User talk:Ellencavanaugh

Babri Mosque

Hi, I noticed the question you left for Tim1357 regarding your student's edit to Babri Mosque. Assuming that EmilyEllis09 is the student in question, it wasn't DASHBot that reverted her edit. You can see in the article history, immediately prior to the DASHBot edit, that Abhishek191288 reverted the edit, with the comment "POV. Please discuss on talk page." In other words, he apparently feels that the content ran against the neutral point of view policy, and that if you disagree, it should be discussed on the article's talk page, Talk:Babri Mosque. Toohool (talk) 00:40, 30 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks -EPC

Any significant addition to a controversial site should be discussed first, although I wouldn't have deleted this simply because it pushes a particular viewpoint. Controversial articles are bound to have differing points of view expressed, and so long as minority viewpoints are not overstated, neutral point of view can be maintained. However, there are a number of sylistic elements that count against the editor, making the edit sound more partisan than it actually is. It is important to maintain a neutral tone in controversial articles that state the facts and do not editorialise. The edit must be seen as an improvement in the quality of the article rather than a political point-scoring exercise. Personally, I would have encouraged a rewrite rather than total deletion of the first section. For example, saying 'However, Sarvepalli Gopal, a Hindu scholar, offers some alternative explanations' is not needed. The opening should say 'The presence of non-Islamic carvings on the pillars of the Babri Masjid can be explained by the use of Hindu craftsmen hired to build the mosque left inscriptions behind, and also portions of other buildings surrounding the mosque site were used to build it.' And then attribute the referencing. EmilyEllis09's edit implies that a Hindu scholar's work is especially noteworthy. In furthering a Hindu claim this encorages the edit to be seen as biased.

But the other section should be deleted. Saying there is/was a general British bias against Hindus and a deliberate spread of aprocryphal historical information for political purposes is extremely controversial and would require more referencing than a small part of a single journal article that isnt accessible to most Wikipedia editors. In order to support this claim of British-wide bias and behaviour, the key sections of the text from the article should be inserted into the referencing, so that the claim can be properly assessed. Because the claim is so controversial and the support for the claim is so limited, this should definitely have been discussed on the Talk page in order to minimise the risk of instant deletion. It could also be interpreted that failure to explain or defend the controversial position on the talk page is tacit acceptance that the edit came from a non-neutral point of view and would never be accepted by most other editors. Mdw0 (talk) 06:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Very helpful - thanks! 71.61.3.24 (talk) 13:58, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]