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. People may recreate the article or redirect it if they can find good sources specifically about this concept, seeing as the lack of sources is the main reason proffered for deletion. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:54, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Four Benevolent Animals[edit]

Four Benevolent Animals (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Article does not include anything not in Four Symbols (China)‎, and no source is given for the "Four Benevolent Animals" name Imaginatorium (talk) 04:57, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mythology-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 05:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 05:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge and redirect to Four Symbols (China). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:59, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as they are not the same thing. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:28, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Looks like they are not the same? Even if Phoenix = Vermilion Bird, a Qilin is certainly not White Tiger. If we were to merge, I would merge to Four Holy Beasts, the only difference being Chinese dragon vs. Vietnamese dragon, which look exactly the same and clearly share the same origin. Timmyshin (talk) 22:07, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• What a mess I don't know a whole lot about this topic, but the ja.wiki links for both articles seem to imply they are different, but related, concepts. I would say put this AFD on hold until someone can definitively figure out if 四霊 and 四象/四神 are different things or not. I wouldn't put it past someone on English Wikipedia translating a foreign-language Wikipedia article without checking whether something else we already had an article on the same thing, so I don't actually want to say which it is. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:10, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I did a little research, and they are definitely different, because each concept is mentioned in a different chapter in the Book of Rites. ([1]: 前朱鳥而後玄武,左青龍而右白虎. [2]: 麟、鳳、龜、龍，謂之四靈.) But the Vietnamese Four Holy Beasts should merge with this article. Timmyshin (talk) 07:59, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem is that when you are dealing with stuff with no empirical basis, there are lots of varying values of "different". And even if there are distinctions, these can still be better dealt with in a single unified article. If a person finds one article when looking for a set of four(*) animals, it helps to know that there are various different sets. (*And remembering that in these circles, "four" quite often has the value five.) If the titles were in Chinese, then it would at least be possible to identify them precisely, but since the titles are (quite right, IMO) in English (this being WP:en), then it is not. You only have to look at the arguments about the appropriate version of 五行 to see the problem. I realise now that my "Delete" statement was not quite accurate; I think this material should be merged into a single article. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:30, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Pending - maybe If we are actually confident that this article and the Four Holy Beasts are functionally identical then I could back them being merged. However a redirect and potentially a name-change for the merged article may be needed to give an overarching nature. If we aren't actually confident on this, then "Keep" is the necessary vote until we are (it's not the article's fault we aren't sure, here). Nosebagbear (talk) 14:16, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Obviously the problem here is that few contributors are acquainted with this aspect of Chinese mythology, but in Wikipedia terms it's simple: this content has no reliable sources, so per WP:V it has to go. Can be recreated if sources are found. Sandstein 06:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. There's no useful references in the article. Two of the refs are links to other wikipedia articles, and the third (Rong Cheng Shi) is a URL that no longer exists. Reading the discussion above, there's a lot of guesswork, which is basically WP:OR. This sounds like a potentially interesting topic, but without sources, we can't even meet WP:V. I would be OK with moving this to somebody's user space, or draft, to give people more time to work on finding good sources. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:53, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, as per Sandstein and Roy Smith.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:42, 15 April 2018 (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.