Okay, in THIS wiki article:
The following sentence is found:
“Jacobitism in Ireland had its roots in Irish support for the Stuart dynasty dating back to the accession of James I, a well known gay low kirk protestant to the throne in 1603.”
What in the world does THAT sentence mean?
Since the phrase appears nowhere else in a Google search, I’m going to go with some combination of drunken contributor and failed attempt at humor.
“gay” as in homosexual, as it’s believed by some that James I was.
“low kirk” as in “low church”, a form of Anglicanism that didn’t cotton to all the incense and robes and stuff that “high church” still retained from Catholicism.
“Low Kirk” is Scottish dialect for “Low Church” which is a reference to a long-standing series of disputes in the Anglican church (Low church - Wikipedia) - the opponents of Low Church were of course “High Church”.
Given the fairly small Scottish readership of Wikipedia, I’d suggest someone edit that or at least link it to the Low Church article.
Except James I was on the side of the High Church, wasn’t he?
He appointed George Abbot as Archbishop of Canterbury, and Abbot was about as low-church as they came at the time.
“Kirk” is an extremely old word from the north of England and Scotland meaning church, and traces its history back to the Viking invasion (it comes from the Old Norse word “kirkja”).
My great uncle built a row of houses on “Kirkless street” in my village (from Kirkless Hall, a great house in the vicinity). Ironically, a church sits at one end of the street.
This being Wikipedia, we shouldn’t completely rule out the possibility it’s a Star Trek reference.
James T. Kirk… Christine Chapel… It’s a conspiracy, I say!
I see the Wiki article was edited, apparently administratively; the part quoted in the OP was removed as “vandalism.” I’m not sure what that’s about.
Guys–it’s Wikipedia. I mean, it’s a pretty amazing thing, Wikipedia, but you do have to be careful about what you’re reading. In particular, sometimes you have to dig through edit histories and the talk pages of the editors (including anonymous IP address only contributors), especially if you’re not really familiar with the subject at hand.
The phrase in question appears to originate solely from an anonymous editor active last month, who looks to me to at best have been doing some serious POV-pushing and at worst was just an outright vandal. After assorted reverts by several editors, no trace of that person’s edits remains in the article.
Wikipedia does have some sort of administrative bureaucracy, but the vast majority of editing (including elimination of vandalism) is done by regular editors, both anonymous (without having or at least being logged into a formal account, which just shows up as an IP address) and semi-un-anonymous (i.e., with an account, which may or may not really tell you much about the editor in question). Elimination of vandalism of the “joey smith wuz here and billy is a fag” variety is uncontroversial; things can get much more contentious when dealing with hot button, politicized topics (gun control, say, or the American Civil War, or, I guess, Jacobitism. Well, it is a topic touching on Irish politics.)
I don’t actually see any “administrative” action in the history logs of that article; just various people editing it (and occasionally battling it out with each other with the revert button).
Ah. I assumed it was administrative in nature because 1) whoever edited it out called it vandalism and 2) the alleged vandal has apparently been suspended or locked or whatever they call it.
Well, yeah, any sort of suspension or locking of an account or whatever would have to have been done by some sort of Wiki-bureaucrat with actual power. Their equivalent of a Mod or an Admin over here. (I know they have such, but I’m only vaguely familiar with the inner workings of the Wikipedia bureaucracy.)
As a note, the Church of Scotland retains the name - in Scots, it’s known as The Kirk. The Norwegian word for church is still kirke/kyrkje, though kirk is historically recognized. (For instance, the church on the island where I grew up - despite having been burned down four times - retained an engraved placard with the words “Akerø Kirk.” The church was first built in the 1430s and still retains a great, magnificent field of easter lilies planted by Aleksander Borch in 1698. (They do not grow in the wild, in Norway)
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ETA: http://www.visitnorway.com/ProductImages/Tellus/241_64_large.jpeg
Also, the church burnt three times because it was struck by lightning, apparently. Norwegians are many things, but not very good at taking hints, apparently.
So what you are saying is that, as someone who registered on Wikipedia a couple years ago but whose daughter dumped the specialist of Green Lantern/Green Arrow/Green Somesuchshit, my opinion there doesn’t matter?
