Wikipedia:WikiProject Hinduism

Mission
The mission of WikiProject Hinduism is to ensure that Hinduism-related articles on Wikipedia are written in an encyclopedic style, in a neutral and non-sectarian manner, using verifiable and reliable scholarly sources. This is the best place to discuss issues which affect Hinduism-related articles in general. Discussions about particular articles should be handled on the talk pages of those articles.

Scope
The scope of this WikiProject is to improve the quality and quantity of information about Hinduism available on Wikipedia. Moreover, this WikiProject aims to:
 * Increase the number of well-written Hinduism-related articles
 * Expand and improve other Hinduism-related articles
 * Ensure that all Hinduism-related articles can be easily found by interested readers
 * Keep Portal:Hinduism up-to-date
 * Keep Recent deaths up to date when notable Hindus die. (As usually there are newspaper obituaries written when a Hindu dies, it is also an opportunity to improve the Wikipedia article on that Hindu.)
 * Coordinate efforts and peer review articles
 * Expand the biographies on every Hindu figure

Guidelines for editing Hinduism articles
If you are a newcomer, the most important and often over-looked point to remember while editing Wikipedia is: You cannot insert your own particular viewpoints into articles. Articles should typically reflect the verifiable opinions of qualified academic scholars, in neutral and balanced prose. The Śruti and smriti are considered primary sources and they shouldn't be quoted in support of a particular argument unless also backed up by a citation to a reliable secondary source. Also remember to cite your sources correctly. If you feel a viewpoint merits mention, you can find some material which may constitute a reliable source by checking books, journals, articles, newspapers and other sources.

To promote consistency in the way articles are written and edited, a manual of style with recommended guidelines exists. Visit its talk page for current discussion.

To do

 * 1) Place the project banner  on the talk pages of all articles that fall within the scope of the project.
 * 2) Add the articles to the WikiProject Hinduism/Articles list by category.
 * 3) Check the recent changes for recent improvements, vandalism, and other changes.

Participants/members
Project participants are listed at WikiProject Hinduism/Participants. Feel free to add your name and join in the fun. You may use the Hindu Links template to invite other users to the project.
 * See WikiProject Hinduism/Participants

Newsletter
You can subscribe the newsletter for receiving mailings from this Wikiproject.

Departments
Departments are specific group of members who do the meta work. Tasks include keeping the project going, maintaining the project pages, related portals, assessing articles, participating in peer reviews, managing the consensus within the project and so on. The following is a list of departments within the WikiProject. WikiProject Members may not necessarily do only departmental tasks. They can contribute content as a member of Work Groups as well.
 * List of
 * Links Cleanup
 * Watchlist of All Hinduism-related articles
 * Hinduism-related topics notice board

Assessment
The assessment department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia articles related to Hinduism. While much of the work is done in conjunction with the WP:1.0 program, the article ratings are also used within the project itself to aid in recognizing excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work.


 * WikiProject Hinduism/Assessment – Our rating system
 * Project statistics – Statistics for our rating system
 * V1.0 index logs, sortings, stats, etc.

Peer review
The peer review department conducts peer reviews of Hinduism-related articles on request; this helps to obtain ideas for further improvement by having contributors who may not have previously worked on particular articles examine them. Project members are invited to submit articles to the department in lieu of using the generic peer review process.

Related

 *  WikiProject Hindu mythology
 *  WikiProject Hindu philosophy
 *  WikiProject Vedanta
 *  WikiProject Shaivism
 *  WikiProject Vaishnavism
 *  WikiProject Krishnaism
 *  WikiProject Swaminarayan
 *  WikiProject India
 *  WikiProject Nepal

Featured material
The 1 following Hinduism-related portal is a Featured portal:
 * Portal
 * Portal:Hinduism

The 8 following Hinduism-related article are Featured articles; the ones in bold have appeared on the Main Page as Today's featured article on the date given alongside.
 * Articles


 * Angkor Wat &mdash; 26, 2005


 * Ganesha &mdash; 30 December 2007
 * Hoysala Empire &mdash; 8, 2008
 * Vithoba &mdash; 3 March 2009
 * Iravan &mdash; 28 May 2010
 * Chalukya dynasty &mdash; July 9, 2010
 * Mantra-Rock Dance &mdash; July 16, 2011
 * Rashtrakuta Dynasty &mdash; December 30, 2015

Articles are being reviewed and classified for the Version 1.0 Editorial Team as part of the push to Version 1.0: The Wikiproject Hinduism department that assesses articles is currently working on categorising each article's quality and importance:
 * Version 1.0
 * See /Version 1.0 articles
 * See WikiProject Hinduism/Assessment

Recently updated articles
The following Hinduism-related articles have been or created (note: this is not a complete list, just a list of articles which WikiProject Hinduism participants wish to bring to the attention of other participants) are now located at the New Articles page. Major changes, such as expansion, tidy-ups and promotions can be listed on the Major Changes page.

Current issues
Although members of the project are usually aware of current problems and specific tasks to perform in Hinduism articles, non-members – who are encouraged to help with these – may not be. Generally, discussions of articles take place on talk pages of those articles, but below is a list of some important problems and tasks.

Vandalism/sock puppet alerts
Please watch out for editing behaviors of these banned puppet masters and revert their edits when suspected:

Notice board
The Notice board contains the latest announcements, requests, news and events pertaining to Hinduism and the project.

Helpful links for reporting vandalism and getting help

 * Administrator intervention against vandalism – only for persistent vandals
 * Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents – report block evading users
 * Requests for checkuser

Tasks

 * Standardise references to Vedas translations.
 * Placing articles in the most appropriate category or categories.
 * Fix inadvertent placing of new Hinduism articles in Category:Hinduism when a better category (or more) can be chosen.
 * Sandbox

Deletions
Hinduism related articles up for deletion are listed at WikiProject Deletion sorting/Hinduism. If you see any new AfD's please add them to this list so participants can be made aware.


 * See WikiProject Deletion sorting/Hinduism

Reference materials
In accordance with general directives on reliable source usage, Wikipedia should quote qualified scholars of Hinduism, as Wikipedia policy dictates that authors must be "authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." Other indicators of reliability is whether or not the work is published in a scholarly, peer-reviewed press, or whether the work is itself the subject of independent academic reviews. As per WP:REDFLAG, It is especially important for the source to be of high quality (and preferably there should be multiple sources) when assertions about Hinduism are made which are unsupported by mainstream academic opinion.

The editors should not write for example "Some Hindus argue X" and then reference it to some Hindu websites unless they could show that the website is representative of the thought of a particular significant group.


 * Please note that websites such as "karma2grace.org" are not reliable sources, because they are neither written by famous scholars nor peer reviewed works. Articles at hinduonline.co are usually signed by the authors. For those articles, if one can establish that the authors hold an official academic degree (Western or Vedic) and are notable, they could be used when properly attributed to the authors. Articles at hinduonline.co are more likely to have references. So, if you found something there, try to look up for its source and then look up the original source. If you are lucky, you'll get a good sourced piece of information.

Sanskrit Wikisource has many relevant works in the Sanskrit language. English Wikisource also has many relevant works in the English language. See the scriptures there.

General tips

 * Encyclopedia of Hinduism and Global Encyclopedia of Ramayana are a very good scholarly resources and one can find information on almost everything. But it is not free unless you belong to an organization that provides access to this for you. Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism online is an exception that contains many articles pertinent to Hinduism, which are peer-reviewed and free to the public, and which may provide additional information not found in the other encyclopedias.
 * You can have free (but limited) online access to many of these books at books.google.com or amazon.com. You can also search for a word (like Hinduism) in books.google.com and find good books. It is useful to memorize names of some reputed scholars of Hinduism, most of whom are listed on the 'Hindu studies scholars'. Since the scholarly books are usually published by "University of X" presses, you can also add "university" in the appropriate box in the advanced search to get the more scholarly works.
 * If you can afford $15 a month for access to an online library, Questia has a spotty selection of Hindu-related books. They don't have everything one would want, but they have enough to justify the money, IMHO. You can search the library without joining.
 * In the U.S., if you have a library card at the local public library (usually free to city residents) you can often get a card at the library of a nearby public university or community college. This may get you access to their online databases like Lexis/Nexis, Jstor, and the Oxford English Dictionary.

From whom you can ask
Please see: Expert Wikipedians in Hindu issues, where you may find a Wikipedian who can help you with your questions about Hindu issues.

Lists

 * List of Hinduism-related articles
 * Glossary of Hinduism terms

Books

 * List of Hindu texts
 * List of apologetic works

People

 * Lists of Hindus
 * List of converts to Hinduism
 * List of former Hindus