Talk:Politics of Dundee

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[edit] Article style

Because this is an international encyclopaedia, many readers will not know where Dundee is. The location of the City, i.e., Scotland, should be mentioned upfront. The Gaelic translation is not going to be as immportant as the location of the city to most readers, so it makes sense to move that slightly later in the first paragraph to improve the flow of the first sentence.

The Wikipedia:Manual of Style recommends not including inks in the pars of the fuirst sentence where the title of the article is put in bold text. It should not be hard for us to respect that recommendation, especially since "Dundee" is repeated in the very first sentence. Ground Zero | t 10:44, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Cheers. Was trying to see a way of keeping the link out of the bold text. Looks more or less OK at present. As regards the "Scotland" link, I am not sure many people will find the article except via "Dundee", or some other article (eg about government and politics), which is, itself, clearly Scotland-related, and putting that Gaelic after the Scotland ref/link makes it, the Gaelic, look like a cognate of Scotland. (Not sure, anyway, of the purpose of these Gaelic cognates, except perhaps in articles about places in the Western Isles, where, I believe, most road signs are in Gaelic, without English cognates.) Laurel Bush 11:13, 15 September 2006 (UTC).

  • People can get to articles in many different ways, including by hitting the "Random article" button on the navigation menu on the left. It is, I think, good policy to have the country identified early. As far as the Gaelic cognate, I realise that's awkward, but couldn't figure out how to handle that better. I don't really know if it is necessary here, but don't want to step on toes by removing it. Ground Zero | t 12:18, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
    • That looks better now. Ground Zero | t 12:20, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Cheers. Laurel Bush 12:33, 15 September 2006 (UTC).

An horrible thought. Or maybe not so horrible. Maybe I have got the article in the wrong 'place'. maybe it would be better at "Politics of Dundee". Don't know whether this would help re stylistic difficulties but, even as it is, the article does include info/history which long predates creation of the unitary council area. As regards use of Gaelic cognates, I am thinking maybe a few toes need treading on. And as regards ways people might stumble across the article, without first knowing that is Scotland-related, I feel the specific example you cite will produce events of much too low a frequency to be of any real significance or importance. Laurel Bush 16:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC).

  • Not so horrible at all. Quite right in my thinking. The article covers Holyrood and Westminster, so "Politics of Dundee" is a better (and shorter) title. Shall I move it? Ground Zero | t 16:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Move? Please do. I might do something similar with a few of my other creations. Laurel Bush 16:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Lists of wards and councillors

Wondering whether anyone is committed to keeping the list of councillors updated (and perhaps maintaining histories of lists). I tried doing this for Highland councillors, and eventually gave up.
As regards wards - is it a good idea to use names as links? Wards are a somewhat special sense of place and area (like constituencies, but much more numerous), boundaries shift quite frequently, and boundaries often cut across more enduring senses of place. For Highland Council wards I have created two subtopic articles (1999 to 2007 and To be created in 2007) to describe the wards, with links in the descriptions. (However, I imagine descriptions of this sort would be rather more difficult for a generally urban area like Dundee.)
Laurel Bush 11:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC).