Talk:Bibliography of Donald Trump

Cf. Books by Donald Trump published in other languages

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I re-added titles of books that were made available in German and French. How far a book reaches internationally can of course also be indicated by the translations that exist in other languages. The titles were removed -- reason: Wikipedia is not a dictionary -- well of course it's not -- and if you literally translate the titles you will not end up with the titles chosen for these translations -- and you won't know whether they exist in the first place. 93.224.96.64 (talk) 16:50, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

RfC

Should the foreign book titles be included, per the above arguments? I have started an RfC and notified the Donald Trump WikiProject. - CHAMPION ^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)} 21:07, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

• Weak Support - I smell peacock a little -- do we need such a list? Do other politicians have such bibliographies? are any of these actually written by Trump? And yet. If we must have such a list -- and I personally would prefer that wikipedia had *no* lists -- it is however true that translations often have a completely different title than the work in the original language. For instance, the French title of Marcel Proust's Rememberance of Things Past translates literally as In search of the wasted time, or possibly In search of time lost. So while it makes me sad that we have this article at all, if we do have it, then the translation titles seem like a legitimate point to me. Assuming we have other online bibliographies we should do exactly the same thing for any translated books that may appear in the them, for all bibliographies, and imho that one thing should be including the translation title. Elinruby (talk) 07:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I made a start here: Bibliography of Hillary Clinton, 93.224.110.135 (talk) 11:46, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

• Yes. My opinion. Keep the foreign titles in their native language with a translation of the title in English.CuriousMind01 (talk) 11:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose The issue her is not WP:NOTDICT, but rather WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Many of these books may have numerous foreign titles; collecting them all here just for the sake of compiling a complete record is exactly the kind of clutter that several sections of WP:WWIN proscribe against. This particular list article frankly strains our policies concerning encyclopedic content and format as is: we don't usually compile lists of sources about any topic on Wikipedia, so that section of the list frankly needs to go. And we usually don't have bibliography articles unless that bibliography, in and of itself is a notable topic (that is, scholars actually talk about their body of work, which is massive and influential; WP:SYNTHing together the claim that some of their individual works are notable, and thus that their bibliography is a notable topic, will not suffice, without RS to support it). We certainly don't need to compound this mess by including every piece of publishing minutia available for each work, including every translated title for every language it appears in. To the extent any of this books is notable in themselves, editors should feel free to broach including the translated titles in those articles, but the proposal here is clearly against NOTDIR; indeed, it's a textbook case for demonstrating that policy. Snow ^{let's rap} 19:01, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Very simple answer -- do you see a mess? Time enough to oppose clutter, when there actually is clutter -- and there are not that many translations. Furthermore adding the titles of translations that actually do exist does not mean "including every piece of publishing minutia available for each work". Sincerely, 93.224.108.48 (talk) 09:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

PS You will not end up with the analogue of this: List of Bible translations by language, just a guess. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.224.108.48 (talk) 09:59, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

You're actually reinforcing my point. Notice that every entry on that list is a Wikipedia article of its own, because the topic of the each language's translation(s) of the bible is independently notable as a topic. You simply can't compare a synthed-together topic of a list of books about or by Donald Trump to the broad encyclopedic relevance of what is probably the single-most widely read piece of written work in human history, sorry. Also, your analogy is flawed in other respects: one article concerns multiple translations of a work that is an imminently notable topic (with that work in each language being a notable topic in its own right), whereas the other article is a list of multiple works, most of which are not notable in their own right and thus do not have their own article to begin with, let alone independent articles for each translation of each individual non-notable work in that list. And no, we don't "wait until it's a real problem" if content runs against guidelines; the entire reason we have policies based on community consensus is to head off unencyclopedic content and problems with organization before they become unmanageable messes. This page very much runs against WP:WWIN, a major policy, and the desire to further archive/compile lists of translations for each individual listed work will only compound that. Snow ^{let's rap} 23:04, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

• Support As long as it doesn't go against WP:AWW. _{Adotchar| reply here} 10:33, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Translations should not be mentioned, unless Trump translated them himself. Imagine what Herman Melville bibliography would look like. His books have been translated into dozens of languages multiple times and in different editions. TFD (talk) 08:02, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

If there were enough translations so that they might clutter the article, one could make an extra article, cf. here: List of translations of works by William Shakespeare -- but this is not going to be the case with most authors. Thus if mentioning translations does not make the article a "mess" (like somebody wrote), why would it be harmful to inform about this kind of outreach? 93.224.109.236 (talk) 11:55, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

PS I added titles of translations here Bibliography of Hillary Clinton, too, no mess to see there either.

There are about a dozen editions of the Art of the Deal and it has been translated into over a dozen languages and Trump has written about a dozen books. Trump's election to the U.S. presidency will likely lead to an increase of interest with more editions and translations. So clutter will happen.

The purpose of this article is not to advertize how successful an author Trump is, but to assist researchers and others who want to read what Trump wrote and what has been written about him. They are not looking for translations.

TFD (talk) 21:37, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

So you know that people are not looking for translations and that "researchers and others" are looking for what "has been written about him", and you know that people don't want to know what has been written in other languages and also they don't want to know in what languages translations of books by the subject exist ...

does this article Bibliography of Hillary Clinton disturb you? It is much bigger and even includes columns.

Is that an article "to advertize how successful an author" Clinton is? Why even come up with such a point? In my opinion it's useful information -- and it can cost people a lot of time to find out. 93.224.108.245 (talk) 09:17, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

PS The number of editions is a different subject.

PPS And again -- time enough to fight the clutter if it should actually happen. Wait and see.

To answer your question myself, I think we probably should be bothered by what is going on the Hilary Clinton "biography" article, precisely because it is suffering from many of the same policy violations as this article, including the general free-fall into blatant rejection of the long-standing and deep community consensus surrounding WP:NOTDIR. I actually think TFD misplaced the emphasis a little in his statement there. While we can't be certain that absolutely no reader would ever find use out of one of these many alternative/translated titles, I think TFD is right to say that the vast, vast majority of our readers, interested in Trump or his writings as an encyclopedic topic, are going to find little to no use out of a complete archive of every translated title of his works. But that's only striking at the periphery of the real issue here. We simply are not here as a project to create detail directories of superficial information. If someone wants to find a complete list of Trump's works, or a particular translated title, there are hundreds of organizations that maintain formal archives for exactly that purpose, from governmental agencies, to library associations, to commercial, academic, publishing and research entities, all devoted to keeping that information straight and easily accessible for public use; I trust you understand the general purpose of those ISBN codes you've been adding after each entry? But that kind of comprehensive listing is not what this project is for--and, in fact, this kind of cruft gets in the way of the actual purpose of this project: providing an encyclopedic summary of our topics. In fact, I can't imagine a clearer example of content that qualifies under WP:NOTDIRECTORY and demonstrates why we have the guideline in the first place. And no, once again, we do not wait until the problem is "big enough" before applying community standards that were designed exactly for the purpose of keeping the problem from arising in the first place. Snow ^{let's rap} 10:01, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

So by these standards you are going to delete the directory of Scholarly articles in the Bibliography of Hillary Clinton which has already grown big -- much bigger (directory of articles, not books) -- than what you can expect to happen in this article soon? 93.224.98.94 (talk) 20:14, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

PS Does this article: List of translations of works by William Shakespeare have the right to exist by the standards as you see them?

PPS Do you mind that this article: Bibliography of works on Che Guevara is huge and includes articles and Audio CDs with Non-English titles or does a Marxist revolutionary get other standards as a President of the United States?

• Oppose - it is sufficient to simply mention the number of languages into which each book has been translated and, if it seems important, a notation of in which countries that translated version made that country's bestseller list. LiPollis (talk) 01:26, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - we don't do this for other bibliographies as far as I can tell, and I don't see any reason to treat Donald Trump differently. The only exception that I see is Bibliography of Hillary Clinton, and I think the translation titles should be removed from there too. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:19, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - It's clutter, per WP:NOTDIRECTORY. It is not done elsewhere, it is a small mess that will become a bigger mess, and adding the titles doesn't add any value for the reader that the reader wouldn't get from seeing the number of translations. The big idea behind WP:NOTDIRECTORY is that Wikipedia should provide content and context, not simple lists. The interesting content, as LiPollis states, is the number of languages. The List of translations of works by William Shakespeare is an interesting counter-example. I would note that 1) Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule, 2) there seem to be very few of these lists in the encyclopedia (Shakespeare, the Quran, the Book of Mormon), 3) many of the translators are notable themselves, and 4) much more context is provided, making that list more useful than what is in this article. Chris vLS (talk) 20:58, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• Weak oppose - Summoned by bot. While the list currently is not too long by including the titles in foreign languages, we should avoid adding them to maintain consistency with other related pages. Meatsgains (talk) 15:12, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - it adds little value and is not typically done. If you asked me about bibliography as article, I would oppose that too. We're not trying to build a library catalog. A list of publications by a person has some interest and might be included in the subject's article. Trying to create a comprehensive bibliography about a subject is not encyclopedic.Glendoremus (talk) 05:20, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Uncredited ghostwriters

Many books attributed to Trump are missing the names of the ghostwriters. Has any attempt been made to fix this issue? The real authors should be credited. -- BullRangifer (talk) 14:57, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer:I've done some research on this. More at some of the individual book articles. Sagecandor (talk) 03:31, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Here's an interesting article, including opinions about Trump "authoring" other books ("As with his nonfiction books, it appears Trump did not actually “write” this novel and instead hired Robinson as his ghostwriter."):

• The Incredibly Sexist Book Once Mysteriously Billed As Trump’s ‘Debut Novel’

We need to be accurate, and if any RS can clarify this, it would be good. Wikipedia shouldn't promote myths and falsehoods. This myth that he's some sort of "author" of so many books needs to be clarified. -- BullRangifer (talk) 22:46, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll see if I can find some research on this and add it to the lede, sound good? Sagecandor (talk) 01:26, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer:Added sourced material, see [1]. Look better? Sagecandor (talk) 03:13, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer:Converted to wikitable sortable for this section. Added column for ghostwriters. Added in-line citations for sourced info confirming the ghostwriters. [2]. Missing a few entries for ghostwriters, maybe you can see if you can find ghostwriters and sources for those ? Sagecandor (talk) 04:28, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Excellent work! -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:19, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you ! Sagecandor (talk) 14:25, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer:Changed format of page to sections for Primary sources and Secondary sources per models at Bibliography of Richard Nixon and Bibliography of Ronald Reagan. [3]. Does that look better or should we go back to [4] ? Sagecandor (talk) 18:18, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I find the primary/secondary split confusing. What's the difference between "Primary sources: By other authors" and "Secondary sources: Biographies"? If it's not significant, then go back to the previous version (your last diff above). -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Done. @BullRangifer:, what do you think of those models used at Bibliography of Richard Nixon and Bibliography of Ronald Reagan ? Sagecandor (talk) 03:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to understand the difference. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:07, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Primary source = usually written by those with ties directly to the subject himself, contemporaneously with the times. Secondary source = usually written by those with no ties to the subject himself, reflecting back on events to place them within their larger historical context. Sagecandor (talk) 03:15, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I find that an uncommon usage. Here we usually use those terms in relation to sourcing, not books. I don't see it as an important enough distinction to be worth making. It just creates more sections which only the fewest might find useful. A librarian might find this more interesting, but I doubt the ordinary person would. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:26, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Okay sounds good. Sagecandor (talk) 03:28, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikitable sortable

Made the section Bibliography_of_Donald_Trump#About_Trump as Wikitable sortable.

Now researchers can organize books by author, title, or year of publication. Sagecandor (talk) 04:22, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Pretty good fleshed out examples

• Bibliography of Abraham Lincoln
• Bibliography of George Washington
• Bibliography of Thomas Jefferson
• Bibliography of Ulysses S. Grant

Sagecandor (talk) 14:52, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Fixed layout mess

Fixed layout mess caused by these changes [5].

We should NOT have an empty section "Films with Trump".

Did he write the films?

Did he direct the films?

No?

Then they are not part of a "Bibliography" page.

Thanks. Sagecandor (talk) 19:21, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

You are right. And this is a bibliography, not a filmography. Therefore, the section on documentary films about Trump must go. I removed it. — JFG ^talk 03:55, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Wrong. See models at Bibliography of Barack Obama and Bibliography of George W. Bush. Sagecandor (talk) 03:58, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Page should only include notable works, major publishers, or received significant coverage in secondary sources

Page should only include notable works, major publishers, or received significant coverage in secondary sources. Sagecandor (talk) 19:46, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Films about Trump

Should films about Trump be included in the about section?

Entire section was removed at [6]

These are works about the subject himself, that therefore have written scripts and are part of the larger bibliography of the subject.

@BullRangifer:thoughts? Sagecandor (talk) 03:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

See models at Bibliography of Barack Obama and Bibliography of George W. Bush. First sentence of both. "both books and films". Sagecandor (talk) 04:00, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

MLA Citation Guide: See: How to cite a film in a bibliography. Sagecandor (talk) 04:01, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

RfC about inclusion of films in Bibliography of Donald Trump

Should the Bibliography of Donald Trump contain a section for films? Sagecandor (talk) 04:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Support inclusion of section about films, which is encyclopedic. It helps the reader and editors. Films about the subject have written scripts, are creative works about the subject containing research and editing, and have equal merit as books. IFF the subject himself was a credited writer or director of films, we should list those as well. Sagecandor (talk) 04:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose – Most bibliographies cite only books and articles written about the subject, see for example Lincoln that was cited above, or Hillary. Bush Jr. has only one film, a biopic by Oliver Stone. I very much doubt that's the only film made about Bush, it was probably inserted as a good-faith error. Obama looks like an exception: probably the list of films should be removed from there as well. — JFG ^talk 04:16, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
• Comment -- Given the recent creations of categories (Books critical of Donald Trump (history), Films critical of Donald Trump (history), Music critical of Donald Trump (history), Parodies of Donald Trump (history), Works critical of Donald Trump, (history)) I assume pages have been created for more NPOV categories like Films based on Donald Trump books? I think addressing the Gender Gap by writing reviews of books by women (Neither Celinda Lake's books nor Janine Wedel's have pages on en.wiki) might be a better investment of time... cross-referencing five ways til Tuesday doesn't necessarily strike me as a priority. Also, there is an open call for a page on Minassian Media (WMF PR contractor) for any page creators looking for work... SashiRolls (talk) 13:06, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

  Above comment appears to having nothing to do with this particular ongoing RFC, and focuses on contributors of individual editor instead of this particular page itself. Sagecandor (talk) 13:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• See models at Bibliography of Barack Obama and Bibliography of George W. Bush. First sentence of both. "both books and films". Sagecandor (talk) 04:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Lead Sentence Removed

If anyone feels this sentence (or, preferably an easier-to-understand version) should be in the lead, this is the place to discuss it (this challenged material has been removed):

Parties and individuals discussed in books by Trump are reduced to a zero-sum game, with a success and failure residing on either side of a given deal.

Thanks, just thinking of the reader. It's better not to try and send the reader off to learn about "zero-sum game" but to make the meaning clear either without awkward use of jargon or with textual demonstration that the jargon is appropriate. SashiRolls (talk) 13:06, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Quote added directly to citation: Trump’s world is binary, divided into class acts and total losers. He even details how physically unattractive he finds particular reporters, for no reason that I can fathom other than that it crossed his mind. Perhaps one can think of a better way to paraphrase this. Sagecandor (talk) 13:09, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Added direct quote to article text itself, so there is no confusion. Sagecandor (talk) 13:35, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

As you prefer SC, I'm just looking out for the reader. Congratulations on the 18 book reviews you've added in the last 20 days (430K). You've generated lots of GA work to be done! (I think you nominated nearly all of them, right?) I would suggest that if you want to help Wikipedia that you might consider branching out into other, more vital, areas of Wikipedia. I would also suggest concision. Cheers, SashiRolls (talk) 13:45, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Please focus on discussions about this particular page, not on individual contributors, thanks. Sagecandor (talk) 13:54, 22 June 2017 (UTC)