Talk:Sathya Sai Baba

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Revision as of 16:03, 16 February 2009 by imported>Howard C. Berkowitz (Explaining references, neutrality policy requirement to keep devotees)
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 Definition:  Controversial South Indian guru, religious leader, and orator, often described as a "godman" and miracle worker. [d] [e]
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 Workgroup category:  Religion [Categories OK]
 Talk Archive:  none  English language variant:  American English

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

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

Trying for better readability

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

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

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

1. Sorry, but your attempt to clean up the reference did not make it better. Andries 21:21, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
2. I do not feel like removing references only because it is too much work for you to check each of them. (Howard Murphet should be removed as a reference, because his books are written from the view point of a gullible devotee) Andries 21:21, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
3 After re-reading it, I admit that readability is a problem and I will see what I can do. Andries 21:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
I didn't remove any actual references. I removed repetitions of the same reference, sometimes on every other line of a lists. If a reference is a good source, it is not necessary to have three or four supporting references on a single sentence.
Someone being a gullible devotee, under CZ: Neutrality Policy, is not reason to remove him. The devotees as well as the critics belong in a neutral article.
Most of what I did was get quotes out of references, and into the mainline text. It is extremely difficult to assess the significance of a quote if it's in a footnote, because it cannot easily be compared with associated text. If the quote is important enough to be in the article, it need not be in a footnote, unless it is purely a definition or other neutral supporting information. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

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

I haven't gotten out all the FACT templates.

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

What is "micro-level citing"? What parts are hard to follow? The anthropologist Lawrence Babb made more generalized statements about SSB and the impossibility of a biography as we know it. I will add more by him. Andries 21:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that the article will be improved by removing text, not adding it. If there is significant additional detail, perhaps it belongs in a subarticle. The blocks of text here are huge; as it was, I inserted some paragraph breaks and some subheadings. Observe that the edit software is giving warnings about the size of the article — even if it doesn't actually break browsers, that's a good suggestion to consider splitting things into subarticles. I often start doing so when I see that warning.
Micro-level citing is having citations, or even worse multiple citations, at the sentence-by-sentence level. It is not have an explicit citation to Babb, without a page reference for virtually every other line of a list; Babb can be cited at the beginning and only the exceptions given.
If a biography is impossible, what is the article trying to accomplish? Howard C. Berkowitz 22:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
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