Talk:Gossip Girl: The Carlyles

Character pages

Hey can people help me with writing character pages? Thank you.(Lilhottie53 (talk) 04:19, 9 June 2008 (UTC))

Yes, its simple, don't do it. They are not notable and the pages will either be merged or deleted. They fail WP:N, WP:FICT, and WP:WAF. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 15:23, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Establishing Notability?

What's the best way to establish notability for a fiction book? I don't edit fiction book articles very often, but this (crappy) book seems to meet the criteria for notability, based on the many articles and reviews about it. You can easily find them by Googling its title or author.Aroundthewayboy (talk) 05:06, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles and reviews must come from reliable sources, and must be in-depth, not short reviews or brief mentions. See WP:BK for the book notability requirements. The series as a whole likely passed notability, but except for maybe the first book, I don't think the rest do. Interestingly, I did find an article which notes that these are literally assembly line books, following a specific formula (along with some other similar series), with the listed author actually doing almost none of the writing on some of them. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 06:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Hm, fair enough. I agree that from a cursory search, the series seems notable, but maybe the individual books are not. I think we should give superfans a little time to establish notability before deleting the article, though. Aroundthewayboy (talk) 01:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Hm, there are a million blogs discussing it, but I don't know which count as a reliable source. Publishers Weekly is the most reliable source in publishing, and here's a long article about the series: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6547202.html?nid=2788 Aroundthewayboy (talk) 01:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Nope, blogs don't count as reliable source unless it is an official publisher or industry blog. Part of the tagging for notability is to give editors time to work on notability. If not one does anything to address it after a reasonable amount of time (2 weeks - 1 month depending on how much activity level is seen), then its reasonable to presume there either is no notability and proceed with a merge or deletion. In this case, it would be partially merged back to the series page with a redirect. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 01:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Here are two more. They're web sites, not personal blogs, and otherwise satisfy the criteria you linked to:

http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/9780316020640.asp

http://thecelebritycafe.com/books/full_review/1328.html

I think that satisfies notability unless you can give a valid reason why not. Note that slashdot is cited as an acceptable source in the guidelines. Aroundthewayboy (talk) 19:26, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think these books are crap, but I also think they're a cultural phenomenon, like Paris Hilton. Thus satisfy notability.Aroundthewayboy (talk) 19:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh also: including the article you mentioned about them being an assembly line, that's four articles about them, surely satisfying the 'multiple' reviews/articles criteria.Aroundthewayboy (talk) 19:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

No, its four articles about the series as a whole, making the series notable, not each individual book. Notability doesn't confer. For those two articles, they both appear to meet WP:RS, however only one of them meets the requirement in WP:BK for serving a general audience. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 19:35, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think you're misunderstanding the titles -- the title of the first book is also the title of the whole series, so the reviews are of this book. I just double checked each one, and each discusses this book in particular. Also, Publishers Weekly is the definition of a general audience publication. So that's all the criteria met. If there were no articles about this I would let the article be deleted, but apparently there are. Aroundthewayboy (talk) 19:45, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there a whole other series of books? It seems like this is just single stand alone spin off "novel" from the Gossip Girl series. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 19:56, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this is the first book in a planned spinoff series....Aroundthewayboy (talk) 03:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

As Aroundthewayboy has requested 3O, after leaving an uncivil message on my talk page, I'm copy/pasting my reasons for still questioning the notability here. Notability has NOT been established at all. The article is completely unchanged from when it was tagged, consisting solely of a plot and character section. Aroundthewayboy provided three links above and has claimed they establish notability, but they do not. Not per WP:BK. The PW article is primarily about Gossip Girls as a whole and its author. It does not provide significant coverage of this offshoot nor is it an in-depth review of this single book. The other two links are to marginal reviews, which I already pointed out do NOT count. The teen reads is from a teen oriented website, making it usuable to establish notability. The second is of questionable reliability. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if the article is unchanged/bad. Your tag is for notability, which is a separate issue. I made a compelling case for notability above. The Publishers Weekly article discusses this book in a non-trivial way, and is not a plot summary or press release, which is all that is required in the guidelines. And specialized sources are admittable, as long as there's more than one non-specialized source. So, including PW, that's two general sources, and one specialist source. That satisfies the requirements. You have not addressed these points. Aroundthewayboy (talk) 05:41, 2 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aroundthewayboy (talk • contribs)

No, it does not. PW only mentions the book briefly, in relation to the existing series. And no, one SINGLE mention is not all that is required. Very first guideline notes it must be the subject of MULTIPLE, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself, with at least SOME (aka more than one) of these works serving a general audience. Again, this doesn't meet it, and I have addressed your points, repeatedly. You just don't like my answers. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 05:48, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I just reread the PW article to make sure I wasn't slipped a hallucinogenic. As I thought, it includes THREE PARAGRAPHS about this book. All the stuff in the beginning about the new characters, that's about this book. It's an author interview ABOUT this book. Definitely a relevant source for establishing notability. If it weren't for that article, I agree the other two would not have been quite enough. In tandem, they establish notability. Aroundthewayboy (talk) 05:57, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The following is the section from the PW article about the new characters in this book:

And fans eager for the next book need wait only until May, when Little Brown Books for Young Readers’ Poppy imprint will publish Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl: The Carlyles with a 200,000-copy first printing.

With the exception of the gossipy blogger who gives the series its name, the cast of this and subsequent volumes in the spin-off is all-new, though the setting remains the same. Exactly the same. The Carlyles—teen triplets who relocate to Manhattan from Nantucket—move into the very Fifth Avenue penthouse that Gossip Girl star Blair Waldorf’s family has vacated. They attend the same exclusive private schools as did the characters from the original arc and move in the same privileged social circles.

“My publisher and I wanted to continue Gossip Girl, but the last novel took the characters to the end of the summer after senior year and they were all going off to different parts of the country,” von Ziegesar says. “With all of them scattered, I thought it was more logical to follow a new group of characters, newcomers to the city who land in the same Upper East Side playground.” Aroundthewayboy (talk) 06:01, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

It should be noted that PW, which I used to write for, is the most prominent trade journal in publishing. It's the Variety of book publishing, so an article like this is HUGE in establishing notability.Aroundthewayboy (talk) 06:02, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

No, it isn't. Its little more than a press release announcing the series. It is a SINGLE reliable source about the series. Even deciding the 3 paragraphs are about the book itself (never mind it keeps pointing back to the series as a whole, and noting that it IS just another book in the series with a new subtitle), it is still just ONE source. That does not equal significant coverage in MULTIPLE reliable sources. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 07:12, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Third Opinion

This discussion was listed as a request for a third opinion. It's obvious from this that the second book has already been announced, so this is definitely the first book in a new series. Another PW article tells us that the contract is for four books, so more coverage seems inevitable. But I have to agree with AnmaFinotera that there just isn't enough independent coverage out there to support notability of this book. However, since the second book in the series has been announced there may be justification to convert this to an article about The Carlyles as a series itself conataining information about both books. I would suggest renaming this page to Gossip Girl: The Carlyles (series) and waiting for more coverage on the individual books. They can always be broken out to individual articles later if needed. Jim Miller (talk) 19:42, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. For my own clarification, I would like it if somebody other than AnmaFinotera would explain why the three sources I cited do not fulfill notability as defined in the notability guidelines above. Just to summarize: PW has at least one, maybe two, articles that discuss this book in a non-cursory way; there are two additional links that even AnmaFinotera initially indicated were relevant coverage, though one is for a teen rather than general audience. That's three sources, one of them very good, two of them less than ideal but relevant, two of them general, only one for a non-general audience. I don't see what's missing.Aroundthewayboy (talk) 20:02, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

So, right now, is this article about the first book, the series, or both? Anyway, Alloy Entertainment’s 2008 Frankfurt Foreign Rights Guide (which also says how many countries they have sold the rights to this and other books to) names Annabelle Vestry as the writer of the series--could her name be mentioned in an article? Thanks in advance! --Kletta (talk) 18:41, 14 December 2008 (UTC)