Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Yoga

Haidakhan Babaji

I was hoping that someone could look over this article as their doesn't seem to be much independent sourcing. I went to WikiProject Hinduism and the New Religions Task Force but they seem to be inactive. I hope that some knowledgeable editor could see what could be done with this bio that seems more like a legend than a scholarly biography. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Liz: I've had a go; the article now has some non-devotional sources. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:35, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposed changes to Template:Yoga

I'm proposing extensive changes to the Yoga navbox and would appreciate the input of those interested in WikiProject Yoga.

Please discuss the changes at this link; discussion elsewhere may be missed:

Template_talk:Yoga#Proposed_partial_reorganisation

Explanations for my proposed changes are listed at the discussion page linked above along with a draft which I will update as the discussion proceeds.

Extended content

@Chiswick Chap: How's this for a neutral notice? I can paste this at some other relevant talk pages as you suggested later. Scyrme (talk) 19:11, 24 June 2021 (UTC) Um, if you want discussion over there then don't put the template draft or anything like a discussion here - suggest you cut it at once. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:17, 24 June 2021 (UTC) @Chiswick Chap: When you said "cut and paste" I thought you meant something like this. Misunderstood. Cut the draft as you suggested. Actually I said either paste all here, or just mention here, but not both at once... never mind. And please stop pinging me. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:43, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Scyrme (talk) 19:39, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Asanas

You said that "the chief issue is that quite often there are multiple similar poses with no obvious leader": then variations should be described on List of asanas and each individual article since consensus is asana variations/variants should not have their own article.

With regard to prefixes: those that occur as variations should be listed in the "leader" article not the whole table of prefixes/affixes on List of asanas. That would be unnecessary to repeat at each "individual" asana article. Catchpoke (talk) 19:43, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Catchpoke, you are snatching at snippets out of context. I said that within an Asana article, we describe the main pose (that is not a separate "leader article", but the main topic of an individual Asana article) and its variations (those are not sub-articles, but paragraphs within the same article's Variations section). Sometimes, was my point, there is not so much one main pose as several related poses, so it's somewhat arbitrary which is treated as main and which are variations; but they are all plainly related and belong in the same article. I do hope that is clear to you now. I may add that some schools of yoga have defined many hundreds of asanas, one or two schools have identified over a thousand. We have far fewer articles than that, because each Asana article describes a major pose and (sometimes quite a few) variations on that pose.

I'm also finding your statements/queries/suggestions very unclear; but if in your second paragraph you are worried about duplication of definitions of prefixes and the like, I can assure you that care has been taken to avoid repeating them as far as possible; this obviously has had to be balanced against the general need to make articles reasonably stand-alone. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:33, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I think I am starting to get your train-of-thought. With regards to the table: What I think you were communicating was you do not think that the table at List of asanas#Affixes should be duplicated on all the individual articles. Is that right? What I do think is that variations use affixes in their names. This should not be in the lede the section and should be described in ==Variations==. I await your reply. Catchpoke (talk) 21:04, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

With regard to [1], we should list all the names that are referenced. Catchpoke (talk) 21:10, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

On List of asanas, I think the article does what it should already. It lists the asanas, says they may have variations, and tabulated the main types of variation. It doesn't attempt to chase the rainbow and document every single micro-variant.

On variations in articles, we basically already do that. The lead doesn't attempt to list variations, the Variation section does.

On list of asanas it doesn't need microvariants but the "leader" or main articles do. Catchpoke (talk) 19:48, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that's how the articles are structured. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:09, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

terminology

"asana" is preferable to "position", "posture", "yoga posture", and "yoga position".Catchpoke (talk) 01:48, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

On the contrary, in particular in the lead section or other less-technical parts of an article, there is a general preference across Wikipedia for plain, simple, approachable English, even when an article is on a highly technical subject. For example, even nuclear physics and molecular biology articles attempt to be clear in their introductory sections, however dense the writing may get deeper into the article.

Wikipedia is quite cautious about insisting on technical terms, as for instance seen in the WP:COMMONNAME policy. Wall-to-wall technicality, far from being a desirable goal, is strongly deprecated as it shuts out a large percentage of readers: indeed, the few who can cope with an unremittingly technical text are those who don't need to read Wikipedia in the first place.

On the specifics of WikiProject Yoga, I'll note that academics who read Sanskrit tend to describe the yoga of the western world as "postural yoga" rather than, say "yogasana" (as is not uncommon on the Indian subcontinent) or "asana-based yoga" which would be the more technical phrase for the same thing. Yoga teachers across the English-speaking world freely say "pose", "posture", and "position", both in instructions to their classes and in their writings in yoga books and journals.

Even the most Sanskrit-oriented yoga schools, such as Iyengar Yoga, freely use "poses" and "postures": for instance, Yoga the Iyengar Way heads page 94 with "Dhanurasana" in both Devanagari script and IAST, but the description begins "In this posture ...", and the section is headed "Supine & Prone Poses".

There is, then, no mandate for trying to use "asana" everywhere in place of all other possible terms, either within Wikipedia or outside it (whether in academia or among yoga teachers and journals). Standard Wikipedia practice is to introduce the technical term and make some effort to familiarise readers with it, freely using non-technical terms to make articles intelligible and readable. That, frankly, is our job.

and is it ==References==, ==Citations==, or ==Sources==?Catchpoke (talk) 02:05, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

The project uses "Notes" for the notelist (if any); "References" for the reflist; and "Sources" for the source books to which the references point. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:32, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Portal:Yoga

Namaste everyone! I think we should make a portal for yoga, so we can display this project. Moreover, This will be convenient for readers also. Wikipedia:WikiProject Hinduism Portal:Hinduism There may be many reasons to not build the portal, but one reason is enough that readers can be benefited from this portal creation. Thanks. NehalDaveND (talk) 02:42, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

A portal would add no new information. The project already has top-level good articles on hatha yoga and yoga as exercise, for example, and these form natural, well-structured 'portals' with hundreds of links *in context* to the project's subsidiary articles, something that an automatic portal exactly does not do - it would just serve up a randomised gobbledegook sample. No, we're much better off without one Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:53, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

From my point of view, the best reason for creating a portal would be the opportunity to show different facets of the Yoga diamond at the same time on this portal. As I am involved in the article on Kriya, I am focusing on a concept with only 3 limbs. In the deleted history of this article and in the existing category of this article, we can see precisely the lack of understanding that yoga is an integral discipline. In the portal we could perfectly show that we always have to consider more than one aspect in order to connect with the power of spiritual yoga. Frank Samyamananda (talk) 12:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

Main page: User:Headbomb/unreliable

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Sampra yoga is nominated for deletion

A deletion discussion has been started at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sampra yoga concerning a newly-created article. Project members are invited to contribute to the discussion. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:08, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

yoga-template update suggestions - pls review - thx

I've provided a draft of possible updates to the Yoga template. Could you please check and comment on this - thx

• Template talk:Yoga#template update suggestions - pls review - thx

Frank Samyamananda (talk) 12:44, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Is this project restricted to only Hindu or Indian yogas?

Someone removed the project from Trekchö and Tögal, which are Tibetan yogas. Skyerise (talk) 13:33, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Those articles don't even mention "yoga", let alone cite it to a reliable source. But the question is a good one: if "yoga" means "anything that contributes to personal or spiritual development, however construed", then the topic is wide indeed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:41, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Is this project restricted to only english language yoga pages?

I have translated a english pages from a spiritual teacher which is already connected to this project, into german. I would like also to put the translated version onto this WikiProject. Is that possible and ok? Or would a German version of this WikiProject have to be created first? Newton i (talk) 20:06, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

This project is part of English Wikipedia, which doesn't include German Wikipedia; articles on English Wikipedia are required to be in English. As long as the article is reliably cited to multiple, independent (non-primary) sources such as books, newspapers, or academic journal articles, and in the appropriate language, any Wikipedia - English, German, etc - should welcome it. A discourse by a single spiritual teacher would not be acceptable on English or many other Wikipedias as this would not be seen as meeting the notability requirement. I hope this answers your question. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:33, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 22:43, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Notice of reliable sources noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Yoga Journal as a Reliable Source.The discussion is about the topic [[: [2]]]. Thank you. --Whitestar12 (talk) 03:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

WP Project InActivity

Hi @Chiswick Chap: recently, you reverted my edit where I made this project inactive, but if you look closely regarding its talk page activity, there is hardly any thorough discussion on this project. Moreover, as per WP:INACTIVEWP, in more than 1 year, if there is not much talk page activity, we can go ahead and make it inactive or at least semi-active. I would like to know your views on this issue. New editors are not contributing in developing this project. There is not much participication from various editors. Thanks & Regards 2409:40E0:1030:8675:947F:543B:13DF:2C17 (talk) 14:15, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any reason for that. The project continues to maintain a suite of well-constructed articles; I've brought 54 of them to Good Article status, alongside several others, and the main work now is to keep the ones that may date up-to-date, and to keep the others free of uncited accretions, while watching out for new topics such as arise from time to time. In short, if the project is ticking over properly without much centralised discussion, so be it, it's working well. Several editors make maintenance edits from time to time, again "quietly" with respect to centralised discussion, both on the yoga-as-exercise and on the yoga-as-spiritual-practice side. In short, you shouldn't confuse smooth operation with inactivity. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:38, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your response and I appreciate the work you have done. Regards!--2409:40E0:101F:A63E:6194:7F83:161A:19D4 (talk) 16:45, 19 July 2024 (UTC)