Wikipedia talk:Good article reassessment/Scotland/1

Help or Hindrance?
Question: User:UKPhoenix79 has repeatedly stated on the Talk page that the lead sentence must be changed from: to the non-consensual (eg. Admin User:Derek Ross: "Many of us have made our positions clear over the last few years of debating this issue. So please do not ignore the opinions of those who have contributed to the debate but not to this vote if using it to determine whether there is consensus for this change" and "In cases of "no consensus", the standard WP thing to do is "nothing". So that is what we should do"), WP:POINT, WP:UNDUE recentism of: because otherwise it will fail WP:FA. So, is the change from the long-standing consenses to the newly imposed (20 December 2008) introductory sentence a help or a hindrance in attaining WP:FA? I consider it to be an unequivocal hindrance, but I would welcome the views of uninvolved 3rd parties. --Mais oui! (talk) 11:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Can I just ask a question here, to those reviewers who have had no part in the editing of the article:
 * Scotland is a country in northwest Europe that occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It is part of the United Kingdom, and shares a land border to the south with England. It is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean...
 * Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.


 * I can't really answer for FAC, since I'm only an occasional contributor there. However GAR is pretty agnostic about the ordering of facts in the first two sentences, as long as the first sentence provides a definition per WP:LEAD. I imagine that FAC wouldn't make a big deal of it either. Evidently, you do. You don't even want to quote the corresponding portion of the current version, so I will:
 * Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean...
 * So basically, you are arguing that being the northern third of Great Britain should come one sentence earlier, that Europe should be mentioned in the first two sentences, and that being part of the United Kingdom should come one sentence later. I'm somewhat underwhelmed by the importance of these changes and your sense of scope about a lead which says nothing about Scotland's international image or its most famous exports.
 * I find the arguments you use even more strange. This is the first time I have seen "recentism" used to refer to a state of affairs going back to 1707 (or 1801, depending on what you mean). The nation-state wasn't a very well developed concept at the time, and many European countries did not even exist in their current form. One might as well say it is recentism to regard Scotland as part of Europe because a large part of it was tectonically North American for most of its history!
 * I struggle to understand why it is undue weight to mention the UK in sentence 1 instead of sentence 2 (all the other UK country articles do so in sentence 1). I also struggle to see Wikipedia being disrupted (to make a point) by these minor changes. Geometry guy 20:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I note that you have not actually answered the question. Was the non-consensual imposition of the 2nd opening sentence, replacing the 1st, a help or a hindrance in a gaining WP:FA status? Or irrelevant/neutral? --Mais oui! (talk) 12:35, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I have no interest in this argument. What is more important to me is that this section should comply with WP:Lead, i.e. provide a summary of the article, and it does not because there is a "civil war" on what the first sentence should say.

My suggestion is throw away the first sentence and use something like:

"Scotland (Gaelic: Alba), depending on the context and the time, may refer to an independent kingdom, a people (or nation), the northern part of Great Britain, or the Scottish mainland together with the Western Isles and the Shetlands. The Scottish mainland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. It was an independent kingdom from 8th century until the 18th century, when the Kingdoms and Parliaments of Scotland and England merged. In addition to the mainland, Scotland consists of over 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides which it inherited through marriage settlements with Norway."

If you wish to reject it, then you can use the "not invented here" argument.Pyrotec (talk) 20:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That fails to explain that scotland is part of the sovereign state and country called the United Kingdom. On an article about a state in the USA for example a mention somewhere in the opening sentence or paragraph that it is part of the United States of America would surely be needed. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have no objections at all to a reference to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and I don't have any strong view on the particular form of such a reference); but is your view merely one side of the civil war that is ongoing in respect of the current first sentence?Pyrotec (talk) 17:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well until this reassement was started i thought the civil war over the opening sentence had ended as it has remained stable since the general consensus was reached. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that should be mentioned for obvious reasons. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:35, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * We have an agreement in part. I think that my suggested first sentence with an added "UK reference" is a sensible way forward; and that somewhere in the WP:Lead a statement be made about Scotland being a devolved region with its own Parliament, legal system and educational system, and banks issuing Scottish bank notes. However, I'm not convinced that the civil war is over, the request for a GAR and Good article reassessment/Scotland/1 suggests that a new front has opened up, i.e. we don't like what is written so we will take away "our" text and then it will become a stub. The article as it currently exists is GA-class apart from the WP:lead which is unrepresentative of the article. Other editors see NPOV (but I don't). Add Europe as well if you like - I don't have a strong point of view either way.Pyrotec (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well i would suspect that alot of people would object to a major reprashing of the first paragraph on that article. It was like getting blood out of a stone to just rearrange the wording of the first two sentences to the way they are now. I didnt mind about the format like where inforamtion on Europe and its geography was mentioned. The problem i had was originally the first sentence mentioned Scotland was a country, but the fact it was part of the United Kingdom was pushed right to the end of the second sentence. As people have different opinions on the term country, its important for people who dont know the UK for that information to be next to each other, not with two lines of geography inbetween them.. if you see what i mean. BritishWatcher (talk) 18:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)