Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Nancy Joyce Peters


 * 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. Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 11:43, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Nancy Joyce Peters
This is a very old entry on a rather obscure Surrealist poet, created back in 2003 by an occasional editor interested in Surrealism. However verifiable and sourced (although I've only found one external website to endorse this), this author's notability appears to be extremely sketchy. It has never had a Wikipedia entry; a Google search for "Nancy Joyce Peters" yields 309 results, our entry being on top of the list (274 if we remove "Wikiquote" from the search string); doesn't appear to have published any books, ever, just a few articles and a poem at certain Surrealist magazines back in the '70s and early '80s. A search for the attributed quote also brings no more than a couple of hits, if we don't take ourselves into account. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on the matter, as this appears to need more discussion. — Phaed r i e l  - 04:17, 25 July 2007 (UTC) *Delete per Phaedriel's research and per Herby's comment merge to make a higher quality entry. FloNight 12:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Vote closed: Result: Keep. The revisions during this debate have helped a consensus to keep emerge. Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 11:43, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete unless evidence of notability is provided. See also Second Manifesto of Surrealism, it is a somehow notable document, but pitiful stub. --Aphaia 10:11, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Almost keep but - Unusual for me but... I'm not worried about the absence of a Wikipedia page, at the risk of heresy there is plenty there that probably should not be and equally I'm sure things that are missing.  There is some small notability for the quote.  Taking Aphaia's point and adding in the fact that we do not appear to have anything actually on Surrealism, I wonder if both the page Aphaia referred to and this one might be sensibly merged into a Surrealism page which might be more findable and so get added to?  Just my 0.02 -- Herby  talk thyme 10:30, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Updated comment I reviewed the latest discussions and I continue to think that deletion is the best whether the content is merger or not. LrdChaos and Jeff Q's research make me think that she does not have the notability for a page on Wikiquote. FloNight 20:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Update-update comment Now Keep per diligent research that now persuades me of her notability. FloNight 15:55, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep (but clean up a little). She's anthologized in Surrealist Women: An International Anthology, a book from a respected author and a legitimate publisher, indicating that she is at least considered notable by people interested in surrealistic poetry ("well known to those who know about her"). I'd like to see the sources beefed up to where someone could actually find them but I don't think we should delete it on that basis. --Ubiquity 15:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: Notability should be proved, or will we collect sourced but non-notable quotes?--Jusjih 15:38, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment She's a poet I like, but maybe she's not notable enough - not sure.--Poetlister 17:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Altering to Keep She is in more than one substantial anthology.--Poetlister 17:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Merge per above.--Cato 21:31, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge into a page on Surrealism, as suggested by Herby above. ~ UDScott 14:36, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. I've extended this vote for another seven days due to the lack of a clear consensus. There are a couple of votes to delete, 1.5 to keep and 2.5 to merge. So, the merge result is leading, but I don't really think that's a good choice. We try to have theme pages about their topics, so suitable content would be quotes about surrealism, but the quotes we have are from a surrealist. —LrdChaos (talk) 19:08, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy Joyce Peters, Literary San Francisco. City Lights, Harper Row, 1980. (no.16) Anyone who shares a billing with Ferlinghetti on a City Lights imprint has to be worth keeping. Tyrenius 03:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Reluctant delete . I hate to say it, but she really doesn't seem to meet our notability criteria. The Library of Congress has six works that give her at least some credit (under "Peters, Nancy J. (Nancy Joyce)"), but five are books she only edited, and one is a "pictorial history" on which she receives co-author credit. Amazon doesn't seem to have any mention of her at all. I did an English-only, Wikiquote-excepted Google search and got only 64 unique hits, most of which were either mere mentions of her name or genealogical sites, and few of which appeared to have anything signficant about her. I couldn't find her quoted work, It's In the Wind, in either Amazon.com or LoC. I'm afraid that if we lowered our threshold to include folks this obscure (by virtue of the lack of readily found reliable sources), we'd open Wikiquote to a parade of less quoteworthy but better promoted people. (I'd personally like to see Wikiquote and Wikipedia become a trove of information on obscure people like this, but we need to solve the sourcing problems first.) I also agree with LrdChaos that merge isn't really a viable option. The interpretive requirements of surrealism make it hard to include surrealist quotes in any theme about something, and this certainly seems to be the case for Peters's currently listed quotes. It occurs to me that surrealism is a relatively unmarketed portion of the written arts, so aside from a few well-known purveyors of the phantasmagoric, we're probably going to miss out on a lot of intriguing characters and their trippy wit. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. But more information from anyone knowing more about her beyond the anthologies mentioned would be helpful. ~ Pan 22:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete . I did much of the same digging as Jeffq, and came up just as empty at the end. Despite User:Ubiquity's claim about being included in an anthology, I wasn't able to find any evidence of that in my searches (not that I mean to accuse anyone of lying, as I have not consulted the book myself, nor found even its table of contents listed), and even so, I don't believe that inclusion in a single anthology, with such a relatively narrow topic, which includes "three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries" (according to the 'book description' on Amazon) is suitable evidence of notability. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Surrealist Women, An International Anthology, edited by Penelope Rosemont, published by University of Texas Press 1998. From the introduction:
 * "Although this anthology contains only a sampling of the work of women surrealists, it shows that they have worked wonders in many genres of written expression. Surrealism in poetry would be much poorer without the radiant voices of Valentine Penrose, Joyce Mansour, Meret Oppenheim, Alice Rahon, Mary Low, Luiza Neto Jorge, Isabel Meyrelles, Marianne van Hirtum, Giovanna, Carmen Bruna, Jayne Cortez, Nancy Joyce Peters, and many others"
 * "In the writings of Claude Cahun, Suzanne Césaire, Ikbal El Alailly, Nora Mitrani, Joyce Mansour, Marianne van Hirtum, Nelly Kaplan, Nancy Joyce Peters, Haifa Zangana, and many others, our appreciation of surrealism itself is deepened."
 * The source for Peters' text is "Ceremonies in a Polar Garden" and a quote higher on the same page, on the website of the Chicago Surrealist Group. Tyrenius 23:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I would note that it took me a few tries before I got the www.surrealistmovement-usa.org server to return Tyrenius's cited page. Its Alexa rating is >5 million, and it seems to be somewhat technically unreliable as well as obscure. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:55, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 4,217,633 when I looked. So in the top 4.5% out of around 100,000,000 web sites. Not bad for an obscure site - but I wasn't suggesting an article on the site! And I get it without any problem. Hey, Jeff - maybe it's time to upgrade your Amstrad. :) Tyrenius 00:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Amstrad?! I don't deal with them newfangled things. I'm got my trusty Altair 8800 for this Internet stuff. (I admit it takes me a while to flip the extra switches for Unicode characters.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - worth keeping and needs research per Tyrenius, - Modernist 18:20, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Update and rewrite. Nancy Joyce Peters is sometimes referred to as Nancy J. Peters, but mostly as just Nancy Peters, well known under that name as the co-owner and publisher of City Lights. That search has produced a number of quotes which I've added. As the article is considerably different from the state in which it was nominated  and to which previous comments refer, it would be advisable for editors to have another look to confirm or amend their vote. Also the article should be moved to Nancy Peters. Tyrenius 05:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Ouch. This just keeps accumulating more and more not-quite-compelling evidence. I've just spent the past week explaining to a number of folks why Wikiquote isn't in the business of merely collecting people's opinions, but is instead trying to get quotes worthy of Barlett's (e.g., see WQ:AN). Then Tyrenius digs up many of these kinds of quotes which nevertheless add incremental notability (i.e., getting quoted in mainstream press). Peters owns and publishes City Lights, which sounds like the kind of obscure, independent publisher we usually reject as a vanity press. Likewise for Surrealist Editions. (For goodness sakes, even many vanity publishers' products these days have ISBNs and are sold on Amazon, unlike SE's catalog.) This has only reinforced my "reluctant delete" vote (both words!) for now. But I suspect that we will fail to achieve a consensus on this one, and it will stand for the foreseeable future as an example of borderline notability. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Ouch with bells and knobs on. City Lights is a world-renowned publisher of world-renowned authors, not least of whom is Alan Ginsberg, the prosecution and subsequent acquital of whose poetry book Howl in 1957 for obscenity is not only a literary but a legal landmark. The BBC does not usually run pieces on vanity presses! City Lights is the first time in SF that not a building but a business has been named an official historic landmark. In fact according to The Guardian City Lights is "the most famous bookshop in the world". I take it literature is not your main specialisation, Jeff...  Tyrenius 06:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, you got me there. I'm an Amazon guy myself. But I think Shakespeare and Company and Foyles may have something to say about "most famous", however City Lights may bill themselves. On the other hand, if I had ignored the Surrealist Editions' appparent obscurity and gone for "City Lights Publishing" instead, I wouldn't have made such an egregious error. My apologies. But we're still looking for Peters' notability, not that of her business. I seem to recall deleting an article on a president of a famous company because he himself wasn't especially notable. I find it frustrating that there is so much almost-famous material here, but I can't say I'll be disappointed if we decide it all adds up to keep her above our loose threshold for inclusion. Good sleuthing! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Btw, for the record, "most famous" was a statement by the Guardian journalist (actually deputy travel editor Isabel Choat). I've not seen City Lights making such a claim themselves. Surrealist Editions did rather get everything off in not the best direction. Tyrenius 20:59, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * By the way, I think I agree with Tyrenius that if we keep this article, it should be moved to "Nancy Peters". Amazingly, even WP doesn't have an article for this very common name. (I suspect much usage of "Nancy Joyce" or "Nancy J." is to pre-emptively avoid confusion with others.) I also note that there is an article for her husband, Philip Lamantia, which mentions her. More ambiguous information! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:35, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * WP now has an article on Nancy Peters. Tyrenius 03:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * ¡No más, no más! Keep now (moving to "Nancy Peters"), given all that Tyrenius has dug up and written. &#9786; ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. City Lights Bookstore has quite a place in American literary history. Nancy J. Peters is  mentioned in its Wikipedia article.  - InvisibleSun 05:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Nomination withdrawn, switch to Keep. Tyrenius' excellent research, digging up enough material to verify the subject's notability deserves to be rewarded accordingly. It's not everyday that we witness such a deep debate and hard work of investigation - great job, T! — Phaed r i e l  - 06:16, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and to others for reconsidering the revised version. Tyrenius 23:56, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * 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.