Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fang Zong-ao

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. SarahStierch (talk) 01:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fang Zong-ao (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Article is a mess, stylistically and content-wise. The person does appear to be verifiably notable, but the Chinese Wikipedia article provides even less information than this messy article, and therefore there is no path to "clean up by translation." I don't think the current article is salvageable as such. I would suggest Delete (and hope that it would eventually to be rewritten properly, by someone who is knowledgeable in the subject — although that's not going to be me, as I am not an expert in that era of Chinese history). Nlu (talk) 04:36, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Further comment. It appears that the article was originally created, and most of the content written, by a grandson of the subject, and therefore also has conflict of interest problems. This, again, I think, militates toward deleting (and hopefully, at some point, someone else starting over). --Nlu (talk) 04:40, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep. The article is a mess, but that's not a reason for deletion. COI problems are also not a valid reason for deletion, tag the article with a COI template instead. Brief reading through this suggests two likely notability passes: "Acting Minister" is Chinese government, and educational activity. We will probably need Chinese speakers to look at the sources; ping me when more information is found and I'll rereview this discussion. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:42, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There are more than sufficient claims to pass for notability. Stylistic problems are only very exceptionally grounds for deletion and this article is comprehensible - the style is similar to that adopted in many biographical dictionaries. We also need to be tolerant of articles written by people about their ancestors. It is often a family connection that prompts contributors to research and write about notable people of the past. This may be a particular issue in the case of examples such as this, for reasons that should be obvious from a glance at his career. To exclude him from WP because he has largely been ignored in China in recent decades would be to introduce a POV bias which is highly undesirable. --AJHingston (talk) 10:55, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep But disagree with AJHingston about introducing POV bias. The guy is a minor official in the Reformed Nanjing Government (aka Japanese puppet). Just because he isn't featured in ZH wiki doesn't represent any bias. ZH wiki is incredibly underdeveloped, I often find more information on a person from Baidu wikis for MUCH more notable people (I had to do considerable research on Chinese ministers between 1914-1950 before). ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 11:41, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 12:26, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 12:26, 14 November 2013 (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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