User talk:Son of the Isles

Question for administrator

{{admin help}} I am sick and tired of the inaccuracies people create on Wikipedia in regards to their creating of imaginary nation-states and nationalities. Wikipedians seem to have a vendetta against British users and continue to try and say that British Actors are not British Citizens or British Nationals but are instead "Welsh, English, Northern Irish, Scottish". Wikipedia should follow the correct demonym as created by the individual nations themselves. The British law very specifically states that people born within the United Kingdom, unless they renounce citizenship are "British Nationals by Birth" so why is there a big crusade against this classification.

Secondly, people are invention nation states. Oscar Wilde is repeatedly referred to as being Irish, even though he is written in his biography as a British Citizen, which he was, and apparently "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" didn't exist because a few disgruntled wikipedians have a grudge against the British nation.

I'm sick and tired of these inaccuracies and it is certainly putting me off wikipedia for life. Admins need to do something about this before people start believing this nonsense.

--Son of the Isles (talk) 20:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Trouble is a lot of Welsh, English, Scot, Irish - want to call themselves that, so much so, that on the last census in 2011 - the Nationality question was adjusted so that the people could put the country they wanted (I put English BTW...). How many Welsh want to be lumped with the English... answers on the fingers of one hand. Note that admins do not check edits, that's down for the other editors - there is not that many active admins to be able to do that. It could be fun after next year if the Scots jump ship... Ronhjones ^(Talk) 21:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies if I come across as abrasive, it just infuriates me that I address myself as British, as per the actual legal standing of my citizenship and nationality, and that Wikipedia are willing to play politics on this. Wikipedia is supposed to give factual knowledge to those who are unaware; not give them subjective opinions of individual editors. You may think I'm being a bit hypocritical there, but I'm just standing by the law that exists in the United Kingdom. Not to mention I'm not trying to lump everyone in as English. I'm "English" and have "Scottish" ancestry, but I'll always just identify as British; as that's what I am, and that's what every other citizen of the United Kingdom is--bar those in Northern Ireland who fell in love with the Belfast Agreement. ----Son of the Isles (talk) 00:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

[Someone deleted my comments - Dabbler? - Here they are again.]

I think you may be picking only the biographies that support your case. Bloom's book on OW uses "Irishman" when referring to him, and never "British": "As an Irishman, he had a particular relationship with English society as an outsider.". The Cambridge Companion uses "Irish" a lot too: "His position as an Irish writer gives him status in the context of postcolonial criticism." Ellman talks about the Irish-Americans liking his nationality - not British surely?; and he writes of OW trying to "minimise the difference between English and Irish." You will need a citation that says OW thought of himself as British only. By the way, I am half English and half Welsh. Those of us with split nationalities may have no option but to call ourselves British. My mother thought of herself as Welsh until she died. I wonder if your Scottish parent didn't call himself/herself Scottish? Myrvin (talk) 16:35, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what happened but my edit seems to have deleted two sets of comments. I have reinstated the second one by Ktlynch. I did not get any edit conflict messages or any indication that there were any other messages. Very strange. Dabbler (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, the question of Britishness is a thorny one and, even though you may , many people don't identify with. Questions of nationality are amongst the most contentious on Wikipedia and often the disagreement amongst editors over encyclopaedic coverage is in fact a manifestation of the unresolved underlying question. The wiki's rarely the right place to settle it. The actual policy in this area, as in any other one, is to follow the usage of reliable sources. In the Wildean example, most biographers consider him as an Irishman and an outsider in London society. Secondly, as you hint at yourself, "Britain" is not a nation-state in the Westphalian sense, one is a subject of the United Kingdom. You can hardly accuse others of ill will whilst making statements like "bar those in Northern Ireland who fell in love with the Belfast Agreement". The answer to settle most content disputes is usually found here. Best, --Ktlynch (talk) 15:46, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I am probably the editor who triggered this comment by reverting UKGB&I in the Oscar Wilde article most recently, let me explain and say firstly that I strongly agree with your position about being British. I have Irish, English and Scottish ancestry, my grandparents considered themselves Irish not British although they lived in England and my grandfather served the British Crown in the British army. With my English and Scots ancestors on the other side, I don't think of myself as Irish but British. However, I also consider Dublin to be geographically in Ireland which was part of the UK then and is why I was able to accept that in the article and also that people from Ireland are generally called Irish. Because of my mixed ancestry I also consider that being overly attached to any nation is a bit ludicrous and I don't understand why a writer in English could or should be considered as being British rather than Irish unless it was because of his place of birth or genetic ancestry. On a practical note, changing Wilde's birthplace and nationality to UKGB&I strikes me as being political and it annoys some other editors leading to dissension and reverting without adding to the clarity or truthfulness of the article. Wilde was never a British citizen as that term was not used in his lifetime. He was a British subject of the Irish nation. Dabbler (talk) 16:25, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Enc. Britannica calls OW an "Irish wit, poet, and dramatist." The OED defines "Wildean" as "Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the Irish writer Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900), or his works." The concise DNB doesn't give OW a nationality, but calls his father "an Irish Antiquary". Weirdly, the 11th edition of Britannica says: "WILDE, OSCAR O'FLAHERTIE WILLS (1856-1900), English author, son of Sir William Wilde, a famous Irish surgeon." Nobody says he's British yet. Myrvin (talk) 16:53, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Richard Pine quotes him as saying to Yeats: "We Irish are too poetical to be poets." Davis Coakely wrote a whole book called "Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish." - quite a short book I guess, if he wasn't. Frank Harris reports that OW said: "I am not English. I am Irish--which is quite another thing." Myrvin (talk) 17:11, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is relevant here: Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom, particularly the section on Do not enforce uniformity :

It is not possible to create a uniforming guideline, when such strong disagreement exists on the relative importance of the labels. Re-labelling nationalities on grounds of consistency—making every UK citizen "British", or converting each of those labelled "British" into their constituent nationalities—is strongly discouraged. Such imposed uniformity cannot, in any case, be sustained.

Myrvin (talk) 20:31, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lordly, I didn't expect this kind of response, first just let me thank you all for getting involved! :) @Dabbler ". On a practical note, changing Wilde's birthplace and nationality to UKGB&I strikes me as being political" I think it is also quite easy to say that the from the other direction; it works both ways, and I just think if someone is born in a state which at the time is called one thing, you shouldn't call it another. What annoys me personally as a user of Wikipedia, and I have been for years I created this account recently but I've had a previous account I can no longer access as I forgot the details of it, is that it seems the many of users who are not British, fail to fathom the term "British" itself, and I think this is partially why many Americans refer to all people born in the UK as being from "England". We should be trying to educate, not allowing them to make such a broadening as they do. Son of the Isles (talk) 21:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Europe 10,000 Challenge invite

Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:09, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red World Contest

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!