Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics

This page is a notice board for things particularly relevant to Wikipedians working on articles on India.

Click here to add a new section

Wikipedia Meetups edit Upcoming none Recent Outside India Past meetups

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)

Personally, I enjoy well maintained portals, but, unfortunately, many (if not most) of the WP:IND related portals are awful. I think all portals need to use the {{random portal component}} and have that ability to cycle between contents, it's what keeps them interesting. "News" section can be updated automatically by User:Wikinews Importer Bot. — Bill william compton^Talk 19:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Can the article User:The_Rahul_Jain/Jain-Hindu_relations be moved back to main article space?

Can this recently deleted article (contents at User:The_Rahul_Jain/Jain-Hindu_relations) moved back to main article space? Rahul Jain (talk) 20:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

wrong forum and format. You need to go to the deletion review. Wikipedia:Deletion review -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:00, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

oops, it wasnt actually deleted. the process would be to send it through the Articles for Creation. I added the templates to the pages so you can click when you are ready to submit. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:44, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

silly me. it WAS deleted AND you recreated it. so you have both options. My bet is that the AfC is the one that will most likely be successful. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:51, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be best to restore (history merge) the draft at the original AFC page so the previous article history and reviewers' comments are not lost? (pinging @RHaworth: has been previously involved with the AFC and mainspace versions) Abecedare (talk) 22:14, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to the right direction. I have asked for a deletion review at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2013_November_2 Rahul Jain (talk) 04:52, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent suggestion by User:Abecedare - it would be best to restore (history merge) the draft at the original AFC page so the previous article history and reviewers' comments are not lost.!!! - Jethwarp (talk) 17:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Indian and Pakistani villages

Strongly considering something which would see us redirect most of our articles on Indian and Pakistani villages to lists by district until somebody can create a half decent article on them and strictly control growth on Indian/Pakistan villages. They're hugely problematic and magnets for all sort of crap. There's way too many to cleanup and given that most of them are unsourced I don't think it would be a problem to delete or redirect most of them. Would you support a mass effort to eliminate the problem? They're one of the poorest areas of wikipedia IMO. It's embarrassing for the good editors of WP:India and WP:Pakistan who are trying to write articles to a high standard. Obviously each article would be checked before redirecting and the very few half decent articles which exist would remain.

In India and Pakistan's case we're presented with a rare problem. High Internet access and the fact that a lot of people added to these villages are from rural areas with a poor command of English and what wikipedia is about. They gradually degrade the articles with ugly lists and POV over time because we lack the editors to control, monitor and nurture them. The scale of the problem means that you can't even begin to start cleaning them up and hoping to make good progress. I can't put them all on my watchlist, I already have over a 1000 articles and a lot of the changes even in those I'm not really monitoring. We have several thousand articles like this, here's a random

Naya Lahore :not referenced at all, poorly formatted, poorly written, not much information other than trivia.

• Malyam cites one source that confirms existence and gives some minimal unsourced information
• Moguluru gives no sources but some information
• Munganda has produced talented individuals who have contributed significantly for the welfare of the society at large. There is also some information, some sources
• Nunna has no information apart from an infobox and coordinates. The coordinates are wrong, belonging to Pamarru
• Kakanur says next to nothing, but does say something.

Do we want thousands of "articles" like this, or would they be best nuked/incubated or redirect until somebody can write a clean sourced article and put it on their watchlist? I'm not disputing the notability of any of them, but we have a duty to provide an encyclopedia and thousands of articles like this are unacceptable and we need to eradicate the problem and start controlling an area vulnerable to extremely poor editing. Certainly stubs like Puralal are magnets for shoddy editing, but I'd rather they were useless stubs like that than hijacked articles with tons of POV about local "famous" taxi drivers and doctors.We're better off redirecting most of them to districts and keep only articles on major Indian/Pakistani cities and towns until somebody can write a half decent article. The cleanup should begin with blasting the thousands of stubs and bog standard articles on Indian villages and start with cleaning up the major cities of India and Pakistan and them put on watchlists. Then articles can gradually be restored once somebody can be bothered to write one properly and monitor it and put on watchlists. I feel that the mess created is a let down to the fluent, capable editors who edit Indian articles on here and are struggling to improve quality here. The scale of the task needs reducing and to gradually build it up with a higher proportion of quality.

If there are no objections to me redirecting unsourced and super poor quality articles to the districts i'll begin next week with ploughing through Andhra Pradesh.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support this proposal. Articles like Naya Lahore damage Wikipedia in general and this project specifically. They set a precedent for adding daft content like the famous PSO Petrol Pump in this village, turn off readers and discourage editors who want to do a proper job. They damage our reputation. I visualize a bright high school student from Naya Lahore thinking of writing an article, then looking at this one and deciding it is pointless. Stubs are o.k. but rubbish is not. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:27, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

as a note, the Naya Lahore comments refer to this version. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:32, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I personally treat wikipedia as 'infopedia', not encyclopedia. Any person on net searching for info about some village should get some info at one place even if that village is not notable. Articles may be of poor quality but we should keep them. Villages are hundreds of years old and will be there for thousands of years. Someone in future will come to add info, improve article. Most of the info on wikipedia is added by temporary users. Regular users just tackle vandalism or push POV or stare at watchlist and yawn. Abhi (talk) 18:34, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Attacking Indian and Pakistani village content because of their nationality seems contrary to WP:NPOV. I see no good evidence that such village articles cannot be improved as we might improve village articles in any other part of the world. For example, I was able to quickly find an encyclopedic source for the village of Malyam - An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology. Blofeld seems to be taking his persona as a Bond villain too literally and should not be trying to rule the world. It seems most sensible for editors to work on their own local region as they will be best able to find and use sources in their local language. For example, I started an article on the village Kilchattan Bay and, now I check, I see that Blofeld has done work on this too. I am quite sure that there's lots more that can be done on villages in the UK and this would be far more productive use of our time than worrying about places in India. Warden (talk) 19:10, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• He's not attacking them because of their nationality - surely you have concentrated on one subject area in the past, simply for reasons of organisation/interest/what books you've got from the library etc. Much of the content is poor and that has been acknowledged here in the past. It was also acknowledged at ANI, where one admin proposed and then enacted a 1,000 village nuking without anyone raising an eyebrow. I also wouldn't take the examples above as a definitive list: Blofeld is perfectly capable of sourcing stuff and I'd guess that he and others would do so in this instance. The real problem with the proposal here isn't deletionism/inclusionism but the long-standing (and daft, imo) "inherent notability" argument. Some of us do a lot of clean up in the India/Pakistan area and we need more of it, not less. - Sitush (talk) 19:25, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Colonel, you know I generally support your views on inclusionism here, but I seriously think you don't realize the extent of the problem with genuinely is mostly exclusive to south Asia on here, and how the very existence of the articles is far more problematic than if they were redirected. Show me one British village which needs as much cleanup as Naya Lahore? You're last comment " I am quite sure that there's lots more that can be done on villages in the UK and this would be far more productive use of our time than worrying about places in India." illustrates a classic Anglo-centric view of wikipedia, as if India is less important than the UK. It isn't acceptable to have entries like Naya on here whether its central London or Timbuktu. I'm not disputing that the articles can be cleaned up and expanded like I did with Shermuhammadpuram (which is still rather bizarre collection of scraps I could find), but if you look at the extent; of the problem it's massive and until somebody can actually clean them up and source/write them it really isn't good to keep them just for the sake of inherent notability of places. You know ideally I'd like 638,000 GA quality articles on Indian villages but this just isn't a good way to develop wikipedia.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:28, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• Show you one British village? Let's look at a village in Dorset that I visited as a child — Marshwood. That's a pathetic stub and its big claim to fame — the World Nettle Eating Championship — isn't sourced. The place has a long history as a manor and parish and so there's plenty to be found in various sources so there's no lack of work to be done there. Q.E.D., eh? This is the English Wikipedia and so villages in England are a more sensible priority for English editors than villages in India. When all English villages are of GA quality, we English editors can then worry about the supposed problem of Indian villages. In the meantime, please leave the Indian villages to the Indians. Warden (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• It's a pathetic stub as you say but how is the text problematic and a sheer embarrassment to wikipedia in the way that Naya Lahore is? If you think editorial interest is purely defined by nationality Colonel why do you care if a road on Gibraltar or something exists then? Why don't you leave it up to the Gibraltarians? It's as much my encyclopedia as it is anybody's, and I'm interested in India and don't like to see garbage standard quality for it when we could be much better than this. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:01, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• Warden, your is a pretty scary argument: you seem to be effectively arguing the thin end of a wedge for an ethno-centric division within English Wikipedia. It isn't even practical, since you don't know the origins of 99 per cent of contributors. It sounds to me like another of those "use any rationale I can to keep something" arguments, sorry. Not being Indian, should I retire from this project now? - Sitush (talk) 22:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• I'm just getting started — Marshwood was the first place I tried. Thinking of another village from my family history, I next tried Wistaston. This is not so stubby but notice how, even though it was in the Domesday book, it only has two citations. It has been heavily tag-bombed but the clean-up banner tags have been there for over four years now. So when you tell me there's a special problem with Indian village articles which demands that they be razed, I'm still not buying it. The only issue here seems to be that the English and Wiki skills of Indian editors are not so advanced and so their articles aren't so pretty. But the content is much the same - just what you'd expect from people writing about the place that they know. That seems just fine as WP:V only requires sources for quotations and contentious facts. And making articles pretty is what gnomes are for. Warden (talk) 00:43, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

• Actually, the way forward here might be to open a subpage where people can add dodgy village articles. Make sure that the articles are tagged for maintenance, timestamp the addition to the list and allow people to attempt improvements. If there are none in, say, three months then look to a redirect to a List of villages in X district or whatever. - Sitush (talk) 19:31, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment We already have List of districts of India. I am proposing we create a List of villages of India by districts which will in turn be a top level list of List of villages in X district. Then all of the individual village articles can be watched via the [[Special:RecentChangesLinked/XYZ]] system. Seems a handy solution. Solomon7968 19:52, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• If these lists are going to be sourced then, yes, it would help. We can't have people adding names of villages to the lists without (say) a cite to a district-level document or the census. And we can't have links from it to individual village articles unless we are sure that they are the same place. I'd still prefer not to see minimalist stubs ("X is a Jat village in Haryana. It has three banks and a water trough." etc). - Sitush (talk) 19:57, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• If we could make district lists that hold village names, coordinates and census populations (sourced), and only keep articles that give more information than that (sourced), a lot would be gained. If all content in the articles that remain is sourced, IP editors will hesitate to add the unsourced list of common family names. I would be ruthless about cleaning out the unsourced information, even when it is entirely plausible. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:12, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• "We had to destroy the village to save it", eh? Warden (talk) 21:54, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Random break

A sourced table with coordinates with a summary option would definitely be the way to go Solomon, Aymatth and Sitush I think. As Aymatth says that would discourage long lists of schools and glorified locals and businesses and would take away the redundancy of a lot of the empty pointless stubs as Sitush says and they could also go on watchlists instead of having to watch thousands of separate stubs. I agree that most of the info is dubious and it should probably be deleted or sourced if it can be and is fairly decent. How can we organize something though given the scale of it. It would surely take a while to even tackle one district of India and Districts of India look how many of them are. The articles on the smaller towns which may be half decent half nonsense perhaps they'd be better incubated until they can be restored with fully checked and sourcing content. What I'd like to see is a full and controlled/organized cleanup job, redirecting all of the problematic village/town articles to lists by districts and then beginning a cleanup of the major cities and towns first and then gradually working through to the smaller towns. Something which is manageable as a group. Browse through as many village articles in as many states and districts as you can and you'll see the extent of the problem and why drastic action is needed. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:05, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• the standard has been that any inhabited community of legal record is notable, and I don't see why that wouldn't apply to inhabited places in India and Pakistan. Those that are not of legal record may be dealt with in whatever manner seems appropriate. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:53, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I do not see this discussion as specific to India or Pakistan. A decision made here could set a useful precedent for other regions of the world.

User:TheRedPenOfDoom has drastically (rightly) stripped down Naya Lahore to remove almost all unsourced information. What is left is "Naya Lahore is a town located in the Toba Tek Singh District in the Punjab" and a picture of the main street. If there were no picture, and if a list of villages in the district included Naya Lahore and gave coordinates and population, there is no good reason to give this village a stand-alone article rather than a redirect.

I agree with inherent notability of small communities, but the unsourced detail that accumulates on the village stub articles is seriously harmful. "Muhammad Azad is honorable headman with three cows" may be a vicious libel. Anyone reading one of these unsourced articles rightly thinks that Wikipedia is full of rubbish. A redirect to a list entry that gives only sourced information is better. If any editor finds sources to give more information, they can easily change the redirect into an article. An IP editor who wanted to add an unsourced list of his notable uncles to the article probably would not. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:56, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

We both agree that places are notable, but until somebody can write a decent sourced article to show why they're notable the articles are still hugely problematic. I'd rather not have the article than one full of disinformation and people promoting themselves and their community in often incoherent English.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:48, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

• I fully support Dr. Blofeld's proposal, per my previous comments in numerous fora. If anyone really wants me to go back and find them I will, but the situation there is ridiculously bad. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:52, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: As Wikipedia sees itself to be a gazetteer, this could hamper that aim in a way. And as someone said, this could be a precedence for others, a wider forum needs to be brought here. An RfC, or proper advertisement could help. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 18:12, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

• I would have thought that Wikivoyage had more of a claim to gazetteer status than Wikipedia. There has been some limited discussion on Jimbo's talk page, which references this thread. I'm not sure that a precedent is being set, though: we're just trying to organise the maintenance of articles that by and large are not policy-compliant anyway. - Sitush (talk) 21:44, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Lots of these stub village articles were created in 2010 apparently as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Villages, sourced to a government database, at a rapid rate, much like Dr Blofeld at one time created many stub article, some of which have later been expanded. If minimally referenced stubs are good, then these village articles are good. If they are unreferenced, they could be prod'ed, couldn't they, as failing verification}. A vandal could create fake village articles which sounded as plausible as the unreferenced ones of these, and no one should have to prove a populated place does not exist and never existed to remove it from the encyclopedia. So another possibility would be to tag the unreferenced ones, then after after a reasonable interval prod them. The referenced ones which have original research or spam added could be stripped back to the stub. Unreferenced local knowledge (lists of cultural institutions, schools, bus lines) could be removed if unreferenced. Edison (talk) 00:19, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I did once concentrate on stub building true Edison, but the reality is that it's a waste of time as few of them get expanded and in India/Pakistan's case make them a magnet for crap. I agree with Sitush's perspective on the situation. I see having thousands of empty unsourced stubs as problematic in India's case especially it that they're not only useless encyclopedia entries but also massive magnets for shite. It would be nice to have 638,000 FA quality articles on Indian villages, and to have a decent article on every settlement in the world but it just isn't practical to do so without the numbers needed to monitor and nurture them. The " Unreferenced local knowledge (lists of cultural institutions, schools, bus lines) could be removed if unreferenced. " approach doesn't work because at some point they get readded. Trust me, I cleaned up quite a lot of the Karnataka towns and villages a while back and put them all on my watchlist and even now I'm finding I have too many articles to monitor and wipe clean again and they're becoming infested again. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to try to make a model list for one district at List of populated places in Adilabad district. May take a week or two to complete but I want to demonstrate how much better it is to reduce the redundancies and shoddy articles in favour of something like this. Somebody feel free to continue to add the coordinates for Madaram onwards♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld The real problem is to identify the references needed to build an article in first place. A simple Google Books search lists two books for Adilabad district:

• T. Pullaiah; P. V. Prasanna; G. Obulesu (1992). Flora of Adilabad District, Andhra Pradesh, India. CBS Publishers & Distributors.
• Setumadhava Rao Pagdi (1952). Among the Gonds of Adilabad. Popular Book Depot.

Note that neither the town (with 3 ref) and the district (with 15 ref) uses the two books as references. My feeling is that there are book length references for every district in India (which may not be the case for other Asian countries). A potential Bibliography by districts in India may be a great resource for the project. Solomon7968 17:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC) Solomon7968 17:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Poor grammar, prose or lack of proper source should not be used as criteria to nuke articles. Spread of internet in developed countries is deep. Info about almost every village is available on the net and everybody has access to the net. This is not the case with India. India's backwardness in information technology and English should not be used as criteria to nuke articles. Articles will improve with time as more and more Indians living in villages get access to the internet. Abhi (talk) 16:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

That's one of the biggest problems with wikipedia right now Abhi, "other people will improve it, don't worry things will improve". Well I've been here 7 and a half years Abhi and the average quality for India and Pakistan has not improved, in fact the extent of the unsourced poorly formatted info has grown and will continue to do so as Internet access to more rural areas increases. For every decent editor here taking articles to GA there's dozens being expanded with garbage. Meanwhile thousands of articles contains material which is an embarrassment to the project and may well contain gross POV, unfounded claims and other garbage. It is up to WP:India to try to improve the situation. We have a duty as an encyclopedia to provide accurate, coherent and well sourced information, and if thousands of the articles are incoherent and poorly written/structured then we're failing to write an encyclopedia. You've actually answered my reasoning for why a lot of the villages should be redirected to lists "Info about almost every village is available on the net and everybody has access to the net. This is not the case with India. " If the villages don't have any reliable sources to write them, why should they have an article? They should be redirected to lists until they do actually have decent sources and info available, wouldn't that make more sense Abhi? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:55, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support. Having individual articles for these villages means they're too numerous and spread-out to allow us to take care of them during their infancy. Collating them into lists - effectively, nurseries - will not only reduce maintenance overhead but allow improved consistency for information on villages across districts, which otherwise tend to get "improved" in a random fashion. — Scott • talk 17:21, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support Do India and the "stans" have national census data or some official government database such as verify stubs about villages in the US and "communes" in Europe? If there is nothing available to verify a village, it should not even be in a list, per WP:V. This is even if we grant some assumption of notability for inhabited places. Edison (talk) 20:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I think there's a list somewhere at least of the names of villages and for some of them population data. But for most of them, especially smaller villages in the more out there parts of India and Pakistan them you'd be finding scraps in google books if anything at all with nothing on web at the moment, ideal for redirecting to sourced tabled list.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support Not sure what I am supporting but I support it :) While I agree that there is no a priori reason to delete Indian and Pakistani village articles just because they are poorly written, the practical side of me is clear that we are nowhere near capable of a "clean up" of the gargantuan scale that is necessary and definitely do not have the ability to monitor these articles even assuming we can clean them up. Given that, redirects to a list seems to be the practical solution. Wikipedia will, as it should, contain a record of every village or town that exists but sans the crap. --regentspark (comment) 21:34, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. There are few things on Wikipedia more outrageous than the contempt people show toward Indian and Pakistani locals who start articles about the places where they live. We should respect that these are real places worthy of coverage. Wikipedia started with stubs and poorly written content in the countries that got Internet 10 years ago the same way, and we didn't delete it all and tell everyone to go away. We should also respect the priorities the locals put on things - they may find it more important to list leading families or historical anecdotes than we do in the anonymous waystations in which we reside. We should only challenge material if we have some iota of suspicion that it is wrong, not because we have a prejudice against having it. It is far, far better to have material that is "not cleaned up" than to have nothing. Wnt (talk) 17:29, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Better to have often false, misleading unencyclopedic gibberish, gross POV and occasionally libelous info about locals in an article than for the article to be redirected to a sourced list with encyclopedic details and monitored on watchlists? What nonsense.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:24, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Gross POV, yes. One side of a story is better than neither. "Gibberish" is often not so bad as all that. And lists --- lists can index the articles like they're supposed to, rather than replacing them. I know full well there are tools that deliver lists of every change to any of a long list of articles to their relevant Wikiprojects, so monitoring is no excuse for destroying. Wnt (talk) 18:31, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• Support To quote WP:N, "This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page." Bundling together these short articles into a list is a more maintainable and useful solution than trying to maintain an enormous constellation of small, poorly-sourced articles, and it doesn't debar them from being split off individually again as more information comes to light. Choess (talk) 07:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
• Question: If we decide to redirect the village articles to Lists, in what cases will new articles be recreated? What is the minimal thing you all are looking for in an article? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:22, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Question - are there not wiki policy regarding stubs / tagging poorly sourced articles / nomination for deletion / prod / and so on ? I do not think the above idea is feasible. For example, there are thousands of village related article of India / Pakistan. And when we are talking of these as a policy, we cannot say these policy applies only to India/Pakistan and not to villages of other countries/continents - that is too much absurdity. Also the creators of articles are likely to challenge your redirects to list and a mere discussion on country specific thread cannot change Wikipedia policies. I think these is a wrong forum to discuss such an absurd change in policy. Also please note that not all India concerned editors follow these thread regularly. Further, as I find the ignition point of discussion was Naya Lahore - which in its present form looks okay. If someone, does not like any village related article than it better be discussed at AfD. I also concur to thoughts of many other veteran editors who have opposed this move. Further, Wiki is not the only web-paedia giving info. There are many other web-pedias giving much better info and coverage on Indian villages and internet users traffic is likely to go over there. And believe me, people searching for villages - generally look for village or place related specific article and not a redirect to a list - which is likely to be much less than a stub - and going to be watched by masters of wiki and therefore going to remain a property of few people. For example few days ago for my personal reasons I was looking for a village named Vaspada in Gujarat, whereas Wiki doesn't have an article on it I found this link [1] - which is excellent gives road direction, PIN code and all other info I was looking for. It was good of User:Warden to list some England relrated articles, which looks as bad as an article of Asia. Anyway, my question still remains - are we discussing some thing which is policy compliant and is this the right forum to frame out a new policy - my answer is NO!! -- Jethwarp (talk) 03:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I liked whatever that onefivenine.com link gave. But not sure if it fits in our WP:RS rules. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:14, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

None of Warden's examples are anywhere near as bad as some of the Indian articles. You're displaying a poor understanding of wikipedia Jethwarp. Virtually any verifiable settlement would be swiftly kept at AFD. Notability isn't the major concern here. Rather I'm arguing that the very scruffy unsourced/poorly sourced and written articles on villages would be best represented in a sourced tabled list which conveys the same if not more information which is monitored on one page instead of strewn across hundreds of pages.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

My question still remains unanswered - Are we discussing some thing which is policy compliant and is this the right forum to frame out a new policy??? How can such guidelines be fixed - as a country specific policy - this is discrimination - right!!! Also, if someone wants to create a new article - what is he supposed to do - create an article or create a redirect to list - huh!!! - This proposal is really absurd as I said earlier. Look some local chap created Naya Lahore with all the crab - someone noticed it - cleaned up gibberish - someone else came and added some reliable source - now we have a better article on that place - which will certainly be expanded over time - obviously by this time certain editors who have edited this article are watching the page - that is how Wikipedia expands!!! I am in Strong opposition to whatever is being discussed here. In fact I opine this is not even a forum discuss such policy decisions! @ Blofedl - I would like to avoid commenting on your statement that my understanding of wiki is poor - becoz I do not want to get carried away from topic. In fact, this is my last comment on this thread. Before I close - I would give my last comment before I close. Better create an Indian Village clean-up / Pakistan Village clean-up project, which can be joined by interested editors. The team can work on cleaning up/adding source/add co-ordinates/template/etc to the pages. Good Bye and Have a nice day!!! Jethwarp (talk) 06:20, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Inability to maintain should not be the reason to convert articles into redirects.--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 11:34, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

EDITING THE SPELLING IN THE url OF BABLOO PRITHVIRAJ

Dear Editor,

Hi.I am new to editing Wikipedia and have a few days ago edited misinformation on facts about my husband Prithiveeraj's page.there was misrepresentation of data starting with the spelling of his name,his birth place,his career graph & photos.I have edited and put in the correct information and i believe there cannot be a more reliable source other than the person's spouse.I am unable to edit the spelling in the url.Please help me in this.the confusion in wrong facts could also have arisen because there is another actor by the same name although with a different spelling.I would request you to let everybody be able to now access correct information about my husband Prithiveeraj alias Babloo

Thank you

Beena PrithiveerajBeenaprithiveeraj (talk) 12:27, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello, since anyone can create an account and claim to be anyone, we need more proof than just "I say so and I should know".

You can follow the instructions as WP:OTRS to be able to confirm your identity and then follow guidance to be able to place your "proofs" in a manner that will be within the bounds of what Wikipedia can accept as reliable sources. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Indian renaissance

What does the phrase "Indian renaissance" actually mean? It is used here. - Sitush (talk) 14:08, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Probably derived from Bengali renaissance and Hindu reform movements. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:22, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I retitled it. The term "Indian Renaissance" doesn't really apply here. The list, of course, needs an axe :) --regentspark (comment) 01:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks ... and don't I know it! - Sitush (talk) 01:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

See [2] & [3]. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

South Delhi Municipal Corporation

Another editor has created the article South Delhi Municipal Corporation. Should this be merged into South Delhi? Should new articles be created for North Delhi Municipal Corporation and East Delhi Municipal Corporation? Eastmain (talk • contribs) 22:44, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd say it's ok. South Delhi is a geographical entity while the corporation is a corporation. Needs proper sourcing, of course, but it could and should be a stand alone article (assuming it exists). --regentspark (comment) 22:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Savarkar

The Savarkar article has undergone some edits which at first look, seems contentious and probably needs to be reviewed by someone who has dealt with this article before. Would anyone take a look? Thanks, Ugog Nizdast (talk) 05:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Chaubey Mukta Prasad

Hello again, India experts! The above article makes many references to a source, "Hari Har Saran Lal" that is not clear. Is this a book? Can someone find the identifying information for this source? —Anne Delong (talk) 06:50, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: According to the note in the article's References section, the article is based on a Smriti Granth ("Memorial volume") for Chaubey Mukta Prasak and the cited references, including Hari Har Saran Lal, are lilely to be the contributors to that work. Unfortunately I have been unable to locate the work on Worldcat or any other online database, or figure out its publisher etc. I couldn't find any other sources on the subject either, so the article is unlikely to survive a prod or afd unless the main author Adhishsharma (talk · contribs) can help us find verifiable sources. Abecedare (talk) 14:40, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts, Abecedare. Do you think I should start an Afd, or do you want to do it? —Anne Delong (talk) 14:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Done. Abecedare (talk) 14:54, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:57, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Request for Comment (RfC)

Invitation to offer additional opinions at This Discussion Page re: Merger Proposal of Macchanu To Makardhwaja; Reason: "These seem to be covering the same person in separate versions (Indian ver. and southeast Asian ver.) of the same epic, but some believe them to be different person."

Additional comments welcome. Thank you. Please re-post as necessary. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 05:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Bhumihar

There is a lot of back-and-forth going on regarding the claimed Brahmin status of the Bhumihar community. One or more anons keep removing the claim from related articles and, to be fair to them, the only source being used appears to be Sahajanand Saraswati, who was himself apparently a Bhumihar. More sources are available in the Bhumihar article itself but many of those, too, look to be either not independent of the community or dependent on the view of Sarasawati. Alas, I can't see many of them in any detail.

Is the claim a major issue or just a bit of caste battling? Can we really rely on Saraswati, given his non-independent position. I suspect that he is not reliable but there is no point in trying to engage the IPs on the article talk pages because they never seem to leave edit summaries and come and go very quickly. - Sitush (talk) 14:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Mission Netaji

Does anyone besides me think there are some problems with this article? Also found Anuj Dhar, who created the organisation - his article tells us that " Dhar and Mission Netaji have been fighting to bring out the truth," about Subhas Chandra Bose. Dougweller (talk) 15:21, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

What kinda problem you mean? I see that barelinks are used as references. Is WP:Bare URLs the problem? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 16:43, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

NPOV, long lists of objectives and documents they are looking for, promotional, etc. And probably COI. Dougweller (talk) 16:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

There is a whole eco-system of related articles:

• Bhagwanji
• Disappearance of Subhas Chandra Bose
• India's Biggest Cover-up
• No Secrets (2013 book)
• Mission Netaji
• Anuj Dhar

that seem to be coatracks for discussing alternate theories of Bose's death. These theories are definitely not the accepted majority view amongst scholars, but I don't know yet where they lie along the minority view, fringe, whacko-conspiracy-theory spectrum. While the topic may be notable enough and worth covering, any suggestion on if/how these articles need to cleaned up or selectively merged? Abecedare (talk) 17:24, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Oh, dear. That is a complete mess. Probably should be half its present size, if that. It evangelises the subject. - Sitush (talk) 17:55, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup is necessary for sure. Just wanted to know what Dougweller actually wanted to point at. I have cleaned one section of it. That's my limit of reading RTI-stuff for the day. You guys carry on. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 18:29, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. If I've got it right, all but one were created by the same editor who is also the largest contributor to the one he didn't create. I see one of the books is now a redirect to the 2nd. Dougweller (talk) 19:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

They should be AfD'd ASAP. It use to be said about large mid-western state schools, "Pick any face in Hollywood, stand in the college quads for 15 minutes and you'll see some one with that face walk past you." Similarly, in a large country of 1 billion people, what are the chances that you'll run into someone who looks like Subhas Bose. Quite high. We can't have that many loony-bin Bose-related pages on Wikipedia. The server will break down. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:09, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I have pruned Anuj Dhar down to one sentence, which I believe is one sentence more than he is notable for. Can someone begin the AfD? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be better to simply merge the four Anuj Dhar related articles, namely Anuj Dhar, India's Biggest Cover-up, No Secrets (2013 book), Mission Netaji making sure that the resultant article is more focused on what has been written about the author, his books and his website, rather than a regurgitation of what is written in those books and website. Any volunteers for the task? Abecedare (talk) 04:27, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

One editor posted on the Talk page asking whether Anuj Dhar is reviewed by Guardian or Hindu. I have answered it there with the relevant links. Your inputs are appreciated. Thanks. -- XrieJetInfo (talk) 12:47, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Please don't distort the facts, I asked if their books had been reviewed, and clearly they were not. The author was merely mentioned in news stories or (chat) interviewed. Do you know how many millions of such mentions are made, and chats conducted, in Indian newspapers, including those of many many authors that have been deleted from Wikipedia. One such I remember was the retired physician in Pune who had written a book on something or other, much edited by Yogesh Khandke, ... a year ago, and much discussed on these pages. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:58, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

If the author is interviewed by one reliable source, why do you fail to understand he is notable? We are talking about the author's page here and not the book's page. And it is good to understand that it is not possible for all the books released in India to be reviewed by The Hindu or NY Times. They select a few and do the review. If you were right, how many author pages would we have on Wikipedia? The cited sources are enough for anyone neutral to understand the notability of the article subject. Blanking the page without discussion is not the solution. -- XrieJetInfo (talk) 13:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I didn't blank a page, I followed WP:VERIFY policy, "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed. Whether and how quickly this should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article. ... Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living people or existing groups, and do not move it to the talk page." I am perfectly within my right. When an article is so irredeemably third-rate and unsourced, you don't go around adding cn tages to every clause within every sentence, you remove the nonsense. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:11, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

In that case, I understand that I can source reliable third party references to the missing sections are restore the contents or rewrite them. And please note that this is a review of one of Dhar's books and that this is a reliable source. -- XrieJetInfo (talk) 13:24, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Not a book review, just a chat with the author. The article was garbage, I removed the garbage. If you can find WP:RS for the article, you are welcome to attempt to put them in; so far I haven't seen any. Netaji conspiracy theories have been around since a few hours after his death. He was a third rate military commander, his army was untrained and ineffective, and caved in after the British army was reinforced, and he died of third degree after his plane crashed in Taiwan. There are plenty of reliable sources, written by the best-known academic historians of the day, and published by the best-known internationally known publishers. I don't have time for inordinately vague and interminably long discussions. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

As long as a dispute exists in this matter, your views do not count. What you suggested are original thinking and research. That is where I have a difference of opinion. When there is a dispute in this matter (not the Wiki dispute), it deserves mention in the article too. When you say Bose was a third rate military man with an untrained force, you are bringing out what's in your head. That is not needed here. Are you forgetting that this is Wikipedia where ratings such as third-rate or untrained need not be mentioned? You are making it clear about what you think on Bose. Other editors may please note this. Also, the information currently added to the Anuj Dhar article is wrong. He is not a journalist now; he was. He authored 4 books and one translation - not two as written there. The mention of third degree burns or failed attempt need not be mentioned there. -- XrieJetInfo (talk) 16:40, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

What is in my head is impeccably sourced. Which of the statements above would you like to be sourced to scholarly authors and academic publishers. The Japanese who had realized that the INA couldn't fight long before they reached Kohima, were using INA, who were deathly scared of the British army Gurkhas (whose kukris took no prisoners), as propaganda to encourage the British Indian army's Indian infantrymen to desert. They failed miserably. There is no one that the British Army's Indian men despised more than the JIFs (Japan Indian Force, their name for the INA). Besides, it is not clear that the INA consisted of volunteers, given that many who refused to join, such as Sikhs and Gurkhas, were executed openly by the Japanese. All this is immaculately sourced. If people in India, have martial myths about ultimate losers, such as Bose, or nonexistent people such as the mutiny's Mangal Pandey, it their problem, not Wikipedia's, which owes final allegiance only to scholarly academic sources. End of discussion. 17:29, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Don't talk rubbish about national heroes. You don't know how influential Bose was. Try and learn what the Royal Indian Navy mutiny was and then talk about Bose and his infantrymen. Those series of events triggered the withdrawal of the British forces from India, acoording to the likes of many, including Clement Attlee. And by the way, national heroes such as Bose and Pandey must not be subjected to your personal feelings here. Those who were on the receiving end would never admit things. I don't know your nationality, but mine is Indian and I have only learnt to respect national heroes. I would like to invite the attention of all people here. This person is attempting to tarnish national heroes like Bose and Pandey by calling them loser and nonexistent. This fellow's intentions are clear. Please approach the subject with an open mind. -- XrieJetInfo (talk) 18:24, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

we hold no one as a saint. We reflect in the articles what the independent reliable sources say about the subject of the article. The string of articles under discussion here appear to be attempts to puff up a single individual and their pet fringe conspiracy theory. if we determine these fringe theories meet the threshold of having a stand alone article, we must present them as the fringe theories they are seen by the mainstream academics in the area. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

A source for my rubbish talk: McLynn, Frank (2011), The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942-45, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-17162-4, retrieved 6 November 2013

Quote 1: "For his offensive Mutaguchi used three divisions – the 15th, 31st and 33rd – together with some units of the Indian National Army, though these were not used in the front line but mainly in propaganda exercises to persuade Indian troops serving under Slim to desert or join the other side. (pp 295–296)".

Quote 2: "Bose’s Indian National Army had also been in action against his Indians and Gurkhas but had been roughly treated and almost annihilated; when the survivors tried to surrender, they tended to fall foul of the Gurkhas’ dreaded kukri. Yamamoto’s next move was to send a commando squad against Palel airfield, using 300 members of the INA, on the grounds that they could approach unnoticed. They achieved surprise but failed at the last moment, as did a second INA group" (pp 295–296)"

Quote 3: "Once Myingyan was open, 14th Corps engineers and pioneers began constructing wharves, bridges and new roads, and soon there was another supply line to Meiktila. The Japanese hit back by temporarily severing the communications with the Nyaungu bridgehead, but their attempts to retake Nyaungu and Chauk failed, mainly because Bose’s much-vaunted INA proved to have no stomach for a fight against their tougher compatriots. (p. 429)" Would you like more sources on the INA? Anyway, XrieJetInfo, I'm getting bored of this. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Which of those sources say Bose was a loser and third rate miliary commander? Which of those sources say Mangal Pandey was nonexistent? -- XrieJetInfo (talk) 18:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

NO, you're right he was a winner. He sent tens of thousands of INA men consisting mostly of Punjabi POWs and Tamil civilians, to their early deaths, all because of his bloated arrogance. After Bose got whupped by the British, every one in Bengal (especially its historians) conveniently forgot that Bose, who had a habit of eating well even in his Gandhian days, was, just a few years earlier, living in the lap of luxury in Berlin. While hundreds of thousands of Indians were in jail during the Quit India Movement, including Gandhi and Nehru, and while Gandhi starved, and his wife died for lack of treatment, Bose was throwing dinner parties:

Apart from the Free India Centre, Bose also had another rea-son to feel satisfied—even comfortable—in Berlin. After months of residing in a hotel, the Foreign Office procured a luxurious residence for him along with a butler, cook, gardener and an SS-chauffeured car. Emilie Schenkl moved in openly with him. The Germans, aware of the nature of their relationship, refrained from any involvement. The following year she gave birth to a daughter. The residence quickly became a gathering point for the Indian, Arab and Afghan communities in Berlin. Among them they included the ousted Prime Minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Moham-mad Amin al-Husayni, and the former Afghan Foreign Minister, Ghulam Siddiq Khan. The comfort, combined with the presence of Emilie as well as contact with important anti-British leaders, exiles and the Indian staff, ensured that Bose now began feeling more at 'home' in Berlin." (Hayes, Romain (2011), Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence and Propaganda 1941-1943, Oxford University Press, p. 67, ISBN 978-0-19-932739-3, retrieved 7 November 2013

Please don't make me throw up. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

You are already throwing up a lot. A person who fights a freedom war is hero in his land, not for his enemies. There are numerous Indian historians and world historians who attribute many success stories to Bose. Michael Edwardes wrote in The Last Years of British India that only one outstanding personality of that era took a different and violent path and in a sense, India owes more to him than to any other leader. You quoted the books of Sugata Bose in support of the death date. The same Sugata Bose has also written volumes praising Bose's heroics. He is also associated with the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata. I am surprised at your enthusiam to throw up more despite your own statement that you are bored talking this. Enemies might not say good things about opponents, friend! -- XrieJetInfo (talk) 20:35, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, RP, very last post. user: XJI, you forgot to notice that I had already removed Sugata Bose, whose book on SCB is not reliable, in this edit, whose edit summary you will do well to read twice. I did that long before you started this ad nauseam argument here. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Folks, this is all very interesting. But, we deal with sources and weight here, not with personal opinions about who was or was not whatever he or she was or was not. Do try to stick to what works best for Wikipedia. --regentspark (comment) 20:54, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/kanji-tiruvannamalai and Kanji, Tamil Nadu

Dear India experts: These two articles show the same spot on the map, but the descriptions don't match. Which is correct? Or are there two towns with the same name? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

They both are same - since there is already Kanji, Tamil Nadu no need for AfC - which duplicates existing page. Jethwarp (talk) 04:30, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Only 43,000 more to check... (Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/G13 rescue) —Anne Delong (talk) 13:01, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Tendulkar's 200th test match

Hello! Sachin Tendulkar's 200th and last test match scheduled on Nov 14-18 brings his retirement from all types of cricket forms. I am extremely bad with cricket and hence would request you all to take to editing the article, general cleanups and then add more about this match. Scheduled at home-ground Wankhede, the event is going to be a huge one and with that we can nominate it for WP:In the news to feature on main page. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:21, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. Can you drop a note at WT:CRIC too, where interested editors are also likely to hang around? Abecedare (talk) 13:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Have dropped same msg on IPL's noticeboard and that's sufficient i guess. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 14:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

• Started a section at West_Indian_cricket_team_in_India_in_2013–14#Tendulkar.27s_last_Test_Match. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 16:11, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Nomination posted at Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#Tendulkar_retires; with one successful "oppose" already. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:15, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Proudh Gandharva Pt. Vishwanathbuwa Jadhav

Dear India experts: The above article will soon be deleted as a stale draft. I can't tell if there is any reason to save it. Can anyone help? —Anne Delong (talk) 12:56, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

The subject is possibly notable enough to have an article on wikipedia (see example this), but the draft is going to need attention from someone with more knowledge about Indian classical music than I. Access to offline sources on the topic is also likely to be needed. By the way, the article if retained should be titled Vishwanathbuwa Jadhav. Sorry, couldn't be of more help. Abecedare (talk) 13:44, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, you have helped already - I had no idea that this was about music. Here's another one:

There are a lot of India-related drafts up for G13 deletion if nobody takes an interest in them. I have saved several that are about professors and scientists, since information about these is easier for me to understand. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Didn't find any independent reliable sources Radhe Maa. Just the usual blog posts, pretend-news sites, and tabloid fare. Unlikely to meet WP:GNG standard. Aside: Ironic that the article is written in better/more standard English than half our guru-related articles in mainspace. Abecedare (talk) 14:37, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

• @Anne Delong: I can edit Jadhav's article. Give me some time before you get it deleted. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 19:24, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Okay, Dharmadhyaksha, I will postpone its deletion. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:27, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Bollywood Hungama images

If I apply google search like Dharmadhyaksha or reverse image search, I can tag thousands of BH images for copyvio. As I said on talkpage of Dharmadhyaksha, I guess freelance photographers cover bollywood events and sell same images to different websites. So same image has multiple copyright owners. It is better to contact BH and sort out this issue, otherwise users like Dharmadhyaksha will keep googling and will keep tagging almost EVERY BH image for deletion and hundreds of articles will be without images. Abhi (talk) 14:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Turns out that not EVERY BH image is a copyvio. Many images out there which don't have others claiming copyrights. But thousands could be quite possible. You are welcome to tag such images and help cleanup. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 14:42, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Then it becomes futile exercise to upload BH images. As I said, I just casually searched one image and found this and this. Why not sort out this issue instead of playing some sort of game with users? Why not remove OTRS permission and blacklist BH? Thousands of copyvio is not a joke. Abhi (talk) 15:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

The BH tag always seemed really dubious to me. I assumed there was some more to the OTRS verification process than "This appears in BH and-so -we- are -assuming- it- falls- under -their- free-to -use -category-and- not -copyrights- owned-by -someone- else- but- just -happen- to- be -used-on- BH."-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:13, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

definitely, agree with Abhi, Bollywood Hungama, is a digital website, occupant their own Photographers. There are certainly no, sources that Bollywood Hungama, images are not copyright, many websites steal or buy images from them. Please, try to check Bollywood Hungama Official site, before claiming dubious renouncement about the site. An image surfing on the net, it can be stealing by UN-copyright users. Think about it. If an image is publishing on Bollywood Hungama, it is accurate to be permit as a copyright tag. ___Smauritius (talk) 16:25, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I learned about yesterday's launch of Rado watch by Hrithik on Twitter here, saw these images on Indicine site. Then I found that BH and Indicine has watermarked same image to claim copyrights.[4] [5] This is not stealing case. Photographers are selling same images to multiple sites. Dharmadhyaksha claims that not all BH images are copyvio. He don't know that BH blocks google search engine and not all the images on BH appears in google image search. Likewise, not all images on other sites show up in google image search. But in future they may show up and users like Dharmadhyaksha will tag those images for deletion. It is necessary to contact BH to make clear this copyrights issue. Let's not waste time of uploaders and reviewers. Abhi (talk) 17:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Copyright paranoia I'm afraid is a disease which affects even the most well-meaning of editors.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

• Well... in case of copyright we don't want any opinions on whether a certain case is a copyvio or not. We have always been playing safe and in case of dubious cases we straightaway remove the content. I have no soft corner for any certain set of images and am fine if all 6k+ images of Category:Files from Bollywood Hungama are nuked in a click. But let me point out that Wikipedias are not right forums for discussion of anything related to Commons. Commons being a low-traffic project you can always advertise the discussion happening there on various Wikipedias. But its really a waste of time to discuss here. I would suggest you start discussion at Commons:Village pump/Copyright and then provide link here for editors to join in. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 18:01, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

2001 Census of India

I just created a stub version of 2001 Census of India, based on two references. Those references contain a lot more detail than what I had time to include. If the topic interests you, please consider contributing to the article. 68.165.77.124 (talk) 00:29, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Trichur C. Narendran

Dear India experts: This article was declined at Afc and then copied into mainspace. It was tagged with multiple problems, but hasn't been improved. Is this person notable? If so, would someone like to fix up the tone and format of the article? —Anne Delong (talk) 22:00, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

ShopClues

Could need a couple of editors pruning the promo and sorting out the big bunch of URLs found in the Ref section with the subtitle Complaints. Happy editing. Sam Sailor ^Sing 10:37, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Krrish 3

Am I missing something? 2 users said that ONLY boxofficeindia.com is used as RS to quote box office collections of movies[6][7], meaning that absolutely every other source like Indian Express, CNN-IBN, India Today, Times of India etc is unreliable. Figures of boxofficeindia.com are in sharp contrast with main stream media figures and also with those given by Taran Adarsh and Komal Nahta. Diff is almost 50 cr for India. Is there some discussion which states that only boxofficeindia.com figures should be used in articles? Abhi (talk) 15:51, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Article on Jain-Hindu relations

The article on Jain-Hindu relations has recently been allowed to be recreated. Requesting comments on the draft User:The_Rahul_Jain/Jain-Hindu_relations2. Specifically, what improvements must be made before it can be moved to main article space? Please continue the discussion at Talk:Hinduism_and_Jainism. Rahul Jain (talk) 10:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I just left a comment at the article draft and then noticed that you have already created the mainspace article Hinduism and Jainism. Are there supposed to be two articles on this topic?! I am vaguely aware that there were some debates regarding previous drafts of this or related articles, but don't know the actual details of the issues involved. So can you or others provide a precis version for editors just joining in. Also pinging @RegentsPark: and @Fowler&fowler: who, I think, were previously involved. Abecedare (talk) 01:21, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

No, there isn't supposed to be two articles in the main article space. The draft is in the userspace, but the article, with minimal contents currently, is in the main namespace. Rahul Jain (talk) 02:24, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Your draft is one way i.e. it describes influence/derivation of Hinduism/Hindu texts into Jainism instead of any mutual relations. If at all your draft goes to mainspace, you may consider to change the title.--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 03:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The article's neutrality is questionable. It is about Jain views of Hinduism and Hindus, but hardly any information about vice versa. There was also a lot of conflict between the religions in middle ages where Hindu saints like Thirumangai Alvar, Appar etc. had conflicts with jainism and led to its decline. Some useful lniks: [8].

--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 14:23, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:COATRACK comes to mind. I'm becoming fed up of seeing the repeated reinstatement of this article, albeit the forms vary. The version in mainspace should be deleted (CSD, yet again) and TRJ should concentrate on improving the draft in their userspace. Just possibly, it may one day turn into something that is useful and encyclopaedic, although I'd encourage TRJ to contribute to a wider range of articles because I think that their near-obsession with seeing this thing happen is blinding them to how we work here. Is there even a single decent source that discusses the subject? Is it just a massive synthesis job using small snippets from numerous sources whose main focus is elsewhere? - Sitush (talk) 14:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

(xec)I think an article that explores the relationship between Hinduism and Jainism is not a bad idea. Making it neutral is what we've all got to do. I've suggested that RJ delete one of the two articles - perhaps the one in userspace - so that we don't end up with two versions of the same thing and then we can all move ahead with shaping the article itself. There do seem to be references (I have Glasenapp in front of me right now) that discuss the topic.--regentspark (comment) 14:33, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

We have things like Jainism and Sikhism, which is another waste of space. We're not in the business of comparative religion, which is in any event likely to be never-ending, eg: where is Jainism and Mormonism? An article that says "A believes in X" and "B believes in Y", when the only common ground is, for example, that both reject the Vedas, is reaslly just a trivial list. We have main articles for A & B and the reader can make their own mind up. - Sitush (talk) 14:48, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yes I am aware of OSE and DEADLINE ;) - Sitush (talk) 14:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. As far as i'm concerned, if RS explicitly talk about the close relationship between two religions, then perhaps so should we. I agree we don't want to end up with a plethora of articles like Christianity and Zen Buddhism but these two religions appear to be closely intertwined and RS do discuss the nature of that intertwining. Oh, and lest I forget - WP:OSE and WP:DEADLINE :) --regentspark (comment) 14:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll dig further on the Hindu-Jain one. As far as the Sikh-Jain one goes, it is as easy to say in each of the two main articles that , "as with A, another major religion with origins in India, B reject the Vedas". Everything that matters can be dealt with in the respective main articles and if that applies also to the H-J article then that is how we should do it. - Sitush (talk) 15:13, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

There is also the article Indian religions; currently in bad shape but clearly a notable subject with numerous books devoted to it. As for the Hinduism and Jainism article: as I noted here, I'd like to see better sources on the topic, rather than just discussion of Hinduism in Jain books and vice versa. Such sources may exist and I'll try to look into it once the "correct" location of the article is finalized. I am loath to contribute till that is resolved, lest all the edits and comments be lost if the page/draft is deleted under G7/U1 (as happened with all the reviewers' comments at AFC.) Abecedare (talk) 15:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

RegentsPark, we've also got Buddhism and Jainism. That, too, is poorly sourced and skewed by what I can only imagine to be Jain contributors. I think there might be a lot of merit in sorting out the Indian religions article that Abecedare has found. Then redirect all these pov-y comparative articles to that one. - Sitush (talk) 16:18, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I have copied the contents of User:The Rahul Jain/Jain-Hindu relations2 and its talk page on the main article Hinduism and Jainism, so that we essentially have one article to contribute to. I think this would first solve the problem of multiple article which Abecedare was referring. Rahul Jain (talk) 16:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Since RJ has copied the contents over to Hinduism and Jainism, why don't we rename the article to Jainism and Hinduism - seems more appropriate than the other way round; delete the userspace version; and the wait and see how the mainspace article evolves. Looking through the history of the article (which goes back more than 6 years!) it seems that the next step for removal would be an AfD anyway. Might as well give the article a fair shot before we head in that direction.--regentspark (comment) 17:00, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

@The Rahul Jain: I am a bit disappointed that with the DRV result being " Recreation of a NPOV properly sourced and balanced article on Hinduism and Jainism permitted, I think the clear consensus is that the material added by Rahul Jain isn't what we are looking for and that particular material is not to be added to this or any other article." that you went ahead without discussion or consensus to move your version into article space. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:15, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was OK, since the two articles were creating problem. This was I think both the view of RegentsPark and Abecedare. Feel free to undo my last edits, if its inappropriate. Rahul (talk) 17:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Agree with TRPoD. The recreation and then the copy of stuff from userspace is effectively gaming the system because it does not comply with the

DRV outcome. - Sitush (talk) 17:23, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I have self-reverted it. Rahul (talk) 17:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

So where are we then? Should we work on the userspace version - perhaps renaming it to Jainism and Hinduism (the current title is definitely not appropriate)? If everyone is agreed, I'll delete the mainspace version but we need to recognize that the article does need to go through the AfD process at some point if it is to be deleted again and we can't really keep it in userspace for ever unless people are actually working on it. --regentspark (comment) 17:34, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. If editors are willing to work in the userspace, I have no problem. Rahul (talk) 17:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

OK. I've deleted the mainspace article and moved the userspace one to [[User:The_Rahul_Jain/Jainism and Hinduism. The article is being incubated, which means that everyone has a shot at building/modifying/discussing it but it also means that it will go into mainspace once discussion and editing has died down. --regentspark (comment) 19:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Its been three days since the last discussion, and the article has become stagnant in user-space again. Can anyone at-least point out the major issues? (preferably in its talk page for consistency) Rahul (talk) 15:35, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

RJ, I suggest waiting a bit longer, perhaps another week. If you don't get any substantive comments by then, then move it to main space. Sitush, Abecedare, if you have the time I'm sure Rahul Jain would appreciate your comments. --regentspark (comment) 03:14, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Indian Astronomy

A User is pushing clear WP:FRINGE in the page, Indian Astronomy, while ignoring every other source, the discussion can be viewed at talk page, all opinions/contribution are welcomed. Justicejayant (talk) 04:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I have commented at that page, but in short: User:Atheneanis indeed right about the relative reliability of the sources being discussed (I can't yet say if you are correct about the content issue itself, but you'll need much better sources to argue the point). Abecedare (talk) 06:08, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Sources presented. And replied. Justicejayant (talk) 07:16, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Is Ayurveda a science?

I have started discussion on this topic on the talk page of Ayurveda. The link is this. As Ayurveda is considered as Indian medicine, some of the editors might be interested to comment on it. I would like to request experienced editors from India to throw light on this topic so that the article can be further edited with the help of guidance. Thanks. Have a nice day. --Abhijeet Safai (talk) 07:11, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Smarta tradition and Shankara

Hinduism#Denominations and History of Hinduism#Advaita Vedanta contain poorly or unrefrenced info on the Smarta tradition and Shankara:

Hinduism#Denominations:

However, academics categorize contemporary Hinduism into four major denominations: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism and Smartism.

The Western conception of what Hinduism is has been defined by the Smarta view; many Hindus, who may not understand or follow Advaita philosophy, in contemporary Hinduism, invariably follow the Shanmata belief worshiping many forms of God. One commentator, noting the influence of the Smarta tradition, remarked that although many Hindus may not strictly identify themselves as Smartas but, by adhering to Advaita Vedanta as a foundation for non-sectarianism, are indirect followers.[246]

History of Hinduism#Advaita Vedanta:

The introduction of Advaita Vedanta by Adi Shankara unified the theistic sects into a common framework of Shanmata system.

[Sankara] was a major cause in the revival and integration of Sanatana Dharma. Shankara's reform essentially eclipsed all earlier schools of Hindu philosophy and became the nucleus of the mediaeval traditions, including Smartism and Sant Mat lineages,[48] that lead up to the current religion.

they paved the way for Vedanta to be the dominant and most widely followed tradition among the schools of Hindu philosophy.

These quotes raise several questions:

• Are the Samrtins really a major denomination? How many Smartins are there in India?
• Is there a connection between the Smarta tradition and Neo-Vedanta? In that case, there is a nucleus of truth in seeing Shankara as forerunner of present-day Hindu-inclusivism (though I doubt Shankara himself was inclusivistic).
• Is there more literature available on the Smartins?

Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:03, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Birth Place of jayadeva

Jayadeva birth controversy . True history shouldn’t be modified by some one’s conspiracy. In free India we expect the truth should be transparent and same for all. So please intellectual of India/Universe discuss about the same and conclude the truth. If Bengal have no strong history , the true history of India should not be modified. Need more discussion as the article being edited many time. All Indian and International Historian are agree with the view of Odisha Origin with all evidence including his own writing form Geetgovind, Archaeological evidence, Evidence based on medieval manuscripts. But still some people claiming for Bengal by giving only evidence from a book just written in 1803. We can refer Jayadeva in Sikhism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tanmaya cs (talk • contribs) 13:05, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

The above simply isn't true. See Jayadeva birth controversy, Jayadeva and their associated talk pages. Jayadeva in Sikhism on the other hand is trying to give one view as the only view. It may be the correct view but it is disputed and as it stands the article violates NPOV. And although some editors have argued that we must accept the view as espoused by one state government, that's not the way we work. Dougweller (talk) 17:14, 14 November 2013 (UTC)