Talk:Welsh devolution

Roman history is not relevant to devolution

An era before any inkling of Welsh identity existed, or any notion of sovereign states as we know them today (states by/from which devolution is granted), is irrelevant; I don't believe you'll find any serious sources linking Roman history to devolution. It's WP:SYNTH. @TG11TG15: I've already removed it once with an explanatory edit summary, please don't restore it again. Jr8825 • Talk 19:08, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with this. Looking at sources, we should only really talk about pre-19thC history in summary to establish Wales' legal and cultural relationship to Wales.Vladimir.copic (talk) 22:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I would argue that Magnus Maximus devolved the command of northern celtic Briton (prehistoric Wales) to Coel Hen prior to 383. I cited this also. Please have a read about this devolvement and let me know what you think after re-considering. Thank you. TG11TG15 (talk) 20:19, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

This article is really about a specific thing, in my opinion, 19th-21st century devolution of governance from the United Kingdom/England. We are stretching the scope of the article too far to include Roman era local governance. As I said above, and is reflected in most sources, pre-19th century history is only given to establish Wales' relationship to England. Vladimir.copic (talk) 23:00, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll stick to devolution following the Staute of Rhuddlan. TG11TG15 (talk) 23:55, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Copyvio of Senedd website

This still isn't fully fixed, as Earwig's copyvio detector result shows. I don't have time to reword the sections tonight myself, if nobody gets round to it I'll try to resolve the last offending sections tomorrow. Jr8825 • Talk 19:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I re-worded when I added but clearly not quite enough. Some is technical legal language which is difficult to change. I've come back to it. If you could point out specific subheadings to re-word better that would be helpful. Thanks TG11TG15 (talk) 20:21, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Cymru Fydd & David Lloyd George

Just FYI - Removed previous, unreferenced content. - Copied and adapted content (from David Lloyd George page) that I wrote myself, so no need for additional citation. TG11TG15 (talk) 22:32, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Splitting Page into: "History of Welsh devolution" and "Proposed further Welsh devolution"

I was considering splitting this page into "History of Welsh devolution" and "Proposed further Welsh devolution" because the page is now quite long. I was wondering if anyone else agrees with this or supports keeping the page as it is?? ThanksTitus Gold (talk) 01:08, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

@Titus Gold, in my opinion, I don't think those two new articles need to be made. The proposed devolution section could be moved to list of devolved matters in Wales under a "proposed matters" section, with a short summary here (I guess just a list with a sentence for each). Although that article you made has been nominated for deletion. The constitutional reform section (federalism and confederalism) can be shortened to just a sentence as they have their own articles, with the Independent Commission moved to the history section (alongside the other commissions). The history section should largely remain, the day-to-day affairs of devolution are not really mentioned in this article as that is for the devolved bodies articles' so this article is largely for the history anyway. Before your move, Scottish devolution (a similar article) was originally titled as History of Scottish devolution. Although the history section can benefit from some copyediting and some summarising. Many Thanks DankJae 12:05, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. Will leave the pages as they are. Titus Gold (talk) 13:41, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Welsh devolution/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 18:38, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Happy to help if any improvements are required to get this article over the line for GA. Titus Gold (talk) 18:21, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

{{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:38, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey, just a heads up. Had to go out of town so I'm behind on my wiki-work, but this is still coming :) Sorry for the delay. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:44, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

No problem. Happy to help if any improvements are required to get this article over the line for GA. Thanks. Titus Gold (talk) 02:00, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Review as follows. Overall, this is a solid start, but I think there's some substantial work needed

• General:
  • There seems like a bunch of "why's" are missing from this article. The history section, for example, gives us a lot of names and dates but not a lot of context for events. When we get to the '19th and 20th centuries devolution movement' section, for example, there's no explanation for why the Wales Act 1881 was passed, or what changed from the last date (1746) to the next (1881). Then in the next section we get a contextless quote from Chamberlain without understanding what it's really relating to. Basically, there's not really a "story" being told in this article—it feels more like a loose collection of facts or an outline of assembled tidbits.
  • Beyond that, I think the article assumes too much familiarity. We get socked over the head with a bunch of blue links without any explanation of who the people or organizations are.
  • I have some concerns with the neutrality of the article; while it would obviously focus on proponents of welsh devolution, the language involved (for example, The report was a damning criticism of the UK government's funding of justice in Wales) push it into biased territory. There's no discussion of the cons of devolution or who actually supports or opposes it beyond polling and the "Political party position on devolution" section, which again feels like it should be prose not just a bulleted list.
  • The entirety of the "Referendum results and opinion polling" section I don't think is all that useful or relevant. Important polls should be covered in prose, and given that these are asking different questions at different times to different people I don't think throwing them together is actually offering any illumination (not to mention it is again more data without context.)
• Prose:
  • The lead doesn't feel like it adequately covers the article at present. I streamlined some of the background info in the first paragraph, but right now it doesn't really give a good indication of how Welsh devolution and sentiments around it have changed; for example, the second paragraph tells us starting in the 19th century there was growing movement for devolution, but that in 1979 a referendum was decisively rejected. The very next paragraph tells us a referendum years later was successful, but doesn't elide why this was.
  • "far-reaching federalism"—who says this? The Labour Party?
  • I think a line or two would be useful to set up the body and background more than just "England invaded Wales", insofar as how long "Wales" had been a thing, etc.
  • In 1470 Edward IV formed the Council of Wales and the Marches. and this is important... how? It's not really made clear.
  • The caption Monument to Llywelyn the last Prince of Wales seems like it should be formatted like it is in prose (Llywelyn the Last, Prince of Wales).
  • Why are sovereigns like Henry IV, Richard III, the Welsh King of England Henry VII not linked?
  • The leader of Plaid Cymru, Gwynfor Evans won the party's first-ever seat in Westminster in Carmarthen in 1966, which "helped change the course of a nation". who said this quote?
  • and a broad consensus on the previously divisive issue of the Welsh language and so the consensus on the language now was...?
  • officially changed the status of Wales from to country — missing word?
  • What are AMs?
  • The act also changed the model of operation of the devolved institutions from a "conferred powers model" to a "reserved powers model". Which means what?
• Media:
  • File:Tony-blair-neil-jenkins.png is for sure a copyright violation and needs a fair use rationale to be included.
  • Other images seem appropriately sourced and licensed, although the number and forced stacking of them all isn't really all that attractive, and breaks up their connection with the relevant text—I would focus on using fewer, more germane images.
• References:
  • Per WP:LEADCITE, most of the citations in the lead probably shouldn't be there, either because this material should be cited when it appears in the article body, or because the lead shouldn't be going into such specifics that it needs to be specifically supported by explicit citation tags (I think the "far-reaching federalism" ghost quote is one such example.)
  • References need to be consistently formatted (some have only URLs e.g. senedd.wales, others have publishers instead, e.g. Welsh Board of Health.) There are missing author and date information from news articles, etc. And, again, the choice to have so many of these sources come from the Senedd and nationalist sources is also problematic. In particular, what makes Nation.cymru a reliable source?

I think given the structural issues I've identified, I don't think this is something that could really be addressed in the span of a good article nomination, so I'm failing at present. I would suggest getting additional feedback on the article from related wikiprojects, especially to get a more useful opinion on sourcing used. If you have additional questions, you can ping me for clarification. Thanks, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:09, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this. I think this has been mostly addressed now. Titus Gold (talk) 05:41, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I notice that you have resubmitted this for GA review. I don't think the issues above are adequately addressed, so before that review ends in disappointment, here are some things to note:

• References
  • MOS:LEADCITE was specifically raised as an issue. The article then had 10 references in the lead. Now it has 9. There are still too many citations in the lead, indicating the lead is not a summary of the main.
  • Reference formatting remains a mess. See below about random "op cit." references copied from somewhere. I would recommend conversion to SFN to allow consistent referencing in a bibliography - a process that will take a bit of work but would involve checking every reference.
  • This article has a lot of history but is relying on BBC history pages and newspapers. It really shouldn't be. The reviewer asked what made Nation.Cymru a reliable source for this? We have no answer to that but still 17 citations to that newspaper alone. In moving to SFN it would be good to phase out all newspaper sources. They are simply not good enough for this kind of article.
• Media
  • I don't generally have much to say about images, but not really sure why a monument to Llywelyn the last or the castle at Rhuddlan are suitable leading images for an article on devolution.
• Prose
  • I think I have comments on this too, but will leave until I have time to read the whole thing in one sitting.
• General
  • I don't think the concerns about neutrality are resolved.
  • I do not see what has changed in the referendum and opinion polling section to address the concerns raised.
  • The other general comments are really also about prose which I am leaving for now.

I think if this is a serious candidate for a good article, it needs a lot of work still. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:15, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for these comments, much appreciated.

• I've removed all but one of the citations from the lead (all but two citations in the lead were essentially already mentioned in the body).
• Images point there seems to have since been addressed.
• I've changed party support bullet points into sentences.
• NationCymru is regulated by Independent Press Standards Organisation like many large news article producers. It is often the only news organisation that reports on certain Welsh matters. I could swap in other news articles instead so that Nation.Cymru is used less?
• Neutrality: The body of the text looks neutral. Perhaps an addition concerning criticism of devolution perhaps?
• Changing references to SFN: I'd be happy to move to SFN but perhaps you would be able to turn your hand to that more easily than myself as it's not a format I'm particularly experienced at using. I'm not sure that everything would be covered without the use of some news articles?

Thanks again Titus Gold (talk) 16:42, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

The sections "Assessment of devolution" and "Lack of economic impact" are both new since the original GA assessment also. This heading now includes criticism of the devolution settlements from various viewpoints as well as criticizing the UK and Welsh governments. Titus Gold (talk) 17:02, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Close paraphrase and source issues

• This edit [1] introduces text that is a very close (probably too close) paraphrase of the source: In this period, there was neither a Welsh Office (created in 1964) nor any devolution for Wales. A total of 125 local authorities opposed the scheme and 27 of 36 Welsh MPs voted against the second reading of the bill (Cunningham 2007). It is, however, good to see reliable academic sources replacing one of the newspapers in the sourcing here.
• In the same edit, the Davies citation only mentions Plaid Cymru because that is the focus of his discussion and not Tryweryn, so consideration should be given as to whether it is due in the text here.
• I also notice in the paragraphs above that text appears to have been copied from elsewhere without adaption, so that there are various Davies op cit. references (I think 5 of them) but Davies has not been previously cited. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:38, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

  That sentence has since been replaced. Titus Gold (talk) 16:57, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

  I've also added the correct book for those citations. Titus Gold (talk) 21:00, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Welsh devolution/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Buidhe (talk · contribs) 21:29, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I am picking up this review because it is one of the top priority unreviewed articles. Unfortunately, I do not think it is close to meeting the GA criteria.

First of all, the article is severely unbalanced with around a third of the non-lead word count devoted to proposed areas of devolution and constitutional proposals, while the current areas of devolution are just a brief list with no explanation of how these policy areas are affected by actual devolution. The article should focus on how devolution has actually affected Wales to date, not on future proposals or hypotheticals, which would better belong in a separate article. For examples of high quality sources that could be cited, see [2][3][4][5]

The "Assessment of devolution" summary is mostly composed of quotes from political leaders. This seems to duplicate the "Political party position on devolution" section. Instead, the evaluation section should focus on the actual impact of devolution according to reliable sources. See the articles cited above for how devolution enabled socialist/social democracy policies in Wales.

Article reference section needs substantial cleanup with some references close to being bare urls.

Overall, the article would need substantial improvement to meet the GA criteria, which cannot be expected to occur within the timeframe of a GA review. I have not checked for OR, copyvio, or plagiarism and consider it to fail 3a and 3b as well as 2a. (t · c) buidhe 21:29, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a. (prose, spelling, and grammar):

   b. (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a. (reference section):

   b. (citations to reliable sources):

   c. (OR):

   d. (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a. (major aspects):

   b. (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a. (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales):

   b. (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/fail:

(Criteria marked are unassessed)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Good article review progress

Following a second failed good artilce review, it seems that different points for improvement have been made, which are all different points to the first review.Summarising them here for follow up:

• Expand on current areas of devolution
• Impact of devolution and how devolution has affected Wales (not just quotes)
• Cleanup of references
• (Potential move of section to new article on proposed further devolution): this would need discussion

Titus Gold (talk) 22:33, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Titus Gold, this article has a chance, but not right now. Agree with the summarised points above. This article should ideally discuss more on how devolution has operated, may be a bit more on government, the policy areas etc. The article also is mostly more pro-devolution and pro-more devolution, so may be not exactly NPOV.

Would support to a degree splitting off the proposed devolution section so the article is not slanted into the hypotheticals, although best to set up a formal split proposal and discussion for that, although at the same time, is such detail needed? and can it be summarised, removing/shortening a bunch of quotes as in the end they're opinions. Happy to help, although if this is a big task, won't be able to until early May.

Also I wonder, as this leans on the more-powers, pro-devolution side a bit, and that about 20% apparently want to abolish the Senedd, or the 38% in the other poll, should there be a small "scepticism" section? also mentioning the abolishment movement, in some detail, but not too much, and including pro-devolution responses to it. As Senedd is on the actual legislature and the argument usually centres on devolution itself, I find it more suitable here. DankJae 23:00, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I have to admit I'm not entirely clear on what the article scope is supposed to be. Is it 1) the legal devolution of powers to the Welsh government that began in 1998—as suggested by the first sentence in the article—or 2) any legal differentiation between Wales and England, which began earlier? RS more commonly mean 1) so I believe information about 2) should be trimmed from the article. (t · c) buidhe 23:58, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Buidhe, I guess it combines legal devolution with general political national development and autonomy done prior. Than solely focusing on the existence of "devolution". I guess it kinda acts as a "Welsh autonomy" article (not supporting a move), but it should be just devolution ideally. Draft:Political history of Wales was attempted, as an alternative location, but was draftified, incomplete and suffered recentism, and was duplicated from this article.

May be the split initially proposed above Talk:Welsh devolution#Splitting Page into: "History of Welsh devolution" and "Proposed further Welsh devolution" be considered to improve scope, although Political history of Wales rather than History of Welsh devolution, and that done with more research than the prior attempt. This article then expanding more on the present situation since 1998 and the few commissions/referendums prior. DankJae 00:31, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

The issue is that the 19th century home rule and disestablishment movements are not typically called devolution, and if you search Welsh devolution on Google Scholar for instance the sources are about 1998–present. So, if these earlier movements are not part of the article topic they should not be covered in depth in this article (mentioned as background, yes). (t · c) buidhe 01:19, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Correct Welsh name

Is it "Datganoli i Gymru" (what this article says) or "Datganoli Cymru" (title of the cywiki article)? (t · c) buidhe 01:23, 19 April 2023 (UTC)