Kirisutogomen
Dear Kirisutogomen,
I have reinstated what you took out of the "disciples" section of the Swami Sivananda article. Krishnananda was in fact a very important 20th century philosopher and theologian, and the references which I cite are world-renowned theology and philosophy schools (Harvard and Berkeley), in which Krishnananda's work is studied. Moreover, one of the professors at Berkeley contributed heavily to the wiki article on Krishnananda. Other editors have already verified these citations, and they link directly to the universities' home pages.
Thank you,
Sivananda's Disciples edit
Dear Kirisutogomen,
Thank you for your letter. I had some correspondence with one of the authors of the Krishnananda page a while back. They told me the article had been written in large part by a professor of philosophy at Berkeley. At that time I was not checking citations or editing so I did not think to ask for the professor's name; and I have since lost track of the individual with whom I spoke. I was just very impressed with the Krishnananda article and was attempting to track down the authors and congratulate them on what I believed to be a job well done. However, later, I wondered the same thing as you: How do links to the university home pages constitute solid references? The quality and extent of the Krishnananda page is such that I had no reason to doubt the validity of the notes, but out of curiosity I decided to ask around. One very experienced editor whom I spoke with told me that all the references--including the Harvard and Berkeley--in the article had been verified by editors living in the United States, and suggested that, considering the universities to which these references correspond are quite old, and Krishnananda began writing and lecturing in the 1940s, perhaps Krishnananda's work had, at some time, been studied at Harvard and Berkeley, but currently is not, as university curriculums can vary from year to year. This person also told me that the links to the university home pages are considered ample, because they provide a way for people to get in touch with the university staffs and do due diligence.
I only made minor contributions to the Krishnananda article (mainly cross links to other wiki pages) so ultimately I do not know why the references have been cited the way they have been; however, in light of the research that I have done, and the fact that all the reference links are live and functional and do in fact correspond to sources of information--some direct, some indirect--on which the writing in the article is based, that people can, upon investigation, verify, I do not personally have any problem with the Berkeley and Harvard references. This is why I included them in my contribution to the DISCIPLES section of the Sivananda article. But I can see your point as well.
Wikipedia is such a wonderful tool, and I am, as I know you are, very grateful for it. Unfortunately though, there are people who misuse it by writing articles that contain no references whatsoever or are totally biased or both. And then there are the dreaded vandals. To my way of thinking it is a hard enough job defending wiki against the likes of this, let alone against all of the, what I consider to be, fairly minor issues such as the Harvard and Berkeley references. I think we have to use our best judgment in situations like this and ask ourselves: 1) does the issue at hand hurt wiki or its readers in any way, e.g., carelessness, poor quality, etc. and 2) does it concern possible malicious behavior, e.g., vandals, deliberate deception, etc. I do not see either of these happening in the case of the Berkeley and Harvard references.
What do you think?
May 2021 edit
Hello, I'm Oshwah. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Esther A. Hopkins, but you didn't provide a source. I’ve removed it for now, but if you’d like to include a citation to a reliable source and re-add it, please do so! If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 01:13, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
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