Talk:James Balfour (died 1845)

Claimed Royal descent
you removed the referenced text "Balfours had fought with Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and a pedigree written under the authority of the Lord Lyon King of Arms traced James Balfour's descent in a direct line from King Robert II, son-in-law of Robert the Bruce", with the edit summary"Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic." One's understanding of James Balfour is not forwarded by giving trivia about what his family was supposedly doing FIVE HUNDRED YEARS earlier or claims about distant royal descents of the type shared by the majority of the Scottish upper gentry of the time


 * 1) This is only one sentence.  That is not WP:UNDUE coverage of the issue.
 * 2) That sentence does not "present a family history" (per WP:NOTGENEALOGY).  It presents one fact of family history
 * 3) The claim is not trivia.  It it is an indication of how the family perceived its social standing.
 * 4) The authentication of the claim Lord Lyon adds weight to it, distinguishing it from a mere family boast.  (You may query the accuracy of Lord Lyon's authentication, but the use of a supposedly reliable source would have added social standing at the time)
 * 5) If you have a reliable source for your assertion that the majority of the Scottish upper gentry of the time made similar claims, then that would be a useful addition to the paragraph. It would be esp valuable if you could add reliably-sourced info on the merits or otherwise of a pedigree from Lord Lyon.

Please can you find the sources rather than just deleting?

Thanks. -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 15:21, 8 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Five hundred years. That is trivia.  'It is not family history because it is only a little bit of family history'?  That is a non sequitur, and its inclusion is completely out of WP:PROPORTION - a passing comment on the first page of an almost 500 page biography.  No, it would not be a useful addition to the paragraph to state why such ancestor-fawning trivia is completely unremarkable, that is reason not to include it.    FIVE HUNDRED YEARS! Agricolae (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Per WP:BRD, please stop removing the test while we discuss this. -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 18:07, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * you seem unfamiliar with the policies you cite.
 * First, you repeatedly namechecked WP:NOTGENEALOGY, but apparently without scrutinising its text. It says Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic.  It does not say to mention nothing of family history.  That guideline is clearly intended to debar long screeds of family history, and it clearly envisages that family history can be presented in an appropriate way.  You express horror that an article might include only a little bit of family history ... but the policy on which you were relying envisages exactly that.
 * Secondly, after your retreat from your misplaced reliance on WP:NOTGENEALOGY, you now cite WP:PROPORTION. The text which you removed amounted to 45 words out of a 1570 word article.  That is less that 3% of the article, which is in no way excessive
 * Thirdly, despite my specific request, you offer no reliable sources to support you assertion that such ancestor-fawning trivia is completely unremarkable. If you have those sources, I ask again that you present them.  If you cannot do so, then I will have to conclude that you are simply pushing some personal POV.
 * Fourthly, you didn't acknowledge my points about the significance of Lord Lyon's attestation of pedigree. Again, if you have any reliable sources to support your dismissal of that evidence, then again -- please present it.
 * Finally, I would like to ask you to take a less combative tone. We disagree, so let's discuss and do so in WP:CIVIL fashion. Use of phrases like such ancestor-fawning trivia and shouty uppercase are not conducive to civil discussion. And please leave the text in place while we discuss. -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 18:27, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow, into the twilight zone we go. I am perfectly familiar with NOTGENEALOGY, just not your special reading of it that draws a distinction between 'family history' and 'just a little bit of family history'.  I have not retreated from NOTGENEALOGY one iota - a 500-year pedigree is just decoration inconsistent with the policy.  And if you want to apply strict mathematical formulas, it occupies less than half a page in the original book, putting it in the neighborhood of 0.1% of the total text, so that would indeed make 3% about 30 times more than it merits.  Setting aside such strict metrics, a throw-away piece of trivia does not merit repetition in an encyclopedia-length article, even at only 3%.   (And I find your point about Lord Lyon to be valueless, given the nature of such claims.  It is neither a guarantee of certainty nor a certification of some special status engendered were such a descent to be true.  There is nothing special here, nothing at all, and you are the one pushing it as some unique characteristic.)  And please leave it out while we discuss - you are the one who decided today that it really needed to be there even though it hasn't been for months.  As to civility and tone, maybe you should have thought of that when you accused me of not reading policies, or of retreating (as if this was a battlefield), and of experiencing horror.  Doctor, heal thyself.  Agricolae (talk) 19:51, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * As you well know, there is no twolight zone.
 * NOTGENEALOGY says says Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic. It does not say to mention nothing of family history.  Please stop misrepresenting it as a total ban on family history.
 * I don't believe that you genuinely hold to that reading, because if you did, then you would also want to remove the preceding one-and-a-half sentences, which are also about family history.
 * As to the metrics, your 0.1% of the book is a calculation based on poor numbers. I sourced the info from a snippet view of page 1 of the book, probably an intro. Your figure is based on the unevidenced an implausible assumption that the family history is discussed nowhere in the book other than on page one. So your number is meaningless.
 * You assert that such an assertion under the Lord Lyon's authority is a throw-away piece of trivia. I have asked you twice for evidence to support that claim, but you respond only with more aggression, and no evidence.
 * The reason for including the snippet (which I cut to only 41 words) is that James Balfour founded a political dynasty, and himself claimed to be part of a longer dynasty. That is a part of how the family viewed itself.
 * You refused to discuss your concerns per WP:BRD until I initiated the discussion about text which you chose to remove.
 * I had hoped to have a reasoned discussion with you about this, and my initial post was measured and calm. But you responded with of uppercase, denial of policy, and battlefield phrasing such as non sequitur, ancestor-fawning trivia, and when challenged on that you have just tried to offload onto me the responsibility for your own aggression. This is classic WP:BATTLEFIELD conduct, as is your insistence on maintaining your 3-month-old edit as the status quo over a text which had been stable and unquestioned for the previous 4 years.
 * I may be pessimistic, but I don't foresee that your tone of or your black-and-white view of a nuanced policy are likely to change sufficiently to facilitate a consensus. So I will seek a WP:3O. -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 22:59, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * PS Note that the article went through two GA reviews without any concerns being expressed about the contested 41 words. -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 00:20, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I never said NOTGENEALOGY was a total ban - that is your own strawman. What you will not find in that policy anywhere is the caveat that genealogy should not be left out, unless there is just a little of it, or if you think it is interesting, or if you are drawing some conclusion about its relevance not found in the cited source. It is only to be included when it helps understand the subject, and the genealogy would have to be astoundingly remarkable for it to really help understand someone 500 years later, which is not the case here.  However, since now you are claiming that the entire book is rife with references to the subject's descent from 14th century Scotsmen, it shouldn't be too much of a challenge to find a direct quote indicating that the author thinks that we can only understand Balfour's life by knowing that his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a king and another one fought in a battle.   . . . . Yeah, I thought not.
 * More disturbing regarding this same point, what do you mean that you cited a snippet of what was probably an intro? Are you telling me you are citing this page without knowing whether it is part of an intro or not?  You say it is an implausible assumption that this is the only reference to this descent.  That sounds to me like you don't have a clue whether or not the author discusses it elsewhere.  Don't you know?  Please tell me you read more than a Google Books snippet before citing, which would be egregious.
 * I have not refused to discuss my concerns. That is what I have been doing here.
 * And of course it is all my fault, what with you being all flexible and willing to consider not having that text there - oh, wait, you have been completely unwilling to consider that. But only I am not willing to 'work toward consensus'?  Do you find this 'either you agree with me or you are acting in bad faith' a productive approach with other editors?  Agricolae (talk) 01:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Agricolae, your battlefield conduct continues. Please desist.  If you actually want to discuss your concerns, then please desist from the sarcassm, hyperbole, strawmen and shouting.
 * Your commentary on NOTGENEALOGY is bizarre. It urges proportionality, which is what we are discussing here. Or should be.
 * Then you put words into my mouth, saying you are claiming that the entire book is rife with references to the subject's descent from 14th century Scotsmen. You know perfectly well that I made no such claim; I merely said that it seemed likely that p1 was just a summary intro, and that we didn't know whether there is more.
 * Similarly, you use hyperbole to construct a strawman, challenging me to find a direct quote indicating that the author thinks that we can only understand Balfour's life by knowing that his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a king and another one fought in a battle.  As you well know, the question at stake not whether this info makes or breaks the article, but whether or not the inclusion makes the article marginally better or marginally worse.
 * We are here to build an encyclopedia. Please conduct yourself with some civility, without the hyperbole and aggressive sarcasm and strawmen which as characterised all your contributions to this article so far.  I have taken a peek at some of your conduct elsewhere, and I see other examples of your aggression; please stop.-- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 02:50, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * it seemed likely that p1 was just a summary intro. Again, you cast this as a supposition.  Let me ask again, then, so you don't accuse me, again, of putting words in your mouth.  Did you actually cite a Google Books snippet for the content in question?  Is that why you don't know whether it is an intro or not? Agricolae (talk) 03:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I wrote the article over 4 years ago, and I cannot recall with certainty what the state of play was then; Gbooks moves between page/snippet view, so its state now is no indication of its state then. I seem to recall reading more of the book through Google, though I can't be sure; but I usually label snippet views as such, so the best I can say is that I probably saw more of it at the time. That's as much I can say 4 years later.
 * However, since the text is from page 1, that is almost certainly an introductory section one way or another. Whatever the label places on that page, biogs usually start with a brief introduction to the subject, and then launch into some detail.-- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 04:35, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * That does not give me confidence.
 * Anyhow, some bios do what you describe, others begin with a 'deep background' that they never return to again. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that this book contained any further mention of these distant genealogical descents.  Are you aware of any biographies of similar length to our article (~1500 words) that have deemed his distant ancestry noteworthy? Agricolae (talk) 05:36, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * It gives no reason to assume that it doesn't. (This is a tangent, but one which we are discussing only because you chose to make an unevidenced calculation about the proportion of content in a book which you haven't read, as a distraction from the fact the 41 words which concern you so much are amount to a mere 2.61% of the article we are discussing .... and you consider that 2.61% to be massive and unacceptable).
 * As to comparison with other articles of similar length, I am not aware of other articles of similar length about the founder of a political dynasty whose family makes a similar claim. So I have no valid comparator, and I treat this article in its own merits rather than trying to replicate the judgement which another editor might have made elsewhere on a different topic with different sources.
 * We could have a perfectly sensible discussion about the merits of inclusion in this article, if you want to do so. But so far we have been bogged down red herrings such as WP:NOTGENEALOGY and pseudo-calculations about the coverage of this point in a book you haven't read.
 * Do you want to move beyond that? If not, I just await the WP:3O -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 06:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * First, whether a 400+ page book mentions the family history more than just in passing on the first page is not an irrelevancy. It is central, the difference between whether it is noteworthy in a 1500 word article or whether it is out of WP:PROPORTION.  This cannot be assuaged by simply claiming It gives no reason to assume that it doesn't.  I am surprised I even have to say this, but that we don't know the source doesn't speak further about it is no kind of argument that it is noteworthy.  You are the one who introduced calculations, and return to them here, to show that the sentence in question doesn't represent a major part of the article, but that is the red herring - a little bit of 'not noteworthy' is still 'not noteworthy'.
 * If there are no short articles on this person, how about short articles on people of similar social standing? Does the ODNB give 500-year genealogies for its 19th century gentry entries?  No, it doesn't.  Does Encyclopaedia Britannica?  I don't think so.  That is perhaps why you are unaware of similar situations, because the standard modern sources of similarly-lengthed content consider 500-year pedigrees to be outside of the scope of their biographies, and all we have on the table here (claims of 'we can't assume it is not mentioned elsewhere' aside) is a single sentence in a 400+ book.
 * Please consider that your condition for 'moving beyond this' is that I must first abandon my entire argument as a red herring. Oddly, I don't consider this a productive route to achieve consensus.  Agricolae (talk) 17:08, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that comes as a big surprise. You put back the text under dispute without a consensus.  And I am supposed to be the one who has a BATTLEFIELD mentality. Agricolae (talk) 22:43, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

3O Response: I feel following WP:BRD is the fairest way to handle a dispute, especially with a GA or FA, and that it is up to the editor making the change from the established version of the article to justify their edit. It is true that What Wikipedia is not describes a policy and BRD is only a guideline, but there's no excuse for BRRR edit waring. It doesn't matter if you're "right", edit waring is disruptive and doesn't look good if you have to pursue dispute resolution.

I take note of BrownHairedGirl's statement: James Balfour founded a political dynasty, and himself claimed to be part of a longer dynasty. That is a part of how the family viewed itself. If that could be stated in the article (with a source), I think that the statement under dispute about his lineage would then be made more relevant to the reader's understanding. Right now it seems like it's up to the reader to draw that inference, but if it was more explicit I think that would counter the arguments for the removal of the disputed passage. I think this would be expected if the article was taken to FAC review. This is a non-binding third opinion, but I hope it helps. – Reidgreg (talk) 00:30, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Here is my position, as clearly as I can state it. NOTGENEALOGY says that family history should be used where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic.  Everyone has ancestors, and important people usually have important ancestors, and thus, in my opinion, the fact that one particular great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather (this is not hyperbole but literally the approximate number of generations involved, at a minimum), that one of his more than 50,000 different ancestral lines (again, literally) back to this period led to a king, or that another great-etc.-grandfather literally 500 years before fought in a famous battle, does not appreciably increase our understanding of this man unless a source can be found that makes this connection explicitly - not that he had this ancestry, or even that he knew he had this ancestry (both of which appear to be true), but that this specific ancestry is a part of how the family viewed itself, not something that should be accepted as self-evident nor implicit.  An encyclopedia article is, by both necessity and design, more restrictive than a book-length biography.  The citation we have so far is to a snippet of what I consider to be a throw-away sentence on the first page of a 400+ page biography, the 'very deep history' with which the author chose to begin his book, with no indication of further mention of these distant genealogical connections later on (and no, further mention cannot be assumed based on typical publishing practice), so in my opinion it is completely disproportionate to include this passing reference to a genealogical happenstance.  In similar circumstances, modern biographies of similar length to our article such as those found in ODNB have not deemed it noteworthy to mention the most recent royal connection of the subjects, even though they had royal descents and knew they had royal descents, unless it was either proximate enough to have directly affected their lives or unless they made some specific public claim based on the remote descent (e.g. publicly asserting in a noteworthy manner a kinship to the sitting monarch).  So, barring a citation that explicitly relates these extremely-distant descents to James Balfour's self-image, all we have is a statement of 'who was the closest king back the pedigree' and 'if you go back really-really far you find an obscure ancestor who fought in a famous battle', information that does not appreciably support the reader's understanding of James Balfour's life, even at the cost of only a single sentence. Agricolae (talk) 01:29, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

I stayed away from this page for a while, because the aggression directed at me was not pleasant.

I came back to see if my WP:3O request had led to a response, and I thank @Reidgreg for taking the time to offer their outside view. In particular, Reidgreg's guidance to follow WP:BRD is helpful. (However, it should not have needed an outsider to remind Agricolae of that. Much grief could have been avoided if the long-term stable version had been retained pending a consensus on whether to remove it.)

I also value Reidgreg's other observations.

The nature of this article is that it uses a limited selection of sources. I did not buy any books to write it, and @Agricolae has not offered any new sources. I don't intend to take it to FAC — it's well short of that standard — so for now we have to work off the sources which I found in 2014.

All we have of that 400-page book is a snippet, and without seeing the rest of it there is no basis for Agricolae's insistence that it is one-off mention. It may be a one-off; or it may be a passing mention of an ancestry which is discussed in greater depth later on. There are many different ways of structuring a biography, so both possibilities are plausible; we disagree on the relative possibilities, but there is nothing to be gained by a clash of speculations, esp about a book whose subject is JB's grandson. If we were assessing a 400-page biography of JB himself and each had a copy to study, that avenue might get us somewhere. But as far as I know, there is no published biog of JB himsellf.

So we are left with two points. The first is the lack of a source explicitly linking the family's claimed royal ancestry to its dynastic ambitions. I agree with Reidgreg that if such a source existed, it would help; but for now, we have the sources we have. And secondly, the merits of including this point without sources explicitly linking the two.

So look again at the facts which are supported by the sources:


 * that JB was a second son of gentry engaged in commerce, and made a fortune which allowed him the trappings of aristocracy: stately home, extensive lands, London townhouse, Highland shooting lodge
 * that JB established a political dynasty: one of children was an MP, as were 4 of his grandchildren (two of them cabinet ministers). No less than 16 of his descendants pass WP:BIO: see Category:Balfour family of Whittingehame.
 * that at some point the family had obtained from Lord Lyon's office a certificate of pedigree, and that this certificate was seen by the family to be of enough significance that a biographer could assert its existence two centuries later
 * that JB was known as a nabob, and labelled as such in both contemporary and later sources
 * that claimed point of significance of the pedigree spanned about 12 generations (Agricolae, your repeated enumeration of all the "great-great"s is a rhetorical flourish which is theatrical if the aim is to bludgeon an opponent, but it is as unhelpful in consensus-building as your repeated hyperbole. Please drop the theatrics.)

Given this mix of nouveau riche derided as such whilst building a political base and aristocratic trappings en route to an earldom two generations later, is it possible that a certified claim of royal pedigree was part of the mix? Yes, it's obviously a reasonable possibility. Without further sources, that possibility is mere WP:SYN so cannot be asserted as fact, so I took great care to make any such synthesising assertion in the article. I just threw the fragment in there as part of the picture, and leave readers to explore further if they want.

This is the difference between a GA and a FA. An FA needs to be a more complete and balanced picture, with everything nailed down; whereas a GA will be less complete, with some unevenness in depth. Fragments which would individually be a tiny proportion of an FA will inevitably each form a larger proportion a GA, because there are granular limits on how small such nuggets can be compressed. However, there is no requirement at GA to eliminate all such minor points just because the rest has not yet been developed. The preferred remedy is to add more, not to remove all non-core material (and I readily accept that this is not core material).

I am sorry to see that Agricolae is still trying to use NOTGENEALOGY as a hammer. Despite Agricolae's early assertions, NOTGENEALOGY does not ban genealogy. It just restricts it to "where appropriate". So it's a judgement call, but either way this set of only 41 words (a mere 2.62% of the article) falls a long way short of what NOTGENEALOGY is trying to prevent: articles overwhelmed by large chunks of genealogy. Agricolae's concerns are more relevant to WP:WEIGHT than to NOTGENEALOGY ... but even so, I suggest a comparison with the History of Parliament's article on JB. 11.1% of that is about ancestor and family, against 7.3% of this article.

I think the underlying issue is that Aricolae and I seem to be asking very different questions about the significance of the ancestry claim. Agricolae looks for evidence of whether this claim is either proximate enough to have directly affected their lives or unless they made some specific public claim based on the remote descent; in other words Agricolae seems to be asking how this claim would be evaluated ~200 years later, and suggests an objective test of publicly asserting in a noteworthy manner a kinship to the sitting monarch.

I am v wary of that sort of test in evaluating biography, because it seems to me to be imposing the contemporary view of a writer onto the lives of people in a different tine and place. For me, the primary task of a biographer is to ask how a person fitted into the story of the times they lived in. That was a less meritocratic age, and it was a culture in which ancestry was prized ... so a claim such as this was much more important then than now. If the subject had died 150 years later in 1995, I would have considered including such a snippet only if it was very prominently noted, because such a claim is now much less significant.-- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 12:22, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * That helps my understanding a bit; and I'm glad you're mindful of WP:SYNTH. I'm an eventualist and I believe it's okay to have things like this where the article is a work in progress.  I think if we ignore all rules and look at the subject, it does give a fuller picture of the family.  While the notability and relevance may not be established as firmly as I would like, I have no problem with it as it stands; I don't feel it carries excessive weight or the threshold where I might call NOTGENEALOGY on it.
 * I think you've both stated your cases quite well. If you both still feel strongly about your positions, you may want to list this at Requests for comment for broader input from the community on how much is permissible under policy. – Reidgreg (talk) 03:03, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

I am going to take the high road here and ignore BrownHairedGirl's repeated snide comments about my supposed misbehavior, other than to say three things. First, just because it is in in small typeface doesn't make it any less offensive to talk down to the other person in the conversation. . Second, I have never, ever said that NOTGENEALOGY bans genealogy. Ever.  Yet BrownEyedGirl continues to make this disingenuous mischaracterization. Third, if 15 'great-'s are too many to list, that pretty much demonstrates how irrelevant the relationship is. It only seems hyperbolic because it is uncomfortably on point.

BrownEyedGirl has repeatedly suggested, and does so again here, that we should base our editorial evaluations on hypothetical text - we don't know that the author doesn't say more about the relationship somewhere else in the book, so we should operate as if they do. This flies in the face of all rules of evidence, and is just a convoluted way of shifting the burden of proof for a completely unsupported claim. We can only make editorial decisions based on the data in front of us, so unless you have more evidence to present, the data in front of us is a single sentence in a 400+ page book. As to what was important 150 years ago, we are not writing the 1868 Encyclopaedia Britannica here. Our goal is not to try to get into the heads of the people living in the 19th century, it is to mirror the sensibilities of 21st century biographers. That means that things that a 19th century biographer might have thought relevant for a 19th century reader to understand their subject is not the same information that a 21st century biographer thinks is important for a 21st century reader to understand their subject. Wikipedia represents modern sensibilities directed at modern readers. This means that the coverage given by modern writers is indeed important to evaluating relevance, and that is why the HOP article is spot on, but not for the reason that BrownEyedGirl thinks it is. They introduce it to make some sort of quantitative argument, as if all that is important in reflecting similar coverage to the source is that the amount dedicated to family history is similar, even if the family history given is completely different. That is well wide of the mark. What is important is what family history the modern HOP account decides to give. Does it trace the subject 500 years before? No. Does it mention that the subject is a distant descendant of a king? No. Does it indicate that the subject had an ancestor in the 14th century who fought in a famous battle? No. It does include family history, but the earliest relative given is in the 17th century, not the 14th century: the period immediately before the subject, placing him in his immediate social context. Agricolae (talk) 05:27, 23 November 2018 (UTC)


 * It's a pity that Agricolae is denying his own stance. On 8 November, Agricolae wrote It is not family history because it is only a little bit of family history. Yet on 23 November Agricolae wrote: I have never, ever said that NOTGENEALOGY bans genealogy. Agricolae's denial of their own stance from only two weeks early on the same page does little for their credibility.
 * Back to the substance. I fundamentally disagree with Agricolae's assertion that our goal is not to try to get into the heads of the people living in the 19th century.
 * On the contrary, the subject of this article lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so that is exactly what we should be trying to convey.
 * People act according to their understanding of the time and place they lived in, and JB's life as a nabob early 19th-century Scotland was very different to life in a 21st-century city. Social standing and career opportunity were measured very differently, and it would be folly to write about JB as if the issues which faced him were those of say a 2018 venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.
 * I suggest a loose parallel: Éamon de Valera. The article gives non-trivial coverage to the possibility of DeV being illegitimate.  To contemporary eyes, that may seem trivial: in most countries such as Ireland and the UK, there is now little or no stigma attached to birth to unmarried parents.  But that was not the case a century ago.  Illegitimacy was only removed from Irish law in the 1990s, and the stigma persisted into the 3rd millennium.  Ireland's mother-and-baby homes and the Magdalene laundries have been the subject of scandalous revelations in the last decade; but they existed solely because of the stigma of illegitimacy. For a child in 1880s Ireland, and a man building a career in early 29th century Ireland, illegitimacy was a life-defining issue ... so the topic well deserves a place in Dev's biography which would not be merited in the biog of a contemporary of the current Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
 * Anyway, it's clear that Agricolae and I do not agree, and I don't see much chance of the gap closing. Reidgreg's third opinion has not endorsed Agricolae's desire for immediate removal of the text from a far-from-complete article, so I agree with Reidgreg: if Aricolae wants to pursue this, an RFC would the best approach. Per Requests for comment, I recommend discussing the RFC question first.-- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs)


 * It's a pity that BrownHairedGirl feels the need to repeatedly distort my position to try to score cheap debating points. In response to me suggesting this was genealogical trivia, BrownEyedGirl made the argument that This is only one sentence, thereby implicitly suggesting that 'it is not [irrelevant] family history because it is only a little bit of [irrelevant] family history?'  NOTGENEALOGY doesn't say that irrelevant genealogy is OK as long as there is only one sentence - but instead addresses whether the information is appropriately informative.  A little bit of genealogical irrelevance, even only one sentence, is still irrelevant while even multiple sentences of proximate, informative family history can be appropriate.  It is quality, not quantity, that matters.  (And just to be absolutely clear this is not a new position I have adopted, as BrownEyedGirl repeatedly tries to deceive readers into believing.  It has been my position from the start.  While there was a time I could have believed BrownEyedGirl just had monumentally missed the point, I have now twice clarified this already and BrownEyedGirl is just WP:NOTLISTENING.)  It would probably be best for BrownEyedGirl to stick to telling me what their position is, and not try to insist what mine is too.
 * We should not be trying to get into the head of 19th century people. We should be trying to reflect the writings of recent WP:RS on the subject.  It is the job of scholars to do interpret their motivations, it is Wikipedia editors to abstract and summarize their conclusions.  Any attempt of a Wikipedia editor to get inside the head of their subject is effectively WP:OR.
 * The identity of De Valera's father, versus the identity Balfour's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Maybe it's just me, but I see a difference in informative value between the two.  Biographies of De Valera explicitly discuss how the issue of his birth and paternity may have affected his motivations and actions.  There has been no indication presented here that the biography of Balfour says anything more that that he had this descent, and not how it affected his motivations and actions - that is all BrownEyedGirl's own speculation, in the guise of 'getting into his head'.  The justification for including it, that if we get into Balfour's mind then he must have been affected by this, is nothing but a transference of our own thinking onto him.  Historians, as 'experts' in the period in question, get to do this.  Wikipedia editors do not (for good reason - BrownEyedGirl's attempts in this discussion to characterize what I am thinking bear no resemblance to reality, so why would it be any better for someone who live 150 years ago).
 * Given that we can't even close the gap between what I think my position is versus what BrownEyedGirl disingenuously insists my stance really is, even if I deny it and thereby negate all my credibility, I don't see how a prior discussion of the appropriate wording for an AfC can possibly be productive. Agricolae (talk) 23:18, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Agricolae, there are things I would like say to the substance of that, but once again your conduct has deteriorated to the point that substantive discussion is fruitless. It is very disappointing that you persist in denying that when I opened this discussion you ranted and edit-warring to uphold your view of NOTGENEALOGY. The issue has never been NOTGENEALOGY; it has been WP:PROPORTION.  Sadly, you repeatedly tried to justify your edit-warring on the basis of NOTGENEALOGY, as shown by your edit summaries.
 * In your previous response, you distorted my name 3 times as "BrownEyedGirl". In your latest response, you did so no less than 8 times. In each case, you opened your post by writing my name correctly, so the distorted version is no accident: it is clearly a deliberate attempt at mockery.
 * Name-calling games like that are the conduct of a bully in a kindergarten schoolyard. They have no place in an encyclopedia-building project, and esp not in one which has WP:CIVIL as a core policy.  Your rhetorical flourishes like listing all the "great-"s are a part of the same bullying game of trying to maximise theatrical effect.
 * Please conduct yourself like a collaborative, adult, encyclopedia editor rather than as a schoolyard bully. -- Brown Haired Girl (talk) • (contribs) 00:37, 26 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Oh, please. It was a simple slip (had the song in my head, and didn't notice I was doing it), just as it was a slip when BrownHairedGirl erroneously called me Aricolae earlier.  (I would recommend that BrownHairedGirl WP:AGF, except that the last time BrownHairedGirl applied that policy they concluded that I couldn't possibly disagree with them in fully informed rationality, so they considered it assuming good faith to conclude I was incompetent rather than disingenuous - that is the 'adult, collaborative' behavior BrownHairedGirl practices.)  Mistakes happen, so BrownHairedGirl needs to quit looking for excuses to take offence.
 * For all of the importance BrownHairedGirl purports to place on adult collaboration, their mode of discourse has been repeated WP:NOTLISTENING while claiming the right to dictate what policies I am allowed to use, what arguments I am permitted to make, the manner in which I make them, and even claiming to know better than I do what I have really been thinking. And of course, all of their many attacks on me have all somehow been my fault.  This is about as far as one can get from adult collaboration, but it is reminiscent of something different: if BrownHairedGirl wants to see a schoolyard bully, they should look in a mirror.
 * This can't possibly be this hard to understand: BrownHairedGirl gets to decide what their position is, they don't get to decide what mine is.
 * All this talk of me denying my original position means one of two things - either BrownHairedGirl still, after all these electrons have bees spilled, still doesn't really understand my position, which has been consistent throughout, or else they fundamentally don't care and one distraction is just as good as another as long as they get to keep WP:OWNing the page. My position was NOTGENEALOGY at the start (with specific focus on the words "where appropriate"), and my position is NOTGENEALOGY now (with specific focus on the words "where appropriate" - is the information on extraordinarily remote family history sufficiently informative to justify its inclusion, or is it just genealogical happenstance?).  Failing NOTGENEALOGY and PROPORTION are not mutually exclusive, and just because it is disproportionate doesn't mean it isn't also insufficiently noteworthy as family history.  It was not 'appropriate' at the start under NOTGENEALOGY, and through all of BrownHairedGirl's attempts at distortion and to browbeat and bully me over using the 'wrong' policy, I still maintain now that it is not 'appropriate' under NOTGENEALOGY.  Agricolae (talk) 05:06, 26 November 2018 (UTC)