Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics

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Sidebars and User:NextSaagar

Usually sidebars are made when topic is big and has many articles. I don't think too many articles will ever be created related to an individual actor. But User:NextSaagar is inserting sidebars in articles of many actors. Is it OK? Abhi (talk) 11:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I also do not like it. Small sidebars with only 3-4 articles doesn't make much sense. Especially when those articles are already linked in the main text. --Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 11:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

What exactly are the standards for a topic/person to have a sidebar?NextSaagar (talk) 13:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

See WP:SIDEBAR. Individual actor is not big topic like religion or history. "This article is part of a series on Katrina Kaif", which 'series of articles' is there? Just 2 more articles about filmography and awards is not series and links to these articles already exists in article. These sidebars are unnecessary and look shabby. Abhi (talk) 14:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

plus, Sidebar is suppose to be a collection of title of articles on closely related topics. Article names listed in sidebars created by you are not really different articles, but single article split into many, so as to keep the size under control. --Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 14:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I've nominated Katrina Kaif's template for a deletion, since there isn't even a separate page for Filmography AB01 (talk) 04:48, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Is User:LogX also in business of creating and adding EXACTLY same sidebar? [1][2] Abhi (talk) 12:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Please place it for TfD if other editors felt it as inappropriate to the article. Thanks --    L o g  X   15:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Or just remove the various templates from the various articles? - Sitush (talk) 15:33, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I saw User:NextSaagar and you editing same template.[3] [4] [5] Why I am thinking that you are sock of NextSaagar? Abhi (talk) 15:34, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Good thought! You can report me to any checkuser to verify that! I just created the template by seeing this Template:Brad Pitt sidebar --    L o g  X   16:04, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Abhi, this is a serious allegation which requires lot of evidence. You do know that LogX has been editing here for years now. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 19:20, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Brad Pitt's article is a featured article. There, the sidebar is accepted by many experienced editors and it doesn't needed to be deleted. I don't know what's wrong in here!--    L o g  X   19:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Sidebars etc are for the Facebook/Twitter generation, ie: for people who can't be bothered reading. There is often no real need for them in what is supposed to be a serious encyclopaedic work. We have See Also sections etc and additional graphical bloat is just daft, not to mention adding to accessibility problems. - Sitush (talk) 20:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

@Sitush: I agree with you. Go ahead and place the templates for deletion. --    L o g  X   20:32, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

@LogX Brad Pitt article was promoted in June 2010 and that sidebar was created in Sept 2013. I just removed it from Brad Pitt article. After studying your edit history, I don't think you got anything to do with NextSaagar. It is your bad luck that he copied your sidebar behaviour. Pls remove those sidebars, propose templates for deletion yourself and end this matter. Sorry and thanks. Abhi (talk) 20:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Need Help

I have encountered some problem articles.

• Koch Rajbongshi people
• Rajbanshi
• Koch Rajbongshi Royal Family

Problem: All these articles contain large chunks of copyright text and also same text pasted in multiple articles. I have already removed some of the overlapping text and some of the copyrighted material where source was easily available. But I am afraid, that way, nothing much will be left in each of these. As the topics seems important, I request people knowledgeable about the topic to check these article and remove violations. Note: I have nominated Koch Rajbongshi Royal Family at AfD as it contains hardly anything related to the royal family. If someone is willing to re-write it, I will withdraw nomination.--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 11:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Jayadeva

Jayadeva, Jayadeva in Sikhism and Jayadeva birth controversy all provide a POV position on his birthplace. Now it is likely correct[6] but it is disputed. I'm not convinced that in a dispute between whether he was born in Orissa and Bengal we should use official Orissa government sources. Dougweller (talk) 10:42, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Interestingly I had found an article by Ajit Kumar Tripathi, who is a senior civil servant and current election commissioner in Odisha (with no known credentials as a historian), in a Odisha state history "journal" claiming that Buddha was also born in that state (see my comment here). So I wouldn't treat articles written by him in state publications, such as this one, as reliable unless there are corroborating academic sources. Given his position, there is no chance of actual peer review, even if the publications were otherwise generally ok. Abecedare (talk) 11:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

This would be a good source to cover the birthplace debate. Barbara Stoler Miller is a genuine expert, and has no dog in the fight. Abecedare (talk) 11:13, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Since I posted this it has swung from only one to only the other. I've added an NPOV tag. Dougweller (talk) 05:55, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Unnao gold treasure incident

You are invited to join treasure hunt. Thank you. Abhi (talk) 15:48, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I request some user to check grammar in the above article. One user has edit-warred to remove half of the contents from '19th century' section in this version of the article claiming too many grammatical errors. Thanks. Abhi (talk) 17:06, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to Sitush and Dharmadhyaksha for fixing the article. 33% share of gold treasure goes to both of you. The media interest is already waning. I don't think there will be much update. If my interest remains, I will nominate the article for GA review after few days. Thanks. Abhi (talk) 14:31, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I doubt that it is GA material, if only because it is not and will not be stable until the ASI/GSI formally report. 33 per cent of nothing, eh? I'm honoured ;) - Sitush (talk) 15:01, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Visvesvaraya

Regarding this requested move is there any previous discussion/consensus on this noticeboard, when to use full name and when only surname? Solomon7968 10:15, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall any such discussion here. And even if there was any, we would follow WP:COMMONNAME irrespective of what happened here. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 07:11, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

@Dharmadhyaksha is "Visvesvaraya" really the common name over "Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya"? Pardon me but I am not that much familiar with the subject. I would have posted this on the talk page but among those who participated in the move, MikeLynch appears to be on wikibreak and Zuggernaut appears to be retired. Solomon7968 07:43, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes! I would go with Visvesvaraya. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 08:22, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Help with another article?

Hey guys, I'm here to ask for help with another article, Cuckold (book). It's by Kiran Nagarkar and looks to be well known in India from what I can find. I'm running into some problems with sources, but another problem is that I'm a little swamped with schoolwork and I think I'm getting the flu. I'd hate to only give half the energy I normally can to this and I'm afraid of misreading something because I'm distracted for several reasons. Can anyone help out with this that is familiar with the work? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:25, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Vijaynagar tehsil

Can someone familiar with Rajasthan check the recent (October 2013) changes to Vijaynagar tehsil for factual accuracy? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:29, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Achrach

Achrach is a new stub article (created by another editor) that I'm having difficulty locating sources for. Any help to locate and add reliable sources to the article (and also to expand it) is appreciated. Cheers, Northamerica1000^(talk) 06:21, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

K. V. Mahadevan and editor Sugram

Hi folks, I would like to propose that editors familiar with subject matter that might include K. V. Mahadevan please take a look at the article, and perhaps make contact with user Sugram to explain some of the expectations that Wikipedia has regarding original research, sourcing, personal interpretation, etc. I previously had to warn him for a significant copyvio, and I'm starting to wonder from where he is getting the massive data tables he is submitting to various articles. We're not at RfC/U status yet, I just think that maybe some friendly, helpful voices familiar to him might help inspire some change. I am not familiar with Indian cinema, etc, so my effectiveness is limited to reciting policy and reverting unsourced edits, where I think that WikiProject India interest might help produce better articles. Thanks all! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 07:51, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

The textual copyvio in this case was from http://tfmpage.com/forum/7995.1133.01.54.38.html. Are there any other articles where you have concerns? —SpacemanSpiff 11:10, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

How about J. P. Chandrababu? Thanks. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 14:05, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

There's minimal textual contribution there and it doesn't appear to have the hallmarks of copvyio... —SpacemanSpiff 04:13, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Agnivesh

I today noticed that Swami Agnivesh article is titled as Agnivesh. Although Smawi is honorific, but it is almost part of his name and I have never seen him anywhere being referred as only Agnivesh. Shouldn't the article be moved?--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 06:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

There should be some uniformity regarding honorifics. Wikipedia is still calling Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as 'Bhagwan' or 'God', although he is self-declared 'God'. Also he is commonly referred as 'Osho'. Title should be either 'Rajneesh' or 'Osho'. I request community to decide on honorifics. Abhi (talk) 08:09, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• Wrong venues. To change "Agnivesh" to "Swami Agnivesh", use WP:RM and start discussion on it's talk page. Same for "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh" to "Osho" or "Rajneesh" or whatever. To discuss honorifics in general, start discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies as anything decided here is of little importance. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 08:17, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I was planning a RM, but thought to find here if there is any particular reason for hosting the article at Agnivesh. I don't think it is inappropriate to do that (to post here).--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 08:30, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Of course nothing wrong in putting it here. But just wanted to inform that after a long discussion here it might simply be capped with no material output. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 18:42, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

The Indian Biographical Dictionary

The public domain Indian Biographical Dictionary (1915) by C. Hayavadana Rao (wikisource transcription project) is now fully available on wikisource thanks to Billinghurst, GreyHead et al. It is good resource for articles on biographies of Pre-1947 individuals. Solomon7968 09:04, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

GreyHead deservers the award for perserverence with the work, I just ever dipped in and out of the work.

I still need to transcribe all the pages through to the main namespace, and build an index page, and will get started on it on the weekend. It won't be quick. We will also need to build a citation template, probably {{cite IndianBio}} template similar to something like {tlx|cite IrishBio}}. At Wikisource, please do add a wikipedia = ... line in the header template for respective articles. Of course, the work still needs validation, so please don't be shy to go and give the transcriptions a second proofread, amend as necessary and then validate the page; see s:Help:Proofreading. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:53, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Ravan's grandson: reference desk question

Hullo India experts. A questioner at the Reference Desk is asking for info on Ravan's grandson. The question. Can anyone here go over and help them? Taknaran (talk) 13:03, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Indian classical dance

There's been an edit war going on in the article for a few days. Someone with knowledge of the subject is invited to visit the article and the talk page! —SpacemanSpiff 08:26, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Category:Days of the year in India

Hi all, There is a deletion request made for Category:Days of the year in India. I think the pages in this category will help to collect events happened in India. Please give your comments on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/17 October in India. --Neechalkaran (talk) 05:57, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Possible hoax: Category:Jamia Arabia islamia Nagpur

Another editor created Category:Jamia Arabia islamia Nagpur, which appears to be copied in part from Jamia Islamia Bhatkal. If the article is a hoax, it should be deleted and the creator warned or blocked. If it is not a hoax, then it will need to be moved to article space and cleaned up. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 03:24, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

There's something weird going on here. The user's talk page is a copy of User:Azizcityzen and that is a copy of something else (this user's user page), can't figure out what that's a copy from. I've deleted the category under multiple reasons G6/G12/A10, it's likely not a hoax but the content isn't right as it's just a search replace of proper nouns and qualifies for those criteria. I'll do what best I can, I'm not entirely sure what's going on. —SpacemanSpiff 05:03, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

V Star Creations

Notable or not? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:59, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Not at all Notable. Not everything is an encyclopedia. Refer WP:NENAW - Ninney (talk) 11:41, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand the relevance of WP:NENAW. I was only asking if this Indian company is notable enough to have an article in Wikipedia. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:47, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Kamptapu Kamatapur state/movement etc mess

I've been trying to figure out what to do with Kamtapur which started as an article about a demand for a new state[7] and then had history added to it which is just plain confusing and seems to belong elsewhere. Now we have some new articles created by Surjit23 (talk · contribs), Kamatapur movement and Kamatapur State, all of which seem to be about the same subject that is where Kamtapur started (these seem to be simply variant spellings). I've discussed some of this with User:RegentsPark at User talk:RegentsPark#Can you make sense of these? and I'll ping User:Abecedare, User:Sitush and User:SpacemanSpiff who I think know about some of this. It's my guess that we now have 3 not terribly good articles where we only need one decent one. Note I reverted this edit[8] by the new editor which I think further validates my view. I'll emphasise that this is (I assume, you never know) a new editor who has also created a probably non-notable article, Golapariya Folk Song Dougweller (talk) 10:43, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

This user is clearly a sock of blocked User talk:Surjit12.--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 11:44, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

User blocked. --regentspark (comment) 12:46, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I only identified the spamming of the books across multiple articles, no idea about the subject itself. —SpacemanSpiff 14:29, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 14:39, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I thought our in-house NE-India-Bhutan-Burma-and-whatever-else-is-there expert was on top of this. :)

Is it still an outstanding issue (after the sock was blocked)? If so I can try looking up sources, although I don't have any prior knowledge of the subject. Abecedare (talk) 17:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

It is still an issue. This part of India is a sort of historical hole and we have competing narratives (Koch vs. Kamtapur) that need to be sorted out. Now that I've promised Sitush, I guess I'll have to drag myself over to the library tomorrow and grab those histories of Assam. --regentspark (comment) 17:24, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Source query

Does anyone have access to The Great Moghuls (1971) by Bamber Gascoigne? I've got a copyright concern. - Sitush (talk) 16:23, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I do, but not till tomorrow. --regentspark (comment) 17:04, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

The potential infringement has been around for, oh, five years or so. We really, really need it sorting out before tomorrow <g> - Sitush (talk) 17:05, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Not a copyvio from the gascoigne book. --regentspark (comment) 17:42, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for looking into it. That is rather stylish writing. - Sitush (talk) 17:45, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

MV Seaman Guard Ohio‎

A group of POV editors (or simply a very prolific dynamic IP) have decided that the article must be updated with every detail that can be scraped up from any news item.

additional eyes would be appreciated to ensure this does not become a WP:COATRACK. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:28, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Kumaoni

I'm struggling to determine whether Kumaoni is an ethnicity or something else. Can anyone enlighten me? Kumaoni people is a bit vague, seemingly mixing up linguistic features, place of birth, where someone lives etc. - Sitush (talk) 07:38, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Inactive portals

We have many inactive portals under our project. Portal:Chennai is one example. While it's good to have portals for developed topics, we don't seem to have sufficient enthusiasm to even develop our existing articles. I'm suggesting that we look into deleting (by MfD process) some of these portals so that we can at least start focusing on the articles and also the more important portals such as Portal:India etc. Comments? —SpacemanSpiff 08:44, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm!!! I have not understood purpose of such portals. Few months back Portal:Bollywood became a featured one and that's when i realized such quality rating thing also exists for portals. Are these portals sufficiently highlighted to be of any use? And of what exact use are they of? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 09:26, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Portals are like subject specific "Main pages", and in our case, for topics like Bollywood etc maintaining a portal might be helpful. However, for stuff like cities, there's not enough sustained interest in them to maintain any portals etc, e.g. in one portal that I saw a couple of weeks ago, the current events section was last updated in 2007/8 in the week it was created! That said, liking to Portal:India from something like Major rivers of India could be of some value to some readers looking to find out more about India. But the portals have to be maintained for that. Portal:Chennai etc aren't and linking them from many articles not only causes clutter on the articles but also directs the reader to an incomplete, and sometimes incorrect, list of things thereby degrading the value of the [supposed/alleged] encyclopaedia. —SpacemanSpiff 09:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Category:India portals lists most of our portals (there are some not included, will need to find them now!). e.g Portal:Chandigarh had its last non-maintenance edit in 2011 which was also its first and only non-maintenance edit. Portal:Indian wildlife in 2007, Portal:Indore in 2012 and so on. The bigger problem with many of these is that a reader who doesn't know how messed up our portal editing is will assume that these are important articles for that topic. —SpacemanSpiff 09:52, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I get how theoretically portals are useful, to surf to linking topics. But i doubt how practically they are being of any use. Anyways... that's something we can't gauge. If the portals are inactive, i doubt you would have any opposition for deletion. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 10:07, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Spot on, Dharmadhyaksha. I've never understood their utility either and, yes, all of these inactive ones (probably mostly created in a brief moment of "they have one so we'll have one" enthusiasm) should go. I'm not sure where to draw the "inactive" line at, though. - Sitush (talk) 10:10, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Portals are a relic from a pre-Facebook, pre-Google (!) era of the web and a case can be made that the whole namespace should be deleted or archived as historical. As for the India specific portals: even Portal:India hasn't been edited in months and properly updated in years. It attracts just 150 views a day (compare with 30000/day for India); Portal:Bollywood around 100; and (say) Portal:Chandigarh around 15. So essentially these pages are dead, whether we keep them around or not. That said I am more indifferent than enthusiastic about deleting them piecemeal since being relics, they don't even attracts vandals and so are easy to "maintain" in their present (as opposed to envisioned) state. Abecedare (talk) 11:00, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

If at all these portals are to be kept, their formats should be changed to something that doesn't require maintenance. The Bollywood portal is maintenance free as it doesn't have any news section. All sections there keep rotating and with 100 hits per day, you are very likely to turn to it irregularly to be surprised to see something new than your last visit. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 11:08, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that's a good suggestion -- to convert these portals to something like Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Article alerts/Table for the bigger ones -- maybe not the deletion stuff but at least the good articles, new articles etc and if not delete the rest at least move them to project space and mark them as {{Historical}} or better yet {{Hysterical}} and be done with it. At the least I hope we get consensus to remove these inactive portal links from articles to avoid unintended traffic to them. —SpacemanSpiff 13:58, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely love Dharma's suggestion. If we get rid of parts that needs manual maintenance, the portals can stay easily. Now, I know "current news" or "news" section in portals need manual updates; so, that needs to go. What other sections? Another example of deteriorating portals is P:WB became featured in 2007, there were some updating activities for a few months/years, but then everything fizzled out.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:17, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

BAPS

A scandal broke out a week ago in the BAPS group about two former swami's that accused the head of this organization of rape. I have been dealing with Swaminarayan topic for a few days now. Could some one explain the WP:BLPCRIME policy as it relates to this. This is a sensitive topics and any input would be helpful. Here is what is posted now in the controversy section:

On 22 Oct 2013, BAPS responded to the allegations made by two former sadhus (Sanjay Shah (Priyadarshandas) and Rakesh Bhavsar (Nishkamsevadas) ) that the claims made against Pramukh Swami and his sadhus are utterly baseless and false. Indian reported that “Pramukh Swami, who heads BAPS, and four other top swamis, of alleged assault dating back to the 1970s when they were students at the gurukul.”

Is this offensive or wrong please let me know. How can I improve it? All suggestions here and there would be helpful.

Bluespeakers (talk) 14:05, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

• My views on how crime related BLP issues should be handled are these...

Off wiki what happened: X claims that Y committed a crime.

On wiki we write: "X claims that Y committed a crime."  Not done

Off wiki what happened: X claims that Y committed a crime. X went to police station and an FIR was registered against Y.

On wiki we write: "X claims that Y committed a crime."  Done

On wiki we write: "X claims that Y committed a crime and an FIR was registered against Y."  Done, even better.

Not to mentions everything needs a WP:RS and its also important to include time reference. May times editors come and write such valid claims but give no time reference as to when it happened. 2 years later that issue in real world has disappeared, but it still sits here as if it has happened recently. Also, due to lengthy procedures such legal cases are never updated. If there is no edit warring or much fuss going on the article, i would suggest adding such content only if there actually happens to be anything worth in real world. People claiming things and others dismissing is just trivial routine. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 05:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

• Grrrrr! I typed this out and now i realize that you are blocked. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 05:38, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Ashura In Kashmir

The above article is heavy on propaganda. Can someone with the knowledge, time and patience tone it down? Thanks — Ramit^(talk) 10:17, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes the article is far from neutral, and is poorly sourced. But before we attempt a clean-up, there is the possible issue of copyvio since the article (created on wikipedia in May) seems to be largely copied from this blog entry (dated April 2013). What makes this weirder, is that that blog while claiming copyright also lists "Sharafat Hussain Beigh : Proffessional Wikipedian" as a co-author, and the article was moved from AFC to mainspace by Sharafat99 (without any apparent review). Finally, there may be additional sock/meat-puppetry issues involving the three main editors of the page: Farari8, Sharafat99 and Soliha7.

Pinging @Davidwr, SpacemanSpiff, and Elockid: for input regarding the AFC process, copyright issues, and potential socking. Abecedare (talk) 11:14, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Just noticed that the blog does license its content under CC-BY. So the copyright issue may be handled by simple talk page acknowledgement of the original source. The concerns about AFC process, possible socking and coatracking/soapboxing still remain. So I'll wait for feedback on whether the article is worth retaining at all, before looking into a POV clean-up. Abecedare (talk) 11:22, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

 

Once the article is created, AFC steps away. The only reason we might become involved is if there was a recommendation to send it back to AFC instead of deletion due to a flaw in the AFC process. For example, if the afc reviewer had been deemed to be incompetent (usually a just-autoconfirmed editor trying to help out in good faith), if the afc reviewer were deemed to be acting in bad faith, or if the afc reviewer were found to be sock- or meatpuppet of an already-banned editor. In the first two cases, moving back to AFC would generally be done only as an alternative to deletion, not "just because." In the third case if the article is worth keeping and it hasn't been heavily edited by others, WP:DENY may apply and it may be worth moving a valid article back to AFC just to it can be re-accepted by someone else, but that risks being WP:POINTy. Even if the AFC process was flawed, if the page has been significantly updated since it was accepted, please do not send it back to AFC.

I looked around enough in edit histories of this and related articles and the talk pages of editors who touched those articles to smell sock- and meat-puppetry but I can't prove anything.

If any articles that were at AFD were found to be AFC submissions that were "accepted" by a banned-at-the-time editor AND they weren't heavily edited by non-banned editors afterwards, AND there is any reasonable chance that the submission can be rescued, post a note on WT:WPAFC and ask if we want to pull the article back into AFC. Don't do this if ALL of the significant contributors were banned at the time of their edits, just delete the thing under WP:DENY.

On may of these pages, ARBCOM "discretionary sanctions" related to India-related articles may apply. I'm not well versed on the specifics of these sanctions, but I'm just saying they may be available.

My recommendation is to proceed with the sockpuppet investigations while taking great care to avoid a witch hunt, and to heavily scrutinize all affected articles for WP:NPOV, WP:COI, WP:Notability, and WP:COPYVIO issues. It may help to have an admin go through strongly-suspected-sockpuppets' deleted contributions as well, but I would avoid this unless the person is already named in a formal investigation. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:28, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

 

@Abecedare: In the interest of openness, fairness, and WP:AFG, please either notify those you have named as suspected sockpuppets either by email or on their talk page so they can come here and defend themselves if they choose (assuming they are still active on Wikipedia of course), and state here that you have done so, or remove their names from any public accusations of sock-puppetry. If there is already a formal investigation open, then they have very likely already been notified, but it would still be helpful to link to that investigation here. Do not depend on Wikipedia's new notification system to notify them, as they may have such notifications turned off. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

@Davidwr: Thanks for the feedback. The reason I thought AFC would be interested in looking at the these articles/editors is that the process smells of sock/meat-puppetry, or at least inexperienced editors moving articles to mainspace without IMO adequate review. For example:

• Sharafat99 (talk · contribs) ( who is Mirza Sharafat Hussain Beigh) has had several of his article creations, including an autobiography, declined (see [9]) yet approved/moved three articles created by Farari8 (talk · contribs) to mainspace.
• Farari8 created the article Mirza Sharafat Hussain Beigh and then approved/moved it to mainspace himself.

As you suggest an SPI, and possibly AFD or cleanup, would be the easiest way to handle the above-mentioned articles. But even if there turns out to be no explicit sock-puppetry involved, I think AFC regulars may want to look into this as an instance of inexperienced editors reviewing and approving articles and see if this requires any action or tightening of procedures. Abecedare (talk) 14:56, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

For anyone interested in commenting: link to SPI. Abecedare (talk) 15:24, 31 October 2013 (UTC)