Talk:Twyford Down

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This article needs a major cleanup to achieve NPOV. The article both glorifies the protest and criticises the goverment, without providing adequate counter-arguments. DWaterson 15:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense - if you think that's glorification or criticism, you ain't seen nothing yet! It's actually very accurately descriptive in very reserved fashion about what happened.

Is neutral something like "while the Nazis exterminated millions of people, they felt they were majorly cleaning up humanity's sustainable future"....!!?!

And when everywhere in the mainstream you read major glorification of governments, and major demonisation of any dissent, I'm glad wikipedia can provide a little balance in the darkness.

- Jah Shocka

I refer you to WP:NPOV and Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial for the guidelines against which this article needs to be judged. I also refer you to Godwin's Law... ;) DWaterson 09:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I see that this article is now much closer to NPOV than before, except for the fact that it spends 99% of the time discussing the protests. Could someone please add some information about Twyford Down? Otherwise the article might as well be renamed to Twyford Down Protest... Thanks. --Ndufva 12:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the article needs splitting into a protest article (which needs more NPOV work in my opinion as it still reads as how wonderful the protesters were and how bad everyone else was and some bits need references eg. Perhaps the most unusual arrest was for criminal damage to a piece of string.) What do others think? Regan123 21:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello... I've taken the liberty of adding a photo I took of Twyford Down during the M3 construction in 1994. Okay, it's not the best photo ever, but at least it's relevant and historically interesting... and it does give some sense of the scale of the cutting.

As far as the discussion above goes, I agree that neutral POV is extremely important. However, it's also important to remember that Twyford Down no longer really exists: all that exists now is an "absence of Down": a motorway cutting. Thus the motorway construction and the protest are "disproportionately important" in any history of Twyford Down. There is some history about the Down (and what was destroyed) in the book by Barbara Bryant, if someone cares to dig it out and add it. Chris W. Chrisw404 21:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

"The link was completed in 1994, but it had been the spark for a whole anti-roads movement that got the UK roads programme slashed three times by a third, resulted in some road schemes being cancelled, and fanned the flames of an ecological direct action movement that had ripples across the globe." - Is that speculation I hear? Road programmes were probably slashed due to penny pinching and NIMBY-ism. There's no proof to show that road protests led to the reduction in road building. Ripple across the globe? Where? France? Nope, lot's of new motorways. Again, facts and NPOV please people! --82.37.68.127 22:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added a section about the motorway itself. --82.37.68.127 22:46, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I've added a recent photograph of the motorway in the cutting. There is now a gallery as part of the M3 motorway category on Wikimedia Commons called | Twyford Down cutting which contains further photos from 2005-2006. I disagree with Chris W above, there is still a substantial part of Twyford Down left, although its character is completely changed by the M3 cutting. Perhaps most of this article should be moved to a "Twyford Down protest"-type article. Twyford Down itself (whats left of it) is partly nature reserve (managed by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust), with several archaeological sites - including the Dongas hollow ways. --JimChampion 20:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your remark re User:Chrisw404's comment; of course the majority of Twyford Down still exists, or the road wouldn't run through a cutting, it'd be on level ground! It'd be nice if people who are familiar with the area would provide some more information on the remaining habitat. DWaterson 21:55, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Well - to the west of the cutting its part of the St Catherine's Hill nature reserve (chalk grassland grazed by sheep - recently the sheep have been free to roam the whole of the nature reserve and dog walkers have been ordered to keep dogs on leads, causing some resentment and protests) and to the east it is part chalk grassland (an annexed part of the nature reserve) and part golf course. BTW, the discussion of Twyford Down cutting on the M3 article is much better from an NPOV angle. --JimChampion 17:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I rewrote the article some time ago and wanted to do the same here but was worried about walking into a POV issue so left this one alone. I would happy to give it a go to try and make it more neutral but as I didn't live locally and wasn't involved I am worried about leaving out something crucial.Regan123 20:15, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Split 2 Rewrite 3 Photos 4 Moving forward

[edit] Split

Following the discussion I think that much of this article be split into a separate article focussing on the protest. Further, are there any specific reasons why this article is NPOV? --Salix alba (talk) 08:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd be against the split on the basis that the information about the protest is a significant part of the history of the place, and conversely, the information about the place sets the protest in partial context. I'd be in favour only if the article was unwieldy and long, which it isn't.

The issue of neutrality is entirely separate. If we can't get neutrality in the article in its present form, I see no reason why the new article about the protest would be any better. There may be a motivation to "get the NPoV out of the main article" but that would be sweeping the problem under the carpet. (Please note, I'm not suggesting for a moment that this is user Salix alba's motivation, I'm just pointing out a problem. ;) – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 11:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Newbury bypass, M11 link road protest are seperate articles on Road protests which (whilst intrinsically linked with places or roads) are about events. Both (in my opinion) need to be less POV but that is for another time. The issue to me is that Twyford Down is a place (however altered) and somewhere where a road protest happened. To create a seperate article is not to say that every reference has to be removed from this article. But I think a seperate article could discuss in more detail what happened and this article can talk about the physical attributes before and after with a brief description of the road construction which has had a far more notable effect on the hill than the protest. Regan123 22:12, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd be against a split. Twyford Down has found its way into Wikipedia (and modern British political history) because of the protest: the place and the protest have become synonymous. Newbury is a place in its own right; the M11 is a road in its own right -- so separate articles about "Newbury" and "M11 road" (or whatever) are more easily justified. I think a split is only merited if someone fleshes out the history and archaeology of Twyford Down before the road was built. Otherwise an article about Twyford Down (minus the protest) will be of little value. IMHO anyway. Chrisw404 12:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Support subject to finding appropriate refs I don't disagree that we don't want two stubs. The two articles I linked to above are both distinct descriptions of the protests and take nothing away from the descriptions of the two places. As the protest is an event that happened to be on and around the hill and about the construction of a road and its relevance to the UK road building programme, that kind of information should not be tied up in an article about a fairly unique hill. References should and must remain to the protest and the effect of the M3, but why not link them with a See Also. I suppose I am reaching the question: is there information to hand that can be used to flesh out the article about the actual physical hill? Regan123 09:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

As there is unlikely to be a consensus on a split, I would still like to rewrite the M3 and protest sections to make them a little more neutral and referenced. I did rewrite the section on M3 motorway previously. Whilst I am all for being bold, I appreciate this is a sensitive subject. Would anyone object to me doing so? --Regan123 00:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead, I support if you can make it more NPOV. DWaterson 00:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Photos

Jim's recent, post-construction photos are excellent. I've also just uploaded another "during" photo to Wikimedia commons. Perhaps we could create a small "before", "during", and "after" photo gallery at the bottom of the page? What do you all think? We have "during" and "after" photos; we just need some "before" Chrisw404 09:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moving forward

We still have a split tag and a POV tag on here. Ignoring the split for the moment, can people describe what exactly the POV issues are so that we can fix them? Regan123 02:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy to drop the split tag, article is short enough not to need splitting at present. I can't really see anything particulalry POV in the article. --Salix alba (talk) 11:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

The only part that seems to me to express an unbalanced point of view now is the section "Outcome": it paints an entirely positive picture of the road. To balance things out, it might be helpful to have a couple of sentences summarizing the negative side, even if all we say is something like "however, many people still felt a priceless landscape had been lost forever". [chrisw404 - not able to sign in just at the moment] 82.152.208.78 12:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

We need something sourceable for that I think. Regan123 13:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

One option would be to repeat something like the quote from David Croker that I added (with source) to the bottom of the David_Croker article? Admittedly it is just one person's opinion, but one person who spoke for many... and it is representative. Something short just to balance the final section. chrisw404 82.153.143.20 07:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

As a local I don't think everyone would accept 'successfully removed a major bottleneck' as a neutral point of view. Even considering only the traffic, the steep hill through the cutting is frequently jammed solid when traffic is heavy (not to mention the huge tailback last time there was any real snow in January 2004 for example), and the M3/A34 junction (not Twyford Down but implicit in the section) is a nightmare for much of the time. And then there is the 'wall of sound' that affects the countryside and villages for miles around and makes the wonderful St Catherine's Hill hellishly noisy. Even the Cathedral was awarded compensation in 2004 for noise pollution [1] Pterre 18:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

At the time it was very much true. Traffic growth since then may have changed things...Regan123 19:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure it was true? I did not live in the area in the 90s, but as long ago as 1999 I remember heading from Southampton to Bracknell on a Sunday afternoon and baling out at J11 and following back roads to avoid the sea of traffic ahead. It's in my conveniently searchable journal, so not a trick of the memory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pterre (talk • contribs) 19:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

For the record, since it's now only this section that's under discussion, I've moved the NPOV tag from the top of the article to the top of the Outcomes section. Waggers 15:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I've added a reference to the noise polution and removed reference to whether the bottle neck is removed or not. Do folk think this is Ok and could we remove the NPOV tag (I'm no longer sure what is suposed to be NPOV anymore)? --Salix alba (talk) 23:42, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it is important to reference the removal of the bottleneck at the time. I will look for something. As for the NPOV tag it could probably go as the article is in much better condition now. Regan123 23:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC)