Wikipedia talk:Notice board for Bangladesh-related topics

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This is a page to discuss Bangladesh related articles. To discuss the project itself, please, go to the project discussion page. The discussions that you start here may be moved to the discussion forums, depending upon the need, importance or the intensity of the discussion. If you shift any discussion to another page, move the entire discussion, and leave {{discussion at|target discussion page#target header}} tag under the header of the relevant discussion. Fill in the target parameter with appropriate names.

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[edit] hindi wiki

What material is a must for bangladesh on hindi wiki? I can create a large number of stubs in a short amount of time.T*E*H Kingrom 02:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

If you start Bangladesh Liberation War, that will keep you occupied for a while. Hindi-speakers, presumably being from Central India, will probably not be very happy with the NPOV version we have reached over such a long period of time! Other good articles to consider are Bangladesh, Bangladesh Language Movement, History of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Cricket Board, Cox's Bazar, History of Bengal, etc. =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.159.126.181 (talk) 07:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Updating the mother article

The Commonwealth Yearbook 2006 is available on the net, and it has a wealth of updated information on Bangladesh, the mother article for this project. Aditya(talk • contribs) 16:21, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reunion of Bangladeshi Wikipedians

Time to organize a Reunion/meeting for the Bangladeshi Wikipedians by the valid authority. Think about it. Thank you. --Farsad (talk) 13:02, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

There is no valid authority. We are all volunteers here. But, well, Bangladeshi Wikipedians do meet quite regularly in Dhaka. You can ask User:Tarif Ezaz or User:Bellayet for the time and venue of the next meet. Aditya(talk • contribs) 14:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Serious need of attention

Attention all active members
The List of Bangladesh-related topics is in serious need of attention. The tasks I can see right away are:

  1. Inclusion (many, a great many number of articles are not included)
  2. Categorization (the current sections and what follows is a bit haphazard, and will probably crumble when new articles are added)
  3. Indexing (a nice little piece code-wizardry may be needed to make all the thousands of bluelinks)
  4. List of lists (a proper place for the list of lists)
  5. Cleanup (obviously the redlinks would be better positioned on the article request page)
  6. Making it an integral part of the Bangladesh Portal and the Bangladesh WikiProject)

This list is the central index to Bangladesh related articles, and the most gateway to easy access of the articles. It demands a high priority. Aditya(talk • contribs) 13:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I would love to focus on this page if someone can help me understand what is the difference between this page and Category:Bangladesh. I feel that the categorization is a wikipedia wide standard of title listing and hence we should focus on that rather than on this list. Arman (Talk) 03:21, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Yippee! There is a whole WikiProject - Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics - dedicated to these type of lists. Now I can seek help there. Aditya(talk • contribs) 13:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stranded Pakistanis, Biharis or Bihari Muslims?

Yes all three exist, carrying different project-banners for WikiProject Ethnic groups, WikiProject Cold War, WikiProject Pakistan and WikiProject Bangladesh. I have proposed a merger of all three, but what would the title be? As soon we can decide on the title, I can volunteer to do the merging. I am posting to all of the WikiProjects for a solution, but it would be better to have a centralized discussion. Aditya(talk • contribs) 13:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Photos from Flickr: easy upload using the upload service

I found this uploader tool from Wikimedia toolserver: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~bryan/flickr/upload

It allows us to search for Creative commons licensed images from Flickr. By using keywords like "Bangladesh" "Dhaka" etc., I found a lot of photos from flickr which can be used at commons.

The tool also allows you to directly upload photos to commons without downloading them to your machine. Please try out the tool. Don't forget to add Category:Bangladesh or any other sharper cat to all the images. --Ragib (talk) 07:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A question for the Admins / Experienced users

I understand that all works by US Government are in the public domain. Does that include works of / sponsored by US embassies? More specifically US Embassy, Bnagladesh site has several reports on Bangladesh under - Key State Department Reports - section. Are these public domain materials? Can we freely copy paste text from these reports into wikipedia articles? Arman (Talk) 13:16, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Feb 21 FA

FYI. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/requests#February_21, and comment on the nomination. --Ragib (talk) 08:25, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vanity articles in subcats of Category:Bangladeshi people

I noticed several non notable entries in the subcategories of Category:Bangladeshi people. In many cases, the subject himself/herself added a vainty biography.

For example:

  • Mesbah Uddin - a non-notable blogger (the article text is definitely from himself)
  • Ahmede Hussain non-notable writer/journalist.

Please take a look at the category, and also prod/afd such nn entries. It is difficult for non-Bangladeshis to distinguish between the notable, and the vanity-bios, so Bangladeshi wikipedians can take an active part here. Please see WP:N for notability guidelines.(in particular, self published novels/books do not make someone notable. --Ragib (talk) 00:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] WP Bangladesh: Articles of unclear notability

Hello,

there are currently 10 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of 12 March 2008 and may be slightly outdated.)

I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:46, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I have tried AFD for many of these articles. The problem is, during many deletion debates, editors outside Bangladesh, with no idea of who is notable and who is not in Bangladesh, would argue for keeping the articles based on a few trivial mentions in newspapers. A prime example is M A Haque, who is a non-notable politician, yet the article was "kept" because of a few trivial newspaper mentions. --Ragib (talk) 18:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Muktadhara

This article is up for AFD and input from the Bangladesh wikiproject editors will be valuable. Abecedare (talk) 02:17, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rajshahi University

Rajshahi University has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

[edit] Kazi Nazrul Islam on FAR

Kazi Nazrul Islam has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use of "freedom fighter" and "martyr"

Seems to be pretty prevalent among anti-British colonials and Bengali Language Movement and 1971 Bangladesh Independence articles to describe the Indians and Bengalis respectively. Is there a lack of awareness of WP:WTA or is there an agreement somewhere subcontinental articles are allowed to use these terms? Some of these were even put in by people with FA credits! Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:28, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Please be specific and address issues on a case by case basis. I see that you have already made some changes in some articles - which is welcome, but let's not make a generalized comment without analyzing the context. I just checked the article on Bengali Language Movement. It does not use the word freedom fighter. It uses the word Martyr in three specific contexts:
  1. to give an English Translation of the term "Shaheed Minar" which is the official name of a monument,
  2. to give an English Translation of the term "Shaheed Dibosh" which is the official name of public holiday in Bangladesh, and
  3. to describe the symbolic meaning of the pillars of "Shaheed Minar".
None of these uses are specifically referring to any person as Martyr from the narrator's side, as such I don't think there is any issue in any of these usage. But if you disagree please raise the issue in specific article's talk page. Arman (Talk) 09:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the specific issues with regard to translation etc, but as a non-involved ignoramus on these issues, I'd reinforce that these words have generalised meanings in English that contravene POV. If there are specific issues with regard to translations, I suggest you find alternative words or are very careful to indicate that you're translating, backing up with RS. Just about anyone can be described as a "freedom fighter" or "martyr", even if they were utterly obnoxious appallingly inhuman beasts (which I'm not saying these people were - you get my point); the policy exists for good reason and should be stuck to. --Dweller (talk) 08:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, but it seems to me I must have miscommunicated the point about translation. When we are talking about a "Monument" - not a person, and the name of the monument is Shaheed Minar which literally means Martyr Monument, then there cannot be any POV issue, whatsoever, to say in simple words that the monument is called Martyr Monument. It is simply the name of a physical object - a verifiable fact - not a point of view. Questioning the use of the word "Martyr" in the name of a monument is analogous to saying - we cannot call "Statue of Liberty" by the name because the word Liberty carries POV. Arman (Talk) 09:14, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I think you're right that there's no problem in that particular article, other than some dodgy use of apostrophes - is it Martyrs' (for more than one Martyr) or Martyr's (for one) - the article is inconsistent. I read Blnguyen's comment as referring to a gamut of articles on a topic, not specifically in the main article on that topic. --Dweller (talk) 11:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for potentially being confusing. I meant the BLM topic in general, not specifically the BLM article. I went to a few articles on the template which had "...was a martyr" in the lead as Wikipedia narrative/POV and changed it to "...was a protestor killed in the BLM demonstrations" and in some cases for freedom fighter. I didn't change anything for proper nouns like "Shaheed Minaar" or "Martyrs' Monument" or the names of any official Bangladeshi award. If I was proposing this I would have just removed it already to see what people think. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:31, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Pretty interesting, this is. Why do you think Bangladesh and India articles has more abundant use of the words "freedom fighters" or "martyrs" than articles related to other countries? Partly because of different linguistic paradigms, as Bengali or Hindi doesn't necessarily cringe or shudder at the local equivalents for these words, and they represent much weaker POVs than the English terms. Partly it is because, as a result of more universality of the usage of the terms in mainstream media, the POVs are hardly noticeable to most Bangladeshi or Indian editors, including people with FA credits. It is probably a matter of more depth than we are giving it a credit for, as Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia for all. Hence, particular cultural contexts are not to be discounted when discussing POVs or anything else.
Every word carries a set of associations, a gestalt, and therefore a set of POVs. But, to people coming from different linguistic or cultural contexts these POVs can vary greatly. Let's say, for example, a "large" animal to a Micronesian may represent anything bigger than a house pet, while to a North-East Indian the same term of a "large" animal may represent nothing smaller than a two-ton buffalo. Unless we are ready to dispense with all adjectives and adverbs unless they are quantified, some of these POVs may remain fine, even as part of FAs. There has to be a bigger discussion to have a consensus about this, one that includes more people with an understanding of how cultures and contexts interact with linguistic inclinations. English is no more the "colonial" language it used to be, and hence a North Atlantic bias may not be very helpful (just to explain myself, I am not referring to any person o comment here when I speak of a bias, as it is a much generalized observation).
I understand that the understanding of terms "freedom fighter" and "martyrs" are developed on the Wikipedia as a result of conflicting POVs, some with radical tendencies, others with national pride. While I don't see any reason to subscribe to national pride or radical tendencies, I also see no point in trivializing (again, no offense, please, as it is a general observation) the cultural paradigm of about 2 billion people in deciding the fate of a few terms in a few articles on the Wikipedia. Aditya(talk • contribs) 03:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I'd rather refrain from commenting on why different groups have different tendencies to use such terms for the time being. Nevertheless Australian soldiers who repelled Japanese invasions during WWI are never called "freedom fighters" or "martyrs" in general textbooks. Le Thanh Tong is regarded as one of Vietnam's greatest (successful) emperors by all historians (in terms of success) - he greatly expanded Vietnam's territory, through military conquest - Vietnamese historians regularly put him on a pedestal - I'm sure the Champa would think otherwise. Likewise, Vietnamese people don't think very highly of Chinese emperors who conquered Vietnam, although a Chinese historian is likely to regard the said emperor as greatly advancing civilisation. That's why relativistic terms like ff and martyr aren't recommended. A Shia might think that Revolutionary Guards of Iran are ff/m but the opposite side most definitely not. In most cases, its pretty obvious who thinks which side is ff anyway , depending on their ethnic group/country/religion. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Saying that a person engaged in military activities to achieve a certain objective tells the same thing as to their activities. And if you think that ff is NPOV, then is there a problem with saying "independence fighter" unless you think that "if" is less stunning? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't see how by not using "freedom fighter" that one denigrates the nationhood aspirations of Bengalis or cheapens the deaths of independence fighters. Or that European thinking is trying to run down Bengalis and Indians. Western textbooks generally refer to French and other European militias that fought Nazi annexation as "resistance fighters" not as "freedom fighters". The European articles aren't using grandiose language while denying it to Asian articles. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:21, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
And another thing, in articles like Phan Dinh Phung, Truong Dinh, etc I never referred to them as "freedom fighters" and "martyrs" although almost all Vietnamese textbooks would regard them in equivalent terms, so I am not running down subcontinental anti-colonials any more than any other anti-colonials. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Even the "independence fighter" (apart from being awkward) may not be universally accepted. Say, we use it to describe a Bangladeshi guerrilla who fought in the 1971 South Asian War against Pakistan Army. Would it be acceptable to a large number of Pakistani people with enough influence on media who consider the cessation of East Pakistan to form a new country as just that, cessation? Would it be acceptable to the leftist movers in India who consider a dependence on global capital as less than independence?
Besides, what leads you to think that "independence" is less POV than "freedom"? It's nice to quote and compare, and not reflect on the issue. Like most things probably that would get a majority approval as well. But, deciding that "independence" is fine, while "freedom" is not, though their dictionary meaning is so very similar, may be tricky, bordering on arbitrary.
I am not for or against a censorship on any word, term, epithet or qualifier as long there is ample reason. The only good reason I have seen so far (not limited to this thread) is a need to resolve conflicts and discourage extreme views. If schoolbooks from one country do something that is in contrast to another country, we may discard both POVs (while Australia has more GDP per person, India has more persons in general... sorry, couldn't help that one). If you are sincerely against POVs, and have a philosophical stance (which I believe you have), please, also take a look at the plethora of POVs mild and bold (sometimes even silly, like Category:Terrorists) present all over the Wikipedia. You'll be really surprised to find how loose the idea of POV in words and terms is.
And, oh, I have nothing against your removal of "freedom fighters" or "martyrs" from any article, including those that relate to Bangladesh or India. It's the reasoning that I find really uncomfortable, not the action. It's not about running down something or someone, as I earnestly believe in you sincerity and capacity (and I would always love to come back to you for advise and help). Rather it's about value attribution to words and terms, which is in line with Northern-Western popular practices of the current times. Aditya(talk • contribs) 05:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
BTW, I forgot to clarify one misunderstanding. None of my comments here was ever about political sentiments (i.e. "the nationhood aspirations of Bengalis or cheapens the deaths of independence fighters"). My only point is the way of using language. While Europeans may find "resistance" an acceptable term, because it is in their schoolbooks, Indians and Bangladeshis may have the same reason to believe that "freedom" is an acceptable term. I'd really prefer to keep politics out of this discussion. Aditya(talk • contribs) 06:00, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I interpreted you comments about cultural differences incorrectly. I thought that your "trivialising" comment was a complaint that I was disrespecting the memory of the dead soldiers and sovereignty. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:49, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I second Aditya's last comment above. Personally, I don't see any difference between using "Independence" in place of "Freedom" ... and the terms are used interchangeably in English-language textbooks of South Asia. --Ragib (talk) 06:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

(Comment interfere) - In the case that people on the subcontinent do not see any difference between freedom and independence, then hopefully you have no objection to the substitution of independence instead, since for a lot of people, and almost universally in the the western world, people consider ff to be the diametric opposite of terrorist "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" is a common saying, which means that people consider it to be a bit of a marketing junket. So if using the word independence doesn't make a difference, then I can't see what the problem is because, for the general readership, more people would likely be turned off by it. In most wars these days, both sides are always accusing each other of war crimes etc. People would likely to read and be impacted by hardcore statistics than qualitative things that might lead them to assume that they are reading some PR spin. I think simply saying upfront that the Pakistan killed 10% of the population, raped 2% of all women, burned down 30% of all villages, disemboweled 10% of all pregnant women and so forth. It seems as though the sources are there to support such a death toll and it is more likely to make readers remember such unfortunate and wanton loss of human life. In modern times, people have been generally less accepting of high death tolls than in previous times in wars and such and people are using hyperbole like genocide/warcrimes/ff etc even in small military actions when only a few hundred-few thousand people die (which is a few thousand too many already) and where random mass-bombing/scorched-earth/large scale death-camps/demolishing entire cities are not used. So actually using raw statistics is better. And, I'm not assuming that anyone has come to the conclusion that I support Pakistani policy from 1971 or British Raj or slaughtering and raping entire villages; I don't. A person who doesn't know history will be more likely to read something if it seems to take less of a judgmental/cheerleading/battlecry tone, more likely to learn from the horrors of mass wars and wanton killing, so that it isn't repeated in the past. Perhaps to a subcontinental reader, it wouldn't make any difference, but for a lot of people, they would just assume that it is nonsense and not believe it; then the people would never read the raw data and learn about history. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:23, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
"In the case that people on the subcontinent do not see any difference between freedom and independence, then hopefully you have no objection to the substitution of independence instead, since for a lot of people, and almost universally in the the western world, people consider ff to be the diametric opposite of terrorist" - pretty long, pretty sarcastic, but of little use. Let's make a reference to the White People of the West [who] taint the reasoning here. The online version of Webster's Dictionary explains "freedom" and "independence" as following:
  • Freedom: 1: the quality or state of being free: as a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care> d: ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom> e: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken <answered with freedom> f: improper familiarity g: boldness of conception or execution h: unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home> 2 a: a political right b: franchise, privilege[1]
  • Independence: 1: the quality or state of being independent2archaic : competence 1 [2]
  • Independent: 1: not dependent: as a (1): not subject to control by others : self-governing (2): not affiliated with a larger controlling unit <an independent bookstore> b (1): not requiring or relying on something else : not contingent <an independent conclusion> (2): not looking to others for one's opinions or for guidance in conduct (3): not bound by or committed to a political party c (1): not requiring or relying on others (as for care or livelihood) <independent of her parents> (2): being enough to free one from the necessity of working for a living <a person of independent means> d: showing a desire for freedom <an independent manner> e (1): not determined by or capable of being deduced or derived from or expressed in terms of members (as axioms or equations) of the set under consideration; especially : having linear independence <an independent set of vectors> (2): having the property that the joint probability (as of events or samples) or the joint probability density function (as of random variables) equals the product of the probabilities or probability density functions of separate occurrence 2capitalized : of or relating to the Independents3 a: main 5 <an independent clause> b: neither deducible from nor incompatible with another statement <independent postulates> [3]
Would you prefer to forward another meaning? And, oh, I really hope we can keep politics out of this discussion. Please, keep it out. Political biases are not everything. Aditya(talk • contribs) 09:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Independence in the case of wars means national sovereignty. Nothing is ambigiuous about this. "Freedom" means a lot of things and has a righteous tone. How many journal papers use independence and how many use freedom? Why are you complaining about sarcasm when you are going "And, oh" in that tone? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Not that my "sarcastic comment" is actually in the freedom fighter article - so it's not a jibe that I made up. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as "nationalist pov" goes, I'd suggest Blnguyen to also consider nationalist POV in other articles, for example "Patriot groups", used in American Revolution. That article freely uses "Patriot" to depict one of the factions of the revolution. This appears to be common usage in the US or western media. The term "Freedom fighter" is an equally used and common term in Bangladesh and India. So, why is there a POV in the usage of "Freedom fighter" and NOT a POV in the usage of "Patriot groups"? --Ragib (talk) 06:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Patriot happens to be linked to Patriot (American Revolution), which it says is the self-styled name of the independence fighters. So this is demarcated as a proper noun. This is the same as Mukti Bahini and Bir_Bikrom, being proper nouns that have equivalent meanings. If you say "Lt. Bose was a Mukti Bahini and Bir Bikrom" then it is clearly in the sense of proper noun, not a generality. The use of patriot is currently as a generality. So if you say "Col X, the leader of Mukti Bahini" that's the same. So the use of "Patriot" in that article has no more POV than using the linked proper nouns for "Mukti Bahini" in the Bengali articles, which nobody is objecting to. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:41, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
What are we trying to achieve here byt replacing "freedom" with "independence", and calling it "removal of Bengali nationalistic POV"? Aditya(talk • contribs) 06:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I think I'm conforming to WP:WTA. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
That would be applying a rule while violating its spirit. Are we assuming that since Patriot, which has an article related to the American "Revolution", is a proper noun because it is in English, and Mukti Bahini, which has an article related to Bangladesh "Liberation" War, is not as it is non-English word, though it translates as "Freedom Fighting Force"? This stand is getting increasingly indefensible, particularly in the context of mass edits against the particular usage without a consensus. Aditya(talk • contribs) 06:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it is. If you write "X is a member of the Mukti Bahini (Bengali:Freedom Fighters)" then it is on the same boat as the attributed POV of the patriots. That phrasing makes it pretty clear that the moral authority is self-styled POV. If you write "X is a freedom fighter of the Mukti Bahini" then the freedom fighter is not presented as a proper noun and therefore a POV/slogan. Secondly I am not violating the spirit of the law, because I haven't reinstated any POV terms. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:59, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I never said that Mukti Bahini is not a proper noun. It is. Saying "freedom fighter" in general in lower caps is a non-proper noun as general usage which becomes Wikipedia POV. Also, I am not seeing a Wikipedia consensus to say that subcontinent articles are exempt from WP:WTA. To the best of my knowledge, WikiProjects can't make their own policies on NPOV that bypass global WP policy. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:32, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
What you have suggested in your last two comments warrants capitalization of Freedom Fighter and linking it as Freedom Fighter, not wholesale replacement. The reductive/destructive edits you made instead of taking the additive/constructive way is not a way to build consensus, looks kind of biased and violates the disclaimer that lies at the top of WP:WTA, the "style guideline" you quote - "it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception". And, that attempt at slighting this discussion (i.e. "To the best of my knowledge, WikiProjects can't make their own policies on NPOV that bypass global WP policy") is not appreciated. Please, go through Wikipedia policies and guidelines to find that absolutions are not really encouraged. Evrything is open to interpretation, even by individual editors. WP:BURO clearly says - "Follow the spirit, not the letter, of any rules, policies and guidelines if you feel they conflict. If the rules prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, you should ignore them". Wikiprojects can and do interpret the commandments as appropriate. When this discussion started I saw no problems with your actions, but, in light of the sarcasm, politicizing and an unwarranted edit blitz (including reverts), there may have been something wrong with my optical faculties. Aditya(talk • contribs) 08:47, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it does. "Patriot" appears to be the common/official name, even if people do not agree with it or take it as a joke. For example, the Taliban used the words "Buddha" ("The Awakened One") when they talked about the destruction of the Buddhist material, such as the Bamiyan Buddhas, even though they actually consider Buddhism to be satanism and so forth. All English textbooks use Mahatma Gandhi even though they might still want to colonise the subcontinent. People use Asoka the Great and Alexander the Great because it is basically common parlance even among opponents. During the cold war, the books and media in the Western World and even government sources still used People's Liberation Army and People's Army of Vietnam even though they likely said "The People's Liberation Army is oppressing Tibetans" and “The People’s Army of Vietnam has enslaved their southern compatriots” and “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a totalitarian regime” and “The Buddha promotes falsehood and idolatry” – so in the case of Patriots, Mahatma, Buddha, it is being used as a common term by everyone, even enemies and non-scholars from the opposing country who consider them to be anything but. So everyone uses Buddha and not “The Awakened One denounced the caste system” or “The Great Soul started harvesting salt and went on hunger strike”. Second, with respect to “occasional exceptions”, almost every non-western country uses the words “patriots” and “freedom fighters” and “national heroes” to describe their own country/ethnic militia and “terrorists” and “imperialists” and “oppressors” to describe those that they fought against. So if you say that this is an “occasional exception” it would make WTA obsolete, because this is a very common and mundane case. That’s why only official self-given names are used (nonsensical or oxymoronic) or almost-universal nicknames (Vietcong, Mahatma). The official name is Mukti Bahini. That officially translates to “Liberation Army” – I’m afraid I made a mistake in reading the article, because it said “Liberation Army” and not “Freedom Fighters”. So then we either use MB or LA as the official name or its translation. And somehow it appears in most JSTOR journals that I searched, that MB is the most common proper noun, not LA. I searched for “Mukti Bahini” in JSTOR and checked the first 10 hits. All of them used “Mukti Bahini (…)” in the first instance and from there on used MB, or they just used MB without giving the Bengali meaning. Certainly the English Banglapedia also locates its article at “Mukti Bahini”. Unless the English translation to “Liberation Army” is predominant, which appears not to be the case among these journal articles, which were written by people with Bengali sounding names, then we can’t go and pipe MB to LA any more than we go and pipe the Buddha to “The Enlightened One”. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I am not being sarcastic in saying that when one person say ff another says terrorist. What do you think is happening when some people say "<militant> is a freedom fighter" and another says that "<militant> is a terrorist". Why are you accusing me of being political when I am just giving example of how people have different opinions of the same thing? Why then do you say "White People of the West [who] taint" ??? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, everyone understands what the dictionary definition of "freedom" and "liberation" and "hero and "martyr" is. Nobody disagrees with that... righetous cause and all that. But people are always disagreeing with what cause is righteous and what is not. People are always disagreeing with which land belongs to whom. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Sure. It's just that "people on the subcontinent do not see any difference between freedom and independence" and repeated reference to the white people's conventions didn't seem to be fair. Without having a reason to assume worse, I assumed sarcasm. If my tone offended you, I apologize. Aditya(talk • contribs) 05:00, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

A few more (hopefully) objective comments from an uninvolved ignorant editor.

  1. Problems with other groups of articles don't make problems with this group any less problematic. It's the classic WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS non-argument. Where there's something wrong it should be fixed.
  2. Blnguyen's suggestions are simple, easily applied and NPOV. I could as easily replace "freedom fighter" or "independence fighter" with "terrorist". IF is clearly the accurate and NPOV term.
  3. Ditto for "martyr". It's only the POV that an individual brings that makes that person a martyr. It's not a cultural thing, or a linguistic thing, as someone living in the same culture/society who does not share the prevailing political opinion would not use that term.

Cheers, --Dweller (talk) 09:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, let's see:
  • WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is the least of the arguments, and quoting it shows an inherent non-understanding of the discussion. The discussion has nothing to do with the classic other crap. It is about the sensibility in replacing "independence" with "freedom", while the latter is the term in common usage.
  • My suggestions are equally simple, and is a lot less deconstrtuctive at that, and it applies NPOV as effectively. What I suggest is capitalization of the word Freedom Fighter, linking it to Mukti Bahini, and make it exlicpit in the article that Freedom Fighter is the official term, like partiots of the Amrecian Revolution.
  • POV is not the problem. Every single English word caries a POV in the form of gestalts, associations and suchlike. The problem is the representation and authenticity of the POV. And, no it's not a political thing. It is very much about language and its use, and apparently there is an inclination present to promote the Norther-Western bias of the day which in itself is a POV to the boot, and a bit arbitrary like any other fashion trends.
Cheers (hey, that was my sign-out style, though not used all the time...). Aditya(talk • contribs) 12:32, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Capitalisation does not help. Millions of people may consider them to have been freedom fighters. But millions will not. That's POV. Freedom fighter is the official term according to whom? I'm pretty sure that Al Qaeda and their millions of supporters have all kinds of "official terms" for the men who flew the planes into the twin towers - do you think that makes it NPOV for us to call them, say, "glorious martyrs"? --Dweller (talk) 13:00, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Aditya wasn't speaking about the word "martyrs", so I don't think your last sentence is a valid argument here. "Freedom fighter" according to govt/media in Bangladesh/India, in the same way as "Patriot Groups" used in USA to depict their pro-revolution faction. I think the British won't be willing to call them "patriot"s either... but Blnguyen explains above that as a capitalized proper noun, "Patriot" is valid in that case. So should be "Freedom Fighter" here. --Ragib (talk) 16:09, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but the proper noun in this case is Mukti Bahini. This translates to "Liberation Army", but it appears that the most common English usage, from my search of JSTOR, among all article writers is to use "Mukti Bahini". Banglapedia uses this. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The word "Patriot" was used to refer to people who initially belonged to the American Patriot Party (hence the capitalization of "P"). Later on, most of these members called themselves "Patriots" to indicate their beliefs and allegiances. "Freedom Fighter" (Mukti Bahini) is not a self-describing term (the guerillas called themselves "Mukti Bahini", not "Freedom Fighters"). Furthermore, the English equivalent of "Mukti Bahini" is "Liberation Army", not "Freedom Fighter". "Freedom Fighter" is a term used most likely by the Bangladeshi press and general public to describe Mukti Bahini, who fought for the country's independence. I suggest you just link "Mukti Bahini" freely, no pipes attached. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not love) 01:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Putting the question of "political correctness" aside, let's focus on "grammatical correctness" for a moment, shall we? "Freedom fighter" is an acceptable English term by all standards; See here, here and here. On the other hand "Independence fighter" is still NOT a recognized English word - See here, here and here. So, what is the point? The point is, as soon as we acknowledge that "Independence" and "Fighter" are two separate words, the term "independence fighter" becomes grammatically incorrect - it has to be "fighter for independence". I know the grammatically incorrect usage is quite common on Wikipedia but didn't we just argue that other craps is not a legitimate excuse? So, I politely request everyone, if you want to npov-fy "X was a freedom fighter in Bangladesh Liberation War", please reword as "X was a fighter for independence of Bangladesh" and not "X was an independence fighter." (P.s. this is a talk page, so I'm taking the liberty of using words that I've just invented, but such liberty shouldn't be exercised on article main space.) Arman (Talk) 02:25, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
We're not using "other crap" - What "other crap" is being used to justify going against WP:WTA? I don't see the grammar error "independence fighter" unless "Bengali fighter" or "Bangladeshi cricketer" are also grammatical incorrect. If you can explain the concept that would be good, because when I copyedit things for FAC and all that, I just think "that's bad" without knowing the technical rule for it. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The terms "Bengali" and "Bangladeshi" are adjectives and hence they can qualify a noun like fighter or cricketer. The term "independence", on the other hand, is a noun itself. The adjective form is "independent". We can correctly say "independent fighter" - but that gives a totally different meaning altogether. Arman (Talk) 02:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh of course, I should be more awake. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


Blnguyen mentions above that the term to use here is Mukti Bahini. Actually, that refers to the pro-independence guerrilla force/army. And members of Mukti Bahini are officially and commonly called "Mukti Joddha", which translates as "Freedom fighter". Now, independence fighter is not the "translation" of the term "Mukti Joddha". Nor is this a common English usage (compare them on GHits Freedom fighter vs Independence fighter. Inventing terms is akin to WP:OR. --Ragib (talk) 05:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there is a misundestanding but I can't see what is wrong with saying "soldier/member of the Mukti Bahini". Obviously the people in organisation != organisation. The articles simply said "X is a FF" instead of saying that they were a member of anything. So changing to "X is a soldier/member of MB" tells more and avoids relativism. Well, I'd like to point out that most of the things on the internet are not reflective of academic usage. There are many more blogs and activist websites than there are proper work. If you look on google for something person involved in a war, the number of times a person is called "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" will be higher than any other terms that are considered to be more sedate by WP:WTA. On JSTOR it is about 4500 to 3500 but then one would have to check whether the author was using it as a slogan or a narrative voice. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:27, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Of the 4500 hits for "freedom fighter" on JSTOR, I checked the first 10 specifically, and only 1 mentioned FF in the author's voice - the other's were referring to other people's slogans or the names of books. So there would be an estimated 350 occurrences of "Freedom fighter" in narrative voice. However for the search for "independence fighter", there were 3500 and the cast majority of the first ten, were just using it normally. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I beleive Nishkid and Ragib have a good solutions. "X was a Mukti Joddha (Freedom Fighter) in the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Army)" looks good. It puts down the facts without grammatical errors, political bias or cultural inclinations (neither Australian nor Indian). We only will have to create an article for Mukti Joddha, or redirect it to Mukti Bahini (of course, that article needs to clarify it by citing reliable sources). Say what? Aditya(talk • contribs) 05:10, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, that sounds fine by me. "Mukti Joddha" is the term the fighters used to identify themselves, and this is what they are referred to everywhere. If the translation to English language as "Freedom fighter" brings in a hint of POV, then using the proper noun directly with bracketed explanations should fix it, just as Aditya suggests above. --Ragib (talk) 05:15, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm not seeing that it is more common to say MJ than MB. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
You probably misinterpreted my comment. Mukti Bahini is the name of the force, and a member of it is called a Mukti Joddha. You have problems with the English language term "Freedom fighter" , so perhaps Mukti Joddha (the official term used to denote MB members) is the right way here. --Ragib (talk) 05:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
It's better to simply say "soldier/member of the Mukti Bahini" - In JSTOR, MJ has no sources, and MB has 55, so MB is far more representative of academic literature. MJ seems much rarer on JSTOR and on google. Personally I'm not sure about putting the translation in every article everywhere because it doesn't conform to the norm. In articles other than Gandhi, when we mention Mahatma Gandhi, we don't put ("Great Soul Gandhi") after it, and in other articles that refer to Ho Chi Minh we don't put "he who enlightens" everywhere. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:27, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


It is interesting that you invoke JSTOR to claim Mukti Joddha is a rarely used term, but then go on adding "Independence fighter" to all such articles, without considering whether that's a common term, or even worse ... incorrect English usage. --Ragib (talk) 05:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
No contradiction at all since "freedom fighter" and "independence fighter" are generic words not proper nouns/official sloagans and it is line with WP:WTA per the narrative voice. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:01, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Ragib, the articles that I changed, they said "NAME is a freedom fighter" without saying that the person is part of any organised group. If the article originally said "NAME is a soldier in the Mukti Bahini that fought for the independence of Bangladesh" then there would never have been an issue. Clearly, simply saying that the soldier is of a certain organisation is the most straightforward way, but if the article implies that he was just a fighter without affiliation then that can't be done. If these people are MB members/soldiers, then we can just say that. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Mukti Bahini (proper noun) > IF (generic word) > FF (pov). Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I would have used MB if there was an option of doing that, but since the bio articles had no organisation affiliation that was not possible. There is no contradiction in my reasoning, because I never put "is an independence fighter" ahead of "is a member of MB" , I only put "is a IF" ahead of "is a FF". Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I found about 4850 hits in Google Scholar for the term "freedom fighter" in the context of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. These are not from "blogs" / forums, but rather are from academic/research publications/journals. --Ragib (talk) 05:43, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

But searching for Hamas and terrorist gives 7780. PLO and terrorist gives 7800. IRA and terrorist gives 12000. And they aren't using "ff" as a proper noun/official name and per WP:WTA so it doesn't matter. It's not up to me to overturn WTA in the narrative voice, as your argument seems to be suggesting. Or by that reasoning, we put "terrorist" all over "Hamas" with no problem. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The overwhelming amount of books say Bradman/Pele is greatest in the POV of the narrator, and searching for that would also yield a massive number of hits; but WP only allows us to say "almost universally regarded" and not "is the greatest" or "is a freedom fighter". Per WP:WTA. Again. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:04, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Putting the translations in the bracket is about making the access to a non-English word easier. It's not necessarily comparable to translating "mahatma" for MK Gandhi, as mahatma has a more coinage in English than "Mukti Joddha". Why throw an unknown word at an unsuspecting reader, when it can be translated and put along? Aditya(talk • contribs) 08:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] We need to do this ASAP

Please check Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Maps.google.com_now_showing_wikipedia_layer first.

Next, we need to add the coord info to all BD articles. For areas like Dhaka or Chittagong city (or others) where google maps has high res satellite pictures, we can easily get the longitude/latitude info from Google maps. Just center the map at the building or landmark (rightclick, select "center map here"), and then the lang/lat parameter shows up at your browser address bar as the "ll" parameter value. use those values with the template {{coord}}, add that to the bottom of corresponding articles. See Dhakeswhari Temple for an example use of the template.

This needs collaboration of everyone, so please start working on it asap. Thanks. --Ragib (talk) 19:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I have been highly focused on this for quite some time. Usingha did an excellent job in providing the coordinates for the upazila articles. I believe the district articles are correctly tagged as well. As far as the city landmarks are concerned, I've tried to tag the correct coordinates as much as possible. But this is a never ending work and everyones attention to this will certainly be helpful. Arman (Talk) 01:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


Great news. Just learned today that Google Maps now have complete maps of Dhaka and Chittagong cities, along with locations of major landmarks. Please check out Google maps and start tagging.
I think we can safely use the coord templates: example: {{coord|23.722419|N|90.397911|E|display=title|region:BD_type:city_source:enwiki}} (For Hoseni Dalan). Just find your landmark in google maps, right click on it and select "Center map here", then find the coordinates from the permalink, or by selecting "directions to here" and copying the long/lat info from the "To" box. --Ragib (talk) 17:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] An Invitation from the Philippine Wikipedia Community

Hello folks,

The Philippine Wikipedia Community will be holding its 1st Meet-up in Cebu City (the fourth one in the Philippines) on June 23-24, 2008. This coincides with the first Philippine Open Source Summit also to be held in Cebu, and which the Philippine Wikipedia Community is a Implementing Partner in. We invite you to join us in this event. If you are in the IT or IT-enabled services industry, this would be a great opportunity to network with leaders from the 4th best outsourcing city in the world. This is also a good excuse to visit our beautiful beaches :)

If you're interested in joining the Wikipedia meet-up, please join our discussion. To register for the Open Source Summit, please contact CEDF-IT. If you would like some assistance with local accomodations, you may email User:Bentong Isles.

The Philippine Wikipedia Community
WP:PINOY

[edit] Draft Guidelines for Lists of companies by country - Feedback Requested

Within WikiProject Companies I am trying to establish guidelines for all Lists of companies by country, the implementation of which would hopefully ensure a minimum quality standard and level of consistency across all of these related but currently disparate articles. The ultimate goal is the improvement of these articles to Featured List status. As a WikiProject that currently has one of these lists within your scope, I would really appreciate your feedback! You can find the draft guidelines here. Thanks for your help as we look to build consensus and improve Wikipedia! - Richc80 (talk) 18:53, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bengali language FAR

Bengali language has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 03:09, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Help with Bangladesh cities/towns/villages and their disambiguation.

Greetings! There is a proposal to organize a bot in order to create thousands upon thousands (if not eventually -- a million) articles related to villages/towns/cities from around the world. Bangladesh is also a part of this and there is a list of places from Bangladesh found here: [[4]]. Currently however, before the project can begin, the list of places need to be checked for disambiguation. That is, there are some blue links already created and they need to be checked to ensure that they are in fact already the created cityand not a disambiguation page. This is needed as the bot will not be able to create the place if there is already a blue link and if its a disambiguation page, then that place (be it a city, village or town) will miss out. That is why I ask anyone here from this project who has some time or knowledge of Bangladesh to have a look and help if they want in any way they can. As a side note, there is also a discussion going on here at the village pump: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/FritzpollBot and you are more than welcome to state your views on it. There is also a FAQ that you may have a look at User:FritzpollBot/FAQ but if you have any question do get in contact with Fritzpoll here User talk:Fritzpoll or with Biofield here User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE. Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 04:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#BOT_issues_with_Bengali_categories_on_TinucherianBot

FYI . Your comments are requested -- TinuCherian (Wanna Talk?) - 05:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vote for C-class

A second round of voting on introducing a new "C-class" in the assessment scale is ongoing here. Personally, I am strongly in favor of this proposal and believe I can help WikiProject Bangladesh assessment by further refining the ratings if this change is made. Please vote. Arman (Talk) 10:15, 5 June 2008 (UTC)