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Vote for Tandoori Chicken

Article Tandoori Chicken has been nominated on Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement/Nominations here. Kindly vote for Tandoori Chicken so that many people may work to improve that article, also more and more people will know about Tandoori Chicken. Thank you. --Human3015 knock knock • 22:37, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

This is canvassing, Human3015. It may seem trivial but you do need to be careful in how your word things because some people can get very upset about things like this, and sometimes they are right to be so. Please read WP:CANVASS. Not that I'm impartial to a reasonably decent Tandoori Chicken on the Curry Mile. - Sitush (talk) 00:12, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Sheesh, the Curry Mile article really needs to be improved! I've only just bothered looking at it after commenting above. - Sitush (talk) 00:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Edit-warring atTalk:Adi Shankara: my comments are being removed

Admin-intervention is highly welcome here. Someone edit-warring on the talkpage, because he wants separate headers, meanwhile removing my comments. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:56, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks] Abecedare. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:06, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Vandalism from India in the news

This IP's vandalism has hit the national news in India [1]. Can people go to check all of his/her edits? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:08, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't anything new, this is just regular vandalism that was highlighted because of the NIC IP. The news piece seems to have attracted more such people to the JN article, so I've protected it for a week. The content was reverted on both articles I watch (JN and MN) quite quickly, and looks like you've taken care of GN. —SpacemanSpiff 09:14, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, indeed. The Nehru pages are being watched by plenty of us. I don't know about the older edits. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 09:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
All three now. Sigh. —SpacemanSpiff 09:37, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
As Spaceman Said, this is not a new meme on or off-wiki. See [2], [3], [4], [5] etc. Parallel attempts to establish that Feroze Gandhi (and, hence Indira Gandhi and their descendents) was Muslim are even more common. Abecedare (talk) 19:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mohd. Shahnawaz Choudhary

Dear India experts: Here is a draft article about an Indian political activist. If this draft is accepted, what should the title be? Also, in the article, what is the surname of this person? I'd like to change the paragraphs to use just one name. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not very experienced with the AfC process, but what I have gathered from reading sources about Indian politics is that "Mohd." is an abbreviation for "Mohammed," a common enough name among Muslims in South Asia. I believe it does not carry any honorific connotations; therefore, it should be spelt out in full, or removed. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:07, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Anne Delong, he is state president of youth wing of major political party, I think he deserves article. As Vanamonde93 said name should be "Mohammad" not just "Mohd", or it can be removed. I made some minor changes in draft, linked some articles. But I wonder why this article waited for 2 years? It should have been created long before. If you have any more questions regarding this article you can ask me, I have special interest in Kashmir related topics. Thank you. --Human3015 knock knock • 19:26, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, Vanamonde93 and Human3015. Most of the sources do not mention Mohammad, so I think I will not include it in the title.—Anne Delong (talk) 19:30, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Human3015, about why it took so long for the article to be added to the encyclopedia: It wasn't in such good shape at that time, and the editor who started it didn't come back to fix it up. Unfortunately there were 50,000 abandoned drafts, and when a group of us started checking through them to find ones worth improving, it took more than a year to check them because there were so many. Once we had them whittled down to 5,000 or so, that's still a lot of pages needing work. I had this one on my list, but didn't get around to it until now. Here are the ones I haven't got to yet; you may see one you'd like to work on: User:Anne Delong/Afc submissions for improvement —Anne Delong (talk) 19:45, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Anne Delong, oh! thats too much of work, you are doing some nice work. Frankly speaking I'm against this policy of AFC, people should create articles directly in main space, then new pages patroller can patrol it and curate that page properly, can nominate it for speedy deletion, at least this will save time of community and we will not get so much of pending work, All pages that I have created all of them directly in main space even when I was very new and not aware about Wikipedia policies much, but none of them is got deleted, so most of people create sensible articles and they should not waste time in AFC, and those who create blatant nonsense pages they get deleted soon. Anyway, I will find out drafts of my area interest and will help you. --Human3015 knock knock • 20:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Human3015, any help will be appreciated. About AfC: There are pros and cons to both ways. Most of these articles would have been deleted as unsourced BLPs or as too promotional if added to mainspace right away. The ones on my list have all been improved somewhat since they were first created. Also, brand new editors are not allowed to create new articles in mainspace for the first few days, so this is a way for them to contribute right away. The creation of Draft space has improved this a bit. The work of fixing them up is, of course, voluntary; they will just be quietly deleted if not edited for six months. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:41, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Ok, that was just my view, but I do support AfC, thanks for your explanation, AfC gives chance for articles to survive. --Human3015 knock knock • 20:51, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Articles for creation/Sasura Bada Paisawala

Dear India experts: Here is a draft article about a film that may be of interest. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:04, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Anne Delong, In 2013 "Aperson" declined this article stating that "subject is not notable", but it is highest grossing Bhojpuri film and its obviously notable. Though its stub currently but still this article deserves mainspace. --Human3015 knock knock • 07:52, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Human3015, the draft was declined because it lacked independent references, but since then I have added quite a few, so I am moving it to mainspace on your recommendation. Can you add some information in brackets as to what "₹ 40 crore" is? I have no idea if this is a lot of money. Thanks.—Anne Delong (talk) 11:52, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Anne, you can use "₹40 crore (US$4.8 million)" (using {{INRConvert}}), it's a lot simpler than bothering with calculations, and IMO should be used for all Indian numbering. —SpacemanSpiff 12:00, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Anne Delong I have searched a lot about this movie in Hindi and Marathi language newspapers, and I found various info, some sources says film released in 2003, some 2004, even 2005 and 2006. Even two sources currently in lead of article differ in release date, one says 2005 and other says 2004. So i'm confused about improving article. Some sources, as in Interview of lead actor Manoj Tiwari to one Hindi news he said film earned 50 Cr, while some sources say 34 cr. But one thing is sure that its highest grossing bhojpuri film. And Spaceman gave you convert rate. I will say what "cr" is, 40 cr rupees means 400000000 rupees, in million it will be 40 million Indian rupees. 1 cr=10 million. 1 million= 10 lakh. 28 Lakh=2.8 Million. (Also I found different figures for film budget).--Human3015 knock knock • 12:06, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, SpacemanSpiff and Human3015 for the conversion information. About the varying statistics: that's one of the reasons why interviews are not considered good sources: the interviewers just print whatever the interviewee says, without doing any fact checking. An actor isn't necessarily a film industry financial expert, and definitely isn't a neutral party, and likely didn't look up the information before the interview and is guessing, so I'd discount those figures. Also, actors have a vested interest in exaggerating the importance of their films. Another reason for the varying numbers for amount earned is that the articles were written at various times, and the film likely continued to be shown and tickets sold over several years. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

See Template talk:Hindu philosophy#RfC: should this template also contain links to Jainism and Buddhism as "Related Indian philosophies"? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:18, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Rajah Nahar Singh

Is anyone able to find sources to improve the Nahar Singh article or make a comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nahar Singh? Sionk (talk) 22:07, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

AfD

Editors watching this page might be interested in this AfD. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:32, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Kumar (name) and Kumar

Namaste ! Do we have two pages (Kumar (name) and Kumar) about the same object ? Should they be merged into one ? --Movses (talk) 18:48, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I see that Kumar (name) was split off from the dab as the dab was too long! Ideally that list shouldn't be at Kumar as it'll just take too much real estate there. My preference would be to rename the dab as "Kumar" and rename "Kumar" as "Kumar (name)" and remove the list of people and merge the current "Kumar (name)" to the dab or at least a secondary dab. —SpacemanSpiff 20:04, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Issue at Faisalabad

There's a disagreement at Faisalabad, which I have explained at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#POV/Peacock pushing at Faisalabad. Any input would be appreciated. Mr Potto (talk) 16:49, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

@Mr Potto: Would be better if you left a note at WT:PAK as that's the project the article rolls under. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 20:06, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Oh gosh, yes, wrong country! How embarrassing! Thanks. But the ANI report has been resolved and closed, and there's a discussion at Talk:Faisalabad already underway, so I don't think there's any need now. Mr Potto (talk) 20:11, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Mr Potto, well its ok, When I saw your post yesterday I thought you posted it here in hope that Indian editors will support you against involved Pakistani editors at Faisalabad article.. Anyway, but you can post about Pakistan related articles here also when it comes to content dispute regarding history of any city which starts from Indus valley civilization to British rule, you can also post about any article related to India-Pakistan conflict. --Human3015 knock knock • 21:42, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

AfC submission

Hello there! This submission is likely notable, although it does need extensive cleanup, etc. Draft:Indian Information Service. Best, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:13, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Bali, Baghpat district

Hello India experts. Here's a draft article about a village, but I haven't been able to find much in the way of references.—Anne Delong (talk) 01:38, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

You're unlikely to find much for most villages beyond the census data. This is the district administration website, but it's sort of a trouble navigating through it. You can get government sources/reports by searching with "site:nic.in". —SpacemanSpiff 04:57, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

National Capital Region (India)‎

The official definition seems to be changing too often and this is causing a lot of ad-hoc changes to our article, especially population and area. Any suggestions on how to deal with this? I think recently Karnal and Muzzafarnagar districts have been added to an already large region. —SpacemanSpiff 16:35, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Indian Institutes (disambiguation)

I have noticed that many institutes of India having similar names are differing by their city name which should be in brackets e.g.Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar must be in this form, Indian Institute of Technology (Bhubaneswar) but they are not ..I'm here to discuss that they must be in brackets as having (disambiguation).....Here is page which i have created Indian Institute of Technology (disambiguation) which includes all institutes which must be addressed according to Wikipedia rules e.g. Air University disambiguation page has their universities names in brackets....similarly Steven Smith disambiguation page they have their birth years in brackets so why administrator of India is permitting me to move articles which must be in brackets....there is another example e.g. Benazir Bhutto University where universities city names are in brackets so why Indian institutes articles have that form , GreenCricket (talk) 15:05, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

The common and official name for most are Indian Institute of XXX Place. This would be the case for IITs, NITs, IISERs, AIIMS etc. No commas or parentheses. We shouldn't force fit a name to suit some made up preference over here. I've been wondering why suddenly some of these institute names have become muddled up.—SpacemanSpiff 16:16, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
None of the AIIMS use a comma except, ironically, Delhi which prefers to say use New Delhi instead of Delhi, and all their full form common names are All India Institute of Medical Sciences FOO, the only case for a comma is for Delhi which I think is more to do with the fact that they are just "AIIMS" located in Delhi as opposed to others that were named for the place. —SpacemanSpiff 16:34, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
Spaceman, I moved the AIIMS Delhi page before seeing your last message. Can you fix it? The lead etc will need to be edited too. Abecedare (talk) 16:39, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
It's a bit more complex than that. WP:COMMON would mean we just use All India Institute of Medical Sciences for it, with no ", New Delhi" which their website uses. I think a talk page discussion there or just here is probably required to evaluate sources. There's some extra context needed there, or their website could just be wrong (wouldn't be the first time for one of these institutes!). —SpacemanSpiff 16:47, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (Mumbai) was a funny move. Thank god it wasn't moved to Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (Mumbai, also known as Bombay, the official name until 1995) based on Talk:Mumbai#Mumbai_vs_Bombay_argument. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 08:42, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

GreenCricket, you can see list of official websites of all IITs in article Indian Institutes of Technology, you can see name on official websites of each IIT. There is no "comma" or "bracket" is used in official names of those institutes. --Human3015 knock knock • 17:08, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Peer review and document improvement request

This is a Peer review request to seek broader input to improve page: meta:Help:Form I & Affidavit (Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition) an option available under (Indian) Copyright act 1957 rules.

Mahitgar (talk) 06:53, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Hungama TV

I can't find any good version in the article history. There are large number of IP edits and it is very hard to decide what revision I should revert to. Can anyone help this article? (Supdiop🔹Talk🔹Contribs) 16:58, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Another set of eyes?

Would anyone want to look for sources for Chehere (2015 film)? I've tried looking for sources under a variety of combinations using regular Google and this WP's Google, but I'm not really finding much. Given some of the names in this film you'd think that there would have been more coverage than what I'm finding. Maybe there's something I've missed? It's up for AfD, so I'd like to try to get another set of eyes on this just to make sure that I haven't missed an obvious combination. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:45, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Sri Vaembu Aathi Muthumari Amman Temple

Hello India experts. This new page looks like a picture book! It has almost no text, or sources. I've dropped a pile of help, advisory & now some warning template messages on their talk page. Editor has so far been unresponsive, other than to remove maintenance templates, and editing/reverting back to centred, and big and bold headings! Any notability here or should it be deleted? Regards, 220 of Borg 03:43, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Small, relatively new temple. What should be covered is already there at Kosapet courtesy of the same editor. —SpacemanSpiff 04:37, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I see Spiffy. Yes, I went to that page too and did some clean-up. Perhaps just a re-direct to Kosapet is the way to go? This is how it looked before here, then I reverted here. 220 of Borg 05:43, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
A redirect should be fine IMO. A check of the images for copyvio issues is also required I think. —SpacemanSpiff 05:54, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Its now been prodded, by another editor, after the page creator removed maintenance templates 3 times! And once from Kosapet 220 of Borg 00:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
Oh dear. The editor in question has now removed the maintenance templates 5 times. Edit warring notices, both for newbies and the 'less friendly' one issued. [6] 220 of Borg 09:47, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
•Edit warning notice board report made. (sigh!) [7] 220 of Borg 10:11, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
∞ SpacemanSpiff, FYI, now at AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sri Vaembu Aathi Muthumari Amman Temple. 220 of Borg 03:27, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Ah well, it probably is best to send it there. —SpacemanSpiff 17:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Request

I've come across an article today, Thiruppuvanam, which contains contradictory information. It's described in its infobox and introduction as being in Sivaganga district, but is categorized as being in Tiruvannamalai district — and according to the edit history, it's been contradicting itself like that for at least a couple of years. As I'm not familiar enough with Indian geography to know which one is correct, I wanted to ask if somebody associated with this project could take a look at this and fix whichever one of those two districts is the wrong one. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 16:11, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

@Bearcat: We already have Thirupuvanam, Sivaganga leading to a dab at Thirupuvanam which also tells us that there's Thirubuvanam, Thanjavur (note: the Tamil spelling for pu and bu is the same). I have no doubt that there's a similar village in Tiruvannamalai district too. According to the alphabetic census list here are some entries:

559. Thirupuvanam (TP) TN, Population: 21589, Class - III, 560. Thirupuvanam (TP) TN, Population: 14135, Class - IV

The above data is only for certain Classes of towns, so there could be smaller villages that aren't listed, and the Tiruvannamalai town might be there. At present I think the best option is to redirect the current duplicate title to the dab. —SpacemanSpiff 18:27, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I redirected it as suggested. If indeed there is one in Tiruvannamalai, then a new article about it can always be created at the appropriately disambiguated title. Bearcat (talk) 03:28, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Help grow Cannabis in India?

I started this article because cannabis has been in the news so much the last few years, but we didn't have any article about India specifically even though it has a long history and close ties with cannabis products. Please help add more cited facts to this article! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 12:29, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Vandaliism?

An anonymous editor User: 223.29.197.66 has been adding some relevant information at times and then has been fiddling with the information on such pages as Jadavpur (Vidhan Sabha constituency), Tollyganj (Vidhan Sabha constituency) and Jangipur (Lok Sabha constituency). His system is to add irrelevant information and delete it himself. He would make several such entries in a day, thereby fuzzing up the editing history part. In between he is indulging in vandalism. At times he also uses other user nos. As he is making a mess of things there is need to keep an watch on West Bengal Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha pages. - Chandan Guha (talk) 10:46, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Does this problem span a lot of pages or just these? —SpacemanSpiff 09:21, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
He usually works on West Bengal Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha pages. At present his targets are
Dinhata (Vidhan Sabha constituency) and Jadavpur (Lok Sabha constituency) - Chandan Guha (talk) 00
01, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
Vandalising of the Jadavpur (Vidhan Sabha constituency) page continues. Please see and help in reverting. I have reverted vandalism in Dum Dum (Vidhan Sabha constituency) and Panskura (Lok Sabha constituency) pages - Chandan Guha (talk) 00:47, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
It's a bit odd, the problem is that other than this one editor, any other IP activity seems to be ok. I'll see if any of the articles merit some sort of protection. —SpacemanSpiff 17:23, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
I've protected two of the articles, but the issue is there are also helpful edits in addition to the absurd changes. Since the person is using a dynamic IP, it's not possible to start a conversation now, but hopefully they'll try to engage when they find these two articles protected. —SpacemanSpiff 17:27, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the support. It is to be seen what he now does. -Chandan Guha (talk) 23:30, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Kaakkarissi?

I was wondering if anyone could help dig for sources for this. It looks like it's a folk dance sort of thing, so it's likely that coverage will probably not be in English. I didn't find much, but I didn't know if it might be something that could be merged somewhere else on Wikipedia? It's up for deletion and I let them know that I'd post here for some help. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:28, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

There's sufficient coverage on gbooks in English to create an article, but I had to delete this one as it was a foundational copyvio. —SpacemanSpiff 07:38, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Many village pages requiring clanup

I very recently found that Template:Panchayat of Hajipur block created by Vickysingh007bond (talk · contribs) lacked proper capitalisation.

I fixed that, and in doing so found that 24 of 26 places on that template also had a lack of capitalisation in the correct places, like the place name in the lede, and inappropriate ALL CAPS in the infoboxes!

Investigating further it seems that almost every page this editor created 7 to 8 months ago [8] is still in the same parlous state! It's late here (UTC+10) so I am not going to fix them now, I've done some, please help!
• Another thing that worries me is some of these pages were marked 'patrolled' by an admin.
• Template:Vaishali district topics, this template too requires many 'cap' fixes
• @Anna Frodesiak: who asked Vickysingh007bond to fix things like this, for her information. - 220 of Borg 16:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Most articles under tree and branches of Category:Villages in India would need clean up. At the least, an AWB run on them to fix capitalization, spelling, and grammar. Perhaps someone who uses AWB could do a run on that tree. Also, those 63 pages (currently) in that would have to move to the branches. —SpacemanSpiff 18:01, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi, 220 of Borg. I remember all of that. It drove me bonkers. I spend quite a lot of energy posting at her talk page. I did a fair bit of work cleaning up after her. Vicki did not seem to be able to change the way she did things. I posted here in Nov 2014 with no response. Yes! A little help with this one would be great. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
@Anna Frodesiak: Bonkers, me too but, well, we're in the right place for being bonkers aren't we? See? 220 of Borg 14:24, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
Who's the admin who marked as patrolled? I spot-checked and saw a few patrolled by User:Wgolf. Vicki was autoconfirmed, at some point, so her creations were not on the list of articles needing patrolling. Am I getting that right? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:32, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
I have patrolled a lot of articles as of late-but not as many as another one-I think her name is something like Sister Twister is the one that has done more-for these I think I just put the unreferenced tag-I usually keep the twinkle unmarked so they don't get patrolled though. Wgolf (talk) 20:56, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi all, kindly add yourself in Category:WikiProject Villages members, currently I'm the only one in this category . I have created some village articles, for example Zari, Parbhani, Bori, Parbhani, Amboli, Pune, Charthana, Ashti, Jalna etc. I will look for these villages in template. --Human3015 knock knock • 22:48, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
@Anna Frodesiak: I will have to take another look to try to find out the Admin, I may have been a bit 'dazed' or wikibonked and been in error. I think some New page patrollers though are marking as patrolled some pretty sub-standard pages. Some editors get involved without much editing experience, it seems.
• Thank you everyone who has commented here. I may have only 'complained' because It was real late and I discovered the problem when I really needed to sleep, otherwise I would have got stuck into to fixing it more. Anyway, many hands make light work, so I am sure it will be fixed up before too long. " an AWB run" as suggested by Spiffy would be a good idea, I'll have to look into using that tool. 220 of Borg 14:24, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
If doing AWB runs by district category, an EL to the census data and/or district website can also be added. I can't run AWB now, else I'd have at least done a bit. —SpacemanSpiff 07:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Gram panchayat?

A related question: I noticed that many of the articles mentioned above eg Andharwara, start with "X is a gram panchayat". Is "gram panchayat" also a geographical unit (besides being a governing body)? This is plausible (cf.muncipality) but I wanted to make sure and if confirmed, it should be mentioned in the gram panchayat aricle. Abecedare (talk) 16:22, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

It's more an administrative unit. A GP can consist of one village or a few; based on population and area, a few villages might make up a gram panchayat, with the unit being named for the largest village in that grouping. —SpacemanSpiff 17:22, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the confirmation, Spaceman. Abecedare (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Categories for discussion: Marathwada & Vidarbha

Category:Talukas in Marathwada and Category:Talukas in Vidarbha have been nominated for possible deletion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 July 17 on the CfD page. Adding this note here as categories don't get listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/India which many of you might be watching. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 13:10, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I have already given valid reasons for keeping those categories, actually nominating those for deletion was surprising. Most of articles about Talukas in Marathwada and Vidarbha are stub, these categories can be used as good navigation for reaching to grass root level towns in these regions and we can improve those articles of Town. Many towns have just one line in article, they are ignored since ages, we need to improve those. That's why I created those categories. Category:Talukas in Maharashtra is quite bulky one, so I created region wise categories. --Human3015 knock knock • 13:28, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
@Human3015: Best to keep the actual arguments for keep/delete at the CfD page, less discussion here or other places be interpreted as canvassing. Abecedare (talk) 15:35, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Babul Supriyo

Can someone please review Babul Supriyo's article. The introduction part is very large without any reliable sources. Thank you. Tolly4bolly 09:53, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

@Tolly4bolly: I have reverted to a previous version of the article, since the text was a copyright violation of content posted at the ministry website, possibly by the subject himself. Even if the subject does hold the copyright to the content and is in a position to donate it under a free license, the content is overly promotional and falls afoul of WP:V and WP:NPOV (besides the WP:COI issues). Abecedare (talk) 15:46, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Categories for discussion: Rajputana Agency

Discussion to be found here about whether or not Rajputana Agency is to be regarded as a defining characteristic of the Indian princely states in the category. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:51, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

More categories for discussion

Matsya kingdoms
Gaudiya Vaishnava texts
Telugu inscriptions
Anga
Kingdoms of clans
Kingdoms in the Mahabharata

Feel free to join the discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:03, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Bhairon Garhi Temple

Hello again India experts. Here's a draft about a temple, but I am not clear about its name. Is this a separate temple from the Hanuman Garhi and Bhairav Garhi mentioned in the draft?—Anne Delong (talk) 18:18, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

"Bhairon Garhi", "Bhairav Garhi" and "Bhairav Gadi" are different transliterations of the same temple name. Hanuman Gadi is a different location. utcursch | talk 13:01, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Theatres, shopping malls

Are adding cinema theatres and shopping malls in village and town pages correct?--Vin09 (talk) 06:30, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Should be fine if there's sources, but then you wouldn't add such stuff in Madurai or Mumbai where a single sentence statement would be enough. Context would matter. —SpacemanSpiff 06:55, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: could you even check Raipur#Shopping_malls.--Vin09 (talk) 06:10, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Like most of our geo articles it needs significant clean up. —SpacemanSpiff 19:02, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

REFSPAM

Are Justdial and moviebuff kind of sites falls in WP:REFSPAM, which state -> removal of multiple valid sources and statements in an article in favor of a single, typically questionable or low-value, web source? Citing directorial or WP:UGC kind of sites as a reference notable?--Vin09 (talk) 06:42, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Neither should be used for anything at all. Justdial is an advertorial/user submitted sight, Moviebuff appears to be the same. —SpacemanSpiff 06:53, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff:Thanks for info and what about Indiarailinfo and Onefivenine.--Vin09 (talk) 06:08, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I think indiarailinfo is ok, I think I've seen somewhere about their oversight of data points, but I might be mistaken. Onefivenine is a hobbyist site, not that it may be wrong, but a lot of such sites often give credible information which cna be used to aid editors in their searches, e.g. Onefivenine might provide a pincode which might provide some better ability to search for info, but I would be wary of using it as a source. The best place for you to check though would be WP:RSN with a specific list with documented evaluation of the sources before you go there. —SpacemanSpiff 14:01, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Onefivenine, census.co.in, villageinfo.in, atareaview.com, indiamapped.in, villagesinindia.in, allindiafacts.com, ourhero.com etc. are ad-ridden spammy websites with auto-generated content, based on the 2011 census data dump. It's much better to use census.gov.in as a reference. Google searches with site:nic.in or site:gov.in can also be used. utcursch | talk 16:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
That's good to know, I wasn't aware of the sourcing for this, but villageinfo also seemed to have some additional info compared to the census, like banks/schools etc, but I haven't seen that site since the new census. —SpacemanSpiff 19:04, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
@Utcursch:What about Indiarailinfo, is that also a user generated one? Can be added?--Vin09 (talk) 08:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Not sure about that. It's not ad-ridden/spammish, so I don't mind its use on Wikipedia. But it has a disclaimer saying that its not affiliated with Indian Railways, and the information might not be accurate. So, I'd prefer indianrailways.gov.in, indianrail.gov.in or IRCTC websites wherever possible. utcursch | talk 12:24, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Peer review and document improvement request

This is a Peer review request to seek broader input to improve page: meta:Help:Form I & Affidavit (Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition) an option available under (Indian) Copyright act 1957 rules.

Mahitgar (talk) 03:48, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Dyala Chack

Hello, India experts. Here's a draft article about a village. Would anyone like to improve it?—Anne Delong (talk) 04:16, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: Done.--Vin09 (talk) 06:21, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, Vin09 and Cutest Penguin. —Anne Delong (talk) 11:54, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Draft:E-commerce laws in India

Hello again India experts. Here's another India-related draft. I have removed about half of the references and content because there was a lot of opinion and contentious material sourced to a law firm's wordpress blog. What's left seems to be about an important topic, but needs to be checked out and updated by someone who knows about the subject. There is also E-commerce in India, but it has a different focus, mainly the development of the industry.—Anne Delong (talk) 13:58, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Anne Delong At this point I would decline this (as it'll likely end up being a how-to) and just merge some of the content to E-commerce in India under a section laws. Unlike many other countries, there's no structured single point law and bits and pieces are addressed from even laws as archaic as the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 on an ad-hoc basis. Therefore while individual issues can be sourced, we'll end up with opinion pieces like law firm blogs linking these. It's easier to manage it as a section in the main article IMHO. But if that's something that you folks don't decide at the Drafts process, then feel free to ignore my suggestion. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 14:29, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Gurcharan Singh Bhikhi (Sidki)

Hi there, does anyone know anything about Gurcharan Singh Bhikhi (Sidki)? He's a Punjabi poet from Bhikhi which, according to the article, is in Pakistan, however he moved to India at some point and may be familiar there. The article is unsourced and has been since 2013. The chief contributors haven't done much to establish his notability and I'm having trouble finding references at Google News or Google Books, so more specialized help would be appreciated. There was some borderline edit-warring going on yesterday that was also troublesome. Thank you. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:05, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Likely not notable, nothing in searches in English or Punjabi for him or the poetry. There appears to be another person of the same name who is a district secretary of Bharatiya Kisan Union who has some minor coverage in local Punjabi news. That's about it. Should be taken to AfD. —SpacemanSpiff 20:21, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb:, I think he is not so notable. There are thousands of such poets in India-Pakistan who wrote 2-3 books. Moreover this person also has aricle on Punjabi Wikipedia [9] which don't has any source too. While Gurucharan Singh is very common name in Punjab so we really can't determine his notability. I found nothing on him in Punjabi language websites. But maybe he is locally famous in Ludhiana region, there are many such poets who are locally famous but they don't have any matter online. --Human talk  20:30, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Human3015, thanks for the reply! I got the same sense too. I left details on the article's talk page for the editor(s) who were interested in editing the article. There were problematic edits like these where we see numerous fluffy statements about all the famous people who came to this guy's funeral, what a good Sikh he was, and that apparently he went to a "heavenly abode". Anyhow, I think you see the obstacles we must overcome. :) Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:42, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Gyan Publishing House

A few years back we had identified the group as a mirror and plagiarism publication house, while most of their content is copied without attribution from our articles, there's also unattributed use of a few other sources and it's been listed in the mirrors list. We had then done a purge of all usage of it as a source. While looking at a source on one article, I came across the fact that this group has come back as a reference in 473 articles, which obviously means we have to get it out of there. Suggestions on how to go about it? —SpacemanSpiff 14:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

What is the issue with simply removing them and tagging the information? I'd be happy to help with that. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm looking for a simpler solution than going through 473 articles manually (maybe there's a bot somewhere that does stuff like this), and also a better way to address it going forward -- like an edit filter or something like that of which I have no idea how they work. —SpacemanSpiff 14:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Ah okay that makes sense. Many hands make light work, though, if a handful of editors are willing to help purging them will take very little time. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
You do have a point, for those interested in helping out, here are some dynamic lists:
There's some minor overlap between the three I think, but this is where the publisher is listed. I expect there are lots of other articles where the publisher isn't listed and we'll have to figure that out separately. —SpacemanSpiff 14:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
I periodically go on a clean up but some care is required: there are some cited Gyan sources whose date of publication pre-dates Wikipedia's existence. - Sitush (talk) 14:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, but I think there was a discussion at RSN on that too, about it being a copy of an out of copyright work. —SpacemanSpiff 14:57, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
A reprint of an out-of-copyright work isn't a major problem provided that it is a faithful reproduction and the named author is the same as the original (which I admit is not always the case with Gyan). I remember, however, that we lost a good contributor when Orlady took exception to wholesale removal of Gyan sources. - Sitush (talk) 15:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
I have seen some decent books carrying the Gyan/Kalpaz label too, like this one: Puniyani, Ram (2010). Communal Threat to Secular Democracy. Gyan Publishing House. ISBN 8178358611.. But in all cases that I have seen, the copyright was held by the author. That leads me to believe that this House is basically a printing house and the responsibility for the work rests with the author. It is not going to be easy to sort out which is good and which isn't. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 15:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, they have multiple imprints, Kalpaz is the one that pushes out Martial Tribes and Races which has stuff from here as well as from Jatland wiki as far as I know (but it could just be us because at one point in time a contributor here had imported a lot of stuff from Jatland wiki to here and that is still languishing at WP:CCI for over three years!) and I had just asked Sitush to check if they had also copied from Tod etc. Other imprints from Gyan that I'm aware of are ISHA and Alpha. —SpacemanSpiff 15:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Quick comment: WP:AWB may be able to help in supervised mass removal of such sources. That is my impression anyway. I haven't used it and so don't know how easy it is to customize, and supervise individual edits (which, as Sitush says, may be necessary to avoid collateral damage to content and editor morale). Anyone with more knowledge of the tool? Abecedare (talk) 16:55, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Railways

Naming of Junctions in Indian railways pages. Like XXX railway station to XXX Junction railway station.--Vin09 (talk) 06:39, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Janam Janam Ke Saath

Bhojpuri experts feel free to expend and add references (possibly in local language) to the article, Janam Janam Ke Saath. — CutestPenguinHangout 10:03, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

2015 Gurdaspur attack

Heads up: 2015 Gurdaspur attack. utcursch | talk 04:19, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Watchlisted. Abecedare (talk) 05:15, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Men's rights movement in India is up for NPOV discussion

The article Men's rights movement in India is under discussion for NPOV issues on the NPOV Noticeboard. Please discuss ways to improve the article or whether the article should be written from scratch. -Kenfyre (talk) 10:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Main line, Sections, branch lines

A discussion on how to name a section for railways. For example Tenali-Repalle branch line, Vijayawada-Machilipatnam section, Visakhapatnam–Vijayawada section. I've moved Vijayawada–Guntur section to Guntur–Krishna Canal section as per Guntur railway division info at SCR Guntur Division. So, a railway division is the main node or any large station? Also, the naming should be from top(north) to bottom(south) station? More info needed on this.--Vin09 (talk) 15:06, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Division could be the major challenge to decide what should be kept on the top and bottom. There are lots of variation in names, because of diverse region. Well, there are certain official and non-official website that could be used to decided what should be named or kept on top or bottom. These are, all the sites with gov.in for example- http://www.indianrail.gov.in/stn_Code.html and non-official erail.in ! Hope this will help you. Thanks for raising the issue. — CutestPenguinHangout 15:31, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
@Cutest Penguin:So what about SCR Guntur Division ref where the table has seven sections, can we create all or needs to merge in the main?--Vin09 (talk) 16:16, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
While branch lines are point to point lines, sections are generally parts of a longer main line, or a collection of lines in an area. Over a period of time, many of the branch lines in a section can have separate pages. I don't think sections have links with divisions.- Chandan Guha (talk) 02:21, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
I have made some changes to the Guntur–Krishna Canal section to update it. I think it is now okay. - Chandan Guha (talk) 11:00, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Its up to the size of the article. In case of sufficient references and contents these divisions can have separate articles. — CutestPenguinHangout 13:29, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Vandalism

Anonymous editor using 223.29.197.171 and other IDs has been vandalising several of the West Bengal Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha constituency pages occasionally. His recent attacks include several on the Jadavpur (Lok Sabha constituency) page. Many of his edits are good and valauable additions, except that these are unreferenced. This is not a major problem as references can be added later.See Panskura (Lok Sabha constituency). Please help in this matter- Chandan Guha (talk) 02:02, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Panskura (Lok Sabha constituency) is a defunct I guess as per Deleimitaion.--Vin09 (talk) 04:49, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
I've added references on Jadavpur (Lok Sabha constituency).--Vin09 (talk) 05:18, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Panskura (Lok Sabha constituency) is a defunct one. Additions made to the page by 223.29.197.171 are good edits. No changes are required. I have restored the Jadavpur (Lok Sabha constituency) to what it was. - Chandan Guha (talk) 10:56, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
The Tollyganj (Vidhan Sabha constituency) page has been repeatedly vandalized. Please see the page and help. - Chandan Guha (talk) 15:27, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Ram Pyari Gurjar

The article on Ram Pyari Gurjar claims that she was a woman commander who fought against Timur. However, the only source cited in the article is The royal Gurjars by Nau Nihal Singh. The book seems less of a reliable scholarly work and more of an attempt at ethnic glorification. I cannot find any other sources -- Google just throws up Wikipedia mirrors or articles based on Wikipedia. I've tried searching with alternative transliterations. Singh claims that she fought alongside Jograj Singh Panwar -- I can find mentions of this guy in some reliable sources, but those sources describe his story as more of a local legend than history.

Being a female commander who fought against Timur is no mean achievement. So, it's surprising that there are not more sources that mention this. I am wondering if this is a real historical figure, a legend or a hoax. Any inputs are appreciated. utcursch | talk 17:03, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Prodded. Exceedingly unlikely to be a (known) historical figure, and lack of sources suggest that it is not even a notable enough legend (I tried several spelling variations too, just in case). FWIW, the cited source says "One of the commanders of Jograj was Mam Chand, who was Gurjar. One of the Lady commanders Ram Piyari was a Gurjari. Ram Piyari Gurjar gave training to 40000 women in the warrior art. These women fought shoulder to shoulder with male soldiers."
If any of this were true (or at least historically attested), scholarly works wouldn't have simply forgotten to mention it. Abecedare (talk) 17:24, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
While I agree with Abcedare, I expect that the Prod will be declined, and certainly would be if a certain arbitrator saw it. I'll watch the article in readiness for AfD. - Sitush (talk) 17:31, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
I'll nominate it for AfD if the prod is declined. On a related note, this problematic source is cited on 10+ pages on Wikipedia: site:en.wikipedia.org "The royal Gurjars". Needs a purge. utcursch | talk 18:57, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
I think all these articles date from that 2009 to early 2010 time frame when there was a Gurjar discussion board egging people to come on here and edit. One of the editors from here had even posted how to stay under the radar and do it (including which admins to keep away from!). —SpacemanSpiff 19:16, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Ogress has cleaned-up the articles. utcursch | talk 20:18, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposed move discussion

Proposed move discussion (Vithoba to Vitthal) is going on here Talk:Vithoba#Requested move 29 July 2015 --Human3015Send WikiLove  22:08, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Talk:1st Indian Cavalry Brigade

There is an ongoing RM discussion. --George Ho (talk) 16:14, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Article here. Apparently someone from the ToI went through my edit history too. —SpacemanSpiff 19:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Pretty odd last statement. "Either way, vandals have their hands full." --NeilN talk to me 19:23, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Quite a few other odd stats and statements, but courtesy of the article I see that Jashodaben Narendrabhai Modi has been recreated after four delete AfDs. Some things never change. —SpacemanSpiff 19:28, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: are you going to file the speedy delete for that? I am not sure where the AfDs are. Ogress smash! 19:38, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
OgressThey are listed on the talk page, but I think I'm missing some context here in that this probably went to DRV or something which overruled the AfDs. Will have to check on that. —SpacemanSpiff 19:39, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: if you are on it, I won't recreate the same investigation simultaneously, then. Ogress smash! 19:49, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
@Ogress:Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2014 September 30 is what I found and it seems to endorse the redirect. I'm not entirely sure that a G4 would go through, but four AfDs and one DRV should be more than enough in my opinion. Eitherways, if it has to go to AfD a salted redirect should probably be the option. (I won't nominate now as I'm trying to stay away from time consuming AfDs for a while). —SpacemanSpiff 19:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

JNM was moved to user space after the latest delete decision and it stayed there getting stronger in content and then came back to article space recently. I admire the great efforts of the User:Bluerasberry, especially of commissioning the image of JNM. But I still don't see much of encyclopedic value in the article. But alas, I find myself furious and helpless. The article has now got tons of material, (we won't comment on the educational quality of it yet), which very well fit in our sacred WP:V policy. The article won't be deleted now, at least on the face value. But as it stays, it remains a live example of what Wikipedia is not....
But congrats User:SpacemanSpiff, just like JNM you too can have an article sooner or later post featuring in TOI. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 11:58, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1971

RfC is going on regarding result section in infobox. Kindly give your opinion on talk page here Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1971#RFC, Should "Decisive victory of Provisional Banlgladesh Government" be written in result? (reporting on India-Pakistan-Bangladesh related notice boards) --Human3015Send WikiLove  22:06, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposed Revision to WP:INDICSCRIPT language

Current version:

Indic scripts in lead
There is community consensus that the lead sentence of an article should not contain any regional or Indic language script. It is suggested that IPA be used for help with pronunciation. For details, refer to this RfC: Native languages in lead. The closure of the RfC was clarified here and here.

Proposed version:

Indic scripts in lead sentence
There is community consensus that the lead sentence of an article should not contain any regional or Indic language script. It is suggested that IPA be used for help with pronunciation. For details, refer to this RfC: Native languages in lead. The closure of the RfC was clarified here and here.
This guideline does not mean Indic script may not be included elsewhere in the lead, infobox, or in the main article, when such an inclusion respects Wikipedia's core content policies and guidelines such as verifiability, reliable source and no original research.

Reasons for proposed change:

  • It is consistent with the original RfC and consensus, which was about "lead sentence". It only clarifies, and may prevent misunderstanding and recent inappropriate deletions of the Indic script from infobox and elsewhere.
  • Wikipedia's consensus policy states, "Consensus refers to the primary way decisions are made on Wikipedia, and it is accepted as the best method to achieve our goals. Decision-making involves an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns, while respecting Wikipedia's policies and guidelines." In other words, consensus cannot overrule fundamental policies that encourage content addition to articles, when such content is consistent with various wikipedia policies and guidelines.
  • The RfC question behind the above consensus was never about an outright ban of Indic scripts from wikipedia, nor was the conclusion. The RfC question started with the concern that people were randomly inserting one or more regional scripts in the lead sentence, that were personal translations or vandalism. The RfC reached a consensus to stop such Indic script insertion and vandalism. Nothing more. One cannot extrapolate, or extend a consensus beyond the scope of the original RfC's intent, because the community never discussed it, nor can consensus overrule wikipedia's core content policies (for example, we can't hold an RfC and vote to make original research acceptable in India-related articles).
  • Indic script can be useful in infobox and elsewhere in the article. When the use of Indic script is verifiable in reliable sources, its mention makes the term traceable to published literature, and to manuscripts. Numerous English wiki pages on Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and other language concepts/words include regional script for good reasons (See Four Noble Truths infobox, for example). Same good reasons apply for Indic scripts when it can be verified in reliable sources.
  • Wikipedia/web search engines have their limitations given the keyboard layout inconsistencies worldwide. Thoughtful inclusion of Sanskrit etymological roots or text in wikipedia articles, when verifiable in reliable sources, is useful encyclopedic information. It is also consistent with wikipedia's Accessibility initiative, multilingual aims, ease of verifiability and wiki guideline pages on non-Latin scripts. This reads, "Articles on the English Wikipedia may contain words or texts written in different languages and scripts".

I welcome your comments and concerns for the above proposed WP:INDICSCRIPT version on the main page. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 15:02, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Nope. It looks like you actually do not understand the problems with using these scripts, even though they and proposed changes have been discussed at length and on multiple occasions. I'm not rehashing them all now but your proposal is an open invitation for people to game the system. - Sitush (talk) 15:08, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Would appreciate a few page links where the problems and proposed changes have been discussed. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 15:16, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Just search for "script", "scripts", "indicscript" in the archives for this talk page. You do realise that there are 26 or so official languages, don't you? Under your scheme, someone could write "Person A" (d.o.b. - d.o.d.) was the nth prime minister of India. Their name is also rendered as script1, script2, script3, script4 ... script26" (and some of those renditions would almost certainly be vandalised, which probably would not be spotted). - Sitush (talk) 15:21, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Indeed, there are numerous languages and scripts in India. Vandalism too is not new to wikipedia, with or without MOS and guidelines such as WP:INDICSCRIPT. I did search and read the archives on this issue. I failed to find a discussion about including an Indic script if and when the script is verifiable in a reliable source. Perhaps I missed. I would appreciate a link to the page, when you or someone can find time to hunt it down. We are in no hurry to resolve this. Do note that the current WP:INDICSCRIPT wording on the main page is only about "lead sentence". Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 15:32, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
I have not read everything above, but I think that indic script should be allowed in lead. I see no harm in adding just one indic word in lead. --Human3015 knock knock • 15:36, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
The problem is that it is often difficult to decide which scripts should and should not be included, and editors either edit-war over the issue, or we get a messy compromise in which 5/10/20+ scripts are included. I myself am no big fan of WP:INDICSCRIPT and have in the past proposed some exceptions, but that policy is like democracy: the worst form of government except all the others. Wouldn't recommend reopening the can of worms.
@Ms Sarah Welch: WP:V/WP:RS/WP:OR have never been the issue with including Indic scripts, since for notable subjects it is almost always possible to figure out how to spell out the name in any particular language. The issue has always been WP:DUE/WP:NPOV, which unfortunately is often a judgment call and leads to endless arguments. Check out the talk pages of India or Jana Gana Mana to see the type of problems that arise when trying to decide primary languages of interest; or, some classical Bollywood movie pages where it is often difficult to decide whether the movie is in Hindi, Urdu or Hindustani; or, worst of all, biographical articles where editors insist that a language and/or script be included based on the subject's community, parentage, languages spoken, mother tongue, language of work, region where they lived/worked, language of the best sources, language of followers etc. Abecedare (talk) 16:08, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
I would also oppose the proposal, for the reasons given by Sitush and Abecedare. South Asia has several hundred languages and scripts. Which do we use? Allowing their use in the infobox is going to lead to clutter (because people insert every possible script) or an NPOV violation (because we are using only one of the possibilities). We should use the IPA, and where possible provide an audio pronunciation guide, but no more. If it were up to me, I would modify the language to explicitly forbid Indic scripts in either the lead or the infobox, but of course another RfC on this topic is likely more trouble than it's worth. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:18, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

@Abecedare: I empathize with your experience and frustration. My proposal is not triggered or motivated by "Person A" articles and similar India-related notable subjects. My proposal is predominantly motivated by Sanskrit-related and Indian philosophy-related articles. There, a Sanskrit script for a philosophical concept is just a statement of fact if and when it is verifiable in a reliable source. There, it is not WP:NPOV issue because there aren't multiple sides and NPOV presumes more than one POV. As explained above, I see addition of Indic script when verifiable in a reliable source, to be consistent with wiki's overall policies and wiki's policy on consensus.

Perhaps, a solution is to be found in more clearly defining the scope of India-related topics where WP:INDICSCRIPT applies, and where it doesn't. Indian philosophy and practices such as Yoga has presence, and wide interest, outside India. Hindu philosophy and history has been found outside India, such as in southeast Asia in past and Bali Indonesia currently.

Democracy (majority votes) should not overrule the Constitution (core policies), outside or inside wikipedia. We wouldn't need the Supreme Court or the wiki's Arb committee / Admins, were votes to decide everything. It would be a tragedy if "original research" becomes acceptable in wiki articles after an RfC and majority consensus because that was democratic. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:31, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

And people with experience are telling you that you are re-hashing old arguments and proposing the same poor remedy. The very fact that you are already wikilawyering and you have a narrow sphere of interest is not helpful. INDICSCRIPT is the best of a bad lot. Live with it. Wikipedia is not a democracy. - Sitush (talk) 16:49, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

The previous conclusion at WP:INDICSCRIPT was not a good summary of the discussion, and indic scripts for the topic name are useful (esp. geographical), and they are appropriate in the infobox. --Bejnar (talk) 16:56, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Sigh. Placenames are already an exception - it just didn't get recorded. You can use scripts for placenames provided you only use those that are verifiably the official language(s) for the place. If this proposal goes to a new RfC then we're going to see a shedload of trouble again, especially from the Hindutva-sympathising contributors. We've got enough problems without travelling down that road yet again. - Sitush (talk) 17:00, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
@Sitush: which wiki page lists and explains the exception(s)? Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 17:11, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Like I said, it wasn't added to the INB MOS. You'll have to search for it in the archives as noted above, sorry. Or just accept that I know what I'm talking about in that regard ;) I'm not aware of any other exceptions: the idea was to keep things tight, not provide lots of loopholes. - Sitush (talk) 17:22, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict)While I'm all for enhancing our literature articles etc, we do allow IAST and ITRANS in Sanskrit etc. In films Pather Panchali a recent FA done after the INDICSCRIPT consensus was formed does not include Bengali despite being one of the masterpieces of Bengali cinema and the world hasn't crumbled. For a long time I held the opinion that the indic scripts would add value to Mahabharata or Ramayana (both have Devanagari included now) but I've come to the opinion that it might add value to editors but not to readers. Both these had changes to Devanagari multiple times and had gone without reverts for long, in addition to every other regional language creeping into the lede making it an unfathomable mess. The script adds value for editors to aid in their search for sources etc and that can be resolved with a talk page banner listing out scripts. Again, in some aspects we ought to exhibit common sense and that's already done, Jana Gana Mana being a prime example for that.—SpacemanSpiff 17:22, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
(after ec; loss of session data; off-line distractions etc) Sarah, the current consensus, or at least practice, is not to apply WP:INDICSCRIPTS to articles primarily falling under the Hinduism project since, as you point out, in that area the primary language (often Sanskrit) is usually not a contentious issue. I recall this being discusses at User_talk:Redtigerxyz and some other places, although I don't know if there is a formal discussion anywhere. The boundary between Hinduism- and India-related articles is somewhat fuzzy, and even on Hinduism related pages, the approach can sometimes lead to a mess (see Ravana), but that can be dealt with on a case by case basis based on discussion and common sense.
The reason I and some others are objecting to changing WP:INDICSCRIPTS as you originally proposed is due to the unintended consequences of the ambiguity/loophole the changes create, which will effect tens of thousands of articles and suck up a humungous amount of editor time. In practice, the approach I personally follow is to apply WP:INDICSCRIPT strictly to non-historical bios and any page where inclusion of scripts is becoming an issue, and allow some flexibility elsewhere as long as the issue is not being gamed; leading to distracting edit-wars; or, degradation of article content (that is the reason I have sometimes advised editors not to apply INDICSCIPTS blindly in mass edits using AWB or bot). Such a approach is of course hard to formalize into policy although I have seen other project regulars practice it tacitly. :) Abecedare (talk) 17:52, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
@Abecedare: That was a very helpful summary. Thank you. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 18:04, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Now that we have already opened this topic, someone please edit this MOS to specifically include the accepted exclusions; like the geographic places mentioned above by Sitush.
Also, as SpacemanSpiff says, the Indic scripts are more useful to editors than readers. I and others have many times provided Indic scripts for search terms for articles at AfDs and doing a regional language search have at many times been useful to not only collect information but also establish notability of subjects not very well covered in English internet world. We specifically face these challenges with not-so-celebrated people or remote locations or traditions restricted to local regions. And if these Indic scripts are useful to enhancing the article in this manner, a little vandalism is no good reason for excluding them thoroughly. I agree that stuffing lead sentence with non-readable-by-many or browser-not-supported-texts is tacky. It also eats up the space in external search engines where more valuable info would be provided in the small preview than eat the space by these scripts. But we should not forget it's utility value. Some have argued that these scripts are available on respective language wiki and can be found on Wikidata. But that’s only if the article in that language exists and let's not forget how some regional wikis are lousy. Also, let's not forget that if not majority but at least a small group of readers would really use the Indic scripts more than those IPAs to understand the right pronunciation.
In the previous RfC itself it was proposed that these Indic scripts be moved to other locations within visible range itself, maybe infobox or footnote or something brand new. But that proposal was drowned in the usual banter. I would still appreciate if some thought was given to include scripts in a more workable manner than just shoo them off totally. Also, do note that 26-official-language-in-lead is only a hypothetical problem and that hasn't really happened, not even to make a point. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 05:23, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I actually disagree with this point quite strongly: I have found many pages where I have removed at least a dozen or more language forms all spelling the same name identically. Usually it's Hinduism-related, such as the name of a god or a text; and the introduction of Devanagari in the lede is particularly annoying for classical languages as it is not helpful for English Wikipedia in the same way that IAST might be and people use it for Pali as well, which I don't have to tell you is completely ahistorical. It also keeps a check on Bengali nationalists asserting the need to spell every premodern Indian Buddhists in the Bengali alphabet's Sanskrit form, which attracts Odia and Assamese nationalists to add their own alphabets. There's also a crowd that adds Sinhalese to every topic on Buddhism, including Tibetan topics where it is, like with Bengali, simply Sanskrit spelled in the Sinhalese alphabet. Even Pali topics mislabel and misspell things as Sinhala, when in fact it's Pali in the Sinhalese alphabet. People aggressively change the lang template back to lang-si. There is in fact a good use for this policy. What we need to encourage is infoboxes that contains useful information like name equivalencies that include Tibetan and the Southeast Asian languages that employ Pallava-derived scripts like Burmese, Sinhalese, Khmer and Thai. There's also an epic shed-ton of "etymology" sections that are completely OR maybe 9/10 times I find one in relation to Indic topics. And there's a ton of misspelled devanagari forms of Sanskrit: so often, the devanagari is just wrong, like wildly wrong, due to speaker unfamiliarity with Sanskrit. I know a lot of people might disagree with my assessment, but Sanskrit in Devanagari basically just as new as Sanskrit in IAST and there's no reason to use a non-Roman script when a IAST/NLK equivalent is accepted and widely used in the scholarly community. If you read scholarly books about Indian philosophy or religion, the presence of devanagari in the text is limited to quotes from published sources and does not usually include it. Ogress smash! 20:28, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
@Ogress: There are reliable secondary and tertiary sources providing the properly spelled devanagari sanskrit script for numerous terms/concepts in various Indian philosophies. Recent sources include Marco Franceschini (2008), An Updated Vedic Concordance, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0674030800, and John Grimes (1996), Dictionary of Indian Philosophy, State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0791430682. Another is the Shankara Rau's classic widely cited in recent RS: Glossary of Philosophical Terms. Etc. Let us stick with judicious use of the consensus as explained by @Abecedare on this, when RS exists on the use of correctly spelled sanskrit script in Hinduism project articles. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 13:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, any pages co-owned/co-managed by the WP:WikiProject Hinduism can have an indic script in it, because the no-indic-scripts policy is local to WikiProject India. However, I would advise against adding it, because it would be an invitation for other people to add their own scripts. Perhaps the WikiProject Hinduism can develop a policy on limited use of Devnagari, and then we can adhere to it. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 13:08, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
@Kautilya3: Indeed, your concern is what I had in mind when I wrote "judicious use of the consensus". @Abecedare's summary above explains it well. FWIW, I am unaware of any comprehensive scholarly RS for sanskrit Indian philosophical concepts in non-devanagari indic scripts. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 13:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
The problem is, people will not stick to the spellings. Like it or not, people repeatedly meddle with this stuff and the vast majority of readers and contributors don't know Devangari from Inuit, so it really could be anything (including obscenities etc). The hassle just isn't worth it - it wasn't when the guideline was introduced and, if anything, the situation is worse now because of certain WMF activities relating to encouraging participation in India. - Sitush (talk) 14:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
The thing is that if you're quoting and discussing a work in the Mahabharata for example, you could use Devanagari and no one is going to complain. The problem comes up when you try to add Devanagari name to Adi Shankara's bio, where then the Malayalam drive-by's will then add Malayalam script, Tamil drive-by's will add Tamil claiming that Malayalam hadn't split off at that point in time and so on and on. In addition to being a waste of time for many editors, there's really no value to our readers provided by giving them any of those scripts, in contrast to discussing something specific. I remember that in Narayanmurthy's bio a degrading Kannada name was added and left unreverted for days before I stumbled upon it, same has happened with other bios as well as with Sanskrit related articles (Mike Lynch had a few examples if I remember correctly).—SpacemanSpiff 14:09, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@Sitush, @SpacemanSpiff: The boundaries between Buddhism-, Jainism-, Hinduism-, Sikhism-related biographies, etc and India-related articles is fuzzy, and your concerns resonate with my own. I agree with @Abecedare that this needs judicious judgment in Hinduism project articles. For Vedas, Upanishads, various schools of Indian philosophy, sanskrit-rooted philosophy articles, where RS is cited for the devanagari-script, I do not anticipate a concern. Requiring a reliable source for the script, in Hinduism project articles where it is allowed, is a more appropriate guideline. Indeed, vandalism is a problem in wikipedia, but banning even RS-sourced content in philosophy articles is not the way to end vandalism, or fear thereof. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:04, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

But that is where we disagree: I do anticipate problems, even with the reliable sources. You have to bear in mind that this is the English Wikipedia and most people will not even feel capable of pattern-matching the "squiggles" (sorry) of non-Roman characters. That lets the idiots in, and we have a vast army of them. - Sitush (talk) 16:08, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
I am going to complain about devanagari a lot of the time, actually, because this is the English wikipedia, IAST and NLK exist and are in roman script and thus easy for budding scholars to read, and devanagari has this weird sacred weight added to it as if it is the official script of Sanskrit when in fact devanagari is just a recent standardisation that often does not reflect the historical scripts used to write it. Use of devanagari for Sanskrit leads to its use for Pali and Prakrits and the Tamil wikipedia warriors come by... I literally just had this situation happen at Maya because everything in India is apparently Dravidian in origin. I have people on my dash all the time pleading special exception for Tamil, for Marathi, for everything. I put the native name in boxes to use for topics on Indic subjects because 20 official languages plus the classical ones equals a nightmare lede. Ogress smash! 16:10, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
@Ogress: As consensus, will you be okay if RS-verifiable sanskrit devanagari script is moved from the lead sentence to someplace else in the article? Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
What difference will that make? You will just be moving the problem. Honestly, I think you should drop this - you've been trying to get your way for a while on this issue and you're hitting brick walls. - Sitush (talk) 16:21, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
@Sitush: I am okay with @Abecedare's consensus guideline explained above. You? Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Abecedare had it right here on 3 July when they said Wouldn't recommend reopening the can of worms. The problem is, you won't let it go and we're already in the long-winded territory that always accompanies discussion about INDICSCRIPT. You are not going to get consensus - that much should be obvious. - Sitush (talk) 16:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
@Sitush: See this guideline summary posted by @Abecedare later than day. I am fine with it. I hope @Ogress is okay with it too, as we sometimes edit the same philosophy articles. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

NO. Indic scripts in the lead caused massive flame wars and edit wars in the past with rather disgusting edit summaries such as edit rape. Consensus was arrived at for a reason, and there is NO grounds to change it. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 16:45, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

The leading section of the article Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, needs to be rewritten. Please feel free to improve. Thanks! — CutestPenguinHangout 17:04, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Will take a look. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 18:43, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Tennews as a reliable source

What is the general opinion of Tennews.in as a Reliable Source? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 16:47, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Rsrikanth05 No! it is not a reliable source to cite articles on Wikipedia. — CutestPenguinHangout 16:55, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. Would appreciate it if someone could echo that on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prashant Mali. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 18:43, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Sompura Brahmin

Sompura Brahmin is unclear and hard to understand in many places, due I'm sure in large part to non-native or Indian English and partly to unexplained Hindu terms, such as shilp-shastra. I've done my best at editing it for clarity, but I know little more about Hinduism and Gujarat than the average American. The page needs work by a knowledgeable person. I'm willing to help with editing but I can't do any more with content. Please {{ping}} me to discuss. (Thanks to Human3015 for pointing me to this page.) --Thnidu (talk) 19:11, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Presidential Standard of India

Does anyone know if this exists/existed and its current status? Abecedare (talk) 17:17, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

It's mostly used by the President in honoring the armed forces, a unit gets the presidential standard as a mark of honour. The image used currently is incorrect I think, I'll have to find a proper source for the right image (we have a lot of user generated images on Commons that are designed from text and use incorrect representations of what's written). —SpacemanSpiff 17:28, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it would be good to get some proper source and then restrict the article content to what we can actually verify, so that we don't end up spreading misinformation given that an hour after the article was created it was already a top hit for the term. Also agree with you about the commons images (see my note on the article talkpage). Abecedare (talk) 17:38, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Here are some primary sources [10], [11] also [12], TOI. --Human3015Send WikiLove  18:04, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Two images of the standard being presented. Doesn't look much like our images. The crw source is also problematic in that they have caused the wrong banner to be used in BI articles for 1858-1947. —SpacemanSpiff 19:37, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
  • The Presidential Standard of India and the President's colors/standards are entirely different things. You can see the various iterations of the Presidential standards in this image. Chand N. Das (1984). Traditions and Customs of the Indian Armed Forces. Vision Books. p. 53. - FLAGS OF THE VICEROY, GOVERNOR-GENERAL, THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA AND THE GOVERNORS - Before Independence the flag of the Viceroy of India was a Union Jack superimposed with a crown and the Star of India. After Independence, the flag of the Governor-General was dark blue with the crest of the Lion and Crown in full colour with 'India' in golden letters. When India became a Republic, the flag of the President was quarterly, blue and red with the charges in gold line: first the Ashoka Lions, second an elephant, third a pair of scales, and fourth a lotus bowl. The Lion came from the Ashoka Column and represented unity. Patience and strength were embodied, in the lively-looking 5th Century elephant, taken from the Ajanta frescoes. The scales, a 17th century Moslem design came from the Red Fort, Delhi and symbolised justice and economy, and the lotus bowl, from Sarnath, (Circa 1st century bc) stood for prosperity and plenty. The Governors of the provinces flew a saffron flag with a crown. This was also superseded by the state emblem and the name of province which later became the state. The names of the states were changed into Devanagri script, when India became a Republic. On August 15, 1971 it was, however, decided that the President and the State Governors will fly the National Flag. The Presidential Standard of India is not in existence anymore while the President's standards are actively being conferred on various military units from time to time. The website got these two mixed up. The Masked Man of Mega Might (talk) 04:16, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
That is most helpful, Masked Man! I have reworked the article based on the quote you provided. Review would be welcome, esp. to check that I haven't missed or messed up some vexillological term or MOS requirement. Abecedare (talk) 05:36, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Temples

Use of Sri and Swamy in temple names. Some don't use like Tirumala Venkateswara Temple, Hanuman Temple, Kedara-Gouri, Kanaka Durga Temple. To maintain uniformity there should be a consensus.--Vin09 (talk) 05:39, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

This discussion should happen at WT:Hinduism. —SpacemanSpiff 05:48, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict)No! Each temple name should be taken case by case. You can't maintain uniformity as we have to use names based on what it is commonly known as. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 05:51, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

FAR listing

I have nominated Tamils for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. —SpacemanSpiff 07:34, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Editors watching this page might be interested in this merge discussion, which proposes merging Religious conflicts in India into Religious violence in India. Vanamonde93 (talk) 03:28, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

MP twin train derailment

Should we change the title? Harda twin train derailment is also mentioned in many sources. Please give your opinions. Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 04:51, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I should have asked this in article talk page but since this is a new article there will be very low traffic, so I asked here. Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 06:02, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Definitely it should not have MP in title. Either it should be Madhya Pradesh or the name prescribed by you.--Vin09 (talk) 06:07, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
I suggest it should be Kudwa.--User:Vin09 (talk) 06:09, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Vin09, here and here, Harda was mentioned. I think we should redirect "Kudwa twin train derailment" to "Harda twin train derailment". What do you think? Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 06:46, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Support
@Supdiop:As per The Hindu newspaper, it was Harda only.--Vin09 (talk) 06:50, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Vin09,  Done Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 07:05, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Sigh. Are we now to have an article on every train accident? There have been thousands in the UK alone, and probably many tens of thousands in India. Why, oh why, don't people consider WP:NOTNEWS? - Sitush (talk) 09:03, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
But not every train accident gets coverage in media as much as this accident got. Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 09:16, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it got coverage in the news, which is what Wikipedia is not. Loads of them do, worldwide. Every accident at a level crossing gets coverage across umpteen newspapers here in the UK. It's not encyclopaedic stuff. The test is basically "will many people look up this thing in a few years' time". The answer, very frequently, is "no". - Sitush (talk) 09:29, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
I think this train accident has enough notability. When was the last time a train or any accident got this much coverage in India? It rarely happens. There are almost 800 news articles related to this accident. I also saw some news in Chinese and Arabic languages while searching for information. Thanks Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 10:17, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Oh, I am not going to nominate it for deletion because that, too, would be a waste of my time. I just think we've got bigger problems than dealing with news stuff and that it is almost always the case that these articles begin with a huge flurry of activity and then languish in an half-complete, often massively copyvio state etc for eternity. That is what happens, for example, with many of the scam-related things, which get a lot of initial press coverage, attract a lot of poor contributions and are then rarely followed-through. They also tend to end up being havens for violations of WP:BLP etc.
I'd much rather people concentrated on stuff that actually matters in the true encyclopaedic sense rather than waste effort time on excitable news-driven ephemera. If you want to read news, go to a news website. - Sitush (talk) 10:35, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
You might want to see this template. There are far more articles on train accidents than you might think. Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 08:01, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
... and you are missing my point again. Just because something can be created doesn't mean it should. - Sitush (talk) 12:59, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
After I created my article, Mjroots created another article on the same accident. Do you think that an admin with over 1000 articles is also wrong? I guess not. It is now featured on the main page because it is notable and many admins saw the article and approved it. Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 13:48, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Admins are not always right, nor are you, nor am I. The article was a mess of poor writing and unsourced claims, although I've since copyedited it. Basically, it says (a) there was a train accident caused by derailment; (b) quite a few people died or were injured; (c) an investigation has been opened. Everything else is speculation reported or even originated by journalists. That's a nothing of an article, really. - Sitush (talk) 13:58, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

I see where Sitush is coming from. This article that I picked out of Supdiop's template on a rail accident in India earlier this year presumably generated a lot of coverage initially. The last line says "a report would be published within a month". Perhaps the report was published (or not) but apparently everyone - the news media and wikipedia editors - have forgotten all about the derailment. This rail accident article is likely to be similarly moribund a few days from now. --regentspark (comment) 22:51, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

  • Whatever opinion we have about newsy articles this discussion is better off at VPP. We are not going to solve it here, not that it'll be solved there but it's a better place to not solve it. On Wikiproject pages this meta discussion ends up being a distraction, that's all. —SpacemanSpiff 03:56, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Hot Wikipedia

Wikipedia has got the national attention of India [13]. Expect all kinds of editors to come in and hack it, like this one [14]. Dear admins, you have your work cut out for you! - Kautilya3 (talk) 08:12, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Didn't a similar thing happen a few months ago re: the same article? I seem to recall an influx of edits, albeit without sign of an official investigation. It makes me wonder if someone might be orchestrating this. In any event, yep, it looks like yet another skirmish is on its way. - Sitush (talk) 00:06, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
¡Ay, caramba! Well, as long as it's nothing like the flood which followed Modi's (in effect) election to the Indian premiership, we should be able to cope :) Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:37, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

suggesting article merger of Naivedhya & Prasad

Theory aside, practically if, Naivedhya & Prasad are the same thing, then why not merge these two articles in to one. So better encyclopedic attention will be given by the community. pl do suggest.

Mahitgar (talk) 07:52, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

They are two different definitions: Naivedhya is what goes into the sanctum sanctorum of a temple etc while Prasad is what comes out. Our article on Prasad is quite confusing to say the least. I think Ogress might be able to provide the correct definitions within the articles. —SpacemanSpiff 19:08, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff and Mahitgar: My specialty is Buddhism and to some degree Jainism; I'm not that fluent in Hinduism. But I can tell you that naivedya is both badly misspelled and that it means an offering of edibles presented to a deity and that the Sanskrit word prasāda means "serenity, tranquility". However, the modern meaning of prasad in Hinduism, which is not the same as its meaning in the historical Vedic religion or the Upanishadic period, is food you offer up and then share with people as a meal. The problem is that the article on prasad is - as so often happens - insisting on mixing the extremely ancient meaning of a Sanskrit word with the modern meaning. There is a sense that because Hinduism is descended from earlier practices, it is identical to ancient religion, when in fact modern Hinduism is the product of like 4000 years of change since the Vedas and there is no reason to include the now-obscure early meaning of prasāda in an article that is clearly mainly about the practice of prasad. Ogress smash! 19:35, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
I wasn't trying to confound the early and modern definitions, but I think the modern definition itself is quite hazy for Prasad (and while the roots of the word might be Sanskrit, I was going in terms of current usage). In colloquial terms prasad might be taken to include naivedya in a geographical context, but I don't think that the definition of prasad being "food you offer up" is universal while the latter bit of "share with" is universal. The articles are a mess, so any cleanup would be beneficial. —SpacemanSpiff 19:48, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Operation Polo or Indian integration of Hyderabad

I have found some good sources on the historical and political aspects, but the sections on the military preparation and operation are very weak and only sourced to a couple of websites. Any help is appreciated. I have also asked on WP:MILHIST Kingsindian ♝♚ 11:42, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

There is another good book directly relevant to the topic, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State, 1938-1948 by Lucien Benichou, which surprisingly is not used in the article. The focus is again political developments, but it of course discusses the military actions and should have citations to more detailed studies. I had part read it a couple of years back with the intention of improving the Hyderabad state article, but got distracted... hopefully, your efforts will bear better fruit. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 19:50, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
For Nizam related topics, there is another book, P. V. Kate (1987). Marathwada Under the Nizams, 1724-1948. Mittal Publications. ISBN 978-81-7099-017-8.. --Human3015Send WikiLove  20:42, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Hyderabadcha-Swatantrysangram-Ani-Marathvada (Author: Anant Bhalerav (language marathi) is a good reference book about political developments preceding the police action.
Mahitgar (talk) 07:16, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Samethanahalli Rama Rao

Samethanahalli Rama Rao has been unsourced since at least 2009. Can anything be done with it or is it a candidate for WP:AFD? - Sitush (talk) 14:00, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

At first, the personality seems to be non-notable but we should not forget he's Kannada author and there are chances that the sources maybe there in local languages (see INDAFD ). What can be done-
  • Try contacting the contributor and the editor involve with that article.
  • Nominate for AfD.
I suggest try raising the issue on IRC. — CutestPenguinHangout 15:54, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't use IRC, so someone else would have to do that. The creator has not edited for seven years. - Sitush (talk) 17:28, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
@Sitush: I tried looking for the references but hardly find any. I think one should nominate for AfD and see if any one come up with proper sources. — CutestPenguinHangout 14:46, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for trying. I have now sent it to AfD. - Sitush (talk) 15:13, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Bhakt

There's an ANI post about the article at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Qualified eyes needed at Bhakt. Interested editors may want to look at the article and/or the ANI post. —SpacemanSpiff 14:21, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I have doubts about the notability of this article. It has received coverage, sure, but there is not much substance there, and given the nature of the topic, not ever likely to be. If it gets nominated for deletion, though, the anti-Modi camp is likely to be all over it (and the pro-Modi people too, diluting the real reasons for deleting it, ie lack of notability). Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:42, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
No arguments there. Any AfD on this is just going to be an ILIKEIT vs IDONTLIKEIT issue and the real issue of our supposed status as an encyclopaedia would get lost. —SpacemanSpiff 15:14, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Speaker of Bihari languages

Is there anyone who can assist in explaining things to a contributor who might well come from the Bihar region? User_talk:Sitush#Any_passing_admin.3F gives the background. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 08:52, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

This is resolved now, thanks. - Sitush (talk) 18:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Help Akshardham Environment Violation Section

Hello Everyone,

If you have time would you please take a look at this article: [15] and this discussion [16] and provide your input. There is a cited content dispute I am having [17] and I feel that this board can help with some clarification for this topic. I was told to post here and I would find help. There seems to be a group of swaminarayan followers who refuse to allow cited information in the article. Also if you are member of this group, could you please refrain from providing a biased POV. It is difficult to be neutral because members of BAPS feel like it is their duty to make sure their group is portrayed a certain type of way on Wikipedia from cited controversy. Another editor has asked openly for help on improving what has been written so please feel free to do so directly in the article.

Thank you, Swamiblue (talk) 23:37, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

AP Express

There is a discussion at Talk:Andhra_Pradesh_Express.--Vin09 (talk) 11:36, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Weird question

Weird question, does anyone recognize the language being used here, and if so, can someone help with a translation? For some context, I'm involved in an SPI case, and an IP editor flagged a user as a sock of another user. The IP also left these comments, so I'm curious what they are saying. Thanks, and sorry for the weirdness. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:45, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

My guess is Saraiki (based on a couple of words and on the users listed in the message). Obvious sock and should be blocked immediately. --regentspark (comment) 19:54, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Blocked as sock of User:LanguageXpert--regentspark (comment) 19:59, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Definitely linked to Punjabi, so Saraiki seems about right.—SpacemanSpiff 20:05, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Interesting Fiji Hindi Wikipedia

I have found one very interesting Wikipedia Fiji Hindi Wikipedia which writes impure form of Hindi language inspired from "Awadhi" and "Bhojpuri" in English script. For example see Welcome message on my talk page there [18]. Also read article India there. If anyone interested they can edit some pages there. No need of Devanagari script. -Human3015Send WikiLove  19:36, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Fiji Hindi is not "impure", or at least I'd avoid that loaded term and stick to "creolised". It's an Awadhi-based creole language and is a lingua franca in Fiji. Ogress smash! 18:14, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I'm sorry to call it "impure", actually I felt it later. Every language is always "pure" in their own terms at their own place. Even Hindi or other language that village people speaks we can't call it impure, language is just medium of expressing our thoughts, whatever we speak, its pure. Thanks.--Human3015Send WikiLove  18:30, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Gymnosophism

There is a bit of fuss kicking up at articles about the gymnosophists, particularly Dandamis and Kalanos. A user who is new to English Wikipedia is using modern religious sources of extreme questionability to push the position that Kalanos and Dandamis in particular were Jain. The article on Dandamis, who was Kalanos' teacher (I think), is a mess and needs wikifying and sourcing. Kalanos is extremely heavily cited to RS, however, and that includes scholarly statements that there is no way to know his religion without a time machine or startling new finds from Classical Antiquity, but that it was highly unlikely he was Jain (he immolated himself, he wore clothes, he used fire) and came from Taxila, which at the time was a Buddhist powerhouse. It's very neutral on his affiliation.

I have advocated quite strongly for Jainism and done a ton of cleanup over the years. I revamped a lot of the Jain articles, but I took a wikibreak and they have gotten pretty messy and unreliable in many cases, full of hagiography and the like. If the RS say Dandamis was likely a Jain, I'm fine with that. But as I pointed out at Kalanos, we can't just decide based on our personal biases. We need scholarly sourcing. Given that the user added Template:Jainism topics to Gautama Buddha and is citing a modern Jain revivalist named Acharya Shri 108 Guptinandi Ji Maharaj, I would appreciate extra pairs of eyes with a note to RS.

However, this relatively new user has now canvassed some 30 Jain user accounts about Dandamis, who he insists on calling "Dandam Muni". I'm not aware that Dandamis was assigned a specific faith based on what little information we have on him as well nor that he is routinely classified as a Digambara Jain monk.

I'm concerned we stick to the RS (whatever they say!) and would appreciate anyone willing to help as I think the editor feels I am picking on him (the word "censorship" was used on the Talk page of Gautama Buddha, for example). Ogress smash! 20:00, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Mediator needed at Rasgulla

Need a mediator at Talk:Rasgulla#Removal_of_citation_needed_tags.

There is contention about two lines in the article:

  • Khiramohana is claimed to be a precursor to the modern Rasgulla
  • The whitish spongy rasgulla that is popular today is also called Bengali Rasgulla

Both are supported with a source; here is the direct quote from the source:

"Food historians broadly agree that the precursor to the rasgulla was probably the kheer mohan, which was invented in Odisha and was offered to the deities at the Jagannath Temple in Puri. [...] the spongy , white sweet we know today as the Bengali rasgulla [...]".

(Note: The article uses "claimed", because there are other sources which contest the claim of the Rasgulla having originated as Khir Mohana in Odisha).

Both the sentences are referenced, but User:Snthakur is adding {{citation needed}} tags to these sentences. The reason given by him is "I do not see Khiramohana and Bengali Rasgulla have reliable sources to establish them as features in Wikipedia, unlike Rasgulla have many definitive sources.".

utcursch | talk 01:56, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

The Rasagulla dispute seems to be the follower to the Cauvery water dispute. —SpacemanSpiff 03:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Haha. For now, I've just removed the contentious parts from the lead altogether. utcursch | talk 16:02, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Difference

What is the difference between List of most populous cities in India and List of cities and towns in India by population. The second one may have towns but cities are common in both. So, for the former one is there any limit in population as it mentioned most populous.--Vin09 (talk) 06:24, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

New districts in Assam

The Assam government has announced creation of 5 new districts. Maps of Assam as well as several articles on villages / towns will have to be updated. I don't know much about the geography of Assam. Hopefully more knowledgeable editors can update the articles. utcursch | talk 00:24, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll have try at it.--Vin09 (talk) 11:06, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Ramanthapur

Hello India experts:

I came across the article about Ramanthapur while removing some spam, and was surprised to see that it has lists of individual stores and even ATM machines. I removed the external links to these places, but it seems to me that these whole sections should be removed. I've tagged it as advertising. Are there any objections to the contents of these sections being trimmed to only items with a Wikipedia article?—Anne Delong (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Nope, what you did was right. In fact, "Shopping", "Hotels & Retaurants", "Icecream Parlours" etc. should go as well, as per WP:NOT#DIR. utcursch | talk 15:01, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Utcursch, I see you have removed those sections. Thanks.—Anne Delong (talk) 02:34, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Afd participation is requested at Swami Premanand Ji Maharaj

Indian editors are request to participate in the Afd at Swami Premanand Ji Maharaj and give your desired opinion. Thanks! — CutestPenguinHangout 10:44, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Jat people in Mahabharata period

Jat people in Mahabharata period looks like original research based on primary sources. There seems to be an assumption that jat and jartas are synonymous. Can this be fixed? If not then the article will either need to be deleted or redirected - there won't even be anything worth merging. - Sitush (talk) 09:39, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

BTW, books by Naval Viyogi and Bhim Singh Dahiya do touch on the synonymity but both have long been regarded as unreliable pseudo-historians etc. - Sitush (talk) 09:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Redirect it back to Jat people, from whence it was sprung, in good faith, eight years back. At that the justification was to shorten the main article from the 150 kilobyte behemoth it had grown into. But that is no longer an issue, especially is only the content that can be reliably sourced is merged back (which may well be nothing). Abecedare (talk) 13:23, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Village name abbreviations

Does anyone know what do the various abbreviations in these village names mean?

I know only two:

What about the rest?

  • K.G. = ?
  • K.K. = ?
  • K.M. = ?
  • K.M. = ?
  • K.S. = ?
  • K.V. = ?
  • S.U. = ?

These articles seem to be based on census records, which use abbreviated names. The articles should be moved to the actual, full names. utcursch | talk 02:22, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I believe most of them are local disambiguators and would need local knowledge. They may refer to the wider area or to a nearby place or feature, sometimes historic, but not always. Sometimes it may be a reference to a person. Many or most of the abbreviations will come from state and district records which are abbreviated for the convenience of the writers and record keeping. Some of the abbreviations may have been wrongly transliterated (Khurd would be abbreviated as Kh in Kannada or Marathi, K.H. is obviously a misunderstanding of this.).
The only one I know is M.K. Hubli, Mugut Khan Hubli (or Hubballi) but this is already stated in the article, and there should be mention of a noted Gandhi memorial there.
Imc (talk) 06:35, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm fairly certain that K.H. and B.K. refer to Khurd and Budruk. You can try searching for some of the names. E.g. Balekundri (K.H.) appears as Balekundri Khurd in a news story, and Balekundri (B.K.) is mentioned as Balekundri Budruk in a Karnataka High Court case document.
Like you said, the rest probably refer to local features or talukas. But they're definitely not part of the actual village names -- I doubt that Kannadiga villagers would use English abbreviations. Similar abbreviations appear in Template:Settlements in Bagalkot district.
Maybe someone who knows Kannada can try searching for these village names in Kannada language, and see what turns up. utcursch | talk 14:15, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Move discussion for Hyderabadi biriyani

Discussion to rename page Hyderabadi biriyani→ Hyderabadi Biryani is going on here. Thank you. --Human3015Send WikiLove  15:43, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

2011 census - Religion

The official religion figures (Excel warning) for the 2011 census data have been released. A number of articles will need to be updated (e.g. Religion in India, Demographics of India etc.) utcursch | talk 15:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Utcursch. Per my recent vent, I have archived the Excel fileat at archive.org. For convenience, here is the citation code that can be cut-n-pasted (open in edit-mode for actual wiki-code):
"Population by religion community - 2011". Census of India, 2011. The Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Archived from the original on 25 August 2015.
If one wishes to cite only the top-line national numbers, The Hindu article may suffice:
Singh, Vijaita; S., Rukmini (25 August 2015). "Hindus 79.8%, Muslims 14.2% of population: census data". The Hindu.
Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 16:15, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I've updated a couple of articles, but there are many more, most of them in Category:Religion in India ("XYZ religion in ABC state"). In case anyone wishes to work on updating these articles, this link will be useful. utcursch | talk 20:11, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
Also the demographics sections of all the States and union territories of India articles. I updated one that showed up on my watchlist; 35 to go. Abecedare (talk) 20:54, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Bhojpuri language § Politeness

Bhojpuri language §  Politeness gives several contradictory values for the number of levels of politeness. See Talk:Bhojpuri language §  Politeness for details. --Thnidu (talk) 02:17, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Afd participation is requested at ScoopWhoop

Expert editors from India are requested to participate and give their opinion for Afd listed at ScoopWhoop. — CutestPenguinHangout 03:50, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Thakur Singh Sandhanwalia

Dear, Indian Wikipedian through this I would like to draw your attention towards Draft:Thakur Singh Sandhanwalia, which is pending for a longer period of time. Please consider your contribution in improving the draft so that it can be moved to the main space article. Cheers! — CutestPenguinHangout 18:04, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Constitution of India and "Hindus"

Input invited for this discussion. Note that despite the title of the linked section and the first few posts, the current debate is whether the Constitution of India's broad use of the term Hindu is worth mentioning in the lede of that article. See User:Kautilya3's and my posts towards the bottom of the section for two views on the subject. Abecedare (talk) 19:06, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Translation, please

This source is used at Saranya Mohan to support a claim that she self-identifies as a nair. However, she also appears in the Kerala Iyers article. Can anyone translate, please? It may well be that the source doesn't even mention her caste but if it does then clearly both articles cannot be correct. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 10:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

@Sitush: no mention of caste. Earlier versions of the wiki article mentions her as a Palakkad Iyer, later changed by an IP in this edit. 106.51.17.77 (talk) 12:01, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks very much. I will clean up both articles. - Sitush (talk) 12:05, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Rajiv Malhotra page needs some extra admin-attention for POV-pushing and sock-puppetry

After the block of some sock-puppets, the Rajiv Malhotra page seems to need some extra admin-attention. Thanks, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:02, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Didn't I just have two socks blocked today and a few blocked a couple of weeks back? If there are more, please take to SPI. —SpacemanSpiff 12:16, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: have a look at Neo-Vedanta; a newbie just turned up, propagating Malhotra, knowing right away how to create an userpage. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:29, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
There are at least two SPIs on sockfarms operating in this area, please open a case there with the associated explanation. Right now, while there's obviously something fishy, I can't see something to confirm a connection. At least three pages in this set are on my watchlist so I have been monitoring stuff. —SpacemanSpiff 14:34, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

MfD notification

Belated notification for three MfDs listed here. —SpacemanSpiff 03:59, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, there is one more at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Kashmir. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 04:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Sheena Bora murder case

To avoid duplication, especially given that the matter is being discussed at a noticeboard that can pull rank over this one, please keep the discussion at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Sheena Bora murder case. —SpacemanSpiff 15:11, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

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

This wikipedia article filled with nonsensical conjecture is the top result in Google News. Please trim it according to Wikipedia guidelines. At the very least remove the names of unrelated family members who has no connection to this event. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.51.21.196 (talk) 12:26, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

  •  Done. I have removed some names which are apparently not related to this case, for example her grandparents and step sister. For removing more names we may need person who followed this case in detail, maybe AKS.9955 is right person who created this article. Regards. --Human3015Send WikiLove  14:39, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Hello Human3015 and 106.51.21.196, the case investigation is still on and everyday more and more people are getting involved. One of the reasons I spent lots of time in clarifying "who is who" in the case is to clear ambiguity. Grandparents are involved in the entire incident; especially when the DNA report is pending and it was reported that Indrani was raped by her father (Upendra Kumar Bora) resulting in birth of Sheena. The story is still evolving and I have taken utmost care in ensuring that nothing is speculated and at the same time all facts are presented clearly (without any original research). I am taking the liberty to revert the changes in Good faith and would request if the name trimming can be held on for some more time. Cheers Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 14:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
@AKS.9955: I suggest to use WP:CET until the study is going on. Cheers! — CutestPenguinHangout 14:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
@AKS.9955: I don't doubt your good faith but there are severe problems with the article eg,:
  • Why is the step-sister's name and details mentioned?
  • The URL in the very first refernce is incorrect "Siddhartha Das interview". Focus News. Retrieved Sep 2015. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  • The article says, "The Daily Telegraph reported that Indrani was raped by her father (Upendra) resulting-in her pregnancy and birth of Sheena Bora.". The actual sentence from that article says, "Police have told Indian media that Mrs Mukerjea has confessed her role and said that she became pregnant with Ms Bora after her father raped her as a teenage girl.". So the attribution is false and misleading.
And those are issues found at just a cursory check. I'll post at WP:BLPN to see if there are suggestions on how to deal with this. Abecedare (talk) 15:03, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@AKS.9955: Ok, thanks for revert and clarification. At least you can remove her step sister's name if she is not involved in it. I think article really needs trimming, article is about "murder case" and it is written like "biography". This is current issue of discussion in media, article is getting more than 20,000 views daily, I think we have to be careful while mentioning name of any living person regarding this case. Thank you.--Human3015Send WikiLove  15:06, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Abecedare, The first URL works fine, I just checked it and could see the page. Can you please check again? As far as The Daily Telegraph is concerned, there are issues with it. The day Daily telegraph reported it, she had not confessed it but the confession came in today. Attribution is not false and I just reported what Telegraph reported. In anycase, this page will undergo further changes (and lots of it). Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 15:10, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
I have started a WP:BLPN report, and perhaps any discussion can be continued there. Abecedare (talk) 15:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Abecedare, I stand corrected and you are right. Let me find the source. I think I screwed up while copying the URL. I will update the link. Thanks for pointing out. Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 15:27, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
And those are issues found at just a cursory check. I'll post at WP:BLPN to see if there are suggestions on how to deal with this. Abecedare (talk) 15:03, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
@Abecedare: That's a very good question that Why is the step-sister's name and details mentioned? Well, the case is still on going and is under investigation and that's why I suggested AKS.9955 to tagged it with CET. There is no doubt that all the souces are reliable but we should not forget that these are mainly consist of interviews and confession and not the actual findings of the case. — CutestPenguinHangout 15:14, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
I did some cleanup on the article. There's absolutely more that should be done though. Something that might help is to better explain who is making some of the allegations mentioned in the article. Conference calls give me some time for copyediting, but not for anything really detailed. It seems like this is a developing case so things will be in flux for a while. Something to consider is that BLP does apply, so please remember to be cautious and respectful of all involved. Contentious claims need to be strongly sourced - not to gossipy sources / blogs. If a person isn't directly involved in the case, consider removing their names from the article out of respect for them. Be patient with new editors - cases like this can draw attention, so use the article talk page early and often! Ravensfire (talk) 15:28, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I attempted to trim the article with edit summaries for each removal. These were promptly reverted. It's upto the community to decide if such egregious violations of the BLP policy, most of which is unsourced and/or presented as statements of fact without attribution to the tabloid journals quoted, should stay in the article. I won't be reverting again. The Masked Man of Mega Might (talk) 09:00, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Infobox wording for state of India

Hi guys, can we change the wording at the top of the infobox for the states of India from "State of India" to just "State"? For example, Liaoning, it shows just "Province" but it links to the Provinces of China. It also might be mistaken for some as the official name of the state. For example, a while ago the Delhi article was incorrectly labeled "National Capital Territory of India" when it is officially the "National Capital Territory of Delhi". For U.S. states it gives the full title is put in the infobox, such as Alaska: the "State of Alaska", now wouldn't that be weird if it was labeled the "State of the U.S." or something like that? I tried to carry out the edits but Human3015 showed me that the correct way to do this is by achieving a community concensus here as it affects all the states/union territories of India.

TL;DR, can I make this edit on all of the states and union territories of India?Filpro (talk) 01:33, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

It used to be just "State" as far as I know, this is very clunky and doesn't read well. Looking through Kerala and Tamil Nadu I notice it was changed by a Swedish IP in Nov'14. —SpacemanSpiff 02:11, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
We use words like "City", "Town", "Village" in infobox, we don't write "City of Maharashtra" or "Village in XYZ district" etc. But this may not apply to "states". Originally word "State" can be used for "Nation" too. For example we use terms like "Sovereign state", "Failed state" etc. Filpro gave example of Chinese "Province", but term "Province" surely denotes a "Subnational territory" which is not case with term "State". In India we don't use word "Province". --Human3015Send WikiLove  02:24, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Good points. Yes it does conflict with "sovereign state" and "failed state" but I don't think I see those in the infobox. Yes, we haven't used provinces since 1950!Filpro (talk) 03:08, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Yellandu

Hello, India experts. This article was unintelligible, so I have rewritten the parts I could figure out and reorganized the sentences into some sort of order. However, some of the sections talk about things with which I am not familiar. I may have misinterpreted these. Can someone from this project take a look at it?—Anne Delong (talk) 01:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@Anne Delong:I've provided references for it. Please check it.--Vin09 (talk) 04:56, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Vin09. The article is much improved. I came across it while fixing up Gummadi Narsaiah. Can you or someone else here add the name of the political party to that article? Currently it only has the initials, which are not informative to someone not from India.—Anne Delong (talk) 06:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: Done, He is an Independent poiltician.--Vin09 (talk) 06:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Any more related to villages geography?--Vin09 (talk) 06:38, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, Vin09, there's this one: Draft:Ujaleshwar which is up for review right now, and will likely not be accepted unless someone improves it. There's also Draft:Awadam, which could use some TLC.—Anne Delong (talk) 07:20, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Corrected Awadam somewhat.Vin09 (talk) 06:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Article title change from "Gurmukhī aphabet" to "Gurmukhi"

Hey guys, does an article title change from "Gurmukhī alphabet" to just "Gurmukhi" seem fit? Gurkmukhi is not an alphabet, it is an abugida and there are no other uses for Gurmukhi as far as I know. Yes, abugida scipts and the other writing systems are sometimes labeled as "alphabets" but they are not alphabets when classifying scripts using the correct terms. For example, Devanagari isn't titled "Devanagari script" or "Devanagari alphabet".Filpro (talk) 15:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

BBC India season

I suspect that not many people outside the UK can see the BBC's India season, which is currently running on television in the UK. But they may have ways of getting hold of the content ;) There have been some good programmes, in particular about the railways (Mumbai and the frontiers), the Indus, and Kolkata. I'm loathe to see them used as sources but I do think that if anyone has the opportunity to watch the programmes then they might appreciate them. Obviously, it is television and subject to all sorts of biases ... but it has been very interesting so far. If only I could fly, I'd be out there. - Sitush (talk) 23:39, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I can remember, back in 2009 I've seen something similar called "The Story of India" it was kind of documentary aired on BBC. Don't know if it's available on internet but Sitush you might appreciate it as well if you could watch it. Jim Carter 03:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, I saw the 4part railway series. Interesting. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 06:28, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

[Project WIN] Ideas and Opinions

Hello board,
As you may be aware that for more than two years (might be 3 years too) I have been participating in this noticeboard, and trying to improve our WikiiProject (you may call it Indian English Wikipedia community too). Every now and then we used to talk on issues like:

  1. How can we get more active watchers in this noticeboard?
  2. How can we get more Indian-content-experts?
  3. How can we increase participation in project like WP:DSI, WP:INCOTM, Tag and assess drive etc?

I have jotted down a first draft of meta:WikiProject India Nurturing, that should attempt to address some of the problems and difficulties faced by this WikiProject.

Of course, it is in very basic stage, and it'll be improved gradually. Please feel free to ask questions or share your ideas. --Tito Dutta (talk) 05:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Tito, laud the goals and the effort you have put in. Encouraging informed and collaborative participation is indeed necessary if this project (and wikipedia) is to thrive/survive, and we should be open to trying stuff out to see what works out and what doesn't. Btw, which mailing list are you referring to in the document? Abecedare (talk) 15:33, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
This board currently has 541 watchers, obviously most of them are inactive now, we see some only 10-15 people who actively take part here on regular basis. We can get more active wathcers by welcoming new users with link of this board. An editor who has apparently Indian name or an editor who edited India related article, we can send message at his/her talkpage to keep this board on watch. New users are usually more active and more enthusiastic to participate in such projects. --Human3015Send WikiLove  15:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! Titodutta for being concerned about getting more users involvement on Wiki-project India. There are few things I would like to raise as a problem, which includes overtaking of IRC channel #Wikimedia-in by an Indian non-WMF based project and minimal participation of Indian editors and admins on IRC channels. Today, users and editors want instant response to their queries, where Wiki-project India is lagging behind. I would like to highlight following areas which can be a great way to gain maximum participation, these are-

  1. Improve Template:Welcome-India and always use welcome-India template to welcome new users on English Wikipedia.
  2. Use mass-messaging tool to delivery latest updates, events, etc. on Wikiproject India.
  3. Organising Wiki-meet ups in cities like New Delhi and Mumbai can be helpful (I'm ready to organise one in Delhi).
  4. Encourage editors from India and editors involved in articles related to India to discuss issues right here on Noticeboard India.

Cheers! and thanks again! — CutestPenguinHangout 16:24, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

As always, Tito Dutta you efforts are much appreciated. I have no constructive suggestions to offer but will check it out when you say it's ready. I had no idea that the welcome India template was available in Twinkle and have just changed my preferences. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 16:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Typed in so much as a project proposal? Respect! My situation is similar to Ugog's at present. --AmritasyaPutraT 07:51, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I have noted all these points. Workshop etc. was not really in my plan. Improving Welcome-India is a wonderful suggestion. Using Mass-messaging tool is also a fantastic idea. I'll keep you guys updated. --Tito Dutta (talk) 08:42, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi, with some ideas, from a passerby:
Take courage yourself, and give new editors courage to fight against evil!
  • Noticing new editors and welcoming them and helping them to fend off the negative bot messages and the negative-minded editors who are trying to delete all of their first contributions, is about the best thing you could do, IMHO. I happened to notice a new editor's article at Biharia recently and tried to help that way (but I saw it only because it had ambiguous links and popped up on a worklist). Now that I check again I see they did edit more, including by copying the style of what I did, which is a compliment, although they didn't happen to reply to my Talk page messages so I didn't make more of a connection. I was happy to learn a bit about Biharia and related topics in the area, including to be surprised that a community of 1/4 million has so little coverage yet. Anyhow I find I get more response and make a real difference for a new editor sometimes, and sometimes not, but it's worth trying.
  • If a few of you could spend some editing time on New Pages Patrol (NPP) and share tips about new editors, at some workpage with an innocuous name like wp:WikiProject India/WIN-notes that you all could watch, you could possibly have a huge effect. Note the NPP's goal is pretty much to try to drive new editors away, before anyone else can make a connection, and they do that very well. What is stated for NPP is: "The primary purpose of new page patrolling is to identify articles which do not meet the criteria for inclusion." and their system encourages them to be rude and unhelpful in order to delete articles and turn away new editors. Their purpose statement goes on to say "Do not be too hasty to nominate contributions by new editors for deletion" but what they recommend then is not for an NPP editor to be helpful in any way, but rather to for them leave it for some NPP editor with fewer qualms to be mean and start the deletion processes, perhaps just a few minutes later, instead. I bet you could make a difference by taking the place of some of the NPP editors on new articles about India.
Good luck! --doncram 05:47, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Here is a list of currently open requests for comments that would be of interest to project-members, and where their input would be appreciated:

  1. At Ganesh Chaturthi: Separate articles required
  2. At Akshardham: Is the criticism section (Environmental Section) correctly cited?
  3. At Charas: Is the detailed methods of manufacturing charas relevant?
  4. At India: Area number and map in infobox should reflect present realities on the ground, not claims?
  5. At Bombay Riots: Add series "Violence against Hindus" or Remove series "Violence against Muslims in India"?

Incidentally, does anybody know if the process of listing India-related RFCs has been or can be automated? Abecedare (talk) 00:29, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I only know of Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Article alerts: Watching for its updates via the bot's summaries is enough: see this -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:58, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
You can transclude Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Article alerts/Table to your userpage to keep track of it, which is what I have done. I tried adding a collapsed version to the top of the talk page, but I think the page might need some coding to allow collapsing, as it's outside of template space. Maybe a template whiz can figure that out.—SpacemanSpiff 03:10, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I've tried a workaround, see the top of this talk page now, I've placed a small scroll box with all the links. If people don't like it, then we can remove it, likewise feel free to change the color/height etc, I chose this height as I didn't want it to invade too much into the noticeboard itself. But this lists everything from RfCs to FAs, CfDs to AfDs, Prods to GAs etc as long as the talk page has the WP India banner. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 03:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Spaceman and Ugog. I believe some of you have pointed me to WP:INAA before (and I even have it watchlisted), but I don't look at it often and didn't realize it tracked RFCs too. It would be good to have the page more visible. Should we transclude it somewhere on WP:INB (instead/in adition to WT:INB)? The Collaboration Dashboard and To do lists on the main project page are no longer maintained, and this could take one of their places. Abecedare (talk) 14:45, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
That would be good but what part of INB is actually updated? In addition to Collaboration NB and Todo, the Announcements, In the news, Events, Departments (partially)...all look stale. Like AA, the newest content too is updated automatically and would be good for New Page Patrollers, but I don't know how many actually use it. Should we overhaul the page or something? AA and Newest content seem like the only useful updates IMO. ‑Ugog Nizdast (talk) 15:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Hey Ugog, thanks for volunteering for the task. It's yours. :-) Abecedare (talk) 15:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Me and my big mouth. I'll get to it. I'll post here if I find anything more useful for our NB. The rest will be checked if still active/useful or be archived. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Ugog Nizdast, to help you out I've sort of modified the layout of the noticeboard to use just the updated stuff and eliminating all the others that are relics of the past. I've left a new link for the collaboration bit as we could perhaps think of revamping that in a different format -- subject collab, topic collab, problem fixing etc. Anyone feel free to change the colors, layout etc. And if it's disliked, just revert back to the original. In case it's reverted, this is the link to what I changed to. —SpacemanSpiff 17:02, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I think what you did is great. I like the scroll bar, it condenses those lengthy Alerts and New content. Then all that's left for me to do is see if there's anything else useful to add there. ‑Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Jamni

Hello India experts. Here's another of those village draft articles that could use some TLC. I have done some copyediting, and found one reference. The material at the top is intended for an infobox, I think.—Anne Delong (talk) 21:27, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm taking a look. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 21:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

"Paperboy" vs. "newsboy" or what else, in India?

There's a requested move discussion at Talk:Paperboy#Requested move (September 2015) where it seems important to determine whether "paperboy" always means a boy (or girl) who delivers newspapers to home subscribers (as currently asserted in Paperboy (newspaper delivery) article. And whether "newsboy" (also known as "newspaper hawker") always means a boy (or girl) who sells newspapers to non-subscribers at a street corner or on a train or the like. It seems there are no longer any newsboys in the United States (and maybe not in the U.K.). Some Indic participation at the requested move and/or your commenting here be greatly appreciated.

Do boys (or girls) sell newspapers on the street in India? And what are or were they called? And what are newspaper delivery-persons called? --doncram 22:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

This seems pathetic. Yet another example of the politics and social engineering that is infiltrating Wikipedia. Like it or loathe it, words like these historically end "-boy". And buggering around with the language - "chairman" becomes "chairperson" etc - is just that, buggering around. FWIW, most newspaper delivery people in the UK (a rapidly diminishing number) have always in fact been male and, apropos my section below about the BBC India season, one of the programmes included quite a few minutes tracking a 16-year old newspaper seller in Dhaka and included many shots of other such sellers, all of whom appeared to be male. Even if they were not, it is just a word. The world as "right-on" Wikipedia politicians see it is going mad: if people want to "reclaim" things such as "nigger" (an extreme example) then they cannot object if everyone else uses the term. - Sitush (talk) 23:46, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Huh!?!? You seem to think there's a debate about usage of "boy", which is not the case. It is whether "paperboy" as a role is unambiguously the main topic so that it gets the simple article title instead of a disambiguation page which lists movies like The Paperboy (2012 film). And about what a paperboy article should say, like should it say that it is the one and only term used for one who delivers newspapers to subscribers, or can "newsboy" have that meaning, too? (There are content issues in Wikipedia besides about gender!) Sitush, what are the (male) newspaper delivery boys in England called, and what are the Dhaka newspaper selling boys called, newsboys or paperboys or something else? --doncram 01:39, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
There are few house-to-house and street corner newspaper delivery people in the UK nowadays, but traditionally "paperboy". I believe "news wallah" is a fairly common term in the subcontinent, where newspapers are widely sold on the street. - Sitush (talk) 19:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
From my experience, nobody really refers to the person delivering the papers in India. It's the agency who is referred to as Paperwala (or Paper kaaran in TN). Gender is not taken into consideration because most, not all paper distribution agencts are males. Nobody uses the term newswala, atleast not in any of the cities I've lived in. [7 cities.] --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 21:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Requesting dedicated project for Udaipur (WikiProject Udaipur)

Hello,

I would like to put a proposal for creation of dedicated Wikipedia project for Udaipur city in Rajasthan. We do have some good number of articles and many active users around this topic. This city already has a good name and fame around the globe, and we would love to bring more aspects of this city on Wikipedia.
P.S.: Initially I thought that creating new Wikiprojects is a manual process conducted by end users (like me), so I also did some experiments with the desired Categories and Statistics tables. The Wikipedia project page for this topic Wikipedia:WikiProject Udaipur also started getting good response. But then I understood that this task has to be done by a pre-decided dedicated team. So request to initiate the process for creating a project for this topic. Vishal0soni (talk) 07:10, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

My 2p, new Wikiprojects with such a narrow scope seldom last (see WP:WikiProject Dravidian civilizations, WP:WikiProject Tamil civilization as just two examples). Why not just activate the Rajasthan taskforce of the India WP? If that itself doesn't have takers, I'm not sure why a subset would. A simple collaboration task under WP:IN would be a better way to start things. Invariably, when there are conflicting Wikiprojects with similar scope, the value reduces. —SpacemanSpiff 07:45, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
It is a common belief that having a dedicated project for a topic boosts the activities related to that topic. If not, there would be just a single project comprising of entire world, no need for dedicated projects at country or state or city level. And i trust that if there are dedicated projects running for other similar topics, this topic would also gain enough attention and activities. We trust we would feel more attached with a city level project. This would also bring in more competitiveness among similar projects, and ultimately this would benefit the entire geographical hierarchy on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vishal0soni (talk • contribs) 17:27, , 2 September 2015 (UTC)
@Vishal0soni: Perhaps you should name/ping the other editors who you think will be interested in joining the Udaipur wikiproject and see what they have to say. Personally I too am skeptical that such a narrow project can survive but if you can find, say, a few dozen active members who want to give it a try, go for it. Abecedare (talk) 18:16, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
Much appreciated effort by Vishal0soni. There are separate WikiProjects for nearly every western city and also for their celebrities and major politicians. "Indian Wikipedians" is probably the second largest Wikipedia community after "US Wikipedians", but most of Indian Wikipedians are scattered. Udaipur is really very important topic area within WikiProject India. Udaipur is among topmost tourist hub of India and most of domestic and foreign tourists search on Wikipedia to get primary info related to any palace in Udaipur. If they find stub article on any palace then lay tourist think that "this is not so important palace" or "Wikipedia has not given much importance to this palace". I do have improved some topics related to Udaipur and ready to work on this project. Frankly speking any separate WikiProject is not needed for this but people have mentality to work under some banner and if that banner is inspiring for someone to contribute then we can create such WikiProject. We do have some Indian city specific WikiProjects, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Lucknow, Wikipedia:WikiProject Patna, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mumbai. Most of them apparently inactive. Mumbai being the largest city there are only 5 new entries as member in last 3 years on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mumbai though we can find several Wikipedians based in Mumbai or interested in Mumbai related topics. This is truth that such projects won't last long but obviously we should not discourage any new initiative. --Human3015TALK  05:26, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm a part of two city based WikiProjects; WP Mumbai and WP Chennai. Both started out with great fanfare and activity, but today both are dead. In the case of Chennai, the four of us [Anbu121, Challengethelimits, Rasnaboy, and I, sometimes Vensatry] worked hard on articles for four months, but then the interest died down. Same happened for WP:INCOTM. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 06:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I myself interested in many topics and wanted to start many portals or WikiProjects on them, but then lastly thought to focus more on topics. Recently I joined Wikipedia:WikiProject Solar System and that is the first WikiProject I show in my list of Userboxes, it covers all topics that we know or in which we interested. Cheers. --Human3015TALK  06:23, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Nothing wrong with creating a new project, but I'm just saying what normally happens after a while. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 06:27, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Obviously nothing wrong in it, at least in initial stages if some articles related to Palaces becomes nice then it will be great achievement, at least we can try for Udaipur to become "good article". It is really important but ignored city.--Human3015TALK  06:32, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
So is Coimbatore, and Gulbarga, and Ahmednagar, and <insert random city here> Falana, Falana, Falana. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 06:41, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
If there is someone interested in taking up any city topic, and work actively at least for few months, it would certainly contribute positively. Digital India is growing at a fast pace, and we don't know what turn future is going to take. But we can give a shot with our contribution in this manner. Vishal0soni (talk) 06:51, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes Vishal0soni, truly appreciated your effort, we will work together, apparently 2-3 more users are with us who signed on WikiProject Udaipur page, also there is a very experienced user Shyamsunder who is active on WikiProject Rajasthan (though he mainly do Category related work) we can take his help and he will also help us. He is very co-operative. We will really increase coverage of Udaipur related topics. As this is a limited Project, so 2-3 interested users are sufficient for it. Cheers. --Human3015TALK  07:50, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
I have interest only in article. I can help with images of Udaipur. I think I added one long time back, or was that Jaipur? --AmritasyaPutraT 08:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Vishal0soni has left a note on my talk page. Frankly I have not quite understood the usefulness of the projects and since start have not associated with any. I work on any topic related to India . In fact I had started many pages related to Udaipur region. I am happy to further work on Udaipur relatd topics but without joining the project as such.Shyamsunder (talk) 11:13, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for all suggestions and support Shyamsunder, AmritasyaPutra, Human3015. All these discussions adds up new levels of enthusiasm towards better quality of work. Regarding the concerns from Rsrikanth05, Abecedare and Spaceman, i believe that working on any sub-project would also count as a contribution for the parent projects as well. When we work for Rajasthan project, it adds up to project India. In similar manner, having efforts for project Udaipur should be adding up contributions towards both Rajasthan and India. Is my assumption correct? If yes, we should not have any problem in creating city level projects. Vishal0soni (talk) 04:03, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm not in the least bit concerned about contribution to WP:IN. The issue here is that after the first month or two of high enthusiasm it tapers off and almost everything is left to the "founder" of the Wikiproject. That is precisely what happened at WP Mumbai, after Kensplanet turned inactive the project followed suit. And for any niche projects this is what happens when it is heavily dependent on one person. We have a reasonably active Wikiproject here, and it makes sense to utilize the people and resources in this especially as the new project would have a scope that is a subset of this one, and a subset of the (inactive) Rajasthan task force. The effect this has is multifold, there are many people on this project who care about the whole gamut of articles and are ready to help in bits and pieces, with a specific Wikiproject that is lost as most are not going to join or follow so many Wikiprojects; also, nothing happens to the lists of "to-do" items when the Wikiproject goes inactive. In my opinion the collaboration of the month that Tito activated a while back is more than a viable substitute for the numerous wikiprojects and taskforces that we have. That said, it's entirely your prerogative to create a new Wikiproject, if you think this is going to be better than the status quo, then go for it.—SpacemanSpiff 04:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

2013 Lilavati's Daughters Edit-a-thon

I've recently come across this Lilavati's Daughters Edit-a-thon and wonder, is anything salvageable there? can any article or resource be used to create any of those 50 bios? The edit-a-thon happened in 2013 and am not sure how well did it end. @Rsrikanth05 and AshLin: I know both of you among the participants, what is the edit-a-thon's status? how did it go? did finding sources for those bios fail or does that remain to be checked? A few have been created though. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Pinging @Visdaviva and Rohini: as well. They were also part of it. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 11:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
In my case, I was in moral support mode and I was not the initiator. Hence cant answer your queries. AshLin (talk) 13:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
While I would be hesitant to use it as a source for anything but simple stuff like publications and employment, the work itself is an indicator of notability and other sources should be easy to find for these people. Also, let's not forget that most of the articles are autobiographies. Just randomly looking through the autobiographical subjects both Sudeshna Sinha and Somdatta Sinha are elected fellows of NASc/INSA, Shobana Sharma has been heading the bio department at TIFR for a while. So, sourcing on these people shouldn't be difficult at all. It may make for good collaboration as pretty much most FAs from our project is related to actresses these days. —SpacemanSpiff 17:16, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
That's great, we can make a list here of all those who checked/not checked. Anyone else is interested in this? It would be nice to revive this old Edit-a-thon and finish what they started. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 09:58, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

List

Copied from meta page
Scientist's Name Web Resources Other Resources
Janaki Ammal Edavaleth Kakkat -- --
B Vijayalakshmi 1979 Publication --
Asima Chatterjee -- --
Anandibai Joshi Anandibai's Quilt; Anandibai's Biography 1888 --
Iravati Karve -- --
Anna Mani -- --
Kamal Ranadive -- --
Darshan Ranganathan -- --
Kamala Sohonie -- --
Radha Balakrishnan -- --
Bindu A Bambah -- --
Meenakshi Banerjee -- --
Manju Bansal -- --
Sudha Bhattacharya -- --
Archana Bhattacharyya -- --
Rajani A Bhisey -- --
Renee M Borges -- --
Bimla Buti -- --
Anju Chadha -- --
Charusita Chakravarty -- --
Maharani Chakravorty -- --
Prabha Chatterji -- --
Rajeshwari Chatterjee -- --
Shubhada Chiplunkar -- --
Renu Khanna-Chopra -- --
Joyanti Chutia -- --
Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta -- --
Priya Davidar -- --
Deepti Deobagkar -- --
Aruna Dhathathreyan -- --
Sulochana Gadgil -- --
Rohini Godbole -- --
Srubabati Goswami -- --
H Ilah (nee' Bhatnagar) -- --
Chanda Jog -- --
Sangeeta N Kale -- --
V Kalpagam -- --
P Mohanty Hejmadi -- --
Gaiti Hasan -- --
R J Hans-Gill -- --
Neelima Gupte -- --
Rama Govindarajan -- --
Sulabha K Kulkarni -- --
Anuradha Lohia -- --
Yamuna Krishnan CV; NCBS; TOI Interview; Interview --
Vinod Krishan -- --
Medha Khole -- --
Pushpa Khare -- --
S K Khanduja -- --
Priyadarshini Karve -- --
Chitra Mandal -- --
Kusum Marathe -- --
Minnie M Mathan Publication --
Asha Mathur -- --
Anuradha Misra -- --
Somdatta Sinha -- --

These are in addition to the key resource, Lilavati's Daughters, which is available online here

Well what do you know, it looks like majority of it have been created. Some of it by the Edit-a-thon, some of it not. I've yet to check the remaining. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 15:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the remaining bios are of subjects who can only be sourced online to Lilavati's daughters itself, thus making verifiability very hard. I wonder would they survive an Afd? ‑Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:13, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Indian English

Just wanted to remind all fellow India Project editors of the importance of the WP:STRONGNAT policy. This policy means topics related to India should use Indian English. This template can be added to talk pages of such articles: {{Indian English}} which appears as

while the hidden template {{Use Indian English}} can be used at the top of mainspace articles.

Possibly due to occasional use of translators, too often American English spelling is being used. It's important to resist this sort of spelling colonialism. Words to look out for:

  • Organisation not organization
  • Colour not color
  • Favour not favor
  • Behaviour not behavior
  • Recognised not recognized
  • Defence not defense
  • Travelled not traveled
  • Labour not labor
  • Fibre not fiber
  • Realise not realize
  • Criticise not criticize

AusLondonder (talk) 08:53, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I see that this is a set of examples also of British English spelling (which is what I would use). It may be Indian English, but it would be useful if you also included some terms that are clearly Indian but not British, and not concentrate solely on Americanisation. Imc (talk) 17:23, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Americanisation is the usual problem. It is inevitable that Indian English bears an extremely close resemblance to British English. Examples of Indian English that do not relate to spellings include commonly referring to the police as "cops", frequent omission of "the", and some British archaisms. However, such examples usually end up being cleaned simply because they are not encyclopaedic in style, regardless of their local usage. Similar things happen with West Indian patois and, frankly, all these language variants just confuse the issue and give an outlet for nationalist pov pushers ... but this is an old story, debated time and again without ever achieving consensus. - Sitush (talk) 17:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Oh, and some Indian media outlets use US spellings nowadays, just as some UK outlets do. The English-speaking world will end up being US English simply because of the power and influence of the US. Fix the problems when you see them, sure, and definitely fix inconsistencies within articles but there is little point expending hours on some sort of campaign. And note that MOSQUOTE causes problems with any variety of English: we should not change the quotation but often they'll be in a different style to the article itself. - Sitush (talk) 17:46, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Category purpose: Kashmiri tribes

Please see Category_talk:Kashmiri_tribes#Purpose - need to sort this one out, and probably many other related categories. - Sitush (talk) 11:21, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Manjusri > Manjushri

Please comment on Talk:Manjusri#Requested move 15 September 2015. Ogress 04:33, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Ksitigarbha > Kshitigarbha

Please comment on Talk:Ksitigarbha#Requested move 15 September 2015. Ogress 04:46, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

So far no one has commented in any way, which bodes badly for this discussion issue. Sooooo this is why I tend to move pages according to the MOS Indic myself, because I post move discussions for vote and not a single person bothers. Yet there was an instant and furious flurry in the discussion about how I tend to move pages according to the MOS Indic... Can you please weigh in on these two pages I listed, rather significant ones for Buddhism, and vote or comment about the COMMONNAME issue of IAST or raw romanisation? Either way, both names are currently inbetween the two norms and it's plain wrong. Ogress 19:43, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

MP explosion

An explosion in MP resulting in over 100 deaths has occured; 2015 Jhabua explosion. Please help me expand this so we can get it to ITN. -_Rsrikanth05 (talk) 13:48, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Or, better still, don't bother. We are not a news website and coverage of breaking events in India is particularly prone to problems. The sooner we stop trying to react to every news story, the better. Wait for decent sources to emerge, if they ever do, and meantime use Wikinews. - Sitush (talk) 15:22, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Jee, that's a rather nasty and unwarranted response. I think I'll refrain from hanging out here because of such comments henceforth. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 15:33, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
It is simple really. See WP:NOT. You'll note that the BBC reports things differently, the number of casualties varies etc - basically, it is all too recent and we end up trying to hit a moving target. Patience is a virtue. - Sitush (talk) 15:35, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
I choose to see it differently. An explosion with 100 people killed, plus illegal explosions involved [mentioned in multiple sources], it seems to satisfy WP:GNG. Anyway, thank you for reminding me that this request was a waste of my time. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 15:48, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
See it how you want but for example (a) most sources say "at least 82", including one that you use; (b) most sources say that the cause is unknown because the police retracted their initial statement that it was related to gas cylinders. It is indeed at present a complete waste of time. - Sitush (talk) 16:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
What's the harm in waiting until the reports 'settle down'? There is no need to show the early reports blow by blow - that is a task for the news media. Apuldram (talk) 17:21, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia doesn't wait! It's perhaps time to retire WP:NOTNEWS as it is never followed. This is a classic example from last week. —SpacemanSpiff 17:14, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
It is relevant, it is useful. Editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events, it is a guideline on what to exclude and how to cover, it does not forbid blindly. --AmritasyaPutraT 06:06, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Undiscussed moves of articles

Hello fellows! User: Ogress seems to have moved many articles and they were mostly undiscussed moves. I came to notice this because of the currently on-going discussion at Talk:Jñāneśvar. While many pages are under the WP:India purview, articles from other wikiprojects have also been moved. The list of moves is long and I have only mentioned some that I found to be falling under WP:India project. I suppose that these moves have been made of non-English words and were for Romanizing them, obviously keeping aside what WP:COMMONNAME is. It’s a big mess to clean one by one, given the involvement of Sanskrit, Tamil, Burmese, Nepali and other Asian languages. What should be done about this? Pinging some experienced editors who have knowledge of some of these aspects @SpacemanSpiff, Abecedare, and Titodutta:. I have dropped a message on user's talk page; but that was before I actually saw how many articles were affected. This needs a larger forum than user's talkpage. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 09:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't know much about the policies at play here or the precedent for such moves, but as a Keralite, I'll have no idea who ton-cat Eluttacchan is (as opposed to Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan). I certainly wouldn't be able to identify him as the father of Malayalam at first glance even though I'm a native speaker. Just saying. 106.51.240.5 (talk) 09:20, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I think we should have an IND-wide policy on the use of Roman (IPA?) in article titles. I vote for the English alphabet because it is common in the sources and most of our readers wouldn't know how to work with the accented Roman alphabet. - Kautilya3 (talk) 09:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
This debate is as old as Wikipedia and while I think a reader is going to look for Silappatikaram and not Cilappatikāram it's apparently not how writers feel, so I stay out of this and plan on staying out in the future too!—SpacemanSpiff 10:49, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
and to Kautilya3's point, we have WP:NCIN.—SpacemanSpiff 10:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Generally I am not too bothered about which transliteration is used in the article title as long as the alternate transliterations redirect to the article and are mentioned in the lede. That said, both commonname and NCIN dictate that if there is one transliteration that is prevalent, than that be the one that is used (hence Krishna>Kṛṣṇa; Bhaṭṭikāvya>Bhattikavya) and we not try to impose any single transliteration scheme as a wikipedia-wide or project-wide standard.
I don't know enough of the above articles to know if the new titles were always compliant with those guidelines or not. The move from Salakapurusa seems ok, since that is neither the IAST (Śalākāpuruṣa), nor the conventional diacritic-free (Shalakapursha) transliteration (not sure which of the latter two is more common, but the original title was simply misguided); ditto for Paiśācī. On the other hand, 106.51's comment suggest that at least in some cases the older article titles were preferable. Can User:Ogress comment and others point out if they have concerns with any particular moves? Abecedare (talk) 14:39, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
It's disingenuous to list all the cleanups I did. There are seven spelling errors, one of which has been inexplicably reverted to the version against the MOS (Uchchaihshravas). Your beef is with the spellings of Dravidian placenames. I moved completely ad-hoc spellings to standardised spellings used by Dravidian scholars. Thiruparankundram does not have an initial aspirated t. Athiyamān is spelled halfway with standardised spellings but has a random beginning. Vijayabahu VI of Gampola had no content, not even the name Vijayabahu, about him in the article. Aathichoodi is a famous literary work and should be known under its properly romanised name, not how someone thinks it sounds based on how they speak English. Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan to Tuncattu Eluttacchan follows the Wikipedia-wide general romanisation trend for premodern topics (i.e. no stated first-person preferences). Your objections are to those names, not everything on that list, unless you can explain to me why Apauruṣheyā, Bhagavathi, Paisaci, Salakapurusa, Sraddhadeva Manu, etc. aren't misspellings according to the MOS. Ogress 18:42, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

List of the pages I suspect you actually object to

I have redacted the first list to the ones that aren't blatantly, unequivocally about misspellings immediately obvious from the MOS. Ogress 19:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Anything related to diacritics and transliterations is pretty much de facto controversial, and not merely in the Indic sphere. People have been blocked and banned for trying to impose their choice. At the very least, WP:RM should usually be followed, bearing in mind NCIN etc. - Sitush (talk) 19:16, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I can find no reason Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan has five extra haitches in it. Or why the difference between the c and the ch is ignored. If I flagged every fix I did nothing would ever get done. At some point, I edit boldly. Have you seen the state of pages related to Hinduism and India? We are wildly understaffed and I do put most things up for consensus voting. I've got pages without votes for like six months sometimes, closed with "insufficient comment" because literally no one votes. On pages that I adjudge are barely even edited by their links and edit histories, I boldly edit errors. In all that work, there's a handful of things that have proven to be objectionable. That happens, and I'll try to be more careful about bold moves, but still. The tone of the OP is that I've created a nightmare, a rogue editor crashing through the neatly-tended garden of Wikipedia, when in fact nothing is further from the truth. You'll even note I'm not pushing one preference: I use both IAST/Library of Kolkota as well as the common romanisation above. Ogress 19:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Additional point: Kautilya3 is probably correct to think that most readers of the English Wikipedia won't know how to handle Indic diacritics. That makes using the things in article titles somewhat problematic simply because they would then also have to be used throughout the article, in the interests of standardising our style even at single-article level. We routinely insist that the spelling used in a title is maintained throughout the article, which in this case has a knock-on effect for all other Indic spellings within the article. I suppose that means it would be better to have diacritic titles as redirects to "plain English" ones. - Sitush (talk) 19:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
That is a matter of opinion, as you yourself noted, and I stick to romanising as seems appropriate to the tone of the article because choosing one over the other gets users in serious trouble. I have voted for moves for both "common" and IAST/LoK, depending on circumstance. Ogress 19:30, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Also, in regards to "everything is controversial", if that is a reference to the misspellings I note: broken IAST and broken common spellings are spelling errors. You can't mash the two together. MOS is unequivocal that ś is to be romanised sh; IAST/LoK does not use h as a diacritic. Those forms are unequivocably misspellings and all I did was fix the spelling errors without significantly moving the page (I added or removed an errant h). Ogress 19:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I was referring to the general, not to the specific. It wouldn't matter if you did it, I did it or Jimbo did it. As for IAST, well, it is not something that should be used in article titles for the reason that I gave, so any mis-spellings there would be an irrelevance and you would just fix the spelling in the lead section. - Sitush (talk) 19:43, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
@Ogress: Indians, i.e., South Asians, are different from most other nationalities in that they have been using the English alphabet for at least a couple of centuries to write their own names and words. So primary transliterations exist for most words. When they don't exist, Indians know how to use their native transliteration for the new words. They might look like misspellings to you, but they are not. So I think it is best to leave them alone. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 20:39, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I've just had a look at Talk:Jñāneśvar and re-read this section also. It strikes me that some of the arguments about Romanisation are based on a false assumption. Claims are being made regarding phonetics and how they might affect the Roman spelling. Since English is far from being a phonetic language, there isn't really much weight to be given to such ideas. Common spellings, yes, but not any attempt to drive through changes based on sounds. - Sitush (talk) 20:58, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
"Tuñcattŭ Eḻuttacchan" (with the accents) is mentioned in the lead, whereas the title and rest of the article just says Tuncattu Eluttacchan. The zh and the "el" sound entirely different in Malayalam. For a reader like me who does not understand the complexities of accents, it reads as an entirely different thing. 106.51.17.142 (talk) 21:01, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

And when the native Indian spellings vary? Ātticcūṭi is romanised in a very large array of forms: Atichudi, Aatticudi, Aathichudi, Aatthichchudi... this is why we have a scholarly spelling system. 106.51.17.142, the form should be the same throughout the article. I can't help that there are three l sounds in his native language anymore than I can help there are multiple t sounds; that's why we use diacritics when romanising Indic languages, so that these differences aren't lost. Ogress 21:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ogress, the average reader would not know how to read an article according to ISO 15919. It will only be a matter of time before the article is plagued with good faith editors trying to "correct" Eluttacchan to Ezhuthachan. Someone like Tinucherian, who is a native speaker, can better explain why this particular case is different. 106.51.17.142 (talk) 21:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
When multiple spellings exist, what I do is to pick the one that seems most common, and create redirects for the others. The native speakers can relate to all the spellings. But what they can't relate to is the IPA/IAST/ISO transliteration. So those transliterations are only good as guides to pronunciation for non-native speakers. - Kautilya3 (talk) 21:29, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Exactly. If a reasonable common name exists for an article, we should use that as the title. Any transliteration based on standards should be inside the article. --regentspark (comment) 21:33, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I think Dharmadhyksha made nice observation. Ogress should have not done so many undiscussed moves. If Ogress thinks that those moves have valid reason then Ogress should have discussed those on article's talk page. If Ogress would have done 1 or 2 undiscussed moves then it can be understood but so many undiscussed controversial moves are not good thing. I think we all should not get unite to oppose Ogress otherwise Ogress will feel bad and awkward. Ogress is very experienced editor and I hope Ogress will not get discouraged by this incident. But next time you should do only discussed moves regarding these topic. I think only proper English spellings should be used and not IAST spellings. I am happy that this issue has been raised on this board, I wanted to raise this since long time. I think we should make probably final consensus over this issue which will benefit future editors and will also avoid unnecessary disputes. Thank you. --Human3015TALK  21:34, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Not quite. Ogress does a lot of clean-up work that is extremely valuable. Asking her to consult on all of them would be too much hassle and not worthwhile. It is best to give her reasonable guidance that she can easily follow. - Kautilya3 (talk) 21:44, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes. Ogress seems to me to be a clear net positive and I have no reason to think that this page moves were executed in anything other than good faith. None of us are perfect and Wikipedia is far more complicated than the Five Pillars might suggest. At worst, this is one of those situations where the intentions are good but too many other people object and have at least equally good intentions. I have no idea whether this phrase is common outside of the UK but, please, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have no idea how this discussion will conclude but we need people like Ogress and we're all entitled to have different opinions even though, at the end of it all, consensus applies. - Sitush (talk) 23:40, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I second Human3015 here. So many undiscussed moves, which are indeed controversial, is not the spirit of Wikipedia as we know it. This reminds me of a 2005 renaming of Hindu-Arabic numbers to Arabic Numerals. This needs to be discussed at length. The current discussion seems very shallow. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 21:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that we move Arabic numerals back to Hindu-Arabic numerals?Filpro (talk) 00:26, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

"This reminds me of a 2005 renaming" are you serious right now? What does that comment even mean? Ogress 01:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Are you serious?!?!?!? Of course I am. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 11:00, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
While I can see where one might want to be a little extra careful about page moves vs. other edits, I don't think that that means that no one should ever be bold about moving pages. Ogress is an experienced editor and should be relied upon to anticipate which moves are likely to prove controversial. If an editor were to guess wrong and make a move that did turn out to be controversial, it can always be discussed at that point and the page moved back if necessary. No harm, no foul. – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 23:19, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
No, sorry, that is not how it usually works or indeed should work. If someone makes an undiscussed page move and someone else contests it then the convention is that the move is reverted pending discussion. There are sensible reasons for this, not least of which is that there is a presumed consensus that the original title is ok by dint of its longevity. - Sitush (talk) 23:25, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Second Sitush. Requesting RMs now to move the pages back will push the WP:ONUS on the requestor where in the first place it should have been on the first mover. I would suggest that some admin, we have plenty in this discussion, should move the pages back to the long standing names and then individual discussions can be started by Ogress or anyone. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 08:51, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
I did not mean to imply “it can always be discussed at that point and the page moved back if necessary” in that order. Go ahead and move it back and then discuss. Sounds fine to me. On the other hand, I don’t see why an admin would need to move them back, unless there’s a technically problem that requires admin involvement. If there’s an editor who actually disagrees with the move and wants to discuss it, why can’t that person move it back and start a discussion. – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 14:24, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
It is quite often the case that a move cannot be reverted without admin assistance. That is, the technical problem you suggest actually happens a lot. - Sitush (talk) 15:17, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
There, move many back. Others I couldn't or have missed. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 03:22, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

IASTs in title

All those fancy frills around the alphabets (e.g. Ā, ī , ṉ, ñ, Ś) when used in the title of the article are really useless. Other than few users who might be using European/other keyboards that have for example umlauts, I don't think that anyone can actually type these frills. They have to be copied from some or the other places. In such cases, readers would always reach the article through the non-frill redirect which we keep. When majority of users are going to reach the articles through plain redirects, why not move the article to such redirects itself? So how much so ever the IASTs or Kolkata Library or Lingustics experts or Romanization brigade wants to use these frills they are not useful for titles. In simpler words, article should be at the typable alphabet string of "Aathichoodi" rather than Ātticcūṭi.
Is this not de facto applicable for all articles? Is it not written somewhere already in some naming policies? Or do we have to form consensus on this as well? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 09:07, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd be happy to see IAST gone from titles. They are awkward to search and they are neither "English" spelling nor local spelling. what is more, I'm sure I have seen inconsistencies in IAST spellings (ie: the academics can't agree either, so the one potential benefit doesn't necessarily exist). - Sitush (talk) 15:19, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Dharmadhyaksha, your proposal to eschew IAST has a common sense appeal, but I prefer the current policy of using the WP:COMMONNAME. For most popular topics this will be the spelling in standard English alphabet, but when it is not it is best to just stick with the spelling/transliteration that most English language sources use, else it just leads to endless OR and unresolvable disputes over "correct" transliterations. Abecedare (talk) 15:48, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
I concur with Dharmadhyaksha and Sitush. They are at best needless decoration to most user and at worst makes the article unsearchable. --AmritasyaPutraT 06:10, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
I'd prefer the correct spelling. See Malasana for the difference between shit and flowers... Redirects from plain English can guide readers to the complicated, but correct, names. But don't count my opinion to heavy on this one; I agree that the simple names are easier to find. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:34, 18 September 2015 (UTC)?
@Joshua: How we can decide which spelling is correct? As you are saying IAST/complicated spellings are "correct" names then does it automatically means names in simple English are "incorrect"? This is really not the case, if you are saying IAST spellings are correct then still one can't say that names in simple English are "incorrect" because we have reliable sources for spelling of simple English too. So at most we can say that both spellings are "correct", and it is obvious that in between two "correct" spellings we should choose simple, searchable and common name. --Human3015TALK  07:14, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

@Dharmadhyaksha: You seriously don't understand how diacritics work, because your decision to move Śalākāpuruṣa to Salakapurusa and Paiśaci to Paisaci indicates you don't understand what you are talking about. If you aren't simply being intransigent, at least move them to Shalakapurusha and Paishachi. You can't just drop the diacritics. Also, Paiśaci is unequivocably the WP:COMMONNAME. Ogress 08:45, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

And you don't understand how WP works. I haven't moved the article, only reverted them back to the long standing titles. You with all your knowledge of diacritics and what-not can follow WP:RM for these and other pages. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 08:51, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
@Abecedare: Its right that the non-frill spelling would mostly also be COMMONNAME. But even if there are cases where the frill-version is mostly used in English, the problem stated above of not being able to type such string remains. And also, if English languages sources are seen using such IASTs they might really be old sources. Some people give NGRAM search results to show how IAST strings have larger count given that those were famous in yesteryears. But most modern writings would have moved to other spelling. We should take into consideration the difference between what COMMONNAME was and now is when titling our articles; preference been given to non-IAST versions. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 09:02, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Abecedare and Joshua Jonathan that we don't need a separate policy about IAST. But IAST shouldn't be used in preference to COMMONNAMEs. If there are multiple COMMONNAMEs, isn't it best to discuss them on the article talk pages? @Human3015: Yes, the English transliterations are "incorrect", or more accurately approximate, because the English alphabet is not enough for representing Indian languages. (But if they are COMMONNAMEs, we should use them.) - Kautilya3 (talk) 09:12, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: We can't say English transliterations as "incorrect" when reliable sources are using it. It can be POV of different people according to their background. We have to think about normal people who read Wikipedia. If English transliterations are incorrect then all real life names of Indian people written on their Birth certificate in English are Incorrect, because they are just transliterations. We can't say these are "incorrect". We can't go against sources, we have sources for both spellings. It is very simple fact that we should use names which have letters which exists on our keyboard. --Human3015TALK  09:21, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

I guess WP:COMMONNAME is a wise criterium, with redirects from the IAST-spelled "correct" names. Funny, by the way, that "the" westerners seem to argue for IAST, and "the" Indians for simplified English. I feel it like a kind of respect to India to use IAST... Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@Ogress: You just said that "Dharmadhyaksha, You seriously don't understand how diacritics work". Yes, that is the fact. Hardly anyone knows how it works, so why we should use such things?? Usually even well aware people don't know about these things, so we should use only common English Spelling. I already said some where that we are not writing PhD thesis. For satisfaction of intellectuals we are already using IAST spelling in lead anyway.--Human3015TALK  09:32, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
I have never in all my years on Wikipedia encountered such attitudes. First, we are an encyclopedia: people come here to learn. This whole "we shouldn't talk about scholarship" anti-elitism is absolutely ridiculous and I can't believe I'm hearing from editors.
Second, my remarks in regards to diacritics was in regards to the official Manual of Style for Indic titles, which has an official romanisation that demonstrates how IAST relates to common spellings. This conversation is a bunch of people who have no idea what they are talking about making all kinds of wild claims and statements that contradict both established Wikipedia policy and MOS standards. How can so many people on the Noticeboard for India-related topics be so ignorant of the basic principles and guidelines relating to these topics I surely have no idea, but I'm done.
I can't take this willful disregard for our goal as an educational tool and our established guidelines for nomenclature because you don't like academics, so I guess it's time for me to go. You've already made it clear I'm a shite editor and now you are espousing a kind of fantastical deliberate "let's ignore everything" dogpile on copyediting and standards. Have fun, I'm officially washing my hands of this. I've been an editor since 2005 and this is what finally broke me: deliberate ignorance. Ogress 12:21, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Folks, this brouhaha is totally unnecessary. The problem (like all Wikipedia problems) stems from the fact that we have a convention that has been codified into consensus with very little discussion so obviously we have a ton of disagreement here. Rather than everyone getting het up, perhaps it is better to use this as an opportunity to hammer out a broader consensus on where Indic titles should lie on the "Common Name" to "IAST" spectrum. An RfC on that specific topic at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Indic) is the appropriate route. Perhaps Ogress and DD can jointly write out the terms of the RfC? --regentspark (comment) 12:29, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
Actually, it seems that the policy at WP:NCIN is already doing what is sensible. It says to use "primary transliteration" (if available), which would correspond to COMMONNAME. If a primary transliteration is not available, it says to use "simplified transliteration", which would be in English alphabet. So, we get IAST titles only if their primary. Of the two prominent examples that have been cited,
  • Paisaci appears to have an equal number of occurrences of "Paisachi" and "Paishachi" in the sources. So there is no "primary transliteration." The policy says, use "simplified transliteration," which is "Paishachi."
  • Salakapurusa appears to have the formal (IAST) transliteration as its primary transliteration. That would mean that Ogress's title was right.
Would people like to change the policy so that we use English alphabet (simplified) even when the primary is IAST? - Kautilya3 (talk) 22:14, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
The policy has plenty of problems. First, it attaches a 75% number to something that is definitely not quantifiable to that extent. The common name policy, which presumably is a basis for primary transliteration, doesn't have any such requirement and leaves it to consensus to determine whether there is a common name or not and that is the correct Wikipedia way. Second, the simplified transliteration is not going to satisfy everyone. It appears to be something designed by a couple of Wikipedia editors and is not a standardized thing at all. Should we use that simplified transliteration developed in house by non-experts, move to a formal but well established transliteration scheme, or eschew the use of diacritics altogether? These are amongst the things that need to be discussed. As long as the convention has limited consensus, it will remain a source of convention. --regentspark (comment) 23:31, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Separate articles for Aadhaar and Unique Identification Authority of India, or merge

Until recently, Aadhaar used to redirect to Unique Identification Authority of India. But, someone has created a parallel Aadhaar article. The new article focuses more on the system and its implement than on the UIDAI organisation, and legal issues. Please discuss whether they should be kept separate or merged. -Kenfyre (talk) 01:59, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! @Kenfyre:, what I can see in the article Unique Identification Authority of India has mentioned all these aspects including the detailed information about the organization, legal issues and its implementation. In this case merger seems to be the better way of improving the existing article instead of creating a new (small) article. — CutestPenguinHangout 04:46, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Shopping in Chennai

Does Shopping in Chennai article falls under WP:PROMOTIONAL WP:NOTTRAVEL?--Vin09 (talk) 07:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

It is not unencylopedic. You can create an AFD for the deletion. — LeoFrank  Talk 10:00, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Subhas Chandra Bose

As some of you may be aware the subject is in news again, and we are seeing edit-wars at the article. More experienced editor and admin eyes will be welcome. Abecedare (talk) 18:44, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Agha Shahid Ali

I'm trying to clean this page up. Can anyone tell me what the family name is? The page seems to have "Agha Shahid Ali" almost everywhere, so "Agha" or "Ali"?? Or it here another way the person should be referred to, it being an Indian BLP??

exclamation mark  I already chose "Agha" as his sons' page, Agha Shahid Ali, refers to them being from the the "distinguished Agha family." [citation needed]
Come and yell at me if I'm wrong! 220 of Borg 07:17, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

I think this might be one of those problematic situations where someone was given the title Agha and chose to retain it as a name. This isn't uncommon. —SpacemanSpiff 09:04, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
Okay, thanks! 220 of Borg 09:10, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

S.P College

Connected to my previous Agha Shahid Ali query, is this, "S.P College" (also S.P. College and S. P. College on numerous pages [19]), referring to Sir Parshurambhau College or Sri Pratap College? 220 of Borg 07:45, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

If you're asking which one the above bio is likely to have attended it would be Sri Pratap, though one can't be really sure. —SpacemanSpiff 09:09, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
Agha Ashraf Ali, is who I meant. I may have to ask the page creator. Ali1872 (talk · contribs) which College they refer to. 220 of Borg 09:30, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
From context it is a very very high probability that it's Sri Pratap College. —SpacemanSpiff 09:33, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
I'll keep that in mind, but it isn't that important, until I want to link to the college/s. 220 of Borg 10:07, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Narian singh Shahbazpuri

As a former MLA for Punjab, he is notable per WP:POLITICIAN, but sourcing may be a problem; any ideas? Also, the article needs a major rewrite. Any assistance welcome. JohnCD (talk) 14:33, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

@JohnCD: Govt. of Indian maintains database of MLAs and other politicians (not all) but unfortunately, there are no references ( see here and here) to support the notability as a politician. — Sanskari Hangout 14:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
I have found this which at least confirms it is not a hoax. Would searching for his name in Punjabi help (if that is the relevant language)? JohnCD (talk) 14:56, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes, you are right! That's not a hoax which can be confirmed from the more relevant source located here. It maybe possible the person have alternative name or name in local language which could be Punjabi or Hindi. Thanks! — Sanskari Hangout 15:08, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
JohnCD I've sourced it sufficiently to show that the article satisfies WP:Politician, there's probably more within the archives of The Tribune (Chandigarh), but searching that site is a royal pain. I've also trimmed the article to just sourcable content for now. —SpacemanSpiff 15:10, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Atul Srivastava

Afd - PROD - Canvassing - clever IP - sock nominator blocked - Wall of text - Claims of paid editing - and Bollywood!!
The best of Wikipedia dramas is on one stage this time and hence experienced editors are invited. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 04:17, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Census

Does every out growth to a city or town (less than 1 lakh population) considered as urban agglomeration of that town or simply out growth as per this ref.--Vin09 (talk) 04:39, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Vital Articles nominations

I have nominated Waheeda Rehman, Nargis, Meena Kumari and Madhubala for inclusion in Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded/People list. Feel free to add your opinions to the nomination page.--Skr15081997 (talk) 12:38, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Pride!

You are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride!

  • What? Wiki Loves Pride, a campaign to document and photograph LGBT culture and history, including pride events
  • When? June 2015
  • How can you help?
    1.) Create or improve LGBT-related articles and showcase the results of your work here
    2.) Upload photographs or other media related to LGBT culture and history, including pride events, and add images to relevant Wikipedia articles; feel free to create a subpage with a gallery of your images (see examples from last year)
    3.) Contribute to an LGBT-related task force at another Wikimedia project (Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, etc.)

Or, view or update the current list of Tasks. This campaign is supported by the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group, an officially recognized affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit the group's page at Meta-Wiki for more information, or follow Wikimedia LGBT+ on Facebook. Remember, Wiki Loves Pride is about creating and improving LGBT-related content at Wikimedia projects, and content should have a neutral point of view. One does not need to identify as LGBT or any other gender or sexual minority to participate. This campaign is about adding accurate, reliable information to Wikipedia, plain and simple, and all are welcome!

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the campaign's main talk page.


Thanks, and happy editing!

User:Another Believer and User:OR drohowa

Signing to add date to enable auto-archiving. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 03:40, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Caste discrimination

This news story may be relevant to some articles. I'm not in a position to do much about it right now and I would urge people not to create an article just for this event ... but it is an interesting ruling that might have some worth as a sentence or two, somewhere. Then again, we should not make too much of a single event. - Sitush (talk) 23:14, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

TAFI

I've nominated the article, Narendra Modi under Today's articles for improvement. Please give your views right there. Thank you ! — Sanskari Hangout 16:09, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Argh. I'm sure you mean well but if the nomination is successful then this is likely to make that article, and related ones such as those for his wife and his public image, even more of a problem than they are already. - Sitush (talk) 23:17, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
Why would we need a BLP at TAFI? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 15:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
hmmm! Withdrawing the nomination.Thanks for the feedback. — Sanskari Hangout 15:21, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Universities - AMU, Amity

Many many articles have sprung up related to Aligarh Muslim University and likely with Amity University as well. In recent past many of these have been taken to deletion (1, 2) or proposed mergers (1, 2) or boldly redirected to the parent page. User:TheRedPenOfDoom has done good job of cleaning a lot of them. but more hands would be welcome. You may notice that articles in Category:Departments of the Aligarh Muslim University‎ have a plenty sources but none are inline and not all are RS. Also, the Category:Aligarh Muslim University alumni is flooded now but the List of Aligarh Muslim University alumni lacks references. Most probably the individual biographies also do not have references but are only categorized such. Hence dropping this note to have more editors help in.
Btw, is these any fancy tool somewhere to find which articles have been added recently in a certain category? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 09:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

You might try User:Ais523/catwatch. - Kautilya3 (talk) 12:41, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
I fail to see the significance of these small scale articles such as Aftab Hall, Indira Gandhi Hall, et al. Why do they even exist in the first place? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 15:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
They exist because when created they are not being reviewed by other many experienced editors. We have 12 separate articles on various departments of the Uni which list down the subjects taught there with a dump of weblinks at the bottom. We also had articles like Aligarh Muslim University Ground, Social Science Cyber Library, Zhcet, etc. all now redirects with no mention in the main article. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 04:37, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Request for article creation in Indic languages

Hi,

I need help for creating Pole worship article in Bengali, Assamese, Odia, Kannada, Telugu language, and other Indian languages too.

I have already created articles in Marathi and Hindi wikipedia.

Thanks and Regards

Mahitgar (talk) 10:59, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Interwiki entry for mr & hi tree worship articles

In en-wiki wordings 'sacred tree' and 'Tree worship' get diverted to article Trees in mythology. South asia section in the article is not yet sufficiently developed. I want to add interwiki links at wiki data of hi:अराध्य वृक्ष & mr:आराध्यवृक्ष but for some how I am in two minds. I wish some one else takes call on this aspect.

Rgds Mahitgar (talk) 08:33, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Baran District and Baran, Rajasthan

I was 'cleaning up' the then unsourced 'Baran District' by restoring content deleted on 28 November 2012, thus restoring some sources.[20] But then I noticed the info box said city, not district. I now see that most of the text dumped into the District page back then[21] appears to have come from the City page.
So it appears 1.187.173.132 (talk · contribs) was 'helpfully' attempting to move the city 'Baran, Rajasthan' to 'Baran'. And I may have made it worse as the restored text & sources seem to apply to a city, not a district.
I think both pages may need major culling by someone more in the know on them than me. e.g. 'Baran, Rajasthan' has a population of "1,22,3,921" ??  :-/ 220 of Borg 13:18, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@220 of Borg:I'll check it and provide references if needed.--Vin09 (talk) 14:05, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
Vin09 thanks. I've also rather tag bombed both pages. A big revert to much earlier versions, like 2011,(!) may be the best (easiest? step). Neither really has a decent lead, (Baran, Rajasthan has one line!), neither has enough sources/footnotes, both have 17 sections, and both currently share a large amount of unsourced content. And don't worry if you have to totally revert my edits. 220 of Borg 14:25, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Bharat Ratna

The article on highest civilian award of the country is a current GA and is put for the peer review here. I would like to take it to FAC in the near future. Any comments/feedback/corrections/guidelines are appreciated. This would be my first attempt with FAC so I am looking forward constructive criticism. - Vivvt (Talk) 04:35, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

These articles are related to Mughals. These are based on old book written 19th century. Army of the Mughal Empire, Chela (Mughal army), Mughal weapons. Take a look on them.--శ్రీధర్ బబు (talk) 12:22, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

May I request you to put your username into English alphabets? Could you elaborate your concern? --AmritasyaPutraT 06:07, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

These articles are based on an centuries back old book. I think proper research needed in modern view. So please help to rewrite them.--శ్రీధర్ బబు (talk) 13:59, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Indian Spammers

It's a big embarrassment for us that, almost 90% of people who creates facebook/auto-biography pages are from India. Let us patrol hard and spread the message. --Aamir Humshakal (talk) 14:48, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Nagar Panchayat

For Municipal corporation, government type in infobox is written as Mayor–council government. Then, what about Nagar Panchayat which is headed by a Chairman?--Vin09 (talk) 07:19, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

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