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 keep. (non-admin closure) — Sam Sailor 00:38, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Medal of National Defense Service[edit]

Medal of National Defense Service (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

No evidence of any notability for this medal, sources are official pages, not independent ones. Fram (talk) 07:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep. We do not have Wikipedia:Notability (awards), Wikipedia:Notability (military) do not cover medals, and any coverage of this seems to be in Chinese only. That said, I think there is a presumed notability extended to ALL military awards; through I know well WP:OTHERSTUFFEXIST is not a valid argument, there are numerous awards about military medals and awards that have similarly no refs but primary ones. I will in fact ping MILHIST project, because I think we need to add a section about military awards to NMIL SNP. Anyway, in my opinon any military medal or award that has been recognized by the state is notable because it is significant in its field. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is an award given automatically if you stay in the army for long enough. It doesn't indicate bravery, having fought in noteworthy battles, or anything else. That your employer gives you a token recognition for staying with the company for X years is not uncommon at all. I fail to see why such a medal would be in any way notable, even if it is "recognized by the state" (which is in most countries the employer of the soldiers in the first place). Why would this be "significant in its field"? Fram (talk) 10:10, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • And of course, for everything that doesn't have a SNG, the GNG applies, not some presumed notability. Fram (talk) 10:11, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Right. Now, may I suggest you nominate Army Service Ribbon for deletion? The article's sources are no better, but I think the discussion would attract more editors than this one. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:33, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep for now. I agree that this could probably use a good robust policy discussion. I would not want to see this article deleted on the basis of the absence of such a policy, in the case that there is general agreement that such a policy should be discussed, and likely (to some extent) developed. TimothyJosephWood 14:26, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do we really need policies for all kind of articles specifically? The same was asked (by other people) at a recent AfD I started for a beauty pageant as well. We have a GNG which should apply to all articles, SNG are way too often a method to lower the bar for a certain type of article preferred by some group (a Wikiproject usually) which would otherwise have trouble meeting the GNG requirements. Basically, "keep because we don't have a policy for these" is simply an invalid reason, we have a policy (well, a guideline, all these notability rules are guidelines) and no good reason not to apply it here. Fram (talk) 14:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would say the WP:NEXIST of this article in particular will be difficult to judge without input from someone who speaks the language.

Otherwise, I'm not suggesting a lowering of the bar so much as I think the bar, on these types of subjects, might not fit into a neat continuum. Looking at the US Army, with which I'm most familiar, the singularly important source re awards is AR 600–8–22, coverage elsewhere is just icing on the cake, and a lot of the sources you may find (armystudyguide etc.) I would expect to be mostly copy/paste or minor rewording of the official regulation.

Looking at the example above of the ASR, the award itself is not for outstanding actions, but the fact that it's going to be relevant to basically every notable soldier in the past 30 years, makes it seem a lot like understanding that award is going to be somewhat important in understanding all those individuals. TimothyJosephWood 14:57, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer not to discuss other articles at this AfD, as that only muddies the water in general. But in any case, the main source you give is a very fine one to use once notability has been established, but does absoluetly zero to establish that notability. And I doubt that the ASR is a notable aspect for any notable soldier of the last 30 years. It's like the certificate you get when you finish elementary school (well, in Belgium you get one, no idea if this happens in the US): almost every notable person will have it, but that doesn't mean that the certificate is notable or relevant for them. Fram (talk) 15:05, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You're probably right that we're getting well off topic. A discussion has been started at MilHist. TimothyJosephWood 15:08, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep or Merge From a quick look over of this discussion it sounds like 2 seperate policies are being conflated. A) The notability and suitability of the existence of this article on wikipedia, & B) does having this award confer notability on the recipient. "B" definately is a big no. However, "A" is what the discussion should be limited to. As to that, I can't read chinese so I can't assess the sources, but it sounds like it should either be kept or merged into another more general article on awards of the PLA (if such exists). cheers, Gecko G (talk) 16:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:43, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:43, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. We have numerous articles on medals and it is reasonable to have articles on them, since they are awarded to many people and are therefore notable. The thought of an American or British service medal being deleted would be laughable, so this is clearly a case of WP:SYSTEMIC. Nothing wrong with such articles being sourced from official websites. In what possible way is deleting articles on such topics doing a service to Wikipedia? This is not spam or someone's mate, local club or street. This is a medal given to many people. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:24, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any chance that you can use the Wikipedia definition of "notable" instead of your own? "they are awarded to many people and are therefore notable." squarely falls outside our notability reasons. Many non-soldiers get similar medals after 25 years of work or something similar, but we don't have articles on most of those. Oh no, systemic pro-military bias! Or perhaps I just nominated this one because I came across it during the Google translated articles cleanup process. I have nominated for deletion a British police force unit recently (it got redirected in the end), so using SYSTEMIC in your keep is a badly misguided attempt to poison the well. Usually, the more restrictive a medal is, the more notable it also is, not the other way around as you seem to claim here. Fram (talk) 13:57, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • As has already been pointed out, do you really think Army Service Ribbon would ever be deleted? That's systemic bias summarised for you! And as for notability, why do you think this medal is non-notable? You don't actually really say. Apparently because you think it's non-notable. We think it isn't. Please don't attempt to claim that your opinion has any more validity than those who disagree with you. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:09, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• (edit conflict)Since there are some sources about it (like [1] or [2]) it would probably not be deleted no (although if these are the best, it would hardly qualify as notable anyway). A merge would be the best (there isn't that much that one can say about it), but I can imagine that there are too many people who believe that everything to do with the military and/or the US government is notable and deserves a separate article. That we may have an incorrect pro-US bias should not be "corrected" by loosening the rules for other topics as well, but by educating those biased editors. Fram (talk) 14:17, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• As for the notability of the topic up for deletion, it is not up to me to prove a negative, it is up to you (plural) to prove the positive, i.e. that there are independent reliable sources with some indepth coverage of this. What you think is of no concern, what you show is what counts. Fram (talk) 14:19, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Playing the devil's advocate, I think Fram has the policy behind him: those medals fail GNG. At the same time, we seem to have a consensus here that they should be notable, so it is time for discussing some form of notability guideline for awards. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:06, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I completely agree. I am, however, somewhat tired of editors who do not appear to be able to apply basic common sense to AfD nominations. Wikipedia works on discussion, consensus and common sense, not on bureaucratic, unbending "rules" that must be applied no matter what, even if it is to the detriment of the project. And deleting an article on an award made by a major sovereign state to members of its armed forces clearly is to the detriment of the project. It's certainly not in any way to its benefit. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:11, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• We'll have to disagree on that then, as I don't see anything detrimental in this deletion. For me it's basic common sense that if something has not been the subject of independent reliable sources, then it doesn't belong here: we should never be the first unrelated entity to give significant attention to anything, as we are not a secondary but a tertiary source. Your common sense is "this should get attention", mine is "it hasn't received attention". Changing the scope of the project to include more things is imo much more detrimental than excluding a few things but maintaining the scope, the basic purpose of Wikipedia. Fram (talk) 13:28, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Through over the years I keep moving closer to the deletionist camp, and I see where you are coming from Fram, I'll point out that we have numerous exceptions for "if something has not been the subject of independent reliable sources, then it doesn't belong here". For example, numerous biographies are considered notable due to the virtue of positions (politicians) or being "significant in their field" (scholars with high citation count) or winning games (sportspeople) or being popular (musicians) even if nobody wrote a single in-depth news piece about them. Outside biogs, we assume notability for most vehicle models (cars, planes, etc.) without in-depth coverage, an entry in some vehicle alamanc is sufficient (my personal gripe there, but hey, that's consensus I failed to overturn), and I am sure we can list a ton of similar ideas. So bottom line, lack of coverage for some subjects with majority of editors considers "commonsenscal" is fine for notability, and I think government-issued medals and awards qualify here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:05, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• FYI, I posted on WikiProject:China to see if we can get some native speakers who might be able to comment on the reliability and depth of coverage in foreign language sources. TimothyJosephWood 14:27, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. Fram (talk) 14:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Good! If kept, the article definitely needs help to be improved. RevelationDirect (talk) 10:05, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep passes WP:GNG. JAGUAR  16:38, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any evidence for this? Fram (talk) 06:32, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Two of the articles references are dead, so archiving the links reveal them to be decent sources. The first one looks like a reliable secondary source, whereas the second (non-dead) link looks like it's a primary source which doesn't hinder its validity. The third link (which I archived) gives out a load of information about the medals, including their history and how they are awarded. It's enough to warrant an expansion. JAGUAR  14:23, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Absolutely no one on Wikipedia is more critical than me of categorizing biography articles based on automatic awards. (Think that's an empty boast?: take a look at all my recent nominations of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orders, decorations, and medals). But, I agree with @Gecko G: here: this nomination is conflating WP:NOTABILITY in the article space with how WP:DEFINING in the category space. Put another way, just because this medal isn't defining for the recipients who receive it, doesn't mean we shouldn't have an article on the award itself.RevelationDirect (talk) 10:03, 4 September 2016 (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.