Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dan Kogai


 * 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The result was   Withdrawn by nominator, no consensus to delete improved version..  So Why  23:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Dan Kogai

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Blogger and developer, but no apparent notability. -- Oscarthecat (talk) 10:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 *  Speedy Delete. No assertion of notability at all. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 10:54, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Since Chris's comment the article has been updated to claim his blog as 'no. 5 in Japan', which probably saves it from speedy. However, that doesn't not exactly constitute a "well-known and independent award" or "multiple non-trivial published works" (WP:WEB), and the source given is another blog which in turn cites "Technorati, which is not super-reliable, we know". I've only done a brief search for other references and didn't find any, but there may be something out there (perhaps in Japanese) I've missed. Olaf Davis | Talk 16:31, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Forgot to say: even if his blog is notable it doesn't justify a separate page for him. So it's probably delete-worthy, and at most mergeable to an article on the blog itself. Olaf Davis | Talk 16:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Can we take down this ridiculous request for deletion? Dan Kogai is one of the most well-known bloggers in Japan as well as being a prominent developer and former CTO of Livedoor. Rather than lunge at the delete button, it would have been a bit more reasonable to post something on the discussion page first, where I had very clearly posted a message and would have responded right away. Most documentation is in Japanese so if you want me to substantiate stuff you'll have to allow for time to translate, or have a look at the Japanese-language page yourself. Iminai (talk) 12:52, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If Dan Kogai is one of the best known bloggers in Japan, I recommend posting some links to articles about him in reliable independent secondary sources. (Note that articles that merely mention him probably don't count, neither do mentions in other blogs. Articles that are merely about his childhood aren't likely to count for much either.) I did a gnews search and ZDnet may be a good start. I'm keeping my vote as delete at the moment (I'm removing the speedy as there is now at least an assertion of notability), but I'll change it to keep if suitable evidence arrives.
 * What will not carry any weight in the discussion is branding the nomination of deletion "ridiculous". The whole point of these deletion debates is to give people the chance to present evidence as to why the article is sufficiently notable for inclusion. A foreign language wikipedia may have less strict consensus on notability there, so you should never assume that inclusion on a foreign wiki automatically means inclusion on the English version. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 17:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Let me qualify "ridiculous". Wikipedia in English (and the net generally in English) has an incredible sparsity of information on Japanese bloggers, despite the country having one of the largest (if not the largest) blogging communities in the world. Where the English-speaking world does know something about Japanese bloggers, the info tends to be about  idols whose "notability" comes from TV appearances, etc. What I am trying to do is to bring a different perspective on this world, by highlighting bloggers who are well-known locally but virtually unknown in the West. What is ridiculous is that whereas there are oodles of pages on e.g. American bloggers, there are only a handful on Japanese ones, and yet when someone comes along trying to add to this list they are told that despite a blogger being ranked 5th most popular in the country (among many other things), that blogger may be eligible for deletion (or even speedy deletion). That is ridiculous. I'm not questioning that the cleaning-up/organization/etc. of Wikipedia pages is not an easy task, but the approach here is wrong-headed and will turn off many potential contributors, especially non-native English speakers who will not have the capacity to respond promptly to requests like this. ... In any case, I've included a list of books Kogai has written, when I have time I'll add more. Also I am copying comments here to the talk page for Kogai so that they are kept with the entry itself (otherwise most people will not find this discussion).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iminai (talk • contribs) 00:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is that Wikipedia is deluged with self-promotional articles for websites and other people or businesses and so on. Usually when deletion of these articles is contested, the defence is that the website/person/business is "important" without presenting any evidence to back it up. That is why users will insist on independent and verifiable evidence that subject of the article is notable - believe me, it is done that way for very good reasons. There are some other arguments you are using which are in the list of arguments to avoid in deletion discussion. Having said that, the books you have presented is a better argument for notability. As I don't know much about Japanese publishers, I'm not sure whether these will qualify as notabile, so I'm changing my vote to Neutral until someone can advise me on this. But I will repeat my advice I've already given: find reference to Dan Kogai in independent reliable third-party sources, and the article will probably stay. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 18:24, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can only imagine how many self-promotional articles must be posted every day at Wikipedia, and believe me I understand that policing these new entries must be a huge task. But this is clearly not the case here: I have a history contributions, I am not just someone coming out of nowhere to promote my company/product/etc. I do see now that starting an entry with just a sentence describing someone will not work, so in the future I will try to at least make a mention of references/achievements etc. I also see (as a translator) that straight translation doesn't really work well on its own either, which has been another lesson I learned from this. What I'd ask that you try to take from this on your side is that language matters (a lot): I expect that there are many fewer people trying to post entries like this one, about people who are well-known (and IMHO very noteworthy) in one lang. community but unknown in another, than there are promoting something "unnoteworthy" about which there is already tons of info in English. Also dealing with non-native English speakers means that "concensus" will always favor the English side, and that needs to be factored in (to be clear, I am a native English speaker). I'm not preaching here and I'm sure you know more about this than I do, just speaking from the Japanese/English perspective. I was pleased to learn recently actually that Wikipedia in English accepts non-English references, which actually makes a big difference in leveling the playing field.Iminai (talk) 04:38, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions.   -- Raven1977 (talk) 16:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions.   -- Raven1977 (talk) 16:52, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions.   -- Raven1977 (talk) 16:52, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete as non-notable since no non-trivial third-party references appear to be forthcoming. --DAJF (talk) 07:58, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,   Sandstein   19:54, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Withdraw - I requested this AFD a few days ago. Article since improved significantly with multiple reliable sources added, so request that this AFD be withdrawn. --Oscarthecat (talk) 20:04, 20 November 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.