Talk:Bhai Makhan Shah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Obviously User:Jahiegel has not read the article or the background relating to this article or has no idea of this subject ie: Sikhism- For your education, a Sakhi refers to a historic account of interesting and important events mainly during the 250 years or so of the lives of the Sikh Gurus from 1469 to 1708. However, Sakhis outside this time scale do exist. --Hari Singh 03:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Deletion of Bhai Makhan Shah
- From: User talk:Sandstein
Dear Sir,
Further to your vote to delete my article, Bhai Makhan Shah, I would like to bring the following to your attention and present this for the record:
You said: "WP:NOT a book publisher. If verified to be notable, rewrite as an encyclopedia article rather than a story." I would like to bring the following to your attention. Ths article is not a book but a historic record - please see my introduction and the links added recently. Further the style of writing is how these Sakhis are normally written - so I have preserved the style and want to give the readers a feel for how this history was passed from one generation to another in rural India during the 1400 onwards.
You may be aware that this article was tagged by Joe for speedy deletion because he thought that the article "appears to be a fictional story" at 2:58. He had however, failed to notice that the article began with: "Makhan Shah Lubana (also written as Lobana) was a devout Sikh and a rich trader from Tanda district Jhelum (now in Pakistan)..…" – If this was a fictional story, would it refer to "(now in Pakistan)"?
Further, mid-way down the article is the line "He then recited this Shabad of Guru Arjan Dev:" followed by the sacred hymn by the fifth Sikh Guru – Now surely if you are not even aware of the Gurus of the Sikhs, do you have the right to make any judgement on this article or any other article linked to Sikhism?
He was wrong but he realised his mistake and rightly and honourably retracted from that position. However, he did not completely re-evaluate his position as he almost instantly put an AfD notice on the article.
If Joe had the "well-being" of Wikipedia at heart, surely it does not take more than a few seconds to search for "Makhan Shah" on Google to see if this is fiction or fact! – If he had done this, he would have found 654 hits and the first article is at: www.Sikh-History.com – Do I need to say more! – I don't think you would find fictional stories on a history website. Under the circumstances, the comment by User talk:Royboycrashfan that this is "original research" is unbelievable!! 654 hits with Google and you think that this is original research!! This is a record of historical events that took place in about 1620AD. And what is surprising is that you are supported by User:TBC and User:Khoikhoi. Blindly following the leader!!
Following my comments on the discussion page highlighting that this article was a example of a Sakhi (ie: Historical Record), which are very popular in Sikhism at 3.09, Jow quickly changed the article to AfD status at 3.13 saying that this was because "text is a Sikh story taken from www.srigurugranthsahib.org website". So in 4 minutes he had read the 2 articles of over 1250 words each and done a proper comparison of the two articles. I am sorry but I don't think this is how articles should be judged - Someone spending less than 4 minutes to evaluate an article that may have taken a few days to create from various resources. Why should someone who appears to have no knowledge of the subject matter, is completely anti-religion and has spent very little time researching the subject take such a step? I wonder?
Having read the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion, I believe that the comments made by Joe – "only that the fashion in which it is currently presented is non-encyclopedic" does not appear to be reason for articles to be deleted.
Further, he say that if the text was: "of great religious import, it would, I think, appear in some form on more than one website" – This is based on a Google search of the words: "Once while he was returning home". What he does not tell us is the Google finds the following:
"with his ship carrying valuable goods over the vast seas, his ship got caught up in a furious storm" in my article and
"with his ships loaded with valuable cargo, there was a furious storm at sea and his vessels got caught in it" on the other site.
Not quite the same sentence – let alone the whole article. So how can anyone say that "text is a Sikh story taken from" www.srigurugranthsahib.org site - is a completely mystery to me? I wonder why you have taken this step as it is totally unjustified!
I believe that your criticisms are entirely ill-founded and without foundation. Further, this appears to a tactic to discourage minority religions to have a reasonable say on this website and this type of behaviour will stall contribution from the minority traditions. The majority sects will dictate what goes on this site - even when they are completely wrong!! If that was your intention, I have no problem with that – just do it openly rather than using unnecessary stealth and poor logic!!! --Hari Singh 07:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
