Talk:The Officer's Guide to Police Pistolcraft

Categories
Digging around a bit more, I removed this from the "Police Weapons" category. I suppose it could be used as one, but that would make the "Police Weapons" category awfully broad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.0.118.99 (talk) 09:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Notability
After reading the article, and doing some research on the book, I'm really at a loss to see how this meets Wikipedia's notability requirements. Unless any published work meets the requirement, I don't see how this does. It's a technical manual, for employees of a specific state agency, within a specific state, that has not, as far as I can tell, garnered any significant external attention. The three references it currently has point to a forum/blog/etc post, one review, and a press release from the organization that wanted the book written in the first place. The requirement noted in the old discussion was three sourcable netural-party reviews, which I can't find. A compromise here, that may meet the requirement, is creating an article about the author, including all 4 books he's written.

Along those lines, I've also noticed none of his other books have pages. So, if the decision is to keep this one, then perhaps some quick work should be done to make the others? (They're no more, or less notable). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.0.118.99 (talk) 09:45, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The issue of notability has already been voted upon.

Allasander (talk) 18:12, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That doesn't stop the issue being reraised. NtheP (talk) 18:16, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

LawOfficer Connect source
Hi Niteshift, I rolled back your edits removing the LawOfficer Connect source, for four reasons:

(1) Veit is himself a published author ("US Marine Corps Pistol Training", "Combat Training With Pistols M9 and M11", "Aimed Point Shooting or P&S for Self Defence") and despite his own protestations could reasonably be taken as an expert in the relevant field.

(2) The article at Law Officer Connect has been republished in sources with editorial control (here and here, among others]) but I'm unable to determine where it was FIRST published. The text remains the same.

(3) The material sourced from Veit's review is largely factual as the content of the book. It's non-contentious stuff, but it's important for other editors to see where those statements came from, and if they disagree, to be able to find a better source.

(4) There's no policy that says unreliable sources should be removed from an article, merely that contentious statements must be backed by reliable sources.

So that is to say, if you have a concern about the accuracy of any material that is sourced to Veit, that is one thing, but the source shouldn't be removed merely because of concerns as to its reliability, especially in the absence of any contradictory material or good faith objections to it. - DustFormsWords (talk) 22:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * First, I disagree with your contention that unreliable sources shouldn't be removed. They absolutely should be removed. Everything is supposed to be sourced with a reliable source. Without one, anything is eligible to be removed. Rather than remove the info, I removed the source, giving the opportunity to find a reliable one. Second, it doesn't matter who reprints it. For example, in doing research for a different article the other day, I found a reliable source (the NY Post) that reprinted part of a bio from Wikipedia. The part they reprinted was something we found out couldn't be sourced anywhere else reliably and had to remove. But there is was, in a reliable source with editorial oversight. Would you contend that now makes wikipedia a reliable source? So I reject both of those contention out of hand. That being said, I admittedly did not do research on Veit. Instead I took him at his word. So that is partially my error. If he has done the things you say, then I would find him to be reliable enough. I still don't like using LawOfficer Connect as a source, but he seems to meet the criteria even if they don't. But I can't stress enough that your contention that unreliable sources shouldn't be removed is wrong-headed thinking. Niteshift36 (talk) 05:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I really appreciate your help in improving this article and your well reasoned and polite arguments above. Thanks for the help, bold editing and constructive criticism! But I'll draw your attention to WP:RS, which specifically describes a range of situations in which unreliable sources may be used, and WP:RS, which describes how unreliable sources may be considered reliable as to the opinion of their author (which is the primary purpose of any review.) There are clearly a number of valid reasons for using sources that don't at face value meet WP:V, and it's also clear that in assessing reliability regard has to be had to what statements the claim is intended to source. - DustFormsWords (talk) 05:42, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I should say also - as to the plot/contents details, normally no citation would be required at all for that information. (See When to cite.)  But I haven't read the book the subject of the article, nor has anyone else working on this article as far as I'm aware.  So I'm in the unusual position of trusting a third party for information as to the content of the book.  In this situation I feel that citing an unreliable source as to the content is better than leaving a content summary that I can't personally attest to completely without citations.  It leaves the article in a better state for future editors to meaningfully critique and expanding the existing text. - DustFormsWords (talk) 05:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Neither of those seems to apply to this case. The one about SPS/QS in particular doesn't seem to apply. "Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves" Everything that then follows it in relation to that idea. Since this wasn't about a book Veit wrote or had any connection to, I don't see where the application of that applies. What does apply is that Veit was published elsewhere (I'll take your word for that and not bother looking it up) and I've already acknowledged that I went by what he said about himself and didn't look for myself. I would still be interested in seeing where you get the idea that non-RS shouldn't be removed (not that I'm still contesting this one, but curious about this POV that I've never heard expressed). BTW, I did !vote keep in the AfD before I ever touched the article. Niteshift36 (talk) 05:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)