Talk:Occult Chemistry

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WP:BK[edit]

This book does not appear to meet any of WP:BK#Criteria:

A book is generally notable if it verifiably meets through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria:
The book has been the subject ^[1] of multiple, non-trivial^[2] published works whose sources are independent of the book itself,^[3] with at least some of these works serving a general audience. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews. Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary.
The immediately preceding criterion excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.^[4]

The book has won a major literary award.

The book has been made or adapted with attribution into a motion picture that was released into multiple commercial theaters, or was aired on a nationally televised network or cable station in any country.

The book is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country.^[5]

The book's author is so historically significant that any of his or her written works may be considered notable, even in the absence of secondary sources.^[6]

Hrafn42^Talk_Stalk 06:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep; The corresponding German wikipedia page looks a little better and has a other literature mentioned. I think we can also take at least one of the pages linked under external links to be non-trival. They are occultists, alright, but at least Occult Atoms is written like a serious science-historic text, regardless of what the conclusion might be. A deletion to make the POINT that one does not believe this occult stuff would be inappropriate. Zara1709 10:41, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I only came across this article because it was proving to be a magnet for link-spam (when I found it, it was more external links than article), and the only activity on it was on external links & categories. If you can expand it into something worthwhile then be my guest. You have however yet to prove it is notable under criteria (1) above (which seems to be the only one you are defending it on), as this requires multiple works on the subject. You have, as yet, provided only one work (and that in German, and without any mention of what it actually has to say on the book). I'll give you some time to rectify that, but if you don't, I'll eventually get around to AfDing it. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 12:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, actually I don't have the time to expand this. I am too busy already with the whole occultism of that time in Germany, Ariosophy, Nazi occultism, etc. But if you are worried about the notabilty, I would say that this is not the case here. For this book there are already articles in other languages, ant it was originally published in English. They are badly sourced, but that is the usual with the occult articles. On the other hand Occult Atomsis quite well written. The only real problem is that the people who are interested in this field have done nothing more than adding external links. Of course they should add some content to the article, but I already mentioned wp:point. You can't just say an article isn't notable just because the people how created it are to lazy or to unfamiliar with wikipedia to expand it.

Sorry but "this book there are already articles in other languages" is not one of the criteria in WP:BK. This is particularly true as you have admitted that these articles are "badly sourced" -- which means that whatever sources they have are unlikely to meet the criteria's WP:RS & WP:V requirements. You have two alternatives:

Establish its notability under the criteria set out in WP:BK; or
Accept that it is highly likely that this article will be deleted.

I may not be able to "say an article isn't notable just because the people how created it are to lazy or to unfamiliar with wikipedia to expand it" -- but I can say that, because of this, its notability hasn't been established, which is all that is required for deletion: "Claims of notability must adhere to Wikipedia's policy on attribution; it is not enough to simply assert that a book meets a criterion without substantiating that claim with reliable sources." -- WP:BK Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 14:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you want, delete this article, but then also take the work to delete it in the other languages. Because if you have an article on an English book in the German Wikipedia someone who speaks German and English is just going to recreate it sooner or later in the English Wikipedia.

Currently, as I don't have access to any books, I can only point out again Occult Atoms. This is a reliable source and it discusses the book in a non-trival matter. If you insist, I will see if I can find some more sources, but together with the other sources whose reliability is not that clear I would consider this sufficient. Zara1709 15:12, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All that I'm really trying to do is prevent this article from simply being a spam magnet, and thus a discredit to wikipedia. If somebody from WikiProject Occult is prepared to take over minimal maintenance (e.g. providing sufficient citations to establish notability -- which seems likely to be possible, getting any citations into good order -- rather than leaving one as a German translation of its English name, occasionally clearing out the spam-links, etc), then I'm more than happy to turn it over. It then becomes "somebody else's problem". Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 15:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would not mind occultists linking various homepages here, if they only would knew how to use them as reference for the article. You are correct that an article with obvious linkspam are a discredit to wikipedia, but there are more serious issues. I'm thinking about proposing Heinrich Himmler's Great Chair for deletion for over a month now, but I haven't found the time to do it. Not to mention stuff like Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs and Ariosophy. I think there is a special tag for linkspam. Threatening with deletion is such a drastic measure. B.t.w., soory for all the spelling errors. Concerning the German book, I just cuted and pasted it from the German Wiki, I was going to check that out later.Zara1709 16:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the standard book-info box (managed to get original publisher off an online rare books retailer). There are dozens of editions of it, so have just thrown in a couple more that still seem to be in print (the original was printed 60 years before ISBN was introduced). I'll consider this article to be your/WikiProject Occult's problem from here on in. My problem with accuumulating linkspam is more that it is an indication that an article is getting no maintenance, so could end up getting completely vandalised with nobody noticing. Happy editing. :) Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 17:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ The "subject" of a work means non-trivial treatment and excludes mere mention of the book, its author or of its publication, price listings and other nonsubstantive detail treatment.
^ "Non-trivial" excludes personal websites, blogs, bulletin boards, Usenet posts, wikis and other media that are not themselves reliable. An analysis of the manner of treatment is crucial as well; Slashdot.org for example is reliable, but postings to that site by members of the public on a subject do not share the site's imprimatur. Be careful to check that the author, publisher, agent, vendor. etc. of a particular book are in no way interested in any third party source.
^ Independent does not mean independent of the publishing industry, but only refers to those actually involved with the particular book.
^ Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the book. (See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material). The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or of its author, publisher, vendor or agent) have actually considered the book notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it.
^ This criteria does not include textbooks or reference books written specifically for study in educational programs, but only independent works deemed sufficiently significant to be the subject of study themselves, such as major works in philosophy, literature, or science.
^ For example, a person whose life or works is a subject of common classroom study.

More sources[edit]

4070 hits for "occult Chemistry" at Yahoo let's see what's in there. Zara1709 15:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This hit mentions a book (Modern Alchemy - Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory - by Mark Morrisson, Associate Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University) that deals with our book in questions in Chapter 2. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zara1709 (talk • contribs) 15:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This hit mentions an article in an alchemy periodical, apparently commemorating the 100. anniversary of the first publication of our book in question, —Dr. Chris Illert, “sub-physical underpinnings of matter”, Alchemy Today volume 1, matter on the E5 level: Platonic Geometries in Nuclear Physics, a Centennial Commemoration of Occult Chemistry 1895-1995; First Edition 1992/5, 172 A4 pages, ISBN: 0 949357 13 8 (v1) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zara1709 (talk • contribs) 15:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This pdf includes a paragraph on the book occult chemistry. Zara1709 15:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is a bibiography, mentioning many other books bearing the title Occult Chemistry, that were pubslished later then Annie Besant's book. Seems she coined a term here.

After examing the first 200 hits cursorily I would conclude that this book as some notabilty within the field of occultism. About 1/3 of the webpages the search engine found were the full book or partial excerpts thereof. Among the rest there were some online bookstores, and a few occult bibliographies, and some text using the phrase occult chemistry to refer to alchemy. There is also a band calld "Occult chemistry", but I only found two hits for them. Zara1709 15:55, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Using anandgholap.net as a source or link[edit]

This site is the personally registered site of Anand Gholap of Pune, India. He has a disclaimer that he is not responsible for the use of anything on his site (http://www.anandgholap.net/Terms_Of_Use.htm). He makes no special claims of expertise or any affiliation. A number of texts and images from books are on his site but copyright status is uncertain as he does not have specific permission to make these public domain but has added these on the basis of his understanding of copyright law which is not the same as Wikipedia's. His site fails WP:RS and WP:ELNO and should not be used as a reference or link for any article apart from (possibly) an article about himself.—Ash (talk) 21:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[subject-1] The "subject" of a work means non-trivial treatment and excludes mere mention of the book, its author or of its publication, price listings and other nonsubstantive detail treatment.

[nontrivial-2] "Non-trivial" excludes personal websites, blogs, bulletin boards, Usenet posts, wikis and other media that are not themselves reliable. An analysis of the manner of treatment is crucial as well; Slashdot.org for example is reliable, but postings to that site by members of the public on a subject do not share the site's imprimatur. Be careful to check that the author, publisher, agent, vendor. etc. of a particular book are in no way interested in any third party source.

[3] Independent does not mean independent of the publishing industry, but only refers to those actually involved with the particular book.

[4] Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the book. (See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material). The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or of its author, publisher, vendor or agent) have actually considered the book notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it.

[5] This criteria does not include textbooks or reference books written specifically for study in educational programs, but only independent works deemed sufficiently significant to be the subject of study themselves, such as major works in philosophy, literature, or science.

[6] For example, a person whose life or works is a subject of common classroom study.

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