Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Advanced Perl Programming Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Advanced_Perl_Programming
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.
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. —Ruud10:56, 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. —Ruud13:34, 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]
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]
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]
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]
Uhm. Well, you did a great job of demolishing a couple arguments I never made, there. Could I introduce you to the General Notability Guideline, and the citations I've added to the article demonstrating that this topic meets it? And I don't even know what to do with "these are technical books, so they don't get coverage in the media, so they're not notable" when you have to be staring right at citations of the book's media coverage. WP:BK#Academic and technical books is trying to establish a basis for using things like academic citations for establishing notability for academic and technical books so that we don't wind up throwing out academically important works because of their lack of mainstream media coverage, not cause us to throw out books that have notability-establishing mainstream media coverage. —chaos5023 (talk) 11:59, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that "you and I read them" (in the figurative, not literal, sense) would seem like the very definition of notability to me. —Ruud10:59, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When I went to Amazon.com to look up this book, I searched under books for "Perl programming". I got 764 results (just books) and sorted by "bestselling". This title was number 188. Maybe we should write articles about numbers 1 thru 187. There was another book with the exact same title with a different publisher and author listed at number 107. This is an obscure book on a very specialized topic with a rather limited audience. That was my point about "you and I read them". IT professionals, especially ones who write Perl code, is a pretty limited subset of the population. --rogerd (talk) 14:58, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What "significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources"?? The article has references to two obscure publications (yea, I get Network Computing, too, and so can anyone else who has an email address), and you listed a collection of blog posts that from the publisher's web site (but thankfully didn't include that as a reference, since it doesn't qualify). Big deal! Between the two of us, we have written about as much about this book as your "multiple independent reliable sources" have. Remember from GNG, "self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, autobiographies, and press releases are not considered independent". I know you think this is a cool book, but there isn't much else to justify keeping it. I am trying to assume good faith, but what is your great concern with keeping this obscure little book from being deleted? --rogerd (talk) 17:08, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I give up. You can review WP:RS for what a reliable source is and why your personal belief that a publication is "obscure" doesn't relate to it, and I'll note that "oh gosh I really want to AGF but I just cannot imagine that you would argue the way you're doing without a hidden COI" is not what success at AGF looks like. Beyond that, I'm done. If the article gets deleted because of this nonsense, it'll be trivial to get it back at DRV. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:33, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My goodness, Chaos5023. This can't be the first AfD where someone's taken a position you don't agree with. Anyway, it appears you have the !votes to win, but that's not enough? I think you could agree to disagree, be a gracious winner and move on. There's no need for histrionics about going to DRV if you don't get your way. Msnicki (talk) 17:53, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Keep The topic satisfies the GNG, having been noticed by multiple sources — here's another. The information might be more usefully presented as part of a general bibliography of books about PERL but that's not a matter for AFD. Warden (talk) 12:26, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
delete per nom, 'an average programming book' . We've recently seen either the Camel or Llama books (maybe both) at AfD and either of those had a really significant impact on Perl and the Perl community. This one didn't. It's a good book, but there's just not much to say about it - which is reflected in an article here that says less than a typical Amazon review would. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:30, 30 June 2011 (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.