User talk:Mal McKee/Irish Republican Army

sourcing

(responding to Denis here) Well, Coogan's history just arrived, but I actually was thinking more of professional literature in military, intelligence and insurgency/counterinsurgency. Somewhere on this computer is a copy, I believe, of some tactical manuals from some factions. There are comparative group analyses, such as "The Dynamic Terrorist Threat: An Assessment of Group Motivations and Capabilities in a Changing World", which uses the Real IRA as one of its case studies. [1]

What would really help me is if you could start blocking out the historical periods. I suspect that while there might be very good material from some U.S. military research centers, there might be some divergence on the names of factions as used in Ireland. For some terminology, have you looked at insurgency and subarticles? Howard C. Berkowitz 22:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah... I'll work on it over the weekend. Peter Hart wrote a very good thesis on the Cork IRA (dealing with its makeup, mentalities etc.) but unless you are familiar with the background he's a bit dodgy. Coogan is good, but not an academic so from a pure snob's point of view he shouldn't be the first start :-)

Charles Townshend, a British historian is one of the most eminent in this field. 'Political Violence in Ireland' is a great book if you can get your hands on it. I'll make more sense when I write at the weekend. Denis Cavanagh 00:42, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Should I move this to userspace?

I am an expert on insurgency, but I am not an expert on Irish history. My understanding is clearly flawed, as I can't understand why a country with abundant Guinness should have tensions. :-)

Nevertheless, I received, yesterday, a note from a Citizen who had invited a colleague to join CZ, and declined, for reasons including finding this specific article to be inaccurate. Now, while I will offer sourcing for some assertions, I am very aware that I don't have the sense of relationships among factions that I did, for example, among South Vietnamese political generals. I personally can't do an adequate job of keeping this article maintained.

My personal belief has always been that we need to be accurate. We've talked about collaboration here but real-life priorities didn't make it practical.

I'm considering moving this to userspace, as the only option for now; Citizens are certainly welcome to edit it there and we can move it back when there's a consensus on quality. I'll bring this broad issue to the Forum; it might be well to have "Draftspace", open to registered users only, where articles go in stubby form when the originator or an Editor believes they need work to be ready, not for Approval, but for general access. I'd like my words and actions to be consistent, so I will move it to userspace in 24-48 hours unless I hear otherwise. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)