Talk:Welsh national identity

Expansion support

Please feel free to support addition of potential topics may include but are not limited to: traditions e.g dance, Mari Lwyd etc., festivals e.g eisteddfod, Santes Dwynwen etc., more on music and the national anthem, cuisine and any others you may think of. Thanks Titus Gold (talk) 22:45, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

What exactly is the purpose of this article and how does it differ at the moment from the description of the development of Wales, in existing articles such as Welsh people?? Sionk (talk) 17:47, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

It should be a history of the development of the Welsh national identity and what it looks like today. The creation of the page was inspired by Scottish national identity. Wales focuses on all aspects of history. Welsh national identity focuses purely on the identity of the Welsh national identity and how it developed from Celtic Britons etc. This also includes national identity polling etc.

Please feel free to make any improvements that you see fit. Titus Gold (talk) 18:04, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

British or Welsh

The section on Resistance to Roman rule has some dubious statements in it. Wales did not exist as an entity at the time, and the sources quoted (esp. Gildas) speak of Britain, not Wales. Although there is definitely a case that this is a formative period, the text is not sufficiently nuanced as things stand to make clear that we are talking about some kind of Brythonic proto-Welsh identity. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:23, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Article Scope

Hi EdwardUK, I saw you made some improvements to referencing here, which are much needed as it is largely copy/pasted text with very inconsistent and unchecked referencing. However, per Sionk's question above, I am not really sure where this article fits. The history is pasted from history articles, and there are questions to the extent this is not just a POVFORK of Welsh people. Welsh National Identity is a subject, but this treatment doesn't seem to me to be an encylopaedic article of the subject of identity. I wonder if I can run some ideas past you both, to see where we might take this:

1. We could Delete it to start again. But I haven't done that yet, as it would take a lot of work to start over, and some of what is here would find its way back in, I think. However, if we think that it is entirely covered in Welsh people then a redirect there is one option.
2. We could strip out all the stuff that is not about identity and refocus. I think I would delete the whole history section, in that case. This is a sociology article, not a history one.
3. We could leave it more or less as it is, but rebalance and fix the referencing.

If refocussing, I find it odd that we don't talk about socialism in Wales. Historically the link between non-conformism and liberalism was also key, but Welsh political culture has been dominated by socialism for so long that it really has to be discussed. We also have precisely two sentences on religion, and the link with puritanism takes the reader down a bit of a blind alley. There is nothing much on place or regionalism, and the language section doesn't factor in that only a fifth of the population use the language fluently, and that there is a linguistic divide as well as a strong sense of cultural identity in language. Anyway, thoughts are appreciated. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:16, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Also pinging in DankJae as someone else likely to have thoughts on this. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:17, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The Scottish article has similar problems (hence the 6 year old cleanup template) which have now been mirrored by TG here. It very much comes across as yet another content fork, repeating large chunks of other articles. This article needs to be something radically different from the existing articles on the history of Wales, etc. IMO. Sionk (talk) 12:49, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I usually avoid cultural and historical topics, unless there are clear issues, so not fully sure how to deal with this. I do believe this article needs to be re-done, seems to be very loose in its scope from the surface, not always making direct connections to the topic, and clearly a copy-pasted article. May be best to strip the article down to sources clearly discussing national identity and slowly re-build from there? The edit history is there if information has to be revived at a later date. Some details currently seem excessive and not making the connection with national identity clear, such as the paragraph for making Cardiff the capital? I guess this fits more to option 2, but I believe there may be sources on the history of national identity? And if so those sources and additional context may be justified to be included.

This article seems to be the largest attempt at a national identity article outside a purely history focus, so cannot really compare to other articles. DankJae 22:15, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

This is clearly a problem with a number of Welsh articles. The copy/paste approach has caused several issues, not just with the citations, but also with the content which although related to the subject, has not been sufficiently adapted to deal specifically with the article it has been copied to. There is undoubtedly going to be overlap in the themes covered by this and other articles, but this article seems to have been built around history, devolution and independence, with culture as other stuff that has been thrown in from random places to make it appear more balanced. There is little here that is not, or could not, be covered fully in other articles, so even with a re-write it would still be mostly duplication with "see also" and "main article" links.

However, if I were to try refocussing this article some of the changes would be: I would keep a history section – history has an impact on identity, but most of what we have here could be trimmed to a few paragraphs. As has already been mentioned, themes like religion and socialism are not dealt with properly, and the same is the case with industrial heritage. The demographics section could be moved to the main article, where it would be described from a neutral POV. Sections like sport and music are very limited and should summarise the whole thing, not just one or two items. After all this I might end up with an article almost the same as Culture of Wales – so it could just be redirected there instead. Something that I would add that is not already part of the culture article is an improved section on geography and archaeology – the Register of Landscapes of Historic Interest in Wales and its HLC reports have a lot of information that could be relevant here. EdwardUK (talk) 11:55, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah yes, I had not thought of Culture of Wales, but yes, these articles are perhaps so close in scope that this should indeed redirect there. Factoring in geography and archaeology as aspects of culture makes sense. The impact of Geography on Welsh culture is profound. Archaeology is also important, although I expect it would be important to focus that carefully. Thanks both your thoughts. I'll leave the discussion open a little longer but may attempt a WP:BLAR. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)