Talk:Jainism and non-creationism

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	Jainism and non-creationism was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
October 17, 2007 Good article nominee Not listed

Jainism and non-creationism has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

	Jainism Portal This article is part of WikiProject Jainism, an attempt to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referencing between pages dealing with Jainism. Please participate by editing the article Jainism and non-creationism, or visit the project page for more details on the projects. Guidelines: Manual of Style - Naming conventions
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

[edit] Rating of this Article without providing the reasons

Hi, Thanks for your contribution to Project Jainism. Please discuss on What basis you have rated the article as Start Class article. I believe that it should be rated atleast "GA" or "B" class and has a potential to be FA with some corrections. Your failure to respond will result in changing it to GA class. I am also copying it in talk pages of Jainism_and_non-creationism for records. Please discuss the same for Nathuram_Premi--Anish Shah 06:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I personally believe that this is a B-class article, but it is a far cry from being GA. A Good Article would have virtually no easily noticeable grammatical errors, a few pictures, possibly in infobox (if there is one for the topic), and it should be formatted better. Also, remember that GA-class articles normally go through an intensive nomination process. However, it is much better than Start class. A few pictures (I don't think an infobox would work here) could easily make this a B-class article. I would like to hear User:Warlordjohncarter's input. --Qmwne235 17:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments were left on the peer review subpage earlier. It is the case that the difference between grades is a difficult one, and this could be seen as either a high-"Start" or a low-"B". Personally, I've always tried to take the more cautious, and thus lower, ranking, but I can see how it others would disagree. John Carter 18:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I think B-class seems to be fair enough unless more improvements as suggested are carried out.--Anish Shah 18:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peer Review Comments

Article markedly lacks inline citations. All quotes in particular should be directly cited. Generally, at least one such citation per paragraph are sought, and the "Jaina Conception of Divinity" section and its first three subsections each completely lack for such citations. Some sort of image, and I grant the difficulty of finding such an image in this case, would be desirable as well. Article lacks several internal links to other articles, including such important links as to the Dharma article. The presence of such links in the sidebar does not remove the desirability for similar links in the text as well. Also, the presence of extensive quotes is generally seen to detract from the encyclopedic quality of an article, such as the extensive quote in the "Jaina criticism of the creationist viewpoint" heading. Such quotes are one of the reasons Wikiquote exists. On the same topic, that heading could be reasonably shortened to something like "Jaina opposition to creationism", which would be rather a bit more clearly NPOV. There are also some other POV possibilities in the article. the last sentence of the last paragraph of "The Theory of Material Cause and Effect" is another such instance. Some phrasing, such as "many Jains are know to worship to such gods", is at best awkward and deters to a degree from clarity. The claim that it should be rated "at least GA" is clearly not born out by the possibility of so many weaknesses. Also, I make a point of not rating any article that has not already been nominated for GA as such, leaving that more formal process to others. And please note that it is one of the rules of the GA process, as per Wikipedia:Good article candidates#How to review an article, that individuals who have contributed to the creation of an article are not supposed to determine whether an article meets GA criteria or not. If you believe that the article does meet GA criteria, of course, please feel free to nominate it. John Carter 13:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I would rather not nominate it as I have been a significant contributor to this article and would appreciate improvements on it.

I am not able to understand your comment -"Article markedly lacks inline citations. All quotes in particular should be directly cited.". Can you please provide some example. As to your other concerns, I will copy it on talk pages and try to resolve it.--Anish Shah 04:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

• In response to John Carters comment :- "Also, the presence of extensive quotes is generally seen to detract from the encyclopedic quality of an article" let me add that todays Featured Article William Tecumseh Sherman contains quotations in 7 places, some of them are quite long.

• I have added links where I felt they were required. However the Dharma link is not required as this is Dharma-tattva (Medium of Motion) and not dharma (religion) as commonly understood.

• I have added images that I felt will add value to the article. Thanks for the tip both of you.

• The last line in Material Cause and Effect is as per the logical arguement in Samaysara 1st Century Jaina Scripture. I have also given it as a citation and hence cannot be a POV. Maybe I will re-phrase.

• The heading "Jaina criticism of the creationist viewpoint" has been amended as suggested. I guess the new heading is better tahn the last one.

• I have particularly taken care of spellings by using diacritic marks for sanskrit/ Prakrit words.

• Please feel free to change any grammatical mistakes that may be noticed.--Anish Shah 13:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Response on merging this Article with Jain cosmology

Hi Dab, this is with reference to your proposal to merge the article “Jainism and non-creationism” with “Jain cosmology”. At the time of creation of this article, I had originally considered putting up this article either with “Jain Cosmology” or with “God in Jainism”, as the issues are related. However, I felt that a new article tackling the issue of non-creationism in Jainism would be better served if a separate article is created. Following are the reasons:

• Jain cosmology deals with the Jaina time cycle and the Jain conception of universe.
• On the other hand, “Jainism and non-creationism” is focused on the non-creationism aspect of Jainism with reference to the “Jaina concept of Universe”, “Jaina concept of reality”, “Concept of divinity”, “Nature of Karmas” and the theory of “material cause and effect”.
• Please note that the “Concept of divinity”, “Nature of Karmas” and the theory of “material cause and effect” which are necessary to understand the non-creationism cannot fit into Jain cosmology.
• The criticisms of Creationism and non-creationism in other Indian philosophies with reference to Jainism also does not fit into the topic of Jain cosmology.
• Jain Cosmology should ideally discuss in detail the reals in Jain philosophy like matter, time, medium of motion, medium of rest and space which are not required to be discussed in detail in Jainism and non-creationism.
• Merging of these two articles will create an unnecessary clutter without focus.

Hence in my opinion, Jainism and non-creationism” with “Jain cosmology” should not be merged.--Anish 04:47, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

at present, this article is in violation of WP:CFORK, since it essentially rehashes the topic of Jainism in general. If you can reduce it to a strictly limited discussion of "Jainism and non-creationism", based on sources that directly address Jainism and non-creationism, that would be perfect. Pending that, we need to merge it to avoid the curse of unmaintainable redundancy. Note that Jain cosmology is in bad shape itself, and should rather be merged into this article than vice versa, but its title is more comprehensive and thus better suited. dab (𒁳) 13:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

• Dab, the topic of creationism and non-creationism seems to be quite popular in wikipedia also. It should be noted that besides Buddhism, Jainism is perhaps the only major religion that believes in a non-creating deity and hence it is important to bring out this in form of a separate article. Like I said before, Jain cosmology is a separate topic itself having volumes of books written on it. The fact that the article is in a bad shape, does not mean that Jainism and non-creationism should be cannibalised and merged in it. Both issues need to be dealt with separately.
• One needs a reasonable understanding of Jain doctrine to understand this aspect. The fact that you deleted the “medium of rest” suggests that you do not have a full understanding on this concept. Please note that Jainism categorises the medium of motion and medium of rest separately while modern science categorises it as one.
• This article is not in violation of WP:FORK. I have given the reasons. Hope that you have read it. In fact it is in line with WP:REL and WP:SUMMARY. Obviously this article is likely to draw from the existing topics of Jainism as it is from the perspective of Jainism. For eg. Sub-section on karma will draw from main article in a summary form, giving a link to the main article.
• The sub-topics, of Divinity in Jainism and Karma in Jainism do not stray from the main topic of non-creationism in Jainism as basic understanding of god and karma in Jainism is required to understand why Jainism adheres to non-creationism. Think of the non-jains who may read this article. They would be in a better positioning to understand as to why “Jainism subscribes to non-creationism” if these related concepts are explained rather than simply limiting the article to only discussion on sources that address the non-creation aspect. For eg. The fact that karma is the regulating principle in the destiny of individuals and God has no role in it is a concept related to non-creationism. Maybe we can re-word the two sections if you feel that they have strayed from the main topic.--Anish 06:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article rating

It should be noted that the GA rating is really reserved only for those articles which have received that rating through Wikipedia:Good articles. This article has not received that rating from that body. That rating is received by nominating it for GA status at Wikipedia:Good article nominations. Only after receiving an affirmative review should any article be given the GA class marking. On that basis, I am changing the assessment rating to "B" until such time as it has been approved for it by the appropriate entity. At this point, the article does not seem to have even been nominated, let alone approved, for receiving GA status. It should also be noted that the rules of Good articles state that only someone who has not contributed to the article can make such a review. John Carter 16:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Quickfail

[edit] Failed "good article" nomination

Upon its review on October 17, 2007, this good article nomination was quick-failed because it:

contains cleanup banners including, but not limited to, {{cleanup}}, {{wikify}}, {{NPOV}}, {{unreferenced}}, etc, or large numbers of {{fact}}, {{clarifyme}}, {{huh}}, or similar tags

thus making it ineligible for good article consideration.

This article did not receive a thorough review, and may not meet other parts of the good article criteria. It contains two "off topic" tags, which count among the clean up tags. Also fails the stability criterion, since there are also two merge requests for this article. I encourage you to remedy this problem (and any others) and resubmit it for consideration. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to have it reassessed. Thank you for your work so far.— Cheers, CP 20:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)