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 redirect to Ebook. ✗plicit 00:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This page is entirely unsourced, poorly written, and confusingly describes the concept of an ebook while adamantly claiming it's not one. I saw nothing here worth preserving, so I was going to blank and redirect this to ebook. However, when reviewing the history of the page I noticed that the first revision seemed to be describing web fiction instead. This puts this page in a weird spot. We could:
Delete this page
Redirect it to ebook
Redirect it to web fiction
Create a disambiguation page between the two subjects
I can't quite decide which, so I'm curious what your thoughts are. InvisibleUp (talk) 00:25, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to ebook: The article defines an "online book" as a resource in book-like form that is only available to read on the Internet. For what it's worth, I don't think I've ever heard of an "online book" as something that, as the article claims, differs from the common idea of an e-book by mere virtue of never having been published in print. Indeed, I note that ebook says: some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. I'd be thrilled if someone can support Online book's current interpretation of definitions, but my hunch is that this is the kind of article that results when editors ignore WP:NOTDICTIONARY and don't cite their sources, such that Wikipedia now hosts a dubious distinction that, likely, has basis neither in common parlance nor in professional editorial and publishing circles. Quite separately, Web fiction instinctively sounds to me as though it is (sometimes, but not necessarily) a type of ebook, and therefore seems inappropriate as a redirect target. IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 00:50, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to ebook Online books aren't necessarily fiction. — Sean Brunnock (talk) 17:28, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to ebook If someone is searching for online book, ebook looks to be the best place to provide them with the information they are looking for. Mgp28 (talk) 18:17, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I don't think there's any reason to redirect this. This is a definition, and it's accurate (indeed, "online book" does not mean "ebook", and yes, we did actually talk about online books this way in 2005, when the article was written). But it's just a dictionary definition. I can't really see any encyclopedic value in keeping it, nor do I see any at all in redirecting people to something it is not (ebook). -- asilvering (talk) 17:40, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, to be clear, it was not describing web fiction in the first revision. It's still describing online books: that is, a book that is online. Digitization and uploading to the internet aren't the same thing, and neither is reading an electronic copy and reading a copy online. -- asilvering (talk) 17:44, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to ebook Article states online books are different from ebooks, but does not provide any evidence for that. Online books are thought of as ebooks. Deleting the article would not make much sense, as an ebook is an online book and redirecting this to ebook would help people searching for ebook. This article is not written properly and does not contain any sources.
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.