Talk:British people

Latest comment: 3 days ago by Rsk6400 in topic GA Reassessment
Good articleBritish people has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
June 18, 2009Good article nomineeListed


Confusing

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A basic point – what is a 'British' person? – is unclear in this article. The lead defines it with some clarity and the final sentence mentions the diaspora, separating its members from 'the British'. But later there's "Britons – people with British citizenship or of British descent", which redefines 'British', and the presence of a diaspora map in the infobox and a (very long) list of countries implies that the diaspora is also 'British'. I'm confident that there aren't 72 million British citizens (the opening sentence definition) in the US. How we can clarify for readers? EddieHugh (talk) 22:27, 23 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

English people tend to think of 'British' as a term invented to be inclusive of the Scots, Welsh, and Irish. Primarily they take it to mean Celtic people, people with hairy legs. Burraron (talk) 15:34, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply
The lede should simply make this double-usage clear: it can refer to people of "British descent" (English, Scottish, Manx, Welsh, other historical British Isles) or it can refer to people of British citizenship. DenverCoder9 (talk) 02:46, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Number of British citizens in the United Kingdom

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I don't want to get into complicated discussions here, but British people in the UK are clearly the entire population, except for those who do not have British nationality. So, according to the House of Commons Library, there are only 6 million people in the UK who are not British nationals. So if we take that number and subtract it from the total population determined by the World Bank (the same source used in the article), we get 61,326,569 British in the UK.

House of Commons Library:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06077/#:~:text=There%20are%20fewer%20foreign%20nationals,population%20is%20concentrated%20in%20London.

The World Bank:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=GB Lewishamsmith (talk) 00:59, 2 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

Logical though this is, we can't do it. Please read WP:SYNTH. You can't use numbers from two different sources to calculate a new number that is not in a source. If a published source has done some calculation, you an cite that. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:52, 2 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Is simple math WP:SYNTH? The chart doesn't show this because a chart showing what "100%" looks like isn't very helpful, so the number is the British diaspora (e.g., includes Australians of British descent living in Britain, but excludes British citizens of non-British descent.) DenverCoder9 (talk) 03:03, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The calculation is simple, the contention behind it is not and is unsourced. Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:05, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

This is a mess

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This whole article is in need of a complete rewrite. It is way out of date on recent Archaeological discoveries and on modern DNA research. There is too much reliance on books by TV presenters rather than historians in the references. Panama1958 (talk) 05:40, 15 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

GA concerns

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I am concerned that this article no longer meets the good article criteria. Some of my concerns are listed below:

  • The concerns about the out-of-date research mentioned above do not seem to have been addressed.
  • There is a lot of uncited text, including entire paragraphs and almost the entire "Chile" section.
  • The demographics and statistics need to be updated, with the infobox using 2005 sources and some sections using sources from the 90s.

Is anyone interested in fixing up the article, or should it go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 17:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

GA Reassessment

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · WatchWatch article reassessment pageMost recent review
Result pending

Concerns about out-of-date information brought up on the talk page have not been addressed. There is uncited text, including the entire "Chile" section, and the demographics section needs to be updated, as it uses sources from 2005 and the 90s. Z1720 (talk) 20:38, 27 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

So, immediately, without going too far, in the lede, reference 28 about CUKC is not explained correctly and doesn't address the situation British people in regards to an influx of Caribbeans identifying as Britons. And the infobox regarding Regions with significant populations is onto the right idea, however again, poorly constructed. Perhaps something on the lines of e.g. Canada 603,000 ~ 17,325,860, as the notes are hidden and don't offer a clear explanation of the figures. Cltjames (talk) 22:00, 27 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Article has 69kB of readable prose, so is on the large side - would be good to trim to under 50kB prose. Lots of things to look at. Lots of direct quotes that should be de-quoted and written differently (if they need to remain at all) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:26, 27 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delist 1) The infobox is mainly about the diaspora, while the lead mentions the diaspora only in the last sentence. Languages like Virgin Islands Creole are mentioned in the infobox, but not in the article (against MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE). The infobox starts with the Union Jack. A few lines later we read that there are more than 100 mill. in the USA. Do we really want to give our readers the impression that 100 mill. Americans fly the Union Jack ?
2) Arbitrary selection of pictures of people: There are four photographs of individuals: Rowling (why select her, and not nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah ?), Rhodes (without even mentioning his connections with colonialism and racism), Paddy Mayne and three gold medalists of the 2008 World Orienteering Championships (the most famous British sportspeople ever ?). All of them are White.
3) Is the diaspora really so important for British identity ? About a third of the whole article is about British diaspora, with a long sub-section e.g. for Chile.
4) Why are the British Overseas Territories and Northern Ireland (in the sub-section on Ireland) covered in one section with the diaspora ? Rsk6400 (talk) 11:38, 29 August 2024 (UTC)Reply