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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 delete. MBisanz talk 00:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The UKA Press

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AfDs for this article:
The UKA Press (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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I came across this while in a heated debate over the article Eleanor Leonne Bennett. A search did not bring up anything to show that this publisher is notable. The earlier debate in 2006 wouldn't hold up under the current standards of WP:CORP, as there aren't really any sources out there that actually discuss the publisher. The article mentions that the authors have been reviewed by various sources or were nominated or won various things, but none of these are actually about the publisher itself and none of the awards appear to be about the publisher at all. I honestly don't think that reviews for the books are really enough to show notability when the publisher itself has not received any actual coverage outside of their own press releases. Some of the awards are ones from the publisher and given the lack of sources in the general sections, I'm not sure that some of the awards or reviews are for the editions of the books that were published by UKA Press. Some, as in the case of The Kommandant's Mistress, went on to be published by other presses. I'm actually unsure as to whether or not UKA Press actually published the book at all, so any notability for the book would not extend to UKA Press since it didn't publish that specific book. Most of what I can find in relation to this book when it comes to UKA Press is that it won one of the publisher's awards. Most of the reviews only briefly mention the publisher as an aside (this was published by so and so, etc) and as notability is not inherited by having notable persons work for the company or being otherwise associated with them, I don't see where this passes notability guidelines. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 09:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • The only problem is that notability is not inherited by having notable persons involved with the company. You could have President Obama or Prince William publish a book through UKA Press, yet that in itself does not extend notability to the publisher. It doesn't really matter if an author has received awards for other things, that notability still does not extend to the publishing company. As far as previous AfDs go, the rules for notability are always changing and very few of the current notability standards are the same as they were back in 2006. It is extremely common for many pages that previously survived an AfD to be challenged and deleted because they no longer pass the current standards of notability. The idea of WP:NTEMP does not supersede whatever the current standards of notability are for any subject. That policy tends to refer more to the idea that because something is older, such as someone trying to say that A Sucessora lacks notability because it was published so long ago. Now if say, in a year the notability standards for books change so dramatically that the book does not pass the current notability standards, it would be entirely reasonable for the entry to be deleted or redirected to an appropriate article. What I'm essentially trying to say is that passing a previous deletion from years ago when notability standards were far looser for corporations and articles in general doesn't really mean all that much when it comes to AfDs. Sometimes you'll have entries that are so overwhelmingly notable that it makes sense to close them early or vote keep, but most times the previous "keep" votes don't really have any weight in the current AfD because of how standards change.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 11:30, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The other big issue here is that much of what the article refers to are articles and sources that aren't actually about anything the company itself has produced. The award for Alexandria Szeman sounds impressive until you realize that it's just an aside and that the book in question was not published by UKA Press. Awards in general only extend notability if the book in question wins and even then, 99.9% of awards are not considered notable enough by Wikipedia standards to count towards notability or keep an article based upon that fact. Even if the articles are about books published by the company, you then have to look at how much the company comes into mention for the books, whether they're actual reviews or blurbs, as well as where the articles are posted. A book blurb (that 2-3 sentence bit on the cover from various authors for those coming into this not aware of what I'm talking about) is not the same thing as a review and is not considered to give notability as far as sources are concerned. A book review by a non-notable magazine, blog, or paper will not show notability either. It really boils down to the sources and articles that actually discuss the company just don't seem to exist and I honestly don't think that a one line mention in a random book review would really count as extending notability to the company when nobody has really seen fit to comment on the publisher. And like Voceditenore has said, WP:GHITS do not count towards notability. There have been AfDs where items have gotten millions upon millions of GHits and were still deleted for a lack of any reliable coverage. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 11:42, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I'm willing to be convinced to change my opinion if good sources somehow show up, but for now I can't find any. There is a certain case to be made for publishing houses inheriting the notability of the books they have published. But I have checked the sources and assertions provided in the Reviews and awards section. They simply do not stand up to scrutiny and the section is very misleading. The awards for two of the authors were not really awards - they were a "finalist" or "shortlist" placement, and the awards themselves are very marginally notable, if at all. The alleged reviews are actually simple publicity blurbs (not actual published reviews) See this for example. Note also the author of one of these alleged reviews: Ellen Tanner Marsh. The vast majority of the alleged reviews are also unreferenced. They lack detailed bibliographic information on the publication in which they supposedly appeared (date. author, and article title). Sometimes even the name of the publication is not given. Some of the books (the ones that might have genuine claims to notability) were reprints of previously published works by another publisher. This combined with zero coverage of the publishing house itself makes it very hard to make a case for keeping this article. Voceditenore (talk) 13:09, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I’ve posted this on the Bennett article, so I might as well post the UKA Press version here as well: Hello all, I see that the UKA Press page has been festooned with 'citation' notices and various other 'improvements' have been made. But just to let you know that I’m not taking part in any further discussions or editing on this article. Frankly, you can do what you like with it, I don’t really care. Since I’m constantly told my sources are ‘unreliable’, and the subject is ‘not notable’ enough (despite having published several extremely notable works by a world-renowned film historian, writer and directer), but no-one actually cares to find/look for any ‘reliable’ ones and help in a constructive way, but just blithely deletes my efforts, I bow out. I do find it a great shame that relatively new ‘editors’ such as Tokyogirl, who freely admits she’s ‘an AfD junkie’ and who, in fact, is responsible for some pretty dodgy articles herself (The Death of Bees’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Bees) is allowed free range to mangle articles in what is, presumably, a huge ego-trip. One wonders, in fact, why ‘The Death of Bees’ and ‘Windmill Books’ are any more ‘notable’ than UKA Press. I note that the ‘Bees’ article has incredibly clumsy sentence construction. I also found spelling errors and inconsistencies. It strikes me that this ‘editor’ needs to get her own house in order before criticising other so vociferously. Be that as it may, I have a very busy writers and resources website to run single-handedly, and I have no more time to waste banging my head against petty, petulant walls.AndreaUKA (talk) 16:51, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tokyogirl has been an editor here for 6 years with more than 13,000 edits. Even if she were a relatively new editor, your personal attack on her is completely uncalled for. I suggest you strike it. (It's also a classic example of how not to defend a position.) Voceditenore (talk) 17:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I concur completely with Voceditenore. In addition, what makes the 'Bees' article more valid than this one is that its references section contains discussion (not just incidental mentions) of the topic at hand in independent, reliable sources (in this case, newspapers). Your argument about Windmill Books doesn't make much sense, seeing as though it doesn't even have its own article. We have all tried looking for reliable sources about this publisher but have not found any, which is the reason we think it should be deleted in the first place. CtP (t • c) 20:56, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Andrea, I'm going to say this very bluntly: attacking my overall edits here on Wikipedia does not do anything other than make you look incredibly petty and spiteful, especially when many of those comments are obviously due to you being angry over your articles being up for deletion and your edits being removed because they are unsourced and as such, don't follow the rules for sourcing and notability that is required here on Wikipedia. The reason the other articles are kept is because they have multiple independent and reliable sources. I'm also, as others have said, an editor that has been here for about six years. I've not only created multiple articles, but I've also managed to do enough research to keep multiple articles from being deleted as well. My hard work has been noticed by other editors (some of which are admins that have been on here for longer than either of us) and I've had several articles show up on "Did You Know" because of my additions. I wasn't going to entirely pull out the "I've edited more and have a better knowledge of how notability and sourcing works on Wikipedia" card, but there it is: I have edited far more than you have and know more about what I'm talking about. All you've done so far is hold to a set of outdated standards of notability that no longer apply to the article and make a series of increasingly nasty swipes at me. I'm fully aware that my grammar is not up to the highest standards out there, but it's not like I have the grammar of a three year old. The only person being petty here is you. If I make grammatical or spelling errors, then fix them without making a big fuss over doing so or crying about how it supposedly makes me an inferior editor. All of these personal comments and swipes do not help you make your case. All it does is make you look petty.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 06:32, 7 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And as far as being an "AfD junkie", I like contributing to AfDs because I like seeing what I can keep. This does, of course, mean that I will also nominate things for deletion that I do not think belongs on Wikipedia or argue for their deletion. This isn't anything that would be a negative attribute as far as Wikipedia is concerned and doesn't make me a deletionist. I like seeing what I can help save, especially since I greatly enjoy doing research on various topics. There's nothing wrong with being either a deletionist or an inclusionist as long as you follow notability guidelines. It's when people try to argue for deletion or inclusion based on faulty logic that doesn't hold up to notability guidelines or deletion standards that this would become an issue.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 10:01, 7 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm sympathetic to the cause of small presses. They are underdogs in a world run by Amazon destroying the fabric of book culture (long story). It really pains me to see small presses deleted from Wikipedia, one more freaking thing right? Amazon ahoy. The problem is though once something reaches AfD, it has to meet the guidelines of WP:CORP. That means, multiple reliable sources about the company itself. This is IMO a very high bar for certain types of companies: magazines, small publishing imprints and press, small companies. We have seen it over and over on AfD. At this point there is not much that can be done if there are no reliable sources. I recommend whenever you can try to get some press exposure for the press itself, a journalistic story or two about the press, not just the products the press produces. At some point I would like to see rules that allow for products to influence the notability of the producer but right now it doesn't seem to be the case (see last sentence of WP:PRODUCT). -- Green Cardamom (talk) 20:52, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - I held off on commenting until I could thoroughly search for sources, since I wanted to try to dig through the results of the rather ambiguous search term "UKA" with various attached operands and related addendums, as opposed to just limiting the search for just "UKA Press". Unless there's something I'm not seeing, the article's subject does not have the independent reliable sources to warrant an encyclopedia article. Although I agree with the essence of Green Cardamom's statement, the unfortunate truth is that without third-party reliable sources I don't see how articles could adhere to WP:NPOV, a core Wikipedia policy; without independent third-party reliable sources the only thing the article can say is what primary sources provide, and at that point articles become thinly-veiled advertisements instead of encyclopedia articles. - SudoGhost 21:18, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment It is very difficult to show that a small publisher is notable without there being a substantial historical reccord. The GNG does not work very well, because references about a publisher are usually just incidental--what is written about is the books they publish. Sometimes they will publish so many or be in such a leading or pioneering position that there will be discussion of it, This similarly applies to magazines, and so on,just as Green Cardamon says. Where I would disagree with GC is in the advice to get PR on the company--since this depends on the skill of the PR agent not on the importance of the company, we do not consider anything based primarily upon press releases a reliable source for notability. Also, to a certain extent we do in practice use induction from the products as evidence of notability for the company, but is has to be so clear that common sense alone will do it, because there is no rule to that effect. I'm quite liberal in this direction, and am eager to make up for the deficiencies of sources, but the evidence here is not very convincing. I would not make the argument for anything less than multiple major prize winners, not just mere reviews or nominations for awards or being a finalist (except for a few extremely famous awards). But what we have here is a finalist for one minor award, and one of medium importance. In the long run, if the press is really important, then the literary histories of the last decade will discuss it--eventually. This is likely to take a few decades. DGG ( talk ) 17:18, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:28, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:28, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - per DGG above. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:20, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak delete - I'll be honest, the link-spammed "references" don't help. There might be a couple of useful ones in there somewhere but how could you tell? That there are that many references but still WP:GNG or WP:CORPDEPTH concerns is a concern in and of itself. Unfortunately, those that I looked at didn't even mention the company at all. A reference for a book published by the company (especially one that doesn't actually verify that the company published it) doesn't do much for meeting the requirement for "significant coverage". I'm not going to get into any of the business above but if someone wanted to go through the references and highlight the 2 or 3 they think actually provide significant coverage of the subject, I think that would help. For now (until my continued searches turn up something of worth) I'm inclined to delete per WP:CORPDEPTH. Stalwart111 05:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - this survived a deletion debate previously on the basis of some rather dubious and non-Wikipolicy-based hand-waving arguments, the references to the article consist of such things as user-generated reviews on amazon.com, and the UKA press seems to fail the basic notability guideline, in that nobody seems to be able to turn up reliably-sourced third party coverage. Still I am a bit surprised that one can publish these books and not attract any third-party coverage, it seems a shame to delete what is a legitimate publisher. JoshuSasori (talk) 12:52, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment re the morass of references. I've gone through them all to make sure I haven't missed anything. There are zero references that contain significant coverage of The UKA Press itself, although I've just found one that has a bit about it and several other publishers using print on demand technology. See this 2004 article in the Toronto Globe and Mail. I tend to agree with DGG that notability can be induced from the products of the publishing company, i.e. the books it has published, provided that they are highly notable and there are are fair number of them. Neither of these is the case. None of the UKA Press books have won an award, notable or otherwise. Several of the books mentioned as being reviewed were not originally published by UKA. The "Reviews and awards" section is still extraordinarily misleading. (Note: the numbering below refers to this version of the article.)
1-19 refer to Kevin Brownlow, who received an honorary Oscar for his work as a film historian and film preservationist. A couple of those 19 also mention or review his books. However of the 4 books listed in the WP article as published by UKA Press, 2 are actually reprints of books originally published by Knopf and Secker & Warburg. None of the 4 books have won awards in themselves. Note that the numbering of these references refers to this version of the article.
20-24 refer to Judith Wills. Positive reviews in 3 reliable sources (but 2 are only local publications) a user-generated review on a fansite for Queen. Number 24 verifies that the book was exerpted in the Daily Mail (Wills writes for the newspaper.)
25-27 refer to Anoop Chandola. One is to having been a finalist in a non-notable Indie Book contest. Authors pay $69 to submit their book (Observe [1] ). The second is an Amazon.com review. The third is a legitimate review in the Arizona Star but it's not for the book published by UKA Press.
28 is a blog review of Simon Leigh's book.
29-31 refer to Sheldon Goldfarb being a runner-up in the Arthur Ellis Awards (Juvenile Crime Fiction category) and reviews in the Grumpy Old Bookman blog and on the Books in Canada website.
32 refers to a review of Ian Hocking's book in the The Guardian
33 Refers to a review of Judy Walker's book in a local paper
34-35 are an interview with Stanley Salmons (not a review) in The Jewish Chronicle and a review on a blog called TripFiction.
36-37 are apropos of Julian Simpson winning a non-notable short story contest sponsored by a Leeds-based charity and has nothing to do with the book he published with UKA Press. Number 37 is simply an excerpt from 36.
38-41 are a review of Tara Hanks's book in a local Brighton magazine reviews in blogs and user-generated content sites.
Voceditenore (talk) 13:53, 12 December 2012 (UTC) Updated by Voceditenore (talk) 14:53, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Just a few last words from me. I’d like to point out that the Wikipedia articles about even the largest publishing houses such as, for example, Random House, focus almost exclusively on references and external links to their own sites. It did not seem to have been deemed necessary to produce ‘third party references’ in their case. There is simply a list of divisions, branches and imprints. Harper Collins does have a list of ‘notable books’, although many, if not most of them, are far less notable than Brownlow’s. I find it a great pity that you seem determined to delete a (albeit small) legitimate Indie publishing house which now exclusively publishes the works of the UK’s (and probably the worlds), leading film historian, film-maker, television documentary-maker, author and Academy Award recipient, especially as we are hoping to publish two more Brownlow’s in the future. How It Happened Here, The Search for Charlie Chaplin and Winstanley, incidentally, are not simply ‘republished’, but are, in effect, completely different books, with different formats, covers, introductions and previously unpublished material, stills and photographs. I can confirm this with written confirmation from Kevin Brownlow if desired. By deleting such small presses as UKA Press, you are hammering yet another nail in the coffin of independent publishing in its struggle to compete against ‘The Big Boys’, who are already doing everything in their power to thwart and eventually eradicate what they see as ‘competition, at every turn. It is a great shame, and very sad, that you feel the need to assist in their (increasingly successful) efforts. Incidentally, Wills does not write for the Daily Mail.AndreaUKA (talk) 15:11, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You're correct about Wills. The other articles by her in the Daily Mail appear to be excerpts from her Omega Diet book. I've struck that bit. Voceditenore (talk) 15:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment AndreaUKA, I think you are missing the purpose of Wikipedia -- we are writing an encyclopedia here, not advertisements. Regardless of the closure of this discussion, Wiki will not be "hammering yet another nail in the coffin of independent publishing." An encyclopedia is a summary of knowledge. While Wikipedia could potentially contain the sum of all human knowledge, to create a useful, readable encyclopedia, the Wiki community has decided to limit articles to those that are notable. TheMindsEye (talk) 17:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of Harper Collins and Random House, while the current sourcing isn't ideal as you say, it probably would be sufficient to pass notability. And everyone knows these are among the largest publishers in the world (the largest for RH) so finding additional sources would be no problem, they are not borderline cases that attract notice to AfD. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 17:58, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - sourcing is not sufficient to establish notability. Author does not understand that Wikipedia is th impartial. Claritas § 22:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I’m sorry, but that’s rather patronising. I understand what an encyclopaedia is. Note Wikipedia’s own definition: … a type of reference work – a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. 'Summary: A presentation of the substance of a body of material in a condensed form or by reducing it to its main points; an abstract'. And if you consider this article to be merely an ‘advertisement’, what do you call the Random House article which, as I said, simply lists their branches and imprints. Or the Harper Collins one, which lists (some of) their titles and…their branches and imprints. Does the fact that ‘they are among the largest publishers in the world’ make it acceptable, then? If so, isn’t that rather discriminatory? In the grand scheme of things, of course, it matters not at all if UKA Press has a Wikipedia article. I doubt if many (if any) sales have been generated through it. It will continue to publish books by excellent authors who otherwise may not have had a voice (Brownlow, to his enormous credit, deliberately went with an independent small press, in order to support the little man. I don't doubt that Random House,for example, would have jumped at the chance of publishing his work, and offered a huge advance into the bargain). I do think that Wikipedia itself will be just a little bit the poorer if it continues to delete perfectly acceptable articles. A publishing house is, after all notable for the titles it releases. Third-party references extolling the virtues of the house itself will, by definition, be thin on the ground. Thank you for your time.AndreaUKA (talk) 12:57, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
AndreaUKA, your statements seem to contradict themselves. Earlier you said " By deleting such small presses as UKA Press, you are hammering yet another nail in the coffin of independent publishing...", and now you're saying "of course, it matters not at all if UKA Press has a Wikipedia article." This could make it difficult to weigh your argument in favor of retaining the article. Also, if you've identified issues with other articles, you should probably address those issues on the talk pages for those articles. Probably A Bad Guy (talk) 13:34, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia doesn't require the reliable third party sources to "extol the virtues" of a subject, merely to have written about it widely and in depth. Our notability criteria have nothing to do with worthiness, virtue, or talent. We have articles about worthless medicines, dreadful singers, bad novels, failed companies, forgeries, fraudsters, murderers, and traitors. Voceditenore (talk) 14:51, 13 December 2012 (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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