Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/How Shall We Know Christ at His Coming?

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was DELETE. dbenbenn | talk 18:02, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How Shall We Know Christ at His Coming?

Dear Sir/Madam,

There is an article at Wikipedia named Max Heindel (1865-1919) which I have expanded with entries (new articles) and related descriptions of this author's twenty three books (all entirely available online and all edited in almost every languages in the world). The book "How Shall We Know Christ at His Coming?" is one of these 23 books. It's title and official description is not to be taken as religious confrontation of any sort or to anyones' faith or beliefs - it is only the description of the book written in 1918.

In Wikipedia there are also other articles of books by other authors, one of my favorites is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850).

I think if we look "Wikipedia" as an Encyclopedia we should be proud to present the description (even if small) of all those books, specialy those written much before our modern electronic days.

Thank you --GalaazV 04:44, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Even if these weren't or aren't copyright violations, they're advertising. That's the reason most copyvios aren't worth keeping even if legal permission was granted to use the text; it wasn't written to be an objective description, it was usually written to be a soapbox, a personal essay, promotional copy -- and yeah, that's all these "official" descriptions are. Let me quote a few choice bits from the almost 25 descriptions GalaazV posted verbatim: "This is the heart of the Western Wisdom Teaching pertaining to Health and Healing." "This volume will be of great value to students who are engaged in healing or nursing, whether they are attached to the orthodox medical school or to the nature-cure school." "No astrological student can afford to be without it." "The library of every astrology student should contain a copy of this essential reference book." The comparison with The Scarlet Letter is laughable, because that article is not written solely by those who believe in the book and are trying to promote it. -- Antaeus Feldspar 06:04, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, the sentences you have put here are outside their context and are from different books according to the theme of each book (Health, Astrology, Vegetarianism, ...) written by this author. Have you read any of them in order to know if those sentences are according or not with the contents of the books?

In my point of view the descriptions are reasonable and give a brief idea of each book contents. However, each description may be expanded by users who have already read each related book (one of the major things of Wikipedia is that anyone of us may give a responsible contribution to the articles).

Nevertheless, I think we have no right to discourage the effort made by any user, even if his/her work may seem incipient; neither to discourage any knowledge produced (which belongs to all mankind) only because it is not according to our own points of view.

Last, I made no comparison: it is true that The Scarlet Letter is one of my favourites in North-American Literature. I have only stated it in order to show that there are books here presented from authors of the XIX and XX centuries.

--GalaazV 06:36, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

GalaazV, please read Wikipedia:NPOV and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. You seem to think that anyone who shows up at Wikipedia automatically has the right to post anything they want to, regardless of how clearly it violates policy, and that "we" "have no right to discourage the effort made by any user". What effort? You posted those 23 descriptions, each copied verbatim from a single webpage, in the space of just over three hours. That comes to about 7.82 minutes per copy/paste, not exactly a tremendous investment of effort. -- Antaeus Feldspar 07:16, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Antaeus Feldspar, calling the mention of The Scarlet Letter laughable isn't very friendly to Galaaz. Remember not to bite newcomers. He was just trying to justify the article with civil discussion and reasoning, which should never be discouraged. It's far better to have discussion than a bunch of unreasoned keep votes. That said, the article is a copyvio, or an ad and as such cannot stay here, (Delete). I would however be happy to keep a proper write up. Mgm|^(talk) 09:39, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I vote to keep, because I am interested in nature-cure. If this must be deleted, please put the list and links somewhere else: I will do some wikireading to suggest a place. Nature-cure was a significant movement that many people in increasing numbers find helps them. Don't be xenophobic, seems like a good rule of thumb. -- unsigned vote by 67.80.8.96.

I guess you are right MacGyverMagic and I think I tried to justify it with words like "discourage" which now clearly sounds to me as an accusation I was making; which I do not intend to be since as you said I made copy of a webpage descriptions, although being at the time my thought that it would be good simple descriptions in order to present this author's work. I will re-write all the articles related to the books the best my english may afford, with my own words, including this one if not deleted. Thank you for your attention and sorry for this worry --GalaazV 17:19, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Delete. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:26, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Jayjg is your "delete" for the current copyvio version, or also for any rewritten article on this topic? Kappa 20:16, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - Non copyvio descriptions of this book would be better included in an article on the author. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:00, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep if rewritten in a reasonably NPOV way. Kappa 20:16, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. First there is the copyvio aspect, and I don't see a rewrite in progress. But second, even if there were a rewrite, and it was NPOV, and not original research or a personal essay, puffery, etc, I don't see the need for a separate article for each of the books of Max Heindel. He is marginally notable, but an article on him, plus an additional article on each of his books, seems over-the-top to me. --BM 22:02, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete, POV advertisement, possible copyright violation. Megan1967 01:26, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I did not do any rewriting since I was expecting for the outcame of the voting. But I appreciate the input of BM and so I'll give up the article for each book, instead I'll just keep the names and ISBN Number of each book at the main article and at the front of each book the external link "www" to a direct reading of the online book. However, I would like to rewrite the article, NPOV, of the main book of Max Heindel (1865-1919, founder of the Rosicrucian Fellowship) titled The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception since in the field of Mysticism and the Occult it is a worldwide reference book as the main book The Secret Doctrine of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891, founder of Theosophical Society) and of main works of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925, founder of Anthroposophical Society). Is it fine this way? Please may you Delete all the articles I have created for the books? I apologize for all annoyance I've caused; thank you for your comments and if I may be of any help please do not hesitate to contact me. --GalaazV 18:14, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

- That seems like a reasonable solution to me. And don't apologize. It isn't at all obvious to someone new (or even agreed amongst different editors) as to what is the right level of detail on a topic in the Wikipedia and how to structure a topic into articles. --BM 00:54, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete Spinboy 00:10, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete, unless it can be shown that this book (or its author) is noteable. Martg76 13:12, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.