Talk:Nithyananda

Legal matters

I saw that this was removed:

There are also issues of conflicts between his followers and local communities over allegations of lewd remarks and ashrams encroaching on public property. At the same time, locals have attacked and vandalised his properties.

References

There's probably something harvestable from this; e.g. the existence of an alleged conspiracy against Nithyananda, vandalism against his organization's property, etc. This was removed per WP:AVOIDVICTIM but that doesn't actually appear to apply to much of this. The "lewd remarks" bit should go; lots of people say lewd things, and an allegation that someone said something lewd (even a religious person) isn't encyclopedic material. Organized opposition to Nithyananda's organisation certainly is encyclopedically noteworthy, however.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:53, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

PS: I constructed a long Google query [1] that weeds out of most of Nithyananda's self-published websites, and it has "real" news in it. Most of it seems to dwell on a controversy from a few years ago, though one or another may cover exoneration from charges. Actual court documents would be useful as high-quality though primary sources. The organisation claims to have recently set two world records (not sure for what; I think it was attendance at a Hindu religious event, or something like that) and to already have Guinness Book of World Records certificates for both, but without publication in the Guinness Book paper or online edition yet, pending further documentation. I don't really know much more about the organization yet. One of their people expressed a wish that the article not exist at all because it's a vandalism and WP:BLP defamation magnet, but the topic actually does appear to be WP:Notable or I would have just taken it to WP:AFD.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  05:55, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

PPS: Nithyananda's organisation is actually suing some Indian media outlets for defamation; I don't think any of them subject to such suits should be treated as reliable sources in this article, pending case outcomes. I'm not sure which ones they are though, nor how to verify that they are (I don't know a thing about finding Indian court records). I get the impression that many of the papers listed at List of newspapers of India are not in fact reliable publications but basically print what they're paid to. I'm not sure how we're supposed to handle this situation. One of our WP:Systemic bias problems is treating "news" as equivalent across cultures when it isn't. We have a double-edged problem here: India's news appears unusually likely to print scandal while ignoring actual noteworthy stuff (e.g. multiple world records), while also being published in a country that is almost overwhelmingly of the same religion and apt to give unusual credence to claims of the paranormal if they fit the expectations of that faith. Of the news my Google search pulled up, the only one I'm immediately apt to trust is the single BBC News hit, but it's years old and just reporting on the beginning of the controversy that now appears to be resolved.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  06:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Update: I'm told that at least one defamation case (filed by Nithyanada against someone else) has concluded in Nithyanada's favor in the United States, and one or more in India, though I don't presently have any details. This would probably have to be pulled from court records websites; I'm skeptical there's been any press coverage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  16:04, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Legal cases

What I've found of so far:

• Life Bliss Foundation v. Samaya TV, RSM Broadcasters Private Limited, Ranganath Bharadwaj and AV Kalavathi Bharadwaj (case no. CIVRS 1410615, Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino. According to Nithyananda's Facebook page, this was a US$5mil judgement in favour of his Life Bliss Foundation against these media companies and journalists for defamatory "fake news". The Facebook stuff says something about "conspiracy", but that seems off; conspiracy is a criminal charge and this was a civil case. Judging from this court page the proper case number is actually RS1410615, RS being the jurisdiction code for Rancho Cucamonga, an "CIV" just indicating it's a civil case. They seem to want money for the case documents ($0.50 per page, $50 max per document), so these might have to be obtained via a FoIA demand to get the documents, and that's more work than I'm willing to put in for this article.
• There seems to be some connection to Indian and American prosecutions of someone named Vinay K. Bharadwaj, and the use of him as a witness against Nithyananda in one proceeding or another (a case filed in 2010 by one Lenin Karuppan against Nithyanada; I think this may be, or relate to, the stuff the BBC news picked up back then). Bharadwaj was apparently deported from the US and is said to be in prison in India. Tthe vague reference for the Indian legal action is "the Hon'ble Court of the Principal Senior Civil Judge & CJM at Mysuru on October 16, 2017". I have no idea how to look up such a thing in Indian legal resources. No details were provided on US case(s) involving Bharadwaj.
• One case number is CIV RS1013793, presumably also San Bernardino, but I don't know if this is case against Bharadwaj, or one by Bharadwaj against Nithyananda. Someone from Nithyananda's organisation says this resulted in about a half-million-dollar fine or judgement against Bharadwaj for false claims of sexual misconduct. Nithyananda's FB post says Bharadwaj absconded, though also that he was deported, so it's unclear other than that he didn't pay (not like the average Indian emigré has $500K laying around anyway).
• Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam of Columbus against Arathi S. Rao and maybe other parties; case no. 2:13-CV-00526, court unknown, [city of] Delaware, Ohio. Someone from Nithyananda's organisation says this resulted in another approx. half-million-dollar fine or judgement, against Rao, for false claims of sexual assault.
• A case (title and date unknown) by Nithyananda and/or one of his organisations in "the XI Metropolitan Court, Saidapet Chennai", is said to be still ongoing as of December 2017, and focused on what Nithyananda describes as a "case of extortion, blackmailing, cheating and conspiracy". I have no idea how that's actually described in the legal documents, i.e. what damages or charges are claimed, or whether it's a civil lawsuit brought by Nithyananda, or a criminal prosecution on his behalf; a comment toward the bottom of the 10 December Facebook post suggests the latter.
• Nithyananda claims "On December 7, 2017, the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India also gave a landmark judgment coming down heavily on the deliberate suppression of critical evidence against the conspirators Lenin Karuppan, the false rape victim [Arathi Rao] and false witness Vinay Bharadwaj and in favor of HH Paramahamsa Nithyananda." That would seem to be something one could look up. He says that the case also showed that the alleged sexual partner or victim had various STDs during the time of her alleged contact with him while Nithyanada does/did not, that this person recanted her own testimony in 2009, that the dates and locations of alleged incidents are inconsistent, and that Nithyananda isn't capable of sex.

I have no idea at this point what the court documents actually state, or how all of these things fit into a coherent timeline, but there appear to be connections between the cases and the parties in them.

I'm told that http://NithyanandaTruth.org has some of the case document scanned, but I have not gone looking for them. I'm disinclined to do so, since it's a lot of work about a topic I have no interest in other than than our page on it be neutral and not subject to editwarring bouts of vandalism/defamation by haters and shameless promotionalism by the subject's disciples.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:18, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Rape trial

Some details about Nithyananda's ongoing rape trial can be found here: https://services.ecourts.gov.in/ecourtindia_v6/ using the CRN: KARN010013312014

It says the next court date is June 28th. They're waiting for one of the accused (Reddy) to show up from the United States to start the trial.

————Ryanmeadows (talk) 04:00, 22 June 2018 (UTC)————

Here is a link to the 75 page court document about this case: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nodpnl_iVwHLJfXqEXo1mHn_sqHHLLkY/view

————Ryanmeadows (talk) 04:15, 22 June 2018 (UTC)————

Next hearing date is July 16th.

From the court site: https://i.imgur.com/XDV8kXC.png

It basically says that Reddy's bailbonds are now forfeited and a separate criminal case is registered against him & his surety (the one responsible for bringing him to court) because he hasn't shown up to court yet. The trial will begin without him.

————Ryanmeadows (talk) 13:01, 28 June 2018 (UTC)————

News source about the June 28th hearing: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/rape-case-against-nithyananda-cid-asked-prepare-two-chargesheets-83847

____Ryanmeadows (talk) 21:52, 28 June 2018 (UTC)_____

Hearings are over and now the case has moved to the trial stage of "Evidence Criminal". Two of the court witnesses (CW1 & CW2) have been summoned by the court and their accusations/testimony will get to be heard. Next court date is scheduled for August 8th 2018. Summary from the court site: https://i.imgur.com/sGXhdBa.png

_____Ryanmeadows (talk) 11:58, 16 July 2018 (UTC)_____

<redacted>

Can thenewsminute be considered a legitimate source? The "history" between nithyananda and DhanyaRajendaran(co-founder and managing editor) is well known locally and starts even before she founded the new portal. For eg: Reported: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/impotency-having-consensual-sex-nithyananda-changes-tune-rape-case-78116 Actual court case: http://judgmenthck.kar.nic.in/judgmentsdsp/handle/123456789/216479 http://judgmenthck.kar.nic.in/judgmentsdsp/bitstream/123456789/216479/1/CRLRP211-18-16-05-2018.pdf Please look at pages 30, 31, 32. The attorney was making an argument on a very specific aspect of "consent" to rebuke a claim on "fraud" but the media reported that the plea defacto was changed to "consensual". If the reviewers are interested I can report atleast a dozen such comparisons.

Many other papers carried this as-is (with minor edits). Those who are familiar with workings of media and journalists in India will recognize this problem. FYI, Trust in media by Indians is lower than trust in government(yes, I didn't mis-type). Its even lower on journalists. One of the reviewers can post the results of one of such study.

This level of distrust in India on media is not without reason. Hence, urging the reviewers to relook at the standards. And also I want to bring up why DNAIndia is not viable but TimesOfIndia is ? The article on DNAIndia which is in favor of Nithyananda is quoted to have been sourced from ANI and is in line with the arguments in the case documents. If one goes through the litigations in the cases it all boils down to when the evidence by defense be introduced.

https://satyavijayi.com/from-kathua-to-kanchi-how-the-secular-police-prosecution-media-nexus-twists-the-arms-of-the-courts/ This article also has information on "herpes".

Before dismissing the DNA article please compare with the case documents. Event the one posted by me above is enough to give you the understanding. Since, the content is now under discretionary review process, reviewers have no choice but to go through the cases else the result could be arbitrary and damaging to the living person. Akhilkodali (talk) 21:20, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Earlier I collected various sources from the papers Abecedare mentioned (this included Times of India). I've not sorted them out yet, but they mention no convinction (thus, we should make sure the information is presented with the uncertainty details that are widely reported). I've found a few about the impotency claim (and a few about refusal to undertake the test) and a recent one with the STD claim mention ([2]). I think that we can indeed use Times of India as a source. —PaleoNeonate – 21:43, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Another thing I want to point out is the credibility of reporting my Indian media on court proceedings. The problem has become so endemic many judges began to openly criticize media on this. And some have used humor ... for eg TimesOfIndia(TOI) is often called TOIlet paper.

In the recent past courts stopped media from reporting the daily proceedings and statements in court. Using Indian media for understanding ongoing cases is not the best idea due to inherent legal constraints imposed on them.

There have been a lot of instances where judges have in strong words critized court reporters for misrepresenting but never gave any official order as they always protect media freedom. This has been true in almost all court cases of Nithyananda. Hence, just relying on media reporting without reading judgements is a bad idea

1. This judge is a media darling as he pushed the limits of media freedom, even he was ticked with poor court reporting https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/justice-markandey-katju-clarifies/article2629257.ece
2. https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/time-to-take-stock-of-irresponsible-legal-reporting
3. https://www.legallyindia.com/views/entry/legal-journalism-the-indian-context
4. https://cpj.org/2017/05/indias-supreme-court-bans-reporting-judges-stateme.php — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilkodali (talk • contribs) 22:54, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

some reporting on STD and potency https://www.newskarnataka.com/bangalore/swami-nithyananda-not-just-a-potency-test Akhilkodali (talk) 22:27, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

And old news source, Nithyananda was put in jail without a victim https://www.telegraphindia.com/1120708/jsp/7days/story_15703551.jsp --- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilkodali (talk • contribs) 23:08, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

"convicted him" .. how did the reviewers come to that conclusion ? Akhilkodali (talk) 14:57, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Didn't happen (neither the conviction, nor anyone concluding that from a review of the sources). Some drive-by editor just inserted it without sources. I've removed it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:52, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Found another article backing DnaIndia which was ignored. https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/medical-tests-exonerate-nithyananda-of-rape-charge-114101500643_1.html and also found times article https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/CID-submits-potency-test-report-to-court/articleshow/45289335.cms Akhilkodali (talk) 03:58, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

SMcCandlish Going by above 2 media reports, information about STDs should be back in the article. Times article backs up Business standard (sourced from ANI) independently.

From today's court hearing: https://i.imgur.com/AUMjvUS.png Next court date is August 16th 2018.

Ryanmeadows (talk) 12:09, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

As of today Accused #1 (Nithyananda) & Accused #3 were issued "non-bailable warrants" for not appearing in court.

You can find details about Nithyananda's ongoing rape trial here: https://services.ecourts.gov.in/ecourtindia_v5.1/ using the CRN: KARN010013312014 (scroll down to the latest court date and click the link for details).

Ryanmeadows (talk) 15:27, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Sex tape

In November 2017 a Delhi forensic lab confirmed that it was Nithyananda in the "sex video". Sources:[3][4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

In May of 2010 a Hyderbad forensic lab confirmed that it was Nithyananda in the "sex video." Sources: [10]

In 2010 a Delhi forensic lab confirmed that Ranjitha & Nithyananda were both in the "sex video". Sources: [11]

It seems as if the only ones who're adamant that the video is morphed/doctored is Nithyananda and his devotees.

_____Ryanmeadows (talk) 20:26, 2 July 2018 (UTC)_____

@Ryanmeadows the news sources cannot be considered as primary source. Since it CB CID never issued any statement to that effect. The burden of proof has to be backed up by court order. If the forensic lab issued such a statement why would the court order an inquiry on the "tape". If the new sources are taken to be valid then the counter news sources source should be taken to be valid as well.

In a situation where there are sources on both sides, then only the court order becomes a valid primary source.Akhilkodali (talk) 07:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, the DNAIndia source (which doesn't look particularly reliable) mentioned in the section above says – without indicating where they got this from – that some company has already taken credit for faking the video. If we had more reliable info on that (e.g. their actual statement that they did so, for starters), that might be something to go on.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:18, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

SMcCandlish In DNAIndia, the company didnot take responsibility but the COO was the whistle blower on its operation which resulted in another series of ligations between the company and him. He spoke about using blackmail as a business procedure for raising revenue. You will find most of the content in Tamil, there are very few english versions. I advise you get a neutral Tamil expert.

1. http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2013/sep/03/Channel-ordered-to-apologise-to-Ranjitha-512987.html
2. http://www.nithyananda.org/news/aaj-tak-tenders-public-apology-paramahamsa-nithyananda-airing-defamatory-news-item
3. http://hinduismnow.org/blog/2016/02/17/nithyananda-video-is-a-fake-sun-tv-coo-hansraj-saxena-confesses/

Akhilkodali (talk) 23:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

As noted in a thread below, someone removed the entire section about the sex-tape controversy, because it cited nothing but primary sources (primary being a class of sources, those written by people too close to the subject and without editorial oversight by independent parties like professional editors at newspapers or at book or journal publishers; some other commenters on this talk page have used the phrase "primary sources" to mean "main sources" or "substantial sources" and that is not what this term means on Wikipedia). The section needs to be restored with reliable secondary sources. There are a number of news sources that turn up quickly [12], but may of these pre-date the claim that someone confessed to having faked the video. Regardless what the veracity of the video is, the controversy in the Indian press is real, so it should be neutrally documented in the article, without any suppositions, viewpoint-pushing, citing of primary sources (other than perhaps to quote a denial from Nithyananda), or other shenanigans.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:21, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

• This is the section as it stood when deleted due to poor sources. There are better sources now. At least one of the source cited for the "A death in the Ashram" mentions the controversy in general terms, and says that it was all over the news, so we know there are news sources. Scattered below are at least a few that mention it, and New Indian Express above is a reliable source. I'm skeptical about Hinduism Now except as a backup source; it's more of a topical blog. Nithyananda.org is obviously an impermissible primary source. We figured out below that DNAIndia.com is a tertiary click-bait publisher, not real news. But there is other real news. So, this section can be reconstructed in better wording and with better sources. More to the point, it should be because the controversy and its possible resolution already are a significant part of the public background of our article subject, even if he and his people wish it weren't so. It's better to cover the kerfuffle, and the dubiousness of the allegations behind it, than pretended it doesn't exist, or anyone aware of the matter will think the article is bogus and hiding things.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:12, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

A significant aspect of this story was multi-party attacks on his main ashram in India. That used to be in the article, too, but go whitewashed out in one editwar or another.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:15, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Death at the Ashram

Moved to #A death at the ashram

Birthday inconsistencies

Resolved

 – Marking this resolved. The actually reliable sources have been used to indicate in the article that birthdate is uncertain, without veering into every possible variant.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:13, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Change "Born 1 January 1978 (age 40)" to Unknown?

Change Category:1978 births to Category:Year of birth missing (living people)? and Category:Date_of_birth_missing_(living_people)?

Hi. This is in regard to the birth date on the Swami_Nithyananda wiki page. It says he was born on "1 January 1978 (age 40)". How has Wikipedia determined this as factually accurate? There is much controversy regarding his actual birth date and age. Only he and his devotees claim he is 40 (or recently 41) and was born on 1 January 1978 (or recently January 9th), but many reliable sources including judgements from the High Court of Karnataka in Banagalore claim different ages for this man...

1. The first ever Indian news report about him from 2002 claimed he was 27, making him 42 or 43 today. http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2002/12/30/stories/2002123001320200.htm

2. In 2010 his US B1/B2 VISA passports were "cancelled pursuant to with prejudice" which indicated his birth date as March 13 1977 on them. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/59977/nithyananda-may-have-forged-birth.html https://image.ibb.co/cbx1Um/img.jpg

3. On December 7th of 2017 a reliable news source indicated he was 44-years-old. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/no-more-delays-sc-asks-trial-court-frame-charges-against-nithyananda-72793

4. In Judgement documents from the High Court of Karnataka at Bangalore it indicates his age was 34 in February of 2013, making him 38 or 39 today. http://judgmenthck.kar.nic.in/judgments/bitstream/123456789/864720/1/CRLP3253-12-25-02-2013.pdf http://judgmenthck.kar.nic.in/judgments/bitstream/123456789/864767/1/CRLP2973-12-25-02-2013.pdf

5. Even on his own website he has a .doc file linked of one of the court judgements: www.nithyananda.org/sites/default/files/news/PCR%20defamation%20suvarna.doc https://i.imgur.com/dZwgVbA.png which says he is formerly known as Tiru Rajashekaran (is this his birth name?) and was age 34 in Feb/2013.

6. Recently on Facebook (January 9th) he claimed to have celebrated his 41st Jayanthi(Birthday). "Come and be part of the grand celebration of Paramahamsa Nithyananda’s 41st birthday, the day when the Avatar landed." https://www.facebook.com/events/168428470595575/

Is he 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44? or?

Ryanmeadows (talk) 01:05, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Can we get a consensus on what should be done here in regards to this issue? I'm new to Wikipedia so please excuse me if I haven't done anything correctly. Still learning. Ryanmeadows (talk) 05:57, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. I'm not inclined to make the change you proposed right now, but I think your comments above, which I take to be in good faith, are enough to place a maintenance tag on the date of birth, which I have done. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 18:29, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm still looking into finding out his actual birth date but keep finding more discrepancies...

7. On the bottom left of his old website (now archived) where it says "News Articles" he links to the article that says he was 27 in 2002: https://web.archive.org/web/20031012130752/http://www.swamisworld.com:80/ Why would he not correct the journalist if they are wrong about his age being 27 in 2002?

8. On another archived site of his it talks about him celebrating his 27th Jayanthi (birthday) on January 1st 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/20031217094110/http://www.dhyanapeetam.org:80/jayanthi.asp How can he be 27 in 2002 & 2004!?

This is all very odd.

There seems to be a lot of deceptive things that don't make sense or add up when it comes to his age & birth date.

Ryanmeadows (talk) 17:06, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

When ostensibly reliable sources conflict, we "teach the controversy" and tell the readers that the sources conflict. We need not delve into details, and just provide a birth year range and an age range, with the various conflicting sources cited. This kind of discrepancy isn't uncommon for non-Western subjects, due to poor record-keeping and poor records access in various countries (not to mention poor standards of journalism fact-checking in the same countries – the Indian press in paticular is notorious for printing whatever they're paid to print).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:26, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

This is why I also included links to his own past & present websites which birthday inconsistencies exist on too.

Ryanmeadows (talk) 12:53, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Sure. I'm just saying that nothing like "38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44" should appear in our article, nor any similar list of years.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:14, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

One ("Nithyananda may have forged birth documents". Deccan Herald. 24 March 2010.) seems to indicate that multiple of the conflicting documents agree that he was born in Tiruvannamalai, in Tamil Nadu. So, I guess that's something. His parents' names, Arunachalam (father) and Lokanayaki (mother) might also be uncontroversial; it just seems to be the dates. However, the Deccan Herald piece actually appears to indicate that the date stuff amounts to another encyclopedically relevant controversy about this guy, which could actually subject him to prosecution, and that his US visa was cancelled "with prejudice" in 2007 as a result of these birthdate shenanigans. The US visa birth date was 13 March 1977. The Karnataka High Court documents gave a date of 1 January 1978, a date is repeated in a (non-neutral) biography. The DH article doesn't cover the other conflicting birthdate claims.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:42, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

How was it concluded both father and mother are dead ? Akhilkodali (talk) 04:28, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Source cited has that info. That's why the source was cited.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:44, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

The source is somewhat ambiguous since the 'late' in "(late) Sri Arunachalam and Smt Lokanayaki" may apply to both the parents, or just the father. Abecedare (talk) 06:26, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Hmm. Yeah, I can see that. I'll just remove that part, and leave the names.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:19, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

I'll leave it to your judgement since I can only give you the primary source Akhilkodali (talk) 14:08, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Which one? What does it indicate? Primary sources can sometimes be used for non-controversial background facts.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:19, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Good BLP writing

Since I have railed against BLP violations above, I would also like to commend the opposite. See this newspaper article headlined, "Nithyananda may have forged birth documents". The article itself qualifies as a reliable source, but instead of aping its headline or presentation, its factual claims are rendered as Sources conflict as to his birth date – even in official documents provided by Nithyananda. His passport and a 2003 US visitor visa gave a date of 13 March 1977, while 2010 Karnataka High Court documents showed a date of 1 January 1978 on the wikipedia page. That is good sober writing and what I meant by being conservative on what/how to present information from a source. Good job, User:SMcCandlish! Abecedare (talk) 06:24, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

All the links , especially from nithyananda truth clearly show that everything that you are trying to show is wrong and not true Saranka04 (talk) 11:32, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Article protection?

Resolved

 – Article now has fairly long-term WP:Semi-protection which is likely sufficient.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:15, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

this article should be protected as there are potentially defaming comments here and there. Unless proved and punished by court, Indian law says, no one is guilty (171.49.208.206 (talk) 07:06, 18 June 2018 (UTC))

This isn't a article published on the wikipedia page. Only those who know about the Talk page can see it. What defaming comments are you talking about? Every different age mentioned I've cited with a link that corresponds to it. Ryanmeadows (talk) 03:36, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

It wasn't a reply to you, just someone not introducing a new section heading (fixed). This article does fairly frequently see potentially defamatory edits (from both pro- and con-Nithyananda sides), as I've noted above, and it has been protected before.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:26, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Priyabrata11's attempted changes

A WP:SPA associated with Nithyananda's organisation reverted some sourced information on the basis that the sources aren't good enough. The relevant part of the edit summary was "The rape charges and a woman's false claims were inserted into the page by certain news sources without citing a copy of court's verdict or a copy of first information report from police (FIR)." There may be a valid point in there somewhere. While the material has been restored, since there are some sources, the unreliability of Indian mass-media could be addressed by chasing down some primary sources from courts and agencies. This will likely require someone who knows the ins and outs of doing Indian legal research.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:49, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Some primary sources from NithyanandaTruth.org (or whatever) were added then reverted [13]. Some of these might be usable for WP:ABOUTSELF purposes, as to what the Nithyananda's or his organisation's responses and statements are. I've not looked over them in detail; it's possible they provide some legal cite information that might be useful for tracking down actual case paperwork.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:14, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

@Priyabrata11: You have tried to make a remove reliably sourced information. You have been reverted by two different editors besides SMcCandlish, and yet your edit responses consist of personal attacks and failures to assume good faith from specifically SMcCandlish.

Before you make any further changes to the article, you need to explain why:

• The sources cited for the rape trial section or suspicious death section are not reliable (which requires more than insinuations and attacks on other people, you need to present independent sources that show why those sources are wrong or else show how those sources fail our guidelines).
• Why material you're trying to add is due weight, proving the independents of the sources you're citing. Court documents are WP:PRIMARY sources, which we do not use.

Ian.thomson (talk) 20:20, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

And I see that he's been blocked for 24 hours. @Priyabrata11: when you return, you need to address these issues before making any further edits or you will just be blocked again. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:21, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

We actually can use primary sources for various things, and having some for these cases would be of value, since the Indian press are full of nonsense too much of the time (i.e. are unreliable primary sources themselves), and there's virtually no secondary coverage outside India. Anyway, it's a routine practice to cite actual case documents on legal matters at WP, and we even have templates for it. We just can't do any analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis based on them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:40, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The rape trial is ongoing. It's verdict has yet to be decided. Details about it can be found here: https://services.ecourts.gov.in/ecourtindia_v5.1/ (may have to refresh several times) using the CRN: KARN010013312014

The next court date is June 28th. They're waiting for one of the accused to show up from the U.S. to start the trial.

Image Screenshots of what you'll see on the court site: [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]

I believe the primary source of the Indian media articles I linked to comes from the ecourts.gov.in website and the 75-page Interim Order (court document) about this case which can be found here: https://services.ecourts.gov.in/ecourtindia_v5.1/cases/display_pdf.php?filename=/orders/2014/206100000862014_2.pdf&caseno=S.C./86/2014&cCode=1&appFlag=&normal_v=1 (it seems as if you have to first go to the ecourts.gov site above and put in the CRN to access the pdf file within the page, it can't be linked to independently)

The court document goes over what Nithyananda and others are alleged to have done in detail. It's in English so it's fairly easy to understand.

Here it is again if the link doesn't load: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nodpnl_iVwHLJfXqEXo1mHn_sqHHLLkY/view Ryanmeadows (talk) 06:09, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

The services.ecourts.gov.in link above produces only "Orders is not uploaded for case number S.C./86/2014".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:51, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

While Priyabrata11 got indeffed on WP:CIR grounds, the ANI thread [22] seems (if I'm reading it correctly) to indicate some skepticism about whether everything presently appearing in the "Controversies" section is WP:DUE. Dlohcierekim may be able to elaborate. Honestly, I don't spend enough time working on WP:BLPs that involve legal claims (pro or con) to be certain. I've removed some crap like "his co-conspirators" and "suspicious death" and "rose to infamy", but that's basic WP:NPOV cleanup.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:29, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

The death section

Moved to #A death at the ashram

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This thread is obsolete. Police primary sourcing about 2014 claims is irrelevant when secondary sources tell us the court has opened a 2018 inquest about police handling of the case and evidence.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:58, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

---

The death section is very misleading. Police and the medical examiner have ruled out any foul. "A death at the ashram The Karnataka High Court started questioning the Bidadi police in May of 2018 and asked them to file an affidavit regarding the investigation of the death of Sangeetha Arjunan (alias Ma Nithya Turiyateetananda), a 24-year-old Nithyananda disciple who died under mysterious circumstances in December of 2014 at Nithyananda's ashram. The victim's mother Jansi Rani believes foul play and torture resulted in the death of her daughter, not a heart attack as Nithyananda and his devotees claim.[22][23][24][25]"

The references cited from thenewsminute amount to mere allegation The allegation is not backed up by any court document According to police and medical examiners report there was no foul play. Since police closed the investigation ther was no court case. http://nithyanandatruth.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sangeetha-case-closure-book.pdf There is no active investigation either. Keeping this section in the absence of any un-ambiguous primary sources (allegation or request for investigations don't meet the standard) would not meet the burden of proof. Akhilkodali (talk) 07:00, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Akhilkodali: New posts go at the bottom of the thread, not in the middle of someone else's post. I've fixed that. Next, I'm just going to quote Ian.thompson, above, though with some reformatting: Before you make any further changes to the article, you need to explain why:

• The sources cited for the rape trial section or suspicious death section are not reliable (which requires more than insinuations and attacks on other people, you need to present independent sources that show why those sources are wrong or else show how those sources fail our guidelines).
• Why material you're trying to add is due weight, proving the independence of the sources you're citing. Court documents are WP:PRIMARY sources

We can use court documents, cautiously, to fill in some missing details, but they are not particularly reliable. They're basically some lawyers' claims, or some judge's opinion about what lawyers have said, or whatever. Even when they're a final ruling after a jury trial, they often require expert interpretation to understand their exact meaning, and we get that from secondary reliable sources, only.

What can probably be done here is look over the court documents, if we have access to them directly, and see if they unmistakably and directly contradict the earlier news material. News is often also primary sourcing (too close to the events it is reporting on, and depending on a journalist's non-expert assumptions about what they've been told by various interviewees, or just making up their own mind what the truth is, plus often injecting bombastic exaggerations). And the Indian press are mostly notorious for printing nonsense, often nonsense they've been paid to print. So, for an article like this, we do have a responsibility to apply due diligence in assessing these claims.

However, just yelling that everything in the press is all lies and that some court documents we don't have will prove some unassailable truth is not doing Wikipedia article research, it's just non-neutral pushing of a particular point of view, without anything anyone here can verify. In a circumstance like that, if all we have is press coverage, we're probably going to use the press coverage.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:13, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: thanks for fixing my edit. I was trying to draw the anomaly on reporting on this death issue.

1. http://nithyanandatruth.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sangeetha-case-closure-book.pdf has both police closure report and medical examiner report
2. The authenticity of the report can be easily verified by anyone using the provisions of Right to Information Act (similar to FoIA) for a nominal fee (should be less than $2 for the whole report)
3. The closure report rules out any foul play.
4. Since there is no case to be made, a case was never made. Hence no court case documents (which would have been available online)
5. As you would have seen with other content only the scandalous content gets reported. Hence, the closure report never got reported.
6. Wouldn't having this section where incomplete media report is the basis be tantamount to misleading at the least ?

Is there a reason this section can continue to remain ? Akhilkodali (talk) 19:03, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you, but someone below is already objecting that scans being hosted at NithyanadaTruth.org aren't reliable sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:11, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Should the death section continue to remain given there is no interest is verifying the police and medical examiners report using RightToInformation Act (or anyother means) ? Incomplete data in this case is prejudicial to the living person. I suggest this subsection be moved to talk out of the main and put back once it's validated completely.

Akhilkodali (talk) 14:29, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest raising the question at WP:BLPN. We've already deleted an entire controversy section (and that action may have gone too far), so this is starting to look like whitewashing. The well-reported fact that someone died on-premises is an actual matter of public controversy about Nithyananda and his organization, regardless what the cause of death was. Stuff like "police and medical examiners report" are primary sourcing and not what Wikipedia would rely on anyway, so their absence from this article is completely meaningless.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:30, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Posting this here as per User:SMcCandlish's suggestion. The death section is prejudicial to the living person. As a death occurred (it was reported by media) and police and medical examiner's ruled out any foul play (media didnot report or contest, complete silence on content). The closure report submitted by authorities have been share by the organization. That report can be easily verified by using RightToInformation. It's a case of primary source and no secondary source. The secondary source coverage is incomplete. And the way it is worded indicates a bias against the person. Looking at the history of reporting of media in various portions of this page is it fair to leave this section ? Akhilkodali (talk) 14:30, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Try making some specific wording-change suggestions. It may be true that the press coverage is incomplete right now; that's just a real-world fact we have to work within. It's not prejudicial to cover the fact that a controversy erupted, that a claim of wrongdoing was made, and that it was denied. The controversy remains unresolved, for Wikipedia purpose, until reliable sources secondary sources tell us otherwise (probably high-quality newspapers). I know this kind of thing can be frustrating, but it is how it is. If you think some of the wording is non-neutral, try to address that some "before and after" revision ideas.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:53, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

No information of his achievements, goals, purposes, his biography

This article appears to me if not the most biased article I have ever seen on Wikipedia.

This man have achieved so man good things, yet nothing of his history, biography, achievements, 3 Guinness world records, nothing of his teachings, have been mentioned on this page.

As the main point are court cases, which are just one by one defeated in courts, so please see documents as published here: http://nithyanandatruth.org/

And that section shall not be named "Controversies" as when something have been proven in court is not a controversy any more, call it "False accusations".

Rcdrun (talk) 17:48, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Then please provide independent, reliable sources about his achievements, history, records, teachings, etc. This is not a blog; we do not publish opinion pieces or original research. We only write about what we have sources for (and self-published material from his own websites doesn't count as independent, reliable sources). I'm not sure you're clear on the meaning of "controversy" in this context. It's something that happens in the public media. There is in fact plenty of it about this particular person. That doesn't mean Wikipedia is picking either side in the controversy, or declaring one side to be correct. It's our "job" to describe why this person is notable (i.e., in the public eye, in ways that encyclopedia readers will want to understand). That includes why newspapers and people at court have made civil and criminal accusations against him, and why he's filed counter claims against various individuals and organizations. That's pretty much the very definition of "controversy" in this sense. It may be unfortunate that most of the sourcing we can find so far about Nithyananda is about these legal back-and-forths, but that is what we're finding. Whether some of the accusations (on either side) are false is something that we're going to have to find out from independent reliable sources. Even then, we'd say that "According to [sources here]" the claim is false (or true). Wikipedia doesn't itself declare things to be true/false; Wikipedia is not omniscient. It's also not a not a means of promotion, nor is it a place to bash someone. The editors watching this page are trying hard to remove both unsourced criticism and unsourced aggrandizement, evenly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:39, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

@Rcdrun: No condescension is intended; I didn't realize you've been editing since 2016, and am used to new faces on this page being very, very new editors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:25, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I have registered with http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com where I found following two records under the search "Nythiananda":

Largest rope yoga lesson

The largest rope yoga lesson is of 272 participants and was organised by H.H. Sri Nithyananda Swami (India) and Nithyananda University (USA) in Bengaluru, India, on 30 September 2017. Rope yoga involves completing postures on a rope suspended from the ceiling. It was performed by disciples of Swami Nithyananda at their ashram outside Bengaluru, India.

and the other one:

Largest mallkhamba (pole yoga) lesson

The largest mallakhamba lesson is of 263 participants and was achieved by H.H. Sri Nithyananda Swami (India) and Nithyananda University (USA) at Bengaluru, India, on 3 October 2017. Mallakhamba is a traditional Indian exercise form where yoga postures are done on a vertical wooden pole.

which is also reflected on this page: http://www.nithyananda.org/news/hh-paramahamsa-nithyananda-sets-guinness-world-records%C2%AE-record#gsc.tab=0

and screenshot from my computer you can see here: https://rcdrun.com/images/depository/nithyananda/2018-06-26-11:01:22.png Rcdrun (talk) 09:15, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Not earth-shaking, but at least it's not scandal-related material. I think the other records were set by one or another of his organizations; not sure which.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:14, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@Rcdrun: can you please fill out a citation template for each of the Guinness pages? The format would be:

{{Cite web |title=Title on the web page at the site |work=[[GuinnessWorldRecords.com]] |publisher=[[Jim Pattison Group]] |date=2018 [or a more specific date if there's a posting date on the page] |access-date=27 June 2018 |url-access=registration |url=THE URL GOES HERE }}

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:21, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

This may also help: Wikipedia:Advanced source searching#Indian newspapers searches.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:34, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I also added an advanced search box near the top of this talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:48, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Please add this to the list of records: MOST PEOPLE DEMONSTRATE READING BLINDFOLDED USING POWERS OF THIRD EYE AWAKENING AT A SINGLE VENUE http://indiabookofrecords.in/most-people-reading-blindfolded-together-at-single-venue/ Akhilkodali (talk) 19:44, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

That seems very strange. If they're blindfolded, it likely means that they're reciting rather than reading. I would have less trouble adding a mention about such claims, supported by a news article or such that does not claim that the powers are real... I remember seeing this indiabookofrecords site before, but interestingly we don't seem to have a Wikipedia article about it; possibly that it lacks enough notability to serve as a source? —PaleoNeonate – 20:53, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Paleo it is "reading" not "reciting" maybe this will help https://satyavijayi.com/supernatural-powers-demonstration-world-record-created-hindu-gurukulam-kids-studying-strict-veda-agama-system/ Akhilkodali (talk) 20:05, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Related article which describes the entire event https://satyavijayi.com/tamil-nadu-lost-mauritius-gained-swami-nithyananda-gurukul-university/ and it also mentions about an MOU being signed with Govt of Maurities and Nithyananda Gurukul and University. Akhilkodali (talk) 20:16, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

That is all very strange too. I see claims of countries in the dark ages (kali yuga) etc, very politico-religious... Hmm I just searched the WP:RSN archives in case I could find previous discussions. I found only this with a short mention of India Book of Records, nothing so far in relation to Satya Vijayi. Some sources such as [23] from The Wire call it fake news. We can however mention claims that are popular enough to be reported by more common sources, surely. —PaleoNeonate – 23:52, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Satyavijayi.com, Newkaranataka.com are clearly non-RS (can seek confirmation at WP:RSN if anyone desires). As for "Blindfold reading": it is a WP:REDFLAG claim, that would need much, much more solid source and greater depth and bredth of coverage than any of the book of records, to merit discussion. Abecedare (talk) 00:49, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate You clearly missed the cultural reference of Kali Yuga (Kali Yuga is not about dark ages it a reference both good and bad being within us instead of outside and education and healthcare not being free where as in Satya Yuga reference to healthcare and education being free). Is is possible you are applying your cultural sensitivities here? Wire certainly does appear to a more western sensibility where as sathyavani to a more non-western sensibility. Please read the article again and context in which Satya Yuga and Kali Yuga were used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilkodali (talk • contribs) 03:26, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

It was a bit confusing to follow the talk page history because of more revision-deletions. I'm not sure about western sensibilties, but where I live (I'm not American), healthcare is of quality, free (in a way, we pay taxes to cover it) and non-dogmatic (no need to join a particular group, no pseudoscientific medicine, etc). However this diverges into editor-opinions and situation and we shouldn't be discussing editors but the quality of sources and article content... Wikipedia is secular and does have academic bias WP:ABIAS. Since you are requesting my opinion, while I know there are shows taking place, these are also easy to produce without supernatural means, and easy to have vanity/mills report about. I understand that the context in India is very different to mine, especially in rural areas, and that similarly to how it was here long ago, pastoralists could be considered heros offering humanitarian services. Which brings the possibility that some sources may describe interesting things like the opening of hospitals, schools, etc. If we find this in reliable sources that is worthy of inclusion. We must go by reliable sources not editor beliefs. Reliable sources should not be the mouthpiece of a particular group, there are criteria like editorial oversight, errata when necessary, etc. —PaleoNeonate – 05:39, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Positive claims

If one wades through the "hagiography" as the reverter put it, at least a few things in this are probably verifiable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:45, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

By which I mean it would be nice to include some them, for balance and for actual focus on the article subject instead of scandal, if they were properly sourced. I'm not sure why the Nithyanada-connected people who edit this page will not listen to all the above advice and find and properly cite reliable sources about the subject (they don't even have to be in English), instead of continuing to edit-war to insert and remove outlandish promotional and attacking claims pertaining to various scandal stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:23, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Please add a new Section "Awards and recognitions"

INR 5 Postage stamp released on Swami Nithyananda by Indian Postal Department Akhilkodali (talk) 14:15, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

88 in the list of 100 top spiritually influentially person by Watkins 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilkodali (talk • contribs) 14:15, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

References

Philosophy

There used to be a "Philosophy" section in various prior versions of the article, e.g. here. Something like that, reduced to facts and pruned of spiritual claims made in Wikipedia's own voice, will be important to include, being a typical feature of all such articles. Per WP:ABOUTSELF policy, much of that can actually legitimately be sourced from Nithyananda's own materials, in basic paraphrasing and summarizing terms and without dwelling on jargon-laden details, or veering into advocacy or promises, or other controversial material. (I.e., the most reliable source for what Nithyananda subjectively believes is Nithyananda.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:24, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Images from nithyanandatruth.org

I'm not sure if linking to these as sources is appropriate. —PaleoNeonate – 21:58, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Update: addressed below, thanks. Moreover, nithyanandatruth.org is considered an unreliable and primary source for Wikipedia, we don't even know if those alleged documents were forged. India news outlets themselves are not examplary and should also be used with caution. —PaleoNeonate – 22:17, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

BLP Violation

I just deleted an edit to the article that named an alleged rape victim and uploaded what was claimed to their medical records!!! Even worse, the medical records were hosted on an self-published website, run by activists with clear interest/POV in the matter. It shuldn't need to be said: but this is an obvious and gross violation of wikipedia's WP:BLP policy.

Please STOP posting scans of primary documents that we have no way to verify. Rely on the best available secondary sources. And even then be conservative on what to include in the article (one source nameing an alleged rape victim does not mean we have to). And yes, this applies to both charges against the subject and the counter-charges against the alleged victim. Abecedare (talk) 22:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I just deleted two more of those NithanandaTruth.org scans.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:20, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I had half a mind to revdel the last 30-40 edits to the talkpage, given the interspersed BLP violations, which are impossible to "undo". But for now I have just deleted some obvious links/comments (and, related responses) that caught my eye. By the way, if anyone objects to my admitted heavy hand, they are welcome to get a second opinion or take the matter to WP:ANI. Abecedare (talk) 22:24, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Hmm should I report the domain for blacklisting? —PaleoNeonate – 22:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Domain reported, will see. —PaleoNeonate – 22:52, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Great idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:56, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Another example: I have deleted this section, which contained not one reliable independent source. I realize that such mass deletion (in place of tagging with etc; the practice I would use if BLP was not involved) likely breaks the continuity of the article. I apologize for that and request that if possible, editors more familiar with the subject and sources, rewrite it using secondary sources, if they are available. Abecedare (talk) 22:50, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Argh. I edit conflicted with you and on of those rare instances where WP (or Chrome, or something) gets confused and loses the data happened. I lost about 45 minutes of article cleanup. Don't have the heart or the patience to do it again. The birth date should be given as a 1977–1978 range, infobox should not use a specific one but give approximate age, give more specific birthplace, move birth name to early life section with parent's names (doesn't seem controversial), fix up the mangled citations and tag or remove the self-published ones, yadda yadda.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Oops. Sorry about that, SMcCandlish. I know from experience how frustrating that is! Abecedare (talk) 15:11, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

No, no, you did nothing wrong! It's just verdammt software. I've re-instituted most of the cleanup now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:09, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Genuine question: haven't mainstream Indian newspapers (The Times of India, The Hindu, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times etc) covered the controversies discussed in the article? Why are we relying on more iffy sources like Newsminute, DNA India etc (they are ok for quotidian happenings, but hardly high quality sources)? Abecedare (talk) 22:55, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Apparently not. We've been looking. India is chock-full of gurus. This one's notable because of his presence in the West (he really does have a lot of followers and ashrams/temples, owing to his use of social media), but in India he doesn't seem particularly to attract much attention.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:58, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Looking for non-English sources

Moved to Talk:Swami Nithyananda § Non-English

Folks I am interested party in this matter. You are not looking at the content in other Indian languages especially Hindi and Tamil. English is not the most popular language for media in India. Non-english news-content is atleast 10 times bigger. If there is counter-claim in the scans with all the information that can be verified independently by FoIA should that be ignored ? And continue to rely on media as a primary source ? It may be best if this is blocked till more suitable standards are evolved. FYI any party that is editing this section will be "deeply" interested on either side. The political and religious issues have to be taken into account before one proceed. Akhilkodali (talk) 00:19, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Well most parties that historically have edited this this page seem to have a point of view to push, but I and several others don't give a damn, other than that our coverage be neutral and we've asked the noticeboards for biographies of living people and India-related topics to weigh in here, as well as the wikiprojects on India and Hinduism, so there should be an influx of neutrally-minded editors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yes, an Indian topics noticeboard was notified so more neutral editors may perhaps help. SMcCandlish and I who are neither pro nor against are a start, but we don't read Tamil. The other unfortunate reality is that we are much less likely to spend time working on an article we care little about. But knowing the problem, we can make an effort and try in the next few days or weeks. We should likely start with source searching and selection first... —PaleoNeonate – 00:28, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

News source quality

SMcCandlish How does one determine "high" quality newspaper ? For example DNAIndia and TimesOfIndia are comparable when newsminute is at the bottom of barrel. Yet newsminute has been used extensively as a source and DNAIndia ignored. This standard is "prejudicial" towards a living person for a casual "observer". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilkodali (talk • contribs) 20:03, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

@Akhilkodali: The most recent sources I see on the topic are regarding the Karnataka High Court questioning the adequacy of the police investigation [24] [25]. If there are events subsequent to that that have been covered by reliable secondary sources, we can include them in the article too. Two side comments:

• This is a fine example of why we don't base our content on primary sources such as police reports, medical/court documents etc; unlike the courts in this case, we have neither the expertise nor the remit to judge their content and adequacy.
• I believe the section would read better if it described the events in chronological order as, "Someone died in 2014... ashram said cause was... parents said cause was...police investigated... court questioned investigation". Also could someone fill in the date field for the citations; makes it easier to check how up-to-date their information is likely to be.

Btw, I disagree with Akhilkodali's characterization of sources ("DNAIndia and TimesOfIndia are comparable when newsminute is at the bottom of barrel") but since that is not immediately relevant to any suggested edit, we need not debate that. Abecedare (talk) 20:37, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

See thread below; I've totally overhauled this section. I did not go with a purely chronological order, to avoid burying the lead. I went with a small inverted pyramid instead.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:05, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Abecedare I respectfully disagree, earlier a DNAIndia ref was rejected about herpes. The dna article was sourced from ANI (equivalent to reuters in India) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilkodali (talk • contribs) 04:23, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

DNAIndia is a weak source. The ultimate publisher Zee Entertainment Enterprises (via subsidiary Diligent Media Corporation, a joint venture with Dainik Bhaskar Group) isn't trivial, but is an overall "infotainment" company who put out everything from daily newspapers to movie channels. This infotainement site in particular isn't a real news organization but a topical blog of click bait. And it's clearly written by just-hired-up amateurs, as it's full of ridiculous journalese that real reporters know to avoid. I wouldn't call it fake news but it's definitely tertiary pseudo-news, just regurgitations of other publishers' reportage, re-cast in a weird and bombastic style.

If we have the real-news story that the DNAIndia material is cribbing from, then we have no need of DNAIndia. The Times of India is one of India's better-regarded newspapers from what I can tell. Asian News International (ANI) is not "equivalent to Reuters", but one many newswires in India. It does seem reputable enough to use. NewsMinute is a smaller publication, but we have no indication they are "at the bottom of the barrel"; that's precisely what someone would say, without evidence, if they were trying to get us to avoid using a source that said something they didn't like. The material I've read in them so far is normal everyday journalism, and has nothing in common with the material cited in this article to crazy local papers earlier this year, veering between sensationalized scandal-mongering without any facts, and utterly credulous reporting of miracles as real and "verified". NewsMinute is just news, and its reports have generally been consistent with other real-not-fake-news sources cited so far. That said, if we removed NewsMinute from the article and anything sourced only to it, we would lose nearly no content because it has multiple sources now. Its value at this point is in retaining it as an additional source to confirm agreement between news sources. But I'm skeptical DNAIndia should be retained for any such purpose. It's not serious reportage and isn't really secondary.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:05, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Scientific publications

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Absolutely off topic. This is the not the "Effects of meditation and worship" article. See WP:COATRACK and WP:NOT#FORUM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:49, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

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Various medical studies were conducted effect of the programs on the participants and published. Akhilkodali (talk) 06:07, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Consciousness states

The elevated "state" of consciousness of the person made him a subject of various studies. The workshops conducted by him were "interesting" from a scientific standpoint due to the altered state.

The studies cannot be viewed independently but cumulatively. Perhaps, a more interested or engaged reviewer should study them before it gets dismissed. I repeat again its the not effects on some workshop. But the effect of the "biology" of the subject himself.

1. EEG BRAINWAVES AND HEART RATE VARIABILITY (HRV) ANALYSIS OF BIOENERGETIC HEALERS The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004 — Journal Article <redacted copyvio>
2. http://lifeblissfoundation.org/founder_science_spirituality.asp
3. Antiaging Effects of an Intensive Mind and Body Therapeutic Program through Enhancement of Telomerase Activity and Adult Stem Cell Counts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27125139
4. An Intensive Mind and Body Therapeutic Program Leads to Alteration in Gene Expression Critical to Aging Process in Peripheral Blood Stem Cells http://file.scirp.org/Html/2-2420156_56810.htm
5. Mystic Phenomena Scientific Data https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5lUd4gvroY1UkpNOHZiMnZucTA/view
6. The complete "picture" of the studies is captured in the book. But I am not sure if how it will be viewed reviewers since other sources don't seem to be available any longer. But none of the studies published have ever been contested. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akhilkodali (talk • contribs) 14:21, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Anti-aging effects

1. An Intensive Mind and Body Therapeutic Program Leads to Alteration in Gene Expression Critical to Aging Process in Peripheral Blood Stem Cells
2. Antiaging Effects of an Intensive Mind and Body Therapeutic Program through Enhancement of Telomerase Activity and Adult Stem Cell Counts.

Akhilkodali (talk) 06:07, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

References

All those claims would require WP:MEDRS (the above are considered primary sources, some unreliable and on topics that are considered pseudoscience for Wikipedia). We can add a mention of such claims if another encyclopedia or large paper discusses them (by summarizing those that discuss it in reliable sources). —PaleoNeonate – 15:06, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 18 July 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move the page at this time, per the discussion below and evidence presented in subsequent sections that shows widespread use of the shorter form. Dekimasuよ! 05:52, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

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Swami Nithyananda → Nithyananda – Here was a previous requested move: Talk:Swami Nithyananda/Archive 1#Requested move which resulted in the current title. Swami is a title, while Nithyananda is currently a redirect pointing to this article (and thus free, not needing disambiguation). If this article was renamed to Nithyananda, a redirection page Swami Nithyananda would be preserved and point at this article. Muktananda is another similar example. Please see WP:!VOTE on how to support/oppose (vote count does not matter, only policy/style based arguments). Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 16:37, 18 July 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. Dekimasuよ! 06:10, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

• Support per MOS:HONORIFICS and MOS:JOBTITLES, as well as WP:CONCISE and WP:OVERDAB. I was actually about to do this myself. This would also be WP:CONSISTENT with Ram Charan, Ram Kishor, etc., which are not at Swamiji Ram Charan or Swamiji Ram Kishor, (they just redirect to the actual articles). Nithyanada isn't consistently called Swami Nithyananda in honorifics-laden materials, anyway, but all sorts of things like H.H. Sri Nithyananda, and Swami-ji Nithyananda., and so on, so this would appear to also fail WP:COMMONNAME.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:42, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
• See also Talk:Swami Vivekananda#Requested move 18 July 2018.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:42, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Just like Swami Vivekananda, "Swami" is not a honorific or a job title here either. Accesscrawl (talk) 07:13, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

  Of course it is. They're the only functions served by "Swami" in this construction. And it completely fails WP:COMMONNAME – he is virtually never referred to as "Swami Nithyananda" in reliable sources (except in "scare quotes" as 'Swami' Nithyananda); even the press in India do not treat him with such undue deference [26] Not only that, his followers mostly don't call him this either, but Paramahamsa Nithyananda or Swami-ji Nithyananda. Even if WP:COMMONNAME applied to inclusion of honorifics – which it does not and never has – this would never pass a COMMONNAME analysis. Hell, he doesn't even call himself that, except on the cover a single one of his numerous publications [27].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:03, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

  It's true that most sources just use Nithyananda (at least in the 4 papers I accumulated sources from yesterday). —PaleoNeonate – 16:25, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

• Note: The article on him in his native language, Tamil, is just w:ta:நித்தியானந்தர் ('Nithyananda'), without the honorofic. The other-language Wikipedias using an honorific appear to have picked it up from the en.WP article, as they all post-date its creation and seem to be based on one version of its content or another (with the sole exception of the dicdef micro-stub at the Sanskrit Wikipedia, which is kind of a hobby site, like the Latin one).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support I see no evidence that the common name is "Swami Nithyananda"; seems to me that that "Nithyananda" by itself is most often used, and MOS:HONORIFICS also applies. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:35, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

A death at the ashram

I've completely overhauled this section to closely follow the four sources we have so far, which was definitely not being done – in even a single sentence – in the material that was there before. I skipped various details but included those that are salient (to my mind), though a few more might be trimmable. In particular, I left out the claim only found in one source that the deceased's mother accused Nithyanada himself of assaulting her daughter, since it is not corroborated by any of the others and could easily be a mis-interpretation (news writers often cannibalize from each other's work and do it imprecisely, introducing errors). Its absence from the others would be very strange if it were actually among the allegations the mother has made. I linked the applicable legal terms; avoided loaded words like "tortured", etc.

The idea that this is just old news and trivial is patently false; a state court has recommended a national CBI investigation, and this within 2018 (though it's not breaking news either; we should always be suspicious of that kind of material, and at least one of these sources was revised the month after its original publication; I've annotated that in the citation). Claims above (e.g. in #Priyabrata11's attempted changes) that this is just noise, because 2014 police or coroner documents prove there was no cause for investigation, is just a handwave. The entire point of the ongoing inquest is that the police and medical examiner may not have done their job properly. Wikipedia cannot declare that they have when the press is telling us that court it seriously considering that they did not.

I've included the counter-claims of both sides for balance, and sourced stuff mostly on a sentence-by-sentence basis, sometimes down to the clause level. It could turn out that the claims are nonsense, but the Indian court is clearly taking it seriously. The (frankly, rather odd) claims made by the Nithyananda press release are covered in two of these sources independently, so they don't seem to be in doubt, and I don't think we need to go dib up the original from Nityhananda.org, assuming it is still available or was archived.

No primary sources are used directly, nor any known fake-news publishers (of which India has many). The accounts in multiple publications are consistent, except for: the assault-by-the-guru accusation which is too questionable under WP:BLP to include; and only one source mentions the pre-death hospitalization (which doesn't seem controversial information, just elided in other reports), and suggests that the death actually occurred the night before it became known (so I gave the apparent death date as a range, to reflect source disagreement).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:42, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

"Her mother, Jansi Rani, denied that Arjunan suffered from any cardiac ailment and has alleged foul play on parts of the ashram authority (torture et al) and subsequent shoddy investigation by the police". On what basis the word "torture" is added. This "standard" is disappointing. Reviewers seem to have fallen for standard Indian media "game". Please re-read the sources you have presented. 108.35.55.52 (talk) 03:07, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

I removed "torture" again; that's the newspaper's word, their bombastic headline. I don't see anywhere that the mother actually made this claims. We have no encyclopedic interest in the journalist's or editor's opinion, just the underlying story they're reporting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:01, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Indeed we should rely on content not headline, thanks for fixing. —PaleoNeonate – 23:56, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

1. How did the reviewers conclude "Physical abuse". Folks ??? Akhilkodali (talk) 15:00, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
2. The court recommended referring the death investigation to the national" How was that conclusion made ? Akhilkodali (talk) 15:03, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
3. subsequent shoddy investigation by the police". There is no mention of "shoddy" investigation. This inference can be contested. Akhilkodali (talk) 15:08, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
4. "unnamed "Hospital sources"", using "unnamed" is mis-representation or ambiguous. No media report or press release says unnamed. It could also mean "official". In reality Hospital released an official "certificate" stating the same. Akhilkodali (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I've numbered them for easier reference, if you don't mind. 1. I would have to re-check, and don't recall right off-hand. 2. I have no idea how the court came to that decision, but it's in the sources cited. 3. The fact that the court reprimanded the police for failing to do their job properly, and sent the case to a higher agency. It's not an inference (you're confusing infer and imply). But it's not even an implications, it's a summary. Some other term could be used, but it really doesn't matter. 4. You're misunderstanding. The sources were not named in the reports. Whether they were official or not is unknown, and not relevant. We could use some other term like "unspecified", but it doesn't matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:14, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Quoting a Judge's oral statements is without proof and amounts to Contempt of Court in India. No other sources have reported that the Judge had asked for a CBI investigation. The entire premise of this section is based on this alleged statement. Otherwise all the facts indicate that the Police have investigated the matter and closed it. NewsMinute is just a blog and can hardly be considered a reputable source. Highlighting the allegation of murder on a celebrity is an issue of WP:FALSEBALANCE and borders on tabloid journalism. I further feels that this section is a disrespect to the memory of a deceased young monk who was a follower of Swami Nithyananda. Parents who were upset with her taking monkhood have filed a case - and that is their right. But nothing in this matter makes it newsworthy leave alone worthy of featuring in an encylopedia and in violation of WP:DUE Acnaren (talk) 05:16, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

"Acnaren" is a devotee of Nithyananda and goes by the name Sri Nithya Mokshapriyan. As we all know by now many of Rajashekaran's followers have tried to edit & hide certain things from public view on Wikipedia about their guru that paints him in a negative light. The death of Sangeetha and the cover-up surrounding it isn't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this pseudo-guru's crimes. Ryanmeadows (talk) 13:47, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Nithyananda University, Mission, Puri, Nagar; Life Bliss Foundation

We're not mentioning "Nithyananda University" or what it is in the article. It's the colophon under which most of his more recent self-published material is released, but that doesn't really tell us anything. We have no idea what sort of body this is.

It's clear that they're employing at least one biology academic. There's a cite elsewhere on this page to a journal article abstract [28], in which one Krishna S. Rao identifies as affiliated with Nithyananda University, in Advances in Aging Research (basic journal info here). This same party also appears on another abstract [29] on a similar subject (biomedical claims being made about meditation and such) in Journal of Stem Cells (basic journal info here). I have no info what kind of reputation the journals have, though I can guess; there are people who do "predatory journal" checks, and they tend to hang out in WT:MEDRS.

The former of these abstracts' author information also mentions something called Nithyananda Nagar in Bangalore, Karnakata. No idea what that is.

One of Nithyananada's self-published books includes an address which mentions "Nithyananda Mission, Bidadi Ashram" and "Nithyanandapuri, Kallugopahalli" in Bidadi, Bangalore.

Life Bliss Foundation (lifeblissfoundation.org) is another of his organisations. I'm not sure how to tease apart what all these things are supposed to be and how they interrelate. He also operates more than one website.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:27, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

An older version of the article [30] had some stuff on LBF, and also some kind of connection to Hindu University of America, but the material was generally unsourced.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:17, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

SMcCandlish,

Advances in Aging Research doesn't feature in Beall's list but the publisher does.And, the lesser it is said about the publishing house, the better it is.And, the journal is absent from DOAJ's directory.

Predatorial by a mile or so.

Journal of Stem Cells by Nova Publishers.Somewhat better than the previous and has a medium reputation despite having been criticized for a lack of rigor in peer-review and solicitation-publishing and designated as a bottom-tier but non-predatorial publisher by Beall, himself. My personal opinion of the paper is quasi-BS but that hardly matters.

As to Nithyananda University, some business-venture with a formal-flavored name for spreading his pseudo-religious bullshit.Nothing more, nothing less.I see a very attractive course-list and another equally attractive one.I did not manage to locate any official record in UGC database that asserts it to be a formally recognized university. ∯WBG^converse 13:49, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this. I'm glad someone has a better handle than I do on evaluating journal reputability. As for Nithyananda U., of course it would be a religion-centered thing. But there are lots of such entities (see Category:Universities and colleges by religious affiliation), which range from respected institutions to fronts for TV-preacher money laundering. Whatever NU is, it's part of the story of the subject of the article, so we need to cover it at least in brief, at some point. It would be nice to have more "just the facts" material in there, given the constant see-sawing between claims of the miraculous and of criminal activity.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:06, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

 Not done you’re not specific about edit. — Harshil ^{want to talk?} 06:44, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Mainstream Indian newspaper sources in English

There seems to be quite a lot of material out there that we're not drawing on for this article. I think much of it could be used to replace weaker sources, and also to restore the subsection on the (apparently bogus, but frequently newsworthy in India) "sex tape" controversy. If it's clear that the tape was fake, then this would be good to have back in the article for balance, since the subject in general seems to attract a lot of negative press. The newer material in particular should be scoured for more recent updates, as some of the info discussed throughout this talk page is open-ended assertions about legal cases opened years ago then trailing off without information on their resolution, and sometimes false claims about their resolution.

• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Nithyananda – This one sometimes makes top-10 to top-20 lists of best English-language newspaper in general. It is one of the largest-selling English newspapers in the world (no. 3 to no. 1, depending on whose stats you trust)
• https://www.hindustantimes.com/search?q=NIthyananda – Regional, but appears well-respected.
• https://indianexpress.com/?s=NIthyananda – Not to sure how well-regarded it is
• https://www.thehindu.com/search/?q=NIthyananda&order=DESC&sort=publishdate – I would suggest we treat The Hindu as borderline, like The Christian Science Monitor (they both have okay reputations for fact-checking, but they have an inherent bias toward acceptance of religious and miraculous claims, so they're not reliable for such material, even if they are for more quotidian claims).

We also seem to have lost one BBC source that was in there before: Beary, Habib (13 June 2012). "India police quiz guru Nithyananda over assault claims". BBC News. Retrieved 14 December 2013.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:04, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Satyavani article also records an MOU, Please add the following:

"His Excellency the High Commissioner was there to sign a memorandum of understanding with Paramahamsa Sri Nithyananda Swami's Ashram's two major institutions Nithyananda Gurukul and Nithyananda University. The agreement will lead to the establishment of both these Veda-Agamic Institutions in Mauritius in partnership with the government of the Republic of Mauritius. The agreement was signed on the Guru Poornima on 9th of July 2017."Akhilkodali (talk) 04:36, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

To a reader like me, this says nothing, unfortunately. It's like a marketting sermon. What does it mean exactly and what reliable (not Satya Vijayi) source describes it? Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 05:39, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, this is "there was a ribbon-cutting ceremony" stuff. I.e., Nithyananda's organization has permission to operate in Mauritius. This is just trivial local news. The article already covers the fact that they have buildings in various countries; this is just one of them (or will be).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:09, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

SMcCandlish The character of this event is different "Gurukul" is a traditional school which operates with a different set of guidelines and purpose than regular K-12s. It is significant that a Govt of a country (represented by its Ambassador) has signed and MOU to operate. Hence the reference of "KaliYuga" and "SatyaYuga". Implication: Accepting a new "form" of schooling. Dismissing as mere Ribbon cutting is mis-representation. Akhilkodali (talk) 06:29, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

I think editors in general are apt to disagree. However, since Nithyananda's organization(s) are not likely to have their own articles (an attempt to create them would likely be merged right back to this article), it's reasonable for something like this to be used as a source in that section for where one of the gurukuls is (and, yes, I know what that is; I was working on the article Gurukula only a week or two ago). The source is useful for the fact of where the school is, not for permission from a country to build one (all such constructions require permission from someone or other; it's implicit in the fact that they exist).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:16, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

References

Non-English

Daily Thanthi is the top Tamil newspapers. It and other national and regional papers in that language may be among the most relevant because of where Nithyananda lives.

Dainik Jagran is the leading or second-leading Hindi-language newspaper (in sales, which may not necessarily equate to reputability – see, e.g., USA Today which has a middling reputation at best, despite having the largest or second-largest circulation in English). Dainik Bhaskar is the second-leading or leading Hindi paper. Amar Ujala is third, Hindustan Dainik fourth, and Rajasthan Patrika fifth. The Patrika papers seem to share a website, so collectively they might all be higher up the totem pole.

Malayala Manorama is the leading Malayalam paper and Mathrubhumi second (published in India). Eenadu is the leading Telugu paper.

I don't actually know any of these languages, so I'm not 100% certain of constructing an accurate searches at these papers' sites (it likely is not enough to use transliteration software to render his name letter-by-letter in the other scripts, as the actual spelling of his name may shift between these languages; e.g. I've already encountered "Nityananda" several times as a transliteration from one or another of these languages into Latin script. Our own various-language Wikipedias provide some of them, but he (oddly) has no article at Hindi Wikipedia. Here's what they seem to be:

• Tamil: supposedly நித்தியானந்தர், translit. Nithyananda. However, it's possible that w:ta:நித்தியானந்தர் is actually getting his Tamil name incorrect; another rendering is நித்யானந்தா (also translit. Nithyananda), and this produces way more search results.
• Hindi (and Sanskrit, technically): नित्यानंद, transliterates as Nityanand
• Malayalam: നിത്യാനന്ദ, translit. Nityananda
• Indonesian: Nithyananda, as in English
• Telugu: నిత్యానంద, translit. Nityānanda (which Google Translate somehow thinks means 'QR codes'!)

Search results for these terms (and Latin-script equivalents) are below; some of these include false positives because there are people named Nit[h]yananda and especially Nityanand as a given name:

• Daily Thanthi produces nothing for நித்தியானந்தர் [31]
  • Google Advanced also comes up dry with that spelling, when applied to that paper; so try the other spelling:
  • Some hits for the நித்யானந்தா spelling: [32]
  • Some hits also for romanized "Nithyananda", in Daily Thanthi's English-language edition at DTNext.in: https://www.dailythanthi.com/Home/Search?cx=010423942146016428512%3Avvss5oorw0c&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=Nithyananda&siteurl=www.dailythanthi.com%2F&ref=&ss=0j0j1
• https://www.jagran.com/search/%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6
  • https://www.jagran.com/search/nithyananda
  • https://www.jagran.com/search/nityanand
• https://www.bhaskar.com/topics/%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6/
  • https://www.bhaskar.com/topics/nithyananda/
  • https://www.bhaskar.com/topics/nityanand/
• https://www.livehindustan.com/search/%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6/1
  • https://www.livehindustan.com/search/nithyananda/1
  • https://www.livehindustan.com/search/nityanand/1
• https://www.amarujala.com/topic/%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6?page=1
  • https://www.amarujala.com/topic/nithyananda
  • https://www.amarujala.com/tags/nityanand
• https://www.patrika.com/search/?q=%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A6
  • https://www.patrika.com/search/?q=nithyananda
  • https://www.patrika.com/search/?q=nityanand
• https://www.manoramaonline.com/searchresult.html?q=%E0%B4%A8%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%A8%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A6&highlightSearchTerm=false
  • No results at manoramaonline.com for "Nithyananda" or "Nityananda" in Latin script.
• http://www.mathrubhumi.com/search?q=%E0%B4%A8%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%A8%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A6
  • No results at mathrubhumi.com for "Nithyananda" or "Nityananda" in Latin script that aren't also found with the Malayalam-script search.
• Eenadu.net doesn't have a functioning search feature that I can find;
  • So I used Google Advanced Search on it, with some results: నిత్యానంద
  • Latin-script searches produced no results.
• General Google searches on these non-romanized names, and the variant romanizations Nityananda and Nityanand, can also be done at Google, Google News, and so on to find more than these top few papers. I would especially suggest focusing on Tamil.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:04, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I have the impression that considering the amount of available English articles in the Times of India, we may not need to rely on non-English sources. —PaleoNeonate – 15:18, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Someone above suggested that various things might not appear except in non-English ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:06, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Yet another legal case: Madurai Adheenam

Hints of one, that went in the swami's favor, in May: [33]. It's a shite translation, but the gist appears to be that he claims to be the titular head of some religious body or site named the Madurai Adheenam or Adheenam of Madurai (of 2,500 years antiquity, apparently), against another claimant, Arunagirinadhar. Someone named Jegathalapradhapan from the adheenam filed suit to bar Nithyananda from the premises, while the latter filed for a police escort onto them. A lower court issued a restraining order against Nithyananda entering the adheenam (date unknown, presumably early 2018). A two-judge appellate court overruled this in May 2018, and Nithyananda may now enter the premises "as a devotee". This seems not to address or resolve the claim and counter-claim as to title/leadership. And the case was still ongoing, with further action expected by the Madurai Adheenam and/or the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department in June 2018. I have not looked for additional details, just ran across this while building the source-searching results above. Various case particulars are probably trivial, but the underlying dispute likely is not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:04, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

In my sources list I marked those which were about this topic with "pontiff". Some which appeared good on the subject: [34], [35], [36], [37]. —PaleoNeonate – 15:21, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Nithyananda won this case recently 108.35.55.52 (talk) 03:41, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Asserting that isn't useful. Need secondary sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:02, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Removal of sources

Rather than editwar over it, I'm going to talk-dispute this deletion of multiple citations [38] by Winged Blades of Godric. India West is a reasonable source to use, being a US-based publication and not connected to the subject. Removal of its stories, and the Facebook evidence, makes "regularly hosts cultural events related to Hinduism across the United States" (or "in various US states", or whatever), no longer a properly supported claim, being reduced to a single source mentioning one event in Ohio. Even the Facebook post is sufficient evidence for the non-controversial claim that an event advertised on that platform existed. It's well within the range of basic stuff we can do with primary sources (WP:PSTS), as "there credibly was an event in state X" involves no analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis, nor any controversy. It's entirely routine to get event-related basic details from primary sources about the event, and only one of these was primary anyway.

In the second block, both India West and India Herald (another US-published, India-focused news site) were removed, leaving only a single source for all claims relating to belief in the supernatural powers that adherents of the subject attribute to Nithyananda and his teachings/philosophy, even though they cannot all be found in the remaining source. These may not be high-quality sources, but they're independent of the subject, and again even primary ones would be permissible, since they're only uncontroversially sourcing claims of belief on the part of the subject's followers (there is no more reliable source for what the followers believe than the followers' own statements, per WP:ABOUTSELF, and news material based on what the followers have said is a close second).

The wrong sourcing standards are being applied to the wrong content.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:27, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Absent a clearer rationale for their removal, I'll add these back in.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:05, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Done.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:49, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Hmm I have just read the two last restored ones and was surprised that they appear to believe no trick was involved. —PaleoNeonate – 04:12, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Pseudoscience

A related change was the addition of pseudoscientific. While I'm familiar with and support WP:PSCI, the way the sentence is formulated seems strange to me. The claims are of paranormal phenomena so paranormal may suit there. Another sentence could however still specify that various concepts are considered pseudoscience. Some sources also describe the shows as fraud... —PaleoNeonate – 15:27, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, adding "pseudo-scientific" to a sentence that already include "paranormal" is probably redundant. Would be better to save the word for another sentence or something.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:52, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Here are some sources related to "mid brain activation" which would be pseudoscientific, but I think none of these mention Nithyananda: [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48]. —PaleoNeonate – 20:49, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Absurd Speeches

Someone added a section on absurd speeches here. Although we all might agree on what is written, I am not sure if it falls within wikipedia guidelines. It seems like original research to me. Please cite reliable sources which say so. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nagasam (talk • contribs) 08:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I removed it pending someone supplying a WP:RS cite. DMacks (talk) 12:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, this sounds like opinion-mongering. All religious speechs are nonsense to an atheist (and a speech by an atheist like Richard Dawkins is absurd to any religious person).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:09, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Unused sources

The "self-styled godman" claim in the lead had a big WP:OVERCITE pile up; we only need a single citation for that, so I left the most explicit one and removed the rest. However, these sources are probably usable for additional material in the article, especially all those legal conflicts:

• "Verdict reserved in Nithyananda case". The Hindu. 28 February 2018. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
• Sureshkumar (29 January 2018). "Madras HC warns of issuing arrest warrant against self-styled godman Nithyananda - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
• "Watch: Cows will talk in Tamil, Sanskrit, claims self-styled godman Nithyananda". Deccan Chronicle. 20 September 2018. Retrieved 30 October 2018.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:49, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 March 2019

Please change "Nithyananda (also called Paramahamsa Nithyananda, born c. 1977–1978 in Tiruvannamalai, India) is an Advaita Vedanta Hindu self-styled godman."

To " Nithyananda (also called Bhagwaan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam, born c. 1977-1978 in Tiruvannamalai, India) is an Advaita Vedanta Hindu Spiritual Teacher of his own global religious organization known as Nithyananda Dhyanapeetham. He is also elected as Pointiff of four Ancient Traditional Shaivite monastaries in South India."

Because: 1) He is known and addressed publicly now as Bhagwaan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam rather than Paramahamsa Nithyananda source: http://prntscr.com/n1rb66

2) "Godman"is nothing but a derogatory term that serves no interest in giving reliable data accurately representing who this individual is to the public with neutral respect. The change gives better clarity as to who he is as an individual to the public with factual reference rather than a loose derogatory term.

3) This individual has been legally elected as leader of four traditional religious monasteries the title traditionally known as Madadhipati.

Source:

https://nithyanandatruth.org/2013/11/22/paramahamsa-nithyananda-is-madadhipati-of-four-ancient-mutts-in-south-india/

http://www.nithyananda.org/news/swami-nithyanandas-appointment-junior-pontiff-madurai-aadheenam-irrevocable-rules-high-court-ma VedicPsychologyNow (talk) 05:53, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: Per the article, he is a "self-styled godman". Wikipedia strongly favors independent sources, which these are not. A person's specific position, elected or not, generally doesn't define them in this way, per MOS:CREDENTIALS. Please gain consensus for these changes before re-opening this request. Grayfell (talk) 06:27, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Avatar of paramashiva

The lede says he is considered an avatar of paramashiva. However it doesn't mention anywhere in the article what paramshiva is. Can it be explained? Or can 'paramashiva' be linked to a wikipedia article that explains it? This sentence is meaningless to someone not versed in Hinduism. Ashmoo (talk) 11:26, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia cannot just claim that he "is considered" something at all (MOS:WEASELWORDS). We can say that he claims to be such an avatar, or that his followers believe that he is one, if we have reliable and independent sources that establish this. Otherwise this stuff should not be in the article at all. If it is retained and properly sourced in some form, then yes, link to Parashiva.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:45, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

OS 5239/2017 and 2:13-CV-00526 judgement

• In Ohio Civil court, in case No.2:13 CV 526 Aarthi Rao was penalized $463,211 USD + lawyer fees for making making false accusation of rape on Nithyananda.* There is no public reference for this other than other letigations making reference to this

- https://casetext.com/case/nithyananda-dhanapeetam-columbus-v-rao - https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914e91cadd7b04934925e6d other than that this order can be found on the website of Nithyananda - http://www.nithyananda.org/news/us-federal-court-issues-nearly-half-million-dollar-judgement-against-false-victim-aarthi-s-rao#gsc.tab=0

However on May 27, 2019 an order came in case number OS 5239/2017 from an Indian court which repeated the same order of 2:13 CV-00526 https://indiankanoon.org/doc/99234743/ . this can be found on the Indian district court website - https://services.ecourts.gov.in/ecourtindia_v6/cases/display_pdf.php?filename=/orders/2017/205200052392017_5.pdf&caseno=O.S./5239/2017&cCode=3&appFlag=web&normal_v=1

OS 5239 is the only available public record which proves beyond that an order - 2:13-CV-00526 exists. This order should be presented in Wiki stating the simple fact that Nithyananda had a court order saying that Aarthi Rao made false allegations of rape against him. Suppressing of this order will give a one-sided picture. 49.207.135.179 (talk) 23:16, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Updates!

@Winged Blades of Godric: can you update article with latest details of Hindu Rashtra namely Kailaasa and rape accusation in Ahmedabad? — Harshil ^{want to talk?} 02:02, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Will do ..... ∯WBG^converse 15:39, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric, does kailaasa deserve separate article?-- Harshil ^{want to talk?} 15:44, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Nah; WP:NOPAGE. ∯WBG^converse 06:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric, someone has made and someone put it under deletion. Harshil ^{want to talk?} 06:25, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 December 2019

Owner of Land Kailash Niv0015 (talk) 06:07, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

 Not done You are not soecific about your edits.-- Harshil ^{want to talk?} 06:46, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Any reliable sources for the fact that he used to charge 10,000 for third eye opening

Seems very notable to me.... I am looking for sources, is any aware of one. Sethie (talk) 18:29, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect use of titles

Self styled

Use of self-styled is incorrect. As per oxford self-style https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/self-styled means "​using a name or title that you have given yourself, especially when you do not have the right to do it". But in this case he is appointed as Hindu Pontiff by Madhurai Aadhenam and Mahamandaleswar (recorded on the article page) Most media sources use the self-styled but there is no explanation given in any of the source. Insight2010 (talk) 05:11, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Self-Styled vs Appointed by an authority

Hinduism does not have the concept of a College of Cardinals to confer papal authority on a Hindu religius leader. So, does it even make sense to have the term: "Self Proclaimed" in this article.

Quoting from Wikipedia:Editing_Wikipedia_is_like_visiting_a_foreign_country: "... "Negro", as applied to people, is a historical term only, and "oriental" is "Eurocentric", with a "shifting, inaccurate definition", and "may be considered offensive"... Point being, for a person who is not a subject-matter-expert on Hinduism, this "self-styled" might be valid, but for SMEs of Hinduism, this seems weird at best and offensive at worst.

I have removed the "self-styled godman" verbiage as it is not applicable to Hinduism. Mechprince (talk) 18:23, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Supreme Pontiff of Kailaasa

After searching for "Supreme Pontiff of Kailaasa" and it's variant's except for a few social media posts not connected with Nithyananda or affiliates, there are no references. And this title doesn't seem to be used by Nithyananda himself. But on searching for "Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism" I am able to find

the following news portals (don't know about their credibility)

• https://www.india.com/news/india/rape-accused-fugitive-godman-nithyananda-launches-reserve-bank-of-kailasa-on-ganesh-chaturthi-2020-4119289/
• https://thelogicalindian.com/trending/absconding-rape-accused-nithyananda-announces-3-day-visa-to-his-country-kailasa-25567
• https://www.theweek.in/news/biz-tech/2020/08/21/nithyanandas-vatican-inspired-reserve-bank-of-kailasa-all-you-need-to-know.html

And Nithyananda's own/affiliated social media accounts/sites and seems to be popular among his ardent

• https://www.facebook.com/SupremePontiffofHinduism/
• https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/20879997.Supreme_Pontiff_of_Hinduism_HDH_Nithyananda_Paramashivam
• https://twitter.com/vishala_ma/status/1340207322065477635
• https://gov.shrikailasa.org/reviver/

Supreme Pontiff of Kailaasa (self-proclaimed) is not accurate as no one claims it

Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism (self-proclaimed) is accurate as he and his ardent claimed it

It doesn't matter if He is actually a Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism but he claims it hence self-proclaimed title.

Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI plz refer to this section before making changes

Ik.Kaluha (talk) 16:28, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Ik.Kaluha Ok, what? The allegation of abduction is clearly mentioned in 3 RSes. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 16:40, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI They are against his 2 of his ardent. Not him. It's prejudicial to a living person Ik.Kaluha (talk) 16:46, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Ik.Kaluha I don't know where you got that from. These are the sources cited for the claim:

Source 55: On January 22, the Interpol issued a Blue Corner Notice against Nithyananda in connection with a case of rape and wrongful confinement of minor girls at his ashram in Gujarat's Ahmedabad. The notice was issued at the request of the Gujarat Police...

Source 56:On Monday, an FIR was lodged against Nithyananda and two of his followers at an Ahmedabad-based ashram for allegedly abducting, confining and torturing two minors and a 19-year-old woman. Following this, the Gujarat High Court had issued notices to Nithyananda and the state government on a habeas corpus petition filed by the father of the women.

Source 57: Nithyananda is wanted by Gujarat Police in a case of kidnapping and keeping children captive at his ashram in Ahmedabad... Nithyananda is wanted by the police in Gujarat and Karnataka in a case of kidnapping and keeping children captive at his ashram in Ahmedabad for the purpose of collecting donations. An FIR was also registered against him after two girls went missing from the ashram.

Well? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 16:55, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

WP can't include even "Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism (self-proclaimed)" in the infobox, because this is not a credible claim and no one but his own followers take it seriously, but its context-free appearance in an infobox gives it grossly WP:UNDUE credibility. We can certainly cover his controversial claims in the article body with sufficient context. As noted in other section, if Nithyananda has been given titles/roles/positions, that we can verify with reliable sources as legit and still valid, by monasteries and other organizations that are not his own house organs, then those would be appropriate in the infobox, as would be the fact that he's the head of his own organization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:36, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Note: Nithyananda's comments on Wikipedia are a work in progress, subject to the thread-mode disclaimer.
Self-convenience: sandbox – sandbox2 – sandbox3 – sandbox4 – sandbox5 – sandbox6 – sandbox7 – sandbox8 – sandbox9 – sandbox10 – User:SMcCandlish/Status – All subpages of this page – All subpages of my talk page.

I keep being told I look like various celebrities:

1. Matthew Rhys
2. Robert Downey Jr.
3. Steve Buscemi
4. Rachel Maddow
5. Jeffrey Dean Morgan
6. Steven Tyler
7. Colin Farrell
8. The Edge (like 20 years ago)
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Coincidentally, I was briefly a tech roadie for Aerosmith (Tyler's band) in 1994; they were probably the first band to do live online chat stuff with fans backstage at shows. A colleague and I were in charge of that.

LOL

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  On the Radar:  An Occasional Newsletter on Wikipedia's Challenges

— "Comments?" links go to OtR's own talk page, not those of the original news-item sources.

• "Wikipedia still has a moderator diversity problem. Its new chief wants to fix it." (Cristiano Lima, The Washington Post, 15 September 2021)

According to WashPo, WMF has tapped a South African nonprofit executive and lawyer to be its new executive director. While I've been saying for a decade that WMF has to stop hiring software- and online-services-industry people to run an NGO, and hire NGO people, this one – Maryana Iskander – is rather cagey and bureaucratic, or comes off that way in the interview.

• First up is a belief that the WMF Universal Code of Conduct (drafted in supposed consulation with all WMF editorial communities but largely ignoring all their feedback) is the key to diversifying Wikipedia's editorial pool. (And as always in mainstream media, "Wikipedia" means en.wikipedia.org.) The entire UCC is basically a restatement of some key WP (and Commons, and Wiktionary) policies plus some WMF "vision" hand-waving. It's questionably reasonable to expect a largely redundant document, which was created for projects that lack sufficient policy development, and which has and will continue to have little impact on en.Wikipedia, to cause a sea change in who volunteers to edit here. That takes real-world outreach on a major scale. One would think a nonprofit CEO would already get that.
• Next up, Iskander makes rather unclear reference to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This content-liability shield has been much in the US news lately, as a target of the Republican Party in its feud with "big tech", especially social media sites deplatforming far-right writers for anti-democracy propaganda and misinformation about the public health crisis. Iskander is correct that WMF isn't in a danger position in this, but the article strongly implies that Iskander and WMF are keenly interested and involved. Even when prompted, Iskander does not meaningfully elaborate, and just offers an education-is-important dodge. So, we need more actual information on what WMF is doing with regard to efforts to revise section 230.
• Moving on, Iskander says something alarming: "Wikipedia has seen a huge amount of increased traffic around covid-19, [so has] worked on a very productive partnership with the World Health Organization to provide additional credibility to that work." That's hard to distinguish from a statement that WHO has editorial plants who WP:OWN the relevant articles. But it's cause for concern whatever the truth is. WMF should not be "partnering" with any external body to influence the encyclopedia's content (especially not one that has taken as many credibility hits as the WHO).
• There's something potentially interesting in here, though devils could reside in the details: "a lot of the basic access issues might technically look different [between SA and US], but how people understand what information is available to them – how they access it – those issues exist everywhere". What is this going to mean on a practical level? Is MOS:ACCESS going to be better-enforced? Is Simple English Wikipedia going to be reintegrated into the main site as alternative articles? Is the mobile version of the site going to stop dropping features? Is WP:GLAM going to turn into a bigger effort? There are a hundred ways (sensible and otherwise) this statement could be made to affect policy, funding, and the end "product" (though one suspects nothing important will change for the better unless the internal culture of WMF's organizational leadership also changes in a major way, such as by diversifying the board of directors, toward more academics and nonprofit people instead of tech-industry rich people).

In short, I have hopes that Iskander's NGO background will make for a better exec. dir. fit than that last two we've had, but right out of the gate she's saying strange, too-vague, and even troubling things. And nothing in the interview actually suggests anything like a fix for WP's editorial diversity problem, which the headline suggested was going to be the focus.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:48, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

[Comments?]

• "Imposing orthodoxy: Left-wing activists are using old tactics in a new assault on liberalism" (staff writers, The Economist, 10 September 2021)

"It is possible to detect eerie echoes of the confessional state of yore", and today's far left is recycling techniques from fun times like the Inquisition." I've been saying this for years, and the article is a good summary of how "left-wing" and "leftist" do not always align with "liberal". It's an observation too few mainstream writers have been willing to make, but the truth of it explains a great deal of disruptive PoV-pushing on Wikipedia. Illiberal left-wing activism is often harder to detect, and harder for the average editor to publicly resist, than far-right extremism, which we tend to recognize then delete on sight.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:51, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

[Comments?]

• Study confirms what we knew already: People edit here to change public perception (Barbara Page, "Edit-a-thon participants are motivated by desire to change the views of society", The Signpost, 24 May, 2018)

An Information Research survey shows that people's editing motivation is often "their desire to change the views of society", and also that they view Wikipedia as a "social media site". This isn't news to us, and the material doesn't have a huge statistical sample, but I would bet real money that it will be re-confirmed by later studies. This has systemic bias, neutrality, and conflict of interest implications (also not news). What we don't really think much about it is what this means for Wikipedia long-term, as everyone with an agenda becomes more aware that they can try to sneakily leverage Wikipedia articles to boost their side of any story, especially after the Trump 2016 US presidential campaign proved that powerful results can pulled off by organized manipulation of "social media" sites (whether WP really is one or not is irrelevant if the public thinks it is).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:28, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

[Comments?]

• WMF Community Wishlist Survey is system-gameable (SMcCandlish, 19 December 2017)

The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has closed; the results are here, and as disappointing as in previous years. This process is fundamentally flawed, for numerous reasons:

• Only the top-ten proposals will get any resources devoted to them, no matter how many there are, or how urgent or important they are.
• It's a straight-vote, canvassing-allowed, no-rationale-needed, short-term "popularity contest" – normal Wikimedian consensus-building is thwarted.
• This setup encourages people to vote for the 10 things they want most, then vote against every other proposal even if they agree with it. Proposals cannot build support over time.
• There's no "leveling of the playing field" between categories. Important proposals of narrower interest (e.g. to admins, or to technical people) never pass, only the lowest-common-denominator ones do – and the most-canvassed ones.
• Too few Wikimedians even know the survey exists or when it is open, which greatly compounds the skew caused by focused canvassing – the intentional spikes actually determine the outcome.

I've drafted some suggestions for making it work better.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

[Comments?]

• Archived stories:
  • Wikipedia co-founder on WP's flaws – and potential replacement? (SMcCandlish, 2 June 2018 (update of original 11 November 2015 story))
  • "Time Inc. Buyer Helped Koch Brothers Airbrush Their Image Across the Internet" (Lee Fang, The Intercept, 1 December 2017)
  • New "Wikipedia:Nations and Wikipedia" page (Fixuture, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), 26 June 2017)
  • RfC to require paid editors' disclosure of advertising to edit (Doc James, and 100+ Wikimedian respondents, Meta.Wikimedia.org, 13 September 2017 – December 2017)
  • At last, an RfC on paid use of admin tools (Smallbones [original proposal by Jytdog], Wikipedia talk:Administrators, 20 December 2017)
  • Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing (Smallbones, The Signpost, 25 February 2016 (updated 29 June 2018))
  • WMF Exec. Dir. Tretikov resigning (Patricio Lorente, Lila Tretikov, meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard, 25 February 2016)
  • "WP:BOGOF" stance helps derail an adminship after conflict at AfD (SMcCandlish, 6 February 2016)
  • "Inside the game of sports vandalism on Wikipedia" (Jeff Elder, Wikimedia Blog, 6 January, 2016)
  • "Hundreds of 'black hat' English Wikipedia accounts blocked following investigation" (Ed Erhart & Juliet Barbara, Wikimedia Blog, 31 August 2015)
  • "Are Pakistan articles being manipulated?" (Gamaliel, Wikipedia Signpost, 18 February 2015)

Hi!

I am Stanton McCandlish (often referred to as just SMcC here and some have nicknamed me Mac, which I don't mind). I am a Web developer, IT consultant, nonfiction author, civil liberties activist and nonprofit executive, as well as amateur pocket billiards (pool) instructor, genealogist, former online news editor, policy analyst, archivist, independent publisher, and also an amateur artist, among other things. I have been among the most active, avid Wikipedians. I have a B.A. in anthropology and communication (a custom minor that combines linguistics and broader human communication, including journalism, PR, and media criticism). I am a US citizen, but have lived in England, Ireland, and Canada for extended periods, and learned to read and write in the UK (and I use something of a form of Mid-Atlantic English consequently). I have competence in an odd assortment of topics, like Celtic mythology, English grammar and usage, Manx cats, New Mexican culture, US law in certain fields (freedom of expression, privacy, and intellectual property), salamanders, Web standards, UI usability, albinism, pool and billiards, online media, Art Nouveau, post-punk subcultures, Mac OS X, Highland dress, and various fiction franchises (though about 95% of my reading time is non-fiction), among other subjects. Being an autodidactic polymath, my interests shift over time and are intense. Some of my latest passions are the history of tartan, interface of zoology and anthropology, especially the history and nature of domestication; and shifting patterns of English usage.

Unified login: SMcCandlish is the unique login of this user for all public Wikimedia projects.

@This user can be reached by email.	PGPUse Nithyananda's public key for OpenPGP encrypted communication
This user is male.	This user lives in the United States of America.
This user lives in or hails from the U.S. State of California.	PTThis user's time zone is UTC-8.
It is approximately 2:15 AM where this user lives.	This editor is older than he looks, but younger than his years.

My current local time is 03:15 AM ().

Bio

Basically, this is my highly compressed CV Stanton McCandlish is a freelance web developer, systems and network administrator, and online PR/communications consultant; a buyer and seller of collectibles; and a pool instructor. His specialties include advocacy, media relations, information management and architecture, usability, technology policy analysis, and technical writing. His educational background is primarily in cultural anthropology and linguistics. He was for a while the technology VP and lead developer of a Toronto-based consulting firm. He was previously employed, and later volunteered, as the communications director for the CryptoRights Foundation. As such, he acted as the nonprofit's press and public-relations lead, publications manager, and webmaster, and also participated in mission-critical technical projects. Stanton was among the world's first professional online activists, and came to CryptoRights after working on issue campaigns, policy, and online communications at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) during its most formative and influential era, from 1993 to 2002, where he also ran one of the most-linked-to websites on the entire Internet, and edited the organization's newsletter, EFFector, one of the largest-subscription online bulletins of the era. He has written a variety of articles and tutorials, been quoted by most major US news publications on Internet policy issues, and is co-author of the privacy and e-activism book Protecting Yourself Online: The Definitive Resource on Safety, Freedom, and Privacy in Cyberspace (with Robert B. Gelman). He also managed production of the updated online editions of Everybody's Guide to the Internet (by Adam Gaffin), including revision, management of multi-language translation, and online distribution. After studying computer science, technical writing, and anthropology/linguistics at the College of Santa Fe, Eastern New Mexico University, and the University of New Mexico, McCandlish worked as a technical consultant at UNM, while maintaining an early independent electronic bulletin board system (BBS) and operating a small-press publishing operation in Albuquerque. Some of his current areas of (mostly off-WP) interest include electronic privacy, free expression online, preservation of fair use of intellectual property, and protection of the public's interest in the development of technical standards. McCandlish holds a BA in cultural anthropology and communication from UNM. He likes cats, salamanders, spicy food, art nouveau, post-punk, good girl art, and Skyrim. He lives in Oakland, California.

Contact

• E-mail me here
• My profile at LinkedIn

Wikitivities

Putting my money where my mouth is

This user is a donor to the Wikimedia Foundation. You can be one, too.

This user donated to WebCite, which keeps online source citations working in Wikipedia articles!

US$This editor buys sources, and has spent at least US$ 3,832 specifically to obtain over 189 reliable sources for citing on Wikimedia projects.

The "TL;DR" version

This user is one of the 281 most active English Wikipedians of all time.

This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than ten years (18 years, 8 months, and 29 days).

This user has earned the 100,000 Edits Award.

Access levels and roles

This user has template editor rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has page mover rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has file mover rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has AutoWikiBrowser rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has rollback rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has autoconfirmed rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has autopatrolled rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has pending changes reviewer rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has new page reviewer rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user is NOT an admin, but acts like one anyway. (verify)	This user performs non-admin closures at consensus discussions.	823Admin score: This user is Wikipedia's 43rd highest-scoring non-admin according to the admin scoring tool, as of 4 March 2013.
This user considers themselves a participant in all WikiProjects.	RNAThis user is a rouge non-admin	This editor is not an administrator (verify) and thinks having the mop wouldn't be of much use to them.

Stats

This user has been on Wikipedia for 18 years, 8 months and 29 days.	281This user is ranked 281 on the list of Wikipedians by number of edits (as of 24 November 2023).	This user has created ~100 articles on Wikipedia.
This user is ranked 3,720 on the list of Wikipedians by articles created.	198,700+This user has made more than 198,700 contributions to Wikipedia, on over 54,400 distinct pages.	62,900+This user has made over 62,900 contributions to Wikipedia mainspace.
Page creations by namespace: article / file / category / template / project / user / help / mediawiki / portal
6,100+This user has logged more than 6,100 moves or other log actions on Wikipedia.	This user has created 469 categories on Wikipedia.	This user has created 233 templates on Wikipedia.
This user has created 12,300 redirects on Wikipedia.	10.8% autoApprox. 10.8% of this user's edits were automated with tools, as of November 2023. (Verify)	ESU99.8% for major edits and 99.8% for minor edits. – Last update: November 2023.

Beyond en.wikipedia

This user is ranked 883 on the list of most-active WikiMedians by number of edits (as of February 2012).	170,800+This user has made over 170,800 contributions to Wikimedia projects.	1,230+This user has made more than 1,230 contributions to MediaWiki Commons.
430+This user has made more than 430 contributions to Wiktionary.

Detailia

SMcCandlish (talk · message · contribs · global contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · user creation · block user · block log · count · total · logs · edit summaries · email | lu · rfas · rfb · arbcase · rfc · lta · CUreq · spi · socks | current rights · rights log (local) · rights log (global/meta) | rights · renames · blocks · protections · deletions | moves · pending changes log · abuse filter · pages created | RM · XfD · AfD · UtHx · UtE)

• My Commons upload/move log (far more informative for my image contributions than the en.wiki one).
• My contributions to WP policies and guidelines
• MediaWiki Bugzilla bugs I've filed or been involved with

AfD-3This user has had 3 pages put up for deletion. Most of the time, they were deleted.	vn-32This editor's user page, talk page, or subpages have been vandalized 32 times.	8.2This user has 8.2 centijimbos.
This user scored 51,617 on the Wikipediholic test.	This user is one in 47,800,045.	#This user was the 378,390th registered editor at English-language Wikipedia
This user has alternative accounts named McCandlish, Smccandlish, SMcClandish, SMcCandish, SMcClandlish, Temp4590, and one other disclosed to WP:ARBCOM.

What I'm working on now...

...when time permits:

This user is currently working on Tartan.

This user is currently working on WikiProject Cue sports.

Incomplete articles

• American snooker (draft)
• Lots of cue sports articles; see WikiProject Cue sports for an overview.
• Lots of articles related to Highland dress
• Lots of articles related to breeds of cat

"Incubator" of new or maybe-to-be-restored articles in progress Stuff I occasionally work on, because it's unfinished or it was deleted but could be salvageable with some better sourcing and writing. SMcCandlish/Incubator SMcCandlish/Incubator/ SMcCandlish/Incubator/Adryenn Ashley SMcCandlish/Incubator/American Association of Cat Enthusiasts SMcCandlish/Incubator/Charles Williams (pool player) SMcCandlish/Incubator/Chinese eight-ball SMcCandlish/Incubator/Clan Abercromby SMcCandlish/Incubator/Clan Watson SMcCandlish/Incubator/Dragon Promotions SMcCandlish/Incubator/Erik Gatmaitán SMcCandlish/Incubator/History of Highland dress SMcCandlish/Incubator/Jump cue deets for the 'Cue sticks' article SMcCandlish/Incubator/Jump shot deets for the 'Cue sports techniques' article SMcCandlish/Incubator/List of World Blackball Champions SMcCandlish/Incubator/List of World Eight-ball Champions SMcCandlish/Incubator/Lucy and the Pool Hustler SMcCandlish/Incubator/Pedro Rigual SMcCandlish/Incubator/Pool TV SMcCandlish/Incubator/Russian pyramid SMcCandlish/Incubator/Sororal polygyny SMcCandlish/Incubator/Southern Colorado SMcCandlish/Incubator/Sudden Death Seven-ball SMcCandlish/Incubator/Tartan design and weaving SMcCandlish/Incubator/Tim Schuldt

Wikipedia-namespace pages

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (glossaries) (nascent proposal)
• Sports naming conventions and manual of style (draft)

Stuff I've been largely responsible for or heavily involved in

Projects

• WikiProject Cue sports – for articles on cue sports, including pool, snooker, carom billiards, and obscure billiards-related games such as bagatelle and bumper pool.
• WikiProject Inline Templates – for maintenance of inline citation, dispute and cleanup templates, such as {{ref label}}, {{fact}} and {{fixPOV}}.
• WikiProject English Language – for articles on the language's history, linguistics, grammar, style, etc.

Articles

This user has helped promote 3 good articles on Wikipedia.

I devote most of my mainspace time to improving poor articles to be encyclopedic quality, rather than "polishing the chrome" on already-good articles. Both kinds of work are necessary, but I find working on Stub, Start, and C-class articles, to move them toward B, A, and Good class, is a higher priority for the project. (To date, I have little interest in Good-to-Featured improvement; that's a wiki-subculture all its own.)

• Stats on the articles I have edited the most
• ACUI Collegiate Pocket Billiards National Championship – created article, as a 5-source stub verging on Start-class.
• Albinism and Albinism in humans – originally a single article, it was already not-bad when I got there, but I worked on the material a lot, especially sourcing the science, and defending it from frequent vandalism. Most of my work on it has been surpassed by now, but it was important back in the day (late 2000s).
  • Albinism in popular culture – was a narrow AfD survivor in the form of Albino bias and an AfD failure as Evil albino stereotype when I got to them; it's quite solid now, after a lot of mergin' & purgin', reliable sourcing, and frequent shepherding and cleanup.
  • Persecution of people with albinism – a later split, and a significant amount of the content was from my work in the above articles.
• Antebellum architecture – mostly based on material split from Antebellum South.
• Caffè d'orzo
• Crystalate Manufacturing Company – an early plastics manufacturer.
• Eight-ball pool (British variation) – mostly my work, building on skeletal, unsourced material originally interpolated into Eight-ball.
• English in New Mexico – along with several others, have been working to develop this into a proper article (it's more difficult than it sounds; most of the source material is on paper at the UNM library, or behind journal-archive paywalls). It later merged to Western American English#New Mexico – with most of the content now gone, which is disappointing. Win some, lose some.
• Five-pin billiards – Article about the carom billiards game popular in Italy and parts of South America. I wrote it from scratch after someone posted a (terrible) machine-translation of the (good) Italian article; mine is now more extensive than the original Italian one, though may yet suffer from translation problems. Help wanted from someone fluent in Italian.
• Folgerphone – an experimental musical instrument. Someone's disputed a major fact, on the Talk page. Help wanted from anyone who knows anything at all about Folgerphones.
• Galfrid – a major disambiguation page (it existed before but had very little in it); this took a considerable amount of work, hunting down all the notable and probably-notable Galfrids (many of whom were also Geoffreys, Godfrieds, Gruffydds, Goffredos, etc., and not at titles with "Galfrid" or "Galfridus" in them), and looking into the origin of the name and its variants, and their relation to other names.
• Ground billiards – written from scratch.
• IBSF World Snooker Championship
• International Open Series – a snooker tournament.
• List of professional sports – mostly based on material split from Professional sports.
• List of U.S. Open pool championships (begun as a disambiguation page).
• Logorrhea (psychology) – mostly based on material split from what was Logorrhea (rhetoric) and now at Verbosity.
• Mythology (fiction)
• Persian onager – a beast.
• Pleonasm – article on redundant expressions in language. About 70% or so of that text is mine.
  • Relatedly, I also shepherded various other language articles like Verbosity, Redundancy (linguistics) and Calque, until they became stable.
• Pool Hall Blues – an episode of TV series Quantum Leap.
• Pro–am – mostly based on material split from what is now Amateur professionalism.
• Regimental tartan – written pretty much from scratch, originally as a section of Tartan.
• Sandbox (software development) – a coding safety process. Created this article. I crack up when someone mistakes it for the Wikipedia:Sandbox.
• Shrew (stock character) – I did a WP:TNT total rewrite [50] to a B-class article, and wiping out various WP:NPOV and WP:NOR problems.
• Three-ball – article about the poorly-documented modern pool (pocket billiards) folk game, about 95% my material. Sourcing help wanted!
• Triple deity – started this, originally as a list article.
• Turkmenian kulan – a creature.
• Valley-Dynamo – a gaming table manufacturer (especially pool, foosball, and air hockey).
• Valley National 8-Ball League Association – a pool league (actually international now despite its name).
•  William A. Spinks – written from scratch.
•  William Hoskins (inventor) – written from scratch.

Overhauled

Pre-existing pages I've done a lot of work on (over time or all at once); new list started January 2018, so very incomplete:

• Girls Under Glass – band article which I redid top to bottom, from a broken-English list of bullet points into a comprehensive article (with some help from the German Wikipedia page on them). This cleanup and expansion [51] (about 23K more material) saved it from WP:AFD.
• Godwin's law – I informally shepherded this page for quite some time, before other editors got more involved in keeping it encyclopedic. (I have a potential conflict of interest, since I worked at the same organization as its namesake back in the 1990s.) I've more recently (2023) returned to cleaning it up, as it started to get crufty again.
• Jeannette H. Lee – Korean-American businesswoman article. I originally nominated this for deletion, but after it was kept as (marginally) notable, I significantly worked up the article so it will be properly encyclopedic.
• Khes – iffy article on an Indic fabric type and garment, written by a non-native English speaker, and with poor sourcing. Was already slated for AfD by someone, but I managed to massage it into passable shape (a quality edit more than a quantity one). Still had issues (as of December 2020), but I drew attention to the page at the wikiprojects and noticeboards for India- and Pakistan-related topics.
• Lynette Horsburgh – British amateur cue-sports champion. Was AfDed, so I improved it (diff includes a few intervening edits by someone else), and it was kept. Not a massive overhaul, but a qualitative one.
• Mora, New Mexico [52]; Mora County, New Mexico [53]; First Battle of Mora [54]; Second Battle of Mora [55] – were palimpsests of confusing drive-by edits, so I re-did them all with everything where it actually pertains, copyedited, and with some new sources.
• Nithyananda – a controversial modern guru of India. For a long time, this article was veering back and forth between a WP:BLP-violating attack page and a shameless promotional advertisement by his followers (whom I attempted to dissuade from further WP policy violations, both on-wiki and by contacting his organization directly). I overhauled it repeatedly, and watchdogged it for months until sufficient attention from other neutral editors was drawn to it. (Problems still arise, but they are much more manageable now.)
• Tartan – totally overhauled from top to bottom, using pretty much every available reliable source.
  • Splits so far include Regimental tartan, with Tartan design and manufacture next, to be followed by Clan tartan (presently a redir to main article).

Wikipedia policies, guidelines, essays, and proposals

• Stats on the "Wikipedia:"-namespace pages I have edited the most
• Wikipedia:Notability – policy – I was deeply involved in the debate over the future and form of this when it was a proposed guideline, especially from Nov. 2006 through Feb. 2007, until it stabilized (it was much more controversial back then than editors today might realize).
• Wikipedia:Gaming the system#Gaslighting – guideline sub-section – I popularized the concept on WP; someone else added it to the guideline, though most of the wording is mine at this point.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers, a many other MoS pages – guidelines – Along with various other "regulars", I have spent a lot of time shepherding the MoS, and have written substantial portions of it. I often move on to other stuff, so as to not get overly focused on it, then return to it periodically, mostly to help keep it stable.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography – WP:MOS sub-guideline – major 2018 overhaul [56], merging in material from MOS:LEAD, MOS:ABBREV, and MOS:CAPS
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines, and their adherents – WP:MOS sub-guideline section – principal author
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Cue sports – WP:AT/WP:MOS sub-guideline – principal author
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Glossaries – WP:AT/WP:MOS sub-guideline draft – principal author
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons – WP:MOS sub-guideline – one of the principal authors (I wrote most its key provisions)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Organisms – WP:MOS sub-guideline draft – principal author
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey) – did a total rewrite (combined diff), so that it makes some kind of sense, and actually follows site-wide policies and guidelines; not sure how much of that will stick.
  
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople) – WP:AT sub-guideline – principal author
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Cue sports/Notability – WP:N sub-guideline draft – principal author
• Wikipedia:Notability (breeds) – WP:N sub-guideline draft – one of the principal authors
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming conventions – WP:AT sub-guideline – much of the prose and most of the structure is my work, though none of the major ideas are; I simply took a palimpsestuous mess and made a parseable document out of it.

• Wikipedia:Advice for hotheads – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Article titles/Criteria order – supplement – principal author
• Wikipedia:Asshole John rule – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Commas exist for a reason – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Common-style fallacy – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Consensus venue – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Content forks/Internal – supplement – creator, one of the principal authors
• Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2021#Flyer22 Frozen – obituary – one of the principal authors
• Wikipedia:Don't be high-maintenance – essay – wrote the overhauled version that changed it from the WP:Don't feed the divas attack page to an advice essay (both for the editorship-at-large and for editors accused of such behavior)
• Wikipedia:Don't bludgeon the process § No one is obligated to satisfy you – essay section – principal author
• Wikipedia:Don't "teach the controversy" – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Emerson and Wilde on consistency – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Fallacy of selective sources – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Fallacy of the revelation of policy – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Frequently misinterpreted sourcing policy – essay – principal author
• Help:How to mine a source – how-to – principal author
• Wikipedia:Identifying and using style guides – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Identifying and using tertiary sources – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:In versus of – supplement – principal author
• Wikipedia:Logical quotation on Wikipedia – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style extended FAQ – frequently-asked-questions page – principal author (though I made the lead section a "guest editorial" from DGG); covers more than the summary MOS:FAQ
• Wikipedia:Notability/Historical – archival index, providing a comprehensive overview of the history of the development of the "notability" concept on Wikipedia – creator/maintainer
• Wikipedia:Proper names and proper nouns – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Race and ethnicity – essay, largely educational in nature – principal author
• Wikipedia:Reducing consensus to an algorithm – essay, verging on humor – principal author
• Wikipedia:Rouge editor – humor essay – one of the principal authors (the version before mine was here, as the text in a category page)
• Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Tertiary-source fallacy – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Use modern language – essay – principal author
• Help:User CSS for a monospaced coding font – how-to – principal author (and actually transcluded from Template:Mxt/User CSS for a monospaced coding font, as it was created initially as a supplement to template documentation)
• Wikipedia:Using nicknames – guidance essay – principal author. Obsolete; almost all of it has been integrated into MOS:NICKNAME as of November 2017.
• Wikipedia:Wall of text – essay – substantial revision [57] to be balanced and less like a polemic
• Wikipedia:When unbundling admin power works – essay – principal author
• Wikipedia:Why Manual of Style discussions are so awful – outline of the causes (and a few hints about what to do about it, though the problem is largely intractable and human nature)
• Wikipedia:Why Manual of Style talk pages have so much churn – a list of reasons and related matters
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals/Article structure - wikiproject advice essay (draft) – principal author
• Wikipedia:Writing about breeds – essay – principal author; primarily for new-ish editors, but also an overview for those just new to the topic
• Wikipedia:You can search, too – essay – principal author

User-space essays

• User:SMcCandlish/Adminship reform – draft proposal (more like a "what if", since it'll never happen unless WMF imposes it)
• User:SMcCandlish/Avoid quoting definitions – author; still in a draft state
• User:SMcCandlish/Bare basics of Wikipedia footnotes – just a little bit of "micro-help" for beginners
• User:SMcCandlish/Discretionary sanctions 2013–2018 review – running log of issues related to WP:AC/DS and ArbCom's failure to address them.
• User:SMcCandlish/Gendered category criterion – draft proposal
• User:SMcCandlish/It – a "ha ha, only serious" piece. [It proved controversial when someone mistook it for "transphobic" because it had anything at all to do with pronouns. It's actually about self-aggrandizement for commercial, religious, classist, or plain ol' egotism reasons, and why Wikipedia will not write in such a manner to please such a subject.]
  • User:SMcCandlish/TG-NB – a FAQ on what my actual views on TG/NB/GQ issues are, and on the history and results of the disputes about the above essay
• User:SMcCandlish/Notability and Deletion policy – my personal "ground-truth sitrep" on notability as a concept on WP; updated every few years (since 2006)
• User:SMcCandlish/RfA standards – what I (loosely) expect and do not expect out of candidates for WP:Requests for adminship
• User:SMcCandlish/RfC-replacement voting system – draft proposal (more like a "what if", since it'll never happen unless WMF imposes it)
• User:SMcCandlish/Wikipedia's self-management and future – some thoughts on organizational life-cycle, editor retention, and dispute resolution

Major successful proposals

Key:

• Y = Proposal (or its gist) accepted
• N = Proposal rejected
• Y = Partly accepted, or other solution reached
• N = No consensus, or unclear resolution

Very incomplete; I just started this list in January 2018 and have hardly added anything to it, since it's a lot of diff-digging for little utility. This is just what I happen to run across and think "oh, yeah, I remember that".

• Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 150#RfC on capitalization of the names of standardized breeds – Y Settled on following the capitalization used in breed standards; MOS:LIFE updated to reflect this. I was neutral on the matter, just insistent that we pick either that or lower-case, not continue to have no clear answer. (December 2018 – January 2019)
• Wikipedia:Proposed article splits – Y I created this noticeboard in July 2018, though originally as a section [58] of what is now Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers (suggesting a broader name); it ran that two-in-one way until April 2019, when it was split off into its own noticeboard by GenQuest.
• A series of merge proposals from 2016–2018 to consolidate biographical advice into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography: Y All the consensus discussions went well, and I merged in material from MOS:LEAD, MOS:ABBREV, and MOS:CAPS in a long series of back-to-back edits [59] (June 2018).
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 26#RfC: Capitalisation of traditional game/sports terminology – Y About over-capitalization of traditional sports and games; concluded in favor of lowercase; new section added to MOS:CAPS, and essentially identical material already in there about over-capitalizing dances and dance genres was merged into it. (January–February 2018)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies/2017 archive#Substantive revision of "Pseudonyms, stage names, nicknames, hypocorisms, and common names" – Y a bold total overhaul of the MOS:NICKNAMES section of MOS:BIO (before vs. after), based on my WP:Using nicknames essay; accepted almost verbatim (November 2017); there was some later clarification discussion, long but not major (December 2017).
• Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126#RfC: In-universe name details of fictional characters, in article leads – Y Consensus: do not write articles on fictional characters as if real biographies (March–April 2016). Point later integrated into MOS:FICT.
• Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126#RfC: Religion in biographical infoboxes – Y Removed contentious |religion= and |denomination= parameters from most biographical infoboxes (March–April 2016).
  • See also Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 127#RfC: Ethnicity in infoboxes, which was going nowhere until I moved it to Village Pump right after the above RfC, then it closed with strong consensus against |ethnicity= parameter for similar reasons (March–April 2016).
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 156#Bird common name decapitalisation – Y Settled eight-year dispute about capitalizing vernacular names of organisms (don't, except where a proper name occurs, e.g. in Grevy's zebra). (April–May 2014)
• WP:TRANSACTIONAL – Original idea from Hurricane_Noah, but most of the wording is my policywonkery. Successful proposal here (November 2023)

Ongoing proposals

This list is years out of date, and was primarily for my own convenience, though anyone who hates me can use it to be a pain and get themselves blocked for WP:HARASSment. Heh.

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games#General-topic article badly needed: Virtual-reality game – Proposed creation of stand-alone Virtual-reality game article, since the topic is distinct from virtual reality hardware, and we already have a Category:Virtual reality games.
• Talk:Virtual reality headset#Requested move 24 March 2021 – Move to Virtual-reality headset per MOS:HYPHEN and WP:CONSISTENT.
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 20#South Scandinavian languages – South Scandinavian languages nominated for deletion, unless a proper target article/section can be found. Presently redirecting to Danish dialects, but does not appear to be a term for this (or for anything else – zero hits in Google Scholar (March 2021).
• Talk:Largest living flying birds according to wingspan#Requested move 20 March 2021 – Move to Largest living flying birds by wingspan per WP:CONCISE and WP:PRECISE/WP:RECOGNIZABLE (this is dialectal/colloquial use of "according to", and unnecessarily wordy anyway.
• Talk:The Bee's Knees#Requested move 20 March 2021 – Move to Bee's knees per WP:CONCISE, WP:THE, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS.
• Talk:Yan Tan Tethera#Section merge from Cumbric – It is duplicative of the material at the latter and inappropriate in huge chart form in the former; all that's needed there is a general summary (March 2021).
• Talk:Steve Gibson (computer programmer)#Requested move 9 March 2021 – Move to Steve Gibson (programmer) per WP:CONCISE, WP:DAB: don't use a longer disambiguation term than is necessary.
• Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 75#Requested move 8 March 2021 – move Template:Cite conference to Template:Cite presentation, since we cite presentations at conferences (or in conf. proceedings), not entire conferences.
• Talk:FKM#Merge from Viton – To merge spammy and redundant brand-name article into article on the substance (March 2021)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Overhauling MOS:CAPS#Peoples and their languages – Proposal to fix problem that MOS:PN merge left a section on this in MOS:CAPS without any actual material pertaining to capitalization, and we actually have plenty to say about that (February 2021).
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Wording proposal on ethnic/racial terms, in light of the recent RfC – To address "[b|B]lack", "[c|C]olo[u]red", etc., since there's been a lot of churn about that, including an RfC with clear results which are not yet reflected in the guideline (February 2021).
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/France and French-related articles#Proposed simplification of MOS:FRENCHCAPS, which is more than a decade outdated – In short, this MoS subpage is contradicting others; we have a conflict between MOS:FRENCHCAPS, MOS:FOREIGNTITLES (and to a lesser extent MOS:FOREIGN, MOS:TM, etc.), and there's also a WP:OPERATITLE essay in the mix (December 2020).
• Talk:James D. Zirin#Merge book stubs here – Proposal to merge three questionably notable stubs into a single article that is more encyclopedic (December 2020).
• Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 72#Proposed documentation and parameter alias changes for Template:Cite episode – N to make the template more relevant in the age of digital media, and less US-centric (October 2020). Archived without resolution, so will need to be re-started. [Leaving it in this section, because I should do this, and while it is still quasi-recent.]

Accepted proposals needing further work

(That's further work by me or by anyone.)

• Talk:Southwestern Brittonic languages#Requested move 13 March 2021 – Move to Southwestern Brittonic per WP:CONCISE, WP:CONSISTENT. We don't need to append "language[s]" to language article when the name isn't ambiguous with that of a culture/ethnicity. N I rescinded this since it's become clear this needs to instead be mass RM of all the articles in the category hat have this "not actually ambiguous with anything" issue, rather (per WP:CONSISTENT) just moving this one article. Leaving it in this section (despite not an accepted proposal), since I actually need to do the work of building that RM.
• Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 December 19#Template:Hover title and Template:Tooltip – Y to merge the former to the latter. In progress: Re-develop code for better accessibility.
  • Related: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#New tooltip testcases and Template:Tooltip/testcases
• Talk:L'Ange de Nisida#Requested move 8 December 2020 – Y moved from L'ange spelling per WP:COMMONNAME, MOS:FOREIGNTITLE, MOS:FOREIGN, MOS:FRENCHCAPS, and WP:CONLEVEL (involves a wikiproject WP:PROJPAGE essay) Followup: It's likely that essay needs revision as a result of this and other moves.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2020/October#Folklore stubs – Y because we don't have a stub category tree for folklore, leading to lots of uncategorized and mis-categorized stubs. "The result of the debate was create." Confer with Pegship on building this out over time: "I suggest this be set up under Culture stubs | Other culture."
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2018/November#Breeds – Y For {{breed-stub}}, {{dog-breed-stub}}, and their categories (also a rename of an over-long one). Result: create parent-only category, and file breed stub sub-categories under it. (I'm not sure about the rename; may need to separately revist that.)
• Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people/Archive 10#A point needs clarification into guidance instead of non-guiding observation (and tacit approval) of conflict – Y Needs to proceed if MoS is going to incorporate that page by reference. Did not attract opposition, but I'm not sure there's enough feedback to declare consensus. May need to re-ask, or just go do it and see if it sticks.
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lists#Propose merging WP:Manual of Style/Embedded lists into WP:Manual of Style/Lists – Y Pretty straightforward. Some of this got done while I was on wikibreak, but some may still need to be completed.
• Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion/Archive 26#RfC: Proposal to make TfD more RM-like, as a clearinghouse of template discussions – Y Just what it says. While this passed almost unanimously, nothing has been done to actually implement it yet. We need a listing template, and a bot that goes looking for it.
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Temperament Test Society – Y Result: Merge to Temperament test. Non-notable org; not unencyclopedic, but should merge to Temperament test
• Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#The constant problem of category half-diffusion – Y clarification suggested (not drafted in detail) for WP:EPON. No opposition; suggestion to just WP:BOLDly do it. Will take some merging work.
• Talk:Toy dog#Merge from Toy Group – Y close out a WP:CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
• Talk:Terrier#Merge from Terrier Group – Y close out a CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
• Talk:Herding dog#Merge from Herding Group – Y close out a CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
• Talk:List of dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club#Merge redundant articles – Y close out more CONTENTFORKs. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
• Talk:Fédération Cynologique Internationale#Merge from "FCI [Whatever] Group" pages – Y close out more CONTENTFORKs. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
• Talk:Breed standard#Merge from Breed standard (dog) – Y close out another CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
• Talk:Non-Sporting Group#Requested move 20 February 2018 – Y de-capitalization multi-RM, plus some further merge ideas. Most articles moved; merges need to happen. Y One article was carved out of the RM by the closer, but without any actual basis and in direct contradiction of a recent RfC on the matter. Closer has been asked to reverse that; otherwise, I will re-RM this later.
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#RfC: Capitalisation of traditional game/sports terminology – Y WP will use "chess" and "baseball bat" not "Chess" and "Baseball Bat" (question didn't seem like it needed to be asked, until editwarring proved that it did). Some game and equipment articles still need to be lower-cased, as does lots of text in them.
• Template talk:Yesno#Support on/off and RfC below it – Y Change to protected template to detect on/off as well as yes/no, 1/0, true/false, etc. This should not have required this RfC, per WP:Common sense and WP:WIKILAWYER, but so it goes. Still needs the fix at Template:Post-nominals that inspired this to be reopened from original 2015 request in the first place. Follow-up request also open at Module talk:Yesno#Support on/off.
• Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 January 24#Template:IUPAC spelling US – Y merge some redundant ENGVAR templates, to just be parameters; merge needs to actually be done.
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elf cat – Y Consensus was to merge WP:SUMMARY version to List of cat breeds, but it requires condensing the material.
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Merge in MOS:PN – Y merge from WP:Manual of Style/Proper names almost unanimously supported, but need to actually do it.
• Wikipedia talk:Media help#Requested move 10 January 2018 – Y some cleanup work needs to be done, and possibly a merge (see final comment at discussion)
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 21#Category:Fédération Cynologique Internationale members – Y move to name without "members" (we don't have narrow subcats. without a parent cat.)
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 22#Category:Male dogs – Y upmerge as unencyclopedic; more sensible to split by dog type/role.
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 22#Category:Glossaries of medical terms – Y upmerge to more concise duplicate/parent Category:Glossaries of medicine.

Log of closed proposals

Very incomplete; I just started this list in January 2018. Changes to WP:POLICY and WP:PROCESS pages Expect to see a lot of yellow and red icons in here, since writing and changing policy is hard. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#MOS:EPONYM – Y to centralize MoS points about eponyms (as of that writing, scattered in MOS:CAPS and other places); there was an initial bit of confused and very circular noise about this, from a single party, then no further dispute. (will probably end up in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 221 or 222). Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2020 archive#Proposal to better address "The"/"the" in names of performers (etc.) and groups thereof – Y to fix the wikilawyering loophole of the rule in question presently only being in MOS:MUSIC (November 2020). Unanimous support; implemented as MOS:NAMEFMT. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes/Archive 16#RfC on birthplace, nationality, and citizenship parameters with matching values – Y Is |birthplace=Paris, France |nationality=France} |citizenship=France redundant or helpful? I say redundant. Result: "Consensus has been determined that |nationality= or |citizenship= should not be used when the country would match that found in |birthplace=". Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 219#RfC: Use of Large Quotes in article space, and the Cquote template – Y I didn't open the RfC, but helped draft it (at [[Template talk:Cquote#Proposed changes re {cquote}]]) and have been "on" this issue since 2007 (I kid you not). Result: "Replace {{cquote}} with the code ... [having] the effect of converting {{cquote}} into {{quote}} in all mainspace uses, all at once. Make similar changes in {{rquote}}." Finally! This puts an end (at least in theory) to people injecting "decorative" quotations in articles that give WP:UNDUE attention to particular viewpoints. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 28#Expand MOS:INSTITUTIONS to cover 'act', 'bill', 'resolution' and other items of legislation? – Y Someone else opened this, though I was quite active in it, and had suggested essentially the same RfC more than once; someone just beat me to it. Near-unanimous support. Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 56#Change to "Memorial" – N Quasi-proposal (not "advertised") to tweak some policy wording for clarity. The respondents mostly appeared to misinterpret it, so it self-evidently wasn't formulated well enough to be a solid proposal. The underlying issue still remains to be addressed. Wikipedia talk:User pages/Archive 17#Minor GAMING/WIKILAWYER fix – Y Proposal to tweak some guideline wording for clarity. While my exact original edit wasn't accepted, it inspired a big round of group editing, and the section is now clearer, so mission accomplished. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lists#Overly long list items – N We have no advice on this in ANY page, somehow. Proposal got some support, then a pile of opposes. I think this can still be worked out, but it will have to be phrased differently. Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Clarifying that UCRN is not a style policy – Y As expected, this did not actually produce a policy change (it will take more than one discussion about the fallacious idea that UCRN (WP:COMMONNAME) is about style). The discussion we did get through was productive, and had a strong influence on some later ones, such as Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 148#RFC on capitalization of prepositions. The underlying policy-wording problem (simply a lack of an MoS cross-reference) has been needing a fix for years, so we're not done yet. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Clarifying date ranges in YYYY–YY format – N A long-unresolved problem will remain so for now. Clear proposal was firehosed with knee-jerk, off-topic negativity by people who did not even read it, after a related and polarized WP:VPPOL thread pointed to the proposal. Will try again some other month. Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 152#Bot to deliver Template:Ds/alert – Y Opened because ArbCom just won't fix discretionary sanctions, left to their own devices. One of the intended effects of this (I did not actually expect the bot proposal to pass, just to spur action) did happen: the menacing {{Ds/alert}} template was totally overhauled. However, nothing about how DS operates was changed, so that will need to be reformed some other way. PS: Surprisingly, the bot proposal actually had majority support. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch#RfC Terms that can introduce bias [may end up in Archive 8 or 9] – Y Someone's re-re-RfC of my item immediately below. It passed this time, resulting in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Easily confused terms, some decade-old advice that was removed from the main MoS page as too specific for it. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch/Archive 8#Re-RfCing Arab/Arabic – Y Closed without resolution, as needing to be re-proposed (which was done, and Y passed; see above entry). This was yet another followup to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Arab, Arabic, Arabian (followup to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 200#RfC Should the usage of the terms "Arab" and "Arabic" be guided by the Manual of Style? and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 199#Arab and Arabic) – To restore long-standing material that probably shouldn't have been in the main MoS page, but is clearly appropriate for MOS:WTW. The last proposal was unopposed; since it was long-standing main-MoS-page material before being deemed too narrow there, I integrated it into MOS:WTW. This was WP:POINTily reverted, so did another RfC (and another). Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 205#Proposed footnote to discourage mass changes – Y No formal close, seems not to have come to a consensus. After three mass "enforcement of MoS" disputes in one week (with two ANI cases and a Village Pump thread about it, this seemed necessary at the time. We might have to revisit this if similar issues arise again. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 204#A consolidated MOS:SPORT? – Y No constructive input was received. Maybe re-approach this with a drafted merge next time. Informal proposal to take our sports-related advice, and pull some from wikiproject style essays, into a coherent single page. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 204#Merge some fiction stuff, too? – Y Same as above, but with regard to splintered fiction-related advice that has been policy-forking for no reason other than TV vs. film vs. anime specialized-style fallacies. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2018 archive#Proposed MOS:JOBTITLES tweak – Y Supported, unopposed, so implemented. Proposal to stop requiring capitalization of commercial and informal job titles in front of a personal name Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2018 archive#MOS:POSTNOM limit proposal – Y Original numeric limit idea rejected. Some follow-on discussion about other limitations was productive but stalled at copyediting phase. Worth revisiting later, to somehow limit the number of post-nominal acronyms after a biography subject's name in the lead. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 204#Expanded use of code syntax highlighting – Y No support for doing this, and the party in favor of the idea has stopped. Not an RfC, but a discussion of use of code syntax highlighting on sourcecode words in mid-sentence in regular prose. Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Conflict between WP:NCP and WP:MOS – Y proposal to fix the conflict (not an RfC, but "advertised" at relevant other talk pages); some discussion mostly about "guideline versus guideline" meta-policy, but the substantive proposal wasn't opposed, so I implemented it and it stuck; NPC has stopped conflicting with MOS:JR. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 26#Scouting conflict with MOS:DOCTCAPS, MOS:JOBTITLE – Y Seeking to resolve a style conflict, in favor of lower-case (i.e., in favor of what the site-wide guideline says vs. a topical essay). Result: Didn't conclude anything in particular, and didn't have a formal closure. Some followup discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 27#Marines vs. marines (and Soldier, Sailor, Airmen, etc.), and innumerable prior discussions about overcapitalization of job and organization titles/roles, plus various later ones (e.g. about "Lord Mayor of [Where Ever]" article about roles/titles as such, versus "List of lord mayors of [Where Ever]" articles where it's a genericized plural/collective reference to a bunch of individuals) all indicate the direction this should eventually go. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 201#Re-deprecate and merge the ENGVAR-related templates that do not serve an encyclopedic purpose – N RfC, self-explanatory. Result: Consensus was against the specific proposal, though a prior RfC was in favor of doing something about this mess. So, this will need to be revisited later with a different proposal. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 157#RfC on use of "crore" – Y RfC, to advise against use of "crore" for "ten million". Concluded to continue to permit it, but with some new limitations. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: "Allows to" – Y Accept or advise against this construction (mostly used by non-native English speakers but increasingly common in tech writing)? Conclusion: consensus it's bad grammar, but no consensus to add a line about it to MoS (it's not a frequent enough problem, supposedly. Trust me, it will be.) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikipedia Awards#Barnstar bureaucracy (informal discussion) – Y While the response was defensiveness, a suggestion of an RfC or more formal proposal was made, and is the next step. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal: Adopt WP:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines into MoS – Y Was adopted into MoS, with some minor revision. (I was not a principal author of the material in the page.) Revisiting gendered categories: Let's have a clear criterion of "has or can have a proper article" (a discussion draft) – Y Proposal not supported, but something worth implementing instead did emerge: "The solution to the problem you raise is to have an explicit guideline that these categories are non-diffusing and for editors to enforce that." Mergers and splits Talk:North Britain#Merge in from North Briton – Y Proposal to merge North Briton, a redundant WP:CONTENTFORK stub, into North Briton, since north[ern] Britons are not a distinct ethnic, linguistic, or cultural group, thus not an encyclopedic topic on their own (January 2021). Talk:John Hornor Jacobs#Merge from The Incorruptibles – Y Merge stub (already AfDed once) on non-notable book into stub on marginally notable author, in lieu of speedy deletion for re-creation of previously deleted material (December 2020). Merge completed 3 January 2020 [60]. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jean Mill – N A case of trying to "rub off" notability from an encyclopedic topic to create a memorial bio? Wow, relisted three times (once more than policy sanctions), and went to ANI, and ran for almost a month, then very narrowly concluded to keep. I'm actually almost glad it did; the article improved a lot in the process, and is arguably encyclopedic now, though the sourcing is still weak (lack of depth or lack of independence). I would still prefer a summarization and merge to a section at Bengal cat. My main concern about it is that developers of animal breeds are very rarely notable, but most of them [living] are highly promotional, and this may open the door to a flood WP:COI / WP:SOAPBOX pseudo-articles. Just for the record, I have nothing against Mill or her Bengal breed – it's my favorite! (March 2019) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Temperament Test Society – Y Non-notable organization; merged to Temperament test. (November 2018) Talk:Teaching English as a second language#Requested merge: February 2016 – Y Merge from Teaching English as a second language and Teaching English as a foreign language into Teaching English as a second or foreign language Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rugby union/Archive 20#Merge redundant RU notability pages – N Proposal to merge and redirect Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby union/Notability criteria to Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby union/Notability; it makes no sense to have two competing WP:PROJPAGEs about the same thing. Discussion did not have a clear resolution, and both pages still have merge tags on them. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 February 5#Category:Fictional location redirects – Y Proposal to upmerge to Category:Redirects from fictional locations. Result: "rename Category:Redirects from fictional locations to Category:All fictional location redirects and restructure accordingly" (i.e., it was renamed and re-scoped to include redirects to fictional locations). Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 February 5#Template:R to anchor 2 – Y merge back into Template:R to anchor, and fix the latter to stop auto-categorizing things as unprintworthy (bots aren't allowed to do that either). Both propositions were accepted. Talk:Sports league#Needs to split or at least re-organize along pro/am lines – N Proposal to either re-scope into very clear sections, or split into Sports league and Amateur league. Draws on WP:SUMMARY, WP:NOTDICDEF, WP:SETINDEX as rationales. Did not garner commentary. Need to RfC it to get sufficient input to assess consensus. Wikipedia talk:Wikimedia sister projects/Archive 2#Requested move 12 March 2019 – N A proposal to merge WP:SISTER to be either a subpage of MOS:LINKING or more directly a part of MOS:LINKING#Interwiki links. While not supported, there does seem to be some support Y for merging part of that material to MOS:LINKING. My was point is that it's unproductive to have interwiki-linking-style-and-layout material in two different places; this may still be fixable in a narrower proposal. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 December 7#Category:Template-related templates – Y Upmerged to Category:Template namespace templates, as redundant. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 December 1#Category:Calf (cattle) – Y Upmerged to parent, Category:Cattle. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 December 1#Category:Individual calves – Y Upmerged to parent Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 June 30#Bplus-Class articles – Y Merged away a bogus article assessment class only used by one project, in the 2000s. Cleaning up all the pages and templates took more work than I thought. I did most of it, but a few good peeps found some spots I missed. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Supremely Partisan and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Mother Court – N Proposals to combine some problematic articles that together might be viable (June 2018). The close of at least the second is questionable, claiming no one argued against the notablity of the book when that is clearly not true. This is a troubling result, as it suggests that an article on every nonfiction book from any major publisher can be kept as long as trivial micro-summary "reviews" appear in library trade publications. If this interpretation is allowed to stand, it will be nearly impossible to remove any article on any book that isn't fiction or self-published. Worse for the short-ish term, we are being WP:GAMED to provide author three promotional articles, one for him as a bio, plus two for his books. (June 2018) Update: The author article, James D. Zirin, was also nominated for deletion (by someone else), and also narrowly survived. As zero of the three articles has improved in the interim, I'm going to recommend they be merged. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 January 20#Category:Placer mining – Y Proposed deleting, but was technically upmerged to Category:Mining as it contained something not in the parent cat. yet. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 January 10#Category:Wikipedia Cabal decrees – Y Upmerged to Category:Wikipedia cabal humor. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 December 18#Category:Wikipedia proposals in brainstorming stage – Y Merged into Category:Wikipedia draft proposals. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 November 24#Category:Articles containing Pushto-language text – Y Merged into Category:Articles containing Pashto-language text. Talk:New Zealand rabbit#Proposed merges (March 2016) Y After a bunch of venting by one of "the usual suspects" (who for some time was trying to impede almost every single thing I did at breed articles), the merges did in fact proceed exactly as I suggested and for the reasons I suggested them. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Le vaillant petit tailleur – Y Non-notable book; redirected to author, Éric Chevillard. (September 2015) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ComicsAlliance – Y Non-notable website (September 2012). It was re-created later, but after ComicsAlliance won a major industry award in 2015, which is enough to establish notability. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2008 January 22#Ruby Terrill Lomax and John Lomax III – N proposal to merge non-notable bios Ruby Terrill Lomax and John Lomax III to notable family member Alan Lomax. Closed as non-consensus, as a "trainwreck", and would have been better listed at WP:Proposed mergers, though it was at that time not well established. A dozen years later, these articles have not improved at all, and lack substantial coverage in secondary sources. (January 2008) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Card shark – Y To delete a WP:POVFORK re-created after merger of the original Card shark into Card sharp. The discussion initially closed as "keep", but they were later that month re-merged anyway Y, as I predicted, and by someone else. (December 2007) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journalistic writing – Y Merge content-forked stub to News style (October 2007). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Punjab State Carrom Association – Y Proposal (accepted) to merge a bunch of local stuff into the nominated article. This was before WP:PM existed (June 2007). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Ralakan Corollary – Y WP:NFT nonsense; some random schmoe's comments about Godwin's law (July 2006). Deletions Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flashflight (2nd nomination) – Y Non-notable product. First AfD was "no consensus", and over a decade later, the page has not improved even slightly (December 2020). Voodoo Tiki nominated for speedy deletion per G4, A7, and G11 (December 2020). Y It was speedily deleted; see User talk:Nobsonwiki#Why Voodoo Tiki was deleted - again for details. This was, I think, the 5th time it was deleted (not counting a move-related redirect deletion). Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 November 20#MOS:DISABILITY – Y cross-namespace redirect nominated for deletion (was pointing to an essay, not to part of MoS). Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 February 5#Category:Redirects from route numbers – Y Proposed to delete, as essentially unused and trivial; the end result was coming up for a use for it and populating it. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 January 25#Ashera – Y Bogus cat-breed (hoax/fraud) article nominated for simple deletion, or deletion and replacement with redir to unrelated Asherah; the latter was the result. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Double-nosed Andean tiger hound – Y Result: merge (but no page to merge to yet existed at the time). Non-notable cryptid cruft (definitely not a dog breed). Update: Now redirects to Pachón Navarro#Double-nosed Andean tiger hound; that article is about the real breed that is the likely primary ancestor of the alleged bifid-nosed population. Material has been trimmed of WP:OR and supposition. (November 2018) Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:PigeonIP/RMs – Y An anti-consensus RM "hit list" Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User talk:MjolnirPants/Editnotice – Y On grounds of WP:TPG, WP:OWN, WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, WP:POLEMIC, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:GAMING, etc., all at once. Freedom Ranger (chicken) – WP:PROD Y – Non-notable, promotional, no independent sources. Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 December 13#Template:Trademark – N To delete redundant template which is also against WP:NOT#ADVICE, WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, WP:NODISCLAIMER. Ended up being kept on the basis of an argument (that trademarks are not intellectual property) which is completely wrong, legally. But whatever; template has no legit purpose but isn't harmful; someone else will just nominate it for deletion again later. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Price (librarian) Y – Non-notable bio, promotional purpose, nothing but primary sources. (December 2018) Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 November 14#Template:IOC name exception – Y This lingering bit of WP:BATTLEGROUNDing needed to be nuked back in 2014. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rise Nation – Y Non-notable e-sports team. Someone else technically nominated this, but was immediately blocked as a sock. The nom was correct, though, and I supplied the detailed deletion rationale. (July 2018) Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 5#Western Dance – Y to delete highly ambiguous redir; consensus was to convert to disambiguation page at Western dance Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 22#MOS:PLBLEAD – Y to delete useless "typo shortcut" for MOS:BLPLEAD. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 22#Wikipedia:SURANME – Y to delete useless "typo shortcut" for WP:SURNAME. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 June 22#Wikipedia:OPERPARA – Y to delete useless "typo shortcut" for WP:OPENPARA. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 February 4#Wikipedia:STOPCHANGINGIT – Y Got rid of pointless, confusing redir. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 February 2#State Investment Company – Y Deleted redirect, since term not mentioned at target article, and there are other entities that actually use this name, one of which may be notable. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Post-grunge lit – Y Zero sources cited use this term other than a self-published PhD thesis. This is a non-notable neologism. (January 2018) Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 January 16#Michael Buscemi – Y Potentially notable bio subjects should not redirect to their relatives, per WP:REDLINK. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 January 3#Category:WikiProject Masculinism – Y No such project any longer (superseded by WP:WikiProject Men's Issues). Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 January 1#Nick Lucero – Y Redlink will inspire article creation, and current redir is confusing. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 December 3#Category:Cattle hybrids – Y Misnomer for the contents (could be recreated with different content, if Category:Cattle breeds were subdivided into taurine, indicine/zebu[ine], and sanga). Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 October 23#Category:Wikipedians who consider themselves participants in many WikiProjects – Y Deleted as pointless. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeannette H. Lee – N Kept as (barely) notable. I ended up significantly improving the article instead. (October 2017) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kineti-Go – Y Deleted per WP:NCORP, WP:PRODUCT, WP:PROMO. (March 2012) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chipo Chung – N Non-notable actor. Has had work, and some press coverage, but it isn't in-depth. This is yet another case of confusion of competence/employability with WP:Notability (a common problem in WP articles pertaining to the entertainment sector). The article was narrowly kept, and after nine+ years has not significantly improved. If anything, the person's claim to notability seems shakier now than it was then, with fewer roles of importance since the 2000s, no increase in non-trivial sourcing, and an increased focus on doing charity work, for which this person isn't notable either. (October 2011) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Orlando Eye – Y WP:NOT#CRYSTALBALL / WP:TOOSOON deletion of a then-hypothetical project. Article was later re-created after it became non-iffy. (August 2011) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Female parliamentarians (2 nomination) – Y Non-encyclopedic, tautological WP:DICDEF (August 2011). Later redirected to proper article Women in government. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carrie Borzillo – Y Non-notable bio (May 2010). Was re-created later N, and should probably be deleted again (has no independent and secondary in-depth coverage, only state-level and industry-insider coverage and awards, so is not encyclopedically notable}} Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joan Carroll Cruz – Y Non-notable writer (April 2010). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Incorruptibles – Y Non-notable book (April 2010). Article was rapidly re-created N in essentially the same form and without any better sourcing. I proposed it for merger into the author article, instead of speedy deletion, and Y this was done. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Big hair – N WP:OR, non-encyclopedic, WP:DICDEF. This is a mishmash of different topics (many of which are notable), put together by an editor's subjective viewpoint that the hairstyles are "big" (March 2010). This was kept, but that was a mistake. The keep rationales basically boil down to WP:ILIKEIT / WP:IKNOWIT, and the closer ignored the actual policy-based arguments, especially WP:NOR. This should be AfDed again. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vanessa Lee Evigan – N Non-notable actor. The article was kept based on faulty reading of WP:ENT. Subject failed and still fails WP:GNG, and is simply competent/employable, plus related to someone notable. Over a decade later, it remains unsourced other than brief mention at unreliable website, plus subject's own primary-source material. I even correctly predicted that her non-notable musician brother would end up with an article because celeb-chasers on WP can't stand having the "set" of Evigans incomplete. There's another sibling article that also looks iffy, too. Greg Evigan is notable, but sharing genes with him and having some bit parts in TV shows does not WP:Notability make. (January 2010) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/DuPont Registry – N The WP:PROMO problem with this page (it had no sources but the company's own marketing materials) led me to reflexively nominate this without doing proper WP:BEFORE. (January 2010) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chalk to win – Y Deleted as WP:BOLLOCKS / WP:HOAX (January 2010). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flashflight – N Questionably notable product; result: "no consensus" (December 2009). Over a decade later, the article had not improved even slightly, so I renominated it for deletion. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/500 (outdoor game) – Y Deleted WP:NFT game (December 2009). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/3 Flies Up – Y Deleted non-notable/OR game variant (December 2009). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Finball – Y Deleted WP:NFT game (November 2009). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nguyen Thanh Nam – Y Non-notable businessperson (June 2009). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pat Fleming (politician) – N Nominated per WP:POLITICIAN (non-notable candidate). I rescinded the nomination, as moot, after Fleming was elected, since the guideline was then satisfied (April 2009). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mary Forsberg – Y Non-notable model/actor (February 2009). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Steve Cook (songwriter) – Y Non-notable bio (February 2009). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Fresh Mex restaurants – Y Deleted as OR, basically. "Fresh Mex" is a registered trademark of a particular company, not a generic description, and we have no Fresh Mex article (October 2008). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PNG Cutthroat – Y Deleted WP:NFT game (March 2008). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amjad J. Qaisen – Y Deleted non-notable actor bio (February 2008) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Exploding head – Y Deleted as a mixture of nonsense and fancruft, and fundamentally unencyclopedic in approach (December 2007). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Characters in Stargate – Y Deleted WP:CFORK; now redirects to Lists of Stargate characters (October 2007). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pool bocce – Y Deleted WP:NFT game (September 2007). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mexican pool – Y Deleted WP:NFT / WP:HOAX game (June 2007). Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Balfour's Law – Y Deleted WP:NFT Internet meme-cruft (someone's attempt to write an add-on for Godwin's law). Deleted per WP:NEO, since WP:N wasn't a guideline yet (July 2006). Moves/renames/re-targetings/re-scopings This is generally just 2017–2021, since keeping track of it proved tedious. Something I pushed on repeatedly for over a decade, in various venues, without quite gaining enough traction: renaming all the "WikiProject Topic members" categories and pages to "WikiProject Topic participants", to help bring an end to the poisonous misconception that wikiprojects are independent and exclusive walled gardens instead of simply pages at which editors with shared interests agree to collaborate, in keeping with WP:CONLEVEL policy. Y Kudos to Sdkb for the proposal that this time finally got it done: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 October 1#Category:WikiProject Foo members. Talk:Icon#Requested move 10 April 2021 – N group move to better comply with WP:ATT (esp. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) and with MOS:DAB: move Ikon → Ikon (disambiguation), then Icon → Ikon, then Icon (computing) → Icon. Someone's immediate followup proposal, Talk:Icon#Requested move 19 April 2021, for Icon → Icon (religious art), then Icon (disambiguation) → Icon, also failed to get consensus, so we're stuck for now with a mess that fails to comply with WP:AT and WP:DAB. Talk:Yan tan tethera#Requested move 13 March 2021 – Moved from the over-capitalised Yan Tan Tethera, per WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS, MOS:INCIPIT, MOS:GAMECAPS. Talk:Norilsk Nickel#Requested move 5 March 2021 – Y Moved from Nornickel to the actual company name. The abbreviated version is pretty frequent, but is not the WP:COMMONNAME. Talk:Forced labour#Requested move 28 February 2021 – Y Moved from Unfree labour per WP:COMMONNAME. Talk:Goliards#Requested move 12 February 2021 – Y Rename from Goliard, as a naturally plural title. Talk:Proper and common nouns#Requested move 1 January 2021 – Y moved from Proper noun and common noun, per WP:CONCISE. Talk:Paramashiva (film)#Requested move 31 December 2020 – Y moved from Paramashiva so that can redirect Parashiva per WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT and WP:ASTONISH. Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Index/Principles#Requested move 8 December 2020 – Y to move currently maintained page from Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Index/Principles 2 to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Index/Principles, and move the dead page then occupying that pagename to "Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Principles (historical)" or something (it ended up going to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Principles/Pre-2020). Template talk:Blockquote#Requested move 1 December 2020 – Y from Template:Quote, to match <blockquote>, and to discourage {{Quote|Too-short block quotations like this.}} Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disability/Style guide#Requested move 20 November 2020 – Y to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disability/Style_advice, since this is not a guideline and the name is confusing (this is a {{WikiProject style advice}} essay) Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 November 20#WP:OPED – to retarget to same Signpost page as WP:OP-ED, especially since the original MoS-page target already has MOS:OP-ED, etc., and the whole point of "MOS:" shortcuts is to not "hog" all the mnemonic "WP:" ones for MoS stuff. Talk:Mob rule#Requested move 21 November 2020 – Y Swapped Mob rule → Mob rule (disambiguation), then Ochlocracy → Mob rule per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:JARGON. Talk:Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff#Requested move 26 October 2020 – N to move to vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff per MOS:JOBTITLES and previous discussion on that page. Due to some initial confusion, this turned into a trainwreck, and ended no consensus. Talk:Arkansas militias during Reconstruction#Requested move 21 October 2020 – Y from Arkansas Militia in Reconstruction, so it makes some kind of sense. Template talk:Xmark#Requested move 15 October 2020 – Y to swap original name Template:Cross with is redirect Template:Xmark, since "cross" is ambiguous. Talk:Non-linear editing#Requested move 15 October 2020 – Y from Non-linear editing system, per WP:CONCISE and to better agree with lead and scope. Talk:Rafeiro do Alentejo#Requested move 21 February 2020 - N Rename another Portuguese dog breed to the official FCI name for it in English, instead of the original Portuguese name. No consensus was reached on what name to use, so it remains at the status quo article title. Talk:DMOZ#Requested move 21 February 2020 – N My argument was that it was renamed Curlie, and is not defunct, so the page needs to be move and to be updated. Other editors want to treat them as separate entities. I'm not sure there's any sourcing to back that position, but it is what it is for now. Talk:Saint Miguel Cattle Dog#Requested move 20 February 2020 – Y Moved 3 Portuguese dog breeds to English-language names per WP:USEENGLISH. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 February 5#Category:Catchphrases – N Proposed merge to Category:Slogans. Opposed but on a WP:IKNOWIT "dictionarian" basis that isn't actually supported by dictionaries at all, and which we can see is already causing miscategorization. This will have to be revisited eventually; the problem is still there, and putting our heads in the sand won't fix it. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 February 5#Category:Redirects from catchphrases – Proposed merge to Category:Redirects from slogans. Ditto the above pseudo-resolution. Talk:Council of governments#Requested move 5 February 2020 – N Suggested rename to either council of government (the concept) or councils of governments (the entities); "council of governments" seemed logically wrong. However, I appear to have misinterpreted. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 January 30#Category:One-shot (comics) – N Proposed to move to "Category:One-shot comics and manga" because it includes a manga subcat. and there's no need for the punctuation. I somewhat suspected the outcome might be that manga are a subset of comics, thus that title would be redundant. But I rather hoped otherwise. Treating manga as nothing but a subset both denies a major West/East cultural difference, and requires more cat. changes (to ensure that comics cats. which can apply to manga either do so directly or via a manga subcat, and to ensure that all extant manga cats. have at least one comics parent cat.) And we still don't need the parentheses. Talk:The Hexer (TV series)#Requested move 14 January 2020 – Proposal to move TV series to The Hexer, and move the "film" (compressed series synopsis) from The Hexer to The Hexer (film), per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, or possibly even merge the "film" into the series article as a section. Y The "film" article was moved, but the The Hexer (film) was not moved, with The Hexer now becoming a two-item disambiguation page. This is a poor result per WP:TWODABS, since a reasonable PRIMARYTOPIC case can actually be made. There was only one respondent, who did not reply to rebuttal. So, this is probably best re-RMed later, with some notice at relevant wikiprojects (TV, film, video games, fantasy) to draw in sufficient editorial input to reach a real consensus. Template talk:Humorous essay#Requested move 28 November 2019 – N Proposal to move to Template:Humor essay mostly for WP:PRECISE reasons (i.e., whether an essay is actually humorous is a matter of individual readers' subjective opinions, not authorial intent); did not succeed. Closed as not moved, yet there were only two respondents, and they both relied on the "well it can mean ..." rationale that was rejected in the Talk:Glossary of music terminology move, below. So, this should probably be re-RMed at some point on a purely WP:CONCISE and WP:CONSISTENT basis, and hopefully with enough input that it's not a WP:FALSECONSENSUS based on fallacious reasoning again. Talk:Off-off-Broadway#Requested move 1 December 2019 – Y Moved to off-off-Broadway from Off-Off-Broadway, per MOS:GENRE and MOS:DOCTCAPS; sources are not consistent in capitalizing it, and it's not a proper name but a descriptive phrase. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 December 6#H₂O – Y Retargeted from Properties of water to Water. Talk:Glossary of music terminology#Requested move 19 January 2020 – Y Moved to Glossary of musical terminology per WP:CONCISE, WP:PRECISE, WP:CONSISTENT. Template talk:Main talk other#Requested move 18 November 2019 – Current name is just confusing. Y Closed as no consensus due to inability to agree on a consistent set of names for that entire template family. Closer suggests re-RMing it after a while, with a clarified proposal. Talk:Das Kapital, Volume I/Archives/2021#Requested move 6 December 2019 – Y Multi-RM of all the "Capital, Volume X" articles to move to "Das Kapital, Volume I", etc. to agree (WP:CONSISTENT) with main article title, Das Kapital. Followup to the RM immediately below this one. Talk:Das Kapital#Requested move 22 November 2019 – Y Idea to nove to Capital (book) (per WP:USEENGLISH, and to be WP:CONSISTENT with Capital, Volume I – Capital, Volume IV) was rejected (which is consonant with a prior RM). However, the alternative proposal to move the volume articles to a name consistent with the main one met with support, and that was laster opened as a new RM, which succeeded (see entry immediately above). Talk:In-group and out-group#Requested move 11 November 2019 – Y Moved from Ingroups and outgroups, per WP:CONSISTENT, WP:SINGULAR. Talk:Catahoula Leopard Dog#Requested move 8 November 2019 - Y Moved from Louisiana Catahoula Leopard dog, per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:CONCISE Talk:Three-man chess#Requested move 28 October 2019 – Y Multi-page RM to fix rampant over-capitalization (Three-Man Chess, etc.) of chess variants, per MOS:GAMECAPS. Talk:North Ossetia–Alania#Requested move 9 March 2019 – Y Multi-page RM, mostly MOS:DASH, plus some WP:CONSISTENT and WP:CONCISE issues; moved away from North Ossetia – Alania, etc. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 March 10#Category:Wikipedia character-substitution templates – Y We don't need to stick "Wikipedia" at the front of category names unless there's a likelihood of confusion with real-world topics (or we should do it to all of them just in case, to be consistent – but not be veering back and forth for no reason). Talk:Lumiere (database)#Requested move 26 February 2019 – Y Moved from LUMIERE, because it's not an acronym (I originally suggested Lumiere (website), but we settled on "(database)". Talk:Media Programme of the European Union#Requested move 26 February 2019 – Y Moved from MEDIA Programme, because it's not an acronym, and "Media Programme" by itself is ambiguous. Talk:George Hodel#Requested move 7 February 2019 – Y Moved from George Hill Hodel, as over-disambiguation (by middle name, which we don't do) for something that isn't ambiguous with any other article anyway Talk:Winter sports#Requested move 29 January 2019 – Y Moved from List of winter sports to Winter sports (and against the proposal Winter sport; I didn't open the RM, but provided the title that prevailed. Talk:Attack on Titan (TV series)#Requested move 18 January 2019 – Y Moved from List of Attack on Titan episodes, with that page now redirected to Attack on Titan (TV series)#Episode list; we don't need a "List of Foo episodes" page unless and until a embedded episode list becomes too long for a main show article, and no such list article should exist without such a main show article in the first place. Talk:Boar–pig hybrid#Requested move 6 December 2018 – Y Original article name, Iron Age pig, and the slant of the article, was an WP:UNDUE marketing focus (on non-notable brand or pseudo-breed) in what should be (and now is) a general article on boar–pig hybrids and their environmental and agricultural impact. Talk:Wiley (publisher)#Requested move 4 December 2018 – Y Moved from John Wiley & Sons per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:OFFICIALNAME, WP:CONCISE, WP:RECOGNIZABLE Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy#Current requests (permalink) – Y Unopposed. Category:Chicken hybrids → Category:Chicken crossbreeds; these words are not synonymous, and all entries in the category are crossbreeds. A cat. redirect was left behind briefly, but later removed as unnecessary. Talk:Media Source Inc.#Requested move 19 November 2018 - Y Unopposed. Media Source as article title for this company article failed several WP:CRITERIA; now a disambiguation page. Talk:Ricochet (dog)#Requested move 16 November 2018 – Y old title Surf Dog Ricochet failed WP:CONCISE and WP:CONSISTENT among other P&G; this was a re-RM of one listed below which closed against the move despite policy and sources supporting it. Talk:Lists of domestic animal breeds#Requested move 15 November 2018 – Y No such thing as a breed of wild animal. Talk:VIBE Vixen#Requested move 12 November 2018 – Y Over-capitalization cleanup (also of what is presently URB (magazine)) Talk:Science Daily#Requested move 11 November 2018 – Y correct publication title is ScienceDaily Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ICZN – Y Deleted two-item disambiguation page and redirected to the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC; both items in the DAB page really resolved to the same encyclopedic topic anyway: a nomenclature code and its publisher. (August 2018) Talk:Nithyananda#Requested move 18 July 2018 – Y moved from Swami Nithyananda, per MOS:JOBTITLE, WP:NTITLE. Talk:Swami Vivekananda#Requested move 18 July 2018 – N (So much for WP:CONSISTENT.) Nominated per MOS:JOBTITLE & WP:NTITLE, just like the above case. [A large block of them are missing; I forgot to keep track.] Talk:Henry III of France#Why the anglicized "Henry"? – Y Huge WP:CONSISTENT mess to clean up; this is an open "what should we do?" discussion more than an RM per se, though I do make a proposal to favor Henri for French subjects and Henry for English ones. Result: No consensus reached, with regard to that article or the entire lot of them, so this will need to be revisited again later. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy#Opposed nominations (at Category:Steeplechase horse racing to Category:Steeplechase), and eventually Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 28#Category:Steeplechase horse racing – Y Consensus went with an alternative disambiguation. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 February 20#Complex Media – Y Delete an inappropriate redir from company to product; alternative proposal to link to the (now identified) parent company. Conclusion: use alternative redirect target. Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet/Archive 2#Requested move 2 February 2018, and User talk:BD2412#"NATO" phonetic alphabet – N Request to change close of Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet#Requested move 2 February 2018 to a simple "no consensus" instead of the PoV-laden original close; otherwise take to WP:MR. This admin nuked his entire talk page and replaced it with an "I'm busy" note [61], which makes it difficult to demonstrate the level of hostility thrown at me when I made this request. Too late for MR now; will need to re-RM it. Talk:Gun control/Archive 21#‎Requested move 18 February 2018 – Y Not my proposal, but an important RM I've supplied a lot of input into. Closed as "no consensus" but needs to be revisited, and I may do it myself. Talk:Water skiing – Y RM to Waterskiing to reflect more common usage. Closed as "no consensus", so will have to try it again later with more sourcing. Talk:Ricochet (dog)#Requested move 22 February 2018 – original RM: N move to Ricochet (dog) from Surf Dog Ricochet for WP:CONSISTENT with contents of Category:Individual dogs, away from a marketing appellation used in <10% of reliable sources. Was closed as "Not moved" (i.e. no consensus) despite there being no policy- or sourced-based reason to retain the present misnomer title (bad close that just "counted votes"). Y Re-RMed later with additional rationales (see above). Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 February 4#Wikipedia:Game guide – Y retargeted to same place WP:GAMEGUIDE, instead of to MOS:VG. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 January 24#Nicastrese – Y retargeted from Nicastrese to Nicastro (instead of Nicastrese goat) Talk:Australian White sheep#Requested move 24 January 2018 – Y multi-page RM to Australian White sheep, etc., from naturally ambiguous names. Talk:Brown Caucasian cattle#Requested move 24 January 2018 – Y multi-page RM to Brown Caucasian cattle, etc., from naturally ambiguous names. Talk:Guilty Party (video game)#Requested move 23 January 2018 – Y moved from Guilty Party which now redirects to the Guilty party disambiguation page Talk:Party Party#Requested move 23 January 2018 – Y moved disambiguation page from The Party Party, per WP:THE and to match its own content Talk:Two-tone (music genre)#Requested move 23 January 2018 – Y move from 2 Tone (music genre) which is confusing the genre with 2 Tone Records trademark Wikipedia talk:List of sound files#Requested move 10 January 2018 – Y RM, to no longer be a subpage of a redirect (moved from Wikipedia:Sound/list) Help talk:Media#Requested move 10 January 2018 – Y multi-page RM to "Help:" namespace (moved from Wikipedia:Media help, etc.) Help talk:Pictures#Requested move 6 January 2018 – Y RM to "Help:" namespace; moved from Wikipedia:Picture tutorial, but to an even shorter name than I suggested (which was Help:Picture tutorial). Template talk:More citations needed#Requested move 30 December 2017 – Y RM to plain-English name (from jargony and actually ambiguous Template:Refimprove); someone's opened an MR about it here Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 December 18#Category:Wikipedia procedure header templates, etc. – Y Renamed to "procedural". Talk:Dobermann#Requested move 5 December 2017 – Y Moved to internationally preferred name, not the WP:SYSTEMICBIAS one favored by a single US-based group Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 November 15#Category:World sports champions – Y Renamed to Category:World champions by sport. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 November 13#Category:World snooker champions – Y A more complex solution was arrived at than my original proposal. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 November 4#Category:Domesticated pigeon breeds by country of origin and subcats – Y Renamed to "Pigeon breeds by country of origin". [huge gap] Talk:English in New Mexico/Archive 1#Requested move 24 October 2015 – Y Moved from New Mexican English, which asserted a dialect (that not all sources agree is distinct) and is too narrow a subtopic [years missing] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Voodoo Tiki – Y Re-userfication of an insufficiently sourced draft (previously deleted then later userfied on the condition that it not be moved out of userspace until fully sourced (February 2008). Was later re-created in mainspace in at least as a bad for as the original, so nominated for speedy deletion. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rounder – Y Deleted unsourced WP:DICDEF page with WP:DAB page that links to all the articles to which various meanings of the term apply, and at which they are sourced. (July 2007) Changes to template functionality Template talk:Infobox person/Archive 35#Proposal: Repurpose and redocument the home_town parameter – N to replace this trivia parameter with one for places of residence during period of notability. Insufficient feedback for consensus to be clear. RfC it? Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes/Archive 16#RfC on birthplace, nationality, and citizenship parameters with matching values – See entry under #Changes to WP:POLICY and WP:PROCESS pages, above. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 219#RfC: Use of Large Quotes in article space, and the Cquote template – See entry under #Changes to WP:POLICY and WP:PROCESS pages, above. Template talk:R from television episode#RfC: The template wording's accuracy – N To resolve a dispute about instructions in the template. No consensus was reached. Template talk:Interlanguage link#Use square brackets – Y Style cleanup; implemented with unanimous support. Template talk:Yesno#Support on/off and RfC below it – Y Changes to a protected template to now detect on/off (as well as its then-current yes/no, 1/0, true/false, etc.). This should not have required this RfC, per WP:Common sense and WP:WIKILAWYER, but so it goes. Module talk:Yesno#Support on/off detection – Y Module-improvement request accepted; a follow-up to the successful proposal at the template version, since it did not carry over, somehow, to the module implementation. Nominations of others for permissions, etc. Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Page mover#ProcrastinatingReader – Y Nomination of editor for WP:Page mover permission. Was accepted [62]. Sockpuppet investigations, requests for arbitration, sanctions/remedies </noinclude> Sockpuppet investigations, requests for arbitration, sanctions/remedies I won't list all of them here, just those that "did something". Lots of noticeboard action just archive away without closure, or close as "no action at this time". Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#WanderingWanda – Y Won't go into details here. Closed as something to be addressed by ArbCom directly, but closed with admonition [63]. That was my actual expectation of and intent for the outcome, though the suggested topic-ban would also have been appropriate. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Flyer22 and WanderingWanda – Y Was not a party, but provided evidence [64] and analysis [65] to thwart a WP:POVRAILROAD attempt. Case was going to close with simply a mutual interaction-ban [66], which is what was proposed/expected at the start, before it was hijacked for railroading. Case closed without formal decision [67] upon the death, after a long illness, of one of the parties (see WP:Deceased Wikipedians/2021#Flyer22) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1004#Proposed image-placement topic ban for Beyond My Ken – Y Long-term editwarring case. As I expected, it did not result in the proposed T-ban; it did result in a self-imposed restriction, which is more than what I did expect (just a warning). So, issue solved. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1003#Fæ's return to canvassing and incivility/aspersions in gender-related disputes – Y Closed without consensus; remanded to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Conduct dispute involving gendered pronouns (still open as of March 2018) Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/107.215.53.37/Archive#06 January 2019 – Y A pair of IPs used by the same person for consistent vandalism. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive997#Incivility, disruptive "dumping" in threads, and activism against notability guidelines by James500 – Y Warning issued (the actual intent, though it came close to a topic ban) Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Best known for IP – Y A set of disruptive and uncivil IP socks was positively IDed and blocked. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive997#Disruptive editing by User:IQ125 – Y Topic ban from terriers, and dog-fighting. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility in infobox discussions – Y Request to include someone as a party in the RfArb about someone else; was accepted, but the end result was just a warning. Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tobias Conradi/Archive#10 December 2017 – Y A set of IP socks was positively IDed and blocked. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive968#Editwarring, incivility, etc. by FleetCommand (November 2017) – Y Disruptive editor topic-banned from MoS. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive189#Darkfrog24 (January–February 2016) – Y MoS's longest-term disruptor finally topic-banned. This was, I think, the fifth such noticeboard action, the second by me; same user has since got blocked, got indeffed, had talk-page access revoked, and had multiple appeals declined.

Major templates

• {{rp}} (The template that kept us from doing awful things when citing the same source many times in the same article. Came to me in a flash after User:Fuhghettaboutit bemoaned how many lines were created by citing the same book for so many entries at Glossary of cue sports terms. For many years it was probably the most widely used of the "support" templates for our source citation system. Later improvements to MediaWiki's handling of the <ref> system, with the addition of the |ref= parameter, eventually made this template obsolete. (See this diff for a crash course in using |ref=.)
• {{compact TOC}} as we now know it (There were many radically different templates of this sort, and I merged all of them and their features and added many new ones.)
• {{glossary}}, {{term}}, {{defn}} (See also MOS:GLOSSARIES.)
• {{em}}, {{strong}}, {{var}}, {{kbd}}, {{samp}}, {{dfn}} and most of the rest of Category:Semantic markup templates
• {{' "}}, {{" '}}, {{" ' "}}, {{-'}}, {{'-}}, {{-"}} and {{"-}} (quotation-mark kerning templates)
• {{hatnote inline}} (and Module:Hatnote inline) and its derivative {{crossreference}} ({{crossref}}, {{xref}})
• {{cue sports}} navbox
• {{WikiProject Cue sports}}, {{WikiProject New Mexico}}, and several others
• {{TfR}}, {{TfR2}}, {{TfR notice}}
• {{fake heading}} – Built a flexible, unified template out of code originally at that page and at {{fakeheader}} and {{fake header}}, with new features added.
• {{sfnref inline}}
• {{page range}} – accessibility/utility template (temporary, i.e. intended to be subst'd)
• Loads more, I just fire and forget (literally – I'm often surprised to look in a template's history and see that I created it and don't remember).

Categories

• Category:Cue sports (I created and have been one of the most active maintainers of most of its subcategories.)
• Category:Insular ecology (I didn't write the articles in it, I just noticed they were scattered about and not categorized sanely, so now they are.)
• Category:Highland dress (No category for this for years for some reason; I organised the articles and have been working on them intensively, starting with Tartan and History of the kilt.)
• Lots that I'm forgetting.

User scripts

These are internal user scripts (for use by logged-in editors in their Special:Mypage/common.js), not external scripts as used by Tampermonkey, Greasemonkey, etc.

• User:SMcCandlish/TidyRefs – Clean up inconsistent <ref ...>...</ref> formatting. All-new script (2024); has some pretty incredible regex in it, and more is forthcoming when I get back into this project.
• User:SMcCandlish/TidyCitations – Clean up inconsistent {{cite ... |...}} formatting. Based on earlier scripts by Sam Sailor, Zyxw, Meteor sandwich yum, and Waldir, development of the latest of which ceased in 2018.
• User:SMcCandlish/MOSNUMdates.js - Convert dates to DMY or MDY. Forked from original version by Ohconfucius (still being developed as of January 2024); mine avoids cluttering the left menu with options that are almost never needed, and enables one that is needed often enough.
• meta:User:SMcCandlish/userinfo – Show some basic user info underneath usernames at the top of user and user-talk pages. Based on a script by PleaseStand, development of which ceased in 2019.

Non-admin closures

Just started tracking this in September 2017 (and then forgot until early 2020). I sometimes do non-admin closure of discussions (RfCs, RMs, etc.) and push right up to the boundary of what a non-admin can do, with that I believe are positive results.

• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Toy portals (2020-01-30)
• Disruptive-turning RfC on whether the US dollar "really" is a fiat currency: permalink – someone barnstarred me for this one. (2017-09-30)
• Nationality of Jose Antonio Vargas: permalink to discussion and closure (2017-09-10)

Misc.

• Some shortcuts that seem like they should have been there forever weren't, and were created by me. I usually forget, but a few important ones are WP:ARCA [68], WP:AEIS [69], and WP:SANCTIONGAME / WP:SANCTIONGAMING [70],[71].

Gallery of contributed images

Some of the images I've contributed under GFDL/CC (and sometimes PD) are displayed as thumbnails in my Gallery Page.

To-do list

Honestly, I no longer maintain or even look at this; there's so much to do, I just do whatever grabs my attention first.

Wikawards

Barnometer
	noob	involved	been around	veteran	seen it all	older than the Cabal itself

Gratuitous
The Running Man Barnstar	The Working Man's Barnstar	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar	The E=mc2 Barnstar	Excellent User Page Award
For your many, many fine cue sport related edits. --Fuhghettaboutit 23:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC)	For all the arduous work on Cue sport 68.239.240.144 23:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)	Awarded to SMcCandlish for sleuthing out sockpuppets being used to subvert RfA. —dgiestc 20:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)	Awarded for your tireless work on articles relating to the field of pigmentation. Rockpocket 09:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)	[...] ask Mr. McCandlish if programmers are users too. Peace and love. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Barnstar Eaten by a Bear	The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar	Some Falafel and One Canadian Beer	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar	The Heroic Barnstar
I regret to inform you that the barnstar that I was going to give you for this bit of hilariousness was eaten by a bear. Happy editing! Hamtechperson 04:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)	For general template taming goodness. Ludwigs2 03:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)	For being here and to work on the women sport project. --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 20:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)	For behaving in a genteel fashion, as if nothing were the matter, and for gallantry. --Djathinkimacowboy 03:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)	For your recent work at WP:MOS: A model of unflagging effort, precise analysis, institutionally broad and historically deep vision, clear articulation, and civil expression under great pressure. Unforgettable. DocKino (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Chapeau	Cheers!	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar	The Socratic Barnstar	The Special Barnstar
for this one! Cheers - DVdm (talk) 20:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)	For all of the thoughtful posts through the extended discussion at MOSCAPS. I've appreciated it. JHunterJ (talk) 13:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)	This comes as a recognition of your kindness in developing the Firefox Cite4wiki add-on. It has been helpful and a great resource. I was also happy to learn you contribute to Mozilla which I do as well :) ₫ӓ₩₳ Talk to Me. Email Me. 18:28, 31 August 2012 (UTC)	In recognition of your general fine work around the 'pedia, and the staunchness and standard of argumentation on style issues. And if for nothing else, I think you deserve it for this comment  Ohconfucius ping / poke 02:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC)	It's a bit delayed, but for your rather accurate edit summary here. Keep up the good work on various breed articles! TKK bark ! 18:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar	The Purple Barnstar	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar	A cheeseburger for you!	Fauna Barnstar
For your recent work at WP:MOS: A model of unflagging effort, precise analysis, institutionally broad and historically deep vision, clear articulation, and civil expression under great pressure. Unforgettable. DocKino (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)	You've been putting up with a lot of crap from other quarters; just want to let you know that people out there do, in fact, manage to appreciate your work. illegitimi non carborundum! VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 04:55, 11 February 2013 (UTC)	I couldn't quite find a suitable barnstar for this, but I found it insightful when you brought up the issue of accessibility within TfD#Template:Tn. Maybe it was kind of a small realization you had, but on behalf of the disabled friends I have, thank you for bringing it up. A step in the right direction for making this everyone's encyclopedia. Meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 02:58, 1 May 2014 (UTC)	Except of course that would be 30 min on the treadmill. But we can still look. Thank you for well measured comments. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:59, 11 May 2014 (UTC)	For being an enlightening Star in a farmyard Barn Gregkaye ✍♪ 15:11, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
WikiCake	The Special Barnstar	The Socratic Barnstar	Some baklava for you!	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
You seem to be among the vanguard in the quest to raise copy editing and style formatting to at least the level of writing barely literate articles. Primergrey (talk) 05:04, 29 March 2015 (UTC)	for disagreeing, with reason and cogent arguments backed up by both source and policy as well as logical interpretation of the position you disagree with. In essence for disputing content in a manner that builds consensus. SPACKlick (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2015 (UTC)	For extremely skilled and eloquent arguments and advice in guiding the overhaul of the very important article Domestication William Harris • talk • 07:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)	To fortify you in your marathon task of finding an acceptable form of words to use in our MoS. I admire your patience and stamina and am thinking of proposing you as a Middle East peace envoy... BushelCandle (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2016 (UTC)	Thank you so much for stepping in on the Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations article, specifically the talk page. You seem to be able to clearly communicate the applicability of guidelines and resolve what might otherwise become a dispute. Excellent job! CaroleHenson (talk) 19:28, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
A cup of coffee for you!	The Barnstar of Integrity	A Dobos torte for you!	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Thanks for your service to rodents. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)	I award you this barnstar ... because you have shown to be a person of integrity and honor. Or, more simply, a stand-up guy. Antidiskriminator (talk) 10:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)	7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it.	For going above and beyond to help with a query — Anakimitalk   20:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)	Thanks you for the Project namespace and TL/SUPPLEMENTAL updates.....been trying to get that wording right for a long time. Would love your CE skills at WP:ESSAYPAGES guideline section and the infopage Wikipedia:Essays. ... Moxy (talk) 17:08, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Your Opinion is More Important than You Think Barnstar	The Fauna Barnstar	Precious	A beer for you!	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
Thanks for your definitive non-admin closure of a RfC, thereby asserting a sane consensus and bringing U.S. Dollar back to congruence with reality. BirdValiant (talk) 06:34, 30 September 2017 (UTC)	Thanks for the big progress recently on sorting out fauna titles – and other titles, too. Keep it up. Dicklyon (talk) 00:13, 1 October 2017 (UTC)	Thank you for quality articles such as ... William A. Spinks, for service in 12 years, for thoughts about policy, style and consistency, for an initiative for clarification, - Stanton, cat lover in four dimensions, you are an awesome Wikipedian! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:41, 1 December 2017 (UTC)	Thank you for your recent edits to WP:RFAADVICE. When I wrote that page a few years ago, I never dreamed of the tens of thousands of hits it would get and become the default advice for RFA candidates. It's nice to know that someone is watching over it and making useful improvements. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:14, 17 December 2017 (UTC)	I appreciate your contributions regarding my topic ban as well as your thoughts on Arbitration Enforcement. --MONGO 13:23, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
The Userpage Barnstar	There is a mop reserved in your name	The Original Barnstar	Perhaps it's time...	A Baker Barnstar
I decided you deserved this for your very interesting and informative User Page ... Tlhslobus (talk) 14:53, 1 March 2018 (UTC)	You are a remarkable editor in many ways. You would be a good administrator in my opinion, and appear to be well qualified! You personify an administrator without tools .... --John Cline (talk) 13:29, 22 May 2018 (UTC)	For your ongoing and unending effort to tidy up the bureaucracies around the English Wikipedia. Jc86035 (talk) 05:05, 14 July 2018 (UTC)	As someone who as bumped into you in various spaces over the years with a generally positive impression resulting, I decided to take a closer look at the scope and caliber of your contributions over the last few days because it has occurred to me that your experience and facility with nuanced policy might make you a good candidate for adminship .... I suspect you would be good with the bit. Snow let's rap 07:40, 16 July 2018 (UTC)	The Disambiguator's Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who are prolific disambiguators. For applying your expertise in disambiguating the James Addison Baker articles. Oldsanfelipe (talk) 19:02, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
The Industrial Barnstar	The Editor's Barnstar	Trouted	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar	A beer for you!
The Upward Spiral: For your excellent expansion work of the Girls Under Glass article following its AfD nom. Nice work! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:20, 3 December 2018 (UTC)	I learned a lot from you about Wikipedia in the Jean Mill afd. Just wanted to say thanks! User:Lightburst 23:10, 19 June 2019 (UTC)	You have been trouted for: having a kick-ass profile. :D Ivario (talk) 02:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)	Thank you for keeping the Nithyananda page clean! [...] Happy editing! Kind regards, Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 09:33, 22 December 2020 (UTC)	For teaching me something. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
The Special Barnstar	The Guidance Barnstar	The Barnstar of Diligence
For all your help (especially with regard to cursive) and patience. JackkBrown (talk) 15:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC)	Thanks for helping fight policy creep and forks by proposing the merge of WP:SELFSOURCE and WP:BLPSELFPUB with WP:ABOUTSELF. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:11, 15 December 2023	For noting that unencyclopedic detail was inserted into the Brunswick Corporation and taking prompt action, exemplifying scrutiny, precision and community service! gidonb (talk) 14:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Automatically assigned
Fifteen Year Society	Ten Year Society	100,000 Edits Award	Supreme Gom, the Most Exalted Togneme of the Encyclopedia	Good Article
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more. ​Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 14:11, 11 August 2020 (UTC)	I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more. Best regards, Sarah (talk) 01:00, 21 August 2015 (UTC)	Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that only 339 editors have been able to accomplish. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work! Buster Seven Talk 15:06, 4 October 2015 (UTC)	This editor is entitled – for 18+ years & 150K+ edits – to display this Senior Vanguard Editor Badge, associated ribbons, and "floor plan of The Great Library of Alecyclopedias with carrying tube". This is very silly.	This user helped promote the article CornerShot to Good status (promoted 24 July 2006)
Good Article	Good Article	Good Article	"Did You Know?" Article	"Did You Know?" Article
This user helped promote the article Jasmin Ouschan to Good status (promoted 12 September 2009)	This user helped promote the article William A. Spinks to Good status (promoted 22 April 2016)	This user helped promote the article William Hoskins (inventor) to Good status (promoted September 24, 2021)	On March 2, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William A. Spinks, which you created and substantially expanded.	On June 2, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Golden Cue, which you created and substantially expanded.
"In the News" Article	"In the News" Article	The Original Barnstar	The Barnstar Creator's Barnstar	Precious six years
On 5 May 2009, In the news was updated with a news item that involved the article Shaun Murphy (snooker player), which you substantially updated.	On 5 May 2009, In the news was updated with a news item that involved the article John Higgins (snooker player), which you substantially updated.	This barnstar is awarded to everyone who – whatever their opinion – contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation. 20:37, 21 January 2012‎.	Thank you for your submission of the Instructor's Barnstar. It's now on the main barnstar list. Pinetalk 15:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)	Thank you ... for improving article quality in January 2018! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:06, 30 January 2018 (UTC) [This one updates monthly.]
"Did You Know?" Article	"Did You Know?" Article
On February 12, 2019, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William Hoskins (inventor), which you created and substantially expanded.	On March 25, 2019, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Ground billiards, which you created and substantially expanded.
Reciprocal
The Angry Tarsier of Appreciation!	A Barnstar Point	A Barnstar Point	A barnstar for you!	A kitten for you! The Loyalty Award
For awarding me a barnstar, I hereby giveth unto you one angry tarsier of appreciation. Thanks! --Fuhghettaboutit 21:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)	This barnstar point is awarded to SMcCandlish for giving me a barnstar point! GracenotesT § 01:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)	I, Λυδαcιτγ, award Stanton McCandlish the Minor Barnstar Point for the creation of said Barnstar.	Howdy Wkatherine003 (talk) 07:46, 8 November 2016 (UTC)	You get the Loyalty Award! Please accept this cute little kitten as token of appreciation for being loyal to values, and standing by other editors in need like me! Thank you!Huggums537 (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
Hostile
"Anti-awards" like this are a great example of what not to do on Wikipedia just because you disagree with someone:
Consider yourself duly admonished
I hereby award this barnstar for your disruptive MFD nomination. —freak(talk) 13:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, the Wikipedia:Fromowner "placeholder image" junk did get deprecated by the community just as I suggested and predicted, about a year later (by which time the admin who posted the above display of incivility had quit the entire project anyway). I wasn't disruptive, just a little before my time. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

What I'm up to in general on Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, I mostly do the following in lieu of large-scale article authorship (though I do have some major ones planned and three under my belt):

1. Resisting poorly-thought-out attempts to change the WP:Manual of Style and other policies and guidelines
2. Neutralizing (sometimes subtle/crafty) PoV-pushing by tagteams of editors with a conflict of interest who try to bend Wikipedia into a promotional or advocacy outlet
3. More broadly, reverting and repairing vandalism and other intentionally anti-encyclopedic edits, especially those by religious or other zealots, slanderers, the foul-mouthed, and the discriminatory
4. Making substantial contributions to existing articles (and sometimes creating new ones) on topics I know a lot about
5. Shepherding the growth and health of some particular articles that need it (and, in some but not all cases, about which I care a lot)
6. Correcting typos, grammar errors and readability problems
7. Weeding out unverifiable, or incredible and unsourced, claims
8. Adding missing salient information
9. Moving articles that violate the WP article naming conventions
10. Correcting outright factual errors
11. Improving cross-references, categorization, etc.
12. Improving consistency of formatting
13. Removing redundant wikilinks
14. Removing pointless (Wikipedia is not a dictionary!) wikilinks – everyone already knows what "eye" and "the sun" mean, in most contexts in which they appear
15. Removing minor, childish quasi-vandalism (smart-aleck remarks in articles, etc.) – I like to document these in the Talk pages, since they often are actually funny
16. Tagging outright vandals' talk pages with countdown-to-blocking warnings
17. Repairing semi-vandalism edits in the form of deletions of long-standing passages without explanation, or the inexplicable addition of large chunks of questionably relevant or unsourced alleged facts, especially attacks against living article subjects, fanwanking and crackpotism.
18. Copyediting, encyclopedizing and formalizing any juvenile, colloquial, non-neutral or poorly thought out language in articles
19. Fixing miscellaneous "bad stuff" - vanity/marketing language, crystalballing, etc.
20. Proposing (and sometimes performing) merges of redundant articles
21. Adding obvious missing redirects and making sure they go to useful places
22. Educating misinformed arguments (per logic or Wikipedia policy) on talk pages
23. Trying to resolve circular disputes on talk pages
24. Defending articles from AfD when the reasoning for the deletion is specious, especially "NN per nom" me-tooism.
25. Nominating truly atrocious crap for AfD (or for SD, or just prod'ing them)
26. Learning a lot concerning things I didn't know about, on all sorts of topics
27. Having a good time!

Wikitivities userboxes

This user is a Rouge editor.	This user values third opinions and occasionally provides one.	This user is a member of the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Stub sorting.	This user is a participant in WikiProject Spam.	{{inline}}This user is a member of WikiProject Inline Templates.
This user participated in the Article Creation and Improvement Drive.	This user is a participant in WikiProject Categories.	This user repairs links to disambiguation pages.
This user is a member of the Counter-Vandalism Unit.	This user is a recent changes patroller.	This user is a new page patroller.
This user is a Reichstag climbing patroller.	This user is a member of the Guild of Copy Editors.	This user is a participant in WikiProject Linkification.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Good Articles. talk | Changes log | GAN report	linkspamThis user despises linkspam, and will terminate it on sight, as well as any other spam by the contributor.	This user integrates Wikipedia.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Council.	This user fixes double redirects.	This user is a participant in WikiProject Check Wikipedia.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Usability.	This user is a participant in WikiProject Accessibility.	This user participates in WikiProject Abandoned Articles.
5This user is a WikiAdult.	This user is a member of WikiProject Cleanup.	tyop typoThis user is a member of the Wikipedia Typo Team.
This user is part of the Cleanup Taskforce. His desk is here.	This user is signed up for the Feedback Request Service.	This user is a proud member of the WikiFun Police.
Beware! This user's talk page is monitored by talk page watchers. Some of them even talk back.

Topical WikiProjects userboxes

This user participates in WikiProject Cue sports.	This user is a participant in WikiProject Snooker	This user participates in WikiProject New Mexico.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Internet culture.	fireflyThis user is a member of the WikiProject Television Firefly task force.	This user is a participant in WikiProject Sports.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Scotland. talk | articles | stubs	This user is a participant in WikiProject Clans of Scotland.

Wikipedia tools userboxes

[[]]This user uses the source editor as their primary editor.	This user has AutoWikiBrowser rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user cites online sources with the help of Cite4Wiki!
This user watches over Wikipedia with the help of Twinkle!	This user keeps citations to online sources working with the help of WebCite!	HThis user had access to HighBeam through The Wikipedia Library.

Wikiphilosophy

On the non-"political" side, I am largely an exopedianist with little interest in the socializing aspects - I get that from other aspects of my life. I'm largely a WikiGnome but shapeshift into other forms of WP:WikiFauna at will, sometimes for long stretches. I have taken part in some quite extensive policy debates, spent a lot of time on visual improvement of articles, wallowed in sourcing troublesome articles, buried my nose in copyediting, become a template master, and obsessed over the perfection of certain articles, as well as gotten into pointless arguments, while also created barnstars. I'm really just not pigeonholeable.

Wikiphilosophy userboxes

This user is bold, but not reckless, in updating pages.	This user believes that process is important on Wikipedia and is opposed to its circumvention.	This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know.
<ref>This user recognizes the importance of citing sources.	<ref>This user would like to see everyone using inline citations. Please...	This user is a member of Wikipedians against censorship.
metaThis editor is a metapedianist.	darThis editor is a darwikinist.	This user is a member of the Association of Structurist Wikipedians.
This user is a member of the Association of Mergist Wikipedians.	immThis editor is an immediatist.	exoThis editor is an exopedian.
This user believes that common sense trumps all other arguments.	FlexibleThis user deals with edits, deletion, and creation of pages individually instead of unilaterally and encourages others to do so.	Non nobis solum
-admin+This user feels that gaining administrator status is not about what you know, but about who you know.	ZTThis user supports a strict zero tolerance policy on vandalism.	AWW DMBJ AWGC AWAI FDSP BATD MTADThis user is a member of the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Deletionists.

WikiFauna userboxes

I am a chimera, frequently shapeshifting.

This editor is a WikiGnome.	This user is a WikiJanitor.	This user is a WikiKnight, valiantly protecting the Five Pillars of Wikipedia.
This user is a WikiDragon: making massive, bold edits everywhere.	This user is a WikiOgre.	This user is a WikiChef.
This user is a Creator Elf.	This user is a WikiFairy.	Beware! This user is a known talk page stalker.

Critics who think I make valuable contributions but get into conflict with me frequently would probably classify me as a cross between a WikiPlatypus and a WikiPuma.

Licensing rights granted to Wikimedia Foundation

I grant non-exclusive permission for the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to relicense my text and media contributions, including any images, audio clips, or video clips, under any copyleft license that it chooses, provided it maintains the free and open spirit of the GFDL. This permission acknowledges that future licensing needs of the Wikimedia projects may need adapting in unforeseen fashions to facilitate other uses, formats, and locations. It is given for as long as this banner remains.

Where I am in Wikispace

• To see contributions in all Wikimedia projects, click here or here

• SMcCandlish at the MediaWiki Bugzilla server

Potential conflicts of interest

Just as a matter of full disclosure, there are certain articles I should not heavily edit (i.e., other than to revert vandalism, provide sources, or otherwise adjust in an entirely neutral manner), because of unintentional potential for conflict of interest or non-neutral point of view. Other editors may wish to examine carefully any edits I ever make to any of the following topics:

• Stanton McCandlish – Me; while I might conceivably pass WP:GNG and WP:BIO, I have no article, have never had one, and don't want one - that would be a bit creepy to me, and friends with articles say they just cause trouble for them (personal attacks, misinformation, etc.), and I helped one get theirs deleted to protect their privacy. McCandlish Consulting is also me (d/b/a) and also non-notable.
• Protecting Yourself Online – I co-authored a book by this title, ISBN 9780062515124; it has no article and is surely not notable enough to have one.
• Wilcox–McCandlish law – something amusing that a colleague (Bryce Wilcox) and I came up with in the 1990s. Someone else created an article about it here, before I even became a WP editor; it was subsequently deleted on notability grounds, and should probably stay that way, though it might make a good WP:Essay, as it applies to talk pages here.

Things I could vaguely, conceivably have a conflict of interest on, due to past connections

• Too many clients to individually list here (and some are covered by NDAs anyway); I know better than to edit articles about them.
• CryptoRights Foundation (CRF) – I was their volunteer CCO/Communications Director for several years, starting 2003; it bugged me somethin' fierce that it did not have an article until recently, but it seemed grossly inappropriate to even start a "just the facts" stub on it, and someone else finally did)
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – Held various job titles there, including Program Dir., Communications Dir., etc., and was editor of their EFFector newsletter, and the webmaster of eff.org, 1993–2002.
• Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign – This was largely my brainchild, as a part of my professional life at EFF; it was an EFF project not a personal one.
• University of New Mexico (UNM) - Alma mater, 1991–1993 and 2007–2010; former employer, 1992–1993.
• Double Rainbow (ice cream) – Former employer, 1991.
• Wal-Mart – Former employer, late 1980s.
• Cannon Air Force Base, United States Air Force – Former employer, late 1980s; I was a civilian worker, not military personnel.

Things and stuff

Funniest things I've seen on Wikipedia

[emphasis added when salient]

• Wikipedia:Not everything needs a navbox
       The content itself isn't funny, but the fact that more than 50% of the content of the page is a huge navbox is hilarious.
• "WP:ANI is like a huge orgy. It's fun to watch, and sometimes it's fun to join in, but like any orgy, the larger it gets, the greater the chances are that someone will eventually try to stick a dick in your ass."
       — Slakr (talk), at 03:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC), User:Slakr/Admin coaching [72]
• 11:07, 26 March 2007 83.253.36.136 (Talk) (→Performance of FAT 32 - moved spam down)
       An edit summary from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Needless to say, the next editor's summary read "deleted spam".
• A diff that must be seen to be believed
       Someone upset about grammar flames that were wasting people's time and being a distraction posts a distracting time-waste in the form of a longwinded and meticulously-researched grammar flame about it (plus a second shorter one!), all in support of the grammar flaming of the starter of the grammar flame; in the process, re-opening debate to yet more grammar flaming in the pointless sub-thread being complained about (dormant for over a day), and to which the poster was not even a party to begin with. I couldn't make this stuff up!
• 05:46, 21 February 2007 Gracenotes (Talk | contribs) (→Template:Barnstars - *stabs kittens*)
       An edit summary in response to "no, don't delete the barnstars!" panic replies to a TfD on a useless template simply relating to barnstars. I awarded Gracenotes a Barnstar Point for that one.
• "Hotel Wikipedia"
       A song parody by various Wikimedians (to the tune of The Eagles' "Hotel California"). I hate filk, with a passion, yet I somehow loved this.
• Possibly the worst ever of my own typos. (See edit summary used.)
       I think I was channeling Ancient Finnish or something.
• "Karl Marx, founder of modern Marxism ...."
       in Animal Farm, as of 13 January 2010 version (we all know that ancient Marxism was of course founded by Marxus Aurelius, right?)
• From the "unclear on the concept" department
       Rather remarkable definition of "watch your language".
• Hairy ball theorem
       Perhaps the funniest real article name on Wikipedia. (It's a real math/physics theorem, and not intrinsically funny, though a bit amusing.)
• Unbelievably selective evidence
       Someone concerned about overlinking in articles actually used the Professional wrestling article as alleged smoking-gun "proof" of rampant overlinking across Wikpedia, requiring (naturally) much more stringent anti-linking wording in WP:LINKING. Of course that article in particular would have overlinking, along with just about every other noob error, except when periodically cleaned up by experienced, neutral editors who don't believe in fairytales. The article is clearly indicative of nothing but the nature of that topic's fanbase (and thus its most frequent editorial pool).
• "Presumably we're talking about Life on Mars (TV series) here? John Carter 20:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)"
       A comment posted at WP:COUNCIL/P, on a proposal for a "WikiProject Life on Mars"; if you don't get why this is hysterically funny, just move on – it's an old-school sci-fi geek thing.
• Very strange font activism vandalism of my sig at a talk page
       Did you know ... that there are not just regular vandals but ones with really, really weird agendas lurking in Wikipedia?
• http://www.well.com/~mech/WP/FunnyWikipediaCaptcha.jpg
       I'm not sure Wikipedia's account-creation CAPTCHA database should include every word... >;-)

Smartest things I've seen on Wikipedia

Just a few particularly well-thought-out bits by other editors. They aren't necessarily mindblowing or anything, just insightful and well-put.

1. "We must always do what is best for the readers, without exception. Per WP:IAR if a 'rule' prevents you from improving the encyclopaedia, ignore it ... and if you put your personal preferences above the readers then Wikipedia is not the project for you."
        — Thryduulf (talk), at 10:52, 4 June 2018 (UTC) [73] in user talk, and in that instance about deleting redirects that are actually useful to readers but which don't quite fit someone's preferred formula.
2. "My impression is that we shouldn't allow users going against a policy to affect how it is written. People going around changing articles against policy isn't a good reason to have that policy be rewritten"
        Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:40, 30 October 2023 (UTC) [74]. Slightly copyedited for clarity.
3. "Unless you can reliably and usefully tell editors how to identify a problematic case, it's generally not helpful to mention it in a policy. It ends up backfiring, as editors make up their own, mutually incompatible definitions and proclaim that their interpretation is the true one."
        WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 3 December 2023 (UTC) [75]
4. "Tony, your writing guides were what prompted me to start getting articles up to GA back in mid-2012. I've done over 100 since (still waiting to actually get a FAC passed solo, maybe next decade) ...."
        — User:Ritchie333 (talk), at 21:57, 2 January 2018 (UTC) [76]. While this is well-deserved praise for the how-to essay series in support of WP:MOS by Tony1 (which starts here), this also gets at why style on Wikipedia is not trivia or trivial.
5. "I ... had no problem whatsoever learning wikicode when I started writing and improving encyclopedia articles in 2009. I do not want to learn new software features that are less productive and less intuitive than old software features. I welcome any upgrades that are entirely intuitive and non-disruptive to existing editors. I will oppose ill-conceived and poorly-implemented make-work projects for professional programmers. This is not an employment program for coders. It is an encyclopedia created by volunteers, who are article writers and researchers."
        — Cullen (talk), 18:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast#RFC - Remove Flow from WikiProject Breakfast? [77] (commenting on how testing WP:Flow, WMF's new forum software intended to replace talk pages, pretty much destroyed the wikiproject that agreed to test it.
6. "I reverted to the version before the diff you cited [i.e., the addition of disputed material], but was reverted. Changes pushed through without consensus are likely to be ignored or constantly disputed, so there's actually no point in doing this."
        — SarahSV ^(talk) 04:51, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#RfC: Should the guideline maintain the "As a general rule" wording or something similar? [78]
7. "Revert rules should not be construed as an entitlement or inalienable right to revert, nor do they endorse reverts as an editing technique.
        Passed 9 to 0."
        — Arbitration Committee, 22:47, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Article titles and capitalisation, Final Decision
8. Perhaps the most cogent explanation to date of what wikiproject banners are really for (and it's not advertising projects) by WhatamIdoing, at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, 06:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
9. Roughtly 95%-accurate Observations on Wikipedia behavior by Antandrus, 12 March 2016 (may have been revised since then)
10. "A small group is more likely to develop a self-reinforcing delusion that their position is reasonable, even when a large number of people outside the group are telling them otherwise."
         — Gigs (talk · contribs), 12 June 2013, in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-06-12/Op-ed, "The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons".
11. "Nearly all our policies are driven by the need to prevent ... abuse of Wikipedia. Policies on biographies of living people are driven largely by those who would abuse Wikipedia for purposes of defamation. Policies on neutrality and verifiability have been largely driven by the need to address those who were here to push a political agenda or promote their fringe viewpoints. What Wikipedia is not is pretty much a chronicle of all the things that people have tried to use Wikipedia for that the community has decided are detrimental to a quality encyclopedia. ... This isn't censorship, it's curation."
         — Gigs (talk · contribs), 12 June 2013, in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-06-12/Op-ed, "The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons".
12. "[C]onsensus is an outcome of discussion, not a type of discussion. Editors' comments contribute to the consensus-building process."
         — David Levy (talk · contribs), 11:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC), at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured list#Renaming and re-stylizing Today's Featured List?, accessed March 11, 2012
13. "If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them entirely and go about your business."
         — Koyaanis Qatsi (talk · contribs), 04:00, 18 September 2001 (UTC); it is the original formulation of WP:Ignore all rules.
14. "Any pile of bullshit decomposes naturally."
         — Wikipedia:Ignore all dramas (as of this version), on ignoring instead of responding to wiki-stupidity. Later versions had it as the far less pithy "Even the largest pile of bullshit will decompose on its own." The original formulation was "The most copiously deposited bullshit decomposes on its own." I reverted it to the concise version on 10 August 2011‎ and it seems to have stuck.
15. "Removed older logo. One logo is sufficient. Logos are copyrighted and Wikipedia should not serve as a gallery for logos."
         — Farine (talk · contribs), 05:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC) (edit summary at Data East)
16. "Anyone who adds material to an article, but cannot be bothered to cite any sources, is being discourteous to the other editors who later have to try to find reliable sources."
         — Dalbury (talk · contribs) 11:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC) (Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles#Userfy is a good option, accessed January 31, 2007)
17. "Of course, the point of style is to give coherence and consistency, deviations from which can detract from the publication's voice (in this case, an encyclopedic voice)."
         — Ninly (talk · contribs), 06:38, 8 May 2009 (UTC) (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, accessed June 2, 2009), on the real purpose and value of the Wikipedia Manual of Style.
18. "Show the door to trolls, vandals, and wiki-anarchists, who, if permitted, would waste your time and create a poisonous atmosphere here."
         — WP co-founder Larry Sanger, on Wikipedia:Etiquette
19. "[N]o need for bullet points – detail here is no more important than others"
         — SilkTork (talk · contribs), 10:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC) (edit summary at Wikipedia:Article size), on the problem that too many editors create bulletized lists from normal prose, as if Wikipedia were a giant PowerPoint presentation.
20. "While the title should be recognized as a reference to the article topic by someone familiar with the topic, for the uninitiated, it is the purpose of the article lead, not the article title, to identify the topic of the article."
         — Born2cycle (talk · contribs), 17:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Common names"
21. "The reason Wikipedia has policy pages at all is to store up assertions on which we agree, and which generally convince people when we make them in talk, so we don't have to write them out again and again. This is why policy pages aren't "enforced", but quoted; if people aren't convinced by what policy pages say, they should usually say something else. The major exception to this stability is when some small group, either in good faith or in an effort to become the Secret Masters of Wikipedia, mistakes its own opinions for What Everybody Thinks. This happens, and the clique often writes its own opinions up as policy and guideline pages."
         — JCScaliger (talk · contribs), sockpuppet of Pmanderson (talk · contribs), 03:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Request for edit, Poll". While Anderson made this point in a WP:POINTy way, sockpuppeting in a discussion he was trying to control (and arguing against me on the details of the issue) he's precisely right, and this was well articulated.
22. "If a high-profile [Wikipedian] poll is conducted that brings in widespread participation from editors who had previously stayed away from [the] venue, and the holdouts who had been stonewalling and preventing progress merely slouch, stuff their hands in their pockets, and walk away, then that proves that they knew full well that their arguments were not sufficiently persuasive, or didn’t have sufficient numbers, or both. ... Trying to now torpedo the current consensus by stating that certain people somehow didn’t have an opportunity to participate is nothing but sour grapes .... On Wikipedia it’s called ‘wililawyering’ which is disruptive and mustn’t be rewarded."
         — Greg L (talk · contribs), 00:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC) Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Why no action on implementing community consensus"
23. "Some editors seek to be totally neutral, which means they invariably catch the most flak from everyone else."
         — User:Collect (talk), at 11:38, 30 November 2010 (UTC) [79], as a salient point in the essay WP:Sex, religion and politics.
24. "[C]onsensus does exist absent an administrator to interpret it."
         — User:Mackensen (talk), at 04:03, 28 January 2008 (UTC) [80], commenting at a deletion review, on the fact that an XfD or other consensus process does not require formal closure if its decision is clear.

Smartest Wikipedia-relevant things I've seen from off-site

• Transgender activist Leslie Feinberg, 2006:

For me, pronouns are always placed within context. I am female-bodied, I am a butch lesbian, a transgender lesbian—referring to me as "she/her" is appropriate, particularly in a non-trans setting in which referring to me as "he" would appear to resolve the social contradiction between my birth sex and gender expression and render my transgender expression invisible. I like the gender neutral pronoun "ze/hir" because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you're about to meet or you've just met. And in an all trans setting, referring to me as "he/him" honors my gender expression in the same way that referring to my sister drag queens as "she/her" does.

Allegedly sensible or clever things I've come up with here

• Wikipedia policies are what are required for the project to operate at all; guidelines are what help it operate smoothly; high-acceptance essays are what help its operators not make fools of themselves; and miscellaneous essays are part of the community mindshare that helps shape all of the above over time.
       (At WT:Don't bludgeon the process, in a "guidelines vs. essays" thread; 23:31, 30 November 2020 (UTC) [81].
       It's a nutshell version of something I've said, in various words, many times since the late 2000s.)
• As of right this moment, Wikipedia (the encyclopedic content, excluding other material like talk pages) is calculable to be approximately 96.79 times the size of Encyclopædia Britannica.
       (The bulk of the math is from User:Tompw/bookshelf/assumptions, but at the time it only calculated how many volumes of EB would be filled by WP.)
• "WP is a bad place to engage in labelling that isn't absolutely integral to international public perception of the subject."
       (In an essay/tutorial at WT:Categorization, 15:39, 9 June 2018 (UTC) [82]. Someone suggested[83] framing it on their wall! The idea eventually developed into the essay WP:Race and ethnicity.)
• "[O]ur articles are palimpsests stirred together by a global assortment of geniuses, crackpots, and everyone in between, sometimes citing great stuff, sometimes poor stuff, and sometimes nothing".
       (At WT:Manual of Style, 16:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC) [84]. This was in the context of readers wanting to verify our content with claim-by-claim inline citations not "general references".
       Someone else nominated it as a mot juste and "a gem" [85].
       It was later quoted on someone's user page [86] along with one by Stephen Fry and another by Neil Gaiman. Pretty good company; I'm honored.)
• "An attempt at disambiguation that introduces another ambiguity is a failure."
       (I say this frequently. I'm not aware of anyone quoting me on it verbatim, but I've seen a rise in the same argument made in other words, and it is having the desired effect on article titles debates at WP:Requested moves.
• "If MoS does not already have a rule on something, then it almost certainly doesn't need one."
       (Included as a corollary at EEng's "If MOS does not need to have a rule on something, then it needs to not have a rule on that thing" essay.
• "No line item in our Manual of Style is supported by 100% of editors, and no editor supports 100% of its line items. The same situation is true of all style guides and their scopes and audiences in the wider world. The purpose of a stylebook is to set some ground rules (often arbitrary) so that the ballgame of writing can continue instead of the players standing around on the field brawling about trivia."
       (Summary of what I've said in variant wording probably 100 times in style disputes. No one ever tries to refute it.
       This awareness is what keeps our MoS from being a nightmare of editwarring about specific rules, over-inclusion of rules we don't need, deletion of ones we do just because someone doesn't like them, and pretense that no rules are needed.)
• "The next-to-last resort of someone who cannot muster a rational response to an opposing argument is to wave away that argument as something impossible to respond to (the last resort being ad hominem attacks)."
       (In particular, if you say "TL;DR" to refuse to respond to a cogent argument because it takes work to do so, you are at the wrong site – this one consists almost entirely of millions of pages of detailed and particular text, so if you can't parse a few paragraphs you are incompetent to work on this project.)
• "If one grinds an axe long and hard enough, there is no axe any longer, just a useless old stick."
       (A quasi-Taoist response to cranky complaints that relate to incidents so long ago no one should care any more. Compressed version: "Grind axe too long: no axe.")
• "Two words: tea pot. ~~~~"
       (A response to angry accusations of wrong-doing that self-evidently apply at least equally and usually much more accurately to the ranter.
       More recently, I've used it as a mantra for myself, when I feel wikistressed. It eventually led to the WP:HOTHEADS essay.)

Nifty Wikipedia tools

Kind of hard to find unless you already know about them:

Resources

• Wikimedia Labs at Mediawiki.org, for general info.
• The Tool Labs at WikiTech.Wikimedia.org, where anyone can create an account to develop tools.
• This page indicates lost tools and other problems after the demise of the old ToolServer.
• OAuth applications list

Stats tools

• Xtools-articleinfo at WMFLabs (general page stats, by year and month, with charts, etc.)
• editorinteract.py at WMFLabs – analyzes your interaction with one or more other users
• Aka's Page History Stats Tool – edit-related stats on any article or other page
• TDS's Article Contribution Counter – get stats (with some accuracy lag, usually a few weeks) on who the top editors of an article are
• Interiot's StubSense - what stubs are being used in a category
• Interiot's Related Changes Watchlist – makes "Special:Recentchangeslinked" pages behave like watchlists

Internal tools

• Special:AllMessages – track down any system message/notice (e.g. copyright warnings you are tired of seeing and want to exclude in your WP:USERCSS.)
• Advanced Search of Wikipedia

Editing tools

This user cites sources using refToolbar.

• WP:WikEd – syntax-highlighting WP editor (integrated, not external)
• WP:RefToolbar 2.0 – reference citation tool

Coding tools

• Special:ExpandTemplates – get raw HTML output of arbitrary wikicode with templates and parserfunctions

Lua programming and Scribunto modules

• Wikipedia:Lua
• Module:Arguments
• meta:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions – the hard-to-find full ParserFunctions (template code) documentation

Cleanup tools

• Reference citation consistency checker (use in sandbox or talk page): {{ref info|Manx cat|style=float:right}}

Visualization tools

• vCat – a tool to generate Graphviz diagrams of Wikipedia category relationships. Examples:
  • https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports – Show the entire parent and other "ancestor" category tree structure of Category:Cue sports (up to the maximum of 250 nodes)
  • https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&depth=2 – Show just the immediate parent and grandparent categories of Category:Cue sports
  • https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&depth=4&algorithm=fdp – Show four levels but as node clusters instead of a tree
  • https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&rel=subcategory - Show the immediate child subcategories of Category:Cue sports (this function does not recurse and show child sub-sub-categories, etc.)
  • https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&rel=subcategory&algorithm=fdp - Show the same, but as a ring graph instead of a tree
  • https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&title=William_A._Spinks&depth=2&algorithm=fdp - Show a node-cluster ring graph of the parent and grandparent categories of the article William A. Spinks
  • There are various other options, such as: creating links in the graph to the categories shown, or to new graphs starting at those categories; specifying output image format; outputting a text Graphviz .gv file with no node limit, for local rendering; choosing a different wiki, like French Wikipedia, or Wiktionary (example), or Commons; etc.

Help and info

• WP:Editor's index to Wikipedia
• wikipedia-en-help channel at FreeNode

Editor interaction analysis

• Editor Interaction Analyzer by Sigma, compares the edits of two to three specified editors to see which articles overlap, sorted by minimum time between edits by both users. Only works on the English Wikipedia. Speed: slow.
• Intersect Contribs, compares the edits of two to eight editors at any WMF wiki to see which articles overlap. Speed: fast.
• Intertwined contributions, merges the contributions of two editors at any WMF wiki into a single list. Speed: fast.

Unsorted additions

• Help:Labeled section transclusion – comparatively new feature that most of us don't know how to use yet
• How to ping people: "The keys are: max 20 pings per edit; and do an edit to clean before before trying a new ping, so the system sees a clean diff; and of course always new four-tilde signature. Dicklyon (talk) 03:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)"
• CatScan Archived 2015-10-23 at the Wayback Machine category analysis tool
  • CatScan Quick Intersection
• TimedMediaHandler - a-v in articles
• Find which Wiki pages link to a particular site [87]
• List changes made recently to pages linked from a specified page [88]
• Readability meter [89]
• Wikichecker [90]
• Emoticons [91]
• Tools for analysis of local MediaWiki installations (not directly relevant for en.wikipedia)
• Magnus's Reference Generator – auto-format several kinds of source citations

Outdated due to the demise of the ToolServer

Search through a page's history for edits made by a particular user [92] List contributors to an article, ranked in order of activity [93] Find images for a given article, using interwiki links [94] What pages have you and another edited? [95] User's across-projects contributions [96] Who wrote that? (Wiki blame) [97] Fix bare url reflinks [98] X!'s edit count [99] 3RR tool [100] Soxred93's thorough edit counter Snottywong's tools – an array of user & editing statistics and search tools Snottywong's tools – an array of user & editing statistics and search tools

Search sites

• https://www.refseek.com – more than a billion sources: encyclopedias, monographs, magazines, etc.
• https://www.worldcat.org – catalogue of 20,000 libraries. Find the nearest rare book you need; get it through inter-library loan at local library
• https://link.springer.com – over 10 million scientific books, articles, research protocols, etc.
• https://www.bioline.org.br – library of bioscience journals published in developing countries
• https://repec.org – 4 million publications on economics and related subjects
• https://www.science.gov – 2200+ scientific sites; more than 200 million articles indexed
• https://www.pdfdrive.com – the largest website for free download of books and other works in PDF format; over 225 million titles
• https://www.base-search.net – over 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them free

Interesting layouts

It's possible to do some nice layouts with CSS – carefully – inside the "shell" that MediaWiki provides. Just of use on project and user pages, of course. We don't do stuff like this in articles.

• User:Logical Premise/admincrits

Security

Committed identity: a6d331de87bb595541d03acf814f68f05abde44b5c3c79e078a3b79ceabf093696dcb01a3570d6eceedb21c6e8c33f4d41649bf9c05864a474974fcc4eec54be is a SHA-512 commitment to this user's real-life identity.

Bureaucracy

Systemic mega-dramas of 2020 onward

• meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022 – How will WMF spend its development money and time next year? This is important.
• meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Draft review – devils in the details, and just about the longest talk page in history
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC - more detail-devils
  • WP:FRAMGATE – relates in part to this, though the above item is more closely related to the one above it
• meta: Requests for comment/Should the Foundation call itself Wikipedia
• wmf:Resolution:Publication of proposed Bylaws changes, 2020 – mostly just legalese tweaks, but a few are non-trivial
  • meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Proposed Bylaws changes – diff view of the above
  • meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Proposed Bylaws changes – feedback page for that
• meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Board candidate evaluation form – draft "Board candidate rubric"
  • meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Board candidate evaluation form – feedback page for that
• meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Global Conversations – not even sure what this is yet, but they used the system-wide banner system to "advertise" it for community input
• meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Discuss – not sure what this is either, but it showed up on WP:CENT

ArbCom

• Archive of stock statements of principles: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Principles 2
  • Old version now marked as {{historical}}: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Principles
• Next year's election-prep RfC will probably appear here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022
  • And the ElectCom one should appear here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022/Electoral Commission

Some of the more nebulous WMF bureaucracy

• meta:Trust and Safety – a.k.a. the cancel-culture enablement system
  • meta:Trust and Safety/Case Review Committee – at least there is one, though I'm sure it'll be as opaque as the above
• meta:Ombuds commission – this actually looks interesting for something ...
• Interestingly, ArbCom members are now required (on the en.WP side, not the WMF side) to not be on either of the above bodies, as a conflict of interest (after the WP:FRAMGATE fiasco).

Buh-bye!

Thanks for visiting!

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ  Contribs.

Last updated: 2021-01-01

Supreme Pontiff of Kailaasa is something no one claims neither media, not his followers. Wouldn't be a title that only WP confer on him ? 24.46.106.254 (talk) 04:41, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Child Abuse Allegation

There are 3 aspects to the Child Allegations.

1. Nithyananda
2. Two of Nithyananda's devotees
3. Against Police and CWC (Child Welfare Committee) in Gujarat, India

According to these

1. https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/in-focus/article/rape-case-karnataka-high-court-cancels-bail-to-absconding-nithyananda/549810
2. https://indianexpress.com/photos/india-news/nithyananda-swami-controversies-cases-6131718/
3. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/interpol-blue-corner-notice-against-self-styled-godman-nithyananda-accused-of-rape-and-abduction-on-2167968

The case is against 2 of Nithyananda's devotees, not against Nithyananda himself. All news articles are consistent in about two of Nithyananda’s devotees being investigated, but none of them say that investigation (for child abuse) is against Nithyananda.

Infact,the case about the child abuse allegations is directed against the police and CWC by the court

1. https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/crime/100320/nithyananda-case-officials-showed-porn-to-ashram-kids-cops.html
2. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/officials-probing-rape-accused-nithyananda-showed-porn-to-children-police-2192538
3. https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/03/09/nithyananda-probe-cops-cwc-members-booked-for-showing-porn-to-children.html
4. https://ahmedabadmirror.indiatimes.com/ahmedabad/crime/nithyananda-probe-cops-booked-for-showing-porn-to-children/articleshow/74555983.cms
5. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/ahmadabad-nithyananda-case-fir-against-cops-cwc-officials-6305818/

The headlines of the news articles are very misleading. And all of them talk only about the rape charge and not about child abuse.

However, in this Wikipedia article, in the introduction section, it is being explicitly stated that the investigation is against him (for child abuse), this is inaccurate and prejudicial against a living person. In fact, Nithyananda is nowhere in the picture so far as the child abuse topic is concerned. Therefore

1. I have made the following edit (996220704) Done by Insight2010 (talk) 06:51, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
2. The mention of child abuse has been removed from the introduction section at the top of this article’s page and the subsection in the article.

Ik.Kaluha (talk) 06:30, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI Please discuss about child abuse here first before making any changes.Ik.Kaluha (talk) 16:50, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Ik.Kaluha Well, from your second list of sources, I got these:

Deccan Chronicle: Police had booked the controversial godman and two of his women disciples on the charges of wrongful confinement and abduction of two girls and a boy living in his ashram.

NDTV: Police had earlier charged the controversial godman and two of his women disciples for wrongful confinement and abduction of two girls and a boy who were living in his ashram... Earlier this year, Interpol issued a Blue Corner Notice seeking information about Nithyananda who had fled the country amid allegations of wrongful confinement of children.

The other two sources repeat the claims verbatim, since it was presumably written out by the Press Trust of India. Do you want to include these in the article as better sources? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 17:07, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI All 3 aspects of it as stated above has to be covered as it will be prejudicial. Later coverage indicates it's against his ardents not himself. And you removed the UN section? Ik.Kaluha (talk) 17:57, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Not RSes

Ik.Kaluha, I removed citations from the page that were either

• unreliable, like the blog and Nithyanandapedia (blogs and encyclopaedias are not normally reliable sources, except maybe Britannica), or
• redundant, or
• repeated

I removed content that was not cited too. For instance, I don't remember any source citing 'yogic powers', and even if they do, 'yogic powers' should be in apostrophes as such extrasensory stuff is pseuodoscience.

What else did I remove, and what do you think was unreasonable? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 15:50, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Too many changes made in the commit. All Kailasa content was deleted, 100s of new articles on it. Ik.Kaluha (talk) 16:07, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Ik.Kaluha No, no Kailaasa content was deleted. I merely switched the positions of two sections. I clearly mentioned that in the edit summary. I also changed the positions of headings. No deletion. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 16:11, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Let's keep changes small. This article page is a mess. The history of changes is impossible to track. Too much vandalism. The subsection for announcement should remain as content and reporting says it's accouncement. Ik.Kaluha (talk) 16:18, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Self-Styled vs Appointed by an authority

Hinduism does not have the concept of a College of Cardinals to confer papal authority on a Hindu religius leader. So, does it even make sense to have the term: "Self Proclaimed" in this article.

Quoting from Wikipedia:Editing_Wikipedia_is_like_visiting_a_foreign_country: "... "Negro", as applied to people, is a historical term only, and "oriental" is "Eurocentric", with a "shifting, inaccurate definition", and "may be considered offensive"... Point being, for a person who is not a subject-matter-expert on Hinduism, this "self-styled" might be valid, but for SMEs of Hinduism, this seems weird at best and offensive at worst.

I can remove the "self-proclaimed" verbiage if no one has an opposition. Mechprince (talk) 18:09, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Mechprince: I'm sorry, but I'm not even convinced the title should be there. Two reasons:

1. The title appears nowhere else (cited) in the body of the article.
2. If there's no formal mechanism which grants the title, then the title is self-styled. Anyone could claim to such a title; that doesn't mean it should be there.

Objection 1 takes presence: if there's no reliable source referring to the subject with this title, it should be struck from the page entirely. ImaginesTigers (talk) 19:14, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@ImaginesTigers:: My bad, I should have typed "self-styled godman" (which appears in the intro section) instead of "self-proclaimed" (which happens to appear in Infobox). My Edit was towards removing the former ("self-styled godman") and not the latter ("self-proclaimed) as Hinduism does not have the concept like a College of Cardinals which exists in Christianty. In Christianity, a College of Cardinals declares Pope to be a representative of God and hence he is not self-styled. But a similar setup does not exist in Hinduism, so every Hindu leader is self-styled as per this definition which is erroneous.
Does it make sense?
Mechprince (talk) 20:06, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Mechprince: Makes total sense; I understand the confusion. Besides little things like that, this page has some very, very severe problems, and needs help. I think there's a lot of editors with a vested, unprofessional interest in this page. I'm going to look through the page's history tomorrow and see what needs to be brought up to WP:COI. Bear with! ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:10, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@ImaginesTigers: He has been appointed the Pontiff of Madurai Adheenam - one of India's oldest living monasteries and as a Mahamandaleshwar (Lead Pontiff) of the Mahanirvani akhada - another ancient order spanning milenia. These are sufficiently referenced in the "Recognition" section. Given this, referring to him using the derogatory term "self styled" is abusive and unwarranted in a BLP. Acnaren (talk) 02:00, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

We cannot make claims that he is the supreme pontiff of Hinduism, a claim in the infobox that I removed. We cannot make claims that he is, in fact, a "godman". That's a self-proclamation and has to be labelled as such (or just deleted). If we have actually reliable sources that he's been named to a particular title/position/role at a particular monastery or other organization (that is not his own creation) that can be included (though whether or not that is currently valid needs to be researched).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:14, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Kumbh Mela

Nithyananda was the brand Ambassador for Kumbh mela.

• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/Saints-want-MP-minister-booked-for-Nithyanandas-Simhastha-poster/articleshow/50700371.cms

This information has been lost to improper edits or vandalism multiple times. The information not obvious from the title of the ref but present in the content. Ik.Kaluha (talk) 20:05, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Ik.Kaluha could you explain whether you have any direct or indirect affiliation with the article subject? I also want to note that just because something is true doesn't mean it merits inclusion. Blablubbs|talk 20:07, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Ik.Kaluha:: WP:RS/PS says of The Times of India: The Times of India is considered to have a reliability between no consensus and generally unreliable. Given that this is a BLP, it is prudent here to not include information from that site. This page is going to need a thorough review. Please do not add this information back in unless you can find it corroborated by a source considered to be reliable on WP:RS/PS. ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:08, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@ImaginesTigers:: I have no particular interest in this page except to restore some kinda balance in a lost cause. I agree about the general reliability of Indian news everything seems to be tabloid journalism. But the balance on this article is too skewed for a living person. Digging through history to figure out some positive content. 90% of the page content is defamatory in tone. Many edits seem to have that tone apparent. Enforcing edits via talk should be the long term approach else it's circular changes. Ik.Kaluha (talk) 20:21, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Ik.Kaluha: Our role as editors is not to 'figure out some positive content'. It’s to describe on what neutral, secondary sources say. The article is currently filled with blogs, primary sources, and puffery. The article is not defamatory in tone; it is descriptive. The lead is inappropriately phrased. This page needs protection so that a group of editors can put some work in to fix it. I don't think that is going to be through talk page discussions. This was a series of good changes to the article, which you reverted. Not only did it improve the quality of the citations in the article, it was a good MOS grammar clean-up. ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:35, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@ImaginesTigers:: Understood. That was not my intent. I was concerned with too make changes in one edit.

Postal Stamp

• https://www.freepressjournal.in/latest-news/postage-stamp-released-on-swami-nityananda

this is also not a reliable source. I really encourage that you look at WP:RS. ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:35, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Republic

Acnaren, do you have any other source for the UN protection claims? Republic TV isn't the best, it is sensationalist and has more commentary than fact. Republic TV is considered 'generally unreliable' at perennial sources. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 02:21, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

There is no Indian Media which is not sensationalist. But in this case Republic TV has shared links to the submission and also shown pages of the submission on their panel discussion on television. I found another reference from The Hindu Businessline. I will add that too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acnaren (talk • contribs) 02:31, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Acnaren Good. The Hindu is not sensationalist, it is a good source to add. TOI and TV channels' websites, though, often tend to be. Republic takes it to a whole new level, however, and often obscures fact - the other sources may have colourful-sounding language, but at least they don't actively lie. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 02:48, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI: I'm not familiar with the mainstream Indian press, so at a glance I can't tell apart reliable news sources from unreliable ones. If you need any further help on the article, let me know, but I feel like I may have done all I really can. If the reversions continue (and I suspect they will), we should go to WP:COI. ImaginesTigers (talk) 05:20, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Recognitions versus controversies

I moved the recognitions section before the controversies as it looks weird for a biography to start with controversies first.Krishkrpal (talk) 04:33, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@Krishkrpal: Per WP:CONTROVERSY, both sections should be merged. I'll be doing this now. Note that, as this is a BLP, it should not provided any sources from unreliable sources. ImaginesTigers (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@ImaginesTigers: ya ok Krishkrpal (talk) 16:28, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Noticeboards

Given the shambles that has become of this article again, I have asked for additional watchlisting and input from experienced, neutral editors, at the India, Hinduism, Religion, and BLP noticeboards. I've not opened an examination thread at any of them. I see above several suggestions to do so, e.g. at WP:RSN, WP:BLPN, etc., but hopefully just having more hands on deck to stop both smear campaigning by the subject's enemies, and whitewashing and glorification by his devotees will be sufficient.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:32, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Problem is not whitewashing but with many editors presenting a negative view of the subject using language such as "self styled" (just for instance) which is highly abusive when in fact the person is the head of the oldest monastic orders in India - perhaps the world. The problem is inherent bias and cultural differences broadly present across the board amongst people who are editing this page. We need to understand that this person is followed and respected by millions worldwide across 50 countries. To reduce his page to a huge list of controversies with a small section on his work - which too keeps getting pared down on a regular basis - seems to make this look more like a tabloid than a encyclopedia. The problem arises because all biographies published on his are ignored as "self serving" for whatever reason and newspapers are considered as the source of information. It is no doubt that this page is a mess. Acnaren (talk) 11:51, 1 January 2021 (UTC)