Wikipedia:Peer review/Vedanta/archive1

Vedanta

I've listed this article for peer review because I believe the article, with some more work on the basis of suggestions from experienced editors, can be nominated for being recognized as a Featured Article.

Thanks, Nrityam (talk) 15:10, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments by David Fuchs

{{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 16:57, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

• Okay, so I'm not at all a subject-matter expert on this subject, so what follows are some neophyte suggestions that might assist in making the article more accessible, and some other stylistic bits.
• Prose:
  • Vedanta (IAST, Vedānta, Sanskrit: वेदांत) or Uttara Mīmāṃsā is one of the six orthodox (āstika) schools of Indian philosophy. It represents the divergent philosophical views of more than 10 schools—all developed on the basis of a common textual connection called the Prasthanatrayi.—These two lines on their face seem contradictory. It's one of six schools, but it represents more than ten schools? I suppose the clarifier is that it's an orthodox school, but it's a bit unclear here what the relation of those ten mentioned schools is—does Vedanta represent beliefs from more than ten schools synthesized into its own thing, or are those ten schools basically organized under the Vedanta orthodoxy?
  • The Prasthanatrayi is a collective term for the Principal Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.—you should briefly explain what the Principal Upanishads et al are, such as "collective term for the philosophical texts Principal Upanishads" or such.
  • From a style standpoint there's a lot of work that needs to be done, especially regarding WP:DASH—you've got hyphens with spaces in places of em dashes, or en dashes instead of em dashes, etc. Something to keep in mind and try to clean up.
  • In general I think the article needs a few more signposts and clarifying text for the lay reader. A lot of proper nouns are introduced without an explanation as to what they are, and readers should never have to link away from an article in order to get the gist of the text presented in the article itself. This is a pretty fundamental issue throughout the skeleton of the article, as well—the article is organized around Nondualism yet never explains what Nondualism is, which given its multiple uses is particularly troublesome.
    • I think reorganizing this article would help, as to me it seems counterintuitive that the "Vedanta philosophy" section and the part that lists commonalities between the different schools of thought comes after descriptions of all the schools and after the history of the movement.
      • In terms of organization, I looked for FA-class philosophy articles and found Anekantavada, which I think might serve as a useful template for organization.
  • Varying interpretations of the Upanishads and their synthesis, the Brahma Sutras, led to the development of different schools of Vedanta over time of which three,[15] four,[16] five[17] or six[18][note 3] are prominent—if the sources disagree in how many Vedanta schools are actually prominent, probably better to streamline this rather than throwing out specific numbers.
• References
  • There's stray inline Harvard referencing in the article such as Gaudapada (c. 6th century CE),[44] was the teacher or a more distant predecessor of Govindapada,Michael Comans (2000, pp. 2,163) alongside the more common Wikipedia use of reflists. This should all get standardized.
  • I really can't speak to the vast majority of source as to their relevance and prominence/appropriateness.
• Images
  • The images in the article need a once-over to verify their free usage. Images like File:Ramanuja embracing Lord Varadaraj.jpg and File:Shri mahaprabhuji.jpg assert free use as being the uploader's own work, but they're clearly photographs or scans of other work and we need to know that base content is in the public domain. File:Shri Madhvacharya.jpg asserts public domain via the age of the author, yet has no author information for the tag to be legitimate.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:52, 29 December 2016 (UTC)