Wikipedia:Peer review/Irish people/archive1

Irish people

Hello. I have made extensive revisions to this article, and would like to submit it for the consideration of my fellow wikipedians for their thoughts, and hopefully helpful revisions of their own. Looking forward to hearing from you. Fergananim 18:39, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Not being Irish myself, I nevertheless respect you folks a great deal. A COMPLETE article on Irish People would probably have to be a thousand pages long. However, some of your choices in the article in question are, well, odd. For instance, you have a list of folks of Irish descent who lived and worked outside Ireland and earned some recognition, also outside Ireland. The list includes Cyril Connoly, but makes no mention of George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde. It contains the name James Duane, but, try hard as I would, I couldn't find O.Henry on it, or any of the Kennedys. And what is it so precious that Stephen King has but William Faulkner and Jack London don't? You see my point. Impressionist October 6, 2005

Thanks for the reply. The heading under which those people were listed was "Noted people descended from Irish immigrants"; GBS and Oscar were not descended from Irish immigrants - they were Irish. Faulker, Henry and London I did not include as I was not aware they had Irish roots. The Kennedys I left out as they are very well known. The point of the others was to avoid rehashing all the old familiar people of Irish descent and throw some light on new ones (especially Ali, Jimi, Ella and Juan). Hope that clarifys matters. Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Fergananim 17:14, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

In that case, I suggest you state clearly, and perhaps in so many words, too, that the purpose of the list is "to avoid rehashing all the old familiar people of Irish descent and throw some light on new ones (especially Ali, Jimi, Ella and Juan)". Besides, your article is an encyclopedia entry, not an essay with an agenda. Listing names, no matter how familiar, isn't "rehashing" in this case but just doing your job. The article on the United States, for instance, mentions that it's a country as well as a republic, although I'm sure even President Bush knows that. Impressionist October 7, 2005

Thanks for those pointers. Will include JFK and the others on that basis. Fergananim 19:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I think there is too much repitition between this article and "Irish Diaspora". There is no need for two articles on this so I think one should be merged into the other. "Irish People" has 49 links to it, while "Irish diaspora" has 40 - so I suppose the diaspora article should be merged into this article. Seabhcán 13:36, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I have no objection to the merger, but what shall be the title of the new article? Fergananim 19:06, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I suppose "Irish people" seeing that there are more links to that name. We can make "Irish diaspora" into a redirect. Seabhcán 00:12, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I thought the figure of 5.9million Irish people in Ireland sounded high, so I checked the CIA Factbook and it gave a population of just over 4m. Unless the article's referring to the peak population of Ireland, in which case the figure sounds a little low. Is 5.9m a typo or do you have another source? Thought you might have included N.Ireland in that figure, but even then it seems too high. CTOAGN 23:08, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Northern Ireland has a population of 1.66 m and the Republic or Ireland has a population of 4.1m, so the combined population of the island should be about 5.7 or 5.8 m. Seabhcán 00:12, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok, but I don't think you can assume that they're all of Irish ethnicity. Leaving aside recent immigration, that figure must include hundreds of thousands of N.Irish people who consider themselves British. Wouldn't it be more accurate to just count those who are of Irish descent? CTOAGN 14:40, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

If you mean the Unionist population in Northern Ireland, I don't believe that they think themselves non-Irish. They see themselves as Unionist, Protestant and often as British, and as different from the people in the south, but they consider their identity to be very much an Irish identity also. I think they see them selves as being British and Irish, in the same way as Scottish Unionists are both Scottish and British. Seabhcán 16:13, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The 5.7m is correct. The division into Northern Ireland and the Republic is only 80 odd years old, so talking about "Irish People" as solely those from the Southern 26 counties is essentially meaningless when you're talking about Irish People going back hundreds of years. Bandraoi 20:50, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Is this going for a featured list or a featured article? Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 21:26, 21 October 2005 (UTC)