User talk:Augustin B.

Reliable sources on Vishnudevananda
Hi, thanks for your intention to improve Wikipedia.

However, Facebook is not a reliable source (anyone can edit, there are many fakes, etc) and we can't really use it. It is very early days for this story and it is already carefully mentioned in the article. There could be consequences such as legal action against Sivananda Yoga, who knows, so the matter is certainly delicate. I've therefore reverted the changes. Thank you for your understanding. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:24, 7 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't really understand the argument of reliability in this case, because the official statement by the Sivananda Yoga centres itself acknowledges the Facebook post and its autor Julie Salter. Of course the matter is delicate but it seems like the information conveyed by the current Wikipedia article only comes from one source and therefore is partial. If a link to a Facebook post is too much, I think that at least a mention of this Facebook post, and a more detailed presentation of the accusations, would make the events more understandable and the article more complete. Augustin B. (talk) 17:29, 7 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Rules are rules, and in this case they're rather sensible. I agree that the SY source implicitly acknowledges Salter's post, but implicit acknowledgement is not what Wikipedia means by "reliable source". We are not in any hurry here: SY has only made a preliminary holding announcement - not a lot to go on - and they have promised to come back with some decisions in due time; those will in turn certainly be reported on by major newspapers, by Yoga Journal, and so forth, at which point we won't be having arguments about whether a Facebook posting is reliable. Wikipedia depends totally on the quality of the sources it uses, and people outside are deeply suspicious of article quality as they imagine anyone can add anything so it's all flaky. The only defence against that is ruthless insistence on source quality. I think you should read two key Wikipedia policies:


 * WP:RS, about what reliability means here;


 * WP:PRIMARY, about what primary (risky) and secondary (more reliable) sources are. Salter is by definition primary; we can sometimes use such things (preferably when they're not social media or gossip newspapers) but always with the greatest of caution, and preferably only in the context of better sources, which we don't have yet. The New York Times would be a reliable secondary source. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:50, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

And PLEASE could you stop making hurried edits to the article. Once again, there is NO HURRY here. We can wait a month or two and we'll get a decent result. For now, could you discuss what you wish to do on the article's talk page (not here), and when we agree (this is called "consensus" on Wikipedia) then we can make changes to the article. For what it's worth, I think the coverage of the Salter affair is very close to being all we can reasonably say until SY makes some decisions, or other developments are reported in major newspapers. Once again, please read those two policies before proceeding, it would help very much. Thanks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:56, 7 January 2020 (UTC)