Talk:Gadhimai festival

Comments

"festival started on 24 November 2009, and the slaughter ended on 25" seems a little pov, like it was writen by someone who doesnt agree with it. Maybe change the "slaughter" to festival of something along those lines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.7.184.127 (talk) 10:48, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Slaughter has a different meaning for animals than it does for normal human speech. In this context the article is correct. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=slaughter Bmgoau (talk) 13:05, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The killing of animals is correctly and neutrally described as "slaughter." Rumiton (talk) 13:46, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but when animals are industrially slaughtered en masse for consumers we talk about 'meat production' (Industrial agriculture), or them being 'farmed' for a certain purpose (Industrial agriculture (animals)), not slaughter, because the intention is critical. It does bespeak a certain bias not to say that it was the sacrifice that was intended because this was clearly a religious event, a festival, a sacrifice, and not a slaughter that they came for. This made the main page because we have a Western-centric POV; I am sure there are plenty of countries were there was no controversy and the controversy went unreported. Fortunately, this has already been changed. Yohan euan o4 (talk) 22:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Wasn't the main motive behind the festival to please god through animal sacrifice? So, the event could be naturally (rather than supernaturally) seen as the mass slaughtering of animals. I say the use of the term "slaughter" here is justified. Thγmφ (talk) 00:04, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I have changed my mind. "Sacrifice" now seems a more neutral and encyclopedic term, while meaning the same thing as "ritual killing" or "slaughter." Rumiton (talk) 15:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

homepage

Borgqueen, I know this is not a f...ing forum, but the sentence : "More than 300,000 animals are ritually slaughtered in Gadhimai festival in southern Nepal amid controversy, in the world's largest animal sacrifice." on the homepage is totally stupid. At least 2 animal sacrifices are hundreds of time larger than this small thing. One is Thanksgiving, which was the same day, the other is Eid el-adha. Maintaining a totally stupid sentence on the homepage is very annoying for the credibility of this site which claims to be an encyclopedia but is here reliable as an average internet forum. Since I don't want to use an account I can't change the homepage to correct it. FYI, Talk:Main Page "is for discussing improvements to the entire Main Page only." (I don't know how to put that in red...). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.122.14.198 (talk) 09:46, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. You might have a point there; actually your logic has been used by pro-animal sacrifice activists, such as some practitioners of Santería, but as I commented on Talk:Main Page, the U.S. Supreme Court found a law against animal sacrifice unconstitutional in 1993 [1] but animal sacrifice can still be prosecuted, and Thanksgiving has been a long established tradition. Obviously the law sees it in a very different light, and I do not see why we shouldn't. --BorgQueen (talk) 16:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Sources

Reliable sources are rare for this subject. I see The Kathmandu Post is following the story. I don't know what reputation they have for fact checking, but they do seem neutral. How do other editors feel about using this source? Rumiton (talk) 15:26, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe we could use it. --BorgQueen (talk) 15:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Hindu scriptures regarding Animal Sacrifice

The addition of scriptural extracts is out of place here, as well as the overt criticism. The article already states that some hindu are oposed to that festival. Hindu dietary choices and animal sacrifice practices are discussed elsewere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_in_Hinduism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sacrifice_in_Hinduism A link to these articles may be still in order. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mihaiam (talk • contribs) 10:11, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Copyvio - Section "Origins"

I have reverted the newest edit about "Origins" because it has been closely paraphrased and constitutes a Copyright violation. User:Mihaiam, please learn about Wikipedia's rules before entering contentious editing in Wikipedia. It may be re-introduced duly paraphrased with this and preferably better and more sources. AshLin (talk) 13:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I also request both editors to please add proposed changes here on talk page, one change at a time, for neutral editors to work on and check/approve/object so that this edit war can be avoided. AshLin (talk) 13:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I tried to find something useful from User:Mrt3366 contribution. I'll let to him to find a better formulation.--Mihaiam (talk) 13:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Second largest

The sentence, "the world's second largest sacrificial slaughter of animals after Hajj (but third largest in terms of number of animals consumed after Thanksgiving and Eid al-Adha)" has to be sourced, it has been challenged by multiple editors. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 04:28, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

2021 Updates

@Revirvlkodlaku and Georgethedragonslayer: please discuss the article here rather than at your Talk pages.

My own opinion is that all of the recent updates appear to improve the article. According to reliable sources like The Independent and The Guardian, the festival has continued despite the ban. The rest of the edits—changing to present tense, grammatical corrections, and added details—also appear to be good changes. But I'd like to hear from Georgethedragonslayer because it's entirely possible that I'm missing something. Woodroar (talk) 02:22, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I came here from ANI. The problem here was that the article dishonestly treated the festival as a "sacrificial ceremony" and a "yearly ceremony", contrary to the facts that it is a 1 month-long festival with only 2 days dedicated to the sacrifice and it takes place every 5 years. Yes, the sacrifice in the festival has been officially banned but the festival continues. The article was wrong to confuse the termination of sacrifice as termination of the festival. These were the problems in both versions and I have just revamped the article to fix all of these issues. Shankargb (talk) 13:28, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I've reverted for now. Reliable sources overwhelmingly focus on the animal sacrifice and associated criticism, so per WP:NPOV we need to as well. This is just a sample of the news coverage, all from 2019, and all quotes from the first or second paragraph where they describe the festival:

• "The Gadhimai festival, thought to be the largest mass-slaughter of animals on the planet, is underway in Nepal" CNN
• "Less than five years ago, animal charities heralded the end of animal sacrifice at a religious festival dubbed 'the world's bloodiest'." BBC
• "Religious worshippers are slaughtering thousands of buffalo and other animals in Nepal this week as part of a highly controversial Hindu festival known as Gadhimai." The Week
• "But that was just part of the sacrifice. A few hundred butchers then gathered on Tuesday with curved knives to decapitate water buffalo during what is believed to be the world’s largest ritual slaughter, the weekslong Gadhimai festival in the town of Bariyarpur, near Nepal’s southern border with India." The New York Times
• "Hindu worshippers have begun beheading thousands of buffalo in Nepal as part of what is thought to be the world’s largest animal sacrifice event." The Independent
• "The animals are just some of the thousands prepared for sacrifice as part of this year’s Gadhimai festival in Nepal, which takes place once every five years and holds the dubious honour of being known as the world’s bloodiest festival." The Guardian
• "At the beginning of next month, Nepal will host an event which features the largest mass animal sacrifice in the world." Newsweek

Those are from the first two pages of a basic Google search for "Gadhimai festival", not even adding keywords associated with animal sacrifice or criticism. I get the same coverage when narrowing down to News and Scholar results as well. NPOV, particulary WP:DUE, requires that we fairly summarize and represent the claims of reliable sources, and that means we need to focus on the animal sacrifice aspects, including criticism.

That being said, I don't object to all of your changes. Clarifying the festival's frequency is a good change, for example. I don't mind if you add those back, or I can as well. Woodroar (talk) 14:09, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Woodroar: Shankargb resolved the big confusion and described how the article needs to be treated. I find your revert to be doing more harm than good. Are you seriously relying on Western news reports depending on inflation by activists? You removed scholarly sources linked to Google Books for these uninformed sources. "World's largest animal sacrifice event" is absolutely absurd! More than 45 million Turkeys[2][3] are killed on Thanksgiving and don't even let me get started about Eid where more than 10 million animals are sacrificed in Pakistan alone.[4] These figures largely dwarfs the figures of the sacrifice carried on this festival. I think you must self-revert your edits already. Georgethedragonslayer (talk) 14:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you about the turkeys, but that's not what reliable sources focus on when talking about Thanksgiving in the United States. We have to follow the sources. Woodroar (talk) 14:57, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Which you are clearly not doing with your mass removal of reliably sourced content several of which were scholarly and far more credible than spicy western reports. Your claim that we should only write about animal sacrifice is not supported by WP:NPOV, but violates WP:PROPORTION. In what world "NPOV" was exactly violated? I don't see if any existing content was removed but misleading section names were renamed WP:NOCRIT. You must also read WP:ONLYREVERT. Georgethedragonslayer (talk) 15:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Look, I've been active on Wikipedia for more than 15 years, including at policy discussion pages and noticeboards like RSN and NPOVN. I understand our core content policies and guidelines, and also that essays like NOCRIT and ONLYREVERT are just that: essays. Yes, they do contain some valuable advice, but they're only essays. You're welcome to start a discussion at a noticeboard or ask for WP:3O, but I'm confident that I'm following our policies and guidelines in this case. Woodroar (talk) 15:44, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Since not a single problem with my edits have been highlighted by Woodroar, I am not sure why Woodroar did the mass revert with an incorrect edit summary to a version that falsely treats this festival as a "sacrificial ceremony" and a "yearly ceremony". Georgethedragon is correctWoodroar that Your claim that we should only write about animal sacrifice is not supported by WP:NPOV, but violates WP:PROPORTION. In what world "NPOV" was exactly violated? I am in agreement that you must read WP:ONLYREVERT which say you should be reverting only when there is no other solution to the issue. Here, you could entirely do without reverting. I see you already had an opportunity to self-revert, thus I am also giving you one. Shankargb (talk) 15:47, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I won't be reverting to a version that misrepresents the vast majority—if not unanimity—of contemporary reliable sources in order to fix a minor change about the festival's frequency. As I said above, you can make that change again, or I will when I get the time. Woodroar (talk) 15:54, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

False allegations of misrepresentation won't fly. No one is going to ask for WP:3O since this dispute already involves 4 editors. I can only pity at your "15 years" of experience that couldn't make you acknowledge these simple facts, and that essays are not useless but important for maintaining a standard. No one is concerned only about the frequency but a number of other facts added on my 2k bytes of edit. Shankargb (talk) 15:59, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Shankargb, I suggest you try using a more civil tone when engaging in a discussion with other users. You are tiptoeing rather close an abusive line, and that cannot be tolerated on Wikipedia. Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 22:46, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I suggest you to write something relevant to the talk page instead of derailing it with false accusations that "cannot be tolerated on Wikipedia". Shankargb (talk) 03:07, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

• I have restored the reliably sourced version by Shankargb who has successfully defended his edits here and got support from George. Rest of the WP:STONEWALLING made no sense. Tessaracter (talk) 13:54, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

  Except that it's not reliably sourced. For example:

  • You restored a 2014 article from The Guardian to support a claim about 2019.
  • You replaced recent coverage from reliable sources with a tourism book from 2002.
  • You restored multiple claims sourced to notesnepal.com, with no author by-line or masthead or indication of editorial process. This is clearly not a reliable source.

  And there's the main issue, which is that most reliable sources—especially recent sources—focus on the animal sacrifice aspect, so we need to do so as well. Woodroar (talk) 14:37, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

That "tourism book"(not really though) is written by an acclaimed academic[5][6], well noted for his research about Nepal. Similarly, notesnepal.com is one of the most popular news/media source in Nepal. These sources are not useless but much better than those dedicated to providing only shock value based on activist accounts after learning about this more than 100-year-old festival only after 2009. Shankargb (talk) 15:25, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The book was published by Safari Nepal, a "Conservation and Cultural Tourism Oriented Bi-Monthly Magazine" where he was editor, according to his own LinkedIn. We need to be careful about using these types of sources, precisely because they tend to downplay controversial elements.

As for NotesNepal, popularity doesn't make a site reliable. I've been looking for citations to notesnepal.com from reliable sources and there aren't many, mostly just social media links and other sketchy sites. Along with the author and editor issues, that suggests that it lacks the reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that we require of reliable sources. The sources I mentioned above enjoy broad support from the community. See WP:RSP, for example. Woodroar (talk) 16:01, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

NPOVN Discussion

I've started a discussion about this article at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Gadhimai festival. Editors are welcome to join the discussion. Woodroar (talk) 01:44, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Per the third-party comment at the above discussion, I've restored the version based on reliable sources. I did include an attributed claim from Notes Nepal, though I still disagree about its reliability. (But that can be discussed later.) I also rearranged a lot of the article to be roughly chronological so that it doesn't jump around as much. Woodroar (talk) 13:56, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

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