I've been following
List of Chinese inventions for a while and stumbled upon the
List of Indian inventions article that I greatly enjoyed reading and that you've largely been responsible for bring up to a respectable standard. Just want to say, you've done a fantastic job! I've been enthralled by much of the India-related articles that you've written. It is refreshing to see an editor who is striving to eliminate the nationalistic, biased content that seems commonplace on Wikipedia.
130.113.81.33 (
talk)
02:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)reply
Hey, can you help point me in the right direction for evaluating the citations you put in? Miller A.L. Altern Med Rev 3 (6): 422–31 is good and belongs in the sci evidence section for sure. I can't for the life of me find either the Mitra & Rangesh reference or the Mungantiwar reference in pubmed.
If they are books referencing other studies, please include cite the studies rather they referenced rather than the book itself (as that does not provide enough for citation checking.) As they stand now, Mitra/Rangesh and Mungantiwar don't fit
WP:CITE standards for sci evidence, but I'll give you some time to track those down.
For Mitra & Rangesh look in the Reference section for: Mitra, K.S. & Rangesh, P.R. (2003) in "Irritable Colon (Grahni)", Scientific Basis for Ayurvedic Therapies edited by Mishra, L.C. CRC Press:
ISBN084931366X. Mitra & Rangesh can be found in chapter 20 of the book Scientific Basis for Ayurvedic Therapies edited by Mishra, L.C. 72. CRC Press:
ISBN084931366X.
Mungantiwar is chapter 5 in the book Scientific Basis for Ayurvedic Therapies edited by Mishra, L.C. 72. CRC Press:
ISBN084931366X.
Since the book itself is a compilation of studies done variously I cite directly from different chapters, covering different studies, each authored by different scholars. In other words, I have already cited directly from the specific study within the main compilation.
Hi, I've seen your contributions and known that you are an active contributor in articles related to Indian subcontinent.
I invite you to participate in this
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suril Shah AfD debate, if you'd have information on the topic, as it is a pretty tricky one and reaching nowhere :-)
Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable about Suril Shah and may not be able to comment or contribute to material related to him on Wikipedia. Having taken a look at the article, I have to say that perhaps if it was written differently than the debate might not have arisen in the first place.
The version nominated for deletion was written from a fan's point of view. A neutral, balanced, and matter-of-fact presentation might have helped. A rewrite aimed at neutral presentation using existing sources may still help.
Yeah, I understood my mistake, that the first draft did seem to lack
NPOV. But I made changes after that, and current version seems to be good enough, so my efforts were to retain it rather than completely overhauling :-)
I rewrote the
Information technology in India article so I'm interested in this but not nessesarily knowledgeable on Suril Shah. I would suggest a rewrite since the article is written in a bullet-point format without the bullet points. You have the
Times of India as a source and you are within your rights to quote directly from that, and other existing respectable sources, to make statements about the professional. The article is at about 4300+ bytes and the
sandbox is there for testing. Many more might change their viewpoint for the AfD debate.
Yes, more Keep votes do seem to be coming in :-) I have made some improvements and converted the article into bullet form and also initiated discussion on article
talk page for the same. Thanks for all your suggestions.
Whizsurfer (
talk)
14:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)reply
I finally got around to having a look at your re-writes of
Indian astronomy and
Ayurveda, and I must say that I am very impressed by your work. They certainly look a lot more coherent and well-written than before. Your work on the
List of Indian inventions is also very impressive. I think you deserve a barnstar for your excellent contributions to these Indian science and technology articles:
I am surprised to note that in spite of being a "Journalist for a regional Hindi language newspaper" who writes "an occasional column too" you declare that you have know only basic level of
Hindi.
Thank you for your vote of confidence in my work. I simply thought that
'hi-1' means the most advanced! I have made a change to '
user hi'. I will keep notifying you about my updates in the future.
I just found that on Wikipedia Hindi has only two subcategories (
beginner and
native) compared to the numerous for
English and
Chinese languages! Wikipedia notation means that you either know your क् ख् ग् and speak fluently or else you are a beginner! I wonder what people who speak Hindi, Urdu with just a bit of English, and Hindi writing ability put on their pages.
JSR (
talk)
12:24, 3 October 2008 (UTC)'reply
Page numbers
After having another look through
Indian astronomy, I've noticed that you haven't included page numbers in the footnotes. I think it would be better for the article if you include the specific page numbers for each of the citations in the footnites, rather than merging all the citations from a single source. That is probably the only issue I have with your otherwise excellent re-write of the article. Regards,
Jagged 85 (
talk)
01:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)reply
That's a valid point. I used specific articles within the main compilation mostly (the books cited with page numbers were already there in the article). I have included the pages of an entire article just before the ISBN in the 'References' section. Most of the articles vary only from 2-3 pages (as is mostly the case in an encyclopedia) so I thought I would just cite the article with its page numbers since they were so limited.
Having said that, let me know what you think is ultimately needed. If its ok to keep the citations as is because of the limited page numbers or if I need to put in the page numbers. If individual page numbers are still needed then I can put them in. I still can't use the citation templates because its too complicated but templates probably make things easier and more standardized.
BTW, Thanks for the great template that you created for the article.
Template:Indian astronomy looks detailed and informative. Also is a good place for editors like me to try and edit articles one by one and hopefully bring some respectable citations to the some painfully neglected articles.
I just logged in (caught the cold and thought I'd take it easy for some time) and saw your message. Thanks for the advice. I had a feeling too many people were using the same place and I might have interrupted a new user during the process so your advice certainly is a better option.
I hope you are having a pleasant time during the ongoing holidays.
I hate see also lists. I think they're silly. But they're hardly worthy getting into an
edit war over, don't you think? I see your point about principles and I don't think it fair to single out traditional Indian medicine over Traditional Chinese medicine or traditional Western folk medicine for labeling as pseudoscientific when in fact they all are fairly much in the same boat, but I really don't think that the answer to this dispute is to remove the article from the
ayurveda article. What might be better is to include a statement or two about the
pseudoscientific nature of ayurveda in the article referenced from a scientist/critic familiar with the subject. There are plenty of doctors and professors in India who have railed against Ayurveda as pseudoscience and we could simply quote one of them. Would that be ammendable to you?
ScienceApologist (
talk)
11:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)reply
You're under the impression that I'm in some way against removal of "list of" article from Ayurveda. I have merely suggested a better way of adding it to Ayurveda, i.e. by putting it in the : template: Alternative medical systems so that it gets carried to Ayurveda, among other articles in one click.
When asked for explanations editors who called others 'pro Ayurveda' chose to leave a line and then revert when real concerns of two longtime editors remained unanswered. That's the 'edit war'. I'm just another unpaid volunteer (like you) who knows better than to waste time over a six word wikilink of all things.
Hey, nice to see your message. I did enjoy the article and appreciate your work till now. I did feel we can add some more information on who is responsible for mining activity, enforcing mining laws in India, who does exploration, etc. So I did a quick search on some government sites and have pasted some raw text on the talk page of the article. If you feel that text can be added to the article, please do so. Remove it from talk page once done otherwise people might shout copyright infringement.
Also, we should include some major mining accidents that might have happened in India. I have watched the page and would be glad to work with you on it. --
GPPandetalk!10:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)reply
Hi JSR. I haven't looked into wikipedia in ages, and today was the first time I saw your messages. I'd like to commend you on all the hard work you've been putting in. -
Amog | Talk •
contribs19:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)reply
Oh, you are a journalist! I was wondering how you got into it. I saw that Dileep Premachandran, the prominent cricket writer gave up studying physics and became a cricket writer and wondered how he managed to get into these things without being trained with a journalism degree. [I'm also a physics student lol]. Hmm, I started my own blog and since the Times of India copied some of my stuff a while back and a journalist from Mint in Mumbai who saw me on WP asked me to do a guest column on Ganguly I was wondering if I had a future :) YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model)
05:29, 25 November 2008 (UTC)reply
Nothing specific, I just send the 'Update from JSR/Message from JSR' message out as soon as I re-write an article. It helps get an insight from people who have edited on India related articles.
Job in
Mint from WP! Given the
sheer amount of contributions that you made no wonder they would have been highly visible to people looking for a knowledgeable candidate.
I'm afraid how I got into it is much duller: I used to help professors research stuff that they used for their columns and soon they began to refer me to more people. My name was added to a few newspaper columns and a couple of journal articles for which I read, re-read, and then squeezed my eyes and re-read again for the simplest things. I got into journalism since I knew a thing or two about the university and the local institutions, and the people at the newspapers had come to know me by then, and they trusted that given some time, I could be counted upon to write a column. Agra is a small place and the job gets done easily here, and the work pressure is next to nothing most of the times so I work here and gain valuable experience in the process :)
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Melesse (
talk)
23:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)reply
Have a look - User:Mdw0/List_of_Indian_Inventions.
It's not perfect yet, but I think it's a major advance on the table format. Having the images next to the text is so much better. The images mean so much more in the correct context. Going through the list I found one of the biggest problems is the lack of accurate dating, even for the more modern inventions and discoveries.
Mdw0 (
talk)
07:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)reply
Hi JSR how are you doing?
In your opinion should we include Snooker? Here's a brief history: it was first played by a British Military officers (namely Neville Chamberlain) and his team in Jabalpur and Ootacamund who eventually named it snooker. By itself snooker is a derivative of billiards but is today recognised as a seperate game.
The other is
Same Language Subtitling (
Brij Kothari). I really have not seen SLS because I'm not in India but do you think it's an invention / innovation?
Firstly thanks for the Barnstar! Pertaining to the inventions, I also had my reservations on Snooker but in any case decided to consult you. But what do you think about Same Language Subtitling? I'm not sure if
Brij Kothari was the first to invent / innovate this, although some sources say he was, while others say he was the first to introduce it to Bollywood while being silent on the background. If not an inventions, I'm sure SLS deserves to be on the innovations table since this system of subtitling is now household for Bollywood songs (according to online sources). Please share your knowledge on this.
I fully agree with you — that we should act accordingly so the whole list isn't disputed later — the last thing we want. Any inventions that are ascribed to more than one place (e.g. dice) should be backed by strong references, which is exactly what I'm doing.
I will look into the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awardees for modern discoveries and inventions e.g.
AKS primality test,
Basu's theorem etc. I will work on the discoveries / inventions in the mean time and we can work together when u return. If you find the time please drop by to see my edits and give guidance where needed.
Exxoo (
talk)
19:13, 25 January 2009 (UTC)reply
Ok I'll look into SLS. I also know that there are some discoveries that are hard to explain as I came across some. However lets first include the easier ones, i.e. those that already have an article, after that those that don't have an article but it's easy to compose one. After those two we shall tackle the harder ones together. I had this in my mind, about Mdw0's point of 'uniquely Indian' inventions. As such do you think we should remove innovations / discoveries like Pati-Salam model, Wilson-Bappu effect etc since they aren't uniquely Indian? There are many more contributions by Indians with a non-Indian partner that can be added (several can be found
here), but I don't think it would be appropriate. What do you think about this?
On another note do you think it is logical to group all of Ramanujan's and S.N. Bose's discoveries under one column? Won't it be better to split them, e.g. seperate description for Ramanujan's sum, Ramanujan's Theta etc?
Exxoo (
talk)
10:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)reply
Yes I too was of the opinion splitting the inventions of one certain inventor would be more logical. Will look into that. I've not had much time these days due to some obligations on my side but have been spending at least a couple minutes daily here.
I have not found any suitable book sources for SLS, that explicitly attributes it to Brij Kothari. There are books I came across but they may not be suitable as citations (eg.
this). Google books has others that seem good but are only offered in snippet view or none at all, and those books are not available in my local library for me to read the entire passage properly to ascertain the facts.
I understand your contention that book sources are more credible than weblinks. As such please have your say before me moving further on using all weblinks for this subject.
Exxoo (
talk)
19:52, 29 January 2009 (UTC)reply
OK. Enjoy Delhi! Will check out on the journal. If there are any other journals you believe would have some noteworthy inventions / discoveries, please provide me the URL to that journal and I'll go through it.
Exxoo (
talk)
19:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)reply
Hi JSR!!
History of India only encompasses India from the Indus civilization until partition. However this article also contains inventions and discoveries post partition, i.e. in the modern republic of India. In that regard I inserted the footnote
as that's the best I could think of. We should tackle this now so that people don't come in future and say this and that is a Pakistani or Bangladeshi invention so it doesn't deserve to be here. What do you think?
Exxoo (
talk)
19:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)reply
Made some changes to the footnote. Hope u don't mind.
Regarding SLS I too came across both those book citations (
[1] &
[2]) but the problem is they are written by Brij Kothari himself and that's I don't consider them a suitable citation. What we need is a third party who decisively says that Brij was the pioneer of SLS. I have already found some (mostly websources but they're reliable enough) that fit into this criteria and I'm working on it.
Damn the ISRO thing was bothering me. I was also trying to get it proper but nothing worked. I suck at this. Anyway no problems, take your time. It's just a small thing that can be addressed later.
Exxoo (
talk)
16:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)reply
I've seen that you've edited my edit on the ISRO page by deleting the line (ISRO currently holds the world record of launching 10 satellites on one rocket ( On April 28th, 2008 ))
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isro
Can you explain me why this happened? is it against any policy of wikipedia or is the record taken away or shared by any other space agency?.
We already had a line which read 'This year India has launched 11 satellites, including nine from other countries—and it became the first nation to launch 10 satellites on one rocket'. If you can take some critisism then my frank opinion is that the statement that you bought was both without a source and was written in somewhat boastful language. As a side note: These things happen to every new user and are a part of the overall Wikipedia experience. The welcome message that I have sent you contains some links which will arm you with Wikipedia's major policies :)
JSR056205:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)reply
Hello JSR,
I agree that I did not give the source of my edit.
And is it permitted to put that text in the top section if I'd mentioned the external source?