Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Advanced Yoga Practices (AYP)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was delete, as consensus to do so exists and the article is yet to address the concerns raised. I've userfied this to User:O. Pen Sauce/Advanced Yoga Practices (AYP) so that it may be worked on. - brenneman  {L} 02:48, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Advanced Yoga Practices (AYP)
promotional page Ekajati 20:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per my nom. Ekajati 20:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete As mentioned, promotional page Dwayne Kirkwood 21:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete I can't find evidence that this is considered to be a proper "branch" of Yoga. A Google search for the phrase "Advanced Yoga Practices" isn't that useful as that phrase is often used more generically. Combining that phrase with the name of the founder, "Yogani," yields only about 730 hits, many related to a few books. The creator of the article immediately set about linking numerous other Yoga-related articles to this one which supports the suspicion that the intention was promotional. OhNo itsJamie  Talk 22:56, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak keep While there is a still a whiff of promotion about this, and most of the sources would not meet guidelines in Reliable_sources, and the Alexa ranking for the site isnt that impressive (though it is ranked, which is more than many sites can say), the popularity of the books and endorsements by O.Pen Sauce are enough to change my vote to a weak keep. OhNo itsJamie Talk 21:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. Thanks, Ohnoitsjamie. But fwiw beware Alexa. It skews very steeply toward underaluing non-huge sites. I have friends running small, medium, and rather large sites who all agree Alexa underrates by a factor of magnitude. They get the super big ones right, though. Just FWIW! (I have no idea what traffic is for the AYP site)--O. Pen Sauce 23:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Strong Delete - relevance... and obvious promotion. Sfacets 00:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * note: The main contributor user:Yogani also is the main contributor to the Yogani article, and is obviously the founder of AYP - he/she has also been posting links to the AYP website on different articles on WIkipedia. This is obviously some desperate attempt at promoting a book and online group. This obviopusly falls under what Wikipedia is not. Sfacets 01:02, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
 * note2: user:Yogani has also started a page on him/herself. Yogani - which I have placed up for deletion Articles for deletion/Yogani. More than a "whiff" of self-promotion here. Sfacets
 * Delete per nom. Blatant self-promotion and unverifiable. &mdash;Hanuman Das 01:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Endorsement from an old-time Wikipedian
I haven't been doing any work on wikipedia in ages (just busy), so I don't know how much cred I have at this point. However, most of my work dates back to before "Advanced Yoga Practices" came into being, so I'm at least not a new face. This is certainly not a new "branch" of yoga, Ohnoitsjamie. They haven't added any in a few millennia. So that's not a fitting benchmark. However, it's a fresh and innovative approach, it reveals a lot of information previously kept secret (one had to be initiated and stick around for years to get this stuff), and it integrates a lot of obscure, esoteric, and far-flung elements into one very well-written and exceptionally clear system purged of superstition, doctrine, and lots of the other junk that inevitably gets added on over the millenia. It's a brilliant work of integration, IMO. And since Yogani has been called "the first yoga eGuru, having come to prominence on the Internet" on a patently independently web site (http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Yyoga.htm), the topic deserves inclusion. Though I agree some work needs to be done on the article to make it a bit less boosterish. --O. Pen Sauce 03:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. Thanks for the contribution, O.Pen. Other editors please note O.Pen's contribution history: many quality edits in 2003-4 on articles relating to yoga and its schools, and no contributions either recently or to the article up for review. A genuine, expert, outside opinion is rare on AfD. Hornplease 04:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. That was nice, thanks, especially 'cuz I feel like Rip Van Winkle here. Listen, I'll commit to doing a once-over on this article once it goes live to purge the hype. As you can see from my old edits, I'm one of the rare yoga practitioners with a balanced eye toward the different schools. The problem with yoga people is they tend to be dismayingly sectarian. This creates a problem for Wikipedia that I ought to start pitching in to help fix anyway, with respect to some of the other yoga entries.O. Pen Sauce 14:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Reasons for not deleting
AYP is a very new approach to Yoga and is catching on very fast among people around the world. It is a guruless system.. wherein you are given all the tools and enough guidance through lessons and a forum to take you ahead in the spiritual path.

All these yoga techniques have been around for ages, however AYP picks the best and most effective tools.. and has come up with a system that is the most efficient for both meditation and pranayam.

The reason for not having many hits when you google is because it is still new.. but catching on very fast. AYP online memberships in the AYP Yahoo groups and the AYP website forums total nearly 10,000 people. The AYP websites have been visited by over 50,000 people during the past few years, and are currently receiving over 20,000 page hits per day.

It may not be at the Wikipedia popularity level.. but it is getting there.. it can only increase with addition of new online lessons and the publishing of the remaining 5 books in the AYP enlightenment series.

Thousands of people who have been following AYP have had very quick progress in their spiritual path.. You can find testimonials of this http://aypsite.com/Testimonials.html

"The creator of the article immediately set about linking numerous other Yoga-related articles to this one which supports the suspicion that the intention was promotional". - The reason for this was because I was told to add link to other Wikipedia articles linkless template to orphan article). Once I was done with that, I was told to link other Wikipedia articles to mine. "The category and the tag both just mean that links to Advanced Yoga Practices (AYP)  need to be created from other articles. You're on the right track, just add Advanced Yoga Practices (AYP) to other articles and that will do the trick." I have been following orders. And now that I have done both way links I have been tagged as trying to promote AYP.

Finally search for "Yogani," yields only about 730 hits, many related to a few books.. is because Yogani wants to remain anonymous.. AYP is not about him.. it is about Yoga and getting the best and most efficient techniques out to everyone who may or may not have a guru.

For other sites that have talked about AYP, please look at http://www.nandhi.com/siddhasana2.htm

http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Yyoga.htm#yogani http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Yyoga.htm

http://in.geocities.com/gitabykrishna/

http://ayp.zaadz.com

http://raysender.com/2005/07/death-rattles-and-advanced-yoga.html

http://www.nandhi.com/tantirayoga.htm

There are articles from Hindustan Times that I have, which are scanned articles.. but the links to them are not active any more.. they have been archived. http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_578621,001100010004.htm Amazon carries all of Yogani's books and you can check out the review http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0976465507/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/104-2573561-2247916?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/097646554X/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/102-2895957-6361724?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0976465566/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/102-2895957-6361724?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0976465582/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/102-2895957-6361724?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976465515/sr=1-5/qid=1153235483/ref=sr_1_5/103-4923313-7675054?ie=UTF8&s=books

There are various press releases

http://www.aypsite.com/pressrelease.html

There is more on the founder

http://www.aypsite.org/pressrelease1.html

The lessons are being translated into various languages..

AdvancedYogaPractices -- International Translations

Bulgarian -- http://www.bg-ayp.dir.bg/index.html

French -- http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Pratiquesavanceesdeyoga

German -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AYPdeutsch

Hindi -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AdvancedYogaPractices_Hindi

Spanish -- http://www.namaste.com.mx/practicas

I would really appreciate if you would consider this topic for Wikipedia. If the writing does not fit in with the Wikipedia standard and style I will gladly re-write it. However, this was not meant to be an advertisement or a promotion. I just thought it would be a good topic for people looking for a fresh approach to Yoga and let them know that there is something available for people interested in spirituality who don't have a guru.

Thanks for your time and patience. Shantiayp 21:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I cant really speak to whether the topic is encyclopaedic or not, because I'm not sure what the notability criteria should be here. I just thought I should share the information that, when I accessed some of the Amazon links to the books provided above, several of them had fairly high ranks. Ranks above 75,000 change frequently over time, but most of the books had ranks (either today or yesterday) below 300,000, and several had ranks well below 200,000, which is a commonly-used cutoff for notabiliity. Hornplease 04:46, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Major edit of article -- attempt to achieve NPOV. If not sufficient, please advise. -- Yogani, July 19, 2006 Yogani 19:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Ohnoitsjamie, Thank you for adding Wiki format and links to the article. If and when it is approved, I will be happy to add informative articles on the practices you have linked, plus some more. Very few are covered on Wiki so far. Is there more that needs to be done to the article now to meet Wiki standards? Yogani, July 20, 2006 Yogani 19:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment I don't see the promotion in this article, it is written in a very objective way and I find it useful and informative, what's the big deal? how would I find out about it otherwise? The more yoga information the better! Anthem, 22:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC).
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.