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User:Miminity/Essays/How to do a WP:BEFORE for Japanese-related articles

This is a simple how-to guide made by User:Miminity on how to do a before search on an article related to Japan as Japanese related articles often sent to AFD due to being poorly written (i.e. unreferenced) and the English title yield nothings.

Step 1

First and foremost, check the listed sources in the page itself. If you cannot speak Japanese, try using Google Translate or any Translation extention on browsers. If all the sources counts towards WP:GNG, it is notable, if not proceed to Step 2.

Step 2

Check if the article passes any WP:SNG. Example if an article is an actor, see WP:NACTOR, if a politician see WP:NPOL. If yes, then it pass GNG, if not, proceed to Step 3.

Step 3

Perform a normal WP:BEFORE search using the Romaji name or English name of the subject. If none is found proceed to step 4

Step 4

Try checking the Japanese Wikipedia's article for the subject, to do that click the button that says "[X] languages" in the top right corner then click "日本語". Again, try using machine translation if you cannot speak Japanese. Try doing what you did in Step 1.

  • If there is no "日本語" in the languages. Try going to ja.wikipedia.org and search the Japanese name/term of the subject. If none is found proceed to step 5.

Step 5

Perform a Japanese WP:BEFORE search, Try searching the subject's Japanese name on Google. You can use WikiProject Japan's List of Japanese Sources, or the Anime and Manga Sources and Video Game Sources as guide. Again try using the method on Step 1 of using translation tool if you cannot speak Japanese. If it is not notable, proceed to Step 6.

Step 6

Nominate the article for WP:AFD.

If the Article is Notable, but there is a problem

As AFD is not clean up (unless it is WP:TNT worthy). We cannot just nominate poorly written or even poorly sourced articles to AFD. Base on the situations,

if the article is poorly sourced.
You can message me on my talkpage, you can contact WP:JAPAN or just tag the article with {{unreferenced}} {{more sources}} {{sources exist}}. Or just fix it yourself.
Poorly written
Make a request on Guild of Copy Editors, tag it with any of the clean up templates, or just fix it yourself.

Other Languages

This essays might be for Japanese-related articles but this can also be applied to other languages, both non-latin and latin, with just a few tweaks in the steps.

See also