Talk:Rùm

message: The following may or may not be spelling issues, but seem inconsistent in my read of the content. Fix or ignore the suggestions as deemed appropriate.
*The Gaelic "isle of the ridge" is spelled i-dhruim in the Infobox and i-dhruinn in the "Etymology and placenames" section.
*There is both a Dibdil and Dibidil that appear to reference the same place, although perhaps Dibidil is an obsolete (1801) spelling.
*Lewissian and Lewisian gneiss in "Geology" section (also, gneiss is wikilinked both times, though that may be OK). -- Michael Devore (talk) 23:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Minor wording issues

message: It's a nice photo of the Mausoleum but surely it's misleading (or someone's joke?) to put it under prehistory when it was built in the early 20th century - although this fact is not mentioned in the article. --JBellis (talk) 09:27, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Au contraire. It is identified as having been built by the Bulloughs earlier in the article, although it's true the caption doesn't repeat this. Ben MacDui 10:42, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok - I see it gets a mention in the geography section. However I still think that it looks like someone's idea of a joke to imply that the prehistoric residents of the island build Greek-style temples!--JBellis (talk) 17:36, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I couldn't possibly comment. Ben MacDui 17:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mausoleum 

message: ETHNIC CLEANSING
I think that the rather casual comment regarding "ethnic cleansing" needs some citation. Also, by whom- was it the English, as implied? Or was it just economic reality being exercised by the Scottish landowners, as occured in the rest of the Highlands?
DanBrodman (talk) 08:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not a casual comment at all. The definition would seem to be  "the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory, of persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation, in order to render that area ethnically homogenous." That is exactly what occurred, although it was called something different in those days. This process was not carried out by "the English" but for the most part by English-speaking Scots on the Gaelic-speaking natives. (You will note I am of the former variety). If you think this had anything to do with broader economic realities, rather than the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, I can only suggest you offer an explanation of the population trends on say the Faeroes. Ben MacDui 12:20, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

text: MacLean of Coll would have been an English-speaking Scot with Gaelic ancestors. It is evidently easier for humans to treat other humans like cattle if they don't share their culture and/or language as the more recent histories of Bosnia, Nazi Germany etc. attest. The Gaels of Rum, were not serfs as such, although the land that had once been theirs collectively had been purloined by the clan chief. Whilst you may be right about their descendants, if you were forcibly removed from your home and country and sent to a far-off land about which you knew next-to-nothing it might be some comfort to know that your grand-children would be better off than those who were left behind, but who knows? I am not sure why you think the Faeroes are strategically located, but consider the difference between  and . One is empty, one has a thriving community (it's most obvious at 1:50,000). The difference is essentially that one was forcibly cleared, and one wasn't. However that's by-the-by. The actions of the landowner fits the above definition, which is the main point. Ben MacDui 18:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ouch, so the Clearances were a re-assertion of economic reality and a path to greater prosperity for their descendents? Isn't that like saying slavery provided education opportunities for African Americans because your average Mandinka would have never made it to Harvard without his great great great great grandparents being sold as cattle? Akerbeltz (talk) 20:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

text: That's a spurious argument. You can argue that, say, a stretch of land that had 500 Gaels in it (100%) would still have a majority of Gaels in it once you cleared 450 of them and added 2 non-Gaelic keepers the Gaelic would still represent 96% of the population... but that's a rather absurd argument when you consider that you dropped the overall population by 90%. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not arguing that as a general rule the Clearances were "ethnic cleansing" (although I might try to if pressed). Rather that in this specific location where the entire and substantial population of an island was removed leaving not a single living link with the people who had occupied it for five centuries or more that this is a reasonable description. Indeed, I am not sure what else you could call it, given that the terminology of the time might now be regarded as a euphemism. Ben MacDui 17:41, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

text: The euphemism I was hinting at was 'improvement'. I take your point but as Akerbeltz was suggesting above, wholesale removals of populations of one culture and language and their replacement with a new system that is by and for the benefit of of those form a different culture seems to me to fit the bill. The fact that the replacement was only say 95% and not 100% does not strike me as disqualifying factor. To put it another way, if the original inhabitants all spoke English, would they have been treated in the same way? Ben MacDui 18:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

text: The economic and social circumstances are different of course but clearances did not generally happen in predominantly English-speaking areas. In places such as in parts of upland Aberdeenshire, where the outcomes were similar, they occurred over a long time and were not enforced on unwilling residents.  If the question boils down to the motivations (conscious or unconscious) of long-dead land-owners then it is going to be hard to prove either way! Anyway - as you know you are free to edit the page as you see fit. Ben MacDui 08:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

text: I think it's an interesting wider debate whether ethnic cleansing is ever about the actual people rather than some type of resource. If I remember rightly, the term gained wider circulation during the Bosnian War which, while conducted mostly against Bosnian Muslims, was in the end about territory. I actually cannot think of any such conflict that was solely based on ethnicity, not on resources or access to them. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: As I remember it, it was popularised in the planning stage of NATO's 50th birthday party extravaganza in Serbia (what better way to get over a mid-life crisis than to fake and engineer events to let you bomb a country to reinvent yourself). Given its tainted, wag-the-dog history, I'm surprised anyone has a desire to use that jargon phrase "ethnic cleansing". Meowy 17:43, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Ethnic debate

message: I'd love to see a published list of islands and their population densities, but we can't use a Wikipedia list as a reference. It would be easy to make a new popn. density list but I fear it would breach WP:OR as a source. Ben MacDui 18:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The answer was "This is the kind of case where you can use your own judgment, certainly if these matters are not disputable or disputed." and the issue has bee marked as "resolved". I'll drop a note at WP:ISLET as well. Ben MacDui 12:43, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Population density

message: For me, the infobox map captioned "Rùm shown within Scotland" usually fails to display (I see a blank white space). One time, apparently at random, it did show. I've noticed the same thing with a couple of similar articles (Barra is one), so possibly there is some systematic error? 81.129.130.254 (talk) 03:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It is fine here with IE8 and Firefox 3.05. As it appears to be a general problem, I suggest continuing discussion at Template_talk:Infobox_Scottish_island#Problems_with_maps or Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_69#Scottish_island_infobox_map. Finavon (talk) 10:59, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

text: See also Template_talk:Location_map#Map_does_not_work_properly_in_IE.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.128.147 (talk) 13:42, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map is broken