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Talk:Wikipedia – The Missing Manual

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See our own Signpost's review at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-03/Book review.

Interview with author: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-01-28/John Broughton interview

See mention of a small "reader's guide" version at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-05-12/Maker Faire.

Should we really avoid putting these in the article? The interview, for example, provides some good information. I think we should treat them just as we would any other link (not doing so would be a self reference in itself if you think about it), and if that means including them we should do so. Richard001 (talk) 23:39, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Valuable resource for Wikipedians

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I just bought it the other day at Barnes & Noble (list price: $29.99). It really seems like "the Missing manual." --Ludvikus (talk) 18:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved
 – Redirects exist for a reason.
A third alternative might be Wikipedia - The Missing Manual. --Ludvikus (talk) 18:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Another alternative is Wikipedia (book), although I think I prefer this one (and I think that title will become ambiguous very soon, if it hasn't already). John should have thought about this conflict when naming the book :) Richard001 (talk) 01:06, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just redirect all such possibilities to the same place. No more problem. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 22:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notability

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Only one review is provided here, which isn't really enough to establish notability. Has it been reviewed by any other notable sources? This is Wikipedia, so it looks like we are being biased by having an article about this book and not most other books of greater notability. Richard001 (talk) 01:28, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have lots of systemic bias. See also m:Eventualism and m:Incrementalism. ;) But yes, more content would be good here. -- Quiddity (talk) 02:26, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, sure, I'm not saying we should have to write articles on every book that is 'more notable' than this one before having the article. In fact, I think systematic bias isn't always a bad thing; imagine if we had lots of articles on things that nobody was ever going to read about and none that were relevant to English speaking people. Two pages that have some review collections are [1] and [2]. I haven't got time to go through them, but they should give some indication of whether the book has received enough attention to merit an article. Richard001 (talk) 23:09, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Richard001, O'Reilly lists a couple non-blogs in media reviews if you'd like to add Publisher's Weekly. I added one to the article. —SusanLesch (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh the bitter irony: A reflection on this recent article for deletion

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Here is a portion of the New York Review of Books review, the "one review" the editor mentions above:

"'Notability purges' are being executed throughout Wikipedia by empire-building, wannabe tin-pot dictators masquerading as humble editors...Your words are polite, yeah, but your actions are obscene." I couldn't have said it better myself. travb (talk) 21:35, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah, those tin-pot dictators... gotta watch out for them! Richard001 (talk) 05:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tumbleweed

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And now, twelve years later, it seems to me that the book was not notable after all. In fact, the NYRB article brandished by the keep-voters of December 2008 is not really a review of the book: like many articles packaged as reviews of nonfiction books, it is more accurtately described as an author giving their own ruminations about the same topic as the book and occasionally mentioning the book in passing. Whether such a review confers the book with the status of "subject of [a] non-trivial published work" is open for debate, but at Wikipedia talk:Notability (books) rather than here. jnestorius(talk) 15:55, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]