Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of the titled nobility of England and Ireland 1300–1309/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by Matthewedwards 01:00, 25 February 2009 [1].

---

List of the titled nobility of England and Ireland 1300–1309

Nominator(s): Lampman (talk)

• Featured list candidates/List of the titled nobility of England and Ireland 1300-1309/archive1

I should probably explain the purpose of this list. The upper nobility of medieval England can best be compared to modern-day government cabinet members, except that they were much more important, because in addition to administrative duties, they were also politicians, generals, patrons of art and religion, and normally the wealthiest people in the country. A list of the nobility at any given time will almost inevitably be a list of the most important people in the realm – with the exception of the royal family and a few churchmen and courtiers.

Unlike cabinets, however, they were not changed at set periods, but came and went individually with the accidents of birth, death and forfeiture. This makes it more difficult to present them in a systematic manner. Lists of succession, like the list of Earls of Warwick can give a good vertical view, but for a horizontal view we need to take snapshots. At first I started making lists for individual years ending in 0, like the list of the Peerage of England and Ireland in 1310, but this way certain individuals could fall through the cracks. Then I got the idea from User:Ugen64, who had created several lists based on decades, such as the List of peers 1200–1209.

I have limited the list to the titled nobility, which at this point is only the earls, because if I should also include barons the list would become too long and unmanageable (the baronage was not very well defined at the time). Hopefully I've found a good formula which can serve as a model for further lists. Lampman (talk) 21:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

"The following is a list of the titled nobility of England and Ireland in the years" FLs don't start like this. See recently promoted lists for examples of more engaging opening sentences. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:19, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I've tried to fix this. Not sure about the use of wikilinks in the bolded part though; WP:BOLDTITLE didn't quite answer the question. The problem is that these words don't reoccur, or not until a bit further down. Lampman (talk) 13:40, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Comment If all the decades are going to have similar numbers of entries (with lots of overlap), i think this is still too finely divided. How many entries would 1300-1350 (or 1337) have? I think such lists only needed to be separated due to length reasons or historical reasons. This doesn't seem to have either. A 100 year range would be more useful to a reader, imo (or 50 year if 100 is too long for readability).Yobmod (talk) 10:18, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

A list covering a 50-year period (1300-1350) would contain around 50 individuals. This probably wouldn't be of a prohibitive size, but it would defeat what is the primary objective of the list: to present the political situation at a given point in time. It would be near impossible for the reader to get an overview, as it would cover several changes of personnel in most cases, and include the reigns of three different kings. An analogy to this list would be the List of state leaders by year, which in my opinion is a bit too fine-tuned, with annual lists. Lampman (talk) 13:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

But with sortable lists, readers could sort by date of birth and date of death for example, making a combined list more useful in every way. If they are interested in a decade, they can sort by date and see that decade. If they are interest in 1308-1311, they would currently have to read 3 short lists, combining them in a sortable table would make this far easier.Yobmod (talk) 15:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem I had with sortable lists was the wide variety of different date formats (c., before, shortly before, 18/19 etc.) Is there any way to use a sortable list even when many of the dates are approximate? Lampman (talk) 01:35, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Using a sort key, you should be able to sort approximate dates as normal dates, or even to before or after the precise date. So approx. 1308 could be made to sort to before or after 1308 depending on if the uncertainty ranges to before or after. Maybe no one else minds the overall list being split into the smallest possible ranges that give "10 or more" items, then i wont oppose just for this (many of the reviewers do this themselves to get the highest number of FL) - but weak oppose from me, the places, names dates can be sortable even withing this date range.Yobmod (talk) 08:48, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

It is certainly not my intention to maximise the number of FLs, my only concern is to present the information as clearly as possible. If this can be done with a sort key that would be great, but I'm not quite sure what template you're talking about. I've loked at {{Template:Dts}}, but I don't think that can do it. Lampman (talk) 13:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

If you use the general sort key (template:sort), i think you can sort in any order you want. As this list will not be changing and is comprehensive for the dates, you can even sort them using a number, although i recommend using the date. If a date is ambiguous, then simply changing this key can place the entry at the beginning or end of the year.Yobmod (talk) 10:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Support, all issues resolved. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:53, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Resolved issues, Dabomb87 (talk)

Comments from Dabomb87 (talk · contribs) "of only one rank up until 1337" "of his reign the number was at only eleven." What number? "with six earls dying in the years from 1295 to 1298"-->as six earls had died from 1295 to 1298 "the wealthiest and most powerful was without comparison Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster." "without comparison" isn't necessary. Fill empty table cells with em dashes. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:34, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Sources look good. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:34, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Done, thanks! Lampman (talk) 15:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.