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:::I morph into others and use them as my astralpuppets to avoid IP checks. But I'm not admitting anything. <font color="green" size="2" face="Impact">~ [[User:RTG|R]].[[User_Talk:RTG|T]].[[Special:Contributions/RTG|G]]</font> 17:26, 8 October 2011 (UTC) |
:::I morph into others and use them as my astralpuppets to avoid IP checks. But I'm not admitting anything. <font color="green" size="2" face="Impact">~ [[User:RTG|R]].[[User_Talk:RTG|T]].[[Special:Contributions/RTG|G]]</font> 17:26, 8 October 2011 (UTC) |
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:::And by the way, this debate reminds me of the one on [[Gideon]]. The ratio of hits to other articles was much larger, tens of thousands to hundreds in one case, but none could be the definition of what Gideon is except the ancient character himself. <font color="green" size="2" face="Impact">~ [[User:RTG|R]].[[User_Talk:RTG|T]].[[Special:Contributions/RTG|G]]</font> 17:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC) |
:::And by the way, this debate reminds me of the one on [[Gideon]]. The ratio of hits to other articles was much larger, tens of thousands to hundreds in one case, but none could be the definition of what Gideon is except the ancient character himself. <font color="green" size="2" face="Impact">~ [[User:RTG|R]].[[User_Talk:RTG|T]].[[Special:Contributions/RTG|G]]</font> 17:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC) |
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== The problem: "Republic of Ireland" as the name of the state == |
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From the discussion above, regarding the table showing titles on the top twenty Wikipedia sites by article count: |
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{{cquote|I hope pointing to [[Republic of Ireland (term)]] will help you see that the term, along with Eire (the Irish name of the state without an accent over the E) and Southern Ireland to name three were names used by the U.K. governments as part of a very serious effort to dissuade other governments from officially calling the state Ireland. You may have to dig deeper, that is a starting point. Not bizarre and unsubstantiated. If you feel no objections here are serious, then I see no reason to go any further. What can I say as long as you buy the line that "It's all prattle", another argument that is ''truly'' unsubstantiated and prime for crumbling? [[User:Sswonk|Sswonk]] ([[User talk:Sswonk|talk]]) 14:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC) |
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:I am not at all sure that the page you link to supports the point you are trying to make, and unfortunately I cannot access the Daly paper via Jstor. Certainly it provides evidence that the British government used the term 'Republic of Ireland' instead of 'Ireland', but it is not clear that it promoted the use of the term abroad, it remains a fact that in doing so it was using a term adopted as 'the description of the state' by Irish legislation, as opposed to its practice in other cases of using the terms 'Eire' or 'Irish Republic' (which I remember regularly hearing on the BBC not that long ago) and it is still, in my view, an unconscionable leap from that observation to a claim that that practice by the British government renders a term '''stated by Irish legislation to be "the description of the state"''' somehow non-kosher. Furthermore, none of this gets around the other problems, notably the glaring issue that on the basis of your most recent statements you clearly want, not simply to rename the two articles, but to rename the 'Republic of Ireland' article 'Ireland' and include in it much of the sort of general information about Ireland that is currently in (logically enough) the article now entitled 'Ireland'. Apart from the technical issue that this probably turns the question into one of merging and not just renaming, I would be surprised if there were not considerable objections to such an approach from many of the participants in this discussion (not from me, by the way). [[User:ComhairleContaeThirnanOg|ComhairleContaeThirnanOg]] ([[User talk:ComhairleContaeThirnanOg|talk]]) 14:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)}} |
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ComhairleContaeThirnanOg, this is my response to you, but I am also asking readers to take it into account. There is a great deal of difficult reading and thinking required here. It is not something that can be solved on Twitter, or with a few emails sent from a smart phone. I will try to answer your comment here since you have given some thought to what I wrote and I don't want to leave you to wonder about anything there. |
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Before your last comment, and again in part within it, you seem to express doubt that anyone has proposed or taken a position suggesting an article merger of sorts in these discussions. I have more or less done that in previous statements following my vote above. Also, [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ireland_Collaboration/Poll_on_Ireland_article_names/Position_statements/Scolaire|Scolaire]] in fact had a similar position in 2009, and I am not exactly sure why he has now moved to support the "status quo" in his votes and comments here. Regardless, if you look at the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ireland_Collaboration/Poll on Ireland article names|2009 poll]] and also the roll call of membership at [[WP:IECOLL#Members]], you will see that arguments and page moves, and resulting animosity, admin reactions and discussion lockdown regarding the title caused many editors to leave, and in several cases leave Wikipedia entirely. IECOLL had become almost entirely the purview of supporters of the "status quo" due to the persistence of a few editors on this page. The amount of pressure to preserve the name "Republic of Ireland" against the objections of so many other now-absent editors serves as another indicator, as I wrote above, that the title is less than ideal. We have alternatives, and it should be changed, even if not to Ireland with merger. |
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A while ago I did purchase the journal article by Mary E. Daly via the University of Chicago Press and JSTOR. It is not yet available from my public library, which does give access to older articles in the ''Journal of British Studies'' however the cutoff date for free access is just short of 2007, when the article appeared. In time it should be available through library membership. So, I can't provide direct citations but I hope you will trust my paraphrasing and quotation. Daly indeed does cite several examples of the British government promoting the terms I mention to other governments, including much detail involving incidences of that with Canada and Australia. She cites the National Archives of the United Kingdom in writing about the diplomatic situation: "Canada duly came into line with the wishes of Buckingham Palace and the Dominion Office. The Canadian ambassador presented identical letters of credence to those presented by the British ambassador. Australia does not appear to have considered upgrading its representation in Ireland to ambassador until 1953, and by then the Fianna Fáil government was insistent that all credentials (with the possible exception of the British ambassador) should be addressed to the President of Ireland. Australia would only agree to letters giving accreditation to the Republic of Ireland or Dublin. This position was adopted on the advice of the British government, who emphasized that any reference to “Ireland” or the “President of Ireland” would be embarrassing to the British government and to Her Majesty."(p. 88). That is the type of incident I refer to, and Daly concludes by writing "Up to and including the year 1999, the Diplomatic List issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office referred to the Republic of Ireland. Since 2000 it has referred to Ireland, and the credentials presented by the British ambassador, Stewart Eldon, in 2003, were addressed to the President of Ireland."(p. 89). |
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That provides the backdrop to the thinking involved in the article naming that occurred in 2002. A couple of editors involved who "won" that debate were both U.K. residents and took a position similar to that described by Daly whereby Ireland was deemed an unacceptable name for the country. It seems as though, if that is what they were taught up until two years previous by their own government, then it certainly must have informed their judgement. The following boxed section is my response to your questions of seriousness, and of truth regarding the use of the term. Please, refrain from commenting here or within the box and use the area beyond my signature for further discussion. |
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<div style="border:1px solid black;padding:1em;"> |
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==== Wikipedia and the false name ==== |
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In the earliest days of Wikipedia, there was a heated discussion among the early editorial staff when this issue arose. The discussion occured in late November and early December of 2002. The three primary editors involved initially were: |
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* {{User|Renata}} – unnamed editor, a Scot from Edinburgh, still active on Wikipedia. Her position was that naming an article about the state "Ireland" is very offensive to those in the north, and used anecdotal evidence or hearsay to back up her statements.<br/> |
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* {{User|Camembert}} – Lee Pilich, from Doncaster, Yorkshire, no longer active but also prone to see Ireland as an unacceptable title because it could mean either the Republic or Northern Ireland, and thus "politically dodgy to say the least". His view represents that followed by the U.K. up until 1998, only four years before the discussion occurred, a view which formally discouraged the use of Ireland as the name of the state. |
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* {{User|Scipius}} – unnamed editor, a Dutch person from Maastricht. Scipius unfortunately took the view that Ireland would be the title of an article about the current state exclusively and thus was the eventual causative factor of the current situation. This is because of what happened next, which has again unfortunately guided the conversations since that time. |
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[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Republic_of_Ireland&oldid=430140 An example of the thread], from the middle of the most active day of the initial discussions, 17 November 2002. |
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Several editors began arguing against Scipius, but the two others mentioned and especially Camembert provided much of the countepoint argument for the title "Republic of Ireland". The discussion was rather heated during the first few days. An Irish nationalist editor, {{User|Jtdirl}}, also later weighed in against using Ireland. The real decision came from [[Larry Sanger]], at the time still very prominent at the encyclopedia he named "Wikipedia" when he co-founded it with Jimbo Wales. {{User|Larry Sanger}} in typical unapologetic fashion chose the scheme we now have, and in so many words told Scipius to give up trying to have an article about the state called Ireland actually have the title "Ireland". The title Camembert and Renata had used, "Republic of Ireland", was Sanger's choice. Among other reasons, Sanger cited the need to have an article about Ireland that was outside the scope of the current state, using the example of Irish music which he played. |
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The debate at that point became about the wrong thing, and has been hopelessly mired in the strange loop I mentioned above since that time. We ended up with a poorly thought out situation that has yet to be properly addressed. What resulted was a title for the article about the state that is incorrect and misleading, and an article into which inserting much relevant information became highly restricted. That is, the "Republic of Ireland" title refers to an entity that did not exist before 1949, let alone 1922. Yet the rest of the world outside of the class "Wikipedia editorship" treats Ireland as being inclusive of much of the history of previous formations, and Ireland the state as inheritor of the bulk of the history just as it is caretaker of the land. Limerick, Cork and Galway are still in Ireland. The Book of Kells is still in Ireland. The birthplace of James Joyce is still in Dublin, Ireland. Anyway you slice it, those sentences are all true today with the modern state as the meaning of the single word Ireland. It takes a long stretch of the imagination—and plenty of excuse making and disambiguating literary gymnastics—to make it seem as though we have to use "Republic of Ireland" in any of those cases. However, that is where the descriptive term ends up when it is used as a title for the land, country, nation, state, whatever you want to term it, the place now officially and legally called Ireland. On this highly respected [http://www.natgeomaps.com/world_classic_zoomify.html?zoomifyImagePath=assets/files/zoomify/re00622005/re00622005_1_img&zoomifyNavigatorVisible=false map], it is Ireland. Up in the right sextant of the island itself there is the U.K. territory Northern Ireland, but the remainder is unarguably Ireland, the state. That is its name, and that is how the great majority of our outside sources will quite naturally refer to it. Here are lists of some of the most prominent organizations and entities that disagree with using the name "Republic of Ireland" when titling articles about the state. Given that the state itself is certainly involved in some of the decision making about the form of address, or title, which is used by the organizations, I think we can conclude that the state does not view "Republic of Ireland" in the same light as Larry Sanger and those early editors. |
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==== United Nations and European Union ==== |
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* United Nations |
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:{{URL|http://www.un.org/en/members/index.shtml|Member States of the United Nations}} |
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:The list links the name Ireland to the website of the Permanent Mission of Ireland, in New York, at http://www.irelandunnewyork.org. Using the site-specific search tag "site:" on that domain through Google reveals that none of the pages currently contain the phrase "Republic of Ireland". The [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Airelandunnewyork.org+%22Republic+of+Ireland%22 search] shows one link to a previous version of the page, which is no longer how the page reads. The previous version read: "The Republic of Ireland Act of 1948 provides for the description of the State as the Republic of Ireland but this provision has not changed the usage Ireland as the name of the State in the English language." |
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* European Union |
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:{{URL|http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/index_en.htm|Countries}} |
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:Lists the member states of the union, and links to a brief article on the state. Of interest to us is the publications style guide of the union, which is found at: |
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:{{URL|http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-370100.htm|International Style Guide}} |
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:The style guide notes at the bottom of the table are clear about the disposition of the term "Republic of Ireland": ''NB: Do not use ‘Republic of Ireland’ nor ‘Irish Republic’.'' |
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==== Other international organizations ==== |
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{{columns-list|3| |
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* Asian Development Bank<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://beta.adb.org/offices/europe/main|European Representative Office}}<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.adb.org/Documents/Fact_Sheets/IRE.pdf|Asian Development Bank & Ireland – Fact Sheet}} |
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* Council of Europe<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.coe.int/lportal/web/coe-portal/home/country|Navigate by Country}} |
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* Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/51288.htm|Partner Countries}} |
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* European Space Agency<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/About_ESA/SEMW16ARR1F_0.html|About ESA}} |
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* Financial Action Task Force<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.fatf-gafi.org/document/52/0,3746,en_32250379_32236869_34027188_1_1_1_1,00.html|FATF Members and Observers}} |
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* International Olympic Committee<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.olympic.org/national-olympic-committees|204 National Olympic Committees}} |
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* International Organization for Standardization<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.iso.org/iso/about/iso_members.htm|ISO Members}} |
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* International Parliamentary Union<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.ipu.org/english/membshp.htm|Members of the Union}}<br/><br/> |
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* International Telecommunications Union<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.itu.int/cgi-bin/htsh/mm/scripts/membstat|LIST OF ITU MEMBER STATES OFFICIAL DESIGNATIONS}} |
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* Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.oecd.org/countrieslist/0,3025,en_33873108_33844430_1_1_1_1_1,00.html|Member Countries}} |
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* World Intellectual Property Organization<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.wipo.int/members/en/|Member States}} |
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* World Trade Organization<br/> |
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:{{URL|http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm|Members and Observers}} |
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}} |
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==== Web directories and reference publications ==== |
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{{Div col}} |
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* Britannica Online Encyclopedia |
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:{{URL|http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/293754/Ireland|Ireland}} |
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* British Broadcasting Corporation |
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:{{URL|http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm|Country Profiles}} |
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* Infoplease |
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:{{URL|http://www.infoplease.com/countries.html|Countries of the World}} |
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* National Geographic Society |
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:{{URL|http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/|Countries}} |
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* Nations Online Project |
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:{{URL|http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/europe.htm|Europe - European Countries}} |
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* Open Directory Project |
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:{{URL|http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/|Regional}} |
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* United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office |
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:{{URL|http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/country-profile/europe/|Europe}} |
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* United States Central Intelligence Agency |
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:{{URL|https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/wfbExt/region_eur.html|The World Factbook -- Europe}} |
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* United States Department of State |
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:{{URL|http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_4965.html|Country Specific Information}} |
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* WolframAlpha |
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:[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Ireland Ireland] |
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* Yahoo! |
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:{{URL|http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/|Countries in the Yahoo! Directory}} |
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<br/><br/> |
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{{Div col end}} |
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==== British Monarchy ==== |
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In May of 2011, Elizabeth II paid an official state visit to Ireland. A press release announcing her itinerary from the [http://www.royal.gov.uk/LatestNewsandDiary/Pressreleases/2011/AnnouncementofprogrammeforIrelandvisit7April2011.aspx official website of the British Monarchy] refers to the state as Ireland. |
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==== End game ==== |
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Described by me as a good representative list of important websites, the information above shows no use of "Republic of Ireland" as a title nor as a phrase linking to an article. All articles referred to on the sites are entitled "Ireland" which specifically addresses the state itself. This is the expected usage in 2011 of the word Ireland, and Wikipedia stands virtually alone in its misuse of the term "Republic of Ireland" as an article title. Larry Sanger later founded Citizendium, an encyclopedia structured similarly to Wikipedia but quite different in its editorial approach. There, [http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Ireland the article "Ireland"] is a disambiguation page and the article on the state is titled "Ireland (state)". "Republic of Ireland", the description of the state that Wikipedia thinks is the name, is redirected to "Ireland (state)".</div> |
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I hope the response gives you an idea of the amount of thought that has gone into my objections. Many of the others here I am sure have thought about this a great deal. The most difficult presentation but in my mind the one we should work for would be to allow the title Ireland to include the state and also much of the history, as would and does an article about places like France, Germany, Greece and so on, with liberal use of article forking and hatnotes to those forks. Baring that, another solution which was offered as option D in 2009, simply renaming "Republic of Ireland" to "Ireland (state)", would end the incorrect and misleading titling scheme we have now. Without question, in spite of a perceived need to disambiguate the state name, readers are being led to believe that the name of the state is "Republic of Ireland". That is being done by the title and the subsequent use of that title by mirror sites and careless journalists and writers who don't take the time to read or understand that it is not the name of the state. Given the benefit of hindsight, as a group we should not continue to allow that. [[User:Sswonk|Sswonk]] ([[User talk:Sswonk|talk]]) 05:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC) |
Revision as of 05:27, 9 October 2011
Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 |
This page has archives. Sections older than 14 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present. |
Poll on extending ArbCom resolution for two years
Should the ArbCom binding resolution on the appropriate names for Ireland and related articles be extended for a further two years? (10:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC) sign for the rfc bot)
- The Binding resolution reads: Once the procedures discussed in Remedy #1 (and, if necessary, Remedy #2) are implemented, no further page moves discussions related to these articles shall be initiated for a period of 2 years.
- The procedures discussed in Remedy #1 and Remedy #2 were deemed to have been implemented on 18 September 2009. The result was: no page move for Ireland, Republic of Ireland or Ireland (disambiguation).
Survey
- Please indicate support or oppose below. Please keep any comments brief, and do not respond to other participants' comments below their !vote. General discussion should be confined to the "Discussion" section below.
Support extending the resolution
- Support, unless it emerges from the discussion that consensus has changed. --Scolaire (talk) 10:08, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support From what I can see nothing material has changed. Mtking (edits) 10:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support TBH, the usage of the pipe-link (adopted during the 2-yr ban) seems the best solution of all. GoodDay (talk) 13:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support No need to change it. It works fine as it is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it and all that. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 15:02, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support Why drag up the same old arguments that never lead to a consensus to change anything? It wastes time from constructive editing and angers many. It works as it is even if it is not ideal and there will likely never be an ideal solution. ww2censor (talk) 15:49, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. JonCTalk 18:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- See, when an authority just says "this is how it is", then there's no more fighting and wasting of time. If we lift the ban, then we go back to wasting time arguing and whatnot. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. As nothing has changed to the situation. Keith D (talk) 20:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Can't see any different outcome emerging than the status quo. Mooretwin (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. No reason why we should change. Mabuska (talk) 11:59, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. The facts have not changed, so why would I change my mind? Djegan (talk) 18:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Nothing has changed. Pipelinking works. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support per Fetchcomms. — Kudu ~I/O~ 21:49, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Status quo is fine. Nightw 14:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. For the reasons I have already given in the poll below, I believe that the status quo is the best solution. Whatever we decide should be binding for a longish period of time. And if we can get a majority for the status quo right now without further discussion, then there is very little chance that one of the proposed alternatives will win and we can save us further excitement. Hans Adler 14:26, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Stable solution seems to be working well. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 02:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. ~Asarlaí 04:54, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support - Nothing has changed since the last time this was extensively debated and a very large poll was conducted which included many people who had not been involved in the dispute before, the poll came to a very clear conclusion. This matter has now been stable for two years compared to the mess that existed before and continuing with that stability is the best option rather than rehashing old arguments. The only time this matter needs to be reopened is if there is a constitutional change to the current makeup of the island of Ireland. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:42, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. There is no indication that there has been a significant change in the real world. Dingo1729 (talk) 02:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Nothing has changed. Kittybrewster ☎ 12:59, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. The situation is the same as previously. --Kwekubo (talk) 14:50, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support because 1. the situation is, as Kwekubo says, the same as previously, and 2. prolonging the prohibition is possibly the simplest way of dealing with the issue, and presumably will not itself be agreed to if consensus on the substantial issue has changed in the meantime. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 00:35, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Oppose extending the resolution
- Oppose - there was an implication in the original resolution that the limit of the ban would be 2 years. The WP way is to then discuss the problem, not to WP:VOTE. I don't believe that the wider community would choose a vote by default. This issue needs discussion. It can be time-limited. I have suggested 6 weeks (including a binding poll at the end). It seems to me that is a very reasonable expectation. Extending the ban will only mask the issue. Discussion may actually find a lasting solution. Fmph (talk) 10:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Whilst I accept that this will bring on all the usual battle-ground warriors to trot out their positions, it nevertheless remains a blatant example of avoiding a global en-commonname for an important UN-recognised nation-state and EU member in order (apparently) to satisfy a mixture of the POVs of extremely small minority opinions over-represented in Wikipedia arguments about the subject and confusion about how to handle article names in a situation where a commonname is spread across a number of possible article locations but is dominantly used in one prime context. It is plausible that sufficient active Wikipedians with a realisation of this will choose to involve themselves this time to sort the problem out. Then, hey-ho, on to China! Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:18, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose, as I oppose the need for any sort of gag restriction on project participants. Discussion of the naming of the two articles and disambiguation page should be open and free, or in other words unrestricted in perpetuity. This ban on discussion has served the purpose of exposing a severe level of immaturity in the way the en.wikipedia.org project handles contentious naming issues. The now-expired restrictions on discussion should die and not ever be reconsidered, they are in a word, silly. Consideration of any time limit on discussion is similarly described. Adopting the outright suppression of opinion as a rule never solves anything in the real world and certainly fails here; it amounts to officially pretending away differing perspectives. Sswonk (talk) 14:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose, as this isn't the poll that the community !voted on a mere 10 days ago. In fact, this wasn't even a choice. The choice selected didn't have a time period of 2 years, and was to test whether to retain the status quo, or not. --HighKing (talk) 23:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose - For two reasons: (1) Two years is ample time for an embargo. The WP process is to have open discussions, even if they are lively. Continuing to ban discussions is contrary to the WP way. (2) The China article is not about the country of China, and there was an RfC on it a month ago, and I was going to use Ireland as an example of why China should be moved, but I could not, because the current status of the Ireland article undermined my argument. I was surprised to see that Ireland was not an article about the country. So, although I am impartial on Irish politics, the current status of the Ireland article is setting a bad precedent for other WP decisions. --Noleander (talk) 00:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The ban has expired! We should be doing RMs and discussing article title options. Instead, we are discussing whether we can vote on a proposal, that, if rejected, might allow us to discuss these issues, provided that Arbcom concurs, following further discussion, of course. I suggest a three option-RM for Republic of Ireland (RoI, Ireland, Ireland (state)). Editors can give their first and second choices. There would be a separate RM on the Ireland article in the same form (Island of Ireland, Ireland (island), Ireland). In the unlikely event that both articles are approved for the lemma "Ireland", then we'd need a tiebreaker. After that, the ban on page moves can be restored, since without one many editors seem to get anxious. Kauffner (talk) 00:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. With the ban expired it is probably time to consider options, maybe now there is consensus in support of one of those options, who knows, the only way to find out is through discussion (and straw polls). Consensus may have changed, and it seems most in line with WP policies to discuss the matter, try to build consensus, and go from there. Having the community vote to extend the ban seems like leap-frogging to me. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 02:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose It needs a structured discussion, ideally mediated through Arbcom --Snowded TALK 05:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose, any such discussion will probably require hands-on mediation, but I don't see any reason to suppress the topic.--Kotniski (talk) 06:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose seems worthy of a structured discussion similar to that conducted on Talk:China over the last few weeks/months. I suggest listing the arguments for the different options in a table and listing what sources use the term "Ireland" to refer to. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose This issue needs to be resolved, there is no need for an extension. Tebibyte (talk) 10:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose - very reluctantly. I agree wholeheartedly with the key "support" arguments: the status quo works reasonably well, the same old issues are going to be brought to the fore again, whatever discussion takes place will be ludicrously heated, divisive, and probably result in no consensus, and it will be a horrific waste of time that would be much better spent contributing to Wikipedia in more constructive ways. BUT as a supporter of free speech if people really want to waste their time in that way then they should be allowed to - but only for a time limited period. I would also suggest that whatever decision is made at the end of that period is binding for 5-10 years or more unless the community agrees that something significant has changed in the meantime; the last two years seem to have gone by very quickly indeed and repeating this every two years is too frequent. waggers (talk) 11:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. We should just see whether people can deal with this in the standard fashion now before going back to Arbcom. If it is still disruptive in a couple of months then this can be reconsidered. Personally I'd first ask for any disruptive people to be topic banned. Dmcq (talk) 15:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose Further banning discussion would be completely against the basic ideals of wikipedia. 89.100.150.198 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:19, 20 September 2011 (UTC).
- Should we be allowing votes from unregisterd users? ~Asarlaí 12:35, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The non-partisan consensus on China is that it should be the article for the People's Republic. That precedent is clearly applicable in this case. In a similar vein, I note that the article for the French Republic is France despite the hexagon containing two states and the article for the Italian Republic is Italy despite the boot containing three states. Arbcom should be invited to determine whether this discussion is being dominated by UK Wikipedians and whether the discussion and decision should be left to non-partisan wikipedians. --Red King (talk) 15:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Wiki naming decisions in relation to Ireland and "British" Isles are becoming increasingly archaic and at variance with common acceptable usage. The current naming is supported for political reasons that have no place in an encyclopaedia. (And literally don't have any place in most encyclopaedias) Sarah777 (talk) 00:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The status quo was not satisfactory two years ago, and it isn't satisfactory now. -- Evertype·✆ 17:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Its worth another shot at a time-limited discussion (especially as a number of the most intransigent editors appear to have moved on). Once that is complete, whatever the outcome, then is the time to reimpose the resolution. Rockpocket 21:46, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. I had hoped to avoid this dispute, but it cannot be ignored forever. The objective reality is that on this issue Wikipedia is wrong. Irrespective of what the majority here say. To vote is a most inappropriate method of settling this dispute, it is simply mob rule. It does not become an encyclopaedia. The ‘status quo’ is wrong; therefore to retain the status quo is wrong. Just as the arbitration to impose the status quo two years ago was wrong. I am not optimistic that this error will now be reversed. One can but hope. If you fail then try again and if you fail, fail better. Lugnad (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. We will only discover whether consensus has changed or not through discussion. Continuing the gagging order is plain wrong. Daicaregos (talk) 13:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose Why continue a status quo when the title Republic of Ireland clearly does not find favour with everybody? We need another debate on the issue.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose I think the options should be discussed again. I for one was not involved in the discussions two years ago, I am sure that are many others like me. A novel option would be to do a couple switch for another two years and then discuss which works best! I also believe that options such as discussed [Talk:Republic_of_Ireland#Display_title here] might be a solution to the problem. Bjmullan (talk) 16:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose talk about it first. Bogger (talk) 16:53, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- I prefer the status quo to Ireland and Ireland (island). It would therefore be easy for me to support this to achieve my preference. But while I think it is correct to set boundaries on the frequency at which we have this discussion, to extend a gagging order in perpetuity would undermine the legitimacy of the current solution. Let's talk about it, hopefully reach consensus, and then consider how long we should leave it before we discuss the matter again. —WFC— 15:46, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose - kicking the can down the road is pointless. Snappy (talk) 19:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose - it's a total, absolute, utter, insulting, mind-boggling farce that Ireland isn't under its proper name. Dickdock (talk) 07:55, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- From a procedural point of view only. The resolution was for 2 years, so a discussion on whether consensus still exists should at least take place first. I don't look forward to the discussion and think it will get pretty ugly (It might end up at ArbCom again, I really would't be surprised) but the discussion should at least happen. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 20:22, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. I don't plan to get involved in the naming dispute, but clearly Wikipedia should not employ the Ostrich effect forever. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:13, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Discussion
- All reasonable discussion is welcomed, but simple re-hashing of old arguments is discouraged. Participants are reminded not to engage in incivility or other disruptive behaviour.
- I would consider Option G above to be a non-starter. Although the phrase "island of Ireland" is not uncommonly used, nobody lives in "island of Ireland", nobody visits "island of Ireland" and nobody's forbears came from "island of Ireland". Ghits do not determine common name, and "island of Ireland" is not a common name for the country (and yes, as many participants will know, I consider the island of Ireland to be a country). Scolaire (talk) 10:23, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Very much agree with Scolaire on this. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- Comment - this 'poll' needs to be widely advertised across the project in order to achieve real consensus. I'd suggest the same venues that were used in the last poll plus any appropriate projects or community venues which have appeared in the last 2 years or so. I don't have any in mind but maybe there are some that others would like added. Should we create a list somewhere and split the workload between us? Fmph (talk) 10:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- I agree about notifying people. Somewhere in the discussion preceding the previous poll there is a list of talk pages/projects notified. If you can find a diff I would be willing to post to some of them. Scolaire (talk) 10:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Found it - here - but it's crazy long! I have notified IMOS, WikiProject Ireland, WikiProject Northern Ireland, Talk:British Isles, Talk:Ireland, Talk:Republic of Ireland and Talk:Ireland (disambiguation). That's as much as I'm doing. Scolaire (talk) 11:24, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- I've added it to WP:CENT also. --RA (talk) 11:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- I've done everything on that list except the last one - Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ireland_Collaboration#Member_list - if someone else could take that on I'd appreciate it. We wouldn't want any "I didn't know!" issues later. Fmph (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Leaving the 3 articles-in-question in their current name & continuing with the pipe-link usage throughout the 'pedia, seems the least dramatic route. GoodDay (talk) 14:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Northern. Find it. What are the most significant things about Ireland? I have two answers. Where is the reflection of that? If there is no interest in reflecting that, we have an excellent indication of flaw and inadequacy. If you can make it your business to keep ignoring that, this discussion and any outcome from it will lack basic validity all the way through, and I will always be right. ~ R.T.G 18:03, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Rather than closing the door - which I would vote for if the current options were the only ones - perhaps *brand new* solutions should be allowed and even encouraged? And Scolaire is right about Plan G. Angus McLellan (Talk) 20:47, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Comment - I find it difficult to believe that this poll was opened in Good Faith, as it wasn't even an option on the community poll held 10 days ago. It's an example of a certain group of editors (or editor) acting in the same way we've seen 2 years ago - it causes division and ups the ante on disruption - which is exactly the disruption that Arbcom is most likely to sanction. --HighKing (talk) 23:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Consensus cannot stop discussions - A Talk page poll cannot ban subsequent discussions & proposals. Only the Arbcom can do that. Even if 50 editors here were to unanimously agree to ban Move discussions for a further two years, another editor can pop up a couple of months from now and sucessfully challenge that ban (see WP:Consensus can change). Consensus cannot override WP policy, and WP policy is that editors can discuss renaming articles. If editors wish to extend the ban, the best avenue would be to ask the Arbcom to extend it: then it would have some teeth. --Noleander (talk) 01:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- seconded Take it to ArbCom is you want an extension, a community consensus cannot ban a regular process.--Cerejota (talk) 01:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- It was, see here, ArbCom sent it back here. Mtking (edits) 01:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- They said they are watching and seeing, not that the result will be law. There is a difference...--Cerejota (talk) 02:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- [edit conflict] Hmmm. That Arbcom clarification request is rather vague. It does not say "Arbcom will extend ban 2 years"; nor does it say "Arbcom will extend 2 years, provided the extension gets a majority vote in a poll on the Talk". In fact, that clarification request does not even focus on extending the ban, it just vaguely asks "what happens now that the first two year period is over?". The Arbcom, in reply, says: "Discuss it on the Talk page, and the Arbcom will monitor that and perhaps decide to do something (or not)". So this Talk page discussion is really about providing more input to Arbcom so they can decide to extend the ban, or not. Bottom line: it is still true that only Arbcom can extend the ban. --Noleander (talk) 02:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- It was, see here, ArbCom sent it back here. Mtking (edits) 01:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- seconded Take it to ArbCom is you want an extension, a community consensus cannot ban a regular process.--Cerejota (talk) 01:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
In hindsight, I believe we asked the wrong quetion. To those who followed the rather desultory discussion on this page the question made perfect sense; to anybody coming cold from the RfC or Centralized discussion page it will make no sense at all. Why just ban discussion on something for no obvious reason? I would have no problem with this RfC being closed early and the project members (minus me this time) working on an alternative. Scolaire (talk) 07:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- It's obvious that Northern Ireland has been overlooked in what has already become page after page of tirade. If people don't think it significant they must be idiots. Sorry. I'm absolutely right here. It doesn't seem to have been even thought about and shows not only a vast gulf in culture and awareness, but faliure to rcognise that gulf as significant. Ireland is a place where you will find Northern Ireland. It shouldn't matter if people percieve themselves as Irish. In the time since the last discussions on this point I have watched numerous documentaries and studies, some broadcast on RTE showing us that people of Ireland and Britain are more closely related through genetics than they are to any other groups. That goes for Irelands Catelonian genetic heritage and Britains non-celtic heritage. It's there. The people are one of it. I am not talking about hunting down the Northern Irish for their *opinions*. No consideration is given at all here or before to the fact that they and it are woven in to this fabric. There are sufficient sources to debate what is right or wrong. This is not politics. We do not need people who make the best noise. We need research and development. Anything short of that is farcical. I want to see the opinions, but they will count for naught with me without proper examination. Every person with something strong to say should roll in on this or they should roll on. There is an elephant in the room and he wants TWO sugars, without any trouble, please. ~ R.T.G 12:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Closure
can I suggest that this poll should be closed now with no consensus. That would leave the second poll and other discussions still active below. Just a bit of obvious housekeeping IMHO. This is not going anywhere now. Fmph (talk) 19:37, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- Close it. GoodDay (talk) 19:42, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with closing it, and not necessarily as "no consensus". On the strength of the arguments it may well be considered a win for "oppose". Scolaire (talk) 23:37, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- Majority doesn't equal WP:Consensus. Fmph (talk) 06:15, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with closing it, and not necessarily as "no consensus". On the strength of the arguments it may well be considered a win for "oppose". Scolaire (talk) 23:37, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- There's no consensus to extend the gag order. GoodDay (talk) 17:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Poll to see if people want to retain the status quo.
This is a poll, as agreed above, to test consensus to retain the status quo on the naming of the Ireland and Republic of Ireland articles, for another yet-to-be-agreed period of time, or to consider other options. People are free to change their minds during the poll. I suggest the poll closes on midnight 30th September, or when 24hours pass with no further !votes made, whichever is soonest. Please do not comment in the support or oppose sections - use the comment section further down. --HighKing (talk) 09:24, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Support retaining the status quo
- Support retaining the status quo. I don't see a consensus to change yet although Option G above has some merit. --HighKing (talk) 23:31, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support retaining the status quo. Mtking (edits) 02:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support It satisfies Wikipedia:Article titles and Wikipedia:Disambiguation. In particular, see disambiguating broad concepts. In this instance, Ireland is the broad concept. The Republic of Ireland (and Northern Ireland) flow from that and only occupies a small subset of that topic. There is a tendency to see states and politics as definitive in these topics areas. It is not. This is a general encyclopedia, topics such as the arts, history, geography, religion, culutre, and so on are as just as definitive. The distinction between Ireland/Republic of Ireland is also a natural one. Its use in the MOS has consensus and makes sense. Ultimately though, the current system works. It developed naturally from the original Ireland article in 2002. Any new proposal is asking us to accept a pig in a poke. It's an unknown, whereas the current arrangement works, even if some editors are (for whatever reason) grated upon by the title Republic of Ireland. --RA (talk) 08:19, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support Current system works best at the moment in my opinion. Mabuska (talk) 11:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support, again. JonCTalk 11:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support, let the pipe-links do the job. GoodDay (talk) 12:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support, I don't see the sense in implying Northern Ireland to be within the republic when it is not, and a few other things. I didn't say I wouldn't like Northern Ireland to be part of the republic or something like that. It's extremely important to watch that the "something like that" option remains apparent. There will always be significant relations between the north and south in this regard bar some currently inconsequential or hypothetical occurence. We have all voted our sovereignty away (or had it manipulated and extracted if you don't like the wool). In any case, the sovereign state should not gain creedence for being a sovereign state and nothing more if there are other considerations. The sovereign state, like the bible, is not God, or Jesus, or the Holy Roman Empire. We need to be able to know that. That's not a bad reflection on the state, it's a GOOD REFLECTION UPON THAT WHICH BEARS ITS WEIGHT. Please, reflect kindly on us all. I find it as important as anything else. ~ R.T.G 12:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Incredibly, RTG has said something that I agree with! The "sovereign state" should not be the primary meaning by virtue of the fact that it is a sovereign state and nothing more. There are other considerations. Scolaire (talk) 13:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. I haven't seen a better solution. Also I suspect most people who type in Ireland are more interested in their holidays or the island as a whole as where their ancestors came from rather than the politics, and if they are interested in the politics that'll be more about Northern Ireland than the differences between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I guess a lot might also type 'economy Ireland' unfortunately but that wouldn't go to one of these either. Dmcq (talk) 15:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- There are differences between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael? BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. The facts have not changed, so why would I change my mind? Djegan (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Nothing has changed. Pipelinking works. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Not because I am not keen on another discussion, but because I think the status quo is the best solution. (1) The island is the more general concept, of which the two countries can be regarded as subtopics. (2) "Republic of Ireland" is a much more natural disambiguator than "Island of Ireland" or "Ireland (island)", and it's the one used in the real world. (3) The state's name "Ireland" expresses a claim to the entire island. The only way to consider "Republic of Ireland" to be defensive would be if you support this claim. Per NPOV, that's not the kind of position we should go out of our way to support. Hans Adler 21:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Nothing has changed in the last couple of years. While I´ve no objection to an Ireland (state) article, I believe ROI to be the best dab. Valenciano (talk) 15:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support retaining the staus quo. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 02:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. ~Asarlaí 04:55, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Have we not already had this poll above? Mooretwin (talk) 11:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support The status quo is the fairest and most stable option. There are no new arguments to justify a change. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support On the two key questions I haven't seen anything convincing that the state is overwhelmingly meant over the island when someone says "Ireland" - most usage does not stop to specify or need to - and a natural disambiguator is preferable to parenthesis, especially when it's one used by the state itself and the main objections to using it put forward last time boiled down to "Some Wikpedia editors don't like it". Timrollpickering (talk) 10:46, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- While I agree with almost everything else you've said, I dont think its fair to characterise those that oppose the use of RoI of just not liking it. Opposition is much more fundamental than that. It really fails WP:POVTITLE and WP:NDESC in many people's eyes, and WP:AGF really requires us to accept the legitimacy of the POV.Fmph (talk) 11:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- During the poll two years ago the precise question was put and the answers given were rooted precisely in some editors being opposed to using the term. This contemporary comment (from an Irish editor) sums it up well:
I have yet to see a simple and clear statement from any of the opponents of RoI which plausibly explains why it is so unacceptable. There are subsidiary arguments, such as the fact the 1948 Act makes RoI the description, not the name ... but that's a technical point which evades the core problem of RoI-opponents, viz. that they find it offensive. This has puzzled me throughout, and it has been the elephant in the room throughout the process: the central question which has never been adequately addressed. If those opposed to RoI had addressed this directly instead of shielding behind technical arguments, we might have gotten a deeper understanding of each other's positions. But that didn't happen, so we are where we are...
Now there are other arguments about but frankly those were not really put and/or they weren't addressing the counter points (mainly use by the government of the state). When the main argument put forward on this specific point was rooted in preventing disruption it naturally did not sway editors who might otherwise have been persuaded to switch their support. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)- I read the same arguments and discussions (on both sides) and I understood why some people found it offensive. It was only recently that I understood that WP allows for this in both WP:POVTITLE and WP:NDESC. I wasn't aware of that last time. That doesn't mean that those editors who found it offensive, but were unaware of WP:POVTITLE and WP:NDESC were making invalid points. They weren't. They just did not know their way around WP sufficiently to be aware of these 2 guideline points. They found it offensive then, They find it offensive now. That is acceptable and is allowed for under those two guidelines. It's not because they just don't like it.Fmph (talk) 14:24, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- During the poll two years ago the precise question was put and the answers given were rooted precisely in some editors being opposed to using the term. This contemporary comment (from an Irish editor) sums it up well:
- While I agree with almost everything else you've said, I dont think its fair to characterise those that oppose the use of RoI of just not liking it. Opposition is much more fundamental than that. It really fails WP:POVTITLE and WP:NDESC in many people's eyes, and WP:AGF really requires us to accept the legitimacy of the POV.Fmph (talk) 11:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Status quo is fine. Nightw 12:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. Status quo is fine. Kittybrewster ☎ 13:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support - We are not required to use the strict, legal title when naming articles; hence South Korea, for example. "Republic of Ireland" is a good natural disambiguator, and is widely used by Irish people and by the Irish government whenever it is necessary to distinguish between the state and the island. I really don't think there's any controversy about it other than on Wikipedia. Iota (talk) 11:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Some support. I support the status quo as regards Ireland but I'm otherwise agnostic as regards the naming of the article currently at Republic of Ireland. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:28, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Partly because the alternative name of Ireland would be to use Ireland (island) or Island of Ireland. Partly because the Irish constitution recognises as a second choice and international usage tends to favour Republic of Ireland. Notwithstanding that, surely those who regard or would like the entire island to be one country would want Ireland to discuss the history, demographics etc of the entire island? For those reasons, I think the status quo comes as close to balancing the conflicting views as we are likely to come. —WFC— 16:26, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- Support. But how and when do we agree on the period of time involved? Oh, and in deference to the instructions above, I have placed my lengthy and eloquent comments down below those other comments forcibly moved down from the votes of those not deferring to the instructions, although I am not sure whether anyone will see them there. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Oppose retaining the status quo
- Given that we're generously told that we're allowed to change our minds, I'll state my starting preference: Ireland (island) and Ireland (country). With Ireland itself redirected to whichever of them turns out to be the more popular article (but with links to that title being repaired as if it were a dab page). [And with the possibility of these articles being a standard-bearer for the idea, once floated before, of treating disambiguators as subtitles rather than a full part of the title, i.e. displaying them in smaller type next to or beneath the actual title.]--Kotniski (talk) 07:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose I am here to officially and cheerfully oppose the continuation of the current naming scheme or "status quo". I will continue the good feeling with thoughts in the "Comments" section below; there, I will offer a detailed explanation of why I feel the name, or title, of the article about the nation which became independent in 1922 and adopted its present constitution in 1937 should be Ireland and the title of the article about the geographical physical body of land should be the one with the disambiguation added, as Ireland (island). This was known as option B when a vote was taken here in 2009, and it polled fourth in that STV-system poll. But, I feel it will prevail in time. (addendum) Ireland should always be the title of an article, be it the island or the state; Ireland (state) is my preference if the island retains the concise title. Sswonk (talk) 03:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC), statement revised 03:04, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose I recommend articles titles of Ireland (island) and Ireland (republic). The term Ireland would initially be a DAB and would be retargeted when relevant page view stats became available. Two problems with the current setup: Titling the island article as simply "Ireland" goes against the practice of other reference books and causes readers who are seeking the article about the Republic to selected a sub-optimal article. Titling the article about the Republic as "Republic of Ireland" misleads readers into thinking that this is a long-form official name. Kauffner (talk) 07:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The status quo on China is about to/has change(d) and exactly the same arguments apply here. --Red King (talk) 15:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The current naming policies are re Ireland and "British" Isles are increasingly a situation supported by a pov which, thought a majority on En Wiki (where so many Irish editors previously engaged on the topic have left or been banned) is, in fact, a tiny out-of-touch minority in the real world. Sarah777 (talk) 00:35, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The article at Ireland should be abut the island, the article about the state should be at Ireland (state), and Ireland (disambiguation) should remain unchanged. In fact, why not re-run the whole poll? -- Evertype·✆ 17:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. My preference would be something along the lines of Ireland and Ireland (island), details of which could be decided at the end of the discussion. ★KEYS★ (talk) 22:49, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. My preference is Ireland (island) and Ireland (republic).Malke 2010 (talk) 02:42, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Nobody from Ireland, when asked his or her place of origin, ever answers Republic of Ireland. Just plain, unadorned Ireland is the normal response that is given. The article which is currently saddled with the cumbersome ROI should be renamed Ireland (country). State might confuse readers. --Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 07:17, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- If you were in a position where you needed to make the distinction that you were from the republic, that is the term you would use, not "I'm from Ireland, but not the north. (or island)" You'd say, "I am from the Republic of Ireland," or "The South," or something that matches. Obviously you are not familiar with such a situation. How do you reason the same opinion without claiming you have no care or requisite to distinguish, and if that be the case, if you do not need to distinguish, aren't you claiming to be from the island when you answer "from Ireland"? It is not for me to detract from a wish to be distinguished as from the republic. It is for me to detract when a claim of a northerner being from Ireland is made less clear than I assume it naturally should be. I find refusal to acknowledge this to be selfish and witholding in respect to Irelands northerners. I've read your user page a long time ago as I recall, and don't recall attributing you as such so I'd even fancy bringing this to your attention to see what you might say because the northerner should have every chance to be from "plain, unadorned Ireland" in my view and no quarter should be given to any person from any state to cast a shadow of doubt upon that for any reason. It's what we call a birthright. It amazes me that this debate does not provoke outrage from many northerners, but their silence here cannot cast doubt on the fact that the large number of people in the north who find it important to identify as Irish rightfully, and harmlessly, are given every... what's the word? It's protected by our laws no matter what part of the island you are from. It's a fact of life Miss and I do not see how you, or anyone, can justify denying that. Again, I'd like you to try including the relevance of the northerners birthright, even by claiming it to be irrelevant. ~ R.T.G 22:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with Jeanne Boleyne that, in general, "[n]obody from Ireland, when asked his or her place of origin, ever answers Republic of Ireland", but some do answer Northern Ireland and those who don't often immediately get asked whether they are from 'northern Ireland or southern Ireland'. At least the latter is my experience, and I can't say I like it given that I'm a proud native of eastern Ireland. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 02:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- If you were in a position where you needed to make the distinction that you were from the republic, that is the term you would use, not "I'm from Ireland, but not the north. (or island)" You'd say, "I am from the Republic of Ireland," or "The South," or something that matches. Obviously you are not familiar with such a situation. How do you reason the same opinion without claiming you have no care or requisite to distinguish, and if that be the case, if you do not need to distinguish, aren't you claiming to be from the island when you answer "from Ireland"? It is not for me to detract from a wish to be distinguished as from the republic. It is for me to detract when a claim of a northerner being from Ireland is made less clear than I assume it naturally should be. I find refusal to acknowledge this to be selfish and witholding in respect to Irelands northerners. I've read your user page a long time ago as I recall, and don't recall attributing you as such so I'd even fancy bringing this to your attention to see what you might say because the northerner should have every chance to be from "plain, unadorned Ireland" in my view and no quarter should be given to any person from any state to cast a shadow of doubt upon that for any reason. It's what we call a birthright. It amazes me that this debate does not provoke outrage from many northerners, but their silence here cannot cast doubt on the fact that the large number of people in the north who find it important to identify as Irish rightfully, and harmlessly, are given every... what's the word? It's protected by our laws no matter what part of the island you are from. It's a fact of life Miss and I do not see how you, or anyone, can justify denying that. Again, I'd like you to try including the relevance of the northerners birthright, even by claiming it to be irrelevant. ~ R.T.G 22:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Agree w/Jeanne Boleyn. I'm amending my preference to Ireland (island) and Ireland (country). Malke 2010 (talk) 16:53, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The internationally accepted name of the state named Ireland is Ireland. This is an indisputable fact, no matter how many British people falsely claim that the state is named the "Irish Republic". It is only the prejudices of British people which is refusing to recognise or accept this. This is patently an absurd situation that such people can determine the name of this article on Wikipedia. If we are to seek a fair solution to all it would be something like 'Ireland (state)' and 'Ireland (country)'. 109.77.9.3 (talk) 20:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Nobody here, is suggesting the country article title be moved to Irish Republic. Also, I'm in favour of the status-quo & I'm not British. GoodDay (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- From the number of times the British media refer to the internationally recognised state named Ireland as "Irish Republic", I would not be surprised if they wanted to institutionalise their ignorance and name the state properly called Ireland as the "Irish Republic". As for the country of Ireland, even they cannot claim that to be synonymous with "Irish Republic", considering they are still ruling 6 of the 32 counties of the country named Ireland. Also, for somebody who's not British you seem to have a very unhealthy love affair going on with Britain and defending British names for places beyond Britain regardless of the feelings of the indigenous population - "British Isles"? 109.77.9.3 (talk) 22:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Nobody here, is suggesting the country article title be moved to Irish Republic. Also, I'm in favour of the status-quo & I'm not British. GoodDay (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Interesting contradictions. You appear to be acknowleding that the country of Ireland is more than 26 counties, yet are supporting the designation of those 26 counties as "Ireland". Mooretwin (talk) 08:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
- The British Isles are named after the indigenous (Celtic) Britons, not the British state which has only existed since 1707. JonCTalk 10:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Comments
- Comments - I'm starting the poll that was actually agreed to as "Option 5" above, rather than the version above which wasn't even an option. --HighKing (talk) 23:31, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Isn't this poll redundant with the RfC immediately above? Or is there some subtle difference I'm missing? I ask because uninvolved editors (such as myself) that monitor RfCs are likely to repsond to the RfC above, but may not see this poll. --Noleander (talk) 00:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Good question. If you scroll up to about here you'll see that the community discussed what to do on Sept 18th, and the agreed next step was to have a simple poll to see if there was a consensus to change - i.e. Retail the status quo. There was a suggestion to introduce a time period or to extend the Arbcom ban, but this isn't what was selected as a choice. It seems now that there's a group of pro-status-quo editors who want to shut down any discussions or options, and introduce another 2 year ban. There's absolutely no reason for it. I find it amusing though, that republicans and loyalists have at least found something they agree on, even if its for wildly different reasons. But as a tactic, it's poor form and doesn't serve the project. Hopefully the wider community will see this tactic for what it is. --HighKing (talk) 00:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Okay, I see that the RfC to extend the moratorium is slightly different from the poll, which is simply asking to leave things as-is (or not). But what good is such a poll? Even if the poll !votes to retain the status quo, after a month goes by, anyone can suggest a new proposal, relying on the WP dictum that "consensus can change". The only way the poll's results could have some longevity is if it contains a duration of some sorts, which is what the RfC includes. Anyway, I guess there is no problem with having both the poll and RfC, but it seems a bit confusing. --Noleander (talk)
- As far as I was aware, the idea was to formulate an extremely light-weight and quick way to test consensus rather than rehash the discussions which most of the older participants are already very familiar with. If consensus is tested, and status quo remains, then the community could decide to desist from discussing name changes for a period of time (which I wouldn't imagine would be for 2 years), and to even create a page containing the "arguments" for each "option" so that editors wouldn't have to rehash the same stuff over and over, but could simply consider new arguments. Then, if consensus changes, we discuss options. --HighKing (talk) 00:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Agreed. It would be sensible, assuming it does come back for more "discussion", for people to put effort into neatly summarising the main alternatives and their pros and cons in table form and if this work has already been done, recovering it from the archives, rather than numerous pointless rehashes of the debate in unstructured ways. The table of pros and cons at Talk:China#Pro-Con_table is a good example of how to manage it better. Then people can look at a definitive list of the alternates. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- As far as I was aware, the idea was to formulate an extremely light-weight and quick way to test consensus rather than rehash the discussions which most of the older participants are already very familiar with. If consensus is tested, and status quo remains, then the community could decide to desist from discussing name changes for a period of time (which I wouldn't imagine would be for 2 years), and to even create a page containing the "arguments" for each "option" so that editors wouldn't have to rehash the same stuff over and over, but could simply consider new arguments. Then, if consensus changes, we discuss options. --HighKing (talk) 00:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Okay, I see that the RfC to extend the moratorium is slightly different from the poll, which is simply asking to leave things as-is (or not). But what good is such a poll? Even if the poll !votes to retain the status quo, after a month goes by, anyone can suggest a new proposal, relying on the WP dictum that "consensus can change". The only way the poll's results could have some longevity is if it contains a duration of some sorts, which is what the RfC includes. Anyway, I guess there is no problem with having both the poll and RfC, but it seems a bit confusing. --Noleander (talk)
- Good question. If you scroll up to about here you'll see that the community discussed what to do on Sept 18th, and the agreed next step was to have a simple poll to see if there was a consensus to change - i.e. Retail the status quo. There was a suggestion to introduce a time period or to extend the Arbcom ban, but this isn't what was selected as a choice. It seems now that there's a group of pro-status-quo editors who want to shut down any discussions or options, and introduce another 2 year ban. There's absolutely no reason for it. I find it amusing though, that republicans and loyalists have at least found something they agree on, even if its for wildly different reasons. But as a tactic, it's poor form and doesn't serve the project. Hopefully the wider community will see this tactic for what it is. --HighKing (talk) 00:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Isn't this poll redundant with the RfC immediately above? Or is there some subtle difference I'm missing? I ask because uninvolved editors (such as myself) that monitor RfCs are likely to repsond to the RfC above, but may not see this poll. --Noleander (talk) 00:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Since maintaining the status quo is always the default, conducting a poll to maintain the status quo is confusing, illogical, and not productive. I recommend this poll be collapsed. After reading HighKing's response to Noleander above, I think I understand the purpose of the poll better. It is clear to me that this process needs strong moderation currently. I do not have a position on article naming but would just like to see a process which is orderly enough that outsiders have a fighting chance of understanding what is going on and participating. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 02:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is always humbling to see someone say something with 1/4 the number of words I used :-) --Noleander (talk) 02:09, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- This has become confusing. That's 2 Polls within hours of each other. GoodDay (talk) 03:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Did you read the explanation above? Still confused? --HighKing (talk) 11:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I didn't find this actual page confusing, but I found GoodDay's comment confused me. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:19, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Did you read the explanation above? Still confused? --HighKing (talk) 11:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- comment - I neither support nor oppose retaining the status quo, so long as doing so is a result of reasonable and full discussions. Fmph (talk) 10:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- The format whereby everybody lays into a single thread, banging on with the same pros and cons, doesn't work. The issue is far too complex and some editors move faster with discussions than others, etc, so it ends up a mess. Far better, I believe, if separate pages somewhere are created where the arguments for and against can be distilled and sharpened. Editors can add pros and cons to each idea - whatever works. I'd say that one "side" keeps away from the other "side" - they can develop counter arguments on their own "page". New ideas can end up at each page - so for example, your Option G could get kicked around, or RA's suggestion. If, as a result, consensus gets retested and the poll to retain the status quo fails, full discussions can take place based on the arguments presented and distilled - perhaps heavily moderated. Like the way your Option G was created, sometimes some peace and quiet is needed, and not the yammering masses trying to out-shout one another. This way, the "sides" are kept apart so that everybody can have their say, and arguments can be easily weighed by anyone not familiar with the topic. --HighKing (talk) 13:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Commentary moved from poll section above
- Given that we're generously told that we're allowed to change our minds, I'll state my starting preference: Ireland (island) and Ireland (country). With Ireland itself redirected to whichever of them turns out to be the more popular article (but with links to that title being repaired as if it were a dab page). [And with the possibility of these articles being a standard-bearer for the idea, once floated before, of treating disambiguators as subtitles rather than a full part of the title, i.e. displaying them in smaller type next to or beneath the actual title.]--Kotniski (talk) 07:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- This doesn't address the nub of what you propose (which isn't bad) but, on a pedantic point, which Ireland is the "country"? Both Ireland's are, even in the present tense, called a country. One being a country like the UK is a country, the other being a country like Scotland is a country. And from many perspectives - historically, of course, but also ethnic and cultural perspectives - only one is definitively the country. --RA (talk) 08:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I suspect that, at least in an encyclopedic register, "country" would be understood by everyone to have the first meaning. (But as I say, I'm willing to change my mind if persuaded.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Ireland (state) was a flyer before. I don't necessarily oppose an Ireland / Ireland (state) arrangement. That keeps the broad concept arrangement for disambiguation, which is what I believe is important to maintain. --RA (talk) 09:33, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I suspect that, at least in an encyclopedic register, "country" would be understood by everyone to have the first meaning. (But as I say, I'm willing to change my mind if persuaded.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- This doesn't address the nub of what you propose (which isn't bad) but, on a pedantic point, which Ireland is the "country"? Both Ireland's are, even in the present tense, called a country. One being a country like the UK is a country, the other being a country like Scotland is a country. And from many perspectives - historically, of course, but also ethnic and cultural perspectives - only one is definitively the country. --RA (talk) 08:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Fails Recognisability, Naturalness and Conciseness, IMHO. Fmph (talk) 11:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Certainly for "naturalness" (in my opinion), which is why I prefer Ireland / Republic of Ireland. --RA (talk) 11:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- To me, the problem with the current setup is the island article has a title that confuses readers into thinking that it is about the Republic. We should always put the reader before politics, especially political views that are now outside the mainstream, both in Ireland and in Britain. Kauffner (talk) 12:22, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- The island article is about Ireland. Your confusion arises from the misconception that any reference to a place is political by default. The reader that you're rightly concerned about is interested in the place called Ireland. Those who want to know about politics, law, institutions etc. in the 26 counties go to the Republic of Ireland article, which is usually (and conveniently) pipelinked to "Ireland". Or, if by mischance they find themselves at the Ireland (well-known place) article, they follow the hat-note at the top of the page. Scolaire (talk) 13:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, we don't really know what topic any given reader is interested in (and often, neither does the reader). I don't really have a lot of objection to the current setup, but I understood the problem was that it implies that "Republic of Ireland" is the real name of the country (state, whatever), whereas in fact it's only a disambiguated form used decreasingly often in the real world.--Kotniski (talk) 13:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- In the world of diplomatic dispatches, maybe. In the real world, it appears in guide books, in politically-neutral articles and on cereal packets as often or more often than ever. And in the real world, nobody minds! Scolaire (talk) 13:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- No one is disputing that RoI is used. What Kotniski has said is that it is decreasingly used. For a start HMG don't use it as much now as they used to. So that is a measurable decrease. Decreasing usage is v accurate IMHO. Fmph (talk) 13:34, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- And what I said is that it is used as often or more often than ever. And what HMG uses just isn't up there in any list of criteria. Scolaire (talk) 13:39, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Given that HMG were a major user and now aren't, that is a significant point amongst the criteria for selection an article name, because it shows that usage is decreasing. Can you show me where usage is increasing, i.e. somehwere (other than WP) which didn't use RoI previously and now does? Fmph (talk) 13:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- No. Can you show me evidence of decreasing use in the real world other than government, diplomacy and politics? Scolaire (talk) 15:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Don't know how relevant it is, but I noticed in the recent BBC reports on the McGuinness standing for Irish president story, that they seemed to avoid using "Republic of Ireland", even though there was a clear potential for ambiguity (with him being a Northern Irish politician and all).--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- BBC says "Irish Republic" here. CNN and the Telegraph both use "Republic of Ireland". But actually the point I was making is that outside politics ROI is as much used as ever e.g. "ROI customers write to this address..." on the cereal packet. And nobody ever boycotts Kellogg's for saying that. Scolaire (talk) 17:11, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I presume we have higher aspirations than to imitate cereal packets ;) But my preference against RoI isn't based on any political motivation - it just seems to me that we should take a more rigorous approach to our article titles: if Ireland is both the common and the official name for the state, then we risk misinforming people if we decline to use that name (or that name followed by what is obviously a disambiguating tag) as the title for its article. RoI is aesthetically more pleasing, as it avoids the ugly brackets; but as an encyclopedia, we ought to be putting information before beauty.--Kotniski (talk) 06:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- BBC says "Irish Republic" here. CNN and the Telegraph both use "Republic of Ireland". But actually the point I was making is that outside politics ROI is as much used as ever e.g. "ROI customers write to this address..." on the cereal packet. And nobody ever boycotts Kellogg's for saying that. Scolaire (talk) 17:11, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Don't know how relevant it is, but I noticed in the recent BBC reports on the McGuinness standing for Irish president story, that they seemed to avoid using "Republic of Ireland", even though there was a clear potential for ambiguity (with him being a Northern Irish politician and all).--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- No. Can you show me evidence of decreasing use in the real world other than government, diplomacy and politics? Scolaire (talk) 15:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Given that HMG were a major user and now aren't, that is a significant point amongst the criteria for selection an article name, because it shows that usage is decreasing. Can you show me where usage is increasing, i.e. somehwere (other than WP) which didn't use RoI previously and now does? Fmph (talk) 13:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- And what I said is that it is used as often or more often than ever. And what HMG uses just isn't up there in any list of criteria. Scolaire (talk) 13:39, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- No one is disputing that RoI is used. What Kotniski has said is that it is decreasingly used. For a start HMG don't use it as much now as they used to. So that is a measurable decrease. Decreasing usage is v accurate IMHO. Fmph (talk) 13:34, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- In the world of diplomatic dispatches, maybe. In the real world, it appears in guide books, in politically-neutral articles and on cereal packets as often or more often than ever. And in the real world, nobody minds! Scolaire (talk) 13:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, we don't really know what topic any given reader is interested in (and often, neither does the reader). I don't really have a lot of objection to the current setup, but I understood the problem was that it implies that "Republic of Ireland" is the real name of the country (state, whatever), whereas in fact it's only a disambiguated form used decreasingly often in the real world.--Kotniski (talk) 13:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- The island article is about Ireland. Your confusion arises from the misconception that any reference to a place is political by default. The reader that you're rightly concerned about is interested in the place called Ireland. Those who want to know about politics, law, institutions etc. in the 26 counties go to the Republic of Ireland article, which is usually (and conveniently) pipelinked to "Ireland". Or, if by mischance they find themselves at the Ireland (well-known place) article, they follow the hat-note at the top of the page. Scolaire (talk) 13:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- To me, the problem with the current setup is the island article has a title that confuses readers into thinking that it is about the Republic. We should always put the reader before politics, especially political views that are now outside the mainstream, both in Ireland and in Britain. Kauffner (talk) 12:22, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Certainly for "naturalness" (in my opinion), which is why I prefer Ireland / Republic of Ireland. --RA (talk) 11:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Fails Recognisability, Naturalness and Conciseness, IMHO. Fmph (talk) 11:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I was looking at the voting patterns from 2009 and my sense is that this is a side issue. The central issue is the primary topic for the term Ireland, i.e. should this term lead to the island, a DAB, or the Republic? Kauffner (talk) 16:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- When there are only two main subjects to disambiguate, it often doesn't matter that much if we choose a topic as primary when technically it might not ought to be. (A dab page will ensure that no-one gets to the article they want straight away; while making whichever article primary still gets about half the people to the right place, while providing a hatnote for the others that isn't any more of an inconvenience than a dab page would be.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I was looking at the voting patterns from 2009 and my sense is that this is a side issue. The central issue is the primary topic for the term Ireland, i.e. should this term lead to the island, a DAB, or the Republic? Kauffner (talk) 16:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I can't understand (well, I can really but AGF won't permit me to say it) why some people insist that "Republic of Ireland" is the *only* article title allowed for the article on the state.... --HighKing (talk) 13:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Some people quietly re-affirm that "Republic of Ireland" is an okay title for the article, and can't understand why other people insist it is the only title not allowed. Scolaire (talk) 13:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- It's this particular title that appears to be the root of most of the debate. I could be wrong. It's not that the title is not allowed, it's that a lot object to it. I can't speak for anybody else, but I don't have a problem using Republic of Ireland in situations described in the IMOS. It's not usage I see as the main issue, just the title. There's going to be problems with any title for sure, but a lot of the other titles *may* be less problematic. I'd like to see an alternative title - perhaps it would a good compromise. And perhaps not. I think until we have a consensus to change (review) the status quo though, there's not a lot of point in discussing. --HighKing (talk) 14:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Some people quietly re-affirm that "Republic of Ireland" is an okay title for the article, and can't understand why other people insist it is the only title not allowed. Scolaire (talk) 13:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I can't understand (well, I can really but AGF won't permit me to say it) why some people insist that "Republic of Ireland" is the *only* article title allowed for the article on the state.... --HighKing (talk) 13:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
"To me, the problem with the current setup is the island article has a title that confuses readers into thinking that it is about the Republic." - In fairness, if either of the two, it is the Republic that has a name that (deliberately in 1937) confuses readers into thinking that it extends across the whole island. This is not chicken or egg. The island came before the state and is by far the broader concept invovled. Subset to that is Geography of Ireland, History of Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Architecture of Ireland, Music of Ireland ... and yes, Republic of Ireland. --RA (talk) 13:48, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- That argument is one of the reasons why the article on the state shouldn't be at "Ireland". It doesn't lend itself to the argument of putting the article at "Republic of Ireland" though. Anyway :-) you can probably write the next 10 responses of arguments and rebuttals as well as I. --HighKing (talk) 14:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I wont' because I think that is the nub of the issue. There are two questions here that are conflated:
- Is there a primary topic or a broad-concept article? (I say, yes, the broad concept article is currently at Ireland.)
- If so, what title should we use to disambiguate another article from it (the one to do with the state of the same name as the broad concept)? (I think Republic of Ireland is natural disambiguator, but it is an open question.) --RA (talk) 16:08, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I wont' because I think that is the nub of the issue. There are two questions here that are conflated:
@RA Am I to understand that the Dublin government was called something other than "Ireland" prior to 1937? I don't think so. Here's some headlines: "Ireland takes her place among nations of earth", Dec. 6, 1922. "Threat of Arms Keeps Ireland Within Empire, says De Valera", Dec. 8, 1933. People automatically started calling the state "Ireland" from the moment it was created. Kauffner (talk) 15:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Between 1922 and 1937 the name of the state was the Irish Free State. In 1937, a new constitution was adopted and the name of the was changed to Ireland. In 1949, the state unilaterally declared itself a republic and declared that "the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland". The UK government refused to accept the 1937 name of Ireland (for obvious reasons) and called the state by its (official) Irish-language (minus the fada): Eire. In 1949, the UK government accepted the unilateral declaration of the republic and changed it's accepted name of the state to Republic of Ireland. Initially, the UK was not alone in it's rejection of the use of the name Ireland by the state but by the 1960's was alone. Since the mid-1990s, and the entente between the two states, the UK has apparently accepted the name Ireland. Regardless of all this, the term Republic of Ireland is used uncontroversially in Ireland as well as elsewhere (see my postage stamp conundrum above).
- All of this is beside the point, however, and only muddies the water. Nobody is disputing that the common name of the state is Ireland. Are you disputing that the common name of the island is Ireland? The question is disambiguation and my point is about broad concept articles and disambiguation. --RA (talk) 16:08, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Other encyclopedias typically have an article entitled "Ireland" (Britannica, Encarta) or "Ireland, Republic of" (Columbia) that corresponds to our "Republic of Ireland" article. Yet our "Ireland" article is about something else. My proposal is simply that the title be changed to something that makes the topic immediately clear to reader: "Ireland (island)", "Island of Ireland", "Ireland (broad concept)" etc. I like the title "Republic of Ireland" and I am not proposing to change it. But if the Irish want another title, I do not tell them what the name of their country is. Kauffner (talk) 00:35, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't know about Encarta, but Britannica has only one article - for the land and the state - which is called "Ireland". It's like Cyprus on Wikipedia. Climate, people, culture etc. in that article is pretty well applicable to the whole country, and the history section deals with the whole country (taking in e.g. the Orange Order). If people wanted to merge the two articles on WP I would be all in favour of that; in fact I argued for it two years ago. I can't see it winning a consensus, though. By the way, I am one of several Irish (as in from-the-south Irish) Wikipedians who don't want another title, so thank you for not telling me what the name of my country is. Scolaire (talk) 10:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Other encyclopedias typically have an article entitled "Ireland" (Britannica, Encarta) or "Ireland, Republic of" (Columbia) that corresponds to our "Republic of Ireland" article. Yet our "Ireland" article is about something else. My proposal is simply that the title be changed to something that makes the topic immediately clear to reader: "Ireland (island)", "Island of Ireland", "Ireland (broad concept)" etc. I like the title "Republic of Ireland" and I am not proposing to change it. But if the Irish want another title, I do not tell them what the name of their country is. Kauffner (talk) 00:35, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think the "broad concept" concept is applicable here - that's for terms whose primary meaning is a broad, rather vague concept, not something specific like an island (that's from my reading of WP:DABCONCEPT and what I believe it was supposed to apply to). Just because the island is a "broader concept" than the state doesn't mean it has to be treated as primary.--Kotniski (talk) 16:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I think a large part of the perceptual problem comes from this insistence on using the word "island", as though Ireland-the-Island was some small patch of land somewhere off the coast of Ireland-the-state. Ireland is the broad concept. It's not just a collection of mountains and rivers; it's an age-old land with an age-old civilization that happens to be partitioned for less than 90 years of its thousands of years of history. Is Newgrange primarily notable for the fact that it is in the part of Ireland that is currently governed by a Fine Gael - Labour coalition? Scolaire (talk) 21:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- On that kind of timescale, "Ireland" is a modern concept, just as "Britain" is - and it was divided into many small kingdoms and kingdomlets through much of recorded history and probably well into prehistory. This debate hinges on our assumptions about what best reflects the most widely used contemporary commonname word "Ireland" in the global community mind - is it the "island", the "state", or some nebulous concept of "Irelandness"? Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 21:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Ireland-ness" is not a nebulous concept. It is a concrete thing that forms the basis of articles as diverse as Provinces of Ireland, Church of Ireland, Music of Ireland, Fauna of Ireland, Climate of Ireland, Banknotes of Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Grand Lodge of Ireland and on and on and on... It is a contemporary and firmly understood broad concept from which other concepts stem (including Republic of Ireland). --RA (talk) 22:15, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry, yes, I didn't mean to imply that "Irelandness" is in some way minor or trivial, I was referencing the non-spatialness of "Irelandness" as presumably you agree with in that in many of those examples there will be material from other countries, places and times, just as there would be in the concept of "Britain-ness". Probably misusing the word "nebulous", I meant "non-specifically geo-located". Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 10:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- The Irish annals from the year dot use expressions such as "never before seen in Ireland", "the best in all Ireland" and of course "king of Ireland" (whether said king could justify his claim or not). Ireland had one language and one legal system for all of recorded history until the Normans came. And the said Normans didn't set out to conquer the kingdom of the Uí Ceinnselaig, or the kingdom of Dublin, but Ireland, just as the Romans a thousand years earlier set their sights on "Hibernia", not some coastal kingdom. The mere fact that there wasn't, or mostly wasn't, a unified kingdom says nothing; there was still a (well-known) land of Ireland, just as there was a land called France in the 11th century when the king had no effective power outside his own rather small demesne. Ireland pre-1542 is no more a "non-specifically geo-located" concept that it is a "nebulous" one. Scolaire (talk) 10:36, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Not that recently, no, but the Irish Annals don't go back to the "year dot", they, like recorded history in Britain, extend back to a mythic Celtic past onto which later writers almost certainly overlaid the mores and concepts of their own early medieval times. Also I didn't claim there wasn't an ancient Irish identity, just that it has little to do with the modern identities, which in the case of all of the identities of these islands are largely inventions of the Early Modern and Modern periods written backwards in time by Antiquarians and Mystics. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- The Irish annals from the year dot use expressions such as "never before seen in Ireland", "the best in all Ireland" and of course "king of Ireland" (whether said king could justify his claim or not). Ireland had one language and one legal system for all of recorded history until the Normans came. And the said Normans didn't set out to conquer the kingdom of the Uí Ceinnselaig, or the kingdom of Dublin, but Ireland, just as the Romans a thousand years earlier set their sights on "Hibernia", not some coastal kingdom. The mere fact that there wasn't, or mostly wasn't, a unified kingdom says nothing; there was still a (well-known) land of Ireland, just as there was a land called France in the 11th century when the king had no effective power outside his own rather small demesne. Ireland pre-1542 is no more a "non-specifically geo-located" concept that it is a "nebulous" one. Scolaire (talk) 10:36, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry, yes, I didn't mean to imply that "Irelandness" is in some way minor or trivial, I was referencing the non-spatialness of "Irelandness" as presumably you agree with in that in many of those examples there will be material from other countries, places and times, just as there would be in the concept of "Britain-ness". Probably misusing the word "nebulous", I meant "non-specifically geo-located". Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 10:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Ireland-ness" is not a nebulous concept. It is a concrete thing that forms the basis of articles as diverse as Provinces of Ireland, Church of Ireland, Music of Ireland, Fauna of Ireland, Climate of Ireland, Banknotes of Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Grand Lodge of Ireland and on and on and on... It is a contemporary and firmly understood broad concept from which other concepts stem (including Republic of Ireland). --RA (talk) 22:15, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- On that kind of timescale, "Ireland" is a modern concept, just as "Britain" is - and it was divided into many small kingdoms and kingdomlets through much of recorded history and probably well into prehistory. This debate hinges on our assumptions about what best reflects the most widely used contemporary commonname word "Ireland" in the global community mind - is it the "island", the "state", or some nebulous concept of "Irelandness"? Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 21:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I think a large part of the perceptual problem comes from this insistence on using the word "island", as though Ireland-the-Island was some small patch of land somewhere off the coast of Ireland-the-state. Ireland is the broad concept. It's not just a collection of mountains and rivers; it's an age-old land with an age-old civilization that happens to be partitioned for less than 90 years of its thousands of years of history. Is Newgrange primarily notable for the fact that it is in the part of Ireland that is currently governed by a Fine Gael - Labour coalition? Scolaire (talk) 21:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Britain is also thousands of years old. There is a modern concept of it related to the Anglicans and the British Empire. I hate to draw negativity, but we are emerging a pattern here related to the quality of knowledge possessed by those following one approach or another. That may seem personally insulting to some, but what should I call it when everything is mixed up after I was calling out, "Wait! People will mix this stuff up!". I am crying out for the evaluation page of relevant facts. All complex debate should have one required. Anything less results in multiple cases of nonsense without point of reference. We are not all chess grand masters. We can't be expected to watch ten moves at once. We need them one at a time, one after the other. Order born out of chaos. Let's make something beneficial out of all this bandwidth we've been spending. Even if it doesn't solve everything for everyone, it will make stuff easier. ~ R.T.G 22:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I want to note something for those who proposed once that Republic of Ireland somehow equates to a British approach. In Britain, Britain is now the state and Great Britain is now the island. So it would follow that if in Ireland, Ireland was now the state and Blahdyblah Ireland were now the island, that would be a strictly British style approach without complex arguement to *ex-plain* why not. ~ R.T.G 22:10, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- James, seriously, it's a bit far fetched to say that "Ireland-ness" is unrelated to space or is "non-specifically geo-located". Hint: Ireland is the name of an island. When we are talking about the Culture of Ireland, we are talking about the culture of that island. When we are talking about the Climate of Ireland, we are talking about the climate of that island. When we are talking about the Banknotes of Ireland, we are talking about the banknotes of that island. And when we talk about Ireland, as a broad concept, unsurprisingly, we are talking about that island. --RA (talk) 12:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well the sands of this thread keep shifting about, but I think I was thinking in terms of this debate about the suggestion that we should treat "Ireland" as meaning the "island" because it has a long history as such - I was arguing that historically, "Ireland" has been a moving feast and that it may not have meant the same thing it does now and that therefore the argument that Ireland must mean the island (if based on historic or psuedo-historic grounds) does not stand up well - that arguments like that belong to a near-metaphysical view of "Irelandness" which is not always the same as anything current. In historic times for example, Irish Kings sometimes ruled over slices of what are now Scotland and Wales - did they think of those as "Ireland"? Perhaps. Could they be included in articles about "Ireland"? Perhaps. It's a complex subject. My argument is that we should focus on contemporary accepted usages and not assume primacy for past ones. I don't think in general that historic territories or conceptual territories should have primacy in article names. The same arises with China - to most modern audiences, China the contemporary state and China the place are the same thing. That's different with Ireland, I agree, but it's also close. To most modern audiences, Ireland means Ireland the country and they don't think too much about the fact that NI sits within the same concept, or if they do, they kind of conflate it with "Ireland", so that Ireland-the-island and Ireland-the-state kind of run together. As the modern state has that name and we are a modern cyclopedia, I think we should go with the modern usage. On your point itself, I do think that long-running historic places have a conceptual side to them ("Persian-ness", "China-ness") that is something different to the modern actuality, but I won't get bogged down by arguing over it as it isn't a critical point. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- The place-ness of a place has a conceptual side that is independent of modern de iure or de facto boundaries. Poland has only one article despite the fact that its boundaries have changed many many times, and there were times when it officially didn't exist. Because there's always been a place called Poland. And somebody like Casimir Markievicz was known to be "from Poland" even if it was then called the Russian empire and his estate was in what is now Ukraine. Likewise there was always a place called Ireland. But it was always in the same place! No shifting borders (till the 20th century), no official extinction. You're right that to modern readers Ireland means Ireland the country. But the country is not the state. Millions of people know of Ireland but don't even realise that it is partitioned. How many people are aware that Belfast is in Ireland and don't realise it is part of the UK? Quite a few. How many people are aware that Belfast is in the UK and believe it's not in Ireland or anything to do with Ireland? Precious few, I would imagine. Scolaire (talk) 13:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well the sands of this thread keep shifting about, but I think I was thinking in terms of this debate about the suggestion that we should treat "Ireland" as meaning the "island" because it has a long history as such - I was arguing that historically, "Ireland" has been a moving feast and that it may not have meant the same thing it does now and that therefore the argument that Ireland must mean the island (if based on historic or psuedo-historic grounds) does not stand up well - that arguments like that belong to a near-metaphysical view of "Irelandness" which is not always the same as anything current. In historic times for example, Irish Kings sometimes ruled over slices of what are now Scotland and Wales - did they think of those as "Ireland"? Perhaps. Could they be included in articles about "Ireland"? Perhaps. It's a complex subject. My argument is that we should focus on contemporary accepted usages and not assume primacy for past ones. I don't think in general that historic territories or conceptual territories should have primacy in article names. The same arises with China - to most modern audiences, China the contemporary state and China the place are the same thing. That's different with Ireland, I agree, but it's also close. To most modern audiences, Ireland means Ireland the country and they don't think too much about the fact that NI sits within the same concept, or if they do, they kind of conflate it with "Ireland", so that Ireland-the-island and Ireland-the-state kind of run together. As the modern state has that name and we are a modern cyclopedia, I think we should go with the modern usage. On your point itself, I do think that long-running historic places have a conceptual side to them ("Persian-ness", "China-ness") that is something different to the modern actuality, but I won't get bogged down by arguing over it as it isn't a critical point. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- James, all the above presumes that Ireland, in any other sense than the state that occupies part of Ireland, is a historical subject. I can promise you it is not. I'm standing on it. Partition may have divided it between two jurisdiction but you cannot partition dance, music, weather, sport, religion, or any number of the topics that are subsidiary to Ireland.
- What I have am been attempting to do is to show you how Ireland is a broad modern subject. Matters to do with the state that occupies a portion of Ireland is only a small subset of that - and is not terribly important. It is entirely possible to discuss topics relating to Ireland in great detail without every troubling oneself with the political arrangements to do with the topic.
- You write above how when people think of Ireland, they conflate Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That is no surprise to me. Ireland is a broad concept, for the purposes of this encyclopedia. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are only small portions of it and not of definitive importance to most matters to do with that subject. --RA (talk) 13:46, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Okay I have to chime in. Jamesinderbyshire, what you say about "Irish Kings" is misleading. You have, or give, the impression that Ireland had a particular lineage of royalty which would foray into other places to impose the identity and define what Ireland is or was. Negative. That is a foreign principle or custom. The most common denominator between Irish kings, after the fact that they were Irish and kings, men whatever, might be the fact that they were *not* King of Ireland. We didn't have barbarian lands where we imposed our identity on the natives. We ARE the barbarians, along with whoever else we may have become since that time. When the Vikings invaded Ireland they/we were somewhat industrious and benign. The next major invasion, was it 1000 years? It was a long time and, while water was still the main highway of the world, Ireland was naturally a major area of multi culture in Europe. Ireland was never a tyrant. No king is synonymous with what Ireland is, though many have marked it quite severely. The Irish republic is not deemed neutral because we can't find anyone who wants to fight. That would be some sort of blessing. No. It's because we were never a part of your struggle for divine blood and infinite power. We actually *are* a *neutral* culture. Kings from here with aspirations overseas were purely isolated and insignificant. You are trying to compare them to your own culture where such exploit was the major significance. It's the major thing you have going for you in that respect, just as with what we have, which is different. Invaders had a tendency to push the natives back and then assimilate with them over time. In my view it is natural development. It's in the geography and weather. We have no shortage of psychos in the mix, but we've no megalomanics. The ground just doesn't spawn them. All lines of conquest roll inwards toward a knot. I'd say the only place in Ireland where you could see straight across for ten miles is Lough Neigh. They cut a new motorway between Waterford and Dublin over the last lot of years. They cut almost a third of the distance of only about 150 miles. If you wanted two large armies to meet each other you'd nearly have to make an appointment. Indeed, when some French allies were defeated in County Cork, they'd got lost on the way to the battle. Is that not cooler than the conquest buzz? Yup yup :). ~ R.T.G 11:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Comment not moved from the poll section above: I think we should recognize that the real problem we are facing here, and only Fmph seems to advert to it, is that computer databases are incapable of accurately representing the real world. Given that there are in fact two possible encyclopaedic subjects both legitimately open to being called Ireland, doing so would seem to be the ideal option, and I therefore propose as a simple and elegant solution that we request the developers to modify Wikipedia so as to ensure that more than one page can have the same name (admittedly this may take some time and effort on their part, but look at how much time and effort has been spent on this issue already, and may continue to be so spent ad infinitum short of dealing with this technical problem by means of a technical solution). Pending the successful implementation of such a technical fix, we could follow the example of print dictionaries and other encyclopaedias mentioned by Fmph and place our articles at 'Ireland (1)' and 'Ireland (2)'.
- I am quite happy with the status quo, and I still don't understand why a term for the Irish state which is stated by legislation of a sovereign Irish parliament to be the 'description of the state' can be regarded as demeaning or offensive to that state by some of its citizens, yet if I have understood it correctly Irish Wikipedians who find the term objectionable on that basis seem to be one of the main forces behind requests to move both pages. Surely if the legislative status quo is so unbearable, these citizens ought to place more emphasis on engaging in political campaigning to have the Republic of Ireland Act, 1948 amended, rather than in Wikipedia campaigning to change the name of the article on the state legally so described?
- Personally, I regard Ireland as my country, not the Republic of Ireland, and find the idea of an article on the Republic that describes it as 'Ireland (country)' objectionable as well as confusing. I can readily accept that calling the article on Ireland 'Ireland (country)' may be validly objected to on the same grounds, and if bracketed addition(s) to page title(s) are required (I hope not) I strongly support using the accurate and precise legal and political term 'state'.ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:38, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Expansion
- Expansion on my vote in opposition above I certainly would like to have awakened, and seen that one of my fellow editors such as RA, or Bastun, or Scolaire without-the-Fada had suddenly gone through an incredible, amazing transformation of thought and discovered what a simple thing it would be to change the article now under the title Republic of Ireland to Ireland. Then, I would look around the room for the bottle with the "DRINK ME" label attached or a hat with a price tag of ten shillings and sixpence nearby. This is for Arbcom, who I hope gain some moments of humour here: folks I don't say this often, but I really could see writing this while having ingested psilocybin, as I think many elements of it would become much clearer under the mushroom's influence. But, I am not one to ask much of people who arbitrate, that is tough business and the real reason I am here is to ask them to let this discussion go free. It deserves a long period of continued discussion and thinking, since there appears to be entrenchment far and wide. Don't lock it down, I mean no one but an administrator can move these articles, and we trust them to not wheel war over it, so just let the words flow and let people continue to get to know each other. Don't go back to the way it was before 18 September, with a tacit ban on discussion. And let the talk go on everywhere, not just in one spot where some might gain hegemony, it is after all just pixels on a screen. It isn't even loud. And no one is spilling a drink on anyone, are they? For what it takes here, to let Wikipedia find the way to conclude this, is having that conversation, not zipping it.
I thought as I was reading these pages in the weeks prior to this day that the IECOLL project, of which I am still listed as a member, had become the SQEOD project. Yes, that stands for "Status quo, end of discussion". Really looks like that is all that's left here to a large degree. If Mabuska, or R.T.G., or GoodDay one day start agreeing with me, and at that time I don't turn back to see the Cheshire Cat grinning away, it certainly will be because of continued free discussions that Wikipedia should promote and not quash.
I have been asked by someone here not to re-hash and all that. So I won't. I disagree certainly that the Ireland that calls itself that all over every page of its official website at the world representative forum called the United Nations has done so to "(express) a claim to the entire island." Certainly Mississippi does not claim the entire river, nor Australia the continent. They are just names, but the names by which those polities are known commonly both to themselves and the world. Germany and Poland, to name two, are places that have survived various stretches in different shapes and sizes, but those names are also the titles of the articles, in spite of the varied and intertwined histories, because that is how they are known to the world, at the UN and in the news. Is there some need to disambiguate previously shaped Germany from what it is now by calling the article there Federal Republic of Germany? Of course there isn't. Yes, from time to time CNN and the Telegraph have used "Republic of Ireland", and you can find links to those, but you can if you look on many other pages on those same sites, CNN and the Telegraph, find the single name Ireland used for the sovereign state. You can listen to speeches of Elizabeth II talking, and accounts of her visit last spring, with the official name used: Ireland. Ireland, just like France, Greece, Spain, other EU countries. Very simply, that is what Ireland is in 2011. The historic place, the island and other meanings can be just as gracefully handled with hatnotes and dab pages, and should be. The article with the infobox containing the harp and tricolor, with the infobox titled Ireland / Éire, should be titled Ireland. No need to re-hash beyond that, but there is also no need to be scared to discuss or contemplate that fact. The Queen certainly was able to see fit to use the proper name when she visited. It's not somehow granting the state dominion over a portion of your brain, as in a grandiose comparison to making the bible God. It is using the name as we do throughout the encyclopedia, as a name. Ireland is the proper name for the article, not Republic of Ireland. The burden of disambiguation is in the minds of some too great. I don't see it, and the vote of first preference in 2009, initially at 104 for "status quo" and 130 for something other than "status quo", shows many others can be found not to see it as well. Silencing or discouraging any opinion other than what who's left of IECOLL feels is consensus would be wrong. Thanks so much, sincerely, arbs and everyone participating, for taking the time to read this. Sswonk (talk) 05:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Too long, didn't read. --Scolaire (talk) 10:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Very good read... and I completely agree. Tebibyte (talk) 10:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- I agree too, well explained. The article can be called Ireland without laying claim to NI or confusing readers about the island of Ireland, historical Ireland, etc. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:39, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Very good read... and I completely agree. Tebibyte (talk) 10:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Too long, didn't read. --Scolaire (talk) 10:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- International Money and law as upheld by government. We are all coming out of the grinder. You know what I am talking about. Session and recession. I've got my feet on the ground. If you don't see what I am picking at, maybe you will. Names of Germany, every country has one. I see, "gracefully handled". The "status quo" is exactly what we have avoided here in the past. I can point that out and I can say that it is okay. Blow away state. We still remain. I am not one for utter dissent. Ireland is an island. It is there that we might find particular states. ~ R.T.G 07:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Closure of page titles poll
HighKing, I am requesting that we go for closure on your poll here as well as the one above. The voting is lopsided and not likely to change much in the coming days. I don't consider it in any way binding, that is it does not end all discussion, it is informative however. The consensus would be that a majority favor no change to titles. From there, I think continued open and free discussion of these issues should be available for all here at this project, not least those who visit here for the first time after seeing a talk page notice. As part of a closure, there should be a general discouragement of future statements to the effect that it is "unproductive" or a "waste" for people to express their well-considered views. The appearance of several statements to that end here reflects poorly on those who made the remarks. Sswonk (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- The voting is lopsided and not likely to change, interesting way to describe a ~70%+ majority in favour of the status quo. The issue with continued discussions now is that only the die-hard's from both camnps will hang about now, I for one have lost interest in the rest of the discussions they are just WP:TLDR. Mtking (edits) 11:00, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- In agreement, close it down. GoodDay (talk) 13:48, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- I'd have to agree with the lopsided assessment. There are plenty of editors passing by and contributing to the first poll - which was notified widely cross the pedia - but not contributing to the second. I don't think it's safe to assume that everyone who arrives and votes in the first poll is necessarily aware of the second poll. Fmph (talk) 15:21, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- Mabuska asked in a section below that the discussions be condensed. There is no need to keep the somewhat disorganized threads here active. I propose archiving this entire page as is, after closure of both polls, into a subpage link. For an example of how that has been done previously see Talk:Willis Tower/Move. The title "Move" is actually a redirect to an archive in numeric sequence so it does not get segregated from the other general archive pages. There is a note at the top of the page which I would be glad to compose. Trust me, I will not display bias in the note. Then, there is another note at the top of the Willis Tower article talk page that reads: The issue of the name of the building has been discussed at great length. Before starting a discussion relating to this, please ensure your point has not already been discussed. That method at once recognizes the issues and still "condenses" the previous statements through the link to the archive. I would also suggest linking to the 2009 poll and the many Statements. I might even add my own statement, say with a list of "2011 statements" link at the header of this proposed archive page. I agree, to avoid Mtking's scenario of "die-hard's from both camnps will hang about now", this should get super-closed. RMs would be fruitless as well, so basically there should be a notice saying we have got to the point of wanting to avoid votes and drama until there is any sort of bipartisan agreement. I can still oppose with vigor the article title "Republic of Ireland" without having to discuss it all the time, and there should not be any gag. RMs could probably be placed in limbo, I haven't worked out logically how they could be initiated. Everyone with an interest please comment on these suggestions. Sswonk (talk) 16:01, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- This talk page currently has 25 archives, of which the vast majority are concerned with page titles. I don't see why the current discussion should be treated differently to the previous ones. The separate "Statements" page was not the first such, or even the most exhaustive. This one here is fairly thin in comparison with the 2008-09 ones. Collating the arguments from all of the archives would be an interesting project, but not an easy one. Scolaire (talk) 21:32, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- Oh, and don't forget the Ireland disambiguation task force and its talk page (and their archives). Scolaire (talk) 22:06, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
- There's a consensus to keep the status quo, atleast for now. GoodDay (talk) 17:16, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
I don't think this is just a matter of titles...
Titles are supposed to match the concept an article is about, but I think there's more than one way to slice the conceptspace of Ireland, and depending on which one is used, different title schemes will be more or less appropriate. If we divide the universe of stuff that can be said about Ireland into:
- physical geography, natural history, prehistory, etc.;
- pre-1922 history, politics, economics, demographics, culture, etc;
- all-Ireland aspects of post-1922 history, politics, economics, demographics, culture, etc;
- economics, demographics, culture, etc. of the RoI;
- history and politics of the RoI;
- economics, demographics, culture, etc. of NI;
- history and politics of NI;
then I can envision at least three ways of splitting this stuff across articles (where discusses means ‘the most in-depth discussion of the matter, excluding sub-articles which no-one would link normally ever link to as Ireland’; brief mentions are possible in other articles too as needed for context; and I'm not assuming the ‘boundaries’ between a topic and another should be hard-and-fast):
- Article A discusses topics 1, 2, 3, and 4. Article B discusses topic 5. Article C discusses topic 6 and 7.
- Article A′ discusses topic 1. Article B′ discusses topics 2, 3, 4, and 5. Article C′ discusses topics 6 and 7.
- Article A″ discusses topic 1. Article B″ discusses topics 2, 3, 4, and 6. Article C″ discusses topic 5. Article D″ discusses topic 7.
- etc.
In each of these situations, I would prefer the titles:
- A = Ireland, B = Republic of Ireland, C = Northern Ireland;
- A′ = Ireland (island), B′ = Ireland, C′ = Northern Ireland;
- A″ = Ireland (island), B″ = Ireland, C″ = Republic of Ireland, D′ = Northern Ireland.
IOW, IMO, whichever article discusses topics 2 and 3 should be titled Ireland; the one which discusses topic 1, if not the same, should be titled Ireland (island); the one which discusses 5, if not the same, should be titled Republic of Ireland; and whichever one discusses 4 should bear the infobox-country for Ireland and be considered the ‘main’ one which should be linked ‘by default’ by {{flagcountry|IRE}}
, sentences like “Galway is a city in Ireland”, and so on. (Does all of this make sense?)
― A. di M.plédréachtaí 10:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- The above points are very well taken. One of the primary things I disliked about the final RfC from 2009 (the only one I saw in time to be involved in) was that it gave a variety of options for dividing up the topic but used the clunky, IMO, Ireland (state), rather than the more natural Republic of Ireland for all choices except the status quo. While no solution will satisfy everyone, I think that another round of discussion followed by a new binding consensus is the best way forward. We don't need to rehash the same issues constantly but we can't know if consensus has changed unless we periodically test it. Eluchil404 (talk) 05:26, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Summary table
Here is a blank summary table. I've populated it with three options, but I do not claim that those are the best ... they are just a starting point. Please put any comments about the table below the table, not above. Anyone should feel free to add content into the cells of the table. --Noleander (talk) 22:51, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Main table of options for the Ireland article
"Ireland" article is ... | Pros | Cons |
---|---|---|
Island - "Ireland" article is about the island. This is the status quo for the island. The article about the country is named "Republic of Ireland" or "Ireland (state)", etc. See sub-table below to compare various options for name of the article about the country. Voters here who have supported "status quo" naming status are supporting no change to either name, however. |
|
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Republic - "Ireland" article is about the Republic. The island is another article. |
|
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Disambiguation page - "Ireland" article is a disambiguation page with links to an article on the Republic, and another article on the island. |
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Sub-table for possible names of ROI article (useful if "Ireland" = island)
Here is a sub-table with options to be considered if "Ireland" article is about the island or is a dismbig page. This table considers the various possible names of the article that means the state/country. --Noleander (talk) 14:50, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
The name of the article about the state/country is ... | Pros | Cons |
---|---|---|
Republic of Ireland -- this is the status quo. |
|
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Ireland (state/country/republic) -- using constitutional English name, disambiguated. |
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Discussion of table
In the table above, "Consistency" is intended to address consistency of the proposal with other geography/nation articles. --Noleander (talk) 23:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- America, Macedonia, and Congo and all the common names of nations that have made DABs because of various controversies. An Ireland DAB could be reconsidered once there are view page stats to determine primary topic. Kauffner (talk) 01:50, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Takes loyalist POV side? See what I mean? How'd you get that idea? You just supposed it. If you were noting down how you came to your assumpions, you'd have avoided that yourself. Loyalism or loyalist ideology doesn't involve itself in opinions about what the island or the republic calls itself. There is no value in that for loyalism one way or the other. Check it out. You are wandering blindly. I'll read on I guess... ~ R.T.G 01:57, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Consistent with all WP nation articles" Well you just read that on Wikipedia. I read it here myself. Wikipedia is not a reliable source and here's why. What about America? ~ R.T.G 02:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- What about Antigua? Each case is unique. If it's worth all this debate it's worth it's own decisions. Without that we'd all be robbed... Maybe you disagree. Maybe you'd rather there was no arguments at the expense of detail. ~ R.T.G 02:10, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- How do you define concise when you claim that "ROI" is not concise? Concise does not mean shorter. It means completely informative in the smallest possible space. This does not apply to defining Ireland as the state. And so on and so forth I'm going to bed goodnight :). ~ R.T.G 02:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I think the table can be one tool, but not the tool used to define the disagreement. Like the STV poll from 2009, and the potential disagreements today about who should write the questions, where decision makers should physically reside, and whether time enough is given to argue or if any limit at all is appropriate, the table will be subject to any number of objections and interpretations. You might even see a 16 to 10 vote on whether the table is accurate, should be deleted, should be randomly ordered via machine, if IP editors should be allowed to tweak it: you name it. Then that vote could be contested. The fact remains that, abstentionist or exiled or otherwise, a segment of the editorship is not even bothering to participate in this discussion, something I considered strongly myself. The view is that it is a waste of time, the fix is in. Their absence further skews things. I do think it is fair to say many loyalists and NI residents fall on the status quo side. It is also very fair to say that the written Wikipedia policy-forming opinions of editors from the United Kingdom, which Ireland seceded from after a very long and painful struggle, far outnumber those of Irish citizens living in the 26 counties. That makes for a very fair assessment of the situation as showing an inherent institutional bias on en.wikipedia.org. Yet, that assessment has been ignored and even scoffed at before. It probably won't make the table. So, along with the addition of authoritarian-sounding "end of discussion" four word votes above supporting a continued ban on discussion, you get further and further away from the possibility of changing the current awkward and incorrect title to something better through a system skewed away from important real world perspectives. With all due respect to everyone reading this, the use of bluelinked WP guideline pages is meaningless when the pillar of verifiability from reliable sources has been allowed to be overruled by the excuses and opinions of many living in a former occupying country when naming an article such as in this case. Those citizens of the republic who also support the current name have been unable to persuade me that its use is called for at all. There is a reason postal delivery regulations on envelopes are clarified via RoI, and the desk sign in front of the Irish U.N. delegation does not use the term. The first addresses parochial internal concerns, the second global external ones. Wikipedia could respect those reasons and follow the lead of the latter, but it doesn't. This is not an envelope, it is a source of information for thousands of readers daily and they are currently being given the incorrect impression through the title that Republic of Ireland is something like United States of America, an official name, when it is not. It is a bad title, and the decision process here has been terribly flawed in the past. If it takes some backroom dealing like Irish admins x y and z ringing Jimbo, or some other unlikely event, to get rid of RoI as a title, then there is something amiss at this project. We have to keep discussing this if integrity is to be assured here. Another closed discussion and lock down will basically do damage to the credibility of the encyclopedia as a whole. Sswonk (talk) 06:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I'm darn near completely confused about what's been happening these last few days. Reckon I'll sit back & wait for the smoke to clear. GoodDay (talk) 03:28, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
For the record: America is not a name for the country in any formal sense; it is mostly a colloquial name used in songs, speeches, advertising, casual conversation and so on. No serious English language encyclopedia would ever title its entry on this country "America". As a citizen born and living here my entire life, I know that. I have noticed that people from Europe who write here on Wikipedia talk pages do tend to call the United States "America" with much higher frequency than I would. When I write or converse, I talk of living in the United States, or U.S.; it is a place which along with Canada and Mexico is one of three large countries in North America. A good portion of the people who come here to visit or live come from Central America and South America. All of those together with Greenland can be called America. This appears to be a habitual thing with Europeans to think of "America" as a name of this country; don't worry, it isn't offensive, and "American" is the normal demonym for residents. However, it is not much more formal than a nickname, really. Ireland, however, is the full constitutional English name of a sovereign state, and the name Ireland is used along with the tricolor to represent the country in formal and official lists of nations, at the United Nations, etc., with high frequency. The sort of dab questions arising in this subtopic which use "America" as an example? Apples and oranges here. Sswonk (talk) 04:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I disagree with the table above and some of the points put in it.. For example there is an inaccuracy about the disam option saying no other country is handled in sucha way. Yet there is Georgia. If we really want to rehash all the arguments and have the endless debate we did 2 years ago then we have to ensure all the points are accurate. If people really think a table is necessary to assist people in seeing the outcome then we must start from scratch and agree to each of the points put in. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:47, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Americans do not live in America. Where is that sort of argument going to lead us? How does that even apply to Ireland except to say that it is not a good guide for us? It is reasonable to imply a republican versus loyalist dispute using Wikipedia talk page debate as an example? The fact remains, the only reason such bias has been inferred is in comparison to other countries where such bias DOES exist. This is occuring because the approach is purely speculative rather than documentary. Relying on speculation is doing nothing bar encouraging editors to divide and galvanise opinion determined by their cultural identity rather than the facts available. I said division determined by, not opinion according to so if Wikipedia is your source of contention in that, my contention stands unless you cheat. I don't want your apples and oranges. I want Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the tool, and if we don't use it, we are all tools without purpose. You have gone out of your way to detail how Republic of Ireland is not official terminology, when in fact it is nothing but that, a significantly abused detail in the past. There is no reasonable way to indicate that through debate. We have basically proven so. You can intend use of this table to put a stop to such abuse, or you can try something more encouraging and reasonable that might fix it at the roots. I cannot assume one or other of these cultural identities you are all fascinated with. I can only demand both. This is an encylopaedia of knowledge, not a courtroom, a town hall meeting, or a gang fight. This is a library. Let us define what it is that we are talking about rather than what we are merely saying, and let us all learn how those are not the same things. It's very important that our voices be seen as relative and not defining. Cut the commentary. Roll the documentary. The table is all about the commentary. Some are complaining about debate being barred. I'd support going through the history, picking each person out who claimed a certain opinion related to cultural identity and bar them from this debate pending their production of a single direct relative source which meets WP:RS, is not relative to Wikipedia itself, and is not merely a singular opinion, a wave in the water. ~ R.T.G 12:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I'm still listening to you. Two points, if you are addressing me specifically: (1)"You have gone out of your way to detail how Republic of Ireland is not official terminology" is not accurate. I have not done that. I realize it is official terminology, but terminology merely sometimes used in legal language about postal regulations, travel documentation, transport rules etc. to describe places on the island as distinguished from those within the confines of the United Kingdom on that island. It is not the name of the country. It would take about five minutes of reading and research for most to see that. (2)"I'd support going through the history, picking each person out who claimed a certain opinion related to cultural identity and bar them from this debate..."? Personally, I am opposed to barring anyone who does not violate standards of etiquette. Well written and thoughtful writing is not harmful, and as I wrote above it is only pixels on a screen. No sense suggesting an RS argument restriction against commentary when the ultimate RS about the name of the country, the Constitution of Ireland, is not being followed in the article title. My commentary is critical of the table, and also how the usage of "America" in this discussion is not very relevant, except perhaps when noting that United States of America is the constitutional name of the country but Republic of Ireland is only a seldom used "description". The failure of Wikipedia to follow the lead of the great majority of world bodies and publications, and even the Queen, which use the single name Ireland is just that: a failure. Sswonk (talk) 13:57, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- See, you are rattling off there about stuff and hoping, just like everyone else, that what you say will be taken for the basis of credible and/or notable fact. I don't want to be relying on opinions and trustworthiness of random anonymous people for my facts in this debate, much in the same way that relying on that *in any other capacity* is universally accepted as *ridiculous and unthinkable* over the whole site *without exception* as a *fundamental pillar* of what this site is. Is that unreasonable? I don't want the *facts* to be *random* either. To add to that, I don't want to be examining list after list of links and trying to cross reference them with still more links buried in prose where I may or may not find the relevant and reliable information available. In each case, to have to evaluate everything individually through that mesh. Stop holding your footholds and start collaborating or are some of us not good enough for others to be seen co-operating with? Make it clear what that table is about, not just in commentary, or continue making personal speeches. Come on. I'll make personal speeches with you. Anyway, if you're still *listening to me*, you defined something as not official. Stop. End. "That's all," she wrote. "Insufficient," says I. See, if you do have awareness of the misconceptions floating aout the last time Sswonk, you are gaming the system. Otherwise you are a liability. Unguided incompetence, out of anything short of necessity, can equate sabbotage in effect. They tried all this knowledge restriction crap over here eons ago. everybody got somewhere between dead and danger. Now, if the streets are going to burn, that's what happens and we are at peace. There's still bad cops. There's still people blowing up bombs. They are an endangered species and why? Because the quality of support they have has changed. So, if official constitutions are so important to you, constitute your debate. Constitute the table. Stop conjuring. We might all get along, as is the spirit of constitutional policy, right? ~ R.T.G 16:33, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I am fully aware of the statement from the Oireachtas using the term as a description in Article 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, having learned that in 2009. "If I say that my name is Costello and that my description is that of senior counsel, I think that will be clear to anybody who wants to know." Thanks. Sswonk (talk) 02:40, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I use the Wikipedia Monobook skin, which is black and green, because my computer is on a plasma screen and it gets very warm if there is a lot of white on the screen for a long time. I find it hard to see where one part of this table begins and another ends. ~ R.T.G 10:46, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- You are aware of a Costello comment you say? Who is supposed to make sense of that? Oh, you trust I will, eh? People are handing me waffles but they are reneging the plates. History is obscure, you can't just insist you are a historian. This is a library. Where is my fact sheet and guide to the books on this matter? You wouldn't expect even a leaving cert age child to be knowledgeable with all this stuff unless they were doing a specific project. I need my fact sheet. My old brain is probably mixing things up. When we talk of these old quotes and stuff, if I had the fact sheet open in the other window beside, I could be sure I wasn't making any mistakes when I made my whys and fors of a thing. Don't worry, I know who Costello was, and what that contextually vague statement is in relation to, but I had to go and find it and check to make sure. I want everyone to be able to check like that or else it should be invalid for us to take it. ~ R.T.G 10:56, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- For the benefit of those reading, per the statement "I want everyone to be able to check" here is a link to the debate in the 6th Seanad in 1948: Seanad Éireann - Volume 36 - 15 December, 1948: The Republic of Ireland Bill, 1948—Committee and Final Stages. The quotation is found toward the middle of that page under the small heading "SECTION 2", beginning with a question from Senator Helena Concannon, answer from the Taoiseach, John A. Costello of Dublin, statements from Senators Michael Colgan and Luke Joseph Duffy and others following. Sswonk (talk) 15:30, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't intend to be personally insulting in that paragraph from yesterday but I do want to insult the table and lack of method. So I regret if there was some tone in this last paragraph but people seem more worried about the end than the means. Happier to draw closed than to outline a path. I know the central thing here is the naming policy and I have lots of opinions and concern for that, but I just appreciate methodology. I rather spend more time on the way to go about a thing than the way to wrap up for a close. As important as I think the history is I rarely shake the notion how important this container is also. ~ R.T.G 11:00, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
This table really is full of some misleading information. The fact someone made an error on the FIFA website changes nothing, nobody here is claiming the official name of the state is Republic of Ireland... but it is fact FIFA use and continue to use Republic of Ireland. Also the claim that "Not consistent with many WP policies such as NPOV and imposes a rule of numbers where consensus fails." is complete rubbish and such blatant POV pushing should not be allowed in the table if it is to be taken seriously. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- You should really do some research before commenting sometimes.
- Feel free to edit the table and improve it. Where there are entries in the table that appear to be not relevant, I'd suggest that you leave that bullet in the table, but add a parenthetical comment after the bullet, explaining your concern (but not a rebuttal to the bullet ... put any rebuttal as a new bullet the appropriate row/column of the table). That way, there are no edit wars. Consensus may or may not happen later to remove the bullet. --Noleander (talk) 14:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I just added a parenthetical comment after the FIFA bullet. I used Green font, so it can be seen as a meta-comment on the bullet's relevance. --Noleander (talk) 14:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I only added the subject matter on the name of the national football team as a rebuttal to the person who provided it as a reason to name the article. @BritishWatcher - at least FIFA corrected the mistake which had been on their website for a decade. Maybe WP could learn from that? --HighKing (talk) 16:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I just added a parenthetical comment after the FIFA bullet. I used Green font, so it can be seen as a meta-comment on the bullet's relevance. --Noleander (talk) 14:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I definitely think 'Ireland' should be the island rather than the state or a disambiguation page, so that leave what happens to 'Republic of Ireland'. I'd no great objection if people really want to move it to 'Ireland (state)' or something like that but the table above doesn't seem to allow for just renaming the Republic of Ireland article. Personally I prefer Republic of Ireland as that's an officially sanctioned description. Dmcq (talk) 09:58, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- It does include that option, which I added late Saturday. Readers might need to refresh their browser caches to view revised editions of the table. Click refresh, or type command-R or control-R, or hold the shift key when loading this page, depending on browser, see WP:REFRESH. Sswonk (talk) 14:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Consistency
I removed two irrelevant points about lock down and stability which have zero to do with consistency (diff) "Consistency – Does the proposed title follow the same pattern as those of similar articles?" That is the question posed at WP:TITLE. Sswonk (talk) 21:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Additional option
Done |I took care of this Sswonk (talk) 23:51, 24 September 2011 (UTC) I think the table should include an additional row under "Ireland is..." : (row 3) the island with the state disambiguated by Ireland (state/country/republic). The current third row "Disambiguation page" would then be (row 4). The current table only allows moving RoI to Ireland, the status quo, or moving Ireland to a dab page. Unfortunately I am not feeling adept at wikicode at the moment and I will be away so if someone could please add those with empty bullet points to start. Thanks, – Sswonk (talk) 21:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- Sswonk: I disagree that adding a 4th option is a good idea. The table originally had three options for what the "Ireland" article would be. The three options were mutually exclusive and unambiguous. Under each option, there are numerous conceivable "sub-options", namely, how the other articles are named. Adding those other sub-options into the table is very confusing, because it would greatly increase the size and complexity of the table. More importantly, if the table is ever used for some kind of poll or survey, the "Ireland = island" !vote would be split over the two suboptions, so the vote counting would be difficult to assess. Another problem is that progress is best achieved by taking modest steps: Step 1 might be deciding what the "Ireland" article is. After consensus is reached on that, Step 2 might be deciding what the name of the other article is (e.g. if Step 1 decides that "Ireland" is the island, then Step 2 might be deciding the name of the ROI article: "Ireland (state)" vs "ROI"). --Noleander (talk) 14:16, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- How about this: What if we split-out the two sub-options for "Ireland = island" (including the new "4th option" you created) into an independent sub-table, and leave the original table with just the three "Ireland = ??" options. That way if Step 1 results in "Ireland = island" then this sub-table would then come into play to decide what the name of the other article should be. Does that sound good? --Noleander (talk) 14:19, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- I split-out the two "what should name of ROI" rows out into a subtable (beneath the main table). I did not change the content at all. The main table has the original 3 choices for what "Ireland" article should be. If the choice there turns out to be "Ireland = island" or "Ireland = dab", then this new subtable (that Sswonk started) comes into play. One final task remaining for this table organization is: In the main "Ireland = ?" table, the "Ireland = island" row should be scrutinized to make sure its pros/cons are not specific to a particular name of the state/country article. The pros/cons in that row should be generic and handle any of the various possible names for the state/country article. --Noleander (talk) 14:58, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I was about to disagree strongly, but that actually works at first glance. I will read it more thoroughly and if I still object I will remark about that. BTW, you originally spelled my user name incorrectly if you can fix that, thanks. Sswonk (talk) 15:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for considering this. My intention is to simplify things into discrete baby steps. The more things get muddled, the harder it is to make progress. (also, I fixed the spelling of your username ... sorry about that). --Noleander (talk) 15:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- You will need to revise the main table, as it mostly describes the "status quo" in the middle section. In other words, the "Pros" are mostly statements in defense of Republic of Ireland as the title, which is the main point of contention. I am starting to prefer four main options, for that really is the situation offered among the voluminous arguments here. Sswonk (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, you are correct that middle section does need to get updated. As for the "four options" in the table: the problem it that could lead to chaos. For example, assume that "Ireland" title is used for the country/state. Then we have "sub options" for what to name the article about the island: "Ireland (island)", or "Irish civilization" (which is the choice made for china: Chinese civilization), or Irish history. If we go the "4 options" route, we'd have to include 2 or 3 sub-options for the "Ireland = country", and then the table would have 5 or 6 rows, and it would be total chaos. I'm suggesting that the main table should focus on the key question of "which article gets the coveted "Ireland" title?" After that is decided, then we turn to the question of: what is the best title for the other article? But trying to mix both questions in one table could render the entire exercise useless. And, yes, the middle row of the top table needs to be fixed. I dont have tim to do it now. Can you help with that? --Noleander (talk) 15:47, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- You will need to revise the main table, as it mostly describes the "status quo" in the middle section. In other words, the "Pros" are mostly statements in defense of Republic of Ireland as the title, which is the main point of contention. I am starting to prefer four main options, for that really is the situation offered among the voluminous arguments here. Sswonk (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for considering this. My intention is to simplify things into discrete baby steps. The more things get muddled, the harder it is to make progress. (also, I fixed the spelling of your username ... sorry about that). --Noleander (talk) 15:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I was about to disagree strongly, but that actually works at first glance. I will read it more thoroughly and if I still object I will remark about that. BTW, you originally spelled my user name incorrectly if you can fix that, thanks. Sswonk (talk) 15:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- I split-out the two "what should name of ROI" rows out into a subtable (beneath the main table). I did not change the content at all. The main table has the original 3 choices for what "Ireland" article should be. If the choice there turns out to be "Ireland = island" or "Ireland = dab", then this new subtable (that Sswonk started) comes into play. One final task remaining for this table organization is: In the main "Ireland = ?" table, the "Ireland = island" row should be scrutinized to make sure its pros/cons are not specific to a particular name of the state/country article. The pros/cons in that row should be generic and handle any of the various possible names for the state/country article. --Noleander (talk) 14:58, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- How about this: What if we split-out the two sub-options for "Ireland = island" (including the new "4th option" you created) into an independent sub-table, and leave the original table with just the three "Ireland = ??" options. That way if Step 1 results in "Ireland = island" then this sub-table would then come into play to decide what the name of the other article should be. Does that sound good? --Noleander (talk) 14:19, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Sswonk: I disagree that adding a 4th option is a good idea. The table originally had three options for what the "Ireland" article would be. The three options were mutually exclusive and unambiguous. Under each option, there are numerous conceivable "sub-options", namely, how the other articles are named. Adding those other sub-options into the table is very confusing, because it would greatly increase the size and complexity of the table. More importantly, if the table is ever used for some kind of poll or survey, the "Ireland = island" !vote would be split over the two suboptions, so the vote counting would be difficult to assess. Another problem is that progress is best achieved by taking modest steps: Step 1 might be deciding what the "Ireland" article is. After consensus is reached on that, Step 2 might be deciding what the name of the other article is (e.g. if Step 1 decides that "Ireland" is the island, then Step 2 might be deciding the name of the ROI article: "Ireland (state)" vs "ROI"). --Noleander (talk) 14:16, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Broad concept
RA, please find a way to state your "broad concept" views within the table structure that does not make it a new subsection of the cell. The table cells are all consistent, with five subheadings and you have added as sixth to one cell you label "Broad concept". I am not opposed to your adding the phrase or information, it is helpful, but to the addition of a sixth subheading which disrupts the expected pattern of summaries. I have moved it to "Impact to other articles" for now. Each cell should have the same five subheadings, giving a structured logical map of questions and answers to the reader. Thanks, – Sswonk (talk) 13:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- I've added a section to do with disambiguation to each of the cells and added points to each. I've also flipped the table around so that the status quo comes first (simply because I would have expected that). --RA (talk) 14:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
Can be read as endorsing the Republic's implicit claim to entire island
The Republic lays no claim, explicit or implicit or otherwise, to the entire island. Is this a real concern for some editors today? --HighKing (talk) 09:10, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- I wrote this, when rephrasing previous wording which simply claimd the name "Ireland" is Republican POV. I think the claim to the entire island is implicit in the name and this is at the root of this conflict. For comparison, see the real-life naming conflict about Macedonia, or how the Federal Republic of Germany became just Germany after reunification.
- Disambiguation between the two (or even three) "Irelands" is something that is necessary in real life just as in Wikipedia. In real life this is usually done by saying "Republic of Ireland" or "the Republic" (if the Irish context is clear). The "description" nonsense was a political compromise between those who wanted an unambiguous name and those who wanted to make the claim to the entire island explicit in the Republic's name. The fact that the name has still not been changed, even though this might contribute to good neighbourly relations with the UK, clearly shows that this remains as a touchy issue. Hans Adler 09:21, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- So many misunderstandings in one short paragraph. No, the IRA didn't call the Dublin government "Ireland". That would be recognizing its legitimacy. The common name for the south has always been "Ireland", even when the official name was something else. The 1937 constitution gives the country's name as simply "Ireland". "Republic of Ireland" is from a law enacted in 1948. The reason it is only a description is because a law can't override the constitution. The word "republic" was intended to emphasize rejection of the monarchy. By the 1960s, the Irish government was having second thoughts about the phrase, or at least didn't appreciate the way the British used it. There is a practical need for a moniker that distinguishes the Republic from the North, so it still gets used. Kauffner (talk) 12:17, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- the issue is not so much that it endorses the nations claim to the whole island, its the issue that it would treat the country like it does control the whole island. The island of Ireland has existed for 100s of years. The island has a larger population and consists of a larger area than the country called Ireland. It is not neutral and it is deeply offensive to suggest that the people of the Republic of Ireland should have primacy over the whole island trying to pretend that there are not over 1 million people living in another part of Ireland.
- When someone says "I went to Ireland last year" or "I was born in Ireland" or "My ancestors were born in Ireland", they do not necessary mean the country Ireland that exists today and certainly in the case of ancestry most will not be referring to a state that has existed sine the 1920s. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:53, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- Certainly it is a fact that the internet, or something, is normalising the more international view that Northern Ireland is in Ireland. Culture in the north today includes standing popular slogans such as, apologies for the language but this is quite significant, "Who gives a fuck?" I'm sure a lot of you have been seeing this phrase on the internet. I remember ten years ago passing one of these crazy drug parties in a house in Belfast. The crazies chanting "Who gives a fuck!" were louder than the music. That's where the peace came out of ladies and gents. We've got to acknowledge the fallacy in this percieved cultural push. Bickering like this is becoming rather alien to those folk. That's great, and who proposes to misrepresent them? ~ R.T.G 12:22, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- TBH, a true Irish nationalist would prefer the status quo. Having the country article at 'Republic of Ireland', symbolizes that the island hasn't been re-united. GoodDay (talk) 15:40, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- And there's a number of those here and wanting the status quo for that very reason. And the irony is that a true "loyalist" also prefers the status quo to prevent the south making an extra-territorial claim on the northern 6 counties. :-) What a funny world we live in sometimes... :-) --HighKing (talk) 17:33, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Was about to comment on Ireland making no claim on Northern Ireland, as is claimed in the above table, but I see HighKing beat me to it. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 17:24, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm not at all concerned that it might read as endorsing any residual implicit claim by the Republic to the North. I'm sure we're all clear that the Republic has fully abandoned any and all such claims (which were never taken very seriously by the government of the Republic in the first place). No, my concern is purely for how to convey information to the casual reader of the encyclopedia in the most clear (or maybe that should be least-confusing) manner. I happen to think "Republic of Ireland" is well-sourced as a name of the southern state: it doesn't require disambiguation or convoluted explanations. That said, I accept that "Ireland" is also well-sourced as a name for the southern state, and further that, post-the Good Friday Agreement, both sovereign governments are supposed to always refer to each other by their full, preferred names: "Ireland" and "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nothern Ireland". I'm just not convinced that Wikipedia need follow suit. I mean, wouldn't it be cumbersome, especially on articles related to the border between Ireland and the UK of GB and NI, to have to always use the full names for both states? Ivor Stoughton (talk) 21:10, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- This is an example of the confusion surrounding the issue. You are perhaps conflating two issues. The first is, where to locate the article dealing with the state (and perhaps this has a knock-on affect with other articles). The second issue - how to deal with disambiguating the republic from the island, or from Northern Ireland - is largely uncontested and accepted and involves using "Republic of Ireland" within article text.
- A bit like using "Joe Smith the Butcher" to disambiguate in text - but that doesn't mean that "Joe Smith the Butcher" is the person's name. --HighKing (talk) 11:57, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- The fact Republic of Ireland within articles is deemed an acceptable way to say Ireland when there is a need for disambiguation just shows why the current setup is valid.. ROI is acceptable for an article title and its acceptable within articles, as long as the introduction makes very clear Ireland is the official name and ROI is a description... the article does that. So no need to change. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see how you can conclude that using a description like Republic of Ireland to disambiguate in text makes it OK to use the same descriptor as the article title. People not familiar with the issue wouldn't (and don't) understand the difference, therefore using it as the title is misleading and confusing, not to mention NPOV given the history of usage. --HighKing (talk) 15:14, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- but by the logic that they dont understand the difference, surely using ROI in text would be even more problematic than using it as an article title which contains in the first paragraph an explanation that the country is officially called Ireland? The claim about it is NPOV to use the term Republic of Ireland was disproved the last time we debated this. It was the Irish Government that passsed the Republic of Ireland act and declared the ROI be the description of the state. Its not like it was something invented by the British and imposed on Ireland. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:50, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see how you can conclude that using a description like Republic of Ireland to disambiguate in text makes it OK to use the same descriptor as the article title. People not familiar with the issue wouldn't (and don't) understand the difference, therefore using it as the title is misleading and confusing, not to mention NPOV given the history of usage. --HighKing (talk) 15:14, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- The fact Republic of Ireland within articles is deemed an acceptable way to say Ireland when there is a need for disambiguation just shows why the current setup is valid.. ROI is acceptable for an article title and its acceptable within articles, as long as the introduction makes very clear Ireland is the official name and ROI is a description... the article does that. So no need to change. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Squaring the circle: a DAB article means that everybody loses and everybody wins
If we have a DAB article pointing to two articles (a) Ireland (island) and (b) Ireland (state), ok the hardliners on both sides lose out. It's called 'equality of misery'. History of Ireland doesn't need to chage. The pipe trick can be used where the context is unambiguous (i.e. [[Ireland (island)|]] in geography articles, [[Ireland (state)|]] in political and diplomatic articles– otherwise or if in doubt, the qualifier should be exposed.) If people follow a link back, its immediately obvious what it is that they are looking at. The table suggests that the con to this proposal is that the names are not succinct. Well they can't be if neutrality is to be preserved. By the way, the Irish goverment most often uses 'the state' as a disambiguator (prior to the Belfast Agreement, it used to say 'the jurisdiction'). It seems to me that this is the only way to square the circle. --Red King (talk) 14:00, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
- The problem with Ireland (state) is that there are two states on the island of Ireland. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 06:28, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is not about editors winning or losing. Your criterion is not relevant. It is about writing an encyclopaedia that can be used easily. Please see WP:5P about the basic principles. This is not a forum. WP:TITLE gives the policy for titles. Dmcq (talk) 09:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I acknowledge that. But we need to square the circle. If I stand on cermony, I infer from WP:PRINCIPALNAMINGCRITERIA that the name of the 'state' article should be 'Ireland' since that is the meaning understood by almost everyone in every country except the UK. UK editors will not accept the change and for a blocking minority. --Red King (talk) 12:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- We currently do dab. We dab by WP:DABCONCEPT. Ireland is the broad concept. Beneath that concept are a number of subsidiary articles, such as History of Ireland, Geography of Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Music of Ireland and so on, including Republic of Ireland (and Northern Ireland).
- Disambiguating [[Ireland (island)|]] and [[Ireland (state)|]], as if there they have nothing in common or as if there is no natural relationship between the two articles, only makes sense from some very narrow perspective on the topic. Both articles relate to the broad concept of "Ireland": the Ireland article being that broad concept. --RA (talk) 09:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- So are you suggesting that the the Island article and the State article be merged? I can't see that getting over the first fence! --Red King (talk) 12:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- Good man Mr. Staughton. It's fair to acknowledge, but it can be unfair to lack knowledge. ~ R.T.G 11:11, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
If it really was needed and the will of the majority id be ok with a dab page, but changing to a dab page will make disputes about what should have the primary spot continue, it will also end 2 years of stability that the clear majority voted for in a widely advertised poll. We should stick with the status quo, otherwise we will go round and round in circles debating this matter for many months. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- Do us all a favour, and avoid repeating the exact same point over and over in multiple sections. Thanks. --HighKing (talk) 17:39, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- This whole page has been flooded with certain people repeating the same points over and over again as they seek to demand changes opposed by the majority. Thats sadly what will happen now this issue has been restarted instead of the sensible idea to lock the article in place again for 2 years which would again ensure stability. Nothing has changed.. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:41, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I doubt the whole project will collapse, whether the naming discussion continue or not. GoodDay (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It wouldnt collapse but it will focus fully on an issue that was resolved over two years ago. If major new arguments had arrived to justify the need for change i could understand it, but there is no new reasons why a change is required. Its the same old arguments, yet Highking attacks me for repeating the same points. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:52, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is your insistence on believing the issue "was resolved over two years ago" that is one of those same old arguments, BW. The entire chaotic situation surrounding that poll and the conclusion, and subsequent de facto protest statements and actions (losing trust in Wikipedia being one, outright leaving being another) by myself and several others, how do those results resolve the issue? Far from it. It is as if you have been sitting at a table, several people disliked the service and left their meals to go cold, and you are eating and saying to empty chairs "isn't this a lovely meal?" Please, today, understand that this is not resolved. Several very serious editors are objecting here on this page in September 2011 to the results and the status quo. Sswonk (talk) 18:18, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- Several are objecting.. Many more are supporting. Most of us simply think this is the best way of handling the situation. The island rightly has primacy over a state that has existed less than 80 years and does not consist of the population or territorial size of that island. People do not always mean the country when they talk about Ireland. Republic of Ireland is a valid term to use to assist in disambiguation, it is a term officially made by the Republic of Ireland, and the article itself explains very clearly in the introduction, ROI is only a description, the official country name is Ireland. Of course its not ideal, but its not our fault that the island is divided today and the state in the south chose to take the name of the island. BritishWatcher (talk) 19:14, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- You say that as if a "fault" exists. That the state has no "right" to be named "Ireland". That the island "rightly" has primacy. That there is more support for the status quo. Can you please stop repeating this mantra over and over. If you wish, make your points in the table above, like everyone else. You are only disrupting the discussion by popping up to repeat the same claims over and over. Please stop. I currently support the status quo, but for none of those reasons. We all have our own reasons, but we don't all have a need to repeat our personal reasons over and over. --HighKing (talk) 20:07, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I agree, I think we are going to need admin support to (a) stop repetitious and disruptive endless restatement of the same position to no mutual benefit, (b) very long paragraphs, which render the page difficult to browse down and contain mostly (so far) meaningless nonsense and (c) anyone routinely attempting to disrupt a structured approach. We've had a good suggestion thus far of a table detailing each approach. There obviously is going to be some kind of effort to have another community vote, so the best thing for all concerned is to be constructive, if you have a fixed view on what should be done, work up proper points about it off the project page, or set up a project page for "your view", invite like-minded others there and refine your arguments. Then we can compare concise lists of arguments for each "view" on a final vote. This kind of ding-donging is utterly futile and disruptive. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 20:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- Indeed. --Red King (talk) 12:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- The vote above shows that around 20 people support the status quo with about 10 supporting a change. There is no need at this stage for a massive new poll to be conducted when a clear majority is ok with the present format that has been in place for many years and won a very large vote 2 years ago. As for the table, it contains some misleading information with no checks and balances to ensure that someone who arrives on this page, is not grossly misled by information in a table they think has been drafted as an accurate summary of the situation. This was part of the problem the last time we debated this over 2 years ago, there were differing views on if the claimed pros or cons are actually accurate or not. Like i said before, if we do have to go down this path of a full new debate and even a poll, and this is going to be done based on a table.. that table has to be fairly drafted with no misleading content. is that really so unreasonable? BritishWatcher (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- The 'pedia isn't a democracy though. The current 20-10 in favour of status-quo, doesn't dictate future events concerning this topic. GoodDay (talk) 13:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is currently 23-20 against renewing the Arbcom ban. Once that's closed, I assume there will be a vote of some kind on the naming structure. As for the vote on the status quo, that is useful in the sense that the comments can tell us what kind of proposal might obtain editor support. This would allow the right questions to be asked in any future polling. But no matter how many people voted for the status quo, that would not prevent future votes on article titling. Kauffner (talk) 13:53, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Agreed. GoodDay (talk) 14:01, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- There is no clear majority support for having the ban extended for 2 years, 1 part of the reason for some people was because they wanted to know if consensus had changed since then. So yes the ban can not be extended, but if there is no clear majority support for making a change to the status quo (as the second poll shows), then why on earth is it going to trigger some form of new debate on the naming structure? BritishWatcher (talk) 15:58, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- And yes that poll does not stop another poll or debate taking place sometime in the future. But the idea when the status quo is shown to have support, we must go on to debate changing the entire setup makes very little sense. BritishWatcher (talk) 16:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is currently 23-20 against renewing the Arbcom ban. Once that's closed, I assume there will be a vote of some kind on the naming structure. As for the vote on the status quo, that is useful in the sense that the comments can tell us what kind of proposal might obtain editor support. This would allow the right questions to be asked in any future polling. But no matter how many people voted for the status quo, that would not prevent future votes on article titling. Kauffner (talk) 13:53, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- The 'pedia isn't a democracy though. The current 20-10 in favour of status-quo, doesn't dictate future events concerning this topic. GoodDay (talk) 13:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- The vote above shows that around 20 people support the status quo with about 10 supporting a change. There is no need at this stage for a massive new poll to be conducted when a clear majority is ok with the present format that has been in place for many years and won a very large vote 2 years ago. As for the table, it contains some misleading information with no checks and balances to ensure that someone who arrives on this page, is not grossly misled by information in a table they think has been drafted as an accurate summary of the situation. This was part of the problem the last time we debated this over 2 years ago, there were differing views on if the claimed pros or cons are actually accurate or not. Like i said before, if we do have to go down this path of a full new debate and even a poll, and this is going to be done based on a table.. that table has to be fairly drafted with no misleading content. is that really so unreasonable? BritishWatcher (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Indeed. --Red King (talk) 12:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- I agree, I think we are going to need admin support to (a) stop repetitious and disruptive endless restatement of the same position to no mutual benefit, (b) very long paragraphs, which render the page difficult to browse down and contain mostly (so far) meaningless nonsense and (c) anyone routinely attempting to disrupt a structured approach. We've had a good suggestion thus far of a table detailing each approach. There obviously is going to be some kind of effort to have another community vote, so the best thing for all concerned is to be constructive, if you have a fixed view on what should be done, work up proper points about it off the project page, or set up a project page for "your view", invite like-minded others there and refine your arguments. Then we can compare concise lists of arguments for each "view" on a final vote. This kind of ding-donging is utterly futile and disruptive. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 20:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- You say that as if a "fault" exists. That the state has no "right" to be named "Ireland". That the island "rightly" has primacy. That there is more support for the status quo. Can you please stop repeating this mantra over and over. If you wish, make your points in the table above, like everyone else. You are only disrupting the discussion by popping up to repeat the same claims over and over. Please stop. I currently support the status quo, but for none of those reasons. We all have our own reasons, but we don't all have a need to repeat our personal reasons over and over. --HighKing (talk) 20:07, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- Several are objecting.. Many more are supporting. Most of us simply think this is the best way of handling the situation. The island rightly has primacy over a state that has existed less than 80 years and does not consist of the population or territorial size of that island. People do not always mean the country when they talk about Ireland. Republic of Ireland is a valid term to use to assist in disambiguation, it is a term officially made by the Republic of Ireland, and the article itself explains very clearly in the introduction, ROI is only a description, the official country name is Ireland. Of course its not ideal, but its not our fault that the island is divided today and the state in the south chose to take the name of the island. BritishWatcher (talk) 19:14, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is your insistence on believing the issue "was resolved over two years ago" that is one of those same old arguments, BW. The entire chaotic situation surrounding that poll and the conclusion, and subsequent de facto protest statements and actions (losing trust in Wikipedia being one, outright leaving being another) by myself and several others, how do those results resolve the issue? Far from it. It is as if you have been sitting at a table, several people disliked the service and left their meals to go cold, and you are eating and saying to empty chairs "isn't this a lovely meal?" Please, today, understand that this is not resolved. Several very serious editors are objecting here on this page in September 2011 to the results and the status quo. Sswonk (talk) 18:18, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It wouldnt collapse but it will focus fully on an issue that was resolved over two years ago. If major new arguments had arrived to justify the need for change i could understand it, but there is no new reasons why a change is required. Its the same old arguments, yet Highking attacks me for repeating the same points. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:52, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I doubt the whole project will collapse, whether the naming discussion continue or not. GoodDay (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- This whole page has been flooded with certain people repeating the same points over and over again as they seek to demand changes opposed by the majority. Thats sadly what will happen now this issue has been restarted instead of the sensible idea to lock the article in place again for 2 years which would again ensure stability. Nothing has changed.. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:41, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
There's no ban to expand, it expired over a week ago. GoodDay (talk) 16:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- That's nice. But they are not allowing RMs until something is resolved here. Kauffner (talk) 16:08, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- There is no support for extending the ban on moves which expired, but there does not seem to be clear support for changing the status quo either. BritishWatcher (talk) 16:16, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
All options previously discussed
Just run the damn poll again and see what happens. Do it quickly, get it over with. -- Evertype·✆ 10:08, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- We should not have to run a massive poll again because a small minority (many of them the ones who opposed it previously) reject the status quo which still has majority support. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:01, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- I'm surprised that RMs haven't been opened at Ireland, Republic of Ireland & Ireland (disambiguation). What with the gag order having expired nearly a week. GoodDay (talk) 15:22, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- With regard to that, I am not sure that RMs won't be quickly closed, as the question of extending the discussion gag is still pending here. In other words, RMs are in limbo until the end of the poll above asking to extend the gag. After that, I would favor no RMs and more simple general discussions at the pages. Perhaps Arbcom could sanction open and unrestricted discussion but temporarily bar formal RMs until a reasonable bipartisan group approaches them with a request for a single conclusive move. Votes are seen as far reaching and statutory when in fact they are really snapshots. Multiple repetitive voting on individual articles every few months has no chance to resolve this. Evertype, I don't think running that poll in the form that it took last time, an STV device with 6 choices, would be the right move. Wikipedia should discuss at length the meta-questions of the need to disambiguate and the correctness of the use of RoI as a title. So, this straw poll of A or B, versus the previous A through E or F, is harmless right now and more likely to clarify the issues I think. Sswonk (talk) 15:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification#Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ireland article names. DrKiernan (talk) 17:26, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It appears your request for clarification has some, certainly me, a little confused by the responses. Why in the statement by Kirill does he say "Yes, both motions remain in effect"? You were asking about the single motion centralizing discussion at IECOLL (here)? It appears Kirill reading John Vandenberg has taken his general plural "those motions" the wrong way. The decision banning all move discussion for two years (here) has surely expired, so what does "both motions" refer to? Sswonk (talk) 18:06, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- The motion "Moderators of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration may ban any contributor from the pages within the scope of the WikiProject for up to a month when a contributor is disrupting the collaboration process" is also still in effect. DrKiernan (talk) 18:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It appears your request for clarification has some, certainly me, a little confused by the responses. Why in the statement by Kirill does he say "Yes, both motions remain in effect"? You were asking about the single motion centralizing discussion at IECOLL (here)? It appears Kirill reading John Vandenberg has taken his general plural "those motions" the wrong way. The decision banning all move discussion for two years (here) has surely expired, so what does "both motions" refer to? Sswonk (talk) 18:06, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
- It serves the purposes of the illuminati to give people the illusion of freedom let them come to come to the predetermined conclusion. ;-) We've got to go by the basic principles of Wikipedia and a major one there is consensus. The consensus might have changed, people are interested and so it should be properly discussed and decided again. That shouldn't be done too often and it shouldn't drag on too long but this has not been anywhere near disruptive yet so there's no need to try shutting it down. Dmcq (talk) 15:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't really matter what the legalistic logic for it might be, they are not allowing RMs now. But we should develop model RMs here which can be proposed in the event that the ban is overturned, as seems likely based on the voting above. For the Republic of Ireland article, the RM can say something like, What title would you prefer for this article? You may give several preferences in order of preference, followed by a rationale. For example: Republic of Ireland, Ireland, Ireland (republic), Ireland (state), Ireland (country), etc. Kauffner (talk) 02:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- There's no ban to overturn, as it expired September 18, 2011. GoodDay (talk) 13:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
- Perhaps some people, by fillibustering, are hoping to get it reimposed. Because reimposed it will if we can't have a rational discussion. If it can be achieved for China, I can't for the life of me see what is so difficult about achieving it here. --Red King (talk) 12:59, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- Perhaps it already has been achieved. It may be that people are happy with the status quo. --RA (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- I really don't get the China analogy at all. I mean, is the Republic of Ireland supposed to be Taiwan?Ivor Stoughton (talk) 02:40, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- There's currently more then one 'China'. GoodDay (talk) 03:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Right, but China regards Taiwan as a renegade province. The UK doesn't regard the RoI that way at all (and hasn't for 90-odd years). Both the U.K. and the R.O.I are universally recognised states and member nations of the UN. I just don't see the paralell. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 03:12, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- True, but I think the analogy is 'same name' for different places or things. The Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan) & the People's Republic of China, both claim the name China. Where's in the case of the name Ireland, that county & the island, claim that name. GoodDay (talk) 04:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- The analogy is that "China" is both the common and official name of a major state, which also true of "Ireland". But like "Ireland" the lemma was being used for something else, a subject that most readers may not have expected to find there. Kauffner (talk) 04:31, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- The "something else" being a conception of Ireland that is not about the southern state, that is in fact older than the state, and that is also in common use. As an example: I was back in the U.K. this summer. I had to stop in London for a few days, after which I was to travel to Northern Ireland to visit my old auntie in Portrush. On my second day in London I called my aunt and her first question on hearing my voice was "are you in Ireland yet?". She did't mean the southern state, clearly. Neither did she mean "on the island of Ireland", exactly. And, no, she has no problem uttering the name of Northern Ireland (she's a Paisleyite). She meant...something else. If she were to search on Wikipedia for "Ireland" she would certainly not expect to find an article on the Republic there. I think she would regard it as too narrow a definition of Ireland.Ivor Stoughton (talk) 05:48, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- The analogy is that "China" is both the common and official name of a major state, which also true of "Ireland". But like "Ireland" the lemma was being used for something else, a subject that most readers may not have expected to find there. Kauffner (talk) 04:31, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- True, but I think the analogy is 'same name' for different places or things. The Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan) & the People's Republic of China, both claim the name China. Where's in the case of the name Ireland, that county & the island, claim that name. GoodDay (talk) 04:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Right, but China regards Taiwan as a renegade province. The UK doesn't regard the RoI that way at all (and hasn't for 90-odd years). Both the U.K. and the R.O.I are universally recognised states and member nations of the UN. I just don't see the paralell. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 03:12, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- There's currently more then one 'China'. GoodDay (talk) 03:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- I really don't get the China analogy at all. I mean, is the Republic of Ireland supposed to be Taiwan?Ivor Stoughton (talk) 02:40, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Perhaps it already has been achieved. It may be that people are happy with the status quo. --RA (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- Perhaps some people, by fillibustering, are hoping to get it reimposed. Because reimposed it will if we can't have a rational discussion. If it can be achieved for China, I can't for the life of me see what is so difficult about achieving it here. --Red King (talk) 12:59, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yes. This is why referring to the article at Ireland as being about an "island" are rather annoying and disingenuous. That article no more about an "island" than the article at Korea is about a peninsula. Like the Korea article, it's about a topic that regardless of partition is still the major concept of the topic that it embodies.
- There is, for example, no such thing as an article on the Culture of the Republic of Ireland. That simply doesn't make sense. There is simply no such thing that is unique from the Culture of Ireland. (The same is not true for Culture of Northern Ireland, which ca be described uniquely.)
- Taking "Ireland" as primarily meaning "Republic of Ireland" shuts the door to a far broader topic, which I would argue most people mean when talking about "Ireland" in the context of a general encyclopedia.
- This too is why proposed moves of the article at Republic of Ireland to Ireland are well-meaning but misplaced as well. There are two things commonly called "Ireland" - and both are called a "country". Like Korea, partition is a reality but it is also a distraction from the main topic. --RA (talk) 08:21, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- You really hit the nail on the head here, RA. JonCTalk 08:25, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Certainly did. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 14:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Once again, people are conflating two issues. Your reasoning is mostly for keeping the Ireland article where it is. You make good points about understanding the broader topic. But what was being discussed here is potential alternatives for the "Republic of Ireland" article, and none of your points really address that (except a reason why "country" isn't a good choice). I'll add that the discussions have given me a better appreciation this time around for the subtleties surrounding "country" and "broader topic" than 2 years ago, so points well made. --HighKing (talk) 14:56, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Certainly did. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 14:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- You really hit the nail on the head here, RA. JonCTalk 08:25, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
If a change were made - "Ireland (Republic)" would fit better. GoodDay (talk) 18:20, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Yes it would. So that would mean the Ireland article would remain as is, while Republic of Ireland would be moved to "Ireland (Republic)". What do people think? Ivor Stoughton (talk) 18:35, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- I oppose any change to the status quo. To rename one of the articles would break the long standing policy and then suddenly the arguments to put the country article Ireland will have an additional excuse (as there will not be a long standing position) approved by a clear majority in a poll. Also "Republic of Ireland" is used within articles as a disam term regularly, we could not say Ireland (Republic) in the text all the time. if "ROI" is good enough within articles, i fail to see why we need to change the article title from ROI to say soemthing else. As long as we make clear in the article intro that Ireland is the official name (as happens), where is the need for change? BritishWatcher (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- I support moving the ROI article to "Ireland (republic)". The island article is obviously staying where it is, whatever I might think about it. So I hope we don't waste too much time on that issue. Kauffner (talk) 02:47, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Given the voting results above -- a very slight majority for a new discussion rather than immediate reinstatement of the moratorium, but a clear majority for the status quo -- I think the only thing that makes sense is looking for a really popular alternative to the status quo, and then voting on that. It appears to me that any of "Ireland (Republic of)", "Ireland (Republic)" and "Ireland (republic)" may have a chance. I suggest a poll to find out which of the three is most popular, and then a formal vote to decide between that and the status quo. Hans Adler 08:51, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- The vote supports discussion but by itself is not the only thing that counts. The quality, tone and volume of these discussions together also represent a significant move away from forced suppression of dialog. Of the three choices you are suggesting Hans, only Ireland (republic) is a real change, the other two would perpetuate the main problem of using an incorrect "name" for the article title, but in an altered and more awkward form. Ireland (state), Ireland (country) or Ireland (republic) focus the title of the article on the correct name for the state that is used by outside reference publication article titles, by diplomatic protocols and among international organizations. Sswonk (talk) 13:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- I dont see how that makes sense. With a small majority people voted against extending the ban for 2 years (some saying there should atleast be a discussion now to see if consensus has changed). Underneath is a poll which shows clear majority support for the status quo remaining. So surely if things dont radically change the two options are :
- 1) Leave things as they are for a period of time accepting that consensus has yet to change and there is no justification for an extensive additional debate.
- 2) Now it looks clear the status quo still has support, consider redoing the poll on if arbcom should extend the ban on page moves.
- Where is the justification for holding a massive new poll, when most support the status quo? Whilst option 2 would resolve this situation quicker, option 1 seems reasonable for the time being, and if the whole issue was sparked again in a few weeks or few months time then debate in full again, see if there is still clear majority support for the status quo and if that is the case.. have another vote on if we should request arbcom extend the ban. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:39, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Ireland (state)" and "Ireland (country)" are problematic as there are two states and two countries in Ireland, and further disambiguation would be required. The problem doesn't arise with "Ireland (republic)", which has the further advantage of more closely reflecting the preference of many editors about nomenclature for the southern state. The current Ireland article would remain as is, of course. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 19:55, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Ireland (republic)" is best, but all look ugly. Why go for the unneccessary paranthesised route when we already have a natural, awkward bracket-free disambiguator used by the Irish state itself? JonCTalk 20:03, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- 100%. Disambiguator has been decided for us and just as well, we might have got stuck in a hefty debate. ~ R.T.G 23:31, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well for me, it's *who* has decided for us, and it's the history of usage of Republic of Ireland as a name (and not as a dab) which has led to tons (yes, I weighed them) of people using the dab when they should use the name. And there's a couple of editors in this very debate who get it wrong and their edits need to be fixed afterwards. It's all very screwed up, confusion reigns, and I believe it would be better to have a different article title. In fact, just about any different title. It won't change how we dab, but with some luck and practice, editors will start getting it right. --HighKing (talk) 07:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Who? You mean the Irish Government when they made clear the official description of the state was to be Republic of Ireland? If this was simply a term used by the British media and created by the British then i could understand your hatred towards it. But i really dont get why there is such a problem (aslong as we continue to make clear what the official name is). BritishWatcher (talk) 13:21, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Nor me. It's used all the bloody time in Ireland, by the Irish. An ad by AIB in today's Irish Times, for example, or Revenue Commissioner envelopes, as illustrated by RA a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I'd much rather the British used "RoI" more often, instead of the incorrect "Eire" or "Southern Ireland". BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 14:11, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Irish Times since 2005 gives you 170,000 results for "Ireland", 28 for "Republic of Ireland", mostly false positives. "Republic of Ireland" is a fine name. It just doesn't happen to be the name of country we are referring to, at least according to the Irish press. Kauffner (talk) 15:05, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Nor me. It's used all the bloody time in Ireland, by the Irish. An ad by AIB in today's Irish Times, for example, or Revenue Commissioner envelopes, as illustrated by RA a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I'd much rather the British used "RoI" more often, instead of the incorrect "Eire" or "Southern Ireland". BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 14:11, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Who? You mean the Irish Government when they made clear the official description of the state was to be Republic of Ireland? If this was simply a term used by the British media and created by the British then i could understand your hatred towards it. But i really dont get why there is such a problem (aslong as we continue to make clear what the official name is). BritishWatcher (talk) 13:21, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well for me, it's *who* has decided for us, and it's the history of usage of Republic of Ireland as a name (and not as a dab) which has led to tons (yes, I weighed them) of people using the dab when they should use the name. And there's a couple of editors in this very debate who get it wrong and their edits need to be fixed afterwards. It's all very screwed up, confusion reigns, and I believe it would be better to have a different article title. In fact, just about any different title. It won't change how we dab, but with some luck and practice, editors will start getting it right. --HighKing (talk) 07:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- 100%. Disambiguator has been decided for us and just as well, we might have got stuck in a hefty debate. ~ R.T.G 23:31, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Ireland (republic)" is best, but all look ugly. Why go for the unneccessary paranthesised route when we already have a natural, awkward bracket-free disambiguator used by the Irish state itself? JonCTalk 20:03, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Ireland (state)" and "Ireland (country)" are problematic as there are two states and two countries in Ireland, and further disambiguation would be required. The problem doesn't arise with "Ireland (republic)", which has the further advantage of more closely reflecting the preference of many editors about nomenclature for the southern state. The current Ireland article would remain as is, of course. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 19:55, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
- The Irish Times search engine is shite, though. Using Google's search of the IT site (and trying to exclude mentions of the soccer team), there are 37 results for this year alone. And neither search looks at adverts in the print edition, which is what I referred to above. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 15:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- HighKing, I haven't just checked, but haven't you expressed agreement for some bracketed disambiguators? It is unjust in a way that our state hasn't had foresight to meet this matter properly before. In fairness, it doesn't ever seem to have been a major concern for us, outside of this screen, even when the state changed title to plain old Ireland. Wrapped in the imperialist worldview, the downtrodden Irish in the north were irrelevant at that time. Even Irish parliament wanted to define themselves as a monarchy of sorts. They, the Irish in the north, would never have an audience for their needs as Irish individuals. That would be treasonous. It was a rat race not a tea party. To be Irish with any meaning, they'd have to move across the border where things were not British. Multiculturalism was a sort of patheticism or handicap in the world. Imagine telling a Londoner in the thirties that multiculturalism would often dominate public policy. They'd start talking about ousting the the working class foreigners. If you said, "No, that will be a good thing," they'd have you down for a potential traitor or spy in two seconds. Britain ruling the north in those days meant that there was no Ireland, or any other non-British culture, above the level of the gutter and that was not some shocking racial fascist oppression that would surprise the world, it was the shocking racial fascist oppresion that glued certain parts the world together. You know all these scholars, social leaders and general upper class folk and whatever hailed today as the champions of social change and equality? Why were none of them prime ministers or anything like that? You've got to be joking, because they needed a certain sense of humour, and only today you can see politicans ripped apart for revealing their sly senses of humour. Twenty years ago you wouldn't bat an eyelid unless it was openly abusive. Physical injury was frowned upon but *blatant subjugation* was just run of the mill forty or so years ago (try phrases like, "What more do you want?" directed at people in the gutter) and, claiming to be from Ireland as a citizen of the north was meaningless unless you wanted to sing us all a song, just as claiming to be British was. It only mattered if you wanted to sing traditionally (bar like opera or something) or had to go to war. Today, because of knock on effects, these things have changed significantly. A happy society is a healthy and productive one and that doesn't just mean *high* society, hence, being Irish has meaning, even in the north. I don't know if this stuff has potential to make us less attractive economically or anything like that, but it seemed to have an unreasoned negative implication on what it means to identify as an Irish person (when I mean republic I will say it ha), and that's what I've been trying to look out for or at least, that's what I don't like to let go of once I spot it. Try looking up videos of The Kop on Youtube from the early eighties or before and you might pick up a keen sense of what your nationality meant as a nation forty years ago. Pack rats. Broken buldings. Ten to a room. If you want to do that to Britain or Ireland today you'd better be prepared to level cities because people will kill you to avoid it. So, it's very different today and if you think the time has passed when meaning was had by being Irish in the north, rubbish. That time only awakened yesterday. Give your Irishness to those people freely because they've endured for it any bit as much as you and they are, in fairness, what they claim to be in that respect. ~ R.T.G 14:46, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Disambiguation not necessary on several Wikis
The table links, in each case, to the article that held the title listed on 30 September 2011 in that language. The links are all to articles about the sovereign state, not the island or any broader concept. Of the top 20 Wikipedias when ranked by article count, 13 use the name of the state, 5 use "Republic of Ireland" and 2 use Ireland (country). This information is provided in support of continued discussion about the current title of the en.wikipedia.org article, and whether the purported "need to disambiguate" is not really a more local concern of Britain and Northern Ireland that has until now strongly influenced this project but is not a globally supported argument. The fact that the English Wikipedia uses "Republic of Ireland" and only 4 others on this list follow suit is telling. Sswonk (talk) 05:08, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Also telling is the fact that on the 30 September, the Irish wikipedia used ga:Poblacht na hÉireann, and has done so for the last seven years (except for 5 hours), which has generated about 5k of discussion compared to the megabytes of discussion it has here. DrKiernan (talk) 07:19, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Rank | Language | Title of state article | In English (source) | Title of island article | In English | Dab Page or Redirect |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | English | Republic of Ireland | Republic of Ireland | Ireland | Ireland | No |
2 | German | Irland | Ireland | Irland (Insel) | Ireland (island) | No |
3 | French | Irlande (pays) | Ireland (country) | Irlande (île) | Ireland (island) | Dab page Irlande |
4 | Italian | Irlanda | Ireland | Irlanda (isola) | Ireland (island) | No |
5 | Polish | Irlandia | Ireland | Irlandia (wyspa) | Ireland (island) | No |
6 | Spanish | Irlanda | Ireland | Irlanda (isla) | Ireland (island) | No |
7 | Russian | Ирландия | Ireland | Ирландия (остров) | Ireland (island) | No |
8 | Japanese | アイルランド | Ireland | アイルランド島 | Island of Ireland | No |
9 | Dutch | Ierland (land) | Ireland (country) | Ierland (eiland) | Ireland (island) | Dab Page Ierland |
10 | Portuguese | República da Irlanda | Republic of Ireland | Irlanda (ilha) | Ireland (island) | Redirects Irlanda to state article |
11 | Swedish | Irland | Ireland | Irland (ö) | Ireland (island) | No |
12 | Chinese | 爱尔兰共和国 | Republic of Ireland | 爱尔兰岛 | Ireland | No |
13 | Catalan | República d'Irlanda | Republic of Ireland | Irlanda (illa) | Ireland (island) | Redirects Irlanda to state article |
14 | Ukrainian | Ірландія | Ireland | Ірландія (острів) | Ireland (island) | No |
15 | Norwegian (Bokmål) | Irland | Ireland | Irland (øy) | Ireland (island) | No |
16 | Finnish | Irlanti | Ireland | Irlanti (saari) | Ireland (island) | No |
17 | Vietnamese | Cộng hòa Ireland | Republic of Ireland | Đảo Ireland | Island Ireland | Redirects Ireland to state article |
18 | Czech | Irsko | Ireland | Irsko (ostrov) | Ireland (island) | No |
19 | Hungarian | Írország | Ireland | Ír-sziget | Irish islands | No |
20 | Korean | 아일랜드 | Ireland | 아일랜드 섬 | Ireland Island | No |
- What name does those 19 non-english 'pedias call the island? GoodDay (talk) 11:34, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- There will always be differences between how different language wikipedias handle something. I note the Irish language wikipedia handles it the way we do. With Ireland being the island and the state being at Republic of Ireland. The fact it has been the case there for a long time, just goes to show our method is reasonable. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
GoodDay - odd, a major - major - point continuously made in 2008/2009 by the anti status quo lobby was that it was distinctly unfair that those "foreigners" (who outnumber us poor Irish) would be telling us what to call the article on our state.
- Indeed, most foreigners are apparently with the 'pro-movement' side of 2008/09. GoodDay (talk) 14:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Sswonk - what's the point of posting this? Really? Disambiguation is needed on all of those wikis, so your section heading is misleading. Just that some of them disambiguate on the state, some on the island. If it's an attempt to argue the case for using some other title than Republic of Ireland, it's not helpful (and it's been used already in the 2008/2009 discussions and didn't sway anyone). We're talking above about how to move on (or to decide not to move on) - not throwing out our various pro- and con- status quo arguments. Save them for if and when there's a RM or some other process. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 14:22, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- "Disambiguation not necessary on several Wikis" - First off, all of the examples above disambiguate between the two "Irelands". Some of them disambiguate using different terms and in different ways, but they all disambiguate.
- Second, and more important, this is the English-language Wikipedia. I don't know what the Irish state is called in Japanese. I don't speak Korean. I cannot read Ukrainian. But, more to the point, I don't know what policies or naming conventions the Japanese, Korean or Ukrainian Wikipedias have. Whatever they are, they don't matter here except in an academic sense.
- This encyclopedia is aimed at English-language speakers, through the medium of the English language. Not speakers of Czech or Hungarian. Not in Dutch or Portuguese. I have no idea what is appropriate for the naming of articles on those projects. They only Wikipedia projects I can contribute to are the English-language Wikipedia and the Irish-language Wikipedia. Both disambiguate between the two "Ireland" by placing the broad concept at Ireland (or Éire) and the state at Republic of Ireland (or Poblacht na hÉireann). I humbly suggest that that may be because that is what is appropriate for those languages. What is appropriate for other languages, I don't know. Possibly it may be whatever is in the table above. --RA (talk) 15:42, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
It really doesn't seem necessary to repeat myself, yet the entire scene here does contain its share of circular self-referencing arguments. Brought to mind are (paraphrasing) "I choose the status quo because nothing has changed" and "we need to disambiguate the state because the state's name is ambiguous". See the article I have pointed out many times, begging the question, for a similar example which goes: "Opium induces sleep because it has a soporific quality". If it seems it is needed, here is something I wrote above, repeated: This information is provided in support of continued discussion about the current title of the en.wikipedia.org article, and whether the purported "need to disambiguate" is not really a more local concern of Britain and Northern Ireland that has until now strongly influenced this project but is not a globally supported argument. If that is not clear, it may be because the original table only included the various titles of the state article, until a question about the island was asked and I added two columns. "Disambiguation (of the single name Ireland as title of the state article) not necessary on several Wikis" was implied, so that is the meaning. I did not mean nor write that disambiguation itself is not necessary.
My statements are in support of further discussion and in opposition to the "status quo", the use of an incorrect title that confuses a description with an actual name. It is fact that the current title was until 1998 promoted outside of Ireland as an official name exclusively by the U.K., a rival government, making it less than ideal for use as a title in a neutral setting. It is also fact that the Government of Ireland itself on its UN mission website publishes the following sentence: "The Irish constitution provides that the name of the state is Éire or in the english language, Ireland." Several others have remarked here in the past week as we have discussed various remedies to the titling situation, and the table is offered as another perspective. My statement suggests that outside of the islands of the North Atlantic a different view of the "Republic of Ireland" title dominates.
Members of the Arbitration Committee are apparently reading these threads, and they may entertain the possibility of adding more time to the suppression of discussion. Arguments are being made that there is not a need for debate or discussion, everything is fine as it is and discussion is disruptive. Obviously or not, many serious editors have disagreed with that and are offering, especially in the past week, alternate visions to the "status quo" article names which have also been included in the summary tables further above this one. What happens outside of IECOLL and in the larger world should be welcomed as instructive. If the need for discussion is not made clear and "status quo" arguments are not continually rebutted here, then the possibility of even having an RM in which to offer points of debate is endangered. The table I added substantiates the argument I have made for several months that the "status quo" is myopic, and that a broader perspective should be taken, and that can only occur when discussions are held. Sswonk (talk) 04:06, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- Discussions have been held on this page over the last few weeks, excessive debate covering the exact same points we went over for months 2 years ago and dozens of times previously. The poll above which is now meant to have closed clearly shows a majority support the status quo, there for no action is needed for the time being. We can come back and look at this in a few months time, but if it continues to come up and endless debate causes clear disruption, we should move for an extension of the ban. And lets not forget the poll organised 2 years ago gathered a huge number of views and opinions, not just advertising that poll on Ireland articles but it was posted on multiple other pages to get neutral, and uninvolved editors to contribute. No case has been made to justify a page move. We should all move on and focus on other things. BritishWatcher (talk) 20:33, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, "endless debate" is not disruptive. Last time, the endless repetitive debate, and the opening of consecutive move request with no time between, was the source of disruption. The tables above are one possible solution to the repetition. No move requests have been made. In fact, the only disruptive repetition I can see is your contributions which can all be summarized as a plea to ban this topic for another two years. Your position is clear. We get it. If you've nothing useful to say other than yet another repeat, keep it to yourself. Perhaps the Arbs watching this could (re)clarify the types of behaviour that constitute disruption so that we can keep a lid on any potential non-constructive behaviour? --HighKing (talk) 00:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- The table of pros / cons would be a possible solution if there was checks and balances on what went into that table, sadly there are some highly questionable and sometimes inaccurate points made in that table. Also of course if there was an actual need for a table and RM which it appears there is not. I have not just been insisting on a 2 year additional ban although yes that is my favoured option. I have commented on the table, making specific points. Ive challenged some of the questionable claims. Ive stated we should respect the second poll that there is no demand for a change and leave it for a few months, accepting there is no consensus at present for an additional 2 months ban. Your unfair attack on me simply for me stating my opinions and contributions like many others have done in this recent debate is very unreasonable. When it comes to repetition, in my view those arguing for a change are repeating the same old points over and over again despite no change in the situation so nothing new being provided to justify change. Everyone else is entitled to give their opinion but im not? that is very fair. BritishWatcher (talk) 08:32, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, "endless debate" is not disruptive. Last time, the endless repetitive debate, and the opening of consecutive move request with no time between, was the source of disruption. The tables above are one possible solution to the repetition. No move requests have been made. In fact, the only disruptive repetition I can see is your contributions which can all be summarized as a plea to ban this topic for another two years. Your position is clear. We get it. If you've nothing useful to say other than yet another repeat, keep it to yourself. Perhaps the Arbs watching this could (re)clarify the types of behaviour that constitute disruption so that we can keep a lid on any potential non-constructive behaviour? --HighKing (talk) 00:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
With all due respect to the people who worked on that table, the other wikis obviously do disambiguate in the title of the pages by using additional words, parenthetical or not. The only real question is whether calque should apply. I caution against assuming that whatever is valid in another language is immediately valid in English by direct analogy. I had some grief with this myself on the topic of gunpowder. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:52, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- Your due respect is appreciated. I titled the section with some words left out. The meaning was: "Disambiguation of the state name is not necessary...", to show that the majority of the largest wikis use the single proper name Ireland as the state article title. Others have missed that was my meaning, so I hope you understand that, as you write, obviously they do disambiguate, just not the state name. Many here have long argued that disambiguation is forced on the state article title due to various reasons. Most other wikis in the list disambiguate the island article. That was my meaning, and I thank you for your comments which introduce an angle that was not discussed. This table is simply an effort to show there is a wider world outside of IECOLL and en.wikipedia.org that mostly disagrees with the current article titles here; it is not meant as a method of enforcement. Sswonk (talk) 02:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- The situation on those other wikipedia pages is very different though. This has been considered far more on the English wikipedia where as on those pages there has been no real proper debate or consideration of the facts. Also if we look at page views on the German wikipedia, about 200 view the island article a day compared to about 2000 viewing the country article. On the English wikipedia, the island page gets 8000 views and the republic of Ireland gets around 4000 views. BritishWatcher (talk) 08:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- What would be a better statistic is how many people visited the "Ireland" page and then visited the Republic of Ireland page having typed in "Ireland" into the search box (what I mean is, didn't arrive at an article by clicking on a wikilink in a different article). Or for those countries that have dab pages, which page was next clicked on. I've updated the table for those languages where the "primary" topic of "Ireland" was a dab page or if a redirect page, where it redirected to. But I don't know if it's possible to see how many people clicked on a link from a dab page. --HighKing (talk) 12:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- The situation on those other wikipedia pages is very different though. This has been considered far more on the English wikipedia where as on those pages there has been no real proper debate or consideration of the facts. Also if we look at page views on the German wikipedia, about 200 view the island article a day compared to about 2000 viewing the country article. On the English wikipedia, the island page gets 8000 views and the republic of Ireland gets around 4000 views. BritishWatcher (talk) 08:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- We don't know what readers are searching for. However, we can look at visiting and linking patterns to see what "Ireland" is more linked to and more visited.
- We know is that there are 78,096 links to Ireland in the article name space and 37,615 links to Republic of Ireland in the article namespace. That's over twice as many links to the article at Ireland compared to Republic of Ireland.
- The number of hits on the two articles is of roughly the same ratio. Last month, there were 217,475 hits on the article at Ireland and 108,087 hits on the article at Republic of Ireland. Like above, that's roughly 2:1.
- Tools:
- For any readers who do land at Ireland expecting it to be about the subject described at Republic of Ireland, there is italicised text at the top of the article pointing to Republic of Ireland and the second paragraph of the article explains partition and points to the article at Republic of Ireland also. --RA (talk) 13:57, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- None of the info you've given answers the question I asked. Also, counting links is a poor way of attributing "primacy". For example, looking at the first 5 articles from "What links here" gives me Algae, A Modest Proposal, Atlantic Ocean, August 22, Achill Island. Looking at the instances of where the article has linked "Ireland" in each article - arguably those links could equally link to other articles. The Algae article says that "Algae are national foods of many nations" and then lists "Ireland". The next instance provides a list of countries "Scotland, Ireland, Greenland and Iceland". The "A Modest Proposal" article wikilinks "Irish" to "Ireland" instead of to Irish people. The Atlantic Ocean article says the first nonstop flight from "Newfoundland to Ireland" - no probs there. The August 22 article lists "Kilcummin harbour, County Mayo, Ireland" which should pipelink to "Republic of Ireland", and the "Achill Island" article should also. I'm not suggesting anybody runs around correcting (so-called) these links, just trying to highlight the fact that is could be argued that a lot of usage of [[Ireland]] isn't linking to the state article where arguably it should. --HighKing (talk) 17:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- I would suggest that as long as we have separate articles on Ireland, the country/island and Ireland, the state, it will be impossible to predict which article is of greater interest to anybody who wants to 'know about Ireland' and looks it up on Wikipedia. It seems to me very likely that many people will want information from both articles and may well read them both. I am confounded by the argument that the title 'Republic of Ireland', which is stated by a law adopted by a sovereign Irish parliament, to be the 'description of the state', is prejudicial to that state. Surely any Irish citizen who really feels that way would be better employed campaigning to have the Republic of Ireland Act, 1948 repealed rather than campaigning to have the title of a Wikipedia article changed? Irish recorded history goes back well over 1000 years, and there are numerous other aspects of Irish life such as culture, sport, literature which are not solely related to the Republic. To make the article about 'Ireland' exclusive to an article that only covers ninety years of the history of part of the country is, in my view, very difficult to justify. There has been some talk about China - I would recommend also looking at the articles on Italy and Germany, both of which cover history, culture, literature and so forth from long before the foundation of the modern Italian and German states.
- The obvious fact of the matter, as I remarked above, is that 'Ireland' is the obvious and correct title for both articles. Since Wikipedia's technical structure means that this cannot be adopted as a solution, there are two alternative courses of action - have one article that covers both, or rename one or both articles. I see nothing wrong with the first option, which could point to more detailed articles on both states (and to a very limited extent that is what we already have in the 'Ireland' article). But the second option means we need to have an alternative title for at least one of the articles. Well, the Irish parliament has provided us with one - the 'Republic of Ireland'. What could be a more obvious choice? And to my mind, what could be harder than finding an appropriate title for the article that's currently at Ireland? It's very clear on reading that article that 'Ireland (island)' would be wrong - as well as, to my mind, extremely POV - because it's not just talking about an island but about somewhere with a lengthy history as a discrete political and cultural space, about a culture, a literary tradition (or two, to follow Kinsella) - in other words, what could best be described as a 'country' (what other term would really suit?), because it is clearly not primarily about physical geography. Since it's clear that to call this article Ireland (country) would be confusing to many readers who equate 'country' with state and would probably be seen as representing a nationalist POV, that option can be ruled out. But any title other than Ireland for this article would be quite inappropriate. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 18:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)197.194.118.28 (talk) 18:33, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
- None of the info you've given answers the question I asked. Also, counting links is a poor way of attributing "primacy". For example, looking at the first 5 articles from "What links here" gives me Algae, A Modest Proposal, Atlantic Ocean, August 22, Achill Island. Looking at the instances of where the article has linked "Ireland" in each article - arguably those links could equally link to other articles. The Algae article says that "Algae are national foods of many nations" and then lists "Ireland". The next instance provides a list of countries "Scotland, Ireland, Greenland and Iceland". The "A Modest Proposal" article wikilinks "Irish" to "Ireland" instead of to Irish people. The Atlantic Ocean article says the first nonstop flight from "Newfoundland to Ireland" - no probs there. The August 22 article lists "Kilcummin harbour, County Mayo, Ireland" which should pipelink to "Republic of Ireland", and the "Achill Island" article should also. I'm not suggesting anybody runs around correcting (so-called) these links, just trying to highlight the fact that is could be argued that a lot of usage of [[Ireland]] isn't linking to the state article where arguably it should. --HighKing (talk) 17:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Wow, it's hard for me to keep up with this fast moving discussion, but the argument that Sswonk is making is that the Republic is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC on many wikis. My caution about linguistic analogies is that while most Poles hearing Irlandia may well think of the Republic instead of the island, it's not clear that that implies the same about English speakers when they say Ireland. Although I haven't formed an opinion of my own on this issue, the discussion here should probably seek to determine, if possible, what is the primary meaning of Ireland in English, although I have a feeling that this may be a difficult and complex analysis because English is natively spoken on several continents. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:01, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- I doubt if there's one answer to that question (in any language, in fact) that is valid regardless of context. In the contemporary political context, someone looking up Ireland could be interested in just the Republic - or they could be interested in all of Ireland, e.g. to find out background to the Northern Ireland conflict. In the literary or cultural context, it would probably mean all of Ireland. In the historical context, it can only mean all of Ireland for most periods - but it could mean just the Republic for contemporary history. However, one thing that is clear is that Ireland referring to all of Ireland is the broader sense, while the Irish state and topics relating to it are logically a subset of the former and the topics relating to it. That is, as several people have stated above, one of the criteria to be adopted in 'disambiguating', and it points to it being, logically, the primary topic, whether or not it is the primary topic in terms of inward links, hits etc. As the page at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC itself points out, there is no agreed definition of what will constitute a primary topic as a general rule, so I don't think that stating that to be the issue at stake will necessarily bring us any closer to a conclusion. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Perhaps you are right about the Ireland case, but from what I have seen in the archives of the former China page, now located at Talk:Chinese civilization, the issue there was decided on the basis of PRIMARYTOPIC in secondary sources, such as the Associated Press style guide and so forth. In the debate above, I have seen little recourse to sources (except some primary sources like the Irish constitution and a law). I image you'd argue that the Ireland case is closer to the Korea case rather than China/Taiwan from a strict geographical perspective, but naming conventions in secondary sources should still be considered if they exist. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:50, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Here is what the Associated Press says: "Ireland Acceptable in most references to the independent nation known formally as the Irish Republic. Use Irish Republic when a distinction must be made between this nation and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom."[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kauffner (talk • contribs) 03:53, October 4, 2011 (UTC)
- Well, two obvious points: first of all, the AP stylebook has clearly got it wrong, since 'Irish Republic' is not a correct term for the Irish state. But more broadly, stylebooks which agree to calling the Republic 'Ireland' in all or some cases don't really help, because no-one (as far as I can see) is objecting to the Republic being called Ireland - the problem is that since 'Ireland' is also the obvious term to be used for the whole country/island, and Wikipedia does not permit two topics to have the same title, then assuming we need to treat these as two separate topics, we need an alternative title for one or both of them. A stylebook may provide evidence that the Republic is referred to as 'Ireland' in reliable secondary sources, but it is unlikely to clarify whether Ireland itself cannot also be referred to as Ireland by such sources. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 07:24, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- The aspect of AP policy that is relevant to our debate is the they do not use "Republic of Ireland" in any context. They tell their writers the fiction that "Irish Republic" is a formal name to make sure they are never tempted to use ROI, not even when the context is appropriate. Kauffner (talk) 05:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- They tell their writers that "Irish Republic" is a formal name. I see no basis for your claim that they do this in order "to make sure they are never tempted to use ROI". It seems much more likely that it is a mistake, and quite possibly a mistake influenced by the British tendency to use terms such as "Irish Republic" instead of the state's own officially adopted description "Republic of Ireland". ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 11:37, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
- The aspect of AP policy that is relevant to our debate is the they do not use "Republic of Ireland" in any context. They tell their writers the fiction that "Irish Republic" is a formal name to make sure they are never tempted to use ROI, not even when the context is appropriate. Kauffner (talk) 05:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Well, two obvious points: first of all, the AP stylebook has clearly got it wrong, since 'Irish Republic' is not a correct term for the Irish state. But more broadly, stylebooks which agree to calling the Republic 'Ireland' in all or some cases don't really help, because no-one (as far as I can see) is objecting to the Republic being called Ireland - the problem is that since 'Ireland' is also the obvious term to be used for the whole country/island, and Wikipedia does not permit two topics to have the same title, then assuming we need to treat these as two separate topics, we need an alternative title for one or both of them. A stylebook may provide evidence that the Republic is referred to as 'Ireland' in reliable secondary sources, but it is unlikely to clarify whether Ireland itself cannot also be referred to as Ireland by such sources. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 07:24, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Here is what the Associated Press says: "Ireland Acceptable in most references to the independent nation known formally as the Irish Republic. Use Irish Republic when a distinction must be made between this nation and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom."[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kauffner (talk • contribs) 03:53, October 4, 2011 (UTC)
- With respect, Herr Have mörser, you say I am making a "primary topic" argument. I am not. Also, you'll find I very rarely will link to wiki policy in my statements. I tend to debate by pointing toward common sense rather than with the "gimlet eye of a wiki lawyer." Common sense and a preponderance of secondary sources, those being other reference works to which we can compare as having the naming issues faced by this one, point to Ireland as the title. And as for the Tir Na n'Og council, I will say Hilarious! Or more to the point, the primary group that has held sway here has written all that before; it always goes: "we must disambiguate, therefor... and then conclude: the Oireachtas has given us the answer." There is not a "question", and even if there was a question the Oireachtas did no such thing, they declared a republic and left the Commonwealth. Ireland has a history much older than the legal existence of the state; its flag is over one hundred sixty years old, and the impetus for independence and self-determination is much older than that. In spite of another popular argument regarding two states, there is only one state on the island, the other jurisdiction is not a state at all but instead a province of the former occupying power. With respect, the days of "Republic of Ireland" being used for the title are numbered; the arguments for it crumble under scrutiny and hence many supporters of it also supported a ban on discussion. Since most of this has been spelled out before, I will not go further into detail. In summary, the particular legal entity is not the only topic that would be covered at the article if the current title were not incorrect. Since it is incorrect, however, all argument that concludes "a history of only ninety years is insufficient to own the title Ireland" is not an argument against the title, it is an argument against the name itself. Wikipedia can't argue against the nation's name, unless that is what is in fact happening here. If the article were titled properly, then all of the other historical periods would be handled with sub-sections and "main article" branching section hatnote links within it, and at that point an article merely about the physical geography would indeed be appropriately titled "Ireland (island)" since that would be all it need discuss. The problems argued as arising from changing the "status quo" have always relied on the beholder first believing the falsehood that disambiguation of the name of the state is a necessity. They'll say disambiguation is required since the content of the article about the state is limited to what is under the current title, which they then won't allow can include the topics that Ireland should cover because the state started in the nineteen twenties, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. That is the strange loop that the "status quo" supporters suppose everyone should be limited by. Sswonk (talk) 03:37, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Also, before someone reading that kindly notes to me that strict Irish republicans and Sinn Féin adherents might fall into the "status quo" camp due to their conviction that Ireland as a national name has not been properly achieved due to partition, no need. I've read it. But even if they want to change the ga.wikipedia.org title to na Sé Chontae Fichead or prefer to use Poblacht na hÉireann, they're presenting essentially the same limitations, and I would still hold to fundamentally the same argument about the proper title, which should be Éire there or Ireland here as a matter of common sense titling not relying on short-sighted rectitude. Sswonk (talk) 04:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- So, Sswonk, what you're really calling for could equally be described as extending the Ireland article to be extended to cover the Republic of Ireland - because the Ireland article is, rightly, where all the other information you talk about (broader Irish history etc) is now. That's fine by me, but that's not what any of proposals above are for and nor is it what any of the proposals advanced last time round were for. None of these proposals suggest that renaming the article about the Republic Ireland would also open it to covering the full extent of Irish history, geography, culture etc. And I suspect that many of those in favour of the change of title would oppose what actually would amount to an effective merger of the two articles. In any case, mergers are meant to be dealt with in a different way. Finally, I don't see any sign that the arguments for using Republic of Ireland are 'crumbling'. On the contrary, no serious objections to it have been put forward apart from a kind of personal objection to it shared, for unclear reasons, by a considerable number of editors, and the bizarre and unsubstantiated claim that it was 'promoted abroad' by the British government. The latter strikes me as unlikely, since I can clearly remember the British official media consistently using the term 'the Irish Republic' - if at some point in recent years, they changed to using 'Republic of Ireland', the description of the state adopted by Irish legislation, we should be grateful to them for that sign of respect surely. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 06:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- I hope pointing to Republic of Ireland (term) will help you see that the term, along with Eire (the Irish name of the state without an accent over the E) and Southern Ireland to name three were names used by the U.K. governments as part of a very serious effort to dissuade other governments from officially calling the state Ireland. You may have to dig deeper, that is a starting point. Not bizarre and unsubstantiated. If you feel no objections here are serious, then I see no reason to go any further. What can I say as long as you buy the line that "It's all prattle", another argument that is truly unsubstantiated and prime for crumbling? Sswonk (talk) 14:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- I am not at all sure that the page you link to supports the point you are trying to make, and unfortunately I cannot access the Daly paper via Jstor. Certainly it provides evidence that the British government used the term 'Republic of Ireland' instead of 'Ireland', but it is not clear that it promoted the use of the term abroad, it remains a fact that in doing so it was using a term adopted as 'the description of the state' by Irish legislation, as opposed to its practice in other cases of using the terms 'Eire' or 'Irish Republic' (which I remember regularly hearing on the BBC not that long ago) and it is still, in my view, an unconscionable leap from that observation to a claim that that practice by the British government renders a term stated by Irish legislation to be "the description of the state" somehow non-kosher. Furthermore, none of this gets around the other problems, notably the glaring issue that on the basis of your most recent statements you clearly want, not simply to rename the two articles, but to rename the 'Republic of Ireland' article 'Ireland' and include in it much of the sort of general information about Ireland that is currently in (logically enough) the article now entitled 'Ireland'. Apart from the technical issue that this probably turns the question into one of merging and not just renaming, I would be surprised if there were not considerable objections to such an approach from many of the participants in this discussion (not from me, by the way). ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- I hope pointing to Republic of Ireland (term) will help you see that the term, along with Eire (the Irish name of the state without an accent over the E) and Southern Ireland to name three were names used by the U.K. governments as part of a very serious effort to dissuade other governments from officially calling the state Ireland. You may have to dig deeper, that is a starting point. Not bizarre and unsubstantiated. If you feel no objections here are serious, then I see no reason to go any further. What can I say as long as you buy the line that "It's all prattle", another argument that is truly unsubstantiated and prime for crumbling? Sswonk (talk) 14:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- So, Sswonk, what you're really calling for could equally be described as extending the Ireland article to be extended to cover the Republic of Ireland - because the Ireland article is, rightly, where all the other information you talk about (broader Irish history etc) is now. That's fine by me, but that's not what any of proposals above are for and nor is it what any of the proposals advanced last time round were for. None of these proposals suggest that renaming the article about the Republic Ireland would also open it to covering the full extent of Irish history, geography, culture etc. And I suspect that many of those in favour of the change of title would oppose what actually would amount to an effective merger of the two articles. In any case, mergers are meant to be dealt with in a different way. Finally, I don't see any sign that the arguments for using Republic of Ireland are 'crumbling'. On the contrary, no serious objections to it have been put forward apart from a kind of personal objection to it shared, for unclear reasons, by a considerable number of editors, and the bizarre and unsubstantiated claim that it was 'promoted abroad' by the British government. The latter strikes me as unlikely, since I can clearly remember the British official media consistently using the term 'the Irish Republic' - if at some point in recent years, they changed to using 'Republic of Ireland', the description of the state adopted by Irish legislation, we should be grateful to them for that sign of respect surely. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 06:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Perhaps you are right about the Ireland case, but from what I have seen in the archives of the former China page, now located at Talk:Chinese civilization, the issue there was decided on the basis of PRIMARYTOPIC in secondary sources, such as the Associated Press style guide and so forth. In the debate above, I have seen little recourse to sources (except some primary sources like the Irish constitution and a law). I image you'd argue that the Ireland case is closer to the Korea case rather than China/Taiwan from a strict geographical perspective, but naming conventions in secondary sources should still be considered if they exist. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:50, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
View counts
Oct 2010 | Nov 2010 | Dec 2010 | Jan 2011 | Feb 2011 | Mar 2011 | Apr 2011 | May 2011 | Jun 2011 | Jul 2011 | Aug 2011 | Sep 2011 | Total | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
French | Irlande (pays) | 34911 | 48777 | 30561 | 41047 | 35672 | 50641 | 39310 | 49781 | 31828 | 26999 | 28263 | 37053 | 454843 |
Irlande (île) | 8238 | 9693 | 6838 | 8528 | 8336 | 11887 | 6357 | 7538 | 4958 | 4261 | 4413 | 4949 | 85996 | |
Ratio | 4.2 | 5.0 | 4.4 | 4.8 | 4.2 | 4.2 | 6.1 | 6.6 | 6.4 | 6.3 | 6.4 | 7.4 | 5.2 | |
Dutch | Ierland (land) | 11647 | 15651 | 10882 | 15081 | 13469 | 14103 | 11224 | 17055 | 11189 | 7947 | 7412 | 7295 | 142955 |
Ierland (eiland) | 2428 | 2448 | 1980 | 4205 | 2750 | 2473 | 1979 | 2848 | 2088 | 1390 | 1513 | 1548 | 26781 | |
Ratio | 4.7 | 6.3 | 5.4 | 3.5 | 4.8 | 5.7 | 5.6 | 5.9 | 5.3 | 5.7 | 4.8 | 4.7 | 5.3 |
Which is about as surprising as pants. I'm gobsmacked there's a debate about this. Extend to Ireland the basic human courtesy of calling her by her proper name. Dickdock (talk) 19:10, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- So far, this has been a civilised discussion. Please stop this provocative language: "gobsmacked there's a debate", "basic human courtesy", "calling her by her proper name". There's a debate because there are two sides to the story. Please extend to all the participants the basic human courtesy of acknowledging that. Scolaire (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- I'm content with the status quo. But, I'm not gonna put up much of a fight, if it's not kept. GoodDay (talk) 20:08, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- But why stop there, Dickdock? End the tryanny inflicted on the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya! Liberate the French Republic! Stop the oppression of the United Mexican States! Won't someone please think of the State of the City of the Vatican?! I could go on... BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:03, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- The most official form of a country's name is its UN member name. These are listed here. None of names you mention are UN member names. Kauffner (talk) 01:51, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Citation, please? BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 06:52, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Surely the "most official" name of any state is the name in its constitution? In the case of the Republic that name is "Éire". "Ireland" is allowed in the English language, but not in French or Dutch, and "Irlande" or "Ierland" are not provided for at all! For that matter, I can't find "Irlande" or "Ierland" in the UN members list either. Scolaire (talk) 07:40, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- A constitution applies only to a state's territory, while the UN member name is intended as an international name. The only reference to specific languages in the constitution is in Article 8, which defines both English and Irish as official. I assume that the writers of this document had only those two languages in mind. I don't see any suggestion in the constitution that the Irish state has jurisdiction in Holland or France, although I suppose it is possible that the clause might apply to Dutch or French speakers inside Ireland. Kauffner (talk) 20:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- So that'd be a no, then? BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 20:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- A constitution applies only to a state's territory, while the UN member name is intended as an international name. The only reference to specific languages in the constitution is in Article 8, which defines both English and Irish as official. I assume that the writers of this document had only those two languages in mind. I don't see any suggestion in the constitution that the Irish state has jurisdiction in Holland or France, although I suppose it is possible that the clause might apply to Dutch or French speakers inside Ireland. Kauffner (talk) 20:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Surely the "most official" name of any state is the name in its constitution? In the case of the Republic that name is "Éire". "Ireland" is allowed in the English language, but not in French or Dutch, and "Irlande" or "Ierland" are not provided for at all! For that matter, I can't find "Irlande" or "Ierland" in the UN members list either. Scolaire (talk) 07:40, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Citation, please? BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 06:52, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- The most official form of a country's name is its UN member name. These are listed here. None of names you mention are UN member names. Kauffner (talk) 01:51, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- But why stop there, Dickdock? End the tryanny inflicted on the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya! Liberate the French Republic! Stop the oppression of the United Mexican States! Won't someone please think of the State of the City of the Vatican?! I could go on... BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:03, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- View counts for fr Wiki have to be taken in conjunction with the articles themselves. Irlande (pays) has a large section on the history of the whole island, it's "Railways" section tells us that Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) runs a Belfast to Derry service, and its list of Irish (state) films includes Bloody Sunday. So what does that tell us? Scolaire (talk) 21:52, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Scoláire has taken the words out of my mouth. The largest single part of the French article on "Irlande (pays)" - note in passing the title - is about Irish history, starting several thousand years before the current political division of the island. The article at "Irlande (ile)" covers history and economy much more briefly, even in so far as they relate to matters before 1921.
- Secondly - "Extend to Ireland the basic human courtesy of calling her by her proper name." - a couple of points need to be made in relation to this plea. First of all, when Ireland is represented as a human being (or similar) she is hardly ever called Ireland, but variously Erin, Hibernia, Éire, Fodla, or Banba. I do not think we need the additional confusion of deciding whether to use one of these five names or, alternatively, Ireland (personage). Furthermore, Ireland is already called by her/its correct name in the article Ireland. For purely technical reasons, it is not possible for another article to have exactly the same title, so if we want a separate article about the Irish state, either it or the article about Ireland as a whole is going to have to use a different title. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
- Linking patterns are also different. On the French wiki over twice as many articles link to the article on the state (8,736) compared to the island (4,265). On the Dutch wiki, five times as many articles link to the article on the state (5,194) compared to the island (1,054). This is the reverse of the situation on the English wiki. On the English wiki over twice as many articles link to the article on the island (78,096) compared to the state (37,615).
- In contrast to the French and Dutch wikis, the linking and hit patterns on the English wiki are similar to the visitor and hit pattern on the Irish wiki (although with greatly differing numbers). The number of articles links to ga:Éire (1,771) being about twice as many as to ga:Poblacht na hÉireann (651). And, like on the English language, the articles on the island gets more its hits (456 last month) compared to the articles on the state (145 last month). --RA (talk) 22:43, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
No, no, resist, resist. But the vortex, the vortex, it's....aghhhhhhhhhh....
Re links: naturally the English wiki has skewed linking and skewed view counts: it uses the wrong name and defaults to the island. This is sneeringly obvious.
Re content: the dab exercise allows one to see, barring access to server logs or brain scans, what name people look up. The content might as well be "Ireland is an endlessly circular (or should that be circularly endless? - see Talk) debate conducted by a micro-coterie of flatulent wikibubblings". This is staggeringly irrelevant.
Re Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya/French Republic/United Mexican States/Vatican/I could go on: I'm sure you could. Next!
Re has been/civilised/stop/provocative/two sides/all participants/courtesy/acknowledging: you left out "pants". But yes I am being provocative/discourteous/unacknowledging, seeing as how I'm (still) gobsmacked that this provocative/discourteous/unacknowledging debate is even taking place. See what I did there?
Although seeing that It is allowed, that Senates and great Councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant Humours; with many Diseases of the Head, and more of the Heart; with strong Convulsions, with grievous Contractions of the Nerves and Sinews in both Hands, but especially the Right; with Spleen, Flatus, Vertigos, and Deliriums; with scrofulous Tumours, full of fetid purulent Matter; with sour frothy Ructations: with Canine Appetites, and Crudeness of Digestion, besides many others, needless to mention. This Doctor therefore proposed, that upon the meeting of the Senate, certain Physicians should attend it the three first Days of their sitting, and at the Close of each Day’s Debate feel the Pulses of every Senator; after which, having maturely considered and consulted upon the Nature of the several Maladies, and the Methods of Cure, they should on the fourth Day return to the Senate-House, attended by their Apothecaries stored with proper Medicines; and before the Members sat, administer to each of them Lenitives, Aperitives, Abstersives, Corrosives, Restringents, Palliatives, Laxatives, Cephalalgics, Icterics, Apophlegmatics, Acoustics, as their several Cases required; and, according as these Medicines should operate, repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next Meeting.
This Project could not be of any great Expense to the Publick; and might in my poor Opinion, be of much Use for the Despatch of Business, in those Countries where Senates have any Share in the legislative Power; beget Unanimity, shorten Debates, open a few Mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the Petulancy of the Young, and correct the Positiveness of the Old; rouse the Stupid, and damp the Pert. Dickdock (talk) 09:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Could you condense all that & put in laymen's term? GoodDay (talk) 10:39, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- It's good to see someone talking sense at last. DrKiernan (talk) 10:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- I want some of what Dickdock's having. JonCTalk 20:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
- Your Swiftian quotation is charming but I think your failure to engage with any of the substantive arguments is more telling.ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 11:40, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
- I morph into others and use them as my astralpuppets to avoid IP checks. But I'm not admitting anything. ~ R.T.G 17:26, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
- And by the way, this debate reminds me of the one on Gideon. The ratio of hits to other articles was much larger, tens of thousands to hundreds in one case, but none could be the definition of what Gideon is except the ancient character himself. ~ R.T.G 17:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
The problem: "Republic of Ireland" as the name of the state
From the discussion above, regarding the table showing titles on the top twenty Wikipedia sites by article count:
“ | I hope pointing to Republic of Ireland (term) will help you see that the term, along with Eire (the Irish name of the state without an accent over the E) and Southern Ireland to name three were names used by the U.K. governments as part of a very serious effort to dissuade other governments from officially calling the state Ireland. You may have to dig deeper, that is a starting point. Not bizarre and unsubstantiated. If you feel no objections here are serious, then I see no reason to go any further. What can I say as long as you buy the line that "It's all prattle", another argument that is truly unsubstantiated and prime for crumbling? Sswonk (talk) 14:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
|
” |
ComhairleContaeThirnanOg, this is my response to you, but I am also asking readers to take it into account. There is a great deal of difficult reading and thinking required here. It is not something that can be solved on Twitter, or with a few emails sent from a smart phone. I will try to answer your comment here since you have given some thought to what I wrote and I don't want to leave you to wonder about anything there.
Before your last comment, and again in part within it, you seem to express doubt that anyone has proposed or taken a position suggesting an article merger of sorts in these discussions. I have more or less done that in previous statements following my vote above. Also, Scolaire in fact had a similar position in 2009, and I am not exactly sure why he has now moved to support the "status quo" in his votes and comments here. Regardless, if you look at the 2009 poll and also the roll call of membership at WP:IECOLL#Members, you will see that arguments and page moves, and resulting animosity, admin reactions and discussion lockdown regarding the title caused many editors to leave, and in several cases leave Wikipedia entirely. IECOLL had become almost entirely the purview of supporters of the "status quo" due to the persistence of a few editors on this page. The amount of pressure to preserve the name "Republic of Ireland" against the objections of so many other now-absent editors serves as another indicator, as I wrote above, that the title is less than ideal. We have alternatives, and it should be changed, even if not to Ireland with merger.
A while ago I did purchase the journal article by Mary E. Daly via the University of Chicago Press and JSTOR. It is not yet available from my public library, which does give access to older articles in the Journal of British Studies however the cutoff date for free access is just short of 2007, when the article appeared. In time it should be available through library membership. So, I can't provide direct citations but I hope you will trust my paraphrasing and quotation. Daly indeed does cite several examples of the British government promoting the terms I mention to other governments, including much detail involving incidences of that with Canada and Australia. She cites the National Archives of the United Kingdom in writing about the diplomatic situation: "Canada duly came into line with the wishes of Buckingham Palace and the Dominion Office. The Canadian ambassador presented identical letters of credence to those presented by the British ambassador. Australia does not appear to have considered upgrading its representation in Ireland to ambassador until 1953, and by then the Fianna Fáil government was insistent that all credentials (with the possible exception of the British ambassador) should be addressed to the President of Ireland. Australia would only agree to letters giving accreditation to the Republic of Ireland or Dublin. This position was adopted on the advice of the British government, who emphasized that any reference to “Ireland” or the “President of Ireland” would be embarrassing to the British government and to Her Majesty."(p. 88). That is the type of incident I refer to, and Daly concludes by writing "Up to and including the year 1999, the Diplomatic List issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office referred to the Republic of Ireland. Since 2000 it has referred to Ireland, and the credentials presented by the British ambassador, Stewart Eldon, in 2003, were addressed to the President of Ireland."(p. 89).
That provides the backdrop to the thinking involved in the article naming that occurred in 2002. A couple of editors involved who "won" that debate were both U.K. residents and took a position similar to that described by Daly whereby Ireland was deemed an unacceptable name for the country. It seems as though, if that is what they were taught up until two years previous by their own government, then it certainly must have informed their judgement. The following boxed section is my response to your questions of seriousness, and of truth regarding the use of the term. Please, refrain from commenting here or within the box and use the area beyond my signature for further discussion.
Wikipedia and the false name
In the earliest days of Wikipedia, there was a heated discussion among the early editorial staff when this issue arose. The discussion occured in late November and early December of 2002. The three primary editors involved initially were:
- Renata (talk · contribs) – unnamed editor, a Scot from Edinburgh, still active on Wikipedia. Her position was that naming an article about the state "Ireland" is very offensive to those in the north, and used anecdotal evidence or hearsay to back up her statements.
- Camembert (talk · contribs) – Lee Pilich, from Doncaster, Yorkshire, no longer active but also prone to see Ireland as an unacceptable title because it could mean either the Republic or Northern Ireland, and thus "politically dodgy to say the least". His view represents that followed by the U.K. up until 1998, only four years before the discussion occurred, a view which formally discouraged the use of Ireland as the name of the state.
- Scipius (talk · contribs) – unnamed editor, a Dutch person from Maastricht. Scipius unfortunately took the view that Ireland would be the title of an article about the current state exclusively and thus was the eventual causative factor of the current situation. This is because of what happened next, which has again unfortunately guided the conversations since that time.
An example of the thread, from the middle of the most active day of the initial discussions, 17 November 2002.
Several editors began arguing against Scipius, but the two others mentioned and especially Camembert provided much of the countepoint argument for the title "Republic of Ireland". The discussion was rather heated during the first few days. An Irish nationalist editor, Jtdirl (talk · contribs), also later weighed in against using Ireland. The real decision came from Larry Sanger, at the time still very prominent at the encyclopedia he named "Wikipedia" when he co-founded it with Jimbo Wales. Larry Sanger (talk · contribs) in typical unapologetic fashion chose the scheme we now have, and in so many words told Scipius to give up trying to have an article about the state called Ireland actually have the title "Ireland". The title Camembert and Renata had used, "Republic of Ireland", was Sanger's choice. Among other reasons, Sanger cited the need to have an article about Ireland that was outside the scope of the current state, using the example of Irish music which he played.
The debate at that point became about the wrong thing, and has been hopelessly mired in the strange loop I mentioned above since that time. We ended up with a poorly thought out situation that has yet to be properly addressed. What resulted was a title for the article about the state that is incorrect and misleading, and an article into which inserting much relevant information became highly restricted. That is, the "Republic of Ireland" title refers to an entity that did not exist before 1949, let alone 1922. Yet the rest of the world outside of the class "Wikipedia editorship" treats Ireland as being inclusive of much of the history of previous formations, and Ireland the state as inheritor of the bulk of the history just as it is caretaker of the land. Limerick, Cork and Galway are still in Ireland. The Book of Kells is still in Ireland. The birthplace of James Joyce is still in Dublin, Ireland. Anyway you slice it, those sentences are all true today with the modern state as the meaning of the single word Ireland. It takes a long stretch of the imagination—and plenty of excuse making and disambiguating literary gymnastics—to make it seem as though we have to use "Republic of Ireland" in any of those cases. However, that is where the descriptive term ends up when it is used as a title for the land, country, nation, state, whatever you want to term it, the place now officially and legally called Ireland. On this highly respected map, it is Ireland. Up in the right sextant of the island itself there is the U.K. territory Northern Ireland, but the remainder is unarguably Ireland, the state. That is its name, and that is how the great majority of our outside sources will quite naturally refer to it. Here are lists of some of the most prominent organizations and entities that disagree with using the name "Republic of Ireland" when titling articles about the state. Given that the state itself is certainly involved in some of the decision making about the form of address, or title, which is used by the organizations, I think we can conclude that the state does not view "Republic of Ireland" in the same light as Larry Sanger and those early editors.
United Nations and European Union
- United Nations
- Member States of the United Nations
- The list links the name Ireland to the website of the Permanent Mission of Ireland, in New York, at http://www.irelandunnewyork.org. Using the site-specific search tag "site:" on that domain through Google reveals that none of the pages currently contain the phrase "Republic of Ireland". The search shows one link to a previous version of the page, which is no longer how the page reads. The previous version read: "The Republic of Ireland Act of 1948 provides for the description of the State as the Republic of Ireland but this provision has not changed the usage Ireland as the name of the State in the English language."
- European Union
- Countries
- Lists the member states of the union, and links to a brief article on the state. Of interest to us is the publications style guide of the union, which is found at:
- International Style Guide
- The style guide notes at the bottom of the table are clear about the disposition of the term "Republic of Ireland": NB: Do not use ‘Republic of Ireland’ nor ‘Irish Republic’.
Other international organizations
Web directories and reference publications
- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
- British Broadcasting Corporation
- Infoplease
- National Geographic Society
- Nations Online Project
- Open Directory Project
- United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office
- United States Central Intelligence Agency
- United States Department of State
- WolframAlpha
- Yahoo!
British Monarchy
In May of 2011, Elizabeth II paid an official state visit to Ireland. A press release announcing her itinerary from the official website of the British Monarchy refers to the state as Ireland.
End game
Described by me as a good representative list of important websites, the information above shows no use of "Republic of Ireland" as a title nor as a phrase linking to an article. All articles referred to on the sites are entitled "Ireland" which specifically addresses the state itself. This is the expected usage in 2011 of the word Ireland, and Wikipedia stands virtually alone in its misuse of the term "Republic of Ireland" as an article title. Larry Sanger later founded Citizendium, an encyclopedia structured similarly to Wikipedia but quite different in its editorial approach. There, the article "Ireland" is a disambiguation page and the article on the state is titled "Ireland (state)". "Republic of Ireland", the description of the state that Wikipedia thinks is the name, is redirected to "Ireland (state)".I hope the response gives you an idea of the amount of thought that has gone into my objections. Many of the others here I am sure have thought about this a great deal. The most difficult presentation but in my mind the one we should work for would be to allow the title Ireland to include the state and also much of the history, as would and does an article about places like France, Germany, Greece and so on, with liberal use of article forking and hatnotes to those forks. Baring that, another solution which was offered as option D in 2009, simply renaming "Republic of Ireland" to "Ireland (state)", would end the incorrect and misleading titling scheme we have now. Without question, in spite of a perceived need to disambiguate the state name, readers are being led to believe that the name of the state is "Republic of Ireland". That is being done by the title and the subsequent use of that title by mirror sites and careless journalists and writers who don't take the time to read or understand that it is not the name of the state. Given the benefit of hindsight, as a group we should not continue to allow that. Sswonk (talk) 05:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)