Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Advanced Perl Programming

Advanced Perl Programming

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Seems to be an average programming book. No indication of what makes it notable. FuFoFuEd (talk) 00:10, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. No independent secondary sources to establish notability as required by WP:GNG or WP:NBOOK. Wikipedia is not a catalog WP:NOTCATALOG. Msnicki (talk) 00:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Cited in 7 other books. The (non)-existence of some independent book reviews from reliable sources could still sway my vote either way. As the nominator has not bothered to look for those I'll go with keep for now. —Ruud 10:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- If we kept every computer science publication that had 7 citations we'd have a ridiculous amount of barely notable material here. You have just voted to delete some with 16 citations at Natural Constraint Language. FuFoFuEd (talk) 11:41, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Because a scientific paper citing a scientific paper is more common than a popular/regular book citing another book. They should be weighed differently. —Ruud 13:34, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - I don't think so. Instead with commercial publishers it's quite common to see in the preface: "this book addresses such and such audience and covers such and such and such material. For books on such and such related material or for such and such slightly different audience see <plug our other books here>". FuFoFuEd (talk) 19:48, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nowhere in WP:NBOOK do I see any provision that makes mere citations relevant to establishing notability. Msnicki (talk) 13:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nowhere in WP:NBOOK do I see any provision that makes mere citations not relevant to establishing notability. —Ruud 14:10, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What part of "A book is generally notable if it verifiably meets through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria: 1. The book has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself ..." [emphasis added] seems unclear? (This book certainly doesn't appear to meet any of the other criteria.) Msnicki (talk) 14:35, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The part where it says "if" instead of "if and only if". —Ruud 15:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Typically in mathematics and related subjects, "if" is equivalent to "iff" in a definition because it gives a characterization of whatever is being defined. I imagine the policy here follows a similar style. 203.79.116.199 (talk) 01:09, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've been looking to see how other publishers are treated in Wikipedia. For example Springer has Graduate Texts in Mathematics, a single article for the whole series. The individual blue links are to math articles not to book articles. I'm certain that every book in that list has some reviews in mathematics journals. They do no qualify for individual articles according to WP:NBOOK though, which requires at least one such review in a venue of general interests, which mathematics textbooks are unlikely to have, as are programming books. Perhaps creating an article for O'Reilly Media#Animal books would be more reasonable. The series can be presumed to be more notable than the individual books. (Oddly enough someone created an article only for their less notable Head First (book series)) Right now O'Reilly Media#Animal books lists only a handful of books, the selection is haphazard, and the individual articles do not even show how they pass WP:GNG, let alone the more demanding NBOOK. I doubt the other/missing books in the series differ significantly in (real-world) notability. FuFoFuEd (talk) 12:28, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The fact the publisher has reused the title for completely different book (as "2nd edition") is another argument for non-notability. Compare with Oracle PL/SQL programming, another book from the series with multiple editions or with Learning Perl, which also has multiple editions and at least claims in the preface of the 5th edition to have had half a million readers, a significant number for a programming book. FuFoFuEd (talk) 19:48, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. A minimal effort, i.e. looking through this page for the sources that Wikipedia would consider reliable, demonstrates notability. I'd do the rescue legwork like I did at Perl Cookbook, but I'm feeling like I should spend some time on my actual job. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:17, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Notability-establishing cites now added. If anybody thinks there's a problem with the two I did, let me know and I'll keep going. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The sources exist as demonstrated above, the other O'Reilly Perl books articles have been improved and kept, but those of us who've rescued those articles have other things to deal with. Jclemens (talk) 03:02, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm reserved on those sources, which are mined by the company itself and even if assumed true, are of little value as RS. "Jeremy Beker, Williamsburg Macromedia User Group, May 24, 2003 ", "-beirne@ald.net from Cuyahoga Falls, OH , 09/27/97, rating=8, Review on www.amazon.com " (srsly?) There may be some in-depth reviews satisfying WP:GNG, but those have not been put forth here. FuFoFuEd (talk) 03:35, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Like I said, they have to be filtered for Wikipedia reliability. But they do a fine job of illustrating just how unlikely a total sourcing failure is. IMO, the question that an AfD nominator should be asking themselves before writing the nom is "do I think somebody who's really trying to source this article is going to fail at it?" If the answer is "no", then what exactly would one be doing by writing the nom anyway? Either 1) trying to delete an article that one knows should not be deleted 2) using AfD as a cattle-prod to force labor out of other volunteers. Neither of these is acceptable. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:08, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Rescue legwork now done (I had to go all the way down to the sixth entry in O'Reilly's flack page). —chaos5023 (talk) 18:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete wikipedia is not a book index, and this book isn't quite Gone with the Wind--rogerd (talk) 22:26, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is WP:CRUFTCRUFT, not an argument founded in policy or guidelines. —chaos5023 (talk) 00:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh really? Thanks for enlightening me. Well how about this: Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information and notablity of academic and technical books. I work in IT, and have dozens of various Wrox, O'Reilly, IDG, Que, etc., books, most of them are about as notable as this book, and they don't and shouldn't have articles written about them. These technical books have a pretty limited printing, are not widely distributed, and do not receive coverage or reviews in the media. In the past few years, even large Barnes and Noble bookstore have been reducing the number of tech books that they shelve. Just because you and I read them doesn't make them notable. --rogerd (talk) 04:34, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, m.o.p 04:59, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]