Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Taranatha

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 of the debate was Keep Kotepho 08:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Taranatha

original text that was afd'd [1]

An extended-length POV rant, including section titles such as "False ideas about the Jonangpa Origin of the Kalachakra" and "Why is this (making the ban known) very important to the world ?". Interestingly, this article as written is not primarily about Taranatha, but about the banning of the Jonang school of which he was the leader, a topic which is the subject of its own article, written in much the same style. Taranatha himself is an interesting subject, and I pledge to write a short article about him in the near future. Nat Krause^(Talk!) 16:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, fine, by common consent, I am withdrawing my AfD nomination. Let's work on improving the article. - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 19:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• Merge with Ban on Jonang, since you note that such an article already exists. --Several Times 17:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Ban on Jonang suggests a merge with Taranatha and vice-versa. I'm not familiar enough with the topics to make a strongly educated decision where these should reside if they are indeed merged, but if merge is the consensus, the merged article needs a cleanup tag. Both are written in a tone that is decidedly unencyclopedic.--Isotope23 18:12, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Merge with Ban on Jonang, and tag for cleanup as noted. KillerChihuahua^?!? 19:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. It wasn't clear to me from the responses above whether people have understood me as endorsing the Ban on Jonang article, which is not what I intended. I have removed the sarcasm from my statement above. After reading through it, Ban on Jonang is, if anything, worse than Taranatha is, containing statements such as "The present article is written under the auspices of the Ngorpa school which is furthering the cause of peace and also that of the Sakyapa school despite several Sakya followers having sided with the Gelugpas" and "Now, it is the Ngorpa school that is cleaning up the mess they've made. And the prophecied return of Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo, the Second Buddha .... is here indeed, to save world-Buddhism against the meddling and disastrous situation ...", etc., etc.

I'm not really sure what the best way to proceed with these articles, and I would appreciate opinions. I started this AfD this morning after I started trying to clean-up Taranatha; when I realised that most of the text would have to be removed altogether, I decided it would be better just to AfD it and start over. The tricky thing about these articles is that they are explicitly POV, and they cite websites as sources, which makes it hard for a non-expert to separate fact from opinion. However, they contain such a large amount of editorialising relative to factual claims, that it might not really be practical for an expert to go through and clean it up, rather than just writing a new article.

In any event, I don't think that Taranatha should be merged with Ban on Jonang. Taranatha is an interesting historical person who is certainly not significant only in connection to the ban on Jonang. There's no reason he shouldn't have his own article, and I intend to write one. - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 00:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment if you plan on a rewrite, no real need for AfD. Remove the text of Tarantha and start a new article there with WP:V information and sources listed. AfD of the article followed by a recreation of a different article with the same name just makes more work for the admins. If you run into content/edit wars with the party who has created the current version there are all kinds of other resources you can use (help from other editors, RFC, or arbitration if it gets really heated). Go ahead and boldly do the rewrite.--Isotope23 14:15, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, good point. Should this AfD remain open now that I've started it? I'll do a brief rewrite either way. Meanwhile, I've boldly redirected Ban on Jonang to Jonang for the time being. - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 16:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I set it back to a stub for you to start editing it, since it seems like you wanted to start from scratch.--Isotope23 20:44, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

• Comment & Keep, don't merge. The Ban on Jonang article has been deleted (properly), so the merge discussion is outmoded. Nat, I've started the rewrite stub. As we known, Taranatha is a major scholar and deserving of his own page. That is, one that is actually about him and not a crazy rant. Sylvain1972 14:10, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please just delete this completely distorted POV page: this is not a biography of Taranatha as it is supposed to be and the so called "Ban on Jonang" has not been enforced for over 300 years, it is simply very, very old news. By the way, the "ban on Jonang" page was deleted for the same reasons, but certainly Taranatha deserves his own page without this nonsense! rudy 20:02, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, don't merge. I think this is probably something that should be expanded into its own article. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 23:03, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

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.