Talk:Death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher

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April 16, 2017	Featured article candidate	Not promoted

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This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Alex Hern (9 April 2013). "How Wikipedia covered Thatcher's death".

Too much rhetoric and chaff

Although it never ceases to amaze me how "death of [major political leaders]" articles become chock-full of quotes and eulogies, I was utterly shocked to see an unprecedented sorry state of this article. Few articles are in such dire need of clean-up. This is unabashed a quotefarm, and has every hallmark of a memorial. We should reduce the surplus paragraphs upon paragraphs of hollow rhetoric and useless unencyclopaedic text, and strive to write in summary style. With this in mind, I've tried to attack the over-reliance on direct quotes, pruning most of the back somewhat. I've also attempted to simplify and render others in indirect speech.

The absolute best [sic] example of such poor editorial work is how the full text of thanks of two separate children is included, down to the repeated "thank you all very much for coming". Quoting Mark and Carol Thatcher's statements in their entirety is simply gratuitous. The verbose text (395 words), can be cut down to a quarter (106 words) without any loss in meaning. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 16:49, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Violation of WP:NPOV in See Also section

Recently there have been multiple attempts to retain a link in the See Also section of this article to Bush derangement syndrome, a conservative political term which should have loaded connotations to any observer, regardless of political affiliation, and the inclusion of which in the See Also section is a textbook violation of WP:NPOV. The first rationale for including this was that it "does not violate NPOV", and the second reversion did not even bother to give a reason. I will be removing this link once again and if it continues to be a problem I think that administrator comment would be appropriate. - 80.195.184.144 (talk) 11:46, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of dignitaries

This was previously removed here, but added back by an IP editor here. I am removing it as unreferenced especially as there is no guarantee the information is accurate. For example it is claimed Ruairi Quinn is the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland. That would be the Tánaiste, and Ruairi Quinn has never held that job. FDW777 (talk) 23:39, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Protests at the funderal

I added a short paragraph to the Wider reaction section about protesters at Margaret Thatcher's funderal itself. This was reverter with the comment, "Reverting good faith edits, discuss please, possibly WP:UNDUE (RW 16.1)". I do not believe my edit gave undue weight. The section includes information about protests and celebrations around the country following Margaret Thatcher's death so, in my opinion, a protest at the actual funeral itself is worthy of mention in this section. The protest is mentioned earlier in the article, under Planning, but is more relevant in the Wider reaction section, where it also helps fill out the broader context of reaction to an (expensive) state funderal within a period of austerity and protests about austerity. Woofboy (talk) 20:37, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to add the paragraph back in. Woofboy (talk) 18:19, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Correction, the editor who removed the paragraph restored it following my initial discussion entry above. Thanks! Woofboy (talk) 18:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"celebrations of her life and death" is misleading.

That makes it sound like one thing, and functionally equivalent to "celebrations of her life". It's not normal to have spontaneous street parties and massive protests at the death of a prime minister; that's a notable part of this article, so using a phrasing that does everything in its power to mislead is, well, not very Wikipedia. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.7% of all FPs.} 15:22, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not normal for a prime minister to receive a ceremonial funeral either. Of course there was going to be a reaction one way or another. It's entirely accurate to state that there were celebrations of her life as well as of her death. There is nothing misleading about it at all. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 15:28, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you said "celebrations of her life and celebrations of her death" that'd be one thing, but lumping them together just puts it into a commonplace phrase. That's literally used in obituaries [1] [2] (etc.) and I'm pretty sure no-one was celebrating those random people's death in the same way they were celebrating Thatcher. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.7% of all FPs.} 15:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm OK with that, which I think is what is conveyed by adding a second "of" to make the sentence celebration of her life and of her death; repeating celebration seems redundant in my opinion. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 15:33, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still not sure that's clear as to meaning. Like, I get the intent is fine, but I don't think it reads well. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.7% of all FPs.} 19:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]