This page 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. |
I reorganised this list List of windmills in the United Kingdom according to current UK subdivisions and it was reverted. A discussion is ongoing here: Wikipedia_talk:MILLS#List_of_windmills_in_Middlesex MRSC ( talk) 18:46, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I am focussing some attention to several high-priority settlement articles in Greater London that I want to get up to good article status (and eventually FA). These are Bromley, Croydon, Ealing, Harrow, Hounslow, Kingston upon Thames, Ilford, Romford, Sutton, Uxbridge and Wood Green. I think Croydon and Romford are most developed and have the best chance of getting there first. Anyone interested in developing London settlement articles, please focus your resources here. Thanks. MRSC ( talk) 18:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Currently the county templates contain a section for rivers. Should canals be included in the river section, probably with a name change, or should we have a separate section for these? I would probably favour just adding them to the rivers section as there are few of them in a county. Keith D ( talk) 18:00, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Deeping St. James is tagged for Wikiproject_England. None of the other closely related pages in The Deepings are. Why? Surely WikiProject_UK_geography is enough? There seem to be too many overlapping projects. Can't the UK geography and the England ones descend from some common ancestor or something? -- Brunnian ( talk) 21:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi, was wondering if people could have a look at Calderdale where a user has come in insisting that West Yorkshire is a ceremonial county rather than a metropolitan county and that the borough has unitary status and dropping in numerous references for this. If this is right then this would affect a lot of other articles and the output of {{ Infobox UK place}}. Keith D ( talk) 18:48, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
Recently, I updated the links in National Nature Reserves in Bedfordshire and noticed that there are 9 of these articles for English counties with slightly varying formats. National Nature Reserves in Cumbria was created in 2002 and has been edited 9 times since then, but it does still not name any reserves! It could easily be updated from [1], but it makes me wonder what the point is of these pages. If they are just to be lists of reserves, each will be quite short and it might be more useful to merge them into National Nature Reserves in England where there is already an incomplete list. JonH ( talk) 20:12, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
Cn someone take a look at Westbury-on-Trym, and the recent addition by an IP of a section about a community website. I've already deleted this once (and also similar at Clifton, Bristol), as it appeared to be spam. Would value a second opinion. Skinsmoke ( talk) 16:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Within the Somerset wikiproject we are utilising a new tool which identifies the most popular pages within the projects remit in terms of the number of page views they get each month. I was surprised by the dominance of biography articles over geography within the top 100. This has led to a discussion about whether a county project should include people who may have been born in the county, but later emigrated & their "notability" is related to activities unrelated to the county. They were originally included when the project was set up & a bot tagged all articles in Category:People from Somerset with the project banner. I would be interested to know what other county project do on this or whether there is any guidance or previous discussions on this which I'm unaware of?— Rod talk 09:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers#Correct ambiguity in naming section regarding disambiguation, which may require the attention of UKGEO participants as one of the options contradicts Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about rivers. Jeni ( talk) 23:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Cn someone take a look at Westbury-on-Trym, and the recent addition by an IP of a section about a community website. I've already deleted this once (and also similar at Clifton, Bristol), as it appeared to be spam. Would value a second opinion. Skinsmoke ( talk) 16:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Someone has bulk nominated every UK service station for AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Norton Canes services (2nd nomination). It seems sensible to post a notification here than at the UK roads wikiproject, as that is dead. Jeni ( talk) 12:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Alerting all WikiProject UK geography members that England is undergoing a reveiw for WP:GA status. Things you can help with are listed here. Please help if you can, thanks, -- Jza84 | Talk 14:45, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm having a look at the lists of places in England linked from {{ List of places in England}} with a view to standardising them. They are quite variable, with some offering grid refs, others having maps etc. etc. Any thoughts on how these should be formatted would be welcome. MRSC ( talk) 11:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I have just started a requested move discussion for M1 motorway to move it to M1 motorway (Great Britain). Another user has been trying to move-war this request into being, so I have started said discussion as I'm sure this was her intention. Comments welcome at Talk:M1 motorway#Requested move. (Again, posted here due to the inactivity on the UK Roads Wikiproject) Jeni ( talk) 22:03, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm reviewing the 150 or so districts in England that take their name from a settlement. I want us to codify our criteria for doing a split or a merge. This will stop the occasional arguments that break out over this issue. I've listed all the examples I can find and put some possible criteria: here. Please take a look and give comments: here. Thanks. MRSC ( talk) 15:11, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I have started three discussions following this:
Please have a look at the results and contribute there. You might want to start other discussions based on these findings, but I am only going to focus on these three personally for now. MRSC ( talk) 15:36, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
What about those settlements (as they would be commonly thought of) that extend beyond the administrative boundaries. (e.g. Liverpool, Manchester etc)? Quantpole ( talk) 20:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I've not had any specific problems raised with the criteria used, so I am now codifying How to write about districts. It would be great if someone could work on a suggested article structure. MRSC ( talk) 23:20, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi, have we anyone who can do a copy-edit of Sheffield which is going to be de-listed at FAR unless someone can perform a copy-edit of the article. Keith D ( talk) 08:43, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I am proposing to merge a number of low or moderately active projects in south east England. The discussion is here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England#Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater South East MRSC ( talk) 21:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I've noticed that the ONS have released the new figures for mid-2008 estimates here. I was going to start updating them, but I haven't done it before, and I don't want to mess everything up! I'm also concerned that I might miss something due to the 2009 structural changes. Could someone who knows about this help me out please? Quantpole ( talk) 11:59, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose a task force as part of this project (and/or Wikipedia:WikiProject England). I want to include the 326 English local government districts. These are highly variable in quality and content, some are developed fully and others are barely stubs. I am particularly interested in this area and have a fair bit of knowledge on UK subdivisions. It is a fairly big task and I wonder if anyone is interested in joining me? MRSC ( talk) 08:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
To whom it may concern, As a resident of the village of Lostock Hall, Preston for the past 30 years, and also access to many historical facts on the village; I have extended the information on the original article with more facts, history of the village, and useful information. I hope that this is OK with members of the WikiProject UK geography group. I would like it if I would be permitted to continue my work on this page, and work to make the page more detailed to provide a more in-depth article on Lostock Hall. Does anyone have objections to this? If so, please let me know in due course via my talk page. Kindest regards, Gareth aka Pr3st0n ( talk) 16:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Another procedural requested move following non-consensus moves by a the same editor as the M1 move. See Talk:M2 motorway#Requested move Jeni ( talk) 23:53, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
I've reverted the M18 motorway move, and warned the user. If they move another motorway page without discussion please block them for disruption. Anyone is free to start a requested moves discussion if they want the M18 moved. Thryduulf ( talk) 19:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
The RM discussion for the M18 is now here. Talk:M18 motorway#Requested move Jeni ( talk) 00:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Thryduulf, stop trying to behave like a vigilante. You reverted my move of M18 motorway to M18 motorway (Great Britain) without offering any substantive reason for the revert. Your reason seems to be procedural, but it was not a controversial move -- I had disambiguated all all incoming links, and there still isn't even single a comment on the talk page about the move.
I'll open a requested move discussion there, but I am very concerned by your actions here. You are threatening blocks, but this vigilante practice of angrily reverting uncontroversial page moves is right out of line. I don't know whether there is some WP:OWN issue here, but I have disambiguated thousands of articles over the last few years and have never before encountered such ferocious hostility to disambiguation.
We now seem to have a situation where this wikiproject has taken it upon itself to automatically revert any disambiguation of an article on a Uk road, without making any effort to assess the merits of that move. This isn't the way wikipedia is supposed to work, and I hope that before this all ends up at arbcom some of this blind-revert crew will take a deep breath and recognise that disambiguation is not some sort of vandalism which automatically requires repeated threats of blocks. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I have apologised elsewhere already for my misuse of admin tools regarding the M18. The discussions regarding the M1, M2, M3, M4 and M18 are showing that your view of these disambiguations as being uncontroversial is not shared by others, in these situations the best thing to do is to discuss first, as this avoids people taking your intentions the wrong way. Thryduulf ( talk) 11:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
eg - Ross-on-Wye
Numerous editors have removed the Welsh place names (they're not relevant - and isn't there a Welsh language Wikipedia?), yet user Hoary seems to be on a one man campaign to keep them in place. These areas are in England, and the Welsh name has no legal standing outside of Wales - particularly the placing of the Welsh namess in the infobox under the real names seems to suggest the names have any signifiance.
92.14.197.200 ( talk) 22:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion here on whether it would be helpful to expand the group of categories for places formerly in one county (and now in another). There is no consensus on that (yet), but it has been suggested that there should be a discussion here, to explore the size (and practicality) of such a project, and see whether consensus can be reached.
Broadly, the arguments in favour of such categories are:
The arguments against are that lists are a preferable navigation aid, and that such categories will never be complete or accurate.
To assess the size of the task I have looked at what would be needed to create categories for each historic category. The major boundary changes occurred in 1974. Other big changes occurred in 1965 (mostly in the London area). There have been many minor changes, mostly additions to large cities, relatively small boundary adjustments and the clean-up of enclaves and exclaves. (Obviously, this only refers to places leaving a historic county, not joining.)
This survey suggests to me that the bulk of the work would be where areas transferred to the metropolitan counties. There are issues (I think mainly in London) of whether you would include places which left the historic counties in the 19th century. In other cases, the process would involve moving to new subcategories. None of these issues seem to me to be insurmountable. But cases such as Sedbergh suggest to me that some consistency and cleaning up would be desirable.
Any thoughts? Mhockey ( talk) 14:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
On another note, it is quite simply a rewriting of history to suggest the 1965/1974 changes were the only significant changes. Middlesex lost 20% of its area and a third of its population in 1889. Buckinghamshire lost or gained far more territory in reforms other than those in 1974. MRSC ( talk) 17:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Rather than listing (or categorising) places moved from one county to another, wouldn't it be simpler to have two sets of overlapping categories: "places in current counties" (districts etc), and "places in former counties" (districts etc)? Places moved from one to the other (and perhaps back) would show up as being in different former and current categories. For example, Staines would be in former Middlesex, but current Surrey; Kingston upon Thames would be in former Surrey, current London, Christchurch in former Hants, current Dorset etc. Then no need for a special category for "places moved from Hants to Dorset in 1974" etc. The "former" areas would I think have to include all former boundaries (that is, one category for all previous Hants boundaries etc) – unless we had a whole set of categories for each major reorganisation (18 whatever to 1974; 1974 to 1990s, 1990s to current etc). Would also take account of counties/districts now not existing at all. Richard New Forest ( talk) 22:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
There are three aims stated for these categories (taken from above):
I believe these points can be summarised as trying to find a way to organise our information so it additionally corresponds to areas described in texts written before 1974. In order to do this, the suggestion has been to categorise places on the fringes that have been transferred between counties. There is an inherent flaw in this plan vis-a-vis the stated aims. That is, it will only improve navigation between those places. In order to organise articles by the areas of counties as they were before 1 April 1974, you would need to add an extra category to every article, even if it did not change county; then you would have categories that allow navigation as outlined in the aims. MRSC ( talk) 06:03, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I raised this issue on this page in January 2008. In view of the debate that has been raging on the Leeds talk page for some days now, and the serious ordnance survey funded research can we discuss how we propose to treat vernacular geographical areas? (i.e. ones that are not currently recognised administrative entities, but which we perceive to, and "know" do, exist in reality.)-- Harkey ( talk) 17:14, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Just a general point from one who has not been in touch with academic geography for a very very long time, but it seems to me that the term "vernacular geography" covers a much wider area than the specific areas relating to the GIS mapping of "fuzzy" areas which are the subject of the research mentioned in the article (which is excellent by the way, so please don't take this as a criticism). I remember back in the 1960s/70s a lot of discussion of what were then called "mental maps", which covered how people perceived their local areas as well as ill-defined wider regions. (The West Country may be a good example of the latter, by the way.) It would be good to get an academic geographer's perspective on how this current research relates to earlier thinking and work. There is also the fact that, when OS first did their mapping in the 19th century, the names of many places were what (and where) the locals told them they were, in many cases not written down - which may be a point worth mentioning. Fixed boundaries and precise point definitions arose after the mapping was done - in many cases they did not exist beforehand (though in some cases, such as parish and county boundaries, they obviously did). Obviously these thoughts would need refs, but may be worth thinking about. Ghmyrtle ( talk) 09:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
The current article has a few problems, which I started to address, but was reverted. The article is too closely using the wording the research and presenting it as authoritative, without making clear this is a piece of social science research. The tone should be changed to describing the research, rather than presenting it "as fact". MRSC ( talk) 11:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Although the UK is not the most prone area to natural hazards, I think an article outlining the most common hazards and causes would be a core article to WPUKGEO. Not to be confused with List of natural hazard events in the United Kingdom. Jolly Ω Janner 19:28, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Should London be a featured article now? What do you think? Likelife ( talk) 17:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
In the guidelines to writing about cities and countries we tend to provide suggestions that information about the origin of the name / the etymology is given in the history section, and - if there is enough material - that a sub-section can be created. In usage some editors prefer that the etymology details be placed in their own section - which is fine if there is enough data to justify it, and the information may be found reasonably interesting or useful to the average reader. But the question now arises as where to place a stand alone Etymology section. I often find them placed as the first section - ahead of the History section - and there is a part of me which can see the logic of that. However, there is a greater logic in having the history section first, as that is the first section that readers would expect - it is generally what encyclopedias do, and the history always comes before the name (I suppose there may be settlements and countries which were named before they existed, but these must be very rare!). Where etymologies are usually placed in dictionaries and references books is at the end of the entry - and that may be where someone interested in the etymology may be expecting to look. There may be other options as to where to place the etymology, and it would be useful to get some opinions and revisit the guidelines to make things clearer. As a starting point, here are four suggestions:
I will copy this to other related WikiProjects. SilkTork * YES! 10:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
I started creating a navbox for the parishes of Devon, but I didn't expect it to be quite as big as it turned out. Do you think it would be better to use civil parish navboxes at the shire district level rather than one navbox for the entire county? (bare in mind that Devon is a rather large county). Could this somewhat large navbox still be used of value on articles? Or even as a navbox? (I mean, it collapses automatically anyway). Jolly Ω Janner 21:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Since the article isn't currently tagged with this Wikiproject's template, it probably won't show up in your usual Article Alerts. Therefore, I wanted to bring Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lount to your attention. Singularity42 ( talk) 01:50, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Suggested merger of categories. Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 November 23#Isle of Man ferrying.
Simply south ( talk) 11:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Would anyone care to contribute to the debate about what should be in the new Geography of Somerset article & what should be in Geology of Somerset which is currently GA. see Talk:Geology of Somerset#Geography & Talk:Geography of Somerset.— Rod talk 19:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Move? See Talk:November 2009 Great Britain and Ireland floods#Requested move. Simply south ( talk) 17:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
In order to generate a little more attention as the affected articles may not be on many watch lists: I have tagged a number of lists of county and district articles for a merger. I would welcome any opinions on the suggestion. The proposed mergers are:
Pit-yacker ( talk) 21:33, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
The project announcements box doesn't seem to be updated very often, possibly because article alerts is performing this function automatically. Is this still needed on the project page, talk page etc?— Rod talk 20:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
A bot has recently been set up to maintain the lists of "Recognised content" for projects eg FAs, FLs, GAs, FPs etc, which can be a pain to maintain by hand. I've set this up for Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset, see User:JL-Bot/Project content for the instructions etc. Would this be useful for this project?— Rod talk 16:35, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
OK I've now set this up for this project & hopefully the bot will add the content in the next 24 hrs.— Rod talk 19:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
An editor has added a "Geographic Location box" to lots of county articles (including Somerset) showing what neighbouring counties etc are. I personally don't feel this is needed, attractive or adds anything to the article & put a comment on the editors talk page. The response was that "they're a very useful way of getting information about a group of communities, going from one to another. If you take the Somerset page as an example, the map in the Infobox doesn't give the names of the neighbours. You and I know what they are but visitors from other countries may well not know them. The other map in the article has districts within Somerset, not neighbouring counties. The neighbouring counties are listed early in the Somerset article but (1) this is unusual - few other county articles do this - and (2) I feel the information is more easily absorbed from a map."
Do other editors feel they are a useful addition to the county articles?— Rod talk 13:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Exactly how are the criteria for given directions worked out? Would, say, a situation where we hit county X if we move due north over a county boundary of county Y be the criteria? Or do we we specify in general terms directions taken from a "centre-point" of the county in whose article we want to put this box? Or what? If you sit down and consider it carefully, it is sometimes not clear, and until this clarified, it may not add easily grasped information. 78.86.94.17 ( talk) 11:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 04:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Could Wikipedians look at the Wellingborough article and say what needs to be done to get it to a 'B' rating, thanks. Likelife ( talk) 14:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
I would like to draw the attention of the WikiProject to the ongoing discussion at
Template talk:Infobox UK place#Dublin. In summary: {{
Infobox UK place}}
has the following four fields - |dublin_distance=
, |dublin_distance_mi=
, |dublin_distance_km=
, and |dublin_direction=
- should these be kept, or removed? --
Jza84 |
Talk
16:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
After hard work and kind help by Kudpung the suggesstions you gave me above have been taken onboard and I hope this reflects in the article. Now again im asking for a peer review as it is or as it gets closer to a GA class, thanks. Likelife ( talk) 21:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
One of the most frequent problems I encounter with geography articles is misunderstandings about postal geography (post towns and postcode districts) providing "definitive" boundaries and (to a lesser extent) the district ward boundaries "defining" settlements. I want to write a guideline on this, does anything of this sort already exist? MRSC ( talk) 12:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
{{
Infobox UK place|post_town}}
output, but there's no compelling reason to use small caps elsewhere, especially as small caps are rarely used on Wikipedia.)Thanks everyone. I've started to write WP:UKGUIDE based on this. MRSC ( talk) 10:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
This page 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. |
I reorganised this list List of windmills in the United Kingdom according to current UK subdivisions and it was reverted. A discussion is ongoing here: Wikipedia_talk:MILLS#List_of_windmills_in_Middlesex MRSC ( talk) 18:46, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I am focussing some attention to several high-priority settlement articles in Greater London that I want to get up to good article status (and eventually FA). These are Bromley, Croydon, Ealing, Harrow, Hounslow, Kingston upon Thames, Ilford, Romford, Sutton, Uxbridge and Wood Green. I think Croydon and Romford are most developed and have the best chance of getting there first. Anyone interested in developing London settlement articles, please focus your resources here. Thanks. MRSC ( talk) 18:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Currently the county templates contain a section for rivers. Should canals be included in the river section, probably with a name change, or should we have a separate section for these? I would probably favour just adding them to the rivers section as there are few of them in a county. Keith D ( talk) 18:00, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Deeping St. James is tagged for Wikiproject_England. None of the other closely related pages in The Deepings are. Why? Surely WikiProject_UK_geography is enough? There seem to be too many overlapping projects. Can't the UK geography and the England ones descend from some common ancestor or something? -- Brunnian ( talk) 21:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi, was wondering if people could have a look at Calderdale where a user has come in insisting that West Yorkshire is a ceremonial county rather than a metropolitan county and that the borough has unitary status and dropping in numerous references for this. If this is right then this would affect a lot of other articles and the output of {{ Infobox UK place}}. Keith D ( talk) 18:48, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
Recently, I updated the links in National Nature Reserves in Bedfordshire and noticed that there are 9 of these articles for English counties with slightly varying formats. National Nature Reserves in Cumbria was created in 2002 and has been edited 9 times since then, but it does still not name any reserves! It could easily be updated from [1], but it makes me wonder what the point is of these pages. If they are just to be lists of reserves, each will be quite short and it might be more useful to merge them into National Nature Reserves in England where there is already an incomplete list. JonH ( talk) 20:12, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
Cn someone take a look at Westbury-on-Trym, and the recent addition by an IP of a section about a community website. I've already deleted this once (and also similar at Clifton, Bristol), as it appeared to be spam. Would value a second opinion. Skinsmoke ( talk) 16:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Within the Somerset wikiproject we are utilising a new tool which identifies the most popular pages within the projects remit in terms of the number of page views they get each month. I was surprised by the dominance of biography articles over geography within the top 100. This has led to a discussion about whether a county project should include people who may have been born in the county, but later emigrated & their "notability" is related to activities unrelated to the county. They were originally included when the project was set up & a bot tagged all articles in Category:People from Somerset with the project banner. I would be interested to know what other county project do on this or whether there is any guidance or previous discussions on this which I'm unaware of?— Rod talk 09:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers#Correct ambiguity in naming section regarding disambiguation, which may require the attention of UKGEO participants as one of the options contradicts Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about rivers. Jeni ( talk) 23:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Cn someone take a look at Westbury-on-Trym, and the recent addition by an IP of a section about a community website. I've already deleted this once (and also similar at Clifton, Bristol), as it appeared to be spam. Would value a second opinion. Skinsmoke ( talk) 16:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Someone has bulk nominated every UK service station for AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Norton Canes services (2nd nomination). It seems sensible to post a notification here than at the UK roads wikiproject, as that is dead. Jeni ( talk) 12:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Alerting all WikiProject UK geography members that England is undergoing a reveiw for WP:GA status. Things you can help with are listed here. Please help if you can, thanks, -- Jza84 | Talk 14:45, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm having a look at the lists of places in England linked from {{ List of places in England}} with a view to standardising them. They are quite variable, with some offering grid refs, others having maps etc. etc. Any thoughts on how these should be formatted would be welcome. MRSC ( talk) 11:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I have just started a requested move discussion for M1 motorway to move it to M1 motorway (Great Britain). Another user has been trying to move-war this request into being, so I have started said discussion as I'm sure this was her intention. Comments welcome at Talk:M1 motorway#Requested move. (Again, posted here due to the inactivity on the UK Roads Wikiproject) Jeni ( talk) 22:03, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm reviewing the 150 or so districts in England that take their name from a settlement. I want us to codify our criteria for doing a split or a merge. This will stop the occasional arguments that break out over this issue. I've listed all the examples I can find and put some possible criteria: here. Please take a look and give comments: here. Thanks. MRSC ( talk) 15:11, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I have started three discussions following this:
Please have a look at the results and contribute there. You might want to start other discussions based on these findings, but I am only going to focus on these three personally for now. MRSC ( talk) 15:36, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
What about those settlements (as they would be commonly thought of) that extend beyond the administrative boundaries. (e.g. Liverpool, Manchester etc)? Quantpole ( talk) 20:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I've not had any specific problems raised with the criteria used, so I am now codifying How to write about districts. It would be great if someone could work on a suggested article structure. MRSC ( talk) 23:20, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi, have we anyone who can do a copy-edit of Sheffield which is going to be de-listed at FAR unless someone can perform a copy-edit of the article. Keith D ( talk) 08:43, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I am proposing to merge a number of low or moderately active projects in south east England. The discussion is here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England#Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater South East MRSC ( talk) 21:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I've noticed that the ONS have released the new figures for mid-2008 estimates here. I was going to start updating them, but I haven't done it before, and I don't want to mess everything up! I'm also concerned that I might miss something due to the 2009 structural changes. Could someone who knows about this help me out please? Quantpole ( talk) 11:59, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose a task force as part of this project (and/or Wikipedia:WikiProject England). I want to include the 326 English local government districts. These are highly variable in quality and content, some are developed fully and others are barely stubs. I am particularly interested in this area and have a fair bit of knowledge on UK subdivisions. It is a fairly big task and I wonder if anyone is interested in joining me? MRSC ( talk) 08:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
To whom it may concern, As a resident of the village of Lostock Hall, Preston for the past 30 years, and also access to many historical facts on the village; I have extended the information on the original article with more facts, history of the village, and useful information. I hope that this is OK with members of the WikiProject UK geography group. I would like it if I would be permitted to continue my work on this page, and work to make the page more detailed to provide a more in-depth article on Lostock Hall. Does anyone have objections to this? If so, please let me know in due course via my talk page. Kindest regards, Gareth aka Pr3st0n ( talk) 16:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Another procedural requested move following non-consensus moves by a the same editor as the M1 move. See Talk:M2 motorway#Requested move Jeni ( talk) 23:53, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
I've reverted the M18 motorway move, and warned the user. If they move another motorway page without discussion please block them for disruption. Anyone is free to start a requested moves discussion if they want the M18 moved. Thryduulf ( talk) 19:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
The RM discussion for the M18 is now here. Talk:M18 motorway#Requested move Jeni ( talk) 00:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Thryduulf, stop trying to behave like a vigilante. You reverted my move of M18 motorway to M18 motorway (Great Britain) without offering any substantive reason for the revert. Your reason seems to be procedural, but it was not a controversial move -- I had disambiguated all all incoming links, and there still isn't even single a comment on the talk page about the move.
I'll open a requested move discussion there, but I am very concerned by your actions here. You are threatening blocks, but this vigilante practice of angrily reverting uncontroversial page moves is right out of line. I don't know whether there is some WP:OWN issue here, but I have disambiguated thousands of articles over the last few years and have never before encountered such ferocious hostility to disambiguation.
We now seem to have a situation where this wikiproject has taken it upon itself to automatically revert any disambiguation of an article on a Uk road, without making any effort to assess the merits of that move. This isn't the way wikipedia is supposed to work, and I hope that before this all ends up at arbcom some of this blind-revert crew will take a deep breath and recognise that disambiguation is not some sort of vandalism which automatically requires repeated threats of blocks. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I have apologised elsewhere already for my misuse of admin tools regarding the M18. The discussions regarding the M1, M2, M3, M4 and M18 are showing that your view of these disambiguations as being uncontroversial is not shared by others, in these situations the best thing to do is to discuss first, as this avoids people taking your intentions the wrong way. Thryduulf ( talk) 11:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
eg - Ross-on-Wye
Numerous editors have removed the Welsh place names (they're not relevant - and isn't there a Welsh language Wikipedia?), yet user Hoary seems to be on a one man campaign to keep them in place. These areas are in England, and the Welsh name has no legal standing outside of Wales - particularly the placing of the Welsh namess in the infobox under the real names seems to suggest the names have any signifiance.
92.14.197.200 ( talk) 22:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion here on whether it would be helpful to expand the group of categories for places formerly in one county (and now in another). There is no consensus on that (yet), but it has been suggested that there should be a discussion here, to explore the size (and practicality) of such a project, and see whether consensus can be reached.
Broadly, the arguments in favour of such categories are:
The arguments against are that lists are a preferable navigation aid, and that such categories will never be complete or accurate.
To assess the size of the task I have looked at what would be needed to create categories for each historic category. The major boundary changes occurred in 1974. Other big changes occurred in 1965 (mostly in the London area). There have been many minor changes, mostly additions to large cities, relatively small boundary adjustments and the clean-up of enclaves and exclaves. (Obviously, this only refers to places leaving a historic county, not joining.)
This survey suggests to me that the bulk of the work would be where areas transferred to the metropolitan counties. There are issues (I think mainly in London) of whether you would include places which left the historic counties in the 19th century. In other cases, the process would involve moving to new subcategories. None of these issues seem to me to be insurmountable. But cases such as Sedbergh suggest to me that some consistency and cleaning up would be desirable.
Any thoughts? Mhockey ( talk) 14:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
On another note, it is quite simply a rewriting of history to suggest the 1965/1974 changes were the only significant changes. Middlesex lost 20% of its area and a third of its population in 1889. Buckinghamshire lost or gained far more territory in reforms other than those in 1974. MRSC ( talk) 17:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Rather than listing (or categorising) places moved from one county to another, wouldn't it be simpler to have two sets of overlapping categories: "places in current counties" (districts etc), and "places in former counties" (districts etc)? Places moved from one to the other (and perhaps back) would show up as being in different former and current categories. For example, Staines would be in former Middlesex, but current Surrey; Kingston upon Thames would be in former Surrey, current London, Christchurch in former Hants, current Dorset etc. Then no need for a special category for "places moved from Hants to Dorset in 1974" etc. The "former" areas would I think have to include all former boundaries (that is, one category for all previous Hants boundaries etc) – unless we had a whole set of categories for each major reorganisation (18 whatever to 1974; 1974 to 1990s, 1990s to current etc). Would also take account of counties/districts now not existing at all. Richard New Forest ( talk) 22:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
There are three aims stated for these categories (taken from above):
I believe these points can be summarised as trying to find a way to organise our information so it additionally corresponds to areas described in texts written before 1974. In order to do this, the suggestion has been to categorise places on the fringes that have been transferred between counties. There is an inherent flaw in this plan vis-a-vis the stated aims. That is, it will only improve navigation between those places. In order to organise articles by the areas of counties as they were before 1 April 1974, you would need to add an extra category to every article, even if it did not change county; then you would have categories that allow navigation as outlined in the aims. MRSC ( talk) 06:03, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I raised this issue on this page in January 2008. In view of the debate that has been raging on the Leeds talk page for some days now, and the serious ordnance survey funded research can we discuss how we propose to treat vernacular geographical areas? (i.e. ones that are not currently recognised administrative entities, but which we perceive to, and "know" do, exist in reality.)-- Harkey ( talk) 17:14, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Just a general point from one who has not been in touch with academic geography for a very very long time, but it seems to me that the term "vernacular geography" covers a much wider area than the specific areas relating to the GIS mapping of "fuzzy" areas which are the subject of the research mentioned in the article (which is excellent by the way, so please don't take this as a criticism). I remember back in the 1960s/70s a lot of discussion of what were then called "mental maps", which covered how people perceived their local areas as well as ill-defined wider regions. (The West Country may be a good example of the latter, by the way.) It would be good to get an academic geographer's perspective on how this current research relates to earlier thinking and work. There is also the fact that, when OS first did their mapping in the 19th century, the names of many places were what (and where) the locals told them they were, in many cases not written down - which may be a point worth mentioning. Fixed boundaries and precise point definitions arose after the mapping was done - in many cases they did not exist beforehand (though in some cases, such as parish and county boundaries, they obviously did). Obviously these thoughts would need refs, but may be worth thinking about. Ghmyrtle ( talk) 09:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
The current article has a few problems, which I started to address, but was reverted. The article is too closely using the wording the research and presenting it as authoritative, without making clear this is a piece of social science research. The tone should be changed to describing the research, rather than presenting it "as fact". MRSC ( talk) 11:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Although the UK is not the most prone area to natural hazards, I think an article outlining the most common hazards and causes would be a core article to WPUKGEO. Not to be confused with List of natural hazard events in the United Kingdom. Jolly Ω Janner 19:28, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Should London be a featured article now? What do you think? Likelife ( talk) 17:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
In the guidelines to writing about cities and countries we tend to provide suggestions that information about the origin of the name / the etymology is given in the history section, and - if there is enough material - that a sub-section can be created. In usage some editors prefer that the etymology details be placed in their own section - which is fine if there is enough data to justify it, and the information may be found reasonably interesting or useful to the average reader. But the question now arises as where to place a stand alone Etymology section. I often find them placed as the first section - ahead of the History section - and there is a part of me which can see the logic of that. However, there is a greater logic in having the history section first, as that is the first section that readers would expect - it is generally what encyclopedias do, and the history always comes before the name (I suppose there may be settlements and countries which were named before they existed, but these must be very rare!). Where etymologies are usually placed in dictionaries and references books is at the end of the entry - and that may be where someone interested in the etymology may be expecting to look. There may be other options as to where to place the etymology, and it would be useful to get some opinions and revisit the guidelines to make things clearer. As a starting point, here are four suggestions:
I will copy this to other related WikiProjects. SilkTork * YES! 10:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
I started creating a navbox for the parishes of Devon, but I didn't expect it to be quite as big as it turned out. Do you think it would be better to use civil parish navboxes at the shire district level rather than one navbox for the entire county? (bare in mind that Devon is a rather large county). Could this somewhat large navbox still be used of value on articles? Or even as a navbox? (I mean, it collapses automatically anyway). Jolly Ω Janner 21:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Since the article isn't currently tagged with this Wikiproject's template, it probably won't show up in your usual Article Alerts. Therefore, I wanted to bring Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lount to your attention. Singularity42 ( talk) 01:50, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Suggested merger of categories. Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 November 23#Isle of Man ferrying.
Simply south ( talk) 11:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Would anyone care to contribute to the debate about what should be in the new Geography of Somerset article & what should be in Geology of Somerset which is currently GA. see Talk:Geology of Somerset#Geography & Talk:Geography of Somerset.— Rod talk 19:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Move? See Talk:November 2009 Great Britain and Ireland floods#Requested move. Simply south ( talk) 17:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
In order to generate a little more attention as the affected articles may not be on many watch lists: I have tagged a number of lists of county and district articles for a merger. I would welcome any opinions on the suggestion. The proposed mergers are:
Pit-yacker ( talk) 21:33, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
The project announcements box doesn't seem to be updated very often, possibly because article alerts is performing this function automatically. Is this still needed on the project page, talk page etc?— Rod talk 20:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
A bot has recently been set up to maintain the lists of "Recognised content" for projects eg FAs, FLs, GAs, FPs etc, which can be a pain to maintain by hand. I've set this up for Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset, see User:JL-Bot/Project content for the instructions etc. Would this be useful for this project?— Rod talk 16:35, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
OK I've now set this up for this project & hopefully the bot will add the content in the next 24 hrs.— Rod talk 19:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
An editor has added a "Geographic Location box" to lots of county articles (including Somerset) showing what neighbouring counties etc are. I personally don't feel this is needed, attractive or adds anything to the article & put a comment on the editors talk page. The response was that "they're a very useful way of getting information about a group of communities, going from one to another. If you take the Somerset page as an example, the map in the Infobox doesn't give the names of the neighbours. You and I know what they are but visitors from other countries may well not know them. The other map in the article has districts within Somerset, not neighbouring counties. The neighbouring counties are listed early in the Somerset article but (1) this is unusual - few other county articles do this - and (2) I feel the information is more easily absorbed from a map."
Do other editors feel they are a useful addition to the county articles?— Rod talk 13:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Exactly how are the criteria for given directions worked out? Would, say, a situation where we hit county X if we move due north over a county boundary of county Y be the criteria? Or do we we specify in general terms directions taken from a "centre-point" of the county in whose article we want to put this box? Or what? If you sit down and consider it carefully, it is sometimes not clear, and until this clarified, it may not add easily grasped information. 78.86.94.17 ( talk) 11:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 04:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Could Wikipedians look at the Wellingborough article and say what needs to be done to get it to a 'B' rating, thanks. Likelife ( talk) 14:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
I would like to draw the attention of the WikiProject to the ongoing discussion at
Template talk:Infobox UK place#Dublin. In summary: {{
Infobox UK place}}
has the following four fields - |dublin_distance=
, |dublin_distance_mi=
, |dublin_distance_km=
, and |dublin_direction=
- should these be kept, or removed? --
Jza84 |
Talk
16:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
After hard work and kind help by Kudpung the suggesstions you gave me above have been taken onboard and I hope this reflects in the article. Now again im asking for a peer review as it is or as it gets closer to a GA class, thanks. Likelife ( talk) 21:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
One of the most frequent problems I encounter with geography articles is misunderstandings about postal geography (post towns and postcode districts) providing "definitive" boundaries and (to a lesser extent) the district ward boundaries "defining" settlements. I want to write a guideline on this, does anything of this sort already exist? MRSC ( talk) 12:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
{{
Infobox UK place|post_town}}
output, but there's no compelling reason to use small caps elsewhere, especially as small caps are rarely used on Wikipedia.)Thanks everyone. I've started to write WP:UKGUIDE based on this. MRSC ( talk) 10:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)