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The article is not the history of Pakistan as a state
The lead that is currently in the article has been in place for nearly 15 years. History if Pakistan is the history of the region that is today Pakistan. In other words, "ancient Pakistan" is an apt term. The old notion that Pakistan exists only after 1947 was settled long ago in many discussions both on this talk page and in the History of India and History of South Asia pages. It was decided that History of India is the history of the region that is today the Republic of India; if is UNDUE to include Mohenjo-daro or Gandhara or Taxila beyond a cursory mention in a history of India; the same applies, for example, to Dacca Muslin and the deindustrialization of Bengal. It is mostly a part of the history of Bangladesh. It is also UNDUE to claim the region of Pakistan in the realms of all sorts of Indian kingdoms the evidence of whose sovereignty in Pakistan is meagre or nonexistent. Fowler&fowler«Talk»14:24, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: Could you actually point me to the supposed "consensus" in question that you claim as the reason for your mass deletion of content ? And anyway is all this 6-months material you are indiscrimately reverting in contravention of this supposed consensus? This seems like a pretty cavalier way of managing article content.... पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)14:32, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Have no bone in the dispute but the same Nichalp who was site-banned by the ArbCom for, let's just say, some pretty interesting stuff? Not even considering that it was over 15 years ago, an eon in internet-era. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:57, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
TB, Nichalp was a respected editor and admin on India articles and is responsible for a lot of content. Yes, he was site banned, but that was after he had stopped contributing as Nichalp, and stopped contributing to India articles. It had nothing to do with his content work on Misplaced Pages and many of us "old fogies" continue to respect his work. Regardless, I agree with Pat that we shouldn't be using what he left behind as a standard for where we want to be. Best to make independent comments on the content or structure of articles. --RegentsPark (comment) 16:28, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
So I see the issue is the lead. I was concerned about the mass removal of content. I tried to contribute in improving the article and was confused where my contributions were wrong Jamal047 (talk) 14:53, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
The lead is a DUE summary of article content, and in some sense a template of what the content should not stray beyond. I believe your additions were UNDUE. Fowler&fowler«Talk»15:10, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: The 15-year-old post by user:Nichalp seems to be a common-sense comment, not a "consensus" as you claimed. Anyway, can you specify which new content in the introduction, or specifically which content in the body of the article, you consider might be "undue"? पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)15:22, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
It is very much the consensus. It has been followed scrupulously both on the India page (in many discussions, which you will have to find yourself on Talk:India) and on the History of India pages. Why do you think both pages, especially the India page concentrates only on the history in the region that is today the Republic of India?
@Fowler&fowler:The way you have been doing this is beyond common sense I'm afraid, and shows complete disrespect for the contributions of others: first you start by deleting the last 6 months of edits (by the way, you are already at your 3rd revert here, on the verge of breaking, again, the WP:3RR rule), and then you go on with a flurry of edits. It should be the other way around: you should edit from the latest version, taking into account the edits from the last 6 months, and then trim as necessary. But instead of that, you are simply blanket-deleting the efforts of all contributors from the last 6 months: how to you expect these contributors to react? This is the opposite of collaborative editing: don't be surprised if you are reverted again by multiple users. User:Johnbod too said that valuable content may have been added in the last 6 months: these contributions have to be respected and deserve more careful analysis. पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)18:28, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Johnbod is saying politely that the article needs to be reduced drastically. They certainly did not say "valuable content." I know I am at 3RR, I say in my edit summary that sometimes you have to take that risk when Misplaced Pages norms of WP:DUE and WP:NPOV are being violently violated in the worst possible way, when India-POV history consisting of the smallest kingdoms described without supportive sources in one-sentence sections are being added to the History of Pakistan. It is a little ridiculous when the Maurya Empire section in the History of Pakistan has twice the geographical extent in its map and is described in double the prose needed in the lead of the Maurya Empire page. Those are the sections I have removed or reduced. I wrote his article long time ago. It has changed a lot since, but I don't intervene unless I see gross WP violations. I know I am following WP policy in the best interpretations of ARBIPA. Fowler&fowler«Talk»18:39, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Also, Pakistan is going through a very difficult time right now, with floods ravaging the country. This is not the time for Indian editors or India-POV-promoting editors to gang up on Pakistan-related pages. I see no Pakistani editors opposing here. Very likely they are preoccupied with real life. Fowler&fowler«Talk»18:52, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Hello Vanamonde, In the main, India-POV editors have been editing it prolifically adding regions of Pakistan to realms of little-known Hindu, Buddhist, Central Asia-based or India-based kingdoms of the past, especially of the early medieval era. The article had not only become bloated with 14,500 words, but also unduly weighted toward that early medieval (pre-Islamic) period, thereby also giving an opportunity for editors to spam this history of Pakistan page with Hindu- or Buddhist-related images of sculpture, reliefs, or coins—images that would never appear in the history of India or South Asia. There were also some Islamic regional kingdoms whose bloat was not so extensive.Fowler&fowler«Talk»23:38, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
I've reduced it to 11,500 odd words and plan to reduce it further to about 10,000 words which is the size of the FA India. I had written the History of Pakistan page long ago. It has changed quite a bit, of course, since then, but the edits of the last six months have been outsized, i.e. caused the article to be unduly weighted by this underlying POV. I sincerely believe that much of it is caused by the absence of active Pakistani editors. Fowler&fowler«Talk»23:48, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
This was the state in which I left it in April 2007. It had 9,500 words, beautiful pictures, and balanced content. (It is one of the things, I believe, that Mar4d (mentioned by RegentsPark above) gave me the Pakistan Barnstar of National Merit). I am not of course advocating a return to then—for one the sourcing standards were very different then—but the article's version of this morning had 14,500 words. The sections on neolithic Mehrgarh and IVC, for example, were smaller than their counterparts in the History of India page! But these other kingdoms had picked up the slack.
On the overall, I agree with the thrust of your reversions. There was too much detail about Rai Dynasty, Brahman dynasty etc. but they do need to be mentioned, probably compressed to a couple of lines. Soomra dynasty about which we know nothing of significance definitely doesn't deserve a section. There are too many quotes including in the section on Hindu Shahi etc. which can serve as further grounds for trimming. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:13, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
My only issue is with Fowler&fowler's editorial methodology here: first, the indiscriminate and blanket reverting of the last 6 months worth of edits to his last version, as a preliminary to getting on with his own preferred edits (typical WP:OWN). This shows total disrespect for the contributions of others: 6 months worth of contributions cannot be all wrong (usually...), and some content was probably valuable and legitimate as also suggested by User:Johnbod and User:TrangaBellam. If some undue content has been added during this period, the least would be to start from the latest version, and start improving from there. This is what collaborative editing is about. पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)07:45, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Patliputra, you have been making the same excuse for their gray-zone edits for quite some time. Here is their post from 2019: Talk:Neolithic/Archive_1#PLOS_citation_and_image_spamming where they were spamming the article Neolithic with blatantly copied text and images:
If you think the wording has to be improved, why don't you edit in a collaborative manner as we all do? Mass deletion and edit-warring is certainly not the way to go, and I think you know it. Best पाटलिपुत्र (talk) 12:44, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
It was in response to that remark that Johnbod had written in the same section:
I agree with F&F. Frankly, using your methods you add so much content that checking probably takes longer than adding it. It tends to unbalance articles. Detailed stuff like this is better in lower-level articles, but your additions are nearly all to very high level articles. Johnbod (talk) 13:25, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
I can't afford to get into the weeds here, but I'll note that if the "six months of edits" introduce a lot of content that is subsequently disputed, the onus to reach consensus for inclusion is on the editor seeking inclusion, not removal. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:12, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93:I don't think this is a case of WP:BRD, in which one bold new addition by an editor would be challenged, removed, and then require consensus and discussion on the Talk Page. Here, in effect, User:Fowler&fowler is blanket-removing the last 6 months of edits made by numerous different editors, so as to return the article to his last version of 6 months before, as a preliminary to making new edits of his own. He is indiscriminately removing any edits that are not his own, good or bad, on the pretext that there is "too much WP:UNDUE material in the recent edits" , without making the effort to distinguish regular maintenance or improvement edits from the "recent" edits he considers to be undue. I cannot see this as anything other than WP:OWN and a rather uncollaborative and lazy approach to editing, as he is in effect wiping out all contributions that are not the result of his own actions. I doubt that this kind of behaviour, which disregards all contributions by fellow editors, is condoned by Misplaced Pages policy. Please note I am basically uninvolved here, as during the last 6 months I only made one small edit back in May . Looking forward to your clarification. पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)06:25, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
I am the main author of this page, the editor who has maintained the page for 16 years. Because of Covid and my partial absence from Misplaced Pages (advertised both on my user page and talk page), I did not get around to monitoring it robustly. Also, some of the edits were not transparent and it took time to figure out what had been added. Fowler&fowler«Talk»11:40, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
I mean, in an ideal world F&F would have checked the combined diff and preserved the maintenance edits while reverting the content ones, but in an ideal world you would have reinstated them instead of complaining about it. BRD still applies to the content, as does WP:ONUS, an actual policy. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:10, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93:In an ideal world, administrators are supposed to make sure proper Misplaced Pages procedures are respected. As far as I know, mass-blanking 6 months of edits to reinstate one's own last version is generally not proper practice on Misplaced Pages: the least would be to ask Fowler&fowler to be more careful and selective about his deletions. And suggesting that I should partially revert Fowler&fowler's edits and that I should be the one trying to separate the good from (what he thinks is) the bad, inspite of his blanking, amounts to promoting WP:Edit Warring I'm afraid: we are supposed to discuss these things on the Talk Page, and administrators are supposed to help with resolution. पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)16:22, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
I already asked you to discuss things on the talk page above; you took issue with that, for reasons that aren't yet clear. I don't see what you're trying to achieve here. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:33, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
पाटलिपुत्र, the reality is that we're all volunteers. If there are many bad edits mixed up with good ones, it would be nice, of course, if someone separated them out, kicking out the bad ones but retaining the good ones. But that is a lot of work and there is nothing wrong with reverting to a "last best" version and then letting other volunteers work on restoring the good ones. My suggestion, you do what you're asking fowler to do: identify these maintenance edits and restore them. Or just let this go. --RegentsPark (comment) 17:29, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93:@RegentsPark: The arbitrary blanking of 6 months worth of edits did not just remove valuable "maintenance edits", but also what User:Johnbod described as "maybe some good ideas" and User:TrangaBellam as elements that "do need to be mentioned" , especially the "Rai Dynasty, Brahman dynasty etc..." (these comments were in reaction to Fowler&fowler's blanking). All this in the absence of any explanation by Fowler&fowler as to what he considers "Undue" and for what reason: he simply reverted to his preferred version of 6 months ago. Everybody agrees that some trimming was necessary, but certainly not mass-blanking of 6 months of work. In order to show some regard for the contributions of others, I suggest that Fowler&fowler should restore the most recent complete version and start his trimming from there, with a minimum of explanations as he moves forward. We usually try to respect the contributions of other editors, and so should he... पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)19:22, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
Pat, I'm not so sure. If, as Fowler suggests, there is a whole lot of undue stuff added, it does make sense to revert to a good version and then rework in the useful edits rather than the other way round. Removing undue content should have a higher priority. --RegentsPark (comment) 21:22, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
The Lady doth protest too much, methinks. For someone who states, "Please note I am basically uninvolved here, as during the last 6 months I only made one small edit back in May " that's a lot of Wikilawyering. If your concern is my behavior, my purported uncivil manner, and so forth, you should be making that case somewhere else, not on this talk page. If you want to discuss content, I am happy to do so about any aspect of Pakistan's history. If you don't I will come away feeling that you are still griping about the pound of flesh you did not get in the various RfCs, ANIs, and AN threads you have attempted against me. For someone who is uninvolved and has contributed no content by their own admission, that is a huge time sink on the talk page, which has produced a lot of volubility, a lot of repetition, a lot of prolixity, none of which will improve the content of the article. May I respectfully suggest that you defend principles of content restoration on pages in which you have created content, which again, by your own admission, you have not here. Fowler&fowler«Talk»20:56, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
Section break
I (finally) looked at History of the Republic of India which contains only the history post-1947. History of Pakistan, on the other hand, is overloaded with pre-1947 history. Almost to the extent that it duplicates the History of India article. This doesn't make much sense, shouldn't this article, like the analogous India one, contain only post-partition history or am I missing something?--RegentsPark (comment) 21:33, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
HelloRP, Not sure this is what you were asking, but let me attempt an answer.
As you point out or imply, the post-1947 bit in the History of India is token, whereas that in the History of Pakistan is substantial. The reason for this is that in the early years after my arrival on WP both traditional India-POV editors and traditional Pakistan-POV editors were dickering with it, and denying Pakistan its ancient heritage, each for their own POV. So, the post-1947 bit has retained its current bulk and focus. I agree, it needs to be vastly reduced.
A related problem is Mehrgarh. It was discovered and excavated by the French archaeologists Jean-François Jarrige and Catherine Jarrige in 1974, long after the Partition of India. No Indian archaeologist has excavated there, yet it is the basis of all pre-history on the subcontinent, the South Asian Neolithic from which the Indus Civilization sprouted (though the ASI has been busy after the Partition in divining ancient history in every shard of pottery found in India above the Vindhyas).
A third problem is that the ASI for the first 50 years after the Partition did not allow foreign archaeologists to excavate in India (because of "colonial" associations and suchlike sensitivities.) Pakistan, on the other hand, whose official history began after Mhd bin Qasim's arrival on Sind's vaunted shores in the eighth century CE, was all to happy to pass the Indus hot potato to the western archeologists, such as Mortimer Wheeler, George Dales, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Rita P. Wright who all excavated there and whose work gave the notion of ancient Pakistan the sanction it needed in the sources. I mean they couldn't very well excavate there, rely on the courtesies of the government there, and call their report "History of ancient India."
Archaeologists sometimes use "ancient" and "South Asia" as in Ancient South Asian World, a middle-school/high-school book published by OUP and authored by Kenoyer and Kimberly Heuston, or Himanshu Prabha Ray's Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia, CUP, 2003., but there is no appetite for the all encompassing history to be South Asian on Misplaced Pages, the least not on WP India.
PS The long and short of it is that the old notion that the History of India is the History of the geographical India as constituted by the British by 1874 (when Baluchistan was inducted), that the Republic of India by virtue of having the same informal name as the India of the British Raj is the only successor state of that history is long gone. Fowler&fowler«Talk»03:08, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Hmm. Perhaps, and this will not go down well methinks, we need to reorganize the history into History of South Asia - pre 1947 history with token representation of post 1947 histories; History of India (post-1947), History of Pakistan (post 1947 with token history of East Bengal); and History of Bangladesh. My unscientific observation is that most universities now use South Asia (as in South Asian Studies) for the entire region (even though most histories use India) so this would be in line with current thinking. --RegentsPark (comment) 13:58, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
That's a perfectly sensible comment in terms of the current Western academic view (I suspect your "most universities" doesn't = "most Pakistani universities"), but would be a nightmare for monitoring WP editors, ushering an era of trench warfare as pov editors load up the History of South Asia article with stuff from their modern state's area, plus tending to make the very serious length issues worse. Johnbod (talk) 14:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I tried my darnedest in 2007 to have a real History of South Asia article (as RP suggests), but (beyond the length as Jb rightly points out which at that time was not a biggie,) there was the issue of what regions to include as South Asia is properly: (sometimes Afghanistan), Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim before Indian induction, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Fowler&fowler«Talk»15:16, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
South Asia has become important again in the context of Indian Ocean (trade) histories. So a History of South Asia still awaits being written—its content not so much about what was happening within the constituent (present-day) states as between them. I think Sugata Bose and a few others may have written such histories; upstairs, I have already mentioned Himanshu Prabha Ray whose book title has "seafaring." Fowler&fowler«Talk»15:35, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Based on ad-hoc scrolling through the article, the amount of the page devoted to the Pakistan movement + post independence history is about 30% of the article. 70% for material that is not Pakistan related seems excessive. Ideally, those numbers should be flipped.--RegentsPark (comment) 18:00, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
It is no different from the India page, where even more, 90%, is devoted to what is not India today, which came into being in 1947, just as what is today Pakistan came into being then. As you've yourself said, what was there before was informally called India, but it was really the British Raj, its geographical extent being the creation of the British. Fowler&fowler«Talk»21:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
It is fairly clear that most (if not all) of the uninvolved editors feel nothing terribly amiss with F&F's reversions even though some of the reverted content might have belonged in some alternate form. That said, what does P propose to restore? Then, we can discuss such additions individually from a content-centric POV. TrangaBellam (talk) 03:52, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
TrangaBellam said in the link you have provided, "There was too much detail about Rai Dynasty, Brahman dynasty etc. but they do need to be mentioned probably compressed to a couple of lines (at most)." Please suggest a couple of sentences, without illustrative spam. Fowler&fowler«Talk»13:03, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Prima facie, those pages, are dubious gray-zone histories, what Ms Sarah Welch had termed POV-y histories. No content of due weight, only illustrations. Fowler&fowler«Talk»13:25, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Recent big reversion
This one. Firstly, the article was already too long at the 180K raw bytes version that F&F reverted to, and now is 218K, which is just far too long. As far as I can see, the bulk of the difference is a series of edits by User:Jamal047 and User:Sutyarashi in August and September, mostly copying over material from satellite articles such as those on various medieval kingdoms. Some of this may be a good idea, but there is too much of it. At the least the material needs to be thinned out. Johnbod (talk) 14:28, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@Johnbod: Yes, my main issue is with the indiscriminate reverting. If there is some undue material, someone could at least have the courtesy to go and edit the content accordingly. 6 months worth of contributions cannot be all wrong (usually...). Best पाटलिपुत्र Pataliputra(talk)14:35, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
I wasn't paying attention to the article size reverted to, only the lead. I agree that there is too much extraneous material, and I'm happy to revert it farther back. The new material is mostly India-POV history being applied Pakistan-related geography. It is the result of Pakistani editors disappearing from Misplaced Pages. Fowler&fowler«Talk»14:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
I've reduced it further. Despite my reduction, it still remains in very poor state. It seems that long and biases histories are being written here about empires that would not be possible on the empire's own pages because those are being better monitored for UNDUE Fowler&fowler«Talk»16:53, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
The page's prose size was 14,371 words. The most obscure Indian kingdoms which are not mentioned anywhere in India#History make their appearance here. I have removed the UNDUE additions and brought the size down to 11,507 words. It needs to be reduced further to 10,000 words. The size of the Indai page, for example, is 10,662 words Fowler&fowler«Talk»17:05, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Content removal
@पाटलिपुत्र:, @Fowler&fowler:, @Sutyarashi: Fowler reverted some recent edits because of "too much WP:UNDUE material". My question is why my contributions got deleted. I believe I literally improved the page with my contributions. Could someone explain to me how my edits were wrong? Jamal047 (talk) 14:30, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
I have opened a thread above. Please don't disrespect Misplaced Pages policy by starting a new thread. State what you need to in the thread above. Fowler&fowler«Talk»14:38, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
