Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Doraemon (character)

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. In the sense that there is clearly consensus not to delete. There is no clear consensus about whether to retain it as a separate article (as the majority appears to prefer) or whether to merge this and related articles, but that can continue to be discussed on the talk page.  Sandstein  17:29, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Doraemon (character)

Doraemon (character) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Article duplicates content in Doraemon. Any new bits should be merged into that article. Imaginatorium (talk) 02:23, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

PLEASE NOTE: This is not about deleting Doraemon ! Imaginatorium (talk) 14:55, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk 02:54, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions.--十八 05:02, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Anime and manga-related deletion discussions.--十八 05:02, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but extensive expansion. Very separately notable. Looks quite work-in-progress compared with other language wp's. A lot of content specific to him can be translated from, say, jawp. See also ja:ドラえもん (架空のキャラクター). 野狼院ひさし Hisashi Yarouin 03:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I'll try to get the anime and Japan WikiProjects involved- the character is pretty much Japan's equivalent of Mickey Mouse so I'd be horribly surprised if there wasn't any sourcing out there to show notability. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:12, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • This academic press book asserts that the character (as opposed to simply the anime) is pretty much the most popular anime character ever created in Japan. I know that there are other sources but most of them will likely be in Japanese and I've asked for help from the applicable WP that would likely have someone who speaks Japanese. Again, this is a wildly popular character (ie, of Mickey Mouse and Katniss Everdeen proportions, which are of unusual and exception popularity) and it's very unlikely that there wouldn't be sources. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:25, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to dump some Japanese language sources here since I'm operating with Google Translate and these would need to be gone through by someone fluent. ([1], [2], [3], [4]) Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:35, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Of course Doraemon is notable: that is not an issue. He is already described in Doraemon. This article simply adds nothing new. (I can speak Japanese, and would be happy to help, but I think you have just missed the point.) Imaginatorium (talk) 08:08, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • If he's notable, then why not do the work to improve the article? I don't mean to sound like I'm trying to bite anyone, it's just that I really hate the idea of an article being redirected to the main article when you have situations where the AfD would pass notability guidelines but would just require hard work to expand the article. It's kind of counterproductive when you get down to it and discourages further expansion because there wasn't really any WP:BEFORE done with the article. The character was not only made into the Olympics mascot for 2015, but it's also been one of the most popular characters in Japan for years running. I really don't want to see an article get deleted because of a lack of people willing to work on expanding it when there is a reasonable assertion of notability to where it'd merit its own article. That's how I'm reading this situation. It may not be what you intended here, but that's kind of how it's coming across. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:10, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because I'm not really suggesting deleting anything at all, I'm suggesting that the article describing the character Doraemon should be the article Doraemon, just as, of course, the article describing Micky Mouse is the article Mickey Mouse. This article stub was created about two days ago by someone who copied the (erroneous) explanation of the name, and added a list of transcriptions and a bit about Chinese media. I can quite imagine that there might be a careful split in the Doraemon article, but I think such things have to be thought about carefully, or you end up with two overlapping articles with no really coherent line between them. I think a rush to add bits to the article here is extremely counterproductive. I will rewrite the name bit (basically, no, Doraemon cannot in any normal sense be translated "stray"), but not until the dust has died down. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:26, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Tokyogirl79 Um, you have looked at the Doraemon article, haven't you?? (There is no shortage of notability, sources, etc) Imaginatorium (talk) 14:40, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then the better course would have been to ask to move the article into your userspace and work on the article, then move it back. That would probably have taken far less work in the long run than taking this to deletion. I know it's not an easy task to fix and repair an article- I've done that on many occasions myself, but taking this to deletion makes the entire process that much more messy. AfD is WP:NOTCLEANUP and work to improve an article should ideally be done before it's taken to AfD. Typically the only reason an article about an otherwise notable subject should be deleted is if the original article is such a terribly written eyesore that there is no perceivable way to improve it- something that's actually fairly rare when you get down to it. I didn't see where the original state of the article was so bad that it'd warrant being TNT'd and it certainly isn't in that state now. The problem with taking this to deletion is that in order to make the new article people would have to run this through deletion review or the closing admin in order to gain approval to be re-approved, and that's not including the potential that the article could be forgotten in the meantime. It makes more sense to do the work now when it needs to be done than to just nominate it for deletion and wait for it to be improved someday. I mean seriously, why wait to do it later when we could improve it now? If you're too busy to do it then a good alternative would have been to go to the anime or Japan WikiProjects and ask for help. Nominating it for deletion is pretty counterproductive. Plus by your own statements you're saying that this character is notable and there is enough information to warrant a standalone article, just that it needs work. If you can't do it then ask others to do it- it shouldn't be deleted because it needs cleanup. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:49, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • But this article Doraemon (character) was created a couple of days ago, by copying a paragraph from Doraemon, adding a sentence from a Chinese newspaper, and a list of transcriptions we agree is not needed. As best I can understand your logic, if someone created Mickey Mouse (character) by copying a paragraph from Mickey Mouse and adding a sentence from a Chinese newspaper, we should not delete this, but should work to recreate Mickey Mouse in the new place. This makes no sense to me at all. I first met Doraemon about 1979; if I wanted to look him up on Wikipedia, I should be very disappointed if I found that the article Doraemon was somehow about something else. Surely if the manga franchise or whatever is too big to fit in Doraemon's article, it should be shifted off to Doraemon (manga franchise). (And your comment just below about Mickey seems to say exactly this: the article about Mickey/Doraemon should be the article titled Mickey/Doraemon. Imaginatorium (talk) 15:10, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also the thing about the Mickey article is that ultimately is is about the character. It includes things that wouldn't otherwise fit in the main article for Disney. Perhaps a better comparison would be to say that the Doraemon article has the potential to become as encompassing as the article Sailor Moon (character), as both character do have individual notability from the show/franchise itself- it's just that one hasn't been expanded yet. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I should also tag these with a keep and improve rationale for my above reasons. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:52, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Normally I wouldn't disagree terribly heavily, but the article being empty doesn't automatically mean that it can't be filled. In this instance you have a character that is so wildly popular in Japan that it's a household name (and there are various theme parks in various different countries based around this character and the show), so odds are extremely high that sources are out there. We shouldn't redirect an article just because the current format of the article is empty. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:27, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Doraemon is Japan's most-loved character, and he has plenty of news coverage in English all of his very own. He is an official Japanese cultural ambassador,[5] and last year he was also declared as the "ambassador" for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.[6] Then there was the story last summer where he was accused of trying to subvert Chinese youth.[7] If you want to find more, Doraemon has his own tag on the Japan Times website.[8] As for why people in the West haven't heard of him, there's a story for that, too.[9] — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:37, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – The nom isn't proposing to delete the character, simply to merge it to Doraemon, which is already about the character. The "Name origin" section duplicates material that is handled better in Doraemon, and the "Doraemon name in different languages" section is handled better in List of non-Japanese Doraemon versions. That leaves only one piece of original content in this article – the news story about Chinese nationalists objecting to a Japanese character, and since that is about cultural issues I think it belongs in the article about the series. So as it stands, I think merge is an eminently reasonable proposal. If we are going to keep this article, I think we need ideas for how to make this article different, about the character as such, instead of just that the character is important. His personality, his special powers, etc. Maybe we need some advice here from the anime/manga project. How do they handle individual characters from a manga? – Margin1522 (talk) 07:23, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, exactly. Of course Doraemon is notable (but hardly notable "separately" from his manga), but the current article contains nothing new at all. Again, if the section about Doraemon's character became a large part of the Doraemon article, it could be made into a separate article, but that has not happened yet, and having a stub would hardly help it. FWIW, the explanation of his name is quite inaccurate, and is based on a unreliable "Yahoo answer" made up by someone a long time ago, so it is particularly undesirable to have two copies of it. And once there are two copies of "About the character Doraemon" things get out of step; the other option, even worse, is to replace the paragraph attempting to explain his name with "See other article for this paragraph", which is absurd. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a neat way to say "merge-delete" (AfMD), or if there is I have missed it. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:06, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think that's a recognized problem. See WP:Perennial_proposals#Rename_AFD. – Margin1522 (talk) 12:14, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As detailed above, this is likely Japan's most universally beloved animated character. David A (talk) 07:58, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge as of current state. Keep if someone works on it. DragonZero (Talk · Contribs) 09:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep People keep coming up with sources that demonstrates notability separate from the series. Here's one more where the FCC gets caught copying Doraemon as their mascot _dk (talk) 11:46, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    So do you think Mickey Mouse should be split off to "Mickey Mouse (character)"?? Imaginatorium (talk) 14:29, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    @Imaginatorium: There's a difference there: the term "Doraemon" is as equally likely to refer to the manga as it is to the character, so there is a need to disambiguate the two. However, the term "Mickey Mouse" is much more likely to refer to the character than it is to anything else, so there isn't a need for a separate Mickey Mouse (character) page. For more, see WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, you think that Doraemon is somehow less likely than Mickey Mouse to refer to the character? I don't understand that at all; they seem to be parallels. Imaginatorium (talk) 15:13, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    It's pretty simple: there isn't a major cartoon or film called "Mickey Mouse", but everyone knows about the character called "Mickey Mouse". That's why he's at the Mickey Mouse page and not the Mickey Mouse (character) page. For the other things with the name "Mickey Mouse" we have Mickey Mouse (disambiguation). — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:43, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep As much as the article requires work, duplicating content in other articles isn't actually a problem in itself. The degree to which the character is responsible for the success of the actual series means this is to be expected. It just doesn't have enough content, a problem that can be easily fixed given the abundance of sources available on the character and series. The real problem is that the Doraemon articles in general are in very poor state, there are too many of them and no one seems interested in doing any real work on them.SephyTheThird (talk) 11:55, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just to add, i didn't realise the page had only just been created, I had assumed it had been here for years.SephyTheThird (talk) 13:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Ah I have overlooked List of Doraemon characters, which already have a section about Doraemon (and should be linked more prominently by the franchise article). With the extensive materials there and provided here by many above though, it is still decently reasonable to support this as a split. (Most of the Legacy section in the franchise article is of the character, not the whole franchise anyway.) 野狼院ひさし Hisashi Yarouin 13:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep, but first cleanup the article. Westerners may not know it, but Doraemon is one of the most iconic characters in Japan. Up there with Pikachu and Kitty White (Hello Kitty). I know that popularity alone isn't enough to establish notability, and I do know WP:OSE, but in this particular case, I say for his iconic status alone, he's notable enough for an article. Also, there's reliable coverage of him and his franchise's impact in Japan. And there should also be coverage for the impact he's had in the Philippines (Doraemon is more popular and has been around longer in the Philippines than in America; we even have Tagalog translations of the manga, and the anime is aired here frequently in the mornings). Clearly a notable character. But the article still needs improvement. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 03:48, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Not just in the Philippines, probably all throughout Asia, parts of Europe, and South America. (Practically everywhere except North America.) _dk (talk) 06:11, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Have you noticed that no-one wants to delete Doraemon? The article under consideration is a copy of part of this made a few days ago: Doraemon (character)... Imaginatorium (talk) 06:25, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am aware, stop hounding me. I'll restate that the character is notable apart from the series it came from. _dk (talk) 08:04, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The character is clearly notable enough that arguments about length become irrelevant. Besides, length is subjective and doesn't infer any quality or appropriateness.SephyTheThird (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I don't see anything wrong with the sources being used here. There might be some reliable Chinese sources as well as the character has been popular in China. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 19:06, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The page has been much improved since nomination, even though it's still early days.SephyTheThird (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Observation. A lot of the "keep" arguments seem odd. There was and remains an article on Doraemon. There was and remains an article List of Doraemon characters. Nobody has suggested the deletion of either; and currently, neither is particularly long. I don't think that there has been a demand that an article Doraemon (character) should never exist (if worthwhile material about the one character outgrew both earlier articles). I don't see arguments for the helpfulness either now or in the likely near future of this third, additional article. See Wikipedia:Content forking, with its "Unacceptable types of forking: Redundant content forks". -- Hoary (talk) 01:31, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • There's a solution to that. Just rewrite each article so that they don't duplicate each other. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:53, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would say a lot of the merge arguments are odd. Having a main article for the series and a character list doesn't prevent an individual article for a character, and Doraemon clearly qualifies as notable enough to justify a separate article. The question is content, but seeing as the article was brought here almost immediately after it's creation, no one had any chance to address the issue. Your argument, if you intend it to or not reads like an argument about notability, which even them nom says it isn't about. SephyTheThird (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • That is indeed a potential solution. Your use of "just" carries a slight suggestion that the task would be an easy one. Perhaps you'd like to contribute some help? I note that other editors have worked to ensure that the article improved since its AfD nomination: unsourced trivia has been cut, sourced material has been added. (From my POV, the problems are that much of the freshly added material, however well sourced, also looks like trivia; and that even with these additions, the material could easily fit into one or other of the two preexisting articles.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:50, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, I can't really help out given that, though Doraemon is popular in my country, I myself am not very familiar with the series. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:55, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If I recall correctly, this article was already a split from List of Doraemon characters. Nobita should probably be kept as a redirect given his lack of notability outside the series, though. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:55, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The mere suggestion of treating Doraemon the same as Nobita shows a severe misunderstanding of both the issue and the details of the characters and their cultural significance.SephyTheThird (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Clearly the article was created on a whim by an inexperienced editor, but it was also brought here almost immediately when a bold merge could have made. With the state of the article at the time as well as it's fresh creation, it would have been uncontroversial. However when it was brought here the issue changed significantly, be it because of the process itself or the debate that has unfolded. The character is obviously notable, and the nominator has said that the notability of the character isn't being questioned. Well thats all well and good, but if the character is so clearly notable, that means we should probably have an individual article for it. Unfortunately it does take time to write such an article, but the work has already been started. Some people seem to be confusing the issue by saying that having a series article and character list mean we don't need an article for one character, but the cultural phenomenon of the character and the resulting reception sources mean that we have more than enough reason to have a separate article. Now, the article still needs expanding and improving, but that is a time consuming process that can't be done under AFD time limits. As the page stands a merge doesn't seem necessary and has no benefit. Attention should now focus on improving the article (and other articles of the series), not trying to save it. yes there is some overlap between the articles, but this can be refined as the articles are developed. This is very much a page that we should be looking to improve, not hide. SephyTheThird (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep based on the improvements and sourcing which have been done. This article no longer meets the requirements for deletion, neither does it merit merging as it it well sourced enough to stand on its own. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:47, 10 January 2015 (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.
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