Talk:Patna/Archive 2

Rivers
The article says "Ganga River is the largest. It is joined by four other rivers: Ghaghara, Gandak, Punpun and Sone." but elsewhere refers only to three of these five rivers - are the five named here correct?

Also, at one point the article says that the city sits on the south bank of the Ganga but elsewhere says that it straddles various rivers. It cannot be both, so which is correct please. - Sitush (talk) 14:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Law and order
There have clearly been issues with law and order in Patna - I keep finding obscure references to it, as for example in an edit made only minutes ago (26 Feb, c. 0820). This needs to be addressed in the article, which has to present an all-round view and not merely one which is favourable to the city. Thoughts? - Sitush (talk) 08:40, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Can you tell me which edit are you talking of? Law and order situation deteriorated for a period of time,but has improved a lot since 2005. I don't support adding any new section ,till others are fixed.Maverick.Mohit (talk) 09:07, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You referenced a Times of India report for the assertion of Patna airport's growth in 2009. That report includes a statement from the airport that a reason for this growth was the improvement in the law and order situation. Since it is speaking of 2009, I'm not so sure about your 2005 comment. Anyway, it needs looking into and there is no reason at all to delay. In fact, it is arguable that to delay is to permit undue weight (WP:Weight). - Sitush (talk) 09:17, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Transportation and connectivity- Air
The reference i gave clearly says about number one position.Please take a look again. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/Patna-airport-notches-No-1-spot-in-air-traffic-passenger-growth-/articleshow/6026297.cms Maverick.Mohit (talk) 09:01, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You are correct. My apologies - struggling to read "Indian English" (no offence intended - I can't read Urdu either) Will revert. - Sitush (talk) 09:11, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Education
I added a reference regarding,patna medical college being ranked as sixth in undivided India.However,the reference was removed.May i know the reason? take a look at it again-http://puonline.bih.nic.in/pmcol.html Maverick.Mohit (talk) 09:44, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Sure, three reasons:
 * inaccessible from here in the UK and as of yesterday was inaccessible from the USA - I'll come back to this point later today as I'm in discussion regarding it
 * although inaccessible, from the url it appears to be a self-published source and is therefore possibly not reliable
 * the reference was inserted at the incorrect point in the sentence, and in the process you deleted a valid clarification tag


 * An aside to this, there is a strong possibility that I may soon open a debate regarding a merge of many of these higher education facilities in Patna as a substantial number of them appear to be operating under the Patna University institution and the articles for them are mostly stubs. Such a merge (well, a redirect in this particular case) has already happened for Patna Training College.


 * Any chance that you are in a position to address any of my recent queries? I feel like I'm on the defensive here :( - Sitush (talk) 10:54, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Update - the merger of the various educational stubs has actually happened without further consultation. I noted that there were in fact two which had already been redirected by admins & so went ahead with the rest. An admin has just ok'd it all (& helped me out on the last stage). - Sitush (talk) 18:13, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It's a setback that government sites are inaccessible from outside India,because as i have already mentioned online source are limited. I would appreciate if you could do something about it.Maverick.Mohit (talk) 07:12, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It is certainly a nuisance. Wikipedia has a policy that editors should accept that their colleagues are acting in good faith (WP:AGF)and therefore the fact that these things cannot be seen outside India is not in itself a reason to delete them. I'm just wary of it because - even allowing for my own mistake with one of your edits yesterday - there has been a lot of poorly worded stuff in this article and, in particular, statements that simply do not agree with the cited source when that source is looked at. So, although I do believe that you are acting in good faith and your edits are valid, I'm also just generally a little cautious about everything! In a few instances there are archived copies of some of these government pages from 2007-08, presumably before the blocks were instigated, and so I'm hoping to get round it that way. Please, I meant no offence with this so feel free to refer to those sites if there is no other source.
 * I'd just add that I have seen some government pages where the information clearly was taken from this article rather than the other way round - you will need to be careful about this. - Sitush (talk) 07:37, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction with History_of_Patna
This article says that Patna is mentioned in various ancient Indian texts; the History_of_Patna article specifically says that is not the case, and seems to name the same texts. Obviously, one or the other is wrong. I know there is one citation (for one text) in this article but I do not think that is conclusive evidence either way. Can anyone resolve this with further citations? Something has to give because the present situation is a mess. - Sitush (talk) 14:10, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * As far as i could check in online sources,it's history dates back to 6th century B.C. However, on official portal of gov of India,it talk about mention of bihar in vedas. check if you can access the link. http://india.gov.in/knowindia/st_bihar.php
 * I believe such claims can not be verified easily.May be we can keep it under mythology or something like that.Maverick.Mohit (talk) 07:26, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I can see the site you mention and it looks like a reliable source. The problem is that it does not refer to Patna as being in Vedas but rather Bihar. I do not think that we can make the link from one to the other as this would be an assumption and/or a synthesis. I'm not sure about putting it under "mythology" either because that does not resolve the contradiction between the two articles. - Sitush (talk) 09:06, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've linked to this section from the History of Patna talk page to seek further input. I've also emailed NIC for an explanation of why I can see the site referred to by Maverick. Mohiti above but not other official portals etc. - Sitush (talk) 09:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Book as reference
I came across a book written about Bihar,published in 2007,by a renowned Indian publisher. The book claims to be encyclopedic in nature,it has 4 volumes. In the first volume, it has a lot of information related to Patna and it's history.As we are facing a lot of difficulties regarding references,use of this book as reference can solve a lot of confusion. .I would like to know others opinion regarding this.Maverick.Mohit (talk) 07:35, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * What is the title of the book, the name of the publisher etc? - Sitush (talk) 08:56, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Title of Book is 'Bihar through ages' volume-1.It's available on google books.Maverick.Mohit (talk) 19:22, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Found it. Vol 1 - - Vol 2  - Vol 3  - Vol 4.


 * It is slightly confusing because there is a book of the same title from the 1950s which was quoted in scholarly publications, eg: . Unfortunately, the title you are looking at has a minimal entry in Google Scholar, whereas the older one has a fair number (. On the other hand, the authors of the newer book do have history PhDs & it does seem to have extensive coverage of the subject + to have used primary sources etc, so I'm inclined to treat it as reliable. I would have been happier if it had been published by a company I'd heard of, but the publisher does seem to have produced a fair few academic books & so it is probably my ignorance. I'm astonished that a 2007 book is available on Google in its entirety. Good spot! - Sitush (talk) 08:03, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Glad u liked it, so can i go ahead adding references from this book?I don't know how to direct link to the exact page of book.May be you can help. One more thing,can i add more info that can be used in article from the book? Maverick.Mohit (talk) 09:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * As far as I am concerned, you can add what you want. In any case, WP works on consensus rather than what one editor thinks or says. Template:cite book should help you with formatting citations but feel free to ask me if you get stuck. Just be careful not to plagiarise and be aware that if massive chunks of the article become reliant on this one book then it is likely to get tagged as being "single source" (WP:1R). - Sitush (talk) 09:28, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Residents section
I just removed a number of names from the former/current residents section. This is because people on lists like this need to have either their own wikipage, or a reliable source proving two things: 1) that the person lived/lives in this city, and 2) that the person is notable enough for their own Wikipedia article. I almost left in the Justices, under the presumption that any Justice of the High Court is inherently notable, but realized that without a reference showing s/he was a resident of Patna, that they shouldn't be included.

Also, I removed all of the titles, like "Dr" and "Justice", as WP:Honorifics says that we don't use these, even when it is common to do so in the native region/language. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:29, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Pictures
I just reverted the addition of more pictures by an IP. I left a note on the IP's talk page, but figured I should probably open up a discussion here, too. Here's what I wrote there:


 * Thanks for trying to improve Patna with pictures...the problem is that the article already has too many pictures. There are so many that pictures are actually lying on top of other pictures.  A good Wikipedia article should have some pictures to give an idea of the subject, but we're not a travel guidebook, so our goal is not to show all aspects of the city, all of its seasons or tourist spots, etc.  We need to be very judicious about the number of pictures we choose.  Personally I actually think at least half of the pictures that were already there should be cut out, not more added.

If others disagree, let me know, but the current number of pictures is really more than the vast majority of place articles have. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:18, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree. That was going to be one of my next tasks, to go through and remove at least half of them. - Sitush (talk) 08:59, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I have just reverted 7 edit by an IP,the summary talked about special contribution made by that IP.I have no idea what special contribution is,but the contribution was only one or two picture or a collage of pictures,which totally misplaced other pictures.I have copied the above message of qwyrxian,on the talk page of IP.May i request a lock for this article.can someone help me with it?

Maverick.Mohit (talk) 16:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Removal of misleading statement from Places of Interest section
I have just removed the statement: " The Hanuman Mandir has the second highest budget in North India after the Vaishno Devi shrine." This is because it appears to an outside viewer to mean that in connection with tourism and/or restoration work etc the thing has the second-highest budget but if the reference cited is read it becomes clear that this budget is intended to service health present-day provision etc by the Temple Trust (and even then is 2 or 3 years out of date and was at an exceptional time).

I understand that the statement may have been ok for someone used to how India works etc, but to the rest of the world it is very confusing, even misleading, and is not a true reflection of what the source says. - Sitush (talk) 08:27, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Bihar/Patna etc official sites
Following my email to NIC last week, the official government sites for Bihar & Patna have once again become accessible outside of India, so all previous discussion about this issue is now irrelevant. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 08:27, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Famous residents
Please could I just remind contributors that just because someone was born in Patna, lived there or studied there does not mean that they are suitable for inclusion in a list of famous residents. There is a Wikipedia essay for this issue here. Not a policy or guideline but if we bear in mind that WP is also not a list then we need to start drawing a line somewhere otherwise in the case of an article about a city of this size it could become unmanageable and overwhelming. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 20:09, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

School
Users have added names of too many schools,it gives article an unwanted length.I will rewrite the section,and will make a separate link for list of school.Maverick.Mohit (talk) 16:14, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Semi Protection Requested
Looking at the number of vandalism attempts made by several IPs,i have requested semi-protection for the article.In the meanwhile i request users to please,discuss the matter on this page before making any edit.Maverick.Mohit (talk) 12:28, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * First of all, please read WP:VANDAL--none of those edits are vandalism. Adding unsourced info, or info that isn't WP:DUE is not vandalism.  Vandalism only refers to intentional acts to make the encyclopedia worse.  Those edits aren't even disruptive--they're good faith edits, just not ones that we want.  Second, it's only 3 IPs editors in about 6 days--that's not enough to qualify for page protection.  I'm going to indicate on RFPP that semi-protection would be inappropriate here.  Qwyrxian (talk) 12:37, 26 May 2011 (UTC)