Talk:Seán O'Meara (songwriter)

Problems

Hallo @WikipedianAncientHistorian and Drmies: and thanks for your work on this article.

There are problems.

1: None of the sources spell his name this way, with the accent over the "e" in "O'Meara". This variation is not mentioned in Ó Meadhra, the article about the surname, and none of the people listed at List of people with surname O'Meara have this accent.

2: I don't think he is notable enough for a standalone article. If the article hadn't already been through CSD and draftification I might have nominated it for CSD. I could take it to AfD, but suggest that it should be turned into yet another redirect to Grace (Jim McCann song), to which Seán O'Meara (songwriter) already redirects. All that we know about him is that he and his brother wrote one famous song and live in Mullingar, and were awarded an award, Gradam Na hÉigse, which no-one has considered notable enough to write about in Wikipedia (and which seems to be one which anyone can apply for to be awarded to anyone they consider worthy: "All that is required is that a very short cv of the proposed awardee be submitted to Head Office. ", from here).

I've incorporated the two sources into the article Grace (Jim McCann song), crediting WikipedianAncientHistorian in my edit summaries for finding these useful additions, but really don't see that there's any point in having a separate article for Sean or his brother Frank, as their sole claim to fame seems to be the one song and they are better served by redirects to that article. PamD 07:53, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

And as redirects they can both appear in categories like Category:20th-century Irish songwriters. PamD 08:37, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Dear Pam, he is very noticeable in Ireland and is constantly talked about. He had RTÉ articles about him, which is extremely major here. I do not agree. WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 10:55, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, the accent is a fàda. WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 10:58, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

I used a more generic term - and Wikipedia refers to it as an accent: Acute_accent#Length.

If you can find more sources about him, then add them. I can find a lot about a young Limerick musician of the same name (but also without the fada over the "e" in "O'Meara"), but nothing more about this person. "Constantly talked about" isn't enough, sorry.

I'll wait to see what @Drmies has to say, but I think this should become a "redirect from alternative spelling", PamD 13:07, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Lol we got rid of that I accidentally used the wrong source it's fine now WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 17:24, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

he has an RTÉ article WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 17:24, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

User:PamD, I don't quite see the point; the man and his brother wrote a well-known song and years later still get honored for it. Strikes me as notable. But what I really don't understand is why you created an article on the song but called it "Jim McCann song", when McCann was one of many artists who have sung it. One might argue that he had the biggest success with it, but he is likely not the main or the only reason that it's so well-known. As far as I know such disambiguation terms involve the creator, not the performer. Drmies (talk) 20:37, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies Songs are conventionally disambiguated by their performer - see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Songs#Article_titles. Girl (Beatles song) isn't Girl (Lennon and McCartney song). Jim McCann was first to record and popularise this song, with 33 weeks in the charts in 1986. I wondered about giving it an unconventional disambiguation of Grace (song about Grace Gifford), which would disambiguate much more clearly for most readers I suspect.

Neither of the sources given (nor any of those in the song's article) uses a fada in "O'Méara".

We seem to have no sourced information about Seán O'Méara or O'Meara beyond: he and his brother Frank wrote "Grace" in 1985, lived in Mullingar, received a very minor award. Is that enough for a Wikipedia article? No other sources have been provided. I really think that redirecting them both to the article on the song seems the right thing to do.

But if there are to be separate articles on them both, please use the sourced form of the surname, with no fada. (Note that, as I mentioned above, the spelling O'Méara is not mentioned in the article about the surname at Ó Meadhra nor in the List of people with surname O'Meara). PamD 21:03, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

I didn't address the "fada" because I really have no bone to pick with that matter. Well, do what you want to do. I was here helping out a new and struggling editor with an article on someone who struck me as notable enough. Writing a song that famous is a feat and while you could call that BLP1, for instance, I don't really put much stock on that. So what if we have no more than four sentences. Once the newspaper archives from the 1980s are digitized there might be a lot more. Drmies (talk) 21:07, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

My preference would be to do away with this article and leave it as another redirect to the song.

But if you really think the article is notable, then please move it to overwrite the redirect at Seán O'Meara (songwriter), and add back the categories which are currently there. And then copy the content to Frank O'Meara (songwriter) similarly, swapping the words Frank and Seán as appropriate. I think that leave us with two pointless little articles, unless someone can actually produce the "He had RTÉ articles about him" which haven't yet been found.

It's all very odd: this song really does seem notable, but no-one has thought to write an article about it until @WikipedianAncientHistorian: created this inexperienced attempt to hijack the redirect Grace (song), with a stub one of whose refs was actually to a short story "Grace" in Joyce's Dubliners. I came across it in a conversation at User_talk:Bkonrad#Hello:_Grace, found various refs, and thought the most useful thing to do was to create an article for the song. A title like Grace (Seán and Frank O'Meara song would be very cumbersome, with the added complication that most people can't easily type the fada, but would also suggest that they were the performers, not the writers. PamD 22:37, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

i sourced the article already did you look at the citations WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 07:50, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Two pointless articles as you say still adds more content to Wikipedia, so it's a win WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 07:54, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, Drmies, for your help. It has helped me a a lot and you are one of the only editors that don't only criticise but actually help WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 07:53, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it actually is. An RTÉ article is like having the new York times write about you in Ireland, and in no way minor. They made one of the most iconic Irish songs, a d deserve an article. WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 07:49, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

It's well known because of the Wolfe tones and Dubliners to be perfectly honest WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 07:55, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

• I can see the RTE article about the song, which mentions the songwriters, but nothing which is about the songwriters apart from the two articles about their getting this apparently fairly minor award.

But to get this settled I've: done a bit of work on the Seán article; put in a formal request at WP:RM to move it to Seán O'Meara (songwriter); created Frank O'Meara (songwriter) overwriting the redirect I'd created there; added the formal template to both talk pages to acknowledge that the Frank article is based on the Sean article. I won't be surprised if at some point someone nominates the two articles for deletion but it won't be me doing it.

@WikipedianAncientHistorian: If you have an RTE or other source which actually talks about the brothers, their lives, what other songs they wrote, etc, then please use it to expand the articles. PamD 09:07, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Have you got any source which mentions their dates of birth? Even an article giving their age at some date would be good as we can use the template {{Birth based on age as of date}} to get an approx date. PamD 09:25, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, that's another morning spent down a Wiki rabbit-hole - turns out Sean has had an interesting career since 1985, recently (self-)published a book of short stories, and Frank has full name Francis Xavier. And they cowrote at least one more sourceable song. PamD 12:31, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Cool, I'll look further into that WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 14:35, 23 September 2024 (UTC)