Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Post-war Britain


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. I recommend starting a WP:RM on Talk:Post-war Britain and pinging Talk:History of the United Kingdom (1945–present) and perhaps the UK and history WikiProjects for input. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 04:23, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Post-war Britain

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Practically a WP:FORK of History of the United Kingdom (1945–present). --Nev&eacute;–selbert 02:25, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep the criticism incorrectly assumes this is an undesirable "Point of view (POV) fork." The two articles discuss different aspects of British history. History of the United Kingdom (1945–present) runs 101,000 bytes  is 95+% national politics, while Post-war Britain (77,000 bytes) is 75% economic, social and cultural history. A clue here is the footnotes: the two articles use quite different sources: POSTWAR is based largely on 80+ scholarly articles & monographs but only a handful of such scholarly sources are used in the 1945+ article (half its sources are BBC journalism).  There is indeed some overlap in political topics, but even there the content is different. --the 1945+ article takes the viewpoint of the government and policy formation whole POSTWAR takes a much broader viewpoint of public opinion and impact of policies across society. Merging would produce something much too long and hard to follow. This is allowed by Wiki policies: Content forks that are created unintentionally result in redundant or conflicting articles and are to be avoided. On the other hand, as an article grows, editors often create summary-style spin-offs or new, linked articles for related material. This is acceptable, and often encouraged, as a way of making articles clearer and easier to manage.  Rjensen (talk) 02:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 03:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 03:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 03:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment. Maybe these articles could be renamed to differentiate them in a more descriptive way. One could be something like Post-war national politics of the United Kingdom and the other Post-war social history of the United Kingdom. Also, we need to differentiate between the nation (the United Kingdom) and the island (Great Britain). It seems to me that a discussion of "Britain" relates more to geography and pre-modern history/prehistory than to modern politics, society and culture. Jacknstock (talk) 05:05, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * that's a good idea. Note that the very first comment on the talk page of the 1945 article made the same point: "Should this page really be called "History of the United Kingdom (1945-2000)" when its purpose seems to be to talk about the Prime Ministers of that period and what their governments achieved? Maybe this page could take a better name, or at least explain that it deals with Politics and not all types of History. What does everyone else think? --Woodgreener 13:14, 27 January 2007" Rjensen (talk) 07:51, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep and rename to Post-war social history of the United Kingdom. The content is fine, the name less than ideal. Actually if nom feels like withdrawing the AfD the change can be made at once. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:30, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - Certainly not a pov fork. When the article was created in May 2013, a links were immediately made by Rjensen to and from both articles and Rjensen contributions to both articles seems appropriate and neutral. The content of both is very different and this article seems encyclopedic to me. I'm curious what Rjensen thinks about a rename.Smmurphy(Talk) 15:35, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * He thinks it "a good idea", See above. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:35, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I meant, what should the new name(s) be?Smmurphy(Talk) 16:46, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm ok with that--or better we can simply so this: rename both so that we have 1) "Political history of the United Kingdom (1945–present)" and "Social history of the United Kingdom (1945–present)"  The problem with "postwar" is that nobody calls 2017 "postwar". Rjensen (talk) 17:39, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment -- Both seem to be valid, well sourced articles, but their subjects are very similar. The normal solution would be to merge, but both are already long and a undertaking a merger would be a major undertaking.  Both are built on the structure of successive governments.  I am far from sure that one is really a political history and the other a social or economic history.  Peterkingiron (talk) 18:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that there is an issue of keeping the subjects distinct with multiple editors. That is one of the reasons for the names of the articles to be clearly differentiated. Hopefully editors will then be more likely to keep on-topic. Also, some clever editing is necessary to further differentiate the text. Jacknstock (talk) 22:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment- I can see the arguments both for delete and keep, but I think renaming is the way to go for now. History of the United Kingdom (1945–present) could perhaps be renamed Political History of the United Kingdom 1945-present and this article renamed something like Post-war British Culture and Society. Dunarc (talk) 19:47, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The article in the few weeks has expanded in length by a third with much better coverage of social topics (and less politics). Rjensen (talk) 21:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep and rename per above arguments. These articles complement one another, and together provide a thorough history. ABF99 (talk) 06:11, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If we choose to rename this article, should we make Post-war Britain a disambiguation page? Worth a thought.--Nev&eacute;–selbert 18:38, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * yes I agree: Rename & make Post-war Britain a disambiguation page. the two new titles can be "Political history of the United Kingdom since 1945" and "Social history of the United Kingdom since 1945". That tells the reader they are inter-related with different approaches. Eventually as time moves on they can be split, say  (1945-2015) and (Since 2016) -- which might work if Brexit proves a big deal. Rjensen (talk) 04:39, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This sounds good, I agree, though it's hard to anticipate a future need for a split. Cross that bridge when we get there. ABF99 (talk) 16:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep with the renaming suggestion as above: "Political history of the United Kingdom since 1945" and "Social history of the United Kingdom since 1945" (the article under discussion). K.e.coffman (talk) 07:14, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep with a rename to Social history of the United Kingdom since 1945 as suggested above. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 16:45, 21 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.