Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books/Non-fiction article

Homo Ludens
I have been working on Homo Ludens (Book) for some time. Recently an Editor has criticized my attempt to elaborate the text in detail, specifically by chapter. From the comments made, I deduced that perhaps the Editor in question was referring to books in general and I wished to argue that scientific books need to be treated differently.

I have two other books of a similar nature in hand:
 * The Gutenberg Galaxy
 * The Internet Galaxy

The work on these 3 has taken about 3 months so far (spare time).

Now I really do want to conform to best practice and so I arrive here... to find that the info on science-oriented books is... missing?

I really need some help and advice on how to proceed.

In addition, there are these stubs:

They have been there since I started. How does one negotiate between 2 interested parties: Books and Anthropology?

--Михал Орела (talk) 14:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions for non-fiction science book
Since I do not find any information on the best practice in writing about science-oriented books then I will attempt to document my own. The first easy observation to make is that the work is hard. At the very least one gives the overview and table of contents. But this can not be sufficient. There must be the equivalent of the plot-summary somehow. When I started I resolved the problem by asking myself how might I characterize a particular topic or chapter?

The immediate solution was to choose a characteristic quotation from the text itself. This proved controversial and I knew it was not ideal and there seemed to be no guidelines. Nevertheless I persisted. Now after all this time I see what it was I attempted. The chosen quotation, good or bad, was this author's way of review — review by a short text.

Coming back to the quotation after a sufficiently long period of time allowed me to see why I had picked that particular quotation. It was like a note to indicate what I considered to be one of the main arguments used by the author.

So! The strategy was: comment out the quotation and fill in the text inspired by it. Any subsequent editor will see the commented text that led to the review.

A second important note on articles for non-fiction science books: one must not only have read the entire book as any reader would, but one must re-read it again in order to review it to capture the critical scientific synopsis, that thing which really characterizes the book as being scientific-worthy. --Михал Орела (talk) 19:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have somewhat of a similar problem. I write on engineering books and find a similar lack of guidance so to speak. Best wishes to you ... Risk Engineer (talk) 14:26, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Contents (and notability thereof)
Hi all

Wanted your views on the following. This previous version of Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream includes without comment the full ToC, which I deleted as "unencylopedic". Another editor question this decision, pointing out (among other things) that WP:BOOKS provided for a template heading "Contents / Chapters".

In order to avoid specious arguments of this nature, perhaps the caveat that is provided in this page (if not other similar ones) could be expanded to note something along the lines that "an exhaustive list of contents, without any editorial commentary or significance, should not be included".

Thoughts?

Bongo matic  23:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree that a section consisting solely of a table of contents is of questionable encyclopedic value. I had come across .  It's kind of like writing an article by only creating section headings, with no content in them; it seems like it's done when editors have nothing to contribute to the article. Шизомби (talk) 06:59, 8 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Following discussion at Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science I have implemented Bongomatic's suggestion. Hpvpp (talk) 23:18, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Summarizing
My desire is to summarize all the chapters in a book, but my concern is perhaps including too much information on each chapters, rather than too little. Any examples of a lengthy non-fiction book with well summarized chapters? 76.173.203.21 (talk) 20:57, 25 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In general, every chapter shouldn't be summarized unless they are so distinct as to require it. It would be better to summarize the book as a whole, if possible. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 21:01, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Synopsis Bloat Warnings
Hi there. I've created a couple of user talkpage templates, template:uw-plotsum1 and template:uw-plotsum2, that can be used in cases where editors are significantly bloating synopses in violation of the guidelines. I'd appreciate any feedback you may have, preferably left on the talk pages for the templates themselves rather than here. You're also welcome to make any changes that you feel will improve the templates. Thanks! Doniago (talk) 14:10, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment: I have created a thread at Template talk:Uw-plotsum1 copying over all comments made up to this point. Please take any further discussion to the template talk page. Big Bird (talk • contribs) 19:36, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

The Discovery, Purchase, and Settlement, of Kentucke
The page The Discovery, Purchase, and Settlement, of Kentucke appears to be an original work of criticism of a book of that name, written by a student or students of the University of Michigan in response to a 2012 course assignment. The article does not cite secondary sources, and may need an extensive re-write. Cnilep (talk) 03:54, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

This guideline needs finishing
I came here hoping for some guidance on reviewing a book article submitted for GA. Sadly, the page seems almost entirely irrelevant to me. It has only detailed information for a biographies. I see a heading for science books (the kind I am reviewing), but it is a completely empty section. Even the section that does exist seems to have not been thought through and I am finding it hard to adapt it. For instance, it talks about where the ISBN number should be added, but the book I am reviewing is a historical book without such a number. There are alternative catalogues that can be used in these cases (e.g. Worldcat OCLC numbers) but these are not mentioned.

I would also add that infoboxes are not obligatory (and are often controversial). The page should either not prescribe infoboxes or else give a rationale why these articles should be treated more strictly than set out at MOS:INFOBOX. SpinningSpark 18:28, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:NONFICTION shortcut
I decided to WP:BEBOLD and create the shortcut NONFICTION to this page, as a parallel to WP:FICTION and MOS:FICT. Hopefully this will become a formal Manual of style page or Guideline, to get better visibility as a resource for new and established editors alike. --Animalparty! (talk) 06:44, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

New editions
How do we deal with new editions? If a new edition is a substantial rewrite do we put a notice at the top of the page and start to rewrite the article? New page?--Akrasia25 (talk) 10:55, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Tables of contents
This page says:


 * an exhaustive list of contents, without any editorial commentary or significance, should not be included.

It then also says:


 * Unless the list has encyclopedic value it is better to convey this in the synopsis.

This second sentence does not make sense - "this" does not refer to anything. It is also too vague to be useful. What encyclopedic value could there ever be in copying out a list of contents of a book? I suggest that there could never be any, and propose that this second sentence simply be removed. If anyone believes otherwise, I'd very much like to hear your arguments. 131.251.253.112 (talk) 12:28, 3 May 2023 (UTC)


 * What encyclopedic value could there ever be in copying out a list of contents of a book? Well, an encyclopedia article on a book should say what the book contains. Being able to tell at a glance the differences between how two textbooks on a subject organize their presentation and which topics they choose to cover is helpful. Being able to wiki-link chapter titles to other encyclopedia articles integrates the article on the book with the rest of the encyclopedia. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 13:05, 5 May 2023 (UTC)


 * It's generally poor encyclopedic style to robotically list the table of contents in any article. It often reads as trying to inflate word count to please a teacher, and results in bloated number of unnecessary subheadings. Look at This Book Is Gay for an example of what not to do. Chapters can be concisely summarized without garish bullet points as demonstrated at Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty. The few exceptions where singling out individual chapters might be appropriate include books whose individual chapters have received extensive scholarly attention, such as On the Origin of Species. &#45;-Animalparty! (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2024 (UTC)