Talk:Rishi Valley School

Rishi Valley School- reason for the name

Anyone associated with the school can cite or edit the reasons for why the school is called 'Rishi valley School'. Hibiscus2581 (talk) 10:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

You can find the reason here but I will wait for the students to work on this as part of their project. Shyamal (talk) 11:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

If you read the section in history and in the overview, you will now see that we have explained how the school got its name. I hope this helps. Rafahriday (talk) 07:17, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Citations needed!

Hi, recently on adding a Infrastructure heading to the Rishi Valley School page, I found that I needed some help concerning the Minimum Wage figure for India provided by the central government(or state government). If anyone would be able to locate the relevant figure it would be great. Thanks.

Teacher edits and comments

The overview team did a good job, but there were a few minor grammatical corrections I made. Also, there is not enough citation at present. I think some additional narrative and detail could usefully be added as well, depending on what the history team adds.

The tradition and culture section is a good start, but there are details and references that are needed, as well as images. I also want to see additional traditions, for example, the annual celebration of the creation of Rishi Valley as a bird preserve. There should be more history on David Young and the creation folk dancing here.

I am also adding hyperlinks to internal Wikipedia pages that we reference in our writing. Please try to pay attention to that ad add appropriate links that exist as you move forward.

I think we need to rename the "other efforts" section. Ideas anyone? When did the reforestation and conservation begin and who started it? Who started the RIVER program? Who else adopted the project? Where? Should we have a separate page for this program as well? Also we need more details about the origin of and the administration of the Rural Health Clinic and REC.

Otherwise, great start! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikirishiwiki (talk • contribs) 04:53, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Land acquisition

We need a date when C.S. Trilokekar finished buying the land in the history section.Rafahriday (talk) 07:18, 24 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rafahriday (talk • contribs) 07:15, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Sourcing

Hi, new editors! It's great to see all the new content, but please remember that unsourced and unverifiable statements are very likely to be removed. Please source your statements in footnotes from reliable sources—this means that details that come from personal webpages and unwritten history aren't fit for inclusion. I think you'll also find that these Wikipedia policies help improve the quality of the encyclopedia article for your school. Feel free to leave a note here or on my talk page if you have questions. czar · · 11:03, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Additionally, when writing a new draft as a first-time editor, sometimes it makes sense to work on the draft in a personal/class sandbox instead of editing the live article directly. This way you can experiment (and request/receive advice on a working draft) without consequence (deletion of unsourced sections). czar · · 11:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Most of the material added (especially in the History section) is from published sources. We do need to add citations and will remind students to do so. You are correct, we should insist on everyone using a sandbox till that section is ready to be added and will doubly remind everyone to do so. Thanks, and look forward to any other suggestions/criticisms. Dirachta (talk) 09:49, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Cool. I'm excited to see the article grow. Information not published in reliable sources will be deleted per WP's rules (it's a matter of time), so please encourage your fellow contributors to only bother to add well-sourced facts. It can be discouraging to have your work deleted, so please use me and other editors as resources to make sure your energies are going towards fruitful ends. Consider adding list-defined refs if everyone is using the same sources (makes it easier to cite and move content around), and let me know if you'd like help being set up with a sandbox. czar · · 01:32, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello students, I have temporarily removed the Natural History section as it was unsourced and your next slot for working on it is only on Sept 14th. Once we have finished this section with all references we can put it back up. Dirachta (talk) 04:12, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Would there be any objection to moving all recent edits into a talk page sandbox so they can be sourced and edited without disrupting what once existed as the article? It stands half-finished, as is. czar ♔ 14:36, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Since most of the citations are from multiple pages of a single book, it would be useful to see the Harvard referencing templates, so as to indicate the specific pages - see Egyptian Vulture or Salim Ali for examples of that method (see the source - the sfn template and the harv parameters on the citation templates. That way each page that was used as a source can be indicated. Shyamal (talk) 13:47, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

If you can pass along the titles of the books in use, I can set up a sample of how the referencing would work, if it'd be easier. czar ♔ 20:07, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Aplogies for the delay in response, notifications didn't seem to work. Okay from what I understand of the original comment, there is a suggestion that we move new edits/sections to a sandbox and get them ready there before porting over to the main article. While not opposed to this for any new material we add I think the current version (which is a very rough draft at the moment and by no means finished) is an improvement on what was there before. So I am not for removing material added in the last few months. The pace is very slow and will continue to be so because we have just one hour to work with the students every week and right now most of it is going into teaching them how to research and write.

Regarding help with referencing, we had started to use the Wiki template - but as Shyamal has pointed out there are multiple references to the same book(s), so if the sfn, or harv templates deal with this will use them from now onwards. I will get a list of books that we are referencing (or will be in the future) and pass it onwards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dirachta (talk • contribs) 09:52, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Dirachta. I would prefer keeping the page in progress, especially since this Talk page makes it clear that we are working on a class project and it is in transition. I think it is useful for the students to be able to watch the changes they are making as a part of the learning process. But I would like to figure out how to use the sandbox and perhaps we can place some of the less ready material there this weekend when we work on it.

I also think we need some support on the sources. This is also a product of working with young people who need to be taught more about how to utilize reference materials properly and source them, so it too is a part of the learning curve. Thank you for the feedback.Wikirishiwiki 11:25, 23 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikirishiwiki (talk • contribs)

Hello. As you had suggested I am providing a list of books that we will be using as references, so do let us on proper referencing formats.

Rishi Valley School: The First Forty Years, by Roshen Dalal, editors Hans and Radhika Herberger, 2nd ed, 2007, Krishnamurti Foundation India, Rishi Valley, Andhra Pradesh, India. Life at School: An Ethnographic Study, Meenakshi Thapan ISBN 13: 0195679644 Birds of Rishi Valley and Regeneration of their Habitats, by S. Rangaswami and S. Shridhar, 1st ed, 1994, Krishnamurti Foundation India, Rishi Valley, Andhra Pradesh, India. Poetry with Young People, Gieve Patel, ISBN: 8126024291 Remembering G. V. Subba Rao: A Life of Dedication to Education, 1st ed 1980, G. V. Subba Rao Trust, Madras, India.

This is a partial list but we hope to add more. Dirachta (talk) 10:16, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Many WP articles are works in progress, but the idea is that it's better to keep the article in a readable state, adding incrementally with sourcing, instead of dumping information and coming back to source it (which is much harder and usually gets passed on to the next group, considering the learning curve). Do you have a timeframe for when the unsourced sections will be cleaned up? I moved the above book list from my talk page and formatted them for the References section of the article. I then converted two references to use the {{sfn}} template (see page history). They should be relatively easy to use now, but let me know how I can help with your next steps! czar ♔ 01:06, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Good point. What we can do is a close reading of the article as it currently stands and remove unsourced material. Hopefully will get done in this week's session. Thanks for the help on the references! Dirachta (talk) 04:25, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Based on recent edits, you may find http://reftag.appspot.com a useful tool for formatting Google Books refs in the future czar ♔ 12:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Images

Anyone interested in taking some pictures? We could use some high-quality photos of the school, the faculty, and the spaces worth mentioning in the article. The photographer would need to upload them under a free license, preferably to Commons. I can offer specific photo suggestions, if you're interested. Also who is the author of File:Habitat profile diagram of Rishi Valley.jpg? Most older items like this have copyright that bars them from being uploaded, unless you control the copyright to change the license as is posted. Can someone at the school verify for me? czar ♔ 20:25, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

If you have specific suggestions, yes we would be very much interested. Regarding the File:Habitat profile diagram of Rishi Valley.jpg, this has been taken from a book published by Rishi Valley School so copyright is controlled by the school and it doesn't have issues with material being put on Wikimedia. Dirachta (talk) 09:55, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

It would be best to have the same file uploaded on the rishivalley.org website and marked under a Creative Commons license there so that the license is verifiable. Shyamal (talk) 13:47, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Great idea about the photographs. We are working on both scanning older images and taking new ones to add to the site. Wikirishiwiki 11:27, 23 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikirishiwiki (talk • contribs)

Firstly, any image that is being scanned or repurposed has to have clear approval from the copyright holder. So that map, for instance, if the school owns the copyright, the person responsible for the school's assets should email consent text to the email address on that page. WP is very particular about respecting authorship rights. Good images that students could take today include photos of the main school building (to go in the infobox), photos that would illustrate particular school traditions that would also be visually interesting, photos to serve as a representation of the campus (its atmosphere of peace and serenity), and a staff/faculty/student group photo to show the size of the school, number of instructors, etc. Those are starting points—anything that would illustrate the important parts of the article (without going overboard) would be great. Also take more than one photo of each so that you can choose and upload the best one with the highest quality. Are there any free photos of Krishnamurti and Besant to upload? czar ♔ 01:27, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Consent text for all photographs from the Rishi Valley Bird book (and others) should be possible, so we will work on putting it to any images we upload.Dirachta (talk) 04:29, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

@Shyamal: do you have any thoughts on the kind of license from amongst the different versions we should proivde? Dirachta (talk) 04:39, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

{{cc-by-sa-3.0}} or {{cc-by-3.0}} should be fine. Shyamal (talk) 15:29, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Great. Thanks!Dirachta (talk) 05:48, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Rishi Valley School: The First Forty Years

Rishi Valley School: The First Forty Years just got a new URL, but it links to an unreliable doc file (could have been written/edited by anybody) instead of something like a Google Books page. We have to work from the reliable source, which would be the book itself. This link appears to be in violation of the text's actual copyright, unless this is how the 2nd edition was indeed released. Anyway, it needs more clarification. If it was released as a doc, how do we know its contents are reliable? And if it wasn't released as a doc but as a book, we can't link to a copy of the text in violation of the copyright. Does anyone know? Just a little snag. Also I'm having trouble confirming the publishing locations for a number of the refs, if someone could double-check them. czar ♔ 13:40, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, this is a problem. Usually this website scans books and puts up the pdf, I don't know how the doc file got there. I think the simplest thing is to remove the URL pointing to the book.Dirachta (talk) 07:45, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay. I removed it for now—we can always add it back after discussion. The important part is whether the 2nd edition is actually a book, and, accordingly, whether the source is reliable. czar ♔ 13:45, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

This is a physical book, we can ask the school to scan it and put it up on their website. Dirachta (talk) 05:32, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Update

Hi all, is there an update on the sourcing phase? We should revert back to a shorter, sourced version if whole paragraphs will not be sourced any time soon. (They can always be added back in the future.) czar ♔ 12:22, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I have added citation needed tags - do give it a week. @Dirachta: Shyamal (talk) 07:25, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it is best if we do that (revert to an older version) as the school is on break right now and reopens in one month. Dirachta (talk) 05:03, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I looked at the earlier versions, but unless we revert to the page as it looked before we started our revisions we will face the same problem (unsourced material). Dirachta (talk) 06:04, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The previous versions aren't exactly sourced either, upon looking. What are the chances that the current information will be sourced soon? Or should I clearcut uncited information and it can be added back in the future? Remember that this page is supposed to be functioning as an encyclopedia article during this time czar ♔ 14:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Checking back in on this. It'd be great to see the article sourced. There also isn't a particularly great previous version if the solution is to revert. Who is the current contact at the Rishi Wiki project? czar ♔ 20:11, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I believe the weekend program ended with the previous term but the person to contact is @Dirachta:. Shyamal (talk) 15:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Right now we are facing multiple issues with getting students to add content. Based on discussions teachers feel it would be best if a small core group does this and we are trying to get volunteers for this. Dirachta (talk) 04:41, 4 March 2014 (UTC)