User talk:Marcel Victor Gunst

Welcome!
Hello, Marcel Victor Gunst, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful: Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or and a volunteer will visit you here shortly. Again, welcome! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:21, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
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The Low Countries before (1600-1609) and during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621)
Hi. Thank you for creating  this impressive new article. There are just a couple of minor issues I  would like you  to  consider addressing:
 * 1) Please see WP:OVERLINK and remove any unnecessary  links to other articles. This could be common  English  words, names of countries, and any other words or names that  are obvious to  a reasonably  competent  user of English.
 * 2) Please see the tagged issue on the articletate to  ask  me on my  talk  page. Happy  editing! --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:26, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of The Low Countries before (1600-1609) and during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article The Low Countries before (1600-1609) and during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/The Low Countries before (1600-1609) and during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. The Banner talk 18:38, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Help me!
Please help me with...

1) the overlinking. It is true that I made a lot of links, but where I put for instance "France", you will see that I do not suppose someone would not know about this country, but I refer specifically to the article on the French political system of those days, the "Kingdom of France", and this is a policy that I have followed in all the links, as you can try out for yourselves.  How should I improve ?  Could you provide me with suggestions ?

2) The Manuel of Style escaped me, I badly used the italic, bold and bolditalic, but I saw you already corrected that in the article. Sorry for that. Do you want me to improve this further on ?

3) I saw your standard for References and Citations in your message . Please give me some time to re-edit it. Do you have any further suggestions ?

4) How can I relate the article to the other pertaining articles more than to make hyperlinks to them ?

I n  d e f e n s e     of the  article "The Low Countries before and during the Twelve Years' Truce" or LC12YT

- LC12YT explains a specific period (1600-1620) within the article " Eighty Years' War" (1568-1648)

- where LC12YT provides more relevant, significant facts and details than does " Eighty Years' War" (check for yourselves, pls)

- where LC12YT provides oversight, analysis and synthesis, and establishes connections between the facts, rather than to summon them up (check for yourselves, pls)

- where LC12YT also provides more details than the related articles like "Battle of Nieuwpoort (1600), "Siege of Ostend (1602-1604)" and "Twelve Years' Truce (1609-1621)", even on the subjects these articles are specifically dealing with  (check for yourselves, pls)

- LC12YT deals with the first 3 years of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and in much (!) more detail than does the article "Thirty Years' War" (check for yourselves, pls)

- LC12YT is a geopolitical article that encompasses the influence that larger countries like England, France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Russia had on events in the Low Countries, a dimension lacking in the other articles (check for yourselves, pls)

- LC12YT gives an overall and at the same time detailed view of the Dutch maritime expansion you will not find in other Wikipedia-articles, neither in English nor (astonishingly enough) in Dutch  (check for yourselves, pls)

- LC12YT also takes on the cultural and the identity dimension in the split between the Netherlands and Belgium that occured exactly in these years 1600-1620  (check for yourselves, pls)

- LC12YT rightfully gives great weight to the decay of the Spanish tercios, more in detail than does the article "Tercio" itself, because it was mainly this military development that determined politics in the Low Countries and slowly reduced Spain from a major power into its defensive position from 1625 and certainly from 1643 on  (check for yourselves, pls)

I was somehow shocked one should think about removing my article as it provides great steps forward compared to what existed. Sorry for the poor quality of my English, I am a native Dutch-speaker. Don't fear for the language in the article. It was entirely, slowly and painstakingly reviewed by a British, higher civil servant of the EU here in Brussels.

Marcel Victor Gunst (talk) 09:19, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * , as far as the deletion of the page goes - you should really be putting your rebuttal on the deletion discussion page rather than here (since no one will see it here). I'll leave the helpme tag because I haven't looked at the article enough to help with your first set of questions. If you want more help, stop by the Teahouse, the IRC channel, or the help desk to ask someone for assistance. Primefac (talk) 16:02, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Regarding the overlinking, I see two issues: Firstly, such links as "16th century" or "1590s" are not particularly helpful. Secondly, and that's far worse, there's no telling where a given link will point to. What would a reader expect behind a link displayed as "1579"? Probably not the Union of Arras. Why would a link entitled "Flanders’ agriculture" point to the article on the Britsh Agricultural Revolution that took place almost a century later? I have no idea. There are multiple links all labeled "peace" that point to different targets. This is bound to be confusing and unhelpful. See WP:EASTER.
 * There still are Manual of Style issues; I'd primarily name the heavy overuse of images. Says WP:MOSIMAGES: "Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar." Here that's not a rare exception, it's the norm throughout most of the article.
 * I currently don't have any suggestions on referencing except that you may want to check out the sfn template, but the exact style of references is not a major issue here.
 * You may want to check out the main template. If a section summarizes another article, you can use that template to point to the main article on that topic. For example, the "The Dutch Republic established trading posts in India and Indonesia, in Africa and in South America (1610-1621)" section could probably do with a "". Other than that and links, I can't think of other ways to relate this article to others.
 * None of this, however, addresses the main issue pointed out in the deletion discussion: It's a mishmash of vaguely-related topics, with an at times bizarre level of detail and no focus whatsoever. Huon (talk) 19:28, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Marcel, you must feel quite disappointed that your article, into which I'm sure you put a lot of effort, has been marked for deletion. If you are inclined to write another article, or revise this one, I would first read the criticisms carefully, then ask for advice and help on writing your next article from the sites suggested above and from other editors. Then, after you have written a draft of your article in your sandbox, ask for someone to review it. After you have already received advice on the content, format, and references and made any necessary changes and corrections, I would be glad to help you polish the English in it. CorinneSD (talk) 18:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)