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: I made the Reading 'split' to avoid confusing the readers. Some articles about a town are also about an administrative region with the same name. In other cases there are separate articles. This discrepancy is compounded by the two types of infobox. There are some esoteric arguments here in support of this, but most readers are not going to aware them. [[User:Alan Pascoe|Alan Pascoe]] 21:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC) |
: I made the Reading 'split' to avoid confusing the readers. Some articles about a town are also about an administrative region with the same name. In other cases there are separate articles. This discrepancy is compounded by the two types of infobox. There are some esoteric arguments here in support of this, but most readers are not going to aware them. [[User:Alan Pascoe|Alan Pascoe]] 21:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC) |
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:: how precisely does having an article about a borough which is supposedly smaller than the town it is within, saying "it is named after its main town, Reading" avoid confusing readers? Further, please address my question of the ''scope'' of [[Reading (district)]] - should it address Reading as a local government district since forever; since it adopted its current boundaries in 1919; since it became a non-metropolitan district in 1974; since it became a unitary authority in 1998? This is a severe structural difficulty which makes this split nonsensical, the fact that its something that most readers will be unaware of the precise reasons for the oddity is irrelevant. I would suggest the need for a a historical perspective here, and with a historical perspective we don't split this, and we don't make links to [[Wokingham (district)]] from 19th century articles. [[User:Morwen|Morwen]] - [[User_talk:Morwen|Talk]] 07:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC) |
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: I'll just add for now that one of the major issues with Middlesbrough is that of identity and it become very easily tied up with names or terms such as [[Teesside]], [[Cleveland, England|Cleveland]], [[Tees Valley]] etc all of which Boro was/is the considered centre of and the continual urban area does very much merge into what is now officially the boroughs of [[Stockton-on-Tees (borough)|Stockton]] and [[Redcar and Cleveland]]. Hence my main view is that we should still stick to an article about the official UA borough in its present form and then another about the town itself which for some is considered to cover a wider area. It really is a very touchy subject for a signigificant number of people living in the area and so Wiki should try and give the local government definiation lines but at the same time recognising the difference with town articles. As the Middlesbrough town article states it is different to other surrounding UA boroughs, which do indeed include settlements along with the major one giving the name, in that there still a few places which don't consider themselves 100% Middlesbrough (the town) but no where near as many. Ultimately it comes down to the issue of what or where local people consider themselves to be part of verses what government borders say and it is not for Wiki to be able to represent all these views and IMHO we should always concentrate on the government borders but at the same time represent that there is a difference, hence the need for seperate town articles. --[[User:Achmelvic|Achmelvic]] 23:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC) |
: I'll just add for now that one of the major issues with Middlesbrough is that of identity and it become very easily tied up with names or terms such as [[Teesside]], [[Cleveland, England|Cleveland]], [[Tees Valley]] etc all of which Boro was/is the considered centre of and the continual urban area does very much merge into what is now officially the boroughs of [[Stockton-on-Tees (borough)|Stockton]] and [[Redcar and Cleveland]]. Hence my main view is that we should still stick to an article about the official UA borough in its present form and then another about the town itself which for some is considered to cover a wider area. It really is a very touchy subject for a signigificant number of people living in the area and so Wiki should try and give the local government definiation lines but at the same time recognising the difference with town articles. As the Middlesbrough town article states it is different to other surrounding UA boroughs, which do indeed include settlements along with the major one giving the name, in that there still a few places which don't consider themselves 100% Middlesbrough (the town) but no where near as many. Ultimately it comes down to the issue of what or where local people consider themselves to be part of verses what government borders say and it is not for Wiki to be able to represent all these views and IMHO we should always concentrate on the government borders but at the same time represent that there is a difference, hence the need for seperate town articles. --[[User:Achmelvic|Achmelvic]] 23:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC) |
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:: can you provide verifiabile sources for ''what or where local people consider themselves to be''? [[User:Morwen|Morwen]] - [[User_talk:Morwen|Talk]] 07: |
:: can you provide verifiabile sources for ''what or where local people consider themselves to be''? also, why is noone addressing the issue that these aren't new boundaries for the boroughs, but generally very old ones (hence the problem). I made a big list of [[Wikipedia:List of English districts to disambiguate]] back in the day, and we've split a few after that; but at the time there was a feeling that this action would be opening a wormcan. It is. If there is a 'pro-split' camp here, can they review all the districts on the list and propose whether they would split the articles about them - [[special pleading]] for your local area to be treated differently is not going to help define a consistent convention. [[User:Morwen|Morwen]] - [[User_talk:Morwen|Talk]] 07:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC) |
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== Project directory == |
== Project directory == |
Revision as of 07:57, 26 October 2006
Proposal for collaboration?
As of May 2005 there are only three UK subdivision articles that are featured:
There are a lot of county articles that are stubs with an infobox and a list of settlements (just look at what we had for Wiltshire this morning!), which doesn't seem right to me. If I set up a collaboration of the month for this WikiProject and pick a county each month, would people help try and turn them into the great articles they should be? I'm willing to do quite a bit of work on them and have some experience having done Dorset up to featured, but hopefully we can get more involved. Joe D (t) 17:07, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
- As long as you make sure it doesn't turn into a bun fight between traditional counties and administrative counties, then I'm certainly willing to help! :) Owain 17:26, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
- Well, I suggest we go for the articles whose page name is the common name of each county, that way if the county is administrative and ceremonial and traditional we'd have to mention everything.
- As long as you make sure it doesn't turn into a bun fight between traditional counties and administrative counties, then I'm certainly willing to help! :) Owain 17:26, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
We already have a policy about traditional/administrative counties etc Here. G-Man 20:36, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
- I've produced a list of English counties roughly ordered by quality of their Wikipedia entry to help get an idea of what needs to be done. Joe D (t) 17:44, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
OK, I've started a new Wikiproject at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography for all this. Joe D (t) 11:21, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
UK-geo-stub split
Currently, there are separate geography stub categories for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A separate category for England has been mooted in the past, but it would contain some 3800 stub articles, considerably more than is regarded as optimum according to Wikipedia: WikiProject Stub sorting guidelines (which roughly state that stub categories should have between 100 and 600 items to be of best use to editors).
In order to remedy this situation, all 3860 current unsubcategorised UK geography stubs have just been tallied to see whereabouts they refer to. Discussions are now underway with regard to splitting off regions or individual counties that have over 100 stub articles.
Understandably, given the confusion between traditional counties, ceremonial counties, and the split of city areas over the last few decades, this is a thorny issue. We at WP:WSS would welcome any input that this WikiProject's members may have, at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#Further_split_of_UK-geo-stub. Grutness...wha? 03:19, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Lists of former districts
Any editors who were involved in this project may be interested in recently created list of rural and urban districts in England, list of rural and urban districts in Wales and list of hundreds of England and Wales. Warofdreams talk 14:36, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation
Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Talk page message
Would it be possible to create a box which is placed on the talk page like AirportProject box and for a set layout to be decided? Flymeoutofhere 14:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
English counties on French Wikipedia
The French Wikipedia has an article, English metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, which lists as counties:
- metropolitan counties (including Greater London)
- administrative (shire) counties, and
- unitary authorities
giving a total of 82 English counties. If, like me, you find this approach confusing, can you point me to a better description of England's administrative geography on the English Wikipedia that I could translate and offer as an alternative to our francophone colleagues? I've tried to find what I'm looking for on the English Wikipedia, without success. Kahuzi 14:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
- It is confusing, but that is the administrative geography. The legislation is in such a mess that most unitary authorities are classed as "counties", except those in the metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan Berkshire. Owain (talk) 14:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
City of Foo / Foo (district) again
Not getting into the issue of whether these articles should be split at all, but someone moved City of Winchester to Winchester district without changing anything else. Shall we just give up on this and have Winchester (district) and Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield? What about the existing (borough) disambiguator? Get rid of that too and have Charnwood (district) ? Morwen - Talk 13:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm the person who moved the City of Winchester article. In that particular case, I think that City of Winchester is an inappropriate title because only very rarely is "City of Winchester" used to mean the local government district (an area including other towns and hundreds of square miles of rolling farmland, as well as the "city" itself). To give some independent backing for this, googling Winchester City Council's website (i.e. the council that administers the "City of Winchester" district), shows:
- In other words, actual usage is overwhelmingly in favour of "Winchester district" rather than "City of Winchester". The key general principle of Wikipedia:Naming conventions is that a name should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity. The City of Winchester title fails that test completely - it's both unrecognisable, even by locals and experts, and ambiguous.
- I think a naming convention saying that government districts should have their official names would be analogous to a convention that articles about people should have the names given on their birth certificates. It works for the majority of cases, but in some cases falls down because actual usage does not correspond with the "official" name.
- While I think the name of the City of Winchester article should move for these reasons, I don't necessarily think that there can be one single naming convention that can cover all cases - what should have priority is actual usage, not official names. In some cases I would expect common usage and the official name to mean pretty much the same thing, such as perhaps City of Westminster, whereas other cases may be more like Winchester.
- I therefore suggest that the naming convention is applied more flexibly, to correspond more closely with Wikipedia's general principles for article naming. Enchanter 00:41, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
- You aren't really addressing the general questions here: still special pleading for Winchester. Can you address the general questions? I am here proposing as the logical conclusion of what you saying :
- City of Foo -> Foo (district) or Metropolitan Borough of Foo, except for City of Westminster, which will remain there rather than at London Borough of Westminster. this will mean Carlisle (district), Canterbury (district), Metropolitan Borough of Bradford, Metropolitan Borough of Salford, etc
- Foo (borough) -> Foo (district) - if if we aren't indicating city status why are we indicating borough status (and anyway, the City of Winchester is a Borough as well)
- Do you think that would be a good idea in general? Flexibly-applied naming conventions with people changing things around however the hell they like, would lead to a nightmare : : there has to be some consistency, otherwise we get Borough of Wellingborough, Stroud district, City of Bradford Metropolitan District all in the same namespace. Morwen - Talk 06:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
- To make it clear: what I am suggesting is that the name should follow actual usage. The name of a place in Wikipedia should correspond with what people actually call it. That's based on the fundamentals of Wikipedia's naming conventions, which go for every article - I don't think there's anything at all special about Winchester.
- Naming conventions are useful, because they make things more consistent for readers and aid in finding information. But that only goes so far - if it turns out that a naming convention is leading to a name which is ambiguous, misleading, and not the name that people actually use, then it's time to either depart from the conventions (which have never been rules set in stone), or change the naming convention.
- I don't think applying naming conventions according to actual, rather than official usage, leads to a "nightmare" at all. It's the way the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia are already named, including the vast majority of place names, and it works well. It's why we have articles on Bill Clinton, William Shakespeare, and Billy Joel without the need for a new "naming convention for people called William", for example.
- In summary, I don't think it's worth having confusing, ambiguous and misleading article names in order to fit in with a naming convention which very few readers of the encylopedia will even be aware of, let alone care about. Enchanter 18:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm perfectly willing to discuss changing the naming conventions! In fact I even just proposed a change! You still haven't offered an opinion on my proposal. 09:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
- City of Westminster covers a much bigger area than Westminster, the two are hardly the same. Is Maida Vale or Paddington really part of Westminster? It is pointless trying to guage "common use" as it is clearly very subjective. As a reader of an encyclopedia I expect to find the official terms and nomenclature of the subject even if those terms are not those I anecdotally beleive to be correct. Mrsteviec 15:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
- Of course thats true. However, there would be no point giving a place a 'higher rank' such borough, royal borough or city if it didn't use it. I know Bradford are a crazy exemption but even they can't decide on their website if they are Bradford Metropolitan District Council or City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. Interestingly borough is not a word they ever seem to use. I'm still in favour of a "highest status" naming scheme. Mrsteviec 19:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
- You are right and I was mistaken, the City of Westminster covers a much larger area than what most people would call Westminster. Looking at it again, it was not a good example of where the common usage is the same of the official one. For example, there appear to be lots of links to City of Westminster that are really talking about Westminster proper rather than the current local government boundary. Enchanter 18:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Use of the England place infobox in Cornwall articles
There is a discussion taking place on Talk:Cornwall about the use of the England place infobox on Cornwall articles. Alan Pascoe 20:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Splits where place is smaller than urban area
So, the convention we established, when we did this originally, was not to split articles where the borough was smaller than the urban area : thus we have Leicester, Kingston upon Hull, etc. I've noticed people seem to be creating splits and should like to get others' opinions on this.
- Middlesbrough now asserts that it is larger than Middlesbrough (borough), which also asserts that it contains other places than Middlesbrough
- Reading (district) now asserts it is a district which is named after its main town, Reading
- Ipswich (borough), I spotted and re-merged in to Ipswich
In the cases of Reading and Ipswich the current boundaries are not new ; Reading's boundaries date from 1911. I can't speak for Middlesbrough: certainly at one point the article falsely claimed the original, pre-1968 borough extended larger than when I researched the matter, it turned out to. If we split articles about places enlarged in 1974; there's a clear split: one article is about the place, the other article is about the local government district. However, if we split articles about places which last saw a boundary extension in 1911; then it is unclear what information should be on the latter article - Reading (district) can't really be fleshed out with any information at all which isn't also relevant on the Reading, Berkshire page. So ultimately this seems to be a way for people to remove infoboxes from town articles, or up the population figures.
Someone has argued with my re-merge in Talk:Ipswich, and has cited the fact we have separate City of Bradford vs Bradford articles, as if that has anything to do with this particular case. Particularly troublesome is the use of ONS figures to identify what is considered the "town": as far as I can tell, the ONS make no use at all of local opinion surveys in deciding what is and isn't in their urban sub-areas; and these are not declared by the ONS to be definitive. Morwen - Talk 22:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
- I do not think the Reading split was a good idea. Not only because it is not necessary but because it was not done properly. Updating the opening line, infobox and categories but leaving the body text pretty much as-is and then creating a two-line article about the borough in effect turned one ok article into a badly written article and created a stub. This is similar to the problem we had with Manchester a while ago; the split was done badly but then edited by various people and we ended up with a mess for quite some time. Mrsteviec 06:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
- It will be especially interesting if anyone tries to do this with Kingston upon Hull: the residents in Hull's western exurbs - Haltemprice - fiercely resist being considered part of Hull - same with Birmingham's eastern exurbs such as Castle Bromwich, which are included in the Birmingham urban sub-area ONS total. Morwen - Talk 08:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
- I have taken the liberty of cross-posting the following contribution (by myself) here. It is principally about the Reading situation, but I think it has a wider relevance here. I think the real issue isn't so much about what articles we have, but more about a mismatch between our current policy (which on the whole I agree with) and the use of standard infoboxes which just don't match up with that policy. Here is what I had to say on Reading:-
- As a Reading resident, I know that in practice there are several different defintions of Reading in play, and you have only to read the letters column of the local papers to know that many people talk about Reading meaning a much bigger area than the borough. The fact that the self-same people oppose expansion of the borough for political and/or tax reasons is neither here nor there as far as WP is concerned. So what we have ended up with is a well defined, but for many purposes misleading, borough boundary, and some other very ill-defined but often more useful definitions.
- In principal, I think the best way to handle that is (as policy suggests) with a single article and plenty of text to explain the situation. What gets in the way of this solution is that ever-so-definative, but ever-so-misleading, info box that immediately draws attention to itself but brooks no definition other than the legalistic borough boundary. Perhaps the correct solution is to modify the info box to correspond to the article, or even drop the thing altogether (hint: I'm no fan of infoboxes). If that cannot be done, then I do think we need to consider segregating the infobox into an article that actually matches what is about, which means a seperate article for the borough. -- Chris j wood 14:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
- I made the Reading 'split' to avoid confusing the readers. Some articles about a town are also about an administrative region with the same name. In other cases there are separate articles. This discrepancy is compounded by the two types of infobox. There are some esoteric arguments here in support of this, but most readers are not going to aware them. Alan Pascoe 21:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
- how precisely does having an article about a borough which is supposedly smaller than the town it is within, saying "it is named after its main town, Reading" avoid confusing readers? Further, please address my question of the scope of Reading (district) - should it address Reading as a local government district since forever; since it adopted its current boundaries in 1919; since it became a non-metropolitan district in 1974; since it became a unitary authority in 1998? This is a severe structural difficulty which makes this split nonsensical, the fact that its something that most readers will be unaware of the precise reasons for the oddity is irrelevant. I would suggest the need for a a historical perspective here, and with a historical perspective we don't split this, and we don't make links to Wokingham (district) from 19th century articles. Morwen - Talk 07:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
- I'll just add for now that one of the major issues with Middlesbrough is that of identity and it become very easily tied up with names or terms such as Teesside, Cleveland, Tees Valley etc all of which Boro was/is the considered centre of and the continual urban area does very much merge into what is now officially the boroughs of Stockton and Redcar and Cleveland. Hence my main view is that we should still stick to an article about the official UA borough in its present form and then another about the town itself which for some is considered to cover a wider area. It really is a very touchy subject for a signigificant number of people living in the area and so Wiki should try and give the local government definiation lines but at the same time recognising the difference with town articles. As the Middlesbrough town article states it is different to other surrounding UA boroughs, which do indeed include settlements along with the major one giving the name, in that there still a few places which don't consider themselves 100% Middlesbrough (the town) but no where near as many. Ultimately it comes down to the issue of what or where local people consider themselves to be part of verses what government borders say and it is not for Wiki to be able to represent all these views and IMHO we should always concentrate on the government borders but at the same time represent that there is a difference, hence the need for seperate town articles. --Achmelvic 23:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
- can you provide verifiabile sources for what or where local people consider themselves to be? also, why is noone addressing the issue that these aren't new boundaries for the boroughs, but generally very old ones (hence the problem). I made a big list of Wikipedia:List of English districts to disambiguate back in the day, and we've split a few after that; but at the time there was a feeling that this action would be opening a wormcan. It is. If there is a 'pro-split' camp here, can they review all the districts on the list and propose whether they would split the articles about them - special pleading for your local area to be treated differently is not going to help define a consistent convention. Morwen - Talk 07:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 17:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)