Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Economy of the Republic of Ireland/archive1

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Economy of the Republic of Ireland[edit]

Self-nomination. I've expanded this article significantly over the last few weeks. It covers all sectors of the Irish economy, taxation, wealth distribution, the relevent statistics, economic ties etc. CGorman 20:03, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Support - robust article and gives insight into Ireland, an alternative history and modern Ireland - also recommend that article should (perhaps) incorporate larger historic section and definitely use less abbreviations (can be quite abstract) and more paragraphing. Djegan 21:23, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Neutral for the moment - the "Economic ties"/USA section needs a considerable update as it still refers to the Clinton administration in the current and future tenses (someone taking bets for 2008?!). Most of the figures in that section refer to 1998 and 1999, something more recent would be a good idea. There's also quite a lot of US spellings there, which isn't appropriate as we should be using Hiberno-English. -- Arwel 00:51, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC) P.S. - I forgot, there's also a tendency to refer to the whole island as "the country", which isn't exactly NPOV. Looks OK now. Support. -- Arwel 23:27, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • The US economic ties section has been updated to reflect current circumstances. CGorman 21:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Support as long as Economic ties is updated thoughZayZayEM 08:50, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • See above. CGorman 21:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Support on same condition. Filiocht 08:55, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
    • See above. CGorman 21:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Will support after sources are formatted in MLA style. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 17:54, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
    • Uh, last I checked, the manual of style says that any referencing style is acceptable. →Raul654 17:59, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
      • Agreed. but they should at least have the publisher, author, and year for every book reference listed. Also, the 'See also' and 'External links' are included under the 'Reference' section. They should not be unless they were used as actual references for this article. If other wikipedia articles were used as references, my feeling is that the references for those articles should be listed instead of listing the wikipedia article as a reference. But maybe that is just me. Finally the external links are not formatted correctly as references as noted in Wikipedia:Cite sources. I completed the suggestion in my foregoing comment - Taxman 19:06, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
  • Support, looks good to me. Especially the name fix. Object, I seem to be a one man mission on this, but please fix the one sentence paragraphs :). This article lists the growth differently than in Celtic Tiger, which is right? Great pictures, otherwise looks good and I would support with those fixes. - Taxman 19:06, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
    • I have merged or lenghted some of the shorter paragraphs were appropiate. As for the growth figures - the Economy of Ireland article mentions 10%, but clearly states that this is over the five year period 1995-2000, the Celtic Tiger article mentions 5%-6%, this is for the longer period - of 1990-2004. Have I satisfied your complaint? CGorman 21:58, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Object. Certainly not bad, but I have some issues: 1) The article is called "Economy of Ireland", but appears to be only about the Republic of Ireland. This should be corrected (either the title should change or the contents should reflect it is also about Northern Ireland). 2) The history has almost nothing on the early history. Everyting up to 1848 is covered in a single sentence, and 3/4 of the section is about the 20th century or later. This trend is noticeable troughout the entire article; the present and recent past are getting most of the attention. I understand this is the period for which most information is available, but a better overview is really needed for an encyclopedia. In addition, this makes the article read rather "dated" at times: "In 1999, trade between Ireland and the United States was worth around $18.5 billion, a 24% increase over 1998." looks like the last information on this is already 5 years old.3) Some additional figures for the history section (or elsewhere) to compare would also be nice. I can think of graphs or tables with the GPD or inflation (or other indicators) every so many years (10, 20). 4) "Recent economic circumstances" should be merged with the history. 2000-2004 is as much part of history as all years before. 5) I don't think there is a reason to keep all of the information that is left over from the CIA book. Some of this information is really not very useful (such as the historic exchange rates in US$), others are duplicates of the information in the table. The rest could probably be integrated with that table as well (I like the table). Jeronimo 19:33, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • I've made a considerable stab at your wish list... hopefully I've satisfied you! 1) Excellent suggestion, the page has been moved to Economy of the Republic of Ireland - information for Northern Ireland is in the UK article (or should be!). 2) The history section has been expanded to include the early economic history of Ireland and old 1998/1997 figures in the article have been replaced with the most recent available - you cited the US section in particular - i've added a link after the figures to allow them to be easily and accuratly updated in the future. 3) I cannot seem to find any historical GDP figures - besides I think the articles informative enough without needing such a graph 4) Recent economic circumstances is now part of the history section - which has itself been devided up into periods. 5) On this I would disagree with you - the historic exchange figures are usful in telling how stable the economy has been in the past, the other figures such as gold reserve, electricity production etc., all are relevent to the countries economy, as for the table, im glad you like it (i've done the same to the USA and UK articles in the hope that it will become a standard) but I fear that adding all CIA figures would make it too long/confusing - and anyways I think for example natural gas reserves are better suited to the resources section than the table. CGorman 22:40, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • This looks pretty OK now. I'm not totally in agreement regarding issues 3) and 5), but they are not sufficent to keep objecting: support. Jeronimo 10:45, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • question why has Ireland got the fastest growing economy in Europe? answer: because its capital's always Dublin. Anyway, no vote. Dunc| 21:26, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • ???? I don't get you - joke or sarcastic comment? CGorman 22:46, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
      • If you have to explain a joke. It's a pun of the words doubling and Dublin, and a play on the meaning of the word capital in a country's capital and capital (economics). Honestly... Dunc| 23:07, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
        • How could i've missed that! I was having quite a bad day yesterday - not in the mood for jokes and all the objections were bugging me... CGorman 19:25, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: I have some concerns about the time dependent nature of this article. Should an article like this be dated? Do we expect it be updated continuously? Will it still make sense 10 years from now? Paul August 23:09, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
    • Yes this article contains a lot of data that is time changeable and in need of regular updating - but so too does Olympic Games. I have provided plenty of sources to allow figures to be easily updated - the majority of which come from the excellent CIA world factbook. Anyways how can you write an article about the economy of a country without talking about recent growth, economic size, labour force etc.? The nature of the article requires these figures - besides as wikipedia continues to grow, there will always be someone around to update things. CGorman 22:46, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
If you havan't already, you might want to take a look at: Avoid statements that will date quickly. Paul August 23:09, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
Here's the introductory economic paragraph from the CIA factbook:
Ireland is a small, modern, trade-dependent economy with growth averaging a robust 8% in 1995-2002. The global slowdown, especially in the information technology sector, pressed growth down to 2.1% in 2003. Agriculture, once the most important sector, is now dwarfed by industry and services. Industry accounts for 46% of GDP and about 80% of exports and employs 28% of the labor force. Although exports remain the primary engine for Ireland's growth, the economy has also benefited from a rise in consumer spending, construction, and business investment. Per capita GDP is 10% above that of the four big European economies. Over the past decade, the Irish Government has implemented a series of national economic programs designed to curb inflation, reduce government spending, increase labor force skills, and promote foreign investment. Ireland joined in launching the euro currency system in January 1999 along with 10 other EU nations.
This looks like a revised version of our intro (or rather our intro looks like a previous version of CIA's entry), should our intro be changed to reflect this more recent info? By the way, I assume that the CIA factbook being a US government document is not copyright protected, but are there other issues (plagiarism?) with using its text verbatim? Paul August 13:11, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Neutral - I'm wondering why there is no real mention of the impacts on the economy from the EU membership in the history part. Surely it must have had a greater importance than whats indicated, as it had for Spain and Portugal in 86. Of course, I may be wrong. Nice article anyway. Moravice
    • There is mention of the EU's impact. See the section on ties to Europe. CGorman 19:43, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Object.The article doesn't even mention the term European Union (now added to see also) - it had major impact on economy of Ireland. This needs some serious peer review if such a major things are missing. For smaller things, many terms should be ilinked, starting from lead (can you believe the term 'economy' was not ilinked at all? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 12:06, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, do you want a mention other than the subsection European Union in the Economic ties section? Filiocht 12:40, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
Im disgusted at your blindness! There's an entire section on the European Union! Please read the whole article before you make such strong judgements! The comment above you from Moravice even indicates this! Im stunned at your lazy attitude to judgeing this article! CGorman 22:07, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Somehow I must have missed it. It may have been edited out or vandalised when I was reading it, you know, so do yourself a favour and take it easy. Still, the EU section seems rather small for me, but I have no objections related to it anymore. I still think this article is incomplete, though. Unless I am blind again, I can't find any references to GATT or World Trade Organization, and I think Ireland is a member (was in case of GATT)? Things like World Bank or International Monetary Fund may be relevant as well. For now, I'll abstain. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 11:11, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Tentative Support, although with a few concerns: I think there could be more on the burgeoning high technology manufacture and electronics sector, possibly in its own section. Some of the pictures are a bit bizarre, and the Irish economy pie-chart could do with being redone in a more interesting and colourful way. But I think it merits Featured Article status. Dbiv 01:49, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • FYI: Starting, Saturday, I will be on vacation for two weeks, (islands … sun … snorkeling … no computers … ahhhh) so if I don't respond to someone's possible query, you now know why ;-) And just so, there's no misunderstanding I have no objections to this article being a FA. Paul August 03:21, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)