Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The She Spot


 * 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. (non-admin closure) B  music  ian  07:22, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

The She Spot

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Advertisement for non-notable book, written by SPA with obvious connection to author or authors. Fails WP:NBOOK. Jay Tepper (talk) 21:29, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 00:47, 17 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment. I've removed a lot of the cruft and ad-speak from the article. Most of the sources were unusable and of the sources that remain, there's only a PW and a Salon review. I'm not sure if the Salon review is usable, though. Isn't that one of the sites where anyone can post their own blog via the site? Can anyone verify if this is the case and if so, if the article is by a staff member or a random blogger? I know that one of the other reviews in the entry was a non-staff member blog, which is why I removed it. I'll see what I can find, but I wanted to remove the nonsense from the article first. It was a mess.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 04:02, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm a little neutral so far, leaning towards delete. There's not enough here to really make me think that it passes WP:NBOOK and most of what I've found have been unusable because they're non-reliable sources, merchant sites, or primary links such as PR bits. I've found this blog entry by Care2's director of nonprofit services, but I'm unsure if it's enough of a mention to really link to in the article. The book is mentioned quite a bit in the article, but it's not the main focus either. I'm leaning towards "no" but I thought I'd post it here for everyone to take a look at. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 04:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)


 * KeepI've added more book reviews to the article. After doing that, it seems like the subject is notable to me and satisfies NBOOK. Silver  seren C 04:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. On the weak end of of the keeping spectrum, but keep nonetheless. I've found multiple sources on the book, incuding reviews, so I think it just about passes WP:NB unless we want to go into the finer points of the wording of WP:NB. Btw, Tokyogirl79, does a review being on a merchant site reduce its reliability even if the source is independent of said site (other than, of course, being posted on the site)? I think the answer is probably no, but correct me if I'm wrong. :) - Samuel  Tan  14:29, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It does and it doesn't. The only problem with using links to merchant sites is that you have no idea how it's been edited. It's fairly common practice for merchant sites to edit reviews, either to make the review more positive or to make it shorter. You can't guarantee that the review quotes haven't been taken out of context, even if they look complete. Amazon is one of the sites that absolutely does this, although they tend to do it more for space concerns than for positive/negative concerns.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 19:21, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * And of course the other problem is that you have to prove that the individual is notable. For example, Suzy Average-Reader's review wouldn't count of course, but then you also have times when the publisher or author edits a description section on a merchant site to add a review, which I've seen done a lot of times, again- something that's common on Amazon. Just because it's posted on a merchant site doesn't mean that it's necessarily a review that would show notability, which is why (in my opinion) it's so important to find the site where the original review was posted. Not only do you need to see the entire review to make sure that any quotes aren't taken out of context, but you also have to ensure that the site and person are someone that would be considered a reliable source per Wikipedia standards. I've seen a lot of merchant sites take quotes out of context and a lot of authors that re-phrase quotes to the same extent. In this case, most of what I found was sites that merely listed the book for sale, which is mostly what I meant by merchant sites. The general rule of thumb in my experience is that if you're forced to link to a merchant site to show notability, you're fighting a losing battle because you shouldn't have to link to a merchant site. If you can't find other sources then odds are that the item or person doesn't have notability.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 19:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Except the references I included in the article are not merchant sites, but full reviews. Silver  seren C 20:37, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but when I had initially mentioned merchant sites, those were not the sites that I was talking about. What I was talking about were the sites that were out and out merchant sites. I mentioned merchant sites because those were some of the predominant ones that showed up. It was just my way of saying that most of what I found were sites like Borders that were mentioning that the book was on sale. At no point did I say that there were reviews on merchant sites. I mentioned it as an offhand and then suddenly people started discussing the merits of using merchant sites as reliable sources if there were reviews on them. Again, at no point was I mentioning that I saw merchant sites that had reviews on them. I merely mentioned that most of the hits I found were ones that were unusable as reliable sources, listing merchant sites as an example. People are misinterpreting what I was saying. I'm not trying to say that any of the reviews on the page are unusable or are merchant sites. Samuel's the one who really started talking about using merchant sites as reliable sources and asked my opinion as to whether they're reliable or not, to which I replied with my rationale as to why I personally try to avoid them.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 11:34, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep The references now establish notability, with multiple reviews/articles about the book and its ideas. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:27, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep The reviews in R&R Book News and Publisher's Weekly are enough to (just!) pass WP:NBOOK#1. Yunshui 雲&zwj;水 10:30, 23 April 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.