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In the page on `Swansea` it describes a healthy proportion of the population are Welsh - speaking. The vast majority of people in Swansea are non-Welsh speakers. I have lived here for 48 years in several areas ( or districts) and have only met one person who can speak Welsh.
has the name "swansea" anything to do with the german area called "
schwansen"?
Swansea was referred to as the city's 'English' name. This is incorrect, and so I've deleted it. As the article points out, the name has a North European origin. It was not that the city had two names, one given by the Welsh and the other coined by the English. Swansea is just the name that evolved from the original settlement. It has no connection with the English language. Incidentally, does anyone know when the Welsh name, Abertawe, first started being used? I can't find any historical reference for the name. Steve
I am surprised to hear of people who don't realise there are a lot of Welsh speakers in Swansea. I hear it all the time. Maybe people who don't speak the language don't necessarily realise it is being spoken. I often find that I can't be sure which language local people are speaking when I cannot quite hear what they are saying. I have a whole set of local friends who I don't usually speak to in English. As for the name Abertawe I have no idea when it was first used but it seems to be a natural name that describes the area "mouth of the tawe". It describes the place by a geographical feature. There are "pen-y-bryn"s all over Wales for example. It just means "The top of the hill".
There's a link to Morgans (the big hotel) under the title "living the dream" in the Famous People section. Should there be? Telsa 09:26, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Before adding any more to this article (and there is lots to add! my current list includes Swansea Jacks, Swansea Valley (well, a bit), a bit more about the regions within the town, the old railway line(s) and Victoria station, Clyne Valley, Singleton Park and the botanical gardens, Twin Town, and about a thousand years' worth of history), I am going to rearrange it into paragraphs which can then have nice headings put on them. Hope this is alright with people? Telsa 11:24, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
The sources for the figures I just added to the article about education: I got the comprehensive schools from a November 2004-dated PDF off the local council website. And I've just removed the figures about full-time students because I got them from the UK government statistics website and on reading the about-this-site-and-these-stats pages, I am apparently supposed to obtain some click-use licence before using them. (Uhhh?) My naive reading of this suggests they're useless for wikipedia articles as a result. Can that be right? Telsa 16:44, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I have just messed around on the [1] website which provides these licences. You have to make an account there before you can even apply for a licence! I have now created an account, and the possible licences look completely unusable from a wikipedia point of view: time-limited among other things. This statistic will self-destruct in five years, and so on. It seems that the data is public, but the aggregations from all these different sources are Crown copyright. I expect I can get individual statistics from the council quite fairly, however, so I shall make long phone calls on Tuesday morning. Sorry if all this is over-careful, but it is always easier to add stuff than to try to unpick stuff which shouldn't be there out of it.
Is there a more general place I can raise this issue? I can't be the only person on Wikipedia who uses statistics.gov.uk: it is utterly fascinating! So someone else must have had this idea for a source before. The Swansea talk page seems a silly place to ask, though. Where can I raise this?
Answering my own question, I have had half an answer from the Crown copyright people, but it is in direct contradiction to the responses someone else on Wikipedia was getting, so I shall try and figure out what's going on before blithely assuming. Telsa 14:00, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
(Incidentally, I just realised why my titles weren't showing up and have turned all my titles with three = marks into titles with two to make them show up properly on this page)
Can User:84.137.32.245 explain why s/he is running around putting regiochannel.co.uk links into various UK city articles? I removed a pile of others recently, following the "Wikipedia is not a web directory" suggestions of Wikipedia:external links and I would like to remove this regiochannel one too. If no-one says I shouldn't, I shall remove it in a few days. I have to admit that I think the ones I removed originally were much more relevant and encyclopaedic than this one, which seems to be content from DMoz. Telsa 14:00, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Advice please. I have put an extremely terse summary of Swansea history in as a section, but I actually have some 1500 words on the subject, including more about people as well as which industries started when. I think it might completely unbalance the Swansea article to put it all here. It must be as long as all the rest put together. Should I put it in anyway, to replace what I have already? Or should I create a History of Swansea page and put it all there?
Telsa 10:05, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Precious little (nothing?) about transport at all - surely an important place like Swansea should have a section on that! It is on a motorway; a mainline station with cross country links; docks including ferry to Ireland; and an airport! Peter Shearan 15:44, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Under 'Culture', you mention :'Swansea's diverse and interesting past has helped weave a city of character and charm, and as one would expect, the land has been very fertile in producing famous personalities', however, I fail to see how a city of character and charm necessarily equates to the production of famous personalities. If anything, the proportion of famous personalities is lower in cities of character and charm than in those lacking charm and character - take Peter Kay's Bolton heritage for instance. 163.1.227.76 22:54, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi everyone, I'm concerned about the opening paragraph of the Swansea article. I made a change on 29th June to bring it in line with Wikipedia policy, but it has been reverted twice.
The guidelines (look for 'Lead section') recommend that the lead section of an article should concisely set out the main points. In my view this does not include details of the traditional county, we should simply say that Swansea is a city and county on the south Wales coast, east of the Gower. Traditional county information, if it seems useful, should go in the main body of the article, not in the opening paragraph.
There are also agreed guidelines on naming conventions which the article should meet (look for 'Counties of Britain').
Take a look at my [ version] and let me know what you think, I've included the Glamorgan details in the 'Geography' section. Thanks Chris Jefferies 30 June 2005 18:45 (UTC)
We can have both of course, but I would prefer to put the historical county information in the main body of the article so that the lead section stays concise and simple. Owain's suggestion is unnecessarily complex for an article's opening paragraph.
For some more examples of balanced debate, take a look at Talk:Cardiff and Talk:Betws-y-Coed Chris Jefferies 30 June 2005 21:08 (UTC)
It would be a pity to clutter the Swansea Talk page by covering this at length here. It was discussed in great detail a year ago and then voted on, and the Wikipedia policy is that historical counties are just that - history (A quote from the policy - refering to the historic county area as a still existing entity is not acceptable.)
Anyone interested can read the definitive text at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places). Having agreed, we should now abide by the agreement. And Owain, I know you think 'voting has no place in a factual encyclopaedia', but Wikipedia is based on the idea of free debate and joint decision-making. Voting on issues is a core reason for its success, along with consensus, NPOV, and the noting of minority opinion. You are one of only two people who voted against at the time.
I see no reason to debate this further here on the Swansea page. Chris Jefferies 1 July 2005 10:20 (UTC)
I will answer these points on User_Talk:Owain. Chris Jefferies 1 July 2005 13:26 (UTC)
There is a slow accretion of names to a section "Districts of Swansea". I can't find the term districts actually used by the council. Am I looking in the wrong place? And so far, the choice of what to add to this section seems a bit arbitrary. I'm not sure that Wikipedia needs an article on every single area of Swansea each on its own page. If we do, then there are dozens and dozens more to add: we have Treboeth but not Landore; Blaenymaes but not Cadle; separate entries for Brynhyfryd and Cwmbwrla, both in the same council ward, but no mention for Cwmdu, Gendros or Manselton in the same ward; no Bonymaen, no Clydach, no Garden Village, no Killay, and that's barely a start. Further to this, Wikipedia already has articles for West Cross and Slade which are not listed in this "districts" effort, which show up if you look for the pages in the Swansea category. This way madness lies. Can we discuss what sort of criteria are appropriate before adding Sandfields or the lons/lonnau as yet more red links? (Incidentally, that link to Mount Pleasant is to a disambiguation page which notes that there are over 100 Mount Pleasants in the UK alone. So it's not a terribly useful link at the moment!)
There are definitely regions of Swansea we don't cover which we should. Morriston has a history of its own as a planned town, for example, before its swallowing into Swansea. And we have nothing about the lower (or upper, for that matter) Swansea valley, which I think is very much connected to Swansea. (As a subject, Swansea valley, and possibly the entire LSV reclamation scheme, can probably go into River Tawe easily enough.)
But generally, I'm not sure that starting at the level this list is doing is going to be sustainable long-term.
-- Telsa 17:57, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Winsh-wen? I've never seen it spelled like that; on road signs it's Winchwen or Winch-wen. However, I wouldn't get too hung up on the existence of small articles. We do need to keep the main article to a manageable size, and that's normally done by cross-referencing to individual articles. I don't think we should worry about it at this stage. Deb 19:07, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Was it built in the 1970s? I'm thinking it was the early 1980s. Deb 17:48, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
According to this article on Explore Gower, it was finished by 1976. Telsa 13:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Warning message coming up when you try to edit this page: "This page is 36 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable; see Wikipedia:Article size." Since there are no hugely active discussions on this page at the moment, would now be a good time to archive the lot of it? I may give it a go, but the instructions look rather complicated. Telsa 08:45, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I am moving this here until someone can turn it into something less promotional and more encyclopaedic. It is probably worth mentioning that Undercurrents are based in the city, but I'm not sure about the rest. The press release for the 2005 one refers to an international audience of 150 people. "Public pressure caused Swansea Airport to close down"? I think a reference is required for this, because I thought it was the cost of the improvements required and the fact that AirWales moved to Cardiff. And there are way too many external links in the text: they would need moving down or out.
Incidentally, I have just noticed that Undercurrents don't have their own wiki article and have made a stub: anyone interested, please help grow Undercurrents (news).
Telsa 14:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Swansea plays host to the BeyondTV International Film Festival. Organised by independent filmmakers Undercurrents, BeyondTV 2004 took place in the Patti Pavilion, BeyondTV 2005 in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea Marina. BeyondTV 2005 hosted the Misty Awards for activist filmmakers.
BeyondTV is to showcase the talents of independent filmmakers.
Independent filmmakers Undercurrents are based in Swansea.
The Pod Report, based in mid-Wales, was out and about at BeyondTV 2005, recording interviews to be podcast over the net.
'Reach for the Sky', premiered at BeyondTV 2004, produced by Undercurrents, focuses on Swansea Airport and that uncontrolled aviation expansion is unsustainable. Swansea Airport, with the connivance of Swansea Council, was given the go-ahead to operate in the centre of the Gower Peninsular, an Area of Outstanding National Beauty, the first AONB to be designated in the country. Public pressure forced Swansea Airport to close down. Air Wales, that were operating from Swansea Airport, now operate from Cardiff International Airport.
I'd reword it to something like this:
The [insert your description here, but independent film-makers is fine by me] Undercurrents are based in Swansea. They hosted an international film festival focusing on activism film-making, BeyondTV, in Swansea in 2004 and 2005.
And I would then move any further details to the Undercurrents (news) article. There seem to be an awful lot of external links in the current disputed text. It is my understanding that too many external links are a bad thing, especially when they're in the main body of an article (except for citing sources). I think I'd remove all the external links here. Undercurrents' website is linked from their shiny new Wikipedia stub (hint hint) article in the external links section, and we could link to BeyondTV there too.
Now onto the tricky bit. Before restoring this text again, can we have some references for it? Connivance of the council, for example. Connivance is hardly a neutral word. The airport was started in WWII when no inquiry was needed: I didn't know that the council were even consulted? Public pressure closed the airport down? When? There was a campaign against expansion, certainly. But closed it down? The implication is that Air Wales was left homeless and had to transfer, but the references in the Swansea Airport article are to Air Wales moving because Swansea was not a destination that made any profit. Which version is correct? And finally, we already note that the airport is in an AOONB down in the Transport section of the current article. At the moment, most of that paragraph is either duplication of information or is about a documentary; and the reference for half the information is apparently the documentary. Erm. I'm not sure this is the best way to present it.
So. Comments?
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
In the page on `Swansea` it describes a healthy proportion of the population are Welsh - speaking. The vast majority of people in Swansea are non-Welsh speakers. I have lived here for 48 years in several areas ( or districts) and have only met one person who can speak Welsh.
has the name "swansea" anything to do with the german area called "
schwansen"?
Swansea was referred to as the city's 'English' name. This is incorrect, and so I've deleted it. As the article points out, the name has a North European origin. It was not that the city had two names, one given by the Welsh and the other coined by the English. Swansea is just the name that evolved from the original settlement. It has no connection with the English language. Incidentally, does anyone know when the Welsh name, Abertawe, first started being used? I can't find any historical reference for the name. Steve
I am surprised to hear of people who don't realise there are a lot of Welsh speakers in Swansea. I hear it all the time. Maybe people who don't speak the language don't necessarily realise it is being spoken. I often find that I can't be sure which language local people are speaking when I cannot quite hear what they are saying. I have a whole set of local friends who I don't usually speak to in English. As for the name Abertawe I have no idea when it was first used but it seems to be a natural name that describes the area "mouth of the tawe". It describes the place by a geographical feature. There are "pen-y-bryn"s all over Wales for example. It just means "The top of the hill".
There's a link to Morgans (the big hotel) under the title "living the dream" in the Famous People section. Should there be? Telsa 09:26, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Before adding any more to this article (and there is lots to add! my current list includes Swansea Jacks, Swansea Valley (well, a bit), a bit more about the regions within the town, the old railway line(s) and Victoria station, Clyne Valley, Singleton Park and the botanical gardens, Twin Town, and about a thousand years' worth of history), I am going to rearrange it into paragraphs which can then have nice headings put on them. Hope this is alright with people? Telsa 11:24, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
The sources for the figures I just added to the article about education: I got the comprehensive schools from a November 2004-dated PDF off the local council website. And I've just removed the figures about full-time students because I got them from the UK government statistics website and on reading the about-this-site-and-these-stats pages, I am apparently supposed to obtain some click-use licence before using them. (Uhhh?) My naive reading of this suggests they're useless for wikipedia articles as a result. Can that be right? Telsa 16:44, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I have just messed around on the [1] website which provides these licences. You have to make an account there before you can even apply for a licence! I have now created an account, and the possible licences look completely unusable from a wikipedia point of view: time-limited among other things. This statistic will self-destruct in five years, and so on. It seems that the data is public, but the aggregations from all these different sources are Crown copyright. I expect I can get individual statistics from the council quite fairly, however, so I shall make long phone calls on Tuesday morning. Sorry if all this is over-careful, but it is always easier to add stuff than to try to unpick stuff which shouldn't be there out of it.
Is there a more general place I can raise this issue? I can't be the only person on Wikipedia who uses statistics.gov.uk: it is utterly fascinating! So someone else must have had this idea for a source before. The Swansea talk page seems a silly place to ask, though. Where can I raise this?
Answering my own question, I have had half an answer from the Crown copyright people, but it is in direct contradiction to the responses someone else on Wikipedia was getting, so I shall try and figure out what's going on before blithely assuming. Telsa 14:00, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
(Incidentally, I just realised why my titles weren't showing up and have turned all my titles with three = marks into titles with two to make them show up properly on this page)
Can User:84.137.32.245 explain why s/he is running around putting regiochannel.co.uk links into various UK city articles? I removed a pile of others recently, following the "Wikipedia is not a web directory" suggestions of Wikipedia:external links and I would like to remove this regiochannel one too. If no-one says I shouldn't, I shall remove it in a few days. I have to admit that I think the ones I removed originally were much more relevant and encyclopaedic than this one, which seems to be content from DMoz. Telsa 14:00, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Advice please. I have put an extremely terse summary of Swansea history in as a section, but I actually have some 1500 words on the subject, including more about people as well as which industries started when. I think it might completely unbalance the Swansea article to put it all here. It must be as long as all the rest put together. Should I put it in anyway, to replace what I have already? Or should I create a History of Swansea page and put it all there?
Telsa 10:05, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Precious little (nothing?) about transport at all - surely an important place like Swansea should have a section on that! It is on a motorway; a mainline station with cross country links; docks including ferry to Ireland; and an airport! Peter Shearan 15:44, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Under 'Culture', you mention :'Swansea's diverse and interesting past has helped weave a city of character and charm, and as one would expect, the land has been very fertile in producing famous personalities', however, I fail to see how a city of character and charm necessarily equates to the production of famous personalities. If anything, the proportion of famous personalities is lower in cities of character and charm than in those lacking charm and character - take Peter Kay's Bolton heritage for instance. 163.1.227.76 22:54, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi everyone, I'm concerned about the opening paragraph of the Swansea article. I made a change on 29th June to bring it in line with Wikipedia policy, but it has been reverted twice.
The guidelines (look for 'Lead section') recommend that the lead section of an article should concisely set out the main points. In my view this does not include details of the traditional county, we should simply say that Swansea is a city and county on the south Wales coast, east of the Gower. Traditional county information, if it seems useful, should go in the main body of the article, not in the opening paragraph.
There are also agreed guidelines on naming conventions which the article should meet (look for 'Counties of Britain').
Take a look at my [ version] and let me know what you think, I've included the Glamorgan details in the 'Geography' section. Thanks Chris Jefferies 30 June 2005 18:45 (UTC)
We can have both of course, but I would prefer to put the historical county information in the main body of the article so that the lead section stays concise and simple. Owain's suggestion is unnecessarily complex for an article's opening paragraph.
For some more examples of balanced debate, take a look at Talk:Cardiff and Talk:Betws-y-Coed Chris Jefferies 30 June 2005 21:08 (UTC)
It would be a pity to clutter the Swansea Talk page by covering this at length here. It was discussed in great detail a year ago and then voted on, and the Wikipedia policy is that historical counties are just that - history (A quote from the policy - refering to the historic county area as a still existing entity is not acceptable.)
Anyone interested can read the definitive text at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places). Having agreed, we should now abide by the agreement. And Owain, I know you think 'voting has no place in a factual encyclopaedia', but Wikipedia is based on the idea of free debate and joint decision-making. Voting on issues is a core reason for its success, along with consensus, NPOV, and the noting of minority opinion. You are one of only two people who voted against at the time.
I see no reason to debate this further here on the Swansea page. Chris Jefferies 1 July 2005 10:20 (UTC)
I will answer these points on User_Talk:Owain. Chris Jefferies 1 July 2005 13:26 (UTC)
There is a slow accretion of names to a section "Districts of Swansea". I can't find the term districts actually used by the council. Am I looking in the wrong place? And so far, the choice of what to add to this section seems a bit arbitrary. I'm not sure that Wikipedia needs an article on every single area of Swansea each on its own page. If we do, then there are dozens and dozens more to add: we have Treboeth but not Landore; Blaenymaes but not Cadle; separate entries for Brynhyfryd and Cwmbwrla, both in the same council ward, but no mention for Cwmdu, Gendros or Manselton in the same ward; no Bonymaen, no Clydach, no Garden Village, no Killay, and that's barely a start. Further to this, Wikipedia already has articles for West Cross and Slade which are not listed in this "districts" effort, which show up if you look for the pages in the Swansea category. This way madness lies. Can we discuss what sort of criteria are appropriate before adding Sandfields or the lons/lonnau as yet more red links? (Incidentally, that link to Mount Pleasant is to a disambiguation page which notes that there are over 100 Mount Pleasants in the UK alone. So it's not a terribly useful link at the moment!)
There are definitely regions of Swansea we don't cover which we should. Morriston has a history of its own as a planned town, for example, before its swallowing into Swansea. And we have nothing about the lower (or upper, for that matter) Swansea valley, which I think is very much connected to Swansea. (As a subject, Swansea valley, and possibly the entire LSV reclamation scheme, can probably go into River Tawe easily enough.)
But generally, I'm not sure that starting at the level this list is doing is going to be sustainable long-term.
-- Telsa 17:57, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Winsh-wen? I've never seen it spelled like that; on road signs it's Winchwen or Winch-wen. However, I wouldn't get too hung up on the existence of small articles. We do need to keep the main article to a manageable size, and that's normally done by cross-referencing to individual articles. I don't think we should worry about it at this stage. Deb 19:07, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Was it built in the 1970s? I'm thinking it was the early 1980s. Deb 17:48, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
According to this article on Explore Gower, it was finished by 1976. Telsa 13:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Warning message coming up when you try to edit this page: "This page is 36 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable; see Wikipedia:Article size." Since there are no hugely active discussions on this page at the moment, would now be a good time to archive the lot of it? I may give it a go, but the instructions look rather complicated. Telsa 08:45, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I am moving this here until someone can turn it into something less promotional and more encyclopaedic. It is probably worth mentioning that Undercurrents are based in the city, but I'm not sure about the rest. The press release for the 2005 one refers to an international audience of 150 people. "Public pressure caused Swansea Airport to close down"? I think a reference is required for this, because I thought it was the cost of the improvements required and the fact that AirWales moved to Cardiff. And there are way too many external links in the text: they would need moving down or out.
Incidentally, I have just noticed that Undercurrents don't have their own wiki article and have made a stub: anyone interested, please help grow Undercurrents (news).
Telsa 14:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Swansea plays host to the BeyondTV International Film Festival. Organised by independent filmmakers Undercurrents, BeyondTV 2004 took place in the Patti Pavilion, BeyondTV 2005 in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea Marina. BeyondTV 2005 hosted the Misty Awards for activist filmmakers.
BeyondTV is to showcase the talents of independent filmmakers.
Independent filmmakers Undercurrents are based in Swansea.
The Pod Report, based in mid-Wales, was out and about at BeyondTV 2005, recording interviews to be podcast over the net.
'Reach for the Sky', premiered at BeyondTV 2004, produced by Undercurrents, focuses on Swansea Airport and that uncontrolled aviation expansion is unsustainable. Swansea Airport, with the connivance of Swansea Council, was given the go-ahead to operate in the centre of the Gower Peninsular, an Area of Outstanding National Beauty, the first AONB to be designated in the country. Public pressure forced Swansea Airport to close down. Air Wales, that were operating from Swansea Airport, now operate from Cardiff International Airport.
I'd reword it to something like this:
The [insert your description here, but independent film-makers is fine by me] Undercurrents are based in Swansea. They hosted an international film festival focusing on activism film-making, BeyondTV, in Swansea in 2004 and 2005.
And I would then move any further details to the Undercurrents (news) article. There seem to be an awful lot of external links in the current disputed text. It is my understanding that too many external links are a bad thing, especially when they're in the main body of an article (except for citing sources). I think I'd remove all the external links here. Undercurrents' website is linked from their shiny new Wikipedia stub (hint hint) article in the external links section, and we could link to BeyondTV there too.
Now onto the tricky bit. Before restoring this text again, can we have some references for it? Connivance of the council, for example. Connivance is hardly a neutral word. The airport was started in WWII when no inquiry was needed: I didn't know that the council were even consulted? Public pressure closed the airport down? When? There was a campaign against expansion, certainly. But closed it down? The implication is that Air Wales was left homeless and had to transfer, but the references in the Swansea Airport article are to Air Wales moving because Swansea was not a destination that made any profit. Which version is correct? And finally, we already note that the airport is in an AOONB down in the Transport section of the current article. At the moment, most of that paragraph is either duplication of information or is about a documentary; and the reference for half the information is apparently the documentary. Erm. I'm not sure this is the best way to present it.
So. Comments?