Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Japanese people in France

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. MBisanz ^talk 02:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese people in France

The subject of this article has no merit. It is neither unique nor especially relevant. There are foreign nationals residing in all countries, and this article shall set a presedent for all permutations to exist. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 05:05, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as yet another example of non-notable "Fooian Barian" ethnic groups. RayAYang (talk) 05:31, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. -- RayAYang (talk) 05:33, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Use discussion before proposing for deletion - This seems like a notable population but the article is not very good yet. That doesn't mean we should instantly begin trying to delete a given article before consulting with the original author and attempting to source and improve it rather than instantly obliterating it and all possibility of improving it. A confrontational approach isn't always the best manner to proceed in such cases. Badagnani (talk) 05:36, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of France-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 08:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Topic has multiple instances of non-trivial coverage in reliable sources; see here for a partial list. I will expand the article and remove the unverifiable content sometime in the next few days. Also, nominating for deletion a 21-minute old article by a 23-minute old user, without making any effort to look for sources or otherwise help the user understand how to meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion, goes against the spirit of WP:BITE.

Finally, the nominator's argument that "this article shall set a presedent for all permutations to exist" is just an extension of the usual WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS/WP:OTHERCRAPDOESNTEXIST fallacy. Any human migration articles created in the future stand or fall based on the general notability guideline, not on the basis of this article. cab (talk) 09:25, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - though the article needs work, we're talking here about a substantial community (28 000, enough to populate a small town, not just a few hundred individuals), so one should look for more sources before nominating for deletion.--Boffob (talk) 16:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Concur with other keeps, this appears to be a notable minority and has enough sources with which one could write an article. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 18:07, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Japanese people in France has a lot of sources? There are reliable sources available for dozens of ethnic groups existing in dozens of foreign countries -- the dispute is whether this is encyclopedic. We can start an article with reliable sources entitled Police forces in America. I can find many articles that discuss the presence of police forces in various US cities, and using these sources to substantiate this article would be absurd. The same would be for Jewish people in Australia, Black people in Manitoba or Homosexuals in Haiti. Sources do not necessarily support encyclopedability. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:39, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vague appeals to your own sense of "unencyclopedability" are unconvincing. Quite a few specialist encyclopedias from reputable publishers see fit to cover the topic of "Fooians in Barland" for a wide variety of values of Foo and Bar. To give a small sample:

Pan, Lynn, ed. (1995), The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0674252202
Inouye, Daniel K., ed. (2002), Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas: An Illustrated History of the Nikkei, Rowman Altamira, ISBN 978-0-75910149-4
Ember, Marvin; Ember, Carol R.; Haggard, Martin, eds. (2005), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Overviews and Topics, Springer, ISBN 978-0306483219
Magocsi, Paul R., ed. (1998), Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples, University of Toronto Press, ISBN 0802029388
Jupp, James, ed. (2001), The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-52180789-0

Regards, cab (talk) 04:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Those all look like potentially notable subject for articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:19, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I am very leery of keeping an article based on sources which are almost entirely in a foreign language; this complicates questions of determining notability, verifiability, etc., to say the least. Furthermore, I would note that while I cannot read Japanese (and thus run the very real risk of mischaracterizing the sources), the English descriptions of the sources undercut the case for the subject's notability. It appears that the sources are, in order, a pamphlet from the Japanese ministry of foreign affairs (such as one might find for every country, giving only basic statistics and almost no narrative description, almost like a page out of a census), a short one to two-paragraph article in a Japanese newspaper, a single article testifying to the "invisibility" of the Japanese in France (hardly convincing evidence of notability), and three academic journal articles, which cannot be considered secondary sources for the general reader by any stretch. RayAYang (talk) 09:07, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:V is very clear that sources do not need to be in English, if they are available only in other languages. Just as notability does not decay with time, language is not a barrier to it. —Quasirandom (talk) 15:16, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um. Apologies; are we reading the same policy? All I see is a remark to the effect that English language sources are to be preferred over non-English ones, and it certainly doesn't extend to questions of notability. RayAYang (talk) 17:16, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. What you see is that, for verifiability, English language sources are to be preferred over non-English ones "assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality". If such English sources are not available then foreign language ones are fine. As far as notability goes there is nothing in the guidelines about the language of sources because notability doesn't depend on the language. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:19, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's what I thought. It doesn't say anything about foreign language sources being as good as English language sources for notability purposes, in either direction, and is more or less agnostic on the question of verifiability. After reflection, I conclude that I stand by my original comment, including the parts on the quality of the existing sources, which, IMO amount to less than substantial coverage. RayAYang (talk) 19:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. —Fg2 (talk) 12:09, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Perfect example of very good article topic. Article quality is not a reason for deletion. - Darwinek (talk) 00:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per arguments already made. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 00:25, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Although consensus seems to favor keeping this article, I think it's probably useful for me to argue for deletion based on the following:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Japanese Guyanese

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Japanese Jamaican

I will change my "vote" if someone can help me understand how and why this article is distinguished from the others? My "vote" is partly informed by the following:

According to fr:Groupes ethniques de France#Anthropologie culturelle basée sur la communauté historique (Ethnic groups in France#Cultural anthropology based on the history of the ethnic community) a non-governmental source is cited in support of the claimed 11,000+ Japanese in France, without distinguishing between Japanese nationals (expatriates) and French citizens having some degree of Japanese ancestry; however, when I clicked on the Joshua Project web page cited, the information line in the chart was blank.
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) does not include specific numbers of Japanese expatriates in Japan and Japanese-French at MOFA France-Japan Relations, in contrast with similar pages for other countries.

For me, this subject is not an easy one to parse. --Tenmei (talk) 16:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By the fact that this has actual sources which discuss the topic non-trivially. Please read and understand WP:N. cab (talk) 15:17, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks. I will review WP:N later today. --Tenmei (talk) 16:13, 8 December 2008 (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.