Talk:The Crown of Ptolemy

Reception section

@Tokyogirl79: I wrote a revised version of the reception section, with justifications, below. On a side note, knowing that author Rick Riordan uses his blog as both a personal and news blog, what is your opinion of the reliability? Most of his news posts are duplicated on Twitter, but were first posted on his blog. Does this meet the requirements of Wikipedia:Verifiability#Newspaper and magazine blogs? The formerly cited posts provided nothing but dates, and were cited on other sites such as Hypable and some online newspapers.

This is a revised version of the draft's reception section: The week of its release as an ebook, The Crown of Ptolemy topped at #16 on the iBook Bestsellers list, as recorded by Publishers Weekly. The Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles crossover series was on the New York Times Best Seller List for the weeks of May 31 and June 7, 2015. It also remained in the top ten most-purchased Children's fantasy eBooks at Amazon's Kindle Store as late as mid-November 2015.

The Crown of Ptolemy was received altogether very well by critics and fans alike, generally as a typical example of author Rick Riordan's writing style. In particular, readers appreciated the first-person narration by character Percy Jackson, who was also narrator of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. Though he was one of seven protagonists in Rick Riordan's more recent Heroes of Olympus, the sequel series was told in the third person -- a fact which has occasionally been criticized by readers and reviewers. As a result, Riordan's return to using Percy as narrator has been highly praised for its new insights into the mind of a character who has been all but silent for five years' worth of novels and short stories. The short story has been praised for its exploration of characters other than Percy Jackson as well, especially as a conclusion to the crossover series.

Despite its overwhelmingly positive reception, readers have occasionally criticized the story for being too short to adequately explore the setting, characters, and plot. However, other reviews have stated the exact opposite. Andrew Scoles's review for GeekInsider, for example, states "The short story only references the events of the recent books ... but that’s just as well. It leaves more room for a good story to be successfully told and finished."

This is the justification for each individual source:

1. Establishes notability by giving a permanently recorded example of the book's public impact. The changeability and user-driven-ness of sources like Amazon and B&N bestseller lists is the main objection to iBook lists, am I correct? In this case, the notability is established based on the fact that users downloaded the book, and by the fact that the source is definitive proof of those statistics.
2. This is a NY Times bestseller list, nearly the most cited bestseller list of all time, which also passes the above justification for source #1, except being less user-driven and changeable.
3. This fact is not essential to the article, nor does it establish notability -- however, it is useful for readers to know. If there were a way to archive the source on anything other than my word as an honest editor, it would pass the notability requirements. As such, it may be deleted from the section; just wanted to provide my reasoning for first including it.
4. The point of this source is to provide evidence of the fact that the HoO series has been occasionally criticized for its narration style. This is just a fact, not an example of direct notability. The notability of this article's subject matter is due to the fact that it has not been criticized for this fact. As a source, Stephanie Oakes's webpage is at least partially reliable as she is a published author (as well as a reader), which gives her an established understanding of the affect of a PoV on a piece of writing. This passes the source reliability requirements because "Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field" -- Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources#Questionable and self-published sources
5. This does the same for this article as #4, but the source is not of questionable reliability, as it is a corporate, editorially-reviewed book criticism.
6. This review is absolutely not of questionable notability, similar to #5. It does establish notability.
7. This is both reliable and establishes notability, as with #6. Geek Insider, though a much smaller news source than Hypable or The New York Times, is editorially reviewed. The source was written by one of the "aspiring writers and Journalism students" who participate in Geek Insider's contributor program, and work with the site's editorial team as they publish. These facts establish reliability.
8. This source is a twitter posts-search, at least somewhat-reliable based on WP:Twitter. I included it to cite an example of the fact is follows, mostly because the link I was going to provide to a definitely-reliable review is now giving a 404 error.

Forgive the verbosity, por favor. -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 21:41, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

• The problem is that you used blog/SPS sources to justify several points. SPS shouldn't be used in articles because they undergo little to no editorial oversight. At it's core it means that we really can't trust what they're saying. The other issue is that if we use SPS in an article then that opens the door for people to say "but you used a blog in this article, why can't I use it in this one to show notability". Wikipedia must use reliable sources in an article and SPS just aren't reliable. Anyone can have an opinion and write a blog article. We need to be consistent on the sourcing we use regardless of whether or not we're using it to establish notability. Now when it comes to authors, they're considered to be the same as your average Joe/Jane. It's only when the author is particularly noteworthy (and writes a lengthy review, but that's beside the point) that we can really start arguing that they're usable as a source to show notability or a reliable source in general, however I will note that there is some pushback over this if the author is sourced via their own blog. Basically, part of the issue with using blogs to back up claims is that they're frequently considered to be unreliable because we can't really verify anything in them, even if it's just being used to back up an opinion. Another reason for the blogs not being used is because the people who write them are generally not considered to be an expert or valued critic in the way that Wikipedia really needs them to be.

Now my reason for hesitation over the NYT list is that the individual work is not mentioned and what you need to show here is that CoP is independently notable outside of the series. That list can show that the series is notable, but no one is really questioning that. When an article goes into the mainspace you need to ensure that you're showing independent notability. Now I personally do think that the book should inherit a tiny bit of notability from the series' popularity, this isn't something that is actually part of Wikipedia's policy and I've seen things get deleted for not showing independent notability. Heck, I've seen more than a few articles related to Riordan's work go up for deletion, which is part of the reason that I'm being so cautious about everything. I know that there are people who watch for articles related to Riordan's work and wouldn't hesitate to nominate them for deletion if they believe the sourcing to be weak. However that said, I do think that this is overall notable, but I really don't want this to go out with unreliable or questionable sourcing. The problem with the GI source is that while the contact page did mention an editor, they don't state who that editor is or really how much editing goes into the contributor articles. If they'd had this stuff posted it'd give more wiggle room and would be easier to say it's usable, but the lack of this information on the page would make it easy for people to question. Sometimes we can work around that if the site itself is frequently mentioned elsewhere as a reliable source, but a search for GI doesn't really bring up much. As far as the Amazon and B&N sales rankings go, merchant sources are considered to be unusable because they're very, very easily swayed and not easily verified. If this had been PW's own list then there'd be some room there, but merchant rankings are specifically excluded in NBOOK and was one of the only ways I was able to get it passed at all (I was the person who actually started up the recent discussion to have them as RS) - there was actually quite a bit of pushback to including bestseller lists of any type because in general they can be manipulated.

I'm going to go make a post about this on the reliable sources noticeboard, but I do think that you need to be careful about the sources. It's better to leave SPS off of an article because they just can't be verified and even if they're not used for notability, we still need to be able to guarantee that what is posted in them is the truth. There's a big, big history of people writing blog articles, only for it to later come about that the post was written by a shill, that the information is incorrect, and so on. I'm not saying that these SPS might be incorrect, but the problem is that we can't guarantee that this is the case. I know that you're likely frustrated at this and you're probably saying "but this isn't a science report", but there's not a lot of difference when it comes to sourcing an encyclopedia article. Sourcing for a book article needs to be as verifiable as sourcing for an article about a science experiment. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:07, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

• Another point about bestseller lists on merchant sites is that they can often be whittled down into such small categories that it's easy for something to fit into something. The fact that these lists are dynamic and frequently up to change (meaning that if we look at them 1-2 years from now the list will be completely different) makes them unreliable for Wikipedia's purposes. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:17, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Tokyogirl79: Okay, I'm going to try and delineate each of your individual points, based on your posts above and here. You tell me when I'm wrong; and what, exactly, you'd like to see happen when I'm right. -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 18:46, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

1. The Crown of Ptolemy is notable, i.e. meets these requirements. (On a side note, I did try a WorldCat search to see what is returned, and when you factor in the number of copies of The Blood of Olympus which contain the short, it actually comes up a decent amount of times [way more than I expected, at any rate].)
2. Blogs (and anything SPS) are bad to use in articles, regardless of their purpose, because they establish a precedent of poor sourcing.

   As such, Riordan's blog and source #4 in my above post are both completely unusable.

3. The NYT list is bad because it does not show independent notability, because even though it shows that this novel is what finally pushed the crossover series into the public's attention (the original section phrasing "after the publication of Crown" etc., being much better at showing this), The Crown of Ptolemy was not specifically listed on the NYT page. This eliminates source #2.

   Similarly, all direct merchant lists are out because they are too easily swayed in one direction or another and are impermanent. A permanently recorded one is still bad because the point of such a source is not to provide an example of consumer purchasing habits as a source of notability, or evidence of public recognition of the work. (What, exactly, the point of such a source might then be, I am unclear about. Perhaps that is why you say not to include them? Also unclear of how this differs from NYT-type lists, which are made with the same method, just including multiple sellers.) This eliminates sources #1 and #3.

4. Geek Insider is not reliable because it does not have specific staff members dedicated to editing articles listed on its site. Evidence such as from these websites ([1], [2], [3]) does not constitute proof of the unnamed editors existence and/or participation in the writing process. This eliminates source #7.

   Side note again: I am a little confused about your mention of not returning much in a search for the site, as I got quite a lot of results when I gave it a go. The site's Twitter account is followed by more than 15,000; and the site itself generates about the same number of hits on a basic Google search as most medium-sized town newspapers, which are considered reliable.

5. Now that there are only two online reviews and a twitter post left supporting the "Reception" section, Draft:The Crown of Ptolemy is no longer suitable for submission. (You put in the USA today list, forgot to mention that, bring sources up to 4).