Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kingdom of Valtio (2nd nomination)

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 redirect to Ari Peltonen. Mark Arsten (talk) 15:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Kingdom of Valtio

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Delete this old micronation joke. The fact that this got some press coverage from a single Finnish newspaper and radiostation employing the "ruler" of this fantasy country six years ago does not make this topic encyclopedic. That few well-known people have been associated with this prank for its humour value does not make it notable either. We don't collect random trivia and in-jokes made up by otherwise notable people and any small media coverage this had has run out years ago. Past deletion discussion here jni (talk) 08:13, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Finland-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 09:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

History Note: In 2007 this article was speedy deleted; that deletion was then overturned at DRV [1] and the article was sent to AfD, which closed as keep on 24 October 2007. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Valtio. --Arxiloxos (talk) 14:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep. The article cites more than one source and the 2007 DRV and AfD cite multiple sources for this micronation. Since notability is not temporary, I am inclined to keep the article. Alternatively, the content might be merged and redirected to Ari Peltonen, where this is mentioned; his article needs sources anyway. --Arxiloxos (talk) 14:58, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First, this is not a micronation but a joke made by one radio presenter who is borderline notable in Finland. We don't write separate articles about pranks made by Jay Leno or Oprah (unless they receive significant independent media coverage) so we should not do so for jokes by some random radio host that maybe 0.1% of Finnish population knowns or cares about. Second, the sources are claimed to be unknown number of news articles in Helsingin Sanomat; it is hard to know what they say as the citation is missing things like exact dates and page numbers. Maybe they don't exist at all or are really columns by Peltonen himself or other blog-like entries. Finnish Wikipedia (fi:Valtio (mikrovaltio)) uses the same vague sources and also cites this newspaper link: [2] It mentions Peltonen and his joke in passing in few sentences but as its title is "Crowd populated city center for the Night of the Arts Festival. Police said the evening was peaceful" and most of the content is routine local news reporting, it does not really amount to anything. Ruotuväki (red link, but article exists in Finnish Wp fi:Ruotuväki)) is a Finnish amateur conscript-journalist edited newspaper for military, equal in notability and journalistic prestige to typical university student newspaper. The external link to Ruotuväki web site in article does not work and the source section again omits details like exact back-issue number and page number. Reliable source is not some vague reference to some obscure news source very few people know about. Also the previous AfD and DRV (which was for the speedy deletion) don't contain any additional references.

I challenge anyone to find even a single non-WP derived source for this in Internet. (But note that valtio is a normal Finnish language noun). I only managed to find a few blog posts. Therefore I challenge the notion that notability is not temporal: If Internet forgets about your made-up stuff in few years - because nobody really cares about it - it was never notable to begin with and never received any significant news coverage. jni (talk) 15:53, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Arguably, most micro-nations are jokes, but at least some of them are notable jokes. Sources need not be on the internet. Reliability has nothing to do with the prominence or obscurity of the source, although if he source is too obscure it may lend less weight to notability. Whether the coverage this received was enough to establish notability can be argued, and as to the previous AfD, consensus can change. But the absence of current online sources is not determinative. I have no opinion on the merits of this article, but I could not let the above comment sit unanswered. DES ^(talk) 19:46, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Current online sources is not determinate, but it is one of the criteria from WP:EVENT were this article fails. It seems to fail all other applicable criteria from that guideline as well, like WP:LASTING, WP:GEOSCOPE, WP:INDEPTH and WP:DIVERSE. Reliabily should be evaluated in some context relating to the source, but lets not start a meta-discussion about our policies. Reliability of sources is a side issue for this article, as it currently has no sources at all! Broken external links are not valid citations. Please do add off-line sources to the article, if you can, but as it has only ever had online sources, their unavailability has become an issue. As this joke is clearly stuff that goes to the "odd events around the world" sections in newspapers (which WP does not usually cover), I don't expect to find anything encyclopedic from the insignificant (and local to Finland capital city area) news coverage this might have received six years ago. jni (talk) 17:17, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to the creator, Ari Peltonen, if he is notable, or otherwise delete. As explained above this is just a transient joke, not anything that is part of the historical record. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Ari Peltonen. --cyclopia ^speak! 14:09, 18 September 2013 (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.