Talk:Sri Aurobindo/GA3

GA Review

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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 15:48, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Well-written, passes spot-checks for plagiarism.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	lead: ok; layout: ok; weasel: ok; fiction: n/a; lists: n/a
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
	2c. it contains no original research.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Major aspects are properly addressed.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	Article is correctly focussed on the subject.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	Tone is now fine after much work in past few years.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Not sure about Aurobindo.family.jpg, please make sure it is properly tagged and dated on Commons. Other images are ok.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.	Article is now far more defensible, is encyclopedic in tone and content and thoroughly cited. It is a pleasure to see how far it has improved since the earlier GA attempts.

Comments

I'll take this on. An immediate comment which is not part of the GA review is that it would be possible to tidy up the references by moving books mentioned repeatedly to the list of cited sources. However this is not a GA requirement. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:48, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Can you suggest me to wikipage were i can learn this to do ? Shrikanthv (talk) 07:39, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

The easiest is probably just to study the article itself, where you can see how e.g. Heehs (2008) or McDermott (1994) are cited in "Citations" and fully listed in "Bibliography". You can just do the same thing for Aurobindo (1960), for instance.

This article has clearly met the GA criteria. These criteria do not include the tidying up of citations, which would be a desirable step as already mentioned, and essential if the article is to go further.

Additional work could be done on Sri Aurobindo's influence on other people and groups, and on the reception of his ideas; in these sections, the article currently "addresses the main aspects of the topic" but would with benefit be further developed to become "comprehensive".

For now I would like simply to congratulate all the editors involved for their hard work. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:13, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: I'm sorry but I think this needs to be delisted. I did a lot of work on the biographical bits some time ago but since then someone has introduced miscited material to those sections. In addition, and while I've fixed a lot of minor problems, I've found at least one instance of copyvio. It is also poor that an article that is so intertwined with a philosophy actually says almost nothing about that philosophy and how he came to derive it. It is the philosophical stuff that was always my stumbling block here: I simply do not understand what the man was trying to say and consider it to be gibberish. The source used doesn't help one bit and is arguably self-interested.

I know people have worked hard on this - including me - but it is not GA quality in my opinion, and it still needs a lot of work. - Sitush (talk) 10:40, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your many improvements. Indeed many editors have visibly put much hard work into the article; I am sorry to hear about the copyvio but am sure that alternatives can readily be found. However, we need to clearly distinguish our own attitudes to philosophies and what is said in an article. The man's life, work, influence and reception are clearly and adequately summarized here. Other people as described in the sources certainly found him important and influential. Whether we editors like the man's ideas, or even find them coherent, is not the article's problem. It is valid to use a source related to a subject to describe what the subject himself thought. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:53, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. My "gibberish" comment relates to my inability to correct the problems. It is not intended as a judgement on the philosophy. The section on the philosophy is indeed gibberish: I'm an intelligent bloke and I've done undergraduate courses on philosophy etc, so if I cannot make sense of it then the likelihood is high that the general reader cannot do so either. Add to that the miscitations, copyvio etc and we're far from GA. I'm not sure where to take this next but I'll read up on the delisting process when I've got a few minutes. I'm not blaming anyone here, by the way, merely explaining why it fails the criteria. And the criteria includes lucid prose. - Sitush (talk) 11:04, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. I remain convinced however that our task is limited to saying 'Aurobindo claimed X', whether the claim makes sense to us or not; and in an article on the man, we are not obliged to say much on the philosophy, so it may be best simply to cut it down. A removed copyvio should not be an obstacle either. I have edited the section on his philosophy; it is now short and frankly perfectly clear (that he believed in some kind of divine purpose to evolution, leading from matter to mind). On the citations, they are now not untidy; and the GA criteria explicitly exclude requirements for correct formatting: "Requiring consistently formatted, complete bibliographic citations. (If you are able to figure out what the source is, that's a good enough citation for GA.)" (What the GA criteria are not) Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:06, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Chiswick Chap IT's very saddening and devasting to see how is it a copyvio, still if you go through the 1st chapter of the book (that I have taken from ) if you directly qoute from it . it is a copy vio and if you interprit it, it is a synthesis of your own material. Philosophy is not Theoritical physics , I doubt any lucidity would ever be brought to it ( I do believe if you ever bring lucitdity to philosophy then it not any more philosophy but something else.) . but on a positive note I do accept it keeping the philo part chrisp, I will copy paste the philosopycall "gibberish" down here and if needed let us discuss why it is so Shrikanthv (talk) 12:45, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap, you misunderstand me. I said "miscitation", not that the citation styles need fixing. My point was that we were citing a source (Heehs 2011) that not only didn't support the statement but didn't even have anywhere close to 347 pages, as the citation suggested. That, I am afraid, is very poor and it meant that I had to tag two bits at {{qn}}, using good faith that the intended source was the 2008 book rather than the 2011 paper. If you don't see that and the copyvio as a major problem then I am flabbergasted. This thing should never have been listed. - Sitush (talk) 14:26, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I see what you mean. Obviously these issues needed fixing. However from Shrikanthv's comments above, it is clear that as you say these things happened in good faith; the cv is already fixed and the faulty citation is readily fixable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:59, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Everything is fixable if enough time and energy and sources can be found. That doesn't make it a GA. The idea is to fix the things before promotion, not after it. You'll note that I've now found still more problems, some of which I've fixed and others of which I've had to tag for now. I'm not blaming anyone but this thing is not a GA and should not have been listed as such. - Sitush (talk) 16:05, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Very true, but we are where we are. I've added quotes and citations where indicated. Also compared Wilber description with the source again; it seems a fair summary of what is said; I don't pretend to understand what Wilber actually means. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:01, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

We need not have been where we are if more care had been applied. Your recent changes do not help matters; in fact, at least one of them seems to be extremely misleading and another seems to indicate a surprising unfamiliarity with WP:RS. I could right now run up a website explaining how Bertrand Russell reacted to the thoughts of Rousseau and then expect it to appear in our Rousseau article pronto because, well, it is a website written by someone who names themselves and so it must be ok. Who is that person? What authority do they have? - Sitush (talk) 17:08, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Is the extended info for Heehs (2008) p. 347 intended to be a quotation from the source or what? I've just reformatted it but couldn't make my mind up. As said previously, I cannot see that page on GBooks. - Sitush (talk) 21:54, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

"Aurobindo was influenced by studies on rebellion and revolutions against England in medieval France and the revolts in America and Italy. In his public activities he favoured non-co-operation and passive resistance but in private he took up secret revolutionary activity as a preparation for open revolt, in case that the passive revolt failed." and a fair bit more from that source is far too closely paraphrased. I've no time to fix that at the moment but we're going to have to check every source because this sort of thing is common in India-related articles. - Sitush (talk) 22:10, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Finally got hold of the complete book online here is the link , please refer to respective pages if references needed to be checked And for me it seems right. I do also see a prejudice on what is common in "Indian" articles . if the facts needs to be stated how do you put into wiki other than summarising it call it para phrasing ?! please go through the actual para with the heading "Attitude towards violent revolution " and the lines in the article simply summaries the para (please note that this book is not a Autobiography, it was corrective notes given by Aurobindo himself on the claims from his biography writers)Shrikanthv (talk) 07:39, 2 November 2014 (UTC)