CCCharlie

Duplication of conversation with BenTels

deletions of Peter Ralston and Cheng Hsin

Hi BenTels,

I'm an instructor in London of a small martial art (perhaps 100 or so in Europe), and was somewhat surprised to have a student report that the wikipedia pages for that art had disappeared!

I'm not particularly familiar with wikipedia, but from scanning and looking for what has happened, I saw the 'fast deletion' process today, and I noted that you had put one of the articles up for rescue, but then apparently gave up.

I can't seem to find any extended discussion on this however, just a few comments on the 'Articles for deletion' pages. Do you know where I might be able to find the discussion which resulted in these being deleted, and how I might get involved in the process to 'resurrect' them if possible?

Cheers...

CCCharlie (talk) 13:17, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Charlie,

It sounds to me like you already found the bulk of the discussion (at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Ralston). Essentially the problem was that nobody could come up with any sources establishing notability of either Peter Ralston or Cheng Hsin. That is, there are plenty of sources generally available online, but none that are independent of either Peter Ralston, Cheng Hsin dojos, or both. My attempt at the time focused mainly on finding independent sources for the championship that Ralston won, but I cannot even identify which championship it was.

Just to be clear, the main problem could very well be a lack of specialist knowledge and access to resources. In other words, a specialist may very well have access to resources not available to me or others. But for now there is/was no established basis for maintaining the articles. -- BenTels (talk) 14:42, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi BenTels,

Thank you, that is very clear.

I thought the Cheng Hsin and Peter Ralston articles were reasonably well attributed, but it's true it may not be easy to find independent resources online.

From looking at the notability guidelines, it appeared that articles in major newspapers or magazines would support notability. I saw references in the deletion discussion to a couple of newspaper articles, but they were small local papers.

Probably the most prestigious periodical to write on Ralston and Cheng Hsin was Black Belt magainze, in 1978 after his win of the 2nd World Chinese Kuoshu Tournament. At the time Black Belt was probably the preeminent martial arts magazine in the world. Luckily Google Books is a wonderful resource here!

Black Belt article (1978) on Ralston after winning the 2nd World Tournament...

For more reference on the Cheng Hsin school of those days, and the Kuoshu Tournaments, Ron Sieh talks about them in his autobiographical account of his life and training as a martial artist. Again, if you can't find the book, here is a Google Books reference to his time in the Cheng Hsin school when the world Tournament was taking place. He himself (Ron Sieh) competed in the 3rd Tournament in Hawaii in 1980. Ron Sieh - Gravity Never Stops

And here is the announcement in Black Belt Magazine for the 3rd World Tournaments, the one Ron Sieh attended...

Funny enough, in another wikipedia article, Pai lum, I also found references the both the 2nd and 3rd Tournaments (and others)...

Here is another well known magazine with an article on Peter and Cheng Hsin (sorry, no back issues online, but you can see the name of the article and subject. Probably not as prestigious as Black Belt Magazine, but nonetheless very well known in the Tai Chi world...), T'AI CHI magazine article (1987)

There is also a more recent well done interview with Peter done for the Dutch Tai Chi magazine Tajivizier. I can't find back issues online references, but pdf's have been put up on a Dutch Cheng Hsin school site. This may not qualify as independent enough though. One of the interviewers, Epi van de Pol, is an independent Dutch Tai Chi master, but Rob van Ham is a student of Peter's. The interview should be the top two hits of this search... Google Search for Tajivizier

Could you have a check of these references when you've a moment, and see if perhaps they are sufficient independent sources (particularly the Black Belt reference) to resurrect the article?

Cheers... CCCharlie (talk) 10:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Charlie. As you can see I am not very active of late. It may be a better idea to run this by the moderators or someone on the martial arts project. -- BenTels (talk) 18:48, 19 December 2010 (UTC)