Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gorō Hobo

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 delete. Randykitty (talk) 10:14, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Gorō Hobo

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Boilerplate rationale adapted from my previous AfDs of similar photographer articles (such as Keizaburō Saeki), which itself was largely borrowed from Cckerberos at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hideki Kasai. Keizaburō Saeki, Hideki Kasai, and this currently-nominated article are all identical bot-created articles. I have nominated several others for deletion, but have improved and de-orphaned quite a few more when sources have been available.

To quote Cckerberos: "This article is a generic stub, generated by a bot in 2007. It makes no specific claim to notability; it appears that similar stubs were created for every photographer listed in 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers, all with the format "Name (years) is a renowned Japanese photographer" (compare the nominated article with Gen Ōtsuka, for example). Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography states that the sole criteria for inclusion in the book was to have a single photograph in the museum's permanent collection at the time the book was published. That doesn't seem to meet WP:CREATIVE."

In addition to Cckerberos's excellent commentary, I'll note that I've done as thorough a WP:BEFORE check as possible for an English-speaker: Google searches of both the English and Japanese order of the English transliteration of his name. None of the English transliterations turned up anything of use. He does not appear in the reasonably thorough The History of Japanese Photography or Photography in Japan 1853-1912.

I have also checked his Japanese name, but all I found was the Tokyo Digital Museum listing of his works, and references to the 328 Photographers book. The Japanese Wikipedia has no article about him, so there are no sources to be borrowed from it. I searched his Japanese name there and found nothing.

In the absence of reliable sources, we cannot verify that this person is notable, so the article, like many of the previous bot-generated photographers before it, should be deleted.

Courtesy ping to Hoary, who is knowledgeable on the topic of Japanese photographers, and whose commentary on these AfDs is invaluable to me, especially when it causes me to alter my opinion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:52, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 07:44, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Photography-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 07:44, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Gorō Hobo (born Gorō Ōbayashi) is one of the more obscure of the 328 photographers: the entry for him in that book is only about one third of the average length. It would be possible to create an article about him, but difficult. As there is no Japanese photography completist working in en:WP, I can't foresee anyone creating an article. However, I wouldn't want to deter anybody from doing so. ~~Therefore delete without prejudicing any later attempt to create a worthwhile article.~~ -- Hoary (talk) 09:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC) deleted conclusion; see below -- Hoary (talk) 00:12, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep and/or TNT delete The article as is contains no information except for birth and death years and his profession, which is not enough to hang a standalone article on. He appears to have an entry on page 363 of this book, which according to the snippet view fully verifies the content of our article, but a short entry in a 500-page book of Japanese photographers does not really meet with my oft-stated quite broad notability criterion of having a standalone entry in a general encyclopedia. If the article is more detailed than the snippet implies, then I guess it would be sufficient, but that's a job for whoever picks up the book. Alternatively, redirect to List of photographers#Japan -- every single piece of information in this article could easily be incorporated there. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:33, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hideki Kasai it says that all these articles were created by a bot with the same wording, which appears to be rooted in a mistranslation -- Outstanding is not in the Japanese title, and nor is "renowned"; this means that of the four pieces of information in the article, three are basic statistics that would be better included in a list, and one is wrong. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:43, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hijiri88, they were all made by Polbot back in 2007; I've been working through a subset that were in the Feb 09 orphans list. There's a more comprehensive, if somewhat outdated, list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography/History of Photography/Japanese photographers if you have any interest in the matter. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:21, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:29, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Responses to some of Hijiri 88's comments. First, "my oft-stated quite broad notability criterion of having a standalone entry in a general encyclopedia": this surely can't be a necessary criterion of notability (general encyclopedias are for the general public, who have little or no interest in photographers of anything other than the celebrated or "beautiful"). If it's a sufficient criterion of notability, fair enough -- but trying to apply it in this area would be a waste of one's time. Secondly, yes, Hobo does indeed have an entry in the book to whose Google Books entry you point. The book is ISBN 4816919481; it's a particularly dry encyclopedia of Japanese photographers born before 1930. Its entry for Hobo really doesn't say enough for the construction of a decent article -- but then few if any of its entries do. (Rather, it's useful as a guide to further reading. Incidentally, its counterpart for newer photographers is ISBN 481691949X, which has entries for Japanese photographers either born after 1929 or born earlier but still active.) Thirdly, the "328" book -- like the two reference books I've just mentioned -- has an alternative title (but nothing else) in English. This is "328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers", and I suppose that this is where Quadell (currently dormant operator of [moribund] Polbot) got the notion of outstandingness. Not that I'd defend the use of this word in this context. -- Hoary (talk) 23:42, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I would consider 日本写真家事典 to be a general encyclopedia, in that it doesn't appear to have been written for specialists in the field -- I definitely consider 日本古典文学大辞典 to be a general encyclopedia for the same reason. However, it would depend on the length of the article the former work has on this person. Obviously we can't keep our article on him as it is now, so I say either TNT delete or redirect. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:46, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It would, I think, be hard, perhaps impossible, to create an article on Hobo of more than three or four sentences. And I don't know of anybody who'd be willing to give it a try. But that's not the reason why I say delete this as one of a set of sub-stubs that haven't been significantly improved/augmented since Polbot created them without prejudicing any later attempt to create decent articles on any of these people. The history of this particular non-article is a sorry indicator of how much time has already been wasted over these things (and how much more is likely to be wasted as MoS requirements and similar continue to change). Apologies if this offends the ever-benevolent and -courteous PMC, but this AfD is just one of what would otherwise be a continuing series of time-wasting AfDs. In the time I've already spend on this one, I could have written an honest (if short and feeble) little article on Hobo myself; and I'm sure that PMC, Hijiri88, Captain Raju and other contributors to this could similarly have spent their time more constructively. Looking at Google's list of "renowned Japanese photographer[s]", I notice for example Keiichirō Gotō: now there's a fellow who really merits an article and about whom a good article could be written; however, the existence of the current sub-stub for him would frustrate anybody hoping to read about him and is highly unlikely to prompt anyone to transform it into an article; its deletion should do nothing to dissuade anyone from later creating a worthwhile article about him. -- Hoary (talk) 00:12, 11 April 2019 (UTC) minuscule typo corrected Hoary (talk) 00:04, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry if you feel I've wasted your time with this AfD, and others before it. I do try to make a reasonable effort to find sources, and to improve any of the ones I can find sourcing for (even if it's just to add a single sentence). If you'd rather, I can stop pinging you - I started because you know about the topic and I respect your opinion, but I wouldn't take offense if you asked me not to in future. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:37, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Uh-oh, perhaps I didn't express myself well. PMC, your conduct is exemplary ... given that these dreary sub-stubs deserve individual attention. But they don't. They -- the sub-stubs -- aren't notable. I don't mean by this that their subjects aren't notable. I'd call few if any of the people "outstanding", but I think that most are notable. Consider a distinctly notable example, whether in the abstract, or concretely with Keiichirō Gotō. How does the sub-stub help the user of Wikipedia, help the would-be improver of the article, or inspire somebody to improve the article? My guess: not at all. If ever so slightly, then still not enough to make repeated discussions worthwhile, for you, for me, for anybody. So that's why I now want to nuke the lot, regardless of the notability of their subjects. I do appreciate the effort you've continued to put into this: the conscientiousness, the courtesy, the patience. But this is effort that you could use elsewhere. [Warning: digression follows.] I don't suppose that Japanese photography is one of your major interests; however, if you'd like to spend a little more time on Japanese photography, you'd be very welcome to do so. An example of a wretched (but not utterly vapid) stub about Japanese photographer is Issei Suda. (The reason why I feel entirely free to be rude about it is that it's my creation.) Now, Suda's work is fascinating (to me, at least) and you might enjoy exploring it. Until recently, he was almost unknown outside Japan (and therefore in any language other than Japanese), but recently good material about him in English has started to appear. And Suda is just one example; I shouldn't assume that your tastes and mine are similar. -- Hoary (talk) 01:14, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) @Premeditated Chaos: With one-sentence substubs like this, I wonder if proactive BOLD merging wouldn't be a better idea. List of photographers is a bare index of names at the moment, and I think it would be better to at least add the dates. Doing so, though, would make what we have here a useless content fork (readers would click of a list that notes his nationality, birth and death dates, to find an article that gives the exact same info in a less efficient manner). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:21, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of photographers is pretty much useless right now. For better or worse, what one can say about it is that it's a list of links to articles. (But interestingly, it started a very long time ago as a list of photographers who merited articles but who for the most part still lacked them.) If you start (or restart) adding the names of people who don't have articles, then I think you'd open the door to all sorts of optimistic/spammy additions. -- Hoary (talk) 01:43, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Hoary: Hmm... how about if we applied my criterion to entries on that list (if the subject can be verified to have an entry in an encyclopedic work on the topic, he/she can have an entry in that list)? Theoretically, forcing editors of the list to include more than a just a name, and requiring sources to verify all information included, would prevent individuals about whom nothing can be written from being included. Obviously no one is arguing that Hobo is not noteworthy enough for inclusion in a list of (Japanese?) photographers. (As a loosely related aside, I recently nominated List of Man'yōshū poets for FLC, and virtually every entry on the list is linked because even if we know nothing about the life of this or that poet, anyone who had at least one poem included in that collection has had their poetry scrutinized by dozens or hundreds of scholars over the centuries, but at FLC I was told that having a lot of red links was an automatic fail, and was told that unlinking them would be gaming the system if I thought the people were notable, so I've spent much of the last month creating stubs out of the red links; my own standards prevent me from leaving a one-sentence sub-stub that consists of information forked from the list I already compiled. If I thought "articles" like the present one were acceptable the job would be a helluva lot easier. (笑) ) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:20, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm rather bewildered. In your opening sentence, what's "that list"? If List of photographers, then let's discuss the matter in Talk:List of photographers. (See particularly "What's it for?") If instead it's what I called above "a set of sub-stubs that haven't been significantly improved/augmented since Polbot created them", then each of these has an entry in the (compact) encyclopedic work that's alternatively titled "328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers". -- Hoary (talk) 04:45, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I meant Talk:List of photographers. Sorry for the confusion. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:03, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete this one and any others on Hoary's list that only say "was a renowned Japanese photographer" with but one source. Articles with more than that should be looked at. Dicklyon (talk) 23:35, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I haven't bundled these articles ever is because a big pile of them got WP:TRAINWRECKed previously by another editor, and I don't want a repeat. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:56, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry (though not surprised) to hear this. Could you point us to the particular AfD(s)? -- Hoary (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find the actual nom... Hey StraussInTheHouse, not to dredge up old history, but do you remember where your Japanese photographers trainwreck was? I know you commented about it on another of my Japanese photographer AfDs but I can't find the actual AfD for the life of me. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:43, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Premeditated Chaos, I've looked through all of my AFDs using afdstats for "DrStrauss" and "StraussInTheHouse" and I can't find it either. However, I can confirm for Hoary that I mass-nominated several permastubs of Japanese photographers which were sourced by only one book and that deletion discussion resulted in a trainwreck. Everyone remembers their first trainwreck hehe. SITH (talk) 13:23, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Shoot. Well, thanks for looking, anyway. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:49, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and add their name and the source to a new list of red linked photographers similar to WikiProject Women in Red/Photographers. I agree that there is a lot of energy being sucked into these articles with only one independent reliable source, that could better be spent on the articles themselves. -Lopifalko (talk) 06:05, 16 April 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.