Talk:Mahavira

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Mahavira/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

I'm reassessing this article after it attracted criticism in its previous FA candidacies, particularly its fourth and fifth. For a long time the article's main problem was that it failed to adequately distinguish between Jain tradition and fact, and thus it failed the neutrality criterion. That gradually became less of a problem; when FAC reviewers cited particular passages as problematic, they were removed or given qualifiers such as "In the Jain tradition…". But the result is something of a muddle. There's a section on the "historical Mahavira" that implicitly contrasts historical reality with the Jain traditions about him, which make up most of the article, but it does little to explain how historians assess what is true about him and what is not, and the article doesn't make clear how the historical Mahavira relates to the traditions that appear in the rest of the article.

In sum, I think the article fails two and possibly three criteria:

• Criterion 1, "well written". This isn't a requirement for FA-level prose, but when the text is unclear about basic issues, it doesn't meet GA standards.
• Criterion 3, "broad in its coverage". For any article on a legendary figure like this, separating legend from fact—and doing so in a way a general reader can follow—is an essential aspect of the article, which isn't adequately addressed here.
• Criterion 4, "neutral", isn't as much of concern as it once was. But very few changes have been made since the last FAC closed three months ago, and the most substantial change was to remove a single sentence that I cited as a glaring example of a lack of neutrality. Smaller problems are still there.

Both Squeamish Ossifrage and I have said that the article needs to be rethought and restructured. Until that happens, I doubt it will meet GA standards. A. Parrot (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delist, essentially per my comments at previous FACs. This article has not really been written; it has accumulated, over time. Getting this to GA status or FA status requires a single editor, or a small group, to sit down with a bunch of sources and rewrite the piece summarizing them. The nominator, though they are acting in good faith, has demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to do this, and has instead continually renominated this article (and others) after making a series of gnomish edits, which, while helpful, do not address the core problem; that of an article which does not adequately reflect the substance of the best available sources. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:08, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
• Near to a keep at GA - this is not FAC & the standards are much lower. But the nomination is correct I think (& Vanamonde not far wrong) things like "Mahavira has been erroneously called the founder of Jainism..." and so on need adjusting. Johnbod (talk) 18:25, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

  @Johnbod: I don't think we're fundamentally in disagreement, but FWIW; I don't intend to hold this to FA standards; but I think it's fair to say that an article about a major religious figure needs to have its substance based on sources from secular scholarship. I don't think that's the case here. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:34, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, I agree that if nothing happens this needs delisting, but I don't think a vast number of changes are needed. For one thing, the dates modern scholars assign to him are not properly (clearly) stated, only the traditional ones (c 100 years different). Johnbod (talk) 00:39, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

  It is sentences like "He preached, and attained Nirvana at the age of 72" and "Mahavira's Jal Mandir stands at the place where he attained nirvana" that are particularly jarring. These are articles of faith, rather than historical record (as the sources make clear); they need to be presented as such. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:27, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

• Delist. Vanamonde93 makes some good points above and has made many more in past FAC reviews. There are two additional broad, long-standing problems with important Jainism-related articles such as this one. Jainism has two major historic sub-sects (the majority Svetambara and the minority Digambara), and a few relatively even minor though important traditions. Each has their own different legends and facts, and it is important to separate these as A. Parrot correctly notes. That isn't acknowledged in this article and separated, in a way it should be. More free, self-published publications are available from the Digambara tradition, which in combination with our WP:V guidelines means their version gets plugged more often by well-meaning, flyby editors. In past, we have had a lot of copyvio issues from Digambara open/free publications, something admin Dianna and I have struggled with. This and other Jainism articles are a bit cleaner, better now than in the past. But, a GA/FA article this is not. Scholarly peer-reviewed literature is available (Dundas, Cort, Jaini, etc), but these are behind paywalls or require access to good libraries plus hours of careful reading and summarizing in one's own words. To keep or renominate this as a GA/FA article, I encourage that we rely mostly on peer-reviewed scholarship in combination with our content guidelines and other good practices. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 11:08, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

  Precisely. An article about a broad, well-studied, and non-contemporary topic needs to be based on high-quality sources. This one doesn't come close. To be fair to the nominator, it's not easy to make such a large article meet the GA standards; but that's no excuse for nominating it when it doesn't. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:19, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

• Closing as delist. I've never run a GAR before and am more accustomed to the stringent standards of FAC, so for a while I was swayed by Johnbod's argument; I thought perhaps this could be kept if the most blatantly POV statements were removed. I've attempted to do some of that, but Ms Sarah Welch has convinced me that there are indeed deeper problems here. None of those who have shown up here seem in a position to do the required overhauling—I don't have the expertise, and those who might, Ms Sarah Welch and Vanamonde, don't seem to have the time. Capankajsmilyo, who was the original GA and FA nominator, has not responded here, despite being notified when I opened this review nearly a month ago. I'll end by emphasizing a point I touched on in the last FAC: many scholarly sources of the type that would be needed to improve this article are already listed among this article's sources, but the article isn't based as closely on them as it needs to be. If that changes, I would be happy to reevaluate the article, but a lot of work is needed first. A. Parrot (talk) 06:36, 15 March 2020 (UTC)