Talk:City status in Ireland/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

'primarily an issue' POV phrase?

Cities in the Republic of Ireland are primarily an issue of local goverment organisation, but six historic cities have the right to ceremonial usage.

Who says that cities in the ROI are primarily an issue of local government organisation? Can this be proved? Maybe cities are primarily defined by common usage. This is an unverifiable phrase and must go. Curtains99 22:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

No. The Local Government Act 2001 says precisely that - see above. --Red King 22:44, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Would it be better to say something like

Legally, cities in the ROI are defined by The Local Government Act 2001

? As far as I can see, there are legal, ceremonial and common usage cities. I would have though that all should be described in this article to satisfy all readers. Curtains99 22:51, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

But what is "popular usage"? Why is it not simply PoV? By any international measure (excl USA where a no-horse town is a city), Sligo, Drogheda, Dundalk are nowhere near being cities. And do we rule out Athlone, Naas? Why? We have to stick to the legal definitions. Yes, it is galling that Newry is declared a city but who said that life had to be fair? --Red King 22:59, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you are right. Maybe common usage has no validity in this context. Common usage is used to determine correct naming of articles in wikipedia but this is not relevant here. I dunno. I am off to bed. Curtains99 23:12, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

First line of this article is suspect

This is a list of the cities in Ireland.

If this is so then why does the article title not have the word list in it? Is this article an attempt at defining which towns in ireland qualify as cities under different definitions of a 'city in Ireland'? Also there are two lists in this article; one for ROI and one for NI. Curtains99 22:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I've fixed the opening line, but you are right about the "ceremonial usage" bit - that is wrong and needs to change. I'll do it as soon as I source the assertion that Kilkenny is listed explicitly. --Red King 22:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Section 10, Para 6 (7) This section is without prejudice to the continued use of the description city in relation to Kilkenny, to the extent that that description was used before the establishment day and is not otherwise inconsistent with this Act. --Red King 22:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Six cities have received royal charters

Did you not just show above that Galway did not receive a city charter? Curtains99 22:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Not sure. It certainly received a borough charter. I'll make a note that the jury is out. It doesn't look good - the judge is cleaning the dust off his black cap! --Red King 23:10, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the word 'citie' was always used back in those days. I suggest that until someone can say definitively one way or another that it was or wasn't always used, that the Galway charter be considered to indicate city. County borough or borough is what was used more consistently, I think, although I could be wrong. 'City' only came (back -- if it had been there before) into administrative use with the Local Government Act 2001, I think. Was there ever a town or village charter? I don't think so. I think the article was fine the way it was (before the Galway edit). We're in danger of going over board here I think. Merlante 15:40, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, 300 years prior to Galway's borough charter, Cork was granted a city charter which did indeed use the word 'city'...

I have granted and given, and by this my charter confirm, to the citizens of Cork all the fields held of my city of Cork and the ground on which the city is, now. for my benefit to increase the strength of the citizens. This is to them and their heirs to hold of me and my heirs, and to remain in frank burgage, by such custom and rent as the burgesses of Bristol, in England pay yearly for their burgages; and to secure my city of Cork I grant this to the same my citizens of Cork all the laws, franchises, and customs or freight which are in Bristol on whatsoever sails. And firmly commanding that the aforesaid my citizens of Cork and their heirs and their successors have the aforesaid city of Cork of me and my successors as is aforesaid, and have all the laws and franchises and frank customs of Bristol; and as those were wont to be used and written in my court and in my hundred of Cork, and in all business. And I forbid that any wrong or hindrance be given to the aforesaid laws and franchises, which gift from us are given and granted

Curtains99 22:46, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so 'city' in mentioned in one Cork charter. Even if it is mentioned in all Cork charters, that still doesn't mean it was used in all charters -- perhaps other words like 'borough' were occasionally used to mean city? Siting examples where is was used does not prove anything. Besides, the terminology may have changed over the centuries. I think we need an expert on city charters to answer this one.

I have to say though, I didn't think they had different types of town in the middles ages. I thought they had just cities and small towns/villages/settlements (that didn't require local government). I would be surprised if there were cities as well as other things called boroughs. Can anyone clarify? Merlante 16:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I think this brings us back to the fundamental problem with this article: there are differing definitions of what makes a town a city and without explaining these definitions and then listing which towns meet each definition, we are shoehorning several lists into one. Curtains99 21:57, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I said before it was a shoehorning exercise, which is I why suggested lists by context. In any case, opinions on towns and cities are irrelevant, these things are defined in the Local Government Act 2001 (and other documents). We decide only how to talk about them. What we need here is an expert in medieval charters, simply because we speak a version of English from a different era. None of us here know for sure what exactly was meant at the time by 'city' and 'borough'. But that doesn't mean that nobody knows -- there are experts out there.

My humble suggestion was that in the absence of such expertise, I think it might be fairer in the interrim to say that Galway's city status was conferred by charter. I don't know what else a medieval city/town charter would confer otherwise. Merlante 11:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you mostly. Yes we are lacking expertise in understanding the significance of medieval charters, but is the primary purpose of this article not to list cities in Ireland in 2006? Of secondary importance would be the history of city status in Ireland. Charters may be granted and withdrawn, or in the case of Ireland, may be replaced by a new administration (the Irish government replaced the monarch and UK government). A charter is an ephemeral constitution for a town and not an eternal definition of status. Note that Rochester does not feature in a list of cities in the UK having recently lost its royal charter. Similarly, Babylon does not appear in the list of cities in Iraq.

You point out that the word 'city', 'borough' and 'town' are likely to have had different meaning in medieval times form their definitions today, but does this not underline the pointlessness of comparing a city now to a city then? How can we say that a city traces its status to a charter hundreds of years ago when the definition of a city has changed so much in the interim?

As regards the medieval definitions of town, borough and charter, here is a link with some relevant discussion. Here the author suggests that there is no clear agreement over what constituted a town in the middle ages and that various contradictory perspectives are commmonly used. I would prefer if the charter stuff were relegated to a subsection rather than clogging up the list of currently legally constituted cities with a load of historical footnotes. In other words, I would favour a return to the earlier structure of the article with two lists, the first containing current cities in Ireland (including Kilkenny with a footnote), the second list containing towns with charters, clearly indicating it was of historical interest only. Curtains99 22:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Bit late, but I would query stating that Galway is a charter town without knowledge of a charter. You ask of what else made for the distinction of "city", but I believe Tuam was a 12th Century city...possibly older, and without charter to my knowledge. I have some expertise, but it is seventeenth century and later. Galway in 1608 petitioned James I for recognition of the town's former charters (going back how far I know not), with additions, granted by the crown in 1610 which gave it separate administration as "the county of the town of Galway", a distinction in formal usage as late as 1830 certainly and probably later. I am fully familiar with Londonderry (which falls within my own period of familiarity), and Cork to a lesser extent, but I'm working on that. When I consolidate my material (trying to get a definition of contextually specific definition(s) of "city" has been an aim) I'll provide what c.1600-1920 can tell. If there was anyone with a Medieval specialism (or interest!) who'd like to get in touch, please do, as I wouldn't want to myopically anachronistically stamp a seventeenth century interpretation on its past. To those who say this is a list, not an examination of a term, I would note that you cannot form a list without defining what constitutes membership. The two aims are one and the same. OCarrollCian 14.39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Well you'll get no argument from me on that one, given that I was the one who introduced the two lists. :) Merlante 21:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Cities in Northern Ireland

There's been a short discussion on City status in the United Kingdom's talk page about whether cities in the Republic of Ireland should be included in that article. One of my suggestions was a combined 'Britain and Ireland' article. Another was two articles, one on the U.K. and the other on the Republic of Ireland. As these two suggestions would both affect this article (and as other suggestions also have implications about what should be included in this article) I thought it only fair to raise the issue on this talk page. Surely though it is unsatisfactory to duplicate material on two separate articles, because then whatever of the duplicate material is edited in the one has to be edited simultaneously in the other.GSTQ 23:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

To me it is not unsatisfactory to have duplicated information, even if that does lead to double edits. There are only 5 or cities in NI so it would only require change when there was something that affected one of these. Otherwise we get into an unproductive discussion about whether such articles should be delimited by geography or politics. Who would benefit from such an abstract discussion? Real users of Wikipedia? I doubt it. If you wish to include NI cities in the UK article then you should do so. But please don't suggest it would be inappropriate to also list them here. Frelke 13:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

All other articles on "Cities in ..." are delimited by politics. It's not an abstract discussion. It's one that affects the content of articles, particularly this one and the U.K. article. Your statement that edits would only be required when something affected one of the five Northern Irish cities is misguided. Edits are often required to improve an article, even when nothing has happened to affect the topics it describes. I have suggested a merger of this page and the U.K. one, which would benefit users of Wikipedia in that they would have a single article which would be capable of covering the similarities and differences of city status in the two islands throughout their history. Nobody has responded to that suggestion. Should I take it that nobody would care if I did merge the pages? By the way, I would suggest that all discussions about content of articles are (or at least are capable of being) productive. Why else do we have talk pages?GSTQ 22:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

People are very often interested in 'Cities in Ireland' in particular, and it would not serve them well to have to find the information in this article in a much larger article. Also, to state the obvious, the Irish Republic is a separate jurisdiction, with different local government law entirely, so there should at least be a separate article for cities in the republic. Although I accept that currently, the article is geographical as opposed to political. Merlante 07:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I take it that unless Frelke or anyobody else has any more to say the consensus is that this article should be about cities in the Republic only. I'll wait a day for any comments anyone wants to make and then in default of anything else I'll make the necessary changes.GSTQ 22:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Um, my reading is that there is no consensus here at all - indeed, User:Frelke and User:Merlante appear to be supporting the status quo. I abstain myself as I'm not a regular editor of this page, however I don't really see any major problem with such limited duplication of content in two articles. Cheers, DWaterson 22:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

You're quite right, DWaterson, I was using the term "consensus" very loosely, to mean "consensus by all those who are (presuming no subsequent discussion takes place within a day or so) continuing to contribute to the discussion in question". I don't want to be too bold, but I'm not going to be too timid about edits either. If we waited until all contributors to a discussion indicated their agreement on a talk page then hardly any edits would get made. My reading of Merlante's post, however, is that "there should at least be a separate article for cities in the republic". How do you read the status quo into that? As for duplication, well, even if you're not convinced about that being a justification for elimination of material, what about the pattern followed in all other articles called "cities in ..." being political?GSTQ 23:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I was reading from Merlante's first sentence, "it would not serve them well to have to find the information in this article in a much larger article" (ie a merged article with City status in the United Kingdom). That reads to me as the status quo. Their second line, "there should at least be a separate article for cities in the republic", implies a second (third?) article, not a change to this one. Perhaps Merlante could elucidate for us? :-) Cheers, DWaterson 00:21, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

If there is a proposal for a merge, it should be marked using {{merge}} template. If there is a proposal for something else, can someone please make very clear what that proposal is. Is it to rename/move this article? Is it to remove the information about NI cities from this article? And waiting a day for either of those things - both of which are controversial - is hardly a way to gain consensus. Personally I don't see any problem with leaving things as they are. Neither do I have any problem with including the list of 6 cities in the UK article, although I would suggest that it might be useful to also include an xref to here. But I have yet to hear any convincing argument for a move or deletion. Frelke 12:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

My current proposal is for deletion of Northern Irish cities from this article & moving this article to "Cities in the Republic of Ireland".

Reason one: it tallies with the pattern of "Cities in ..." articles all being based on political entities. If you look at the list of cities by country, "Cities in Ireland" is marked with an Irish tricolour, which is representative of what you'd expect from all the other articles listed there. Rather than add a Union Jack next to the link, why not make the article fit the expectation of the reader?

Reason two: this article does discuss city status in the Republic. There is no discussion, however, of the situation in Northern Ireland, indeed there is not even any discussion here of those cities in Northern Ireland which were cities before partition. The N.I. section of this article is just a stub, and it looks like an afterthought.

Reason three: the problem of double-editing articles is pretty well borne out by the fact that two dicussions are currently taking place on two different talk page articles about essentially the same thing. It is not the easiest thing to keep track of both, and you can never be sure if everyone contributing has read both discussions. The same thing will happen in the future about edits to the Northern Irish sections of each article.GSTQ 22:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify what my views are. I think it is 'nice' from an Irish point of view to leave the status quo, because people can take view Irish cities in an all-Ireland context. Many people associate with 'Ireland the island' as opposed to merely 'Ireland the republic', for various reasons. However, I do accept that the status quo involves duplication, and it also involves making the 'cities in Ireland' article more geographically orientated, whereas, judging from what has been said, most of these articles tend to be politically orientated. If the Irish article really jars in this respect, then it is probably correct to make it a 'Republic of Ireland' article. Where this is not really the case (that it really jars), I'd be in favour of maintaining the status quo, since the article is not huge and perhaps info on UK cities status could link to the UK article rather than be repeated.

In any case, if the decision is between merging the Ireland and UK articles or changing the Ireland to a Republic of Ireland article, I would choose the latter. Merlante 23:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Given that we don't use Cities in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, nor Cities in the Republic of France, Cities in the Federal Republic of Germany, nor even Cities in the Libyan Socialist Peoples Arab Jamariyah, why do you think we should change the Ireland page to Cities in the Republic of Ireland. There is already a major outbreak of edit-warring on the Republic of Ireland article for very similar POV reasons. Whenever anyone asks me where I am from, I reply "Ireland" and everyone understands exactly where I am coming from. The name of the political entity is Ireland, so the name of the cities page should be Cities in Ireland. Although on WP we currently have the article for the political entity at Republic of Ireland the MOS for Ireland related topics suggest that in most instances that should be piped to Ireland and this is done across a huge number of Ireland-related articles. Moving the article will achieve nothing except another useless bout of POV edit warring and flaming on the talk pages. People who use WP are not going to be helped by moving the article. We are not going to hear a huge sigh of relief across the WP user base as people say "Phew. Finally I can allow my children to use Wikipedia now that the Irish cities article is at Cities in the Republic of Ireland". Its unnecessary, meaningless and useless.

If you want to include the cities in NI on the UK page then do so. We could even add at the top of the NI section

Main article: Cities in the United Kingdom § Northern Ireland

And why not add a para expalining what extra information is available over there, say ...

Further detail on the cities of Northern Ireland can be found on the UK list, including vast quantities of information on city status, history and 360° Google Earth flybys.

or whatever. That way we can abide by the WP standard of keeping duplication to the minimum necessary to be useful to the user. The users are the people that matter here, not the editors. And users will expect all the cities on the island of Ireland to be listed on a page entitled Cities in Ireland. And that is the correct title for the page. Frelke 07:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I think your interpretation of the Manual of Style's suggestion is a bit self-serving, Frelke. Here is what it actually says:

"A large number of Republic of Ireland towns and villages (and other types of articles too) state that they are in Ireland, not Republic of Ireland in the opening paragraph. This is misleading as it creates the impression that Ireland is one state. A compromise has been proposed at WP:IWNB that the form "is a town on the coast of County Cork, Ireland" should be used. This is already widely used and will allow it to appear as Ireland whilst linking to Republic of, as per Follow_local_conventions."

Now that is the proposed convention for introductory paragraphs for town articles. It says nothing about other articles. I think we've got a good analogy with List of towns in the Republic of Ireland - just see where List of towns in Ireland takes you - do you think we should have the same set-up for "Cities in Ireland" just being a disambiguation page?

Your analogies with France and Germany are false. Those countries' names do not give rise to ambiguity. A better analogy would be with List of cities in the People's Republic of China and List of cities in the Republic of China (Taiwan) or List of cities in the Republic of the Congo and List of cities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Your point about the name of the state being Ireland, while valid in Irish constitutional law, is contradicted by your own assertion when you say that "users will expect all the cities on the island of Ireland to be listed on a page entitled Cities in Ireland". The description Republic of Ireland is routinely used to avoid ambiguity both within and without the Republic. And needless to say, the 1948 Act has no legal force outside the Republic. The Republic's legal name in the United Kingdom, and thus in Northern Ireland, is Republic of Ireland (or Eire): see the Ireland Act 1949.

No other article in the list of cities by country is listed by island rather than by political entity. Ireland is anomalous in this respect to what appears to be the house style in this area. Even more anomalously and misleadingly, the list shews an Irish tricolour next to the link to Ireland.

I am not going to reply to your "unnecessary, meaningless and useless", "not helping the user", "sigh of relief", "para explaining... Google earth flybys" and "children sleeping at night" comments. If you have something rational to say, please say it without the fluff.GSTQ 23:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

No one has (yet) suggested that there should be a Cities in Northern Ireland article, which is why the List of towns stuff and the Congo/China stuff is irrelevant. The Congo and China articles all need unambiguous article titles because there are 2 of each. What was proposed here was that there would be an Ireland article and a UK article. No need for puffed up articles titels to dab those is there? The term Republic of Ireland is not used routinely except in the U.K. Its a piece of POV. Go anywhere else in the English speaking world and people use Ireland It doesn't matter a damn what the countries legal name is in the UK or NI. Thats not what decides the WP name. Fortunately WP looks a little wider than that.

If you want to ignore WP's raison d'etre - the readers - in favour of a particular group of editors POV then by all means feel free to do so. Just don't expect to be successful in persuading the rest of us of the validity of your case.

BTW, can we please have a recap on exactly what the proposal is again. Is it that there should be a Cities in Northern Ireland article? Frelke 06:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Recap: my proposal is to remove Northern Irish cities from this article & to move this article to "Cities in the Republic of Ireland".

By saying that the country's name is "Ireland" are you saying "yes we should remove the N.I. cities because they're not in Ireland (defined as the Republic of Ireland)"? That's a pretty eccentric position to hold. If, instead, you're actually saying "No we should make this article anomalous by basing it on a geographical entity rather than a political one" then I think that's a result which confuses rather than informs the reader. Either way, I don't see where the POV accusations are coming from. I've declared my hand on my userpage. I expect a little good faith in return.GSTQ 22:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Well there doesn't appear to be consensus in the strict sense of the term, but nobody has contributed to this discussion since my latest post a week ago. Any further posts?GSTQ 03:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

My apologies. I had missed your earlier reply. I thought you had gone quiet. Can I clarify what my position is then:

1. That the title should remain at Cities in Ireland.
2. That the page should list ALL cities in Ireland.
3. That any other page that wants to list some or all of the cities can list them.

HTH Frelke 07:00, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I say leave it as it is. We can have ontological arguments all day, but having an 'Ireland' article, I would argue, makes sense to 'most' people, and having that article refer to the island of Ireland, I would argue, is what most people expect to see, or at least is a superset of what most people expect to see; the article does after all give the political context. Legally, and in normal speech, the label 'Ireland' is ambiguous, but it is not meaningless. That fact that it is meaningful to so many, and the fact that the article is not problematic to maintain in its current form, leads me to say that I think we should leave it in the current format, but perhaps add a note, explaining the geographical/political scope of the article, particularly for those familiar with similar articles elsewhere on wikipedia that are familiar with a mainly political treatment of the subject (although surfers of 'cities in ...' articles are likely to be in the extreme minority of those viewing the article). Merlante 09:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not persuaded, for three reasons, overlapping in some respects.

1. The discussion on this page centres on cities in the Republic & ignores cities in the North. The current stub section on N.I. is not warranted given this topic is covered much better in the U.K. article.
2. This article is anomalously based on a geographical rather than political entity, and yet the content of the article shews a strong bias towards cities in one political entity rather than another. In other words, the content doesn't justify the anomaly.
3. If we were to address the imbalance in the article then there would be unnecessary duplication, which follows directly from the fact that if you base almost all articles on a political entity, and then base one on a geographical entity, it's bound to create an overlap because geographical boundaries don't follow political ones.

How about we put in a request for comment, and see if we can get one or more outside views? If either position is based on a POV position, then the outside opinion consensus is likely to be all one way. If it's not a clear-cut question, then the topic would benefit from more discussion from disinterested editors.GSTQ 22:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Your first reason seems to ignore the point made by bothMerlante and I, that anyone coming to a Cities in Ireland would expect to see, at least, the (linked) names of ALL cities in Ireland. The average user would expect that. Pehaps you would disagree with that contention? The reason that this article ignores (as you see it) cities in NI, is because those who have an interest in those cities and their status have not got any meaningful content to add, or if they do, they have added it on the UK page. I have already suggested adding a {{main}} template to point readers to all the extra content. It is a very useful editiorial device, that template.

The article, as has been pointed out to you many times, is not based on a geographical entity. It is based on the political entity of the country of Ireland. Ireland is one of those places where language, terminology and symbolism cause huge disruption, discussion and debate. If you really want to engage in that debate, it is at its fiercest right now over on the talk page. I'm sure they would welcome another voice in the debate, especially one as knowledgeable as yours. As a sideline, the country and the island of Ireland share a name, if not a land mass, and the political distinctions can be somewhat hard to comprehend for many people. To that end, as a service to readers, we include a short list of the cities of Northern Ireland on this page so that the reader can find a handy set of links to 'ALL the cities on the island in one place. I hope that helps to explain the situation.

You have suggested the article is imbalanced. Well there are many ways to address that without unnecessary duplication. The template suggestion above is one. Moving the NI list to the bottom of the article is another - although I don't doubt that such an act would be seen by some as Republican POV. There is a huge amount of overlap in an encyclopaedia like this. Most of it is for the good. This is such a case. It is in no way devaluing WP.

I cannot stop you doing an RFC but if you do it the reviewer will need to be aware of the delicate balance that exists in Ireland related articles. That balance is "negotiated" amongst the regular contributors and achieves its on stability. Having an uninvolved eye impose a solution will not be helpful. Frelke 09:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

GSTQ, your argument is basically that the current article is unbalanced (top heavy toward the republic) and that in balancing it there would be too much duplication. I don't see any problem with balancing it as Frelke says with a template suggestion or linking to the main article, which would cause no additional duplication.

You have not commented on whether or not the 'Cities in Ireland' article gives the information that most users expect to see, which I believe it does (as well as clarifying the scope of both jurisdictions). In any case, it is a fact that Ireland is used to refer both to the republic and to the island as a whole, and regardless of whether you think people should be searching for 'Cities in the Republic of Ireland' or not, people will continue to seek out an article called 'Cities in Ireland', either because they live in (rep. of) Ireland and are in the habit of referring to the country as Ireland, are nationalists north or south that take an all-Ireland view, or, more importantly in terms of numbers of visitors, are people from the wider world that know that there is a place called 'Ireland', but have only a scant idea, if any, about the jurisdictions on the island. Merlante 10:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, sure you can't stop me putting a request for comment, I was just kind of hoping you'd be happy for someone without an interest in the whole Irish situation to comment on this specific article. You shouldn't be just saying "this is to do with the whole Irish conflict" and throw a smokescreen down. Every facet of Ireland needs individual treatment, that is what an encyclopaedia is about. As for the article being "based on the political entity of the country of Ireland"; frankly, no it's not. The Republic of Ireland does not exert sovereignty over Northern Ireland, and yet those cities are being included in this article regardless. So it is not based on a political entity. As for what people would expect to see on this article, unless it's renamed, they ought to expect to see a disambiguation page just like List of towns in Ireland. Whether the main article for N.I. be Cities in Northern Ireland or Cities in the United Kingdom is really immaterial as far as whether they should be included in this article. I'd say this is going to be my last post on this topic, I really can't be bothered if editors are going to say "I disagree with your view because it's biassed" and then say "Nobody who isn't familiar with Ireland can make a worthwhile comment on this article". Because by saying both of those, you're really saying "The view I am espousing is the only unbiassed informed view on this article". It's just a rhetorical attempt to shut down the argument while sidelining the issues by saying there's no possible way of judging the right (except yours, of course). The encyclopaedia is worse off for it. That's all.GSTQ 22:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Founding Year of Dublin

The article quotes the founding of Dublin as 917. I distinctly remember the millennium celebrations in 1988, which suggests that Dublin was founded in 988.

--Ironcorona (talk) 17:46, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

To quote History_of_Dublin#Founding_and_early_history:

Dublin celebrated its millennium in 1988 with the slogan ‘'Dublin's great in '88’. The city is far older than that, but in that year, the Norse King Glun Iarainn recognised Máel Sechnaill II (Máel Sechnaill Mór), High King of Ireland, and agreed to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law. That date was celebrated, but might not be accurate: in 989 (not 988), Mael Seachlainn laid siege to the city for 20 days and captured it. This was not his first attack on the city.

If the (sadly unreferenced) Irish anniversary festivals is correct the date was arbitrarily selected by Bórd Fáilte (and was a year out). Apparently they had 1989 earmarked for a celebration in Dundalk. It would be interesting to dig through the newspaper archives of the eighties and throw some light on it.

Lozleader (talk) 10:20, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Further to the above just had a look at the Irish Times digital archives. Unfortunately I don't have a subscription so can only see bits and pieces of articles. The announcement of the celebration of the millennium appears in the edition of 17 December 1985. By 8 January 1986 it had made it to the front page with the headline "One in a thousand, but the wrong one." The word "hoax" also appears. On 10 January there was a story entitled "Archivist defends dating of Dublin's 1,000th birthday."

Lozleader (talk) 10:36, 14 September 2009 (UTC)