Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1248 in Ireland

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Yamamoto Ichiro 会話 07:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 1248 in Ireland

1248 in Ireland (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

An article that should be, if anything at all, a category AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 20:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. Putting this here as a test case for clarification of policy. It seems there's a group of Irish editors who have created a whole series of articles for every year in Ireland. Check this user's contributions, for example: [1]. What should we do? Are we going to have an article for every year in every country in the world? AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 20:51, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • On the subject of year-by-year pages: it could be argued that we should at best have decade-by-decade pages for such topics where little information is avalilable. Punkmorten (talk) 20:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • What we should do is to have all of those articles deleted unless the year has been particularly notable. Below, one of the user says that, "There isn't a year since 500 AD in Ireland that you couldn't write a book on". I respectfully disagree, at least not a book with any notable content. And I say that as someone who knows Ireland, its history and culture very well. I'll be happy to continue the debate in Irish with any editor who disputes that point :) Seriously, very few of these articles seems to containt anything notable. Should we really have close to half a million articles on each year in each country's history? I'm sure Turkish editors, Mongolian editors, Bolivian editors or Algerian editors think every year in the history of their own country is just as notable as these Irish contributors feel about their own history. Will there be any logic in keeping this page and deleting 945 in Yemen, 946 in Yemen, 947 in Yemen etc should those articles be created? JdeJ (talk) 21:35, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• This particular page. Speedy delete as containing nothing whatsoever, and essentially a user-blanked page. Such article skeletons are just garbage and in no way deserve to be in an encyclopedia. Punkmorten (talk) 20:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Hi Alasdair G - with regard to your question: Are we going to have an article for every year in every country in the world? The answer is yes - check out the Years by country category. Content is coming for Years in Ireland, but like everything Wiki it takes time. Develop the article, don't delete it. Ardfern (talk) 21:17, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. Reply to Ardfern. In the vast majority of cases, Category:Years by country leads to subcategories, then further subcategories and so on, not to articles. However, you are right that there are a few examples of pages that are essentially the same as those in the years in Ireland series, such as 2000 in France. These seem to be for recent years where more information is available. The problem is obviously that not much worth mentioning may have happened in any given year in a particular country, such as in this test case, 1248 in Ireland, and we may end up with hundreds or thousands of pages that are basically (or completely) empty. I take your point, but I think the community should decide what we want to do, hence this discussion. AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 21:38, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
• Comment Not a lot of point deleting this single year, what's needed is some way of deciding how Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information is to be applied to this kind of ever-finer subdivison before we get to articles on "February 1134 in Co. Cork" etc. Punkmorten's suggestion of articles by decade sounds more reasonable. JohnCD (talk) 21:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Year-country combination are relevant when there is material; its one of the good ways of organizing WP. We are not limited to categories. Two major events are enough to start, considering the very few WPedians who work on this important material. The events listed are important, not indiscriminate. A list of everyone born that year in ireland would be indiscriminate. DGG (talk) 22:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
• Weak keep. I'm not opposed to this in principle, although I do question whether it's really useful. My greatest concern might be its use for POV-pushing, e.g. the assertion of the existence of an entity before it became a "country" as such. That doesn't apply to this instance, though. --Dhartung | Talk 23:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope, neither confusion of location nor shortage of material applies in the case of Ireland. It is no argument to judge this series in the context of places with much less lengthy written histories or less rich archeology. (Sarah777 (talk) 01:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC))

• Merge into decade article Weak keep. Was tempted to say keep, as the reason given in nomination is false A s c a n v e r y e a s i l y b e s h o w n. However, Punkmorten is right that by-decade articles might make more sense for early years like this one, with redirects from individual year dates (see 1560s in England for an example of how well it can work). Grutness...wha? 00:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. This is part of a series under construction. Also strongly oppose the merge suggestion. I'm not sure what is meant by referring to 1248 in Ireland as a "test case". If anyone insists on deleting this they will have to go through the other 800 case by case. For example, see 1349 in Ireland, needs refs, but you could hardly say "very little happened". There isn't a year since 500 AD in Ireland that you couldn't write a book on! Note: There is as much information on "1349 in Ireland" as the whole decade "1340s in England", partly due to various monastic scribes. Sarah777 (talk) 01:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
  • ...one of whom, FWIW, was a distant relation of mine. Yes, having looked at the size of the articles, there seems to be a case for keeping them separate rather than merging, though it is borderline. Grutness...wha? 01:31, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Royal(ish) blood! Grut, a key argument here is that these are under construction; a vast task but given the small handful of editors working on it progress is fairly rapid. We need time. Regards Sarah777 (talk) 02:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, the idea of reducing the years to categories is a bad one because because many of the events don't have Wiki articles; Births and Deaths of even those who do will usually occur in different years and decades. (Sarah777 (talk) 01:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC))

• Strong keep. Per Grutness, the nominator's reason is simply false: there are plenty of by-year articles. This is part of a series of articles which are still under construction but which have been massively expanded in the last month or two, largely due to the hard work of Ardfern The alternative suggestion of using categories does not appear to have been thought through: a category will simply list the title of an article without indicating why it is relevant to that year, e.g. 1248 in Ireland says

  King’s Bench in Dublin is instituted (today contained within the Four Courts)

  … and a category listing could not convey anything more than Queen's Bench, without any explanation (was it created then, abolished then, or what?). As Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes says, categories and lists can co-exist, and in this case they do co-exist, very well. I see this series of articles as a sort of historical index, a valuable addition to the encyclopedia, and I find it very disappointing to see Ardfern's hard work problematised with a "what should we do about" question. What we should do about this is to say "well done", and encourage other editors to join in the work of building this series of articles index.
  If the nominator is looking for a series of hundreds articles to delete, why not try tackling something like one of the piles of fiction-trivia, such as the 709 articles in Category:Middle-earth characters, the 417 articles in Category:Middle-earth locations, the 366 articles under Category:Pokémon or delve into the 126 articles in Category:Mario Bros. games. And before someone quotes it at me, yes I do know WP:WAX and WP:POKEMON, and I still make the comparison because what we are discussing here is a component of an index to articles on a country with a well-documented history. This seems to me to be a case of systemic bias: the interests of editors have led us to have hundreds or even thousands of articles on each of very many fictional topics, yet the spectre of hundreds of historical articles is the one raised at AfD :( --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:16, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

LOL!! Sarah777 (talk) 04:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Other countries seem to be fully able to make do with categories. See [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] etc. etc. JdeJ (talk) 21:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Nice try, JdeJ, but your supposed example is plain simple wrong.

Check further, and you'll find 1940 in Canada, 1836 in Canada and dozens of other year-in-Canada articles. It would also have been good manners for you to check the categories you listed above, because every one of them has an associated article:

• Category:1980 in Canada → article 1980 in Canada
• Category:1981 in Canada → article 1981 in Canada
• Category:1982 in Canada → article 1982 in Canada
• Category:1983 in Canada → article 1983 in Canada
• Category:1984 in Canada → article 1984 in Canada
• Category:1985 in Canada → article 1985 in Canada
• etc

I'll assume good faith, and assume that you simply didn't bother to check before posting. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:14, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• Touché, I stand corrected. Unusually stupid mistake on my behalf, I offer my apologies. I still think, in principle, that having articles of that kind is a bad idea, though. JdeJ (talk) 07:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Keep: Good points made by some others who see some value in keeping. Recently, at the end of December last, 1695 in Ireland was put up for speedy deletion and removed with the comment: "This page is part of a larger structure of similar articles that should be dealt with as a whole via AfD if desired" which would the proper way to deal with this if there was no possibility of content. Either way they should all stay or none stay. In the 1695 case, I was able to find several additional entries on Wikipedia alone to improve it. A quick look around by any decent editor will likely turn up verifiable data that can improve any of these Year in Ireland articles. Though data should be referenced unless will documented in a main article. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 04:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per BrownHairedGirl. Guliolopez (talk) 04:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep as timelines are a staple of reference books. Whether this is kept as is or is merged into a decade is an editorial decision and out of the scope of this AFD. As creator of most of the years/decades in England, Great Britain and United Kingdom, I prefered decades for pre-1640 because it meant no gaps in years where nothing happened. Tim! (talk) 08:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure something happened Tim! - just we don't know what - yet :) Sarah777 (talk) 01:31, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Keep there's a group...who have created...articles for every year in Ireland. What should we do? We should award Barnstars. Aatomic1 (talk) 10:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Another comment - admittedly about the year - vs. - decade question, not about this AfD, but as we're having the discussion... as well as getting the information into Wikipedia, it needs to be organised to make it likely that people will actually read it. Who is going to click on "1248 in Ireland" and why? An article about a decade is more likely to attract someone interested in a period, and, because it will contain more, perhaps lead them on in a new direction. JohnCD (talk) 11:54, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Reply AfD isn't really the place for a discussion on how to organise these articles. I think that the issue can be best dealt with by navigational templates, but I suggest that if anyone wants to discuss it, WikiProject Ireland's talk page would be a suitable venue. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:24, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Navigational templates and in-line article wiki-links; that how it works for 'global' years. Sarah777 (talk) 01:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Delete All this is doing is duplicating infomation that is already on other pages. (In this case the first piece of information belongs on the King's Bench article. The second should be on Coleraine or Coleraine Castle if it is ever created.) If people think it is useful to know what happened on a particular year, then categories are the perfect way to do this. MSGJ (talk) 13:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Reply. See my lengthy comment above, where I show how categories cannot replace this sort of article. —BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and Comment (again) - Just as well I'm not too sensitive, or I would be really pissed off at AlasdairGreen27 highlighting my Years in Ireland and Years in Northern Ireland contributions at the start of this exchange, without displaying the slightest understanding of what we are about or the value that it has. Maybe he should also highlight those contributors who have been doing the same thing in Australia, Canada etc (although their history doesn't stretch back so far in the same way). All of my contributions contained content, however small, but they are supposed to be stubs - you know, the old Wiki concept (nearly lost) of starting articles for others to contribute to and develop further. All of them are also being developed by the addition of birth and death date entries, which could have been seen if anyone looked, ie ensuring existing people articles are in a historical yearly index. I would eventually hope we could do the same with all Irish articles. Once again, all I can say is develop the articles don't kill them.Ardfern (talk) 20:36, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Strong delete Weak keep. Old comment: The article doesn't contribute anything to Wikipedia, just two links to information available elsewhere. I see no reason (or even sense) in having articles by year for countries, unless the year has had important consequences. With close to 200 countries in the world, we'll 401 600 articles of this kind if we start putting in articles for each year after year 0 to now for each country. An article on, say, 1989 in various Eastern European countries, the year when the dictatorships fell, would be notable. There is nothing notable in this article, not more so than an article on 1183 in Madagascar. Articles of this kind should definitely be deleted. New comment : I still think that we do not need countless of articles of this kind, but the reason I suggested deleting it was because I saw it as precedent on all of Wikipedia. I now realise that this isn't the case, there are many other similar articles already. While I repeat my hesitance about this kind of articles, this article is by no means any less notable than any others, nor is Ireland any less notable than other countries. I would welcome a more general debate about the issue, but this is not the place for such a debate. In the absence of such a debate, and with many other similar articles, there is nothing in this article to make it especially suitable for deletion. JdeJ (talk) 07:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Reply. 1248 in Ireland is a stub article, which means that it is a small starting point for a larger article. The reason that it contains only two entries is because that's all that has been added so far, not all that could be added. JdeJ's arguments for deletion seem to be a delete-all-stubs position, which would have widespread consequences if followed through. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - per BHG and Grutness - Alison ^❤ 21:36, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
• Comment Being fond of Québec, I hope it's ok that I create exactly 405 articles similar to this one on each year since it was discovered in 1603? JdeJ (talk) 21:44, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I think it's a great idea to create these articles for countries, for the years in which there are entries to record. I'm not sure whether it's a good idea in general to do the same for country sub-divisions unless the year-in-country articles are getting overlarge. (Whether Quebec should be counted as a separate country is of course a contentious issue in itself).
    However, the aim of the years-in-Ireland articles is not to create hundreds of articles with two entries, but to populate the articles properly and to create an index. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your input! Still, I suppose the area being a country or not sure isn't the most important thing? Surely the notability of the events that took place is the thing to look for? Ireland, for most of history in the last millenium, wasn't a separate country either but many notable events still happened. JdeJ (talk) 22:25, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
      • I think it would indeed be an unusual year when not a single notable event occured in a whole country! Even if all 200 countries on Earth could find material for each year since zero AD (even in Ireland the record starts to disappear before 500) the absolute max would be 400,000 articles. Reality is that in Australia, America North and South, Africa south of the Sahara, central Asia etc 500 years is the likely maximum. So we are realistically looking at 100,000 articles tops. There are more than that about pop groups, train spotting, nematodes, games and much else besides. Maybe half of the two million articles on Wiki have the no long-term relevence to match this series. (Sarah777 (talk) 01:51, 14 January 2008 (UTC))
• Comment. Regarding comments above such as "Just as well I'm not too sensitive, or I would be really pissed off at AlasdairGreen27 highlighting my Years in Ireland and Years in Northern Ireland contributions at the start of this exchange, without displaying the slightest understanding of what we are about or the value that it has (...) All of my contributions contained content, however small, but they are supposed to be stubs" and "1248 in Ireland is a stub article, which means that it is a small starting point for a larger article. The reason that it contains only two entries is because that's all that has been added so far" I would like to draw attention to the fact that, at the time of nomination, this was the article: [8]. Yes, Ardfern, I am aware that this is not one of your creations, to save you the trouble of pointing that out. While I'm on (yes, I know this is a question for the article's talk page, but anyway) perhaps I might suggest that you look into the claim that the article has been updated with that Coleraine castle was built in 1248. Does this mean that construction started or finished then? Or was the whole thing sorted from foundation stone to curtains in a year? A remarkable achievement, if so, and quite unlike other castles of the period.
  Bearing in mind all of the contributions above it is quite apparent that there is broad consensus to keep, so I'll withdraw the nom. AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 08:23, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Al! That creation was mine it seems! Don't normally create blank ones but I'm sure there was a good reason at the time :) Your intentions were good; I fault you not. Regards Sarah777 (talk) 20:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks :-)) -- AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 20:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Strong keep. Year in Country articles are good summaries, and they should be encouraged as long as they are well sourced. This is an excellent way to organize information too detailed to be appropriate for either the specific Year article or the Country article. I really don't understand this nomination. Quale (talk) 20:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
• Weak keep, this article really should be deleted, its quite pointless. BUT year xxxx in country y seems to be an established standard on wikipedia, the issue is with that entire way of doing things being daft not with this article.--Him and a dog 19:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.