User talk:MarkDennehy

Please format references correctly
Hi, it would help if you would properly format references in your contributions by using the tags. Inline refs are not allowed in articles and fixing them makes work for other editors, or they are liable to be removed. If you need any help with this please don't hesitate to get in touch. Hohenloh + 09:32, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Hohenloh, Is there a wikipage on the correct formatting of references available?MarkDennehy (talk) 11:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

See Citing sources. This section provides the basics, with more information in the article itself.

BTW, in my mail above I had included the names of the tags, but they were not displayed (I've figured out how to do this now) and "Inline refs" should read "Inline external refs". Hohenloh + 08:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Cheers Hohenloh MarkDennehy (talk) 12:50, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Gun politics
Hi there, I removed your link to the irish petition from the gun politics article. A petition is a self published source, and thus does not qualify as a reliable source, and thus is inappropriate to use as a reference in an article. An example of a good reliable source would be a newspaper's or broadcaster's website. Sailsbystars (talk) 16:45, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Adding Ireland to the comparison table
Dear MarkDennehy,

It seems to me what you have an extensive knowledge of the gun politics in Ireland. Could you please help me with the information about Ireland for the comparison table? I would like to make the table as accurate as possible, so any help is appreciated --Blacknight87 (talk) 08:24, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia
Second Quantization (talk) 10:45, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia articles are not how-to guides. WP:NOTHOWTO
 * Wikipedia articles should not be based around primary sources like text from legislation etc. WP:SECONDARY
 * Forums are not appropriate sources for articles. WP:RELIABLE
 * Wikipedia does not follow what is "useful", it gives content due weight.
 * I do not need to discuss my edits with you before making them.

"should" not. However in this case there are almost no suitable secondary sources - meaning none which are accurate because this is a highly specialised and poorly written chunk of esoteric Irish legislation with *maybe* four dozen people in all of Ireland who have a good working knowledge of it because it consists of over twenty seperate overwriting Acts, two EU directives and over sixty statutory instruments as well as a large cohort of case law (nearly two hundred high and supreme court cases so far) and experience - and you edited out references to the only secondary sources cited anyway.

This really is an edge case. Deleting swathes of text without any sort of notice, discussion or consensus is not a great approach to it. MarkDennehy (talk) 11:23, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Also, for "useful", read "factually accurate"MarkDennehy (talk) 11:53, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * If there are no secondary sources, wikipedia does not cover it. There is no problem with you having a blog with the information. It is simply not suitable for wikipedia as it's original research. Second Quantization (talk) 12:00, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * You're contending that we should not have a page on firearms legislation in Ireland because only having the legislation is insufficient? And by the way, I don't own that page, but neither do you. If you feel like deleting it, you're only going to drag this into dispute resolution. MarkDennehy (talk) 12:04, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * That is not what I said, but yes. Read WP:GNG. It requires secondary sources for an article. The article should be a stub if it is literally just primary sources (there are some secondary sources on the topic though; newspaper articles). Wikipedia doesn't host original research. Second Quantization (talk) 12:07, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If you take it to dispute resolution, I will simply point at the respective policies, the lack of secondary sources and your acknowledgement that the sources don't exist. Boards.ie isn't a reliable source to be used on wikipedia, it's a forum. Second Quantization (talk) 12:09, 16 October 2015 (UTC)


 * After your comments on "gun advocacy", I'm not convinced your arguments are based on improving wikipedia. MarkDennehy (talk) 12:10, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I will admit I was a little annoyed at your knee jerk revert. But if you take the time to read the policies I linked to, you will see I am correct. I'm even keeping more content than the policies say I should. Seriously, if you think the information is useful, host it on a blog. Wikipedia has specific requirements the articles should meet. The current article doesn't meet them, but the old version was even worse. Second Quantization (talk) 12:13, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Your recent edits
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Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 11:42, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Please restore my comment on the guns per capita article.
You deleted my comment when you added yours. Please restore it. Thank you. Anastrophe (talk) 22:05, 30 July 2016 (UTC)