Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Traditional counties of England

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[edit] Traditional counties of England

Self nom. This article has been the subject of huge disputes in the past, with it being more of an argument than an article. Getting involved led me to do a lot of research, and after a while thinking about it, I've refactored it entirely - with the agreement of one of the people on the other side of the argument. Morwen - Talk 15:03, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• It's a nice article, but the past editorial instability is a worry. I'd really like to see it stay relatively stable for a while, say a week or two, to show that the warring factions really can settle for the present version, structure and wording. Call this support if it's not warred over for a week ;-) - David Gerard 15:18, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Definitely support, it's a fantastic article; I've gone to it several times over the last month or so and amn't sure why it's never occurred to me to nom it myself. -- OwenBlacker 15:33, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Interesting, detailed article. It's much better article than it was a month or two ago thanks to Morwen's work on it, and seems to satisfy those on the other side of the argument. Warofdreams 15:48, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
• Support. -- pne 14:13, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Good article! Yet:1) Can we incorporate the abbreviations list into the previous list of counties? 2) The "Names and Statuses" section might be better placed at the end of the list of counties, rather than a separate section; the sentences in that section are quite disjointed, but might work well as footnotes to the list. 3) It would be helpful to define "enclave" and "exclave" within this article. 4) Unusual colon style "lastword_:_" ('_' is a space); does the Manual of Style specify what we should do? "lastword:_" is more common. 5) Logically, it seems that the "Origin" section should come earlier in the article. -- Matt 16:44, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • 1) no - because then the numbered list of counties and the map will have trouble fitting on one screen neatly. I tried this is didn't work out.
  • 2) yes, can do.
  • 3) ok
  • 4) will look into ;)
  • 5) ok
  • Morwen - Talk 17:01, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • regarding 1) (the abbreviations); I can see it's tricky. The map won't fit neatly anyway at certain resolutions and font sizes (the map starts going off screen at around 1000px at my usual reading font size). Surely there's some way of getting the information in neatly without having to have a separate abbreviations list? -- Matt 17:14, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • Well, please feel free to suggestion one. I really can't see a way to do it. Possibly the info could be moved to Postal counties of the United Kingdom as they are mostly postal abbreviations. Morwen - Talk 17:22, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • Would scaling down the image help (keeping the numbers visible, of course)? (Sorry, I'm not much of a layout guru). -- Matt 17:28, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
          • I've had a play around, and I think Morwen's right - merging the abbreviations into the map section just isn't going to work very well, sadly. Scaling down the image probably won't work too well, either... Moving to the postal-codes article is possible, I suppose, but they are perhaps rather less useful out of context. James F. (talk) 17:45, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
            • Most of the abbrevs are quite dull, so I've summarised the interesting ones into a short paragraph. Morwen - Talk 17:53, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
              • Right, I've rather boldly marked this Uncontested, since (1) is now moot.
• Support. James F. (talk) 17:45, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• An excellent article, but certain minor typography-related objections: 1. Single quotation marks are used; they should, per Wiki policy, be replaced by double quotation marks. 2. Furthermore, one should use em dashes instead of hyphens surrounded by spaces. 3. My only "substantive" objection relates to the section "The counties." We mention the use of "shire" and "County of," but it appears that no explanation is given for the special usage "County Durham." -- Emsworth 21:28, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
  • All done. Morwen - Talk 21:39, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Then I support the article entirely. -- Emsworth 22:37, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) The lead section need dates (or rough periods in history) of when these counties arose and when other county systems partially superceded them. Likewise, the "origin" section needs some more specific dates and time periods for a reader to easily grasp the history. 2) Are "enclave" and "exclave" synonymous? (The article uses both). Also, "exclave" is defined twice; we only need to define it once -- the first time it's used in the article. 3) There's an unnumbered region on the map (near the Scotland border, next to "7" and "36"; should it be numbered? 4) Curiosity: why is Yorkshire such a large county? 5) What's the smallest county? 6) I'd query the usage of "worn down by erosion" -- is that the usual linguistic phrase? (Just querying) 7) The "Usage" section is quite long; could this be broken up somehow into slightly smaller chunks (e.g. subsections or two sections)? -- Matt 13:21, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • 1) done. 2) we already have perfectly good articles about both those terms, i don't want to duplicate those articles here. 3) this is the detatched part of Lancashire mentioned. 4) 5) done. 6) done. 7) done. Morwen - Talk 13:47, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Thanks; would it be possible /desireable to add a "19" label to Furness (presumably in the sea, but with a line connecting it)? -- Matt 14:14, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • Already done. Try force-reload to get the new image. Morwen - Talk 14:15, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • Ah, great -- thanks.
• Support. -- Matt 14:22, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. I've done some cleaning, but nothing major. Markalexander100 07:13, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)