Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/When Doctors Disagree (short story)


 * 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. There is a consensus below to not delete the article. Further discussion of a merge might be productive, or it might not, but that can be pursued on the article talk page. Eluchil404 (talk) 05:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

When Doctors Disagree (short story)

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PROD removed with comment: "all works of this famous author are probably notable ; criticism available in the many books on wodehouse. First look for sources, & if not found, only then consider merging, certainly not deletion. See WP:BEFORE." I have searched Google Books, Google scholar and JSTOR, Project MUSE and other journals available via a university library, but found only listings of the story and links to on-line copies of the story. No in depth coverage or even reviews, therefore not notable. Suggest redirect to The Man Upstairs. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:55, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions.  -- Jezhotwells (talk) 00:56, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions.  -- Jezhotwells (talk) 00:56, 24 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong keep Difficulty in finding sources (in this particular case) is down to a deficiency in the internet. Catfish Jim   &#38; the soapdish  02:01, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep Per WP:BK criteria #5, while notability is not generally inherited, this author seems to be of such a stature that any work written by him is notable by virtue of his having written it. Monty  845  04:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep As above but the point I want to make is that there is a world outside the Internet and things were happening in the 20th century. Using online searches for notability is highly biased towards the last decade and severely prejudices against older material. Putney Bridge (talk) 08:42, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: The Project MUSE and JSTOR archives contain journals going back, in some cases, to the nineteenth century. As I said, there is nothing there covering this story, but there are listings of it in bibliographies. I do not dispute that the story exists, but there appears to be no available significant coverage.  I think the article should be redirected to the parent, The Man Upstairs until something is found. WP:NBOOK critrion #5 says: "We suggest instead a more common sense approach which considers whether the book has been widely cited or written about, whether it has been recently reprinted, the fame that the book enjoyed in the past and its place in the history of literature." The short story has not been "been widely cited or written about".  Further: "It is a general consensus on Wikipedia that articles on books should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of notability. What this means is that while a book may be notable, it is not normally advisable to have a separate article on a character or thing from the book, and it is often the case that despite the book being manifestly notable, a derivative article from it is not."  Jezhotwells (talk) 13:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep or Merge. There seems little dissent that P. G. Wodehouse counts as a major author and brings criterion #5 of WP:BK. The question is whether this should be applied to just The Man Upstairs or all stories within this book. However, I think there can be little doubt that a plot summary has a place somewhere in Wikipedia, either in this article or part of The Man Upstairs article (possibly in a condensed form). I don't think deletion is a serious option. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 17:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I would be happy with a merge. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete - just because Wodehouse is notable, doesn't obligate us to host an exhaustive plot summary of every obscure short story he ever published. This story fails our notability tests; and cannot "inherit" notability just because it's by a notable person. Neville-Smith's reasoning completely escapes me, since this is not Wodehousepedia. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  18:20, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You are welcome to argue for a change in notability policy, but as it stands, criterion #5 of WP:BK doesn't see it that way. P.G. Wodehouse is easily one of the most historically significant British authors of the last century, and there is a good reason why all works by major authors can be considered notable: they all contribute towards the history of the author and his/her work. The only question is how far we go when defining all works. An individual short story is debatable, but a published collection of short stories is on par with a novel. An article about a notable novel would have a substantial plot summary of the story, so it's quite reasonable that a collection of short stories should have a mini-plot summary about each story. So we're basically down to a decision of whether the plot summary of a short story within a published book written by a major author belongs in an article about the story or an article about the collection, and another decision on whether the current plot summary is the right length and detail. Either way, the plot summary has a place in some kind of finished article (with or without condensing), so WP:PRESERVE means we should keep the information on the plot summary somewhere. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 19:16, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Project MUSE and JSTOR are comprehensive, but not complete, and Wodehouse is a significant icon. The significance of each individual short story is debatable, compared with the greater utility of having articles on each short story collection, unless an individual story should reach a higher level of notability, e.g., Kafka's "A Country Doctor". This doesn't mean that we should delete the article. Keep it until improvements can be made; this article will in all probability end up merged into an article on one of his short story collections. — Chromancer  talk/cont 19:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge into The Man Upstairs, with a redirect. We must remember that WP:NOTJUSTPLOT also applies, and therefore the article should not be stand-alone unless we have real-world information. The Man Upstairs, being a compilation, should conceivably have more verifiable information and reliable sources discussing it. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:16, 4 May 2011 (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.