Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sikhism

Sikhism

A lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into making this page a whole lot better than it once was. Extensive work has been done by myself, Rama's Arrow and Rajatjghai (as well as countless others) into improving the article. I believe that the article discusses the customs, principles and history of Sikhism accurately and in enough detail as is possible in a single article (without going over the top!). There is a large collection of references, from numerous sources of which most are published books. The article has been through a peer review and we have collected and addressed most comments.

Please make this a FA! Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 00:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support per nom, although some copyediting has to be done. Rama's Arrow 00:09, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Support per nom, Highly Recommended as FA. God willing, we will all see it on the main page in a few days. Rajatjghai 02:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Support per nom,Gurm 07:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  • --- This is Gurm (talk · contribs) 's 19th edit Anonymous__Anonymous 09:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I'm yet to read the article, but, shouldn't ==History== be moved to be the first section? The lone subsection should be merged into its parent section. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 14:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  I've merged the subsection. I'm not sure about moving History up because none of the other major religion pages seem to do that (see Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam). They seem to place more emphasis on general beliefs before history. However, if there is a general consensus to move it up, we can do that. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 14:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Oh, I see. Somehow, I started looking for ==History== when it came to Sikhism.
  • The ==Ceremonies== subsection actually talks about customs and a bit of philosophy.
  • On a light reading, it appears that content is good, but it needs a refactoring of text, and summarisation per WP:SUMMARY. Once done, I see that subsections either would not be necessary or would be more evenly distributed across sections. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 14:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

    I've addressed your first point and will look at the second point later on when I have more time. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 14:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

    A lot of work has since been done on the article. Please check it out. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 00:38, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

    • Support now. The article has improved a lot. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 04:23, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Support per nom, Gsingh 16:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• Support: I've seen this article evolve to its present state, and the huge amount of work put in over more than a month. I think it's worthy of featured status now. deeptrivia (talk) 18:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• It can be improved by reducing links to solitary years. A monobook tool allows this to be done with one click on a 'dates' tab in edit mode. You can then accept or reject the changes offered and/or do more editing before pressing 'Save'. Simply copy the entire contents of User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to your own monobook. Then follow the instructions in your monobook to clear the cache (i.e. press Ctrl-Shift-R in Firefox, or Ctrl-F5 in IE) before it will work. Hope that helps. bobblewik 19:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  Fixed! Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 20:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Nice work—just a few comments: Why the unicode for Guru Gobind Singh? With no special symbols, it looks rather funny. Also, some of the special symbols don't work for me (appear as squares). Could be my system, but since many of the symbols do work, I thought I'd mention it. Should "emphasize" be spelled "emphasise" to be consistent, or is the former used in England? --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 20:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  There shouldn't be a Unicode for Guru Gobind Singh. There was originally because it used the ISO transliteration, but I changed them to increase readability. Can you tell me which symbols or words you don't see properly? It could be that they're missing unicode tags. Well, strictly speaking, 'ize' is valid in British English - but this article uses 'ise' so it should be consistent. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 20:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  Fixed the unnecessary use of Unicode tags and changed spelling to 'ise'. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 20:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Here are the ones I can see at the moment:
    • ik ōaṅkār
    • Rāi Bhōi dī Talvaṇḍī
    • laṅgar
    • bandī chōḍ divas
    • Vaṇḍ Chakkō (in see also)
  • There might be more that I didn't notice, but I think that's most of them at least. --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 21:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

    Ah, I see. Try downloading Code 2000 as your fallback font. Might require you to select it as a preferred font in the IE/Firefox options. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 21:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

    Is there any way for this to be visible without downloading something? I don't mind, but for the reader's sake it'd be nice to avoid this if possible. --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 12:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

    I concur. I actually did try to download that software but its shareware. Not many people would want to download shareware. Sukh, Can you guide me to a trusted freeware instead. I do have Indic enabled on my computer, but I still see boxes above -- Lost 17:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

    The visibility of the text largely depends on the user's operating system, browser and installed fonts. For example, if you have IE 6 with Office (it comes with Arial Unicode MS) on Windows XP you should be able to view it fine. On the other hand, if you don't have Office, I don't think you will. But if you have another fallback font installed, then it'll work fine. I think IE 7 will address some of these issues. See [1] for a comprehensive list of fonts. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 18:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

• Object Image:GuruTeghBahadurJi FreedomOfReligion2.jpg is improperly sourced and is very unlikely to be licensed under the GFDL. Image:Dictation of the Guru Granth Saheb.jpg is improperly sourced. Further, are the external links very helpful? If they are, why aren't they cited as references. If they're not, why are we directing readers there? Also more than a little long at 49k. Jkelly 21:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  Hopefully I can address your concerns:

  • Images removed pending further clarification on copyright status. I'm not so sure about the first image, but the style of the second image suggests that it's quite old (and possible PD). However, we won't reinsert them until source is clarified.
  • I've removed one of the external links which isn't as helpful as the others. However, the Sikhs.org and AllAboutSikhs.com are very useful sites in terms of content (the first I consider good for a casual reader, the second I think is probably the best all round Sikh resource site online). Sri Granth is a copy of the Sikh holy book in English with the original Gurmukhi. SikhiWiki is a wiki dedicated to building a Sikh encyclopedia. SikhNet is a very popular community web site that has lots of useful resources. I think the first three links are especially useful and the last two links less so, but overall I think they're all good sites. The reason they're not used in referencing is because I thought books were preferred sources for references (definately better than websites) and therefore I've tried to use them more than websites.
  • Page size is something I've struggled on. I find it very very difficult to include a comprehensive look at the Sikh religion without going over the '32k' recommended size. I mean with a bit more trimming, we could probably knock off 4-5k at the most. That still leaves a 45k page. Not sure what I can really do in that respect. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 21:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
    • I struck my objection... but please do work on trimming some material and putting it into the daughter articles. Jkelly 22:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Support per nom. Nobleeagle (Talk) 23:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• Object. The whole article could do with a massive rewrite. Not in terms of structure or content, but merely in line-by-line clarification, reordering of sentences, elimination of unexplained jargon, and so on. Just not brilliant prose. zafiroblue05 | Talk 01:10, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Please be specific in your criticism. Your description doesn't establish what the problem really is - we need to have something to fix. Rama's Arrow 01:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I rewrote the God section as an example. Basically, there is way too much jargon, and the article is daunting if not unreadable for newcomers. In my opinion, this article should be a (comprehensive, of course) introduction to Sikhism, and the finer details - the etymology of certain terms, the nitty gritty of Sikhism's early history, and much more - should be reserved for the subarticles. The main point of the article should be answering the question "What is Sikhism?", and when the opening sentence of the Philosophy and Teachings section states "Sikhism is commonly viewed as a syncretic mixture of Hinduism and Islam," without even (before I edited it) a link explaining what "syncretic" means, the reader is lost in jargon that is only slightly relevant to the subject at immediate hand (philosophy and teachings). In short, use more topic sentences, cut out the jargon in this main survey article, KISS, and be clear and concise whenever possible. zafiroblue05 | Talk 01:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Support. It is much better now. :-) zafiroblue05 | Talk 05:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• Object. Per zahiroblue. Excessive jargon may put off readers outside South Asia. The article is either silent or ambiguous on topics like idolatry, caste, jurisprudence,... Also I detect some avoidable confusion between religious and cultural practices of Punjab e.g. Vaisakhi. There is also some confusion between religious and political aspects of Sikhism itself e.g. Sarbat Khalsa (looks like the equivalent of Jamaath) and Gurmata (equivalent of Fatwa?). What exactly is the holy language of Sikhs - Gurumukhi, Sant Bhasa, Braj, Punjabi? Do Sikhs pray daily? Do they fast? Do Gurudwaras permit non-Sikhs? Is there any formal process of conversion? Is pilgrimage mandatory? I can't find anything at all about the religion proper. Instead I learn only about Punjab's ethos. Anwar 13:57, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

  Anwar, you make some good points. However, it must be remembered that Sikhism is *not* a religion with a rigourous set of rules. So to answer your questions (which I'll attempt to put in the article), Sikhs are encouraged to pray daily, gurdwaras permit all people (any background, religion, sex, race etc..), Sikhs do not fast, there is no formal conversion process, pilgrimage is not mandatory (and ritualistic pilgrimage is discouraged). There is a direct quote from Guru Nanak discouraging fasting, pilgrimage and rituals [2].

  Idolatory and caste discrimination is forbidden [3]. The Sikh religion does not have a complex set of laws and rules, although it does have a decision making 'arm'. We'll have to wait for Hardeep to say more on this, because I'm not too familiar with this side of Sikhism. I'll get reading ;)

  Sikhs do NOT have a holy language. The Guru Granth Sahib has an extensive use of languages used in India at the time of which 'Sant Bhasha' (consider it a religious proto-Hindustani if you will) is the most common. However, Sikhs holy books contain far ranging influences including Punjabi, Hindi-Urdu, Lahndi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and probably more.

  If there are any further points you think should be mentioned in the article, please mention them so we can add them. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 14:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

  I feel I have addressed your points now. Please take a look at the article. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 16:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• The article is getting much better. Can anyone explain what this sentence (in Pursuing Salvation) means?

  Māyā — defined as illusion or "unreality" — is one of the core deviations from the pursuit of God and salvation.

• Specifically, what is meant by "deviation"? Is maya good or bad? Or neither? And how? zafiroblue05 | Talk 20:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

  Deviation means "distraction" from the pursuit of God - a deviation from Nanak's method of devotion. People are enticed by illusions and lose their discipline and sense of devotion. Rama's Arrow 20:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

• The one part of the article I haven't gone over specifically is the history section, which strikes me as significantly too long, overshadowing other parts of the article. Most of the details should remain in the subarticle, I think. But it's almost there... zafiroblue05 | Talk 21:24, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

  We've already reduced the size of the history section to eliminate details about modern politics, etc. The need for a large history section comes from the fact that the conflict with the Mughal empire, the Sikh empire and the Khalsa military order an inalienable elements of Sikhism. So that needs detailed explanations. Rama's Arrow 21:26, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

  I agree with Rama's Arrow. We've tried to condense the information in a 300 page book into a few paragraphs. The slightly expanded look at Guru Nanak's life is very crucial because he was the Guru that established the founding principles of the faith. Some gurus barely get a mention at all. I doubt we can remove more information while retaining the required level of information. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 21:52, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

• 1. Avoid the usage of those 'characters' as section headings. 2. other means of disposing the body may be employed -- please don't leave the sentence hanging. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

  Fixed your first point. I'm not sure what you mean by the second point? Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 15:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

'other means of disposing the body may be employed -- how? by burial? or by way of how the Zorastrians do, leaving it to nature? =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll add the word 'any' infront of it. Essentially the body isn't considered important after the soul has departed. So any of the methods could technically be employed (although I dare say most Sikhs would not prefer the Zorastrian method!). Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 16:21, 2 July 2006 (UTC)