Talk:Chennai/Archive 2

Archives of older discussions
Archive1
 * This is an archive of the following discussions, which don't seem to be active any more:
 * Explicit code for table of contents.
 * Comma separators and number format (lakhs vs millions).
 * The names "Chennai" and "Madras", and their origins.
 * Unicode characters for "Chennai" in Tamil, and Firefox vs IE rendering issues.

Please archive the other discussions on this page if they no longer seem to be active.

Deleted Food. Explained here.
I deleted the section called Food, which I've pasted below. I feel it currently reads like a joint ad for some Chennai restaurants ("excellent quality", "very tranquil" etc). This needs to be rewritten and merged with the Cuisine subsection, without making a sales pitch for any restaurant. Thanks, --Brhaspati 07:52, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

Some of the best South Indian food is available in Chennai. The Saravana Bhavan chain of restaurants are popular for serving South Indian fast foods such as Idlis, Vadais, Dosais, Uthappams etc of excellent quality. Other chains such as Sangeethas are also catching on. The Drive-in Dasaprakash Restaurant on Cathedral Road is surrounded by trees and is very tranquil. Numerous cafes dot Mylapore and Triplicane area. In addition, the more expensive hotels offer both South Indian and North Indian cuisine. Top of the line South Indian food can be found at "The Dakshin", a restaurant run by the Adayar Park Sheraton.

Other popular joints that serve local cuisine are: 1. Kaaraikudi (Chettinad) 2. Kalpakam  (Keralite) 3. Annalakshmi (Typical Tamil lunch of rice, Samhbar, Rasam, veggies etc served on a silver platter) 4. Adayar Ananda Bhavan (serves snacks, sweets and savories) 5. Adayar Grand Sweets (One of the best places to buy authentic sweets and savories) 6. Sree Krishna Sweets (their Mysorepak is very popular) 7. The innumerable joints in T Nagar around Ranganathan and Ramanathan Street.

The beaches are popular for "Pattani Sundal", a snack made out of boiled peas, grated coconuts, bits of raw Mango, red chillies and garnished with mustard seeds and cilantro(coriander) leaves.

Length of article
The length of the article has crossed 32 KB again. This is in spite of outsourcing the large infobox table to Template:Chennai infobox and moving the lists to a separate article List of things in Chennai. I do tend to add a lot of stuff. How can we reduce the article length? (please indicate Support or Oppose under these options)
 * Move History section (currently the longest) to its own article History of Chennai. Maybe with other sections too if they are mature enough.
 * Support on the condition that there should be a brief summary in the current article too. -- Sundar 04:56, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * Reduce the detail and make the article less comprehensive than it is now. I feel the article is informative but I don't know how much of it is truly encyclopedic.
 * Support. The candidates I see are the list of British Governors etc. Can't we outsource them to some list articles and include a template that expands here? -- Sundar 04:56, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * Split the article into two smaller articles, one dealing with permanent aspects of the city (history, geography etc) and one with changeable aspects (economy, current problems etc).
 * Oppose. In general, even when we move sections to other articles, we should have a brief summary in the Chennai article, which should give a complete overview of all aspects. -- Sundar 04:56, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

I should also warn people that I intend to add one more (hopefully brief) section about the administration of Chennai (local government structure, Corporation, Mayor, their problems, progress, plans etc) and Chennai's contribution to Lok Sabha and TN Assembly (number of seats/constituencies, current MP/MLA etc).
 * Support. Please do so. We can always find some ways for reducing article length. -- Sundar

-- Brhaspati 22:24, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)


 * Problem of plenty is good. If we had so much info, may be we should start . -- Sundar 04:56, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

SRM College & Anna University
I searched the web for '"Anna University" established', and got this page from www.annauniv.edu. That page does not mention SRM. SRM College is not mentioned on the list of colleges affiliated to Anna University (both the abbreviation and the expanded form). This Google search indicates that SRM is affiliated to the University of Madras, not Anna University. Note also that SRM was set up only in 1984/1985, while Anna University was set up in 1978. Due to all these reasons, I am very skeptical of the statement that SRM College of Engineering was one of the constituents of Anna University. If you believe otherwise, please state your reasons here. -- Brhaspati 07:25, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)


 * The deletion is fine, but not for the exact reasons above. A few years (I forget exactly when), all engg. colleges affiliated to the Univ. of Madras were moved to the auspices of Anna Univ. However, I understand SRM Engg. College is now part of SRM Deemed Univ. and as such is not part of Anna Univ. Ambarish 17:32, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * It was about 3 (or 4) years back when all Engineering colleges got their affiliation changed to Anna University. And, in any case, affiliated colleges are literally not "part" of Anna University. Just my 2 paise. -- Sundar 04:31, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Scope for improvement
This is a thread devoted to improving the article to make it ready for Featured Article Candidate. I would prefer that we iron out most of the wrinkles before going for FAC. Please list all areas that need improvement here. -- Brhaspati 22:09, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)
 * Need a few more photos, especially for the sections/subsection that don't have any. In particular, some photos showing overcrowding and bad traffic (otherwise the set of photos would be POV). -- Brhaspati 22:09, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

User:Nichalp adds the following points:
 * The info table is simply too ugly. It has to be shortened and spruced up. See the Mumbai table for improvement.
 * Modified table header and made it smaller. I would prefer leaving it as a template though - that table occupies several KB which will only make the article even longer if it were inline. Also, that image indicating the location is intentional. I often find that people relate to foreign places much more easily once they have a good idea where it is. -- Brhaspati 02:45, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
 * I was not talking about the contents of the infobox. I was referring to the width and appearance.
 * No references. Without print references, its going to be thrown out.
 * Will expand. I've been intending to move all inline references to the "External links" section anyway. What do you mean by "print references"? -- Brhaspati 02:45, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
 * By print references, I mean books with their ISBN numbers. User:Jeronimo always looks at this section for an objection.
 * Images are untagged. Unless the images are tagged, the article will not be a FA.
 * Tagged everything that I uploaded myself. Changed others to my own or to Commons images. Two images still pending, uploaded by User:Avinashswamy. Have emailed him about his image tags, awaiting his response. -- Brhaspati 02:45, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
 * Too many subheadings, remove the subheadings completely and merge the text.
 * Page too large. Current size is 36kb. It has to be under 30kb. Remove unnecessary text. History can be added on a separate page and a condensed version here.
 * Will get around to these two topics next week, after User:Sundar returns. Both these have been on the Talk page for a while now. And yes, I'm the culprit who expanded the article to its current length - check its state before Jan 7 for instance. -- Brhaspati 02:45, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
 * Origin of Name>History>Geography is how most sections go. Promote the history section.
 * I'd prefer leaving the current sequence as it is - geography and climate play a much bigger role in the city's life than its history. This is also precedented by Sarajevo (FA). -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 09:01, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
 * The education section has only a list of institutions. Some text on the general education has to be there. Similarly the Sports sections.
 * There is no unifying theme to education in Chennai institutes, at least none which are unique to Chennai alone among Indian cities. The current section is still somewhat better than a blank list (which is what it was until early Jan 2005) in that it now has a sentence about each institute. What did you mean by general education? Did you mean something like the question of whether most schools follow CBSE/ICSE/State Board, or whether 11th and 12th grades are considered high school or junior college? -- Brhaspati 02:45, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
 * Yeah something like that, about schooling, academic year, how higher education is viewed, extra curricular activities (encouraged or not?). Three four lines wouldn't hurt.
 * Done. Can be expanded. -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 09:01, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
 * Though not an objection consider adding something on infrastructure, flora and fauna and media.
 * Will do. The flora/fauna will come under Parks & Wildlife. Media is a good one to add. -- Brhaspati 02:45, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
 * After this a thorough copyedit will be needed to clean up the flow and language and make it suitable as an encyclopedia. Nichalp 19:30, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * The text should be written using British English spelling according to Wikipedia conventions for India. -our -ise instead of -or and -ize.
 * Yeah. Unfortunately, Brhaspati's latest automated spell checking seems to have used American English. Please revert back. -- Sundar 10:06, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Ouch! Yes, you're right. Reverting in a few minutes. -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 10:18, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * Years should be wikified
 * Done. -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 12:30, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * Nothing on the tsunami tragedy?
 * Sundar, what do you think? My own opinion is that Chennai wasn't particularly hit by the tsunami - barely any property damage, no outstanding casualty figure, no long-term effect on the city. -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 09:01, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
 * An important section Demographics is missing. Please include statistics on Chennai in this section. It is an important section.
 * Started off from old "People" section. Needs some quantification. -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 12:30, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * Done. -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 13:05, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * I would like you to take a look at Mumbai and Gangtok (failed FAC's) for ideas and language flow. Also take a look at other city articles to have attained the FA status
 * Certain sub-headings such as Transport, Culture have to be delinked and made new headings.
 * Done. -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 12:30, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * The lead-in should be two paragraphs as per wikipedia guidelines for a page this size. Add some more text.
 * Lots of text (especially in the images) needs to be wikified. Henry Irwin, Lord Ripon, Central Station. In short, all proper nouns (for future articles)
 * Nearly all done. I've added stubs for many of them (all the ones that I'm familiar with anyway) so that this article doesn't look weird. -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 12:30, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * Inline references should be used as a superscript.
 * Done. -- Sundar 08:24, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * What about courts? Madras HC, appellate courts. A line here would be informative. Nichalp 20:02, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
 * Done. In the Government section. Can be expanded. -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 09:01, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
 * The second picture in the Geography section seems to belong elsewhere. -- Sundar 04:55, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmm, it is a satellite image, so where else can we put it? It's pretty useful though (compared to large-scale maps or street maps). -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 05:41, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
 * Wikilinking whole or parts of section headings doesn't appear to be good style. -- Sundar 04:55, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I wasn't sure of this myself. Seemed a little overboard! Reverted. -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 05:41, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

I know that it adds to the excess in content, but can we think of including this image? -- Sundar (talk &middot; contributions) 08:53, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Reverting changes by User:155.69.5.234
User:155.69.5.234 has made several edits to the article that seem to violate NPOV. Chennai doesn't "boast" of anything - not in an encyclopedia article. There is no benefit in taking some random superlatives from the article and putting them in the introduction. Here's evidence from a Parliament Q&A session on Dec 22, 2004 that the Cooum has not been cleaned (p 8663-8664). I'll personally believe that the Cooum has been cleaned up when I can canoe on it without a paddle. -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 16:24, 2005 Feb 23 (UTC)

FAC
The page has improved, but I feel that the page size is a little too big and a summary would be necessary. Hope that Chennai too becomes a FA soon. == 20:35, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
 * Candidates for moving into full articles: Transport (far too detailed) and Architecture (informative but not terse enough). Transport is also a good candidate for a merge with Chennai suburban in its present state. Would prefer getting a different image for a temple if possible (one that's fully free). Avinashswamy's images are still untagged (both are very good images, which is why I hope he gets around to tagging them). -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 22:11, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)


 * You can temporarily remove the image links from this page. I've had to sacrifice good quality images for Mumbai for lesser quality, but tagged images. Once Avinash tags the images, it you could add it back. == 18:58, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)


 * I had a go at trimming the transport section.... I think perhaps a sentence or two should be added about the city's ports as they are mentioned quite prominently elsewhere. srs 23:21, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The "Highlights" section
This is user 155.69.5.234 ...

Seems like the idea to add a Highlights hasn't gone down well with Brhaspati. Before I go on with this, sorry for the wrong edit to the Cooum - yeah I agree, it stills stinks. Thanks for correcting me.

The article on Chennai is already too long. I suppose at this rate, it would definitely put off the first time reader. We are ppl who know more about Chennai... Think about the first time reader - Would he be interested in Chembarambakkam Lake or for that matter our 'Otteri Nullah'? This thought came to me only when a foreign friend of mine asked for more information on Madras.

And, what about the curious guy who wants short information on Chennai? Calcutta has a section on Trivia. It's half summary of the main points of the article and half trivia that would not fit into the article... But they're all quick information. I belive, Chennai should also have some sort of a compilation of what it is known for (like the not so clean Second longest beach we have :P ). It doesnt cost much and it really helps people who are short on time - they don't need to burrow through the entire article. There are so many encyclopaedia articles which actually have a section highlighting the main things the city has. It would really help having some thing like this - probably an info-box, if you like. Comments?

Further, the article, as I mentioned is too long. We could consider summarising the entire article. Then, each section could be made a new wikipedia entry in its own right (there are loads the article lacks - like Education, for example), and the main article could be a summary linking to those individual entries.

Cheers!


 * Anon has raised some good points. == 19:30, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * would be interesting if there is more info interms of the railway systems. the bus systems with a user point of view.
 * I would also like to raise the point of improving the maps. I understand the difficulty of finding copyright free mapping . I would also like see what kinda possibilities exist for obtaining maps. viyyer 20:14, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree! -- User 155.69.5.234 (haven't thot of a alias yet) 155.69.5.234

For reference, I quote the "Highlights" section in its entirety below this post. I deleted this section not because it was repeating the article, but because it very one-sided and not neutral. You may of course recreate it, but please make it neutral if possible. Length of the article: Yes, I agree it's longer than necessary, but I'm firmly against *deleting* information purely for the sake of making it shorter. A good article *should* mention Otteri Nullah and such, precisely because we don't think of it immediately. If we mention only the obvious stuff, then the article is bound to be flat. That said, I will fully support making separate articles from long sections if they can stand alone as good articles. For instance, History of Chennai is reasonably independent now. Transport in Chennai needs some merging and expansion work but it's better as an independent article than as a section. If you can expand Education in Chennai or Geography of Chennai to a good article, please do so - I will fully support that. BTW, if you want a long city article, see Houston, Texas. -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 20:32, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT

Highlights
Here are some of the highlights of Chennai
 * The largest Bus Terminal in South Asia, Chennai Moffusil Bus Terminus (CMBT)
 * Second longest Beach in the World, the Marina Beach is located in Chennai
 * Chennai manufactures over 40% of the automobiles made in India
 * Home to one of the most prestigious institute in India, the IIT Madras and also the Anna University.
 * Distinctive English-style buildings and British influence.
 * World's largest cultural event, The Music Season takes place December at Chennai.
 * Home to a regional TV giant, Sun TV

END QUOTED TEXT


 * "Highlights" - I agree it could appear one-sided - please refine it and include it where u feel is appropriate :) . But do include the strengths of Chennai.
 * Article Length - I suppose we can have more about education in Chennai. Some pointers
 * The State boards, DoTE
 * Anna University
 * CBSE still prevails to a very large extent
 * IIT Madras; the mad rush for IITs
 * Institutions / Coaching centres created to help ppl get into IITs (there's one "coaching center" at Satyamurthy School)
 * Schools (DAV, Vidya Mandir, PSBB, P.S. Senior, SBOA...)
 * Deleting info - we need not delete info - let's relocate stuff to more deserving places. I am also against deleting info unless the info itself is wrong.
 * Lets start with putting some stuff into stand-alone articles. To begin with, we'll label them as a stub - hopefully people would expand the articles.
 * The article on Houston is too long - don't you feel just the sheer length might put off some people? -- BN 155.69.5.234

Yes, the article on Houston is intolerably long. I often refer to it as a cautionary example of what Chennai should not become (the article I mean). About Education:
 * DoTE can be a separate article independent of Chennai (we have a stub for TNPCEE already). Ditto Anna University. Individual institutions only need to be linked from Chennai (which is true for the present version), not described in detail.
 * The existing version already mentions the majority of CBSE and rarity of ICSE. Did you want to expand on this?
 * JEE-coaching (and the rush for Engineering in general) can be mentioned in Education in Chennai.
 * Schools - two caveats. One is that competition between schools is cut-throat, so mentioning one may make everybody treat the section as an advertising board or vanity section. (See the page version from Dec 2004 for example). This must be guarded against - we probably don't want to encourage things like "My daughter studies in FOO school, which has been praised by Wikipedia". The second point is that Wikipedia in general is not friendly to high schools. It causes prolonged debates on WP:VfD and has created heuristics like BEEFSTEW to decide notability. If BEEFSTEW becomes policy, then Indian schools will have to adapt to that or modify it to make it suitable for Indian schools. Since we currently don't have a policy in place, I would prefer just describing the school system without mentioning any particular schools. -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 14:59, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Try and condense the text like the Mumbai article. You could mention famous schools which anyways would merit a place in wikipedia. == 20:21, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

-


 * The Anna University article is too small to be a separate article. DoTE is pretty closely tied to Anna Univ, so we'll put the two of them together, under Education in Chennai. If not, we'd have too many stubs floating around - Anna Univ, DoTE, etc. Of course, if Anna University can be expanded into a full article, then it should stay. Else, I'd support its deletion and inclusion into Education in Chennai. Comments?


 * We can expand on the 10th and 12th board exams. They seem too brief. Probably something like -
 * Children join school at about age 3, and study through 2 years of kindergarten (LKG, UKG) followed by 12 years of school. Grades are numbered continuously from 1 to 12 in Chennai. In the 10th grade (referred to as '10th Standard'), students will have to sit for an exam administered by the Educational Board which their school is affiliated to. Many students (this is debatable) switch Boards (typically to the TN State Board) schools after the 10th exams. There is a general outflux of students switching from CBSE schools into State Board schools, the reason being the relative ease of State Board and the examination system, which they hope, would translate into higher marks at the 12th exams. The Class 12 board exam results are generally a criteria for college entry. Most students also take several college entrance examinations of their choice. Common college choices include the IIT-JEE and the TNPCEE.


 * Just like the rest of India, the Board exam administered by the CBSE for Class 10 students is called All India Secondary School Examination (AISSE) and the Class 12 CBSE Board examination is called AISSCE (All India Senior School Certificate Examination). In the TN State Board, it is called the SSLC and HSC (Higher SeCondary education exams) respectively.


 * We can do with more information abt IIT coaching (after class 10, ppl join Coaching centers, and 'neglect' school studies, in the hope of getting into the IITs). Also, things like 'The TNPCEE exam is based on 12th State Board Exam results and also an objectie type question paper'.


 * Schools - We definitely do not want to become a 'certification agency'. But at the same time we should mention the good schools. 'Good' here is not definitive, but we can label the schools as "some popular schools". There was this India Today or Outlook ranking of schools. We could quote that if need be. However, based on my experience, here are a few of the 'good schools':
 * DAV Boys, Gopalapuram
 * Vidya Mandir
 * PSBB, KK Nagar
 * P.S. Senior, Mylapore
 * SBOA, Anna Nagar

- Your suggestions, pls.
 * We also have the American International School at Velachery.
 * Montessori Schools like Abacus are hip.


 * Colleges: Anna Univ, IIT, NIFT, PSG, Satyabhama, etc...


 * Maps - why not link to some provider of maps? I know of really good interactive ones for Singapore (Street Directory) and the US (Google). Yahoo also provides interactive maps (Yahoo).


 * We lack the stats on % of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc. We can also mention Velankanni Church. Although there is Hindu domination, the other religions also co-exist, and clashes do not occur.


 * Are we including the Highlights section?


 * Should we mention the IT Boom in Chennai. We're catching up with B'lore (finally!). See articles:- Elcot #1, Elcot #2, ET - Intel to set up Chip plant in Chennai, Nokia in Chennai. This was surprising - I didnt think Chennai would wake up so soon :P.


 * Also needed are info on Media and Places of interest (in moderation). -- BN 155.69.5.234 09:50, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Veeranam Project axed. Have included that in the article. Linked to this article. -- BN 155.69.5.234 06:23, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For pictures you can try SSC India or My gallery at SSC these are all user submitted photos. Hope there are some intresting ones you can use here.
 * If you can release your pictures under GFDL by uploading those images and then adding GFDL to the image pages (say, Image:foo.jpg), we can use it. -- 08:36, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Whoever posted the links to SSC India and his gallery at SSC, please release them under GFDL as Sundar has stated above. -- BN 210.214.228.88
 * Can someone please open a thread at SSC India page and state the procedure required to release images with the GFDL license? i have absolutely no knowledge of how wiki works, but would like to help your India project. There are thousands of user pics from most cities in India and a lot of Indian photographers. You could request pics you need. Especially plenty of rare airport pics not available anywhere else.
 * I've started a thread on this there. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 09:57, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Change in History Section
About St.Thomas

The sentence describing the arrival and subsequent preaching by St.Thomas was deleted from the section History.

I made these changes for the simple reason that they were not backed by any proof. Some of these stories are even disputed in the site hamsa(which is linked through the article in History of Chennai) and the site seemed very credible. --Arunkrish 09:48, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Hamsa.org seems rabidly POV, which makes me doubt their historical accuracy. I've added the sentence about Thomas back in the history section. It uses the phrase "is believed to have", which (I hope) covers all uncertainty regarding whether Thomas really did visit India. -- Brhaspati\talk/contribs July 7, 2005 00:00 (UTC)

Transportation
I added something about direct European air connections to the city. It may be phrased awkwardly, so editors, feel free to change it, but don't allow the meaning to be altered. -Amit

Images, long lists etc
Two issues with this article:
 * Too many untagged images of dubious provenance. Please tag the images or remove them from the article as quickly as possible. In particular, if there is a free image already available, do not replace it with an imagevio or untagged image, no matter how good the new image may be compared to the first.
 * Some lists are too long. In particular, please examine the list of notable people born in Chennai. It seems to have several not-very-notable people, or people who arguably weren't born in Chennai (Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in particular was born in Tiruttani, which is about 65 km from the city). Someone had added "Bodhidharma" to that list, which I deleted. -- Brhaspati\talk/contribs July 7, 2005 01:55 (UTC)
 * The list of notable people doesn't belong to this article. We'll remove such lists and replace copyvio images with free ones soon. -- Sundar \talk \contribs July 7, 2005 03:57 (UTC)

Notable people born in Chennai
I've moved the following list from the article to here as I don't think it belongs to this article for several reasons. It unnecessarily increases the length of an article that is supposed to be about Chennai rather than the people of Chennai. If it should, the list can be at List of notable people born in Chennai. But, it is likely to grow indefinitely with the current standards for notability. The notability and the place of birth of most of these people are questionable. We shouldn't engage in fancruft.


 * Engelbert Humperdinck, pop singer
 * Hemamalini, Actor and dancer
 * Henry Whitehead, mathematician
 * Kamal Hassan, actor - Born in Paramakudi
 * Mahesh Bhupathi, tennis player
 * Maniratnam, film director
 * Narain Karthikeyan, Formula One driver - Born in Coimbatore
 * Jiddu Krishnamurti, theosophist
 * R.K. Narayan, writer
 * Nasser Hussain, English cricketer
 * Pete Best, early Beatles drummer
 * A. R. Rahman, music composer - Supposedly from Kerala
 * Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher, former President of India - Born in Tiruttani
 * Tiruvalam N Krishnamurthy, Meteorologist
 * Viswanathan Anand, chess grandmaster

-- Sundar \talk \contribs July 7, 2005 04:16 (UTC)


 * Regarding the list of notable people born in Chennai, it is good that you removed it from the article. But, we shouldn't remove the names from Wikipedia entirely - lets put them on some other article atleast, probably with lesser prominence. I am against removing information. I feel Engelbert Humperdinck, Mahesh Bhupathi, Maniratnam, R.K. Narayan, Pete Best, Viswanathan Anand, and A. R. Rahman (if he's from Chennai) could be included. Definitely those on the international scene should be included. But lets not scrap information.


 * -- BN

Feel free to select appropriate names from the above list and more and then put them in the list of notable people born in Chennai. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:32, July 11, 2005 (UTC)


 * Sure, will do that. I will also try and come up with Education in Chennai article sometime soon.
 * Does anybody have recent demographic information on Chennai, especially the percentages of people speaking Tamil, Telugu,...; the religious composition, etc?


 * -- BN

Reducing Hyperlink Clutter
The article has a lot of links for relatively unnecessary words such as city, east, coast, 2005, meter, boat, nature, habitat, June. In my opinion, all these are useless. A person who does not know the meanings for the words boat, nature, city, etc would consult an English language dictionary before reading an article on Chennai. Thus, we do not need to create a link for almost every English word. Please note, however, that we should continue linking British, South India, Tamil, etc.

I would like to mention here that the BBC once had discussions with its readers about keeping links within the body of news articles and the Editor decided "they are a distraction". I agree with him!

Does anybody differ in view? If not, I will remove all unnecessary hyperlinks.

-- BN 210.214.227.48


 * I agree partially. Retain links for all years, dates and units of measurement. Link terms like city or coast in the first sentence of the article but not necessarily elsewhere. (The first sentence is as close as we get to a formal definition). All other terms mentioned may be linked the first time they occur (if necessary). (All this was only my opinion). -- Brhaspati\talk/contribs 10:36, July 13, 2005 (UTC)


 * Finished removing links -- there are still a lot of links though! Any special reasons for linking the mentioned words in the first sentence? Also, why link years (except 1947) and months? (Sorry, I am ignorant about any rationale behind this.)


 * Isn't Marina the second longest in the world?
 * Added sentence "The Telugu speaking population was so large that when portions of the present Tamil Nadu were given to neighbouring states, Andhra Pradesh wanted to have Madras as its capital on language basis". Do we have the statistics for the % of Telugus (and people speaking other languages) in Chennai? Many reports pegged it at 30, some even 40%. I have adopted a conservative figure of 30%. Can somebody please fill us in with the correct demographics?

-- BN : Bnitin 05:25, 23 July 2005 (UTC)