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. Yes, I know nobody has explicitly argued to keep here; but evidence of notability has been provided, nobody except the OP has argued to delete, and the OP has been blocked as a sock, meaning that I am ignoring their opinion. Vanamonde ( Talk) 17:19, 3 February 2019 (UTC) reply

Gerina Dunwich

Gerina Dunwich (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

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No obvious notability Oathswarm ( talk) 13:33, 27 January 2019 (UTC) reply

• Comment Some signficant coverage in two newspaper articles ( [1], [2]). Also what could be more notable than being, according to the The Cat Book of Lists: Facts, Furballs, and Foibles from Our Favorite Felines, a "world-renowned authority on felidomancy".-- Pontificalibus 14:12, 27 January 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Qualitist ( talk) 15:02, 27 January 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Qualitist ( talk) 15:02, 27 January 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. Qualitist ( talk) 15:02, 27 January 2019 (UTC) reply

• Comment, appears to be quite a prolific author, and at least one of her books Herbal Magick is held by a large number of libraries (over 450, yes this includes ebook), but where are the useable reviews? Coolabahapple ( talk) 01:11, 30 January 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple ( talk) 01:12, 30 January 2019 (UTC) reply

• Comment As well as the two articles with lengthy coverage which Pontificalibus found, I have found several 1-2 para reviews of The Pagan Book of Halloween (eg this [3], written by staff of the Dallas Morning News, though this link is to a Kentucky newspaper; this [4] by an Associated Press writer, published in several papers including this one in South Carolina; one in Publishers Weekly, 30/10/2000, Vol. 247 Issue 44, p70, [5]); and it's quoted in a 2013 article on Halloween in the Tennessean [6].
  

Ghostvillage [7] would not be regarded as a reliable source, but their reviews of her books can be critical (eg in the review of A Witch’s Guide to Ghosts and the Supernatural [8], "When Dunwich is describing the haunted houses she has lived in and some of the supernatural experiences that have happened to her directly, she is sometimes overly dramatic and sensational, which does slightly affect her credibility. As an example: “But the moment I placed my hand upon the knob of the bedroom door to open it, the music was no more.” She uses this touch of Edgar Allan Poe-style in many places while describing her haunted house experiences—probably in an attempt to set a scarier tone for the reader, but it often just leaves a bad taste.")

I also found a 1999 article in a Toronto paper [9], about the popularity of witchcraft, which has a long bit about teenagers reading and using spells from Wicca Love Spells, which it says was one of the most popular books for teens. An article in Publishers' Weekly about the publisher Career Press says that Exploring Spellcraft by Gerina Dunwich had sold more than 30,000 copies [10]. I also noted that Wicca Candle Magick was in the top 5 non-fiction Most Reserved books at Mesa Public Library in Phoenix, Arizona in 2001 [11], and a women's book group discussed it in 1997 in Stanton, Delaware [12].

Looking on Google Scholar, I counted just under 50 books and articles by other authors which quoted her works.

The book Poet's Market 1998: 1,700 Places to Publish Your Poetry (1997) [13] confirms info about the press she founded, although as the description of the press starts with quotation marks, it may not be an independent assessment of the press.

If her biography is included in various sources, it would be more useful for those sources to be used as references (and this para should be deleted!). The Who's Who in the East and Personalities of America may not be independent (I'm not sure how entries are selected and written), but The Wicca Source Book and The Modern Witch's Complete Sourcebook are by Dunwich herself, so are definitely not independent. Interestingly, her biography in the Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft has the exact same sentence about her memberships and where her bios are included - and the previous para about being a spokesperson and a guest on talk shows etc is almost identical to the Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft too. From the revision history of the article, I see that the paragraph about her bios has been in it from the beginning, with no attribution. In 2005, a large amount of text was deleted (but not wiped) as a probable copyright violation; it was reverted with the summary "permission granted - contact [email protected]". So either we have WP:COPYVIO or we have WP:COI.

She maybe scrapes through WP:BASIC or WP:AUTHOR, but the article still needs a lot of editing and more inline citations, as well as addressing the WP:COPYVIO and/or WP:COI. So I am really not sure about this one. (Sorry for writing screeds!) RebeccaGreen ( talk) 13:24, 3 February 2019 (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.