Talk:House of Béthune

citation quality

I came to this article because several of the citation templates were showing red error messages (this version). I fixed the broken templates that were displaying the error messages (this edit). But, I have left the other poorly written templates to others to fix. As an example of the kind of fixing that is needed, I picked, at random, this reference:

<ref name = Nobiliaire> (French) {{citeweb|author = Baert, Philippe; Beydaels, Charles Jean; Cuypers, Joseph Ferdinand Ghislain|date =1779|title=''Suite du Supplément au Nobiliaire des Pays-Bas et du Comté de Bourgogne''|pages=178 et seq|publisher = P J Hanicq|location=Mechelen/Malines|url=https://books.google.fr/books |access-date=6 January 2016}}</ref>

(French) Baert, Philippe; Beydaels, Charles Jean; Cuypers, Joseph Ferdinand Ghislain (1779). "Suite du Supplément au Nobiliaire des Pays-Bas et du Comté de Bourgogne". Mechelen/Malines: P J Hanicq. pp. 178 et seq. Retrieved 6 January 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

The proper fixes for this would be:

1. choose the correct cs1 template; in this case, {{cite book}} because it is a book that is being cited
2. each author in his or her own |lastn= |firstn= parameter pair (preferred) or in separate |authorn= parameters
3. if wiki-markup is required to make the value in |title= render properly, that is a good indication that the chosen cs1 template is the wrong template; here, because {{cite web}} renders |title= in normal font and in quotes, the editor used wiki italic markup to italicize the title
4. When providing a url, provide a url that lands the reader at the book. In the example, the url lands at the generic Google search home page; the reader then must return here, get the title, go back to the Google search page, enter the title there and then choose one of the search results. Don't make readers work so hard.
5. because this is a book, an access date is not needed
6. move the language annotation into the template: (French) → |language=french

So, rewriting the example, and guessing at the correct url for the sake of the example, we get this:

{{cite book |last=Baert |first=Philippe |last2=Beydaels |first2=Charles Jean |last3=Cuypers |first3=Joseph Ferdinand Ghislain |date=1779 |title=Suite du Supplément au Nobiliaire des Pays-Bas et du Comté de Bourgogne |pages=178 et seq |publisher=P J Hanicq |location=Mechelen/Malines |url=https://books.google.fr/books?id=AWVMAAAAYAAJ |language=fr}}

Baert, Philippe; Beydaels, Charles Jean; Cuypers, Joseph Ferdinand Ghislain (1779). Suite du Supplément au Nobiliaire des Pays-Bas et du Comté de Bourgogne (in French). Mechelen/Malines: P J Hanicq. pp. 178 et seq.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

House of Bethune vs other Bethunes

Too many of the families and individual included in this article lack a substantiated, and in many cases even a credible, membership in the historically prominent noble French House of Bethune, which eventually obtained the ducal peerage of Sully. If there is no footnote sourcing the male-line descent from a verifiable member of this family, that person or branch should be moved to a different article under "Bethune (surname)" or not mentioned in Wikipedia, except in properly sourced articles on individuals who happen to share the name of "Bethune". Speculation that there may be a connection is insufficient to include them in this article -- and even such speculation needs to be footnoted to a reliable source. FactStraight (talk) 02:35, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree and have removed them all. If any of the individual families are sufficiently notable, then they can be harvested from the history and used to create their own family page, but a page about one specific noble family should not be used as a WP:COATRACK to list every family bearing the same toponymic as their surname based on the false supposition that it is meaningful, as opposed to them just deriving from the same place, or worse, coincidence. To be mentioned here, a family must have a credible claim to being members of this noble House of Bethune. Agricolae (talk) 14:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)