User talk:Ekomkar
Welcome![edit]
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Reverted your edits at Bedi Mahal[edit]
Greetings, you added a lot of content at Bedi Mahal, but it was not properly sourced, and it was not written with the tone and style of an encyclopedia article, but rather like a drama or recounting a legend. If you like I'd be happy to help you support your data with footnotes and modify it to the correct writing style. If you would like that, please reply here and then paste the code {{tb|User talk:Ekomkar}} on my Talk page. MatthewVanitas (talk) 21:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
- dear sir
please help me edit, style and upload the information I have posted earlier as surprisingly there is a lot which is not posted on wikipedia , the palace (bedi mahal) was owned by my family until the partition and my ancestors have sufficient evidence of residing at bedi mahal and i believe the history of residents should be recognised as well as we built it and old legends shall not be forgotten
--Online Sikh Community 08:48, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
- I completely agree that Wikipedia should strive to present the best information about Bedi Mahal, but for it to be of maximum usage the article must be clear even to people not immediately familiar with Bedi Mahal, and it must be based on WP:Reliable sources such as news articles, academic books, etc. Here are a few reasons I reverted your earlier edits:
- Since the title is "Bedi Mahal", the article is about the palace, not the history of the Bedi clan itself. Such info should go at Bedi clan; the latter currently WP:Redirects to Khatri, but if there is sufficient WP:Reliable sources to form an article on the Bedi separately, that is possible.
- The websites you provided as references don't appear to be Reliable Sources (in the official Wikipedia sense). While it might be okay to link to SikhWiki in the External Links section, a wiki in general can't be used as a direct footnote since Wikis are built by a community, not with an academic having overall control, or a publisher who must fact-check the works: Similarly, the "http://members.iinet.net.au" link is just someone's personal webpage; yes he states the material is from the Victoria and Albert museum, but if that's the case we need to ourselves find the original V&A publication and cite it, so we can be sure it's accurately cited. In a worst-case scenario, any person could write whatever they want and just claim it came from some book or article, so ideally we want our Wiki readers to be able to click a link and see the information on a reliable, stable, protected source.
- You have a long passage from the Bachittar Natak which does not directly touch on the Bedi Mahal. On Wikipedia, since we can make the blue links to other articles, there's no need to over-explain things since we can link them. So in an article about "the author John Smith" (a fictional example) instead of saying "After the American Civil War, Smith moved to Alabama. The American Civil War lasted from 1861-1865, and had such-and-such impacts, and many people were moving around the country, etc. etc." we can instead just say "After the American Civil War, Smith moved to Alabama; he thought he would find economic opportunities in war reconstruction.<ref>''Life of John Smith''. Acme Press, 1973</ref> Essentially every portion in the article should tie directly back to the concept of Bedi Mahal, not go off on long tangents.
- You have long passages of information that are just confusing for a reader: "atinpal Singh Bedi Sahib who is the eldest son in the family and Baba Harpal Singh Bedi Sahib followed by his son Kunwar Baba Ravishpal Singh Bedi Sahib,". If none of those names are linked to an article, what good does it do for someone in Japan to see a huge list of names with no context? If there's no information on who a person is, specifically in relation to how their person effects the history of Bedi Mahal, then it's not at all adding to the reader's understanding of Bedi Mahal.
- I looked on Google Books and didn't see any mention of Bedi Mahal (maybe there are other spellings I need to search?), but even so if you have books or newspaper articles which can WP:Verify any facts you state about Bedi Mahal, you can cite those even if they're not online or not in English. Fundamentally, for every fact you add to the article, the question in your mind should be "says who?" If a reader needs to verify that "Khem Singh Bedi built the palace", what book or article can he turn to to assure himself that this is correct? If no such reference is given, the sentence itself is worthless because it cannot be grounded in any authority who can attest this.
- I completely agree that Wikipedia should strive to present the best information about Bedi Mahal, but for it to be of maximum usage the article must be clear even to people not immediately familiar with Bedi Mahal, and it must be based on WP:Reliable sources such as news articles, academic books, etc. Here are a few reasons I reverted your earlier edits:
- Does all of this make sense so far? Any further questions? Also, if you have questions and I'm not available or not responding promptly, you can also get prompt advice from volunteer mentors by coming to The Teahouse and asking there. I'll post a link to them above. Hope all this helps! MatthewVanitas (talk) 16:13, 7 June 2013 (UTC)