Talk:Karaiyar

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@Khem Nayak: Please explain why you insist on adding these two references that don't even mention the word "Karaiyar":

• Nayaks of Tanjore
• “Westward ho!”

utcursch | talk 23:13, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

As explained earlier, need to read the pages in the citation before you make a judgement. Since you have repeatedly failed in that task I take the link directly to page 91 and the word Karaiyars in particular. The above was linked to Varunakulattan Khem Nayak, a Karaiyar chief and commander of Ragunatha Nayak and his troops including Karaiyars in military activities and sailing dhonies (native Indian ships) in their engagements from/in the traditional geographical spheres of the Karaiyar. As page 91 was one among four pages linked it may have posed some difficulty for you. The revised link for your convenience;

• Nayaks of Tanjore

“Westward ho!” deals with the large and now extinct ships of Velvattathurai, a largely single caste town.[1][2][3] For those less familiar about that culture, I draw the attention to paragraph 3; I only gathered that the ship had been named “Annapoorani”, and that the picture was of her in the Suez canal. The rest of the article was about Velvettithurai: no more references to the ship. and paragraph 11; built and operated by sailors from Valvettithurai.. Other sources to confirm the single caste VVT demography are;
Militarism and Caste in Jaffna
Prabhakaran, Veluppillai and the father-son relationship
Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the Nineteenth ...

Khem Nayak — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khem Nayak (talk • contribs) 13:52, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Neither of the refs support these statements:

• "...ethnohistorical accounts characterize Karaiyars as traditional naval warriors and mercenaries, who were also engaged in boat-building, fishing and trading activities during their leisure time...."
• "...S. K. Sittampalam believes that they were once engaged in international commercial trading"

Westward Ho! directly contradicts your assertions. Here's a direct quote from the article: "Most of them, while being built and operated by sailors from Valvettithurai, were owned by the wealthy Chetty families from Tamil Nadu. The rest were owned by the Chetty traders who had settled in Valvettithurai since the opening of secure sea lanes in Indian Ocean by the Porthuguese (from Arab & Far Eastern pirates). (They might have been there since before Cholas time.)"

The statements in the article are already supported by another reference (Ethnohistory Through Intracultural Perspectives), so I'm not sure why you're resorting to forced synthesis. See WP:CITEOVERKILL. utcursch | talk 14:45, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

It was for the visuals of the ships themselves. Two possibilities, in the 1920s the Chetties being the richest perhaps owned, not built and operated and/or the Sinhala writer attempted to downplay the community, for obvious reasons. I am yet to read the citation you mentioned. Khem Nayak — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khem Nayak (talk • contribs) 14:50, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, it's unnecessary, since every statement in the article is already cited now. utcursch | talk 15:49, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Removing sourced content

Hi Sitush My revert because in your own words "I realise that there were various tags in place but to lose 4k of probably and actually "accurate" information in a single edit is likely to be confusing - it certainly was for me. I think this needs smaller edits and better explanations.". We should create consensus right? It would be more appreciated if you would take time to see what sourced content you actually remove. Removing old sources are acceptable in academic and scientific field, however this is a historical field and older sources are appreciated unless you have newer source ofcourse. See WP:RS AGE Xenani (talk) 08:02, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

No. We do not use Raj era sources, we do not use Indic scripts, and yet again you made massive changes in one single edit. I am becoming increasingly concerned with these large changes that you are making because they amount to rewrites of the articles. - Sitush (talk) 08:46, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually, we have a big Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing problem. Eg: we say are identified with the founding ancestors, Periyanadutevan and Verimanikatevan, who were reputedly commanders of an invading Chola army. which is virtually identical to p 7 of this. Another example is us syaing strengthened the Vellalar dominance for their own purposes, which is very similar to what the cited source says. Perhaps we are going to have to rewrite the entire article, after all. - Sitush (talk) 09:17, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Sitush

I actually don't understand what you mean with Raj era sources. The WP:RS AGE states that older sources are better, and also that secondary and tertiary sources being better because they collected more reports etc. You can read the rest yourself, so I think there is no reason to remove sources from Raj era.

Yes I see that some parts are to close paraphrasing, I will try to rewrite those parts If I detect such. Xenani (talk) 18:59, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

References

Karaiyar vs Karava

I think we have a problem here relating to the connection between Karaiyar and Karava. Numerous sources seem to indicate that former are Tamil people of India and the latter are an equivalent community of Sri Lanka, eg: p. 4 of this. I can't see the McGilvray source mentioned in our lead section, which we claim says Sharing similar origins and status are the Sinhalese Karava, but it doesn't seem to contradict this. As such, it would appear that all material relating to Sri Lanka should be at Karava, not in this article. Or, alternatively, one of the articles should be merged with the other. - Sitush (talk) 10:03, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Sitush. Not sure if you read through the sources. Both communities seem to have been at one time same community who today are two different communities due to language barrier. The Karava community is according to several sources a Sinhalese community. However Karaiyar community is found in India, but is according to several sources in the article mainly found in Sri Lanka. Several of the sources talk about the Sri Lankan Karaiyar. The Karaiyar and Karava communities in Sri Lanka seem to distinct today, so I think it would be a bad idea to merge both articles. Xenani (talk) 19:06, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, a year on and nothing has improved. There were still Raj sources being used, along with a large number of snippet views that seemed to rely on biassed search terms etc. I'm sorry but I simply do not believe that the contributor owns all of these books and I am very concerned about some sort of Tamil Eeenam etc agenda that might possibly be being pushed here. Furthermore, if the two communities are distinct then we should have separate articles for them. - Sitush (talk) 04:39, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I have now tried to fix a better citation on the sources to the article. I will also further go more through the sources and removing the Raj sources. Please do not instantly make any reverts on this article, just give me time and I will soon fix it. Regarding your comment "some sort of Tamil Eenam etc agenda", I didn't understand what you were trying to say. And regarding the sources, quoting from WP:SWYGT

The advice to "say where you read it" does not mean that you have to give credit to any search engines, websites, libraries, library catalogs, archives, subscription services, bibliographies, or other sources that led you to Smith's book. If you have read a book or article yourself, that's all you have to cite. You do not have to specify how you obtained and read it.. Xenani (talk) 19:45, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I have raised the general issue here for wider input because the situation is becoming more and more confused. I really do not care whether this particular article concerns Sri Lanka or South India or both, provided that we have some clarity and consensus about how to deal with these situations where at present we have multiple articles for what may be the same communities. - Sitush (talk) 07:07, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I went through all sources in this article, and they seem to only mention about the Tamil speaking Karaiyars of Sri Lanka. I changed the lead to be more specific. Xenani (talk) 19:34, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

New content added

Hi Boomstories. You contributed with an edit to this and the Karava article, which are mostly of non reliable sources, and also the content added is also not supported by sources. Could you provide a quotation from your sources supporting the content you added? Thank you, Xenani (talk) 17:07, 24 January 2019 (UTC)