Talk:Battle of Inverkeithing

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008

• Ensured that the article is: within project scope, tagged for task forces, and assessed for class.

• This article would benefit from: in-text citations. --Rosiestep (talk) 22:13, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

inline citations

This article has come a long way since I last edited it, and it is now sufficiently detailed to need inline citations. Could future editors please start to add inline citations whenever they add more information or clarify a point? --PBS (talk)

Inlobox

Hi VFF0347 and thanks for your tidy up of the info box. I have had this article earmarked for attention once I had heaved Battle of Dunbar (1650) over the featured article line so it is good to see it becoming popular. I have reverted or changed a few of your edits:

• The combatants: this was a war between two separate nations, and so I have put them as the combatants, not the political groups that happened to be strongest within those nations at the time.
• I have removed the citations. Infoboxes (and leads) are not cited as they should only include information which is also in the body of the main article, where it will be (obviously) cited.
• I have changed the map - good idea by the way - to a more focused one, and tweaked the caption to a more conventional one. I think that this is more user friendly, but that is subjective, so feel free to come back at me if you prefer the all of Scotland one.

I also note that you are not a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history. I think that you might find it useful, and hopefully friendly. It also has a lot of MilHist specific resources and guidance, such as Template:Infobox military conflict.

Regards

Gog the Mild (talk) 15:33, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Gog the Mild - Sir - Thank you for your note and comments here also. I defer to you. As I said, I am not all that knowledgeable regarding the history of Scotland or England. I made the change as I assumed that the article on the Third English Civil War was the overarching authority for the events that happened after Charles I was executed and England became a Commonwealth. I therefore thought that the articles on Dunbar, Inverkeithing, etc. ought to conform. But I will leave the review and updates to you and the FAC. Please note that the article on Inverkeithing still shows the Kingdom of England as a belligerent and speaks of the Scottish acting on behalf of Charles II in the introductory paragraph. I assume that you will correct the article once you finish with Dunbar. I like the new map. Could it be a relief map? Thanks so much! Virgil FairchildVFF0347 (talk) 23:03, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

VFF0347, please feel free to continue to contribute to this article, and similar ones. You make some good points and it seems from your user page that this is an area of interest to you; although I would suggest treating any source from before about 1950 with a degree of caution.

Map: that is odd. It should be generating a relief map from the parameters I put in, but I can't force it. I shall investigate.

I have changed the link to England in the infobox. And yes, I intend to tidy up the prose when I move on to this article. Or feel entirely free to WP:DOITYOURSELF.

Gog the Mild (talk) 20:43, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Battle of Inverkeithing

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Battle of Inverkeithing's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "EB-GR-CrowningMercy":

• From Battle of Worcester: Atkinson 1911, 59. The Crowning Mercy
• From Third English Civil War: Atkinson 1911, 59. The Crowning Mercy

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 21:07, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Battle of Inverkeithing/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Hog Farm (talk · contribs) 03:22, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

A little different from the topics you've been working on while I've been reviewing. Hog Farm _Bacon 03:22, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Hog Farm, I am getting stale on the Punic Wars, so have been looking at a few other things. This one is a follow on to the August collaboration FAC Battle of Dunbar (1650). Gog the Mild (talk) 11:05, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• "concerned that their Godly war would be corrupted by feelings of personal loyalty to the King" - Not sure about British English, but in American English, godly would generally be lowercase in this context.

Done.

• From what I can tell, the city of Dunbar itself is only ever linked.

Good spot. Fixed.

• Maybe this is covered by "although these numbers fluctuated during the course of the campaign", but it seems like there was large fluctuations. When Cromwell entered Scotland, we're given an upper bound of 12,500 men. The first purge gets rid of many men, and the second gets rid of at least 4,080, leaving around 8,000 at maximum. Yet at Dunbar, the Scots are back up to 12,000. Likely a comprehension problem on my end, but I interpreted "these numbers fluctuated" as a bit less extreme than 1/3 of the army. I understand this may not be known, like with some of my obscure CSA unit articles, but do the sources quantify how great the fluctuations were?

No they don't. At all. The Scots weren't exactly great record keepers. I reckon that your Confederates were models by comparison. They were recruiting even faster than they were purging, but the only numbers quoted are at the start of the war, at Dunbar and when the Scots marched south. And I wouldn't personally trust any of them too far.

• " In January 1651 the English attempted to outflank the Scottish-held choke point of Stirling" - Personally, I think it would be best to mention that Stirling was a choke point when the defense of Stirling is first mentioned.

I wondered about that. Done.

• "and 500 Highlanders led by Hector Maclean of Duart;" - Move the Highlander link up to where you're talking about Highland chiefs earlier?

Done.

• " shadowing the Scottish army while leaving Monck with 6,000 of the least experienced men to mop up what Scottish resistance remained" - Can we get an introduction for Monck?

Oops. He is such a figure later in the period that I forgot. Done.

• Worth mentioning in the article that the site is a designated battlefield?

Oof. I would rather not, but done.

• Is the external link a high-quality RS? It includes some different takes on the loss figures: that Balfour stated that both sides suffered similar losses, and that the other casualty estimates are based exclusively off of English sources. The source goes on to say This account might not be correct but there is no intrinsic reason to privilege the official casualty figures promoted by Cromwell over this other set of figures, so maybe Balfour's estimation of English losses is also worth noting.

The omission is deliberate. Yes, Historic Environment Scotland is an RS, but there is no way that both sides suffered equal casualties. The Scots lost Browne, Duart and four regimental commanders killed. No English officer is even recorded as seriously wounded. The Scots were chased for six miles and had an infantry regiment and the Highlanders wiped out. Balfour was inflating the English losses on the basis of no knowledge. More to the point, the three print sources which I have seen mention Balfour's estimate of Scottish losses do not pass on his estimate of English casualties, even to dismiss; they seem to consider it too ridiculous to even bother knocking down.

While check image licensing after work tonight. Hog Farm _Bacon 18:16, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Hog Farm, swift thorough work as usual. Your comments to date all addressed. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:52, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 18:53, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that when exploiting the Battle of Inverkeithing, Oliver Cromwell deliberately left open a route for the Scottish army to invade England? Source: Woolrych, Austin (2002). Britain in Revolution 1625–1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820081-9, p. 494.

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Thomas J. White

Improved to Good Article status by Gog the Mild (talk). Self-nominated at 11:58, 5 December 2020 (UTC).

• ALT1 ... that after the Battle of Inverkeithing, Oliver Cromwell deliberately left open a route for the Scottish army to invade England?

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith
• Interesting:
• Other problems: - I think the wording could be improved. Maybe "... that after the Battle..."?

QPQ: Done.

Overall: (t · c) buidhe 15:18, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

@Buidhe: Thanks for the review. Done. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:33, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Thanks for writing the article! (t · c) buidhe 15:34, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Quick questions

Hi Gog, I just did some tweaks. Pls undo any incorrect. I'm not sure re the Major-general v Major General bit. Some for you to maybe check:

• are there 2 peninsulas ie Ferry and Fleet?
• Brown v Browne ie John Brown of Fordell is same as Browne?
• King v king consistency

Regards, JennyOz (talk) 11:45, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

JennyOz, any changes you make to an article are always most welcome. Re the queries:

• In the UK it is major-general (major-general (United Kingdom); in the US it is major general. Other nations also vary. More to the point, I have corrected my inconsistency.
• No. My error. Corrected.
• Same person, but all of my sources spell him Browne. Sorted.
• K/king usage all seems to meet MOS:JOBTITLE. Was there a specific case where I have got it wrong?

Many thanks as usual Jenny. Were you intending to review its ACR - Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Inverkeithing? Gog the Mild (talk) 14:44, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Charles. Charles

Greetings @Gog the Mild! This is a very small issue, if at all, but just wanted to ask, wouldn't just mentioning "pursued" and then abruptly ending the sentence; would that not be an incomplete sentence? Or maybe we can amend the next wording of "Charles" perhaps? Danial Bass (talk) 10:44, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi Danial Bass. Nope. I am not saying that the phrasing in the article could not be improved, but as it stands the sentence is grammatically correct. (And reads perfectly naturally to me; not that that counts for too much.) As five reviewers signed off on the current wording at FAC and it is in the lead I am a little hesitant to make major changes. How would you feel about "Cromwell pursued them, leaving 6,000 men to mop up the remaining resistance in Scotland."? To my eye that is a little clunky, but I could grit my teeth. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:18, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand your reasoning. As I can see, you mostly edited this article, and I wouldn't want to be pushing my thoughts on this article. So I leave it up to you, but your new wording sounds like an improvement to me. Thanks! Danial Bass (talk) 11:27, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Unusually for Wikipedia, there is WP:FAOWN, but I wouldn't want to push that too far. So, if some readers find that tweak makes the phrasing flow better, fine. Changed. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:33, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Recent Copy Edits

This reversion is problematic. @DocWatson42 added a comma to correctly fix the sentence, and @Gog the Mild reverted it.

I do not understand constantly referencing WP:FAOWN. FAOWN has nothing to do with undoing copy edits on a FA. From FAOWN: it is considerate to discuss significant changes of text or images on the talk page first, emphasis mine.

Adding a comment is not a significant edit (especially when it's grammatically correct, and necessary). Having to document every copy edit someone wants to make on the talk page isn't practical, and stands against the entire purpose of the Wiki project. FA articles are not perfect. Undoing every copy edit because the article was deemed "good enough" during the FA process is really poor practice.

That actively makes the articles and therefore the site worse. No one is every going to contribute to articles in a copy editing fashion if you force everyone to use talk pages first. 71.11.5.2 (talk) 19:25, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I think the entirety of my edit proves your point—I often find mistakes in featured articles, in particular with MOS:ORDER (especially putting the {{Featured article}} template at the bottom, which hasn't been the case for some years now), and in the case of ones covering battles, not including the {{Coord}} template in the infobox, along with not using that template's "event" parameter. —DocWatson42 (talk) 23:20, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Background

In this article, which is about one single battle in a wider war, there is a background section that is very wide and detailed in scope. Is this not a a duplication of the war article and thus redundant?. Specifically, it seems a stretch to start by talking about the reasons for the Bishops' Wars 11 years earlier rather than a brief summary of the Anglo-Scottish War and Battle of Dunbar as covered in the "Prelude" section. Is this not sufficient Background? As it stands now, it is rather like an article on the Battle of Iwo Jima having a background section that talks about the causes or lead up to the Pacific War! Since I've seen this elsewhere too and is this is a Featured Article, I'm wondering if there is WP policy or other thoughts from experienced editors on this? Jp2207 (talk) 18:01, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Opinions tend to differ. At FAC some nominators and reviewers like a good, full background. Others prefer a sketchier setting. For a general discussion you are probably best posting at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)