Talk:Hampshire

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Contents 1 Current Talk 2 Featured article candidate 3 County town 4 GDP per head 5 County flower: I would prefer to just post them a tenner

[edit] Current Talk

Hi Mr Cairns

Can you not add a commercial link to Wikipedia ? - I am refering to link added to the Hampshire section - for iHampshire, which is a directory of businesses, services and clubs in Hampshire and only in hampshire - I feel this is of relevancy to this section. However you continue to remove it - I have briefly looked through the guidelines and it seems that commercial links are allowed.

I look forward to your comments.

Max

Thanks for your comment. I find that the Hampshire article does not discuss businesses nor commerce in Hampshire. Therefore, a commercial link to a directory of businesses in Hampshire is inappropriate. If you were to create an article 'Hampshire businesses' linked in the 'See also' section from the Hampshire article, and place the iHampshire weblink in this new article, then I for one would have no problem. Clearly, Wikipedia has commercial articles on Google, Boeing, etc. The issue is whether to place a commercial link in a non-commercial article. Ian Cairns 00:02, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article candidate

The todo list is looking very nice a short now. I'm considering going into Dorchester library sometime and reviewing the relevant bits against some books. Does anybody have any more to give before we try for featured article, and is it worth putting it through peer review before FAC? Joe D (t) 23:30, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd check out the physical geography (some of it's not quite accurate) and organise demarcation between that and Geology of Hampshire, which I just edited. "Hampshire Basin" is the key term. See Solent too; while erosion has played a part in widening the Solent and finally separating the IOW, rias are sea level rise features. Tearlach 5 July 2005 02:20 (UTC)

Much of the physical geography section (at least, the geology and landscape bits) is a summary of the geology of Hampshire article. I've added sea level change (though obviously erosion acted before sea level change to create the valleys that flooded--but that's probabaly a bit too much depth for this page) and the term "Hampshire Basin", but other more in-depth additions should go on Geology of Hampshire. Joe D (t) 5 July 2005 11:21 (UTC)

[edit] County town

It's Winchester according to the majority of sources. Owain's citation for Southampton comes from an 1815 gazetteer. However, if you look at modern official sources, there's repeated confirmation it's Winchester. for example:

• www.cityofwinchester.co.uk "We invite you to take a tour of the City of Winchester UK ... The County Town of Hampshire in the UK"
• 14 documents (use the search engine) at the Winchester County Council page e.g [1] or [2]
• Hampshire County Council coat of arms page "Hampshire's borders today are very little different from those of 1086, when the Domesday Book was compiled in Winchester, the county town then as now".
• Hampshire County Council again "Hampshire County Council's strongly-urged case to keep the County Town of Winchester in the Wight and Hampshire South European Parliamentary Constituency has been accepted by the Boundary Commission."
• Oxford Dictionary of English, revised ed. 2005. "Winchester: a city in southern England, the county town of Hampshire".
• Philip's World Encyclopedia, OUP, 2005. "Winchester, County town of Hampshire".

And so on. In fact the 1815 Brookes's Gazetteer seems to be the sole source for it being Southampton. Tearlach 13:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

The traditional counties of England section in the county town article lists the traditional county town - i.e. in most cases the town that the county is named after. It mentions where the County Hall is located if it differs from the traditional county town. Winchester is the location of Hampshire County Hall, but it is not the traditional county town, otherwise the county would be Winchestershire. The traditional county town and the location of the County Hall (if any) are both listed in the article. Owain 14:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Cite sources. You've provided one reference against many. Check out The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868): Winchester: "locally situated in the hundred of Buddlesgate, county Hants, of which it is the county town". Southampton: {"county town" notably absent from description). Anyhow, all this is irrelevant to the Winchester article, where we're talking about current status. Tearlach 14:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I am not arguing that people refer to Winchester as the county town, but that Southampton is the traditional county town. In any case I haven't touched the Winchester article itself. Owain 14:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

that people refer to Winchester as the county town

No, they don't merely "refer to it". Read Wikipedia:Verifiability: if current respectable references all say it is, then by Wikipedia standards it is full stop. If you can't provide any sources corrobating your claim that "Southampton is the traditional county town of Hampshire", then it fails the criteria for inclusion. Tearlach 19:13, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] GDP per head

In terms of GDP per head Hampshire is just above the national average at 105% (37th highest in England), rising to 122% when including Southampton and Portsmouth. The highest GDP per head is Portsmouth at 144% of the national average.

This is true, but misleading. The GDP per head figures here have been calculated as "total output within the borders of the region" divided by "number of people living in the region". This means that the figures are distorted significantly by people commuting into and out of the county.

For example, a town where everyone commutes to somewhere else and nobody works would have a GDP per head of zero, and a town with lots of incoming commuters would have a very high GDP per head. These distortions make the GDP head figures more or less irrelevant for illustrating whether somewhere is "affluent" or not, and in their current context in the article they are misleading. For example, Portsmouth looks rich, because it has lots of commuters coming in, while Hampshire as a whole doesn't look all that affluent, because the figures ignore all the commuters in Hampshire working in high paid jobs in London, Portsmouth etc.

I have removed these statistics from the article as they are more misleading than helpful. However, it would be nice to find some more useful statistics to illustrate Hampshire's economy. Enchanter 13:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

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Call me Ameri-centric, but shouldn't the article mention that the U.S. State of New Hampshire was named after Hampshire somewhere?  :p -MaxJ

[edit] County flower: I would prefer to just post them a tenner

Exactly what status does this so-called "county flower" have in Hampshire. Which bodies have adopted it, or use it? Any? Who says that it is the county flower? Unless you put in the context then you are allowing Wikipedia to be used as free advertising by a, on all the evidence, very wily little charity: Plantlife. Good luck to them, but is the Hampshire article really the best place for us to subsidise their meagre marketing budget. Personally, I would prefer to just post them a tenner. --Mais oui! 16:21, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

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This was posted at User talk:Steinsky. Per the talk page header I am replying in a more appropriate public namespace.

Not wanting the fact about the county flower in the summary is one thing — fine, move it to where you think is more appropriate. Removing the fact altogether is rather different, though, and much less acceptable. Two or three editors have a rather unhealthy obsession with the county flower concept, trying to remove the article, trying to remove all mention of it from other articles, slapping disruptive {{fact}} templates on it, etc. Don't let them harry you into acting hastily. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:03, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that the fact template is disruptive. This article only norrowly failed FAC, and it needs all the citations it can get. I know, you say it is disruptive because somebody has been adding it to all county articles, not just this one, without concern for whether it is really appropriate on all of those pages. But I consider the semi-automatic addition of single sentence facts to otherwise well developed and structured articles without consideration to whether it is being placed in appropriate context to be disruptive.

I have no problem with the fact being included in its current section, however. Thanks for taking the time to do this one properly. Joe D (t) 18:13, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

See the current discussion at Talk:Plantlife for information concerning the status of county flowers. (As with the AfD, Mais oui!'s campaign to remove or lessen the coverage of this notion is not finding consensus with other editors.)

Editors often add pieces of information to articles, which other editors then re-order, move, tidy, etc. — that's the way that Wikipedia works. One can begin to feel possessive about articles, and then this sort of thing can seem annoying, but that's an attitude against which one has to be on one's guard (I've fallen into the same trap). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:34, 10 April 2006 (UTC)