Talk:Munster

Should Munster redirect to Munster (disambiguation)?

Maveric149: "(replacing full disambiguation with a disambiguatio block --- all the other "Munsters" have natural disambiguators so there is no need to parenthetically name the province)"

Shouldn't Irish provinces be labeled as such? eg, "Munster province", or "Munster, Ireland"? I'm curious about this, because we go to that sort of trouble for most cities (and where a conflict exists, for many states and counties.) This policy seems fairly arbitrary.

For somebody who arrives here looking for Munster, Indiana or Munster, Germany, being told to click off onto a separate disambiguation page looks kind of silly. But I won't change this (again) unless other people agree. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dachshund (talk • contribs) 22:42, 10 September 2002 (UTC)

"Munster province" could be used as a natural disambiguator if the term is actually used. I suspect it isn't in the same way as "California state" is not used. It just sounds silly. If you think that having a raw link to Munster (disambiguation) looks silly then just change it to "click here or something similar. Disambiguation blocks are now being preferred to full disambiguation whenever possible in order to minimize the use of parenthetical. --mav 22:53, 10 Sep 2002 (UTC)

I use the term "New York State" every day, even though the state is technically just "New York" (see the New York article for an example of why this causes yuckiness.) We don't say California State because we rarely have a context problem in every day speech. But an encyclopedia isn't every day speech.

The reason people hate paranthetical is that its ugly. Still, it's there for a reason (one that will someday hopefully be provided for by the software). Other encyclopedias make a great effort to accurately classify their topics, rather than just assuming that certain topics should be the default for a particular term. The problem with linking to "Munster (disambiguation)" is that disambiguation pages are only something you really get to by accident-- some article not directly linking to the correct topic-- so manually specifying one makes no sense. Also see my response to Zoe, below. But if you guys feel that it should stay, then it stays. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dachshund (talk • contribs) 23:06, 10 September 2002 (UTC)

Not at all artbitrary. We don't need to differentiate each province by its country -- we don't say California (United States) or California (state). The only exception being Georgia. -- Zoe 22:45, 10 Sep 2002 (UTC)

That's because there are no major cities named California. What I'm worried about is people accidentally putting in a lot of links here (eg "Munster is a city in Germany..."), which will force readers to go through this somewhat unintuitive "click here if you're looking for something other than Munster, Ireland" process. In addition, people who are actually looking to read the Munster, Ireland article now have a great big blob of ugly text at the top... In both cases, the remedy actually seems to create a less-than-ideal situation for everybody. The root cause of this is underuse of the paranthetical, for (apparently) aesthetic reasons. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dachshund (talk • contribs) 23:06, 10 September 2002 (UTC)

You may think it is ugly to have disambiguation blocks but I and many others think it is even uglier to have full disambiguation pages at the end of seemingly valid links. Munster is such a link. Disambiguation blocks only take up a single line at the top of the page -- if anybody arrives here from a misdirected link then they instantly are informed of this fact and an actual article on at least one use is just below. If there were one use which dominated the others in importance then it would be at simply Munster but since this is not the case then other issues are dealt with. In this case the choice was easy; each use except for the province had a natural disambiguator. --mav 00:20, 11 Sep 2002 (UTC)

So I went and checked out the Wikipedia disambiguation policy after you mentioned it. It seems that full articles w/ disambiguation blocks are only recommended when the article is about the obvious topic you would expect to see under that heading. So, for instance, it would be acceptable to have an article under Thomas Edison that would refer to Edison the inventor, rather than, say, Thomas Edison the janitor from Illinois. The point of this is that when somebody is writing an article and casually links to Thomas Edison, their link will should to something useful.

So the question is: when people link to Munster, what will they expect their links to connect to? My guess is that 90% of them won't be referring to the Irish province. Most linkers will probably be thinking of the German city (as they would expect to in the case of, say, Paris or Munich). Since this article hardly refers to the "obvious" topic, it's hardly in accordance with any sort of Wikipedia policy. It's actually a perfect place for a disambiguation page.

Furthermore, the issue of disambiguation blocks vs. pages isn't about aesthetics. It's about what makes practical sense for the future. Sooner or later, the number of links is going to reach the point where manually updating them becomes too much trouble, and Wikipedia will want to begin keeping track of ambiguous links. Disambiguation pages facilitate this process, because they're easy for a machine to identify. I envision a process whereby ambiguous links will be presented in an obvious way, so that an author can tell if he/she has just created an ambiguous link.

If we stick with this policy, when somebody does get around to implementing this stuff (whether it's next year or ten years from now) we're going to have to manually go through the entire encyclopedia and check all of the links (for example: "does this article really mean to link to Munster, Ireland, or were they being ambiguous?"), not to mention hand-remove all of the disambiguation blocks (because I doubt that software will be sophisticated enough to do this.) In summary, we're creating a long-term problem for some not-so-compelling reasons. Obviously this is a subject that's best posted to the Wikipedia pages, and I have.

So anyway, sorry to make such a big deal of this over one page, but across all of the articles in Wikipedia, it really is going to be a huge deal sooner or later. -Dachshund 02:27, 11 Sep 2002 (UTC)

I disagree. Münster has a population of about 200,000, Munster has 1.2million, probably about 98% of which speak primarily English. If this was de.wikipedia.org, I would agree as more Germans will look for their city, rather than an Irish province. I guarantee you millions of English speaking Irish diaspora worldwide also visit this page looking for more information about their roots. Steve hill4 (talk) 21:59, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, Münster (region) (or Münsterland) has a population of 2,619,372 (31 Dec. 2006) (and Münsterländer dog breeds named after it), and as far as I know, German-Americans outnumber Irish-Americans. -- Matthead  Discuß   12:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Steve hill4. Münster is a different word, why should wikipedia redirect to a disambig page because some people are not using their keyboards correctly?

Matthead, why are you misrepresenting Steve's point btw? Since when are the people in the Irish diaspora the same as Irish Americans? 217.122.104.253 (talk) 11:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Old talk

To confuse matters slightly without contributiong anything of substance: there is actually a town called Munster in Germany, and a separate town called Münster. Most everyone who links to Munster actually means Münster. AxelBoldt 02:45, 11 Sep 2002 (UTC)

LOL, one can find a "exhaustive" collection of Munster/Münster/Minster place names at Munster (disambiguation) -- User:Docu 14:21, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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I fixed most of the Münster-links pointing to Munster. To faciliate checking, I set up the redirects Province of Munster and Munster (province) and replaced some of the links with them. This way, one can easily check which of the articles on Special:Whatlinkshere/Munster may not be about the Irish province. -- User:Docu 14:21, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I did it again in March 2008 after user:Docu did it in 2003. Though 5 years is quite long, I still think that this article should be moved to Munster (Ireland). Andries (talk) 20:00, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

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There are loads and loads of places called Munster or Münster. Is there any particular reason this article should be pointed to directly, rather than going through the disambig page? Bear in mind also that many people looking for the city in Germany Westfalen will not be capable of searching for Münster directly, nor think of searching for Muenster. Stevage 16:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

RUGBY???

Rugby is one of munster's biggest claims to fame in Europe, being one of the stronsest teams, perahps this should get it's own section, after all "Power" got it's own section. Paul5121 (talk) 22:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that something substantial needs to be added, (I may even start it tomorrow). After all, without provincial rugby, the name Munster would be less well known in the Irish context than it currently is, (same with Leinster, Ulster and Connacht). With recent successes and the fan-base being arguably the largest worldwide, a lot of people would think of the Irish rugby team before the province without realising the two are one and the same effectively. Doesn't have to be in too much depth, just a general rundown and link to main article. Sport is not mentioned in great detail either, so could be added as part of an expanded section on this. Steve hill4 (talk) 22:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Very good idea guys. Fire ahead ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Taoiseach (talk • contribs) 16:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Stadia

I was going to do a straight edit, but thought I'd ask opinion first. For starters, Páirc Uí Rinn is completely missed off the list. I also see that Fitzgerald Stadium is listed at 48,000 when the article for it states 39,120. In fact nowhere in the article does it state it ever held 48,00. The closest it gets is there are plans to increase it to 50,000. If we're going by potential capacities, perhaps Páirc Uí Chaoimh should be 60,000 in the Munster article. In it's own article it says originally 50,000, currently 43,500, record 49,961, (however in the Munster article 45,000). It even says it's Munster's third largest behind Semple and Gaelic Grounds. In the list of GAA stadia, we have even different figures.

As someone born and living in England, but with family in Cork and as an honouree Leesider, I feel a little confused and I'm sure others would be too. Perhaps someone a bit more in the know could clean up the numbers and follow through on the other articles for consistency. I would certainly be one who appreciates it. Steve hill4 (talk) 22:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Requested move from Munster to Munster (Ireland)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no move. JPG-GR (talk) 05:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I propose a move from Munster to Munster (Ireland) because this article keeps getting incorrect incoming links. See Munster (disambiguation). Andries (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Munster#Should Munster redirect to Munster (disambiguation)? Together with the move I propose to redirect Munster into Munster (disambiguation). Andries (talk) 18:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

• Weak oppose See discussion which follows. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - "Munster" seems only to b ambiguous with small American townships. Munster is an important province of Ireland. It seems it should claim primary usage above all. 66.121.215.213 (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 66.121.215.213, no, that is untrue, many people looking for the major German city Münster will type in "Munster". Andries (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
• I said "Munster", not "Münster". I am already aware of the German city and the umlaut is a disambiguator. Putting Munster under a disambiguation just because another impotant place has a similar name is unncessary. That's what disambiguation pages and dablinks are for. 66.121.215.213 (talk) 15:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose, Münster (with Umlaut "ü" or Muenster). The umlaut "ü" becomes "ue" in the en.wikipedia. 78.19.160.11 (talk) 03:23, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
• Totally oppose, per PMAnderson's reasoning. This is also probably primary usage too. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 23:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. The other uses are the small American townships, and the German city of Münster, which is hardly a major city (population only 220,000); the however, the province is one of four primary divisions of Ireland. I just checked the incoming links to see how widely they are used, and there are just over 1000 links to Munster, against just over 750 to Münster. I'm usually strongly in favour of keeping the undisambiguated term as a disambiguation page, but in this case I think that the umlaut in Münster is sufficient, and the Irish province (with 5 times the population) is the primary use of the term. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:10, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • PS I have just checked: Münster is only 23rd in the list of German cities by population. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:16, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

From an encyclopedic perspective, the rich history and lasting cultural significance of the German city of Münster more than compensate for any perceived demographic shortcomings, BrownHairedGirl. — On the other hand, until this very day I had never heard of the Irish province of Munster. Note however that English is a foreign language to me, and I don't live in an Irish or British cultural environment :-) Best regards, Ev (talk) 03:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

In my youth, I spent a significant chunk of time studying the Münster Rebellion, but when I found myself briefly in the city a year or two later I was fascinated to find that nobody in the town wanted to help me find any of the relevant sites. In my experience, it wasn't a town very proud of its history, but that's their choice. Anyway, I assure you that Munster has a very rich history, with a monastic scholarly tradition which predated the German town's notability by nearly 1000 years (see e.g. Lismore Abbey), and was very important to what eventually became Germany. And of course, it was a man from Munster who discovered America long before the Iberian latecomer. It's a pity that your history syllabus neglected this, but that's life :)

Anyway, we could argue all night about our POVs on history, but the demography is not perception — it's objectively measurable. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not questioning the richness of Irish history :-) much less so after re-reading Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom only two weeks ago. My point is that, at least in my personal experience, that history is not closely associated with the province of Munster itself, and enough so that I simply never heard of the province before. Using your examples, our article on Lismore Abbey doesn't mention "Munster", and the one on Saint Brendan mentions it only once in "Saint Ita, "the Brigid of Munster""; also our History of Ireland mentions it only once in relation to Neolithic burials. I'm surprised that even Kingdom of Munster is a redirect to Münster Rebellion instead of pointing to Kingdoms of Ireland. — Thus, in my experience, thinking of Ireland's past brings to mind "Waterford, Kerry, Limerick", while thinking of Munster means the city in Westphalia. But I imagine that native English-speakers living in the British Isles may see it differently, and I prefer that they -including you- make the call; hence the "weakness" of my support :-) Best regards, Ev (talk) 05:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

• Weak support, although preferring a move to Province of Munster or Munster, Ireland. I think that having Munster as a disambiguation page could help in two ways:
  First, it could help our readership, since at least for some of us the Irish province is most definitely not the term's primary meaning. For me personally, that honour falls to the German city, whose encyclopedic significance goes without question. — I would however prefer to leave this decision at the hands of native English-speakers.
  Second, it would help us editors to properly disambiguate all incoming wikilinks. I'm volunteering myself to do this job, as I have been doing in the case of Nike since similar maintenance concerns were raised at that talk page in January 2007. - Ev (talk) 04:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
• Not terribly keen. The time that this would need to keep in order would be better spent on sorting out Limerick/County Limerick links (and Wexford, Waterford, Sligo, Galway too), or the links to Cork, to name but a few of the perennials. Unless someone can come up with a dab-bot, and that would be a challenge I think, we need to be practical because we do not have endless resources to fix stuff. (If we do, why am I fixing Cork again?) No. Angus McLellan (Talk) 11:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it would take time. But once the current incoming wikilinks are sorted, it would basically solve the problem forever, reducing future maintenance to simply checking new incoming wikilinks every week or so to fix those new ambiguous "Munster" that will undoubtedly appear (as I'm doing with Nike since January 2007 :-) Best regards. Ev (talk) 13:43, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Ev that Münster has a rich and inmportant history. And from an encyclopedic point of view Muenster is more important than Munster. For example my Encarta DVD 2006 in English language is longer for Muenster than for Munster. Andries (talk) 09:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Mistaken incoming links are a problem; but this solution will merely move the problem. A dab page, like Munster (disambiguation) should have almost no incoming links at all, so every link will have to be fixed. Andries' solution will mean that everybody who wants this, the original Munster, will have to click twice; if they are the majority, they should be accomodated - the minority who want Muenster will be no worse if the dab header is extended.

Are you getting bad links for anywhere else?

As a lesser matter, Munster, Ireland would be better if we do move; it can be used in running prose. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

If the move is done, I volunteer to fix all incoming wikilinks. However, I prefer to leave the decision of whether we want to have the Irish province as the primary meaning to native English-speakers. - Best regards, Ev (talk) 04:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Etymology?

Is the etymology Celtic, Germanic or Basque? 37.144.53.146 (talk) 10:06, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Scope

As per the hatnote which has been in place since last month, and this IWNB discussion, there are concerns that this article includes content only very loosely related to the subject. Specifically, while there may be valid sub-topics on "Munster History" (eg Kingdom of Munster, Thomond/Desmond split, etc), "Munster Sport" (eg Rugby team, GAA provincial organisation, etc), "Munster Geography" (eg the counties that make up the province), "Munster Irish", etc, it is skirting OR and SYNTH to imply that there is a "Munster Economy" (as distinct from that of the rest of the country, the regions or anything that follows actual provincial bounds). Or indeed no reason to suggest that mining, power-generation, transport or IT companies are somehow managed or organised on a provincial basis. Frankly, they are demonstrably not arranged on this basis, so listing them as such is problematic under WP:SYNTH, WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:LISTN. (While the latter may be intended primarily for stand-alone lists, it is relevant here as list members should have "been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources". In this manner, if a "list of airports in Munster" appears nowhere else, then why are we listing them together on Wikipedia - somehow implying that airports are organised or managed on a provincial basis?). Anyway, thoughts are welcome before possibly summarising or removing "stuff that just happens to be in Munster" style content or which otherwise is only very loosely related to the subject. Guliolopez (talk) 20:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Having left it for a few weeks (to see if there were thoughts or suggestions from other editors on approach), I have made a first pass at some of the clean-ups noted above. I have kept my edits discrete by section (to allow clarity on what was changed and why). Happy to discuss any of the changes - before perhaps continuing. Not least I think the Mining and Economy sections need work. In fear of ranting away to myself again, it's not clear to me why a non-administrative subdivision (an almost purely historical, geographic and sometimes cultural/sporting subdivision) has such sections. Such sections are SYNTH magnets. For example, we have a sentence which says that "the province fights off competition from Switzerland and Singapore for investment in pharma". What provincial entity is involved in this "fight"? The IDA isn't organised on provincial lines, so there's no "Munster office" or "Munster chapter" of the IDA "fighting the Swiss". Nor is there a "Munster desk" in Enterprise Ireland. Or a civil servant in the DJEI on trade-missions to drum up investment for Munster as a separate economic/pharma entity. Similarly, why are we talking about mining in the province as if it's a discrete "thing"? Is mining regulated, managed, or structured on provincial lines? Is there a geographic, geological, plate-tectonic or other mining "thing" that correlates even roughly to provincial boundaries - that perhaps means mining in Munster is different from mining elsewhere? If not, I see no reason to treat "Mining in Munster" as a concept with a section. Happy to hear thoughts though before I plough ahead.... Guliolopez (talk) 02:23, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Continue as you are doing. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:58, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I've done about as much as I'll do for now. There are still some issues remaining. But at least the "Munster is connected to the rest of Ireland by roads - here's a list of them" type meaninglessness is improved. Guliolopez (talk) 22:35, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Names in Irish

What is the difference between the names an Mhumhain and Cúige Mumhan? Which one is the official designation? Do they perhaps refer to different things (such as the historical and current province respectively)? And why the Mhumhain/Mumhan spelling difference? /Swedish Wikipedian Genomlysning (talk) 18:19, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Coordinate error

{{geodata-check}}

The following coordinate fixes are needed for

the decimal coordinate for Munster is wrong... the longitude should be positive not negative... the magnitude is correct

—198.163.53.11 (talk) 21:24, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi. I do not personally understand what you are saying.

Longitude, to my understanding, specifies the east–west position of a point/location. Where a positive number indicates "east" of 0° (the prime meridian; Greenwich; London). And a negative number indicates "west". Munster is a province in Ireland. All of which is west of Greenwich. No part of Munster (nor indeed any part of Ireland) is "east" of Greenwich. How or why (what?) would suggest that the "longitude should be positive not negative"?

(52.25,-9 is, as it should be, a representative point in Munster/Ireland. Making the longitude "positive not negative" would make this 52.25,9. Which would represent a point somewhere in Germany. What am I missing? Why would we change it to that?)

The only coordinates currently used in this article are those in the infobox. Represented as:

{{coord|52.25|N|9|W|region:IE-M|display=inline,title}}

Which renders as:

52.25°N 9°W / 52.25; -9

This seems perfectly valid to me. Are you proposing to change this? How? Why? (What!?) Guliolopez (talk) 23:11, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Deactivating template, since OP has not responded and coordinates appear to be OK. Deor (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2020 (UTC)