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Overlap between this project and various county/town/city projects

Although I will use my experience in working on the Cheshire project in this, the issues apply to other county-wide, town-wide, or city-wide projects that overlap with this UK geography project.

We have successfully begun a Cheshire Project which is concerned with all things to do with Cheshire. This naturally involves Geographical issues in Cheshire (settlements, etc) with which this project is interested. Some templates from the UK geography project appear on talk pages which also have the Cheshire project on as well. On some of the UK geography templates, assessments have been made about the articles' quality. I want to open a discussion about how we can ensure that the two projects work together on articles that fall in both projects' remits. There are a number of issues that occur to me immediately. Some may later occur. One issue that arises may deserve its own separate section, but I've just included in with this one for now:

  1. Would it be better to have just a single project assessing an article, or, at least, just 'one (perhaps joint) assessment made of an article? If so, how could we make sure that notices put on the articles that we jointly have an interest in do not conflict with each other, and make clear this unified, joint action? I raise this issue knowing that each project deals with articles and potential articles that the other project would not.
  2. There are some features that the Cheshire project uses that have been the subject of some discussion to reach a consensus with projects dealing with Scotland and Wales, Northern Ireland, and perhaps other projects as well. I'm thinking most obviously of issues to do with InfoBoxes, but there are others, like "How to write about Settlements". Whilst these may not be policy, but are merely Guidelines, I for one have found and I know some others on the Cheshire Project have also found it difficult sometimes to find out where to discover the records where the consensus has been discussed and specified. We need to do this, because we have all found the resources on which agreement has been reached to be very useful. So, I want to ask if there is a centralised place where all the resources can be easily found or from where one can be easily referred to access them? If not, I would argue strongly that there should be one.
  3. In the light to the two preceding points, I wonder if a revitalisation and relaunching of the UK geography project is now in order, as it seems to have become very quiet recently. The relauched project could, in my view, have three primary aims and goals:
  • It could act as a centralised resource for common features of all aspects of UK geography: guidelines for InfoBoxes and a description of their use, county templates, and region templates, etc. These need to be collected together and mentioned in a specific part of the relaunched project. It would be easy to include resources for any customisations of these for the constituent countries and regions of the UK.
  • It could set up and organise a more centralised area where problems can be aired and shared with respect to issues that arise in, say, different county projects, but which might be relevant to other county projects. (There may be other advantages apart from just the county one I have mentioned here.)
  • It could act as a directory of all projects that are concerned with and which would have a direct "hands on" role in sub-divisions of the UK such as counties (though their coverage may extend beyond purely geographical concerns). Furthermore:
    • Where no project for, say, a particular project currently exists, the revitalised and relaunched project would have a direct "hands on" role for geographical-related articles in those otherwise project-less areas.
    • Where a project was set up which dealt with, say, a county which up to then had not had its own project, then the UK geography project would be able to "devolve" its remit to that new project for the relevant articles.

Now, all this could be as formal or informal as required, but I think it would be better for it to be less coercive in its nature than people might otherwise think it could be: we are, after all, dealing mostly with consensus views and guidelines rather than binding policies. However, I do think some clarification and rethinking of this project and its relationships with other projects might be a good idea as would would help people working on the separate projects to become more informed about resources, their status, and they could potentially get more support from people having to deal withsimilar issues in different counties. It would be nice to get some comment and discussion of all this, please.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that apportioning 'authority' for any given area of an article will do much to change the way in which editors or WikiProjectX members approach editing. As regards article assessment, I see no reason why different projects shouldn't assess the same article. Quality standards shouldn't vary between projects (if they do, there's a problem); Importance will very naturally vary between projects.
To pick an example completely at random, University of Virginia is currently watched by five WikiProjects. I expect it gets the most attention from WikiProject University of Virginia, but it doesn't seem to suffer from competing standards. No single project owns the article, or any article.
Apart from the assessment thing, I'd support your suggestions. More resources and expertise are always good. — mholland 14:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

In the light to the two preceding points, I wonder if a revitalisation and relaunching of the UK geography project is now in order, as it seems to have become very quiet recently. -Don't really see any need for this. It was in the nature of the project once a lot of the initial work had been done (Infoboxes, policy and stubbing) that it would go quiet. Few UK editors are going to have the sort of in depth local knowledge of settlements across the UK to flesh out all articles in the depth that they require, and co-ordinating editors with local knowledge across the whole of the UK geography articles would be a logistical nightmare! The appearance of more projects at a county level is a symptom of this and more co-ordinated efforts by local editors can only be a good thing. I don't see that interference from the UK project in local projects is going to improve matters. The UK discussion page is a useful sounding board for discussion of topics though (as for the Home nation debate), as you will hit the broadest cross section of relevent editors Mammal4 14:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Progress will be made IMO when wikipedia is more helpful to the "ordinary" contributor rather than the project worker/editor. There does seem to be a bit of an assumption at times that everybody who would like to contribute to a geography project or article on wikipedia will automatically know:
  • what policies have been decided and what strength they have (ie can they evolve?)
  • what guidelines exist (and do they always need to be applied?)
  • what is acceptable verification in relation to places
  • how to write about a place - what to include and what to exclude in brief terms.

The people who are experts are on individual places are not likely to be experts on wikipedia. I think more contributions will be forthcoming if the 'how' of how to contribute was a bit more obvious in every article or stub relating to a place. It gets especially confusing if people from different places within wikipedia say different things to those wanting to contribute. One link from each place article to an over-arching guidance page for writing about places might be very helpful and help avoid confusion arising in the first place. I strongly support the notion that there should be one central reference resource re development of articles about places. I know I looked for it when I started to contribute and found very little. Cosmopolitancats 09:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, was away when this was posted, and only noticed it after DDStretch mentioned it on the infobox talk page. I don't have any major issues with DDStretch's ideas, and I disagree with the claim that this project was supposed to go quiet after an initial phase. My plan was that we'd collaborate on high-priority articles -- you don't have to live somewhere to be able to find statistics or know how to tidy up an article or write good prose -- in the early days, when I had time for WP, I wrote large sections of the Norfolk and Northumberland articles, counties I had never visited and knew relatively little about. The project already has a few guidelines, and it did have some on infoboxes, but the infobox situation changed and they were deleted. I think the project should interact (not interfere) with local projects, in order to assist in standardisation, and avoid duplication of effort in the development of policies and guidelines. Several county wikiprojects, I've noticed, added a link back tp WP UK geo in their talk page project templates without prompting. I don't have time to implement this myself, but if others want to go ahead and do so, I'll do everything I can to help. Joe D (t) 02:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Changes to county boundaries

Please note Staffordshire#Boundary_changes, Warwickshire#Boundary_changes, West Midlands (county)#Boundary_changes and List of Worcestershire boundary changes. I'd like to see similar for all other UK counties (but don't have the knowledge) - what do folks think? Would they all be better as separate list articles, like the Worcs one? Andy Mabbett 12:39, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest these belong in the history, not government sections. The boundary changes are to the county, not just the government of the county. On articles with a separate history article I think the list should go on that page, and if there are any notable changes they should be in prose in the main article. Joe D (t) 13:26, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
That's not true; administrative county boundaries (i.e. the government of counties) has changed several times but the actual (historical) county boundaries have not changed. To quote Russell Grant:
I wrote to the Department of the Environment and 10, Downing Street to ask why they had abolished Middlesex, my home. The reply, which I hadn't expected, came back. From the Environment Department came this: "What makes you think of the abolition of a county that has lasted 10 or 12 centuries ... of course Middlesex still exists and will continue to do so..." The Downing Street reply was similar.
(Grant, Russell: The Real Counties of Britain. Lennard Publishing, 1989. ISBN 1-85291-071-2)
It's very important not to confuse local government structures with county boundaries; they are not the same thing. Waggers 14:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, but in most of the cases these are not just changes to local government structures, they're also changes to ceremonial counties or to the popular conception of the counties. Your quote doesn't prove that "actual (historical) county boundaries have not changed," it merely shows that the government doesn't prohibit people from using unofficially defined geographical areas. As these lists of county changes themselves go to show there is no definitive historical county. Counties have been changing shape and size, gaining and losing exclaves, etc, size they were conceived. Joe D (t) 23:01, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

To Do List

Is there any particular reason London features twice in the To Do List or is it a mistake? Cosmopolitancats 08:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Given the quantity of stuff which needs doing out there, this 'to do' list should presumably be limited to top priority stuff only - however the project page lacks guidance about:

  • how items for the 'to do' list are decided and where to go to join any debate about this
  • reasons why an item has been added to the 'to do' list
  • how to add something to the to do list
  • reasons to delete something from the To Do List
  • how to improve the 'to do' list

I for one would like to see something more akin to some of the other pages for wiki projects which make lists like this a bit more meaningful than it appears to be at the moment.

Comments? Cosmopolitancats 08:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The to do lists follow the format of the Wikipedia 1.0 project. As for the little table on the project page, it's supposed to be a random selection of those -- the first column containing a random selection of GA/A class or top priority articles, the middle column a random selection from the category of stub-class articles, and the last column a random selection from the UK requested articles page. If I had the time I'd shuffle it around every few days -- perhaps others could do so? Joe D (t) 16:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I see on the external resources section of the Wikipedia:WikiProject London article there is a note about not being able to copy statistics from the Neighbourhood Statistics site. I think there is a misunderstanding here which is probably worth highlighting and discussing further both on that page and this one. What follows is what I said on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject London page.

The wikipedia injunction against violation of copyright opposes the wikipedia requirement that all content is attributable to a reliable source. The only reliable source for data collected by public bodies are their own publications. However, there is no intention by government that statistics should not be used - but there is a requirement to use them responsibly and within due process and with proper attribution.
Neighbourhood statistics - as with other government statistics - are supposed to be copied and used in appropriate documents. In other words they are in the public doman and permission can be granted for their use so long as proper attribution is given - as occurs every time every other public body, academic organisation or other organisation with a justifiable reason uses them. Just as Wikipedia does, for example,
  • every time Wikipedia copies and quotes their data each time mapping co-ordinates are identified and published or
  • every time population data is quoted within any of the settlement templates for any of the UK places with articles.
'Copyright' does not mean 'do not copy'. It means observe the copyright restrictions. The wikipedia injunction to not violate copyright does not mean 'do not copy' it means do not infringe copyright restrictions. So long as proper attribution occurs within the context of specified qualifying use and permission then it should be OK.
Given the extensive current use by Wikipedia of goverment statistics (see examples quoted above), I'm assuming that Wikipedia (somewhere in this vast set-up but I have not a clue as to where - but it would be nice to know!) have dealt with the following - which comes from the copyright notice of the Office for National Statistics

Reproducing National Statistics Customers wishing to reproduce National Statistics material, other than for the purposes of research or private study, require a Click-Use Licence (details on how to apply are below) and whenever such material is published must accredit the material as being from National Statistics website, including the URL, as follows: Source: National Statistics website: www.statistics.gov.uk Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO

Additionally, by way of example, the statistics from the London Councils website has the following copyright notice.

The Association of London Government retains full copyright of the material contained within its website(s), unless otherwise stated. Users may download printed copies of the material displayed on an ALG website provided that you maintain all copyright notices and other proprietary notice. You may not permanently copy contents for commercial gain.

Thus the main article for London - if it uses statistics from the London Councils (which it will need to do) - needs to ensure that the references section cites their copyright over the stats used. I would think it adviseable to do this every time they are used given the various sources for data within the article. This can be done as a footnote.

My personal feeling is that there needs to be better guidance in terms of some form of notice about how government stats can/should be used. A bit like the citation one but smaller maybe? Maybe an expansion of any links to government stats service saying how data should be used within wikipedia?

Any thoughts or comments - or a link to the page where all this has been dealt with even it isn't referenced anywhere I've come across as yet! Cosmopolitancats 14:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

There are two issues here. First, Crown copyright is not going to be compatible with the GFDL, and therefore not acceptable here. Secondly the figures of the statistics cannot be copyrighted because facts cannot copyrighted. It is the particular expression of a fact or idea that is copyrighted. So if some facts are simply laid out in a table with no creative expression, they are not subject to copyright. However the composition of a prose introduction to such a table would be copyrighted. Even if the stats are given in prose, it is only the expression in prose which is copyrightable and not the actual figures themselves.
In other words they are in the public doman and permission can be granted for their use so long as proper attribution is given - as occurs every time every other public body, academic organisation or other organisation with a justifiable reason uses them. This sentance is completely mistaken in regard to what "public domain" means. The data is not public doamian, it is not under Crown Copyright, it is uncopyrightable. Now other parts of the publication (i.e. not plain data) are under Crown Copyright, they are not public domain. After 50 years when the Crown Copyright expires, the entire work will become public domain (but not till then). Things which are public domain, cannot be protected by any sort of copyright, nor require permission for their use, nor require proper attribution. These things are likely required for the use of the parts of the work under Crown Copyright. It may also be ethical and common to attribute the data which is not copyrightable. It certainly is ethical and common to attribute public domain works like poetry. However such things are not actually required for the latter types of works in either the US or UK.--BirgitteSB 18:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
So please explain the crown copyright notice quoted above. Are you saying that it means nothing or that you know better and it should be ignored? Why do you think it doesn't make it explicit as to which part of the publication is copyrightable and which part is in the public domain? Do you know where within wikipedia the formal policy/ statement of consensus is about how wikipedia will treat such data. BTW - I love the idea that there can be no creative expression in government statistics! You may find a few people disagreeing with that notion. Cosmopolitancats 21:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • So please explain the crown copyright notice quoted above. Are you saying that it means nothing or that you know better and it should be ignored? I am saying that the publication is under Crown Copyright and it means what any copyright means. Which is that the expression of an idea or information is protected under the terms of that copyright, granted the expression is both substantial and original. And that the acual ideas and information themselves along with expressions which are not orginal or very short are not protected.
  • Why do you think it doesn't make it explicit as to which part of the publication is copyrightable and which part is in the public domain? Nothing is in the public domain until the copyright expires after 50 years. Uncopyrightable != Public Domain. There are limits on what is copyrightable according to the law. Facts are not copyrightable; expressions are copyrightable. Otherwise everything on Wikipedia would either be original research, a copyright infringement, or at least 80-year old information. It is common for publishers to simply slap the strictest copyright applicable on a publication and make no mention of component which do not qualify for that copyright. I think they do this because they have no compelling reason to do otherwise.
  • Do you know where within wikipedia the formal policy/ statement of consensus is about how wikipedia will treat such data. No. Honestly I work more at Wikisource, which consists almost completely of publications being copied their entirety and therefore deals with many more copyright issues than Wikipedia. Wikipedia's copyright statements mainly deal with images instead of text.
  • BTW - I love the idea that there can be no creative expression in government statistics! You may find a few people disagreeing with that notion. This thread has not given examples of what exactly is being claimed to be a copyright infringement. But with the general idea of population or financial statistics for cities in mind, I don't see how they can be copyrighted on their basic form (London | some number). People are welcome to disagree with me. I am confident in my understanding of the matter, but you can certainly dismiss my advice without hard feelings on my part.--BirgitteSB 21:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

New project page

I have created a new project template page for announcements and moved some of the announcements on to it, as there seemed to be a lot of demand for somewhere to announce new projects and collaborations, and request help and feedback. You may wish to add it to your watchlists or user pages. Joe D (t) 16:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Guideline development: disambiguation suffixes

There are quite a few pages in existance documenting the suburbs and districts of Southampton. For a list, see Template:Districts_of_Southampton.

At the moment, the disambiguator is inconsistant. Most began as "XXX, Southampton" but got moved to "XXX, Hampshire", although there are still some "Southampton" ones around. And some have no disambiguator at all.

I would like to propose making the canonical page for each district to be disambiguated as ", Southampton" (apart from those few outside the unitary authority limits).

Does anybody have any comments on this? Thanks, AlanFord 22:44, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


Over at Template talk:Districts of Southampton, the issue of disambiguation suffixes has come up, as the current situation is a mixture of "Hampshire" and "Southampton" used as the suffix. Since I was bold and updated this project to include more policy and guideline developments in its remit, I thought we could develop some guidelines for this issue. These are some options (applying mainly to England, since I'm not as familiar with the local government systems elsewhere):

  1. We could always use the ceremonial county. This would put places in Southampton in Hampshire, but places in Bristol (a ceremonial county and unitary authority) would remain in Bristol. Places in London would be in Greater London, meaning a move for places like "Sudbury, London", unless we made London an exception.
  2. We could use the administrative counties / unitary authorities. This might be confusing for some of the more obscure UAs though. Additionally, what would we then do about London?
  3. We could use districts/boroughs. I don't like this option, mainly because it would take a lot of effort to migrate to than either of the first two options.
  4. We could pick one of the above, but allow individual WikiProjects to overule the decision. London and the Isles of Scilly, for example might be likely candidate special cases.

Any thoughts? Anybody want to develop some guidelines for the other home nations? I imagine NI is simpler, while Wales is far more complicated? Joe D (t) 22:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Doh, looks like we both decided to start this conversation at the same time. I'll keep this post though, as I think this should be general discussion, rather than a specific discussion about Southampton. Joe D (t) 23:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

(smile) and you edited it as was doing so, so I was confusingly faced with an apparently empty subject editing box, instead of the one I thought should have been there.
Anyway...
In Cheshire, we have at least one situation (there may be more) where there are two places which are both village and civil parish with the same name. Luckily, they are in different districts: Agden takes you to the disambiguation page, and Agden, Macclesfield and Agden, Chester is what has been done to separate them. I imagine this is a rare occurrence (at least, I hope it is), but there are other "near misses" within Cheshire, too, which are disambiguated by adding things to the end of the names: see Aston for example. There will be another: Crewe (the railway town), and Crewe, Farndon is a small hamlet and civil parish near to Farndon, but which is often known as Crewe by Farndon, though the official status of this in-built disambiguation is not definitively known at the moment by myself.
As for the question of how to generally treat such situations, I would suggest that the most general Local Government Division names that allow one to distinguish between the two places should be used. This would cater for the Agden cases, above, and is intrinsically flexibly defined to handle all but the most peversely confusing "duplicate names". So, Adlington, Cheshire and Adlington, Lancashire would be disambiguated by using the same rule. And with a bit more generality, it would also cater for New York, Tyne and Wear and New York (with the omitted "United States") as well within a similar rule just expanded to deal with International clashes of names.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:19, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
We seem to have always used the ceremonial county before. Only when there has been two settlements with the same name in the same county, have we divided the name further. I think this seems the simplest solution. Regan123 23:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, ceremonial counties works reasonably well for rural settlements. I think it can be a bit confusing at times, but it really depends how the reader thinks of geography. For example, to take the former county of Avon, chunks of what are ceremonially in Somerset now go by a whole host of names. While "North Somerset" for some places is reasonable as a disambiguator, sticking "Bath and North East Somerset" after a name is ridiculous. So I can see the argument there...
Where this has come from is urban subdivisions, however. When you're talking about suburbs of a city, you don't think of it as being part of a county, you think of it as being part of the city itself. Having a suburb of Southampton as being disamiguated as being part of Hampshire does not help the reader at all. To take the extreme example, one of many of the Southampton subdivisions is "Old Town" - we clearly can't use Hampshire there. But for suburbs like "Highfield" and "St Denys", why should we use Hampshire over Southampton? As far as I can see it's just adding confusion.
What might be opinions on a "next largest geographical subdivision" principle, with the options being "city" or "ceremonial county". AlanFord 10:35, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
The advantage of ceremonial county is that everywhere has one (at least in England - can't comment on Wales/Scotland). How about we go with ceremonial county, but create redirects for suburbs of cities, like Southampton, Portsmouth, Stoke-on-Trent and so on and so forth. Therefore we cover both bases, cater for settlements that have been "absorbed" into larger settlements but had a history prior to that. See Tunstall, Staffordshire for an example. Regan123 10:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
We already do that for many. What matters to me is not how to get to the page so much as what the page looks like. I find it offputting (to put it mildly) that a page about a city region refers to the county, it seems confusing. I can't imagine anybody thinks of their city suburb/region as being part of the county first and the city second! And besides, we need city-based disamiguation for common city suburb names since there will be conflicts within the same county - what should we do about this? AlanFord 10:55, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, here's one more option:
5. Use ceremonial county, except where the area falls within a settlement chartered as a city.
Would that solve the problems? The villages and market towns of North Somerset would then be in "Somerset", while the suburbs of Soton would be in "Southampton". Suburbs of Bournemouth would be in "Dorset", since Bournemouth is not officially a city... Joe D (t) 14:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
The additional option wouldn't solve the problem I pointed out of two civil parishes/villages having the same name within the same county, but being in different districts. The problem with giving too "tight" a definition is that is has to be long and extended to cater for all cases. It is better to have a more flexible one. I originally suggested using the the most general Local Government Division names that allow one to distinguish between the two places , but I now realise that is almost certainly a poor idea. For town or city suburbs, it seems reasonable to me to use the name of the town or city as the disambiguator, since that is almost certainly what they would be seen to be a part of; for other places, use the ceremonial county except where further distinction is required; and for this last case, go to the relevant district name.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Oh, indeed, there will be a handfull of exceptions. I suggest we go for one of the above options (or something similar to them), but with an addendum along the lines of using the next division down where the name remains ambiguous -- i.e. districts and boroughs. I know of two such examples: Ash, Somerset (which uses a suffix naming the nearest big town in brackets) and Saint-Just, Cornwall (which uses a suffix naming the district in an odd way!). I don't know of any examples where they occur in the same district... Joe D (t) 21:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
One way to proceed would be to list a set of "test places" and give for each of the options suggested, the disambiguation that would result. We should be careful not to exclude any "difficult" exmaples, as these will be the ones that might cause the most trouble. Then, with it all displayed in some kind of list, we can judge which scheme does the best job, or, how to combine or vary one or more of them to make it all look better.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems that most people here agree that there is an issue. I'm having trouble working out wording for what I'm trying to propose. Basically, I'd like to see a principle of the disambiguator being the larger geographical entity that wholly subsumes the entity in question. From a practical sense, whichever road sign was driven through before the one in question, i.e. "Welcome to Hampshire" before "Welcome to Southampton" before "Welcome to Highfield". This way, we avoid any issue of a distinct value of scale (either population, or city status, or whatever), and simply reflect the hierarchy of locations as recognised on the ground. Does this make sense? Is it agreeable as a principle? Can anybody work out how to better phrase it? AlanFord 20:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
That might make the default suffix (how about a new term dabix?) to use "England"? I recall such an issue came up about four years ago, and for various reasons it was decided that the country name shouldn't be used. Anyway... Joe D (t) 21:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The relevant guideline states that we always disambiguate by county; the status quo is to disambiguate by ceremonial county, with the sole exception of Greater London, where the disambiguator is "London". The advantages of this approach are that it has no subjective element (e.g. is x a suburb of y? Or is it a separate settlement?); that the disambiguators are always fairly well known divisions and are fairly short (not "Bath and North East Somerset"). Alan's proposal needs to be more sharply defined; I suspect that there may be too many suburbs which are often regarded as separate places to make this a clear alternative guideline.

The discussion on multiple places with the same name lying in the same district has never really been taken up before. Different approaches exist for different places. In the past, it was felt that there are too few instances to need a specific policy, but perhaps now that we have many articles on villages and hamlets, a guideline might prove more necessary.

Finally, I note in the original post that there is a suggestion that everywhere in Southampton should be disambiguated, regardless of whether this is needed. While this approach is used in the U.S. and for some other countries, there has always been significant opposition to applying it in the UK. Warofdreams talk 20:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback, up until this point I was not sure exactly where the guidelines were from. It strikes me, however, that those guidelines were written without these suburban/city districts being thought of (indeed 'Neighbourhoods' is listed as a future use). To clarify, I didn't intend to suggest all should be disambiguated, only those that need to be (although I can see how it could be read!).
I still think these city districts need a better rule. As a simple solution, just an addendum to the above guidelines that say that articles about districts lying within a city boundrary should be disambiguated with the name of the city if required. How might one go about proposing such a formal change? (As you may have gathered, even though I've been active around here for a couple of years now, all this procedure/guidelines/etc stuff is rather new to me!) AlanFord 17:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
I am in the process of drafting out a guideline provisionally titled "How to write about UK Cities". This followed a case where an article (Middlewich) was rejected for Good Article Status mainly on the grounds that it did not follow guidelines given in WP:CITIES which seems extremely USA centric and which cannot cater for the UK case. Myself and Jhamez84 have discussed this and feel that the UK geography project needs to update its guidelines. I think the suggestion of disambiguating city districts or suburbs to the name of the city is the most sensible way forward, and this can be added to the guidelines if people think it is appropriate. of course, the guidelines would have to be discussed as well. I'll try to get a version up for discussion within the next week.
Perhaps there should be other, updated or even new guidelines? In which case, perhaps people could suggest topics for newer guidelines in a new section I'll write just after posting this message  DDStretch  (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Article Status: What happens next?

Back in August 2006, the Eastbourne article was given a B rating as part of this project. After a lot of editing and adding citations it seems to have reached a stage where major changes have now ceased. My question is, what happens now? MortimerCat 18:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

To get to the next stage, nominate it at WP:GA.
The difference between "start" and "B" classes, and between "GA" and "A" classes is somewhat arbitrary -- an editor decides it based on comprehensiveness, referencing, prose quality, and so on.
The difference between "stub" and "start" class is also determined by editors, but generally, stubs are those with fewer than three decent sized paragraphs. To get to "GA" quality they need to go through WP:GA, and to get to "FA" quality they need to go through WP:FA. Joe D (t) 18:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Incidently, if you submit it for the GA or FA processes, you may wish to announce it here. Joe D (t) 18:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


Advice wanted about Deva Victrix and large amounts of unsourced and unreferenced material

A user without a userpage: User:Chestertouristcom, but with a talk page: User talk:Chestertouristcom, and who seems to have a very strong link with an external site: Chester Tourist External Site has added a lot, probably the bulk, of the material to Deva Victrix, which was originally under a different name, and before that, was a part of another article. It is almost entirely unsourced and unreferenced. I tagged the article as being in need of references back in January 2007. Nothing was done, and the user continued to add a lot of unsourced and unreferenced material. I left a message on the user's talk page on 25th February 2007, asking for citations and references to be added, and this was followed up by an email to the user, but no response was received and new unreferenced material continued to be added up to the middle of March when it stopped.

The problem is, what to do? We are supposed to require entries to be adequately sourced and referenced, and yet hardly any of the material for Deva Victrix is. It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attempt to produce references for this material retrospectively when one isn't even the original author, especially so if one does not have a specialised knowledge of this topic. I have asked for assistance on the other wikiproject that has a template on the talk page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Archaeology but as yet received no response.

My feeling is that one could simply delete all the material, but I imagine this would cause some consternation in certain quarters (the removal of an external site whose inclusion had not been justified has already caused some negative comment about my action by another user) Could I ask for some comments on what to do here? Many thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

New or Updated Guidelines

Myself and a couple of other editors think the existing guidelines need to be updated with perhaps new ones written as well. So, could people suggest some topics for new guidelines? At the moment, I am drafting out a guideline for writing about UK cities, provisionally titled "How to write about UK Cities", but there could be others as well. Some ideas:

  • How to write about UK civil parishes.
  • How to write about UK Districts, and Boroughs.
  • How to write about UK counties.
  • How to write about UK rivers and canals.
  • How to write about UK long distance footpaths.

Some of the above suggestions would make use of information present in the almost defunct WikiProject concerned with UK divisions.

Any comments, additions, brickbats, etc?  DDStretch  (talk) 18:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

There are already guidelines for settlements and counties -- see the main WikiProject page. Joe D (t) 08:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, there are. But perhaps they need looking at again, that's all I would be suggesting for those. Jhamez84 recently took a look and did some revisions of the settlements guidelines, and perhaps the others need a makeover too. I think it is worthwhile to never view guidelines as being "perfect" in so far as they could do with being periodically reviewed. I'm not sure when the ones you mentioned were last reviewed.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:03, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, I just wasn't sure you noticed them, since you included them in what appeared to be a list of proposed guidelines. Joe D (t) 09:33, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
It's always a good idea to cover the basics: putting new articles in the correct categories (including stub cats where applicable) and using the correct infobox will save a lot of effort later on. I'd recommend using the term "waterways" for rivers and canals to avoid confusion over names (cf broad, navigation, creek, etc.) Waggers 09:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Good suggestion.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not convinced it makes sense to combine rivers and canals -- they are probably sufficiently different to require separate guidelines, and certainly separate infoboxes. Joe D (t) 09:43, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I just started a thread at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Waterways#Guidelines and should have looked here first. The more I think about it, the more complicated it gets. There are so many combinations of natural and artificial waterways, those used in part at least for navigation and/or for drainage. It would actually be difficult to define all the different scenarios, let alone create individual guidelines for them. My thinking is that there should be just one guideline for all, which gives guidance for how to write about the relevant aspects of any waterway. In particular it should help editors in their thinking about the topic, by highlighting the many aspects of a waterway, ie geography, drainage, navigation, milling, (and all the structures necessary for these functions) history, environment, recreation, impact it has on the surroundings etc. Guidance can also be given about when to move a section of an article to its own page, such as a long and complicated history of a navigation.--Derek Andrews 13:17, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Misc suggestions

I really ought to do some more important work than Wikipedia for a few weeks, but I just thought I'd raise a couple of ideas, and maybe somebody can implement them (or I can in a few weeks, if they're popular ideas):

  • We start some "committees" within the project for areas that don't have their own projects, or for closer cooperation and organisation in particular areas. I was thinking "roads", perhaps "physical geography" (or specific ones e.g. "rivers"), maybe an "administrative subdivisions" one as a replacement for the subdivisions wikiproject, and perhaps some regional ones to start with? These could then be used to deal with things like the infobox and guideline issues, but with cooperation to ensure standardisation.
  • As well as the existing systems of identifying high priority articles, and classing articles FA/A/GA/B/start/stub we could identify "embarrassing articles". These can be articles about very notable subjects -- major settlements or features -- which are embarrassingly short or embarrassingly badly written and covered in cleanup tags. One particular article gave me this idea: Blackpool, an important settlement, but whose article was very poorly structured, included lots of informal writing and unencyclopaedic information, and was almost entirely in list form (still is, though not quite as bad). Those articles are relatively easy to deal with: you don't need to know the area to be able to format the existing article to the manual of style. By outing them, we can cooperate to quickly get them all sorted.
  • Is it worth trying to ressurect the collaboration of the month thing? Even when I was around to update the listing, nobody but me seemed to edit the articles...

Any comments or suggestions? Joe D (t) 19:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Taking them in "reverse order", here are my thoughts on the suggestions/ideas: Unless more active members are around, I think it may be flogging a dead horse to get the "collaboration of the month" thing going again. A better strategy might be to engage in a recruitment drive to get more members to join who will be more active. However, it might be better still to take up your second proposal. This is because I think your suggestion of "embarrassing articles" is a good one, and would act as a spur to get some articles cleaned up and improved a little. In order to do this, a list of putative embarrassments needs to be drawn up. I think your first idea is a very good one: "committees" or perhaps "task groups" would be a good way to initiate work, which, if they became very active, might be considered for splitting off, if required or desirable, onto their own project page. In this respect, Wikipedia:WikiProject reform makes some interesting suggestions, somewhat similar to ones I have made myself, independently, in the past, though in my suggestions, this project would be much more active and proactive than the tier 0 project mentioned in the reform article, though wouldn't be seemingly as restrictive to the county projects as it would be if it were a tier 1 project and the reform proposals were enacted upon as they are now.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

UK Footpaths and Route Maps

It occurs to me that there is a common need, currently being worked on, for route maps for railways and waterways in the UK. But, there is also a corresponding need for such route maps for (long distance) footpaths in the UK as well. There could equally be said to be one for UK roads as well. It seems to me that the UK geography project would be best placed to coordinate such information-sharing between the different teams working on the rail and waterways route maps so that route-mapping facilities for footpaths and (if needed) roads could be quickly adapted from their own work if agreed upon. It seems to me that certain features of all the route maps will be common amongst all of them, but simple cutomizations would help make one implementation apply to another (e.g., colouring the routes, dealing with start and end-points, branches etc), and the means of indicating various features, if not the appearence of them, might also be common amongst all of them. Finally, there will be some unique kinds of features applicable to only, say waterways, and not to any of the others. What would people think about this? In particular, what do people perhaps working on route-maps at the moment think? I consider getting the facilities in place to produce good quality route-maps for footpaths and roads might act to encourage people to take a special interest in editing them, perhaps as task-groups of this project.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

For background:
I think the idea of widening this out for other uses is a good one; but it's not UK -specific. that said, you should use the above pages to speak to the people working on it, currently. Andy Mabbett 21:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

War memorial site "more than a name"

Some discussion about whether a war memorial site should be added to every town's article, in a specific area (in this case Stockport). A discussion is at Talk:Heaton Moor, appreciate any feedback, ideally on that discussion page rather than here. --Oscarthecat 06:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox development: districts, boroughs and unitaries

City of Peterborough
Geography
Status: Unitary, City (1541)[1]
Region: East of England
Ceremonial County: Cambridgeshire
Historic County: Northamptonshire
Area:
- Total		 Ranked 140th
343.38 km²
Admin. HQ: Peterborough
ONS code: 00JA
Demographics
Population:
- Total (2022)
- Density		 Ranked

/ km²
Ethnicity: 89.7% White
7.0% South Asian
1.2% Afro-Caribbean
0.3% Chinese
0.3% other
1.5% mixed[2]

Peterborough City Council
Leadership: Leader & Cabinet
Executive:  
MPs: Stewart Jackson, Shailesh Vara, Malcolm Moss

OK, time we got started on this issue. On the right is the current infobox setup for a unitary authority. The first hurdle to cross is how many infoboxes we should have:

  • One: handle districts, boroughs and unitaries together, merely switching the "type"
  • One for each type of division
  • Two/six: distinguish between those that cover a single settlement, and will therefore share many of the charactoristics of {{Infobox UK place}}, and those that have no principal settlement, and will therefore be more like the counties
  • Different ones for England, Scotland, Wales and NI?

One we've got that sorted, I imagine we can split off discussion to the new template(s) or a single coordination page if there are multiple templates. Joe D (t) 13:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

We should go for one template with switches. We have been able to do it at Infobox UK place and for what is likely to be a simpler box, then there is no reasonn it couldn't be done here. Regan123 13:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I think different infoboxes would be overkill: the one infobox with switches for this group of things seems the wayt to go speaking for myself.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The infobox that is currently in use for a number of places within the unitary authority of Thurrock (eg Orsett) appears to produce a map of Essex, with no obvious (to me at least) indication of where the place is. I'm not sure that this is very helpful. Is there some way of tweaking the box so the result is more obvious - a red dot for example. Rjm at sleepers 08:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (highways)

There's currently a proposal and draft in place for a notability standard for highways. At present, since the proposal came out of WP:USRD, it deals exclusively with roads in the United States. Anyone interested in helping give the guideline a wider scope would be most welcome. Also help communicating with people from other WikiProjects that might be interested would also be welcome. -- NORTH talk 01:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest something like:
  • Motorways, trunk roads and primary routes are inherently notable and deserve their own articles.
  • Other A-roads are notable enough to be mentioned in the encyclopaedia, but could be merged into an article dealing with several e.g. "A-roads in X", or "Transport in X" (see Transport in Dorset, for example, which A351 road, A352 road, A353 road, A3030 road, etc redirect to). Of course, many A roads aren't easy to pin down to a specific geographical division, so that's not appropriate for all of them, and anyway, many non-primary route A roads will be notable enough for their own article anyway.
  • B-roads and unclassified roads are not inherently notable, but should be assesed on a case-by-case basis, as I expect some will be deserving of an article. Some may be worth mentioning in "Roads in X" or "Transport in X" articles, and merging could be the solution for those whose notability is questioned.
Joe D (t) 13:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


Cities, boroughs and districts

There was a lengthy discussion about article naming conventions for cities, boroughs and districts within Wikipedia:WikiProject UK subdivisions#Controversial or confusing cases and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK subdivisions#City of Foo / Foo (district) again. The discussion seemed to peter out without any conclusion and now that sub-project has been closed. Has the discusssion continued elsewhere, or is this page the right place to continue it? I'll wait for a reply before I make my contribution to it... --Dr Greg 12:03, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally I think that this project needs to look at how cities are defined in the UK as it appears that, at present, different definitions are used on all the different pages!

Per the State of the English Cities report from the Department for Communities and Local Government, who are the Government department responsible for city-related policy, a city is defined as a Primary Urban Area (note, not the same as an urban area) (Volume One, 2.3.5):

"The point of departure for our definition was the official set of Urban Areas definitions based on 2001 built-up areas. Hence we identify major cities in terms of their physical extent and not in terms of local authority areas or administrative boundaries."

They also provide population figures for these cities in the State of the Cities Database. Similar population figures are available from sister projects run in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Per the department:

"it reflects the “common sense” understanding of anyone who looks at, for example, Manchester and Salford in the real world – or indeed an ordinary map – and sees just one city rather than two."

As far as I'm concerned it makes sense to use these population figures to define cities in the UK, whilst retaining information about places such as Salford which have been granted city status. This would then more accurately reflect our cities, in line with how Government departments define them, whilst still retaining information about boroughs which have been granted city status. EarlyBird 16:09, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Photo's

Have recently uploaded photo's to my commons[[1]] page some of which may be useful... Merlin-UK 14:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Should we include current political information?

Following the recent local elections, I have come up with a small dilemma. Some Town articles include the current state of power. eg The council has a Labour majority. I am in two minds about whether this sort of information should be included.

I think its should be included but the information is Recentism, likely to go out of date, and would not normally appear in an encyclopedia. Any comments? MortimerCat 11:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

help with copyediting Mendip Hills

Is it OK to ask here for a favour from wikipedians with expertise in UK geography and/or copyediting? Mendip Hills is an FA candidate (again) at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mendip Hills. Comments generally have been helpful and supportive & it has quite a number of "support" comments, however one reviewer has said "Needs fresh eyes to copy-edit the whole text". I have now read every sentence so many times I'm having problems spotting the sorts of rephrasing which has been suggested. Any help (or other comments on the FAC) would be appreciated. — Rod talk 15:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - has now achieved FA status.— Rod talk 12:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

.... Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Hertfordshire and User:Simply south/WPHerts.

Well, i have decided to try at this if anyone is interested. Also, does anyone know where to get a coat of arms of Hertfordshire image that is not fair use? Simply south 17:55, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Category Naming

There is a discussion beginning on category naming at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Greater Manchester#Metropolitan Borough of Oldham categories which could have implications across a wider area. Regan123 10:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

This issue has now been taken to WP:CfD (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 9). Please feel free to contribute your opinions on the issue (perhaps including whether a uniform change should be made across the UK???) Pit-yacker 16:25, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Blyth, Northumberland

I've expanded the article Blyth, Northumberland quite a lot, but the talk page template still has it classed as a stub. If someone could take a look at the article and re-rate it, that would be great. Also, Blyth, Northumberland is up for peer review, so if anyone has the time to leave any comments or suggestions there, that would also be highly appreciated. Cheers. Dbam Talk/Contributions 12:34, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Chew Stoke FAC

I've put Chew Stoke up as a Featured Article candidate. Any help of comments on the candidate page would be helpful.— Rod talk 11:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Birchington-on-Sea FAC

Birchington-on-Sea is a current Featured Article candidate, if anyone would like to offer their support. Epbr123 11:48, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

County Portals

Having looked at Portal:United Kingdom and Portal:England and specifically the subportals on the right hand side, I have today created portals for Somerset and Bristol would anyone care to comment on or improve these & does anyone have any comments about the perceived usefulness of portals for counties and areas in the UK as many do not appear to have them? Should there be a degree of standardisation? If so what should & shouldn't be included?— Rod talk 20:54, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month decade

How long has Rutland been the collaboration of the month for? As long as I've been editting I'm sure! Perhaps this is an indicator that the project ought to promote itself a little to generate some fresh interest, participants and ideas? Jza84 01:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Good article, dodgy category

I note that on the project page Flannan Isles is listed as a GA in the 'settlement' list. The publicity is appreciated, but is a minor inaccuracy as the light is now automated. There are a few other GA islands - but I don't think the list is intended to be exhaustive or I'd boldly add them. Ben MacDui (Talk) 20:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

North Sea

Would this project consider that article to be within its scope? __meco 21:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

This article is a current candidate for the Article Creation and Improvement Drive.SriMesh | talk 01:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Burgess Hill

On the talk page for Burgess Hill, it is still listed as a stub, which it (I am very pleased to say) is no longer the case. I was wondering if this could be reviewed? The article is now quite substantial, and now also contains several images, after a great deal of work by other Wikipedians and myself.

Thanks,

80.229.16.243 21:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

North Sea collaboration

North Sea is the current Article Creation and Improvement Drive collaboration. WikiProject UK geography members may find that a relevant focus. I have refrained from rating the article pending the result of the collaboration. Perhaps a regular member of this project could find a place for the collaboration banner on the project page itself? __meco 22:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Potential Review Process and issues arising from it

After bringing a merge proposal between List of largest urban sub-divisions in England by population and List of English districts by population as detailed in Talk:List of English districts by population (for which the consensus at the time of writing appears to be Oppose), User:Captain scarlet is now threatening to take List of largest urban sub-divisions in England by population to a Peer Review process. The grounds given for this are that:

The article is neither properly sourced nor properly edited or maintained since it does not allow:

  • other editors to modify it
  • its strutcure is rigid and does not allow any editing
  • it represents a unilateral point of view
  • it allows being referenced by one source alone.
  • this article is inaccurate and does not represent a neutral ground

This has serious repercussions across all articles and information based upon data prepared by the Office for National Statistics (and presumably the relevant bodies for Scotland and Northern Ireland), including any UK Census information, or estimates based upon Censuses.

Articles including most obviously List of English districts by population, List of ceremonial counties of England by population, List of English districts by population density, List of English districts by ethnic diversity, List of English counties by population, List of non-metropolitan counties of England by population, List of English counties by area, List of conurbations in the United Kingdom and so on would potentially suddenly become completely untenable.

As all data of this type ultimately comes from the ONS, should ONS data be considered suspect by the editing community at large, then many articles would fall under the criteria given and would be potentially considered invalid. In addition to the obvious list articles, all articles containing data ultimately sourced from the ONS (such as all local authority articles, and settlement articles where relevant) would need that data removing. This will include all aspects of the ONS's work and will not only impact upon population data, but also upon economic data and demographics to name but two.

This is a very concerning development as I'm sure people will agree. Fingerpuppet 00:44, 28 July 2007 (UTC)


The third bulleted point in itself renders Captain Scarlet's position self-defeating, since his viewpoint is itself a unilateral one. Additionally, he is effectively proposing something that could be viewed as being severely disruptive to wikipedia in order to prove a point, and to express his dissatisfaction with how the official figures treat Sheffield. It should be resisted as strongly as possible. I am absent for about two weeks from today, but if this matter does get proposed, it would be something I would oppose strongly if I had editing access during my holiday (which i won't). The points I've given here merely express my own viewpoint in advance of any proposal put forward by Captain Scarlet, and if there is some way of noting them if this happens, please do so.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:52, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Interpreting the MOS and the {{convert}} template

The MOS suggests that numbers under 10 ought to be expressed as words. With that in mind I made a small change to the {{convert}} template, adding an option to do exactly that. So, for instance, {{convert|4|mi|km|1|mos=on}} produces User:Malleus Fatuarum/Sandbox. This modification has met with some resistance, on the grounds that "four miles (6.4 km)" is a list, and so should be either all numbers or all words. Naturally I don't agree with that interpretation. As the {{convert}} template is widely used in geography articles I'm wondering whether there's any kind of wider consensus on the matter? --Malleus Fatuarum 14:25, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with what you have done, I myself have thought about the issue with MOS and Template:Convert. I do prefer small numbers to be spelled out as I was always taught that it was good grammar to do so. Rossenglish 15:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Local government wards

Has a consensus been reached anywhere on whether wards at local government are notable or not? I have spotted a few cropping up here and there and think they should be deleted. My own opinion is they are not notable and it diverts energies away from expand stubs of the settlements they belong to. Before I head off and propose them all for deletion, has an opinion been decided on this elsewhere? I can't see anything in the notability guidelines. Ki | jog 14:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

You might like to see what I have done under Politics of the Highland council area. The article links to lists of wards, as defined for a series of periods, eg Highland Council wards created in 2007, rather than to articles about individual wards. Laurel Bush 15:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC).

Sub-categories of counties

There seems to be a standard structure for sub-categories of a county (although I haven't seen any guidelines for this). Recently User:DShamen has been creating a large number of subcategories of Category:Lancashire and Category:Greater Manchester. These include:

and so on, 14 subcategories of Category:Blackburn in all, most of them populated by only a handful of articles. And then a similar structure in all the other town and district subcategories of Lancashire. Today he has even created Category:People from Broughton, Lancashire. Broughton, Lancashire is village for goodness sake.

I have previously aired my concern at User talk:DShamen#Subcategories of districts (where I give further reasons for my concern). Before I take this any further, I'd like to hear views of other editors. Some of the subcategories may be justified, but I think a lot of them are not. --Dr Greg 17:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Consensus (as in silence is consensus) has it that these are the best sub cats and that everyone gets standardised. As to the People from categories I have argued many times to keep them for accuracy, simplicity etc. Regan123 18:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong, these categories make a lot of sense at county level, but how far down do you take them? At town level (or even worse village level) these categories may be too small to be worthwhile (e.g. there is only one canal in Blackburn) and the reader has to navigate their way through a whole hierarchy of categories to find what they are looking for. (By the way, Blackburn was perhaps a bad example as it is a unitary authority. But I could have chosen Category:Chorley, Category:Lancaster, Category:Preston etc.) Are there any guidelines or established precedents for this? --Dr Greg 11:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
It depends entirely on how many items are in the sub-category - allowing for time for the category to be populated. Having a huge number of items in a county category where there are borough, town or city based categories that could be used to sensibly sub-divide, and as long as those categories are themselves sensibly categorised, then it's fine. There are always examples where small categories are sensible, though. I wouldn't have any problem with the Blackburn categories mentioned above, as long as they were all subcats within the hierarchy of both Category:Lancashire and Category:Blackburn. I would suggest that anything smaller than a borough or large town should be carefully considered as to the number of potential articles that could be placed within that category. Fingerpuppet 11:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Generally it has always been at Local Government level where there is enough (eg. Manchester) or county where there isn't (eg. Staffordshire). The only exception has been the People from... Regan123 14:06, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Peer Review of Manchester

I have submitted Manchester for a peer review with the hope of eventually making it an FAC. I would very much appreciate if editors could leave some comments on the review as there is a backlog on there are more people are needed! Thank you all for your time. └and-rew┘┌talk┐ 09:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Settlements absorbed by urban expansion

I have begun to come across naming issues arising because of urban expansion absorbing a previously distinct settlement. For example Littleton was a parish adjacent to Bigboro. Until the 20th century it was a distinct settlement, but housing estates and commercial development now make it difficult to see where the boundary between Bigboro and Littleton is. In the late 20th century, both Littleton and Bigboro became part of the unitary authority of Megacity. However, the name Megacity is somewhat unpopular and residents sometimes refer to the whole area as Bigboro. The electoral wards have been redefined to match population changes and the Anglican parish structure has been modernised. In the 1990s, the local technical college became Bigboro University and built a new campus in what used to be Littleton. Do we say that the university is in Littleton or Bigboro? (Names have of course been changed to protect the innocent.) Rjm at sleepers 09:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

In which article? Is it the university article, or one of the geographical ones? I would also look to see if the ONS declare Littleton to be an Urban Subdivision - if so, then it can be still said to be a separate settlement; or whether it is in the list of Towns in whichever consitituent country it's in. Which I would use would depend entirely upon the context. Fingerpuppet 11:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Vote on Windermere

A vote is currently in progress to move Windermere (lake) to Windermere. I thought some Wikipedians here might be interested in participating. Reginmund 06:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Blyth, Northumberland FAC

I have nominated Blyth, Northumberland for FA (candidate page). If anyone would like to comment or offer their support it would be very much appreciated, thanks. Dbam Talk/Contributions 06:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Names of categories for local government districts

There seems to be a convention for a local government district to have a category that does not include the words "district", "borough" of "city" in its name. For example there are articles about the town of Chorley and the district "Chorley (borough)", but the category for the borough is simply called Category:Chorley. Am I right to think this is standard practice across the country, or does convention vary?

My reason for raising this is that I intend to create a category to cover Fylde (borough) and another to cover the larger geographical area called the Fylde (which is about twice the size of the borough). If I were to call the borough category "Category:Fylde", then I'd have a problem finding a good name for the whole of the Fylde. It would just be too confusing to have two categories called "Fylde" and "The Fylde". Any thoughts? --Dr Greg 17:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not The Fylde (Area), but I honestly can't see there being much confusion. After all the articles exist with the names being very similar. Regan123 20:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Generally, yes, that's the convention. There was a "frank and open" discussion a while ago about renaming one of the Greater Manchester borough categories (Wigan, IIRC) from Category:Wigan to Category:Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, but there was no change consensus reached.
How would you see the categories progressing? In other words, would there be many articles that would be categorised in both categories? If there are two created, then I would suggest that they reference each other in the lead section. Fingerpuppet 21:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Response to Regan123: The point I was trying to make is that the article names are significantly different ("Fylde (borough)" and "The Fylde") whereas the proposed category names "Fylde" and "The Fylde" are too similar. I should have mentioned that there is also a disambiguation page (for the articles) named "Fylde".

Response to Fingerpuppet: The borough category would be a subcategory of the area category. For those not familiar with the geography, "the Fylde" is a coastal plain that contains within it the whole of Blackpool and Fylde (borough), the western half of Wyre borough and, arguably, a small part of Preston district. So the only articles that would be included directly in the area category (rather than subcategories for Fylde Borough and Category:Blackpool) would be those places in the west half of Wyre Borough and a couple of places in Preston District. I would certainly add cross-linking headers. --Dr Greg 17:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

(I have been offline for the last 2 weeks, so unable to continue this discussion.) After further thought, I think the best way forward is simply to use the same names as the articles, viz. [[Category:Fylde (borough)]] and [[Category:The Fylde]]. This would break the usual convention for not using the word "borough" in borough categories, but in this case I feel it's necessary to avoid confusion. Before I proceed I'd like to get some agreement that this is appropriate, because it's a lot harder work to rename a category than rename an article. --Dr Greg 17:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Naming of articles about city suburbs

Can someone explain why the articles about the Southampton city suburbs have the suffix Hampshire rather than Southampton? e.g. Shirley, Hampshire rather than Shirley, Southampton (which is now a re-direct). As a Shirley resident, I don't consider that I live in Hampshire but rather in the City of Southampton, and I'm proud of it. On looking at the edit history, most of the articles were re-named in November 2006, with the edit summary "correct form of disambiguation". Where is this policy set out? Can you imagine renaming say, Edge Hill, Liverpool to Edge Hill, Lancashire simply because it falls within the boundaries of the old county of Lancashire? Daemonic Kangaroo 07:47, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Since posting this, I have spotted that this was discussed earlier here although there was no firm conclusion. Daemonic Kangaroo 07:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
It does seem more sensible to me to use the name of the town or city of which the place is a suburb, as this would almost certainly correspond more to local usage, and not cause too many problems.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree with User:Warofdreams' statement in the old discussion that the advantage of using the county in the name is that it has no subjective element (e.g. is x a suburb of y? Or is it a separate settlement?). However, if Shirley is clearly a suburb and not merely a neighbouring village, I would support its move back to Shirley, Southampton. Epbr123 09:38, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
The map in the article about the Southampton Urban Area shows the position clearly. Those places marked with "O" are within the boundary of the city of Southampton and, in my opinion, should be known as "XXX, Southampton", whereas somewhere like West End, whilst adjoining the city, is outside the boundary and is therefore correctly titled as West End, Hampshire, even though its postal address is West End, Southampton. To me it's rather ludicrous that Northam, which is adjacent to the city centre, should be known as Northam, Hampshire. I see nothing subjective in this at all; either it's part of the city or it's not. Daemonic Kangaroo 11:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Comment - it wouldn't be Edge Hill, Lancashire though - it would be Edge Hill, Merseyside. DWaterson 17:16, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I guess the problem is that there will be places which are clearly part of a town or city, and those which are clearly not part of a town or city. These won't cause much problem. In between these limits, there is a grey region of places which is unclear. The easy solution would be to say all of them should be X, Z-shire. However, a bit more work in searching out what official maps show us, and what local verifiable and citable sources tell us can reduce this grey region. If we are lucky (and I guess that usually we won't be), this grey region will be eliminated, but usually we will be left with a grey rump region (GRR). It is this GRR that contain the really difficult cases. An overriding problem is a veneer of people, who, for various reasons, deny what official sources say, and push a POV that should not be weighed very heavily. The easy solution does away with all the difficulties, but introduces a lack of precision, as its solution works at the level of attending to editor convenience, or need to reduce argument to sort out verifiable sources, etc. I'm not at all sure that this would be a good solution, because it does sacrifice precision for convenience too easily. No doubt, if the amount of work required to get verifiable evidence about grey regions and GRR becomes prohibitive, then some decision could be just imposed. But with a bit of work (work which all good editors should realize is required at times) a better idea of what to call a place could be found than X Z-shire, and the number of cases where a policy decision is used could thus be diminished. All in my opinion, of course.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Pretty much this exact discussion is also happening on WikiProject West Midlands regarding suburbs of Birmingham - the gist being that there are problems with the X, Y-shire format where there are two suburbs with like-names within one county, see Springfield, Birmingham and Springfield, Wolverhampton along with Willenhall, Coventry and Willenhall. Fingerpuppet 18:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Not suburbs, but even more of a problem: in Cheshire, when (if) the new local government arrangements come into being, there will be two villages and civil parishes named Burton within the same unitary authority, neither of which could really be said to be a suburb of anything (see Burton, Ellesmere Port and Neston, and Burton, Chester.)  DDStretch  (talk) 18:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Highworth article needs watching for long term vandalism

Highworth has been vandalised with nonsense for over a year. Every time it gets removed, single-purpose account editors re-add more nonsense. Can people here put this article on their watchlist as no one else seems to be watching this? I'm not on Wikipedia often, so I only notice the vandalism occasionally. 172.141.136.88 17:28, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

  1. ^ Confirmed by Letters Patent issued under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 25 June 1974, see the London Gazette (Issue 46334) published 28 June 1974
  2. ^ 2001 Census Area Statistics Office for National Statistics, April 2001
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