h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Northern Ireland - A794810
Author: Demon Drawer, ACE, Guru, (Back after 2 weeks in Berlin) - U104826

Many people on H2G2 have attempted to write an entry on Northern Ireland, not very seriously by in large but attempted none the less, including myself but none of us have yet got an entry covering the whole country added to the edited guide. So I decided to take a look at waht they had all tried to write plus what I know about the subject having be born and brought up there.

Hi, Demon Drawer!

I haven't time at the moment to give this a thorough read, but one thing I'd suggest is a link to the entry A (Very) Brief History of Ireland at A707906.

Azara

An informative entry on the recent history of Northern Ireland as far as it goes, but to do the subject justice, one needs to go further back than 1912. How Ireland became to be part of the Union in the first place is probably the root cause of the current problems. The link suggested by Azara goes someway to addressing that problem.

It should be mentioned that the place we now call Ulster is not the ancient province of Ulster in its entirety. Part of that still remains in Southern Ireland.

And there lies the problem. If you can write a brief history of Northern Ireland that the majority can agree with, you are doing better than most historians and politicians have done in the last 800 years .

Regards

Stuart

I'll link to your article Azara.

Which is going to answer you first point stuart.

I have mentioned that Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan are the parts of Ulster not in Northern Ireland.

I started at 1912 as before that Northern Ireland did not exist.

Oh, it's not my entry, Demon Drawer, it's Woodpigeon's!

Azara

I knew what I meant. And it's too darn busy at W*** to gat it done just now.

I can't review this article. I'd like to be specific why, but then this post would be longer than the article.

I had a lot of difficulty just reading this article because of the plethora of run-on sentences. Adding to the brain-pain is that there are lots of randomly sprinkled correctly-spelled but wrong-for-context words. You might think a spell checker did this and it could be undone, but there are a lot of misspelled words still there. Then, there are paragraphs like the one with Ailill, that seem to be missing chunks of information.

The paragraph on Ailill has had to be dhopped as the whole thing would be far to long to include. I will look at that.

The spelling has been sorted in the meantime though. And what do you mean by the plethora of run on sentences.

Hi, Demon Drawer!

I've now had a chance to read the entry in detail, and I have to say that I'm a bit uneasy about the overall format. In particular, the way that you have a detailed chornology from 1912 at the start, and then put the geological history and general history at the end, makes it seem very unfocussed. I can see that this probably arose from combining various entries, but it's still strange to come across a sentence like 'first there's the geology and physical geography' when you're actually 2/3 of the way through the entry.

I would strongly recommend two big changes, if you want to stick to the layout with the chronology at the beginning:

First, drop the myths altogether - they really deserve an entry of their own to cover them properly. Here, putting them straight after a table of modern populations is particularly jarring.

Secondly, I would favour rewriting all the later historical section as a section of 'Things to See', since that seems to be the actual emphasis. Sub-headers like 'Neolithic Remains' , 'Churches and Abbeys', 'Norman Forts' and 'Transport and Everyday Life' would fit in quite well.

I have a lot of smaller points to deal with as well, but I think this general problem of an overall unfocussed effect should be dealt with first.


Azara

Spelling:

Your spelling may or may not be better, but I still find the very first instances are still there: dispite instead of despite, and unto, which is correctly spelled, but is not the word that might properly belong there. I didn't look any further today for misspellings.

Run-ons:

In the paragraph that starts 'five counties', the sentence that starts Fermanagh has at least three main points. They may be strongly connected, but it isn't apparent how by reading it. Therefore, it is a run-on sentence. Since this is only the first one, and you didn't spot and change it, I didn't look any further today. I assure you they are there from my first reading.

Data omission:

In the paragraph about the main rivers, you only mention one, the Bann. You say County, but omit just which one. It's not clear what the NW corner refers to: the county border, or the river Bann, or even some other landmark, so you are missing another piece of information.

If all of this were just a matter of me knowing what you meant to say, and just being a usage-and-grammar-fiend, I'd ignore it. There are plenty Researchers who are more apt to do that sort of thing and I let them have at it. I am also prone to let the Sub-Editor have his fun. BUT, it really is difficult for me to make sense of it all, because my mind tries to hold all possible interpretations at once until the redundancy of language takes over and fills in the missing blanks. My memory isn't long enough to read your article.

Hi DD,

Good article. I would agree with most of the comments above in terms of style. In particular you should pay attention to the first paragraph, as it goes into the details a bit too quickly. I think the first article should set some context, because lots of people only know NI from what they hear and see in the news, and therefore from a very negative viewpoint, and it needs to be said quite early in the article that NI is much, much more than this.

In reality the article is so broad it has the makings of lots of different and separate entries - Mythology of NI, History and Politics of NI (whew, now there's a BIG subject to take on), Geology, Archeology. All of these are comprehensive entries in their own right. You also could do with something on the many talented people who have made their name from NI over the years. I think it was Beeline who split his/her entry up in this way on the Isle of Wight - it might be a useful format for you too, but its only my opinion.

Best regards,

Woodpigeon

Woodpigeon,

I think you mean Bluebottle, who writes of the Isle of Wight.

I would love to see this same approach taken to Northern Ireland.

OK Woodpigeon your comment is noted I will take this out of Peer review and start working on the bits. I never intended the overview to get quite so big.

Sea - Yes, sorry - I stand corrected.

DD - Ok - Apologies if it seems I have requested you turn the entry into a project! Alternatively you could just focus on one very specific aspect of the place for a start, and just work on that. I have found that it is much easier to write an entry on a specific subject than on something more general (its easier to get it passed through Peer Review too).

Hope it helps

Woodpigeon

Hey Woodpigeon no worries as you know I have concentrated on various individual aspects of Northern Ireland in my varo=ious entries as it is I was intending to make this a breif overview of Northern Ireland and it got to be Project length. Therefore that is what it is now about to come as I actually left stuff out of this article as it was getting too long. So watch this space I'll post the Project Page once I have it set up and any of you guys with any Northern Irish experience can come by and hlep out on it if you like.

Good luck with it, Demon Drawer!

Azara