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Sam Wineburg and Nadav Ziv (October 17, 2024). "Go ahead and use Wikipedia for research". The Boston Globe. Retrieved October 18, 2024. The claim that "anyone can change" Wikipedia isn't true. Try tampering with the entries for "Partition of India," "Donald Trump," "Gamergate," or "Coat of arms of Lithuania" and you'll smash right into a lock icon, indicating that the page is "protected."
Thanks for adding the Attlee-related material. It was needed for sure, but perhaps it was Labour party's decision in the wake of the prevailing economic conditions and the mood of the electorate that needed to be emphasized than Attlee himself. The references I had put in place after my revert were WP:TERTIARY souces, i.e. widely-used undergraduate textbooks to determine due weight. In other words, in my way of thinking, those sources are the foundations of the text. More detailed sources are best employed for fleshing out what has been established in the tertiary sources. This can be done with more detailed explanations or vignettes. Fowler&fowler«Talk»14:58, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the explanation! The sources that I had looked at had suggested that prevailing economic conditions and war-weariness provided the long-term rationale for decolonization, but that Attlee's personal interests and convictions prompted him to move so quickly whereas the Conservatives, or possibly even a different Labour government, would just have restarted another round of Congress/Muslim League talks knowing full well the process could take a long time. I recognize the general importance though of relying on tertiary sources rather than his biographers, who will obviously focus on his personal role. I do think this is an important turning point in 20th century history and it would be good to have a bit more detail about the deliberations and the decision. I took an interest in this because I found that a lot of tertiary sources tended to gloss over it, treating it as sort of an exhaustion-driven fait accompli. whereas I would argue (though obviously not in Wikipedia) that it at the time it was pretty rare for overstretched empires to pass up on the chance to kick the can down the road if they could. I would suggest including the September announcement, which Guha (Gandhi's biographer) suggests was a pretty important impetus. If it's all right, I will look for some detailed explanations or vignettes in other sources. I am not sure I would use them only to flesh out what has been established in undergraduate textbooks, as many of them rely on received wisdom, although if that is Wikipedia's practice I will defer to it.
I'd suggest that this line in particular - "Late in 1945, the British government decided to end British Raj in India" - could really stand to be fleshed out. I assume it came from the textbooks. I don't think there's anything in the biographies that contradict it, but they could add a great deal of detail. Given how critical a juncture it was, and the precedent it set, that decision arguably deserves an article in itself. Steve Negus (talk) 16:40, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Having read the Wikipedia section on tertiary sources, I do see the importance of relying on them to establish due weight as a general principle of editing. That said, I would still like to try to find some first-hand descriptions of the deliberations, as I like to know what key actors were saying at the time about this kind of decision. Thank you again @Fowler&fowler for the explanation. Steve Negus (talk) 23:47, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Codenamewolf has reverted my edits, which include information about Jinnah's reaction to Partition. The material that I added had two citations. As long as this is properly attributed to the claimant and the reference, there is no reason why this should be reversed. It seems to me like an issue of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Captain AmericanBurger1775 (talk) 16:41, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Having an outdated 1901 map shows nothing about partition. That's like me having a map of 1789 Europe for the main image of the WW2 article. It does not help the reader gain any idea of what partition was about.
The long standing [1901] map is useless, it doesn't show any proper borders involving partition or provinces, or districts. It makes no sense to have a map as the main image when there's another, more accurate, map right underneath it.
The pre partition is inaccurate and doesn't account for the partition of Bengal and other regions. It's not just a Pre-Partition map, it's simply a completely outdated map that doesn't showcase the situation just before and during 1947. If you really want a map, there are far better ones that show partition. Your current map is already represented right underneath it by 4 other maps. It's overkill with the maps.
I suggest having a collage of images, similar to the article of the Bangladesh Liberation War article. I agree that one image of the riots doesn't represent all of partition, several images though (like the Liberation War article, which is less grand) would accurately help readers get a better visual idea of partition- more than that a image of a destroyed village or an extremely outdated map. The 1901 map is clearly outdated, and doesn't show any idea about the situation of Partition. Even the purpose of the map is outdated. The Hindu/Muslim districts changed tons of times after 1901 due to smaller partitions as I've talked about, and the succession of different monarchs in princely states. Captain AmericanBurger1775 (talk) 01:45, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The issue with collages is that no four specific set of images can represent the Partition of India, it is too eventful and grand, and there's more to it than just the communal violence, refugee crisis etc that followed in the aftermath, which the OP wants to use exclusively with one sided images that they specifically prefer that also look unnatural and violate MOS:SHOCKVALUE.
That Bangladesh Liberation War page also becomes completely irrelevant when you have pages like the Cold War that have maps as representative images.
Maps are the best representative on this topic as this page is primarily about the change in political borders, and the formation of two separate dominions/countries, and it is logical for an article reader to want to see depictions of before and after images of pre and post partition British India. The issue OP raises with maps is that they are outdated, in which case they can replace the lead image with the best map alternative they think there is.
The Cold War wasn't a one year political change and conflict like partition. It encompasses hundreds of conflicts. There's such an obvious difference. Partition can be represented perfectly with a 4 lead image collage. The collage I added did a good job of that. There was 100% no bias in the collage. One image was Muslim refugees waiting at a train, another was the aftermath of Direct Action Day (an event which both sides lost great numbers, and thus isn't one sided), a photo of riot damage in Punjab, and the last photo was an image of the 3 leaders of partition sitting together. Literally no bias can be found at all.
Much of partition's grandness comes from its massive migration and violence, and that's why 3/4 images represent that. The other image represents the political process. I can definitely change the collage to include more diverse images if that's the main issue. Adding a map in the collage invalidates any of Codenamewolf's criticism, and would be a solution.
This page is exactly like the cold war, as it has a background going back to hundreds of years of colonial rule by the British and a similarly eventful aftermath. The first "Background" section heading will make that clear.
And what do mean by diverse images? You're going to add images of Hindu refugees along with Muslim ones, an image of Gandhi, the British along with Jinnah, riot images of every religious group being targeted etc ? That would look horrendous, and would still not address the issues with cherry picking as the partition is way more eventful than that as evidenced by the article body, and it would always be subject to edit wars. Diverse images or not, lead image clutter is best avoided in all cases and MOS:PERTINENCE is clear in cases like these, it is best not to overwhelm the article with too many images that are primarily decorative and ultimately serve no encyclopedic purpose.
See also: MOS:LEADIMAGELead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works.. And in this case, they are primarily maps.
The Cold War and Partition are incomparable. Everything you said is silly and trivial criticism. A map, the photo of the 3 leaders, and 2 other images would work perfect as a collage. The lead image doesn't represent the background info of the subject, so your point is invalid. It seems as if you don't know the meaning of "cherrypicking", because the images I chose had no bias, and fairly represented everything.
I had only brought up the Cold War because you brought up the Bangladesh Liberation War, which doesn't compare to this page at all either.
My point of lead image clutter still stands. If the purpose of excess images is to be primarily decorative, it's better avoided.
And "The lead image doesn't represent the background info". True, and it shouldn't be represented by aftermath pictures either.
A page primarily about the change in political borders is best represented by exactly that: image depictions by the use of maps, which serves encyclopedic purpose. Though you might have a point about too many maps, in which case, one of these should be moved to the body. Codenamewolf (talk) 04:12, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Partition wasn't just the political divide. It also involves the violence that occurred. As such, there is no reason not to include images of violence.
What map do you propose? Can you post it in another thread in case other users would like to weigh in? I'm not necessarily opposed to an idea of an alternative map image.
And I think that adding a additional collage would look too cluttered, unnecessary and non standard. We've already been through this discussion before a month or two ago. Codenamewolf (talk) 06:44, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Partition of India's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. Feel free to remove this comment after fixing the refs. AnomieBOT⚡05:38, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the new India–Pakistan border". One might have expected that such an event would require its own section and headline. Instead it's buried in a section headlined "Regions affected by partition".2A00:23C6:C42F:3701:C8C4:8B8D:1464:7EB7 (talk) 09:53, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
