Talk:List of United Kingdom locations

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on November 6, 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

Contents

[edit] Source

The first upload of this list as a single enormous file on Multilingual Wikisource was a compilation of material researched by Mike Simpson of Penrith, NSW, who posted the same list in subfiles at rootsweb.com. He says "I am happy for you to use the data any way you wish, however, please do not attribute it to me, as I collected it from a lot of sources, and so much of the work was not mine." —Theo (Talk) 12:18, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganize/reformat

The subpages for this series of articles are extremely large, most show up on the list of long pages. I looked through some of the pages to think about how to reorganize, but I didn't come up with any great ideas. Anyone else? RainbowCrane 19:59, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I am not sure that I agree with "extremely" large and in my opinion the subpages are not too large to be effective. The longpage limit is largely a historical issue that has been superceded by browser improvements. Are you having problems with load times? —Theo (Talk) 20:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Load time for me is ~20-30 seconds. We've got a T6, so the slowness is probably not on my end of the connection :-). That's quite a bit of time for load, possibly worse if users have a modem connection, but the big issue for me is usability. When a page is more than a few screens long users tend to get frustrated. RainbowCrane 15:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
  • You have convinced me. —Theo (Talk) 16:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
  • The pages are indeed very large - W is currently 258 Kb. They need to be split further by at least the first two letters, in the same way that B, C, and S currently are. I think around 100Kb is probably a useful size. We, for example is 78Kb on its own. -- zzuuzz (talk) 15:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I congratulate Zzuuzz on this. They need splitting up further; Hi-Hz is itself quite massive.--Holdenhurst 12:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree that the pages need splitting to make them smaller and easier to edit - more sections would be helpful too eg sections at the third letter rather than the second. There's also a huge amount of Disambig Link Repair to be done, I'm doing bits and pieces as I come across them, but all help would be appreciated! DuncanHill 21:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I also think splitting up the articles more is a good idea. For ease of finding the article for a particular place as long as the index is good, then having a large number of smaller articles is not a problem. I cannot really think of any good reason to have a smaller number of large articles. Think this is a great resource by the way, should greatly aid the addition of coords to UK places. GameKeeper 23:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

This set of articles deserves a category of their own. Any objections if I move all the articles into Category:List of United Kingdom locations by name and place this category into Category:Geography of the United Kingdom Category:Lists of places in the United Kingdom Category:Lists of coordinates? GameKeeper 23:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this - they belong in their own category because they are otherwise getting spread all over the place - and they are probably going to multiply in number. I was going to do it, but was uncertain of the best name. I'm still uncertain, but your suggestion is the most obvious and quite appropriate, and we can always rename it later. -- zzuuzz (talk) 23:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
It makes sense to me.—Theo (Talk) 01:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Minor amendment, taking a look at similarly organised categories Category:Lists of people by name . Is a popular one. That is plural so I think Category:Lists of United Kingdom locations by name. GameKeeper 08:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
it is done now GameKeeper 19:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oddity

Take a look at List_of_United_Kingdom_locations:_M#My, I see the 'coor d' and 'gbmappingsmall' as red text. If I edit and preview it looks OK. but when I save its wrong again. If this just me? Anyone know what is happening? GameKeeper 21:19, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Weird. I get it too, starting at Mynachdy, but only 'coor d' in red for three lines, then gbmappingsmall too. Tried a few things to no avail. Maybe splitting the page will help :) -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I saw this again, when I formated S into table format, so I split it up and it seems to have solved the issue. GameKeeper 20:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I think there is a limit to how many templates you can use on one page - obviously quite a few! -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:08, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
M is now split so it no longer occurs. I am sure your diagnosis is correct. GameKeeper 22:38, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welsh Location, Counties

  • These should be listed <English county> (<Welsh county>).
  • At present the Welsh counties are listed with the Welsh name, followed by the English name. I think the wikipedia standard is to use English most prominently. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) . GameKeeper 21:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Counties

A lot of the entries under County are not actually counties. For instance Kirklees is a metropolitan borough. Furthermore, the former county of Hereford and Worcester has now been separated into separate counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The most correct list of counties would be a combination of Council Areas of Scotland, Ceremonial counties of England and Principal areas of Wales. these could be derived from the current entries , but if we replace them , we lose information. Any ideas what is best? GameKeeper 23:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the former county of Hereford and Worcester has now been separated into separate counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.43.49.140 (talk • contribs) 21:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To do list

I have been making a few changes and thought its best to list what I think needs to be done . Because there are an awful lot of lists to revert if you don't like what I have done. Any extras welcome too. GameKeeper 23:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

  1. Split all lists over 100kb (see Special:Longpages, note this is cached and may be outdated). to do Sa-Sm Ll-Ly Hi-Hz Ba-Bn La-Li Ha-Hh Sn-Sti
  2. tabulate all lists done Keith D 12:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
  3. wikilink all gbmapping templates done Keith D 12:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
  4. Reverse welsh county naming.
  5. WP:DAB all the links (will take the rest of my life!)
  6. Add Northern Ireland places
  7. Design and use a template to show sub-letter headings, complementing Template:A-Z multipage list done by User:Bryan Derksen see Template:Lists of United Kingdom locations
  8. Identify and add ===<group name>=== for large 3 letter groups

[edit] Lists too long

A quick survey (sample size=1) suggests that these lists have as many as 800, if not more, places listed per page. I contend that that's too many, and should be split to a maximum of 200 per page,. for two reasons.

  1. Its user-unfriendly and unwieldy to edit
  2. We're about to replace {{coor d}} with {{coord}}, which adds extra functionality and a Geo microformat (see Project Microformats). This breaks down at ~247 (now ~640) examples per page; and microformat parsers are also caused problems by such high numbers.

I propose to request a bot do the splitting and, if necessary, some recombining, to make pages of max. 200 names (checking that there are no orphans), with a forced split for each new letter of the alphabet. Any comments, concerns or objections? Andy Mabbett 11:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest about 500 per page is more appropriate, as you do not want too many pages to scan through. Though we should not be strict on the number per page as we should be going on a logical split of the enties not on count of entries. You need to produce a compact list of pages to select from. I would think that we are about getting to the limit on the number of splits that are desirable from a readers point of view. Keith D 20:06, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Changes to {{coord}} mean that it now works up to 640+ times on one page, so that's no longer an issue, but I still think that 500 is too many for a user to take in in one go - do others have any opinion on the optimal numbers? Andy Mabbett 08:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
If you are increasing the number of pages you need to modify {{Lists of United Kingdom locations}} to have more space between items. It is sometimes difficult to determine what is a range when it is displayed as it is now. Keith D 12:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
How does it look, now? I've marked it up as a proper (HTML) list, using {{flatlist}} (you may need to "refresh" your browser to see the new format properly). Andy Mabbett 16:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
If you really want to know - awful. The use of verical bars all over the place that do not line up in my view is certainly no improvement. If you want to use vertical bars then make them line-up across all of the lines, probably use a table it will look much better. Keith D 19:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I just did a check , the longest page at the moment is the List of United Kingdom locations: Ba-Bd at a huge 2343 entries. Wikipedia:Article size suggests anything over 60Kb should be split up. So I agree this should be split, 60Kb is about 1/4 of the file size 236Kb so corresponds to about 500 entries. This seems a good number to me on that basis. GameKeeper 18:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Just did some more exploring
  • [1] is an old version on the M page it contains 2000+ links and still works with coords!
  • I like the new flatlist effect on the title. It makes it more readable
  • When splitting I would like to keep to as short as possible section names for neatness so if split can occur at 1,2,3 or even 4 letter changes that would look neatest.
  • Another thing to think about when splitting is that you should make sure the list is inclusively named ie. there is a section that would contain any names beinging Bz ie List of United Kingdom locations: Bru-Bz even though there are not actually any places listed with this. This serve 2 purposes. 1) it means the list can be added to easily if new places are added. 2) It allows readers to be sure that the page they are looking at is the page they would expect to find the location if it existed. GameKeeper 18:23, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. Ba-Bd is already sub-divided into six sections, so it would make sense to use those subdivisions. Did you happen to check or count the other longest pages? the old "M" page may work with 2000 of the current coor template, but the proposal is to replace that family of templates with {{coord}}, which has added functionality, and seems to have a maximum of ~640 per page. Andy Mabbett 13:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Bot requested. Andy Mabbett 17:04, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Please note newly re-started discussion at the above bot-request page. Andy Mabbett 15:04, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Bot count was produced User:ST47/UKLC GameKeeper 09:30, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy

I came across this admirable list via Google as I was looking for an OS grid ref for Tideswell. Following the 2 links given here for Tideswell to Google maps gives 2 different locations; both are in the general vicinity of Tideswell but neither is in it. I was wondering if this was a concern. (http://www.magic.gov.uk/ gives both coords and OS grid refs rather neatly.) It would be something of a challenge to check all these references but might it be possible to translate the coords into grid refs so that the 2 pieces of info coincide? -- roundhouse 14:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot request to add microformat markup and use templates for boilerplate text

Having now split all of the pages with >~545 entries, I now plan to request a bot to add hCard microformat mark-up, and to use two new templates instead of the boilerplate text which is repeated on every page. I've detailed my proposal at /botreq - any comments, before I proceed? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 19:14, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Now requested. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
~ I've found a few more need doing. It shouldn't matter if that's before or after the above request is fulfilled. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:11, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Done, I think. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Entry count

I thought people might like to know that there are 42,718 places listed in these pages. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Template layout

Is there any objections to changing the template at the top of this series of articles to use a bullet character rather than the vertical bar character as the separator? The vertical bar is rather intrusive and confusing in the list, something small like a bullet character (•) would be less intrusive and make the list a lot easier on the eye.

Keith D 15:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)