19 Nov 2025 –OpenTaal(talk · edit · hist) was PRODed byLenny Marks(t · c):Article topic fails notability guidelines. All sources are either from own website or not significant coverage. wp:BEFORE did not turn up sufficient sources to establish notability.
Adding this again, because a LOT of progress has been made. @PARAKANYAA and others were involved here last time. With a lot of effort the category now has only 1896 listings of books with missing book cover images right now!!! This is the lowest it has probably been in YEARS. I'd love to see it get below 1,000 though because then that is a super manageable level which can be dealt with easily over time. That has always been my goal, just get it to be a reasonable and manageable level, not zero, but manageable. I think a few hundred to 1,000 is that level.
Nearing 1800 I hope we can continue to push and soon be below 1800 in the list. There are some ancient tomes that I have issues with if anyone has any special interest in those old ones.Iljhgtn (talk)14:37, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One thought I had for the really old ones is, if you switch the manuscripts to use "infobox manuscript" instead of "infobox book", that will remove them from the "books with missing cover" maint category. It would also make it easier for the infobox to present the kind of information that's relevant to the manuscript instead of weird anachronistic "book" ones (ie manuscripts don't have publishers).~ L 🌸 (talk)20:05, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So foundOn Passions for example. What is the easiest or most straightforward way to convert the book infobox to manuscript infobox and just retain all of the content as is? I use the visual editor.Iljhgtn (talk)01:35, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LEvalyn Do you think you will be able to look over the list or help with this at all? I am trying to push it below 1,500 soon and then ultimately I'd love to keep the list under 1,000 and always in the triple digits. I think we can do this. It was 4,000+ when I began this latest passion.Iljhgtn (talk)02:37, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even if you own the book, the copyright to the cover image still belongs to the original artist, according to whatever the copyright term is from where it was first made. It looks like it's from 1967, so there could be some edge cases here. If it was first published in the US inwithout an explicit copyright notice, it's public domain now and you can upload the image -- you can check the inner flap of the book and the copyright page to look for a notice. If thereis a copyright notice, it won't become public domain until 2062 (meaning we can only use a "fair use" low-resolution image until then).This chart has the details for figuring out other US books' status.~ L 🌸 (talk)19:59, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not that I'm aware of. I believe any source for the image is OK, though it's important to upload fair use files to the English Wikipedia directly, not the Wikimedia Commons. TheWikipedia:File upload wizard will steer you in the right direction.~ L 🌸 (talk)21:46, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you @Kingsacrificer! I do this all the time, and have actually uploaded thousands of images like this, but would appreciate help in adding more such as this. Please join me. I used a combination of sources, from Goodreads, to Archive.org, to Amazon or Abebooks, or other places when available. Glad to see another lover of adding book cover images. The list (as I write this) is around 1803 listed books deep, but I think with some concerted work, we could get the list down to 900 or below and keep it there!Iljhgtn (talk)07:16, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Kingsacrificer The list is 1,743 deep as of this writing. That might be the lowest that it has ever been. If you @LEvalyn are able to contribute to this list, that would also help, I think we can get below 1,500 before the end of this month if we all work together!Iljhgtn (talk)01:16, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This article was turned into a redirect to the author's page, but none of the information was merged. (User has since been banned for being a sock puppet). I moved some information over to the author's page, as it stands it doesn't have enough information to be a stand alone article. However - it's a book that was banned by the India Government,[1] it's a politically charged topic, and I wanted a second pair of eyes on it as I haven't worked in the "book space" very much to know the MOS. But, I also have a feeling there are other sources out there that could expand the section of the book, if it peaks anyone's interest. It sits in that sweet spot of "too early to be covered widely on the internet" and "not old enough for paper sources to have been converted electronically".Denaar (talk)14:50, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Per a user talk page request, I have broken outDraft:Chronicon ex chronicis, one of the oldest English works, and I am specifically looking for information on theGenealogia Lindisfarorum, a genealogy reproduced as part of the book. This is outside my expertise, and I would appreciate any help with this effort.BD2412T01:19, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Book cover with competing editions, which to choose?
As some of you already know, I spend a huge amount of my time updating and cleaning up theCategory:Books with missing cover. I am always recruiting more people over to that by the way, with the goal being to get it eventually in the triple digits (<999) on an ongoing basis.
I was doing my normal book cover additions, when I found this book calledMarble Hall Murders, a 2025 book which was released at the same time in both the UK as well as the USA. What do we do in these cases? Which book cover should we choose as the single choice of a non-free file for purposes of being used only to identify the book in the infobox? I chose the UK cover in this case because the author appears to have a UK background, but that might not be the right way to think about it. I'd appreciate any feedback on how to decide in cases like this.
When there is a clear case of competing book covers, but one is released before another, in those cases I just go with whichever came out earlier, but I am curious about what we would do when multiple might have been released around the same time or exactly the same time.Iljhgtn (talk)23:31, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't run into anything like that, but I think your move, of the home country of the author's cover, is an alright solution when editions are released at the same time.PARAKANYAA (talk)23:33, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:NOVELS in the “images” section saysThe image displayed at the top of the article should be the most significant cover historically for that book; often this is the first edition cover, but occasionally it is not, if a later edition is better known. I agree that if there are several simultaneous first edition covers we should use the one from the author’s “home” country.~ L 🌸 (talk)01:19, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Related question, that by coincidence I have just encountered (on an article I am making that is not in mainspace yet):
If most editions of a book use one cover, but the original uses something else, which do we prefer? Does more editions equal "most significant"?
For example, the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions of theEncyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology (article in question) look like this:[2][3][4][5] (pyramid with a big red moon)
While the first edition looks like this:[6] (eye of horus type thing)
I obviously haven't finished the article yet but I am curious how "most significant" intersects with that. If there was a different cover for every edition I would use the first but all but the first use the pyramid thing.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:42, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the clearest image of the earliest prominent edition should be used, and then a caption should be provided beneath that in the infobox in order to further clarify which edition it is (3rd edition for example), and the year of its issue. I do this often, but I am receptive to feedback on how to improve that system if anyone has ideas or if there is better MOS guidance already in effect.Iljhgtn (talk)02:33, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
