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Portal:Indian classical music nominated for deletion

Portal:Indian classical music has been nominated for deletion, please see discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Indian classical music. Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 04:20, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

wasiyat nama, ek maan apni saari jaaydad ha...

Can anyone read this? If so, please answer over on Wikipedia:Help_desk#wasiyat_nama. Thanks,  Chzz  ►  12:11, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

District naming convention

Discussion at Talk:Kodagu district about the imposition of an unwritten and un-discussed (as far as I am aware) naming convention. Imc (talk) 18:14, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Standard_Hindi#Requested_move

There is a move proposal to move Standard Hindi to Hindi (Hindi is a redirect to Standard Hindi and not an article). Please comment and present your view on the structure of the article. --Redtigerxyz Talk 06:16, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions/opinion on article title

India map dispute between Wikipedia and the BJP's youth wing is the third title given to that article since Friday. I would appreciate comments/suggestions. - Sitush (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move at Iqbal

Comments welcome. --regentspark (comment) 16:24, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Tamil Wiki Media Contest

Tamil Wiki Media Contest

Greetings from the Tamil Wiki Community,
We are organising a Media Contest for images/videos/audios related to Tamil, Tamils and Tamil Nadu.

  • Prize Money: Total prize money for the contest is 850 US$. First prize is 200 US $ and there are a total of 9 prizes including three continuous contribution prizes. Certificates will be awarded to prize winners
  • Upload: Files have to be uploaded to Wikimedia commons through the Contest portal using a customised version of the commons upload wizard. Or if you choose to upload directly to commons, the category "TamilWiki Media Contest" has to be added to the files.
  • Dates : Nov 15, 2011 - Feb 29, 2012
  • Themes : Anything related to Tamil and Tamils (more detailed rules here)
  • All files should be uploaders' own work. Copyright expired and PD/CC images of others are not eligible.

We invite you all to participate in the contest. Please spread the word among your friends and share our Facebook page: Share with Facebook

--Sodabottle (talk) 08:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I find that most of the images in Tamil Wikipedia like this do not mention the correct source or copyright status. This is, in fact, disappointing.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 12:57, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
We are planning a file cleanup drive as part of the contest next month. Some cleanup work is being done already. It would solve the old wrongly tagged / copyvio / missing FUR problems.--Sodabottle (talk) 14:08, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

The most important project page for WikiProject India

You may have read Sven Manguard's special opinion editorial in the Signpost some time ago. What you may not have realised that this Project is a significant contributor to the Monster under the Rug. We have our own huge pile of articles awaiting cleanup and the gory details can be seen in what I regard as the most important user-page of this WikiProject, User Svick's Cleanup listing for WikiProject India.

When we combine this with our WikiProject article, the statistics are horrifying:

  • Of the 79361 articles in this project 51,982 or 65.5 % are marked for cleanup, with 86,019 issues in total (as of 16 November 2011, 23:56:17 UTC.)
  • There are 40,338 articles unassessed for importance and 20,527 for quality, making a backlog of 60,865 assessments.
  • There are 43,843 stubs and 10,986 start class articles. All these need to be developed in time too.
  • Besides these are a very large number of cryptic articles, articles pertaining to India but not tagged on the talk page with the WikiProject banner. There are also articles needing many more cleanup tags than are marked at present.

Something needs to be done URGENTLY. Our WikiProjects percentages are higher than those of general English Wikipedia. Many hands make light work. There are about 450 active editors listed on the WikiProject members page. If each of us decided to do just one cleanup task each day, then we can do away with 1,64,500 odd problems in a year. Over time, these issues will fall to negligible levels. Let us all take up this commitment and slowly but surely we can improve the state of affairs at WikiProject India.

(This was the gist of a five minute presentation of the state of WikiProject India in WikiConference India 2011 given by me on request. See the original presentation slides here).

AshLin (talk) 07:37, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Results - Noteworthy Wikimedian Recognition 2011

The Noteworthy Wikimedian Recognition, a community nominated process, was carried out during WikiConference 2011. A total of 41 nominations from all India-related Wikmedia projects were received. See the complete list here. I had posted notice of this event on this page earlier. The following nominations were received in respect of editors on English Wikipedia during the process:

  1. Bhadani (Wikipedia, English, Content)
  2. Utcursch (Wikipedia, English, Hindi, Content)
  3. Pamri (Wikipedia, English, Content)
  4. GaneshK (Wikipedia, English, Content, Bots)
  5. Narasipur Vijayaraghavachar Venkatanarasimhachar or "nvvchar" (Wikipedia, English, Content, DYK)
  6. Sundar(Wikipedia, Tamil, English, Content, Outreach, Bots)
  7. Redtigerxyz (Wikipedia, English, Content)
  8. Planemad (Wikipedia, Commons, English, Content, Maps, Outreach)
  9. Fowler&fowler (Wikipedia, Commons, English, Content)

Imho it is a great honour to be nominated by the community, my personal congratulations to each and everyone of the nominees. The awards were announced on Day Three of the Conference. The results are placed on pdf here.

The award for editors on English Wikipedia was won by User:Bhadani. On behalf of the community, I congratulate him on this recognition by his peers. AshLin (talk) 13:39, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

As per the jury discussion, userbox has been placed on Bhadani's user page and a barnstar given to all nominees. AshLin (talk) 14:26, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
That's cool! :-) My hearty congratulations to the nominees and User:Bhadani.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 02:28, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Congrats Bhadani ... you are my motivation to volunteer for WMIN--naveenpf (talk) 09:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Required - articles for Collaboration of the Month

Please consider nominating articles for Collaboration of the Month (COTM). Upto 5 articles can be selected for the COTM so plenty of scope available for nomination of the month. It is proposed to close nominations on 30 November 2011 and selections for month of December 2011 made from whatever we have. AshLin (talk) 18:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

We have had a bit of inconclusive chat on the Wikimedia-I list with regard to how many collaborations we should have in a month. Five was the number of the past. I seriously doubt we can do justice to that many today seeing we are trying to jump-start a dormant process. I suggest having two for December 2011 & that we may may increase the number of articles as editor involvement increases. What do you say? AshLin (talk) 10:51, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
I agree with 2. Hmundol (talk) 10:55, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
I agree. Better to be more focused initially. Thanks for getting this going. --regentspark (comment) 14:06, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
No prefered stand. I think we're worrying too much about niceties here. Let's set the rules as the number of collaborators increase and there are needs for such limits and rules. Why not work on all the articles nominated? This is the first time that this has been re-introduced. However, I have no problems whether we're collaborating on 2 articles or 5 articles. Prad2609 (talk) 14:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
2 seems to be a good figure to start with initially. Lynch7 16:30, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
Two, it is for December 2011. Closing nominations now. Review again after this month? AshLin (talk) 04:40, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Shekhawati

Shekawati - language or dialect? I don't know if there should be one article or two on the topic, and which title should be used in the end. Please comment at Talk:Shekhawati language D O N D E groovily Talk to me 05:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Ethnologue on Shekhawati clears things up. It has been considered as a language (part of the macrolanguage Marwari) by Ethnologue which does not feature dialects. Hence recommend merge into Shekhawati language. AshLin (talk) 06:54, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month - December 2011

Two articles have been selected for Collaboration of the Month (COTM) for December 2011. These are:

Remarks from the community regarding these articles are given here:

  • Manmohan Singh could use substantial work. As noted on the page, significant copy-editing is needed, which I have begun. In addition to copy-editing, parts of the biography have the be clarified with new sources. The awards and summary of positions at the end has to be reformatted for readability and structure. As Prime Minister of India, Singh's article is an important one to be improved -- it should be on par with articles about other heads of state.
  • Mullaperiyar Dam -
    • The page is currently being used by different communities to push POV and the article has become more about the surrounding controversy than the dam itself. Collaboration to improve it requested?
    • The article needs cleaning up, in regard to facts, language, spelling, grammar and organization of content. I started on this path of cleaning up and adding facts to the existing article and trying to list the controversial issues objectively and then found vandals deleting contents at will and interjecting opinions, misleading statements and distorted facts and quotes. I am willing to collaborate to create an objective, encyclopedic article, and to present an objective view of the controversies. As I have indicated, currently it presents more of a debate, rather than an article of Wikipedia quality. Those who contribute must think more as Indians rather than as Tamils or Malayalees.

While collaboration for the purposes of COTM only will last during the calendar period of December, but we exhort all editors to continue improving COTM articles beyond their allocated time period.

In the meantime, nominations for COTM of January 2012 are requested. Exact number of COTM articles will be discussed again later in the month, once editor response and participation in COTM is seen.

Eager editors have already started collaborating on Mullaperiyar Dam. :)

Happy editting.

AshLin (talk) 05:55, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Keshab Chakravarthy and K. B. Hedgewar

The Wikipedia articles on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Kakori, Kakori conspiracy, Keshab Chakravarthy and K. B. Hedgewar state that Keshab Chakravarthy and K. B. Hedgewar are the same guy. Google (minus Wikipedia mirrors) doesn't reveal any reliable sources to support this claim. I find it surprising that even books don't mention this fact (if it's true).

The source cited in the articles is Swadhinta Sangram Ke Krantikari Sahitya Ka Itihas written by Dr. Krant M.L.Verma. The above claim and reference were added to the articles by Krantmlverma (talk · contribs), so this would be original research unless there's another reliable source to support this.

If this fact is not true, this is a major blunder persisting on high-traffic articles and Wikipedia mirrors since months. Does anyone have a reliable source for this? utcursch | talk 10:52, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Previously K. B. Hedgewar was involved in such type of revolutionary activities, This fact has been disclosed by so many writers viz. C.P.Bhishikar[1], M.S. Golwalkar[2], K.S.Sudarshan[3] and Rakesh Sinha[4] previously. How can this be called as original research of Dr.'Krant' M.L. Verma? I do hope now the matter is very clear to everybody.Krantmlverma (talk) 17:16, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


Regarding article Khattar

Dear All, I would please like to bring to your notice an ongoing, persistent problem with the article Khattar, an important tribe in Indian and Pakistani Punjab-- have edited and re-edited it time and again but some people keep tampering with it and though I have tried to fix the problems again, I have now posted it as a Disputed article; and would request you all to please see the article and its talk page and help resolve this issue once and for all. Its rather futile for me to keep on fixing it otherwise. Thank you. Khani100 (talk) 11:45, 4 December 2011 (UTC)Khani100

I am assuming this is the right talk board to ask this question . I have recently (and my first time) completed an article List of Amar Chitra Katha comics .I have revamped the earlier list,changed the format to a table, wikified the links and removed bad references .How to get this added to the featured lists? Sumant81 (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

First ensure your article meets the criteria for FL. Check out lots of candidatures before you nominate it here so as to avoid obvious mistakes. List it once you have removed the obvious defects and undergo the rigorous process of Featured review! Happy Editting. AshLin (talk) 16:47, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
Before FLC, try to resolve few problems: check disambiguation links, lead is not of FL standards—try to expand it, add notes in the table for more information like year of publication and about the contents of comics, fix MOS issues, etc. — Bill william comptonTalk 17:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
Some pictures should also help. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 06:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Help on vandalism...

...required on Sudha Murthy. Too much messy! I myself have no much knowledge & wiki-hands! -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 06:51, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Announcing - WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools

Dear friends,

This is to announce the beginning of a new project for WikiProject India - WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools (OWIS). For quite some time now, there has been a need for an offline wikipedia compilation suitable to Indian schools. There are, and have always been, a whole lot of Indian schools and students out there who dont have access to an English encyclopedia. The web has killed off a whole range of printed encyclopedias and factbooks besides Wikipedia putting paid encyclopedia packages such as Encarta. If the school does not provide wide-spread, regular and dependable access to the web. then the students have zilch. So, keeping in mind that English Wikipedia has been around for more than a decade and has more than enough material for an encyclopedia, we began this project so that all interested people could pitch in and collectively prepare such offline compilations which are the need of the hour.

About the Wikiproject

To do this, we began a new WikiProject in English Wikipedia, daughter to WikiProject India. Titled WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools (OWIS), it is intended to be the umbrella WikiProject for all Indian versions of offline English language wikipedias for students and communities. The WikiProject will concentrate on content issues and leave the production to a team of technically oriented guys from the community (to be decided later).

You can read about the WikiProject page here:

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Offline_Wikipedia_for_Indian_Schools

Under this WikiProject, it is proposed to provide a variety of compilations suitable for various needs, such as a full offline encyclopedia, single disc collations on topics related to India etc.

The first project

To begin with, we felt it is best to create a single DVD compilation with all subjects covered in sufficient detail. We have named it as Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools (Full version) or OWIS-FULL (in short). It is based on and will be siimilar to the SOS Children’s Village Offline Wikipedia for School which you can checkout for yourself here:

SOS Children’s Village Offline Wikipedia for School

The project page for this first project is here:

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Offline_Wikipedia_for_Indian_Schools/Offline_Full

The SOS village compilation is CD based with approximately 6500 articles based on the British educational syllabus. Naturally, it contains a large number of topics relevant only to the UK and has a distinct Western flavour in its overall choice too, which is only natural.

To make this compilation suitable for our environment, we will have to not only add a whole host of new articles on Indian topics to the compilation but also remove topics/articles irrelevant to Indian students. In addition, the SOS Children’s Encyclopaedia, being in existence for the last few years, is designed to fit on a CD with the consequence that the number of articles on a subject cover a subject satisfactorily but skimpily. Since we plan our compilation to be on a DVD, there is scope to improve coverage on all subjects as well. Hence it is planned to have in the region of around 9000 articles.

So where are we now? As a first step we have established the framework in the form of the WikiProject and pages where one can work. The list of topics from the SOS compilation has been prepared subjectwise. These lists need to be vetted/improved/extended and then finalised.

As of now, six subjects have been opened up for topic selection - Art, IT, Maths, Physics, Biology and Chemistry. We need motivated editors to join the teams and pitch in. The selection of topics needs to be completed in ten days time so that we can move on to other subjects, other tasks.

So, if this venture interests you, if you want to do something really important with us, if you agree with our proposition that this is critical for delivering the potential of Wikipedia to digitally-challenged communities, sign up here:

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Offline_Wikipedia_for_Indian_Schools/Offline_Full#Members

Let us hope that we succeed in this vital project.

AshLin (talk) 14:30, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Jonathansammy's query about "Art"

Hello AshLin , Good proposal. Can you clarify what you mean by Art ? Do you mean sculptures, paintings, music etc. or the broader Indian definition which includes literature, languages , and social sciences ? Thanks. Jonathansammy (talk) 20:08, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Jonathansammy, good question. We are following the structure of the SOS Children's Village compilation as it seems quite handy. Of course, we are ready to amend it if we felt that needs to be done. Please explore their subject index in greater detail to get an idea. For the convenience of all, I have given the location of the arts in the SOS compilation:
Besides this, in this compilation, culture is not used as a larger umbrella term as we normally do but instead used as per a narrower sociological definition and it forms part of subsection Culture and diversity (part of section Citizenship).
The question now arises, do we need to change the structure at all? If yes, then in what way is art and culture to be structurally represented? This is a larger debate in which I request you all to participate in to get a better structure than before. AshLin (talk) 03:55, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Does cinema come under "arts"?-RaviMy Tea Kadai 15:31, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Cinema comes under subsection Films, part of section Everyday Life. AshLin (talk) 19:45, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Schools in India

Hi. I'm just dropping in here to mention that we are getting an increasing number of articles about schools in India. Unfortunately, the majority of these articles are of very poor quality and need a lot of clean up, while others may have to be deleted. We prefer to keep as many as we can in order to increase India articles in the encyclopedia - but we need your help.

For detailed information on how to write and maintain school articles, please visit us at WP:WPSCH and our guidelines at WP:SCH/AG. We also have a dedicated help page at WP:WPSCH/H.

--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:40, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Kudpung for bringing the situation to our notice. AshLin (talk) 15:40, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Peer review of Tiruchirappalli

The article Tiruchirappalli is being peer-reviewed. I invite you to participate in the same.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 17:07, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Moved here from user talkpage. Thanks to user:RabiChander84 User:RaviChander84 for informing me. AshLin (talk) 19:50, 16 December 2011 (UTC).

Tiruchirappalli at FAC

I invite you to participate here and voice your opinions.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 06:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia and disputed maps

Signpost has covered the Indian map controversy and has linked to this analysis on myLaw.net. — Ganeshk (talk) 16:27, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

AfD

I have nominated this Indian film article for deletion, per WP:NFF. Please post your "support" or "oppose" opinions. Thank you. X.One SOS 12:51, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Please note that a separate discussion portal for Indian Films exists here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Indian cinema task force. I know its dead with no traffic (other than mine). But thats the reason why it should be used & added on you people's watchlist. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 14:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikimedia-in-en mailing list

A new mailing list named "Wikimedia-in-en" is created for co-ordination and collaboration between Wikimedians working on India related content on English Wikipedia & related projects has started. Feel free to subsribe to this new list here -- Tinu Cherian - 08:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

India image vote

Here. Saravask 03:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

FA review

I have nominated Chennai for an FA review. If anyone is interested, kindly participate. X.One SOS 15:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Eastern Nagari alphabet

The article Eastern Nagari alphabet was recently deleted after being prodded. Although the prod concern was that this term was coined on a Wikipedia talk page, Google Book search does return a few results for "Eastern Nagari". There are a number of pages which link to this page: Special:WhatLinksHere/Eastern Nagari alphabet. Can anyone comment on whether this page deserves to exist, or if it needs to be redirected to some other page (such as Bengali script)? utcursch | talk 05:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC) Cross-posted from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Writing systems

INCOTM - Report for December 2011

Its time for the Collaboration of the Month. Lets have a look at what we achieved in these COTMs.

Last month we had restarted the COTM and decided to take up just two for the time being considering that fewer members were taking interest in it. The one's selected were :

During the period under question, Mullaperiyar Dam was the more active of the two. We had 267 edits from 62 contributors. This was good from the point of view of COTM. The COTM was a success in this case as the dam article improved substantially:

  • Improved lead.
  • Improved material in Infobox
  • New image on irrigated area by CaptainofHope.
  • Some POV trash removed/rewritten.
  • Dispute points clearer now.
  • Improved references.
  • Article sections were restructured.
  • History of its construction improved.

Is it ready for GA? No, there are number of content issues. The article is not stable. Unless some passionate editor really gets down to sift through all the dispute points, ensure that they are written well in context, NPOV and with a timeline, it is not complete from substance point of view. In parts of TN, Pennycuick, the builder of the dam, is idolised and busts of his can be found in the countryside. This fact (with reference) and an image is also needed imho. Someone who is a civil engineer needs to vet the article to ensure whatever is written makes engineering sense. However, the article reads much better now.

The top five editors (excluding self) of Mullaperiyar Dam during 01 December 2011 to the time of writing this email were:

To encourage contribution, the first three registered users have been awarded a Barnstar for taking time and effort to participate. Captainofhope also gets a barnstar both for his edits and the new diagram created.

Thumbs down point - the previous month's edits were even more - 348 in November 2011. Main reason, due to interest generated by User:Prad2609 and User:Rsrikanth05, Wikipedia editors started editing the article in right earnest and over a hundred edits are in the last week of November (User:Prad2609 was a significant contributor in November to those already mentioned). Also, the dispute itself was in the news and saw attention form angry editors on both sides. Considering the heat with which the dispute raged irl, the article was relatively serene in December. :)

Many Thanks To All Who Contributed In MULLAPERIYAR DAM COTM (Yes, I'm shouting :)!)

Manmohan Singh was a different story. Perhaps people did not like his stance in the Lokpal Bill, as there were only 43 edits of which 14 were by User:AroundTheGlobe, who gets a barnstar for dogged determination. Some cleanup of the article was done but overall the effort the community put into the article was not enough and it was not much improved.

So "Fail" for this COTM!

In the next post, I shall be discussing the proposal for next month's COTM.

AshLin (talk) 13:16, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Peer review

Some users are still creating requests at the page in vain. Since it is inactive, I am planning to add the following text at the start of the page: "Please do not create new requests on this page. Please use Wikipedia:Peer review instead." Your thoughts. --Redtigerxyz Talk 06:08, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Any such peer reviews may also be indicated on this page and on Wikipedia-in-en mailing list please. Seriously though, would you care to try to revamp it? I promise you few comments on my part for the peer reviews. AshLin (talk) 10:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

New Year Greetings for 2012!
Wishing all editors of WikiProject India a very Happy New Year! AshLin (talk) 17:29, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Scripts, redux

A specific issue, related to the discussion above, can be found here. Purely on the basis that the extant script had apparently existed for some time, and because there was a brief discussion on the contributor's talk page, I had reverted. This is a geographic article. I do not have the expertise to validate whether the recent change is correct or not, but have been stung far too often by vandalism & pov-pushing in instances such as this. Please can someone review the situation, and if it turns out to be in fact a classic example of the sort of issue being discussed under the scripts section above then could you please explain this to the contributor. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 01:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

With regards to the above mentioned issue, I'd like to add that this is not a simple case of vandalism or pov-pushing. I'd like to bring to your notice that Tamil, as a language has existed in the region for several centuries now. In fact, there is credible evidence that a large section of the population in this region speak Tamil, and that the very name of this place is of Tamil origin. I have familiarized myself with the issue being discussed in the scripts section and I can assure you that what I am raising is a legitimate point. Therefore, I propose that the article in question represents this claim through the addition of a Tamil name tag. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank You

Jash121 (talk) 02:32, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

My apologies. I did not intend to assert that your contribution was either vandalism or pov-pushing, merely that a lot of it goes on and I tend to err on the side of caution. I have no firm opinion (yet!) regarding how these issues should be treated, nor the expertise to determine whether your specific contribution is valid. That is why I have raised the issue. - Sitush (talk) 02:38, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification !. As I mentioned before, the intention behind my initiative is to enhance factual accuracy.I do not have any other interests.

Jash121 (talk) 02:53, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

As an example (Spiff mentioned it somewhere above), people who know Kannada will understand this. Spiff suspected something was wrong with the transliteration and asked me, but generally, people who don't know that particular language will not care to see the correctness of the translation. Lynch7 03:18, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Sitush, this has to happen. Many geographic locations, especially around borders will have multiple indic scripts. This particular town being not of high population doesnt have its demographies discussed there itself. Had that been present i think you wouldnt have doubted on the correctness of the word also. Just assume good faith, as always. Also, for Tamil verifications you can use Google Translator. Its covered there. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 14:16, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Then what criteria do you propose for having the script of a non-official language there in a Geographical article, assuming that there are no reliable sources to verify that the particular language is well spoken? Lynch7 14:19, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I would suggest just the Good Faith clause. Plus a glance at the map would be helpful. Munnar looks like 50km or so away from Tamil Nadu and hence could easily have a good Tamil speaking population. And as always, When in doubt, ask. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 14:31, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
So where do we draw the boundary - 50 km, 100 km, 5000 km? And how do we ascertain whether a person is correct when we ask? Forget good faith: that is not a reliable source. - Sitush (talk) 14:34, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
This is not done; we'd be AGF ing too much here. "When in doubt, ask"? Whom? If there are no verifiable references at all, then what do we rely on? Original research? Lynch7 14:48, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
There will never be made any strict rule about this as it cant ever be made. And these situations would arise for small towns and villages only where source is absent. And if its undisputable, keeping two indic scripts is ok. After all, having two indic scripts does not clearly mean that those languages are well-spoken there. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 15:14, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
A free-for-all situation is exactly what we don't need; We must keep only what's relevant there. Lynch7 15:28, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Fine! Just stick to State language. Add other scripts if reliable sources exist. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 16:02, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I would appreciate the involvement of others in this thread. Yes, it overlaps what is now an RfC'd thread above but as a specific example it perhaps has some useful merits regarding how things might work out in practice. As long as any further comments in this section are related specifically to Munnar then it could both (a) establish the position with regard to the article, and (b) assist in the general discussion above. What I hope to avoid is two threads that clearly regurgitate the arguments without advancing (a) at all. If you want to make a general comment then do so in the prior thread; if your comment relates to this example then placing it here seems just fine to me. - Sitush (talk) 00:18, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

In response to your desire, Sitush. How about this for a draft policy - "For Geographic articles under WikiProject India, only the concerned state language/official state languages to be used for transliteration in the lede. For addition of any other languages for adding transliteration in the lede, please take up case for consensus on talk pages with references from Reliable Sources that the new languages are relevant. In cases where two or more transliterations already exist in the lede all such additional transliterations, if approved by consensus on talk page, to be added to the script instead." If this is acceptable, we can consider voting for it be approved as policy. If this is approved, this can be a starting point for cases where specific relaxation,, as in the case where RS are not available can then be taken up. AshLin (talk) 12:21, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I think that as a draft policy this would be better discussed in the section above re: general usage of scripts. I don't quite understand the last sentence of your message (after the quoted draft) but that is probably my fault - I am still a bit fuzzy-headed with a cold. - Sitush (talk) 09:15, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Misleading Articles about India

There is one Wikipedia Page named "Separatist movements of India" The Article has many misleading information particularly aiming vandalism(like sepratist movement in Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal) and many reference are without source and even about dead insurgencies in India. I tried to get misleading Part removed but there are some users(one is a Pakistani Wikipedian) which don't want it to be removed and always undoing the changes made in the articles.

I also tried to put information about dead insurgencies that too was removed. Please help to get it corrected. Ashok4himself (talk) 21:58, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this to notice of WikiProject India. We advice young editors to learn to edit on less contentious articles and learn the rules of the game before taking up on tough issues like this one. This will need to be tackled by editors of our WikiProject by due process and good faith and the whole article cleaned up to remove incorrect assertions over time and replaced by referenced facts. This article needs to be maintained principally by Indian editors. AshLin (talk) 22:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm not getting involved in it but why "This article needs to be maintained principally by Indian editors"? Seen your note above, btw, & will respond. I'm full of a cold and sticking to the easy stuff at the moment! - Sitush (talk) 22:52, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
I mean that it is our natural responsibility as Indian editors to ensure that all articles about India get due attention from its citizens - even ones which may seem abhorrent such as the one under discussion. The comment is meant to be in the nature of encouraging more Indians though I now see that it's language can be construed in an "Indian vs foreigners" sense, but that was not the intention. Hope this clarifies the issue. Neutral editors are most welcome, in fact necessary to help us overcome our biases. The principal concern here is that the most minor facts get undue proportion and listed while the actually relevant issues are just not developed. For example, the disputed section holds names of groups I have never even heard of despite doing a postgrad in defence studies in an Indian University. Onthe other hand, there is no useful discussion of the Naxalite problem which Manmohan Singh mentioned in 2009 as one of India's greatest challenges. In such articles we need to have lean, clean, well-referenced facts with NPOV and WP:UNDUE strictly enforced. See the kind of changes I'm trying to do in Indophobia in Pakistan (a task still incomplete) as an illustration of the kind of edits I'm talking about. AshLin (talk) 23:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Got it. The Naxalite point is interesting - I've had some lengthy discussions about that one, notably with someone who at present is not contributing, and eventually gave up. Still, I have got enough issues on my to do list without adding another potentially contentious article to it. I wish you well. - Sitush (talk) 09:19, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Next month's INCOTM - a proposal to include former GA/FA as one of the choices

While restarting COTM last month, we had reduced our COTM targets from five to two and we saw that of these one did well - the other flagged. Perhaps it means that the number of people interested in COTM are not that many. User:AroundTheGlobe had suggested last month that we consider developing the low-hanging fruit ie former GA and FA articles and bringing them back to quality each month. Personally I like this idea for many reasons:

  • it gives a different activity for people to do than just improving an article.
  • brining an article to GA is like a quest or challenge for those who prefer such.
  • the articles have already reached very good quality and relatively little work is required to improve them and restore them to former status.
  • the WikiProject benefits much more tangibly.
  • editors get to learn the GA process (lets begin with GA first) which they can then use to improve their own articles.

So I propose that for January, we choose one normal article as normal COTM and the other as Good Article Collaboration of the Month. Please give your views on this proposal. AshLin (talk) 19:04, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

As Ashlin mentioned, I suggested this as there are a lot of former GA/FA articles from India. Some like Mumbai have been demoted and re-promoted, but a majority of them once demoted, remain demoted. Another reason is, there are not too many active participants in COTM, we would probably achieve more in terms of tangible results to show this way. Around The Globeसत्यमेव जयते 11:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Can we have more opinions please/ Support/against? AshLin (talk) 18:00, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
I guess both non-former FA/GAs should be included. The former FA/GAs are all fairly above par & would require slight tweekings. Non-familiar editors wont be able to help much in it. Most of the information that should be included is already present in there. Other articles have vast scope for expansion & hence would probably see more contributors. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 19:33, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
I like the idea of a former GA/FA and a "normal" article. Gives different kinds of folks the opportunity to participate. Think it'll be really useful if we can generate some noise and excitement around the idea. For instance, can we attract users beyond WP:INDIA to help out using maybe en-wp village pump or a similarish WP? ...e.g., could we have got additional help for an article like Manmohan Singh from WP:ECONOMICS and WP:POLITICS? As long as the article per se falls within the subject scope of WP:INDIA, would be great to collaborate with folks all over the world. Can we use our social networks (e.g., Wikipedia and WikimediaIndia on facebook or the @wikipedia on twitter to attract more folks? Can we get the COTM article (after it's edited) covered in media / social media to provide motivation and recognition to the folks who worked on it, and to attract more folks to it? Can we use our social networks similarly? Hisham (talk) 04:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Shruti Haasan's mother tongue

It is well known that Shruti Haasan is the daughter of veteran Indian actor Kamal Haasan, who is a Tamilian. We also know that Shruti cannot speak Tamil fluently, which is clear after seeing the Tamil film 7aum Arivu. That means she has devoted her life to North India, which is her mother Sarika's native place! So why shouldnt there be a Hindi/Marathi script in her article? Kailash29792 (talk) 08:54, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Have you seen the discussion above regarding usage of scripts? - Sitush (talk) 09:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes. But neither her looks nor her accent show that she is more of a Tamilian. Your so-called discussion says that the script of the person's mother tongue is a must, eg: Aishwarya Rajinikanth's article has Tamil script even though her father Rajinikanth is Maharashtrian. And since Sarika is Maharashtrian, isn't Shruti's mother tongue Marathi? We must discuss this. Kailash29792 (talk) 03:44, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Clueless with village stubs

I don't usually deal with geographic articles but have just created Shahpura, Andhra Pradesh to get round a disambig problem. Oddly, the connection with Papadu - the reason why a disambig was needed - probably makes it a more notable Indian village stub than many.

Can anyone expand on this one? I am not even 100% sure of the district in which it sits, although I would guess Warangal district. Also, although the hill-fort apparently still exists there or thereabouts, I have been unable to find any photos of it. Where is the best place to stick a request for photos - they could be used on the Papadu article also. I'd guess that the district article might be a good place ... but that brings me back to working out which is the correct district. - Sitush (talk) 11:12, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

The village is referred to at [1] and is on Wikimapia as Quillashapuram at [2]. The name is written Killashapuram on some other websites, and the first part may be derived from the Urdu for fort. Shapuram rather than Shahpura sounds correct for Telugu, but it would be wise to get some confirmation elsewhere, such as a state government record. It's in Warangal district. Imc (talk) 16:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Added a referenced fact ex Google Books. AshLin (talk) 19:01, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
I saw that ;) It looks like we need to clear up the point that Imc raised & maybe that will open some things up. As it stands, I am really not sure how many Shahpurs/Shahpuras etc may even exist in the Deccan - these things are an absolute pain to me. If anyone can assist with the naming/district issue then that would be a great start as it would help with cross-referencing any possible sightings. If anyone has any ideas about where images of the fort might be obtained (tried Flickr) then that, too, would be great. My guess is that most other issues can be dealt with on the article talk page. - Sitush (talk) 19:07, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Ramapur

The article on Ramapur strikes me as bizarre. However, I know nothing about the subject. Would somebody who does (or who would understand reliable sources) care to take a look? -- Hoary (talk) 15:38, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I have cleaned up the article and deleted most of the cruft. It is readable now but the village does not appear to be notable at all. It still needs more cleanup. What is the policy for notability amongst Indian villages? AshLin (talk) 16:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Without actually bothering to read up any guideline on the matter, I'd say that any village anywhere is inherently notable. The question is rather: Is the material about it verifiable in reliable sources? That matter aside, it does sometimes seem that Prem Chand Pandey (its strange history) confers notability within en:Wikipedia to anything he touches. As perhaps do other members (e.g. this one) of the Pandey family. -- Hoary (talk) 01:44, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
Busy fellow, eh! The Pandays are a clan and not a family, so there would be many editors with that surname not necessarily related. AshLin (talk) 02:09, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

If someone has time

Bhagwana ram (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) appears to be editing solely in Hindi. My appraisal is based on Google translate so forgive my ignorance if I am mistaken. I've messaged the user but my post, as it is in English, may not have the desired effect. If anyone could take the the time to look at the situation and offer the user any assistance it would be appreciated. Thanks Tiderolls 15:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

  • It appears this account was created to avoid a block. If anyone wishes to remove this section as a waste of time, I have no objection. I only leave it in the event there is some hope in reaching out to this individual. Regards Tiderolls 18:01, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Thai Pongal

Thai Pongal is currently tagged for needing more references, and according to the rules at Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries, must be omitted from the Main Page on January 15, 2012, unless the issue can be addressed. There are a little over 12 days to go, so hopefully that gives editors enough to time to take care of this. Thanks! howcheng {chat} 20:07, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Reorganised the lead, added material and references. However the sections for each of the days need referencing. The present references used have lot of scope for reuse. AshLin (talk) 01:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Bollywood Hungama

What's up with www.bollywoodhungama.com? It has been bad for a while and there are a lot of articles that have links to it. Does anyone know when/if it will come back? BollyJeff || talk 21:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh! Is it so?! I too saw that awesome SRK's poster. I thought its just something wrong with that particular link. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 12:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
If it turns out to be dead then consider whether the Wayback machine can be used to fix the articles. And if it is just iffy then maybe you should consider Webcitation for future references that use it. Both of these assume that bollywoodhungama is in fact a reliable source, of course ;) - Sitush (talk) 15:55, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
Well, they are not dead, but have moved everything, and not provided automatic redirects. For example the main site for Dhoom 2 was changed from
http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/movies/preview/12546/index.html (old) to http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/moviemicro/cast/id/509011/Dhoom+2 (new)
Now its gonna take a lot of work to find everything again on the articles that use it. What a pain! BollyJeff || talk 02:37, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Pitcheswara Rao Atluri needs sourcing

Pitcheswara Rao Atluri has been tagged as unsourced for three years now. Given that he was apparently a Telugu writer, there is quite a high chance that someone may PROD or AFD this thing unless some sources are found (systemic bias etc). No-one has even edited the article for a year & at 3-40 views a month I can see the notability being questioned. Can anyone help? It is beyond me, I am afraid. - Sitush (talk) 18:08, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

And his father-in-law, Tripuraneni Ramaswamy, is in an even worse state: unsourced since 2007. - Sitush (talk) 18:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm, found a very sketchy one for PRA. Seems that he is not available on anything meaningful online or in Google Books. Most are cyclic to Wikipedia itself. AshLin (talk) 17:15, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Contacted Arjuna Rao Chawala, President Wikimedia India chapter and editor on Telugu Wikipedia. He has promised to alert Telugu WP first for interwikis and secondly for refs, offline or otherwise. Hopes to be able to respond in a week. Lets hope they are able to help. AshLin (talk) 17:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks very much. I would still be concerned about notability etc if all we can find are Telugu sources, but we have to start somewhere & I live in hope! - Sitush (talk) 17:52, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

the wonders (or not) of Allahabad

The article on Kumbh Mela presents some mighty big numbers. But a first look suggests that they are imagined.

Could some level-headed person, intent on presenting the known facts about Kumbh Mela (rather than impressing readers with how spectacular it is), please take a look?

(I find that a remarkable percentage of articles about this part of the world seem to have been affected by boosterism: a desire to impress with dubious factoids and peacock terms rather than to inform straightforwardly. I hope that my informal sample of the articles has been unrepresentative.) -- Hoary (talk) 03:41, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for stepping in, utcursch. Others are welcome too. -- Hoary (talk) 06:37, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Vote for INCOTM of the Month

Seeing that there are no objections to my proposal for having a Good article/Featured article improvement as one of the two WP:INCOTM subjects (in fact hardly any responses :( here plus two on Wikimedia-in-en, [3], [4]), I have divided the nominations in two sections for voting/selection. Please add your names below. Forty eight hour window for voting. Nominations close midnight IST on 04 Jan 2012. I'll add my choices later. AshLin (talk) 18:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

COTM

GA/FA improvement of the Month

Comments

Participation

Nicke.me (talk) 09:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

  • Experienced editors are most welcome to join in with a request that they help me mentor these young editors.

AshLin (talk) 16:04, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, we have enough volunteers to begin with. User:Nick.me has also offered to join. He is a newbie and I cautioned him about the work involved. Let us hope that he joins in also. Generic directions will be on wikimedia-in-en mailing list. Specific GA points / comments will be on the article talk page first & GAN when its ready to put up. AshLin (talk) 17:35, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
First post will be put up tomorrow, but generic intro done and posted today on wm-in-en with a simple one article reading assignment for tomorrow. Let the Games begin! (Trumpets sound all around Colloseum)AshLin (talk) 18:02, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Confirmation that something is an official website

Can someone with knowledge of what (I think) is Hindi please check this website and provide an opinion regarding whether or not it is the "official website" for Manoj Tiwari. There are some basic bio details in English there & I can use them if we have a nice feeling about it. - Sitush (talk) 02:15, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing on the website that explicity says "this is the official website of Manoj Tiwari", but it does seem to be official. The website is registered to Manoj Tiwari, and some of the content on the "About Us" page is in first person. utcursch | talk 06:26, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
That will do for me. Thanks for checking it out. - Sitush (talk) 09:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Former countries

This is a weird one, sorry. If anyone is prepared to take a look at my comment here regarding the Lohara dynasty and is also prepared for the onslaught of links that follow if you look at the documentation for Template:Infobox former country then I would be grateful for input. - Sitush (talk) 01:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Undid the edit. The article is about a dynasty not a country. As such the term country is a relatively modern usage and the modern definition of nation state should apply to former countries used for this infobox. AshLin (talk) 17:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC).
That was what I thought, but I am embroiled in enough minor skirmishes at present without going solo on another. Thanks very much for looking into it & doing the necessary. - Sitush (talk) 17:04, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Importance rating required for The Doon School

Hi. Could someone from your assessment team please drop by and apply your rating for your project work on importance scale at Talk:The Doon School. At WP:WPSCH we currently have this article, a recently failed GA, rated as Top Importance, but of course not all projects are obliged to accord the same importance level within the scope of their work. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:50, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done: Marked it under Low importance as the article was of little importance to this project. -- Karthik Nadar 07:09, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I have a different view with regard to this issue than the view expressed in good faith by User:Karthikndr. As per present policy, schools may be rated "mid" to "low" in importance. The Wikiproject Schools article however allows Top level importance to the top most school(s) of a country. So, since the Doon School is a very prominent contender in that category, I propose that Doon School retain the top rating in WikiProject Schools. In keeping with this assessment, the WikiProject India importance grading may be upgraded to "mid" for all Indian School articles having Top Importance rating in WikiProject Schools, including Doon School. All other schools may continue to have "low" importance rating as of now. I am amending the rating vide this existing policy. However, if User:Karthikndr disagrees in good faith, he is free to revert me and to request a change in existing policy through consensus. AshLin (talk) 07:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Ok, I'm sorry. I too agree with mid importance. Thanks for pinching out my mistake :) Regards. -- Karthik Nadar 07:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Thank you very much everyone. Your continued support of our work on Indian schools at WP:WPSCH is very much appreciated :) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:34, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Notable?

Are these people notable enough for Wiki Articles?

AshLin (talk) 15:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually there are many more here Category:Indian_people_stubs. How does this project keep itself clean? Do we have scheduled cleanup activities? I many times see no Importance scales on many articles, or wrong classes, fairly lengthy articles have stub-class. I bothered to change them to Start class many times. Should i do it or is it just a worthless thing? -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 15:05, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Of course, it is a worthwhile activity, except that one's work rarely gets noticed and hardly anyone bothers to help. Folks, please do a few friendly edits for Animesh. Haven't heard of "friendly edits"? Please see here. AshLin (talk) 15:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Can we develop a WikiProject page for immature BLPs akin to moving them to user space? AshLin (talk) 16:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
We would have to be extremely careful. Basically, anything that is unreferenced should probably be removed even if the article is userfied/"projectified" - BLP violations apply outside mainspace etc. I think it would be easier to recreate should info ever turn up and someone has the inclination to do so. - Sitush (talk) 16:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Really?!? Even if we delete the redirects? Clear all history? Use sandbox? Really? Cant we do this? Cant i prepare a BLP article and take a few days preparing it? Other articles which need to be deleted from mainspace for some policies can be moved to userspace. Whats wrong with BLPs? -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 21:52, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
As mentioned to you recently, WP:LIBEL. If it isn't sourced then we should not say it on the WP servers, regardless of the namespace. That is a very strict interpretation but our policy for BLPs is very strict. I do not understand why you seem to find this concept so difficult to grasp. - Sitush (talk) 22:03, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

RfC: NFC images of currencies

I have opened a RfC on the use of non-free currency images for Talk:Indian_rupee. We will definitely appreciate comments to resolve this issue. Sumanch (talk) 21:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Thakur Deshraj

Bhim Singh Dahiya and Ram Swarup Joon were both deemed to be unreliable sources recently. Another writer of the genre is Thakur Deshraj - frequently cited, sometimes in two or more articles that contradict each other by sourcing to him. Is he reliable as a source? His Jat Itihas is not available in English as far as I can make out. - Sitush (talk) 19:38, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

If the content to be sourced is something like "X was the chief of this Jat village in 1950" or "the 19th century politician ABC belonged to this Jat clan", he is very reliable. However, if it's something about the ancient history, he's extremely unreliable. His books are full of wildly wrong theories (e.g. Assyria gets its name from Asiagh gotra of Jats), formed on the basis of sound-alike words (such as Assyrian ~ Asiagh) and pseudohistorical cruft. utcursch | talk 05:22, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Moni Bhattacharjee at AfD

Moni Bhattacharjee is currently being discussed at AfD. This is an odd one: the article appears to suggest that he was significant but the only sources that I can find are a little "six of one, half a dozen of the other". The Hindu rates one film - which was nominated at Cannes - as a "classic" but a periodical closer to the event described his direction as "confused". Can this one be expanded, with the usual provisos of reliable sources etc? What did he do next, for example, and why was a film selected for Cannes despite apparent directorial deficiencies? (The subtext appears to be that the story carried the film, but this is not an area regarding which I know much at all). - Sitush (talk) 00:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Dr.Krant M.L.Verma

Some of the sources in this newly-created bio are in Hindi, making it difficult for me to evaluate them, so some help from someone from this project would be welcome. Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 10:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

He (User:Krantmlverma) is also a Wikipedian though the article has not been created by him. I met him at WikiConference. AshLin (talk) 10:10, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

The Telegraph (Kolkata)

Ok, our article on the city I knew as Calcutta is called Kolkata. I'm not sure it's the common name in English sources now, but if that's what was agreed, fine. But this newspaper doesn't say it's in Kolkata, it clearly uses the spelling Calcutta, and the article talks about a Calcutta edition. If the newspaper thinks it should spell the name Calcutta, should we really contradict it? Dougweller (talk) 16:49, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

No. That would be like renaming Burmese Days to Myanmar Days. - Sitush (talk) 17:12, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

List of hospitals in India

Is it okay to have such lists? -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 09:35, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The category trees shows that it is okay. But it should be city wise/statewise in India rather than a pan-India list. AshLin (talk) 13:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Okay! Yes! You are right. But as of now it is not that big to have seperate pages. Will have to break them once they grow. But people keep adding clinics also in it. Do we have a certain definition of this list? Tough to define & also verify. Well... will take this up in WikiProject Medicine. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 14:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Feel free to suggest a yardstick for Notability. AshLin (talk) 15:24, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, at the very least no article = no mention in the list. I would imagine that hospitals are another of those weird areas where notability is presumed to be inherent but I still see no reason to have redlinks or non-linked items in a list such a this, and enforcing such a basic criterion assists in maintaining the list. Personally, I wouldn't even have the list but I know that I am not going to win that one! - Sitush (talk) 16:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, I'd like to differ. I guess its OK to have inherent notability for hospitals, on the lines of Universities. But I'm not too strong about it, because sources are hard to find for hospitals, and hence Verifiability would be at a loss. Lynch7 16:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Who are you differing with here? I am confused! By insisting on bluelinks in the list we would be effectively insisting that there is verifiable notability - that seems to be A Good Thing. Is that unreasonable, bearing in mind WP's overall standards? - Sitush (talk) 16:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#List_of_hospitals_in_India -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 16:42, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry but I flat out disagree with your comment in that linked thread. If it is not notable then it is not notable, period. - Sitush (talk) 16:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
But we cant have stub onliners for all hospitals. Those will be useless. Plus someone (mostly you) will go on putting WP:PROD tags on them all. And as per the definition of the article, these are hospitals and hence should be included. Whether they treat 10 people a day or operate on PM and thus get media coverage, is not relevant. They being hospitals, they should be listed. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 01:15, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Woah, AK. I very rarely PROD anything. A stub that is sourced has a chance of survival and I won;t be going round hunting stuff like that - to me it is a crappy type of subject unless the hospital has a really decent status nationally/internationally etc, but I accept that if articles meet the policies etc then what I think is irrelevant. Surely some sort of viable stub is better than nothing at all. If we ignore for a brief moment the Wikipedia definition of notablity, the word has it root in something that is "of note", and something that is "of note" is "noted". If it is not notable then it will not be noted. We cannot ride roughshod over the community consensus regarding notability etc. We are not a directory. - Sitush (talk) 02:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
I was differing a bit from your view there Sitush :) . Never mind, I don't think WP has any standard notability criterion for Hospitals, so WP:GNG should be our guide here for article creation, and going by GNG, a vast majority of Hospitals will not find a mention, simply because they don't get coverage. I was suggesting an inherent notability system for Hospitals (something like, if it exists, and its existence is verifiable, then it should find a mention in the list). I don't feel very strongly about this, and am open to discussion. AK, I like your spirit, but I would make a mild suggestion: go to Wikipedia 101 once more ;) ; we're not a directory, and your criterion, which includes no clause of verifiability, is dangerous. Lynch7 07:33, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree with "if it exists and its existence is verifiable then it should be enlisted". Now the existence can be verified by maybe a government mainted site which enlists all hospitals or National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers's list or something of this sort. (Btw, can we use Google maps or wikimapia for proving existences?) But mention of hospitals in these lists wont be sufficient for having a seperate article of their own but surely sufficient enough for enlisting them. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 12:28, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
You are allowed to differ. I've just counted and there are at least seven hospitals with 10 miles (16 km) of my house here in England - although at my other place in Wales there is just the one. Those eight represent the ones that I have had to attend myself (there are others around the country - in Edinburgh, Cambridge, Exeter etc - that I have also attended (I have rarely been in good health in recent years & am accident prone!) All of those hospitals feature in news sources many times each year, although not always for good reasons! All of them have articles here, although one is an unreferenced stub despite there being adequate sources available if someone could be bothered. There is also a List of hospitals in England, which is poor and would not meet my ruleset vis-a-vis unsourced redlinks etc - shocking. I could live with sourced redlinks, although I really do not see what the problem is here, although it looks like the way things are reported etc in India differs. Oh, and before someone mentions the NHS, there are also private hospitals in my area that have articles etc. - Sitush (talk) 14:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
BTW, Wikimapia is not a reliable source. - Sitush (talk) 14:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Easy thing when you have so few hospitals. Try this.... http://yellowpages.sulekha.com/search/mumbai/hospitals.htm?t=c&pgvar=cp And these are just hospitals, means bigger capacity ones. Small clinics are not included here, which by definition of hospital should have been included and thus should also go on our list. Hence, we can either redefine the list or give references to enteries from various lists or google maps as mentioned above. For redefining, we cant keep a cutoff on No-of-patients-treated-per-year. That info wont be available. We cant even include on No-of-beds basis. Aurvedic hospitals, mostly, wont have any. Excluding private hospitals is not fair either. I have no clue how this list should be kept in control. It is gonna be a directory. Might as well include telephone numbers!!! -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 23:23, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
No. I refer you again to the point that Wikipedia is not a directory. I also have some doubts about your appreciation of the world view. As much as I realise that anyone can do anything with statistics, I have a gut feeling that the number of "proper" (ignoring what you call "small clinics"/ayurvedic etc) hospitals per head of population is probably greater in the UK than it is in India. I have no opinion regarding whether that situation is justifiable or not, but your notions of "number of beds" etc are completely irrelevant to Wikipedia's consensus regarding notability. Systemic bias is one of the major challenges facing English Wikipedia and the situation will probably change over time, but we either have to work within the current ruleset or propose amendments to it. And it we want to propose amendments then that needs to be taken to a "higher" forum than this.
Furthermore, your link above to yellowpages.sulekha.com is without doubt pointless. Aside from that being in itself a directory, it is a "paid for" directory and what we call a "passing mention". Like it or not, the requirements here on en-WP necessitate that we have multiple, independent sources and that they should have some degree of depth. If it were otherwise then, for example, my own name would appear on a list somewhere here. In fact, my name has featured in sufficient news sources etc that, in theory, I probably am indeed notable in the Wikipedia context. Of course, I would contest that, big time - I am nothing, seriously. My real life name is not generally recognised even within the towns/cities that I have lived, and so on. We have to apply a test of what might be called "reasonableness" to this sort of thing, although I suspect that most of us do this subliminally because the issue crosses so many areas, including WP:DUE.
Hey, as much as we seem recently to be disagreeing about how the en-WP project works, I do feel that the debate over various subjects is helping me to think about things that perhaps previously I sometimes just accepted. That is a good thing, and (without intending to patronise) I thank you for posing these questions. I am not always right. In fact, my mother would probably say that I rarely am! And en-WP policies are not always right, either: it is a state of flux, much as real life is. - Sitush (talk) 01:46, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

As the primary maintainer of that list (i.e., the person who keeps out the links to hospital websites, redlinks, random formatting bugs, phone numbers, etc.), I have to say that it would have been nice if the OP or any of the respondents had mentioned on that article's talk page that a discussion was being held about it here. Regarding the actual issue, yes, the list should exist--the concept of "hospitals in India" I'm sure has been discussed in reliable sources (i.e., there must be research articles, newspapers, etc., that discuss the relative quality of hospitals across India), and this is the notability standard for "Lists of X". As to whether or not it should be limited to blue links, the discussion needs to be held on that page. WP:LSC, a part of WP:MOS, contains the instructions, which explicitly allows both lists that require notability for every entry, as well as lists that don't require notability of any entry, and, of course, any point in between. While I generally prefer notability-required lists, in this case, I'm very strongly opposed, because "List of hospital" articles for other countries do not seem to have this requirement, and I am very uncomfortable with the idea that we would set stricter rules for India than we have for countries where notability should be even easier to prove. I would, though, welcome a discussion on the article's talk page that would help us differentiate between "hospital", "clinic", etc. We would need to find out if there is such a distinction in India (in the U.S., generally, a hospital must have overnight stay facilities). If anyone cares, I would also object to requiring verification of each item on the list, because that will result in people adding the hospital websites as verification, and that seems just like linkspam to me. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:01, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, this thread should have been noted on the article talk page. That is my fault - I should have checked, even though I did not instigate the thread: tbhis is exactly the type of thing that, by now, I should be sorting out. I can understand the issues regarding linkspam etc and, yes, that would be a nightmare. Which is in part why I was suggesting that the hospitals should have their own articles, although I also note that it seems that my very limited UK experience of sourcing etc must differ from what happens in India.
I think it was AshLin who suggested above that the list might need to be refined in terms of sectioning/categorisation/whatever, if only because it would otherwise become lengthy and difficult to manage. I cannot recall seeing WP:LSC before, and will look at that - I presume that it has some impact on WP:V etc, although I note that amongst your maintenance work is that of keeping out redlinks (which is pretty much where I was coming from in the first instace). This is messy and I am not happy with the WP:OSE argument regarding other lists of hospitals. If that is an issue then it probably needs to be discussed as an RfC or something similar because there are two viewpoints: one being that India is "singled out" and the other being that other lists are inappropriate. - Sitush (talk) 02:32, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

AfD

Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/K. P. Yohannan. Thanks. BigJim707 (talk) 01:30, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Re:Kolkata

Last chance to save Kolkata from demoting from its FA status. Please help. Experienced editors are needed for copyedit, citation corrections, etc. Amartyabag TALK2ME 05:35, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Began some ref cleanup. Can someone help? I cant tackle Gandhi & Kolkata's ref cleanups at the same time. AshLin (talk) 10:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
Kindly vote for selection of images for the Culture section here. As it is a long section, it can accommodate atleast three pictures i guess. Amartyabag TALK2ME 06:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Kick (2012 film) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Kick (2012 film) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kick (2012 film) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. --George Ho (talk) 08:42, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

AfD Bimol Mukerji

Members here may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bimol Mukerji. He is claimed to be the first Indian to cycle around the world, though very few sources support this. Someone here may know of reliable sources in Bengali to support the article about him, or his book Du Chakay Duniya. Sionk (talk) 15:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

List of books that plagiarize Wikipedia

There are a number of Indian books which are based on content plagiarized from Wikipedia, and several of these are now being cited as references in the Wikipedia articles. This problem of circular references has been discussed several times in the past (e.g. 1, 2, 3), but several people keep re-adding these books as references. I've created a page which keeps track of such books: User:Utcursch/plagiarism from Wikipedia. utcursch | talk 09:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

There is a simpler way to deal with ISHA, Gyan and Kalpaz Publications - don't use anything published by them. Even some of their reprints of old British Raj stuff are mangled, and even when they do not plagiarise Wikipedia they are usually plagiarising someone (including their own authors). As such, they are by definition not reliable publishers & thus it makes no difference whether a particular author is reliable. I am one of several people who just delete them on sight, and I have the support of - for example - User:Moonriddengirl in doing so. - Sitush (talk) 09:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
WP:PUS exists and has Icon, ISHA, Gyan on them. A link to Utcusrch's page (or just subpaging it) from there might be a good option to keep this consolidated. —SpacemanSpiff 09:49, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for that link -- will add my subpage to it. utcursch | talk 10:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
That's a useful page you created: thanks for going to that trouble. It's a very irritating problem. Johnuniq (talk) 10:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

TedderBot on WP:INMUSIC

The New Articles search bot Tedderbot's archive updates seem to be missing from around 5th July to current date. Anyone knows about this bot / can help with further information and/or flags for this bot, especially with WP:INMUSIC? VasuVR (talk, contribs) 15:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Arindam Chaudhuri

Third party opinion needed on talk page. We are discussing the use of the phrase "management guru" in the lead section. Please participate. Telco (talk) 05:18, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

AfDs

Strolling through AfD page found few India related articles. Your votes can help here.

Isnt there any automated system which will do this job of keeping updates? -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 16:58, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:DSI - Sitush (talk) 17:04, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
You can also watch Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Article alerts, though it has more things than just deletes under it. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 12:57, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Have taken up the cleanup of Bollywood songs with a request that the article be spared from deletion and other editors kindly join me in adding referenced context to build it up. AshLin (talk) 16:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Please read WP:CANVASS. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:09, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Ah thanks, didn't quite realise it applied to situations where the interest was more altruistic and not involving editwars, POVs etc. Thanks once again. The editors may kindly disregard my above message while deciding. AshLin (talk) 17:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

"Salem district" or "Salem District"

Now, the "district" all Indian district names are given in smaller letters. This shouldnt be the case, individual districts are proper nouns and as in the case of Fucheng District and New York State should be capitals.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 06:03, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav

This is a recently created article by a new editor. Unfortunately, there is already a lengthy article on the subject at Ganesh Chaturthi. I've left some suggestions re a merge at Talk:Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav. This is not my area at all, so I'll leave it to project members to sort out. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 11:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

One of the problems that led to this is that the title "Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav" had been red-linked at both Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social sciences and Bal Gangadhar Tilak which led the new editor to assume, not unreasonably, that no article on the subject existed. Voceditenore (talk) 11:39, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
There is difference between Ganesh Chaturthi and Sarvjanik Ganoshotsav.Sarvjanik Ganoshotsav "was started" by Tilak, whereas Ganesh Chaturthi is something which was/is already there from centuries. "Sarvjanik" Ganoshotsav was started in last century. Thanks for attention. AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 16:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but there exists a good section in Ganesh Chaturthi on Tilak's contribution to the way the festival is celebrated. The Ganesh Chaturthi article is quite small (for a festival of such importance and magnitude, and considering that there is likely to be no dearth of sources), and splitting the article further will not really be of much use, when the same content can be included coherently in the main article itself. Lynch7 16:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Replied at Talk:Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav. Lynch7 17:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Celebrity Cricket League

People here may have a view on the Celebrity Cricket League. I moved the article from Articles for Creation today, because the League is in its second season and attracting significant media coverage. However, a member of the Wikipedia Cricket project seem to view the tournament as a non-notable celebrity 'jolly' and wants to delete it. The deletion can be challenged, if desired, on the article's Talk page. Sionk (talk) 19:36, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Barkha_Dutt & CIOL as reference

Can someone comment at Talk:Barkha_Dutt on using CIOL as WP:RS. I have seen it being used as one in many places(or those places are wrongly referenced?). Also the Controversy section has been totally cleaned up leaving only Radia tapes controversy.Can someone also help to weigh in, neutralize the article taking care of WP:BLP concerns? Thanks Srikanth (Logic) 21:19, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Hindu Voice

I've got the feeling that Hindu Voice is not a reliable source. Can anyone confirm/deny, please? - Sitush (talk) 10:42, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you talking about this site? It's not. Too fringe. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 11:15, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Locating it was a part of my problem - I had a quote but no link. I've now found out that it is this. I am having all sorts of difficulties with an article right now precisely because the subject matter is fringe-y ... and I am seriously wondering whether it there is any real notability other than from the subject's acolytes. The counter-argument would be the old "news blackout" routine, as you & I have seen elsewhere in the last few hours. - Sitush (talk) 11:19, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
My apologies, I meant [this. - Sitush (talk) 11:27, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
(ec) That is a blog, a self-published source and hence cannot be treated as a reliable source. With regard to "news blackout" arguments, it's not our job to validate the truth, but to represent mainstream news and academic sources accurately and within context. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and encyclopedias are conservative. They are written dispassionately without favour or prejudice towards the subject. Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view does not say that if you don't have proper sourcing for articles, you can use blogs and cruft to back up assertions. NPOV does not refer to content neutrality, but neutral representation of authoritative and reliable sources. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 11:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Re: blog, yep, thanks. That's how I thought it would be from the quotation that I had to deal with, before I found the link. Re: remainder - that is why I have serious doubts about Ishwar Sharan, which is taking me ages to clean up of POV/misrepresentation etc and ultimately is looking likely to be a candidate for AfD due to the only real notability being derived from a few other fringe types in a mutual support exercise. - Sitush (talk) 11:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Ishwar Saran may be borderline notable (I've seen a bit of coverage on him, but I haven't really done a check on notability), but his opinions are definitely not! It doesn't rise to the level of the P. N. Oak fringe which is "well-covered and debunked" fringe. —SpacemanSpiff 15:54, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

R-Day Editing

Greetings to all Editors,

Wikipedia Club Pune is hosting Editing Workshop on 26th January 2012 (Republic Day of India). We want to invite all of you to be part of it.More details can be found on Republic Day Editing Workshop Page.

Please help us to make list of non-developed articles on English as well as Indic Language Wikipedia, Please all names of such articles on Page itself,under "Topics".

Thank you. Keep Editing, Keep Inspiring! AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 12:57, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

File:Bolywood.jpg

This is a heavily overused file on many of our articles. However, on looking deeper at the flickr page, I found that this image is of a local performance in Bristol, some local artistes, some invited and so on. So, quite obviously, it is not representative of Bollywood or of Indian culture and so on. I've removed the image from a few articles (Bollywood, Dance in India, Cinema of India, Culture of India, Maharashtra) and have also asked for the file to be renamed on Commons so that this confusion doesn't come up again. Anyways, as this is a heavily used file, repeatedly added, I figured I'd let people know and also maybe help reducing usage where we can find more truly representative images! cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 18:47, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

It is a Bollywood-inspired show in Bristol, which is not really a "true" representative of Bollywood. I have completed the image rename you requested. --Redtigerxyz Talk 19:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
THank you, let's hope it stays off of representing Indian cinema/culture except in the context of non-local adaptations etc. —SpacemanSpiff 19:12, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Happy Republic Day

Happy Republic Day to all editors of WikiProject India. Its a national holiday in India and eminently suitable for a few friendly edits on topics about India. AshLin (talk) 03:16, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

FAR of Mysore

I have nominated Mysore 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.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 02:24, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I would request editors who wish to place existing FAs under FAR to please line up experienced and willing Wikipedians beforehand, prior to placing an article on FAR, unless you feel it needs to be demoted outright. In case, the aim is improvement through FAR, lack of editor support may render the article to fail the review. We have just lost the battle of Ahalya (which was a FAC). Kolkata is struggling. Gandhi is hardly anywhere near ready for plain GA. The amount of effort needed to retain/achieve quality status in today's world is just not funny. AshLin (talk) 15:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

State of COTM/GAOTM - Jan 2012

Hello friends,

It is time for a review of the Collaboration of the Month for January 2012. Lets have a look at what we achieved in these COTMs. As usual, I'm delivering the verdict before the month ends. :).

Last month we had decided to take up just one COTM considering that fewer members were taking interest in it and choose an article for Good Article improvement. The one's selected were :

During the period under question, Premchand had 133 edits from 17 contributors. This was very good from the point of view of COTM even though it was about half of the previous COTM - Mullaperiyar Dam. The COTM was a success in this case as the article on Premchand improved substantially:

  • Improved infobox
  • Improved lead.
  • Size - increased from 974 words to 3361 words - a 3.5 times increase.
  • There was very large restructuring of Biography alongwith expansion. Biography went from zero subsections to seven.
  • A new section on "Styles and influences" has been added.
  • Referencing greatly improved from 7 to 47.
  • Images went from nil to two.
  • List of works, now in tabular form but still quite trashy.
  • External link cleanup done and went from five to two.
  • Five books were listed in the References (=Bibliography) & Further reading section. Previously none.

Is Premchand ready for GA? No, the article is still having huge gaps in content and the list of works is far too clunky to even think of it. It needs even more development despite the increase in size. However, the article reads much better now, is referenced a whole lot better and is now satisfactory which it was not earlier. So, imho a successful INCOTM.

The top four editors of Premchand during January 2012 to the time of writing this email were:

  • utcursch - 51 edits
  • Hisham - 43 edits
  • Nitika.t - 19 edits
  • Redtigerxyz - 11 edits

To encourage contribution, they have been awarded a Barnstar for taking time and effort to participate. This is the first barnstar both Hisham and Nitika.t are getting for their contribution as editors and separate from their official role. I trust they will value these more than the others they have received till date.

MANY THANKS TO ALL WHO CONTRIBUTED IN PREMCHAND COTM (Yes, I'm shouting!)

The GA of the month was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi saw lots of activity - 316 revisions by 27 users, boy, that exceeded Premchand. But it takes a humungous effort to set articles right for GA nowadays. There was a lot of editing and deletion as we had User:Rjensen, a history prof in the states doing lots of work, judging material with the fine eye of an expert. His user page blurb is revealing.

We are honoured to have User:Rjensen amongst us. His improvement of Gandhi brings to the article the hallmark of the professional historian.

The top editors were:

  • AshLin - 119 edits
  • Rjensen - 64.
  • Karthikndr - 56.
  • AroundTheGlobe - 30
  • Debastein - 13

The reason why is that yours truly has started the Master Class and the class is still stuck on Reference cleanup. About 110 refs have been cleaned up by me. The article has now got 146. But there has been many references removed, some fused, and almost all improved in some way or the other. Yet about 60 odd refs still remain. A number of posts on Master Class dealt with this aspect.

Of the three Master Class students, one was preoccupied with studies/SSB interview and outreach and genuinely had problems to edit, one did not bother to edit after opting in and the third, Debanjan was hampered by his College server not downloading Wikipedia to see much less to edit. But Debanjan came back with a vengeance and in barely couple of days clocked up 13 decent edits here alone.

Kudos to AroundTheGlobe and Karthikndr for their sterling work in GA.

Since we are nowhere near completion, Gandhi defaults to February. We continue to edit it till it is GA or bust. Barnstars for GA will be awarded only after Gandhi becomes GA again.

In the next post, I shall be discussing the proposal for next month's COTM.

AshLin (talk) 15:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Native languages in lead

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
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. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 09:38, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Clarified here though this discussion. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 14:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Those who've been seeing my contribs and talks would be familiar with my rant. Its about these native language transliterations. User:Hari7478 has been repeatedly adding transliterations to articles, citing that it is the subject's mother tongue. It is sometimes as unreasonable as adding Marathi scripts to Aishwarya Rajinikanth, just because her father was born in Maharashtra, and adding Tamil script to Ramesh Aravind. Some other articles where this has been happening by the same user is Rahul Dravid, Soundarya Rajinikanth and Ravi Shankar (spiritual leader). The user seems to be operating on some nonexistent policy that the transliterations should be only of the subject's mother tongue. There is no Wikipedia policy that states so. I have reverted all his controversial edits pending consensus here.

It is difficult to come up with a generalized policy to handle these kinds of issues. I'd like Wikipedians' comments on this. Lynch7 12:11, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Just to bring to your notice; there are also discussions going on elsewhere about adding Urdu title for film names. eg here at Talk:Zindagi_Na_Milegi_Dobara#Urdu. A decision taken there and implemented on film articles can be misunderstood as taken for all India related articles & be brought to practise. Hence suggestion to conclude on both topics together. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 12:25, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Purely on the basis that this is English Wikipedia and that even most Indian contributors whom I have come across are not proficient across the whole spectrum of subcontinental scripts/languages, is it feasible to adopt English (Latin character set) transliterations as the norm from now on? Or will we then just end up with a whole new set of arguments regarding which is the correct transliteration? Among other benefits, this might enable some of us truly monolingual types to spot vandalism/abuse that sometimes appears using Indian character sets. - Sitush (talk) 13:06, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree with you Sitush, and this is what I initially aimed for, when I started actually doing something about it. I did receive some comments at Village pump (idea lab), but I just didn't have the energy to take it up further. Lynch7 13:19, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Some of my edits regarding "transliteration of names" have been frequently removed by new users/Ips without a proper explanation. I want them to be reinstated. Recently an admin' MikeLynch (talk · contribs) had reverted my edits, although they were well sourced. Upon his notification i'm bringing the issue here. I'm hereby mentioning the corresponding pages and the problems invovled.

  • Jairam Ramesh - In this page, i had provided reliable sources which speak of his "Tamil brahmin" origin. See this:[5]. Some new users/Ips used to revert my edits and keep the kannada transliteration alone. But they don't provide any source about his Kannada ancestry, except for the fact that he was born in Karnataka. I suppose transliterations can only be added in the corresponding person's mother tongue. And, when i've provided sources about him being a "tamil speaking brahmin" , why is my contrib' being deleted? Please resolve this. I strongly believe that a tamil transliteration is a must, and that it should come first, for which i've provided sources.

  • Sri Sri Ravi Shankar - See this:[6]. He happens to be a "tamil iyer brahmin" who was born in papanasam, tamil nadu. But users are frequently adding a kannada transliteration of his name, just because he currently resides in Bangalore. I suppose only the transliteration of one's mother tongue is added.

Please resolve them. Thank You. Hari7478 (talk) 13:36, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. You might want to reply on the broader issue in the above section. Lynch7 13:39, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops. Will post my replies in the above section. Hari7478 (talk) 13:46, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


Native language transliteration should be not be as an "identity tool". It should be used only to show how the non-English name appears in the original language and for a pronunciation/search guide. The transliteration should be pertinent for the reader to gain more information not to identify him as belonging to X group.--Sodabottle (talk) 14:01, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
That being the case, i say we remove all the transliterations in the disputed pages, temporarily, until a solution is reached. I've been providing sources for all those contribs of mine.
However, almost all the articles concerning "a person of indian origin" has a corresponding transliteration in an indian language, believed to be his/her native tongue. I don't think it would be practically possible to adopt "Sitush's newly proposed idea", as you couldn't stop new users/Ips who are unaware of it from doing the same mistake.
I suppose the current policy on transliterations is widely being followed across all global wiki' articles. See below:
Karolos Papoulias - President of Greece. Xabi Alonso - Footballer. Although he hails from Spain, he belongs to the indigenous Basque community. Henceforth the article does not have a spanish transliteration, but rather has a "Basque pronunciation" IPA.
That being the case in wikipedia, why don't we follow the same principle in the "India related articles" too? Thank You. Hari7478 (talk) 14:07, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Har7478, can you justify why so many India-related articles have multiple native language script entries? You can, by the way, forget the issues relating to newbies - they are largely irrelevant and no worse than the usual issues of sourcing, pov etc. Equally, the fact that other stuff exists (including extant Indian articles) dpes not prevent us moving forward. Finally, mine was a question rather than a "newly proposed idea". I am sure that it has been raised before. You may want to consider indenting your posts properly - usually, one colon more than the previous post in the thread ... and there is no need to use HTML br markup. I've reformatted your post above accordingly. - Sitush (talk) 14:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)There is no policy on transliterations. I cannot state that loudly enough. Show us one policy which says something about the compulsion of having to include a transliteration, and some clause which says that it has to be the mother tongue. Lynch7 14:18, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, ML. Just guidelines, such as Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). I'll take a look at Village Pump but it might be easier first to get the issue settled here. - Sitush (talk) 14:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Proposal:
People: Mother tongue + Language of their work. Eg: Rajnikant’s mother tongue would be Marathi but as he has works more in other South-Indian languages, those should be added. (I am unsure for this particular example of which would be the “other languages”. He has films in Kannada, Tamil, Telegu.)
Places: State language. In case of disputed territories, both languages can be added.
Films: The language of the film as well as the languages used in the credits of the film. Many olden films (few new) would have Urdu titles even if the film is Hindi.
Another question: While using a non-English language, should the content be the phonetic translation or the meaning’s translation? As this is applicable for titles (films, books, etc.), i suppose that only phonetic translation should be used. However, many places also have different names in different languages. E.g Sion, Mumbai is called Shiv in Marathi. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 14:50, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
@ Mike Lynch - True indeed. There is no such policy. I understand that when there is no policy in that regard, one cannot revert another user's edit on any grounds. The only solution would be to remove all transliterations as of now, until we reach consensus. But, do you intend to differ from the usual format that is widely being followed across most wiki' articles (global), just because there is no exclusive policy regarding transliterations? My proposition is this:"Why don't we follow the same format as in the Xabi Alonso & Karolos Papoulias articles ?" @ Sitush - I suppose you were talking about articles like Makar Sankranti and i agree with you. But right now, let us settle the issue on "naming conventions in wiki' articles about individuals". Hari7478 (talk) 14:52, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

There is no prevailing convention, like the one you speak about, and hence there is nothing to be followed. Obama mentions no native language like Hawaiian (or whatever), or any African language (his father was African), and it is a FA. Rajnikanth mentions Tamil and Marathi, and is a GA. There is clearly no set convention being followed. Lynch7 14:56, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
@Animesh, thanks for taking the initiative and proposing something. I tend to agree with your proposals (though honestly I'd want the scripts to be removed altogether), but there are some kinks. We usually do not know what the mother tongue of a person is, in most cases, and this will start unnecessary debates again. Language of their work is a must, or else it won't make sense. I strongly agree with that. Lynch7 15:02, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Rajinikanth's birthname is "Shivaji Rao Gaekwad". He got his new name, only after his foray into tamil film industry, which was given to him by a tamil film director. So the name Rajinikanth has a tamil transliteration while "Shivaji Rao Gaekwad" is written in marathi. That was the consensus in that page, although i wouldn't agree with it. But Obama's case is different. He is American. Except the american indians(natives), all others in the US don't have an american ancestry. For example: "Sylvester Stallone" is an American of Italian & Irish ancestries. But there is no "Italian/Irish transliterations" in that page. That's a different case (US related articles). But that isn't the case with "Europe & Asia related ones". See:Hakan Yakin - Although a swiss footballer, i don't see any swiss german transliteration, but only a turkish one as he is of turkish ancestry. I really wonder if he knows turkish as good as swiss german. Regardless of any of it, that is the format in all "Asia/Europe related articles". See Wael Zwaiter. Only the Americas is different. Hari7478 (talk) 15:15, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

:) Again, there is no such fixed convention. There is no world's difference between US/Europe/Asian articles as such. There exists loosely formed Wikiprojects, but other than that, there is no division as such. Those conventions are what we're here to discuss and/or propose (for Indian articles) anyway. Lynch7 15:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Hey Hari Potter, be careful with your wand. Dont rub off other's comments. (Kiddingly calling you Hari Potter. Dont Avada Kedavra me. MikeLynch actually said something good about me in that comment of his.) Removing scripts would be a very easy, though tedious, task. But its like going one step down & i dont wanna do that. It is infact good to have these scripts just for the purpose of knowing how they look. Frankly i (or anyone who doesnt know the language) wont understand a thing nor know if its right or not & nor even know if its actually Tamil or Telegu. But just for the feel, its good to have. Actually, a phonetics of Indian-words should be more beneficial that original scripts. eg. Chutney should have chútnee. - Animeshkulkarni (talk) 15:38, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Bingo Animesh, you've understood my point :P . Yes, removing all scripts till this discussion is over would be futile. I'm waiting for other users' comments on this issue; lets see how it goes. Lynch7 15:42, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Mother tongue won't work because of verifiability issues, and I remain unsure about the rest of your proposal. I just feel that using these scripts is asking for trouble, especially on caste-related and politics articles. There is no urgency about this though, so I'll have a think and watch what others say. - Sitush (talk) 15:44, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think "language(s) of their work" will be effective. What if the actor has roughly done equal number of films in more than one language. Other than mother tongue, I see no valid criteria. Again, mother tongue may not work in cases where the subject's parents are of mixed background (Rekha being a classical example). So I too may have to wait for others comments —Commander (Ping me) 16:22, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Then Rajinikanth in Tamil and Deepika Padukone in Hindi will be meaningless. Don't you think that will be a bad situation, since Rajini is not as famous in Maharashtra as he is in TN, and Deepika is not as famous in Konkan as she is in Bollywood. Lynch7 16:37, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, it is better not to include any transliteration. One this is an English encyclopedia, so why would a regional language transliteration be needed anyway? And two, we can avoid all the edit wars that keep happening because of it. So in short, remove them for good. — Abhishek  Talk 16:51, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

That may create problems with some of the south Indian actresses, where it's diffucult to say in which language they have done more films. Take the case of Madhavan, a Tamilian by birth has done more films in Tamil, but many would say that he is a Hindi film actor as he is more active in Bollywood these days. Again, things might change tomorrow so it's difficult to decide things based on your proposal —Commander (Ping me) 16:54, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Mr. Hari, in that case consider adding Rahul Gandhi's name in Kashmiri, Farsi and Italian along with Hindi. After all he is part Italian, part Farsi, part kashmiri Pandit no? This is becoming absurd! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.92.136.99 (talk) 16:58, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I have been for removing them all, because this is the English language wiki, and most English speakers will not get anything out of them and cannot verify mistakes in them. Pronunciation would be better. Also, they bring about too many debates and arguments. For actors, the names are always given in English only in the film credits that I have seen. Anyway, there can and should be Interwiki links on the left side of the page that show the name in various languages. BollyJeff || talk 17:08, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
By "Languages of their work" i just wanted to point that excluding it & keeping only mother tongue wouldnt make sense most of the time. Eg. would be Rajnikant (classic example for today!), Gulzar (born Punjabi but has more Urdu work). Case to case decisions on people should be taken. Also writing "Rajnikant" in 5 languages apart from English is height! But for other articles a common decision can be made. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 17:09, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment – This is an English Wikipedia and seriously I have never endorsed adding the local dialects and scripts in the lead. I would be fine with removing them altogether. Prose alone will suffice as to which language/nationality/caste etc the person would belong to. — Legolas (talk2me) 17:11, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) :@Vensatry A transliteration has got nothing to do with telling a reader that an actor or actress has done more films in that language? So my opinion is to remove a transliteration all together from all the articles and just have its English title alone. — Abhishek  Talk 17:12, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
It is a little weird to associate one's work to his/her name being written in a script. I agree with user:Sodabottle who said "Native language transliteration should be not be as an identity tool. It should be used only to show how the non-English name appears in the original language and for a pronunciation/search guide.
Proposition 1: Regardless of one's native language, why don't we look into the origin of the name itself. Most of our names are "words of sanskrit origin". Except for a few like Lallan(Awadhi), Ambatirayudu(telugu), kanimoli(tamil), kannadakasturi(half kannada + half sanskrit) most others are sanskrit (Ganesh, Chaitanya, Vivek, Abhishek, etc), whether one is from north, south, northwest, etc. So why don't we simply add a devanagari script? There is no difference across the various states, in the pronunciation of these sanskrit names.
Proposition 2:Also, brahmins across the country (including south) are considered to be of vedic aryan heritage. They use sanskrit for ritualistic purposes, and are the only caste to put sanskrit into use (practically). So i would suggest the addition of "devanagari transliteration" in wiki' pages about "brahmin individuals". But although it is logically right, it would pave way to inconsistencies, vandalism, edit warring. As mentioned by Sitush "using these scripts is asking for trouble, especially on caste-related and politics articles". So why not consider "proposition 1"? Hari7478 (talk) 17:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Even if its English Wikipedia, its an encyclopedia & hence its not harmful to have other language scripts. Ofcourse as BollyJeff said that Interwiki links are available, but not all articles will have it. Eg. Beed district from Maharashtra doesnt have an Indian-language page, including Marathi, but has it in other 10 foreign languages. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 17:22, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Then those Marathi speakers should get on the ball and write an article there, instead of just adding scripts here. BollyJeff || talk 17:33, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Hari7478, your proposal appears ridiculous. Please don't bring caste into this discussion. There are many non-Brahmins who have names derived from Sanskrit. What do you do propose to do in such a case. And there are a number of Sanskrit names which are exclusively used in South India - like Swaminatha, Subrahmanya, etc. You might have come across a Subrahmanya who could not speak a sentence in Sanskrit. It is extremely ridiculous to give a transliteration in a dead language-RaviMy Tea Kadai 17:32, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, language transliterations for people is necessary and should be based on their cultural heritage. For eg, I've added both Marathi and Tamil script for Sir T. Madhava Rao, Marathi because he is a Thanjavur Marathi and Marathi was his mother tongue, Tamil because his ancestors had settled down in Kumbakonam for centuries and Madhava Rao was born and brought up there. As for Deepika Padukone, Konkani would be enough - after all, both Konkani and Hindi are based on the Devanagari script. And as far as Madhavan is concerned, he is not such a big name in Bollywood as he is in the Tamil film industry. So Tamil script would be enough.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 17:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Nope, This gets into the realms of having to determine who self-identifies as what, as happens with Jewish people etc. The K.I.S.S. principle applies, surely? - Sitush (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
My proposal is almost the same as what Animesh had already proposed here.-RaviMy Tea Kadai 17:34, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes. And it is not acceptable to me, for the reasons that I have already outlined. - Sitush (talk) 17:37, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

What if a new user? What's this new user old user theory? May be new to this editing-contributing business, but I've been watching wiki for years. It's time some "old" wikipedians start using their privileges wisely!. Moreover when someone gets to write a bio, and he writes only 2 lines stating he does not like people undoing his edits, just shows sheer arrogance. There many better things to do than just changing transliterations! Let's not make this a battle ground for propaganda! Thank you! §KevinBraun 17:28, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

@ Abhishek: I didn't mean that, "a transliteration has anything to tell that an actor or actress has done more films in that particular language?" I asked that to Mikelynch :) —Commander (Ping me) 17:31, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

By the way Devanagari was not always a script for Sanskrit! So let's not try and bring in such ideas! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbr144 (talk • contribs) 17:33, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Mikelynck and Animeshkulkarni were saying that scripts have to added based on "languages of their work". I just asked them what if the actor had done equal no. of films in two or more languages. Again that would create a lot of problems and edit-wars. Hence that wouldn't be a nice proposal —Commander (Ping me) 17:37, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Well, lets look at it this way; just think whether it will be more meaningful to have Rajini's name in Tamil or Marathi. Whenever people say Rajini, what comes to mind first is Tamil films, and not his birth in Maharashtra or the Bangalore bus he was a conductor in.
To be clear on my stand, I would want a complete elimination of these scripts. Whatever benefits they have, they don't outweigh the nuisance they cause. Vensatry (and Sodabottle) would know that; we've been reverting additions of scripts from Rajinikanth article and Hosur. What we don't want is this: Tomorrow, some user will come and say: "Hey, Deepika was born in Kobnhavn, I want Danish language up there!" I don't know why I'm obsessed with Deepika.
If the names in these scripts have some importance of their own, then by all means, we should include it. But it should never be something like: "Hey, this guy was born in my village, so I want my language up there!". Lynch7 17:45, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)(edit conflict)Also, if anyone cares, have a look at the presentation I presented at WCI11: commons:File:Native Language Transliterations.pdf. Lynch7 17:52, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
... and SpacemanSpiff and me have been removing dubious stuff, including a revdel at Jayalalithaa on 13 December. I can't even read these scripts, but I know a malicious editor when I see one. The problem is not merely in relation to films. - Sitush (talk) 17:50, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Case to case decision on people with multi-language-works should be taken. But as a general rule "languages of their work" should be added. Especially of people who work with languages. Vijay Mallya, as has nothing to do with language, need not have his name in Kannada or Konakani (& especially not in Kannada & calling it as Konkani. Can someone please verify what language it is & change the language's name accordingly?) But to not include Javed Akhtar or Gulzar's names in Urdu wont be justified. Hence the "languages of their work" proposition. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 17:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
And I ask again: why make it more complicated than it needs to be? These additions add nothing for the vast majority of the readership, even in India. - Sitush (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Exactly! How can we get someone involved here who can make an official policy? BollyJeff || talk 18:04, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
That is a decent proposal Animesh, and that would be my second option, first being a complete removal. Konkani script is same as Kannada BTW Case by case handling is what we're doing right now, and its not going too well aint it? :P Sitush speaks well; he has read my mind! Lynch7 18:03, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
They might not add value to Indian readers but might be of interest in fact to non-indian users to just look at how the name looks in another language. Isnt it useful for some American to see how the name "Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport" looks in the language these people on this airport talk? -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 18:08, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
They can click the interwiki link. BollyJeff || talk 18:09, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I'll have to disagree with Animesh. No, people don't want that; for instance, I don't care what Gdansk is called in Polish, or how Nelson Mandela is called in Zulu. I'd not mind hearing it (i.e. the IPA pronunciation), but I can't read a word of scripts like Cyrillic or Hebrew; so how in the world is it going to be useful for me? I don't see a good use for it, be it Indian or foreigner. Lynch7 18:14, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Vijay Mallya has nothing to do with any language! But as far as coastal Karnataka is concerned, Konkanis there are very much part of Kannada heritage- in broad sense, just like Kodavas or Tuluvas KevinBraun 18:10, 20 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbr144 (talk • contribs)

@Bollyjeff: Dont bring in Policy Makers so soon. They come & write essays. I leave the page then. :) But if you at all want, write "Caste" 10-15 times & they will all sprout out. :) Also, not all pages have Interwiki links. Replied to that above.
@MikeLynch: Same script? Really? But Konkani language writes itself in the normal Hindi/Marathi script unlike Kannada writes in Kannada script. So say all the Notes in my valet. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 18:19, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


Did you know that Catholic Christians (from Mangalore) prefer Konkani in Roman Script? KevinBraun 18:22, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

/span>]] ::::::@Animesh, To the best of my knowledge, yes. Kevin, lets have that discussion on Talk:Konkani. Anyway, not taking it tangentially away from the topic, yes I would really like a policy on this. Lynch7 18:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I think pushing for a policy is a long term thing. But there is nothing to prevent this project finding a consensus that it the India-related sphere it is the case that the existing guidelines are more trouble than they are worth and that instead we prefer our own, what ever that may be. - Sitush (talk) 18:28, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
That's fine by me. Lynch7 18:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

We should stick to just discussing which languages should be added on biographical articles rather than places and films. I think our idea for the latter two is to just have one language, which is language of the state/region it is in for places and language of original production for films. As for biographical articles, I'm finding it hard to agree with "language of their work" because some people work with multiple languages. At the same time, mother tongue is also agree with, because while many retain their birth names, some, like Rajinikanth have changed their names to one that originates from a different language. If we followed the mother tongue rule, I'm not sure if putting Rajinikanth's name in Marathi on his page would make sense (unless his name was still Shivaji Rao Gaekwad). I'm thinking for biographical articles it's good to have the name in language from which the actual name originates (Rajinikanth is a Tamil name while Gautham Vasudev Menon is a Malayalam name). Another rule could be to add the language which they mostly speak at home, while that would be hard to figure out with out a reliable source maybe. EelamStyleZ talk 18:38, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

@ user:ravichandar84 - I was just trying to come up with an amicable solution by suggesting the use of devnagari for all Indian names. Please look into "proposition 1" in my previous comment, where i suggested the use of devanagari for all regardless of caste,region,language. Hmm...I shouldn't have come up with the second proposition reg' brahmins. S'ry ab't that. Coming back to the point, "writing in devanagari" doesn't necessarily mean "writing in sanskrit". The devanagari script is not only used for sanskrit, but also for hindi,marathi and by hindu-kashmiris & sindhis. It is indeed the most widely used indian script across the country. Only, its usage slightly differs w.r.t languages.
All those languages that use the "devanagari script" have four schemes for the ka/ga sounds, namely ka kha ga gha. But there is just one "ka" for all the four different schemes in tamil. For example, the name "Ganesh" can only be written as "Kanes" in tamil, as there are no "G","SH" sounds in tamil. So what is the point in providing transliterations when you cannot even pronounce the name with it's actual sound? "Devanagari" is the most widely used writing system in India which is used for various languages such as "Hindi, marathi, konkani, kashmiri(hindus), sindhi(hindus) & sanskrit". Every railway station across India would have nameboards with english & hindi(which uses devanagari writing system) names, while the regional script differs with the states. One doesn't have to necessarily put it up as hindi, marathi or konkani; but simply make it like this - Deepika Padukone (Devanagari: दीपिका पडुकोण). The script is common. And, as i had mentioned earlier, the name Ganesh(गणेश) can only be written as "kanes" in tamil, as there are no "G","SH" sounds in tamil. So what is the point in providing transliterations when you cannot even pronounce the name with it's actual sound? If you ever want to avoid all these prolonged edit wars & vandalism, using devanagari could be the only possible solution for this never ending debate(as it seems)Hari7478 (talk) 18:47, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Propping up Devanagari to somehow represent all the languages of India is highly objectionable, as most South Indian languages do not use Devanagari. This will only create more problems than solving any. Let us avoid it. Lynch7 18:54, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Hari, What is the point in adding Devanagari script for someone from Tamil Nadu just because he has a Sanskrit name if he does not know a word of Hindi or Sanskrit or any other Indo-Aryan language?-RaviMy Tea Kadai 18:55, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

My proposal: Script for the person's mother tongue + Script of the lang of the place he belongs to/settled in/works in -RaviMy Tea Kadai 18:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

That isn't a good idea. There are many north indians & tamilians in bangalore who cannot speak kannada, coz you don't have to necessarily know the language, as one could easily get along with hindi or tamil, in the city. It would be pointless to add a kannada transliteration for a north indian working in bangalore, who might not know kannada. Also, while devanagari(representing hindi) is used by the central government across all of it's areas such as Railways, Airports, post office, etc , regardless of the state in which the offices are situated, why not include it here? I'm not denying the addition of a corresponding native script, but why not make devanagari compulsory here, when the indian(central) government uses the script extensively, across all of it's areas, regardless of the region/state? Hari7478 (talk) 19:14, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


Agree with MikeLynch here! Encouraging Devanagari does not make sense at all, to me it looks like another face of Hindi imperialism. I agree with RaviChandar. Mother tongue+ Second Primary place, E.g. For Rahul Dravid - Marathi and Kannada. For Deepika Pallikal- Malayalam and Tamil. KevinBraun 19:15, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Why should Devanagari be compulsory? hain? Are individuals Union govt. run/managed? KevinBraun 19:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbr144 (talk • contribs)

If in Karnataka one does not feel Kannada is necessary, or Malayalam in Kerala how can Devanagari (representing Hindi) is necessary for whole of India? KevinBraun 19:20, 20 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbr144 (talk • contribs)

If any Indian script is made compulsory by this project then it is the last time that you will see me here. That might encourage some people! - Sitush (talk) 19:22, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Hari, your own argument proves why it makes sense to add Kannada transliteration for Ramesh Arvind, Rahul Dravid, Sri Sri Ravishankar etc. They all speak Kannada and they're living/working in Karnataka. Not worried about all those north Indians and tamilians (who can't speak Kannada) in Bengaluru who'll never have a wiki page by their name!! Thanks. KevinBraun 20:03, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Please do not engage in what appears to be childish point scoring such as in your last sentence above, KevinBraun. It does not advance a discussion, it makes you look silly and it could be construed as an incivility. - Sitush (talk) 20:53, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Right, that has been taken for vandalism already. By the way too bad that implied bias has no way to be dealt with here on wiki. KevinBraun 06:35, 21 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbr144 (talk • contribs)

TA DA!!!! We now have various options & solutions & questions & responses. But it will be too soon to decide on any of them. Hence we should let more editors come in & give their views. Maybe few more days later we can have all feasible options with us & then decide on implementation of them. Summerizing the above, potential problem seems only with biographical articles. Status on other articles seems to be more or less agreeable. Also please bring in views on non-biographical articles as they seem to have got little attention here. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 21:50, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I think we're discussing something broader now, not limiting ourselves to biographical articles. Lynch7 04:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
To second Sodabottle's views, the English Wikipedia needs to have an English transliteration that helps in pronunciation aspect and there ends the matter. Other scripts are not necessary in my view on the English Wikipedia. If interwiki link exists and article exists, great. Otherwise, contribute to that language wiki and add the interwiki link. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 01:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • There was a discussion on this on VPP two years back (where Rajnikanth was specifically discussed). I've personally been back and forth about this. The advantage of an indic script is that it allows for source checking etc and allows the reader to actually search for material relevant to the subject where the subject's contribution is in the language mentioned in the script which a google transliterate is very dangerous for. However, on a more practical note, this just adds grief for regular readers, so it's better to do away with it. E.g. Take the case of Tishani Doshi, a Welsh-Gujarati author who writes in English and has lived in Madras for almost all her life. What defines the addition of a script (choosing this as an example as it's one of the few where the script wars haven't happened but is likely to when she wins one of the more major awards). Doing away with indic scripts on Bios will probably help us get stop wasting time on the script wars, so that's probably a decent option. —SpacemanSpiff 04:41, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
    • And of course the worst part is vandalism, where indic-script names are changed to mean dog, prostitute and other words that children here shouldn't read. Now, most often, anyone who adds these scripts cares two hoots about the actual articles to go back and check that these things are stable. e.g. in Jayalalitha's page, there was a Kannada-Tamil script war, but when it comes to fixing the vandalism to these scripts, no one seems to care. Likewise on Narayanamurthy's page, the Kannada script was vandalized and no one really knew for a couple of days and the only reason I picked it up was because the IP involved did some other vandalism and so I had to check with Mike Lynch to see if there was anything funky going on. We shouldn't leave these to chance, the value of adding these scripts, at this point is far less than the grief caused. —SpacemanSpiff 04:48, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that is a very real threat, and is an easy and difficult-to-detect form of WP:LIBEL. To put it shortly, the disadvantages far outweigh any advantages. Lynch7 04:55, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm personally against adding this unless really really necessary, like say a Movie Name or so. I have myself been at war with other editors, because the language I add is 'inappropriate' [ALWAYS]. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 11:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Options

Should the name of an article subject (e.g. a biographical article or a geographical region) be added in his/her/its native language? --AnupamTalk 10:44, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I can understand that this RfC also concerns films and other articles? Shahid • Talk2me 18:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, all India-related articles. Lynch7 18:53, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Adding options being discussed, add other variants below and indicate support.

Use IPA to clarify pronounciation and use Indic transcriptions only for interwikis

  • Support Shyamal (talk) 02:11, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support I don't see how Indic transcriptions help the reader. Time will be better spent on writing a one-line stub on the native language wiki. — Ganeshk (talk) 02:38, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Support. As nom, if I could say so! Completely agree with Ganeshk's statement. Lynch7 03:52, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: As per Ganesh. -- Karthik Nadar 04:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. I still believe there's value to Indic scripts, but on a practical note this is a far better solution. I aso think Ganesh is on to something, when someone comes around adding scripts willy-nilly (just a couple of weeks back I had to block one racist editor on this, Devanagari vs Kannada script for Konkani!) they should be redirected to the appropriate Indic Wikipedia. We can easily make a templated note for that. —SpacemanSpiff 04:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
    Before I forget, my support is for non-geographical articles. Geographical articles should have indic-scripts as every state/regional government has their primary websites and a good chunk of their local activity record in the regional language. —SpacemanSpiff 05:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Hmm, good point. Lynch7 06:03, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Partial Support: I agree with "Use IPA to clarify pronounciation", for the rest I support "Indic transcriptions in mother-tongue of subject/ geographic location", the reason being the latter would take care of repeated additions of local language by local editors. They will invariably want to add the stamp on the personality/location, we are very territorial mind it! For this, state wise wikiprojects can devise and add one-line notes to their respective projects as this is a longdrawn and repeated issue. The same debate happened a few years as well, may some dig it from the archive. Also, native/mother tongue to give respite to all those people who somehow want to ensure others know where the celebrities come from. Geographic locations won't have much of an issue in this regard. --Ekabhishektalk 06:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Support: I entirely agree with Ganeshk's suggestion. Practically the best possible solution. But there's one minor complication - For example, the Zinedine Zidane page has a pronunciation help in french which links to the "Wikipedia:IPA for French" page. I remember another user who disapproved it, and wanted to use "IPA:for Arabic/Algerian Arabic" as Zidane is ethnically Algerian. These kind of problems will definitely arise in India related articles. What would we do in those circumstances? Hari7478 (talk) 08:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Good point, we would not want wars to start again. But I think if this will be a problem, it will be much more limited than the present problem. This is primarily because Wikipedia:IPA lists many languages, but the Indian ones listed are Hindi-Urdu, Sanskrit and Tamil. The idea of IPA is to take out the language thingy, and to emphasize more on how it sounds. Lynch7 08:59, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
There might be another small complication, but i think it won't even be an issue. As i had mentioned before, tamil does not have enough alphabets to represent all types of sounds. However, today, most tamilians have sanskrit names, which can't be interpreted with a "tamil IPA". For the four different schemes "K KH G GH", tamil only has one "K" to represent all of them. In other words, for the english alphabets "K & G", there is only one "K" in tamil, as you can see from the tamil IPA page. So the name "Ganesh" can only be interpreted as "Kanesh" with a tamil IPA. However, the tamilian himself only pronounces it as "Ganesh" & not "Kanesh". In this case, a "tamil IPA" will not be useful even when interpreting the name of the tamilian, rather a "Hindi-Urdu or Sanskrit IPA" need to be used. In another example the name "Madhavan"(actor) can only be interpreted as "Mathavan" using a tamil IPA, because there is only one "TH" in tamil for the four schemes "T TH D DH". In other words, both the english alphabets "T & D" are only represented by one "T" in tamil. However, the actor himself pronounces his name as "Madhavan" and not "Mathavan". I support the use of "Hindi-Urdu, Sanskrit IPAs" in such cases, but i'm not sure if some south indian editors would approve of it. Hari7478 (talk) 11:08, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I understand your point. My point is that, we want to stress more on how it is pronounced (that's your intention too). Let me be clear on my stand; We know how "Madhavan" is pronounced; now, just because he is a Tamilian, we should not use Tamil IPA. If the correct pronunciation of "Madhavan" can be got by English IPA, then its very well. If not, we go to the IPA which is best suited for that name. The critical point is that, we should not mention it as "Tamil pronunciation", or "Hindi pronunciation"; lets give the actual pronunciation based on some factors (mother tongue, area of fame, whatever), but we don't mention that it is Tamilian, Hindi, etc. My aim is to take the language completely out of the name.
  • Support: IPA's in most cases are a must. My preference is to remove scripts, stop caring about whether the interwiki articles are created, as the other languages are totally unnecessary. If that is not possible, we would have to discuss each and every dispute in a haphazard manner like this one. X.One SOS 09:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Of course not; nowhere will it be explicitly specified that you have to go to other wikis and create articles. The idea is that it should be implicit; people see some language interwikis on the left, and then they think "oh, my language is not there", and then they go create it. That's the funda. Lynch7 10:23, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support: Agree with Ganeshk's suggestion. Also IPA should be for the correct pronunciation of names and not based on any other criteria. That in turn may be based on the mother tongue in which person has been named, but again if name has changed, it may not be so. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 10:40, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support, Oppose & Comments: Adding IPA for ALL articles related to India where the title is of non-english origin is a good option. So Support for that. Creating relevant interwiki pages is not feasible. So Oppose on that. Comments: I am unsure of how this is proposed to be handled. Does 'no indic scripts whatsoever' mean that you want to remove all the indic scripts from the pages which are stable now? People who give vandalism as the reason for not having indic scripts should think on it. I doubt Editor's Favourite biographic articles like Gandhi, Satyajit Ray, Lata Mangeshkar, Karunanidhi, etc. as well as others like India, Ganges, etc. would remain calm & quite on deletions of Indic scripts. & i dont see this option being any good to just agitate more people. As Ekabhishek said, we are territorial! Also for film articles, the reason given for having Hindi & Urdu indic scripts as "original film shows the title in 3 languages" is a valid one. I dont know why & when was that ruled out. In fact, we should include only the indic scripts that were shown in the film, irrespective of the actual language of the film. Eg. As Hyderabad Blues is a Telugu-Hindi-English film but the titles in the film were only English, other two indic scripts should not be added. Also if we are keeping indic scripts on geographic articles (as they have little disputes) there will always be discussions & editings on other indian articles for including indic scripts. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 10:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Obviously no one is asking you to go and create pages in all the 20 odd Indic wikis existing; the funda is that if interwikis exist, then well and fine; if they don't then any editor can create it. The point is that an interwiki should contain all the other language stuff, not the enwiki article. Lynch7 11:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Seeing many comments above (SpacemanSpiff and Ekabhishek), it is possible that we could discount Geographical articles from this equation. Lynch7 11:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Okay! got the point of Interwiki links. :) Also for geographic articles keeping indic scripts is right. Only problem will be to convince editors hence forth that its applicable for only geo articles. And what abt the implementation? Who would wanna bell FAs & GAs? -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 12:11, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Considering that most of our FAs are Geographical articles, they probably should remain status quo, as many editors above suggest that its OK for geo articles to have these names. For the other articles, someone will just have to do it.
Also, it might take some time for editors to get used to adding IPA (many of us will not be familiar with them), so we shall expect hiccups at that. Lynch7 12:21, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - I have a concern that we could end up with multiple IPAs being shown, to represent various languages/scripts. Is this proposal that we use just one? If so, which one? Also, for geographic articles, could we end up with more than one script? Eg: Hindi + an official state language? - Sitush (talk) 12:43, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Copy-pasting my comment from my talk page
It makes much much more sense to have just one IPA; Branding IPAs as "Tamil Pronunciation", and "Hindi Pronunciation" is meaningless for two reasons: 1) It creates that "stamp" of the language again, something which we sought to eliminate. 2) Languages like Hindi are so widely spoken that pronunciation differs from place to place. For instance, there are lots of pronunciation differences between Mumbai Hindi and Delhi Hindi. This pronunciation can in turn be based on the subject's mother tongue/location. Lynch7 12:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Hm. But using the mother-tongue etc puts us back with the problem of verification and self-identification etc - a lot of actor bios, for example, are incredibly poorly sourced for these things, and in the case of communities such as the Yadavs, well, how do we define their region? It also creates issues for people such as the Welsh-Indian lady mentioned somewhere above. - Sitush (talk) 12:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Then we go for the next best option; if there is no clear verifiable source for mother tongue, then we go for the language he is identified with. Remember, we are not mentioning it as "X language pronunciation". If we don't know the mother tongue of a person like, say, Amartya Sen, who is not associated with any language, then we give just a pronunciation as any normal English speaker would pronounce it. Lynch7 13:03, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
The mother tongue thing I spoke about was just a vague idea, I am completely open to improvements. Lynch7 13:03, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I am just trying to clarify things here. The situation is messy and I am trying to cover all the bases, which is made even more awkward by my imperfect knowledge. If we're going to come up with a solution then let's at least try to make it a comprehensive one, otherwise the entire issue will just resurface again in a few weeks' time. - Sitush (talk) 13:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
This would be a problem for sure. Calling it Ganga or Gonga (in Bengali or Bengoli i should say) will always be a problem. But as we have only 3 IPAs established in Wiki we can use those language pronunciations & then use the same IPA. Eg. as Bengali IPA is not present, Hindi-Urdu should be used & it should be called as Ganga even if it flows through WB & Bangladesh who speak Bengali. Dont know if Tamil IPA can be used feasibly for all South-indian languages. & yeah! IPA is gonna be tough too. Tried one on Vidya Balan. No one removed it since almost an hour. probably ppl didnt understand it -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 14:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Completely useless for most US users. (That we in the US ought to know it may be true, but in point of fact very few US people do, and we much serve the readers. We're not the only constituency, but we're one of them.) But since it's an international standard, we can justify adding it, but not relying on it alone. DGG ( talk ) 13:48, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I'd hazard a guess that the scripts are "completely useless" for most US users also. - Sitush (talk) 14:29, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Being an English Wiki and seeing the wide number of multiple language cases, it is impossible to develop reasonable guidelines for other options. We could all spend this time doing better things. AshLin (talk) 17:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: As per my comments in the discussion section above. BollyJeff || talk 21:28, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. I have spent some time pondering this and have decided that, with the exception of geographic articles, this is clearly the most workable, neutral solution to what is a rather unusual situation. For geographics, I would prefer to see just the state's official language used as the variant term (&, yes, in the event that the state has several such official languages - determined by their official websites - then we would show all of those variants). - Sitush (talk) 01:23, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Use mother-tongue of subject / geographic location to decide language

  • Strong Support Adding the native language of an individual or location is helpful to readers and is the standard convention used throughout Wikipedia - in articles on Japan, Syria, India, etc. WP:India should follow the same conventions rather than create its own. Thanks, AnupamTalk 10:45, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support at least for geographical features. I would have thought having those in the local scripts was standard. For biographical subjects, it should be in their mother tongue, but I feel less strongly about it, unless they have an iconic status for their ethnicity. --JN466 13:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
The general mood seems to be support for adding native language for Geographical articles (as commented by users above). Lynch7 13:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment only (Sorry!) My knowledge of languages, scripts and associated considerations is too slight for me to advise in detail. I think that in general we should encourage cultural and ethnic groups with a pride in their language, names, scripts, pronunciations etc, to exhibit and explain items that they think some readers might care about or be interested in. The fact that some readers might not care, or even might get huffy about resource consumption or the aggrandisement of a group that they disapprove of, matters far less than inclusion of material that someone, somewhere, sometime, might be interested in. That is how reference material works; not everyone cares about every aspect of every entry, but everyone should care about the comprehensiveness and quality of the work, as long as the material is relevant and in context — in a word, encyclopedic. If someone thinks that Chakradakramakra needn't have his name in his local medium, he needn't add it, but if a successor editing the article disagrees, thinking that he deserves that recognition in that medium, sure, let him add it, always observing WP principles of course. In general, there is no need to justify inclusion of material; it is removal that needs justification. JonRichfield (talk) 13:12, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm ok with adding the local script for geographical entities (see caveat below though) but oppose a general rule for people. It is impossible to always determine the 'mother tongue' of a person, or even to say with some degree of confidence that a person self-identifies with a particular group. If reliable sources support such an identification, then it's probably ok. However, it is not the job of wikipedia editors to associate people with language groups. (Caveat for geographical names: Often, the same region has multiple identities across time as well as across cultural groups. For example, I notice that the Delhi article has its name rendered in Hindi. However, I could easily construct a case for including Urdu (it was for many hundreds of years a center of Urdu learning and literature). I could just as easily include gurmukhi since it has a large punjabi speaking population. For Haryana, which has been a part of the Punjab for most of the existence of gurmukhi, we should perhaps include that script as well. In an English language encyclopedia I think it better to stick with just plain old english.) --regentspark (comment) 15:27, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Your argument for Delhi is valid. But this will happen only with few geographic locations which have conglomeration of various languages & in such cases, having multiple enteries of indic scripts is fair. The article itself says that Hindustani i.e Hindi-Urdu is the principal spoken language. Urdu as well as Hindi enteries here are fair to have. Only other place i am able to guess is Mumbai whose Marathi stand is clear. Also for geo-locations under dispute of border both languages are proposed to be used. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 16:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Use English transliteration

  • Support: At the risk of sounding Anglo-centric (which I guess I am), an English transliteration in addition to the IPA phonetics often helps me (and perhaps others) get a better feel for the pronunciation. Miniapolis (talk) 14:55, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Didnt get your point. Wont IPA be sufficient for pronunciation? Please give some example. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 15:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
What Miniapolis probably means is writing "Bengaḷūru", instead of just "Bengaluru" (with the diacritics and accents and stuff). Correct me if I'm wrong. Lynch7 17:27, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for trying to clarify my muddled comment, but actually I meant the opposite. Maybe it's just me, but I have a lot of trouble with IPA :-). Miniapolis (talk) 05:28, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Well... i too find IPAs difficult. But thought that maybe whole world understands it & hence i should now learn it somehow. I dont even know how to read this. [bɑːl tʃʌθri]. But do all people find it difficult? If so, IPA wouldnt be a good option either! [ˈbeŋɡəɭuːru] or [Bengaḷūru] or just simple [Bengaluru] -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 09:50, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Maybe we all think everyone else is comfortable with IPA except us :-). For me the simple [Bengaluru] works best as a guide, but that may be just because I'm a native English speaker. Miniapolis (talk) 15:13, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Partial support: In addition to IPA (which is often confusing, as noted by Miniapolis), I like having an "English transliteration". But the English transliteration is much, much less precise, and open to misreading, so IPA is also essential. I wonder if there's a standardized form of English pronunciation guide used by one of the major dictionaries, that's easy for an English speaker, but still fairly accurate? I expect there'd be some concern about having too many versions of a name (original script, common English version, IPA, English transliteration...) but this transliteration might just be the one that the reader actually understands, so I'll support it. --Chriswaterguy talk 01:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: There is no harm in having English translation for an Indian word, as long as we stop edit-warring over language scripts. But of course, it is difficult to find RS's for each and every word for a translation, so different people perceive the words in a different manner. A small consensus might be enough for that. X.One SOS 07:03, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Use Indic (state specific) for geographic locations

  • Support: This seems obvious, logical, and hopefully won't complicate the job of the page-patrollers. Miniapolis (talk) 14:58, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: Opinion also stated elsewhere for this option. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 15:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Cautious support As someone who has had to look at the boards of buses to see if the destination matches where I need to go, there is a value to it. Fairness would mean having it in all the official language scripts (22?) of India - if that be the case it should probably be an infobox rather than the lead. (For this particular example, Mysore would needs to to include the Malayalam script, if not all) Shyamal (talk) 04:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support official language(s) of the state/city. e.g. in Delhi this would include Hindi (Devanagari), Urdu (Nastaliq) and Punjabi (Gurmukhi), in Bangalore it would include Kannada, in the case of Yanam it would include Telugu, French and Tamil. —SpacemanSpiff 05:47, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
    What about the Munnar example below? According to one of the linked sites, the language spoken there is largely Tamil but, since the town is in Kerala, I assume that the official language is Malayalam? --regentspark (comment) 13:02, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I think that unless we have a very good source (like official Census data) that clearly states that some language other than the official language (Tamil in this case) is very widely spoken (this is open to interpretation), we should not include any other language other than the official one. Lynch7 13:21, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Use every relevant language and transcription

I fail to see the harm of providing information that may of of use to the widest range of individual needs as possible. This can include ipa transcriptions of every relevant form, the original script, and a Roman transliteration, The main title should always be in Roman, because the only thing that is certain of everyone coming here, is that they can read the English languages in Roman characters. Beyond that, we're not paper. It always amazes me that when there are multiple choices people argue which of them to use even when it's not a matter of selected an article heading--use anything verifiable that any editor desires in good faith. DGG ( talk ) 13:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't mind including anything that an editor wants in good faith; but why in the lead? Lynch7 14:11, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
And what about the vandalism/abuse that goes on, especially when it is a BLP? Patrolling this sort of thing is a nightmare, although probably it is the case that those not regularly involved in India-related articles do not realise this. - Sitush (talk) 14:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
As I say above, I don't like the idea of casually associating a person with a group, unless that association is relevant. For example, transcribing Premchand in Hindi and Urdu is relevant because he wrote in those languages. Transcribing Rajiv Gandhi in hindi is probably not because it is not relevant in describing his persona or work or life. And, of course, opening the lede to all languages will be problematic because we will be starting the article with a lengthy digression that is not germane to whatever the user is looking for - never a good idea in a lede. --regentspark (comment) 15:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I somewhat agree with you, but it is not always easy to make a distinction as to whether it is relevant or not, and this will open up more grey areas on what is relevant, and what is not. For Geographical articles, it is easy to distinguish (official language, language most spoken, etc) but for other articles, its not always so easy. Lynch7 15:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
MikeLynch, than bringing in Tamil or Hindi or other indic scripts, how about adding .ogg where ever it is significant? Let transliteration be only in English. KevinBraun 21:23, 21 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kbr144 (talk • contribs)
Audio always helps clear things up better, but again we must be wary of it for the simple reason that WP:LIBEL is extremely easy to add using audio, and we don't have people who check each audio file whether it is good or not. Lynch7 03:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I think deciding relevance is really the problem here. (eg. Bal-chatri, hardly of use to the average Indian, but geographic name renderings do have a practical value for travellers) Also can we have example renditions of all the options at the top of each option block. Shyamal (talk) 04:50, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with DGG on this point (and they've worded it better than I could have). If we have a reliable source for the name of a subject in some relevant (ie. local) language, why on earth would we omit it? We don't have to stick to a single name. To pick an example from a more familiar alphabet, I think Munich is fine; it tells you what the place is called (and how it's pronounced) in relevant languages but that doesn't harm the article in any way - it just provides additional information to the reader. Isn't this meant to be an encyclopædia? At worst, if multiple transcriptions of a long name get a bit unwieldy, we could move it out of the lede into a separate section. bobrayner (talk) 05:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Additional comments

Can anyone (uninvolved) close this discussion and make out a consensus (unless there is a sense that this discussion is not yet over)? (Please note that even though all these "options" may be named so, it doesn't mean that they are necessarily incompatible with each other). Thank you. Lynch7 15:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

It appears that there is currently no consensus on the issue. There are several editors who have supported the addition of scripts and several who have opposed scripts. Right now, in order to address this issue, only scripts which are officially recognized by a state/province should be added. For example, in Uttar Pradesh, Hindi and Urdu are appropriate. In Haryana, Hindi and Punjabi are appropriate. In Madras, Tamil is appropriate. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 01:16, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Are you closing or commenting, Anupam? If the latter then how are you addressing the non-geographic content, and why say it here rather than above? Comments here - other than ones contesting the request to close - seem to me to be out of place. - Sitush (talk) 01:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
I think Anupam cannot close this because he has taken part in the discussion if I am not wrong. Lynch7 05:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
I would also request the editor who closes it to make a table or so for all states, just like Anupam did for 2-3 states. (Thats coz i guess there will be disputes there too.) -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 10:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
I actually see that most people support the removal of all scripts. Shahid • Talk2me 11:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Many of them do agree to retain in Geographical articles though. Lynch7 12:17, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it looks like removal from biographical, but keep on geographical and films. BollyJeff || talk 00:50, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think people are quite getting the hang of how an RfC is closed. Commenting here with your opinion of consensus is pointless: comment in the above sections with your rationale and let an uninvolved person determine what, if any, consensus is clear. This section should not give people a second bite at that cherry, and it is already clear that various people are trying to take that second bite. - Sitush (talk) 01:02, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
Sorry. So call this a summary section, and when someone does close it they can do so in whatever way is proper. BollyJeff || talk 01:07, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
My remark was not aimed specifically at you, BollyJeff - no worries. There is in fact no need for any involved contributor to comment here or in a "summary section". RfCs can run for up to 30 days, although they can also be closed earlier if a non-involved person sees fit. I really doubt that such a person would be willing to close this one yet if only because of the time of year at which it is occurring, which coincides with various holidays/religious/pagan celebrations of significance etc and therefore might impact on the ability of interested parties to comment. In any event, it might have been better to request closure at WP:AN or somewhere similar. - Sitush (talk) 01:15, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
Taking a neutral judgement the second option i.e. "Use mother-tongue of subject / geographic location to decide language" would be more stable as a policy. It addresses both personal and impersonal articles. As a policy it can be more objectively administererd in the Indian articles.-- R.Sivanesh ✆ © 17:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
As Sitush rightfully pointed out, I was wrong in naming the section header; I have changed it to "Additional comments" since that's what is happening here anyway. If you want to state your point of view, then please do so in the relevant section! (Until this RFC is closed by someone uninvolved who knows how to gauge consensus). Lynch7 19:51, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
Bumping. This issue needs to be resolved & so I do not think it wise to let it archive. - Sitush (talk) 02:38, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Bounce. Still not resolved. Lynch7 07:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Since comments have dried up, I have requested closure at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Requests_for_closure#Wikipedia_talk:INB.23Options. I hope that no-one minds. - Sitush (talk) 16:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
7 days up. Are there any limitations to the number of times we can bump? Try replying after 7 days, unless this is closed. X.One SOS 13:14, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
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.

Duplicate articles

Just thought I'd bring this to attention here: India national cricket team and Indian cricket team are two separate articles for some reason. The latter was turned from a redirect into an article on 28 November 2011 and has been misleadingly thought to be the main article by many users, and edited extensively since then (see history). Mar4d (talk) 06:00, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Northeast India and Seven Sister States

Been thinking — should these articles be merged? Telco (talk) 16:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems okay. SSS is a subset of NEI and the remainder isnt much. Also is inline with other articles; North India, East India, South India and West India. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 22:12, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
But then the lead for NEI should clearly state what SSS comprise of. That term should not be lost. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 22:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:India will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in India's history, society and culture. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 21:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

An appeal on Wikimedia-in-en repeated here:

Hi, I am writing to all of you to bring your attention to this message on the India Noticeboard, by User:SarahStierch. Would you like to announce any kind of initiative? I would like to offer my support on English Wikipedia. It is my personal opinion that this field dealing with roughly half the number of Indians has not got any of the attention it deserves. For that reason, I have created a new Task Force page for WikiProject India titled :

Wikipedia:WikiProject_India/Women_and_gender_issues

It is brand new & will require tweaking. But its a small start in the right direction.

AshLin (talk) 12:49, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

AshLin, this is wonderful! I shared it with the Gender Gap list. What a great start- imagine if we had the ability to have a task force like this on every project, and then eventually, be able to get rid of it :) I took the liberty of adding it here. Feel free to elaborate and pretty-fy the entry :) SarahStierch (talk) 02:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

A curious category

Given that this project does not do a tremendous amount of formalised housekeeping, what function does Category:India articles with comments serve nowadays? - Sitush (talk) 01:27, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Anyone? - Sitush (talk) 07:42, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
No idea. What was it supposed to do in the first place? I'd suggest you raise this at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion, and if nobody can figure out what it is for, propose its deletion... AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:48, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. That was likely to be my next step, after conferring with the subject specialists here. However, I've now just done it. - Sitush (talk) 07:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Ram Narayan Sharma, Dhanbad & Ram Sharma

Resolved

Hi. Hoping someone here can lend some assistance? I just declined a speedy on the former, thinking his status as a former MP is sufficient to avoid an A7. In trying to source, I found Ram Sharma who is, per the article, a poet who was formerly in government. Ram Sharma is clearly the better of the two articles, but I'm having trouble with English language sources to confirm they're the same. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! StarM 23:43, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

They are obviously different. The first was active in the 1970s while the second was dead by 1918. rudra (talk) 14:50, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes but the new one had no sourcing or real context at the time I asked that question . Thanks StarM 00:25, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Pakistan

There is an ongoing discussion on the lead section of the article on Pakistan. Please contribute to the discussion. I think posting this notice here is pertinent because the discussion surrounds the history of the subcontinent, and the Indian independence movement in particular. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 11:02, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

  1. ^ Keshav Sangh-Nirmata page 13-14
  2. ^ Shri Guruji Samagra page 47-48
  3. ^ Shri Guruji Samgra page XXII-XXIII
  4. ^ Dr.Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (published in 2003)
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