Talk:Raashid Alvi

Untitled
To whom so ever it may concern. Now, the page has been edited and thoroughly been gone through. It now has a neutral approach. I am new to wiki, so don't know who has to remove the message at the top of the article. I am removing the message. Good Talk Regards, Shakeel Uddin — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shakeeluddin (talk • contribs) 14:53, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
 * This article remains overblown, bloated, and crammed full of irrelevant and unnecessary information. It reads like a eulogy, not a Wikipedia article.  I would trim it down myself but I don't have a lawn mower for the Internet yet.  We don't need a list of his publications nor an itemization of every office he has ever held.  We don't need a list of every talk he has ever given or of every time he has washed his hands in the sink.  We don't need 300 citations to prove it.  This article needs to be made much more succinct and to-the-point.  Right now it is drowning in its own glory.  KDS 4444  Talk  08:30, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Also: one picture is needed here. Just one photograph.  Not 20, not a gallery of images.  One photo is all this article warrants.  KDS 4444  Talk  08:33, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * And please, please remove the overabundance of capital letters: "television" is not a proper noun. Neither is "radio."  Neither are 100 other Nouns and Adjectives that have been used in This Article.  They make it look like This is an Important Person who is Trying Very Hard to convince us of His Importance which possibly therefore he Does Not Have.  Except maybe he does.  And if he does, then he doesn't need all the capital letters to prove it.  If the article cannot speak for itself, then it should not exist.  If it speaks for itself, it doesn't need All Capital letters to Convince us.  KDS 4444  Talk  08:41, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The entire third paragraph should probably go. Also, stuff like: "Known for his apposite, humble and soft-spoken style Alvi became the National Spokesperson of Indian National Congress in 2011..."   KDS 4444  Talk  08:44, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, all of the photos have been marked as transferable to Commons.-- Auric    talk  11:54, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Excessive, indiscriminate, images
Whilst not totally agreeing that "One photo is all this article warrants" as stated above by KDS4444, it really only warrants 2 or 3, or 4 at the absolute most. The relevant policy is Image use policy specifically WP:Gallery which states:-
 * "Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved ... or moved to Wikimedia Commons."

Despite attempts to trim the gallery to relevant images, even more indiscriminate images have been added, showing a collection of indistinguishable blobs which may, or may not, be Alvi - but certainty add nothing of encyclopedic value. The gallery should, therefore, be severely trimmed, or removed in its entirety. - Arjayay (talk) 15:46, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I concede that perhaps one photograph is austere. Let me suggest a comparison: the article on Indira Gandhi.  This article contains 10 images of her-- the lead section has a simple black & white photo, and the text that follows shows two more images of her in her youth, one with her father and another of her in posing in a simple white dress.  The only photos of her that follow this are professional photographs of her taken with world leaders, and these usually pertain directly to the sections in which they appear (relations in the Middle East: photo of her meeting the Shah if Iran).  If an editor would like guidelines on what kinds of photos to add to this article, I would consider any images depicting the subject engaged in personal dialogue with known world leaders to be appropriate-- and not 10 pictures with the same leader, of course.  If such images are not available, then perhaps the article does not need more that a profile picture or an image of the subject giving a presentation before a political body such as the UN.  The important thing to remember is that this is not meant to be a yearbook: if the picture does not specifically convey something interesting and relevant about the subject, perhaps it should not be included (?).  KDS 4444  Talk  15:00, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Indic script
Despite my repeatedly pointing out the consensus at WikiProject India regarding WP:INDICSCRIPT, editors continue to re-insert Indic scripts into the lead. This is clearly contrary to consensus, and so constitutes vandalism. Arjayay (talk) 15:53, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Relevance of references
This article contains an [over] abundance of citations. I just looked at three of them to see if they actually do anything to support the claim being made in the article. For example: the claim that Mr. Alvi has been a party to the anti-dowry movement is supported by a link titled,'' "India set to count 550 mn votes today". The Nagaland Post. 16 May 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2014.'' I reviewed the news article...  It has nothing at all to do with the anti-dowry movement. It has to do with vote-counting. I get the feeling that many of the "references" given in the Wikipedia article have nothing at all to do with the claims they are being used to support, but are instead a random list of places in the news where Alvi has been mentioned, however briefly. I don't need much additional proof to come to the conclusion that the article really is a house of cards: one puff and it collapses. Every time the article gets reverted and re-reverted is another sign of the downward trend of the piece, one which can be stopped but not reversed. Mr. Alvi, wherever you are, I hope you are taking note of the games that are being played with your (I use the possessive pronoun loosely) Wikipedia article. The behavior is truly shameful. KDS 4444 Talk  18:46, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Article Rewrite
I spent the better part of last hour trying to find more information about the subject and cross checking the citations with the actual content. First things first, Mr Alvi is no longer a spokesperson of the Indian National Congress. See here. There goes the notability factor. Almost all the citations (like User:KDS4444 said) have nothing to do with the actual content. All I could find is that Mr Alvi is a member of the Indian Congress Party and has been an MP thrice. He has no mention of him on the INC official website as part of the organisation's structure or leadership. Also I can see from here that Mr Alvi was with the Janata Dal earlier and before joining in the Congress Party, he was elected to the 13th Lok Sabha as a member of the 'Bahujan Samaj Party'. None of the books mentioned in the article are authored by him. I had to scour the internet to find something about his past and I have added some content about his political career. I am going to go ahead and remove all the content without valid sources and replace it with what little I could find. Feel free to revert if you don't agree with the rewrite or you can go ahead and add more content with proper attributes. Thank you NQ (talk) 20:29, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Good start. I gave up - way too confusing for me (and I'm totally not familiar with the Indian political system and election process).  Just as a note - notability is not temporary, so if they held a notable position once, that's usually enough.  Gotta be careful to avoid adding trivial details after they've lost that position though - this shouldn't be a collection of trivia. Ravensfire ( talk ) 20:46, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Sockpuppets at this article
See Sockpuppet investigations/Hamdirfan987. Dougweller (talk) 20:42, 3 June 2014 (UTC)