Talk:George Mackay Brown

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Orcadian

I request Mais oui! to desist from continually changing “Orcadian” to “Scottish”.

“Orcadian” is a perfectly legitimate term widely used to describe all those people I have contributed articles about – as Mais oui! would discover if he took the trouble to read some books on Orkney. For example:

The Orkney Book edited by Donald Omand

The New Orkney Book by Shearer, Groundwater and John D. Mackay (this is school textbook from the 1960s)

An Orkney Anthology, edited by J.D. Robertson

As an instance, the introduction to the last of these books begins with words: “Ernest Walker Marwick was a distinguished Orcadian ..” My article on Ernest Marwick is one of those where Mais oui! has been determined to constantly change “Orcadian” to “Scottish”.

Furthermore, the term “Orcadian” gives extra information that is lost if it is replaced by “Scottish”, analogously to the information that would be lost by replacing “Scottish” by “British”, or “British” by “European”. Therefore, Mais oui!’s changes are diminishing the quality of the information in Wikipedia.

As noted on the “Orkney people stubs” discussion:

“Comment- Mais_oui! has a history of going through articles changing "British" to "Scottish"- so it isn't very surprising he is opposing the changes you made. Astrotrain 19:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)“.

I take it that Mais oui! considers it an improvement to the information content to change appropriate occurrences of "British" to "Scottish", so likewise he should respect and appreciate the value of the use of the term “Orcadian” where I have used it.

To scotch the potential “nationality” argument here and now: there is no “Scottish” nationality, the Scots have British nationality, just as have the Orcadians.

Mallimak 19:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

To add a tuppenceworth to the debate - there is no British nationality. We are citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. If asked their nationality most Scots would say Scottish,and in my experience English think of themselves as English. Sometimes British is relevant - "a British Prime Minister", but where there is no special need "Scottish" or "English" seem preferable. As for "Orcadian" is will often be relevant to know someone is from Orkney but it seems best to leave this in the expansion in the text. This would be in the same way that it would be best to describe a Glaswegian as Scottish, and expand to say he belonged to Glasgow, etc. We should bear in mind our international readership. Horis 20:39, 10 August 2006 (UTC)