Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Perl Cookbook

Perl Cookbook

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No independent secondary sources to establish notability as required by WP:GNG. Google search reveals blog posts and reader reviews at Amazon and elsewhere, but no formal reviews that qualify as reliable sources WP:RS. Wikipedia is not a catalog WP:NOTCATALOG. Msnicki (talk) 21:30, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. One of many programming books. Not clear how this one is more notable than average book of this kind. FuFoFuEd (talk) 00:09, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~The whole~~ A lot of the O'Reilly catalog appears to have been copied onto WP; see Category:O'Reilly Media books. I assume good faith WP:AGF and that many contributors to these pages thought they were doing the right thing. But WP is not a catalog WP:NOTCATALOG and it's pretty unlikely there are sources to establish notability WP:GNG for most if not all of these books. Msnicki (talk) 18:32, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

O'Reilly has way more books than that. But those which do have pages here seem to have been selected on editors' interests. A lot of Perl stuff for instance, probably because some of the Perl consultants edit here. FuFoFuEd (talk) 19:12, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

People write about what they're interested in. I don't think there is some evil conspiracy going on here to indirectly increase the revenue streams of these hypothetical consultants... —Ruud 14:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:23, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:23, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Among the most notable and iconic of O'Reilly's books. —Ruud 10:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A policy-based argument would be more helpful. Msnicki (talk) 13:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's notable? —Ruud 14:04, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Based on satisfying what part of those guidelines with what evidence? Simply claiming it's notable without explaining why is an argument to avoid. WP:ITSNOTABLE Msnicki (talk) 14:15, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, I had this book confused with Wall's Programming Perl when I made the comment above. That clearly makes its notability somewhat less than blatantly obvious. However, apart from the blog posts and reader reviews the nominator mentioned, I found reviews of this book in the Library Review and The Computer Bulletin. Also mentioned 21 times in other books. —Ruud 14:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I clicked though a few of those links. Not surprisingly, they are other books in the O'Reilly catalog, e.g. [1]. It's a common practice for commercial publishers to plug their other books in their own books in an attempt to increase sales. That kind of citation is not independent. FuFoFuEd (talk) 19:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, more than half of those, are simply back matter mentions of the kind: "X, author of such and such book (Perl Cookbook in this case), says this other book is awesome". Such mentions are mere PR for the person doing the back matter endorsements; a way to get something for their hassle, in the form of publicity for their own book(s). FuFoFuEd (talk) 19:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to User:Dominus the Perl Cookbook sold at least 150 000 copies [2]. Anyone know of a reliable source against which we could verify this? —Ruud 20:50, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]