Talk:Department of Defence (Ireland)

Inclusion of section on relationship with Defence Forces

A new editor, GreatRedFox, recently added material here in a new section on the Department's relationship with the defence forces. These were subsequently deleted and reinstated and ultimately deleted by me. GreatRedFox subsequently posted on my talk page (relevant portions copied here to keep the discussion central):

I was surprised when my edit was again deleted just as Josh had stopped the original series of deletions. Having witnessed some remarkable coincidences in real life, I’m happy to accept that this is another. I would first remark that the deletion of an edit appears aggressive to someone inexperienced in Wikipedia. It would have been more helpful to me, and certainly less open to misinterpretation, had you amended it as you thought fit. However, I believe that both you and Josh are misinterpreting the edit. The article in the DF Review is the story and the citations, originally included in line but lost along the way, are to the edits in the Irish Times and Irish Examiner. I actually tried to include these as citations, but this was beyond my (very) amateur skill level. Rather than engage in another edit spat, could I invite you to restore my edit, properly cited; if you do not have the original inline citations, I can provide them. Incidentally, the “Military Authorities” is as described in the DR Review. I’m not sure exactly who these are, but we must assume that these are officers tasked with producing this review.

So, just to be clear, I deleted the material as there were no proper citations for the material, and everything added, especially anything controversial, needs to be verifiable to a reliably source. So what's a reliable source? Certainly the Irish Examiner and Irish Times articles would count, but we don't have them. I've not gone through all the edits, but it looks like the only references included were "Irish Examiner 15 February,2021, Irish Times, 5 February, 2021". Unfortunately, pointing to a particular edition of a newspaper isn't enough; we would also need, at minimum, the actual article title, and ideally the URL (web address) of the actual online editions of the articles. That would then allow us to fully cite the article, including adding the author(s), and readers could click through to read the actual articles. GreatRedFox, if you still have those articles, you should be able to google for the online versions. There are a couple of other issues: I think you would need to explain what, exactly, the Defence Forces Review is; I had assumed it was a magazine like Cosainteoir, but it appears to be an annual academic journal? The inclusion of "issued by the Military Authorities" implies that what follows is the view of those Authorities; it isn't. There is a disclaimer right under the "published by" section, that states "The material and views expressed in these papers are those of the authors, which have been subject to academic peer review, and do not indicate official approval of the Defence Forces or the Department of Defence." So if you can source the Examiner and Irish Times articles, and alter the text somewhat, I don't see why it couldn't be included. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 20:10, 16 June 2021 (UTC)