Talk:India

I know that I've put in a std Eng page, but I'll modify it to make it simple. Nichalp 12:47, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Review

I am in the process of reviewing this article, to identify the issues that need to be fixed before it can be given the status of good article:

Intro

• Currently reads like many interesting facts without much structure - Is it possible to get a lead in there?

  Fixed

• Things like six (6) are probably overkill. Numbers, esp. those low ones are one of the first things taught to people learning English as a foreign language

Done Pmlinediter  ^Talk 09:59, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• Why is Jammu and Kashmir excluded from the count, but Sikkim and Arunanchal Pradesh included? - What makes these special to require special mention? - Why not exclude Andaman/Nicobar or Lakshadweep islands?

Done Removed clearly confusing sentence

• Is India being a growing economy really opposed/contrary to it having problems with literacy or malnutrition? - Are those not general problems of growing economies?

  Fixed

Languages

• Several things are said multiple times. Restructure to get a lead

Fixed

• Wouldn't it be helpful to get at least the most current history (the separation of British-occupied India into several countries, into Pakistan (East/West), India, Burma (...) before the languages section?

Fixed

• Why are some languages linked (Malayam for example), and others (Chhattisgarhi) aren't?

  Fixed

• Would it be helpful to get a ranking of the 23 languages by number of speakers/importance?

  This is for VGA, not GA.

• What about artificial languages/dialects like Hindustani? (The language used by most Bollywood films?) - Would it not be worth mentioning? - No idea, no languages expert

  What is "Hindustani". Bollywood films use Hindi

  I am no language expert; compare en:Hindustani language with en:Hindi and en:Urdu - really no idea. --Eptalon (talk) 12:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

  I've never heard of that language. I'd rather not introduce it here. I don't think many speak it. ;) Pmlineditor  Talk 12:13, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

  Looks like Hindustani is a word to refer to the spoken varieties of Hindi/Urdu (which seem to be very similar, and different from their written versions). Anyway, you are the expert, not I. --Eptalon (talk) 12:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Indian states/Geography & Climate/People

These sections probably need the most work. An ideal setup would be to first talk about what it looks like (ie. subcontinent, biggest rivers, most important mountain (ranges)), then the climate, then how it is subdivided into states/territories, then the people.)

• In the intro we heard 1.2 billion people, in people, 200 millions of them disappeared, and its one billion. make up your mind?

Government

• A good start, I see little specifically wrong.

Economy

• Good start, can we get a little more

History

• After this, the Vedic period came. Nice, can we get a link to Vedic period?
• This is the country where two main Classical languages of the world were born - Sanskrit and Tamil. - A sentence later - as above lead, one idea should naturally lead to the next. We want to guide the readers; several others of these
• Several of the important ideas are not linked, they should be.
• In the 1600s, European countries invaded India, and the British took control of most of India by 1856. - 150 years in one sentence?
• After 1947... . It is... - change in tense (I am not a native speaker, so you probably need to back up my opinion there), but I would opt for one tense only (the simple past)

Are you saying - "India had become?" Won't that be dubious? Pmlinediter  ^Talk 09:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

As I am saying: I am not a native speaker; so ask someone else on the tense to use. Simple past would be became--Eptalon (talk) 12:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Accepted and will consult someone else. Regards, Pmlineditor  Talk 12:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

• It fought many wars... - there is no use mentioning year numbers; we as the foreigners do not know what these wars were about, so either give us more info, or leave out the years, or rather specify what these wars were about, and who were the other parties.

Other stuff

• Can we get a bit more on religion, perhaps in a different section?
• In general, avoid things being said multiple times (and then contradicting, as with the people)
• Once you are done, rearranging sections so the flow is more natural is probably a good idea. --Eptalon (talk) 12:27, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Question about first sentence

Does the first sentence make any sense? "India was a former imperial British Raj a colonial Anglo-empire (1857-1947) is now a sucessor country by the same name in South Asia." How about "India was a former imperial British Raj of the colonial Anglo-empire (1857-1947) and is now a sucessor country by the same name in South Asia." Just guessing. Thanks, Istvan , Hungary — This unsigned comment was added by 91.120.159.45 (talk • changes).

Done Thanks for notifying me. Pmlinediter  ^Talk 09:53, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Istvan

Snake311's comments

A good article is...

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): Strong oppose
   b (MoS): Oppose

   There is about half a dozen red links that should be fixed. Additionally the article requires a through copyedit. Several fragment sentences.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): Oppose
   b (citations to reliable sources): Oppose
   c (OR): Weak support

   See India#Economy, the last sentence has a {{fact}} tag. Citation 20 appears to be a dead link. Scattered statements remain unsourced throughout the article.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): Weak oppose
   b (focused): Weak oppose

   Is missing a politics section under government, nothing on India's foreign relations and military, culture section, and where the name India originated from.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias: Support

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.: Support

   History page shows minimal edit warring.[1]

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): Support
   b (appropriate use with suitable captions): Support

   All images are illistrative to the article and are tagged with appropiate captions.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail: Strong oppose

I think this article needs a through copyediting from different editors before it can be renominated for GA. Major prose and MoS issues need to be addressed. Also citations and notes need to be properly referenced. Fails the GA criteria. --§ Snake311 _{(I'm Not Okay!)} 02:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• This isn't the vote now, this is jus the proposal like what needs to be fixed. Not closed. The nom has two weeks time to fix the concerns. Barras || talk 05:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• And this is not the enWP. We have a different set of rules. In the future, please give a review on the article talk page rather than closing PGAs. Thank you. Pmlineditor  Talk 15:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Readability

A quick check here [2] shows that the article still has a way to go before it is in simple English. Have made a start, but more needed. --Peterdownunder (talk) 12:32, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm thinking of withdrawing this. Too difficult and besides, I don't have that much of time. Great work by Epty though. Pmlineditor  Talk 12:44, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Religion

I started getting something together about Religion in India (or rather, the Indian subcontinent), I do however see certain problems with scope:

• All there seems to be from the cave paintings is the cave paintings. If these are comparable to such paintings elsewhere, then all there is is some paintings, perhaps a few bones, and if you are very lucky a few shards of clay (pottery) and other artifacts. So you can analyse all of them (perhaps some kind of coloring) and come the conclusion that the people who had them had some kind of religion with an afterlife/magic?
• How much can we gain from explaining that a group of 4-5 religions had common origins and influenced each other, and are therefore very similar?
• Can/Should we limit ourselves to the perhaps top 4 religions?

I find it very difficult to simplify some of the stuff (which I obviously took from enwp). To what lengths should we go there for GA? So it would definitely be good if someone else looked at it, and cut out everything we don't need; it is complex enough as it is? (Other idea: get people from EnWP to help with the subject?)--Eptalon (talk) 14:44, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Border disputes

• Are there any other border disputes worth mentioning? --Eptalon (talk) 14:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

  Well, I dunno. I've never heard of anything very notable. Pmlineditor  Talk 15:11, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Issues before GA

• The "other names" for India is not restricted to two. You should unbold and probably unlink Hindustan (as it links to more of disambiguation page), and say something more like "Other names for India include... " and link "other names" to the Official names of India article.

  Fixed

• "largest-sized country in the world in amount of land" - why not just "largest country in the world"? The rest is pretty self-explanatory.

  Fixed

• "six neighbours" - I'm sure you list seven...

  Fixed

• "...of India is New Delhi. It is a peninsula..." sounds now like you're saying New Delhi is a peninsula.

  Fixed

• "of India is of " - "of India is ... long".

  Fixed

• "India is a growing economy and has high levels of poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition" - surely a "but" is more appropriate than an "and" here since one is very positive and one is very negative.

  Not done It was like that before, before I changed it per Eptalon's comments. I'll not do this.

• Don't link malnutrition twice in two sentences in the lead.

  Fixed

• dialect is not simple.

  Fixed

• I would talk about Hindi, the official language, before going into the language families.

  Fixed

• Last sentence of Languages section is entirely unreferenced.

  Fixed

• "This is a country where two main Classical languages of the world were born" - reads like a travel brochure.

  Fixed

• "born - Sanskrit and" should use an en-dash, not a hyphen here.

  Fixed

• "oldest languages existing in the world" in the world is redundant - where else would languages exist?

  Fixed

• Link religion on its first use.

  Fixed

• "unified" is not simple.

  Fixed

• "100 BC - AD 1100" en-dash, not hyphen.

  Fixed

• "protest" does not mean "not obey British rule" - it's what they did in order to make a protest.

  Fixed

• No need to link individual dates.

  Fixed

• Link British Empire the first time you talk about British, not the third time.

  Fixed

• What is "Non-Aligned Movement "?

  Fixed

• No need to link individual years.

  Fixed

• Port is a dab link.

  Fixed

• "has a nuclear bomb" I suspect it has more than one.

  Fixed

• General - far too many images - the page looks totally cluttered up. We don't need so many maps, and be careful in which other images you decide to keep. As a rule of thumb, you should always avoid squashing text between two images.

  Fixed

The Rambling Man (talk) 16:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Rest of issues

• "the capital of India." - link capital appropriately.

  Fixed

• the "Parliament" or "parliament" of India. Be consistent.

  Fixed

• "Sansad Bhavan" is mentioned in the caption but not in the article.

  Fixed

• " has the ability to choose " simplify please.

  Fixed

• "Union territories" or "union territories"?

  Fixed

• The numbers and letters for the states and territories appear that they should relate to something on that map. They don't - they seem to relate to the map below. I'd pick one map and stick with it.

  Fixed

• " Clash of civilizations theory: The international coummunity such as UN"
  • This is grammatically poor - starting with that non-sentence is a bad start.
  • Why capital T after the colon?
  • It's "the United Nations" not just "UN". And link it.

  Fixed

• "(Similarly, India does not recognise the Pakistani parts of Kashmir)." - why is this sentence in parentheses?'

  Fixed

• "in exile" is not simple.

  Fixed

• "consequence" is not simple.

  Fixed

• recognise is BritEng, the rest of the article appears to be USEng so use the z, not the s.

  Fixed

• "This is a map of India, as it is seen from space." - it's a map of India, it isn't as seen from space because it's a drawing.

  Fixed (Removed)

• "Presently" - this needs a timeframe.

  Fixed

• Instead of (U.S.) for the currency, why not just link $ to the appropriate currency page? Especially as you link USD much further down. Be consistent in the way you describe the USD.

  Fixed

• The "UN map of India and disputed territories" is entirely useless as far as I can tell, it shows nothing more than the other maps.

  Fixed

• "still only $3100 (considering PPP)" - what does "considering PPP" mean here?

  Fixed Linked above

• "There are about 1 billion (1,000,000,000) people living in India" - you've already said that 1.12 billion live there, why go back to "about 1 million".

  Fixed

• "India is the second largest country by the amount of people living in it" I know we're trying to be simple but this is just poorly written. Rewrite please.

  Fixed

• "twenty-three official" 23.

  Fixed

• "Mesolithic age" is not simple.

  Fixed

• "spiritual practices" is not simple.

  Fixed

• Stone Age should be linked.

  Fixed

• "worshiped" incorrect spelling.

  Fixed

• "were orally transmitted" - far from simple.

  Fixed

• "India[41]," move ref to other side of comma.

  Fixed

• Why is Eastern religions in italics?

  Fixed

• %'s in the prose don't match the %'s in the religion graph.

  Fixed

• " and many others" - this doesn't flow correctly from the start of the sentence.

  Fixed

• "8 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze " eight, one, two.

  Fixed

• Ensure you link to field hockey, not ice hockey.

  Fixed

• "The Harmandir Sahib or The Golden Temple of the Sikhs." - why is part of this bold? And no need for the full stop, it's an incomplete sentence.

  Fixed

• ", commonly held to have originated in India is also becoming popular with the increase in the number of Indian Grandmasters" is this really what you'd consider Simple English?

  Fixed

• Youtube link should go.

  Fixed

The Rambling Man (talk) 16:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)