Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics/Archive 65

CIS-A2K Newsletter August September 2017

Hello,
CIS-A2K has published their newsletter for the months of August and September 2017. Please find below details of our August and September newsletters:

August was a busy month with events across our Marathi and Kannada Focus Language Areas.

1. Workshop on Wikimedia Projects at Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College, Satara
2. Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal
3. Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at MGM Trust's College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aurangabad
4. Orientation Program at Kannada University, Hampi

Please read our Meta newsletter here.

September consisted of Marathi language workshop as well as an online policy discussion on Telugu Wikipedia.

1. Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Solapur University
2. Discussion on Creation of Social Media Guidelines & Strategy for Telugu Wikimedia

Please read our Meta newsletter here: here
If you want to subscribe/unsubscribe this newsletter, click here.

Sent using --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Renaming articles

Going through an article Amara Ram (Born 1955), I found a similarly named article Amra Ram. Both are politicians from Rajasthan. The title for the article Amara Ram (Born 1955) isn't what we would normally use here on Wikipedia. Could you please weigh in your opinions on renaming the articles and whether a disambiguation page is required. Thanks. MT Train^Discuss 17:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Proposal

I would like to propose to merge and redirect all the articles on the characters of Mahabharata for which there's not enough content to Characters in the Mahabharata to comply with notability requirements. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 17:20, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

List of NDA alumni FLC

Greetings everyone, recently I have proposed List of National Defence Academy alumni as a Featured list candidate. It has already gained two supports, more hands needed. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 02:53, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

National Herald (India)

The history of National Herald (India) suggests that two different groups claim to be the 'real' National Herald, and there is an edit war going on between two representatives from these groups. Can someone knowledgeable about the topic take a look? utcursch | talk 16:34, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

MOS page about articles Buddhism

Dear fellow Wikipedians, In response to repeated discussions about policies and whether they hold for articles on Buddhism, I have drafted a policy proposal to include into the Manual of Style for Wikipedia articles about Buddhism. The proposal does not actually include much new policy, but rather attempts to apply policy to articles on Buddhism in an understandable way, similar to MOS:ISLAM. Content is based on discussions held on Buddhist articles, as listed on the talk page. Comments are welcome.--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 08:29, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Featured Wikimedian [November 2017]

On behalf of Wikimedia India, I hereby announce the Featured Wikimedian for November 2017.

Balaji Jagadesh is one of the top contributors from the Tamil Wikimedia community. Though he started contributing since 2009, he was quite active after his participation in WikiConference India 2011. Initially he started contributing to Tamil Wikipedia, but was later attracted towards Tamil Wikisource, Tamil Wikitionary, and Wikidata. His global contributions count to whooping 2,50,000 edits. He is an admin on Tamil Wikitionary.

After his interaction with Mr. Loganathan (User:Info-farmer), Balaji was very much motivated to contribute to Wikimedia projects. He says, "When I was editing in Tamil Wikipedia, I used to translate science articles from English to Tamil. But faced problem in finding equivalent Tamil words. The English to Tamil dictionaries were inadequate. Hence I felt the need to work in the Tamil Wikitionary. After a while there was a collaboration with Tamil Wikisource and Tamil Nadu Government through Tamil Virtual University through 2000 CC0 books were uploaded".

As an active contributor to Wikidata, he says that the vision of Wikimedia movement is, "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge", but with Wikidata we can make it, "Imagine a world in which every single human being and every single machine can freely share in the sum of all knowledge". Apart from regular contributions, he also created templates to Tamil Wikimedia projects, and also maintains Tamil Wikisource's official Twitter handle.

Balaji hails from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, and is a post-graduate is Physics. He currently works as a Senior Geophysicist in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC).

Any editor can propose a fellow to be a Featured Wikimedia at: http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Featured_Wikimedian/Nominations

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:59, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest

Disappointed in the Indian turn out for this contest so far, particularly from those editors here I've spent a lot of time helping over the years. C'mon people do Indian women proud and join in with some new articles!♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:57, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Hanuman Mandir 82 RB

Does the village exist? Xx236 (talk) 08:15, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@Xx236: Hi, I don't think so. Both the sources mentioned in the article have nothing about the subject. Moreover, fro what I can observe here, it is just a locality/area of Raisinghnagar. Also I could't find any source to prove the subject's notability, fails WP:GNG. I think we should take this AfD. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 09:38, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Want to create an article on "Kabir God"

Hello! I intend to create an article named "Kabir God", since there are millions of people in India who believe him to be God and they have enough evidence to prove their points.

Though an article already exist on the subject with the name "Kabir", but that proves him a saint only. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saint Rampal Ji (talk • contribs) 18:17, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@Saint Rampal Ji: Hi, thanks for reaching out. The thing is it is not about how many believe in or how many workship. It is about how reliable sources to we have subject's notability. If you still need some clarification, I think WikiProject Religion guys could give a better answer. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 09:43, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

List of Presidents of India FLC

An FLC is in progress about List of Presidents of India which is a topic of top importance .Please review the nomination and add comments ping me add {{ping|Force Radical}} OR [[User:Force Radical]] 10:38, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Tipu Sultan

It looks like the article on Tipu Sultan has been whitewashed to make Tipu look like a hero. Can we at least have a link to persecution of Hindus by Tipu Sultan in that article (I could not do it myself due to it being protected)? Please also mention the protests by Hindus to the celebration of the Tippu Jayanthi by the Congress Government of Karnataka on 10th November, 2017 citing appropriate references. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.186.192.2 (talk) 18:50, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Dhan Singh Gurjar

Can anyone mediate at Dhan Singh Gurjar? Caste warrior at work.utcursch | talk 05:28, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@SpacemanSpiff: Can you have a look at this, since you've been involved in cleaning up caste-cruft? This particular user has been blocked three times in past, but is now back after a 3-year hiatus. I've contributed some content to the article, so I am concerned about WP:INVOLVED. utcursch | talk 14:20, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

This was already on my to-do list, I believe there are a couple of other sock/meat accounts. Will block those too soon enough. —SpacemanSpiff 15:52, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. utcursch | talk 18:09, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Kurukshetra War - too much "plot"

Most of this article is detailing what the Mahabharata says about the war. It's like giving a long summary of a book. Any suggestions as to how to trim it? Doug Weller talk 18:53, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Official languages of India

An editor, JudeBob123, is insisting that Tamil is an official language of India in List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language. Is this assertion correct or not? The editor has not provided any evidence that it is an official language of the country of India, apart from claiming that it is the official language of individual states like Tamil Nadu. Hzh (talk) 17:38, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Since India is a country which doesn't have any national language, all the 22 scheduled languages based on the constitution is an offcial language in the country. It doesn't matter although it is spoken in a individual states or not. All the 22 languages based on the schedule is considered one of the offcial language in the country (although it only has an offcial status in a single state). I said it is one of the official language in the country. (It doesn't mean that it is the one and only offcial language in the country). I wish Hzh and others maybe clear and able to understand enough now.

@JudeBob123:Given that there is actually an Official Language Act in India, which only mentions Hindi and English - [1], what you said is odd. You have not provided any evidence that Tamil is an official language for the country of India. I have no idea why you talking about national language, the Official Language Act has stated very clearly what "official" means here, which is used for official purpose of the Union, for transaction of business in Parliament, etc. Show that this is the case for Tamil. Hzh (talk) 10:24, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

The idea of an "official language" in India is a red herring. Hindi and English are official languages for the central government, not for the country. Each state government has its own official languages. Since this list page exists, perhaps the "Tamilnadu state of India" (or some suitable rewording) can be added for Tamil. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:39, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

There is an Official Language Act, therefore it cannot be a red herring, and it would be a strange interpretation of the act to say that it does not refer to the country of India. In any case, however you may interpret the status of Hindi in the act, there isn't anything similar for Tamil, and Tamil Nadu is not a country whichever way you may look at it. Hzh (talk) 16:45, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

If it were up to me, that article would be binned: with the diversity of ways in which a language can, or cannot, be said to be "official" in a place, I think trying to count countries like that isn't particularly meaningful. – Uanfala 17:11, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

I would agree to a certain extent that there are ambiguities in certain cases, however, it is not ambiguous in many cases, as they are stated in the constitution of those countries. In the case of India, what the official languages are is stated in the Act, and if you object to the designation of Hindi and English as official languages, you would also need to change articles like India and not just the article under discussion (if you can provide a valid source that is). Hzh (talk) 17:35, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not objecting to the use of the term in any specific instance, my point was rather that there's not much room for comparison between individual cases and any "sum totals" are meaningless. Anyway, I don't want to get involved, the nature of the list is such that someone will sooner or later take to AfD. – Uanfala 17:40, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

I have no problem if someone wants to nominate the article for deletion, the issue however is still that an editor wants to make assertions that cannot be support, not just in this article, but in many other articles where he was promoting certain Indian languages without sources (often appearing to be outright fabrication), as well conducting a war against Hindi by deleting mentions of Hindi, for example, [2], [3], [4]. Hzh (talk) 17:59, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Kopparapu Sodara Kavulu

needs some attention. I just removed a large amount of POV content in lieu of G11. Suspect they are notable, and finding sources on India related subjects is not always easy. -- Dlohcierekim (talk) 07:59, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Move request

Hi all, I have initiated a move request here. Do comment -sarvajna (talk) 17:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Different names and same topics

Template:Hindu calendar, Template:Bengali calendar, and Template:Nepali calendar have the same 12 months represented in three different templates. Most of the articles are the same, and when they are not, they still talk about the same months.

I believe the months should be merged. Vaisakha, Baishakh and Boishakh are largely different ways to spell the topic. According to WP:MERGEREASON, they should be merged. The templates should be merged as well. May be we call it the "Subcontinental calendar" or something (my personal preference would be "Indian calendar", though judging by the Bangladeshi and Nepali sentiment here, Indian may not be preferred identity for their calendar).

Can you people take a look at the scenario? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 03:22, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

WP:INDICSCRIPT

Clarification needed, does the policy apply to WP:WikiProject Film/Indian cinema task force? I have recently been editing articles in this area of interest and see indicscripts used in FAs like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. I have also been to the talk page of some Tamil film which I don't remember long ago, where all scripts were removed citing this policy. Does Indian cinema fall under WikiProject India? Thanks for your time and consideration, King Prithviraj II (talk) 16:17, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Train-the-Trainer 2018: Invitation to participate

Hello, it gives us great pleasure to inform that the Train-the-Trainer (TTT) 2018 programme organised by CIS-A2K is going to be held from 26–28 January 2018.

• What is TTT?

Train the Trainer or TTT is a residential training program. The program attempts to groom leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedia community members. Earlier TTT have been conducted in 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

• Who should join?

An editor who is interested to conduct real-life and online Wiki-events such as outreach, workshop, GLAM, edit-a-thon, photowalk etc.

Any active Wikimedian contributing to any Indic language Wikimedia project is eligible to apply.

An editor must have 500+ edits.

Anyone who have already participated in an earlier iteration of TTT, can not apply.

Please see more about this program at: CIS-A2K/Events/Train the Trainer Program/2018. Please fill this form to show your interest to join. The last date of signing up is 7 December 2017. If you have any question, please let us know.

On behalf of Titodutta. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 11:11, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Category:Historians of Indian art

I've set this up - please add anyone who is missing & has an article. Johnbod (talk) 05:11, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

The only person who springs to mind as being absent would be Nancy Adajania, in her instance I guess the lines between critic and historian are a little blurred. Please advise. Failosopher (talk) 17:40, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Featured Wikimedian [December 2017]

Greetings, on behalf of Wikimedia India, I, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga introduce you to the Featured Wikimedian of the Month for December 2017, Hrishikes Sen.

Hrishikes Sen is one of the most active contributors from the Bengali community. Though he started editing English and Bengali Wikipedia in 2007, he had to take a long break due to professional constraints. Later he started working on Bengali Wikisource from 2012, and ever since, he has been an active contributor, and expanded to English Wikisource as well. With more than 45,000 global edits, he is an admin on English Wikisource.

As a child, Hrishikes always found reading books as a fascinating task. He says that he finds reference books as interesting as mystery novels. That interest, over years motivated him to contribute to Wikisource. The journey and motivation behind his contributions to Wikisource can be read from a post on WMF's blog, Why I contribute to Wikisource?. He says that till date he's been only active online, but he plans to do outreach in the coming future. He hopes that attending the 10th Anniversary Celebratory Workshop of Bengali Wikisource in Kolkata on 10 December may be a harbinger to his future offline activities.

Hrishikes believes that Wikisource will one day emerge as of the top digital libraries in the world, and says that as a store-house for primary and secondary source materials for Wikipedia, the importance of Wikisource is steadily becoming invaluable. Much of his time, Hrishikes spends working around Indian works, with a special focus on the works of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Jagadish Chandra Bose, and Rabindranath Tagore. Apart from being a proofreader, he uploaded more than 750 books spreading over five languages to Wikimedia Commons.

Hrishikes hails from Kolkata, but is presently based in Lucknow. By profession, he is a doctor serving in paramilitary forces. To his Bengali friends, he welcomes them to contribute to Bengali Wikisource which has more than 676,000 that have completed Optical Character Recognition and are waiting to be proofread.

Nomination can be made at: http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Featured_Wikimedian/Nominations

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:09, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay to be moved to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 13:59, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

2-minutes of Malayalam help

Hi all, can anyone familiar with Malayalam please take a quick look at this Manorama Online article. Someone has twice posted this at List of highest-grossing Indian films as a reference for Ramaleela's gross. I'm trying to determine whether or not the ₹55 crore financial figure came from the film's producers (problematic as that constitutes WP:PRIMARY and we know how producers lie about finances) or if it's clear that Manorama is independently confirming the 55 crore accomplishment. I'm skeptical because the image at the top has appeared in a number of articles that have attributed the gross to the producer. Much obliged, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 07:07, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Pinging AG47 and Athi Bheekaran. MT Train^Discuss 17:21, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Article says 'The Production Team has released the collection report of Ramaleela movie and it has collected 55crore over 55days of its run.' athi_bheekaran 15:19, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Akshay Kumar (disambiguation)

Need some feedback here. There is a dab page for Akshay Kumar (disambiguation) with primary topic being the actor. Is this necessary ? Because there is no ambiguity, all other 4 entries are uniquely identifiable names - Akshay Kumar Datta, Akshay Kumar Boral, Akshay Kumar Maitreya, and Akshay Kumar Sen. I don't think there will be trouble for readers finding the AK they are searching for. I reckon this should be deleted. Let There Be Sunshine (talk) 09:46, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_India

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod ^talk 12:36, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

CIS-A2K Newsletter October 2017

Hello,
CIS-A2K has published their newsletter for the months of October 2017. The edition includes details about these topics:

• Marathi Wikipedia - Vishwakosh Workshop for Science writers in IUCAA, Pune
• Bhubaneswar Heritage Edit-a-thon
• Odia Wikisource anniversary
• CIS-A2K signs MoU with Telangana Government
• Indian Women Bureaucrats: Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
• Interview with Asaf Bartov

Please read the complete newsletter here.
If you want to subscribe/unsubscribe this newsletter, click here. Sent using --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:43, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Indian Music Industry

We've got a new editor, Siddhant2709 that has a self-declared COI on this article (see their edit summary on first edit to that article). I've left a somewhat pointed message on their talk page on the basis of their edit summary claiming it as an official page. If folks wouldn't mind, some extra eyes and help guiding a new editor with a COI would be appreciated. Ravensfire (talk) 05:44, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

User has now been indeffed - (we await the socks) - Arjayay (talk) 10:18, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Supporting Indian Language Wikipedias Program: Needs Assessment Survey

Hello,
We are extremely delighted to inform that the Wikimedia Foundation and CIS-A2K have come together in a partnership with Google to launch a pilot project Supporting Indian Language Wikipedias Program to address local online knowledge content gaps in India. In order to engage and support active Wikipedia volunteers to produce valuable new content in local Indian languages, we are conducting a needs assessment survey. The aim of this survey is to understand the needs of the Indic Wikimedia community and ascertaining their infrastructure requirements that we can fulfill during the course of this project.

Please help us by participating in the survey here.

Your opinion will help to make the program better. Kindly share this survey across your communities, user groups and network of fellow Indic Wikimedians. -- m:User:Titodutta, sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Same village?

Badas (K.H.) and Badas (India) look to be the same village. — Dispenser 19:22, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

• I'm not sure I know what's happening here. The geonames database lists only one village with this name in India, and its coordinates are 15.770844°N 74.365241°E / 15.770844; 74.365241. The wbsite www.census2011.co.in on the other hand has census data for two distinct villages with the same name in Belgaum District: [5] [6]. – Uanfala 20:31, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I've checked the official gov website re the census (where census2011.in purpots to have got its data from). The census clearly shows two different villages Badas (Inam) and Badas (K.H.). Hope I've cleared this up. Failosopher (talk) 17:45, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@Dispenser, Uanfala, and Failosopher: After reading this thread, I created two more articles: Sayala, Palam, and Sayala, Parbhani. —usernamekiran(talk) 09:01, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Caste

Couple of editors have no intelligible argument and they are misrepresenting Caste system in India as basis of racial discrimination on Racism though none of the sources support it. Discussion is on Talk:Racism#Contemporary. Raymond3023 (talk) 14:05, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Tipu Sultan

Are these edits appropriate? I've given the editor, Gauravsaral (talk · contribs) a DS notice and a warning at User talk:Gauravsaral#Why are you adding "extremist and miliant" to Islamic groups and removing it from Indian groups. Doug Weller talk 17:49, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

I have just made required changes to the topic Tipu Sultan, which if you go back in the history you can see how much biased it was. complete outcome of wars were changed/ distorted. Selective points were added to topic. I have just tried to make it neutral instead of white washing an article. Gaurav Saral talk 17:55, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: Definitely concerning. While some of Gauravsarai's edits are probably fine, the blitzkrieg approach and the editorial comments in the edit summaries display an ideological bias that leads me to think that the good edits are only fine by accident. As an example consider this diff where gauravsarai says no where in the provided reference it is said that Mysore was a "major economic power", please read the reference before citing it and do not add points you derived/concluded from them to make your point (very bad example of political bias in Wikipedia). While the text does not explicitly say "major economic power" it does clearly states that Tipu "embarked on an ambitious program of economic development" (p.267) (text that Gauravsarai deleted in this edit) and goes on to indicate that the Mysore economy was relatively advanced. My guess is that Gauravsarai's editing style is to examine anything positive about the sultan on the page, look for an exact match in the reference, and then deleting it if he/she doesn't find it there. And, of course, repeated claims that they are only fixing a biased article (e.g.here) is always suspicious. --regentspark (comment) 19:17, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: It should not be Gauravsarai's it is GauravSaral's.
• Comment: "While some of Gauravsarai's edits are probably fine". All edits are fine, comments might be offensive because RegentsPark is misusing his admin powers to whitewash the article. Take the same "major economic power" controversy as example, by any standards any kingdom in India during British rule was not a "major economic power". At least you should add some economic data to support the claim like "GDP", "state expenditure" by a historian expert in economy and not from a travel journal
• Comment: The article before my edit was a complete white wash (it still is below the first 2 sections). Wikipedia article should be to the point and supported by references. The funny part is that even geography of South India was somehow linked to Tipu Sultan.
• Comment:It will be better to ask/ wait for a neutral observer (RegentsPark and his contribution history clearly tells his bias against Hindu community. I have tried my best to be neutral and rational while editing the article, the problem is that when article is cleaned from a completely biased imaginary fictional state it was in earlier to a sane state the edits are bound to look to have blitzkrieg approach. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gauravsaral (talk • contribs) 14:10, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: RegentsPark's hate towards Hindu community can be seen here [7] as well. where he is just trying to clean up Hindu from the Mirpur article distorting the article.

Query: Is this inappropriate to write in Wikipedia ? "Really sad to see such hate mongers like Regentspark as Wikipedia trying to rewrite history in Wikipedia " — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gauravsaral (talk • contribs) 14:16, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Bajrang Dal

This request is to bring into notice of possible vandalism by a few Wikipedia Admins in Bajrang Dal page. Some users are repeatedly adding objectionable edits in the lead of article. As it can be seen that adding objectionable content is lead is not something recommended from here here. can some sane admin please help to keep the article with in standards — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gauravsaral (talk • contribs) 18:07, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Inappropriate (personal remarks) edit comments by user User:Winged_Blades_of_Godric

Please see this Not only user Winged_Blades_of_Godric is making personal remarks but also targeting and reverting all my edits with same message that discuss in talk, instead of raising the same issue himself — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gauravsaral (talk • contribs) 18:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Lovely. Cheers! Winged Blades ^Godric 18:16, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Reply to Gauravsaral Hello, Gauravsaral. Generally on Wikipedia when we write content, we use need to support it using references. These references must be reliable sources such as a well established newspaper report or a publication in a well known journal. That is how Wikipedia's quality is maintained. It seems your edits [8],[9] were actually removing these references, which is why other editors undid your edits. However, if you feel that the references should be removed from the article for some reason, you may state your reasons at Talk:Godhra train burning. We call it the talk page and it is there for discussions about the article. You can start a new section over there for discussing.--DreamLinker (talk) 18:47, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Adam's Bridge/Ram Setu

The Discovery Channel's "What on Earth" has a broadcast coming that people are trying to use to prove that Adam's Bridge was built by Rama.[10][11] This is going to be a big deal for Hindu nationalists.[12] I can't find much on "What on earth" except this. Doug Weller talk 14:24, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Pushkar and cattle

A friend of mine told me that Pushkar is considered a holy city, and as such no meat is allowed in the city, and even fish and eggs are hard to come by. On the other hand I saw that there is an annual camel/cattle fair in the city. These to things seems like a contradiction in my Western eyes. Can somebody please explain this? Perhaps there is a difference between live animals and meat for consumption? Debresser (talk) 16:17, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi Debresser, it appears that eggs/meat are banned for consumption in the city. Indeed, milk and its products being essential for Hindu rituals, cattle are reared and sold. Thanks, MT Train^Discuss 14:38, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Added this to the article.[13] Thanks. Debresser (talk) 15:28, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

References

RM notice

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:KIIT University#Requested move 7 December 2017, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, SkyWarrior 17:41, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2017_December_1#Deccan

This redirect discussion does not seem to have much attention from Indian Wikipedians, but there seems to be an attempt to define "Deccan" as the whole of South India. Johnbod (talk) 04:47, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Relisted to Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2017_December_14#Deccan. Johnbod (talk) 19:26, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Duplication?

Hi, an article Zila Aurangabad has been newly created by a user. There already exist articles on Aurangabad district, Bihar and Aurangabad, Bihar. As zilla translates to district, do you think this new article is a duplication? The lack of coordinates is the reason I haven't been able to determine. MT Train^Discuss 10:43, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Mark the train, yes "Zila" means district. This should actually be redirected to the district article.--DreamLinker (talk) 09:15, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

I forgot to mention it here, but it was redirected to Aurangabad District the same day. MT Train^Discuss 12:50, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

National Maritime Foundation

Hello. This article, National Maritime Foundation, needs major cleanup. Wikipedia and official website are used as sources, but Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and official website is a primary source. George Ho (talk) 10:46, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Possible copyright issues are reported at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2017 December 18. Also, the whole article is covered up with the whole template. George Ho (talk) 12:00, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Featured Wikimedian [September 2017]

Greeting, on behalf of Wikimedia India, I, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga from the Executive Committee, introduce you to the Featured Wikimedian of the Month for September 2017, Swapnil Karambelkar.

Swapnil Karambelkar is one of the most active Wikimedians from the Hindi community. Swapnil hails from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, and by profession a Mechanical Engineering, who runs his own firm based on factory automation and education. Swapnil joined Wikipedia in August 2016, through "Wiki Loves Monuments". He initially started off with uploading images to Commons and then moved onto Hindi Wikipedia, contributing to culture and military topics. He also contributes to Hindi Wikibooks and Wikiversity. Soon after, he got extensively involved in various outreach activities. He co-organized "Hindi Wiki Conference" in January 2017, at Bhopal. He delivered various lectures on Wikimedia movement in various institutions like Atal Bihari Hindi University, Sanskrit Sansthanam and NIT Bhopal. Along with Suyash Dwivedi, Swapnil co-organized the first ever regular GLAM project in India at National Museum of Natural Heritage, Bhopal. Swapnil is an account creator on Hindi Wikipedia and is an admin on the beta version on Wikiversity. Swapnil has been instrumental in establishing the first Indic language version of Wikiversity, the Hindi Wikiversity. As asked regarding his motivation to contribute to the Wikimedia movement, Swapnil says, "It is the realization that though there is abundance of knowledge around us, but it is yet untapped and not documented".

Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 02:00, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Mariam-uz-Zamani

Recently came across an edit war on Mariam-uz-Zamani, mostly a dispute about sourcing, what assertions to include, and whether there is "fan bias" (WP:NPOV). There are numerous disputed aspects to sort out and some outside insight and oversight on the article would be helpful, particularly at Talk:Mariam-uz-Zamani/Archive 1#Recent edit dispute. Dl2000 (talk) 02:58, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Hijra

Need some input from editors on Talk:Intersex rights in India#Redirect. Orientls (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Bengali kheer

Can someone take a look at Kheer (Bengali sweets) to know if it's just another variation of kheer or khoa. A redirect or merge looks very much possible. MT Train^Discuss 13:06, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Garv awards?

Hi all, has anybody ever heard of the Garv Awards? Someone added a slew of award nominations for a TV show here, but I don't see anything at Google News that would indicate anybody cares about this award. Further, the source used was this, which is a Weebly.com website, i.e. a free web hosting service. Seems very sketchy that a reputable awards site wouldn't spring for the nominal cost of a registered domain. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:01, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Vellalar

There were some huge changes made at the Vellalar article in December. I reverted them and opened a discussion at the article talk page precisely because they appeared to be so dramatic. I had hoped for further input but, aside from Xenani, none has been forthcoming. Xenani has just reinstated their changes and I've reverted them again. I was away from Wikipedia for most of the intervening period but this really could do with some extra eyes so that some consensus can be derived. - Sitush (talk) 17:41, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

The problem with the article is that it claims the Velir as ancestors of the Vellalar which is even mentioned in that source as doubtful. In turn is much of the rest of the article only talking about the Velirs and not about the Vellalars. It has been mentioned ample of times in the talk page also. I think the Velir related content should be removed and replaced with only Vellalar related content. As Sitush mentioned, there need to be some extra eyes to this article to have some consensus on the article. Xenani (talk) 12:51, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Comments requested at Talk:Vijay (actor)

Hi there, comments requested at Talk:Vijay (actor)#Remove "Chandrasekhar". A number of sources have indicated Vijay's birth name as either Chandrasekhar Joseph Vijay, Joseph Vijay or C. Joseph Vijay. The question is how to present this information, or whether we should not present this information. Thank you, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:03, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

A-Class review for Param Vir Chakra needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Param Vir Chakra; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! AustralianRupert (talk) 12:03, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

IPs causing WP:OVERLINK on pages relating to Indian settlements

Hi, I just wanted to bring attention to a set of IPs who are linking every mention of an article's title on an article, for example on this edit. I'm trying to fix as many as I can, but with Baruipur, the IP is actively working on it and undoes any de-linking. I have left messages on the IP's talk page about it, but I believe they have gone unread.

Thanks, Abce2 (talk) 06:45, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

@Abce2: I blocked 42.110.189.254 for 36 hours. Drop me a line on my talk page if you see them start up again from another IP. If it keeps being an issue, it should go to WP:AN where someone smarter than I can do a rangeblock, potentially. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 09:50, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Aiflc

The article Aiflc has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No valid references, non-notable, and unverifiable. See Talk:Aiflc.

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. Mathglot (talk) 01:39, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Mumbai AC local services

Please make a new article for India's first AC local train services, the Mumbai AC local. Or the information can be clubbed into Mumbai Suburban Railway. --✝iѵɛɳ२२४०^{†ลℓк †๏ мэ} 05:24, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Jaynagar I and Jaynagar II

An anonymous editor has been regularly over-linking the above articles and making some minor unreferenced changes in Jaynagar I and Jaynagar II articles. I would request an editor, preferably an administrator, to visit the pages and see if it is in order, and take action as he deems fit. Cheers. - Chandan Guha (talk) 01:54, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

I find that this is linked with WP Ovelink above. - Chandan Guha (talk) 01:58, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

@Chandan Guha: I have fixed the glaring issues of WP:OVERLINK and the section heading errors. Section headings should be in "Sentence case" not in "Title Case". (Note caps.) Contacting the editor on their talk page would have been a good first start here. I have done that for you at User talk:42.110.183.56. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:21, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Recruit new editors for your project?

Happy new year! As you may remember, I've been building a tool to help WikiProjects identify and recruit new editors to join and contribute. See my previous post. I’ve been working it on in the past several months, and collaborated with some WikiProject organizers to make it better. We also wrote a Signpost article to introduce it to the entire Wikipedia community.

Right now, we are ready to make it available to more WikiProjects that need it. If you are interested in trying out our tool, feel free to sign up. Bobo.03 (talk) 19:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

@Bobo.03: Thanks for reaching out. I'm interested. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 12:22, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: Got it. Thank you! Will keep you updated once it's ready! Bobo.03 (talk) 16:47, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Content dispute regarding Karam Singh

Please comment at: Talk:Karam Singh#Removal of citation section "Military Medal". --Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 14:07, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Could this be used?

I had a student from a previous semester create a sandbox article (User:Hardent/sandbox), but I'm concerned that it may be seen as duplicating content in India in World War II and Indian Army during World War I. I didn't know if anyone here could use this somewhere or not. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:15, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Shalor (Wiki Ed), copying content from within Wikipedia calls for proper attribution. Since this is a WikiED project, the guidelines on what can be done to a stagnant page can be better answered by the volunteers at Teahouse or Help Desk. Thanks. MT Train^Discuss 09:03, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Shalor (Wiki Ed), thanks for reaching out. Until the content is taken with proper attribution, and is in the sandbox, there'll be no issues. But once it gets published as an article, the editor has to provide proper rationale for content duplication, the match is too large. The extent of duplication from WWI article and WWII article, is 1 and 2 respectively. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 14:23, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

• That was my concern - the class is over and the student is unlikely to respond at their talk page as far as I can tell, so I'm going to assume that there's really nothing that we can truly use here since we don't have them to properly attribute content. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:47, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Shishu

Draft:Shishu_Pal_Singh_"Shishu" Hello this draft of this Indian poet has been continually rejected at AFC and I would like to see it get passed, but it appears most of the sources are offline and in a language I don't speak. Is there any experienced editors or people who can find sources about Shishu that could help improve this draft so it can go to mainspace? Egaoblai (talk) 19:14, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Egaoblai, there's nothing binding in the decisions of previous reviewers. If you think a draft should be be accepted, then you can simply move it to the article namespace. There's no need to ask for another review or seek the permission of previous reviewers (though you might want to give them a courtesy notice). Still, though the subject appears notable, it will indeed be wise to first find some additional reference/s (preferably in a printed book or journal) that can be used the supplement the claim of notability (which currently relies only on journalistic texts). – Uanfala (talk) 03:47, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Uanfala It's not my original, I have simply been looking over old drafts trying to find some to be restored and prevent them from being deleted. As for this subject, I've already searched online and havn't found much so posting it here to see if anyone was interested to work on it. Do you have any additional sources for this subject? Egaoblai (talk) 08:44, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Egaoblai I will look into this. The subject is a Hindi poet from Uttar Pradesh and was active before the 1960s. I did manage to find a couple of local references [14] and [15]. Unfortunately both references indicate, at best, a district level fame. At this point I cannot conclusively say the subject is notable. The Hindi media in India often prints many local non-notable stories. That said, I would still like some time to do research on the subject and find out if the award is notable enough.--DreamLinker (talk) 18:27, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

The page has a dramatic history.Is there such page in Hindu Wikipedia?Xx236 (talk) 09:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

The text lacks links like Khariboli dialect.Xx236 (talk) 09:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Reliable source?

Is https://listbodolist.wordpress.com/ reliable?Xx236 (talk) 09:09, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Not at all. It's a personal blog by a random guy. utcursch | talk 15:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely not, per the above. Vanamonde (talk) 16:08, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Comments for proposed merger of Parents' Worship Day and Matru-Pitru Pujan Diwas

There is a merger proposal discussion taking place at Talk:Matru-Pitru Pujan Diwas#Merger proposal which is currently being overrun by a suspiciously large number of new editors who have signed up just to oppose the merger. It would be good to get the opinions of long-standing Wikipedia editors on this debate. Richard3120 (talk) 20:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Category:20th-century Indian women politicians has been nominated for discussion

Category:20th-century Indian women politicians and Category:21st-century Indian women politicians, which are within the scope of this WikiProject, have been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:43, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India)

Greetings,

It is being planned to organize Wikigraphists Bootcamp in India, please fill out the survey form to help the organizers. Your responses will help organizers understand what level of demand there is for the event (how many people in your community think it is important that the event happens). At the end of the day, the participants will turn out to have knowledge to create drawings, illustrations, diagrams, maps, graphs, bar charts etc. and get to know to how to tune the images to meet the QI and FP criteria. For more information and link to survey form, please visit Talk:Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:43, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

List of Indian warriors

Any thoughts on this article: List of Indian warriors? A vague list of that includes a wide range of people from ancient rulers (not necessarily "warriors") to modern soldiers, made worse by anachronistic caste/language-based categorization. No similar articles exist for other countries: instead, we've got Category:Lists of military personnel by country (including Category:Lists of Indian military personnel) and Category:Lists of monarchs (including Category:Lists of Indian monarchs). Is someone willing to clean it up or is deletion a better option? utcursch | talk 22:59, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Specifically the section on Ancient warriors is very much debatable and the others appear more as part of a list of 'warrior kings', poorly referenced. I'm more inclined towards doing away with the article. MT Train^Discuss 08:27, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Not only is "warriors" a fuzzy debatable term, the article is also combining mythological people with "real" people. --regentspark (comment) 13:14, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I've had doubts about it for years. It is the usual caste/nationalist glorification coatrack. I think it should probably be deleted as vague, haphazard and not encyclopaedic. - Sitush (talk) 13:26, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

In addition to the excellent points made above, any attempt to catalogue the notable warriors of a set of societies that is >5000 years old, and has encompassed betweeen a quarter and a seventh of the world's population, is preposterous. I will send this to AfD, based on the discussion here. Vanamonde (talk) 14:57, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Indian warriors. @Utcursch, RegentsPark, and Sitush:. Vanamonde (talk) 15:10, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Caste self ID

Hey all, I know that caste requires self-identification, but I'm having trouble finding the guideline where that is codified. Any tips? Also, is there a central location for these sorts of things, like a FAQ for India-related topics? Ex:

Q: Can I use Indic script in the lead or in an infobox?

A No, because ___. See ___ discussion and WP:NOINDICSCRIPT.

Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:48, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I have some notes at User:Sitush/Common#Castelists. The self-identification applies to living people and, of course, it applies everywhere, not merely in lists. - Sitush (talk) 10:10, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Sources for Indian wrestler bio

I've been talking with Vishal Rathi on their own page regarding a wrestler. Apparently, "Krishan Kumar Rathee from Bharproda, Haryana popularly known by Hind Kesari Krishan Phalawan. He was winner in Olympic Trials, he claimed the title of Bharat Kesari 1986, Rutam-e-Hind, Jawahar Kesari, 3 times National Champion, 3 Times Army Service Champion".

I've tried searching on both of the names given and on various spellings of Rathee but I am not seeing much out there other than a few YouTube things. Vishal Rathi tells me that there is some newspaper coverage (they have clippings) so I'm wondering if this is another of those instances where Google isn't particularly good at mining Indian news sources etc. Can anyone help? The awards suggest to me that he may be notable enough for a biographical article. - Sitush (talk) 18:06, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Apparently, he is mentioned in this article (Hindi). - Sitush (talk) 19:54, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

The garimatimes.in article is about another wrestler named Chand Roop. It provides a list of wrestlers who attended his funeral -- one of the attendees is Krishna Bharproda, who may be "Krishan Kumar Rathee from Bharproda". utcursch | talk 16:55, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't know how is it a problem to add a wrestler's name in one page although he is mentioned in other pages in wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vishal Rathi (talk • contribs) 16:40, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Culture of Pune

Just brought this here, I wasn't sure, but many someone might want to restore it. Govvy (talk) 01:00, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Greatest Bengali Of All Time

Do you think this article is of any importance? Polls are conducted by numerous outlets, this one by BBC is no special to stand out among them. The method of polling itself is limited to a small percentage of actual Bengalis, and we're talking about a media that does not have much foothold in South Asia where most of the ethnic Bengalis reside. MT Train^Discuss 14:41, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

It is interesting, although it may not be flawless. The BBC stamp certainly carries weight. In any such poll, Bangladeshis outnumber other Bengalis substantially, that may have had some impact. It is also interesting to note the results of the Greatest Briton poll. Who do you think would be voted the greatest German, if one such poll is organised? - Chandan Guha (talk) 15:26, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not discrediting BBC, sure it's a popular media house. But it's not something as popular as TIME, which brings out 'top xyz' every year. Greatest Britons would kind of make sense, a British public media conducting polls in Britain. In the article I bought up, it was concluded through opinion polls. The first source mentions BBC's Bengali service has nearly 12 million listeners in Bangladesh and eastern India, home to some 250 million Bengali-speakers. I wonder the sample size they surveyed of the 12 million. MT Train^Discuss 17:22, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Do we have similar articles for the TIME lists? This poll seems somewhat indiscriminate and while I could see it being cited in the individual biographical articles I am not convinced of the merits of a separate free-standing article. - Sitush (talk) 10:05, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Last Names of Telugus

Draft:Last Names of Telugus has been half a year ago by Srinivasulua, an editor who has not edited since. It automatically came up for speedy deletion now, but I think it has potential. I at least found the introducing paragraphs an interesting read. To give it a chance, I changed the deletion status to simple WP:PROD. — Sebastian 09:34, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

You cannot PROD in Draft space. And the article is plain original research, as most lists of surnames are. - Sitush (talk) 09:45, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

That's just what I've been wondering about, Sitush. Would you please be so kind to answer my question at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion#Why not for Draft? — Sebastian 10:21, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

No idea. I just know that the template says that. - Sitush (talk) 12:28, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Baghel Samaj

Can anyone provide translations of the sources at Baghel Samaj, which I think are in Hindi? I am a little concerned that the subject may not be notable, especially since the article about the caste itself has been deleted. - Sitush (talk) 10:03, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

The first source mentions a town name, Bhidauni (भिदौनी), while the second mentions the last name of a politician, Baghel (बघेल). I don't see how these two articles relate to the subject. There's a good possibility the facts in this article are correct, but these are just not the right sources to be cited, which has been an issue with many Indian articles on caste and surnames. MT Train^Discuss 15:08, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the point that the article is trying to make is that the organisation exists in a particular gram panchayat and operates there (basically, a village-level caste organisation that is probably not even know to the people at state level - a local club, more than anything else). That may explain the reference to Bhidauni, although it will probably sound the death knell per WP:GNG. @Utcursch: can you make any more sense of it? - Sitush (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

The first ref mentions some activists, whose surname is Baghel, but doesn't mention any "Baghel Samaj". The second ref mentions a "Dhangar Samaj" (Dhangar Society) meeting, which featured a speaker surnamed Baghel. That said, a Google News search for Baghel Samaj in Hindi ("बघेल समाज") throws up results indicating some notability. utcursch | talk 16:46, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I will delete the "sources" and add a {{unreferenced}}. - Sitush (talk) 17:35, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

IP making major rewrites of articles using unreliable sources including nationalist ones

See [16] and my comments at Talk:Indus Valley Civilisation and the changes made to Sarasvati River prior to my revert.[17] I love the "cautioN" "Any constructive criticism must be recorded in a separate paragraph, exclude the opinion pieces from the newspapers, criticism of scientific work must be based on the scholarly peer-reviewed sources literature only". Followed by the use of newspaper sources. Some of the IP's edits are hopefully ok, but clearly some are not. I also note " Of 1,022 sites discovered so far, 616 are in India (along Ghaggar-Hakra river) and 406 are in Pakistan (along Indus river), hence it is obviously objectionable to name it Indus Valley Civilization". Doug Weller talk 19:11, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

they’ve responded on my talk page. Doug Weller talk 20:23, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikigraphists Bootcamp Survey Reminder

Greetings,

As it has already been notified about Wikigraphists Bootcamp in India, for training related to creation drawings, illustrations, diagrams, maps, graphs, bar charts etc. and to tune the images to meet the QI and FP criteria, please fill the survey form linked from Talk:Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India). It'll help the organizers to assess the needs of the community, and plan accordingly. Please ignore if already done. Krishna Chaitanya Velaga 03:03, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Nationality of Kalki Koechlin

Hi All,
There's been some confusion over Kalki Koechlin's nationality, with persistent edits on the issue. There are sources that say she holds a French passport, the first in an Ouest Magazine. Upon clicking the next image in it, one can find the date of the edition to be around mid-2016. A similar article has been published by the same correspondent at https://mediaindia.eu/dossier/kalki-koechlin/ around the same time. There are also Indian sources in which she has quoted of holding an Indian citizenship. These include India Today and The Hindu. A discussion took place at Numerounovedant's talk page, which also involved myself and Kailash29792. With all the sources we were able to find on the web, we weren't able to come to a conclusion. Help from other editors in taking a decision and availability of new sources supporting her nationality would be appreciated. Thanks, MT Train^Discuss 05:20, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

New editor might need advice

Vishnudasa108 (talk · contribs) is adding huge chunks of quotes to articles. See for instance this addition of a huge chunk of quotes and translations and use of ISKCON as a source.[18] And I'm not sure which source he used, but he copied in a chucnk of this lecture into A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. I've reverted him at one article. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 09:52, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Tamil and Kannada

Are Tamil and Kannada considered to be Indic scripts? If they are, then perhaps someone from this WP:INDIA can try explaining to WP:NOINDICSCRIPT to Sivagopalakrishnan, who keeps adding both to the Mahalakshmi (Kannada actress). At the same, time it might be a good idea for someone to assess the article for Wikipedia notability per WP:BIO and WP:ACTOR since it's essentially a filmography sourced mainly to primary sources and some other questionable ones. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:48, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, they are. - Sitush (talk) 11:46, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying this Sitush. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:36, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

New template

I've opened a discussion concerning a new template at Template talk:Indic script lede. It was created by Samee in December 2017. - Sitush (talk) 18:22, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Ukrid

Can anyone find any reliable sources for the existence of Ukrid, supposedly a village in Jharkhand? I have trawled through various census websites/data without success and Google just seems to produce mirrors and unreliable aggregator sites. AS I see it, if the census doesn't mention the place then it probably exists only as a local name for an area that is actually a part of something else. This map might be relevant but it is useless as a source. - Sitush (talk) 12:29, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm..No hits in census data for either Ramgarh or Bokaro distrcits..See this!Winged Blades^Godric 12:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Brahmins as historically the oldest community

According to the first sentence of this, the Brahmins are historically the oldest community in India. I have said before that I have severe doubts about a lot of theses etc hosted at shodhganga - surely this claim, upon which the thesis does not appear to equivocate, is an example of why we should have doubts? I don't care if it was awarded a PhD or whatever, it is clearly far too sweeping (and probably actually incorrect) as a statement. Or am I wrong?

I know PhD these are acceptable as reliable sources but I've been seeing a fair few dubious ones and wonder if we need to take more care in applying that acceptance when it comes to Indian history/religion/society articles. - Sitush (talk) 11:32, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, mythologically that might be true (keyword: might be). But historically, there was the "chaturvarna" system. The clan was not decided by birth, but by behaviour/qualities. —usernamekiran(talk) 11:51, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm thinking more of indigenous Dravidians etc, although that may fall foul of the Aryan invasion theory. In any event, such an unqualified statement should not have been accepted in a PhD thesis, surely? - Sitush (talk) 11:57, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, the Brahmins are not a "community" in any case. (They are a social group).

I don't use anything from Shodhganga theses unless it is backed by solid sources (within the thesis). The main value of the theses is that they often bring together a lot of material from a wide range of RS, many of which we don't have access to. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:34, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

If Brahmins are supposed to be the oldest community, than it should be the Indo-Aryans, to which they belonged. No Brahmins without non-Brahmins. But the Adivasi may be better candidates. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:36, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I've never been happy about the idea that all PhD theses are equal. Some are downright bad. Doug Weller talk 14:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, and your comment here, Doug, reminds me of the Indus Valley Civilisation. - Sitush (talk) 14:18, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

The starter of this thread Sitush is saying that because the thesis contains this one sentence some other totally unrelated passage in this thesis cannot be cited as a reliable source for a Wikipedia page. I am not much experienced in editing Wikipedia but isn't it too far fetched?

This thesis was written many years back when Brahmins were numerically superior to all other castes(which is also mentioned in the very same sentence) which is not the case now, then how can it undermine the main facts of the thesis which come into the author's area of expertise?

Please spare some time if You can and visit this page:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dadheech_Brahmins

--2405:205:1489:1F8B:B5B0:3254:E6DD:1EC5 (talk) 14:33, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

The thesis in question is apparently this one, from Jawaharlal Nehru University, no less, done in 2014. Given the pedigree, I reread the passage in Chapter 2. I think all it means is that, of all the caste groups currently existing, Brahmins are the oldest, which is still dubious but not far off the mark. Probably the author was trying to avoid the term "caste" but he/she couldn't still resist using it a few lines down in the passage. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:31, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Ph.D. theses should be used with care, even if from top universities, because they are not necessarily well reviewed. Peer reviewed journal papers that are based on these theses are a better bet. I'm surprised that we accept anything from a Ph.D. thesis - if there is something useful in one, doubtless it will show up in a journal somewhere. --regentspark (comment) 15:53, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

And that's one of the reasons for WP:UNDUE. Doug Weller talk 19:29, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

• • Comment--In all fairness, Shodhganga is nothing but a repository of all M.Phil. / Ph.D theses.When UGC(courtesy INFLIBNET) set-up ShodhGanga, it did not ever state that the best of theses (which have undergone rigorous review/scrutiny) will be solely uploaded.That a thesis is stored in SG hardly means about us(WP) assigning a special value to the thesis.It's totally expected to see crappy works which can be miles worse than this one.Winged Blades^Godric 13:26, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

onefivenine

The outcome of the discussion here may have a significant impact on articles of interest to this project. - Sitush (talk) 21:58, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Sinhgad Technical Education Society Controversies

Hi all; Just a quick note to draw your attention to this; I'd appreciate if someone with more knowledge of Education and Law in India could take a look at it and decide if it's worth including in the article! (Please use "{{reply to}}" to get my attention) -- Cheers, Alfie. (Say Hi!) 14:41, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

South Sikkim district

Could someone check out the maps on South Sikkim district as they appear inconsistent. {South Sikkim image map}} shows Namchi in the north and Ravong in the south. The table below shows them the other way round. Thanks Mccapra (talk) 06:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Census village query

I am sorting out village articles for Solapur district, Maharashtra, per the 2011 official census report. On p. 114 of that report there are separate lines for Wangi - 1 (NV), Wangi - 2 (NV), Wangi - 3 (NV), and Wangi - 4 (NV). All of them are more or less the same size in terms of area, at just under 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) each. I am unsure how to treat this - it looks rather odd to me and, if combined, would be a very large "village". Can anyone explain what is going on? Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 11:27, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

This IMIS record (page 2) suggests that these are four distinct villages that are administered by a single panchayat called Wangi.

According to Google, the term "Wangi" covers the entire area encompassing these four villages:

• Wangi - 1 (labeled "Wangi No.1")
• Wangi - 2 (labeled "Wangi No.2")
• Wangi - 3 (labeled "वागी नं 3")
• Wangi - 4 (labeled "Wangi No 4")

I can only speculate, but I'm guessing Wangi used to be a single village, which was divided into four distinct villages for administrative convenience.

"N.V." is probably an abbreviation for some kind of administrative classification or a suffix (e.g. B.K. for Budruk or G.P. for Gram Panchayat), but I'm not sure what. Back in 2015, I had unsuccessfully sought help on village name abbreviations in census records here. utcursch | talk 16:07, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Hm, thanks. I wonder if perhaps I should revisit the articles and change them from saying "X is a village in Y taluka" etc to "X is a census village in Y taluka" etc. We don't have an article for that redlink but I'm beginning to think such places may be similar to Census-designated place in the US. - Sitush (talk) 16:16, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

dummy comment here. —usernamekiran(talk) 16:32, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

@Utcursch and Sitush: That is obviously confusing. I have never seen anything like that. Regarding, census designated places, I don't think there is term similar to that in India. For sure, in India, villages are not "incorporated". So I think every village is de-facto census designated if there are census records for it. About these Wangi(s), I am not sure what is going on with numbering. But the guess of breaking them down for administrative purposes doesnt seem to be right, as I have never heard a similar case, and they have the same administration office (Wangi grampanchayat). There is one more village under that grampanchayat, Bhivarwadi. Regarding naming conventions, if they were split, they would have got some other identifiers rather than numbers. Like budruk, khurd, or majority of trees, or surnames. And I dont trust google maps either, I have seen dozens of mistakes in google maps; nothing comes to my mind now though. Maybe somebody was lazy or goofed it up, and it just kept on spreading from there? I think this should be posted to talkpage of that district, and dist. HQ; maybe somebody would elaborate this issue there. —usernamekiran(talk) 19:09, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I have left a note at Talk:Solapur and Talk:Solapur district. Usernamekiran, Google Maps are known to be unreliable and should not be used as sources - they have open days etc where people are encouraged to develop the things using their own local knowledge. It has been discussed here some time in the past. - Sitush (talk) 12:34, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sitush:--Hmm...NV means New Village.As to census designated places, census-towns and census-villages are pretty commonly used.(See the administrative setup portion of the linked handbook.)I will try to find the administrative notification but am pretty sure that Wangi used to be a single village, which was divided into four census-villages.Winged Blades^Godric 14:35, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

That would be great, thanks. - Sitush (talk) 14:41, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Singh's History of the Chāhamānas

Singh, R. B. (1964). History of the Chāhamānas (pub: N. Kishore) is used extensively at the Chauhan article, which has been a problematic place for years. I am struggling to determine whether or not it is a reliable source. Does anyone have an opinion? Can anyone work out whether or not it has been cited by other people? - Sitush (talk) 13:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I've read it -- it's a good, scholarly book. It has been cited by several other scholars, including Alf Hiltebeitel, Baij Nath Puri and Ram Sharan Sharma. utcursch | talk 14:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Great, thanks. - Sitush (talk) 15:41, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Thathal redirect discussion

Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2018_January_31#Thathal has now been twice relisted and is stalemated between myself and Uanfala, perhaps because of the commonly experienced issue of people that frequent such noticeboards not being sufficiently confident or au fait to delve into things relating to caste etc. It could do with some comments. - Sitush (talk) 00:56, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Talk:List of Korean Nobel laureates#Requested move 31 January 2018

Greetings! I have recently listed a requested move discussion at Talk:List of Korean Nobel laureates#Requested move 31 January 2018, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 07:01, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

The Indian article "List of Indian Nobel laureates" is the same situation. A user removed all laureates other than Indian citizen.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 07:01, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Index of Andhra Pradesh-related articles

Is there really any point in keeping Index of Andhra Pradesh-related articles? There was a procedural close at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Index of Andhra Pradesh-related articles which suggested that any discussion re: deletion should occur here or at Village Pump. - Sitush (talk) 00:13, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Crikey! That's a long index. Seems to me that the only way to use it is if you already know the title of the article you're looking for and then, of course, you don't need it. --regentspark (comment) 00:38, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

It is also outdated in various ways. I've just cleared out the redlinks (deleted articles) and removed another that now redirects (there will be plenty more). As someone pointed out on the talk page, some of these are also arguably Telangana-specific now. And doubtless there will be new ones. I noticed a link to an index of India-related articles somewhere at the bottom of the thing ... I did not dare click on it. - Sitush (talk) 00:41, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

It also includes articles such as Ziziphus which, on the face of it, seems pretty tenuous (captions to two images). - Sitush (talk) 00:43, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

My opinion did not change since 2015: such lists are impossible to maintain, and this is exactly why we have categories for this kind of function.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:16, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• I recently spent some time copyediting and categorizing articles on villages in Andhra Pradesh, because they're mostly inadequately sourced and many contain a lot of horrendously-written and dubious assertions, and I can tell you that a lot of the articles I edited are not even on this index. That is, it's already a sprawling and useless atrocity and it's nowhere near complete. I don't think it serves any purpose. If you do decide to take it to AfD, would you please give me a courtesy ping? Thanks, Reyk _YO! 08:51, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Reyk: I am not sure that it can go to AfD. I could do with someone reading over the procedural close when it last went there (see link in my first message) to ensure that I've interpreted it properly. - Sitush (talk) 09:01, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

  Probably the best way is to move it (along with similar lists) to the subspace of Wikipedia Project/India or wherever it belongs and then go to MfD.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:04, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• (ec) If it's not an article and cannot go to AfD, it certainly can go to MfD. The idea that a useless and crufty page cannot be deleted because there's no correct venue to request deletion, is ridiculous. Reyk _YO! 09:07, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• Some thoughts: Reyk is spot on, in that the absence of a forum cannot insulate an article from deletion. Also, I see little point in this, or any, index on Wikipedia, but the existence thereof is likely to be defended to the death by folks who have spent time and effort creating the only indices that actually exist. Thus the proper solution might be to start a proposal at VPP to dump all indices, but the practical method may be to send this to AfD. Vanamonde (talk) 13:23, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• No, it has been to AfD and was procedurally closed. It must be moved to Wikipedia namespace and sent to MfD. Concerning the general proposal of eliminated all outlines and indices, I would definitely support it but I am afraid it has zero chance to pass.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:25, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• Zero chances for sure, we will also need to get articles like Index of British Columbia-related articles deleted and it won't happen. Anmolbhat (talk) 13:47, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• I concur with you folks that these indices serve no purpose and are extremely tedious to maintain, but getting a favorable vote at mfd is certain to fail. Here's the issue: all 50 US states and most Canadian provinces have indices, while none of Australian states have it, i.e. there's no uniformity. Moreover someone must've worked very hard to collate them. Unless this is taken to the village pump for analysis and discussion, this page will remain. I don't even expect things to go our way if taken to the village pump, but editors from multiple countries need to get involved in this discussion. MT Train^Discuss 15:25, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I realise that local consensus cannot over-rule community consensus but weight should surely be given to the views of the primary affected project, just as it is when special notability guidelines are worked out. - Sitush (talk) 15:54, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• The AfD close said to start a discussion at this project. My reading is that, if we can get keep or delete consensus about indexes here, that should be good enough. Other projects can make their own judgements. --regentspark (comment) 17:03, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• AFD also mentioned Village pump, which seems to the correct spot. We can't overrule community consensus from discussions here like editors noted above. Anmolbhat (talk) 17:16, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Nope. It seems to say either would be ok, although it is not specific in naming this particular project. Is there some reason why you think it would be inappropriate to deal with it here other than that of community consensus? In other words, do you actually want this kept? - Sitush (talk) 17:27, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

We need to follow the correct procedure for this, and MTT has provided a good solution. As for my opinion, we really don't need such articles when we have got categories and templates. Anmolbhat (talk) 17:40, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I see, thanks. However, the closer gave us the option and I've no intention of seeking the removal of all similar articles because probably some of them are not too bad. It just doesn't scale up well for countries such as India, and especially given the relative lack of attention the topic area receives from experienced contributors. Keeping the thing in such a poor state is actually doing the reader a dis-service. - Sitush (talk) 18:17, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

• So, should we assume we have consensus to remove Index articles from the project? Or, do we need a formal RfC? --regentspark (comment) 13:52, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

• There seems to be consensus among the above comments that they should go. A couple of people aren't too sure, however, whether this is the place to determine it. - Sitush (talk) 18:29, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

• Should we start a vote here and later take it to the RfC, would that work? The way everyone opposed it in the AfD makes me a bit pessimistic. MT Train^Discuss 12:08, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

• Doesn't need a !vote here. Consensus can be determined from discussion as above just as well as from a !vote. Why prolong matters? - Sitush (talk) 12:28, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

• Reading the above discussion it doesn't look like anyone wants to keep it. If that's the case then it seems we have (local) consensus to delete these indexes from WT:IN. Any naysayers, this is your time to speak up otherwise we'll just codify it. --regentspark (comment) 14:07, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

• So what is happening about this? - Sitush (talk) 15:41, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• I've just noticed that this creation is probably an unattributed copy/paste of the AP list. While there would be significant overlap, surely that isn't right? - Sitush (talk) 22:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oh my! So many such useless articles / lists. Kindly look at this impossible page List of villages in India as well! Don't think Six hundred thousand villages are going to get onto that list at any point of time! VasuVR (talk, contribs) 04:43, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• Take the spreadsheets produced by Census of India, turn into CSV, write a bot to extract the relevant fields and populate new articles using a standard prose format. Let it also add those articles to the list. Then split the list into smaller lists - by state, district, taluk etc - so that it becomes a tree. That's the method used, for example, by the people dealing with the US National Register of Historic Places. There will be some duplication and some disambiguation needed but the principle has worked before.

I mention this because there is no way that list will be deleted, however useless it may seem to many people (including me). Sitush (talk) 08:36, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. OK. I will not worry about that list anymore. I am not going to work on that list (or the nice methods you have described) either. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 10:46, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

• It looks like there is consensus to delete the Andhra Pradesh list. It also seems that there is broader consensus on lists but we'll need an uninvolved editor (someone who hasn't contributed to the discussion) to codify that consensus. --regentspark (comment) 22:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Perhaps @SpaceSpiff: can take a look, although they're not very active at the moment. - Sitush (talk) 12:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Well, I messed up that SpacemanSpiff ping, didn't I? - Sitush (talk) 11:56, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Supporting Indian Wikipedia Program resource distribution

In 2017 - 2018, the Wikimedia Foundation and Google working in close coordination with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Wikimedia India chapter (WMIN) and user groups will pilot a program encouraging Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages. This program (Code name: Project Tiger) will:

(a) Support active and experienced Wikipedia editors through the donation of laptops and stipends for internet access and

(b) Sponsor a language-based contest that aims to address existing Wikipedia content gaps.

The objective of the program is to provide laptops and internet stipends for existing editors who need support to contribute more actively. 50 basic model Acer Chromebooks and Internet stipends for 100 contributors are available for distribution. Provided resources are the sole property of the beneficiaries and should be used for the betterment of the movement.

If you're an active Wikimedian, and interested to receive support from this project, please apply. It will take around 10 minutes of your time, and will ask descriptive questions about your contribution to Indic Wikimedia projects.

• Apply at: Supporting Indian Language Wikipedias Program#Apply for support
• Last date for submitting applications is 11th February 2018, 11:59 IST.

Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 08:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Bhadani

For those who may be unaware, news is going round that Bhadani (talk · contribs), a long-standing contributor to this project, has died. Noted by Xaosflux at WP:AN. - Sitush (talk) 15:15, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

State Maps

based on recent edits at WikiProject:China, I have noticed Indian state maps we have do not show sea or land borders. Should we fix or not fix? — Preceding unsigned comment added by C1MM (talk • contribs) 04:31, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for policy change on Indian languages/scripts in lead sentences

I know that the wiki policy for Indic scripts is generally prohibition in lead sentences & infoboxes, and I'm sorry this opens up more tensions [[19]] [[20]]. But I think there should be a change in policy. It's disappointing to never see native scripts in India-related articles but always see native scripts elsewhere, even in places where they are no longer widely used and the scripts in questions have much more worse support than Indic scripts. I realize there are arguments both for and against the usage of native scripts, but it feels like India is being held to a separate standard. I only wish for policy to be consistent and for India to be treated the same as every other place in the world, even if that means that all non-Latin scripts are banned in all cases.

I'll come right out and say that I don't have a solution for the problem as a whole, for articles on people and items that can have connections to many regions and languages. However, for location-related articles, I propose that we display the scripts/languages that is official in the state/union territory relevant.

So the Bengaluru page would have only Kannada, and no other Indian language, and the Telangana page would have Telugu and Urdu. Arunachal Pradesh would have no special language because English is the sole official language in the state, despite the popularity of Hindi as a lingua franca. India itself would have the language explicitly named as Hindi and in Devanagari script, because Hindi in Devanagari script is defined as one of its two official languages as per the Constitution. This is to provide a objective basis on which to decide which languages to include. We can bicker about which languages are connected to whatever content, but you can't argue whether or not a language is official or not. It either is or it isn't. (To avoid using too many languages, we would not include ["additional official languages"] and stick to the primary official languages).

For the vast majority of states, there is only one official non-English language. Mizoram, Telangana, and Tripura have 2 such official languages. Mizoram and Tripura would probably not pose any problem, because of the unlikeliness of translations into Mizo and Kokborok being added, at least for the moment - these languages do not even have their own wikipedia editions, although Mizo has a [language test]. The same goes for Manipuri/Meithei, the official language of Manipur.

There can of course be special cases, where a location is particularly significant for or is populated with a certain linguistic group, but this would be the rule and everything else would be an exception.

This is consistent with what appears to be wiki policy elsewhere - Afghanistan shows only the two official languages, Pashto and Dari, and not Uzbek or Turkmen, despite them being significant languages in the country; Indonesia has only the official Indonesian name, despite the unofficial Javanese actually having more native speakers in the country; Ethiopia has only the Amharic name because it is the working language for the government despite Oromo having more native speakers; etc.).

Again, I very much wish to avoid the kind of edit wars and arguments that have been seen in the past, but I also want India to be treated on the same basis as the rest of the world.

If this isn't the best place to post this, I'd greatly appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction. I'm really only a casual editor, despite what you might think from this post.Last edited by: (talk) 00:04, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

No. This has been discussed very recently. - Sitush (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The kinds of situations that led to the adoption of the ban on native scripts barely arise (if at all) in the context of populated places or administrative units. This specific subset of topics was broached in the last RfC (where those commenting against them did so on the basis of simply not finding them useful), but it wasn't really discussed at any length. You should probably start a new RfC to add an exception to the outright ban, but it's worth bearing in mind that this is an area where many regular editors have strong opinions and where it's particularly difficult to have a reasoned discussion. – Uanfala (talk) 00:10, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. - Sitush (talk) 09:18, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Concur with Sitush - populated places were probably where the majority of the problems arose. The consensus at the last RFC, which was only closed in May 2017, was very strong and clear. We do not need to revisit this so soon. - Arjayay (talk) 11:17, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Oppose. No change in policy required. Editors were flooding articles with native scripts, even resulting in edit/revert wars. English Wikipedia should use only English (Latin script), for other native languages and scripts, we have individual Wikis.
Anish Viswa 11:46, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

In response to the first post here, I've tried before to say why I think India is being held to a separate standard, but it is difficult to be diplomatic about it. I've previously alluded to " Macaulay's children". I'm going to be more blunt about it now and say that the use of Indian languages makes many editors who concentrate on India uncomfortable in some way and they are only too glad to have found a way to forget about it. It may be useful to read Macaulayism and this article. It would be good to have a wider discussion, though probably not here, about how this departure from Wikipedia's wider values affects the value and the integrity of the English content that is affected by it, and how it affects the content and status of the other wikipedia's in the other languages of India. Imc (talk) 20:15, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

• Wikipedia should use the English script only. In that case, all other scripts should be removed as well. Why only indic scripts? I am aware of the problems it caused. I had to create few "infobox templates" to avoid the edit warring that was taking place. I think only devnagari script should be allowed, and not others like tamil, telugu, punjabi. —usernamekiran(talk) 21:52, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

• Indeed you have tried before, Imc. You're starting to sound like a broken record and your veiled attacks in the above message are unwarranted. - Sitush (talk) 15:28, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

• Westerners tend to romanticize India too much for that to be true of them, and it's the southern Indian states, where there is the most variety of Indic languages and scripts, that favor the continuation of English as an official language, to ward off the dominance of Hindi. Macaulay shouldn't be too quickly blamed for the predicament where a knowledge of English is required to thrive economically, as it was already the case in his time that people preferred English instruction, according to his "Minute", and it was his intent that the elite learning English would enable borrowings into vernacular tongues that would make the latter vehicles for technical education, as English had been enabled by borrowings from Latin and ancient Greek. The principal for addition of Indic scripts should be that of verifiability, which is what is almost always missing, in my experience, and which I think the present policy may already allow as an exception. As I understand it, there's nothing now stopping editors from adding well documented etymology sections that include Indic scripts, even if they're not allowed in the lead or infobox. If India is treated differently in this regard, it may well be due to volume. There may be one or two other countries with equal linguistic diversity, but not with anywhere near equal numbers of English Wikipedia editors. Dhtwiki (talk) 07:19, 12 February 2018 (UTC) (edited 21:24, 13 February 2018 (UTC))

Infoelections.com

This website has been used as a source in quite a few articles related to Indian politics. Further research shows that its a consultancy service offering to do door-to-door surveys, political campaign and social media management for candidates. I have requested blacklisting at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist but they have requested that this should be discussed first. --Skr15081997 (talk) 11:21, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

No need for it. Election data etc is published via the ECI -Sitush (talk) 11:40, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Elections.in is another such website. --Skr15081997 (talk) 11:56, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Skr15081997:-Blacklisting the url is an extreme measure when links to the website are inserted by a spammer as click-bait. Most of the URLs seem to be a case of genuine (AGF) citation rather than balant self promotion of the website.(Same goes for the other website).That being said I am not encouraging their usage as they are not reliable and it looks as if they mirror data from other reliable websites( and thus may not be upto date)  — FR™ 10:48, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

RfC on use of "crore"

Relevant RfC going on at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#RfC_on_use_of_"crore". Languorrises (talk) 22:51, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Sam Manekshaw FAC

The article about Sam Manekshaw, India's first field marshal, is at featured article candidacy. Please put comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sam Manekshaw/archive1. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 12:50, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Marathi help?

I'm trying to verify that the major source for Draft:Vasantrao Ghatge – the recently published book वसंतवैभव - वसंतराव घाटगे जीवन आणि वारसा – actually exists. Apparently, the only thing we've got is an announcement in a local newspaper about the book's publication:

• "Book Release Ceremony of at Kolhapur published". Lokmat. 4 September 2017.

Could someone double-check that there is such an announcement on the linked page of this newspaper? Thanks! – Uanfala (talk) 19:02, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

And whether it is reliable! There is a lot of rubbish published and promoted in newspapers, which get these press releases etc as free copy. - Sitush (talk) 19:31, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

To be honest, that article is never going to get out of draftspace unless it bins all of its citations related to the memorial trust. - Sitush (talk) 19:32, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Pinging AshLin to check the Marathi source, and as well as its reliability. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 12:53, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

RfC on Talk:Roti

Talk:Roti#RfC about the origin of the roti. — MapSGV (talk) 02:49, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Current Event - Unreliable information

Hello, the series of articles including Mahamastakabhisheka, Gommateshwara statue, Shravanabelagola, Bahubali, etc. relate to the current event being held in the state of Karnataka. It is gaining large traffic and needs a lot of work in sourcing copy-editing and tone-rationalisation. Please have a look if you are interested. Thanks -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 13:33, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Jyothi High School

Another editor created Jyothi High School for a high school in Ajekar, Karnataka, India. There are other schools with the same name in different cities. I cannot find a reference in a reliable source to establish that the school in Ajekar exists. Google Maps lists the school and indicates that it is located next to a convent, but does not include a telephone number or website. If you can add a reference to the article, or alternatively if you can prove that the school does not exist, please do so. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 04:04, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

@Eastmain: There is a mention in this Daijiworld Media website. Also mentioned in the state government's website for the upcoming elections. Enough to confirm that the school exists. MT Train^Discuss 04:57, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies

Has anyone come across Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies before? Any thoughts regarding general reliability etc? - Sitush (talk) 14:29, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

International Mother Langage Day and Open Data Day Wikidata Edit-a-thon

Hello,
We are happy to inform you that a national level Wikidata editing campaign "IMLD-ODD 2018 Wikidata India Edit-a-thon" on content related to India is being organized from from 21 February 2018 to 3 March 2018. This edit-a-thon marks International Mother Language Day and Open Data Day.

Please learn more about this event: here.
Please consider participating in the event, by joining here.
You may get a list of suggested items to work on here.

Please let us know if you have question. -- Titodutta using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:12, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Just to mention, the last link you list does not yet seem to be operational at the time I write this. MPS1992 (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@MPS1992: Here is the correct link: d:Wikidata:IMLD-ODD 2018 Wikidata India Edit-a-thon Item Lists. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 00:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

List of General Caste in Sikhism

Does List of General Caste in Sikhism have any potential for development? - Sitush (talk) 13:38, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

There is some content in the Castes sub-section of the Sikh article that may be of use. Is 'General Caste' a well-defined term? I'm struggling to figure out the scope or purpose of the list. Regards, Cesdeva (talk) 16:37, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

General caste = Forward caste. - Sitush (talk) 16:40, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I might be getting the wrong end of the stick but why don't we just widen the scope and make a 'Castes in Sikkhism' article instead that uses sections to separate Forward Class, OBC and Scheduled etc? Cesdeva (talk) 17:03, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

This will just devolve into a list containing the superset of last names of Sikhs. Pointless. --regentspark (comment) 17:20, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly, RP. That is actually how it has been on occasion. - Sitush (talk) 17:24, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

The article is now at AfD. I'm still not sure what to do. - Sitush (talk) 20:16, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

"Prince of Goa"

Decan.reporter (talk · contribs) has been adding information about "RoquiSantan" (presumably politician Roque Santana Fernandes) to several articles, claiming that he was a "Prince of Goa" and a direct descendant of the Kadambas of Goa. The references cited by the user included mailing list messages, YouTube videos, personal sources from Dharwad University and other such sources. I've removed a lot of such poorly-sourced information from the articles Kadambas of Goa, Velim, Goa, Goa Opinion Poll, History of Goa, Margao, Goa liberation movement etc.

Recently, Decan.reporter has added the phrase "RoquiSantan, a Prince of Goa" to multiple articles[21][22][23][24], citing File:Gomantak Times, Friday March 16 2012.jpg as a source. This is a Gomantak Times article, which includes a sentence, "The next day Mr. Nehru send his close friend Mr.Gopal Handoo to Velim to meet this Prince of Goa."

However, the newspaper article doesn't contain any further detail about the "Prince of Goa" aspect. As far as I know, neither the Portuguese nor the Indian government recognized any "Prince of Goa". I can't find any reliable source that talk about Roque Santana being (or even claiming to be) a descendant of the Kadambas. Also, a couple of local newspaper reports call Santana "Father of Goan Democracy", but I'm unable to find this epithet in any scholarly books or national newspapers.

Does anyone have more information about the legitimacy of "Prince of Goa" and "Father of Goan Democracy" claims? utcursch | talk 18:26, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense.~ Winged BladesGodric 07:19, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
refer to Velliapura 'Velliapura Viragal' the 12th century battle the 1345 killing of kadamba king his Queen moves to Veliapura she is cremated by her nephew jayasha the family has been living there for centuries his great grand father Leao ( meaning Lion in Portuguese) who owned a timber yard in Haliyal, which was confiscated by Madras Governor George Harris in 1845. his grand father Nic'leao was awarded a Portuguese title as village Sherif RoquiSantna is the family member a prince, freedom fighter, father of Goan Democracy and later law maker His Son is Sanjaya deva named by Kadamba Coterie in 2007. he was NSUI Goa Student leader. He (RS) died in 2007, may his soul rest in peace 104.207.219.62 (talk) 18:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)104.207.219.62 (talk) 19:05, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this is reason for serious concern. His mission statement on the present userpage, his lack of competence in writing English, the series of family photos of the "prince" and his lack of competence in understanding copyright also adds to my concerns. The Banner talk 19:36, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@The Banner:--Thanks for linking the diff:)~ Winged Blades^Godric 07:19, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense.~ Winged BladesGodric 07:19, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The banner teach him English...lol 104.207.219.78 (talk) 00:36, 27 February 2018 (UTC) The Banner The chain of events goes like this... .....Goa Lt Governor nominates 29 members for Administration of Goa..... Roqui Santan opposes, holds Satayagrahh and demands Democracy.... election are declared in Goa. but in stead you chose to delete this info (Roqui Santan opposes, holds Satayagrahh and demands Democracy) and punch a whole in Goa's history. I hold nothing against you. good luck in your work 104.207.219.78 (talk) 00:36, 27 February 2018 (UTC) people can do wonder as to how a one man can do so much - a prince - a freedom fighter who took 9 bullets - a man who single handed by Satayagrah brought Democracy in Goa. - a man who was elected twice as law maker all true he did it. That why I am impressed. Decan.reporter (talk) 00:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

• I've issued a WP:ARBIPA alert, if problems continue then discretionary sanctions can be imposed. —SpacemanSpiff 07:23, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Winged Blades of Godric and SpacemanSpiff. utcursch | talk 14:57, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

That might help a bit, but I think it is also a case op WP:CIR, especially in relation to copyright. The Banner talk 23:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Copyright is policy, but WP:CIR is just a WP:ESSAY. MPS1992 (talk) 23:47, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Can I send invitations to new members for your project?

Hi, I have been working on recommending new members for your project for a while, and have sent some lists to Krishna_Chaitanya_Velaga who was willing to help invite those recommended editors. I wonder if you mind me sending invitations directly for WikiProject India on your behalf to save time and efforts of yours? Thank you! Bobo.03 (talk) 17:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Bobo.03:--Thanks for your work! I will shortly go through the list and inform you:)~ Winged Blades^Godric 08:05, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

• Sounds good. You may use: {{WikiProject India invitation}} --Titodutta (contact) 08:34, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: Sounds good! Please feel free to send invitations directly if you have a chance, and fill the short survey to let me know what do you think about the recommendation. Thanks! Bobo.03 (talk) 15:54, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Winged Blades of Godric: Please take a look at the recommendation list I sent earlier if you have a chance, and fill the short survey to let me know your thoughts! Thank you! I would also help invite some new members, but they are not the ones on this list. Bobo.03 (talk) 20:36, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Is Battle of Umberkhind covered in Indian-language sources, or delete?

While working on Shivaji, I noted I was having a really hard time finding any facts whatsoever about the Battle of Umberkhind, so I figured I'd check the main article. It has no footnotes whatsoever, and of the one claimed source that is in English, I searched it on GoogleBooks and I'm finding no mention of this battle.

Do sources exist in English perhaps under a different name or rendering? All I'm finding on GoogleBooks is shady and recent Indian books clearly copied from Wikipedia itself.

For speakers of Hindi or Marathi, could you glance at GoogleBooks to see if there is any mention of this battle in scholarly works? I don't want to be English-centric and say the battle doesn't exist just because I can't find English sources, but the Maratha Empire is pretty well covered by English-speaking academics (British and Indian), so I find it suspicious that I can't find anything about this battle that's not just blogs and cruft.

If we can't find proper sourcing, should we not just AFD the entire article until such point as someone can source a proper stub at least? MatthewVanitas (talk) 06:44, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

It is mentioned in this 1982 English-language book ("The battle of Umber Khind (1661, Feb. 3), the episode of Kartalab Khan and Shivaji's forces is quite well known") and [this 1975 work] ("In the early months of 1661, Shaista Khan's evil designs, to reduce Shivaji's power in the North Konkan and thereby reduce the prospects of plunder in the neighbourhood, failed when in February 1661, Kartalb Khan, a prominent General received a crafty defeat and masterful molestation at Umberkhind at the hands of Shivaji"). This travel blog shows a picture of a plaque at the site which describes the battle and a sizeable stone memorial at the site with extensive text. Someone who can read Hindi may be able to confirm what the text says - Dumelow (talk) 07:19, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Dumelow; I think part of my problem was I was in "Preview" setting vice "Snippet and Preview" so was missing the less-visible books, and also the spelling "Kartalb Khan" seems more common in those books than the "Kartalab Khan" we use in the article. Suffice to say I'm seeing mentions, but unfortunately mostly in Snippet, and books from small regional Indian publishers that I'm unlikely to find in the US. Though I also note that a lot of those seem like partisan books written to praise Shivaji, rather than academic works.

That said, I'm getting some snippet hits for mentions of the battle in books by Jadunath Sarkar, and while he's not free of controversy, he is one of the more established writers on Shivaji. I might see if I can get an inter-library loan (have a book sent from a distant library to my local one) for a couple of the Sarkar books and check those out.

I would hazard a guess that a lot of what's in the article is "stuff everybody knows" which is some mix of fact and legend and some completely wrong bits, but presented with great authority (such as set figures on casualties, etc). Do y'all think I should leave it be until I can find a proper book, or is it safe to assume that since it's poorly cited, that it's poorly sourced, and I should trim it down to a stub which just establishes the utter basics of who-what-when-where-why (which even from Snippet I can ascertain) and just make sure anything anyone adds in the future is properly sourced? MatthewVanitas (talk) 08:16, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

MatthewVanitas, I think you know more about this period than I do so are better qualified to make the decision! As the article has no in line citation of some fairly bold claims my preference would be to cut it down to what can be backed up by reliable sources. It can always be re-expanded later if additional sources are found - Dumelow (talk) 09:07, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

List of CID (Indian TV series) characters

I am aman goyal (talk · contribs), who has a history of disruptive editing, has removed the redirect of the mentioned article with an edit summary 'redesigning'. A few more editors went on to remove maintenance tags and categories. The article still reads like a fan page than an encyclopedia, and I feel it will read the same despite the 'redesigning'. Any thoughts, or does the redirect need to be restored? Thanks, MT Train^Talk 11:11, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

MT Train, thanks for your words. Remember, something is better than nothing. If you can't help improving the article. Then don't directly go to delete or redirect it and kindly leave it for those users who are familiar with the article (who watches the show and have an idea what is going on there). Either help improving it or leave for others. And again check my "DISRUPTIVE" contribution (only if you will not redirect articles made by me just because you would think they are "FAN MADE" or not meet the "GUIDELINES".

I am aman goyal (talk) 12:19, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Aman, just because you watch the show gives you no authority over the opinions of others. It is obvious that you are unaware about of many facets of Wikipedia culture and rules. Perhaps that is because you weren't welcomed when you first started editing on en:WP. I have added the welcome template to your talk page, belated though it is. :) So, welcome and before you edit any further, do read the links given there so that your editing is meaningful and your discourse with others is as per Wikipedia norms. Have a nice day. AshLin (talk) 19:29, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I think AshLin put it very well. The redirect restored by another editor and to not have to read that poorly written article is very relieving to the eyes. MT Train^Talk 09:11, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Inaccessible website

Someone has provided a link to a potential source in the discussion at Talk:Velir#Reverting_edit_by_Sitush but neither myself nor Utcursch can access the thing. Can anyone else? - Sitush (talk) 12:37, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I can access the source (chennai museum). Not sure what it is supposed to support but it supports the yadava claim but says nothing about Krishna or Sanskrit. --regentspark (comment) 13:40, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Hmm..I can access the scraped text but can't view the book.Anyways, the book is just a translated copy of the inscriptions by varies Tamil dynasties, produced by Chennai Museum. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 15:18, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Translation with commentary. For example: "Yaduvamsaketu-The tradition in PurananUru that the family was Yadava in origin derives-some support; from the title "Yaduvamsaketu" is ascribed to a book by someone called Shastri. Since this is a museum site, I think we can assume it is reliable (other things being equal). --regentspark (comment) 15:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah..Some minimal commentary is present. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 16:10, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, folks. I have been told it is a reprint of a 1941 book. Do the notes still bear weight? - Sitush (talk) 20:15, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I'd lean toward not. Except for the fact that it is included in a museum website, we don't know anything about the text and even less about the sources it refers to. Safer to assume it is not reliable. --regentspark (comment) 17:01, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi RegentsPark, I am the editor who added the notes for an inscription discussed in this link. Mind you I did not add this link as source but have added a different reliable book but only included the link so the entire inscription can be viewed. The link given is the ebook version of the book, Inscriptions in the Pudukkóttai State, Part 1, Inscriptions in the Pudukkóttai State, Government Museum (Madras, India), Translated by K. R. Srinivasa Ayyar. The subject in question is about the genealogy and lineage of Velir tribes. Historians entirely rely on Sangam literature and inscriptions for gathering information about these tribes. One such inscription is the Moovar Koil inscription of its builder the Irukkuvel line of Velir chief Vikramakesari. His father is referred to as Yaduvamsaketu, that is the Banner of Yadu race and the language used by him is Sanskrit. You can scroll to the beginning of the inscription by using the left/right arrows. Here is the link to the beginning [25]. Based upon this well known historian Sastri has surmised that the Yadava claim of Velirs bears some weight. Request you and others to review it once again. Thanks Nittavinoda (talk) 04:04, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm not really qualified to make the judgements you want Nittavinoda but it seems to me that the official language = Sanskrit is a stretch if deduced from the presence of inscriptions in Sanskrit. You would need a source that clearly states "the official language of the XYZ was Sanskrit". The Yadava claim seems more reasonable assuming that the Shastri referred to in the museum web pages is the same Shastri that you link to in your comment above. --regentspark (comment) 23:32, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes it is the same Nilakanta Sastri as here. Thanks Nittavinoda (talk) 12:32, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Coverage of the imprisonment of Maratha prince Sambhaji in 1678?

The article Sambhaji for at least four years now has had a constant stream of editors looking to change the phrase Sambhaji's behaviour, including alleged irresponsibility and addiction to sensual pleasures led Shivaji to imprison his son at Panhala fort in 1678 to curb his behaviour.

If you have suggestions on how best to phrase and cite the description of Sambhaji's imprisonment, which is evidently a hotly-contested issue, please post your thoughts (and sourcing) at: Talk:Sambhaji#How_best_to_cover_Sambhaji's_confinement_at_Panhala?. Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 21:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Stephen Court Fire sourcing

Can anyone please mine some sources on the subject (The government report on Stephen Court Fire) of this [url] especially the hindu article linked to in the article — Frc Rdl 02:57, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Haryana for GA?

Is Haryana ready for GA nomination? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 08:16, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Major cleanup at Shivaji – preparing for Good Article review

Hello, way back in 2011 I first came to the article Shivaji, and it was in terrible shape so I did an initial major cleanup. Now years later, it has declined only slightly, but I've decided to try to push it to an even higher state and submit it for Good Article status.

In my initial 2011–2012 cleanup I did a full copyedit, removed numerous cites to non-RSs (a children's novel and a television serial), and addressed the POV promotion of Shivaji by partisans. Now in 2018, I'm going through the entire article in great deal, making sure that every single statement is sourced, and the source is a serious and valid one and not just whatever pops up on GoogleBooks. A key effort also is finding what's missing from the article, as steadily I find examples which partisans think reflect negatively on their hero and glossed over, such as the degree to which he was a vassal of neighboring Muslim states, possibly unethical warfare, and the grand controversy of Shivaji's qualifications for coronation.

If anyone is interested in helping out, I'd welcome your input if you believe you have the above-average Wikipedia skills to prepare an article for Good Article review. If you are not sure and don't want to get involved directly, your observations and suggestions would be welcome on the Talk page. Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 01:33, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Yup, count me in, but, (disclosure) my rate of work is slow. :) AshLin (talk) 16:42, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

It's a bit outside my area of expertise, but I'd be willing to review it, if it's not snapped up by someone else first. Vanamonde (talk) 17:02, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

@AshLin:, thanks! Slow isn't a big problem, but I will say the "grunt work" of just copyediting and fixing citations I have a pretty good handle on and should finish soon. What I *could* really use:

• Talk page input on making sure we haven't missed any significant detail, or aren't presenting just one side of a detail. Note on Talk I made a list of *every* issue anyone on Talk has ever said is missing. Some of them may be pointless, but some might be valid, so feel free to add topics/issues to that list, and if possible a source that covers them.
• The biggest challenge is going to be writing the Legacy section. Shivaji's memory has been re-worked and used by disparate groups for disparate causes, whether Hindu Nationalism and Hindutva, or Dalit/Kunbi upliftment, Shiv Sena, anti-Muslim activists, etc. So I could really use input on the Talk page as to any good facts/incidents/groups you find where we should explain how they've portrayed their vision of Shivaji.

Sure. Any way that I can help. I'm located in Pune, so there are bound to be a few resources here too. AshLin (talk) 03:42, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93:, thanks for offering, I can ping you once I put it up for GA. Not to impose, but it would be useful if you get a chance to briefly skim the article and point out any egregious issues. I'm working on fixing every "cn" tag in the place so aware of that, but that aside anything that catches your eye would be useful to know. MatthewVanitas (talk) 21:31, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll try and have a look soon. Vanamonde (talk) 04:30, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I will, too. I've been a bit sidetracked but will find some time. - Sitush (talk) 05:40, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I would also like to be part of this. I can read the native language and some of its sources could be useful. I am little less active these days but still would like to contribute. - Vivvt (Talk) 09:34, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

@Vivvt: Marathi sources could be really interesting, provided they are WP:Reliable sources. I would just ask that you provide a really clear original quote (in Marathi, and possibly a short English summary) in the cite template in case anyone questions us about the accuracy of a citation. Thanks for the help! MatthewVanitas (talk) 09:40, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Tamil inscriptions

Hi, following article title and MOS:HEADCAPS, which of these is correct: Tamil Inscriptions of Bangalore or Tamil inscriptions of Bangalore? --Titodutta (contact) 01:59, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish:--Any ideas?!~ Winged Blades^Godric 05:06, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Lower-case. It's a common-noun phrase, a description, not the proper name of a particular work; see MOS:TITLES and MOS:CAPS. By way of analogy, many religions have scriptures, and many megalithic monuments are found throughout Europe and the near east, and many writers today churn out romance novels. They are not Scriptures, Megalithic Monuments, and Romance Novels.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:54, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

sources for towns

Hello. I was wondering if there are any easy to use reliable sources for really small towns/villages. Not only for census, but if it can be at least verfied per WP:V, that would be great. I have a few articles on my watchlist which currently are unreferenced. —usernamekiran(talk) 06:58, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, yes. You should be able to search the 2011 Census of India here [26]. The website is often pretty slow. Also check the refs on other small town/village articles on Wikipedia and see what they use. Regards, Cesdeva (talk) 20:56, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Archive.org [27] is pretty useful and easily searchable. You can find old Gazetteers on there, which while not reliable for census data, there is sometimes useful information. Cesdeva (talk) 21:12, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Government Open Data License - India

Works by the Government of India were all rights reserved. But GOI introduced National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy in 2012 followed by Government Open Data License - India in 2017. So "all shareable non-sensitive data available either in digital or analog forms but generated using public funds by various agencies of the Government of India" are now free to use. I created a license tag in Commons. It looks like Template:PD-USGov except that it is an "attribution" license. There are so many images by the Government of India are already used here under fair use. I think it is time to replace them with reusable files. Jee 02:13, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject India articles new assessment categories

Some recent change to the Template:WikiProject India banner and/or its usage has caused it to start populating dozen of new categories. (I think it is related to the field= parameter, but I have not checked.)

To remove them from the cleanup list at Special:WantedCategories, I have created temporary category pages, and grouped them under Category:WikiProject India articles new assessment categories.

If WikiProject India members want to retain these categories, please replace each temporary category page with a properly-set-up category page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:08, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Merger discussion

I have initiated a merger proposal at Tamil cinema and your comments would be helpful in reaching a consensus. Thanks, MT Train^Talk 06:58, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Please join in this discussion

A page-move discussion has just been relisted at Talk:Rajahmundry#Requested move 18 March 2018, and your input would be much appreciated. Please come and help with your opinion and rationale about whether or not this article should be renamed. Thank you very much in advance! Sagavaj (talk) 22:25, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Please come and help...

A page-move discussion has just been relisted at Talk:East Bengali refugees#Requested move 10 March 2018, and your input would be much appreciated. Please come and help with your opinion and rationale about whether or not this article should be renamed. Thank you very much in advance!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  19:47, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

K. M. Cherian (doctor)

Would some members from WP:INDIA mind watching K. M. Cherian (doctor) for a bit? The article was recently prod deleted, but then subsequently restored per this deprod request. I've been trying to find better sources and improve the article, but an WP:SPA Nirmal Sam keeps showing up and damaging the formatting, etc. and adding unsourced content. The SPA is a new editor and I believe they are acting in good faith; they just lack familiarity with the MOS and some of the basic policies and guidelines. Anyway, I've tried engaging them on their user talk, but so far have not gotten any response. I'm not sure how to get the SPA's attention (maybe there's an English comprehension issue?), but perhaps someone else might have better luck. If Nirmal Sam, however, keeps on doing what they have been doing, then the only option is going to be to ask an administrator to intervene. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:56, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Gopinath Panigrahi

Can someone please take a look at this biography on an academician having just one source. The editor has added every single publication, research, award and appointment, making it read like a resume. I've tried finding sources, but they are very few, while other people with the same name also exist. I'm just not sure if and how much to trim, or if the person itself is notable or not. Thanks, MT Train^Talk 08:28, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

@Mark the train: I trimmed and edited the article. I believe he should pass notability criteria for academics based on Fellow of the Linnean Society and Fellow of the Indian Botanical Society if those can be sourced. The article may need to be stubbed if no further sources can be identified. I did not want to do that until there was a chance to spend more time looking so I cut the most egregious material but much of what is left may still need to be cut. Jbh ^Talk 16:25, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Which article would be a pre-modern Indian historical figure, who's very popular but their page is in terrible shape?

I'm getting closer to launching the GA review for Shivaji (49th most popular page in this project with almost 11k views/day). Once I get that GA done, can anyone suggest another historical figure who is immensely popular, but their article is in terrible shape and needs to be carefully worked over? Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 01:14, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Raja Raja Chola I AshLin (talk) 03:58, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Add Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya to the list: all these articles need a re-write with modern sources. utcursch | talk 14:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Is there a woman to showcase?
  • Ahilyabai Holkar
  • Rani of Jhansi
  • Rani Padmini
  • Savitribai Phule
  • Kittur Chennamma

Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:53, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Chandragupta Maurya +1 --Titodutta (talk) 01:41, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Of these listed, are the some that suffer greatly from an ahistorical POV, like are leveraged by nationalists using a skewed view of history? That was much the case with Shivaji, so making that article POV was a struggle worth the time. MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:20, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Project Tiger Writing Contest (March – May 2018)

In 2017 – 2018, the Wikimedia Foundation and Google working in close coordination with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Wikimedia India Chapter (WMIN) and user groups from India, are piloting a program encouraging Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages. This program will (a) support active and experienced Wikipedia editors through the donation of laptops and stipends for internet access and (b) sponsor a language-based contest that aims to address existing Wikipedia content gaps.

Phase (a) has been completed, during which many active contributors were awarded laptops and internet stipends. Phase (b) will be a contest in which editors will come together and develop a writing contest focused on content gaps. Each month three individual prizes will be awarded to each community based on their contribution for the month. The prizes worth 3,000 INR, 2000 INR, and 1,000 INR, will be awarded to the top contributors for each month. The contest started at March 1, 2018, 0:00, and will end at May 31, 2018, 23:59 (IST). Useful links are as follows:

• Sign up at: Wikipedia:Project Tiger Writing Contest/Participants
• List of the articles can be referred at: Wikipedia:Project Tiger Writing Contest/Topics

• Submit/report your articles/contributions at: https://tools.wmflabs.org/fountain/editathons/project-tiger-2018-en
• For more details, rules, FAQ etc. kindly refer: Wikipedia:Project Tiger Writing Contest

Looking forward your participation, all the best. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 22:17, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Venkatagiri Raja High School

A school article has been created Venkatagiri Raja High School. A lot of work is needed. I feel we can delete unsourced content after "History" section. Kindly share your opinion. --Titodutta (talk) 20:53, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

April 2018 at Women in Red including India

		Welcome to Women in Red's April 2018 worldwide online editathons. Focus on: April+Further with Art+Feminism Archaeology Military history (contest) Geofocus: Indian subcontinent Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative
		To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list or Women in Red/international list. To unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list. Follow us on Twitter: @wikiwomeninred

--Ipigott (talk) 16:18, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Kamlakar Singh

Could someone who is familiar with the politics of Uttar Pradesh please take a look at the article on Kamlakar Singh (born 21 June 1967), popularly known as Lambardar? There are several claims in the article that are not supported by references. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 18:42, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@Titodutta:--That's a blatant hoax.Tagged for G3.~ Winged Blades^Godric 08:45, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

For last 15 minutes I was looking for references. Yes, I also feel it is hoax. Thanks. --Titodutta (talk) 08:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Art-hoax.Used the references from and about Raghuraj Pratap Singh, manipulating the displayed titles, in the ref-framework, to evade immediate scrutiny.Ha! ~ Winged Blades^Godric 08:50, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

And see this.Sigh....~ Winged Blades^Godric 08:53, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

• This was partially copied from Raja Bhaiya, including refs which were retitled, so a clear cut hoax and I've deleted as such and also blocked a sock account of the (blocked) original hoaxer -- adding dubious pictures, there's still some nonsense left over at Commons though. —SpacemanSpiff 10:11, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

British Raj

Indians, born before 1947: is it correct to state their citizenship was British Raj? We have seen changes on Wikipedia, and a large number of recent changes on Wikidata. Here we have a more active community, thanks in advance. --Titodutta (talk) 08:28, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

• Earlier consensus (I can't figure out where) was to use [[Presidencies and provinces of British India|British Indian]] for all those belonging to the British Raj. RP or Dwai might know better as I think this consensus happened before I started editing here, and has been accepted practice ever since. —SpacemanSpiff 10:18, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
• Wikidata can form its own consensus. This project has no control over that one. It's another reason to resist attempts to integrate the two projects, though, which seems often to be happening in a rather subtle sort of way. If Wikidata want to use English Wikipedia's info then that is up to them but there is no reason why English Wikipedia should use their data. As for the specific point, I think SpacemanSpiff is correct. - Sitush (talk) 10:35, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
• I would agree, although strictly speaking directly ruled British India only included around 72% of the population in 1947, the rest living in the Princely states, with British Raj covering both. But much of the world won't understand the latter. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
• @Titodutta:, British Indian passport was there and this document is the proof of citizenship for the people from British Raj. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 16:10, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Invitation

A relevant discussion for converting {{Infobox writer}} into a wrapper of this template has been initiated at Template talk:Infobox writer#convert_to_wrapper. Your comments will be appreciated. Capankajsmilyo (talk) 04:52, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Suraiya

This is a huge article and is a mix of a hagiography and a fan site. It needs serious attention but after reading through a fair bit I'm not even sure how to approach it, I've left a similar note on the talk page where I hope anyone interested can discuss and cull/clean up. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 11:51, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Potential deletion of portals

See Wikipedia:Village_pump (proposals)#RfC: Ending the system of portals. - Sitush (talk) 16:35, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Ram Rahim or Singh?

Hi all, could use some guidance re: these edits, where an editor changed all of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's Singhs to Ram Rahims. Any thoughts? Would this be appropriate? Indian name rules are not my speciality. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:38, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

• Hello User:Cyphoidbomb, per MOS:SURNAME, it should be "Singh". --Titodutta (talk) 00:25, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

@Titodutta: Thanks. I wasn't sure if there were unconventional exceptions here like there are for patronyms. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 06:33, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Open threads at WT:NCIN

There are a couple of open threads at WT:NCIN that require resolution, one added by me today and another that has had no response since last year. - Sitush (talk) 06:09, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Asaram Bapu

Asaram Bapu looks to be in need of clean up by people who actually know what they're doing, if anyone is prepared to take a look. - Sitush (talk) 06:12, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• THere's a huge walled garden around this. I closed a merge discussion a couple of days back where two duplicate articles were created under Hindi and English titles and a sock infestation was hijacking the merge discussion. I haven't looked elsewhere (I think I blocked a couple of socks) but I'm guessing there's more than I came across, both in terms of articles and socks. —SpacemanSpiff 07:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Tag & Assess

Hello, we have Tag & Assess portal. We last worked on it 2014. The Assessment bar, most probably, was not working at that time. I am not fully sure about the current status of it, or if any other alternative (not AWB) that makes life easier. Ideas? Once again there are too many unassessed India articles? Ideas and suggestions please. Pinging User:AshLin, who was really active in the drive. --Titodutta (talk) 07:06, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Titodutta: - interesting that you bring it up just as I cleaned up some of the assessments in past few days. I plan to continue this work as and when time permits. As of now, it has been directly from links on the Summary statistics of the project. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 07:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• Oh great, thanks for working on it. Are you doing it manually? Could you confirm or check that the assessment bar is not working (I tried installing, did not work). I saw some 11k unassessed articles, perhaps we can collaboratively work on this? --Titodutta (talk) 07:51, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• I must tag and assess at least four or five articles every day. I never did use automation and I'm not going to start now. - Sitush (talk) 11:31, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• You could request Srik.lak or Yuvipanda to get it functional again. AshLin (talk) 14:11, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• In the past month I have not used automation. It is manual check and assessment. However, when it comes to marking the importance of stubs/ start level articles during the tag and assess drives, I prefer to use AWB. I setup the list in AWB in such a way that after each article the Talk page is loaded - that way after I review the article and skip it, I mark assessment on talk page. Even un-assessed articles can be processed using this method.

I have not tried the Assessment Bar in the past. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 04:56, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

• Pinging MediaWiki developer User:01tonythomas to see if he can help or get help from one of his MW friends. --Titodutta (talk) 05:51, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Looking for resources to help NPR

I run across a lot of India and SE Asia articles while reviewing new page creations. Many are very short just naming a village or place without context of even what country it may be in. Are there any resources to look up such places? I know of India 2011 census data, Indian village directory and *AreaProfiler - India.

Another issue I have is assessing Indian biographies. It is my understanding that many of the Indian newspapers do 'articles for hire'. Can anyone here give an informal assessment of which of the major papers may be particularly bad about this or if there is a way to distinguish purchased publicity from genuine journalism in those papers? I have also noticed that many articles, even on easily notable individuals are written using extremely grandiose wording and flamboyant style. (I see this to an extent in articles from the entire region. ) I find this makes me immediately assume lack of notability since that type of writing nearly always is an attempt to puff up a non-notable person when encountered in Western biographies. I think this may be a cultural difference. Are there differences in what is considered appropriate or is my perception a combination of a biased sample set and a bit of unconscious racism on my part? Does anyone here have any insights which would help me recalibrate my expectations so I am less likely to misjudge articles?

Finally, can anyone recommend some good resources for to get a grounding in the politics of caste and ethnicity. I know enough to understand it is a minefield and I have some of the basics from Wikipedia articles but I would vastly prefer some solid works by cultural anthropologists and historians.

This is a part of the world with which I am completely unfamiliar with but we have many editors writing lots of articles about the region. Any help you can provide to help me orient myself and get an idea of where the pitfalls lay is much appreciated. Thank you. Jbh ^Talk 15:50, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Arguably "grandiose wording and flamboyant style" are the natural mode in Indian English, especially in journalism, and many of our editors are used to this and believe it is the way to go here. English is a second language for many editors. Typically they don't mind the language being adjusted, but of course this can be a good deal of work. Generally style is less use in judging probable notability than it might be in articles on, say, American subjects. Johnbod (talk) 16:05, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

It is challenging. Many Indian publications do publish profiles of people, companies, and projects for hire. More respected publications do this less or not at all, although I think every publication gets accusations. India has relatively better small regional publications than perhaps anywhere else in the world, just because there are so many regions with a distinct cultural identity and because there is a great love and culture of journalism everyone in India as compared to many other places. It would be biased and unfair to exclude smaller publications but at the same time new media is putting great tension on all journalism and causing chaos. I would advise anyone reviewing India-based articles to be polite, expect doubt, and to try to think of this as a challenge which will need multiple points to address it. I have wondered if Wikipedia community reviews on the quality of publications would be useful. From a data science perspective, getting perspectives on how much publications are cited could be an automated analysis, and that also could identify when a series of small publications all come from the same publisher. I do not have good ideas for addressing the challenge in the present. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

census2011.co.in is usually right, but why use a mirror that may not map correctly when you can get the right thing directly from the source at www.censusindia.gov.in. Any village article can be cleaned up with this as you'd get the demographics (pop, literacy, sex ratio, age etc) and geographical info (block, district etc) and a reasonable stub can be made from that source. See Janhitaila for a recent use of the source where the ones Jbh mentioned up above were all included at first. As for newspapers, The Hindu Group and The Indian Express Group would have the least amount of pay-news typically. Except for a couple of large national newspapers, most others have the fluff and pay-news and regurgitated PR in the city supplements. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sheo Sagar Ojha for an example of PR reprints.— Preceding unsigned comment added by SpacemanSpiff (talk • contribs)

JBH, as mentioned above, the official gov census page is best. You'll find the search function on the navbar under 'Population Finder 2011'. Mirrors can be hit-and-miss. In regards to prose style in new Indian articles, i wouldn't take inconsistency with MOS:W2W as a face-value sign of bias; it's just the enthusiastic/poetic way that a lot of people tend to write in India. You'll sometimes even find it in The Hindu and Times of India (TOI) etc Cesdeva (talk) 20:56, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you all for the insights, particularly about the differences in acceptable grandiosity in mainstream writing. It is also good to know that the regional papers are generally good as well as knowing to look out for use of articles in city supplements. Also, I did not notice census2011 is a mirror I will update my resource links to point to censusindia. Jbh ^Talk 23:37, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

#1Lib1Ref Again!

Greetings,

#1Lib1Ref is happening again in May!

It is an annual campaign where librarians add references to improve Wikipedia, is coming back again this year, running from May 15th to June 5th, 2018. It is being run for the second time from this year because we heard from you a desire to run it again out of excitement. Librarians, community members, and affiliates are encouraged to make 1Lib1Ref [their own]. So whether we call this 1Lib1Ref May, 1Lib1Ref for the Southern Hemisphere, or 1Lib1Ref Strikes Back, the point is the excitement is building again, and we'd like you to be a part of it.

If you would like host a session at a local library, here are some materials for you:

• Helpful multimedia (logos, videos, flyers, stickers)
• Connect with local librarians
• Lets take a Coffee Break and contribute to #1lib1ref. Here's how!
• Read the #1Lib1Ref 2018 January report and learnings.

"Imagine a World where Every Librarian Added One More Reference to Wikipedia" Wikipedia is a first stop for researchers. Let's make it better! Your goal today is to add one reference to Wikipedia! Any citation to a reliable source is a benefit to Wikipedia readers worldwide.

For any assistance, kindly contact wikipedialibrarywikimedia.org.

Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya Velaga [Outreach Coordinator | The Wikipedia Library]
on behalf of Felix Nartey [Global Coordinator | The Wikipedia Library]

11:53, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Indiscriminate page moves

Moyna is a village. There are two other pages - Moyna (community development block) and Moyna (Vidhan Sabha constituency). Master Of Ninja moved the Moyna page to Moyna (village) and made the base Moyna page a disambiguation page. I moved the disambiguation page to one with a suffix and wanted to use the base Moyna page for the village. I could not move it back and so moved it to Moyna, Purba Medinipur. Thereafter, ToThAc, moved the Moyna disambiguation page to the base page. I have requested for Moyna, Purba Medinipur to be moved to the base page, and ToThAc is opposing it. Now, Moyna is a small place and it does not matter whether it is a base page or one with a suffix, but the principle is important. ToThAc is brash about it, see this. I am only worried that this could lead to the movement of a large number of other pages indiscriminately. I request wider participation in the decision making on the talk page of the article. - Chandan Guha (talk) 01:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Alikat101 Self-determination#Kashmir Edits

New-user Alikat101 introduced an uncited paragraph to the top of the Kashmir section of the Self-determination article, in the process introducing some typos into the document. I fixed the typos, but I suspect there may be some NPOV issues with the added paragraph. I left it in and tagged it as it seemed to have some awareness of the history, and I'm not qualified to judge. Could someone more knowledgeable please take a look? This is the text he added:

Ever since Pakistan and India’s inception in 1947 the legal state of Jammu and Kashmir, the land between India and Pakistan, has been contested as Britain was resigning from their rule over this land. Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler residing over Kashmir at the time accession, signed the Instrument of Accession Act on October 26th 1947 as his territory was being attacked by Pakistani tribesmen. The passing of this Act allowed Jammu and Kashmir to accede to India on legal terms. When this Act was taken to Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British India, he agreed to it and stated that a referendum needed to be held by the citizens in India, Pakistan, and Kashmir so that they could vote as to where Kashmir should accede to. This referendum that Mountbatten called for never took place and framed one of the legal disputes for Kashmir. In 1948 the Untied Nation intervened and ordered a plebiscite to be taken in order to hear the voices of the Kashmiris if they would like to accede to Pakistan or India. This plebiscite left out the right for Kashmiris to have the right of self determination and become an autonomous state. To this date the Kashmiris have been faced with numerous human rights violations committed by both India and Pakistan and have yet to gain complete autonomy which they have been seeking through self-determination.

GretLomborg (talk) 18:24, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Rohila (Hindu)

Can anyone look at Rohila (Hindu), which is supposedly a Hindu ethnic group distinct from the Muslim Rohillas? The article has several citations, but most of them either do not mention the term "Rohila", are unreliable sources (e.g. a a Google search page), or both (e.g. James Tod).

The only citation in the article that actually mentions the term "Rohila" is a chapter on the Runwala caste in People of India. This source mentions the term "Rohila" twice, but does not assert that they are/were a Hindu ethnic group:

• "They [Runwalas] were actually the Rohilas, the well known warrior group and in the course of time have come to be known as Runwala"
• "The story of their origin runs thus: [...] But the parents of Padmini who were the Rohilas refused to give their daughter..."

Last month, the creator moved the article Runwala to "Rohilla Rajputs" and "Rohila Tank Kshatriya", and I undid those moves as none of the reliable sources mention these terms (see Talk:Runwala#Recent edits). So, now the user has created this new article. I tagged several citations in the article for failing WP:V standards, but the creator alleges that I may be biased towards this particular 'ethnic group'. So, a third-party opinion would be welcome. utcursch | talk 14:21, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, it is really helpful if somebody help us get away the dilemma and the conundrum. The reviewer has missed to mention that the original page Rohilla Rajputs which was active from August 10, 2009 and it was merged/moved by the reviewer to Runwala on July 17, 2016. There is nothing bad to let another reviewer come in and review neutrally. However, the subject seems matter of cherry picking which I strongly feel should not be there. Information tagged with citation needed, cn, waiting for better citations, is better than deleting the whole page or moving it. Only then, people will be able to participate to write in, as they already were doing till this page was merged. Deleting it is like removing the seed before it becomes a tree. It should be done only in case of vandalism. Even the famous, semi protected page, Ashoka has 20 cns, citations needed.

• "They [Runwalas] were actually the Rohilas ..", How can "Rajput Rohilla" article, a parent category be moved into a subcategory "Runwala"? It could be the other way.
• If Runwala are rajputs who are hindus only, does the reviewer want to say, they were not Hindu before (.. were actually the Rohilas), Were they converted?
• parents of Padmini who were the Rohilas, "Padmini" was hindu, whole world knows this but my dear friend doubts her parent's religion.

I urge, make the page eclectic. It becomes more important and responsible task since we have another ethnic group of different religion but coincidentally same namesake, highly famous in history. I've also asked to the former's website http://www.rohillataank.com to help the article and waiting for some volunteer.hey_pal (Friend.hey)^(talk) 17:00, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@Friend.hey:-Why the heck are you obsessed with Ashoka? See WP:OSE.~ Winged Blades^Godric 08:11, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Not to mention that hundreds of reliable sources actually exist about Ashoka, which is not true about this particular topic.

@Friend.hey: The only decent source in the article Rohilla Rajputs was about "Runwala" -- no other reliable citation even mentioned that term. The fact that this dubious content existed since 2009 nullifies your argument that we need more time to allow for citations rather than delete this page. You've been personally editing the topic since 2014 -- that's enough grace period. utcursch | talk 14:41, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

PD-Text?

Does this poster File:Two (short film, 1964) title card.JPG come under {{PD-text}}? Please share your opinion. --Titodutta (talk) 18:50, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

The rationale of US copyright act being applied is not correct. Indian Copyright law will apply. AshLin (talk) 07:49, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Why so? The servers are hosted in the US and that is the key point. Johnbod (talk) 09:22, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Who is who in this carving?

In the carving shown here, from the Ivory carved tusk depicting Buddha life stories, one of the figures represents Venerable Moggallana (Maudgalyayana)? I need to know this for a DYK review, which also includes the image. Thanks!--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 16:16, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

These image files are carefully referenced to a scholarly article on the tusk - why not trust the file name: "Sariputra and Maudgalyayana become disciples of Buddha". Buddha on the left. Johnbod (talk) 20:58, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, and which one is Moggallana?--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 22:45, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Sariputta seems to have been the first of the two to join the Buddha, so is presumably shown introducing the kneeling Maudgalyayana, if the description is correct. Who the standing figure behind is I wouldn't know. Otherwise the two main disciples might be shown standing, introducing some other figure. Johnbod (talk) 23:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

That makes sense--good thinking. Thanks for the advice!--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 16:29, 17 April 2018 (UTC) Ping, ping.

There is one problem though. If the ordained Sariputta is introducing Moggallana, why is neither of them shaved as a monk?--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 16:33, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Don't know - not many figures on the tusk are shaved. Johnbod (talk) 23:36, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Okay, thanks anyway, Johnbod. I will have to remove the image from the DYK entry then.--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 10:56, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Greater Mangalore

Much of the news sources regarding the subject is around 2013 and 2014, and almost none in the recent years. While there were plans to create such a suburban area in 2013, the idea appears to have been scrapped in 2014. Though the article mentions it as an unofficial metropolitan area, can someone please confirm if the term is still used. Thanks, MT Train^Talk 12:14, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

References

From what I can tell, the term has been used since the 1960's whenever expansion of Mangalore is proposed. The expansion either doesn't happen or the new area probably just becomes homogenous with Mangalore.

The term could also be synonymous with 'Greater Mangalore Urban Area' which is equally poorly defined. 'Mangaluru' is becoming increasingly popular and may make the 'Mangalore' part obsolete.

Perhaps there is some state legislation on the expansion? Otherwise WP:CRYSTALBALL and WP:TOOSOON come to mind. Cesdeva (talk) 13:10, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

History Sources

lot of local sayings , bard adage documents , Medieval writing work , Britishers writing works , Government Gazetteers of British period etc are found in India which reflect the lifestyle , Historical events , Ancestry of Royal Families , Happenings . These sources must be based on actual facts or may have some additions . If we are believing ancient Sanskrit inscription and scriptures , then we have to consider above said old sources as a references of History . Recent works are also based on old findings . I have an example on this matter which is making conflict . One of Admin is not accepting the old sources.

Variant name of any dynasty should be allowed to add which is known to public since long period ie. about 600 years . Corrupt form of Sanskrit words should also be added .

For example : As per Sanskrit inscriptions, scriptures , King Bhoja was said to be of Pramar or Parmar dynasty . But Since 600 years , in Hindi or local languages it became Panwar, Ponwar or Powar etc as per medieval documents by Abu Fazal / Firista , bard adage documents , Britisher writings , Gazetteer , Local sayings . This fact should be displayed on wikipedia . Without which , information seems to be incomplete . I have tried to add variant name of Dynasty but it is being reverted . I think there should not be any issue if variant name of dynasty is added to page . Variant name is also stated in references given with original reference of Page Bhoja or Paramara Dynasty . So what is the issue if alternative word Ponwar or Panwar is added with Paramara Dynasty.

Please suggest .G9H (talk) 09:16, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I note that yourself and User:Utcursch have already had a lengthy discussion on your talk page.

I can see two other, MOS-related reasons why your edit here could have been reverted. 1) Ponwar isn't consistent with the usage in the rest of the article. 2) Semantics and flow really. Is anything gained by the unexplained addition, mid-prose, of another term? It will just confuse the reader.

In general we use one term consistently through an article.

Regarding your sources, reading this discussion may help.

There exists a disambiguation page at Punwar (which is linked to from a hat-note at the top of Parmar, which itself is redirected to from 'Ponwar'). I hope you find that to be a reasonable accommodation for the alternative names.

Kind regards, Cesdeva (talk) 13:42, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

G9H was blocked by SpacemanSpiff as a suspected sock of Kpowar (confirmed by NinjaRobotPirate).

@G9H, for the record: we are not "believing ancient Sanskrit inscription and scriptures" over "local sayings , bard adage documents , Medieval writing work , Britishers writing works , Government Gazetteers of British period etc". We're relying on modern academic, scholarly works which prefer the spelling "Paramara" over your surname / caste name Powar/Ponwar. utcursch | talk 13:55, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Move Abhishek Mishra to Abhishek Mishra (politician)?

Hi all,
There are obviously many people of this name.
As you can see from the article history, any number of edits are not about this Uttar Pradesh politician.
I think a page move would appear to be at least an interim remedy.

What do you think about this? Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 11:52, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much it would help. The probably most controversial holder of that name 1, 2 also appears to also be involved in politics. Cesdeva (talk) 23:50, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Biographical article being repeatedly deleted by a user

Hi all - I created a biographical article on Sonali Kulkarni and observed that the content was deleted by a user with the name User:Terminattor with the note that she doesn't want her name to be on Wikipedia pages. I reached out to Tito Dutta and he was able to help restore the content. We see that the content has been deleted again. The article met the notability criteria and the information available online is significant. How should I handle the situation? Any thoughts or guidance? --Parul Thakur (talk) 12:13, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Now at AFD. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 12:44, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

The result was keep. I added content which I am sure will be deleted again. The stub says major contributor has close connection with the subject. I am a volunteer and the editing I do is not personal. I find it unfair that an article that I created for Women In Red is being marked as if I have personal interests. I would love to have some support for volunteering. --Parul Thakur (talk) 13:57, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Editing required for Indu Malhotra article

Indu Malhotra article needs serious editing. Given that her elevation as Supreme Court judge is in news, the page must be getting a lot of hits. However, there is scope for lot of improvement. Any help will be much appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anom1987 (talk • contribs) 04:31, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Please come and help...

I just relisted a requested page move on the Swaminarayan Temple, Ahmedabad article's talk page. Please come and add your opinion and rationale to help resolve this issue. Thank you very much!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  10:11, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Rakhigarhi samples

The Caravan (27 april 2018), Indus Valley people did not have genetic contribution from the steppes: Head of Ancient DNA Lab testing Rakhigarhi samples:

“It will show that there is no steppe contribution to the Indus Valley DNA,” Rai said. “The Indus Valley people were indigenous, but in the sense that their DNA had contributions from near eastern Iranian farmers mixed with the Indian hunter-gatherer DNA, that is still reflected in the DNA of the people of the Andaman islands.”

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:20, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

DNA studies are notoriously poor for statements of fact regarding Indic society origins etc. - Sitush (talk) 10:18, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Cleanup needed

MTNL Perfect Health Mela has quite a lot of issues that need cleanup, including sourcing and POV. I'm short of time presently and if someone could take care of this, it would be great. Thanks, MT Train^Talk 10:19, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I, being on a handheld device, can't check the entorety of the previous revisions but in the absence of a clean non-promotional one, this is clear-cut G11 stuff.~ Winged Blades^Godric 09:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Punjabi-Mughal War

It would be useful if an India expert could look at this article. The references are all formatted as {{sfnp}} although only one has a corresponding bibliographic source. I wonder if the text and refs has been copied from elsewhere. PamD 22:55, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

And there are similar problems at Battle of Pindi Bhattian. PamD 05:43, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

 Doing...--~ Winged Blades^Godric 09:41, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

@PamD:-_As to Pindi Bhattiyan, none of the current references mention the battle.A reliable source is located over here.~ Winged Blades^Godric 12:05, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

WBG, that's not a source for the war because it merely mentions the existence of Bhatti and his folklore status. That should be included in the Dulla Bhatti article not in a stand alone misnamed article. We should delete the redirect as well. --regentspark (comment) 12:09, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Nah....I was writing an AFD nomination, because the redirect is even misleading.Just a note that it's not an outright hoax. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 12:29, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Admin help required

I have recently revised and developed the Bagdah page, as well as other pages, with fully referenced text. ImSonyR9 had placed some unreferenced material on the page. I removed the material from the page with a note on his page to add only verifiable information in Wikipedia. In response he has placed these on my talk page - Why had you removed my edits.? and Further don't remove my inputs about Bagdah . I shall be grateful for an admin handling the situation. - Chandan Guha (talk) 10:40, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

 Done Will be keeping a tab on the page as well as the user.Why indulge the high and mighty, in cases so petty?!.....~ Winged Blades^Godric 09:21, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. You have handled it well so far. Cheers. - 15:33, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Hari Teja

Can anyone knowledgeable about Telugu entertainment industry take a look at Hari Teja? There seem to be some incorrect information in the Filmography section. E.g. "RADJH" (which links to Ashok Kumar (film)), Vetagadu (which was released before the actress was born), Babu (also released before her birth) etc. A set of IP addresses seem to have inserted misinformation mentioning Rajesh Anandan (I removed quite a bit of misinformation from that article). utcursch | talk 14:15, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Adding Urdu alongside Hindi - ethnic-warring?

Hi friends, I'm curious how you would interpret these edits[28][29][30][31] where the editor adds Urdu as a primary language to TV series that are made in India.

Might this be a subtle form of Indian/Pakistani ethnic-warring? I don't want to jump to any conclusions. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 13:52, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure i recall under-the-radar techniques like that have been used in the past. Although editors that have been here longer are more likely to remember.

One viable alternative is the editor is a big fan of Hindi movies, and in response to feeling stigmatised by his peers in Pakistan he is lashing out in denial of his true love. Kind of like being in the closet, for lack of a better example. I'm leaning towards this, if only for poetry's sake. Cesdeva (talk) 20:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Lol. Anybody else have any thoughts on this? If there's a legitimate reason why this user might be doing this, I'd like to have that info before deciding what to do with him if he continues it. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:33, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: The matter appears to have been settled, but maybe it's worth pointing out that Urdu is one of the official languages of India and there are in fact more native speakers in India than in Pakistan. Given that Hindi and Urdu are more or less different registers of the same language (differentiated in writing or in formal spoken style), there's unlikely to be much of a difference between the two when used in a popular TV series. – Uanfala (talk) 11:52, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

@Uanfala: Thanks for the response. The issue was resolved because I slapped him with a 72 hour block. But the bigger issue for me is still a little unclear. He was basically trying to turn everything labeled Hindi into Hindi/Urdu, which has the appearance of some kind of agenda-driven editing. I've seen other editors do this and it just appears odd to me. Should all Indian Hindi-language articles be reworded as Hindi/Urdu? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:29, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Technically, most Bollywood movies are made in Hindustani language although claimed to be made in the Hindi register. The same is applicable to TV series, though to a lesser extent. Urdu is not an official language of India, just in a few states. Eitherways, it should be labeled as claimed by the production house/credits, or we'd then have to label anything claimed as Hindi or Urdu as Hindi/Urdu leading to just pointless bloat. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 14:54, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Same articles?

Can someone please confirm if Baba Sangat Singh and Sangat Singh Minhas are the same people? Thanks, MT Train^Talk 05:11, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

99.99% likely. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 07:09, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Pakistan Occupied Kashmir or Azad Kashmir?

Hi all, an IP editor at Bajrangi Bhaijaan has repeatedly changed Azad Kashmir to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.[32][33][34] with the most recent justification "Do I have to take a legal discourse? I repeatedly keep correcting that Azad Kashmir is not an Indian term. For Indians, it is Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. And this is an Indian film. Please don't distort facts." This is something that's happened numerous times over many months (probably not the same guy). Any preference here? Pakistan Occupied Kashmir redirects to Azad Kashmir, so we're ultimately sending readers to an article that is not consistent with the phrasing we're using in the film article. But I can understand that in the context of an Indian film the region might be called Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Input is appreciated, thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:54, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: As I see it, we should be following general Wikipedia consensus unless there's good reason to do otherwise. Indian law doesn't matter. We describe the Pakistan-held portion of Kashmir as "Azad Kashmir" and the India-held portion as "Jammu and Kashmir". Why should we do it differently because something is an Indian film? If the film itself says "Pakistan Occupied Kashmir", then we should mention that in a footnote or possibly in the body of the article; but we don't, for instance, use the Indian map of the region, so I really don't see why we should use the Indian name. Furthermore, the IP is welcome to take a legal discourse, though I think they meant "take legal recourse", which is a legal threat and needs to be dealt with. Were the dispute more recent I'd protect the page; as it is, I'd suggest you revert and see what happens. Vanamonde (talk) 06:21, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

"Azad Kashmir" it technically the name of the administrative unit within Pakistan (well, "Azad Jammu and Kashmir" if we want to be anal), but I tend to use this term only when the focus of the text is either on Azad Kashmir itself or on Pakistan. In broader contexts (where readers might not necessarily be familiar with the exact names of the territories concerned), it's probably better to go for the more widely accessible term "Pakistan-administered Kashmir". – Uanfala (talk) 06:54, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

If we're using "Pakistan administered Kashmir" and "Indian administered Kashmir" in similar contexts, that's fine too; but we shouldn't use the name for an administrative unit in one case but not the other. Vanamonde (talk) 07:20, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Graphnile opinion poll

At the article Karnataka Legislative Assembly election, 2018, one user had added an opinion poll from Graphnile. On further checking I found that this poll hasn't received any coverage and the body conducting the survey isn't reliable either. So I removed the polls with the links pointing to Graphnile's website. However, my edit was reverted by an IP 14.140.217.4 with the following summary The person who deleted the content is ignorant about the Electoral Analytics or have some political motives. I don't think this survey is reliable enough and this is spamming. Should we list such polls on current election articles? --Skr15081997 (talk) 10:27, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

No.At least, not from home-grown-blogs.SPAM. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 10:57, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

First ruler to rebel against British

There has been a lot of caste pov-pushing at articles such as Vasireddy Venkatadri Nayudu. That particular one claims that he was the first Indian ruler to rebel against the British but my request last year on the talk page for translations of the sources etc has come to nothing. Is that claim really likely to be correct? What about Tipu Sultan, for example? I am sure I have seen claims that are earlier, perhaps relating to what is now TN or Kerala. - Sitush (talk) 15:44, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian portals

Editor activity is increasing in the portal namespace. If you are interested in shaping the future of the portal system, be sure to check out developments at WikiProject Portals and get involved in restarting our portal workgroup (WikiProject Indian portals). I know some of us would have hammered on a 'portal delete button' like a woodpecker but it's clear now that portals are sticking around, so let's get these things automated and looking less like a 1990's internet zeitgeist. Kind regards, Cesdeva ^(talk) 14:24, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

GAR - Deshastha Brahmin

Deshastha Brahmin, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual 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. Sitush (talk) 07:44, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

French editor using MT for massive additions

Please be aware that a French-speaking editor with little or no knowledge of English has been using WP:MACHINETRANSLATION to drop massive amounts of text into articles, causing disruption and making work for other editors to clean it up. Please see the following discussions regarding Indian painting, where his edits have since been rolled back:

• Talk:Indian painting#Translated from French?
• Talk:Indian painting#Proposal to roll back one month to remove MT
• User talk:Andershus#MT and disruptive editing at Indian painting
• User talk:Andershus#Follow-up about your machine translations

I now see that Andershus also previously created the article Indian Tribal Painting (sic; with incorrect capitalization) using Machine translation from fr:Peinture tribale en Inde. See:

• User talk:Andershus#Indian tribal painting

This article should be deleted in my opinion, and restarted from scratch, either as a brand new article with English references, or else as a translation by competent bilingual editors. Please watch out for and monitor any additions by this editor to India-related topics. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 11:11, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion on Wikimedia Commons regarding images from PIB

There is an ongoing discussion on Wikimedia Commons about usage of images from Press Information Bureau under the licence tag, GODL-India. This discussion will have great effect on coverage of images related to India, as the scope and the applicable limits of the tag is being discussed for all websites of Government of India, including its sub-departments, agencies, ministries etc. Kindly follow the discussion, and voice your opinion. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 17:40, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

[Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India)] Discussion on selection criteria

A discussion has been opened on Meta-Wiki to discuss about the selection criteria for users to attend the Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India). Kindly give your opinion at m:Talk:Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018_India)#Ideal participation. Your responses will help the organizers and the scholarships team to select right participants for the workshop. The discussion will be open until the end of 25 May 2018. --Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 11:25, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Ethnicity in infoboxes

Just a note. Thankfully, this RfC has closed with the outcome that we should not state Ethnicity in infoboxes. I say thankfully because it is an absolute minefield for Indian biographies. We recently also had an RfC that determined we should not state religion in biographical infoboxes. (But see my further note below).

Perhaps one day the community will sort of the problems related to the nationality and citizenship fields! In the interval, feel free to remove ethnicity and religion from the things because as far as I can tell there has been no bot doing the job or, if there is one, it hasn't touched much in the India sphere yet. - Sitush (talk) 15:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I added the result to the MoS earlier today. It can be linked via WP:INFOBOXETH. Can you link to the religion RfC? It can be put in the same subsection. Jbh ^Talk 16:14, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

The religion one is slightly more complex because it only applies to {{Infobox person}} and may not apply even to derivatives of it. See here. I've just asked at Iridescent's talk page whether that consensus may have changed. - Sitush (talk) 16:56, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Interactive maps

The Kartographer extension is now available on English Wikipedia. See User:Naveenpf/sandbox for India-related test cases. utcursch | talk 17:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

That's really cool. Thanks for the heads up. Cesdeva ^(talk) 20:16, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Pentapadu mandal

Pentapadu mandal (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) Should "mandal" be capitalized? Googling, it appears that "mandal" and "Mandal" are used interchangeably, sometimes on the same page. Someone(s) has gone through Pentapadu mandal and capped mandal. Should the article be moved or Mandal decapped? Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 05:16, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Should be lowercase. But there's a chance that 'mandal' might not be part of the proper name. The article has other issues too, I'll see what I can do about those. Kind regards, Cesdeva ^(talk) 11:36, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Made some edits. Should be alright now. Cheers, Cesdeva ^(talk) 12:47, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! I piped mandal to tehsil over the redirect. Also added a hidden comment at the top that "mandal" should not be capped. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 02:25, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Samajwadi Janata Dal

Can anyone sort out the mess at Samajwadi Janata Dal? As it stands, it is a WP:CRYSTAL type of situation. - Sitush (talk) 13:20, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

On first glances, this doesn't seem to be a topic which is notable enough for a stand-alone article.Ought be merged.~ Winged Blades^Godric 16:04, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree. This should be merged with Janata Dal under New Merger Initiatives. Ankit2 (talk) 04:15, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Flags

Can anyone take a look at Special:Contributions/66.183.50.236? The anon is mass-replacing historical flags with File:Punjab flag.svg in the battles involving the Sikhs (not necessarily the Sikh Empire). The article Nishan Sahib suggests that this flag was not in use at the time of these battles. utcursch | talk 17:47, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Draft question

Is Draft:Radhika Vemula independently notable, apart from Suicide of Rohith Vemula? Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:36, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't look like it. All the cited sources refer to her as Rohith Vemula's mother. Ankit2 (talk) 01:00, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's determinative. You can imagine that a number of activists are spurred to action by some event central to their identity, but later transcend the event based on their own actions. Anyways, interested in any further thoughts. Calliopejen1 (talk) 05:13, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

 Done--The article talks about everything except her, which is not surprising, given that she has got nothing that can lead to a passage of notability guidelines, except as the mother of Rohith Vemula.Best, ~ Winged Blades^Godric 05:36, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Are we in Dalit History Month again? We get a lot of this sort of stuff at that time of year and it is a nightmare to police because it is almost all about activism and nothing about encyclopaedic content. - Sitush (talk) 07:47, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Likely no.I was thinking along the same lines but I see that they are yet to start, this year.The nightmare is awaited:) ~ Winged Blades^Godric 12:53, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Template Rename Discussion Hindu to Hindutva Politics

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Template talk:Hindu politics#Rename this to Hindutva politics?, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, DBigXray 09:52, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

General reliability of a journal

What thoughts do people have about this journal? I've never seen it before today, nor seen it cited. - Sitush (talk) 18:50, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Niche publisher with not a very long history, which is not surprising given the topic. The persons involved do seem to be genuine academics in the area, albeit with an acknowledged POV/approach. Seems citable to be although, depending upon the content, explicit inline attribution may be advisable. Abecedare (talk) 19:39, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Hrishikesh Kanitkar in the news

Requesting eyeballs on this BLP Hrishikesh Kanitkar, which has been in the news^[35][36][37] for multiple instances of vandalism and misinformation. — Nearly Headless Nick {c} 18:14, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Our protection policy states Pending changes protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against violations that have not yet occurred.Additionally, I don't see any evidence of long-term-vandalism other than garden-variety-nonsense.Please undo your protection. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 18:41, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review

I've currently opened a peer review for Indian National Congress . I think the article meets the GA criteria and I'm thinking about nominating it as a GA candidate. It would be helpful if other editors could comment on the article and/or offer suggestions, etc. Thanks. Akhiljaxxn (talk) 07:17, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Need help with reviewing an India-related draft

I've reviewed what looks like a promising new article, Draft:Nehru and Indian Economy. I'm not an expert on Indian topics, so I'm requesting subject matter experts also take a look at it. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:16, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Looks like WP:OR to me. Perhaps a general article like Indian economy (1950-1964) would make sense but this is pure OR. --regentspark (comment) 21:44, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Also significant copyvio/plagiarism issues, with many of the sentences close copies/paraphrase of the cited sources. For example compare the draft's lede para as well as the Industrial policy section with this source (which would not qualify as being reliable for this topic). Abecedare (talk) 19:15, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

This looks like an essay to me and is describing the economy specifically with respect to Nehru. However, it would be more appropriate to have article about Indian economy in the 1950s. Although Nehru was the prime minister, he was not the only person who was responsible for the economic policies of the day. This would be putting undue weight. In its current form, I see the article as a personal opinion rather than an encyclopaedia article.--DreamLinker (talk) 12:52, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

List of diplomatic visits to India nominated for deletion

List of diplomatic visits to India was nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of diplomatic visits to the United States. Would editors be able to find sources about the subject? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 07:18, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Punam Suri

I am having difficulty finding references from reliable sources about Punam Suri, although this might be because I am limited to English-language sources. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 12:09, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Pratapgarh State (Northeast India)

Could I get eyes on this new article? Articles about very old history sourced to paper sources always put me on the alert for nonsense/making things up. It seems unlikely that this is the case here, but you never know.... Thanks, Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:58, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Kirata Kingdom article needs revision from knowledgeable Wikipedians :o)

I added a {{context}} tag to the article, Kirata Kingdom, and I started a section on the article’s Talk page: Talk:Kirata Kingdom#Context   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 03:56, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India): Applications are open

Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India) to be tentatively held in the last weekend of September 2018. This is going to be a three-day training workshop to equip the participants with the skills to create illustrations and digital drawings in SVG format, using software like Inkscape.

Minimum eligibility criteria to participate is as below:

• Active Wikimedians from India contributing to any Indic language Wikimedia projects.
• At least 1,500 global edits till 30 May 2018.
• At least 500 edits to home-Wikipedia (excluding User-space).

Please apply at the following link before 16th June 2018: Wikigraphists Bootcamp (2018 India) Scholarships.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:12, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Baru Sahib

Could some knowlegable wikiperson look at article Baru Sahib, it's pretty rubbish IMO. TKS--92.1.72.100 (talk) 09:21, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Tamil transliteration scheme

Several scholarly books on Tamil-related topics use a particular transliterate scheme (like IAST for Sanskrit-related topics). For example, "Sangam" is written as "Caṅkam", Pandya is written as "Pāṇṭiya", Chola is written as Cо̄ḷa, "Chera" is written as "Cēra" etc.

I may be wrong, but I think this is the transliteration scheme used in the Tamil Lexicon. Does this transliteration scheme have a name? Is there a Wikipedia article about it? utcursch | talk 15:39, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Page Move Discussion

There is a Page move discussion going on for Rajneesh. Would anyone be interested in participating? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rajneesh#Requested_move_11_June_2018 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Accesscrawl (talk • contribs) 15:51, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Latest and important News

The idols in the temples in Pakistan and the ponds outside those temples that are considered necessary for a holy dip are drying up. A source that can be used for that can be seen at https://indianexpress.com/article/pakistan/absence-of-lord-ram-hanuman-statues-in-katas-raj-temple-irks-pakistan-supreme-court-4979705/ I am unable to add it to any article as they are page protected. I therefore request some body here to do the needful! Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yagnik2 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

New article proposed - "Weapons of power in Hindu epics"

Discussion of a proposed consolidated Weapons of power in Hindu epics article is at Talk:Kurukshetra War#New article proposed - "Weapons of power in Hindu epics". --Bejnar (talk) 14:45, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Should Simple English Wikipedia be closed/merged here?

It was pointed out in the discussion that Simple English Wikipedia is most popular (comparatively) in India. Input from Indian editors on the future of SEW and potential merge here would be much appreciated. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:35, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

GODL-India

Hi, Wikimedia Commons now uses GODL-India for all images produced by the Indian gouvernment, and therefore accepts any content available under this license. Consequently all images of money (banknotes and coins) are also accepted (the pictures themselves need to be under a free license). So all files on the English Wikipedia under GODL-India could be transferred to Commons. All files previously deleted are being undeleted. Some help for categories for c:Category:Coins of India and c:Category:Banknotes of India would be welcome. Regards, Yann (talk) 00:15, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Can anyone knowledgeable about this tell me what government publications are covered by this license? Specifically, can I use maps and images from Detailed Project Reports of government funded projects (like this) under this license? Ankit2 (talk) 08:36, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Contributing to stub(without tag)

Hi guys, any one interested in contributing to Bachelor Girls & Martyrs of Marriage Accesscrawl (talk) 03:08, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Two articles, one subject?

I’ve run across two articles that may cover the same thing: Foreign Contribution (regulation) Act, 2010 and Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. If this is the same law, then the articles should be merged. Since I can’t even tell for sure if they’re the same subject, I’d be pretty useless myself; thus, I bring the potential task here. Any takers? — Gorthian (talk) 05:49, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Can confirm the two articles cover the same law. In my opinion Foreign Contribution Regulation Act page should simpy be deleted redirected to the other page as it is a stub and provides no information that is not already covered by the other article. Ankit2 (talk) 08:42, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Okay, that I can do. Thanks, Ankit2! — Gorthian (talk) 06:33, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Maps of India

Maps showing the borders of India, Pakistan, and China are a controversial topic, with each claiming some territory not held by it. It strikes me that the appropriate maps for Wikipedia to use are the international ones, showing disputed territories as such; and indeed our article on India [38] (and the one on Pakistan [39]) do just that. A number of other articles, however, depict the entire territory claimed by India as being a part of India; see this image used in the featured list List of chief ministers from the Bharatiya Janata Party, or this one, used in the featured list List of Presidents of India. Unfortunately making maps isn't a skill everyone has; I certainly do not. Therefore, our options seem to be to a) remove the maps and hope someone recreates them with the appropriate boundaries, or b) do nothing. Since either decision has the potential for controversy, I would like to see some discussion on the topic. Vanamonde (talk) 12:03, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

The most appropriate maps should be the ones inviting least controversy i.e. maps on articles related to internal issues of India like elections, geography, administration should show Indian claims, those related to Pakistan should show Pakistani claims, and the articles concerning more than one country, like those about the various Indo-Pak wars, Kashmir dispute etc. should show the disputed borders. Otherwise there will be constant bickering on otherwise non-controversial articles. Plus at least in India, almost all maps available show entire Kashmir in India. Adding border disputes to them will create a lot of extra work, especially when only raster maps are available. So for the question you asked, we should choose option b) do nothing. Removing good maps from articles over this issue doesn't make sense. Ankit2 (talk) 14:01, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

This has been discussed in the past, certainly back when Yogesh Khandke, Mango Wong, Zuggernaut etc were active. Check the archives but I'm pretty sure the consensus was that we should only use internationally accepted borders etc. And rightly so because anything else is nationalist POV. - Sitush (talk) 15:20, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

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

Hello, Please note that Indian Slavery Act, 1843, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was 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 00:05, 16 July 2018 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

Swami Nithyananda

More eyes at this article would be welcome. The article's subject is involved in some recent/current court cases and controversies, and it seems that SPAs (both supporters and detractors) are attempting to spin the article based on often self-published and poor quality sources. Abecedare (talk) 23:09, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

wave of articles regarding 2019 elections

Hello. I recently draftified three articles by two editors (Draft:Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election, 2019, Draft:Indian general election, 2019 (Bihar), and Draft:Indian general election, 2019 (Chhattisgarh)). But there are few more similar articles in the mainspace. Should the articles in such state be kept in the mainspace? or should they be moved to draft-space? What kind of work they would need if for getting in to the mainspace? Any suggestions regarding the issue are welcome. —usernamekiran(talk) 05:59, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

pinging @Utcursch, Sitush, Winged Blades of Godric, and DBigXray: who are regular editors in India related topics. —usernamekiran(talk) 06:02, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Can You also list those similar articles that you found here, for us to compare ? Thank you. --DBigXray 06:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Indian general election, 2019 (Goa)

Indian general election, 2019 (Punjab)

Indian general election, 2019 (Maharashtra)

Indian general election, 2019 (Delhi)

Indian general election, 2019 (Arunachal Pradesh).

I am also not sure about about nomenclature, as I always get confused between those terms in English and Marathi. —usernamekiran(talk) 06:29, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

• There is a tendency on Wikipedia to create far too many election related articles even when the relevant material is better presented within a single page or a small set. The pages I have reviewed are quite unnecessary. State-by-state turnout is far better presented within the article about the national election; the list of contesting parties, likewise; the list of successful candidates will become a category as soon as the election is complete; and the pages I have reviewed have no analysis or prose of any kind. I would suggest that all "Indian general election in [state], [year]" pages be merged into the "Indian general election, [year]" pages. The legislative assembly elections, on the other hand, are quite legitimate standalone topics, and should remain. Vanamonde (talk) 06:49, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Hello.@Usernamekiran: & @Vanamonde93: This articles should not be discuss here,because Every Year in Wikipedia lots of articles created year by year & state by state.these article should not be moved into draft,these are Mainspace articles. Less than 1 year is Left For important Indian election so I these articles should not be moved into draft,(Mr.Mani Raj Paul (talk) 07:16, 22 July 2018 (UTC))

Mr.Mani Raj Paul As the creator, obviously you feel that way. But for the rest of us, can you explain what these articles offer our readers that Indian general election, 2019, combined with our categories of constituencies and sitting members, does not offer? Vanamonde (talk) 07:22, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93: I'm am a creator of these articles Draft:Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election, 2019 & Draft:Indian general election, 2019 (Chhattisgarh) as you know Brother.After 4-5 months these articles Converted into Mainspace articles we everyone know that these are are the STATE Representation of Indian general election, 2019,So I want these articles should be moved into the Mainspace Today.(Mr.Mani Raj Paul (talk) 07:33, 22 July 2018 (UTC))

Mr.Mani Raj Paul You are not answering my question. What information is available in these articles that is not already available elsewhere? Vanamonde (talk) 07:39, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93: Like Indian general election, 2014? I'd prefer that. —usernamekiran(talk) 07:47, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: Precisely. Vanamonde (talk) 09:08, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93: I know information is not available all the things are TBA or TBD in these articles but also in Indian general election, 2019 not much information is available.but my brother that articles not be moved into Draft,so can I revert my these articles into Mainspace????(Mr.Mani Raj Paul (talk) 07:50, 22 July 2018 (UTC))

@Mr.Mani Raj Paul: Vanamonde is saying, all the information can be available in Indian general election, 2019; so why we need so many articles? The articles dont provide any new information. —usernamekiran(talk) 07:58, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93: :@Usernamekiran:

in 2014 also seperates article were made like Indian general election, 2014 (Bihar) (Mr.Mani Raj Paul (talk) 08:03, 22 July 2018 (UTC))

That article should not exist either. State-by-state vote shares are already included in Indian general election, 2014; a list of MPs is likely a violation of WP:NOTDIR. Vanamonde (talk) 08:23, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93: Brother are you Indian?(Mr.Mani Raj Paul (talk) 08:53, 22 July 2018 (UTC))

Mani Raj Paul That is completely irrelevant. Vanamonde (talk) 09:07, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

• Comment These articles should be moved back to the mainspace. We have them for most elections and they're equivelent to articles like United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, 2018 or United Kingdom general election, 2017 (Scotland). Given the existence of these examples, it would appear to be a case of systematic bias to do this to the Indian articles. Number 57 11:02, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
  • I've also moved Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election, 2019 back into mainspace; it's clearly not a case of TOOSOON as the election will be held next year. We have (perfectly valid) articles on elections in 2023 elsewhere. Number 57 11:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
    • @Number 57: It's my personal opinion that those articles shouldn't exist for the US either as they're a classic example of recentism, but that's really a by-the-way. My point here is simply that as long as the articles do not provide information already covered elsewhere (and they don't) they shouldn't exist. India doesn't have primaries, and there's no substantive analysis in any of these pages; they're mostly just tables full of TBDs. Also, to be clear, I have no issues with articles about legislative assembly elections. Vanamonde (talk) 04:23, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
      • They aren't recentism though – the Florida series goes back to 1845. Whilst I agree that there is an argument that these types of articles shouldn't exist, there needs to be a centralised discussion on all of them, rather than picking on the Indian examples, otherwise this does appear to be a bias issue. Number 57 07:28, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
        • Perhaps you missed the rest of my comment, Number 57. I'm willing to set aside my concerns and accept such pages in principle: but they need to have content beyond a table of TBDs, do they not? At the moment, they are completely redundant to Indian general election, 2019, and as such don't serve our readers. I frequently kick and scream about systemic bias, believe me, but in their current state, these pages aren't serving to ameliorate it. Userfying them to allow the creator to expand them some more is entirely reasonable. Heck, we even have a speedy deletion criterion for such articles, which these meet, until some non-redundant material is actually added. Vanamonde (talk) 08:07, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
• I agree that, if there is definitely a general election taking place in the world's most populous democracy next year and there are reliable sources to support this, there is nothing to prevent articles being started now. However, if there is no news coverage or speculation about election results in the individual states, there's no reason to create articles yet. I don't know the particular issues facing individual states, but if there is already state-specific news coverage in existence, it needs to be added, to justify the articles' existence. Sionk (talk) 17:07, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Precisely, with the qualifier that articles should contain analysis of substance, not just speculation, per WP:CRYSTAL. Vanamonde (talk) 04:23, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

that is similar to my opinion. I am not against creating the individual articles for each state. But only one line, and a table of TBA/TBD is useless. All these articles should be created after they can have enough content. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)