Talk:Richard Thomas (author)

This article was nominated for deletion on 24 February 2015 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

Biography: Arts and Entertainment

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the arts and entertainment work group.

The following Wikipedia contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view.

Wickerkat (talk · contribs) This user has contributed to the article. This user has declared a connection.

A few minor edits

I hotlinked a few of the words in the article is all. I noticed Wikipedia likes it when you do that, haha. Amnion (talk) 07:57, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:NOT

This article was way too detailed, way too loaded with minor trivia. Just the highlights. Choor monster (talk) 13:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Random House

Horrid BLP but now appears signed with major publisher, and his co-editor on Burnt Tongues is notable in his own right. Deletion at this point might be quite foolish. Collect (talk) 22:07, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Raise this on the deletion discussion page! Choor monster (talk) 18:35, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Short stories

In general, short story lists are to be avoided. Choor monster (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

However any notable short story should absolutely be listed -- it is just that we have a lot of BLPs where we have 10K of non-notable works in a "works" section <g>. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:52, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

When I find them, I usually delete them. Worse is a list of speaking engagements, writer workshops they've run, and the like. I've come across what seem to be non-existent awards even. Not that the author lied (pre-Internet) about winning some mid-level award, he apparently just gave himself an imaginary award! Choor monster (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From my points at ANI: WP:NOTDIR. I agree the entries do not have to be notable enough to have their own articles but for authors with many works, we should be using something more than "it exists" as an inclusion criteria. The situation is analogous to "Likewise an article on a business should not contain a list of all the company's patent filings." --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:59, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As I pointed out there, WP:NOTDIR does not apply to directly relevant lists. And according to WP:NLIST, which concerns standalone lists, only the list itself is required to meet WP:N guidelines. Within an article, notability is not needed for the list as a whole, let alone the entries. What you are asking for would lead to some really unhelpful bibliographies and filmographies and so on, with readers denied key information, and having no idea that they have been denied information. That is unacceptable. An extreme example is Catherine Cookson.

The relevant policy is WP:UNDUE, which basically means that almost certainly any short story list we give is shorter than any novel list, because RS's pay much more attention to novels than short stories.

Your analogy is off-the-wall. No one goes to WP to find precise patent information about a company. But I would expect an article here about a patent lawsuit to list all patents at issue, even if RS's concentrate on a handful of them. A better analogy would be the statistics related to professional sports careers: college and high school details are normally trimmed to tiny to non-existent compared to a player's professional career. Choor monster (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some of his books are collections of short stories. I think the best approach is to find a source saying (roughly) how many stories he's published, and/or what important magazines he's published them in, and cover short stories with a referenced statement using that. If any have been singled out in reviews of his work, they can be added, but I'm inclined to use a prose sentence or two, rather than a list, for the stories, to keep things based on sources and avoid the comprehensive list of publications. I've also been trying to get all the books referenced, and with his help, we're pretty much there now. One factor with lists of stories (and articles for living academics) is that there's usually a list on the person's website so that readers who want that can look it up there. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]