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Finding verifiable sources for "Maina Gawankar"

I'm trying to help Mihir_nanthur (talk · contribs) find a source to verify their claim of a Maina Gawankar who apparently was, in Mihir's words, "A lady who spent 22 years on bed and 1 amongst the first few women criminal lawyers of maharashtra." With some help from the WP:Teahouse another reference to (potentially) the same person was found on Samyukta_Maharashtra_Samiti.

Some quick internet searches didn't find much, but I don't have any context or ability to read Hindi, so I may be missing something. SpurriousCorrelation 07:13, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible from the archives you could retrieve something. Was a leading lady for the Maharashtra Samyukta Morcha. The movement established for the indenpence of Maharashtra as a state. Was handicapped sitting on the streets of Delhi during the cold winters. Mihir nanthur (talk) 07:17, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Custom searches

I seem to recall that WikiProject India had some custom searches, scripts or something, because Google is poor at indexing Indian topics. Are these still about? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:08, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• This was a CSE, now it is added to User:Titodutta/scripts/SearchHelper.js. --Titodutta (talk) 14:33, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for that! --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:49, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Asian art, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:06, 14 September 2020 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

Military Collegiate School Khulna

Is there any reason why this unsourced article should not be stubified? -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 18:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

I'd start by removing the fancruft, and getting rid of the indicscript from the lede, then see what is left. Zindor (talk) 20:54, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

If by fancruft you mean unsourced, then there would be nothing left. I dont think that WP:FANCRUFT covers this as it's about something else entirely. -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 13:57, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

@Roxy the dog: I did mean fancruft. Example:

The boys' wing is split up into 4 houses and the girls' wing into 2. Competitions are held on the basis of these houses, and points are awarded to the champion and runner-up houses. At the end of the year the house with the most points is awarded the Overall Championship. Classes and other academic activities are held in the aptly named Academic Building, which is equipped with multimedia classrooms, ballrooms, physics, chemistry and biology labs and offices for teachers, the vice-principle and other support staff. "

Even if that was sourced we'd be removing it because it goes into minutiae that are probably only of interest to students at the school. If there's a more precise term for that other than fancruft, i apologise. I was just suggesting a way to discriminate against the worst of the unsourced content. I'm not mad into axe-swinging myself. I hope that clears this up. Regards, Zindor (talk) 16:59, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

I think I see what you mean, thanks very much. -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 17:43, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

I chopped a bunch out a few days ago, not enough to call it stubified though. There's still lots of unsourced stuff, but it's not as crufty as it was. I tried to leave things that I thought would be somewhat easy to source, even if just a primary source. I certainly won't complain if more gets removed (including the para cited above). Ravensfire (talk) 19:44, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Had the article been in its current condition when I first saw it, I would not have dreamed of commenting here. I think good work has been done. -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 20:08, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Wrong page move

Pijushghosh1 has moved Jangipur, West Bengal, a town page, to Jangipur Municipality. I think it is a wrong page move and needs to be reverted. I request someone to please take necessary action. He also created a page Jangipur district, which I have made Jangipur police district as per references. - Chandan Guha (talk) 00:19, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi Chandan Guha, that does look odd. I suspect what's happened here is that Pijushghosh1 has for some reason tried to re-disambiguate the title as a municipality but not realised that there is also a town of the same name in Uttar Pradesh. Also we currently have Jangipur village as primary topic, which is more than likely wrong. There's a few things going on here, so i'd like to hear from the editor first before i start moving stuff around. Zindor (talk) 16:38, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Other places with the same name is not a major problem. It can be taken care of by adding a disambiguation page. 'Municipality' has a specific meaning and such pages are meant for the civic body of the town and not the town itself. There are numerous municipality/ municipal corporation pages, separate from the towns/cities - Kolkata and Kolkata Municipal Corporation and so many others. Moreover, earlier the page was Jangipur, West Bengal. The disambiguation was there already. It is definitely not a disambiguation problem. - Chandan Guha (talk) 23:49, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, i concur with what you say, however i think we can capitalize on this situation and fix the primary topic issue. The village article occupying Jangipur should move to Jangipur, Jaunpur, and Jangipur Municipality should move to Jangipur; as a round-robin swap. We can then put a hat-note on the top of Jangipur with a link to the town in UP.

I'm not opposed to Jangipur Municipality moving back to Jangipur, West Bengal, but i feel we'll be missing an opportunity to occupy the primary topic title. Thoughts? Zindor (talk) 00:24, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Unless you'd like a disambigutation page at Jangipur, which would be a great idea. Zindor (talk)

I would prefer a disambiguation page, as we also have Jangipur subdivision and Jangipur police district. Moreover, I am not sure whether we can move the page without admin support. - Chandan Guha (talk) 00:41, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

We can move Jangipur to Jangipur, Jaunpur, which would leave behind a redirect. We then just convert the redirect page into a disambiguation page. Separately Jangipur Municipality gets moved back to Jangipur, West Bengal, and we place a speedy tag on the redirect it creates. Zindor (talk) 01:39, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

 Done @Chandan Guha: Should be resolved now Zindor (talk) 19:06, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I disambiguated it by district because i've clarified the state on the disambiguation page. This avoids having to get an admin involved; but if you still feel it's necessary to disambiguate the title by the state, a request at WP:requested moves would get it done fast. Thanks Zindor (talk) 19:24, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks. I will create the disambiguation page. - Chandan Guha (talk) 21:45, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh! That's also done. Fine, thank you. - Chandan Guha (talk) 21:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

For Hindi speakers

Please participate in Talk:2020_Delhi_riots#Hail_Lord_Rama_is_biased_translation_for_Jai_shree_Ram. Eatcha 11:13, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Draft:De-Industrialization in India

This draft is pretty badly sourced, but I'm guessing it is largely accurate, and it's on an encyclopedic topic. Should it be approved to mainspace for further development? Or left for eventual WP:G13 deletion in draftspace? Or does anyone want to adopt it? Thanks, Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:08, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Article already exists at Deindustrialisation in India. Some content definitely looks merge-worthy, but it is difficult without inline cites. – SD0001 (talk) 18:20, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

A couple of editors have made large scale changes to this article [1]. In particular, the tone of the lead is quite different. Could be fine but FYI. --RegentsPark (comment) 01:15, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Women in Red Asian women contest

From 1 October to 31 December, Women in Red is running a virtual contest on Asian women. In November, this will coincide with Wikipedia Asian Month. We look forward to strong participation from all those interested in improving coverage of Indian women.--Ipigott (talk) 16:05, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Du Chakay Duniya

Can someone who knows Bengali see if this is a hoax? It looks pretty fishy to me, but would be super interesting if true. I found one English-language ref that looks reliable—[2]—but otherwise pretty much nothing. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 04:36, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@AleatoryPonderings: It's not unknown for Indian-language books of this period to have no virtually zero coverage online. The book is real for sure -- it's listed on flipkart and goodreads. An article exists for the author which is sourced entirely to book sources, at least one of which has an ISBN that doesn't match anything on WorldCat/GBooks/OpenLibrary (!) but still is real as I found a mention of it in a journal. – SD0001 (talk) 04:54, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

The Indian Express

I find it surprising that this article has had those ugly maintenance tags on it for nearly a decade. It is one of the best newspapers in India (I would say it's the best – doesn't publish press releases like The Hindu). But all my attempts to find sources are failing due to the generic nature of the term; there a ton of results citing IE, but nothing about IE itself.

Is anyone else able to find sources? – SD0001 (talk) 17:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@SD0001: one way to cleanup the result pages would be to instead search for the topics surrounding the newspaper, such as it's founder or publishing company. Fortunately, Express' founder was quite famous and well known Ramnath Goenka. A search for Ramnath Goenka on JSTOR (using the Wikipedia Library Card Platform) brings up quite good sources like this, from the Economic & Political Weekly. PS: this Caravan Magazine feature is a nice read, if not as useful as the JSTOR sources. Regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:57, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

A search for Ramnath Goenka on Google Books brings up this interesting book containing some useful information about many Indian newspapers. This might be useful too. Regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:10, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

• I posted sources at Talk:The_Indian_Express#Possible_sources. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:20, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks TryKid and Bluerasberry. Looking at those sources, I couldn't add much to Indian Express itself, though I ended up adding bits to related articles like Media of India. That one from EPW looks interesting, but only if I knew the background.

I am wondering whether this piece can be considered reliable? The founding editor of the site has a book on the topic published by the Oxford University Press, so looks credible to me. Just wanted to double-check. – SD0001 (talk) 05:41, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

2020 Assam gas and oil leak

I've been working on the 2020 Assam gas and oil leak page, and was wondering if a more experienced editor could take a look and let me know how to improve it. I could also use some help with sourcing images for the article. Thanks! --Naushervan (talk) 06:58, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Pasi (caste) discussion

The tone of the article Pasi (caste) is not neutral and sound biased whereas the use of the word like untouchable and emphasising Dalit and pig-rearers on the basis old unverified testimony is questionable which is offensive and obliterates as per the law of the land which was questioned same by the High court of Mumbai. I've added Dalit word is offensive and obliterates section for the discussion your feedback will help the article to improve. — Sanskari ^Hangout 08:31, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

(edited to include additional sources + for clarity) I do agree that the tone of the article needs addressing, but we don't need to mischaracterize court opinions in order to arrive at that conclusion. Your own source does not indicate that the word 'Dalit' is "forbidden" to use, only that one bench of the Bombay High Court provided a non-binding recommendation for the government to consider, that its use should be avoided, according to them (by the media).

If you have other reasons and sources to indicate that the use of the word 'Dalit' is deprecated, then please do provide them.

I'd like to add that I found some sources that indicate that there is a debate within various stakeholder communities about whether the term should be abandoned or embraced (see this or this and this). I also want to add that the Press Council of India is currently objecting to this opinion of the Court. More opinions here and here suggest that there is no consensus on whether the term should be removed or retained, with one Dalit group saying they will file a PIL to ensure they can still use the word. Given that there isn't a consensus, I think we need more information, i.e. sources and not personal opinions. . --Naushervan (talk) 10:47, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

How to deal with it?

My concern is Rajput related pages. Ex List of battles of Rajasthan..The citation style used by editors on these pages are different. Usually i see the book etc present in the list of bibliography in article where this type of citation are used. But i am witnessing a heavy use of these incomplete (half) citations which leaves no way to verify the content. Ironically these topics are covered in some of the good books by genuine publishers but editors to the Rajput related pages are not using it and this becomes a pretext to write some WP:POV pushing stuffs in a bid for glorification. Ex see talk page of Amar Singh I which i recently edited. The version before my edit was heavily unsourced and written like a fan page. But I used "Abraham Eraly: Emperor of the peacock throne by Penguin publishers" which is a very high quality source and going through its relevant pages i found that situation portrayed in article was just a opposite to what Mughals inflicted on Mewar. How to deal with these type of citation which gives no information about book etc from where the stuff is taken? Tagging some of the pupils whom i found knowledgable in this area. Alivardi NitinMlk and JonathansammyHeba Aisha (talk) 22:24, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Quotation regarding Amar Singh and Mughal conflict
Abraham Eraly (2007). Emperors Of The Peacock Throne: The Saga of the Great Moghuls. Penguin UK. ISBN 935118093X. Retrieved 2020-09-23. When Rana clasped his (Khurram's) feets and asked foregiveness for his faults, he took his head and placed it on his breast and consoled him in such a manner as to comfort him. The Rana and prince then exchanged gifts.

And the article declares victory of Rajputs with unclear sources and describes that Mughal princes fled.Heba Aisha (talk) 22:39, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Also see as for example:

Extended content
Battle of Kama (October 4–7, 1708) - Ajit Singh Kachwaha, the Rajput zamindar of Kama defeated the combined armies of Mughals and Jats. The Mughal-Jat army numbered 18,000 while the Kachwahas had 10,000 horsemen. After a bitter fight the Mughal faujdar Raza Bahadur was killed and the Jat leader Churaman was forced to flee to Thun.

References

Only half name of writer is written and there is no bibliography nor any extra info to find the book ??Heba Aisha (talk) 22:48, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Indian subcontinent

A complex RfC is going on, after a long bout of edit war. Uninvolved editors needed at the discussion. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 06:39, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

The RfC could really use some more comments. Indian subcontinent is too big for WP:NOONECARES (pun intended). Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 07:52, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Notability check

Is the journalist and novelist Draft:Richa Lakhera a "of course" category when it comes to notability, is she in the "hmm, maybe" category, or the "who is she? Definitely not notable" category? My hunch is she's in the middle group. If she's in the first group I'm included to accept the draft remove the "promotional" stuff. If she's in the middle group I'm going to leave that work up to the submitter. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:13, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

A Severe Issue With Regards To Copy Editing

To the members of WikiProject India, I would primarily like to address a report concerning the quantity of articles for which copy editing among articles concerning India remains necessary; following inspection of the list of all articles requiring copy editing, as posted via the Wikipedia Guild of Copy Editors, I present the following report to the WikiProject as an external party:

A massive quantity of articles necessitating copy editing primarily remain classified as articles related to the subject of India, within a geographical, cultural, cinematic, governmental or economic manner; a cursory search for the word "India" within the text of the summaries of the aforementioned articles produces approximately 94 articles necessitating copy editing. This massive quantity, when taken from a total of, as I write this report, 355 articles, remains an extremely concerning issue. The fact that approximately 26.4% of articles necessitating the performance of copy editing remain concerning India primarily remains a circumstance which produces, within my opinion, the conclusion that the appropriate WikiProject must remain involved. I shall present a series of recommendations below concerning this situation:

1. I propose that WikiProject India immediately encourage compliance with the Manual of Style among its members, in particular the proper utilisation of the English language; a large quantity of articles upon the aforementioned list contain nonsensical sentences and extremely poor grammar, indicating a lack of experience with the utilisation of the Manual of Style. Among all members and all notable contributors to articles concerning India, the Manual of Style must remain disseminated immediately; this remains in addition to my second proposal.
2. As a second proposal, I would like to suggest the facilitation of a competition for the immediate elimination of the aforementioned backlog of articles concerning India; preferably, this competition would remain modelled within a manner similar to that of the Backlog Elimination Drive or Copy Editing Blitz hosted via the Guild of Copy Editors.
3. Lastly, I would like to propose that the members of WikiProject India primarily attempt to utilise a general combination of effort to campaign for the establishment of an independent category search with India as the subject among articles necessitating copy editing; this category would primarily remain positioned within association with the remainder of the categories posted in the "Filter this category by topic:" section.

Within my opinion, the enactment of the aforementioned proposals would serve to eliminate the quantity of articles which require copy editing and concern India; the facilitation of this would remain a great boon for the WikiProject. The provided suggestions remain my recommendations to the project; thank you. SurenGrig07 (talk) 01:30, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

No one is forcing anybody else's compliance with anything, especially not MOS, which (1) is a guideline and (2) is mostly ignorable unless you are writing a GA or an FA. India has a fifth of the world's population, that's without first subtracting the anglophone population of the world. So, the percentage of 26 does not seem disproportionate. Any effort to address the issue remains as noble without the hyperbole, especially one that can be read as insulting to a group of people/editors from a whole country. Usedtobecool ☎️ 15:09, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Listed below: Firstly, I apologise if the previously referenced remarks appear to remain excessively insulting to a group of individuals; they remain within no manner intended as insulting. The primary attempt of the message remained to encourage the WikiProject to organise an event or division within its organisational hierarchy responsible for the identification and elimination of these articles; please do not construe this as remaining offensive to editors of Indian descent. Secondly, my message did not attempt to imply within any manner that the quantity of articles which remain related to India remains disproportionate with regards to its population; rather, it attempted to address the fact that, within my opinion, the involvement of WikiProject India would assist the copy editing of these articles within an exceptional manner and contribute to the management and success of the WikiProject, which, as I interpret it, remains entrusted with, among its essential functions, the improvement of articles related to India. Lastly, with regards to hyperbole, the utilisation of the language which you describe within my initial report remained intended to display the fact that a large backlog of these articles remains within existence, the purpose of it remaining the incentivisation of a measure to combat this increase within articles related to the subject of India which require copy editing; please do not regard it as an attempt at pathos within the generalised display of the argument. SurenGrig07 (talk) 21:26, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Post script: The ultimate purpose of the utilisation of copy editing and generalised doctrines related to the aforementioned concept remain the continuous improvement of articles within Wikipedia; the statement that the Manual of Style remains "ignorable" except with regards to Good Articles and Featured Articles remains particularly erroneous, as the ultimate goal of copy editing remains the improvement of the quality of all articles to remain equivalent to the quality of articles within the aforementioned categories. SurenGrig07 (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

This is the list? Category:All articles needing copy edit? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 02:58, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

If you currently refer to the list upon which the articles which necessitate copy editing and concern India remain located, yes; the articles may primarily remain accessed within the South Asia individual category. SurenGrig07 (talk) 05:36, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Comments requested about 2 source(s)

Hello! Editors are requested to kindly share their views at Talk:Rajput#About the sources in section — Rajput lifestyle. There have been some editing to article Rajput and I have opened a section at its talk page regarding the sources added. One source is a retired Indian defense personnel and a search at the google scholar for citation index of the second source is not showing any number/hits. Thanks, Мастер Шторм (talk) 06:56, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Books by serving/retired Indian and Pakistani defense personnel on castes

Hello! Several of Indian and Pakistani serving and retired defense personnel also writes books on the topics like the Indian and Pakistani castes. Please note that such officers, though they have an education degree in history, should not be considered as WP:RS/WP:HISTRS for contentious and debatable topics like the castes of India and Pakistan. We need the books/articles from scholar academics who have/had done research for significant time on such subjects and published their work in reputed scholarly publications. Recently, I removed the books by 2 such authors, one from the Gurjar article [3] (Saikat K. Bose's an officer from the Indian Army) and another one (Mukund S. Naravane's a retired officer from the Indian Air Force) from Rajput [4] and Rajputization [5] article.

In future also, I think that I shall keep on removing such sources and replace them (wherever possible) with superior scholarly academic sources (books published in reputed scholarly publications and from scholar academics who are/were working for some significant time at academic positions at notable academic institutions/universities).

I humbly request the views of more experienced editors on this matter, as this section may be used for future reference regarding this matter. Thanks, Мастер Шторм (talk) 05:03, 3 October 2020 (UTC) (added a few words) Мастер Шторм (talk) 08:14, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

The initialisms "IFS" and "IFoS"

I have started a discussion at Talk:Indian Forest Service#Use of the "IFS" and "IFoS" initialisms in an attempt to reach consensus on the usage of the initialisms "IFS" and "IFoS", which are regularly contested. Your contributions on that talk page would be appreciated! ninety:one 23:47, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Movement Strategy - What Are Your Choices For Implementation

Hello distinguished WikiProject India friends,

The time has come to put Strategy into work and everyone's invited to participate.

The Movement Strategy Design Group and Support Team are inviting you to organize virtual meetings with your community and colleagues before the end of October. The aim is for you to decide what ideas from the Movement Strategy recommendations respond to your needs and will have an impact in the movement. The recommendations are available in different formats and in many languages. There are 10 awesome recommendations and close to 50 recommended changes and actions or initiatives. Not everything will be implemented. The aim of prioritization is to create an 18-month implementation plan to take some of the initiatives forward starting in 2021.

Regional and thematic platforms are great ways to prepare and share ideas. Prioritization is at the level of your group, affiliate, and community. Think local and relevant! Afterwards, we will come together in November to co-create the implementation plan. More information about November’s global events will be shared soon. For now and until the end of October, organize locally and share your priorities with us.

You can find guidance for the events, the simple reporting template, and other supporting materials here on Meta. You can share your results directly on Meta, by email, or by filling out this survey. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions or comments, strategy2030wikimedia.org

We will be hosting office hours to answer any questions you might have, Thursday October 1 at 14.00 UTC (Google Meet).

MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@MPourzaki (WMF): I read your post and the associated documentation and i still don't understand what this Movement Strategy actually is; there's a lot of PR speak and little specifics. Would you be able to explain to us in simple English, without buzzwords, how this might affect WikiProject India; and how we should engage with this process to benefit us as a WikiProject in the long run? Thanks, Zindor (talk) 17:02, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the ping Zindor. In short: don't miss out on bringing about change starting next year. Movement Strategy will be put into action in 2021 and we want to make sure that it's not just the largest projects and largest affiliates that benefit from it. We will start implementing different ideas from Movement Strategy in January and want to make sure everyone interested in change and growth is included. We have heard this lots, that strategy is high level, it can be jargony and difficult to connect to reality. Well, the time is really now to get involved and put it into action. There are 10 recommendations (sustainability, user experience, decision-making, resource allocation, capacity building, etc.) and each recommendation puts forward multiple ideas. We can't work on everything and definitely not at once. We are asking projects and affiliates to share their priorities with us - (1) what should be implemented in 2021; (2) are you interested in being a part of the implementation work; and (3) what resources would you need to do so. According to WikiProject India, what ideas in the recommendations can have an impact and address some of your immediate needs. The recommendations are very much set on the long-run, from now until 2030 - how to grow stronger as a project, how to diversify in people and content, and how to have a greater say in how decisions are made in the movement and resources are allocated. This could be things you are already doing where you could support others or things that you would like to do in 2021 to benefit in the long-run. There will be many local experiments where WikiProject India can be a strong partners. There will also be big decisions in the movement, such as allocation of resources and the creation of a Global Council. It's very important that as many people as possible are part of these discussions, especially those in parts of the world where the Wikimedia movement has a need to grow, such as South Asia. I hope this was helpful and lighter on buzzwords. Feel free to attend our office hour on Oct. 1. I would be more than happy to arrange a call as well if that would be preferred. Many thanks. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, MPourzaki, for your swift and detailed reply. I look forward, and I'm sure others here also do, to sharing ideas with you and your team regarding this. Kind regards, Zindor (talk) 21:03, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Ideas

So folks, does anyone have any ideas? Zindor (talk) 21:03, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I looked at the one page summary of the recommendations, which I felt was a little easier to understand than the post above. Just in terms of the recommendation regarding "managing internal knowledge" one thing that we could perhaps work on is standardizing templates that are specific to the Indian context. To take a couple of examples that I'm familiar with, there's a wide variety in Wiki articles on Indian case law (just see the variations in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala and T. S. R. Subramanian v. Union of India), and on a smaller scale, articles on legislation cite laws differently (some use the entire Act name + acronym, some mention the year it was passed but others don't, some include the number of the act and the legislative body - central or state, and others don't.) Some amount of consistency across Indian wikipedia in these and other fields is probably a good long-term goal, and one that contributes to the sustainability of the project in general. --Naushervan (talk) 05:00, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes that's a good idea, and we could collate relevant templates or links to them on a project page.

I had an idea a few years ago that someone could write a program that would automatically write stub Indian village articles, using census data. When initially created, village articles are often very standardised. If disambiguations were encountered, the program could either deal with them or leave it for us to manually do.

I see two ways of doing it: someone running a backend that would on-the-fly parse the census data and serve it to a bot, or all of it being created offline in the right format, a random sample checked by editors, then the data is moved onto the Wikipedia servers.

There's also the question about the value of having that many stubs, even though they would all qualify under geoland. Some might argue that it ranges into stats book territory. The bot would have to circumvent the normal NPP feed and be autopatrolled, so a serious amount of trust is needed.

Theres a new census soon, so that would tie in nicely. SD0001, how feasible does this sound? Zindor (talk) 16:03, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

It's feasible -- it's been done for US places in WP's early days (Rambot) and for species of bugs (Qbugbot). It isn't easy, or at least I don't have any experience writing such a bot/script. I think Aymatth2 and Encyclopædius also have been looking for such a script, though for some other country than India. (All bot creations are autopatrolled so that won't be a problem). – SD0001 (talk) 17:09, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I would be against generating stub articles. If basic start class entries can be coded with some decent info though I would support that. But it's problematic with countries like India and Pakistan which get a lot of traffic and a lot of spam collecting in the articles and most of the rural localities are off the radar and watchlists. There's at least 700,000 villages in India I think?. They already need a massive cleanup and improvement drive but very few people work on existing articles. What we really need is regular Indian contests, Destubathons etc focusing on existing content. I would rather a few hundred quality articles on every district of India rather than a database dump of hundreds of thousands.† Encyclopædius 17:17, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Ymblanter, thoughts?† Encyclopædius 17:22, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I understand very little in Indian topics, I have never been to the Indian subcontinent, but I know a bit about strategy and I participated in the planning of these events. Without going into detains, I would say that if we can solve all the issues as a community - they may be important issues, but if we know what to do and will just continue doing things, it is not worthwhile to raise the issues inn the context of the stratefy. However, if you need some help - help with the code from the developers, or some financial help - and the case can be made (and it looks to me it has been made above in this thread) that this help will advance these strategy priorities - then a case must be made at one of these events. I know there will be dedicated events for India, and they will be very soon. Mehrdad knows about them more than I know and can give some pointers, which people to contact. It looks like there will be no event in the first series specific for the English Wikipedia, but I still hope people will be able to organize themselves later, because there are things which we definitely need, and some of these things are specific for Wikipedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Encyclopædius makes a great point about maintaining 700,000 articles. I've seen village articles turned into community noticeboards, family messageboards, railway and bus timetables, pages about local villager ancestry. That's just the innocent stuff.

If we made a discrimination, and only included villages above a certain population, we would reduce the article numbers massively and increase the likelihood of finding usable content. I'll scout around and see if I can come up with a rough baseline figure.

This raises thoughts on sustainability. Automation, and perhaps even machine-learning (Cluebot NG?), are playing an ever greater role in maintaining Wikipedia.

I tried to run an assessment drive a few months ago, it wasn't successful and we all ran out of motivation fairly soon. I think that's what happens when using slow old school methods in today's world.

There was an assessment bar knocking around in 2014, i know I couldn't get it working back then, and there was talk a couple of years ago about getting it fixed but I'm not sure what became of that.

From a sustainability perspective, i feel it's important that we conciously strive to use automation where we can, and we should look at our rate of expansion and see if there's anything we can do to bolster ourselves for future growth.

Is there a bot for at least assessing stub and start class articles, and if so can we let it loose on our backlog?

A question is begging here, what's the point in assessing and tagging if we don't capitalise on it with action?

Drives and editathons have worked in the past, but has anyone else noticed that the amount of collaborative editing has nose-dived over the past 10 years. What happened to the sparkle and excitement?

The WMF could lend a hand with incentivisng editing. I know that at grassroots level in India, there have been instances where laptops have been given to budding editors.

While I'm not suggesting we should get laptops (although my screen is hanging off and the WiFi antenna is broken), rewarding our contributions with access to online developer courses and other training could be highly beneficial. Zindor (talk) 13:50, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Zindor. Yes exactly that, "beautiful village", lists of "famous" locals", bus tables etc. I think it was 639,000 villages or something like that. If the articles are going to be started eventually I support a bot to create them if there are created as close to start class as possible. But we need something to protect articles from local spammers some type of bot which picks up on words like "famous" and "beautiful" would be a start.† Encyclopædius 13:56, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Anand Jacob Verghese

Could some members of WP:INDIA take a look at Anand Jacob Verghese and assess it? Based on User talk:Elizabeth Verghese#Conflict of interest editing and all of the IPs and SPAs which have edited the article over the years, there might be some COI/PAID editing that needs to be cleaned up. There are some other issues as well, but it's not clear at least to me whether this person meets WP:PROF or WP:BIO. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:25, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: The page has been speedy deleted, but looking at the deleted revisions, there was certainly a COI involved. I think his claim to notability is borderline at best. There's a number of passing mentions in the news, and what looks like the reproduction of a couple of press releases. He is Chancelor of a University, but that seems to be the result of his being director of a corporate entity, and not a reflection of scholarship, and I see no evidence of scholarly work, and therefore no evidence that he passes WP:PROF. That said, the corporate entity in question seems substantially large, and one could make an argument for notability on those grounds. I would !vote "delete" at an AfD based on what I've found so far. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:09, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at this Vanamonde93. The article was deleted after I posted about it here, but thanks for further clarifying why. I was leaning towards sending it to AfD myself, but thought I'd get some other opinions first. --

Rejaul Karim Laskar

Does the intro/lede of Rejaul Karim Laskar require some sorting? DTM (talk) 15:37, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Surely not! Tayi Arajakate _Talk 02:23, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Rahul Gandhi as "pappu"

There is an ongoing discussion about whether Pappu should mention that the term is widely applied to Rahul Gandhi. More input would be useful!—Neil Shah-Quinn (talk) 06:48, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library database available - Taxmann

Hi - just a quick note that Taxmann is now available for access via The Wikipedia Library. They're making their case laws database available for use in research for Wikipedia articles. Let me know if you have any questions. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:51, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

P. J. Joseph

Could some members of WP:INDIA please take a look at P. J. Joseph? This is the article in the worst condition that I ever found on Wikipedia, and while I did my best to make the lead comprehensible (and even then there's a lot of room to improvement), I don't know what to do with the rest of the article. I don't know the basics of Indian politics to make a comprehensible text out of those random strings of text. Thank you. RetiredDuke (talk) 12:25, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Deletion of notable companies

Hello everyone, I am specifically concerned that a few notable Indian startups write articles in a "promotional manner" and the page gets deleted. It's important to have unbiased, factual content for easy study of the company/brand/person. I have recently created Urban_Company and would appreciate it if someone could review the same. Amishah78 (talk) 16:50, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Sharp contradiction between Old Malayalam and Middle Tamil articles

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Talk:Middle Tamil#Sharp contradiction between Middle Tamil and Old Malayalam articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:38, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Followup to "Surname problem for Keezhpattillam Viswajyothi"

(Link to original discussion) (Link to Wikispecies discussion)

Hello from Wikispecies again! Last time we asked only about the order of the names for this person (which of course was answered as "Viswajyothi Keezhpattillam"), but what I want to know is which name should she be indexed by? I've seen that in scientific publications where she is an author, her names are typically given as "Keezhpattillam Viswajyothi", and in citations of those publications her name is given as "Viswajyothi, K." (note: there was one article on ZooKeys that did the opposite, however; I suspect this was a mistake). Is it possible that this is how her name is meant to be cited, and her name was flipped around for convenience?

Apologies for not asking sooner, I've been busy with other things but this indexing problem has been at the back of my mind. Monster Iestyn (talk) 01:04, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

No answer after four days? Monster Iestyn (talk) 01:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Monster Iestyn. If surname is what you normally index by, then use Keezhpattillam, which is her last name at her Facebook profile and sounds like a place name rather than a given name. Zindor (talk) 12:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Well alright then, thank you. Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:50, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Paharis

Is anyone familiar with the Pahari people of Kashmir? Informed input will be very welcome at Talk:Pahari Speaking People#Article scope. – Uanfala (talk) 16:49, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Climate of India FAR

I have nominated Climate of India 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. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Hetvi Karia

This is a new article about a young entrepreneur from Mumbai. The references seem a bit duplicative and I'm not sure how reliable or independent they are. Because of that, I can't make a good determination of notability so I don't know whether to tag it with {{notability}} and send it to WP:Articles for deletion, move it to Draft:Hetvi Karia (if the criteria in WP:NPPDRAFT fit), or leave it where it is and copy-edit it and try to bring it up to 1500 words of prose so it can be nominated for an appearance in the WP:Did you know? section of Main page.

Courtesy ping to the author, Xsurajrajvardhamx. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:06, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi davidwr. Imo it's pure promo masquerading as legit content, and definitely Afd worthy. Might be nukable under WP:G11 but i'd get a second opinion on that, CSD isn't my area. I've seen this kind of stunt pulled by Indian 'social media influencers' before.

• The source about her being The Youngest Entrepeneur in India was written by her company, and such a generic claim would be unsupportable.
• The Quora source was a question asked by her media company.
• The infobox image is one from her instagram page and the commons entry doesn't provide a free licence or fair use rationale.
• The first paragraph of the Yahoo source is verbatim the same as the Medium source, so i suspect it's a paid article.

From a before search:

• The Deccan Herald reads like a paid article and doesn't use quotation marks for her.
• The Statesman reads like an advert.
• International Business Times is unreliable and the article reads like PR speak. Also includes a line that is verbatim present in the above Statesman source "the youngest female digital entrepreneur and the Women President of the South Mumbai Crime Prevention Department from Mumbai, India" and only slightly altered in the Deccan Herald.

She also lists all these sources in her instagram bio, which is further suggestive she paid for the articles, if the above dissection isn't enough lol. Kind regards, Zindor (talk) 18:51, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

@Zindor: Thanks, that was enough for me to start Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hetvi Karia. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:13, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Noticeboard discussion on reliability of Rajasthan Patrika

There is a noticeboard discussion on the reliability of Rajasthan Patrika. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Rajasthan Patrika. — Newslinger talk 08:02, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Manipur State Constitution Act 1947

There is an editing dispute occurring in the article and at the related talk page. I was asked to do something (apparently because I patrolled the article) but I know virtually nothing about the topic. If someone could have a look this could be much appreciated. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:30, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Requested move

There is a requested move at Talk:Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad that would benefit from your input. Please come and help! P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 22:59, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I need a notability check here

I'm on the verge of accepting draft:Karikku based on the sources (the draft does need some cleanup, that can be done post-acceptance).

BUT I'm not familiar enough with the quality of sources to know if they are truly reliable and independent enough to "count."

Can someone familiar with the online Indian newspapers do a quick check of the sources for me?

Also, if you happen to know that this group is flat-out-no-questions-asked notable or for that matter not notable, please let me know. If you are an AFC reviewer please go ahead and accept or reject it if you know for sure it's "notable" or "not notable."

Courtesy ping to the primary author, Atlantis77177, so he knows about this conversation. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:54, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Just passing so thought i'd comment.

Times of India (TOI) is potentially unreliable for this kind of thing; they're known to have on some occasions disguised paid articles as actual coverage. I saw a case of that recently too. It's problematic because they're one of the major Indian papers and cover notable subjects. So trust your gut with the TOI. The Hindu is considered reliable; Nikil Prahad (a cast member of Karikku channel) might have connections with the paper because they published an article he wrote. That being said The Hindu was honest enough to name him as the author, which supports their reliability greatly. Afaik the New Indian Express is an RS; side-note it's a different paper (but previously related) to the also reliable Indian Express. The regional Mathrubhumi rings a bell (in a good way) but i'm not overly familiar with it, and not familiar with a couple other sources presented (like Republic World).

I've read the previous deletion discussions re Karikka and don't see those concerns present in this draft. I can't give the 'yes' you're after, but i can say i wouldn't be rejecting the submission either as there's promising indications. Hopefully someone else here can provide a better insight, sorry i can't be of more help. Zindor (talk) 20:49, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I am repeating my comments at AFC here. As the creator of the previous (deleted) version of the article on this YouTube channel, I would definitely suggest approving the article. The subject of the article acquires notability per WP:N as it is the recipient of a major local award (Mazhavil Manorama Award). Regarding the references, it is quite unlikely that we would find supporting references about entertainment media in academic texts, as such, we may have to depend on local press and media, more so that this article is on a regional language channel. I am a Wikipedian with experience spanning over 16 years during which I made more than 116,000 edits and created over 1500 articles and a native of Kerala, I can vouch for its popularity in Malayalam speaking world, especially in this state which is a densely populated one with 35 million people, which is more than the population of the Netherlands and Belgium put together. As an aside, I would also suggest comparing this channel with such YouTube channels as Red Letter Media and The Viral Fever which have similar ratings (as recorded by internet analytical tools); both these channels have C-Class articles on them.--jojo@nthony (talk) 07:25, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• [6]
• [7]
• [8]
• [9]
• [10]
• [11]
• [12]
• [13]

I am adding above a few references that appeared in Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi, two of the most circulated dailies in Kerala as well as The Hindu, one of the most respected dailies in India; these references, I believe, support the argument that the channel is notable.--jojo@nthony (talk) 07:39, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Still looking for input from un-WP:Involved editors. @Tachs: (jojo@nthony), @Atlantis77177: While your input is valuable, it's obviously biased. Zindor's input is helpful but not definitive. Anyone else who isn't "involved" but who knows enough to reply have any input? Also, a review of the references Tachs (jojo@nothny) gave above from a "quality/reliability/independent" perspective will be helpful too. The goal is to approve the draft if it won't wind up going straight to AFD, then improve it, OR reject the draft if it will likely go straight to AFD if approved. Right now, I simply don't have enough information to decide. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:34, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

@Davidwr: Thanks, I would only say that while I may be WP:Involved, I am not biased as I do not have any involvement with this YouTube channel. It so happened that my attention came to this channel and I thought (like many others earlier), they deserve an article in Wikipedia. I got involved in this discussion only on request from the creator of this draft. My experience of a decade and a half here has taught me that if the subject of an article deserves space in Wikipedia, it is bound to happen sooner or later. Thanks for your efforts here. --jojo@nthony (talk) 05:56, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

@Tachs (jojo@nthony) Thanks for the reply. I assume "deserves" is shorthand for "meets WP:Notability."

Sidebar for new editors who may be reading this: See User:Davidwr/No topic deserves to be in Wikipedia (permalink). Tachs/jojo@nthony, this is not directed at you, you've been around long enough you know all about notability already. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:11, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Mathrubhumi and Malayala Manorama are generally reliable sources, both being papers of record in the Malayalam-speaking community. I have not looked in the particular article though.

Sidenote: that essay is pretty much waffle. The "narrow exceptions" you talk about are actually a broad category of topics comprising places of dwelling, species, degree-awarding institutions, railway stations, ranking government and military officers, impactful academics – all of which are usually considered notable even in absence of significant coverage. – SD0001 (talk) 16:13, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Olympians too Zindor (talk) 17:21, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

it is that surprising Karikku is not having an article. It is well covered in Malayalam media at different point of times -- naveenpf (talk) 13:01, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

Everyone, thank you for the input. It wasn't a slam-dunk, but I have accepted the page.

Karikku · ( talk | logs | history | links | watch | afd | afd2 | afd3 ) · [revisions]

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:02, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Eyes needed on Gurdan Saini

There is some recent sock-puppetry going on at Gurdan Saini. I partially-reverted a non-logged-in-editor's restoration of material I previously removed due to sock-puppetry.

If the edits by the socks are "good" edits, that is, if they are accurate and well-sourced, established editors are encouraged to restore the content. If they are accurate and not well-sourced, as might be the case with my most recent reversion of a non-sourced edit, established editors are encouraged to find sources and restore.

Established editors interested in this topic are encouraged to add it to their watchlist. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:00, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Indian media that fall for fake news

ANI, Yahoo News, News18, Patrika, News Nation, Amar Ujala, Aaj Tak, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Dainik Jagran and Zee News. [14] -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:46, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Help with 2020 Assam gas and oil leak

Requesting help again with improving 2020 Assam gas and oil leak, especially with finding appropriate pictures for the article. I'm trying to get it to GA status, and would appreciate any inputs. Thanks. Naushervan (talk) 10:27, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Udal of Mahoba

Hi, I'm Sumit banaphar. Recently I have been trying to make changes in Udal of Mahoba by participate on the talk page , so i want to ask did Aalha Khand consider reliable source for making changes.

Book:- Aalha Khand [15]

Author:- Dr. Asha Gupt (Dr. Asha Gupt is Doctor of literature in Hindi language in Bhagalpur Hindi University )

Publisher:- Vani Prakashan

Page number:-;19

The article Udal of Mahoba currently includes the text

They were of mixed Ahir and Rajput descent and belonged to the Banaphar clan.

And I want to change it to

"They were of Rajput descent and belonged to the Banaphar clan of Rajputs"

Sumit banaphar (talk) 08:29, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Jadeja

There is a content dispute going on at this article at the moment. I would be grateful if someone with better knowledge of the issues involved can have a look at this and see if they can work out what should be there. noq (talk) 11:35, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

RSN discussion on reliability of Republic TV

There is an ongoing discussion on the reliable sources noticeboard regarding Republic TV. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Republic TV. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 16:44, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Brahmin Gotras Article

Hi there, I have added a significant amount of new information to the Brahmin Gotras article and have linked it to the India Wikiproject. I am kindly requesting a reassessment of my article. Thanking everyone in advanced.TheHumanEncyclopaedia (talk) 14:06, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

 Done. Zindor (talk) 16:49, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Republic TV

Please visit [16] to join the discussion on the reliability of Republic TV. I have already suggested that it is politically unreliable, but an argument continues for the reliability in non-political matters. Please oin the discussion with your valuable comments. Thank you.--Atlantis77177 (talk) 05:20, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Advanced Landing Grounds

Happy Diwali to all editors!

The Template:Indian Air Force bases lists Advanced Landing Grounds (ALGs) as if they are air bases. Is this correct? My impression has been that ALGs are mainly meant for transportation of troops. That is far cry from being an "air base". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:59, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Through the Looking Class

A brilliant article in the Washington Post on how the western media would have covered the American election, had it been some other country.

• Karen Attiah, How Western media would cover the U.S. election if it happened in another country, The Washington Post, 14 November 2020.

The United States, the former British colony already rocked this year by ethnic conflict and mass protests over extrajudicial killings by police, may finally have a new leader after weeks of political turmoil following a disputed presidential election....

I suppose this gives us a grammar to parse the western media reports the next time we have to use them for covering Indian events. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Indian regions issue

I have found that regions of India, excluding East India, Northeast India and South India, are loosely defined, and it depends on whom you ask or follow. Wikimedia Commons use Zonal Councils as regions, while Wikipedia mimics it with including Uttarakhand and UP into North India. Wikipedia's definitions of Indian regions are nothing more than a original research. Any thoughts? --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 12:47, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

These aren't "Wikipedia's definitions" - as you say these "are loosely defined, and it depends on whom you ask or follow". That's to say, you can easily reference a range of definitions, and the articles should. Some vary more than others. So no OR. I don't think we should just tie ourselves to the new Zonal Councils in articles; these may well change or be abolished before long. What many of the articles probably need is more on the diversity of definitions, especially in the past, with more references. This should probably mostly be in a separate section after the lead. I tried to do this with Central India, which I find one of the most slippery of these terms. I don't think these issues are especially confined to India btw, many countries have friction between historical divisions and modern administrative groupings. I don't know why you pick on Northeast India - this seems one of the more clear-cut cases, apart from Sikkim being stuck on later. Johnbod (talk) 13:32, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

You are quite misunderstanding my statement. I am saying that WP use an arbitary definition of Indian regions (may not be used by Indian govt.) in categories, project pages, etc. while saying in the respective articles that they are "loosely defined". --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:47, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't think so. They are indeed loosely defined overall, so imprecision follows in categories etc. As far as I can see only Category:North India, + South and North-East have their own main categories. What the Indian government currently uses is rather beside the point. The book A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar (1955) may or may not use the current official definition, but surely belongs in the category regardless? Johnbod (talk) 18:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Republic TV

A dicussion is going about the reliability of Republic TV in non-political matters. Please click here to join the discussion. Thank you--Atlantis77177 (talk) 16:57, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Rashmika Mandana - "National Crush of India 2020"

I try to avoid bringing these trivial issues to this noticeboard, because I know that a lot of you prefer working on loftier matters, but it's difficult for me to get attention drawn to articles about Indian entertainment subjects through other means.

A number of outlets have asserted that Google has bestowed actress Rashmika Mandanna with the title "National Crush of India 2020", which some editors have added several times to the article. There is a discussion open at Talk:Rashmika Mandanna. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:47, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:INDICSCRIPT for non-Indian articles

Does anyone request for comment about WP:INDICSCRIPTS were both used in Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi articles? which had been restricted for India-related topics since 2017. --122.2.10.69 (talk) 05:44, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

We all have a consensus that Indic scripts (including my native Bengali script) should be avoided in Wikipedia as much as possible, since there can be multiple spellings for the same name (कश्मीर and काश्मीर are plausible Devanagari renderings of Kashmir, কলকাতা and কোলকাতা are plausible Bengali renderings of Kolkata etc.). --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 18:14, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

My interpretation of the guideline is that scripts are not prevented in the body of the article, just the lede and infobox. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Quoting the WP:INDICSCRIPT:

One reason why Indian scripts are avoided is because often there are too many different languages with their own native script, each of which can be original names for a topic. Additionally, there are too often problems with verifiability of the accuracy of the non-English spelling. A third reason is frequent disagreements over which native scripts to include; this led to a resolution to avoid all of them.

If these are the reasons behind the avoidance of Indic scripts, why are their exceptions in other parts of the article? This means, we can add "जम्मू और कश्मीर" when we mention "Jammu and Kashmir" (state or union territory) for the first time in non-lead sections of an article. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 06:00, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

That is mainly because the people who like to stuff the lead with their favorite script are usually driven by WP:Lead fixation. They have not much motivation or stamina to do so in a later section. For that reason, there is no WP:Later section fixation.  :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:56, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

The problem at WT:INDIA

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not the CIA Factbook or the Manorama Yearbook, directing our attention chiefly to the latest information. Please do pay attention to WP's encyclopedic content. See: Talk:British_India#How_does_10_supports_by_editors_who_know_nothing_about_Indian_history_and_five_opposes_by_editors_who_do_become_a_consensus_to_move? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:31, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

The move is supported by consensus. The WP:COMMONNAME is "British India". It makes no sense to have an article about the provinces of British India without having an article on British India itself. Discussing the provinces of British India in an article about British India is the best solution and together we have reached that goal. LearnIndology (talk) 15:02, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

• Further to this, the move has now been re-closed as "no consensus", which I think is correct. I have started a discussion at Talk:Presidencies_and_provinces_of_British_India#After_the_new_move_close_(as_no_consensus) as there is clearly unhappiness with some of the titles and redirects in this area: British India, British Raj British rule in India, British Indian Empire and maybe more. I've floated some thoughts and proposals as a basis for discussion. All comments welcome. Johnbod (talk) 18:06, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

ZEE5 vs Zee5

Anyone have any thoughts on whether the correct article title for the ZEE5 network should be at ZEE5 or Zee5? Per WP:TITLETM it should maybe be Zee5, but a very half-assed search at Google News for "Zee5" -site:zee5.com tended to yield a slightly higher usage (maybe 20 to 13 over 5 pages) for the ZEE5 uppercase corporate branding. However, a lot of those hits came from one source, GQ India, so I'm still not 100% convinced. Thoughts? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:02, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Koli languages

Hi! The disambiguation page Koli language currently ranks first on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links#November 2020, with 13 unintended links to it. Apparently, Koli can refer to three different but very closely related languages spoken in India and Pakistan, which makes it very difficult to find out which one is being referred to. It would be greatly appreciated if someone with knowledge about these languages could take a look at this! The same goes for Indian medicine, which is second on the list. Lennart97 (talk) 23:07, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

It's a mistake to assume that nothing should ever link to a disam page. I wouldn't worry. Johnbod (talk) 18:58, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I know that very well, and I'm not worrying; but when a DABlink is intentional, that should be made clear by explicitly linking it to "X (disambiguation)" (as explained at WP:DPL). If this is not done, the link will keep being included in the DPL reports and different editors will forever be wasting their time trying to figure out what the intended destination is, as is now the case with Koli language. That's why I raised the issue here. Lennart97 (talk) 22:55, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Proposed changel that would affect FTWZ

(Neutrally worded announcement made by a non-neutral party)

There are two proposals that would affect eligibility to be listed in FTWZ#List of Free Trade Zones being discussed at Talk:FTWZ#"List of Free Trade Zones" proposed new requirements. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:46, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Created a generic infobox template for administering territories of Kashmir

In order to fortify our consensus from vandals, I have created {{Infobox Kashmir territory}} as a generic infobox template for administering territories of Kashmir. It is just a wrapper of {{Infobox settlement}} with following changes:

• You cannot change the CIA map of Kashmir without editing the main template. The CIA map should not be superseded by alternatives per consensus.
• You should have to add an indefinite article on the "type" parameter in order to make the infobox subheader rendering something like "region administered by Foo as a bar". If the territory is part of another territory, then use the parameter to render something like "region administered by Foo as part of Bar". --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 18:40, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Your version here did not have any "administered by..." clause. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:26, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Will copy it in my sandbox to see some oddities of the infobox. My intention was to fortify our consensus from vandals, which is set in stone like a rule since 2019. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:08, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3 and Fowler&fowler: I have fixed the issues with the template raised by you. See User:Soumya-8974/sandbox for my proposed infobox of AJK. I shall create a doc page with enough time. Always remember that revert only when necessary. Continiously reverting changes in Kashmir-related articles by editors make Wikipedia editing unpleasent. Be kind. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 14:08, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Lists of educational institutes in town/city articles

Is it desirable to catalogue a long list of non-notable (without articles) educational institutes like in city/town/village articles like this based on sources like these or the institute's own website?- Fylindfotberserk (talk) 08:50, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

No, not really. It's a question of weight and scope, and less so Wikipedia being not a directory. If the schools are notable and/or related to the town in an important and relevant way, then inclusion could be arguable; but otherwise listing the schools is of no encyclopedic value to our readers. They are coming to the article to get a picture of the subject, minutiae such as the names of schools are irrelevant. I hope that answers you question. Kind regards, Zindor (talk) 18:31, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your inputs Zindor. I'd like to ping @Ravensfire, Kautilya3, Arjayay, RegentsPark, and Usernamekiran: for suggestions as well. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 13:28, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

There is a policy somewhere that says that all "degree-granting institutions" are taken to be notable. It is not clear to me whether affiliated colleges would qualify, but I think that in rural areas even affiliated colleges can be a big deal. But schools should not be listed unless especially notable. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:46, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Kautilya3 it's the AfD consensus for India-related articles, and treated like policy here, but afaik it isn't written down because it contradicts WP:NSCHOOLS. Regards, Zindor (talk) 17:56, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

• yeah, it's a commonly recurring issue with Indian articles. There are two problems. One is like the article provided above, Rajpur Sonarpur#Education. But that's the simpler problem. The other problem is standalone articles of non-notable degree colleges. Even if we take them to AfD, they rarely get deleted. Regarding the first problem, if we follow logic (not being wikilawyer), then we can give just one line to colleges/schools, if they already have an article. Other institutes can be grouped in one sentence. "The town also has A, B, C, D, and E." When I was new on Wikipedia, and trying to work on Parbhani, lots of IPs, and new users used to add schools/colleges to the article. It was a mess. I had seen similar articles, and decided to create List of educational institutions in Parbhani district. Since then, I was able to keep the city's article tidy. But now that doesn't seem like a good idea, or long term solution. I think we should really come up with some sort of guideline, at least for wikiproject India. —usernamekiran (talk) 06:48, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I take a fairly strict line on unsourced entries without articles in school/college lists:- new additions I delete on sight - if there are multiple old entries, I tend to split them from the sourced entries, tag them with "Clean up list" and delete them after say 3 months, unless they cite refs showing detailed, independent, coverage - sufficient to pass WP:42 - not the institute's own website or a directory entry.
Although WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is about deletion of articles, not inclusion in lists; I think it is indicative:- "Most independently accredited degree-awarding institutions have enough coverage to be notable" and "At one time, secondary schools were assumed notable unless sources could not be found to prove existence" but now "secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist, and are still subject to WP:N and WP:ORG" - Arjayay (talk) 12:39, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I believe non-notable educational institutions, especially schools, should not be included. I've seen many 4-room schools and most of them have websites. Totally not-notable as per WP:NSCHOOL. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 11:24, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Since most people here seems to be in support of removal, I believe I should remove these kind of entries from the list. Anyone else want to weigh in? - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 08:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Started removing it as per the above policies. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 14:52, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

New editor may need help

New editor Karnisenabharat (talk · contribs) may need a Wiki-welcome. He may also need help with English help understanding what the English Wikipedia is for and what it is not for.

As best I can tell from his edit history, user page, and current mostly-blanked user talk page, he may think that Wikipedia is like social media or a web site. I don't read the language he is using, but Google translate was somewhat helpful. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:44, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

davidwr, i get the feeling they are just using the platform for promotional means and are not here. They've seemingly ignored your advice, and based on their userspace contribs they're proficient enough with wikitext to make constructive edits if they were so inclined. I'll try and give them some advice, but I can see where this is probably headed. Zindor (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:02, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

davidwr I've discovered there's been recent attempts by at least one other user to create drafts on the same subject, I have a feeling perhaps the Karni Sena organisation has split. I'm tempted to take the content I moved and put it in a sub-page of the user instead, leaving the draft title free for a game of wacka-a-mole-salt. Based on current information it doesn't look like a viable draft subject or content, and Id rather it occupied a less-useful space. Thoughts? Zindor (talk) 19:28, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

A user sub-page sounds good to me. If you do, zap the leftover redirect please. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:01, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

 Done Moved and zapped. Zindor (talk) 20:24, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

New FAR for Karnataka

I have nominated Karnataka 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. RetiredDuke (talk) 12:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Really? And from where @RetiredDuke: did you get that gumption? Do you know anything about Karnataka, Mysore, South India, the Deccan? Have you made any contributions to those topics? Or are you just another Wikilawyer par excellence of the FAC criteria descending upon the green fields of Karnataka with your fellow locusts? Bogus FAR attempt. To be anathematized. Especially shameful given the abysmally third-rate articles that are passing FAC these days. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:27, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Puducherry taluk

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Puducherry taluk. Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 14:00, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Ladakh

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Ladakh. Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 18:29, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion about article "Kashmir"

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Kashmir#Infobox Kashmir territory, which is about an article that is within the scope of this WikiProject. Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:07, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Khes

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Khes. This article and its primary author could use some help. The topic appears at least marginally encyclopedic, but the main editor (not a native English speaker) seems to have trouble understanding the core content policies, parsing the exact meaning of the sources and citing them accurately (may have even contradicted them in a few places). As I've suggested on the talk page, there are probably non-English sources that are good for this (perhaps already listed in non-English articles at South Asian-languages Wikipedias that haven't been linked to this article yet). I already did a cleanup pass on the page, last night, to make it more comprehensible, but there are sourcing issues I can't really deal with. I'll notify WT:PAKISTAN, too, since this topic is kind of a pan-Punjab thing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:57, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Indian subcontinent

There is a discussion on the talk page about a disputed sentence. Is it possible for members of this project to make a comment there? Aditya^{(✉ • ⚒)} 03:05, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Rose.Nandha - Rettai Roja

Hi all, I know that this is a long-shot, but can anyone please help me to understand these three edits[17][18][19] where Nandha Kumar becomes "Rose.Nandha Kumar"? I understand that in one of the edit summaries, the user wrote "his name is rose. nandha kumar see the serial", but I'm perplexed as to: 1) What Rose is short for, and why we would use a full stop. If someone is named Rosemary, but goes by Rose, the latter is what we'd typically write. We typically only use a period if it's something unpronounceable or odd like "Geo." for "George" or "Thos." for Thomas or "Md." for "Muhammed". 2) Why this person has on three occasions made it "Rose.Nandha" as if somehow in English we ever use a full-stop in the middle of something without a space. Am I overthinking this? Is this a unique cultural twist that I am suddenly becoming aware of? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:07, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Flag Day of India on December 7th

Hello. Can someone familiar with Armed Forces Flag Day help with improving the referencing in this wikiarticle, please? A link to this wikipage is scheduled to appear in the On This Day section on MainPage tomorrow (UTC). It was already pointed out at WP:ERRORS that "around half of it is unreferenced". Please help. Thanks in advance. --PFHLai (talk) 17:14, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Bengali cuisine, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 7 December 2020 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Chhena cheese

Is it possible for this article to be increased from stub status? https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Chhena — Preceding unsigned comment added by Platypusrock (talk • contribs) 02:41, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

New GA nomination

Hi members, I have expanded the article Mahadevi Varma with the help of hi:महादेवी वर्मा and have nominated it for WP:GAN. Thank you. — Amkgp 💬 04:41, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I have informed at the more specific group Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Green. Thank you — Amkgp 💬 06:27, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Love jihad law(s)

This is not a formal renaming discussion or an official move request. I just wanted some opinions related to Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020 and how the common name of the article is undoubtedly "Love Jihad Law" and a renaming could be considered seriously?

• Some background: UP CM Yogi said he would bring in a Love Jihad law on 31 October 2020.
• Laws Against 'Love Jihad' Are Yet Another Serious Attack on India's Once Secular Democracy (TIME, 30 November 2020)
• Apex court needs to strike down ‘love jihad’ laws (TOI, 6 December 2020)
• India police stop interfaith marriage citing ‘love jihad’ law (Aljazeera, 4 December 2020)
• Protest against proposed ‘Love Jihad’ law (The Hindu, 1 December 2020)
• Love jihad: The Indian law threatening interfaith love (BBC, 7 December 2020)
• In UP, ‘love jihad’ has two faces: man jailed in one case, woman gets police escort in other (Indian Express, 8 December 2020)
• As Karnataka Mulls 'Love Jihad' Law, HC Says Adult's Right to Marry Person of Choice 'Fundamental' (The Wire, 7 December 2020)
• Public discourse surrounding 'love jihad' misses one crucial element: Criminalisation of Muslim men (Firstpost, 8 December 2020)
• Not Ram Mandir, the ‘love jihad’ laws are the foundation of Hindu Rashtra (ThePrint, 23 November 2020))
• UP law on love jihad seeks to divide communities (New Indian Express, 30 November 2020)
• there are lots of these articles which refer to the "love jihad law" and the numbers are growing...

DTM (talk) 14:23, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

 Comment: While Love Jihad Law might be a popular pseudonym for the ordinance, i strongly Disagree that the article be renamed for the same, reasons being:-

1. Love jihad has been primarily associated with forced conversions and marriages between two religious groups only whereas the ordinance encompasses all such cases irrespective of the religions involved.
2. The ordinance is only restricted to the state of Uttar pradesh and has not become a law yet.
3. Majority of the sources you have mentioned above are Op-eds and Editorials which according to WP:RSEDITORIAL "are rarely reliable for statements of fact" and thus, shouldn't be used to support the same.

I think, it's better to leave the article dealing with the ordinance as it is, renaming it may also be a violation of WP:NPOV and there's really no need for something like this when love jihad has it's own article. Cheers! AnM2002 (talk) 16:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

• Comment - Wow, great idea DiplomatTesterMan! I haven't noticed the term till now, but it brilliantly captures what is going on. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:25, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Should inactive workgroups be listed separately?

I heard that WP:WikiProject Indian maps is inactive, and I have decided to categorise it under "inactive workgroups". But should we list inactive workgroups separately? --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:54, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

What is Kashmiri people?

In Wikipedia, "Kashmiri people" has two definitions:

1. An ethnic group lives in Kashmir Valley.
2. A group of people live in the greater Kashmir region which was a princely stated ruled by Dogras.

However, the article Kashmiris deal with the first definition and neglect the other, while its main category Category:Kashmiri people does the opposite. We should be consistent in this case. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 14:07, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Kashmiris is a POV fork whose lead I have just restored to NPOV status. Examine how much distortion I had to remove. Its "history" will need to be removed in its entirety. History by a previous consensus belongs only to the main page of the region, i.e. Kashmir; but that has not stopped people from inserting their pet POV into all sorts of related pages, such as this. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Soumya-8974, I have created a Category:People of Kashmir region and moved some stuff from Category:Kashmiri people. Please feel free to move more if needed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:00, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Devadasi

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Devadasi § RfC: Should article reference reports of sexual exploitation and prostitution in the modern day. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 07:20, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Mumbai Mirror

Would someone please check this article on Mumbai Mirror, which has I believe has been expanded recently with an opinionated point of view. I tried editing it out but was constantly reverted. Would someone mind reviewing it. I am pinging few active members to look into it @Kautilya3 @Soumya-8974 ——- defcon5 (talk) 05:12, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

A question regarding Indian-language Wikipedias

I want to create some Indian maps in Bengali, and I have a question regarding this and other Indian languages. I use NPOV maps in English Wikipedia as much as possible, but should I use Indian POV maps or NPOV maps in Indian-language Wikipedias? If we use NPOV maps there, we will be hearing complains from Indians for not including the entire Kashmir region in India à la File:2019 Political Map of India.jpg. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 09:13, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Different Wikipedias have different policies, independent from the English Wikipedia. But from a cursory look at the different language versions of India page, it seems like most of them use the "neutral" version of maps. The Bengali Wikipedia has both Indian and Bangladeshi members, and they too use the "neutral" maps. regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 09:34, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Help needed: Kuru (mythology)

This page is a one-sentence stub with no links to other articles. It certainly seems to be related to Hindu mythology, but other than that, it's very unclear what this is about. It doesn't help that 'Agnidhara' doesn't seem to be the name of a person or deity, or that the only Google hit for 'Srinavagan range' is this article itself - is this article even legitimate? Could someone take a look at it? Lennart97 (talk) 00:24, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The author of this article is currently under copyright investigation ChunnuBhai (talk) 13:48, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

This was the article before it was hijacked to its present form. The undiscussed move should be reverted and the original content restored. I'd do it myself, but I'm quite confused on what's what in this mess, so will do the janitorial work if someone can clean up the content to reflect how it was for a long time. —SpacemanSpiff 14:15, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• This is already at Characters_in_the_Mahabharata#Kuru, merged from King Kuru in this edit. I'm now restoring the original content of this article via a move revert. @Lennart97: —SpacemanSpiff 14:26, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@SpacemanSpiff: Thank you very much! I didn't realise the page used to be about something different altogether. I've added a hatnote to avoid confusion with the Mahabharata character. Lennart97 (talk) 18:17, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Punjabi speaker?

Hi! I was wondering if anyone fluent in Punjabi would be willing to reach out to Gurmeet singh bai. They posted an article entirely in Punjabi to AfC, User:Gurmeet singh bai/sandbox. The translated version of the draft (which looks to be about a politician), along with this edit, gives off the impression that they really do want to help but may need additional assistance or if there is too steep of a language barrier, to be pointed in the direction of the Punjabi Wikipedia. (Linking since I did tag them here.) I just wanted to make sure that someone reaches out since if they are interested in editing the Punjabi Wikipedia, there's a lot there that they could do. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:48, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• @GSS: is a Punjabi speaker who is active. —SpacemanSpiff 13:43, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the ping SpacemanSpiff. @Tokyogirl79: I have left them a welcome message in Punjabi and asked them to use my talk page if they need any help. GSS ^💬 16:53, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
• Thank you so much!!! ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:52, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Someone look

Is the information I have contributed to the Freedom of the press in India all right. I don't trust HalfdanRagnarsson at all any more because he is deliberately deceiving me. Immortal Lion (talk) 18:44, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

It is merely a matter of WP:POLICY that I am following. I have given an explanation on the user's talk page. Of course, if I made a mistake that someone here alerts me to, then he is welcome to reinsert it. HalfdanRagnarsson (talk) 02:40, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

 Comment:After going through the edits and corresponding 'edit summaries' made by Immortal Lion, I think the editor should go through the Wikipedia policies as @HalfdanRagnarsson: suggested before making such ambiguous additions. You seem to have a particular POV on the subject and thus, should build consensus before making edits.Cheers! AnM2002 (talk) 09:47, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Category:Administrative divisions of India by state or state or union territory has been nominated for renaming to Category:Subdivisions of India by state or union territory

Category:Administrative divisions of India by state or state or union territory has been nominated for renaming to Category:Subdivisions of India by state or union territory. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Place Clichy (talk) 17:45, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Category:Administrative divisions of India by city has been nominated for renaming to Category:Subdivisions of cities in India

Category:Administrative divisions of India by city has been nominated for renaming to Category:Subdivisions of cities in India. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Place Clichy (talk) 17:45, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Indian films under attack

It doesn't seem like anybody can be bothered to save content anymore but India is going to lose thousands upon thousands of articles like this!!† Encyclopædius 13:45, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't even know what to say about that. Could you explain what you're trying to do there, Kolma8? Tayi Arajakate _Talk 16:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tayi Arajakate:, I am not sure about "thousands upon thousands of articles", but to answer your question I am trying to clean up WP from articles like this Kanakachilanka_(1990_film) or like Vrindavanam_(2006_film) or like Veeralipattu_(1990_film). There are too many film articles that come a mile away from meeting WP:NFILM and WP:GNG and go against WP:NOTCATALOG. What is yours and Encyclopædius's specific concern? Thank you for pinging me and I will appreciate any constructive feedback. Kolma8 (talk) 22:32, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

My concern is that this will likely result in the deletion of a number of articles on the basis of the state of the articles rather than the notability of the subject. Thousands is an exaggeration but by my count you've prodded about 40 Indian film articles in a single day. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 11:21, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

40 in one day, that's 14,600 if done for a year, I said "going to lose thousands" if he consistently keeps it up. I can see why kolma wants to nuke them all, but the problem is most older Indian films have poor coverage online.† Encyclopædius 12:07, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Regional films would have even worse coverage. May be someone would add atleast cast and plot section sometime. 182.77.15.75 (talk) 13:27, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Abuse of sources

Please opine about which of the versions between A and B are better at Talk:Torwali_people#Issues.

Also, I and Uanfala have allegations about dubious use of sources and I would like to know whether I (and he) are correct or wrong. TrangaBellam (talk) 16:18, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't call that "abuse". I believe it's just inadvertent misrepresentation of sources. I've seen a lot of that, frankly. It must have happened to others as well? Like, you see some article text and the only way you could imagine it would have been written is if the author had typed a search phrase on Google Books and then written the whole thing based on the snippets from the first page of results. – Uanfala (talk) 18:13, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

India offended by our maps

Somebody cited this news article today: India orders Wikipedia to delete map that shows Aksai Chin in China.

I don't know the precise details, but the offending maps seem to be in c:Category:Bilateral maps of India. The parallel c:Category:Bilateral maps of China and c:Category:Bilateral maps of Pakistan also have similar problems. There are no dotted lines around disputed regions, basically.

Can somebody get in touch with Wikimedia to find out what their plan is for fixing them? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:31, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I handled a few cases at WP:RFPP and noticed Bhutan–India relations which had an edit war regarding a map related to this issue. In that case, the map is generated by {{Infobox bilateral relations|Indo-Bhutanese|India|Bhutan}} using {{Infobox bilateral relations}}. Talk:Bhutan–India relations has some excited commentary including a link to a Twitter page which I haven't looked at, see "coordinated from off-wiki". Why would Wikimedia have a plan to fix maps? Given sufficient reason, the WMF might delete maps, at least temporarily, but I don't imagine they would "fix" them. Johnuniq (talk) 09:59, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I can't imagine what sufficient reason there could possibly be to delete from Wikimedia Commons a map the creator had uploaded under a free license. Certainly not simply because some people/entities find it politically offensive. The editors at a particular article might choose not to use that map, but that's handled at the article talk. I can't imagine WMF trying to interfere with that, either, even in the event some government official somewhere asked or "ordered" them to. This looks like some minor politician wanted to get their name in the paper. —valereee (talk) 10:57, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

According to the media at least, this is coming from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. They are attributing it to "sources" which just means that it is a leak and not a publicised official position. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 11:25, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Pretty sure Wikimedia doesn't make those maps or fixes them. They seem to be derived from the same template map which only show the de facto borders and appears to have existed since at least 2008. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 10:06, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

As per my very recent discussion with the concerned Ministry, no official order or press release has been issued in the matter to WMF. The article seems an inspired leak. It has not yet escalated to the level of threats or censorship by Govt of India. If we all respect WP:CIVIL, as we must, this can be handled very well by us internally within the community. The issue is not only with this map or article but has much wider implications requiring us to proceed cautiously to achieve wide consensus across regular Indian, Pakistani and Chinese topic editors. Aghore (talk) 10:07, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Aghore, expect more such attacks on Wikipedia. People who have founded , or work at OpIndia are gathering all such issues and will keep on petitioning the govt, organising such leaks to attack Wikipedia. Basically the idea is to deligitimise use of wikipedia in India, and in due course of time, prop up an admin controlled wikipedia atlernative. ChunnuBhai (talk) 06:51, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

The map should have been replaced by a more acceptable alternative (already suggested in the talk page discussion) the map attached there has been used on many articles previously and would have solved the issue being discussed. AnM2002 (talk) 10:12, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I concur with what @Aghore: has said. Making this GoI Vs Wikipedia/Freedom of expression etc isn't going to help. AnM2002 (talk) 10:15, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

This [20] is the map which was suggested during the talk page discussion. I am of the opinion that this map might be acceptable to all parties involved. AnM2002 (talk) 10:22, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The problem is the data-set from which these user generated maps are constructed. They don't comply with India's map laws. It is far better to wait and see what WMF intends first based on past precedents like Turkey or Censorship of Wikipedia. Aghore (talk) 10:33, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• I am not sure why this is even being discussed. We have plenty of territorial claims, and the standard practice is to show disputed territories (claimeed by one country but de-facto administered by another country) in other color (light green is ok) or striped. Look at any post-2014 map of Russia and see how Crimea has been shown. This should be done immediately.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:53, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Under India's recent map laws [21], its either exactly the way India wants it, or Wikipedia will be blocked and WMIN chapter users jailed. That's the concealed threat. This is only a trial balloon since the disputed map sites in Aksai Chin are thousands of kilometres away from the Indo-Bhutan border. Plus, its being sock coordinated off-wiki on Twitter for a larger "assault" on wrong Indian maps. The Crimean example may not be comparable here. Aghore (talk) 11:21, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, we must put the map which shows disputed areas, and if they are still not happy they are perfectly capable to block Wikipedia. However, not showing them at all is a very weak and not defensible position.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:28, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Not showing the map is not an option, as it would imply buckling under censorship threats. You recall the Russian blocking of Wikipedia I suppose. Any revised maps without significant involvement of editors from China (which is the counter party) would be meaningless, unacceptable and affects Wikipedia's credibility as a neutral source. Aghore (talk) 11:45, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry but what you say does not make sense to me. Our policies do not sat anything about the position of Indian government. We do not care what they like and what they do not. However, our policies imply that we show on maps (all maps) disputed territories as disputed. This applies to Kashmir and Aksai-Chin in particular. The borders are well defined, and I do not see why we should wait for any input from Chinese editors. What we need is to immediately replace the map because the current one does not conform to our policies.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:58, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The borders are not well defined. That is the nub of the problem. Aghore (talk) 15:00, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Your answers, not for the first time, completely miss the point. The internationally recognized borders of In dia and China are well define. The areas which are disputed are well defined. This is more than sufficiently reflected on maps available on Commons.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: totally agreed! I have the same opinion myself, why not just add the disputed regions with different colours.and settle this right away. It's such a minor issue and could have been avoided without much hype as has been done on many occasions before.

• I am sorry to say but @Aghore: you are really hyping this up. There's no mention of banning the Wikipedia if the map is not changed to 'an acceptable one.' The only issue that the GoI has is the map wrongly portrays Indian claim on these regions.
• The absurd assumption that Aksai Chin is thousands of kilometres away from Bhutan and thus allows selective disregard of Indian claims over the regions is really distasteful. AnM2002 (talk) 11:33, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

As you are a self-described editor from Jammu and Kashmir, I respectfully suggest you have a serious conflict of interest on this topic and should stop POV pushing. There is no hurry here, and it is WMF's problem anyway Aghore (talk) 11:40, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Aghore, where a user is from doesn't count as a COI. Zindor (talk)

Ordinarily Yes. But his interactions with me on-wiki signal something else. Cheers. Aghore (talk) 13:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Aghore, please assume good faith. —valereee (talk) 14:13, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

@Aghore: please refer to what Jimbo Wales has said on the talk page discussion. Don't know why accepting an error is so hard for you. This is not how wiki works. The map itself is clear violation of NPOV please go through it carefully no hurry!AnM2002 (talk) 11:57, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

You apparently value Wikipedia community rules more than your own country's laws. 12:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aghore (talk • contribs)

@Aghore: seeing your comments thus far, I think you are yourself confused as to what are your opinions on this. I would suggest you attend some WMF tutorials about editing on the Wiki. On one side you are pretending so vehemently as the 'sole protector of wikipedia from government censorship' but the very next movement you start supporting the 'perpetrators' this 'supposed censorship' instead of Wikipedia. Take some time off and chill out!!

I have also reacted to the map of India on the India talk page and invited comments over there. Aghore (talk) 12:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposed resolution

Some people seem to believe this issue is supposed to be resolved on this page, and this discussion doesn't appear to be heading towards a sufficiently explicit resolution. I offer the following proposal, primarily for the purpose of providing clarity to less experienced editors.

1. The Wikimedia Foundation isn't going to get involved, because they never get involved. It's not their job. Their job is to run the servers and collect piles of money in donations.
2. India's laws are irrelevant. China, Pakistan, England, Russia and surely other countries have have issued assorted threats and/or imposed partial or complete blocks against Wikipedia. We ignored them all. Wikipedia is hosted in the US, subject to US law, and copyright law is about the only time they get involved.
3. Where images are appropriate, articles use the best available image.
4. Anyone is free to supply new images at any time. Whether the new image is better, whether it will replace the current image, is decided at the article page.
5. Accurately displaying disputed territories on a map is generally considered better than a map that fails to do so.
6. If there is difficulty resolving which image is better, an RFC may be opened to resolve the dispute. If a mob of new users swarm in to vote in the RFC, we give them all due weight based on their knowledge and experience in Wikipedia policy. In other words, none. We ignore them. Don't Canvass people to vote in an RFC, it doesn't work.

In other words there is nothing to do unless and until someone supplies a better map.

• Support as author of the proposal. Hopefully this will help end the unconstructive chatter. Alsee (talk) 17:32, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose The only acceptable way to solve this is to do what Google does. Users in India see the maps which the Indian Govt wants them to see. Anything else and Wikipedia is blocked. No leeway, no wriggle room, NPOV arguments won't cut it. Oh BTW, did I mention that I got 300+ Google websites taken down under the same section of law ie. 69-A, from the same office ? The other way is for WMF to do what they ought to do in the first place. It is a pity Michelle Paulson is no longer in WMF. Aghore (talk) 18:21, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

  This is not going to happen. Ever.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:29, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

  Aghore, are you making a WP:LEGALTHREAT? —valereee (talk) 18:30, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, and got indefblocked for this. Given that the contribution of this user is relatively insignificant (265 edits), I would just ignore everything they posted here.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:44, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

  Then, let it be blocked. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:46, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

  Aghore WP is WP:NOTCENSORED. Firestar464 (talk) 03:43, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• Comment - There is nothing to "resolve". I have stated the problem clearly in my opening message this morning. The majority of the maps in the bilateral relations categories on Wikimedia Commons do not show disputed areas. Any editor can go and fix them, and replace them by corrected maps. That is all there is to it. Some people are already doing it regarding the Bhuta-India map that got mentioned in the news report. Other people are welcome to fix the other maps, including the China and Pakistan maps. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:14, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• Comments from WMF Legal: Hello all, here's a link to comments by Jrogers (WMF) over at the Commons deletion discussion for the map in question: c:Commons:Deletion_requests/File:India Bhutan Locator.png. BChoo (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• Comment I've supplied a modified map as File:India Bhutan Locator2.png, derived from File:India Bhutan Locator.png and File:India Administrative divisions FR.svg. --RexxS (talk) 20:10, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• comment This is a big challenge, we have to address it, and it is not easy to resolve. The solution to this probably starts with an organized community conversation including people from outside English Wikipedia, and including non-wiki people who can speak to India. In the WP:Volunteer Response Team queue this is a perennial issue with probably thousands of individuals writing in complaints on their own. This map issue might be the single most complained about issue in Wikimedia history. There are lots of complaints on wiki, many in that email queue, then probably tens of thousands of complaints in off-wiki social media and news feeds. Aside from the community conversation, I have my own fringe view of how to resolve this. In my opinion, there is a wiki solution, but maybe no one off wiki would like this idea. I have it posted at Talk:Jammu_and_Kashmir_(union_territory)#Three_map_proposal. The problem as I see it is that there are three maps: the Indian government wishful map, the Pakistan government wishful map, and a map for the rest of the world which shows what each country actually occupies. I think we should show all three maps on some discussion, then call over people to discuss them all. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:30, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
• In my view, this dispute is just a distraction from the topic of the article, India-Bhutan relations. To that end, I cropped the image to create File:India Bhutan Locator2 (cropped).png in order to focus the image on India and Bhutan and not territorial disputes, omitting (much of) them entirely and therefore making the problem moot. Oftentimes the only way to win is not to fight at all. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else thinks this is a viable solution (I agree that this would be a deviation from normal, but so are rumors of the Indian government using legal action). Zoozaz1 talk 03:33, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
• @Zoozaz1: I think your cropped map is a very good solution. I had a similar thought myself. Hopefully no one could take an offence with this version. I will add this to the article till we reach a final consensus. --Walrus Ji (talk) 08:32, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
• Comment Most of our maps are, unsurprisingly, a bloody mess. Indian users upload the Indian government's version of the maps, because that's what they have access to, or because that's what they like, or because they're scared of legal action. Chinese users do the same, with the Chinese versions of the maps. Ditto with Pakistan. We have far more Indian editors than either of the other categories, unsurprisingly, so the Indian maps are dominant; that does not make them correct by default...I've brought the matter up before, and while several editors have recognized the problem, the effort required to correct it is considerable. What we really ought to have is every map showing a) which country holds which piece of land, and b) which country claims which piece of land, at least with respect to Kashmir, where independent sources don't give particularly different credence to the various claims (it's somewhat different in Arunachal Pradesh, where, to the best of my knowledge, the Chinese claim to the state isn't treated with the same degree of seriousness by RS; but I'm not an expert). And what this requires is likely a site-wide RfC mandating that maps showing the borders comply with these requirements. Organising that, and enforcing it, are mammoth tasks that I want no part of. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

  If somebody could start an RfC and we could come up with a resolution broadly applicable to all territorial conflicts it would be great (though I am afraid it might be not too much realistic). I had in the past a lot of trouble with users either unilaterally changing maps which show Crimea or loudly complaining that the maps do not conform with the laws of their state.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

  Ymblanter, I am asking you as you are an admin. How is this going to end. I can see many folks have commented. When will it conclude? I have a set a temporary cropped map on the India-Bhutan page for now but it needs to have a final conclusion. Similarly there are many India-FOO bilateral maps that needs similar attention. Walrus Ji (talk) 13:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

  One possibility is that nothing happens, the topic gets archived, and we keep the maps which are currenty in the articles. Another possibility is that someone prepares and opens an RfC about maps (which ideally should not only cover India, but all similar situations). Once an RfC is open, it has to be closed, and the decision taken is binding. I do not think it is possible to summarize the current discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:46, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

  Hear, hear. An RfC may be the best way to solve this issue and prevent it from popping up again. 45.251.33.14 (talk) 02:26, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

  @Ymblanter: If you are talking about the main Kashmir map (see my comment below), let's keep it; it already reflects an excruciatingly long RFC on this (very) page, one that had the support of WP Pakistan and admins. Kashmir is the oldest dispute before the UN; there is nothing like it. Attempting to generalize it will distort its history. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:13, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

• Comment @Bluerasberry: The three map proposal has been dead for over a year. Please read the old discussion. There is no need to resurrect something that did not receive support then. For all Kashmir-related pages, there is a WT:INDIA, and WikiProjects India and Pakistan consensus for the map: File:Kashmir Region November 2019.jpg All the "first-order" regions of Kashmir (Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Jammu and Kashmir (state), Ladakh and Aksai Chin) carry only one map. For a year, they have carried only one map. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:28, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

  That map is as it should be; the challenge is making other maps reflect the same basic facts. The problem isn't with maps about the conflict, which receive a lot of scrutiny, but with those on tangential subjects, where the creators do not have to bother with reflecting scholarly consensus about Kashmir. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:50, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

• WMF should either ignore the Indian Government or come to a compromise with disputed territories in a different colour on all maps involving India - right when I thought the OpIndiaDuryodhana and other far right idiots vs Wikipedia war would end, the governmentRavana has come in. While I personally believe that India is the rightful owner of the disputed territories (screw you, 1950s UN!), I also believe that the Indian Government banning a website over a few maps is a trashy move. I don't think the government will really ban Wikipedia, one of the largest websites out there, over these maps but the WMF can come to a compromise if they really ban Wikipedia. Indian democracy is really in danger now... 45.251.33.14 (talk) 06:46, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

  Well I am in fear towards Modi sarkar over banning Wikipedia for not showing Indian POV maps there. I think Kashmir should be shown as a separate entity in the map à la Western Sahara. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 09:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose the second resolution, support others. Although Wikipedia is hosted in the US, and is only subject to the US law, I am aware with the true purpose of Wikipedia, which is to make the sum of knowledge free to the entire world. In order to do so, we must avoid something that will lead to a block of this site in some nations, which hampers our true purpose. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:58, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Showing Kashmir differently from other countries

Like Western Sahara, I like to show Kashmir separately from other countries in world map, with showing the entireity of it as part of India with a slighty different colour (hence marking Kashmir a disputed territory). Any thoughts? --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 10:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Soumya-8974, personally I think it would be better if we use the default colour you used for most of India for all the territories in the internationally recognised map, and used the peach-yellow for only those parts claimed by India and controlled by Pakistan or the PRC (and used similar rules on Pakistan and the PRC). But if that becomes too tacky because there will be too much detail, then I suppose just showing the entirety of Kashmir and Ladakh as disputed will suffice. 45.251.33.14 (talk) 06:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

PS - I think it'd also be fine if we used the Indian map at India (with the internationally recognised part of India in dark green and the disputed areas in light green) as a replacement for bilateral relation maps of all of India's neighbours (some bilateral relations articles involving India use that map) and used the world map for countries that are too far (but retained the "two shades" system). 45.251.33.14 (talk) 06:24, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Aipan Art

 Courtesy link: User:SenatorLEVI/Aipan Art Hello! I'm working on a user space draft for Aipan Art. If anyone could help add information as well as images to this draft to improve it, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your consideration. SenatorLEVI (talk) 11:37, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

So what does it actually look like? Nothing on this so far. Johnbod (talk) 11:40, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello Johnbod, if you google what Aipan Art looks like you will find out. I have never really uploaded an image to Wikipedia Commons and for this reason I can't find a non-copy right image to upload. SenatorLEVI (talk) 11:57, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Territory type

Should we change "Region administered by Foo as a Bar" to "Disputed territory administered by Foo as a Bar" in Kashmir-related articles? This change would make articles consistent with other disputed territories like Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China and Western Sahara. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:42, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Pakistan doesn't have a "Bar" as far as I know. It just administers it. Period. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:27, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

See administrative units of Pakistan. AJK and GB are autonomous territories, hence we can use "Disputed territory administered by Pakistan as an autonomous region" in those articles, which is consistent with other autonomous regions like Xinjiang. --Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 04:56, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Scientific racism and Images

Please see Talk:Bania_(caste)#Image. Thanks you. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:45, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Kothaimangalam Wetlands and Kongur wetland

Can someone please check the articles Kothaimangalam Wetlands and Kongur wetland, both created by the same editor? I'm pretty sure that the first should be spelled Kothamangalam like the town, but even then, I can't find hits for "Kothamangalam Wetlands" or "Kongur wetland" on Google. I can't find any reliable source to add to the articles, but it's possibly due to the language barrier. Thanks. RetiredDuke (talk) 21:04, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Subject matter knowledge required - Indian highways

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 30#National Highway 45C (India)(old numbering) that would benefit from the the input from one or more editors familiar with the subject area. Thryduulf (talk) 14:38, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Manas bose is an interesting user with double standards

Manasbose (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Manas bose is an interesting user with double standards. He is removing the controversy related reliably sourced information on Dilip Ghosh (politician) diff while adding similar kind of stuff on Mamata Banerjee diff diff ? The edit reeks of political bias, to me. They are clearly double standards for the 2 leaders of rival political parties? He has been edit warring and has now summoned a gang of editors to support him in his edit war and bowdlerize the reliably sourced content. Please see the discussion.

I also believe his other contributions need to be verified for more such political bias. --Walrus Ji (talk) 14:22, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Can you please stop copy pasting the same thing and tagging me everywhere. -- Manasbose ^{(talk | edits)} 14:35, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Will you please stop edit warring on those 2 articles? I posted here as this page seems to be active, the task force page seems to be defunct. Walrus Ji (talk) 16:26, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Requested move of potential interest

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Paramashiva#Requested move 31 December 2020. This seems a neutral page to notify to "get more eyeballs", as both of the involved subjects are Indian.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:44, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Maridhas

Would someone from this WikiProject mind looking at Maridhas and assessing it for notability? The article was created directly in the mainspace and needs quite a bit of clean up. It also seems to have undergone quite a bit of WP:REVDELs due to WP:COPYVIOs. If the subject is considered to be WP:TOOSOON at the moment to support a stand-alone article perhaps WP:DRAFTIFY would be an option instead of deletion. I came across the article while trying to figure out WP:THQ#Question about photo and it's possible that their may be some WP:COI editing going on as well. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:19, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello Marchjuly,I don't think it is supported by enough reliable sources. It has only 4 sources, and one of them seems to be self-published. There is an absence of sources in sections such as Early Life and Career. As such it does go against the stringent presence of reliable and independent sources in order to present any information in a WP:BLP. The majority of Social and Political Activity is unsourced. And some of the references contain only a pea-sized amount of information about the person in question. If we remove most of the unreferenced information there probably won't be much information to present. I think WP:DRAFTIFY is a good move here. I have requested a move to move the page to Draft:Maridhas due to these reasons already. SenatorLEVI (talk) 11:35, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir § Part of the Kashmir conflict?

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir § Part of the Kashmir conflict?. Soumya-8974 (he) ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:06, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Kapurthala king's article at AfD

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fateh Singh Ahluwalia

The AfD list has been spammed with Telugu movie list and in the melee, this Kapurthala king's article was deleted. What a shame. I was able to get it relisted a third time. Please see the discussion. Walrus Ji (talk) 17:25, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Nithyananda again

After a year or so of comparative calm, the BLP Nithyananda has been re-invaded both by haters and by devotees. This week, it's mostly followers clearly working in concert to whitewash, last week or so it was mostly detractors trying to dwell on allegations. This article needs more experienced, neutral editorial eyes and brains on it. The WP:SPA tides are not relenting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:18, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

PS: It would be especially helpful if someone with the language skills could go through more recent non-English RS about this subject.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:45, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I'll try helping out with the article once I get a bit more time but off the bat I can see citations to Jagran Prakashan publications which probably shouldn't be used in the article in any context. The company has both issues with paid news and is an open advocate for multiple godmen like figures. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 13:56, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I suspected as much. The SPA on the talk page, however, is basically claiming that all India based mainstream news is also suspect, as being corrupt "pay for coverage" operations. I've actually determined this to be true about a couple of certain specific publications a couple of years ago, after research into scandals surrounding those particular publications, and removed citations to them. But this blanket claim appears to be untenable or we would not be regularly citing The Hindu and other major Indian news sources. I think this FUD handwaving is part of a white-washing attempt: since virtual no media cover the controversies about this person outside India, eliminating Indian news sources eliminates controversy coverage from our article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:50, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Dispute about this figure has spread to Madurai Adheenam (article on a monastery and its Guru Maha Sannidhanam leadership title). The short version is that as of at least 2019, MA was headed by the 292nd GMS, Paramacharya, who seems to be have been grooming Swamigal as successor. Over the last year or so, however, Nithyanada has claimed to be already the 293rd GMS. And HTML comment at Madura Adheenam says Nithyananda has usurped MA's official website, and that he has no actual extant connection to MA at all. Googling around, I see a veritable firehose of claims from Nithyanadan, his organisations, his social-media operations, and his followers that he is the 293rd GMS (and this corresponds to various things like being a avatar of a particular deity, etc.), but I am not seeing any indy RS that confirm any of this, not even him have still any connection to MA in the first place, much less being ordained Paramacharya's successor. Also, Nithyanada-follower SPAs at his article have further made outlandish claims, such as that the GMS title means "Supreme Pointiff of Hinduism", which it definitely does not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:50, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I looked into this a bit and it appears like Nithyananda was in fact appointed as the successor in 2012 and then subsequently removed, The Hindu mentions it in a 2016 article. He never became the GMS. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 14:50, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

In general, The Hindu in particular is a pretty useful for this topic being the only national newspaper from Tamil Nadu and tends to cover its home state more in depth than others. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 15:11, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Persecution of Dalits

Help expand this article. --Friendly Eagle (talk) 17:15, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject India cannot be used inside Template:WikiProject banner shell with some parameters

It results in the page landing in Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded.

You can see this in this old revision of Talk:Tilak Maidan Stadium, which was partiallyh reverted with the next edit. The call to {{WikiProject India}} looks like this:

{{WikiProject India
|class=Stub
|importance=Low
|goa=yes
|field=sports
}}

Even without the "shell" it has a template expansion depth of 40, which is the limit, as shown in the source-code view of the "old revision" link above. Search for Highest expansion depth: to find the parser profiling data. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 15:30, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi davidwr, happy new year. For Image_Left if we just defined one image locally (the flag maybe), instead of calling the yesno template, would that remove several layers of depth? I'm only just aware of expansion depth, so please forgive my lack of understanding. Zindor (talk) 16:55, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I haven't looked deeply into this, and won't have time to do so in the near future. I posted here hoping those who made and maintain the template and those who have a stake in what the template does would come together to find a solution. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:20, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Indo-Guyanese

Hello, I'm working on pages about Guyana and I'm thinking the Indo-Guyanese article needs a lot of help, and although I've read plenty of sources on the subject I feel like it needs a more nuanced knowledge about Indian culture (and help from people who work on articles about culture groups). The lede starts pretty strong, but then the content starts looking more and more shabby. Some of my concerns are:

• Is the unsourced mention of the caste breakdown appropriate?
• Food citations seem like blogs/personal websites.
• Uncited culture stuff that will be a headache to hunt down citations for.
• Is there a better way to select or organize the indiscriminate BLPs?
• Should I make a separate List page for BLP section?
• There's a lot of overlap with Indo-Caribbean, how do I avoid repetition?

Some sections might need TNT and a fresh start with solid sources, but I still need a little support to get the terms and understanding correct. Advice appreciated! Cheers, Estheim (talk) 01:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Islampur High School

I have deProded this article and done my best to improve it, but it could really do with expert attention if anyone has the wherewithal. Thanks. Tacyarg (talk) 01:42, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Caste rules for dead people

Hey all, sorry to ask, I know that self-identification is required when we add information about caste to living people, but what about dead people? There has been a recent back-and-forth at Auto Shankar, and I'm trying to get clarity before I chime in. I have a feeling that some of the back-and-forth may involve people who don't want a gangster associated with their caste, so if anyone has any ideas for how to manage that, please join the carnival at Auto Shankar. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:05, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it should be a problem to add caste as long as there is a verifiable source backing the claim. Some people may even find it offensive to see a criminal sharing their nationality but I see nationalities being mentioned on bio of dozens of criminals. I don't see why caste has to be treated any differently just because few caste fanatics make ruckus over the caste of a criminal. Ihaveabandonedmychild (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I guess if it is reliably sourced it should be acceptable. But, a good rule of thumb would be to add it only if it adds value to the article. For the Auto Shankar article, I don't see much value in adding his caste. --RegentsPark (comment) 19:04, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Add Kashmir Conflict reference on Kashmir Valley

The page, though being a source of Geography of Kashmir Valley cannot omit the underlying Geopolitics of the vale in accord to Kashmir Conflict. The mentioning of Kashmir Conflict on this page has also been issued in public interest.Similarly, as mentioned in the 'infox' for example : " Union territory of India". The above references for either 'Kashmir Conflict' or 'Union territory of India' can't be overlooked. Musadiq Mushtaq (talk) 00:20, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

You would notice that there is a page called Kashmir and another called Kashmir Valley. The reason for the existence of the second page, according to the page creator, is to deal with the geographical feature of the Kashmir Valley. The lead sentence of the latter page clearly states that. All discussion of the politics of Kashmir is expected to go in the first page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:38, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Chennai Metropolitan Bus Routes

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Chennai Metropolitan Bus Routes. Walrus Ji (talk) 08:53, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Taj Mahal GAR

Taj Mahal, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. DTM (talk) 12:29, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § RfC: Asian News International (ANI)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § RfC: Asian News International (ANI). Walrus Ji (talk) 14:36, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Times of India has lost it...

Has anybody seen this? "Sidharth Shukla wins Times Men of the Year" award.

Am I overreacting, or does this look to anybody else like Times of India has knocked-off Time magazine's Time's Man of the Year award? I'm not saying that nobody else has men or women-of-the-year awards, but this one is literally called "Times Men of the Year Award". Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:09, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

It's great isn't it. First we had the 'National Crush of India' determined by a Google search, now they've ripped off pre-99 Time magazine. I'm expecting big things in 2021, perhaps they'll be declaring a poet laureate based on the celeb's corresponding Wikipedia article. Zindor (talk) 19:01, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and let's include the whole Dadasaheb Phalke award fiasco, where even the Indian media couldn't tell that a two-year-old film festival wasn't handing out state-issued lifetime achievement awards. I really think the wider community has to get their hands dirty about deciding what sort of awards are suitable for inclusion or not. This is a widespread problem, but since I mostly edit in Indian subject areas, I mostly see it in that context. There are thousands of award mills out there and most are used to fluff up actor biographies. I opened a discussion at MOS:BIO a while back and only got a few responses. I'm kind of upset about the poor response, but at least a few people seemed to agree that in order to include an award, an article where notability has been demonstrated should first exist about the award. I may have to open an RFC. One of the tricks is going to be getting people to agree on inherited notability, i.e. if the New York Times is notable, does that mean their first-annual Cutest Lady of the Summer award is? Anyway, this could turn into a rant, so I'll be quiet now. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:23, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

get ready for the cleanup that may be required. They have announced more awards. Something like Power Woman of the Year.defcon5 (talk) 19:40, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Qadam Qadam Badhaye Ja

Can someone fill in the copyright details for https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AKadam_Kadam_Badhaye_Ja.ogg It has been listed for deletion and it is an important file given that it is the Quick march of the Indian Army. 180.151.23.104 (talk) 08:55, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Soap Boy 1, How did you get this file? You should mention there. Walrus Ji (talk) 09:44, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Walrus Ji Not sure if they are online, but can this not be really easily recorded? For example: I could easily have recorded this during a rehearsal or during a routine march. What copyright criteria would apply in that case? Plus it is really old and available easily, so does the copyright actually apply? 180.151.23.104 (talk) 10:07, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I am not an expert. But based on my understanding of copyright, here is what I think. Even during a public performance, the copyright of the audio video is owned by the artist and their company. It is upto the artist to release it with an appropriate license. The heart of your concern lies in the copyright, so the uploader Soap Boy 1 should clarify from where did he download or record the file. That information will help to judge the copyright status of this file. I dont think without this crucial bit of information, the file can be saved. Walrus Ji (talk) 10:36, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Walrus Ji I found the file. On this link if you choose 'Military Tunes' in the dropdown, the file for Qadam Qadam Badhaye Ja is listed there. Can you help figure out the licensing thing?--125.63.97.233 (talk) 22:54, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

The tune you linked is a different rendition of the same song. You can easily hear that different instruments are used. This means that the files are not the same and the copyright status of the file on the Army site has no effect on the file uploaded. Only Soap Boy 1 can fill the necessary information about the sourcing and copyright to save this file from deletion. Even if the file is deleted it can be recovered by Admins as long as Soap Boy 1 is able to show that the file is a free file not protected by copyright. Walrus Ji (talk) 09:04, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Walrus Ji Given that Soap Boy 1 has not responded and is unlikely to do so, can you guide me on the copyright criteria that would be applicable for the file I linked? The file on Commons will most likely be deleted and I would like to upload the linked file separately with the correct copyright details. Sorry for troubling you; should I be asking this somewhere else? 180.151.23.212 (talk) 11:17, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

You are right. May be you can ask help from the copyright experts on Commons:Village_pump/Copyright. You can also refer to the FAQ on that page to read more on the copyright criteria. There is a Commons:Template:GODL-India but I have no idea if this will be applicable to this file because the source itself is not clear. Soap Boy 1 made a big mistake by not saying how he got the file. Walrus Ji (talk) 11:27, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I just found it on web. I don't think this file have any copyright as it was played by maratha light infantry regiment band and someone recorded it. Please delete the file if you found otherwise. Soap Boy 1 (talk) 05:57, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Noticeboard discussion on reliability of A Social History of India by S. N. Sadasivan

There is a noticeboard discussion on the reliability of A Social History of India by S. N. Sadasivan, published by APH Publishing. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Can we ban this highly questionable source? — Newslinger talk 12:05, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Balai & Balahi

Hello. Requesting thoughts on proposed merger of Balahi (caste) to Balai. Thanks, Мастер Шторм (talk) 11:00, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

WMF consultation

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats

The WMF is running a consultation on the selection method and quotas etc relating to community seats on the board. The en-wiki community risks losing due-representation, especially in the context of the WMF trying to line Jimbo up for an early departure. I came across this by chance at WP:VPW. As this has the potential to affect all of us I thought it would be worth sharing with you, my fellow WikiProject India members. Kind regards, Zindor (talk) 11:17, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Edit Notice for Narendra Modi

Recently Democratic backsliding was added to the lead section of his article. Ever since, "#Wikipedia" has been trending on Twitter in India. Multiple verified Twitter profiles have tweeted that this was done w/o discussion and that it was done at a 'controlled' level i.e Wikipedia is 'involved.' Since it was done via discussion (pretty small imho), I would propose adding an Edit Notice that clearly links to the discussion. --180.151.13.151 (talk) 23:42, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Pinging some India-topic editors. Apologies. :( @Kautilya3 and Kailash29792: --180.151.13.151 (talk) 23:46, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, well, if they are supposedly "democratic", they would get off Twitter, read some of the sources we provide and THINK. I am not holding my breath though. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:01, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Kautilya3 Should we add an edit-notice or something else? 180.151.13.151 (talk) 00:07, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

We tend to be reactive, rather than proactive in these matters. So we will just wait and see what happens. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:13, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Nayak

Hi. I came across Nayak (caste), an unsourced article containing only a single line of text: The Nayak are a Hindu caste found in India. Does this caste actually exist? I'm getting the impression that it doesn't, and that maybe it's been confused with Nayak (title), a historic title and modern-day surname used by various castes. But I'm not sure about this and would appreciate some input from anyone who is, unlike myself, at all familiar with the topic of Indian castes and surnames. Lennart97 (talk) 15:38, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

It should be noted that quite a large number of articles link to this article. However, the majority links to the redirect Muslim Nayak. If the Nayak are indeed a Hindu caste, as the article states, then that obviously can't be right. Lennart97 (talk) 01:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Lennart97, I just looked it up on google. Kathryn Hansen of UC Berkeley says it is a caste.[22] I will try to add a couple of sources to the article tomorrow. Thanks, Мастер Шторм (talk) 10:38, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Мастер Шторм: Thanks, good find! Do you have any idea how the "Muslim Nayaks" tie into this? Lennart97 (talk) 21:35, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Lennart97, no! Sorry, Мастер Шторм (talk) 15:04, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@Мастер Шторм: Thanks so much for improving the article! I found that all the links to Muslim Nayak come from Template:Indian Muslim, which lists Nayak as a muslim community in Gujarat. Even if such a group does exist, it shouldn't be included in the template as there's no article about it, so I'll remove it and nominate the redirect at WP:RFD. Lennart97 (talk) 15:17, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@Lennart97: no objection Thanks, Мастер Шторм (talk) 15:24, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Merge discussion, please comment

I have started a merge discussion related to the Union Budgets of India. I intend to merge all the independent budgets into one single article Union budget of India. Please comment. DTM (talk) 16:41, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Jyotirlinga

Regarding Jyotirlinga article. There are two Vaidyanath/Baidyanath dham jyotirlingas and depending on verses, they are either in Deoghar, Jharkhand or Parli, Maharashtra. The article is being subjected to edit wars because of that [23] [24] [25]. I had opened a discussion at Talk:Jyotirlinga but utcursch advised be to post it here. Any help? - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 09:56, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

About Indian Television Academy Awards

Hi all,

I noticed this while looking at 20th Indian Television Academy Awards - page may already deleted by the time you read this.

This article was created back in 2015.

As an WP:ADMIN I can see that these articles have never been created:

• Indian Television Academy
• 1st ITA Awards - see http://indiantelevisionacademy.com/site/awards_hhita_details_new.php?year=2001
• 2nd ITA Awards - see http://indiantelevisionacademy.com/site/awards_hhita_details_new.php?year=2002
• 3rd ITA Awards - see http://indiantelevisionacademy.com/site/awards_hhita_details_new.php?year=2003

And so on.

Maybe they should be created?

WP:AGF as always.

Your thoughts about this?

Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 11:26, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Comments requested on move proposal

Hello. Requesting comments for Talk:Bhat Sikhs#Requested move 8 February 2021. Thanks, Мастер Шторм (talk) 11:31, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Mughal-Sikh Wars

I've started a discussion about the validity of this article over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Mughal-Sikh Wars. It's obviously also within the scope of this project, so please feel welcome to provide input. Lennart97 (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Number of quotes

Please participate at [[26]]. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

It has been reasonably addressed. Please have a look. Thanks, Vikram 07:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Comments requested on Patanjali Ayurved

I've been trying to update the page with details of litigation/licensing issues/FSSAI investigations and so on, but my edits have been reverted on the grounds that they are a) "too long", b) "seem suspicious" and c) violate BLP (which I did not realise applied to corporate persons). Would appreciate some input from more experienced editors. --Naushervan (talk) 17:47, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

List of cities in India by area

Can anyone take a look at List of cities in India by area? A bunch of anon edits seem to have made the article inaccurate. utcursch | talk 18:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Requesting “Comment” on whether to use “Indian” or “Kashmiri” in Lead.

Hello, An discussion is going on to derive consensus for an issue going on with Kashmir related articles. You are invited to give your opinion on whether the BLP subject should be referred as “Kashmiri” or as “Indian”. http://en.m.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Masrat_Zahra Jammumylove Talk to me or ^{CHECK MY RECENT WORK} 08:52, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Opinion on a merge and SYNTH issues

Please participate at Talk:Destruction_of_Kashmiri_Shias#Merger_proposal. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:57, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Issue with genetics research sources

Even after a number of threads on this noticeboard alone,[27][28] it appears that the issue with genetics research hasn't been resolved.

Just recently, I removed a section on Peopling of India, regarding the claims about ancestry of the population of Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC). None of that content appeared on the article about IVC itself and I found that attempts were made to add these researches there, but they were unanimously rejected on the talk page on Talk:Indus_Valley_Civilisation/Archive_5#Narasimhan et al. (2018) as unreliable for the article. I linked this all in my edit summary but my edit was reverted with a rather baseless explanation.

I wanted to revert or discuss, but then I saw that the entire article is flooded with similar quality of researches, contrary to the version some years ago.

I would really like to know if we should rely on these WP:RECENT researches for challenging the years of peer-reviewed and widely accepted researches and how we should proceed. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 11:11, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

If those "years of peer-reviewed and widely accepted researches" have become obsolete, of course. The whole-genome revolution is quite recent, indeed, but not WP:RECENTISM; see WP:AGE MATTERS. Journal-articles are the relevant entry point, because book-publications on this topic are very soon outdated, due to the speed of new discoveries. And note that notable archaeologists like David Anthony are also involved in these research projects. See for example Anthony (2021), Migration, ancient DNA, and bronze Age pastoralists from the Eurasian steppes, SUNY: "Recent studies of ancient DNA revealed large-scale, long-distance migrations from the steppe in the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age." Note also that Narasimhan et al (2018), the preprint, which already had a huge impact, is superseded by Narasimhan et al. (2019), which is the peer-reviewed version, published in Science in september 2019, and cited already 111 times. That's WP:RS and definitely relevant. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

What I had proposed originally is that Peopling of India is one of the places where genetic research is explicitly permitted, because that is indeed the specialist topic that deals with the subject. On the other hand, genetic research should not be used in sociological topics dealing with castes, communities and ethnic groups, unless sociologists have validated them. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:38, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Romila Thapar (2019), They Peddle Myths and Call It History:

Recent genetic evidence from archaeological sources has pointed to a mixture of populations in northern India at that time, with people of Iranian and Central Asian origin. Historians see this as evidence of migrations into India, but the idea is anathema to the Hindutva construction of early history.

That's an historian, embracing genetic research, and pointing to the real source of opposition.Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:13, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

[@JJ] I don't see anything new in your argument. You had used the same argument on Talk:Indus_Valley_Civilisation/Archive_5#Narasimhan_et_al._(2018) as well when you claimed: "One of the co-authors is David Reich, a heavy-weight on the subject. It has been cited by other scholarly publications, and drawn a lot of media-attention. So, definitely relevant". That was easily rejected too. I see no difference between this and the earlier case. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 06:02, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

[@Kautilya3] Sounds better, but then I think Peopling of India looks nothing more than a WP:POVFORK of Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia at this stage. It should be merged given there is no Peopling of Pakistan. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 06:02, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Maybe. That is a topic for discussion on the talk pages of those articles. It is not a WikiProject-level concern. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:32, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

[@JJ again] A news source, especially an 'opinion piece' isn't reliable for this claim. I guess you still don't understand the discussions I linked above. Ping Fowler%26fowler, AshLin (the participants of IVC talk page discussion) to contribute into this discussion.

I am still not seeing any sense in allowing the genetics researches to float anywhere else on Wikipedia if they were rejected on the main article per strong consensus on Talk:Indus_Valley_Civilisation/Archive_5#Narasimhan_et_al._(2018). Standards need to be the same all over Wikipedia when it comes to dealing with this subject. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 06:02, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

You are again referring to Narasimhan et al. (2018), the pre-print; Narasimhan et al. (2019) is the peer-reviewed version, published in Science; that's as WP:RS as you can get. The discussion was about the pre-print, not the peer-reviewed version. Do you actually pay attention to the arguments, or are you just repeating yourself?

It was co-authored, among others, by James Mallory, David Anthony, Massimo Vidale, Thomas K. Harper, Arman A. Bissembaev, and Gian Luca Bonora, all archaeologists and anthropologists; so, validated by archaeologists and anthropologists.

Romila Thapar, in the New York Times, is by definition WP:RS; I think you don't understand what WP:RS means.

And, to repeat myself: the discussion you linked to above was not about 'genetic research floating on Wikipedia', but about the use of pre-prints. Nor was there a "strong consensus," or "unanimously rejected"; you're misrepresenting the discussion. And local consensus does not override Wiki-policies. That's a standard. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:59, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

You don't have to repeat yourself but answer the questions I have asked above. NYT article is still an opinion piece not published by a scholarly publication. If you are really thinking that you can differentiate between the use of Narasimhan 2019 and Narasimhan 2018, then your edits will contradict your statements because on Peopling of India you have extensively used "Narasimhan (2018)" as well. In your replies here, you are using the same argument which you used back in the day. There was a strong consensus against 1 (which was you) and at least 4 editors opposing. It is indeed called 'strong consensus' against your POV. You can't add such content on different pages after it was unanimously rejected on the main article's talk page consensus. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 09:53, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, branding Romila Thapar's article an "opinion piece" is laughable POV. I am surprised the OP thinks he even has a leg to stand on. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:36, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Contrary to your research, this article is an opinion piece marked as 'opinion'. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 09:53, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Some other discussions on Indian social groups pages where consensus was held for not including genetic studies:[29][30][31]. I would agree that such content should be largely limited Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia, but not outside that article. Shrikanthv (talk) 20:29, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

To quote regentspark, from the Ezheva-discussion: "Ideally, we should only include results of genetic studies that have been published in peer reviewed journals and then cited in other peer reviewer articles." Narasimhan (2019) fully qualifies, if we take this as a norm; it was published in Science, and referenced (already) by more than one hundred other publications.

This is, of course, in line with WP:RS. And if this 'norm' wasn't: Wiki-policy, in this case WP:RS and WP:AGEMATTERS, cannot be overruled by WP:LOCALCONSENSUS.

And let me repeat again: the discussion was about the usage of pre-prints, while you removed info from the peer-reviewed article. If you still don't get this, then you're not able to understand the discussion. And the "opinion" of a highly regarded historian like Romila Thapar with regards to the acceptance of genetic research by "historians" (plural) is relevant. Thapar counts as WP:RS on the state of the field, no matter where it is published (hack, if not Thapar, who else? Is there any better you can get?). It shows that genetic research is deemed acceptable by historians, just like archaeologists and anthropologists participate in those research-projects.

And in case you missed it (you did): Peopling of India was updated to reflect your concerns, and does no longer contain references to Narasimhan et al. (2018). Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:51, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

If you are really referring to comments by RegentsPark, then understand that he wrote more recently[32] that "I think it better not to allow these articles. Though the example above appears to be peer reviewed and, therefore, would qualify as reliable, the reality is that genetic studies are constantly shifting. A study could get outdated, it may be only one study amongst many with results and conclusions varying across studies. Uncontextualized pointers to single studies is never a good idea."

Taking a look into this discussion. No less than three people have agreed here so far that genetics studies must not be accepted in articles unless they are themselves about the genetics. Why do you want to wikilawyer that out given this issue has been discussed many other times as evident from several discussions linked above? Abhishek0831996 (talk) 12:52, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I am late to this but, for what it is worth, my opinion remains as it was in past discussions here and elsewhere, ie: we do not and should not do it. Nothing has changed in recent years and I rather suspect that I will be dead before they do! - Sitush (talk) 16:31, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

The quote from RegentsPark was about External links; that discussion in question yielded opposition against a 'blanket ban'. The same discussion also proposed to take being referenced in other publications as a 'quality measure'. Even Narasimhan et al. (2018) has been referred to by scholars like Anthony, Witzel, and Thapar. And, let's not forget: the "local consensus" is about caste-articles, a contentious topic for the identity-politics being fought out in such articles. And again: WP:LOCALCONSENSUS does not override Wiki-policies: we do not censor a whole field of research because some editors use isolated studies to push a certain pov. That would be a truly bad idea. What we can do, is apply the relevant policies: WP:RS (including WP:RSCONTEXT), WP:NPOV, WP:DUE, and WP:AGEMATTERS. We can continue this discussion at Talk:Peopling of India. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:55, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Why my edit request neglected here?

@Victuallers: @Aman.kumar.goel: @Padavalamkuttanpilla: It's been 2 weeks, since I request edit to be made to Rashtriya Ispat Nigam ,but no one cares. Am I doing anything wrong to request edit? Rizosome (talk) 04:49, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Am I missing something? This article is about a steel company? I have made a few edits but I'm not really interested. One Point is that It suffers from RanDom Capital letters. I look at the edit history and it appears that you are not editing the article either Victuallers (talk) 08:18, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victuallers: please add cabinet approved privatization of RINL in the article. I mentioned source here Rizosome (talk) 17:39, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure you understand how Wikipedia works. We are all volunteers and we do exactly as we want. Why don't you add it? Victuallers (talk) 17:44, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victuallers: I edited now. But I still believe source 1 and source 2 need add to reference links. Rizosome (talk) 02:49, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

• Note This was also asked (and answered) at the help desk. FWIW the OP used an idiosyncratic ref formatting and did not use ref tags or fmt the refs correctly. @Rizosome: please do not ask similar questions in multiple locations as it takes up the time of other volunteers (and there is always the danger of conflicting advice). Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 06:14, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@Eagleash: I keep that in mind.

Discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories § Redirect request: Indian Whatsapp University, Modi's Media, Modi media, Modia, Lapdog media, Bikau media , Dalal media and Bharkau media!

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories § Redirect request: Indian Whatsapp University, Modi's Media, Modi media, Modia, Lapdog media, Bikau media , Dalal media and Bharkau media!. 122.179.55.205 (talk) 14:50, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Samboora, Jammu and Kashmir

There is a discussion going on here about the content of the page Samboora, Jammu and Kashmir. You are invited to join the discussion and share your respective thoughts. Thank you! –Kammill ⟨talk⟩ 18:05, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Pawri Ho Rahi Hai, Pl. help expand

Greetings,

This neo South Asian slang meme Draft:Pawri Ho Rahi Hai is more likely than not to remain in vogue in foreseeable future. And more than enough sources are available. Any one who finds topic interesting enough, pl. help out in expanding the article proactively. (Sincerely I do have lot many topics already on my hand so I need some proactive support who can take this article topic as independent article ahead)

Thanks and regards

Bookku (talk) 09:04, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Mahua Moitra

Today a speech by Moitra was added by an IP here and was restored by Loopzinc (probably same user) [33]. I find the content (speech) unnecessary and WP:UNDUE, contravening WP:NOT -

On 8th February 2021, Mahua Moitra stated in the parliament "The sacred cow that was the judiciary is no longer sacred, It stopped being sacred the day a sitting chief justice of this country was accused of sexual harassment, precided over his own trial, cleared himself and then proceeded to accept the nomination to the upper house wihtin three months of retirement, replete with Z+ security cover"

It is just a speech given in the parliament that serves nothing to the career section of the article. We do not WP:CATALOGUE speeches given by parliamentarians, otherwise we would have unending lists of speeches in all these articles. The FA and GA status articles like William Henry Harrison, Harry S. Truman, Narendra Modi, do not have these kind of speeches in the articles. The only reason a speech like that would be useful if it was coupled to some bills, new laws or some major controversy the article subject is a part of. For example here, it is relevant since the comment triggered a controversy and was part of a larger event. We had a discussion at Talk:Mahua Moitra, but thought it would be better to get more opinions on this here. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 19:05, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

A speech sourced solely to Youtube is going to be undue almost by definition. Coverage in secondary sources is the bare minimum necessary to include that sort of content. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:37, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

How anything is currently sourced, & whether or not it is WP:UNDUE are completely unrelated issues - please don't confuse them! Johnbod (talk) 22:04, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

They are not entirely unrelated. If a RS has reproduced it, we would at least know what weight to give it (and thus decide whether it is DUE or not).

In any case, a page on Mahua Moitra should summarise RS say about her, not what she said about other people. So I would vote to omit all such speeches. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:33, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Better see the discussion at the article talk. "If a RS has reproduced it, we would at least know what weight to give it" doesn't really make sense. That an RS has mentioned it may tell you something, but is unlikely to settle the matter. Johnbod (talk) 22:35, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Johnbod, just circling back to this, apologies. I'm rather confused by your comment. WP:DUE is entirely based on coverage in reliable sources. How is the sourcing of a piece of content separate from whether it is due weight? Certainly, you can have reliably sourced content that is given undue weight; but views not represented by reliable sources are undue by definition; they cannot be independent. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I think you are confusing how something is currently sourced by WP with whether it could be sourced to RS - you said "A speech sourced solely to Youtube is going to be undue almost by definition", which is just wrong. But I'm presuming that a fiery speech in parliament actually has far better sources available. Johnbod (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

That might be true if you ignored the second sentence in my comment, where I make the same point; but if you wish to take issue with an ambiguity in my first sentence, then so be it. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:45, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

On the article talk page I have given reference to number of reliable sources and hence the issue of not having RS is null and void. "In any case, a page on Mahua Moitra should summarise RS say about her, not what she said about other people." - I would like to disagree here, for a politician or for any public representative, their opinion and political position are very important to their personality. Taking the example given by User talk:Tayi Arajakate, of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her wiki page specifically list her political positions. The particular excerpt from the speech of Mahua Moitra is her opinion on the judiciary based of fact which are already in public domain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Loopzinc (talk • contribs) 10:27, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

It has been added, after relevant changes to the proposed text. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

How about adding that quote in wikiquote. Might get a good collection instead of putting them on the bio page. Vikram 18:05, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Notability of Draft:Pawri Ho Rahi Hai

Greetings,

Your valuable comments on notability are requested at Draft talk:Pawri Ho Rahi Hai#RfC: Is this topic notable or not ?

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 08:54, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Genocide of Kashmiri Shias

The article consists of information that have been added per WP:ORIGINAL, which is against Wikipedia's policies. It uses International Research Journal of Social Sciences as reference is a WP:PREDATORY source. Also, it enlists Yohanan Friedmann, "Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi", Chapter 5(3), p. 74, PhD Thesis which is not a WP:RS. The content looks very much WP:DUBIOUS, so I listed it at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genocide of Kashmiri Shias. I am requesting for inputs and a discussion on this subject. Thank you — Amkgp 💬 11:15, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Courtesy ping @TheAafi, Ulubatli Hasan, Mhveinvp, UMAGPR, Kautilya3, Vanamonde93, Fylindfotberserk, and DiplomatTesterMan: for further help and inputs if any. Thank you. — Amkgp 💬 11:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

The normal procedure is to remove any non-RS and replace it by a {{citation needed}} tag. This doesn't need any discussion. All the other issues should be discussed at the article talk page and the ongoing AfD.

PhD these are a bit more of a problem. The WP:RS policy says they should be used with caution, attributed where necessary, and any independent judgements made in the theses (other than factual material) should be avoided. It is a fine balance.

Keep in mind that it is generally hard to find good material on Shia Islam in general, but I have rarely seen authoritative HISTRS contradict any of the stories of persecution that abound. So I would tend to be sympathetic. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:08, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I have decided to withdraw the AfD and closed it as keep per WP:WDAFD, but it would be good if anyone can help to improve the article. Thank you. — Amkgp 💬 14:43, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Time for senior editors to have a look at the page and remove the tags. It has been improved a lot, thanks to a long discussion in the Talk page. Dr. Hamza Ebrahim (talk) 09:11, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Cheman Shaik up for deletion

• Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
• Cheman Shaik (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs|google) AfD discussion

Indian inventor. Question of notability and sourcing. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:34, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

General question about political party affiliation

Hey all, I need a little edification: If an actor joins a political party like the BLP, what exactly does this mean? Does this mean that they are now a politician who will be running for office, or just that they are allying themselves with a certain political ideology? In western nations like the UK and the US, if someone joins a political party, it is largely just suggestive that they will vote a certain way about various matters and often the only formality is ticking the appropriate box on the registration sheet. The background of my question has to do with this edit, where we're bothering to note that Srabanti Chatterjee has joined the BJP, yet there's no context in the article suggestive of any political ambitions or running for office. So I'm trying to figure out if this fact is relevant or not, and if I just lack some fundamental understanding of what "joining the BLP" means. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

When actors join political parties in India, they are either wanting to run for office or they are lending their considerable visibility to add to the weight of the party. It is rarely an innocent or private thing. If it was indeed a private thing, it would have remained private. It wouldn't be in the news. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:00, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the explanation, thank you. I'm going to open a discussion on that article's talk page about it, in case anybody has an opinion one way or another. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:25, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments invited for proposed edits to India

Please give your feedback for the edit proposed on the main India article at Talk:India#Society_section_statement_on_caste.

Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 16:51, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

List of Himalayan peaks and passes

The list in List of Himalayan peaks and passes has seen a fair number of edits by IPs, each typically substituting "India" with "Pakistan", "China" with "India", and so on. You all know the familiar picture. This has been going on for a long time, so the quality of the information in this article is now unreliable. Anyone interested in having a look? If it's all sorted out, then we can ask for permanent protection to prevent this sort of thing happening going forward. – Uanfala (talk) 23:06, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Ok, will look into it.defcon5 (talk) 05:47, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Request for comments on whether a temple inspired the design of India's Parliament House

Hi all.

Please join the discussion at the talk page of the article about India's Parliament House. A commonly-repeated claim is that the design of the structure was inspired by the Chausath Yogini Temple at Morena, the WP article of which is a GA. This claim has appeared as a DYK. However, I have raised some concerns about the sourcing and reliability of this claim. It would be nice to have more voices discussing the issue.

Thanks in advance and kind regards, Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 07:42, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

General question about citation of South Indian authors of articles

This is kind of a followup question to two previous discussions at this noticebord, but I realise this problem is not at all a unique case so it may be more useful to know generally. I also hope this is the last time I ask about this subject for a while, because it's been getting to my head lately.

So basically, I want to be absolutely sure about this: should South Indian authors of articles actually be indexed/cited by their given names? I've learned recently that South Indians generally do not have surnames but have their village and/or father's given name in front of their own given name instead. For instance, I also noticed that on the ResearchGate profile of the author I talked about last time I was here, some of the articles she co-authored gives her name as "K. Viswajyothi" (e.g. here). This seems to be consistent with what I noticed previously where the author tends to be given as "Keezhpattillam Viswajyothi", with the intention that she be cited as "[...] Viswajyothi, K. [...] year. title". I notice this to be similar to "K. D. Prathapan", an Indian entomologist who is almost always given as that name even outside of scientific journals (such as in several recent news articles and legal court documents available online). Additionally, both Prathapan and Viswajyothi have at some point at least been affiliated with Kerala Agricultural University, which I am now aware is located in South India, so it sounds more and more likely to me that both these scientists/authors are both from South India themselves.

Googling around, I have found several articles on the subject:

• Give south Indian authors their true names (from 2008)
• Insensitivity of editors and indexers regarding the cultural variations of authors’ surnames (from 2016)

The authors of both articles talk about how they have been frustrated by publishers simply because they do not have a surname, and they have to substitute it with their father's name instead which itself causes confusion.

Meanwhile, does this insight change the answer for the original question at all: is Viswajyothi's name actually supposed to be written as K. (or Keezhpattillam) Viswajyothi rather than the other way round, despite Viswajyothi being probably her given name? I note that last time someone here referred to her FaceBook profile to back up the idea that it's the other way round, however so I recall FaceBook may be just as guilty as the publishers quoted in the above two articles forcing South Indians to give a "surname" when they in fact do not have one. So FaceBook cannot be a reliable source for names of South Indians let alone name order, unless the website has recently changed its attitude towards making everyone have to give a "first name" and "last name" on signing up?

Monster Iestyn (talk) 18:42, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• We have {{Indian name}} for this purpose, see the usage at Murali Vijay. It was also there on J. Jayalalithaa but was removed, I've restored it. —SpacemanSpiff 16:13, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
• Ah sorry, maybe I should explain properly: I don't actually edit articles on Indian people, but more usually articles on species of animals, but sometimes there have been articles authored by Indian people involved. I just want to know how I'm supposed to cite Indian authors for those articles. It'll also be useful to know for Wikispecies, which I am also active on. Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:45, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Monster Iestyn, I believe you can leave the first= parameter blank for South Indian authors and enter the full name in the last= parameter instead, in the reference templates. At least that's how I remember it - I had to do it for some Bhutanese sources. In their naming system there is no given name/family name distinction, and the entire name is the person's given name, like Dawa Dem. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 07:35, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI: Ah, that makes sense, maybe I'll do that too unless anyone suggests anything different. Thanks for replying! Monster Iestyn (talk) 12:24, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Splitting discussion for Rayan

An article that been involved with (Rayan) has content that is proposed to be removed and moved to another article (Rayan (disambiguation)). If you are interested, please visit the discussion. Thank you. Cnilep (talk) 07:14, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Indian politician and election affected by COVID

Hi. I'm surprised that in the article Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on politics, there's not a single mention of India. We Know former president Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of State Suresh Angadi and many other politicians died due to Covid while Home Minister Amit Shah contracted the virus. Not to mention a number of MPs, MLAs and other politicians. Help me make a list of politicians who contracted or died of the virus. Thank you. -- Manasbose ^{(talk | edits)} 07:04, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Godi media § Bhakts

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Godi media § Bhakts. 122.172.188.47 (talk) 14:16, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Naveenpur#Name

 You are invited to discussion at Talk:Naveenpur#Name. It is about the name of the article. –Kammill ⟨talk⟩ 14:50, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Narendra Modi § New sections

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Narendra Modi § New sections. 122.179.38.46 (talk) 15:09, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Indian cricket lists

Hi everyone. Hope you all are well. If anyone you have some time then please give your input at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of international cricket five-wicket hauls on Irish cricket grounds. Thanks. Störm (talk) 17:10, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Inclusion of Word Naxalite in the Introduction of G.N. Saibaba

As the Person Dr. G.N. Saibaba is proved guilty by the sessions court on count for their maoist link and granted life imprisonment by Session Court in Maharashtra[34]. He is been charged and convicted under section 13, 18, 20 , 38 and 39 of the UAPA Act. As Such, it seems that the naxalite reference can be added to the article. The article where the judgement done by judge at the sessions court specifically mentions the accused belong to CPI(Maoist) as well as RDF [35]. Please guide whether it;s appropriate to add the word "naxalite" in the introduction. Pranhita (talk) 17:46, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Pranhita! Neither of the sources use the term 'naxalite' to describe the subject. The NIE sources says he was convicted for ...aiding and abetting Naxal activities which, in my personal opinion, cannot be claimed as an equivalent. Vikram Vincent 18:07, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Vincentvikram! You can check the following source clearly mentioning naxalite leader for the subject. [36] Pranhita (talk) 11:04, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

hi Pranhita, please have a look at WP:TOI. Best! Vikram Vincent 11:28, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Vincentvikram , I Don't know about WP:TOI . But the same site is used as reference for almost 6 sections in the article using this link [37]. Isn't those should be removed too? Pranhita (talk) 11:54, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

replacement of source is logical, no? :-) Vikram Vincent 12:04, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Not only source but also the relevant text. How come using some information from a source is good, whereas some is bad. How it is defined ? Isn't it Biasedness ? Pranhita (talk) 12:22, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it is just not knowing what source is reliable and what is not. I came across WP:RSP while reading some conversation. It is possible to use TOI if you are not making a critical claim but definitely not a claim that might potentially violate BLP. I'm sure there will be other RS that support the claims and that content can be salvaged using the alternate sources. Vikram Vincent 12:57, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

non notable lecture?

Quick question: please have a look at this edit. The author of that quote is a senior advocate in the Supreme Court, with the quote following WP:QUOTE to support the criticism of a controversial topic. Would the arguments here be reasonable? Thanks! Vikram Vincent 19:51, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Udham Singh

Udham Singh's article has been disrupted for a long time, but the disruption has increased manyfold since the announcement of his biographical film: Sardar Udham Singh. So the page needs to be at least semi-protected. The disruptive caste-warriors are trying all sort of tricks to appropriate him, e.g. a newbie (Parvinder Pathi) added a ref to support his Koli ancestry, but the source seems to be nonexistent, let alone being a scholarly one. And now an IP hopper is edit-warring over it, e.g. see here and here. As far as I remember, most scholars mention that he was a Kamboj, but the discussion is only possible if the disruption by the newbies can be stopped. - NitinMlk (talk) 20:03, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

NitinMlk please install twinkle extension and request for temporary page protection WP:RPP. Vikram Vincent 12:59, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Vincentvikram, thanks for the advice, although I am familiar with Twinkle as well as RPP. The caste-related disruption is normally hard to explain to those who aren't familiar with this area. They would probably think that I am trying to evade discussion with the IP hopper. So I have opened a relevant discussion on the talk page (see Talk:Udham_Singh#Udham Singh's ancestory), although I already know how it will pan out. - NitinMlk (talk) 21:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

arbitrary removal of India category

HI! I'm bringing this here for a wider discussion among the India community. BrownHairedGirl is removing all categories related to India, like this. I started a discussion on the editor talk page and then nominated one category for deletion. I have closed the article and talk page discussions and retaining the CFD and this one. What problems do i perceive? 1. An ordinary reader will look for country/state/district by default since these are commonly used categories. 2. By replacing the India/Karnataka with "Mysore State" categories, though hyper accurate, causes problems for normal searching. I would suggest retaining the existing categories while adding any new more accurate ones. What do others think? Vikram Vincent 15:03, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

• Sigh. This is now the fourth venue in which @Vikram Vincent has forum-shopped his disruptive misunderstanding of a simple process.

The reality is simple. I have not been removing all categories related to India. That is simply false.

What I have been doing is diffusing establishment categories into by-state subcats. This task has also been done by other editors (including John Pack Lambert).

This diffusion into more specific sub-categories is a routine categorization task, and in this case it follows from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 August 1#Establishments_in_Sikkim, where it was agreed to have the by-year establishment categories split by state.

This is similar to what is done in e.g. the United States. See e.g. Category:2010 establishments in the United States, which is diffused by state.

Vikram Vincent's suggestion of retaining the existing categories while adding any new more accurate ones is straightforward breach of WP:SUBCAT: we don't keep a page in both a category and its parent, except in a few specific categories which don't apply here. Breaching WP:SUBCAT increases maintenance loads, makes categories harder to navigate, and causes category clutter on articles.

Part of this arises from @Vikram Vincent's relative inexperience: he clearly lacks familiarity with categorisation processes and principles and conventions. However, that's not the cause of all this drama. Vikram has repeatedly been stirring up drama about this based on his misunderstandings and has repeatedly failed to do even the most basic research before launching another round of drama. For example, the discussion on my talk page started because Vikram didn't understand that Mysore State is not the same thing as Mysore district.

All this frenzy of ill-research objections and proposals is a huge waste of the time and energy of other editors. It is becoming increasingly hard to believe that Vikram is acting in good faith, and I urge Vikram to drop this nonsense and do some research before his conduct crosses the rapidly approaching line into tendentious WP:IDHT. Four misconceived discussions on the same topic is well into WP:FORUMSHOPping territory already. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:50, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

• PS. @Vikram Vincent's assertion that replacing the India/Karnataka with "Mysore State" categories, though hyper accurate, causes problems for normal searching is another false assertion, based on Vikram's lack of understanding.

Look at Category:Establishments in Karnataka by year. The pre-1973 catefories are all named "Mysore State", because that was the name of the state pre-1973. However, in every case, there is a {{category redirect}} from the equivalent title with "Karantaka: e.g. Category:1969 establishments in Karnataka is a redirect to Category:1969 establishments in Mysore State. That allows both easy searching and easy categorisation, because an article categorised anachronistically in Category:1969 establishments in Karnataka will be recategorised automatically in Category:1969 establishments in Mysore State. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:57, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with the use of "Category:1969 establishments in Karnataka" with a redirection to "Category:1969 establishments in Mysore State". However, I do find it counter intuitive, the tagging of articles post-1956-pre-1973 as Mysore state, and this can be ascertained by my average IQ and average understanding as pointed out by BHG :-) Hence my opposition to the arbitrary replacement of tags to Category:1969 establishments in Mysore State is valid and still stands. Vikram Vincent 16:12, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Vikram Vincent, stop trolling. The process of subcategorisation is not arbitrary; is a routine and systematic process of subcategorisation. And categories are not tags.

And no, your opposition is not valid, because it ignores the fact that contemporaneous naming is used in all the other time-in-place categories on Wikipedia. See e.g. Category:1955 in Ceylon (not Sri Lanka), and Category:1963 in Swaziland (not "1963 in Eswatini"). I had already given you examples of that, but as usual you ignore the facts which don't suit you.

I am sorry that you find it counter-intuitive to write history as it actually was, but I am unable to help you with that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:25, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

LOL! This is the first time I have been accused of trolling :D (No, I ain't trolling. I find BHG's tone extremely aggressive and prefer to use humour instead). I've shared whatever was my opinion and I'll let other share their thoughts. Best! Vikram Vincent 18:37, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Vikram, you find me as you treat me. Your forumshopping antics exhausted my good will long ago, and you are now dealing with a BHG who thoroughly fed up with your timewasting. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:27, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, your aggressive approach started when you ignored WP:BRD and reverted me here. I already mentioned here that I opened those multiple discussions by mistake. Trying to blame me for your aggressive attitude is misplaced and bad for your health more than mine cause I use humour. When upset, remember what Yoda said, Wikipedia is no place for humour. Everything is very serious here and we are all terrifically important. Best! Vikram Vincent 18:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Your revert was based on a simple misunderstanding by you, which I clarified for you.

If you open a discussion by mistake, you can revert your edit. But if you really opened 3 more discussions by mistake, then you have some severe competence problem.

Now, please stop this trolling. Your trolling is what is making me annoyed, and your refusal to either accept any responsibility for your disruption or to stop the disruption is continued hostile provocation you. Please go off and do something where you actually understad what you are doing and how to behave. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:02, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject India/Collaborations of the month

You are invited to join WikiProject India/Collaborations of the month initiative. This initiative will help to promote many articles to the good and featured status, but to do so we need your help! If you are willing, please add your name in the participants page and you will receive newsletters when it will start again. Thank you! Kammill ⟨talk⟩ 15:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Move proposal per policy

Hello. Requesting comments at Talk:Bhat#Requested move 20 March 2021. The article title should be changed per policy — WP:COMMONNAME/WP:UCRN. Thanks, Мастер Шторм (talk) 14:34, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Naming Kashmiri Villages

Hello Wikipedians, I recently came across some village related articles like Akura, Jammu and Kashmir, Nowgam, Anantnag, Rohu, Jammu and Kashmir and many more. What I noticed was the article are not named similarly. Some of them have district at there end and some of them are followed by State/Union territory name. Let us discuss about it, so that all articles have a consistent name. I suggest we should name these articles as Village name followed by district eg. Lalchowk, Srinagar and Lalchowk, Anantnag keeping in view that there can be villages with same names in two different districts. A classical example is Lalchowk in Srinagar, Kashmir and Lalchowk in Anantnag, Kashmir. Iflaq ^(talk) 14:23, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Moved to WT:WikiProject Jammu and Kashmir § Naming Kashmiri Villages

Kolkata, sexual violence, Feb 1968, Requesting refs

I do work on /contribute to many Women's rights related articles, including Sexual violence in India, Draft:Sexual politics in south Asia,

There was some gruesome historic incidence of mass public molestation and sexual violence seems to have happened in a failed "Ashok Kumar night" entertainment programme @ Rabindra Sarobar Stadium Kolkata Jan / Feb 1968. For which online details are scant.

I came across one mention in a Assamese socialist MP Hem Barua speech @ Lok Sabha debates, there seems to be some ref in Jyoti Basu's authorized biography too , which I already requested @ Resource Request forum but that is unlikely to provide non communist version. Hence I am looking for refs from 1968 West Bengal and national news paper archives may be Anandabazar Patrika archives? Can some one help ?

Bookku (talk) 03:08, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Missing article on Shakuntala Vasishta

Shakuntala Vasishta was the first woman gazetted police officer of India and it's a shame that we don't have an article on her! I'd like to write one but can't find any sources for the research and citations. Can this WikiProject help me with that?--Deepak G Goswami (talk) 17:43, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Deepak G Goswami, yes I will but we need to see if she is notable. Kammill ⟨talk⟩ 15:43, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Deepak G Goswami, I don't think she is notable. She doesn't seem to pass WP:GNG. Yes, I am aware that she is the first woman Delhi police officer but we don't have any reliable source which would verify it. Kammill ⟨talk⟩ 16:04, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Kammill, thanks for your efforts but don't say that she is not "notable". First woman police officer of India is not notable? She was not just Delhi's first police officer! When promoted to DSP in Delhi, she became the first Indian woman to achieve that. However, I do understand that she hasn't been covered in sources available online, which reflects the sorry state of Indian media and their coverage of women in general.--Deepak G Goswami (talk) 14:44, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

@Deepak G Goswami: I do not know if you have referred to following book's related page

• "VASISHTHA Mrs. SHAKUNTALA". Encyclopedia of Women in India. India: Praveen Encyclopaedia Publications: 252. 1976.

If not available to you, then you can make a request @ Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request

I hope above info would help you a little. Basically we need to have a better source for pre 2000 news archives. that would help a little. Thanks and regards Bookku (talk) 17:25, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Department of Science and Technology (India)

There's a new editor or possibly an SPA adding quite a bit of stuff to Department of Science and Technology (India). Some of the edits are reasonable, but there's also quite a bit of unsourced material, and I'm seeing a casual approach to copyright (I'm fairly certain that the DST logo is not the editor's own work). It'd be good to get some attention from people more familiar with the Indian system over there. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 18:08, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

The logo is allowed on commons as it is licensed under the Government Open Data License - India (GODL). User:Diannaa has dealt with the copyrighted text, although IMO the text may also be under the terms of GODL but I am not sure if CC BY-SA 3.0 is more or equally restraining than GODL itself. -- Eatcha 03:33, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Revolutionary Communist Council of India

The article Revolutionary Communist Council of India has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Non-notable political movement with one reference. The article fails to mention any details or explain why this movement was notable and also provides that the movement "might" have existed in the 1970s.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Theprussian (talk) 11:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Double-check requested

Hey - would someone mind double-checking my revert [38] on Magadha. It looked like a rather large edit that mostly unsourced and POV in places, hence my revert. Would appreciate it! Ravensfire (talk) 17:32, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Noted in passing ...

From Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund's now classic History of India, 6th edition, 2016, Kindle Edition:

At this stage Pakistan made a very provocative move. It tested a rocket named ‘Ghauri’ after Muhammad von Ghor who had once raided northern India. Actually this rocket was made in North Korea and had only been re-baptised in Pakistan.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

North Korea? That's funny, I thought Pakistan supplied DPRK with defence tech, not the other way round. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 02:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Move proposal on article of recently deceased politician

Please participate in the move discussion on the talk page of the article Digvijaysinhji Jhala. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI ^{converse | fings wot i hav dun} 02:44, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Move proposal from Meṣa to Mesha (month)

More views are sought in Talk:Meṣa for the move from Meṣa to Mesha (month). Thanks in advance. Crashed greek (talk) 08:46, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Persistent unsourced changes to Bihar Legislative Assembly

Could anybody take a look over there and find sources (I don't know if they'd be in English language publications) for this information? There's just so many different people who keep changing numbers, I don't know whether its genuine information, premature and incorrect reports, or mundane number vandalism. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Kurnool Airport categories

The history of Kurnool Airport in brief:

• 2013 - Central government proposes 50 new airports
• 2016 Feb - Ministry of Civil Aviation gives site clearance
• 2017 Feb - Andhra Pradesh state government approves the allocation of land
• 2017 June - Foundation stone laid
• 2019 Jan - Inaugurated
• 2021 Jan - DGCA gives license to operate
• 2021 March 25 - State government re-inaugurates
• 2021 March 28 - IndiGo plans to commence operations IndiGo commences operations (edit: 6 April 2021)

Based on this what is the year of establishment? The current category tagged in the article is 2018, which seems wrong.

- Srihari Thalla (talk) 17:52, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

SrihariThalla, the date of inauguration is a clear date of "establishment". If no flights operated between the first inauguration and the second, then I would choose the seond one. (The first one then just be ceremonial nonsense.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:08, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Then, would it be categorized into Category:Airports established in 2021 and not Category:Airports established in 2019? The first flight took off on 28 March 2021. (Ping @BrownHairedGirl) -- Srihari Thalla (talk) 19:17, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Srihari Thalla, there are reasonable arguments to be made for using date of inauguration, and also for using date of first operations. So I suggest don't sweat it ... and if editors want to put effort into this type of work, it would be massively more useful to sort of out the 247 Indian airports in Category:Airports with year of establishment missing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:41, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

CCI wrapup

Hello! A case at CCI just wrapped up that concerned India. The project may want to assess how much was removed and if any articles were of high interest; I don't believe many were rated of high importance but it won't hurt to check. There were about 60~ articles total in the CCI, found here. Sennecaster (What now?) 01:04, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Bharat Broadband Network (BharatNet)

The article Bharat Broadband Network has an infobox of Template:Politics of India. I don't think this article falls under this category despite being initiated by the government. I propose to remove the template. I've posted on it's talk page, link -- Srihari Thalla (talk) 08:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

The Kind needs attentions!

Hay guys, The article Khetsingh Khangar needs attentions from someone who has full knowledge on Gujarat history or who's really good at Tamil Hindi. Thank you. VocalIndia (talk) 12:07, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Remembering

Elephants being ridden in Shahbag

Those of you who remember Aditya Kabir, especially those who had helped edit his first Featured Article Shahbag in 2007, will be saddened to know that he passed away a few months ago.

After Shahbag, I interacted with him only intermittently, but it was usually on POV-ridden pages, where I found him to be a timely breath of fresh air. And I was pleasantly surprised last August to have received a barnstar from him which grossly overrated my abilities or contributions.

A few minutes ago, soon after complaining to my wife that my memory was no longer what it used to be, a poem of R. L. Stevenson's popped into my head. It is from A Child's Garden of Verses, given as a birthday present long ago. Here are its last three stanzas:

Picture of the Brahmi script during the Gupta era taken by Nichalp

From "Keepsake Mill"
Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all the boys are away.

Home from the Indies, and home from the ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all shall come home;
Still we shall find the old mill-wheel in motion
Turning and churning that river to foam.

You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
I with your marble of Saturday last,
Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
Here we shall meet and remember the past.

On a less downbeat note, those who remember Nichalp, Wikipedia admin and arbitrator, and the force behind the early FA-drives of South Asia-related pages, will be pleased to know that his picture on the Gupta era Brahmi script has appeared in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is in their short article on the "Brahmi writing system." The credit for the picture has been given to him, and not just generically to WP, as is so often done. Dwaipayanc, Ragib, Tony1, Armanaziz, SandyGeorgia, RegentsPark, SpacemanSpiff, Doug Weller, PBS. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:43, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I feel sad and happy. Tony (talk) 01:44, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I made a brief entry about Aditya Kabir in Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2020 after his death. Please feel free to elaborate the entry. Regards!--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:14, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Dwaipayan, I have nothing to add. The obit in the Bangladesh newspaper brought fresh insight and heightened appreciation. The moral code of Wikipedia involves keeping Real Life largely out of sight. It was restoring to know that he was not only undogmatic and generous on Wikipedia but also a poet and writer in RL. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:55, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Sad news. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family and friends. - Chandan Guha (talk) 23:09, 11 April 2021 (UTC)