Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shooting of Jiansheng Chen


 * 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 consensus. Kurykh (talk) 05:01, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Shooting of Jiansheng Chen

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A single event that is largely of local interest. Deletion nomination per WP:NOTNEWS. — Non-Dropframe    talk  04:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - I could find several mentions of the death in international media, but the lack of more than a passing mention just doesn't seem to meet WP:NOTE. It doesn't help that the article itself fails to specify any reasons for notability (such as any controversy that may have been caused by the cause of death). felixphew ( talk |  contribs ) 04:45, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm confused what a "passing mention" is. All of the articles I have seen are detailed articles with several paragraphs.  A "passing mention" is when you have an article that lists the 12 people who were murdered in Virginia today and one of the 12 is Jiansheng Chen, with no further details. --B (talk) 01:16, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete as nomination and WP:ONEEVENT - Arjayay (talk) 09:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Per WP:NOTNEWS. Sad event but no lasting notability or significance. AusLondonder (talk) 17:04, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment The article's original author left the following comment on the Wikipedia talk page rather than here in the discussion. — Non-Dropframe    talk  21:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The shooting of Jiansheng Chen is a civil rights issue. What do you mean by "of local interest"? How much did the security guard company pay you to nominate the page for deletion? I&#39;m y.j. (talk) 04:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I think you might like to familiarise yourself with WP:NPA and WP:AGF before striking and apologising for those comments. AusLondonder (talk) 02:13, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That's an absurd accusation. Don't take things personally, its just that Wikipedia doesn't make an article for every single crime story on the news. Sergecross73   msg me  16:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)


 * See also Jiansheng Chen and associated AFD. - GB fan 02:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete both. If we must document this somewhere, perhaps in an "Impact/effects of Pokemon Go section/article", but it doesn't require its own article, per WP:NOTNEWS and WP:ROUTINE. Sergecross73   msg me  16:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Video games-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep: far from being "largely of local interest" this has been reported worldwide. WP:ONEEVENT doesn't apply to events. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 00:05, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - the story has been picked up by CBS News and NBC News nationally. This seems to go well beyond a local news story. --B (talk) 01:14, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * By the way, People has the story now http://people.com/crime/security-guard-says-grandfather-ran-him-down/ --B (talk) 13:52, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge with the other page "Jiansheng Chen". Thanks to another editor's help, I have plenty evidence of significant local coverage (the Virginian Pilot), national coverage (NBC, CBS ) and international coverage . This strongly suggests that the content deserves to be kept in one way or another.  The victim was Chinese and spoke almost no English.  That added more complexity to the seemingly odd killing by certain security force and is bringing more attention from national and international coverage.  SlowSuperMom (talk) 03:08, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep There's international coverage for this. Not enough to support an individual article for the deceased person but definitely enough to support an article for the event. Exemplo347 (talk) 03:11, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - The amount of coverage alone is not enough to justify keeping the article. To justify keeping an article on an event, we need to establish some significance and impact. WP: NOTNEWS states "While news coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion."[emphasis added] What we have here is a typical crime news event which is used to fill air time and print copy because it is "odd" (to quote SlowSuperMom) but which is forgotten a week later because it has no real impact on anyone not directly involved, and because every week someone is shot in their bathtub or run over by drunken joyriders or permanently scarred by falling face first on a box of thumb tacks. Unusual deaths just aren't that unusual, and they certainly aren't notable.--Martin IIIa (talk) 12:55, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The shooting was on January 26 and People wrote about it on February 7 ... so it hasn't been forgotten about in a week. --B (talk) 13:08, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * "forgotten a week later" is a figure of speech; my meaning was not that such a news item is forgotten in the exact time span of a week, but that it is forgotten as soon as another news item comes along to replace it. An event being reported on 12 days after its occurrence is hardly an indication of lasting significance.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:56, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nomination and WP:NOTNEWS, not enough information to have it's own article. TheDeviantPro (talk) 12:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Basically routine news at this point. No evidence of lasting impact. Several of the SPA accounts involved in writing the article keeping saying it's "potentially" the next "Treyvon Martin", but there's no evidence of that. -- ferret (talk) 14:49, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Today (February 14), there was more news about it - - three congressmen from the metro area issued a statement.  There was also news yesterday about the change.org petition seeking "justice" in the case .  I don't claim this to be the next Trayvon Martin or any such thing - but I do claim that it meets our notability requirements. --B (talk) 22:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)




 * Keep or Merge to Pokémon Go § Criticism and incidents, which presently has no mention of this incident that has received national coverage in the U.S. (People, NBC News, CBS News) and in many other areas of the world . The incident is recent, but has continued to received coverage in reliable sources right up to this very day (The Virginian Pilot, WTKR, The Roanoake Times, etc.) This suggests that this incident will continue to receive sustained coverage. At the very least, this can be merged per WP:ATD-M. North America1000 05:20, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm opposed to any merger to Pokemon Go, which appears to be little more than a bait headline and not core to the shooting or its subsequent coverage. -- ferret (talk) 14:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * It's an incident that occurred while a man was playing Pokémon Go and was shot to death doing so. This section of the Pokémon Go aricle also has similar content in it, about a person in Guatemala shot and killed while playing the game and another person accompanying the person who was shot in the foot. I view this as a valid merge relative to content already in the merge target. North America1000 17:29, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOTNEWS and WP:ONEEVENT. -  Julietdeltalima   (talk)  22:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Please explain how WP:ONEEVENT relates to events. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 22:19, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The event itself, while unfortunate, isn't notable per WP:NOTNEWS, and to the extent arguments have been made that the event is notable for the reason that the victim himself possessed one or more particular attributes (age, ethnicity, being a Pokémon Go player, etc.), I'd argue that WP:ONEEVENT applies as well. -  Julietdeltalima   (talk)  22:38, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. I'm still more swayed by the ongoing international coverage, though. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 22:34, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Kurykh (talk) 23:04, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep: This is NOT just another "typical crime news event", rather it represents one of historical incidents where Chinese Americans continuously being systemically discriminated against. --Vincent_wk (talk) 15:58, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Where is the evidence that anything about this case was racially motivated? - GB fan 23:37, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:ONEEVENT. No lasting notability. If this has impact on something else, then that's where it should be described. The other keep arguments seem to center on this being "widely reported", but that only fails WP:NOTNEWS. It may be used as source material, but that's not sufficient for a stand-alone article. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:24, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Update: the rent-a-cop has been charged with murder . I'm not sure that some who are citing WP:NOTNEWS have actually read what it says.  I keep reading it over and I'm not seeing how this article violates it at all.  Just because something is a news story does not automatically exclude it from coverage.  Most events that happened in the last few hundred years and about which Wikipedia articles have been written were, in fact, covered in the news.  We don't have articles about routine things like individual sporting events (unless they are famous in some way) or trivia like the Microsoft First Quarter 2017 Dividend or February 17, 2017 traffic accident on I-64 in Richmond, VA, but this doesn't seem to be trivial like that.  The coverage of this shooting has continued for several weeks now and has been picked up by national and international media.  I'm not sure why we're getting scared off just because it's also a news story. Yes, there are a lot of SPAs promoting this article, but I think it's worth taking a look on the merits. --B (talk) 16:08, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment This is really simple - the GNG has been met. Will people stop muddying the issues and read the GNG for themselves? This really isn't a difficult AfD discussion! Exemplo347 (talk) 23:16, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * B - No one said that being in the news excludes it from coverage on Wikipedia. The reason people are citing WP: NOTNEWS is because the article subject is a clear instance of something which is reported in the news but has no enduring significance.
 * Exemplo347 - You should take a look at WP: GNG yourself, as it clearly indicates that meeting the GNG is a necessary, not sufficient, criterion for having an article on a subject.--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:00, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The list of things that NOTNEWS lists are wholly unrelated to the subject of this article - "For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia." The idea is that we don't have articles on trivial junk just because there was a wedding announcement in the newspaper and we don't turn celebrities' articles into a tabloid-like list of their every day lives.  It's not a prohibition on a news item being considered notable.  And I think you're underselling WP:GNG.  WP:GNG says that a topic is presumed suitable for an article if it meets the criterion.  That's a much stronger statement than to just say that it's one of several requirements. The rebuttable presumption is that the topic is notable.  We accept that we don't need articles about Justin Bieber's trip to the grocery store or my (assuming I'm a non-notable person) wedding or death - that's WP:NOTNEWS - but NOTNEWS is not a blanket prohibition on otherwise notable things that were covered in the news. --B (talk) 15:08, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Again, no one has said items reported in the news are banned from coverage, and creating straw man arguments for the opposition just demonstrates a lack of confidence in your position. Trying to construe "presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article" as "incontrovertibly suited for a stand-alone article, to the point where all other Wikipedia policies must be ignored" is a better effort, but frankly predictable, and completely undone by the fact that right in the lead section of WP: GNG it lists two necessary requirements for meriting an article. One is the GNG, the other is WP: NOT. Finally, claiming that this article doesn't fall under NOTNEWS because it's not listed among the specific examples is just weak.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:54, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm confused. On one hand is a guideline that says the topic is presumed to be notable.  On the other hand, there is a policy that doesn't say anything to the contrary and gives examples that are wholly unrelated to the subject at hand.  This article does not resemble any of the examples given in WP:NOTNEWS and you haven't explained how it does meet any of the rules in WP:NOTNEWS.  Above, you quoted "most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion", but the very next sentence explains what "most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion" is talking about - "routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities".  This is nothing like that. --B (talk) 13:41, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * keep for now as per WP:RAPID. I was troubled by the fact that sources on the page are local (Note that WaPo is a regional paper) and the NBC stories are on NBC Asian.   The anglophone Asian press, however, has picked this story up and run with it as though it is a race crime, although coverage I looked at does not support this.  However, The AP now has this: "Security guard charged with murder in Chesapeake shooting", picked up by a local paper [] Trial will bring out issues such as was the guard or the company that hired him negligent, and whether they is anything to the support the idea that victim was targeted because he was Asian.  Suggest that we close as 'No consensus  for now and revisit in 6 months.  Trial may also clarify whether there is an appropriate merge target.E.M.Gregory (talk) 12:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note that the Washington Post has covered this (search here: ), but only as local news. Not seeing that any national American publications have picked it up (except in Asian interest editions).  Still thinking we should punt and revisit in 6  months.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * As a point of information, Washington DC is about 4-5 hours away from Chesapeake, depending on traffic. Chesapeake is not in the DC metro area and the Washington Post does not routinely cover "local news" from Chesapeake - see https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia/ for the Virginia counties they cover as "local" news - all of these are in Northern Virginia, whereas Chesapeake is in the Southeastern corner of the state. --B (talk) 15:08, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The thing is, the articles are clearly labeled "Local News" at the top of the page. Like other American big city dailies, the Washington Post covers nearby regions as local news, printing a different set of "Local News" in each of several regional editions.  Stories about a "local" crime in Virginia (or a local election, a celebration, etc.) will not appear in the copies of the paper delivered in Maryland or in the District, and visa versa.  Of course, everyone can see them online.E.M.Gregory (talk) 12:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Merge as appropriate The two things that keep this from being a tragic yet still routine everyday shooting are the reported but not quite flushed out Pokémon Go connection, and the fact that Mr. Chen was Chinese and didn't speak English. The best solution is to merge the info into any appropriate other articles.  My rationale for a merge is how the article of school shootings in the US lists all the shootings, but you'll notice they don't all have their own articles, despite an amount for many similar to that for the Chen shooting.  In Chen's case, the Pokemon connection is the strongest, because it explains why he was at the location where he was shot, and perhaps why his behavior may have seemed to be suspicious to the guard.  The Chinese and non-English speaking angle only becomes significant (IMHO) if it can be shown that those attributes contributed to his being shot.  Without any evidence of the shooter having a racist history, and even then, that connection is going to be very hard for any prosecutor to prove.  Plus, even if it could be shown to be a factor, I can't find a niche US hate crime attacks article where a merge might work. I previously put the info about Mr. Chen in Pokémon_Go but undid the revision when I realized I might be going against consensus, per the talk page. If the info does eventually wind up there, I'd redirect this article there. Timtempleton (talk) 04:55, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - per WP:NOTNEWS, WP:ROUTINE.  Dr Strauss   talk  19:08, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Where in WP:ROUTINE do you find "murder case that spawns a month of national news coverage"? Yesterday (February 23), NBC News (national) had another story about the case - .  (There have also been near daily stories in the local media for the locality where the shooting happened, as well as international Asian media because the victim was a Chinese immigrant.)  WP:ROUTINE discusses things like wedding announcements, and one-and-done type stories where someone is the subject of a human interest story and never heard from again.  Coverage that goes on for a month in the national and international media is hardly "routine" nor just a local news item. --B (talk) 13:34, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * What about WP:EVENTCRIT, bullet 4? Where is any evidence of "enduring significance"? It's simply an ongoing criminal investigation. -- ferret (talk) 14:12, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * How do you distinguish between "an ongoing criminal investigation" from an event of "enduring significance"? For most crimes, the local news media reports it when it happens and then, maybe, later when someone is arrested.  They don't discuss it on the intervening days.  Congressmen don't issue statements about it.  People don't hold protests about it.  The national and international media don't report it. --B (talk) 22:27, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep or Merge per previous comments. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:44, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. The Article cites 7 sources, at least some of them from nationally or globally recognized outlets. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 05:17, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 09:32, 25 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment about relation to Pokemon Go A merge into Pokemon Go is not really appropriate as it has not been established whether the game was responsible for the incident. We do not merge information unless there is some link. There have been similar incidents such as Man killed while playing 'Pokemon Go' at San Francisco park but they have not been added to the article. Adding every event tangentially related to Pokémon_Go makes it coatrack. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 09:39, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree ... he could have been sitting in his car looking at Google maps or talking on his phone and the incident would have been the same - this isn't really in the same vane as the incidents where people are playing Pokemon Go and walk into traffic without looking - the problem here was not Chen's lack of concentration on the task at hand. --B (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - fails WP:NOTNEWS, WP:ROUTINE and WP:GNG.  Dr Strauss   talk  13:37, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * ^^ Duplicate ^^. And I'm not sure you're reading the general notability guideline if you think that this guideline supports deleting the article.  The argument for deleting is that it should be deleted in spite of the GNG - I don't see anyone claiming that there isn't significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject. --B (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Struck duplicate !vote above, only one allowed, but feel free to comment all you'd like. North America1000 18:24, 27 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Another day, another news article about the case - . --B (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per above comments. - The   Magnificentist  20:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Any particular comments or just comments in general? At least a few of the above comments don't agree with deleting.  It's not a vote and it is usually a good idea to explain your reasoning. --B (talk) 22:15, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Like what the nom said "A single event that is largely of local interest." - The   Magnificentist  22:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Why are the national and international media covering an event "largely of local interest"? --B (talk) 22:24, 27 February 2017 (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.