Talk:Walkinstown

Good edit series!

Well done to the anonymous editor who has, with clear local knowledge, substantially improved this article. Referencing welcome also... SeoR (talk) 12:48, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The article is a swamp cabin

The article contains 10 sections including the lead and 1,360 words – but only four citations (February 2022). The whole thing is built on a swamp with no firm foundation. Who was bribed to provide planning permission for this imperilled structure? O'Dea (talk) 20:12, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

This title is (as of August 2025) still objectively quite poor. While improved somewhat (in terms of referencing) since 2022, including a bit of a blitz recently, the "location and extent" section in particular remains without any "firm foundation". Reading entirely like someone's subjective opinion. Classic WP:OR. Unless the section can be supported by something (anything), I'm minded to just delete it. Entirely. And, until many of the inline tags are addressed, I'm not minded to remove the main "needs additional citations" hatnote... Guliolopez (talk) 15:43, 25 August 2025 (UTC)1

@Spideog (aka O'Dea) and Guliolopez: Much of the article consists of trivia and stuff which doesn't come near to being significant enough for inclusion in an encyclopaedia. Perhaps the most extreme example is telling us that the town has local shops. Really? A town with local shops? Who would have guessed it? Also a substantial proportion of the article is unsourced or very poorly sourced. Then there are bits which, as Guliolopez has said, are just personal opinion. In my opinion something like 90% of the content of the article could reasonably be just deleted, and the rest could benefit from substantial rewriting. JBW (talk) 17:23, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @JBW. I 100% agree with the somewhat silly stuff in the lead (about the existence of "local shops" - as if that were somehow notable/encyclopedically relevant). And have removed it. Although I haven't yet removed the related/uncited text in the body (about "newsagents, pharmacies and fast food restaurants [..] near the Walkinstown Roundabout"). I've also added some actual/cited text (about the location/extent of the suburb) to the relevant section. And have summarised/removed the more discursive editorial (about what some unnamed/unspecified people think about the overlaps with Greenhills and Ballymount).

While, as with @Spideog's note about "swamp cabins", I expect your "90% could be deleted" suggestion was likely exaggeration for the sake of emphasis, the bits that (IMO) could be removed without much quibble is the uncited editorial about Ballymount. And the vague/uncited stuff about shops and supermarkets. Which is about 10-20% of the text that now remains. Otherwise, hopefully, this title is somewhat less of "swamp cabin" than it was yesterday :) And, by extension, less of an easy target for block-evading types...

Cheers. Guliolopez (talk) 15:17, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

@Guliolopez: Thanks for the significant amount of work you have put into improving the article. It is certainly better as a result. Yes, "90%" was just an arbitrary figure to give an indication of my overall feeling, rather than an attempt at a serious estimate of the actual proportion. However, while I wouldn't like to try to put an accurate figure to the proportion, I do genuinely think that more than half of the content of the article is parochial trivia which really isn't of encyclopaedic significance. I tend to shy away from the task of working through an article like this and picking out the good bits to keep and the bad bits to remove, partly because I find it tedious, partly because I don't think that kind of work is one of my strong points (there are other editors who are much better at it than I am) and partly because when I have tried to do it, I have sometimes had the very disheartening experience of seeing my considerable amount of work destroyed by one click by an editor who doesn't even bother to give any explanation beyond a contemptuously dismissive five-word edit summary. (Yes, I know I shouldn't let that put me off, but it does.) However, in the perhaps unlikely event that I do ever decide to make a serious go at this article, it will be significantly shorter when I finish than when I start. JBW (talk) 18:41, 26 August 2025 (UTC)