Talk:Ravi Shankar

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[edit] Role in Western view of Indian music

Interesting. He criticised the way Indian music was made "superficial" and "marginalised" , yet he played a major part in encouraging this by playing at Rock festivals with the Beetles and allowing this to happen himself.

[edit] Disambiguation

The question has arisen whether or not the page Ravi Shankar ought to be a disambiguation page for Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Ravi Shankar (musician) and others. Although the immediate question pertains to the Ravi Shankar article, this question touches upon some larger questions related to when should an ambiguous title point to a disambiguation page, versus when should it point to the most commonly expected page.

I will start the discussion by pointing out that there are three types of links that need to be fixed:

links to the wrong article
links to disambiguation pages
links to non-existent articles

Whether an ambiguous title points to a disambiguation page or to the most likely article will affect the types of bad links that are created. If the ambiguous title points to the most likely article, then in cases where the most likely article was not intended, naive links will point to the wrong article. If the ambiguous title points to a disambiguation page, then naive links will always be links to disambiguation pages. In one case, some, perhaps most, links will not need fixing, in the other case, all links will need fixing. But in addition to the issue of the relative proportion of links that need fixing, is the issue of the costs associated with each type of bad link.

[edit] Costs of ambiguous name pointing to disambiguation page

There are at least three ways that users may arrive at a disambiguation page.

by typing in the name of the page in the search box and pressing Go
by typing in a search term in the search box and pressing Search, then selecting a page from the results.
by clicking on a link that points to that page

I don't have any figures regarding the relative frequencies with which these methods are used to reach a page. I will, however, make some general observations.

When a user clicks the search button, they would probably not be inconvenienced by the appearance of a disambiguation page
If the percentage of links to a disambiguation page is small in comparison to links to the disambiguated articles, then the likelihood of arriving at the disambiguation page via a link becomes correspondingly small.
If the ambiguous title points to a disambiguation page, then most attempts to reach a related article using the Go button will bring the user to the disambiguation page.

[edit] Cost of links to an incorrect page

The main difficulty in correcting a link to an incorrect page is that the location of such links is generally unknown. Such links may be found through browsing the articles, or by iterating through the "What links here" list. The effort required to find errors by iterating through "What links here" lists must be repeated over and over again if it is to find newly introduced errors. Thus the cost of fixing such links through planned effort is high. On the other hand, if a user, browseing Wikipedia comes across an incorrect link, there are several possibilities.

The user recognizes that the link is in error and fixes it.
The user recognizes that the link is in error and does nothing to fix it.
The user does not recognize the error, but draws no incorrect conclusions.
The user does not recognize the error and arrives at incorrect conclusions. (For example, a user might conclude that Ravi Shankar, the musician, is an alumnus of Government Victoria College, Palakkad, which is false).

[edit] Costs of links to disambiguation pages

The costs of links to disambiguation pages differ from the costs of links to the wrong article.

Links to disambiguation pages are easy to find, via "What links here" enabling them to be efficiently corrected through planned effort.

When a browsing user clicks on a link to a disambiguation page the user may

Click through to the page they seek without making the original link a direct link
Fix the original link to a direct link as well as proceed to their desired page.

If no planned effort is used to fix links to disambiguation pages, then the quantify of inconvenience to users by the link to the disambiguation page depends on the frequency with which users change such links to direct links.

[edit] My opinion

Given the above considerations, I am of the opinion that the greatest costs are associated with links to the wrong article, even when one particular article is much more like to be the desired article than others. The costs associated with links to disambiguation pages I think are significantly less than the costs associated with links to the wrong article. The area where the issues seem most clouded are when users attempt to reach pages with the Go button. All in all, I would argue that it would be a net win for the Ravi Shankar page to be a disambiguation page. --BostonMA 21:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't really read through this long analysis, but current common practice is that if one person with the name will receive a very large share of the name's usage, such as with Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, George Harrison, etc., then they get the direct page, while if the name is split among two or more with roughly equal usage, such as with Bob Grant or John Sterling, then disambig gets the direct page. This current practice seems very reasonable to me. As for this particular case, I don't know anything about the "other" Ravi Shankars, so I can't say. Wasted Time R 22:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Well the executive summary of my argument is that even when one article gets 9/10's of the attention, the costs of having Ravi Shankar point to a particular Ravi Shankar are probably greater than having it point to a disambiguation page. Double links have low cost over there lifetime, which I imagine would a fairly limited number of uses. --BostonMA 23:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Strange that you'd bring up as good examples of disambiguation two horrible examples of how disambig pages should really work. Bob Grant uses bold even though it shouldn't, and since there are only two actual articles with that name, could easily just move "Bob Grant (radio)" to "Bob Grant" and have it link to the actor at the top of the page, essentially encapsulating the entire disambig page in a single line of text at the top while allowing at least half of the readers to instantly read the page they want, and the other half to be no less inconvenienced than they would have been by a disambig page. Even more so, John Sterling, which doesn't even have an extra broken link for the disambig page to provide, should clearly have one of them (probably the author) at John Sterling, and link to the other at the top, and vice versa. Instant disambig! Having a whole page just for a pair of links is completely overdoing it when only two articles are possible options. And even more so, of course, when one page is vastly more likely than the other to be the one looked for, as is the case when one of the articles is simply named after the page (Ravi Shankar) and the other is merely similarly-named, not identically. Then again, the vast majority of disambiguation pages, ironically enough, violate disambiguation style in some ways or others, so it's hard to find good role models... -Silence 22:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, to be honest, I don't care how it's done ... you guys should petition the powers that be to revise the diambig guidelines then. I think Ravi Shankar should follow whatever those guidelines are. Wasted Time R 22:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

First, I think 'the powers that be' would want to know the consensus reached by the editors. Second, I think guidelines, in contradistinction to policy, are meant as suggestions rather than laws. If editors find that a particular guideline doesn't seem to provide the best results, I think the editors are free to set the guideline aside when appropriate, and to re-write the guideline in light of experience and a growth in understanding. Long and short, I think that the editors are "the powers that be" in this case. --BostonMA 22:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Ravi Shankar, the musician, and Ravi Shankar, the guru, are identically named. Sri is an honorific, and the guru apparently merits two of them. Chris the speller 23:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and there has been discussion of renaming the article Sri Sri Ravi Shankar [1], [2]. --BostonMA 22:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

If you take a look at the "What links here" tool for each article, Ravi Shankar is linked to by 138 pages, whereas Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is linked to by 19 pages. However, in my personal opinion, unless the search is ridiculously common (even more so than the above mentioned Michael Jackson example), along the lines of USA, the disambiguation page should be the one to come up. The pages can be built to point to the most obvious article, but if you disambiguate it makes it easier for the overall search. -- Natalya 00:22, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

So make a Ravi Shankar (disambiguation) and link to both of them from there, and let the links to the musician be the default, since he is by far the most commonly-known. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

There already is a Ravi Shankar (disambiguation). The discussion is whether to keep it that way, and have a search for "Ravi Shankar" go directly to Ravi Shankar (the musician), or to have the search go to the disambiguation page. -- Natalya 03:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I did read the long explanation, and it did a fine job! Thank you.

The guidelines at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic already state "well-known (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles)". Natalya indicates that the musician is by far the more well-known. So, the "Ravi Shankar" should link directly. And {{Otheruses}} should be used, without another extra link to the relatively unreferenced "Sri Sri Ravi Shankar".

However, remember that this is not set in stone! Someday in the future, the musician may not be the majority of links any longer. At that time, it's easy enough to move "Ravi Shankar (disambiguation)" to "Ravi Shankar" (making it a Generic topic page). OK?

--William Allen Simpson 11:41, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questions regarding a partial solution

There seem to be mixed opinions on this topic. I would like to know opinions regarding whether it would be a good (or bad) thing for me to do the following.

move the current article to 'Ravi Shankar (musician)'
Leave a redirect (for the moment at least) from 'Ravi Shankar' to 'Ravi Shankar (musician)'
Finish changing the existing links to either 'Ravi Shankar (musician)' if appropriate, or to another page if appropriate.
Continue to add red-line links to the disambiguation page when an existing link was intended for an individual for which there is no existing article.

Please share your opinions on my taking these steps. Please also note that I have come across 3 instances where existing links to 'Ravi Shankar' pointed to the wrong article. --BostonMA 22:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you leave the page arrangement the way it is, and fix the three wrong links. Then move on to one of the thousand worse areas of Wikipedia than arrangement of disambig vs direct pages. For example, this article itself. I tried to fill in Shankar's early years a bit, but the article still has no description of how he advanced the art of sitar playing, or what he did that other players hadn't done. It doesn't make clear whether he's a major composer or not. It has no discography. The selection of works described seems suspiciously skewed towards Western idioms and collaborations, even after the Beatles involvement. All of these matters are more worthy of attention than futzing around with further page moves. Wasted Time R 23:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate that you would like my efforts to be utilized in the most effecient way. However, we are all different, and the edits that interest me might not be the edits that interest you and vice versa. Thus, I would appreciate your opinion on whether the changes that I propose would be beneficial or harmful to Wikipedia, without any reference to other things I might be doing. (On a side note, I did fix the links when I found them, but as I was interrupted after going through about half the links, I expect that there are more.) --BostonMA 23:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if I was snarky before. I appreciate that page arrangement is important, and I've done a few page moves in that regard myself. But in this case I think that any slight benefit that might acrue from a rearrangement is not worth the effort of changing all the links to here, and in a month or two someone else will come along and think the new arrangement violates WP guidelines and change it all back again. Wasted Time R 23:35, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Your apology is welcome and appreciated. Unless you lead me to believe otherwise, I will understand your comment about "any slight benefit" to mean that you see no harm in what I propose, (other than wasted effort), and possibly a slight benefit. --BostonMA 00:26, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Adding my two cents: I don't see any harm in what you propose, but I also don't see the need for it. It appears that there are only two articles with the name "Ravi Shankar" in the title, Ravi Shankar and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. As others have already pointed out, in cases where there are only two possible pages that might need disambiguation, Wikipedia policy dictates that a separate dab page should not be used. So unless someone wants to write articles for the other two guys who are currently red-linked on Ravi Shankar (disambiguation), the dab page is actually pretty useless, regardless of what it is called. I think that the current state of the articles is probably the best solution to the problem as currently constituted. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 03:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with BostonMA. Especially the part about adding red-links to the disambiguation page. I'm a big proponent of compiling links to future articles! The rest seems to follow the guidelines (as shown earlier).

--William Allen Simpson 15:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think a fair amount of time has passed to allow editors to raise strong objections if they had such. I note that no such strong objections have been raised, so I will proceed along the lines above. --BostonMA 01:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Related guideline (proposal)

Not so long ago someone started Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people of India and Sri Lanka) - maybe not a bad idea to see this discussion in the light of that guideline proposal too? --Francis Schonken 09:16, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] When did Ravi Shankar become an Indian-American?

As far as I know, Ravi Shankar has never taken American citizenship. I think the person who added this article to the "Indian-American" Category was misled by the fact that he has at least one daughter (Norah Jones) who is an Indian-American (born to an American mother). Therefore, I shall remove this article from the Category of "Indian-American". --Jalabi99 12:47, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More details on his books and discography?

I've just added a new section on his books. Do u supposed i need to mention just more than the title and the year of publication (such as publisher, etc) ? Is there a better way of representing this list?

Also, i've just added a major list of his discography. I think its too long. Recommend moving this to a seperate page (?). --Mayuresh 00:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unmoved

Considering that Ravi Shankar was merely a redirect to Ravi Shankar (musician) this whole time abyway, this title is just simpler and more efficient. There are currently only two Ravi Shankar-named articles anyway, so just have Sri Sri and this one link to each other at the top of both pages and we even skip the confusing extra disambig-page hop. -Silence 23:51, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Talk:Ravi Shankar — Ravi Shankar → Ravi Shankar (musician) – disambiguation between the musician and the guru BostonMA 01:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

Support Having generic title and musician page greatly reduces the effort required to disambiguate -- links to generic title have not been checked, while links to (musician) have been checked. BostonMA 01:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Oppose — The musician is by far the better known of all these. The music director is better known simply as Ravi, and the guru is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. The other two notables with this name do not even have articles as of yet. Anyone searching for Ravi Shankar will almost certainly be wanting to find an article on the musician. — Gareth Hughes 17:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I agree with you that users will expect the musician more often than not. As the pages stood until yesterday, users were in fact redirected to Ravi Shankar (musician) when they typed in Ravi Shankar. That would seem to me to address the concern you raised, but perhaps it does not, or perhaps you have other concerns as well. Would you be willing to discuss this further? Thanks. BostonMA 18:12, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

You seem unfamiliar with Disambiguation style. No page on Wikipedia redirects to an identical phrase with added parenthetical specifiers (for example, if the George Bush presidents didn't have middle names, it would have no sense to make George Bush a redirect to George Bush (42nd president) rather than simply putting the contents of "George Bush (42nd president)" on "George Bush" and avoiding any need for a redirect); doing such solves absolutely no problems and causes quite a few problems. The only two viable possibilities are (1) to move Ravi Shankar (disambiguation) to Ravi Shankar (which is what I thought the initial move was endorsing, and I'm pretty sure most other people thought that too), or (2) to put one of the Ravi Shankar articles on Ravi Shankar and link to the others (or to a disambig page) at the top of the page. Under no circumstances can "Ravi Shankar" currently be a redirect, so whichever option we choose, the situation this article was in when I unmoved it is unacceptable. Parenthetical specifiers should be used in article titles only when absolutely necessary. My recommendation is to go with option 2 (which is the current one) rather than force a majority of searchers (the majority that will be looking for this Ravi Shankar) to jump through elaborate disambig hoops just to reach this article; the fewer disambig pages and redirects people are forced to wade through, the better. However, it may also be possible to make a valid case for option 1, which would follow disambiguation procedures, and even though I'd strongly disagree that such measures are necessary in this case, at least option 1 doesn't directly violate the disambiguation guidelines (not to mention common sense!), like the "Ravi Shankar redirects to Ravi Shankar (musician)" situation did. -Silence 18:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Silence. You state that having Ravi Shankar be a redirect to Ravi Shankar (musician) solves absolutely no problems, but creates quite a few. I will try again to explain the problem that it solves. It solves only a problem for editors who are attempting to disambiguate links. An analogy might be as follows. Imagine that you have a large stack of papers that needs to be sorted into two piles. Every day, while you are at lunch, your boss comes into your office and to give you more papers to sort. What you would like is for your boss to leave the unsorted papers in a new stack. The worst situation is to have the new papers randomly mixed into one of the piles. Ravi Shankar links correspond to newly created links that have not been sorted. Ravi Shankar (musician) links correspond to links that have already been sorted.

You also state that this system creates quite a few problems. Could you please try to explain the problems that it creates? Thanks. --BostonMA 18:53, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

"It solves only a problem for editors who are attempting to disambiguate links." - Articles are written for readers, not for editors. No article should ever be named such that it sacrifices simplicity for readers just to assist in a behind-the-scenes redirect-sorting editorial mission. If we're having trouble getting all the links to Ravi Shankar sorted by person, go to the Village Pump or IRC or WikiProject:Disambiguation and ask for help with sorting the links to different Ravi Shankars so we can get enough manpower to get the job down. Don't restructure the names and organization of the article pages themselves just to make it easier for editors to tell which links have and haven't been double-checked for linking to the correct page; that'll just force editors to do even more work in the long run, when it eventually becomes necessary to restore the pages to their proper names. If you feel it is vital to keep track of new links to Shankar, set up a bot or a talkpageps-ace list to double-check new additions; those sorts of methods are non-obtrusive ways to improve link accuracy, and thus are infinitely preferable to methods involving elaborate, counterintuitive, unusual disambiguating and redirection.

"The worst situation is to have the new papers randomly mixed into one of the piles." - No, the worst situation is to sacrifice the product of your job for the sake of making the job itself more expedient, such as by painting all the papers you've finished with purple and all the ones you haven't finished with pink. It may help identify new pages faster, but your boss won't accept soggy purple pages unless he specified that step in the process for you. So, a different way to keep track of the new papers is necessary, one that won't interfere with the quality of the work's result just for the sake of making the work faster. Even interfering with it in such a minor and cosmetic way as changing its color or giving the article a different name is still, when so unusual, roundabout, and seemingly arbitrary, a Very Bad Idea.

"You also state that this system creates quite a few problems. Could you please try to explain the problems that it creates?" Unnecessary redirects, unnecessary parenthetical clauses in article titles. In an ideal world, Wikipedia would have 0 redirects and 0 articles with parentheses in the titles to differentiate between different things with similar names. Both cause unnecessary complication and confusion, and parentheses in particular are unprofessional, bizarre, and POVed (trying to sum up an entire person's life and significance in one or two words is rarely ideal!), and are only ever used simply because there's no better alternative. That reason does not apply here, because there is a vastly better alternative: no parentheses at all for this article, if we're only going to make the original title a redirect to the parenthetical one anyway. I strongly recommend reading through Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation; they'll be able to explain the situation much better than I can. -Silence 21:42, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Oppose — I stated that this was a pointless move the first time the issue came up, but you went ahead and did it anyway. There is already a sufficient difference between Ravi Shankar and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar that there is absolutely no compelling need whatsoever to disambiguate them any further, either with dab pages or parenthetical titles. Yes, BostonMA, disambiguation and redirects always cause problems for editors, but I don't think it's at all fair of you to appeal to editor-friendliness as a reason for moving articles around when you're the one who changed all the links to Ravi Shankar (musician) in the first place, thus instigating the entire problem. And quite unnecessarily so, IMO. Microtonal 21:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. Markedly, and arbitrarily, inconsistent with established Wikipedia:Disambiguation style. Articles only use parentheses when they absolutely must, not just for the heck of it or to assist in a temporary, behind-the-scenes editorial task that shouldn't in any way interject into what Wikipedia's readers see when they search for an article like this. -Silence 21:42, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

To avoid the need to rescan all of the links to Ravi Shankar whenever there is a disambiguation effort, it important to keep the links that have already been sifted through, separate from the links that have not yet been sifted through. Please read discussion in Talk:Ravi Shankar#Disambiguation. BostonMA 01:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects

Some of the objections raised to the proposal seem to be based upon the notion that in an ideal encyclopedia, there would be no redirect pages. Although I have withdrawn my request, I feel that this point deserves to be answered. Redirect pages are very useful to end users. They allow users to access the same article using a variety of different queries. One objection that is commonly raised against redirects is that they burden the servers. The page Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion, a page which I suggest everyone read, contains some significant comments about the cost of redirects:

Redirects are cheap. Redirects take up minimal disk space and use very little bandwidth.

In a slightly different context, Wikipedia:Redirect makes a similar point:

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links [i.e. links to Redirect Pages BostonMA] improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. But because editing a page is thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is actually true.

Thus, I believe that the precept that in an ideal encyclopedia there would be no redirects may be based upon mistaken assumptions. --BostonMA 15:11, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

An ideal encyclopedia would have no redirects because it would exist in an ideal world where every possible name for a subject is immediately obvious and every reader can guess at it correctly the first time around. :) However, I completely agree with your points about the importance and usefulness of redirects in our imperfect world, so I don't think there's any real disagreement regarding this topic. -Silence 03:46, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig Guidelines

I believe that what is best for Wikipedia at the moment is to reduce some of the contention. That is why I have withdrawn my request. However, I do believe that my proposal has merit. One of the arguments that has been raised against having Ravi Shankar as a redirect page to Ravi Shankar (musician), the latter page containing the actual content article, is that this violates disambiguation style guidelines. However, I believe that the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) is not meant to be taken as a strict law, but to allow for alternatives when those alternatives have merit. The final section reads:

Break rule For every style suggestion above, there's some page which has a good reason to do something else. These guidelines are intended for consistency, but usefulness to the reader is the principal goal. So ignore these guidelines if you have a good reason.

I think it is very useful to the reader to have accurate linking. Experience has shown that editors will make links to Ravi Shankar when a person other than the Sitar player is intended. I think there is every reason to believe that new links of this sort will continue to be created. It is a service to the reader to find and correct these links. I therefore think it appropriate for my proposal to be judged on its merits, rather than on conformity with current practice. The style guidelines codify current practice, but also leave room for alternatives when there are good reasons for those alternatives. --BostonMA 17:02, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request Withdrawn by BostonMA

I can see that there are strong feelings about this, so I will withdraw my request. I am however, not convinced by the arguments raised. I fail to see any way in which the user is inconvenienced. Consider Elizabeth II. That is a redirect to Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. I fail to see how the reader is in any way inconvenienced by this fact. I am also unconvinced by the argument that having Ravi Shankar (musician) only helps with a temporary problem. The creation of Naive links is an ongoing process, and the correction of Naive links must therefore be an ongoing process. Finally, I do not agree that "coloring" the papers to be sorted is exactly analogous. To a casual reader, the "coloring" involved in a redirected page is invisible. There are many thousands of redirect pages, and I don't see how those inconvenience anyone. However, again, there appear to be hard feelings, so I withdraw my request. --BostonMA 22:15, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discography

Does anyone else feel like it's a problem that Ravi Shankar's whole discography is linked to amazon.com? (Ngoah89 16:46, 31 May 2006 (UTC))

OK, I think I will work on getting a functional discography going

--Gautam3 20:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

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