''See also: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(disputed_place_names)
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I've tried to gather the relevant discussions from other places so that we can continue the debate in just one place. I'm aware that there have been other conversations about this topic and if anyone feels those should be included, obviously please just go ahead and copy them over.
I decided to leave the originals in place rather than ''move'' them here as they often have some relevance in those other Talk pages. Chris Jefferies 20:17, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
==Counties of England== (Discussion copied from Village Pump)
There seem to be at least two groups of people, those who think 'county' means the current, administrative entity, and those who think it means a traditional or historical entitiy.
In itself this isn't a problem, but Wikipedia needs to have a policy on which county a particular place is in. Maybe such a policy has already been debated and agreed; if so I'd be grateful if someone could point me to it. There's no discussion about the article Counties_of_England, though the article itself mentions that the different meanings exist.
It's a problem because someone has gone through the article on St_Neots and moved it from the current, administrative county of Cambridgeshire to the historical county of Huntingdonshire, which will confuse the reader. For now I've returned the article to its original form. And this is happening on a wide scale, articles on towns and villages are being modified wholesale.
Is there any guidance on this sort of thing, other than to kick off the talk page, debate the topic and see if we can come to a consensus view? Advice anyone? Chris Jefferies 10th December 2003
: Common sense ''should'' prevail. The St Neots article should say it is in Cambridgeshire, but was formerly in Huntingdonshire, because the article is about the village both in the past and the present. An article about Junipero_Serra should say he lived in Alta_Mexico not the US state of California. The Romans invaded Gaul, not France, but Tabo_M'Beki is the president of the Republic of South Africa, not of the Cape Colony. I can't for the life of me understand why this seems be be contentious in so many places (cf the enteral Danzig debate...). There can be few places that haven't been parts of many countries, or have had many names. -- Finlay McWalter 00:19, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:Ah, yes. I've been trying to keep out of that mess apart from protecting Warwickshire overnight in one of the early outbreaks of the edit wars. It appears to me that the ''traditionalists'', if I can name them that, are only one or two people, but they're very determined in their point of view! It'e even worse with the Welsh counties where the old names have mostly been reused to cover areas with little territorial commonality with the pre-1974 counties. My view is that '''all''' the county articles are currently untrustworthy, but for practical purposes the current administrative counties are the ones that an encyclopaedia ''ought'' to be concentrating on, with just a note on the former history such as e.g. "Stoke-on-Trent is now a unitary authority but was formerly in Staffordshire". In my view the only current relevance of the old traditional counties is to determine which cricket club covers the area! -- Arwel 00:27, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::Thanks Finlay, and Arwel, I appreciate your input. I'm afraid the person who altered St_Neots has changed it back again. I don't particularly want to have a 'change war' (how childish, what a waste of time) and I'm trying to discuss it on his/her Talk page. There's also been an exchange of views on the Godmanchester Talk page and I can't say I'm encouraged. Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003
::Clearly Finlay stated it perfectly. The current, on the ground, designations are the proper ones, but reference to historical standings are important contributions to the articles. I'm preparing a "Style" page for Proper names at Wikipedia:Proper_names and will use Finlay's sage advice there as well. - Marshman 01:09, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:::The encyclopedia should definitely concentrate on the current administrative divisions of the United Kingdom (and everywhere else) -- not to the exclusion of historical data, but certainly with much greater prominence. Granted, the UK has been IMO way too obsessed with messing with administrative boundaries in the last 30 years or so (it's crazy that somewhere like the United States has it all MUCH more settled) but we must document what is not push what we wish was. --Morven 01:15, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:::: Quite. I can't remember if Chigley is in Trumptonshire, or Trumpton is in the Chigley unitary authority :) -- Finlay McWalter 01:29, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::: ''"The current, on the ground, designations are the proper ones"''. Well, I wasn't being quite as sweeping as that, for the encyclopedia as a whole. I really mean that the context of the article determines the correct usage of placenames, languages, social groups, etc. ''This'' article should mention both counties, as its scope spans the period where each prevailed. If Alfred_the_Great had done something interesting there, it would be perfectly reasonable to mention it was in Mercia, or Wessex, or whatever. Equally, if an article were about a battle in the english civil war, the prevailing county at that time should be the dominant one in the article's text. -- Finlay McWalter 01:29, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::::Yes, I understood what you were saying. That first sentence was really intended for the discussion of the counties situation, and the point next made by Morven. - Marshman 01:59, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
OK guys, thanks for all your comments. I think there's a great deal of common sense in what you say, especially about the historical county ''relevant to the article'' being the correct one to use in each case.
So what are we going to do about User:80.255 who is throwing his weight around, agressively changing dozens of articles without consideration for either other editors or indeed (and more importantly) for the poor readers. He is damaging the Wikipedia and will also damage its reputation with readers if he's allowed to continue.
I don't mind having a dialogue with him, but if (as I suspect) he proves resistant to both reason and the majority view, what then? If that happens, maybe we should consider having his IP address blocked, though it would probably have only a temporary effect. Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003
:The "80.255 vs everyone else" battle has been going on for some time (the particular battleground for my tussle was Kent). 80.255 has a particular view point, and argues for it in a consistent and eloquent manner. This is rather different from childish vandalism and I wouldn't support banning him at this time (despite having gone through the same sense of frustration as you, Chris). It is time however to formulate a policy on the specific issue of county names. If this policy can be rolled into a more general policy of historic place names then so much the better. Once this policy is in place, if 80.255's sense of how Things Should Be is so strong that he flauts the policy (in addition to common sense and the majority view) over several articles and over a reasonable period of time, then we may have to say "sorry 80.255, but this just isn't the community project for you". Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:22, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::I believe we should have a wide and open debate with the aim of formulating the policy on current and historic place names mentioned by Pete above. And I think we should begin sooner rather than later to minimise the damage to Wikipedia.
::I know there are correct procedures for doing this, but I'm going to need help from someone wiser and more experienced in the world of Wikipedia. What's the first step? Where should the discussion take place? Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003
:::Seconded. I've been trying to reason with some people over Oder/Odra for a last few days, and some just don't seem to give up. A clear policy on names, their use in text generally as well as in historical contexts, is definitely needed. Zocky 20:54, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
==Counties of England== (Discussion copied from User_talk:Chrisjj)
Chris, just so you know, the counties issue is a real hot potato. 80.255 is a contibutor I've clashed with more than once: he's fought on this before and the current usage (as exemplified at Godmanchester) though awkward and desperately unclear to the average reader, is the furthest compromise he will allow. I personally feel that 80.255 is probably not willing to discuss this, but I wish you the best of luck. Frankly, I think that 80.255's insistence on this issue is harmful to WP, because it leaves us with a multitude of confusing articles that desperately try to keep afloat a county scheme that is long forgotten, something like converting all prices into the old system in a London cafe--"that'll be 10 of the traditional shillings (or just 50p from the coins in your purse)". And I say this as an Anglophile who loves the old counties and old English pound as much as anyone...possibly even 80.255. I'll keep an eye on the discussion, and we'll both hope for the best, eh? Jwrosenzweig 00:49, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
: Firstly, I have never refused to discuss this matter - on the contrary, in fact; I have many times ''requested'' that it be discussed, to no avail. I've noticed an increasing number of allegations floating around that I'm "not prepared to discuss" this matter - none of which have any basis whatsoever in fact, as far as I can see...
: Secondly, the C/county system is inherently confusing, and this confusion is expedated by inexact references to and lack of deliniation between traditional Counties and administrative counties. More to the point, however, ask yourself this: what is more important in an encyclopaedia - avoiding "confusion" at all costs, or providing ''correct'' and ''factual'' information? No doubt all articles would be far less "confusing" if the latter weren't abided by!
: Thirdly: you comparison with 'old money' is false. The £/s/d system was abolished; this is not debatable. The Government issued no official, categorical statement that ''it was not abolished'' - whereas exactly such a statement was made with regard to the traditional Counties. As I have said many times before, ''this is a point of fact and not an opinion''.
: My apologies to Chrisjj for posting what is in effect a third-party discuession on this talk page; there seems to be a lot of whispering going on against me 'behind closed doors' and I'm not prepared to allow such whisperings to go unchallenged! 80.255 03:03, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:Thanks for your note about the hot potato. To give 80.255 due credit, he seems to me to be discussing the subject in a perfectly sensible and civilised way. And also, he's responded to my request to stop changing county articles - I'm grateful to him for leaving alone the articles I was working on and have changed back.
:Until proved wrong I shall assume he means well and is prepared to join the debate and abide by whatever policy may be agreed on at the end of the process. Thanks 80.255! BTW, I hate to refer to you by half an IP address, would you like to share your given name, or do you prefer anonymity? Chris Jefferies 12 Dec 2003
:: I am, as I have evidenced several times, quite prepared to abide by a reasonable compromise whereby true and factual information prevails. I'm not prepared to allow misimformation, however, which is what some people seem to want (nor will I submit to tyranny of the majority view if this view is plainly at odds with the facts). However, the question seems mainly concerned with how information is systematically organised, rather than the facts themselves (although ''some people'' have a tendency to ignore facts when it suits them!). It is clear that unnecessary confusion can result when a single article attempt to deal with 3 or more different entities all known (in some form or another) as 'counties'; the only solution I can see to this is the creation of separate articles covering each distinct meaning (as occurs in virtually every other case in wikipedia), and as can be seen at Gloucestershire, and several of the Welsh Counties. I have consistently suggested that this obviously successful system be put in place for all other counties (see my talk page); unfortunately, some people have again opposed this without offering arguments against it nor agreeing to discuss the matter in a sensible manner.
:: I'm quite happy to make no edits to the articles that you've mentioned for the time being; you strike me as being a reasonable person, so I'll assume this isn't simply a stalling tactic! However, to resolve those matters in particular, I'd like to know your reasoning on reverting.
:: Thanks, 80.255 03:03, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
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Excuse me would you like to point out an instance where I have provided "misinformation". Also I have given my reasons for why I oppose you're counties malarkey on you're talk page, to which you have not responded to G-Man 19:07, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
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:::To deal first with your last paragraph, you and I simply don't agree on what is correct. You claim that logical argument demonstrates a once and for all correctness which Wikipedia should adhere to. I claim that Wikipedia should take current common usage as its guide. We need to find a way to agree, or failing that a way to agree to disagree. Meanwhile we'd both be foolish if we indulged in an edit war.
:::On the more general points I think there may be some misunderstanding about the governance of Wikipedia. If there is to be a policy on placenames it will come through open discussion, possibly followed by some sort of vote. But first we need to agree that there ''should'' be a policy, otherwise no policy can ever be put in place!
:::So I'm worried when I read about the 'tyranny of the majority view'. Surely tyranny is when a minority view (or even the view of one person) is forced upon multitudes who disagree. That's what a tyrant ''is''. The majority view, whether correct or incorrect, is not tyranny, it is democracy! A tyranny depends upon the one or the few having some kind of power which enables them to force their view (correct or incorrect) on the majority.
:::Best of all is full agreement. Everybody is happy. Sometimes no amount of discussion achieves this happy state and the best that can be managed is agreement by all to accept the majority view, which may include a record of the remaining points of difference.
:::If we don't begin by accepting that consensus is best, that the majority view is second best, and that tyranny is worst, we will get nowhere. And this is often the point at which the majority feel the best and only way is to block further contributions from tyrants. Surprisingly, the main objective with Wikipedia is not that it should be ''correct'', but that it should be realistic and as correct as possible. Where we can't agree what is correct, we need articles that explain there are two or more points of view, say what they are, and set out the main arguments for and against. But this should be done once and in one place. Other articles can refer across when necessary.
:::So can we begin by agreeing that consensus and the majority view have priority over correctness whenever parties disagree over what is, in fact, correct? If we can't agree ''that'' point, we do have a bit of a problem. Chris Jefferies 10:01, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:::: I have seen no meaningful rebuttal of the facts that my 'view' relies upon; merely posters saying "I disagree with those facts" but not substantiating their disagreement with details and facts. Of course I will accept factual corrections, and modify my stance in their light - but no such corrections have so far been forthcoming! The majority view should be the produce of debate, not simply the greater ability of the majority to shout down 'dissenters'. Nor should the articles of wikipedia reflect nothing more than idle beliefs when these are not the product of reasoned logic. If most contributors believed that the earth were flat, and this were reflected as fact in articles concerning the earth, not because it was a proven (or even reasonable) fact, but because it happened to be an idly-held beleif of 'the majority', I would feel no disinclination to change all such articles to state that the earth is round, and, when questioned about such changes by the flat-earth majority, I would challenge them to support their viewpoint with ''facts''. This would result in the articles in question being a produt of factual debate, rather than simply a blindly-held majority view, and in such cases, I would indeed put the notion of correctness above the 'majority view'.
::::Similarly, in this case, I am open to reasoned debate. I invite anyone who disagrees with me to ''disprove'' my arguments. In the absence of such proof, however, I cannot simply abducate factual correctness simply because the majority can shout the loudest! 80.255 21:59, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
==Where is Godmanchester?== (Discussion copied from Talk:Godmanchester)
Surely 'Cambridgeshire' was correct? 'Huntingdonshire' is an historical county, but is now only a part of the modern county of Cambridgeshire. It's misleading to write 'Huntingdonshire' without explanation. Chris Jefferies, 10th December 2003.
: There is no such thing as a "modern county" - there are adminitrative counties and traditional counties; they are separate entities and and both current. I have specified that Godmanchester lies within both. 80.255 00:16, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::Is this a matter of opinion or can it be supported by evidence of some kind? I'm not willing to see these pages permanently changed without either evidence or a consensus view following open debate. Chris Jefferies, 11th December 2003.
::: 1st April 1974, an official government spokesman said:
"The new county boundaries are solely for the purpose of defining areas of ... local government. '''They are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of Counties''', nor is it intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change."
::: If the "traditional boundaries of Counties" were ''not altered'', then by definition they are current.
::: Furthermore, ''administrative counties'' were created in 1888 - the act in question specifically states that the entities created were "administrative counties", and it ''was not the traditional boundaries that were changed''. Since the government has only used these 1888 administrative counties since that time, the boundaries changed during the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s ''were not'' those of the traditional Counties.
::: If you would like to verify this, have a look at the 1974 local goverment act with regards to ''Ross and Cromarty'' - this was an administrative county created in 1888. The traditional counties, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire, were not changed, but a new entity whose area was equal to both of theirs combined was errected. You ''will not find that the Counties of Ross-shire or Cromartyshire were mentioned in 1974, since it was only the administrative county of Ross & Cromarty that underwent a boundary change.
::: This is fact, and not simply my opinion. 80.255 20:29, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
==Ongoing debate== (Beginning 12th December 2003)
The material above, copied from several places, already outlines the arguments fairly well. I'm very sure in my own mind that we need to go forward on the basis of current, common usage being right for Wikipedia, even if it is in some arcane sense incorrect (though personally I'm not convinced by the arguments about the correctness of historical counties). Chris Jefferies 20:17, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:So, to clarify, you think wikipedia should be deliberately made to display incorrect information.
: If you're "not convinced", what exactly do you dispute? 80.255 21:59, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::Well, to clarify, I'm not convinced by the arguments (as I wrote just above). But I'm strongly suggesting that there may be something more important than pure 'correctness'. Much more important than pure correctness is ''clarity''. In other words, when someone consults Wikipedia about, say, St Neots, they expect (with very few exceptions) to find it in Cambridgeshire, not Huntingdonshire.
::Why is this? It's because the sign beside the road says, 'Welcome to Cambridgeshire' and the one going the other way says, 'Welcome to Bedfordshire'. OK, the road coming in from Bedfordshire might also say, 'and Huntingdonshire District Council', I'm not sure but I can check.
::When they go to the local library the sign over the door reads, 'Cambridgeshire County Library, St Neots'. When they look at a map, the town appears in Cambridgeshire, even the 1:25 000 OS map says, 'Cambridgeshire County', 'Huntingdonshire District', 'St Neots CP'. Nowhere does it say, 'Huntingdonshire County'. Maybe the OS maps are wrong, I don't think so but perhaps you do; but that's ''not'' my point. If you insist on interpreting it in that way, then yes, I think Wikipedia should be deliberately made to display 'incorrect' information. It should display the same information as all the other sources in people's everday lives so that readers are not confused. I asked a group of people today (not enough to be valid statistically) which county they believed St Neots to be in. All of them said, 'Cambridgeshire'. I then asked them whether it might not instead be Huntingdonshire. All of them said it was definitely not in Huntingdonshire.
::Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. Like all encyclopaedias, dictionaries, books on grammar and style, it must reflect the reality that is out there in the world. An encyclopaedia doesn't exist only to tell people facts, that's far too narrow a definition. It's role is to give people information - yes, about facts - but also about opinions, common perceptions, customary understandings by ordinary people. Chris Jefferies 00:13, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:::Regarding road signs that say 'Welcome to...'- On leaving York there is a sign that says 'Welcome to North Yorkshire' so by symmetry there should be similar signs on leaving Leicester, Derby, Nottingham etc. welcoming people to a different county! This is clearly non-sensical as these places are the relevant county towns! The current legislation regarding road signs is a complete mess. On a motorway (which is a trunk road) a sign referring to the local authorty is completely irrelevant as there is no way it can possibly have any effect on you. As a geographical reference (which is quite handy when travelling) it converys very little information. A sign referring to the historic county would be much more useful. User:Owain
::: Very well, append the text "it is a common perception that St. Neots is not in Huntingdonshire, according to a 'survey' in which User:Chrisjj asked 'a group of people' on the 14th of December, 2003."...
::: It is a common perception in the arab world that the state of Israel is involved in a global conspiricy to destroy the rest of mankind; the very existence of such "common perceptions" does not make them correct!
::: In answer to your comments: you will see "Cambridgeshire County Library" on the local library since it is administered by 'Cambridgeshire County Council' - the authority that has responsibility for the ''administrative county'' of Cambridgeshire, as defined in the 1888 local government act as distinct from the ancient County of the same name, and as re-defined in the 1974 local government act as superceding the similarly post-1888 administrative county of Huntingdonshire.
:::OS has taken it upon itself to show administrative county boundaries on certain maps - this doesn't imply that the historic Counties do not exist or are not current; OS also does not show ward boundaries on some maps, and parish boundaries on others - what OS does or does not show has little to do with the price of fish in Kettering! I have never said that OS maps are ''wrong'' - they show 1888 administrative county boundaries with the greatest accuracy. But the fact that they may not show historic boundaries is neither here nor there.
::: Similarly, the sign beside the road saying 'Welcome to Cambridgeshire' is welcoming you to the administrative county of Cambridgeshire, created in 1888 and expanded in 1974. You will see signs around the furness penisular saying "Welcome to the historic County of Lancashire", even though the area no longer falls within the juristiction of the administrative county of the same name.
::: Of course wikipedia exists to give information - and the information in this case is: St. Neots is in the ancient County of Huntingdonshire and also within the administrative county of Cambridgeshire. And if, as you say, the former fact is not written on any road signs you happen to have passed recently, or over the doors of your local library, then this encyclopaedia will have been doing exactly what it it here for - providing information that the average person may well have not know before! 80.255 01:29, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::::This isn't what ''I'd'' like to see. By all means mention historical counties but surely not as the very first county information the user sees. Far better for the average reader, to begin with, 'St Neots is in south-west Cambridgeshire'. Wikipedia policy is that the first paragraph of each article should be brief and only mention the key points. Detailed information such as historic county, district council etc should always be presented in the main body of the article.
:::: 80.255, am I curious. Do you feel that any of the people you have discussed these issues here with on Wikipedia are out to deliberately write false statements or to exclude true ones? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 01:45, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::::: I would like to think that this is not the case, although sometimes I wonder... 80.255 01:48, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:I've no problem with mention of historic counties in an article about a place. In fact, I'm all for it. It's valuable information about a place's history, and necessary information for researching that place in certain archives. But when defining a place - giving its address if you like - at the start of an article, it seems sensible to give the administrative county; the county of local government, and of maps and road atlases. In short, historic counties have historic uses and administrative counties have administrative, practical uses. When we say Place X is in County Y, that information should be useful to someone who is looking for Place X. Modern map books give the administrative counties, and so should we. But it doesn't hurt us to specify that a county is administrative, and to subsequently mention a historic county. That's my view anyway. (By the way, there's also some extensive discussion of this at Talk:Towns_of_the_United_Kingdom) -Nommo 02:17, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:: Since you mention addresses, it might interest you to know that Royal_Mail ''does not accept'' many administrative counties/UAAs in postal addresses, since they clash with the relevant Post_Town. In contrast, royal mail accepts historic Counties in ''all'' cases. Postal 'counties' are yet another kettle of fish, and naming articles to orrespond with them introduces yet more confusion into the matter.
:::This is false. The reason that Royal Mail accepts mail with pretty much any county (administrative or otherwise) or UAA you care to write is that nowadays (since 1996) all sorting is done by postcode. Please see the word from the horse's mouth here: http://www.royalmail.com/docContent/other/Downloadable_Files/General_PAF_Product_Info.pdf - a PDF document describing the Royal Mail's PAF standard for address databases. See in particular section 3.11 on flexible addressing. Pete/Pcb21 (talk)
:::: To quote from page 8 of the very link you posted:
::::3.3 Address Details
::::''An address is composed of the following address elements. Not all are present for every address, as addresses on PAF may be composed of different subsets of the elements. '''Postcode and Post Town are the only elements that are mandatory, i.e. they will be present for each address'''.''
:::: I.e. if the ''Post Town'' is also the name of an "administrative county" (i.e. a UAA), but the location in this UAA does not correspond to the post town area (which is mandatory), then royal mail will not accept the address if the post town is ommitted, postcode notwithstanding. 80.255 01:48, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:::::I've taken a close look at the PDF document mentioned by Pete. Nowhere does it state 'Royal Mail ''does not accept'' many administrative counties'. What it ''does'' state is (and I quote), 'The County is no longer required as part of a correct postal address, provided the Post Town and Postcode are quoted'. Chris Jefferies 15:20, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:: "''When we say Place X is in County Y, that information should be useful to someone who is looking for Place X''" - and would that be ''County Y'' post 1974, post-1987, post-1992 or post-2001? The fact that administrative boundaries change so frequently often means that some looking for an article may well be uncertain as to exactly what the ''current'' administrative area is.
:: I suggest that the an article about a given place is based at its traditional county (i.e. Huntingdon,_Huntingdonshire), with redirects from all other conceivable places (Huntingdon,_Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon,_Huntingdon_and_Peterborough, Huntingdon,_England, etc.). The base article can then expound all the various administrative and traditional county locations of the place in question. Thus, if someone wants to know the current administrative county, it will be clearly stated; and if they search for an article on the place in this county, they will find it.
:: Another option is the put the base article in a neutral place (e.g. Huntingdon,_Central_England or Huntingdon,_East_Anglia), and use the various redirects in the same way. 80.255 21:59, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
==Dispelling a myth==
A number of posters here have said such words to the effect of "the old counties aren't used or understood", etc. I should like to ask all such people to have a lok at the ''modern'' map of the registration counties of scotland - ''administrative entities'', I might add, that are currently used in law: have a look at the map on page 2 of this pdf file. These counties are post-1888 administrative entities, granted, but their modern use nonetheless rather contradicts those people who assert that they are "not understood nowadays", differing as the do only slightly from the Traditional_counties_of_Scotland. 80.255 23:35, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:Calling something a myth doesn't make it one. I have no doubt that if you stopped 1000 people on the street in St Neots and asked them which county they were in, the bulk would say 'Cambridgeshire'. If you asked them where they expected the old County of Huntingdonshire to be used they would tell you, 'Oh, that's no longer used, you'll only see it in history books, but they kept the old name for the District Council you know'. Chris Jefferies 00:24, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:: The myth in question was the one that asserted that because both historic counties and the very similar pre-1974 administrative counties were not currently being used for administrative purposes, they are somehow "not understood". The pdf file to which a link I posted proves that, in the case of scottish post-1888 administrative counties, they ''are'' in current use for administrative purposes. Thus, "people do not understand them" is rather at odds with the facts!
:: Regarding your "St. Neots thought experiment", whether you have "no doubt" or not, such 'examples' are unprovable and of little use in arguments. Notwithstanding the fact that if 1000 people were wrong, that does not miraculously make them right. In any case, that is besides the point. What is your objection to stating in the article: "St. Neots is a town in the traditional County of Huntingdonshire. It also lies within the Administrative_county of Cambridgeshire", and to which both St_Neots,_Huntingdonshire and St_Neots,_Cambridgeshire can point?
:: Out of interest, what will be your reaction if, as is quite likely, the current district of Huntingdonshire is made a Unitary Authority? 80.255 00:57, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:::My objection to wording the article as you suggest is that it's unclear to ordinary readers. We should not begin by writing that a town is in a traditional county of little relevance to people in 2003. By all means mention this later as part of the town's history. We should begin with something more familiar and much, much more relevant - the current administrative county, but leaving out the word 'administrative' which is uneccesary in the introductory paragraph and is also best explained later.
:::If the district becomes a unitary authority that should be reflected in the article but probably not in the introduction. If, after a period of time, it becomes clear that ordinary people think of 'St Neots, Huntingdon UA', ''then'' we can consider introducing it in that way.
:::And concerning my little survey, it wasn't a 'thought experiment' and it's not 'unprovable' either. A larger survey, properly designed and statistically analysed would demonstrate whether my assumption is correct. Personally I don't think it's worth the effort, but if you wish to do the survey I'll be interested to see the results. Chris Jefferies 18:11, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
==Wrapping this discussion up==
Well, the discussion traffic has died down now to very low levels and has stayed low for a couple of weeks. I suggest that we think seriously about moving to a conclusion, maybe by the end of January 2004. What do others think?
It seems likely that we'll be unable to come to a unamimous agreement on a Wikipedia convention, though I for one would still like to try. Flexible wording and generosity of spirit on all sides may win through.
Failing that, we will have to think in terms of accepting the (currently) 80% majority view, perhaps including a record of the minority view.
Meanwhile, season's greetings to everyone, and very best wishes for 2004! Chris Jefferies 12:55, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)
''Discussion from the main page moved here. See there for edit history''
===Counties of England===
''Capitalization not treated here''
====Approach 1====
One way to state which county a place is in is to use the current (administrative) county. E.g. Eton is in Berkshire, not Buckinghamshire. This approach is consistent with most http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places)#Dispelling_a_myth local and national government literature, some private sector literature, will be familar to most readers and writers, and indeed the approach will apply even if boundaries change again.
'''Supporters of this approach''': Pete/Pcb21 (talk), Chris Jefferies, Morwen, Arwel, G-Man, SecretlondonWarofdreams, Tarquin, Francs2000, Angela, silsor, Trainspotter
Implementational details: ''In which articles do we need to mention historic counties? Obviously articles of the county itself e.g. Warwickshire, and ex-county towns such as Huntingdon should mention Huntingdonshire
Coventry is likely to mention that Coventry has only been in West Midlands since 1974. But the Lady_Godiva article wouldn't need to mention a county at all?''
Cons:
* Does not recognise the fact that traditional and administrative counties are separate entities.
** IMO, they are sufficiently similar that the reader would be best served by describing all the meanings over history of a particular county name in one article. The current surplus of articles is a bit of a minefield, e.g. the two Denbighshire articles would seem contradictory to an uninitiated reader. Best to spell out in one place. Pete/Pcb21 (talk)
* Produces a number of confusing anomalies: e.g. 'South Gloucestershire' not being part of 'Gloucestershire'.
** The best place to dispel this confusions would be a single article named Gloucestershire, with a redirect from South Gloucestershire. Pete/Pcb21 (talk)
*** I think it would be far easier to have one Gloucestershire article which mentions the status of South Gloucestershire as part of the traditional and administrative counties, but a separate administrative district, and to have an article on it (e.g. see Somerset) Warofdreams 02:50, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)
* Fails to recognise that historic counties ''are'' used rather more than some "anti-traditionalists" would like to admit: e.g. compare google results for Bexleyheath Kent and Bexleyheath London.
** Funnily enough a Google search for Bexleyheath London and Bexleyheath Kent without the quotes gets more hits for the London rather than Kent version. Bexleyheath also seems very poor represented on the web. Most hits seem to be Link_farm hits for hotels all produced from the same source... but that's drifting off the point a little. Is the best wording for the Bexleyheath article - Bexleyheath is a town in the London_Borough_of_Bexley.... Prior to the county boundary changes of 1974 Bexleyheath was in the county of Kent.
*** Try comparing Sheffield West Riding (about 3500) with Sheffield South Yorkshire (about 187000) and even Sheffield Hallamshire (about 11000). And if we are to use traditional counties, why use the West Riding rather than Hallamshire: not an administrative area for the last 950 years, and yet still more Google hits. Warofdreams 02:50, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)
**** The concept that just because more people claim one thing over another somehow makes it right is laughable. A lot of Americans refer to Britain as 'England' (probably more people worldwide than refer to it correctly). Does this make their point-of-view right? Of course not. The purpose of an encyclopaedia is to inform people of the truth. You can include popular opinion by all means, but state that it is just that, and not the truth. User:Owain
*****So I'm confused as to why you might support "traditional" counties. Their only use at present is from people remembering the old counties. In the case of some places (in particular on the edge of Greater London) this may be a majority, but if that's not why you support the usage, surely we should adopt the administrative or ceremonial counties primarily with a mention of traditional counties where they are for some reason significant. User:Warofdreams
******Why do the Royal Mail have traditional counties on file for every address in Britain then? Surely by your logic that's no use to anyone under 50. The problem with so-called ceremonial counties is that they are still fixed to local government areas, and therefore will change with further administrative reorganisation. Also they perpetuate some unloved areas like Merseyside. Who in the Wirral wants to live in Merseyside? The fact that traditional counties have nothing to do with local government makes them ideal as unchanging geographical areas. User:Owain
* With the rise of Unitary Authority Areas and the scraping of administrative metrolpolitan counties as administrative units, many places carry a 'county' name that divulges very little useful information: e.g. Darlington is in the 'county' of Darlington; the same applies to croyden,dudley, poole, oldham, gateshead, luton, wrexham and countless others. "Wrexham is a town in Wrexham" is not a terribly informative statement!
** ''Agreed that that statement would not be informative. How best then to start such articles?'' (listed in order of becoming more like approach 2)
**# '''Wrexham''' is a town and Unitary Authority in Wales. Prior to the Local Government (Wales) act of 19xx it was located in the county of Denbighshire. (+ Denbighshire articles contains details about its pre+post 1994 boundaries)
**# '''Wrexham''' is a town and Unitary Authority in Wales. It is located within the traditional boundaries of Denbighshire but became a Unitary Authority in 1994]
**# How about this which I personally would prefer: '''Wrexham''' is a town and Unitary_authority in Wales and traditionally a part of Denbighshire (+ Denbighshire articles contains details about its pre+post 1994 boundaries). G-Man
**# '''Wrexham''' is a town and Unitary Authority in Wales. It is located in the tradional county of Denbighshire....
**# '''Wrexham''' is a town in the traditional county of Denbighshire. It also the name of the Unitary Authority which includes Wrexham town and the surrounding area.
**# '''Wrexham''' is a town in the County of Denbighshire. It is also the name of a Unitary Authority which includes the town and surrounding area.
*** (1) is downright incorrect and should not be considered on the grounds of accuracy. I would support (5) but am willing to compromise to (4). 80.255 00:18, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
**More accurately:
::: '''Wrexham''' is a town and Unitary Authority in Wales. Prior to 1974 it was located in the county of Denbighshire, while between 1974 and 1996 it formed the Borough of Wrexham Maelor within the County of Clwyd. Arwel
::::Wrexham has never ceased to be in the Traditional_county of Denbighshire; is it not currently in the Administrative_county of the same name, however. A ''genuinely accurate'' statement would be:
:::: '''Wrexham''' is a town and Welsh Principal Area in Wales. The town is in the Traditional_county of Denbighshire. Prior to 1974 the town also lay within the Administrative_county of Denbighshire, while between 1974 and 1996 it formed part of the the Borough of Wrexham Maelor within the administrative county of Clwyd.
:::: 80.255 03:59, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::::: And as has been repeated ''ad nauseam'', your 'traditional' county of Denbighshire has '''no practical current existence whatsoever'''. People in Wrexham still sometimes put "Clwyd" when they address letters, they do not put "Denbighshire" on them. The former existence of the old county should be noted but '''very much in a subsidiary position''' in the article. The prominence you are seeking to give to the old counties is absolutely unjustifiable and only spreads confusion among readers who are not familiar with the true situation. Arwel 16:19, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
:::: Well said Arwell. It seems to me that stating that the "Traditional County" of XXXXXXX exists but has no administrative functions is a contradiction in terms. Being an administrative unit is the entire reason for a county's existance. If it does not exist as an administrative unit then what exactly does it exist as ?. The historic counties are certainly rarely used as geographic terms these days. As far as I'm concerned if it looks like duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is reasonable to assume that it is a duck. If a "county" has no administrative functions, and most people who live within it have no affinity towards it or even realise it exists, then it is reasonable to assume that for all practical purposes it does not exist. G-Man 18:56, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
::::: How can the existence of a geographical area that's different from an administrative area be a contradiction? Take Northern Ireland. The six counties there haven't been used as administrative areas since 1974, just as in the rest of the UK, but they appear on maps, people talk about them, they exist. What about the laughable concept of 'ceremonial counties'. How can they exist if they have no local government function? Because people don't think it exists it doesn't exist? What a preposterous statement! Hey, if I stick my head in the sand I can pretend the world doesn't exist.. and so on. User:Owain
::::But the "traditional counties" are in most cases not used to describe geographic areas any more. Take for example Birmingham, the geographic term used to describe the location of Birmingham is always the West Midlands and never Warwickshire. The same applies to Manchester and Liverpool, when was the last time you heard anyone refering to those cities as being in Lancashire?, like it or not people now use the modern county boundaries as geographic references not the historic ones, life has moved on since 1974 you know. And before you say it about the metropolitan counties not being administrative units, I would like to point out to you that in all of the metropolitan counties, policing, emergency services, public transport etc are still organised on a metropolitan county wide basis, and they are also still used for statistical purposes, so they do still have some "real world" existance and an identity, unlike you're precious historic counties. G-Man 23:59, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)
* If the ''current administrative county'' is to be used, then former administrative metrolpolitan counties cannot be mentioned - for example, terms such as "West Midlands", since these are not current (now split into smaller, administrative units). This is likely to be met with opposition from some quarters.
**As has been pointed out before, the metropolitan counties were never abolished in law. You can find examples of legislation well past 1986 mentioning them.
***And of course they could've been mentioned even if they had become matters of history. The most helpful presentation on Dudley would say something like ' '''Dudley''' is a town and in the Metropolitan_county of the West_Midlands conurbation.... From 1974 to 1986 Dudley was governed by the West Midlands county council though since then most local services have been administered by Dudley District Council.... Prior to the county boundary reorganisation of 1974, Dudley was located within Worcestershire.... The zoo there is on a hill...'
**** Dudley has never ceased to be in the historic County of Worcestershire. A better text would read:' '''Dudley''' is a town in the Traditional_County of Worcestershire [link to Worcestershire (traditional) when it exists], in the West_midlands of England. It is also a Metropolitan_district Unitary_Authority_Area. From 1974 to 1986 Dudley was governed by the West Midlands county council although since then most local services have been administered by Dudley District Council.... Prior to the administrative county boundary reorganisation of 1974, Dudley was located within the Administrative_county of Worcestershire...' 80.255 00:27, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
**** Boy that's complicated G-Man 17:31, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
***** :). In the actual articles on such towns the admin/county information might be spread throughout the article rather put one after another as in these examples... depends on how much other history there is write about. So that would spread the complexity out a bit. Pete/Pcb21 (talk)
====Approach 2====
We should state that the county that a place is in is its historic county. The idea is that these historic counties are timeless standards with little cause for confusion. We also won't have to update Wikipedia every time the boundaries change. Such an approach also results in sensible outcomes whereby York and Leeds are in Yorkshire, Leicester is in Leicestershire, the isle of Bute is in Buteshire, etc.
This approach clearly deliniates between traditional and administrative counties, eachoing the similarly clear deliniation made by successive acts of law and government statements, from 1888 onwards.
'''Supporters of this approach''': User:80.255, User:Owain, User:Trilobite (long after the debate concluded, but I object to the policy).
Cons:
*The approach can cause confusion. The historic and administrative lineages split further and significantly in 1974. Thus some claim that the use of historic names has little resonance for those under the age of 35, although supporters of this approach would argue that this facts is disputed . For these people the historic county names and locations are interesting snippets of historical information, to be mentioned in relevant articles - but no more than that.
**I don't see how mentioning traditional counties could cause confusion - the Royal Mail for example have the correct traditional county on file for every postcode in the country so they can and should be used in addresses. The administrative areas on the other hand are just going to get less useful as more and more unitary authorities are introduced. Where is Tredegar? In Caerphilly? No it isn't, that's a completely different town 10-plus miles away. Where is Derby, Leicester, Blackpool, etc? Administrative areas are useless for this purpose, but a single well-defined county name that is independednt of local government is a perfect solution. The fact that it's different from local government boundaries is a strength not a weakness. User:Owain
*The boundaries do not change frequently. In fact once a decade is a reasonable average. Compare that on average a Prime Minister is in office for about five years. We obviously keep the Prime Minister and related articles up to date! This 'advantage' is phantom.
**Why should people have to re-learn where they live just because of a current political trend? Local government areas are supposed to be for efficient delivery of certain services, not as a general identifier of where a place is. The fact that unitary authories exist now that aren't descriptive is reason enough not to use them even if there were no further boundary changes for a thousand years! User:Owain
*The "timeless standard" is also somewhat dubious - see the Counties_of_England paragraph to appreciate how difficult it is define exactly which counties where are the historic ones - after all historic counties are just administrative counties from 800 years ago. '' - this article was created by Morwen using generally unrepresentative snippets from replies of 80.255 that were not intended to stuck together in such a way. Thus, it is unnecessary confusing. For the purposes of this debate, I suggest that the 'timeless standard' is taken to be that of 1887, a year before the creation of administrative counties, User:80.255.
**''Wouldn't that timeless standard then include Bristol?'' Morwen 12:13, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)
***I don't see why not as long as it's pointed out where Bristol is geographically (i.e. straddling the Gloucestershire/Somerset border) User:Owain
**** 1887 is hardly "timeless". -- Tarquin 17:26, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
*This approach goes against common usage and perception in daily life. Maps, directories, 'Welcome to' roadsigns, signs on official buildings, businesses etc normally use the modern county names. Chris Jefferies
**Just because people repeat the same inaccuracies doesn't make them right. There is no such thing as 'modern county names'. Local government areas are not counties - at most they are 'administrative counties'. Welcome to signs and official buildings are owned by the local council, hence them using their names and boundaries! You are right though that central government needs to erect county boundary signs that are independent of local government boundaries. User:Owain
*Because of this approach, the article on Huntingdonshire, for example, focusses attention on the historical county rather than the current district council of the same name. Wikipedia articles should begin with current information and deal with history in the body of the text (except for purely historical topics). Chris Jefferies
**Huntingdonshire IS a traditional county. A local government area borrows its name because it borrowed its area. As we all know local government areas can be changed on a whim. Perhaps the page for the district council should state so. The current 'county name (traditional)' and 'county name (administrative)' distinction works, so what's wrong with that? User:Owain
*** I think having two articles for each county name is a dogs dinner. It is just plain common sense that we should have a single article on, for example, Warwickshire that spells out its historical boundaries over the years and most recently the 1974 change which significantly reduced the size of the county. Having two articles each telling half the story with a bit of overlapping just makes no sense.
**** The 1974 change was a change to an administrative area, NOT a change to the county itself. This has been spelled out many times. The original LGA 1888 was clear to make the distinction that the new areas just happened to have the same names and roughly the same areas. The government made a similar clarification in 1974 although they made the mistake in the LGA 1972 of using the word 'county' instead of the phrase 'administrative county'. The end result is the same though - the administrative areas have changed, NOT the counties they were originally based on. The fact that people don't make the distinction is the root of all this confusion in the first place.
*Approach 2 makes it impossible to write short, clear introductory paragraphs on cities, towns and villages which have changed hands historically from one county to another. Chris Jefferies
**Not at all. How many places really moved from county to county? If you exclude detached parts I'd say relatively few. A short introduction to a place can say where it is located geographically (i.e. what traditional county it's in) and if they want to go on to say how it is governed administratively then that's an entirely different point and can easily be in a distinct paragraph. User:Owain
***''say where it is located geographically (i.e. what traditional county it's in)''
***This is a non-sequitur. If a traditional country (i.e. an administrative county from a long time ago) can be used for pinpointing location then so can today's administrative counties. Traditional counties are not more "real" in any sense than today's counties, just older and much less used today.
****Really? Where is Leicester? Derby? Blackpool? Tredegar? Where will they be in 20 years time? The concept of using administrative areas that can be changed by a Statutory Instrument is madness! Britain needs a stable geography that CAN'T be changed by the government of the day to suit their political aims. I know where I come from - I don't want successive governments telling me I come from somewhere else... User:Owain
*This approach is not used by any other encyclopedia (even the in many ways archaic 1911_Encyclopedia uses the 1889 counties.) - for example ''Cromarty, formerly a county in the north of Scotland, was incorporated with Ross-shire in 1889 under the designaton of the county of Ross and Cromarty.'' http://17.1911encyclopedia.org/C/CR/CROMARTY_EARL_OF.htm
**Not true at all. To use the Wrexham example again, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says "Wrexham county borough, historic county of Denbighshire" Online version User:Owain
***And the entry on Denbighshire says 'Welsh Sir Ddinbych county of northern Wales extending inland from the Irish Sea coast. The present county of Denbighshire includes the Vale of Clwyd along the River Clwyd and an inland area between the Clwydian Range in the east and the Clocaenog Forest in the west that ascends to the Berwyn mountains in the south. The lower Vale of Clywd and the seacoast are part of the historic county…'. Note use of 'present county'.
====Possible convention====
* Develop an article on the subject 'county' that covers both points of view.
* Explain specific historical changes in the article on each individual county, referring back to the article above for the principles involved.
* To avoid clumsiness, use whichever approach (1 or 2 but ''not both'') is finally agreed in city, town, village etc articles, always linking to the relevant county article.
Further suggestions (80.255):
* A standard boilerplate for stating the traditional county and administrative county in a clear, correct and unconfusing manner.
* Redirects from both (for example), Huntingdon,_Huntingdonshire and Huntingdon,_Cambridgeshire to a ''more neutrally named article'' (e.g. Huntingdon,_East_Anglia, in which can appear the agreed boilerplate text stating the county situation.
* Separate articles on counties themselves, all appended with either (administrative) or (traditional). This allows the relevant maps, etc. to be shown in the ''correct'' article without causing confusion. For an example of this method, see Gloucestershire.
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==="Electoral fraud"===
It has come to my notice the several points put on the Naming conventions (places) page as "policy" by User:Morwen in fact formed no part of the motion that was put to the vote. It is wikipedia policy to vote on such matter and, if Morwen thinks they should become policy, then separate votes should be errected for them; however, as it stands, no such vote has been taken. I have removed a paragraphs pertaining to disambiguation pages that had no part in the motion put before a vote, and having checked the page in question, I shall remove any other sneekily added lines of "policy" that did not form part of the motion, unless Morwen should decide that adding things as policy that were not decided by the correct mechanism is both contrary to the convention and spirit of Wikipedia and removes them in any case. 80.255 22:31, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
:You are the one who removed people's names from the vote, and you dare accuse me of electoral fraud? I wish I could say I was shocked. Morwen 22:33, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)
:I'd like to know why you are bringing up issues of electoral fraud after deleting my vote. silsor 22:35, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)
:: Although it's a trifling matter, I'll explain why those names were deleted if you wish. At present I have no working mouse, and thus cannot select text to cut/paste; having added various responses to the discussion, I came upon an edite conflict with those naming having been added, so over-wrote them with my most recent version. After doing this, I returned to add these changes manually, but then came upon another edit conflict since Morwen had declared the result, etc. - it would have been rather academic to both replacing them at that point, so I saw little point in it, assuming (correctly) that they would have been noticed in any case, and even had they not recognising that it would have made no difference to the outcome of the vote.
:: Now, morwen, perhaps you'd like to explain why you like adding all sorts of "policies" that were neither voted on nor discussed on the page? 80.255 22:49, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
:::Contrary to your delusions, it is not the convention to vote on every proposed word of a policy. The policy is all a logical conclusion of the original statement. I showed a draft to User:Angela and was agreed with. Re-running the vote would just be a delaying tactic, and the result would be an inevitable victory in favour of it, I am sure you are aware.
:::Btw, were you the IP who made changes to County_Durham earlier today? I left a message on their talk page to try and engage them in this discussion. Morwen 22:59, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)
--------
Nice job on the policy write-up, Morwen :) -- Tarquin 23:33, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
:Thanks you. Obviously I am interested in taking into account people who think their views have been misrepresented, and if anyone objects who _was_ part of the consensus, then fine. But I don't see why someone who opposed the consensus should try to speak on behalf of people - they can speak for themselves. Morwen 10:36, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)
I, too, would like to say, 'Thanks, Morwen', for the current version, and, 'Thanks everyone', for the debate. I've been out of circulation for a few days, and I arrive back and find everything done and dusted. Fantastic! Chris Jefferies 22:48, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)
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Just one small problem, if we are to use pre 1847 boundaries when refering to historic counties. Then Coventry cannot be mentioned as being in Warwickshire, as prior to 1847 it was a county in it's own right. G-Man 01:13, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)
:Yeah, but if we use the dates after that, that means Islandshire wasn't part of County_Durham, which is exactly the sort of interesting anomaly we are after. I suppose what would be 'ideal' from the traditionalist point of view would be to use some county boundaries that have never actually been used, except maybe some time in the 14th century (although of course, boundary revisions must have happened without anyone even noticing, since then). They are sort of a Chimera. Morwen 11:15, Jan 3, 2004 (UTC)
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==="Why stick to any fixed format?"===
Having read the above discussion with interest, I would make the following observation which I hope - given the strength of feeling this subject provokes - will not be taken the wrong way. I think much of the 'problem' here is people getting too close to see the wood for the trees; the main purpose of the 'pedia is to inform (?) Information should be accurate, timely, relevant and usable. Without going into a dissertation here (available on request) it is accurate to say "this town is in this admin. county, this traditional county and was until this date in this historical county" Nobody would dispute this surely? This covers accuracy and timeliness. Relevance and usability depend on your target audience - unfortunately nobody knows who the target audience of the Wikipedia is (or at least described it to my satisfaction) - so you surely have to present ALL information but sort it out to be usable to as many different types of audience as possible.
To end with a question: Is there any reason why each Wikipedia article has to be presented (i.e. laid out) in one fixed format? This is like a traditional printed encyclopedia but online. Can't an article be led by the audience instead of by the preferences of the editor(s)? If I'm looking for towns in Huntingdonshire then I would expect to find Huntingdon but also if I look for towns in Cambridgeshire. Where counties are used to subdivide lists - can't I choose from a menu of county types and have the list presented in that one?
The answer, I suspect, is one of mechanics (i.e. code and time) rather than policy. But if the Wikipedia is to be useful to as wide range of audience as possible then it is going to become necessary. Btljs
:Amen to that. As we've found out in this discussion, sticking to one format creates too many arguments and would probably create too much confusion in the potential target audience. As long as we stick to the facts that places are in one administrative county and one traditional county then what's the harm? User:Owain
::I for one don't care which comes first, the administrative county or the traditional county. Given that some Acts of Parliament use "county" to mean administrative county should mean this is the default, but a) the traditional counties have never been abolished and b) the wording "traditional county" or doesn't imply statutory sanction in any case. But at the end of the day to leave one or the other out would be completely wrong.
::By the way, has anyone noticed that Eton is now within Windsor and Maidenhead and not "Berkshire"? Andrew Yong 14:02, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
:::Berkshire has not been abolished as an administrative county, though. (Whereas, Avon, Humberside, and Cleveland have). Morwen 14:40, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)
::::Poor old Eton. In the traditional county of Buckinghamshire, but bizarrely also in this quantum world of simultaneously being in the unitary authority of Windsor and Maidenhead and 'administrative county' of Berkshire. Quite how an unitary authority, which by it's very nature is the sole administrative authority in a given area can be 'in' another local government area is beyond me - but it just goes to show how messed-up successive governments have made the situation. User:Owain
:::::If Berkshire is an Administrative county, the articles Administrative_counties_of_England and Subdivisions_of_England need correcting (and why isn't it in ISO_3166-2:GB)? Anyway, I contend that the current Ceremonial_counties_of_England (including Berkshire) should be the primary reference - not one of the two options that was put to the vote. Who in Runcorn would ever say they come from "Halton"? Andy G 20:08, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
:::Re: Berkshire. The confusion here is one introduced by the propagandists of the ABC. They equate 'county councils' and 'administrative counties' and pretend that the latter cannot exist without the other. Berkshire is not in ISO_3166:GB because ISO 3166:GB makes no pretense at representing counties. It represents top-level local authority areas, and Berkshire is certainly not one of these, nor are Greater_Manchester or Tyne_and_Wear, as their county councils have been abolished. This is not the same however as abolishing the county. The article Administrative_counties_of_England I have clarified - the map was already correct. You will note that the link you found on the talk page when you originally questioned whether say, Milton Keynes was in law a county, refers to the 'County of Berkshire' in the present tense. Morwen 20:20, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
::::Nonsense. How can something be an administrative area if it has no administration? Regardless of what various local government orders try to make you think, if there is no corporate entity to administer an area then ergo it is not an administrative area. The real pretence here is that you can somehow dispense with an administrative body but still claim that the area it used to cover is an administrative area. ISO 3166:GB is a list of administrative areas; If Berkshire is not on there then it is not an administrative area. Of course the real county continues to exist with it's real borders, blissfully unaware of all this administrative nonsense. Owain 16:30, Mar 16, 2004
Owain, why does a county need a council? Tyne and Wear happily exists. Otherwise, the good citizens of the City of Sunderland are paying me a lot of money to administer something, which does not exist. --garryq 14:14, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
::A county doesn't need a council - they didn't prior to 1889 after all. The point is there are the traditional counties which existed before county councils were formed; Then there were county council changes in 1974, and county council abolitions in 1986. Why perpetuate the name and area of something that was merely the result of an administrative change when the administrative body no longer exists? After all that was the entire raison d'êtré for it existing in the first place. Incidentally, why are the citizens of Sunderland paying you money? Owain 14:39, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
:::I don't think Wikipedia is interested in what should be the case. Wikipedia is just interested in what is the case. And if you believe google, then people do still use Tyne and Wear as a geographical reference, more often than they use the former counties. I think its time to accept this gracefully, and move onto more productive things. Morwen 14:55, May 23, 2004 (UTC)
::::I'm not disputing the fact that people still use Tyne and Wear as a geographical reference. As a name for a conurbation it's perfectly OK. As you so eloquently put it 'Wikipedia is just interested in what is the case', not just what some people use. Some people use traditional (not former!) counties, some people use names of conurbations. Fine by me. Owain 09:36, 25 May 2004 (UTC)
== Links to other naming conventions ==
Hm, I was looking for discussion I half remember about cities and towns in the USA being placed with their state names, eg "Chicago, Illinois". I recall seeing some other articles about naming conventions about specific subjects that seem not to be linked to here. They probably should be. -- Infrogmation 15:30, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
:It's at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(city_names). The two pages need merging. By the by, both pages have a "not a formal policy yet" tag... and the tag is probably inappropiate in both cases! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:37, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
==Proposal for disputed places==
I propose that in disputes over the correct name for a place in the English Wikipedia, those who are not native English speakers be prohibited from voting, though encouraged to advise on the history involved. Reason: native English speakers are more likely to know the native English usage and less likely to have partisan interests. Jamesday 20:36, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)
: This sounds like a very good guideline to me. Martin 20:57, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)
== What is a "Unitary Authority" ==
Is a Unitary Authority outside its former county?
As a county borough Sunderland was entirely independent of Durham County Council, but remained part of County Durham until the 1974 reorganisation placed it in the new metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear.
Darlington was recently created a unitary authority. The convention seems to say it must now be described as "formerly part of County Durham". But surely it is still part of the county, but entirely independent of the county council.
The first unitary authorities in effect were the metropolitan districts after their county councils abolition. For such authorities to be outside their counties would mean the counties have been abolished in wikipedia, despite
the convention saying otherwise.
Surely the terms are
"Sunderland, a city in the metropolitan County of Tyne and Wear" and
"Darlington, a unitary authority in County Durham" garryq 21:25, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
:The policy is self-contradictory in many places. However, until it can be modified, it is acceptable to say "''Darlington, a unitary authority in the traditional county of Durham''", which conveys the necessary information accurately. One can also accurately say "''Darlington, a unitary authority in the ceremonial county of Durham''". However, one ''cannot'' accurately say that Darlington is in the (administrative) county of Durham, because it isn't! Neither traditional nor ceremonial counties are used in administration, so if the term "county" be taken solely to mean "administrative county" then all one can say is the terribly enlightening fact that "''Darlington is in Darlington''"! 80.255 22:00, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
===Whose idea was the nonsensical "County of Milton Keynes"? ===
It's legal status is a Borough, the Borough of Milton Keynes. See Milton_Keynes_(borough). The term County of Milton Keynes is complete misnomer. The same is true of "County_of_Swindon". --Concrete Cowboy 23:44, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
::You can blame the government for that one. In their nonsensical local government terminology MK is both a borough and a county of itself. See http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19951769_en_2.htm
An_Najaf province; Najaf city
Al_Basrah province; Basra city
Al_Karbala province; Karbala city
'''Egypt'''
Al_Iskandariyah province; Alexandria city
Al_Isma'iliyah province; Ismailia city
In some other cases, the city and the province share the same article, with the Arabic name redirecting to the English name. Should there be two separate articles for the province and the city instead? '''Egypt'''
Al_Qahirah redirects to Cairo city
Al_Jizah redirects to Giza city
'''Syria'''
Dimashq redirects to Damascus city
'''Jordan'''
'Amman redirects to Amman city
'''Algeria'''
Alger redirects to Algiers city
Then there's a third way, which is to have the English province redirect to the Arabic province, and the Arabic city redirecting to the English city. The clearest way so far, but IMO a bit elaborate: '''Saudi Arabia'''
Mecca_province redirects to Makkah_province
Makkah redirects to Mecca
What's the best way to sort all of this out? -- ran 09:06, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC) I think that "Al-Something" is "the something". "Al Karbala" => "the Karabala". - anon I'm going to start rearranging the city and province pages. The new scheme will be like this: Al_Basrah redirects to Basra (this is the city, not the province)
Al_Basrah_province redirects to Basra_province If anyone disagrees, post something here. -- ran 07:50, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC) ==Historical places== Is there a convention for referring to a geographical location at a historical moment, now in a different nation-state than at time of the event in question? For example, the List_of_earthquakes makes reference to places as being in the United States, not being incorporated into same at the time. Is this as per the convention, or ought they to refer to Spanish_Empire, Mexico, etc, or flag as "in present day", or some such formula? Alai :For clarity, maybe both should be indicated. Maurreen 06:15, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::I agree, where both are relevant, both should be mentioned. For an article about a modern place, the current name should be used. But if the article has a history section, the previous name(s) should be mentioned there. If the article is about an historical event or person it should use the name that was current at the time but should probably also say 'currently in xyz'. Chris Jefferies 14:02, 11 July 2005 (UTC) == Country names in category titles == There's a discussion on standardization of country names in titles (at least for categories) on Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion which may be of interest. -- Beland 02:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Countries (Moved from general conventions) == Is there a central list of "commonly misnamed" countries, and what they should be referred to on Wikipedia? This might seem fairly obvious, but sadly not all country names are as simple as Canada, Australia, Brazil or France. This refers to both in article names, AND just as importantly, as a short form (see bolded examples below). Examples: *Republic_of_the_Congo / Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo - I have seen these referred to as '''Congo''' and '''Congo DR'''. *People's_Republic_of_China / Republic_of_China / Taiwan - I have always referred to these as '''China''' and '''Taiwan'''. (I'm 26 and read atlases/world maps a lot when I was young) Only in the last couple of years have I see the convoluted names above being used to refer to these countries. Is this an American thing (I'm Australian), or some recent change in political correctness? What are acceptable short names now? '''China PR''' and '''China ROC'''/'''Taiwan (ROC)''' ? *Georgia_(country) vs Georgia_(U.S._state) - I see this is being handled on Talk:Georgia. *Macedonia and Azerbaijan have similar conflicts, except the country's priority is a lot more defined that in the case of Georgia - however the naming scheme doesn't reflect this. Is '''Macedonia FYR''' an acceptable short form? *I have seen Federated_States_of_Micronesia referred to as '''Micronesia FS''' to differentiate it from the region. *East_Timor or Timor_Leste (or even Timor-Leste ? *Yemen vs North_Yemen vs Yemen_Arab_Republic (aka '''Yemen AR''') *South_Korea vs Korea, and North_Korea vs Democratic_People's_Republic_of_Korea (aka '''Korea DPR''' or '''DPR Korea''') *How many different Yugoslavia's have there been? *British_Virgin_Islands (or U.K._Virgin_Islands) and U.S._Virgin_Islands. I've also seen Virgin_Islands used by itself in a list - alongside the other two! I'm sure there are others! I found most of these while doing up the table at Template:WikiProject_Olympics_Country_Table and needing short forms of the country name for the table - not to mention article names like Democratic_People's_Republic_of_Korea_at_the_1992_Summer_Olympics are a bit of a mouthful! -- Chuq 06:59, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) :Such a list would be helpful: I've just disambiguated a couple of the links in the 2004 summer olympics series where an article existed but did not show up in the 04 olympics template because of misnaming. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:16, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::List_of_sovereign_states might be helpful for this. Maurreen 04:40, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) :::The two Congos are best identified as Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Kinshasa), ie using the capital cities to identify which one you mean. This was the custom before Congo (Kinshasa) changed its name to Zaire, and is the least confusing way to refer to these two countries. :::Taiwan is best referred to as such. It is only really Americans who tend to use "ROC" or "Republic of China" and that usage confuses the hell out of the rest of us. Note that the Taiwanese government uses both forms itself. There is a difference between Taiwan and ROC, namely a small number of small heavily militarised islands close to the Chinese mainland. However, almost always the difference is irrelevant. :::The People's Republic of China can almost always be shortened to "China" without causing confusion. Some care is necessary if Macau and/or Hong_Kong are in point. :::Referring to "South Korea" as "Korea" would be an unwelcome development, jguk 08:22. :::There's only ever been one Yugoslavia, as far as I'm aware. But it shrunk somewhat in the 1990s. If it's borders at any one moment in time are important, you'll have to describe them:) :::I'm not aware of ever seeing the British Virgin Islands (which are often abbreviated to BVI) being called the UK Virgin Islands - and we should not be in the business of renaming things here, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==Counties again== Please note that there is a discussion going on at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_geography about the suitability or otherwise of ceremonial counties as a way of arranging the "list of places in Exampleshire" articles. G-Man has asked me to raise it here since it relates to the policy on naming conventions. I find the arguments for ceremonial counties taking precedence over the traditional and administrative senses of the term unconvincing, the policy somewhat ambiguous when it comes to stating what county a place is in, and the present arrangement inadequate when it comes to dividing up our primary county articles and their spin-offs such as "list of places in" pages. I'd appreciate some input. — Trilobite (Talk) 6 July 2005 07:20 (UTC) :May I suggest that you canvas opinion from regular contributors to 'awkward' places like Manchester, West Midlands, London, Bristol. --Concrete Cowboy 6 July 2005 10:44 (UTC) ::My vote would be for traditional counties. The ceremonial areas are far from satisfactory in Scotland and Wales and large parts of England. Owain 6 July 2005 09:18 (UTC) :::Chalk up another vote for traditional counties. It's maddening to see people talking about Unitary Authorities as if they are real counties! UAs are always going to be changing -- what kind of reference scheme is that? MonMan 6 July 2005 13:54 (UTC) :Mine for traditional and/or admin, depending on context. The ceremonials do not appear to have attracted popular acclaim. --Concrete Cowboy 6 July 2005 10:44 (UTC) ::::And my main concern is that the articles we write make good sense to our readers. As I noted above over a year ago (!), the library in St_Neots says above the door, 'Cambridgeshire County Library, St Neots'. The road signs as you enter the town say 'Cambridgeshire', the OS map shows the town within Cambridgeshire. So should the Wikipedia article, and this is what the current policy requires. But the 'traditional counties' approach has the town in Huntingdonshire! We really ''do'' need common-sense to prevail if we want our articles to be useful to our readers. ::::In an article about Oliver_Cromwell, I would refer to St Neots as being in Huntingdonshire because at that time it was. The current policy supports this. ::::As far as I'm concerned the issue was decided when the vote was taken (85% in favour of the existing policy). I do not want to debate the whole thing again (sigh). Let's be very clear. The current debate is taking place because a small minority refuses to abide by a policy decision taken a year ago. Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 11:10 (UTC) I think you're misrepresenting it somewhat. I certainly do abide by the policy decision, otherwise many of the stubs and articles I've created would have been worded differently, categorised differently, and listed differently. I'm trying to argue for a slight softening of the line that ceremonial counties are of paramount importance, which is the principle that guides the present arrangement of our county articles and related pages such as "list of places in". This actually contradicts the policy, which says: "''We should use the current, administrative, county''". Ceremonial strikes me as absurd. I'd favour traditional as the guiding principal, but I'd be happy to compromise and do everything straight down the line administrative, with nice infoboxes for population and all the rest of it in the articles on all the administrative counties and unitary authorities, with traditional county articles done separately and talking about history and culture, etc. For individual place articles I'd like a recognition of what may well be the real consensus but which the policy is ambiguous about, namely that we talk about a place's traditional, administrative and ceremonial counties, all qualified as such, and all in the present tense. Once policy decisions are taken they are not sealed forever, particularly if a substantial minority dissents and the policy is poorly worded and inadequate. Furthermore, I am not refusing to abide by it (you seem to lump me in with POV-pushers). I have always objected to the policy, but came across it after it was a fait accompli, and have never really had the stamina to have a go at arguing for a change in the face of people who have got their way and understandably don't wish to see the debate reopened. (Actually I don't much feel like having a marathon argument about it now, but since there is a push to complete the "list of" articles and the question of why they are all ceremonial counties was raised, I felt compelled to say something). — Trilobite (Talk) 6 July 2005 11:44 (UTC) ::::No, no, I don't mean to lump you with POV-pushers, Trilobite. If I gave that impression I apologise. Ceremonial ''or'' administrative county is fine as far as the St Neots article is concerned, just as long as the town is recorded in Cambridgeshire I shall be very content. If the policy needs to be revisited and adjusted that's fine too, let's do it. All I ask is that we are guided by common-sense and that having agreed, we all stick to the policy. That has so far failed to happen and was failing to happen long before you became involved! ::::If you have been abiding by the policy but are dissatisfied with it and want to review it, that is very laudable. It is what ''all'' of us should have done all along. Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 13:04 (UTC) :::: ''but I'd be happy to compromise and do everything straight down the line administrative, with nice infoboxes for population and all the rest of it in the articles on all the administrative counties and unitary authorities, with traditional county articles done separately and talking about history and culture, etc.'' — this is very near what I suggested a long time ago, and I'm a "''POV-pusher''", apparently! I would tolerate the organisation of places primarily by administrative areaa ''if'' all the traditional counties had separate article, and, when a traditional county was mentioned, it ''linked to one of these articles''. Indeed, a few articles were created such as Gloucestershire_(traditional), etc., but unfortunately certain editors didn't like them and made a great fuss until they were eventually deleted. It is ludicrous to organise county articles as refering to administrative counties, then organise county lists as refering to ceremonial counties, and then, when mentioning traditional counties, link to the former! :::: It would be a very simply matter to have individual articles on the different types of counties, allowing accurate links from all articles refering to one or another of them. As the bulk of the history of all counties took place when their boundaries exlcusively followed those of the traditional counties, it makes sense to include the bulk of the history information in traditional county article. When someone follows a link to Huntingdonshire from the Oliver Cromwell article, they don't want to know about some ''council district'' nonsense dreamt up in the past two decades! This should be moved to Huntingdonshire_(council_district)! If all the different counties had different articles, along with decent maps in each, they could actually be usefully referenced throughout the encyclopaedia; this cannot be done currently. :::: On the question of the bizarre choice of "ceremonial counties" as a basis for the 'county' articles at present, naturally I am in favour of replacing these with traditional counties, which are much better known and provide a stable geographical framework. Alongside these could run a similar series of articles on the administrative counties and UAAs. All places lying in each set of entities could then be properly inter-referenced. Ceremonial counties, although poorly known, could also be treated separately, and provide additional information on the location of places; however, I doubt that most people would even known what a 'ceremonial county' was, so they are a very poor choice as a basic geographical framework. 80.255 19:32, 14 August 2005 (UTC) ::Why would you be 'content' to see St. Neots as being recorded in Cambridgeshire? Surely the truth of the situation is more important? The infobox already records that it is administratively Cambridgeshire and traditionally Huntingdonshire. Why push a POV that the administration is more important to people than the centuries old traditional county? Owain 6 July 2005 14:02 (UTC) :::::Why do I get a strange sense of ''deja vu''. Do we have to go through this 'again'. G-Man 6 July 2005 18:21 (UTC) ::I thought we didn't. I thought we were going to apply common sense. But then Chrisjj makes a controversial POV statement. Owain 6 July 2005 18:44 (UTC) :::::: I've just been informed about this debate and I've yet to read all the contributions here and elsewhere but following are my initial thoughts on the matter. Whether one likes it or not the traditional (or historic) counties are still with us. I recall seeing a government statement something to the effect that "the historical counties were not abolished in 1974". Therefore it is a fact that, for example, Ulverston '''is''' (not '''was''') in the historic county of Lancashire. There's no getting away from it. Ulverston is, of course, also located in the administrative county of Cumbria. Wikipedia is all about conveying facts, so if we don't convey these basic facts about Ulverston then we are failing. We must state in an article about Ulverston its relationship to ''both'' entities. As to how we do that is another matter, as is which entity should take priority in the text. Maybe I'll make some comments about that when I've read other people's contributions to the debate. If the Wikipedia naming policy (which I haven't yet studied) says that no reference should be made to historic or traditional counties in ''location'' articles then I would humbly suggest the policy needs revising. Arcturus 6 July 2005 20:18 (UTC) :::Yes, do read it please (and its talk page too) and then come back and comment. That would be welcome. The policy doesn't say that ''no'' mention should be made of historic counties, it says that it's appropriate to mention them in historical contexts or to mention them later in an article on a place. But we also have to consider the guidelines on article structure which says the lead section should contain only the major, basic, essential points. So an article on St Neots should say in the lead section 'St Neots is a town in Cambridgeshire' and then later, perhaps in the section on history, that historically or traditionally it was in Huntingdonshire. Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 22:59 (UTC) ::The problem here Chris, is that what you consider 'basic' points differs from other people's. I for example condsider the ancient county a place is in, as it least as important, if not more important, that the current local government situation. Secondly, you AGAIN seem to like to use the past tense for traditional counties. St. Neots IS in Huntingdonshire, not WAS there. Owain 7 July 2005 08:31 (UTC) :But that is perverse and misleading. Today, Huntingdonshire (district) exists and St Neots is not in it. The only correct statement is "St Neots is in Cambridgeshire but was in Huntingdonshire before boundary changes in xxxx". The past is interesting, but it is the past - so use the past tense. In a case such as St Neots, the article must give both to avoid confusion and ambiguity. The same goes for Huntingdon, as I see is already the case --Concrete Cowboy 7 July 2005 10:47 (UTC) :I withdraw the above. I misread the map. St Neots ''is'' in Cambridgeshire ''and'' in Huntingdonshire District. There is a better map here. St Neots doesn't illuminate the debate because Huntingdonshire was a shire county and now it is a district: I don't understand why it was cited, other than to create a false semantic argument. ''[This inserted after Owain replied to my original.]'' --Concrete Cowboy 7 July 2005 17:15 (UTC) ::The reason St. Neots is used as an example is because its administrative county is different to its traditional county. The point is that St. Neots would be in Huntingdonshire traditional county whether Huntingdonshire District Council existed or not. Local government does not define what county a place is in, and never has. Owain 7 July 2005 18:39 (UTC) ::How is it perverse? Traditional counties have nothing to do with local government. Yes there was a Huntingdonshire county council, but that only existed between 1889 and 1965. Huntingdonshire itself is an entirely separate entity. Boundary changes change the names and areas of local councils, not traditional counties. Owain 7 July 2005 13:06 (UTC) :::Owain, I wonder if you can explain why it's OK for you to see things differently from others, but it's not OK for me to do so? Are you suggesting that ''everybody'' else disagrees with my view and agrees with yours? Do you have any evidence for that? :::Quite apart from the discussion about the ins and outs of county naming conventions, there is a deeper question which has not been explicitly asked. I'm going to ask it now - because it's much more important than the policy itself. :::'''Does everyone here agree to abide by the policy?''' I hereby declare that I will abide by the existing policy in editing articles and that if the policy is changed I will ''still'' be bound by the new version. If I think the policy is wrong I will discuss it further and try to get it altered, but meanwhile I will abide by it. :::Who will stand with me on that declaration? Will everyone go forward on that basis? If not, how can we go forward at all? Chris Jefferies 7 July 2005 12:10 (UTC) ::If you recall I used wording out of the policy itself. The sacred policy was never broken. Your objection was to where in the article the text should be placed. That is an argument that is entirely independent of the policy. Owain 7 July 2005 13:06 (UTC) The idea was to try and come to some compromise between the two camps, and recognise that (a) traditional counties have special significance and (b) that despite this it is inappropriate for an encyclopedia to use them as to imply they are in popular use. We should follow usage of broadsheet papers and similar material and the fact is, that they simply don't write stuff like "Carlisle is in Cumberland". Compare Guardian usage of "Carlise, Cumbria", vs Guardian usage of "Carlisle, Cumberland" - and all the results on the last are false positives, for an institution that is still happily called Cumberland. At one point we tried to propose "is within the traditional borders of" and "traditionally covers" as compromise wording. I still don't see anything wrong with these from my side. Some comments have tried to put forward the idea that administrative counties were a creation of 1889 with no precedent. This is just not true - they sprung more-or-less directly (apart from County_of_London) from the boundaries used by the Quarter Sessions courts, which had e.g. a separate East_Sussex and West_Sussex, and county borough-like entities in them (see County_corporate). There is the issue of the 1844 changes, and the Scottish exclaves. When people do use traditional counties in day to day life, they don't use the pre-1844 ones (ie I've never heard anyone claim that Wokingham is in Wiltshire, or that Lindisfarne is in County_Durham, which was the situation before 1844). I would be interested to hear opinions. People do use counties in Scotland, and at least here we don't have a nomenclature dispute over what "county" means. However, they generally use the former administrative counties rather than the "traditional" ones, due to the unmanageable exclaves. If we can get agreement from the traditional counties people on the 1844 and Scotland points, then hopefully we can get a bit more relaxed and work towards consensus. But if I see List_of_places_in_County_Durham containing Lindisfarne, then I am going to get awfully annoyed. Morwen - Talk 20:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :As the author of List_of_places_in_County_Durham, I can tell you I have no intention of listing Lindisfarne. Your compromise wording is also the kind of thing I have been using where necessary. An article on a place in Warwickshire that says it's "in the West Midlands and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire" is acceptable, though I can't help thinking that if Warwickshire has to be qualified as a traditional county in such a case, then we ought to qualify ceremonial or administrative counties in other cases, so we'd have places stated as being "in the administrative and ceremonial county of Cumbria, and in the traditional county of Westmorland". The key to accuracy, I think, is to acknowledge the separateness of the three systems and to make each definition explicit to the reader, because those who are under the impression that there is one set of counties that has had its borders changed over time will be hopelessly confused otherwise when it comes to trying to understand that somewhere can be simultaneously in ceremonial County Durham, and in administrative Stockton-on-Tees unitary authority. While in my personal POV-pedia things would be done primarily according to traditional boundaries I can certainly acknowledge that clearly spelling out all three (where they differ) is the most neutral and accurate approach. — Trilobite (Talk) 21:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC) ::Apart from Herefordshire and Rutland and a few others. Unitary authorities dont have county status and so arent the same as administrative counties. Personally I think your above formula is needlessly complicated, and likely to cause utter confusion amongst the readers. G-Man 21:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :::I think we can all agree that the system of counties, Lord-Lieutenants, administrative boundaries of local government and all the rest of it is needlessly complicated, otherwise we wouldn't be having this argument. The formula is not needlessly complicated because it just follows from that. I don't think we should be oversimplifying things and misleading the reader about the real situation. For places that have been affected by boundary changes it is just not appropriate to say they are in some county, without qualifying what is meant by county, and just leaving it at that. I'd rather the readers did a bit of thinking and appreciated the distinction between a place's traditional county, its ceremonial county, and the unitary authority that administers it, than that they just remained ignorant of the complexities of the UK's messed-up subdivisions. — Trilobite (Talk) 21:44, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :::Oh my, consensus would be lovely! Morwen asks for opinions, mine is that there are a number of sticking points. I don't believe recognising that traditional counties have special significance is one of them, I'm happy with that and county articles should certainly explain this. I suspect we can all agree on this, if so we can tick off point (a). But point (b) may be far more difficult. The 'traditional borders' styles of phrasing mentioned by Morwen is fine, but I get anxious when I see article after article stating in the lead section that place P 'is in the traditional county of C'. It seems too, well, 'systematic' and the present tense leads the reader to a conclusion that many will interpret as a point of view. :::Then there's the messy business of multiple county infoboxes. I would much prefer to see a single infobox linking to a single county article for each county name. The county articles themselves can explain the history, the significance and use of administrative, ceremonial, traditional, postal, and whatever other kind of county is pertinant along with the geography and many other aspects. :::We have to accept that British county naming is a bit of a minefield and Wikipedia articles should surely explain the muddle as clearly as possible. Multiple infoboxes will not help people understand as well as clear, concise, descriptive writing and a county map, preferably showing the borders in use at different times in the past as well as the present administrative boundaries. :::I have one further comment at this stage. When people use traditional county names in everyday life, I suspect they are often quite vague about the boundaries. For example, the Gloucestershire County Cricket ground is actually in the city of Bristol, and has been for many years, but few people could say where the traditional county line is. Many cities are like Bristol, partly within two or more traditional counties. They began in one county and spread right across the border - that's history! I don't want to have a battle over this, I'm tired of wrestling endlessly with it. But I'm not going to roll over and die either. That is why I've been pleading for everyone to declare their intentions up front. Will everyone abide by the current/future policy? If not, why not? Chris Jefferies 21:55, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :::::The footer boxes aren't infoboxes, by the way, the infoboxes are the things at the right. I support having a traditional counties footer, in the same way that historical Provinces_of_Sweden do. (see Tavastland for example). Morwen - Talk 13:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC) :::::Multiple footers are useful when the subject of the article exists in multiple name spaces with different relationships. The articles on Scottish council areas and Welsh principal areas have multiple footers where they share the same name as a traditional county and it works well. Regarding G-Man's argument that unitary authorities don't have county status — well it depends what you mean by "county"! :) The legislation clearly defines them all to be "counties" within the meaning of the Local_Government_Act_1972. e.g. from: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19951769_en_2.htm Constitution of new county of Milton Keynes 8 (1) Milton Keynes shall cease to form part of Buckinghamshire. (2) A new county shall be constituted comprising the area of Milton Keynes and shall be named the county of Milton Keynes. :::::The word means different things in different contexts, just as in City_status_in_the_United_Kingdom, ''some have doubted the right of the Crown to define the word "city" in the United Kingdom'', the same can be said of the word "county". In specific legislation is has been defined to mean specific things, but those pieces of legislation cannot redefine the meaning of the word in general usage. By the way, the southern border of Gloucestershire is easy - it's the river Avon. Owain 14:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC) BTW, I'm more than happy to use the post-1844 boundaries for all practical purposes (as of course was the intention of the Act), but of course any articles on places that fall in such detached parts can easily mention the fact that they are in a detached part. Owain 14:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC) : A formula such as ''Kyloe lies in an exclave of the traditional county of Durham, and is locally situate in Northumberland'' would be acceptable from my perspective. Then, on the County_Durham_(traditional) page, such places could be listed with an asterisk or similar and a footnote mentioning the fact that the 1843 Act purported to affect them, rather as the current article List_of_places_in_Hampshire is primarily concerned with the administrative county, but also lists places in the traditional county with a footnote to that effect. 80.255 19:47, 14 August 2005 (UTC) I am all for listing the historic counties of Great Britain.Including the 6 counties in Ulster,there are 92 traditional counties.I will be writing some articles on the postal orders used in the 4 British nations. - (Aidan Work 04:54, 11 November 2005 (UTC)) == RfC == I think this discussion needs help so I've added it to the RfC page. Here's a brief summary of the situation for those who may offer help and advice. '''RfC - Summary so far''' - There is disagreement and debate about how we should reference British counties in Wikipedia articles. Over a year ago, the subject was discussed in detail, on this page and elsewhere (various user talk pages and a variety of article talk pages). This discussion can be reviewed nearer the top of the page you are now reading. Eventually a vote was taken and a policy approved by a majority (see the Project page). Since that time disagreement has continued, some articles have been repeatedly reverted, and there is an impasse. Now the debate has intensified once again and we need some help to go forward in a way that will be positive for Wikipedia. Summary posted Chris Jefferies 7 July 2005 14:47 (UTC) :RFC response. I would say the reasonable way is to refer to the traditional counties in any article which is unambiguously before 1974, and the current administrative unit for anything which is after that time. To refer to Oliver Cromwell as connected to 'St Neots, Cambridgeshire' is quite clearly wrong. David 25px | Talk 7 July 2005 21:23 (UTC) Congratulations on being the first RfC response :-) And thanks. That's a novel suggestion and worth chewing over. How would you approach articles that span the historical divide? Most town articles for instance deal with the modern town ''and'' its history. I suppose we could apply the rule as appropriate, today's St Neots would be in Cambridgeshire but the history section would have it in Huntingdonshire prior to 1974. Works for me. Chris Jefferies 8 July 2005 00:00 (UTC) : I agree. The introductory paragprahs of an article on a town or city should be about the place as it is now. Unfortunately, it seems some Wikipedians believe that the historical county forms a part of the important data on a place as it currently exists. Much as historical counties may have resonance with some people, they remain an administrative division, and one that is no longer current. It's most relevant to mention these in the section on a place's history. -- Tarquin All this is missing the point. I brought this up originally because of the suggestion that we should all set to work filling out the "list of places in..." articles for ''ceremonial'' counties - the worst choice! The way we talk about counties in individual place articles needs clarification, as it seems people have different understandings of what the policy is. What we have got away from though is this question of why we are using the ceremonial counties ''for the county articles themselves'', and all their various spin-offs like "history of..." and "list of places in...". Now since many people find it sensible to use the traditional counties in a historical context, doesn't it make sense to have articles like History_of_Westmorland and History_of_Huntingdonshire instead of spending our time on History_of_something_that_was_arbitrarily_designated_in_1974,_didn't_exist_before_that_time,_and_had_all_its_functions_except_Lord-Lieutenancy_abolished_again_and_devolved_to_unitary_authorities_a_few_years_later? The way I see it, supporters of the policy are under the illusion that no one cares about traditional counties these days, so we should slavishly follow reorganisations of local government and treat these administrative "counties" as the real thing. Then they realise the absurdity of this because of the subsequent changes to the adminstrative structure, which means places they like to think of as being in the "West Midlands" are in fact administered by various unitary authorities. While I'd like to see Wikipedia using a stable reference frame to organise our county articles, with all the administrative and ceremonial deviations duly and prominently noted, supporters of the status quo are stuck in an unfortunate halfway house at some indeterminate time in the late 1970s, not acknowledging that things have moved on (something they are quick to accuse supporters of traditional counties of) and former administrative counties like the West Midlands no longer have county councils. Why does the assignment of a Lord-Lieutenant to an arbitrarily delineated patch of ground grant it the right to an article listing all its places, or outlining its history? Why don't we either use the ones that really matter from an administrative perspective, or the stable reference frame that is the 900-year-old traditional system? Why? — Trilobite (Talk) 14:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC) I want to try and help to resolve this difficult situation. I live in Cardiff, watch the page and a bit saddened about the number of edits which do not actually improve the article, but just flip between opposing views as to whether “in the traditional county of Glamorgan” (or somesuch) should appear in the introduction. We need some way of stopping the attrition of edits and reverts so we can all get on with life. The only way of doing this is having policies. We have one on the use of county names but it clearly can be read more than one way. The “put Glamorgan in the introduction” camp point to the acceptable Coventry example in the policy: ''Coventry is in the West Midlands, and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire''. The “leave Glamorgan out” camp point to the ''only as an afternote'' comment in the policy proper. There seems to way out but to refine the policy to be explicit about the use of traditional county names in article introductions. If there was to be such a proposal, we would need to consider the relative value added by referencing current administrative boundaries compared to traditional counties. The current boundaries tell us about the governance of the place, and put it in the context of regional political and service delivery frameworks. The traditional boundaries tell us where it is, with reference to a spatial framework that to all intents and purposes has no current relevance. And people know where it is anyway, because there is a map. --Dave63 11:53, 13 July 2005 (UTC) :While I disagree with you that that the traditional boudaries have no current relevance, I do see that it seems sensible at a first glance to do everything according to administrative counties. If I lived in another country and came across this dispute I would think why don't they just follow the administrative boundaries, because as you say, they "tell us about the governance of the place, and put it in the context of regional political and service delivery frameworks." But it's not as simple as that, because "Cardiff is a city in Cardiff" is not a very useful statement. I haven't followed the dispute in this particular article, and don't much feel like getting involved, but I see from the introduction at the moment it says "it is now administered as a unitary authority" and leaves it at that. Now this is a useful piece of information and a much more sensible way of wording it, and it probably deserves to go in the introduction (although I can't understand why it is considered contrary to the policy or an irrelevant piece of information to say that it's in Glamorgan). However, as I keep trying to point out, the main thing I am concerned about is not the policy on how to word individual articles on towns and cities, but the way we organise our county articles. Cardiff will have to go in the List_of_places_in_Cardiff article under the present plan over at Wikipedia:WikiProject_UK_geography/tasks, becuase these are the "principal areas" that popped up in 1996. Doesn't this seem a bit silly? — Trilobite (Talk) 16:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC) So are you seriously suggesting that we use as a geographic reference, county boundaries which do not appear on any modern maps?. Would you like to show me a modern atlas which shows Birmingham in Warwickshire for example, or Liverpool in Lancashire. All of the modern maps and atlases I've seen either use ceremonial county boundaries or purely administrative boundaries. Absolutely none of them use the traditional county boundaries. With regards to the West Midlands it is still a perfectly legitimate county, the policy is quite clear about the metropolitan counties: ''we should treat the metropolitan counties as real counties the fact that their county councils have been abolished does not change their legal status''. Berkshire no longer has a county council but is still a perfectly legitimate county. ::Ordnance Survey maps (which most other maps are derived from) only show administrative boundaries. This means that yes, traditional boundaries are not shown, but neither are 'ceremonial' boundaries. Can you show me a modern map that shows Reading in Berkshire, or Blackpool in Lancashire? Ordnance survey maps don't show a lot of things - government regions, health authority boundaries, police areas, fire service areas, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Oh yes, and I know that Berkshire is still a perfectly legitimate county - so is Huntingdonshire! Owain 14:26, 18 July 2005 (UTC) Also it is perfectly alright to have a History_of_Huntingdonshire article, I dont know where you have gotten the idea that it isn't. G-Man 18:24, 13 July 2005 (UTC) "Cardiff is a city in Wales. Traditionally, it was in the county of Glamorgan; today, it is a Unitary_authority." What's the problem? Grace Note 05:06, 20 July 2005 (UTC) ::Not bad, but it uses the past tense for the traditional county. Owain 08:53, 20 July 2005 (UTC) ::: Does the "Past Historic" tense still exist in modern English? --Concrete Cowboy 23:41, 21 July 2005 (UTC) ===Where now?=== I've visited the RfC page and can't see any reference to counties. Is the discussion going on here or should I look elsewhere? My initial thought is that the current coverage of historic / traditional counties in Wikipedia is way over the top. There are 800 odd pages linked to Traditional_counties_of_England. While there will a few places where the historic county is of interest, I can't believe it is anywhere near 800. Often the first line of an article will say the place is in Xshire. Do we really then need to say it is in Xshire ceremonial county and Xshire traditional county? --Cavrdg 18:24, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :The discussion is going on here. Items drop off the RfC page after a short time, it's really an alerting system and an invitation to join in, not a place for discussion. I agree with your comments on traditional counties, and so do the policies as I understand them. The real problem, even if we rewrite the county names policy, is that people won't abide by it. :I stated clearly that I will abide by (ie write articles according to) the policy no matter whether I agree with it or not - even if it changes. So far nobody else on either side of the argument has joined me in doing so. There lies the real difficulty. A reworded policy will ''still'' be ignored by a minority. What a tragedy for Wikipedia. :-( Chris Jefferies 18:51, 1 August 2005 (UTC) ::People shouldn't be denied knowledge of what county a place is in by unrelated local government changes. Local government '''is''' important if one happens to live in a given local government area; but which organisation someone happens to pay their council tax to is '''not''' the only important factor when describing a place. If the first line of an article says the place is in Xshire which is the same as the ceremonial and traditional county then they need not be mentioned. The problem is when an article says a place is in Xshire, and the traditional county happens to be Yshire. Both pieces of information are relevant and with the policy suggesting that there shouldn't be disambiguation pages they should both be mentioned in the one article. I am abiding by the policy regarding the wording to use, but my edits are routinely reverted with no explanation. The fact that there are 800+ articles referring to traditional counties should show the depth of feeling about them. There are different types of area that could be legitimately called 'counties'. The 'traditional county advocates' have got used to this fact, but it seems the 'administrative/ceremonial advocates' have not - despite the fact that they themselves ackowledge that at least two types of 'county' exist! There is no conflict stating all three in articles about places or the county articles themselves - the real problems are going to come with the 'List of places in...' articles. Owain 19:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :::I will abide by (ie write articles according to) the policy no matter whether I agree with it or not - even if it changes. This is what I've already been doing as consistently as possible, although the policy seems fairly weak and ambiguous so I cannot promise that I have the same interpretation of it as everyone else. I still would like to see the policy revised. — Trilobite (Talk) 19:00, 1 August 2005 (UTC) ::::I agree. The policy is weak and is in need of revision. I had wondered about putting up a proposal to amend it. Getting back to the argument; Wikipedia is about facts. Places are still in historical counties, and these historical counties still exist - FACT. I prefer to state locations in terms of their current, transient, administrative county/borough/unitary authority AND their permanent historic county location. I'm not that bothered which comes first, but what I really object to are edits which state "...was formerly in the Historic county of Lancashire....", or something similar. Such descriptions are erroneous and I edit them accordingly (when I get round to it). Arcturus 19:23, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :::::Thats a matter of opinion and argument as to whether historic counties still exist or not in any meaningful sense, I dont see it as ironclad 'fact'. Now In my experience 99% of people use a great deal of common sense and discretion when it comes to writing about counties. However there are a few people who dont, and are quite fanatical. And unfortunately we need a relatively prescriptive policy to stop them from wreaking havoc, which is why it was created in the first place. Now if anybody would like to propose revisions of the policy I wouldnt mind discussing them. Otherwise I'm not sure what these discussions are achieving. Thirdly the 'places in' problem could be solved by having a 'Places historically part of X county' section. G-Man 19:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC) Thanks for the confirmation that this is the place and the outline of the arguments. Most people seem to have some sense of balance but I still think the historic counties are being given too much prominence. Take a couple of articles I've looked at today. The first fact mentioned in Presteigne is its role in the former Radnorshire. Is that the most important thing to be said about the town? Beedon is a very short article but out of some 530 characters of information, 54 are in six occurrences of ''Berkshire''. --Cavrdg 20:28, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :I wonder if we might at least agree that it's neither necessary nor desirable to use counties to inform readers where towns or villages are. Most Wikipedia users are not British and won't be familiar with our counties; articles about places can and perhaps ''should'' use the automatic map template which is more precise than the county and cannot be misinterpreted. :I am not going to rework the policy while there is still so much disagreement. Others are welcome to do so if they wish and I will take part in the discussion and cast my vote if we reach that point. The vote last time was 13 to 2 in favour of the current policy, Wikipedia has grown since then so the number of voters may increase. :I'd like to thank Trilobite for supporting me in agreeing to abide by the current or future policy. Will anyone else join us in that declaration ''before'' any changes are made? In my view if we cannot get a good majority in favour of accepting agreed policy we might just as well give up now. In particular it would be good to hear a clear statement from Owain on this. Chris Jefferies 20:40, 1 August 2005 (UTC) ::I have stuck to the exact wording defined by the policy, even to the extent of using markup such as"X is in Y, and within the traditional borders of Z" . The problem is that the policy is inflexible, contradictory, has been edited after it was voted on, is not what people are actually applying, and leaves very little room for common sense. It is not possible to arrive at statements of fact by consensus, but it should be possible to arrive at a solution that allows all the facts to be presented without causing anyone offence! Owain 11:28, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::No your not, your using a very highly selective interpretation of the policy which suits you. Yes the policy has been ammended, but the ammendment was approved by all the people who originally voted for it. And thirdy, yes I'm quite happy to obide by the policy. G-Man 20:29, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
::::::Like I've already pointed out, the 'policy' is ambiguous. You have your interpretation, and I have mine. So long as artclies respect both, what is the problem? They are not incompatible, they can both live happily on the same page. Any policy that favours exclusion of one set of facts over the other is clearly not in the interests of common sense. Regarding the policy amendment, Concrete Cowboy made these changes which were never discussed or voted on. Owain 09:41, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
::::Do they still exist or not? Here's what Britannica has to say about it. Well, the start of the article anyway. If anyone subscribes to this no-so-free online encyclopaedia it might be worth letting the rest of see the contents of the full article. Arcturus 22:01, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::Despite its name, the Encyclopedia Brittanica is written in America by Americans, so it doesn't surprise me that they're so out of touch. As far as I know the EB is the only encyclopedia which still refers to traditional counties. Look at this entry about Middlesex from encyclopedia.com http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/M/MidsexE1ng.asp for example. G-Man 20:20, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
::::::They disagree with you, therefore they must be "out of touch"? Are the government out of touch when they continually issue re-assurances that traditional counties are not affected by local government re-organisation? encyclopedia.com contradicts itself as well as you here http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/e/england.asp: It uses the phrase "former metropolitan counties", yet you insist they still exist. It also claims Berkshire isn't a administrative county, yet you claim it is. It also mentions "The 39 so-called ancient or geographical counties of England typically differ in area". That sentence is in the present tense — yet it uses the word "former" elsewhere. Just like British_Isles_(terminology), it is obviously a complicated situation that few people understand fully. This is where Wikipedia can help — we can create articles that explain it all fully, without hiding behind overly-restrictive policies that just create ambiguities and confusion. Owain 09:41, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
:Well, there are now three people here who agree to follow policy in present or future form. In other words, three people who are prepared to say, up front, that they will stick to the decision of the majority in the event of a vote - even if they, personally, voted with the minority.
:Once again I must ask you, Owain, will you also pledge to follow Wikipedia policy come what may? Your failure to commit yourself is becoming noticeable. Chris Jefferies 20:59, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
::I have already stated that I am already following the policy and will continue to do so in the interests of article consistency (as long as the policy doesn't contradict facts or common sense). That's all anyone can say. Owain 09:41, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
:::That sounds ambiguous to me. G-Man 20:01, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
:It certainly isn't the sort of statement I'd hope to see from a Wikipedia contributor. To me it says, very clearly indeed, 'I'll follow the policy if I agree with it, otherwise I won't'. And it is most certainly ''not'' 'all anyone can say'. Three of us have ''already'' said more, that we'll follow the policy even if we disagree with it. Chris Jefferies 22:09, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
:The problem here is that I already am following the policy, and you think I'm not. The policy shouldn't be about pushing one person's PoV over another, it should allow all the facts to be presented in a way that is acceptable to all parties. Obviously I will continue to follow the policy, but work to get it changed where it is deficient. I really can't be any more specific than that can I?! Owain 18:48, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
:OK, that sounds good. And if it's possible to understand the policy in more than one way, at the very least it must lack clarity and will require tweaking. Thanks Owain, this feels like progress. Chris Jefferies 22:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
::FWIW, I agree that maybe any kind of county information isn't necessarily the best way to describe where places are to non-British readers in the opening paragraph. Perhaps something generic (eastern England, southern Wales, &c;) with a picture would be good for the opening sentence, followed by explanations of the various traditional, administrative and ceremonial boundaries later... Owain 06:54, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
:::If we are going to tweak the policy, is the example given of ''County of York'' correct? If it refers to the city, surely it doesn't meet the ''are significantly larger than the town they are centred upon, or have no such centring'' criterion. Also on that section, I'm not convinced about the special use of ''Borough''. I think it's a status much the same as City so it may be needed in a few cases for clarity but generally not. --Cavrdg 07:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
== More discussion copied from User_talk:G-Man ==
While Owain may know what you are referring to in your answer at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_geography, I unfortunately am left somewhat in the dark. As the original creator of those pages can you enlighten me please? -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 2 July 2005 18:53 (UTC)
:Well the policy is quite clear that we should use administrative or ceremonial counties as Owain well knows. If Owains idea was followed it would result in absurdities like having Birmingham in the List_of_places_in_Warwickshire article. Or Manchester in Lancashire. G-Man 2 July 2005 18:59 (UTC)
So that means I did the right thing when I created those lists then? That's a weight off my mind, I was having fears of having to re-write the lot... -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 2 July 2005 19:01 (UTC)
::Wait a sec, why is having Birmingham in a list of places in Warwickshire, or Machchester in a list of places in Lancashire 'absurd'? That is the geographical frame of reference that has been used for centuries. I'm sure people in the Wirral would also rather be listed with the rest of Cheshire rather than lumped together with Liverpool and Southport. The list of places is Scottish defuct regions is still an anomaly as well. Owain 3 July 2005 10:49 (UTC)
:Yes Owain, as I suspected you really are out of touch with reality. It may well have been the "geographic reference frame that has been used for centuries" but it isn't the reference frame which is used any more. G-Man 3 July 2005 11:26 (UTC)
::You don't have to be quite so hostile. I am merely pointing out that it is not absurd to say Manchester is in Lancashire. It would be absurd to say Manchester is in Hampshire, but NOT Lancashire. The Royal Mail think Manchester is in Lancashire. Freinds of Real Lancashire think Manchester is in Lancashire. Lancashire County Cricket Club think Manchester is in Lancashire, and so on. I don't know what geographic reference frame you're thinking of, but I can't think of any that have replaced traditional counties. The government themselves have said that administrative changes don't change 'where' places are. Administrative counties define areas for administration, Ceremonial counties define areas for certain ceremonial functions, and traditional counties define areas for geographic purposes. I haven't lost touch with reality, I just happen to know that there is more to 'reality' than certain people would have us believe! Owain 3 July 2005 15:53 (UTC)
:Ever heard of Greater_Manchester? which is what most people seem to use. "traditional counties define areas for geographic purposes" - used by whom exactly, would you like to tell me where I can buy a modern atlas which shows Manchester in Lancashire, no I thought not. The fact that the freids of real Lancashire think that Manchester is in lancashire is hardly a major surprise. G-Man 3 July 2005 16:35 (UTC)
::When you say 'most people seem to use', what set of people are you referring to and in what context? People from towns with a separate identity to Manchester are hardly likely to use it, especially when the Royal Mail don't. "Traditional counties define areas for geographic purposes" is true regardless of who use them, it is a fact. Owain 12:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Is this the right place to continue this discussion? I don't know, but anyway... I think it is worth placing a note on the places in Lancashire list that there are areas that used to be in Lancashire that are now considered to be within other administrative boundaries, and then going on to say what those places/boundaries are... This is what I have done when I have created other places lists in the past. -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 11:24, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
:::Owain wonders why G-Man needs to be so 'hostile'? The first thing I'd say is that G-Man is not hostile, he is probably just exasperated. So am I, so are others.
:::It seems clear to me that Owain is prepared to twist and misrepresent anything in order to bolster his view that traditional or historic counties should have priority in all Wikipedia articles about British places. He will say in reply, 'Give me evidence, where have I misrepresented anything?' To be honest I cannot be bothered, it's a waste of time. I've spent far too much time discussing this ''ad nauseam'', 18 months is enough for anyone. Owain does not ''want'' a rational discussion. The evidence is plastered all over Wikipedia, on articles about British places, on their talk pages, on user talk pages like this one, on the policy talk page, on the UK Geography project talk page.
:::Owain rarely takes the trouble to point back to previous discussions, always preferring to start yet again at the beginning. For example, the position of the Royal Mail was investigated and discussed in detail in the policy discussion. The consensus was that Owain's view of it is incorrect.
:::Francs2000 is right, this is ''not'' the best place for this discussion. Frankly, there is nowhere on Wikipedia that ''is'' the right place. This discussion should not be taking place at all! It is high time Owain accepted the policy vote and stopped trying to wriggle around it. As far as I can tell Owain is not interested in Wikipedia policy if it gets in the way of his opinion. He is not interested in co-operation. He will be content only when everyone else agrees to do it ''his'' way. Chris Jefferies 12:17, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Quite right whenever anything relating to UK geography is being discussed, I am forever seeing Owain popping up and saying "I think we should use traditional counties" when he knows perfectly well we already have a policy about the matter, which I usually have to point out. Its as if we've never been through this before. G-Man 18:47, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
::Regardless of how exasperated you are there is no justification for ad hominem attacks, at just cheapens any argument you may have. Owain 12:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
::I'm not asking for priority, I am asking for parity. It's not too much to ask. Of course I want a rational discussion, it's just that I never seem to get one, just thinly-veiled attacks and excuses. Owain 12:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
::My view of it? What do you think my view is? The facts are that the Royal Mail has no county information listed in the main Postal Address File at all anymore. They have an 'Alias' file that contains former postal, administrative and traditional counties listed for every address. It is interesting to note that the Royal Mail's view of administrative counties DOES NOT include Greater Manchester, Merseyside, &c.; Owain 12:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
::There's little point sticking to a policy if it gets in the way of useful information. For the record I have stuck to the policy wording and never removed any administrative county information. The debate now seems to revolve around where in the article the wording can be used. This is not actually defined by the policy. Owain 12:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
:::I assume your view of the Royal Mail's position is what you say it is - 'The Royal Mail think Manchester is in Lancashire'. This is incorrect, the Royal Mail require only the street address and the post code, anything else is optional. They do not 'think' Manchester is in Lancashire. Please scroll to the top of this page and use your browser's search function to find 'Royal Mail'. You can read the discussion there, we don't need to go over it again. Chris Jefferies 13:53, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
:::I have a further point to make in reply to Owain who writes 'There's little point sticking to a policy if it gets in the way of useful information'.
:::Actually there is ''every'' point. The reason for following policy has nothing to do with the usefulness or otherwise of information. The reason for following policy is to avoid anarchy. If Wikipedians were to do their own thing regardless of policy, Wikipedia would die. It would be a free-for-all. If the policy is ineffective or inefficient or incorrect, we should continue to follow it but meanwhile work on getting it changed. Chris Jefferies 10:27, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
::The Royal Mail only ''require'' the street address and the post code to deliver mail, but they ''do'' have county information in their PAF Alias file for every single postcode. The three fields are Former Postal county, Traditional county, and Administrative county. In the case of Manchester they are 'Lancashire', 'Lancashire' and 'Manchester'. In the case of Salford they are 'Lancashire', 'Lancashire' and 'Salford'. No mention of 'Greater Manchester' whatsoever.
::We are hardly dealing with anarchy here, we are dealing with things that are very well defined. Ill thought-out policies lead to edit wars that no-one is happy with. Nobody is proposing anything that would lead to anarchy, just a policy that would allow all facts to be presented in a consistent way. Owain 12:44, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
:::::The PAF Alias File is designed to spot things added to the address by the user that need not be there. It isn't a comment on what county a place is or was in. http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/jump2;jsessionid=RIEVLPH25UNKQFB2IGEUPLQUHRAYOQ2K?mediaId=400086&catId;=400084 Mrsteviec 13:48, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
::The very link you posted states: "The County record - holds traditional, administrative and postal county information". Therefore for every postcode in the UK, the PAF Alias File will tell you the traditional, administrative and postal county. It can be used in whatever way you want. Postcodes were originally designed to speed up delivery of mail, but the database nowadays is used for all sorts of geodemographic purposes. If you want only the pieces of information that are required in a postal address, that is usually just the house number and postcode. You don't need to provide a street address or a locality, but that doesn't mean that the information held in the PAF is unnecessary or wrong! The extra fields in the alias file give you information regarding that postcode, not to tell you what can be ignored! Owain 19:28, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::::It seems to me that this postal county debate is an irrelevance. Everyone, so far as I can see, agrees that the Post Office has a variety of different definitions of counties on file, but has no single official standard and does not require them in order to process letters. The real contentious issues are whether traditional counties can be regarded as still existing, and whether traditional counties should be mentioned as prominently, less prominently or more prominently than administrative counties or unitary authorities in articles. My view is that the traditional counties do appear to still have some form of continuing existence, but that it is unclear which which boundaries this refers, and that they are not used for any official purposes (official as in legal or governmental, rather than by certain sporting bodies, or in being kept on record somewhere). Given this, and that a growing number of people are totally unfamiliar with traditional counties (for instance, the "West Riding" is almost never used around Sheffield), I have always believe it is clearer to describe a location in an introduction as lying in the administrative county, and then discuss the traditional arrangements (where they differ) in a history section - without necessarily taking any particular view on their continued existence; unless the traditional arrangements are particularly notable (e.g. Welsh_Bicknor). Would this be satisfactory? Warofdreams 13:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
::The Royal Mail '''used''' to have one official standard - their own postal counties. Due to popular demand (general dissatisfaction with their postal counties) they added the administrative and traditional information to the PAF. None of them are needed for addressing purposes, as we've already discussed, but the fact that for any given UK postcode they can be determined is certainly useful. I don't favour any type of county having any more prominence than any other; although administrative county information is becoming less and less useful as an indicator of where a place is: due to continual boundary and structure changes, and the overall uselessness of untary boroughs being administrative counties in their own right. A degree of flexibility needs to be taken on a per-article basis due to the differing circumstances in different places. For exmaple, I've been updating all the English county infoboxes to the new look 'n' feel, but have been unable to make a consistent template for them, due to the different local government situations. So long as each article explains the differences between the types of county in a clear way, then none of us should have any problems! Owain 13:57, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
There seems to be some confusion between what the PAF file and the Alias file are and what they contain.
The Alias File, which is separate entity to the PAF, is a list of entries commonly found in each field of address data '''in error'''. It is not an attempt to create a list of "acceptable alternatives" and came about not "due to popular demand" but because people get postal addresses wrong and add extra bits that need to be cleaned and converted to the correct postal address.
In the PAF the Royal Mail '''still''' hold their postal counties as they were in 1996. The field had been renamed "Former Postal County". Each Post Town that existed in 1996 is linked to a "Former Postal County" and that is the '''only''' county information held on the PAF. The data will never be updated again and should new Post Towns be added the "Former Postal County" field will not be populated. There is another field called "County Flag" and for every entry this is set to "0" which means "do not use". In December 2000 the former postal county data was removed from the PAF and added to the Alias file.
This doesn't really have much to do with if traditional counties still exist but hopefully clears that up. Mrsteviec 15:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Thanks Mrsteviec, that was a helpful and illuminating comment on the postal county. Much needed, like a refreshing, cool drink on a hot day!
:::I wish we could also get away from the argument that historic counties are necessary as a means of describing where a place is. Counties are not really well suited to locating places, a simple map is better. It's more precise, and there's a really easy Wikipedia mechanism for adding an outline map of the UK with any chosen place marked by a dot.
:::May we therefore strike off (a) postal county and (b) describing a place's location as reasons for mentioning traditional counties in article lead sections? No objections? Good! Unless of course someone wishes to disagree... Chris Jefferies 17:23, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Mrsteviec writes ' ''The Alias File, which is separate entity to the PAF, is a list of entries commonly found in each field of address data '''in error''''' '. As the county field is no longer required, then surely everything is in error? So why bother listing a few possibilities? The Royal Mail never had this information before, they just told everyone to use their postal counties. ' ''It is not an attempt to create a list of "acceptable alternatives"'' '. It clearly is though, because if any one of the three is used it can be cross-referenced to the correct postcode, and hence the correct postal address. In any case, as I've mentioned before, these databases may have been intended for one purpose but they are always used for purposes they were never intended for. See http://www.capscan.co.uk/mcd5demo.htm and try PE191AA or NP204UR, or a postcode of your choice — this particular piece of software will return the correct traditional, administrative and former postal county. This functionality was not available before — the addition of these fields was by customer demand. Owain 18:38, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
== "Town, Region" form ==
I'd like to open a whole new can of worms if I may... The standard form for a place-name in the US is "Town, Region", eg "Chicago, Illinois" -- almost as if that's the full name of the place. Howver, this is quite alien-sounding when applied to places outside North America. We simply don't say "Perthshire, Scotland". We say (and write) "Perthshire in Scotland". -- Tarquin 09:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
:Yes, it's an interesting point. At present I think the first occurrence of a name 'Townville' results in an article called just 'Townville', further occurrences are distinguished with a comma and additional text. That's Wikipedia convention and is fine for the URL, but can seem a bit odd as the article title on the page.
:Personally I feel inclined to live with it. It works, it's simple, and different conventions for different countries might be a bit confusing. But in principle I'd not object if this convention was changed. It ''would'' read better. Chris Jefferies 10:12, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
::I always change this if I come across it in article text, as it stands out as an Americanism. However, I don't see too much wrong with having "Town, Region" as the article title if disambiguation is needed, since it's only like an address really. It just looks bad in prose. I suppose I would prefer "Town (Region)" as the article title in an ideal Wikipedia (this is how the German and lots of other Wikipedias do it) but I can cope with the status quo, just so long as we can keep changing things like "he came from Truro, Cornwall" to "he came from Truro in Cornwall" in articles themselves. — Trilobite (Talk) 14:34, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have said -- I was thinking of text within articles. Which means this is a Manual of Style issue rather than Naming conventions, and I've started this discussion in the wrong place. Oops! -- Tarquin 14:58, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
::Is this in the MoS somewhere then? If it is it should definitely be changed. — Trilobite (Talk) 15:08, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
:::Wouldn't this mean moving hundreds of articles and then fixing thousands of links?. If you look at List_of_towns_in_England you'll see we would have our work cut out if we decided to change the naming convention. G-Man 18:51, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
::::* "Chigago, Illinois" is equivalent to "Liverpool, England" (not "Liverpool, Lancashire" (!)). In the US, the same names are used in many states. They often duplicate names from the "old country" (famously, Paris,_Texas (Wim_Wenders)). So Plymouth should be the original one and Plymouth_(disambiguation) give the others. BUT I notice that "town,county" notation is used within England to disambiguate. For example, see Wolverton. Conclusion: the "city, state" (or "village, county") notation should only be used where there is a significant ambiguity; the town of earliest foundation should have precedence. --Concrete Cowboy 10:07, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
:::::"''"Chigago, Illinois" is equivalent to "Liverpool, England" (not "Liverpool, Lancashire" (!))''" How did you come to this conclusion? Proteus (Talk) 18:11, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
:::::: The fully qualified name (city, county, state) equivalence is "Chicago, Cook County, Illinois" :: "Liverpool, Lancashire, England". What other conclusion could I come to? --Concrete Cowboy 23:16, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
:::::::You seem to be under the misguided impression that a "county" is the same thing in the US and the UK. US counties are much more like UK boroughs or districts. Equating Cook County with Lancashire is just stupid. Proteus (Talk) 21:18, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
:::::::: You seem to be under the even more misguided impression that a UK county and a US State are the same. The state of California alone is about the same size as Great Britain, the population is a little less and the GDP is substantially more. Yes, there are small states in the US, like Rhode Island - but there are small states in Europe too - Luxembourg or Malta for example. Matching Cook_County to Lancashire is far more accurate than matching Illinois to Lancashire. --Concrete Cowboy 11:35, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
::::::These are both correct, but unnecessarily long-winded. That's why for any given policy there will always need to be flexibility for common sense. Owain 08:11, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
::::But if, as has been said, this is about text within articles, and not naming conventions, there's no moving to be done. — Trilobite (Talk) 15:35, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
:The Wikipedia convention is that the first article ''written'' gets the bare name (not necessarily the oldest town/city), subsequent articles for other places with the same name get the comma and modifier. Or so I understand. Chris Jefferies 10:23, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
:::Is this really true? I can see that most of the time if there is a city that stands out above the others its article will probably have been written first, but I thought it was decided on a case-by-case basis. A lot of the time (often where they are bigger than the others, but not by much) British towns and cities get primary topic status where there are lots of American places with the same name, on the grounds that they're older, the original source of the name, and in some way stand out (such as their age meaning they will be mentioned more in historical articles, or something). Even sometimes where the population of an American city is twice that of a British one (as is the case with Durham,_North_Carolina) the British one gets its name undisambiguated on these grounds. There are exceptions though, such as Boston. I for one wouldn't try and argue that Boston in Lincolnshire deserves primary topic status or even equal disambiguation with Boston in Massachusetts on the grounds that it was founded earlier. — Trilobite (Talk) 15:35, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
:Well, I remember reading that it was based simply on the order the articles were created, but I don't remember where I read that and I know my memory is not ''always'' accurate :-) Chris Jefferies 22:12, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
:We also need to take account of the fact that there is no administrative county of Berkshire any more, though it would be hard to argue that Berkshire does not exist. Mind you, it would be more clearly arguable that Middlesex no longer exists. (I'm not sure where this leaves us...) Mark O'Sullivan 13:59, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
::Both the traditional counties of Berkshire and Middlesex still exist. Owain 14:33, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
::: They exist only in memory and in historic texts. They don't exist legally, any more than Wessex does. --Concrete Cowboy 23:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
:::: False. They have ''unequivocable legal existence''. They were ''legally created'' and have ''never'' been ''legally abolished''. Thus, they exist in the eyes of the law whatever some fantasists would have you believe. Legislation has been very explicit in creating new entities to serve an updated administrative function, and in not abolishing the old ones. Furthermore, in the case the Lancashire, complicating factors relating the Dutchy also use only its historic boundaries. In 1974 some thought was given to these factors, which resulted in the LGA legislation being altered to ensure that new 'non-metropolitan' "county" unequivocably left the dutchy intact; the dutchy of Lancaster covers the whole of the county; just as Dutchy of Cornwall covers the whole county of Cornwall, and was completely unaffected by the Counties (detchted parts) Act of 1843.
:::: A second reason for this deliberate leaving alone of the ancient counties in law stems from the fact that many could not be legally abolished by parliament anyway; counties that existed by repute since prehistory enjoy a Common_Law existence; the current power of the monarch (and the government) does not extend to abolishing entities not created by the same power. The Anglosaxons adopted pre-existing entities in many cases; the Normans adopted Aglo-saxon entities; neither created most of them anew. Trying to abolish something like Sussex would be like trying to abolish Scotland; it couldn't be done de jure! 80.255 15:33, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
::: Yesterday I drove from Nelson in Lancashire to Gisburn in Yorkshire. On the way I passed a sign on the Lancashire/West Riding boundary welcoming me to the 'Historic County of the West Riding of Yorkshire'. Later, I arrived in the town of Yarm. As I drove over the Tees I passed a sign proclaiming Yorkshire, North Riding. These entities DO exist. They were not abolished in 1974. Only the administrative equivalents of them were. Our historic counties are still with us. The problem is that many people have been brainwashed by local authorities into thinking that they have been abolished. The local authorities now stick up signs teling us that we're entering their 'territory'. Well I don't want to know that! I don't want to know that I'm entering the administrative borough of Stockton on Tees. As far as I'm concerned Stockton on Tees borough is the organisation that empties my dustbins! However, I do want to know in which historic part of the country I'm in. In several articles that I've commenced in Wikipedia (see articles categorised under Islands_of_Furness for example) I state the location in terms of both historic and administrative counties. I mention the historic county first, due to its permanency. I wish other contributors would stop removing references to the historic counties from these and other articles. Like it or not, the historic counties are still with us. They do not "exist only in memory and in historic texts". Does Furness exist? Yes. But it doesn't exist "legally", whatever that might mean. Arcturus 20:42, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
:I have absolutely no desire to have this argument again, see the long discussions above. If your mentioning the historic county first then that is in clear violation of policy, and anyone is entitled to remove it. G-Man 21:06, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
::G-Man, if you have "absolutely no desire to have this argument again", then don't! Go and find some other topic to occupy your mind. For me, it's new, and I reserve the right to discuss the matter, as do plenty of other contributors, it would seem. I've had a look at the policy, which you and others of like mind seem to have been instrumental in formulating. I don't like it. It's not a particularly well-written policy and in many respects it's too restrictive and prescriptive. I'll shortly be putting forward a proposal for a major revision of it. Arcturus 21:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
::: G-Man will accuse you of "breaking policy" any time he doesn't get his own way. Please be assured that such accusations have absolutely nothing to do with the actual policy, and everything to do with G-Man's personal opinions, which he likes to pretend are reflected perfectly by the mess of a policy currently in existence, when they clearly aren't. Until there is a policy to unequivocably show his oppinionisations to be false, G-Man will containue to manipulate it and attempt to insinuate that anyone who doesn't share his views is 'breaking' it.
::: If your forthcoming major revision comprises a more sensible and accurate reflection of the continued legal existence of the ancient and enduring Counties, and recognises that organsing articles by way of an unchanging, static set of popularly understood geographical entities is far more sensible than using constantly changing administrative dog's dinner which is primarily designed to facilitate council services rather than provide any sort of useful geographical frame of reference, then you can count on my support. 80.255 15:33, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
::::''G-Man will accuse you of "breaking policy" any time he doesn't get his own way. Please be assured that such accusations have absolutely nothing to do with the actual policy, and everything to do with G-Man's personal opinions''
::::Funny, I could have written exactly the same thing about you. G-Man 16:30, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
::::: You've been "interpretting" this policy to suit your own agenda much more than I have. It boils down to the fact that any policy that enables such diverse interpretations, from whomever, is simply a ''bad policy'' to begin with. 80.255 16:34, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
== addendum tweaks ==
The ''addendum'' consists of text that was added after the policy was voted for. I have brought the section of text following the asterix within the ''addendum'' and added an ''N.b.'' clarifying that it was indeed added as an afterthought and was not put to the vote. I thought this deserved to be made clear; nothing else has been altered. 80.255 23:19, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
==Redundant or competing pages: Places, countries, etc.==
Please see Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions for a discussion on consolidating pages. Maurreen (talk) 16:50, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
==Trad counties of England infoboxes ==
{{infobox England traditional county|
|County= Buckinghamshire
|Image= Image:EnglandBuckinghamshireTrad.png
|SizeRank= 32nd
|Size= 477,151 acres
|Water= ?
|CountyTown= Buckingham
|ChapmanCode=BKM
|detailedImage=Image:Buckinghamshire_Traditional_Numbered.png1. Slough
2. Beaconsfield
3. Great_Marlow
4. High_Wycombe
5. Chesham
6. Princes_Risborough
7. Wendover
8. Aylesbury
9. Winslow
10. Buckingham
11. Fenny_Stratford
12. Stony_Stratford
13. Newport_Pagnell }} In Buckinghamshire (and no doubt others) User:owain appended one of his hobby-horse infoboxes (see right) to the end of the standard infobox, as if it were part of it. An unfamiliar visitor could very easily mis-read the info as current and believe that Buckingham is the county town. It hasn't been so for over 400 hundred years! This is obsessiveness taken to extremes. For now, I've moved it down to the para on "places that are no longer part of modern Bucks" and copied it to History_of_Buckinghamshire. In my mind, the latter is the only reasonable home for it and I am minded to pull it from the main article since it adds nothing. If it were a copy of one of the old county maps, it would amount to something. Shown in the context of the UK as a whole, the differences are invisible. --Concrete Cowboy 17:25, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :This is why we need separate articles on the traditional counties. In a Buckinghamshire_(traditional) article, this infobox wouldn't be confusing at all. More detailed maps of the traditional counties could also be provided on such separate pages. I cannot see a single reasonable objection to this. 80.255 17:36, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: I'm happy with that proposal. Of course if I were the one writing the article, I wouldn't be happy becuase very few people would read it. On the other hand, if it were in the History_of_Buckinghamshire, then it would be very useful indeed - and people would read it! --Concrete Cowboy 22:17, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :As if it were part of it? Come on - it clearly says "Traditional county of ..." at the beginning of it! It adds nothing? It shows the traditional county in relation to the other traditional counties! All of the Scottish and Welsh counties have them. I would call suppressing valid information "obsessiveness taken to extremes". Owain 18:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: Update: I've tweaked the infobox so it does show a more detailed map of the traditional county of question (in the case of Bucks) and thus the differences are obvious in comparison with the administrative map. In my view, this would still be better on a separate page, but at least it can no longer be argued that "''shown in the context of the UK as a whole, the differences are invisible''", because they aren't! 80.255 19:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC) I personally object to these infoboxes, as it gives the impression that wikipedia endorses the position that traditional counties still exist. Which is not NPOV. G-Man 18:50, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::It is POV to suggest that they DON'T exist. Read the relevant legislation. Read the government statements. Local government was loosely based on traditional counties between 1889-1974, and now it isn't. So what? Why should changes to something '''based'' on the counties mean we should ignore the counties themselves? We shouldn't. The addition of traditional county information to articles doesn't remove anything, so what's the problem? Owain 19:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: Neither should wikipedia endorse the POV that they don't exist. Particularly as the government says they do! Personally, I think I trust government statements over your own opinion, G-Man, if it came to a choice between the two...80.255 19:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC) That is still a disputed POV, and is not neutral. This certainly belongs in the history article. G-Man 20:38, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::Preferring one POV over another would not be neutral, and that is what you are proposing. I am proposing including both POVs (if that's what you think they are). Clearly, not preferring one over the other IS neutral. The fact that the infobox would also be useful in the history article is no reason to remove it from the main article. That would be POV. Owain 20:50, 17 August 2005 (UTC) But our policy does clearly prefer one approach. That "we do not take the minority that the [traditional counties] still exist with their former boundaries". How exactly is this complying with the policy. G-Man 20:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: ''Nothing'' exists with ''former boundaries'', by definition. I quite agree that no county exists with its ''former boundaries''; in the case of all the traditional counties, they only exist with their current boundaries, as they have continued to do since 1889, having never been abolished. I and Owain are both wholly complying with your beloved, hamfistedly-written policy. 80.255 21:07, 17 August 2005 (UTC) Sorry, re-phrase to say "we do not take the minority that they [counties] still exist with their former boundaries". So again how is that complying with the policy. G-Man 21:19, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::: You haven't re-phrased anything already. Of course nothing exists with its ''former boundaries'', else they wouldn't be ''former boundaries''. Example: Carlisle isn't part of Durham - that is a ''former boundary'', which was abolished. Hartlepool ''is'' part of Durham, because the boundaries of the traditional county of Durham ''has not'' been abolished. I've never claimed that any ''former boundaries'' exist, as the very idea of something-that-no-longer-exists existing is a contradiction in terms. ::: You claim that the traditional counties do not exist, but not once have you provide a shred of evidence to support this claim. Go and find me a bill that repealed them. There is no such bill. My position is based on 1) the fact that, according to the law, the absolutely no reason why they should not exist, and 2) according to the government itself that passed the 1972 Act, "[this Act] '''will not alter the traditional boundaries of Counties.'''" - that is pretty clear-cut statement; it couldn't really have been clearer. I've asked you this before and you have never replied to it, but I'll ask it again: '''should wikipedia officially take the view that this Government statement was a bare-faced lie?''' If you believe that the counties do not exist, you answer to this can only be ''"yes"'', and the ''POV'' ball is very firmly in your court. Of course, you'll need to put in a clear statement that "''although the government issued a statement saying XYZ, it was lying!''", in several articles...80.255 22:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC) "The position of the government" that's a bit of a stretch. Your single piece of evidence for this assertion, is a single statement made 30 years ago, which in itself has no legal force. And could be interpreted as meaning that traditional loyalties of county cricket for example were not intended to change. What the government said was utterly contradicted by what they actually did. If they really meant that, then why for example did they allign the ceremonial counties with the new administrative ones instead of with the historic ones?. And why did they stop producing statistics for historic counties (which happeded as early as the 1920s I believe). It seems to be something that various governments occasionally pay lip service to as a sop to traditionalists, rather than as something they take seriously. You also fail to point out that there is no-longer any direct reference to historic counties anywhere in law. And your sole argument for the surposed "existence" of historic counties is that they have never been formally abolished. Which in itself is quite frankly a very weak argument indeed for claiming that something "exists", and has very little relevance to the real world. I'm sure there are many obscure pieces of legislation which have never been formally repealed, but are no-longer taken notice of. I believe it is still technically legal for an Englishman to shoot a Welshman with a bow and arrow within the grounds of Hereford cathedral for example, as this medieval law has never been repealed. G-Man 19:17, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::Why can't you see what is written in front of you in black and white? They don't have "former boundaries" they have CURRENT boundaries. No piece of legislation since (and including 1889) has even attempted to changed them. Owain 21:45, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::So your clearly treating the policy with contempt again. I dont care about your personal opinions. You either take the line of the policy or you dont. G-Man 21:55, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::::I am doing no such thing. Where does the policy forbid inclusion of traditional county information in the sole article about it? In fact it encourages it with the statement "Articles about counties should not be split up and should not be disambiguation pages". Owain 08:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::Can't we do something to resolve the county issue? I don't think the ceremonial or traditional counties need to be mentioned at all in most cases, i.e. where they are the same as the administrative county. Where places have changed county recently (last 10 years?), it needs a mention in the main article but anything older should be in History of... :::: ''Separate pages'' for each traditional county would go a very long way to resolving this issue. Then there would be no complaints from anyone about different maps, etc. 80.255 19:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::I was looking at Ryhall yesterday. "Rutland" appears 9 times in a short article and "Leicestershire" not at all despite Ryhall having been in Leicestershire for 23 years until 1997. --Cavrdg 18:53, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::Er, Ryhall was administered by Leicestershire for 23 years, but it's been in Rutland for 900. I'm not sure I understand your objection.Owain 19:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC) More importantly no-one has agreed to these boxes being put into articles. There is no agreement that they should be, and they are clearly controversial. You have taken it upon yourself to put them there. Can I ask you to stop putting them into articles until this has been discussed further. G-Man 20:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC) My 2p (since the article being disputed is one I have put a lot of work into) Buckinghamshire_(traditional) and History_of_Buckinghamshire should be one and the same. My intention is to expand the history article so that it's significantly more than just what was forked from the main article: a lot more can be said, I just haven't got around to it yet. The whole idea of traditional counties being modern tangible entities is ridiculous, and I can speak as one who lives in modern-day Buckinghamshire, that the "Traditional County of Buckinghamshire" doesn't exist in a modern context. Thus anything referring to the traditional county belongs in the history article. Also at a recent committee meeting of one of the historical societies in Buckinghamshire (where I am a trustee) I had (for statistical purposes in an unrelated exercise) grouped Buckinghamshire together with Slough and Milton Keynes and got the general response, "what do you want to do that for? We were bloody glad to get rid of them..." -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 23:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: Well, it's a pity the government disagrees with you, isn't it? Do you think wikipedia should officially state that the British government has repeatedly lied when it has issued official statements saying "''The new [1974] county boundaries are solely for the purpose of defining areas of ... local government. They are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of Counties''"? It doesn't strike me as at all NPOV to claim that the government was lying. But perhaps you think we should clearly state that "''wikipedia delcares that this government statement was a lie''" in the relevant articles? 80.255 23:31, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then, and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire? Why, in the 26 years that I have lived here, have I never heard of it? Why, in the 5 years that I have been the trustee of a history society in Bucks, have I never heard mention of it? How exactly does it differ from the Ceremonial County that is already mentioned in enough detail in the Buckinghamshire article? I will certainly be seeking the opinions of learned local experts on the existence of this "traditional county" of which you speak. :::You need more than the wording of a 1974 act of government to convince me, I'm afraid. Acts of parliament have always been woolly in their wording and interpretation and unless you can provide evidence of this "real" place that meets with the opinions of other local experts (which I will seek out tomorrow, don't fret) then I won't accept that you're coming from a NPOV. -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 23:39, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::::"''So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then, and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire? Why, in the 26 years that I have lived here, have I never heard of it?''" ::::: Many people haven't heard of many things; that doesn't mean they don't exist, unless you're a solipsist! The many laws have little effect on most people, but remain legally in force. ::::: "''Why, in the 5 years that I have been the trustee of a history society in Bucks, have I never heard mention of it?''" ::::: Presumably because this history society is happy working in terms of administrative boundaries, and not traditional ones. What has that got to do with the price of fish? ::::: ''How exactly does it differ from the Ceremonial County that is already mentioned in enough detail in the Buckinghamshire article?'' ::::: The boundaries of the traditional county are the bounderies that were used administratively prior to 1889. In 1889, a new set of "administrative counties" (so-called) were created, and the original "counties" were explicitly left untouched; they were not repealed, nor was there any implied repeal of them; the government, the courts and official censi recognised their continued existence in the years following. It is these counties to which the government was refering to in the statement I reproduced above. In 1974, the "administrative counties" of 1889 were explicitly abolished, so the accompanying government statement say that "''the traditional boundaries remain unchanged''" clearly wasn't refering to these "administrative counties". ::::: The traditional county differs from the ceremonial county as per the illustrative graphics of both now uploaded. ::::: ''I will certainly be seeking the opinions of learned local experts on the existence of this "traditional county" of which you speak.'' ::::: You'd be better off seeking the opinions of learned legal experts. The fact that some people falsely believe that the traditional counties have been abolished doesn't mean that they have. As I have said before, this government statement is very clear; it isn't taken out of context, and it also shows clear the intention of the 1972 Local Government Act bill - as I'm sure you know, 'intention' is most important when it comes to determining what Acts of Parliament exactly mean, and statements, both to the public and to Parliament, have often been used by Judges in their interpretting of statutes. ::::: ''Acts of parliament have always been woolly in their wording and interpretation and unless you can provide evidence of this "real" place that meets with the opinions of other local experts (which I will seek out tomorrow, don't fret) then I won't accept that you're coming from a NPOV.'' ::::: See above. As I previously mentioned, why should 'local experts' be experts in parliamentary law? I have never claim that the traditional counties are used exclusively by everyone; merely that they unequivocably exist ''de jure'', and that wikipedia, if it values factual accuracy, should make this clear in separate, unconfusing articles about them. 80.255 00:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::Please also answer the question: ''So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then, and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire?'' I won't be able to respond to any of your other points until tomorrow. -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 00:18, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::::::: ''So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then'' - what do you mean by "where it exists"? It exists as a set of boundaries that, through both statute and common law, has the legal recognition of the British state. :::::::: ''and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire?'' :::::::: As much or as little effect and the individuals who live in Buckinghamshire wish; they all have free wills. How much effect does the ceremonial county have on the lives of people who live in it? Do you even think that the majority of the public even know what a 'ceremonial county' is? Or what a Lord Lieutenant actually does, or represents? Effect is quite irrelevant to legal existence, and this question strikes me as a classic straw man, attempting to avoid the point by trying obfuscate the real issue here. And that real issue is: ''wikipedia should accurately representent legal facts''. 80.255 00:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::::::::''wikipedia should accurately representent legal facts'' - I cannot dispute your legal claim (see below) though Wikipedia should also aim to represent the facts appropriately (see below) -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 01:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::In answer to your previous response I'm afraid I can't count that many legal experts among my many contacts and so cannot do as you suggest. What I am objecting to mainly here though is that you want to create a separate article that basically says ''The such-and-such Act 1974 was so worded that the pre-1974 boundary of Buckinghamshire was never officially abolished and some believe that it is still relevant today.'' If it's still relevant to Buckinghamshire it belongs in the main article, if it's relevant to the history it belongs in the history article. In all honesty it could go in both. I don't see why you want to create a separate article with its own infobox to say what I've just managed to sum up in a single sentence. From my position it seems that all you're doing is disrupting Wikipedia to make a point and I fail to see how creating a separate article called Buckinghamshire_(traditional) would be '''less''' confusing to the casual observer. If it affects modern-day Bucks, it goes in the main article. If it doesn't, it goes in the history article. What could be simpler? -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 01:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::: Not quite. What I want is separate articles for all the traditional counties, and the administrative and various other counties clearly labeled as such in their titles, so that places can be easily linked. For example, the article on Eton could then be written "''Eton is a place in the Unitary authority of Windsor_&_Maidenhead, the ceremonial county of Berkshire_(ceremonial) and the traditional county of Buckinghamshire_(traditional).''" At the moment, all these different county-types link to the same page, and it's naturally very confusing. Splitting them up into separate pages would allow us to make it clear that they are different entities. The whole idea of using ceremonial counties for organising articles is also confusing; there is no such thing as "''Berkshire County Council''", yet there is such thing as "''Kent County Council''", whereas people who live in Tunbridge Well are being told that they are in Kent, those that live in the "''Medway''" unitary authority are also being told that they are in Kent. It would be a lot clearer to tell these people that they are in Kent_(ceremonial_county). As it stands, many of the place articles have an info box listing, amongst other things, the ceremonial and traditional county. At the moment they both link to the same article, which also serves as the administrative county article. It's ridiculous from the standpoint of clarity. Eton, for example, links to the Buckinghamshire page under "traditional county", but the Buckinghamshire page now has no information on the traditional county of Buckinghamshire! What good is that? And you claim my suggestion would be ''confusing''?! ::::::: ''What I am objecting to mainly here though is that you want to create a separate article that basically says 'The such-and-such Act 1974 was so worded that the pre-1974 boundary of Buckinghamshire was never officially abolished and some believe that it is still relevant today.' '' ::::::: No, I want a separate article that deals with the traditional county of Buckinghamshire, so that when places are linked as being in traditional Bucks, the reader is actually taken to a relevant page, and shown a proper map of the entity in question, not a map of some other type of county called 'Buckinghamshire' that's used as a Lord Lieutenancy or anything else. The fact that the traditional boundaries of Buckinghamshire still exist precludes them from only being mentioned in the history article. The traditional county is a current entity and some people use it. Those people who choose not to use can use something else; I am not advocating the removal of all the administrative county articles, merely the use of a comprehensive system in which all the various types of 'county' have separate articles that clearly demonstrate their differences and that can be linked to. ::::::: And no, I am not 'disrupting' anything to make a 'point'. It is the current, badly-thought-out policy that has caused the disruption. 80.255 12:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::::Well I am willing to concede to the fact that some people still refer to Eton as being in Bucks (though I have asked the question of people I know who live in the disputed area and every single one of them has come back with "no, it's in Berkshire") but I still cannot agree to splitting off stuff from the Buckinghamshire county article. I don't think your suggestion can be achieved without repeating oneself unnecessarily. ::::::::Your argument is that the current Buckinghamshire article does not mention this traditional boundary. So change the article then. I still think your suggestion would lead to more confusion when essentially, and for the vast majority of cases, we're talking about the exact same county, just at a different time period when the boundary was slightly (and it is slightly) different. ::::::::I also feel that it would be preferable to include a map of the pre-1974 boundary and to mention that some people believe this is still relevant in the text, rather than using a separate infobox, because the infobox is still leading the casual observer to believe that a separate county is being discussed that is an entity in itself, which isn't the case. I do believe that "some people believe this is still relevant" is correct, as I say I have been speaking informally to contacts and mailing lists since this arose, and so far you are the only person who is saying that the southern-end places are still in Buckinghamshire. If it's written in law I can't dispute that, however laws can be (and often are) irrelevant to what people who live in the area believe, as has been shown following my enquiries. ::::::::I do believe that this whole process, as far as Buckinghamshire is concerned, is being overly disruptive. You have explained that your reasoning behind wanting a separate article is because the current article doesn't mention what you want it to, so rather than amending the current article or discussing amendments to the current article, you are proposing a whole new (and in my opinion unnecessary) article that would divert the user away from the valid (and relevant) information on history etc already contained in the main Buckinghamshire article. ::::::::I apologise if I am overly defensive or ill-mannered with regard to this topic, however this has gone on for the last two years and to be frank I'm tired with it coming up again. It's also come up at the worst possible time for me work-wise, but that's my personal stuff. ::::::::Incidentally, my enquiries around Milton Keynes and its environs produced the answer "It's still in Buckinghamshire, it's just administered differently" from the same people who said that Slough and Eton were definitely in Berkshire. So there you go. -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 18:25, 19 August 2005 (UTC) I would like to add my voice to Francs2000 - these article should be merged and the Trad infobox attached to the merged article - that makes structural sense and avoids any POV/NPOV. Thanks, Ian Cairns 23:27, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::It doesn't avoid POV at all. The traditional county deserves its own article; the history section also deserves its own article. All different entities should have their own article; to attempt to mix them will only cause confusion. 80.255 23:31, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::They deserve their own articles, yes - but if we ARE going to have one article it should mention everything! To have a policy that dictates having one article but then restricting what can be put into it is a nonsense. Owain 08:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC) How about one article with three different main sections: Administrative county, Ceremoninal county and Traditional county - they can all have their own descriptions of boundaries, relationships with other entities, infoboxes, &c.; Trying to shoehorn them all into one descriptive paragraph at the beginning is not working. If you look at Monmouthshire it has two headings: '''The principal area''' and '''The traditional county'''. Both relate to infoboxes of the same name and there is no ambiguity, confusion or loss of information. If we are going to have one article, then surely this is the way to do it? Owain 08:50, 18 August 2005 (UTC) : I'm content for 80.255 and Owain to have their Buckinghamshire_(traditional) article. He can play in his sandbox to his heart's content, because very few people care enough about the subject to visit it. At least it stops him cluttering up the main article. --Concrete Cowboy 09:40, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::So you want three different articles: Buckinghamshire_(administrative), Buckinghamshire_(ceremonial) and Buckinghamshire_(traditional) as well as a History_of_Buckinghamshire? Owain 10:29, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::Let's not forget Buckinghamshire_(1889-1974_administrative_county) and Buckinghamshire_(1974-1997_administrative_county) Morwen - Talk 10:42, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::: Yes, why not have articles on all of them? They are/were all discrete entities, and all differ in their boundaries. 80.255 :: No ''I'' don't. A single article is (and was) perfectly ok before you started cluttering it with disproportionate detail, at too high a precedence. The history of boundary changes is interesting, but for goodness sake have a sense of proportion. The trad county infoboxes (soapboxes?) are completely out of scale. The issue is exactly the same as it would be if someone put a great big infobox giving the historical route of the London to Oxford turnpike and all variants of what is now the A41 before people ruined it by driving motor cars on it. Or if somebody wanted to show all the railways before that d____d Beecham chappie took his axe to them. Yes, it is encyclopaedic material, but it has to in proportion to the article - otherwise it needs a separate article. --Concrete Cowboy 12:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :: For example, the trad county map in Warwickshire ''is'' proportionate and is particulary relevant in that case. Put a dirty great big infobox in and you knock out all the photographs. As it is, there is a peculiar white space above the material on Coventry. --Concrete Cowboy 12:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::: ...which is why a Warwickshire_(traditional) article would solve this problem. Then places that are in the traditional county but not in the administrative county can be linked to the right article, without the reader having to mull over lots of different maps showing different entities in order to work out which one applies to XYZford. 80.255 12:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ==Formal mediation on 'Counties of Britain'== I think we need formal mediation about this issue. Make a list here if you are willing to participate # Morwen - Talk 08:54, 18 August 2005 (UTC) # Owain 09:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC) # Chris Jefferies 11:27, 18 August 2005 (UTC) # --Cavrdg 20:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC) The convention is that there should be a Request for Comment first. --Concrete Cowboy 12:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC) * I don't see any guidelines about that... We've had plenty of opinions, anyway. Morwen - Talk 12:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC) : What exactly does formal mediation entail? This matter needs more discussion first, which is what we're all doing, anyway. 80.255 12:26, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :: See Wikipedia:Mediation. The idea is that independent meditors will be able to work with everyone and try to find a solution that everyone can consent to. I don't think the current discussion is productive, we have been going around in circle for 2 years. Morwen - Talk 12:29, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::I think, first of all, it would be more useful to (neutrally) itemise the available options/alternatives and discuss/comment on each of them. The reason that this current discussion is unproductive is that it is aimless. There needs to be a more focused discussion on this if a consensus it to be reached that is acceptable to all parties. 80.255 12:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::I think that would just generate more verbiage. Are you refusing the offer of mediation, then? Morwen - Talk 12:57, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::: ...which is why it needs to be ''focused''. Perhaps I'll post a suggestion a little later this afternoon; I don't have time at the moment. I'm not refusing mediation, but I do not feel that we have exhausted all constructive discussion yet. 80.255 13:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::: Just a point of fact for the record. We ''did'' go to RfC on 7th July, see the '''RfC''' section further up this very page. Chris Jefferies 13:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::: I misunderstood: I thought that the reference was just to the new infoboxes. Yes, '''I accept''' mediation. It is clear that at present there is no meeting of minds. The participants don't even seem to tuned to the same channel. --Concrete Cowboy 16:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::I think formal mediation might ''help'' us focus in order to achieve consensus. Why would it be better to do this without help? Chris Jefferies 13:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC) : Which issue is "this issue" being referred to? (SEWilco 17:27, 18 August 2005 (UTC)) ::::You're right, SEWilco, it's not very clear. This long page discusses a whole slew of place name issues. The formal mediation suggestion is specifically for the matter of the policy on British county names, articles on the counties, and referring to counties in articles on towns etc. I'll tweak the title of the mediation section to make it clearer. A lot of the discussion on this page is about those matters, but there's other stuff here too. Maybe we should move all the county stuff to a new page of its own. What do others think about that? Useful or daft? ::::One other thing, could anyone who wants to be included in the formal mediation process add a line to the list at the top of this section? It may not be enough just to mention it in passing in the text here. Thanks. Chris Jefferies 19:56, 18 August 2005 (UTC) == Other subnational entities == I see a lot of discussion on UK Counties, etc. here, but what should we do about countries we don't know much about? i.e. we don't know, say, the official format of Benin, or Afghanistan, or what not. Some areas prefer the format "X Department", some prefer "Province of X", others are simply "X", like the USA. What should we do about these? Should we have a standard naming format (in format, not name; "department" and "province" above are simply examples), or give preference to local standards? (There are proposals under discussion at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(subnational_entities) but there is a lot more discussion taking place here, and this is arguably the better location for it, since, well, UK counties and such are subnational entities :)) I hope this is the right place to do this. --Golbez 15:34, August 18, 2005 (UTC) :afaik Term of X only used in "Province of X" (Italy) and "Canton of X" (Switzerland). Others provinces and cantons that are subnational entities of present day countries do not use this form. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:25, 18 August 2005 (UTC) == Suggestion for consensus == Having read through the recent discussions on this page again, there seem to be two main complaints: :1) That the ''traditional county infoboxes'' that were recently added to some articles take up too much space and give undue prominence to something that the article is not (or should not be) primarily about, and :2) that information on the traditional counties should not be allowed to dominate articles primarily about administrative entities, and that attempting to incorporate both is often confusing and inappropriate. The following suggestion is designed takle these objections by doing two things: :1) prevent main/general articles where the administrative area is of primary concern from being "swamped" with references to or information on traditional counties - the main complaint about the traditional county infoboxes above. :2) Keep the primary emphasis on administrative areas but allow useful and informative reference, where appropriate, to be made to traditional counties by keeping information about them contained within separate articles. Reference is made to the current policy at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) under the subheading ''2.2 Counties of Britain''. --start of suggestion-- '''Line 1: ''' : ''We should use the current, administrative, county'' append : "''to organise lists and as the primary references to places''". '''Paragraph 3: ''' i) Amend first sentence to : "''We should mention traditional counties in dedicated articles about them and and only in secondary references to places that lie within them. Primary references to places should be made using administrative counties only.''" ii) 2nd sentence: : ''it is acceptable to use ceremonial counties as geographic references, as this is often more in line with common usage'' append : ''"but the differences between these and administrative counties (i.e. top level authorities) should be made clear"'' '''Paragraph 4:''' Amend to : "''In historic references we should make reference to a separate article on the traditional county, if it differs from the current administrative county to which the reference in question pertains.''" '''Paragraph 5:''' Amend to : "''Information pertaining solely to traditional counties should be contained with separate articles on these counties, and '''should not dominate or be given excessive prominence''' in articles dealing primarily with administrative or ceremonial counties.''" --End of suggestion-- I believe that these changes should decrease the current conflict relating to this 'county issue' dramatically, while not entailing anything unacceptable to either party. This is not, as yet, an official poll, but users are invited to state whether or not they would support or oppose the above suggestion with a view to reaching consensus on this matter. 80.255 18:32, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :Can you explain what you mean by the 'historic references' section? This is rather unclear. I think certainly no articles regarding the locations post-1844 events should be linking to traditional counties articles (were they to exist). Morwen - Talk 23:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :: Historical reference: current sentence reads "''In historic references we should make sure to note that the county at the time was not the same as the county now, if relevant'' - difference is largely that in my suggested version 'note' becomes 'link'. For example, currently, an historical reference to XYZshire links to the "catch-all" XYZ-shire article, which often isn't approrpriate at all because it deals almost wholly with an administrative county that is completely different from the county being made reference of. Huntingdonshire is another good example. The vast majority of links to it are linking the traditional county, but the article itself is primarily about a 2nd-level council district! Under this suggestion, all the material about the traditional county would be moved to Huntingdonshire_(traditional), and thus all the 'historical reference' links it has will actually go to a relevant article. :: Secondly, I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you mean, but there is a standard infobox (not of my making) for places that gives the traditional county for a lot of them (example), which seems to be well accepted by everyone. Under the proposals above, these links (Surrey in the example above) would more appropriately point to XYZshire_(traditional) pages, rather than articles which aren't about the traditional counties in question, and thus simply aren't applicable at the moment (such as the Surrey article in the case of Brixton). 80.255 00:07, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::In these cases, how can you tell that the 'majority of links' are wanting the traditional county, as opposed to the former administrative county? Are you proposing that someone born in 1964 in Huntingdonshire, would have "born in 1964 in Huntingdon, in the traditional county of Huntingdonshire " or somesuch, which is what that would imply? Morwen - Talk 07:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
::::: Someone born in 1964 would indeed have be born in the traditional county of Hintingdonshire, but certainly not in the the ''Huntingdonshire distrct'' of the administrative county of Cambridgeshire. Linking to the traditional county under such circumstances would, I believe, be better than the current situation in which we link to an article about something that didn't exist until 1984. The boundaries of the former administrative county are also much closer to those of traditional Huntingdonshire than they are to the council district. Whereas it would also be possible to create an article on Huntingdonshire_(former_administrative_county) for such situations, I still think that linking to Huntingdonshire_(traditional) would be considerably better and more informative than, as is currently happening, linking to an article about a council district. 80.255 12:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::: Can you not see another way, where Huntingdonshire_(traditional) would be created, and would be about the traditional county, its borders, and suchforth, meanwhile Huntingdonshire would (a) mention that there is a Huntingdonshire_(traditional), and then (b) describe that it originated as a county and administrative unit in the Xth_century, then many centuries later was asborbed into another unit called Huntingdon_and_Peterborough, and then finally into Cambridgeshire. We simply can't have separate articles for every incarnation of every county, as this would lead to duplication and unmaintainability. I suggest a test for whether to split based on (a) different boundaries and (b) lack of continuity, which I will detail later. Morwen - Talk 12:36, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
::::May I ask, 80.255, are you suggesting the existing article on Huntingdonshire has insufficient historical detail? Are you saying that the article is unbalanced in some way? I don't understand your criticism, how would several articles on Huntingdonshire would be better than one? Chris Jefferies 08:41, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
::::: It is unbalanced in favour of the council district. "''Huntingdonshire is a part of England around the town of Huntingdon which is currently administered as a local government district of Cambridgeshire. The present district does not match the traditional county boundaries exactly.''"
::::: Thus, when there is a link such as "''Oliver Cromwell was born in the County of Huntingdonshire in East_Anglia.''", it's linking to a council district that doesn't even have the same boundaries as the county he was born in. As soon as the link is clicked, the reader sees a map of the second-level authority district of Huntingdonshire, and thinks to himself "ah, that's where Cromwell was born!", when it wasn't. It is inaccurate and, in my opinion, not appropriate for links that are not refering to the council district. 80.255 12:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
::::::: This isn't really a very special issue, but is just an editorial thing. Perhaps we should look at how this is managed for people born in Germany, for example - do States_of_Germany get used anachronistically? Morwen - Talk 12:36, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
::::As a small point of fact, Cromwell of course ''was'' born within the current district of Huntingdonshire. The article gives information on both the district and the earlier county, indeed the third paragraph begins, 'Huntingdonshire is also a traditional county'. It will not help Wikipedia if we generate multiple articles with similar names and covering similar areas of Britain. Chris Jefferies 13:18, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::If we ARE going to have one article including everything then it should be laid-out in a non-ambiguous way and traditional infoboxes would need to be provided. Currently, the county articles are currently a mess of information all lumped-together. If the single article had internal anchors such as #ceremonial #administrative #traditional, &c; then the relevant links could be provided pointing to the right section. This would require small amounts of rewriting to provide three different sections, each of which could have all the infoboxes and detail they required. Owain 13:32, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
===Administrative or Ceremonial===
Thanks for coming up with a suggestion for debate.
I have some problems with the use of administrative counties as the main building blocks.
1) They include places not widely recognised as counties such as BANES and Blackpool
2) They are not necessarily the ''top level authorities''. The metropolitan counties and Berkshire are administrative counties even though they don't have county councils. So, given the need to mention the real adminstrative arrangement, there is potential for another level of duplication.
3) Some administrative counties have been doughnutted, so Nottingham is not in Nottinghamshire and Leicester is not in Leicestershire
I favour using ceremonial counties as the most widely recognised areas as the building blocks. --Cavrdg 08:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :I would aree with that, It seems that ceremonial counties have become the de facto geographic counties. Who wrote this by-the-way you havn't signed it. G-Man 19:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::::Sorry. Now retro signed. --Cavrdg 19:30, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::I agree that administrative counties aren't be best choice, but ceremonial counties are only slightly better. Why perpetuate areas like Greater Manchester for independent towns like Bolton, Wigan, Salford, &c; when the administrative area was only created in 1974 and lasted for 12 years before all the councils became unitary. These ceremonial areas are defined for a very specific purpose in a very specific piece of legislation, much in the same way as administrative counties are. They are clearly an attempt to move back to traditional names and areas where the local government situation is now different, but they don't go far enough. If we're going to not use administrative areas, why not go all the way back to the traditional names and areas everywhere? Owain 10:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::: To what period would you go for traditional names? 1973? - I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in Botley, on the edge of Oxford, who thinks they are in Berkshire. 1910? - Even fewer would put Caversham in Oxfordshire. As current entities at least the ceremonial counties are clearly defined. ::::Obviously for built-up areas that cross county boundaries, the traditional name to use would be the one where the centre of the place is. For articles on individual villages or suburbs then the traditional name to use would be the one where the village actually is. e.g. the Reading article would refer to Reading as being in Berkshire, but the Caversham article would refer to it as being a suburb of Reading, but being in the traditional county of Oxfordshire. No ambigutiy there. Owain 13:45, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::: Greater Manchester is a bit odd because it wasn't used as a postal county and having their addresses changed helped people to know where they were but there is still a sense of identity around things like GMPTE ''Welcome to the official public transport site for Greater Manchester, UK.'' :::: Greater X can be defined to mean whatever you want it to mean. There is a case for a geographical area of Greater Nottingham for instance. The problem is that it can be highly arbitrary — in the case of Greater Manchester including places with totally separate indentites, which were covered by a shared top-level authority for 12 years, some 20 years ago, but since have been administratively separate. That they happen to share a few joint-boards is neither here nor there with regards their identity. Owain 13:45, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::: Hmmm... If the police cars passing my door said ''Greater Manchester Police'', the fire engines ''Greater Manchester County Fire Service'', the chamber of commerce, the probation service, the crown prosecution service, the strategic health authority, the county records office, all called their local units ''Greater Manchester'', I'd suspect I was in Greater Manchester. --Cavrdg 14:35, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :: The suggestion above would not change the use of administrative counties in some instances and ceremonial counties in others, as is the case currently. 80.255 12:04, 19 August 2005 (UTC) I'd like to add: if we are to use ceremonial counties for general lists of places in England, we should also use their counterparts for Scottish lists. 80.255 14:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::The problem with that is that in Scotland the lieutenancy areas are the same as the traditional counties in some areas and totally different in others. There is no consistency. Furthermore the so-called preserved counties of Wales are totally unlike either traditional counties or local government areas. None of these areas were designed with general geographical use in mind, they are defined in the Lieutenancies Act 1997 for very specific purposes. The same goes for administrative counties — they are defined in local government legislation as the areas for the most efficient delivery of local government services. Neither of these areas are intended for the use that they are attempting to be put to. Owain 14:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : I've no problem with that. They look a sensible size. I confess I couldn't put my finger on ''The Stewartry of Kirkcudbright'' on a map but the same applies to ''Clackmannanshire'' old or new. Would most of them be familiar to people in Scotland? --Cavrdg 14:35, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::They are not intended for use in a general geographic sense. Most are the same as traditional counties, but do we really want something like "List of places in Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale"? Owain 15:06, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ===Suggestion for splitting test=== This suggestion should help to alleviate some of the most silly merges. A split of an article can be made given the following conditions *the boundaries of the entities being described are substantively different (more than a few villages) *there is a lack of continunity between the entities The resulting articles will be about all those entities with the same boundaries This would lead to East_Riding_of_Yorkshire being split into two - one for the post-1996 UA, another for the pre-1974 admin county, and also the traditional county. It might also lead to Huntingdonshire being split into two. Flintshire and Denbighshire would also be split, as would Renfrewshire. However I feel that in order to support this we would have to keep info on the pre-1974 admin counties on the same page as the traditional ones. Morwen - Talk 12:48, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : Lest ''substantively'' be misinterpretted, can you list which traditional/administrative counties would ''not'' be split under this proposal? : I support it in principle, although I feel that consistency throughout all traditional/administrative/former administrative articles would be better still. : I have no objection in principle to dealing with pre-74 admin counties on traditional county pages, although I none the less think they would be better delt with on their own pages. One great advantage to splitting articles is ''clarity'', and this could be lost when still trying to cover subtly different entities with the same name on the same page. : In the case of the East_Riding_of_Yorkshire, it is not a traditional county anyway; Yorkshire is. The same spplies for thepre-74 county councils of lincolnshire, sussex, suffolk, northamptonshire, etc. 80.255 13:54, 19 August 2005 (UTC) This wording is not intended to cover Lancashire, Middlesex, Rutland, Surrey, Northamptonshire, Pembrokeshire, Herefordshire and suchforth, which exhibit either boundary differences or lack of continuity, but not both. Worcestershire, and Huntingdonshire are borderline. I think it would clearly apply to Monmouthshire too. I know the East Riding isn't a traditional county ''per se'', but I think the same issues still apply to it. Morwen - Talk 13:59, 19 August 2005 (UTC) As an addendum I note Cambridgeshire would be split if Hunts was. : The boundaries of Lancashire, traditional and administrative, are certainly ''substantively different''; why do you say they aren't? There's a huge difference! As are those of Surrey, Kent, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire to give a few more examples. An example of counties the boundaries of which aren't substantively different would be Cornwall, Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire. Rutland, I agree, is also pretty similar (though I'm not sure whether it's exactly the same). Middlesex isn't really relevant, because it isn't the name of an administrative county. In the case of the ridings of yorkshire, perhaps an East_Riding page would be best, as the current Unitary Authority is called ''East Riding of Yorkshire'', as opposed to the former administrative county, which was called simply ''East Riding''. 80.255 15:49, 19 August 2005 (UTC) Yes, those are ''definitely'' substantively different, but they don't pass the 'lack of continuity' part of my test. I agree with Cornwall, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire not exhibiting substantial differences, and would add to that Wiltshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. My apologies for any confusion. The idea is here to define a very small set of splits that should be very uncontroversial, and then get consensus and actually do them, whilst leaving open the question of whether other splits should happen or not. Morwen - Talk 16:07, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : I'd say that Northamptonshire fills both criteria, the lack of continuity being satisfied by the creation then abolition of Huntingdon_and_Peterborough. The same could be argued for Warwickshire, considering that, in reality, the West Midlands metropolitan county consists of unitary authorities, and thus the former existence of the two-tier WMMC provides the lack of continuity in this case. Also, in terms of the traditional counties around london, the creation and abolition of the administrative County_of_London, and then the further creation and abolition of the metropolitan county of Greater London (which now only exists as a ''region'') could also be argued to fulfil both your criteria. : Presumably, you'd include the traditional counties covering parts of the former (absolutely abolished) metropolitan counties such as Avon or Humberside? 80.255 17:09, 19 August 2005 (UTC) This is not what I'm trying to say with 'lack of continuity' - there continously existed administrative counties named Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. What this is trying to cover is names that were abolished for administrative usage and then later re-used after a gap, with substantively different boundaries to those that were last in use administratively. So to take a hypothetical example for example, if an entity called 'Westmorland' were created tomorrow, that covered in addition to the historic Westmorland the Furness area, this would then definitely warrant a separate article under these tests. Perhaps you could find a better way to put this? Whereas, if an admin county consisting of Westmorland+Furness had been created in 1974 instead of Cumbria and named 'Westmorland', we would not split. I know this doesn't realise your full ambitions but hopefully it is something we all can agree on that ''at least'' needs to be done and will set a precedent for further agreement. Morwen - Talk 17:35, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::Yes, I see what you mean, now; I assumed you originally meant a lack of continuity in the naming of a any substantive part of a given entity, rather than simply going by name. By this reasoning, Shropshire ought to qualify, in losing a substantive exclave around Halesowen, and very briefly being officially renamed "Salop" as an administrative county. A number of the Scottish counties would also be covered - e.g. Clackmannanshire would need to be split. 80.255 19:30, 20 August 2005 (UTC) : Incidentally, the current Lancashire article in incorrect. The administrative county of Lancashire is not a County_palatine; the palatine (actually a ''Duchy palatine'') covers only the historic county. In the case of Lancashire, information on this should be moved to Lancashire_(duchy_palatine). Throughout the palatine (and not just the administrative county of Lancashire), the Duke of Lancaster, and not the Queen of Great Britain, is the nominal sovereign. : Have a look at the "palatine boundary" on the duchy's official website.http://www.duchyoflancaster.org.uk/output/page2.asp. I believe the same may also apply to Cheshire and Durham. 80.255 16:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::I would not support splitting articles, It's a great way to create a complete dogs dinner. And create utter confusion amongst readers. Especially with regards to Warwickshire and Lancashire et al. G-Man 20:03, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : Well, we're having this discussion because many of the non-split county articles ''are'' dogs dinners and ''do'' create utter confusion. Why exactly do you think splitting would create confusion? It would allow accurate linking from the 'traditional county' infobox that appears on so many place articles, and would keep all allegedly cumbersome traditional county infoboxes from articles about administrative counties. : I may split off Lancashire_(palatinate) anyway, since it's a special case, and is a dutchy palitine, not a traditional county (and as a most fundamental area in law; if you commit a crime in Furness, you'll still be charged with having disturbed the Duke of Lancaster's Peace), and, as such, is not covered by the policy. : Regarding all the other counties, I still believe they'd be much better off split, and, indeed, suggested it after a number of other users from the "anti-traditional-county camp" agreed with me. However, I'd be willing to give Morwen's more limited suggestion support as a provisional measure in this direction. 80.255 20:40, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::They're only dogs dinners because of your absurd insistance that historic counties still exist as separate entities. Which other encyclopedia splits up county articles into its different revisions. I will oppose any splitting of articles on principal. Regarding the infoboxes, they are clearly in breach of the existing policy. G-Man 21:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :They are not "clearly in breach" whatsoever. Nothing in the policy forbids infoboxes; in all cases they appear as an 'afternote' well after the infoboxes on the administrative/ceremonial counties. Having said this, I must add that I myself have never ''added an infobox'' of this sort into any article. However, they do get added by (horror of horrors!) people who do not share your POV, and the aim of this discussion is find a consensus, not pretend that everything you don't personally like is covered by the current policy when it clearly isn't. : I'm still waiting for the ''first piece of evidence'' from you that historic counties don't legally exist as separate entities, when the government thinks that they do. I notice that you still haven't answered my question about the government's position, so I'll ask it again: should wikipedia officially declare that the government was lying when it said that traditional counties have always remained completely unaffected by various administrative boundary changes? : As for the question "''Which other encyclopedia...''" - this is wikipedia, not an "''other encyclopaedia''", and our format allows us to do things that ''other encyclopaediae'' clearly can't, such as splitting up articles to provide more detailed and less confusing information on different things, without being hindered by book-bound problems this could cause out of our medium. 80.255 21:14, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::Have you seen my comments above. G-Man 21:28, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::May I break in with a different question. I've asked it before, but I've had agreement from only a few people here so far, yet it's fundamental to the entire process of creating a policy. Here it is... :::Will everyone join me in declaring, up front (ie ''now''), that they will abide by the current policy until it is changed and will abide by any future version too? Will everyone abide by the policy even if they disagree with it? (This doesn't preclude anyone from trying to get it changed yet again in future, that option is always open). We must aim for consensus, but if we have to settle for a vote, it is essential that we agree to be bound by the policy even if we're in the minority. Thanks, Chris Jefferies 20:52, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : I have not and do not break the policy. If I did or intended to, I would have no reason to bother getting involved in this discussion! We must indeed aim for a consensus, be it by vote or not. I feel that progress is slowly being made. 80.255 21:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::So - is that a 'yes, I agree to be bound by the policy even if I'm on the minority side'? Chris Jefferies 22:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ===A case study that might help? === I had this exchange with 80.255 [slightly corrected for clarity]: :"I'm still struggling with this. Take for example the policy statement :''Coventry is in the West Midlands, and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire'' :This to me is completely reasonable. But I would expect the Coventry article to read [be written as] :'''''Coventry''' is in theWest_Midlands , and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire ''
:so if I wanted to drill down I could go directly to an article about the historical boundary.
:But I suppose it would be possible to append the material to the main article and in that case, the line would read:
:'''''Coventry''' is in the West_Midlands , and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire ''
:'''provided''' that [ Warwickshire#Traditional_County ] was at the end and not at the beginning of [ Warwickshire ], as if it had equal status with the current boundary, and didn't swamp it. --Concrete Cowboy 17:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC)"
::"I'd support the second option. I think it would be preferable all round to have information on the traditional county in a separate article. This could either be seen as ensuring such information doesn't "swamp" or be given "undue prominence" the administrative article, or alternatively ensuring that it is not "relegated" to the end of it or "buried" in the middle of it! I agree that the Huntingdonshire article leaves much to be desired at the moment, and think that effecting this suggestion would certainly be a positive step towards sorting it out. 80.255 17:17, 19 August 2005 (UTC)"
What I'm driving at here is that I accept that some info about the trad counties in the modern county article is justified, provided that it is in proportion. Indeed, there are lots of subjects that an editor might want to add to a county article, ''but'' there has to be a point when the addition is overwhelming and it needs to be hived off to another article. IMNVHO, Huntingdonshire has reached that point. Warwickshire hasn't quite, but it's getting there. --Concrete Cowboy 19:04, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
:::I do not believe it is too hard for intelligent people to write an article called 'Huntingdonshire', and to explain what the present district is, what the previous county was, and the history of how it all came about. To have several articles dealing with an area of England like this would be confusing to almost everybody - editors and readers alike. Most countries have changed their borders from time to time, some of them often, sometimes they have been provinces within a larger state, like Latvia. Are there separate articles for Latvia the nation and Latvia the Soviet state? There are not. One article is normally sufficient for a country - why not for a county?
:::Nor do I believe that it is very hard to write an article about, say, St Neots and explain clearly that it is in Cambridgeshire, in the district called Huntingdonshire, but that in the past parts of it were in Bedfordshire and other parts were in the county of Huntingdonshire. We are making something simple ''sound'' hard by talking about it over and over again.
:::And before someone tells me once more that the county 'still exists', that is not my view, nor was it the majority view when the policy was voted on previously. I am using the past tense because I believe that is the correct and best way to describe it - 'Huntingdonshire was an English county'. If you believe otherwise by all means use the present tense. But I will use the past tense until someone produces an argument that convinces me or until Wikipedia policy requires otherwise. Chris Jefferies 21:35, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
:: ''"Most countries have changed their borders from time to time, some of them often, sometimes they have been provinces within a larger state, like Latvia. Are there separate articles for Latvia the nation and Latvia the Soviet state?"''
:: In many cases like this, yes. For example: the former german state of Hanover, and the current administrative region of Hanover have separate articles, and it would be utter lunacy to try to cover both in the same article, just because they share a name!
:: Whether or not you believe the county of Huntingdonshire exists still, we should follow the example set by ''Hanover'' (which clearly no longer exists in its original form), and give it a separate article. 80.255 21:45, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
:: Furthermore, as Concrete Cowboy pointed out to me, county articles ''are'' split up, completely against policy. In many cases there are History_of_XYZshire articles, Geography_of_XYZshire articles, and so on.
:: The policy states: "''Articles about counties should not be split up''", so all of these articles are against policy, and should be merged with the main articles if the current policy is to be followed.
:: I do not believe this would be helpful, however, which is why I say that the absurd "should not be split" clause goes completely against the principles of wikipedia and should be removed.
:: None the less, I suppose I shall have to grit my teeth and merge every single one of these articles if the current policy remains, because, as User:Chrisjj has mentioned, we must all follow the policy, regardless of whether we agree with it or not. 80.255 21:53, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
:::It would not be very hard to combine those two Hanover articles, one could argue that they would be ''better'' combined. And why do you assume that the authors of the two Hanover articles articles have made a wise choice, but the authors of the single Latvia article have chosen badly?
:::Your second argument about having separate articles on the history or geography of a place is completely without foundation. Maybe the policy could have been better worded, but it was clearly not the intention to prevent specialist articles on history or geography. The intention was to prevent splitting on the false grounds that historical and modern counties cannot be adequately dealt with in the same article. If a county article became too large then it would make sense to have an article on the history or geography, just as it makes sense for London or England or Bristol. A summary goes in the main article with the detail in the specialist part. Chris Jefferies 22:11, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
:: Firstly, have a look at List_of_German_Confederation_member_states. I think every single case in which the name of a former German/Austrian state is also the name of a modern administrative area, both have separate articles. In many cases, such as Tyrol, the namespace page is of the former state, not a redirect to the administrative article, which is found at Tyrol_(state). If we were to follow this clear convention elsewhere in wikipedia, Huntingdonshire district would be moved to Huntingdonshire_(non-metropolitan_district).
:: I'm not inherently saying that this approach is right or wrong - I'm merely pointing out that it is widely-used elsewhere in wikipedia, and it is we who are being inconsistent by following the current policy on counties in Britain.
:: Secondly, the foundation of my second argument is the current policy. I wholly agree with you that "''if a county article became too large then it would make sense to have an article on the history or geography, just as it makes sense for London or England or Bristol"''; the trouble is, that isn't what the policy says. Don't blame me - I didn't write it! 80.255 22:37, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
:::The German Confederation situation does not appear to me to be the way you describe it. Your argument seems at best dubious. The Tyrol is certainly not remotely comparable to British counties. Others here may wish to go and check for themselves. And even if all the German states ''did'' follow the pattern you suggest, that would fall far short of demonstrating that it's 'a clear convention elsewhere in Wikipedia'! Nor does it prove that 'it is we who are being inconsistent'.
:::And your second point relies entirely on taking part of a sentence out of context. The policy reads as follows "''Articles about counties should not be split up and should not be disambiguation pages. They should treat the counties as one entity which has changed its boundaries with time.''" Quoting the first part without the rest is misleading. Chris Jefferies 23:23, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
:: ''"The German Confederation situation does not appear to me to be the way you describe it. Your argument seems at best dubious. The Tyrol is certainly not remotely comparable to British counties."''
:: I disagree. Tyrol was the name of a former entity; it is also the name of a current administrative division, with a significantly different area. Both have separate articles.
:: ''"Others here may wish to go and check for themselves. "''
:: Let's save them the trouble and go through some of the top-level federated states of Germany:
::1. Baden-Württemberg - separate articles on Baden, Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the Principality_of_Leyen, Württemberg, Grenzmark_Posen-Westpreussen, Württemberg-Baden, Swabia, Hohenzollerische_Lande and Württemberg-Hohenzollern
::2. Bavaria - separate article on the Bavarian_Soviet_Republic, Würzburg_(state) and Franconia
::3. Hesse - separate articles on Hesse-Kassel, Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Rheinfels, Hesse-Marburg, Hesse-Nassau, Hesse-Homburg, Waldeck_(state), Isenburg, Isenburg-Isenburg, Isenburg-Birstein, Isenburg-Kempenich, Isenburg-Wied, Isenburg-Büdingen, Isenburg-Meerholz, Isenburg-Philippseich, Nieder-Isenburg, Isenburg-Büdingen-Birstein, Isenburg-Wächtersbach and the Grand_Duchy_of_Frankfurt. I think you get the idea!
::4. Mecklenburg-Western_Pomerania - separate articles on Pomerania, Mecklenburg-Strelitz (note, separate article on Mecklenburg-Strelitz_(district), for the current admin area!), _Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg.
::5. Lower_Saxony - separate articles on the Duchy_of_Saxony, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Oldenburg_(state), Schaumburg-Lippe, Waldeck_(state) and Hanover_(state).
::6. North_Rhine-Westphalia - separate articles on Westphalia as an unofficial region, on the Kingdom_of_Westphalia and Berg_(German_region)
::7. Rhineland-Palatinate - separate articles on the former Prussian Rhine_Province, the Hesse-Darmstadt province of Rheinhessen, and on the former Rhenish_Palatinate that "''became part of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1946''", Nassau_(state), Salm-Salm, Salm-Kyrburg, Salm_(state), the Archbishopric_of_Mainz and the Dutchy of Arenberg. Even the former French Lippe_(département) in occupied Germany has its own article!
::8. Saxony-Anhalt - separate articles on former state/regions of Anhalt and Province_of_Saxony.
::9. Schleswig-Holstein - separate articles on Holstein, Schleswig (note, not the same article as the City_of_Schleswig), Southern_Schleswig, Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Holstein-Gottorp.
::10. Thuringia (this is going to be fun!). Separate articles on Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Saxe-Gotha, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Saxe-Coburg, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Reuß; links to Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Saxe-Hildburghausen and various other in existing articles, giving a clear invitation for them to be created.
::Also have a look at the Category:Provinces_of_Prussia, List_of_provinces_of_Prussia and List_of_Weimar_states. The majority of these have separate articles too, such as Province_of_Posen, a good example of a good article on an historical state. Not to mention many others, such as that on the Free_City_of_Danzig.
:: So, yes, I do think there is a clear convention elsewhere in wikipedia!
::Secondly, you quoted two complete sentences. The first says that articles should not be split; the second says that articles should treat counties as ''XYZ''; there's no implication that articles should be split for other reasons. It clearly says ''articles should not be split'', ''and'' should treat counties in a certain way. Nothing has been taken out of context. 80.255 01:26, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Frankly, I'm astonished at your long list of 'split' German states. If quantity could win the day you'd have little to worry about! :-) I'm certainly not going to work through the entire list here, but it's bloated with irrelevant articles. One or two examples will suffice - Baden, there is only one article - Hohenzollern is an article about a family, not a place - Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a family, not a place - Leyen was a principality that lasted all of 8 years - Wurttemburg is a classic example of an article that is ''not'' split, it deals with the general area, Wurttemburg under the counts, as a duchy, as a kingdom, and until 1945 when it ceased to exist (there is a separate article on its history). That's the first five in your list. I'm not going through them all, but your argument is full of holes. Had it been a boat it would have sunk!
:::If you need further counter examples of places with difficult, complex histories and changing borders look at Poland, Italy, Germany. They all have single articles. How clumsy and difficult it would be if there were separate articles on all the different Polands! Now that ''would'' be madness.
:::And now to the wording of the existing policy. Yes I agree, it could have been written in a way which would leave less room for misinterpretation. But I think most rational people coming to it without a prior agenda will understand what was intended. Let's not pretend that a missing word or phrase prevents us from seeing the underlying sentiment. It was never meant to restrict us from writing detailed articles on the history or geography of a county. Chris Jefferies 09:00, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:: "''One or two examples will suffice - Baden, there is only one article - Hohenzollern is an article about a family, not a place - Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a family, not a place - Leyen was a principality that lasted all of 8 years - Wurttemburg is a classic example of an article that is ''not'' split, it deals with the general area, Wurttemburg under the counts, as a duchy, as a kingdom, and until 1945 when it ceased to exist (there is a separate article on its history). ''"
:: Firstly, according to this policy, Wurttemburg should be entirely incorporated into the Baden-Württemberg article. Hohenzollern was indeed listed by mistake, as I didn't check it at the time. However, the vast majority of the articles I listed above are not 'irrelevant'. The Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen article, for instance, is not entirely about a familiy. Excerpt: "''the Princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen ruled over a small principality in southwest Germany''" ... "''In 1849, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Hohenzollern-Hechingen were annexed by Prussia''" - obviously, it was the state that was annexed, not the family!
:: Leyen did indeed last only a short time, so all the more reason for it, according to your reasoning, to be subsumed in the Baden-Württemberg article.
:: As for Baden, there is only one article, which starts ''"Baden is a historical state in the southwest of Germany"''; why hasn't this article been merged with Baden-Württemberg, which is, after all, the current administrative state? As I have previously pointed out, I'm only giving these examples to show that very many historical states, areas and subdivisions on wikipedia have their own articles and are not delt with solely in the articles covers their current. administrative counterparts.
:: "''If you need further counter examples of places with difficult, complex histories and changing borders look at Italy... [it has a] single article''"
:: Italy has a "''single article''"? So perhaps you'd like to explain the existence of:
::::*Kingdom_of_Italy
::::*Italian_Republic_(Napoleonic)
::::*Cisalpine_Republic
::::*Duchy_of_Mantua
::::*Republic_of_Venice
::::*Transpadane_Republic
::::*Duchy_of_Savoy
::::*County_of_Savoy
::::*Grand_Duchy_of_Tuscany
::::*Marquisate_of_Montferrat
::::*Duchy_of_Milan
::::*Duchy_of_Massa_and_Carrara
::::*Republic_of_Genoa
::::*Marquisate_of_Mantua
::::*Duchy_of_Modena_and_Reggio
::::*Duchy_of_Lucca
::::*Republic_of_Lucca
::::*Republic_of_Florence
::::*Duchy_of_Parma
::::*Kingdom_of_Naples
::::*Kingdom_of_Sicily
::::*Kingdom_of_Sardinia
::::*Duchy_of_Reggio
::::*Lunigiana
::::*Ligurian_Republic
::::*Bolognese_Republic
::::*Republic_of_Crema
::::*Republic_of_Alba
::::*Cispadane_Republic
::::*Republic_of_Ancona
::::*Roman_Republic
::::*Tiberina_Republic
::::*Parthenopaean_Republic
::::*Kingdom_of_Etruria
::::*Kingdom_of_Lombardy-Venetia
::::*Kingdom_of_the_Two_Sicilies
::::*Papal_States
::::*Venetia
:: So you seem to be out by a factor of 28! 80.255 17:12, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:::As far as Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen is concerned, you might as well argue that the article on Oliver_Cromwell proves British county articles are split because it mentions Huntingdonshire! I'm not going to continue the discussion on the first part of your reply. You've posted enough examples for anyone who wishes to check.
:::On the second part, none of the articles you list is about Italy, they are all about the states that were united to ''make'' Italy. Listing them to claim that the Italy article is 'split' is like listing the English county articles to claim that the article on England is split. I fear you're struggling to defend an untenable position. Chris Jefferies 17:40, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:::: Not at all - you gave the example of Italy as an article in which all previous states were combined; it clearly isn't! Since all the states listed nowadays comprise Italy, they should, by your reasning, all be merged into a single Italy article, or consist solely of article on modern administrative districts, rather than articles on historical entities, as, for example, the current Huntingdonshire article does. However, if we were to follow the examples set by Italian and German state articles, Huntingdonshire would consist of two articles, one on the traditional county and the other on the non-metropolitan district.
:::: Secondly, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen is clearly about ''both'' the former principality ''and'' the dynasty that ruled it. Your argument against it as irrelevant is very spurious, I feel. Other readers are invited to look at this article and make their own judgements.
:::: I sha'n't post any more examples of articles on historical entities, but I think it's clear that, from the examples I have posted, that there is certainly no policy elsewhere in wikipedia that expressly forbids splitting articles in this way. I refer back to Tyrol and Tyrol_(state), and Hanover_(state) and Hanover_(region) as examples of successful splitting.
:::: I think we are left with a number of different options regarding splitting or not splitting, and that it would be perhaps helpful to have a vote on this presently. What do you think? 80.255 18:24, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
== Please don't make controversial edits until later ==
Please don't make edits to articles during this debate unless those edits are to material ''not affected by'' the policy. Making controversial edits during the debate is just poor Wikiquette and doesn't help to keep everyone calm. No more, people, please. Thanks.
If you ''have'' made such edits you might usefully consider putting them back as they were at the end of July. Chris Jefferies 00:33, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
==Objection==
Now, one of the things I object to the most, Is the way that Owain and 80,255's edits treat what I regard as an opinion (i.e that traditional counties still exist) as fact. As far as I can see the only source for this claim comes from the traditional counties movement themselves. Who by their very nature are not neutral or independent, and seems to be based upon some rather questionable interpretations of the law.
Personally I dont think the wikipedia should endorse the opinion of a promotional organisation. As there is no independent confirmation of this view. I think it should be qualified as an opinion. For example Middlesex should say something like: "Middlesex is ''considered'' to be a traditional county" rather than "Middlesex ''is'' a traditional county". G-Man 19:20, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
::Middlesex ''is'' a traditional county. If it isn't, tell me what it actually is? Arcturus 19:31, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:: "''As there is no independent confirmation of this view''" ... except an official government statement. So you think that wikipedia should officially endorse the opinion that the government was lying, then? 80.255 19:50, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:: "''As far as I can see the only source for this claim comes from the traditional counties movement themselves.''"
:: No, in fact it comes from the government, which has officially said:
:: "''"The new county boundaries are solely for the purpose of defining areas of local government. They are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of Counties.''"
:: This has been repeated and restated by successive governments on a number of different occasions, and similar statements have been made upon susequent administrative boundary changes.
:: 80.255 19:53, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
: Might I suggest that this argument is essentially irrelvant. Whichever tense you use, the tradtional counties are encycopediac, just as are Wessex, Silbury Hundred and the Roman Province of Britania. We are not going to just lose them. The question is really one of proportionate positioning and size. If I go to the article about Alphashire, I dont want to have to plough through three screens of what it used to be before I get to current information. By exactly the same token, I don't want ditto about its ley lines, its dismantled railways, its bypasses, or even its Odonata - all of which are interesting but should only be summarised. If these are all in the same giant article, then what we have is a pseudo paper encyclopedia, not a Hypertext encyclopedia. --Concrete Cowboy 14:13, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
::This sounds like an argument for splitting the articles up. How about this then? Three sections in the main Xshire article, with summarised information on administrative, ceremonial and traditional. Then in each section have the standard 'Main article: Xshire (administrative)', 'Main article: Xshire (ceremonial)' and 'Main article: Xshire (traditional)' at the beginning of each section. Best of both worlds? Owain 12:01, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
==Another Objection==
Now, one of the things ''I'' object to the most is the way that G-Man's and ChrisJJ's edits treat what I regard as an opinion (i.e that traditional counties do not exist) as fact. As far as I can see the only source for this claim comes from G-Man and Chris' personal opinions themselves, which by their very nature are not neutral or independent, and seem to be based upon complete indifference to both basic principles of the law and to successive government statements.
Personally I don't think the wikipedia should endorse the opinion of two editors. As there is no independent confirmation of this view, I think it should not be presumed in any way to be fact without appropriate qualification.
Opinions cut both ways, don't they just! 80.255 20:00, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:The opinion of two editors? Funny, I seem to recall that only two editors opposed the present policy, but thirteen of us voted in favour. Wikipedia ''already'' endorses the opinion of thirteen editors - not two.
:Clearly there are two opinions on the nature of the old counties, we all agree that they ''did'' exist, but some believe that they still exist today. There is room in Wikipedia for two opinions, they can both be mentioned in the articles. That was never at issue. The problem has always been (and remains) that you are just not willing to accept the majority view that a single article for each county is the simplest way to do it, and the best for Wikipedia. Nor have you been willing to accept that the proper place for the two opinions to be explained is in the body of an article. Instead you have insisted that it go in the lead section - very much to the detriment of so many articles.
:As we have been unable to work towards consensus (this page is just a battleground from beginning to end) I am inclined to agree with Morwen that we will have to go to formal mediation. That is a shame, but it appears unavoidable. Chris Jefferies 20:41, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:: ''"you are just not willing to accept the majority view that a single article for each county is the simplest way to do it, and the best for Wikipedia.''"
:: Complete nonsense; I have not split a single article since this policy came into effect. I certainly don't believe it's a good policy, but equally, I certainly haven't broken it!
:: "''Nor have you been willing to accept that the proper place for the two opinions to be explained is in the body of an article.''"
:: I have not made any original changes during the course of this discussion; indeed, in one case I have reinserted a removed reference to an administrative county into a lead section of an article! In both these attempts at portraying me negatively you have failed from a factual standpoint.
:: For the record, I have been very generous in compromising in my suggestions (suggestion which, I might, are a very long way off my 'ideal' version), and, from my perspective, it is you and G-Man who have impeded consensus by your abject refusal to conceed any ground whatsoever for the good of the project. 80.255 20:57, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
:No further comment. Chris Jefferies 21:05, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
::The whole problem with voting on these policies is the same as voting in real-life elections. People can vote on something they don't understand. Given the choice between something they can see on a map and something they can't they will naturally vote for what they can see regardless of the actual facts. I don't claim to be an expert in all matters, which is why I have to bow to the knowledge of people who are in certain subjects. I am glad that it has been agreed to mention traditional and administrative counties in a single article, so why are the traditional infoboxes being removed? No-one has responded to my suggestion to have three different sections with internal anchors yet. This should surely allay fears of confusion within a single article. Owain 09:32, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
::: Since it was I who began this debate by transferring (not removing) the trad counties infoboxes, let me explain. In the specific cases that I looked at (Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, because they are familiar to me), the trad county infobox provided a level of detail that was (to my mind) out of proportion to the importance it should have in the "current county" articles. On the other hand, I did feel that they were very relevant to the respective "History of" articles (History_of_Buckinghamshire and History_of_Oxfordshire), to which I had transferred them. That generated ''two'' threads of debate: (a) are the trad counties "history" or are they not? and (b) why are there two articles anyway? - the policy permits only one! Do others agree with this assessment? My own view is that "yes, they are history, not current" and "yes, we should have two articles" (at least - more if someone wants to write about the ley lines that they believe to exist!) --Concrete Cowboy 14:30, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
==List of Demands - an invitation==
It seems that this page keeps regressing into destructive argument, so I'm making a last attempt to get it back to ''constructive, focused, discussion''.
To do this, I invite all participants of all sides to list their demands - that is to say, the furthest they will compromise on this issue. Without knowing these, it will always remain impossible to reach consensus on this topic; but if the fundamental 'furthest posts' are known, it should be a lot easier to reconcile them and reach mutually acceptable solution.
All are invited to make concise points below: 80.255 21:07, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
: Focus may be easier to achieve if a table of all issues and their status was available. (SEWilco 21:17, 21 August 2005 (UTC))
::I don't think lists of demands would help, but we might make some progress if we deal with the least troublesome bits first and try to pick off issues one by one. Being constructive instead of arguing endlessly might give us enough trust and confidence to move on to the tougher issues later. Here's a starter for ten :-)
::How would you all feel about removing county references from the lead sections of articles about places, and relying on the infobox to supply those details? We could write briefly about the counties in the main body of the article, mentioning that there are different points of view, and link to the article Counties_of_the_United_Kingdom which would explain those different points of view more fully (no point in having a full discussion in every article about a British place). If you want to see how this would look, visit Huntingdon where Owain and I have agreed the current lead section wording. We have not written any county text for the main body, but you can see how the lead section and infobox appear.
::We'd have to begin by agreeing the explanatory text for the Counties of the United Kingdom article so there was something useful to link to. Then we could write the idea up as ''part'' of a new policy and busy ourselves by changing those 'place' articles.
::We'd come back here feeling we'd done something useful and done it together. And that would put us all in a good frame of mind for tackling another issue.
::How about it? Could we have a straw poll to see if this idea has any support? Sign below under 'Yes' or 'No'. If you answer 'no' feel free to give reasons below the second horizontal rule. Chris Jefferies 12:42, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
----
:I have no criticism of what you've done to Huntingdon; the infobox looks fine, and I see no reason why any sort of county reference need be inserted right at the beginning of the article, any more than national grid co-ordinates deserve to appear in the first sentence.
:A Counties_of_the_United_Kingdom article won't replace the advantages of splitting off traditional counties into seperate articles, however. If we're going to use infoboxes to give information, the advantage of splitting articles is very clear. In many cases the admin and traditional counties will be different for some places, and splitting articles would allow precise reference to both. If a XYZford is, for example, in the traditional county of Berkshire and administratively in Oxfordshire, linking to Berkshire under traditional county isn't going to be very useful; to put it another way; if a reader clicks on "''Traditional County: Berkshire''" in the XYZford article, he's going to do so thinking "''I want to find out more about the traditional county of Berkshire''", whereas if he clicks on the "''Administrative County: Oxfordshire''" line of the infobox, he's going to be thinking ''"I want more information on the administrative county of Oxfordshire"''.
: Whereas I do think your suggestion is a good one, it would be so much more useful and workable if we could agree to split articles and, when making reference to any traditional county (such as in infoboxes), link to the appropriate traditional county article. This would also provide a place for extraneous details on traditional counties currently in the main namespace articles. 80.255 15:01, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
:Incidentally, could you suggest an example text to linkt to Counties_of_the_United_Kingdom? The main possible criticism I'd have of the idea is that the same text in every article about a place could prove unwieldly and inflexible.
:An alternative that would still maintain the level of NPOV would be to split off articles on all the traditional counties, and have the text there (in each traditional county article) instead, which would ammount to far fewer article changes. Then, each ''place'' article could link to these article in the ''traditional'' county field of the infobox. Just a suggestion. 80.255 15:13, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for signing up in principle. The Counties_of_the_United_Kingdom article already exists, we'd just need to write a section for it. I was hoping we could leave the issue of splitting or lumping articles until later as I don't see a way forward with it yet. I know you believe that the advantage of splitting articles is very clear, but some of us think the advantages of ''not'' splitting them is very clear.
I'm not going to prejudice the straw poll by discussing any more detail. Let's just see how many people are prepared to follow this suggestion in principle. If it's a lot, then we can go ahead and try to agree some details. If it's just you and me then we're really no further forward. Chris Jefferies 17:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
===Neutral naming===
As a policy related to the above suggestion, I think we ought to decide upon what consistitutes a 'neutral' area name. For example, I notice that the use of 'East Anglia' for Huntingdon has been complained about on the grounds that is primarily an ancient kingdom, and shouldn't be used in that way.
In terms of use in the opening sentences of place articles - "''ABCford is a place in XYZ, England''" - it would be useful to agree upon a suitable geographic descriptors that avoid using counties.
I suggest the following (feel free to add to or comment about it):
*Use geological areas where possible - e.g. South Downs, North Downs, Peak District, Cotswolds, Lake District, Malvern Hills, Chilterns, Mendip Hills, Pennines, Fens
*If this is not possible, use compass points, specifying if the place is on the coast - e.g. Westcountry, the North East coast, the Midlands, on the North West coast of Wales
* Perhaps refer to rivers in the introduction - "''XYZford is a town on the river ABC, in the South East of England''".
* Perhaps equate it with a larger, better known place, if application - "''ABCford is a village 15 miles east of Salisbury, in the South West of England''".
What not to do (in my opinion):
*Don't use ancient kingdoms - Wessex, Northumbria, Mercia, etc.!
*Don't use euro regions, because they're vague and not commonly used; that is not to say there's anything wrong with, for example, "''South East England''", but "''South East England''" should be used because a place is clearly in the South East, not because it just falls within the "region" called the "South East" but could better be described as, for example, "''Central South coast''", etc.
80.255 23:22, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
:If we keep debating the straw poll will fail, partly because people will get the impression we just want to keep talking and partly because the poll will not be noticed as it disappears further and further up the page. Chris Jefferies 23:32, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
:: I'm suggesting this because User:Concrete_Cowboy complained about "East Anglia" - and I thought it was a fair complaint. I'm not trying to undermine your poll; I'm trying to help it. 80.255
:: P.s. you could always created a seperate page for the poll - Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places)/poll, for instance, post the link prominently at the top of this page, and the project page.
----
===Straw poll===
I am willing to work on text for Counties_of_the_United_Kingdom to explain the different points of view on British counties, write a clause for the policy, and then help modify British 'place' articles as suggested above by Chrisjj.
'''Yes'''
* Sign with four ~ signs
* Chris Jefferies 12:42, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
* Support only refering to (any sort of) counties in the infobox. Don't necessary either support or oppose the rest, but see comments below. 80.255 16:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
* Removing county information from the opening sentence and supplying it via the infobox sounds like an elegant solution that will offend no-one! Owain 18:49, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
* MonMan 19:13, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
: Further up the page, Owain had a good suggestion that he called '''Best of both worlds''' which I think deserves serious consideration. MonMan 14:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
* Tarquin 09:41, 29 August 2005 (UTC) (Gah... We're STILL on this one?)
* garryq 08:26, 5 September 2005 (UTC) infoboxes should settle arguments by displaying current former and ceremonial counties and hopefully draw these srguments to a close - in line with wiki.policy
'''No'''
* Sign with four ~ signs
* '''Oppose''' because I don't think it is sustainable. In an ideal world, it is a wonderful idea, but we don't have such a thing. My reason is this: in many of the village and small town articles, the location information is half the article. If the village has changed administration, make that three quarters. So if, following the proposed policy, we began removing that info "because it is in the info box", there would be a permanent edit war with the people who live there, who would simply put it back in again. That's how we end up with insanities like this: '''''Castlethorpe''' is a Village with a population of around 1000 in the old county of Buckinghamshire, England,[...] The village is now administered by the Borough of Milton Keynes.'' as if it were the British Mandate of Palestine! (I corrected it - see Talk:Castlethorpe but I accept that I was pre-empting this discussion and so reverted). So my counter-proposal is that articles should say very simply "Alphaton is in the Borough of Betaton and in the ceremonial county of Gammashire." (or even "and was formerly in the traditional county of Deltashire") --Concrete Cowboy 09:37, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
**"''in many of the village and small town articles, the location information is half the article''" - but surely you do not think that location information ''should'' be half the article? If we can keep this information in check by adopting the suggestion above, editors (from the local area or not) will be encouraged to add more non-location information, which in tern will lead to a better article. And if all the location information is in the infobox, people will see that there's no need to duplicate it. 80.255 17:10, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
::: If you want to be picky, then "half the text". Ok, I'm willing to be convinced by a a blind experiment: pick a village somewhere with a current active edit history. log out so that you are anon, add the infobox and gut the text. Wait for a week and then reveal what it was. --Concrete Cowboy 19:23, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
:::: Very well - why don't we all try doing that, see the net result at the end of a week? A single place won't be very reliable evidence, but if each of us picked a place for this 'experiment', the results might be more convincing. What do you say? 80.255 19:43, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::I'm not willing to alter articles as an experiment so, no, count me out. I urge others not to do so either. Chris Jefferies 15:43, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
== Russian/Cyrillic place names ==
I think Wikipedia needs a policy for consistent representation of Russian/Cyrillic geographic names in English. Something like:
1. If there's already an established name in English - use it. You can look up established names in English dictionaries (i.e. Webster's, Encyclopedia Britannica, etc.) and atlases (e.g. National Geographic Atlas of the World). You can also use Google_test, but don't treat the name as established unless there's at least a few thousand hits. Examples of established names that don't follow modern transliteration rules: Moscow, Red_Square, Saint_Basil's_Cathedral.
2. If there's no established name, transliterate the name. Do not translate words that are a part of a proper name. This applies to common words like улица (street), набережная (embankment), мост (bridge), гора (mount/hill), верхний/нижний (upper/lower), etc. E.g. translate ''здание на улице Кузнецкий мост'' as ''a building on Kuznetskij Most street'' (not Kuznetskij Bridge street or Blacksmith Bridge street), but ''здание на Улице 1905 года'' as ''a building on Ulitsa 1905 Goda street'', because in this case the word улица (ulitsa = street) is a part of the street name. Include literal translation when appropriate, e.g. ''Kuznetskij Most (literally, a blacksmith bridge) - a street in Moscow''.
Azov
== guideline ==
I've added the guideline tag because it looks like discussion has died down here, and also, being a guideline doesn't remove the fact that discussion can be ongoing. I also removed the merge tag as I can't see any current discussion on it and it has been on for a while. Steve block talk 13:34, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Constitution of new county of Milton Keynes 8.—(1) Milton Keynes shall cease to form part of Buckinghamshire. (2) A new county shall be constituted comprising the area of Milton Keynes and shall be named the county of Milton Keynes.Obviously, this only applies in the narrow field of local government. In ordinary parlance MK does not cease to form part of the traditional county of Buckinghamshire and there is no such thing as 'the county of Milton Keynes', but the current mess of local government terminology makes this extremely difficult. Owain 12:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC) ===Addendum: Bear in mind other Wikipedia policies=== It occurs to me that the naming conventions for British counties need to be applied in ways that don't breach ''other'' guidelines. In particular, it might be unreasonable to include details of historical counties in the lead section of an article. This is meant to be a concise summary and include only the most major points. If an article mentions these details it should do so in the main body, not the lead section. See the guide to writing better articles, look under the heading 'Lead section'. Chris Jefferies 30 June 2005 19:07 (UTC) ::Therein lies the disagreement as to what people think is important and what isn't. To use the Cardiff example, stating 'The city of Cardiff is in the county of Cardiff' is no use whatsoever as both entities are the same thing. Stating 'Cardiff is in the traditional county of Glamorgan' ''is'' useful as it places the city in a specific geographical area. The fact that that grographical area has no administrative functions shouldn't be an issue because we are trying to explain ''where'' the place is geographically, not administratively. Owain 13:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC) ==Proposal== by ChrisO moved from Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) ===Hierarchy of place names and disambiguation guidelines=== Some place names are replicated for entities of differing levels of geographic significance. For instance, Georgia is both a country and a US state; Luxembourg is a country, a district of the country, a city and a province of Belgium; the name Limburg is used for provinces in both Belgium and the Netherlands. A consistent approach should be taken when disambiguating place name clashes, as some places are more important than others. The hierarchy that should be followed is as follows: * '''Country''' (''e.g. France'') ** '''Region''' (''e.g. Canadian_Maritimes'') *** '''Province, county (UK) or state''' (''e.g. Bavaria'') **** '''County (US) or local district''' (''e.g. Humboldt_County,_California'') ***** '''City or town''' (''e.g. Oslo'') ****** '''Submunicipality''' (''e.g. City_of_Westminster'') When disambiguating identical names, priority should be given to the highest-ranking place. Therefore Luxembourg the country takes a higher rank than the province or the city; the hierarchy for disambiguation is as follows: * Luxembourg (the country) ** Luxembourg,_province_of_Belgium *** Luxembourg_(district) **** Luxembourg_(city) -- Anon. *In some countries, city can be larger, smaller, or same size as county. So the above county > city thing doesn't work globally. --Menchi 21:51, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC) *Yes, your size argument is good but we should follow the ''political'' boundaries/hierarchy. Another example, Canadian is PEI (the province) has less people than most cities in Canada yet PEI has more power than most of these cities due to the hierarchy of the Canadian governments. Burgundavia 06:01, 1 May 2004 (UTC) *The usual solution for disambiguating cities (i.e. add a comma and the country name, or, as the Naming conventions (city names) for the US and Canada, to add the name of the state/province) seems preferable to me. I agree with Menchi that county > city doesn't work globally, specially when trying to compare entities in two different countries. -- User:Docu *Yes, but if the county is considered a higher political entity then the city then the county should be ranked higher Burgundavia 09:26, 1 May 2004 (UTC) *As a US state is a sovereign entity, I see no reason it should not be given equal precedence to a European state (or any other state/country). anthony (see warning) *Counter-intuitive strangeness. I '''Oppose''' this. There is nothing wrong with the main article being a disambiguation page since it allows virtually 100 percent of the readership to be a single click away from the article they are seeking.. Davodd 11:41, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC) *I also strongly belive that, in the event of a name clash, the main article should ALWAYS be a disambiguation page. It is the most fair way to avoid cultural disputes. Allow me to assure you that many people in the U.S. State of Georgia belive their state to be just as sovirgn as the nation sharing the same name. Putting one location "over" the other for ANY reason is highly insensitive and offensive to the residents of the "lower" placed area. === Another proposal === There are a few important factors to consider when clarifying/qualifying and disambiguating names. # Ease of use by wiki-editors. #* Will most editors naturally link to the right article in their writing? How difficult will standard written usage of the term be? # Ease of use by readers. #* Will the disambiguation and/or clarifications be clear? Will readers be confused by seeing one article rather than another? Will they know where to go to find the information they want? #* Will special-focus readers be able to find what they want, if one of the conflicting terms is only used in a narrow context? # Conceptual/field-related importance; Propriety, Justice, Fairness #* How ''should'' the various articles be named, in an ideal world (where no writer or reader is confused)? Three common dab situations are: # A common, important term conflicts with an uncommon, niche, or derivative term # A common term conflicts with a specific, important term in a different context # Two important terms in similar context conflict with one another. (There are other combinations of these situations, but let's start with these.) In the '''first case''', we agree the common/wide-use term should get "term", the other terms should get "term_(clarif)", and the main "term" page should have a note on it pointing readers to the other pages: * the note is generally at the top, unless the other uses are really minor in comparison; in which case it is at the bottom. * for one or two dab terms, the note can look like "''For the clarif-1, see ''term (clarif 1)''. For the clarif-2, see ''term (clarif 2)''''". * for two or more dab terms, create a dab page at "term_(disambiguation)" and have a note like "''for other uses of ''term'', see ''term (disambiguation)''''". In the '''second case''', both editors and readers in one context may not be thinking of the use in the other context, and may therefore be quite confused to be directed to the wrong page (or may regularly link to the wrong page). consider Polish. There is agreement that visitors to Polish should see a dab page, but I think it should be via a redirect to Polish_(disambiguation) -- that makes it crystal clear, before one gets past the first H1, that this is not the final page any reader was looking for. In the '''third case''', I think the shared context and the magnitude of any popularity/population difference is key. When the context is almost completely shared by the different terms (as with Luxembourg (country) and Luxembourg (city), or as with the various Fame articles), it makes sense for the original name/event (the country; the film) to occupy the unclarified name, and link to the others. When the context is only partly shared (as with Georgia (country) and Georgia (U.S. state)), I prefer an explicit (disambiguation) page, with only a redirect at the unclarified name. +sj+ : I must confess I was the one who moved "Fame (movie, TV series, and theme song)" to "Fame", and I want very much to be able to move that to "Fame (disambiguation)"... but until there is some consensus on what to put at the unclarified Fame, I'm leaving it as is. +sj+ 07:33, 2004 May 18 (UTC) Applying this proposal to the above examples: * '''Luxembourg''' is closely related to Luxembourg_(province_of_Belgium), Luxembourg_(district), and Luxembourg_(city); they all share the same name origin, and none greatly eclipses the country. So we can use the above-suggested hierarchy to assign the unclarified name to the country. * '''Fame_(movie)''' is closely related to Fame_(television), Fame_(musical), and Fame_(song) -- the latter three all named for and derived from the first. The other common use of ''fame'' is a dicdef which doesn't have its own article. So we can assign the unclarif. name to the film. * '''Georgia_(country)''' and '''Georgia_(U.S._State)''' are linguistically unrelated and in somewhat different contexts, though both are placenames. People can be divided fairly neatly among those who first think of the country and those who first think of the state when they hear the name. The articles do not mention one another. As a result, a dab page is created at Georgia_(disambiguation), and the unclarified name is redirected there. * '''Cambridge, England''', Cambridge,_Massachusetts, and other places named Cambridge_(disambiguation): all are cities, all were named after the old and renowned city in England, and none vastly eclipse the original in size or popularity, so the original city gets the unclarified page. * '''Santiago de Chile''', '''Santiago_de_Compostela''', and other places named Santiago: all are cities, all were named after Santiago the patron saint of Spain, but Santiago de Compostela was by far the first. However, unlike the case above, the original Santiago (population 100,000; capital of an autonomous region) is in some ways eclipsed by Santiago de Chile (population 5,000,000; capital of a country). So neither gets an unclarified article title (and the current page at Santiago should be redirected to Santiago_(disambiguation)). * '''Azerbaijan''', and the Iranian provinces West and East_Azarbaijan: All are named for the same thing, in the same part of the world. The country is higher on the heirarchy up above, and larger and better-known than the provinces. It should clearly get the unclarified article name. Since the Iranian provinces are related, their articles should be linked-to from the main article. (I just added a dab mesg at the top of Azerbaijan; before that, there was no mention of Iranian provinces on the page. +sj+ 08:22, 2004 May 18 (UTC)) : (Who wrote that? User SJ? Never heard of him.) But I am sure I will hear more of you, SJ, as when it comes to city names, common sense is a most uncommon quality, and your examples just above are full of it. I hereby nominate you to be our Tsar of place name confusion. Tannin 09:40, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC) ===A different rule for each country?=== There are plenty of cases where a city and its province share a name that is mostly used for the city. Since there has been no common naming convention so far, what we have is chaos: * '''Japan'''. Osaka is the capital of Osaka_prefecture, Kyoto the capital of Kyoto_prefecture. (lower case) * '''Russia'''. Moscow is the capital of Moscow_Oblast, Khabarovsk the capital of Khabarovsk_Krai. (upper case) * '''Brazil'''. Rio_de_Janeiro is the capital of Rio_de_Janeiro_(state), São_Paulo the capital of São_Paulo_(state). (disambiguate) * '''Iraq'''. Basra is the capital of Al_Basrah, Karbala the capital of Al_Karbala. Weirdly, the English name is being used for the city, and the Arabic name for the province. Should we just let the writers for each country decide on their own rules? -- ran 08:25, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC) :Until recently, with exception of Counties_of_Croatia there was no more lower-case around. User:Golbez started to unilateral revert this, while knowing that at least one other user (me) opposes. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:05, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :I think that each country should have its own rules, with a standard disambiguation style. To say otherwise will inevitably make article names that look "wrong" to locals, and could sometimes be downright offensive. However, this is not to say that conventions cannot be attempted or debated - some locals may be swayed by the arguments to accept a more global standard. However, until then, I say we go on a per-country basis. It worked well enough til Tobias came along and started unilaterally moving articles around. :) --Golbez 17:14, August 18, 2005 (UTC) == Arabic province / city names == If a province and its capital have the same name, what is the best way to name the articles? Wikipedia seems to do it in three different ways: In some cases, the Arabic version is used for the province and the English version for the city. (Sometimes the only difference is the ''al-''.) I find this strange and confusing (Moscow city, Moskva oblast?), but then, I don't speak Arabic. Can someone clarify if this is right? '''Iraq'''
An_Najaf province; Najaf city
Al_Basrah province; Basra city
Al_Karbala province; Karbala city
'''Egypt'''
Al_Iskandariyah province; Alexandria city
Al_Isma'iliyah province; Ismailia city
In some other cases, the city and the province share the same article, with the Arabic name redirecting to the English name. Should there be two separate articles for the province and the city instead? '''Egypt'''
Al_Qahirah redirects to Cairo city
Al_Jizah redirects to Giza city
'''Syria'''
Dimashq redirects to Damascus city
'''Jordan'''
'Amman redirects to Amman city
'''Algeria'''
Alger redirects to Algiers city
Then there's a third way, which is to have the English province redirect to the Arabic province, and the Arabic city redirecting to the English city. The clearest way so far, but IMO a bit elaborate: '''Saudi Arabia'''
Mecca_province redirects to Makkah_province
Makkah redirects to Mecca
What's the best way to sort all of this out? -- ran 09:06, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC) I think that "Al-Something" is "the something". "Al Karbala" => "the Karabala". - anon I'm going to start rearranging the city and province pages. The new scheme will be like this: Al_Basrah redirects to Basra (this is the city, not the province)
Al_Basrah_province redirects to Basra_province If anyone disagrees, post something here. -- ran 07:50, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC) ==Historical places== Is there a convention for referring to a geographical location at a historical moment, now in a different nation-state than at time of the event in question? For example, the List_of_earthquakes makes reference to places as being in the United States, not being incorporated into same at the time. Is this as per the convention, or ought they to refer to Spanish_Empire, Mexico, etc, or flag as "in present day", or some such formula? Alai :For clarity, maybe both should be indicated. Maurreen 06:15, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::I agree, where both are relevant, both should be mentioned. For an article about a modern place, the current name should be used. But if the article has a history section, the previous name(s) should be mentioned there. If the article is about an historical event or person it should use the name that was current at the time but should probably also say 'currently in xyz'. Chris Jefferies 14:02, 11 July 2005 (UTC) == Country names in category titles == There's a discussion on standardization of country names in titles (at least for categories) on Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion which may be of interest. -- Beland 02:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Countries (Moved from general conventions) == Is there a central list of "commonly misnamed" countries, and what they should be referred to on Wikipedia? This might seem fairly obvious, but sadly not all country names are as simple as Canada, Australia, Brazil or France. This refers to both in article names, AND just as importantly, as a short form (see bolded examples below). Examples: *Republic_of_the_Congo / Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo - I have seen these referred to as '''Congo''' and '''Congo DR'''. *People's_Republic_of_China / Republic_of_China / Taiwan - I have always referred to these as '''China''' and '''Taiwan'''. (I'm 26 and read atlases/world maps a lot when I was young) Only in the last couple of years have I see the convoluted names above being used to refer to these countries. Is this an American thing (I'm Australian), or some recent change in political correctness? What are acceptable short names now? '''China PR''' and '''China ROC'''/'''Taiwan (ROC)''' ? *Georgia_(country) vs Georgia_(U.S._state) - I see this is being handled on Talk:Georgia. *Macedonia and Azerbaijan have similar conflicts, except the country's priority is a lot more defined that in the case of Georgia - however the naming scheme doesn't reflect this. Is '''Macedonia FYR''' an acceptable short form? *I have seen Federated_States_of_Micronesia referred to as '''Micronesia FS''' to differentiate it from the region. *East_Timor or Timor_Leste (or even Timor-Leste ? *Yemen vs North_Yemen vs Yemen_Arab_Republic (aka '''Yemen AR''') *South_Korea vs Korea, and North_Korea vs Democratic_People's_Republic_of_Korea (aka '''Korea DPR''' or '''DPR Korea''') *How many different Yugoslavia's have there been? *British_Virgin_Islands (or U.K._Virgin_Islands) and U.S._Virgin_Islands. I've also seen Virgin_Islands used by itself in a list - alongside the other two! I'm sure there are others! I found most of these while doing up the table at Template:WikiProject_Olympics_Country_Table and needing short forms of the country name for the table - not to mention article names like Democratic_People's_Republic_of_Korea_at_the_1992_Summer_Olympics are a bit of a mouthful! -- Chuq 06:59, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) :Such a list would be helpful: I've just disambiguated a couple of the links in the 2004 summer olympics series where an article existed but did not show up in the 04 olympics template because of misnaming. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:16, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::List_of_sovereign_states might be helpful for this. Maurreen 04:40, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) :::The two Congos are best identified as Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Kinshasa), ie using the capital cities to identify which one you mean. This was the custom before Congo (Kinshasa) changed its name to Zaire, and is the least confusing way to refer to these two countries. :::Taiwan is best referred to as such. It is only really Americans who tend to use "ROC" or "Republic of China" and that usage confuses the hell out of the rest of us. Note that the Taiwanese government uses both forms itself. There is a difference between Taiwan and ROC, namely a small number of small heavily militarised islands close to the Chinese mainland. However, almost always the difference is irrelevant. :::The People's Republic of China can almost always be shortened to "China" without causing confusion. Some care is necessary if Macau and/or Hong_Kong are in point. :::Referring to "South Korea" as "Korea" would be an unwelcome development, jguk 08:22. :::There's only ever been one Yugoslavia, as far as I'm aware. But it shrunk somewhat in the 1990s. If it's borders at any one moment in time are important, you'll have to describe them:) :::I'm not aware of ever seeing the British Virgin Islands (which are often abbreviated to BVI) being called the UK Virgin Islands - and we should not be in the business of renaming things here, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==Counties again== Please note that there is a discussion going on at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_geography about the suitability or otherwise of ceremonial counties as a way of arranging the "list of places in Exampleshire" articles. G-Man has asked me to raise it here since it relates to the policy on naming conventions. I find the arguments for ceremonial counties taking precedence over the traditional and administrative senses of the term unconvincing, the policy somewhat ambiguous when it comes to stating what county a place is in, and the present arrangement inadequate when it comes to dividing up our primary county articles and their spin-offs such as "list of places in" pages. I'd appreciate some input. — Trilobite (Talk) 6 July 2005 07:20 (UTC) :May I suggest that you canvas opinion from regular contributors to 'awkward' places like Manchester, West Midlands, London, Bristol. --Concrete Cowboy 6 July 2005 10:44 (UTC) ::My vote would be for traditional counties. The ceremonial areas are far from satisfactory in Scotland and Wales and large parts of England. Owain 6 July 2005 09:18 (UTC) :::Chalk up another vote for traditional counties. It's maddening to see people talking about Unitary Authorities as if they are real counties! UAs are always going to be changing -- what kind of reference scheme is that? MonMan 6 July 2005 13:54 (UTC) :Mine for traditional and/or admin, depending on context. The ceremonials do not appear to have attracted popular acclaim. --Concrete Cowboy 6 July 2005 10:44 (UTC) ::::And my main concern is that the articles we write make good sense to our readers. As I noted above over a year ago (!), the library in St_Neots says above the door, 'Cambridgeshire County Library, St Neots'. The road signs as you enter the town say 'Cambridgeshire', the OS map shows the town within Cambridgeshire. So should the Wikipedia article, and this is what the current policy requires. But the 'traditional counties' approach has the town in Huntingdonshire! We really ''do'' need common-sense to prevail if we want our articles to be useful to our readers. ::::In an article about Oliver_Cromwell, I would refer to St Neots as being in Huntingdonshire because at that time it was. The current policy supports this. ::::As far as I'm concerned the issue was decided when the vote was taken (85% in favour of the existing policy). I do not want to debate the whole thing again (sigh). Let's be very clear. The current debate is taking place because a small minority refuses to abide by a policy decision taken a year ago. Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 11:10 (UTC) I think you're misrepresenting it somewhat. I certainly do abide by the policy decision, otherwise many of the stubs and articles I've created would have been worded differently, categorised differently, and listed differently. I'm trying to argue for a slight softening of the line that ceremonial counties are of paramount importance, which is the principle that guides the present arrangement of our county articles and related pages such as "list of places in". This actually contradicts the policy, which says: "''We should use the current, administrative, county''". Ceremonial strikes me as absurd. I'd favour traditional as the guiding principal, but I'd be happy to compromise and do everything straight down the line administrative, with nice infoboxes for population and all the rest of it in the articles on all the administrative counties and unitary authorities, with traditional county articles done separately and talking about history and culture, etc. For individual place articles I'd like a recognition of what may well be the real consensus but which the policy is ambiguous about, namely that we talk about a place's traditional, administrative and ceremonial counties, all qualified as such, and all in the present tense. Once policy decisions are taken they are not sealed forever, particularly if a substantial minority dissents and the policy is poorly worded and inadequate. Furthermore, I am not refusing to abide by it (you seem to lump me in with POV-pushers). I have always objected to the policy, but came across it after it was a fait accompli, and have never really had the stamina to have a go at arguing for a change in the face of people who have got their way and understandably don't wish to see the debate reopened. (Actually I don't much feel like having a marathon argument about it now, but since there is a push to complete the "list of" articles and the question of why they are all ceremonial counties was raised, I felt compelled to say something). — Trilobite (Talk) 6 July 2005 11:44 (UTC) ::::No, no, I don't mean to lump you with POV-pushers, Trilobite. If I gave that impression I apologise. Ceremonial ''or'' administrative county is fine as far as the St Neots article is concerned, just as long as the town is recorded in Cambridgeshire I shall be very content. If the policy needs to be revisited and adjusted that's fine too, let's do it. All I ask is that we are guided by common-sense and that having agreed, we all stick to the policy. That has so far failed to happen and was failing to happen long before you became involved! ::::If you have been abiding by the policy but are dissatisfied with it and want to review it, that is very laudable. It is what ''all'' of us should have done all along. Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 13:04 (UTC) :::: ''but I'd be happy to compromise and do everything straight down the line administrative, with nice infoboxes for population and all the rest of it in the articles on all the administrative counties and unitary authorities, with traditional county articles done separately and talking about history and culture, etc.'' — this is very near what I suggested a long time ago, and I'm a "''POV-pusher''", apparently! I would tolerate the organisation of places primarily by administrative areaa ''if'' all the traditional counties had separate article, and, when a traditional county was mentioned, it ''linked to one of these articles''. Indeed, a few articles were created such as Gloucestershire_(traditional), etc., but unfortunately certain editors didn't like them and made a great fuss until they were eventually deleted. It is ludicrous to organise county articles as refering to administrative counties, then organise county lists as refering to ceremonial counties, and then, when mentioning traditional counties, link to the former! :::: It would be a very simply matter to have individual articles on the different types of counties, allowing accurate links from all articles refering to one or another of them. As the bulk of the history of all counties took place when their boundaries exlcusively followed those of the traditional counties, it makes sense to include the bulk of the history information in traditional county article. When someone follows a link to Huntingdonshire from the Oliver Cromwell article, they don't want to know about some ''council district'' nonsense dreamt up in the past two decades! This should be moved to Huntingdonshire_(council_district)! If all the different counties had different articles, along with decent maps in each, they could actually be usefully referenced throughout the encyclopaedia; this cannot be done currently. :::: On the question of the bizarre choice of "ceremonial counties" as a basis for the 'county' articles at present, naturally I am in favour of replacing these with traditional counties, which are much better known and provide a stable geographical framework. Alongside these could run a similar series of articles on the administrative counties and UAAs. All places lying in each set of entities could then be properly inter-referenced. Ceremonial counties, although poorly known, could also be treated separately, and provide additional information on the location of places; however, I doubt that most people would even known what a 'ceremonial county' was, so they are a very poor choice as a basic geographical framework. 80.255 19:32, 14 August 2005 (UTC) ::Why would you be 'content' to see St. Neots as being recorded in Cambridgeshire? Surely the truth of the situation is more important? The infobox already records that it is administratively Cambridgeshire and traditionally Huntingdonshire. Why push a POV that the administration is more important to people than the centuries old traditional county? Owain 6 July 2005 14:02 (UTC) :::::Why do I get a strange sense of ''deja vu''. Do we have to go through this 'again'. G-Man 6 July 2005 18:21 (UTC) ::I thought we didn't. I thought we were going to apply common sense. But then Chrisjj makes a controversial POV statement. Owain 6 July 2005 18:44 (UTC) :::::: I've just been informed about this debate and I've yet to read all the contributions here and elsewhere but following are my initial thoughts on the matter. Whether one likes it or not the traditional (or historic) counties are still with us. I recall seeing a government statement something to the effect that "the historical counties were not abolished in 1974". Therefore it is a fact that, for example, Ulverston '''is''' (not '''was''') in the historic county of Lancashire. There's no getting away from it. Ulverston is, of course, also located in the administrative county of Cumbria. Wikipedia is all about conveying facts, so if we don't convey these basic facts about Ulverston then we are failing. We must state in an article about Ulverston its relationship to ''both'' entities. As to how we do that is another matter, as is which entity should take priority in the text. Maybe I'll make some comments about that when I've read other people's contributions to the debate. If the Wikipedia naming policy (which I haven't yet studied) says that no reference should be made to historic or traditional counties in ''location'' articles then I would humbly suggest the policy needs revising. Arcturus 6 July 2005 20:18 (UTC) :::Yes, do read it please (and its talk page too) and then come back and comment. That would be welcome. The policy doesn't say that ''no'' mention should be made of historic counties, it says that it's appropriate to mention them in historical contexts or to mention them later in an article on a place. But we also have to consider the guidelines on article structure which says the lead section should contain only the major, basic, essential points. So an article on St Neots should say in the lead section 'St Neots is a town in Cambridgeshire' and then later, perhaps in the section on history, that historically or traditionally it was in Huntingdonshire. Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 22:59 (UTC) ::The problem here Chris, is that what you consider 'basic' points differs from other people's. I for example condsider the ancient county a place is in, as it least as important, if not more important, that the current local government situation. Secondly, you AGAIN seem to like to use the past tense for traditional counties. St. Neots IS in Huntingdonshire, not WAS there. Owain 7 July 2005 08:31 (UTC) :But that is perverse and misleading. Today, Huntingdonshire (district) exists and St Neots is not in it. The only correct statement is "St Neots is in Cambridgeshire but was in Huntingdonshire before boundary changes in xxxx". The past is interesting, but it is the past - so use the past tense. In a case such as St Neots, the article must give both to avoid confusion and ambiguity. The same goes for Huntingdon, as I see is already the case --Concrete Cowboy 7 July 2005 10:47 (UTC) :I withdraw the above. I misread the map. St Neots ''is'' in Cambridgeshire ''and'' in Huntingdonshire District. There is a better map here. St Neots doesn't illuminate the debate because Huntingdonshire was a shire county and now it is a district: I don't understand why it was cited, other than to create a false semantic argument. ''[This inserted after Owain replied to my original.]'' --Concrete Cowboy 7 July 2005 17:15 (UTC) ::The reason St. Neots is used as an example is because its administrative county is different to its traditional county. The point is that St. Neots would be in Huntingdonshire traditional county whether Huntingdonshire District Council existed or not. Local government does not define what county a place is in, and never has. Owain 7 July 2005 18:39 (UTC) ::How is it perverse? Traditional counties have nothing to do with local government. Yes there was a Huntingdonshire county council, but that only existed between 1889 and 1965. Huntingdonshire itself is an entirely separate entity. Boundary changes change the names and areas of local councils, not traditional counties. Owain 7 July 2005 13:06 (UTC) :::Owain, I wonder if you can explain why it's OK for you to see things differently from others, but it's not OK for me to do so? Are you suggesting that ''everybody'' else disagrees with my view and agrees with yours? Do you have any evidence for that? :::Quite apart from the discussion about the ins and outs of county naming conventions, there is a deeper question which has not been explicitly asked. I'm going to ask it now - because it's much more important than the policy itself. :::'''Does everyone here agree to abide by the policy?''' I hereby declare that I will abide by the existing policy in editing articles and that if the policy is changed I will ''still'' be bound by the new version. If I think the policy is wrong I will discuss it further and try to get it altered, but meanwhile I will abide by it. :::Who will stand with me on that declaration? Will everyone go forward on that basis? If not, how can we go forward at all? Chris Jefferies 7 July 2005 12:10 (UTC) ::If you recall I used wording out of the policy itself. The sacred policy was never broken. Your objection was to where in the article the text should be placed. That is an argument that is entirely independent of the policy. Owain 7 July 2005 13:06 (UTC) The idea was to try and come to some compromise between the two camps, and recognise that (a) traditional counties have special significance and (b) that despite this it is inappropriate for an encyclopedia to use them as to imply they are in popular use. We should follow usage of broadsheet papers and similar material and the fact is, that they simply don't write stuff like "Carlisle is in Cumberland". Compare Guardian usage of "Carlise, Cumbria", vs Guardian usage of "Carlisle, Cumberland" - and all the results on the last are false positives, for an institution that is still happily called Cumberland. At one point we tried to propose "is within the traditional borders of" and "traditionally covers" as compromise wording. I still don't see anything wrong with these from my side. Some comments have tried to put forward the idea that administrative counties were a creation of 1889 with no precedent. This is just not true - they sprung more-or-less directly (apart from County_of_London) from the boundaries used by the Quarter Sessions courts, which had e.g. a separate East_Sussex and West_Sussex, and county borough-like entities in them (see County_corporate). There is the issue of the 1844 changes, and the Scottish exclaves. When people do use traditional counties in day to day life, they don't use the pre-1844 ones (ie I've never heard anyone claim that Wokingham is in Wiltshire, or that Lindisfarne is in County_Durham, which was the situation before 1844). I would be interested to hear opinions. People do use counties in Scotland, and at least here we don't have a nomenclature dispute over what "county" means. However, they generally use the former administrative counties rather than the "traditional" ones, due to the unmanageable exclaves. If we can get agreement from the traditional counties people on the 1844 and Scotland points, then hopefully we can get a bit more relaxed and work towards consensus. But if I see List_of_places_in_County_Durham containing Lindisfarne, then I am going to get awfully annoyed. Morwen - Talk 20:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :As the author of List_of_places_in_County_Durham, I can tell you I have no intention of listing Lindisfarne. Your compromise wording is also the kind of thing I have been using where necessary. An article on a place in Warwickshire that says it's "in the West Midlands and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire" is acceptable, though I can't help thinking that if Warwickshire has to be qualified as a traditional county in such a case, then we ought to qualify ceremonial or administrative counties in other cases, so we'd have places stated as being "in the administrative and ceremonial county of Cumbria, and in the traditional county of Westmorland". The key to accuracy, I think, is to acknowledge the separateness of the three systems and to make each definition explicit to the reader, because those who are under the impression that there is one set of counties that has had its borders changed over time will be hopelessly confused otherwise when it comes to trying to understand that somewhere can be simultaneously in ceremonial County Durham, and in administrative Stockton-on-Tees unitary authority. While in my personal POV-pedia things would be done primarily according to traditional boundaries I can certainly acknowledge that clearly spelling out all three (where they differ) is the most neutral and accurate approach. — Trilobite (Talk) 21:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC) ::Apart from Herefordshire and Rutland and a few others. Unitary authorities dont have county status and so arent the same as administrative counties. Personally I think your above formula is needlessly complicated, and likely to cause utter confusion amongst the readers. G-Man 21:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :::I think we can all agree that the system of counties, Lord-Lieutenants, administrative boundaries of local government and all the rest of it is needlessly complicated, otherwise we wouldn't be having this argument. The formula is not needlessly complicated because it just follows from that. I don't think we should be oversimplifying things and misleading the reader about the real situation. For places that have been affected by boundary changes it is just not appropriate to say they are in some county, without qualifying what is meant by county, and just leaving it at that. I'd rather the readers did a bit of thinking and appreciated the distinction between a place's traditional county, its ceremonial county, and the unitary authority that administers it, than that they just remained ignorant of the complexities of the UK's messed-up subdivisions. — Trilobite (Talk) 21:44, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :::Oh my, consensus would be lovely! Morwen asks for opinions, mine is that there are a number of sticking points. I don't believe recognising that traditional counties have special significance is one of them, I'm happy with that and county articles should certainly explain this. I suspect we can all agree on this, if so we can tick off point (a). But point (b) may be far more difficult. The 'traditional borders' styles of phrasing mentioned by Morwen is fine, but I get anxious when I see article after article stating in the lead section that place P 'is in the traditional county of C'. It seems too, well, 'systematic' and the present tense leads the reader to a conclusion that many will interpret as a point of view. :::Then there's the messy business of multiple county infoboxes. I would much prefer to see a single infobox linking to a single county article for each county name. The county articles themselves can explain the history, the significance and use of administrative, ceremonial, traditional, postal, and whatever other kind of county is pertinant along with the geography and many other aspects. :::We have to accept that British county naming is a bit of a minefield and Wikipedia articles should surely explain the muddle as clearly as possible. Multiple infoboxes will not help people understand as well as clear, concise, descriptive writing and a county map, preferably showing the borders in use at different times in the past as well as the present administrative boundaries. :::I have one further comment at this stage. When people use traditional county names in everyday life, I suspect they are often quite vague about the boundaries. For example, the Gloucestershire County Cricket ground is actually in the city of Bristol, and has been for many years, but few people could say where the traditional county line is. Many cities are like Bristol, partly within two or more traditional counties. They began in one county and spread right across the border - that's history! I don't want to have a battle over this, I'm tired of wrestling endlessly with it. But I'm not going to roll over and die either. That is why I've been pleading for everyone to declare their intentions up front. Will everyone abide by the current/future policy? If not, why not? Chris Jefferies 21:55, 3 August 2005 (UTC) :::::The footer boxes aren't infoboxes, by the way, the infoboxes are the things at the right. I support having a traditional counties footer, in the same way that historical Provinces_of_Sweden do. (see Tavastland for example). Morwen - Talk 13:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC) :::::Multiple footers are useful when the subject of the article exists in multiple name spaces with different relationships. The articles on Scottish council areas and Welsh principal areas have multiple footers where they share the same name as a traditional county and it works well. Regarding G-Man's argument that unitary authorities don't have county status — well it depends what you mean by "county"! :) The legislation clearly defines them all to be "counties" within the meaning of the Local_Government_Act_1972. e.g. from: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19951769_en_2.htm Constitution of new county of Milton Keynes 8 (1) Milton Keynes shall cease to form part of Buckinghamshire. (2) A new county shall be constituted comprising the area of Milton Keynes and shall be named the county of Milton Keynes. :::::The word means different things in different contexts, just as in City_status_in_the_United_Kingdom, ''some have doubted the right of the Crown to define the word "city" in the United Kingdom'', the same can be said of the word "county". In specific legislation is has been defined to mean specific things, but those pieces of legislation cannot redefine the meaning of the word in general usage. By the way, the southern border of Gloucestershire is easy - it's the river Avon. Owain 14:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC) BTW, I'm more than happy to use the post-1844 boundaries for all practical purposes (as of course was the intention of the Act), but of course any articles on places that fall in such detached parts can easily mention the fact that they are in a detached part. Owain 14:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC) : A formula such as ''Kyloe lies in an exclave of the traditional county of Durham, and is locally situate in Northumberland'' would be acceptable from my perspective. Then, on the County_Durham_(traditional) page, such places could be listed with an asterisk or similar and a footnote mentioning the fact that the 1843 Act purported to affect them, rather as the current article List_of_places_in_Hampshire is primarily concerned with the administrative county, but also lists places in the traditional county with a footnote to that effect. 80.255 19:47, 14 August 2005 (UTC) I am all for listing the historic counties of Great Britain.Including the 6 counties in Ulster,there are 92 traditional counties.I will be writing some articles on the postal orders used in the 4 British nations. - (Aidan Work 04:54, 11 November 2005 (UTC)) == RfC == I think this discussion needs help so I've added it to the RfC page. Here's a brief summary of the situation for those who may offer help and advice. '''RfC - Summary so far''' - There is disagreement and debate about how we should reference British counties in Wikipedia articles. Over a year ago, the subject was discussed in detail, on this page and elsewhere (various user talk pages and a variety of article talk pages). This discussion can be reviewed nearer the top of the page you are now reading. Eventually a vote was taken and a policy approved by a majority (see the Project page). Since that time disagreement has continued, some articles have been repeatedly reverted, and there is an impasse. Now the debate has intensified once again and we need some help to go forward in a way that will be positive for Wikipedia. Summary posted Chris Jefferies 7 July 2005 14:47 (UTC) :RFC response. I would say the reasonable way is to refer to the traditional counties in any article which is unambiguously before 1974, and the current administrative unit for anything which is after that time. To refer to Oliver Cromwell as connected to 'St Neots, Cambridgeshire' is quite clearly wrong. David 25px | Talk 7 July 2005 21:23 (UTC) Congratulations on being the first RfC response :-) And thanks. That's a novel suggestion and worth chewing over. How would you approach articles that span the historical divide? Most town articles for instance deal with the modern town ''and'' its history. I suppose we could apply the rule as appropriate, today's St Neots would be in Cambridgeshire but the history section would have it in Huntingdonshire prior to 1974. Works for me. Chris Jefferies 8 July 2005 00:00 (UTC) : I agree. The introductory paragprahs of an article on a town or city should be about the place as it is now. Unfortunately, it seems some Wikipedians believe that the historical county forms a part of the important data on a place as it currently exists. Much as historical counties may have resonance with some people, they remain an administrative division, and one that is no longer current. It's most relevant to mention these in the section on a place's history. -- Tarquin All this is missing the point. I brought this up originally because of the suggestion that we should all set to work filling out the "list of places in..." articles for ''ceremonial'' counties - the worst choice! The way we talk about counties in individual place articles needs clarification, as it seems people have different understandings of what the policy is. What we have got away from though is this question of why we are using the ceremonial counties ''for the county articles themselves'', and all their various spin-offs like "history of..." and "list of places in...". Now since many people find it sensible to use the traditional counties in a historical context, doesn't it make sense to have articles like History_of_Westmorland and History_of_Huntingdonshire instead of spending our time on History_of_something_that_was_arbitrarily_designated_in_1974,_didn't_exist_before_that_time,_and_had_all_its_functions_except_Lord-Lieutenancy_abolished_again_and_devolved_to_unitary_authorities_a_few_years_later? The way I see it, supporters of the policy are under the illusion that no one cares about traditional counties these days, so we should slavishly follow reorganisations of local government and treat these administrative "counties" as the real thing. Then they realise the absurdity of this because of the subsequent changes to the adminstrative structure, which means places they like to think of as being in the "West Midlands" are in fact administered by various unitary authorities. While I'd like to see Wikipedia using a stable reference frame to organise our county articles, with all the administrative and ceremonial deviations duly and prominently noted, supporters of the status quo are stuck in an unfortunate halfway house at some indeterminate time in the late 1970s, not acknowledging that things have moved on (something they are quick to accuse supporters of traditional counties of) and former administrative counties like the West Midlands no longer have county councils. Why does the assignment of a Lord-Lieutenant to an arbitrarily delineated patch of ground grant it the right to an article listing all its places, or outlining its history? Why don't we either use the ones that really matter from an administrative perspective, or the stable reference frame that is the 900-year-old traditional system? Why? — Trilobite (Talk) 14:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC) I want to try and help to resolve this difficult situation. I live in Cardiff, watch the page and a bit saddened about the number of edits which do not actually improve the article, but just flip between opposing views as to whether “in the traditional county of Glamorgan” (or somesuch) should appear in the introduction. We need some way of stopping the attrition of edits and reverts so we can all get on with life. The only way of doing this is having policies. We have one on the use of county names but it clearly can be read more than one way. The “put Glamorgan in the introduction” camp point to the acceptable Coventry example in the policy: ''Coventry is in the West Midlands, and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire''. The “leave Glamorgan out” camp point to the ''only as an afternote'' comment in the policy proper. There seems to way out but to refine the policy to be explicit about the use of traditional county names in article introductions. If there was to be such a proposal, we would need to consider the relative value added by referencing current administrative boundaries compared to traditional counties. The current boundaries tell us about the governance of the place, and put it in the context of regional political and service delivery frameworks. The traditional boundaries tell us where it is, with reference to a spatial framework that to all intents and purposes has no current relevance. And people know where it is anyway, because there is a map. --Dave63 11:53, 13 July 2005 (UTC) :While I disagree with you that that the traditional boudaries have no current relevance, I do see that it seems sensible at a first glance to do everything according to administrative counties. If I lived in another country and came across this dispute I would think why don't they just follow the administrative boundaries, because as you say, they "tell us about the governance of the place, and put it in the context of regional political and service delivery frameworks." But it's not as simple as that, because "Cardiff is a city in Cardiff" is not a very useful statement. I haven't followed the dispute in this particular article, and don't much feel like getting involved, but I see from the introduction at the moment it says "it is now administered as a unitary authority" and leaves it at that. Now this is a useful piece of information and a much more sensible way of wording it, and it probably deserves to go in the introduction (although I can't understand why it is considered contrary to the policy or an irrelevant piece of information to say that it's in Glamorgan). However, as I keep trying to point out, the main thing I am concerned about is not the policy on how to word individual articles on towns and cities, but the way we organise our county articles. Cardiff will have to go in the List_of_places_in_Cardiff article under the present plan over at Wikipedia:WikiProject_UK_geography/tasks, becuase these are the "principal areas" that popped up in 1996. Doesn't this seem a bit silly? — Trilobite (Talk) 16:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC) So are you seriously suggesting that we use as a geographic reference, county boundaries which do not appear on any modern maps?. Would you like to show me a modern atlas which shows Birmingham in Warwickshire for example, or Liverpool in Lancashire. All of the modern maps and atlases I've seen either use ceremonial county boundaries or purely administrative boundaries. Absolutely none of them use the traditional county boundaries. With regards to the West Midlands it is still a perfectly legitimate county, the policy is quite clear about the metropolitan counties: ''we should treat the metropolitan counties as real counties the fact that their county councils have been abolished does not change their legal status''. Berkshire no longer has a county council but is still a perfectly legitimate county. ::Ordnance Survey maps (which most other maps are derived from) only show administrative boundaries. This means that yes, traditional boundaries are not shown, but neither are 'ceremonial' boundaries. Can you show me a modern map that shows Reading in Berkshire, or Blackpool in Lancashire? Ordnance survey maps don't show a lot of things - government regions, health authority boundaries, police areas, fire service areas, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Oh yes, and I know that Berkshire is still a perfectly legitimate county - so is Huntingdonshire! Owain 14:26, 18 July 2005 (UTC) Also it is perfectly alright to have a History_of_Huntingdonshire article, I dont know where you have gotten the idea that it isn't. G-Man 18:24, 13 July 2005 (UTC) "Cardiff is a city in Wales. Traditionally, it was in the county of Glamorgan; today, it is a Unitary_authority." What's the problem? Grace Note 05:06, 20 July 2005 (UTC) ::Not bad, but it uses the past tense for the traditional county. Owain 08:53, 20 July 2005 (UTC) ::: Does the "Past Historic" tense still exist in modern English? --Concrete Cowboy 23:41, 21 July 2005 (UTC) ===Where now?=== I've visited the RfC page and can't see any reference to counties. Is the discussion going on here or should I look elsewhere? My initial thought is that the current coverage of historic / traditional counties in Wikipedia is way over the top. There are 800 odd pages linked to Traditional_counties_of_England. While there will a few places where the historic county is of interest, I can't believe it is anywhere near 800. Often the first line of an article will say the place is in Xshire. Do we really then need to say it is in Xshire ceremonial county and Xshire traditional county? --Cavrdg 18:24, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :The discussion is going on here. Items drop off the RfC page after a short time, it's really an alerting system and an invitation to join in, not a place for discussion. I agree with your comments on traditional counties, and so do the policies as I understand them. The real problem, even if we rewrite the county names policy, is that people won't abide by it. :I stated clearly that I will abide by (ie write articles according to) the policy no matter whether I agree with it or not - even if it changes. So far nobody else on either side of the argument has joined me in doing so. There lies the real difficulty. A reworded policy will ''still'' be ignored by a minority. What a tragedy for Wikipedia. :-( Chris Jefferies 18:51, 1 August 2005 (UTC) ::People shouldn't be denied knowledge of what county a place is in by unrelated local government changes. Local government '''is''' important if one happens to live in a given local government area; but which organisation someone happens to pay their council tax to is '''not''' the only important factor when describing a place. If the first line of an article says the place is in Xshire which is the same as the ceremonial and traditional county then they need not be mentioned. The problem is when an article says a place is in Xshire, and the traditional county happens to be Yshire. Both pieces of information are relevant and with the policy suggesting that there shouldn't be disambiguation pages they should both be mentioned in the one article. I am abiding by the policy regarding the wording to use, but my edits are routinely reverted with no explanation. The fact that there are 800+ articles referring to traditional counties should show the depth of feeling about them. There are different types of area that could be legitimately called 'counties'. The 'traditional county advocates' have got used to this fact, but it seems the 'administrative/ceremonial advocates' have not - despite the fact that they themselves ackowledge that at least two types of 'county' exist! There is no conflict stating all three in articles about places or the county articles themselves - the real problems are going to come with the 'List of places in...' articles. Owain 19:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :::I will abide by (ie write articles according to) the policy no matter whether I agree with it or not - even if it changes. This is what I've already been doing as consistently as possible, although the policy seems fairly weak and ambiguous so I cannot promise that I have the same interpretation of it as everyone else. I still would like to see the policy revised. — Trilobite (Talk) 19:00, 1 August 2005 (UTC) ::::I agree. The policy is weak and is in need of revision. I had wondered about putting up a proposal to amend it. Getting back to the argument; Wikipedia is about facts. Places are still in historical counties, and these historical counties still exist - FACT. I prefer to state locations in terms of their current, transient, administrative county/borough/unitary authority AND their permanent historic county location. I'm not that bothered which comes first, but what I really object to are edits which state "...was formerly in the Historic county of Lancashire....", or something similar. Such descriptions are erroneous and I edit them accordingly (when I get round to it). Arcturus 19:23, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :::::Thats a matter of opinion and argument as to whether historic counties still exist or not in any meaningful sense, I dont see it as ironclad 'fact'. Now In my experience 99% of people use a great deal of common sense and discretion when it comes to writing about counties. However there are a few people who dont, and are quite fanatical. And unfortunately we need a relatively prescriptive policy to stop them from wreaking havoc, which is why it was created in the first place. Now if anybody would like to propose revisions of the policy I wouldnt mind discussing them. Otherwise I'm not sure what these discussions are achieving. Thirdly the 'places in' problem could be solved by having a 'Places historically part of X county' section. G-Man 19:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC) Thanks for the confirmation that this is the place and the outline of the arguments. Most people seem to have some sense of balance but I still think the historic counties are being given too much prominence. Take a couple of articles I've looked at today. The first fact mentioned in Presteigne is its role in the former Radnorshire. Is that the most important thing to be said about the town? Beedon is a very short article but out of some 530 characters of information, 54 are in six occurrences of ''Berkshire''. --Cavrdg 20:28, 1 August 2005 (UTC) :I wonder if we might at least agree that it's neither necessary nor desirable to use counties to inform readers where towns or villages are. Most Wikipedia users are not British and won't be familiar with our counties; articles about places can and perhaps ''should'' use the automatic map template which is more precise than the county and cannot be misinterpreted. :I am not going to rework the policy while there is still so much disagreement. Others are welcome to do so if they wish and I will take part in the discussion and cast my vote if we reach that point. The vote last time was 13 to 2 in favour of the current policy, Wikipedia has grown since then so the number of voters may increase. :I'd like to thank Trilobite for supporting me in agreeing to abide by the current or future policy. Will anyone else join us in that declaration ''before'' any changes are made? In my view if we cannot get a good majority in favour of accepting agreed policy we might just as well give up now. In particular it would be good to hear a clear statement from Owain on this. Chris Jefferies 20:40, 1 August 2005 (UTC) ::I have stuck to the exact wording defined by the policy, even to the extent of using markup such as
2. Beaconsfield
3. Great_Marlow
4. High_Wycombe
5. Chesham
6. Princes_Risborough
7. Wendover
8. Aylesbury
9. Winslow
10. Buckingham
11. Fenny_Stratford
12. Stony_Stratford
13. Newport_Pagnell }} In Buckinghamshire (and no doubt others) User:owain appended one of his hobby-horse infoboxes (see right) to the end of the standard infobox, as if it were part of it. An unfamiliar visitor could very easily mis-read the info as current and believe that Buckingham is the county town. It hasn't been so for over 400 hundred years! This is obsessiveness taken to extremes. For now, I've moved it down to the para on "places that are no longer part of modern Bucks" and copied it to History_of_Buckinghamshire. In my mind, the latter is the only reasonable home for it and I am minded to pull it from the main article since it adds nothing. If it were a copy of one of the old county maps, it would amount to something. Shown in the context of the UK as a whole, the differences are invisible. --Concrete Cowboy 17:25, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :This is why we need separate articles on the traditional counties. In a Buckinghamshire_(traditional) article, this infobox wouldn't be confusing at all. More detailed maps of the traditional counties could also be provided on such separate pages. I cannot see a single reasonable objection to this. 80.255 17:36, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: I'm happy with that proposal. Of course if I were the one writing the article, I wouldn't be happy becuase very few people would read it. On the other hand, if it were in the History_of_Buckinghamshire, then it would be very useful indeed - and people would read it! --Concrete Cowboy 22:17, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :As if it were part of it? Come on - it clearly says "Traditional county of ..." at the beginning of it! It adds nothing? It shows the traditional county in relation to the other traditional counties! All of the Scottish and Welsh counties have them. I would call suppressing valid information "obsessiveness taken to extremes". Owain 18:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: Update: I've tweaked the infobox so it does show a more detailed map of the traditional county of question (in the case of Bucks) and thus the differences are obvious in comparison with the administrative map. In my view, this would still be better on a separate page, but at least it can no longer be argued that "''shown in the context of the UK as a whole, the differences are invisible''", because they aren't! 80.255 19:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC) I personally object to these infoboxes, as it gives the impression that wikipedia endorses the position that traditional counties still exist. Which is not NPOV. G-Man 18:50, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::It is POV to suggest that they DON'T exist. Read the relevant legislation. Read the government statements. Local government was loosely based on traditional counties between 1889-1974, and now it isn't. So what? Why should changes to something '''based'' on the counties mean we should ignore the counties themselves? We shouldn't. The addition of traditional county information to articles doesn't remove anything, so what's the problem? Owain 19:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: Neither should wikipedia endorse the POV that they don't exist. Particularly as the government says they do! Personally, I think I trust government statements over your own opinion, G-Man, if it came to a choice between the two...80.255 19:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC) That is still a disputed POV, and is not neutral. This certainly belongs in the history article. G-Man 20:38, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::Preferring one POV over another would not be neutral, and that is what you are proposing. I am proposing including both POVs (if that's what you think they are). Clearly, not preferring one over the other IS neutral. The fact that the infobox would also be useful in the history article is no reason to remove it from the main article. That would be POV. Owain 20:50, 17 August 2005 (UTC) But our policy does clearly prefer one approach. That "we do not take the minority that the [traditional counties] still exist with their former boundaries". How exactly is this complying with the policy. G-Man 20:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: ''Nothing'' exists with ''former boundaries'', by definition. I quite agree that no county exists with its ''former boundaries''; in the case of all the traditional counties, they only exist with their current boundaries, as they have continued to do since 1889, having never been abolished. I and Owain are both wholly complying with your beloved, hamfistedly-written policy. 80.255 21:07, 17 August 2005 (UTC) Sorry, re-phrase to say "we do not take the minority that they [counties] still exist with their former boundaries". So again how is that complying with the policy. G-Man 21:19, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::: You haven't re-phrased anything already. Of course nothing exists with its ''former boundaries'', else they wouldn't be ''former boundaries''. Example: Carlisle isn't part of Durham - that is a ''former boundary'', which was abolished. Hartlepool ''is'' part of Durham, because the boundaries of the traditional county of Durham ''has not'' been abolished. I've never claimed that any ''former boundaries'' exist, as the very idea of something-that-no-longer-exists existing is a contradiction in terms. ::: You claim that the traditional counties do not exist, but not once have you provide a shred of evidence to support this claim. Go and find me a bill that repealed them. There is no such bill. My position is based on 1) the fact that, according to the law, the absolutely no reason why they should not exist, and 2) according to the government itself that passed the 1972 Act, "[this Act] '''will not alter the traditional boundaries of Counties.'''" - that is pretty clear-cut statement; it couldn't really have been clearer. I've asked you this before and you have never replied to it, but I'll ask it again: '''should wikipedia officially take the view that this Government statement was a bare-faced lie?''' If you believe that the counties do not exist, you answer to this can only be ''"yes"'', and the ''POV'' ball is very firmly in your court. Of course, you'll need to put in a clear statement that "''although the government issued a statement saying XYZ, it was lying!''", in several articles...80.255 22:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC) "The position of the government" that's a bit of a stretch. Your single piece of evidence for this assertion, is a single statement made 30 years ago, which in itself has no legal force. And could be interpreted as meaning that traditional loyalties of county cricket for example were not intended to change. What the government said was utterly contradicted by what they actually did. If they really meant that, then why for example did they allign the ceremonial counties with the new administrative ones instead of with the historic ones?. And why did they stop producing statistics for historic counties (which happeded as early as the 1920s I believe). It seems to be something that various governments occasionally pay lip service to as a sop to traditionalists, rather than as something they take seriously. You also fail to point out that there is no-longer any direct reference to historic counties anywhere in law. And your sole argument for the surposed "existence" of historic counties is that they have never been formally abolished. Which in itself is quite frankly a very weak argument indeed for claiming that something "exists", and has very little relevance to the real world. I'm sure there are many obscure pieces of legislation which have never been formally repealed, but are no-longer taken notice of. I believe it is still technically legal for an Englishman to shoot a Welshman with a bow and arrow within the grounds of Hereford cathedral for example, as this medieval law has never been repealed. G-Man 19:17, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::Why can't you see what is written in front of you in black and white? They don't have "former boundaries" they have CURRENT boundaries. No piece of legislation since (and including 1889) has even attempted to changed them. Owain 21:45, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::So your clearly treating the policy with contempt again. I dont care about your personal opinions. You either take the line of the policy or you dont. G-Man 21:55, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::::I am doing no such thing. Where does the policy forbid inclusion of traditional county information in the sole article about it? In fact it encourages it with the statement "Articles about counties should not be split up and should not be disambiguation pages". Owain 08:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::Can't we do something to resolve the county issue? I don't think the ceremonial or traditional counties need to be mentioned at all in most cases, i.e. where they are the same as the administrative county. Where places have changed county recently (last 10 years?), it needs a mention in the main article but anything older should be in History of... :::: ''Separate pages'' for each traditional county would go a very long way to resolving this issue. Then there would be no complaints from anyone about different maps, etc. 80.255 19:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::I was looking at Ryhall yesterday. "Rutland" appears 9 times in a short article and "Leicestershire" not at all despite Ryhall having been in Leicestershire for 23 years until 1997. --Cavrdg 18:53, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::Er, Ryhall was administered by Leicestershire for 23 years, but it's been in Rutland for 900. I'm not sure I understand your objection.Owain 19:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC) More importantly no-one has agreed to these boxes being put into articles. There is no agreement that they should be, and they are clearly controversial. You have taken it upon yourself to put them there. Can I ask you to stop putting them into articles until this has been discussed further. G-Man 20:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC) My 2p (since the article being disputed is one I have put a lot of work into) Buckinghamshire_(traditional) and History_of_Buckinghamshire should be one and the same. My intention is to expand the history article so that it's significantly more than just what was forked from the main article: a lot more can be said, I just haven't got around to it yet. The whole idea of traditional counties being modern tangible entities is ridiculous, and I can speak as one who lives in modern-day Buckinghamshire, that the "Traditional County of Buckinghamshire" doesn't exist in a modern context. Thus anything referring to the traditional county belongs in the history article. Also at a recent committee meeting of one of the historical societies in Buckinghamshire (where I am a trustee) I had (for statistical purposes in an unrelated exercise) grouped Buckinghamshire together with Slough and Milton Keynes and got the general response, "what do you want to do that for? We were bloody glad to get rid of them..." -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 23:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :: Well, it's a pity the government disagrees with you, isn't it? Do you think wikipedia should officially state that the British government has repeatedly lied when it has issued official statements saying "''The new [1974] county boundaries are solely for the purpose of defining areas of ... local government. They are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of Counties''"? It doesn't strike me as at all NPOV to claim that the government was lying. But perhaps you think we should clearly state that "''wikipedia delcares that this government statement was a lie''" in the relevant articles? 80.255 23:31, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then, and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire? Why, in the 26 years that I have lived here, have I never heard of it? Why, in the 5 years that I have been the trustee of a history society in Bucks, have I never heard mention of it? How exactly does it differ from the Ceremonial County that is already mentioned in enough detail in the Buckinghamshire article? I will certainly be seeking the opinions of learned local experts on the existence of this "traditional county" of which you speak. :::You need more than the wording of a 1974 act of government to convince me, I'm afraid. Acts of parliament have always been woolly in their wording and interpretation and unless you can provide evidence of this "real" place that meets with the opinions of other local experts (which I will seek out tomorrow, don't fret) then I won't accept that you're coming from a NPOV. -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 23:39, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::::"''So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then, and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire? Why, in the 26 years that I have lived here, have I never heard of it?''" ::::: Many people haven't heard of many things; that doesn't mean they don't exist, unless you're a solipsist! The many laws have little effect on most people, but remain legally in force. ::::: "''Why, in the 5 years that I have been the trustee of a history society in Bucks, have I never heard mention of it?''" ::::: Presumably because this history society is happy working in terms of administrative boundaries, and not traditional ones. What has that got to do with the price of fish? ::::: ''How exactly does it differ from the Ceremonial County that is already mentioned in enough detail in the Buckinghamshire article?'' ::::: The boundaries of the traditional county are the bounderies that were used administratively prior to 1889. In 1889, a new set of "administrative counties" (so-called) were created, and the original "counties" were explicitly left untouched; they were not repealed, nor was there any implied repeal of them; the government, the courts and official censi recognised their continued existence in the years following. It is these counties to which the government was refering to in the statement I reproduced above. In 1974, the "administrative counties" of 1889 were explicitly abolished, so the accompanying government statement say that "''the traditional boundaries remain unchanged''" clearly wasn't refering to these "administrative counties". ::::: The traditional county differs from the ceremonial county as per the illustrative graphics of both now uploaded. ::::: ''I will certainly be seeking the opinions of learned local experts on the existence of this "traditional county" of which you speak.'' ::::: You'd be better off seeking the opinions of learned legal experts. The fact that some people falsely believe that the traditional counties have been abolished doesn't mean that they have. As I have said before, this government statement is very clear; it isn't taken out of context, and it also shows clear the intention of the 1972 Local Government Act bill - as I'm sure you know, 'intention' is most important when it comes to determining what Acts of Parliament exactly mean, and statements, both to the public and to Parliament, have often been used by Judges in their interpretting of statutes. ::::: ''Acts of parliament have always been woolly in their wording and interpretation and unless you can provide evidence of this "real" place that meets with the opinions of other local experts (which I will seek out tomorrow, don't fret) then I won't accept that you're coming from a NPOV.'' ::::: See above. As I previously mentioned, why should 'local experts' be experts in parliamentary law? I have never claim that the traditional counties are used exclusively by everyone; merely that they unequivocably exist ''de jure'', and that wikipedia, if it values factual accuracy, should make this clear in separate, unconfusing articles about them. 80.255 00:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::Please also answer the question: ''So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then, and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire?'' I won't be able to respond to any of your other points until tomorrow. -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 00:18, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::::::: ''So tell me where this "traditional county" exists then'' - what do you mean by "where it exists"? It exists as a set of boundaries that, through both statute and common law, has the legal recognition of the British state. :::::::: ''and what effect it has on the lives of the people who live in mordern-day Buckinghamshire?'' :::::::: As much or as little effect and the individuals who live in Buckinghamshire wish; they all have free wills. How much effect does the ceremonial county have on the lives of people who live in it? Do you even think that the majority of the public even know what a 'ceremonial county' is? Or what a Lord Lieutenant actually does, or represents? Effect is quite irrelevant to legal existence, and this question strikes me as a classic straw man, attempting to avoid the point by trying obfuscate the real issue here. And that real issue is: ''wikipedia should accurately representent legal facts''. 80.255 00:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::::::::''wikipedia should accurately representent legal facts'' - I cannot dispute your legal claim (see below) though Wikipedia should also aim to represent the facts appropriately (see below) -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 01:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::In answer to your previous response I'm afraid I can't count that many legal experts among my many contacts and so cannot do as you suggest. What I am objecting to mainly here though is that you want to create a separate article that basically says ''The such-and-such Act 1974 was so worded that the pre-1974 boundary of Buckinghamshire was never officially abolished and some believe that it is still relevant today.'' If it's still relevant to Buckinghamshire it belongs in the main article, if it's relevant to the history it belongs in the history article. In all honesty it could go in both. I don't see why you want to create a separate article with its own infobox to say what I've just managed to sum up in a single sentence. From my position it seems that all you're doing is disrupting Wikipedia to make a point and I fail to see how creating a separate article called Buckinghamshire_(traditional) would be '''less''' confusing to the casual observer. If it affects modern-day Bucks, it goes in the main article. If it doesn't, it goes in the history article. What could be simpler? -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 01:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::: Not quite. What I want is separate articles for all the traditional counties, and the administrative and various other counties clearly labeled as such in their titles, so that places can be easily linked. For example, the article on Eton could then be written "''Eton is a place in the Unitary authority of Windsor_&_Maidenhead, the ceremonial county of Berkshire_(ceremonial) and the traditional county of Buckinghamshire_(traditional).''" At the moment, all these different county-types link to the same page, and it's naturally very confusing. Splitting them up into separate pages would allow us to make it clear that they are different entities. The whole idea of using ceremonial counties for organising articles is also confusing; there is no such thing as "''Berkshire County Council''", yet there is such thing as "''Kent County Council''", whereas people who live in Tunbridge Well are being told that they are in Kent, those that live in the "''Medway''" unitary authority are also being told that they are in Kent. It would be a lot clearer to tell these people that they are in Kent_(ceremonial_county). As it stands, many of the place articles have an info box listing, amongst other things, the ceremonial and traditional county. At the moment they both link to the same article, which also serves as the administrative county article. It's ridiculous from the standpoint of clarity. Eton, for example, links to the Buckinghamshire page under "traditional county", but the Buckinghamshire page now has no information on the traditional county of Buckinghamshire! What good is that? And you claim my suggestion would be ''confusing''?! ::::::: ''What I am objecting to mainly here though is that you want to create a separate article that basically says 'The such-and-such Act 1974 was so worded that the pre-1974 boundary of Buckinghamshire was never officially abolished and some believe that it is still relevant today.' '' ::::::: No, I want a separate article that deals with the traditional county of Buckinghamshire, so that when places are linked as being in traditional Bucks, the reader is actually taken to a relevant page, and shown a proper map of the entity in question, not a map of some other type of county called 'Buckinghamshire' that's used as a Lord Lieutenancy or anything else. The fact that the traditional boundaries of Buckinghamshire still exist precludes them from only being mentioned in the history article. The traditional county is a current entity and some people use it. Those people who choose not to use can use something else; I am not advocating the removal of all the administrative county articles, merely the use of a comprehensive system in which all the various types of 'county' have separate articles that clearly demonstrate their differences and that can be linked to. ::::::: And no, I am not 'disrupting' anything to make a 'point'. It is the current, badly-thought-out policy that has caused the disruption. 80.255 12:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::::::Well I am willing to concede to the fact that some people still refer to Eton as being in Bucks (though I have asked the question of people I know who live in the disputed area and every single one of them has come back with "no, it's in Berkshire") but I still cannot agree to splitting off stuff from the Buckinghamshire county article. I don't think your suggestion can be achieved without repeating oneself unnecessarily. ::::::::Your argument is that the current Buckinghamshire article does not mention this traditional boundary. So change the article then. I still think your suggestion would lead to more confusion when essentially, and for the vast majority of cases, we're talking about the exact same county, just at a different time period when the boundary was slightly (and it is slightly) different. ::::::::I also feel that it would be preferable to include a map of the pre-1974 boundary and to mention that some people believe this is still relevant in the text, rather than using a separate infobox, because the infobox is still leading the casual observer to believe that a separate county is being discussed that is an entity in itself, which isn't the case. I do believe that "some people believe this is still relevant" is correct, as I say I have been speaking informally to contacts and mailing lists since this arose, and so far you are the only person who is saying that the southern-end places are still in Buckinghamshire. If it's written in law I can't dispute that, however laws can be (and often are) irrelevant to what people who live in the area believe, as has been shown following my enquiries. ::::::::I do believe that this whole process, as far as Buckinghamshire is concerned, is being overly disruptive. You have explained that your reasoning behind wanting a separate article is because the current article doesn't mention what you want it to, so rather than amending the current article or discussing amendments to the current article, you are proposing a whole new (and in my opinion unnecessary) article that would divert the user away from the valid (and relevant) information on history etc already contained in the main Buckinghamshire article. ::::::::I apologise if I am overly defensive or ill-mannered with regard to this topic, however this has gone on for the last two years and to be frank I'm tired with it coming up again. It's also come up at the worst possible time for me work-wise, but that's my personal stuff. ::::::::Incidentally, my enquiries around Milton Keynes and its environs produced the answer "It's still in Buckinghamshire, it's just administered differently" from the same people who said that Slough and Eton were definitely in Berkshire. So there you go. -- Francs2000 | Talk Image:Uk_flag_large.png 18:25, 19 August 2005 (UTC) I would like to add my voice to Francs2000 - these article should be merged and the Trad infobox attached to the merged article - that makes structural sense and avoids any POV/NPOV. Thanks, Ian Cairns 23:27, 17 August 2005 (UTC) ::It doesn't avoid POV at all. The traditional county deserves its own article; the history section also deserves its own article. All different entities should have their own article; to attempt to mix them will only cause confusion. 80.255 23:31, 17 August 2005 (UTC) :::They deserve their own articles, yes - but if we ARE going to have one article it should mention everything! To have a policy that dictates having one article but then restricting what can be put into it is a nonsense. Owain 08:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC) How about one article with three different main sections: Administrative county, Ceremoninal county and Traditional county - they can all have their own descriptions of boundaries, relationships with other entities, infoboxes, &c.; Trying to shoehorn them all into one descriptive paragraph at the beginning is not working. If you look at Monmouthshire it has two headings: '''The principal area''' and '''The traditional county'''. Both relate to infoboxes of the same name and there is no ambiguity, confusion or loss of information. If we are going to have one article, then surely this is the way to do it? Owain 08:50, 18 August 2005 (UTC) : I'm content for 80.255 and Owain to have their Buckinghamshire_(traditional) article. He can play in his sandbox to his heart's content, because very few people care enough about the subject to visit it. At least it stops him cluttering up the main article. --Concrete Cowboy 09:40, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::So you want three different articles: Buckinghamshire_(administrative), Buckinghamshire_(ceremonial) and Buckinghamshire_(traditional) as well as a History_of_Buckinghamshire? Owain 10:29, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::Let's not forget Buckinghamshire_(1889-1974_administrative_county) and Buckinghamshire_(1974-1997_administrative_county) Morwen - Talk 10:42, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::: Yes, why not have articles on all of them? They are/were all discrete entities, and all differ in their boundaries. 80.255 :: No ''I'' don't. A single article is (and was) perfectly ok before you started cluttering it with disproportionate detail, at too high a precedence. The history of boundary changes is interesting, but for goodness sake have a sense of proportion. The trad county infoboxes (soapboxes?) are completely out of scale. The issue is exactly the same as it would be if someone put a great big infobox giving the historical route of the London to Oxford turnpike and all variants of what is now the A41 before people ruined it by driving motor cars on it. Or if somebody wanted to show all the railways before that d____d Beecham chappie took his axe to them. Yes, it is encyclopaedic material, but it has to in proportion to the article - otherwise it needs a separate article. --Concrete Cowboy 12:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :: For example, the trad county map in Warwickshire ''is'' proportionate and is particulary relevant in that case. Put a dirty great big infobox in and you knock out all the photographs. As it is, there is a peculiar white space above the material on Coventry. --Concrete Cowboy 12:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::: ...which is why a Warwickshire_(traditional) article would solve this problem. Then places that are in the traditional county but not in the administrative county can be linked to the right article, without the reader having to mull over lots of different maps showing different entities in order to work out which one applies to XYZford. 80.255 12:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ==Formal mediation on 'Counties of Britain'== I think we need formal mediation about this issue. Make a list here if you are willing to participate # Morwen - Talk 08:54, 18 August 2005 (UTC) # Owain 09:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC) # Chris Jefferies 11:27, 18 August 2005 (UTC) # --Cavrdg 20:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC) The convention is that there should be a Request for Comment first. --Concrete Cowboy 12:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC) * I don't see any guidelines about that... We've had plenty of opinions, anyway. Morwen - Talk 12:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC) : What exactly does formal mediation entail? This matter needs more discussion first, which is what we're all doing, anyway. 80.255 12:26, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :: See Wikipedia:Mediation. The idea is that independent meditors will be able to work with everyone and try to find a solution that everyone can consent to. I don't think the current discussion is productive, we have been going around in circle for 2 years. Morwen - Talk 12:29, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::I think, first of all, it would be more useful to (neutrally) itemise the available options/alternatives and discuss/comment on each of them. The reason that this current discussion is unproductive is that it is aimless. There needs to be a more focused discussion on this if a consensus it to be reached that is acceptable to all parties. 80.255 12:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::I think that would just generate more verbiage. Are you refusing the offer of mediation, then? Morwen - Talk 12:57, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::: ...which is why it needs to be ''focused''. Perhaps I'll post a suggestion a little later this afternoon; I don't have time at the moment. I'm not refusing mediation, but I do not feel that we have exhausted all constructive discussion yet. 80.255 13:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :::: Just a point of fact for the record. We ''did'' go to RfC on 7th July, see the '''RfC''' section further up this very page. Chris Jefferies 13:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::: I misunderstood: I thought that the reference was just to the new infoboxes. Yes, '''I accept''' mediation. It is clear that at present there is no meeting of minds. The participants don't even seem to tuned to the same channel. --Concrete Cowboy 16:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC) ::::I think formal mediation might ''help'' us focus in order to achieve consensus. Why would it be better to do this without help? Chris Jefferies 13:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC) : Which issue is "this issue" being referred to? (SEWilco 17:27, 18 August 2005 (UTC)) ::::You're right, SEWilco, it's not very clear. This long page discusses a whole slew of place name issues. The formal mediation suggestion is specifically for the matter of the policy on British county names, articles on the counties, and referring to counties in articles on towns etc. I'll tweak the title of the mediation section to make it clearer. A lot of the discussion on this page is about those matters, but there's other stuff here too. Maybe we should move all the county stuff to a new page of its own. What do others think about that? Useful or daft? ::::One other thing, could anyone who wants to be included in the formal mediation process add a line to the list at the top of this section? It may not be enough just to mention it in passing in the text here. Thanks. Chris Jefferies 19:56, 18 August 2005 (UTC) == Other subnational entities == I see a lot of discussion on UK Counties, etc. here, but what should we do about countries we don't know much about? i.e. we don't know, say, the official format of Benin, or Afghanistan, or what not. Some areas prefer the format "X Department", some prefer "Province of X", others are simply "X", like the USA. What should we do about these? Should we have a standard naming format (in format, not name; "department" and "province" above are simply examples), or give preference to local standards? (There are proposals under discussion at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(subnational_entities) but there is a lot more discussion taking place here, and this is arguably the better location for it, since, well, UK counties and such are subnational entities :)) I hope this is the right place to do this. --Golbez 15:34, August 18, 2005 (UTC) :afaik Term of X only used in "Province of X" (Italy) and "Canton of X" (Switzerland). Others provinces and cantons that are subnational entities of present day countries do not use this form. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:25, 18 August 2005 (UTC) == Suggestion for consensus == Having read through the recent discussions on this page again, there seem to be two main complaints: :1) That the ''traditional county infoboxes'' that were recently added to some articles take up too much space and give undue prominence to something that the article is not (or should not be) primarily about, and :2) that information on the traditional counties should not be allowed to dominate articles primarily about administrative entities, and that attempting to incorporate both is often confusing and inappropriate. The following suggestion is designed takle these objections by doing two things: :1) prevent main/general articles where the administrative area is of primary concern from being "swamped" with references to or information on traditional counties - the main complaint about the traditional county infoboxes above. :2) Keep the primary emphasis on administrative areas but allow useful and informative reference, where appropriate, to be made to traditional counties by keeping information about them contained within separate articles. Reference is made to the current policy at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) under the subheading ''2.2 Counties of Britain''. --start of suggestion-- '''Line 1: ''' : ''We should use the current, administrative, county'' append : "''to organise lists and as the primary references to places''". '''Paragraph 3: ''' i) Amend first sentence to : "''We should mention traditional counties in dedicated articles about them and and only in secondary references to places that lie within them. Primary references to places should be made using administrative counties only.''" ii) 2nd sentence: : ''it is acceptable to use ceremonial counties as geographic references, as this is often more in line with common usage'' append : ''"but the differences between these and administrative counties (i.e. top level authorities) should be made clear"'' '''Paragraph 4:''' Amend to : "''In historic references we should make reference to a separate article on the traditional county, if it differs from the current administrative county to which the reference in question pertains.''" '''Paragraph 5:''' Amend to : "''Information pertaining solely to traditional counties should be contained with separate articles on these counties, and '''should not dominate or be given excessive prominence''' in articles dealing primarily with administrative or ceremonial counties.''" --End of suggestion-- I believe that these changes should decrease the current conflict relating to this 'county issue' dramatically, while not entailing anything unacceptable to either party. This is not, as yet, an official poll, but users are invited to state whether or not they would support or oppose the above suggestion with a view to reaching consensus on this matter. 80.255 18:32, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :Can you explain what you mean by the 'historic references' section? This is rather unclear. I think certainly no articles regarding the locations post-1844 events should be linking to traditional counties articles (were they to exist). Morwen - Talk 23:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC) :: Historical reference: current sentence reads "''In historic references we should make sure to note that the county at the time was not the same as the county now, if relevant'' - difference is largely that in my suggested version 'note' becomes 'link'. For example, currently, an historical reference to XYZshire links to the "catch-all" XYZ-shire article, which often isn't approrpriate at all because it deals almost wholly with an administrative county that is completely different from the county being made reference of. Huntingdonshire is another good example. The vast majority of links to it are linking the traditional county, but the article itself is primarily about a 2nd-level council district! Under this suggestion, all the material about the traditional county would be moved to Huntingdonshire_(traditional), and thus all the 'historical reference' links it has will actually go to a relevant article. :: Secondly, I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you mean, but there is a standard infobox (not of my making) for places that gives the traditional county for a lot of them (example), which seems to be well accepted by everyone. Under the proposals above, these links (Surrey in the example above) would more appropriately point to XYZshire_(traditional) pages, rather than articles which aren't about the traditional counties in question, and thus simply aren't applicable at the moment (such as the Surrey article in the case of Brixton). 80.255 00:07, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::In these cases, how can you tell that the 'majority of links' are wanting the traditional county, as opposed to the former administrative county? Are you proposing that someone born in 1964 in Huntingdonshire, would have "
I have some problems with the use of administrative counties as the main building blocks.
1) They include places not widely recognised as counties such as BANES and Blackpool
2) They are not necessarily the ''top level authorities''. The metropolitan counties and Berkshire are administrative counties even though they don't have county councils. So, given the need to mention the real adminstrative arrangement, there is potential for another level of duplication.
3) Some administrative counties have been doughnutted, so Nottingham is not in Nottinghamshire and Leicester is not in Leicestershire
I favour using ceremonial counties as the most widely recognised areas as the building blocks. --Cavrdg 08:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :I would aree with that, It seems that ceremonial counties have become the de facto geographic counties. Who wrote this by-the-way you havn't signed it. G-Man 19:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::::Sorry. Now retro signed. --Cavrdg 19:30, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::I agree that administrative counties aren't be best choice, but ceremonial counties are only slightly better. Why perpetuate areas like Greater Manchester for independent towns like Bolton, Wigan, Salford, &c; when the administrative area was only created in 1974 and lasted for 12 years before all the councils became unitary. These ceremonial areas are defined for a very specific purpose in a very specific piece of legislation, much in the same way as administrative counties are. They are clearly an attempt to move back to traditional names and areas where the local government situation is now different, but they don't go far enough. If we're going to not use administrative areas, why not go all the way back to the traditional names and areas everywhere? Owain 10:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::: To what period would you go for traditional names? 1973? - I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in Botley, on the edge of Oxford, who thinks they are in Berkshire. 1910? - Even fewer would put Caversham in Oxfordshire. As current entities at least the ceremonial counties are clearly defined. ::::Obviously for built-up areas that cross county boundaries, the traditional name to use would be the one where the centre of the place is. For articles on individual villages or suburbs then the traditional name to use would be the one where the village actually is. e.g. the Reading article would refer to Reading as being in Berkshire, but the Caversham article would refer to it as being a suburb of Reading, but being in the traditional county of Oxfordshire. No ambigutiy there. Owain 13:45, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::: Greater Manchester is a bit odd because it wasn't used as a postal county and having their addresses changed helped people to know where they were but there is still a sense of identity around things like GMPTE ''Welcome to the official public transport site for Greater Manchester, UK.'' :::: Greater X can be defined to mean whatever you want it to mean. There is a case for a geographical area of Greater Nottingham for instance. The problem is that it can be highly arbitrary — in the case of Greater Manchester including places with totally separate indentites, which were covered by a shared top-level authority for 12 years, some 20 years ago, but since have been administratively separate. That they happen to share a few joint-boards is neither here nor there with regards their identity. Owain 13:45, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::: Hmmm... If the police cars passing my door said ''Greater Manchester Police'', the fire engines ''Greater Manchester County Fire Service'', the chamber of commerce, the probation service, the crown prosecution service, the strategic health authority, the county records office, all called their local units ''Greater Manchester'', I'd suspect I was in Greater Manchester. --Cavrdg 14:35, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :: The suggestion above would not change the use of administrative counties in some instances and ceremonial counties in others, as is the case currently. 80.255 12:04, 19 August 2005 (UTC) I'd like to add: if we are to use ceremonial counties for general lists of places in England, we should also use their counterparts for Scottish lists. 80.255 14:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::The problem with that is that in Scotland the lieutenancy areas are the same as the traditional counties in some areas and totally different in others. There is no consistency. Furthermore the so-called preserved counties of Wales are totally unlike either traditional counties or local government areas. None of these areas were designed with general geographical use in mind, they are defined in the Lieutenancies Act 1997 for very specific purposes. The same goes for administrative counties — they are defined in local government legislation as the areas for the most efficient delivery of local government services. Neither of these areas are intended for the use that they are attempting to be put to. Owain 14:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : I've no problem with that. They look a sensible size. I confess I couldn't put my finger on ''The Stewartry of Kirkcudbright'' on a map but the same applies to ''Clackmannanshire'' old or new. Would most of them be familiar to people in Scotland? --Cavrdg 14:35, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::They are not intended for use in a general geographic sense. Most are the same as traditional counties, but do we really want something like "List of places in Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale"? Owain 15:06, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ===Suggestion for splitting test=== This suggestion should help to alleviate some of the most silly merges. A split of an article can be made given the following conditions *the boundaries of the entities being described are substantively different (more than a few villages) *there is a lack of continunity between the entities The resulting articles will be about all those entities with the same boundaries This would lead to East_Riding_of_Yorkshire being split into two - one for the post-1996 UA, another for the pre-1974 admin county, and also the traditional county. It might also lead to Huntingdonshire being split into two. Flintshire and Denbighshire would also be split, as would Renfrewshire. However I feel that in order to support this we would have to keep info on the pre-1974 admin counties on the same page as the traditional ones. Morwen - Talk 12:48, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : Lest ''substantively'' be misinterpretted, can you list which traditional/administrative counties would ''not'' be split under this proposal? : I support it in principle, although I feel that consistency throughout all traditional/administrative/former administrative articles would be better still. : I have no objection in principle to dealing with pre-74 admin counties on traditional county pages, although I none the less think they would be better delt with on their own pages. One great advantage to splitting articles is ''clarity'', and this could be lost when still trying to cover subtly different entities with the same name on the same page. : In the case of the East_Riding_of_Yorkshire, it is not a traditional county anyway; Yorkshire is. The same spplies for thepre-74 county councils of lincolnshire, sussex, suffolk, northamptonshire, etc. 80.255 13:54, 19 August 2005 (UTC) This wording is not intended to cover Lancashire, Middlesex, Rutland, Surrey, Northamptonshire, Pembrokeshire, Herefordshire and suchforth, which exhibit either boundary differences or lack of continuity, but not both. Worcestershire, and Huntingdonshire are borderline. I think it would clearly apply to Monmouthshire too. I know the East Riding isn't a traditional county ''per se'', but I think the same issues still apply to it. Morwen - Talk 13:59, 19 August 2005 (UTC) As an addendum I note Cambridgeshire would be split if Hunts was. : The boundaries of Lancashire, traditional and administrative, are certainly ''substantively different''; why do you say they aren't? There's a huge difference! As are those of Surrey, Kent, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire to give a few more examples. An example of counties the boundaries of which aren't substantively different would be Cornwall, Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire. Rutland, I agree, is also pretty similar (though I'm not sure whether it's exactly the same). Middlesex isn't really relevant, because it isn't the name of an administrative county. In the case of the ridings of yorkshire, perhaps an East_Riding page would be best, as the current Unitary Authority is called ''East Riding of Yorkshire'', as opposed to the former administrative county, which was called simply ''East Riding''. 80.255 15:49, 19 August 2005 (UTC) Yes, those are ''definitely'' substantively different, but they don't pass the 'lack of continuity' part of my test. I agree with Cornwall, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire not exhibiting substantial differences, and would add to that Wiltshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. My apologies for any confusion. The idea is here to define a very small set of splits that should be very uncontroversial, and then get consensus and actually do them, whilst leaving open the question of whether other splits should happen or not. Morwen - Talk 16:07, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : I'd say that Northamptonshire fills both criteria, the lack of continuity being satisfied by the creation then abolition of Huntingdon_and_Peterborough. The same could be argued for Warwickshire, considering that, in reality, the West Midlands metropolitan county consists of unitary authorities, and thus the former existence of the two-tier WMMC provides the lack of continuity in this case. Also, in terms of the traditional counties around london, the creation and abolition of the administrative County_of_London, and then the further creation and abolition of the metropolitan county of Greater London (which now only exists as a ''region'') could also be argued to fulfil both your criteria. : Presumably, you'd include the traditional counties covering parts of the former (absolutely abolished) metropolitan counties such as Avon or Humberside? 80.255 17:09, 19 August 2005 (UTC) This is not what I'm trying to say with 'lack of continuity' - there continously existed administrative counties named Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. What this is trying to cover is names that were abolished for administrative usage and then later re-used after a gap, with substantively different boundaries to those that were last in use administratively. So to take a hypothetical example for example, if an entity called 'Westmorland' were created tomorrow, that covered in addition to the historic Westmorland the Furness area, this would then definitely warrant a separate article under these tests. Perhaps you could find a better way to put this? Whereas, if an admin county consisting of Westmorland+Furness had been created in 1974 instead of Cumbria and named 'Westmorland', we would not split. I know this doesn't realise your full ambitions but hopefully it is something we all can agree on that ''at least'' needs to be done and will set a precedent for further agreement. Morwen - Talk 17:35, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::Yes, I see what you mean, now; I assumed you originally meant a lack of continuity in the naming of a any substantive part of a given entity, rather than simply going by name. By this reasoning, Shropshire ought to qualify, in losing a substantive exclave around Halesowen, and very briefly being officially renamed "Salop" as an administrative county. A number of the Scottish counties would also be covered - e.g. Clackmannanshire would need to be split. 80.255 19:30, 20 August 2005 (UTC) : Incidentally, the current Lancashire article in incorrect. The administrative county of Lancashire is not a County_palatine; the palatine (actually a ''Duchy palatine'') covers only the historic county. In the case of Lancashire, information on this should be moved to Lancashire_(duchy_palatine). Throughout the palatine (and not just the administrative county of Lancashire), the Duke of Lancaster, and not the Queen of Great Britain, is the nominal sovereign. : Have a look at the "palatine boundary" on the duchy's official website.http://www.duchyoflancaster.org.uk/output/page2.asp. I believe the same may also apply to Cheshire and Durham. 80.255 16:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::I would not support splitting articles, It's a great way to create a complete dogs dinner. And create utter confusion amongst readers. Especially with regards to Warwickshire and Lancashire et al. G-Man 20:03, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : Well, we're having this discussion because many of the non-split county articles ''are'' dogs dinners and ''do'' create utter confusion. Why exactly do you think splitting would create confusion? It would allow accurate linking from the 'traditional county' infobox that appears on so many place articles, and would keep all allegedly cumbersome traditional county infoboxes from articles about administrative counties. : I may split off Lancashire_(palatinate) anyway, since it's a special case, and is a dutchy palitine, not a traditional county (and as a most fundamental area in law; if you commit a crime in Furness, you'll still be charged with having disturbed the Duke of Lancaster's Peace), and, as such, is not covered by the policy. : Regarding all the other counties, I still believe they'd be much better off split, and, indeed, suggested it after a number of other users from the "anti-traditional-county camp" agreed with me. However, I'd be willing to give Morwen's more limited suggestion support as a provisional measure in this direction. 80.255 20:40, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::They're only dogs dinners because of your absurd insistance that historic counties still exist as separate entities. Which other encyclopedia splits up county articles into its different revisions. I will oppose any splitting of articles on principal. Regarding the infoboxes, they are clearly in breach of the existing policy. G-Man 21:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :They are not "clearly in breach" whatsoever. Nothing in the policy forbids infoboxes; in all cases they appear as an 'afternote' well after the infoboxes on the administrative/ceremonial counties. Having said this, I must add that I myself have never ''added an infobox'' of this sort into any article. However, they do get added by (horror of horrors!) people who do not share your POV, and the aim of this discussion is find a consensus, not pretend that everything you don't personally like is covered by the current policy when it clearly isn't. : I'm still waiting for the ''first piece of evidence'' from you that historic counties don't legally exist as separate entities, when the government thinks that they do. I notice that you still haven't answered my question about the government's position, so I'll ask it again: should wikipedia officially declare that the government was lying when it said that traditional counties have always remained completely unaffected by various administrative boundary changes? : As for the question "''Which other encyclopedia...''" - this is wikipedia, not an "''other encyclopaedia''", and our format allows us to do things that ''other encyclopaediae'' clearly can't, such as splitting up articles to provide more detailed and less confusing information on different things, without being hindered by book-bound problems this could cause out of our medium. 80.255 21:14, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ::Have you seen my comments above. G-Man 21:28, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::May I break in with a different question. I've asked it before, but I've had agreement from only a few people here so far, yet it's fundamental to the entire process of creating a policy. Here it is... :::Will everyone join me in declaring, up front (ie ''now''), that they will abide by the current policy until it is changed and will abide by any future version too? Will everyone abide by the policy even if they disagree with it? (This doesn't preclude anyone from trying to get it changed yet again in future, that option is always open). We must aim for consensus, but if we have to settle for a vote, it is essential that we agree to be bound by the policy even if we're in the minority. Thanks, Chris Jefferies 20:52, 19 August 2005 (UTC) : I have not and do not break the policy. If I did or intended to, I would have no reason to bother getting involved in this discussion! We must indeed aim for a consensus, be it by vote or not. I feel that progress is slowly being made. 80.255 21:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC) :::So - is that a 'yes, I agree to be bound by the policy even if I'm on the minority side'? Chris Jefferies 22:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC) ===A case study that might help? === I had this exchange with 80.255 [slightly corrected for clarity]: :"I'm still struggling with this. Take for example the policy statement :''Coventry is in the West Midlands, and within the traditional borders of Warwickshire'' :This to me is completely reasonable. But I would expect the Coventry article to read [be written as] :'''''Coventry''' is in the