Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hinduism/archive1

Hinduism
Self-Nomination

Support: Hinduism is a vast, vast religion which contains many diverse and colorful practices, philosophies and scriptures. For this reason, the newly-overhauled page (having taken into consideration many comments made on its prior nomination) is a completely different article from before. I think it does a great job of condensing a massive faith, with many variant beliefs, into a single page with clear, readable prose. Also, you'll be surprised at how many inter-wiki links related to Hinduism have similar depth and thus make for good surfing. All in all ambitious, informative, fun and NPOV. Questions, comments, criticisms? --LordSuryaofShropshire 16:47, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * Breathtakingly detailed. In favor.  Wally 23:31, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Quite good. In favor. - Nat Krause 10:24, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Very well developing article. In favor - Moby 11:23, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Object. Our maximum length per article is about 30,000 characters, above that length an article should be split up. This article is presently over 70,000 characters long, which is far too large. I suggest moving out and summarizing very long sections. Furthermore, the copyright status of some of the images is a bit wishy-washy. Where it says "used with permission", did you ask for permission to use the images under the FDL? If so, please flag them with ; if not, we cannot use them. Image:Jagganath Mandir.gif claims "public domain pic."  - where is it from? As for the graphics which are contended to be fair use, I find that somewhat doubtful. The Hindu symbols could be drawn by Wikipedia contributors, we don't need fair use there, and it deters other people from creating a free image. Is Image:Sankara.jpg a public domain painting? It looks modern, but has no copyright information. Image:TA43 wallpaper.jpg seems to be very clearly of commercial value and pure entertainment, so it is doubtful whether we can and should claim fair use. Please read and follow the guidelines at Fair use.--Eloquence* 12:14, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Your objections are quite valid. Along with others, the issue of length was discussed, but due to the nature of Hinduism itself, it was rather difficult. To address that, would it be acceptable to split the article into a sort of (1of3), (2of3),(3of3) situation? I will of course try to try individual sections, but to halve this massive blend of different streams is a little difficult, even for a summary article, as one intends to give as complete, while succinct, a picture as possible. That brings me to the pictures... I have removed Jagannath picture (the temple) as it is not public domain. My mistake. The Image:TA43 wallpaper.jpg (Krishna picture) is part of ISKCON art, which is freely distributable as long as use is not commerical and the picture is not altered. The two AUM symbols are both from Hinduism Today and they are in favor of distribution without commercial use. The Sadhu picture I have permission for and the picture of the Brahmin boy, the Rama statue and the 'Hindu Woman' are all from the Birodkar page freely distributable with non-commercial uses. I will remove the Shankara picture as it was uploaded by someone else and I thought it had been cleared. I believe this should cover image use policy. So, 1) length, can we split into 2 or 3 sections of the same article? and 2) have I taken care of your objections? --LordSuryaofShropshire 13:46, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Commercial use is one of the freedoms that the GNU Free Documentation License and, by extension, Wikipedia grants on its content. That's why "no commercial use" images are highly problematic and may be removed at any time. Please tag them with so they can be easily found and removed if we decide to get rid of all these images (some Wikipedians, including Jimbo Wales, think they already shouldn't exist, while others have for the time being succeeded in defending their existence on Wikipedia). As for the splitting up, I strongly dislike "1", "2", "3" type splitting. Why not have, for example, an article Hindu belief systems? That seems to be by far the largest section in the current article. You could write a brief one or two paragraph intro and have a link "Main article: Hindu belief systems".--Eloquence* 14:05, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, since for the moment non-commercial use pictures are allowed, I have stamped them and all the images on the Hinduism page, I believe, comply with needed standards of approval. As for the editing down... 30,000 is the highest recommended, but I hope there can be some leeway on this giant topic... I have reduced the page text to around 40,000 (w/o spaces) 52,000 (w/ spaces) from 70,000. I think with such a large number of topics that's pretty good. How now?
 * Please add the tag to the image pages (click the image and then "edit this page"). The article is still at 52K (and of course spaces need to be counted!). Sorry, but you will have to get it down at least to 40K. If I find some time tomorrow I'll try to help.--Eloquence* 15:18, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Hinduism article (with spaces!) is at 40K 30K (THIRTY K!). The images have been labeled (within their pages and on the Hinduism page). And now? --LordSuryaofShropshire 16:44, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Looks a lot better now. I withdraw my objections. I haven't read it in full yet so I cannot support, but a quick glance suggests it could use one more rough copyedit.--Eloquence* 00:41, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)
 * Object. The article is still above the 30KB limit and there seem to be way too many small sections (esp in the philosophy section). There is very little point in giving each paragraph a title - this would also allow for more summarizing for sections with main articles (I count one so far - one more should take care of the size issue). The lead section also looks too long and should be reduced to three paragraphs - an overview section could then be created for the rest of the material. --mav 00:21, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * I have done a lot of editing based on your suggestions. The size of the page is now 32K 30K (THIRTY K!) (from 70K earlier today). I have also thoroughly cleaned up the topic page and done lots of summarizing. Please check it out and tell me if this does away with your objections. --LordSuryaofShropshire 02:46, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Objection withdrawn. --mav
 * Object - the image captions are horrendiously placed. They completely break the manual of style. &rarr;Raul654 18:14, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Please check the Hinduism article and see if my edits have rectified the caption problems. --LordSuryaofShropshire 18:47, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Much better. One more (minor) comment - the top of the article says "Hinduism [is] the oldest of the major world religions... It has its origin in Vedic culture as far back as a conservative 2000 BCE." I believe 2004 is the 5764th year on the Jewish calendar, which would date it back (at least) to 3760 BCE. So I'd like some evidence further backing up that claim. Other than that, the article looks good to me. &rarr;Raul654 21:00, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Generally, the consensus among scholars is that Hinduism is the oldest religion. Also, the Jewish calendar is based on the date of creation, not the incipience of its faith, which is marked by the coming of Abraham circa 1900-1600BCE.--LordSuryaofShropshire 21:17, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Ok, that's sufficent for me then. The formatting was pretty crazy, so I went in and worked on that. It looks a lot better now. I support. &rarr;Raul654 00:33, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)
 * Just want to publicly mention my thanks to Eloquence, mav and Raul654... I don't think I could have fathomed, 3 days ago, that the page would be slashed around 55%!!! of its original content, that so many holes in image policy would be filled up, and that its overall structure/prose would be so changed for the better. The credit goes to you. --LordSuryaofShropshire 01:12, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)