Talk:United Kingdom/Archive 1

Article Checklist for "United Kingdom/Archive 1"

Workgroup category or categories	Geography Workgroup, History Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	External article: from another source, with little change
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Petréa Mitchell 10:57, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

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United Kingdom or Great Britain?

Why has this article been moved from United Kingdom, which is a recognised country, to Great Britain, which hasn't existed as a country since the UK was formed?

The person who moved the page says "The term 'United Kingdom' is actually part of the long title for this country grouping" but this doesn't make sense to me. Richard Lamont 08:16, 27 January 2007 (CST)

Richard, most people know this country as Great Britain.Having an article under 'United Kingdom' doesn't make sense,as it is like having an article titled 'United Republic of Tanzania', when most people refer to that country as Tanzania. I hope that I was able to answer your question.Great Britain, by the way, has existed since 1707. - (Aidan Work 14:04, 27 January 2007 (CST))

This seems to me to be a general programming problem. The same issue comes up in biology with the names of organisms, common names and scientific names. Perhaps disambiguation pages would solve it? I do not have a view as to the best name, but I do know that if I put either "United Kingdom" or "Great Britain" or (forgive my lack of sophistication) even "England" in the search box I should be offered a route to this article.Nancy Sculerati MD 15:45, 27 January 2007 (CST)

This is confusing indeed, since on the European continent the UK is considered the proper name where as when one would say GB that is the UK without Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - concistent actually by standards used by the FIFA (to mention some of the users of that standard. England and Great Brittain nowadays are seen as total synonyms. However due to historical arguments there remains much to say for using the UK above GB. Robert Tito 17:06, 27 January 2007 (CST)

England and Great Brittain nowadays are seen as total synonyms. Hmmm. By whom? Not by anybody from the United Kingdom, certainly. Great Britain is the larger of the two main British Isles islands and includes Scotland and Wales. Ian Cundell 10:32, 2 February 2007 (CST)

Try and tell the Scots and Welsh that England is synonymous with Great Britain. Just because people make this error, and in the US I hear this all the time, does not make it right. I have never heard FIFA confuse England and GB. In fact, they are the ones that want a combined Scotland, England, NI and Wales team or similar. I think they are acutely aware of the difference since it represents 3 extra teams in the world cup qualifying rounds. Chris Day (Talk) 04:51, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Counting all minor outlying islands as part of Great Britain, it is 94.3% of the UK's land area and 97.2% of its population. It is not identical to the UK, so the article on the UK should not be called Great Britain. On Wikipedia, there is a separate article for the UK, Great Britain, and England, and I don't see why we shouldn't do the same here. These articles do lead readily to the UK article, because it is linked to in the first two lines of both of those.—Nat Krause 19:36, 27 January 2007 (CST)

Great Britan seems to be a subset of UK. UK should be retained, I suggest, and the distinguishing theme for the subset explained. We also need to check CZ policy on moving pages. I recall it should be done sparingly Is my memory wrong on this? David Tribe 21:43, 27 January 2007 (CST)

I have lived in the UK all my life. We hardly ever talk of Great Britain, because we don't often need a term for England + Scotland + Wales but excluding Northern Ireland. Great Britain is not a legal jurisdiction, it has no parliament or government, and other countries don't send their ambassadors there. There is English Law, and Scottish Law, but no British Law. I would like the name of my country got right, if it's all the same to you guys, so I'm going to revert the move. Richard Lamont 11:48, 28 January 2007 (CST)

As stated quite clearly in the opening line, the correct full term is United Kingdon of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (originally Ireland). So, by definition, Great Britain cannot be equal to United Kingdom. Ian Cundell 10:32, 2 February 2007 (CST)

Northern Ireland not a part of Great Britain?

That's absolutely a load of baloney. Northern Ireland IS part of Great Britain. It certainly isn't part of Ireland, even though it is located on the isle of Ireland. Northern Ireland is as British as England, Scotland, and Wales are. The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are NOT even part of either Great Britain or the European Union.They're still British Commonwealth countries though. All 4 countries of Great Britain use the same currency - the Pound Sterling. - (Aidan Work 22:29, 18 February 2007 (CST))

I'll chime in here too, as a Brit, I agree with Ian Cundell and Richard Lamont above. Northern Ireland is not part of Great Britain. If this is how you use the term GB then it is incorrect usage. UK = GB + NI. I think you should find it easy to confirm this with mutliple sources. Chris Day (Talk) 04:37, 19 February 2007 (CST)

If Northern Ireland was part of Great Britain, why would the country be called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? The name UKGBNI came about following the partition of Ireland, in which the Republic of Ireland was created, and NI became part of the UK along with GB. Maybe you're mixing Great Britain up with the British Isles - the latter does include both NI and the Republic. Richard Lamont 11:32, 19 February 2007 (CST)

It's not even debatable - the front of my passport says United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Important word that, "and". Although, just to confuse things it does call me a British Citizen, where once it called me a Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies... Ian Cundell 12:32, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Getting back to more substantive matters

I've tried to make a start of hacking out some of the wiki-bloat, which at least in part stemmed from classic wikipedia POV pushing and 5c (sorry - 5p) inserting. Basic approach: try to improve the writing; remove stuff that is of interest only to a tiny minority of anally-retentive locals; remove stuff that is transient/ vicarious (or re-word in a more considered way); try to do justice to the N. Ireland situation in a neutral way (I think it needs more work).

I suspect I should have been more brutal. Ian Cundell 19:48, 3 March 2007 (CST)

You have more work to do.

Very recently the opening sentence (and, indeed, the whole opening paragraph) has been enormously blunted with, and I do quote, In articles on geography and 21st century characteristics, the preferred noun is United Kingdom or UK. In historical books and articles the preferred noun is Great Britain or Britain. The preferred adjective is British. The main language is the English language. Citizens are called Britons or (informally) Brits. Use British Empire or British Commonwealth. The UK!!!

The UK article was imported from WP where it had been exhaustively debated and honed. It is extremely unlikely that any of the facts can be altered or the emphasis substantially changed while remaining an encyclopedia article.

We can improve the way the language reads but I would suggest that a sandbox for article development is started first. Otherwise people will make unfavourable comparisons between the CZ and WP articles. I would strongly like our articles to be better - more up to date, better sourced, more balanced, sometimes with more pungent language that reads less like the report of a committee - but not idiosyncratic or too quirky in layout or emphasis.W. Frank 04:23, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

The CZ goal is to do better than Wiki, or else why bother? The Wiki is NOT edited by experts, which makes it an unauthoritative source--it is the least common denominator of a lot of amateurs, which tends to mean lots of uncontested facts and few complex ideas. In this case the article needs to start with the name of UK and usages, which confuses people outside the UK a great deal. Richard Jensen 08:16, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Have you actually tried to read the sentence that was constructed without using circular (or 'tibetan') breathing? I thought German took the biscuit for sentences that needed help from artificial breathing apparatus or a flow diagram, but you've coined a world-beater, Richard. Even if the current sentence were not such a monstrosity, it is bizarre that you should think the most important characteristic of the UK is its funny name. I hate to say this but as a German resident in the UK for decades, I like to think I'm expert enough to say that, in travelling to more than 147 different countries, the only people that seem consistently confused or sloppy in their useage are American, English and French politicians. However, if you then ask the French person who has been wittering on about l'Angleterre what or where Le Royaume-Uni is, they still don't "confondre le Royaume-Uni avec l'Angleterre, l'un des pays qui le constitue, ni avec la Grande-Bretagne, l'île principale"

By all means stick the nomenclature clarifications in one of the first sub-sections - or even in a fourth or fifth paragraph of the lead but Not in the opening sentence.

Don't underestimate the expertise of some WP participants too much. There are lots of experts attempting to construct encyclopaedic articles on WP - it's just that they give up and roll their eyeballs when faced with the sort of non-expert howlers that confuse the Commonwealth, the British Isles, The British Islands, The United Kingdom, Britain, Great Britain and England as almost exact synonyms of each other! W. Frank 09:13, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, I do agree that definitions and explanations are needed for all these names. By the way, Britain is a geographical term which also includes the Rep. of Ireland, which nobody seems to have noticed here. Perhpas it would be helpful to look at the suggestions I have just made on the Talk page for Countries of the World. It really is necessary for Encyclopedia entries to be clear and accurate, and when reality is more complex to take some rational decisions about categorisations. Please comment there. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 09:21, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

ONe more comment: the opening sentence is unwieldy [as well as not being completely correct]. I suggest that a table of terms is needed, with a different opening sentence referring to the table for more information. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 09:27, 29 April 2007 (CDT)