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Rajdeep Sardesai

Need help. I've posted this persistent problem here before regarding continuous BLP violations on journalists at /Archive_61#Female_journalists.2C_reporters_BLP_vios.

So now Sardesai's page is currently "hijacked" by one IP editor who insists on putting an incident in his page.

Here's the diff and discussion is at Talk:Rajdeep_Sardesai#New_York_incident.

Most of the time, these editors either relent on seeing the BLP policy or get blocked or stop editing whatever. This one took more steps and has fetched citations, I've pointed out that they may be misrepresented on talk, forget whether this whole mention is relevant or not. Also has discarded my post about the BLP policy and other guidelines saying the usual accusation of me trying to suppress this incident (start on my talk initially) etc and hasn't made any policy/guideline-based argument besides the vague NPOV. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 18:01, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Moved to ANI. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:56, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
Related to this, because the same IP editor is involved in the disruption, I was hoping that I could get more eyes at Shirish Kunder. Though there were some problems with some serious puffery at that article, an IP editor from the US is working a nerve trying to swing the POV pendulum in the other direction, with edits that seem to be geared to denigrate the subject. Changing the lead to describe him as notable for being married to Farah Khan, indicating that the subject "supposedly" worked as an electronics engineer, and that the subject released a short film on YouTube as a "freebie". (Yes, they actually wrote that...) Some of this was detailed at this ANI (Permalink, not the live discussion...) Anyhow, I don't want to be the only voice of reason at the article, so if anyone else could watchlist it, I'd be grateful. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:31, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Briefly looked at it, on just BLP standards alone, just that movie plagiarism part seems a little undue and could do a trimming and source checking, being the only contentious part in the article; the rest is bare basic stuff about his work and not much to contest. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 16:50, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Redirect of Gohila, Uttar Pradesh to Gohila, Ambedkar Nagar

Hey guys this fellow redirected Gohila, Uttar Pradesh to Gohila, Ambedkar Nagar. Could someone please double-check that this is a legitimate move consistent with other articles? The user is new. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:22, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: There are two 'Gohila' villages in India. One of them is in the Uttar Pradesh state – ref 1; ref 2 – and the other one is in the West Bengal state – ref 1; ref 2. The sock mentioned by you was referring to the village in the Ambedkar Nagar district of the Uttar Pradesh state. But I guess both of his articles will be deleted, as per WP:BLOCK EVASION. - NitinMlk (talk) 19:46, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
@NitinMlk: I guess what I'm trying to get clarified is whether or not the redirect he performed is worth reverting or not. If the change is constructive, I'll leave it alone. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:51, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb: The title of the page should remain as the Gohila, Uttar Pradesh. There's no need to further disambiguate it. - NitinMlk (talk) 19:57, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Per your prediction, I wound up deleting it, but I appreciate your effort to clarify. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:15, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for saving my efforts ;) NitinMlk (talk) 20:21, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Indian 500 and 1000 rupee note demonetisation#Title

A discussion was started here about the page title. While the discussion seemed to 'peter out', only 3 editors (myself included commented) the page was moved again. Any extra opinions welcome. 220 of Borg 10:07, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

This page has been moved, again, to the rather IMHO stupid:
The 8th November 2016 Indian delegalization of 500 and 1000 rupee notes issued till that date.
The third 'discussion', in which only the mover took part is, now at Talk:Indian 500 and 1000 rupee note demonetisation#Change title. Change demonetisation to delegalization
Input please? 220 of Borg 04:25, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

CIS-A2K Newsletter October 2016

Hello,
CIS-A2K has published their newsletter for the months of October 2016. The edition includes details about these topics:

  • Blog post Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November — a revisit
  • Program report: Impact Report form for the Annual Program Grant
  • Program report: Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far
  • Article: What Indian Language Wikipedias can do for Greater Open Access in India
  • Article: What Indian Language Wikipedias can do for Greater Open Access in India
  • . . . and more

Please read the complete newsletter here. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:18, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
If you want to subscribe/unsubscribe this newsletter, click here.

Nationality

Can we accept Sikh as nationality? Please see this edit which claiming Sikh as a "nation" on behalf of some sources. Thank you – GSS (talk) 07:45, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Uninformed edits on Chandragupta Maurya

It has coincidentally come to my attention that Chandragupta Maurya is receiving edits by users, by all appearances from India, who repeatedly add (as far as I can tell) fictional pseudo-facts gleaned from the new TV series Chandra Nandni to the article. If the edits persist, semi-protecting the article might become necessary. I have seen misinformation from the show spill to other articles as well. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:16, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a month. Vanamonde (talk) 05:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
  • Common scene these days when Indian televisions start taking such topics like historic fiction and mythology. Newbies keep coming and add stuff that has been created for better screenplay in such article. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 05:44, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I was at first puzzled but figured out very soon that that's exactly what's going on here! @Vanamonde93: Thank you for taking care of this! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:40, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Template:Narendra Modi

Can somebody with a decent knowledge of template syntax take a look at this? It seems to contain a whole bunch of extraneous material, which I'd remove except I don't want to break anything through ignorance. Vanamonde (talk) 14:27, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

{{Narendra Modi}}
I'm only a dabbler in such magic but what's do you think is wrong with it syntax-wise? It looks fine to me, other than being quite untidy, lot of spaces and the lists could be formatted--but those are minor.
Otherwise, are you referring to the sheer amount of links in it? Looks like every possible article about anything done/related to the present government has been added to it. If we look up WP:SIDEBAR more carefully, I think it fails it/needs to be trimmed (see also: WP:Article series and WP:NAV). Ugog Nizdast (talk) 19:50, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
ping Vanamonde93 incase you didn't see this Ugog Nizdast (talk) 21:56, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
@Ugog Nizdast: yes, I missed this somehow, thanks. I was referring to all the stuff I removed here, because it seemed entirely superfluous to the template as it stands. AFAIK it was the result of a crudely done merge. In any case I removed it myself eventually, and I think I didn't break anything, so I think we're good for now. Vanamonde (talk) 03:15, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
Oh I see. So what you removed was what to display when the |horizontal parameter is passed. But on its own, that still doesn't work, the horizontal mode looks like this on my sandbox; is this related to the undocumented merge you're talking about? Anyway, if it was useless since the beginning, update the templates doc which talks about this parameter. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:54, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
Updated, I think. There wasn't much detail on the parameters I removed anyhow. Vanamonde (talk) 14:16, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Zomi nationalism

A pretty incomprehensible article with badly or unsourced material, most of which seemed irrelevant. I've removed quite a bit (eg "The Zo and the mi are two words but their relation is combination in physical and chemically in nature" although that might have been removed from another edit by the creator of this article). It's still a bit of a trainwreck. Doug Weller talk 10:45, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Doug Weller: Really couldn't make out head or tail and the refs make me question its notability for a standalone article. I didn't look further as it didn't concern India as far as I could tell. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 22:02, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
@Ugog Nizdast: Thanks. I don't think the editor is competent. But if you see Zomi Revolutionary Army you'll see that it definitely concerns India. Doug Weller talk 15:05, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
@Iryna Harpy and Ugog Nizdast: if you look at the editor's other articles. It's not just a language problem. Do either of you see a solution? Doug Weller talk 18:51, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: Oh, my aching head. All I can see is a WP:COMPETENCE problem with no easy fix. The editor can't differentiate between his/her own personal accounts of Zo/Zou, unreliable sources, and encyclopaedic articles and content. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 19:55, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
It might make sense to indef him to protect the encyclopedia and to save volunteer time at least until we can work something out with him, like that he shouldn't edit any articles directly, and can only post edit requests. His participation in discussion has been minimal at best, and confusing. I'm not sure what else can be done here. We can't repair language deficiencies (I get the sense that most of what he's submitting is done via mechanical translation). @Doug Weller: Do you want me to be bad cop? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:26, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
I'd certainly agree that some form of hard-nosed measure needs to be taken. Working off their talk and translation software English, I can't envisage any coherent requests being directed to other editors on their behalf... leaving indeffing as the only option. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:35, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb: yes please. Doug Weller talk 20:46, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: -  Done - I tried to explain the rationale on their talk page. Lemme know if it's too harsh. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:01, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Doug Weller: Just some questions regarding the content left behind, I've not done any digging as such and these as just from a quick glance. Why should we take anything written on Zomi Nationalism seriously--or the rest of the editor's contribs, if they're all like this? There aren't any third-party sources there right? a redirect to Zomi people and maybe a section on its nationalism there if sources present (oh great, there's a subgroup too called Zou people which makes it even more confusing). Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:54, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

@Ugog Nizdast: The issues of names seems to be a nightmare and the subject sometimes of editwarring. I don't know what to do here and really am too busy. But I don't think anything written by this editor is fit for purpose. Doug Weller talk 15:45, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

madrasmusings.com

Hey guys, anyone heard of MadrasMusings.com? Any thoughts on if it's sufficient or not for referencing? The site says that they're registered with the Indian Registrar of Newspapapers. I don't see any editor information at their contact page. This article, which is linked on their main page attributes an article to a "special corresondent" [sic], so I'm a little uneasy about it. It's being used as a financial reference at Velayudham. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:54, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and one more: mathrubhumi.com? Their About page boasts a strong history. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:47, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Don't know about the former but Mathrubhumi, mainly in Malayalam, to my knowledge is notable at least and should be reliable (without checking, so take with grain of salt), definitely can be used for local state news. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:02, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
@Ugog Nizdast: Thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:16, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Can anyone help expand Rifa-e-Aam Club for a DYK?

I wrote a stub for Rifa-e-Aam Club, but I am stuck at 184 words. If anyone can add a hundred or so more, we could WP:DYK it :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:05, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I've added a little bit of text and a source. Not quite big enough for DYK yet though. I'll take another look later. Vanamonde (talk) 03:49, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
Nice! We just need one or two more sentences... so close! PS. I tried looking for a free picture but I failed (nothing in creative commons search) :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:53, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
Added another sentence fragment. I actually think it's now over the DYK limit of 1500B. Vanamonde (talk) 09:24, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
It is. 1711 bytes. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 09:52, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Of course, people should still add stuff if they're able. Vanamonde (talk) 10:15, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
Looks like there are few images on Flickr. I've sent one request for permssion to one of the users. Might get lucky but don't expect anything. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 21:51, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
@Piotrus: Yay! I got permission and added it to the page. Hope it's in time for DYK. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:24, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
Excellent job, everyone - I have nominated it at Template:Did you know nominations/Rifa-e-Aam Club. Feel free to suggest cooler hooks! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:28, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

careers360.com

I've managed to stick my head thoroughly into the wonderful world of spamming on various Indian university pages. One site I see used fairly frequently is various domains under careers360.com from both named accounts and IP accounts. Based on the contributions of some accounts, it looks like pure spamming is happening (see P.Kumar1988 (talk · contribs) for example). Other times it's used by fairly well established editors as a reference. I see it often used for ranking universities. There's a fair amount of advertising on the site. Some of the articles look fairly decent, but others [1] while it looks good just seems to be a summary of the topic designed to get clicks. Any thoughts on how to consider this as a source? Generally reliable? Reliable for some things? LinkSearch returns around 273 links, nearly all universities in India. Is this a useful site for Wikipedia? Appreciate any thoughts/advice. Couldn't find previous discussions on WP:RSN or here, but my searchfu has been weak of late, so easily could have missed something. Ravensfire (talk) 17:07, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm not good at RS-checking but this doesn't look like just another spam-site to be discarded. It's actual reliability needs to be checked. If no one capable here, then move to RSN. I would like to know the result. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:22, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Anti-Hinduism/Persecution of Hindus

Persecution of Hindus and Anti-Hinduism‎ currently have huge amounts of content that are redundant to each other. One could even argue for a merger, but if argument for keeping the two pages separate is that deal with ideology and one with incidents, then the content needs to be distinct. Currently, it is not: much the same material is diced up in different ways in the two articles, together with copious quantities of original research. Any assistance in cleaning them up would be much appreciated. Vanamonde (talk) 05:12, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

India financial sector articles need attention.

This came up at WP:COI. There are a number of articles about small loans to business and companies involved with them. Most of the articles are company PR, and are tagged as ads. One set of companies involved:

Anyone want to look at this area? John Nagle (talk) 05:03, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Mess

Talk:South Indian diaspora, is this a valid new article or a duplicate? In ictu oculi (talk) 08:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Commented. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:19, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Meitei language → Manipuri language

There is a move discussion going on at Talk:Meitei language. Thanks. Filpro (talk) 22:02, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Jnanpith Award

The subject article is an FL nominee since quite a long time for now and hence requesting the community to review and comment at the review. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 09:35, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Indian Political Party Stub/Orphans

Hey folks! There seems to be quite a few articles for Indian political parties which are just a sentence or two and have been tagged as orphans for 7 years. I'm having trouble finding much in the way of sources for them. Any chance someone with a bit more experience (and interest) in this kind of thing could take a look? If you could add a ref and maybe even de-orphan some of them, you'd be my hero. Alternatively, if you can't find anything, we may want to consider bringing some to Articles for Deletion (the relevant notability criteria are probably Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)):

Thanks a bunch! Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 04:08, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

I would suggest redirecting and merging to the respective elections where they took part in. If a party had taken part in more than one election but is still minor then redirect and merge to their respective "Government of [state name]" from Category:State governments of India. Nationalist Trinamool Youth Congress can simply be redirected to Nationalist Trinamool Congress. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 06:15, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Additionally, smaller factions formed out of larger parties due to minor tiffs and then merged back in when they "resolved their disputes" can simply be merged back. We need not given them any special publicity that they wanted. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 13:26, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Pinging @Soman: as many have been created by him and in general he deals a lot in political articles. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 13:28, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I think these are all creations of many, several from the time that I wasn't too concerned with putting proper references in articles (a practice I now regret). I'd try to go through them one by one. Generally speaking, merging articles on political parties isn't that helpful. --Soman (talk) 15:10, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
A usual case is when these articles have just the ECI registration as source to their bare basic information about their founder, foundation date etc. IMO, that still fails WP:GNG and only helps us verify that the party exists and isn't a hoax. Nothing more could be written about it.
I support redirecting them too (the quicker alternative to afd). The best candidate would be List of political parties in India directed to relevant section using the {{R to list entry}}. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 19:33, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
I am against listifying such entries. Few weeks later someone is gonna remove the bluelink of the entry saying "redirects here"; months later someone like me is gonna blank that entry saying "WP:NLIST, WP:V, WP:N, red-links out". Also, the history, even if minuscule and one-liner, about the party is lost in lists which can stay in either of the target articles. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 03:51, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Btw, List of political parties in India does not include defunct parties. So these entries might not find place there unless a table for defunct entries is started. Why are they not listed? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 03:53, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

A fair point actually. Never thought of it, though I myself added Category:Defunct political parties in India to the See also. Maybe I didnt think that because there won't be any proper ref for that and we would have to compile such a list solely based on that category; but that's just an inconvenience. I support such an addition.

Here are some other issues I've had with it. I have zero experience in lists and did some major decisions with minimal input like Limiting the unrecognised to just the ones with articles and removing the flags and symbols, which were hopefully wise. Another thing which bugs me is that it was reported that INC, NCP and CPI (M?) would lose national status way back after the election results years ago due to their less seats but till now I couldn't find any official indication that it happened, see talk. All India Trinamool Congress got national status recently yet they remain. Maybe I didn't search well enough, I don't know. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 06:15, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, there certainly isn't any reason why List of political parties in India can't include the entire ECI listing, plus defunct parties plus reasonably notable parties that never registered (such as several of the CPI(ML) factions). The list can include a "Notes" column, which can include brief and referenced information on some of the minor parties. (Yes, the list would have 2,000+ entries, but I feel to see the problem with that. If properly referenced and sortable it will still be possible to navigate). --Soman (talk) 16:11, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
I decided not to include all the unrecognised registered mainly from WP:CSC. For instance they mention the three criteria, where the first one ("Every entry meets the notability criteria") applies here. The second obviously doesn't while the third mentions that it should be short, easy to navigate and useful--WP:NOTDIR comes to mind here. I'm fine with what else you've proposed (again, never thought of notable but never registered) but don't see an easy way of doing it in terms of fetching refs. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Any further thoughts on these? As far as I can tell nearly all are still orphans without references. Any help is greatly appreciated Ajpolino (talk) 21:22, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
@Ugog Nizdast, Soman, and Dharmadhyaksha: Hey folks, sorry to be a pain in the rear. Any further thoughts on these? Is there some broad solution for how to deal with all of these or should we treat them on a case-by-case basis? If it isn't possible to expand the articles from their current 1-2 sentence state, we may want to consider deleting (as they may not meet Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)), or merging into a list and redirecting. Thoughts? Ajpolino (talk) 17:41, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
They need to be treated on case-by-case basis, the list above represents a wide spectrum (from alliance with millions of votes to rather marginal groups). --Soman (talk) 23:33, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Hey Soman, can you mark those major ones in the list which ought not be afded? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 05:51, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Definately notable entities: Mizoram Secular Front, United Left Front (1962), Krantikari Morcha (all of these were allies of notable parties). I'm crossing them out. I'll try to source 2-3 other parties from the list today. --Soman (talk) 13:15, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Are there any entries that, now with the benefit of time, are definitely not notable and should be PRODed? ("No" is a fine answer, if applicable). That might help focus our efforts on the saveable/expandable ones. Ajpolino (talk) 18:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Indian Premier League seasons and results/archive1

Would be lovely to have comments from experienced editors at the Featured List nomination page. Thanks. Lourdes 11:29, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Shahjahanpur Rang Mahotsav

Hi all, may I please impose upon any Hindi-speakers to look at Shahjahanpur Rang Mahotsav and figure out whether or not the article meets WP:GNG per the sources given? They appear to all be in Hindi. The article was created by a sock operator and it looks like it was brought back from a redirect by some suspicious noob. I'm considering putting it up for AfD to make it easier to delete in the future, but only if the dance competition isn't notable. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion, the subject meets GNG, the first three sources are of Amar Ujala and last one is of Dainik Jagran which are reliable. The articles address the subject in detail. Pratyush (talk) 19:44, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
@Dharmadhyaksha: Greatly appreciate the reply, thank you. My concern is that I want to perform due diligence before nomming per WP:BEFORE. I figured if any of the Hindi-speakers could look at the sources and help with a quick check. "Naw, poor references. Not news sites, they're blogs. Passing mentions as well." And maybe a Google check in Hindi, that'd make things a bit easier for me. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:50, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
Oh poop, I didn't notice Pratyush's comments. Sorry! Anyhow, I'm still unclear what to do if one says GNG is met, and another suggests taking it to AfD. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
No! The 4 Hindi news articles are just press reports of local events. They all describe who all performed, who all won and so on. I could not find a single notable personality mentioned nor is the organizing group any notable as such. Nor could I locate any better sources. It doesn’t pass "significant coverage" part of GNG. TOOSOON also applies. They might try here after few years. Amazingly, if the competition is pan India, reports should also be pan India and not just from newspapers which are popular in the region where the event took place. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 05:12, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
There are teams from 20 states of India, so I dont think it will be justice to call it a local event. The 4 articles also describe the event and not just mention it's participants. And there are not just 4 articles, there are many [3], [4]. This article says the 2015 event was inaugurated by former Home Minister of India. There is coverage in other state too. An article from Jamshedpur edition of Dainik Jagran. The coverage is very high considering that the place is an Indian small town where generally online coverage is very low (see WP:INDAFDKI) and sources are in Non English language (Non English Indian newspapers archive very small percentage of their content online). Pratyush (talk) 11:08, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
You are welcome to improve the article and make it claim some notability before it goes to AfD in say next week or so. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 11:35, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Problematic List

A relatively new user has created List of Sikhs in Punjabi Cinema. Leaving behind one entry – Diljit Dosanjh – whole of the list seems to be incorrect. In fact, respective articles of the entries don't have any reliable source regarding their religion, let alone self-identification, which is required in these cases. So, this list constitute BLP violation, as per WP:BLPCAT/WP:CAT/R. And hence all but one entry should be removed from it. But that will make the list redundant. So, I don't know what to do here. BTW, the same user also seems to have added unsourced religion-related details in various BLPs, e.g. [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], etc. So, his whole contribution needs scrutiny.

PS: The concerned user is topic-banned from Sikh and Punjabi related articles. So, I didn't discuss the issue on his talk page. - NitinMlk (talk) 19:25, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I have AfDed it at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Sikhs in Punjabi Cinema. Please WP:BEBOLD to take such crap for deletions. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 03:32, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Could someone help with cleaning up Maithil article and adding to the approproate categories?

Would really appreciate any help here, the article seems like a bit of a mess at the moment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Damien2016 (talk • contribs) 11:20, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

@Damien2016: Don't have time to help in any actual editing but can advise how to edit in general. What's wrong with the categories at present? If you want to edit, an easy way is to use WP:HOTCAT. If you have any other queries let me know. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:22, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Greetings Noticeboard for India-related topics/Archive 63 Members!

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Alternative medicine practitioners

People, please remember while editing topics on Alternative medicine to be careful. I've come across multiple articles mainly on such practitioners to be against WP:FRINGE/PS and sometimes even WP:MEDRS. These were like a WP:WALLEDGARDEN. Given our government and media promoting this, it's easy to fall for this. The government even regularly gives AM practitioners the Padma Shri in medicine. There are such people having posts in the medicine and scientific advisory committees. I could go on. While it's for these reasons these people get notable, we draw the line at promoting AM.

It is possible given the lack of previous discussion regarding this, there's has not been any major conflict before; I was surprised by this. There's my old post Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard/Archive_52#Category:Indian_homeopaths for reference. Editors not aware of both those guidelines and focusing on working mainly in this area are still oblivious to this; I daresay they're intentionally doing this. It all boils down to the main articles on Homeopathy and Ayurveda: asserting their efficacy in these bio pages will be contradictory, almost like a WP:POVFORK. If any arguments, they should take it there first.

I first found this at Category:Indian medical doctors which had AM practitioners as a subcat. This was since years. Then I found Category:Indian scientists being populated with them. A range of AM practitioners in Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri in medicine were promotional in this way.

I found these were some ways of it being done, along with examples:

  • using the word "allopath" (a derogatory term) to refer to regular medicine
  • referring to any form of alternative medicine as "scientific", practitioners as "medical doctors, scientists" and their own research getting mentions in AM journals as "cited by peer-reviewed medical journals" diff, diff
  • most importantly, saying that they can "cure" so and so--this fails MEDRS. diff

Oh great, more work: typing "~Allopath" in search shows a host of articles using it. So main categories to scrutinise are Category:Indian homeopaths and Category:Ayurvedacharyas--there are still some unchecked. I mainly went through the Padma Shree awardees. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 00:29, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Cannabis in India averaging 100,000+ views/year, kudos to WPNI

About a year and a half ago I started a stub at Cannabis in India, and posted on this noticeboard inviting input from others. A number of folks from this project chipped in to expand the article, and I'm pleased to note that the article has gained 119,387 views in the last 12 months, making it one of the most popular of the "Cannabis in (country)" articles. (PageView analysis link)

Just wanted to note this achievement of WPNI members, thanks again for your support!

Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 07:50, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Indiarailinfo.com at RSN

A discussion has been initiated. Editors may input their valuable suggestions. --βα£α(ᶀᶅᶖᵵᵶ) 12:06, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Hydro bath needs a cleaning

I'm having a problem finding a central location to post this. If there is a better place that will be more noticeable please copy to there.

I fix misspellings. (It keeps me out of trouble.) So I scan through Special:RecentChanges looking for someone correcting a word, then I look to find all the other misspellings then I go fix those.

So today I see someone fix 'Hydrabad' to 'Hyderabad'. Great. Whoa! 80 times!??!

How is it that a major city can have its name misspelled so many times? Imagine 'Peris' or 'Lundon' in en:Wikipedia dozens of times!

Would your project consider taking on a work item to look for and fix misspelled city names? I wonder how many state names are misspelled, um, like Telangna? I wonder about 'Delli' in Kharampur_Mazar_Sharif, for instance. How about 'Predesh' for 17 hits?

I think it would be a good work project, even if only because as you look for _these_ misspellings it will take you to many articles on India and you can look for _other_ problems at the same time. Sound good? Shenme (talk) 07:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Good job at fixing these. I think the main problem would be due to English not being the native language of those editing, so you'll see such problems (and bigger ones) on India-related (or any other poorly represented country) pages. One thing to remember while fixing these would be that some of these variations may not be typos per se, Dilli is the old form of "Delhi" after all. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 12:43, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
This problem occurs mostly with Sanskrit and Dravidian languages. When these get translated to Hindi, the vowels are often dropped and when some editors try to translate it back to English over here, those vowels stay out. One just has to look at the various articles linked to Ramayana or Mahabharata where these errors get introduced as "corrections". Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages explains this better. —SpacemanSpiff 13:26, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Montazur Rahman Akbar

can any one edit this article

Montazur Rahman Akbar — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.35.168.42 (talk) 17:28, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, that's a bit vague... Did you have a specific question or recommendation? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:02, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Rearrange this article like director bio — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.35.168.42 (talk) 19:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer review for the Jadunath Singh article

A request has been made for the article on Jadunath Singh, an Indian Param Vir Chakra recipient, to be peer reviewed. Interested editors are invited to participate in the review here: Wikipedia:Peer review/Jadunath Singh/archive1. Thank you for your time. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:57, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Hazi Azimulhaq Pahalwan - politician

Hello, this article could use a check from a native Hindi or Urdu speaker please:

  1. What's the correct spelling of his name? Romanized, and in Hindi and Urdu.
  2. When did he really assume office? Infobox has 2002, article table notes 2015, but the 16th Assembly was constituted in 2012. 3 different years - there has to be something wrong here.
  3. What kind of source is ref #1, including dates of 1976 and 2003? It seems to be a legit source, but is it about the same politician? Google Translate was totally useless here.

The article has been created and repeatedly edited by various sock accounts, so it would be good if another editor could double-check its validity and accuracy (the socking editor added a mix of good faith edits with occasional fabricated details and patent nonsense in various articles, so it's hard to differentiate). GermanJoe (talk) 13:51, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

2012 would be correct according to this. Ref 1 is from the assembly (member profile) whiel ref 3 is from the election commission. The other two wouldn't qualify as RS but they seem to have the right info if you look around. —SpacemanSpiff 15:25, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: thank you for the information, but could you have another look please? I did an External links check on ref #1, see here, and the ref is used in 3 articles. The original valid usage was likely in Ali Yusuf Ali, after that the ref was re-used by a socking editor to create Masood Ahemad and Hazi Azimulhaq Pahalwan. The usage in the newer 2 articles has to be erroneously copypasted (?). Also, Masood Ahemad lists this politician as member of the 16th Assembly, which contradicts both Hazi Azimulhaq Pahalwan, and the given references #3 and #4. Due to the language barrier I can't sort out these issues, so any help would be greatly appreciated (I am half-tempted to nominate the latter 2 articles as G3 sock creations and be done with it, instead of wasting more of my and your time). GermanJoe (talk) 18:22, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
@GermanJoe:, I was careless when I commented earlier and didn't read the name on Ref 1. The correct link for it should be uplegisassembly.gov.in/ENGLISH/pdfs/members_profile/278.pdf. You can get profiles for each member based on the "number" in ref 3: Find the serial number in pages 9 to 18 of [11] and then use that in place of XX in uplegisassembly.gov.in/ENGLISH/pdfs/members_profile/XX.pdf. That would give the correct profile of the current MLA. As for Masood Ahemad, the person came third in the election (lost), so it's a hoax. It seems to qualify for G5 anyway. —SpacemanSpiff 01:29, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
I have now changed the profile URL according to your analysis (I still can't read it, but will AGF ;) ). I have also fixed the date, and removed all unclear or unsourced biographical information per WP:BLP. Finally I moved the article to Azimulhaq Pahalwan as this is a verifiable sourced spelling variant (ref #2), and added the link to the members list in Sixteenth Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh. If you have a bit more time, it would be great if you could briefly double-check my changes. Thanks again for your help with fixing this mess, SpacemanSpiff. GermanJoe (talk) 02:20, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I correctd the name in Urdu. --Soman (talk) 04:54, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Viceroy in relation to Secretary of State (Amery, Linlithgow, Wavell)

Request for help

I have recently posted a request for a new photograph on Wikimedia Commons. I would appreciate it if any members of this project who are located in Bihar would take a look at this request and see if they are able to help. Regards Exemplo347 (talk) 11:00, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Chaaval / Chawal at RFD

Please see Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2016_December_22#Chaaval. It could use some input from someone fluent in Hindi/Urdu and who perhaps better understands the context of the word. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 05:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Dhangar

Need eyes on this: Dhangar. The usual "everyone from Chandragupta to Shivaji belonged to my caste" cruft. A user is restoring a previous version of the article without addressing any of the issues for which the content was removed. utcursch | talk 15:53, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Looks like someone beat me to it. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:28, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

About "Aaryans World School"

Hi all,
I have just deleted this article under the WP:G2 speedy deletion criterion, and blocked Aaryans World School (talk · contribs) for obvious username problems.
That said, should here be an article about this school or purported K-12 school network?
Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Maybe. A quick search shows some mentions in news reports so notability isn't dubious as such. Personally, I wouldn't vouch for it but it'll survive basic community scrutiny like shown in WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 06:11, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Just created a new article, appreciate if you guys could take a look at it.

Hi, just created Oinwar dynasty, would appreciate if you guys could look over it and check for any mistakes and add relevant categories. Thanks.Damien2016 (talk) 10:10, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

@Damien2016: The refs with Google Book urls can be formatted using this tool. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:18, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

RfC on Sati

I have started an RfC on the talk page of Sati. Please comment on it if the topic is of interest to you. Soham321 (talk) 04:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Strange "peer-reviewed" article

Here is a journal article [12] that got cited in Varna (Hinduism). The article appeared in International Research Journal of Social Sciences, which is apparently published by International Science Congress Association (now named, International Science Community Association). Just the abstract gives us a pretty good idea what this paper is about. The paper was written by a Mechanical Engineer, and it was peer-reviewed and published in under 2 months. Funnily, the citations include a paper by somebody called "Wikipedia" written in 1926! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:52, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I notice that the Xlinkbot already rejected it. But the guy is persisting. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:01, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
What a glaring mistake, really can't figure out how they made that or what they were trying to put. XLinkbot has a blacklist to my knowledge but I couldn't find the logs where or when this site was added. Sadly, in our country, any group with the word "science" in them raises many redflags. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:53, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The backlog of India-related deletion discussions has become quite long, and AfD discussions could do with more eyes that have experience in this area. Especially those familiar with cultural performers and entertainers, e.g., wp:Articles_for_deletion/Koushani_Mukherjee_(actress), wp:Articles_for_deletion/Kamal Thakur, wp:Articles_for_deletion/Kottakkal Nandakumaran Nair, etc.) Thanks. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 01:58, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

RfC on Nehru

An RfC has been initiated on the talk page of Jawaharlal Nehru. Please vote on it if the topic is of interest to you. Soham321 (talk) 04:47, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Swami Nithyananda BLP issues

Can someone have a look at this article (see this section) and help with the content. I see a lot of editors who seem to have some sort of a conflict of interest. This could benefit from inputs by established editors. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 05:26, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@Lemongirl942: I echo your concerns and you've acted on the safe side by reverting which is good but to my knowledge, his accusations pass WP:WELLKNOWN. A quick search, shows even some international coverage, "Indian guru Nithyananda is rearrested after being bailed" from BBC. An almost good sign it's relevant and passes it is that he was arrested and bailed. I'm reluctant to join in the article as I can't promise any legwork beyond such occasional input but let me know if I can be of any help regarding presenting it. A related article would be Asaram where something like this happened a long time ago--it's not currently in the best of condition but there's a decent balance on his accusations given that majority of sources talk only about that. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 18:05, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Ugog Nizdast. Yes, I had a look at the coverage and it seems to be well above the WP:WELLKNOWN bar. However, drafting the actual information is going to be an uphill task. I am personally not familiar with the history of the event. I guess if there are more editors willing to join in, I wouldn't mind helping out. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 15:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
There should be something about this on the BLPN archives somewhere if you search for it. I was involved in adminning that content at that time (I think there was a separate article for the scandal at that time). —SpacemanSpiff 15:27, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for telling us, here it is Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive81#Paramahamsa_Nithyananda: it looks like there was an agreed on mention of it eventually.
Lemongirl942, it shouldn't be that difficult regarding your concerns of being unfamiliar with it (same with me too). It will be fairly straightforward to mention it at minimum. I think there might be a good revision to recover it from if we're lucky, maybe mentioned at the archives of the article talk? In any case, I'll leap into the fray and see what is to be done but would be happy if you beat me to it. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 15:15, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Draft:AIZ_Musical_Group Comment

Hi, the linked page (rejected at AFC) has various references written in Hindi that I have as yet been unable to get an accurate translation for. Is there an editor in this project/can someone point me in the right direction of someone who can see if any of the references meet WP:MUSIC. Amortias (T)(C) 17:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Pondicherry vs Puducherry

Hello, could someone please tell me why exactly we keep the name Puducherry for the union territory article and Pondicherry for the city article? I looked through the RfCs but still don't understand. So people still call the city by the old name, but they have embraced the new name for the union territory? Doesn't make sense to me. — Sunnya343✈ (háblame • my work) 04:26, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

BHIM (new e-payment system) needs to be integrated into Wikipedia

We had several new article starts that I merged, and are now at BHIM, since that system was announced yesterday. This topic might get a flurry of attention, so help from experts would be appreciated to make sure this new article is integrated into Wikipedia. MatthewVanitas (talk) 04:37, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Page got 5,000 views yesterday alone; quite a timely topic! MatthewVanitas (talk) 09:56, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Incorrect river map

Hi everynoe! I came across this map. Brahamani and Baitarani rivers are interchanged in it. Somebody who can edit images please correct it. Swingoswingo (talk) 13:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Planemad's maps are usually right but in this case he seems to have made a transcription error. Looks like he edited a couple of weeks back, maybe he'll see this ping when he comes back next. —SpacemanSpiff 13:34, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Oh wow, nobody noticed this in a decade :O I have stopped using graphic editors after I switched to a GIS based workflow so its some fiddling for me as well to do it. Swingoswingo, if you have inkscape, maybe its a simple edit? -- PlaneMad|YakYak 11:53, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
I m bad at that. Swingoswingo (talk) 19:31, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Courtesy Notification

Talk:Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna has a malformed article FLC history template, its listed as being a Featured List and also as failing its FLC. Just an FYI. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:57, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

@TomStar81: Thanks for highlighting. I tried fixing it but couldn't. Have hence posted another request here. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 11:01, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Peer review for M. P. T. Acharya

G'day, a peer review has been requested for the M. P. T. Acharya article. Interested parties are invited to take part at the review page, which can be found here: Wikipedia:Peer review/M. P. T. Acharya/archive1. Thank you for your time. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:52, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Alauddin Khilji

Somebody please check this change. I dont believe it because I am studying history currently in details. One of the sources is incorrect as well. Swingoswingo (talk) 19:30, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Changes have been reverted, and also I removed a word from the heading here. MPS1992 (talk) 01:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Veerapandiya Kattabomman

Hey all, can someone please look at these changes to see if they were made in a wise fashion. I don't know the subject, so I'm not terribly helpful here. Apart from the grammar issues, I notice some significant changes, like the statement that the subject killed many Tamils and statements like "However, the historians used to write several myths and unreal things about him to depict him as a brave and kind hearted King though he is a coward in reality." One statement was changed from "Folk songs recalling the heroism of the Poligar leaders remain alive in Tamil Nadu to this day" to "Folk songs recalling the selfishness and cowardness of the Poligar leaders remain alive in Tamil Nadu to this day." Seems a pretty big shift, so I'm hoping someone might be able to look at it, please. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:54, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: What stopped you from bolding undoing those changes per WP:BURDEN? Stuff like what you've quoted almost never belongs to an article. Then there's it being WP:REDFLAG poorly sourced and even written without even knowing the subject. Reverted and warned the editor. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:36, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
This kind of bovine excrement often finds its way to many of our articles, I have to regularly wipe it out from Raja Raja Chola I, where, in addition to being unadulterated nonsense, it is also a copyvio of numerous blogs. Unfortunately, "the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" now just lives up to "anyone can edit"! Also, Indian history topics don't get as much attention as Indian film, so it's difficult to keep the crap out. I think such stuff will rarely last long in Kattabomman (film) for example. —SpacemanSpiff 10:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Bisalpur Dam

Please see the article's talk page regarding desirable work to be done over the next day or so. Schwede66 19:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Media upload of historical photographs of India

Dear editors,

I would like to draw your attention to a media upload that may be of relevance to this page:

The Temminck Groll Collection consists of 2,641 historical photographs taken by the Dutch architect and architectural historian Coen Temminck Groll (1925-2015). The photos were taken in regions with which the Dutch have had historical relations, including countries in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia (see the category description for a full listing). The photos were taken during Temminck Groll's travels and study of 'shared cultural heritage' (heritage of the Netherlands located outside the country’s borders) and mainly date to the 1960s and 1970s. The photographs were digitised by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and made available to Wikimedia Commons in the context of the project The Netherlands and the world. If you have any questions about this upload, or have other media requests regarding Dutch shared cultural heritage, don't hesitate to leave a message at the project page!

Kind regards, --AWossink (talk) 14:38, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

More castecruft

The edits by 103.206.*.* need some cleanup. Preliminary look suggests the usual caste-cruft (XYZ king belonged to my caste) backed by fake references or poor sources.

E.g. - For [13], the source cited is Kammavari Charithra, which appears to be a non-RS caste glorification book.

I recall that some days back a series of Kamma-related sockpuppet accounts were blocked. Don't remember the sockmaster's name, but this could be that guy. utcursch | talk 16:00, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Ajoy Home

Dear India experts: I have done my best to find online sources for this article. There are quite a few references that are not linked online. Are some of these to independent reliable sources that could be used to demonstrate notability of the subject?—Anne Delong (talk) 19:23, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Invitation for Office Hours with WMF's Global Reach team

Hi,

On behalf of Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Reach Team, we would like to invite all the South Asian Wikimedia communities to our office hours to discuss our work in the region.

Meeting Details

Date: Thursday, 19th January 2017

Time: 16:00 UTC/21:30 IST

Duration: 1 hour

Language: English

Google Hangout Location:

https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/ytl/w5sE6IZTXERWH0VvKtDRiAm9WE1eZ5mYcnQm0h7dHok=?hl=en_US&authuser=0

If you are not able to join the hangout, you can watch the live stream with a few seconds lag at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD-VCpQkVSk

Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Global_Reach_South_Asia_Office_Hours

Agenda

  • Introduction of Global Reach Team and office hours
  • Research around New Readers and our partnership themes
  • Feedback for next office hours
  • Q&A

We plan to hold these office hours at regular intervals. FYI, office hours for South East Asia and Central Asia/Eastern Europe will be held separately; given the size of communities, we needed to break down the regions.

Please feel free to add your questions, comments, and expectations in the Etherpad document shared above. You can also reach out to sgupta@wikimedia.org and rayyakkannu@wikimedia.org for any clarification. Please help us translate and share this invitation in community social media channels to spread the word.

Thanks,

Ravishankar Ayyakkannu, Manager, Strategic Partnerships, Asia, Wikimedia Foundation --16:23, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Train-the-Trainer 2017: Invitation to participate

Hello,
It gives us great pleasure to inform that the Train-the-Trainer (TTT) 2017 programme organised by CIS-A2K is going to be held from 20-22 February 2017.

What is TTT?
Train the Trainer or TTT is a residential training program. The program attempts to groom leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedia community members. Earlier TTT have been conducted in 2013, 2015 and 2016.

Who should join?

  • Any active Wikimedian contributing to any Indic language Wikimedia project is eligible to apply.
  • An editor must have 500+ edits.
  • Anyone who have already participated in an earlier iteration of TTT, can not apply.

Please see more about this program and apply to participate or encourage the deserving candidates from your community to do so: CIS-A2K/Events/Train the Trainer Program/2017

If you have any question, please let us know.
Regards. Tito Dutta (CIS-A2K) sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:35, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm concerned that a number of India-related articles are the subject of edits that constitute undue weight, and possible synthesis of published materials. I'm especially concerned about articles on Indian ancient history or prehistory, such as Indus Valley Civilization, and Vedic_period#Origins. See also Indo-Aryan migration theory, Indo-Aryan peoples, as examples of pages which I had to edit to reduce the synthesis or ambiguity. At a time in which there are thousands of journal articles on pretty much any narrow topic, it is very easy to synthesize reliable sources into a rambling, subtly POV-ridden, article. Encyclopedias are beholden to present the consensus view of a topic; they are necessarily conservative and traditional in their descriptions. They are not surveys of recent literature on a topic. I would like people to take a look at Talk:Indus_Valley_Civilisation#.22Too_much_addition.22, and I invite you to present your views. I see this problem as a increasingly bigger WP-wide one. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Existence of Template:Kshatriya Communities

See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2017_January_19#Template:Kshatriya_Communities. - Sitush (talk) 20:54, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

R Nandakumar

Hi There,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:R_Nandakumar

Need help in this article. R Nandakumar is a noted art critic and his works have been cited by prominent authors from across the world. His works have been published in many magazines and academic journals in India and abroad. He has been conferred the Kerala Puraskar Award in the year 2007 by Kerala Lalithakala Akademi and has been the senior fellow of Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. His article is being rejected several times and the editors seem to not understand the value of the awards and contribution made by R Nandakumar. Is there any way I could improve the article?

Thank you.

Tirutirutiru (talk) 11:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Jallikattu

Hey guys, I'd appreciate if a few of you could please add Jallikattu to your watchlists. There's been a recent flare-up of editors who seem to have taken issue with describing this bull riding/wrestling/taming event as "bull embracing", which is a completely bizarre choice of phrasing. Sounds like some kind of hippie love event... I first noticed this a few days ago when this guy changed every instance of "bullfight" to "bullembrace". (This obviously had negative results on URLs, and, well, nobody's come up with a Wikipedia template for BullEmbracing just yet...) This also came up here where another user changed the phrasing of certain words like "grab" to "embrace", and here where "taming" has been changed to "embracing". And, it seems to not be a new concept, as in January of last year, bull-taming/bull-baiting was changed to "bull-vaulting".

My educated guess (as well as my suspicious nature) leads me to believe that in the wake of criticism being levied at this rural sport in the form of animal cruelty accusations, people threatened by the possibility their cultural traditions might disappear, have taken up arms in a censorship/PR campaign. There might be better ways of describing it than "taming"--maybe "wrestling", "riding"--I don't know, but "embracing" is purely asinine and we do not use euphemistic language. Anyway, if some more of you could take a look, I'd appreciate it. You might have better ideas for how to improve it. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:58, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Related to this: 2017 Jallikattu protests has been created recently. I question the neutrality of it at present. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:50, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I also became aware of Bullfighting in Tamil Nadu, which I have redirected to Jallikattu. Please double-check my choice to ensure that it was sound. The article was largely unsourced, seemed mostly like an editorial, was also prone to the BullEmbracing stuff, and seemed like a possible copy-paste job since similar content appeared here at Jallikattu. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:35, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

So far, the articles affected:
There have been some sock/meatpuppetry instances at the 2017 Jallikattu protests article, so keeping an eye on these all would be helpful. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:43, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki Training 2017: Invitation to participate

Hello,
We are glad to inform that MediaWiki Training or MWT 2017 is going to be conducted between 24-26 February 2017 at Bangalore.

MWT is a residential training workshop that attempts to groom technical leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedia community members. We invite active Indian Wikimedia community members to participate in this workshop.

Please find details about this event here.

Let us know if you have any question.
Regards. -- Tito Dutta (CIS-A2K) sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:25, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi,

I want to begin an article about Rameshwari Photocopy Service shop copyright case on english wikipedia. Pl. do suggest suitable title for the article and also join in building the article if possible.

some links to begin with.

Mahitgar (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I am looking for an infobox template support about Template:Infobox India Highcourt Case for article Rameshwari Photocopy Service shop copyright case on the same lines as of Template:Infobox United States District Court Case

Mahitgar (talk) 13:27, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I've removed your help request, please use that only on your talk page. You can use {{Infobox court case}} for any court case. —SpacemanSpiff 13:34, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup at Bhang?

The article Bhang has a lot of uncited content from well-meaning novice editors, and could really do with some deletions and some additions of cited material. Can anyone here take a look and make some small improvements? This article also exists in an impressive 20 languages, and gets 366,000 views per year, so it's a pretty high-visibility article and worth improving. Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 05:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Conflict over "Indic scripts in lead" section of Wikipedia:WikiProject India

Background: I am not Indian and do not speak a language that uses an Indic script (unless baybayin counts ). I was editing 2017 pro-Jallikattu protests. On top of expanding the article substantially, I added Tamil script to the lead, much to the chagrin of some editors who were quick to point at WP:NOINDICSCRIPT.

Research: I was very immediately skeptical of that page so I began reading the actual 2012 RfC it is based on, along with MOS:INDIA. First let's look at what DeltaQuad actually said in her closure.

There is ultimately no consensus about which language to use, but I see a fair bit of support in regards to IPA and pronunciation and would think this would help normal readers, so I am going to say that 'Using IPA to clarify pronunciation' is the consensus of this discussion, all other sections do not meet a level of consensus needed to pass.

— DeltaQuad (emphasis added)

No consensus about what language to use? I can see that they meant, with articles about people, because people move! They go overseas! They stop spelling their name in their native script! Their parents potentially each give them a part of their name that has different native scripts! OK, that's fine.

What is not fine is the ridiculous assertion that this RfC applies the way it does. Why, if the script we should be using is obvious, can't we include it? What makes India articles different than China related articles? If it turns out I'm wrong and the consensus in 2012 was to remove the Indic scripts even in obvious cases of which language applies, I hereby move to reopen the discussion as per WP:CCC.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I misunderstand the consensus reached in the RfC and my edit was wrong. SpacemanSpiff, can you kindly explain your revert? Psiĥedelisto (talk) 12:01, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

You need to consider subsequent discussions. The phrasing of the thing you changed has been fixed for ages and SpacemanSpiff was right to revert you. - Sitush (talk) 12:02, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@Sitush: If there were further discussions which generated substantial consensus, they should be linked on Wikipedia:WikiProject India. Do you know where they are? I only started editing on this site in 2016, which is a good representation of the WP:10YT. Because the project page does not link to these more recent discussions, I just assumed its wording was only based on what it linked to. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 12:12, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
You are free to open a new RfC but please don't use your interpretation to change settled consensus. THere's obviously no more explanation needed, your assertion that you're right is what is ridiculous. —SpacemanSpiff 12:04, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@SpacemanSpiff: If there was a further RfC or discussion which resulted in the wording change on Wikipedia:WikiProject India, can you link it to me to save us all a lot of time? I wanted to know where that wording came from, and so I looked at the linked RfC discussion and the two clarifications, but neither did not say what you say that they say. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 12:07, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
What part of the closer's clarification: *Personally I thought that this was already cleared up above, but i'll go for it again. The consensus is to remove the scripts and replace them with IPA to clarify the pronunciation. is not clear? If you want to change consensus then feel free to open an RfC, don't alter existing stuff to suit your opinion on what it should be.—SpacemanSpiff 12:12, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
No part. I was not aware that that was part of the RfC closure notice and not just DeltaQuad's opinion, because it does not appear anywhere in Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics/Archive_48#Native_languages_in_lead except as a link. But, I should have realized that they were both written by the same person, so the talk page clarified DQ's intent with the closure. I absolutely plan on opening a new RfC, but, I would like to apologize to you SpacemanSpiff as you are right, consensus is against me, and my edit to Wikipedia:WikiProject India, while a good faith interpretation, was wrong. Apologies. {I would recommend that Archive 48 be edited (even though it is an archive, per WP:IAR) to clarify that DQ's clarification is part of the closure notice. I will also work on removing Tamil language from articles I have added it to as per my erroneous understanding of the RfC closure. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 12:20, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
I have undone my changes to jallikattu and 2017 pro-Jallikattu protests‎, as promised. I once again apologize to my fellow editors for what you may perceive as disruption, but I promise it was mere confusion from not being involved in Wikipedia for long enough to understand why I was wrong. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 12:34, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh, please don't plan on opening a new RfC. At least, not until you actually understand what is going on ... and my guess is that you are many months' of experience away from that. - Sitush (talk) 12:35, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Sitush: I fear you may be right and will hold off on the RfC indefinitely. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 12:36, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
This is a significantly contentious topic, I was on the losing side of the argument as far as applicability for geographic locations goes but I have to say that I'm happy to say that while my opinion may not have prevailed in that, I believe the current situation is better than what I had hoped for. —SpacemanSpiff 13:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
At the risk of annoying you further SpacemanSpiff, may I ask why you feel how you do? What makes Indian languages different than Chinese, etc? Psiĥedelisto (talk) 13:36, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I think it's definitely a good idea to start a new RfC to re-examine the issue and come up with something more nuanced and qualified than the draconian blanket ban that we seem to have at present. – Uanfala (talk) 16:10, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment - The lead sentence of any article is a typical target of density and clutter. With regard to jallikattu, trying to cram in the three major alternative names for the practice, plus the three Tamil scripts, plus the general description of what the practice is just too much data even without WP:NOINDICSCRIPT. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:09, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment - Other than the issue of clutter, it is wholly unproductive. We waste a lot of time trying to decide which scripts should go there, in which order etc. (All this happened very recently with the infobox for the main India page.) If a script gets vandalised, we wouldn't know for a long time because nobody knows all the Indian scripts. Script-warring is merely for show-off. It has nothing to with the purposes of Wikipedia. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:18, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
@Kautilya3: Very well put. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:02, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Nehru College of Engineering and Research Centre

Greetings. Following the well-covered suicide of a student at this college, various editors have tried to add AfD tags without proper followup, to blank the page, then to add unsourced material relating to the controversies surrounding this incident. Finally, some editors (especially one with the un-NPOV username of "Helpsavestudents") have added information on the controversies with references, but these now constitute the bulk of the article text. I'd like to ask that the article be examined by someone here who is better than myself at a) content editing in general, and b) evaluating the reliability of Indian sources, with an eye towards making sure that the controversy section meets standards on its own and is given the appropriate weight within the article as a whole. Thank you for your time. --Finngall talk 16:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

AFD notice

There is an AFD currently running for Dagar, which is in this project's purview. Please join in the conversation here. Thank you. Primefac (talk) 17:27, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Arjuna Award and Sangeet Natak Akademi Award

A discussion about Arjuna Award and Sangeet Natak Akademi Award is being held here at Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates#Continuously expanding lists. Please provide your opinion. - Vivvt (Talk) 18:12, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Enantra

I'm not sure whether this is a notable topic but the promotional language ("humongous") is awful. Can this be salvaged? AusLondonder (talk) 22:12, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

At AfD. - Sitush (talk) 09:18, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Redundant articles on drums?

Hi all, I recently came across a few articles on drums used in the Subcontinent, and I think there's redundancy among them. I think there's more than one topic, but a merge or two is probably called for. The affected articles are Tabla, Naqareh, Nakara (drum), and Nagara (drum). Should these all be separate? --BDD (talk) 22:14, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Only nakara and nagara look same imo. Swingoswingo (talk) 08:17, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Seeking native Telugu speaker to review file

More information at Talk:Telugu_language#New_Telugu_consonant_chart. Thank you for your time and attention. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 11:39, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

You can try Category:User te-N and Category:User te-4. Even if they aren't on those two categories, I think Ganeshk and Kautilya3 may also be able to help. —SpacemanSpiff 12:04, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Arab warrior in Tamil Nadu?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manamadurai#The_Holy_Paanch_peer_.28Anjanamar.29_Five_Shuhadaas_Dargah

First time in life I am hearing this kind of a story:- Some Arab came to south India, there was a war and his dargah was built. Can somebody help with the truthfulness of these claims? Thanks. Swingoswingo (talk) 08:15, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

That looks like a mess even without considering the claims, someone's put an entire pseudo-article of that dargah in the article about the place, like a WP:COATRACK. Even if true and sourced, it should have it's own article, not everything explained there.
It's unsourced. Remove it per WP:REDFLAG and WP:BURDEN. Of course, you'll get brownie points for doing the minimum source searching highlighted in WP:BEFORE. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 12:29, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Geographic disambiguation

I just happened on four villages all named "Akauna" within the state of Bihar, and I wondered how they should be disambiguated. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic_names)#India suggests disambiguation should be by district, which would lead to Akauna, Nalanda, Akauna, Nawada, Akauna, Patna and Akauna, Aurangabad. The last of these already shows a problem: There is another Aurangabad district in Maharashtra, and while I doubt that one also has a village named Akauna, I'd still be unhappy with such an... ambiguous disambiguation. I believe US townships use (if necessary) a disambiguation scheme of "Township, county, state" - wouldn't similarly "Village, district, state" (ie Akauna, Patna, Bihar and so on) be better if a disambiguation below the state level is needed at all? If there's just one village of the name in the state, wouldn't then "Village, state" be better than "Village, district"? After all, disambiguation shouldn't be more specific than necessary, and I see no need to make district, instead of state, the default level of disambiguation. Huon (talk) 22:42, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Sindhi Hindus

Hey all, there appears to be a bit of an edit-war at Sindhi Hindus and I was hoping some of you regulars could keep an eye on it, please. I'd be appreciative. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:09, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Herbert Reiner Jr, the man who captured Mahatma Gandhi's assassin

30 January this year is the 69th anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. I have created a page on Herbert Reiner Jr., an American, who played a pivotal role in capturing Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse. Does anyone know if I can nominate it for DYK main page appearance on 30 January 2018, the 70th death anniversary of Gandhi?

Please also read the article and please leave comments on how to improve it at Talk:Herbert Reiner Jr. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:44, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

There's WP:DYK#Date requests. Quite interesting and well written article. Made some minor edits and here's one comment: MOS:BEGIN, the lead first statement is way too long, may be tough as the creator, but try compressing it to bare minimum. Though this is a person notable for a single event and that is essential, but it still can be trimmed IMO (maybe just say "who played a key role in apprehending...", remove or move the prior part). The lead's last statement there has too many citations (eight?), Citation overkill. Besides being in the lead, the sentence isn't that challengeable, maybe a few might suffice, not to mention that efn note will be less likely to be read if there are too many. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 08:05, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

"Neo-Sangam" Tamil literature

Can anyone knowledgeable about Tamil take a look at these newly-created articles: Neo-Sangam Tamil Works, Potruhil-Perumkaappiyam, Puram Nooru, and Agam Nooru. These read like promotional to me, but I may be wrong. utcursch | talk 22:36, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Disputed Area in the Map

I can understand wiki maps always be neutral and respect the territories disputes. So, Some of area of Jammu & Kashmir and other might be disputed and hence shows in the map with different colors. But Jammu & Kashmir and Arunchal Pradesh both states are the integral part of India and there is no dispute at all. Some of international border area might be disputed and discolor from the other map. But How we can show the whole state with different colors. In this map both states are shown with little dark in compare of the other map. Both states has fully Indian administration , conduct elections and all other thing are similar with rest of the nation.

I respect the wiki policy for disputed territories but how can we totally ignore the things just because other nation demanding their control of that particular part of the land.

In my views both states should be shown with the same color as other part of the map is shown except the real disputed area such as Some part of International border of Jammu Kashmir and Arunchal Pradesh. Almost everywhere on wikipediia Indian Maps demonstrate with the same mentioned above.

Please correct me if I am wrong. सुमित सिंह (talk) 04:13, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

You are wrong, ie: holding the less acceptable view. This matter has been discussed extensively in the past. You may wish to search the archives of this page. Unless the international view has changed - United Nations etc - we don't change the maps. - Sitush (talk) 05:51, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
I didn't find any reliable information where you pointed. Anyway Thanks सुमित सिंह (talk) 07:11, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
Finding any discussion shouldn't be too difficult. What you're asking is almost a FAQ, search any archive of this page, the main border dispute article's talk, Talk:India, Kashmir talk etc, you will find something regarding this. This is often an heated issue with a special arbitration case for those editors who edit war over this, so discussions should be easy to find. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:45, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Geographic "source of truth"?

I'm been punting away at correcting obvious typos in Indian place names (e.g. Himachel, pardesh, Predesh, etc.) but I keep coming across names where there are at least two versions, and I can't say which one is correct. I know that spelling across language sounds can vary, but there must be a "known correct" version for the name in English, right? The couple times I've really looked hard I find conflicts, even in government documents.

Probably best illustrated by the simple word 'tehsil' also 'tahsil'. Okay, what are the numbers here at Wikipedia? About 20 to 1 in favour of 'tehsil'. Okay, but is it 'correct'? And in looking I found a recent central government census report where on the very same page it would have both versions, multiple times!

Can you suggest where to go to find the 'correct' names for places and terms? I don't want to use Google Maps as my source of truth... :-) Shenme (talk) 04:03, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Shenme: Sorry for the late response. Related post is /Archive_63#Hydro_bath_needs_a_cleaning for the possible reasons for this. I suggest defecting to the article title and keep consistency for relatively major words like pradesh, tehsil etc where probably their main article ought to explain the spelling variations. For relatively smaller geographic locations like villages, it'll be way harder though. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 06:59, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Source check - translation

I've just tagged something for clarification at Badhik. I have considerable doubts that the source will say what we claim it says in our statements - the English-language headline doesn't seem likely give reason to mention what we claim. Can anyone verify, please? - Sitush (talk) 21:11, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Need volunteer support on en wikisource

Hi,

At english wikisource s:en:Portal:Copyright law/Copyright law of India links to source documentation of various Indian copyright laws and amendments are given. We are in need of volunteer support in proof reading and validation of those texts (including even the old Indian copyright laws of 1847 & 1914). While couple of Marathi language wikipedians are working on this but still needs more support to acomplish the task.

Acomplishment of this task will help improved referencing & understanding of Indian copyright aspects, hence this request.

Mahitgar (talk) 11:36, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Meeting notes from Office hours with WMF's Global Reach team

We thank everyone for participating in the Office hours with WMF's Global Reach team. Meeting notes can be found here. You can also watch the YouTube recording here. --Ravishankar Ayyakkannu, Manager, Strategic Partnerships, Asia, Wikimedia Foundation. 10:12, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I've just read through that stuff. I am sure it has a worthy goal but, honestly, if anyone in that discussion is being paid by the WMF then I think the WMF needs to rethink where the money is being spent. Not a criticism of the individual(s) but the exercise itself does seem like a waste of time. - Sitush (talk) 01:31, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

The Early Coorgs

Is The Early Coorgs actually a notable book? I have a suspicion that the article is basically self-promotion. The book itself was published by NotionPress, a vanity publisher. - Sitush (talk) 01:35, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Yikes, there is Long ago in Coorg also. By the same author. - Sitush (talk) 01:54, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Huh, WP articles call them history, while this review[14] calls the first book a "novel." It's dubious whether these books and author are notable. Surely the books aren't reliable sources here, even though they are both used in several articles that way. [15][16] First Light (talk) 03:09, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
He also happens to "edit on Wikipedia" according The Hindu article, so there is likely some self-promotion here. First Light (talk) 03:21, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. Theonlynitin (talk · contribs) has been the person adding most of those links, which I've now removed. Looks like WP:COI to me. - Sitush (talk) 12:56, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Early Coorgs - both books + the author bio article have been nominated as a bundled AfD. - Sitush (talk) 13:19, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

All deleted. - Sitush (talk) 01:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Indic scripts again

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That means it attempts to transmit non-specialist knowledge to a worldwide audience. It is not a place for people to demonstrate how much they can tweak a simple sentence of English by demonstrating how much new, specialist, knowledge they have.

Look at the ridiculous lead sentence of Sanskrit. Can anyone tell me where the sentence actually begins? I shall soon be removing the Indic scripts. So, help me Panini. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it's safe to trim down to the English pronunciation + Devanagari with transliteration and Sanskrit IPA, and move everything else to the Name section. – Uanfala (talk) 01:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
I don't believe Devanagari belongs. By the time the script was fully formed, in the early second millennium CE, Sanskrit was already a dead language, the Middle Indo-Aryan vernaculars having taken hold. For most of its history, Sanskrit was orally transmitted, and after 300 BCE, or thereabouts, until late in the first millennium CE, it was written, when it was written, in variants of the Brahmi script. The article's own script section speaks to this. The infobox says, "No native script." I have done a more radical revision. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
I'm not insisting on including Devanagari (even though it has been the de facto standard for at least the last two centuries), but the lede should at the very least contain the Sanskirt pronunciation of the name and at least some orthographic representation. Also noting re your edit to the infobox: WP:INDICSCRIPT is explicitly excluded from articles about languages. – Uanfala (talk) 02:30, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
That seems reasonable. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:33, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
PS I've removed the English pronunciation of the word "Sanskrit," as people can easily look it up in a dictionary; besides, it depends on which English we are talking about. No one speaking any of the South Asian Englishes would pronounce it /ˈsænskrɪt/. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Well, English transcriptions are meant to be broad enough to encompass many English varieties, so if the English pronunciation isn't needed here, that'll be on account of the fact that it's straightforwardly deducible from the spelling (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Pronunciation. – Uanfala (talk) 12:51, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Basawon Singh (Sinha)

I could use some help regarding Talk:Basawon_Singh_(Sinha)#Times_of_India_source and, indeed, that entire article. It has been problematic for years because of issues relating to reliable sourcing. - Sitush (talk) 13:52, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Three month statistics for Index of Andhra Pradesh-related articles are here. I'm not sure how meaningful those are, eg: I just stumbled across it after a gap of many years but have looked at it perhaps 10 times in the last week. With incredulity, not utility.

In 2015, there was a procedural close of a deletion discussion (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Index of Andhra Pradesh-related articles) on the grounds that this thing was not a list and that discussion should take place at the relevant project or WP:VPP. The relevant project is presumably this one.

The list, as I still consider it to be, must surely be way out of date - the lead/header says it is up to date as of September 2013, although the history suggests that a lot has been pruned from it since then. I am not even sure how it would be maintained: the deletion discussion mentioned that it was easy to do that so I assume some bot is available. I also note from the deletion discussion and the history that redlinks are seen as A Good Thing, which surely means it is to some degree in fact not an index of our AP-related articles.

Is it really useful? There's a similar index for another state, although I forget which one. - Sitush (talk) 05:56, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge February 2017 is Multilingualism

FYI, take a look in commons:Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - February - Multilingualism. I'm sure there is some nice picture regarding also India that can be proposed, if you have it stored it somewhere. It's a way to think about images that we don't always collect, but can be useful.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:16, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Generals of the Indian Army - a large list of non-notable generals

Category:Indian generals is a real mess with a lot of non-notable generals on this list! Needs cleanup. AshLin (talk) 15:31, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

How do you establish the non-notability of the generals about which you are concerned? WP:MILPEOPLE suggests that general officers are likely to be notable.
Or, do you mean that some of the people on the list were or are not generals? MPS1992 (talk) 19:48, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
Well, we can ignore MILPEOPLE, for starters. The sooner we bin all these topic-specific notability guidelines, the better. MILPEOPLE says - with no rationale whatsoever - that generals are generally (sic) notable. It's nonsense - if all we have are official gazettes, for example, then they are not. - Sitush (talk) 20:56, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
In that case it seems the form of clean-up required is to take articles to WP:AFD where appropriate. MPS1992 (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
I agree, we can ignore MILPEOPLE (essay), the guildeline is Wikipedia:Notability (people). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:46, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
There's also the question of whether pre-1947 generals should be included in the list. India refers to independent India not the entity that included present day Pakistan and Bangladesh. That said, how do we even know stuff like Mir Sayyad is true?--regentspark (comment) 22:04, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Interesting new stub Jootha (ritually unclean leftovers)

A novice editor created Jootha as a draft, and since it wasn't usable as-is I rewrote it as a brief stub. I was unfamiliar with this concept, so I think it's a useful addition to Wikipedia. I'd invite anyone here to help expand it, or link it into other articles on Indian customs, food taboos, etc. MatthewVanitas (talk) 23:21, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Lakshadweep Sea vs Arabian Sea

Hi guys,

Would appreciate if you can look into this issue. The official limits of the Arabian Sea and the Lakshadweep Sea are defined by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) (of which India is a member) and have been in place since 1953. Basically, the coast north of Sadashivgad near Karwar in Karnataka is along the Arabian Sea and the coast to the south of it all the way up to Kanyakumari and back up to the Adams bridge is the Lakshadweep Sea (source for information on limits of the seas is cited in both articles). However, I don't think this is generally known in India, especially as we are never taught about Lakshadweep Sea in school. All we are taught is Arabian Sea is along the West Coast of India and the Bay of Bengal is along the East Coast.

This confusion has led to different information being presented in different articles. For instance, the article on India does not mention Lakshadweep Sea at all. However, the articles for Karnataka and Kerala reflect their coast with the Lakshadweep Sea. Similarly, the article on Kanyakumari states that the popular belief that the place lies at the meeting point of three bodies of water is erroneous, it only touches the Lakshadweep Sea. On the other hand, there are a lot of articles related to districts and taluks in Karnataka and Kerala that mention them being along the Arabian Sea, rather than Lakshadweep Sea.

So I was editing a few articles to change the sea name from Arabian to Lakshadweep to reflect the definitions as per the IHO and made the mistake of not citing the source for the limits of the sea. Obviously, it caused a minor kerfuffle and the changes were reverted. But before editing them back along with the proper source, I'd just like to put the issue on this noticeboard so that we can have some consensus. Would it be agreeable to change Arabian Sea to Lakshadweep Sea for the articles for places, districts etc on the west coast of India south of Sadashivgad? If this subject has been discussed before, please let me know. Ashinpt (talk) 15:44, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I would like to know more about this issue as well, regarding whether it was discussed/resolved before etc. I recall seeing that change happening to Kerala and not doing anything about it because I couldn't find anything conclusive. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:44, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
Nothing found on this noticeboard's archives, try searching the usual article talk (all those articles you mentioned above) if you haven't already. I'll try searching on my side too. Same thing with me too from my experience, never had any idea that this existed as we were taught in school and my head literally exploded when I realised that this existed. There has to be something given this topic's potential. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:52, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
Ok. I found something here. It's almost 6 years old discussion. Maybe that's one way to resolve the issue. As it is, there is no consistency from the official government sources. The Survey of India maps mark the seas south of the central Karnataka coast as Lakshadweep Sea. There are some sites that mention Kerala being next to both Arabian Sea and Lakshadweep Sea in the same paragraph. Some of the official websites of the districts involved state that the coast is along the Lakshadweep Sea, others say it is Arabian Sea. Some central govt agencies like CGWB and NDMI expicitly mention Kerala and Lakshadweep being next to Lakshadweep Sea.
To be honest, I kind of expected this muddle. Some background to the definition of the seas. The 1st edition of the Limits of Seas and Oceans published by the International Hydrographic Bureau (as IHO was then known) came out in 1928, which defined the Arabian Sea as being all along the West Coast of India. The 2nd edition of the Limits of Seas and Oceans published in 1937, continued with the same definition of the Arabian Sea. In both these editions, there was no Lakshadweep Sea. Lakshadweep Sea was defined only in the 3rd edition of the Limits of Seas and Oceans which has been in place since 1953. So I can understand why there could be some confusion on this matter. Ashinpt (talk) 21:21, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
Good work. Looking just at the Kerala discussion, I'm inclined to put this as an explanatory note in the rather than main text. And even then, we can't possibly rehash this issue on each page, probably need to update only the major ones and put at minimum a link pointing there. But I haven't investigated this yet. Till then, I don't know know any editors besides AshLin and Yash!: both of you, can provide input or ping other editors you know of that would be interested in this? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:14, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
Okay, doing a brief search has convinced me that nothing should be done (in fact, I don't oppose removing its mention from those pages to keep consistency and prevent confusion: it's own page and others covering seas in general mentioning it is enough). In addition to what you said about the IHO's fluctuating reports and the final one in 1953, it doesn't seem to have any other mention. The only reason to support is this IHO's rather obscure report. The various government websites have not been consistent either, but the major one's (India.gov, Kerala.gov) seem to not mention it.

The article Bhang is undersourced

We've had a lot of well-intentioned but not experienced editors build up bhang, with content that is unfortunately unsourced. Can you help to add citations to the history and legal status of bhang in India? Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 03:49, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

India, South Asia and Indian subcontinent

What is the concencus so far on "South Asia" versus "Indian subcontinent"? See Talk:Decline of Buddhism in South Asia#India and Bangladesh; I've just moved that page from "India" to "South Asia." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:51, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I just moved it back; see talk there. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:58, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

AFD concerning WP:NOTNEWS

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Delta Meghwal rape case, concerns with notability and WP:NOTNEWS. D4iNa4 (talk) 10:18, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Area rank of Jammu and Kashmir

According to the Jammu and Kashmir article, the state's area rank is 13 (or 14). But, according to List_of_states_and_union_territories_of_India_by_area it is the 5th largest by area. Does this have something to do with the area under Indian control? Could someone fix this so that the rank is correct and - if it needs an explanation - that explanation is available as a footnote. Thanks.--regentspark (comment) 18:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Incomplete stub

Hello.There is a nice but incomplete stub here.Please assist in editing it. Riswa talk 06:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Gyan / Kalpaz (again)

Many editors here are already familiar with WP:PUS#Wikipedia mirrors. The books published by Gyan Publishing House and Kalpaz / Isha Books extensively plagiarize Wikipedia.

Since the last clean up, these books have been reintroduced as citations in 500+ articles, resulting in circular references:

Obviously, these need to be cleaned up. And we need to come up with a plan to prevent the re-introduction of these as references (something like MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist or a bot that notifies the users who add these). Suggestions welcome. utcursch | talk 03:18, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Sigh, we went through this exercise not too long ago. I think a bot request to list out all articles with these refs is overdue, I'll try to frame something, but we'd need a list of all such books/ISBNs/authors, maybe a table of that can be made? —SpacemanSpiff 05:07, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Found another awful author-publisher combo: Renu Saran - Diamond Pocket Books. Used in several Wikipedia articles. utcursch | talk 20:17, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

@Utcursch, SpacemanSpiff, and Sitush: Something automated definitely needs to be done, this is just too much work. Problem is both the blacklist and User talk:XLinkBot use the same approach, I doubt books from specific publication houses in GoogleBooks can be weeded out, we can only provided basic urls to target. Has any of you know of any previous discussions on tackling this elsewhere, like the Pump/Technical etc? Another issue in GB is there are also self-publishing companies like Lulu.com etc. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:44, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
Another problem is that the books may be cited here without the publisher being named, so a lookup to GBooks/WorldCat or similar would be needed if we really want to clean up. - Sitush (talk) 07:46, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
That's true, but the problem is mainly GBooks-related right? Books by these publishing houses seem to be added here solely via it. So if someone, at minimum, adds a bare url to that book, a bot could be written to extract the raw data (thus the publishing house) using the regular GBooks citation generator, compare with the blacklist, revert. This would be 99 percent of all instances of its use here, I reckon. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 08:08, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
I haven't started any discussion elsewhere. Village Pump might be a good place to discuss this. utcursch | talk 22:16, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
VP probably is the place, although I am not sure which bit of it. However, it might be easier just to do stuff manually - I have cleared a lot, just as I clear Prabook, jatland.com, Bhim Singh Dahiya and (my bugbear) passed away. I remember getting a filter put in place for jatland (and there should be one for newpakhistorian) but if it ever continued, it hasn't worked. - Sitush (talk) 01:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
I've posted that idea at VP/T and will notify here if anything comes out of it. @Sitush: Now those that you mention can be added to mw:blacklist or Xlinkbot, any reason why you haven't? Filters AFAIK aren't used for urls that much compared these two. If you give me a list of them and furnish me with their background, I'll be happy to get them blacklisted. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:52, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
FYI Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Restricting_Google_book_links_from_a_specific_publisher. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 01:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Add India portal to Category:Populated places in India articles

Hi, i want to add India portal to Category:Populated places in India articles by JarBot and i ask for approval.--جار الله (talk) 00:47, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker

Two members of the same family (see User talk:M R Madhavan) have been editing Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker in the last few days. Some of it is definitely ok but a lot seems dodgy to me. I am particularly concerned because we have long-running issues with people trying to promote/glorify the Chekavar and often engaging in practices such as original research and downright misrepresentation to achieve their goal. I can't see a lot of the sources in this instance and could do with some help. - Sitush (talk) 11:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Both accounts have now been blocked as socks. What do I do now regarding the content that they added? - Sitush (talk) 15:54, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
If it's easily removable, I'd say just remove it. In these cases there usually isn't much point in wasting time evaluating the content. --regentspark (comment) 16:10, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
That was my gut feeling. I'll do it and see what happens. It may be complicated by a revdel for copyright violation/close paraphrasing but something-or-another favours the bold. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 00:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I can't do it, RegentsPark. The revdels go way back to 2007. Is there any way you can use your enhanced position to recreate the article as it was prior to the recent activity involving the sock accounts? I am loathe to go back a decade in one hit, even if the material might be dubious. Let's see if we can build on it, even though it does appear to be mainly a folk hero thing. - Sitush (talk) 00:42, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Should we go back to this one?--regentspark (comment) 02:18, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
If that appears to be the best then ok (I can't see many diffs due to the extensive revdels). Cites 1, 3 and 4 would have to go. - Sitush (talk) 09:21, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Reverted. But the three remaining references are all dubious. An IAS officer writing a history. A one sentence newspaper listing of an event. And a website that I can't reach that, from the name, is either a personal site or a blog. --regentspark (comment) 12:02, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. It has been on my watchlist for years and will stay there. I agree about the dubiety of the refs that now exist. But will give it some time. - Sitush (talk) 01:10, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Freedom fighter

I've noticed a great many articles refer to a person as a "freedom fighter". This term seems very POV. More neutral terms should be used. You can use google to search wikipedia for examples. Most of them come from biography pages for Indians. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 21:30, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes. But it is a big job and I am not sure what would be more appropriate. "Independence activist"? - Sitush (talk) 00:33, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
What do Reliable Sources call these people? Can you give some specific examples? It wouldn't violate WP:POV if someone is commonly referred to as a "freedom fighter" in Reliable Sources, no? First Light (talk) 00:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
It would if those sources emanated from one "side" of the debate. I know for sure that many Indian sources do describe these people as freedom fighters but they also call them "martyrs" etc. It is not neutral. - Sitush (talk) 00:50, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
What would a more neutral term be? Can't think of one. --regentspark (comment) 02:25, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Terrorist? Just kidding, but in looking for how that term might be similarly treated, I came across Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Contentious labels, which also includes "freedom fighter." But what other common and neutral term can be used without sounding artificial or creating an originally researched term? First Light (talk) 04:34, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Like I said, "independence activist". What is wrong with that? Far from all of the people listed as freedom fighters actually engaged in combat - they "fought" through methods such as passive resistance. - Sitush (talk) 09:24, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Independence activist sounds wishy washy. Freedom fighter is a well defined term in India (the government even handed out pensions to them). That said, I agree that - unexplained - the term may appear POV. Perhaps someone would consider writing an article like Freedom Fighter (India) that we could link to?--regentspark (comment) 12:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Sitush, when I see "freedom fighter" I know what it means right away in this context. "Independence activist" not so much, because it's a somewhat artificial term in a (perhaps artificial) effort to be neutral. Reliable sources seem to use "freedom fighter" as a very well defined term in this case. An article would be a good way to make that clear.First Light (talk) 13:53, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
It probably would but I am not the person to write it. I can't cope with broad-brush things, which is why I keep away from articles such as India. I am really not that fussed about using freedom fighter, despite the supposed POV. I do know that we have List of Indian independence activists and that I have edited there ... but I've never really considered whether the title is or is not appropriate. - Sitush (talk) 01:08, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

I've added a little something about this to Freedom fighter (here) and the above mentioned list; if something beyond this can be expanded upon maybe a separate article is warranted, but till then redirects and explaining it in terms of the fuller context should suffice.

I do replace that word when I come across it, seems like a straight-forward case of WP:WTW. Admit that the neutral term seemed awkward at first but soon I got used to it. Our arch-rival, EB for instance, though never using it directly, seems to prefer variations of activist (see Nehru or Gandhi) but never seems to use "Freedom fighter". Ugog Nizdast (talk) 04:41, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

The term used in academic discourse and writing, is "nationalist," or "nationalism." See WP: Nationalism. Gandhi was an anti-colonial nationalist. Freedom fighter and independence activist are bogus words, POV-ridden, and in real life, in India, can be applied to a 16-year-old who dropped out of high school in 1942 and pulled down a few telephone poles to express solidarity with the Quit India Resolution. Indian nationalism has a long history going back at least to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. However, neither freedom nor independence became an explicit goal until the early 1930s. How are we calling a Dadabhai Naoroji, or a Pherozeshah Mehta, or a Gokhale, independence activists? How does the Indian independence movement page begin with the leaders of the Rebellion of 1857? They had no notion of independence. At the encouragement and prodding of User:Dwaipayanc I one tried to clean up the Indian independence movement page in 2007. See my User:Fowler&fowler/Short_History_Indian_Independence_Movement, but in the end I gave up as the IIM page had become a hot bed of people who were attempting to pull down Gandhi by propping up every two bit terrorist as a freedom fighter of equal consequence. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:39, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
It is certainly a much abused phrase. I've seen FF used for people in Kerala/Tamil Nadu in the late 1700s. - Sitush (talk) 20:30, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
One meaning of nationalist, amongst a plethora of meanings, in OED is an advocate of national independence or self-determination. If that were the only, or primary, meaning, that would work. However, with the various nationalist parties and presidents we see around us, I think A believer in nationalism is probably the dominant meaning these days and, so, it doesn't capture the "fighting or struggling for independence" aspect well.--regentspark (comment) 01:34, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
BTW, when I search for "Freedom Fighter" on JSTOR, I get 2,679 hits with ff referring to Irish resistance movements, apartheid, librarians, Kosovons, Indians, womens rights, Indonesians - and that's just on the first page. --regentspark (comment) 01:47, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
You have to search for the exact expression; otherwise, you get results in which the words "freedom" and "fighter" appear somewhere (not necessarily together) on the same page. In JSTOR Advanced Search (access type: all content), for "Indian freedom fighter," I get 50 results, most in the nature of memoirs. "Indian independence activist" (6); "Indian nationalist," (2,407), most about the "Independence movement." "Indian nationalism" (4,553), again most about the period 1885-1847. "Indian freedom movement" (179), "Indian independence movement" (420); "Indian nationalist movement" (835), most about the period 1885-1947. "anti-colonial nationalism," (608); "religious nationalism" (2,188); "revolutionary nationalism" (1,903); Let me show you the results on Google Scholar, as everyone can see it. (BTW, when I say "most" below, I mean most in the first page or two." I didn't go through the whole search output.) "Indian freedom fighter" (339 results, most in the nature of memoirs etc); "Indian nationalist" (9,800 results, most about India's "independence movement"); "Indian independence activist" (91 results; most are popular magazine articles.) "Indian freedom movement" (1,380); "Indian nationalist movement" (3,180), "Indian independence movement" (2,970); "anti-colonial nationalism" (3,870) and so forth. For example, in the lead of Gandhi, which I had written some years ago, I had, off the top of my head "... was the pre-eminent leader of [[Indian independence movement| Indian nationalism]] in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent resistance, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world." People keep changing it to: ""... was the pre-eminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent resistance Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for ..." which is redundant. The only reason why I had to pipe the "Indian nationalism" link is that I couldn't change Indian independence movement to Indian nationalist movement in 2007. I believe it is much better to be precise, to use "anti-colonial nationalist" or some such in brief. More leisurely, we can say Gandhi was an Indian nationalist who employed nonviolent resistance to oppose British rule; Bhagat Singh was an Indian nationalist who employed terrorism against Britons in India to oppose British rule. When we want to be even more precise we can say Subhas Bose was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist who sought the help of Germany and Japan to militarily oppose British rule in India; Savarkar was an Indian religious nationalist, who sought to recreate India in the mold of a Hindu nation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:42, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

PS The Britannica article on Gandhi written by historical biographer BR Nanda, says, "Mahatma Gandhi, byname of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (born October 2, 1869, Porbandar, India—died January 30, 1948, Delhi), Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of the nationalist movement against the British rule of India." For Nkrumah: "Kwame Nkrumah, (born Sept. 1909, Nkroful, Gold Coast [now Ghana]—died April 27, 1972, Bucharest, Rom.), Ghanaian nationalist leader who led the Gold Coast’s drive for independence from Britain and presided over its emergence as the new nation of Ghana." For Nehru and Sukarno they use "independence movement." I guess it depends on who is writing. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:49, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I did search for the exact phrase (but without the Indian). The problem with Nationalist is that it has become a bit of a pejorative in the world we live in. Nationalists who belong to nationalist parties are not the same thing as people fighting/struggling for independence. My point is that freedom fighter is an acceptable term. OED, for example, says freedom fighter n. a person who fights for freedom or liberation; a person who takes part in a resistance movement against the established political system of a country; also in extended use. --regentspark (comment) 17:04, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
What is wrong with "anti-colonial nationalist?" It is precise, and no one encountering the expression will be confused. "Freedom fighter" assumes you know some background. Freedom from what? Ambedkar, for example, is freedom fighter, but he was not an anti-colonial nationalist. His freedom fighting was mostly against upper-caste oppression. Martin Luther King and his compatriots were all freedom fighters, but they did not sign the Declaration of Independence. The Kashmiri militants are freedom fighters for many Kashmiris, but even their grandparents were not born before 1947. In the context of the Indian media, "freedom fighter" has a certain meaning. But in an encyclopedia, one can't assume anything. Nationalism applied to the 20th century, especially in the contexts of Asia and Africa, has a precise meaning, which was "anti-colonial nationalism." I believe when it is applied to that context and that period, say 1900 to 1960, its meaning is fairly precise. See the examples in: User:Fowler&fowler/Britannica_nationalism_nationalist and a small description of nationalism at the end. Today, however, nationalism, has lost that more precise meaning, so it needs to be qualified for contemporary topics: "ethnic nationalism" (Catalan, Basque) or "religious nationalism" (RSS) or "economic nationalism" (Trump) or "territorial nationalism" (China) and so forth. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:58, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Missed the anti-colonial part. I'm ok with that. --regentspark (comment) 22:16, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

If "Freedom Fighter" is a title or status that is betowed upon a person, then that can be mentioned. ie "Such and such was given the title of "Freedom Fighter" in 1985 by the Indian government". --Harizotoh9 (talk) 23:24, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes it could, but so many people were recognized in such official fashion that the recognition alone is not that notable. It is usually advertised by the grunts of the movement, obviously not by the well-known leaders. In the late 1980s and 1990s, it seems, the title was being handed out to people were still teenagers in 1947. The intention behind the recognition might have been sincere, but the recognition may have also become an object of canvassing by people who were being lured by the benefits. But, equally, there were probably legitimate claimants, for example, students who dropped out of college in the 1940s, heeding Gandhi's call, and courting arrest etc., and hurting their chances of pursuing conventional careers. The Wikipedia page, Freedom fighter (India), which I would generally oppose, for, in my view, it might become means for legitimizing POV-usage, could perhaps be about this official recognition instead, about what are the criteria for it, how many have been recognized, what economic class they are in, what sorts of lives have/had they led, and so forth. It might not be that easy to write, and OR might be an issue. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:55, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Review of Vat Purnima

The article, Vat Purnima, was recently developed by using reliable sources, and has been nominated good article review. I would like to see any interested reviewers taking it. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 13:51, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Images from Indian Army & Indian Air force

Wikimedia India is advocating for release of Images from Indian Army & Indian Air force under Commons Acceptable licenses. Please see the discussion on WMIN's domain. Also share this message among your fellow Wikimedians. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 15:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Placement of INDICSCRIPTS in the project page

Before anybody groans, don't worry, I'm not raising anything about it. From this comment at User talk:Sunnya343, INDICSCRIPTS being placed under the section "Manual of Style" on the project page at WP:INDIA#Manual of Style misleads. The actual MOS is a link to MOS:INDIA (which is right) and this RFC being incorrectly put there. A way out of this would be retitling that header "Manual of Style" to something else or moving the scripts subsection out of it. Maybe relatively uncontroversial, but I'd like to hear from others before going ahead. Also, technically speaking, hope no redirects to the section or something break. Silly problem is any suggestions though, I can't think of anything proper to put instead. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 06:30, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree that something should go into MOS:INDIA. But not the way the scripts subsection is currently written. I have two small objections: first one is that the mention of the RfC wouldn't be too appropriate in the actual MOS page, so perhaps it could be mentioned only under a WP:INDIA page. Second is that the way it's currently written is in fact too strong, since even MOS:INDIA states that these are guidelines and not hard rules. Kwamikagami put in an exception about language and script-related articles here, since these clearly do not cause POV issues, and I think it would be even better to mention that this guideline shouldn't apply to topics for which the script choice is uncontroversial. (Maybe rewording to something like: Exceptions can be made for topics on which the script choice is uncontroversial, such as....) ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ тʌʟк 14:59, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
No because we cannot predict what is controversial when there are so many official languages etc. You're proposing a variation to the RfC that is distinctly problematic and not at all "small". As for placement of a note about the RfC and any qualifiers - it is logical to put them where people would find them most useful as a resource, which is indeed with the guidance itself. Further, since the RfC represents consensus, it is current policy, not guidance, regardless of where it is placed. MOS might be a guideline but this is not. - Sitush (talk) 15:48, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Okay, for the sake of constraining this discussion, let's assume we're only talking about moving what's currently written or keeping it here. Then I support either not moving it, or splitting it such that the RfC is mentioned only on a WP:INDIA page. I couldn't tell which option you support though, Sitush. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the RfC was about a WP:INDIA 'policy', and not a MOS guideline. A MOS guideline would apply across Wikipedia, but a WP:INDIA 'policy' has the potential to conflict with other Wikiproject 'policies' or established practices, and by that logic, doesn't have the force of more than a guideline anyways. (Note that RfCs can be about guidelines too, not that I'm sure what the abovementioned RfC's scope is, but certainly not WP:List of policies.) ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ тʌʟк 17:34, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Yea, you're right about the MOS and RFCs in general. The word "policy" is being misused here. Nothing we have been talking about so far is a policy, just the difference between the MOS (a guideline) and a RFC (then there's project-specific WP:ADVICEPAGE but that's another story). If we have to say which is higher (but they don't blatantly conflict each other), it's generally the guideline, RFCs such as these are made for specific instances which the former would never cover; if it did, then that RFC would be about change the guideline in the first place. I'm going to reword the #Manual of Style to a more vague #Project conventions. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 09:40, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
I don't think this is strictly accurate. Project specific guidelines are allowed and the outcome of the RfC is to set a guideline specific to WP:IN. Convention doesn't sound right. regentspark (comment) 22:54, 1 March 2017‎ (UTC)


Sounds good. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ тʌʟк 15:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

How about "Project guidelines" then? ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ тʌʟк 01:07, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Politician categories

Can a politician biography have all of these categories

Sample Purpose

Or is the second one enough and the other two be removed? Personally I think that the remaining are redundant since the 2nd one covers both the party and the state. In cases where a politician has changed their party, should we remove categories related to his previous parties or can all of them be placed in the article? --Skr15081997 (talk) 08:44, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

The second one renders the other two redundant, provided the category itself is properly placed within its parent categories. Vanamonde (talk) 07:48, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Akola Municipal Corporation

Hi WP:IN. I've come across a new editor named Anup 1995 who has been adding non-English content to Akola Municipal Corporation. I tried using a Template:welcomeen-en to let them know about this on their user talk page, but it doesn't seemed to have helped. Perhaps there is someone here who can post an easier to understand message in Hindi to explain that content on English Wikipedia should be in English. The source provided for the content seems to be dead, so I was not able to verify it. If the information is accurate and can be sourced, all that probably needs to be done is for it to be translated into English. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:08, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Mumbai statistics

The article Mumbai statistics has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

WP:NOTSTATS

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. 70.51.200.162 (talk) 06:29, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Eguvaramagiri

Hi. Eguvaramagiri was created recently, and my sources turned up very little to nothing in English. Perhaps there is a name for the village in a different language that might turn up more coverage. Does this village have the legal recognition needed for notability under WP:GEOLAND? Thanks, Mz7 (talk) 15:41, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

It's most probably same as "Yeguva Ramagiri", which is a habitation in the Amidalagondi village. utcursch | talk 19:58, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Thanks! It looks like the subject isn't significant enough for a standalone article; perhaps it could be merged into the Madakasira article, which already mentions it. Mz7 (talk) 21:07, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, the parent village Amidalagondi meets WP:NGEO, but this habitation doesn't seem to be notable enough. utcursch | talk 02:31, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Factual accuracy of Mohan Pass

This article hasn't been edited since a long time and I am unable to find any sources. I suspect that the information may not be accurate. Inviting interested editors to have a look at Talk:Mohan Pass. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 08:41, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

The Sikkim bit is a mistake. The Mohan Pass is a low-altitude pass connecting the plains above Saharanpur to the Dehra valley or Dehradun. It lies approximately 20 or 25 miles to the northwest of the Hindu pilgrimage towns of Hardwar and Rishikesh. The Solani river, which rises in the Siwalik hills, and which is mostly a stream, except during the monsoon, flows through the pass and later under the famous Solani aqueduct of the Ganges Canal, near Roorkee, eventually joining the Ganges. You should be able to find this info on Google. There seems to be a small village (?), or human settlement, called Mohand, and also a forest called Mohand, on the right bank of the river as it flows through the pass. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:24, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
Yep, traversed through this pass 35 years ago in training. Amending the article. Found a reference. AshLin (talk) 15:04, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
@AshLin: One of the remarkable things about Wikipedia is that it has experts, such as you, who have actually seen and walked through the geographical page in question.
I noticed that the sources for Mohan Pass are older ones. I wonder if that is because the area in the vicinity of the pass (though not necessarily along it) is more thickly settled today (and also because there are very likely other means of getting to Dehradun), and, consequently, the lay of the land is not as visible and not as significant as it was in early British times when travelers on horseback first contemplated crossing it. I noticed the same along the Ganges canal, where in older accounts many slopes and gradients are mentioned that today are hard to see. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:44, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
Since the pass lies in reserve forest, it has not developed thankfully. I took the first usable references which were freely available online for the sake of verifiability. Fortunately geography is little affected by time in most cases, so old references are fine. AshLin (talk)

Map of Punjab region

There is a discussion about the accuracy of this map of Punjab at Talk:Punjab (region)#Amritpal Singh Mann.27s map. Please feel free to contribute. utcursch | talk 12:52, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Hardware donation

Hello,
This might be interesting. User:Ijon announced on the Wikimedia mailing list that WMF is starting a hardware (laptop) donation program. Please have a look here or the event page. --Tito Dutta (talk) 05:34, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Badhi

Does anyone know if this is a separate caste from Bahti or Bhati? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:54, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

All I can say is that the names don't look related. – Uanfala (talk) 09:08, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Indian newspapers again

With the surprise appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the CM, it looks like the Indian newspapers have been caught with their pants down. Wikipedia comes to the rescue.

Compare them to the yesterday's version of the article.

They didn't bother looking as far as Gorakhnath Math, which had a better description actually (though with less mud). -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:14, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

More amusement. I had written

spiritual "father," Mahant Avaidyanath

DNA copied it verbatim, including the comma inside the quote marks! The Times of India at least removed all the punctuation.
Are we supposed to feel proud that they copy us? I feel rather cheated! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:29, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Telugu verification, please

Hi all, could a Telugu speaker please double-check this edit. I've reverted it because it was unsourced. The source in the article is in Telugu, so I can't verify whether the previous version or this new version is correct. If it's correct, please feel free to revert my change. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:11, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: I am a native speaker of Telugu, and it is my mother tongue. So I can answer this. Thanks for reverting the edit, the source actually says "Kothapalli", the former one. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 16:31, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: Thanks for the help and the quick reply! Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:33, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Indian defence services

Hi everyone, as the title says it all, this all about a Wiki Loves initiative for Indian defence services. Indian defence services in the sense, it doesn't not only cover the Indian Armed Forces, but it includes all the law enforcement forces including the state polices, paramilitary forces etc. Clear scope is defined below. The contest as other Wiki Loves initiatives, will be hosted on Commons. The contest will run for two months, and results will be published 75 days from the last day of the contest. I have already gathered another couple of editors to assist me in this. The judges there will be 3–4 of them depending upon their availability and our requirement. Two of them will be for the subjective stream (to judge with the scope) and qualitative stream (to judge with the image fineness parameters). The idea behind this is that there are more than 3000 articles within this scope, so these images will a lot of good to them. Regarding the prizes, we'll make sure to satisfy all the participants. All participants with more 200 valid entries will get a certificate, obviously there will be 1st, 2nd and 3rd places along with consolations. We'll also have judge's pick for each, coordinator's pick etc. For any change regarding the title, scope, rules etc. please discuss it under the discussion sub thread. I'll put all of them within a day. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 16:18, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Rules and regulations

  • The photos that are anyway related to the Indian defence services as listed below (in the scope) are eligible. They may be the equipment, properties, men and women etc. of the services.
  • All entries should be shot by uploader owning the copyright. Images shot by others or images found in the web are not eligible.
  • Photos must be uploaded within the stipulated time period (Contest dates will declared later). The photos may have been shot earlier, but these need to be uploaded in this period.
  • All entries should be under a free copyright license, or release it to the public domain. The preferred license used by the upload wizard is Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).
  • All eligible pictures should have an identification. The identification is done by adding the category "Images from Wiki Loves Indian defence services 2017" or so, to the page description of the image.
  • The description of the image must clearly indicate the service or the force the image belongs to. For example, 4th Group of Delhi Police, 15th Assault Group of the Indian Army, Central HQ of NSG etc.
Why not? What about campaign maps? AshLin (talk) 13:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
Sure, we'll include that. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 16:26, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Photographs that are already on Commons (i.e., re-uploading is not allowed)
  • As the images will be hosted on Wikimedia Commons, all entries must fall within Commons scope. Any that do not will be disqualified and may be deleted without notice.
Self-explanatory, hence redundant.
  • Images with Watermark, Timestamp or image credits on the picture itself or any other kind of editing which associates the image with the uploader are not eligible.
  • Minimum image size is 1 MB.
Can't mandate image size. AshLin (talk) 13:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
For every Wiki Loves contest, there is a minimum size defined. For WLM it was 2 MB, I prefer one here. So that general mobile photographs can be in. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 16:26, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Scope

Discussion

@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: You shouldn't be writing, "Clear scope is defined below," when it clearly isn't. First finish all the sections, then make a post. This is not a sandbox. Please remove, and then repost when you are ready. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:14, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Actually sorry for that, last night I was having connectivity issue with my internet. The post is ready, will update the entire thread by this evening. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 01:05, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Have you discussed it with anyone? You say, "equipment, properties, men and women etc. of the services." The Indian government, as far as I am aware, puts all kinds of restrictions on photographing many of those things. Have you considered that you might be putting other Wikipedians at risk? Besides, why should Wikipedians who have limited time on their hands, be spending it on such an initiative? Why shouldn't they be taking pictures of all the places of worship in India, of all religions, and adding them to the pages that already exist? Why shouldn't they be taking pictures of rural India, of the thousands of villages that have pages but no pictures? Will your pictures include the "anti-Romeo" squads of the UP police that are now apparently harassing single young men? Will you give prizes for the pot-bellied policemen of Delhi who sit around and talk, while one lane is barricaded off under the pretext of looking for terrorists, and traffic slows down for half a mile? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 07:42, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: I have not discussed it with anyone. This page is for discussion itself before take it to the actual stage. The contest doesn't push the editors to go in the restricted zones and risk themselves. You can take the photos of just what is permitted. For example, you can go the Commons and look at the categories of the armed forces and other law enforcement services. So these photos are permitted and the contest is for the same. As per the laws, freedom of panorama is not applicable to the images that have been taken in the public order. It is not that you have to go to a restricted zone to take pictures. For the question that why Wikipedians should spend their time, a image is worth a thousand words. As I have already mentioned, this contest will be hosted on commons. So as in here we have editors who edit on content, but it is the photographers, whose primary interest is taking photographs. You see we have Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Food etc. these are specific for a subject. If you wish to conduct a contest you are welcome, that is the initiative of Wiki Loves, you can organize Wiki Loves Indian community etc. The basic motto of photography is to capture the right moment. It may be anything. And we as an encyclopedia, are not here to discuss the pros and cons Delhi police or how do they work or not? Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 09:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga:: I'm not sure you are in the right discussion forum. Just a cursory search on Commons Commons: Wiki Loves contests, brings up some Wiki Loves initiatives. Of these three seem to have been successful: Commons: Wiki Loves Monuments, Commons: Wiki Loves Earth, Commons: Wiki Loves Africa, and they all involve general subjects and multiple countries. There seems to have been an Indian initiative Commons:Wiki Loves Food, in 2015, which didn't seem to have repeated in 2016. More troubling, to my limited heft in matters of photography, the pictures that seem to have won the prizes don't seem to encyclopedic, i.e. ones that would illustrate a subject in a way that adds information that words alone don't, i.e. visual information that complements textual information, but maybe I'm out of my depth here. Tellingly, none of those pictures appear on the page Indian cuisine. I would imagine this "letter of intent" belongs to some Commons page, not here. Perhaps you should contact the people who had posted at the talk page of the Wiki Loves Food page. I'm pinging @AshLin:, who, I seem to remember, had some contact with Wikimedia India, on his perspective, but I don't believe this is the place for testing the waters of such an initiative. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:26, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • I too find this initiative rather distasteful. It appears as a way to bring to Wikipedia the militarism and ultra-nationalism that seems to be gripping India. This is by no means a burning problem for Wikipedia. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:00, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
@Kautilya3: I think this is not distasteful. For example, you take Wiki Loves Food, it is not that you want to bring Wikipedia towards food culture. We are encouraging that field. Currently, today we have a lot of scarcity of images in this scope. So that is the motto of Wiki Loves, to improve the image content in a particular field. Please note that this is not related in here, it is about Commons. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 09:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
Kautilya3, leave out the intent. Will this improve Wikipedia? I think "yes", so no harm to add images. Secondly, WP:MILHIST is arguably the most active WikiProject on en:WP. Will it succeed? Can't say. AshLin (talk) 13:34, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: Why don't you make a introductory post on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history and, perhaps consider making your initiative a little more general geographically? Sounds like people there might give important feedback. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:50, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Krishna I am in agreement with Fowler&fowler, this is not the right forum to float an idea of photography competition. FWIW: Though Freedom of Panorama is not applicable but there are more practical reasons why this initiative does not sound right to me and maybe a potential risk to the participants. Taking a picture of a group of military personnels on duty, is it even legal in India? It is not a great idea to initiate a project without taking all scenarios into consideration. Best, Jim Carter 14:13, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
I want to make it clear, it would not put the photographers to any kind of risk. See the categories of Indian Army, Indian Navy, National Security Guard, Police forces of India etc. All of them have images without any restrictions. I want to once again make this point clear, that it doesn't encourage any contributor to into a military or law enforced installation for clicking the photographs. They can capture the images of these of what they do in public or what is available publicly. Anyways, I'll be move this discussion to commons. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 14:45, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
The editor @Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: has opened a new commons talk page, Commons talk:Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India), whose project page, however, is as of now, still under construction. Editors, if they like, may reply there. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:53, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Daikon split discussion

Please come participate in the split discussion regarding the Daikon article. Thank you. --Epulum (talk) 06:42, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Maps

Hi all, districts maps can be added in all articles with new feature, qids for all indian districts are added now in OSM . sample is here -- naveenpf (talk) 03:07, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Daikon split discussion

Please come participate in the split discussion regarding the Daikon article. Thank you. --Epulum (talk) 06:42, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Maps

Hi all, districts maps can be added in all articles with new feature, qids for all indian districts are added now in OSM . sample is here -- naveenpf (talk) 03:07, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Please help reassess

Dear fellow contributors, Please help reassess the article Maudgalyayana. I have greatly expanded it. Thanks. --Farang Rak Tham (talk) 22:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Merging Ragging in India into Hazing

There is a merger discussion here you may wish to contribute to.--Obi2canibe (talk) 08:21, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

K. E. Krishnamurthy

An IP tried to change the infobox birth date in the above article but broke it. While wondering what to do I noticed that the article says born 2 October 1938, the old infobox said 9 February 1938, and the IP said 11 February 1938. Also, most of the refs are very dead links. Any suggestions? Perhaps remove the date if there is no source? Johnuniq (talk) 10:21, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

DoB doesn't have any reference. I've removed for now.--Vin09 (talk) 13:06, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Healthcare in Hyderabad

Healthcare in Hyderabad can be merged to Hyderabad#Healthcare. Does WP:CONTENTFORK apply here?--Vin09 (talk) 10:49, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

New merger proposal of Ragging in India into Ragging

There is a new merger proposal. Please comment at Talk:Ragging#New_merger_proposal Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:45, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Bibek Maitra

Would anyone be able to help me find out Bibek Maitra's date of birth? Or even just the year of birth? I assume a knowledge of Hindi, which I lack, would make this easier to find. Thanks. Freikorp (talk) 10:18, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Ping me back here or contact me on my talk page if you're able to find this out. Also there's a rewards for doing this at the reward board. Cheers. Freikorp (talk) 23:27, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Mahavira

I need some help at Mahavira about the issues raised. Would anyone here like to review the article? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 17:08, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

West Bengal featured article review

I have nominated West Bengal for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. DrKay (talk) 16:06, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Are these spellings correct?

47.15.10.143 (talk · contribs) is rapidly going through articles adding what is probably either Hindi or Bengali spelling to them. However, at Burrabazar this edit] doesn't match the Hindi and Bengali in the article. I'm not sure if the IP is just making their own translations up or? Doug Weller talk 17:53, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

They are okay or at least they sound the same .They are not vastly different.The IP has used the Bengali pronunciation were the "o "sound is more pronounced.WIZRADICAL (talk) 11:30, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

@WIZRADICAL: Thanks. Doug Weller talk 18:00, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: his/her translations seems to be fine, but edits are not . He is just adding regional names/translations in most of his/her edits such as this one where he/she just added the translation in the regional language at the beginning of the article which is obviously not required or is in wrong format. — Sanskari Hangout 04:26, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
@Sanskari and WIZRADICAL: someone needs to communicate with them. If they can't speak English, that's a problem on a collaborative project. Doug Weller talk 05:26, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
@Sanskari and WIZRADICAL: Sanskari, sorry, I misspelled your name so am repinging. WIZRADICAL, thanks for your help with the IP. Also, pings only work with a new, signed post. You can't fix them, as I found out when I wondered why my pings weren't working. Doug Weller talk 08:47, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
@Sanskari and WIZRADICAL: The IP didn't respond and is now editing as Shivamj (talk · contribs). And is continuing to add his translations in the wrong place, eg again at Gulf of Kutch after the revert.[17] He's now accumulated several warnings including one from User:RegentsPark and I am of the opinion that a block until he shows willingness to discuss his edits may be required. Doug Weller talk 12:47, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
@Doug Weller:. Definitely needs a block and soon. The scale of disruption is already quite large.--regentspark (comment) 13:46, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: @RegentsPark: Yes, see also his edits on Sanskrit, India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:39, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
Blocked for 31 hours, I expect it won't have an effect. Doug Weller talk 19:14, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Param Vir Chakra recipients FLC

I would like to see more reviewers at my featured list candidate of List of Param Vir Chakra recipients. It has already gained two supports, including the one from the featured list director. It would be of great help if any one of you step in. You can participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Param Vir Chakra recipients/archive1. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 02:26, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

And I would like to see less raiding, of well-established articles, for the creation of content forks that allow easy FLC runs. Seriously, what is the game here? Look how you have mangled the Param Vir Chakra page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:13, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Translation of Bengali caption

I was rummaging in the attic yesterday and found several old pictures of Famines in India. One such picture is File:BengalSpeaksLastPicture.jpg. Could someone translate it into English for me? (For those interested, the other pictures, which don't require translation, may be found in Timeline of major famines in India during British rule, including two others of the Bengal famine of 1943.) Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:00, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I can translate the first line, "Whoever does wrong and allow suffering from wrong to happen/take place, then hatred [....]". 16:07, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Politician disputes

A lot of political articles face disputes primarily because of WP:NPOV. Is there a way to reduce the possibility of disputes, may be by a policy or tag. Examples, see revision histories of Narendra Modi, Tarek Fatah, Arvind Kejriwal, Sonia Gandhi, Yogi Adityanath, etc. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 04:52, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

History of India - GA

I was thinking if we should nominate History of India for GA. Anyone here, who would like to contribute to make it a pass? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 04:37, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Given the importance of this article, I'd be willing to help with prose; but I'm afraid I'm not well-versed enough on the ancient history side of the content to do major rewriting, only to offer general comments. It will take at least a little polishing beforehand, though. After a quick look, I can see that it seems to be basically well sourced and structured, but we certainly cannot, for instance, use James Mill as a source in a GA. Vanamonde (talk) 11:22, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
I'd be willing to volunteer fix potential issues that could come up in a GA review. I can't dedicate lots of time though. Given the sheer size of the article, a review is going to take a lot of time and we will need more volunteers I guess. Yashovardhan (talk) 11:56, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
Please do work on the History of India, but please don't nominate it for GA. It has significant POV issues, not to mention clunky language etc. It is nowhere near being ready for GA. The POV issues can't be sorted out under the gun of a review process. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:15, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Development Bengalis Article

@Titodutta: Hi, Article Bengalis needs thorough development particularly in Religion, Culture, Bengali cuisine, Festivals, Bengali language sections credible sources are required for development. Please come forward help develop this article. Thanks--Anandmoorti (talk) 14:35, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler:, IPs are editing this article without any idea, putting unsourced materials. Please do something.--Anandmoorti (talk) 08:41, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Upcoming "420 collaboration"

You are invited to participate in the upcoming

"420 collaboration",

which is being held from Saturday, April 15 to Sunday, April 30, and especially on April 20, 2017!

The purpose of the collaboration, which is being organized by WikiProject Cannabis, is to create and improve cannabis-related content at Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in a variety of fields, including: culture, health, hemp, history, medicine, politics, and religion.

WikiProject India participants may be particularly interested in the following: Cannabis in India (Category:Cannabis in India).

For more information about this campaign, and to learn how you can help improve Wikipedia, please visit the "420 collaboration" page.

---Another Believer (Talk) 21:55, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

We could particularly use help at several tasks:
Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 05:35, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
We also have Draft:Bombay Hemp Company Private Limited where a novice editor could use some help! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 08:54, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
New template added! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 17:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:IDONTLIKEIT on Rape in Kashmir conflict

Need some opinions on Rape in Kashmir conflict. I would describe this content dispute as, that Kashmir conflict refers to "The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict primarily between India and Pakistan, having started just after the partition of India in 1947." While whole Rape in Kashmir conflict is India only, and contrary to wider consensus,[18][19][20] some editors[21][22][23] have resorted to edit war over removing anything about Pakistan, no matter how many reliable sources talks about it. Clearly a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Capitals00 (talk) 14:09, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Is that really the article title - Kashmir conflict is not a place. Shouldn't it be Rape and the conflict in Kashmir or Kashmir conflict and rape or some thing like that? No comment on the content though, naively, so please ignore this, I'd expect the focus would be on the Indian part of Kashmir rather than the entire region. --regentspark (comment) 16:16, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
This dispute has also spilled over to AE. Note that I have applied ARBIP/Ds to the article. El_C 23:29, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Rao surname/title/honorific

We now have Rao (surname), Rao (title) and (the latest creation) Rao (Telugu honorific). It all seems very messy to me and I am wary of pov pushing, original research etc being used to distinguish these various lists of people. Should I be? - Sitush (talk) 07:07, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Sitush: If you examine the mid-19th century records of court cases of the Central Provinces, you may notice that Rao is a fairly common last name and is also a title: Rao, Rai, Rao Sahib, Rai Bahadur, Rao Raja, ... But you may also notice that except for some Brahmin names (such as Dubey), some Singhs, some Raos (as already mentioned), some Patels, a few profession/caste-related names such as X Mali, Y Ahir, Z Kunbi, the vast majority of names are only first names. I can't be sure, but I suspect that a large number of Indians have taken last names only in the 20th century. Even Sanskritized Brahmin names such as Dvivedi for Dubey are absent in the mid-19th century records. If my conjecture is correct, then there might be a lot of fluidity in the reconstruction of historical names. In addition, since pretty much all Hindu last names in India have sprung out of caste, the inevitable status marker in Indian society, there is an understandable upgrading in the reconstruction of such historical names, explaining the POV-pushing. In terms of WP policy, I'm not sure what we can do. You could add templates {{example farm}}, {{famous}}, {{unreferenced}}, {{lacking overview}} Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:37, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I think Rao (Telugu honorific) should be merged into Rao (surname). It is not really a surname; it is what Cynthia Talbot calls a "status title", which is now hereditary. It is a surname for all intents and purposes, even though Telugu people have an actual family name somewhere at the front, often omitted. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:48, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Not sure about that. For example in that page, an actor appears as Akkineni Nageswara Rao, but he is described as belonging to the Daggubati-Akkineni family. On the family's page, he and his wife appear as: Nageswara Rao Akkineni and Annapurna Akkineni. The family page name and the wife's name shows that it is Akkineni that is very much the surname. The second generation is described as (Nagarjuna Akkineni and Amala Akkineni, second wife of Nagarjuna Akkineni Upon clicking Mrs Akkineni's page, we discover her name to be: Amala Akkineni (née Mukherjee). We surely can't put them under Rao (surname) because the second generation is still alive and there are BLP violations waiting. Like I said, there is a great deal of fluidity in Indian last names. Bigger problems arise, when in biography pages the parents or grand-parents are named and the last name is applied retroactively to them too. So the mother might become a Sita Akkineni, and the grandmother a Laxmi Akkineni and you can be sure that they were never called that in real life or had their name recorded in that form anywhere. I mean, a few might have, but most won't. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:44, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
In Akkineni Nageswara Rao, "Akkineni" and "Rao" are both hereditary. Which one you want to call family name and which one you want to call surname or whether it makes a difference is up to you. Some people in the younger generation are dropping the endings like "Rao" (good for them), but it is not that common. Putting "Akkineni" at the end instead of at the front could be what you are calling North Indian influence. It could also be western influence.
The point I was making is that there is no difference in the use of "Rao" for the names listed in Rao (Telugu honorific) and those listed Rao (surname). So the two lists should be merged. In fact, you notice that Akkineni Nageswara Rao is listed in both of them. I rest my case. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:49, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Oh I see, I think we are on the same page. I made an error, thinking that the children too were listed in the Rao (Honorific) page, but they are not. However, I do have a questionm and it may be a little off-topic. Are we sure that Akkineni is a hereditary name, i.e. that was used in a person's name in some record? I couldn't find it in the 19th century English language records. I tried different spelling, but obviously I don't know the language nor the history of the region, and perhaps the name was rendered differently in English back then. But do you know for sure that there are written records of that name in some language before 1890, say? And as I write this I am noticing the same for others in that list: NT Rama Rao's son is Nandamuri Balakrishna or K. Raghavendra Rao's son is Prakash Rao Kovelamudi. But an advanced Google Books search for books published before 1890 for any of the three names, turns up only "History of the village of Kovelamudi" in this index of records from 1879. Are all three names really village names? If so, do you know for sure that these village names were used as hereditary names of people in any record before 1890? Perhaps there are some in Telugu, or in Urdu or Persian, which might have been used in records in the Nizam's dominions? The names certainly appear in people's names by the 1930s: see here, for example. My suspicion is that the village names were not used in actual recorded names of people until the 20th century. But I admit this is a guess, and I could very well be wrong. Perhaps someone else with knowledge of the region or Telugu might know. Pinging @Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: who earlier answered a query about Telugu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:02, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Family names in Telugu are often derived from place names. When a family moved from one place to another, it would have tended to acquire its original place name as its new family name, and the old family name would have gotten lost. Somebody could do research on the faamily names and analyse migration patterns I suppose.
Not all family names are from place names, however. For example, Thota Vaikuntam's family name, "Thota", means plantation. So, some ancestor of his probably lived by a plantation or owned a plantation, and his family came to be called by it. Dwivedula Visalakshi would have come from a family that mastered two Vedas. The family names don't follow any particular principle. Anything that served to disambiguate could have been used.
The Telugu last names, on the other hand, represent status titles. So one could analyse them to figure out social hierarchies. That is what Cynthia Talbot does in
  • Talbot, Cynthia (2001), Pre-colonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra, Oxford University Press, p. 55-61, ISBN 978-0-19-803123-9
The last name "Rao" doesn't occur in her list. So it is of a more recent vintage.
How old is this sytem of family names? The earliest I can remember is that of Musunuri Nayaks (where "Musunuri" is the family name and "Nayak" is a status title) in the 14th century. If you are really keenly interested you can read this highly entertaining paper:
  • Keiko, Y. (2008). "Politics and representation of caste identity in regional historiography: A case study of Kammas in Andhra". Indian Economic & Social History Review. 45 (3): 353–380. doi:10.1177/001946460804500302. ISSN 0019-4646.
See the analysis of K. Bhavayya Choudhry (starting on p.372). Family names (house names) are discussed on p.376. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:47, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for pinging me into this discussion. As I can see, the discussion has gone slightly out of the context. The discussion initially started with issue of three "Rao"-related articles, and swung into the history of Indian surnames. So put the discussion back on tracks please make sure that you are discussing the about the primary subject. OK, now regarding "Rao", it isn't surname nor a title and definitely not a honorific. The word translates into Telugu as రాజు, which means King. So this isn't a surname, some parents prefix or suffix it to the name of their child. Sometimes just "Rao" amy also be used, example, there is a possibility of "Rao Akkineni" etc. Here "Akkineni" is the last, "Rao" is just the name. Next, in this context, "title" defines as a name that describes someone's position or job. So that isn't a person titled Rao is a king. So Rao isn't a title. Next, coming to the honorific thing, Rao is never awarded to a person as some honorific. So finally I conclude that "Rao" is a name as all other first names. So I suggest merging all the three pages into a single page titled Rao (name), which would the most apt title. If needed I can help out the merging and moving of pages as I hold extendedmover rights. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 01:21, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

User:Krishna Chaitanya Velaga told the right thing. Rao is just a part of a name and not any surname, most commonly used by many at the end of their name irrespective of family name.--Vin09 (talk) 04:06, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Three questions:
  • How would you compare "Rao" to the status titles listed by Cynthia Talbot on p.57?
  • If "Rao" is neither a surname nor a title in Telugu, then it would seem that those pages should be deleted. They are a non-topic. Would you agree?
  • What problem do you see with the page Rao (title), which seems supported by citations?
-- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:32, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Summing up the discussion thus far for @Sitush:: I am seeing that @Vin09: and @Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: consider Rao to be a first- or second name. However, @Kautilya3: considers it to be last name or surname, perhaps originally a title having been absorbed into a surname.
As for the off-topic bit, my view, which doesn't directly answer Sitush's question, is that "surnames" are, for the vast majority of Indians, a 20th century invention as far as the records go, their use perhaps driven by the British censuses, which began in 1871. Talbot is talking about titles in medieval inscriptions, but inscriptions are usually about the elites in a society. The same for the Nayakas. They are rulers, and rulers and their family have lots of names, even today: Charles Philip Arthur George and Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:14, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
PS The inscriptional "status titles" mentioned by Talbot on page 57 and 61, such as reddi or reddy, for example, do occur in English language records before 1870, as does "raju", as does "rao," as already stated. With regards to how widely they were used, Talbot herself says on page 61, that they appled to an elite: "The social typology inherent in the status titles does not encompass all existing social groups. Those of inferior status and occupation do not appear in this scheme, for the simple reason that almost all medieval inscriptions document transfer of property to Hindu temples and hence only record the names of people who owned something of value." As for censuses, she does talk about "caste" as being a response to the census, but I am conjecturing something more: that surnames themselves, for the vast majority, were a response to the census, and that "surnames" such as Akkineni or Kovelamudi etc, mentioned above, are 20th century reconstructions as far as records go. I am now bowing out of this discussion. Thanks all. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:19, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Answering Kautilaya's questions,
  • Talbot's book is about precolonial India, during the times which kings existed, as I said Rao translated as "king", but now that is not the case.
  • If you feel so tag them for AfD, a deletion discussion should decide their retention.
  • If you observe, both the citations only list names with Rao, and it is never mentioned that Rao is a title and men were holding it as a title. It is just a part of the name. Also I suspect they hardly meet WP:RS.
Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 12:14, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for all the input. I am still confused, although I'm leaning towards a merge of the articles. - Sitush (talk) 10:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you can merge these in one. Mahajandeepakv (talk) 02:07, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Interwiki initiative

I was exploring various pages related to Indian history and found that there is a lot of scope of improvement, particularly about Ancient History of India (2nd-century BC - 5th-century CE) especially about Southern India. Further exploration helped me find images of biographies like Kālidāsa, and unlinked articles in Tamil Wikipedia about Early Chola kings. It is possible that we can source out much more good information if there is proper linking of articles of various languages, especially native languages. I would like to propose a new sub-initiative to link articles in other languages to English wikipedia, specifically related to Indian history. Task would be easier due to presence of categories infoboxes and navboxes across wikis of various languages. Volunteers and their suggestions are invited. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 08:56, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

That's a job for Wikidata. I'm not even keen on WD doing it because the standards used across the various language projects varies dramatically. - Sitush (talk) 15:50, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
I'll post here later, but just wanted to say for now that I've removed the ahistorical, acontextual, anonymous, picture of a contemporary sculpture in India of uncertain notability, which had been added to the Kalidasa page. Compare with Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Aristophanes, ... No picture is better than a modern false rendering based on nothing reliable. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:20, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
That image issue happens a lot, eg: with flags and portraits, as well as sculptures. - Sitush (talk) 20:24, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • The interlinking of articles across different language wikipedias is an undertaking that is much more laborious than seems at first sight. I think it could be manageable if done at the level of each of the wikipedias that are smaller than the English one. Capankajsmilyo, you might try to get in touch with the people from the wikipedia you're interested in and ask them for a list of the articles on that wikipedia that don't have interwiki links (it's likely that such a list already exists). – Uanfala (talk) 21:47, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I'll say it again in a different way: we don't use the old interwiki tags any more, ie: the ones that used to appear towards the bottom of the edit window. Instead, it is all done through Wikidata - the links you are seeing in the menu at the left of the article pages come via that. I'll ping RexxS because he'll likely be able to explain what has to be done for the links to happen (some of it was done by bot at the outset).

    And I'll also say again that I would be reluctant to see a mass of content brought over from other wikis. The link is ok but incorporating the information without taking a lot of care is likely to place a massive burden on a small number of regulars. Fowlerandfowler's example above is the very tiny tip of a huge, problematic iceberg. - Sitush (talk) 21:56, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

  • Of course, the interwiki links are almost all stored on wikidata. There probably is some wikidata report somewhere that lists the wikidata items that have articles on wikipedia X but not on wikipedia Y. But the reason I suggested starting at the local wikipedia is that it's likely the regulars there are already working on the linking of their articles to the English wikipedia – you would want to complement that effort rather than start trawling through lists that somebody else has already been through. So much for the linking. As for the translation of articles into English: if the source articles is a quality one, then why not? Just make sure the translated article is marked as such. – Uanfala (talk) 22:15, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Translation is not good enough. Every source would need to be evaluated per our policies and each citation checked for misrepresentation etc. Sorry but there aren't many people who have the skills to do that. It is why we're in such a mess as it is. - Sitush (talk) 22:35, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Glad we agree. As far as WP:TRANSLATE is concerned, I'd argue that page is effectively promoting circular referencing, and I'd ignore AGF across projects also. We also know for sure that there are a plethora of crap sources in native languages for topics such as caste and history - I'd be very unhappy if they were copied over without careful scrutiny. - Sitush (talk) 09:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
@Sitush: you called? Well, the best thing to do to improve inter-language linking is to look for articles that genuinely cover the same topic in different languages, and when you find one that isn't linked to others, search for the topic on Wikidata. When you find it, edit the box labelled "Wikipedia" (the little pen/edit link is just to the right of the word). Add the ISO code of the language Wikipedia where the unlinked article exists and its title in that language. Hit "save" at the top of the box and you're done. Once that is completed, the inter-language link will automatically appear on every other Wikipedia that has an entry in the box. If everybody who cared about the links helped out, we'd rapidly increase the amount of linking across all wikis. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:21, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Great, thanks. That's ok for the multilingual amongst us. - Sitush (talk) 22:33, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Forgive my use of incorrect terminology. I was talking about linking through language links only that appear on the left extreme in screen using Wikidata. Fetching or not fetching can be decided once the article is linked. I'm not commenting on that. I was just proposing to link the articles. To elaborate, there is a possibility (not surety) that Tamil monarchs pages will be better in Tamil Wikipedia. Similarly, Greek monarchs might be better in Greek Wikipedia. If they are not even linked through "language" links, we might not even get to know about it. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 04:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
This linking would also help in the debate going on above about languages in infoboxes. We might be able to migrate that to Wikidata, and support the viewpoint of those in favour, through Wikidata, and those against, through cleaning infoboxes. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 04:18, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
True. Let all the edit warring, vandalism etc happen at Wikidata instead. I'm sure they'll love us for that. - Sitush (talk) 09:04, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Indeed they will. After all, they volunteered for it. --RexxS (talk) 12:37, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Origin of last names

I realise this may appear to be the wrong project for this but please bear with me. We have Category:Surnames of Nepalese origin but quite a few of the articles contained in it also make claims that the article subject is a name of Indian origin and seem to suggest that the meaning/etymology/whatever is the same. Can it really be both? It strikes me that these names are of Indic origin and any attempt to refine further is pointless. - Sitush (talk) 14:12, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

The corresponding category is Category:Surnames of Indian origin. Within that we have Category:Indian family names. I could see the latter working for the Nepalese entries, eg: Category:Surnames of Indic origin with subcats Category:Indian family names, Category:Nepalese family names etc.

Yes, this is ultimately something that would have to be worked out at WP:CFD and would need notifications to other projects, such as Nepal, Pakistan, the Surnames bods etc. I'm just testing the water here. I could be way off-base. - Sitush (talk) 15:09, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, I can't say I know much about these topics, but I did have a thought about the adjective "Indic," which might even have some bearing on the RfC's language upstairs. "Indic," typically either refers to languages or to scripts. When it refers to languages, it means the Indo-Aryan languages, the Indian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages. These include all north and central Indian languages, including Urdu, but not Tamil and some South Indian languages. When it refers to scripts, it means any of the scripts used in South- and Southeast Asia which have descended from the Brahmi script of the first millennium BCE. These scripts include pretty much all Indian scripts, including Tamil, but excluding Urdu (Nastaliq). The problem with names is that they are not always categorizable in terms of languages. ... But even if somehow were found a way to do this, we might not be able to cover all. I notice some names in your category, such as Chemjong, which might be hard to pin down. This surname is found in eastern Nepal and Sikkim. I can't say for sure, but it could be a Sikkimese language name. But that language is of the Sino-Tibetan family, and thus not Indic. I think we might have a similar problem in the RfC's language. If were are using "Indic" there in the sense of scripts, then we cannot include Urdu, which has a Persian (and ultimately Arabic, i.e. Semetic) script. If we mean it in the sense of "scripts of Indic- or Indo-Aryan languages," then Tamil, a Dravidian language, cannot be included in it. Of course, "Indic" is also being used less precisely (and with some POV) to mean "descending from Hinduism," "or a cohort of Hinduism," or "Dharmic." I don't know whom the Chemjong worship. Theirs may well be an Indic religion in this last sense (as Buddhism falls in that category.) So, all in all, "names of Indic origin" could be a little confusing, but like I said, I don't know too much about these topics. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:12, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, that means Indic won't work. Another thought I have had is "are all of these, really, Indian origin?". Nepal, Pakistan and the like are relative newcomers. I'm struggling to explain what my issue really is here, sorry. As best I can: I don't see how one name - Pradhan etc - can have multiple geographic origins when we claim that they all mean the same thing and are transliterated in the same way. - Sitush (talk) 16:19, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
The terai (or lowland) region of Nepal is culturally and extension of upper-central-India, though I'm sure Terai-ians will dispute this. So, you are probably right, some/many of the names in this list may have had their origin in one place and are today found in other places. They could have sprung in the Nepalese terai, and trickled down to the Indian-, or vice-versa (i.e. floated up). There have also been migrations, from places as afar as Rajasthan, or at least those who are Rajput in Nepal, would be saying that. "Pradhan," which has found its way into the OED, is defined there as "a village headman." So, that would have been an attractive surname to choose, when South Asians began to choose formal surnames for the British censuses. So, to answer your question by coming up with "scenarios," here is one scenario: when the census announcement appeared in 1881 (ten years after the first one, by which time the populace was somewhat familiar with this ten-year exercise) and the subject of the surname came up, there were already stories from distant same-caste relatives in faraway places that "Pradhan" was a excellent name for that caste, no matter that only one person can really become a headman. Thus, before long, you had Pradhans springing up in both Nepal and in India (and there in several locations, most likely), each thinking that they are the original ones. To compare this with English names, Indians apparently don't like names like Smith, Ferrier, or even Fowler. They prefer Abbot or Baskerville. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:51, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Susta

Hi, please take a look at Susta article. Before getting blocked a sock made this edit to claim that it is currently being controlled by the Indian Army. As far as I can see, the source cited in the article doesn't say anything about the current status of administration. It might have had some useful information in this regard earlier but now it has no relevant information. On the other hand List of disputed territories of India article says that it is currently being administered by Nepal, but that is unsourced, see here. Thanks . Ind akash (talk) 16:58, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Neighbourhood and suburb

Neighbourhood and suburb are both same? If not which one should be used as a settlement type for merged villages in Indian towns and cities? Also categories.--Vin09 (talk) 11:26, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

No, suburb and neighborhood have different meanings. I think you might have in mind out growth or outgrowth, which India's census defines to be: "A village or a part thereof which is immediately adjacent to a statutory town and has pronounced urban characteristics but does not qualify to be an independent town is treated as an Out Growth." (see here, page 12, as printed at bottom of page. Elsewhere, in another book, an outgrowth is defined as: "An area will be treated asw an outgrowth if: (a) it is contiguous to an urban area, municipal or non-municipal; (b) it fulfills the density and occupation criteria for urban eligibility; and (d) its population lies between 500 and 6,000. (See:Bahadur, Tarun Kumar (2009), Urbanization in North-east India, Mittal Publications, pp. 6–, ISBN 978-81-8324-264-6) While you are at it, you might want to correct the grammar and update the refs in Wikipedia's Out growth page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:05, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: No not about Outgrowth, Outgrowth is transformation from rural to urban and does not qualify to be an independent town. It's a part of urban agglomeration. It was written by me, so I have the meaning of it . Just wanted to know, if a nearby village (rural) when de-notified to merge with a town, it fully becomes urban entity i.e., merged in municipal corporation, it becomes part of a city. Then, what should it be named in infobox, like any other existing places of the city?

Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Guide/Common mistakes third item states: Adding Indic scripts in lead/infobox: We should not add Indic scripts in WikiProject India articles. See User:Sitush/Common#Scripts for details.
Not adding script to infoboxes is not mentioned in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/India-related articles. Should it be added? In my OCD rounds as a wp:RCP, I often see people adding script to infoboxes. If such a statement was in the "official" policy page would make me feel more comfortable removing it and informing the editors. Would somebody please add it to the policy page? Thank you Jim1138 (talk) 19:22, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Done. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ тʌʟк 19:39, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Swachch sarvekshan rankings

  • Swachch Sarvekshna rankings can be added to the article page ?

There is a discussion on addition of swachch sarvekshan rankings at Talk:Visakhapatnam#Visakhapatnam is not a clean city by any means. Editors can have their opinion on adding or not on an article page.--Vin09 (talk) 06:42, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, the Swachh Sarvekshan survey is carried out by the Government of India (MoUD). It is not an authorized body to carry out cleanliness rankings. The Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) is headed by a Minister from Andhra Pradesh. It is mind blowing that a city like Visakhapatnam which has the highest percentage of slums in India (44.61%), is rated as the 3rd cleanest city in India. Here is the source for the percentage of slums in Visakhapatnam: http://www.census2011.co.in/census/city/402-visakhapatnam.html. Click on the "Slums" tab after navigating to the above URL. From a foreigner's point of view, calling Visakhapatnam a clean city is a laughable matter. The genuine authorities to determine cleanliness include the World Health Organization(WHO) and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Since Wikipedia expects content to be written from a Neutral Point of View (POV), adding Visakhapatnam as a clean city will breach neutrality. Visakhapatnam has never been praised for cleanliness by WHO or CPCB.
Hence I request NOT TO ADD the clean city statement to the Visakhapatnam article in Wikipedia.

Mario-Puzo-091 (talk) 07:05, 5 May 2017 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mario-Puzo-091 (talk • contribs) 07:16, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

The genuine authorities to determine cleanliness include the World Health Organization(WHO) and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Since Wikipedia expects content to be written from a Neutral Point of View (POV), adding Visakhapatnam as a clean city will breach neutrality. Visakhapatnam has never been praised for cleanliness by WHO or CPCB. Hence I request NOT TO ADD the clean city statement to the Visakhapatnam article in Wikipedia.

Mario-Puzo-091 (talk) 07:05, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Dussehra (film)

I am struggling to source Dussehra (film). Has it been released yet? If not then it appear to fail WP:NFF. That article and related biographies - eg: Manish Vatsalya and the now-deleted Pooja Welling - were subject to a lot of promotional socking some time ago. - Sitush (talk) 09:15, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Reservation in India

I am likely to get out of my depth dealing with various POVs that keep appearing at Reservation in India. I've just reverted two seemingly opposite stances that involved big changes and I've asked them to take it to the talk page. If anyone is interested, I'm going to need help when they do. - Sitush (talk) 22:00, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I have reviewed the activity again and asked for some help from WP:RFPP. That just pushes the problem somewhere down the line but it might cause some of the anonymous contributors + newly-registered accounts to use the talk page, as they need to do. - Sitush (talk) 00:54, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

New infobox

I would like to ask suggestions for {{Infobox deity/Wikidata}} and if it can be used on certain test pages. If yes, please suggest test-cases. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 12:25, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Possible Content Fork on Kashmir unrest

The above article was recently created with a controversial title, on the subject that is very much related to the article Srinagar (Lok Sabha constituency) by-election, 2017 that already existed, and with the content that is well-covered in 2016–17 Kashmir unrest#April 2017. Interested editors may participate in the discussion there, and offer their suggestions. Best regards, Tyler Durden (talk) 19:16, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rape in the Kashmir conflict

Share your vote on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rape in the Kashmir conflict. Capitals00 (talk) 06:04, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I have already responded to it. Please don't quote me without my consent. I have nothing to do with this. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:24, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
I saw. This discussion is now closed. Capitals00 (talk) 12:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal on Rape in the Kashmir conflict

A merger has been proposed at Talk:Rape in the Kashmir conflict#Merger proposal. Capitals00 (talk) 12:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Ajay Ohri

Would someone from WP:INDIA mind taking a look at Ajay Ohri to see if he's really notable for a stand-alone article article per WP:BIO or WP:NAUTHOR? Some of the sources cited are pretty trivial things which are very unlikely to be considered the WP:SIGCOV needed to show notability. I'm asking here because better sources may exist and someone here may know where to find them. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:45, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Categorising politicians by religion

Is there any real point in categorising politicians by religion? I've recently stumbled across Category:21st-century Indian politicians, which I can live with, but what I find more pointed is the subcategory Category:21st-century Indian politicians by religion.

Do we really need this intersect? There are very few articles in the category but it has the potential to be a WP:BLP minefield if a religion-obsessed contributor should see it and decide to go down the route of categorising all the Muslims or, even more alarmingly, all the Hindus. - Sitush (talk) 18:03, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

We should probably get rid of it. For BLP reasons, we need self-identification with a religion to label someone as following the XYZ faith and that's usually not easy. Looking at the all of three articles included in the list, all of them as adherents of Jainism, one has no reference at all, one merely states that the person was born in a Jain community, and none of the articles confirm that the person self-identifies with Jainism. The articles shouldn't include religion and we definitely shouldn't place them in a religious category.--regentspark (comment) 21:23, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
Hasnt wikipedia updated the policy to not to mention a person's religion unless he is notable for his religion? So categorising politicians with it would be a violation of that policy.
On personal levels, India has enough of politics based on religion. I dont think wikipedia should label politicians with religion. I even think that religion shouldnt be mentioned in anybody's article unless that person's notability has direct link with his religion. —usernamekiran(talk) 21:38, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
I vaguely recall looking at that discussion and thinking it was all about mentioning religion in infoboxes. Personally, I agree with the sentiment but I don't know whether the scope applies. Do you have a link to it? - Sitush (talk) 01:26, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
@Sitush: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_126#RfC:_Religion_in_biographical_infoboxes. It applies to infoboxes only, and at this point only to the generic {{Infobox person}}.
As for the category, there is nothing inherently wrong with it. As with all categories, they need to be verifiable. If the article makes no reliably sourced mention of the politician's religion, then the article should be removed from that category. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:54, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the link, which seems to confirm my thought that the scope of that outcome is very limited. However, at WP:CFD there are frequently issues raised regarding whether something is a useful/valid/whatever "intersect". Even if there is incontrovertible verification that satisfies WP:BLP (or just WP:V, if they're dead), what purpose does this type of category serve? I can understand categorising by political party but, for example, the extreme Hindu politicians would most likely already be categorised under Category:Hindutva or something similar, in addition to being Category:21st-century Indian politicians. And if the person is not at some extreme then the categorisation seems really rather silly because it has no real relevance. - Sitush (talk) 00:23, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Indic script in "Lead sentence" or in "Lead section"?

WP:INDICSCRIPT currently states:-

There is community consensus that the lead sentence of an article, as well as infoboxes, should not contain any regional Indian language script. ... (For details, please refer to the following RfCs: Native languages in lead ...

Having re-read Native languages in lead I can see nothing about the "lead sentence" in that discussion, it was all about the "lead" or the "lead section". Was there subsequent consensus for the "the lead" to be changed to "the lead sentence"? if so, where, when, and why?
Here we have an IP reinstating Indic script in the lead section, because it is not in the lead sentence.
If there was no consensus on adding "sentence", could this please be removed from the explanation of WP:INDICSCRIPT, and replaced by "lead section", which is defined in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section as "the section before the table of contents and the first heading", before we get swamped by language-warring editors "gaming the system" - Thanks - Arjayay (talk) 15:18, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

It should be the lead section, not just the first sentence. Too much opportunity to game the system otherwise (although I'm sure people will still cause problems with scripts in the body, regardless). I thought that was the consensus but I may be wrong. - Sitush (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

RfC regarding salutations before name

WITHDRAWN
No need to process as the policy already exists. —usernamekiran(talk) 16:08, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

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

On wikipedia, I have come across a very long set of saltations. A long time ago, I had to edit an MLA's name "Hon. Resp. Ma. (thats short for respectable in marathi/hindi) Shree <First_name>ji <last_name>" when in real media, and himself use only "Mr. <first> <last_name>, or in some cases "Shree". Only for example purposes: Hon. Resp. Mananiya Shree HarryJi Potter; instead of simply Mr. Harry Potter. This issue generally takes place with politicians. When it comes to women, instead of shree, "Smt" is used which stands for "Shrimati". Ironically, shrimati means a widower or divorcee. (Saubhagyavati is for "currently married lady"). So for women, either Ms. or Mrs. should be used accordingly.
I hereby request for comments, to make it a policy similar to WP:NOINDICSCRIPT. I mean, it should be wikipedia policy to exclude such salutations, unless a particular salutation is formally/officially given to the subject. 
—usernamekiran(talk) 15:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
See WP:NCIN. - Sitush (talk) 15:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Sitush. I had read it sometime in the past, but somehow slept my mind.

 Request withdrawn

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.
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