Talk:Introduction to Lattices and Order

Why this particular book?
I am sure this is a very fine book, but I am wondering if this article really belongs in Wikipedia. It reads like an advertisement for one particular book that the wikipedia page creator liked. But there are thousands of mathematics books out there. Usually we don't have a separate article for each one of them, it would be impossible to do. More importantly, Wikipedia is not meant to be a compendium of reviews of mathematical books. One can understand a separate page for really classical ones of great historical interest, like Newton's Principia or Hardy and Wright's Introduction to the theory of Numbers, etc. But I am not sure of the rationale of this particular one (or others even more recent like Using the Borsuk–Ulam Theorem, coincidently by the same wikipedia author, etc).

The section "audience and reception" is blatant advertisement. Why quote all these reviewers saying the book is so wonderful? And that the diagrams are well done (big deal, these are hundreds of books with good diagrams without the need to say so.) Again, I have not read or seen that book, and I don't doubt it's a wonderful book to learn from. Just that this article seems out of place. PatrickR2 (talk) 06:01, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It is notable because it has multiple in-depth published sources directly about it. See WP:GNG. Two published reviews might barely pass GNG, but three would be my minimum for creating an article. This one has double that many (or nearly that; one of the six is too short to count for much). That's an argument for its notability, not its significance, but it is also cited over 7000 times according to Google Scholar, quite a high number (I could easily point to widely used textbooks with fewer) and well over the types of citation numbers we usually use as the threshold for notability for their authors. Beyond its notability and significance, it is linked from 36 other Wikipedia articles, in many cases as references to those articles, so it is a useful part of the encyclopedia by giving readers a link to click on to find out what critics thought about the reliability of that reference. If you think other books are more worthy of attention, find the reviews for them and write an article; your failure to do so is not my problem. As for the "audience and reception" section, it merely reports what those sources say. If there had been negative reviews I would have quoted them as well, as I have done for other books. And in fact I did include the negative bits from the reviews; see the part about Cohen's quibbles. In any case, I included the reviews that I included because they were all the published reviews that I could find, not because they were particularly positive. As for "coincidently by the same wikipedia author" and "one particular book that the wikipedia page creator liked": I appear to have cited the book in one of my publications, so I must have at least looked through it at some point before deciding to write an article about it, but I don't remember that and I don't think I own a copy. I have quite a long list of mathematics books that I liked but have not created articles on, because they do not have the sources to support one. Your failure of WP:AGF is noted, and concerning. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:29, 29 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the explanation. And just to be clear, I was not criticizing your choice of book in particular. I was wondering about the need for such book related articles in general, taking this article as an opportunity to ask the question. But given WP:NBOOK I can see your point. PatrickR2 (talk) 22:20, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * In general I think the ratio of numbers of articles on mathematics books to articles on mathematicians is far too low. We typically get a handful of new mathematics biographies every day. The rate of new articles on books is far lower, even though a large fraction of mathematicians write at least one notable book. I think at least all of the MAA Basic Library List should be included (at steady state this would be roughly one per month) but that's a far bigger task than I can do on my own, so I have only been doing it piecemeal for books that catch my attention (not necessarily from the BLL, although this one is listed) rather than in any systematic way. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:52, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Per the notability guideline for books, a book is presumed to merit an article if it has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself. This can include published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries, bestseller lists, and reviews. Introduction to Lattices and Order meets that standard with room to spare. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 19:30, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Short description
Since the book is authored by two people, the "normal" short description of "1990 book by Brian A. Davey and Hilary Priestley" is going to be too long at 48 characters. An alternative SD would be "1990 mathematical book", since this adds the subject area. A SD of "1990 book on mathematical order theory" is 38 characters, which is short enough, while adding enough detail — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:33, 27 May 2022 (UTC)