Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joan Acocella bibliography


 * 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   redirect to Joan Acocella. There is a clear majority for deltion, but also some who have sincerely argued for keeping, so I have had to interpret the debate in the context of what is normal precedent and policy for Wikipedia biographies. DGG in the nomination correctly points out that the books are already in the main biography. The remainder of the entries list articles that Ms. Acocella wrote for The New Yorker. Looking over at what is established practice for other well-known authors, books are usually listed but individual magazine articles are not. As such, the people arguing for deletion are not only in a clear majority, but they are also in accordance with standard practice.

With that said, some Wikipedia biographies do list out a selection of published articles which in my mind introduces some measure of doubt as to whether deletion is the correct outcome. Because of this, I will close this discussion with a "redirect" to the main biography rather than an outright deletion. I will not be merging anything, but this resolution leaves the history in tact in case any of the magazine articles are worth merging. Sjakkalle (Check!)  19:04, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Joan Acocella bibliography

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Making a list of individual dance reviews and essays is not appropriate, and the books are already in the main article.  DGG ( talk ) 18:52, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * delete - WP:NOTWEBHOST etc Jytdog (talk) 21:42, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  Programming Geek  (Page! • Talk! • Contribs!) 22:42, 27 March 2016 (UTC)


 * keep - separate bibliographies are suitable for authors with more than ten publications - see guidelines at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Bibliographies#Author_bibliographies Sunwin1960 (talk) 23:56, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I understand the question to be one of notability: if the bibliography is not found in WP:RS, then we shouldn't have a bibliography article regardless of the notability of the subject.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:57, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * As the creator of this bibliography, I should perhaps explain my attitude to author bibliographies. If an author (of whatever ilk) is deemed notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, then I think we should include a list of those items which are responsible for their notability, i.e. their writings.  I don't create articles for the authors themselves, leaving that to users who know the subject matter better than me, but if I read something by an author for which a page exists I update the bibliography to include the item I've just read.  If the bibliography grows enough to become significant in its own right as a research guide, I tend to move it into its own page.         This is partly to allow the main article to remain uncluttered, but also to allow the bibliography to be further developed. I tend not to have the time to completely overhaul a bibliography, so I might tidy up poorly formatted entries, introduce citation templates etc. and then invite other editors to continue the work by using the "this list is incomplete" template. Sunwin1960 (talk) 09:42, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not comfortable with the idea that a notable author automatically has a notable bibliography. I'm also not comfortable with the issues this approach would raise wrt WP:OR.  If you're a bibliographer you know how far you can trust google, gscholar, ZBL, MR, etc.  As editors, we aren't presumed to have that knowledge and need to rely on WP:RS instead.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 16:16, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bibliographies-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete - Wikipedia is WP:NOT a CV. We don't include every publication for every academic we have an article for. The guidelines for what to include aren't as clear as they could be, but especially if we're talking about spinning off to a separate article in order to include everything, there really needs to be a degree of importance for the author or publications that would allow a bibliography to satisfy our notability criteria on its own. For example, there are reliable secondary sources about the collective oeuvre of, say, Kurt Vonnegut or Emily Dickinson, and there are published bibliographies on major subjects in scholarly works. That's the sort of thing we would need for notability, and it just doesn't exist for most subjects (even notable subjects). &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 02:56, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. Rhododendrites has it heads on. We have bibliographies of Einstein and Darwin, but not for more mundane academics. --Randykitty (talk) 08:07, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep&mdash; and have it exactly right:  we don't have articles for "mundane academics" or where there is an absence of "reliable secondary sources about the collective oeuvre".  Where those reliable sources exist, however, notability for the bibliography (apart from the notability of the subject) can be established.  This bibliography meets that test.  Acocella's work is indexed comprehensively in the standard dance bibliographies edited by G. K. Hall:  Index to Dance Periodicals and Bibliographic guide to dance.  I regret that I have access to only a subset of these volumes, but those I was able to consult more than establish notability for the bibliography.  I have added these citations to the article.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 22:58, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * As it doesn't seem like there's a Google Books preview, Amazon preview, or that I otherwise have access to these sources, can I ask for clarification? When you say that her work is indexed there, you don't mean a few works, right? They have a section about Acocella with a scope along the lines of what's included here? &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 00:01, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Those bibliographies have complete coverage of a handful of scholarly journals on dance and selective coverage for a few additional "mainstream" publications with a strong track record for dance criticism and review (in particular, the New Yorker). If you look up someone's name you'll see what appears to be a complete listing of their works published for the past year in these selected venues, as well as selected coverage of their book publications, mentions in collections of essays, etc.  To directly answer the question you asked:  the sum of entries across the relevant volumes would be more comprehensive than what is currently in the article wrt book publications and top-tier journals.
 * As bibliographies go, this is not a gold-standard collected-works edition. Nor is it a scholarly annotated bibliography (although the entries usually have a sentence or two of context).  However, unlike Mathematical_Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH, the bibliography is selective:  not every academic's criticism or every critic's review gets listed; you have to be publishing in the top-tier venues.
 * Honest, well-intentioned people can disagree here. I think there's a consensus that notability of a subject does not guarantee notability of their bibliography, and perhaps less of a consensus (count me in) that we should be relying on bibliographies published in WP:RS to both establish notability and to populate the resulting article.  I think selective bibliographies such as those I dug up earlier today suffice; other editor may want a higher bar.  That's fine.  As best I can tell, we haven't reached a critical mass of bibliography articles for a sitewide consensus to have been reached.
 * Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:11, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment: "complete coverage" sounds to me that if we take this as standard, then we would need to have bibliographies for everybody who has ever published on this subject. This seems similar to works like the Science Citation Index: enter somebody's name and you'll get a complete list of their works. But that is not the same as serious discussion of somebody's oevre, which is what I'd like to see before putting someone's list of publications in an "article" here. --Randykitty (talk) 08:11, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Even Science Citation Index does not include book reviews, nor do most bibliographies in science. Sometimes in the humanities they are included in indexes, because they can sometimes but not usually be length and important, but  they are normally found only in separate indexes. Reviews of performances also, which can vary in length from trivial to very substantial, are usually found in special indexes. WorldCat includes them, as it does some reference book chapters,  but only for the Project Muse and JSTOR journals they cover.   An encyclopedia similarly has to draw the line somewhere.
 * And we do include them--we include them in articles on the works. For example, in our bibliography of her books, he should include footnotes to all identifiable reviews of them--I try to include that. It would not be inappropriate in an article on a famous dance work, to include notes of all performances. Specialized bibliographies do cover these things. But what they do not cover is a a complete listing of them by whoever wrote the review. Our policy is similar, and is based on NOT INDISCRIMINATE.   DGG ( talk ) 05:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * From the description of this work ("indexed comprehensively in the standard dance bibliographies") I did not get the impression that these were book reviews, but more a simple listing like you see in WoS or GScholar (and here). --Randykitty (talk) 09:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It's definitely not extensive reviews, but neither is it GScholar. A human has gone through and given a one- or two-line summary about the work along with the bibliographical material.    I agree that "an encyclopedia has to draw the line somewhere," and I think that line should be where people who are paid to be subject matter experts have drawn the line.  The folks printing the bibliographies I cited have chosen what they think are the best journals in this field, and those journal are publishing substantial criticism, history and reviews.  An author having their work listed in such a bibliography, to my mind, speaks to the notability of both the author and the notability of their body of work.  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 16:08, 30 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete as nothing particularly convincing for its own article. SwisterTwister   talk  06:44, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment "If there are fewer than 10 works attributable to the author, they should be included in a bibliography or list of works section within the main article." (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Bibliographies#Author_bibliographies) does not necessarily mean that if an author has over 10 works than they should have an article, notability guidelines still apply ie. WP:LISTN - "Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group. One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources", at present the article does not show this. Coolabahapple (talk) 01:40, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete, does not meet WP:LISTN for the reason given above, as no improvement to the article ie. sources showing notablity has been made. Coolabahapple (talk) 16:43, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete - fails WP:LISTN, and as per numerous delete rationale's above.  Onel 5969  TT me 12:44, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Merge to Joan Acocella. --Reinoutr (talk) 22:39, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment, Hellloooo hard working admin types, this afd commenced on 27 March, it is now 12 April, should this be closed or a relist notice posted?, just wondering... Coolabahapple (talk) 14:22, 12 April 2016 (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.