Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Prem Rawat/Archive 1

Next issue

I presume that we're ready to begin using the framework for assessing sources since we've agreed on it. However I see that there are some issues on the list related to sources in general, and to scholarly versus journalistic sources. While it would be nice to resolve that set of questions before looking at scholarly or journalistic sources, I doubt we'd make much progress discussing it in the abstract. So I suggest we keep our eye on those issues and try to work toward answers for them as we review individual sources. If that makes sense shall we move on to discussing Cagan as a source?   Will Beback  talk  05:53, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the issues relating to sources can not be addressed in any meaningful way, separated from a discussion of specific sources. Of the four issues No.4 Competence and Relevance for Academic Sources is already built into the assessment framework, No.1 relies on a categorisation which would anyway need to be agreed and would therefore logically follow application of the assessment framework discussions. No. 2. requires consideration of what the “established literature” consists of and would also logically follow application of the assessment framework discussions. No. 3 is entirely conditional on assessment of what sources are available – again something which is dependent upon the outcome of the assessment framework discussions. In fact without the assessment framework I can see the potential for No.1 and No. 3 to provide an inescapable logic loop and the last thing we need is another set of circular arguments.

So yes let's start work on Cagan. We will I think need some process to manage the discussion, I had earlier suggested something akin to the set up that Steve Crossin created fro the earlier mediation. However given that Cagan with just a single book and the potential for the discussion to be limited to Top and Mid level assessments perhaps we can get away with a talk page linear approach so long as we split the discussions striclty by level - I've kicked off a Top level section below. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 09:23, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I know this is a bit convoluted, but the architecture we adopted for this project means, so far as I can tell, that the actual discussion should be at Wikipedia:WikiProject Prem Rawat/Current article issues. That's where we've already discussed three issues. Could I trouble you to move the related text over there? I'll set up a heading.   Will Beback  talk  09:45, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. That location makes more sense.--Nik Wright2 (talk) 11:30, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Number of articles

This general topic includes way too many articles, as opposed to WP:UNDUE International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (for example) is much bigger, particularly in the U.S. , with seven million members worldwide and the late Aimee Semple McPherson is a much more prominent historical figure, but they only have one article each, as far as I can see.Wowest (talk) 00:26, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

It is important to compare like with like and while the ICFG may have an identifiably large following today, it is only the same size as the following claimed by the Rawat family in the early 1970s. However size of following is only signiificant if there is an issue about notability and the media attention given to Divine Light Mission in the 1970s is enough to qualify the Rawat father and sons and their supporting organisations under notability guidelines. The net number of articles will be a function not of notability but of the practical need to adequately deal with varied subject headings;in the case of the ICFG I count over twenty related articles, where the various pastors, related organisations and aspects of belief are dealt with as individual articles.

There may be grounds to merge two or more of the existing articles but the Rawat Project needs to commence with what is there. --Nik Wright2 (talk) 17:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Coincidentally, in addition to being active with this topic I'm also the 2nd most active editor on International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. That article has only 346 edits. Divine Light Mission has 1251. Aimee Semple McPherson has 577 edits, while Prem Rawat has 6478. It's axiomatic on Wikipedia that the more active the editing the more text will be created. That's a systemic bias caused by the involvement of interested editors. Since Semple's death the ICFG has had a low profile. The bottom line is that the size of the following doesn't correlate with notability or encyclopedia content. It'd be possible to write 10,000 words on Semple's "kidnapping" alone, and maybe somebody will do so.   Will Beback  talk  11:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Category:International Church of the Foursquare Gospel vs. Category:Prem Rawat.   Will Beback  talk  11:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Photos

To any project members who might have access to such stuff: it'd be great to have more photos to illustrate the articles. In addition to photos of Prem Rawat himself, it'd be great to have photos of ashrams, of baragons (the T-shapted meditation aids), or anything else that's germane. If anyone has these kinds of self-taken pictures and could contribute them to the project that'd be a big help.   Will Beback  talk  10:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I am out of the loop for the moment

I am taking a break from actively participating in the Prem Rawat project (and Wikipedia in general), though I haven't removed my name from the participants list as I am still reading most of the discussions and will probably engage again in future.

This is due to personal committments and also the level of detail of current discussions around sourcing. My interest is in the overall neutrality of the article, and I don't have the competence to be engaged in the detailed assessment of academic sources. I do however maintain the strong position that this biography is not just about Rawat as a religous leader of interest to academics, but about all notable aspects of his life, including some controversial and very notable aspects that no religous academic would go near. I will be satisfied when we have the opportunity to incorporate all key aspects of Rawat's life into his autobiography. Savlonn (talk) 09:00, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Millennium '73

FYI, Millennium '73 will appear on Wikipedia's main page as a featured article on November 10, the 36th anniverary of the festival. Articles featured there typically get tens of thousands of hits during their 24 hours of prominence. If we wanted to, we could bring the Prem Rawat article to featured status too.   Will Beback  talk  17:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be a most interesting endeavor. Cirt (talk) 18:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment on Biographies of living people

Hello Wikiproject! Currently there is a discussion which will decide whether wikipedia will delete 49,000 articles about a living person without references, here:

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

Since biographies of living people covers so many topics, many wikiproject topics will be effected.

The two opposing positions which have the most support is:

1. supports the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, User:Jehochman
2. opposes the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, except in limited circumstances, User:Collect

Comments are welcome. Keep in mind that by default, editor's comments are hidden. Simply press edit next to the section to add your comment.

Please keep in mind that at this point, it seems that editors support deleting unreferenced BLP articles if they are not sourced, so your project may want to source these articles as soon as possible. See the next, message, which may help.

Tools to help your project with unreferenced Biographies of living people

List of cleanup articles for your project

If you don't already have Cleanup listings, Cleanup listings is a bot which collects all tagged unreferenced biographies of living people, plus other lists onto one page in your project.

It is very easy to add to your project: simply add a template to a page of your project! Instructions

A list of examples is here

Moving unreferenced blp articles to special "incubation pages"

If you are interested in moving unreferenced blp articles that your project covers, to a special "incubation page", contact me, User talk:Ikip

Watchlisting all unreferenced articles

If you are interested in watchlisting all of the unreferenced articles once you install Cleanup_listings, contact me, User talk:Ikip

Ikip 09:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

probation parameter at template

Discuss about this. --Kslotte (talk) 11:24, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Prem Rawat articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Prem Rawat articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:30, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposed expansion of scope

I have proposed possibly expanding the scope of this project, and a few others. For the purposes of centralized discussion, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion#Possible reorganization of some related projects. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 15:56, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Nigerian Guru Maharaj Ji

I just came across a scholarly volume from 2004, New religious movements in the 21st century : legal, political, and social challenges in global perspective. ISBN 0415965765, which mentions both the DLM and the Nigerian DLM without indicating that they are different entities, or that the Nigerian GMJ is a different person than Indian-American GMJ/Prem Rawat. I've come across a number of sources discussing the Nigerian GMJ. We discussed it some years back and the general view then was that there was no need for an article at that time. But this latest reference makes it clear that there is potential for confusion. Nigerian GMJ is borderline notable in his own right, so a decent stub could be written. A separate article for Nigerian GMJ would help readers avoid confusing his actions with those of Prem Rawat. The hardest question may be be how to title and disambiguate it. "Guru Maharaj Ji (Nigeria)"? Thoughts?   Will Beback  talk  09:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and perhaps also add a little something to the Rawat article lead section after mentioning his former title Guru Maharaj Ji, that this is more like a generic denomination and there are many Guru Maharaj Jis. Maybe a footnote?--Rainer P. (talk) 09:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Both ideas sound good and necessary from a WP:BLP standpoint. Rumiton (talk) 12:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Done: Guru Maharaj Ji (Nigeria).

As for the issue of the title being generic, I don't have a source for it. But if we can find one then we can add it.   Will Beback  talk  06:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Maharaji tells us it is an honorary title and gives three examples where it has been applied. Rumiton (talk) 14:11, 22 January 2012 (UTC) And this of course, is a fourth. Rumiton (talk) 14:20, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

We'd still need an actual source which says it's generic before we could make a positive statement to that effect. The fact that a title is held by many people in succession does not necessarily make it generic.   Will Beback  talk  18:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The word "generic" doesn't matter, but perhaps as Rainer says, we could add something that steers the reader away from any implication that it was given exclusively to him. Maybe, as you said above, we could say "the title has been held by many people in succession." Rumiton (talk) 05:06, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The article doesn't mention that the Nigerian Maharaji is an offspring of Rawat, why? http://www.ex-premie.org/pages/offsprings.htm Surdas (talk) 12:07, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that link. Several of the sources linked on that page are not active, and the Wayback Machine is being repaired. However the Sunday Telegraph article is good - I found a separate copy in the Proquest archive. We should add more information from it.   Will Beback  talk  19:48, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed MOS for Religion

There is now a proposed general Manual of Style for Religion and other articles relating to ethoses or belief systems at Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Manual of style. Any input would be welcome. I personally believe at least one of the reasons why many articles in this field have been as contentious as they have been is because of lack of such guidelines, and would very much welcome any input from others to help come up with some generally acceptable solutions to some of these problems. John Carter (talk) 22:01, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

FAR

Millenium '73 had been nominated for FAR at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Millennium '73/archive1 PumpkinSky talk 02:15, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Updating Prem Rawat on Wikipedia

I was so disappointed when I read Wikipedia's account on Prem Rawat. So much was focused on the 1960's and 70's when Prem Rawat was a child, and so little on today. And even information about his childhood seemed so biased and outdated. For a start it became apparent to me from when I first came across Prem, also known by the honorary title, Maharaji, that he was not speaking about a religion or a philosophy, rather he was talking about a way to look inside yourself and discover a feeling of peace, using techniques he was willing to give for free to anyone who had a sincere interest.

In recent years Prem Rawat has received dozens of accolades from all over the world not only for his work in bringing peace to people, most recently the British Freedom Award; for his television series entitled "Words of Peace", and his Peace Education Programs, where his message of Peace, dignity, and prosperity has been running in jails in America, South America and India. Not only this but also for his organization, The Prem Rawat Foundation that teams with other leading organizations, such as Oxfam, to bring relief in the form of clean water and food to those most in need.

Wikipedia really needs to be updated to 2013 and a great deal of new information would serve much better to describe the work of Prem Rawat.

Tara Lee Planett (talk) 05:41, 31 October 2013 (UTC) Tara Planet, October 31st, 2013

The article isn't biased, it was mostly written by premies using the available reliable sources. One cannot simply place things in the article unless they have reliable sources, and even then, discussion and concensus must be reached on the article's talk page prior to making any changes. I Googled "English Freedom Award" and can't find any sites about that particular award. Can you provide a link? Thanks. Sylviecyn (talk) 12:30, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

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Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)