The result was Delete Spartaz Humbug! 22:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A run-of-the-mill website. I do not see where the notability is with this one. Per WP:WEB. Gary King (talk) 16:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this opportunity to further discuss the issue. Your issue with the LitMinds entry seems to be around notability. Allow us to address that.
It can be difficult to judge an organization by simply looking at it’s web-site. And you are right that on a cursory glance, LitMinds web-site won’t appear to be notable. In fact, we don’t claim to have a sophisticated web-site with fancy features. LitMinds does claim to be a notable organization which is engaged in several notable activities. Among them – 1) Telling the stories of literary innovators who are doing unique, interesting, and pioneering work to promote reading and literature. We do this through our acclaimed Literary Innovators Interviews which can be found on our blog. www.litminds.org/blog/ 2) Work with schools and colleges to help young readers discover books and the art of conversation through social networking. 3) Perform the above activities without any commercial motivations (ala advertisements, subscriptions fees, affiliate kick-backs). In summary, we think LitMinds is a notable mission-driven organization with fairly unique goals and focus.
Next, let us address the issue of “coverage” i.e. who else thinks we are doing anything notable? Here is some press we have received from the American Booksellers Association, San Francisco Business Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, New York Review of Books, and San Jose State University http://news.bookweb.org/features/5520.html http://washington.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2007/08/20/story5.html?jst=s_cn_hl http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6449438.html http://nyrb.typepad.com/classics/2007/06/index.html http://sanjose.metblogs.com/archives/2007/07/litmindsorg_teams_with_sjsu.phtml
Also, here is some discussions of LitMinds in the blogosphere: http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2007/03/litminds_interv.html http://bookchase.blogspot.com/2007/03/litminds-interview.html http://caribousmom.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/4/16/2884137.html http://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/index.php
Last, after reading Wikipedia’s notability guidelines, we have an observation we would like to share. The guidelines say “A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.” In our humble opinion, strict application of this guideline poses significant risk of turning Wikipedia into a site that only summarizes what the mass media is reporting on. Let’s take a couple of examples from our world – the world of literature. The mass media has been obsessing about stories of independent bookstores closing around the country. There has been a real lack of coverage in the mass media about stories where independent bookstores are surviving and thriving while chain stores in the same neighborhoods are retrenching. Similarly, the mass media continues to report about the apparent decline of reading in the American society, and continues to largely ignore the efforts of pioneers who are helping to create generations of new readers. LitMinds was started to correct this information imbalance. So, by definition we are talking about things that don’t get covered by others! Fortunately, Wikepdia notability guidelines also state – “However, there is still a lot of debate on notability, as for obvious reasons, not every person, business, or street can be considered notable, so on such topics, the line has to be further drawn.” We hope in addition to making a case for LitMinds notability, this conversation will also help re-assess the notability guidelines themselves.
- Praveen —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmadan (talk • contribs) 21:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]