Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways/Coverage

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Further to the discussion on the talk page. I'm making the following proposals:-

1. The project should cover all railway related articles in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Eire, Isle of Man and the Channel Isles.
2. Subject to proposal #1 being agreed, the name of the project shall be WikiProject UK & Eire railways. Mjroots (talk) 15:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Discuss:-

I'm very reluctant to go along with this, for a variety of reasons:

1. We should be able to retain a level of flexibility as regards to the idea of "coverage" of a WikiProject. Remember that articles are not owned by anyone: either individual users, or WikiProjects. Furthermore, any project member can edit any article they like. Primarily, a WikiProject should be about co-ordinating edits to related articles, and for discussion. If someone has a query or something they want to discuss about, say, railways on the Isle of Man, then under the current scope of the project there's no reason why they can't do that here, even if IOM isn't specifically designated as "covered" by the project.

2. Continuing from the above, why is a formal notion of "coverage" even required? The only practical reason seems to be the "tagging" of articles, which I'm not really convinced about anyway.

3. I don't see why Eire needs to by covered by the same project as the UK: it's definitely a different country, and even when it wasn't the railway systems were totally unrelated. If, in future, some editors want to create a WP:WikiProject Railways in Ireland (or some such), then there's nothing wrong with that; if it overlapped with this project with regards to Northern Ireland, then there's nothing wrong with that either. For instance, we already overlap with WP:WikiProject London Transport with regard to railways in London.

Overall, this seems an unnecessary distraction. --RFBailey (talk) 17:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not claiming any ownership. But before loads of articles get tagged as belonging to the UK Railways Wikiproject some kind of consensus needs to be reached. I agree that a "Railways in Ireland" wikiproject would be an easy solution to this, just leaving us the IoM and Channel Is to discuss. Yes, the railways in Eire were a different system, but that shouldn't stop us from covering them if consensus is that Eire is to be included. AFAIK, they would have needed a Act of Parliament passed by MPs in Westminster before they could be built. At least two of the Irish companies had lines that ended up in both Eire and Northern Ireland. Mjroots (talk) 17:21, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I think including Eire is beyond our scope - there's enough work to keep us going with UK articles. As far as IOM and the Channel Islands are concened, as these are alreasy tagged and there's not many articles, these can continue to be included but possibly change the first couple of lines of the project page to read This WikiProject exists to improve the range and quality of articles related to the railways of the United Kingdom. It also covers the railways of the Isle of Man and Channel Islands, though these are not generally considered to be part of the UK. Tivedshambo (talk) 17:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Tivedshambo. --Dr Greg (talk) 18:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Tivedshambo's idea sounds good (and simple!) to me BUT could upset some people (see British Isles naming dispute). I don't think this discussion is a distraction by any means. Eire - different country granted, but the railway networks of NI and Eire are physically connected to each other (didn't the LMS once own some lines in NI?). In general, (and this IS a generalisation), British people see tags such as UK and British Isles as geographical, whereas Irish people see them in a more political light, given the history of "these islands". Best Witchwooder (talk) 09:50, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Summary

As I see it, the consensus seems to be not to include the Republic of Ireland, though there doesn't seem to be any dissent about the Channel Islands and Isle of Man, though it should be made clear that these are not part of the UK. If people are happy with this, I'll close this discussion off shortly. Tivedshambo (talk) 22:04, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

It is worth reminding editors that the name: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) only dates to the mid 1920s, before that it was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, also the UK. I understand the political dimension; but when we are considering the construction of most of our current railways, from the 1830s onwards, they were built within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Again I understand the wish not to include these within the scope of UK railways. The railway companies also ran shipping services, which have all been privatised, and we will at some time cover them from a historical perspective. Thus railway shipping services which nowadays would fall into the scope of the Republic of Ireland may also fall within the scope of the UK railways; and it would seem sensible to include them where necessary.Pyrotec (talk) 19:29, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.