Talk:Imperial Federation

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Who's "Morris"?[edit]

A fuller name and an idea of what he did (politician, professor?) would give readers a proper understanding of the "Morris" who enters the article lecturing in 1885, and whose works are quoted only under that name.Cloptonson (talk) 08:45, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Beginning bold decimation of this article.[edit]

I will to start elimate some of the specious primary references. Just some to give folks a chance to fight back. Juan Riley (talk) 00:21, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The next stage is just deleting sections that do not have a secondary reliable reference. Juan Riley (talk) 00:39, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How does on go about doing an RfD? Did I get that right? Juan Riley (talk) 01:35, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • I would have to object to your 'bold decimation' some work is certainly needed on the article, but references to most of these primary sources is hardly the stuff of a conspiracy trash novel. The United Commonwealth is quite obviously a new version of the old Imperial Federationist groups, links to the RCS and the Moot are worth having as those orgs started as Imperial Federationist organizations (and aside from institutional histories retain some interest in the topic)- the concept still exists in the modern period and modern expressions of it must be included - and currently they are in a reduced capacity, but you seem to have removed the references to it from media sources (which online tend to become hard to find as time goes on admittedly - but that is just the unfortunate way things go and why so many respectable articles sit on a throne of dead links). One of the articles primary issues is the lack of direct citations - but I don't think that deleting the References section previously at the bottom and the useful primary sources (and more importantly the vital secondary sources) improves the situation. What this article needs is more of Duncan Bell's work in particular - in line citations for various statements from that book would go a long way to improving this article. There are plenty of additional secondary sources, both journal articles and monographs published over the last 50 years on this topic.

An even greater priority in my view would be changing the article image. I have never had much luck figuring out how that works but obviously we want the Imperial Federation map as the article picture as that image is actually directly about this topic. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Imperial_Federation,_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of_the_British_Empire_in_1886_(levelled).jpg/1280px-Imperial_Federation,_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of_the_British_Empire_in_1886_(levelled).jpg

Another thing (though it does carry a whiff of conspiracy novel - as do some of the better secondary sources on this topic frankly) is Cecil Rhodes and the original purposes of the Rhodes Scholarships. I can't recommend any good secondary sources at the moment (though the Wiki articles may have them) but that deserves at least a few lines, probably a whole section of this article.