Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Learning kanji

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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 no conensus to delete. Merge or transwiki possible (make sure Wikibooks wants it first though), but discuss this on the talk page. W.marsh 17:58, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Learning kanji

For over a year this article has consisted of little more than a collection of links. This is akin to creating a page called "learning the alphabet," or "learning to spell." It is unencyclopaedic and has no hope for expansion. Exploding Boy 00:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete under WP:NOT. How-to guides only belong in the Wikipedia namespace, and this isn't applicable to the use of Wikipedia. The problems with this article have been noted by several editors (see the talk page). Dekimasu 01:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nominator and User:Dekimasu. JIP | Talk 06:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, WP:NOT an instruction manual. I believe Wikibooks has a Japanese course already. ColourBurst 06:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom and as above. OBM | blah blah blah 10:00, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Move to Wikibooks --Haham hanuka 10:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Wikibooks already has a textbook containing lessons in Kanji and a JLPT Guide. Always check the target project before nominating something for transwikification. Uncle G 11:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • How is this article a how-to guide? It is purely descriptive, describing the various methods that different people and organizations employ for learning Kanji. It is not instructional at all. (Contrast it with the textbook at Wikibooks.) We have perfectly good articles on English language learning and teaching and Teaching English as a Foreign Language. It is systemic bias to think that we cannot have a good article on the learning and teaching of Kanji by various classes of people. Uncle G 11:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Okay, I'll change my vote to keep (it describes methods, but doesn't tell people how to do it), but the "learning Kanji" title is a bit misleading (I think the active phrasing is what caused people to think it was a how-to manual). Can we rename the article like the Kanji learning techniques or Kanji learning? ColourBurst 16:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Ihcoyc has another suggested title below. Uncle G 21:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment. Uncle G, I normally agree with you, but you and I must have very different understandings of what systemic bias means. I do not feel that Wikipedia has any sort of systemic bias against Japan (quite to the contrary, thanks in large part to our many Japanese and Japanophile contributors), and I don't think that an article called "Learning Cyrillic" or "Learning the Greek alphabet" would be terribly successful at AfD. ergot 23:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong keep--this is not a how-to guide. It seems as if many of the Wikipedians did not even look at the article: as far as I can see, there are no how-to elements to it at all. — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 14:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Comment. The topic is goal-oriented and thus unencyclopedic. The fact that it fails in guiding anyone doesn't take away from the fact that it's meant to be a how-to. The main section of the article, about the "number of characters to be learned," is written in terms that make it applicable only to foreigners studying Japanese. The topic sentences of both paragraphs are "Learners may be confused about how many characters they need to learn in order to read Japanese fluently" and "It is also not clear whether one must learn the entire jōyō kanji list in order to read a Japanese text" - logically, factually, and intuitively irrelevant questions to Japanese people, and written from the standpoint that there is a goal of learning the kanji. The lead discusses different methods of memorization. As noted by User:Ergot above, this is very much the equivalent of making an article called "Learning math" or "Learning words." Dekimasu 12:21, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
  • SPEEDY DELETE per nom-Vanity JoshTyler 15:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC) . Josh.
keep. Seems like a ripe article to be retitled, though. Unfocused 16:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Article is not a how to guide, it is a description of a teaching method for a subject. I could not learn how to write Kanji in any way by reading this article. I agree the title needs to be changed. Ratherhaveaheart 17:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge at least parts of this to kyoiku kanji, the general article about the Japanese official curriculum and teaching methods (I would prefer that article to be moved to an English language title as well. No one who doesn't already know what the official name for the curriculum in Japanese is will be able to find it as it stands.) Parts of this might be best suited for a general article about teaching Japanese as a foreign language; of course, the script is one of the hardest things about learning Japanese. I tend to agree that this isn't a how-to guide, but the title seems off. - Smerdis of Tlön 17:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep or merge (as above) Ozzykhan 17:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep or Merge to Kanji. Not really a hot-to guide. Edison 18:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge per Smerdis, no opinion on what the title should be.--Cúchullain t/c 00:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletions. -- Neier 23:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not a great page, but I don't see any reason to delete it as it is informative and has no noticeable bias or offensive content.

  • Merge somewhere, I think; there is very little encyclopedic information here that is not already given in other places, and this article is a spam trap (man, just look at that external links section!)
    As for bias, how about the fact that this page discusses learning methods for a major writing system but only mentions one of the languages that use that writing system? It could possibly become a useful article if it also discussed teaching methods in China and for students of Chinese. There could be some interesting comparisons to make there.
    If kept, at the very least clean up external links. — Haeleth Talk 12:52, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Another comment. I have to say, I'm quite confused by the results of this AfD so far. I note that there is a Reading education article. Compare the two and you find that the reading education article is based on actual teaching methods and research, while the learning kanji article is based on commercial how-to guides and considers the "learning" at a personal level. There is no attempt in the learning kanji article to discuss the use of any teaching methods, other than to note that Japanese schoolchildren memorize kanji. The discussed books themselves are, quite honestly, not for serious language learners. And, while not necessarily a perfect indicator of anything, all of the commenters I know to be in Japan have voted to delete. Dekimasu 12:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Taking the "article" paragraph-by-paragraph, the opening two paragraphs simply repeat information from other articles. The third paragraph is a brief review of commercial how-to guides. The second section consists of two paragraphs speculating about the completeness of the joyo kanji list that veers dangerously close to being original research. The entire balance of the article consists of links, either to various how-to books or systems, most of them off-site.
I questioned this article when it was first created. A year later, nothing about the article has changed. It can never be more than a collection of links, and as such is far more suited to a personal or commercial website than an encyclopaedia (can anyone imaging Britannica having an article like this?!)
Those who have voted to keep have not really provided any compelling reason to do so. No one has really given any reason beyond "this is not really a how-to guide." This is not really good enough, especially giving all the excellent reasons for deleting this article. If there was really a need for an article of this type, then it would have received a lot more attention over the last year, and would have morphed into more than the long stub it is right now. Exploding Boy 17:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete This doesn't cover any ground that's not covered in Kanji or the two Wikibooks. It's not a how-to guide, as its title infers, and it's stayed this way for too long. Nothing to see here. KrakatoaKatie 13:19, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
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.