Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Fathers of the Church


 * 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The result was speedy keep - nomination withdrawn ‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. StAnselm (talk) 16:43, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

The Fathers of the Church

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Article appears to fail WP:GNG and WP:BOOKS, with only primary sources used in article. A BEFORE search is complicated by the title of the series. Google Books and Google Scholar turn up citations to individual books in the series, but I can find no secondary coverage of the series as a series. Dclemens1971 (talk) 00:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗  plicit  00:39, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature and Christianity.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  03:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment the book exists!  and there are reviews   Not sure where to go with this. It's a massive undertaking so is probably notable in its field but not enough coverage yet—  Iadmc  ♫ talk  03:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment Logos has the entire 130 volumes for sale electronically for a cool $2365.00 before discounts. Not every book sold by Logos is notable, but many (most?) of them are, and recognized as reference volumes for Christian and adjacent religious studies. How many of the 130 included volumes are individually notable? I have no idea. We've had previous discussions on book series articles recently, and looking at this in that light, I'm relatively certain this should be kept, but more research would be reasonable. Jclemens (talk) 03:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Jclemens and @Iadmc - Looks like three of the four links posted above are to direct links to the individual books, not reviews, but the Sage Publications link is to a 1948 review of the series. If we can turn up one or two more reviews of the series itself, I will consider that sufficient to keep and withdraw the nomination. Dclemens1971 (talk) 13:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It was hard to find those! I'll try though soon — Iadmc  ♫ talk  14:05, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I was not able to turn them up in my BEFORE search but I would like to keep the article if we can establish additional sources. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:50, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * There was just a discussion on how series relate to NBOOKS, last month I think, and I believe the general consensus was that a series involving multiple notable books merited an article. Of course, it would then have to list or link to those books, which it currently does not. Jclemens (talk) 16:34, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * From that discussion, actually, I'd say that a series article without individual book articles to link to can be a sensible outcome per WP:PAGEDECIDE when individual books are notable but readers will be better served by series-level coverage. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 17:27, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @LEvalyn @Jclemens Can you share a link to that discussion? I am operating off the WP:NBOOK policy, which does not address series. Dclemens1971 (talk) 17:34, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Dclemens1971 Sure, it's here. Looking more closely, there were a few folks who wanted to treat "large general-topic publisher book series" different from, e.g. Game of Thrones-style series. But if folks are able to turn up NBOOK reviews for a few of the individual books in this particular series, there would at least be a case to be made. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 17:55, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, let's see what comes up. After reading the debate, I'm reluctant to withdraw this nomination on the basis of proposals that have not been adopted as policy; my read of the governing policy would still require WP:GNG to be demonstrated for a series even if individual books are notable. Dclemens1971 (talk) 18:54, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * But each book having it's own article would be mad! Better to have them under one umbrella surely? — Iadmc  ♫ talk  18:56, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Given the dearth of reviews I'm not sure how many are notable on their own anyway. Dclemens1971 (talk) 20:13, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Commment: I'll throw my two cents in: I think that if the series is published as a series and there are many reviews for the individual books (but those are not independently notable themselves) then the series should be treated as notable. That said, it should absolutely be up to the quality of the reviews and where they were published. Offhand the reviews for the series looks to be pretty numerous. They seem to get routinely reviewed in The Heythrop Journal and Scripta Theologica, but have also received reviews from Isis (journal), New Blackfriars, and so on. My workplace's database is pulling up hundreds of reviews. Granted I haven't been able to verify them all, but that does point fairly heavily towards notability and I do think it would be a disservice to not cover the series because there aren't enough individual volumes that are notable. That's kind of taking a "not seeing the forest for the trees" approach. Besides, with something like this it's usually better to just cover the series rather than the individual volumes in order to prevent the creation of dozens of articles (assuming that the individual books are notable). ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  14:10, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Offhand I am seeing enough reviews to where I could probably argue individual notability and articles for some volumes, but I think that might be a waste considering that these would likely be multiple stub articles. Better to have the one article and cut off unnecessary individual ones. (Here is what I'm seeing, if anyone is curious.) ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  14:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep - there are dozens of reviews of articles in the series: people write reviews every time a new one comes out: so the series is certainly notable, with many reliable sources. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:26, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Some books in the series are independently notable and were previously published. Augustine's The City of God has been published in many different versions over the centuries, for example, and thus there are many reviews. But are there reviews of the version published in this series? Dclemens1971 (talk) 11:43, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * When I take a look: yes. The reviews are specifically of these editions, and evaluate things like the editors' selection of sermons to include and the usefulness of the footnotes. ~ L 🌸  (talk) 03:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'm neutral on whether the article should be kept, but if it is kept it should be renamed as The Fathers of the Church should redirect to Church Fathers, easily a primary redirect. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:11, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep. Having had a chance to comb through some of the reviews, I'm seeing too much to justify either deletion, or articles about the individual books. As far as I can work out, all of the 100+ volumes has gotten at least one serious, scholarly review. If you look them up individually by title & translator you start to get clear NBOOK passes, e.g., the first two I tried, vol. 70 and vol. 131 . This appears to be a thoroughly notable series. As for the name, I am not excited about renaming but The Fathers of the Church (series) works for me.  ~ L 🌸  (talk) 04:20, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Withdraw. Given the commentary here, I won't prolong the debate. Keep. Dclemens1971 (talk) 04:31, 26 June 2024 (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.