Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Outreach/Newsletter/January 2007

• Usage of Vernacular scripts: Following extensive description at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) archived here regarding inclusion criteria for vernacular scripts in Indian biographies, Wikipedia:Vernacular scripts was set up to formulate usage guidelines. However, discussion appears to have dissipated without a conclusive result.

• Project tagging:After a brief edit war over the addition of {{WP India}} to ancient archaeological sites now located in Pakistan, a "pre" parameter was introduced to remove the ROI flag from the template for pre-1947 articles, following discussion. After another large discussion on ANI alleging that the automated tagging by Ganeshbot and LostBot was "nationalistic", Ganeshbot was briefly blocked. Currently, the bots are again in action.

• What is India?:Recently, there have been ongoing discussions here which discuss the stated issue of "India" the historical region is different from the Republic of India. It consisted also of modern Pakistan and Bangladesh, but a search for "India" automatically redirects to the Republic of India. Should there not be a clarification? . This comes in light of clashes on articles such as Panini, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, regarding the status of the individuals.

• Swastika on Hinduism templates:Recently, an extremely large and at times emotional debate broke out regarding the use of the swastika on Hinduism templates, given its association with Nazism. As a result, {{Hindu Links}} now contains an educational message about the use of the swastika, as discussion on a more permanent resolution continues.

• Arbitration: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Hkelkar regarding the activities of various editors on pages related to Indian religion topics closed recently, with Hkelkar, BhaiSaab and TerryJ-Ho all banned for one year. Currently, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sathya Sai Baba 2 regarding a dispute over the article of the religious teacher is in the voting phase.

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  Featured and Good Content: Two articles (Indian Standard Time (nom)) and (Hoysala Empire (nom)), were featured from our WikiProject recently, since our last edition. Irfan Pathan, Hinduism, Dinesh Karthik, Lage Raho Munna Bhai were promoted to Good article status.

Are you stuck at a point where admin help is needed? There are 21 Indian Administrators in Wikipedia at the last count. If you need some help with anything related to WikiProject India, they are just a couple of clicks away!

• Welcome to the January 2007 edition of our newsletter. Time flies past like matter into the black hole. A Happy New Year to all.
• Congratulations to one of our administrators, Shanel, who was appointed with 98% approval to the office of Steward across the Wikimedia Project.

• Weekly Collaboration (Shortcut:WP:INCOTW): Collaboration of the Week has fallen from its once high feats. Please drop by and help rejuvenate it.
• As before, we'd like to stress, this is your newsletter, and we want you to be part of it as well. Provide us with news tips. It can be anything related to the project, from discussions to calls for help, and other interesting stuff within our community. Sponsored content for recruitments within your WikiProject sub-groups are also welcome, including requests for copyediting, photographic work, peer review, etc. We'll be very happy to include them here.

• Before we sign off, Happy New Year, everyone.

• Translation Department: Can you read and write any languages of India? Do you know multiple languages and are looking to keep your skills at a high level or improve them? If so, the Translation Depeartment may be for you!

The translation department of the India WikiProject aims to utilize high-quality non-English material related to India for the goals of the project. This includes both translating articles from and to other-language Wikipedias as well as assisting contributors with non-English sources. The department aims to provide services in transliteration, formulating scripts for various languages, as well as translating articles from one language to another and validating sources in other languages to that of the encyclopedia article. If you are looking for a friendly translator here is your go-to point. Currently, we are still seeking representation for Kashmiri, Nepali, Oriya, Sindhi and Tulu, as well as reinforcements in all other languages.

If you run a covert newsroom operation, provide us with ur news tips here.