Template talk:Infobox England and Wales civil parish

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[edit] Infobox UK place merger

Could anyone interested look at Template talk:Infobox UK place#Suburbs_.2F_Parishes_.2F_Islands where I have raised the issue of a possible merger. Your thoughts / comments would be most appreciated. Regan123 10:31, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I would welcome a merger. This infobox seems to lack the depth, content and flexibility of Template:Infobox UK place. The UK place infobox adequately covers civil parishes already, and has mapping features, and options for foreign names, population density etc etc. This infobox seems to have a lot of white space, and no content - I'd be unwilling to transclude it myself. Jza84 00:32, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

+1 for merge. Andy Mabbett 18:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Any plans to action this? Looks like there are 100 transclusions. -- Jza84 · (talk) 02:10, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I've reviewed some of the usage of this template. Many articles have only one or two fields populated. Converting to template:Infobox UK place will allow us to get something more useful in place. MRSC • Talk 09:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

There were some concerns over identification of the entities and handling different situations in the previous discussion. May be we need to take a copy of template:Infobox UK place into a sandbox and make the changes needed for a combined template so we can see what it will look like in the different situations. We can then continue discussions with a view to overcoming any problems of a combined template or any tweeks to improve it without affecting existing articles. This will also allow time to provide a recommended set of fields to use for the parish, the place and the combined place/parish usages before making it live. Keith D (talk) 11:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Do we have any indication what info/fields were wanted in this parish template that UK place has been missing? I've been involved with writing a few articles about parishes but fail to see the benefits of this template, or, indeed, what this has that UK place doesn't. Basically, I'm thinking we ought to go for a wholesale conversion to UK place as I don't see any strengths here. -- Jza84 · (talk) 18:45, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

From memory I think the problem with a combined box is clearly knowing what is being described - is it a place, is it a civil parish or is it a place and a civil parish. In the case of the combined place/civil parish what do the various items, such as population, refer to. I do not think the fields it offers were a problem. Keith D (talk) 20:16, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I understand. It's the Saddleworth problem (as I like to think) where it's a civil parish, but not a settlement. Saddleworth seems to get round this though using UK place, though do wonder if it needs somekind of "parish" identifier like you say. I wonder how many transclusions there are that are actually settlements and parishes. I suppose that would give away how broad or limited the issues are. -- Jza84 · (talk) 20:31, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I have figures for the East Riding of Yorkshire where there are 170 civil parishes of which 25 are just civil parishes currently using this template. The rest are combined settlement and civil parish using the UK place template, which really describe the village but give population for the parish. That will give you some idea of the scale of the usage if you assume that is typical across the rest of the UK. Keith D (talk) 20:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

May be we could use something like settlement_type as used in {{Infobox settlement}} to give an indication of the type of place. Keith D (talk) 21:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Would it be abused though? I'm not thinking so much as things like "settlement_type= Shithole", but more things like "settlement_type= City" for places like Salford and Bradford that have had their city status superceded by City of Salford and City of Bradford.

Furthermore, I'm thinking that giving this an identifier may give the title "civil parish" more weight than is really needed. I'm not sure, just my critical thinking kicking in. Perhaps we ought to leave a note at UK place talk for more input? -- Jza84 · (talk) 23:11, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Had this discussion (as pointed to by the top comment above) in UK Infobox Place talk back in June, and there was no consensus to merge. Has anything changed since then? Mauls (talk) 01:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I did produce in the previous discussion a list of different cases that need to be considered so taht clear advice could be given for each (I can't remember where the previous discussion is now, otherwise I would reprint them here). I still think they are worthwhile digging out. Any solution (preservation of this template in either unaltered or altered form, or merging with another template) would be best done with clear guidelines for how to deal with each of the situations, I think, otherwise we will get a mishmash of ad hoc solutions that may result in a proliferation of reinstituted infoboxes (like this one may have been).

The template as it stands now is certainly deficient, in my opinion: it needs to have a field that states what kind of administrative body deals with the civil parish matters: parish council, parish meeting, or (a default situation) administration by the higher-level local government body. If the template does not survive, it needs some discussion whether this material (and any other we can think of) should go into any template it is merged into, or whether we need to write into any guidelines that the form of local representative body (parish council, parish meeting, administration) should be given (it should be somewhere, I think). We need also to realise that there are some civil parishes that contain none, one, or more than one settlement, of which there may be any number that could be called "principal settelements", and there are some settlements (Burton on Trent springs to mind) that contain more than one civil parish. We need to give some advice on how to handle this variety of situations (but perhaps I'm now repeating what I wrote about in the prior discussion.)

I probably will have other comments, but it is late, and I can tell my thinking and typing is suffering (I have to be up to get a child to school in the morning as well.) I will try to write more tomorrow.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this should be seen as an alternative to the UK Place infobox - for example, in the most common scenario of a parish being closely aligned with a particular settlement, it's best just to use the UK place infobox.

But to merge this for civil parishes that contain no settlements, or for parishes that contain multiple settlements, seems to me to be about as sensible as merging the English county infobox into UK place. It's seems to be just trying to stretch it too far, and making something that's fairly clear to use into something that's unnecessarily complicated.

In fact, for those 'not-tied-to-one-settlement' parishes, what exactly is the deficiency with this infobox?

Finally - administrative body is certainly missing, although parish council and parish meeting are the only options. Having the higher-level administrative body is not a default situation, and is not a legal possibility in any civil parish. If there's no parish council then the parish meeting is the administrative body - it is not possible to have no parish meeting.

Of course, in unparished areas the district or unitary authority would have the responsibilities that would otherwise fall to a parish council/meeting. Unparished areas don't exist per se, they are merely those parts of a district/unitary area that aren't covered by any parish. Mauls (talk) 02:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, wouldn't a merge with Infobox UK Local Authority be more advantageous? Mauls (talk) 02:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I very much agree with this point: UK Local Authority would be the better choice of template for this to merge with (if one has to merge it at all, that is.).  DDStretch  (talk) 02:47, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, also need to allow for parish groupings - where multiple civil parishes (and thus settlements) are governed by one parish council or parish meeting. Mauls (talk) 02:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I do not believe that it is totally the case that the parish has to have either a parish council or a parish meeting, though I suspect that almost all of them will fall into either of those two cases. Take the example of Chester Castle (civil parish). It has no residents and has not had any for some time, so it can hold neither a parish council nor a parish meeting, but it not been abolished. In that case, the higher order body has to take over the duties normally done by the parish body, and it may do this by appointing people to work together in carrying out the functions of either a parish council or meeting in the areas that need attention (a dim memory is that these people may be called "trustees" or "adminstrators" or something similar). But that does not mean these people form either a parish council or a parish meeting. The same thing may well happen in other cases. I understand (though I do not have the references to hand) that this is laid down in legislation somewhere. I admit that "default" was a poor choice of words brought about by me trying to wrap things up and get to bed, and so was the first term I thought of. There are also situation where abutting civil parihes share either parish councils, or, much more rarely, parish meetings (Chester (district) is awash with these situations, and they are present in the other districts of Cheshire. These situations should be distinguished from those where a civil parish has different parish wards. There are some joint parish councils administering more than one civil parish in which some of them have parish wards. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am coming round to thinking that we will be mixing up two different categories of things if we merge the template in with the infoboxes designed for settlements: settlements and the areas under a third level tier of local government (civil parishes), are different categories of things, and, although we can get away with having them subsumed in the same articles or by the same infobox for some unknown numbers of cases, there are occasions when this becomes very strained (as Mauls points out, correctly in my opinion). So, I think we need to keep something like this template. However, we first need to make sure we know how many of each different case there are (as I briefly listed above and in more detail in the previous discussion). WE need to do this so we can know what guidance to give editors and so we can know how much strain there will be as a whole in the case of each potential solution. Is any of this at all clear?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Note, that it's not that the competencies of a non-existing parish council fall on the district council, it is more that the district council already has those powers and may chose to use them only where a parish council deosn't exist. I'm not aware of any powers that parish councils have that district councils can't do anyway. 83.146.2.234 (talk) 10:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Having looked through the discussion, and seen some development in the infobox, I could be persuaded to keep these seperate. I notice this is transcluded on the Isle of Man. I presume this infobox would not be used in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland? If so, shouldn't this be "Infobox England parish"? -- Jza84 · (talk) 11:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Even if we do not merge the templates we need to address the problem of {{Infobox UK place}} not really catering for articles covering both settlement and civil parish. Unless we add both info boxes to these articles which would not really be appropriate. The other alternative, which is not really attractive and could lead to confusion, is to split the articles into one covering the settlement and one covering the parish. Keith D (talk) 11:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

You raise valid points. This leads me round to the question again of, what does this infobox have that UK place doesn't? I cursory glance through the transclusions confirms MRSC's point that a great many of these only have a few fields completed. Read, Lancashire is one of them, and also an example of an article missing out on all the features of UK place. -- Jza84 · (talk) 11:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Infobox English parish wouldn't be entirely appropriate. Wales has civil parishes, although they are always named 'communities' they are in all practical senses identical entities.

Parish meetings always exist, even if there's nobody around to turn up to them. Parish trustees/administrators are the people charged by the parish meeting/district council with holding and protecting the parish meeting's property, as a parish meeting is not a body-corporate. It is correct that district councils have overlapping powers, although there are some they operate differently if an area is parished - for example the powers when a churchyard is declared closed. Parish councils covering multiple parishes is a process known as 'grouping', and again is a formal legal electoral arrangement. Mauls (talk) 22:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Two specific problems with this template at the moment

I think it would be a good idea to address the following two problems I have found.

1. The name of the template s misleading: it should be distinguished from a potential ecclesiastical parish template that could be constructed by renaming it "Template UK civil parish" or something similar. Doing this would also reduce the chance of good-faith, yet mistaken attempts to edit it so as to enable it to be used in ecclesiastical parishes.
2. In Barrow, Cheshire this template has now been added, but I see that it also creates a category of "Parishes of Cheshire". The name is misleading (for the same reason as given in the first point), and in this case, it ignores that fact that there are already categories in existence for the districts and boroughs of Cheshire. A better option would be to either omit this category in the template, or allow it to be omitted in cases where a pre-existing category can be used. If it is kept, it still needs to be renamed, I suggest.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I was still concerned with the name too. Perhaps Template:Infobox England and Wales Civil Parish? Lengthy I know, but more accurate. It's looking like there is a consensus above that where the parish is coterminate or broadly based on a single settlement we use UK place, but where the article is clearly about a parish only, we use this? Where there is overlap, this infobox could be used later on in the article, perhaps under a Governance section. -- Jza84 · (talk) 02:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. Can I then suggest that the name be changed to Template:England and Wales civil parish (I think I've conformed to the rules about hyphenation there)? I also think we need to either remove entirely the automated category declarations in the template, or change them so that the simple "parishes" become "civil parishes". If no one objects, I will make the name change on 17 January (to give time for comments). I won't touch the parishes declarations, but I really do think as a minimum they need a name change as well. It would be good to have views about both of these issues: the name change before 17th, and the name change for the categories not necessarily by then, but as soon as possible. I think I should be able to use various semi-automated tools I have access to in order to the redirects in articles that already use the template after the name change.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:09, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to say that I support the removal of automatic categorisation, per the reasons you explained.... I suppose now we ought to focus on writing up about where this template is appropriate. It has been suggested that we avoid using this template where the parish is conterminate with a settlement; I recommend this template be used in a Governance section where this is not so clear (with UK place in the lead) and finally have this in the lead where the article principally discusses the parish. -- Jza84 · (talk) 22:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

If you are changing the categories then you will have to get the existing categories renamed at WP:CFD so that the two match up. Also if you are removing the automation of the categories then you will need to add the appropriate category to the articles that the template is used on. Keith D (talk) 22:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to you both for the comments. And thanks to Keith D for reminding me of the extra action that needs to be done. I think I'll be able to handle that all right, though I may move a little bit more slowly in doing it. Some of the categories newly declared by the template don't yet seem to be in existence, which will complicate matters a little, but will make the job easier in other ways if they are not yet created.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:31, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I've now taken a preliminary look at the categories automatically added by with this template. There are higher and lower order nested categories in some of them, and these are already mixing up civil parishes with ecclesiastical parishes. I think the confusion between civil parishes and ecclesistical parishes we are already seeing needs attention that I'm prepared to attend to. may be this should be taken to WP:UKGEO as a sub-page of some sort? If we do this, then an issue that was raised with me some time ago in a debate in WP:CfD about a category involving parishes can be sorted out as well: "civil parishes in..." versus "civil parishes of ..." (The case was put to me that "civil parishes in the Isle of Wight" sounded very odd, using the preposition "on" would be adequate for the Isle of Wight but not really many other places, but using "of" would satisfy all the different cases.) Comments?  DDStretch  (talk) 22:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok. I was away yesterday unexpectedly, but since no comments against the move have been made, and the name really is confusing, I'll will change the name shortly to "Template:Infobox England and Wales civil parish". The question about the categories remains for now. I have also some other issues arising from my use of the template, but I will mention them at a later date.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:19, 17 January 2008 (UTC)