Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse
Please be aware that popularity does '''''NOT''''' count as an argument to keep an article. Popularity is not how things are decided on Wikipedia and that no matter how many of you come on here with arguments that essentially boil down to |"I like it", that's not how articles are kept and that these things are not decided on a vote. Your arguments have to fall within the boundaries of  and not within . Reliable sources are necessary to show that these books pass  and most importantly, they have to be specifically about this book. Sources that are about the author do not count towards notability for this specific book. Saying that the books exist or that they sell well or are on the shelves of various bookstores also does not count towards notability. If that was the case, then there'd be many more articles for books on Wikipedia. Existing is not notability and notability is not inherited by the author being notable. Only rarely can an author be so notable that all of their works inherit notability and Rawles is not one of those authors. This isn't a slight, as less than 1% of any author that ever existed has this level of notability and less than 5% of any living or deceased persons that ever existed in any given field has this level of notability that extends to their works, whether literary, scientific, or otherwise. There are no sources to show notability for these books and that's pretty much the long and short of it. The big thing about a lot of the “sources” put on the article is that they aren’t the type that gives notability. Being on bestseller lists doesn’t give notability per Wikipedia’s rules, not even when it’s the New York Times’s bestseller list. Do I necessarily agree with this? No, not always, but that’s pretty much the way it is. We can’t keep an article because it’d hurt your feelings to have a book deleted by an author that you particularly like. I’ve had to vote “delete” on AfDs for various articles that contained things that I’ve liked and would have liked to have kept, but the articles didn’t pass notability guidelines. My original move for these books was to merge the pertinent data into the main article and redirect there, but my actions were reverted because the books “exist”. Again, existing is not notability. As far as showing that these books were particularly influential, you’d have to prove that in reliable sources. Just for the new people coming in, a reliable source must be independent of the author. Anything he personally publishes, whether via his blog, his books, his agents, his publisher, or anyone involved with him or the process of getting his books put into the general public, anything from those sources is considered to be . You can’t use those to show notability or to really back anything up. You have to back up the claims from primary sources with multiple independent and reliable sources. Here’s where the difficulty comes in when it comes to things within a group that isn’t uber-mainstream: you have to put it in reliable sources. Most blogs aren’t usable, which means that you can’t just run out and post a blog claiming that this is notable. It won’t work and if it was that easy, I’d have created a million blog entries to save various articles from deletion. The only time a blog is usable is if it’s by someone like the editor of a paper such as the New York Times or if it’s by a very notable person, such as someone who is routinely quoted in newspapers or books. Most people don’t reach this level of notability and reliability. As far as when you do have people who reach that level, you have to actually link to something they published. We can’t go by quotes posted by Rawles on his website because we have no way of knowing how much of it might have been edited or revised to look good, or even pertains to the actual book at hand. We have to look for the actual source, which is why most author blurbs for various books are never used. It’s fairly common in the literary world to have blurbs for past books appear on current books, revised to appear as if they are for the new one. You can never take anything at face value. Review-wise, they only count if they’re posted by reliable sources such as Publishers Weekly, New York Times, and the like. Reviews by “average” people such as you and myself don’t count, no matter how many of them there might be. Is it frustrating that you could have something with a decent fan following within its niche not pass notability guidelines? You betcha, but “it’s popular” stopped being a valid argument years ago when certain authors (which shall not be named) started creating fake reviews and posts about themselves in order to bolster arguments to keep their articles, which is why the guidelines for books are so strict now. To show notability you have to provide independent and reliable sources to show that these specific books are notable. Not show that the genre its posted in is notable. Not show that the author is notable. Not show that there are lots of people in the prepper movement. You have to specifically show that Founders and Survivors are notable by showing reliable sources that cover these specific books in depth. Passing mentions in relation to other things does not count. That’s the long and short of it. No amount of “keeps” will salvage the article if it lacks these reliable sources
— User:Tokyogirl79, 03:36, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Stance: comment
Cited policy: WP:ILIKEIT||WP:GNG||WP:AADD||WP:NBOOK||WP:PRIMARY (Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions)