Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Dr Prabhat Das Foundation

I am surprised to see that some editors are pushing for a hasty deletion of this article. Before deleting we must do some research to find whether this topic is notable & the information is reliable or not. I have done some research & these are the findings:-

1) Notability: I am a native of Bihar, India, living in USA. My mother tongue is Hindi & I read Hindi newspapers daily. Though I am a fan of Wikipedia, this is my first contribution. I can well remember dozens of third party & reliable references related to this organization. Majority of natives of Bihar (with population of 50 million) are at least familiar with the name of this charity organization. This organization very well meets the notability criteria of Wikipedia.

Also, when I was going through this article I noted that some of important facts (that are supported by reliable, secondary sources) were deleted (why?) by the editor Cameron Scott. This organization has volunteers more than ten thousand (there is reference to an American newspaper front page article with this heading ), and this whole fact with its reference was deleted by this editor (later brought back by a contibutor). This seems inapropriate haste in deletion! Similarly he deleted the mention of the fact that more than 300 libraries-community centers are run by this organization! Cameron Scott should have put a ‘citation needed’ tag & should not have removed these important facts that are some proofs of its notability.

I have also visited the website of this organization & found that there are hundreds of reliable, secondary sources (mainly in Indian languages -Hindi, Urdu & Maithili- newspapers, perodicals, magazines etc. As a daily Hindi  newspapers reader I could recognise several of them and they are real, reliable & from reputed (Hindi) publications.

2) Conflict of interest: One editor Atama, who is hastily pushing for its deletion, has posted some information regarding this article that are not correct. For example, to quote him, “per discussion at the conflict of interest noticeboard it was established that this article was created by an editor with a conflict of interest with the intent to promote the organization.” I have reviewd the whole discussion & links with neutrality. This mentioned editor has noted “I, Prakashkanth (this is also my real name) …..am actively involved in this organization; but there is absolutely no conflict of interest as all the information added by me are facts, well referenced in this article & objectively verifiable by reliable, secondary sources.” This is not a proof of conflict of interest, especially when this contributor is not hiding any thing (not even his name!) & has no financial relation with this organization. The only thing is that probably he knows about this organization more than we know & is contributing this information to Wikipedia. For example, as citizen of India, if I contibute to the aricle related to India, it will not automatically prove that I have conflict of interest. In fact majority of the articles in Wikipedia are contibuted by people who are well familier with those topics. Reviewing all these facts I don’t think that this contibutor has any real conflict of interest.

3) Reliable, secondary sources: The English speaking editors of the Wikipedia should know that majority of people on our planet do not speak english. The mother tongue of about 500 million people is Hindi. If a source is in Hindi it does not make it less reliable!  Comments by one editor who seems in very haste to delete this article ( Atama ) is surprizing  “…scans of newspapers, nobody has yet been able to translate such photos and in the past web sites have been known to alter scanned images…” He is stating that  nobody can translate & understand Hindi! He is also implying that fraud is involved because he himself can not read Hindi. These statements by this editor questions his intention.

After checking the website of this organization I found that this is essentially an Indian organization NGO, though the founders are in USA, and it is also registered in USA. In fact this was very clear in this article till Cameron Scott deleted this basic information, (again, why?).

One of the editor who has written about this article just couple of days ago; -“But considering how long the article has been around, and how many editors have worked on it, I have the feeling that it would be rejected because the article can be "cleaned up".”—is now suddenly pushing for its deletion! (why?)

Wikipedia, though very popular in English speaking world is rarely used by Hindi speaking peoples. But that does not mean that Hindi or other non-English citations should be disregarded. And, if you search on google (the English language search engine) to find Hindi article you will certainly find none! I think that editors of Wikipedia should not have bias against non-English languages.--Barnabas2009 (talk) 17:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Reply
I'm not going to address all points, but it would appear that the sources Cameron removed were mostly press releases, which don't meet our standard of reliable sources. While I certainly agree what subjects covered by non-english press are likely to be under-represented here, that doesn't alleviate the need for sourcing. And google does index the Times of India, among other english-language periodicals that are based in India, so one would expect to find at least some sources. Alternatively, is there a sourced article in the Hindi Wikipedia that we could take references from? Best, -- B figura (talk) 17:23, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll reply to a couple of points raised because they were at least somewhat directed at me. Firstly, the conflict of interest has been definitively established. Per our WP:COI guidelines, as a self-declared active member of the organization, Prakashkanth would be expected to have the intention of promoting the organization. That isn't meant to reflect on their character (if anything, wanting to promote a charity is a good thing) but that does mean that their contributions need to be considered in that light. I said that "nobody has yet been able to translate the scans", that means nobody has done so yet because they don't speak the language. How that can be interpreted to mean that I think that nobody on the planet speaks Hindi is beyond me. The English Wikipedia does not require that all sources be in English, but if no translation is provided then reviewing editors have no way of verifying the information (and verifiability is a core policy). In addition, as I said in the deletion discussion, scans of newspapers hosted on the organization's site will be taken with a grain of salt because we don't know if they have been doctored and that has happened before (I even linked to an older deletion discussion where that occurred). The other point I made about the "deletion being rejected" was in regards to a speedy deletion request which I still think would have been rejected, which makes the current deletion discussion necessary. I hope that clears up some of the confusion. --  At am a  頭 18:29, 14 October 2009 (UTC)