Portal talk:Books

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Portal:Books page.
This talk page is for the Portal about Books. Ensure this portal's details are listed in the Portal directory.

Discussion should centre on improving the Portal. Content disputes should take place on the appropriate article's talk page.


For discussion about Portals generally, please see the WikiProject on Portals.

I object!! Books are not literature. I understand that the portal is a bit inactive, but it's not the same thing. Literature has nothing to do with publishers or printing or binding or marketing or... other things. Besides, it was requested and I was just filling the request. Don't like to see all that go down the drain for an inaccurate lumping. --Keitei (talk) 15:37, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Please write where it was requested. feydey 20:52, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Here. Near the bottom, under "how to get involved." "Requested portals" and "general portals preferred to concrete portals" convinced me to give it a go. I'm not saying the portal is done, and I've sort of hit a mental block, but redirecting it to something barely related is a bit... counterproductive. --Keitei (talk) 23:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I have nothing against this Portal, but it seems no one is maintaining it. Also the creation of this portal never went throgh Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals. I think that Portal:Literature includes all the things You mentioned like publishers or printing or binding or marketing. Everyone can create portals, but if they are not maintained then they are not really useful. I know it took some effort to set it up, but if You are not going to maintain it, whynot just redirect it to Literature? Also I don't understand how books are "something barely related" to literature, ... books are literature. feydey 00:59, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I am maintaining it. I come back once or twice a week and try to add. However, I can't come up with anything, and I haven't found anyone who can. It didn't go through proposals because the portal page as it existed in April said that there was a list of portals which were requested. It didn't say it had to be approved.
Books are not literature. Dictionaries can be books, but dictionaries are not literature. Literature is the stories, the words. Books are the paper, the bindings, the glue, the publisher, the booksellers, the distributors. Books have nothing to do with the authors, the impact of the content, the plots, the characters. They're separate things, and having more information doesn't hurt anything. Wikipedia is not paper.
I still know very little about portals and nobody has really been helpful. I am trying to make it a nice portal, but I haven't the slightest what to do. Anyhow, I would have appreciated it if someone had started a discussion before deciding to overhaul the project. Can we let it exist? Would you like to help? If it shouldn't exist, nominate it for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion; redirecting leaves the subpages intact. --Keitei (talk) 03:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
A portal literally on books, the physical entity? Should we let that exist? Methinks not. If all agree that Portal:Books should redirect to Portal:Literature, then there's no need to sumbit it to MfD. I'll take care of the subpages. So, are all in favour of the redirect?--cj | talk 05:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
It's not hurting anything, the entire portal takes up a miniscule amount of harddrive space (have you ever checked the amount of space Pokemon takes up? Seriously...) and if there's even one user (like, say, Keitei) willing to upkeep the portal, we may as well let it alone. Books != Literature. Literature is the content of books. Please leave this portal as-is. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 00:53, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm against a merge as well. I think it's ill advised. Books are not literature and literature is not books, there is need for a distinction. Or were you going to welcome articles on binding, paper manufacturing techniques, and Amazon.com at literature? Those all fall within the purview of "books". I'd oppose a MfD as well should it get nommed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lar (talk • contribs) 21:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Don't merge with Literature, this is distinct. It should survive if (and only if) it's maintained. At the moment, it's really under construction. It needs to have a line up of selected articles and pictures (not necessarily automated), and the "ITN" section needs to be at least occasionally updated or else removed. The "Books News" section is self-referential and should be deleted.-gadfium 08:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Feel free to change it. It's not like anyone has offered to help me here, or even tell me what to do. --Keitei (talk) 19:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Publisher Clean-up

I'm guessing that publishing fits best here? I just created Appleton-Century-Crofts and discovered a wonderful mess of (corporate) mergers at D. Appleton & Company and the various nodes xref'd from them both. There's some duplicate history across them, and it's not clear how to best handle this (sparse) information. It doesn't help that the naming isn't consistent (I fixed some of that on D. Appleton & Company), or that sometimes business entries are created with the incorporate type extension, and sometimes not. (I opted for not as it seemed cleaner, and I found examples of mage conglomerates such as Time Warner where it is also ommitted) --Belg4mit 18:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] In the news

This section needs to be updated. -- 200.100.16.48 (talk) 17:32, 13 January 2008 (UTC)