User talk:Trev M/Yoga asanas (page merging and development)

Request for Comment
Please give me your feedback here on the relative merits of the layout and usability of this development page combining this list: list of yoga postures and stubs: Category:Yoga_positions - bearing in mind all are under development and have numerous issues to resolve. The stubs are opened by clicking the links in the list and are temporarily partially transcluded to the development page.  Trev M   ~   02:01, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

More explanation about the RfC above
I'm trying to bring together an article page, to replace the List of yoga postures and a group of stub-pages Category:Yoga_positions with numerous issues. All the stubs/pages I propose merging are tagged to that effect.

Discussion of the proposed merge - into the development page is from Talk:List_of_yoga_postures.

the development page has sections temporarily transcluded from most of Category:Yoga_positions and a contents box which  effectively replaces list of yoga postures. I have also begun editing many of the stubs.

So far, agreement with the proposal has been noted from 2 experienced but uninvolved editors, but only one contributor to these pages has made any contact, and that in a negative manner. However, I do not wish to continue investing valuable time in this project if it is going to be blocked in the end.

Before taking this to any resolution process with the editor (now.nupe) I would really appreciate unbiased - yet broadminded - feedback on the value of the development page compared to list of yoga postures and Category:Yoga_positions.

A very few of Category:Yoga_positions stubs qualify - just -  as notable enough to make articles. The issues on the stubs, especially the ones towards the bottom of the page, which I've not yet got around to editing, include very poor english (probably written by non-native users), lack of citations to controversial statements, inappropriate external links, poor quality suspect-copyright images, teaching style, and excessive duplication over the group. And of course, some of these issues transcude to the page I am building. Help with resolving the citation issues etc, is another thing altogether but I believe it can be done, and could be better done from an article page than a scattering of stubs.

Thanks for your attention, Trev M (talk) 02:23, 9 March 2010 (UTC), SUMMARISED Trev M (talk) 16:37, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

contents box not rendering after transcluded content added
Hi, thanks for dropping by. Could you give an idea why the auto contents box is failing to render on this lash-up page? It was OK until I added all the transcluded contents from other stubs.

Many thanks - now bed..... here in europe. Trev M (talk) 00:31, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * One of the articles you transcluded is Adho Mukha Vrksasana, which redirects to Handstand. The article on handstand contains   which removes the table of contents on the page it's on.  If you want to put the table of contents back on User:Trev M/Yoga asanas (page merging and development), add either   or   to the page.  If you use , the table of contents will be placed before the first section heading.  If you use  , the table of contents will be placed where the code is placed.  Please read Table of contents for more information on this, and let me know if you have any more questions.  Thanks!  --Mysdaao talk 01:37, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Mysdaao, you're a star ;>), Trev M (talk) 12:53, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You're welcome! --Mysdaao talk 13:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

thumb template
I'm looking for the "thumb" image template, so I can make a user-specific copy of it. Given up looking after 1/2 hr. I would like to be able to add an anchor above the image so that when a #link to a floating thumb is hit, the page scrolls to the TOP of it not the bottom, and without having to add any more encapsulation around the thumb template. You never know, other pedians might like to use it, if it is running reliably.

For graphic demo of what I'm trying to work around, hit the first link in the contents box of the main page of this talk, then hit the "see image" link under the title. Trev M (talk) 22:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The thumb is not a template - if it was it would be used with two braces  {{  - Therefore it is part of the MediaWiki software.  Ron h jones {{sup| (Talk)}} 23:46, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. There is nothing to stop you writing a template for your own use - someone already has Template:Thumb - maybe you can modify that to have the caption on top, and call it something like Template:ThumbTop ?  Ron h jones {{sup| (Talk)}} 23:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Write a book
I don't support this Wikibooks initiative on Wikipedia. Whether you write a book (Wikibooks) or write articles (Wikipedia). It's so simple... Davin (talk) 08:45, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts and comments
Hey. Here are some early thoughts on this page.

Content changes:
 * The larger problem with this sort of article is that you have to be careful of WP:NOTHOWTO. Wikipedia is not a place for people to come to learn how to do yoga poses or anything like that, and the article should reflect that policy. Text like "If you are pregnant, consult with your physician or qualified yoga instructor before doing this pose." is completely inappropriate, and honestly makes me wonder if that text was plagiarized from another source.
 * You also need to be mindful of WP:RS and WP:V. All text on Wikipedia is supposed to be attributable to secondary sources. Just because you're a yoga master (or have taken classes or whatever) does not mean that you can write an entire article based on what you've learned. You need to get sources for everything. In this case, I'm sure there are books out there that have an explanation of the poses that you can use. All claims about health benefits should either be similarly attributed, or removed. Related: do not plagiarize or closely copy text from those sources. Even if it's attributable to the book, such editing is not allowed here.

Style changes:
 * Restructure the sections so they have the English translation or romanized name of the position. For example, change Adho Mukha Śvānāsana अधोमुखश्वानासन "Downward-Facing Dog" to Downward-Facing Dog. I would then take try to work the Sanskrit into the text - something like "अधोमुखश्वानासन (Adho Mukha Śvānāsana) Known as the downward-facing dog, ...".
 * Remove weird references that aren't actual references - right now, refs 1 and 2. If you want to write footnotes, read WP:FOOT for alternative ways to do that. In this case, though, I think extra notes would be unnecessary.
 * Puffery text is unnecessary. Your opening sentence is "This page refers alphabetically to approximately one hundred of countless yoga postures or asanas and variations." Do we need to state that they're countless? That doesn't really add anything, but just seems to, I don't know, make the article feel more special or something.
 * Since you're doing that weird include thing, you have sections that have incomplete sentences. The first line of Uttānāsana is "one of the most frequently practiced hatha yoga postures." They should be complete sentences.
 * In places where you want to link to another article, use main, a template to show "Main article: myarticle".
 * In some places, you have little weird images in the sections. Remove those.
 * You have images all along the right side of the page. I know you're trying to demonstrate the poses, but the page just looks really cluttered and is hard to read. Further, the images don't line up with their appropriate sections, so it's hard to tell what is what.

As discussed on the other talk page, do not include text from other articles when building this. Copy the text over here and edit it on your own. Anyway, this is just a first round of things I noticed. Thoughts? —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 01:27, 7 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Here is my suggestion, that table format is better than individual subsections when there are 20+ asanas. We can improve existing article which has a table format, and drop this rewrite of article. Now.nupe (talk) 04:14, 7 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you again for these comments.


 * 1) Content – I agree without reservation re WP:NOTHOWTO and WP:V. Your comments make me realise that now is the time to take the plunge and refer to some WP:RS manuals from which to provide inline citations to many of the sections.... and delete anything that cannot be WP:RS cited. Hoping I can find these in a public library!
 * 2) Section (headings) – an issue here is that people will want to scan for sections alphabetically in both english and romanised sanskrit. I agree that the existing headings are unweildy. I will investigate an alternative structure using plain Latin translations of the titles, with  the english names and Devangari equivalents within the section, and another alphabetical index to scan the English names.
 * 3) Weird refs – thanks for the WP:FOOT ref; I'll work on alternatives, however...
 * 4) Puffery – I had not seen that this could be construed as such. The object of this text was to convey the information that whilst there are effectively limitless, nameable postures into which the human body can be put, most of them are slight variations of something else and don't need to be elaborated upon here. One of my issues is what to do with all the red links. Is it appropriate to make redirect pages for dozens that people might search for, pointing at the sections on the more general posture?
 * 5) Anomalies due to the Transclusions I've used. The original purpose of this sandbox lash-up was simply to get a quick feel for one page with all the non-notable asanas (and an intro to the others) including thumbnails of them, without all the WP:NOTHOWTO padding. To see whether it was within the recommended page size and flowed better than all the stubs and the list. I now have that feel, and think that aside from all the issues due to the transcludes which will now "come out in the wash" and we can create a unified page meeting the strict criteria that  HelloAnnyong and I both agree to.
 * 6) I receive the feedback that the floating images and the related paraphenalia to tie them into the text are too messy. The issue for me is making a page that is compact, and not resulting in masses of white space due to images constrained within very short sections.  Masses of white space is as bad as clutter. I think I can sort them both. I am a layout junkie however, and working with layout within such a strict, simplified environment where most editors don't give it much consideration is challenging!
 * 7) Regarding a Table solution.... Tables are have been deprecated in web page layout for all else other than the purposes they would serve in a paper document since the advent of Cascading Style Sheets, about 10 years ago.  Fixing the page layout in this way is visually ungainly - leaves great gaps of white space and stretched boxes when images are included in some but not all of the cells. They are not easy to read, especially when the column headings are scrolled way above the place in the table being viewed. So basically, Now.nupe, despite having ploughed-in in my early days here and tried to fix the table layout, I now want to go with a layout that uses section-headed prose, as in the WP guide to style.  Trev M  ~  10:51, 7 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Let's see here.
 * You don't necessarily need to run to the library just yet; Google Books should be able to help you a bit.
 * As to the redlinks, I would just remove the links altogether. Having a huge page of blue links that link back to the same article is excessive and unwieldy.
 * The table thing is a hard call. You're right that tables are on the decline somewhat, but they still remain viable here. One of the advantages of using tables is that you can make a column sortable (it does it with Javascript), which would solve your problem of people supposedly wanting to search by either English or romanized names. Consider the following structure:
 * {|class="wikitable sortable"

!style="width:15%"| English name !style="width:15%"| Sanskrit !style="width:15%"| Romanized ! Description
 * Downward-Facing Dog
 * अधोमुखश्वानासन
 * Adho Mukha Śvānāsana
 * The preparatory position is with the hands and knees on the floor, hands under the shoulders, fingers spread wide, knees under the hips and typically about seven inches (17 cm) apart, with the spine straightened and relaxed. ...
 * }
 * The problem with that sort of table is that, if the description runs long, the page would be really unwieldy. To that end, I think that a list format is preferred, and I still think that putting the English names of the moves is the best solution. That's more of my own adaptation of WP:ENGLISH, but I think it applies. People who are looking up by Sanskrit can either search down the page in their browsers (most people know how to do this), or they'll just search on Wikipedia - and that's where you can do redirects.
 * With regards to the images.. well, that's a little trickier. You're right that big blocks of white where you cleared between sections would be distracting. My recommendation would be not to overload the page with images, but rather pick and choose the best ones.
 * I actually just had an idea: is there a better way to break down these poses? In other words, rather than just throwing them all in one big gross list, could we categorize them? Is there some set of categorization that's used by yoga practicioners, and that we could employ here? I think I would prefer to have a page that's a top-level List of yoga postures with several categories in it, names of the positions and such, and then to link to subpages, like List of yoga postures (category 1), where you can expand a little more. That would be the most ideal solution, in that each pose is not particularly notable on its own, but a list of them together is. (This is similar to how List of episode pages have been handled.)
 * Thoughts? —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 14:28, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thoughts? —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 14:28, 7 July 2010 (UTC)


 * HelloAnnyong, thanks again for all this input. You're a star. You've given me a lot to think about and process. I will begin to reconstruct a page based on many of your recommendations. User Now.nupe will find my tiresome "onlyincludes" progressively removed over the next few days, but will have to seriously reconsider what is a stand-alone article page. I will give your user page a bell when this page is substantially reconstructed, or if any more problems arise, save you having to endure all my edits on your watchlist, if you want to delist it soon. The only outstanding issue for me at the moment is the mildly abusive mention of me on the Talk:List_of_yoga_postures page. I don't know what to do about this in terms of the protocols of Wikipedia – is blanking of sections such as this appropriate? Is some sort of "official" warning appropriate? Let me know there or wherever. Thanks,  Trev M  ~  22:43, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Glad to help. Let me know when you come up with something; I'm interested to see how all this turns out. As to that talk page: as long as comments like that don't continue, I would just leave it alone for now. If it does, though, you can take it up at other places around here, like WP:WQA. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 01:12, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Trev M has half knowledge which is dangerous. Table for styling is replaced by div/span css, but using for table is not deprecated. You can count how many tables are there on wikipedia itself. Now.nupe (talk) 04:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Using the &lt;table> tag on Wikipedia is largely deprecate in favor of wikitables. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 14:10, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikitables convert back wikitables syntax to tag in html, not to div/span tag. View source of any wikipedia article that contains a table. Now.nupe (talk) 05:39, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you, I understand how Wiki's rendering engine works. That doesn't change the fact that, when you edit a Wikipedia article, you're supposed to use Wiki markup and such rather than straight HTML. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 12:35, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Are all contributors to the asana content pages aware of the effects of the Indian Governments initiative to compile a database describing about 1,500 yoga postures and videography of 200 popular ones as part of an effort to prevent patent pirates from exploiting it for commercial purposes? Traditional_Knowledge_Digital_Library. Yoga Mat (talk) 11:57, 5 July 2011 (UTC)