Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clans of Scotland/Archive 1

Original project: Tartans
I think its needed. Wikipedia should contain more information than any enecylopedia has ever had. The image is abit to large maybe scalling it down to 250px wide. - fonzy


 * I'm thinking for the standard size maybe 320 X 320 pixels at this same scale. This one could afford to be scaled down and still be okay, but some of the others have a whole lot of really tiny stripes, in both directions, and I'm afraid those details would get lost if I scaled them down much more, and some of them have a much larger "repeat" than this one, but I think using a square for them would work -- that is, using what is the full width of the book image for the height, too.   A 320 square fits on my screen nicely, but I don't know what settings other people are using. -- isis 10:59 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)

I'm sure that this will be popular but bear in mind that it will be a never-ending task. Remember that most tartans are the work of marketing people working for Scottish woollen mills. They started work after Sir Walter Scott invented the modern concept of tartan in the early 19th century and they're still at it. New tartans come out every month. -- Derek Ross 11:22 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand your point -- are you saying that's a good thing or a bad thing? There are new plaids all the time, surely, but if we're talking about clans' tartans, there can't be a new one until there's a new clan, so they can't be proliferating all that fast, I think. (Or are you suggesting expanding the list of tartans to the non-clan ones, too?) But even if they are multiplying like rabbits: (1) that's the best reason I've heard yet for doing it here, because a book of the clan tartans can't be updated without printing a new edition, but the 'pedia can be up-to-date all the time; (2) that will give contributors new material (pun intended) forever, so it's like job security; and (3) just because somebody starts a new article or list doesn't make them responsible for keeping it current, so it's not going to be my problem, if problem it is.  But now that you mention it, and I see you're in Scotland, while I'm a whole ocean away, and you already know more about the practical stuff about tartans than I do, I think you should volunteer to oversee this project to make sure it's done right.  Would you? -- isis 12:48 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)

Going by the Wikiproject title I thought that you meant tartans. I'm not really saying that that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just trying to say that it's an absolutely enormous task and I don't think that we could keep up. However if you really mean a Wikiproject on Clans and their tartans, then that's much more doable. However 99% of clans didn't have a specific tartan before the 19th century. Now it's got to the stage where each has several. I can choose to wear Ancient Dress Ross, Ancient Hunting Ross, Modern Dress Ross, Modern Hunting Ross and no doubt others which I'm not aware of. None of these existed more than two hundred years ago no matter how Ancient they claim to be. The big thing in mediaeval Scotland was Coats of Arms and Crests not tartans. The Lord Lyon's court is the oldest heraldic court in the world still in operation. Check out https://tailieumonster.com/sach-pdf-lich-su/ if you're interested.

Anyway, if we were to do articles on individual clans which mention the tartans that would be good but I think that we just need a general article on tartan itself. I'll happily comment on and discuss a Clan WikiProject with you. -- Derek Ross 18:33 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)


 * There are at least mourning tartans, chiefs' tartans, and district tartans, in addition to those you mentioned. The book I have says "ancient" just means it's a lighter shade and that the clan tartans going back to the 1600s were simple two- or three-color checks but distinctive as to district.


 * If this project wants a source of tartan images, in a standard format, they can be obtained from my Tartan Generator site. Ok, I'm blowing my own trumpet here – but there's nothing in it for me, the use of the site is free. It has several databases of setts, not all of them still publicly available, as far as I know.


 * Something that can (and should) be standardised easily is whether to portray tartans diagonally or "straight". More difficult to standardise is size, as some have much greater pivot-to-pivot distances than others, e.g. Gow and Innes.  Even selecting a large, say 240 pixels each way, square of each would be problematical: if done by clipping, some would be truncated in an obviously asymmetrical way, and if done by resizing an image with a whole number of repeats, there will be undesirable "beat" effects where the resizing factor interacts with the pattern. Maproom (talk) 13:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Project:Clans

 * Yes, what I have in mind for this project (subject to what I hear from everybody else) is what I said on the subject page: A list of the clans on a page that discusses the concept and has links to all the separate clan articles. Each article would include the history of the clan, its mottoes and war cries and theme songs and crest badge and whatever else we know about it, plus images of however many of its tartans we have and a list of the surnames it comprises.  Then there would be one page on tartan(s) -- for which there's already a link on the kilt page -- and then we could list and link the pages with the images of tartans to that one however we decided to (or not).  If we wanted to expand to non-clan tartans, that page would give us the jumping-off place to separate pages titled with the names of the tartans themselves or to pages for the mills that designed them or whatever.


 * [...Can we change the name to Clans and Families? Durie, for instance, isn't a clan, nor is Bruce. Perhaps these should move to Lowland Families. B. Durie...] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.76.123 (talk • contribs) December, 26 2008
 * Clans and families are the same thing. Popularly they are refered to as 'clans' though. Read this: .--Celtus (talk) 10:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This project is part of my campaign to make every 'pedia article multi-media, so I'd love to be able to get sound clips of the various clans' fight songs and such. So let's keep the name for the project page (unless you want to change it, because I don't know how to do a page move yet, and I'm not sure when I delete one I'm doing it right) but with the understanding it's really a project on clans, and when we start setting up the pages, they'll say "clans" instead of "tartans".  But I want to work on images, not text (and maybe not anything if enough other folks are willing to do it).  And welcome aboard. -- isis 19:12 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)

That sounds good to me, Isis. -- Derek Ross 22:09 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)

Is scanning in Tartan photos from a book allowed by copyright? -- 137.111.13.32
 * Yes. -- isis 01:23 Oct 25, 2002 (UTC)

Could you try to make a mock artcile? - fonzy


 * Yes, having waited a decent length of time for input from the nay-sayers I know will crawl out of the woodwork as soon as we post it, I'll put something together, but I may not get it done until after the 4th, because I have an appellate brief due then that I haven't started yet. I thought I'd do Clan Ross for the prototype, since Derek probably knows the most about it and so can better tell if we're dealing with all foreseeable issues. -- isis 20:35 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)


 * Not to be a nay-sayer or anything, but isn't the association of tartans with clans a fairly recent notion? (see http://www.fabrics.net/tartan.asp). Not that they aren't interesting in themselves, but it would be wrong to perpetrate the idea of a clan's 'ancient tartan' if in fact it dates from the 1800s... -- Someone else 21:27 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)


 * "Ancient" doesn't mean "old" in this context, it means "faded" in the sense of a lighter shade -- it's a term of art. We all know the modern tartans don't go back very far, but all the other indicia of clan identity do, which is one of the reasons we're doing clans now, not tartans.  Would you like to help, please? -- isis 21:33 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)


 * If I see anything I can add, I certainly will, though the likelihood is I'll be of little use. I just beg you to make clear that 'ancient' means 'faded' each time you use it, because otherwise the non-cognoscenti (like me) will be misled, since it's not the usual meaning of the word. -- Someone else 21:39 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

Thumbnail images
About Images: If we follow a format similar to that of WikiProject Countries we will have a thumbnail picture (or slightly larger than that) and a larger version of the picture. The main article will have the smaller picture on the screen and then a link to a larger picture, such as a link to a "Fullsize Picture." This solves the problem of having too large pictures on the main article (for people with slow internet connections and so forth) but allows you to have a larger image that people can see the important details if they desire. Clearly JPEG images should be used to lower file sizes. -- Ram-Man

Requirements
This is my (poor?) attempt at summarizing some of the requirements for these articles:
 * General Requirements
 * A list of clans on a single page which introduces and discusses the concepts.
 * There would be one page on tartan(s) listing and linking the pages with the images of tartans to that one however we decided to (or not).
 * Specific Information
 * Clan History
 * Crest Badge
 * Coat of Arms
 * Tartans
 * Use pictures no larger than 320x320 pixels (smaller?) using the .jpg format.
 * Area of Scotland (with a map?)
 * Mottoes
 * War Cries
 * Pipe Music (Clan Songs)
 * List of surnames it comprises (what is the upper limit to the number of them for a single clan?)

The book I have lists about 600 surnames for about 125 clans, but some surnames appear in more than one clan. Rough estimate: Most clans will have about half a dozen, some have a dozen or more, so I think the upper limit would be around two dozen. For the maps, I was thinking of one standard outline map of Scotland (or maybe even just the Highlands) and coloring in the part(s) where that clan is. There's some work to be done on the crests, because the ones in the book are b&w line drawings with a heraldic description that doesn't always mention any colors; the text says they're used on stamped metal badges, so we need to decide whether to do them as line drawings, silver-gray, or multi-colored (when we know what the colors are).

Most of the clans have at least two tartans, although the book pictures only one for each of them. I don't want to futz around with thumbnails and larger pictures for the tartans -- I think it will be more efficient to use one size, the smallest that allows the thinnest stripes in the pattern to show clearly (probably 250x250 pixels) but show as many as we know and have images of. I don't yet have any pictures of anything except the tartans (and the drawings of the crests), but we should allow room for images of famous people and/or events in the clan's history. Most of the clans have "plant badges" (like heath, holly, myrtle, hazel -- for Clan Ross it's juniper), and I have some b&w line drawings in a Dover clip-art book or two of public-domain plants, but not nearly all of the ones needed for all the clans; I'd like to have space for the ones we do know and can find images of, but that's on my wish list, and if the consensus is it's too much trouble, I'm willing to do without images.

Will any of you be able to buy or borrow copies of the book I have (or any other that has the same info) so I don't have to provide the text for whoever's going to write it up for each article? For any of you who don't know it yet, ISBNs link automatically, so if you just click on them, they take you to on-line dealers to buy them from: ISBN 0-00-411117-6 is a small hardback, and ISBN 0-00-636416-0 is a "Fontana" (whatever that may be), but in different editions it may have different ISBNs; mine is the 1984 reprint. I'm hoping to do no more than scan stuff in, whether tartans, crests, and/or text for someone else to rewrite into the article.

Not all clans have all items, but the categories are:
 * name in English
 * name in Gaelic
 * origin of name
 * crest badge
 * motto
 * plant badge
 * war cry
 * pipe music
 * dress tartan
 * hunting tartan
 * clan history -- about three paragraphs for most, fitting on one page

I don't know anything about putting music clips in except that one can do bagpipes with midi. Where we would get the scores I have no idea, but then I haven't looked for any yet. So what else does anyone need to know from me at this stage? -- isis 03:29 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

I've posted a sample page at WikiProject Clans of Scotland/Sample page/Clan Ross for us to start working out the format, and there's some info about it on its talk page. -- isis 13:55 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)

Hello...?
is there any hope in getting this up and running again? - fonzy
 * Who else is actively adding content to this area - Nfras 00:02, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

No one at the moment. The main force behind the idea does not contribute to the Wikipedia any more. However it is reasonably complete when viewed as a template, so if you want to use it to format clan articles, feel free -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:48, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks Derek. I have been using the template and adding some clans. I am going to start by adding an entry for every clan of the Standing Council, starting with Agnew and working my way down. The major problem I have is getting hold of tartan pictures that are copyright free. If anyone can get a source it would be great. Nfras 05:24, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * I'll add some content, just the same as the usual Wiki articles?

Macintosh
The Mac link point to the computer. Anyone more qualified want to make a proper Mac page or must I?

Clan Munro
Been playing with a page for Clan Munro at User:CatherineMunro/Clan Munro -- comments? I need to write the history section properly, with some more research, but am getting the basics down for now. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller....? Catherine | talk 05:37, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Looks fine to me, Catherine. But you might want to change the title that says "Septs of Clan Ross". -- Derek Ross | Talk 08:22, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

Structure
Instead of the verbose structure provided on the Clan Ross Sample Page which was recently added to the Clan Ramsay article, I've created a template for this type of data. See Template:Scottish Clan. Also see Clan Ramsay for how this template is used. Adraeus July 3, 2005 02:11 (UTC)


 * Looks nice. Of course we didn't have the option of templates when Isis came up with the Clan Ross layout, so the verbosity is more a result of keeping it simple enough for ordinary users to edit without them. Templates make this sort of thing much simpler. -- Derek Ross | Talk 3 July 2005 06:12 (UTC)

Current Status of Clans Project
What is the current status of this WikiProject? How many folks are still working on it, or interested in doing so? There is a Highland Games Wikicity, founded by myself last April. Should this project be tied in with the Highland Games Wikicity in some fashion? Or perhaps the main work should be done on the Wikicity with subsequent transfer of relevant material to Wikipedia?

JFPerry 01:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm definitely still interested, though I've just found the project.


 * Still interested but not having much time to contribute. I'd like to have an entry for every clan up by the end of next year if that's possible. (Nfras 05:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC))


 * I don't think that anyone is actively working on this project at the moment. However if someone wants to, just do it. You don't need to ask anyone. You can see the basic framework by looking at the project page. All you need to do is implement it! Cheers, Derek Ross | Talk 06:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Can I add myself as a participant in the project page and set about helping out, using the templates linked to above? I'm a real, live Scottish Highlander (who still lives there) and would very much like to help out with this worthwhile project as much as possible. Lianachan 17:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Please do. - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 18:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Consistency
It seems to me, especially when we have so many Clan articles, that we should strive for at least a bit of consistency. I've been using Template:Scottish Clan (created by User:Adraeus) viewable at Clan Fraser and Clan Ramsay that I think works well.. At least, the page looks a bit more tidy than some of the other Clan pages I've seen, which have large, bulky images and bunches of blank page space. The biggest issue is that entire sections are devoted to as little as one or two senctences, sometimes even only a few words' worth of information (Clan Ross is a good example of this). What do the rest of you think? Canaen 00:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

CFD - Category:Scoto-Norman Clans, keep or delete?
There's a CFD (Category for Deletion) procedure in process for Category:Scoto-Norman clans.

Somebody had posted a truly rubbish bit of text there (a rather strange ramble about Clan Fraser), on the Category page rather than an Article page; while failing to categorise a single article as relating to a Scoto-Norman clan. Which provoked a call for deletion. I've cleaned things up a bit: moved the text to an article Scoto-Norman clans (though it's still rubbish); and added "Category:Scoto-Norman Clans" to a few clan pages.

I don't know whether the category should be kept or not. I think it's really up to people following this project to decide. Is it a useful thing to have a category, gathing up all the clan articles with origins identified as Scoto-Norman? Is it a useful common link explaining any shared traits in the subsequent history or behaviour of some of the clans? Or (since most of the clan members had no Norman descent) is it an irrelevant non-useful over-specificism that should be deleted? Or delete at the present stage of the project, perhaps to be re-considered at some later date?

Up to you guys to decide. Make your views known on the CFD linked from Category:Scoto-Norman Clans, and/or also discuss here. CFD is likely to close in a week's time. -- Jheald 23:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC).

Status?
Hey, just checking in here. This WikiProject seems to have no communication; I've no idea if anyone's even working on other clan pages. So I invite you to list here what you're working on as far as this project goes. I also want to see how many people are still actively interested in this project still. Canaen 19:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Canaen: I'm working on Clan Fraser pages, basically everything in .  Canaen  19:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Nfras: I'm working on getting an entry for every recognised clan by the end of the year, working from 'A' down. If I can get 4 a month done I'll be happy. Just had an operation which has left me out of the picture for a couple of weeks but hopefully will get an entry added today. (Nfras 00:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC))


 * Lianachan: I have not touched any clan pages at all. External pressures are ensuring that my wiki editing remains just the odd tidy and flesh out.  So - actively interested?  You bet.  Actively contributing to the project, I'm afraid not. Lianachan 22:57, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Ram-Man: I removed myself from the list. I can only claim to have some interest, but don't forsee having any time... perhaps ever.  So I'll still perhaps look here from time to time. Ram-Man 17:02, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Kathryn NicDhàna: I have only just discovered this page. I'm not going to commit to any level of workload at this juncture, but will probably drop back in and add to pages when I have time and relevant information.  I *might* commit to starting pages for my ancestral clanns, but we'll see how my schedule goes. --Kathryn NicDhàna 07:24, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that that's the way we've all done it, Kathryn. This wikiproject has never been hugely active or community-minded. It's more of a template and a resource for people who want to do their own clan in a reasonably standard way. I suppose we could go through all the clan articles in WP ruthlessly standardising them to match our template but I don't think that any of us are particularly in favour of doing that, so it hasn't been done. -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:16, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Template:Clan stub
I've created the following stub for use with Scottish clans and related articles. You can use it by putting   at the bottom of an article. Hopefully this will help facilitate not only the organizing of Scottish clans, but also the construction, as we'll be able to see which ones desire more attention than others. Granted, right now it seems more will be on the stub list than not. Canæn 19:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Template is now Oz Lawyer  21:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Lord Lovat
Hiya. If anyone reads this, and wants to help out the legacy of a Clan, please take a stroll over to Lord Lovat. There's a tiff developing over the numbering of the Lords Lovat. I'd like it if y'all would take a gander at the arguments, and give your opinions. Canæn 06:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Scotland
Since the coming of WP Scotland, is there any precedent for putting WP Clans of Scotland under the scope of WP Scotland? Canæn 23:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 17:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Clan MacEwan
Currently deciding on best form of name to use. I think most of the societies officially use "Macewan" or "MacEwan", though at least two that I know of have used "Ewen". I think "Macewan" is the form I've seen used by most of the tartan manufacturers. I've started brainstorming at User:KathrynNicDhàna/Clan MacEwan, but may be slow to complete this. --Kathryn NicDhàna 03:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 21:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Derbhfine
Given Lyon Court's procedure for forming Scottish clans, involving calling a derbhfine to elect a Chief, I think it would be appropriate to begin a derbhfine article, if anyone is interested...maybe discussing other meanings of the word as well as its context in the "election" of a Chief? Isoxyl 21:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Template for members to join this Project needed
I used the usual conventions of User WikiProject Clans_of_Scotland and User WP Clans_of_Scotlandand nothing happened, so is this project up and running so people can join etc? petedavo 08:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Now working. Orderinchaos 11:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Redlinks
It seem a bit untidy to have templates under construction on the main page. Good luck with the project. Fred 10:47, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Template: Clan Infobox
Just browsing by and I wanted to contribute to this project as I am myself of Scottish descent. I see the creation of an infobox of high priority and I will work towards this goal using the one on the Clan_Fraser page as an example. Regards, 18:40, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you mean like Template:Scottish Clan? Or something different? Isoxyl 20:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the one I used all right. [[Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png]] Canæn [[Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png]] 06:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Clan Fraser
Hello everyone, as some of you may have noticed, I've basically written the Clan Fraser article all by me lonesome (that's actually true; I would avoid claiming it if I could), and I would love some input as to how I (or others!) could improve the article. I wonder if I should go about this by requesting a Peer Review? I'm completely knew at actually attempting to gain status (sush as GA or FA) for articles, and I'd love whatever input I can get from y'all knowledgeable and generous fellow Scots. Canæn 06:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I added a fair bit to the Clan Fraser page about the Jacobite risings including the Battle of Glenshiel in 1719 and the events in Inverness in 1715. 195.137.109.177 14:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Wonderful! [[Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png]] Canæn [[Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png]] 06:14, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Clan Douglas
There's an argument brewing over at Clan Douglas over whether the article should be named Clan Douglas or House of Douglas. Opinions are sought from the community. Nfras 23:45, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Added my bit.petedavo 03:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

copied from Talk:Clan Douglas

Momento
If petedavo had cared to read the above, regarding the OED definition of "house" here, or that of dynasty here,then perhaps he would not be so confused. The history of the House of Douglas is a mirror of that of the Kingdom of Scotland, it does not require a regnal seat to qualify for the accolade of a "regnal" style. If one were to read Froissart, there is ample testament to the Noble and Puissant Princes that have been so styled from the 14th century, of both Douglas and Angus lines. In the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period members were the Power brokers of Scotland. The history of the chiefs of this house, and their cadets is enormously notable within medieval and early modern Scots history, and while the aspirations of the contemporary N. American organisations such as the CDSNA are maybe to be encouraged, they do not have a monopoly on real fact. The House of Douglas is not and was not a 'Clan', they were not Gaels, they may be referred to informally as a 'clan', a parallel differentiation can be made between the Proper and common nouns, 'Conservative' and 'conservative'. This from the 9th living heir male in direct line from William I, Lord of Douglas. Brendandh 18:42, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, if one were to read any published and accredited experts on the subject, Michael Brown (historian), Herbert Maxwell, Gordon Donaldson, James Balfour Paul, G. W. S. Barrow to name a few, there is no mention of Clan Douglas. This is purely an invention of the diaspora during the late 19th/20th centuries, as can be attested by the amount of non-UK sites using the erroneous term. If a 'Clan Douglas' (as with others such as 'Clan Home', 'Clan Bruce', 'Clan Kerr', 'Clan Scott' etc.), article is to be correct, it should reflect the history of that diaspora since going hence from these shores, and not impose reverse Cultural imperialism on the non Gaelic families of Scotland. Brendandh 20:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

July 2007 - Update
Is it possible to have a bit of a roll call on who's still contributing to the Project and maybe a list of work that needs to be done and things we can improve on? There's been great work on getting an entry for all recognised clans and many armigerous clans have been added and given entries (I haven't been very active but it was one of my goals to get an entry on every recognised clan by the end of last year). Apart from the continual improvement on those is there anything that needs a major reworking or work starting on? Nfras 02:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) I've been working on the Clan Fraser article, trying to get it to FA. I requested copyediting from two editors recently. One decided the article was just fine, the other started editing, then stopped for several weeks, while insisting he was not done with it. Any assistance would be appreciated in pushing this article to FA. [[Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png]] Canæn [[Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png]] 05:56, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Are there any other clan pages close to being Good article candidates or Featured article candidates?--Celtus 09:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I originally started the Clan MacThomas article, but stopped work on it when I took an extended wikibreak this past year. I see some others have since added to/subtracted from it (some for the better, some for the worse).  Any help would be appreciated, especially in the area of getting promoted to GA status.--William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 21:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Ambition?
Hello team,

I've just joined the project. The main project page is a little bleak, and I'm struggling to see any project aims, examples of successes or any guidelines. Simillarly, the talk page hasn't been touched for a few months - are we still active? Any plans for the short-to-mid term for the project? <span style="color:#696969;font-size:larger;font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-- Jza84 · (talk) 12:03, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, just woke up. I'd been padding out clan Davidson after I had added a famous American General to the name page.
 * Other than that, I can't see much collaboration going on, so I don't know if anyone wants to make up those fancy templates for this project that show requested articles, to expand articles, to do list, etcetera. It might be an avenue worth exploring. Canaen is watching this page, so I'm sure you'll prique his interest with your enthusiasm. Petedavo talkcontributions  21:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, i've basically just been picking and poking at a few articles.-- Celtus   (talk) 07:53, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, I've made a few changes to the main page, as well as created our own patchwork tartan logo (if people don't like it I can try something else?). I think this will help make the project more attractive to potential participants as well as make our image more proffessional. I've created a Template:WikiProject Clans of Scotland project banner so we can start bagging and tagging what's in our project's remit. I could do with a hand setting up the assessment system, and we might want a bot to run through some of the categories and add this banner automatically.


 * I don't want to take over (in the slightest), and I don't have much idea where people would like to take the project and what it's main priorities are so the more input here the better! Hope this is well recieved! <span style="color:#696969;font-size:larger;font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-- Jza84 · (talk) 14:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a start, and a good one at that, thanks.  Petedavo talkcontributions  15:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I've taught myself how to set up the assessment system and got it up and running for us! I've also made a request for a bot to run through Category:Scottish clans and tag all of the article talk pages with our project banner . Still lots to do here, but hopefully this helps! <span style="color:#696969;font-size:larger;font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-- Jza84 · (talk) 15:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Good job! The mainpage looks a lot better now, and the logo is bright and eye catching. I guess i'll have to do some reading on wiki projects and assessing articles.--Celtus (talk) 06:01, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I just don't want to see the project become inactive or obsolete. That would be a real shame for such an interesting topic.... Hopefully the project banner will stimulate some new interest and users for us, if nothing else!.... We have around 450 articles within our remit according to the project banner bot. However, 390 of them, in Category:Unassessed Clans of Scotland articles, don't seem to be being picked up by the assessment bot. The category/assessment system is my first and I've probably done something wrong somewhere. Anybody familliar with this and able to fix this? I can't work it out. <span style="color:#696969;font-size:larger;font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">-- Jza84 · (talk) 13:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Related WikiProject: Anthroponymy
By the nature of the scope of WikiProject Anthroponymy, there is overlap between WP Anthroponymy and WP Clans of Scotland, as the origin of Scottish surnames or given names sometimes rests with Clan history. We have noted WP Clans of Scotland as a related WikiProject on our main page and I am wondering if you would be interested in doing the same on your main page. Thank you for considering this proposal. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 11:53, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
 * This was broached to WP Anthroponymy several days ago (23 Jan); see talk page section.
 * An example of a "co-branded" article: MacColl
 * Makes sense to me, i think both projects naturally mesh together.--Celtus (talk) 05:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

DYK? candidate
This actually is an example of co-branding discussed directly above. I edited Taylor and Taylor (surname) on 2/2/2008 on behalf of the Anthroponymy project, and came across Taylor (name) (now Taylor sept), an article about a Clan Cameron sept and its namebearer, (2/3/2008 DYK? selfnom Donald Cameron ('Taillear Dubh na Tuaighe'). I put the Scottish Clans project template on Donald's Talk page and might add the Anthroponymy project template. Any comments here and/or on the DYK? candidate page would be appreciated.  Also, as I'm not a subject-matter expert, your improvement of Donald's page or the Taylor sept page are also welcome.  Thanks. Rosiestep (talk) 22:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Nice job Rosie!--Celtus (talk) 09:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, nice job. I do think that Taylor sept would make a good DYK, with the DYK statement perhaps drawn from the opening line of the article: "Taylor is a sept ("branch") of Clan Cameron, a Scottish clan. Present day members of the Taylor sept hold the Scottish surname Taylor." --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 11:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks:) Both articles were interesting research.  As for Taylor sept as a DYK? candidate, in it's current form, it fails to meet DKY? criteria for articles created >5 days ago:  "5-fold expansion within 5 days". I'm going to look for 19th century, 20th century, and present-day info on the sept next time I'm at the library; maybe there will be enough additional material to qualify Taylor sept on another day.  Cheers Rosiestep (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * FYI update: Donald Cameron ('Taillear Dubh na Tuaighe') of Taylor sept Clan Cameron appeared on DYK? 2/7/2008. Rosiestep (talk) 21:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Clan Chiefs suggestion
Hi there, I like reading and writing about Scottish clan history. Just a suggestion but when you read a published book about a clan the history is normally put into chapters under the name of the clan chief of that time. It might be a good idea to add a list of clan chiefs in a table from which articles relating to the history can be written. Some articles already have them including: Clan MacLeod, Clan MacLean, Clan Munro, Clan Ross and Clan Cameron. QuintusPetillius (talk) 18:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Clan Grierson
This clan needs an article, looks like was deleted in December.--Celtus (talk) 09:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Done, though very stubbish.--Celtus (talk) 08:57, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Clan, Sept or family?
What is the difference? - Kittybrewster  &#9742;  10:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The words 'clan' and 'family' are both used to mean the same thing. Septs are supposed to be families that relied upon a particular chief and his clan, or were absorbed into a particular clan but retained some sort of identity - like their own surname (so septs are supposed to consider the chief of another name as their chief). You can read what the Lyon Court website says about clans .--Celtus (talk) 07:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The link is not working. Presumably it would say that clan is highland and family is lowland. - Kittybrewster  &#9742;  16:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No it doesn't say that. It just mentions how families and clans are considered the same thing, and that Scottish clans are noble communities. This is what Sir Crispin Agnew, 11th Baronet has to say about lowland clans - . "There is now a belief that clans are Highland and families are Lowland but this is really a development of the Victorian era. In an Act of Parliament of 1597 we have the description of the "Chiftanis and chieffis of all clannis...duelland in the hielands or bordouris" thus using the word clan to describe both Highland and Lowland families." The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs website lists all recognised clans as clans.--Celtus (talk) 08:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Sinclair userbox

 * Nice, i think i once saw another clan userbox - but i can't find it at Userboxes/Life now.--Celtus (talk) 08:40, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


 * EDIT, Thanks Celtus! Just added the Latin motto. :) it means Commit thy work to God...and im not even christian lol, but i love latin obviously so i stuck it in. ΤΕΡΡΑΣΙΔΙΩΣ (<sup style="color:purple;">Ταλκ ) 16:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I've a couple of clan userboxes on my page, but they're self made (out of frustration!). --<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;border:2px solid #A9A9A9;padding:1px;">Jza84 | Talk  16:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
Just to let the community be aware of the possible Conflict of interest in my edits of Clan Brodie. I do not think that my edits constitute a Conflict of interest, but i think my interest should at the very least be notified to the community. see Talk:Clan Brodie for a summary of the conflict.Czar Brodie (talk) 15:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC). p.s. please advise.


 * Hi Czar Brodie. I think it shows good faith to state your interest in the article. Though, i think by definition there is a conflict of interest if a clan chief heavily edits his/her clan article. How could someone be any closer to the subject of a clan article than a chief, and who else has a higher stake in a clan than a chief? That said i think you have strengthened the article with your additions. And i can understand how any Brodie would want to edit, add to, and work to fix a dubious Clan Brodie article. This quote is from Conflict_of_interest: "If you do write an article on an area in which you are personally involved, be sure to write in a neutral tone and cite reliable, third-party published sources, and beware of unintentional bias". Welcome to the project.--Celtus (talk) 03:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with Celtus. There is improvement that can be made to the article but looking back at the history I think your edits have been wholly positive. There is certainly a conflict of interest here but you are being open about it. There has been at least one case of another senior clan member editing a clan site without declaring a conflict of interest. Given that you have made everyone aware of your COI I don't see a problem with continued editing of the article following the guidelines Celtus has quoted. (Nfras (talk) 12:34, 10 June 2008 (UTC))


 * Probably a case of WP:IAR here. Certainly I also admire the clarity and communication, which ensures good faith from my perspective. --<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;border:2px solid #A9A9A9;padding:1px;">Jza84 | Talk  12:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanking you all for your reviewing my case. Thanking you all for reading the article. I note your conclusions. Never the less I will take great care in my editing. If a future problem does arise, I'll post the matter on these pages.Czar Brodie (talk) 16:32, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of Clan Forbes
Just wanted to point out to the project that Clan Forbes was tagged as a copyright problem and listed on the copyright problem board on May 27th. As most of the material was evidently copied from this source at its creation, and as those concerns were not addressed, the article has been deleted. I have for now created a redirect in that place pointing to Scottish clan. I wanted to bring it up here, though, so that someone with familiarity with the project might create something more satisfactory. There is currently a double redirect, as the Scottish clan page includes a redirect to Clan Forbes, but I am presuming that the gap will be filled at least with a stub article soon. Thanks for any assistance you can offer with this. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:32, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Just created a new Clan Forbes page. Copied/pasted most of the text from a public domain source. see link hereto. Hopefully this public domain text should act as the articles backbone and allow safer future editing.  Yours Czar Brodie (talk) 19:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Nicely done Brodie. If you want to, you can submit a fact from the the new article as a WP:Did you know. If you do, it'll get a mention on the wikipedia main-page in about a weeks time. You can nominate it here: Template talk:Did you know.--Celtus (talk) 06:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
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Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 434 articles are assigned to this project, of which 94, or 21.7%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:



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Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Clans of Scotland
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

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Homecoming Scotland 2009
Of interest, the article Homecoming Scotland 2009 has started with interesting clan events. Good to see some current news on clans. Czar Brodie (talk) 11:27, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
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Clan Martin
Not sure if this is a clan, found the article, which is orphaned, by doing word searches. the SCOSC does not give Martin as a clan but as sept of Macdonald or Cameron. Electric Scotland gives the exact text of wiki, and I was about to tag the text with an army of copyright violation tags when I notice Electric Scotland copied the text from wiki (see bottom of Electric Scotland page). Rather disappointing of Electric Scotland, Clan Martin does not give sources. Does anybody have info that can clarify Clan Martin's authenticity? Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 13:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know. I think the article does more harm then good. I've come across bits and pieces about the Martins of Clan Cameron before, but this article seems to lump all Scottish Martin together. I can't find anything on google that would match the "Dal Riada society" mentioned in the article. The "official motto" is also questionable. Electric Scotland seems willing to put up anything submitted to them - no questions asked. For example Clan Akins is a 'clan' made up by Steven L. Akins who tried to trick the Lord Lyon with forged wills, photoshoped tombstones and bogus arms ( "In November 2004 I spoke with the Lyon Clerk and Keeper of Records and was told that Mr. Akins is not recognized as Clan Chief by the Lyon Court. His application to the Lyon Court contained fraudulent information" ). Even though he failed at Lyon Court his clan lives on at websites like ElectricScotland. A perfect example of why published sources should be prefered over websites.--Celtus (talk) 05:51, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Noted. Tagged the article for Proposed deletion. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 11:59, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Clan battles and locations
Hi folks

You may be interested in this request I've made over on the Military History project. Specifically I need some help working out the locations of them so that I can go take some photos - I'm most interested in the ones north of Inverness but it seems to be a general problem. Comments on Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach would also be welcome. Cheers. Le Deluge (talk) 13:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * A lot of those articles are in rough shape. A big chunk of them are based on a book published in the 1700s, and others quote a 17th century historian... The most recent book referenced in the article you linked to was published 115 years ago. If we could get more up to date information it might help us locate them.--Celtus (talk) 06:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, those are gorgeous pics in the Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach article.--Celtus (talk) 06:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, although I think Mother Nature deserves more credit than the photographer. :-)) Annoying how you realise you missed things once you get back home, I've a much better one of the cemetery but the framing was just a bit off. Interesting to see some of the structures on the hill above the cemetery, you don't notice them in real life.
 * Just as a general comment, I'd be less hung up on the "old sources" thing than you seem to be. It's not as though we're dealing here with topics in biochemistry or electronics, where a source 10 years old might be way out of date. We're dealing with a time that's effectively somewhere between prehistory and the Dark Ages in many cases, so you're relying on people like Gordon to capture oral history, and then be plagiarised by subsequent historians. In that case, you might as well stick with the "original" in many cases. :-) Of course more recent scholarship would be nice, particularly if there's archaeology that can be included (I sense in most cases it hasn't been done), but the most pressing need for those articles is to be turned into a coherent article rather than a collection of quotes from old books. As such, I'd suggest that a "rewrite"-type tag rather than a "go dig out some modern books on this stuff" tag would be less intimidating to the casual editor, and so would be more effective in getting people involved in the articles. Like I say, just IMO.
 * Incidentally, I've been doing some digging on sources for locations. Aberdeenshire has a great list of all their sites with OS references - perfect. :-) Unfortunately I've not found a similar list for Sutherland/Highland, which is the one I'm interested in, and I've not looked for others. Apparently Historic Scotland is working on an Inventory of Battlefields, but there's not much sign of it yet.  They're working with the Battlefields Trust, who have a 2005 list intended as a "first look" that at least gives us "official" names and dates, but maps such as this one tells you how even official sources are struggling to definitely place many of them. Particularly that swathe of battles from Ullapool to Helmsdale, which are mostly Ross v Sutherland, but I suppose even the "red dots" would give us something to work on. They've done a more recent assessment of sites in England in conjunction with the Institute for Medieval Studies at Leeds and English Heritage, but that doesn't help us much AFAICT. Perhaps the best contact for our purposes might be the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at Glasgow - I might get in touch with them for a few specific queries and to see if I can persuade them to set writing Wiki articles on clan battles as a bit of homework for their students! :-)) At least they will have access to any books that are relevant. Incidentally, the Herald gave a good overview of the situation as of a year ago.
 * I must admit, I don't have huge amounts of time to devote to this stuff - it was only really because I happened to be in the area that I took the photos of TT and then sorted out the article, for the foreseeable future that kind of thing is all I'm likely to be doing. So people should feel free to use the above links to help articles along. :-)) Mebbe if I get a wee bit of time I'll order some books from the library - that reminds me, one of the PDFs on the Battlefield Trust site has a nice annotated bibliography. Le Deluge (talk) 15:40, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Paydirt! :-)) Aberdeen have a nice tool that allows you to click on a map to bring up anything of archaeological interest nearby, and that takes you through to the RCAHMS site, which I think we can regard as definitive in these matters and which tries to tie battles to grid references, or at best grid squares, and has a bit of bibliography as well. It works best if you enter BATTLE SITE as the site type, it's amazing how many random stone circles and the like you pick up otherwise. I'm much happier now that we've a WP:RS for battle locations, much better than skimming OS maps that's for sure. :-)) Le Deluge (talk) 18:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, good points. Recent books (or atleast good ones) will tell the reader where the info comes from. Whether it is based on oral history, old annals, recent achaelogy, or the conclusions of other historians/specialists. The older and less scholarly books aren't as honest that way.
 * Thanks for the links! Until now i could never get the 'search' to work for the CANMORE pages (the page looked a bit different than this one though). I think they must have just updated the main page, or something (it was as if they only let libraries or members use the the search function). So, before i just had to rely on googling a name until it got caught on the "RCAHMS" weblink. Lots of good info to be found in the those RCAHMS pages; and they list their sources so you can look them up at the library or googlebooks.--Celtus (talk) 07:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Likewise, fair points - but mebbe I've just been seeing a lot of the "less scholarly" recent books, clans do tend to attract the enthusiastic amateur. :-) But often with the battles you pretty much had a definitive account written perhaps in late Victorian times, and there's not been much archaeology done since. Or there isn't any - just as a mention, I've done a big sort out on Stand-off at the Fords of Arkaig, nommed it for DYK and it is probably GA-able, could do with a second pair of eyes just to read it through though.  Oh, and if anyone gets a decent source on Battle of Drumlui I'm interested - but those older battles tend to have pretty skimpy coverage at the best of times, and Google Books is unwilling on that one.... Finally, if anyone has a "definitive" answer for the name of Battle of Littleferry, mention it on the Talk page - it seems that it never really got an official name, so people use combinations of "the Little Ferry" etc, plus Skirmish at Goslpie and such like.  Little Ferry seems to get the most mentions, so I went with the modern spelling, but I've no strong views.  Just so long as it isn't Bonar, as our friend QuintusPetillius set it up as!!! On searching Google, searching for <tt>foobar site:rcahms.gov.uk</tt> makes a big difference if you've not come across that one before. Le Deluge (talk) 12:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Local chapter for the Wikimedia Foundation
AndrewRT(Talk) 21:29, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

excessive or improper use of copyrighted material
Clan MacIntyre seems to use copyrighted material. History section uses great chunks of text found at macintyreclan.org. probable violation of copyrighted (Copyright © 1999 - 2005 Clan MacIntyre Association. All rights reserved) material. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 00:09, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Gotta be a bit wary of history stuff - often it's not for the website to copyright as it's often just nicked straight out of one of the late Victorian clan histories (which of course are out of copyright). So it could be OK from that point of view - but it still doesn't hurt to rewrite it.  I'll leave that to someone else though, I've enough on my plate with the battles. :-) Le Deluge (talk) 08:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * yes, I'm aware of the Victorian copies. Electric Scotland often has complete chapters taken from our Victorian friends. Only the way Clan MacIntyre history is written - opinionated towards the clan in question, exclamation points, phrases like "the Campbell's whisper that the MacIntyres are their feudal inferiors. This was never the case..." etc... reads very much like a modern Clan homepage. Whatever information they got from past sources, the way it is written makes it very much their own in my view. Good work on the battles by the way, definitely an area that needs attention. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 09:00, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In that case it's pretty easy - it gets nuked, and ask questions later. :-) I'll leave it to someone else to sort out the fallout, :-) but I imagine that they'd be a reasonably popular clan? Hmm - maybe not. :-) Incidentally - on the Electric Scotland thing, I'm not quite clear to what extent they're just acting as a repository for old books (like Google books and archive.org), or whether they're trying to "do" things with them. So where possible I prefer to use archive.org or Google as references, and use Electric Scotland more for background reading and to find phrases that can be used as "bait" on on search engines. In any case, people need to think more about what they're referencing - it's less helpful to just make a citation of Electric Scotland than to go up the directories to find the table of contents where they tell you what book they're reproducing. That way if ES is down for any reason, we can still find the ref elsewhere - and it makes it possible to work out whether ES have mucked it about at all. Thus to quote a recent example, you might replace <tt> Skirmish at Golspie@Electric Scotland.com </tt> with  <tt>  </tt> - although in that particular case in the Battle of Littleferry article I was happier replacing it with the Google Books URL, as that book was on unrestricted view there and Google don't "mess about" with the text as much.    Le Deluge (talk) 11:21, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Noted. thanks for having the courage to be bold. I've nuked several pages recently (Clan Martin, Clan Udny, and felt uneasy continuing in the same vein. Added a Victorian text to Clan MacIntyre, "The Scottish clans and their tartans", with link as ref. Should act as a good stub for future editing. Talking of references and clans, we need a debate on using Clan web pages as sources. will start the debate below. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 12:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't worry too much about nuking - if it's a copyvio, it's got to go. You do find yourself having to be quite brutal if you're the first "proper" editor to come across an article, you just have to be WP:BOLD to set it in the right direction. Obviously if you can dig out a Victorian text that can make a decent "placeholder" for the time being, although it might be appropriate to slap a Copyedit template on, I note the one you used for MacIntyre talks about "one of the best modern poets" being born in 1724!!! I've just quickly replaced the references to Glen O with Glen Noe, it just looked toooo weird. Your mention of Clan Martin led me to the discussion above - if ES are simply reproducing Wiki articles in some places then it looks like I was right to be wary of them. Makes you wonder where they've got their old texts from - Google PDFs? In which case you might as well go to the original source. Le Deluge (talk) 14:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Clan Web Sites as references
Clarification needed and the opinion of other editors sought on the use (and excessive use) of sources used in clan articles. Notably those of Clan web sites. My opinion is that Clan web sites may be considered WP:SPS, and articles that rely heavily on these should be tagged. However, there is an argument that these sources may be considered expert in their fields, they are also (and sometimes the only), source for up to date clan info. They may further be considered as the modern form of a clan. Accordingly, I proceed with caution and ask advice. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 13:54, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd tend to the view that they are more WP:SELFPUB than WP:SPS - the good ones at least, although the bad ones are worthless. So that allows them as sources subject to the rules about "not unduly self-serving", "no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity" and so on. They're certainly useful as background reading, to highlight bits that may be missing from the Wiki article, and to provide "bait" phrases for search engines. On the other hand, we're not talking TV shows or computer games here, we just don't need modern websites for the basic information about the clans and their history - we've got the Victorian histories to provide those basics (not without fault, but they're a good baseline). So then you're just relying on the clan website for perhaps the odd snippet of history and current-day events - and I think that seems reasonable. And of course they deserve to be in the External links section. JMO anyway. Le Deluge (talk) 14:17, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, i think this could a tricky in some cases. Its hard to find third-party information on some of the 'younger' or lesser known clans, other than their own websites. I too think the out-of-copyright books are a good base for most of the articles because IMO, for the most part, the info is exactly the same as the average clan website. I went overboard, above, about the Victorian stuff in clan battle articles, and i realise was too critical. I guess the thing is, if the article shows where all information comes from, it makes it easier for us consider whether a piece of information atleast could be dated or wrong or perhaps biased. That way we can easily 'update' the sources if we come across a newer or higher quality book/paper/website. But if we just reference a clan website, we don't really know where that piece of information originally came from. Whether the site is based upon published information or if it is really no different than us doing our own original research.--Celtus (talk) 06:59, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Chart of clans and clan chiefs
I noticed that the last couple days there's been a new column added to the chart of clans/chiefs on the main Scottish clan page. I think the intent of the original editor was to list the 'highland designations' of some of the chiefs. Which makes sense, since we list the chiefs. But i think we're drifting into just placing Gaelic names in there at will, just for the sake of it. I worked on a similar list a while ago in my sandbox. Its got the designations i was able to find for some of the chiefs (referenced). But the thing is, is that it was only a minority of chiefs who had such designations; and about half the designations aren't the clan surnames. So, i'm not sure its as simple as us just Gaelicising the chief's surname. I want to clean up that section: the designations are interesting in some cases because they are not as obvious as just Gaelicising the surname (for example the Duke of Argyll's isn't Caimbéul as listed, but Mac Cailein Mór). Possibly, i think we could add the Gaelic form of the the clan-name in the same column as where the clan-name is at present (maybe placed underneath the current name; or perhaps a new column). Though not every surname is of Gaelic origin. And what about Scots. If we list one form of a name (Gaelic), should we list the other equally (Scots) ; regardless of how the name originated or whether the family historically lived? The chart could get pretty big though. Any opinions or thoughts about the list?--Celtus (talk) 07:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with your concerns. There's not even a column header so I'm not sure what's goin on. I think one possibility, might be to have a simple table on the Scottish clan article, with a List of Scottish clans to have a more detailed, developed table with Scots et al noted on it? --<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;border:2px solid #A9A9A9;padding:1px;">Jza84 | Talk  09:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Snap Jza84 - I was just about to suggest splitting out the list into a separate article myself. But I'd just leave it at that - I wouldn't even go there with a "simple table" in the main article.  The main reasons being that it's of debatable completeness, dodgy historical foundation (eg AIUI the folk etymology for Cameron as Camshrón) and a target for vandalism ("MacDonald comes from Am 'Burgaigh") - all of which will militate against that article ever getting to GA, let alone beyond.  And as the Project's main "representative" to the wider world (and potentially the only article likely to get into Wikipedia 1.0) - I think we need to do what we can to get that article up to GA standard at a minimum. (I've still got all the 15th century battles to go, plus a few stragglers in the 14th, and to be honest I'm probably not the right person to do a lot of work on the main clan article, but I'll try and chip in a few references at least). One adaptation - since the Highland/Lowland thing is an either or, could that be replaced with a coloured background perhaps? Or merely an H/L, and then use that column to identify either the clan HQ (Achnacarry, Moy, Dunvegan etc) in the case of "proper" clans :-) or the general area they come from? Would be more useful, and also drive some traffic towards some of the rather neglected village articles. PS You'll have noticed I've been bold and applied Miszabot archiving (with fairly lax parameters) to this page - it may be a day or two before it runs PPS Stand-off at the Fords of Arkaig is in the queue for the next time WP:DYK is updated, Battle of Lochaber should also get DYKed in the next few days. Unfortunately with a lot of the battle articles the large amounts of content copy and pasted from the histories means that it's very difficult to get the 5x expansion needed to get them onto DYK, but at least those two should give the Project a bit of publicity.  And they are probably good to go to WP:GAN - I'd appreciate it if people had a look at them just to see if there's any obvious problems. Cheers Le Deluge (talk) 11:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Just had a quick look at Armigerous clan - and it has the same problem, it needs splitting into an article and a List of... Perhaps the two List of..'s could be combined into one article, makes it easier for people to search? And I'm not sure about the Armigerous clan article that would be left - there's enough to write about there to keep it separate, but would it work better if merged into the main clan article? Le Deluge (talk) 12:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * agree, a list the 'highland designations' seem to take to much room yet leave to many spaces. (perhaps the designation could be added in italics under chiefs name, in the same box, where appropriate). On a side note on the same subject, while the subject of the list of chiefs/clans is being broached, perhaps the list could be separated from the main article, and include more information, i.e. include armigerous clans, and merge with the List of crest badges used by Scottish clan members; see the polish example at Lista_klanów_szkockich which seems to work well. I think tartan may need a separate list as many clans have numerous tartans. perhaps Clan badge could also be included with picture of plants. the Highlands, Lowlands, etc could be replaced with letters (H or L or B...). Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 23:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)...just did a brief example: User:Czar Brodie/sandbox 5, not sure if one could use a colour code: light Grey lowland, dark Grey highland, middle grey border; or perhaps color difference for Clans (colour A) and armigerous clans (colour B)
 * I agree with removing the list from the main article for the reasons stated. The blurb in our armigerous clan article could easily be placed inside the main clan article too. Also, i think there are about 140 clans with chiefs and about the same number without. So it is a big number for either and quite long when combined. The crest badge and clan badge lists can easily be combined into a standalone list. I realise it'd probably be easier for people to search through a list of all clans, but the list would be huge aswell. I like the idea of having a 'with chiefs' list & a 'without chiefs' list. I was working on an example of two possible lists at the same time as Brodie above. Colour-coded for highland/lowland (we could add a 'border' colour too); seat of the clan listing the house/castle and area; the chief with his/her designation can live in the same column; and notes for whatever. Note apparently i'm colour-blind so my choice in colours is suspect colour-codes to choose from. :D Yeah, the tartan thing is tricky because so many clans/surnames have multiple tartans and its hard to find what tartan is officially recognised by a chief/clan/society as a 'clan tartan'. Sometimes chiefs recognise multiple tartans aswell.

{{legend|#99CCCC|Highland clan}} {{legend|#CC6666|Lowland clan}} {{legend|#99CCCC|Highland clan}} {{legend|#CC6666|Lowland clan}} --Celtus (talk) 04:59, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * list of scottish clans with chiefs
 * list of scottish clans without chiefs
 * Just as a quickie comment - as CB has mentioned, colour blindness is a bit of a problem with this stuff - red is generally best avoided. Don't forget that "transparent" is also a colour, and is less intrusive - I'd go for transparent for one region, a somewhat lighter blue (something around #CCDFFF for instance) for the other one, and then perhaps something darker (#7DAC89 (green) or #83A3D0 (blue) ?) for the Borders if you're splitting them out separately. And personally I think the pictures of plants are a bad idea, unless you can get them all the same size they just make it look messy, they add to download times on something that's already going to be a big page, and they don't really communicate any new information when you already have a wikilink to the appropriate article already. So they're just clutter, I'd ditch the plant pics.Le Deluge (talk) 09:21, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Another version below- without plant pics, including armirgerous clans with clan clans, and having notes as an inline link, also not sure how to get the "transparent colors", colors need toning down, yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 10:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC):

sub section: table without notes 1
{{legend|#d0e5f5|Highland and Island clans}} {{legend|#faecc8|Lowland and Border clans}}
 * list of scottish clans with and without chiefs

sub section: table without notes 2
{{legend|#d0e5f5|Highland and Island clans}} {{legend|#faecc8|Lowland and Border clans}}
 * list of scottish clans with and without chiefs and inline notes

example of how linked Notes are set out

 * Arrggh - my brain's frazzling already! And even as someone without colour blindness, I can barely tell the difference between the two greens. FWIW the "official" Wikipedia colours are at WP:COLOUR - #cedff2 is the "official" mid-blue for instance. Don't worry about the "official" HTML colours, they're pretty much obsolete these days, they date back to when graphic cards couldn't display more than 256 colours. But I'd try to avoid cramming too much into these tables, if you overload people then they just switch off. I'd try to minimise the number of categories. You can get away with communicating 2 regions with colour, 3 is getting a bit iffy and 4 starts turning into a dog's dinner, both aesthetically and in keeping things WP:ACCESSIBLE to the colour blind. Imagine you can only see shades of grey - you can tell the difference between light and dark quite easily, but with 4 divisions you may be requiring colour-blind people to contrast between "dark grey", "sort-of grey", "lightish grey" and "light grey". Keep it simple - Highlands versus Lowlands is probably enough, I'm iffy about even going as far as Borders. Same with the footnotes - you could be ending up with 140 footnotes.  Keep it in the table (perhaps combine the clan seat with the chief to free up room?) and that encourages people to keep it short. Each row is a link to an article, not a mini-article in itself. Oh, and if we're merging in the armigerous clan article, that no longer needs a link. I'm in two minds whether to merge the armigerous ones in or not, I leave it to you guys. Le Deluge (talk) 10:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * noted, updated and adjusted colours to two groups of user friendly (not sure about colour blind) shades. Not sure I agree about notes. Notes could seriously clutter up lists in my view (i.e. if entry needs separate notes on each fields - crest, seat, badge, chief etc..). I also find the click on notes tool useful. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 11:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

sub section: table with notes 1
version below with notes on page. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 11:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC): {{legend|#d0e5f5|Highland and Island clans}} {{legend|#faecc8|Lowland and Border clans}} just now placed another version at User:Czar Brodie/sandbox 5. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 12:44, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * list of scottish clans with and without chiefs and inline notes


 * The new colours look good to me. Should 'warcry' be switched or at least piped to slogan (heraldry)? It'll be another list that will become redundant. About the notes, i think it might be a minority of instances where we'll really need them. Not much point cluttering up the list with a column that is only being used part of the time. So i guess they could live down below with using th 'note tag' as Brodie shows. Generally, i like the notes within the table, since its easier and quicker to read. Remember we can use the tags to compact things when needed. Another thing is that the "[note 1]" note tags, i think can sometimes get lost among the "[1]" numbered references within the text of an article. That considered though, i like how clean Brodie's newest version in User:Czar Brodie/sandbox 5 is. I think its the best version we've got so far. I agree with Le Deluge that the 'armigerous' article could exist within the main article, since we've only got a very short paragraph of content. So i guess that'd mean that within the list, the 'armigerous clan' wiki-link could be piped to the appropriate section in the main article? Are we leaning towards one combined list with all clans then? Another idea i thought of - i think the seats could state something like 'Historical seat' or 'Seat (historically)' or something when the clan no longer owns the property or when the castle/estate is ruinous etc.--Celtus (talk) 06:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * sorry about warcry, I prefer the term, so tend to use it rather than slogan, somewhat selfish of me. Think we keep the notes list, I'm leaning towards the general consensus here. Try and make seats as vague as possible. What we will be listing is more likely to be the traditional hunting grounds of the clans, rather that the true seat (where the chief now resides). I have been testing some of the clans with this vague location system and it seems to work (Clan Abercromby- seat: Abercrombie, Fife; Clan Abernethy- seat: 	Abernethy, Perth and Kinross; Clan Adam- seat: Blair Adam, estate in Kinross-shire. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 12:27, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, no problem at all with using 'war cry', i just meant i thought the link ought to piped to the info on the slogan article since we are talking about the same thing. I see what you mean about seats/lands. I don't think the word 'seat' should be used inside the column if what we are actually listing is the trad lands. Its like saying one thing but meaning another. Its ok to say "Seat: Dunvegan" for Clan Macleod, since the family is still in possession of the castle. But saying "Seat: Dunardry" for Clan MacTavish is misleading or atleast confusing, because the clan hasn't owned it for some time, infact it has ceased to exist as it lies beneath a canal. Its kind of like listing Scone as the capital city of Scotland, yet in reality Edinburgh is the current capital, and has been so since 1437. It'd be more accurate if the list was clear in the difference between what lands were once occupied by the clan and what old lands are still held. I think it could work if we re-titled the column something like "Clan chief, clan seat and historical clan lands" and then within the column use "Seat: xxx" and "Lands: xxx" for cases like Macleod, and "Lands: xxx" for cases like MacTavish. That way it should be clear 'lands' means the historical stomping grounds of the clan. Or why not just forget seat altogether. The column could be titled "Clan chief and historical clan lands" and within the column "Lands: xxx". Nothing simpler, and it doesn't imply that an estate/castle is the current seat when technically it isn't.--Celtus (talk) 07:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I have left clan seat for the moment, problem with lands is it looks a bit odd with true seats: ie
 * Campbell: Seat: [Inveraray Castle], [Argyll and Bute].
 * vs
 * Campbell: Land: [Inveraray Castle], [Argyll and Bute].
 * The title "and Clan seat, or historical seat" eems to leave a little room for maneuver. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 11:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've twiddled the widths in the last table - how does that look? Also we only need one colour plus "transparent", I've adjusted it so that you can see the brown, green or blue next to the transparent in the table above - I think I'd tend towards transparent for Highland and either green or brown for Lowland.Le Deluge (talk) 10:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * looks good, adjusted the size of the note text size. I think the general view is to have notes on table, so I'll follow and go with notes. Colours: we need three shades = 1 (blue) for highland, 2 (brown) for lowland and 3 (transparent) for clans whose locality origin is not clear (common in armegerous clans) or still to be determined. Other points: should the boxed labels be in bold (or other text), examples:

sub section: variations of boxed labels
And of course: Should there be two tables: Clans with chiefs + clans without chiefs, or just one massive all clans table? Yours ever Czar Brodie (talk) 11:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Good stuff. Underlining is generally deprecated on the web, and I think bold should be saved for the link to the clan article. Again you want to keep it simple, but some italicising for things like the motto would seem appropriate, otherwise perhaps just small the labels for consistency? On the splitting thing - do the with-chiefs list and see how it looks. If it's already too unwieldy then you know you need to split it, although it would make searching easier for the non-specialist if it was all in one list.  You might want to have a look at Featured list criteria for some ideas on what makes a good list. I'm not sure how finite either list would be - presumably the with-chiefs list is easier to define than the armigerous list? And that in itself might be a good reason to split. But see how a with-chiefs list looks in the first instance. Le Deluge (talk) 12:52, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

sub section: list created
placed the list at List of Scottish clans, still work to do on "Clan seats". I think, as we add and adjust to this list, we keep the other lists as they are smaller, more specialized and probably easier to use. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 13:49, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

What a difference a DYK makes
Stand-off_at_the_Fords_of_Arkaig goes from 5-10 hits a day to >8000 in a day thanks to its appearance on the Did you know? section of the main page. So it's well worth trying to organise your edits in a way that makes them eligible for DYK - it needs to be a referenced fact from an article of >1500 bytes nominated within 5 days of creation or a 5-fold expansion of the readable text (ie excluding refs and infoboxes etc). I suspect that most of the clan articles are past the stage where they can be readily expanded 5-fold, but it's worth bearing in mind if you're creating new clan chief articles for instance. And it's good publicity for the Project to get articles onto the front page - some projects are very organised about it. Le Deluge (talk) 09:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Congrats. I wonder if there's a way to see which articles within the project receive the most traffic, other than just manually checking each article? Then we'd know which articles to be the most concerned about.--Celtus (talk) 06:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's on my todo list to write a wee script to grab the data - it should be fairly easy to do, I've just got a few other things on my list at the moment. :-)) But it's the big general articles that get most of the traffic - on a quick sweep, Kilt gets about 30k/month, Tartan 25k, then the main Scottish clan article is about 15k and with the odd exception like Donald (4k)most of the clans are no more than 1-2k. Even the likes of sept (social) is only 3k, Scottish clan chief is half that, Armigerous clan is about 2k.  So in theory we should be putting 10x as much effort into those "Big 3" as any individual clan article.  We've a good deadline coming up in the form of Homecoming Scotland 2009 in three months time, I guess the dream would be to have those three articles as the front page Featured Article on the three days of Homecoming. Even just one would be very good going - it's doable but getting WP:FA's is tough, a lot of work. Perhaps more realistic might be to try and get the main "concept" articles - tartan/kilt/clan/sept up to WP:GA by Homecoming time. Those "general" articles are the hardest to write to a good standard, you need that good general knowledge of the subject and practical experience with the nitty-gritty of writing Wikipedia articles on smaller aspects of the subject. I'm happy to act as that (very necessary) "second pair of eyeballs" on things, copyediting and catching obvious mistakes, but unfortunately I suspect that you and Brodie are the people best equipped to write them.... Some people do get a bit crazy over GA - the Military History project has insanely high standards for instance, but the basic thing to remember is that if you were to copy and paste the equivalent article from a standard dead-tree encyclopedia (in practice a specialist one such as eg Jane's for military stuff), reference the main points and Wikistyle/link it, you'd have something that was a comfortable GA. This business with the lists is obviously part of the process towards GA, and would also be a nice thing to sort out by Homecoming. But that's where I think people should be concentrating their efforts right now, rather than on individual clan articles that might only get 2-3% of the readers of the Big 3. And by the time you've done that, I'll have grabbed the stats on the other articles. :-) Le Deluge (talk) 10:57, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've done a bit of work on this, the full monty will have to wait until next week but the only ones assessed for the Project averaging more than 3000 hits/month in the first 3 months of this year were :
 * Kilt (33.1k), Scottish Highlands (25.4k), Tartan (25.2k), Battle of Culloden (20.0k), Scottish clan (18.3k), Highland Clearances (9.3k), Clan Campbell (7.0k), Massacre of Glencoe (6.8k), Clan Donald (4.7k), Clan MacLeod (4.2k), Border Reivers (3.5k), Sept (social) (3.2k), Lord of the Isles (3.0k).
 * We can mebbe talk about this a bit more once I've got the data in better shape, but if you compare those to the average clan article which might only get a few hundred hits/month, it makes me really think there needs to be more of a focus on getting Scottish clan, Tartan, Kilt and Sept (social) up to WP:GA at least. I'm less worried about the eg battle articles shared with the likes of WP:MILHIST than the "clan-only" ones. As an aside, I've knocked out the 14k spike that Glencoe received on 13 Feb - must have been in the "On This Day" section of the front page. Incidentally Homecoming Scotland 2009 is getting close to 2000 hits/month already, more than big clans like Douglas or Mackay and will surely only get busier, but it's a mess at the moment. Might be a good one to WP:DYK if someone can expand the text 5-fold? The only other fairly high-traffic stub is armigerous clan which will get sorted as part of Brodie's list-making, and to a lesser extent family seat. I'll take care of the battles, the only really stubby clan I've come across is Clan Udny which I understand there's some doubt about? I'm leaving the Unassessed ones just for now, as I think how those get assessed may be affected by discussions next week. In general they're pretty peripheral, there's no clans in there. Le Deluge (talk) 14:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)


 * My thinking is that a proper section and link to Scottish clan from the Scotland article would be a good start. Scotland gets about 250,000 hits a month, yet there are very little references to Scottish clans on that page. The same goes for the various Scottish history pages. I broached the subject on the Scottish talk pages (see archive link), and the matter was viewed favorably. Due to various interests, which at times seem opinionated or defensive, on the edits at Scotland, one should proceed with caution. A good little paragraph in the Scottish article with a Main article: Scottish Clans link heading should be appropriate. The reason I think this is that there are few editors working on the Scottish clans, not enough in my view to work on the contributions you suggest, and are indeed sorely needed. We need to attract more attention, and hopefully editors will follow. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 15:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

[outdent]Aye - although I'd be scared to do it myself. :-) I've put a direct plea on the main Scotland project talk page for the GAs, I really think that's the best thing we can do in terms of effort/reader. Getting articles on the front page, whether by FA's (hah!) or WP:DYKs is another good way of getting some traffic going - that 8000 hits for Stand-off at the Fords of Arkaig was more than the Scotland article gets some days. So it's well worth trying to organise 5x expansions of articles so that they're done within 5 days (I just rewrite it offline, then "dump" it into Wikipedia), and thinking of potential DYK hooks if you ever create an article. I also slightly cheekily put in a direct advert for the Project at the top of Battle of Lochaber for the few hours it was on the front page at the weekend. After the GAs, the other nice thing to get done by Homecoming would be knocking off the remaining stubs - it would be doable by three people each working on one article a week between now and then. They split fairly nicely into three as well - I'm happy to take the battles, then there's about a dozen clans (many of which are nudging into Start territory already, but most need wikifying), and about a dozen "others". But clearing all the stubs would be another big achievement.Le Deluge (talk) 17:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

On an amusing note, "Clan Martin" has an average of 600 hits a day since it has been up for deletion (up from an average of 2). Food for thought. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 13:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a bot set up to do this already. User:Mr.Z-bot created and updates pages such as WikiProject Aviation/Popular pages - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 16:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

My Clan
It appears that the old MyClan.com has a record of its pages on the net. See web.archive.org. This site had a good list of clans. At the very least it is better to have a second opinion to Electric Scotlands list. As I understand it, myclan.com was originaly owned by the standing council, who sold the site on (the text at myclan.com is very much in copyright, editors are warned) in preperation of the new clanchiefs.org. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 13:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't find it now, though somewhere on the archived version i thought it stated the information was based on the Scottish Clan and Family Encyclopaedia, by Way of Plean and Squire, published in the 90s. That'd make sense because MacTavish doesn't turn up on the list, and the clan's chief was recognised in around 1997.--Celtus (talk) 06:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Lists of previous clan chiefs
Hi just a suggestion but each clan page could do with a list of the historic chiefs of the clan in a table. Several of the clan pages already have one. I added a list of previous chiefs for the Clan Mackenzie recently, with a quoted source of course. The advantage of including a list of the chiefs is that a page can be linked from each chief detailing the history of the clan during the time under that chief. This saves space on the main page about the clan. Just a suggestion but other pages which have so far included a list of chiefs include: Clan Munro, Clan Ross, Clan Cameron, Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, Clan MacLeod, Clan Maclean and Clan Mackintosh.--QuintusPetillius (talk) 17:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You want to be a wee bit careful of lists within articles - see WP:EMBED. I'm not sure what's the best way to do it - with the "interesting" clans you can probably fold most of the chiefs into the narrative, for instance Lord of the Isles has a subsection for each one, telling the history during his reign. That method also allows one to get rid of the overly listy lists of battles in many clan articles. In many cases it's more appropriate, per WP:NOTDIR to have two lines within the clan article about a chief rather than breaking out a whole new article which is never going to be more than 3 lines because there just aren't the sources to fill out any more of the article. So I suspect there will be an element of horses for courses.Le Deluge (talk) 10:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

New template for Scottish clans
yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 02:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks great Brodie. Very clean. It should likely go in every clan article? There won't be a need for 'Scottish clan' and 'Armigerous clan' links in the see also sections i guess. I sort of figured those links were a bit redundant since they tend to appear as the first few wiki-links in the lead section.--Celtus (talk) 04:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've a few things I want to talk about but I'm a bit busy just at the moment, but one thing might not be able to wait. If anyone's getting twitchy fingers seeing all those armigerous clans waiting to be created, they've the potential to be a good source of advertising for the Project if we can get them onto the front page as WP:DYKs. You don't want to overwhelm the DYK people, but maybe creating one every 2 days won't annoy them too much but could give a bit of steady visibility to the Project.  And I'm thinking particularly in the time around Homecoming, when the outside world are going to be thinking a bit more about these things.  Besides, we still have plenty of clan stubs (see  although I see Celtus is trying to thwart my dream of totally clearing all the Stubs by Homecoming! <g> More to the point, I'd draw people's attention to what we've been doing with Infobox Clan - if we can get that knocked into shape then a lot of the "databasey" bits of clan articles can go into the infobox and we might end up rethinking the "standard" form of a clan article. So that's another reason to hold off on new clan articles just for now. Incidentally, on the clan chiefs front, I'd remind people that Wikipedia is not a genealogical database, and that "Less well-known people may be mentioned within other articles" - there's also talk of setting up a separate m:Wikipeople. So I wouldn't get too carried away with setting up lots of articles for each and every clan chief where they're never going to be more than a few lines of stub. PS Brodie - are there not a few clans missing from the navbox that are in the main List? Right - must dash. Le Deluge (talk) 09:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * yes, there are quite a few clans missing, the list as on the navbox is copied from the clan articles (Scottish clan and Armigerous clan), the list from list of Scottish clans is copied from celtus' crest badge and clan badge articles, which have more complete listings. see also list at [myclan.com]. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 18:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I just put in the missing clans. Tomaterols has overhauled Scottish heraldry article and suggests that it could be added to the culture section.--Celtus (talk) 06:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, that was one I had my eye on at some point, I was surprised it was so underdeveloped. Just as a general comment, I'd warn against trying to make a Swiss Army knife of a navbox - it's big enough just with all the clan names one.  Now we can't do much about that - the names are an all-or-nothing thing.  But why not split out the culture bits into a separate box. Oh and just as a general thing Brodie, in general navboxes just go on the articles listed in them. Very roughly anyway - obviously in this case you'd add them to eg the branch articles, but I don't think it should go on absolutely every article in the project, like Statutes of Iona. Not least because you're adding >10kb to every article downloaded, which is a bit unnecessary, but more because it's not an article you can navigate from the navbox. I might also have a bit of a play with the colours - the battle navbox needs to match the battle infobox, to save my headaches! :-) It's also a bit naff linking to the battle infobox from the clan one.  As I've suggested over on Talk:Scottish clan, it might be a question of splitting off the "clan history" stuff to leave the clan article as more about "clan theory", and then putting battle stuff in there.  Or perhaps we need a History of the Highlands article, or we could hijack contribute to articles like Scotland in the Late Middle Ages. Probably best to continue that one over on Talk:Scottish clan. Le Deluge (talk) 12:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Is this the clan chiefs project or the clans project? Thoughts about project scope
Having spent a bit of time thinking about where the Project is going, I thought it was time for a bit of a chat about the scope of the Project. Obviously we have the "core" of the Project, maybe 300 "Clan XXX" articles, plus a few extras on what a sept is and so on. But to what extent do we go beyond that? For instance - virtually every Scottish castle is associated with a clan of some kind and there's probably more than one castle per clan, so do we want to tag 400+ castle articles with the Clans Project when we have an active Castles Project dealing with nothing but castles? It seems to me that we're better off leaving all castles to them, rather than dilute out the clan articles with a greater number of castle articles. On the other hand, there's only 50-odd clan battles, and although they are technically covered by WP:MILHIST they are a tiny fraction of their 89,867 articles and will get more TLC as part of this Project than over there. So I think it makes sense to keep the battles here. The thing that bugs me is looking to the future - and is a microcosm of that. We may not have many Clan XXX articles to add, but coming our way is a tidal wave of "people" articles. Some bots have assumed that this Project is interested in every article tagged with a Clan XXX category, which means that anyone vaguely Scottish with certain surnames has been tagged for the Project. I've removed quite a few, but someone like Thomas Napier (philanthropist) is typical - born in Scotland in the 19th century but emigrated to make a minor name for himself in Australia, and was never really involved in clan life. The Napiers, Frasers and Campbells are the most obvious names which have been bot-tagged. I don't know what other people feel, but I think people should show some kind of "involvement" with clan life to be of interest here. Even so, we have the problem that on average every clan has had maybe 10 chiefs, plus a few other people of interest, so in the long term we could be talking about a Project with 300 Clan XXX articles and 4000+ clan chief (etc) articles. Is that what we want? Personally I think a "concentrated" Project like the Castles Project is the way to go - perhaps the clan chiefs could be brought under the purview of a Scottish/clan taskforce of the Biography Project? Aka the User:Kittybrewster taskforce. :-)) Thoughts? On a related note, there's a few "location" articles kicking around. Again, there's many, many Scottish locations which could be associated with clans, I'd be tempted to leave them to WP:WikiProject UK geography and or the Scotland project, and let this Project keep a tight focus on the clan articles. Well, at least until every Clan XXX article is a WP:GA..... :-)) PS Completely unrelated, but over on Talk:Tartan Day I've linked to the page view stats for that page - 18.5k on the 6 April 2009, up from 4k the previous year - amazing. Le Deluge (talk) 21:43, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the chiefs are for the most part quite important to the clans and that they naturally should be included within the project. It should be in the project's interests to see them come along smoothly. But obviously the sheer numbers could swamp us. Thousands and thousands of chiefs! So i'm not sure. IMO the castles aren't critical and are safe in the castles project. The chiefs though i think are more important to this project than the bio project. What are the 'location' articles? Sort of related, i noticed a couple clans have their own categories. Look at Category:Clan MacNeil. The thing is it's really just made up of people with variations of the clan-surname. IMO articles shouldn't automatically be labelled as part of a clan just by looking at a surname. It's just guessing on the wikipedian's part. Only articles that are confirmed to be associated with the clan ought to be included.--Celtus (talk) 08:11, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree with Celtus. Only I think the sub categories are an interesting development. While I agree that the surname does not by itself categorize into a clan, other things could be placed into these sub categories, e.g.: castles, chiefs, septs, titles, lands etc. I have been working on an idea of using the ideas of subcategories and the clan info box with clans Maclean and Maclaine . see the info box that in turn is a nav box at the linked articles (eg Duart Castle or MacLaine. I stoped short of adding this navbox in articles that would view the clan as a minor influence/part (e.g. Isle of Mull and many of the septs - as I have not yet checked to see is they are properly referenced). See also the list of chiefs navbox at the bottom of Clan Maclean, an interesting idea, not my doing (I have just been jugling the templates about, adjusting and renaming, etc), but something I think has potential. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 01:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, IMO the cats can work well for the big clans like Campbell & Donald, which have loads of related articles on wikipedia currently. I only meant the wholescale-lumping of surnames into the cat, oblivious to the fact that surnames can originate from families other than that particular clan/family/founder. I like look of . To me it the formatting looks much better than the current clan infobox &mdash;how the headings are centred and coloured instead of on the left. About the chiefs falling within the scope of the project, maybe just give them a low priority in relation to the clans/battles/clan-culture articles?--Celtus (talk) 08:13, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Chiefs Just because something is labelled a work group of WPBIO doesn't mean that it's not "owned" jointly by the two parent Projects - in fact most Projects represent the "intersection" of two bigger Projects, articles in this one are technically part of both WP:WikiProject Scotland and WP:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. The WPBIO people are well used to that kind of thing, in fact they even have "grandchildren" projects like the new WP:WikiProject Scottish Royalty as part of the wider WP:WikiProject British Royalty work group. I guess in effect I'm suggesting something a bit similar with a Scottish twist on WP:WikiProject Peerage and Baronetage. It's just a label after all, I'm just trying to head off a problem which may not be too bad now, but could become a real issue later on. I guess one option could be to just put every chief on Low, but that effectively loses Low as a useful class for everything else, you might as well have a new Project tag. Regardless, I propose that all Clan XXX and branch articles are at least a Mid, to keep them out of the mire - and they are the Project's main priority. The battles are probably happy at Low - even the likes of Harlaw barely get 25 hits/day and most are much less than that. I'll hopefully get the new pageviews list up tomorrow, it might help people's thoughts - he's only just come out with the monthly stats for April which I was waiting for, and I've been improving the script that grabs them.
 * Castles etc - I've detagged, most were added by SQLbot as part of the tagging of everything in Clan xxx categories. Seems the same happened with what I called "locations" - I don't think we've much to say about Peebles or Peeblesshire for instance, but they are in so SQLbot gave it to us. I propose a rule that says places go to UKgeo but are outside the scope of this Project. Focus is good. I've also detagged the worst of the "surname" bio articles, but they're still in the clan categories - I guess someone will say that the surname means they can be considered part of the clan unless the chief has kicked them out. Iffy, I know, but I'm not going there... <g> On the navbox - Brodie I suggest that a) you don't go mad, just do it for the major clans and b)Do it as a bottom navbox - a navbox is not the same as an infobox, they serve different purposes. I was going to prettify Infobox Clan at some point, no decisions should be made yet based just on the visuals, but it still felt that we had a way to go on the content before spending too much time on what it looked like. I'd also be wary of the septs - again there's a temptation to Swiss Army Knife it, but certainly on Infobox Clan you don't want more septs if there's more than about 5, they become anti-information that makes it harder to communicate the stuff that matters. I'm half-minded just to wipe that field altogether, just to keep people from temptation.... Le Deluge (talk) 12:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Clan battles template
created this Navbox template and added to clan battles:

Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 15:50, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Historic sources
I have read alot of books about the history of the clans and generally the older the book then the more reliable it is as a source for information. However some historian authors can be very biased. For example 19th century author Alexander Mackenzie wrote the books a "History of the Clan Mackenzie" and a "History of the Munros of Fowlis", both books are known to be very biased in favour of the Mackenzies. This is understandable as author Alexander Mackenzie was a descendant of the chief of Mackenzies. I also thought I should mention that historian Sir Robert Gordon is considered to be one of the best sources for info on the clans, i.e his book "History of the Earldom of Sutherland". He is unbiased and is a fairly early source, close to the time of the events in question.QuintusPetillius (talk) 17:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Been meaning to comment on this. It's hard to generalise as all books have their weaknesses, and the best way to guard against that is to have as many decent sources as possible. Don't rely on onesource exclusively. Books published in the last 30 years or so are the most desirable, as standards of historiography are rather higher than in Victorian times, and they benefit from modern thinking on "big picture" stuff like Celtic migrations as well as the results of modern techniques like DNA fingerprinting and carbon dating. Even so, you still need to take a bit of a view - stuff published by university presses or in peer-reviewed journals should be the most rigorous, self-published stuff can be pretty flaky (but can be outstanding as well). The catch is that such sources tend not to be online, but they're the standard to aspire to. The Victorian histories can be biased, but they're pretty comprehensive and fine for the nuts and bolts stuff (marriages, badges etc) - and they tend to be on Google Books or archive.org, which means that they are paper sources that can be easily checked online. I can imagine the typical clan WP:GA having a core of references from a Victorian history, with a smattering of modern book references for the more controversial stuff, and a few things from the clan website for the post-WWII stuff. Personally I'm a bit sceptical of anything that comes from Conflicts of the Clans or Gordon.  I suspect your impression of accuracy comes from the  fact that they're early enough to not have many "competitors" to contradict them :-) - certainly Gordon's dates are pretty hopeless and COTC ain't great.  It can be instructive to correlate their accounts with eg The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 (rps.ac.uk) - a fantastic resource for charters and the like. Ditto the RCAHMS site which at least gives you a flavour of the modern academic consensus on things like battles. The big problem of course is that many subsequent histories (particularly the Georgian ones) either rewrote COTC and Gordon, or the handful of manuscripts on which they rely, so you get a form of Chinese whispers coming down through the years, which may also contribute to your impression of authenticity among the "originals". The challenge is to identify which books are genuinely independent of COTC etc, and which are not - as only then can you be considered to be using more than onesource. Incidentally Quintus, Google Books has a full copy of a 1780 edition of COTC - online and available as a PDF or text file.  I'd suggest it's more transparent to use the original scan than an OCR'd version, and also that Google is a more reliable host long-term than somewhere like Electric Scotland... I see you don't make much use of Google Books in general, but for this kind of stuff it's a goldmine - subject to the concerns about bias mentioned above. Le Deluge (talk) 11:47, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think your right about the Victorian era sources being good for things like clan marriages and badges etc and the general history of the clan but they are often biased when it comes to clan battles - which seem to be a big part of the project here. As for Gordon, his work is pre Victorian but some people are even sceptical of his work. Having read the Clan Mackay book, the authour, Robert Mackay claims that Gordon has been biased against the Mackays and in favour of the Sutherlands because Gordon himself was, during his lifetime a close relative of the Earl of Sutherland. But on the whole his wrtings are quite good. As for conflicts of the clans the dates are usually incorrect but most of the info agrees with the accounts from Gordon. So its difficult to find reliable sources. I live in London and often go to the British Library where they have a huge number of both modern and old books about the Scottish clans.QuintusPetillius (talk) 17:40, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Page view stats
In case anyone's interested, I've generated a list of page view statistics for articles within the Project over at WikiProject Clans of Scotland/Stats. I know Mr.Z-bot does something similar, the main differences are that my script doesn't run automatically but I do try and strip out obvious "spikes" in the data. The effects of a good DYK or eg 13/Feb on Massacre of Glencoe and Clan MacDonald of Glencoe are really obvious - I talk a bit more about that stuff over on the page itself. One obvious use for this data is setting priorities within the Project - if you only have limited time, it makes more sense to work on articles getting 7000 hits a month rather than 70. And seeing the data, you might understand why I've started making some noise about getting Scottish clan, Tartan and Kilt to GA status - they get 10x as many hits as even big clans like Clan Fraser, and 100x more hits than respectable members of the SCSC like Clan Wemyss. So if you want your editing efforts to "count", there's little doubt where they can reach most people. Not that I'm advocating slavish adherence to the pageviews when setting priorities - obviously "umbrella" articles should be promoted one level and vice versa for articles principally covered by another project - but I'd suggest that going more than one level away from what the pageviews suggest is probably a misallocation of resources. And it's interesting just to see the data anyway. Le Deluge (talk) 16:11, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Seeking advice on Notability & COI before 'Being Bold'...
Just found my family (Roberton) included in the "armigerous clan" in the Project Footer. I'd like to write an article, 'Roberton family'. I've got primary sources enough to write a "better than stub" text on the 'Roberton Family' but I'm extremely conscious of what I guess is the debate of what qualifies as notable, and if it borders on self-promotion. My question therefore is, can the following facts make enough for an article?

This entry has been abbreviated and can be viewed at my talk page. Paul Roberton. 13:48, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Regards, Paul Roberton 16:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Proberton (talk • contribs)


 * I think it should be ok, although most of these articles tend to include anything 'Scottish clan' related. I don't know anything about your Roberton family but are they rather more a Lowland 'family' than 'clan' ?. The family has a current 'chief' so you might want to call the article 'Clan Roberton'. Most clan articles start with an 'origins' section, detailing weather they are of Gaelic, Norman, Saxon or Viking origin etc.., just a thought. Are the Robertons related to the Clan Robertson ? You might aswell write the article, citing your references and sources and see what response you get. QuintusPetillius (talk) 16:43, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * For sure you should take a stab at it and create something for the clan. Quintus, i'm sure about the chief, since no chief shows up at the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs website. Here's the clan page there: Clan Roberton; and the archived version of the myclan page here: Clan Roberton. Just from looking those two pages over the Robertons of that Ilk and Earnock are the notable clan. It should be pretty easy to make the arms of Roberton of that Ilk and Earnock which is blazoned on the myclan page.-Celtus (talk) 06:34, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox Clan
Editors are invited to give their opinions and suggestions at Template talk:Infobox Clan on the new updated Clan info box. examples of this infobox can be found at: Clan Campbell, Clan Donnachaidh, Clan MacLeod, Clan Kerr etc...(full list here). Your opinion is encouraged as this infobox may be adopted by all clans. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 12:18, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Naming of branch articles
I notice that the branch names are a bit of a mess - we have Clan MacDonald of Dunnyveg, Maclean of Duart and Frasers of Inverallochy. I know they all fade into one another to some extent, but can I suggest that we save Clan XXX only for clans recognised as such by the SCSC, and everything else takes the second form which complies with the Wiki-rule to prefer singulars in article names? I'd also suggest that people don't go too mad creating branch articles - let the appropriate section grow in the main clan article until it forms an WP:UNDUE part of it, it gets a lot more attention that way. Something like Frasers of Strichen would get 40x more eyeballs as part of the main Clan Fraser article, and would not exactly overwhelm it. Yes there's a bit of tension between pageviews and the nagging effect of having a separate stubby article, but we've got plenty of proper clan articles that need attention... Le Deluge (talk) 12:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed.--Celtus (talk) 07:45, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree too. The writing up of individual branches could go on for ever. There can be hundreds of branches to any one clan.QuintusPetillius (talk) 18:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So how should 'branch' articles be titled? "MacDonald of Dunnyveg", "Campbell of Strachur", "Dunnyveg branch of Clan Donald", "Strachur branch of Clan Campbell"?--Celtus (talk) 07:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * For me MacDonald of Dunnyveg is a no-brainer, as above, but I'm happy to defer to any better ideas - we should probably have a few redirects in place in any case. Le Deluge (talk) 09:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've renamed the ones I can. However, we need an administrator to move Clan MacDonald of Ardnamurchan, Clan MacDonald of Dunnyveg and Clan MacDonald of Lochalsh to the same names without the "Clan" - they've only ever been redirects, but got tidied up so need an admin to move into them. Ditto knocking the plural off Frasers of Philorth - the other Frasers have moved fine.Le Deluge (talk) 22:08, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I can do it. Just clarifying, you want me to remove the "Clan" from the titles, or something else? --<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;border:2px solid #A9A9A9;padding:1px;">Jza84 | Talk  22:14, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep - Clan MacDonald of Ardnamurchan -> MacDonald of Ardnamurchan and so on. And Frasers of Philorth -> Fraser of Philorth. As an aside, MacDonnell of Antrim probably wants to go to McDonnell of Antrim but I'll leave that one to Celtus as our de facto expert on the Irish families. TIA. Le Deluge (talk) 01:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's another one: Clan Campbell of Strachur needs an admin's help to move it to Campbell of Strachur.--Celtus (talk) 07:40, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have moved Munros of Miltown to make it non plural:Munro of Milntown. Thanks. QuintusPetillius (talk) 18:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Re the above, it has been proposed that Clan Campbell of Strachur be renamed and moved to Campbell of Strachur. votes/opinions welcome at Talk:Clan Campbell of Strachur. Yours ever Czar Brodie (talk) 15:37, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Carter-Campbell of Possil
Dear Sirs,

First of all, may I commend you all on what an absolutely fantastic job you've done in creating wikis for clans and expanding wikipedia's info on Scotland in general, it is remarkable. I remember wiki on clans etc a few years ago, not half as good as it is now! I have taken the liberty (I hope you don't mind) to add myself to the participants list as I too would like to help. However, I know specifically about Carter-Campbell of Possil and helped create the page for it a few years ago. As I'm sure you know its a very Scottish family and I would much appreciate it if you could add it to your project to help improve it further. I much look forward to seeing your future work on it and contributing myself.

With best wishes

Craigenputtock


 * Welcome to the project and wikipedia.--Celtus (talk) 07:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

new purpose for List of crest badges used by Scottish clan members
I have been in discussion with User talk:90.202.105.65, who I think is also User:Craigenputtock, about Carter-Campbell of Possil as a clan. While I think we are in agreement that the Possil branch should not be listed as a clan but a branch of Clan Campbell a further interesting point has been raised. User:90.202.105.65 suggested that as Campbell of Possil has a crest and motto, that these be listed at List of crest badges used by Scottish clan members in the form as a badge. The only technical problem here was the title of the badge name given as Clan. This User:90.202.105.65  changed to Clan/Clan Member name. My thinking at the time was the shear scope involved, see the reference for British crest arms and mottoes: The general armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, with over a thousand pages each with about 40 of mottos, crests, of various family branches, even estimating only 25% are Scottish, this gives about 10,000 possible new crest badges. There are about 74 Campbell variations and this does not include those creations after 1884. I do not agree with User:90.202.105.65 's argument that not every armiger is a clan member, it would be easy with the name and sept name to identify the vast majority of Scottish entries as part of a clan. More to the point, it would be dificult to argue that some entries not be included if others are. User:90.202.105.65's further argument that I considered the change would make the list less "prestigious", is misconceived; my reasoning here was that the list would lose its original purpose and be undermined into a directory for Scottish armigers. Two points have occurred to me since the original talk: 1) the List of crest badges used by Scottish clan members has become somewhat obsolete with the arrival of List of Scottish clans, perhaps it can find new life listing all Scottish crests and mottos; and 2) wikipedia suggests (see WP:SALAT) there is nothing wrong with huge lists if they can be formed into lists of lists, so as the list grows we could form sub lists of, for example, crest badges for Clan Campbell, for Clan Hay....ect. I rest the matter here for further opinion. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 16:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The idea of the list is that it should contain only the crest badges of the chiefs, or the crest badges worn by clans that don't happen to have recognised chiefs. There would really be no end if we allow every Scottish armiger's crest badge to appear on such a list. It defeats the purpose of the list. Yep, i agree the list is obsolete now. One thing about the main list is that i think it is too bulky. It is currently 160,926 bytes. WP:SIZE and WP:SPLIT say that after 100 an article should almost certainly be split. We could roughly half the list if we divide it into clans with chiefs and those without. Lists tend to link existing articles; listing every crest badge in existence seems to be like listing phone-numbers in a phonebook and i think WP:INDISCRIMINATE might apply to something like that. On a related note, i would think that clans like the Campbells and Macdonalds and others would have enough related sources to create an article or at least a pretty good section on an analysis of the heraldry of the clan. Though i think it'd have to be something more than just listing every last coat of arms ever granted.--Celtus (talk) 07:39, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed Celtus and Czar Brodie I agree that List of crest badges used by Scottish clan members has become obsolete with the arrival of List of Scottish clans. QuintusPetillius (talk) 16:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

An informal WikiProject Clans of Scotland convention at The Gathering 2009
I will be at the Clan Convention and The Gathering 2009 (25th -26th July 2009), at the Clan Brodie tent. If other wiki clan editors are at the gathering, please drop by to see me. It would be good to discus the wiki clan project person to person, an informal wiki convention. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 17:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC). p.s. thats tent 45 of the clan vilage
 * Unfortunately i'll miss the event. It definitely looks like an amazing weekend. Hopefully people will post photos and videos on Flickr and Youtube.--Celtus (talk) 08:59, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sadly I cannot make it to the gathering but I would like to. I'm sure it will be a great success.QuintusPetillius (talk) 16:34, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe we could pull together an article (or something) on the clans at the gathering, if we could come up with enough news articles on it.--Celtus (talk) 06:03, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sure that could be put into a section in the article: Homecoming Scotland 2009. The main clan gathering took place over the 24th and 25th of July. I know that not all clans were necessarily present. QuintusPetillius (talk) 18:35, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * gathering went was an amazing success, march was especially fun. Pity no other editors could make it, still it was short notice. There are several press reviews so notoriety can be established in my view for an article. A point of interest, re the convention. I mentioned wikipedia in the parliament chambers in connection to the crest badge being black and white. The lords lion's responses are interesting, and seem to indicate that the use of colour is tolerated, then again the response seemed to also indicate that the use of all crests are illegal, but then again only in Scotland. See holyrood.tv and the discussions at Clan Convention (afternoon), 20 minutes in to about 28 minutes. As seen by this discussion I clarified the position to the Lord Lyon and he seemed to indicate the lyon web site will be amended. Interesting. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 19:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Brodie, the videos are very interesting.--Celtus (talk) 07:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I started a small article at The Gathering 2009. It is just really numbers and dates, and needs to be fleshed out.--Celtus (talk) 06:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Noticed this banner on Flickr .--Celtus (talk) 09:53, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, they also had huge shields within the castle stadium, I thought they were rolling out the read carpet for ye old chiefs, however my delusions of grandeur were slightly checked when informed that Edinburgh council puts clan banners up the royal mile every year (for ye new tourists), can't say I noticed them before. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 11:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I have only watched the morning clip of the Clan Convention and I must say I am very impressed. It is worth noting that towards the end the chief of Clan MacLaren mentioned the use of the internet for doing research. He also mentioned that the history of the clans was mainly made up from the conflicts such as the Wars of Independence, clan on clan, the covenenting campaigns and the Jacobite risings etc...Which is what we mainly include here. However he also said that the internet should not be used for "recycled fiction". Will watch the afternoon clip as soon as poss QuintusPetillius (talk) 16:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey Czar Brodie! is that you at 25.30 mins in the afternoon Clan Convention. You must be quite in the know when it comes to the clan associations. QuintusPetillius (talk) 18:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Irish clans
I know its got nothing to do with the Scottish clans project but just in case any of the regular contributers here are interested. The Irish clans page could do with alot of work on it. I have added some references and a couple of opening paragraphs but the rest of the existing article has no references and theres alot of work there to be done.QuintusPetillius (talk) 19:16, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Clan Douglas
Been doing some work on Clan Douglas recently, adding info with good reference. Historically, Clan Douglas is one of the most important Scottish clans and probably once, the most powerful Lowland clan. Problem is User:OHCLOUDSUNFOLD keeps appearing and he (or she) insists on adding heaps of unsourced info, some of which is incorrect and then gets upset when I remove it! QuintusPetillius (talk) 17:52, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's one of the sad facts of wiki life. People will get upset. Nothing wrong with what you have done but if, out of the goodness of your heart, you want to try a gentler approach, you can add  tags to the uncited statements instead of removing them immediately. Then remove the uncited statements if the tags have still not been replaced with citations a month later. -- Derek Ross | Talk'' 22:00, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Good plan, will do, thanks.QuintusPetillius (talk) 20:04, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Clan Duncan
This one popped up a couple days ago. It had been merged with Clan Donnachaidh / Clan Robertson article. Should this article stand as a clan of its own? It seems to me that the Duncans are no different than Clan Donnachaidh / Clan Robertson. Really it looks like the only difference is the Clan Duncan Society, which is trying to get itself recognised as a separate clan.--Celtus (talk) 07:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting one. I actually added some info to the Clan Donnachiadh article a while back, all referenced to: "Chiefs of Clan Donnachaidh, 1275 - 1749 and the Highlanders at Bannockburn". By James Robertson. Anyway, back to your point Celtus, I have seen this occur with other clans. I think during the time of the clans (up to the mid 18th century) the Duncans were actually a "sept" of the Clan Donnachiadh. However in mordern times some sept families create clan societies of their own, seperate to the overall clan. This could be because the sept family, often being non-related to the leading clan may have had their own individual leader of the sept family but still historically owing allegiance to the main clan chief. Also in modern times the sept family having a completly different name to the main clan may feel that they can create a seperate clan society of their own if you know what I mean.QuintusPetillius (talk) 18:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Right. So is 'Clan Duncan' a notable clan or a society with a website? It seems like the article is just an advert promoting the society. I doubt there is going to be any substantial references treating Duncans as anything other than members of Clan Donnachaidh / Clan Robertson. So its like a self-licking lollipop with the web site backing up the society on wikipedia.--Celtus (talk) 05:10, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well if you do a google search for 'Clan Duncan' it brings up all sorts of results including http://www.clan-duncan.co.uk/. So there seems to be a modern day official society for Clan Duncan. However any history of the clan I have found always seems to relate them as being part of the Clan Donnachiadh.QuintusPetillius (talk) 16:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If there are no independent sources dealing with the clan in any meaningful way then it isn't notable by wikipedia guidelines. Notability, Notability (organizations and companies). Look at the quality of the Google hits. It is all pushing the website, not dealing with the clan any meaningful way. Here are the first two pages. Basically it is all spam. The only links that aren't are the homepage (x2), facebook page, and a deadlink!
 * www.clan-duncan.co.uk
 * www.clan-duncan.co.uk
 * www.wantacalendar.com - selling clan 'e-calendars', "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.wantacalendar.com -
 * www.mycinnamontoast.com - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together...."
 * www.electricscotland.com - anyone can get a clan registered there, or have themselves listed as a chief (Clan Akins, Clan Alexander)
 * www.alexa.com - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.home.vicnet.net.au - "CLAN DUNCAN SOCIETY is here" with a link to to website
 * www.google.com - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.aaqq.org - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.dmoz.org - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.zoominfo.com
 * www.aboutus.org - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.facebook.com
 * www.scotster.com - spam on the forum, "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.czipm.org - deadlink
 * www.xomreviews.com - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.whatweird.com - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.ip-adress.com - "Based in the Scottish Highlands the Clan Duncan Society's primary purpose is to bring together..."
 * www.scotshistoryonline.co.uk - a single link to the website.
 * I think the stuff about the Clan Robertson / Clan Donnachaidh should be merged into that article, and the stuff on the surname Duncan could be merged into the surname page. Those are the only things covered in independent sources.--Celtus (talk) 06:04, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedians, With regards to the above posts regarding the Clan Duncan. I understand your desires to link the name Duncan with the Clan Dhonnachaidh / Robertson. For many years, the Duncan / Clan Robertson history has been the only one available on the web. Over recent years however, further research has been undertaken, and although the name Duncanson could be attributable to the Clan Robertson, the vast majority of Duncans have no link whatsoever to the clan so named.

In Scotland the Crown, through the Lord Lyon King of Arms, is charged with the duty of granting arms to well deserving persons. As part of this duty, the Clannish nature of Scotland means that anyone of a recognised clan, whether of the clan surname or otherwise, must be acknowledged as a branch of that clan (whether of the clan surname or not) and therefore would be granted only, the cadenced arms of their chief, bearing mark of difference.

In the case of the Duncans, the first armorial bearings were noted in the Hague Roll of 1592, the first blazon of a grant of Duncan arms is Argent, a chevron Sable between two stars Gules and a hunting-horn Sable, stringed Gules. Whereas the Robertson arms are “Gules, three wolf heads argent”.

The difference between the Duncan and Robertson arms continues to the present day. The other factor to consider is that the sept lists are ‘not in fact’ official and the Lord Lyon King of Arms of Scotland, does not recognised them as official. This is evidenced from the Lyon Court. There is also provision for new Clan or Clans trying to gain official recognition of a Chief http://www.lyon-court.com/lordlyon/241.html/.

To summarise, their may well be links between the Duncansons and the Robertsons, but the Duncans are a separate clan of which no links exists between the Clan Robertson and the Duncans. This can be evidenced by the extract from the present chief’s father’s letters patent (Grant of Arms), which states:-

“Langton George Duncan Haldane Robertson of Struan, Chief of the name and head of Clan Robertson otherwise entitled Clan Donnachaidh".

The Lord Lyon, King of Arms, has therefore confirmed that there is no such an entity in law, as the Clan Donnachaidh, but rather that there is a Clan Robertson, which call themselves Clan Donnachaidh, but this is not a separate Clan Duncan or Donnachaidh. The heraldry speaks for itself.

The recent Clan Gathering 2009 organised by the Standing Council of Chiefs invited Clan Duncan to take part both, in the Clan Convention and as separate entity in the Gathering itself. The Duke of Rothsay was also personally introduced to John A. Duncan of Sketraw head of the Territorial House of Sketraw (which is also officially recognised by The Court of The Lord Lyon). Lyon Court is also well aware of the Clans endeavours of official recognition for a chief on the name Duncan.

It should also be noted that Romilly Squire co author of the book Clans & Tartans and former Chairman of The Heraldry Society of Scotland is a Clan Duncan Committee Member and Advisor to the Clan. Please take time to check details properly on http://www.clan-duncan.co.uk/

--Sketraw (talk) 23:44, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * This isn't about different versions of history or coats of arms. It is about independent information. It doesn't matter who is member of the society, or whether someone posed in a photo with a duke. Wikipedia is is kind of hard to understand at first, read this Notability.

“This isn't about different versions of history or coats of arms. It is about independent information.” That is exactly what it is about ‘Coats of Arms’ how do you think a Clan Chief is given official regognition? What is written on that document ‘ The Letters Patent’a legal document in Scotland, from a Scottish Court, it is what is gives that Chief that official recognition under the Royal Parogative. Robertson of Struan is not Chief of Clan Donnachaidh he is Chief of Clan Robertson who claim Duncan as a sept. I would also suggest that you take a look at ‘Clans Septs and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands by Frank Adam and Sir Thomas Innes of Learney. Lord Lyon and his view on septs page 295 and also page 588 appendix XIV (1952 edition).where Duncan is quoted seperatley from Roberstson’.

Blacks Surnmaes of Scotland dose not even list Donnachaidh as a name. The first mention of Donnachaidh is from William Forbes Skeen’s Book “ The Highlanders of Scotland” and if you reference the book above you will see what they say about so called sept lists.

As for different histories it depends if Wkipedia want ‘Brigadoon’ history or historical fact and not base all knowlage of Clans on Victorian romantisism. The majority of Robertson history is based on the Red Book of Clan Robertson, which is said to have been destroyed in a fire at Meggernie Castle, Glen Lyon, in the 1650s. http://www.archive-articles.co.uk/hoots/december2004.htm All the information within the book was re-written by the Poet Chief of Clan Robertson in 1845. So the transcription is a copying a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy cobbled together from information provided by an old man who had read an original copy more than half a century earlier. This is what James Irvan Robertson (also a Clan Council member of the Robertson) based his original book upon…see link above. There is a lot more I could say and reference.

As for notability, I would suggest that we do meet the points in the General notability guideline and the article will be further expanaded. It is difficult to site information from The public Register of all Arms Scotland for example as people have to phisicaly visit the Court of The Lord Lyon to get copies of the Information.

As for the ’Celtus’ above, I hope this is not the standard of all Wikipedia editors and that some who do edit areas of wikipedia, at least have some knowlage of The Clan System in Scotland.,Scottish History and the Roll of The lord Lyon.

If you decide to remove Clan Duncan from Wikipedia, please delete all the information and do not move it as suggested to other parts. --Sketraw (talk) 13:58, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * How do you think it meets the requirements for notability when the only reference to the existence of a 'Clan Duncan' is its own website, spam, and other web-things written by its webmaster and coincidently 'clan head' John A. Duncan of Sketraw? The page Notability is summed up as: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article".


 * When you edit Wikipedia you aren't supposed to publish things that you have found through research, or things that haven't already been covered by others before. Look at this page No original research: "Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source" and "Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources".


 * So, as an editor, you aren't supposed to set out and try to prove to everyone that your organisation exists. You aren't supposed to trawl through the primary sources and the public register of arms and pick out every minute difference between coats of arms to prove your clan is different. What you are supposed to do is summarise what other credible people have already published on the subject. Independent sources. So Wikipedia isn't the place to mirror your website, publish your findings, or advertise your organisation.--Celtus (talk) 08:05, 16 August 2009 (UTC)


 * “How do you think it meets the requirements for notability when the only reference to the existence of a 'Clan Duncan' is its own website, spam,”


 * Clan Duncan is Clan Donnachaidh - Donnachaidh/Donchad/Dunchad “Duncan is the Anglified Spelling of the Gaelic name”. Donnachaidh does not spell Robertson FACT and verifiable. Robertson of Struan is Chief of Clan Robertson not Clan Donnachaidh FACT and verifiable, did the Donnachaidh/Donchad/Dunchad at one time have a Chief? Yes, FACT and verifiable. Because Clan Robertsons call themselves by the name Donnachaidh and have common decent does not make what they say correct, Or for that matter what has been said in past literature correct.


 * It is not a Spam website, where on earth do you get that from? Because it has Google ads on it (to help with Society funds) does not make it a spam website. Many charitable organisations and non profit organisations use Yahoo and Google ads to help aid their organisations. Where are there pop up windows that take you to unsolicited sites? Because a website has good searchability on the web doesn't make it a Spam website. I am sure Google who also give Wikipedia good rankings will be pleased to hear their Google ads are considered Spam be wikipedia. Secondly, because some website list your website, in this particular case clan-duncan.co.uk, on theirs and the website that does so is using for other purposes, does not make clan-duncan.co.uk the guilty party. All websites suffer this to some degree and is out with there control


 * “You aren't supposed to trawl through the primary sources and the public register of arms and pick out every minute difference between coats of arms to prove your clan is different”


 * Minute differences!! The arms are totally different. Is not the Public Register of Arms a verifiable source?


 * As I said before do as you please. “If you decide to remove Clan Duncan from Wikipedia, please delete all the information and do not move it as suggested to other parts.” --Sketraw (talk) 17:00, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Sketraw, I will not get involved in this discussion as the chances are I met you at the Edinburgh clan gathering, and I sympathise with your cause. All that Celtus is saying is that Clan Duncan must need independent proof to be a clan. Once this independent proof has been established, the clan web site can be considered a reference but not until then. The general guidelines on clan web sites can be found at WP:SELFPUB, and note that if a reliable source is not found to shew that Clan Duncan is a clan it could be considered to fail the term thereto: "4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity.". With regard to Duncan and Clan Donnachaidh, please note a fundamental point of Wikipedia: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth (see Verifiability). This may seem odd, but it is nevertheless fundamental. Note that references need not be "easy access" to be good. You say "It is difficult to site information from The public Register of all Arms Scotland", well in my opinion information from the public Register of all Arms Scotland is a good source, and can be quoted. Please also note that Celtus (who is an excellent editor) is just expressing his opinion. He can not delete the article, he just thinks it needs to be sourced, and is suggesting such. He or another can propose that the article be deleted, by doing so the article may be placed at Articles for deletion, and the outcome from there is far from certain. It will be reviewed by editors who are independent and will review the matter on merit. Note that the words "Clan Duncan" has 5,340 hits on google and many an editor would feel sympathetic to give the article the benefit of the doubt. My suggestion is to stop discussing the matter hereto, and that you edit the article with as many references as possible. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 18:12, 16 August 2009 (UTC) (the guy it the bleu jacket to the far right of your picture at clan-duncan.co.uk)


 * Thank you Czar Brodie for your constructive advice. I was beginning to feel that 20 years plus of research was worthless. I will do as you suggest. I know who you are now and understand why you do not wish to get involved. It was good too talk to you briefly at the Gathering. --Sketraw (talk) 18:51, 16 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't say that anything was wrong with your website, only that about all the Google hits for 'Clan Duncan' are adverts for your it. Even Clan Akins gets a couple thousand hits! Right, info from the register of arms, and other primary sources, is ok. Drawing conclusions straight from primary sources isn't (WP:PRIMARY).--Celtus (talk) 05:11, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Popular pages
Anyone got any comment/objection etc on adding the Project to the bot generating lists of popular pages ? I don't know what time zone it's in, might squeeze it in to start generating data for October if I'm quick. Le Deluge (talk) 22:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Clans of Scotland to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at WikiProject Clans of Scotland/Popular pages.

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Clan Makgill Revisited
You may be interested in Clan Makgill Revisited, which is a new and unreviewed article. Ben  Mac  Dui  11:18, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The information should really have been added to the actual Clan Makgill page. It is quite alright for you to replace the information currently on the Clan Makgill page because it is unsourced, you can replace it with well sourced information. Its likely that the Clan Makgill Revisited page will be deleted soon anyway.QuintusPetillius (talk) 17:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
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Unreferenced living people articles bot
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Possible Creation of WikiProject Tayside and Fife
Hi! I have proposed the creation of WikiProject Tayside and Fife to improve the quality of all of the articles which fall into the scope of the project. I think that some of the articles in the scope of WikiProject Clans of Scotland may fit into the scope of the proposed project. I would hope that members of this WikiProject would like to indicate their interest in the project. If you would like to join please add your name on WikiProject Council/Proposals/Tayside and Fife. If the project gets a reasonable amount of interest I will create a draft of the WikiProject (after consultation with editors who are interested) in my userspace and then will create the WikiProject. Thank you.  Andrewmc   123  15:20, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, Andrewmc123 has withdrawn this proposal. Le Deluge (talk) 10:19, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Scottish clan
People might want to keep a close eye on Scottish clan at the moment - it's been "discovered" by User:Wyvren who shall we say tends to have quite firm opinions and is not very good at working cooperatively. And could do with sussing the referencing thing.... Le Deluge (talk) 10:19, 10 July 2010 (UTC)