Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience

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 keep. By the end, people are agreeing that the article should be kept. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience

If you came here because someone asked you to, or you read a message on another website, please note that this is not a majority vote, but instead a discussion among Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia has policies and guidelines regarding the encyclopedia's content, and consensus (agreement) is gauged based on the merits of the arguments, not by counting votes.

However, you are invited to participate and your opinion is welcome. Remember to assume good faith on the part of others and to sign your posts on this page by adding ~~~~ at the end.

Note: Comments may be tagged as follows: suspected single-purpose accounts: {{subst:spa|username}}; suspected canvassed users: {{subst:canvassed|username}}; accounts blocked for sockpuppetry: {{subst:csm|username}} or {{subst:csp|username}}.

FailsWP:N and WP:BK, Googling shows no sources available to establish notability. Artw (talk) 16:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. —Artw (talk) 16:37, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions. —Artw (talk) 16:38, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep~~Merge to Michael Shermer, Keep~~ and link from Skeptic magazine. This is a notable book, and given time I'm sure references can be added. This appears, unfortunately, to be a bad faith nomination following a dispute at ANI, and at the articles on Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson. I hope that isn't the case. Verbal chat 16:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Should you find some reliable independent sources to establish notablity for this article I will of course withdraw the nomination. In the meantime it does not meet WP:N, and so is a perfectly valid article to bring to AFD. Please assume good faith. Artw (talk) 17:12, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'd support a merger and redirect per FTN and views here. This could have been dealt with on the article talk page; deletion was never a viable option and was premature. When decent refs are found the article could be spun out again, so nothing is lost. I therefore suggest the nominator withdraws the AfD. Verbal chat 19:48, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - !Vote changed to merge. Verbal chat 08:06, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - Changed back to keep per changes to article and arguments below (Doug, etc). Great work. Verbal chat 19:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Skeptic (U.S. magazine). There aren't a large number of independent reliable sources that refer to this encyclopedia, but it would fit very nicely as a subpart of the Skeptic magazine article, as it is based on articles that originally appeared in that publication. Fences&Windows 17:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge, but I'd favor Michael Shermer as the merge target, since he's listed as the author on WoldCat. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:31, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Michael Shermer per TimVickers. -- ǝʌlǝʍʇ ǝuo-ʎʇuǝʍʇ ^ssnɔsıp 19:19, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Nomination was clearly made in bad faith as part of an ongoing POV battle waged on another article in which the editor disputed the use of this book as a source, which deleting the article won't even accomplish anyway. The Google search posted to the article talk page shows multiple, independent reliable sources giving more than nontrivial coverage demonstrating notability, they just need to be added to the article. On top of that, WorldCat shows that the books is in fact in many libraries, more so than plenty other books that have been shown to be notable in previous AFDs. Merging doesn't make sense, as it is separate from all of the proposed merging topics. Michael Shermer is not the author but the editor, and there were a lot of them involved. The magazine is related, but this is above and beyond that. DreamGuy (talk) 19:55, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- comment - I've restored the Not a ballot template, which has been removed twice now, as there are comments both here and at WP:FTN which attempt to conflate the issue of whether this article meets WP:N with other issues. I will consider any attempt to remove it as vandalism. I will also ask the closing admins to disregard the votes of those whose comments to not address the specific policy issues on which the article fails. This is all very basic AFD stuff, and I am surprised at having to do it. Artw (talk) 20:48, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - You can choose to "consider" it vandalism, but that doesn't make it so. Furthermore you can demand that the closing admin ignore votes you disagree with, but that's not how things work here. This is VERY basic "AFD stuff". DreamGuy (talk) 18:27, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Michael Shermer per TimVickers. -- Johnfos (talk) 22:51, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Michael Shermer. Sources seem very hard to find for this book. Noirtist (talk) 14:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)— Noirtist (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Another bad faith POV-based edit: this editor came over from Ian Stevenson where he is trying first to claim the book is not a reliable source and then that it didn't say what it clearly said, all so he could remove the POV the expert opinion he disagrees with from the article in question. If Artw is arguing against people showing up and voting without following procedures, it's interesting to not that the only people actually doing so are people *he* brought over. 18:27, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete needs independent sources to establish notability. Dlabtot (talk) 18:54, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete not notable. Jeni ^(talk)_(Jenuk1985) 23:24, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Accusations of POV are not valid arguments. The article is unreferenced. Google news, Google Scholar and specific Google searches don't seem to return any WP:RS results with nontrivial coverage. I happen to like Shermer, but this book really doesn't seem to meet WP:NBOOK's notability guidelines for standalone articles. — Rankiri (talk) 02:33, 26 July 2009 (UTC)^{(see below)}[reply]
Merge to Michael Shermer Weak keep. Most mentions (e.g. here) appear to be in reference to Shermer. Would contemplate 'keep' if "significant coverage" independent of Shermer were found. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:34, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: the topic may meet the "multiple, non-trivial published works" criteria of WP:BK, but does not, as yet, meet the "at least some of these works serving a general audience" caveat to that criteria. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 08:03, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Meets "multiple, non-trivial published works" (and maybe WP:GNG), reviews to date aren't "serving a general audience", so still not a full-throated 'keep'. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 14:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge. To Michael Shermer --CrohnieGal^Talk 10:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Given the massive size of this two-volume work (903 pages), its significant price and the publisher's classification of it as an academic book, and the fact that a lot of the references to it in print are academic style citations in academic books [1] and papers [2], it should be considered as an academic book, for which the notability standards are different, and generally lower. (Its name might also be a clue that it was meant as an academic book.) Cardamon (talk) 20:29, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or merge to Skeptic (U.S. magazine) or The Skeptics Society. I don't see any reason for merging into Michael Shermer. If it is to be merged, it only makes sense to merge to Skeptic Magazine or Skeptics Society article. In order to keep, it needs to be expanded and establish notability. Bubba73 (if u cn rd ths u cn go to my talk page), 02:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
merge, not enough sources to write a full article (strange, I though that this book would have more reviews). Btw, another cite in a scholar book, pseudoscience in archeology, published by Routledge[3]. Also appears in a list of references for the Council of Australian University Librarians[4]. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. 3 reviews are provided on the article page, this page cites two more (American Reference Books Annual and Against the Grain) which each seem to be respectable reliable sources. Five sources more than meet Wikipedia:Notability. --GRuban (talk) 20:20, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Skeptic (U.S. magazine). Lippard (talk) 15:54, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I'm thoroughly persuaded by Cardamon and GRuban's arguments. The publicly unavailable reviews are legitimate[5]. The CHOICE review is concise (~150 words) but acceptable. It evaluates the book as "Optional. High school, college, and public libraries" and lists "weak article bibliographies...and inconsistency in writing quality and depth of subject coverage" as its most notable shortcomings. The encyclopedia is cited by other academic publications like Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience or General philosophy of science [6][7]; and a number of educational institutions seem to regard it as a valid academic reference[8][9][10] — Rankiri (talk) 17:15, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I have been trying to make up my mind, and Cardamon, GRuban, and particularly Rankiri have convinced me. I had already noted that there are quite a few citations to various articles in the book in other academic publications but had not been clear about the implications of that. Dougweller (talk) 18:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The further references found for the article have convinced me it's clearly notable. Nevard (talk) 06:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Reviews have now been found and added, it meeting all requirements a book has to in order to have its own wikipedia article. Dream Focus 13:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Hmm. I'm seeing the same references we had 2 days ago. All of which fail to give any indication of what the actual text of the reference is and it's degree of significance. Some links of quotes would do a lot here. From the look of the current Scitech Book News it consists of simple listings for books, and so tyhat one in particular would not count towards WP:N. Artw (talk) 16:37, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please take a look at WP:NB#Academic_books and ABC-CLIO. — Rankiri (talk) 17:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced that publication by ABC-CLIO confers automatic notability on these titles[11].Artw (talk) 19:25, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I only added these links as a supplement to my earlier post. — Rankiri (talk) 19:29, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The reviews and (especially) the citations of it in other works have convinced me that it can be its own article, as opposed to a part of the one on Shermer. Ergative rlt (talk) 02:30, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I agree with Dougweller - there has been significant intellectually independent coverage of this book and there is sufficient evidence of impact on the field. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:39, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I agree with the arguments made above in regards to academic books. --Krelnik (talk) 21:24, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Not only is it a reference book, but it holds a reputation among those whom its contents find in contention. Loren Coleman, for example, refers to it as "The Debunkers Bible" - though he says calls it that derisively, it does give some measure of the book's reputation.--Trevor Sinclair (talk) 23:24, 30 July 2009 (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.