Talk:Ireland

Bastun's revert

Can you explain your random revert? Of this. Earlier Irish history such as its older kingdoms are directly pertinent to the subject. Also I cleaned up the format so its less of a mess. - Yorkshirian (talk) 11:26, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

See above. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 11:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

What parts would you like to discuss and which parts introduced are "errors"? Can you show me a link to the ArbCom thing, what is it about. - Yorkshirian (talk) 11:32, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

A) All of them. B) Offhand, Ireland isn't the 9th largest island in the world. There were others, but I don't have time to go over them now. C) The format is fine by most editors here. D) The Arbcom links are in the first infobox above. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 13:17, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

A) really? you'll have to be more specific. Certainly the info on early Irish history which I put in was not an "error". B) OK thats one, easily corrected. If you have time to revert, then you have to explain what your issues with the edit are specifically on the talk, so we can fix it and get it sorted. C) Simple tidying of refs and tightening up of box; pointless to revert. D) OK, I'll read it. - Yorkshirian (talk) 13:21, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Yorkshirian, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, but - you've just returned from a long ban? You've done exactly the same (largescale removal/replacement of text, formatting and templates) at England, Great Britain and now Ireland? In each case, different editors have reverted you and asked you to discuss first? You don't see a pattern here? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 13:29, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I wrote the expansions in my note pad over a series of months during the ban. The problem is though, I'm here discussing, but certain peoples seem to claim to want to discuss (even requesting it) ... then have nothing specific to say? Take this conversation for example, OK you've corrected me on the island size, but flat out negated dicussing the rest. Here is the clean up, you reverted and said you want to discuss on the talk, cool... lets discuss to come to a consensus. - Yorkshirian (talk) 13:35, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

(Unindent). Apologies for not being available 24/7. "I wrote the expansions in my note pad over a series of months during the ban" - then decided your version was better than what was already here? Sorry, WP is not a personal webhost. This is a collaborative project. In many cases, what you replaced in one edit had been arrived at after much discussion here. Look at the prior archive 11, for example, for a long discussion on the wording of the disambiguation hatnote. You replaced that agreed wording with "make disambig less of a mess." If you want to introduce changes - fine. I strongly suggest, then, that you post your proposed changes here first, allow some discussion, then introduce them, rather than just making a string of edits. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 16:15, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

It looks like it was only the intro and hat notes (in the main) that were re-written. One issue I would have with the rewrite is its stress it places on Norman and English conquests. The prescription for use of terms in the article also sound like they would cut across the ArbCom ruling. Like Bastun pointed out, the hat note had previous been the subject of much discussion - as had nearly every other part. Phrases like, "also known poetically as Hibernia" (bolded even in the text) are out of the norm and strange inclusions. Saying that, "[in] antiquity Prehistoric and Gaelic cultures were prominent" makes it sound like Brian Ború and neolithic farmers were running around the island hand-in-hand (and neither Gaels nor Prehistoric people belong to the era known as antiquity.)

These are the sort of things that can be pointed out easily if an editor leaves a note on a talk page saying that they are thinking about rewriting a section of the article - and saying why. Giving other the opportunity to remark on your sandbox is a good way to get feedback and iron-out issues. Pasting in a wholly new intro on a highly visited article is a guaranteed way to have your contributions reverted.

So let's start afresh. Yorkshirian, you don't like the current intro? What would you change? --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 17:15, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok well atleast someone has put forward some actual points, thank you.

• 1) I'd argue the opposite, currently in the intro, there is one long paragraph which is filled of Ireland-vs-Britain mope; wars, famines, "domination" so on. But apart from a brief mention of a so-called "Celtic migration" in 200BC, it doesn't really mention much of the native goings on. It jumps from 200BC to suddenly being about Catholics being opressed by the state in the 1600s.

IMO we need to fill in the gap between in a way which is accessable and easily understandable to the reader. Mention the various Irish kingdoms which existed before and after the Norman conquest - these are obviously still relevent to the present day since the kingdoms of Munster, Ulster, Connacht and Leinster still form a basis of regional identity as so called "provinces". Mention the High King system, I gave Boru as an example because he is the best known (though I realise he did not actually unify Ireland, rather made an agreement with the O'Neill's.)

2) It makes no mention of the fact that the Norse-Gaels founded Ireland's largest city Dublin and as Kings of Dublin established themselves as a regional power for a while. The Kings of Dublin expanded their sovereignty to include the Isle of Mann and the Western Isles (obviously significant in cultural sphere since Gaelic culture continued on in the area), as well as southern Northumbria for a while.

3) It needs to mention the fact that it was the Tudors who first created a centralised all-Island state as the Kingdom of Ireland. Obviously for political reasons there will likely be howls of dejection but regardless its still significant.

4) It doesn't mention that Ireland was a vassal of the Angevin Empire.

5) It mentions the Plantation of Ulster, but doesn't mention Ulster Scots by name or summarise how it links to modern day identity. - Yorkshirian (talk) 17:59, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

True enough. The current sentence, "Relatively small scale settlements of both the Vikings and Normans in the Middle Ages gave way to complete English domination by the 1600s", sounds hyperbolic. Why don't you start of with a rewrite of that paragraph (post your rewrite here first).

On sepcific points: 1) In fairness, the relationship with England/Britain has been a big part of Irish history for the last millennium and has not generally been good; 2) I don't think there is a single "native" Irish city, telling the story of the "Gall" would be a good thing, but is the intro the best place to do it?; 3) the story of the centralisation of Ireland is not so clean-cut; Gaelic Ireland wasn't a feudal so comparisons with nearby states doesn't really capture it; consider that despite having no central government, Gaelic Ireland had a single legal system and you will see how short the comparisons go; 4) the Angevin Empire doesn't figure very greatly in Irish history; it fell asunder 50 years after the Norman invasion, and technically Ireland was possession of the Papacy; England/Britain is the important player, not Angevin; 5) Scots were not the only people to be planted in Ulster and Ulster was not the only place to be planted; the Scottish (Presbyterian) planters of Ulster were dissenters (and so without equal political rights) like the Catholic Irish; the development of that identity is not simple, or even complete/certain today, never mind in the 17th century. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 19:42, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

1. That is the only "mope" there is unless you count fairy rings and forensic archaeology. If you can add something more relevant...
2. The City of Waterford was the main stay of Vikings in Ireland. That and conquering all from Scandanavia to Greenland and Spain (is that the right areas?) is probably more notable than Dublin and Isle of Man.
3. The Tudors were not the first all-Ireland royalty by a long shot. You Angles are blow-ins around these islands. Try List of High Kings of Ireland or you could start with Sláine mac Dela and work your way through to Galahad (Gíallchad) and the rest...
4. The article England mentions neither Anjou or Angevin either. I understand you were recently instrumental in an attempted update of the whole article?
5. The areas where plantations are mentioned, in both the lead and history sections, are a bit of poor maybe.

~ R.T.G 17:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

1. Not really. The effeminate mope revision of its earlier history stems from the late 1700s, after rebels in the north were influenced by the naturalistic ideology of the Jacobin Club (see also Gand Orient of France); like the Rousseauian concept of the "noble savage" for instance, which is a prominent feature. The communist view of history is like "Whig history" - a review of history from a political perspective - in this case anti-monarchal, anti-aristocratic and athiestic. Lets call it "Republican history".

There are a coherent set of annals which document the history of Ireland before the Normans arrived quite clearly. This isn't all fairies and gobblins; actual real people, real kingdoms. Its not even that mysterious I promise - even Irish monasticism, extremely influential high culture created from the island is not given a full and thorough presentation in this article. Obviously organised naturalism has its reasons for wanting this clouded, negated or derailed, including in official educational strutures in Ireland;

• First of all the fact that the island was a patchwork of kingdoms with their own monarchs, up until much of them were subsumed into the Lordship of Ireland, then the remaining few into the Tudor's centralised Kingdom of Ireland is incredibly inconvinent for a political movement which has irridentism as a central part of its ideology. Best to keep the past cloudy, lets call internal parts "provinces" even though this was a Tudor term from the Kingdom of Ireland period and in history they were actually independent kingdoms.

• Many of these túath and their native monarchies still have traceable descendants to this day, who if they wanted, could in theory press a claim to their land currently occupied by a republican state. Or even worse for the authoritarian naturalistic movement's revision of history; what if Irish people were able to view their real history in a coherently organised way such as that of the O'Neills and a native monarchist movement grew? Best to keep this masculine, traditional "western civilisation" stuff hidden away, quick wave a bit of green and lets pretend that monarchy is only a Brit thing; communism will never be achieved under a monarchy.

• Another very naughty thing to talk about is how those invading Norman aristocratic dynasties, which held feudal fiefs of the Lordship of Ireland, headed by the King of England in a loosely confederated way, not only had a significant amount of autonomy but fully assimilated into the local populance and ways. Far from "800 years!", "opressive!" these Normans became Irish. IMO republicanism should try to manipulate history between the period of the Norman invasion and the Tudor Protestant revolt to create a highly ambigious but vague conception that the Irish were all enslaved or something during this period, rather than reality. Oh wait?

2. Both can and should be included.

3. Please, I'm aware of the fundamental basics of Irish history. The High Kingship of Ireland was purely ceremonial - in actual fact there were many warring independent Irish kingdoms with their own kings - its a bit like the title Bretwalda, the Mercians in reality didn't control that island either. Even Brian Boru didn't have complete authority when he was High King, the O'Neills still controlled the north (look up Leth Cuinn and Leth Mogha). Completely different to an early modern centralised state like the Tudor's Kingdom of Ireland. PS - I'm half "blow out", not "blow in".

4. Haven't got around to sorting out the history yet. Work in progress.

5. Yes, unfortuently just about all of the article needs improving. However it seems most would rather debate titles than help improve these articles and if anyone tries they get reverted. I'm currently working on something for the Irish state which will take a few months, but by the end it should be approaching GA status. Feel free to assist. - Yorkshirian (talk) 06:40, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Your views are actually quite interesting. Why don't you go ahead and give the article a quick rewrite noting your views on communism, republicanism, organised naturalism, the benefits of Tudor dictatorship, Norman integration under the loose control of the English, ideological theories, savages, cultural development based around the merits of the fief/serf-dom aristocrat, western masculinity, effeminate mope and, of course, the origins of the Freemasons. It is about time this article made GA status after all. (?) ~ R.T.G 16:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

British Isles

As was pointed out before a second revert, this contentious issue has previously been debated here with a resulting consensus that it was not constructive to the article. If you wish for that consensus to change, you should make your case here. RashersTierney (talk) 20:25, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

It is factual that the island of Ireland is the second largest of the two main islands of the British Isles. Therefore it is appropriate that this sentence remains. Qwerta369 (talk) 22:59, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

It is factual that the island of Ireland can be seen from space. Yet, the article does not say so. Something merely being a fact is not sufficient criterion for inclusion in any articles on the encyclopedia.

Adding that Ireland is the second-largest of what some call "British" isles adds little to the article. That Britain itself is the largest of these is not considered sufficiently interesting to be stated even in the article on Britain. Adding it here looks like trouble making.

By all means open up a discussion for why you think it benefits the article to add it. But let's keep the article itself stable while you do so? I'm reverting the article to it's previous state for now. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 01:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Its also under active discussion here. Wikipedia:British Isles Terminology task force. Lets not fork the debate. RashersTierney (talk) 10:14, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Qwerta369, kindly take your flag-waving British jingoist terminology away from this article. Your empire is over. 78.16.231.37 (talk) 17:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Simple facts, not flag waving British jingoist terminology. The fact that British isles isn't included in this article is a result of gross bias from republican editors. They are offended by this fact, so they choose to omit it. Typical fenian bringing up the empire, keep living in the past you twat. Trickyjack (talk) 01:17, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Population

Population seems to be way off, from the sources I can find. It states "5,981,448 (as of 2006)" with out a referance. The two referances I can find https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ei.html and http://www.cso.ie/statistics/Population1901-2006.htm put the estimate at nearly 2million lower. Not really that confident about editing, can someone change this or show a trusted source where the original figure came from. Ta. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.152.233.102 (talk) 10:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

This article is about the island of Ireland (the state named Ireland + Northern Ireland). The statistics you link to are for the state only. That, I assume, makes up the difference. Nuclare (talk) 12:23, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I modified the population data to show under 6 million based on the two statistics and their reference. NI shows an estimate of 1,75 million while the state shows 4.239 million for the 2006 census which together total to just under 6 million for the whole island. Both have citations. ww2censor (talk) 13:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

It is an error to label the "Travellers" an ethnic group. They are not recognized as such72.243.25.170 Cillmore (talk) 21:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)(talk) 21:34, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

"Irish" and "Irish Traveller" are distinct boxes that can be ticked on census forms - North and south. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 00:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Quite right, I do see it on the form. Do not see "Ulster Scots". Is it on the northern form?Cillmore (talk) 17:34, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Misleading scentence in Intro

Politically, the sovereign state of the Republic of Ireland is sometimes described as "Ireland".[3] covers five-sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) covering the remaining one-sixth of the land, located in the northeast.

I propose changing this to: Politically, the sovereign state of the Ireland (offically descrition Republic of Ireland) covers five-sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) covering the remaining one-sixth of the island, located in the northeast.

My reason for this is the version as is currently the case implies that the name of the state is the Republic of Ireland, and that the use of "Ireland" to refer to the state is only a description, whilst the opposite is actually the case. Bh02306069 (talk) 18:46, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree the old version appeared to imply that. I've rewritten the (now two) sentences again to avoid "Ireland is a part of Ireland" type flows for reading purposes. I'd also remove the bit I've put in parenthesis since the official name for ROI is not "must know" info for the introduction but I know it is seen as **crucial** information that **must** be restated at **every** opportunity by many. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 01:41, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

nd the version proposed above suggests that the name of the state is Republic of Ireland and Ireland is only an occasional description! Thats a nonsense. I suggest that it should be "Politically the sovereign state of Ireland covers five sixths if the island etc.--Snowded ^TALK 09:08, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The text currently appearing is: "The Republic of Ireland (usually called Ireland, which is its official name also)..." --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 09:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

"The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia[44] or Scotia". 'Scotia' was a middle ages generalisation of Gaelic speaking people. i.e. it referred to those people both in Scotland and Ireland. The Romans only called Ireland Hibernia and pirates from Ireland raiding Roman controlled Britannia as Scoti. 14:25 4 January 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.46.18.37 (talk) 14:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

RFC: calling Northern Ireland a "country"

An RFC has been opened inviting comment on how to describe Northern Ireland in that article. All comments are welcome. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 22:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Why is it that the size of Ireland is listed as 81,638km2, but when you add up The Four Province's you get 86,576? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.70.32.153 (talk) 00:48, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The Area of Ireland

I don't know if this has been brought up before or not, but the area for the Island of Ireland as stated in this article is highly messed up and contradictory. Firstly we have a seemingly precise area given in the info-box at the start of 81,638.1 square km, this figure is sourced from a UN webpage about islands. Then later in the article it is stated that "The island's area is 84,421 km2", this figure is taken from the official Irish government website. This area is very similar to what you get if you add together the areas for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, i.e. 70,273 + 13,843 = 84,116 square km (though even these figures are slightly contradicted by the government page). And then as if that wasn't enough, this article also has a table of the Provinces of Ireland and lists their areas, but if you add these together you get a new and entirely different figure from the previous ones; Connacht 17,713 + Leinster 19,774 + Munster 24,608 + Ulster 24,481 = 86,576 square km. So, on the extreme small end we have a figure of 81,638.1 square km and at the large end we have 86,576 square km, all in the same article. A difference of nearly 5,000 square km! So... what exactly is the true size of Ireland? --Hibernian (talk) 22:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Almost certainly there are smaller islands off the Irish coast that are part of the Republic of Ireland or of Northern Ireland but were probably not counted by the UN source as part of the island. But it also makes sense to include their area in the area of the main island, and it appears that the Irish government source has either done just that or referred to the union of the areas of the RoI and NI as the island of Ireland. The results would be very similar. I guess that the smaller islands account for the difference of 2,500–3,000 km² between the infobox value and the value in the text / sum of the two countries' areas. The difference of 500 km² seems relatively marginal to me and my be the result of different ways of measuring. E.g. the real area of Ireland changes considerably every minute, due to the tides, and people may have different ways of dealing with this.

As to the sum of the areas of the provinces: I guess either at least one of them is wrong (perhaps we have the area from before some boundary change), or they are overlapping. E.g. if (I don't know if there is such a case) county X belongs almost completely to one of the states, but a fraction belongs to the other, then the state that owns that fraction may, for most purposes, consider X to be part of a neighbour province and count the area with that, while the first state may count all the area to X while being aware that part of it is exterritorial. Such strange things aren't as rare as one would think, and are often not well known outside their neighbourhood. Hans Adler 20:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I thought of the possibility of some of the smaller islands messing up the measurement, but that cannot be the case, as there are only a few tiny islands around Ireland, they couldn't be making up the big discrepancy. Achill Island is the largest outlying island, but it is only 148 square km, and all the others are much smaller than that. I wouldn't be complaining as much if it was just a few hundred sqr km out, but the differences here are an order of magnitude greater than that (nearly 5,000 sqr km, that's the size of 2 or 3 extra counties!). As for the sum of the provinces, this really shouldn't be something difficult to get right, the boundaries of them are well established over hundreds of years and their constituent counties have not changed either (except of-course for the administrative changes in Northern Ireland, but that doesn't effect the "traditional" provinces as they are being talked about in this article). We could try adding up the areas of all the 32 Counties of Ireland and see what figure we get from there (I'm sure it would end up different again). As for the possibility of different measuring methods being used, that might be possible, but there surely must be some internationally agreed upon standard method of measuring area. Otherwise, what's the point in listing areas anywhere on Wikipedia? We must stick to one method or all such measurements become meaningless. There must be more information about this from either Ordnance Survey Ireland or the British Ordnance Survey, I'm sure they would not tolerate such inaccurate measurements. --Hibernian (talk) 14:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No doubt there will be more up-to-date figures to be had, but there are 1901 ones on page 916 on Bartholemew's survey gazetteer of the British Isles. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The original OSI data, which was the date and reference used, disappeared and is not archived which is why I looked for a new relaible source which I added to both Ireland (with this edit)and Geography of Ireland that I worked on for its featured article review and occasionally check its reference links for functionality and reliability by using the Checklinks toolserver]. At that time I added the current data with its reference but did not check the province data against it. In fact only the population from that table is referenced. Obviously we should reconcile this information and it should add up accurately. What other reliable sources do people have for use to use? ww2censor (talk) 18:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, we clearly need new sources for this. As for where to get these sources, I'm not entirely sure, the OSI should be the obvious first look, someone will just have to go looking through their website (or books, or whatever) to find the data. I would suggest that for the moment we should remove the UN figure of 81,638.1 in the info-box and replace it with the Irish government statement of 84,421, as more sources agree with that area and the UN one seems to be an aberration. But that should only be a stopgap measure until really reliable sources can be found. Then there is the matter of defining what we mean by "The Island of Ireland", do we mean just the mainland or do we include all outlying islands as well and where can we get reliable information on that. --Hibernian (talk) 00:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Informal review

 Doing... At ww2censor's request, I'm going to do an informal GA-style review on this article in preparation for a possible formal GA nom. GA criteria are: writing and formatting, accuracy and verifiability, breadth, neutrality, stability, and images. Stability (at least recently) does not appear to be a problem (and isn't really something this sort of review could address anyway). My concerns regarding this article are as follows:

• Writing and formatting:

• Lead is too long (4 paragraphs is the maximum). This shouldn't be too hard to fix, as that last paragraph is really just a sentence tacked on at the end. The lead also seems to emphasize history. While that is an important segment, the lead should exist as a succinct summary of the entire article.  Done
• Section headings: there are a lot of them, and some of them aren't great. I would suggest merging shorter sections where possible. If necessary, you can do what England did and hide subheadings from the TOC. No headings should start with "The", and they should avoid using "Ireland" where possible. Also, "Literature and the arts" is not a good subheading when others in that section mention "Graphic art" or "Music" - these are arts too. Is there a better title?  Done
• Avoid passive tense and ambiguous sentence construction. "Has been" seems a common problem. Prose in general could use some tightening, and some areas are in need of copy-editing.
• Need consistent (probably British) spelling conventions Done

• Accuracy and verifiability:

• Citation density is lacking in places. I would recommend a minimum of one citation per paragraph; most sections will probably need more. In particular, all opinions and statistics must be cited.
• Web references need access dates and publishers, books and journals need page numbers
• You might want to find a few more independent sources to back up potentially contentious claims - a Government of Ireland website will almost certainly be pro-Irish, and thus should be used only for factual information
• Tertiary sources like encyclopedias should be minimized

• Breadth:

• You might include more detail on law, politics, crime, etymology, and education, and a little bit less emphasis on history. Possibly also include communications, food, tourism...

• Neutrality:

• As noted above, all opinions must be cited properly.
• Look at WP:WTA, WP:PEACOCK, and WP:WEASEL - certain words introduce an editorial bias and should be avoided

• Images:

• The lead image is duplicated in template in the History section
• Physical features map is slightly blurry; can the size be adjusted to fix this?
• Red deer.jpg is tagged as lacking source information, and needs a date
• Should "Stone age" be "Stone Age" in the tomb caption, or should "age" be omitted?
• The title of File:Aughnanure Castle (pixinn.net).jpg suggests that it was taken from the internet - source, date and author should be noted
• "The United States" should be "the United States" in the emigrant caption
• Does the treaty count as an artistic work?
• Is there a source for the population graph?
• File:KellsFol292rIncipJohn.jpg is tagged for cleanup
• Source for Newgrange? Caption also needs grammar fixed