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Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for India

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Importance of many articles shown as Unknown in the Selected articles list. Should they be assigned appropriate importance manually? Examples are:
  • B. R. Ambedkar, Rajiv Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Edmund Hillary
  • Kālī, Indus River, Marathi language, Tabla
  • Mohenjo-daro, Hampi, Koh-i-Noor, Khajuraho, Ellora Caves, History of Buddhism
  • Asian Elephant, King Cobra
to name a few from the list. VasuVR (talk) 08:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, rating is manually done. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I personally think that some of these articles are not up to scratch, but I'm going to have little time to go through all of them myself. I also think that some good work has not been included and probably could be. For this reason, if any user feels an article has been left out and shouldn't be left, or that one of those listed should be left out rather than included, please leave a note of it here with the reason why you think it should/shouldn't be. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Some view points on the list...
  • Rolling Stone (talk): a global magazine - probably only magazine found in the Wikiproject India list that was selected. Can be dropped from Wikiproject India's selection. It may still make 0.7 version due to other projects/ criteria, that is fine.
  • Julie Christie: born in India - no other information related to India in the article.
  • Many many articles on latest actors, actresses, latest movies are included, while artists and achievers in other fields, areas and eras seem to be very less. What can be done to give a better balance?
Hope we can improve the list appropriately... VasuVR (talk) 15:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
What can be done to give a better balance? Put forward suggestions of specific articles that can be included/excluded to give that balance. :) Ncmvocalist (talk) 01:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Hmmmm... The few articles that I thought should be on the list seem to require copy editing, citations, expansion or such stuff. Anyway, here are some thoughts for additions.
  • Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Vande Mataram, Mahābhārata
  • Business stalwarts like JRD Tata, GD Birla
  • Hindustani classical music, Bismillah Khan, Amjad Ali Khan, Veena
  • Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda
Above is mentioned keeping in view the peer articles are selected.
Also the following could be dropped from list.
  • Srivijaya article (kingdom in Indonesia), Khan (title) article
Comparing peers, the following may need to be there, but quality needs improvement
  • Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly
These comments are with respect to Wikiproject India selection - but if the same articles that are suggested for drop are also selected in another project's criteria, then so be it. Also, I went through the process/procedure for nomination, review, etc. Based on what I read there, it is probably going to be difficult to get some of the above articles for the test release 0.7.
I guess modern people, events and related information are well documented due to Computer age, Internet collaboration and such. Hence there is going to be such imbalance of information, links, hits, etc... Hope by 1.0 the information is sufficient to make it balanced. VasuVR (talk) 17:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Do read: WP:DEADLINE :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

FLC

Extreme points of India on FLC nom =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Date format poll confirmation

There is ongoing discussion on the talk page for the Manual of Style (including a series of polls) aimed at achieving consensus on presenting dates in American (August 15, 1947) or International (15 August 1947) format on an article by article basis. The poll gives full instructions, but briefly the choices are:

  • C = Option C, the winner of the initial poll and run-off. (US articles have US format dates, international format otherwise)
  • R = Retain existing wording. (National format for English-speaking countries, no guidance otherwise).

If you wish to participate or review the progress of discussion, you may follow this link. --Pete (talk) 09:02, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

TREAMIS World School

Back in June 2007 there was an Afd for TREAMIS World School, with an outcome that it would be saved to User:Jayvdb/Saved pages/TREAMIS World School, as I expected that more sources would arrive after the launch. Sadly I havent seen any news, or useful Indian webpages. The school has recently been approved for Cambridge International Examinations [1], so the school is definitely real and functioning; it just lacks reliable sources post-launch. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:01, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Radio (Band)

I thought this AfD might benefit from the opinion of someone with specific knowledge of entertainment in the region and/or access to potential sources in order to counter any potential systematic bias. Guest9999 (talk) 01:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal at India (cat)

I have put up a proposal to merge the article India (cat) with George W. Bush. Editors interested in expressing their opinion regarding the merger can comment at Talk:India (cat). Thank you. --Ragib (talk) 21:08, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Image needs replacement

Hello all...

An image used in the Mishing article, specifically Image:Assam popu div.jpg, has a little bit of a licensing issue. The image was uploaded back when the rules around image uploading were less restrictive. It is presumed that the uploader was willing to license the picture under the GFDL license but was not clear in that regard. As such, the image, while not at risk of deletion, is likely not clearly licensed to allow for free use in any future use of this article. If anyone has an image that can replace this, or can go take one and upload it, it would be best.

You have your mission, take your camera and start clicking.--Jordan 1972 (talk) 22:29, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Assam (there's noone there unfortunately) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian maps can help. Additional problems with the map include the fact that they are JPEG (instead of SVG), and probably WP:OR. It's a 20 min job to create a new map, but my concern is WP:OR. As for photographs, none available on Flickr so far. :( =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

On the main page for wrong reasons

There's wayyy too much bad news on the main page regarding India these days. I hope everyone's near and dear ones are fine. — Lost(talk) 15:44, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern, Lost. Yes indeed , it seems that we are going throug bad times. Hope we will have some good news to post soon :-). --Deepak D'Souza 04:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Labh Singh

Hello Indian Wikipedians.

If you see my last edit I replaced the names Khalistan with India. This is because there's no country called "Khalistan" and Punjab stated there are today in India. Although many Sikhs fought for "Khalistan" there's no such thing as a land called that, or there has never been. Moreover the flag next to it is an Indian flag. These people will just revert my edits and I'm new here. Can you please help? There's misinformation in Wikipedia. Any unfamiliar reader would think where's Khalistan. It's only a conceptualized state. Please look into it. Thx. 218.111.28.100 (talk) 18:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this into notice. --GDibyendu (talk) 18:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Call for Bigg Boss (Season 2)

Hi there. I would like to call for attention of all interested parties towards the article for Bigg Boss (Season 2) show, which is essentially an Indian remake of the international Big Brother (UK) format of reality shows. The article has been put into some shape and size (cf here) recently. However, in interest of quality content it could surely use some help from experienced editors and/or regular followers of the show. The wiki entry on the previous season Bigg Boss (Season 1) doesn't seem to help much, and surely doesn't set a benchmark, rather the vice versa may be true.

The article has been identified to be part of Big Brother WikiProject where it has been rated as High-importance on its assessment scale. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.225.17 (talk) 11:20, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Akbar the Great

This article really needs the attention of someone who undertands Mughal history well. The tone of the article has changed tremendously over the past year. There is a concerted attmept being made to put forth the view that Akbar was a religious fanatic whereas what we have learnt in shcools is that he was very tolearnt. Could someone please take a look. --Deepak D'Souza 10:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Census data required for districts of Madras Presidency for the period 1911-1941

Hullo friends, I am working with Madras Presidency article. I was able to obtain census data and details of export, import, etc. for the period 1871-1901 from The Imperial Gazetteer of India of the year 1908. But, I don't have the data for the period 1911-1941. I need your help in this matter.If you do have district-wise census details for the Madras Presidency please add them to the table here.Thanks-RavichandarMy coffee shop 14:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Image needs replacement - Hindustan Ambassador

Hello all...

An image used in the article, specifically Image:IMGP0134.JPG, has a little bit of a licensing issue. The image was uploaded back when the rules around image uploading were less restrictive. It is presumed that the uploader was willing to license the picture under the GFDL license but was not clear in that regard. As such, the image, while not at risk of deletion, is likely not clearly licensed to allow for free use in any future use of this article. If anyone has an image that can replace this, or can go take one and upload it, it would be best.

You have your mission, take your camera and start clicking.--Jordan 1972 (talk) 21:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we do have several free replacements. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Indian place article moves

User:Fundamental_metric_tensor is moving Indian place articles from "Place_name" to "Place_name,Indian state" format. Is it advisable to move them to this format unless there are more than one place with the same name ? I couldnt find a related guideline at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Indic) . Comments ? -- Tinu Cherian - 11:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

That's absolutely wrong. States should be mentioned only incase of same names. Places should be stand alone in all general cases. Should be informed immediately. Kensplanet (talk) 11:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Left a note on Fundamental metric tensor's talk page. -- Tinu Cherian - 12:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements) has some pointers. I wonder why FMT went ahead with such a monumental change without discussion. I know there is an old discussion somewhere about the use of Indian settlements, but am not willing to search any archives for the moment. We only use the city, state convention for dabs eg Bilaspur. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:00, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Is this discussion : Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(settlements)#India Nichal refering to ? -- Tinu Cherian - 15:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I am very sorry about this. I just lost it, I guess. I have undone most of what I did and I will undo the others ASAP. I will make up for this with some good wikipedia work. Again, I am sorry. I am invariant under co-ordinate transformations (talk) 17:17, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely no problem KensplanetTalkContributions 17:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
No problem buddy, this is how we learn things :) . Do contribute to india related articles -- Tinu Cherian - 07:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Coimbatore

Someone has moved it to SRKV, which seems to be name of a college in Coimbatore. Can someone please undo it? Thanks. --GDibyendu (talk) 19:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 23:11, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Basawon Singh (Sinha)

59.92.191.254 (talk · contribs) has raised the issue of copyvio on Basawon Singh.[2] Could someone who is more knowledgeable than me about the topic (and the sources in question) look into this serious claim? Apparently, User:KickahaOta created the article for an anonymous user in July 2006,[3], but the copyvio in question may have been introduced by 202.78.167.30 (talk · contribs)[4] in November. It's possible that reverting the additions of 202.78.167.30 may solve the problem, but I'm not sure. Thanks for any help you folks can offer. Viriditas (talk) 08:35, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I forgot to look at the talk page for 202.78.167.30. The user has been accused of copyvio before, so I'm going to be bold and just remove his contributions from the article. Hopefully, this should solve the problem. Viriditas (talk) 09:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Now, the article needs serious cleanup. The lede barely makes sense. Viriditas (talk) 10:43, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

L. Athira Krishna‎ article needs copy-edit

L. Athira Krishna‎ created by Infospeak and edited by Infospeak and Askdolly needs copy-edit. In my opinion, the editors are doing a dis-service to the artist, while probably thinking that they are doing a good job in putting as much information as they can gather from the web.

  • There is no lead/ introduction.
  • The structure is not like an encyclopedic article.
  • There is arbitrary bold text all over the article.
  • There are many WP:Peacock terms used.
  • The editors are trawling the web to add every possible article that exists out there in the external links section.

I have left messages on their talk pages, but they seem intent on removing the intro needed and copy-edit tags without any changes to the page. Can some of you help? VasuVR (talk, contribs) 03:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Infobox template issue

I noticed that on Talk:Anant_Pai the template's "An appropriate infobox needs to be added to this article, or the current infobox needs to be updated. Please refer to the list of India-related infoboxes for further information." tag does not "nest" itself with the rest of the infobox. This may need to be fixed. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Indo-Islamic world relations

Based on the various "Indo-other states relations" pages, I was wondering if anyone thought having an article India's relations with the Muslim world would be a good idea? I wrote a paper in school once about this. We can easily cover the Arab World, Central Asia and South East Asia. Then sub-saharan Africa can come up, and perhaps Albania/Bosnia at some point too.

As for the title what would be more appropriate "Indo-Islamic world realtions" or "Indo-Muslim world realtions"? Or perhaps "Relations between India and the Islamic world," or something to that effect? Lihaas (talk) 14:24, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't this already discussed? I think Indo-Muslim world relations is a poor choice of a title. We don't have Indo-Christian (Armenia, Vatican) or Indo-Judaism (Israel), so why Indo-Islamic? Instead, Indo-OIC might be more objective. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, certainly it was and I think Lihas want's someone to take up the job. I personally feel nothing wrong in the title as the term "Islamic world" is widely used across the globe and even by U.S. govt. But like my previous comment - the title is very generic and would need some focus on Indian stand. India has different views when it comes to troubled states like Pakistan and Bangladesh but friendly relations with Iran and Egypt to almost blank relations with central asian states. Also, though muslims are in minority here, India has vast muslim population which qualifies it as strong muslim population state on global scale. Thus, the article in itself will have no tasty meat to chew. Instead, concentrate on adding articles under the series of Foreign relations of India. Some major articles are missing like Indo-French relations, Indo-Japanese relations, Indo-Italian relations, Indo-German relations, etc... User:Vishnava has done some great job in adding to the series. I recently wrote this. I believe, such articles need more efforts. --gppande «talk» 19:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
What is the scope of the article. How does one cover such a topic? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

There is some significant growth here with India's relations with the Islamic world. It is even more imporant in the light of a religious-based partition. You say "India has different views when it comes to troubled states like Pakistan and Bangladesh but friendly relations with Iran and Egypt to almost blank relations with central asian states;" but relations don't have to be positive, they could very well be negative. Also there is a burgeoning growth with the former-Soviet Central Asian states (it's got a decent amount in my paper). There is also institutional relationship. But I think instead of having seperate articles on small states that isn't going to be too big we could clump it into this as a section. Then the title for "Indo-XXX relations" can link to this. The same thing has been done for Iranian-Arab relations.

I'm not surw what the old thread said, but if we can agree on a name, then I can work on this. Lihaas (talk) 20:35, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this is redundant, and also a bit POV-ish. Are their articles such as "India-Christian World relations"? "India-African relations"? We do have articles on relations with specific countries, and such info can be summarized into Foreign relations of India. India's relation with Maldives has little to do with her relations with Mauritania, so lumping together these into "relation with Islamic world" would be an artificial construct. Rather than making up "India's relation with <insert group name here>", I think the individual country specific articles should be developed. --Ragib (talk) 02:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, the christian world is has never been associated as the "christian world," nor has the the "african world," which is, in fact, just the continent not spread out.
But the "Islamic world" has been used in academic and even media circles.
Secondly, as I stated above, this would follow along the lines of articles like Iran-Arab relations, where having a multitude of short pages is a large waste. Clumped together the smaller countries that don't have as many relations can also be mentioned. If the article grows then it can be spun-off. But I don't think the likes of the smaller -stans and Oman/Yemen/Senegal/Somalia/SAR are going to be too big, too soon. Sudan may grow, that can be spun off. Palestine (could already be an article) has potential. Likewise Iraq, Iran (of which ir probably exists). Then of course, Albania and Bosnia could be added, where there is not strong ties. (see the Iran link for a better understanding. All the countries don't have to be inter-related, which is what I think you have perceived it as)
Of course, Pakistan and Bangladesh would be redirected already.
As an aside, Indo-Serbian relations would be good. Lihaas (talk) 19:25, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
If you were talking about socio-cultural aspects, then "Muslim world" would have been a scholarly-used term for countries with Muslim religious majority populations. However, the "Indo-XXX" relations are about politics. Politically, very little is of a common thread when it comes to relationship of India with Albania and Bangladesh, even though both have Muslim majority populations. As I said above, you can find arbitrary but "Scholarly / academically used" groupings of countries, and ask for India-XYZ articles, but that grouping will be of little value. India-Polynasian Country relations? India-Sub-saharan African country relations? India-(Far eastern country) relations? India-(South American countries) relation? India-(Cricket playing countries) relation? India-(Ex-British colonies) relation? For example, the last one, "Ex-British colonies", or Commonwealth-member states are a academically defined / media loved term for a group of countries ... yet, India-Commonwealth member nation relation is off little value as India does not have any special relation with a country because of their commonwealth membership. So, that article will A) be redundant B) be original research. The same as "Muslim world" relations. --Ragib (talk) 22:40, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you arguing about the semantics of the name or the concept? If it's the former, we can come up with something else, as I asked on here. If it's the latter, then I don't see how it can conflict with some of them. There are various Muslim countries where India has relations (although it is not always politics, by definition and in the article, as economic and other ties also constitute relations. even if the state doesn't work strongly on ties, there are natural ties that enhanced relations because of the presence of Indians, which in turn acts an impetus for the Indian state to strengthen relations (soft power, in a sense)). Again see the "Iran-Arab relations" page to understand what I'm saying. For the same reasons you are opposing this idea you would also oppose that, but the idea works. Where you have small countries it's not worth having a whole new page for a couple of lines.

And in what sense do you say there is very little politically with bangladesh? it's probably stronger (read: positive), at least at one point, than with pakistan. Lihaas (talk) 01:10, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

It is the latter -- the concept of arbitrary grouping of countries is original research in this context. I have mentioned my arguments above so I won't repeat them here. (See the comment on "India-former British colonies relations"). If you don't have much to say about small countries, Foreign relations of India is the perfect place to say what at all you have to say about them.
As for the last comment, I think you misread what I wrote. Please read again: "very little is of a common thread when it comes to relationship of India with Albania and Bangladesh". To clarify, by this I meant Albania and Bangladesh (or you can also write Mauritania in stead of BD) has very little of a common theme as Muslim majority nations so that you would want to create an article to try and find similarities. Hope this is clearer now. --Ragib (talk) 01:57, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

FAR listing

Kargil War has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.


Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena, VHP - militant parties?

Hi all, there is an edit war regarding Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and Vishva Hindu Parishad. I believe, they are not declared militant parties. There are some users continuously reverting them and declaring as militant parties. I need a third opinion on it. Could you please say your words? Thanks, Shyam (T/C) 13:32, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I feel that you are taking the meaning of the term "militant" a bit too extremely. A militant organization could be an organization like LTTE or JKLF. It could also be used for a political party or organization whose cadres do things which a typical political party would not do such as routinely using strong-arm tactics or army-like rituals(such as RSS). This does not mean the Shiv Sena can be equated with the JKLF. But yes in my opinion the tag "militant" is justified, going by the nature of these organizations. --Deepak D'Souza 13:57, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I am not sure about calling them 'militant', but radical surely fits. However, how does it matter what we think? If a news source calls it militant, keep that as a view of news source with citation, rather than keeping it as a view of WP. --GDibyendu (talk) 14:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I will duplicate what I said on the Talk page, the word 'militant' is being used on the article in the sense of aggressiveness in speech and actions by the group members. Their actions fit the definition of militant, and there are sources for this too. Its not meant to present them as blood-thirsty terrorists. Just aggressive. Maybe is there a milder word we can use instead of militant? --Abhishek Talk 14:43, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

In such circumstances, it would be best not to use such terms to describe them. Our job as editors isn't to interpret the philosophy of organizations, but rather to state facts. Please refer to WP:MORALIZE – it's a really quick read and I think it would help sort out issues on the article. Thanks AreJay (talk) 14:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Wiktionary:militant stands for either (a) aggressive and combative or (b) fighting, warlike, belligerent. Hence it will be difficult to deny that these organizations are Militant, if we take the first meaning - they have been very aggressive in recent past and caused trouble to communities / society in their area. But popularly Militant has been associated with terrorists and hence the view (or even worry) of some individuals that these organizations are not militant. VasuVR (talk) 14:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
We have to trust on Reliable sources. As added in the article citations by BBC, NY Times and CNN, the organizations are well known as Hindu militant groups as their aggressive behaviors and recent attack on Christian minorities in many parts of India . Therefore, the term shall remain perfect in the articles. --Googlean Results 14:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
"Radical right-wing" would be more appropriate. CNN etc may be reliable, but do have biases. Best to cite the sources inline (ie "according to..") who call them militant. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Just restore this version and end the discussion. Thank You. 59.95.112.145 (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

AreJay pointed to WP:MORALIZE which says we should not be add such terms to articles. The facts should point to the type of organization. Examples given in that article - we need not begin article on Hitler with Hitler was a bad man. Opening statement of these organizations should not have the word militant. VasuVR (talk) 15:10, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with other that 'militant' should not be overdramatized. However, in the case of the Bajrang Dal article, i don't see the absolute need to have it in the opening sentence. Having it mentioned in the lead is ok by me. If the term is removed altogether, with what should it be replaced? 'Communal'? --Soman (talk) 15:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The word militant is not derogatory in itself. If reliable sources use it, then it should continue to be used here. Imc (talk) 18:11, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Militant is the most-NPOV word, however it should not be in the first sentence of the article. It is certainly not perceived as a terrorist group by any majority of people in India, and judging by the tacit support among many Hindus, not especially radical either. Militant describes the fact they are unafraid of using violence to achieve their goals.Pectoretalk 22:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Apart from CNN & BBC (accused of biased versions) who used the term militant, it is also being used by many Indian Reliable sources, such as Outlook, Times of India, and Economic Times, etc. Interestingly, I see this term in CPIM, Hinduunity and such 'own' websites. Take a look at any search engine, we will find further wide range of such reliable results. --Googlean Results 02:50, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Pectore and Nichalp. We should not use the term "Militant" in the first sentence or in introduction. We can use it by stating, like according to xyz source etc. Thanks, Shyam (T/C) 10:10, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
There seems to be a consensus here..YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model!) 04:22, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Do we really1 2? --Googlean Results 05:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is, especially, first on raw numbers yes, secondly, taking into the account the records of the people involved in this debate, most of the people who are against calling it militant in Wikipedia's voice have a strong record of contribution, while the main dissenter, you, have engaged in sockpuppetry in the past to push POV. YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model!) 06:08, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Please don't include me in this 'consensus'. --Soman (talk) 13:44, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Certainly, VHP, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena all are extremist parties and should be categorized as militant organization like Lashkar e toiba, Al qaeda, SIMi ,etc. Many VHP members are charged with Terrorist attacks in Malegaon and VHP, RSS, and Bajrang Dal are suspected perpetrators for the blasts 29 September 2008 western India bombings 96.52.193.72 (talk) 17:29, 27 October 2008 (UTC)


Section break

Please pay attention to Reliable sources. According to the definition of militant, if an individual or party engaged in aggressive physical or verbal combat, they are called militant group. In this case, these parties are involved in many violence and communal/religious attacks in India. The recent attacks in Orissa, Karnataka and other South Indian states further underline their aggressive role as militant. Therefore, it is not a big issue or cause for much dispute in this case to use it in the intro itself which gives a clear image about them. --Googlean Results 02:24, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I see two proponents of the "militant" termiology who have engaged in sockpuppetry. YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model) 03:17, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
in this discussion? or any other related articles? I would like to comment that some users create legitimate uses of alternative accounts per Wikipedia:SOCK#LEGIT. --Googlean Results 04:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Not yet, but in the reverting, yes. And in previous religious disputes too. YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model) 05:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
That was a long back history & the user was blocked for that. After the block expired, there was no such involvement/co-edits by other/id ips in any of these articles. As a check user, you can see it. --Googlean Results 08:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Section break 2

Looks like Googlean (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was blocked by YM for "persistent reverting on a variety of pages despite consensus at WT:INB." I guess here he was reverting a reliable source (?) part which was removed by a possibly a SPA editor named Blondlottswires ( contribs ) . I think it we should have better discussed before the block. -- Tinu Cherian - 06:39, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

  • I'm generally not comfortable with discussing specific users or blocks in separately titled sections (like this) in this venue. I've changed the title of the section accordingly.
  • It's important to remember that even the most notable newspapers are not reliable in certain contexts or instances. The most reliable sources are generally peer-reviewed journal articles. I've just checked through the source given by Blondlottswires (which is one such source) and it checks out so there is no issue on that front. I made the following edit here to clarify what is noted in the source, and to fix the reference template.
  • But even in the absence of these facts being known, the consensus here was very sensibly to exclude the term in question from the lead. If it is to be included in the body, it should cite the sources in-line. Googlean's conduct was plain disruptive and violating that consensus and gave all appearances of pushing POV on the matter, so he was appropriately prevented from continuing. Good block. Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:08, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
    • I think the block of Googlean is highly questionable, considering that the blocking admin him/herself is a party in the dispute and expresses a political pov on the question of communalism in India (see for example [5]). I cannot see any evidence in YM's contributions that he/she would have tried to discuss issues about Googlean's edits with other admins. --Soman (talk) 13:44, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Where you have a problem with an admin action, the general thing to do is to (1) talk to YM, and if you still have the problem, (2) take it to WP:ANI then go from there. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:08, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
        • I posted a note at YM's talk page, asking about the sock accusations against Googlean. For the record, I don't agree with 100% of Googlean's recent edits, but I wouldn't label him/her as disruptive or that he/she hadn't engaged in discussions. --Soman (talk) 14:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
          • Good. I'm also glad you wouldn't label him/her as disruptive, because it might be interpreted as a personal attack if you did. To be specific, he was engaging in edit-warring which is one form of disruptive conduct on Wikipedia - this resulted in his 2 unblock requests being declined already. Engaging in discussions while engaging in revert wars does not make the conduct non-disruptive; particularly where the consensus was quite clear. I think this is the first time I've looked into his conduct, and it was on this isolated incident. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:22, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
            • If one were to look at the broader issue of conflict on Hindutva/Communal violence at wikipedia articles, there certainly has not been a shortage of pro-Hindutva edit warriors, and singling out Googlean as the villain is a bit unfair. I'm a bit disturbed how the WP:INB suddenly was coverted into a kangaroo court adopting binding resoultions. I posted a comment on 7 October, which could hardly be interpreted as giving clearance for a binding consensus. Likewise there have been other comments that have tried to problematize the usage of the term 'militant' or sought alternative wordings, but not necessarily categorically stating that the term be vanished completly from articles such as Bajrang Dal. --Soman (talk) 14:34, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
              • I wouldn't say all edit-warriors were ignored, if any. Blondlottswires himself would've blocked for edit-warring (but instead, was blocked indefinitely as a sockpuppet of another user). Referring to this noticeboard as a kangaroo court is disrespectful to the community of users who created this noticeboard, and those who have responded here, so please refrain from doing so again.
              • Instead of pursuing article RFC directly, this matter was brought to the noticeboard where a wider community of users (who are not involved in the article, or topic for that matter) could post their views - particularly those from this WikiProject. There were clearly objections to inserting the word militant in the lead section, and while it is not a binding resolution, it is a consensus. Consensus is not stagnant and it can change if you work with others towards a new consensus. However, continually reinserting that content into the lead after there is a consensus not to, is unacceptable on Wikipedia, as is revert-warring. It doesn't mean that the content will be vanished completely forever, if at all, or that content cannot be inserted in accordance with that consensus. Clear? Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:11, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Calm down guys, Nobody is aganist the admins and we are proud to have lots of good admins and b'cats from this part of world.I have great respect and apppreciation for YM and I personally dont agree with many of Goolean's edits but after this incident, YM's judgement on blocking Goolean may be not really appreciated, probably an more uninvolved admin should have questioned the actions of Googlean. Just my personal opinion, though -- Tinu Cherian - 16:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
    • To be brief: at 04:22, 20 Oct, YM says that he/she considers that there "seems to be a consensus". at 05:18 Googlean responds rejecting the notion of a consensus. At 06:05 Googlean is blocked by YM with the motivation "persistent reverting on a variety of pages despite consensus at WT:INB". Three minutes later YM responds to Googlean's comment at this talk page. No other user endorsed the proclamation of the consensus and Googlean was blocked before given a response to his comment on the consensus issue. A difference between a kangaroo court and a real court is that the rules of a kangaroo court are arbitrary, and i feel that the consensus was not properly established to warrant a blocking on the grounds of breaking it. I'm not opposed to consensus-building as a measure of conflict resolution, but this type of block is not favourable for creating a consensual environment. --Soman (talk) 20:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Well, my point is we're not a court - we're a community. :) I considered there was a consensus, though perhaps I should've made an explicit endorsement when I read YM's comment. That said, I know YM has been more tolerant than some other admins who would've had a much more aggressive block summary, citing other conduct issues like what I mentioned. I note, however, even if a consensus has not been established, edit-warring over a certain revision when there is a clear concern with it isn't good for a consensual environment either. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:50, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Section break 3

More 'heads ' roll down :) on these articles. User:Knownot and User:The Firewall are indefinite blocked . Strangely User:Googlean had been also blocked by User:Wknight94 hastily until the mistake was rectified by Nishkid . Another admin error hah? . Finally YM protected Bajrang Dal indefinitely. -- Tinu Cherian - 05:13, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I was fairly stunned this morning when I noticed it. About indefinitely protecting Bajrang Dal is really questionable, another case of admin abuse by YellowMonkey. I feel that YellowMonkey protected it when the moment it was reverted per the way YellowMonkey liked it to be (See his above 'consensus'). A temporary protection would have been better as people edit warring are anons and socks. Since there are incidents slanted towards recent happenings in India related to Bajrang Dal, which has to be added to the article, this protection is truly unwarranted at this juncture.--Googlean Results 06:03, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


Please use this noticeboard for discussing India-related topics. For administrative discussion, please direct the debate to WP:AN. Thanks! =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:11, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
(ec) This noticeboard was not created for the purpose of complaining or discussing about other users or their actions (however tempting that might be). That's what the admin noticeboards, and dispute resolution processes exist for. I've already expressed concern over section 2 but let it be there as a one-off, but this is getting out of hand. This discussion at this venue is now closed. Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:15, 23 October 2008 (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.

Caste-lists and notability

Friends,I observed that most of the caste-lists in Wikipedia are made of POV. Most of the names in such lists don't abide by Wikipedia:Notability.

Hence, I propose that only names of individuals who have Wikipedia articles be listed. I found an implementation of this thing in List of Parsis and found it to be good. I've implemented it in List of Iyers and to some extent in List of Iyengars. I am waiting for your nod before implementing it in other articles. Thanks-RavichandarMy coffee shop 17:49, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Earlier had a similar view. Later, found that including links encourages others to contribute. If someone is notable, but we dont have access to necessary information, by adding them to list including a non-existing page link, it encourages someone who happens by the page, to start the article. So, suggest that you think about it before you plunge in removing such names / links. I believe there is a Wikipedia policy page that suggests that you leave them there for the same purpose, but am not able to locate the topic now.
One other view is that with computers and internet lot of information is available of current people, but not so with bigger achievers of yester years. This skewed availability of information is already reflected in the content ratio of Wikipedia articles. VasuVR (talk) 17:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
In that case, we would rather comment out the individuals who don't articles of their own. What do you say? :-)
Most lists contain lot of caste-propaganda. I found some lists filled with names of civil servants. I am not sure if individuals satisfy notability just because they are of the Indian Civil Service. We need to know what achievements have these individuals made which sets them apart from the rest. Simply listing them as 'Businessman' or 'ICS' isn't going to solve matters. If we create red links for these individuals and do research upon them to establish notability or wait for someone else to try and establish notability, then maintenance is going to be difficult with so many red links around-RavichandarMy coffee shop 18:08, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
How does one define the notability of a caste? =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Also, does one presume that the notable person self-identifies with the caste (or do we presume that caste identification is fixed at birth and you can't get rid of it)? This whole list by caste when the notable individual has no known association with the caste leaves me with a not so good feeling. (I say, get rid of the list or only add people who have explicitly self-identified themselves with the caste in question.)—Preceding unsigned comment added by RegentsPark (talk • contribs)
Yeah, this is indeed true for individuals who are notable. But then what of the inclusion of doctors and engineers in caste-lists who don't satisfy notability at all. I feel that this issue too needs to be looked into :-). Anyway, thanks for idea. Your suggestion was good and I would love to implement it :-) -RavichandarMy coffee shop 09:09, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I also share this view. And BTW, I really wish that people had not created an article for each Rajput clan etc. --GDibyendu (talk) 09:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I believe that ravichandar's solution is good. Also we should source every article if possible on the list, on the list so that it is made notable and sourced.Pectoretalk 02:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Have a look at this thing: List of Thevars#Civil services. It list all members of the community who had cleared the Civil Service exams. I don't think such lists should prevail. Unless these individuals have made noteworthy achievements of their own, they should not be listed here. If we are to create lists for IAS officers then we will end up having lists containing names of thousands of individuals. Eventually, these lists end up being extremely lengthy and serve no purpose other than caste-propaganda. A worser sample was the List of Vettuva Gounders which was eventually deleted. It included a list of software professionals and BPO employees from the community and a Vettuva Gounders Welfare Society website link as a primary source of reference. This is an issue which plagues most of Wikipedia's caste-related articles and creates unpleasant caste wars and fights on talk pages. Thank you friends for your support. :-) I require the wholehearted sanction of the members of WP:INDIA in order to enforce this proposal. :-) -RavichandarMy coffee shop 08:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Caste related articles are a mess to begin with very few are encylopedic. Iyer is an exception, that too because of just one individual. Once that person takes a break, it will go backwards. It is very difficult to get people who are interested in these articles but also can objectively write about them. In my view the internet and wikipedia has become just another step in the process of Sanskritisation of most of these caste members to upgrade them. It would make an interesting subject in itself for an academic but as contributers to Wikipedia it is a frustating to watch. Lot of non Indian Wikipedians are given up on them. But if we strictly follow the WP:RS, WP:NOR criteria to clean them up, how long can it last? Who in the right mind can think that they can stand up to the process of Sanskritisation ? It is a like a huge tsunami wave that has not crested yet and is few thousand years old. It is in the very DNA of most South Asians :))( I am exaggerating a bit here) So what ever we do, without banning articles about caste in Wikipedia (which is never possible) is simply a temporary fix but still worth the try if one has the time for it99.247.129.133 (talk) 13:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your support :-). But I didn't mean Sanskritization, in particular. My viewpoint is that articles on different communities should be made of academic content. And when lists don't contain notable individuals, they, naturally fail in that count. -RavichandarMy coffee shop 15:51, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
just dropping by, it is standard practice to limit such lists to the people having articles in wikipedia--or where something can be quickly said that would undoubtedly qualify them, such as being a member of a national or state legislature.DGG (talk) 02:24, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

vandalism

Operation Meghdoot, Siachen Glacier and Siachen conflict are frequently vandalised by PAKISTANIs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.77.61 (talk) 18:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I wish to highlight the outstanding actions by User:JuJube for reverting Pro-Pakistani vandalism on operation meghdoot n siachen conflict. --60.50.70.65 (talk) 11:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Please read the so-called 'anti-Christian violence' articles. Users Recordfreenow, Vvarkey, Lihaas, Gabrielthursday, Otolemur_crassicaudatus, Googlean, SkyWalker, Honest_skeptic, Innocent_editor, Pk1122, have been using these Articles for blatant anti-India propaganda. They are backed by some Admins as well. It is likely that being Christian priests and missionaries, they have financially contributed to Wiki and so, Wiki cannot act against them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.68.98.197 (talk) 19:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

AfD: Marathi nationalism

I have nominated the above AfD as WP:OR & WP:HOAX. Comments from project members are welcome here. --GPPande talk!

Indian districts

Our List of Indian districts has recently lost FL status, and I am trying to revive it. I created this page: User:Nichalp/districts with all the data. But the number of districts are not tallying with the official number 610. Can anyone help verify the missing/redundant districts for each state? =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Below are the discrepancies -
Arunachal Pradesh (AR): Missing districts are - Anjaw, Lower Dibang Valley & Kurung Kumey.
Assam (AS): Missing district is Kamrup
Gujarat (GJ): Missing district is Tapi.
Haryana (HR): Missing district is Mewat.
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K): Extra district is Bandipore.
Jharkhand (JH): Missing districts are - Jamtara, Seraikela, Latehar, Simdega.
Madhya Pradesh (MP): Missing districts are - Anuppur, Burhanpur, Singrauli.
Punjab (PN): Missing districts are - Mohali, Tarn Taran, Barnala.
I had started alphabetically and finished till Punjab. All states below Punjab are too big :-)) --GPPande talk! 08:19, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Wow quite a few, but by adding these new districts, the number exceeds 610. Any ideas or has the government got it wrong? PS Bandipore is a new district. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:46, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Government surely has it wrong atleast in one place. This site says 610 districts while this says 604. Moreover, the total count on front page may not match if we count all districts on individual state pages. I am comparing the present list with later website. In there, new districts are shown by * and so no district websites are present for them. National Information Center(NIC) might be slow on that. --GPPande talk! 10:00, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Also, most states have individual article like Districts of West Bengal, these tables should tally with ones in those pages. --GDibyendu (talk) 08:42, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't this tie into the Lok Sabha constituencies? We could merge them too, somehow.
There are many Lok Sabha constituencies which do not fall completely into a district. Merging is not possible. --GDibyendu (talk) 04:41, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
But the List of Constituencies of the Lok Sabha#Karnataka page could use a review as they conflict with the election commissions disctrics and are thus not finished. Lihaas (talk) 01:14, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
There was a Delimitation Commission which has reorganized the parliamentary constituency areas. Last Karnataka Election has used this redefined constituencies for the first time. This commission's decisions are binding, so changes will be there everywhere, but we can defer the changes for other states till it is used for the first time. Will try to provide a ref for List of Constituencies of the Lok Sabha#Karnataka after reviewing. --GDibyendu (talk) 05:33, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Here is the ref. Check table B at page 30. But, I am not sure whether assembly constituency details are needed in the List of Constituencies of the Lok Sabha. I am trying to add those details in 'x (Lok Sabha constituency)' pages (not yet started with Karnataka). --GDibyendu (talk) 06:14, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Feel free to edit the district subpage to add or remove the district information. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:51, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Before we start doing changes to the page, we need to decide which website or websites are reliable. Clearly central government portal sites are not reliable. Should we instead trust individual state government ones? --GPPande talk! 12:15, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Hehe. The government of India websites contradicting itself for something as basic as districts! State government websites can help, but do they contain statistical information? =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:53, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, really NIC has to improve it's quality. Meanwhile, on project's primary page, India#Subdivisions I have updated the figure to 610 based on the existing reference used on it. --GPPande talk! 08:20, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Even state websites are not updated in case of Jammu and Kashmir. It has 22 districts now. For ref, check the refs in say, Kishtwar District. --GDibyendu (talk) 10:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I suggest we skip the problematic states such as JK for later. The other states need to be checked. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:17, 20 October 2008 (UTC)


Merger discussion

I was proposing a merger between the insignificant common minimum programme (in terms of content) and United Progressive Alliance. If you anyone has opinions can you discuss them on the UPA talk page? Lihaas (talk) 20:46, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

CMP is NOT only for UPA but majority of coalition goverments both at the state and centre. May be CMP article should be expanded further -- Tinu Cherian - 08:58, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Tinu. CMP is a term used by many alliances. Not a copyright of UPA. --GPPande talk! 09:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Sarvagnya (talk · contribs) has been repeatedly adding the following links accompanied with the template

to States Reorganisation Act and Marathi nationalism. The above mentioned user has been reverted by User:Utcursch, User:BillCJ and me. But they have been re-added. Are they applicable per WP:EL? Comments?--KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 08:52, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

These two links and the template has nothing to do with these two articles.--GDibyendu (talk) 09:15, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
No linkage IMHO. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:43, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Fundamental rights

I've just been trying to clean up Fundamental Rights in India, which was listed as a GA and then had someone complain there were seven fundamental rights listed, rather than the more popularly accepted six...

Unfortunately, I've got to the point where my not having any background in the topic is a bit problematic. I've corrected the worst bits, and tried to patch up the confusion over quite what the 86th Amendment did, but I'm still at a loss as to what to do with sections like this. It might potentially need rolled back to the GA version and working forward again... anyone with expertise in the area feel up to the task? Shimgray | talk | 09:31, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Attention needed on this article:

Bhumihar--Tznkai (talk) 13:35, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Battle of Longewala

ATTENTION !!!

This page (Battle of Longewala) is being vandalised by Pakistani editors. Information being removed. Please keep an eye on it. Regards, Joe.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.73.46 (talk • contribs)

Pakistani editors lol now you really lost it 86.158.177.181 (talk) 15:16, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, you seem to be from army background to address others with a big ATTENTION !!!  :-)) ....just kidding.
Yes, article has been edited with some good and bad edits by few IPs recently. --GPPande talk! 17:17, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
YES I was a former Field Commander actually and have served in 2 of India's wars. Now I am no longer in India. I am living with my son in another country. Ok, so Please undo those kinda edits. I stoped editing here because everyone undos my edits. I am old and got no patience to deal with all this. Hope you help. Thank you. Joe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.72.46 (talk) 11:17, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry if my comment offended you. I've stroked down my comment - will try to help as much as possible. --GPPande talk! 17:04, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
No, it did not offend me. I have no problem with it young man. Thanks for looking into it. I am not in favour of content that is pro Indian, but neither must it not be hiding crucial information, as how is being done by some of our Pakistani brothers. Please help me maintain neutrality of this article. Between you and me, this war means a lot to me. I don't mean you should act on a personal favour for my benefit. Wikipedia articles benefit millions everywhere in the world and it would surely be in Wikipedia's founder's mind to present clear, unbiased content. Thanks. Happy Diwali. Regards, Joe. 60.50.73.46 27 Oct UCT


WP:Indian Roads and Transport

In lines of Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads , I propose to start WP:Indian Roads and Transport, a workgroup of WP:INDIA. Thoughts ? Any one interested ?
This will be a common workgroup for Indian roads, highways, transport, railways , transportation in India etc -- Tinu Cherian - 07:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Definitely a need, especially since that roads infobox sucks because it is sooo US-centric. I also propose splitting them up. Since I've been rating articles recently, I propose some more workgroups:
  1. Transport (buses, railways (root level), autos etc)
  2. Roads (covers all roads, lanes, highways -- separate infobox needed)
  3. Railways (Indian railways, local suburban railways)
  4. Media
  5. Law (cases, laws, courts etc.)
  6. Government (this will be on government departments and functioning as opposed to politics)
  7. Companies (deals with organizations)
  8. finance (deals with financial aspects: budget, commerce, economy, banking etc.)
  9. education
  10. military

Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. I like the idea of breaking roads away from transport in general. That way, other important roads like Janpath, Rajpath, Willingdon Crescent, Anna Salai etc, which are sort of transport independent since they are historic, will all come under the project. We could, like the US version, break roads into national, state highways, local roads, and historic roads (down the, er, road, of course). --Regents Park (sniff out my socks) 16:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I like the sound of the proposal but why not just WP:Indian Transport to begin with? Once this grows then it would be sensible to create further task forces such as roads or railways The Bald One White cat 16:32, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with merging roads and transport, but railways definitely needs to be fleshed out. The scope of railways covers ~8,000 railways stations alone. In addition, I am interested in using Wikipedia:Route diagram template for key routes. It's worth an investigation how to apply it. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Given the size of India even a project on Indian railways is massive one in scope so I'm all for it, providing there are enough editors to sustain it in the long term. Good luck with that The Bald One White cat 19:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I like the proposal of roads and transport (and railways) being a separate taskforce - I don't think the remainder in Nichalp's list necessarily belongs in that category/workgroup. My view anyway. Ncmvocalist (talk) 00:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Unlike the state workgroups, spliting of other areas will have a serious problem,which is finding enough people of sustaining it. Even for the new state specific workgroups which we started recently, we havent been able to find enough active editors to work on them yet inspite of the huge popularity of WP in India.Think of this , I agree Roads and Railways are bigger topics by itself. How many articles do you think will come under Transport in India alone ( excluding Roads and Railways ) ? 50 ? 100 ? Not more... Therefore I am for Roads and Transport together, hopefully railways also in. IMO we can start with WP:Indian Roads and Transport ( which includes Railways , Rapid Transit and Metro Rails ). If it grows substantially in future and could gather enough interest , I dont see a problem splitting them ... I dont have stanch opinions on this.Thoughts ? -- Tinu Cherian -
My bad, I think my earlier note is too confusing. I meant to say that I want roads/transport/railways as one workgroup, separate from the others on media, finance etc. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
It's not really splitting rather, parallel coexistence. Powai Lake can be tagged under both geography and mumbai. From my observation, the Indian noticeboard has been active since 2005, but there are very few regular active editors. Some of out best users have been lost to inactivity, and others have not signed up to WP India. Also by having task forces, it would be easier to determine the priority of select articles. For example, K. M. Nanavati vs. State of Maharashtra might be a low priority India article, but a top priority law article. So, waiting for a quorum to start a taskforce would might actually be counter productive. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

What about ?

  1. Transport + Roads + Railways ( The reason I see is that they are all under Transport in India )
  2. Media and Communications
  3. Government and Law ( minus Politics)
  4. Companies (deals with organizations)
  5. finance (deals with financial aspects: budget, commerce, economy, banking etc.)
  6. education ( schools, colleges , universities)
  7. military ( we already have this)

-- Tinu Cherian - 08:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Folks, What about ?
  1. Roads + Transport
  2. Railways
  3. Media and Communications
  4. Government and Law ( minus Politics)
  5. Companies (deals with organizations)
  6. finance (deals with financial aspects: budget, commerce, economy, banking etc.)
  7. education ( schools, colleges , universities)

-- Tinu Cherian - 08:49, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Some suggestions for the hierarchy and the project names,
Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 14:12, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:46, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Perfect! We will work on the workgroups in the above structure. Ganesh, can you make the {{WP India}} parameters and assessment categories, while we work on creation of the new work groups.

-- Tinu Cherian - 11:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

2 more: Sports (to take care of hockey, basketball etc) and Science (ISRO, BARC etc.) =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:57, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I'm sure a lot of users will be interested in a sports workgroup - I'd go so far as saying some may even support a workgroup on Indian cricket. ;) Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:20, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
( YM will definitely jump in for sports , read cricket)  :) -- Tinu Cherian - 06:33, 23 October 2008 (UTC) )
I hope so. ;) Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Which is better ? Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian education or Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in India ?? I feel Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in India is better.

-- Tinu Cherian - 06:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly either way on this, but I do personally favour WikiProject Indian education, etc. as opposed to WikiProject education in India. This is probably just a difference in interpretation, but I don't think the taskforce should limit itself to things that occur within India alone; I find the version I prefer to be a bit broader. Same with Sports and Science. And of course, it matches our existing workgroup arrangement. Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
I favor Education in India. Mainly because it is more concrete. 'Indian Education' is a bit abstract and would appear to refer to a system of education known as Indian. But, I'm easy either way. --Regents Park (sink with my stocks) 14:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Same here. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:00, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Education in India, Sports in India, etc., are better. Indian sports sounds like sports that were founded in India, Indian science sounds like a separate branch of science. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 15:59, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Even I prefer "_______ in India" --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 16:24, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Looks like we're edging towards a consensus :) - however, I think we should review the way our existing workgroups are named before that, to ensure consensus is in a way that naming is consistent across the board. Ncmvocalist (talk) 19:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Section break

Gr8, I will go ahead with the creation of these workgroups

Another other name changes needed? Ganeshji / help me with the {{WP India}} parameters -- Tinu Cherian - 11:54, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Using VasuVR's rationale, I think it should be WikiProject Transport in India, WikiProject Railways in India and WikiProject Media and communications in India for consistency. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:28, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Super. Please keep some items in mind, as I have noticed some spelling issues that I have been addressed in past couple of weeks. Categories are being speedy renamed because of issues like below.
    1. XXX-Class Indian YYY articles of unknown importance - in place of Unknown importance. Template tags them to "Unknown", but project team has created "unknown". This also leads to many Wanted Categories for the Unknown categories that are generated by template tags.
    2. Category-Class Indian YYY articles - in place of pages. Template tags them to pages, but project team has created articles category. Here we have bigger naming convention issue - all other projects in Wikipedia use Category-Class xxx articles, but we are using pages. This also leads to many Wanted Categories.
    3. Delete old categories after creation of new categories and tagging of appropriate articles. For example, Indian (sports) category to be deleted after Indian sports category is completely populated.
Kindly take care of these and similar issues, to extent possible. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 12:30, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Indian economy / Economy of India / Economy in India ?
  • Indian roads / Roads in India ?
  • Indian companies / Companies in India ??

-- Tinu Cherian - 14:54, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to delay you further (that is, I hope this is not going to start another round of comments)... Economics of India is more appropriate, IMHO. Indian companies seems better than the other and Indian Roads seems good too. As an aside on my differing opinions on different areas, I feel we have to use whatever seems more appropriate for each area of interest, as the name will have different connotation for each area. When it comes to such conventions we have to use whatever is good in the broader interest for each particular case, rather than conformity to an arbitrary convention. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 15:17, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
While I think that it's fair to assess each as an individual case, I have a strong view that there needs to be some consistency in the rationale applied, and I don't think your assessment adequately does that. "Indian economy" is indeed a separate branch, and unique in the way it functions. This is why each nation's economy is commonly known in that way, as opposed to something like "Economy of India" or "Economy in India", for example. I therefore strongly support "Indian economy". Could Indian roads be considered a separate branch as if we called one Indian Science? I highly doubt it; seems more sensible to call it "Roads in India". Same goes for companies. However, that's just my view. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:58, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Section break 2

I am working on the creation of the workgroups except the one with there is no naming consensus yet.

-- Tinu Cherian - 09:03, 28 October 2008 (UTC)


Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali to all! =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:50, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Have a safe Diwali and enjoy! --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 08:07, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Happy Diwali / Deepavali to all -- Tinu Cherian - 08:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Happy Diwali to all! AreJay (talk) 16:26, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Happy Diwali !!--Dwaipayan (talk) 21:30, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I wish a very belated Happy Diwali to everyone! GizzaDiscuss © 22:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Categories and Workgroups

Recently noticed some red category links in some talk pages and followed it up. Found that there are some categories created with capitalization issues, while the template {{WP India}} associates the talk pages with slightly different category name. This lead to some clean-up (speedy renames of categories) to bring them in line with templates' auto processing. A common difference is in the word "Unknown" in categories like B-Class Indian television articles of Unknown importance, the category for which is created with unknown (lower case u). Hence the category stays empty, while the articles get associated with non-existing category with capital U.

Another key difference I found is in the Category-Class categories, like Category:Category-Class Tamil Nadu pages. There is no such category, but all the 91 Tamil Nadu pages get associated with it (as of 28 October, 9:30 AM GMT). There is a category Category:Category-Class Tamil Nadu articles, which does not have any pages in it. On further search for other Category-Class categories, I found that most other projects in Wikipedia use articles, like say Category:Category-Class Adelaide articles, (probably based on which our categories were created), but our templates populate the pages category as shown above in example of Tamil Nadu.

Pages seem more appropriate, as such Categories are not articles - they are list of categories automatically associated for the Indian Wikiproject. Conformance with other Wikiproject conventions would mean that our templates be modified to associate Category-class tagged talk pages with articles instead of pages (is this simple or not - experienced Wikipedia editors would know, I guess). The easier alternative is to stick to pages and just Speedy rename the Category-class categories that end with articles to pages. Please repl with your viewpoints and consensus will help the project team to address appropriately.

As an aside, for those who are not familiar with these and see other Indian categories in the Wanted categories list, like Category:WikiProject India (sports) articles, please see the Template:WP India. These are normal and for gathering statistics before creating new sub-groups, like the Sports sub-group being created by Tinucherian this week. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 11:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I've not seen the term "pages" used in any category. Has anyone seen the term used? =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:32, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Please see the above links themselves (for example Tamil Nadu). You can also see the Wanted categories list (special page). Some more examples are :
    1. Category:Category-Class Nagaland pages vs Category:Category-Class Nagaland articles
    2. Category:Category-Class Himachal Pradesh pages vs Category:Category-Class Himachal Pradesh articles
    3. Category:Category-Class Puducherry pages vs Category:Category-Class Puducherry articles
to quote a few from the special page. Here, the templates seem to be populating the pages category (which has not been created), while a category with articles in the name exists without any articles/pages associated with them. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 14:27, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I meant other than Tamil Nadu. It looks like a typo of some sorts if it is only seen at TN. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:19, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I fixed the issue...do give the software some time to refresh the categories. The term "pages" is used for non-articles (For example: Category:Non-article India pages). Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 19:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


Indian music Navbox templates

The two templates {{Indianmusic}} and {{Indian Music}} have very similar names, but quite different content. The second one seems to be oriented towards Classical music only and hence name is misleading. Rename to something like {{Indian classical music}} ? VasuVR (talk, contribs) 16:44, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest rename 1. to {{Music of India}} and 2 to {{Indian classical music}}. List this on WP:RM. What about other forms of Indian music including fusion etc? =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
The first one previously used to be at one called Music of India (sidebar) so it redirects there anyway. I've already moved the second one. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Are Padmi Shri/Bharat Ratna etc "titles"

A fellow is going around adding all these things along the lines of "Padma Shri Rahul Dravid" and "Bharat Ratna Sunil Gavaskar" and what have you. Are they proper prefix titles like "Sir Donald Bradman" or "Sir Syed Ahmed Khan" or just the name of an award. After all, if someone wins a world title we aren't going to call them "World Champion Vishwananathan Anand" at the top of the page. YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model!) 05:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment: Obviously not...but hey! wait! why not? If we can have Sir Donald George Bradman, AC, why not Padma Shri? Huh? Eureka! Hehe, --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 05:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
So it's wrong? Remove them? YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model!) 06:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes. These are awards, not titles. --GDibyendu (talk) 07:07, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
The Government of India site does not mention any title to go along with it. Indian media tend to use it as a title in articles / news items. So do people extolling such awardees (for example, in Invite cards and banners of events in which the awardees participate). VasuVR (talk, contribs) 07:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Agree. All titles, includng heridatary ones are abolished as per the Indian Constitution (except proffesional ones such as Dr. or Prof.). As pointed above it is an award not a title. I remeber reading somewhere that as per this rule it is not legal to prefix Padma Shree etc to names but people do it anyway. --Deepak D'Souza 10:07, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
they are awards as well as titles. --Redtigerxyz (talk) 11:42, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
What if I start using these awards as title to my name on WP? This how my signature will look. --The holder of Barnstar of Peace, two times conferred Original Barnstar and one Editor's Barnstar - GPPande talk! 11:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
There are many awards and titles conferred on achievers. Should we include all of them? From Wikipedia standpoint, the name of the article should be just the name of the person. The titles and awards can be mentioned in separate section in the article. Let us take example of M. S. Subbulakshmi - she has been awarded Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan and Bharat Ratna, other than various other titles from the Musical fraternity and institutions. How should the introduction be worded? Please refer to Garfield Sobers and Donald Bradman too. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 12:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
No, not needed. As Deepak mentioned, they are awarded, not titles. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, it shouldn't be before the name in such biography-articles. But, we can encourage a newbie of that sort by opening a category of all Bharath Ratna recepients or Padmashri recipients (if it doesn't exist already), so that he can add all relevant biographies to that cat. :) Alternatively, suggesting he/she make a list (article) of such recepients may also be worthwhile. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Some of the awards already have categories for recipients of each such award (including Bharath Ratna, Padma awards, Sangeet Natak Academy award and fellowship, Sangeeta Kalanidhi award). VasuVR (talk, contribs) 16:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Instead of category - I would suggest the award should be included in the infobox template. Most readers which are not familiar with the concept of WP category or who just read the article summary for high level information about the bio read the infobox template first. I think the trend as seen on Amartya Sen article should be used. --GPPande talk! 19:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Ok, this discussion is pretty much sealed. However, I thought it would be good to mention the legal standpoint, just in case this issue comes up again. The following is a precis from the book "Our Constitution" bu Subash C. Kashyap. pg 109-110 sec:Abolition of titles.

Article 18 prohibits the State to confer titles on anybody....exemption in case of military and academic distinctions....

The Supreme court has held that these awards(BR, PV, PB, PS etc) are not titles within the meaning of article 18 and if any awardee uses the award as a title by suffixing or prefixing it with his or her name , he should forfeit ht award(Balaji Raghavan v. Union of India, AIR 1996 SC770)

Wikipedia Academy

Kiruba Shankar, a Chennai blogger, is organizing a Wikipedia Academy at Chennai on 22 November 2008. This is similar to the iCommons Academy at Johannesburg. From the website, "Wikipedia Academy is an initiative to encourage Wikipedia readers to contribute back to the online encyclopedia by editing and writing. Less than 0.1% of wikipedia users edit or add information and this is an initiative to encourage more users to actively contribute. As part of the initiative, we start off with a two hour, hands-on workshop taught by people experienced in Wikis."

If you are intestered, please sign up here. I hope this concept will spread to other cities and increase the awareness of wikipedia in India. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 13:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

How do I qualify ? Participant or Volunteer ? :)-- Tinu Cherian - 15:47, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Need new articles

Abhinav Bharat and Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahideen are starting to show some potency. Heck, the former is more than 50 years old, founded originally by Savarkar, then disbanded in 1952 (or so it is said), and coming up again this. See the west india and guwahati bombings for these two, Template:Campaignbox India terrorism Lihaas (talk) 09:49, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguating India/Indian

Some people (example: Paxse) are disambiguating Indian weirdly, for example, in Johnny Lever article, to Indian (film). Within last few days, I saw someone changing '[[India]]n state of x' to '[[Indian (disambiguation)|Indian]] state of x'. Since, a lot of changes like these have been made now, I thought that it is important to bring this to the notice of this project.--GDibyendu (talk) 05:36, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

GDibyendu, could you tell him not to dab Indian anymore? The Manual of Style changes for August has done away with wikifying demonyms. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:18, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Howdy GDibyendu and Nichalp. Taking my name in vain I see - no wonder my ears were burning. To set the record straight. I'm removing links to DAB pages not creating links. In the example above on the Johnny Lever page my DAB link edit (diff [6]) was in his list of films. I changed the incorrect and unwanted (also per MoS) link to the DAB page Indian to the correct and specific link to the page for the film Indian (film) where Johnny played a small role. Nichalp, thanks for pointing out the August MoS changes, this will make the nationality links to DAB pages much easier to fix. I have the DAB pages Indian and India on my to do list. I will get them sorted with no incoming article links and delink where appropriate. Cheers, Weirdly-DABbing-Paxse (talk) 11:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
OK. That one was a right change. But, most of the others were not so useful. For example, this one, or this one. Can you explain how are these changes useful? Thanks. --GDibyendu (talk) 13:10, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Talk:British India

The scoping of what constitutes British India (vis-a-vis British Raj etc) is ongoing at Talk:British India. Please weigh in if you have opinions on the scope. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:00, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Virachilai

I recently stumbled upon Virachilai. I think it is talking about a real place in India, but it needs a lot of work. Any help is appreciated. Dragons flight (talk) 01:16, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Delhi on main page

Just a head's up: Delhi will be on the main page tomorrow. I'm sure we are going to get a lot of comments on the talk. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me how does a promoted FA makes it on the Main Page. KensplanetTalkContributions 13:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:49, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Not that way. By default. KensplanetTalkContributions 13:54, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
User:Raul654 decides, (User:Raul654/Featured article thoughts has some musings) although he also considers articles suggested based on a point system. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, what we could do is propagate this on social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook that delhi will be on the Main page of Wikipedia;;;;A Great achievement;;;;;;; and ask for some general comments from all the people regarding improvements, suggestions, etc.. We could give them the Talk page link. KensplanetTalkContributions 14:19, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. It would serve to promote Wikipedia editing, and also perform an external peer review. For Amateur radio in India I e-mailed the Amateur Radio Society of India for a review. At least seven people came back to me with critical feedback including the organization president, and directors of scientific organizations in Lucknow and Trivandrum. That's the kind of peer review we need from subject matter experts. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow, this is great. Delhi will finally be in the main page. Will try to keep an eye, as much as possible. Thanks Nichalp for the info. I have not read the whole article for many months. Really don't well how it has evolved since it became FA.--Dwaipayan (talk) 15:00, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Congrats and thanks to Dwaipayan's efforts on getting Delhi to FA status. Btw lots of changes are happening to Delhi article today. everybody , Please keep a close eye on the article -- Tinu Cherian - 08:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Filmfare Awards as recurring items in WP:ITN

I have started a thread here to check if Filmfare Awards can be made recurring items on ITN as Grammy Awards & Academy Awards. Please pen down your thoughts. --GPPande talk! 10:45, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject India and AmE

I assumed that BE is the standard for India-related articles as mentioned on the India project page style manual itself. The Delhi article, however, is replete with Americanisms. I would like to have a clarification on the issue. Maquahuitltalk! 07:03, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

  • Yes, BE is the general standard for India articles. I'm not sure about the reason for deviating from it, except possibly that no one noticed until now - thanks for bringing it up. :) I don't think anyone will mind if those spellings are adjusted accordingly. ;) Cheers again, Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:43, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
BE is the standard format, but the -ize is also popular (Oxford English) for scientific articles. PS. Both spellings are legally recognized by the government of India. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes I know that both spellings are legally accepted by the GoI. But I just remembered reading somewhere in the India Project that we were to use BE for the same. The Delhi article however, as I saw, is almost completely written in AmE. Maquahuitltalk! 08:05, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Legislative assembly elections

Do we have pages for these? I haven't seen it for the recent ones. I think we certainly can. I could start some, but for the historical elections we can tag it on to the main page of WP India as a to do. (that certainly helped getting the LS pages up) Lihaas (talk) 08:29, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Looking for something like this:Tamil Nadu state assembly election, 2006?--GDibyendu (talk) 08:36, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, thank you. this is pretty accurate. but it is not consistent for the whole country. and a central database to link to them would be nice too. Much like the LS constituencies have.
Expanding State Assembly elections in India would be greatly beneficial Lihaas (talk) 09:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Refresh articles after reverting vandalism of template

Can someone shed some light on how to do this? Recently {{Hdeity infobox}} was vandalized. I have removed the additional text. How long does it take for pages to show the latest version? Is there some way to force related pages' caches to be refreshed? Any other Do and Don't in such scenarios? Thank you in advance. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 04:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

You can force individual pages to refresh by using &action=purge at the end of the URL. Usually you just let the software take it's time to update all the pages. This is the reason high visibility templates stay protected since it takes up a lot of system resources to update all the pages. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 14:04, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I have semi-protected it. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you both. I had initially intended to the software to take it's course (and intend to leave it at that for most cases, if I come across any). After about 6 hours I found a message at Talk:Agni, that it had not yet got reflected in that page. Hence wanted to know a bit more about the refresh process. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 09:24, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I want to use one of these photographs here in the "Transport and Communication" section in the article on Madras Presidency. The photograph is of Chennai bus at a petrol pump and was taken in 1920. The photo would be of great value to the article.However, when i click the photo open I find a copyright notice in the name of Vintage Vignettes despite the fact that the photo is in public domain according to Indian copyright laws. Is it permissible to use the image?

I als wish to know if it is permissible to use images from the Hindu Photo Library which are in public domain as per Indian copyright laws. Thanks-RavichandarMy coffee shop 07:13, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Depends when it was first published. If it was clicked in 1913, but released from private collection to be published in 1965, it remains copyrighted. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh! What should I do in such a case? Should I contact the authorities or is it permissible to release the photograph with a "fair-user notice". I feel that the photo is rare and is of high-importance to the article-RavichandarMy coffee shop 07:30, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Ask them when it was first published. Try and avoid uploading fair use images. Instead, go for creative commons v3. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, ok! Thank you very much :-) -RavichandarMy coffee shop 07:39, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:Discrimination Bihar

Template:Discrimination Bihar has been nominated for deletion and been relisted again to generate more discussion. Kindly participate in the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Cheers Wiki San Roze †αLҝ 13:47, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Gaalis

Please do add your knowledge of the best words that the language you speak offers, to this page: User:Lupin/badwords. Now there, I can see a smile on everyone's face. :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:18, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Haha yes! Just have a question. What does the question mark do? Does it make the part written after it optional when the filter detects the words? GizzaDiscuss © 22:15, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
See Regular expression (commonly known as Regex in programming circles). The question mark makes the previous character optional. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

India Week on Russian Wikipedia edition

Dear colleagues, Russian Wikipedia edition is planning a week of India on Nov 7-17, 2008. During this period, the Theme Week project participants and other Wikipedia users will try to cover as many India-related topics as possible. Your contribution to this project would be very much appreciated. The Deceiver (talk) 08:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Let us know if you need any assistance. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:44, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

NIIT

NIIT article was deleted shortly by an admin. I feel it might be a relevant article for WP:IND, any suggestions? --STTW (talk) 13:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll hop over to the admin's page. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Sikh extremism

This article Sikh extremism is under attack from religious zealots. Inspite of having so many references, the version of article is riddled with tags in order to make it look bad and uncredible: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sikh_extremism&oldid=250653732

I have cleaned up the article, but I'm afraid that this version won't long last as Canadian gaddars would vandalize it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sikh_extremism&oldid=250677918

Requesting all secular editors to keep a watch. 59.164.100.127 (talk) 17:23, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I suggest a merge with Khalistan movement. With so many articles speaking the same story...the situation is getting to hot to handle! --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 07:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

Back in September 2008, somebody nominated this article to FAR without notifying this project. The article was subsequently demoted due to lack of supporting editors as can be seen from here. Only 2 votes came in and both were to remove the FA status. Article is currently unassessed. I feel the article is quite elaborate and with little more help from editors it's former glory can be restored. --GPPande talk! 12:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It's not a vote. Would you be in a position to get this refeatured? =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Still an uphill task for me :-) --GPPande talk! 14:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Extremist editors

I request all Indian editors to keep a watch on these extremist Canadian Gaddar (Khalistani) editors:

This editor (Special:Contributions/Roadahead) has desecrated Sikh Rajput article and attacked Mair Rajput article because they contained information that Hindu families in North India, specially from Punjab & Haryana have been making their eldest sons Sikhs since Guru Gobind Singh ji called on all Hindus in the region to give him their eldest sons to raise the Khalsa army. Kindly rewrite Khalsa article to include this important fact.

Atulsnischal (talk) 06:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Roadahead —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.164.186.29 (talk) 16:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

The ip also tagged Citedfrequently (talk · contribs) as user:Hkelkar's suspected sockpuppet. --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 16:34, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Citedfrequently (talk · contribs) is a Hindu extremist editor and shows same editing pattern as Goingoveredge. Roadahead edited from Intel proxies. And Aulakh said he works in Intel. Both show same editing patterns.
Please add Operation Blue Star to your watchlist.
Wikipedia should ban these Hindu and Sikh zealots. Best, Dave. 59.164.186.29 (talk) 16:40, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
You may wish to create an account. Doing so is free, requires no personal information, and provides several benefits. --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 17:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Vithoba: Application for A class

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I apply for A class for this failed FA candidate, currently GA. I did not know where else to apply? I have addressed issues about the reliability of references, simply by replacing them with other references. User:Alastair Haines and User:Anishshah19 have graciously agreed to look into the article for refining the text and doing a great job there. I would love to hear from Project India, about the what improvement is needed in the article (especially if the references used now can be considered RS) and welcome anyone who wants to improve the article herself/himself. After the copyedit, i am rethinking a FAC.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Redtigerxyz (talk • contribs) 13:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

  • The place to make the request is at the assessment dept. page. However, I would encourage you against doing so at this time - instead, the dept. generally encourages editors to take back to FAC to clarify that the concerns have been satisfied in the eyes of the wider community - in this case, particularly sourcing. If the article fails at FAC again (but solely on prose), then considering A-class would be worthwhile. In any case, best of luck. On behalf of the assessment dept., Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:32, 14 November 2008 (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.

Indian Railways at FAR

Indian Railways has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured quality. 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 "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Districts of a state

Asked this question in district workgroup discussion page, but nobody replied so far. So, asking it here. The articles like "Districts of X" (where X is a state/UT of India): shouldn't they be like list-type articles(compare: List of counties in Arizona, which is an FL)? In that case, should we move "Districts of X" to "List of districts of X" or similar? Thanks.--GDibyendu (talk) 07:26, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If we're going to make it a stand-alone list like the Arizona one, then yes, the title should reflect that. See Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Either that or brushing up existing lists like the one with the LS constituencies would be great. Lihaas (talk) 12:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Help needed

I came across the article Mannargudi Raju Sastri, which is desperately in need of help from someone familiar with Hinduism topics. I suspect large portions of the article are plagiarized (I removed the blatant stuff that I was able to find), and aside from that, the article is just very poorly written, completely unreferenced, and not wikified. I have tagged it with cleanup templates and left some grumpy notes at Talk, but that's about all I can do, because I'm very unfamiliar with the subject; if anyone is willing to come rescue this article, it would be greatly appreciated. —Politizer talk/contribs 08:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Hindu terrorism

Hindu terrorism has been unfairly deleted citing CSD G4 as the reason.

However, CSD G4 is invalid since it was very different from the version that was deleted earlier. It was not substantially identical to the deleted version (which is a necessary condition for deletion). The term "Hindu terrorism" has become very common after the arrests of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and http://www.google.co.in/search?q=Lieutenant+Colonel+Srikant+Purohit. Here is the proof: http://news.google.co.in/archivesearch?q=%22hindu+terrorism%22&hl=en&ned=in&sa=N&sugg=d&as_user_ldate=2008&as_user_hdate=2008&lnav=d0&ldrange=1990,2007

Requesting all secular editors to keep a watch. 59.164.100.127 (talk) 17:26, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Even though the media might be using provocative words sometime to catch eyeballs here on WP we follow neutral stand. Associating two words Hindu and terrorism is violation of neutrality. Check how extremism is addressed in titles in WP by looking at other articles and renaming this article title. It might help in gaining consensus. BTW, get yourself a name. --GPPande talk! 18:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Is it ok to associate two words Sikh and extremism as in Sikh extremism, if NOT then delete it as well. Lets see how secular you are. --Singh6 (talk) 18:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Oops ! Is there a competition? Whats the prize? --GPPande talk! 19:18, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Shame on your secularism slogan then. Do not become a coward by manupulating the reply. Answer what I asked, let me put it again --> Is it ok to associate two words Sikh and extremism as in Sikh extremism, when its not OK to put Hindu and Terrorism words together as in Hindu Terrorism, Do Justice, become just.--Singh6 (talk) 20:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Hindu terrorism? Oh dear! Keeping minority view out and neutrality in mind, the best you would get is Hindu nationalism. It is the nationalistic ideologies that are sometimes termed asby critics as terrorism. Wiki San Roze †αLҝ 19:41, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
As Wikiality says, it is normally one extreme form of relgious nationalism that calls another terrorism (Hindu calling Muslim, Sikh, and Christian, Muslim calling Hindu and Christian etc.). Ignoring these fringe views, it is rare that many reliable sources coin terms like Hindu terrorism. Whenever terrorist activities are associated with nationalism, it is probably better to add a section in the Hindu nationalism article for example, unless the topic is distinct and notable enough. GizzaDiscuss © 21:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with DaGizza and Wikiality123. Hindu terrorism is a fringe theory....but...Well, if the Malegaon blasts turn out to be the handy-work of extemists it can be termed as an act of "Hindu terrorism". IMO, Hindu terrorism is in its nascent stage (I am Nostradamus!) ...so any article about it now is a NO, NO per WP:REDFLAG. --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 09:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
It would all boil down to how many of such incidents would warrant to make a standalone. Air India jet bombing of 1985 carries all the hallmark of terrorism, but how many such can be listed out as Sikh extremism. If all the incidents would point to Khalistan movement, then thats where it belongs. Anyways, as far as I know extremism is not the same as terrorism. Wiki San Roze †αLҝ 12:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, the term has been coined. Even BJP accepts that it exists. It's in the Rajya Sabha. It's only a matter of time before somebody recreates the article with a hundred sources and you Indian editors, with your blindfolded reasoning, will not be able to get it deleted. Wahe Guru da Khalsa, Wahe Guru di Fateh. 59.164.105.254 (talk) 17:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
It's not the number of sources, it's the reliability of sources that counts on WP. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
59.164.105.254 in the source you metioned the BJP denied its existence.

I think the deletion is good. I read the article on Islamic terrorism, and it mentions that that Islamic terrorism is religious terrorism by those whose motivations are rooted in their interpretations of Islam. Do we have similar sources for a similar interpretation that merits a "Hindu terrorism" by seeking justification in religious books? Too premature to list such an article at this stage. Hindu extremism on the lines of Islamic Extremism might be a more apt title. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I support the deletion. I tend not to care much for articles labeled "<insert religion> terrorism" since the very title presupposes a moral viewpoint on the issue. I think "Hindu extremism" is probably a better article and could be modeled out of the Islamic extremism article. Rightly or wrongly, our western neighbors will tell you that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia should distance itself from creating such articles. Thanks AreJay (talk) 18:32, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Right now, all acts of violence perpetrated by Hindutva groups can be mentioned in the article Hindu nationalism. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 18:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think so: Hindu nationalism is an ideology, but not necessarily by using force that causes collateral damage. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I tend to agree here. Terrorism is a very harsh word to associate with a religion generating POV. Maybe extremism suits the class but still can be called PoV. I think it lies in gray area. Nationalism is apt as it tends to adhere to nationalistic idea and the suits the definition. --GPPande talk! 19:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
What's POV about "extremists"? Those who hold extreme [usually right-wing] views not shared by the rest of the community are extremists. =Nichalp «Talk»= 20:17, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Somewhat offending. Many political parties/organizations who are known to be extremist tend not to accept it. As I said, it lies in gray area. Even Hindu Taliban is acceptable here. --GPPande talk! 21:01, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but the article Hindu Taliban is about the term and its usage in the media, and not about a so-called group called the Hindu Taliban and their activities. That some organizations don't accept that they are extremist doesn't make them any less extremist :) Nationalism is different, because it's an ideology that may or may not have an extremist edge to it. Therefore to say that Hindu nationalism is the same as Hindu extremism wouldn't be accurate. AreJay (talk) 00:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
True, weather they accept being extremist or not does not make them different. Actually, these terms nationalism, extremism, regionalism, Parochialism etc. are all debatable. Media tends to use them in the way it suits. Also, Hinduism is debatable as the term is sometimes used to describe the Indian way of life in country and not attached to Hindu religion. I feel all such articles should be merged in a parent article and the varied level of their staunch ideas should be put into this main article. Organizations deserve separate articles not varied level of staunch ideas. There should be no separate article for each term as it tends to create more friction. Point is :- Articles based on terms should be discouraged as they tend to be PoV-ish. --GPPande talk! 08:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I oppose the creation of Hindu extremism per Abecedare and Soman's views at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Hindu_extremism. It would be just another POV fork copypasted from Hindu nationalism#Critcism and will be a melange of Hindutva, Hindu nationalism and RSS. Another "problem" article in the making which would be a "headache" for WP:Indian editors and admins. The only Hindu extremists I can name is Sangh Parivar (with outfits Bajrang Dal and the new Abhinav Bharat)- they can have their extremist views covered in their respective articles. Not another article which becomes a battleground for propaganda and fundamentalists. In all an oppose per WP:POVFORK. --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 07:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. Your lifting of Abecedere and Soman's views from an AFD is taken out of context. I can provide you a copy of the deleted draft in your userspace so that you can determine why the deletion came about and was at that point of time perfectly justified. Times have changed since 2006; we know have people with extremist ideas trying to kill people. This cannot be covered in the Hindu nationalism article. That article talks about the idea of setting up a state based on Hindu ideologies: ban on cow slaughter, pushing of Vande Mataram, defending Indian culture from the "immoral West". This ideology is not very different, infact almost nearly identical, to the stance taken by parties such as the Christian Democrats in Europe, and some of George Bush's policies on abortion and gay marriage. However Hindu nationalism does not advocate the purging of religions non native to the land viz- Christianity and Islam or the use of extreme force to indulge in violence and killing. The extremist viewpoint however wishes to get rid of Muslims from India, banning western celebrations such as Valentine's day (fringe groups also oppose Sunday as a holiday), use of violent force to defend "Hindu" and "Indian" culture by all means in the name of Hinduism or by right-wing Hindu groups. With allegations of these groups involved in the Malegaon blasts, there is a need to separate nationalism from extremism what we have been seeing in 2008. Hindu extremism is a subset of Hindu nationalism, Hindu nationalism is not a subset of Hindu extremism. There lies the difference. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Times haven't stayed much since 2006. Only the emergence of Hindu extremist involvement in Malegaon is new. Godhra and Babri Masjid, Graham Staines etc had already occured. Valentine's day has been immoral since 90s when the Shiv Sena was in power. Also Hindu extremism is a subset of Hindu nationalism, right! Thats the reason why I called it a POVFORK.

According to Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#POV_forks,

A POV fork is an attempt to evade NPOV policy by creating a new article about a certain subject that is already treated in an article, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts. This is generally considered unacceptable. The generally accepted policy is that all facts and major points of view on a certain subject are treated in one article.

So this extremist aspect can be described in Hindutva/Hindu nationalism, that is, all facts and major points of view on a certain subject are treated in one article. --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 12:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

POV forks are applicable to instances where the Neutral Point of View is applied to the same topic, but split two articles. eg. India's version of Kashmir, Pakistan's version of Kashmir. You have not mentioned why it is a fork, and what is POV about "extremism"; especially if reliable sources cover the extremist angle. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, you have already explained that Hindu extremism is a subset of Hindu nationalism. I agree to your explanation. Then, in that case, extremism simply needs a section under the article Hindu nationalism. This section should mention new extremist organizations like Abhinav Bharat and what all operations they did. I don't think there is a need to create more articles with confusing titles. My point is that such articles which are based on varied degree of ideology (ideology remaining same across the spectrum) should not be allowed. They tend to promote more PoV. --GPPande talk! 13:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
You seem to be agreeing with me in general! Having a separate article on extremism (that exists and is covered by RS) is not a fork or POV, but rather a daughter article that talks on the subject in depth. Remember the set theory? This is B is a subset of A. B can have an article, but it not necessary a POV fork where A and B do not overlap in the universal set. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
But the question is does the subset deserve an article yet? Isn't it too early with just few organizations. I think the subset is still in infancy and needs to stay with its mom. Believe me, an article on Abhinav Bharat, bios of Sadhvi and Lt-Col. caught in bomb blast will cover this subset completely. Each of these entities can have their own articles. After that nothing more would go into Hindu Extremism stand-alone article. --GPPande talk! 14:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
If it can go beyond the WP:1.0 start class there's no reason not to split the content, and summarise the lead of the dauther article as a section in the parent article. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Well then please go ahead. :) --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 07:20, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
For my two cents, I must agree with those saying that mention in Hindutva/Hindu nationalism is sufficient. The boundaries of what defines "Hindu nationalism" can and will differ, whether going as far as wiping out Islam and Christianity or just about Ayodhya and cow slaughter. I frankly don't like the idea of a different article just to point out a different term, however notable, given that the content is so closely linked to the same matter as Hindutva. S h i v a (Visnu) 10:59, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I thought 'Hindu Terrorism' was a POV fork. But then I see this in the New York Times this morning. I'm not sure it deserves a separate article, yet, but the term seems to exist independently now, and does need a paragraph somewhere - in Hindu nationalism for example. One has to be careful how though. By putting Hindu Terrorism into Hindu Nationalism you end up associating the two terms and nationalism and terrorism do mean different things. Perhaps a separate section that deals with the extreme elements of Hindu Nationalism (I'm not sure if the Violence subsection is appropriate because sporadic violence and terrorist cells are different things). --Regents Park (bail out your boat) 15:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Again, media has time and again used provocative terms to attract attention. This is probably not the first time it has been used as many TV channels in India have already done so. I have mentioned so at the top of this thread. Following same here on WP however is not good as it is clearly a PoV. --GPPande talk! 15:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that if there are groups out there who are planning and carrying out violent terrorist activities in the name of Hinduism then, per WP:SPADE, there is Hindu Terrorism. If those conditions exist and if a reliable source labels it Hindu Terrorism, then it would be wrong for wikipedia to not have a write-up on it, however brief. I think that both those criteria are met since these terrorist cells seem to exist and the New York Times labels it as such (I doubt that the NYT is trying to attract attention by labeling it thusly). --Regents Park (bail out your boat) 15:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Lemme see if I get this correct:

Correct? --Deepak D'Souza 04:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

While there is Hindu terrorism when you define it, (and I've written a paper on this) considering this documentation stems out of Malegon (nevermind the fact that it now can be speculated further back to at least samjhauta), it would be more appopriate to wait for a governing conclusion. It is a mere investigation thus far, albeit over valued by the media (amongst the english media: ndtv, times now, cnn-ibn, news x, and that entertainment bureau headline news). A court's summation is more valuable than an "investigative" demand with all it's TPR (isn't that what they call it in indi?) prerogatives. Lihaas (talk) 02:40, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I guess you meant TRP? --KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 10:48, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Ya, ya, totally. Lihaas (talk) 23:44, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

List of Indian ODI cricketers is in FLR

See here.--GDibyendu (talk) 09:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Noticed that there is already a comment on the FLC page that it fails criteria 1 and 2 (Prose and Lead). Feel that even criteria 7 - Stability - will be an issue as some overzealous editor is bound to update this on a day-by-day basis for current cricketers! VasuVR (talk, contribs) 12:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Peer review on Geography of India

Hi - I'm working with User:Nichalp on restoring FA status for this article and I have started a peer review - I request all to review the article and help improve it. Thank you, Shiva (Visnu) 07:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review for List of districts of West Bengal

Hi, I believe this list has now a potential to be an FL soon. Need comments/suggestions to understand what it may be lacking and what other improvements may be required. Please see here: peer review. Thanks. --GDibyendu (talk) 09:46, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Sukhdev Singh Babbar

Hello, I was wondering if any editors who have time on their hands can weigh in on the discussion here? The article is currently protected and I've been trying to start a discussion in the talk page to improve it. My changes (mainly surrounding cleaning up grammatical and spelling mistakes, and removing the more glaring NPOV/OR/PEACOCK violations) were being consistently reverted and I've tried to get a dialogue going on the talk page. However I'm being constantly accused by a few editors there of having a hidden agenda amongst some other things, and no one seems to be inclined to actually discuss improvement to the article. One of the main issues is that certain sentences (which seem POV, but are actually referenced) have been inserted into the article. They are definitely referenced but provide no information other than fluff. I think some of these could be rewritten, or just removed outright. Any input and help will be appreciated! Thanks! --vi5in[talk] 19:35, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Assessment stats table updated

I have updated the task force assessment stats table to show the task forces row-wise. You can see it here Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Assessment/Statistics. The table is now sortable; sort the FA column to see who is generating the most FAs. Thanks GDibyendu for the suggestion. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 12:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

சேரமான் பெருமாள்

Somebody created an article by this title, which I think may be about the Cheraman Juma Masjid, which we already have an article about. Can anyone confirm that the Tamil-language article is indeed about this particular mosque? If so, we can transwiki the Tamil article to the Tamil Wikipedia and leave a redirect here. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 08:22, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

It is not that article, but equivalent to Cheraman Perumal (Islamic convert), including the picture.
The translation of the tamil article goes as follows.
Cheraman Perumal Bhaskara Ravivarma was the first Indian to convert to Islam. On his orders the Masjid at Kodungalur was built. This Masjid, called Cheraman Perumal Juma Masjid, is the 2nd Juma masjid in the world. TOC. History heading. etc.

Hope this helps. Probably it should have been posted to Tamil Wikipedia, if it does not exist there? VasuVR (talk, contribs) 09:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Middle kingdoms of India

There are several issues with Template:Middle kingdoms of India - the biggest problem is that it does not properly represent kingdoms which lasted for long periods of time. I've flagged this issue up on the the talk page. I'd be grateful for input on how the issue can be addressed. -- Arvind (talk) 15:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

hope all Mumbai Wikipedians are safe

Nobody messes with my city.

I hope all our brethren in Mumbai are safe. Shiva (Visnu) 23:47, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Together we stand on this crisis .... praying for the souls of my departed brethens ! Jai Hind ! -- Tinu Cherian - 07:09, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Hope this menace ends soon... RIP to the dead, prayers for the injured and those trapped, and appeals to those with power to stop sleeping (and upgrading their wardrobes). Sniperz11@CS 08:39, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


Hope all Wikipedians in South Bombay are safe. I am safe since I stay in North Bombay. Terrible attacks. KensplanetTalkContributions 09:04, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
My prayers for our brave policemen and Army personnel and their families. Shiva (Visnu) 18:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Panaganti Ramarayaningar

Hi friends, I need the Telugu transliteration of Panaganti Ramarayaningaru in the article Raja of Panagal. Could anyone help???-RavichandarMy coffee shop 02:24, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

 Done User:WikiRaja has provided the transliteration and I've added it to the article-RavichandarMy coffee shop 04:32, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

WikiMeet with Jimbo

Jimmy Wales and two other wikimedia foundation members will be in Thiruvananthapuram in connection with the 2nd International conference on Freedom in Computing, Development and Culture being held there. Re-Posting the invitation that was made in the mailing list by User:Jyothis:

All,

We would like to let you all know that Jimmy wales and two other wikimedia foundation members will be in Thiruvananthapuram this December as a part of fsfs conference. The fsfs and space-kerala organizers has provided an opportunity for malayalam wikipedians to participate, conduct a session/panel discussion and meet Jimmy soon after. We would like to welcome if anyone is interested in joining. We may even plan an indian wiki meet there, if there is enough participation from other wikipedias.

Thanks,
Jyothis.

--thunderboltz(TALK) 18:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

:( I have just returned from Thiruvananthapuram this week end and wont be able to go again soon.. I really wanted to meet him ... -- Tinu Cherian - 12:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

need help on Sunil R Nair

I suspect that Sunil R Nair is an article on a non-notable personality - also, all its major contributors are a new user and an IP; couldn't see substantial Google hits for the notability either. Could someone please investigate this and PROD or SPEEDY or AFD this? Have been away for too long from WP :( and hence do not know the current guidelines for investigating deletion. --Gurubrahma (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I DON'T think it is a notable person. Sunil R Nair ( some CEO of unknown Nautanki.tv) and Nautanki being the only edits of the article creator Killikampetti (talk · contribs) . Google hits takes me only to self created community website profiles only. Better to AFD, though. -- Tinu Cherian - 12:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Marathi language help

I started the article Gangadhar Appa Burande. There are two Marathi articles online, which I think have some useful material for the wikiarticle, but I can't read them, http://www.esakal.com/esakal/10012008/TajyabatmyaMaharashtraMumbaiPuneNationalInternationalAurangabad3B748B8FCF.htm?article and http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3548246.cms . Any help would be appreciated, for example was October 1, 2008 the date of death? --Soman (talk) 11:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I would like to help here. What exactly you need to check on these articles? --GPPande talk! 10:01, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I translated the articles - See Talk:Gangadhar Appa Burande --GPPande talk! 10:17, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

List of states and union territories of India by population is on FLC.

List of states and union territories of India by population is nominated at Featured list candidate. You may leave your comments here --GPPande talk! 14:59, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

C class articles

Why is the project not using the C class rating? By skipping this rating, articles will wind up being correctly classed as 'C' by other projects that have an interest while this project would be rating them as start. That is confusing. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:41, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the time has come for us to upgrade. Given that B class articles are now more refined that what was originally planned, I say we vouch for the C class and the following additions to the assessment:
  1. C class
  2. B class-1, B class-2 up to B class-5
  3. add the "needs-coordinates" to the WP India template for entities that need a geo coordinate.
Under normal conditions, A class should only be rated if the article has undergone a formal peer review. The only difference between an A class articles and FA should be that A class articles need 1a polishing. The requirement that A-class articles undergo PR could be waived for experienced FA writers, and for articles on FAC. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:01, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
If you are going to make changes to {{WP India}}, you may want to convert the the editorial projects templates. This eliminates most maintenance for the project template. {{WP Australia}} is an example of what you can do using the standard components. You wind up with a less complex template. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:08, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the Aussie project is good. I think we should tweak the IN project to pick up some of the finer points from there. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
This review was meant to be opened later this year so that we could adopt something in the new year, but there's no harm doing the review now for changes for the new year. For the record, I don't favour using an obscure C-class. WikiProject Military History, WikiProject Films, are amongst several successful and big WikiProjects who declined to use C-class, and there's no confusion when they do that - I personally favour using their approach, of keeping our grades as they are, and enforcing them more strictly. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:00, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
It's not so much about the confusion, rather the disparity step between a start class article and a B class. For example, a four paragraph article can be rated as a start class, but a ten paragraph article poorly written, without citations cannot be termed as start, neither rated as a B. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:10, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Strict enforcement takes care of cases like that. A stub article can be of any length. I don't think that example would fall under C-class even if we did adopt the grade. Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:31, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Did you mean "start class" instead of "stub article"? =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:38, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I meant stub class assuming that the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, per our quality scale. If it had a majority of the content needed (despite several concerns), it could be B, but if it's lacking key ideas, then it could fall under start. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:01, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Not necessarily. Stub templates are only added to articles that have a few lines of content. We do not add the template for an article of a size of four paragraphs as a stub. For example, Agra has too much content to be labelled as a start class, but classifying it as a B class when references are unavailable, and the focus is on tourism is questionable. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, not necessarily, but quite possibly - whether it's according to our quality scale or that followed by the editorial team, stub classes can be of any length. But yes, normally they are short as the quality scale acknowledges. It really does depend on the article in question. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I guess the question may be, where do you want the confusion that can result? Wikipedia:WikiProject Companies uses C class so any companies that are part of your project will have the disconnect for company articles. So is it a question of choosing which other projects to follow? Another point to consider, is it a matter of time before most projects decide to use C class? If that is likely then the decision may be more of when to change rather then do we change. The sooner a change like this is completed, the fewer articles needing review to reclassify. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the sooner the better if there is a change. However, I don't see those projects adopting it any time in the future - they'd explicitly rejected it upon the editorial team accepting it, due to preference on the system without C-class. Articles that fall under C-class in other projects will generally be either start class or B class, but should show up as unassessed. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Any further thoughts on having the C-class rating? Further debate solicited. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:46, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea to start using C-class. This is because, on many topics it is difficult to provide substantially detailed coverage (as expected in B-class), but it is very much possible to make the article useful for normal readers (better than start-class). These intermediate ratings can also encourage participating editors. And I guess it is not possible to make an FA article on every topic. --GDibyendu (talk) 10:34, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Is there consensus on using C class? 2 support, 1 for a deferred review. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:36, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
My vote is to oppose for 2008-2009. Certainly will review this on a yearly basis given the substantial division among big projects, and indeed, each user's views. Most likely to look into this again before the next tag and assess (no earlier than in 8 months). However, I don't think there's a consensus at this time. Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Altough initially I opposed the idea of a 'redundant' class C during the discussion at WP1.0 forum , I dont see a reason why we should shy away from using it now as other projects have accepted it. Otherswise we may lose possibly C class + Top/High importance articles from our project while selecting the DVD version. In this case we should make our B class criteria more stricter and those which are Not Start but not yet B class articles will fall in C criteria , right? -- Tinu Cherian - 14:02, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
No, we generally don't lose C-class articles. The main thing that determines if an article is ready for inclusion in the DVD version is importance - unless there are sufficient reservations by the editorial team, it's included, even if it's less-than-ideal. Articles that fall short of inclusion by a couple of hundred points (particularly on quality) in Bot selection are generally looked at and manually included in the selection by the editorial team. This is checked amongst all big WikiProjects that opted out of C-class. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:04, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Ncm, You mention that the C class articles are to be reviewed by year-end. Who will be reviewing them, and is there a likelihood of it being rescinded? =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:53, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't follow what you're asking. My reply to you was speaking of WikiProject India (assessment dept.), while my reply to Tinu was speaking of the editorial team. Does that clarify? Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Earlier you mentioned: My vote is to oppose for 2008-2009. Certainly will review this on a yearly basis given the substantial division... 2008 ends in about 60 days. Do you have anything in mind that might change your opinion within the next 60 days? To elucidate, is there a WP 1.0 review on the effectiveness of the C-class implementation, or is a major project planning to release its findings by then? Else I'm puzzled why you are asking for an abeyance. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:37, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
No, when I said (WP India assessment dept.) would review it on a yearly basis, I did mean in about 12 months - though technically, it'd be about 8 months if it's just before the next tag and assess. No, I'm not aware of a major project solely dedicated to looking at C-class alone. But yes, the editorial team is always reviewing its assessment structures as an ongoing task. Currently, there are other important tasks which are a priority, but a couple of us will be making a move to conduct a survey when time permits. Hope that answers your question. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Err, what do you mean by "the next tag and assess" and how is it significant? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
It's significant because that's when users (outside of the assessment dept.) actually take the time to assess india articles, and usually, the number which they assess is quite large. In a lot of cases, that number can be larger than than the total number they'd assess for a year, if there was no 'tag and assess' being run. That's why we ran it this year (it was announced on this noticeboard); that's why it'll be run again next year, and that's why it's important to have appropriate grades to use particularly prior to that event. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I feel we should go ahead with the C-Class. It will help us grade our articles better. We do not have to wait for the next tag and assess. Assessment is an ongoing process, tag-and-assess helps with filling the gaps. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 14:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Section break A

<reindent> These are my reasons why we need to have a C-class:

  1. As illustrated above, Agra falls into a grey category. Too much content for a start, too unreferenced and badly written for a B-class. There are several articles such as these that languish in this grey-zone.
  2. I do not agree with the argument that a stub article can be of any length. WP:STUB has clear guidelines on what a stub should look like.
  3. Drawing parallels with "WikiProject Military History, WikiProject Films, are amongst several successful and big WikiProjects who declined to use C-class" and Wikipedia India is a classic case of a logical falacy known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Correlation does not imply causation), simply put, just because another project has for the moment rejected it, does not make it non-kosher. Let me illustrate with further examples:
    1. The scope of WikiProject India is vast. The folks at Featured articles categorise a featured articles into about 30 categories. WikiProject India is vast enough to contribute an article into each of these 30 odd categories. Given the scoping of these projects, the scope of MILHIST, FILMS is limited to not more than five categories each. For example, in WP:FILMS, the bulk of the content are films and biographies. Therefore the graduation from stub to B class is not so pronounced. Our project is much more diverse.
    2. We need to take in the considerations and requirements of WP:INDIA, whether C class is suited for usage. If no reports or findings are made by any active large wikiproject to debunk the effectiveness of a C-class grade, I do not see why any parallels should be drawn to MILHIST not using them.
  4. "Redundant" was a word used above. Initially, yes C-class could be called redundant. But with the gradual tightening of the quality of A and B-grade articles, a vacuum is created that can be filled by C-class. To resolve redundancy, we can easily define clear guidelines to separate a start from C class articles. B-class is already defined under 5 parameters. I've already provided an example of a potential C-class article.
  5. As Ganesh put it, assessment should not be hyphenated with a tag-and-assess drive. Tagging is an an ongoing effort and should not be held ransom to time.
  6. Assessment can be done by anyone on wikipedia who has sufficient editing experience, and topical knowledge. Except for FAs, and self-review of GAs, restricting assessment to just people who sign up on an assessment page is counterproductive to the goals of wikipedia – that is open editing and not just coteries. I have not signed up for any assessment page, but that does not prevent me from assessing for projects on MILHIST, SHIPS, SERBIA, SCHOOLS etc.

To conclude, I strongly believe we must assess the requirements of a C-class article for the needs of WP India, rather than digressing from the topic by making irrelevant conclusions without the availability of factual data. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:54, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I am bit confused with your first response.
  1. What do you mean by "B class-1, B class-2 up to B class-5"? What's does 1, 2 ... 5 denote?
  2. Will this exercise mean some B-class articles will be demoted to C-Class? Will B-Class articles need a mandatory review going forward as required by GA class articles currently? That would be too tough to follow.
  3. How will adoption of C-Class help India related articles to get selected for DVD version of Wikipedia?
I am not sure of the rules that are going to change after adoption of C-class. If someone could shortly explain this I think we can have inputs from more folks weather we should go for this change or not. --GPPande talk! 18:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
  1. For B class, and article must conform to the following criteria:
    1. B-1: Referencing and citation
    2. B-2: Coverage and accuracy:
    3. B-3: Structure
    4. B-4: Grammar
    5. B-5: Supporting materials
    See Talk:Mahim Fort for the MILHIST assessment. Only if all conform, does the B-class get awarded.
  2. Yes, some articles might get demoted, others might get promoted from start.
  3. I did not understand you with respect to DVD version and C class. Nominations are first gathered by importance, then class. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Tinu said above Otherswise we may lose possibly C class + Top/High importance articles from our project while selecting the DVD version. I did not understand how is C-class related to the DVD version. Does this mean that an article with Top/High importance but of C-class does not qualify for DVD version? --GPPande talk! 18:48, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm really not sure about the nitty-gritties. We would have to clarify this on WP:1.0. Remember this would also apply to stub class article of top importance too. Many start class articles of high importance such as Kohima and Imphal would not make the cut if the condition is true. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
GPPande, it's a bit more complicated than that I'm afraid. Importance is assessed according to the grade we give, as well as a few other factors including how much the article has been viewed. These factors are all put together to form an importance score - this is then added to the quality score (which is based on the quality grade we give - like B-class for example). If the combination of both of these scores are over a certain threshold, it's included in the release version (DVD). If it isn't, then it won't be included. The editorial team also do a set of manual assessments for nominated articles, and of course, some of us go through to find other articles that narrowly missed out but should've been included. Even stubs and start class articles are included where they are deemed important enough for release. Hope that helps, and you can ping me if you'd like more details. :) Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:22, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Got it. Coming to second part of my question#2, if we adopt C-class grade, then for an article to qualify as B-class do need to do a formal review from a non-participating member just like currently GA status require? For Talk:Mahim Fort I did not see any review done by any member - except criteria met for the 5 conditions listed under MILHIST. What criteria should be used to differentiate articles as is being currently done for GA, A-class and FA. If ad-hoc I feel so review is being used, then article may switch back and forth between B and C class based on individual views without any changes to the real article. Also, it's an added bureaucratic procedure which I think will yield little. Instead should we not continue to enforce existing guidelines more strictly first? Should Agra be demoted to start class by removing non-sense text without any source? I am not seeing much of a use here for C-class. Am I missing some important point here? Nichalp said we can easily define clear guidelines to separate a start from C class articles. B-class is already defined under 5 parameters. Should we discuss the difference in criteria for start, C and B class articles first and then decide if really these differences are worthy enough. If we see striking differences (as we can see between a B-class and GA and FA currently) then we can adopt the proposal. --GPPande talk! 19:43, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
  1. Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Grades may help answer some preliminary queries
  2. No, anyone can assess for grades up to B. I've proposed a modification to A in my first post in this thread that mentions experienced FA writers can self-assess articles on FAC as A-grade without a requiring a Peer Review.
  3. Assessment is subjective, after all, humans do this. That's why I always try and prod people to get their articles up to featured quality.
  4. B-class has mostly objective criteria. The debatable clause is comprehensiveness. There was a huge debate on FAC last month on short articles vs availability of references to support expansion. If you really are game to trawl through the archive mess, see Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive32.
  5. Indian Army is an article I would downgrade to C. It has too much useful content for it to be labelled as a start. But to satisfy B-class, it needs references, a proper history section with a flow, and reduction of list material to prose.
  6. Yes, we need to discuss the criteria for all except GA and FA. That's why I posted :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 20:13, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Err, 'illustrated above'? Agra does not fall into a "grey area" - under our current assessment scheme, unless it does not satisfy the distinct criteria that it has "a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article" (in which case it would be a start-class), it'd clearly fall under B-class. I say there is no ambiguity in considering B-class because the criteria allows for "some gaps or missing elements or references", or if it "needs editing for language usage or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as copyright, Neutral Point Of View (NPOV) or No Original Research (NOR)." Even if it's assessed as B (as it is now), I would still tag the article concurrently for lacking sources, for example. This acknowledges the nature of flaws in that article. The more formalized (& wider community) process called GAN is the proper place to ensure that references, NPOV/OR, etc. are fixed properly. (We can make B-class criteria stricter if the gap between B and GA is too big - but C-class is pointless.)
  • Stub articles can be of any length, they've been graded as such and they will continue to be if they match the criteria. Guidelines vary in how they've been enforced as norms can override them. AGF is enforced reasonably strictly; stub guidelines are not, nor have they ever been constituted in the quality scale of either this project, or the editorial team's criteria.
  • Merely quoting project diversity as a reason for inclusion lacks relevance. The arguments for or against C-class are in no way less applicable to those other projects merely because they focus on a narrower set of topics, or because they qualify under less categories at FAC. Eg; a film article may lack references, it appears to contain original research and seems to be a promotion of the movie. That doesn't mean using C-class is going to make that outcome any different. Those projects have been successful in producing quality output, over and over. It's an incredibly narrow minded view to suggest that assessment/tagging is being held ransom to time, by either those projects or myself, in purporting the same view. They/myself are directly against C-class for good reason: our current system is more effective without (a) additional complications, (b) more unnecessary time spent in early stages of assessment as opposed to content building/improving, and of course, (c) more red-tape. These are just a few reasons.
  • I don't think the assessment department of any project (including this one) has suggested that assessment is limited to any set of members. If we were limiting which editors assessed in WP India, tag-and-assess would not have existed as all other editors would be dismissed as unfit. In other words, that view has never been held by any of us, whether it was Tinucherian, Ganeshk (previously), Mspraveen, pruthvi, myself or any of the other newer members. However, when a large number of articles are going to be assessed in a relatively short span of time compared to usually, that's when there is a heightened level of importance on what grades are being used and how they are applied. That's when I expect more editors to comment also.
  • To conclude, I strongly believe C-class should not be blindly implemented as suggested - instead, we should see how other projects have improved (or not) from its implementation, and decide from there. So far, I've seen more time taken up by the introduction of the new grade which could've been better spent in content building/improving, and the overall effect being not-so positive. As I've noted at the time of C-class being implemented by the editorial team, it's more worthwhile to have stricter standards for B-class and start-class - changing B-class criteria to a 5-tier test should be enough. 'Introducing C-class now is a waste of valuable time' sums up my view. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:15, 2 November 2008 (UTC)


Here are my ratings:

Grade Details Example
FA All our articles should be FA class eventually India
A Criteria: Has undergone a formal peer review, and comments have been addressed. A-grade articles can also be self-assessed by experienced FA writers (>4 FAs) for articles currently on FAC. Ideally, the article should progress from a GA. Usually, the only thing separating a A-class from FA is the quality of prose. A class articles also have suitable media (such as charts, photographs, and maps) that help in the understanding of the subject. Vithoba
GA Meets all B class criteria. Reviewed independently by GA assessors. Fundamental Rights in India
B Meets the six basic criteria for encyclopaedicness. Contentious claims in the article are referenced, has no grammatical issues, has a definite flow, and touches on all topics expected for a reader to gain an understanding of the subject. In addition, it touches on all sections recommended by a task force such as Indian cities. All infoboxes and tables are present. History of Mumbai
C The article is not comprehensive, suffers from poor prose, but has the relevant information to gain an overview of the subject. The article needs a general clean-up, and needs sources to progress to B-class. A rewrite is necessary to focus on encyclopedicity. Indian Army, Agra, Nagaland
Start In proportion to the availability of sources and scoping, a start class article may vary in length. A start class article might for example only talk about the history and geography of a place. The article may need infoboxes, templates, tables and pictures. Gateway of India
Stub Basic information on the topic. See WP:STUB various


  1. Ncmvocalist, I dispute your comments on what a stub is: Quoting from WP:STUB: A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information. Sizeable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they lack wikification or copy editing. To support your claim please provide examples of sizeable articles (I'm especially looking forward to one over 10k prose (ext tables, categories, and list content)). I would cite the DYK requirement of 1.5 kb of encyclopedic prose as a rough guideline to what separates a stub from a start class.
  2. AGF and STUB? What's the connection?
  3. I'm still not convinced with your reasons for the non inclusion of C-class. I feel it's purely personal considerations without the support of factual data or current opinion from research in other projects. In this regards I have contacted successful Wikiprojects such as AUSTRALIA, HURRICANE, (2 successful large projects that produce FAs), COMPANIES (quoted above), and also FILMS and MILHIST to present opposing arguments. In addition, I have contacted WP:1.0 for their opinion. I also note that you have responded to some of them.
  4. From the table above, I have outlined how we can use the C-class criteria. If there is a gap, and we can prove that C-class articles fill that gap, then redundancy is resolved. I have tried to address it by citing model Start, C, and B-class articles.
  5. As names of members on the assessment team are being dragged needlessly here, I have personally contacted all the users who have signed up as assessment volunteers, and have not contributed their opinion yet. I'd prefer if we would have their unbiased opinion.
  6. I have a correction to make: B-class has 6 parameters, not 5.
  7. You mention fears such as (a) additional complications, (b) more unnecessary time spent in early stages of assessment as opposed to content building/improving, and of course, (c) more red-tape. Please justify using examples.

Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:38, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

    • I'll be off shortly so I'll have to address most of this next time I'm online. Just to clarify a few points though; the common element between stub and agf is that they're a guideline. Neither the editorial team or this project's assessment dept. cites WP:STUB in their criteria for stub-class in their respective quality scales, as I've repeatedly noted. So my point is that one of the guidelines is enforced as such, the other is not. I doubt we have a 10K article that is stub - that'd be blasting it out of proportions. I note that the name of the team members was dragged in to respond to your apparent concern that some users are being segregated in who assesses articles and who doesn't; I'm confident that they're aware that any user may assess an article, but if you'd like personal clarification from each of them, then it was a good idea for you to ask them to come here and clarify that for you. I'll be asking a couple of others to weigh in at this discussion at some point also. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:54, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
      Sure, I'll look forward to your response. Not in a particular hurry, as I also expect input from those we contacted.
      Yes, the common element between a stub and AGF is a guideline, but so is the Manual of Style which is enforced. Debating on the niceties of guidelines vs policies is getting off-topic, so I suggest we drop mention of it. We both understand the criteria.
      You mentioned that "a stub can be of any length". I disputed that initially, but you kept mentioning that repeatedly without clarifying the issue or citing examples to justify your viewpoint. That's why I cited a 10kb example so that you can refine your statement.
      My statement on those on assessment team was not meant to disparage them. If it was construed that way, I apologize to those members. My statement rather, was in response to your statements: Most likely to look into this again before the next tag and assess (no earlier than in 8 months). However, I don't think there's a consensus at this time. where you spoke on behalf of the assessors to determine a lack of consensus. To avoid an ugly turn of events, I decided to contact them for their opinion on this discussion so that the issue is amicably resolved.
      Sure, feel free to ask independent and neutral observers to pitch in. I've contacted all stakeholders so far (assessment talk page, assessment page, and Vegaswikian), and wikiprojects that were cited as role models for either case. I trust that you will contact similar stake-holders. =Nichalp «Talk»= 11:45, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
      • As a note, I've demoted Vithobha back to GA status - if reliability of sources is enough of an issue on its own, then I'm sorry, but it would neither pass our A-class status quality scale, and would almost definitely not pass at editorial team level. Had it been a matter of a bit more copyediting (or style issues) or a bit of expert knowledge, then it'd qualify. Reliably sourced content is a must once it has passed GA status - if there's enough of a doubt for it not to pass FA, then there's a problem. Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
        • I've asked SandyGeorgia for inputs on the nomination failure. Since this is not central to the discussion we can open a new thread to discuss A grade criteria. PS Reliability of sources depends on the context. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:18, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
          • Agree with your P.S.
          • Yes, like AGF, MoS is another example of a guideline that is regularly enforced; most vigorously at FAC. I don't think this is a matter of semantics; I think it's a matter of general experience - it's no secret that some guidelines are enforced more stringently than others (including those which are hardly referred to). We don't refer or link to them in the quality scale in the same way we do for WP:RS, WP:NPOV etc.
          • Perhaps my clarification was not so good after all, so I'm partially to blame for the miscommunication and certainly to blame for my convoluted sentencing which caused you to misconstrue my comments and take them out of context. The sentence beginning "My vote...." was my personal input on this discussion here, and the 'don't think that there is a consensus at this time' was based on the discussion that occurred here and here alone. The sentences in between these 2 (which was what you were focussing on in your reply/question) were what I was referring to as concerning the assessment dept. - evidently, I can see how saying something like "my reply concerns the assessment team" can be construed as all 4-5 sentences being on their behalf, so apologies if it was interpreted as such. Does that clear that up?
          • Isn't your proposed B criteria identical to GA?
          • I did wish to be present for the discussions that took place over these issues (my availability will be limited until sometime in early Dec). That said, I don't think this is something that can be resolved overnight so this discussion needs to run, even during my periods of absence, and it would also give us (and others) plenty of time to consider and respond accordingly. Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:53, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

<reindent>

  1. Thanks for the clarification. Things now clear.
  2. B is self-assessed and more of a checklist. From personal experience, and general consensus, due to the familiarity with editing an article, a person might overlook prose issues, may think that the topic is comprehensive, or may overlook the reliability of a source. By going in for a GA, a neutral person might be able to point out these flaws. IMO GA should be the minimum quality standards we must strive for. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I am not in favour of having additional category C-class for quality of article. I think "Start-Class" category is sufficient or appropriate to cover range what other editors want to call it "C-class". One concern raised not having C-class article is disparity when two articles rated as Start class, they might be having substantial difference in quality. I agree this is true but I do not see this as a problem as long as B-class ranking can be awarded objectively. When I see an article which is not B-class it immediately tells me that article lacks citation or reliable source. Another concern raised not having "C-class" category has to do with technical issue like mismatch between other wikiprojects and how articles are selected for DVD version. Here also I do not see it is problem as long as we are not alone for not opting the "C-class" category for assessment. Main purpose of assessment is to encourage content generation by highlight the issues which on correcting will significantly improve the quality of articles. pruthvi (talk) 04:54, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Response by User:G.A.S to Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#C-class articles
  1. If the implementation of C-class has been effective in general?
    • The implementation of C-class has been well received and is very effective at WP:ANIME.
  2. Does C-class articles involve more red tape?
  3. Are the lines of distinction between Start and C, and Start and B classes blurred?
    • I would say that our implementation of a B-class checklist has eased any such distinctions: We added a B-class checklist to our project banner at the same time that we adopted C-class, and it automatically assesses B and C class based on the six B class criteria. If all parameters are "No", the article is rated as start class, if 1 to 5 of the parameters are "Yes", C-class, and if all parameters are "Yes", B-class.
    • If the criteria has not been completed in full, the article will be rated as C class. This caused all of our B-class articles to be rated as C class, but having completed the 2008 assessment drive about 60%, this seemed to be the correct choice, as most of those articles are in fact, C-class.
    • In short: If an article is clearly incomplete or has multiple major omissions, it is start class, C class otherwise, and only B class if the checklist has been completed. I do monitor the assessment log for all B-class upgrades, as editors have in the past (and still) rate articles as B-class when they do not meet all of the criteria.
  4. Does C-class complicate the assessment process?
    • As the B-class checklist has to be completed, it is somewhat more complicated, but it takes only a few seconds to fill in the checklist. I should say that I find this much easier though than deciding whether an article is B or start class, as the checklist provides very good guidance in this regard.
Regards
G.A.Stalk 04:49, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Your replies in point#3 above indicate more than 50% B-class articles will be demoted to C-class. I feel this is scary. What kind of constructive responses you received from editors when an article was demoted to C-class? Was there any immediate significant improvement in those demoted articles in terms of text, sources, style or images? How many articles were again upgraded to B-class? If there were hardly any improvements seen then I think the process of implementing C-class should be on hold. If there was any positive impact we can go for it. All I am looking for here is the advantage of using this new class. --GPPande talk! 10:07, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Before the adoption of C-class, these type of articles were regularly demoted to start class.
All of the B-class articles were intentionally demoted to C-class by adding the checklist. We are currently still working through the backlog of the incomplete checklists. The checklist currently reads "This article has not yet been reviewed for compliance with the WikiProject's B-Class criteria" for those articles. For the most part, it seems that editors have not paid attention to the (automatic) demotion, though some have completed the checklist for their articles.
Our decision was to limit the assessment to C-class in the absence of the checklist, and I would reckon this to be correct in ~90% of cases, as the project had no assessment department prior to the introduction of C-class, and all assessments were by fans of the specific series (See ARCAM Private Army for a typical "B-class" example). In some cases (quite a few of) these articles have been manually demoted to start class since. If this is not the case at WP:INDIA, I would reckon that it may be better to leave the assessment at B class in the absence of the checklist; demoting only where a specific item is failed.
Unfortunately, most of the articles which were demoted to C-class do not have active editors at the moment. There have been improvements where the articles have active editors.
The more direct effect was that B-class have become a target for editors, especially on the way to GA class. If there is a specific issue stopping articles from becoming B-class, this is also usually addressed by editors, e.g. if a single image was needed. I usually leave comment why an article fails specific criteria. Editors usually attempt to fix these issues (example). Some of those B-class articles are currently awaiting copyedit or peer review, or are FL/FL candidates, GA/GA candidates now. At least 6 C-class lists have been upgraded to FL class since, as have 3 articles been upgraded to GA class. Another 18 have been upgraded to B-class since. (Some of those have been start/stub class before) At least 29 articles were upgraded to C-class shortly after the adoption of C class.
The major stumbling block I envisage, is that all articles will not be correctly assessed all at once. It takes time. I would reckon that a more important choice is whether or not to adopt a checklist, such as the one used by WP:ANIME and WP:MILHIST.
Regards, G.A.Stalk 11:26, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Note that I am mostly (95%) involved with article assessment at WP:ANIME at the moment, not with the Version 1.0 Editorial Team.
You said At least 6 C-class lists have been upgraded to FL class since, as have 3 articles been upgraded to GA class. Another 18 have been upgraded to B-class since. (Some of those have been start/stub class before) At least 29 articles were upgraded to C-class shortly after the adoption of C class. Those are significant improvements in my opinion for the project of size WP:ANIME. The total C-class article counts for WP:ANIME is around 700+ and B-class article count for WP:IN is 900+. I think if India project adopts similar strategy then -
  1. First need to downgrade all 900+ B-class articles to C-class. I think Tinu's child can help here.
  2. Then manually each of these 900+ would have to be manually assessed for start, C and B-class.
I think this would be like a mid-year drive - but on a smaller scale. --GPPande talk! 11:51, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! Do have a look at {{WikiProject Anime and manga}} and {{WikiProject Anime and manga/B list}}, as the code for these templates are quite advanced (The banner automatically assesses project pages, templates, infoboxes, images, categories appropriately, and the checklist's code have been refined a lot since we adopted it). I reckon ~900 articles could be assessed in a few days (18 man hours). Regards, G.A.Stalk 12:04, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, now I realize that India Project may also have to take a look at 6600+ start class article to check how many of them fit into C-class. So, 6600+980=7580+ articles to review manually. That's a mammoth task. --GPPande talk! 18:12, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
There are task forces to do this such as WP:MUM, WP:INCITIES etc. Also see WP:DEADLINE. I'm also exploring the use of a script/bot to make tagging easier. With the use of a bot I can estimate a tagging of 4000 articles per user per week on a conservative average. By sharing the load things can be done sooner. Besides, the longer we delay implementation, the more rework there would be at a later stage should we choose to implement later. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:36, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
See User:Kingbotk/Plugin, which is a plug-in for WP:AWB. This may or may not be useful for this purpose. I prefer to use WP:AWB with a manually set search and replace string for Tag and Assess purposes (Almost all of our articles had no importance rating when the Tag & Assess started), and a second screen for viewing and pre-loading articles in parallel. G.A.Stalk 06:50, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Yet another section break

Section break inserted bu User:G.A.S to facilitate easier editing]] Well the fact that WP:AUS has 110 FAs and 176 GAs doesn't necessarily mean that it is because of any particular administrative structure in place, eg a C-class assessment. If India wins this week, that doesn't mean that that Cricket Australia should engage in the type of hte politics that the BCCI does. Anyway, if this reasoning is going to be used, then don't use C-class because the rate of growth in FA-Class Australia articles has slowed up since C-class was introduced. I think the real reason that the FA production slowed down is because 4-5 authors have been responsible for about 60% of the FAs this year and they have all slowed down on writing recently, for differing reasons. YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model!) 06:51, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that C class does not have a particular impact on the rate at which FA's are created. On the other side, at WP:ANIME, some editors take stubs and really horrible start class articles, and clean them up to C-class, and move on to the next article, or fix them up to B class. Due to the lack of copy-editors, it is not possible to upgrade those articles to GA class quickly, hence the article staying at (a proper) B class. I have also made a suggestion at WT:ANIME/CLEANUP to have our cleanup listing only display articles of C class or higher, to help prioritise cleanup; so this may also be considered here. G.A.Stalk 07:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

A class

Why not start a seperate A-class review department for such articles which are midway between GA and FA. Like the PR department, Assesement department etc...I had also given an article (Mangalore) for A-class status before which was a GA and a failed FAC. But the procedure and the reasons for not promoting it to A-status was not very much appreciated by me. The next time I gave it for FAC, it got promoted to FA with almost no changes at all. But it was not promoted to A-class. KensplanetTalkContributions 13:27, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

  • The reason is simply because of the large backlog and the lack of input - the peer review dept. is an example of a dept. that is narrowly alive. By leaving it up to the assessment dept. to determine, all members would review by passing from one reviewer to another until/unless there's enough of an objection. IIRC, both myself and another team member objected based on on more than one objection over criteria at FAC, and I left you a note on your talk page accordingly (also encouraging you to take it to FAC again). If it was a mere matter of style issues or expert knowledge being needed, it would've received A-class, as would Vithobha - we're strictly following basic editorial team standards to that extent. Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:48, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
    • While I accept that INDIA PR is dead, but I don't think A-class dept. will ever be dead. The reason for its death is we have a global PR. Most prefer giving their articles there. I found the best way to get a review. Suppose you and me nominate our respective articles for PR; I inform you that I am ready to review your article provided you review my article. This is the best way; A give and Take relationship. It has worked for me manytimes. Although I wouldn't like to dig in the past,;; why to bother; since it is featured; but however I strongly disagree with your comments. If you check the revision of the article when I gave it for an A-class review and the revision when it attained FA status; you'll observe all the references were the same. If reliable issues were present, Ealdgyth would have yelled at the article during the second FAC; he had previously made my life miserable in the first FAC. A dedicated A-class dept. will help us. We can't forget WIKIPROJECT INDIA has 58 GA's. Many of them may be near FA-status. An A-class rating will act as a catalyst KensplanetTalkContributions 14:12, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
      • I appreciate your concerns about Mangalore article; however, IIRC, Sandy gave you a rationale on why it was closed as unsuccessful, and that was still a concern - generally, the assessment dept. places more faith in that wider-community (FAC) assessment on sourcing than its internal ones. I considered opting for abolishing A-class altogether simply because I don't think this is the most ideal way of assessing articles at this level - A-class review is always ideal, and there seemed little point in keeping the grade for a handful of articles. However, I think at least it'll be beneficial where the only issue is like those I noted - and it should (as you say) act as a catalyst to move for FA.
      • I'm aware that even the other bigger projects are having periods where no where near enough reviewers are weighing in during A-class review for their respective projects - one of our own assessment team members encountered that issue for an article he nominated at another project. In that sense, I'd be opposed if we don't have enough support to maintain it here.
      • If we have the support to maintain it though, I'd certainly support and be ready to open it up. Can we find enough other users from our project (or even other projects) who are ready to keep it active when we have nominations? Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:53, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
PS Ealdgyth is a she. :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:46, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I'm not a fan of GA and A. I prefer to push my articles from stub to FA-class directly, and I've done some within a week. 4 days from stub to A-grade, 1 week to FA. I would suggest that inexperienced writers work up the levels. Self assess for B-grade criteria, then nominate for GA, get a good review and pass GA. After that, submit it for a WP:PR, post a message on relevant wikiprojects for review (and contact experienced contributors), take care of those issues in PR, and then request a reassessment for A grade. With that done, push for FAC. But I must remark, from all these gradation systems, it makes a push for FA process a little bureaucratic. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:26, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Can we have A-class reviews here itself. This talk page is very active. Well, Nichalp, there are many articles which have to go through all this. Not all. For example, topics such as Roman Catholic Church, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism have to follow all the steps, or it is impossible to get the gold star. Some topics can directly attain FA-status from Stub even without undergoing a PR. It depends on article to article. Just have a glance at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Roman Catholic Church. It was not listed as a GA 3 times and is a failed FAC 4 times. KensplanetTalkContributions 18:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd prefer we's not use this for A class. Getting an FA class is much better. Yes I agree that each article should be debated as per its merits. Having a strict policy for nominating an FA is m:instruction creep. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:55, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Nichalp; that's also what we've been trying to encourage editors to do - take it up to FA rather than worry about A-class. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:48, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Section break B


Where to come in? I have been arguing the toss over this at mil hist, as a visitor. To try to sum up what I think are their views, they are mostly concerned with articles they consider of high quality, and potential candidates for same. As I have seen it argued, they are not concerned that the current system means most articles end up as 'stub' or 'start', with a lot of quite usefull and informative articles ending as 'start'. My own view is that this does not help visitors to wiki, or even us. Wiki needs a good grading system for the benefit of readers: it is no good having any system which lumps most of the articles in the same category.

Mil hist, and others of like mind, have made matters worse by continuously pushing up required standards for a grade. They currently insist upon more severe criteria than the assessment team. I think this is daft. Firstly, the assessment team created standards for their own purposes in sorting articles. Having said what they wanted, they asked others to help. Deciding to use a different standard then theirs is just unhelpfull complication. Secondly, the reason for introducing a C grade seems to have a lot to do with this 'grade inflation', because more and more articles are being pushed out of B downwards. So, to satisfy those who want a stricter B, someone introduced C. But now having created the problem, some are opposing the proposed solution. The system currently is top-heavy with high grades. In a system Fa A GA B Start Stub, you might expect stub was the bottom 20%, start the next 20%, and so forth. A quick look at your statistics says you have stub 75%, start 24%, B 2% , top four grades 0.4% combined (approximately, yes I know it doesn't add up). This also says that you should be looking to find C class articles amongst ths 'start' block, not by demoting any currently in 'B'. A better solution would very probably be a radical downwards re-definition of the criteria for the top five grades. Your own statistics show that even B, the lowest current grade with any meaningfull differentiation, is very hard to reach. Wholesale change may not be practicable, but for the present a C grade is a helpfull addition. Riddle me this: If the top five grades are only 2.5% of wiki, how does this help a reader know if what he is reading is a good article? 97.5% of articles are being listed as bad. (And I know perfectly well some of those are pretty good. For example, mil hist is littered with good articles which have been failed for lack of references) At present, the greatest number of articles usefull to readers are in the 'start' or even 'stub' section. Does that seem sensible? Sandpiper (talk) 20:07, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The issue of whether to adopt C class was discussed, at length, by the members of the military history project. The consensus view was that there were few, if any, benefits from adding another level of assessment and that the stub-start-B-A-FA scale was working well. The resources required to re-assess start class articles as C class were felt to be significant, and this would have detracted from work on articles for no benefit. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:13, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Re: adoption of C-class in WP Aus My view is that using C class has been an underwhelming yawn. At first I opposed the idea on it just complicating things for no good reason and I still feel this is true. At the same time I am slowly rating some articles with C class, especially when they don't have appropriate citations from reliable sources.

Using C class doesn't provide any quick fixes so it is difficult to discern any real benefits. At first there was a lot of confusion about criteria. There is still of lot of inconsistency between types and many articles rated start are probably C class. However other editors who do more assessing or work on specific sub projects that I am not familiar with, may find may find good reasons and have other opinions contrary to mine. So in summary, adopting C class might have some benefits and probably some confusion. You might want to look at WP:VG/A, who also adopted C class. - Shiftchange (talk) 22:48, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Reproduced from my talk page. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:37, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Copied from WP AUS =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC) <begincopy>

Just a personal observation, but from my own rating point of view it filled a gap that was sorely noticed and meant we didn't have to artificially stretch our "B"s and "Start"s any more into contortions. I personally see a "C" as "definitely not extensive enough for B but definitely more than a Start" and use few other formal criteria. Others will undoubtedly hold different opinions. Orderinchaos 09:21, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I see it as a waste of time/resources either its in a position to be made into a GA(hence B) or just its starting out missing basic structure, citations, infoboxes etc. I just dont see a benefit or encouragement to get an article from start to C or C to B its just reflection of the state of the article. What I do see is cynical process to give people more reason to run meaningless bots. Gnangarra 12:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

</endcopy>

One perspective from the 1.0 team

I held off jumping into this discussion, as I'm deep in work on the Version 0.7 release. So, please forgive me, I've only glanced over the above comments, but I wanted to give you something of the "big picture" impression from the 1.0 team perspective. Prior to the vote, I did not have strong opinions one way or the other - I could see the value of C-Class, but I also wondered if the change was worth the trouble. I'm now in favour of C-Class.

  • Overall, I think the introduction of C-Class has been successful. We didn't get any serious complaints during the transition that weren't fixable (typically technical problems like errors in template code). No one has indicated that they are going back to the old system or that they are unhappy with C-Class.
  • A handful of projects - most notably some major projects India, Milhist, Chemicals and (if I recall) Films (or was it Novels?) did not adopt C-Class, but almost every other project did adopt it (there are 1300 projects/task forces in total). As Sandpiper points out, that does create problems for us, because we have perhaps 5% of Start tags using a different system than the other 95% (that's no more than a guess). That also means that the SelectionBot is giving a lower score to a C-Class India article (which is tagged as Start) than to a C-Class Australia article (which is tagged as C) - meaning that we may end up missing some decent (but not quite B) India-related articles for the offline releases. (Other groups such as One Laptop Per Child and SOS Children also use our SelectionBot data, too.) Fortunately, "Bs that should be Cs" are not often a problem in these projects, because typically these "opting-out" projects were already using strict criteria for B-Class.
  • In one sense the change helped things to re-align. Sandpiper is right to point out that what was a typical B two years ago would probably fail today; at the same time, there has been a general improvement in overall quality since then. Adding this extra class allowed us to tighten up on criteria for B, and bring Milhist (and others) into alignment with the majority of projects. So although we now have a new Start/C discrepancy with a few projects, we got rid of the B/MilhistB discrepancy.
  • A major argument (reiterated above) against C-Class is "It's too much work to re-assess all of our Bs and Starts." But what I have seen in reviewing articles for Version 0.7 is that many assessments are getting out of date anyway! that are So, I would say, PROJECTS SHOULD BE CONTINUALLY REASSESSING ANYWAY in order to keep information up to date, particularly with High or Top importance articles. The assessment date is listed in the main "by quality" lists from the bot, and indeed the list can even be ordered by date.
  • In putting together the 0.7 collection, most articles that are "on the border" for the selection fall into the Start-C-B quality range. So if we want to be able to know that we should pick article A and not article B based on quality, we often need the finer level of assessment in order to judge things correctly.

Overall, my own prediction is that within a few years all projects will be using C-Class anyway. I may be wrong, but I think having a uniform system benefits everyone. And as the number of offline releases begins to take off - I expect us to be producing dozens of different releases by 2011 - I think projects will want to make sure they reap the full benefit of that. Walkerma (talk) 17:33, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm following up on a request of a user for the opinion of MilHist people to comment on this debate. The issue that others have brought up concerning the use of C-Class stems from the wide range of articles that the project encompasses. Many articles have a gap in the eyes of some people. Others view this gap as an area for improvement to an article. The use of the C-Class has also been viewed as another thing to muddle up the project as evidenced in the debate. There is an small majority against the use of it, as evidenced by the debate that lasted a matter of months. In the end, it seems that the C-Class proposal could eventually pass as more people are realizing that there are many benefits to having it. Personally, I'm all for the use of the class, as I was one who helped to start the most recent debate. Good luck in the debate and I will happily answer any questions that anyone might have. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:08, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Novels has C-class, so it was Films. Just to make sure everyone knows... —Ed 17 for President Vote for Ed 23:51, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
People might want to look at the recent MILHIST discussions on the subject here : Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#C-class question (no doubt it will be auto-archived at some point, but discussion is still active for now) Also it might be useful to remind people of WP:CREEP. Personally I'm not wild about the idea of C class - but since it is now widespread, it makes sense to be consistent and use it. But I would urge people to try and use the standard WP:ASSESS#Grades definitions and not come up with Project-specific ones that just discourage non-Project members from helping out with assessments, and may contribute to class inflation such as MILHIST's invention of a B-class checklist that in some respects is almost more demanding than "normal" GA class. I'd also encourage people to bear in mind the GA definition as "approaching (although not equalling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia". There seems to have been some inflation of the demands on a GA of late in that respect, but it's worth repeating that if you were to (illegally) copy and paste the equivalent Encyclopaedia Britannica article, that text would exceed the requirements of GA (if referenced etc). Some people have got it into their heads that such text wouldn't even meet B class. Once you've gota really good idea of what GA looks like for a particular article, then you can imagine what B-class, C-class etc will be like. It doesn't help that the standard example for B class is such a massive topic as Jammu and Kashmir - it might be helpful to give several examples of different classes of articles, a B class version of Doda will obviously be much shorter than the article covering all of Jammu and Kashmir, whilst a B-class version of Basmati will look different again. 82.3.246.14 (talk) 17:22, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Inflation as in making the bar higher, or inflation as in upgrading the status of rubbish articles? YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model!) 00:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
  • One perspective from the editorial team was that some 1300 odd taskforces and WikiProjects adopted C-class - that may be true, but we have no accurate count of the large number of those which are (or have been) relatively inactive/dysfunctional compared to projects like Milhist, among others.
  • There was also the perspective that articles should constantly be reassessed anyway - true, however, what should happen as opposed to what can or will happen are not always the same. The resources required to re-assess is significant. Our normal assessment procedures can detract from work on articles as it is, and without reassessing, we have nearly 7700 articles that are manually unassessed to begin with. Would introducing new grades and processes that are perhaps more complicated than what we have already going to improve that problem much?
  • My view is that GA should be a minimum standard; we shouldn't have to spend any more time than is absolutely necessary in categorizing articles that fall short of that standard. Less instruction creep and simpler processes are needed for this area, so that only a minimum amount of time is spent here - more time needs to be spent on building/improving article-content, and finding ways to help editors work in an atmosphere without constant or major problems. In my view, introducing this new grade and changing the already existing one does not satisfy that objective, either in the short term, or in the long term. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Apologies for the delay in replying, but my experience in WP:WPTC is that the introduction of a rubric forced us to demote 180 articles to C-Class status. Of those, a significant portion did not make it back to B's, but rather, were copyedited slightly and now are GA-Class articles. In fact, I'd attribute a large fraction of the amount of GA nominees to articles that were reviewed and given some TLC to get past B and into Good Article territory. So in that perspective, C-Class has been a success. It also introduced more stringent requirements for B-Class, so we know that all the articles that are rated B's now are graded against a contemporary rubric, instead of being possibly graded two years ago, were standards were relatively lax. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 01:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Decision

We'll we've got inputs from proponents of the C-class and against the usage of C-class. In addition, we have got inputs from WP:1.0. No further significant inputs have been added for a while, so I think we need to make a decision while the issue is still ongoing. Please indicate your choice based on your understanding of the comments above.

  1. Support C-class =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  2. Oppose KensplanetTalkContributions 06:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  3. Support.--GDibyendu (talk) 06:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  4. Support.--GPPande talk! 07:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  5. Oppose. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  6. Support GizzaDiscuss © 09:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  7. Oppose VasuVR (talk, contribs) 09:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
  8. Support Ganeshk (talk) 00:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  9. Oppose pruthvi (talk) 04:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  10. Support -- Tinu Cherian - 12:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  11. Support C class for consistency of standards with other projects.--Redtigerxyz (talk) 13:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Result: Seems majority support C class addition for WP:IND project. Can somebody tell how to close this poll and take this forward to implement in WP:IND? --GPPande talk! 09:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

There are 4 opposes. It's not right to implement. Majority may support C class addition but there are 4 opposes. Consensus has not been established. I a sure this is not a poll. Thanks, KensplanetTalkContributions 12:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
We had a long debate and the opinions were open to all for a long time? Should I ask someone outside this project (Taxman (talk · contribs · rights · renames)) to close this? =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:23, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think so; this is something that should be sorted out internally through project members, and we have the external input that was needed. Instead, if we want to move forward, we should find a common ground that a strong consensus can support. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:43, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, I only suggested Taxman as he is a 'crat and has contributed several articles to WP:IN, without actually signing up to WP:IN. It's clear that every contributor to the project is aware of the move to C-class, and those who participated in the poll has read the debate and then lent their views to the subject. We need someone to read through the debate and interpret the results accurately paying attention to the comments made by the members. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I know that, given you used crat as opposed to userlinks. But I'm afraid 'crats get no extra authority to judge what this is: a content dispute. We've got external input to try to resolve this and now what is lacking is the strong consensus to support the proposed change. We've come to the point where we need alternative proposals that we can have a strong consensus for, and that inevitably means we need to come to a compromise. I find it to be the best way forward for this project, and in line with the consensus process. The only issue left (therefore) is identifying that. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:12, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Since Taxman has experience in determining consensus, I nominated him. I did not choose him just because he is a crat. We need someone neutral to decide on the outcome if there is sufficient cause to move to the C-class. You could nominate someone else that would be mutually agreeable to everyone else. Else it will be deadlocked. I don't understand what you mean by "strong" consensus. The strength of the arguments needs to be weighed in rather than a poll which is helpful in determining where each person's views lies. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:31, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I disagree; this discussion began with just myself and pruthvi finding cause NOT to introduce C-class of editorial team, and has since grown to include two other users as it is. I've listened to a number of concerns via email too.
This is much more dynamic than an RFA for example whereby you either become admin, or you don't (as there is no such thing as compromise by way of letting someone be a partial admin who gets partial tools). I consider we're still in consensus-building stage in this case: I doubt any of us are completely closed to any idea - we have our respective arguments for supporting or rejecting the current C-class proposal and that's naturally our first choice. Now, we're disputing whether there is a strong consensus (or a consensus at all for that matter), and I favour the approach of considering alternative proposals where there's less cause for such a dispute. I'm hoping my proposal below (that attempts to better accomodate arguments on both sides of the divide) can help us reach a compromise to eliminate these disputes, and result in greater consent and willingness by our project as a whole. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Err, why were concerns kept off wiki? Secondly, what do you mean by "consensus"? Consensus cannot be fixed by voting or numbers, you know that. There are people on the assessment team who have been inactive, had they perhaps expressed support, the ratio of supports could have been higher. Wouldn't you agree? Let's end the debate, as it's not germane anymore and explore the suggestion below. =Nichalp «Talk»= 20:03, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I presume they will participate on-wiki upon their return. Secondly, had they perhaps expressed oppose, the ratio of oppose could have been higher. It's futile to talk about this sort of hypothetical - considering the suggestion below would be more worthwhile, I agree. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

Clearly, we're not in a position of strong consensus to support the original proposal. So it's time to consider alternative proposals so that we have a strong consensus for something.

One of the concerns is that an undue amount of time will be spent on assessment through C-class, while one of the other concerns was that a lack of C-class is not in line with other projects. We should consider a broader measure then.

Rather than use the editorial team's vague criteria for C-class, let's try a different approach. Currently our start article criteria is as follows. The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element. For example an article on Africa might cover the geography well, but be weak on history and culture. Has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including the following: multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic, a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic, multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article, a particularly useful picture or graphic (optional).

Implementing a C-class that uses the following criteria would be useful: The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should be free from major grammatical errors, and have a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. It should also contain supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams, and a section dedicated to providing references to sources of information used.

Our B-class could stay similar to what it is currently without requiring a full checklist: Commonly the highest article grade that is assigned outside a more formal review process, but requires some further work to reach Good Article standards. Satisfies all C-class criteria, but also has a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article. At minimum, it should also have some references to reliable sources. Nonetheless, it has some gaps or missing elements or references, needs editing for language usage or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as copyright, Neutral Point Of View (NPOV) or No Original Research (NOR).

GA criteria would then add four extra criteria in addition to coverage: namely, MOS compliance, in-line citations, references to all sources, and NPOV. Thoughts? Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Interesting proposal, although I disagree with some aspects of the first line of this section. :) I will think over it. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:11, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Decision 2

I've opened this section early; if there's no further comments in the above section, I think we're ready to get the ball rolling on the alternate proposal. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:45, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Seems fine. This is what I had in mind for the C class criteria originally. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:59, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Pics needed for poli sci articles

i just created Indo-Palestinian relations and Indo-Irish relations but I have no pic in ths regard. First of all it would be great to create a map. But then some sort of relation with the countries would be great. maybe eamon de valera or yasser arafat in india. Lihaas (talk) 02:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

This is obviously going to difficult unless the government decides to relicence photographs under a copyleft licence. Or, we can wait for 60 years! :( An alternate could be the clicking of an embassy photograph, but that might be risky from the security point of view. For maps: Download Inkscape, and use Image:BlankMap-World6.svg to fill in the colours of the respective countries. =Nichalp «Talk»= 11:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Aren't state photographs by definition in the public domain? And Thanks.
Just saw the file for that is 30Mb? It would take an eternity on this computer to download it. I was wondering, if you (or somebody else) has it, can you make a quick colouring of India and Palestine, and India and Ireland? Any colour code between orange/green would do, we can then alter it on the page. Lihaas (talk) 12:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
No photos of any government (union/state/local) in India are in public domain. Are you saying that this image Image:BlankMap-World6.svg is 30 MB? It's 1.6 on the listed page. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Hey Lihaas, I can help here. Let me know if the maps are still needed or you are working on the same. I would need 1 day to make both. --GPPande talk! 07:24, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Amateur radio in India on main page today.

Big thumbs up for Nichalp (talk · contribs) to get this to FA status. This seems to be the shortest FA nomination to pass successfully. :-) --GPPande talk! 14:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Also one of the fastest to be written from zero to FAC (5 days) :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:01, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Kingdom of Mysore FAR

I have nominated Kingdom of Mysore 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 "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:25, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedians in Bangalore/Chennai

Cary Bass with Wikimedia Foundation had posted the following message to the Wikimediaindia-l list:

Hello everyone,

Sue Gardner is going to be in India next week for several things, Bangalore and Chennai, and would like to get in touch with some local Wikimedians in and near those areas for meeting and meetup. We are especially interested in those who are interested in the chapter but anyone with any involvement is welcome.

If you would respond to me off list ( Special:Emailuser/Cary_Bass ) I would be most grateful, whether yourself or other Wikimedians you may know.

Yours very truly

Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation

Posting here for wider audience. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 02:22, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Any idea when he is in Bangalore? -- Tinu Cherian - 13:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
It's a she (User:Sue Gardner) =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:55, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
( Sue Gardner) -- Tinu Cherian - 09:12, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I, too, am interested in knowing when she would be in Chennai. Any idea of the exact schedule? -RavichandarMy coffee shop 04:25, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Those interested are advised to e-mail Cary Bass to know the event schedule. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 18:13, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Picture of the Raja of Panagal

I need a picture of the Raja of Panagal for incorporation in the Raja of Panagal article. I have searched all over the net and was not able to find a single one. If at all someone here has a picture in his/her personal collection, we humbly request you to contribute to the project. Thanks-RavichandarMy coffee shop 15:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Scan a picture in book published before 1948. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:46, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I know. But you see, I don't have any book with his picture. That's why I am asking here-RavichandarMy coffee shop 03:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Ok. Usually people belonging to the pre independence era have few images available online, that's why I thought of the book option. You can perhaps ask User:Dore chakravarthy if he has any from his personal collection. An alternative suggestion would be if someone click a statue of him somewhere. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:03, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, I asked him. And I hope it is of use. Well, while Mr. Doreswamy has previously contributed photos of the Quit India movement, etc. in which he has participated, the individual whose photo I need passed away in 1928. If we are to look for contemporaries, then we could only consider people who are over 100 which is practically ruled out. Let me see. I expect to get some leads for some quarter anyhow. And by the way, thanks for providing the link :-) It was great to learn about. I guess he is the oldest Indian Wikipedian. -RavichandarMy coffee shop 14:36, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
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