Wikipedia:Irish wikipedians' notice board/Archive20

Irish Featured Articles

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In the last few months I have reported on the featured article reviews of President of Ireland (archived FAR here), George Moore (FAR here) and now Irish poetry (FAR here). Besides these we have also lost Celtic tiger, Donegal fiddle tradition, Economy of Ireland, Éire, Irish theatre and Ryanair since they were promoted. Most of these featured articles were promoted in 2004 and 2005 when the criteria for FAs was more lenient than it is today. So many of these FA losses are due to not conforming to current standards. The biggest problem is that no one seems to be interested in really helping to maintain the FA rating. If even one or two editors would take an article under their wing when it comes for review, or take on the demoted articles, and help being them up to the current standards it would really help. The most serious problem is that the articles suffer from lack of inline citations or even any citations at all though some have other problems too. Possible most Irish wikipedians are more interested in their own interests, but quality would be a good aspiration too.

Perhaps we need an Irish featured article campaign or completely revive the Irish Wikipedians' featured article drive to keep the featured articles up to standard even if they are not topics we really have a real interest in or even know anything about. I will be happy to coordinate such a campaign if there are a few willing participants. Nine other Irish FAs will no doubt come up for review and they have already been noted as mainly missing inline citations. Who is committed to this or does anyone really care? I know I do but cannot do it on my own. ww2censor (talk) 03:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Probably not the answer you want to hear, but actually "No", I don't really care. For me FA's and GA's actually make the whole WP experience much less accessible for newbies and relative novices like myself. I'm not sure what they actually contribute to the user experience. But that's just my take. Sorry. MurphiaMan (talk) 12:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Well MurphiaMan your view may well be correct and the majority too, but I don't think accessibility and quality are mutually exclusive. Maybe the newer editors prefer to contribute to smaller and basic articles, and/or are intimidated by GAs and FAs, but as an encyclopaedia, I think a decent amount of quality articles are needed to show what is possible and should be aspired to. It just seems unfortunate that we should lose the higher status articles due to lack of interest by the more experienced editors, who are more likely to be involved in bringing, and keeping, articles to FA or GA. I was just testing the temperature out there; I suppose that two days and only one comment tends to say it all. ww2censor (talk) 00:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

My 2p worth - (i) Featured and Good Articles are valuable, as, much as I like the vast breadth of Wikipedia, for an encyclopedia to be valuable, and especially to be useful to scholars (or even poor schoolkids), there has to be some measure of quality, (ii) I suspect this is one of those areas where aspirations get caught up in time limitations - if I have a small amount of time today, I can do more with a little tidying, assessment or basic material addition, whereas, like any scholarship, Quality work can take time (though sometimes a quick Google or newspaper search is enough), (iii) it seems clear that a revived Featured Article Drive is needed, led by experienced editors. To be a bit frank, it is not that there are so many, at least of FA's, to protect - maybe each of these should have a "minder" (2-3 articles per person).

I understand MurphiaMan's point - but I agree with ww2censor on the aspiration. The former point is perhaps in part driven by the much-commented issue of nit-picking by some editors - but where, for example, an article has no sources or citations at all, in fairness, something has to be done. Jimbo Wales and others have noted that Notability and Referencing must be handled with common sense, but some backup is required for any encyclopedia. And while some may argue about the current rules for FA and GA, the encyclopedia is maturing, and that means standards go up. I personally think the inline citation aspect is overdone - but we in Ireland are not going to change the rules.

As a 2007 joiner, I am still learning, but am willing to help as a junior - such as with cases where I have knowledge or access to relevant sources, notably in those where very basic sourcing / citation is lacking - and I have done some work on a couple of the Irish FA's, where there were basic improvements possible. SeoR (talk) 13:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A scan of the discussions on this page will tell you why. So many editors are otherwise involved in disputes.

Belfast is currently at FAC, and will pass hopefully. It took a lot of work though, most of it janitorial - inline references etc, which take forever to do. I think that's part of the problem, it can take hours to properly format a long article including refs and whatever else needs doing. Northern Ireland needs a lot more sources, and its 59 existing ones properly formatted, which is daunting to say the least. As most people have limited time on Wikipedia, the featured article drive is a great idea, but only if people take notice of it. I for one am willing to lend a hand, but it will take more than two people to make a difference. Stu ^{’Bout ye!} 13:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Input required

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 – solution reached

Can you all please have a look at talk:List of non-Gaelic Games played in Croke Park, should this be for non gaelic games played in CP and their notablity due to Rule 42 or every non Gaelic game played at the site Croke Park now is? Gnevin (talk) 12:49, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I would opt for current, i.e. games played since Croker was established. I think that is more likely to be what people expect based on title (the other is part of Croke Park history, maybe). With appropriate clarification on the list page. SeoR (talk) 13:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A bit of background here. Gnevin is contesting the inclusion of the Irish Cup Final of 1901, generally accepted to have been the first and only major soccer game to have been played at Croke Park/Jones' Road. The user seems to think that simply because the GAA did not own the stadium at that stage, and because it was called Jones' Road, it was an inherently different stadium; this is a ludicrous assertion, for example Wembley Stadium was originally called Empire Stadium and own by a private company, it of course did not 'become' a new stadium when the FA finally bought it. Gnevin has reverted the inclusion of this game four times in the past (here, here, here, and here). When myself and User:Guliolopez tried to explain this situation to Gnevin on the talk page, he decided, without any consensus, to change the purpose of the page to something along the lines of 'List of non-Gaelic Games played at Croke Park while it was owned by the GAA and while Rule 42 was either in force or relaxed', claiming to be following WP:BOLD. At this stage, I really think think this is a non-issue. Schcambo (talk) 10:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The can read the history and talk if they want background , why don't we just let the good people here have there say since we clearly can't agree Gnevin (talk) 13:46, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is an encyclopedia after all. If the 1901 game is unique, then it's notable, and if it's notable then I would include it. It's not as though it's going to open the floodgates for every gang of kids that played kickabout on the field before it was a sportsground. I will expand on the talk page. Scolaire (talk) 09:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Important work for somebody to do

List of towns in the Republic of Ireland/2002 Census Records needs a 2006 version created or the 2006 results added to this. (Sarah777 (talk) 22:33, 6 December 2007 (UTC))

I'd be happy to do the work on this, unless somebody else has already started. Just let me know.Perryn (talk) 02:10, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Dosen't look like it as List of towns in the Republic of Ireland/2006 Census Records is still a redlink. Leave a note on the 2002 talk page as well. TIA ww2censor (talk) 02:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Ireland portal - now a featured portal

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Great news! The Ireland portal has been made a featured portal, taking it's place along side the Scotland, London and North West England portals on these islands and the France and European Union portals on the continent.

p.s. Nollaig shonna diobh! --sony-youth^pléigh 18:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Good stuff Sony. Great job. Guliolopez (talk) 00:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Excellent news!! Well done, all :) - Alison ^❤ 00:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Referencing Years in Ireland

Copied from Ww2's page:

Unreferenced History

Ww - take a look at what I've done to 1349 in Ireland! Events are being taken out of the "Annals of Ulster" but the generalised refs makes checking impossible. Being BOLD I am suggesting that we insist on in-line refs unless there is a link to a Wiki article which contains the information. Otherwise we'll have all sorts of junk and fiction listed and spotting hoaxes will be near impossible without time-consuming research. Sarah777 (talk) 17:23, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

At first I though you had added lots of details to this page but then, after looking at the history, I see what you have actually done with the citation tags. Well, the question will be whether these year pages should have references or do we accept the info as taken from the main article in which it is mentioned, so long as it is referenced there, which it may not be. Much of this historical type data seems to have been written back in the day before references were a big deal like they are now, so much data is not referenced in the main article either. You make a good point that a load of garbage might be added if there are no references so perhaps we need to insist on them and even place a notice on each page indicating that unreferenced additions will be deleted. This topic might be better discussed elsewhere in more detail, maybe on the Irish Wikipedian's notice board would be best. See you there. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 17:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggested policy

• (1) If the facts are contained in a linked Wiki article they should stand so long as they remain standing in the linked article.
• (2) If they are not mentioned in a linked Wiki article then they must be referenced in-line or be deleted on sight.

Otherwise we will get massive hoaxing on these pages when the bored students of Ireland discover them! Sarah777 (talk) 18:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be worth doing a basic check on the references before blanket tagging them. I quickly traced the quote in the first "event" to the Black Death article, where it was sourced. When I added the citation to 1349 in Ireland, lo and behold the same book is already listed under references! Possibly - even probably - all of the facts in the article come from the same two sources, but there's not much point in waiting for the original author to come back and provide the citations — he/she may well have moved on. If we want to improve articles, we have to be prepared to do some of the work ourselves. Scolaire (talk) 21:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Some, but with 1,000 years or whatever that is a lot of checking every time someone adds to 1753 in Ireland; Events; Localised famine devastates parts of the Mayo, Sligo and Donegal. Turlough MacFadden, last of the traditional Donegal sean-nos singers dies in Galway. Sarah777 (talk) 02:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

No, I was talking about the articles as they stand now. Anybody adding information should be required to source it or have it removed. But these articles were presumably created/edited in good faith in the days when WP:V wasn't such a big deal. If you fill them up with tags and nobody comes back and sources it, then you have a choice of leaving it in an ugly state indefinitely or removing all the useful information from a useful article. Why not just add an {{unreferenced|date=January 2008}} tag to the bottom of the article instead? Scolaire (talk) 11:24, 14 January 2008

I take your point on existing information, most of which was added by Ardfern (and all his material is referenced to Wiki articles - he's kinda our gold standard!). I was more concerned that the information from the various Annals could easily be hoaxed if the references are not much easier to pin down. Sarah777 (talk) 21:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with anybody adding information should be required to source it or have it removed. If I can be of any help with referencing existing information please let me know, I would be more than willing to help. --Domer48 (talk) 09:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Soccer in Ireland

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Talk:Football_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland#Requested_move ,can you all have a look at this discussion Gnevin (talk) 00:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

NFL

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 – disambiguation page corrected

Does anyone agree with my sentiment on this disambiguation page. Discussion is taking place here Any imput would be appreciated. Go raibh míle.--Play Brian Moore (talk) 22:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid WP:COMMONNAME wouldn't agree with you, google won't either.In Ireland the usage the league is more common than National Football league The current redirect is grand Gnevin (talk) 22:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the help.--Play Brian Moore (talk) 13:56, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

IBAL Litter Survey

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Has anyone got any comment to make on the latest 2007 IBAL litter survey, especially in relation to Sligo (see this comment). Being a Sligonian, I'm loath to change this in case I'm perceived as being biased in some way! --The.Q^(t)(c) 16:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)