Talk:The Worst Witch (novel)

Merging is a bad idea
Merging is a bad idea, because The Worst Witch discribes the 6 books, the film, the 3 tv serie's, general setting and the characters. If this article is merged, 5 other articles about the books and 3 about the series needs be merged also. The head article would become very large. Carsrac (talk) 15:37, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

explanation From my talk page:
 * The present articles are likely to be deleted from Wikipedia, though not by me, and you have a choice of merging them or greatly improving them. The problem is they have essentially no content other than the plot, and this is not really likely to be acceptable: we have a rule about this: WP:NOT PLOT Exactly how to interpret this is much disputed-- just how much beyond the plot is needed, and how deeply the plot may be covered, are things about which there is not really any consensus, but this is below the line that most people are likely to accept. My own view is to accept detailed coverage of plot and characters, but most people here are not yet quite as accepting as I.
 * What is needed for every individual book, is a discussion of the reception of the book, which means date of first publication, list of subsequent editions, relative popularity, sales figures, placement of best seller lists--all of which should be sourced to good references-- and especially reviews in 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, and not reader reviews on amazon or any similar site. Any public or school librarian can help you find these reviews. If you can find and add the reviews, and the refer specifically to this book not the series in general, and they are in places like Publishers weekly, or Library journal, or School library journal, or major newspapers, and if they are full reviews, not one sentence mentions, then the article may well stand.  More about the nature of the book is needed as well. How long is it? Is it illustrated, and, if so, by whom. For what age or grade level is it intended?


 * There is another problem also, whether kept as a separate article or merged: the section is not particularly good as plot sections go. Start off with a one sentence summary. Then it needs to be divided into more than one paragraph. If this is the introduction to Margaret as the key character, where does she come from? what sort of person is she? what is the school like? This gives some background for those who do not know the series, to put it into context.  Then, it should be written concisely; it probably should be about 2/3 the length. The triva section, finally, should not be called trivia--try "relationship to later novels."


 * The summary for the second novel, similarly, has the same problems--except the plot seems to go into even more unnecessary detail--for example, that  Enid's  clothesare tooo large to provide growing room is relevant--that they include "a pair of sports shorts that come up to under her arms" is not.


 * The advantage of combining the sections is that some of this can be done more compactly, and not duplicated-- and there will not be a problem about the notability of the specific book. But even so, the material included needs the improvements I've suggested. Good luck with it.   DGG ( talk ) 07:45, 15 September 2009 (UTC)