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Wolfe Tone

Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as Wolfe Tone (Bhulbh Teón; 20 June 1763 – 19 November 1798), was a revolutionary exponent of Irish independence and is an iconic figure in Irish republicanism. Convinced that so long as his fellow Protestants feared to make common cause with the Catholic majority, the British Crown would continue to govern Ireland in the interest of England and of its client aristocracy, in 1791 Tone helped form the Society of United Irishmen. Although received in the company of a Catholic delegation by the King and his ministers in London, Tone, with other United Irish leaders, despaired of constitutional reform. Fuelled by the popular grievances of rents, tithes and taxes, and driven by martial-law repression, the society developed as an insurrectionary movement. When, in the early summer of 1798, it broke into open rebellion, Tone was in exile soliciting assistance from the French Republic. In October 1798, on his second attempt to land in Ireland with French troops and supplies, he was taken prisoner. Sentenced to be hanged, he died from a reportedly self-inflicted wound.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, his name has been invoked, and his legacy disputed, by different factions of Irish Republicanism. These have held annual, but separate, commemorations at his graveside in Bodenstown, County Kildare.

Early life
Tone was born on 20 June 1763. His father, Peter Tone, was a prosperous coach-maker who had a farm near Sallins, County Kildare and adhered to the established Anglican church. Although records are absent, he is said to have been the descendant, from the 17th century, of a Cromwellian soldier ("the first Tone to settle in Ireland") and of French Huguenot refugees. His mother, Margaret Lamport, the daughter of a sea captain in the West India trade, was a Catholic who according to Tone's early biographer, R.R. Madden, converted to her husband's church only when Tone was already eight years old. Tone, nonetheless, was baptised a Protestant, with the name Theobald Wolfe in honour of his godfather, Theobald Wolfe of Blackhall, County Kildare, a first cousin of Arthur Wolfe, 1st Viscount Kilwarden.

In 1783, Tone found work as a tutor to Anthony and Robert, younger half-brothers of Richard Martin, a Patriot member of the Irish Parliament for Jamestown, County Leitrim. Tone fell in love with Martin's well-connected wife, Elizabeth Vesey. While Tone later wrote that it came to nothing, a Martin biographer suspects that he was the father of the Martins' first child Laetitia born in 1785.

Tone studied law at Trinity College Dublin, where Kilwarden remembered him as a "sparkling conversationalist and rising talent". Tone was active in the College Historical Society, which had a record for honing oratory skills and preparing members for a life in politics. He was made a scholar in 1784 and graduated BA in February 1786. In 1798, after training in London's Middle Temple, he qualified in Dublin's King's Inns, as a barrister, a profession with which he was already disenchanted.

As a student, he had eloped with Martha (Matilda) Witherington, daughter of William and Catherine Witherington (née Fanning) of Dublin. When they married, Tone was 22, and Matilda was about 16. With the arrival of their first daughter, and his father's bankruptcy denying him an inheritance, he cast about for new employment. To British Prime Minister William Pitt, in 1788 he submitted a plan for a Roman-style military colony on Captain Cook's newly reported Sandwich Islands. When this elicited no response, he sought enlistment as a soldier in the East India Company but applied too late in the year to be shipped to south Asia. Styling himself an "independent Irish Whig", he followed the example of a number of college friends and began reporting on the proceedings of the Irish Parliament and the conduct of the London-appointed Dublin Castle executive.

Invitation to Belfast
In July 1790 in the visitors' gallery in the Irish House of Commons, Tone met Thomas Russell, a disillusioned East India Company veteran. He found Russell equally critical of the proceedings in the chamber below. Henry Grattan's reform-minded Patriots were floundering in their efforts to build upon the legislative independence from England (the "Constitution of 1782") that the Volunteer militia movement had helped secure. Tone later described the encounter with Russell as "one of the most fortunate" in his life.

With Russell providing the introductions, in October 1791 Tone addressed a small reform club in Belfast. Members were Protestant "Dissenters" from the established church, Presbyterians who, notwithstanding sometimes substantial commercial property, had no elected representation. Belfast was a parliamentary borough in the "pocket" of the town's proprietor, the Marquess of Donegall. They had coalesced around the proposal of one of their number, now resident in Dublin, William Drennan, for "a benevolent conspiracy, a plot for the people" dedicated to "the Rights of Man" and to "Real Independence" for Ireland. (Tone's diary records Thomas Paine's Rights of Man as the "Koran of Belfast").

An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland
The Belfast club had invited Tone as the author of An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. It was a tract which they had helped publish and which had appeared, in their honour, as the work of "a Northern Whig". With an eventual print-run of 16,000, in Ireland only the Rights of Man surpassed it in circulation.

The Argument embraced what had been the most advanced Volunteer position: that the key to constitutional reform was Catholic emancipation. So long as "illiberal", "bigoted" and "blind" Irish Protestants indulged their fears of "Popery" and of Catholic repossession, the "boobies and blockheads" in Parliament and Dublin Castle would prevail. The choice was stark: either "Reform, the Catholics, justice and liberty" or "an unconditional submission to the present, and every future administration".

Tone was himself suspicious of the Catholic priests (regretting that the Irish people had been "bound" to them by persecution)   and hostile to what he saw as "Papal tyranny" (In 1798, he was to applaud Napoleon's deposition and imprisonment of Pope Pius VI). But the Argument presents the French Revolution as evidence that a Catholic people need not endure clericalism: in the French National Assembly, as in the American Congress, "Catholic and Protestant sit equally". It also recalls the Patriot Parliament summoned by James II in 1689. When Irish Catholics had a clearer title to what had been forfeit not ninety but forty years before (in the Cromwellian Settlement), they did not use the opportunity to pursue the wholesale return of their lost estates. As for the existing Irish Parliament "where no Catholic can by law appear", it was the clearest proof that "Protestantism is no guard against corruption".

First resolutions
Calling themselves, at his suggestion, the Society of the United Irishmen, and approving Tone's draft resolutions, his hosts declared that "we have no national government — we are ruled by Englishmen, and the servants of Englishmen". The sole constitutional remedy was "an equal representation of all the people in parliament"—"a complete and radical reform". Others were urged to follow their example: to "form similar Societies in every quarter of the kingdom for the promotion of Constitutional knowledge, the abolition of bigotry in religion and policies, and the equal distribution of the Rights of Man through all Sects and Denominations of Irishmen".

Summarised by James Napper Tandy as "all Irishmen citizens, all citizens Irishmen", the same resolutions were carried three weeks later at a meeting in Dublin. Present were John Keogh, John Sweetman and other leading members of the city’s Catholic Committee.

Secretary to the Catholic Committee
In the new year, 1792, the Catholic Committee appointed Tone as an assistant secretary. He replaced Richard Burke, the son of Edmund Burke to whose critical Reflections on the Revolution in France, Paine's Rights of Man had been a response.

In December 1792, with the support and participation of United Irishmen, Tone helped the Committee in Dublin stage a national Catholic Convention. Elected on a broad, head-of-household, franchise, the "Back Lane Parliament" was seen to challenge to the legitimacy of the Irish Lords and Commons. The impression was confirmed when the convention decided to make its appeal directly to London where the government, in advance of war with revolutionary France, had signalled a willingness to solicit Catholic opinion. In January 1793, Tone was included in the Convention delegation that, after being hosted by Presbyterian supporters in Belfast, was received by George III at Windsor. It was an audience with which, at the time, Tone believed he had "every reason to be content".

Through its appointed Dublin Castle executive, the British government pressed the Irish Parliament to match Westminster's 1791 Catholic Relief Act. This lifted the sacramental bar to the legal profession, to military commissions and, in the limited number of constituencies not in "pockets" of either landed grandees or the government, to the property franchise, but not yet to Parliament itself or to senior Crown offices. But there was a substantial price to be paid for the passage, in April 1793, of similar legislation in Ireland.

In the wake of the 1793 Relief Act, the Catholic Committee voted Tone a sum of £1,500 with a gold medal, subscribed to a statue of the King and, as agreed in London, voted to dissolve. The government then passed legislation raising militia regiments by a compulsory ballot system and outlawing extra-parliamentary conventions and independent militia. United Irishmen at the time were seeking to revive the Volunteer movement on the model of the French National Guard.

Separatist and conspirator

In May 1794, evidence laid against Tone helped the government justify its proscription of the Society. In July 1793, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, John FitzGibbon, Earl of Clare, had seized upon Tone's suggestion in a letter to Russell that independence "would be the regeneration to this country", to denounce all United Irishmen as committed separatists. Tone protested, but only by way of endorsing a connection to England where it did not involve the "gross corruption in the legislature" and the "sacrifice of [Ireland’s] interests to England". In April 1794, he was found to have been meeting in the prison cell of Archibald Hamilton Rowan (a fellow United man serving time for seditious libel) with William Jackson. An Anglican clergyman radicalised by his experience of revolutionary Paris, Jackson came to Ireland to ascertain to the potential support for a French invasion. Tone had drawn up a memorandum for Jackson testifying to the readiness of the country to rise, the Presbyterians being "steady republicans, devoted to liberty" and the Catholics "ready for any change because no change can make them worse".

An attorney named Cockayne, to whom Jackson had imprudently disclosed his mission, betrayed the memorandum to the government. In April 1794 Jackson was arrested on a charge of treason and dramatically committed suicide during his trial. Rowan, and two other parties to the conspiracy, Napper Tandy and James Reynolds, managed to flee the country. None of the incriminating papers seized were in Tone's handwriting. Also, while entertaining hopes of serving Francis Rawdon, Lord Moira, as a private secretary, Tone had not attended meetings of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen since May 1793. (Rawdon, who had hosted the Catholic delegation in London, had been a rumoured replacement for the Earl of Westmorland as Viceroy in Dublin).

Tone remained in Ireland until after the trial of Jackson but was advised by Kilwarden that to avoid prosecution he should leave. In an agreement brokered by a former Trinity friend, Marcus Beresford, he was permitted to remove himself to the United States in return for giving an account of his role in the Jackson affair, albeit without breaking confidences or naming names.

Before leaving, Tone and his family travelled to Belfast, and it was at the summit of Cavehill overlooking the town that in June 1795 with Thomas Russell and three other members of the movement's Ulster executive, Samuel Neilson, Henry Joy McCracken and Robert Simms, that Tone took the celebrated pledge "never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country, and asserted our independence".

Responding to the growing repression, the northern executive had endorsed a "new system of organisation". Local societies were to split so as to remain within a range of 7 to 35 members, and through baronial and county delegate committees, build toward a provincial, and, ultimately, a national, directory. Beginning with an obligation of each society to drill a company, and of three companies to form a battalion, this structure was in turn adapted to military preparation.

In this form, the society replicated rapidly across Ulster and, eventually, from Dublin out into the midlands and the south. As it did so, William Drennan's “test” or pledge, calling for "a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion", was administered to artisans, journeymen and shopkeepers, many of whom had maintained their own Jacobin clubs, and to tenant farmers and their market-town allies who had organised against the Anglican gentry in secret fraternities. These were the "numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of no property" that Tone, despairing of his own creed and class, believed would ultimately carry the struggle.

Impressions of America
In August 1795, Tone took up residence in Philadelphia, the then-capital of the United States, where he found himself in the company of Rowan, Tandy, and Reynolds. Tone was instantly disillusioned. He found the Americans to be a "churlish, unsociable race totally absorbed in making money", and was appalled by the reactionary anti-French sentiment of George Washington and his Federalist Party allies—a "mercantile peerage"—entrenched in the U.S. Senate. His sympathies were with the Democratic-Republican opposition that was beginning to form around Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Tone bought a farm near Princeton, New Jersey, an area made desirable by the attraction of "a college and some good society", and thought to spend the approaching winter writing a history of the Catholic Committee. But letters received from John Keogh and Thomas Russell persuaded him to resume his mission. With the support of the French minister in Philadelphia, Pierre Adet, on New Year's Day 1796, he sailed for France.

Lobbies the French Directory
When in February he arrived in Paris, Tone found that, forwarded by Adet, his Memorials on the State of Ireland had already come to the attention of Lazare Carnot, one of five members of the then governing Directory. Tone was not aware of it at the time, but his picture of Ireland as primed for liberation was being reinforced by the still more enthusiastic reports from two new United militants, formerly in the ranks of Grattan parliamentary opposition, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor.

By May, General Henri Clarke, the Irish-descendant head of the War Ministry's Bureau Topographique, had drafted an invasion plan. In June, Carnot offered General Lazare Hoche command of an expedition that would secure “the safety of France for centuries to come". According to a French sympathiser, Tone's enthusiasm for the venture was qualified by "the express condition that the French should come to Ireland as allies, and should act under direction of the new government, as Rochambeau had done in America". Tone had already recorded his resolve never to be an "accessory to subjecting my country to the control of France merely to get rid of England".

Hoche's expedition to Ireland

On 15 December 1796, an expedition under Hoche, consisting of forty-three sail and carrying about 14,450 men with a large supply of war material for distribution in Ireland, sailed from Brest. Accompanied by Tone, commissioned as a "chef de brigade in the service of the republic", it arrived off the coast of Ireland at Bantry Bay on 22 December 1796. Unremitting storms prevented a landing. Tone remarked that "England [...] had its luckiest escape since the Armada". The fleet returned home and the army intended to spearhead the invasion of Ireland was split up and sent, along with a growing Irish Legion, to fight in other theatres of the French Revolutionary Wars.

Tone served for some months in the French army under Hoche, who had become the French Republic's minister of war after his victory against the Austrians at the Battle of Neuwied on the Rhine in April 1797. In June 1797 Tone took part in preparations for a military expedition to Ireland from the Batavian Republic, the French-client successor state to the United Netherlands. However, the Batavian fleet under Vice-Admiral Jan de Winter was delayed in the harbour of Texel island that summer by unfavourable easterly winds and from mid-August by a British North-Sea fleet blockade. After Tone and other troops assembled had disembarked, it eventually put to sea in the hope of reaching the French naval base at Brest, only to be destroyed by Admiral Adam Duncan in the Battle of Camperdown on October 11, 1797. Hoche who, straying from Tone's plans for Ireland, had begun to consider descent upon Scotland (where following the Irish example, radicals had formed the United Scotsmen), had died of tuberculosis on September 19. It was a loss Tone considered "irreparable to the Irish cause".

Rivalries in Paris
Back in Paris, Tone recognised the rising star of Napoleon Bonaparte, but was unable to deflect the conqueror of Italy from his grander vision of still greater conquests in the East. In May 1798, with the men and materiel that might have possible another descent upon Ireland, Bonaparte sailed for Egypt. Bonaparte was later to claim that he might have been persuaded to sail for Ireland had the United Irish agents in Paris not constantly quarrelled among themselves.

After his return from Bantry, Tone had been joined by a co-conspirator in the Jackson affair, Edward Lewines accredited by the Leinster directory in Dublin. With Lewines heavily reliant on Tone for introductions, Tone was unchallenged as a representative of the Irish cause until, returning again to Paris from Texel, he found Tandy recently arrived from the United States.

Willing to exaggerate his military experience, his standing in Ireland, and the readiness of the country to rise, Tandy appeared the more imposing figure. He won over the radical luminaries in exile, Thomas Paine and the Scottish republican and escaped convict, Thomas Muir, but also—and critically—new arrivals from Ulster. These included James Coigly, Arthur McMahon, John Tennent and Bartholomew Teeling. Witness to General Lake's "dragooning of Ulster", they insisted that the movement in Ireland had to act, if necessary in advance of the French, or face the break-up of its entire system. It was an outlook (further encouraged by Coigly's reports of radical societies ready to act in England and Scotland) more in keeping with the policy of the French. After Bantry Bay, they were waiting for reports of a rising in Ireland before again hazarding their own troops.

Bompart's expedition to Ireland and arrest
When, in the spring of 1798, the Leinster directory bent under the pressure of the same martial-law measures applied to the south and called for a general insurrection on May 23, Tone was in the dark. The most that he and the other Irish lobbyists had won from the Directory was the undertaking that once news was received that the country had risen, they would seek to break through to the more open Atlantic coast of Ireland and land smaller numbers of men and supplies. In late August 1798, General Jean Humbert succeeded in landing with a force of approximately 1,000 near Killala, County Mayo. He advanced into the country but, once it was clear that the main rebel conjunctions in Ulster and Leinster had already been decisively defeated, he surrendered. Among the Irish prisoners taken were Teeling and Tone's brother Matthew. They were both court-martialled and hanged.

A second still smaller expedition, accompanied by Tandy, touched land in Donegal on 16 September but departed on the news of Humbert's defeat. Six days before, Tone had embarked with Admiral Jean-Baptiste-François Bompart and General Jean Hardy in command of a force of about 3,000 men. They encountered a British squadron at Buncrana on Lough Swilly on 12 October 1798. Tone, on the ship Hoche, refused Bompart's offer of escape in a frigate. In the ensuing battle of Tory Island he commanded one of the ship's batteries until, isolated and crippled after several hours of bombardment, the ship struck and Bompart surrendered. Two weeks later, held with his fellow French officers in the privy-quarters of Lord Cavan's in Letterkenny, he was recognised by Sir George Hill, a Member of Parliament (and a leading member of the new Orange Order) and was arrested.

Trial and death
At his court-martial in Dublin on 8 November 1798, Tone defended his desire to separate Ireland from Great Britain “in fair and open war" and his honour.

I entered into the service of the French Republic with the sole view of being useful to my country. To contend against British Tyranny, I have braved the fatigues and terrors of the field of battle; I have sacrificed my comfort, have courted poverty, have left my wife unprotected, and my children without a father. After all I have done for a sacred cause, death is no sacrifice. In such enterprises, everything depends on success: Washington succeeded – Kosciusko failed. I know my fate, but I neither ask for pardon nor do I complain.

His one "regret" was the "very great atrocities" committed in the course of the summer rebellion,"on both sides". For "a fair and open war" he had been prepared; but if that had "degenerated into a system of assassination, massacre, and plunder" he did "most sincerely lament it".

His one request was that, as a ranking French officer, he might "die the death of a soldier" and be shot. The request was denied: found guilty of treason he was condemned to hang on the 12th. On what was to be the morning of his execution he was found with a wound to his throat, the result—although later a subject of some speculation —of an apparent attempt to take his own life. The story goes that the doctor who bound the wound told Tone that if talked it would re-open and he would bleed to death, to which Tone replied: "I can yet find words to thank you sir; it is the most welcome news you could give me. What should I wish to live for?".

Theobald Wolfe Tone died on 19 November 1798 at the age of 35 in the Provost Prison of the Royal Barracks, Dublin, not far from where he was born. He is buried in the family plot in Bodenstown, County Kildare, near his birthplace at Sallins, and his grave is in the care of the National Graves Association.

Equality and representation
Later generations of Irish republicans have broadly been content with Tone's own succinct summary of his purpose:

"To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England (the never failing source of our political evils) and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland: to abolish the memory of all past dissension; and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denomination of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means."

In the autobiography he began to compose in France, Tone claimed that already in 1790 he had advanced "the question of separation with scarcely any reserve". While not yet rejecting a personal union of crowns, in his tract The Spanish War (1790) he had disputed Ireland's obligation uphold England in a colonial dispute with Spain and had called for a separate Irish navy.

Beginning with James Connolly, who maintained that Tone would have been "a rebel even had he been an Englishman", left-wing republicans have suggested that for Tone, Irish independence was part of a broader radical vision. Typically reference is made to his diary entry for 11 March 1796: "If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, ''the men of no property". '' He is also recorded as telling the French that a revolution in Ireland "was not to be made for the people of property".

While acknowledging the need for their support, it is not clear that Tone wished those "of no property" to take the initiative. Russell's diary records a despondent conversation in January 1794 in which Tone remarked: there is "nothing to be expected from this country except from the sans culottes, who are too ignorant for any thinking man to wish to see in power".

Tone did not abandon Whig constitutionalism, so long as the talk was of reform. In 1792, in an address to Volunteers, he disclaimed any intention of invading the "just prerogatives of our monarch" or the "constitutional powers of the peers of the realm".  As a condition of Catholic emancipation he had even offered that that the greater part of a non-confessional Irish electorate be disenfranchised. Anticipating the terms under which Catholics were eventually admitted to a United Kingdom parliament in 1829, his Argument proposed raising the property (or tenure equivalent) threshold for the vote fivefold to match the English ten-pound freehold. As Daniel O'Connell was to do in 1829, Tone suggested that raising the qualification would allow the "sound and respectable part of the Catholic community" to recover its proper place and weight in society. More than this, it would also purge the Protestant interest of "the gross and feculent mass" of forty-shilling freeholders. As these could be driven to the polls by their landlords, "as much their property as the sheep or the bullocks which they brand with their names", Wolfe may have reasoned that was lost in democratic principle was gained in the practical check on the ability of the squirearchy to swamp county-seat elections.

Even when set on an insurrectionary path, Tone expressed no wish to unsettle property in Ireland. As "petty despots", unable to see beyond "their rent rolls, their places, their patronage and their pensions",  he suggested to General Clarke that the gentry ran the risk of a "general massacre and a distribution of their entire property".  This he would hope to avoid, for not only would he abhor the bloodshed, but he believed that the prospect of retaining property in Ireland might blunt resistance. He recommended that the French on landing, and a provisional convention that would then be called, offer not only resident landowners but also to the absentee lords in England, security for their estates.  General Hoche could otherwise reckon "on all the opposition" that men of property could give him.

Tone approved the advance of peasant proprietorship under the French Republic, and may broadly have shared Jefferson's faith in the republican virtues of independent smallholders. But he insisted that the United society he had known in Ireland had never "entertained" ideas of "a distribution of property and an agrarian law", and he advanced no such scheme himself. He ventured no more than relief from that "pest on agriculture", the tithes levied on top of rents by the landlord's established church.

In general, Tone appears to have followed the resolve of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen to "attend those things in which we all agree, [and] to exclude those in which we differ", and consequently to avoid directly engaging questions of economic inequality. From France, he wrote tracts addressed to the weavers of the Liberties in Dublin. These expressed sympathy for their hardships. but James Hope, the self-educated weaver who organised in the Liberties, did not place Tone alongside his friend Russell as one of those “few” United Irish leaders who "perfectly" understood the real causes of social disorder: "the conditions of the labouring class".

As was the case with the Dublin society, Tone proposed an independent and representative government as a sufficient promise of redress regardless of the grievance. For Tone, the promise appears to have been not, scarcely conceptualised, agrarian or labour reform, but the promotion of education (Tone imagined the polymath Whitley Stokes as the head of a national system) and a vigorous mercantile policy in defence of Irish trade and industry.

It is matter of speculation as to what Tone, who prided himself on being a political pragmatist, would have found expedient in an Irish republic.  In France, he criticised the Directory, not for a constitution that reintroduced the property franchise abolished with the monarchy, but for suffering themselves "to be insulted in the most outrageous manner" by the unsanctioned press. "It is less dangerous", he wrote, "for a government to be feared, or even hated, than despised".  His recent biographer, Marianne Elliott, notes that Tone applauded the Directory's suppression in April 1796 of Babeuf's proto-socialist conspiracy.  This is consistent with what she concludes was a commitment to equality in Tone that did not truly extend beyond the abolition of aristocratic and confessional privilege.

Monarchy or republic
Questioning whether Tone had "any sustained interest in republicanism as a form of government", the popular historian Andrew Boyd notes that, at the time the United Irishmen were formed, Tone confessed that his objective was not "the establishment of a republic" but to "secure the independence of Ireland under any form of government". Four years later when, believing that "the people of Ireland were in general very ignorant", General Clarke asked whether "we might choose a king", Tone's response was notably pragmatic.

The only person with the least chance of fulfilling such a role, in Tone's view, was Lord Moira (after whom Tone had named his fourth child Francis Rawdon Tone). But the Patriot aristocrat had "blown his reputation to pieces by accepting a command against France".  Tone's larger objection to an Irish crown was that the Dissenters, who he was in no doubt would "direct the public sentiment in framing a government", were "thoroughly enlightened and sincere republicans".  He thought it "absurd" to suggest, as Clarke had done in his instructions to Hoche, that a member of the House of Stuart could be found who would be agreeable to all parties.

To Tone's dismay from Humbert's account of his misadventure in September 1798, the Directory concluded that the Irish were indeed more Jacobite than Jacobin: that they might be compared with the devoutly Catholic and royalist peasantry they had battled at home in the Vendée. Tone had again to rebuff the suggestion of a Jacobite restoration—that the Catholic Pretender, Henry Benedict Stuart, be recognised as Henry IX, King of the Irish.

Nineteenth century
Praising his courage and his "keen" and "lucid" judgement, the otherwise unsympathetic Whig historian William Lecky set Tone "far above the dreary level of commonplace which Irish conspiracy in general presents". But set upon a constitutional path by Daniel O'Connell, nationalist opinion in Ireland was slow to embrace his memory. Despite the efforts of his wife Mathilda and their son William who had collected his papers in a two-volume Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone (Washington in 1826), in the decades after his death, Tone's name languished in relative obscurity.

In 1843, Thomas Davis published in The Nation his elegiac poem Tone's Grave, and with Mathilda's blessing, organised the first Bodenstown memorial.  With his fellow Young Irelander (and Protestant) John Mitchel, Davis found in Tone an "alternative national hero" to O'Connell, "the Liberator", with whose solicitation of Whig government favour and Catholic clericalism they were increasingly disillusioned.  In his History of Ireland (1864), Mitchel drew uncritically from the Life, beginning what historian James Quinn suggests is a "long tradition in nationalist historiography of treating Tone's writing as sacred scripture".

Mitchel's portrayal of Tone as an uncompromising martyr in the cause of independence was adopted, in turn, by a succeeding generation of "physical-force" republicans, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the "Fenians".  In 1873, their supporters began the practice of annual pilgrimages to Bodenstown.  They saw it as fully in the spirit of Tone to dismiss, as a distraction from the struggle for independence, the Land League and other agrarian agitation.

In 1898, the centenary commemorations of the rebellion bore "the stamp" of O'Connell's home-rule successors. Attempts by William Butler Yeats, president in Dublin of the Wolfe Tone Memorial Association  and, in Belfast, by Alice Milligan, author of her own six-penny version of Tone's Life, to celebrate his secular republicanism, were overwhelmed by accounts of 1798 confined to the risings in the south. In these, Tone and other Protestant leaders were effectively sidelined. The focus was on Wexford where, at Oulart Hill, rebels had been led to their first victory by a Catholic priest, John Murphy. Meanwhile at Tone's graveside, Connolly claimed that his Irish Socialist Republican Party "alone" was "in line with the thought of this revolutionary apostle of the United Irishmen".

Twentieth century
In 1912, the IRB veteran Tom Clarke revived the lapsed commemorations at Bodenstown. Speaking at the graveside in 1913, Patrick Pearse described the site as the "holiest place in Ireland", for "though many had testified in death to the truth of Ireland’s claim to nationhood; Wolfe Tone was the greatest of all that had made that testimony; he was the greatest of Ireland’s dead". But while Tone many have been an "apostle" for those who rallied to the republic proclaimed by Pearse, Clarke and Connolly in 1916, writers with influence in the new Irish state after 1922 dismissed him as not being Irish enough.  The "Irish Irelander" D. P. Moran, described Tone as "a Frenchman born in Ireland of English parents", while in a work entitled Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen—for or against Christ? (1937), Leo McCabe (the Jesuit, Br Denis Peter Fennell) associated the veneration of Tone with nothing less than a Judeo-Masonic-Communist conspiracy to destroy Christianity. Conversely there were those who, stressing his work as an agent of the Catholic Committee, sought to adapt Tone to the state's Catholic-inflected nationalism. Aodh de Blácam, a close Fianna Fáil partisan of Éamon de Valera, insisted that Tone's "attachment to his mother's Catholic people was with him to the end".

Anti-Treaty republicans were able to gather at the graveside only after the official, state-organised, demonstration involving martial displays by the National Army.  Once De Valera's Fianna Fáil gained office in 1932, pro-Treaty Fine Gael abandoned Tone's graveside for an annual ceremony at Béal na Bláth, in County Cork, where Michael Collins met his death in an ambush in August 1922.

Tensions surrounding Tone's legacy were evident in the 1934 Bodenstown commemorations. A Republican Congress "James Connolly" contingent from the Protestant Shankill Road in Belfast (accompanied by Jack White and by Winifred Carney) was blocked on their approach to the graveside and their "red" banner—"Break the Connection with Capitalism"—torn by IRA stewards. Each side accused the other of dishonoring, and misappropriating, Tone's memory.

Arising out of the bi-centenary celebrations of Tone's birth in 1963, left-leaning elements of the IRA formed the Wolfe Tone Societies. The WTS opposed the Republic of Ireland's entry into the European Economic Community and protested the Vietnam War. A key figure in the WTS was Roy Johnston, of Protestant background, who (In the tradition of the Republican Congress) looked to recruit Protestants in Northern Ireland to the cause of national unity in a workers' republic.

Following his bi-centenary, a memorial to Tone was commissioned for St Stephen's Green in Dublin. The work by Edward Delaney was unveiled in 1967 by Éamon de Valera. Having, in the name of Tone, opposed the dominion-status Irish Free State, De Valera took the occasion to declare that, while still to achieve national unity, the Republic of Ireland of which he was now president was that for which Tone had "longed for and worked for”.

In October 1969, the Ulster loyalist UVF claimed responsibility for bombing and damaging the Bodenstown memorial to "the traitor Wolfe Tone". In June 1975, the UVF sought to derail a train near Sallins carrying 250 Official IRA supporters to the annual commemoration, and murdered a witness to their attempt.

In 1998, the rebellion's bicentenary, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern made separate appearances at Bodenstown to claim Tone's sanction for their endorsement of the "Good Friday" Belfast Agreement. Acknowledging "with pride" the roots of its republicanism in "the mainly Presbyterian United Irish movement,” Adams declared Sinn Féin equal to the task Tone had set for those truly committed to a sovereign Ireland: to "cast off the manacles of religious sectarianism and 'abolish the memory of past dissensions'". Ahern offered that in that Article 1, the Agreement conceded the "central tenet" of Tone's vision and that of all those who in succeeding generations "worked for reconciliation and peace between the different traditions on this island". It states: "that it is for the people of Ireland alone, by peaceful agreement, between the two parts but without external impediment, to exercise the right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South".

Two years later, Ahern used the same occasion to threaten extraordinary measures against those he described as capable of uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter "only in death". Dissident republicans, who saw rather a cementing of partition, had been holding their own Bodenstown rallies. From Tone, they claimed a "continuing legacy” of struggle against “British occupation“.

Descendants
Of Tone's four children, three died prematurely. His eldest child, Maria Tone (1786–1803; died in Paris) and his youngest child, Francis Rawdon Tone (1793–1806) both died of tuberculosis. Another son, Richard Tone (born between 1787 and 1789) died in infancy.

Only his son William Theobald Wolfe Tone survived to adulthood. Raised in France by his mother after Tone's death, William was appointed a cadet in the Imperial School of Cavalry in 1810 on Napoleon's orders. He was a naturalised French citizen on 4 May 1812. In January 1813 he was made sub-lieutenant in the 8th Regiment of Chasseurs and joined the Grand Army in Germany. His nom de guerre was the punning le petit loup – the little wolf. He was at the battles of Löwenberg, Goldberg, Dresden, Bauthen, Mühlberg, Aachen, Following the Battle of Leipzig, in which he received lance wounds, he promoted to lieutenant, and was decorated with the Legion of Honour.

After the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, he emigrated to the United States, where he was commissioned a Captain in the United States Army and died there on 11 October 1828 at the age of 37. Matilda Tone also returned to the United States, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. William Tone was survived by his only child, his daughter Grace Georgina.

In popular culture
Several Gaelic Athletic Association clubs in Ireland are named in honour of Wolfe Tone. These include, in Kildare, Wolfe Tones GAA; in Armagh, Wolfe Tone GAC, Derrymacash; in Derry, Bellaghy Wolfe Tones GAC; in Meath, Wolfe Tones GAA, and in Tyrone, Drumquin Wolfe Tones GAC and Kildress Wolfe Tones GAC. In North America, there is the Chicago Wolfe Tones GFC in Illinois, and the Edmonton Wolfe Tones in Alberta, Canada. In Antrim, the Greencastle Wolfe Tones GAC is based in the Greencastle district of North Belfast, bordering Cavehill where members of the United Irishmen took their oaths.

In 1963, Brian Warfield, Noel Nagle, Tommy Byrne, and Derek Warfield formed The Wolfe Tones, an Irish republican band. They play Irish rebel music and have courted some controversy with songs celebrating the Provisional IRA.

In 1998, Tone, played by the actor Adrian Dunbar, was the protagonist in an RTE four-part television movie, The Officer From France.

The bicentennial year also saw publication of Belmont Castle: or, Suffering Sensibility "by Theobald Wolfe Tone & divers hands". Edited by Marion Deane, it is an epistolary novel that Tone wrote with two friends in 1790, manuscripts of which were found in his possession when he was arrested in 1798. It is described as "an elaborate roman à clef, satirizing the lives of several prominent figures of the Anglo-Irish establishment and redressing a painful love affair [with Lady Elizabeth Vesey] from Tone’s past".

Works

 * Belmont Castle: or, Suffering Sensibility, a novel with John Radcliff, Richard Jebb, 1790
 * The Spanish War, 1790
 * An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, 1791
 * Declaration of the United Irishmen, 1791
 * The Autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1798
 * On Being Found Guilty, 1798
 * The Life of Wolfe Tone, Written by himself, with his Political Writings and Fragments from his Diary, William T. W. Tone ed., 1826
 * The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763–98, T. W. Moody, R.B. McDowell and C. J. Woods eds., 1998

title: Wolfe Tone


text:
Northumberland County, New Brunswick

Northumberland County is located in northeastern New Brunswick, Canada.

Geography
Northumberland County is covered by thick forests, whose products stimulate the economy. The highest peaks in the province, including Mount Carleton lie in the northwestern corner of the county.

The county is dominated by the Miramichi River, world famous for its salmon fishing. The lower portion of the river is an estuary that widens into Miramichi Bay, a part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Services
The city of Miramichi is a local service centre for the county and surrounding regions with schools, hospitals and government offices and retail locations. The county has several saw mills in the city of Miramichi and up the Southwest Branch of the Miramichi River. There were formerly two large pulp and paper mills at Miramichi.

Chatham was also home to an air force base, CFB Chatham, until 1996. Renous-Quarryville, located along the Southwest Miramichi was also home to an army post - a federal maximum security penitentiary is now located on the site.

Communities
There are five municipalities within the county (listed by 2016 population):

First Nations
There are five First Nations reserves in Northumberland County (listed by 2011 population):

Three communities in the county are part of the Miꞌkmaq Nation: Metepenagiag Miꞌkmaq Nation, at the junction of the Northwest Miramichi River and the Little Southwest Miramichi River; Eel Ground First Nation, close to the junction of the Northwest and Southwest Miramichi Rivers near Newcastle; and Burnt Church First Nation on the northern shore of Miramichi Bay.

Parishes
The county is subdivided into thirteen parishes (listed by 2016 population):
 * note: Statistics Canada did not report data for Ludlow Parish in the 2016 Census.  Data shown is from 2011 Census.

Demographics
As a census division in the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Northumberland County had a population of $45,005$ living in $19,945$ of its $21,940$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $44,952$. With a land area of 12843.39 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

Access Routes
Highways and numbered routes that run through the county, including external routes that start or finish at the county limits:

 * Highways

 * Principal Routes

 * Secondary Routes:

 * External Routes:
 * None

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Northumberland County, New Brunswick


text:
Queens County, New Brunswick

Queens County (Comté de Queens; 2016 population 10,472 ) is located in central New Brunswick, Canada. The county shire town is the village of Gagetown. The county was named as an expression of loyalty to the Crown and to commemorate a group of earlier settlers originally from Queens County, New York.

Geography
The county's geography is dominated by the Saint John River and Grand Lake. Coal mining is a major industry in the Minto area. Forestry and mixed farming dominate the rest of the county. The CFB Gagetown military training area takes in a large portion of the western part of the county.

Communities
There are four municipalities within Queens County (listed by 2016 population):

 * Part of Minto lies within Sunbury County, but since most of it is in Queens County, Statistics Canada considers it as part of Queens.

Parishes
The county is subdivided into ten parishes (listed by 2016 population):

Demographics
As a census division in the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Queens County had a population of $10,998$ living in $5,133$ of its $6,854$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $10,472$. With a land area of 3681.05 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

title: Queens County, New Brunswick


text:
Talk:Front de libération du Québec

Motivations?
Just was watching the CBC special "October 1970"... What exactly where the motivations of these groups? Besides just knowledge of socialism, I suspect that there were economic inequalities (or discrimination or something similar) in the society that furthered these types of movements. It would add a lot to the article to include some coverage of this aspect of things. --70.51.230.151 03:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

 * check out this article--
 * https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-crisis 216.183.149.61 (talk) 18:26, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

8 deaths?
I was reading the article on the FLQ on the Canadian Encyclopedia, and it says six deaths? not 8? I would look into that and maybe adjust that in the article here. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-crisis 216.183.149.61 (talk) 18:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

We can make a article about the insurgency in quebec?
I Really Think that we can create a own article for The Insurgency In Quebec, Because, if there was more parties not just one in the conflict, it should has a own page telling about all of the conflict, and the movement page just for the attacks and etc. Jaztie não é árabe (talk) 00:10, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

 * If you're referring to the October Crisis, the only group involved was the FLQ. If you're referring to Quebec separatism in general, the Quebec sovereignty movement article covers the topic thoroughly. Yue 🌙 01:23, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Front de libération du Québec


text:
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles/Check your fiction

I support this rule. I would think it to be so obvious as to be unnecessary, but obviously it's been violated enough times to make an explicit rule worth doing. --Robert Merkel

obvious as to be unnecessary ... seconded! -- Tarquin

I guess this is linked to avoiding ideosyncratic subjects? Example: I once saw a game played which the participants called seven card xxxxstain, which would be unsuitable for wikipedia because its global participation is probably around twenty, so it's hopelessly unverifiable... Martin

Policy amendment discussion
From the project page:
 * Do not unnecessarily create small articles about largely irrelevant fictional characters, locations, objects and so on that can be better integrated into larger articles.

What does "largely irrelevant" mean? Contribute your views to Articles about fiction.

Village pump discussion 1: Fictional characters
The articles on fictional characters are going out of control. Simpson, Star War, Star Trek, Harry Potter. A strict guideline is definitely a priority.

 * Not to mention articles on the physics of Star Trek. Sure, there was a book published with that title and we should have a review of it, but that's about it. -- Miguel

I know many classic novels having more than one hundred characters. It is tempting to add all of them in Wikipedia, but I want to wait until we have a clear guideline.-wshun 20:34, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't know that it's really a problem, aside from the fact that we tend to prefer articles on real people to be qualified by some measure of "importance" (especially given all the recent discussion over Mr. Boyer), and that fictional characters perhaps should have similar qualifications. But the existence of an article on, say, Bleeding Gums Murphy doesn't harm Wikipedia in any way, or distract anyone who wants to from creating articles on similarly obscure real people. If someone wants to spend their time on articles about fictional characters, it doesn't bother me any. -- Wapcaplet 20:50, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * This matter has been raised quite a few times, not all of them by me. I say by all means, add articles on Mr Darcy, Heathcliff, Sir Toby Belch, Kate Croy, Sir Lancelot, Bartlebooth, Yossarian, Becky Sharp and any others you can think of! -- Tarquin 21:20, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * I think it's ok as long as it's made clear they are fictional people in the introduction. Angela

 * I just fear that there will be too much stubs. Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter are "important" enough, I think.  But other minor characters? wshun 21:38, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Our deletion policy allows for us to delete pages that can never be more than stubs. マイカル 21:56, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Why would anyone want to stop people writing articles? The more articles, the better. Having an article on the used ship salesman in Monkey Island does not prevent us from having an article on physics or something. CGS 22:01, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).

From a practical view point. Everything is unique, but you can't have articles on everything. We don't write about every physicists, so why do we write about every fictional characters? BTW, mentioning the used ship salesman in the article of Monkey Island is, functionally speaking, better then writing a separate article about the character. wshun 22:36, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

We don't write about every fictional character. If we have more fictional characters than physicists listed it is because that is what people prefer writing about. Whether a character (fictional or otherwise) should be on their own page or page about whatever it is they are related to should probably depend on how much there is to write about them. A page containing info on all the Harry Potter characters, for example, would be way too long. Angela

But if someone wants to quietly document every single character invovled in the Star Trek universe, with a bio, episode references, et cetera, why stop them? CGS 22:46, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).

 * Then why do we need Criteria for Inclusion of Biographies? Of course, on the same page we say that we can ignore it.wshun 23:31, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * In case you hadn't noticed, the same thing is currently being dicussed on the votes for deletion page - in relation to real people rather than fictional ones. Angela 11:08, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Neither of those artiles say why there is a need to limit the number of articles. CGS 11:23, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC).

 * I don't see the difference. If you don't support any limit of articles on fictional characters, you are in no position to support any limit of articles on real persons. But we have to set such limit, right? wshun 20:01, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * No. Wikipedia is not paper. ··gracefool |☺ 08:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * The "Wikipeida is not paper" argument tends to appear when nothing else warrents inclusion. I take that argument as an admission that the proponent of an inclusion cannot come up with anything better and since there's no limit any amount of endless litter is fine. If you find yourself using that argument, then rethink what you are doing.
 * I don't believe you should put anything into Wikipedia just because there is room. This is an encyclopedia, not a biographical dictionary, for both real people and fictional ones. And it should try to be a quality encyclopedia. There is no point in giving separate articles to thousands of fictional people or places originally each mentioned only in a single work, these persons and places very, very seldom mentioned outside that work in a context where the person or place is not explained. No encyclopedia needs separate articles for persons or places when the article name is almost never going to be used for lookup. Notability is the key. Is the person or place mentioned in other works? How often?
 * Tiny stub articles about individual people, whether fictional or not, are often of little value, often of negative value. Put the information in a larger article and create a REDIRECT article for the person. It is annoying to click on a link and have nothing but a useless two or three sentence article appear which only repeats information from the larger article. And then an editor will ignorantly stick one of those silly stub templates onto the small article asking readers to expland it even though it is not really expandable.
 * It is also annoying when article after article contains exactly the same information.
 * One of the things I have been doing is removing annoying and useless stubs about mythological characters and changing them to redirects. It seems some editors imagine that a mythological encyclopedia and a mythological dictionary are the same thing. They aren't. We have an article on Charles Dickens. We don't have an article on either of his parents. We have an article on Sherlock Holmes. We don't have an article on every person who appears in every one of Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes and we should not have. We should not have an article on any fictional character when such an article provides no more information than the story itself and the fictional character is almost never mentioned outside of the story and discussions of the story. Only when the character is a much-discussed character should that character have his or her own article.
 * A few good articles in depth are almost always far better than article after article giving the minutiae of individual characters. That the former is harder to do is not an excuse for littering Wikipedia with the latter and leaving it to other editors to clean up after you by merging the little bits of material scattered hither and yon into one article where a reader can read it comfortably all in one place.
 * Jallan 19:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm not using "Wikipedia is not paper" as a reason for inclusion of a particular article, but as an answer to a question about policy.
 * I agree that tiny stubs about fictional subjects shouldn't be created, especially if they are mostly redundant information - obviously, these should stay in the main article. I also agree that articles about minor fictional characters or places etc. shouldn't have their own articles.
 * The problem occurs when some people say a character is "minor" and of not enough importance to warrant it's own article, and others disagree. Just because a lot of people at Wikipedia think something is minor, doesn't mean it actually is - for instance, in one recent case, 90% of people on a VfD thought the subject was minor, yet it generated 150,000 hits on Google. Usually the people who think a subject is minor are not interested in the subject - yet the people who would look it up are by definition interested... Usually, articles about factual subjects are deemed okay, even if no more than a thousand people are likely to ever look it up (eg. an article about a small town), but articles about fictional subjects generate a lot of debate, even if fans of the subject number in the millions. We need to clarify the goals of Wikipedia.
 * I suggest you contribute your views to the proposed clarification of Wikipedia:Check your fiction - Articles about fiction.
 * ··gracefool |☺ 04:17, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Village pump discussion 2: WikiFiction
Currently, there are many articles about fictional characters. Unluckily, most of which are hopeless stubs. The number of such stubs grows very quickly and every time a suggestion of VfD leads to a lengthy debate, partly because it is never NPOV to say whether or not a character is important.

I hereby offer two possible solutions:
 * 1) We tolerate all articles on fictional characters. Any suggestion on VfD will be automatically removed.  I don't like this solution but at least we can save time and energy on this subject.
 * 2) With the help of all those fiction fans, we can create a sister project, maybe WikiFiction. In WikiFiction, fans could even create miniproject on star wars, middle earth, Harry Potter, Simpsons, Pokemon, etc.

--wshun 03:55, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I really disagree with either of the above. There are many fictional characters, such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, just to name two off the top of my head, that are cultural icons. But to name every charactger in every episode of some TV series that lasted five episodes, and to make them seem somehow of the same weight, is ludicrous. And I definitely don't agree with spinning off all fiction into a separate Wiki. Would this include all television shows and movies? RickK 04:06, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why do you want to list them on VFD? That's just asking for trouble. You should merge them to a characters page, Atlas Shrugged style. As for WikiFiction: I know there's been a lot of fan wikis going up recently, for example This Might Be A Wiki. Perhaps we could expand your proposal somewhat to encompass that sort of site; to jump on that bandwagon. A fan wiki, with WP:WWIN #8 relaxed. (via edit conflict with RickK) -- Tim Starling 04:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * No, I never list them. I just frequently see similar requests and similar arguments over and over again on VfD page. I have done some merging myself, but it is not a good solution, as nowadays the number of characters of a TV series could grow very fast.  See Characters from The Simpsons, which is broken down further into subpages. --Wshun

 * Crappy little pages like Snowball (The Simpsons) must die. They should be merged into larger pages like Major characters from The Simpsons, Minor characters from The Simpsons, Guest stars on The Simpsons, Food eaten by Homer Simpson, Nuclear accidents on The Simpsons etc.—Eloquence 05:17, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * There are new characters on The Simpsons everyday, so I guess we can never catch up. I give up, but maybe someone can come up with more creative ideas. --wshun 05:28, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The thing is that while The Simpsons has 100 characters. All but 10 are very shallow ("stubs"). On the other hand, some novels has 100 characters, and 60 of then have some real things to be said in an encyclopedia ("articles"). --Menchi 05:35, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * Characters who are minor and are basically one-dimensional, such as the Sea Captain in the Simpsons, shouldn't have articles about them unless there is something else significant about them. --Daniel C. Boyer 18:59, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I hate to sound elitist, but is has to be a sad commentary on the state of education that there is any significant number of people that actually would write on each fictional character that appears on a TV episode. It does show what a bored human mind is lead to. I'm not sure if these people are just killing time and excercising their fingers, or actually think that sort of information will have some lasting interest. I like the idea of a whole separate wiki for that, but clearly there is room here (and interest) for many fictional characters; so where does one draw the line. I think it should just be a rule that a show (like the Simpsons) gets one or two pages and only the important stuff need be expanded upon within that limitation. I love the Simpsons, by the way, but in the not too distant future, the entire phenomenon will rate less than a page (and perhasps only a paragraph) in any real encyclopedia. - Marshman 05:50, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think it's a bad idea to splice off into different sub-encyclopedias, which is what "wikifiction" would be. But we do have too much on pop culture -- as Marshman says, people find it much easier to ramble about it off the top of their heads than do actual research. I guess we have too many clones of Comic Book Guy about ;) There was talk on the pump about this last week -- might still be up there ^^^. Create more article on important fictional characters to balance it out! -- Tarquin 09:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Can someone explain to me exactly what the problem is? Why is it bad to have these pages? They don't stop us having other pages, they don't hurt anyone! CGS 16:54, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC).

 * Exactly! Of course some kind of stocktaking is necessary from time to time, but mainly to see what it is we don't have enough of. The surplus is irrelevant: It's not perishable stock. --KF 17:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * For the longest time we've had discussions like this. Some city articles are so small and boring that they will always be stubs, so why have them?  Having 30,000 cities will make the balance of wikipedia get off.  It will keep people from joining.  Naysayers.  Now the next thing is the big bloat of fictional articles. -- Ram-Man 17:02, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

A spin-off encyclopedia for pop cultures should be welcomed by fans. It doesn't hurt if it include all television shows and movies, if the fans bother to add them. Important characters could still be on Wikipedia. Just like we have Wikiquote but we have the article I have a dream also.

To CGS: Yes, the articles don't hurt anybody. But Wikipedia doesn't welcome stubs.

To Ram-Man: Hey, every city has its amazing story (unlike those dumb characters), just nobody from those cities write something about them yet. :( -wshun 19:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * I agree with wshun. And true, if space for Wikipedia is infinite, then adding anything hurts nothing. My complaint is more about the sad state of education (and an encyclopedia is an educational tool and not much else) that is clearly evident if one looks at the amount of material about fictional stuff (and not even good fiction). I just found a good example at Kane, one of the more significant of the Polynesian gods and therefore of tremendous importance in the culture of these great seafaring people. But the page is split, with reams of stuff on "Kane" (pronounced Cane?), apparently a made up wrestler in some WWF show.  All of it as if Kane had a life and did things significant to anyone, complete with complaints about the lack of consistent story line in the scripts!.  I guess I fear for the minds of those obviously intelligent and organized people that would follow a character in the WWF this closely when there is such a big real world out there needing their help.  It is like entering a race in a fast car and roaring down a cul-de-sac. - Marshman 21:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * That Kane article is hilarious. It really is a shame that people are spending so much time on articles like that and not on something more exalting, but if the authors of the aricle aren't qualified to write about anything else, I don't see that anything's really lost.  Well, beyond a loss of face for wikipedia. -- Tlotoxl 00:14, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * And I might add, if there was ever evidence for the damage TV has done to our (US) culture, Wikipedia has that evidence in spades - Marshman

The sheer bulk of obscure Harry Potter references, for example, are getting out of control. Do we really need articles on Occlumency (which has less cultural relevance than "bling bling") or 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey? The Occlumency article should be moved to a page with several terms used in the series (if it is kept at all), while the information in the 4 Privet Drive article should be in a Harry Potter characters page. However, I do support the idea of Wikifiction if most of the more obscure pop cultural references get moved there and grouped into specific categories such as Science Fiction (TV), Science Fiction (Books), etc. --Kaijan 02:19, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't see how people think that splitting this stuff into another wiki helps things any. What is truly accomplished by that? It's not really out of the way... and just makes the interface (the important bit) more clunky. I think people have a very strange attitude about 'room'. Now, this said, there's a lot of small articles that can be combined- Harry Potter Glossary would handle the example above of Occlumency... things like that. But VfD is getting spammed with large numbers of things that don't need to be there, with the utterly meaningless term 'Non-encyclopedic' attached. We should focus on: *adding more content
 * fleshing out existing articles
 * organizing articles in a meaningful matter
 * quality-checking existing articles- weed out nonsense people have put in, both the blatant (JoeM) and the not-so-blatant (Reddi)
 * clear up List of people by name and friends... a lot of those have lots of duplication and misspellings... and so on. Deletion should -not- be a significant priority for real articles (even if minor, obscure, or short.) And remember, people, POV means rewrite, NOT deletion, unless it's something like Conservative views on homelessness that is inherently pure POV. -- Jake 01:15, 2003 Aug 22 (UTC)

 * Would it be appropriate to just slice down and move the Kane article (as an example) to "Characters of the WWF" or sometyhing similar? I know, "Be Bold" - My question is more to make a point: discourage some of the  proliferation of trivial trivia by real editing. Sounds like that is what Jake is offering as a solution. - Marshman 18:24, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I still don't see anything wrong with having "Wikifiction" created. Libraries have reference books specifically for fictional characters, yet they're horribly out of date and necessarily limited due to their being made out of paper. Why not create a new Wiki to list and describe all the fictional characters extant, both major and minor? Wikifiction is really a separate issue from the guidelines for fictional characters at Wikipedia, and it should be discussed as such. -- Kaijan 09:46, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * I like the idea of a separate Wikifiction encyclopedia. Complaints about the emphasis on pop culture remind me of an Australian High Court judge who, in the middle of a trial involving Nike's trade mark, repeatedly referred to Michael Jordan as "Malcolm Jordan". Pop fiction is an essential component of contemporary culture - they have enormous commercial value, let alone cultural value. Having said that, I am against those people who simply list a character without providing some form of critique, background or insight into the character. So, if someone was to write Spider-Man's entry (I haven't checked it), it should make reference to authorship by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the various creative teams who have worked on the title, the reason for the character's initial popularity in the 1960s, and the recent litigation over the character concept. Its not enough to merely write Spidey's literary history ("he beat the X-men in Secret Wars 1" sort of thing). It should be done properly. - David Stewart 09:42, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Fictional Universes?
Is there/should there be either a standard designation for the plethora of articles on the characters, locations, etc. of self consistent fictional universes. Those of science fiction and fantasy seem to be especially prevalent (e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Harry Potter). A few of these could almost sustain a wiki-encyclopedia of their own... As it's traditionally not customary for encyclopedia to include numerous articles on fictional characters... has this issue been hashed out already? - Seth Ilys 21:22, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Numerous times. There's widespread agreement (although no consensus) that it's best to merge these into super-articles like Characters of Middle Earth, with redirects from the respective pages where appropriate. This avoids context duplication and flooding of the article space with what many consider to be unencyclopedic fringe material.

 * This advice conflicts somewhat with the standards presented in Contributing to Wikipedia.
 * Elde 21:57, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Not anymore.—Eloquence

 * I tweaked the bit to have more of a rationale based on amount of possible content; a lot of the fictional character articles I see can never muster more than "Doggydoo is the lovable sidekick of Smartypants the Bear, and always says 'arf' when he's hungry." The whole fictional characters thing should probably be more organized, because there are hundreds if not thousands of stubly articles wandering around the namespace now. Stan 23:06, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * There is in fact a Tolkien wiki and a MediaWiki-based Star Trek encyclopedia, but that doesn't stop the respective fans from hanging out here. I personally have no problem with that but I do detest small articles about individual fictional characters and places.

 * Perhaps, for those groups for which wikis exist, a prominent link to the relevant wiki could be placed in the appropriate articles... would that discourage their development here?

 * We do not tolerate fan fiction or other material that is only relevant to very small fringes even within the respective communities.—Eloquence

 * To put it in perspective, Odysseus and Achilles have been described in encyclopedias for a long time... :-) In general, I think it's sufficient for the first sentence to say "fiction" or "fictional", and supply author/milieu; disambiguators like "(Middle-earth)" are annoyingly verbose in titles, should only be used if necessary. (If you disagree, move him to Achilles (Iliad).) WikiProject Fictional Series purports to be a project on this, but says little, also there's Check your fiction. Stan 21:37, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * It's important to note that these are mythological figures which appear in different stories and in different imagery. When a character becomes so deeply embedded in our culture or in a past one, it clearly deserves its own article (compare also Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck). Also, when it's a very complex character with a long back story, this may also be preferable. On the other hand, an article about Zipper the Fly makes a lot less sense.—Eloquence

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of encyclopedias. There is therefore nothing wrong with having a great many Middle Earth, Star Trek or Star Wars articles if there is enough to write about each subject. But if all there ever can be is a stub on a subject then it should be merged into a larger article. There certainly is no consensus to do this to the extent the Eloquence suggests. --mav 13:02, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Elements of fictional universes
Is there a formulated policy on items in books, films, television, etc.? For example, I am dealing with Stargate (film) and the TV show Stargate SG-1 and have encount ered many articles on items of the fictional universe, such as Jaffa (Stargate SG-1), George Hammond, and Goa'uld. I think these should be merged with one of the main articles or put in an article like "Stargate (universe)". The advantage of the second option is that many universes have multiple books, films, and shows, like Star Trek or Star Wars. This present on has a film and two TV shows. Another option would be to create a new namespace for fiction and use the same unique names for every item, with the parenthesis of the context, as it is done now. It would also allow for the fiction to be separated for certain releases or archives of the encyclopedia. Comments? Have I missed something obvious? - Centrx 23:48, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't think there's anything to worry about, and we have a countable infinity of Star Trek and Tolkien stuff. I do think that all such articles should begin "In the fictional Stargate SG-1 universe..." just so everyone falling randomly upon the article (ex google) isn't misled into believing that this stuff exists. (I also worry about the "future archaeologist" problem, for much the same reason). -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 23:54, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

 * To clarify my marginally off-topic answer, I don't think merging is necessary or desirable, an amespaces are a rather complicated, overkilly solution, IMHO. It's not a bad idea for all SG-1 articles to have a common msg: (like the Alien universe things have - see Weyland-Yutani for example), which (among other things) serves to tag all the articles you might later want to export/deport. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 00:00, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * It may not be much of a problem now, but the situation will become untenable and not befitting an encyclopedia. As the encyclopedia becomes more comprehensive, every topic will require a disambiguation page. If separate articles are appropriate for each element of some fiction, then in the interest of completeness and balance it would be appropriate to create articles of all sorts of things which most people aren't looking for. This is a general problem of the encyclopedia, as there are many non-fiction items that should be merged into a single article, but with fiction these elements can be separated with relative ease. When someone is searching for information on a specific topic, they know very well whether it is matter of fiction or not, and adding all manner of elements of fiction will make it more difficult and time-consuming to find a particular piece of information. It's also almost completely self-referential; very few articles of an element of one fiction are going to refer to the elements of another fiction, and non-fiction articles are not going to refer to the elements of a fictional universe, aside from articles on actors and such. - Centrx 01:28, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * The correct solution is catagories, a feature that's "coming soon". With catagories something can be in as many catagories as you want (it can be in "Stargate", "Science Fiction", "American TV shows", and "things that will never get you laid"). Once the software (and the nasty task of figuring out the catagories) one should be able to define a search within a given catagory. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 01:40, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Centrx: When someone is searching for information on a specific topic, they know very well whether it is matter of fiction or not, and adding all manner of elements of fiction will make it more difficult and time-consuming to find a particular piece of information

 * But not all information is Searched for a lot of it might be found serendipitously. So, especially given that a lot of links are put in articles without checking - just assuming - they will lead to where we expect I think fiction should be flagged.

 * I remember having my eyebrows hoisted aloft when I was looking at my usual slew of serious subjects and finding myself reading an account of a computer game world all of a sudden with no definite indication that I was doing so (other than the inclusion of many "facts" that would give us cause for concern if they pertained to the real world) until I got half way through the article.

 * It would be great if I could point you at the specific instance I'm thinking of, but I forget it now. --bodnotbod 21:07, May 27, 2004 (UTC)

 * I had some trouble parsing your second paragraph but I think a clarification of what I meant obviates your concern. I was not arguing that the context of articles should not be clearly indicated at the introduction to the article. By asserting that many are looking for specific information with full knowledge of its context, I was pointing out that the many disambiguation pages that will result from having fiction in the same space as non-fiction will impede or elongate that person's direct search for information: he does not need a disambiguation between the thing of fiction and the thing of non-fiction. Thus, it would be beneficial to have fiction in a different space, yet not problematic because someone looking for that information would know that it is fiction. - Centrx 23:50, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * "fictional" should be one of the catagories, for sure. But centrx' idea of using namespaces means things can only be in at most one catagory, which really isn't sufficient.  And all entries should clearly state the domain of knowledge they inhabit (regardless of technical stuff like catagories).  -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 21:14, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Having a separate namespace for fiction (opposed to non-fiction) or for each universe of fiction would not be problematic by this reason. A thing in fiction has no reason to be in the non-fiction namespace, and a thing in one universe has no reason to be in another universe's namespace. If the thing has the same name as something in another namespace, by virtue of it being fiction it requires a different article than the same thing would in non-fiction. If a thing is common in fiction in multiple universes: a) it wouldn't be a problem with a simple dichotomy of fiction and non-fiction; b) with multiple universes, it might still be appropriate in an article like "vampires in literature". None of this namespace business would mean that we couldn't also use categories for all things. For the record, I am not arguing for namespaces for each universe in literature; I think that would be problematic to say the least. Simply, a thing in fiction is wholly different from a thing in the real world and in an encyclopedia it does not belong in the same space. My idea for a separate namespace for fiction is a recognition of that fact, and a compromise for people who want to write articles on everything. Personally, I think major items of a fiction belong in the article about the piece of work and minor items do not belong in an encyclopedia at all. We can create articles covering all things, but doing so becomes redundant and impossibly exhaustive. In an ENCYCLOPEDIA, do we really want there to be dozens of articles for each book in the world? One for the information on the publishing and the book and paper itself, one for the history, one for each part of the story, one for each character, one for each item in the book? Accepting that this should be a comprehensive encyclopedia beyond what is normally considered an encyclopedia, that it should be a cyclopedia, the circle or compass of human knowledge, of the arts and sciences, that does not include the unreal, indeed false, narratives of fiction. - Centrx 23:50, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Ah, I think I understand where you're coming from now. I suppose what (quite rightly, don't get me wrong) concerns you might more generally be called "unencyclopedic minutiae", and while fiction has the lion's share thereof, I don't think it has the monopoly.  One could say just the same thing about every character mentioned in the bible - certainly there's hundreds of important ones, but there's also lots who don't really have any spiritual, narrative, or allegorical function, and are mostly there just to be someone important's great-great-grandfather (at this point our contingent of bible-scholars bristled some, as the contention that anything in the bible is unimportant will find disfavour with some).  Equally it's quite reasonable to have biographies of, say, chess players, but should we have one for every international grand master?  Every regular grand master?  It's clear that Capablanca is encyclopedic, and it's clear that little Tommy who won his highschool's chess trophy isn't, but where to draw the line?  Ditto for, say, molecules - we have H2O, we have MDMA, we have DNA, and I think they're all clearly encylopedic.  There's billions of molecules, and most are as dull as ditchwater, but where to draw the line?  A case in point is high schools.  It's clear that Columbine Highschool is encyclopedic.  It's clear (to me) that my own high school isn't encyclopedic.  We've included Fettes College, but not the high school in Sunnyvale, California where Teri Hatcher was a cheerleader. But where to draw the line?  There's a considerable contingent of people who think highschools, regardless of fame or alumni, are acceptable. College professors, linux kernel contributors, paintings by Tintoretto, bridges over the Po, verb declensions in Inuktitut, uninhabited islands in the Inner Hebrides, paraguian swimming coaches, the scope for factual minutiae (one might say trivia) is endless, but the line between the in and the out is blurry and sometimes astonishingly subjective.  It's at this point someone will inevitable cite Wiki is not paper, which many take to mean "let's err on the side of keeping stuff that might be useful".  Your concerns about the appropriateness of each individual fictional item are, I fear, but a salient in the great western front of inclusion vs exclusion.  I see no end in sight to that conflict. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 00:47, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, but the matter isn't so much what should be included, but where it should be included and under what subordination. I don't think it's quite so clear with fiction though. With items of non-fiction, one can make a fairly good case that if there is sufficient information about something in the public domain to make an article about it, then it's appropriate. The same is not necessarily true of fiction.

 * First of all, proper names don't have quite the same problem as many generically named items of fiction, especially when listed as full names. I'm not going to go into the Bible example so much because if an item in the Bible does not have significant cultural or popular influence, I think it does properly fall under fiction, but if it is just there to be someone's great-grandparent and not much else, then it would properly fit in one of the many Lists we have here. For other things though, I think a good case can be made about uniqueness and length of article. If something isn't unique and a long, non-template article cannot be made of it, then it doesn't belong. If something is not unique, then it can fall under a superordinate article. If not much unique can be said about Tommy the chess player, then he should instead be in a list. Generic phenol molecules without much to say about them would fit under a large article about phenols.

 * Anyway, I'm not concerned about inclusion so much as proper placement. This is especially true with elements of fiction where the only way you can effectively define such an element is by relation to other elements of that fiction. It's all self-referential because it's a confined fiction. Everything in the real world is truly connected to other things in the real world, whether scientifically or historically. Interpretively also, but interpretations of fiction are not the same problem, because the articles I'm talking about are, in fact, confined to a particular fiction with parentheses after the name, and are actual definitions in the context of the fiction, not literary interpretations and syntheses. Once it becomes such an interpretation, it becomes "real world" and an analysis across fictional universes.

 * The fact is, fiction is peculiar. It is wholly different, and the matter of inclusion vs. exclusion merely illustrates the problem that results from articles on all things fiction. - Centrx 02:51, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree with Centrix that there is a bubbling under problem here. If there gets to be too many articles on fictional items, Wikipedia could get unbalanced and its value degraded. To some extent its a question of where you draw the line as to what should be in and what should be out, but Wikipedia is likely to become much more inclusive than any prior encyclopedia. That leads to the problem of needing more and more disambiguation against real/fictional items. A (imperfect) concrete example here is Frodo. Arguably the only Frodo that is encyclopedic is the King of Denmark, except we don't have an article on him yet and I'm guessing it would be quite a while before anyone would actually want it. In fifty years time, I can't see anyone caring much about the C64 emulator even though it is a real item. And of course anyone searching for Frodo, was probably looking for Frodo Baggins. Perhaps a better example could be Speed of light (discworld). The unusually slow speed of light in the Discworld novels could get an article of its own, which would then suggest the need for an inappropriate disambig link on the real Speed of light page (the Big Bang page does actually have a see-also link to the Discworld page). An example of a problem article which doesn't make it clear that it is fictional, is Yig. I knew that the Cthulu mythos was fiction, but in reading the Yig article I started to wonder whether it was based also based on a 'real' American mythology. One solution might be to move the fictional milieu articles to a separate but related Wiki project (or perhaps category tagging gives the same effect). However there would still be fictional characters that are so significant that they are encyclopedic and should be in the main Wiki, for example Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan - and they you are back to drawing in/out boundaries. -- Solipsist 07:41, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Fictional Characters vs. Living, Breathing People
There's a (humorous, in my opinion) dispute with the Harry Kim article that I think should seriously spin-off a Wikipedia policy. At issue is that there are two Harry Kims: the Star Trek character and an actual elected mayor of Hawai'i County. One person objected to creating a disambiguation page out of the main Harry Kim space and redirect to two separate articles, as others like myself would like to do. One for Harry Kim (fictional) and Harry Kim (politician). Another person suggested that the living, breathing Harry Kim take precedence over a fictional character and therefore should have the main space while redirecting to Harry Kim (fictional). On the otherhand, some have argued that the fictional character takes precedence over the actual person because the fictional Harry Kim is more widely known and therefore deserves the main space while the actual person gets a mere redirect. There are basically two camps. One camp believes an actual person gets precedence over a fictional character anytime, despite the current Wikipedia policy of giving the main space to the more widely known subject. The other camp stands by that current policy. I think we need clarification on this issue. --Gerald Farinas 16:44, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Well I'll just jump in with both feet as usual and express my opinion that Wikipedia should reflect the real world. If therefore there is more than one "Harry Kim", then Wikipedia should reflect this and the "main" Harry Kim article should say so. In other words it should be a disambiguation page pointing to Harry Kim (Star Trek) (note the subtle difference in approach) and Harry Kim (politician). I believe that this is not an uncommon name (Googling for "Harry Kim" seems to show a couple of candidates), and there might well prove to be further entries required. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:12, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

 * Phil Boswell's approach is the same I used at Jack Ryan (Senate Candidate) and Jack Ryan (fictional character) (he's from Tom Clancy, in case you were wondering). I think this approach is fine.  Certainly, a relatively obscure politician should not bump out the Star Trek usage; but then, the Star Trek character was no Spock or Captain Kirk, either.  Disambig works well here. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:16, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * The more well known one should obviously get the main article, regardless of whether they actually exist or not, otherwise we'll end up with Sherlock Holmes (fictional) just because a real-world Sherlock Holmes has done something minor that someone feels merits a stub in Wikipedia. Proteus (Talk) 19:24, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * The judgement should be based on both criteria: renown and existence. In other words, we should use common sense.  In the case of "Harry Kim", the real guy should get the main article.  In the case of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character should get the main article, despite any minor real people, unless the next President of the USA (e.g.) is called Sherlock Holmes, in which case the made-up one should be relegated.    — Chameleon My page/My talk 18:20, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I think that unless one of the two is iconic to the point of being culture shattering (like Sherlock Holmes), then if there is any dispute, neither one gets the main page, and we make the main page a disambiguation page. --ssd 06:02, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Changes to format of page, addition of "encyclopedic" requirement
I've changed the page a bit. First, I've sectioned it by certain general guidelines that should be followed when writing about fiction, I didn't alter the content much in this case. There are 4 guidelines at the moment, and they all help make sure articles about fiction are

I also expanded a section about making sure that the article is encyclopedic (one of the aforementioned 4 requirements), which I think will ensure that articles won't be simple "fancruft", rather true articles about topics within fiction.

— siro χ  o  23:52, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 20:00, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

CSD Proposal
There is currently a proposal to make articles about fanfiction, or characters from fan fiction or RPGs subject to speedy deletion. Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal. I susgest that peopel intersted in this subject commetn on this proposal, and consider voting on iot when it is up for vote. DES 28 June 2005 19:56 (UTC)
 * This proposal is now open for voting. The specific wordings are (these are separate proposals),
 * "Any article that states that it describes a character or story from fiction, that was never published except on the internet or in a fan magazine, nor written by a published author" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.
 * "Any article that states that it describes a character (but not a race, or type of creature) from any roleplaying game (including MUDs and MMORPGs), that is not also a real or fictional person outside that roleplaying game" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.
 * Radiant_ >|< July 5, 2005 13:53 (UTC)

Which template?
I've asked this at template talk:fiction, but since that namespace doesn't get much visitation, I'll ask it here, too. I've encountered a lot of articles where the first sentence may identify the subject as a fictional character, but then the entire article is nothing but references to the work of fiction: fictional places, fictional events, other fictional characters, without once 1)idenfitying this millieu as fictional, or 2)citing the work of fiction in which these fictional events occured (akin to if the article Luke Skywalker were to say he destroyed the Death Star without including that it happens in Star Wars Episode IV:A New Hope). Everytime I've added the template:fiction tag to it, it's been removed with no change or very little change (typically a clarification at the start that the character is fictional). Am I using the wrong tag? Should that be a template:context tag instead? template:unreferenced? Or should I just go ahead and write a new template?

Perpetual present tense for video-game articles
Time and again, I run across video-game articles that do not use present tense to describe the plots of the games. I'm trying to correct these as I find them, but there are so many that it's a losing battle. Would it be out of line if I added a note to the "Check your fiction" section that the perpetual present tense applies to video games as well? And on a related topic -- this present tense should extend to explanations of gameplay, as well (if I put in Super Mario Bros. today, it plays the same as it did in 1985). Is this the appropriate place to mention this, or can anyone point me elsewhere? Thanks. . . . Amcaja 20:04, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


text:
Restigouche County, New Brunswick

Restigouche County (2016 population 30,955) is located in north-central New Brunswick, Canada. The county is named for the Restigouche River which flows through the county and is famous for its salmon pools, which have attracted wealthy American and Canadian tourists to the region's summer colonies for decades. Forestry dominates the local economy.

Communities
There are nine municipalities within Restigouche County (listed by 2016 population):

First Nations
There are two First Nations reservations in Restigouche County (listed by 2016 population):

Parishes
The county is subdivided into eight parishes. (Listed by 2016 population, excluding municipalities):
 * note: Grimmer Parish has been dissolved and amalgamated as part of the Rural Community of Kedgwick, effective July 2012.

Demographics
As a census division in the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Restigouche County had a population of $30,700$ living in $14,165$ of its $15,288$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $30,955$. With a land area of 8566.82 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

Access routes
Highways and numbered routes that run through the county, including external routes that start or finish at the county limits:

 * Highways

 * Principal Routes

 * Secondary Routes:

 * External Routes:
 * Qc132.svg Quebec Route 132

title: Restigouche County, New Brunswick


text:
List of swing musicians

This is a list of swing and Western swing musicians.

Swing

 * Anita O'Day (1919–2006)
 * Art Tatum (1909–1956)
 * Artie Shaw (1910–2004)
 * Ben Webster (1909–1973)
 * Benny Carter (1907–2003)
 * Benny Goodman (1909–1986)
 * Bill Doggett (1916–1996)
 * Billie Holiday (1915–1959)
 * Buck Clayton (1911–1991)
 * Buddy Rich (1917–1987)
 * Bunny Berigan (1908–1942)
 * Cab Calloway (1907–1994)
 * Charlie Barnet (1913–1991)
 * Charlie Christian (1918–1942)
 * Chick Webb (1905–1939)
 * Chu Berry (1908–1941)
 * Cliff Townshend (1917–1986)
 * Coleman Hawkins (1904–1969)
 * Count Basie (1904–1984)
 * Cozy Cole (1909–1981)
 * Craig Ball (1909–1960)
 * Doc Severinsen (1927–)
 * Don Byas (1912–1972)
 * Don Redman (1900–1964)
 * Django Reinhardt (1910–1953)
 * Duke Ellington (1899–1974)
 * Earl Hines (1903–1983)
 * Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996)
 * Fats Waller (1904–1943)
 * Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952)
 * Frank Sinatra (1915–1998)
 * Freddie Green (1911–1987)
 * Gene Krupa (1909–1973)
 * George Duvivier (1920–1985)
 * George Paxton
 * Glenn Miller (1904–1944)
 * Hank Jones (1918–2010)
 * Harry James (1916–1983)
 * Illinois Jacquet (1922–2004)
 * Ilse Huizinga (1966–)
 * J.C. Heard (1911–1985)
 * Jack Teagarden (1905–1964)
 * Jean Goldkette (1893–1962)
 * Jimmy Dorsey (1904–1957)
 * Jimmy Rushing (1902–1972)
 * Jo Jones (1911–1985)
 * Johnny Hodges (1906–1970)
 * Lester Young (1909–1959)
 * Lionel Hampton (1908–2002)
 * Louie Bellson (1924–2009)
 * Louis Armstrong (1901–1971)
 * Midge Williams (1915–1952)
 * Milt Hinton (1910–2000)
 * Nat King Cole (1919–1965)
 * Roy Eldridge (1911–1989)
 * Sammy Kaye (1910–1987)
 * Slim Gaillard (1916–1991)
 * Sonny Greer (1895–1982)
 * Stéphane Grappelli (1908–1997)
 * Sun Ra (1934–1993)
 * Sweets Edison (1915–1999)
 * Ted Heath (1902–1969)
 * Teddy Wilson (1912–1986)
 * The Squadronaires (1939–)
 * Tommy Dorsey (1905–1956)
 * Woody Herman (1913–1987)

Western swing

 * Adolph Hofner (1932–1993)
 * Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys (1905–1975)
 * Cecil Brower (1914–1965)
 * Chet Atkins (1942–1996)
 * Chubby Wise (1915–1996)
 * Cliff Bruner (1915–2000)
 * Hank Penny (1918–1992)
 * Hank Thompson, (1946–2007)
 * Johnny Gimble (1938–2015)
 * Johnnie Lee Wills (1912–1984)
 * Leon McAuliffe (1917–1988)
 * Light Crust Doughboys (1931–)
 * Mart Kenney (1910–2006)
 * Milton Brown (1903–1936)
 * Moon Mullican (1909–1967)
 * Pee Wee King (1914–2000)
 * Sheb Wooley (1945–1999)
 * Spade Cooley (1910–1969)
 * Tex Williams (1917–1985)
 * Tommy Allsup (1931–2017)
 * Tommy Duncan (1911–1967)

Swing revival groups (post-1960)

 * Asleep at the Wheel (1970–)
 * Beantown Swing Orchestra (2006-)
 * Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys (1990–)
 * Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (1989–)
 * Clint Black (1983–)
 * Buster Poindexter (1987–)
 * Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (1967–1976)
 * Ray Gelato (1982–)
 * Dan Hicks (1965–2016)
 * The Dusty Chaps (1969–1980s)
 * Hot Club of Cowtown (1997–)
 * Lyle Lovett (1980–)
 * Michael Bublé (1975–)
 * The Quebe Sisters Band (2000–)
 * Riders in the Sky (1977–)
 * Shoot Low Sheriff (2008–)

title: List of swing musicians


text:
User talk:BjarkeDahlEbert

Hi Bjarke, welcome to Wikipedia. Please note that subpages are no longer supported on Wikipedia, your experiment therefore ended up in the main article namespace. (We have stopped supporting subpages because they were abused to add all sorts of non-encyclopedic material, and became hard to maintain.) --Eloquence 22:52 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:BjarkeDahlEbert