Welcome edit

Hello, Prajski, and welcome to the English Wikiquote, a free compendium of quotations written collaboratively by people just like you!

To ask for advice or assistance feel free to drop by the Village Pump or ask on my talk page. Happy editing! And again, welcome!

Thank you for the creation and development of the Haidakhan Babaji page. Please study some of our formatting and organizational standards on some of our pages. To minimize editorial disputes we generally present author's quotes in chronological fashion, with a section for "general sources" at the top of the page (whether or not it is designated as that), and oftentimes chronological sections for their works below that. Thank you for your interest in developing Wikiquote pages, and may you find much of interest here. Blessings. ~ Kalki·· 01:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi Kalki, it makes much more sense to present quotations from Haidakhan Babaji thematically rather than chronologically. The message is much more coherent in this way. Should I remove quotation marks from this article? Would you have other specific suggestions? --Prajski (talk) 02:20, 3 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Additions to theme pages Courage and Work edit

Hello Prajski. Thank you for your interesting additions to the theme pages Courage and Work. I have a few concerns about the additions.

1. The Haidakhan Babaji page has DEFAULTSORT:Babaji, Haidakhan, and I see in the Wikipedia article that this guru is often referred to simply as Babaji. Why are you alphabetizing under the letter H?

2. Unless there is a good reason to include more, it is common to limit the number of quotes from a single author in a theme page to three, or maybe four if they are short. The number of quotes from Babaji added to the Work article seems unreasonable.

3. Ellipses at the beginning and end of a quote are superfluous if the quote is a grammatically complete sentence.

4. Ellipses do not need to be enclosed in parentheses or brackets.

Thank you again for your interesting contributions. ~ Peter1c (talk) 06:55, 20 March 2016 (UTC)Reply


Dear Peter, thank you for your kind words and feedback. Regarding your concerns:

1. "Babaji" is a generic term to express respect. It can be used toward a guru, a teacher or even an elder. "Haidakhan" is a place in India where this specific guru was active. "Haidakhan Babaji" means more or less "Babaji from Haidakhan," but I have not encountered this last form in any context. I believe "Haidakhan Babaji" without a coma is the best reference to this person. That is why I alphabetized it under the letter H. If this is not correct, let me know and I will move these quotations to a different section.

2. The subject of "work" is the central theme of Haidakhan Babaji's teachings. All the quotations I have chosen reflect some unique aspects of these teachings. I don't believe that there are any repetitions in the quotations I have chosen, and, you would probably agree, they are very original and important for our times. If at all possible, I would like to keep them intact. However, if you say that this cannot be done, I will truncate them down to four.

3 & 4. I was uncertain about this rule. Thank you for pointing it out to me. I will eliminate ellipses momentarily.

Again, thank you for your constructive feedback. Kind regards, Prajski (talk)

Hello Prajski. Thanks for your reply. I have changed the DEFAULTSORT parameter of the wikipedia article w:Haidakhan Babaji to reflect the correct sorting. ~ Peter1c (talk) 13:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
On point 2, I think this is much too much in the Work article. Work may be central to Babaji's thought, but that does not make Babaji central to the universal theme of work. The object here is not to reflect unique aspects of his teachings, it is to reflect famous sayings about the subject. When quoting from such a short booklet, I would suggest no more than one or two of the most widely quoted items, particularly those that are widely quoted outside his following.

On point 4 there is no firm rule. I often use brackets for editorial ellipses myself, to distinguish them from ellipses in the original source, but most contributors do not.~ Ningauble (talk) 15:10, 21 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi Ningauble, thank you for your feedback. "Famous quotations" is a somewhat subjective term. I enjoyed many thoughts shared in Wikiquote from people I have not heard about in the past. I believe that for as long as the quotation is characterized by beauty, wisdom and originality, and Haidakhan Babaji's thoughts seem to meet these criteria, there should be room for it in Wikiquote. However, if you and Peter1c agree on this subject, I will reduce the number of the quotations in the article of Work to bare minimum. Kind regards, Prajski (talk)