Talk:List of Kolkata facts

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[edit] Ronald Ross's mosquitoes!

  • In 1897 Ronald Ross discovered the link between mosquitoes and malaria in Kolkata. - No... he discovered that working in Secunderabad. There is a even a Lab and the Villa he lived in here.... --hydkat 06:56, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Of course Ross stayed in Secundrabad and also carried out many of his experiments, as pointed out here. However, we should remember his discovery was not a Archimedes-Eureka type discovery, that is, it was not that he thought of the mosquito-malaria connection one fine morning. The discovery was the result of relentless research, carried out not only in Secundrabad and Calcutta, but perhaps in many other locations. Read the article in malaria site where it is described how he collected specimens thanks to an assistant in Calcutta. As the several article [1], [2], nobelprize, Britannica, WP, [3], American digest, [4] and many more suggests, he probably first became sure that Anopheles mosquitoes had parasites within them in 1897, while in Secundrabad. He established the complete life cycle and further proved the relation later in 1898 in Calcutta. Anyway, I again emphasize, monumental works like this is usually done in a continuum, rather then piecemeal. I do not think the line has to be changed in the article, whereas Secunderabad or trivia on the city should mention that the initial clues were discovered there, even better, it was discovered that probablr parasites (not sure till then) was found for the first time inside the Anopheles mosquitoes. Thanks.--Dwaipayanc 07:36, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for the info.... and wow! you did research this throughly didn't you? Well Ronald Ross is important to Secunderabad, the maintenance of the villa he stayed in, his lab (which was a responsibility of Osmania University) came up in a newspaper article some years ago. (sorry I don't have a reference...) --hydkat 09:13, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some points to ponder

  • William Makepeace Thackeray, Vikram Seth, Bharati Mukherjee, Suketu Mehta, Sasthi Brata among others, were born in Calcutta.

=> True. But this is just a list of famous people who were born in Calcutta, but worked/stayed elsewhere. If we merge this article with 'Kolkata' and if we want to keep this bullet, I would suggest adding (in another sentence or bullet) some names who were not born in Calcutta, but made it their home/workplace, like Mother Teresa or Sister Nivedita. Alternatively, add a link to the page which lists famous residents of Calcutta (I think I saw that page, but don't remember the url)

  • The Indian Botanical Gardens at Shibpur, near the Bengal Engineering College, is home of the world's largest banyan tree(the banyan tree with the biggest girth), according to the Guinness Book of Records. It is reputed to be over 240 years old. [5]

=> These are not part of Calcutta. However, its OK to mention it if we mention that these are in Calcutta's twin city: Howrah.

  • Kolkata is sister city to Long Beach, California.

=> This wiki page on sister cities of Asian cities, show Karachi also as Calcutta's sister.

  • Kolkata was the original headquarters of IBM Corporation in India before shifting to Bangalore on its return to operations in the country.

=> True but unimportant info. Should be deleted.

  • I would also suggest clubbing the last two bullets on in-vitro fertilization.

GDibyendu (talk) 16:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The first point you mention about the people born in Kolkata, rather we should delete that.
IBM headquarters trivia- should be deleted, too.
Sister city - reference needed.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:23, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AfD?

Hi! Yes, the trivia issue is always bothering! So, Aditya and GDibyendu, what do you recommend? An AfD? Personally, I would like to this article to stay. However, the usual wp policy against trivia makes it tough. And it is not possible to incorporate all the trivia mentioned here in the article Kolkata, although it is possible to incorporate almost everything in several Kolkata-related (or, unrelated) articles.--Dwaipayan (talk) 16:52, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Trivia is discouraged in WP. This entry might violate NPOV and better to merge with Kolkata--NAHID 18:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Ignorance bothers me so much. There has been this debate on trivias, and an entire wikiproject dedicated to trivia, and still people pop in to say "trivia is discouraged in wikipedia". This simplemindedness is going to be the ruins of wikipedia someday I'm afraid. Anyways, the only troble I see is with the title of the article. I have seen it happening quite often. Remove trivia from the title, and the article is saved from simple minds who just look for the word (i.e. trivia) they learned on policy pages.
Trivia is not discouraged here, it's the trivia that sticks out as trivia with a label stuck on their forehead. I would have changed the title myself if I could've though one up. It would also need a summary introduction, which I couldn't due to my strong POV about the city of Kolkata. But, it would be very sad to have all the great news about the city dispersed and scattered over fifty different articles, making it virtually inaccessible as a whole.
There is nothing wrong with notability or reliability of the information here. And, therefore it would be mindless wastage of time and energy fighting people who only reads the policies without understanding the spirit. The solution s simple - change the title and add a lead section. Aditya(talk • contribs) 20:10, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Hehe :) This is very true, Aditya. Hmm, adding a lead—I'll try. Indeed, you can start, despite your PoV.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry Aditya, I beg to differ. While it is true that trivia isn't discouraged here, a collection of random trivial facts without any context whatsoever to link them together is discouraged. No one is questioning the reliability of the info (though the article can do with more sourcing), people are questioning what value does having a handful of bulleted points give? Providing a lead and renaming will not solve that problem (though it might enough sugar-coating to hide that, apparently). Rather the statements should be linked together by some means of common thread - an organized collection of facts is infintely more interesting to read. Something like the points about Ronald Ross, Wilhelm Siemens, Subhash Mukhopadhyay and Amitava Bannerjee points could be clubbed in a timeline of scientific achievements. Similarly other groupings can be created like oldest monuments/living beings/constructions/whatever in Kolkata. And where nothing else is found, add more context in terms of prose. Organization is the solution here, I feel, not deletion. And change the title: you advertise it as trivial, you will get deletion noms. :-P --soum talk 16:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
How very true. I have fought against deletion of two articles marked as trivia so far. One has emerged with a keep verdict, the other discussion is also looking positive so far. In both cases I had to reorganize and expand the articles. In this case we may also have to change the lead. I thought of Kolkata Highlights, but that too advertises trivia. I thought I need is an appropriate title to start on the work, and was waiting for one to come my way. Should I rather start working on the article now and see what title emerges from the copy? May be I'm going to do just that. In a day or two. Thanks. Aditya(talk • contribs) 16:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I have nothing against trivia, but all of this information is already in the Kolkata article, which is where it belongs. I don't know why someone even created this page, unless it was just to remove a trivia section. This information is redundant. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 09:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

No, the information contained in this article is not present in the article Kolkata. So far as I remember, this article was created, indeed, to remove a trivia section from Kolkata article. However, that's about two years back. After that, Kolkata article underwent major changes, and became an FA. This article also underwent changes. The information in this article is not redundant.--Dwaipayan (talk) 11:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Did you check? I didn't check everything, but the bit about the oldest golf course, the oldest museum, the sister city, and a few others were in the Kolkata article. It may have been removed from the Kolkata article two years back but someone added it again. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 19:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Title

How about "Kolkata milestones"? Somewhat into reorganization and expansion I have this feeling that this article is destined to go that way. "Kolkata highlights" could be another suggestion, but that smells too much like another "trivia" article. Aditya(talk • contribs) 16:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Infinitely better, the article has become. Okay, no more Yoda-isms. But, hey, you deserve at least a few pats on the back, if nothing more. As far as the title goes, (IMO) since this is not a prose-heavy article, a title that suggests so would be better. Something like "List of (or Timeline of) milestones in history of Kolkata" - lot more communicative of the intent than "Kolkata milestones" even though a lot less glamorous.
Also throwing in a few relevant pictures here and there would jazz up the article and break monotony. You might want to consider using {{Graphical timeline}} for certain things as well. --soum talk 16:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I would suggest changing the title to List of Kolkata facts. This article lacks prose, and it would be hard to string together all these random facts, thus it is unlikely to ever develop prose. "List" articles are perfectly acceptable in WP, but "trivia" articles are certainly targets for deletion. However, if we can tolerate List of Homer Simpson's jobs (nominated for deletion twice) I think List of Kolkata facts is acceptable. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 09:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok so I couldn't resist changing it, if anyone disagrees feel free to change it back. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 09:59, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I also made lots of improvments to the article (can you tell I was bored?). Looks like parts of it were written by someone who wasn't a native speaker of english. I also fixed some cites and added new ones, I almost cited every fact... but lots of the older ones were dead links. Might wanna check them. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 11:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)