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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. This is a close call, but I read an emergent consensus that ReaderOfThePack's improvements alongside a possible expansion of the NBOOK criteria as sufficient to go ahead and close this. Certainly no prejudice against renomination (perhaps with a bias towards merge/redirect) if the consensus of the notability discussion goes in a different direction, but it seems, for now, this can be safely closed. Go Phightins! 01:12, 10 March 2021 (UTC) Go Phightins! 01:12, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Strange Eden

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Strange Eden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Skipping PROD as it's a work of a major author. But it is just a short story, and one that seems to have trouble meeting WP:GNG/WP:NBOOK. My BEFORE gave me only snippet view in one book that suggests there may be some discussion of this on pages 44-45 of Lord Rc (1 July 2007). Pink Beam: A Philip K. Dick Companion. Lulu.com. ISBN 978-1-4303-2437-9. (but lulu.com is WP:SPS). There is also a podcast dedicated to this story [1]. And that's it, all other mentions I saw are just trivial (WP:SIGCOV-failing) bibliographical notices that the story was published in 1954. I couldn't find as much as a single sentence about its reception/significance. But perhaps someone has something that is not well indexed in Google and like, that contains a review or at least a paragraph about the story? (Just remember, we need more than plot summaries). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:43, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:43, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:43, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:43, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I would point out that just passing WP:NBOOK is not a guaranteed reason for an article to remain by itself, as even that guideline states that it "is not an absolute guarantee that there will necessarily be a separate, stand-alone article entirely dedicated to that book", and that reliable sources are still needed. In this case, the seemingly complete lack of coverage in reliable sources this particular story has received would, I would argue, indicate that a separate, stand-alone article would not be appropriate. Rorshacma (talk) 20:37, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It also says This guideline provides some additional criteria for use in deciding whether a book should or should not have an article on Wikipedia. Satisfying this notability guideline generally indicates a book warrants an article and after the bit you quoted Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article. Andrew and I have put the case for that discussion.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 22:13, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus I didn't have time to look properly last night. Fellow editors have found refs, and this morning I have added another, and the copyright paperwork from 1983 that was on wikimedia commons. Looking at the other short story collections, large number have one reference from the Locus Index.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:12, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Davidstewartharvey, This is not a short story collection. Nice job expanding the bibliography and even finding the A copyright renewal notice document, but those are WP:PRIMARY, not independent sources that don't contribute to establishing notability. What we really need is to show that the story won some awards, or at the very least, it was reviewed and generated some reception in reliable sources. If it helps, I just expanded another stub about a sf story with such reception that indicates the story is significant: Now:_Zero#Reception. But I can't find such a discussion about Strange Eden (although RotP did find one source, discussed below, it's a good start). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:18, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I know they are primary sources but they add to the story. I found the copyright but unfortunatley the story about Dicks son putting the wrong date on as the copyright had expired is on a self published website. My point is a collection of his short stories have only a listing in a directory of Science fiction as the only ref. There is no example of impact. They are on Wikipedia under WP:Nactor #5, or should they be put to AFD? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:26, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Technically this is a book now, even if an ebook, as it has been published ISBN 9781435509771. Beyond Lies the Wub (collection), Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities, Second Variety (1989 collection), The Father-Thing (collection) (which also contains Strange Eden), The Days of Perky Pat (collection), The Little Black Box (collection) all have one ref or a link to the same database that this page was originally. If we delete this page then these need to be AFD too, even though I think they meet Wp:Nbook #5.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 08:38, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Davidstewartharvey, In all honesty, the story itself is more meaningful and notable than the anthologies, which are just collections of stories. At least, that's how it should be in theory (since there's little creativity that goes into selection stories for an anthology, comparing to actually writing the said stories; in the end the best one could say is that anthology a has a space opera theme, anthology b collects works than won a particular award that year, and anthology c contains stories editors x and y liked...). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:44, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the stories are actually more important. Some of the anthologies seem to be actually just rehashed versions of previous anthologies, and many don't seem to have much acclaim from reviews - there seems more interest in certain stories, or like the Minority Report are famous because of adaptions.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I'm kind of torn. On one hand, I do think that PKD is notable enough to where any of his works would be notable as well. On the other, there's really not a lot of sourcing out there. This poses an issue as to what can really be done here since we can't truly flesh the article out that much. We could add a section on when it was released and some mentions of the collections it's been released in since then. However this also needs sections on things like themes, reception, and development. It's entirely possible that there are sources out there, but they aren't on the internet for whatever reason. I'll try and see what I can do, though. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:26, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I did manage to find some coverage of themes in a PhD thesis, so there's that. I'm not really content to keep it on that alone, but the article is more fleshed out now. At the very worst I think this should redirect to perhaps the The Father-Thing (collection), but with the history intact so that if/when more sourcing becomes available this can be restored. I am more certain now that there's likely coverage off the internet, but can't find anything that would make enough of a slam bang case to make this a more comfortable keep for me. (Not arguing keep or delete at the moment, just saying that I wouldn't be comfortable arguing for a keep at this point sinc ethe sourcing is still weak.) ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:33, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's my conundrum as well. I'd say that currently the page likely has more comprehensive information on the story than any other place on the internet, but it just needs more sourcing since we can't use WP:ITSUSEFUL as a justification. If anyone can access it, this might offer something useful but it doesn't want to come up for me. It may be a result of my being in the US, as I know some sites are geographic specific. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:17, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • ReaderofthePack, Indeed. The page is now well written and useful. On another hand, WP:ITSUSEFUL is a relevant critique to consider here. Let's hope we can dig something more, one more source to warrant keeping this (I interpret GNG as requiring two sources, and you found one - although WP:SIGCOV is an issue, too, sigh). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:21, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm leaning more towards merge now. I've been searching for hours, off and on, but can't find anything really substantial. The most I found was a post on SFFaudio where they claim that the story is in the public domain due to a filing error, but I'm not even entirely sure if the site is usable as a RS or not. They have editorial oversight but the formatting on some of their posts leaves a little to be desired. I'm thinking that we could probably selectively merge some of the information into the article "The Father-Thing (collection)". To avoid this putting undue weight on one short story we could flesh out the article to include brief information on each individual story, then put a condensed version of any individual story coverage in the reception section. This could prove to be a reasonable alternative if there are any other short stories that have similar issues. I really, really want to argue for a keep here but I just can't justify it. It feels too much like I'm bending the rules in a way they're not meant to be bent. I get the feeling you're kind of feeling the same here. If there were just one more reasonably good source I'd argue for keep but I just can't find anything. I don't think that the notability guidelines cover reprints in collections and I'm leery about arguing for that, given that it seems like it'd be an easily exploited loophole. I'll broach the subject at NBOOK to see what they think. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:26, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The copyright thing appears on quite a few message boards about Dick, but I can't find anything concrete other than the actual form on wiki media (which is a federal released document) which shows the wrong date! As per the discussion above The Father-Thing (collection) has only a reference to Locus, which is just a listing so is worse referenced than this article is now!Davidstewartharvey (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I started a discussion here. It's more of a feeler to see how feasible such a guideline would be, but I'd like feedback. So far I think for it to work it'd have to be limited to academic/scholarly reprints, so it wouldn't help out here even if were to be instantly approved, but it could help out in other marginal cases. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:47, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , we read that "The posthumous growth in Dick's reputation is, of course, partially due to the huge amount of critical attention his work has received, an attention so excessive, given the number of sf writers who also merit sustained study, that at least one scholarly journal refused in the early twenty-first century to consider, at least for a period, any further essays on his work." Per our policy WP:NOTPAPER, we have no such constraints. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:31, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Andrew, I purposefully raised the possibility that all of Dick's short stories could be notable because he is such an important author and because I do not consider it shocking if we would virtually add over a hundred articles to WP. I just haven't made the value judgment that the author is that notable. It's an option we should consider. My comment is not a keep or delete opinion but outlines the routes under which the article could be notable. I would not have mentioned these routes if they were pure hypotheticals. The other route is the story's own publicity. gidonb (talk) 00:08, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Need more discussion on whether ReaderOfThePack's improvements have helped changed consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:04, 28 February 2021 (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.
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