I don't think most academic books face the same problem. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:31, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes. It looks to me like that line is 20 years old, and 20 years ago it was indeed much more difficult to find articles on this kind of book. may only be available in specialized libraries and bookstores in particular feels like a relic of a past age. What were these AfDs you mention? I'm surprised to hear they were kept with only one other contributor to the discussion. -- asilvering (talk) 19:38, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering The only one I remember is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Islamic Commercial Law. I can't remember the other. It was closed as "no consensus" actually, I misremembered, which changes things slightly but I still wondered how accepted the argument was. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:53, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

This discussion, between two experienced, well-intentioned editors is about as No Consensus as you can get. No kidding. I endorse this statement, haha. Regarding the notability of that book in particular, I'd wonder if there wasn't something in an non-English language for coverage. I think you can safely boldly merge that one into the author's article. -- asilvering (talk) 20:01, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I don't contest the result - just was curious about the idea expressed in that AfD and how applicable it is nowadays. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:10, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

TBK is outdated, in my opinion. If an AfD is relying on that rather than sourcing, it's of line with the general notability guideline. There is a glut of academic publishing and book reviews and the bar for book inclusion is already super low even without TBK. czar 01:43, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

@Czar In all fairness, some SNGs are in conflict with the general notability guideline. As I mentioned, WP:NACADEMIC is purely based on achievement. Theoretically one can pass that with no GNG qualifying sourcing. Or GEOLAND. I assume TBK is trying to be analogous to that - but I don't think it's justified in the case of books, so I agree with you that it is outdated PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:50, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Some SNGs in active use, such as NACADEMIC, are unrelated to the general notability guideline (I would not say "out of line with", any more than any two different guidelines are out of line because they are different). But TBK has more the appearance to me of an outdated relic from a time when notability was less codified. It might be ok as an escape valve for a very widely used textbook (textbooks can be hard to source) but for scholarly monographs I would prefer to go by WP:NBOOK #1: it is notable if it has multiple reliably-published and independent in-depth reviews, whether in newspapers or in academic journals. And for actually notable textbooks, the part about having small print runs makes no sense, because the textbooks that we might want to apply TBK to are the ones that are widely used and do not have small print runs. So if TBK is not to be removed altogether I think it at least needs significant edits to focus on widely-used textbooks for which reviews are scarce (the case for which it makes some sense). —David Eppstein (talk) 04:02, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Fair. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:17, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

It looks to me like all the participants in this discussion agree that TBK offers more exceptions to the coverage requirements of NBOOK#1 and GNG than are justified in practice, and in that sense it is outdated -- especially for monographs. But it also looks like we agree that some famous and widely-used textbooks should be notable and need an "escape valve". (I would offer the Al-Kitaab series as an example of the vibe.) Right now, NBOOK#4 (The book is, or has been, the subject of instruction at two or more schools...) explicitly excludes textbooks. That exclusion makes sense given that a mere two schools doesn't mean we're looking at our edge case of a famous textbook-- but that exclusion also means that TBK has a gap to fill. What would be a good next step, if we were going to revise TBK to update it and narrow its scope more to this 'influential textbook' case?

As a side note, I think this problem occurs because textbooks get fairly limited reviews when first published, and then spread by word of mouth, and after a textbook is famous there's no need for reviews to show up and recommend them. Whereas literary works and monographs do attract more coverage after they're famous. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 17:28, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that the exclusion of textbooks from #4 is not so much because textbooks would pass more easily, but because #4 is about a different thing: is the book, itself, the main topic of a course? For instance, a literature course on Dante's Divine Comedy is the sort of thing that should count for #4 (not that there is any doubt over whether the Divine Comedy is notable in other ways). A textbook used for a course on a topic is a qualitatively different thing than a book that is itself the subject of study in a course. We need the exclusion to prevent confusion over this distinction. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:42, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I've made an edit to remove "academic books" from the language and replace it with "textbooks" (I also removed the bit about small print runs). Otherwise it's mostly unchanged. I think what I've done here is in line with what everyone else has been saying so far, but I only made that relatively minor change, and there's probably more we can do to make this helpful for patrollers and AfD participants. -- asilvering (talk) 19:50, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

The notion of a "print run" is probably obsolete anyway, given how many academic books are actually print-on-demand these days. XOR'easter (talk) 20:30, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Using Blurbs

While I don't see any rules against using blurbs in a book's 'reception' section, I'm curious about the general consensus among editors on this.

Thank you. Filmman3000 (talk) 21:35, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I would not use them if they're the kind of blurbs the author seeks out from peers who obviously won't say anything negative about it. If they're excerpts from actual reviews just use the reviews. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:38, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. A blurb that only appears in promotional materials for the book is not independent. A blurb that’s an excerpt from a published review is a useful clue as to where reviews exist, and we should consult the full review as a source; the blurbed part rarely says the kinds of things that are useful for an encyclopedia article. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 21:55, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. And I don't trust blurbs that are supposedly from full reviews that are printed on the amazon page or publisher's page, as I've seen instances where they cherry-pick favorable words that misrepresent the overall review. Schazjmd (talk) 22:36, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree with all of the above. The only encyclopedic use of a publisher-picked pull quote is to point the way toward reliably published reviews that you can actually use as sources. However even in this you should be careful to search for reviews in other ways as well, as the publisher may have been selective in which reviews they quote. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:58, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Nutshell/criteria

In regards to this revert: First of all, I'd like to point out that the nutshell is identical, or nearly so, to the Criteria section below. Furthermore, some of this seems questionable whether it's in the nutshell or further down. Without a reliable independent source covering the book in some detail, it doesn't really matter whether the book has received an award, or is by a historically significant author; per WP:NOTPLOT, there still isn't enough for an article. In fact, detailed coverage in reliable sources is what this whole page should focus on. Threshold standards and Self-publication are red herrings, which is why I removed those sections. 36.89.218.67 (talk) 18:57, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Some editors will not make it past the nutshell. Other editors not past the introduction. Having the must important information there so it can be found is important for this guideline serving this purpose. Explaining ways that things fail the notability in common ways also helps editors understand this guideline and the appropriate application of what happens. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:24, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

A nutshell by definition is supposed to be brief, usually a sentence or two. Furthermore, an instruction page as a whole should aim to be concise, and not waste space on mostly extraneous points. In that case, people might actually read it from beginning to end. 36.89.218.67 (talk) 21:01, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Do not make sweeping changes without asking about it. What you think is mostly extraneous has been debated over and over and over at AfD. Any change here will effect many articles so you can't do it with no discussion. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:47, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

I wish you would be more specific. That there is such a long nutshell, which is repeated further down, indicates to me that this page has been quite poorly maintained. 36.89.218.67 (talk) 00:22, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

That list has been there for a very long time. It's clarifying the individual criteria that we use to decide on at AfD. The overarching principle is less important to know when in deletion discussions. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:28, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

So it needs to appear twice on this page? 36.89.218.67 (talk) 00:32, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Probably. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:34, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

That is very hard to believe. If we shorten the nutshell itself, the intro, and the Coverage notes section, perhaps merging that into the intro, the Criteria section would be near the top. And we wouldn't have an absurdly long nutshell which is repeated in the body. 36.89.218.67 (talk) 12:52, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

The part in the nutshell is what it is important for people to read. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:07, 13 February 2025 (UTC)