Wikipedia:Irish wikipedians' notice board/Archive18

Any chance of a picture of St Patrick's Bell Shrine?
Is there any kind soul in Dublin could nip into the National Museum and take a picture of St Patrick's Bell Shrine (the thing at the top of this page if you're not sure). Would be most appreciated as I'm busy expanding the article about the man who paid for it, and it's about the only thing I can think of that is directly associated with him. TIA, Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:23, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

County Crests
If I did up a mockup in Inkscape of a county crest, is it subjected to any copyright? Wikipedian231 17:48, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Ireland (part ii)
Portal:Ireland is up for featured portal candidacy. All views welcome! --sony-youth pléigh 11:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Gaeilge task force
Coming out from a few conversations, a Gaeilge task force has been established to coordinate the translation of Irish place names and other Irish-language related work. Anyone who wants to get invovled is invited to add their names to the list of participants or drop a line on the task force talk page.

Even those without Irish are invited - an outside view is always important, and I'm certain that there is plenty of work that can be done without the need for the Auld'Gaeilge! --sony-youth pléigh 16:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sign me up :) - Alis o n  ❤ 16:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Limited Gaeilge here, but I'll see what I can do! -  Kathryn NicDhàna  ♫ ♦ ♫ 21:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary in Irish!
While we're on the subject, can I please point people, especially Gaelgóirí, towards the Irish language Wiktionary. Over the past two months, a massive amount of work has gone into it and we could really use new people to begin adding words and translations. Even if you've only got basic Irish, your contributions would be most welcome - Alis o n  ❤ 16:40, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * And as per above, in my copious spare time... heh. -  Kathryn NicDhàna  ♫ ♦ ♫ 21:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I, uh, own an English-Irish dictionary... but seriously, I've recently become a bit shy about exposing my deficiencies in Gaeilge on Wikimedia projects. :) Dppowell 20:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * OWww. That was very BITEy of Panu. Not nice at all :( BTW, I'm an admin on both Irish wikis and don't bite at all. And we certainly don't do that on ga.wikitionary - Alis o n  ❤ 20:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I told him as much, but I also learned my lesson and am not going back until I'm a bit more sure of myself. :) Dppowell 20:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The Troubles in.... articles
I was looking at some of these, for example The Troubles in Ballykelly. While I can see the benefit in not listing every single death in certain places (for example The Troubles in Derry and The Troubles in Belfast don't exist), I'm slightly concerned at the criteria of "resulting in two or more fatalities". I don't have the figures to prove this, but I don't think there's going to be any dispute from anyone that republicans killed more people in incidents "resulting in two or more fatalities", whereas loyalists generally tended to lean more towards incidents that only killed one person. Are we running the risk of presenting a slightly skewed perspective? One Night In Hackney 303  20:08, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Tend to agree with you there. I'm not sure the encyclopaedic value listing an incident that leading to the death or two people versus not listing an incident leading go the death of one. Moreover, without context, I'm not convinced lists such as these are particularly useful anyway, other than as a memorial to those who died. Rockpock  e  t  20:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the "two or more" part was caried over from the discussion Ardfern, Mal and myself had back in 2006, see Wikipedia talk:Northern Irish Wikipedians' notice board. Ardfern had added incidents resulting in two or more deaths on each town article - ie the actual Ballykelly article and not The Troubles in Ballykelly. When we agreed to remove the Troubles content (see discussion for details) from each town/village article that then became the criteria for including incidents in each The Troubles in .... article. I'm still not convinced these article are useful either. Most haven't been expanded since creation and it's pretty much duplication of the Sutton database on CAIN. However I think it is of interest to readers. Maybe the individual town articles could be merged into six overall county articles. Maybe all deaths should be included. Maybe more statistical analysis could be included. I don't know. Stu   ’Bout ye!  20:53, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Just to let you know this was debated before - I had added 97 articles relating to incidents of two or more fatalities in towns/villages in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Many of these were effectively stubs to be added to and developed, with reports on all fatalities, other incidents etc. However, some people did not seem to understand the stub concept and sought to destroy articles rather than build them up and develop them. These articles have been attacked twice - see Articles for deletion/The Troubles in Moneymore and Articles for deletion/The Troubles in Tynan. In both cases the Wiki-destructors were successfully repelled.Ardfern 20:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC)


 * This hasn't been debated before. I'm not questioning whether the articles should exist or not, as that's a different point. My point is that the "two or more fatalities" makes the coverage inherently biased. One Night In Hackney  303  23:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

A few thoughts:
 * FWIW, I'm surprised that there is resistance to listing the deaths. Not as a memorial to the dead, but because each of those deaths is clearly notable: AFAICR, RTE had for years a practice that any death in the troubles was lead item on that night's 9pm news, and newspapers reported those deaths prominently. Most deaths seemed to generate quite a lot of reaction: condemnations from various quarters, statements of justification from the other quarters. As such, it seems to me that these incidents are a notable part of the history of Northern Ireland (per WP:NOTE), regardless of who was killed or by who.
 * The Troubles were not a burst of mass slaughter like the Battle of the Somme, they were a 25-year series of often small incidents (an average of about 1 death every 3 days). Telling the story requires overview articles as part of the picture, but but it also requires the small details, like recording the incidents in small communities which may rarely have been touched by the troubles. For that reason, I'm also disinclined to aggregate the articles to county level, though at the other extreme an article for every townland would be overdoing things.
 * These articles should be verifibable, which frequently does mean listing the name of the dead person(s), to help identify the incident. OTOH, the threshold of two deaths seems to be either arbitrary or POV, and should be removed. I can't see any justification for it.
 * I suggest that it may not be appropriate to limit these articles to deaths. There were many significant incidents in The Troubles in which no-one was killed, but where significant injuries or new techniques were deployed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:51, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Irish Bands - "is" or "are"?
The following text is reproduced from a help desk post I made recently.


 * ''Hi - I know we use "are" for british bands (e.g. Def Leppard are a british rock band) and "is" for USA bands (e.g. Bon Jovi is an american rock band) and whichever is used first for international bands (e.g. INXS is/are an austalian rock band). What is the guideline for irish bands? Are they considered "british" for this purpose? Do different criteria apply for Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland bands? Exxolon 22:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * From WP:ENGVAR:
 * An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation.
 * If an article has evolved using predominantly one variety, the whole article should conform to that variety, unless there are reasons for changing it on the basis of strong national ties to the topic.
 * As you can see, there isn't really a specific answer, but you should probably use British English here. N F 24 (radio me!Editor review) 22:28, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

So I'm looking for some input from irish editors. Do people in Ireland typically use the construction "U2 is a an irish rock band" or "U2 are an irish rock band" or do they use the two interchangeably? Is there a difference in use between Northern and Republic? Thanks. Exxolon 01:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * is feels horribly wrong when I say it,in Dublin at least are is what we say. Gnevin 11:03, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * In my experience "are" is used in both Hiberno and Mid Ulster English. Stu   ’Bout ye!  12:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * British English should be used but it isn't a matter of just using 'are'. Both 'is' and 'are' are used in British English. Which you use depends on whether you want to refer to something as a single entity or as a group of individuals. Blue-Haired Lawyer (formerly Caveat lector) 13:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Interchangable I would have thought. However, I would go for "are" in this case.--Vintagekits 13:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input. In England we use "are a band" as the band is considered to be a collection of individuals rather than a singular entity. Will prob change all I can find to 'are' and see what reaction I get. Exxolon 18:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)