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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vedic mathematics (book)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Vedic Mathematics (book). It seems like the consensus is that the article about the content of the book is not notable and should be redirected. Out of two options - redirecting to the book or to the author - the first one is clearly preferable. On the other hand, there is no consensus on whether the book itself is notable, and given it was never AfDed, I am not going to take any action on the article Vedic Mathematics (book).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:57, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vedic mathematics (book)

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Vedic mathematics (book) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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A random editor may find the book to be cited by secondary sources but a closer inspection reveals that there is only two secondary reliable sources by K.S. Shukla and B.B. Dutta. The rest of the sources added here are all by conflict of interest Hindu nationalists or by primary sources. It seems to me that this book surely falls under Wikipedia:No original research or a walled garden of Wikipedia:No original research. And I am personally very interested in Indian mathematics and I have made contribution on it in wikipedia. But this article in no sense belongs to Indian mathematics but rather a propaganda tool for Indian mathematics. Solomon7968 (talk) 11:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment:It is interesting to note here that there is another article by the name Vedic Mathematics (book) implying the same book. If consensus emerges to delete this article it will be automatically extended to that article also. The edit history shows that article has got significant fewer edits. So I am reluctant to nominate that for deletion. Solomon7968 (talk) 13:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah that should be deleted too, if we get consensus here. Faizan -Let's talk! 13:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Faizan -Let's talk! 12:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. This review suggests that the book might be notable. Problematic, yes, and that has to be part of the article, but notable. I'm not sure if notable enough though. — HHHIPPO 13:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. My concern is not notability but WP:NOR and WP:NPOV and the book fails both. And if you read the review by S. G. Dani (a Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award winner and a neutral souce) it criticises rather praises the book and terms it a propaganda. Solomon7968 (talk) 13:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand your point. The book is not NPOV, but it need not be to deserve an article. The article makes it quite clear that the book's content is not accepted by mathematicians and that is a forgery. That's interesting, encyclopedic information about a book like this. Qwertyus (talk) 13:40, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The article don't makes it clear. Except the first paragraph the whole material is cited from the pages of the book. If the article has to survive Afd then we have to delete at least 90% of the article. Instead I advise to merge the two articles on the book to the page of the author and make it a redirect. Solomon7968 (talk) 13:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If the topic is notable, the article should stay. To write it from a neutral point of view and give criticism due weight is a matter of improving the article, which can be done. I don't see a reason for deletion there. — HHHIPPO 15:33, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Is having Only three reliable secondary source all of which shows the article in a bad light is notability according to wikipedia standard? Solomon7968 (talk) 15:49, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GNG says Multiple sources are generally expected. It doesn't say more than three sources are required. I checked only one of the sources, so I can't say if the other two provide significant coverage or if they are reliable and independent, but the number of sources doesn't seems to be a problem here. Neither is it a problem that the book is shown in a bad light. Our inclusion criterion is a topic's notability, not its quality. — HHHIPPO 16:07, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are many valid stubs with only one reference or so, but in this case neither of the reference seems strong to me. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:22, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. Faizan -Let's talk! 13:28, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's certainly a mess, but I think some of the content can be saved, esp. the critical reviews. The fact that a book contains nonsense is no reason not to give it a Wikipedia page, as long as its contents are not presented as fact. I'm proposing to radically trim the article down. The "mathematical" part of the article should probably go.
As for the merge proposal, there are two articles about this book. They need to be merged, if both are kept. Qwertyus (talk) 13:58, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, crumbs! I had not seen that there is Vedic_mathematics_(book) and Vedic_Mathematics_(book) differing only in capitalisation! Certainly the two must be combined, if any of this is worth keeping, which I doubt. Imaginatorium (talk) 11:38, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I suggest making both the two article on the book redirect to the article Bharati Krishna Tirthaji Maharaja who is the author of this book. If a separate article on the book is kept it is bound to be vandalised by COI editors. Solomon7968 (talk) 14:01, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't object to a redirect, but given the state of that article, I'm not sure if it would prevent vandalism. Qwertyus (talk) 14:06, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. WorldCat seems to show only 21 copies held by institutions over all its 9 editions. Agricola44 (talk) 14:15, 9 May 2013 (UTC).[reply]
  • Comment. I've updated the article Bharati Krishna Tirthaji with information from the article being discussed to bring it closer to a neutral POV. I believe that requires the original page history to be kept, so please replace by a redirect instead of all-out deletion. Qwertyus (talk) 14:31, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per the rationale laid out by Solomon7968. This article appears to be a case of heavy WP:OR. Mar4d (talk) 15:02, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As mentioned by Qwertyus, deleting the page history would be a copyright violation. So the choices are Keep or Redirect. — HHHIPPO 15:33, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by copyright violation. Afd means nomination for deleting the article all together not deleting the page history. Solomon7968 (talk) 15:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Hinduism-related deletion discussions. czar · · 18:56, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t see any such claim from Qwertyus, and deleting the history along with the page would not violate any copyright. If you mean that he’s merged the article into another, then yes, the history should be preserved; but whether to merge or delete is what’s being discussed here. —Frungi (talk) 19:39, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's what I meant. I understood he did at least a partly merge. But you're right, that can be undone if the result is delete without redirect. — HHHIPPO 19:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – Large portions of the article are not clear at all. For example, for the "Method 1: example: using multiplication to calculate 1/19" section, I'm at a complete loss to understand what the numeric manipulations are doing (and I have a degree in Math). Also, comments/asides such as "Run this on your favorite calculator and check the result!" make the article look unencyclopedic. — Loadmaster (talk) 16:25, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and move back to the original title. This article is not about the book (which by the way, is also notable). It's about a system of calculation (there is a separate article on the book) The article was moved from Bharati Krishna Tirtha's Vedic mathematics to the current title by a user without any discussion. There are truckloads of books from the Vedic Math "experts" (e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] etc.) There are several reliable sources that discuss the system and the controversy surrounding it (e.g. [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12] etc.) The claim of the system being "Vedic" is fraudulent and it's more of a collection of arithmetic techniques than anything else. But still, it's notable, if only as a fad or a controversy. utcursch | talk 17:21, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Having truckload of reference does not make anything suitable for wikipedia. My concern is secondary reliable source. And your point that it is not a book is wrong. The title clearly suggests that it is the article of the book. Again my concern is not notability but secondary reliable source. If this article by chance any how survives Afd I am going it to strip it off all its material which is of primary source. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:40, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"The title clearly suggests that it is the article of the book" - please read my comment again - the article was originally titled Bharati Krishna Tirtha's Vedic mathematics - it was moved to current title without any discussion.
As for your deletion nom, like User:Qwertyus above, I don't understand the point that you're trying to make. Maybe you're trying to say one of these two things:
  1. The book itself is not notable because it's based on fraudulent claim / original research
  2. The article should be deleted because it contains unsourced/OR content
In either case, the article should not be deleted:
  1. That's not the definition of notability. Truckload of reference means presence of secondary reliable sources: there are at least a dozen books whose sole purpose is to discuss this topic (linked above, ignoring the original book written by Tirthaji). There are hundreds of articles in reliable sources which discuss the topic (some of them are linked in my above comment). These qualify as secondary sources. For the same reason we have an article on The Weight-Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About - the claims in that book might be wrong, but the book is still notable.
  2. AfD is not meant for discussing cleanup issues. If you belive an article is NPOV, tag it with {{npov}}. If you believe an article is OR, tag it with {{original research}}. utcursch | talk 18:15, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    1. Let the debate complete and if the article survives Afd then I will start work on it. Now I am busy with some other articles on wikipedia. To make it NPOV the article have to be stripped off for at least 90% of its total volume. Solomon7968 (talk) 18:50, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Again I see that you are from India. I am also from India. So please do not associate any nationalism with it. The long tradition of Indian mathematics will go down if this kind of non sense gets association of nationalism from Indians. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:44, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What? My keep vote has nothing to do with "nationalism". I openly called the system fraudulent and a fad in my comment above. A concern about "the long tradition of Indian mathematics" going down due to "non sense" is not a good reason to insist on the deletion of an article. Both the book and the system are notable as shown by the links in my first comment, and that's why the article should be kept. The good and bad things about the system or the book should be discussed in the article. At worst, the two articles should be merged. utcursch | talk 18:15, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:48, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:49, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Like the person above who tried to struggle through one of the explanations ("Method 1") I have a degree in maths, and I can say with confidence that there is nothing here of mathematical interest. But I also see that like the slimming books, some things never go away. Of this page (the "lowercase" Vm), the first 10% is mention of the controversy (fair enough), the last 20% is references (good, I suppose), but the 70% in the middle is confused attempts to describe the meaning of the 19 items in the "List of 16 sutras". At the very least, if any of this is to stay, someone should volunteer to clean it up such that a person with mathematical expertise can confirm that the terminology is normal, all the sanskrit words are glossed properly, and so on, in other words so that the article makes sense. I think the "truckloads" argument is very feeble: a glance at the references given suggests that they are all vanity publications -- none of the reviews, where there are any, read like mathematically informed views. Imaginatorium (talk) 12:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I stated above, I agree that the so-called Vedic Maths is "more of a collection of arithmetic techniques" than mathematics. But that's not the point. The point is that the topic is notable - it doesn't matter if it's fraudulently called "Vedic" or "Maths". There are plenty of sources that are not vanity publications - some of the books are published by established houses such as Jaico and Motilal Banarsidass. A search for "Vedic maths" on Google Books/Scholar/News archives easily establishes notability of the topic (nearly all the results are about this system, not the mathematics in the Vedic period). Saying that this article should be deleted because it's not real mathematics is like saying that the article on Scientology should be deleted because Scientology is a scam. If an article contains NPOV/OR content, it should be cleaned-up, not deleted. That's not what AfDs are for. utcursch | talk 02:26, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your comment is quite reasonable. But the point here is that the 70% of the page that is neither mention of the controversy (which could (better?) be in the other article on the book), nor references, consists of a total jumble: at the very least, a claim that there are 16 "sutras" ought to be followed by 16 items, not 19. So there really is no coherent description of the "system" (such as it is) at all. Therefore, deleting it would not lose anything of value, and if someone later managed to write a coherent description of the system the page could be created anew. Any bits of this page that seem to have any value could be simply merged into the other article about the book. After all, one of the references here is a protest by Indian mathematicians that this is neither "Vedic" nor "mathematics", so it really does not deserve to have a WP article by that name. It is basically just the content of the book. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:45, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am of the opinion to merge the total content of this article to Vedic Mathematics (book) which is about the real book and make the book article a valid stub and deleting the article which is discussed here. Solomon7968 (talk) 13:54, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but you have probably not realised that there are TWO pages: "Vedic mathematics (book)" and "Vedic Mathematics (book)" (capital M). The capital M one is about the book; the lowercase m one is about the (notional) content of the book. This is not a good idea! Imaginatorium (talk) 06:30, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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