Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alphabet Series


 * 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 delete. J04n(talk page) 18:33, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Alphabet Series

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

No cause to merge 25 existing articles into one super-long article that would only scream to be split again. (Three or four novels might be one thing, but 25!) Also, this merger was carried out barely a day after this article's creator had proposed it at Talk:Sue Grafton, after only one response (an Oppose response) had been received. There are now three Oppose responses, there, including mine. Largoplazo (talk) 02:20, 2 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Procedural comments from merge proponent. Well, this is using AFD as a forced-merger discussion, but sure.  I'd like to turn this AFD around a bit and have it be on all the current book titles.  ("L" Is for Lawless is a good example.)  Note that these have been nominated before - see Articles for deletion/%22R%22_Is_for_Ricochet and Articles for deletion/"A" Is for Alibi.  Every single one of these articles right now is in violation of Plot-only description of fictional works.  They're all just plot summaries, with- for a few of them - the mention of winning a minor award or two at the end.  The novel articles should be merged into Alphabet Series and the series article should be kept.  (Currently, this article has 5 novels, but presumably most of them would be merged in eventually - barring any novels that develop articles that can stand on their own.)

Now, does this mean I think they aren't notable and should be deleted? Absolutely not. The series as a whole is certainly notable, with plenty of discussion of awards, themes, reception, etc. As for the individual books, well, WP:PROVEIT by adding something that isn't a plot summary. If someone wants to make such a book article stand on its own, I have absolutely no objection, and the merged article can simply use a main to point readers at it. If you look at the old AFDs, the consensus was strongly that these were notable topics, but nowhere did it say that these notable topics couldn't be covered in a series article.

As for the opposes on the talk page, most of the opposes seem to be under the apprehension that I was proposing deleting the content. Which isn't the case. I realize that some people back in 2007-2010 poisoned the well by performing "merges" that were really just deletions, but I am eliminating zero content; readers will see exactly the same article they would have before, just via redirect to a section of a longer article, rather than to a tiny plot-only stub.

As for the accusation of undue haste, as I already explained to the nominator on the talk page, I did not actually redirect the existing articles yet, awaiting more discussion on the Sue Grafton talk page. We are all volunteers here, I was doing something I thought would help the case for a merger by showing what the final article would look like. When I created this article, it was a 1:1 discussion with only one person opposing, and silly me thought that maybe an example might convince them. So please don't accuse me of bad faith here. If you truly want to stand on procedure here, we can move this article back to the Draft namespace, but I don't think that would help much, since we clearly disagree on whether the actual redirects should be carried out.

If the complaint is that the resulting article will be too long, I disagree; the actual problem is that the current articles are too short, and are really better off as sections in a longer article. That said, if length is truly the concern, then I would have no objection to something like Alphabet Series, 1982–1996 and Alphabet Series, 1998–2017 which would render the merged articles shorter. (And, as a reminder, if you're imagining A Big Huge Section that isn't just a plot summary gumming up the series page, well, those books can stay as separate articles. This doesn't apply to any of the book articles we have so far, however.)   It shouldn't be an issue. SnowFire (talk) 02:58, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. PriceDL (talk) 03:02, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. PriceDL (talk) 03:02, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. PriceDL (talk) 03:02, 2 January 2018 (UTC)


 * FYI: I have pinged Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books with a request for more input. SnowFire (talk) 19:01, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I oppose merging the articles on each novel into long boring article, but support an article about the series, an overview, as is done with other series of novels on Wikipedia. Putting the plot summaries of all 25 novels in one article is not a good article. Each novel has been reviewed separately, so those reviews can be hunted up and added to the article on each novel. Looking at the articles on the novels, many cite review or interview articles but never use those articles as the base for a Reviews section. An article on the series is also useful, but it would talk about the main character's age changing little over the 25 novels meaning the whole series is set in the 1980s without cell phones, changes in the nature of the cases, her character as a detective, and include reviews of the whole series. Two series come to mind, The Cadfael Chronicles and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which have one article about the series and then an article for each novel in it (save the last two in the newer series). Bernard Cornwell has written several historical novel series, and the articles follow the same approach, for example The Saxon Stories which includes Death of Kings, a novel with its own article and its own reviews. In the opening paragraph for the article on each novel in the series, the series name is given and wiki-linked, and the series article is linked in the infobox -- see the opening of The Holy Thief as an example. There was a good review of The Alphabet Series by Sue Grafton on NPR this week, indicating its impact on detective novels as a genre, as a starter for the series article: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/02/575068781/a-is-for-appreciation-how-sue-grafton-helped-transform-the-mystery-genre . So that monstrosity of an article in the building can be cleared out, but a real article about the series could be inserted in its place. Some of the material in the article about the author could also appear in a good article on the series, or be moved from one article to the other. I hope there are editors who can add a Review or Review and Awards section to the article on each novel. This was a big seller of a series, so I assume, but I have not looked, that Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews had reviews of most if not all of the novels, in addition to reviews in newspapers and magazines. I have read only a few in this series, and cannot describe the plots the way Maureen Corrigan did in her NPR piece.  --Prairieplant (talk) 22:03, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Kinsey Millhone itself already includes an overview of the series. Not that that overview couldn't be broken out and expanded, if there's anything to add to an expansion that isn't already covered there and under Sue Grafton, but there may or may not be compelling reasons to bother. Largoplazo (talk) 22:35, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Also oppose: complete agree with and  – no need to remove the book articles, which could be expanded. An overview article for the series would be good, but kept with minimal plot summary/overview for each book rather than a gigantic article. &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 22:16, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The frustrating thing for me is that these book article could still be expanded even if they are merged to a series article for now. I'm repeating myself, but my argument is a manner of how to present the content Wikipedia currently has, not to permanently salt the articles as forever unworthy.  If someone wants to expand such an article, great, they can do so.  Until they do - and they've had 10+ years already - the content can be kept in the series article.  Just to make it very explicit what I'm saying, book 16 gets merged to the series article next week.  In three months, someone starts expanding the content in the book 16 section of the series article.  Someone realizes that they have more content than just one section, they take the content, and put it in the Book 16 redirect.  They change the series article to have a  template instead of the section, and everyone is happy.  I don't see why the ability to expand such individual book articles would somehow be stopped by the creation of a series article.  I believe you that they might have potential!  But that's not a problem...  SnowFire (talk) 23:59, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for the reply, and I see where you're coming from: the current articles aren't great, so rather than making readers go between all these different articles it could be better to put them all in one article (or two). I also appreciate that you're not trying to remove content. In my opinion though, the Alphabet Series article (which again I think should be kept) should not go into anywhere near this much detail for the plots of each book (I doubt anyone will read the whole article in one go), but should have a 3 to 4 line synopsis, giving an overview of the book but not the full story and shouldn't have full infoboxes for each one. For me that's the usefulness of having a series overview article, and sub-articles that allow people to read more if they want, making it easy for people to browse and get the gist of each book, but also have the option to read a bit more. &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 13:05, 5 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Each entry should be judged on its own merits. If a single volume lacks significant coverage in multiple reliable, independent sources (?), then merge it to a series article, which can/should exist if the series itself is similarly the subject of multiple reliable pieces of sourcing. But this AfD has no deletion rationale and should be speedily kept (Speedy keep). If you want wider participation in a merge discussion, there are plenty of forums to request additional input including WP:3O, WP:BOOKS, and the nuclear WP:RFC. (not watching, please ping ) czar  23:09, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete the reason for deletion is WP:DEL5, content fork (of the independent articles). There's a clear consensus on the relevant talk page (Talk:Sue Grafton) against the merge; as far as I can tell nobody except the original proposer  supports this.  If this is a common name, it can redirect to Kinsey Millhone. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 20:45, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, this was never going to be a content fork - either A) the other book articles would be merged and redirected to the series article; or B) it will become a series overview article that doesn't replicate the content per Yodin; or C) it'll just redirect to Kinsey Milhone. I was going to do C anyway if the merge proposal failed per the talk page, which seems likely, but Largo filed the AFD anyway.  SnowFire (talk) 16:10, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Optakeover (U)(T)(C) 09:47, 9 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Reading all the comments here and at the Talk: Sue Grafton page, I stand with improving the articles on each novel, having an article on the series as a whole without summaries of any of the novels, and keeping the article on Sue Grafton in good form. She is a mystery writer of note, publishing her first mystery when Sara Paretsky introduced the fictional female detective V I Warshawsky in Chicago, marking a change in the gender of the detectives and and the style of murder mysteries from 1982 onward. The series article can discuss the setting of most of the novels, how the series is kept in the 1980s and does not move along with chronological time and how that affects the storytelling, and the strong or weak points of Grafton's style per reviewers. It is a good article to include the sales of her novels, and which novel was the first to enter the best sellers list at No. 1 (New York Times wrote a current article on that, which link I noted on the Talk pages of F Is for Fugitve and L Is for Lawless). I have added text or section titles to some of the articles on individual novels, notable A is for Alibi. The reference system in the articles now, it is not useful, as it excludes inline citations by and large. Those belong in the missing Reviews section for each novel. So I oppose that conglomeration article. I have not read all the Sue Grafton novels, so am not the person to write every article. Articles on the Aubrey-Maturin series (historical fiction) and The Cadfael Chronicles (historical mystery), suggest a structure for an article titled the Alphabet Mystery series (with a disambiguation note to see The A.B.C. Murders for the Agatha Christie novel). It would be wise to remove the messages in the Talk page of each novel that the merger means to stop improving the article on each novel. --Prairieplant (talk) 02:55, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify which talk page messages you are talking about? SnowFire (talk) 06:37, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:19, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:19, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Question - Even if the extended content about individual books is moved out, wouldn't there still be cause to keep this article about the series and/or links to the various books? &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 05:35, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Procedural keep, the nominator, and other editors here, appears to be opposed to the merger of the individual novel articles into this one (as do i), they do not state that the series is not notable, btw it does appear to meet WP:LISTN with the large number of news articles discussing the author and her series, and wikireader interest. Coolabahapple (talk) 05:43, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note to those remarking that there should be at least a list article, in case you missed my mention above: The list already exists, at Kinsey Millhone. It would make sense to redirect this title there or to remove the list from there and have it in this article or under a more conventional "List of" title. Largoplazo (talk) 11:15, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   21:27, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete for the following reasons (not necessarily in order of importance): 1., the term Alphabet series does not appear to be the common name (the New York Times in their obituary referred to it as "alphabet series" - adjective not common noun, but other NYT articles use different describers; on the author's own website it's "The Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Series"; there are other series of books referred to as "alphabet series" so I think if this survives it would need to be disambiguated). 2. there are 25 books, all are notable and received attention from the LA Times, the Washington Post, The New York Times as well as a number or scholarly books and works by literary critics; after the 5th book, each book in the series appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List - a great number of them at #1; we have articles for each book, and those shouldn't be merged into a single page, (currently editors are researching, reading, and beginning to expand the articles, but there is no deadline for this work). 3., I've split out and started to expand the Sue Grafton section in the biography, and that's where we should be starting. As it stands, the biography lacks a well written "Style" and "Themes" section, and which needs to be researched and added. Given these books are the author's sole body of work (with a few exceptions), those sections will focus on the style & themes in the series. Suggest redirecting to the biography or to Kinsey Millhone (which needs work). Victoriaearle (tk) 23:59, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. This isn't a list of the series, which I wouldn't oppose. A list would be an easy navigation through the series but this appears to be the start of a tedious journey where every book is listed in detail - the details already available in the respective articles for the book. Which already exists. Why duplicate that? Ifnord (talk) 16:25, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * 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.