Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Watkins Biographical Dictionary

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. (non-admin closure) Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:16, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Watkins Biographical Dictionary

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The book is not notable as required by WP:NB if you apply the same logic as being applied to Who’s_Who_in_Nebraska. Drmissio (talk) 12:37, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep. Disruptive, WP:POINTy nomination by Who’s Who in Nebraska's disgruntled author. No valid reason for deletion given: WP:BK specifically says that it doesn't cover dictionaries. — Rankiri (talk) 14:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. —Rankiri (talk) 15:23, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 15:59, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Reference works such as this are specifically excluded by WP:NB, thus no valid argument for deletion has been given -- Boing! said Zebedee 16:12, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep -- I am NOT disgruntled -- merely perplexed. Rankiri and seren have made some good points why this volume, as a reference type work (or encyclopedia) does not "fit" the way in which "notability" is handled for other types of works. Now -- go read the deletion talk on "Who's Who in Nebraska" -- a similar reference type book (or encyclopedia). I am just merely raising the question: What is the right way these types of works should be handled? and can't those working on Wikipedia apply a common standard to all works within this class or type of material? Drmissio (talk) 23:19, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note A discussion about creating a guideline for reference works is currently ongoing at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Notability requirements for reference books and other reference materials (If we consider this as a reference book). Please see the page and contribute to the discussion if possible. --Fiftytwo thirty (talk) 01:38, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete Historically of very minor significance, but not a standard work. My guides to older reference sources such as Walford do not list it. Yale and NYPL have it, but not Princeton or Columbia or Chicago or Harvard or Berkeley. What however is a standard older work, is a different book of his, A Biographical dictionary of the living authors of Great Britain and Ireland; comprising literary memoirs and anecdotes of their lives and a chronological register of their publications, with the number of editions printed; including notices of some foreign writers whose works have been occasionally published in England. OCLC 555943, which is listed under his name in the BL catalog . A modern reprint is in 100s of libraries. It's in the Internet Archive at [1], from the NYPL copy . It does not contain the anecdote about Hume referred to in the present article. DGG ( talk ) 03:11, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Another disruptive nomination. Drmissio, please read WP: POINT Rin tin tin (talk) 23:17, 21 April 2010 (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.