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In my opinion, the 9 May "JzG" edit has considerably weakened the article, leaving it as a stub. There is now only one section, called "The Mercian Constitutional Convention", whereas the article is entitled "Acting Witan of Mercia", so the former is anomalous. The remaining section begins by saying that the Mercia Movement was the catalyst of the MCC, but, as all the previous background has been edited out, the MM appears out of the blue, so we've no idea what it was/is and why it was instrumental in setting up the MCC. Also, as a result of the material removed by the edit, we no longer really know how the AWM came about and why it exists. Therefore, I think it's imperative that the edit should be undone and the article revert to how it was after the previous edit, ready for further constructive improvement.
Also, I think that the "Bobrayner" edit of the same date has done the article a disservice in removing the (concisely-stated) philosophy of the Constitution of Mercia/AWM because, without it, we no longer know what the AWM stands for. So, reluctantly, I believe this edit should be undone too.
Obviously, I could just undo the edits myself and see what the outcome is, but that would be being discourteous and instead I wish to discuss the situation here, with a view to trying to reach a consensus to go forward on the article.
Snoobysoo ( talk) 18:34, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
My suggestions for the improvement of the article are below, one by one. Although they are individual suggestions, I think it would be best for them to be read together because my aim is to give the article consistency, as well as improve it in specific places. A number of my suggestions consist of proposed additions, but they are small in size and are not suggested in order to increase the length of the article, which I agree with you is of approximately the right length and doesn't need to be substantially expanded:
1. The current structure is nonsensical because there is just one sentence under the "Acting Witan of Mercia" heading and the rest of the article (including all the specific information on the AWM) is under the subheading of "The Mercian Constitutional Convention", which was a forerunner of the AWM and only important in that it shows how the AWM came about. So I suggest that the "Mercian Constitutional Convention" subheading should be deleted and its two further subheadings ("Convention" and "Independence") should be replaced by the new subheadings of "Origins" and "Formation and Campaigns" to make the structure more relevant. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:13, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
2. The phrase ',as a result of the Norman Conquest and the perceived Norman Yoke.' should be added in the introduction after 'ancient English region of Mercia' because it explains why the AWM believes that the UK is in illegal control of Mercia. Otherwise we've no idea why they think that. This is commonplace in their publications and occurs not irregularly as an explanation in the independent sources. 'The Acting Witan claims' would then become the start of a new sentence. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:20, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
3. The current article states that the MCC 'decided to accept The Mercia Movement's draft constitution as the basis for its deliberations.' The problem here is that we've no idea what the Mercia Movement was or is. It just appears out of nowhere and needs to be put in context. So I suggest that after 'decided to accept', the phrase 'The Mercia Movement's draft constitution' should be replaced by 'the "Draft Constitution For Mercia", produced by the campaign group, The Mercia Movement (formed in 1993),'. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:31, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
4. The present article nowhere states what kind of society the Constitution of Mercia projects. This is rather like having no idea what the Conservative Party stands for other than an independent UK and is a glaring omission. So I suggest that after the phrase 'wish to be included in the region', a new brief sentence is added, explaining this: 'The constitution offered 'a new holistic society' in Mercia, 'based on organic democracy, co-operative community and ecological balance.' This quotation is from the back cover blurb of the constitution, but has also been printed in independent sources as to what soceity the AWM wishes to see. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:42, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
5. The phrase 'After the "declaration of Mercian independence", the Mercian "Constitutional Convention"' is unnecessarily wordy and repetitive, with the out-of-the-blue inverted commas hindering the clarity of what is being said. Therefore, I suggest the phrase is simplified to 'After the declaration, the convention'. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:52, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
6. The present article nowhere states what the aims of the AWM are, which is a glaring omission. So I suggest that after the phrase 'renamed itself the "Acting Witan of Mercia", the following is added: ',which aimed 'to spearhead the full democratisation of the region and the re-establishment of its de facto independence'.' This quotation is from the back cover blurb of the constitution and has been referred to in independent sources as objectives of the AWM. Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:00, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
7. In the May 2009 comment about the numbers of people who'd registered as ' "citizens" of Mercia ', the inverted commas are superfluous unless they're consistently used throughout the article every time a word is used in a non-Establishment context, which would make the article unreadable. So I suggest deleting the inverted commas. Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:10, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
8. As the same phrase, 'citizens of Mercia' is used in the previous sentence, a few words before, it would read better if this time it was simply 'Mercian citizens'. Snoobysoo ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 22:12, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
9. In my now-deleted previous edit, I had reduced the number of references, as requested - from 31 to 22. I suggest doing this again, but, as at present I don't know what the outcome of my above suggestions will be and how they will affect the references, it will be best for the references reductions to be made after my above suggestions have been decided upon. Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:44, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
10. In the 'Further reading' section, I suggest adding (before the current first item, for chronological reasons):
' "1066: The Story of a Year", Denis Butler, Anthony Blond Ltd., 1966.'
' "1066: The Year of the Conquest", David Howarth, Wm Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1978.'
After "Bondmen Made Free":
' "Puritanism & Revolution", Essay 3, "The Norman Yoke", Christopher Hill, ISBN 0-4362032-0-0, Secker & Warburg, 1958.'
And last on the list:
' http://www.independentmercia.org'
The reason for these suggested additions is that they are just as valid as the items currently on the reading list and round it off. Snoobysoo ( talk) 23:00, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Unfortunately, since posting the above suggestions for the improvement of the article, I've not been able to revisit this Talk page until now. Thanks for the responses to my first two suggestions. There are no replies to the following ones. Is that because I should deal with the response to my second suggestion before moving on? Snoobysoo ( talk) 19:09, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
There are quite a number of independent citations for a relatively small amount of text in this article. Should the Factual Accuracy and Tone & Style templates therefore now be removed?
Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:11, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Snoobysoo Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:11, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
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| A member of the
Guild of Copy Editors,
MrCrazyDude, reviewed a version of this article for copy editing on August 2015. However, a major copy edit was inappropriate at that time because of the issues specified below, or the other tags now found on this article. Once these issues have been addressed, and any related tags have been cleared, please tag the article once again for {{
copyedit}}. The Guild welcomes all editors with a good grasp of English. Visit our
project page if you are interested in joining! Please address the following issues as well as any other cleanup tags before re-tagging this article with copyedit: The article was listed for copy-editing with the issues being "Factual check, irrelevant information and tone". If the facts are in question, the article may change drastically and a copy-edit is therefore unnecessary at present. It should be re-tagged once the content is finalised. |
![]() | The following Wikipedia contributor may be personally or professionally connected to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view. |
In my opinion, the 9 May "JzG" edit has considerably weakened the article, leaving it as a stub. There is now only one section, called "The Mercian Constitutional Convention", whereas the article is entitled "Acting Witan of Mercia", so the former is anomalous. The remaining section begins by saying that the Mercia Movement was the catalyst of the MCC, but, as all the previous background has been edited out, the MM appears out of the blue, so we've no idea what it was/is and why it was instrumental in setting up the MCC. Also, as a result of the material removed by the edit, we no longer really know how the AWM came about and why it exists. Therefore, I think it's imperative that the edit should be undone and the article revert to how it was after the previous edit, ready for further constructive improvement.
Also, I think that the "Bobrayner" edit of the same date has done the article a disservice in removing the (concisely-stated) philosophy of the Constitution of Mercia/AWM because, without it, we no longer know what the AWM stands for. So, reluctantly, I believe this edit should be undone too.
Obviously, I could just undo the edits myself and see what the outcome is, but that would be being discourteous and instead I wish to discuss the situation here, with a view to trying to reach a consensus to go forward on the article.
Snoobysoo ( talk) 18:34, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
My suggestions for the improvement of the article are below, one by one. Although they are individual suggestions, I think it would be best for them to be read together because my aim is to give the article consistency, as well as improve it in specific places. A number of my suggestions consist of proposed additions, but they are small in size and are not suggested in order to increase the length of the article, which I agree with you is of approximately the right length and doesn't need to be substantially expanded:
1. The current structure is nonsensical because there is just one sentence under the "Acting Witan of Mercia" heading and the rest of the article (including all the specific information on the AWM) is under the subheading of "The Mercian Constitutional Convention", which was a forerunner of the AWM and only important in that it shows how the AWM came about. So I suggest that the "Mercian Constitutional Convention" subheading should be deleted and its two further subheadings ("Convention" and "Independence") should be replaced by the new subheadings of "Origins" and "Formation and Campaigns" to make the structure more relevant. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:13, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
2. The phrase ',as a result of the Norman Conquest and the perceived Norman Yoke.' should be added in the introduction after 'ancient English region of Mercia' because it explains why the AWM believes that the UK is in illegal control of Mercia. Otherwise we've no idea why they think that. This is commonplace in their publications and occurs not irregularly as an explanation in the independent sources. 'The Acting Witan claims' would then become the start of a new sentence. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:20, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
3. The current article states that the MCC 'decided to accept The Mercia Movement's draft constitution as the basis for its deliberations.' The problem here is that we've no idea what the Mercia Movement was or is. It just appears out of nowhere and needs to be put in context. So I suggest that after 'decided to accept', the phrase 'The Mercia Movement's draft constitution' should be replaced by 'the "Draft Constitution For Mercia", produced by the campaign group, The Mercia Movement (formed in 1993),'. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:31, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
4. The present article nowhere states what kind of society the Constitution of Mercia projects. This is rather like having no idea what the Conservative Party stands for other than an independent UK and is a glaring omission. So I suggest that after the phrase 'wish to be included in the region', a new brief sentence is added, explaining this: 'The constitution offered 'a new holistic society' in Mercia, 'based on organic democracy, co-operative community and ecological balance.' This quotation is from the back cover blurb of the constitution, but has also been printed in independent sources as to what soceity the AWM wishes to see. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:42, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
5. The phrase 'After the "declaration of Mercian independence", the Mercian "Constitutional Convention"' is unnecessarily wordy and repetitive, with the out-of-the-blue inverted commas hindering the clarity of what is being said. Therefore, I suggest the phrase is simplified to 'After the declaration, the convention'. Snoobysoo ( talk) 21:52, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
6. The present article nowhere states what the aims of the AWM are, which is a glaring omission. So I suggest that after the phrase 'renamed itself the "Acting Witan of Mercia", the following is added: ',which aimed 'to spearhead the full democratisation of the region and the re-establishment of its de facto independence'.' This quotation is from the back cover blurb of the constitution and has been referred to in independent sources as objectives of the AWM. Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:00, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
7. In the May 2009 comment about the numbers of people who'd registered as ' "citizens" of Mercia ', the inverted commas are superfluous unless they're consistently used throughout the article every time a word is used in a non-Establishment context, which would make the article unreadable. So I suggest deleting the inverted commas. Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:10, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
8. As the same phrase, 'citizens of Mercia' is used in the previous sentence, a few words before, it would read better if this time it was simply 'Mercian citizens'. Snoobysoo ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 22:12, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
9. In my now-deleted previous edit, I had reduced the number of references, as requested - from 31 to 22. I suggest doing this again, but, as at present I don't know what the outcome of my above suggestions will be and how they will affect the references, it will be best for the references reductions to be made after my above suggestions have been decided upon. Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:44, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
10. In the 'Further reading' section, I suggest adding (before the current first item, for chronological reasons):
' "1066: The Story of a Year", Denis Butler, Anthony Blond Ltd., 1966.'
' "1066: The Year of the Conquest", David Howarth, Wm Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1978.'
After "Bondmen Made Free":
' "Puritanism & Revolution", Essay 3, "The Norman Yoke", Christopher Hill, ISBN 0-4362032-0-0, Secker & Warburg, 1958.'
And last on the list:
' http://www.independentmercia.org'
The reason for these suggested additions is that they are just as valid as the items currently on the reading list and round it off. Snoobysoo ( talk) 23:00, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Unfortunately, since posting the above suggestions for the improvement of the article, I've not been able to revisit this Talk page until now. Thanks for the responses to my first two suggestions. There are no replies to the following ones. Is that because I should deal with the response to my second suggestion before moving on? Snoobysoo ( talk) 19:09, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
There are quite a number of independent citations for a relatively small amount of text in this article. Should the Factual Accuracy and Tone & Style templates therefore now be removed?
Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:11, 4 July 2016 (UTC)Snoobysoo Snoobysoo ( talk) 22:11, 4 July 2016 (UTC)