Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Legal Methods (Strauss)

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. Cirt (talk) 03:23, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Legal Methods (Strauss) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Non notable textbook being spammed, see my talk page. Drawn Some (talk) 21:16, 17 May 2009 (UTC) Drawn Some (talk) 21:16, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: I can't figure out why it would be notable. It might pass Wikipedia:Notability_(books)#Academic_books but it isn't stated. Toddst1 (talk) 21:25, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I want to add that there is no assertion of importance or significance, no independent resources, and the article is primarily the table of contents or outline of the book. Drawn Some (talk) 21:52, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Hello, I am the creator of the article. My understanding is that the concern being discussed here is notability, not copyright.
• Just in case copyright 'were' an issue, I emailed a copyright professor in my law school (I have never taken copyright so I can't make the assessment myself). He responded, "[displaying the TOC in this fashion] comes down to a fair use question; though on balance, because it is so clearly educational and non-commercial, I highly doubt it would be infringing." I understand that copyright is a fuzzy area of law, so this doesn't mean he's right. But I hope that, unless you get a contrasting second opinion from another copyright expert, those concerns will be allayed.
• Actually, I can't come up with arguments for why this content is notable. Would you mind if I moved the content to my userspace? I created the article because I thought it would help students (like me) to study for upcoming exams that rely on this casebook. The article serves double-duty as a wikified list of the cases that are most prominent in the law school curriculum, organized according to subject. Thus, it benefits Wikipedia as a to-do list of which articles to improve. That is why I would like permission to keep this content on my userspace. Thanks. Agradman (talk) 23:19, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't you just userfy it yourself and let the AfD run, someone else may see why it is notable under the guidelines? Drawn Some (talk) 23:48, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll userfy it and let the AfD run. But my inclination is to delete (not notable.) My professor wrote the casebook and I don't want him to benefit from free advertising. Agradman (talk) 23:58, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Don't see anything in the article to indicate that this book is notable. I'm also very worried by the comment, in the article, by the article creator in this and other articles that every legal case should have a Wikipedia article. The vast majority of legal cases should not have a Wikipedia article. If the creator wants this then they should consider starting a legal cases wiki separate to Wikipedia. Canterbury Tail talk 02:01, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• pardon me, I agree that only important cases should have articles (and that the vast majority of cases don't deserve articles). But I also think that the cases taught in law school almost always meet that threshold of importance. We are only taught cases that either made precedent, or contributed to the creation of a precedent, or else are notable because they summarize the existing law so articulately that they are often referred to as reference texts. I think that under this heuristic for notability, you will see vastly more false positives (cases that seem at first to be not notable because the author of the article wasn't articulate, as happened with me writing Chysky) than false negatives (cases that are not notable, even though they were included in a law student's casebook).

• Incidentally, could I ask the admins on this page to stop making me feel as though I were some kind of juvenile prankster or vandal? Drawn Some called me a spammer; Canterbury Tail, I can't complain about your tone, but please be aware that it's off-putting not to be addressed in the first person when you are giving me advice. Look, we share the priority of improving Wikipedia; in my case I want to make it a valuable resource for law students and others who are trying to learn the law. I will always be open to persuasion if you disagree with me about how I go about doing that. Agradman (talk) 02:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I don't believe you're a spammer, I think you're a very good intentioned editor who is just new to Wikipedia and the way things work. I nominated the pages for deletion as I don't believe, personally, that they are notable. Others may disagree and in that case that is perfectly fine, that is why we bring the articles into a discussion space like AfD.

With law case articles, and I'm no expert on law, the articles need to be inherently notable in themselves, and need to be written in a way to be accessible to the general populace and readership. Placing articles in a law case format isn't really the way to go, as there is no context, no reason to believe they are notable (see WP:Notability, and the average reader stumbling across the articles will not know what they are about or why they are here.

As I said above, every court case isn't inherently notable, and neither should Wikipedia be an repository for all such information. Wikipedia is a reference work yes, but it's a general encyclopaedia, not a law specific reference work, and as such I don't believe that a lot of these cases articles should be on here. We shouldn't be building a whole section of the project for law students to use as an online linked reference source, that kind of project is best done on it's own elsewhere outside of Wikipedia. Now these are just my opinions, and others may disagree, which is why we bring things to these discussion areas. Canterbury Tail talk 10:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, do not userfy There is no encyclopedic content at the present, and userfication would serve no purpose toward article/'pedia buidling. I am not able to locate any WP:RS or evidence of meeting notability requirements. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a law library, so reproducing an outline (or content from} the book is not the way to go in article space or user space. As a side note, if the work is under copyright, we can not have a derivative work-- the outline on Wikipedia. All content must be public ___domain or released under the terms of the GFDL. On policies on copyright matters are stricter than the law would allow, so whether something is legally permitted or not is moot if it's not allowed under Wikipedia policies/guidelines. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 20:13, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I made the page slightly different (and created an article for the author, Peter L. Strauss). Again, I have no attachment to this article, so I'm neutral whether you delete it. -The creator, Agradman (talk) 21:09, 19 May 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.