User talk:ShyamDasUK

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The Wikipedia page of my Guru Maharaja, Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Gosvami Maharaja was taken down by persons inimical to him, for reasons known only to themselves, in 2010, the year of his leaving this world. For 2 years a campaign was waged to re-instate this page, unsuccessfully, and for 8 more years it lay dormant (fortunately, as you will see below, his life & teachings were being enthusiastically preserved and distributed via our Sanga's own institutions, in print, digitally & online).

Now a new page is published - and within days, the same actors have scheduled it for deletion. They say he is "dead" and "not notable". By such a token, so are Pythagoras, Mozart & Einstein "dead" - and there are not many people who achieved what Srila Narayana Maharaja did. Srila Prabhupada left India aged 70 and travelled the globe 14 times, establishing 108 temples and publishing a vast body of literature, establishing Gaudiya Vaisnava Dharma worldwide. Srila Gurudeva left India aged 75 and travelled the globe 28 or 30 times (it was easier in the 1990s & 2000s than the 1960s & 1970s), following in Prabhupada's footsteps, visiting his temples & devotees and inspiring those who had lost faith or devotion.

He lectured in more countries than I can count, led Vraja Mandala & Navadwipa Parikrama (holy pilgrimage in India) annually for 50 years. Gurudeva also published a great number of books, translated into over a dozen languages - here I show publications in 7 languages and websites in 10, and there were several more pages which are no longer extant (in Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Chinese, Norwegian, Filipino among others). I intend to add the Archive of those pages for reference, and proof of Maharaja's global reach.

Here is a list of his presence online, and his publications. I ask you, honest Wikipedians - is this notable?

Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Maharaja was a world-famous guru & scholar who has 294 publications available in 7 languages
(English, Hindi, Bengali, German, Spanish, Russian & Dutch). The list of his publications, all downloadable, is here:
http://www.purebhakti.com/resources/ebooks-magazines/bhakti-books
His author page on Amazon.com is here:
https://www.amazon.com/Sri-Srimad-Bhaktivedanta-Narayana-Gosvami-Maharaja/e/B00RIWCH3Q
and a search of his name yields 208 results:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Bhaktivedanta+Narayana+Maharaja
I think there are much less notable & prolific authors than this who have Wikipedia pages. ShyamDasUK (talk • contribs) 20:35, 1 October 2020 (BST)

Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Maharaja has 5 official websites:
http://www.purebhakti.com/
http://www.bhaktibooks.info/
http://www.bhaktiprojects.org/
https://bhaktistore.com/
https://gvpbookdistribution.com/

The following pages are dedicated to him:
http://srilanarayanmaharaja.com/
http://musicofyoga.com/
http://purebhakti.tv/
http://www.kirtaniyas.com/
http://bvmlu.org/SBNM/index.htm
http://sbnmcd.org/

Those are just the ones in English. Here is a list of websites dedicated to His Holiness Narayana Maharaja in 9 other languages:
German: https://harekrischna.de/
Portuguese: http://presentesinigualaveis.blogspot.com/p/acervo-devocional.html http://gvebrasil.blogspot.com/ http://jornalharekrsnabrasil.blogspot.co.uk/ http://vidasimplesepensamentoelevado.blogspot.com/ http://iskconaverdade.blogspot.com/
Russian: http://www.purebhakti.ru/ http://www.radiokrishna.ru/ http://www.a108.net/
Polish: https://www.purebhakti.pl/ https://www.bhaktijoga.pl/
French: http://www.purebhakti-francais.com/
Spanish: https://www.radharanikijay.com/ Books in Spanish: https://www.radharanikijay.com/search/label/Libros
Italian: http://www.gaudiya.it/
Dutch: http://hollandsanga.blogspot.com/
Swedish: https://web.archive.org/web/20160306041634/http://bhakti.se/ [Archive 2016: now dead page]
There were formerly pages in Hindi, Chinese and other languages but I have not had time to find the Wayback Archive of them.

He has at least 6 Facebook pages dedicated to him:
https://www.facebook.com/narayanagosvami
https://www.facebook.com/2021Centennial
https://www.facebook.com/Swami.BV.Narayana
https://www.facebook.com/rememberingsrilagurudeva
https://www.facebook.com/SrilaBhaktiVedantaNarayanaGoswamiMaharaja
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009908766411

This YouTube channel shows videos of him leading pilgrimage of hundreds or thousands of people:
https://www.youtube.com/user/krsnakarunya

There are 4000 mp3s of his lectures and 2000 videos of him here:
http://www.purebhakti.tv

There are hundreds of photographs of him touring the world from 2004-2010 here:
http://bvmlu.org/SBNM/index.html#photos and for example, this one shows him speaking before a crowd of 5000 people at a 5 day festival he held in Noida, New Delhi in 2004: http://bvmlu.org/SBNM/photos_noida.html
(There is also an archive of several thousand photos on Facebook which I will try to find).

All the above is incontrovertible proof of Srila Narayana Maharaja's 'notability'.
He was a Gaudiya Vaisnava holy man, guru, author and lectured all over the world in front of many thousands of different people.
His nearly 300 books are still available in print and digitally, in at least 8 languages.
Any attempt to deny this as 'notable' is frankly ludicrous, if not downright dishonest.

ShyamDasUK (talk • contribs) 23:08, 1 October 2020 (BST)

Insisting behavior in AfD's

Dear friend, since you have been interested in taking parts in AfDs. I guess the COAL essay would be helpful. Try reading it once. ─ The Aafī (^talk) 05:18, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Let me put it this way: your behavior at the AfD (especially combined with your inability to understand what constitutes a reliable source) is getting disruptive. Multiple users have pointed to WP:RS and WP:GNG for you time and again, and your answers indicate that you didn't bother reading them at all. Pointing to search engine pages (rather that citing specific results) is ridiculous. If I see any more behavior like that, I may have to remove your ability to edit that page. Ian.thomson (talk) 10:37, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

@Ian.thomson I am doing my level best to learn and adhere to all your criteria, and it would take me a lifetime to learn your whole rulebook.

I keep citing new evidence and keep getting shot down. It's as if no-one is actually reading any of it.

From your GNG ~

• "Significant coverage"

"The book-length history of IBM by Robert Sobel is plainly non-trivial coverage of IBM."

The person in question has 2 beautifully crafted biographies in print (and viewable as PDF), "Sri Guru Darsana" and "Srila Gurudeva, the Supreme Treasure". Granted, they are hagiographical, but who knows a person better than his personal servant or intimate associates? Is Jane Austen's biography bogus because it was written by her nephew?

• "Reliable" - every time another Wiki academic who knows little or nothing about the subject appears, takes a quick look and says "Delete", ignoring a ton of evidence - I post another secondary source: but even if it was his followers filming him and publishing the footage - one cannot deny that a person who lectured in front of thousands of people, year round for decades, is notable!

• "multiple sources are generally expected". - Contributors have posted a ton of sources both on the page itself and the AfD discussion. They seem to count for nothing, the editors just look for a flaw in our Wiki knowledge, etiquette, any mistake and all the valid evidence counts for nothing. We provided you with a PhD Thesis, a whole book chapter (Columbia University Press) and various authors and Hindu news sites about him - nada - it's you guys who just keep repeating - not GNG, not notable, not valid.

If I point to a search engine list of dozens of sources, I thought that was more powerful than just the one. And I have selected examples, formatted them so they are clear & clickable - nope, same response. It's like dealing with a stone wall.

You'll forgive me if I start to feel as if Wikipedia is hostile to myself and my religion. To be fair, and with respect - you haven't exactly been polite to me so far - although I do appreciate any guidance as to how I can improve as an editor. I would love to edit other pages too - just proof-read, improve the English & so on - but my experience so far is wholly negative - anything I touch, some high-handed Wiki 'expert' will then come and delete the whole page, or the whole paragraph - when all I did was remove vandalism, or correct the spelling. Perhaps I should only edit pages about things I hate - because y'all seem determined to destroy what I love. ShyamDasUK (talk) 11:07, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

As I've explained before, and as is found on the page you're trying to selectively-quote from, you need independent sources. His followers praises of him are not independent, get over it.

Stop trying to argue against the "independent" clause and accept that it's a condition you need your sources to meet.

Pointing to a search engine result would be like me saying "Just read our policies" and not telling you which ones. Do you not see how that would be disrespectfully lazy?

You'll forgive me if I start to feel that you're imagining persecuted because you don't want to actually find proper sources, because you're not actually here to work with the site's policies but build an altar for your guru. Or, we could both assume that the other person is trying to help, even though that would require you to accept that I've been giving you consistent goals to meet to save the article, that you have been choosing to ignore for some selfish reason. Ian.thomson (talk) 11:38, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

And I see that you tried to quote a source explaining why we should avoid primary sources to argue that primary sources are still good enough to ignore WP:GNG. No more, you're not editing that page anymore because you clearly don't care about our community's social contracts except for trying to find a way to twist them to get your way.

The problem is not that we have too many policies or that they're unclear: it's that you don't want to abide by them.

It has been made abundantly clear over and over and over that you need to find three or more sources that are INDEPENDENT of the subject, provide specific and in-depth coverage about the subject, and are professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic works. It is your responsibility to cite content for your claims. You keep trying to argue against the independency clause, which gets in the way of any appropriate sources you might be citing.

I honestly have stopped checking all of your sources because you keep fighting to include crap sources. If you hadn't done that and focused on sources that meet the required standards, you might have saved the article by now. But no, you couldn't shut up about your mistakes. Ian.thomson (talk) 11:47, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

@Ian.thomson Believe me baba, I'm trying to find those independent sources - but we are a pretty niche group, not really part of mainstream society. A sizeable minority, if you like. We have our own structures - news, publishing, art, music, architecture, etc. Not always recognised by Google News! There are a variety of sources and at least 2 of them are University published (impartial, academic, scholarly).

I do think you're trying to help, because you're pointing me in the direction of the guidelines, which I am trying to read & digest on no sleep.
How about we try to save the article first, and rectify it second? That's what the deletion guidelines say:

C. Consider whether the article could be improved rather than deleted

   If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD.
   **If the article was recently created, please consider allowing the contributors more time to develop the article.
   If an article has issues try first raising your concerns on the article's talk page, with the main contributors, or an associated WikiProject, and/or adding a cleanup tag; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.

D. Search for additional sources, if the main concern is notability

   The *minimum* search expected is a normal Google search, a Google Books search, a Google News search, and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects.
   If you find a lack of sources, you've completed basic due diligence before nominating. However, if a quick search does find sources, this does not always mean an AfD on a sourcing basis is unwarranted. If you spend more time examining the sources and determine that they are insufficient, e.g., because they only contain passing mention of the topic, then an AfD nomination may still be appropriate.
   If you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination. Instead, you should consider citing the sources, using the advice in Wikipedia:How to cite sources, or at minimum apply an appropriate template to the page that flags the sourcing concern. 

If you really want to help me, please tell me how I can

• request help in the task by listing the article on the rescue list in accordance with instructions given at WP:RSL **

Lastly - we are not just "singing his praises" but providing concrete evidence of his being a notable person.

294 publications in 7 languages - 4000 audio recordings, 2000 video lectures, many videos of him leading pilgrimage of 1000s of people. :That may be a primary source - but to any reasonable person it shows the person was famous, and significant.

All the information is there, annotated, in the list which you first covered.

I'm sorry you feel frustrated with me and appeal not to be blocked from the page of my spiritual master.
I have made no secret of my discipleship, ie. am acting in good faith, as you can see from my Talk page. ShyamDasUK (talk) 11:57, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Once again, the 294 publications in 7 languages - 4000 audio recordings, 2000 video lectures, many videos do not demonstrate notability because they are not independent. I have already blocked you from editing Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Srila_Bhaktivedanta_Narayana_Gosvami_Maharaja until it's over, do you need to be blocked from the site for tendentious editing? Ian.thomson (talk) 21:36, 4 October 2020 (UTC)