Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Taminato incident

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 redirect to Japanese community of Shanghai. Consensus is that this should not be a separate article, but there's no consensus as to whether to delete or merge. Redirecting it to the one place where it is mentioned is a compromise. Editors need to determine whether to merge any content from the history, and where to. Sandstein 12:14, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Taminato incident[edit]

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I think it's time this is revisited. The last AFD back in 2012 ended in "no consensus", but the reason for that was largely that JoshuSasori hadn't been site-banned for hounding me yet (I was the nominator, and in retrospect it was obvious that that was the only reason he commented) and CurtisNaito (the article's original creator, and a virulent anti-Chinese POV-pusher - that's relevant) had not been topic-banned and left the project yet. Apart from those two, it was 7-2 in favour of deletion.

Basically the article was created to push the idea that the Sino-Japanese War was provoked by anti-Japanese violence on the part of the Chinese, and the only modern sources (as opposed to contemporary newspapers) that discuss the topic as anything worthy of note are from Japanese far-right ideologues. The current version is toned down from the original 2012 version, but it still doesn't demonstrate notability: virtually all of the sources are still either newspapers from 1936 or revisionist works by Japanese rightists (who aren't even professional historians): titles like "支那事変作戦日誌" and "日本とシナ:1500年の真実" are clear markers of revisionist, anti-Chinese works, and 文藝春秋 is hardly a bastion of liberal thought. (I know we shouldn't judge books by their titles, but by default we should generally assume sources are not reliable; these Japanese titles are roughly equivalent to On the Waging of the War of Northern Aggression and Saracens and the West, a History: The Truth that You're Not Being Told, and those books would have an uphill battle to be taken seriously on RSN.) The only sources for which this is not true are the ones currently numbered 4, 19 and 20, of which 4 and 20 are cited for innocuous content not related directly to the assassination of Taminato, and assuming 19 is cited correctly and not misrepresented it demonstrates the notability of Wang Yaqiao, not this topic.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:05, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. – TheGridExe (talk) 16:26, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. – TheGridExe (talk) 16:26, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. – TheGridExe (talk) 16:26, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. – TheGridExe (talk) 16:26, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merge (selective) to Battle of Shanghai or Shanghai International Settlement. It seems this incident served a propaganda purpose, has some coverage as a propaganda piece (e.g. [1], [2], [3] - and led to increased Japanese armed deployment in the city (martial law, state of emergency). A series of similar incidents were the pretext for the battle of Shanghai.Icewhiz (talk) 09:01, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify my !vote on selective merge - I think we could have a paragraph to two under a subsecrion (level3 or 4) in Battle of Shanghai - whatever passes V after some NPOVing.Icewhiz (talk) 06:11, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Perhaps a future article at this title could discuss the propaganda angle, but the current article seems to fail WP:V (per nominator and after looking for modern sources) and doesn't discuss that angle. Smmurphy^(Talk) 18:54, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:53, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merge The subject constitutes a notable chapter in the history of the Second Sino-Japanese War. On this, both sides in the conflict agree: At the time, the Chinese side claimed the incidents were no more than random murders committed by individuals and should not affect relations with Japan; Japan claimed they were an act of intentional provocation by China or at best deliberate lack of protection of Japanese citizens. The intent to engage in propaganda does not affect the merits of a subject as far as Wikipedia is concerned, provided the subject is presented in the appropriate, encyclopaedic manner. We have articles on subjects of pure propaganda, such as Triumph of the Will.

Incidents within a conflict need exceptional notability in order to have an article created about them. But the Taminato incident, along with similar ones, are what ostensibly gave the Japanese side the legitimacy of their subsequent actions that led to the Battle of Shanghai. It seems important enough to merit its own, separate text. If not a separate article (as we have on the Marco Polo Bridge Incident or the Gulf of Tonkin incident), then an account under the section "Prelude" of the Battle of Shanghai article. And if the text in this article is indeed promoting bias of some kind or other, i.e. "anti-China" sentiments, as the nom claims, we can and should work on it; not delete it. -The Gnome (talk) 12:41, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@The Gnome: You say we can and should work on it, but have you located any sources that would allow us to do so without engaging in original research? In more than five years no one has been able to do so, and there was a pretty strong consensus in the last AFD (undermined only by two disruptive editors who have long since been banned) that this incident seems only to be played up by unreliable revisionist works. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 21:24, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Are you suggesting that this incident be wiped out entirely from the Wikipedia articles? -The Gnome (talk) 22:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No. There’s a reason I responded to you but not Icewhiz, whose comment essentially amounted to “redirect now, figure out what can be merged later”, even though the sources they found were basically useless at least based on the GBooks snippet views. You, on the other hand, appear to be arguing for the page to be kept mostly intact, either by keeping in the short term or copying over the full text or close to it in the long term, even without modern reliable sources. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:42, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:31, 1 June 2018 (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.