Talk:Shri Ramakrishna Kshirsagar Swamiji

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[edit] Cleanup needed

Some problems:

• "The purpose of spiritual knowledge is" ... needs to be re-worded so that it is not an assertion of fact, and is sourced wrt the religion.
• "Sadguru experienced the Divine realization" ... again, this is a recounting of a story of this person's formative years, presumably related by that person. That should be made clear and sourced.
• "Gradually, people started recognizing".... what people? Have they been interviewed? Can we cite their comments?
• "Shri Sadguru's darshan was enough to remove the cobwebs of ignorance" ... this is a purely POV statement. Needs re-writing.
• "It was through His mere darshan that atheists turned into staunch followers" ... who are these atheists? Have they been interviewed? Can we cite their comments?
• "His divine preachings" ... we should not take a position on the divinity of his writings.
• "These books teach us" ... Wikipedia is not a religious manual. Tell the reader what is in the books, but do not attempt to instruct the reader on what to take away from it. Start by not writing articles in the first person.
• "...spiritual upliftment..." no such thing.
• "They provide answers" ... no, they provide teachings. They are only answers if you believe them to be correct.

Given a re-write, this article might be helpful, but as it stands, it's a piece of religious dogma. -Harmil 02:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

To the author of the recent attempt to fix some of the problems with this text. Please review:

Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words

It can often seem to be helpful to change "x is true" to "some people think x is true", but such a change does not actually make the statement acceptable for an encyclopedic referece. I appreciate your efforts, however, and hope that you continue to try to improve the article. A suggestion: the single biggest improvement that can be made to this article is to find sources for the assertions that it makes about this man and cite them in the body of the article or as a References section. -Harmil 21:18, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• To Hamil: Thank you for the review. I have added a reference section to the article using which readers can confirm the doubts that you mentioned. Also I understand the weasel section that you mentioned and have tried my best to maintain a NPOV. However since this is a religious text its difficult to make a point about something with an absolute NPOV. However I have provided the readers with the option to confirm the views. I hope that helps. Also if you are somewhat satisfied kindly remove the neutrality disputed comment from the top. - Thanks - Satyavrat Joshi 10:22 am 28th April 2006 (PST)

It's not hard to write with a neutral point of view. What's hard is the research required to get to that point. For example, the article reads:

Some people believe that the purpose of spiritual knowledge is the awakening of the soul and the transformation of life itself.

To transform that into a factual and neutral statement, you need to know more. You have to be able to explain who these people are that believe this thing. For example, let me take a section out of another religious article:

The most well known form of the Guru-shishya relationships is the bhakti guru-shishya relationship. Bhakti (Sanskrit) "Devotion" means surrender to God, gods or guru (sanskrit guru bhakti = devotion to the teacher). Bhakti extends from the simplest expression of devotion to the ego-decimating principle of prapati, which is total surrender. The bhakti form of the guru-shishya relationship generally incorporates three primary beliefs or practices:

1. Devotion to the guru as a divine figure or avatar
2. The belief that such a guru has transmitted, or will eventually impart moksha, diksha or shaktipat to the (successful) shishya
3. The belief that if the shishya’s act of focusing his or her devotion (bhakti) upon the guru is sufficiently strong and worthy, then some form of spiritual merit will be gained by the shishya

from Guru-shishya tradition. Notice that the text does not say "some people", but specifically calls out what factions have these specific beliefs. This allows further research and understanding on the part of the reader. -Harmil 18:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

• Hi Harmil,

Thanks for the guidance. I have now removed any references to people in general and also make it more neutral.

Hope this helps. If it does please remove the neutrality dispute. Please let me know if its okay to refer to the beliefs

of his devotees in the article. Please bear with me as this is my first article on Wikipedia. 11:30 2 May 2006 - Satyavrat

• Hi Harmil,

I have been waitin for your response for a while now kindly respond at the earliest or I shall assume that the

article is ok and proceed with removing the neutrality and format tags from the article 9:21 17 May 2006 - Satyavrat