The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep as withdrawn. Synergy 16:53, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Good Dog (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Original research of an unnotable childrens book, made almost completely up of plot summary. There are no references to verify notability. Tavix (talk) 01:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The article needs improvement, but according to OCLC's Open WorldCat there are 14 different editions (a fuzzier concept than most non-liberrians might think) held by almost 1,500 libraries worldwide. Imprint is Atheneum Books so we're not looking at vanity or other self-published tripe. I get the feeling the editor picked up the book and decided to make a wikipedia article. Good for them! --Quartermaster (talk) 02:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the spirit of communal editing niceness (which is why we're all here, right?) I went ahead and added a book infobox to the article. I personally prefer clicking on the OCLC number in the infobox which pulls up the OCLC's Open WorldCat record immediately. I should probably have put this WorldCat link to the book in this Afd in the first place. --Quartermaster (talk) 17:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keepanything which encourages reading should be included, plus there's scope for improvement. Annette46 (talk) 04:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep If it was any other animal besides dogs I would have voted to delete. Steve Dufour (talk) 05:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep Per Quartermaster/

The author is a well known award winner. It's a poor article, but it needs to be improved, not deleted.--Abusing (talk) 06:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep

• Looks like a good article [1] (includes "It's a valid question and Avi presents it, from McKinley's point of view, in an interesting mix of adventure and animal rights advocacy. ...")
• There's a paragraph here.
• and here
• a smaller bit here

Most of these are short, but this is a children's book. Plenty of sources show folks are reading it (schools that have assigned it etc.) Hobit (talk) 06:24, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I see that you guys are finding a couple sources for notability, but that fails to address two other concerns I have with the article. I will start with the first: Original research. The article is almost entirely composed of a plot summary with no sources to back up the plot. Removing the original research would leave the article with just two lines of text, which isn't what I'm aiming for if you all want to rescue this article. The second is verifiability. WP:V can be summed up with the following text: "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." I see no reliable sources in any of the article so that's why I'm "challenging" the text if you will. Tavix (talk) 23:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• WP:SOFIXIT? Seriously, the reviews can be used to make a longer article, or perhaps it can be merged into an article about his works. But the problems you are discussing are for cleanup, not deletion. Hobit (talk) 03:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I went in and modified the opening paragraph to point out that the author is a Newberry Medalist; added some more info extracted from (and cited in the new References section) the School Library Journal review of the book. I'm in agreement about the problem with this being a lengthy recounting of the plot. --Quartermaster (talk) 14:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Being bold I severely reduced the detailed recounting of the plot with a much shorter summary. The infobox I added now has an image of the cover of the book. I think it is a short, but worthy to live another day article. I entered a comment on the article's discussion page encouraging the original editor to continue to contribute.

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:39, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep I just added a Literary significance and reception section providing references from two reliable sources. Additional sources that I can only find abstracts

• Cart, Michael et al. "Fiction." Booklist 98, no. 1 (September 2001): 102. Abstract: Reviews several fiction books. 'The Good Dog,' by Avi;....
• Freeman, Judy. "Amazing Animal Tales." Instructor 111, no. 6 (March 2002): 18. Abstract:Reviews several children's books. ... Reviews several children's books. --Captain-tucker (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment and compliments. Excellent work by all participants. This entire Afd goes in my "this is how things should be done on wikipedia" folder. The original Afd prod was perfectly valid, leading to an examination by others regarding the article's notability, followed by improvement of the article to something quite reasonable. We made lemonade, people! --Quartermaster (talk) 21:51, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Withdraw Nomination This article is severely better than when I nominated it. Before I nominated it, I probably should've done a better search at looking for references, but then we probably wouldn't have this good of an article than if I didn't nominate it. Seriously, you guys are amazing at editing. Tavix (talk) 23:46, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.