Talk:Orleigh Court

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Latitude/Longitude: 50.9782, -4.2382

Propose creation of a child article

Looking at the current state of this article, it's evident to me that it's been overwhelmed by a huge amount of detailed information about the "descent" of the manor, much of which, although clearly well-researched, is only peripherally related to the subject of the article. I think this should be split to a child article, in accordance with WP:Summary style. Comments welcome.

If the content is moved, what would be the appropriate title for the child article? I guess that "Descent of the Manor of Orleigh" would be technically correct, but this use of the word descent is far from common and may confuse the average reader - would "Owners of..." or "Ownership of..." be better, perhaps?  —SMALLJIM  12:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Descent of the manor is the format adopted by the Victoria County History series. Often in the cases of manor houses it is more practical to combine the history of the manor with the architecture of the existing house. There often is not enough to say about the building itself to form an article of any length, as is possibly the case with Orleigh. Often architectural features can only be properly explained by reference to previous occupants who built them, and the reader therefore needs to be familiar with the descent. To split into two separate articles seems somewhat disjointed. Subjects which become too dis-aggregated can loose the ability to give an overview. On your general point (made elsewhere) I do not agree that history of a manor is "very peripherally relevant" to an article about the house. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 15:09, 9 July 2012 (UTC))

It's true that there's a link between the occupants of a building and its architecture, of course, but we must remember that this article is about the building, not the families of the people who used to live in it: we can't have more information about them than there is information about the building itself - apart from any of our rules, that's just plain unencyclopedic! I'm sure you've noted that there's about a page in Cherry & Pevsner on the building, but even including all that wouldn't be enough to balance things out.

As the article stands now, there are some details of the building scattered amongst the extensive and discursive personal details in the "Descent" section, but they're hard to find: "Denys", "Denys of Somerset", "Denys of Gloucestershire", and "Denys monument" contain nothing about Orleigh Court at all, as far as I can see. There are a few snippets buried in "Denys of Devon" and "Anthony Dennis (1585–1641)", but it's necessary to wade through a lot of irrelevancy to find them. "Davie", "Lee", and "Rogers" are rather better.

My proposal is to move all the family details to a separate article (title to be determined), retaining summary information in which the wanted material about the building would stand out far more clearly. Those readers (surely not the majority) who want detailed information about the families that owned the manor can get it from the linked article.  —SMALLJIM  16:49, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that the flow of people through the building is what makes it so interesting. When I started the article it was because of my interest in the Davie family. I wanted to know more about the place because of them. It's so nice that people have added so much additional material - and there's even photographs. I do not consider that the page has gathered so much by way of length that there is any need to worry about using patches of it to create other pages.Leutha (talk) 22:23, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment

Following on from the above, should this article include such extensive details about the former owners of the building, or should those details be split into a child article, leaving a brief summary here, per WP:SPLIT and WP:Summary style? If so, what should the other article be called?  —SMALLJIM  11:11, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes, when an article gets long . . .

I must admit I have read through both WP:SPLIT and WP:Summary style, and I have failed to find any reason why JIM would seek to create a WP:Content fork It would be useful to have a more detailed rationale before the suggestion can be given serious consideration. Leutha (talk) 20:22, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I think my comments of 9 July above explain well enough. The concept is simple: an article should be predominantly about the topic of the article, but this one isn't. Other people agree with this common-sense principle: see, for instance, WP:BETTER#SIZE: "In shorter articles, if one subtopic has much more text than another subtopic, that may be an indication the subtopic should have its own page, with only a summary presented on the main page."

I don't understand your reference to a content fork, that doesn't seem relevant here. (Ah - I see you mean the restricted sense of CFORK in WP:SPINOFF, sorry. —SMALLJIM )  —SMALLJIM  11:32, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

• RFC Comment: The problem with the proposed child article is, that the subject may not be notable enough to warrant a dedicated article. As to the relative weight of the "descent" of the building in this article, that should be in rough proportion to the coverage the "descent" gets in reliable sources, when they discuss Orleigh Court, e.g. if sources devote about half of their space, when discussing Orleigh Court, to the "descent", then devoting about half of this article to that aspect could be a good idea. As to length, I don't think this article at present is excessively long. Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 20:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for those helpful comments. Regarding relative weight, you're making the same point as me, but you've explained it more clearly, I think. The main cited sources that deal with the topic of the article (as opposed to sources in which the topic is only mentioned incidentally) are Cherry and Pevsner, Emery, and Rogers. The first two cannot be considered, even with the greatest act of good faith, to devote more than 20% of their entries to the "descent" (former owners/occupiers) of the building. I don't have access to Rogers, but considering the content that it's being used to reference here, it doesn't look like its balance is much different. The British Listed Buildings website entry shows a broadly similar proportion too. This percentage would roughly tie up with what could be left as a summary after removal of the disputed section, and some expansion of the details of the building. I've checked some other online sources, e.g. [1], [2] - none of them mention the descent at all.

So it would appear equitable to make the split - the child article must stand on its own, but if the refs provided are good, it should be able to do so.  —SMALLJIM  23:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that also the sources that mention OC in passing ought to be considered when assessing the weight (if possible), but in general I agree, if reliable sources use roughly 20%, then roughly 20% would be a good idea here, too. Roughly is a key word here, as we shouldn't be counting words. 35% is "roughly 20%" for this purpose, IMO. Using "20%" of this article is one option, the child article is another. If the child article can't stand on its own, then the descent should be discussed here. (if reliable sources devote 20% of space to the "descent", then that's an aspect of the subject that ought to be covered in some article) I'm now noticing that the "80%" content of sources isn't very extensively described in the article at all, maybe adding some non-"descent" information would make this more diverse and also reduce the relative weight of the "descent". --Dailycare (talk) 20:48, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree that the addition of further information as regards other aspects of the building sound like the best way forward.Leutha (talk) 23:16, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Dailycare, I don't think it's useful to consider the relative weight provided by sources that only refer to a topic in passing: the very nature of a passing comment means that it will only be a brief mention amidst content that's about a different subject. However, you're both right that more should be said about the building, so with the sources I have available I'm going to expand those details (as started by Leutha) and I think that the irrelevancy of the "descent" section will then become apparent.  —SMALLJIM  11:25, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Update: I've added a new section, provisionally entitled "History", which is intended to merge the details of the building and its owners/occupiers, as has been suggested above. It's not yet complete, but when it is, I intend it to include all the relevant parts of the "Descent" section, so that the remaining content of that section can be removed elsewhere.  —SMALLJIM  23:11, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

• Closure proposal. I believe that the "History" section now contains the important details from the "Descent" section that are relevant to Orleigh Court - if I've missed anything significant, please add it (is there, for instance, a reference for which Dennis added the hammerbeam roof?). Otherwise if there are no further comments within a couple of days, I'll remove the "Descent" section, and mark this RFC as resolved.  —SMALLJIM  22:36, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the Descent section should be merged into the Histry section. United States Man (talk) 15:23, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I've merged a few more details into "History", and have now split the sections that deal with the Denys's into a new Denys family article, where I feel that content best fits (rather than, as I originally proposed, an article about the "Descent of the manor", which now seems unnecessary).  —SMALLJIM  12:56, 28 July 2012 (UTC)