Talk:Restoration of castles in Scotland

The Article
I've started this article concerning the numerous castle/tower house restorations that have taken place in Scotland. Perhaps a Wikipedia article will draw more attention to the subject, which I think is quite unique. Scotland has hundreds of ruined buildings of this type, generally speaking mouldering away, many not receiving any maintainence. Hope others may be able to add to this page. ArchaicW (talk) 11:31, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

‘An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument. .’ Wikipedia definition

I must say I’m bemused by Theroadislong’s argument that this draft “feels like an essay”. It’s a straightforward description of an interesting aspect of Scottish architectural history. I just don't understand where he’s getting this ‘own argument’ from, so I’d be hugely grateful if some others could please have a look at it and tell me what they think? I’ve got no vested interest in this area at all, and don't know and have never met a single author (sorry, I used to know one of them a little professionally). I just feel that it updates what’s happened to a lot of Scottish castles in fairly recent history, hence of general interest to anyone with an interest in Scotland.

There’s only two places where I feel the text could be remotely read as “feels like an essay”. One, in describing the castle restoration process, I opted to write it based on an actual example. I could have written it generically, but felt that basing it on a typical real building would give readers a much better feel for what was involved. Two, I refer to the ‘conservation versus restoration’ argument, but that is old hat to anyone with any knowledge of the historic building field and I believe the text is totally neutral.

Now, if I’d written, ‘A hundred complete idiots have thrown away a fortune on rebuilding falling apart piles of old Scottish stone castles!’ THAT would have been an essay!

Theroadislong also a few posts ago referred to the draft as having “original research”. I can only assume here he was referring to the significant use made of the reference to Janet Inglis’s PhD. Now, I’ve studied the Guidelines about ‘original research’, and for some reason I can’t really understand it doesn't seem to favour PhD type research? However, it also says it may be valid in some instances. In this case, if anybody would like to have a look at the Inglis PhD (available online, see references), they will quickly see that it is in truth not really ‘research’ at all, but an accumulation of detailed facts on the subject, indeed by a mature student who was already highly knowledgeable in the field.

To conclude, I think it’s also not very fair of Theroadislong to decline to review it but still make such a pejorative comment like “feels like an essay”, so I hope any third party editors will try to ignore that remark. ArchaicW (talk) 09:50, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Title
This title is not to Wikipedia MOS standards. Only proper nouns should be capitalized, and "castles" should not be pluralized, and "projects" could be omitted, so something like Draft:Scottish castle restoration or maybe Draft:Restoration of Scottish castles. —DIYeditor (talk) 09:53, 13 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear DIYeditor
 * Thank you very much for having a look at this - and thank you very much for your comment. I think 'Draft:Restoration of Scottish castles' would be best? I'm sorry, I am really not very good at the rather complex niceties of Wikipedia presentation! However, I do think this Draft covers an important area in relation to Scottish castles, so I hope you can find a minute to read through it. If you have other matters to raise, I will be more than happy to make edits if we can get this article accepted. ArchaicW (talk) 11:56, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I did a little work on this but I don't go through the whole article. I made some examples of formatting changes. —DIYeditor (talk) 12:23, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I also think the title is a bit off, but there are a lot of directions it could go; I would also be supportive of "Restoration of Scottish castles". (Unless someone objects or has a better suggestion, I'll do that in a bit.) LittlePuppers (talk) 02:22, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @ArchaicW, thoughts? LittlePuppers (talk) 02:22, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I made the change. It could've or should've been done before moving to article space imo because the other title was a bit strange. Thanks for updating this thread. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:50, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually I noticed in looking at the "see also" section in relevant articles that it might be more consistent with other titles to use Restoration of castles in Scotland. —DIYeditor (talk) 11:02, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Linked articles
I started adding a "see also" to this article on articles linked from here (the castles). I did so on a couple pages then hesitated on the ones where there was no mention of the restoration. It'd be nice to get some of the stubs filled out with at least the information on the restoration. I guess I am going to add this to the see also section on all of the articles under the assumption the list here is accurate. —DIYeditor (talk) 10:46, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Context
I think the article would benefit from a bit of historical context. As it stands, it almost suggests that restoration is a 20th/21st century phenomenon, whereas Robert Adam was doing it at Culzean Castle a quarter millennium ago, and many restorations were undertaken in the 19th, e.g. Robert Lorimer at Earlshall Castle. I’ll see what sources I can dig out. KJP1 (talk) 04:51, 13 July 2024 (UTC)