Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives/2017 January 1

= January 1 =

Request on 01:46:53, 1 January 2017 for assistance on AfC submission by JosVan
Hi, I created an article Draft:Bern Expo for the facility. I think there aren't too many sources for this place as most fairs that are held there are small and local events. I believe that the stub should be brought into the article space nonetheless, but I need help find sources for it. And can you help me format it correctly? Thanks!

Josvan  Talk  01:46, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello, JosVan. Happy New Year and thank you for your submission to Wikipedia.  Finding reliable sources that attest to the notability of the venue is a basic hurdle that must be passed before an article is published on Wikipedia.  If there are indeed no sources (independent of the venue) that discuss the venue in depth, then no amount of formatting will make your draft suitable for publication.  As for assistance with finding sources, you might want to post a request on the Talk page of WP:WikiProject Event Venues.  I'm not sure if that Project is still active and, if not, you might try asking at WP:WikiProject Architecture.  For now, I'll note that the draft's sections on how to get to the venue via local transportation, as well as the discussion of nearby hotel accommodations, are unencyclopedic and will cause most reviewers to see your draft as nothing more than an advertisement for the venue.  You might want to remove those sections.  I hope this response has been helpful.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:24, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

15:20:40, 1 January 2017 review of submission by Shagadelik
What does it mean if one can't find references, reviews, articles etc. about a book but finds the book itself on Archive.org? What happens to philosophical questions about absence of evidence being evidence of absence when the object itself makes an appearance? These are questions Wikipedia needs to answer so that rejections of such pages do not seem like injustice.

ABOUT THE PAGE I ATTEMPTED TO CREATE: This page was for a book, Mysore, by an Indian writer, R K Narayan. I couldn't find references to it and I had never heard of it till I stumbled upon it in a book search on Archive.org. I created a Wiki page so visitors to Narayan's page could go to the book's page and find the downloadable link there. Narayan wrote this 1944 travel book about Mysore state in South India. It is a departure from his normal genre of fiction. It may have been a welcome paid assignment by the Indian Government during the economic crunch of the war years.

Shagadelik (talk) 15:20, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello, Shagadelik. Happy New Year and thank you for your submission to Wikipedia.  To answer your initial question -- if one can not find discussion of a book in reliable sources, then that book will not be considered "notable" in the sense that Wikipedia uses the word.  And a book that is not considered notable will not have an article on Wikipedia.  As an alternative to having its own article, you might consider placing a link to the Archive.org copy as an External Link in other articles.  For example, a link to the text might be a useful addition to the article on Mysore, and it might be a useful addition to the article on R. K. Narayan.  In each case, the acceptability of adding the link will depend on the consensus of the editors who work on those articles, so I encourage you to engage in discussion with them if they have any questions about adding such a link.  I hope this response has been helpful.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:07, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

22:11:17, 1 January 2017 review of submission by Daniela-S
Daniela-S (talk) 22:11, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello, I created a page for my friend Daniella Sieff and was clearly not at all successful in satisfying the Wiki Editor. Unfortunately, the editor dealing with me sent me rather rote responses which left me puzzled about how to improve my page. I read the recommended pages and tried to follow the advice, only to discover on resubmission that the editor had recommended deletion. I found this unsympathetic and unhelpful. I don't think I'm all that dim. I've managed academic websites in the past and have a doctorate in history. All advice will be gratefully received.
 * Hello, Daniela. Happy New Year and thank you for your submission to Wikipedia.  Also, thanks for stating that the subject of the submission is your friend, and not you yourself.  Without that statement, I would have assumed that you were writing an autobiography (which is discouraged per WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY).  However, writing about your friend also raises questions about your ability to write neutrally, a topic that is addressed in WP:COI.  And furthermore, having a username that implies you actually are the subject runs afoul of our policy on usernames, which is spelled out in WP:USERNAME (and see in particular the section on "Misleading username").  Let me also clear up a misperception that you seem to have -- the editor who nominated your submission for speedy deletion was not the same one who twice declined to accept it.  They are two different people who apparently have similar views on your submission.


 * And frankly, I'm a third one. Although I did not conduct a thorough review, I noticed that many of your references don't discuss your friend at all, and others do so only briefly.  A basic bit of advice that is often given to new editors here is this -- writing the article should be the last thing that you do.  The acceptability of any article for publication on Wikipedia depends on the existence of reliable sources that are independent of the subject and that discuss the subject in depth.  The first step, then, is to assemble those sources and write an article that uses only the material in those sources.  After that, reliable sources that don't meet the requirements for being independent and in-depth can be used to add helpful detail to that core material.  And that's the problem I see here -- there just doesn't seem to be enough of the reliable-independent-in-depth material to support an article.  The most helpful source that I saw was the review from Routledge about one of your friend's books, but that one source wouldn't be enough to support an article about the book, let alone the author.


 * I'll finish here by offering a bit of friendly advice. The draft's Talk page contains your response to the speedy-deletion nomination, in which you essentially argue that your draft should be kept simply because one of Wikipedia's five million existing articles might also suffer a similar defect.  This is not going to be a successful argument.  Instead, you would do better to substantially trim the draft down to neutrally-worded information that appears in third-party reliable sources.  Doing so would place your submission in a much better light.  I hope this response has been helpful.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 23:58, 1 January 2017 (UTC)