Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/OS-tan (third nomination)

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. Obviously this is a long-running debate, but the main reason I have decided on keep is that, besides there being more keep "votes" than delete (and votes are not the be-all-and-end-all of any AFD), there seems to be no majority consensus to delete. There is enough of an argument to keep the article, and as suggested, systematic bias may be the issue in terms of referencing. As a closing note, I would look to improve the article and fix its problems than re-nominate it soon; I can't see a fourth AFD attempt suddenly creating a deletion consensus. Esteffect (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

OS-tan (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Before we begin, let me state: Yes I know this has been nominated twice before. However I feel the last AfD wasn't closed appropriately, I've tried yet again to clean up this article and bring it in to line with policies and guidelines, however it seems impossible. In addition I don't feel the last close by a non-admin was appropriate as lots of claims were made in the AfD by the people wanting to keep the article but no one bothered to provide any evidence to support their opinions and since then no one has done anything to address the concerns with this article

• Original Research The article contains excessive amounts of original research. Sure it could be rewritten without it, but there is very little here that isn't original research. Its all taken from forums and fansites. This kind of basis leads itself to original research. Drawing conclusions and putting forth subjective statements based on these observations are the very nature of original research.
• Notability I can find a single piece of coverage from a reliable source, however its not significant as required by the guideline and its tainted in that it seems to use this very article as source. Its a wired gallery that contains a single paragraph about OS-Tan [1]. This hardly demonstrates a greater notability outside the fandom. The guideline very clearly lays out what is necessary to establish notability, and no one has done that in this article nor does it seem possible. In the previous AfD there were tons of claims of notability, but no evidence. Some fansites and forums don't establish that. Otherwise they'd be an accepted part of the guidelines on web notability. Please read WP:ILIKEIT for further insight.
• Verifiability/Reliable Source Put simply, there are none. All these linked infoseek pages appear to be personal pages akin to a geocities page. These are never considered reliable and can't be used to source statements outside of "this page exists" and certainly can't be used to establish notability. In fact as I was going through the sources I couldn't find a single reliable source which really said anything about OS-Tan.

Simply put if people want this article kept, they need to provide the required sources and not simply make claims that an article meets wikipedia's criteria when this article very clearly doesn't. Multiple editors have attempted to clean this up (see the previous AfD) and the ones who have put the most time in to it don't see how this article belongs here. At the very best a mention should be made about this on the Futaba Channel article or in the internet memes article. But currently none of the content is suitable for merging as it really isn't source (yes there are some sources there, but most of those should be removed as they're just infoseek pages) and is mostly original research. Crossmr (talk) 03:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete They may be cute (aren't most anime girls?) but unfortunately they're not covered in any reliable sources at all -- and nothing else seems to indicate that they're notable in any fashion. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 03:22, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep The fandom led to 1) a commercially published anthrology, 2) a manga in Dengeki Teioh, 3) the controversy involving the magazine Netrunner (which you removed). 1) and 2) solve the sourcing problem, while all of them establish notabilities. Do not belittle doujin efforts. _dk (talk) 06:17, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

  I removed the netrunner controversy because it didn't seem to be specific to OS-Tans, The OS-Tan card was only one of the cards created and the images downloaded weren't limited to os-tan images, there is also no evidence this "controversy" was covered by any outside reliable sources. Which doesn't make it particularly notable or reliable. Neither an anthology or manga are independent of the subject and can't be used to establish notability. As I pointed out above, please provide sources which actually comply with wikipedia's policies and guidelines which support keeping this article.--Crossmr (talk) 14:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

  And this [2] Was previously discussed. While it has an ISBN and is for sale, its a self-published book by that artist. At best its a primary source on how that artist feels about those characters but there is no evidence the artist is notable and that he could be used as a source. Even so as a primary source it can't be used to establish notability.--Crossmr (talk) 14:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

"Those" artists, thank you. Seeing your response further convinces me that you don't know enough about this topic. Of course the artists are not notable, they are meant to be unknown anonymous contributors to this internet phenomenon. (Read about doujin for some background knowledge) The anthology is considered "official" because it is not just some self-published work, it is a collaborative production by the artists involved in making the characters, and it has gone through a commercial publisher (not a vanity publisher or a self-publisher) who had deemed the anthology profitable to sell. Also, relevant mentions include this from AkibaBlog, which, before you jump to conclusions, is a news blog with as much credibility as Kotaku. (But you'll just shoot it down via the usual bureaucratic talk anyways) _dk (talk) 11:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

You'd need to demonstrate that it does have as much credibility as Kotaku unless someone has already done that leg work. Why point me to doujin which refers specifically to self-published works if this book is supposedly not a self-published work? An english page on this book describes it as a "fan" book, which doesn't make it sound like its commercially published. [3]. Even if you establish that akibablog is considered a reliable source that can establish notability, I don't see any evidence here of significant coverage in third parties independent of the source.--Crossmr (talk) 16:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I pointed you to doujin because that's how OS-tan started. The book, however, was a commercial publication published by a commercial publisher (look up 宙出版 if you don't believe me) about this doujin phenomenon. I'm not going to argue your other points since it's a lost cause. _dk (talk) 02:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Anime and manga-related deletion discussions. _dk (talk) 06:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep as per Deadkid dk. I think the opposition to the article may be a case of systemic bias. There may not be sufficient references in English, as opposed to Japanese. --Merovingian (T, C) 07:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

  None of the provided japanese sources appear to be valid. They appear to come from self-published websites. That has nothing to do with what language they're in.--Crossmr (talk) 14:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete I've read the article, google translated the page about the book on amazon.co.jp, read the articles on Dengeki Teioh and Futaba Channel, and googled some (also for OSたん). And I'm not convinced of notability. A book displaying the pictures (that's all it does from what I see) and a manga using the characters clearly isn't enough if you read through WP:V and WP:N. We need some real third party coverage, like appearance in news or a book talking somewhere about OStans, right now this article is just WP:OR. --Minimaki (talk) 12:53, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Why delete the article when it still provides very important information. If not an article about OS-Tans, shouldn't an article exist to explain the -tan phenomenon in general? There's -tans for EVERYTHING, and even though it's all fandom and fan created and most of it isn't endorced by the respective companies, it's still a style of artwork/character design that is becoming increasingly popular it seems with each and every new gadget that comes out. If it wasn't for this wikipedia article, and an article I read on AnimeNation I would've never knew anything about this sub-culture of artwork in Japan.--72.65.239.213 (talk) 07:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Can you provide a link to that article? I guess the reasons for deletion get clear from the initial statement, especially if you follow the provided links. If someone else besides Wikipedia deemed reliable enough wrote about it, or once someone does, nothing will speak against keeping the article. I also find this quite interesting - the first time I heard about the -tan suffix was when I saw Wikipedia:Wikipe-tan :) So in a way, if even the almost-mascot of Wikipedia is such a -tan girl, it can't be that non-notable. On the other hand, seeing how that wired.com article and also some other pages I saw in google clearly used this article here on Wikipedia for the definition of OS-tans, Wikipedia may have played some involuntary role in making them known.. but that's all besides the point. --Minimaki (talk) 13:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• He might be talking about this, which is a small blurb about os-tan on a shopping site [4]--Crossmr (talk) 16:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• That's from 2004 and uses the "extensive article" on Wikipedia as reference for those OS-tans. Heh, my above suspicion just got stronger now. --Minimaki (talk) 04:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Then give evidence to that effect. Show us some news articles, reliable magazine articles, etc that show some greater notability of the subject outside of the fandom.--Crossmr (talk) 16:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• Merge into Moe anthropomorphism Will ^(talk) 13:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Has the sort of web sources expected for this type of thing; for memes like this, popularity does equal a certain amount of notability, & I think it's time we recognized as much. From the sites, looks like the article could me expanded.DGG (talk) 16:54, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Care to actually provide those sources? All we have is a book which may or may not be self-published, and a blog which may or may not count. Do you have any evidence to support the popularity? Something that meets WP:WEB? Those are the kind of sources we expect.--Crossmr (talk) 17:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete this just isn't notable. The complete lack of sources despite several people actively looking for them serves to indicate that. The manga mentioned above, self-published or not, might qualify as notable, though - maybe create an article for that, and merge OS-tan into the manga article. But I think unless that artist goes on to have a notable career, an early self published work is not really worth make an article about. Doceirias (talk) 02:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
• Merge sourcable content to Futaba Channel and cut out the cruft. I'm not convinced by the reliability of the sources here.-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 14:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete no reliable sources as mentioned per above. Antonio Lopez ^(talk) 00:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep as per Deadkid, plus, if we have articles on 3 million internet memes this is surely as notable. I've certainly heard of this before reading this article today. Xmoogle (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• WP:OTHERSTUFF always is problematic though. On one hand, List of Internet phenomena has lots of such articles which do cite third party coverage along WP:V and WP:N. And on the other hand, there certainly are just as many internet memes (with notability below WP:N) which we do not have an article for. --Minimaki (talk) 12:22, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep per Deadkid. We can fix left over OR and V issues without total deletion. -- Ned Scott 03:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

• The problem is, if you actually look at the article and try doing that, you end up blanking it :) --Minimaki (talk) 01:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. I see absolutely no reason to delete this. The lack of notable and credible sources is understandable because this started out as fanart/doujin, a personification of the various OS's in anime form. Personally, the fact that this internet meme is extremely popular and well known by many serves more than enough to establish notability for the OS-tans. I fully understand the problem with lack of credible sources (and what can you expect from something that started as fan work in futaba?), but deleting an article on one of the more popular internet phenomenons just because you can't find research paper on it is too much. Deadkid also makes a nice point, though I can't comment in detail since I never bought the book or frequented the blog. King Arthur6687 (talk) 07:25, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

• Well, lack of credible sources means, there can't be an article. That's just how Wikipedia works. --Minimaki (talk) 01:35, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Then I find it funny that the Japanese OS-tan page, which has absolutely no credible sources referenced from what I see, is still standing with no deletion nomination in sight (please correct me if I'm wrong). In fact, the Japanese version seems more comprehensive and detailed than ours. Moving on, you say Wikipedia works on "sources or get out", in that case I believe the Japanese article should be nominated for deletion as well. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the OS-tan pages from any of the Wikis to get deleted, on the contrary I want to help keep them for the benefit of many. However, as it stands this deletion nomination sounds much like a cultural bias against Japan and the OS-tans because it is something that most English-speakers fail to comprehend (the concept of "kawaii" is something I seldom see outside of Japan/Asia), whereas in Japan it has a strong following with or without credible sources. This can be taken the other way as well: If the Japanese OS-tan page can survive with no credible sources referenced, it has to be notable in some way or form. King Arthur6687 (talk) 06:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• No, we all agree that they are kawaii I think :) WP:V (read through it) really is the problem. --Minimaki (talk) 12:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Oh, I know Wiki works on verifiability, I've had to cite episodes in edits of Gundam 00 articles from time to time. I know how it works. It's just that, with internet memes, the best sources you could get come mostly from blogs and/or fansites (and in this case, because OS-tan is fanart at its core, a very popular one). I've noted that the Japanese OS-tan pages reference those, but I saw no otherwise "commercial" or any such sort of sources. If the editors really, really think this should be deleted, then it sucks but I guess we'll have to live. However, I still ask why the Japanese version is standing with no references to good sources (assuming that blogs and the like are not). If that page can live, there has to be something we're missing that we can do for our version. =X —Preceding unsigned comment added by King Arthur6687 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 29 February 2008 (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.