Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Lawrence (Writer) (2nd nomination)


 * 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. — Mr. Stradivarius  (have a chat) 05:38, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Mark Lawrence (Writer)
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Non-notable author lacking GHits and GNEWS of substance. Fails WP:BIO and WP:AUTHOR. red dog six (talk) 02:48, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 02:54, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe that this page should be deleted because I think that Mark Lawrence meets the WP:BIO and WP:AUTHOR criteria as he has been a finalist for various writing awards, and he has received significant critical success from his books Prince of Thorns and King of Thorns, both published by Ace Voyager. BigZ7337 (talk) 06:59, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment: Disinterested third party here. The article seems to rely heavily on self-published sources. However I did find an interview with a branch of HarperCollins, a big publisher, which might be considered more reliable. --Drm310 (talk) 16:20, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - I also saw this primary reference, but I can not find any substantial secondary coverage. red dog six  (talk) 16:51, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. Fails WP:AUTHOR and WP:BK and WP:BIO.  In the best source proffered, from HarperCollins, he interviews himself!  That hardly meets the requirement of a secondary source.  Qworty (talk) 00:03, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. I did a major, MAJOR rehaul of the page and removed almost every source on there. I left the B&N source since it is official, although I do want to stress that it would be considered trivial. Being on a list does not give notability, not even if you were on the New York Times list. It just makes it more likely that sources could be found. By the same standards, simply publishing does not give you notability regardless of who you published through. I also want to note that being a finalist for an award does not matter. What matters is if the person actually won the award and if the award would be notable. Most awards are not so notable that they would give absolute notability or even contribute towards notability at all. Goodreads' awards would probably fall between "totally not notable" and "contributes towards notability but does not in itself give absolute notability". All of that aside, a search brought up quite a few reviews of his books. I did find an interview that wouldn't be considered a primary source, but I'm not sure if it'd be a RS or not. It's in the EL section if anyone wants to take a look. I think that overall there's just enough for this author to barely squeak by notability guidelines, as he's received reviews from Locus, Tor.com, and the AV Club. There's some other reviews as well, but these three seemed to be the biggies. There's always the option of creating an article for Prince of Thorns itself since most of the coverage surrounds the first book but right now I don't see any problem with the author's page existing and the book titles redirecting to his page, as there's not much more that would be placed on the book page that can't be placed on the author page. I also changed the name of the article to "author" since that's generally the standard.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 08:08, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't totally agree with having so much removed (especially the goodreads information/ratings) but I suppose that less is more, especially in a Wikipedia page. It's also now much more neutral, something that I couldn't do because I am a big fan. I really used interesting info I found from his personal blog and from interviews he's done, but I guess it is better now with it having just larger/more prestigious sites. I'm sure that his second book King of Thorns is going to receive more recognition as it is a better book, but it has only been out for less than a month. I don't know how to add it, but there is a picture you could add to the wiki info, here's a link to a high quality author photo: http://princeofthorns.com/images/me_an_c2.jpg Thanks for your work, and hopefully the page will be kept now. He might not be famous outside of the fantasy community, but he is a rising star, and I believe he's definitely at a similar level as other fantasy authors that are currently on wikipedia. BigZ7337 (talk) 20:54, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, the big thing with Goodreads is that it is pretty much completely unusable as a reliable or even trivial source. There's nothing at that site that gives notability in the slightest apart from the book potentially winning an award there, which it didn't win. I know that you're new here, but generally speaking Goodreads should absolutely never be linked to at all in a Wikipedia article, not as a source or even as an external link. The only exception to this is that we have it used as a primary source on the actual Goodreads article, but that really only works for the actual Goodreads wiki article. Now if the book had won the contest then linking to the contest page would be another exception but for the most part it would be better to link to an independent and reliable source commenting on the book winning the contest. As far as the other content goes, I removed it because it wasn't neutrally written. It was very non-neutral, being written from a fan or promoter's perspective. Articles must be neutrally written. Phrases such as "For most of the book, Jorg is 14 years old, which makes the brutal unforgiving darkness/grittiness featured in the book even more alarming and offensive to some sensitive readers." are from one person's perspective/opinion and could be considered to be original research and also somewhat seems like a bit of a barbed statement against people who didn't care for the book. The other reason I removed so much was that we didn't really have any independent and reliable sources to back up the claims made by the primary sources. You can use primary sources (things that are published by the author, his publisher, or anyone involved with him), but only if you have multiple sources from places that are considered to be independent and reliable per Wikipedia's guidelines. This is where it can get tricky for a lot of niche writers because most of the non-review coverage has been in blogs and other sources that wouldn't be considered a reliable source per WP:RS. Reliable doesn't always mean mainstream, but that's generally what it usually boils down to. Since you're new, I recommend asking Reliable sources/Noticeboard if you have any questions about sources. But again, Goodreads is not usable as any source that can give notability and the ratings on that site don't matter here, mostly because just about anyone can edit there or post a review. It's not reliable. Even if all of the reviews are genuine and not someone posting multiple fake reviews in either direction, the ratings there don't really mean anything to Wikipedia.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 11:00, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - notable enough for 4 books. He is not a flash-in-the-pan writer and sources provided look good. As edited now, I vote keep. It can be improved.  Jrcrin001 (talk) 00:27, 18 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - seems notable enough given the awards nominations and so on, for the type of genre literature. Green Cardamom (talk) 00:38, 20 September 2012 (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.