Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paddy Murphy (Liverpudlian)

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. consensus is too keep (non-admin closure) –Davey2010^Talk 22:35, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Paddy Murphy (Liverpudlian)

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No indication of subject's notability, to the extent required. There were thousands of foreign-born workers in Liverpool in the period of the subject's life, and the only reason for this one to be treated separately are that he was a distant relative by marriage of the Japanese emperor, and he adopted an apparently amusing nickname. Notability is not inherited, and the nickname itself is of little intrinsic interest (the fact that it's "funny" is not significant). The few sources that mention him give little support to claims of notability. The subject was a local character of insufficient notability to justify an article. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:18, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, with regret since it's a funny piece of trivia. I can barely find any mentions of this person that would qualify as non-trivial per the WP:GNG—a couple of local news obituaries, mentions in trivia books, and that's (seemingly) it. Apart from notability I'm also slightly concerned over veracity. I couldn't turn up anything from a search in Japanese. Admittedly I might be putting in the wrong queries: ~~the Silver Drum reference would at least be sound confirmation on that front, but I don't have the book—can anyone verify it/post the relevant quotation?~~ —Nizolan ^(talk) 21:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strike that on the Silver Drum, I just noticed it's only cited to justify a claim about the princess who wrote it, not Murphy himself. Definitely leaning further towards delete in that case—without further verification this could just as well simply be a thing a Japanese immigrant made up. —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. —Nizolan ^(talk) 21:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. —Nizolan ^(talk) 21:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. —Nizolan ^(talk) 21:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Wha? -- huh? Just three of the sources:

(1) Belchem is a scholarly book by Liverpool Univ. Press.

(2) Liverpool Gateway is a work on local history, not "trivia".

(3) Fritz Spiegl was for forty years a respected author and columnist (e.g. for the BBC's The Listener) on language and culture.

GNG's sigcov requirement is merely that " 'Significant coverage' addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it need not be the main topic of the source material." The coverage need not be extensive nor lengthy. Where little is known about a subject, little will be written, but the multiple sources that have written him up (at roughly 10-year intervals for fifty years -- sixty if you count a 1962 interview I've been unable to access so far) more than meet GNG.

It's not at all surprising there's no coverage in Japanese, since he spent almost his entire life in England (beginning before WW1), and the amusing name change does not, of course, add to notability, but neither does it detract. E Eng 22:30, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@EEng: Belchem's notice of Murphy is a trivial mention (quite literally two sentences) sourced to Spiegl, and Spiegl's is in turn sourced to the local obituary. One would expect there to be at least some small notice in Japanese given the man's genealogy—I also note that I can't find any relatives of Princess Chichibu with the surname (native or assumed) of Yoshida for any permutation of kanji with that reading. —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:36, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To add: from checking the book, Connections – Liverpool Gateway is a "public art project" (quote from the foreword) comprising interviews with Liverpool residents, not a work of historiography, and the relevant part within it is a two-page interview with Murphy's grandson with no evaluation made of the claims. The idea of someone claiming close relationship to the highest levels of Japanese society simply turning up in England for unknown reasons and working menial jobs in the navy while not being present on any genealogical tables is possible but still pretty incredible—falling under the WP:REDFLAG of "exceptional claims requiring exceptional sources", I would think. —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:51, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Belchem's is not a trivial mention. Yes it's two sentences, but they're long and complex ones that succinctly summarize his life [1] -- and used, BTW, by Belcham to illustrate " 'the Liverpool That Was', a cosmopolitan heritage of Merseypride briefly embraced by Black Liverpool, until as Jacqueling Nassy Brown has noted, its history became as apart as its geography." Not that I know enough about Liverpool to have more than a vague idea what that means, but clearly it's a serious scholarly point. Belchem says, in fact, that Murphy "best personified" this heritage, so he's not dragging Murphy in just for giggles over his name, if that's what you imagine. And that Belchem cites to another secondary source is completely irrelevant as well -- not every source needs to have done original research from primary sources, and the fact that Belchem, writing for a university press, chooses to rely on Spiegl without qualification confirms Spiegl's reputation for reliability.

The Federal Writer's Project was also, to a large extent, a public art (well, cultural) project that very much relied on oral sources. So what? Most of what's cited to Gateway are exactly the sorts of things one would find nowhere else e.g. the scar, the soft spot. Most or all of the rest is in the other sources as well, but I used Gateway exactly because it was open access so others could see it. I guess this is my reward for that consideration.

Spiegl himself lived in Liverpool, and that he quotes from (reproduces in facsimile, in fact) the obituary doesn't mean the obit was his only source of information, and it's of no interest to us whether he lists them all, unless there's some conflict among sources we need to sort out.

There's nothing REDFLAG here. He was born a commoner -- a relative married into the imperial family decades later -- and died a commoner, so I don't know why we should expect him to show up anywhere at all in Japanese sources. We take the sources we have at their word. REDFLAG is for men from mars, cold fusion, and claims that appear to contradict known fact and common sense.

How about if we take a breather so others can comment. E Eng 23:52, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

He wasn't born a commoner, though; Princess Chichibu's family on the male side is of the Tokugawa clan and her mother was of the Nabeshima clan, so he would be from one of those. Two sentences in an entire book, "long and complex" or not, is pretty much textbook WP:TRIVIAL (though one sentence more than just the one, I guess!) in terms of not representing any contribution to notability. —Nizolan ^(talk) 00:07, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Commoner: I was relying on Princess_Chichibu: "Although technically born a commoner, she was a scion of distinguished aristocratic families with close ties to the Japanese Imperial Family on both sides."

Textbook TRIVIAL: You and I must be looking at different textbooks, because the example TRIVIAL gives (as a trivial mention of Bill Clinton's high school band) is this sentence in a Clinton bio: "In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice" -- nothing at all like Belchem's coverage of Murphy. And the relationship between the book's quantity of coverage of the subject, versus the overall size of the book is irrelevant. You're acting as if coverage sufficient for notability has to be found all at once in a single source, which of course isn't true -- it's the totality of sources that matters.

The subject's story is a simple one, but one which has been repeatedly told in RS. Now, again, can we please wait for others to comment? E Eng 00:28, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: What he said. Reported by a number of reliable sources. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:02, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, it seems that he meets notability requirements, if barely. Chrisw80 (talk) 05:24, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, this delightful article seems adequately sourced. Bishonen | talk 18:16, 7 April 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Keep, Totally keep. reliable sources available. VanEman (talk) 19:46, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Like, totally keep, dude! It's a radical article! E Eng 22:10, 10 April 2016 (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.