Talk:Scotland/Archive 12

message: In the media section Robert Louis Stevenson has been coupled with J. M. Barrie in the 'kailyard' tradition.  This is just plain wrong; I cannot be any more direct than that.  Kailyard is a literary dead end.  Stevenson may have written some historical romance-not among his best fiction-but this no more puts him in the kailyard bracket than Sir Walter Scott.  How 'kailyard' is the Beach at Falesa?  The point about Stevenson is that he is one of the most significant of Scottish writers, influencing men as diverse as Henry James and Jorge Luis Borges.
Rcpaterson 05:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't my field, but surely Macpherson and Scott had huge international influence, inspiring the birth of Romanticism and the historical novel respectively? We seem to be suggesting a bit of a kailyard mentality here by not mentioning them.. dave souza, talk 07:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I would guess that this is just the usual vandalism/cluelessness. Kailyard literature is a very specific genre within Scottish literature as a whole and only three or four late nineteenth century writers (of whom Barrie is the most famous) did any work in it. I doubt that it's worth mentioning at all in an overview article such as this one. Scott, Stevenson, Barrie (and I suppose Macpherson) were much more important. In fact if we are talking international influence I would say that there's a good case for mentioning Conan Doyle, Buchan and Macdonald Fraser too. -- Derek Ross | Talk 05:21, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Robert Louis Stevenson-Kailyard??? 

message: So it looks to me, that Religion in Scotland and Language in Scotland are two logical articles to be created, being the only two sections in the current article which don't have "main article" links. I'm a bit surprised that there isn't already a Religion in Scotland article, actually. An article detailing the current situation of various Languages in Scotland (Gaelic, Scots, Scottish English, Highland English, along with maybe details of various regional dialects and peculiarities, plus some history on the whole lot) seems as though it could also make up a decent article. I'm not sure I have the knowledge/resources to start such articles, but just throwing the idea out there.  Canæn  22:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've created the Language in Scotland article, with my limited knowledge. The page is split into Celtic and Germanic languages, and I guess you'll find out the rest. It needs loads of expansion, as well as the need to be added to numerous categories.  Canæn  23:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expanded articles 

message: Hiya folks, here again with another orientation question. Are nearly all the images in the article on the right, in a neat little row, for a reason? I've noticed that the image in the Law section, has stayed to the left, since I moved it some months ago. I'm a big fan of varying which side of the article images are on; it adds style, and just seems to make the article look better. More professional, like a real encyclopedia, which we're aspiring to be. If anyone has any strong objections, I'd love to discuss the matter, though it is somewhat trivial.  Canæn  22:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images 

message: So the Demographics section has an introduction, however Neither the History nor Culture sections does (these being the only three sections of the article with sub-sections). I'm making another request here, for there to be one for each of these sections. I'll try my hand at the Culture one, though it'd be much better for one of our wonderous Historians to take a try at the History section. Always open to discussion.  Canæn  22:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just stole that bit from the main sub article, so no offence taken. Thank you!  Canæn  20:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section intros? 

message: i can see a lot of effort has gone in to this page A++ guys great page, came to see if there was any thing i could add, i was wrong lol. Mr Roboto 19:37, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: good work

message: The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.
*Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at WP:LEAD. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.
*Consider removing links that add little to the article or that have been repeated in close proximity to other links to the same article, as per WP:MOS-L and WP:CONTEXT.
*Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSDATE, months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.
*Per WP:MOSNUM, there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 18mm, use 18 mm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 18 mm.See footnote
*Per WP:MOSNUM, when doing conversions, please use standard abbreviations: for example, miles -> mi, kilometers squared -> km2, and pounds -> lb.
*Per WP:MOSNUM, please spell out source units of measurements in text; for example, "the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth.See footnote
*Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:BTW, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006, but do not link January 2006.
*Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.
*Please reorder/rename the last few sections to follow guidelines at WP:GTL. 
*Please alphabetize the interlanguage links.See footnote
*Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) maybe too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per WP:SS.See footnote
* article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, than an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail. 
*There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view.  See footnote 
*Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
**While additive terms like “also”, “in addition”, “additionally”, “moreover”, and “furthermore” may sometimes be useful, overusing them when they aren't necessary can instead detract from the brilliancy of the article. This article has 31 additive terms, a bit too much.
**Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant -  “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
**Temporal terms like “over the years”, “currently”, “now”, and “from time to time” often are too vague to be useful, but occasionally may be helpful. “I am now using a semi-bot to generate your peer review.”
*As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space inbetween. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]
*Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a. See footnote
You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Mal 01:26, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Auto Peer Review 

message: I have reverted the article to include "This article is about the country. For other uses, see Scotland (disambiguation)" rather than the version  had added: "For an explanation of terms such as Scottish, Great Britain, British, United Kingdom and Scotland, see British Isles (terminology). For other uses, see Scotland (disambiguation)".
The disambiguation header is there to redirect viewers who have ended up at the wrong page. Somebody is not going to type in "Scotland" (or follow a link) expecting to get to an article about Britain the British Isles.
Please get consensus for any changes, we do not want to continue this edit war. Thanks/wangi 21:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed with. Globaltraveller 21:41, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's bad enough having it on the UK article- people are not stupid. Astrotrain 21:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although this is not the correct forum for discussing the UK article, I agree. That dab header on the UK article is an absolute eyesore, and, even worse, the article it points readers to is utterly appalling. Dab headers are for WP:Disambiguation, nothing else. They are not a repository for "See also" links. --Mais oui! 21:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The dab header 

message: I believe this is incorrect. Using the figures given by the reference  I've worked out the ratio of MOD land to total land area for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. These are 1.46%, 1.76%, 1.10% and 0.23% respectively. As for number of bases, I doubt there are more in Scotland. To take the RAF for example, there are many more bases in England.  Therefore it is wrong to say "large amount of military bases in Scotland, when compared to other parts of the UK". Mark83 13:34, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would imagine that the sentence is predicated on the assumption of population ie from the article Scotland has 31% of the UK's defence estate, despite having 9% of its population, ergo it is disproportionate to population (which is true) and probably what sentence was referring to. Globaltraveller 21:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

text: If that is what is meant, it doesn't make sense. One would expect Scotland to have
military land in rough proportion to area - in fact, since Scotland is less densely populated and has more marginal land, possibly more. 
Exile 16:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "The proportionally large amount of military bases in Scotland, when compared to other parts of the UK"

message: Sorry, my computer keeps saving my changes when I am half-way through my edit summary - no idea whether I'm hitting some speed-key by mistake.  Anyway, I wanted to say that Latin is not in use in Scotland as a language and therefore should not be under the languages-of-Scotland section.  Scots law does use Latin tags, but no more than English law, and there is no reason to highlight these more than technical loan-words in any other field. What might be worth mentioning, though, is that the number of minority languages is growing.  A report in the Herald last week said that over 50 languages are used in the playground of Shawlands Academy.  --Doric Loon 20:43, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're like me it's hitting the return or enter keys. The question is, how do they pronounce the school name in 50 languages? A Liverpudlian pal from Thurso was going with a Glasgwegian chum on the blue train to visit that area, and was warned to watch out for the station name and be quick to head for the doors, but they had to rush as he didn't react to the station signs having been looking for ones that said "Shulns". ...dave souza, talk 21:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Latin

message: I am the only one to notice the gaps in the history section of this article. It seems to jump from the 1370s to 1603- 300 years which include, among other things, the Scottish Reformation- although admittedly it's included in the Religion section. --Slackbuie 01:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is, as I never tire of pointing out, but no-one ever responds, the History section is way too long as it is: that is what we have numerous subarticles for, esp. re. history. It is my opinion that we will never get this article up to FA status while it is miles over the length recommendation, with the key "culprit" being the History section (although Politics could do with a decent trim too). I do not feel sufficiently qualified to trim the History section myself, but the problem is that none of our numerous historians seems to want to tackle it. Summarising many hundreds of years of history into a few paragraphs is extremely hard, but we can do it well, I feel certain. (But I agree with your point: in many ways the pre-Union of the Crowns Stuart era is really the key period when Scotland became Scotland: it would be nice to give a tiny flavour of that to readers here on the main article.) --Mais oui! 06:11, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How long should the history section be? It is the tendency of the wiki to expand rather than contract. People feel comfortable adding new information or correcting existing information. It takes a strong conviction to delete sections and cut them out. Someone may feel more at ease making the cut if there was a consensus that the history section should be X many words. Then someone can work on the wording to meet that target. Rincewind42 10:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

text:  I've had a go at shortening the history section. The waffle about the glaciation (as per pear review recommendations) and the bit at the end about post WWII industrial decline got the chop along with much of the wars of Independence. Also the new Parliament of 1998 is historical, but it's not yet history. I also added some missing periods that were neglected so as to make a comprehensive article. (the 16th C and 18th C were woefully poorly covered). The passage is still to heavy on the 13th/14th C. Overall I think I added as much as I cut. Swings and roundabouts, eh! Rincewind42 17:33, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gaps