Talk:1470

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

@Anon 86.146.55.192,

I'm not getting in to the 1468/69 debate, as I am well aware my knowledge is quite limited on it. However, the Scottish crown "purchasing" the Earldom of Orkney from the Sinclair's appears in various historical publications. Are you saying it never happened, or just that it didn't happen in 1470?

Ghostrider 17:37, 1 November 2007 (MDT)

@Anon 86.146.55.192,
again read your favourite W.P.L. Thomson, p. 115, last §, first sentence and following pages ... ;-) Islandhopper 18:43, 1 November 2007 (MDT)

The event referred to here happened in /1471/. What happened, however, was that William Sinclair surrendered his right to hold the earldom of Orkney to the Scottish crown. There is no reference to Shetland in the transaction. Nor does the Scottish privy council enter the equation. Have a good read of the /new/ edition of WPL Thomson, chapter 14!

@Anon 86.146.55.192,

The widely published "fact" that Shetland was an integral part of the Orkney Earldom is pure myth then, is it?

Ghostrider 15:28, 3 November 2007 (MDT)

@Anon: Please note: Forthcomming publications are no proper reference in a "paedia" unless you are able to show a proper proof that WPL Thomson agrees that results of his forthcoming publication may be rightfully pre-published on a website like shetlopedia. I'm not only talking about copyright infringements but according to my understanding of fairness against third party works you should i) state on the site (and not claiming 'super-knowledge' on the discussion page) that the information is based on a personal note about the forthcomming publication, ii) that this information is rightfully used and that the author agrees. Anything else is simply ignorance, fishing for compliments or whatever you might call it. This is not my style of friendly co-operation. Being an author about Orkney and Shetland meself I'm defenitely dependend on such inside information but I absolutely don't agree with the way you are using them. That has nothing to do with "facts" and "truth" - I accept any judgement about his or my or a third party's opinion - it's just a question of fairness.

[private note]
Your behaviour acting as an anon is rediculous and counter-productive.
[private note off]]
Shetlopedia does need any help which is available - but we don't need rumours spoken from the off. Islandhopper 17:55, 3 November 2007 (MDT)

The new edition of Thomson's Orkney appeared in 2001 - it is not 'forthcoming'. It is a standard work. For the arguments against the view that Shetland was part of the Orkney earldom see, for instance, Barbara Crawford's contribution to DJ Withrington ed., Shetland in the Outside World, 1984. As far as I can see, we are all 'anon' here. We can all make mistakes: I erroneously stated above that the year for this transaction was 1471, but it is, indeed, 1470.

--I think an apology is due to our anonymous friend?!

Appology - for what? We are a debating society. I did not want to blame anyone personally - agreed - I referrred to the 1987 edition but whenever I did ask for an explanation you/the anon answered: The new one. Sorry, we do have 2007 and a 2001 edition is not a "new one" ... Nevertheless we do regard WPL Thomson's work as some kind of standard work but we both do know that parts are under discussion if not to say that they are opposed (sorry for my humble English), with both Thomson and Crawford working together in what we call over here as a "self referencing system".

BDW - Despite that WE here working on Shetlopedia are not "anons". We (most of us I guess) don't know personally but after years of working together we do have our own images. We do have our more or less informative user pages and all of us do have our own biography regarding Shetlopedia: We had our very own discusions and sometimes we had our "fights" *twink at Robbie* but in the end we do know "who is talking about what and measured against what kind of background". And just this is the difference: This is not wikipedia where anybody can bluff from the "off", this is Shetlopedia, working together to achieve the best result ...

If the anon will take this as an apology ... I would be happy ... ;-) Islandhopper 16:35, 5 November 2007 (MST)

I certainly don't want an apology folks - what I would like is rational behaviour. I made a few factual corrections, giving my sources (unlike others), and was assailed with shrieks of 'ignorance' and 'ridiculous'. As I said before, none of us is infallible, and if we are wrong we should admit it, instead of foaming at the mouth.

Leaving the debate about what is fact aside. It bears saying that as far as the general public is concerned, ie. the rank and file visitor to this site, for whatever reason, certain "facts" exist in their minds, put there and maintained there by generations of belief and by appearing in multiple publications over the same period.

Inevitably some of those "facts" or part "facts" were established containing errors, some have no doubt acquired certain errors with the passage of time, 500+ years does that. Where an entry here generally agrees with, and hopefully expands upon, the widely believed version of the event there is no problem, but when an entry states something that is wholly at odds with what is the widely held public belief, citing a very little known author and an even lesser known publication as reference, and making no reference whatsoever to how or why the widely believed version is wrong and the given version is correct, it is opening the door to having the credibility of the site brought in to question in many people's minds.

Take for example the Earldom of Orkney point. In the minds of most of the public who know such a thing existed I think you will find most will tell you, rightly or wrongly, that it was created as a title to cover both Orkney and Shetland as one entity, they may as well have been one group of islands as far as the Earldom was concerned, and that it remained as one title, therefore any reference to it is a reference to both Orkney and Shetland. How accurate that may be I'm not going to comment on, but the fact remains that is what is believed in most people's minds and published in a very many written works.

If it is incorrect and there was some division or the possibility of division of the title at or around the time of transfer in to Scots hands, it is only right and proper we try to state the truth as accurately as possibly, however simply deleting the reference to the widely believed and published undersatnding of what is the truth and inserting an alternative is not, IMHO, a suitable way to go about it.

Outwith their own professional circles the names of people such as Thomson and Crawford only mean something to a very small number of people, and the fact they have written books will be news to all but a small minority of those. IMHO, in cases such as these, where the long held and published version of events is being brought in to question, there is a need to state both the long held and published version and the alternative version, along with an explanation detailing briefly why the alternative is now believed to be more accurate than the long standing version, and who and what the people are who have put forward this alternate version, so that it has cerdibility in and of itself.

Simply stating a "fact", regardless of it's accuracy, that is at odds with the widely held and published belief, and without reference to that widely held belief, and you average person is unlikely to find verification of in the vast majority of mainstream publications, can only inevitably lead to folk reading it on here and dismissing the information as "a mistake", or "they don't know what they're talking about". If the purpose of this site is to make available truthful and accurate information concerning Shetland, it is not all about just simply stating that truth, it is also about proving how and why that which is widely believed and accepted presently as "truth" may be wrong, and how and why an alternative version of events may well be more accurate.

Ghostrider 11:10, 6 November 2007 (MST)

--Well put. It is difficult to convey complex ideas in a forum like the Shetlopedia Timeline (which I think is a very good idea). What Crawford argued wasn't that Shetland was never part of the earldom of Orkney - it certainly was. What she said is that we may not have been /between 1379, when Henry Sinclair became earl of Orkney, and 1469/. I am a bit sceptical about this; but Crawford is right to say that there is no direct proof. I tried to be careful about this, but concede that I might not have been careful enough.

I know nothing about history, and don't really want to either, but Ghostrider makes a very valid point about including both versions of the facts.
Many publications, websites, etc., will give reference to past held beliefs on a topic, as well as the current beliefs. This way it is clear to ignorant folks like me that what I am reading in one place is not just flying in the face of something I previously read, but is a replacement, or update, of the previous version.
When dealing with history this old, it will always be impossible to say, with absolute clarity that any version of 'the truth' is accurate. If one version of the truth could be accepted as accurate then historians would be out of a job after a while. And ,come to think of it, if one version of the truth was all that was required, why do we have so many different versions of The Bible?
On the subject of anonymous, I'm certainly not, I use my own name, but over the time Shetlopedia has been in existence all the vandalism suffered by the site has been by non-registered contributors, which perhaps means that we tend, wrongly, to take a lesser view of information given by non-registered contributors.
I have no doubt that this anonymous user is a very well read person, and I hope they will continue to contribute to the ongoing 'debate' about Shetland's past. Might I suggest though, as nicely as I can, that if something controversial like this topic comes up, then rather than just changing the information, it should be brought up for debate first on the 'discussion' page. That would save a lot of time for a poor overstretched braincell, like mine, who has this silly habit of checking every edit. ;-)
Among the pages of Shetlopedia there are likely dozens of similar 'debatable' 'facts'. Let's try to get to the best version of them, in the nicest possible way.
Remember that, unlike Wikipedia, where 'Truth is Secondary to Verifiability'. Shetlopedia wants to get to the truth, and there is room on the pages to include analysis of all versions of any fact.
Robbie 12:11, 6 November 2007 (MST)