Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New York Journal of Books


 * 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. While there is agreement, that this subject is cited often, there is also consensus that sufficient sources about the subject do not exist. If and when this changes, the article might as well be recreated.  So Why  12:51, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

New York Journal of Books

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Not notable according to the criteria of WP:WEBCRIT; there are also issues of WP:NPOV due to the lack of WP:IS The article relies heavily upon three sources:
 * Andriani, Lynn (November 22, 2010). "New Book Review Site Launches". Publishers Weekly. PWxyz, LLC. Retrieved June 10, 2017. That's basically an announcement that the venture and its site have been launched. Ms. Andriani merely describes the goals of the website and the content it is about to provide. The information seems to be taken from interviews or maybe a press release of the New York Journal of Books (NYJB) themselves. This single source is used excessively, for example, to describe the site's goal in the lead section, in the history section and in the section on reception. In the section on reception the very same article is used for three quotes with a footnote each, as if Publishers Weekly wrote three different articles on that website, when in fact it was just one by Lynn Andriani. Casual and trivial as it is, that is even the best source for the article.
 * Leaf, Lizzie T. (December 2013), "New York Journal of Books Interview – Behind the Scenes", The Booklover Magazine, Night Owl Reviews. When Lizzie T. Leaf, a writer of paranormal and historical romance, published her interview with the NYJB, she had aleady been a reviewer for that site. That interview appeared in the apparently self-published Booklover Magazine, hosted by Night Owl Reviews, a network of web sites focusing on book reviews. Most of the information sourced to that interview comes directly from the NYJB itself.
 * Yumul, Rich (August 27, 2015), "Case Study: New York Journal of Books grows their website with Drupal", Sagetree. The article skips over the fact that Sagetree is Richard Yumul's company and rebuilt the NYJB website with Drupal. That's what Mr. Yumul described in his "case study". It's an obvious piece of advertisement and as a customer of Sagetree Mr. Sturtz is quick to attest: “I am happy to be a reference for every single client who needs one. . . . For me, Sagetree is the Holy Grail." To use that piece throughout the article, even in the lead and in the section on reception, all the while obfuscating the business connections between Sagetree and the NYJB, is concerning.

The same is true with the quote by Writing Children's Books for Dummies in the lead and in the section on Reception. The author is Lisa Rojany, who is the publisher and editor in chief of the NYJB. That's not "reception", but marketing.

Many more references are to the NYJB website itself, mainly a listing of its more notable reviewers. The other referenced articles mention the NYJB only somewhat casually.

In sum, I think there are two issues to be sorted out first, namely WP:NOTADVERTISING and WP:WEBCRIT. It has not been shown that the content of the NYJB itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself, and notability is not inherited from notable reviewers. I did a GA review of this article about a week ago in which I pointed out these problems. Since then no further sources have been added, so I believe there are none. --Assayer (talk) 22:59, 5 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. --Assayer (talk) 23:12, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. --Assayer (talk) 23:12, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. --Assayer (talk) 23:12, 5 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2017 August 5.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 23:14, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment, hope this doesn't cause problems with citing their reviews in 100s of wikiarticles...Coolabahapple (talk) 06:20, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Whether this pub can be used as a source is (or should be) a completely separate topic from whether the pub is independently notable for its own article. The former is off-topic here, but I linked to prior discussions in my response below. czar  20:45, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
 * thanks, and apologies for wandering offtopic (i am open to a little fish slapping:)).Coolabahapple (talk) 08:57, 9 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Suggestions on how to improve the article should be made on the article's talk page. AFD is WP:NOTCLEANUP. Sagecandor (talk) 20:03, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I am adding a comment on behalf of New York Journal of Books. Sorry I know nothing about coding for Wikipedia. A few points:
 * Author of expanded article appears to have been exhaustive in searching for online material that describes NYJB. There is not much. We focus on our audience and the roughly 1200 publishers' and imprints' reviews that we cover. And so to write a full-length article author was resourceful in using everything he could find. Unfortunately much of this is dated and now inaccurate. And so through no fault of author, there are numerous inaccuracies. One easily checked miss is the dozens of reviewers who are the subject of Wikipedia articles.
 * 100% agree that some of the sources here have appearance of conflict. Third parties are, of course, better.
 * We believe that we are the most widely quoted online book review. (Quoted online, in print articles, in book promo.) Indeed, that we are mentioned in passing is normal vs. what is suggested in one comment. No journalist stops to provide a profile of the quoted review. But the review is chosen because it has authority.
 * Publisher's Weekly years ago asked to do an article on us with our cooperation years ago because we seemed to be the first broad, quality online-only book review to show signs of emerging those number of years ago. This solid on our beginnings, but not on current methods.
 * Unfortunately, otheer sources are also dated and no longer accurate
 * Google page rank is a solid way to judge the way other online websites, etc. view a site, such as a book review. The page rank is set based on quality and quantity of links to a website. Like Kirkus, that has been around much longer, we have a Google page rank of 6. This can be checked at following URL or any other Goggle page rank checker you can search for and use: https://www.prchecker.info/check_pagerank. The NYJB page rank is based largely on about 150,000 links from external locations on the web that link to NYJB because they believe our content has value. (Sorry, we get this in Google Webmaster Tools and impossible to link to this password-protected info source.
 * The structure of the article on NYJB departs from the single other online-based review that we and the publishing world considers our equal, Los Angeles Review of Books.
 * Also departs from structure of article on San Francisco Review of Books. Find it odd that the SFRB article is deemed perfectly fine despite article's flimsy sources. Also while I don't wish to trash another review, it is stunning to me that while SFRB has a zero Google page rank, it warrants an article. Over years it is really hard to remain at zero and indicates that an incredibly small number of authors, publishers, etc. consider a rave review from SFRB credible enough to even bother to link to. Also won't find credentials for their reviewers. They are merely book lovers.
 * As noted we do not believe that the current article is accurate because it uses old sources. We would be happy with a much briefer article that mentions our beginnings as previous article did and does not get into specifics of how we operate as there are not current sources. Or we'd be happy with the article that preceded this expanded version. As I recall it was truncated, but was not inaccurate.
 * However, we expect there to be more sources in coming couple of months. A core element to the story of NYJB is that we have been building tech that is unique to NYJB and enables us to streamline operations with most administrative actions, including interaction with publishers and reviewers handled by our tech. Critical final piece is likely to be launched by around end of September. And it is only recently that I am able to talk about more of what we are doing with tech (but not everything) as it's almost complete and we have needed to protect our first-mover advantage.
 * Upon launch, we plan an announcement to a number of thousands of book publicity professionals, also press releases, and expect this to be reported by the leading publishing industry daily newsletter, Publishers Lunch (with links to article online) and have heard that Publisher's Weekly has heard about the new tech completely unique among book reviews. No doubt further coverage.
 * The tech enables us to grow over a bit of time so that we ultimately become the largest source of the highest quality, extended reviews of any review source in the English language.

And so, while we do not believe that current article on NYJB should remain in its current form, we do believe that it would be unfortunate to simply eliminate us from Wikipedia, especially as we are about to become even more dominant than we have been as an online review. A short article that can be expanded in coming months seems to me to be a sensible solution. Also, as one editor noted, we are cited across wikipedia - something we know because this generates traffic to our website and a scaled down factual version would avoid disruption and appearance of contradiction as we are considered a valid source for so many other articles.

Thanks for considering all if the above. I hope you all hear that we believe there is value in a full Wikipedia article, but one that is accurate and up to date. And so I hope that the short article can be restored and then updated as more info becomes available online.

Ted Sturtz, Founder, NYJB 8-7-17 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.105.67.81 (talk) 19:48, 7 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete. This was previously discussed at Articles for deletion/The Plot to Hack America, out of a discussion as to whether this publication is itself "reliable" for use on WP (later discussed at RSN). The NYJB article then exploded from a series of mentions into what is effectively no different than a series of mentions. Assayer's analysis is spot on: The sources do not have depth or independence from the publication, and the rest of the sources are either asides or links to author bios, none of which describe NYJB in enough depth for us to paraphrase into an encyclopedia article. If this extraneous information were to be removed from the article, we'd be back at the original stub. The IP editor above (if indeed the NYJB founder) says as much, that there is not much coverage of the pub in reliable, secondary sources (first bullet). (P.S. We could respond on any number of your points raised, but this is the wrong venue for that.) To the point of this AfD discussion, the nominator makes a straightforward case about the sourcing (not "cleanup") of this article, which does not fulfill the general notability guideline (re: depth/independence) and which requires more than a dump of passing mentions of the subject. I recommend staying on topic. czar  20:45, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment Can anyone suggest (or create) a plausible merge/redirect target? On the one hand, I agree with nom's analysis of the Sagetree case study and The Booklover Magazine interview. They are not independent, reliable, secondary sources, and should be removed. The Publishers Weekly piece is an acceptable start on sources, but there is no other independent coverage of any depth, so it is difficult to argue that the stand alone article should be kept.
 * On the other hand, reviews in New York Journal of Books are cited by a fair number of independent journalists and academics, so as a Wikipedia reader, I'd like to find some independent information about the site, even if not a full article's worth. Could it be covered in a paragraph or three of a broader topic? --Worldbruce (talk) 02:12, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * , I don't see a suitable redirect target, else that would have been my recommendation. The pub has no notable parent topic. For what it's worth, we have plenty of reliable sources that do not link their publication's name. (In this publication's case, there are not many citations on WP, and as linked in the discussion above, I don't think they should have been cited in the first place.) czar  16:54, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * If anyone wants to check whether it is the founder who weighed in simply email info@nyjournalofbooks.com4.Unless that's a violation of your procedures. (Don't want to put my direct email address here.) Believe last comment makes snese. More of sa stub and I would hope for this to be revisited in a couple of months as we expect to have substantially more info in public domain when trade secrets are no longer trade secrets because we've executed. And BTW, for author of article, the following is a partial list of reviewers with articles bout them in Wikipedia. Easily checked by searching our website and finding their reviews. Those marked "pending"are brand new with first reviews not yet in.Others have reviewed or have and continue to review. An barely relevant book review does not include this number of credentialed reviewers among its ranks.
 * Alice Mattison (pending), Aphrodite Jones, Bhaskar Chakravorti, Carol Moldaw, Charles Weinblatt Chinelo Okparanta Dora Levy Mossanen, E. Ethelbert Miller, Edith Pearlman (pending), Eloisa James, Gian Gentile, Jake Bible, James Denselow, James Thompson (crime writer), John Whittier Treat, Jon Land, Jonah Raskin, Karen Dionne, Michael J. McCann, Mike Edison, Paul LaRosa, Peter Riva, Rae Bryant, Richard Cytowic, Ryan David Jahn, Sam Millar, Siobhan Fallon, Tony Bailie, William Tomicki (Bill Tomicki in Wikipedia). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nyjbooks (talk • contribs) 13:23, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * As you said yourself, the publication hasn't been covered widely in independent, secondary sources. If/when those sources are published, this discussion can be revisited. czar  16:54, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * NYJB Founder again: Makes sense. As noted previously, we have been reluctant to grant interviews or release information because New York Journal of Books technology is proprietary and we have wanted to protect our first-mover advantage in streamlining the administrative aspects of operating a book review. As we are in process of final phase of core administrative tech build, we will be able to release more info about this soon. And this will be publishing industry news because of our profile in the industry. That said, i am not so comfortable with the current expanded article remaining in place as there are factual errors. What we were doing at time of PW article and are doing now is different. Hope it's possible to return to previous shorter article, but with discussion held open. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.105.67.81 (talk) 14:18, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete. Between the apparent factual errors and the dearth of independent sources covering the topic in depth, there seems no point in trying to keep this article at this time. Better to recreate from scratch once the forthcoming sources that could establish notability are published. — GrammarFascist  contribs talk 17:19, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   09:56, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep i can easily find literally hundreds of references to this site on independent websites and news outlets, while i admit that only (2) of these refernces say anything of note about the actual business, this seems to meet WP:N. A Guy into Books (talk) 11:41, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That it has "lots of hits" is an argument to avoid—what matters is that there is enough source substance to write an article with due consideration on the topic without delving into primary and affiliated sources, and as you "admit that only (2) of these refernces say anything of note about the actual business", we have our answer. czar  18:50, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment Most citing of any book review is with reference to individual reviews, not an article about the review.


 * Seems rather than remove a highly cited review, is simple to revise to a couple of paragraphs with the PW article at least talking about facts around founding, executives, founding book reviews mission. Could also note the numerous reviewers who have articles on Wikipedia that are reviewers for this review. It says something that so many notable people review with New York Journal of Books.


 * Separately, Google has NOT been attaching value for links from Wikipedia to other websites for some years. This is partly because organic validity of links is doubted (in light of open access) and because a certain portion of articles are deleted, so that while Wikipedia's prominence is unquestioned, its reliability score for Google purposes has suffered.


 * Easiest solution is to remove and then add back later. Best solution is a very brief article like the factual one that previously existed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki4014 (talk • contribs) 17:47, 13 August 2017 (UTC) — Wiki4014 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.


 * Comment I think it is worthwhile to preserve a Difflink to the original statement by Wiki4014. It is true that links from Wikipedia to other websites have become less important for search engine rankings, not at least because Wikipedia employs the nofollow attribute on all external links since 2007. But as a trusted website Wikipedia is still very important for SEO and content marketing. As a minimum the NYJB gains traffic when their reviews are hyperlinked to from Wikipedia articles. Since there are so few independent sources that attest to the quality of the NYJB, I find it concerning that people seem to use and refer to its reviews so often apparently without asking questions about it and its reviewing policies. Because of the lack of independent sources, Wikipedia cannot provide much background information on the NYJB and it should not pretend to be able to do so. I did a backlink check and did not find many news outlets and independent websites, but many publishers and authors who use NYJB reviews of their publications as a reference. Wikipedians are most likely atracted to it, because the NYJB is easily available online. In contrast to the NYJB, a simple google search turns up independent sources dealing with the LA Review of Books, which claims to be "a nonprofit, multimedia literary and cultural arts magazine" and thus seems to follow a different approach than the NYJB. The San Francisco Review of Books was a printed periodical which ceased publication 20 years ago. I assume that the frequent allusions to it are actually to the San Francisco Book Review. While I agree that articles on other book review magazines whose notability for Wikipedia may be questionable do exist, that does not really help the discussion on the NYJB. I do not see much reliable sources that could be used to write an article, all the more since the existing sources are allegedly dated and therefore inaccurate. Notability is demonstrated through independent, reliable sources. It is not inherited from the reviewers writing for the NYJB. --Assayer (talk) 01:15, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
 * comment Really there are two issues emerging here, firstly whether this article is notable (which it is, two references is enough and having notable reviewers gives some inherent notability); and secondly whether the sources justify a b-class article (which they don't, there aren't enough sources to support most the information in this article.) so this article fails WP:V and possibly WP:OR, but not WP:N. A Guy into Books (talk) 07:21, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Assuming that "two references" were indeed "enough", which I don't, I can only come up with one reference (Adriani) being somewhat independent from the subject. Which one is the second? There is no such thing like "inherent" or "inherited notability". See WP:WEB: Web content is not notable merely because a notable person, business, or event was associated with it. If the web content itself did not receive notice, then the web content is not notable. Maybe an article on book reviewing in the age of the internet would make sense, but such an article does not exist.--Assayer (talk) 17:35, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Comment Not sure why comments seem to indicate that NYJB is advocating for preservation of this article. The article is highly problematic in multiple ways, and if there was not this group decision we'd have gone through the general contacts to ask for this to be rolled back to old brief several sentence, thinly, but correctly sourced article.

What can we do to make this bad article go away and get back old one that is grammatical and that one no one can quibble about? By tomorrow if not sooner.

Separately, within next month a major announcement will be forthcoming to publishing industry and there will be coverage. Might serve for some expansion of original article, but nothing like length of current albatross if properly rendered. Or not. Wikipedia is not part of our strategic plans. We just don't want this absurdly flawed Wiki-junk appearing next to us in search results.

Appreciate all the comments, but hope this problematic word jumble can be quickly addressed. If roll back is not an option, please delete. Have marked article as disputed as we do not want anyone to rely on this article in current form and hoping this hastens resolution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.105.67.81 (talk) 21:49, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete -- for lack of sources that discuss the subject directly and in detail; no indications of significance either. Appears to be a prolific publisher of reviews, but not an authoritative or otherwise notable source. I briefly edited the article recently (Talk:New_York_Journal_of_Books), and the article struck me as containing a lot of puffery. I've attempted to look for sources, but the sources are lacking. As far as the other articles that link to this one (presumably due to the subject being used for citations), then the only authoritativeness would be due to the authors of the reviews, not the web site. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete As I commented earlier, I agree with nom's analysis of the Sagetree case study and The Booklover Magazine interview. They are not independent, reliable, secondary sources. The Publishers Weekly piece is an acceptable start on sources, but there is no other independent coverage of any depth. I don't see the "two references" A Guy into Books claims, and they haven't responded when asked for elaboration. Does not meet WP:GNG or WP:WEB. --Worldbruce (talk) 12:49, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * this one. http://2paragraphs.com/2013/07/the-new-york-journal-of-books/ and this one. http://www.northeastern.edu/law/news/announcements/2015/abrams-nyjb.html couldnt find anything else. A Guy into Books (talk) 13:40, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for following up. I wouldn't call 2paragraphs an independent reliable source. Their "about" page says "If you've got something to say or to promote, try 2paragraphs." And that particular story seems to have originated with Inner Circle Labs, a PR operation you can trust because they don't accept a client unless they would promote the client even if they weren't getting paid, and because they wear pink on Wednesdays. The Northeastern piece is also a press release. I wouldn't touch those sources with a 10-foot pole, but at least that explains why our takes on notability are different. --Worldbruce (talk) 02:43, 19 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment I closed this as keep, with rewrite. however my edits were reversed and the Afd reopened as I was deemed to be too involved. I have restored my changes to the article but will not be involved in this further. A Guy into Books (talk) 13:13, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Could not find significant coverage by independent, secondary sources. Does not pass WP:GNG or WP:WEBCRIT. -AuthorAuthor (talk) 20:17, 19 August 2017 (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.