Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Debito Arudou

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. Yamamoto Ichiro 会話 05:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Debito Arudou

Debito Arudou (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Big, well-sourced article on a non-notable person. The case he was involved in may have been notable, perhaps, but that does not bestow upon each plaintiff notability. bd2412 T 04:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• Reluctant keep a notorious self-promoter, to be sure, but he has been covered non-trivially even before he filed that lawsuit, e.g. in The New York Times [1]. Sometimes known by former names Arudoudebito Sugawara or David Aldwinckle. The article's 20+ citations to his own website and other self-published sources need to be scrutinised much more carefully though; articles should not be written primarily based on self-published sources. cab (talk) 06:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. cab (talk) 06:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. He doesn't sound like someone I'd like to be around, but he's definitely got notability in spades. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 06:41, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm curious, did that "New York Times" piece ever actually run in a physical newspaper? Seems like something from an affiliate that the Times just happens to link through to on their website. Please show me something other than self-promotion and low-level mentions provoked by it. bd2412 T 07:26, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment: According to Lexis-Nexis, the New York Times published three articles either about or mentioning by name "David Aldwinckle" in 1999, 2000, and 2004. It's interesting how neither Brooke nor French call him by his (now-preferred) Japanese name Debito Arudou, but that's a side issue. Howard French's article entitled "Nanporo Journal; Turning Japanese: It Takes More Than a Passport" was apparently published on page 4, Column 3, Section A, of the Foreign Desk on 29 November 2000. The NYT also published one by James Brooke ("Foreigners try to melt an inhospitable Japanese city," Column 3, Section A, pg. 4) on 12 May 2004. It's probably not appropriate for me to vote either way because I spend a lot of time trying to add citations and balance to this article when it was such a horrible state (so maybe I have a bias to keep the article). However, I do agree with the other editors that 20+ citations to Arudou's personal website is embarrassingly excessive and I've stated that on the talk page before. J Readings (talk) 07:50, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Of course you can vote. Your earlier involvement in the article may or may not bias you, but you needn't worry about this, particularly as you've divulged the fact. -- Hoary (talk) 03:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep he appears to have some minor notability --Sansumaria^t@lk 09:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep While I personaly think he is an obnoxious AW who does about just as much damage as he does good to the gaijin community with his deeds (possibly more damage, even), that does not mean that he is not notable. Or perhaps notorious would be a better word. TomorrowTime (talk) 09:41, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • What's an "AW"? -- Hoary (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Oh. Excuse my internet slang. It means a person desperately seeking attention. Akin to a troll, but a troll will asume an identity, whereas an AW simply goes by their own. See also: [2] TomorrowTime (talk) 07:20, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Oh, right. Handy term, that! I'll have to use it. There are certainly plenty of people that it neatly describes. -- Hoary (talk) 07:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Merge'...' into an article about the case.--Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 15:45, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep: Notable activist with multiple sources indicating he is discussed and noted not just for the single incident of the case. —Quasirandom (talk) 15:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, obviously. More than sufficiently notable, absolutely no reason to delete this article about a published author and internationally known activist. Exploding Boy (talk) 18:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Trim and Merge into Ethnic issues in Japan. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 18:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:19, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. Who said he's not notable? His history is well-documented. --Roehl Sybing (talk) 01:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Being "well-documented" does not automatically make someone notable. bd2412 T 05:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and trim to focus sharply on his public activism. None of the information about his background and arrival in Japan, his marriage and divorce, motivations for name changes and self-interpretation of his chosen name, work experiences, etc. etc. etc. is worth including in an encyclopedia article on him. They are no more noteworthy than anyone else's. Those details belong in newspaper articles and his web site. The only reason he merits an encyclopedia article is his public activism. Fg2 (talk) 01:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Redirect somewhere or maybe feeble keep for an article on this person. I'm amused by such descriptions above as a published author and internationally known activist. Yes, he's a published author; so are hundreds of thousands. He's internationally mentioned; so are hundreds of thousands. He's had some success in publicizing slights (significant, minor or perhaps merely imagined); well, good for him (particularly if he's had any beneficial effect on the poor treatment of darker-skinned people, which I rather doubt). But his WP article (if he needs one) is not his soapbox. If he retains an article, strip all the Debitocruft per Fg2 (immediately above), and strip virtually all of the sourcing to his own website, too. -- Hoary 03:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC) ... edited Hoary (talk) 01:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: Please keep in mind that (originally) this article was supposed to be a biography, so information about the subject's background was obviously appropriate. Second, while I agree that 20+ citations to his personal website is self-serving and wrong, one of the problems is that Arudou gratuitously circulates virtually all of this information about himself in public, so some editors receive this information and start adding it bit by bit (and it gets out of hand). Either we make it a biography or we don't. It's that simple, really. And if it's a biography, it can't be someone's personal soapbox. I agree with Hoary. As policies state, it has to be balanced by the available secondary sources to give a full picture of the subject while being mindful of undue weight concerns. Personally, I'm not sure which path is more appropriate: biography or merging some information with another article about the hotspring case. But on the issue of his website, yes, biographical details can be sourced from newspapers and magazines. We don't need his website. J Readings (talk) 03:13, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep - While perhaps not the strongest case of notability, this strikes me as being notable enough. --Kralizec! (talk) 06:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep I think that the case is somewhat interesting. « D. Trebbien (talk) 22:11 2008 February 3 (UTC)
• Keep Passes the Google test and I can't think of a more active person in the area of discussing human rights and assimilation issues in Japan. --Do Not Talk About Feitclub (contributions) 02:05, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, let's see now. Ishimure Michiko, Nezu Kimiko, Kawada Ryūhei,.... Hoary (talk) 05:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• KeepThis page confuses me. Whenever I refer to an encyclopaedia, I get hard factual objective information. The more references offered the better the read, to validate the text. I assume Wiki is “trying” to be the same as say Britannica. This said, why all the “debate”…right or wrong is irrelevant, if it exists, it must be presented. Stop providing useless subjective data. We can source Nazi’s from any book, as abhorrent as it was, doesn’t mean it should not be written about. Seems many here do not like the Debito website…that is subjective and irrelevant to the content of a factual 'book'. It exists, so list it, period. I’m shocked Wiki allows this pointless debate.Mr_lolly (talk) 04:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • User's first edit. -- Hoary (talk) 06:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • "It exists" is not, by itself, a valid reason to include something in an encyclopedia. bd2412 T 05:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry to read that you are confused. Nobody disputes that Arudou or his website exists. But the indisputable fact that a person exists and has a website that exists is not automatically grounds for inclusion: the huge majority of websites (such as my own) aren't written up, and rightly so. I'm glad that you tell Wikipedia (WP) to "Stop providing useless subjective data"; it is indeed policy of WP to be objective, and one part of this is to avoid sources that are likely to be subjective. Thus somebody's own website is not regarded as an authoritative source on that person. I hope that I have helped allay the confusion. -- Hoary (talk) 05:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • My point is, if I write a book, it is subjective, because I wrote it, regardless of the objectively that I may claim, or otherwise. I read endless technical papers where the authors always refer to their own work, that is how academia works. I’ve written many technical papers myself and had published after significant peer review. Whilst the content of their work may be considered ‘subjective’ despite many references, the paper does exist and cannot be ignored. So, how do you justify “likely to be subjective”? A persons own website is no different to a persons own book. A website is just easier to obtain on the web than a book, that’s it! Being a website doesn’t make it any more or less valid. Whether it is included on Wiki or not.If a persons own website is not regarded as authoritive, I assume all the links and references to films stars and musicians websites and autobiographies etc are to be removed as well, since these are subjective and ostensibly a persons own website/book. Blowing ones own trumpet is not a valid reason for inclusion or removal, but existence of, is. Otherwise Wiki becomes ‘included only if I like it’, that is censorship. Mr_lolly (talk) 05:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    • As somebody whose works have undergone "significant peer review", you should understand that a person's own website is considerably different from their own book (in the form it has been accepted for publication by a self-respecting and even respected publisher), and that this in turn is likely to put a different slant a personal subject than that within a book by a disinterested person coming from a university press. Your assumption about links and references is one you'll find somewhat amended within WP:EXTERNAL (which does not supplant WP:NEUTRAL); there's little point in summarizing it here. There seems very little risk that Wiki becomes ‘included only if I like it’: it already includes vast swathes of stuff that even the most assiduous editor will never have heard of, and thus can't be in any position to like (or indeed to dislike). -- Hoary (talk) 05:58, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Well having been ‘part of the academic system’ I was some what surprised to learn that I can write a book, with no references whatsoever, and then have it published. I can then write a paper for a thesis or technical journal and then refer to that book as a source. This is perfectly acceptable. Since the book is published and in the public domain therefore whatever its content, it is valid, subjective or not. Otherwise there would only ever be one uniform thought and no debate! There are always differing opinions each armed with their own references and sources, claiming the opposite of the other. The fact the book has no references may get raised eyebrows, but that is all, since the book is published. Any post on a political or sociological comment etc will have a personal slant. I did have a look at the Debito website, he gives a very strong personal stance, but does refer to actual facts and figures and quotes actual laws. His editorial comments may be aggressive or questionable, but the referencing is sound and source-able by anybody anywhere. Any social science subject will be subjected to a ‘personal slant’, just take a browse down any book store or library on anthropology or sociology etc and you’ll see widely differing opinions. So this comes down to your point. Should Wiki be allowed to be edited by ‘anybody’, or as in real books and encyclopaedias reviewed by peers? Or have the ‘anybodies’ reviewed and vetted first? If the items posted by ‘anybody’ are accepted, then all views and points of view from one extreme to the other must be accepted. I think Wiki are in a quandary since its credibility is lost when ‘anybody’ with a song to sing can edit and add. Since the ‘anybody’ has no published history nor vetting (as in the academic world) to validate their comments, it just becomes subjective banter. Mr_lolly (talk) 06:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    • I'll take three points. (1) Should Wiki be allowed to be edited by ‘anybody’, or as in real books and encyclopaedias reviewed by peers? If you're talking about Wikipedia, it's the former, like it or not. (I'm not sure I like it myself.) There are plenty of places to raise the question and this isn't one of them. (2) If the items posted by ‘anybody’ are accepted, then all views and points of view from one extreme to the other must be accepted. You do not appear to have read and digested what's posted at the policy pages to which I linked. (3) it just becomes subjective banter I'm not sure if you're discussing articles or this page, which you earlier called a pointless debate, a description that you haven't retracted. Anyway, if anything hereabouts is a waste of your time, simply surf elsewhere. -- Hoary (talk) 08:11, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • The policy page; #1)Documenting actual practices and seeking consensus that the documentation truly reflects practices; as it points out it, requires a community consensus. It is ostensibly saying he who shouts loudest. This is clearly very different from a ‘normal’ encyclopaedia and is hence not necessarily seeking to be objective, just accepted by the majority. This relates to your comments on my 1), which is fair point, ie like it or lump it. This is why Wiki can only be regarded as ‘basic source material’ and not used as a ‘true reference book’, which is absolute. Your #3, I’m referring to the comments on this page about whether a reference to a website should or should not be included in Wiki, so what is there that is untrue or false to retract?? I have no idea who wrote the article about Debito. However, is the write up verbatim from his website, if not, what is the problem, as it is just a Bio of him with a link to his website. But if people reading the citation don’t like it, then according to Wiki policy (as you have also pointed out) it can be removed. Hence, any entry is transient and ephemeral, unlike a book, which is absolute. If this was a waste of my time why would I bother to reply? But that view is in keeping with the policy view of Wiki, if a consensus thinks it is a waste of time, then it must be a waste of time! Anyway, that’s my tuppence penny worth…off to watch paint dry now; thanks for the bannter on a website that shouldn't allow it in my view. User:Mr_lolly|Mr_lolly]] (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 08:59, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    • 1. "as it points out it, requires a community consensus. It is ostensibly saying he who shouts loudest." - Well, this isn't a "majority rules" - Consensus on Wikipedia is more fluid - Although a rough estimate is about 66%-80%- it is not set in stone. There is a page called Wikipedia:NOT#DEMOCRACY and also see Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion
    • 2. Why use Wikipedia as a "‘true reference book’" when you can cite the referenced from the "true reference books"? :) - I am a long-time editor - I feel I can make good articles but at the same time I have no illusions about the "cite-ability" of Wikipedia. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:11, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - I really do not understand how it could be AFDed. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
  • One reason could be that a large (though diminishing) percentage of it is sourced from Arudou himself. If he and his pronouncements are so significant, I wonder why such a small amount is demonstrably of interest outside his blogosphere, etc. -- Hoary (talk) 10:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    • I added sources for the NY Times articles, etc. so that the article is not entirely sourced from Arudou. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - Notable indeed. I would also suggest to revise the criteria for AFD so that we don't have to waste our time on obvious keeps. Thanks. 205.228.73.11 (talk) 14:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• PS: I appreciate the good work by J Readings, WhisperToMe and others, but as I reread the article I see somebody who's a noteworthy part of one noteworthy legal case, but who otherwise doesn't seem noteworthy. Take the onsen case away and you have somebody who changed his name, changed his nationality -- unremarkable, and a cynic might suggest that these too were related to the lawsuit -- has written some newspaper columns, has got into arguments with people, and that's about it. No offense intended to those who've worked on the article, but really, it sounds desperate in places. There's one hint of noteworthiness outside the legal case, as Arudou "commented on" a mukku (one that sounds conspicuously moronic even by Japanese junk-publishing standards) and posted a bilingual letter for people to take to a konbini; well, good, but (i) this is dutifully written up in the publication's article and (ii) no evidence is adduced for this letter being the reason why FamilyMart stopped stocking it. (I hazily recall reading about the mukku's crappiness in Asahi/IHT or J Times or similar.) Thus I belatedly agree with bd2412: redirect to an article about the case, and have amended my earlier vote (but-this-isn't-a-vote) accordingly. -- Hoary 01:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Even if that were true, and it's not, plenty of articles about people notable for one thing are included in Wikipedia. Exploding Boy (talk) 17:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
    • I'm waiting for the day that a user doesn't try to use the WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument and the WP:GOOGLEHITS argument in an AfD. J Readings (talk) 22:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Both perfectly valid arguments. And here's another one: Wikipedia isn't paper. Exploding Boy (talk) 00:42, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
        • No, not really. They're weak arguments, but since you mention What Wikipedia is Not, let's not forget to include that Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and while we're at it, let's also stress again that primarily using the subject's self-published material as the source of the article (20+ citations) is really excessive, and strongly discouraged (if not forbidden) under Wikipedia's official policy. I suspect that's why this AfD came about in the first place. J Readings (talk) 01:42, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
          • I don't see how the first applies, since if he's here Arudou hasn't revealed himself, and the second is not a valid reason for deletion. Exploding Boy (talk) 16:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
            • Both points raised in this AfD are valid when cross-referenced with the notability guidelines. Rehashing what those guidelines state is unnecessary. As for Hoary's question, which is related to those notability guidelines, it's still unclear why you wrote that it's not "true" in relation to how this article is written. If Arudou's personal details and activities were notable, it should be easy to re-write the article using independent, reliable secondary sources. If it's difficult, then notability comes into play and the AfD makes sense. Those are the only points that I'm raising. J Readings (talk) 22:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Which part of what I wrote isn't true? -- Hoary (talk) 00:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
• This has absolutely no standing as a reliable source, but even I had heard of Debito Arudou as an activist since well before this AfD, and I haven't lived in Japan since I was four -- which makes me pretty sure that yes he's notable. Yes, the onsen case was the initial episode of his public activism, but he has continued his activism since then, as I think the article makes pretty clear (if you read past the biocruft). —Quasirandom (talk) 01:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  • He's continued huffing and puffing on his website, and sometimes elsewhere; but how/where has this further activism been of note? -- Hoary (talk) 01:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Some notability. Enough so that I read the article and found it interesting. Brian Adler (talk) 00:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Update: some new editor added a paragraph of "criticism", suggesting that a class of people were criticizing Arudou in a significant-sounding website. I looked into this, found that it was just one man (Matt unknown-surname) and his blog, and rewrote more informatively and clearly (I hope), very unsure that any of this was worthwhile (and admitting as much in my edit summary). WhisperToMe then removed it, as Matt didn't seem notable. ¶ Should I be pissed off by Whisper's undoing of the work that used up fifteen minutes of my life? I can't bring myself to complain to/about Whisper, because he was after all removing stuff about a mere blog entry (though a coherent and punchy blog entry in a more than averagely interesting blog). What was Matt doing in this entry? Responding to an entry in Arudou's blog. It's not at all obvious to me that Arudou's blog is more significant than Matt's. (One way in which Matt scores higher is his mature avoidance of the excited if soporific streams of BOLD ITALIC CAPITALS so beloved by Arudou.) ¶ And this in turn reinforces my earlier impression of the Arudou article: that an awful lot of it is based on Arudou's blog. He gets steamed up, he writes letters to people, he's involved himself in a series of lawsuits, he cobbled together a dreadful-sounding book about all of this, put out by some very obscure publisher, the occasional news hack knows his email address and asks him for a quotable soundbite on (non-) issues dear to him, and he blogs, blogs, blogs. Long may he blog, but I don't see why this should be encyclopedic or what his significance is outside the lawsuits. -- Hoary (talk) 00:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I've put a draft of an article focused on the onsen case at Talk:Debito Arudou/draft. The draft does not include the "criticism" paragraph. (I took a lot of other material out, too.) Fg2 (talk) 01:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

If it comes to removing everything, but the small section on the lawsuit (and I don't necessarily disagree), then the title of this article (Debito Arudou) is incorrect. We would definitely need to merge it with another article at that point because the subject himself doesn't have any notability beyond the lawsuit. J Readings (talk) 01:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Renaming it is a possibility. Then it could become an article on the lawsuit. Something like "Otaru onsen discrimination lawsuit"? Then we switch the sidebar (the information box) to one appropriate for the lawsuit. Fg2 (talk) 01:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Right, or whatever the specific legal title of the lawsuit was that can be sourced from independent and reliable secondary sources (that would be encyclopedic, I think). We'd have to look everything up. The problem is: this situation is such a headache. I honestly doubt the same problems here won't start anew over there. Such is the nature of Wikipedia. J Readings (talk) 02:13, 8 February 2008 (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.