Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Olympus Chrome Six

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. John254 01:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Olympus Chrome Six

Olympus Chrome Six (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

This grotesquely long article (on a line of cameras) is riddled with WP:OR and presents an original synthesis, and anyway is about something that's of negligible significance outside a small world of collectors.

The article was originally taken from Camerapedia, where it was released under the GFDL. There's no obvious issue of copyright (or left) here. But there are more than enough problems elsewhere.

Camerapedia does not enforce certain of Wikipedia's core policies, particularly on WP:OR. This particular article relies heavily on the personal observations of Camerapedia contributors (and as its history reveals, largely a single anonymous author with obvious enthusiasm but no obvious qualification). The OR is evident in such language as "the cameras observed so far have..." and "none of the original documents observed so far". Note that these do not reproduce the observations or non-observations by writers in books and the like; they are instead original syntheses of what the Camerapedia author has (or authors have) found not only from magazines and so forth but also from many hours of monitoring auctions at Yahoo Japan (mostly now irretrievable) and elsewhere. Procedure and result obviously violate WP:VER.

Further, the main author draws conclusions on the basis of his personal observations, which in some cases contradict what's written in English-language sources that can be assumed to be authoritative: "many sources wrongly say that", "it is often said that [...] but this is a mistake". The article even suggests that what the Olympus company says of its own product may be wrong: "some sources, including the Olympus company itself, give 1951 as the release date, perhaps by mistake", "the chronology of the Olympus official website mistakenly says", etc.

There is probably a WP:POV issue here; that aside the main issue is of whether this material is verifiable or not. Wikipedia and Camerapedia differ hugely on approaches to verifiability, which is why any copying into Wikipedia would need, at the least, very radical editing.

So what editing did it get? The article's history page here confirms what's obvious from the article in its present state: User:Megapen first copied the entire content of the article but for its links section. Unlike Wikipedia, Camerapedia allows the incorporation of images hosted elsewhere; Megapen removed a link to an (unfree) image hosted by Flickr (leaving others). He did away with the bibliography. He then got rid of another image. And that was all he did. These edits took him all of four minutes.

Now we have an article full of Camerapedia-specific templates and red links, riddled with original research and with 95 footnotes pointing to a non-existent bibliography section. The task of stripping all the original research out of, and converting dud templates within, this fifty-plus-kilobyte page seems daunting.

Further, the article goes on and on about this and that minor variation on a single folding camera -- a design that was of some significance to the survival of Olympus but of little significance elsewhere: the camera's sales were not remarkable and its design was not at all innovative (and indeed was rather backward). I'd say that the camera rates a paragraph in the article on Olympus and, at a stretch, also a very short article all by itself. If the latter is called for (which I doubt), such an article would be hugely easier to do from scratch than via condensation.

As a sporadic Camerapedia editor (and one who's made very minor contributions to its "Olympus Chrome Six"), I'm all in favor of the intelligent appropriation of suitable Camerapedia material by Wikipedia (and vice versa): Camerapedia's "Ars Camera" (specifically this version) became Wikipedia's "Camera (Japanese magazine)" (specifically this version). But adjusting even such a short article takes a fair amount of time; condensing and adjusting "Olympus Chrome Six" would take much longer and it's not a job I'm willing to take on. Anyway, the magazine (Ars) Camera has a fairly prominent place in any history of photography in Japan, something that can't be said of the Olympus Chrome Six.

It is probably unusual to nominate a B-rated article for deletion, but it should be noted that the B rating was applied by User:Megapen himself five minutes after his beaching of this sick whale of an article, now predictably putrid. -- Hoary 11:08, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• Delete now. Is it an ad? Wait ... no ... it's supercam. Get rid of this OR. I was expecting to find sources for the info, but alas, almost all of the claims are supported by ... more commentary by whoever authored this somewhere else. TONY (talk) 12:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC) .................The words "Delete now" scored through by TONY in this edit
• Delete per nom Jasynnash2 (talk) 13:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Delete, unless someone is willing to re-write this to Wikipedia's standards. The references section is riddled with red links that, presumably, have some sort of function on Camerapedia. Wikipedia is not a Camerapedia mirror and I don't see any point in wholesale recycling of their article(s). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. I don't think Hoary (or this article) left any room for doubt. Pinkville (talk) 20:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Keep but trim mercilessly. Appears to be a notable topic (which is the criterion for keeping), but the article is definitely not up to wikipedia standards, for all of the reasons given above. But deletion is not a substitute for editing, so I think the article should be kept. Klausness (talk) 22:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Has been trimmed mercilessly, so no further trimming is necesary. Klausness (talk)

• • First, being a notable topic is not the (singular) criterion for keeping. Consider the Ermanox camera (already redlinked from Erich Salomon). It's indubitably notable, a topic within any history of photojournalism. If somebody were to "create" an article on it via copyright violation, the article would (or should) be deleted as fast as possible, without prejudicing the fate of any later, unrelated article on the same topic. Now, the mess we're discussing here isn't a copyright violation. (Although it's not completely unproblematic; note Gyrofrog's comment on its talk page.) However, it's crap. ¶ True, the policy page on deletion says If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion. But it follows this up with no more than: A variety of tags can be added to articles to note the problem. These are listed here. Some of the more common ones include [blah blah blah]. What it lacks is any explanation of how noting the problem (actually, multiple problems) is likely to bring about a radical improvement to the article. ¶ Let's suppose for a moment that this subject is notable (something you merely assert, without reasoning) and that an article is merited. I believe it would be faster to make an entirely new article (perhaps with some careful reference to this article as it is intelligibly hosted at Camerapedia) than it would be to "trim" the mess resulting from somebody doing a dump in WP. You disagree, and put "trim mercilessly" in the imperative. You don't say who you're addressing, so I suppose it's as likely to be me as much as anyone. And my response to your injunction is "hell no": it would be a great amount of entirely unnecessary work. -- Hoary (talk) 02:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
• Keep with severe trimming. Notable topic with too much information. Stifle (talk) 22:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • "Severe trimming" by whom? (And see my rejoinder to Klausness's comment.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

• Keep and cut extensively. For the material at length, Camerapedia seems the right place for the very detailed material in this article--I'm glad to have now found out about that site. But this line of camera appears to have been popular in its time, though very uninnovative, and a suitably short article is appropriate for Wikipedia. That's the right relationship between a general encyclopedia and a more specialised one. And certainly there are enough sources in that article. The nom could have cut this down to size in less time than it took to bring it here. At least it could have been stubbified. DGG (talk) 02:52, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. I have to say that starting from scratch is the far preferrable tack at this point. There is so much crap in this article that anyone contemplating "trimming" it is likely to drown in an especially unpleasant manner. It's repetitive, absurdly detailed - for a subject of very minor significance - turgid, etc. This is just the problem of lifting material from some obsessive enthusiast - it's prejudiced and of little interest to anyone else. Pinkville (talk) 03:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Coasttocoast rewrote it from scratch. Delete I want to echo DGG, I'm happy to have learned about Camerapedia, which is where this article came from and where it belongs. Olympus is notable. The economic rebuilding of Japan (on the Meiji model) between 1945 and 1975 is notable. This article contains no meaningful hint that this camera model was ever notable. This article is nothing but a data dump which would take far more work to glean, research for notability, source and clean up than starting anew if this so narrow topic somehow does happen to be encyclopedic. Lastly, according to this article, its title, the term Olympus Chrome Six, never even showed up on the camera but only in advertising (50-60 years ago). A wholly rewritten paragraph or two in a history (or the products) section of Olympus Corporation would be far more helpful. Gwen Gale (talk) 13:13, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
• Keep I got rid of the content and rewrote it. I do think this camera series is notable, it was the content in the article that was a problem. Since it was OR, un-sourced and copied from Camerapedia. I think this fixes the problem. -- Coasttocoast (talk) 01:06, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Notice one glaring (to me) problem with even the rewrite: what the hell is a "folder"? A dossier? A creased sheet of foolscap? And what does such a thing have to do with cameras? I'm being somewhat rhetorical, but I hope you see the problem... Pinkville (talk) 01:16, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. —Hoary (talk) 00:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. —Hoary (talk) 00:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

• Keep since it has been trimmed mercilessly. It needs categories and, as Pinkville pointed out, editing, but the major problems Hoary discussed have been solved. There's lots of room for improvement, and this is typical of a "stub." Fg2 (talk) 01:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
• Keep; the current trim is viable (though the version that was nominated was teh suck...). dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 03:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
• Comment My thanks to Coasttocoast for his or her work on the article. My uneducated guess is that Coasttocoast is less than fascinated by the Olympus Chrome Six and benefited very little from the Wikipedia text dump (a lot harder to read than the Camerapedia article). I recognize that others, such as Gwen Gale, have put their time into it as well. No offense to them when I say that I was underwhelmed by the resulting article. I did the minimum amount of work on it that I could get away with with a clear conscience, which added up to over 20 minutes. And the result is still mediocre, to put it charitably. (For example, it makes a vague and perhaps slightly misleading boast about the rangefinder. I say "boast", as the factoid is sourced to its manufacturer.) The Camerapedia article on the same subject seems hugely better: it seems that Megapen's jolly notion of lifting it and dumping it here (costing him all of four minutes) has used up an hour or so of other editors' editing time, all in the service of an article that's feeble, that's unlikely to get much better, and that's rendered unnecessary by the Camerapedia alternative, which, if you jump past minutiae on different typefaces in lens barrel engravings (etc etc) gives a lot more information on lens coating, flash synchronization, etc (stuff that we take for granted now but that people couldn't then), and that writes lucidly about models II, IV and V. ¶ The major problem I didn't discuss above was the lazy and smug dumping of material into WP with the expectation that somebody, anybody will come along later with a trowel and prettify or bury it. -- Hoary (talk) 07:53, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and admonish: The person who said that deletion is no substitute for editing is not entirely correct. If an article is not encyclopedic and does not meet the standards for keeping (and those are not topic alone), then the article must be entirely rewritten, and no one is under any obligation to do that. The admonition is for the person who took a specialist article from a specialist wiki and dumped it here in a mangled form. The present article can be kept, except that it begs the question of, "Why is this a big deal?" I.e. the article actually fails to tell the reader why this camera is special. It looks like a series of details on a camera, and there is nothing that tells me why this is better or worse than my Justice League Instamatic disposable. Commendations for all the hard work, but admonitions that yes indeed, deletion is required if an article is not up to standards; editing is nice, saving is nice, but no one gets to have a "keep" by just having a good topic. Geogre (talk) 10:52, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: Thank you for a most thoughtful "keep" vote, Geogre. I wrote above in the nomination that the camera's sales were not remarkable and its design was not at all innovative (and indeed was rather backward). On sales: I should qualify that. The amount of advertising that the camera got, the fact that the manufacturer survived while many of its rivals did not, and the number of Olympus (Chrome) Sixes on the shelves of used camera dealers these days all lead me to suspect that its sales were substantial. However, I've never read this; I'm just indulging in Original Deep Thought here. On design: To me, the mystery is of why the camera had neither a coupled rangefinder nor focusing of the entire lens: both were pretty normal by 1954 or so for folding cameras costing about as much. In a sense, it's notably or at least intriguingly mediocre. Or so I think, but again this is mere Original Deep Though. The camera is said to have done a good job of holding the film flat; I'd like to know more about this and particularly why, if it was successful, it wasn't copied by rival companies. (I'd have thought that all of these other than the Mamiya Six would benefit.) All of these questions seem to me worth raising on the discussion page of the Camerapedia article, where the indefatigable Rebollo_fr might research and elucidate. ¶ And now to your Big Question: On the one hand, 120 film (for the Olympus) is a lot easier to buy than 126 (for the Instamatic), the negatives are bigger for more detail, focusing is more important with the longer lens but also perhaps more precise. On the other a Justice League camera is just soooo kewl and probably has a higher resale value than the Olympus and you must write it up at Camerapedia pronto. -- Hoary (talk) 13:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
    • So these were not the coolest cameras ever :) How notable do you think they are in the sweep of 19th and 20th century film camera history? Gwen Gale (talk) 23:05, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
      • Just the unremarkable (other than for the film tensioner introduced toward the end) Takachiho/Olympus take on one of the four or so staple Japanese camera designs of the early fifties (others being the TLR, the lens-shutter 35mm camera, the focal plane shutter 35mm camera). A year or so after the demise of the Chrome Six, the genre was dead in Japan; it lingered in the Soviet Union another five years or so with the excellent "Iskra" (contrary to stereotypes of Soviet products, both original and well designed and made), and even longer in China (with indifferent models whose names elude me). If I were writing a two-hundred page history of cameras, I'd devote no more than three pages of it to postwar Japanese folders, and no more than four lines of that to the Olympus (more likely a single line). I hesitate to name more interesting alternatives as doing so might encourage some other upstanding editor to grab their articles from Camerapedia and regurgitate them here, bypassing the digestive system. -- Hoary (talk) 23:56, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
• I'm waiting to see who among the "Keeps" is weighing in to save this monstrosity. It requires not only "trimming" (slashing, I'd say), but a substantial change in tone. I don't see how it can be managed. Prove me wrong. TONY (talk) 17:39, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

• "Monstrosity"? You may want to look at it again -- it's changed greatly since the start of the AfD, including being stubbified. —Quasirandom (talk) 23:24, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

• Keep - as it is now, it's fine as a stub. I'm not into old cameras myself, but I do see this as a notable topic. Merenta (talk) 00:35, 20 May 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.