Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Yoga/Archive 2

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   08:00, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Asana and related articles

Hallo, is there anybody here? I am revising some of the articles on Hatha yoga, including especially Asana but also List of asanas and various individual asana articles as necessary. I would welcome support on the revision of Asana in particular; I've added a list of tasks to the talk page. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:13, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Here to support this. Right now we seem to be consolidating multiple asanas under single articles dedicated to a "key asana" and then listing the rest as variations. For example, Trikonasana (triangle pose) house the extended (Uttitha-) and supine (Supta-) forms, as well as the revolved or twisted (Parvrtta-) form based on the asana's name as the determining factor. With Trikonasana, this makes sense because the shapes of these poses have much in common: flexed feet, extended legs and arms, and a trunk in either open or closed rotation. But what about asanas with similar names whose shapes are quite different, such as Mayurasana (peacock pose) and Pincha Mayurasana (feathered peacock pose), or the various Kapotasanas (pigeon poses)? And then there are poses that are given the same name but appear differently in different systems of yoga, such as Navasana (boat pose), Bhekasana (frog pose), or Swastikasana (yes, that can refer to a variety of swastika-shaped poses, which are rarely called by this name in the West due to cultural connotations associated with this shape). As a scholar of asana, I'm happy to sort this out, with consensus from fellow editors as to how to stadardize these factors across all asana articles. Morganfitzp (talk) 00:35, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, this is a difficult thing to standardise, as there's no uniform system for naming asanas in Sanskrit, there are many synonyms, and some names are used for quite different poses. The best that can be done is to consolidate on article titles that can be robustly defended using multiple reliable sources, and to accept that we probably need separate articles for the various Mayurasanas and suchlike cases. When those are sorted, we should update the asanas template and the list of asanas with the new list of article names. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:56, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

A progress update: I've implemented this for around 100 major poses, each (I hope) with a Variations section listing some of the other things that are rather similar, or failing that with a See also section, suitably annotated. The implication is that new "asanas" will usually be classified as variations and added as brief mentions to the existing 100, rather than as new articles, though there's always scope for genuine innovations if they become widespread enough to be notable in their own right. The asana articles remain inconsistently named, some still with diacritics. There is scope to add reliably-sourced benefits and risks to all of them.

I've rewritten List of asanas to include a classification of types and history, with sources. Asana has reached Good Article status, many thanks to Farang Rak Tham. Yoga as exercise is complete and in the GA queue; it is indexed by a new Template:Yoga as exercise. The template arranges the major schools of modern yoga by date, each with a sub-list of articles associated with them, such as their founders (where notable). There's a separate Template:Yoga scholars with Classical and Modern sections: it has scope for plenty of expansion with new articles on major scholars of yoga. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:39, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Yoga for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Yoga is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Yoga until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:07, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

English terms borrowed from Sanskrit

Responding to edits on many yoga articles by Gryffindor:

Yoga terms in wide use in English and spelt without Sanskrit diacritic marks are English. Many Yoga terms have been used in English for many years, and can be found in the major English dictionaries (such as Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster).

Terms borrowed from Sanskrit, such as Yoga, Asana, and Prana, have been in use for centuries, as the dictionaries, textbooks, and this Ngram attest.

For example, Merriam-Webster states that "Prana" entered English in 1785. It is therefore an English word, not a foreign one. It may help to realise that the English word differs from the Sanskrit prāṇa, from which it was borrowed. The Sanskrit word is foreign and should be in italics, per MOS:FOREIGNITALICS; the English word is not and should not be italicised. Similarly, for instance, the English "Nirvana" differs both from Sanskrit Nirvāṇa and from Pali Nibbana, both in spelling and very probably in common usage.

The names of many asanas derive from Krishnamacharya in the 1930s and have been in use in yoga as more specialised terms, but anglicised without diacritic marks, since that time, as this Ngram indicates.

Among the asanas, Trikonasana is an English word, a term of art, and should not be in italics. On the other hand trikoṇāsana is Sanskrit (written here in IAST) and should be in italics: the two words are different, though the English one is borrowed from Sanskrit, having shifted subtly in the process.

The asana names are more recent borrowings than the ancient yoga terms, and they certainly look close to Sanskrit, so it may be worth noting that many of them have variant spellings once borrowed into English, as in Shavasana/Savasana or Shirshasana/Sirsasana. These Anglicisms show that the names have indeed made the transition to the English language, as can readily be verified by looking at any yoga book or website. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:23, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, a well written and researched explanation during a potential edit war (more of an edit skirmish). Shows how good faith disagreements can evolve into valuable Wikipedia educational tools and actions. Would Yamas, Niyama, and Ahimsa qualify as unitalicized in this range? Randy Kryn (talk) 12:25, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

I think Ahimsa clearly qualifies: it was used in English in 1875 and became common in English from Gandhi's use of it in the 1920s.Yama is also the name of a god (he seems to qualify easily) which confuses the picture, see the Ngram. The phrase "yamas and niyamas" seems to be restricted to books on the philosophy of yoga. I note that people commonly use the English -s on the ends of these formerly Sanskrit words (e.g. 2009 book title) so they are certainly getting the English treatment. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:02, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

MOS:FOREIGN and MOS:FOREIGNITALIC is clear on this: "Loanwords and borrowed phrases that have common usage in English – Gestapo, samurai, vice versa – do not require italics. A rule of thumb is to not italicize words that appear unitalicized in general-purpose English-language dictionaries." While the term "Yoga" may appear in general-purpose English-language dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, the different names in Sanskrit such as "Anantāsana", etc. do not. Please revert your edits User:Chiswick Chap and comply with Wiki policy, or take up the discussion on the talk page there if you have an issue with it. Thank you for your cooperation. Gryffindor (talk) 09:29, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I have no idea where I should be taking up the discussion, if not here; perhaps you are copying and pasting in haste. I am glad you accept that "Yoga" is an English word. The distinction that needs to be made is that words in IAST like samādhi and āsana are simply Sanskrit, written in romanized form, whereas when "Samadhi" and "Asana" are written in English, as they have been for over a century, they are unitalicised and without diacritics. The English word "Trikonasana" is similarly derived from the Sanskrit "trikoṇāsana" (again, written in IAST, with diacritics). Trikonasana Dictionary Definition (my emphases):

"Proper noun [English]

   (asana) A pose in which the legs are kept straight and wide apart, in the shape of a triangle, while the upper body bends.

Origin

From Sanskrit त्रिकोणासन (trikoṇāsana), from त्रिकोण (trikoṇa, “triangle”) + आसन (āsana, “asana”)."

The English asana names used in the English-speaking world, like "Trikonasana", look roughly like the Sanskrit names but are spelt and used differently.Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:25, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia's own style policy on loanwords as compared with technical jargon or foreign words is clear. The discussion here is somewhat incoherent because some of the justification for creating a distinction between Sanskrit terms and English terms is somewhat impatient. Words loaned from a donor language, (like 'yoga', 'nirvana' or 'prana') may well be incorporated into many languages with various semantic shifts and translations but it does not at any point make the words 'English' or 'Dutch' or 'Spanish' in the sense that a loanwords provenance is usually easily discernible because it resembles the term in the donor language. This project page has to be able to cope with a number of overlapping domains. Firstly, there are the original Sanskrit concepts, which in the case of yoga was first enumerated thousands of years ago and is archaic. Then, there are the local, regional developments where the Sanskrit algorithmic character was able to take on many more meanings. Then there are the donor language's encounters not only with other Asian civilizations, but also Greek, Roman and modern european civilizations where Sanskrit terms were used in even more ways. In the last twenty years or so I think we even have a North American jargon where some terms are (arguably) used slightly differently to European conceptions. All of this suggests that the way terms may be used for this project cannot be assumed to always be the loanword version. In other words, users may not understand that many Sanskrit words when loaned into Modern English are not homonyms but more often highly polysemous thus making a judgment about whether or not to italicize less simple as this discussion implies. Put simply, who's to say if a fan of aerobics is connecting with a supernatural, divine being or simply raising her heart rate, and who might know if a Buddhist monk is enlightened or simply in a coma? --User Tammy (talk) 14:01, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

The loanword thing is clear enough, we don't italicise them. Many of the "Sanskrit" names of asanas are however not even loanwords, as they were created from the International English names. For example, "Viparita Virabhadrasana" or Reverse Warrior Pose was created in the 21st century, somewhere in the Western world; the Sanskritised form was created to fit in with the existing poses such as Virabhadrasana II, whose Sanskrit form is familiar to many teachers and practitioners, though it too dates back only to the 20th century. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:54, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Yoga mat second opinion requested

The GA reviewer of this article has requested a second opinion. Anyone who'd like to help can comment at Talk:Yoga mat/GA1. Many thanks, Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:01, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

TFD for The Yoga Guru barnstar

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 April 13#Template:The Yoga Guru concerning {{The Yoga Guru}}. --awkwafaba (📥) 16:08, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Can someone take a look?

Hi, I have a couple of lines here describing how yoga can help improve cleavage of breasts, and what poses are effective. Can some take a look? I am not very happy with material or sources yet. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 03:47, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, that kind of source would not be acceptable on any WP:Yoga article. Even if the self-proclaimed guru is proficient in yoga as exercise, there's no knowing if he is talking from years of experience or a vague hunch, so it's not verifiable (WP:V). There should be reliable sports physiology/medicine-type experimental evidence, peer-reviewed and published in a reliable journal, and preferably a review article looking over multiple such experiments (WP:MEDRS). Whether flaky evidence is acceptable in the article you cite is another matter, but since Wikipedia is never better than the quality of its sources, I should have thought not. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:36, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Removed SPS, rewrote and added cites of RS, thuogh may not be MEDRS. One questions - is MEDRS a requirement for non-medical, i.e. fitness, execise etc.? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 06:56, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

MEDRS is a requirement whenever a medical claim (of a beneficial effect to a human body) is made in any article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:36, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Two "Yoga"s

Well, it's been an interesting challenge rating "Yoga" articles. The reason for the scare quotes, and the challenge, is that the ratings have been pulled in two completely different directions: let's call them "Philosophy" and "Exercise" yoga article traditions for short.

Let's take the fictitious "Sri Sri Paramahamsa Mahadev Yogaguru" first. Yogaguru lived in "Faraway Pradesh" c. 1400 and was highly venerated in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of that state; he attained many Yogic powers (Siddhis) by his meditation. In the "Religion" tradition of WikiProject Yoga rating, Yogaguru is rated "High", though his article, knocked together by a devotee with one citation and probable, copyvio, cannot be more than a "C" and is currently rated "Start". In the "Exercise" tradition, Yogaguru is either to be rated "Low" as he has no impact on any discernible aspect of yoga as exercise, or indeed deleted from the WikiProject as he had little or no discernible influence on Yoga philosophy either; let's be generous and rate him "Low".

Now, let's consider the fictitious "Fabulous Fitness Flow Yoga". FFF originated in New York three years ago and has been highly recommended in 97 US newspapers, magazines, and wellbeing and fitness websites as the latest, best, and fastest way to hyper-fitness by means of furious flow through advanced asanas. FFF is rated "Top" importance by enthusiastic "Exercise" WikiProjecters, possibly connected to FFF but who knows. In the unlikely event that an old-school "Philosophy" WikiProjecter was to come by, they would see no discernible connection to Patanjali or anything they could recognise as "Yoga" from their years of practice, study, and meditation. They rate it "Low" out of kindness, rather than just deleting it from the project as unconnected to Yoga philosophy.

Clearly, we have two sets of rating criteria, based on two disjoint things both called "Yoga" (homonyms). The logical thing to do would be to create two WikiProjects, called, say, "Yoga (philosophy and religion)" and "Yoga (exercise)" or some similar terms of that sort; these each get their own lists of popular articles and charts of article status: hardly any articles are in both WikiProjects, though Patanjali probably gets mentioned in each of them. The clunkier thing to do would be to carry on as we are, doing our best to rate the two sub-projects or task forces separately, and accept that the tables and lists contain the two things randomly muddled together. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:00, 7 October 2020 (UTC)