Talk:Culture of Plymouth
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[edit] Content of this article
Shouldn't it be 'Culture in Plymouth' rather than 'Culture of Plymouth'? Surely the city has no distinct 'culture' of its own apart perhaps from the Janner syndrome. All the rest is imported. Culture as a word in the city is almost as oxymoron and should be used carefully and selectively.
What has sport or nightlife to do with it anyway? including those sections is akin to suggesting that any 'activity' is 'culture'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.107.214.43 (talk) 19:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
- Culture is a useful term because of its vagueness. As the Culture article explains, it "refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance" and it is "manifested in music, literature, painting and sculpture, theater and film and other things."
- I agree with you that sport is taking those "other things" too far. That section should be re-imported into the main article, or hived off into its own article - with your deletions[1] reinstated. —SMALLJIM 14:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree that Plymouth has no culture whatsoever. It has no history, no outlook. It should be described purely as a car park. *sarcasm*. I'm not going to make any more edits to anything Plymouth-related until the smoke clears, which may be quite some time. :( Maybe we should add the automatic doing-down of the city as an aspect of its imported culture, seeing as no one thinks to do the same thing with other UK cities, such as London. No one says London's culture is imported, regardless of whatever opera or play they like seeing. Stevebritgimp (talk) 15:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
- Well, one definition of culture is "what people do in their spare time" then why not include sport? Rugby might not be on the same intellectual plane as opera, but does that make it non-cultural? Totnesmartin (talk) 20:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC
- Oh, rugby and football are definitely culture in the city, along with sailing, swimming and combat sports - although how you describe that is always the rub. The Six Nations going on at present is a great example of Sport-as-culture. It would think it is a matter of discussion, and presentation style, whether to include Sport in a Culture page, and one I would be neutral on, in that Sport gets plenty of coverage, and could have its own page. Stevebritgimp (talk) 22:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
- Some guidance is provided by the A-Z list which shows that there are over two hundred "Culture of …" articles, a good proportion of which appear to have "Sports" sections in them. Most of these articles are for countries, not cities, though. Against this, there are many "Sport in …" and "Sports in …" articles, and I note that the featured articles are split into categories which include "Culture and society" and "Sport and recreations". So there are precedents for whatever we choose to do, though separating them is probably more "correct". Anyway since both Steve and Martin (if I may use those abbreviations) are content with it, I propose we keep this article as it is now, reinstate most of the deleted sports content, and work on tidying it up. It can always be split up, re-merged with the main article or whatever at a later date if there's consensus to do so. Comments? —SMALLJIM 15:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
- The only reason I split Plymouth in the first place was on size grounds, and that doesn't apply here (yet). Sport's status as "culture" seems to be debatable, but maybe let's keep it here for now until the article gets too big (over 32k), then we can hive it off into a Sport in Plymouth article. Totnesmartin (talk) 15:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
- Some guidance is provided by the A-Z list which shows that there are over two hundred "Culture of …" articles, a good proportion of which appear to have "Sports" sections in them. Most of these articles are for countries, not cities, though. Against this, there are many "Sport in …" and "Sports in …" articles, and I note that the featured articles are split into categories which include "Culture and society" and "Sport and recreations". So there are precedents for whatever we choose to do, though separating them is probably more "correct". Anyway since both Steve and Martin (if I may use those abbreviations) are content with it, I propose we keep this article as it is now, reinstate most of the deleted sports content, and work on tidying it up. It can always be split up, re-merged with the main article or whatever at a later date if there's consensus to do so. Comments? —SMALLJIM 15:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oh, rugby and football are definitely culture in the city, along with sailing, swimming and combat sports - although how you describe that is always the rub. The Six Nations going on at present is a great example of Sport-as-culture. It would think it is a matter of discussion, and presentation style, whether to include Sport in a Culture page, and one I would be neutral on, in that Sport gets plenty of coverage, and could have its own page. Stevebritgimp (talk) 22:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
- Well, one definition of culture is "what people do in their spare time" then why not include sport? Rugby might not be on the same intellectual plane as opera, but does that make it non-cultural? Totnesmartin (talk) 20:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC
[edit] Complaining
Sadly the plymouth and the Plymouth culture pages have become a disorganised washout. Unless you are a railway geek, a nostalgic buffer with a rose tinted view of selected military blips or someone trying hamfistedly to talk up the dire retail predicament then there is not a single useful or even logical improvement. These pages have become a complete embarassment and it cannot be long before they fall into disuse or are comprehensively hacked about. Pity. They have become the idiosyncratic creation of S and S. Gingernut 23 2 08
[edit] Organising sport
In an attempt to put some order into the long sports section, I've used the categories in the List of sports (2nd list: "By other") to divide it up. Hope it's useful - I'm not claiming it's perfect! —SMALLJIM 21:44, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
The list is hopeless and very strangely put together. The categories are very very odd and have no relationship to the real sports world. no effort has been made to distinguish mass participation activities from those recently introduced and supported by a handful of novices.Assertions eg relating the popularity of bowls to Francis Drake is a nonsense as shown by the full wiki entry on bowls. The very long list in the now hacked about and estranged long Plymouth page at least gave browsers an insight into the number and nature of local sports activities. Gingernut —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.55.138 (talk) 21:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- Hello! Welcome to the talk page! Maybe you would like to tell us how you envisage the sports section working. Then the various users who contribute to and watch this page can give their opinion, and it will become possible to form a consensus so we can put something solid together. Cheers. Stevebritgimp (talk) 21:57, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Union Street
I have put back the infamous part of Union Street - as per Union Street's own page, which was left alone by Gingernut/Potomac2/Whiteworks but doesn't seem to be allowed to be left alone here. I have added a citation tag with the current date. I will not put it back again, as I will edit warring. I have raised it on Whiteworks' current IP talk page. It might be nice if we had the courtesy of a response on a talk page. Stevebritgimp (talk) 17:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- I've just done a quick google for ["Union Street" Plymouth +infamous]. Lots of hits: I've cited three. As expected, there are plenty of references in the local newspapers too. Even Google Books provides a page preview [2] (not a particularly reliable source, but they all mount up). Oh, and this piece, by journalist Mark Simpson is interesting too. —SMALLJIM 11:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
