Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/India

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[edit] India

Article is still a featured article.

Does not meet criteria 1, 2a, 2b, 2c. It also has a template underconstruction on the main page. It has two sentence paragraphs, almost no references for the curious, not comprehensive, badly formatted (the national symbols of India is sitting in the middle of the page) and has stublike sections.

1. Lack of easily verifiable references and citations Quite simply, for an article this size, it cites just a few references, and those hardly at all within the text.
2. Use of weasel terms
3. Short, choppy sentences

--Bob 01:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

• September 2004 FAC
• April 2005 FARC
• No request for improvements

Keep First of all, you should try to be more specific about what you have issues with. That would be helpful. Only real issue that I see in your complaint is regarding the citation. This is a two-fold complaint:

1. Citation style is not user-friendly: I agree with you but as far as I know inotes are acceptable and the editors of the article decided to use those. So, unless I am wrong (a distinct possibility) about their acceptance you have no case in that regards.
2. Citations are insufficient: This is a problem potentially but you have not really explained which parts you feel need citations. Your argument is very generic and I am unaware of some article length to number of citation relationship that you speak of. Besides, you saying "article of this size" implies it is a large article. Last time I checked it was 33KB and probably one of the shortest country article with FA.

Finally, it would be nice if you had attempted to "Before listing here, leave comments detailing the article's deficiencies on its talk page, and leave some time for them to be addressed." As indicated in the talk page, their was a massive dump of information in the article during the past few days and it had not been cleaned up. You might have read the article at that point. (added later) Also, I do not see the national symbols in middle of the page or any other presentation problems. Did you check the history to see if you were not looking at a "Just been edited badly" version? --Blacksun 05:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment Citations are really, really inaccessible to the reader. inotes are absolute rubbish and do not aid the reader find the required citation at all. You say, click on edit to see it, I do, then I see a reference to something that I then cannot find. This issue was raised 22 March 2006 by user Blacksun, and was not acted upon. Thus, I felt no need to leave a message at all. One nice example of how few references are visible to the reader is the subsection demographics which has just one visible reference for the entire section, lots of inotes, but as the average reader has no idea what they refer to, if anything, it can not seriously be considered as Wikipedias best work.

Bob, yes I had brought that up. But don't you think you are being grossly inaccurate when you say my issue was not addressed?? A quick look at the talk page will easily prove that user Nichalp had addressed my issue? inotes are acceptable form of citation style in wikipedia. You have no case. If you dislike them feel free to start a thread in the talk page and maybe we can reach a consensus to change them. Also, I will go through all the inotes in the article currently to make sure they are formatted correctly. I agree that the inotes in demographis are formatted in a very strange manner. I had definitely not noticed that before. I have raised that issue in the talk page. However, inotes themselves are perfectly legible. --Blacksun 12:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

They are anything but legible. Especially in the demographic section. What, exactly, does inote|tongues or inote|languages mean? --Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Let me rephrase: The usage of inotes is completely legible but yes, their might be problems with how couple of them are formatted. But this is completely irrelevant to your claim that you need not bring it up in the talk page as I had already raised the issue and it was not addressed. My issue was completely different and was in regards to the general question of whether or not inotes are acceptable. I had never noticed or raised the issue of any specific problems with citations. Which means that your claim is false and at best you were mistaken. --Blacksun 02:14, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

We have one line paragraphs, for example - Mumbai (Bombay) serves as the nation's commercial capital, with the headquarters of many financial institutions located within the city. hardly brilliant writing.

I am sorry but I think you meant to say that their is/was A one-line paragraph - yes that is paragraph WITHOUT a s. That was the only one line paragraph in the entire article - quite possibly a cause of a recent edition. I am starting to wonder if you are being misleading on purpose.--Blacksun 13:01, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Why would I do that? Unless you are being paranoid.... --Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Lets just say that I am suspicious of people who do not take the courtsey to raise issues in the talk page first or a cursory glance at the edition history of an article before nominating an article for FARC. --Blacksun 02:20, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

We have weasel wording - Indian society is largely pluralist, multilingual and multicultural. - who says?

That is not weasel wording considering their are thousands of different dialects in India with hundreds of languages + many different religions and cultures. A quick look at demographics should back that up in my opinion. Otherwise a citation can be easily provided. --Blacksun 12:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Unless backed up by a reference, it is. --Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Bad formatting - the table National symbols of India is stuck in the middle of the page, why isn't this properly inserted into the page inline with the images?

Something is wrong with your system. I dont see it and neither does anyone else. Please refer to the screenshot posted by user Nichalp for how everyone else is seeing the page. Again something that would have been quicly addressed as a "bug in your system" if you had posted in talk page first. --Blacksun 12:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

This has been rectified by the recent edits, thankyou. And no, there is no problem with my browser. --Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

And this just proves, as I said earlier, whatever you were talking about was a result of dump of text by a questionable entity in the past few days. Bringing back to the point as to why one should bring up issues in the talk page or atleast check the history to make sure the current version is the stable version. Toodles --Blacksun 02:12, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

The Himalayan parts of India have a tundra climate. India gets most of its rains through the monsoons. - choppy.

I dont understand why that is choppy.--Blacksun 12:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The constitution recognises 23 official languages. Hindi and English are used by the Central Government for official purposes. Two classical languages native to the land are Sanskrit and Tamil. The number of mother tongues in India is as high as 1,652. again, choppy.

Fixed. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. --Blacksun 14:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Traditional indigenous sports include polo, kabaddi and gilli-danda, which are played in most parts of the country. - lack of references. --Bob 00:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Each of that sport has its own article. I have added inote reference for Kabbadi too. --Blacksun 12:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Bob, I have fixed all the choppy phrases you have listed. Such issues should be raised on the talk page of the article itself; bringing it to FARC without discussion on the talk is a waste of everybody's time. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:13, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

No more a waste of time than posting on the talk page. Both should lead to improvements, which, as this article was cited as a good example of a country FA, it should be, because it did not meet 1, 2a, 2b or 2c. --Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

According to you, my dear. --Blacksun 02:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that constant improvements are needed, but listing it here instead of the talk page for just one valid clause (brilliant prose) is a little too harsh. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we all agree that this FARC was unnecessary and the consensus is not going to be problematic for the India article. Please post such things on the talk page first or at least give some time for your issues to be resolved. I agree with Nichalp, it was way too harsh to immediately put up an article that people have worked hours on for FARC without telling them that you are doing it. Nobleeagle (Talk) 07:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per above. --Gurubrahma 06:00, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, there is no real detailed reason you have presented to get it removed from Featured Article Status and as Blacksun pointed out, if you are unhappy with formatting and a bit of structure, then say so on the talk page of the article in question. Allowing us to fix it up. Nobleeagle (Talk) 06:09, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Per Blacksun. Copyediting may be needed in some areas. Otherwise it is still FA standard. Gizza^{Chat ©} 06:47, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep although I agree that the article needs upgrades. Rama's Arrow 11:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

  Could you expand on what upgrades are needed? =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per Blacksun. Specifically point out the problems here. --Andy123(talk) 15:47, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Remove per Bob. Citations insufficient, prose sometimes long-winded and awkward, but mostly with choppy phrases. Image placement in wrong sections at high resolutions, resulting in messy organization.Naus 16:25, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

  Wikipedia aims to set image placements at the standard web resolution (800x600), the most common resolution. As one increases the resolution, the images will obviously be clustered together. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

  I just reread majority of the article and I really did not find any awkward or "long-winded" prose. Please give examples. Infact, I find the prose to be articulate and concise. Obviously this is a very subjective criteria and once again, do provide examples if you are interested in improving the quality of the article. I also found citation for every thing that I felt needed a citation in the inotes. Again, provide examples if you feel like something is not cited that should be. --Blacksun 17:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Examples of sentences using weasel words and without sufficient citation in the India article:

India is a sovereign, secular, liberal democracy with quasi-federal republic.

What is "quasi-federal"? Who qualifies India to be a liberal democracy?

Quasi-federal is self explanatory if you look up the meaning of Quasi. I recommend doing a google search for "Define: Quasi." Infact, I believe that my American Government class text book in highschool (in USA) had that phrase in it and gave India as an example of other countries with that form of federalistic model.--Blacksun 22:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

So, this article has to fit with American idealogy? I was under the impression that Wikipedia was for the world. Cite sources. --Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I've copyedited it. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Since the early 1990s, India has gradually opened up its markets through economic reforms by reducing government controls on foreign trade and investment.

What is your opposition to this sentence? Are you just randomly copy-pasting at this point? --Blacksun 22:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with this phrase. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Apart from the fact that it lacks visible sources. --Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

As a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation, India has had some sectarian violence and insurgencies in various parts of the country, but has stayed together as a vibrant democracy. What qualifies as staying "together"?

Is this phrase "stayed together" even necessary for country articles? What is a "vibrant democracy"?

Yes considering that many political experts had doubted whether or not India can survive after its independence in 1947. It is not a weasel term. --Blacksun 22:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I've copyedited it. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

None of the sentences are "weasely". Please see WP:AWT for actual weasel phrases. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The following are examples of "prose not 'brilliant'" (to borrow the phrase from Nichalp):

The Constitution of India also recognizes Bharat as the official name of the nation. It is in wide popular use as is the colloqial name Hindustan. Second sentence is problematic.

Why is it problematic? It is afterall used as one of the names by Indians. It is also part of many important patriotic songs and has been in use for centuries (coined by Iranians I believe) --Blacksun 22:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Being home to over one billion people, India is the second most populous country in the world and also seventh largest country by geographical area.

This exact sentence forumlation was used for the People's Republic of China article, to which user Nichalp specifically cited as an example of "prose not brilliant." Fair?

Read my comment below regarding this. --Blacksun 22:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The comments above are related to a draft version and has since been reverted. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

My vote of Removal is tit-for-tat to the aggressive approach of Nichalp against the PRC article. The examples I gave above are trivial and can be easily fixed, just like many of the issues involving the PRC article. Naus 21:49, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Well if your vote for removal is as you say a "tit-for-tat" for whatever happened with some other article then quite frankly I find it pretty immature and I wonder whether or not your vote should be counted. Some might even consider it as a form of vandalism. Regards, --Blacksun 22:20, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

My vote was clearly done in a sarcastic tone, the issue here is that trivial reasonings should not be used for FARC as they can be easily fixed. The intention was to demonstrate this point. Please read the Wikipedia article on vandalism carefully if you believe my comments to be vandalism. Votes in Wikipedia are not binding anyway, the important thing is consensus and the comments associated with the vote, not the actual vote itself. Cheers and no hard feelings. Naus 07:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry but the fact that both India and PRC article are on FARC does not equate them in any manner. While the reasons for nominating India for FARC were arguably trivial and done without raising the issues in the talk page - the same cannot be stated about the PRC article. A quick look at votes and comments would back this up. --Blacksun 14:50, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

That last paragraph just ruined all of your points. You yourself have called the problems trivial and stated that they can be easily fixed. Yet you say that this article should be removed from FA status because of these trivial problems. Then your points lose further importance as you say that your vote is only because Nichalp voted against the People's Republic of China. Honestly, when you say that an article should be removed from FA, what happened or what is happening to the People's Republic of China has no relevance at all. Nobleeagle (Talk) 00:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The last paragraph IS my point. And it has nothing to do with the fact Nichalp voted against the PRC article, but the nature of the trivial reasonings he used. I merely mimicked his exact gameplay here. My points are still valid (as they have clearly been fixed by other users in the article), but they are temporary points (which is exactly my point). Also, what is happening to the PRC article ABSOLUTELY has a relevance here, as the point of FA country articles is to be consistent, and precedence does play a role in decisions within Wikipedia. Naus 07:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

My objections to PRC were far more than trivial. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:07, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh please Naus. Enough with trying to play with words to fit your own assumptions and conclusions. You are an embarrassement. In your own words, your vote was nothing but tit-for-tat. You can try to talk out of it till the end of the world but it wont do you any good. --Blacksun 14:46, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

• Naus, all the statements raised by you have been fixed. If you have any other issues please list them else your vote for its removal will be considered void. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

thank you for fixing them. Naus 07:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep -- 1. {{inote}} is a perfectly valid method of referencing. From WP:WIAFA, it only recommends the use of cite.php. This style is NOT mandatory. Please state which all text needs to be additionally referenced. Secondly, the use of inotes is not a valid reason to object even during the FAC process. It is perfectly reader friendly as it avoids text from being punctuated by footnotes. 2. Please specify the "weasel" words found in the document, we'll clean it up. 3.Similarly the choppy sentences. 5. It is customary to add a note on the talk page of the article before listing here. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep It looks fine to me - referenced well, structure excellent. Although See also needs to be shortened. Just another star in the night ^{T | @ | C} 18:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

  Done =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:13, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Well referenced through the means of inotes. No reason to remove its FA status.--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| ŗ 3 $ |-| ţ |-|) 19:15, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Leaning towards keep, but yes, it does need a copy-edit. I'll try to do some in the next week. Tony 00:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Keep. Article is too long and people keeping adding pointless or unverifiable information all the time. This article needs to remain as it was when it was first nominated as a featured article and not allowed to devolve as it is starting to. Tombseye 03:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Replies

• Bob, this is not the appropriate forum to debate the drawbacks/merits of inotes vs cite.php. Since inotes is one of the inline referencing methods allowed, you'd have to move the discussion to a common forum such as talk:fac etc. I'd be happy to convert all inotes to cite.php if inotes is declared to be an inferior style and completely done away with from wikipedia. Till then I'm afraid, your opinion on inotes will not be acted upon.

At least get the references legible within the text then. The demographics section has inotes, but the enduser has no idea what they refer to, if anything at all.--Bob 00:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• ...the table National symbols of India...' -- I can't see what's wrong with the table: This is what I'm seeing: Image:India-screenshot-table-test.png in Opera 8.53 on Win, at 800x600 resolution. Probably a bug on your system?

=Nichalp «Talk»= 06:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Per above.--Dwaipayanc 06:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE: please take a look at the page now. =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:59, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Its a good article though I think it can be expanded a little bit. Raswa 23:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

  Note: User's fourth edit =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Per above. thunderboltz^{a.k.a.Deepu Joseph |TALK} 13:57, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep didn't raise problems on talk page prior to nom. SECProto 19:33, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. No major issues raised. Even the minor issues raised have been adequately addressed. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep meets FA standards. per above. Ganeshk (talk) 07:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment While the problems with the article are not big, the article does look very messy with random sections like "Government" (could've been combined with Politics), "States and Union territories"(either be redirected by a See also or combined into Political divisions), and a "Holiday" section that could've been better placed under Culture. The pictures also seem to be placed randomely, with a building of a temple under Demographics (could've belonged under a new section called Religion), a picture of a house with himalayas in the background under Geography, and a picture of Ghandi in the History section (when the polictics might've been more suitable). In the culture section, there are four large pictures that are a bit distracting and don't contribute much (except for the Taj Mahal). Some of the pictures could definitely be replaced by more suitable ones and the article could be expanded to include a lot more information than what is there now. However, I am glad to see that there are so many Indian editors who are very protective of their article.--Ryz05 01:53, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Images:

• Picture of Himalayas in Geography section:  ??? Himalayas are a pretty significant geographical trait of a nation. I fail to see why that is irrelevant.
• Gandhi picture makes lot more sense in history than politics. He is a big part of Indian history. He never held a political office in his life. Surely, having a picture of the father of nation (who is deceased) in the history section cannot be considered as "placed randomly?"
• I agree with you that 4 images in culture is overdoing it. I am going to remove atleast one of them right now.

Sections:

• Indian government specifically definies its political division as "States and Union territories." That might be the reason to use that terminology. I am neutral either way.
• I personally dont agree with combining government and politics. To me government is more about the overall structure of the..well.. government. Politics is more about the players involved and in the Indian article it is combined with Foreign policy. However, I think the long term goal is to expand the article to include more information. I believe that one of the things that can be looked at is making a supersection named Politics - with subsections for government, political parties, and foreign policy. However, this will take some time.

Finally, ignore people who feel overly protective. Your contributions are welcome. --Blacksun 03:11, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Per above. AmbExThErMaL 02:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep again per above. AndyZ _t 23:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep --Terence Ong 12:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep: This nomination is ridiculous and without foundation. It is almost disruptive to Wikipedia. When is someone going to do something to stop complete idiots making stupid nominations and wasting all our time? Why is this page, after ten days, still here when there is an obvious overriding majority of editors seeing common sense and voting keep. Whoever imagines they are running this FARC page needs to either resign or wake their ideas up - and fast, while their are still editors here willing to risk their time writing a decent FA. Giano | talk 20:19, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I have to agree with Giano's general sentiment; there's an air of vexatiousness about this nomination. Why is there such a backlog of nominations in this room? Tony 07:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep- Sometimes, I am amazed to see the tendency to criticize without making any attempt to add value to wikipedia. This is not good in the long term interest of wikipedia. In case, we find some shortcomings, we should sincerely endeavor to remove them to make the wikipedia Better than the Best. At least, we may try to solicit support of the editors who may be able to remove the real or "perceived" shortcomings. --Bhadani 10:45, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I'd like to encourage those who engage in improving the content and constructive discussions rather than politically charged FARC nominations and ad homs. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 22:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I surely agree with you, not politically charged only, but against the spirit of wikipedia: we have to forget rule-book sometimes, if it is detrimental to wikipedia, and interestingly our "rules" provide for forgetting rules! --Bhadani 11:36, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Keep This article is well formated, structured, the sentences are (for the most part) balanced, the only thing that needs working on is the references (too few for such an article). Sfacets 05:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep This article does not deserve an FARC nomination in the first place. SwiftRakesh 13:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

When are they going to close this discussion and confirm the consensus (which is quite obviously Keep)? Nobleeagle (Talk) 08:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, its over 2 weeks and extremely clear consensus has already emerged. This should be closed soon. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 05:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. The article is well-referenced. Carioca 04:04, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. An excellent article, the information is accurate to the best of my knowledge, some more non-gazzetteer type references may be called for, though. Why this was a FARC is beyond me. 141.151.186.244 15:45, 6 May 2006 (UTC)