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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Sahitya Akademi fellows/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by PresN via FACBot (talk) 23:31, 20 March 2017 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of Sahitya Akademi fellows edit

List of Sahitya Akademi fellows (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): - Vivvt (Talk) 16:49, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One of the most important literary awards in India. The list has gone through major changes recently and I believe that it follows the required guidelines to be a FL. Hoping to see some constructive comments/criticism. - Vivvt (Talk) 16:49, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Minor comments from Yashthepunisher
  • Alt text is missing from the images.
    • Done
  • "and is given for the "immortals of literature". I think 'to the' will sound good.
    • Done

Yashthepunisher (talk) 18:02, 24 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Yashthepunisher: I have made the necessary changes. Please let me know if you have more comments. - Vivvt (Talk) 15:06, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Minor comments from Aoba47
  • Do you think that you should include an image of the award in the infobox?
  • There is no free image available as of now.
  • That is fine then. I would have believed that a non-free image with the proper rationale would be appropriate in this case, but it does not add that much to the article so it is fine as it currently stands. Aoba47 (talk) 13:43, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you think that you should include some additional images of other fellows in the body of the list? You currently have two, but it may be more comprehensive to include two to three other ones.
  • I've added images of current fellows
  • I would suggest breaking up the last paragraph of the lead into two as it is rather long, especially in comparison with the other paragraphs of the lead.
  • Either way, the fact that the last paragraph was such much larger than the rest of the the lead was an issue. It is better now. Aoba47 (talk) 13:43, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Vivvt: Wonderful job with this list. Once my relatively minor comments are addressed, I will support this. If possible, could you provide comments for my current FAC? Thank you in advance. Aoba47 (talk) 05:20, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Aoba47: I have addressed some of your comments. Please let me know if you have more. - Vivvt (Talk) 09:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Vivvt: Thank you for your comments. I will hold off on my support vote until you have addressed the below oppose comments. Aoba47 (talk) 13:43, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: I would suggest withdrawing this nomination to focus on addressing the below discussion. Aoba47 (talk) 14:27, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Fowler&fowler: Oppose, this time. I'm afraid this article is not quite ready for FL. I created this page over two days in November 2007. This is what is looked like then. I don't see any real improvement other than the addition of the awardees since 2007 and some layout changes. Here are the issues that need fixing: a) There are still a number of awardees that don't have Wikipedia pages. If you are shooting for FL, you will need to create those pages and to develop them to at least Start level; otherwise, what is the point of listing them? If the reader has no clue who they are and what they've done, then why should they be reading the list in the first place. At least the old list in 2007 had some explanation after the red links. Now all we see are names. b) You've made two significant errors in the list. The Sahitya Akademi fellows are the lifetime fellows (both the real and the honorary). The recently instituted Coomaraswamy and Premchand fellowships are only research fellowships awarded to promising people for a period of one to three months. Those cannot be listed here. c) As for the lead, it has four paragraphs, of which two are about the Akademi, not the fellowship and properly belong to the Sahitya Akademi page. The citations are mostly to the Akademi's website, not to secondary sources. d) Most awardee's pages don't list this honor, even without citations/attribution, in their "awards" sections. Some have "Sahitya Akademi Award," but those are different. e) Most of the nominator's edits, which began in December 2016 are in the nature of layout edits, converting a list to tabular form, not much by way of content improvement edits that will make this page comprehensive in the manner required by the FL criteria. A simple search in Google books will throw up some references, and in Google news, some others. I'm afraid these sorts of awards do not typically have books devoted to them, so one has to scrape the bottom for whatever one can find. This page, consequently, needs more work than can be done with the help of compassionate editors here. It is probably best if you work on these issues for the next few weeks and then renominate here. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:21, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm afraid I just remembered that this page use to be Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, i.e. simply about the fellowship, not about the list of fellows, though it did have the appearance of a list. That is how it stood from 2007, and this is what the page looked like before your first edit in mid-December 2016. You added some stuff, some of it incorrectly, went for a DYK, and then moved the page to "List of Sahitya Akademi Fellows" in this edit in late January. Nothing wrong in any of this, but a List of XYZ usually presumes that Wikipedia already has an article on XYZ, unless XYZ is a term in common parlance, i.e. so well-known and used as to require no further explanation, but here XYZ isn't and there isn't an article either. Besides, there was no discussion on the talk page about this move. (I'm guessing that the page move was probably not even needed for an FL nomination.) The page had been around since 2007. The motivation behind the creation of the page was to encourage others to add more content to the page, not to have editors jump in and change the page willy nilly into easy grist for their Wiki-ambitions. Don't get me wrong. I'm not begrudging you your energetic recent work on this page, but when the driving ambition is the star, and not knowledge, rigor, and community, such problems happen. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:26, 14 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here are some books that will help you with improving the article: a) George, Rosemary Marangoly (2013). Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature. Cambridge University Press. pp. 136–146. ISBN 978-1-107-72955-1. She has a chapter on the Sahitya Akademi and a page or two about the fellowship. b) Rao, D. S. (2004), Five Decades: The National Academy of Letters, India : a Short History of Sahitya Akademi, Sahitya Akademi, ISBN 978-81-260-2060-7 You'll have to go to a library for this. The link in Google Books is the wrong one. Rao's is the official history of the Sahitya Akademi, though, according to Rosemary George, it is an impartial account. It should have something on the fellowship. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:56, 14 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Fowler&fowler: For a) Though I have put redlinks back, its actually not in the scope of this or any FLC for that matter to develop other links. I understand that its good for the project. But I am afraid that its too much effort for any standalone nomination. For description, do you expect one liner, like you had back in 2007, to be added> e.g. "Bengali novelist.", "Odiya poet" etc? - Vivvt (Talk) 16:10, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I didn't say you had to put redlinks back. I said that the old list, for example as it stood in mid-December 2016, before your first edit, had more information about the awardees, even with the redlinks, than it does now. The linked individual articles on the authors in many cases do not even mention this honor. Compare this list for example with other featured lists: List of Nobel laureates in Literature, Copley Medal, Sylvester Medal ... Where are the citations/rationales of the awards? How does a reader know what aspect of the author's work has been honored? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:40, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • And here are the award citations (and in some cases the acceptance speeches, in addition) of 50 of the SA fellowship awardees: Citations of SA Fellowship awards. You could create a new column, titled "Award citation," and use the relevant part of the first sentence of these links for it. For example, Amrita Pritam's award citation begins with the sentence, "Amrita Pritam, the most eminent Punjabi poet and fiction-writer on whom the Sahitya Akademi is conferring its Fellowship today, is perhaps the only writer in modern Punjabi literature who has kept up an unmatched record of prolific output and artistic excellence." In the "Award citation" column for her, you could write, "Amrita Pritam, the most eminent Punjabi poet and fiction-writer ... is perhaps the only writer in modern Punjabi literature who has kept up an unmatched record of prolific output and artistic excellence." Similarly, for Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, you would leave out the "on whom the Sahitya Akademi etc etc" and use, "Professor Bhadriraju Krishnamurti ... is an internationally reputed linguist and one of the most eminent scholars in Telegu with twenty-five books and over one hundred research papers." You would be citing each award citation to the these individual citation pdfs.Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:47, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You can create a page on Kanhu Charan Mohanty, one of the redlinks, using his biographical details in this award citation, which was awarded posthumously, on account of the writer having died between the announcement of the Fellowship and its award ceremony. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:09, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lead issues: a) The sentence, "As of 2016, the fellowship has been conferred on 92 writers, including seven women authors." has been cited to the Sahitya Akademi Fellows website. Where does the website say that? If you have determined that by counting, it is clearly WP:OR? b) The sentence, "In 1979, Hindi poetess Mahadevi Varma became the first woman to be elected as a fellow, followed by three women writers in 1994 (Malayalam poetess Balamani Amma, Bengali novelist and poetess Ashapoorna Devi, and Urdu novelist Qurratulain Hyder). Hindi author Krishna Sobti was honoured in 1996, and English novelist Anita Desai in 2009." has been cited to the same website? Where does the website say that? How did you determine that Mahadevi Varma was the first female honoree? If you did it by investigating the list, it is again OR? c) The sentence, "As of 2016, there are only 20 fellows of the Sahitya Akademi." has been cited to two websites: the same Sahitya Akademi Fellows website and this press release. Where does either website say there are only 20 living honorees? If you have been investigating the lists, then it is both WP:OR and WP:SYN. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:48, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fowler makes some good points above. I took a quick look and found at least one error almost immediately. Gurdial Singh, according to their webpage, received the award in 1975 but the list says 2016. Someone should probably check if there are other such errors in the list. In addition to fowler's suggested fixes above. --regentspark (comment) 01:37, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Vivvt, the Gurdial Singh article says 1975 and is cited (albeit to the Sahitya Akademi website). If you want this to be a featured list, you need to cross check everything carefully. Also, the akademi website seems to be languishing after 2013 - where are the references for the post 2013 awards? Gurdial Singh appears to have received a punjabi language award rather than a fellowship (or are these the same things?) in 1975. --regentspark (comment) 13:37, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @RegentsPark: I am very disappointed to see that you are not reading things clearly here and elsewhere. Gurdial Singh's article mentions that he won "Sahitya Akademi Award" in 1975 which is different than Fellowship which Fowler mentioned above. There are two sources; one mentions fellows from 1968 till 2014 and there is another source which mentions about last two selections in 2016. Gurdial's mention is in the second source. I mentioned above already that cleaning other articles mentioned with this list is not in scope of this nomination but I will still do it whenever and wherever possible. - Vivvt (Talk) 13:59, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Vivvt, a featured article or list needs to be clear and consistent so you need to make sure that the reader reads things correctly. When I click on the Gurdial Singh blue link, I get to a page that says he won a Sahetya Akademi award in 1975. I click around on that page, as any reader will do, and can't find any mention of a fellowship.You can't expect the reader to know the difference between the award and the fellowship. I suggest you update all the individual articles linked from the list because a list is not independent of the content it lists. Making it a featured list is not merely a matter of making sure everything is listed but more of thinking of it as a navigational point in a network of content. In other words, follow the links! --regentspark (comment) 15:17, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Fowler&fowler: The citation link that you provided does not actually mentions the citations but they are more like a profile pages with inclusion of acceptance speeches. The Nobel Prize, Copley Medal, Sylvester Medal, or National Film Awards provides exact wordings for which the award is given, which is not true in this case. Moreover, there are 92 recipients as of now and only 50 profiles/speeches are officially available. So I would prefer adding "Notes" column with brief mention of author like you had in 2007. Adding more details in the same column would imply that the award is given for the specific work, which in turn would be WP:OR or WP:SYN.
  • About Premchand and Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship, the Akademi itself mentions the respective recipients under "Fellows". Plus, article as well as source clearly mentions that the fellowships are given only for one to three months. If not here, where should they be going? Any suggestions? Removal, from here or elsewhere, would lead to missing information.
  • I have used George, Rosemary Marangoly (2013). Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature. Cambridge University Press. pp. 136–146. ISBN 978-1-107-72955-1. but it does not mention much about fellowship. Its more about Akademi.
  • Thanks for providing sources to create new articles about the authors. I will use them in the future.
  • I have provided sources about "first woman fellow" and explanatory notes about living fellows. - Vivvt (Talk) 15:36, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let me suggest very politely that you not Wikilawyer or adumbrate the scope of this article. Let me count the issues: a) You have changed the name of the article from Sahitya Akademi Fellowship to List of Sahitya Akademi fellows unilaterally without any discussion, or intimation, anywhere. That means Wikipedia's only discussion of the "Sahitya Akademi Fellowship" is in the List of its fellows. Imagine a similar scenario in which the Nobel Prize in Literature was redirected to List of Nobel laureates in Literature. How long before someone would have undone that move? b) You have introduced "padding" about the "Premchand fellowship" and the "Coomaraswamy fellowship" in the lead. This page is not the List of Premchand fellows or List of Coomeraswamy fellows. It is not about research fellowships awarded to promising people for a couple of months. Any fellowship awarded by a society, or academy, etc is not the same as a traditional Fellowship of the society or academy. Fellowship of the Royal Society does not include Royal Society University Research Fellowship. You are welcome to create separate articles Premchand fellowship of the Sahitya Akademi etc, but they don't belong here. c) Yes, the 50 links above are indeed the citations. The entire text in each citation was read out before the fellowship was awarded to the awardee. The links are in the directory: http://sahitya-akademi.gov.in/sahitya-akademi/library/citations.jsp, which is titled "Citations (Eminent Writers)". The first sentence is what is usually quoted as the brief citation. d) You have no real background information on the Sahitya Akademi other than Resolution No. F. 6-4/51-G.2. (A) dated 15 December 1952, etc. nothing on the deliberations in the 1950s on why India's proposed National Academy of Letters came to be called "Sahitya Akademi" nothing about what Abul Kalam Azad, the then education minister said about Plato's Academy, in his welcome address at the inauguration of the Akademi in India's parliament, nothing about what S. Radhakrishnan said was the purpose of the Akademi in the inaugural address. e) There is nothing about how the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship is modeled on the membership of the French academy, that that is where it gets the "immortals" bit; f) Nothing about how members of the Sahitya Akademi council (which included some of the greatest names in Indian literature) could not be nominated for the fellowship and either did not become fellows or became so only after they had retired from the council (except in one instance); g) Nothing about how the SA Fellowships are presented at the home of the awardee, starting with Radhakrishnan's in Madras in 1968, after he had retired as president of India, and of the Akademi, h) Nothing about how the Sahitya Akademi, since 1994, has organized seminars called "Samvads" on the works of the Fellows in which the fellows read from their works and others offer critical perspectives; i) True, It is not true that Rosemary George doesn't have much about the SAF, maybe not much in word count, but she makes some very relevant remarks about the lack of religious and gender diversity in the choice of the Fellows, that most Fellows are upper-caste Hindu males. but However, Rao, D. S. (2004), Five Decades: The National Academy of Letters, India : a Short History of Sahitya Akademi, Sahitya Akademi, ISBN 978-81-260-2060-7 does have quite a bit of material. Its entire Chapter 2, titled "Men of Achievement" (speaking of gender diversity) is about the fellowship and the fellows ... I could keep going, but what would be the point. I can help you, but I'm not sure you are interested in this subject. I have already told you above that you will need additional columns on the award citations (you don't have to have all of them, but at least you have 50 + 3) and the languages of composition and the literary genres, but instead I see that you are attempting to bolster your WP:OR by now citing works published by iUniverse a self-publishing house. Anyway, sometime this weekend, when I find time, I'll attempt to improve this article. It will still need to have its name changed back to Sahitya Akademi Fellowship though. I believe it can be done in the midst of an FLC review. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:00, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • PS Since the SAF citations are long, we can change the proposed column heading from "Award citation" to "Award citation introduction" or "Award citation opening sentence." The first sentence, unfailingly, in each citation does describe the recipient succinctly. There is no OR in this. "Sri Tarkateertha Laxmanshastri Joshi, on whom the Sahitya Akademi is conferring its highest honour of Fellowship today is a distinguished Marathi and Sanskrit scholar, literary critic, and philosopher." Or: "Sri Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan, on whom the Sahitya Akademi is conferring its highest honour of Fellowship, is a universally acknowledged Indian master of fiction writing in English." True there will be repetition of the "on whom ... Fellowship," but it is probably better than replacing it with ellipses, as that might be considered OR. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:18, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Fowler&fowler: What should we put in place of other 40+ fellows where official citations are not available? - Vivvt (Talk) 07:42, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not to worry. I have access to Rao's chapter 2. Rao is the official history of the Akademi. So, I can add brief descriptions for approximately 30 more. I've started a new list on the Talk:List_of_Sahitya_Akademi_fellows#New_list_of_SA_Fellows. Why don't you add the SA citations in the manner I have done in that list and cite it to the individual pages on the SA website in the manner I have done? I will add some too as and when I find the time. One thing though: there can't be the Premchand or Coomaraswamy fellowships in this list. You don't need to mark with an asterisk or other sign who is alive and who is not. Simply click the header of the last column and all the live people will separate from the rest. Also, please add only the freely available images that are already on the author's pages on Wikipedia. For the honorary fellows, we'll make another similar list. Meanwhile, I see that you're making some new pages. Keep up the good work! Good luck! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:42, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Vivvt:@Aoba47:@Yashthepunisher:@RegentsPark: I tend to agree with user:Aoba47's remarks above. I estimate that it will take two to three months to improve this artcle in the manner needed. It is best that the nominator withdraw the nomination. He can resubmit in two to three months time. I will help him improve the article, but it will still take time. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:17, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @WP:FLC director and delegates: Withdraw Currently, I dont have bandwidth to work upon the suggested changes as I am creating articles for the fellows. I will be improving the article in parallel, definitely with the help of @Fowler&fowler:. Thanks all for your time. - Vivvt (Talk) 17:35, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawing. --PresN 21:57, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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