Talk:Barefoot College

3RR limits, Vandalism
User "The "Red Pen Of Doom" is re-inserting dubious sources without discussion, and removing citation metatags. This is vandalism. BlackMansBurden (talk) 04:21, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Reliable sources.
This article is loaded with POV pushing claims made by the Headmaster of this organisation in interviews to various online columnists. Kindly discuss if these qualify as "reliable sources"

,, , etc.

An exceptional claim is being made that an unrecognised university/college with only 10 staff has trained 3 million "engineers", "architects" and other barefoot professionals. This fake "college/university" seems to be a Degree mill. Had it been a proper Indian educational institution, its website would have had a .edu, .edu.in, .ac.in domain. It would have had affiliations to AICTE, Council of Architecture etc which regulate the practice and teaching standards for these professions in India. This is an NGO masquerading as a college.

Exceptional claims require exceptional sources. BlackMansBurden (talk) 05:33, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * they dont give degrees or certificates, so they cannot possibly be a "Degree mill"- do you have any reliable sources that support your claims to counter the very reliable sources of Time and PBS and the BBC? you seem to be the one making extraordinary claims that all three of these well respected sources are lying. --  TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  11:30, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Lets lists the various claims

I'll come to your other sources later for the unexceptional claims. BlackMansBurden (talk) 13:54, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Barefoot College has 10 staff. (see infobox) (what is the source ?)
 * Is it disputed that Barefoot College is located in India ?
 * Barefoot College has trained " more than 3 million people in skills including solar engineers, teachers, midwives, weavers, architects and doctors" (this is attributed to a bizarre short piece in TIME Magazine".
 * The actual words used in the TIME piece are "The college's "barefoot professionals" then return home to use their new skills — as solar engineers, teachers, midwives, weavers, architects, doctors and more."
 * Is it disputed that in India only professionally qualified people with degrees can practice the regulated professions of engineers, architects and doctors, and that these degrees can only be awarded under section 22 of the University Grants Commission Act of 1956. The academic standards are maintained by the AICTE, Council of Architecture and the Medical Council of India respectively. Only students who have gone through a prescribed and rigorous training regime of long duration at accredited colleges are entitled to be described as "engineers", "architects" and "doctors" respectively.
 * A photographer has photographed these so called engineers in action- . Do you seriously expect these illiterate women in the photos to be described as Engineer.
 * The website of the "college" does not list a single faculty member with any academic qualifications. Here it says since 1972 they have trained 6,525 "housewives, mothers, grandmothers ... in various trades as solar engineers and 'solar cooker engineeers etc ". Nowhere in their own website do they make such outrageous claims as 3 million as TIME did. Their so called 85,000 sq.ft campus is self-evident in the pictures on this page. (its 85,000 sq feet of barren semi-desert scrub).
 * Bumker Roy doesn't have any scientific education whatsoever, he studied the minor Arts.
 * The well known Aga Khan Foundation episode, resulted in a public furore in professional circles in India and the Aga Khan Foundation withdrew the award from Bunker Roy.BC and he had to return all the money eventually and only Raina was credited with the entire award and the money.
 * So we are now on the following 2 extraordinary claims in an encyclopedia
 * 1) That Barefoot College trains "engineers", "architects", "doctors".
 * 2) That Barefoot College has trained 3,000,000 professionals.
 * 1) the number of faculty is unsourced and has been removed.
 * 2) i have not seen any disput that the college is in fact in india, but if you actually want to dispute it, we just copy any of the current references.
 * 3)the "bizzare short piece in time" is their award profile as the recognize Roy as one of the 100 most influential in 2010. You will need very reliable sources that dispute the claim in Time.e
 * 4)i do not see the time piece actually being used here so i am not sure about why you are quibbling here about semantics about language that does not appear here.
 * 5) is it disputed? and do you have reliable sources that specifically connect such claims to Barefoot College? you analysis sounds like WP:OR.
 * 6) and your point is? we do not say anything about faculty or their credentials in our article, as far as I can see.
 * 7/8) we have very reliable sources - BBC, Time, PBS some of THE MOST reliable sources in the world - that make the "extraordinary" claims. do you have any reliable sources that question them? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  15:33, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * OK so we are at least agreed on the basics claims.


 * That Barefoot College is in India, and trainsengineers, architects and doctors - purportedly 3 million of such professionals.
 * So we need reliable sources from India which make these extraordinary claims. Please show even one !.
 * The BBC source here shows this pioneering "solar engineer". Would you say this is a primary source or a secondary source. ? Is it a reliable source or scholarly source ? The text to this picture says Sophisticated Equipment - a battered soldering iron, a roll of solder wire, a desoldering pump and a razor blade ? Are you serious ? Who is the author of this text which seems to have been WP:COATRACKed onto the pictures ? THE BBC source says nothing of architects, or doctors. The terms "solar engineer" seems to be a WP:HOAX and there is no evidence that it is a recognised "profession". The BBC source does not make the claim that Bunker Roy founded the BC in 1972. The PBS article has this extraodinary claim "BUNKER ROY, Founder, Barefoot College: Our job is to show how it is possible to take an illiterate woman and make her into an engineer in six months and show that she can solar-electrify a village.". This is an extraodinary claim which the reporter swallowed at face value. It is not possible for illiterate people to become "engineers" in India - PERIOD !!. In India it is not possible to become an engineer without at least 4 years of formal study in an accredited institution - PERIOD !! If you choose to dispute either of these statement - I shall provide at least 100 reliable sources to you. In so far as TIME is concerned, we'll come to that later.
 * I am asking you very clearly not to defend the indefensible and clean it up on your own. After this I intend to put the HOAX tag on this article. BlackMansBurden (talk) 16:01, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You have made the following statement "we do not say anything about faculty or their credentials in our article, as far as I can see.". If you have any WP:COI in this article, please disclose it or stop editing on controversial points. BlackMansBurden (talk) 16:26, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "We" are wikipedia editors who have been editing our wikipedia article. yes the wikipedia article that we wikipedia editors have been creating. and I, as a wikipedian have been contributing to this article and to many many articles about many many subjects for many many years and I have no relationship to Barefoot College or Bunker Roy and had never even heard about them till I followed the announcement at the BLP notice boards to the ruckus at the article about bunker roy's wife and thence following various vandals of short editing history of problematic edits focused solely on a limited number of articles to Bunker and the barefoot college.
 * back to actual article content
 * we do not "need" reliable sources to be from india to validate reliable sources from other places in the world.
 * the pictures from the BBC are clearly identified in the BBC as images taken by students in the Barefoot College programs. we (wikiipedia editors who have created and edited a wikipedia article) are not however making any claims on the pictures. you appear to be asking editors to be making original research and basing article content upon what we think we might see in the pictures? that will not be acceptable. and again the BBC PBS and Time are some of the highest quality sources out there. you have yet to provide any reliable sources that provide reason why we should be doubting their reliability.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  04:39, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Exceptional Claims./ HOAX
To re-focus this debate

The article lead presently claims " It is a solar-powered school that teaches illiterate women from impoverished Indian villages to become doctors, solar engineers, architects, and other such professions.". The stated sources for this claim is BBC here and PBS here  where Sanjit(Bunker) Roy self described as Founder, Barefoot College, makes the extraordinary claim "Our job is to show how it is possible to take an illiterate woman and make her into an engineer in six months and show that she can solar-electrify a village."

The article presently also has a description of an Award purportedly given to the College by the Aga Khan Foundation, as follows "The creators of the campus near Tilonia received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Originally the award was attributed to "an illiterate farmer", but later the award was corrected and redesignated to read "A young architect, Neehar Raina, prepared the architectural layout and an illiterate farmer from Tilonia, along with 12 other Barefoot Architects, constructed the buildings." when the presenters became aware of the involvement of professional architect Neehar Raina. [9]" This is attributed to an (obsolete) article in the Indian Express dated 01.July.2002 retrieved from a blog.

So in sum the 2 extraordinary claims are as follows:-

1) Barefoot College 'trains engineers, architects and doctors. 2) Barefoot College takes illiterate women and trains them to be engineers, architects, doctors etc in 6 months. 3) NB: There is an additional extraordinary claim in the Bunker Roy article that 3,000,000 such professionals have been trained (which is contradicted by the organisation's own website which only claims about 6,000).

I say this if this article continues to make these statements, merely based on some dubious reporting (please note I am not challenging the organisations like PBS, or BBC Online at the present time - they probably are reliable organisations) to do PR (Public Relations) for this "College", I shall place a appropriate HOAX tag on this page and ask for its deletion.

The BBC Online "story" is merely some text added onto photographs taken by admittedly illiterate students of this college. Such illiterate students can hardly be classified as reliable sources. The PBS piece merely repeats whatever Bunker Roy says in the course of an interview.

When a controversy broke out in 2001-2002 with the Aga Khan Foundation where Bunker Roy misled the Foundation into awarding the College workers the AKF's prestigious award for Architecture, on the complaint of a qualified architect Neehar Raina, the Foundation first attempted to mediate a compromise (the revised citation) as described on the page at present (01.July.2002) which Raina did not accept (there was public furore in the architecture fraternity) saying that his statutory qualification as an Architect under India's law did not permit him to be mention along with non-qualified Architects masquerading as "barefoot Architects" when the law only allowed for 2 sub-types ("landscape architects" and "naval architects") [section 36 and 37 of the Architects Act]. After that Raina and the Council of Architecture moved criminal proceedings the Aga Khan Foundation, and the entire award was cancelled as a HOAX - the most shameful incident in the history of the award and Bunker Roy was exposed as a hoax. (This is not OR). All mention of the award has been deleted from the Foundation's website and there is no award for that award cycle. Bunker Roy has not returned the money and instead mounted a PR campaign to portray himself as the victim so as not to return the money. Bunker Roy/BC did not "return the award", the Foundation stripped it from him. If BC against represents that they are training architects they are liable to be jailed for 5 years for a 2nd offence. Similar provisions in India's law prohibiting anyone from masquerading as an engineer or doctor or "quacks" training such fake professionals. Masquerading as an Engineer or Doctor in India is even more stringent being punishable with imprisonment up to 10 years or for life.

It is noteworthy that all the regulating professional Acts, specify/contain the names of the recognised/accredited institutes which can train architects / doctors etc.

Finally, even the College on its own website does not make such extreme claims which are being made in unreliable 3rd party sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BlackMansBurden (talk • contribs) 06:05, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * tldr; take your rants elsewhere . -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  06:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I've taken it to WP:3 BlackMansBurden (talk) 06:37, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Greetings, I am responding to a request at WP:3O. For a 3O to be successful, both editors have to agree that a third opinion is warranted and express interest in breaking the deadlock. I am not seeing that here, and suggest WP:NPOVN or WP:RSN would be more appropriate venues. I do want to note though that in the most current version, I do not see a source in the body of the article for the statement involving "doctors, solar engineers, architects..." that is stated in the lede. VQuakr (talk) 07:03, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for responding so quickly. I confirm I'm interested in resolving this deadlock through consensus. I suspect this article is a WP:Hoax based on wikipedia abuse. The disputed text was inserted by a Special Purpose Account (SPA) User:Rebecca_Qari by this unsourced diff  on Aug.2010.BlackMansBurden (talk) 07:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

WP:SOURCES
What counts as a reliable source

The word "source" in Wikipedia has three meanings: the work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, Oxford University Press). All three can affect reliability.

TIME is a reliable publisher. The creator/writer is under a cloud. The work itself is suspect/dubious. All 3 aspects have to be addressed for the claims made, not merely reciting TIME/PBS is an exceptionally reliable source. BlackMansBurden (talk) 17:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * as a new user, you must be unaware of the reliable source notice board where you can take issues like this, and so I have opened the discussion there for you. Reliable_sources/Noticeboard -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  05:28, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Bunker Roy proposed for WP:MERGE in Barefoot College
In view of the limited RS for Bunker Roy's BLP, and considering that Roy is synonymous with Barefoot College, I am proposing that this article is merged with Barefoot College. I hope this is done in a non-controversial way so that all interested editors can achieve consensus on a single article BlackMansBurden (talk) 05:52, 23 November 2012 (UTC)