User:Ekantik/Random Sandbox

Re:Shilpa Shetty

Hi there. Yes, I'll surely get around to re-editing the Shilpa Shetty article and bring it up to GA and FA-class standard.

About Romanov Vodka, it is Wikipedia convention to mention people's commercial endorsements. I.e: there is no reason why such endorsements cannot be mentioned. It is also not a very good practice to remove sourced/referenced information, as it may be done with good intentions but it can also be construed as vandalism. I'm aware that there has been a culture at WP:INCINE to remove mentions of commercial endorsements moved by certain editors. Shahid, this is wrong. I am telling you this because I can see from your contribs list that you are a very active contributor to Bollywood-oriented articles and it is very good that you are so enthusiastic. But unfortunately we have been noticing for a long time that the WP:INCINE project has no real direction or formal/informal standard for articles. Hopefully this will change in the near future because I plan to set some things in motion later this month when I will have more time.

Anyway, forgive my rambling. Back to the topic, it is ok for Wikipedia to list and detail any person's commercial endorsements. For example, Shilpa Shetty has recently launched her own perfume, cookery book and other things as a direct result of the Big Brother controversy so this will have to be mentioned. Wikipedia even has entire articles dedicated to a person's merchandise, for example Britney Spears.

So if you don't mind, I'm going to re-insert the Romanov Vodka information and probably enlarge the article with more information, sourced and referenced of course. Hope you're well. Ekantik ^talk 23:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello again.

You said: "Hi again! I'm sorry, but I disagree with you in that particular case. I have absolutely no problem with mentioning endorsements of actors, as long as they are notable. Launching a new perfume is great and definitely can be mentioned, but Vodka? I can't understand the matter of making a whole section for endorsement for Vodka, when actually nothing regarding her actual work there is mentioned."

Well it is only a short paragraph within a section about her other commitments away from filming and acting, not a "whole section". Perhaps you need to define "notability" in this case. WP:NOTE doesn't preclude the inclusion of commercial endorsements so long as it has been reported by verifiable and reliable sources. Personally I cannot understand why you draw a difference between perfume and vodka, what's the difference? They are both commercial products she is endorsing. And there is much more she has endorsed that needs to be catalogued, verified, and included. Ditto for all other actors. I don't understand what exactly you mean when you say "nothing regarding her actual work is mentioned". Could you please explain what you mean by that? Do you mean there is no information regarding what she has actually done for Romanov Vodka? Well, there is plenty of information, such as the fact that she has done TV and radio advertisements for them, as well as appeared on public advertising billboards and all the other typical brouhaha that goes with advertising a commercial product. Trouble is, none of that can be sourced reliably. :) That is what I was telling you at Talk: Shah Rukh Khan, there is a serious problem with the Indian media in that it doesn't report very much of these things, so no guarantee of reliable sources for Wikipedia. I don't think this requires removal of the information per se though, considering what we do have.

In any case, it is good to see that you don't have a problem with the inclusion of commercial endorsement information for all actors connected with WP:INCINE. :) That is a refreshing change from the attitudes of the old guard of editors who, frankly speaking, had no idea how to write an article.

You said: "Well, the Britney Spears article is not a good template for inspiration. It has recently failed an FAC. And even if you want to do the same, remember that while her article presents numerous endorsements, you have a whole section dedicated to only one. Have a look at some FAs and you will see that there are no such mentions. But still, I repeat, I have no problem with endorsements, but there must be some significance to it. As I said above, unless there is some controversy behind it, something that is genuinely notable, a description of her work -- it's non-notable. So this one is clearly non-notable. Launching her own perfume is notable, but an endorsement for some vodka, one of thousands endorsements she may have done, is..."

Thanks Shahid, but I've been on Wikipedia long enough to know what's notable and what's not. As mentioned earlier, WP:NOTE doesn't preclude any information about commercial endorsements/product launches so long as they have been sourced reputably. I personally don't understand what you mean when you say there must be significance to an endorsement, what do you mean? What is the significance of Beyonce, Pink and Britney Spears all doing the same Pepsi advert? There isn't one, but it is just mentioned that they endorsed it, along with a whole host of other products. (They all have sections for their endorsements too.) There doesn't have to be a controversy behind a product endorsement to get it mentioned on Wikipedia. Where does it say that in WP:NOTE? By the way, I just now found this.

As for FA-class articles, could you show me an example of an FA-article that initially failed FA-requirements because of mentions of product endorsements? I only mentioned Britney Spears because there is a separate article dedicated to her endorsements (since she has done many) and there are other such pages connected with other people. If I remember correctly, Xc wanted to create one such page for Hrithik Roshan back when she was a new editor. I don't know what became of that, but I didn't see any problem with it.

You said: "A BLP should provide biographical information; a new own perfume is great, and endorsements are great only for one of the above-mentioned reasons, but mentioning one of many endorsements in one section is definitely not an encyclopedic stuff. Have you seen an encyclopedia entry for some actor mentioning something of the sort? PETA and HIV drives are great causes, part of her humanitarian work, therefore very notable, as they constitute a part of her very biography."

Well that was my point. I will be including much more information about her product endorsements either in that section devoted to her commitments, or it may require a new section about her endorsements. Perhaps a new article even, I'm fine either way. The only reason the Romanov Vodka stayed in there for so long was because there was no other place to put. As you say, it is stupid to create an entire section for just a short paragraph, which is why it happily remained within a section generically describing other commitments apart from Bollywood. So perhaps we may need to create a new section for product endorsements/launches that will include information about Romanov Vodka, perfume, cookery book, etc.

You are correct in noting that Shilpa Shetty is a BLP article. I might further add that it has a stronger priority with WP:BLP than with WP:INCINE. Do you have any experience with BLP articles outside of INCINE?

You said: "As for "It is also not a very good practice to remove sourced/referenced information, as it may be done with good intentions but it can also be construed as vandalism." - Just to note, it doesn't apply to established editors who have been working on an article, and although I immesely appreciate your terrific work on this article, I have full right (and equal to yours) to edit this article."

Yes, Shahid, I don't deny that you have a right to edit the article and never disputed that. I remember you were starting out as a newbie editor when I was around last time and I am glad that you have come so far with WP:INCINE and have done a tremendous amount of work. But unfortunately I think that you are wrong about established editors being able to delete referenced information. As far as I am aware, Wikipedia conventions look down on the removal of sourced information as that is taken as a subtraction of the information available on Wikipedia. The only real reason for removal of information is if the info is potentially libellous or otherwise defamatory to the subject. Of course if such information must be included, it must be reliably sourced. This is a requirement made directly by Jimbo Wales and WP:BLP happens to be extremely strict in this regard. If you want to remove information because you think it is non-notable, I think it is Wikipedia convention that the burden of proof falls on the deleter to show how the info is non-notable.

You said: "We better try to expand her brief career section, rather than adding things to make the article longer. I have expanded her career section, her lead, fought vandalism down the months, and impolite editors on the talk page as well; so I also can remove something which is non-notable. I'm not going to remove it now, I hope you get the matter and do it for yourself. I don't want an edit war."

That's good, Shahid, because I don't want an edit war either and see no reason why there should be one. Discussions about text like this should really follow the Wikipedia BRD procedure. I totally agree with you about expanding the necessary sections. The only reason why I didn't do that myself is because I couldn't find any reliable sources. :) Back to square one! :) The sad thing is that there just isn't enough information from the Indian media on the Net, especially for actors gone by