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 delete. WjBscribe 23:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hai-Sha Ni (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Fails to assert notability of subject, websearch produces 19 hits (edited to add - with parameters of "Hai-Sha Ni" acupuncture"), several of which are wikipedia or mirrors, no secondary sources WLU 17:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as unsourced. —Resurgent insurgent 2007-04-18 17:53Z
• Delete per nom. Sorry, but if we cannot find English references, it's useless to English readers. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 18:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, there is no requirement for English sources; requiring them would be a problematic imposition of WP:BIAS against non-Anglosphere topics. See further discussions at Wikipedia talk:Cite sources/archive14#Citations other than English?, Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 16#Sources in languages other than English, Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 16#Sources only in a foreign language, Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 16#More on foreign language sources,　Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 15#Are sources in languages other than English verifiable?, Wikipedia:Deletion review/Kelvin Kwan, etc. cab 09:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete unless some proper references show up. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 19:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep His Chinese name returns 8,920 hits on a Google search[1]. To rely only on English sources is a good example of WP:BIAS. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 19:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: My reasoning follows:
  1. It is very interesting to see the chicken-egg dilemma happening in Wikipedia. We have domain knowledge in Chinese (A) and English (B). There is always a first attempt to share the knowledge from one A to B, or vice versa. But once the first attempt happens, some people in the B domain will refuse the right of the EXISTENCE of such attempt,not mentioning to accept it, since no other reference exist before in domain B. Is it the right way to treat a new article in wikipedia? Probably not. So deletion based on lack of references in domain B does not stand.
  2. As to verification, keeping in mind there are millions of people who are bilingual in English and Chinese, they can do the verification if people only knowing English can not. Also, the person in question has an English website and a USA local address. It can be verified if English readers really want to verify the information in USA. It was actually my major reason to create English article for this doctor because he stirs a large debate in China and I wanted to attract USA people to verify his claims. A little selfish motivation. :-)
  3. For the usage for English readers. Information about alternative medicine and doctors are important for all people,regardless what language they speak. We all know the main stream practice in medicine today is far from perfect. And the doctor in question is practicing medicine right in USA with an English site. If the article deliveries the accurate information, He is more useful to English people than to Chinese people in fact.
  4. I guess the deletion policy in wikipedia is like the conviction of suspect in law system. We should keep an article unless you have very solid reason to delete it, not solely based on dubious doubts. It is a death penalty to a piece of information, or even an important one to people in need. We have to be very cautious when deleting an article. --Leo 19:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • • In response to your points: since you are the article creator, it is YOUR job to improve the article such that it should be kept, for example by referencing all statements in the article to reliable sources (newspapers, not blogs or advocacy sites). They don't need to be English sources, but they do need to be good sources. Wikipedia is not a court of law; it is the responsibility of the person who wants information to be included to prove that it should be included. Yes, there are plenty of us around who are bilingual in Chinese and English and could do this improvement for you, but to put it bluntly, many of us plain old won't want to unless you show some initiative to improving the article yourself; we all have our own pet articles we'd like to improve as well, not to mention stuff to do in the real world. Finally, your use of "death penalty for information" is an exaggeration; we have Wikipedia:Deletion review to request that deleted pages be undeleted. cab 09:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would spend some time to evaluate the merit of the article rather than telling the creator's responsibility. Creators of wiki articles certainly have some responsibility. But the able readers like you should also do their part rather than solely relying on/waiting for the creators, which would be against the collaboration spirit in wikipedia. You still have not provide a single direct reason for deleting this article. Have you found any fact error, bias, POV? Finally, deleting IS the death penalty for an article based on common sense, not my personal exaggeration. --Leo 16:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I could understand this argument coming from a newbie, but you have been on Wikipedia since 2004; that makes you my senior around here. You know how to write a proper encyclopedia article: find reliable sources, write a series of verifiable statements referenced to those sources, and form them into a cohesive narrative that demonstrates why the topic should be in an encyclopedia. I'm not particularly knowledgeable in this topic, and I don't have the desire to spend an evening doing the necessary background reading to get myself up to the level necessary to write an encyclopedia article on it. You are interested in this topic, so why are you so resistant to improving the article? If you were a newbie, and couldn't be expected to know how to do this, I'd do it for you, but this is clearly not the case here. cab 18:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. As I stated previously on the Talk page, this article is merely promoting one TCM practitioner out of the many thousands in the world. TCM itself is already well-covered in its own separate article. While Hai-Sha Ni and his associates propose some novel (?) ideas, there are no refereed publications supporting any of this, and in fact, some of the ideas are flatly contradicted by established scientific knowledge and are in the "crackpot" realm. There is no difference between the scientific method in China and anywhere else. The arguments in defence of the article are, at best, extremely confused. It is essentially admitted that the claims are unverified: "It was actually my major reason to create English article for this doctor because he stirs a large debate in China and I wanted to attract USA people to verify his claims". I should also note that the article is very poorly written and structured. AussieBoy 01:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unlike most other TCM practitioners, this one is notable. Like I said, a Google search for his name returns 8,920 hits. Whether or not his ideas are "crackpot" is irrelevant to whether or not this article should be kept. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 01:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep I distrust arguments that contain the phrase, just another. People are notable or not as individuals. Notable practitioners of whatever school who attract media attention are notable, just as much so if their practices are irrational or harmful; the articles will naturally need to find sourced quotations and cite their judgments, not give ours'. DGG 03:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The raw results of a Google search for his name are not worthwhile evidence of notability. What proportion of the hits are actually him? I note that some 1990 of the hits are on the website www.hantang.org.cn! Some of the hits in Chinese also argue that his views are highly suspect--they are not all positive. My argument was meant to indicate that he lacks notability--he is a TCM practitioner like tens of thousands of others, so this alone does not make him notable. His website contains many bizarre and unsubstantiated claims, and that does not make him notable either (imho). I concede that if it can be established that he has a significant following, that could make him notable, but only as a popular quack. AussieBoy 05:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ok... but being notable as a popular quack would still mean he is notable... Like I said, it's irrelevant how bizarre or unsubstantiated his claims are. Heck, that may be precisely why he has become notable. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 06:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Agreed, but there would still have to be real evidence of notability, not just the unanalyzed results of a Google search. A Google News search for his name (in Chinese) gets no hits whatsoever. This appears to be good evidence of his lack of media attention (and by extension, notability). The article would also have to be rewritten and include a section of controversy/criticism if it is to survive at all. I still say delete, given his apparent lack of any real notability. AussieBoy 08:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well, (1) First of all, having previous patients as volunteers to establish supporting websites in both mainland China and Taiwan is the hard/real evidence for any Chinese doctor's notability. Not to mention the hot debate around him in numerous blogs, forums, and websites. Can you provide us just a single western doctor having the same phenomena? The bottom line is that doctors' notability come from their previous patients' praise, not from paid news, magazines, TV advertisement etc. (2) Also. using only news reports as the standard of notability is biased and unacceptable. Many persons get famous in an Internet community first nowadays and then get the attention from professional reporters. The traditional news channels have many concerns or limitations to be even allowed to report a controversial, traditional Chinese doctor like him due to the potential suppressing from main stream western medicine community. Wikipedia should serve as a complementary way to provide ORIGINAL interesting information to people, not just a mirror/collection site or tailing site for previous news articles. (3) per your comment about unanalyzed google results. I did read many search results and analyzed them before creating this article. You can only say you did not analyze the searched results, but you'd better have asked around first if you want to say the results are not analyzed. So your reason for the deletion does not stand. The existence of this article is a typical fight between main stream information and minority information. So far, I am very disappointed that I have not found any hard reasons/evidences for deleting the article. Let's see how it ends. :-) --Leo 16:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - 1) None of those mentioned count as reliable sources. Western doctors having or not having similar websites are irrelevant to the case. Blogs, fora and websites are not reliable sources, they are meaningless for virtually any wikipedia article.

2) If Hai-Sha Ni has news articles about him, that makes him notable. News reports, scientific journals, government agencies' websites are notable and reliable sources, webpages of unknown origins are not. Personal testimonials do not count as reliable sources. Also, regards your 'original' comment, see WP:NOR, which specifically bars wikipedia providing any original synthesis of information. You might also want to familiarize yourself with WP:5P.

3) If you read the reports, you should be citing them within the article if they are noteworthy. If they were verifiable, reliable and noteworthy sources and were included in the article, we wouldn't be having this deletion review.

4) This is not a fight between mainstream and minority information, this is a debate on whether an obscure acupuncturist is notable enough to be included in wikipedia. A single reliable source on HSN would go a long way towards avoiding deletion. As is, the only thing that could really be written about him according to current sources is his involvement in bill LB270, his work as an acutal acupuncturist would be left out of the article entirely. His personal websites are external links included as an afterthought to the main article, not as sources.

5) Re: "...I have not found any hard reasons/evidences for deleting the article" - A lack of reliable sources is a very good reason, see 8th and 9th point here as well as the 14th. Also see this section, and note that the line "Trivial, or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability", bars any inclusion based upon the information cited in my point 4 above. This is not 'mean old users trying to prevent me from posting valuable information about an important guy', this is users mostly saying he isn't important. WLU 20:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A person's notability is SOLELY based on what distinguishing saying/doing/responses he/she has COMPARED to others. How can you say other doctors are irrelevant when we talk about a particular doctor's notability? Even the reliable resources you mentioned would never just say person A is notable without providing the context of what other persons are doing, implicitly or explicitly. So your comment about (1) is totally lack of common sense. I feel so strange that even people in wikipedia solely rely on traditional media to judge the notability of a target and think the only reliable resources are among them. I agree that a personal testimonial does not count. But I have said there are hundreds or even more of personal testimonials or supporters as shown by google results. Do they count as an evidence of notability ? Again,notability is based the distinguished attributes of the target compared to others, not if the traditional media has chance to report it. --Leo 22:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From WP:BIO "A person is notable if he or she has been the subject of secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." That is what determines notability. A person's notability is SOLELY based on secondary, independent sources. Policy is common sense. If you wish the articles you create to survive deletion, familiarize yourself with policy. Traditional media is what determines notability, not testimonials which could have been written by anyone, including Hai-Sha Ni. Testimonials are not acceptable as evidence here, just like they are not acceptable in medical research. WLU 23:44, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete unless sourced, no prejudice against recreation of a properly sourced article. Dr. Ni is a controversial figure, so having an unsourced or poorly-sourced article about him is a violation of WP:LIVING. An article verifiable by reference to multiple instances of non-trivial coverage in reliable sources could be written about Dr. Ni, as demonstrated by Google searches above. However, the page as it stands is not such an article, and we lose absolutely nothing by deleting it. My vote changes to keep if the article is improved to the extent that most statements have inline citations to newspapers (either English newspapers or Chinese newspapers are fine). cab 08:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Important doctor and he's mentioned in Doctor looks eastward for healing techniques Fort Pierce Tribune (Florida), February 8, 1999. However, there is not enough WP:RS material to write an attributable article on the topic. Thus, the topic does not meet Wikipedia notability guidelines and cannot meet Wikipedia article policy standards. The article also has several WP:BLP problems, so we might want to speed the deletion of this one. Even if deleted, there is nothing wrong with recreating the article from WP:RS in Chinese so long as everything is in English. -- Jreferee 22:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per cab, fails WP:V. I'm unmoved by the argument that English-language sources don't exist; this guy does his gig in Florida, not Shenzhen or Guangdong. If independent sources from the country in which he lives and works haven't taken notice of him, then he hasn't demonstrated notability. I'm likewise unmoved by the argument that there's something wrong with Wikipedia relying on traditional sources to establish notability. Since Wikipedia is run on consensus, I invite those who disagree with sourcing policy to attempt to change consensus to their own POV. Good luck with that.  RGTraynor  13:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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.