Misplaced Pages

talk:Manual of Style/India-related articles: Difference between revisions - Misplaced Pages

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
< Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 06:55, 28 March 2022 edit65.92.246.142 (talk)No edit summary← Previous edit Revision as of 23:29, 8 May 2022 edit undoIzno (talk | contribs)Checkusers, Interface administrators, Administrators113,371 edits std templateNext edit →
Line 2: Line 2:
{{WP India}} {{WP India}}
{{WikiProject Manual of Style}} {{WikiProject Manual of Style}}
{{archives}}
{| class="tmbox tmbox-notice mbox-small" style="width:22em"
|-
| class="mbox-text plainlinks plainlinks2" style="text-align:center; width:22em;" |
'''Archives of this page'''
|-
|
{{#tag:inputbox|
bgcolor=transparent
type=fulltext
prefix=Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/India-related articles/Archive
width=22em
searchbuttonlabel=Search archives
}}
|}


== Use of Slokas == == Use of Slokas ==

Revision as of 23:29, 8 May 2022

Shortcut
WikiProject iconIndia Project‑class
WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Misplaced Pages's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.IndiaWikipedia:WikiProject IndiaTemplate:WikiProject IndiaIndia
ProjectThis page does not require a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
WikiProject iconManual of Style
WikiProject iconThis page falls within the scope of the Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style, a collaborative effort focused on enhancing clarity, consistency, and cohesiveness across the Manual of Style (MoS) guidelines by addressing inconsistencies, refining language, and integrating guidance effectively.Manual of StyleWikipedia:WikiProject Manual of StyleTemplate:WikiProject Manual of StyleManual of Style
Note icon
This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Misplaced Pages Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate.
Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing.
Note icon
For information on Misplaced Pages's approach to the establishment of new policies and guidelines, refer to WP:PROPOSAL. Additionally, guidance on how to contribute to the development and revision of Misplaced Pages policies of Misplaced Pages's policy and guideline documents is available, offering valuable insights and recommendations.

Archives
Index
Archive 1Archive 2

Use of Slokas

Can we use slokas in articles. A on going debate is at Talk:Sritattvanidhi#Why do we need the slokas???. I think this may be incorpoareted into this MOS. Amartyabag 06:58, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Scope of this project

So far the main development here is the incorporation of most of the content of Misplaced Pages: Naming conventions (Indic). I suggest that that Naming convention article should remain separate and active, and that this Manual of Style should only make reference to the it for appropriate cases. Reasons;

  • that naming convention would also apply to articles that were not specific to India (the modern country); including articles about some of the neighbouring countries, and to the Pali language.
  • that article was always intended to deal with old Indian languages (for history, religion and so on). India has names that do not derive from Indic languages. These include Arabic, Persian, and English names.
  • the naming convention was not intended or written with modern names in mind. For a current example, the naming convention (or this manual of style) would be of little help in the recent dispute over Bengaluru / Bangalore, which is the sort of thing that should be addressed here. (According to the naming convention, Bangalore should be renamed Bengalūru, not Bengaluru, and I don't suppose anyone will support that). The existing, very sketchy 'Modern names' section should be expanded to deal with these.

Imc 15:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Biographical naming conventions

Editors behind this proposal may wish to step in at Talk:Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi#Full_name (see also the immediately preceding discussions) where there is a discussion about whether to change the article name of Mahatma Gandhi. Currently it is named 'Mohandas Gandhi' while others are in favour of 'Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi', while other prefer the original 'Mahatma Gandhi'. This MOS for India-related articles has been invoked at the current discussion but, despite saying so on the MOS articlespace that 'Mahatma Gandhi' is preferred, there is doubt as to whether this should be implemented on account of this MOS being a proposed guideline. So, in any case, editors may wish to step in over there and contribute their thoughts. Thanks, Ekantik 19:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Resurrection of this MoS page

A recent decision on the use of indic scripts in the leads of India-related articles was made (see main discussion here and clarification here). This decision has not been properly communicated and User:DeltaQuad and I agree that it should be placed in the Manual of Style somewhere. The most appropriate place would be in this India-related articles subpage, but it is currently inactive. Surely there are now enough India-related article to warrant the resurrection of these guidelines. What are your thoughts? Bazonka (talk) 08:56, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I did not realise that this section of MOS had ever existed. By all means, resurrect it after a period of review. I'll wander through the thing over the next few hours. - Sitush (talk) 09:04, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
One for a section on lead sections: WT:INB reached a consensus sometime mid/late 2011 that specific varna status should not be referred to in the lead section of caste/community articles. I'll try to find the link to the discussion. - Sitush (talk) 09:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
This may be that varna discussion, although it seemed to deteriorate into a "bash Sitush" type of thread. Nothing new, then! - Sitush (talk) 09:26, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I can't be bothered to read all of that discussion now, but assumuing a decision was reached (which isn't clear from the little I've read), then that's exactly the sort of thing that should be in this MoS article. Bazonka (talk) 09:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm no expert on India topics, so I will defer to the wider community: is there anything that's currently in this MoS article that shouldn't be there or needs to change? If not, I suggest taking the inactive template off the top, and relinking it into Category:Misplaced Pages Manual of Style (regional), etc. We can then start to improve it with stuff about varnas and indic scripts and so on. Bazonka (talk) 09:45, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that it needs some discussion before the template is removed. For example, I can see that some people might have problems with the guideline preferring British English and Indian units (lakhs etc). If this is made active now then some pretty fundamental concepts are raised to the status of something that has current consensus when in fact the consensus may have changed. We need a structured discussion here of the various aspects. I emphasis structured because my experience is that discussion of such things tend to deteriorate pretty fast.- Sitush (talk) 09:59, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree. One option would be to remove anything remotely controversial from the page, and make the uncontroversial stuff active (even if there isn't very much). Then separate discussions can be held about each controversial part, rather than one big amorphous bunfight of a discussion. The MoS page can then grow over time as (and if) consensus is reached for each discussion. Bazonka (talk) 10:05, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I cannot really comment on the transliteration bit (I am monoglottal) but the section regarding district naming is also currently being discussed. Tbh, I do not think that there is much in the inactive version that does not require review. The only dead cert is probably the recent RfC regarding scripts in lead sections. - Sitush (talk) 11:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this needs to be resurrected. IMO, the following are controversial:

  • Scope: "Religions originating in India, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism. Articles on Buddhism may follow this convention, Mythology of India" All wikiProjects related to Indian Religions need to be consulted before imposing the MOS on articles related to them
  • "Use only British English spellings as per the guidelines for India related pages": change to Indian English??? Eg. the word cock is usually used in Indian English for "the adult male of the domestic chicken", however America (or Britain not sure) use the vulgar connotation. The word "rooster" can be used in American English in this context.
  • This is another proposed addition to the naming convention needs to be updated
  • "However, exceptions may apply to individuals who are widely known by an honorific name or with a title. Examples are Mahatma Gandhi where Mahatma is an honorific" The page is no more at the title Mahatma Gandhi. The honorifics are dropped. Need to update the honorific policy and form a consensus
  • "Naming and transliteration" is controversial. There are many written totally in IAST eg. Bhaṭṭikāvya, which are affected. Needs to be discussed.

IMO, Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Indic) (linked in here) also needs to be discussed and made a policy, rather than proposed one. --Redtigerxyz 16:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

MOS is now live

Since no-one objected to the resurrection of this page, I have made a few amendments and reinstated it under Category:Misplaced Pages Manual of Style (regional). The changes that I have made to it are:

  1. A few non-controversial spelling and punctuation fixes.
  2. Removal of the "Geographic articles" section because each of its subsections was disputed. I would recommend discussing and reinstating this as soon as possible.
  3. Change the spelling guideline from use of only British English to use of only Indian English. This seemed like an obvious change.
  4. Removal of text about religion and mythology as per User:Redtigerxyz's concern above.
  5. Removal of the "Naming and transliteration" section as per User:Redtigerxyz's concern above.
  6. Removal of text about people who are widely known by honorific titles, as per User:Redtigerxyz's concern above.

I have not included anything about the decision mentioned above not to use Indic scripts in the leads of articles. This seems like a controversial decision requiring further discussion and consensus. The points raised above by User:Redtigerxyz also require further discussion. Bazonka (talk) 09:04, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Conflicting policies

At Misplaced Pages:WikiProject India § Indic scripts in lead, it says that Indic script is not to be used in the lede sentence of an article:

There is community consensus that the lead sentence of an article should not contain any regional or Indic language script. It is suggested that IPA be used for help with pronunciation. For details, refer to this RfC: Native languages in lead.

However, at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/India-related articles § Preferred format for introducing the article subject, it says that Indic script is to be used in the lede and gives the example:

'''Sikhism''' ({{indic|lang=pa|defaultipa='siːkɪz(ə)m|defaultaudio=Seekism.ogg|indic=ਸਿੱਖੀ|trans=sikkhī|indicipa='sɪk.kʰiː| indicaudio=Sikkhi.ogg}}) is a ...
Sikhism ('siːkɪz(ə)m; Punjabi: ਸਿੱਖੀ, sikkhī, IPA: ) is a ...

This is more consistent with article practice, too.

So, which is it? —— 06:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Translations in Infoboxes

In Infoboxes for places, there are the parameters |name=, |official_name=, |other_name=, |native_name=, and |native_name_lang= (ignoring the tranlit* params for now). The first three are specified to be in English with Latin script.

The question is what to do with the others. The fact that |native_name_lang= exists says to me that the design is to support the predominant non-English language/non-Latin script name of the place, like:

Shahjahanpur शाहजहाँपुर

or this, using the {{Lang-hi}} template wrapper around the script to prepend the Hindi link:

Shahjahanpur Template:Lang-hi

The notes say that if multiple names/languages are to be specified, to wrap the names in {{Lang|xx}}, but this doesn't specify which language the names are in like {{Lang-xx}} does. Example:

Kashmir

What about pronunciation guides, like /koʊlˈkɑːtɑː/? —— 09:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

BTW, this came up because of a string of edits by User:101.0.38.163, adding Indic script names to |native_name= on various articles on places without moving what alternative names were already there or changing/adding the language to native_name_lang. —— 10:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you familiar with WP:INDICSCRIPT and the various discussions that gave rise to it and that have subsequently taken place at WT:INB? - Sitush (talk) 10:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, you've posted two queries in two sections, and I missed the one above. Clearly, you are aware to some extent. The quick solution that avoids all this mess and more is not to have the scripts anywhere. They cause a phenomenal number of problems, including outright vandalism that doesn't get picked up because insufficient contributors can understand the scripts. - Sitush (talk) 10:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

City names

Is there a convention for handling new/old city names, (Mumbai/Bombay), specifically in historical articles? Thanks for the help! Lfstevens (talk) 04:26, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Use the name that was used at the time the event occurred. This can be especially important for some geographical entities; for example, British India was geographically very different to India as it is known today. - Sitush (talk) 17:14, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Handling numbers

I have just amended the wording here. - Sitush (talk) 10:50, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Alphabetical order for names

When a list of personal names in an India-related article is sorted alphabetically, which name order should be used for sorting? If the family name is usually placed last (western order) then a list of names should probably be sorted by the last name. I am looking at Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art#Famous alumni, which is currently sorted by the full name, so that Francis Newton Souza is listed before John Fernandes. In a European or a North-American article I would change this. What should be the convention for India-related articles? Verbcatcher (talk) 12:54, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Naming conventions

This article says "After the initial mention of any name, the person may be referred to by surname only." This is not always true. Many people use the personal name. For example, see R. K. Narayan, where he is known by his personal name (Narayanan) and not his surname (Rasipuram, actually village name). Anbumani Ramadoss is Anbumani, son of Dr. Ramadoss. Another example is V. Anand, sometimes wrongly expanded as Vishwanathan Anand. (Anand is his given name and the correct expansion is Anand Vishwanathan.) Also, "The last name or the family name is placed before the first name for Telugu people." This is also found in Kerala, as in V. S. Achuthanandan, where Velikkakathu is his surname, and Achuthanandan his given name. As far as I know, this style is restricted to South India. Jose Mathew (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge WP:INDICSCRIPT to MOS:INDIA's "Lead and infobox" section

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
After two months, no objection was raised, so the result of this discussion was to Merge. Muhandes (talk) 09:13, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

The rationale and consensus history (the links/diffs for which should be put into a footnote) at WP:WikiProject India#Indic scripts in lead belong in the MOS:INDIA page; they serve no purpose buried on the wikiproject page where no one will see them but active participants in the wikiproject. Without that material, the one-liner in the present guideline looks like arbitrary nonsense, and is easily dismissed as some consensus-free WP:CREEP someone added without discussion.

I did some cleanup work on the material to make it "MoS-styled" language, and actually guideline-worthy. It had a bunch of WP:OWNish wording (I don't mean that too critically, it's just a common problem in stuff written at wikiprojects), was very unclear in certain ways, and had some grammar problems).

After merging, the WP:INDICSCRIPT shortcut (and a MOS:INDICSCRIPT one) should redirect to what is presently the "Lead and infobox" section in MOS:INDIA, though this would be better named "Indic script in leads and infoboxes" since it does not cover anything else, and it doesn't stand out in the table of contents without "Indic" in it.

 — SMcCandlish ¢ >ⱷ҅ⱷ<  02:04, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Implementation

This is regarding the implementation per the above discussion.

I moved the relevant material and updated the links. There is, however, the matter of the "Preferred format for introducing the article subject" section and onwards, which now makes much less sense. The example given, Sikhism, is especially bad since it it can always be argued that it's not even predominantly within the scope of WikiProject India but more in the scope of WikiProject Religion. The entire point of the section was how to use {{Indic}} in the lead section, are we now recommending its use at all? --Muhandes (talk) 12:04, 21 December 2017 (UTC) I read it again and it is just too confusing to keep. I commented out the entire thing, here it is for further discussion

Extended content

Preferred format for introducing the article subject

Ideally, when introducing an article that is covered by this guideline, IPA transcriptions (with audio files if possible) and transliterations of the Indic script should be included. The format is:

Simplified Transliteration (English IPA text; Language:  Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: lang (help), Error: {{Transliteration}}: unrecognized language / script code: lang (help), Template:IPA-lang) ...

A special {{indic}} template has been made to take care of formatting issues.

Use this format when you have the original script text, transliteration, IPA and audio pronunciation file.

'''Simplified Transliteration''' ({{indic | lang=Language code | defaultipa=English IPA text | defaultaudio=Audio file.ogg | indic=Indic Text | trans=ISO Transliteration | indicipa=Indic IPA text | indicaudio=Audio file.ogg }}) ...
Example
'''Sikhism''' ({{indic|lang=pa|defaultipa='siːkɪz(ə)m|defaultaudio=Seekism.ogg|indic=ਸਿੱਖੀ|trans=sikkhī|indicipa='sɪk.kʰiː| indicaudio=Sikkhi.ogg}}) is a...
Sikhism ('siːkɪz(ə)m; Punjabi: ਸਿੱਖੀ, sikkhī, IPA: ) is a...

Without audio

Use this when you have the original script text, transliteration and IPA but do not have the audio pronunciation. This is likely to be the most used format.

'''Simplified Transliteration''' ({{indic | lang=Language code | defaultipa=English IPA text | indic=Indic Text | trans=ISO Transliteration | indicipa=Indic IPA text }}) ...
Example
'''Mumbai''' ({{indic|lang=mr|defaultipa=mumbəi|indic=मुंबई|trans=mumbaī}}) is a...
Mumbai (mumbəi; Marathi: मुंबई, mumbaī) is a...

Pinging User:SMcCandlish and User:Let There Be Sunshine --Muhandes (talk) 12:17, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

On a quick once-over, the problem appears to be that this is being written about leads when we don't want to use Indic in leads. If the material were rewritten to be about use of Indic in our text in general (with a reminder that we don't use it in the lead, "see above", then some of the material could be restored into "Non-English strings" somewhere, though Sikh stuff should just be an example. We would never do "Simplified Transliteration" which is against both MOS:BOLD and MOS:CAPS ("simplified transliteration" is just fine), and we would not normally include audio without a really good reason. The audio stuff is already covered, in a non-topic-specific manner, at MOS:AUDIO MOS:PRON, so it need not be covered here at all except with short cross-references, like "For when to include a link to an audio pronunciation file, see WP:Manual of Style/Pronunciation."  — SMcCandlish ¢ >ⱷ҅ⱷ<  22:03, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
I'm thinking what I did as first-aid (commenting out the entire section) might be the best solution. The entire thing is just an explanation of how to use {{Indic}} which does not seem to apply as a WP:MOS anyway and is covered elsewhere. --Muhandes (talk) 19:11, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

I suggest not to mention state/UT name because when reorganization of any state will occur, each assembly constituency state will need to be changed. Sid54126 (talk) 14:00, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Sid54126, I think you meant this to go elsewhere (probably three sections below). --Muhandes (talk) 14:10, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Nonsense about wikiproject scope

Articles do not belong to wikiprojects. Someone added stuff about the "don't use Indic script in leads and infoboxes" somehow only applying to WikiProject India articles. I've objected to this, Corinne has as well, on another page, and it just doesn't make any sense. It's directly against WP:CONLEVEL and WP:OWN policy and the WP:ARBINFOBOX ruling against projects trying to assert authority over entire categories of articles. I've removed this twice and been reverted on the basis that there will allegedly be controversy if I"m not. Show us the controversy.

The wording of the contested material has now been changed to "This avoidance of Indic scripts only applies to articles that are predominantly India-related and is excluded from, among others, articles about Hinduism, Buddhism, Pakistan or any of India's neighbouring countries." What?! Articles about these religions are not magically disassociated from India as a topic. This result is literally not possible under policy. If Indic script is a problem for readers in articles that pertain to India, it does not magically become a non-problem when the topic is Bangladesh. Wikiprojects on Pakistan and Jainism cannot declare "their" article immune to guidelines that are based on a practical consensus that our leads and infoboxes should not have indic script in them for well-articulated reasons. That's Indic script, not Indian script. This is a site-wide MoS guideline, not a wikiproject advice page essay. If projects on Hinduism and Bangladesh really want to assert that there is no consensus to apply this rule to any article they say is within their scope, then the Indic script rule actually does not have consensus. But I don't see any evidence of that. I see one editor trying very hard to shoe-horn wikilawyering language into this guideline for no clear reason.

PS: If we need to explain that there can be exceptions, e.g. where the very topic is an Indic word like Aum, familiar even in written form around the world, then we should do so. There is no exception for "this politician is Maldivian, so we can use Indic script as much as we want to."  — SMcCandlish ¢ >ⱷ҅ⱷ<  23:36, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

It's not about Indic scripts, and never has been, it's about "Indian" scripts. If an article is related to India, then the community has decided that it's not desirable to include native scripts in the lede or the infobox regardless of whether those native scripts are Indic or something else, e.g. Urdu. Clarifying the scope is kind of redundant: this is after all, the MOS page for India-related articles (and before this was moved here, it was within WP INDIA's internal project space). However, WP:INDICSRIPT is used and quoted so often that there was a history of incidents with editors missing that point and starting to remove e.g. Sanskrit names from Buddhism articles, or Urdu native names from Pakistan-related articles.
Anyway, if you'd like to change the guideline to have broader scope than it currently has, you can of course start and RfC, but unlike all the previous ones it will need to 1) be on a page different from the talk page of WP INDIA, and 2) be advertised to the projects concerned. However, this is unlikely to draw much support as the situation that led to the adoption of this guideline (= regular editors being sick of people edit-warring over which script(s) to include and in what order) doesn't hold for any of the related projects. – Uanfala (talk) 00:45, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Really? I may be wrong but I thought the RfC etc said Indic? The underlying problem, though, does have history either on this page or some other. Something to do with local (ie: project) consensus cannot over-ride general community consensus. That's a big issue because all someone has to do is add another project banner to a talk page and an article instantly becomes exempt from the India project consensus. Whether it is a problematic issue is another matter. Personally, I'd rather see it applied site-wide for the reasons that have already been discussed to death in numerous past threads and because I feel that if a project can re-work general notability guidelines with local consensus - NSPORT, NPROF etc - then we're on the cusp of doing the same sort of thing with Indic scripts anyway. The fact is, they're pretty much unworkable and the value of retention is really of minimal (not zero, but minimal) utility for our readership: if you know it, you know it ... and if you do not then you probably couldn't care less. - Sitush (talk) 01:21, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Sitush, do you suggest that any of the editors who opposed the inclusion of say Devanagari or Tamil scripts in the lede would have been happy with retaining Urdu? all someone has to do is add another project banner to a talk page and an article instantly becomes exempt from the India project consensus – that's why that bit in the text says "predominantly India-related". – Uanfala (talk) 01:38, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Any script is a problem. Defining India is also a problem, eg: in theory most Pakistan-related tribe articles are also India-related: Pakistan has only been around for a few years and it was a part of India for much longer. We have to assume a bit of common sense here. - Sitush (talk) 15:00, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

blanket ban per WP:INDICSCRIPT

I understand the reasoning for WP:INDICSCRIPT, but the ban seems excessive. For example, gujarati film Dhh has a clear case of indic script in lead and/or infobox. There are no claims of multiple language to be added here, so why can't we refine policy to allow such cases? Coderzombie (talk) 13:10, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

There has been quite a number of discussions on the matter over the years, and I think the simplest way is to explain it is that there is no way to leave the door half-open. Since the alternative was worse, the community has chosen to leave the door tightly closed. Maybe one day consensus will change. --Muhandes (talk) 22:30, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Diacritics, use or not?

This guideline is unclear on whether or not to use diacritics, and in what circumstances. Devanagari or Devanāgarī? Aryabhata or Āryabhaṭa?

Should diacritics be "extended?" (Brihadisvara, Brihadiśvara, or Brihadishvara?)

Should they be used for all terms that can be transcribed with IAST (this would be excessive, imo), or just technical Sanskrit terms/names for historical/religious topics? The latter is my preference, for words like parinirvāṇa.

Should they be used for article names? In leads? General text?

Overall diacritic usage is very inconsistent across the wiki, I hope a standard can be set. - AMorozov  12:18, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@AMorozov: The question is not one of whether to use diacritics or not, but which transliteration standard to use. As the section on Non-English strings outlines, ISO 15919 should be used for all Indic languages except for Sanskrit, where IAST is used conventionally. I have proposed to switch to ISO for Sanskrit as well (see the section below), but that's the policy for the moment. By "without diacritics", I assume you mean using the Hunterian transliteration scheme, the official scheme used by the Indian government. In that scheme, it can be written as Brihadishvara. Brihadisvara is incorrect; it's not a matter of simply dropping the diacritics from the ISO/IAST transliteration to reach Hunterian transliteration. All in all, I'd say use ISO (preferably) or Hunterian for all Indic languages except for Sanskrit, for which you should be using IAST. Getsnoopy (talk) 01:52, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Gandhi

In section "Indic scripts in leads and infoboxes", we are admonished not to use Indic scripts in the lede section. In the very next section, "Linking to other Indian Language Wikipedias", an example lede fragment is given which violates this rule. The article it refers to, Mahatma Gandhi, does not display the same lede. Elizium23 (talk) 11:03, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Avoidance of Indic scripts makes no sense

The decision was made because there are too many Indian languages? This makes no sense, because there are only 2 official languages in India, English and Hindi. Adding Hindi can help millions of people who only know, speak and write in Hindi to find articles on wikipedia. Not all English wikipedia articles have a hindi translation. Such a decision only prevents wikipedia's accessibility. For people, companies, and organizations that operate mostly on the state level. State languages can be included as an when deemed necessary. It seems regressive to avoid the usage of Indic scripts when for every other country, a local language translation is offered — Preceding unsigned comment added by Debitpixie (talkcontribs) 11:50, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Prefer BCE/CE

I propose a policy of preferring the secular BCE/CE as opposed to BC/AD for Indian articles being added under the "Basic India conventions". Many articles on Indian topics seem to follow this convention already (e.g., India, Karma, Hinduism), but my proposal is to codify it as a preference. Getsnoopy (talk) 04:37, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Prefer ISO 15919 over IAST

I propose preferring ISO 15919 over IAST for all Indic-language transliterations, and adding this to the conventions page. IAST is essentially a subset of ISO 15919, barring a couple cases where it's different, and the latter allows for all Indic languages to be unambiguously represented. Along the same lines, the recommended template for transliterations should be changed to {{transl}} instead of {{lang}}, as the former allow specifying the transliteration scheme used as well, which is important in many cases. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Category:Government of Bangalore should be deleted since it is named after a an entity which never existed

Category:Government of Bangalore should be deleted since it is named after a an entity which never existed. Usage of terms Government of Karnataka and Government of India should be entertained but there is (or was) nothing by the name Government of Bangalore. If you want to categorize agencies associated with Bangalore, then we can use Category:Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike for Pages dedicated to Agencies associated with Municipal Corporation. Similarly other Pages which are using Category:Government of Bangalore can use Category:Bangalore. Talk Page Talk. -Vijethnbharadwaj (talk) 17:14, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

This is the wrong forum for deleting or merging a category. Take it to WP:CFD where it will have wider attention. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:29, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
Agree with Timrollpickering. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 21:31, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Is this okay?

So if on an India-related geography article, can I put Indic script and then Latin script? It doesn't say you can't according to WP:INDICSCRIPT. For example, can I put in the "nativename" section the Hindi name for a place and then below that the Latin transliteration? 2001:8003:C829:E400:F091:1EFE:F47B:624B (talk) 07:03, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

That's requires a very imaginative reading of Avoid the use of Indic scripts in lead sections or infoboxes.. Avoid it. --Muhandes (talk) 09:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
Some geographical names in India have been used with multiple spellings in Roman. For example The name of the city in Hindi जबलपुर follows the exact native pronunciation and has not changed. In Roman it has been Jubbulpore, Jubbalpur, Jabalpur etc. In that case it is advantages to use the Indic text. One distinct advantage of using the Indic text is that the text string can be used to search publications in Indian languages (newspapers and books). For example see which will search for जबलपुर in Hindi newspapers.

References

  1. Search जबलपुर news
Malaiya (talk) 02:01, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
I know what you mean. I have a lot of examples, for one being Guntur which was written as గుంటూరు which transliterates to Gunturu. Can't say about other languages in other countries, but this is common in Indic scripts. For this change, you'll need to achieve consensus in the WP:INDICSCRIPT context. -- DaxServer (talk) 08:59, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

All non-Sanskrit transliterations should use ISO 15919

This policy is already implied in the current policy and followed on most articles, but my proposal is to make it explicit. If no one objects to this in about a week's time, I will be amending the text accordingly in Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/India-related articles § Non-English strings. Getsnoopy (talk) 19:42, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


Legislative Assembly constituency names

I am noticing some confusion about what are the correct and uniform names for the Indian state assembly constituencies. Articles are titled using Vidhan Sabha constituency, Vidhana Sabha constituency, Assembly constituency, Legislative Assembly, State Assembly constituency and Union Territory Assembly constituency etc.

I propose to name change of the all State and Union Territory assembly constituencies, for example, from Khanapur (Vidhan Sabha constituency) to Khanapur (Maharashtra State Legislative Assembly constituency), Khanapur (Assembly constituency) to Khanapur (Telangana State Legislative Assembly constituency), Khanapur (Vidhan Sabha constituency (Karnataka)) to Khanapur (Karnataka State Legislative Assembly constituency) and Islampur (Maharashtra) (Vidhan Sabha constituency) to Islampur (Maharashtra State Legislative Assembly constituency) etc. Italawar (talk) 14:49, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

The standard name should be "XYZ (Legislative Assembly constituency)". In the case of multiple constituencies in different states having the same name, the format should be "XYZ (ABC Legislative Assembly constituency)". Using "Vidhan Sabha" in the title will be a cause for conflicts. In the future, someone may argue that Karnataka constituencies should instead use the term "Vidhana Soudha". Better to go with the English term. Bharatiya29 15:04, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I support Bharatiya suggestion, there is no need to list the state if no further disambiguation is needed. Number 57's proposal below is more complete so I prefer it. --Muhandes (talk) 16:41, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I too support Bharatiya's suggestion. TryKid (talk) 19:13, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Bit of a late reply, but Karnataka's Legislative Assembly is called a Vidhan Sabha. It's only the building that's called the Vidhana Soudha. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI 03:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
I propose the uniformed nomenclature "XYZ (ABC Assembly constituency)", where XYZ is the constituency name and ABC is the State/UT name. That way we wouldn't need to put the titles, "State Legislative Assembly constituency" or "Union Territory Assembly constituency" separately the for the states and union territories.
Also the "XYZ (Legislative Assembly constituency)" as proposed by Bharatiya29 is unusually long title and thus not desirable. For example, "Ghosi (Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly constituency)" can simply be titled "Ghosi (Uttar Pradesh Assembly constituency)" — Hemant Dabral 17:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
There are two issues here. You propose to use "Assembly constituency" instead of "Legislative Assembly constituency". To this I do not oppose. However, you also propose to always use the state, which I think makes the titles unnecessarily too long in 99% of the cases. If there is no disambiguation needed, don't disambiguate. --Muhandes (talk) 17:44, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
There is no need to put State/UT in the title irrespective of the fact ehther the State name is mentioned or not. The legislative body of a state is called the legislative assembly for both states and partial states (Delhi, Puducherry, J&K). Bharatiya29 19:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Keeping the name of a State/UT in titles will bring the uniformity in all of these constituency pages and at the same time it will rule out any chance of ambiguity. It'd look odd if some constituencies in a state (disambiguation pages) have the state name in titles and other constituencies don't have it. It's rather more practical to use State/UT name to achieve uniformity so we don't have to use different titles (one for disambigous pages and other for normal pages) for the various consistencies of a same State/UT. — Hemant Dabral 22:45, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
While I see why uniformity can be valued, it is no excuse to needlessly extend all titles, and is generally not the way disambiguators work. There are thousands of examples of this in Misplaced Pages, but just one, in how song disambiguators work, we have Hope (Jack Johnson song) because there are many songs with the title "Hope", but we have As Tears Go By (song), not As Tears Go By (Marianne Faithfull song), although that would be more uniform. 99% of the titles will not need the state/UT, uniformity is not a reason to make the other 99% longer. --Muhandes (talk) 11:13, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

My view is that we should always keep disambiguation to a minimum and unnecessarily long names are not helpful. Having a standard disambiguator, especially as long as that proposed by Italawar is unnecessary IMO. I would propose the following disambiguation hierarchy:

  1. No other geographical area or entity with the same name: Do not disambiguate (e.g. Gwalior East as opposed to Gwalior East (Vidhan Sabha constituency))
  2. Geographic entity with the same name, but not a constituency: Disambiguate with "(constituency)" (e.g. Alirajpur (constituency) as opposed to Alirajpur (Vidhan Sabha constituency))
  3. Lok Sabha constituency with the same name: Disambiguate with "(Legislative Assembly constituency)" (e.g. Betul (Legislative Assembly constituency) as opposed to Betul (Vidhan Sabha constituency))
  4. Legislative Assembly constituency with the same name in another state: Disambiguate with "(state name constituency)" (e.g. Islampur (Maharashtra constituency) rather than Islampur (Maharashtra) (Vidhan Sabha constituency))
  5. Legislative Assembly constituency with the same name in another state and a Lok Sabha constituency with the same name: Disambiguate with "(state name Legislative Assembly constituency)" (e.g. Footown (Maharashtra Legislative Assembly constituency)).

I don't see having slightly different titles across a range of articles as a significant issue – having unnecessarily long titles is more of an issue than a lack of uniformity IMO. Cheers, Number 57 13:54, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

@Number 57: I fully support your proposal as it captures my thoughts about how disambiguation should be done. However, is #4 the furthest disambiguation needs to go? Is it not possible to have a constituency which is both the same name another state and a Lok Sabha constituency? There might not be such a case, but if there is, it may require the obnoxiously long Khanapur (Telangana Legislative Assembly constituency).--Muhandes (talk) 14:18, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, you're correct that it probably needs a #5 just in case such a situation did exist. I've added it above. Cheers, Number 57 14:22, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Even better. @Italawar, Bharatiya29, TryKid, and Hemant Dabral: care to comment? --Muhandes (talk) 18:51, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Number 57's proposal looks quite good to me. I think we should extend it to Lok Sabha constituencies as well. Chennai South (Lok Sabha constituency) can be moved to Chennai South as per point one. I am not entirely sure about how to manage Lok Sabha constituencies with the same name in different states. Should it be Aurangabad (Maharashtra Lok Sabha constituency) or Aurangabad, Maharashtra (Lok Sabha constituency)? Because the current title gives a feeling that there is a different Lok Sabha for each state. Bharatiya29 21:05, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Although I see your point about it making it look like there is a Maharashtra Lok Sabha, I think Aurangabad (Maharashtra Lok Sabha constituency) is still slightly preferable as it avoids a double disambiguation in the same title (using a comma and brackets). Number 57 21:13, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Number 57's proposal looks quite obnoxious and odd to me. For example:

1. Aurangabad, Maharashtra (Lok Sabha constituency) serves as a much better disambiguator than using "double brackets" Aurangabad (Maharashtra) (Lok Sabha constituency). As an alternative, you can just use the official constituency number if you don't want double disambiguation. 34-Aurangabad (Lok Sabha constituency) for Bihar and 41-Aurangabad (Lok Sabha constituency) for Maharashtra. The constituency number is the part of official name of the constituency as it can be seen in the nomination papers filed by candidates.

2. Suggesting the constituency title Alirajpur (constituency) is also incorrect as there are Legislative Council constituencies too in the some states of same name. (Not in Madhya Pradesh though but I'm using Alirajpur as a reference point here) For example: Saharanpur in U.P. has three kind of constituencies — Legislative Assembly, Legislative Council and Lok Sabha, So it's better to clarify what kind of constituency is it, Assembly or Council or Lok Sabha. Even within the Legislative Council, Saharanpur has three constituencies — Graduate's constituency, Teacher's constituency and Local Authority constituency.

3. The title Gwalior East denote a general locality or geographical area of that city. It doesn't have an article on Misplaced Pages as of today but in future there's a possibility that there might be an article related to this geographic area so it's better to use disambiguator instead of using just a generic title for a constituency article page.

4. It would be very inconvenient for a Misplaced Pages user to search for a specific constituency located in a specific state with all these non-uniform title names. For example: A person looking for Betul Assembly constituency would be expecting the same keywords for Alirajpur Assembly constituency and Gwalior East Assembly constituency to search for the articles, but all three of them having three different non-uniform titles would prove to be very inconvenient to a Misplaced Pages user to locate them.

Hemant Dabral 02:26, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Happy to have a constructive debate, but I feel your first three points are a wilful misrepresentation/misinterpretation of my suggestion; regarding #1, I did not suggest using double brackets. Regarding #2 and #3, the examples I gave were illustrations of how it would work; if the specific examples I gave do require further disambiguation, then they would move to the next level (for example, if there are other Legislative Assembly constituencies called Alirajpurr, then they would fall under #4).
The suggestion made to use 34-Aurangabad (Lok Sabha constituency) is worth consideration. However, I think adding the number would have to be applied to all Lok Sabha constituencies if it were adopted.
With regards to the final point, when editors search for a constituency, as they start typing its name in the search box, all the matches will come up. As a result, I don't see there being problems with locating articles, or that keywords are necessary in the title. Number 57 11:18, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
I endorse all of Hemant Dabral's four points. HD clearly knows the set of articles very well, and is familiar with the degree of ambiguity involved.
HD's description of it reminds me of the discussions we had in relation to Ireland, where a broad stable adminsitrative geography (Ireland has had the same set of counties for ~400 years) means that their names (and those of towns and cities) have been used for constituencies of
  1. The Parliament of Ireland (pre 1801)
  2. The Parliament of the United Kingdom (since 1801 for Northern Ireland, and 1801–1922 for the Republic of Ireland)
  3. The Parliament of Northern Ireland (1921–1972)
  4. The Northern Ireland Forum (1996–1998)
  5. The Northern Ireland Assembly (since 1999)
  6. Dáil Éireann, since 1918
  7. The European Parliament (since 1979)
.... and that's not even a definitive list.
For examples of the permutations of name, see e.g. Template:County Antrim constituencies or Template:County Cork constituencies. The Indian situation seems just as complex, and trying to impose a multi-level disambiguation hierarchy would create absurd complexity. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:32, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
  • I strongly oppose Number 57's suggestion. That creates a complex 5-level hierarchy of disambiguation, which means that editors and readers have to guess what the canonical name is, with an inevitably high rate of error. The problem is simple:
  1. every constituency is anmed after a pre-existing geographucal entity, so the bare name is always inherently ambiguous
  2. the bare name such as "FooTown" or "FooTown East" may refer to any of
    • an informal geographical area
    • an administrative division
    • a state assembly constituency
    • a Lok Sabha constituency
With a consistent naming format, readers and editors can ascertain the name of the constituency article just by applying the convention.
But without it, the article's name can be determined only with extensive prior knowledge. In other words, the reader or can find the article only if they are already have info which most will need to learn from the article. If Number 57's plan is implemented, the result will be that it is impossible to conduct a rules-based check for the accuracy of links. Every one of them will have to be checked by hand, and we simply don't have enough dedicated editors to sustain that level of manual checking of such huge variability across such a huge set of articles.
The same issues were debated at length in 2006/2007 in respect of constituencies in the UK and Ireland. Neither is a federal system, but both share the Indian characteristic have multiple types of constituency. In each case, the consensus was to use a consistent dismabiguator in all cases, and that consensus has remained stable ever since then. Similarly, see Category:European Parliament constituencies+subcats: all articles use "Foo (European Parliament constituency)"
So please, disambiguate all the constituencies, at least to the level of "Foo (assembly constituency)"/"Foo (Lok Sabha constituency)", and much preferably use the always-unambiguous "XYZ (ABC Assembly constituency)" proposed by Hemant Dabral.
Maintainability is massively enhanced by consistency. Please please please don't undermine that maintainability. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:44, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
PS Please note that the policy WP:NAMINGCRITERIA sets five criteria:
  • Recognizability
  • Naturalness
  • Precision
  • Conciseness
  • Consistency
The format "XYZ (ABC Assembly constituency)" is a clear winner on 3 criteria: Recognizability, Precision, and Consistency.
Number 57's provision wins only on conciseness, but fails on at least three of the other criteria.
Some editors seem to prioritise conciseness over all the other 4 criteria, but there is no policy reason to do so. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:59, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
You have a point on consistency as I accepted above, but I disagree on the recognisability and precision criteria. We don't generally disambiguate where it's not necessary. I would imagine the vast, vast majority of readers would not know what the word Culpho refers to, but I doubt anyone would seriously suggest changing its name to Culpho (UK village) to make it recognisable or precise. This debate effectively boils down to a decision between consistency vs conciseness. Number 57 11:18, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Number 57 that this is primarily a consistency vs conciseness debate. But Hemant Dabral's points are worth consideration. A lot of Lok Sabha constituency names can also refer to geographical entities. For example, Inner Manipur, Autonomous District, Paschim Champaran, etc. Terms like Gwalior East should mostly refer to the LS constituency, but that depends on one's perspective and hence we have to assume that all constituency names can also refer to the geographical location irrespective of the existence of a Misplaced Pages article about the same. The idea of hierarchical disambiguation is no longer practical due to legislative council constituencies. In light of all this, we have to sacrifice conciseness for practicality and consistency. I will like to propose a much simpler naming scheme:
  1. All LS and legislative assembly constituencies should have "(Lok Sabha constituency)" and "(Legislative Assembly constituency)" in their title. Omitting the word "legislative" will not be appropriate IMO.
  2. If two assembly constituencies in different states have the same name, the state name should be mentioned in the disambiguator: "ABC (XYZ Legislative Assembly constituency)".
  3. If two LS constituencies in different states have the same name, the state name should be mentioned with a comma: "ABC, XYZ (Lok Sabha constituency)".
This proposal is mostly based on consistency, but also provides some conciseness by omitting the state name in most cases. As for mentioning the constituency name in the title, that would practically solve all of these issues. But it will look quite odd and will fail WP:NATURALNESS. Bharatiya29 17:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
The use of titles like Rajinder Nagar (constituency) might lead to confusion for the reader as it can refer to either the Delhi legislative assembly constituency or the North Delhi Municipal Corporation ward. A constituency is defined as "a group of voters in a specified area who elect a representative to a legislative body", and since municipal corporations are not legislative bodies, wards are technically not constituencies. But they do satisfy the first part of the definition and that can lead to confusion. Bharatiya29 17:20, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
@Number 57 and Bharatiya29: no, this not a simple consistency vs conciseness debate. That stance is just denialism of the precision and recognisability criteria.
Every constituency name is derived from an existing geographical term, so it is inherently ambiguous. Every constituency name (e.f. "FooTown", "FooTown Central", "FooTown and BarTown", "South DistrictName" etc) could equally well refer to a formal or informal geographical entity. So the undisambiguated form fails the precision criterion. Readers and editors are unlikely to know in advance whether we currently have an article on the informal area "South DistrictName", and the failure to disambiguate leaves them guessing.
Number47's comparison with Culpho is a red herring, because the name Culpho is not derived from an existing geographical entity. The constituency name is derivative, so it is almost never the primary topic for a geographical term, where as the village nearly always is primary (unless ambiguous with an other village of the same name).
Here's an example of the sort of absurdity which arises from the failure to disambiguate: Bhograi. The article is about a constituency named after an administrative division ... but because the article on the division hasn't yet been created, the constituency is occupying the slot.
The undisambiguated term also fails the recognisability criterion, by failing to indicate that the article is about a primarily legal entity rather than a primarily geographical one.
And I'm sorry to see that Number57 pays no attention to maintainability. There are currently 4,227 articles on Indian constituencies, of which only 181 omit the word "constituency". Number57 wants to introduce avoidable ambiguity to an unquantified number of the 4,046 articles which are already dismabiguated: why? How does this help anyone? Who benefits from this? Where is all the extra editorial effort going to come from to maintain this 5-level hierarchy of disambiguation? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:53, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
  • There is no need to put State/UT in the title irrespective of the fact ehther the State name is mentioned or not. The legislative body of a state is called the legislative assembly for both states and partial states (Delhi, Puducherry, J&K). Bharatiya29 19:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I oppose Bharatiya29 for now Italawar (talk) 15:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Keeping the name of a State/UT in titles will bring the uniformity in all of these constituency pages and at the same time it will rule out any chance of ambiguity. It'd look odd if some constituencies in a state (disambiguation pages) have the state name in titles and other constituencies don't have it. It's rather more practical to use State/UT name to achieve uniformity so we don't have to use different titles (one for disambigous pages and other for normal pages) for the various consistencies of a same State/UT. — Hemant Dabral 22:45, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Isupport Hemant Dabral Italawar (talk) 15:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
  • All LS and legislative assembly constituencies should have "(Lok Sabha constituency)" and "(Legislative Assembly constituency)" in their title. Omitting the word "legislative" will not be appropriate IMO. Bharatiya29 17:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
I support Bharatiya29 Italawar (talk) 15:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Number 57's ...
I strongly oppose Number 57's suggestion. Probably a good compromise could be to use the official name of the constituency without number. Italawar (talk) 05:28, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

@Italawar, Bharatiya29, Number 57, TryKid, Muhandes, and BrownHairedGirl: Why the Karnataka Legislative Assembly constituencies pages were moved by Vijethnbharadwaj when the discussion about the correct title format of constituencies is still ongoing? — Hemant Dabral (📞) 07:32, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Italawar, Bharatiya29, Number 57, TryKid, Muhandes, BrownHairedGirl, and Hemant Dabral: I see there is no clear outcome of this discussion. May be we should go for an RfC. What do you think? -- Ab207 (talk) 13:12, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@Ab207: I agree. An RFC is needed to clear this up.
But please, before launching the RFC, let's collaborate to make a neutral summary of the issues. That makes for a much better discussion at RFC. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:21, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Yeah, thats the ideal way to go. --Ab207 (talk) 13:59, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Constituency names RFC drafting

  • There are two topics here: Should we go for consistency or conciseness? If consistency, then how?
  1. Lok Sabha constituencies where there is already some consistency XYZ (Lok Sabha constituency) e.g. Chennai South (Lok Sabha constituency)
  2. Legislative assembly constituencies where currently there is no consistency. Different proposals include:
    1. Option 1: Disambiguation by generic name: Secunderabad (Assembly constituency) or Madurai East (state assembly constituency)
    2. Option 2: Disambiguation by State/UT name: Khanapur (Telangana Legislative Assembly constituency) or Sultan Pur Majra (Delhi Assembly constituency)
    3. Option 3: Disambiguation by Indian language: Bangalore South (Vidhana Sabha constituency) or Begusarai (Vidhan Sabha constituency)
I have tried to hit brief points, you may fill in your input--Ab207 (talk) 13:59, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for that valuable start, @Ab207.
However, I think the the hierarchy of questions and options is little confusing. So I suggest this redraft:
Question 1: disambiguate selectively or always. Should constituency names in India be:
Option 1a) always as concise as possible, i.e. include a disambiguator only when needed?
(as with e.g. Category:New Zealand electorates and Category:Canadian federal electoral districts, which don't always disambiguate)
Option 1b) consistent, i.e. include a standard disambiguator in all cases?
(as with e.g. the various types of constituencies under Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Ireland, Category:Constituencies in the United Kingdom. Each set of constituencies for those countries has a standard disambiguator for each parliament/assembly. Category:Australian electorates uses a pair of consistent but unparethesised naming formats: "Division of Foo" for federal constituencies, "Electoral district of Foo" for state assembly constituencies)
Note that the underlying debate here is about two ways of viewing these titles:
  • One view is that every constituency title as inherently ambiguous, because it is named after an existing geographical entity on which we may or may not have an article. Under this view "FooTown", "North FooTown", "West FooDistrict", "FooTown and BarTown" etc are all ambiguous because they describe a geographical area on which we could reasonably have an article.
  • the other view is to individually test the ambiguity of each constituency article only by whether another article already exists with that title.
Question 2: How should we disambiguate the Lok Sabha constituencies?. Note that:
  • this applies regardless of the answer to Q1, which decides whether we disambiguate in some cases or all cases.
  • Currently, all article on Lok Sabha constituencies are disambiguated either as "(Lok Sabha constituency)", except in five cases where that is ambiguous and the dab is ("StateName Lok Sabha constituency)".
  • Option 2a: disambiguate only as far as needed in this hierarchy: "constituency" / "Lok Sabha constituency" / "StateName Lok Sabha constituency"
  • Option 2b: (status quo) disambiguate only as far as needed in this hierarchy: "Lok Sabha constituency" / "StateName Lok Sabha constituency"
Question 3: How should we disambiguate the State Assembly constituencies?. Note that:
  • this applies regardless of the answer to Q1, which decides whether we disambiguate in some cases or all cases.
  • Currently, there is no consistency in the naming of State assembly constituencies
Options for Q3
--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:23, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl:, The draft looks good, there's one minor issue though. example for Option 3e is incorrect. Vidhana Sabha is Kannada-language term while generic Hindi-language term is Vidhan Sabha. There are other Indic language terms include, Sasana Sabha (Telugu), Niyamasabha (Malayalam) etc. which are not in use at this point.
It may also be worth mentioning that while there is no consistency for state assembly constituencies across India, there is consistency at state/UT level. "Assembly constituency" is used by Telangana and Andhra Pradesh; "state (or) Union Territory assembly constituency" by Tamil Nadu and Puducherry; " assembly constituency" by Delhi; "Vidhana Sabha constituency" by Karnataka; "Vidhan Sabha constituency" used by several states, and so on. Hence, there is indeed an option of maintaining the status quo with consistency at State/UT level.-- Ab207 (talk) 19:58, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Ab207. How about an Option 3g for "retain existing format of consistency at State/UT level"? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:06, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Sounds good -- Ab207 (talk) 20:10, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Pinging past participants who are currently active @Hemant Dabral, TryKid, and Muhandes: Do you have any inputs? -- Ab207 (talk) 05:45, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment I don't think the state assembly options are precise enough for an RfC, as each of them gives two options. I would suggest only having one method for each option, which could potentially be:
  1. Option 1: Use (state assembly constituency), e.g. Madurai East (state assembly constituency) (adding state where there are two with the same name in different states)
  2. Option 2: Use (Assembly constituency), e.g. Secunderabad (Assembly constituency) (adding state where there are two with the same name in different states)
  3. Option 3: Use (Vidhana Sabha constituency), e.g. Bangalore South (Vidhana Sabha constituency) (adding state where there are two with the same name in different states)
  4. Option 4: Use the full name of the state assembly, e.g. Khanapur (Telangana Legislative Assembly constituency)
Cheers, Number 57 16:32, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@Number 57: Yeah, this version is better. But I'm not sure if you have realized Vidhana Sabha (Kannada-language) and Vidhan Sabha (Hindi-language) are also different. This would open a pandora box as each Indian language has its own name e.g., Sasana Sabha (Telugu), Niyamasabha (Malayalam) etc. which are not in use at this point. -- Ab207 (talk) 17:30, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
We can add Indira Nagar (Union Territory Assembly constituency) in option 1 as an example for UTs. (Now there's an unaddressed issue of caps). Following options may also be added
Option 5 Use (State Legislative Assembly constituency), full official name, e.g. Tamenglong (State Legislative Assembly constituency)
Option 5.a Use ConstituencyName (StateName/UnionTerritoryaName State/Union Territory Legislative Assembly constituency), e.g. Gandhinagar (Rajasthan State Legislative Assembly constituency), Gandhi Nagar (Karnataka State Legislative Assembly constituency), Gandhi Nagar (Gujarat State Legislative Assembly constituency), Gandhi Nagar (Delhi National Capital Territory Legislative Assembly constituency) or (Delhi Union Territory Legislative Assembly constituency) etc. for assembly constituencies and Use ConstituencyName (StateName/UnionTerritoryaName State/Union Territory Lok Sabha constituency), e.g. Gandhinagar (Gujarat State Lok Sabha constituency), Gandhinagar (Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory Lok Sabha constituency) etc. for Lok Sabha constituencies.
Option 6 Use (Legislative Assembly constituency), concise official name, e.g. Uri (Legislative Assembly constituency) -- Ab207 (talk) 17:49, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Does anyone actually advocate Foo (State Legislative Assembly constituency)? The word "state" seems redundant. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:08, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: I think no one yet (including me). I was brainstorming all possible options. -- Ab207 (talk) 20:19, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@Ab207 and BrownHairedGirl:The word "state" or "union territory" may require to rename Gandhinagar (Jammu and Kashmir Assembly constituency) to Gandhinagar (Jammu and Kashmir State Legislative Assembly constituency) (Historic) and Gandhinagar (Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory Legislative Assembly constituency) (Future). 171.48.30.80 (talk) 14:18, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
@Ab207, fair enough. Probably best to put everything on the table at the outset. Options added later get confusing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:39, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't mean to write Vidhana – that was a typo... On a related note, is State Legislative Assembly (India) actually the right name for that article? Not State assembly (India)? Number 57 20:27, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
@Number 57:I think it uses official terminology. Alternatively it could be State Legislative Assemblies of India -- Ab207 (talk) 20:44, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
A user actually mass moved all the constituencies in Karnataka from Vidhan to Vidhana as recently as June. So we should be specific. -- Ab207 (talk) 20:54, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I have a more fundamental note / question. Since this is in English and we're trying to be clear to typical readers, we should look at the common meaning / interpretation of the word "constituency":

  1. 98% I think that 98% of the time it means the group of supporters or group of people being represented, and so this is how the readers are going to read the word "constituency"
  2. 1% of the meanings are the geographic district being represented
  3. 1% of the meanings is that it is the assembly itself.

Keeping this in mind, IMO the above possibilities are confusing to the typical reader and/ or sometimes redundant. It appears that the "98%" meaning is not intended under any of the above. My suggestion is:

  • Don't even use the word "constituency" in the title.
  • Call a "district" simply a "district"
  • Call an "assembly" simply an "assembly"

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:16, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

  • Comment: The Page names should always give an idea on the content of the Page. Hence it is also necessary to retain the names as used in local terminologies. (Assembly constituency) was the early used suffix for Legislative Assembly Constituency Pages (Example: Ayodhya (Assembly constituency)). There were other forms of usage as well (mentioned and listed by many, above). The use of Indic terminology started with using (Vidhan Sabha constituency) as a suffix (Example: Chhindwara (Vidhan Sabha constituency)). So if more usage is considered, what we call popular usage or most Commonly used name in Misplaced Pages, (Vidhana Sabha constituency) suffix gets justified (Example: Bangalore South (Vidhana Sabha constituency). So, if title Vidhan Sabha Constituency stands valid, Vidhana can also co-exist.... If consistency is the key, I would suggest using (Assembly constituency) as suffix for all pages across India without mentioning State name or the word State / Union Territory or even mentioning the words Legislative, since these characters makes the title lengthy. However, in case of disambiguation, we should use state name in the title. (Example: Shivajinagar (Maharashtra Assembly constituency) and Shivajinagar (Karnataka Assembly constituency) Since we have multiple seats in different states with same name. Whereas, Lucknow East (Assembly constituency) page title can continue without modification since no page exist with the given name else where in India. Vijeth N Bharadwaj 18:57, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
I agree with "The Page names should always give an idea on the content of the Page." IMHO, for the majority of English readers, using "constituency" would violate that concept. North8000 (talk) 19:45, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Indian politics § Proposal : Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions Indian constituencies

 You are invited to join the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Indian politics § Proposal : Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions Indian constituencies. Venkat TL (talk) 12:54, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

{{Cleanup Indic script}}

FYI Template:Cleanup Indic script (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 06:54, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Categories: