Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was KEEP. dbenbenn | talk 20:58, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths
No online source for copyvio, but I highly suspect it. Otherwise Original Research and not encyclopedic (nor potential to be so), perhaps Homoeroticism in Ancient Greek culture may be an article one day as an appropriate title for sniggering about Hercules and his friendly man-cousin Ioalus.--ZayZayEM 08:24, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Delete. This isn't even an article about gay Greek myths; it's an article (or rather, a book report) about a book about gay Greek myths. But by all means someone should start an article on Homoeroticism in Ancient Greek culture or the like. For the time being, anything useful here should be merged into History of homosexuality --Angr 11:01, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep (and cleanup) this article on a book. 3,070 google hits for the title, seems to be a reasonably notable. The author, Andrew Calimach, has a page and this appears to be his breakthrough work. Any merging (which I disagree with) should be done with Andrew Calimach. Kappa 12:00, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with Kappa. Cleanup/keep. Samaritan 13:40, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I hope this isn't sounding prejudiced. But a book about homoeroticism (even in a historical context) is going to have a significant boost to its Google hits for no other reason than its got gay stuff in it. Gay people will push it, Homophobes will denounce it. I say 3,000 is really not enough to count as notability. Has it won prizes? That would up its notability. Otherwise is just promotion of a book.--ZayZayEM 13:47, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * If so many people are alternately pushing or denouncing a book, I daresay it's notable! Samaritan 14:21, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * The point I was making was, it's not the book they are pushing/denouncing--ZayZayEM 09:16, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. It seems to be very notable within certain circles.  Bacchiad 18:02, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Book by notable writer, Andrew Calimach -- and, for that matter, the book which made him notable. Nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2002. Article does need some cleanup, but I have to call it a keep. Bearcat 19:16, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Needs cleanup, but it is encyclopediac. Carrp | Talk 20:16, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and send to cleanup. It seems controversial/popular enough to merit an article. And for those looking for information about homosexuality in ancient Greece I think pederasty, about the most common form it took, is the most informative. &mdash; &#1051;&#1080;&#1074;&#1072;&#1081; | &#x263a; 20:26, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, article as written is a disaster but it's encyclopedic. Wyss 21:48, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, any book by Calimach is inherently notable. As remarked above, this one is the most so. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:19, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. This is an article about a book.    So the question is whether the book is notable.   It does not seem to have been on any major bestseller lists when it was published a bit more than two years ago.  Its current Sales Rank on Amazon is 45,000 or so. This means not very high sales, although they might have been higher in the past.   The publisher is Haiduk press, which has published just two items.  (The other one is "Lover's Legends Unbound", a CD collection of stories about male love, edited by Calimach and others.)   We have an article about the author, although Wikipedia being what it is, this doesn't mean he is notable.  The article doesn't mention that he has written anything else, other than the CD collection, which is based on this book. It says that he is an "independent scholar", meaning he does not have an academic appointment.  The book was nominated for the Lambda Prize, which is awarded for gay and lesbian literature, indicating that the book might be notable within the gay and lesbian community, even though it doesn't seem to have achieved any kind of general notability.   I don't know; it looks like we have three articles: one about the author of some underground chapbooks and basically one book (which might be self-published), an article about the book, and an article about a CD collection of readings based on the book.  Sure doesn't have "notability" written all over it. --BM 22:40, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * For me, a commercial and/or critically successful work is actually more notable if it's self-published. For me the book seems adequately notable within its field (and yes I have a low threshold), the CD collection maybe not. Kappa 01:43, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, you are right that self-published works (if that is what it was; I am only speculating) are not very often critical successes.  But how do you know this book was a commercial and critical success?  The Amazon sales rank doesn't suggest it was; but perhaps it sold a lot of copies at gay and lesbian book stores.   As for critical success, are you going by the Lambda Prize? That seems to be the only indicator of critical success, and to be honest, I have no idea how prestigious that is. --BM 02:49, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I was mostly judging critical success from the reviews listed at Amazon.com.
 * I might be wrong, I suppose, but considering the massive number of books in print, I think a sales rank of 45,000 at Amazon is actually pretty darned significant for a self-published work of gay scholarship which hasn't exactly received Oprah's Book Club levels of publicity. Bearcat 19:17, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Keep and cleanup.--Centauri 23:16, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, notable - 3000+ Google hits, cleanup and expand. Megan1967 02:51, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. There are hundreds of more marginal books in Wikipedia (not to mention tv shows) that no one considers eradicating. The place to start on homoeroticism in Ancient Greece is in the existing Culture of Greece of course, which begins "The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years..." oi!--Wetman 10:07, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. The book is well known, being about a well known historical subject. -- Old Right 10:49, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.