Talk:Philip Palmer

Proposed merge of Debatable Space article

I propose merging the Debatable Space article here. At the moment, this article is little more than a single-sentence catalog entry that fails to meet WP:STUB and makes no significant claim to notability. Currently, the entire text of this article consists of the words "Debatable Space is a 2008 science fiction novel by novelist and screenwriter Philip Palmer." There is no discussion of the content of the book, or its critical reception. The only two references provided are to web-based reviews: no references to reviews in mainstream publications are provided.

As such, it needs to be either:

• deleted
• merged to Philip Palmer
• or improved to be, at the very least, an entry that both asserts its subject's notability and meets the stub article criteria.

It would be trivial for it to be merged here, by simply adding the words "Debatable Space is a 2008 science fiction novel by novelist and screenwriter Philip Palmer." to this article. -- The Anome (talk) 08:50, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose All articles start off small, and are then expanded in time. The book has references now to reliable sources providing review of just it, and thus meets all requirements for an article. Dream Focus 09:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I know it has two refences to website reviews: I put them there.

I have no objection at all to this book having an article. This is not an article, it's a catalog entry. Even a stub article should have several sentences describing its subject: see WP:STUB. Book articles should at least make some mention of the book's contents and critical reception.

I find it interesting that the several advocates of this substub are happy to defend it, but cannot be bothered to actually add any substantive material to the book's article.

As it is, there is nothing in this article which could not be gleaned from its author's page and basic catalog information. It would be easy to write a bot that screenscraped bookseller sites and author bios to generate hundreds of thousands of non-articles similar to this one. Should we do that? I don't think so. -- The Anome (talk) 11:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

It takes more than one day for an article to be developed. A stub is a fine start for day one. Why so impatient? Is anything gained by eliminating it? Dream Focus 11:36, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose No articles start off complete. Your main reasons against keeping the article separate seem to be:

1. You can't find any 'mainstream' reviews of it.

There was a review of the book in The Guardian.

2. The article contains 'only one sentence'

I believe the cover image (which would look horribly out of place on the Philip Palmer page) counts as 'content'. Also, could you perhaps hold off on the mindless bureaucracy for a few days to give me (or somebody else) time to write a plot summary (or whatever)?

3. Having more articles on Wikipedia is bad!

I don't agree.

--jmenkus ^[T] 12:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

You're missing my point. Having more articles is good! In fact, I'd really like to see an article about this book, instead of a sub-stub.

Instead of advocating that the article be kept in spite of its current woeful state, why not make it better? For example, you could:

• Add an actual link to the review
• Write something about content of the book
• Write something about its critical reception
• etc.

-- The Anome (talk) 01:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Update: never mind, I've just done it for you. -- The Anome (talk) 02:09, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! And thank you for waiting a whole 13 minutes for me to implement those changes you suggested ;D --jmenkus ^[T] 13:53, 28 August 2010 (UTC)