User talk:Imranshaykh

BahaiAwareness.com as a source or link

Based on Wikipedia policy on external links, there are couple reasons for its removal:

Links to personal websites, including blogs and anonymous websites or webpages are not allowed; clearly that page is your own page as evidenced by your username and the author of the articles on the website.
Linking to a website that you own, maintain or are acting as an agent for is also against policy; once again, you are linking to a website that you maintain, which is against policy.
Sites should not be linked if promotional or likewise dissuasive, unless they are the official website of the organization. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeff3000 (talk • contribs) 12:39, 1 December 2006.

This site misses the mark on all these points. MARussellPESE 17:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MARussellPESE provides references to very good links in Wikipedia. Most important of them are reliable sources and verifiability. Everything that is added in Wikipedia should be cited by reliable sources, which do not include self-published resources. The external links very much follow the same policies.

You are correct that the Baha'i link in the Muhammad al-Mahdi page is also inappropriate, and I will remove it. As to other editors of your website or friends of yours adding the link, Wikipedia policy does not allow that, and those editors can be considered meatpuppets or sockpuppets. Regards, -- Jeff3000 17:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, Wikipedia places no importance on editors who believe or are experts. It's actually one of the criticisms of Wikipedia. However, we all abide by Wikipedia policy, and can only cite material based on the reliable-sources guidelines linked above, which by definition remove self-published resources, and original research. Regards, -- Jeff3000 17:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of if your website is good or not, it is self-published and does not pass Wikipedia policy as a source or an external link. -- Jeff3000 17:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From the reliable sources link, "Typically peer reviewed publications are considered to be the most reliable, with established professional publications next. Government publications are often reliable, but governments vary widely in their level of reliability, and often have their own interests which will explicitly allow for withholding of information, or even outright deception of the public. Below this are sources which, while not tangible, can be providers of reliable information in some cases, for example websites associated with reliable publishers.

With any source, multiple independent confirmation is one good guideline to reliability, if several sources have independently checked a fact or assertion, then it is more reliable than one which is not checked.
Sources where there are multiple steps to publication, such as fact checking and editorial oversight, are more reliable, other things being equal, than those without these procedures.

So for example, a website that is associated with a reliable publisher is a reliable website. There is no process in Wikipedia as classifying a website as a reliable source, but instead it has to follow the policies outlined above. Regards, -- Jeff3000 17:44, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For a website to be reliable, other publishers which are already reliable need to accept it. So, for example, peer-reviewed journals accepting it, etc. Basically, your site is self-published and cannot be accepted. Note that your statement "I am keen that my web site comes up as an alternative perspective on the Bahai Faith." is definitely against the policies of Wikipedia. See Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. Regards, -- Jeff3000 18:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am a normal editor, but I follow Wikipedia policy which has been linked multiple times above. I do this not only with External links in pages, such as the ones this morning (which btw I was not the only one removing), but in pages like Prayer, The Matrix, Canada, NHL an others, but also policies that govern Neutral Point of View and, fair use of images, copyright and the linking to disambiguation pages. The three fundamental aspects of Wikipedia are verifiability (that statements much be published in non-self published reliable sources like Encyclopedias, books and journals), Neutral point of view which also governs undue weight, and no original research (in that one cannot come and add their own point of view to articles). All wikipedia editors need to be governed by these policies, or one can be blocked.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with your website; you can hold your own views, and there are many other websites that make their own views made. It is not a decision of what is right or wrong, but in following Wikipedia policy that does not allow for self-published resources to be included. Wikipedia is striving for accountability, and has made those polices so that it can be seen as more authortative. Your posting of your own website violated two policies, one dealing with posting your own website, and the second dealing with reliability. Asking someone else to post the website, which becomes meatpuppetry (which BTW is also against Wikipedia) does not solve the second problem in that your website is self-published, which is not acceptable. Regards, -- Jeff3000 20:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Imran, Please you really need to read and digest these policies. The frequency of your edits on Jeff's and my pages in this time-frame suggest that you couldn't have done so.

In a nutshell, but missing a lot of nuance, your site is not a source with recognizable authority on the subject. You've obviously put a lot of time into it, but that doesn't make it authoritative.

There are hundreds of personal Baha'i websites, some as thorough as yours, that Baha'i editors are just as rigorous in excising. Jeff just deleted the "Baha'i Prophecies" link from the Hiddem Imam article — something, frankly, I should have done had I taken the time to review it, but was unfamiliar with the article. MARussellPESE 21:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And Imran, before you get the impression that the Baha'is are trying to suppress your work here, please consider the whether these sites or articles would have any place on Wikipedia:

These appalling, bigoted, sites and articles are well-documented with "so-called" sources. But they fail as sources for Wikipedia for all the same reasons yours does as noted previously.

Personally, I think yours and theirs suffers from the same flaws: assumption of the conclusion and cherry-picking sources, among others.

That said, it would give me great satisfaction to be the first to blast anything remotely resembling these out of Islamic articles. As a Baha'i, I do take deliberate insults to Muhammad and the Imams as offensive. MARussellPESE 22:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]