Talk:Architects Act 1997

Untitled

Was it this act that allowed direct access to the bar? --Joopercoopers 15:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Excessive footnote

I have removed the following footnote from the article:

<ref>In May 2006 the Prime Minister Mr Blair arranged for ministerial responsibility for the Architects Registration Board to be transferred from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) to a newly formed Department which was to be called "Comunities and Local Government" (DCLG) and to be headed by a Secretary of State Ruth Kelly, to whom the Prime Minister addressed a letter setting out what was required. This Department has an official website which has published the Prime Minster's letter and states its vision to be of "prosperous and cohesive communities, offering a safe, healthy and sustainable environment for all". The website also has a page for describing the Architects Registration Board where it offers an unreliable summary of the effect of the legislation, in that it has a thread of inaccuracy in three out of four sentences, namely:

• stating that ARB "succeeded" ARCUK, when the legislation has expressly stated that it is the same body but with another name as from July 1997;
• stating that it was established to guarantee the professional competence of architects to consumers, when this cannot be the case in that ARB has neither the legal powers nor the funds to honour any such guarantee; and
• that all architects must be registered by ARB in order to practise legally in the United Kingdom, when in fact an architect, or any other person, is free to perform or supply the services of an architect subject only to the restrictions on the use of the vernacular word "architect" contained in the legislation first enacted by Parliament in the 1938 Act.</ref>

This is not a footnote, it is an essay. If you need such a large footnote to explain something then you haven't explained it very well in the original text. The correct solution would be to fix the original text.
However, I cannot see any need to go into this level of depth about the transfer of functions between government departments, especially as the Communities and Local Government department was primarily just a re-branded Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The unsourced claim that the official website is incorrect should not be mentioned at all without supporting sources. Road Wizard (talk) 19:12, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

- I cannot remember now whether I was the author of the material you have excised, but I have discussed it on your talk page. Salisian (talk) 21:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Text copied from User talk:Road Wizard to maintain continuity of the discussion. Road Wizard (talk) 23:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your intervention on this page. I agree you're probably right to remove the lengthy footnote, but my reason for supporting your removal of the reference would be different, namely that as time goes by some information loses its topical interest and becomes more abstruse (which is, I imagine, the reason it was placed in a footnote and not in the body of the text in the first place). I therefore appreciate your placing the information on the talk page, for you never know, a serious researcher rather than just a casual visitor who takes a general interest in primary legislation may derive genuine satisfaction in finding it there; the very distinction, I hope you will agree, that marks an encyclopaedia (which should be an extensive knowledge resource) apart from a penny guide-book. A few points however:

• You have left some external links (Blair, Kelly) which had relevance to the detailed former footnote but not to the article.
• There is a balance between referencing all statements and introducing clutter.
• The bullet-point statements are accurate (and, in point of fact can be verified easily enough by looking at the linked pages). And as to technology, if you have a way to put a reference on a footnote using the edit pages, then you are a lot cleverer than I am.
• Your criticism is a little disparaging. It may of course be both accurate and justified, but pejorative language such as yours is quite difficult to read with a constructive attitude. Perhaps it needs charity? May I suggest that for the sake of the average grump you adopt the style of academia (which I admire but am no part of), which is to achieve a result coming up with an improvement rather than a half-baked detraction? Salisian (talk) 21:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry if you found my comments disparaging as that was not my intention. The text was meant solely as a factual log of my reasons for removing the text and not a criticism of an individual editor (to be honest I had assumed that the size of the footnote was the result of several different editors expanding it in an attempt to be helpful). I may be misinterpreting your meaning, but your assertion that I should "achieve a result coming up with an improvement rather than a half-baked detraction" sounds rather unfair. My actions are intended to improve the article through adherence to the manual of style and other key policies and guidelines. I also regularly improve UK legislation articles through the addition of referenced text. An assumption that I am only conducting "half-baked detractions" is not the most helpful of attitudes.

Thanks for pointing out the external link issue. External links are not generally included for the sole purpose of supporting a footnote, so I had not expected the issue to arise from removing a single note. I will take a look at that section once I have finished my reply.

The bullet-point statements may be accurate, but they are hardly factual (there is a key distinction to be made between fact and truth). The assertion that the points make the information supplied on the website unreliable is an unsourced opinion. It may be true, but I can't see an adequate reference that supports it. If a footnote requires its own reference then serious consideration needs to be made whether the statement should be in the form of a footnote at all. The normal way of handling a source of questionable reliability is to replace it with a more reliable one. Explaining why a source is unreliable within the article itself is unnecessary, unless the source itself forms part of the article's core subject (e.g. in this case the core subject is the Act, not the website of a government department charged with working with the Act). The perceived faults with a source should be raised on the talk page for discussion with other editors.

"There is a balance between referencing all statements and introducing clutter." I would have to disagree with this statement most strongly. Addition of references is necessary to comply with the key Verifiability policy. Compliance with the Citing sources guideline can help reduce "clutter" to a minimum, but visual appearance must always be a secondary concern to that of providing adequate referencing. Regards. Road Wizard (talk) 23:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Correcting misnomer

Re: Architects Act 1997, Woohookitty's Revision as of 07:33, 20 March 2012 (WPCleaner (v1.13) Repaired link to disambiguation: This appears to be inaccurate with reference to the source, viz. the DCLG website, where, as mentioned in the same sentence, it is classicied as a Non-departmental public body. Please be mindful that law, practice and usage in these matters is not the same in the jurisdiction of the UK as in the federal republic of USA. According to UK law and practice the ARB is not properly classified as "Government-owned" although a majority of its members are appointed by a government department, and it operates in liaison with the government. Qexigator (a native English speaker) has therefore removed the misnomer introduced in the name of 'cleaner' by Woohookitty's Revision. Qexigator (talk) 17:15, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

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