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Bhagavad Gita is inarguably the most famous scriptural text among Indians due to its concise nature & popularity of Lord Krishna. Now such enormous popularity also gives rise to misconceptions and wrong information around it. Considering that I started below thread:
Which famous quotes are wrongly attributed to Bhagavad Gita?

Depending on type of verse, a separate answer is required for explaining. Ideally we can close a new Qn as a duplicate even if there is no particular answer during that moment. Answer can always be added later.

Now this post is closed as "too broad". I request the community to keep this open as a single point of reference to all such wrong attribution.
Due to its closure, we had to post a separate answer today for this Qn: Is this citation of Anthony De Mello correct?

Note: Most of the other scriptures quoted here are hardly read or even known among the mainstream population. Hence we may not need such "broad" Qn-s for other texts. Let Gita be the exception.

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    Thanks for pointing out the issue; we'll try to solve it soon :)
    – Pandya Mod
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 12:08
  • TBH, the seperate question is a great example of a narrowly scoped one. The one quoted is probably several Bhagavad Gita's worth of possible answers.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 12:32
  • Instead of adding every answer for every quote, all the quotes should be merged into a community wiki answer. Answers are CWed when there are list questions like these.
    – Sarvabhouma
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 13:02
  • @Sarvabhouma, in the special case when answer requires extra explanation (verse is partially true), we may still require a separate answer. Which need not be a community wiki.
    – iammilind
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 14:52

2 Answers 2

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Firstly, I must say that the Q&A pair is a very commendable job and thank you for that.

Coming to the post itself, I mentioned this on that question as well:

It is too broad, no doubt, Stack Exchange isn't a place for a "list of things", like posts. However, this post is certainly quite useful both as a duplicate target and as a place to know the truth. @TheDestroyer, is there any reason why the post can't be made a wiki-lock? Anyway, the OP have themselves made their answers CW, hence as a moderator, you would not be using the wiki lock as a rep denial tool. (This post does look like a good candidate for such a lock)

Let us wiki-lock it instead of leaving it open. Stack Exchange is not suited for a list of things. (I am not aware if we can wiki lock a post and also have it closed as too-broad, but if that is possible, it would be the best way). The additional effort which you need to do would be to combine all the answers into one, which you feel is possible. The one concern there:

I am fine to combine all wiki answers in 1, but that would be too long as and when we keep adding new answers.

The limit is 30,000 characters at the moment. If we remove the images from the answer and restrict ourselves to the quotes that would be sufficient for nearly 200 wrongly attributed quotes (counting at 150 characters per quote). In case the number goes above that, we can flag for moderator attention and get it reopened.

Let Gita be the exception.

Exactly, let your post about Gita be the exception. Let us utilize the option which is already present to cater to exceptions, rather than engaging in a possible close-reopen battle.

I hope you understand my point.

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  • @Pandya Nope, that'd just fragment the answers. You'll just have a lot of answers. Instead of scrolling down one page, why not have all of them at one place? The existing answer can be easily edited by anyone.
    – Bhargav Rao
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 12:02
  • Community answer becoming long is not a very good argument. In many sites, answers are made into one answer and all the quotes are written in a single answer. Adding five separate answers is not required.
    – Sarvabhouma
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 13:05
  • Thanks for the suggestion. Considering it, I have now kept only 2 wiki answers: 1. Straight away wrong verses. 2. Answered already somewhere else. Apart from that, there is a 3rd category, where we still require individual answers. That's when the verse is half true and requires explanation with a related verse. One answer I already posted earlier. Even today's answer also would have fallen there, if the Qn was still open. Any suggestion for 3rd category?
    – iammilind
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 14:34
  • @iammilind I think we can have just two categories. The "Answered already somewhere else" and the 3rd category can be in one place. Instead of just linking the other answer in the post, we can write something like, "This is a misquote of this verse <verse>. You can read more about it in this answer <answer>". That would prevent <2k from not being able to see the answer, in case it is deleted.
    – Bhargav Rao
    Commented Feb 25, 2018 at 23:09
  • @BargavRao, combining 2 & 3 categories may not be a good idea. 3rd category deserves reputation as it requires lots of research to find out a suitable verse which partially matches with the given verse. Such answer shouldn't be a wiki. If it's not a wiki then my answer only would earn reputation. That may discourage others to update my answer, who have found a relevant verse.
    – iammilind
    Commented Feb 26, 2018 at 5:47
  • @iammilind Once a post is a wiki, it's everyones duty to edit it. If that discourages others to update, then we really can't help much. Their motivation must be to help the community and not to just earn reputation.
    – Bhargav Rao
    Commented Feb 26, 2018 at 9:18
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To be honest, your question is really too broad.

Comments on Possible Solutions:

  1. One solution proposed in the question is to keep the question open.
    However linking all the questions at one place sounds good idea, I think closing all the questions as duplicate may not be good idea since questions on that topic can discuss the specific issue better and such Q/A can deserve the separate post.

  2. Second solution proposed by Bhargav Rao is "wiki-lock"
    By doing so further answers can not be can be added but existing answers can be edited. So, we have to combine all the answers into single one and update it occasionally. Now, as discussed in comments, it sounds that we may need to provide two or three categories of answers out of which two requires to be community-wiki and still other answers that shows an effort may deserves to be individual (non-wiki). This creates the complexity.

Another solution (workaround :p) is to have a meta question like "List of posts that discuss the wrong attributions to Bhagavad Gita". If we get consensus on it, we can migrate the post to meta.

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  • Another idea is to make the post [tag:community-wiki] but I'm not sure about it.
    – Pandya Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 5:50

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