Talk:Sathya Sai Baba

The entry needs to be far more concise. Andries 22:10, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Wait a bit before deletion, please. Andries 10:12, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

Trying for better readability

Let me preface my comments by saying I have no preformed opinion about the subject, but find the article hard enough to read that I can't form an opinion from it. As a result, I have tried to clean up some of the references, especially with embedded quotes that need to be seen in critics. I have, unless in a direct quote, tried to remove words such as "skeptic" and "follower", which we found to be needlessly polarizing in the ground rules on working on homeopathy.

There are far too many references; it is impossible to check which are anecdotal and which are authoritative.

So far, I'm simply trying to clean up. Whether a readable article can result is a good question; would Religion Editors please look at this? Howard C. Berkowitz 16:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Sorry, but your attempt to clean up the reference did not make it better. Andries 21:21, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

2. I do not feel like removing references only because it is too much work for you to check each of them. (Howard Murphet should be removed as a reference, because his books are written from the view point of a gullible devotee) Andries 21:21, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

3 After re-reading it, I admit that readability is a problem and I will see what I can do. Andries 21:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I didn't remove any actual references. I removed repetitions of the same reference, sometimes on every other line of a lists. If a reference is a good source, it is not necessary to have three or four supporting references on a single sentence.

Someone being a gullible devotee, under CZ: Neutrality Policy, is not reason to remove him. The devotees as well as the critics belong in a neutral article.

Most of what I did was get quotes out of references, and into the mainline text. It is extremely difficult to assess the significance of a quote if it's in a footnote, because it cannot easily be compared with associated text. If the quote is important enough to be in the article, it need not be in a footnote, unless it is purely a definition or other neutral supporting information. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Who is the Topic Informant? Why so much Wikipedia style still here?

I haven't gotten out all the FACT templates.

There is overwhelming micro-level citing, characteristic of WP. More synthesis is needed; it's very hard to follow this article. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

What is "micro-level citing"? What parts are hard to follow? The anthropologist Lawrence Babb made more generalized statements about SSB and the impossibility of a biography as we know it. I will add more by him. Andries 21:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't yet say what parts are hard to follow, because right now, the article gives the impression of a massive block of text, with many quotations and little explanation. I suggest that the article will be improved by removing text, not adding it.

If there is significant additional detail, perhaps it belongs in a subarticle. The blocks of text here are huge; as it was, I inserted some paragraph breaks and some subheadings. Observe that the edit software is giving warnings about the size of the article — even if it doesn't actually break browsers, that's a good suggestion to consider splitting things into subarticles. I often start doing so when I see that warning.

Micro-level citing is having citations, or even worse multiple citations, at the sentence-by-sentence level. It is not have an explicit citation to Babb, without a page reference for virtually every other line of a list; Babb can be cited at the beginning and only the exceptions given.

If a biography is impossible, what is the article trying to accomplish? Howard C. Berkowitz 22:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This biography though an impossibility as explicitly described by Babb is trying to accomplish the same as biographies for Jesus, and Buddha; a biography based on reliable sources as we know is impossible, but they still have entries in encyclopedias. Andries 07:14, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I converted the subsequent Babb/Redemption citations so the identical full citation doesn't appear every time. It doesn't look pretty in the formatted footnotes, but is it really necessary to cite Babb several times in individual lines of a list, rather than Babb for the list as a whole, which would make things look much better? Howard C. Berkowitz 23:18, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Some CZ technical citation information

We prefer the inline citation form, to which I am converting reference.

In such form, it isn't necessary to say "available online"; the existence of a URL establishes that.

There is a difference from Wikipedia: if you use the format <ref name=Blitz />, the <ref name=Blitz>{{citation... has to come before the former type of referencing, or you'll get blank citations. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

To Both Howard and Andries from a Constable

Hi, Gentlemen!

I see that there are have some major changes here in the numbers of bytes in the article, first one way and then the other, and then back again, and so forth. I know that both of you are acting in good faith, but before it goes any further, let me make a couple of points:

1.) This is not Wikipedia, we do not revert our versions of an article back and forth until one or the other quits from exhaustion.

2.) Any of us are free to edit without explanations to the others except for the courtesy of putting at least brief justifications in the Subject box.

3.) BUT, none of us are free to make MAJOR edits of a mass of material without first opening a discussion on this page to clearly outline just what he is going to do and why. And then WAITING for a response from the other party.

4.) I personally have never heard of Sathya Sai Baba, I have no interest at all in learning about him (or her, if that is the case), and I certainly do not intend to read this lengthy article with its copious footnotes in order to acquaint myself with the pros and cons of whatever editing conflicts are currently going on.

5.) Just for ease of editing, as per Occam's Razor, let's take the present version (by Howard), which is considerably shorter than the older one, and use that for the basis of further discussion.

6.) Andres -- if you feel that the 20,000 bytes that Howard deleted should be restored, kindly write a detailed explanation here in the Talk page about why this should be done. Please do not restore anything until you and Howard (and anyone else who is interested) have agreed on what should be done.

7.) Howard -- if you want to continue to make MINOR editing changes and formatting, go ahead. But be sure to put an adequate explanation in the Subject box for EACH edit. NOTE: just writing: "deleted footnote" is not an explanation. Tell us *why* you deleted that particular footnote.

Thanks! Hayford Peirce 23:18, 16 February 2009 (UTC) Constable

It appears the 20,000 bytes were primarily the External Links (see other) and Bibliography, which I had already moved to a subpage per CZ conventions.

Hayford, I am not actually deleting any content. I don't know anything about the subject; I have purely been copy editing and organizing so I can read about the subject.

What I am doing is when there are 10 or more identical full footnotes, I've been substituting the short form (i.e., rather than <ref>Smithxxx</ref>, <name ref=Smith>{{citation xxx}}</ref> followed by <name = Smith />.

In some cases, where Smith is cited three times in the same line of a bulleted list, are three cites really necessary? Indeed, if Smith (actually Babb) is the source for almost every item in the list, a simple Smith after the colon introducing the list would make it much easier to read.

Also, if a source is good, there isn't a need to put three sources on the same sentence — especially when those three sources repeat every few sentences.

I have been pulling quotations out of footnotes, which, in any event, were not in inline cite form, and converting them to blockquotes so they can be read in context. Again, I haven't been deleting other than redundant bibliographic information.

We aren't WP and it's not necessary to keep citing every few words. Right now, until I can format things more readably, I really don't have much opinion on content. Andres, if you aren't familiar with CZ formatting conventions, why not let me convert and edit, and take out the WP-specific/WP-convention material? Howard C. Berkowitz 00:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Howard, thanks for the very clear explanation of what you've been doing. It all sounds pretty reasonable to me -- and necessary, for that matter, to turn it into an acceptable article. Thanks for all the effort that goes into this tedious work! I'm glad that all the BIG deleted stuff was just redundancies.... Hayford Peirce 01:19, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

a personal opinion about the lede paragraph

It's terrible. What a disjointed mess! Hayford Peirce 02:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't really know what this article is trying to tell me. There's a huge amount of content, but without much context. There's some commentary about cults and controversy, but I can't extract significance. Speeches by people pro and con aren't quite the same thing as an article-style neutral presentation of positions.

I do have to note that there were comments about improvement from April 2007. It's not clear how much change there was from a Wikipedia article, and whether the article meets th retention requirements. Whether or not that can be clear after the citation cleanup (still unfinished) is not a call I want to make. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Apparently it was Andries who brought it in from WP a couple of years ago and essentially dumped it here. Now you, and maybe he, are doing a clean-up. There's no question but that it should be rewritten. En principe Andries ought to do it, since he's the person interested in this topic. But if *he* doesn't, then anyone else is free to edit it, and rewrite it, so that the thing makes sense and reads smoothly. And actually has a theme. Hayford Peirce 03:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I am motivated and have the sources for a major rewrite, because I can see the readability problems (lack of synthesis and lack of context). Andries 07:21, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't think I'm interested enough in the subject to spend more time on it. Before, I couldn't even really get a sense what it was about. I cleaned it up enough to see that it's a possibly hostile article on a possible cult, but it's not a subject of much interest. The question is whether it has been sufficiently modified from WP to warrant keeping, given it's this old and has not been cleaned up. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:49, 17 February 2009 (UTC)