Talk:History of Lords Reform

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 8 October 2006. The result of the discussion was speedy keep.
  • The request to delete this page is one of the most abominable suggestions I have seen. The person making it clearly had not even bothered to read it. It does need more editing - so why didn't they offer to help rather than acting like a street mugger. I may be the one who separated it out but I was not the not the one who wrote it, I don't happen to know them by name, but I can tell from the information that they are a bit of an expert on the subject. However given the length of the main article and the "specialism" of the information on this page it is probably right to separate it out. ImpeachMe 23:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I was the author of this section and I thank you for your kind words. Clearly this material does need a lot of work to be a stand alone article. As it stood, when it was transferred, it was clearly inadequate. I have begun the exercise of adding to the text and giving references and links to supporting evidence for each item. This process seems to me to be preferable to just deleting everything. Hopefully we can produce a text which will meet with general approval. --Gary J 02:16, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Nice to hear from you Gary. I couldn't find your talk page so I'm leaving a message here! I was doing a search for the latest info on Lords reform and came across the main article. I realised it needed a bit of work. I thought the article was too long (or that's what my wife said), so I thought I would move some of the more detailed parts to sub pages. I'm still not sure about the naming convention. With the reform coming back on the agenda, I thought I would try to get the article to explain the main issues, the history and the range of options that have been considered. Could you have a look at the various sub pages for the options for reform and give me your opinion about the idea giving a bit of information on each - but please excuse the content it is highly "provisional" until I have more time to work on it!Mowgli++ 16:32, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Gary, I hadn't quite appreciated how much you have added to the article, it is stunning!Mowgli++ 16:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
If you do need to get to a talk page you can click on the users name (if it is highlighted in blue), that gets you to the user page and the comments tab from that page will get you to the talk page. Here is a direct link to my talk page User talk:Gary J. I will look at the sub--pages and give my comments, as you suggest on the talk pages for those articles (which is the proper place to post thoughts about the particular article, so other users can also contribute to discussions. In general all individual pages need to be able to stand alone, not just to be detached parts of a larger article.
I mostly learned what to do by copying what other people had done. Initially baffling things, like Wikitables, can be worked out but it takes time to do so. There are however pages, if you can find them, which explain policies and guidelines on things like style. I suggest you go to the Community Portal and look around. --Gary J 21:43, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] General

We need to be careful not to go too much into depth. On the other hand I never knew there had been so much reform and to be honest you have put in a goldmine of information. As a novice there is too many facts and not enough explanation of what they mean.Mowgli++ 16:56, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

How much detail is too much (or indeed too little) is a question of judgement. Wikipedia articles do often try to cover in a few hundred or a few thousand words topics which can be and have been written about at book length. However if one article gets too long it is acceptable to produce detailed articles on a particular aspect and just refer to that topic briefly in the original article.
It seems to me that the main topic in the original article was what has happened since 1997 and what plans various people have for future reform. It may be that that these two aspects themselves may need to be split. However the historic examples of Lords reform are independently worthy of coverage in Wikipedia.
We could as individuals speculate about the future, but that probably is outside the scope of an encyclopaedia. It could be that no further changes will actually take place in our lifetimes. It may be that we are just at the start of a few years of rapid and major constitutional change. We do not know. All we can do, in this context, is briefly summarise what has happened and what is going on at the moment and revise as and when new events happen. --Gary J 21:22, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General Layout

The sectioning is a little confusing. You probably haven't finished editing which is why it goes historical and then temporal then spiritual. Mowgli++

You are correct that I am not finished with the layout changes I propose to make. My plan is to incorporate information from the Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal sections into three thematic sections, sub-divided into dated episodes (as I have neem doing on Reform of Composition). The other sections will be Reform of Powers and (something like) reforms proposed in the twentieth century. but not implemented. At that point I will be able to delete the Lords Trmporal and Lords Spiritual sections. --Gary J 20:31, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Gary, You are so right. The historical reforms are very different from the post 1997 debate. I must admit I'm a bit frought with the attacks the article has had, and though it was technically my fault, I was ignorant of the policy against sub pages. I hope your article isn't lumped in with the others. It is obvious the articles need to be completely stand alone which is going to be difficult. The subjects that stand as one are:
  • Reforms pre 1997
  • 1997 Public consutation & debate (which is the area I really do want to see documented properly)
  • The Parliamentary bills.

I'm not sure about this kind of split. Any comments? Unfortunately, I still feel under pressure, so If after a coffee it still seems a good idea I'll go for it!Mike 10:24, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sections

[edit] Removal of the Abbots and Priors 1539-40

Is the indented section a quote. I couldn't quite see how it fits! Mowgli++ 16:50, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes that is what is known as a blockquote. If you look at the buttons above the editing screen, the one on the furthest right gives you a blockquote (you replace the words Block quote in the middle of what appears in the editing screen if you click the button, with the quote you want to indent on the page, making sure that each paragraph has the blockquote and /blockquote in <> brackets before and after respectively).
This is an editing option I only worked out in the past few days, so I may be overusing it. However as one of the objections I am trying to respond to is not citing sources a good quote from a secondary source you are relying on is very useful. Quotes from primary sources, like the part of the Act abolishing the House of Lords, can make the text livelier. We do not, it seems to me, compromise neutral POV by demonstrating that the participants in events had strong and decided points of view; but it is better to argue that by quoting some evidence than just making an assertion. --Gary J 20:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rename

This article should be renamed, probably to something like Lords reform (history) or History of Lords reform. Thryduulf 15:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

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