Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/HIH the Crown Prince Yi Seok

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS.

The votes were 5 delete (RickK, Megan1967, Rossami, Deathphoenix, and BM) and 3 keep (Curps, Samaritan, Philip). It's been just a redirect for most of this vote. dbenbenn | talk 19:57, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

HIH the Crown Prince Yi Seok
Bad title, original research, POV, wishful thinking. Copyvio? RickK 07:11, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
 * Move to Yi Seok and create NPOV stub. Not a hoax, he is an at-least-minimally notable pretender to the no longer existent throne of Korea. -- Curps 07:25, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sirs,

Korea is currently partitioned into two nations: both republics.

HIH the Crown Prince Yi Seok is indeed heir to the throne, and there is extensive documentation to that IN KOREAN. However he is obviously an ordinary citizen, with no more or less rights than any other citizen of the Republic of Korea, although a most interesting past and a desire to uphold traditions, and maintain an interest in Korean history: much as any person of age would want to do in a country which has had supreme difficulties in the 20th century.

regards, d.


 * Articles in Wikipedia should follow a neutral point of view. You should create an article at Yi Seok (it is disputed that he currently has the status of "prince"), and try to provide a balanced picture.  If it is too pro-royalist, then it will probably be edited by others.  Is there an article at the Korean Wikipedia about him? -- Curps 07:57, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Move/cleanup; agreeing with Curps. Samaritan 08:25, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Cleanup. It has already been redirected to Yi Seok. --Deathphoenix 23:21, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

At this point, the original anon IP author has simply copied much the same POV content into Yi Seok.

What do we do now? Perhaps one of the following:
 * 1) Speedy HIH the Crown Prince Yi Seok
 * 2) Redirect HIH the Crown Prince Yi Seok &rarr; Yi Seok
 * 3) Stick a  on Yi Seok

I'd suggest (2) above. I'd argue that Yi Seok passes the minimal threshold of notability, and it's now just a POV issue on that page, as the author seems to be heavily pro-royalist. -- Curps 08:46, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. Uncle G 18:49, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)

Extremely POV and combative, now he's making legal threats... -- Curps 09:09, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * (64.229.26.44 | talk | contributions)
 * (64.229.27.192 | talk | contributions)


 * Weak Delete, sorry just below POV notability for me. Appears the author is using Wikipedia to promote his own political agenda. Megan1967 22:51, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. In principle, I would think this person is marginally notable -- but then I find people with "noble" lineages living in the lost grandeur of their families to be rather fascinating, if somewhat pathetic.   If you read the WSJ and Washington Times articles about this man, his career as lounge singer, Beverly Hills pool-man, California liquor store owner, and now pretender to the Korean throne is interesting, to say the least.   However, I find that such articles are very hard to keep NPOV, since the forces driving them towards being POV poppycock are often stronger and more single-minded than the forces trying to keep them neutral and accurate.   My effort to clean this up and remove the POV nonsense has already been reverted once by the anon original author. --BM 23:45, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep The policy of removing royal titles is at least as POV as moving them in my opinion. The people who insist on it tend to be hard line republicans. Philip 11:55, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * That is a false characterisation based upon a false assertion. "HIH" is not a title.  It is a style.  Wikipedia has a clear policy on royal styles & titles, and it is not one of "removing royal titles" as you assert it to be.  It is one of removing the styles and retaining the titles.  As such, the Wikipedia article name would be Yi Seok, Crown Prince of Korea.  However, Yi Seok does not actually have the title "Crown Prince", given that neither North Korea nor South Korea are actually monarchies any more.  We don't attach titles to people that they do not actually have, their own affectations to the contrary notwithstanding. Paddy Roy Bates does not get to be "Prince of Sealand" just by calling himself that, and Yi Seok does not get to be "Crown Prince of Korea" just by calling himself that. Uncle G 15:39, 2005 Jan 27 (UTC)
 * Comment: Good point about the royal titles. I think a good example would be Charles, Prince of Wales. All the complicated "His Royal Highness" type of titles would be included in the first paragraph of the article, while a relatively simple title (the most common form?) is used as the article title. Maybe something similar for this article, such as Yi Seok, Crown Prince would be better? --Deathphoenix 14:11, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem is that since 1947, when all of these titles were legally abolished, there is no legal forum in which disputes about them can be resolved.  The only court in which the claims can be argued is the court of public opinion.   Yi Seok claims to be the "Crown Prince", but that claim is not accepted even within the dynastic family.   In Korean royalty, titles passed down to the male heirs, but the seniority of a son's mother amongst the wife and concubines of the King determined succession order.    Yi Seok's grandmother was low in this ranking order, and even though his father was older, an uncle became the "Crown Prince/Head of the Royal House", and now his son claims that title.   Yi Seok's claims are based on the fact that his cousin was born in Japan with a Japanese princess as his mother, and many Koreans are not prepared to consider someone with a Japanese passport, who lives in Tokyo, to be head of the royal house. Wikipedia should not go into the business of validating claims of nobility.    We have at least one other case that I know of where Wikipedia articles have been written by claimants to noble titles as a way of winning in the court of public opinion.   I don't think we should cooperate with this.  --BM 20:58, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Based on the evidence presented so far, I am inclined to vote weak delete. I am conflicted, however.  He is probably more notable than many of the subjects of articles nominated to this page.  The current article is reasonably neutral.  The article is about the right size so I would not call it a stub.  The redirect to the neutral article title was definitely the right choice.  The reason I still vote for a weak delete is that I've come to believe that we should raise the bar for the inclusion of biographies of living persons.  The difficulties in maintaining this page and preserving it from bias outweigh the small value that I see in the article.  Rossami (talk) 21:27, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete and redirect to Yi Seok. I concur with BM. Thanks for the extra background information that helped me with this decision. --Deathphoenix 18:06, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. In the end, I vote to delete the redirects and the Yi Seok article, even though I have been trying to clean up the latter.  I think the case for notability is borderline but, as I mentioned above, the article is probably going to end up being an edit see-saw as Yi Seok partisans try to turn it into a puffy press release.  This is happening even with the VfD spotlight still on the article.    He isn't notable enough for it to be worth the hassle of keeping the article neutral and encyclopedic (or, for that matter, written in grammatical English.) --BM 14:14, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Being an edit-war magnet is not grounds for deletion for any article. In any case, the edit war here is far, far milder than at many other pages. This guy does more than meet the minimum threshold of notability and an NPOV article on him is suitable for inclusion.  At this point, it seems that people are voting on a redirect-for-deletion for the original article title; a Vfd for Yi Seok itself would probably need a fresh vote (too much confusion and renaming since the original vote was called). -- Curps 23:49, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.