Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Finite and Infinite Games

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. MBisanz ^talk 00:17, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Finite and Infinite Games

Looks to me to violate WP:BK. In particular, the only reviews I see for this book are by people who are caught up in the guru-qualities of the author who is notable as an academic researcher and teacher but not necessarily as a spiritual leader (this is not a notable text book, for example). In any case, this particular book hasn't seemed to really register as anything in the history of ideas, nor has it spawned any notable movements, won any notable awards from groups that aren't simply front-organizations for the lazy spiritualism that the author espouses. It looks to me like the entire thing is one big soapbox. Let it get famous outside the New Age community and make enough of an impact so that there are independent, outside reviews that can explain the importance (or lack thereof) of this book in the grand scheme of similar ideas/publications. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:58, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Article is a coatrack for book's contents, as are many others. The notability of the book is not established by secondary sources. Having said that, I don't think that WP should discriminate against authors based on their spiritual beliefs. Redddogg (talk) 05:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep: The book has been reviewed by the New York Times ([1]), though the review is negative, not to mention extremely catty. There are a few other reviews in major outlets: The Independent ([2]) for instance, though that review requires $$$ to view and so I haven't read it in its entirety. Anyhow, there appears to be something there in terms of secondary-source coverage - enough for a weak keep, but not enough for a strong keep. MastCell ^Talk 06:10, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I'm not convinced of the notability of the book, and notability is not inherited from the author. rootology (C)(T) 19:14, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The books itself does not seem to meet notability criteria, though the author probably does. Perhaps some of the content can be merged into James P. Carse before deletion. Deli nk (talk) 20:25, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There are a good number of mainstream reviews, - the NYT, the Independent, per above, and The Advocate (Baton Rouge) [3]. (16 gnews hits), 322 gbooks hits (and 175 gscholar hits attesting to influence in business, philosophy and the humanities. See e.g. [4], [5], [6] , or this address -Mathematics as Metaphor, to the International Congress of Mathematicians by the eminent Yuri Manin using Carse's book's concept of "metaphor." These seem to support keeping under WP:BOOK.John Z (talk) 05:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 07:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 08:00, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Smerge or rewrite as a stub. The NYTimes review, which is fully readable, makes me believe that the current content is not written from the independent sources, and hence the current content should go. The number of reviews for a philosophy text indicates to me that we should have some coverage. If anyone wants to pay to read the other reviews and write a real article that would be great. But the NYTimes review all by itself would support a paragraph of content, either as a stub or in the author's article. GRBerry 14:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Searching, I think the book is more notable than the author. Having searched, I was only able to add one sentence to the author's biography from a clearly independent source - so that article is now two sentences long. I doubt that the author's article would survive AFD, so can't see merging as a good idea. GRBerry 17:01, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that initially too, but there are a number of paper-source biographies about the author and I think, per WP:PROF, he maintains his notability. The NYU faculty directory, for example, contains an interesting biography of him. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:22, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So use it please. The article on him is somewhere between a sub-stub and a stub, with a book list thrown on the end. GRBerry 17:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The reviews linked above show that this clearly gets through WP:BK. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Per previous keeps; those weren't even exhaustive searches. And I note that the NYT review's criticism is not at all up to the quality I expect of a real philosopher, which makes me wonder. --Gwern (contribs) 03:15 26 December 2008 (GMT)
Keep per the sources provided above. John254 17:24, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.