Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carver Trilogy


 * 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   keep. Of note is that the nominator changed their stance, stating, "I, the original nominator, now lean keep." in a comment within the discussion. (Non-administrator closure) NorthAmerica1000 22:51, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Carver Trilogy

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Fails Notability. Only reference is to a blog. All I could find with a Google search was book sale sites and publisher reviews. Cited accolades don't appear to be notable either D kriegls  ( talk to me! ) 00:28, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete - Non notable book by non notable author, Sue Harrison. Parabolooidal (talk) 01:25, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. It appears that this isn't a single book, but a trilogy, and I was able to find coverage enough to show that the series as a whole passes notability guidelines. If we were looking at each book individually then they may not necessarily pass, but as a series they seem to be notable enough. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   04:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment Nice citation work Tokyogirl. The NYT's review seems to be just a compilation, in that, the book is not the main subject of the article. But I think the Entertainment Weekly review should suffice now. It is clearly all about one of these books. But I'll leave it to a more experience Deletion editor to review and withdraw my nomination. I, the original nominator, now lean keep. -- D kriegls  ( talk to me! ) 14:46, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:00, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:00, 19 August 2014 (UTC)


 * comment - None of these added reviews mention the Carver Trilogy by name and only a few mention a proposed trilogy or mention Brother Wind as the last of the trilogy. They are mostly very brief mentions of individual books by name: Mother Earth Father Sky, My Sister the Moon or Brother Wind. The Entertainment Weekly article (dated 1990) mentions Mother Earth Father as the"first of a projected trilogy" and doesn't review the book. It's a short biography of the author. The Publishers Weekly (19994) says of Brother Wind that it "completes her prehistoric trilogy", and is just a plot summary and not an evaluative review. One of the Kirkus Review articles (both published in 1994) says Brother Wind is:


 * "Harrison's final entry in a prehistory trilogy set in the Aleutian Islands (My Sister the Moon, 1992, etc.) provides no more and no less than its predecessors, which means it is a standout, but only in the context of a genre never known for fine writing."


 * For books written in the early 1990s, there has been plenty of time for more complete coverage to be published, for mentions of the Carver Trilogy, or the publication of more books by the author. There's no mention by any reference so far of Carver Trilogy.  Seems like it's original research to make statements about the trilogy based on these references about individual books 20 years ago. (The one requiring membership I couldn't access.) Parabolooidal (talk) 19:33, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Are you arguing that the name is incorrect or that because the book reviews aren't labeled as saying that they're book 1, 2, or 3 of a trilogy, that we should see each book as completely separate from one another and not as a series? If it's the first one, then that's fair enough- the author's own website refers to it as the "Ivory Carver Trilogy" and I've changed it to reflect upon that. The current title (Ivory Carver Trilogy) is the official title for the series and there's confirmation that each book is part of the trilogy on multiple, multiple official websites (publisher, author, merchant sites, etc). At this point saying that each book is related to each other and that they make up a trilogy should not be seen as original research. However if you're arguing that we should review this as each book being separate, then that's a little overkill. It's fairly common for us to make an article about a series/trilogy and count all of the reviews towards it. As far as the EW article goes, that was mostly used as a backup for the basic stuff. Now as far as the trade reviews go, there has never been an official consensus on whether or not they count as in-depth coverage or not. I can see the arguments from both sides, as one side argues that they're too short while the other side argues that the review length doesn't matter because there's still an opinion on the product/book. I'll tell you what I tell everyone: if you want to have an official consensus on this, bring it up at WP:NBOOK. However even without those, there's still coverage from Entertainment Weekly (the review), a peer-reviewed journal, and the LA Times. The NYT lists the books but makes reference to a review written by the paper. I'll try to find it to make sure that it's a lengthy review, but in my experience most of the NYT reviews are usually pretty lengthy. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   15:56, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I also despise listing merchant sites, but Amazon's page for the first book also shows proof of reviews in other places as well. It shows a quote from the NYT and also quotes from reviews from the Washington Post and Houston Post, both of which are fairly large and well known newspapers. You can see similar things on the Amazon pages for and book 2 and book 3. The thing to remember in this instance is that because the books were published in the 90s, most of the reviews and coverage will be from that time period and there's still an enormous chunk of newspaper coverage that has never made it onto the Internet. Some of the reasons for this is cost, but a lot of the time it's just a lack of manpower. In any case, what I'm finding are a lot of references that show that by all accounts, the media fell all over these books when they released but that coverage is just hard to find since it was pre-Internet coverage. It even has a few mentions in books, but I didn't really figure that they were worth listing as sources Tokyogirl79  (｡◕‿◕｡)   16:16, 20 August 2014 (UTC)


 * But no reviews or even mentions for the trilogy in any of the sources I could access. Reviews were all 20 years old or older. A fair share for the first book, some for the second, decreasing in information and number for third book. None for the trilogy. Parabolooidal (talk) 19:16, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The reviews don't have to be for the trilogy as a whole. They can be for the individual novels and still count towards notability for the series as a whole. It's actually incredibly common for us to have an article for a series as a whole, especially if the books might not otherwise have enough coverage for each work to have a page to themselves. It's very, very, very common to keep a page for a series and I've seen countless AfDs close with "redirect to series page" because the coverage for all of the books (meaning coverage for each independent book) does equal out to notability for the series as a whole. Just because the articles here cover specific books instead of covering the entire series doesn't mean that the series as a whole isn't notable because they don't review the entire series. Individual reviews still count towards notability for the series as a whole. I'm sorry, but I disagree with you- I think that individual reviews still count towards the overall notability for a series and there's no precedent to say that reviews have to mention the entire series in order to count towards notability for a series page. What you're suggesting here (that series page has to have series coverage otherwise coverage doesn't count) hasn't been part of the policy to date. I'll mention it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books, but I'm almost 100% positive that individual reviews count towards notability as a series. What you're suggesting would pretty much decimate a large, large portion of the articles on Wikipedia. While we're not supposed to be all inclusive, there's no point in seeking deletion for articles for series that have received coverage for the individual books. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   04:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/Blue Is for Nightmares is an example of where we've had precedent for a page to redirect to a series page as opposed to individual book pages. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   04:23, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I repeat: no reviews or even mentions for the trilogy in any of the sources I could access. So it's still original research. If the series is notable, there will be sources. The fact that you changed the name of the series from Carver Trilogy to Ivory Carver Trilogy in the middle of this AFC shows that even you are unsure.
 * That it's only mentioned on the author's website or on a book sales site speaks volumes. But, heck, I don't care. If you feel so strongly about keeping this, then go ahead.
 * Although this book fulfills none of the five nutshell criteria at WP:BOOK, but you continue to argue passionately shows that you don't care about whether this follows it or not. I give up. Parabolooidal (talk) 16:00, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * How exactly do the LA times review and the multiple journal reviews not meet criterion one of Notability (books)? Also, as for your claim of WP:Original, what exactly is original research here? From your comment, I understand your claim to be that simply naming it a Trilogy to be WP:OR? I think that is rather like saying the sky is blue is WP:OR. There is no doubt that a trilogy was published, and that one of the books received critical review (or perhaps you are contesting that). Perhaps that point should be made clearly in the text, but I don't see the WP:OR argument. Perhaps I misunderstood your position. Or perhaps is wrote "perhaps" too much ;) -- D kriegls  ( talk to me! ) 07:00, 7 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The only thing I was unsure of was the name. The official name is "Ivory Carver" and the only reason I didn't change it sooner was because I was focused on looking using the individual book names. A series is comprised of books. Reviews for those books count towards notability for the series as a whole. Just because they don't say "this is about ____ series" doesn't mean that we can't use those reviews to show notability for the series as a whole. The books make up the trilogy. It's not original research to say that the reviews for the books (which again, make up the trilogy) would show notability. Again, there is precedent for keeping a page on a series based upon the reviews for individual books because they make up the breadth of the work. It's the same thing principle for say, us keeping a page for an author based solely upon the author receiving reviews for the individual books. By your argument, the author is not notable because the reviews for his/her works did not mention him. I think that you're so focused on seeing the non-notability for the series that you're forgetting that reviews do count towards notability for books and that these reviews count towards notability for the series since again, the series (in this case a trilogy) is made up of the books. Saying that the reviews don't count because they don't go into depth about the series is forgive me, just silly. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   05:51, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep If the individual books are notable, the trilogy certainly is. There's no need to prove it's a natural grouping, because a trilogy with a common title is obviously a natural grouping. It's also certain that any competent reviews of the later volumes would mention the earlier ones also, so there are sources for it being a trilogy (besides WorldCat, which I just added). In fact, it is almost always a very good idea to write articles on the larger unit like this with sections for the individual parts, rather than to do articles on the individual volumes. It would of course be possible to instead, or also, write articles for each of the three novels, as they are individually notable: each is in over 1000 libraries, they have been translated into multiple languages, and they have reviews. (Doing it this way is known as WP:Summary Style. And of course the author is notable also; she has written 3 other notable novels in another trilogy. Before nominating a book for deletion it helps to always search WorldCat--it provides a totally reliable source for the basic information. People here at WP seem rarely to use it, and I can not see why. It's not in the least difficult, and it's available free everywhere.  DGG ( talk ) 08:35, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Wifione  Message 06:22, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Rcsprinter123    (chatter)  @ 20:47, 2 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep per Tokyogirl79 and DGG. James500 (talk) 05:41, 7 September 2014 (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.