Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Japanese mnemonics


 * 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: transfer nomination to "Mnemonic pages" discussion. Everyone here seems to be either comfortable with or not against including this in the general mnemonics discussion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Japanese mnemonics
I don't think that a page full of learning aids (not quotes) in a foreign language something we ought to have on the English Wikiquote. —LrdChaos (talk) 16:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Vote closes: 19 February 2007, 17:00 (UTC)


 * Delete. —LrdChaos (talk) 16:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete.  Cbrown1023  talk  21:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC) Neutral per below.  Cbrown1023  talk  03:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, per nom. But this raises the question of the many other mnemonic pages also in existence here - should they all be deleted? ~ UDScott 21:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep First, I think this nomination is a bit rude and personally not pleasant. LrdChaos could talk with me beforehand. Also I have no good reason he didn't list French, German, Russian and Swedish mnemonics but list it only. It could be even racism for Asian languages and cultures. Without a good explanation of such omissions, it is hard for me to think this nomination was done on a good faith. I think all those deserve to be kept as well non-English language proverbs and strongly oppose to this list.  Aphaia 07:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Aphaia, I didn't mean to offend with this nomination. The reason that I picked this page to nominate, as oppose to any others, is that I happened to see it come up in Special:Newpages. I wasn't even aware, until now, that we had other language mnemonic pages (excepting English), but even knowing that I'm still going to refrain from nominating them at this point. This isn't because I have any bias against Asian languages, but because the Wikiquote community hasn't yet expressed a consensus about these pages. A lot of pages that I nominate, I know (or am at least very sure) will be deleted, and the VFD process is basically a formality; when I nominated this page, however, I had and still have, no idea which way the vote is going to go. I figure it would be less disruptive to "test the waters" with one page (it just happens to be this one; again, it's not an Asian-language bias) than to nominate a whole host of pages at once. Rest assured, I fully intend to nominate the other language pages (as well as perhaps many of the "proverb" pages) if it appears the consensus is to delete this page. —LrdChaos (talk) 14:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm still not fully capable to understand 1) why you didn't use talk page before your nomination nor check category:mnemonics where you may have found other language mnemonic and 2) from your tagging you may have been aware of foreign language proverbs, even without translations. Aphaia 16:14, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Aphaia, until you commented here, I didn't even realize that it was you who created the page. I confess to being somewhat oblivious, and as I said, I didn't realize and didn't really take the time to look around for any other related pages. After the fact, I don't think that there's a compelling reason to nominate any of the others unless/until there is a consensus that such pages be deleted. Regarding the "proverbs" pages for other languages, yes, I have been aware of those. I've seen them before and I've considered nominating them for deletion, but as I said before, I'm generally wary of nominating something unless I'm fairly certain that it will be deleted. My nomination of this page is a break from that, yes, and my actions in the future regarding these types of pages will be largely dictated by the result of this one (i.e., if this is kept, I'll leave the others, but if this is deleted, I'll nominate them). This page ended up being the one I picked not because of anything with you, or with the particular language, but simply because I happened to see it while I was in a state of mind to be a little more bold and nominate it. I didn't raise the issue on your talk page because that's not my usual behavior (though usually pages I nominate are either one-shots from editors who don't hang around, or else have had a number of contributions that it's not clear who I should mention it to). Again, I didn't realize at the time that you were the creator, and perhaps I might have done things differently if I had. Regardless, what's done is done and there's no way that I can go back and do any of it differently now. —LrdChaos (talk) 18:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * LrdChaos, try not to be hesitant about nominating items for deletion. That is how we get consensus on how we should handle them, in fact, I'd respect you more than I already do (and I respect you a lot) if you had nominated a few articles for deletion that hadn't been deleted.  This would show that you like to "test the waters" and aren't afraid to speak your mind. (But I don't condone just deleting. :) )  Cbrown1023  talk  18:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Due to the scope of this issue I think it necessary from two reasons:
 * Comment: I want to address one of Aphaia's stated concerns that causes me considerable worry — the possibility of racism being behind this nomination. I won't belabor the point that LrdChaos makes that he is following his usual practices, as do many of the other regular VfD nominators, of catching a sample article that shows up on a recent list (like Newpages or Recentchanges) and nominating it to probe community opinions on a subject.
 * But I do want to point out one possible real reason for a language bias (not racism, which is about unreasoned bias based on unfounded perceptions of ethnic superiority or inferiority). It is an unfortunate reality that technology is largely geared around the Latin character set and English in particular, purely for historical reasons (i.e., the explosion of computer technology primed by the world's largest simultaneous producer and consumer, the U.S.). Add to that the general ignorance of said nation's population (which I can say, as I'm one of them) of anything that doesn't faintly resemble English, and you face a huge hurdle in getting most English speakers on an English-language project to work on material in non-Latin character sets, like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Tamil, etc., etc.
 * In my own case, I feel quite comfortable editing articles on French and German, with which I have some command, and even Spanish, which I can barely parse. I have also found it possible to do some research on articles in Latin, Turkish, and even Greek (a personal exception to my non-Latin point). But Japanese and these other languages are so literally foreign to me that I can hardly begin to address them. Likewise, I suspect that the vast majority of our readers and editors face a similar hurdle. Many probably have very little interest in the fate of any articles whose content is largely (if not exclusively) in these non-Latin symbols, or those that are about the use of these languages, like mnemonics. Aphaia has good reason to be concerned that the community would just as soon delete such articles as keep them. This is why we must make a greater effort than usual to contemplate the real issue here.
 * Ultimately, I believe that real issue is a basic conflict of two wiki principles: the desire to incorporate anything of interest throughout the globe, expressed in or translated into English for the reading audience, versus the desire to avoid having articles in subjects of no significant noteworthiness to the English-speaking world, especially when our editing audience cannot be expected to do their basic job of making decent articles on them. I don't believe there is any single, simple, or permanent solution for this conflict. But I would like to see us focus on that issue, not accusations. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks Jeff for your good analysis. It may be concern with language bias, agreed. It could be partly why a lengthy French mnemonics (without no translation) has a favor but more short Japanese one with translation is treated in this way.
 * The talk I second mentioned was not my own, but the talk of the article. Under the circumstance the project hosted other language mnemonics, it would be more appreciate to begin a discussion.
 * So I don't think there is no way you can do here; you can simply withdraw your nomination and send back the discussion to the talk page or VP.
 * 1) One week discussion may be not enough to treat this issue. Jeffq pointed out several points behind it.
 * 2) Personal pressure. I daresay I don't want principally to talk here. It is for me too much unpleasant and I have much difficulty suffering ethnic bias and even hostility I've sensed with this nomination. For me a non-native speaker it is almost impossible to have a discussion this type in a foreign language under such a great pressure.
 * So I daresay, I'll appreciate the nominator to withdraw his nomination. Thanks. Aphaia 01:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep for now. Personally, I don't find mnemonics especially quotable, although I can certainly see the counter-argument. Also, because these things, like proverbs, are never sourced, and can often include stuff that people just slap in there or even make up themselves, mnemonic articles cannot be expected to properly represent "notable" examples, at least in the current state of general editing activity. (This is not a statement about this specific mnemonic article, but since it also lacks sources, I have no way to make a judgment on this specific one, anyway.)
 * But this is not just about mnemonics. This article is also representative of the issue I mentioned above, about where to draw the line(s) of including non-English quotes. Because of this, I feel it's too big an issue to address in a VfD, even if we extend it for a week or two.
 * It's easier to see how we can hope to source and translate people or creative-work articles whose contents are not originally in English. Authors have book citations, actors have film and TV citations, public figures have news citations. Works themselves must be published, providing their own citations. But this is much greater problem for proverbs or mnemonics, which share a bad assumption in our current practice that they don't need sources, making it impossible to determine if the content is truly noteworthy.
 * I just don't believe we have the community will to address the greater issue yet. We are tackling a lot of other genres that are terrible examples of Wikiquote articles, and I don't want to open this Pandora's box until we do all of the following:
 * Make more progress on easier categories of bad articles.
 * Gain a lot more regular participants across the entire project, so we can have a better community perspective on the entire question of non-English quoting.
 * Show some sign that many in our community understand the reasons and support the need for sourcing all quotes in all genres.
 * On the other hand, if the discussion here looks like it might treat this as a flagship article for deleting mnemonics in general, as UDScott asks above, I would consider changing to "delete". But I would immediately follow this up with a nomination for all other mnemonic articles, including English mnemonics, to make it clear that it's mnemonics and not non-English quoting that's being considered. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Transfer nomination to general "Mnemonic pages" nomination. As I agreed to above, I don't want to delete this article by itself in the short term without much more consideration, but I'm willing to address it as part of the entire set of mnemonics articles. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep pending results of the Vote for Deletion nomination for all mnemonics pages. - InvisibleSun 23:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I would apology LrdChaos for the bitterness and harshness of my wording on the above. It may be possible for me to bring the topic in that way. Aph.
 * Transfer nomination or merger to Votes for deletion/Mnemonic pages. Concur with JeffQ and InvisibleSun, as far as I understand they are in a same mind. It may be more logical to bind two discussions, and we focus on a wider scope one, independent from the argument if they should go away or worthy to keep. Aphaia 14:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wait for the outcome on the sub-page and treat all pages in accordance with that; don't single out the Japanese page.--Poetlister 22:44, 18 February 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.