Talk:Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk · contribs) 06:45, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

OK, I'll review the article. These are just some initial comments. I'll provide a fuller discussion of the article soon.
 * Thanks for taking this on. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:15, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

The lead states, "It is one of the first books in English to describe and illustrate a substantial number of asanas; it describes the yoga purifications (shatkarmas), pranayama, mudras, and samadhi at a comparable level of detail." The first thing that strikes me there is that readers are likely to be confused about the meaning of "asanas", an unfamiliar term. You could argue that context (or the link to Asanas) explains this. But it ought to be as unambiguous as possible, and I'd suggest some sort of clarification or further elaboration of that point so that readers don't have to look up another article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:46, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Said "yoga poses".

Where the organization of the article is concerned, I'd have done things slightly differently. The section titled "Context", I would have titled "Background" instead. Rather than have a section titled "Book", I would have had two different sections, one titled "Publication history" (corresponding to what is titled "Publication" here) and the other "Summary" or perhaps "Synopsis" (corresponding to what is called "Contents" here). I don't expect you to necessarily do things exactly in the way I would have done them, and none of these points is essential to the passing of the article, but it would be worth at least considering a somewhat different approach. "Book" seems to me too general a section for a title, as everything in the article relates to the book in one way or another. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:53, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Done.
 * Thank you for being wiling to reconsider the exact organization of the article, but it needs some further adjustment. At present, there is a section called "Publication history", with "Synopsis" as a subsection within that. This isn't what I was suggesting. Rather, what I was proposing was a "Publication history" section, then a separate "Synopsis" section following that. Doesn't make sense to have the "Synopsis" section as a subsection of "Publication history". The "Synopsis" section should include everything within the section currently titled "Synopsis", together with "Illustrations" and "Approach". FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:31, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * If you want examples of exactly what I'm suggesting, see some articles I've worked on, eg Sexual Preference (book), The Homosexual Matrix, Sexual Desire, and Freud and Philosophy. In each case, there is a "Summary" section (which might just as well have been called "Synopsis"), followed by a separate "Publication history" section. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:43, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Woops, promoted the section. I meant it to be at the top level.
 * Thanks. The way you've done it now is what I was suggesting. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:56, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

"Despite its title, the book was less personal and more technical than his fictionalised 1939 account of hatha yoga, Heaven Lies Within Us."

Grammatically, I think "Bernard's" would make better sense than "his". FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:56, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Done.

"The main part of the book recounts Bernard's own experience, starting with a chapter on asanas and the reason he was "prescribed" them."

Obvious point, but there needs to be a brief explanation of what "prescribed" means. You might argue that it's self-evident, but remember that Wikipedia has readers of many different levels of education, varying backgrounds, and different levels of familiarity with different subjects. I think I know what "prescribed" means, but I'm not quite 100% sure. So clarify that please. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:59, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Added gloss "by his teacher".

" There is a 3-page biography of the author and an academic bibliography with primary sources - the Yoga Sutras, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Siva Samhita, and the Gheranda Samhita - and the secondary sources available to him, including Kuvalayananda's Asanas and Sir John Woodroffe's Shakti and Shakta."

The exact number of pages doesn't matter. No need for inconsequential details. You might instead perhaps simply say a "brief" biography. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:04, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Done.

"These mastered, he took on the meditation asanas, the two main ones being siddhasana and padmasana, as well as the minor ones vajrasana, muktasana, guptasana, simhasana, bhadrasana, gorakshasana, and svastikasana."

I would have written that slightly differently - "main asanas" and "minor asanas" instead of "main ones" and "minor ones". FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:04, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Trying not to say asanas many times per sentence: reworded.

"Bernard learnt all six purifications, namely dhauti, neti, trataka, nauli, and kapalabhati."

"Namely" doesn't add anything to the sense of that sentence. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:06, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Removed; in terms of adding facts, all such connecting words are mere noise. But given that all six of the linked terms following are unfamiliar, it's actually quite helpful to have a single word that says "ok, the list of strange stuff that follows this word is what you'll need to pay attention to", and for that meaning we may think that a six-letter word is rather efficient. Maybe we should put it back.

"In pranayama, he learnt surya bhedana (piercing the solar disk), sitting in siddhasana and employing uddiyana bandha to help move the air."

A question readers will want answered is, "what does 'solar disk' mean?". Maybe this reflects my limited knowledge, but I don't know myself what it means. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:10, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Said "so-called". I don't think we can go beyond the fact that it is so named, really.

"He then learnt ujjayi breathing (victorious), sitkari (hissing sound) and sitali (cooling breath), followed by bhastrika and bhramari (buzzing like a bee[c])."

It's clear what "hissing sound", and I suppose more or less clear what "cooling breath" means, but the meaning of "victorious" is obscure here. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:13, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Again, that's just what it is called. Said "meaning".

"The yoga scholar-practitioner, Norman Sjoman"

I'd remove the comma between "scholar-practitioner" and "Norman Sjoman". FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:22, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The pair of commas brackets his name. I've removed 'em but many wikignomes insist upon them.
 * It's a minor point, and not essential to the article getting good article status. Take it as a suggestion only. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:29, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

"Another yoga scholar-practitioner, Mark Singleton, calls Bernard's book an influential "participant/observer account of a hatha yoga sādhana", and an "important forerunner of the encyclopedic asana guides of Vishnudevananda (1960) and Iyengar (1966)"

In this case, I would consider it better to identify the book by its specific title rather than by referring to it as "Bernard's book", considering that Bernard was the author of multiple books. I realize that readers will understand that sentence, and realize that "Bernard's book" refers to Hatha Yoga: The Report of A Personal Experience rather than any of Bernard's other books, but in principle it is still clearer and more accurate to use the book's specific name. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:35, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Done.

Just to comment on the article as a whole, I think there is a lot of good stuff here, and you've clearly put plenty of work into it. There may still need to be improvements before the article is passed, however. The review process is not complete at this point. I will come back to it soon. As an immediate improvement, I would suggest adding Category:English-language books. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:40, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Done.

Further comments
I have now had a chance to re-read the article, following the recent changes made as part of the good article review process. I believe the article requires further work. The lead states that, "It is one of the first books in English to describe and illustrate a substantial number of yoga poses (asanas); it describes the yoga purifications (shatkarmas), pranayama, mudras, and samadhi at a comparable level of detail." Terms such as "shatkarmas", "pranayama", "mudras", and "samadhi" will be likely unfamiliar to most readers. I appreciate that they are linked, and that an explanation of them is only a click away, but ideally readers shouldn't have to look up another article to understand what they mean. So there should be some explanation of these terms in the lead. The explanation does not have to be long. Even just a very brief explanation, consisting of only a small amount of text, would be very helpful to readers (it could follow the example of "yoga poses" as an explanation of "asanas").
 * Glosses added. However, they still leave the concepts inexplicable to newcomers, so I've added the diagram I made for another article which at least gives people a glimpse of what is meant to be going on.

In the "Context" section, the article states "After visiting India and Tibet, Bernard completed his Ph.D. in a single year at Columbia University under the supervision of Herbert Schneider. In 1943 he published this as a book." In that second sentence, I think "it" would be correct grammatically, rather than "this".
 * Done. Possibly Brit, btw.

There is a more important issue in the "Summary" section, which is that citations need to be clearer. With every article about a book I've tried to get through WP:GAN, I have, with the exception of the lead (where WP:LEADCITE applies) placed a citation at the end of every paragraph, and sometimes after individual sentences, in cases where it seems especially important for whatever reason to indicate that the material is cited (which can apply where the material could be considered controversial, or where it consists of direct quotations). That needs to be done for the "Summary" section of this article, specifically the "Overview" subsection of "Summary" (the two following subsections, "Illustrations" and "Approach" are sufficiently clear about citations; "Overview" should be brought up to that standard).
 * Added. I have brought various books to GA, often without such page refs; and when page refs have been supplied, people have complained they're primary! I once separated primary and secondary ref lists for that reason, now that's a faff.

Some other points:

The "Illustrations" section states, "Back in America, Bernard's photographs of himself, whether in Tibetan dress or performing yoga poses such as Baddhapadmasana in the studio (a photo that also appears as plate XX in the book[c]), appeared frequently in Family Circle magazine from 1938, "reveal[ing] his willingness to commodify spirituality and assumptions of exoticism"." "America" should be changed to "the United States", the more formal and accurate term for the country. "America" as a term for the United States is a colloquialism.
 * Done.

The "Approach" section uses a number of quotations. Some might suggest that it makes excessive use of quotations. To me, however, it seems that the quotations have been used carefully, appropriately, and to good effect, and that they don't need to be changed (it's also good that the article illustrates a yoga pose). However, while the use you've made of quotations there is good, it's also as well to keep in mind that it is probably about the maximum use of quotations that should be made.
 * I had the same thought.

Since I have EBSCO access, I looked up EBSCO to see whether it has anything that could be used to improve the article. As far as I can tell, EBSCO has no articles specifically about Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience. I did get results for a search for the author's name (Theos Casimir Bernard). Only two of the articles I found that way mention Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience; since these references were both brief, I didn't see fit to add anything from either source.
 * Many thanks.

Finally, the review process is still not complete yet. There will be more. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:52, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Further comments (part two)
I've re-read the article again. The lead now does a notably better job of explaining the article's subject. The addition of full citations to the "Overview" section is a substantial step forward for the article. I'd like to see a citation added following the sentence, "An introduction explains the principles of hatha yoga." It's important not just that everything there be cited but that it be seen to be cited.
 * Thanks.

There are some minor things about the article I could question; for instance, I'm not sure that all the notes in the "Notes" section are really needed. Note c in particular, as a reference to another Wikipedia article, seems unneeded to me. However, I'm not going to insist on its being removed, as it's just a small point.
 * OK, then let's leave it. The point of the note is that a higher-quality image is available without my wishing to copy the image here, so I've tweaked the wording. The Bernard images are stored as non-free, but given that Bernard's death was 76 years ago, they should be PD and if so we could use one or two more of them.

The six good article criteria are,

1. That an article is well-written. I think the article is well-written; I realize that producing a well-written article can be difficult when describing a subject that will likely be unfamiliar to most readers, but you've done a good job of it.
 * Many thanks.

2. That an article is Verifiable with no original research. This criterion also appears to be met.

3. That the article is Broad in its coverage. This criterion is met; the article covers the main points of the subject.

4. That an article is Neutral. Again, yes, the criterion is met as the article is quite neutral.

5. That an article is Stable. The criterion is met.

6. That an article be illustrated. Yes - you've included some nicely-chosen illustrations.

I'm now nearly ready to pass the article. The one remaining area where I think that there could be improvement before the article is passed is in the formatting of the article's citations. You've used a mixture of different citation styles, which is something I think should be avoided. Best to pick a single style and be absolutely consistent with it. In the "References" section, some citations are of the style, "Syman 2010", and "Bernard 2007". That's the example the others ought to follow - could you modify citations 2, 3, 5, 21, 22, 23, and 32 so that they follow the same style? Alternatively, it would be helpful to have an explanation for the variant citation style. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 10:39, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Done. The explanation is simply that the books used repeatedly as sources are in short form to avoid repetition.

Many thanks for the careful review. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:59, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Passed article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 09:58, 8 June 2019 (UTC)