Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland/Archive 21

Comment on previous debate about succession boxes

 * Previous WP:TFD discussion see here for the 2016 discussion and case. The positions taken then versus now are amusing and instructive. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:12, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Sending a ping to those who particpated in that decision - and also  before our likely interaction ban comes into effect. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Those comments by Laurel Lodge are nothing to do with the sub-section they were posted in, which is about the development of a series of semi-automatic navboxes. So in this edit I have added a new level 2 header, in order to allow discussion of the navboxes to stay on-topic. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:26, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I fail to see the point of Laurel Lodged's comment. If Laurel Lodged has nothing construtive to add then perhaps they should bow out of the discussion. Spleodrach (talk) 17:02, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I'll be sad to see the Oireachtas template for Jack Chambers (politician) go. I spent so much time on it, and all the TDS in that constituency, in an attempt to make BHG's solution work. Despite BHG's promises in the above debate, the attempt was futile. No other editor went to the bother of trying to make the unworkable workable. But the fiction had to be maintained. Until it could no longer be maintained. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:18, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that I have started a discussion about this at WP:ANI. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 18:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The only fiction in any of this is Laurel Lodged's stream of demonstrably false assertions:
 * Oireachtas template s-par/ie/oi is only a header. It doesn't make the succession boxes. 7 years and 4 months after I pointed that out at WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 March 3, LL still doesn't get that basic point.
 * No decision has seen made to remove all the succession boxes for the multi-seat constituencies of the 2nd Dáil onwards.
 * Even if we did remove succession boxes for the multi-seat constituencies, we still need s-par/ie/oi for the single-seat constituencies of the 2nd Dáil
 * The succession box at Jack Chambers (politician) works, contrary to LL's claims
 * Several other editors, including BHG and Iveagh Gardens, added full succession boxes
 * Spleodrach suggested that if Laurel Lodged has nothing constructive to add then perhaps they should bow out of the discussion. That was wise advice, because it is clear that LL does indeed have nothing constructive to add.
 * Seven years after LL's WP:BATTLEGROUND conduct at WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 March 3 led to Wikimucker to describe LL's behavior as an example of nutters, LL's latest post above of at 11:18 today is yet more snark which does nothing to assist the collaborative solution-building by other editors.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 13:11, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The only reason that Jack Chamber's succession box works is because I made it work. It took a lot of effort. Nobody else did same for any other TD. Why? Because it's too complex. I said so in 2016. Nobody wanted to listen. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:01, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * "I am aware that there would be work involved in creating the new style of succession box, but it's not too onerous. I have created several thousand such boxes for UK MPs, but there have been only about 1300 TDs since 1919. So it's not a daunting task." Famous last words from BHG. Turned out to be quite a daunting task after all - so daunting in fact that NOBODY apart from me attempted to replicate for any other TD. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:26, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Um, I have. Rarely. But yes, occasionally, I've come across partial succession boxes and fully filled them out. It's a pain in the arse to do, and "one TD only that inherits their single seat in a constituency" is plain wrong. Hence the section above. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 16:06, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yet again, Laurel Lodged adds absolutely nothing to assist in finding any solutions to anything, or to aid collaboration. LL's two latest replies are pure point-scoring.
 * And yet again, Laurel Lodged is wrong. In the discussion above, others posted about how they made made lots of succession boxes.
 * It is hard to believe that LL has trawled through over 1,300 articles on TDs ti find who has added succession boxes since Marc 2016.  And it they have not done that trawl, the their assertion that nobody else did same for any other TD is just a guess asserted as if it was fact.
 * Note that in LL's last comment in the 2016 TFD, LL denounced The sheer ugliness of the solution. Yet today LL wrote !I'll be sad to see the Oireachtas template for Jack Chambers (politician) go
 * It is tedious that LL is still pushing on with this time-wasting, morale-sapping, self-contradictory sniping.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:45, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * To how many of the 1300 TDs did you apply your solution? Your Html skills are the stuff of legend. 130? 13? Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:00, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * What is the point of this contribution, LL? Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 16:06, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The point is that if my proposal in 2016 had been accepted, we could have worked on a solution like this to the problem identified. Instead, a lot of time has been wasted to no avail due to BHG's objection. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:25, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That was seven years ago, LL, time to build a bridge! Consensus can change; it did in this case. Her objection to your proposal wasn't personal, but you seem to be taking it as such. The snark in your last last comment really wasn't necessary, especially when you're in an active dispute with the target. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 11:12, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that Laurel Lodged still doesn't understand their fundamental error in WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 March 3: that deleting s-par/ie/oi would not have removed a single succession box.
 * All that TFD would have done is to remove the header above the navbox. I did a test edit a few minutes ago to show what would have happened if LL's TFD proposal had been implemented:
 * I explained that to Laurel Lodged in the 2016 TFD.
 * I again explained this to Laurel Lodged in my reply above on 13:11, 15 July 2023‎.
 * In my post above I also explained to explained to Laurel Lodged that s-par/ie/oi will always be needed for members of the First Dáil, over 90% of whom were elected in single-seat constituencies for which the new navbox series is unusual.
 * Laurel Lodged ignores that too.
 * No time has been wasted. It has always been to open to any editor at any time to propose the solution which I proposed in my reply on 10 July 2023 to @'s new thread. That solution gained consensus. It has been built and is being deployed ... and Laurel Lodged is just wasting time with their sour grapes moaning about issues which they persistently fail to understand.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 11:59, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Review of new article
Hi all, I'd love to get a few more people involved in reviewing an article with declared COI on the Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre. Would anyone be willing to take a look? Thanks! Smirkybec (talk) 09:24, 13 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Looking at some of your previous edits, @Financefactz @Sheila1988 @Denisarona, to Capel Street specifically - you might be interested in casting an eye over this draft?
 * Maybe also @Bastun? Smirkybec (talk) 14:33, 17 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, I can take a look, but likely not until the weekend. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 14:54, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Overall it seems like a fine start-class article, well beyond a stub. There seems to be good use of secondary sources, and it seems neutral; e.g. you have included both views on the arson. My only slight concern would be whether it passes WP:GNG: I guess it probably does, but I can't really answer properly that without checking the refs. So I would encourage you to do your own GNG assessment. If you want to ping me when you have done that, I will be happy to do a formal AFC review. But apart from needing a proper GNG check (which any draft should get), it looks to me like it's more than ready for publication. Well done! -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:47, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Smirkybec: I had time only for a 3-minute quick scan, and to add a few categories. I didn't open any refs.
 * Thanks!I would be pretty confident of GNG given the amount of coverage the centre has, not withstanding it's connection to the wider LGBTQ+ community within Ireland. I'll wait and see what Bastun's verdict is over the weekend. Both @Xx78900 and @Iveagh Gardens have taken a look for me as well :) Smirkybec (talk) 19:01, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Smirkybec: connection to the wider LGBTQ+ community within Ireland are not a factor in GNG, important as they are.
 * What matters is that at least of the coverage in reliable independent sources is actually about the Outhouse, not just brief mentions in articles about other or wider topics.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:29, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I've thrown in a couple more news citations, but I'm not concerned about GNG. Smirkybec (talk) 21:41, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Good work, @Smirkybec. You are probably right to be unconcerned.
 * Now go on, submit it to AFC!  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 05:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Dáil by-election navboxes
There are currently 24 navboxes for by-elections to Dáil Éireann. I have proposed merging all of them to one new navbox.

The discussion is at WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2023 July 20. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:28, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Population of towns
Earlier today, in the latest release of the 2022 census, the CSO published the population of 867 towns, or what it now defines as built-up areas (BUAs). They're available at table F1015 from the Data section of the CSO. We can begin adding this population to articles for each town and village in this list, as well as articles such as List of urban areas in the Republic of Ireland by population. I'd recommend including a link to the current census page anywhere we add the new figures, i.e. (as of 2022 census). That way, when we're doing the same in 2028, we can easily find any pages that use the 2022 figures. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 13:51, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Replying to myself, as I think this is useful information to anyone seeking to update population data. According to the CSO population schedule, the Small Area Population Statistics (SAPS) will be available from 21 September. They may provide better links for individual articles than the data tables. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 20:12, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Organisation of constituencies
A few months ago, I proposed a reorganisation/merger of specific constituencies, being those related to Kerry North–West Limerick (Dáil constituency) and Limerick (Dáil constituency). I did notify the this WT:IE discussion page, as it was not my intention to be disruptive or to make a series of edits that might be controversial and end up being reverted. There was no response on this page, and after waiting the customary week, I implemented the change. I later proposed the same for Dublin South-East (Dáil constituency). Although I didn't notify this discussion page on that second occasion, I did wait the customary week after the proposal. However, I may have been over-eager in making changes throughout other pages; for good reasons of WP:NOTBROKEN, I should not have changed the underlying link on pages where the modern name was not used, i.e., I should not have edited it read Dublin South-East on Garret FitzGerald's page. Whatever the decision here, I will revert those particular edits.

That said, on the Talk:Dublin Bay South (Dáil constituency) page, has argued that these changes should be reverted. For that reason, I'll make the case generally.


 * It makes the listing of elections more useful, so that looking at the result in 2016 can easily be compared with the previous election in mostly the same territory, and the outgoing TDs from DSE (apart from the retiring Quinn) all standing in DBS. This coherence was my main motivation for proposing these.
 * In these cases, the Constituency Commission reports themselves used the term "rename", so it doesn't amount to WP:SYNTH to consider Dublin Bay South a continuation of Dublin South-East (I'll predominantly use the DSE to DBS example here).
 * Dublin Bay South included more than just the territory of Dublin South-East as of 2016, as there was a transfer from Kimmage and Terenure; however, that's also true of Dublin Central or Dublin North-West at the same election. In fact, Dublin Central was even more of a different constituency, moving from 4 to 3 seats, making a comparison more difficult. Dublin South-East was also a different constituency by territory in 1997 to 1992, with transfers to and from other constituencies, but we do list them one after another in the page. An extreme example in Dublin: the 1969–77 Dublin South-Central didn't contain any of the 1961–69 constituency, yet we list them on the same page (for clarity, I wouldn't propose a split). The change between DSE and DBS in 2016 is minor in comparison to that.
 * I proposed and implemented these changes after other work detailing the geographical definition of each constituency over time, so that it should hopefully be clear the extent of the change in these constituencies, whether at any name change, or any other time. I also hope it's clear in the introductions of the pages that they had different names over time. The different names are maintained in the election result boxes throughout the page, as of course they ought to be.
 * Grouping by purely statutory name can mean like is not placed with like. Take the 2011–16 Limerick constituency. Listing its TDs and result under Limerick (Dáil constituency) meant that a constituency that was the western part of the county was listed with the 1923–48 Limerick which included the entire city and county; instead, given the continuity of candidates and representatives, and broad continuity in area, it makes sense to list it either with Limerick County or with Limerick West, if not combining all three names in use for the western part of the county.

From a process point of view, although I had planned to make more than one of these sets of changes, I didn't propose all these at the same time, as I supposed that the strength of the argument might differ between one instance and another. That said, it is worth having the general discussion now that an objection has been raised. If the consensus is to revert to the status quo ante, I will be as helpful as time allows in reverting my own changes, both to the constituency pages and any other affected pages. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 15:45, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

In a collaborative environment where editors will have different degrees of knowledge on constituencies, that is very important. It means that no editor or reader has to be a political history wonk like me or thee to know what article refers to which constituency. An editor whose expertise might be in a wholly different topic area can use these titles with ease. That's partly why the one-to-one relationship was been stable and uncontentious for 16 years: it's simple and it works. It avoids editors having to remember to pipe links or use a redirect: if Sean Murphy is listed as a candidate in 1943 in the article title "Ballyporeen South-Central", then a link to Ballyporeen South-Central will always be accurate. But if the Ballyporeen South-Central article actually lists Sean in a section on Ballyporeen West, then an error is likely: unless the edtor is very alert, they are likely to write wrongly that "Sean North was the 1943 Something Party candidate in Ballyporeen South-Central". It's not just Dublin; Sligo–Leitrim has also been a wildly mutable concept. It has at times included big chunks of County Cavan and/or County Roscommon and/or County Donegal. It started off with all of County Leitrim, but its 1977–1981 incarnation included only a wee sliver of North Leitrim. I think that Sligo–Leitrim is an extreme example, but since the 1961 Supreme Court ruling in O'Donovan v. Attorney General, the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1961 and its successors have been restricted to very small variations in the ratio of TDs to population, which has made for very unstable constituency boudaries. The result is that any attempt to second-guess the names used by the Electoral (Amendment) Acts is a recipe for mind-boggling dilemmas. It all reminds me of a plastic surgeon who told me that his work was like "knitting jelly".
 * @Iveagh Gardens: the sooner this is reverted, the easier it will be to reinstate the status quo ante. So please revert promptly, then we can discuss your desire to udo the 17-year status quo of a one-to-one relationship between name and article, which was agreed in 2006 for both the UK and Ireland.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:29, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I can commit to following through on this within the next week. I'm away over the weekend, so will have limited capacity to do so then. I was able to quickly revert Kerry North–West Limerick (Dáil constituency), however Kerry North (Dáil constituency) was more complex, given intervening edits, but will do so when I get the chance. I would propose revisiting the consensus, for the reasons outlined here above, but I'm more than willing to follow the proper processes in the mean time. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 16:58, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Returning to this, I'll note that the pages in question post-date the discussion in 2006. I don't think the discussion then need stand for all time, if new considerations arise, or at least, the naming convention then can come with modifications or provisos. I understand the need to avoid synthesis of sources, this was based on the language of the Constituency Commission reports, which use the term "rename", so that calling DBS a continuation of DSE isn't my own work (the DBS page even discusses referendum results from DSE in a section on its politics). A different consideration might therefore arise if I was suggesting merging Dublin Townships into Dublin South-East, where there isn't AFAIK an external reliable body using the term "rename". Iveagh Gardens (talk) 06:31, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've taken a look at this topic and here at some takeaways:
 * BHG:17-year status quo of a one-to-one relationship between name and article, which was agreed in 2006 for both the UK and Ireland
 * IG:I'll note that the pages in question post-date the discussion in 2006. I don't think the discussion then need stand for all time
 * On this point, I'd note that WP:Consensus can change. I don't think it's wrong for IG to explore the possibility of a change to the previous consensus and it doesn't appear they are trying to steam-roll this through, they seem happy to discuss this matter when some push back was brought up.
 * As far as the broader proposal goes, I see where both IG and BHG are coming from; IG has some good rationale for wanting to merge these articles, but I imagine BHG's point will be to say well "On what basis actually decides these merges? Our guts?". I imagine BHG's viewpoint (although I'd like to see them state this themselves) is that we cannot merge these constituencies arbitrarily, there should be an underlying basis/sources for that, but even then, I imagine BHG is of the view they should be separate when possible.
 * I think in terms of Kerry and Limerick, it will be harder to argue for those merges regardless of the actual underlying "truth" of whether they are or are not simply continuations of previous constituencies because it will be hard to gather sources which support that claim.
 * However, in the case of Dublin Bay South vs Dublin South-East, it seems that we have both sources from the Constituency Commission and from RTÉ indication that DBS is a (near?) direct continuation of DSE. I think that could be a compelling case which we can discuss collectively. This case would be further bolstered if additional supporting sources were found.
 * Could you outline your argument a bit more on this? Perhaps with specific mention of the Dublin Bay South/Dublin South East proposal? Can you give practical reasons why this merge would be a bad idea?
 * At this point, I'm not "committed" to one viewpoint or another, I'm just interested in hearing out each argument.
 * Finally, another editor who I think might be able to give insight into this matter is, who often edits Irish constituency articles. If they have the time, I'd like to hear their view on this matter as well. CeltBrowne (talk) 21:29, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @CeltBrowne: thanks for your thoughtful comment, and for your thoroughly collegial tone.
 * I do want to reply at length, but am very busy right now, so I will have to give a shortish response for now.
 * I see four broad advantages of the one-to-one relationship between constituency name and article:
 * Follow the secondary sources. All the scholarly reference books I own on election results stick rigidly to a one-to-one relationship between constituency name and article. That's the en.wp gold standard for sources. Primary sources, such as those used by @Iveagh Gardens are discouraged.
 * One-to-one is clear and simple for editors.
 * One-to-one is clear and simple for readers. Again, no spcialist knowledge is neded. Suppose a wholly apolitical teenager in say New Zealand hears about Richie Ryan TD, sees the YouTube clips of how he was lampooned on Hall's Pictorial Weekly, and googles their way to the Wikipedia article. Having soaked up the parody, they wonder "who on earth elected this guy". They see that he was a TD for Dublin South-East, but when they click on that they find themselves on a page with a different title. Maybe our reader will persevere into the small print, but on the web people speed-read.  So a significant number of readers will mumble "WTF", and move on.  That is not good.
 * Constituency names are just labels for wildly fluctuating gegraphical areas. I don't think that any Irish constituency has been quite as footloose as England's Newcastle upon Tyne North, whose pre-1983 and post-1983 territories share absolutely no territory at all. But many Irish constituencies have been highly mobile, esp in Dublin. E.g. Dublin South and Dublin West have both grown and shrunk and moved like something in Conway's Game of Life.
 * I think that the lovely and commendably studious @Iveagh Gardens made two good faith conceptual errors here in his studies of the Constituency Commission reports. Of course it's great to work with scholarly editors who conscientiously study such things, but the first glitch in my view is that Iveagh Gardens didn't fully succeed in zooming back out again from that valuable research to look at how this detail relates to the task of producing an encyclopedia for general readers. "We decided to call it something else" is not helpful to the general reader, and it does not fit well with policies such as WP:COMMONNAME. We should not surprise our readers, and 2016 really did mark a change in the common name, as well as in the official name.
 * The second point where I think that Iveagh Gardens was mistaken is in their focus on 2016, noting the minimal boundary changes then. But the new name may persist for decades (or even for nearly a century, as with Sligo–Leitrim), and in that time there wil be many more boundary changes.  Some may be radical changes, esp the current shakeup which will bring huge changes across the country, due to massive population growth, the post-1961 <5% variation rule, and the retention of the 3-5 seats per constituency rule (despite the recommedations of the Constitutional Convention for an increase in size to boost proportionality). A recent Irish Times Inside Politics podcast (https://open.spotify.com/episode/2qmGslDrrkXJlRHiNiYlEk) had two academics who explained in detail that the changes will be unavoidably radical; the word "carnage" was used.  So in the long run, I think that the relative similarity in 2016 will be be much less significant.
 * Anyway, that's all much more than I intended to write for now. I do strongly oppose the change, but I hope I have also conveyed some hint of how much I value discussing this with conscientious editors who really are immersed in the topic.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 23:41, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You know, I wrote out a whole long reply, but as I kept looking back over and over at the various articles and replies, I basically had to scrap it and start again. So let's try this:
 * Right now, and this might come off as arbitrary, but I feel like (after taking abroad both view points) that merging Kerry North–West Limerick (Dáil constituency) into Kerry North (Dáil constituency) was and is fine, but the others should be kept separate.
 * Because Dublin Bay South (Dáil constituency) and Limerick County (Dáil constituency) are "living, breathing" currently existing constituencies which may be around for decades to come as BHG said, muddling the waters by merging them with defunct constituencies which had their own histories may well be a bad idea, not least because it could be confusing for readers, particularly one's trying to research the Dublin South-East constituency or Limerick West (Dáil constituency).
 * However, in the case of Kerry North & Kerry North–West Limerick, both are dead and gone, and no major new information is going to be added to them in the future. So we know for a fact that Kerry North–West Limerick was an more or less an anomaly, it only briefly existed and realistically it was de facto a direct continuation of the former Kerry North. We see that with it retaining 2 out 3 of the exact same TDs from one election to the next. "Kerry North–West Limerick" is basically an Irish political history footnote and I don't know that it's distinct enough from Kerry North to warrant a separate article. If Kerry North–West Limerick had existed for 25 years I might have taken the opposite position, but a one election constituency largely overlapping with a previous one is sort of a blimp on the radar. I don't see many readers or researchers superficially seeking out Kerry North–West Limerick individually, but even if they do, a redirect and some clarifying text in the merged article will keep them on track.
 * Now in an ideal world, some sources to support the claim that Kerry North and Kerry North–West Limerick were de facto one-in-the-same would really help solidify that merger. That might be something Iveagh Gardens would need to look into.
 * That's my take after looking blankly at the articles for over an hour; I'll wait and see what others make of that conclusion. CeltBrowne (talk) 01:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Y'know, @CeltBrowne, wishing for sources to assert a pre-determined conclusion does not seem to be in any way a great approach.
 * As to the Kerry constituencies, please do not assume that their lives are permanently over. Many Dáil contituencies have had multiple incaranations, and one or other of them may be reborn when the forthcoming set of "frankenconstituencies" splits Kerry again, as they will have to do in order to give it the required 6 seats.
 * I think that any gains from such a merge are minor. It's quite common for TDs to represent a succession of constituencies, and in any case comparisons between elections can be misleading due to both demographic changes and boundary revisions.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks to both of you, and, for your considered responses (and I note the commendation on my studiousness amidst this!). On a prognostication sidenote, I'd agree with BHG that we can't assume Kerry North is dead. My instinct is that it won't return this time, but may return again; I do expect Tipperary to be split this year, bringing the return of a once dormant consituency. But that's merely to say that I wouldn't make the decision based on what ones we'd call historic.
 * I do understand what BHG says, that we need to consider the general reader, who may have little knowledge of Irish political history, or the editor who has some knowledge but not enough to always know the differences instinctively, as I think we might be closer to being. Ensuring that redirects are always active can certainly assist with the latter, but I accept we need to have a system where we keep that editor in mind.
 * As to the general reader, it was in part for them that I proposed this. To use a more recent example, if simply because it crosses over the change in name, if someone read about Eoghan Murphy, saw that he was first a TD for Dublin South-East and then for Dublin Bay South, they'd might ask themselves "Oh, why did he move around?" The current text, "representing the Dublin Bay South constituency (previously named Dublin South-East)" makes it clear that he stayed where he was, but with a different name for the constituency. And if they had instead clicked through on the constituency, it would also show that he or any of the others hadn't moved around, or even been forced to consider what new constituency to consider contesting, as with wholly new constituencies (think Dublin Mid-West on its first outing).
 * To some extent, given the changes in boundaries between all constituencies, comparisons between constituencies can be misleading in any case, whether there's been an name change or not. I mentioned before that in 2016, there was a more significant geographical change in Dublin Central than in DSE/DBS.
 * As I know has interacted with some of these pages since I implemented the changes, their view would be valuable, as CeltBrowne indicated. It's good to have this discussion now, ahead of what BHG alluded to in relation to the upcoming changes, with a report expected at the end of August. A lot of my work last year adding historic definitions and references from the Constituency Commission reports was in anticipation of the upcoming Electoral Commission report, to have the pages in a good state for the new body's proposals. So one way or other, this question will be settled  by then (if not within the next week!). Iveagh Gardens (talk) 14:43, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @Iveagh Gardens. I'm enjoying this discusion
 * It's great that IG has done so much work on the historic boundaries. From 1961 onwards, the <5% variation rule meant that county boundaries were crosed nearly everwhere. I started that many years ago to document the wild shape-shifting of Sligo–Leitrim, but I didn't take it much further. It's one of the two most important parts of a constituency article (the others being election results), so it's a huge boost to have that brought up-to-date by an editor who we can rely on to use the sources with scrupulous care.
 * With that done, one of the most valuable additions would be maps of the historic boundaries. The use of obscure and historical county subdivisions to define the boundaries maks this a non-trivial task, which requires a lot of expertise in Irish historical geography as well as graphics skills.  Any ideas on how and where we might find someone willing to do some of that?
 * I don't think that the "why did he move around?" question is a reason to merge. The 1961-onwards instability in constituency boundaries means that a high proportion of multi-term TDs represented more than one constituency. See e.g. Richie Ryan (4 constituencies in 23 years) or Seán Doherty or Frank Cluskey. An expectations of stability will be regularly disappointed.
 * But suppose we did merge Dublin South-East (DSE) to Dublin Bay South (DBS). What impact would that have on the article Eoghan Murphy? The only way that the "why did he move around?" question could be avoided is if Eoghan Murphy was rewritten to pretend that Murphy was elected in 2011 for a constituency called "Dublin Bay South". That would be simply untrue and the Murphy question seems to me to be a scary illustration of the historical falsities which can arise from losing the one-to-one relationship between constituency nmae and article title.  I realy hope that we never go anywhere near that.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * For clarity on the last point, I'm not at all suggesting we write in the Eoghan Murphy article that he represented Dublin Bay South from 2011, but that if it were one article, it would include Dublin South-East in brackets unlinked, and that being in the same article, it's clear to anyone coming in to Dublin Bay South from his article that one constituency was a near-continuation of the other. For comparison, Murphy's ministerial office is titled Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, but someone clicking on that link would get to Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. For Heather Humphreys, we give each of the separate ministerial titles in her page of Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, even though they each link to the same page.
 * [Kerry tangent: I don't see enough for a full two-constituency split, without substantial transfers from other counties (I could be wrong, this is my recollection from the time of the submissions), so I am anticipating outrage as the Beara Peninsula is all contained within Cork South-West!]
 * On maps, they are difficult to source. I've done my best to find what's available on Oireachtas Library Digital Collections, but to limited avail. There are admittedly blurry maps for the 1918 constituencies from the 1917 boundary report, I'm stumped with the first part of our own legislative history of constituencies. Dublin Historic Maps has constituencies maps for Dublin up to 1969 and also Dublin ward and DED boundaries; that is limited to Dublin though. The owner of that site is part of the OpenStreetMap community, which has some constituency maps. I think most of its most recent ones are actually the 2016–2020 boundaries, rather than the very most recent ones. It does have one for Dublin Townships, which I've added to that page. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 06:55, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks again, @Iveagh Gardens. I just did what I should have done much earlier in our discussions, i.e. compared the electorate totals:
 * Dublin South-East 2001: Electorate = 58,217
 * Dublin Bay South 2016 : Electorate = 73,066
 * That's a 25% increase, which is well-beyond being a minor change. If it wasn't for population growth in the rest of the country, it would have given DBS 5 seats instead of DSE's 4 seats.
 * Some of that 25% increase will be due an increased density of housing, esp in the South Docks area, but a significant chunk of the increase must be due to the addition of Terenure and Harold's Cross. Such a big change seems to me to be a big dent in the argument for continuity.
 * Well done finding the Dublin Townships map. That's a helpful addition.
 * The comparison with Govt Departments is weaker than it first seems. The Depts are knitting jelly on steroids, as the many dozens of functional units of the civil service are combined in an endlessly changing set of permutations. (This is common to many countries; when I was a lobbyist in London, I worked for five years with the same team of civil servants, but in that time they were shuffled between five govt departments, and reported to many more teams of ministers. There was often not even a chage of phone number, even tho there were at least four moves between buildings, and each building had its own amusingly different policy on biscuits for meetings. It became a standing joke that with each change they would first give me a business card on which they crossed out the name of the old Department, and wrote in the name of the new one. In a few weeks, they'd give me their new printed cards. Repeat a year or so later.).
 * I think it's was @Spleodrach's good work which drew my attention to the weirdness of the legal basis of Irish Govt Departments. AFAICR (and pls correct) any errors, the last new Department to be created was back in 1977, when the Department of Economic Planning and Development was created for Martin O'Donoghue. Through 4½ decades of changes (see the list), that same legal department is now -- wait for it -- the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. The Economic Planning functions were removed entirely within three years of the Dept's creation, and relaced initially with energy. I think we can safely assume that not only is there zero commonality of function between the 1977 Dept and the 2023 Dept, but that there was also zero commonality of function between the 1977 Dept and the 1980 Dept.
 * By contrast, the constituencies are legally very straightforward. Each round of constuencies is enacted by an Electoral (Amendment) Act, which is usally a simple standalone Act that lists the constituencies and defines their boundaries. As far as I can recall, each Act makes to distinctio between A) a constituency name that was used before and B) a new or revived name. Each new list makes no reference at all the old list, other than to repeal the previous Act. See e.g. the 2017 Act at https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2017/act/39/ or the 1995 Act at https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1995/act/21/
 * So if we were being legally purist, we woud treat each new Electoral (Amendment) Act as creating a wholly new set of constutuencies. That would usually mean that in the last 5 decades, each constituency would cover only one or two elections with the exception of the 1981/82 set of three general elections wwithin 18 months.
 * Mercifully, both the academic psephologists and the political journalists don't do that; they treat constituencies with the same name as being a continuation. Since 2006, en.wp has followed the reliable secondary sources (per WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NOR), and done the same with Irish and British constituencies.
 * That spares us the horror of the legal purist route leading us to have e.g. Dublin West (Dáil constituency) being a disambiguation page for:
 * Dublin West, 1981–1987 (Dáil constituency)
 * Dublin West, 1987–1992 (Dáil constituency)
 * Dublin West, 1992–1997 (Dáil constituency)
 * Dublin West, 1997–2002 (Dáil constituency)
 * Dublin West, 2002–2007 (Dáil constituency)
 * Dublin West, 2007–2011 (Dáil constituency)
 * Dublin West, 2011–2016 (Dáil constituency)
 * Dublin West, 2016–present (Dáil constituency)
 * In summary: the reliable secondary sources lead us to consolidate under a shared name, as we have done. They do not support consolidation of constituencies with different names.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 13:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * To ensure we're properly comparing like with like, to avoid the unknown combination of general increase and addition, we should compare the figures from the same dataset. The 2012 Report gives the 2011 population figures for the existing constituencies at p. 84, and proposed constituencies at p. 65:
 * Dublin South-East 2011: Population = 103,833
 * Dublin Bay South 2011: Population = 116,396
 * This is a more modest increase of 12% from the additional 5 Kimmage/Terenure electoral divisions. Now, I'd have to acknowledge that both of us taking out our calculators to assess this is veering on WP:OR! I'd come back to the report using the term "rename", so it's not simply my own assessment that there's a continuity. There's a subtle distinction between the use of primary sources and original research, and I'd argue we're just about on the right side of it, and that it is helpful for the reasons given above. I can see that you're not with me, but I did think it worthwhile to have the population analysis on record here for the posterity of this discussion.
 * The most recent new department was actually the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science! There have been a few recent creations, Department of Rural and Community Development (2017) and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (2011), each of which required a fresh Act amending the Ministers and Secretaries Acts. I had actually done a bit of work tracing each of these, e.g. at Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, to take another Ship of Theseus example. It was after doing a bit of work on all of those that I found the history of constituencies as another good project.
 * However, I do acknowledge the legal distinction here: however different the departments have ended up, there is a formal legal chain, with a succession of orders made under section 6 (1) of the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act 1939 maintaining the link between changes in name and transfers of functions. Whereas, as you say, each new set of constituencies replaces all constituencies with an entire new schedule, so that even though the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1983 made only two minor changes affecting four constituencies, there was an entire new schedule, defining the constituencies afresh.
 * A lot of where my disagreement comes to is that once do we acknowledge that legally every new set of constituencies is distinct with each new electoral act, but that we group them together for simplicity and clarity, grouping changes in names together is one further small step for simplicity and clarity. However, I have found value in the discussion, I always do when there's meaningful engagement, even if falling on the unsuccessful side of a proposal to find a new consensus. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 16:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks again, @Iveagh Gardens. I too have found this valuable as well as enjoyable. It has done me good to have such scrupulously honest and well-informed challenges to my own thinking, and to be prompted to take time to review all the issues. (Back in 2006 a lot of Wikipedia was like this; I recall many lengthy discussions with lots of editors bringing to the table a lot of directly topical experience and scholarship, and applying rigorously critical thinking.  That seminar vibe was a huge contrast to a lot of what I encounter nowadays, where even pointing to the plain English meaning of words is shouted down as "uncivil").
 * I have been surprised to find that my support for one-to-one has become significantly stronger. I don't query the diligence of  your research, and it has been hugely informative. But for me the crucial point is that per WP:Verifiability, we should "Base articles largely on reliable secondary sources. While primary sources are appropriate in some cases, relying on them can be problematic".
 * Analysing primary sources with you has been stimulating and educational. It has helped to restore some of my very dented faith in Wikipedia. I can't thank you enough for that.
 * In the end, it seems to me that the crucial issues here are that:
 * unless I have missed something huge, those reliable secondary sources point almost entirely to maintaining the one-to-one relationship between constituency name and article.
 * If were to strictly follow the primary sources, then statute law would take precedence over recommendations to ministers, because these law set out with unusual clarity what actually happened. That would take us in the opposite direction to what you want: it points us to a system of one name to many articles.
 * I hadn't realised that you had also done so much of the work on the departments. Thanks again for that wonderful set of contributions.  It's a helpful reminder of how a good Wikipedia article can show even wonks how our assumptions can be a long way from the reality.
 * I think we have covered a lot of ground, but remain in disagreement. Thoroughly amicable disagreement, but still disagreement. Is that right?   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * To respond to your last query, I think so!
 * I am sensitive to the WP:OR or WP:SYNTH, it's something I generally try to edit out of other articles if I notice them. There certainly are some areas of Irish history and politics where they've been added which are inappropriate for an encyclopedia coming from a NPOV, or have got facts wrong, such as calculating dates for the length of a Dáil, so I agree that we need to be vigilant in that regard.
 * I know what you mean about how Wikipedia seems to have changed in its culture. While I did edit back then, it was not as much as I do now, and I didn't get involved in any of the editorial discussions. But I do think there can sometimes be a sense of stasis or lack of discussion about how it might develop, with a certain rigidity, set since that time.
 * I'm reasonably happy to bring this conversation to a close, and in a day or two (in case the conversation stimulates thoughts from other editors in the mean time) declare that there was either no consensus, or consensus not to move. I look forward to more discussions with you, as we learn from each other in this continuing mission. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 07:28, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Somehow I completely missed this until now! FWIW, I would agree with the current consensus and wouldn't favour moves/merges. I also have a related issue I want to raise, but I'll do that in a new section! Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 10:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I've read the whole discussion and I'm sympathetic to what Iveagh Gardens says but think it would be the wrong approach. When I created articles on the short-lived 1977 creations like Dublin Artane (Dáil constituency) I did consider the alternative route of just including them in existing articles but I thought that was taking things into original research territory. Also, from a global point of view it would raise a consistency issue. Where US constituencies, for example, are designated simply by numbers but cover totally different areas, the logic of choosing that route would mean we'd have to have separate articles for each incarnation, which is not current practice. There are also examples like The Hartlepools (UK Parliament constituency) and Hartlepool (UK Parliament constituency), which cover an almost identical area but have separate articles. Accordingly, I'd favour maintaining the status quo of articles matching the constituency name. Valenciano (talk) 14:00, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to consider this discussion closed. But while there are some standards of naming conventions for Wikipedia as a whole, this is one of those things that properly varies by jurisdiction, depending on the various legal bases and secondary sources. For example, the constituency pages in Germany do include name variations, e.g. Prignitz – Ostprignitz-Ruppin – Havelland I, with a substantial change in 2002. But I wouldn't presume to get into a debate about the naming of German constituencies! (Nor did I refer to them, what with WP:OTHERTHINGS not being an argument!)
 * Incidentally, well done on creating the original pages for some of those like Dublin Artane! They are among many articles that form the basis of the great work on Irish political history that exists here. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 20:01, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, the overriding principle per the policy WP:AT is to follow the reliable secondary sources, and not apply WP:OR or WP:SYN.
 * For Dáil constituencies, I am satisfied that the reliable secondary sources (both scholarly and news media) overwhelmingly use the legal name of Dáil constituencies.
 * I am not aware of any exceptions to this consistency other than for
 * the case of Laois–Offaly (Dáil constituency), was initially named with the pre-independence county names as "King's County–Queen's County". Then the spelling of the first county's name has mutated from Leix to Laoighis to Laois.
 * Some standardisation of whether compass points appears before or after the city or county mame.
 * I suggest that we should now update MOS:IMOS with a new section "Dáil constituencies", to reflect what seems to be a consensus.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:37, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I suggest that we should now update MOS:IMOS with a new section "Dáil constituencies", to reflect what seems to be a consensus.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:37, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Geography of Ireland FAR
I have nominated Geography of Ireland for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 23:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Who can help out with this? Let's not lose another Irish featured article. Issues are stated to be uncited passages and the need to update the information (like climate data and the "Oil, natural gas, renewables and minerals" section). ww2censor (talk) 21:47, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm back after a few days away, and happy to try to help preserve this. SeoR (talk) 00:47, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Ongoing RfC: Choosing the infobox photo for "Sinéad O'Connor"
In the wake of O'Connor's death, a discussion is underway in the talk page as to the photo that should be used for her article! They are:

Please vote here!

Holidayruin (talk) 02:15, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Credibility bot
As this is a highly active WikiProject, I would like to introduce you to Credibility bot. This is a bot that makes it easier to track source usage across articles through automated reports and alerts. We piloted this approach at Vaccine safety and we want to offer it to any subject area or domain. We need your support to demonstrate demand for this toolkit. If you have a desire for this functionality, or would like to leave other feedback, please endorse the tool or comment at WP:CREDBOT. Thanks! Harej (talk) 17:32, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

IMOS COUNTIES cleanup
Input sought on a possible big cleanup of a widespread minor issue: breaches of MOS:IMOS COUNTIES.

For the last ~7 weeks, I have been working intensively on categorising Irish biographical articles. So far, I have made tens of thousands of edits in that ongoing task. (That's by way of background. If anyone wants to discuss that work, I'd be very happy to do so, but please start a separate thread).

Along the way, I have been mildly irritated to find that a significant minority of those pages use the abbreviated form of the word "County", e.g. "Co. Offaly" instead of "County Offaly". Sometimes it's unlinked, but more often it's linked, usually in the piped form e.g., or sometimes using a redirect such as.

This is deprecated by MOS:IMOS COUNTIES, for good reason. It is unclear to many readers, and the abbreviation saves only 3 chararacters in the rendered text. The loss of clarity hugely outweighs the tiny gain. And when the piped form is used, it adds unhelpful verbosity to the wikitext: adds 14 chararacters to display Co. Fermanagh instead of the clearer County Fermanagh.

(Please note that I do not mean any reproach to the editors who added these abbreviations. I AGF that they were unaware of MOS:IMOS COUNTIES, and I can see that in many cases the sources use the abbreviated form).

After a few manual fixes (e.g. ) I eventually thought that manual cleanup woukd be tediously slow, but maybe I could tackle this at scale using WP:AWB. Some tests showed that my regex was basically sound, at least in simple cases such as this one which I actually saved.

So I made some lists using WP:Petscan: All articles tagged with WikiProject Ireland, WikiProject Northern Ireland, WikiProject Gaelic games; all articles which link to any of the 32 traditional counties, whether as "County Foo", "Co. Foo" or "Co Foo"; all categories for Irish people by place or by ocupation.

That gave me a list of 94,695 unique article titles. For technical reasons, I used a crude filter as a first pass. That left me with a list of 6,111 articles which use "Co. Foo" or "Co Foo" somewhere in the wikitext.

This 6.5% hit rate is a lot higher than I had expected. (I had reassured myself that I had probably been encontering unrepresentative clusters, so I hoped for <1% in a wider trawl).

However, it includes a lot of false positives, e.g. where the "Co. Foo" abbreviation is used
 * 1) in quoted text, whether an inline quote or a blockquote or a quote in a ref, or
 * 2) inside   tags, usually as the title of the cited work, or
 * 3) in one of the appendices, e.g. a list of works, or of sources

Types 2 and 3 are easy to code for. My next rounds of filtering will skip them, and hopefully make a big reduction in the numbers. (I don't yet have an estimate of how big).

The quotes are hard to reliably detect in software, so I will just have to watch for them as I review each edit.

The feedback I am looking for is where my approach is sound. There may be concerns in principle, and if so, I'd like to hear them. But my main uncertainty is whether I am right in my selection of which uses of the "Co. Foo" abbreviation to replace. My overall principle is that MOS:IMOS COUNTIES should be applied only to the text originated by Wikpedia editors, whether that's in body text or an infobox. How does that sound? Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Some examples:

Hope this clarifies what I intend. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:31, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Notifications : I have notified WikiProject Northern Ireland, and WikiProject Gaelicgames. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:31, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I had no idea it was quite this bad. As the original proposer of what eventually became MOS:IMOS COUNTIES I do clean them up when I come across them, and I agree with your proposal. Basically anything that isn't a direct quote (titles of referenced articles would be a direct quote) should be cleaned up to state County rather than "Co." or "co". Canterbury Tail talk 21:27, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware who had proposed MOS:IMOS COUNTIES, @Canterbury Tail, but thanks for initiating it. It was a useful addition.
 * Until a few weeks ago, I too had no idea that it was this bad, and even i didn't get the full picture until i did my scan, tho i stress that my initial tally is definitely an overestimate. The final number of pages to be cleaned up will definitely be lower, but I dunno whether it will be 20% of that 6,111, or 80%. I will post updated numbers when I have them.
 * Your phrase anything that isn't a direct quote is a good summary of my understanding of the suitable scope of cleanup.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:46, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for proposing this, I completely support the idea and the above table and scope looks good. I fixed (what's now) a small number of these myself a couple of months ago, cases where a redirect of the form "Co. Foo" was being used. A look at "What links here" for any of those redirects already gives many results. Then there's the unlinked usage.
 * The only other case I can think of right now might be of the form e.g. "Cos. Wicklow and Wexford", but I doubt there are many of those compared with the singular usage. And after cleanup, I wonder if the "Co. Foo" redirects might be better deleted, as someone entering new content, with linked "Co. Foo", could just see the resulting blue link as "valid". Declangi (talk) 05:54, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @Declangi
 * My regex includes unlinked usages, so they will fixed in my edits.
 * I see where you are coming from with respect to the redirects, but actually they are a help to cleanp, because they are so easily detected.
 * A WP:Petscan search for links to those redirects was a crucial part of my list-making: https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=25362499 finds 532 such links. I hope that my edits will reduce the tally to zero, but it may be worth re-running that search periodically find any more links to the redirects.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 11:06, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * A WP:Petscan search for links to those redirects was a crucial part of my list-making: https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=25362499 finds 532 such links. I hope that my edits will reduce the tally to zero, but it may be worth re-running that search periodically find any more links to the redirects.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 11:06, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Intention to proceed. It is now almost five days since I posted this proposal, and both the responses support both the principle and the approach. (Thanks, .)
 * So I intended late today to proceed to start making the edits, unless there is an objection before then.
 * My second pass through the list skipped pages where the "Co. Foo" is inside  tags, leaving me with 2,559 articles (down from 6,111 articles on the first pass).
 * My third pass will also automatically skip articles where "Co. Foo" is in the appendices (sources, lists of works, discographies, etc)
 * My fourth pass, in which I will actually do the edits, will include me manually checking each edit to enure that I skip quoted text, and skip any other valid uses which my regexes have not caught.  I will of course take care, but being human I may make some errors in the course of what will probably be more than 1,000 edits, maybe more than 2,000. Please feel free to promptly revert any errors. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 10:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * My third pass removed from my list any articles where "Co. Foo" is written only in one of the article's standard appendices (i.e. MOS:FOOTERS). That left a new tally of 2,260 articles, which a bit higher than my guess of ~1,500.
 * I will now proceed to apply the changes to those 2,260 articles, skipping articles where the "Co. Foo" is only in a quote. I have set AWB to use an edit summary which links both to IMOS and to this discussion: see e.g. this first trial edit, which uses my standard edit summary for this run: MOS:IMOS COUNTIES fixes, per discussion at WT:IRELAND.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:11, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Progress on IMOS COUNTIES cleanup
I have now processed the first 102 articles on my list of 2,260. As usual with a big task like this, most of the cases are straightforward, but there are unforeseen issues which it might be useful to note. Of those 102 articles, I did "Co. Foo" → "County Foo" edits on 93 of them, (see the contribs list)

Issues: Does it refer to "Queen's County" (now County Laois), which is nowhere near Cork? Or is it a weird way of saying "Queenstown" (now Cobh), in County Cork? Or a club called "Queen's", somewhere in County Cork? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 18:24, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) A big majority of cases were straightforward, e.g. ,
 * 2) In several cases, the "Co. Foo" was part of an image filename. I spotted most of these and skipped them, but failed to spot two which I corrected, and two more  which was kindly reverted promptly by @KylieTastic.  Thanks, KylieTastic; I will take more care to identify those.
 * 3) there were a lot of case where my edit showed underlinking (e.g., , ). In my experience of targeted jobs like this, I have found that it is much safer to stay focused on the narrow task in hand, and not go down the rabbit hole of fixing other the other issues on a page ... so I leave the underlinking to someone else.
 * 4)  was to infobox which lists  . Technically correct, 'cos in 1831 Ireland was indeed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; but it feels a bit OTT to me. Does IMOS say anything on this?
 * 5) left us with , 'cos my AWB job isn't set op to handle Irish-language county names.  Apart from the disparity of one county name being in English and the other in Irish. I thought that in the English-language Wikipedia we use the the English-language county names.  What does IMOS say?
 * 6) Some weird piped links, e.g. :  . Whaaaaaat?
 * 7) I skipped 1890 Home Nations Championship and 1890 Home Nations Championship, both of which mention  . I dunno what that means.
 * FYI:
 * 4. Per MOS:IMOS BIOPLACE, people born anywhere in Ireland before 1922 should just have "Ireland", and it should not be linked. I've fixed that.
 * 5. IMOS has nothing to say specifically about in-article links to Irish names, but I can't see any good reason for using Irish names here. I've changed it to just "Kilcar, County Donegal".
 * 6. Donaghmore/Ashbourne was the venue for the final. Other venues in the table had venues pipelinked to counties, but without the word "County". I've removed the word "County" from Meath as well.
 * 7. University College Cork R.F.C. was originally called "Queen’s College Cork". It is called "Queen's, County Cork" to distinguish it from Queen's, Belfast. I have fixed that in both the 1890 and 1891 article.
 * Scolaire (talk) 15:30, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, bless you, @Scolaire. That's all very helpful.
 * Somehow I never considered the possibility of of "Queen’s College Cork" being abbreviated as "Queen’s Co. Cork".  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:35, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Slight tangent: linking to disambiguated town names

 * This is somewhat related, but not a direct violation of WP:IMOS. I can't offhand think of an example, but I'm fairly sure I saw one when I was adding census links, and do see from time to time, that a town name with a county for disambiguation in the article title ends up not having the county separately linked. e.g. Ballina, County Mayo instead of Ballina, County Mayo . Perhaps not relevant to this discussion, but something one thought leads to another! Iveagh Gardens (talk) 20:09, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Iveagh Gardens: I think that there is a good case for the single link format (e.g.  ):
 * simpler markup
 * the reader gets only one link, which is the most directly relevant.
 * By contrast,  feels in most cases like overlinking.
 * However, I deplore omission of the county, as in . iif it's appropriate to include the country name, then the county should not be removed.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:47, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That makes sense, we don't always need separate links! This is a case where the natural disambiguation is serving a dual function. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 15:51, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

IMOS COUNTIES cleanup finished
This morning, I finally finished this job. I estimate that I did MOS:IMOS COUNTIES fixes to about 1,900 pages.

The precise tally is hard to track, because: a) some pages were fixed by browser edits, rather than using AWB; and b) about 25–35 edits were reverted as false positives, where I erroneously changed the usage in a quote or in the name of an image file. Many thanks to the editors who spotted my errors, and kindly reverted them.

Along the way, I probably wrongly skipped a few pages which should have been fixed, but I am confident that such errors were also in the 1–2% range.

Anyway, the result is a big dent in the number of pages with "Co. Foo" or "Co Foo" displayed anywhere other than in quotes or appendices (refs, works, sources etc). I hope that this will also help to avoid future editors using the abbreviation after seeing it used in elsewhere on Wikipedia, and thinking that it is OK.

This also marks the last non-trivial task on Wikipedia which I undertake as I semi-retire from Wikipedia after 17 years. Many thanks to all the woderful Irish editors with whom I have enjoyed collaborating over the years. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:40, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Effin
Hello, anybody hanging around willing to "dig" in Tim Hannan, using the pseudonym Rambling Thady? Since only people with an article should be mentionned, and looking for some information on Tim Hannan, I came across : ...and at school he'd tell us the stories he had heard the night before from Jim Connolly ; one of these was the story of Seadna in English...   Thank you so much for your time. Lotje (talk) 05:57, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

TD and MEP articles and the 's-par' template
Prompted by the discussion above on organisation of constituency articles, can we also look at the template used in articles for TDs or  people who were TDs. (ACtually, this also applies to MEPs and councillors!)

We have multi-seat constituencies, yet many politicians' biographical articles, using the parliamentary succession template, suggest that Bob replaced Alice, as if there was only one seat up for grabs, or that Ted inherited the Whatever Party seat from Alice. Technically, this might be the case where there was a by-election (especially given the feudal nature of Irish politics!), but it is the exception rather than the rule.

Usually, there are three, four or five TDs, who either get re-elected or who are replaced, individually. It is not correct to do as we're doing on - for example - the Michael Healy-Rae, Dermot Ahern, Catherine Murphy (politician) or Simon Coveney articles (where there wasn't a by-election). We should instead be doing what's on the articles for, e.g., Eamon Ryan, Jim O'Callaghan or Eoghan Murphy articles.

I am not in any way well versed in template creation or editing. Would this be best achieved by amending the s-par template? Or coming up with an entirely new template, for Irish Dáil, European and council elections? Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 14:31, 10 July 2023 (UTC)


 * @Bastun, I agree that it is wrong to use the templates to pretend that there was an office of "FooParty TD for Somewhere". Sadly, there's a lot of articles using that, so thank you for challenging it.
 * However, existing templates can be used for multi-seat constituencies, as was the norm for county seats pre-1885. I applied it to most of the Dublin South-East TDs, which you found and linked above. See also e.g. Eoin Ryan Jnr.
 * I didn't perevere beyond Dublin South-East, 'cos it's slow work and I had other things to be doing.
 * But since then i have occasionally pondered wheter there is an easier way, and the idea I keep coming back to is to take the existing table of the TDs from the constituency article, and make it into an auto-collapsing template. Quick, easy, and much more informative than the succession box.  The templates which make those tables were built by me donkeys years ago, and all the constituencies have an uptodate list: see e.g. Dublin South-East (Dáil constituency).
 * I'll rustle up a example to show what I mean.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Note that it is still a quick-and-dirty demo; the formatting is a bit wonky 'cos I haven't entirely figured out how make this table fit elganty into Navbox. But if the idea gains approval, the presentation can be polished. what do you think? - Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Demo done. See Dublin South-East TDs, and see it in use on Alexis FitzGerald Jnr.
 * I strongly agree that there's an issue here, for all the reasons stated by above. It's one I've edited somewhat in some articles (at least the suggestion that there's such as an office as Party TD for Constituency), only as I've been editing other matters, to alter office of Party TD for Constituency to TD for Constituency   (Party), e.g. here for Helen Keogh. However, even that is unsatisfactory, as they're not one-for-one in multi-seat constituencies
 * I'd favour the approach we currently have in Eoin Ryan, referred to by BHG, of an expanded succession box. As referred to, it's what we use for pre-1922 constituencies, so there's a nice chain in format there going back historically. I also think that rather than duplicating the TD list from the constituency pages, thereby adding links to all TDs for a given constituency, those which are most relevant are those who were there before, during and after a given TD's time in the Dáil. Maintaining the succession box format also have advantages of general consistency with the tables readers are accustomed to see at the end of a page.
 * As BHG mentions, any of these are slow work, and we have only so many things to be doing at a time, but I'd be happy to assist with these. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 16:24, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that the fixes should be simple, once I can figure out how to do them, which may be slow. I will report back when there is progress. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:16, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed, it's painful, tedious work, and the results (for me, at least) never look well. I've edited individual boxes when I've across them (but only sometimes), and I see a good number of current TDs don't have any box at all. BHG, that template you've done up looks quite well. I don't know if there's an appetite to change "faulty" templates in the short term, but if we can use something like BHG's template from the next general election, that'd be good progress. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 16:44, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The advantage to the templates is that they're easy to add, and we could add them to each biographical article more quickly than editing succession boxes. That said, my preference from a visual point of view would still for the extended succession box . Iveagh Gardens (talk) 16:55, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't have a strong preference for either. BHG template looks a bit ropey at the moment, but maybe they can improve its display, and it could work, and it would be alot less editing. From a pedantic point of view, it should be an extended succession box with all before, during and after TDs. That as has been mentioned it alot of tedious work. I was amused by Bastun's comment that "a good number of current TDs don't have any box at all". This is because I was the one adding them to TDs articles for years. Then a few years ago, there was a debate about moving from 1-to-1 succession to multiple succession. I stopped adding them until the debate ended but there was no conclusive outcome that I recall, so I never added anymore of them. If ye decide to go for the extended display, then I regret to inform you all that I will not be helping out to edit them, as this is way too tedious for me! Michael McDowell (politician) is a good example of the amount of work needed when a TD loses/regains their seat multiple times. Also McDowell table is incomplete as it should contain the years of service for all before, during and after TDs. Spleodrach (talk) 17:44, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that this may be another discussion where @Iveagh Gardens and I enjoy amicably disagreeing
 * Making the template Dublin South-East TDs was quick and easy. Once the formatting issues are resolved, I could make the rest of the set within an hour, and apply the templates within a few more hours, using WP:AWB. All done by bedtime.
 * By contrast, making succession boxes for multi-seat constituencies is a glacially slow task. I have done thousands over the years, and have a few tricks up my sleeve, but even so it's not uncommon to find that it takes 10 minutes per article. For someone who has represented mutiple multi-seaters, 20 minutes person is not enough.
 * And the worst I was doing were 4-seaters. Try making the succession box for Margaret Collins-O'Driscoll (MCOD), the 1923–1933 TD for the 9-seater Dublin City North (DCiN). That box would have to link MCOD to 17 other TDs, listing years for each TD, and dealing with fact that some servd for non-consecutive terms ... which is a huge clerical task.
 * Much as I like succession boxes, MCOD's box would be unwieldy. And it would take several full days just to do the boxes for those 18 DCiN TDs, some of whom may also have held other seats. I eventually decided that was not how I wanted to spend my life, and in the 7 years since I did DSE boxes, few other editors have taken up the task. I empathise with @ leaving it be.
 * Unless IG devotes the rest of this year to full time box-making, it's gonna be decades before the job is complete. And while I am sure that IG would do the job very well, I would be sad to see so much of IG's time devoted to this minor task, when I know that there is a long list of much more important tasks which are unlikely to be tackled with 100% accuracy by anyone without IG's rare talents.
 * Templates like Dublin South-East TDs can give us an imperfect remedy within days, without prejudice to any better soution. I think I should be able to implement it so that the constituency article and the navbox use a common template, which would mean that after each election, only one template needs to be updated.
 * So ... what say you? Should I work on resolving the formatting issues with Dublin South-East TDs, with a view to then creating the rest of the set when we are happy with the layout?   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:51, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi BHG, yes I think you should work on the template formatting issues, then we can see what it looks like properly. This would be the best solution as I think nobody (including you and I as stated) will take up the arduous task of editing the succession boxes. Spleodrach (talk) 17:56, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, since at least one other editor think's it's worth trying, I will give it a go.
 * After reviewing the conversation, where I think all of us have in some way tried to do remedy this through the succession box formula and got so far given the limited hours in any day, I'm going to revise my earlier resistance to the link with the table. I shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and actually achievable, so count me in support of it! I'll assist as time allows. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 20:32, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @Iveagh Gardens. shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good sounds like a wise summary.
 * So far I am quite pleased with how this is coming together. I think that I may have found a few pieces of template and transclusion magic which will allow the navboxes to grab the live TD table directly from the constituency article, and reformat it for the navbox.
 * If this works, then once the framework is in place, the implematation will be very simple and easy to maintain. But, big "if". Fingers crossed.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:19, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Design of sample TD list template
is that better? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:09, 10 July 2023 (UTC) I think that resolves the display issues, but what say you? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * First tweak to Dublin South-East TDs is to remove the horrible blue background: see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Dublin_South-East_TDs&oldid=1164728311
 * Second tweak to Dublin South-East TDs remove the duplicate header: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Dublin_South-East_TDs&oldid=1164733489

A neat solution for TD navboxes
After a lot of jigglig around (and temporarily breaking some constituency articles along the way), I seem to have got an elgant solution to the creation of navboxes for TDs of each consituency. More elegant than I thought possible.

My stretch goals were:
 * 1) No modifications to the constituency articles
 * 2) The navbox should use the TD table from the constituency article, and tweak its format:
 * 3) * strip out the refs
 * 4) * omit the table header
 * 5) There should be a easy-to-use, simple meta-template to create each navbox
 * 6) * Ideally, the meta-template should need no parameters.

I think I have succeeded: the Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox meets all but one of those stretch goals. (It needs one parameter: the name of the constituency).

Here's how it works:

For any given article Foo (Dáil constituency), create a page named Template:Foo (Dáil constituency)/TDs. The contents of that page should be simply

I have made one for Kildare South (Dáil constituency): see Kildare South (Dáil constituency)/TDs, whose content is

Here's its output:

It needs polishing: documentation, better error messages, and categorisation. But those are the easy bit. If y'all like the functionality I'll start polishing.


 * how does this look to you? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:05, 11 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Wow! Nice going, - that looks great! Clear and informative. I'll have a look later on at creating some templates for use on pages that have none and see how easy or hard it is. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 10:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Bastun.
 * To make it even simpler, I have just tweaked it so that it works with
 * That way each it's exactly the same thing to paste into any new navbox.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 10:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Ok, it's not working for me. I've made Dublin Bay North (Dáil constituency)/TDs, which looks fine, but when I paste that template or into Denise Mitchell, I get errors, as you can see here. What am I doing wrong? Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 20:53, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah @Bastun, I am very sorry. You were of course doing nothing wrong. It was entirely my fault: I had screwed up my final implementation of the intensive error-checking. Now fixed.
 * Dublin Bay North (Dáil constituency)/TDs now works as intended, both when viewing the template page and when transcluded into Denise Mitchell.
 * Sorry again for messing you around.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:55, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm very impressed with the coding! It might be the weekend before I can get a chance to properly experiment with this, and to be honest a few weeks before I can do so more extensively, but this is quite neat! Iveagh Gardens (talk) 21:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Ack, not a problem at all! Working fine for me now, too. Just done Dublin Bay North. Will work away on this over the next while. Thanks for your work on this, BHG - it's a very simple and easy to use solution, so much quicker than my previous efforts, which involved manually adding two to four additional TDs to both 'preceded by' and 'succeeded by' elements of the old template. Very much appreciated! Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 22:12, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Many thanks, @Bastun. I am glad you find it useful: that simple-and-easy thing was just what I was aiming for, and I am very pleased how well it is working out. I too have that succession box t-shirt, and it was no fun.
 * DBN is one of the simpler cases that I have identified for these navboxes, but of the hard ones I tried, I am pleased that only the super-wide Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs still has me foxed.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:11, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

TD navboxes: getting there
After a day spent polishing Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox, I think that is now nearly ready for use, but would of course welcome criticisms and/or suggestions.

I have added intensive error-checking (with a tracking category), full documentation, and polished the output. To reduce clutter, the navbox now strips out the table headers, they key of parties, and all refs. The result is a much more compact navbox.

The navboxes created so far are:
 * Kildare South (Dáil constituency)/TDs (my first test)
 * Dublin Bay North (Dáil constituency)/TDs (made by Bastun}}

... and three more to test edge cases
 * Kerry (Dáil constituency)/TDs (now in its third incarnation)
 * Wexford (Dáil constituency)/TDs (a 5-seater which has existed conintually since 1921}}
 * Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs (a 9-seater)

Kerry (Dáil constituency)/TDs is an interesting case because it has had three incarnations, and I was concerned that it might become very bulky. However, after stripping layers of fluff, it is now not bad. I struggled with how to remove the level 3 headers which sat between the tables (and added annoying edit links), but a question at Module talk:String brought prompt help from many thanks to both for guiding me to this fix.

Wexford (Dáil constituency)/TDs is the longest single table we will find on any constituency. It covers 32 general elections and 3 by-elections, making a total of 35 rows. I think it has turned out quite well: it takes up almost two screnfuls on my full-HD laptop display, but that's unavoidable.

The 9-seat Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs is problematic: on my laptop, using the new Vector 2022 skin with its reduced idth for the article, the navbox is far too wide. As of now, I think it would be disruptive to any article (see my test on Margaret Collins-O'Driscoll). I need to figure out how to constrain its width.

And that's it for now. That width issue on Dublin City North is the only remaining item on my to-do list.

If still have any patience left to do more testing, I'd welcome more feedback, esp on unusual cases. No hurry; I won't take this any further until the weekend.

You may have a particular interest in item 3 of Template:Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox about the one-to-one relationship between the name of a constituency and the name of the correspondig Wikipdia article, as wdiscuused above at. It's an unavoidable constraint of this automated approach to building the navboxes, but I don't want you think that I was trying to slip that past you.

Thanks again. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 23:58, 11 July 2023 (UTC)


 * PS Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs threw up an issue which I had foreseen earlier when writing the documentation, in Template:Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox item 2.
 * Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs initially made an empty navbox. It turned out that the article Dublin City North (Dáil constituency) did not have a level 2 header named "TDs", so Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox. In this edit, I changed the level 2 header from "TDs 1923–1937" to "TDs", and all was well.
 * I guess that DCiN will not be the only constituency article where this issues arises.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * First off, a serious hats off to your work, and admiration for your skill in coding, something that requires incredible patience! As far as I can see, the templates don't seem to be working, essentially showing up as empty except for a link back to the constituency itself.
 * Without having tried it at all, I had wondered how it might approach situations where there was more than one incarnation of the same constituency (or same constituency name). There's a small assist possible where a constituency was absent for one election only, such as Laois–Offaly (Dáil constituency), by listing it within the same table, but having a single empty row for the 2016 election.
 * Would a possible solution be to have two templates in use: a default one, where there's a single table, and Template:Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox2, with additional parameters to specify the subsection, e.g. TDs 1923–1937 and TDs since 2016. Arguably, they are such different sets of TDs as to not being closely related as articles. There's also the instance of Dublin South-West (Dáil constituency) where the two incarnations refer to different areas entirely (city vs county).
 * I don't want to suggest another rabbit hole though! I appreciate the amount of work that goes into any of these changes. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 05:11, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Iveagh Gardens: sorry, something very subtle broke and I can't find what. All I know is that the final step of transcluding the "TDs" section is not happening: it just displays a link to the article. Damn.
 * I need sleep now, so I am sorry, but the templates will have to remain broken until I get back to the after a sleep. Then I will also reply properly to the rest of your comments.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 05:26, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Templates are working again. I seem to have encountered an undocumented bug (or maybe "feature"!) in section transclusion, but once I disabled testing whether the section transclusion worked, then it worked. Hey-ho.
 * Now, bed.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 05:41, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I created one at Template:Dublin Ballyfermot (Dáil constituency)/TDs and added it to its 3 members. It is one of those one-off 1977 Dublin constituencies. It was simple to create and use. Well done to BHG, on the complex work in order to make the template work seamlessly. Spleodrach (talk) 16:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you, @Spleodrach! It was a lot of work, but I think that on the simple cases like your Dublin Ballyfermot (Dáil constituency)/TDs and my Kildare South (Dáil constituency)/TDs, it is working well and easily.
 * On the more complex cases, I think we have some hard choices to make about how to live with the limitations of navboxes built with Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox, or to reject it because of those limitations. See my replies below to Iveagh Gardens.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 18:03, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Also Iveagh Garden's comments still need to be addressed; namely constituencies with multiple incarnations, and Dublin South-West which moved to an entirely different area. Spleodrach (talk) 17:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Spleodrach: thanks for drawing my attention to Dublin South-West (Dáil constituency) (DSW), which is a rare example of a constituency whose two inacarnations are in wholly different areas. AFAICFS, there is no overlap at all, and the two are possibly not even adjacent: 1948–1977 DSW was within the city boudaries, but post-1981 DSW has been in the outer reaches of the county.
 * My long reply below to Iveagh Gardens also applies here. In summary, "TD for Foo constituency" is a job title which applies in many cases to a constituency whose boundaries have varied hugely over time. DSW may be the most extreme example, but there are other examples such as 1977-81 Sligo–Leitrim, one of the many cases where a radical boundary shift was not preceded by a gap.
 * Maybe DSW is not suitable for a single navbox, but before deciding on his extreme case, I think we should consider the wider picture. If we get too purist here, then neither succession boxes nor navboxes are really usable for TDs in most of the post-1961 unstable constituencies. Does that help readers? Wouldn't it better to consider how best to explain to readers that post-1961 Irish constituencies change at nearly every election, sometimes radically, making the concept of succession inherently fuzzy?
 * An idea: Could the DSW issue be resolved by adding a short note to top of the section Dublin South-West (Dáil constituency), saying somthing like "Note that the boundaries of DSW from 1981 nwards share no common territory with the pre-1977 boudaries". That would add clarity to the article, and the note would be transcluded into the navbox. So we could use a Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox-based navbox, with that warning in it. I will rustle up a demnostration.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:11, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Spleodrach: I made this edit to ad the note to Dublin South-West (Dáil constituency), and the created I Dublin South-West (Dáil constituency)/TDs.
 * The note automatically appears in the navbox.
 * (This is of course just a demonstration. I won't deploy the navbox unless there is a consensus that it is a good enough solution.)
 * what do you two think of this hack?  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, @Iveagh Gardens, I now I can write a proper reply.
 * First, many thanks for your kind words about my template-making. Much appreciated. This Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox has required me to learn new skills, which I have enjoyed.
 * As to constituencies with two or more distinct periods of existence, it seems to me to be unwise to introduce arbitrary and/or subjective assessments as a basis for treating some iterruptions differently from others. That seems to me to be a recipe for uresolvable disputes, as editors debate whether to assess by the number of years or the number of elections, and debate how many years or how many elections. That seems to me to be both a bad use of editor's time, and unsolvable debates unlikely to help maintain a colaborative atmosphere.
 * Instead, I think to avoid unncessary headaches we should treat all gaps in the same way. The current system of using level 3 subheads to separate different periods is as used e.g. in UK constituency articles. It is helpful for navigation, because the subheads appear in the Table of contents (see e.g. Kerry (Dáil constituency)). Merging the tables would lose that important navigational aid, and I see little gain.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:49, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * On to constituencies with big gaps, again in reply to @. (I am making this a separate post to facilitate threaded discussion.)
 * Take e.g. Kerry (Dáil constituency) with its subsections TDs 1923–1937 and TDs since 2016 where IG writes Arguably, they are such different sets of TDs as to not being closely related as articles.
 * Again, I think that this would introduce avoidable issues of subjective and/or abitrary criteria, as we debate how big a gap requires a separation. It also seems to me to oversimplify the question of commonality, by overlooking the many major changes in constituencies even without a gap. Taking Sligo–Leitrim again, the 1977–1981 boundaries omitted nearly all of County Leitrim, which is arguably as radical a distinction as a long interlude.
 * The constituency articles' "TDs" sections list the people who share one common atribute: that they were elected to Dáil Éireann for a constituency of the same name: e.g. Bernard Maguire, Ray MacSharry, James Gallagher and Frank Feighan all the held the office of "TD for Sligo–Leitrim". But the nature of "Sligo–Leitrim" varied radically across the careers of those four TDs: different boundaries, difft numbers of seats in the consituency. However, the biggest difference in boundaries is not bewteen Sligo–Leitrim's 2002–2007 bounadries and those of its 2016 re-creation; those two sets of boundaries had much more in common with each other than either did with the Tullymandered 1977–1981 boundaries.
 * Splitting navboxes on the basis of an interlude seems to me to risk undue weight to one aspect of difference. I don't see any major difference between early and current Sligo–Leitrim which doesn't also apply to a constituency whose existence was unbroken, e.g. Wicklow (Dáil constituency), which since its 1923 creation has often not been contiguous with County Wicklow.
 * There is of course a usablility case for splitting larger navboxes, to keep them on one screen. But doing so raises a few problems for readers: even if we indicate that the consituency had other periods of existence and provide links to the other relevant navboxes, it rarely provides good usability. See e.g. 1983 Bermondsey by-election, where there is a navbox for Westminster by-elections in that 1979&dash;1983 Parliament. it includes link the next and previous navboxes, but following those links take the reader not to another article, but to a template page which is wrapped in tech info designed for editors: see e.g. Template:By-elections to the 49th UK Parliament, where the reader is faced with stuff aabout "Initial visibility", to which they should never be exposed (unless they decide to take up editing).
 * That huge set of many hundreds of UK by-elections had to be split, and with available wiki-technology, the current setup is probably the least-worst way of doing it without huge programming effort. But I would be wary of emulating it, unless we really have to.
 * On a technical level, implementing the split would be very difficult within the framework of these automated navboxes. It would take a lot of work to implement, and it would be fragile: e.g. if Kerry (Dáil constituency) is split at the next general election, the current sub-section Kerry (Dáil constituency) should be renamed to "TDs 2016&dash;2025". That would break the metatemplate's recognition of the section not only in the post-2016-Kerry-navbox, but also the links to it from the other-period-Kerry-navboxes.  I doodled how to do it, and concuded that it would be a nightmare to code for.
 * I would agree that the technology tail shouldn't wag the editorial dog; we should prioritise what's best for readers rather than for template-makers. But I am not persuaded that separate navboxes would be a clear gain for readers, and also I think that making separate templates within this framework would be hard to achieve and appalling to mainatain. So it seeems to me that the editorial choices need to be made between the techically viable options, which as I see it are:
 * Live with concerns about multiple episodes in one article, as an imperfection outweighed by convenience
 * Treat the flaws as too great, and dont use Constituency TDs navbox on some aticles
 * Dump the whole Constituency TDs navbox scheme entirely 'cos it doesn't work in all cases.
 * My strong pref is for option 1, with option 2 as a fallback. But I don't see other options.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:54, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * My suggestion about separate navigational boxes wasn't as such because of the great difference between them, although the significant gap in the case of Kerry was more the extreme case. I was thinking of them as substitutes for the succession boxes, where for a given TD, we list who was there before and after. However, maybe I'm thinking about this project the wrong way; they're not mere substitutes for what's there are present, but a collapsible link to all who shared such an office.
 * Now that you present it as such, I could also imagine it breaking if there were a change in the future, and you or one of us happened not to be editing at that time. Or depending on when someone made the change, or if they made a formatting change. It shouldn't be that fragile! So 1 seems good, with an awareness that there may be some articles out there that don't fit the model. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 04:52, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, @Iveagh Gardens. There are mnay difft ways of looking at this. I used to have a strong pref for successsion boxes over navboxes 'cos of the reasons you assert: they focus on the immediate links.  It took me a while to get head around  the relative merits and demerits of the two modes.
 * There is some fragility inherent in the basic logic of Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox; if some changes the "TDs" heading to anything else, the navbox dies. But I think that's not too hard to maintain, and I am workin on how to track it. Other changes may uglify the navbox, but won't break it, and the 14-year stability of the Irish TD table begin series is a good omen.
 * Let's keep looking out for problem areas. I'll try to fix anything I can (e.g. I have a nearly-done remedy for the 9-seaters at Template:Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs/sandbox2, but if we find unresolvable issues, we should document them.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 06:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I have an imperfect understanding of the issues related to the succession/navbox issue, but what BHG has come up with seems - in the vast majority of cases - to be a simple and elegant solution; it provides more information for the reader (if they want it) and (in the majority of cases) makes it easier for editors to deploy and maintain. Yes, there are exceptions. We can cope with the odd exception, even (shudder) using the current succession boxes if necessary. My preference, therefore, is for option 1 above. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 09:37, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @Bastun.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:32, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Documentation. Every navbox built using Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox now has automatic documentation explaining its use and how it is made, and how to break it &mdash; or preferably not break it.
 * This is provided by Template:Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox/shared doc, which adjusts itself to each navbox. See it in use on e.g. Dublin Bay North (Dáil constituency)/TDs --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 18:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The documentation now includes in every case a shortcut route to check which articles transclude that navbox. See e.g. Template:Dublin Bay North (Dáil constituency)/TDs -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 07:57, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I think I know what causes this, but so far I have not found a perfect fix. So I have asked for help at WP:Village pump (technical). sorry to bug you again, but do you have any ideas?-- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 08:20, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Bug. AFAIK, the only remaining significant bug in Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox is that on 9-seat constituencies, the table of TDs is too wide. (See e.g. Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs).
 * Did you mean Galway (Dáil constituency)? Dublin City North (Dáil constituency) was an 8-seater. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 11:41, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, @Iveagh Gardens. I did mean Dublin City North (Dáil constituency) / Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs ... but you are right, it's an 8-seater, not a 9-seater.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:16, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Galway (Dáil constituency)/TDs is displaying with nine columns for me. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 11:52, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It's fine for me too, @Iveagh Gardens. And now so is Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs
 * When I checked, I found that this cunning fix by @ has already gone live.
 * Many thanks, PrimeHunter. That resolves the last non-trivial item on my bug-list for  Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox. We are ready for wider deployment.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:32, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Iveagh Gardens, I have now added Galway (Dáil constituency)/TDs to its full set of TDs.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 13:12, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Great to see it in action! I'm alas going to have to turn to work outside Wikipedia, but I'll assist on my return. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 13:23, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Rollout of TD navboxes
With the major technical glitches in Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox resolved, rollout has been proceeding fast. Of the 1,344 articles on TDs, over 400 now have a navbox built with Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox, and that doesn't include Dublin University (constituency)/TDs + National University of Ireland (constituency)/TDs, which I had to build using slightly different means 'cos their different name format is incompatible with the metatemplate.

Use of the navboxes built with Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox is tracked at: Note that a significant proportion of TDs have been elected for more than one constituency, and many of those don't yet have their full set of navboxes, so we haven't progressed quite as far as the raw numbers imply.
 * Category:Articles using a navbox created with Template:Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox (live pagecount = )

I see that Bastun has been hard at work today, and Spleodrach has been prolific. Iveagh Gardens is busy off-wiki, but I have using AWB to chomp through some constituencies. At this high rate of productivity, we might get the whole job done within a week. Great work!

I have a few questions on followup issues, which I will post as separate comments, to facilitate any threaded discussion. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:07, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I am inclined to think that have considered a lot of issues already, and that we can put the brakes on sharply if needed, so no need for a pause. But I am open to other thoughts. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:09, 15 July 2023 (UTC) At some point when the navboxes have settled in, we should have a wider discussion about where this leaves the succession boxes. I see several options, and the only thing I would be strongly opposed to is removing the succession boxes for the single-seat First Dáil, where there is no navbox alternative. Also, per WP:CLS, multiple modes can co-exist. But we probably need to make some choices on the malformed succession boxes which prompted both this thread and the ugly 2016 TFD. Maybe leave this one for a few weeks until more people have seen how the full set of navboxes is working out? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:21, 15 July 2023 (UTC) As the template coder, I am probably too close to them to spot everything. Feedback/criticism welcome. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:24, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Should we just keep on rolling out the navboxes until finished? Or should we pause a bit to see if there are any concerns?
 * What about succession boxes?
 * Are there any remaining technical glitches with the navboxes?
 * Hi, I noticed a technical glitch. It has to do with the 9 seater Dublin County navbox. It wraps when used ordinarily but when used in Navboxes template like in Liam Cosgrave, it does NOT wrap. Spleodrach (talk) 23:43, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Damn. I just checked, and can replicate the problem. Thanks for spotting it, @Spleodrach.
 * I don't see any need for Navboxes to be imposing nowrap. I will report this tomorrow at Template talk:Navboxes.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 01:18, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Spleodrach: see Template talk:Navboxes.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 03:50, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Now fixed, in this edit by @, who explained their remedy at Template talk:Navboxes
 * Thanks again to PrimeHunter for another prompt fix, and to @Spleodrach for spotting the problem. I will now cleanup the cases where Spleodrach or I worked around the glitch by putting the "Foo (Dáil constituency)/TDs" navbox outside Navboxes.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:11, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I used AWB to scan a few hundred articles, and found 5 articles where the constituency navbox was outside a set of political navboxes wrapped in navboxes. I made five edits to put the constituency navboxes inside navboxes: Seán Lemass, Michael Hayes (politician), Séamus Brennan, Pádraig Faulkner, Dermot Ahern
 * Note that I also found a few examples where a TD had also been a successful sportsperson, with multiple sporting navboxes inside a sports-only, and a few political navboxes outside it. That seemed to me to be a helpful distinction, so I didn't alter those cases.
 * In fact the distinction seemed to be such a good idea that I split Jack Lynch's forest of navboxes into two groups: "Jack Lynch political navigational boxes" and "Jack Lynch sports navigational boxes".   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:07, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

So, nesting the constituency navbox inside a "'person' navigation boxes", as, for example, at Frank Aiken? I presume yes? I'm working away slowly on adding the template, and removing the s-par template where it's been incomplete. I see others are removing it in all cases for the constituency and leaving any offices held, I'll start doing that too. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 13:29, 16 July 2023 (UTC)


 * @Bastun: yes, it was about nesting the constituency navbox inside a "'person's navigation boxes".
 * However, it applied only to a small number of unusually wide navigation boxes. Frank Aiken has only one constituency navbox: Louth (Dáil constituency)/TDs, which is not wide. And as above, the issue has now been resolved.
 * As to the s-par template, see my comment above under the bullet point "What about succession boxes". I think that there are several possible options, and that we should discuss them before any systematic removal.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:37, 16 July 2023 (UTC)


 * A glitch. A few of these navboxes still contain one or more refs and/or footnotes. I am treating that as a bug, and am working on ways to ensure that they are not displayed in a navbox. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:00, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The cause seems to be that in a few cases a ref or footnote has been placed after the TD's name in the name parameter of Irish TD table TD with party link, rather than in the refs parameter.
 * Moving this has fixed the issue with Kildare South (Dáil constituency)/Kildare South (Dáil constituency)/TDs (fix) and Roscommon–South Leitrim (Dáil constituency)/Roscommon–South Leitrim (Dáil constituency)/TDs (fix)  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:20, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Note I'm going to be very busy today through Wednesday (and probably still doing catch-up until Friday) so won't have too much time to devote to Wiki until then. Just wondering, what's the most efficient way of doing this? Like, is the best way to start with a constituency template, open the links, and go through one-by-one; or is there a category or list I could be using, creating templates as I come across one that hasn't yet been made? (Once the template is made, it's really quick to apply to everyone in a constituency, I am in awe of the speed difference between this method and writing an s-par template 'manually'!) <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:10, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I keep that tab open, so that it becomes the next constituency on my to-do list
 * Hey @Bastun, it's great that you want to keep on working at it, but with the current rate of progress we may be nearly done by Friday! Over 900 of the ~1344 TD biogs already have one or more of these navboxes (see the tracking at Category:Articles using a navbox created with Template:Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox). But checks for completeness will still be very valuable.
 * I think that the most efficient way of doing this depends mostly on what tools and modes of working you are comfortable with, so my suggestions may or may not help anyone else. But here they are, FWIW.
 * For "bigger" constituencies (i.e those with more than about 7 TDs), I use AWB to make a list of TDs for that constituency, and add the navboxes. This involves a few tricks, so I won't explain unless you are already fairly proficient with AWB.
 * For other cases, I do much as you describe: start with a constituency article, open the links, and go through one-by-one. I try to stick to each constituency until I am sure that I have done all its TDs.
 * has been highly productive in adding these navboxes, so whatever approach Spleodrach is taking, it clearly works well for them. They may have some suggestions to add.
 * A significant number of TDs were elected for more than one constituency. In those cases, I have settled on this approach:
 * add all the relevant constituency navboxes to the TD article's wikitext
 * preview my edit, to check that this TD is actually listed in each of the navboxes I added
 * if a navbox appears as a redlink, ctl-click on the redlink to open it in a new browser tab. Create the new navbox by adding, and save.
 * switch back to the tab where I was editing, preview again.
 * When all is OK, then save
 * Note that nearly all possible navboxes in this series now been created, so there are only a few left to create.
 * Also, I encountered a few articles where the infobox (and maybe even the body text) mentioned only one of multiple constituencies which elected them.  So I fixed them (see e.g. Celia Lynch diff and Anthony Millar diff). I also spotted that the table of TDs in Donegal East (Dáil constituency) was wrong, so I fixed that too. Whether you want do to any of these related fixes is of course up to you.
 * Hope this helps.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 13:10, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

TD navboxes: nearly done
My checklist at User:BrownHairedGirl/Dáil constituency navboxes shows that all the navboxes now exist.

All TDs from the Second Dáil onwards should have at least one of these navboxes. I have done two WP:Petscan searches to check whether that is so. Note that the searches cannot tell whether a TD has the full set of navboxes needed if the were elected for more than one constituency.
 * 1) https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=25393942 finds TDs with no constituency navbox (currently 122)
 * 2) https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=25393216 finds TDs with at least one constituency navbox (currently 1209)

Opening those links, will give the current live lists and tallies, subject to some technical tag which can vary from milliseconds to hours. In the last few days, the lag has been almost zero, but that cannot be relied on.

These two totals add up to 1,331. But my other searches suggest that the total should add up to 1,343 or 1,344. Some day I will try to figure out why there is a mismatch. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 07:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)


 * My current work is using some AWB's list-comparison tool to check each navbox in turn, and test whether it is transcluded on its full set of TDs. I started at the bottom of User:BrownHairedGirl/Dáil constituency navboxes with Wicklow (Dáil constituency)/TDs, and have worked my way up to Mayo (Dáil constituency)/TDs. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 08:04, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

O'Mahony is an edge case which raises a lot of constitutional questions which ultimately come down to political preference. Creating a Dáil constituency navbox for Fermanagh and Tyrone wouldn't technically work with Constituency Teachtaí Dála navbox as currently designed and if even if built by some other means, I don't currently have the stomach for the debate that would be needed. Apart from Seán O'Mahony, it is possible that I have missed some cases where a TD has should have multiple constituency navboxes, but currently lacks the full set. To detect any such cases, I'd need to re-run my tests of each navbox listed at User:BrownHairedGirl/Dáil constituency navboxes; but that would be several hours of work, and I need to be getting on with other things. https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=25393216 now find 1,338 articles with at least one constituency navbox, which I think is great progress. Well done all! -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 12:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think we are done. My https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=25393942 search for TDs with no constituency navbox now finds only one article: Seán O'Mahony, a TD for Fermanagh and Tyrone in the 2nd and 3rd Dáils.


 * Wow! Huge thanks to BHG, and anyone else who's been adding the templates. I got a tiny few done over the last couple of days and went through Wexford and Wicklow at lunchtime today trying to find any who needed one, and failed :-) That was some amount of work. Special thanks to BHG for all the work on the navbox template, despite, er, distractions! <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 14:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @Bastun! All contribs have helped, and you checks were a valuable part of the team effort.
 * And the fun of our team-work here in finding a solution and implementing it has boosted my morale when dealing with those, err, distractions.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:20, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh not at all! That was in part how we got into that recent discussion, so it is partly assumed. It was more a reminder for the purposes of clarity for all editors at this stage in the discussion as to what does and doesn’t count as a completed succession box. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 08:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

TD navboxes: a final polish
I have done some final polishing to the TD navboxes.

Part of it was removing excess whitespace, which is a bit finnicky to achieve, but reduces visual bulk.

The more significant part was tweaking the Irish TD table begin series of templates so that when used in a navbox they link only to the TDs and to successor constituencies. This is per the principle that a navbox is a tool for navigation, not for explanation. So, like a road sign: it should point only to the primary relevant destinations, and not to places which are unrelated to the immediate navigational choice. For navigation, less is more.

So in these navboxes, there is now no link to the elections, to the nth Dáil, or to the political parties. But those items are all still linked in the constituency articles.

Or rather, that's how it should be. has just posted to my talk abut a related glitch (probs with the suprression of refs in navboxes), which I will try to resolve. But, please also gimme a poke if you spot any issues. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:59, 19 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Will do, thanks! <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 18:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

TD succession boxes: is this where we got to?
This thread started with 's observations about the lack of progress on making complete succession boxes. We solved the navigation problems by creating and deploying navboxes. However, many succession boxes remain.

I think that this where we got to:
 * 1) Keep succession boxes for Members of the First Dáil. These are nearly all single-seat constituencies, where complete succession boxes are easily made, and we don't have navboxes.
 * 2) For the multi-seat constituencies from 1921 onwards, keep any completed succession boxes. Per WP:CLS, succession boxes and navboxes both have their strengths and weaknesses, and can coexist.  So if they have been fully built, don't remove them.
 * 3) For the multi-seat constituencies from 1921 onwards, remove any incomplete succession boxes. They mislead readers, and it is unlikely that they will be finished.


 * how does this sound to you? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 01:46, 11 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi BHG, yes, all of the above work for me. <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 09:39, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with 1 and 3. The two 2-seat constituencies in the First Dáil (Cork City and Dublin University) are ones that can more easily be managed, just as 2-seat constituencies in the earlier Ireland at Westminster, and Irish House of Commons. I’d cautiously agree with 2. Succession boxes can serve a function in addition to the new templates, but we should watch out for continued use of the term “Party TD for Foo Constituency” where it exists. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 22:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Iveagh Gardens: I agree entirely about the inappropriateness of “Party TD for Foo Constituency”. My suggestion assumes that a "completed" succession box lists all predecessors and successors and those who served with that TD, and that any “Party TD for Foo Constituency” would have been removed when the box was expanded.
 * Sorry for not making my assumptions explicit.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Categorising survivors of industrial schools
Today I found myself at the article Michael O'Brien (Fianna Fáil politician), whilst populating Category:Fianna Fáil local councillors.

O'Brien was a Mayor of Clonmel in the 1990s, but he is notable almost entirely for his work as an advocate for survivors of the industrial schools. His own account on Questions and Answers of his abuse at St Joseph's Industrial School, Clonmel (aka Ferryhouse) made him a household name.

However, he is not in any categories relating either to his campaigning or to his own experiences. We may have some categories for O'Brien's activism, but what his time in the industrial school? It's clearly a WP:DEFINING attribute, so we should categorise by that attribute; but Category:Industrial schools in the Republic of Ireland has no subcats. The conventional title for people-by-school categories is "People educated at", but that word "educated" feels deeply misleading for institutions which were called "schools" but were in the theory of their creators youth detention centers for children who had usually committed no offence (other than being poor and/or having lost a parent) and in practice these places were centres of rape and brutality.

So ... any thoughts on a neutral title for a category for survivors of an Industrial school (Ireland)?

My best idea so far is to use the word "detained", which seems to be a neutral description of why children were in industrial schools. That would give us Category:People detained at industrial schools in the Republic of Ireland, with subcats for individual schools where the number allow: e.g. Category:People detained at St Joseph's Industrial School, Clonmel.

How does that sound? Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:03, 26 July 2023 (UTC)


 * "Detained" seems appropriate, and was a term sometimes used for such places in both the UK and Ireland. SeoR (talk) 00:47, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree with "Detained". Spleodrach (talk) 15:26, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I have created Category:People detained at industrial schools in the Republic of Ireland, and found 12 articles to populate it. (Live count: )

So far, I have not found enough enough articles to justify creating any subcats. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:33, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Naming municipal elections
There's an inconsistency in how articles for certain municipal elections are named, e.g. 1920 Dublin Corporation election but 1999 Dublin City Council election, both elected under the same Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. I've started a discussion at Talk:1960 Cork City Council election. Although I proposed moving article titles to Year City Corporation election, my only strong view is that they should be consistent, and I could be persuaded that a consistency of City Council or Borough Council may be preferable. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 06:49, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Noel Kelly single-purpose account
Is User:Sarahallen2156 a single-purpose account dedicated to airbrushing Noel Kelly's links to the RTÉ payment scandal? Contribs suggests this. They're not doing anything else...

Don't know how this is normally dealt with - if blocked will they come back with a different name? Should someone watch Noel Kelly for anything like this in future? --Rydíaz (talk) 23:33, 21 August 2023 (UTC)


 * is a redirect to RTÉ secret payment scandal. Whether it is worthy of inclusion in the Noel Kelly disambiguation page is a matter of opinion. The only edits to that page recently is you adding the "agent" article and Sarahallen2156 removing it again – her only two edits ever. You, Rydíaz, have made no attempt to discuss the question on the talk page, which is how content disputes are supposed to be dealt with. Neither of you have used edit summaries, so there is no reason to believe her purpose is "airbrushing" rather than just thinking the addition is pointless. There is no question of her being blocked, and there is no good reason for anybody other than yourself to watch the page. Scolaire (talk) 12:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Let’s assume good faith all round. I have offered the new user a normal welcome. Meantime, best would be for Noel Kelly or NK Management to get an article or articles; they’re certainly notable enough. SeoR (talk) 12:48, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's anything else to write. Doesn't look like he's known for anything else apart from this scandal. Don't see much on him that's from earlier than this year. --Rydíaz (talk) 00:09, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There’s more; NK flies low but the agent / agency acts for many key talents. Recent coverage would enable. SeoR (talk) 07:20, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * If you think it's becoming a whitewashing SPA, feel free to ping me and I'll look into it more and take action if needed. Right now it's an uncertain, but we'll see where the account goes. <b style="color: Blue;">Canterbury Tail</b> <i style="color: Blue;">talk</i> 14:21, 22 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I took the advice and watched it. The response to the welcome was a third edit. It's the same again, and no reply on the talk page. I asked what she's doing. Don't think I'll get a reply either. But could be a fourth edit? This is over several weeks - her only interest here is that edit. --Rydíaz (talk) 00:09, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Not great; you were right to post a query. SeoR (talk) 07:20, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * there's still nothing on the article talk page. You need to open a discussion there with something like "I believe the redirect page should be added here because..." (the "noredirect" is necessary because otherwise users will be brought to the payments scandal and wonder what they're doing there). If Noel Kelly had an article, it would clearly belong there; as it stands, it's still only a matter of opinion. You need to get a consensus to add it. Constantly restoring it without consensus is edit-warring.  --Scolaire (talk) 08:39, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Donegal
Your input would be welcomed regarding the pronunciation of Donegal (town) which was recently changed: Talk:Donegal (town). --AFBorchert (talk) 12:06, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Castletownshend monument photo
Hi, I've just written an article on William Sharpington, a lettering artist and monument designer and I'm prepping it for DYK. I've found that he designed a really beautiful monument to Edith Somerville and Violet Florence Martin in Saint Barrahane's Church, Castletownshend. (It's really quite something, gold leaf, coat of arms, the lot, and I think it's got to be about his best surviving work.) Unfortunately I haven't found a freely licensed photo on Flickr and there's no pictures of the interior in the Wikimedia Commons category. As it's not practical for me to get to in the DYK timeframe I wondered if anyone knows a freely licensed photo of it, or happens to live round the corner? Otherwise I'm thinking about contacting the church and asking if they'd be willing to upload a photograph and say I'd be happy to make a donation. Blythwood (talk) 15:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:1960 Cork City Council election
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:1960 Cork City Council election that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. —Usernamekiran_(AWB) (talk) 21:43, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Celtic nations category
Just dropping a line to notify that Category:Celtic nations has been nominated for deletion, which seems to me to be a bit odd. Comments welcome on the CfD page --Tóraí (talk) 18:14, 28 August 2023 (UTC)


 * ! Long time, no see! Replied on the CfD. <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:56, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of Northern Irish nationalism for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Northern Irish nationalism is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Northern Irish nationalism until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished. Kpratter (talk) 07:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Women in Green's 5th Edit-a-thon
<div style="border: 6px solid #2bbf08; background: #FFF; background-color:#FFFFFF; padding: 1ex 1ex 1ex 1.5ex; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em; font-size: 99%"> Hello WikiProject Ireland:

WikiProject Women in Green is holding a  month-long Good Article Edit-a-thon event in October 2023!

Running from October 1 to 31, 2023, WikiProject Women in Green (WiG) is hosting a Good Article (GA) edit-a-thon event with the theme Around the World in 31 Days! All experience levels welcome. Never worked on a GA project before? We'll teach you how to get started. Or maybe you're an old hand at GAs – we'd love to have you involved! Participants are invited to work on nominating and/or reviewing GA submissions related to women and women's works (e.g., books, films) during the event period. We hope to collectively cover article subjects from at least 31 countries (or broader international articles) by month's end. GA resources and one-on-one support will be provided by experienced GA editors, and participants will have the opportunity to earn a special WiG barnstar for their efforts.

We hope to see you there! Grnrchst (talk) 13:11, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Census maps for population figures
The CSO published an updated local statistics mapping app with options to zoom into towns, electoral divisions, local authority areas, etc. I'd suggest that where possible, the links this provides are much better that the tables published by the CSO earlier this year, as they provide direct links to the area in question, with options to expand from there to more specific demographic information. I'd suggest a line on MOS:IMOS for geographic articles, advising their use for population figures. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 10:03, 26 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi. Thanks for that. A nice resource indeed. RE:
 * Using/adding deep links as a source. Agreed. Those links (like this one for Carrigtwohill) probably are better than the "generic" (higher level) ref/link to the F1015 table.
 * Requiring/recommending deep links in IMOS. I'm not sure I agree. Those links (just as with the F1015 table link and the 2016 sapmap links) will likely suffer from linkrot/move/changes at source before long. Unless someone goes to the trouble of ensuring all those links are archived (to the extent that they are more reliable/retained), I'm not sure they should be specifically covered by IMOS.
 * Good to know that's there though... Guliolopez (talk) 16:00, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That's possibly fair enough. IMOS does possibly require something with stability, rather than something that will have to be updated every five years. And we well know that government websites have been prone to altering their indexing. It would be good to have a useful resources page for the WP:IE, as well as a style guide. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 09:09, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Athleague
Could use some micro-geographically wise eyes at Talk:Athleague. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:43, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Related matter at: Talk:Murchadh Ó Cuindlis. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:18, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

User template
What is the userbox template that says I am a member of WikiProject Ireland?

Thanks, Shadestar474 (talk) 06:09, 19 October 2023 (UTC)


 * It's, and its documentation can be found at Template:User WikiProject Ireland. (/sneaks away to add it to their own page!) <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 14:23, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

George Moore (novelist) at FAR
I have nominated George Moore (novelist) for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 14:41, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Anyone interested in helping to keep this featured? I'll do some as I did previously but time is not on my side. ww2censor (talk) 14:46, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Are there no literature buffs here who can assist with this WP:FAR? ww2censor (talk) 12:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Any reason not to merge?
Hi all

Is there any bureaucratic reason we shouldn’t merge Feargal and Fearghal as they both have Feargal as an alternative and are essentially about the same name?

TIA Fob.schools (talk) 21:24, 6 November 2023 (UTC)


 * None that I can think of. <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Two relevant redirect discussions
Readers of this page are invited to participate in two discussions about redirects relevant to this WikiProject: Please comment in the linked discussion rather than here. Thryduulf (talk) 02:22, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 10, discussing the redirect
 * Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 10, discussing the and  redirects.

Celtic Knot Conference Returns September 2024 in Waterford
Dia Duit! Hello Everyone!

We are very happy to announce that the Celtic Knot Conference will be back for its 7th edition in the new year! We are delighted that it will be hosted in Waterford City, Ireland, in September 2024. The exact date will be announced as soon as possible.

The Celtic Knot is a conference dedicated to minoritized languages on the Wikimedia projects, including Irish. Getting back to its roots, in the Celtic languages and nations, the event gathers people from communities and languages that are underrepresented on the Wikimedia projects. It is a place where people working on growing and maintaining their communities can meet, learn from each other, and support each other on topics like community growth, technical tools, or collaboration with partners.

Celtic Knot 2024, will be an in-person event, held in Waterford, Ireland's oldest city which has an abundance of cultural heritage and history. We are currently exploring options to make conference resources (talks, panels, etc.) available to those who are unable to attend in person.

We are currently gathering input from the community to build a conference tailored to your needs: whether you attended a previous edition of the Celtic Knot or not, if you are involved in underrepresented languages on the Wikimedia Projects, please take a few minutes to fill in the community survey, and make sure to share the information with your local group. The survey is open until January 21st. Many thanks in advance!

As we are starting to build the concept and the program, we will regularly improve the existing event pages on Meta and post updates on the talk page of the event.

The core organizing team is composed of Amy O’Riordan (WCI), Sophie Fitzpatrick (WCI), Daria Cybulska (WMUK), Richard Nevell (WMUK), supported by Léa Lacroix (community engagement consultant). If you have ideas or suggestions, if you would like to get involved in the conference, feel free to contact any of us.

We’re looking forward to seeing you at the Celtic Knot!

Le dea-ghuí,

Sophie Fitzpatrick (Wikimedia Community Ireland) Cailínréalta (talk) 11:59, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

FAR for Ernest Shackleton
I have nominated Ernest Shackleton for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 16:21, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Town halls
Hi - It would be great if someone could take a photo of Naas Town Hall and upload it to wikimedia commons. Many thanks, Dormskirk (talk) 15:40, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Likewise Mallow Town Hall if someone lives near there and can take a photo. Thanks, Dormskirk (talk) 10:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If you are taking photographs in Naas perhaps you can take a photo of the post office to upload to c:Category:Post offices in County Kildare. ww2censor (talk) 12:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Likewise a photo of Kells Town Hall in County Meath. Thanks. Dormskirk (talk) 14:18, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Assassination of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Assassination of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma to be moved to Assassination of Lord Mountbatten. Members may want to participate in the discussion here. This was notified by bot to WikiProject Irish republicanism but not to here. Scolaire (talk) 14:40, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Courceys needs improvement.
Hello WikiProject Ireland, the article Courceys is listed for your WikiProject. The article is also one of the oldest unreferenced articles on the site. If anyone would be able to trim/improve/look at the article that would be much appreciated. Tooncool64 (talk) 07:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi. Thanks. That's largely done. Guliolopez (talk) 11:07, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Much appreciated. Tooncool64 (talk) 18:40, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Whiddy Island disaster
Whiddy Island disaster has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 16:50, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Celtic Knot 2024 in Waterford Survey Reminder
☘️ Interested in coming to the Celtic Knot Conference 2024? Let us know what you would like to see by filling out the Community Survey by January 21st: https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_erCHFhEJyzrO46i

☘️ Líon amach an suirbhé! Táimid ag ullmhú An Chomhdháil Celtic Knot 2024, beidh do chuid tuairimí an-tábhachtach dúinn chun tuiscint a fháil ar cad atá uait agus ó Mhuintir na Gaeilge agus na Gaeltachta ón gcomhdháil seo.

Is imeacht Comhdháil Celtic Knot 2024 a gcuireann béim ar theangacha a bhfuil faoi ghannionadaíocht i gcúrsaí Wikimedia Beidh Éireann mar thír óstach i mí Mean Fómhair 2024. Cailínréalta (talk) 12:40, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Move of all Luas stop articles
There is a move discussion at Talk:Luas that may be of interest to members of WikiProject Ireland. Guliolopez (talk) 12:47, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Merger discussion at Talk:List of Irish Americans
There is a merger discussion at Talk:List of Irish Americans that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 16:29, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:General Certificate of Secondary Education
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:General Certificate of Secondary Education that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 16:59, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Demography of Belfast
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Demography of Belfast that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 14:52, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Town v Village
Note that the editing behaviours previously raised are ongoing again. While raised at User talk:80.233.59.195 and User talk:80.233.54.102, as multiple IPs (within the same range) are involved, other editors might wish to verify whether any related changes are consistent with the applicable sources. Guliolopez (talk) 20:11, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Is this the person, I wonder, who edited Caherciveen one way, and later, in pique, the opposite way… Will cast an eye anyway.  There may be issues with this classification worth further debate, but not now, and random IP edits definitely don’t help. SeoR (talk) 23:55, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Department of Agriculture & Technical Instruction, Dublin, 1909
Please see Reference desk/Humanities and see if you can identify any of the personalities depicted, or assist with transcription of the comments. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:06, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

List of mountains and hills of County Dublin
I found this when working on WP:FEB24 the February drive to eliminate/reduce the backlog of unreferenced articles. I've added a single source, PeakVisor, not 100% sure of its reliability, which has a list of 41 summits. The Wikipedia list is a set of names, some linked, many not linked, with no further information or sources. I contemplated taking it to AfD, but sourced it and moved on, changing the template from unreferenced to refimprove.

the Hill Bagging website (aka Database of British and Irish Hills), which I think is a WP:RS, includes Irish mountains like Kippure, but its search function doesn't seem to be working today. Some of the smaller lumps and bumps may not be included in it anyway. (Like the 36m Feltrim Hill, the smallest listed in PeakVisor.)

Someone with access to good sources (a book, perhaps?) on Irish hills and mountains might like to work this up into a more useful list, and to check that the list in Mountains and hills of County Dublin matches the list in the article.

Over to you. Pam D  12:56, 9 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I note that the article's creator,, is still an active project contributor. And could perhaps review/assist. Otherwise, to my mind and if referencing of the standalone article is an issue, the title could potentially be retargeted to Lists of mountains in Ireland. Guliolopez (talk) 13:08, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've mentioned this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject British and Irish hills Pam  D  13:15, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I have made a good beginning by researching and citing a reliable source to cover the deficiencies. It should be easy to find more; it's just a question of finding time, which I will do. Spideog (talk) 05:14, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Most of the mountains and hills now have citations, with just a handful of stragglers to be completed. Spideog (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Spideog I've now managed to get a "County Dublin" list from Hill Bagging / DBIH, and it lists 16 - 3 of which weren't in your list. One is an alternative name, and I've added a note at the bottom about the other two.
 * What criterion did you use for your list of 46? It would be useful to add a note to the list to explain it. Thanks.
 * Ah, I've just noticed that Naul Hills is listed, so Knockbrack is included ... will tweak the footnote. Pam  D  23:00, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @PamD Thank you, PamD. I created the list 13½ years ago so I can't remember my source(s) for the entries or what criteria I may have used. One or two other editors added a few peaks, but most of it is my work.


 * I do recall that when compiling Coastal landforms of Ireland in 2010 I used a physical map (Map of Ireland No. 923; 1998. Michelin Tyre PLC) and also "circumnavigated" the entire Irish coast using a very detailed government Ordnance Survey map, online, but I have no memory of researching the uplands of Dublin. Spideog (talk) 23:41, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah well, it's a much better sourced list now than it was a few days ago, so thank you for upgrading it! This WP:FEB24 project is leading me off into all sorts of tangents, but I'm here to enjoy editing and be useful, rather than to climb up the leaderboard of that project.  Pam  D  23:49, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

FA review: Edward I, Lord of Ireland
I have nominated Edward I of England for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Jim Killock (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If you're going to pretend that Edward I of England is actually titled "Edward I, Lord of Ireland", don't expect to be taken seriously. Scolaire (talk) 10:00, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Scolaire: Meow! The old wounds are the tastiest, eh? :D :D :D  ;-) Spideog (talk) 09:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Articles on March 2024 referendums and amendment bills
Each bill put to a referendum has its own article. We also have pages for dates on which there is more than one referendum. See, for example, 2015 Irish constitutional referendums, with the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland (marriage equality) and the Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2015 (age of eligibility for president).

Should we be following that approach with the March 2024 Irish constitutional referendums (month included in the title because of the scheduled, if not finalised, referendum on the patent court in June)? In that way, keeping detail on the wording and campaigns on the separate pages of Thirty-ninth Amendment of the Constitution (The Family) Bill 2023 and Fortieth Amendment of the Constitution (Care) Bill 2023. On the other hand, given how much the campaigns will have in common, it might make sense to give more of the details on the campaign and support for or opposition to the two proposals on the referendums article, rather than the separate amendment articles. Previous cases where there were two or more on related topics, such as 1968 Irish constitutional referendums or November 1992 Irish constitutional referendums give guidance, although needn't determine the approach.

,, and , who have made substantive contributions to the referendums article, might have a view one way or the other. Just seems like the kind of thing to consider at the start of the formal campaign. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 19:30, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Consistency, taking its cue from an established pattern, can be valuable or, as Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".
 * My initial instinct is to cover the referendums in one article, with suitable redirects pointing to it, because they both deal with related questions: What is a family, and what is a woman's role at home and at work?
 * For that matter, the three articles Twelfth Amendment, Thirteenth Amendment, and Fourteenth Amendment should also be merged (with suitable redirects) since those three referendums, held on the same day, were about the same topic of abortion.
 * I will revisit the question after I have time to pore over the articles and the question raised more carefully. Spideog (talk) 20:41, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to have the single article March 2024 Irish constitutional referendums, splitting in the future only if the campaigns diverge in terms of coverage, notability, campaign groups etc. -Bogger (talk) 21:46, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And I'd also support a single article unless strong reasons for more emerge. And further, I'd support merging those on the 12-14th Amendments; I never did see the logic of separate articles for those, three wholly interlinked questions. SeoR (talk) 00:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also agreed, a single article makes sense. <span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif">Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 00:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Great to see a consensus, and though I had started moving in the other direction with my edits, it makes a lot of sense. Even if there is any divergence in the result or if there are some organisations calling for a split vote, it will be useful to show this together on one page. Similarly, the same with the 1992 votes, that there was a No/Yes/Yes from many groups, as well as No/No/No from others, is a useful comparison, in a way that a divergence between marriage equality and the presidential age is only trivial. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 06:45, 26 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I would agree with the single article approach for the campaign. To date all the parties and civil society groups that have declared a position on the referendums are supporting both and there could be a lot of repetition if we have two separate articles. Having said that, when it gets to documenting the results, two separate articles might be more appropriate. Ccferrie (talk) 09:29, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * when it gets to documenting the results, two separate articles might be more appropriate
 * There is no need for separate articles for reporting results given the well-established pattern of numerous past constitutional amendment articles reporting multiple results in one article, viz: in 1968, 1972, 1979, 1992,
 * 1998, 2001 (four results in one article), 2011, 2013, and 2015. Spideog (talk) 14:14, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

1968 and 1992 mergers
Following this discussion, I've proposed that we merge the two previous occasions we've had multiple ballots on closely related topics. Working on combined articles for these (if agreed) should inform how we handle the results section of a combined article for the upcoming votes. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 11:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC) ,, , , , or , any thoughts on the two proposals above (corrected after I’d accidentally mixed them up!) Iveagh Gardens (talk) 15:03, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Talk:1968 Irish constitutional referendums
 * Talk:November 1992 Irish constitutional referendums
 * Thanks. I've thought about it further, and for these two cases, firmly support mergers. SeoR (talk) 00:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * FWIW, the discussion has continued on Talk:November 1992 Irish constitutional referendums, and I think it is converging towards no consensus. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Support merges: The dispersal of merger discussions across multiple article talk pages and here in WikiProject Ireland is exasperating. I suggest we centralise the discussions in one location (I prefer this location) and place notices in any relevant talk pages directing interested parties here.

It only struck me yesterday that Wikipedia treatment of Irish constitutional amendments is illogically split over two or more articles, for example, we have (Article 1) 1992 Irish constitutional referendums and then we have three more articles: (Article 2) Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 1992, (Article 3) Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland, and (Article 4) Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. This scattered treatment is offensive. The four articles should be merged into one, with redirects pointing to that one article.

If I was dictator for a day like Donald Trump's fantasy for next January, I would go on a wholesale merging binge to impose order and consistency on the mess collected in Category:Constitutional referendums in the Republic of Ireland. I don't know why it became a pattern to have, for example, 2015 Irish constitutional referendums plus Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland and Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2015. The three articles should be one because atomising the discussion is both disorderly and illogical which either sends the reader to three different places for one event or risks the reader missing part of the treatment of the occasion. There is also the problem of repetition between articles.

I have read a few of these articles in the past without realising until yesterday that by reading Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland I could easily not recognise that there are two related articles: Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2015 and 2015 Irish constitutional referendums.

Even if two amendments voted on, on the same day, are not related in content they are nevertheless contemporaneous events and there is obvious logic in combining them to tidy this unnecessary mess which risks making related material invisible to an unwary reader.

Merge, baby, merge. Merge the discussions we're having, then merge the articles. Spideog (talk) 16:26, 18 February 2024 (UTC)


 * By "merge the discussions we're having" I mean place notices on all relevant constitutional amendment and referendum Talk pages saying that centralised discussion is taking place (here) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland. Spideog (talk) 16:35, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I can understand your exasperation at the duplication! Even in the meantime, I had crafted a separate response over on Talk:November 1992 Irish constitutional referendums within the next half hour! My apologies for this dispersal.
 * The way I see it, it makes sense to have a separate article for 2015 Irish constitutional referendums, with an overview of the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland and the Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2015 as marriage equality and the age of eligibility for election to the office of president were entirely separate subjects; someone who wants to know the background to the relatively obscure proposal to amend the age of eligibility would get lost in the material on marriage equality. Or a reader studying the abolition of the death penalty by country could get lost in the 2001 Irish constitutional referendums in the debate on the Nice Treaty if they were all combined. It's different for the 1968, November 1992, and March 2024 referendums, as in each case, these were proposals on related questions, proposed together, debated together. I had opened separate merger discussions even there though, someone might have a subtle case of Yes for merger in 1968 for No in 1992. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 17:03, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I recognise your argument about two different topics being voted on in one day but that is easily dealt with in one article such as 2029 Irish constitutional referendums within which are two sections: Amendment to permit strangling of babies at birth and Amendment to prohibit fake tans. The results of each vote would appear in the appropriate sections within the article.
 * Even if there is only one amendment being voted on, it makes no sense to have two articles: 2029 Irish constitutional referendum and Amendment to permit strangling. The lead paragraph would say two (or more) issues were voted on in the 2029 referendum then the reader could browse whichever section is of interest. This would tame the messy subject atomisation/fragmentation and sprawl and cure the problem of repetition between articles. Spideog (talk) 17:25, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We have enough examples that we don't need to consider such hypothetical referendums. Where there's one referendum held on the day, e.g. Ninth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland, there's only one article. Although a short article, we don't and shouldn't merge that with 1984 European Parliament election in Ireland held on the same day. The same should go for other polls held on the same day on quite distinct topics. I've considered quite a few mergers and splits on different topics of Irish politics, and the question for me is primarily what would be clearer for the readers. I can't see what benefit there would be to any reader of a single article on the referendums on the Amsterdam Treaty and the Good Friday Agreement. There is a small benefit, partly from disambiguating, of 1998 Irish constitutional referendums, with a very short summary of them. However, I do think that in the three specific cases of 1968, November 1992, and the current ones, it's clearer and more informative to the readers for the distinct referendums on the same broad subject debated in the public sphere together to be treated on a single page. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 06:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Churches in Ireland - founders and naming
Three debates have begun, two at Talk:Church of Ireland (founder and LQBTQ+ issues) and one at Talk:Catholic Church in Ireland (CC or RCC). Not new, especially #1 and #3, but some life in the discussion, I see. Input / perspective welcome. SeoR (talk) 14:46, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

The Mary Wallopers and "Anglophobia"
Hi all, I'm just dropping this message on all of the WikiProjects associated with The Mary Wallopers. An IP editor has been repeatedly adding a line to the article describing their musical style as Anglophobia. I have been repeatedly removing these inclusions as I do not believe the source a) is reliable enough or b) discusses the supposed Anglophobia in sufficient detail to warrant its inclusion.

There is an active Talk Page discussion which both myself and the IP editor have commented on today. I would value your input either way on this discussion as I really just want to stop edit warring with this other user. Thanks. Xx78900 (talk) 23:40, 15 March 2024 (UTC)


 * You’re being a bit oversensitive and maybe ignoring the power dynamics here. There is no suggestion that a folk group can deny anyone their human rights.  The context of Irish/English relations renders the Anglophobia of the latter an acceptable response to repression.  That Irish people dislike (on the whole - clearly there will be the odd exception) England and the English is hardly unsurprising or news. As I say the band themselves would probably be quite proud of being described as such. 2A00:23C6:7682:F101:60DD:32D8:C9B0:C1E5 (talk) 16:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe interesting? - Geomapped Femicide in Ireland 1922 - 2022
Dear WikiProject Ireland editors, I came across this generated map of Femicides occurring in Ireland between 1922 - 2022 (with References) in one of my nightly Reddit doomscrolls. I thought it may be of use or interest to your project or someone within your network. I also suggested to the original poster to consider using Wikidata or even a Wikibase instance to map and enrich their current data. Link to Google Map and Reddit Original post. I hope it is useful to you. Kind regards, Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 14:34, 18 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi Danny, thank you for sharing, that is really interesting. I wonder do you have any ideas of what we could do with this list. Perhaps an online editing event, or information session?
 * Kind regards,
 * Sophie
 * Project and Communications Manager
 * Wikimedia Community Ireland Cailínréalta (talk) 11:25, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


 * That is a compelling dataset alright. Depressing though. In terms of "what (if anything) to do with it":
 * "now", it (the map viewer link rather than the reddit post link) would appear to meet WP:ELYES for inclusion on List of major crimes in Ireland. And I'd support its inclusion as an external link there. As is.
 * "longer term", and assuming there are no WP:UGC issues, it could be used/linked from a more specific article. I note that, in order, there is convention for articles on Gender inequality by country (some having "violence/crime" sub-sections. EG: Gender inequality in Bolivia). And, where such a section would be too large, there is convention for articles on Violence against women by country (some having "murder/femicide" sections. EG Violence against women in the United States). And, where such a section would be too large, there is convention for articles on Femicide by country. If a related article is created, it may make sense to start "higher" in this order. Working down.
 * "enriching map data with wikidata", the articles/data in the related Category:Violence against women in Ireland may be of relevance.
 * Thanks for sharing. Guliolopez (talk) 12:43, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for those helpful suggestions. If any Wikipedians would like to get involved with working on this I am interested in setting up a project/ editathon so please get in touch! Cailínréalta (talk) 12:59, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Iarnród Éireann
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Iarnród Éireann that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. JuniperChill (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Resignation of Leo Varadkar
I have replaced the content of the newly-created Resignation of Leo Varadkar article with a redirect to the existing Leo Varadkar article because the subject does not justify a standalone article since it can be dealt with thoroughly in the existing Leo Varadkar article.

Should the newly-created 2024 Fine Gael leadership election article be similarly redirected to the existing Fine Gael article, for the same reason? (Pinging in particular.) Spideog (talk) 17:33, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi. My 2x cents:
 * Resignation. I cannot fathom why his resignation would require a standalone article. I agree with the redirection. WP:NOTNEWS and WP:LASTING apply. (And, unless some LASTING impact or ground-breaking issues arise, I cannot see how this will be anything other than a redirect.)
 * Leadership election. Also do not see why, given that nothing has happened yet (and any "article" here would be a placeholder/scaffolding containing only speculation) I also agree with this redirection. WP:NOTNEWS and WP:TOOSOON apply. (And, once something has actually happened and there is coverage to support more than a skeleton, the redirect can be removed.)
 * Sometimes I think we forget to take a breath on these things. Bye. Guliolopez (talk) 20:02, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, my 2¢:
 * The Resignation article should be a redirect, I created the section in the main article expecting it to be expanded, not a separate article created.
 * The 2024 Fine Gael leadership election can be left alone. This is needed. All other FG leadership contests have an article and so will the 2024 contest. It also has to be kept up-to-date. Disagree that nothing has happened yet, as I am writing, Simon Coveney has already ruled himself out of the contest, info which needs to be added to the article, as he was the runner up last time. Also, the other candidates will be declaring there intentions tomorrow. Also, the new FG leader will be in place by 6 April 2024, just over 2 weeks away, so we do have a deadline! I say keep and expand this article. Spleodrach (talk) 20:53, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Fully agree that a resignation does not require an article, now or at all. I would not have articles for leadership races either, but there is precedent, so OK. SeoR (talk) 21:01, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree very much with both of these comments from . There can be a rush sometimes to create new articles because of a similar article elsewhere on the project; there’s certainly no need for a resignation article. But we can also forget the extent to which Wikipedia is used as a resource for up to date information. So even as WP:NOTNEWS stands, in practice we should be up to date, and provide this referenced coverage of the leadership contest, however brief it ends up being. We don’t need a link to every tweet with an endorsement, but general updates are useful. While I have limited capacity over the coming two weeks for this, I commend all work to date on it, and will contribute to the extent I can. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 12:28, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

History of Fine Gael
The page History of Fine Gael is in need of considerable review. The problems range from a complete lack of references in the earlier part, to excessive detail on recent events copied (without attribution!) from Government of the 33rd Dáil and Leo Varadkar. I’ll do my bit to look at it, but the more input from the community, the better! Iveagh Gardens (talk) 11:50, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Black Irish (folklore)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Black Irish (folklore) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. RodRabelo7 (talk) 00:41, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet has an RfC
Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Edmund Patrick – confer 08:41, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Capitalisation of, e.g. "33rd government of Ireland"
My read of WP:NCCAPS is that we should not capitalise the word government in phrases such as "Leo Varadkar formed the 33rd government of Ireland". On this basis, I've moved the two pages currently titled in this manner to 23rd government of Ireland and 24th government of Ireland. That said, though I favour the lowercase format, if there's a consensus that the term Government in "33rd Government of Ireland" is a proper noun, and that it therefore falls under the exception to the naming convention, I'm happy to reverse the changes made thus far. So before deploying WP:AWB for all remaining relevant pages, I'm going to wait to see if there's any comment on these thus far. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 17:55, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

FL nomination
I have nominated Ireland women's cricket team record by opponent for featured list. I think, it is one of the topics of interest of this wikiproject. Please join the discussion on whether this article should be promoted or not. Thanks. Robo<sup style="color:#707">Cric Let's chat  18:09, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

God Save Ireland
A sound file (File:God save Ireland.ogg) was added to God Save Ireland, and also to Irish Republic. I've deleted it from both because I think it is a very bad rendering of the song. Can I ask people to add their opinion at Talk:God Save Ireland? --Scolaire (talk) 17:54, 21 April 2024 (UTC)


 * By "very bad rendering" do you mean the sound quality or the performance? Because the sound quality sounds fine to me. I see now that you mean the performance, and I agree that it is not a very good rendition. Additionally, it seems that this recording is identical to this YouTube video from 6 years ago by someone named "Quartetto Genovese". It's possible that this is the same person or that they simply used the same software to make it, but I'd say it's still worth looking into. Slamforeman (talk) 18:30, 21 April 2024 (UTC)


 * That is very useful information. Thank you. Actually, I didn't find it at the link you gave me (404 Not Found), but I did find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKFs43ZeQ14. The .ogg version is not played by the same person, it is played on an electronic keyboard using sheet music bought from stringquartetarrangements.org, therefore it is copyvio. I have nominated it for deletion at Commons, and I will keep an out for it on Wikipedia. Thanks again. Scolaire (talk) 09:43, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Sen dollotar Ulaid ...
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sen dollotar Ulaid ... that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 14:20, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Move request at 1918 Irish general election
There is a proposal to move 1918 Irish general election to. The discussion is at Talk:1918 Irish general election. --Scolaire (talk) 09:05, 30 May 2024 (UTC)