Mikebauer

December 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. It might not have been your intention, but your recent edit removed maintenance templates from Mir Asedullah Quadri. When removing maintenance templates, please be sure to either resolve the problem that the template refers to, or give a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry, as your removal of this template has been reverted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia, and if you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. --DAJF (talk) 06:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi ,

Firstly, I am a great admirer of the Wikipedia site and the work that you guys as administrators do! I was just reading your page of issues you handle and I must say that I really admire the kind of detail you guys check in posts to help keeping the Wikipedia page neat! Kudos to you all on this! I just wanted to quickly chat with you about the problem we have with the Shaikh Aseduallah Quadri post by guide99. I guess there has been some problem about the authenticity of the article and I just read the (war page:)) between the admin group and guide99. I also think you guys suspect that me and guide99 are the same person. Well, your doubts are valid. I just wanted to clarify that we are definably not the same person. I have been following Wikipedia for a very long time and I just signed up to register my account here. I know the Shaikh personally and I admire his capabilities and used to follow this page on Wikipedia for all the articles guide99 used to update (am sure you can check the history of my ip address or so). I was really surprised to see that this page was called not authentic, and hence, I reached out to guide99 recently in a social gathering and spoke about this. He told me about the issues you guys have with the authenticity part of the article and you needed references. Which is why, I edited the page - but I am guessing the edited information was not convincing enough. I am very certain that you want to help us,Which is why I am reaching out to you sincerely. Could you please tell me what are the problems with the references I gave in my edit and what more references you would need. I would love to help you to have this post online. Please know that Shaikh Asedullah Quadri is extremely popular in India and have a lot of followers on Wikipedia for articles on him. I speak on behalf of all his fans and it would be great if you could help me fix this issue. Looking forward for your help and guidance here.

Thanks! Mikebauer (talk) 06:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

On finding refs for Mir Asedullah Quadri

Greetings, thanks for writing to my Talk page. This article has been contentious, so it's good to keep open lines of communication. Hope you'll forgive our suspecting your being a sockpuppet of Guide99, but his blockage and your immediate registration and reversion to his edits did look a bit coincidental.

In any case, hopefully by looking over the Talk page of the Quadri article, you can get a feel for what everyone's issue is with the article. Fundamentally, this comes down to the slogan "Wikipedia is about verifiability (WP:VERIFIABILITY), not truth." That is to say, we're not out to right wrongs and establish the truth, we're here to report and organise that which is already being said in the world.

Here's the basis of our concern: none of the references provided for the Quadri article have met the standards set forth in WP:RS ("reliable sources"). Every reference has been a CIFA page, a forum thread, Facebook, or a data-dump site. What we're looking for is a site unaffiliated with CIFA or Quadri, which is recognised as authoritative in some way (not editable by anybody, but a site that has professional/journalistic/academic standards to maintain), and that specifically states some basic facts we can use in the article. The problem is that, as things currently stand, all we have is Quadri's view of basically every single fact in the article; we don't have any outside view from a newspaper, academic work, etc. It's not to slight Quadri personally, it's just an issue of principle. Ideally, we don't let anybody just say "seriously, take my word for it, I say so myself."

Furthering our concern, Guide99 and now yourself assert that Quadri is notable; Guide99 claims that Quadri is the spiritual leader of 350 million Muslims. However, we're not finding a single unaffiliated reference mentioning him. One would imagine that such a figure would be mentioned in someone's academic work on Islam in India, or in the Delhi Times when he makes some statement or visits somewhere, or simply something along those lines.

So does that lay out the (uniformly held amongst everyone but Guide99 in this debate) stance of the concerned editors? Do you feel that you have a good grasp on what a "neutral, third-party reference" would be? Are you, like us, having trouble finding outside mention of Quadri, or are we somehow not just finding it, or is it in some online newspapers or articles in other languages? MatthewVanitas (talk) 07:31, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Matthew for reaching out and helping me clearly understand the issue. The concerns you have are clearly valid and I understand your point if view here and agree with it completely.

I have gone ahead and added some more references to his page. It would be great if you could quickly look at the page to see the additional references I have added, These range from third party sites, to some other leaders like Ahmad Deedat reaching out to the shaikh for help and guidance.

The problem here is that Shaikh is a person who has always liked to maintain a low profile in his life, which is why we may not have newspaper publish information for him for he rarely comes into the media. But I have provided and added some other references, which will surely help you guys in figuring out the popularity of Shaikh in Islam.

Please do go through all the references, and please let me know if you think you would need more.

Again, thanks a lot for your help here. I am proud of working with people like you who are willing to help.

Thanks Again! Mikebauer (talk) 07:52, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Sources

Please read WP:RS - we don't use Forums, Facebook, pages which say they have used material from Wikipedia, blogs, etc as sources, and most of your sources which weren't CIFIA were those. Dougweller (talk) 07:53, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I've looked through the entire list of 59 references, largely the same as Guide99's reflist, and found literally none of them to meet WP:RS. If is has the word "showthread" or "topic" in the address, that's a prettty good indication it's a forum, where anyone can post anything. The rest is Facebook, blogs (both places anyone can post anything), and the CIFA site which is directly affiliated with Quadri. Of the very few sites that don't fit the above, all they mention is just that CIFA exists, no substantial info or commentary on the notability of Quadri. Again, whether or not Quadri is important is beyond the scope of WP. However, whether the average person can find neutral depictions of his importance... still not looking convincing. Notice how on the deletion template at the top of the Quadri article it lists places to look like " GBooks · A9 · MSBooks · GScholar · MSAcademic · GNews recent · GNews old · NYT recent · NYT old"? If you can't find anything there, that's not very promising for proving notability. MatthewVanitas (talk) 08:04, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Matthew again for explaining me and for your time on this. I have done some extensive research on the Shaikh my self and have found some very good sources. I am listing them here for your reference :

Newspaper :

The San Francisco chronicle (world's renowned newspaper) has listed Shaikh Mir Asedullah Quadri as one of the modern day Muslim scholars in Islam. Please check this link here : http://topics.sfgate.com/topics/Muslim_scholars (please expand the article on the right side of the page and you will find his name in the list).

Books :

The museum of learning (authentic site which does research on books written by scholars) have clearly listed Shaikh Mir Asedullah Quadri books and their published dates quoting referenced from the book. Please check here : http://www.museumstuff.com/learn/topics/Shaikh_Mir_Asedullah_Quadri

Evri, which offers download/purchase of books in association with amazon has links for free download of Shaikh Asedullah Quadri's books. Please check the fourth link here :

http://www.evri.com/media/article;jsessionid=13snzkyj038wr?title=BOOKS+FREE+DOWNLOAD+Related+Articles+p%26gt;+Carbon+nanotube+...&page=http://www.amazines.com/Books_free_download_related.html&referring_uri=/person/shaikh-mir-asedullah-quadri-0x51aeca;jsessionid%3D13snzkyj038wr&referring_title=Evri

Med-library - online books library has given descriptions about the books written by the Shaikh quoting references from his books published. Please check here :

http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Shaikh_Mir_Asedullah_Quadri

ireference has listed Shiakh Asedullah Quadri as one of the modern day scholars in Islam. Please check here :

http://www.ireference.ca/search/List%20of%20modern-day%20Muslim%20scholars/

Again, as I said, Shaikh Mir Asedullah Quadri has written a lot of books but not many online.He is very media shy and keeps very low profile. However, he is very popular across India and we all who follow the shaikh have a great regard and are very sensitive about this. I am hoping the information I provided will be sufficient.

Further, if you like to have some pictures of the books that were published of him(hard copy books), I can send that as attachments to you if that will help.

Thanks again for working with me here!

Mikebauer (talk) 10:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The San Francisco Chronicle-hosted article says "Description from Wikipedia" at the top, and links to List of modern-day Muslim scholars here on Wikipedia, which appears to have lots of unreferenced claims about living people. Regardless of those claims being referenced or unreferenced, it means the San Francisco Chronicle material cannot be a source for Wikipedia because it just links back to Wikipedia.

The museumstuff link has been explained to you by someone else already.

Someone's material being available for free on Amazon does not confer notability.

The medlibrary page clearly says "Content is sourced directly from Wikipedia and is authored by an open community of volunteers. It is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org."

The ireference page is a copy of List of modern-day Muslim scholars and says so at the end. Again, pages that just copy Wikipedia or link back to Wikipedia, are not reliable secondary sources.

Scans of hardcopy books he has published are of no use in proving notability, since merely having published is not enough for notability unless the person has received significant coverage in independent secondary sources. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 10:34, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Mikebauer, you seem to think that books by this person are appropriate references here. What is needed, instead, are sources about him -- only material of that sort would establish notability and enable us to write about him on Wikipedia. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:47, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all who replied. I just have a quick question though. What if his notability is offline. I does not necessarily mean that a person has to be online to be popular. Internet penetration in India is about 7% . This means that a lot of people who are not on internet could be popular and must be having an impact on people's lives.

Shiakh Asedullah Quadri is one person like that. He has many fans, but most of us are not on internet most of our time. If we are looking for popularity of a person, is there any offline source that we can give you which establishes the popularity and genuineness of this person.Like, we have sent you the scan copy of letters Ahmad Deedat wrote to Shaikh Quadri. Similarly, do you want to see any videos or pictures wof the Shaikh giving a speech or anything like that? If you want, I will upload these videos on youtube and send it across.

See, all I am asking here is there has to be some way in Wikipedia by which, a person who is not internet savy gets the recognition he has done in his life offline. Come on guys, please help me out here.

Mikebauer (talk) 07:31, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

You are correct that a person doesn't have to be personally online to be popular, and you are correct that it is conceivable that there are important people who, due to a lack of internet penetration in their specific community, may not have internet coverage proportional to their worldly importance. Do you happen to have any evidence that Quadri has been covered in major regional newspapers that just don't happen to be online? Have you run searches on his name in Urdu and Hindi scripts to see if there's some online news coverage in those languages? The bottom line is verifiability, so especially for something this contentious where Guide99 is insisting he's spiritual leader of 350 million Muslims, we need to see something. Further, it's important to note that this is not a matter of "find one Delhi Times article mentioning Quadri giving a speech, cite it, and then spend the rest of the 5 pages directly quoting Quadri's website." The article should be based on external sources, with some minor inclusion of self-published info of a non-contentious and non-self-serving nature (like birthdate, schools attended, etc.) So the article is going to be awfully short unless you can either find some online foreign language info, or else point us to where he gets neutral, third-party coverage somewhere. MatthewVanitas (talk) 09:14, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Matthew for your quick response. I think I understand your point about the article claiming 320 million muslims without providing sufficient proof. You definitely need some proof for a huge claim like that. This claim is actually true, but as you said, we have stuff on Wikipedia which can be proved to be true and not just true. I get it completely.

I am currently searching for all records of newspapers and third parties about providing you the proof. Also, I am getting in touch with guide99 to seek his permission to change the article a bit. I believe we should claim stuff based on what we can prove.I will re-work on the article to remove terms like "350 million muslims" as you quoted and any other objectionable material for which we cannot provide proof. Once I am done editing and removing the stuff, I will post the article again. Since I have almost given you all the proofs I had (and I am still looking for more), I am hoping that you would allow the edited version of my article which will not claim things which would require proof.

Please let me know. Thanks again for all the time you spent on helping me figure this out! Mikebauer (talk) 11:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello Matthew,

As discussed, I have removed all the sentences which we cannot prove. All claims which we cannot justify. Specifically - (i) I have removed 350 million followers, and (2) praise of Cifia as largest Association in the World.

I am hoping that now the article is very generic in nature and you would not have any problems in having it online.

Also, I wanted to thank each and everyone of the Administrators who have helped and explained me all the policies of Wikipedia. I would love to praise you guys somewhere if possible (like a place where I can give feedback about you all to the owner of this site about your good work). Please let me know if I can do that.

Thanks! Mikebauer (talk) 13:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello there,

I see that the article is again removed...I had discussed it and made the appropriate changes..

Can you advice what went wrong now?

Mikebauer (talk) 14:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Established editors here take the view that the sources you have provided (including facebook sites, discussion forums, blogs, etc.) do not satisfy the requirements of WP:RS. If you really thought that they would be appropriate, then unfortunately that means your understanding of the requirements is still not in line with normal expectations here. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mir Asedullah Quadri

Greetings, just noticed the article is at AfD, and wanted to link you in: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mir Asedullah Quadri. Again, note the emphasis that nobody is against there being an article on Quadri, it's just that we can't have a BLP (biography of living person) where not a single references meets WP:RS. At any future point that a reliable source becomes evident, the article can be created, provided it properly uses reliable sources and uses affiliated sources, such as CIFA's site, in very limited ways as described in RS. MatthewVanitas (talk) 17:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I have asked all members of our community to come forward to vote against this deletion.They all used to follow wikipedia but since you guys want people to register and be online (as it seems to me that for you, popularity is limited only to being online),I have asked them all to register now.Mikebauer (talk) 06:46, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy (see WP:NOTDEMOCRACY). It's not a matter of counting the number of people who vote for or against a deletion. If you or your people can produce a handful of Reliable Sources, the article will remain even if 100 Wahabbis show up to say "I hate Quadri and he shouldn't have an article." Likewise, even if you bring in 100 "keep" votes, unless someone can bring the article up to acceptable standards it will be deleted. Asking more people to help you find Reliable Sources (please make sure they read WP:RS to make sure they know what to look for) is great. Bringing in a bunch of people to just say "don't delete it" without any new information or sources won't accomplish anything.

Again, absolutely nobody here is against having an article about Quadri if it can be reliably sourced. But we can't let a biography, especially a Biography of a Living Person, remain without neutral, 3rd party sources. MatthewVanitas (talk) 07:43, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion regarding Mir Asedullah Quadri

You may wish to consider creating an article about Mir Asedullah Quadri at one of the Wikipedias in languages other than English. These other Wikipedias do have their own policies about what topics are notable enough for inclusion on them, and what kind of sources they require. Of course, you will still need to follow their policies, just like on the English Wikipedia. However, it is possible that their requirements for articles are not as strict. Also, mostly those decisions will be made by different people.

The complete list of different language Wikipedias is at: http://www.wikipedia.org/

Some example Wikipedias in different languages that might be relevant, are:

• Urdu Wikipedia http://ur.wikipedia.org
• Punjabi Wikipedia http://pa.wikipedia.org
• Farsi Wikipedia http://fa.wikipedia.org
• Arabic Wikipedia http://ar.wikipedia.org
• Indonesian Wikipedia http://id.wikipedia.org
• Hindi Wikipedia http://hi.wikipedia.org

Another suggestion is that the scans of documents regarding Mir Asedullah Quadri are not ideal as sources for any Wikipedia because of their very large filesize (about 25MB for each document). You may wish to create smaller versions of these scans (for example, in PNG format rather than TIFF format). These smaller versions would allow the reader to quickly see the content and relevance of the document, but you could still make the original full-size scan available for anyone interested in seeing it. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:58, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Please do not attack other editors, as you did at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mir Asedullah Quadri. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. Dougweller (talk) 06:24, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Please convey the same to the other editor also Mikebauer (talk) 09:01, 27 December 2010 (UTC)