Talk:Scottish national identity

message: First thing to my mind when clicking the link was the Scotland football team and brave defeat.  CalG 02:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Article

message: This looks like it has been written to give the viewpoint of some rabid nationalist idiot. No sensible person in Scotland really believe anyone oppresses their culture or what have you. And to suggest that British identity is somehow false or manufactured is nonsense. User:Breadandcheese
:This article needs some whinging about the oppression and marginalisation of Gaelic culture by the English lowlanders.
:84.135.242.170 17:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Has anyone here come across a very fine publication by Dr. William Ferguson? The Identity of the Scottish Nation: an historic quest. Edin. Uni. Press 1998. Deals with rather a lot of the issues raised and rather badly dealt with in this article, specifically the Scots/Inglis, Scots/Erse tribulations.Brendandh 00:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Utter garbage. Scotland is a constituent Nation of the United Kingdom - to refer to Scottish Identity rather than National Identity is not politically neutral - it smacks of POV. Scotland is not a state, nor is it a region, nor a province. It is a member of a political union of four constituent Nations, or countries that were previously sovereign states in their own right. Similarly Wales and England are also Nations within the UK - there is no political controversy in the UK regarding this issue of Nationality. We all know that England, Scotland and Wales are Nations (the Northern Irish question is a little more complex). We even have a phrase for them collectively "The Home Nations".  It's mainly foreigners that have problems with the concept of the British Nations - it is a pretty unique situation after all in the modern world.--62.249.233.80 (talk) 23:18, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Perspective

message: Right now this article consists of nothing but. Wikipedia is not a soapbox or a publisher of original thought. Remember, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "I'm from Scotland and I know this to be true" counts for nothing. If you can't back up your facts by citing reliable sources then they don't belong here. -- IslaySolomon | talk 05:00, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:OR|Original research]] 

message: This article is very, very depressing. Celebration of "Scotsness" is a good thing and national pride should be admired as much here as elsewhere in the world. Yet some people haven't got their head round the fact that one can have multi-identities. I'm a Catholic Lowland Scots Ulsterman living in Lothian in the Island of Great Britain and part of the European sphere in a small planet that rotates around a fairly insignificant ball of fire somewhere in the Milky-way. The Northern Islesmen can shout all they like about supposed cultural independence, but a FACT, the Nordreys were ceded to Scotland by Christian I of Norway in 1468 for non payment of Dowry, and have been Scots ever since. 
Regional identities are certainly important but in this article should be assigned to paragraphs rather than dodgy deleting wars.  A'body wi' me? Brendandh 03:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Depressing

message: This article has seen a long edit war over the inclusion of a statement that "[most/many] Orcadians and Shetlanders have a distinct national identity which is at odds with the idea of a Scottish national identity". --18:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are no verifiable sources anywhere to back up the comment that "Orcadians and Shetlanders have an identity at odds with a Scottish one. There are plenty of sources which suggest they have their own identity, which the article reflects, and is common knowledge. There has been similar abuse of Orkney and Shetland related articles before. In that instance, the user was indefinitely banned from Wikipedia. Globaltraveller 07:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The User who was permanently banned - User:Orkadian - is a sockpupper of User:Mallimak, as is User:81.156.63.64, commenting above. In fact every single disruptive edit to this article, and hundreds of other Orkney-related articles, is by Mallimak and his sockpuppets. Time for a permanent ban of the puppetmaster and all his blatant socks. --Mais oui! 09:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

text: There are plenty of verifiable sources to show a resentment in Orkney of the "annexation" to rather unpleasant Stuart rule, in the same way as there are Scots who still resent proud Edward and object to a British identity. I've not seen evidence of to what extent, if any, Orcadians reject Scottish identity. To meet this point, "generally" could be added, so that the sentence reads "a strong sense of regional identity, generally alongside the idea of a Scottish national identity".. dave souza, talk 09:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

text: From WP:V: "Editors adding new material should cite a reliable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor". Failing to cite reliable sources is a perfectly acceptable reason to revert a user's edits. We are not in the business of "making cases" using evidence. From WP:OR: "Articles may not contain ... any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published arguments, ideas, data, or theories that serves to advance a position". Most people can back up their opinions with evidence, that does not make them any less opinions. See also WP:NPOV, WP:NOT#SOAP and WP:NOT#OR. -- IslaySolomon | talk 17:55, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In another world we might commune with the Spirit of NPOV to determine the Right Thing. In this one, Mallimak wants to give more weight to the idea that Orkney/Shetland are semi-detached parts of Scotland; Mais oui! and others don't. Both are arguments for which good cases can be made, fully compliant with WP:V. If you can suggest a way of resolving content disputes which doesn't involve comparing the arguments, or cases, made on each side, I'd be interested to hear it. If we end up with undue weight being given to the case of Orkney and Shetland, the answer is to expand the rest of the article, rather than trying to cut the coverage of the northern isles. One thing's sure, edit warring is not the answer. Angus McLellan  (Talk) 19:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: OK, let me clarify. There would be nothing wrong with:  "Source-X states 'Orkney is a semi-detached part of Scotland', while Source-Y states 'most Orcadians consider themselves fully Scottish'". What would be wrong would be stating either opinion as truth and producing evidence to try to back up that opinion. -- IslaySolomon | talk 19:21, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's roughly what I meant. I apologise for being as clear as mud. Angus McLellan  (Talk) 19:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Quit the personal abuse Mallimak. Your campaign of vandalism has been stopped dead in its tracks by the Wikipedia community acting through consensus. You are a thoroughly unpleasant individual, who has subjected me to a ceaseless campaign of vitriolic personal abuse bordering on obsession, and your opinions carry zero weight with me. Grow up and stop using countless IP addresses. --Mais oui! 17:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think we can quite happily discount the above rantings. (I am not the first to bring his/her name into this discussion.)  81.158.167.130 18:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Comment 

message: This website  does not meet WP:RS which says. 
A self-published source is a published source that has not been subject to any form of independent fact-checking, or where no one stands between the writer and the act of publication. It includes personal websites, and books published by vanity presses. Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, and then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources.
Therefore the statement and source should not be placed on the page until such a reliable source is found.--Zleitzen 23:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are no verifiable sources anywhere to back up the comment that "Orcadians and Shetlanders have an identity at odds with a Scottish one. There are plenty of sources which suggest they have their own identity, which the article reflects, and is common knowledge. There has been similar abuse of Orkney and Shetland related articles before. In that instance, the user was indefinitely banned from Wikipedia. Globaltraveller 07:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The User who was permanently banned - User:Orkadian - is a sockpupper of User:Mallimak, as is User:81.156.63.64, commenting above. In fact every single disruptive edit to this article, and hundreds of other Orkney-related articles, is by Mallimak and his sockpuppets. Time for a permanent ban of the puppetmaster and all his blatant socks. --Mais oui! 09:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

text: There are plenty of verifiable sources to show a resentment in Orkney of the "annexation" to rather unpleasant Stuart rule, in the same way as there are Scots who still resent proud Edward and object to a British identity. I've not seen evidence of to what extent, if any, Orcadians reject Scottish identity. To meet this point, "generally" could be added, so that the sentence reads "a strong sense of regional identity, generally alongside the idea of a Scottish national identity".. dave souza, talk 09:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

text: From WP:V: "Editors adding new material should cite a reliable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor". Failing to cite reliable sources is a perfectly acceptable reason to revert a user's edits. We are not in the business of "making cases" using evidence. From WP:OR: "Articles may not contain ... any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published arguments, ideas, data, or theories that serves to advance a position". Most people can back up their opinions with evidence, that does not make them any less opinions. See also WP:NPOV, WP:NOT#SOAP and WP:NOT#OR. -- IslaySolomon | talk 17:55, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In another world we might commune with the Spirit of NPOV to determine the Right Thing. In this one, Mallimak wants to give more weight to the idea that Orkney/Shetland are semi-detached parts of Scotland; Mais oui! and others don't. Both are arguments for which good cases can be made, fully compliant with WP:V. If you can suggest a way of resolving content disputes which doesn't involve comparing the arguments, or cases, made on each side, I'd be interested to hear it. If we end up with undue weight being given to the case of Orkney and Shetland, the answer is to expand the rest of the article, rather than trying to cut the coverage of the northern isles. One thing's sure, edit warring is not the answer. Angus McLellan  (Talk) 19:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: OK, let me clarify. There would be nothing wrong with:  "Source-X states 'Orkney is a semi-detached part of Scotland', while Source-Y states 'most Orcadians consider themselves fully Scottish'". What would be wrong would be stating either opinion as truth and producing evidence to try to back up that opinion. -- IslaySolomon | talk 19:21, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's roughly what I meant. I apologise for being as clear as mud. Angus McLellan  (Talk) 19:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Quit the personal abuse Mallimak. Your campaign of vandalism has been stopped dead in its tracks by the Wikipedia community acting through consensus. You are a thoroughly unpleasant individual, who has subjected me to a ceaseless campaign of vitriolic personal abuse bordering on obsession, and your opinions carry zero weight with me. Grow up and stop using countless IP addresses. --Mais oui! 17:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think we can quite happily discount the above rantings. (I am not the first to bring his/her name into this discussion.)  81.158.167.130 18:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Has anyone considered finding a photograph for this article?  Alan.ca 12:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have any suggestions? Please add one if you find something relevent.  Canæn  19:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture 

message: I have added the following piece of factual information to the article (with ref.):  "... Orkney and Shetland have their own distinct identity *, often at odds with a Scottish one."
I know this somewhat spoils the slushy Scottish sentimentality being peddled by this article, but it is a fact nevertheless, and it needs to be stated if this is to be a truly NPOV encyclopaedic article.
81.129.16.228 20:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed it because, as you've already been told plenty of times (for example, the discussion above), the site you're trying to use as a reference is not a valid source. If you can find a neutral, scholarly reference on this subject then you can add verifiable information. Otherwise, you will continue to have your changes reverted and will end up blocked, again. This isn't very constructive. --YFB ¿ 20:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

text: And what about the Shetlands? Don't they have a VERY distinct identity? (83.13.39.98 (talk) 21:31, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

text: These are some fantastic points which will hopefully make it into the article very soon. Brythones (talk) 09:35, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Northern Isles indentity 

message: I find some of the content in this section very objectionable. It needs citation. I've been kind and tagged it as compromised and needing citation, and unless this can be addressed I intend to remove the offending material outright. -- Jza84 · (talk) 00:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree - I may try to improve this article when I get a chance but I see no reason not to just delete the section for now. Cheers Fishiehelper2 (talk) 01:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Politics of identity 

message: Is it really necessary to have a kilt as the picture. The reason that I ask is if you ask most Scots people about their identity, then not many of them would be quick to say kilt. It is worn occasionally at celidhs and formal ceremonies etc, but it's not like we all go around wearing them day to day. I feel that this image that the picture paints only further strengthens some nations views (America) as Scotland being full of haggis eating Mel Gibson's, like Groundskeeper Willie out of the Simpsons.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexcooldude (talk • contribs) 03:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've replaced it with a not-very good pic of the Tartan Army, which is bit more contemporary and less specifically Highland/elistist.  Ideally I'd like a free version of something more like  this pic, a crowd scene at a match which ticks the boxes - ginger wigs, tam-o-shanters, saltires and tartan... FlagSteward (talk) 20:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Image

message: I note that someone's put in a reference to the Sunday Herald of 4 Sept 2005 to support the statement in the intro that "many of "immigrant" descent see themselves (and are seen as), for example, Pakistani and Scottish: Asian-Scots." Leaving aside the fact that Asian and Italian immigration isn't really mentioned thereafter - the intro should summarise the rest of the article, not throw in new concepts never to be repeated - I've not been able to confirm the reference.  Obviously it would help if the Wikipedian concerned had given an URL or even an article name, but there's nothing I can see on the Herald website from that date which helps. One possibility might be "New face of young Scotland; Tikka masala hasn't topped haggis as our national dish yet, but Scotland is rapidly becoming more ethnically diverse." of 12 Sept 2004 but I've not seen anything definite. Anyone? FlagSteward (talk) 20:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Scots-Asian reference

message: Scotland struggles to find a seperate national identity from England probably because it doesn't really have one, or at least nowhere near as much as some nationalists would have folk believe. That's not because of historic English imperialism but rather because today's 'Scots' are predominantly an Anglo-saxon not a Gaelic/Celtic people - in other words they are mainly 'English'. The original invading Scots were gaelic speaking celtic settlers from Ireland, but at the same time some 1500 years ago the Anglo-saxons or 'English' settled the south and east of what would much later become part of 'Scotland'. The long term consequence would be that despite the historic retention of the name 'Scotland' the country is for the large part ethnically, culturally and linguistically 'the land of the northern English'. The 'English' of England and the 'Scots' of Scotland today are both more sensibly described as 'British' since for everyday purposes neither has a strongly distinct or different national identity from the other. Meanwhile anyone with a serious interest in Scottish history will be fascinated to note how often and to what degree the story of Scotland's huge (indeed predominant) Anglo-saxon or 'English' heritage gets ignored, minimised or carefully airbrushed from the picture in favour of an often mythical or semi-mythical celtic background.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.8.105 (talk) 10:05, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: So where are the references to the genetic studies that verify that English or Scots speaking Scottish people have Anglo-Saxon marker genes? I'm waiting . . . There isn't even much evidence that many outside the Saxon South of England posses the Anglo-Saxon genetic markers, far less Scots. And where exactly are these Anglo-Saxon settlements in South East Scotland? - Surely you have a list to back up your claims? The language one uses does not decide one's nationality or one's national identity. You forget also Scotland (and Britain's) other language heritage, which pre-dates the arrival of Gaelic (Q-Celtic) in Southern Scotland - the British P-Celtic languages from which Welsh evolved. The ancient Welsh poem by Aneurin "Y Gododdin" - is about Yr Hen Ogledd - (the Old North), which consisted of the Lothians and parts of what is now the Scottish Borders - a British P-Celtic (Brythonic) speaking region for which place name evidence still exists.  If there is an argument to be heard for the true ethnic origin of the people who live in Southern Scotland and Northern England, then it is Brythonic (Welsh) although again speaking a Celtic language doesn't make one a Celt either for the same reasons.  The Anglo-Saxon language of the invaders may have caught on, but that doesn't mean they became Anglo-Saxons any more than it makes talking parrots human.--62.249.233.80 (talk) 00:55, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Genetic markers aside, it is erroneous to assume that the language just "caught on". As far as "Anglian" (rather than "Saxon") settlements in south east Scotland go, Prof. WFH Nicolaisen, in his definitive work 'Scottish Place-Names' devotes an entire chapter to them. Look anywhere on a map, and any settlement ending in '-ton', '-toun' farmstead, enclosure Haddington, Stenton, Swinton; '-ingaham', '-ham' settlement, village Coldingham, Tyninghame, Morham; '-bottle', '-battle' dwelling place Newbattle, Morebattle; '-wick' farm Berwick, Hawick etc, etc. Brendandh (talk) 07:58, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

text: The scots are anglo saxon idea you have is only credible from a cultural perspective in the lowlands. Yes the south east of scotland had saxon settlers but their impact on the modern genes of scots is very little. Soruces say modern scots are 40% gaelic, 10% pictish and the rest being cumbric and norse with a small amount of anglo saxon. It is factually incorrect to call scotland anglo saxon for this reason.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.21.244.26 (talk) 22:23, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scottish identity an Anglo-saxon identity? 

message: This article tends to repeat the old story of English military aggression against Scotland. But that is probably rather POV. The original small Kingdom of the Scots was agressively imperial (just look at the results and how it grew). Furthemore the 'Auld alliance' between Scotland and France was intended to ensure that the latter (a continental 'superpower') could pay the Scots to invade England whenever France needed a second front with its own wars with England.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.12.48 (talk) 18:08, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  English attack or defence? 

message: A good part of the section is definitely a personal interpretation of facts, with a clear-cut opinion on them. This is an encyclopedia. Please let us keep it to facts, possibly relevant and avoiding the temptation of cherry-picking. I have tagged the section for a NPOV check. --HarpsiMario (talk) 23:13, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Independence in Europe 

message: Not sure that this sentence is facually corret:
"Finally there were the 'English', the Angles, a Germanic people who had established a number of kingdoms in Great Britain, including the Kingdom of Bernicia, part of which was in the south-east of modern Scotland"
As I understand it, all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom Bernicia was in what is now Scotland. It later merged to become the northern half of the kingdom of Northumbria before splittig off again following the Danish invasion of England. Cassandra  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.12.99.140 (talk) 17:01, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Mutt Lunker (talk) 22:35, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bernicia 

message: I see this issue has been raised before, but it still remains evident on the article.  The last two sections in the History are barely about Scottish national identity at all, but read instead like one editor's personal take on the history of Scottish nationalism.   Obviously nationalism plays a significant part to the Scottish identity, but anyone reading this article would think it was the only facet of Scottish identity worth mentioning in the last 100 years.   The Scottish identity of the majority that didn't vote for nationalism during this time is barely mentioned, other than to receive a scolding from an undefined "intelligentsia".  (Apparently it doesn't have its own "intelligentsia" worth citing). 
These sections badly need re-focused back on the subject of the article.   It could also do with an update on events over the last few years.  --Escape Orbit (Talk) 11:32, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking back over the article I have to agree that the later sections are not focused on Scottish identity and they are, as a recent edit pointed out with tags, largely unsourced. I am thinking about a clean up.--SabreBD (talk) 11:44, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Good on you. Mutt Lunker (talk) 12:31, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nationalist focus of this article 

message: Substituted at 05:38, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: This history of the Scottish 'national identity' fails to emphasise the most significant fact of 'Scottish' national identity. Namely that the Kingdom of Scotland comprised two main ethnic groups: the original people called Scots who spoke Gaelic and lived in the Highlands, and the English speaking inhabitants of the kingdom's southern provinces in the  Lowlands. The history of the kingdom from say the time of King David to 1707, and indeed towards the end of the 18th century is one of continuous antipathy and often direct internal conflict between these two distinct ethnic groups or nations. Paradoxically the sense of there being a single Scottish national identity, one nation, only seems to have begun to properly form a century or more after Scotland and England were united and the kingdom of Scotland had ceased to exist. Cassandrathesceptic (talk) 09:42, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historic bi-polar national identity 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have requested that a user brings their massive deletions and additions to Talk, not least because despite a raft of major edits they did not provide a single Edit summary. Mais oui! (talk) 07:16, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: My edits were in line with what we had already discussed on here. I decided to focus more objectively on the state of Scottish national identity and the SNP/independence versus the current section which is poorly written and not neutral. My edits also fleshed out the section more, with the addition of more than 4,000 bytes. Brythones (talk) 10:08, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Massive changes without a single Edit summary 

message: Regarding the continual removal of a reference to culture in the opening sentence and per my edit summary (" follow the link for a cited def of national identity which, patently, is "...represented by distinctive traditions, culture...""), if you had followed that link you would have found a citation for the definition therein, by the Oxford English dictionary, stating "A sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". If that applies to national identities in general, it applies to that of Scotland specifically. Stop warring.
Please also read MOS:LEADCITE about why we tend to limit citations in the lede, particularly redundant ones for matter which are straithghtforwardly verifiable, as I had indicated to you in my edit summary. Mutt Lunker (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Saying that a nation is represented by culture has nothing to do with national identity. Source it or it should be removed. Get out of here with your own research.195.159.175.68 (talk) 18:25, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: So are you disagreeing with the Oxford English dictionary's inclusion of culture in its definition - per above - of national identity, claiming that said organ is not a WP:RS and can be disregarded, or what? Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:00, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

text: Will you stop combing through article talk pages to find discussions which you can spuriously tag your forum posts to? There's a brief pretence of pertinence by giving the OED your seal of approval (I imagine they are delighted), then with a clang you tack on a pet POV that you've been persistently and similarly irrelevantly plonking into other talk pages and which neither addresses the matter of the opening sentence, nor any other speficic improvement to the article - this page's sole purpose. Mutt Lunker (talk) 13:29, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

text: So confirmation that it has precisely naff all to do with the matter under discussion, the definition of national identity in the first sentence and that you've made your latest clumsy and transparent attempt to hijack an unconnected talk thread with one of your cut and paste forum campaigns, already similarly scattered across other talk pages (by previous IP socks). Mutt Lunker (talk) 22:16, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Warring regarding "culture" in opening sentence