Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK subdivisions

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Archive Due to lack of activity, this project has been merged into WikiProject UK geography.

This page is maintained as an archive for historical interest only and is not a current editorial guideline. Please do not edit the contents of this page. Direct any comments to the WikiProject UK geography talk page.

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[edit] Proposal for collaboration?

As of May 2005 there are only three UK subdivision articles that are featured:

There are a lot of county articles that are stubs with an infobox and a list of settlements (just look at what we had for Wiltshire this morning!), which doesn't seem right to me. If I set up a collaboration of the month for this WikiProject and pick a county each month, would people help try and turn them into the great articles they should be? I'm willing to do quite a bit of work on them and have some experience having done Dorset up to featured, but hopefully we can get more involved. Joe D (t) 17:07, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

As long as you make sure it doesn't turn into a bun fight between traditional counties and administrative counties, then I'm certainly willing to help! :) Owain 17:26, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, I suggest we go for the articles whose page name is the common name of each county, that way if the county is administrative and ceremonial and traditional we'd have to mention everything.

We already have a policy about traditional/administrative counties etc Here. G-Man 20:36, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I've produced a list of English counties roughly ordered by quality of their Wikipedia entry to help get an idea of what needs to be done. Joe D (t) 17:44, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, I've started a new Wikiproject at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography for all this. Joe D (t) 11:21, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] UK-geo-stub split

Currently, there are separate geography stub categories for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A separate category for England has been mooted in the past, but it would contain some 3800 stub articles, considerably more than is regarded as optimum according to Wikipedia: WikiProject Stub sorting guidelines (which roughly state that stub categories should have between 100 and 600 items to be of best use to editors).

In order to remedy this situation, all 3860 current unsubcategorised UK geography stubs have just been tallied to see whereabouts they refer to. Discussions are now underway with regard to splitting off regions or individual counties that have over 100 stub articles.

Understandably, given the confusion between traditional counties, ceremonial counties, and the split of city areas over the last few decades, this is a thorny issue. We at WP:WSS would welcome any input that this WikiProject's members may have, at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#Further_split_of_UK-geo-stub. Grutness...wha? 03:19, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of former districts

Any editors who were involved in this project may be interested in recently created list of rural and urban districts in England, list of rural and urban districts in Wales and list of hundreds of England and Wales. Warofdreams talk 14:36, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk page message

Would it be possible to create a box which is placed on the talk page like AirportProject box and for a set layout to be decided? Flymeoutofhere 14:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English counties on French Wikipedia

The French Wikipedia has an article, English metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, which lists as counties:

  • metropolitan counties (including Greater London)
  • administrative (shire) counties, and
  • unitary authorities

giving a total of 82 English counties. If, like me, you find this approach confusing, can you point me to a better description of England's administrative geography on the English Wikipedia that I could translate and offer as an alternative to our francophone colleagues? I've tried to find what I'm looking for on the English Wikipedia, without success. Kahuzi 14:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

It is confusing, but that is the administrative geography. The legislation is in such a mess that most unitary authorities are classed as "counties", except those in the metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan Berkshire. Owain (talk) 14:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] City of Foo / Foo (district) again

Not getting into the issue of whether these articles should be split at all, but someone moved City of Winchester to Winchester district without changing anything else. Shall we just give up on this and have Winchester (district) and Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield? What about the existing (borough) disambiguator? Get rid of that too and have Charnwood (district) ? Morwen - Talk 13:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm the person who moved the City of Winchester article. In that particular case, I think that City of Winchester is an inappropriate title because only very rarely is "City of Winchester" used to mean the local government district (an area including other towns and hundreds of square miles of rolling farmland, as well as the "city" itself). To give some independent backing for this, googling Winchester City Council's website (i.e. the council that administers the "City of Winchester" district), shows:
  • 200,000 mentions of "Winchester district" [1]
  • 463 mentions of "City of Winchester" [2]. However, even of these 463 mentions, the majority are using it to refer to the city proper, and not the local government district.
In other words, actual usage is overwhelmingly in favour of "Winchester district" rather than "City of Winchester". The key general principle of Wikipedia:Naming conventions is that a name should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity. The City of Winchester title fails that test completely - it's both unrecognisable, even by locals and experts, and ambiguous.
I think a naming convention saying that government districts should have their official names would be analogous to a convention that articles about people should have the names given on their birth certificates. It works for the majority of cases, but in some cases falls down because actual usage does not correspond with the "official" name.
While I think the name of the City of Winchester article should move for these reasons, I don't necessarily think that there can be one single naming convention that can cover all cases - what should have priority is actual usage, not official names. In some cases I would expect common usage and the official name to mean pretty much the same thing, such as perhaps City of Westminster, whereas other cases may be more like Winchester.
I therefore suggest that the naming convention is applied more flexibly, to correspond more closely with Wikipedia's general principles for article naming. Enchanter 00:41, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
You aren't really addressing the general questions here: still special pleading for Winchester. Can you address the general questions? I am here proposing as the logical conclusion of what you saying :
City of Foo -> Foo (district) or Metropolitan Borough of Foo, except for City of Westminster, which will remain there rather than at London Borough of Westminster. this will mean Carlisle (district), Canterbury (district), Metropolitan Borough of Bradford, Metropolitan Borough of Salford, etc
Foo (borough) -> Foo (district) - if if we aren't indicating city status why are we indicating borough status (and anyway, the City of Winchester is a Borough as well)
Do you think that would be a good idea in general? Flexibly-applied naming conventions with people changing things around however the hell they like, would lead to a nightmare : : there has to be some consistency, otherwise we get Borough of Wellingborough, Stroud district, City of Bradford Metropolitan District all in the same namespace. Morwen - Talk 06:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
To make it clear: what I am suggesting is that the name should follow actual usage. The name of a place in Wikipedia should correspond with what people actually call it. That's based on the fundamentals of Wikipedia's naming conventions, which go for every article - I don't think there's anything at all special about Winchester.
Naming conventions are useful, because they make things more consistent for readers and aid in finding information. But that only goes so far - if it turns out that a naming convention is leading to a name which is ambiguous, misleading, and not the name that people actually use, then it's time to either depart from the conventions (which have never been rules set in stone), or change the naming convention.
I don't think applying naming conventions according to actual, rather than official usage, leads to a "nightmare" at all. It's the way the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia are already named, including the vast majority of place names, and it works well. It's why we have articles on Bill Clinton, William Shakespeare, and Billy Joel without the need for a new "naming convention for people called William", for example.
In summary, I don't think it's worth having confusing, ambiguous and misleading article names in order to fit in with a naming convention which very few readers of the encylopedia will even be aware of, let alone care about. Enchanter 18:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm perfectly willing to discuss changing the naming conventions! In fact I even just proposed a change! You still haven't offered an opinion on my proposal. 09:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
City of Westminster covers a much bigger area than Westminster, the two are hardly the same. Is Maida Vale or Paddington really part of Westminster? It is pointless trying to guage "common use" as it is clearly very subjective. As a reader of an encyclopedia I expect to find the official terms and nomenclature of the subject even if those terms are not those I anecdotally beleive to be correct. Mrsteviec 15:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, "Metropolitan Borough of Bradford" is also a perfectly good official name, as is "District of Carlisle". They are also officially the cities of Bradford and Carlisle, but that doesn't stop them from possessing borough and district status as well. Morwen - Talk 09:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Of course thats true. However, there would be no point giving a place a 'higher rank' such borough, royal borough or city if it didn't use it. I know Bradford are a crazy exemption but even they can't decide on their website if they are Bradford Metropolitan District Council or City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. Interestingly borough is not a word they ever seem to use. I'm still in favour of a "highest status" naming scheme. Mrsteviec 19:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
You are right and I was mistaken, the City of Westminster covers a much larger area than what most people would call Westminster. Looking at it again, it was not a good example of where the common usage is the same of the official one. For example, there appear to be lots of links to City of Westminster that are really talking about Westminster proper rather than the current local government boundary. Enchanter 18:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been looking at the entries of the constituent parts of Cheshire, and I think some work relevant to these discussions needs to be done with this. I am proposing to do it. Currently, the entry City of Chester refers to the wider area of land that makes up the district council area, and it extends far down to the sounth of the county, including places like Malpas. On the other hand, the Chester entry refers to just the city area of Chester, though there has been some discussion of what can be included in this, and there may be some anomalies in this entry depending on what is decided in any attempt to sort this out. Additionally, when one travels by road to Chester (the city itself), the road signs advertising this most closely correspond to the boundaries of the parish of Chester within the relevant district. To my mind, the two entries, if anything, are the wrong way round. However, the official local government websites seem to be organised in a way which corresponds most closely to the structure as given so far in wikipedia. Perhaps this is an example of a lack of clarity having to be reflected somehow in wikipedia? I aim to speak to someone in the county authority soon (within a day or so), and hope they can help clear up a few things. In any case, I think some clearer specification of the entries could be carried out.  DDS  talk 19:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I would agree that there needs to be some more distinction. Town / City areas can be a bit difficult to deal with. I suppose the way to deal with it, would be to say anything inside the A55 would count as Chester and the areas outside with be in the City of Chester. Most of the Chester article appears to be about the main settlement and anything not could be removed to the district article. I don't necessairily have full knowledge to be particularly effective, but am willing to help if you need it. Regan123 19:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks for the comment and for the offer of help. I didn't get too far in contacting a person in the council who could help me, but my time was limited, and I think Christmas was beginning to get in the way of things. I will try again after Christmas, but I think the addition of "District" after the names might help considerably. In the interim, I am hoping to add some more detailed maps giving an indication of the development of the county throughout its history. I'm also going to add lists of all parishes, creating stubs where necessary, to each district. So, my notion now is to generally take a closer look at Cheshire, and work to improve its articles and the articles of its constituent parts. I'm proposing a WikiProject dealing with this. There are such projects in existence for Sheffield and for Cornwall (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Sheffield and Wikipedia:WikiProject Cornwall, respectively) and this may be a good way of concentrating and coordinating any editing of entries to ensure improvement in quality. If you or anyone else is interested, then please go here and add your name to the entry for Cheshire.  DDS  talk 10:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been trying to solve a very similar issue - see #Unnatural disambiguation names below. My issue is Milton Keynes (the town)/Borough of Milton Keynes (the Borough). Some pedant created the Borough article as Milton Keynes (borough), a style that is completely unknown and unnatural. The same is true for the unnatural Wikipedia artefaxct "Swindon (borough)" except in that case an editor was able to move it to the more sensible Borough of Swindon. There is a perfectly good disambiguation in popular usage: I don't know why it is so difficult to persuade Wiki Admins to accept it without insisting that it can only be changed if all such articles are changed - and then it will be another (different) case of one size doesn't fit all! Any ideas on how to break the deadlock?--Concrete Cowboy 22:21, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of the England place infobox in Cornwall articles

There is a discussion taking place on Talk:Cornwall about the use of the England place infobox on Cornwall articles. Alan Pascoe 20:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splits where borough is smaller than urban area

So, the convention we established, when we did this originally, was not to split articles where the borough was smaller than the urban area : thus we have Leicester, Kingston upon Hull, etc. I've noticed people seem to be creating splits and should like to get others' opinions on this.

In the cases of Reading and Ipswich the current boundaries are not new ; Reading's boundaries date from 1911. I can't speak for Middlesbrough: certainly at one point the article falsely claimed the original, pre-1968 borough extended larger than when I researched the matter, it turned out to. If we split articles about places enlarged in 1974; there's a clear split: one article is about the place, the other article is about the local government district. However, if we split articles about places which last saw a boundary extension in 1911; then it is unclear what information should be on the latter article - Reading (district) can't really be fleshed out with any information at all which isn't also relevant on the Reading, Berkshire page. So ultimately this seems to be a way for people to remove infoboxes from town articles, or up the population figures.

Someone has argued with my re-merge in Talk:Ipswich, and has cited the fact we have separate City of Bradford vs Bradford articles, as if that has anything to do with this particular case. Particularly troublesome is the use of ONS figures to identify what is considered the "town": as far as I can tell, the ONS make no use at all of local opinion surveys in deciding what is and isn't in their urban sub-areas; and these are not declared by the ONS to be definitive. Morwen - Talk 22:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not think the Reading split was a good idea. Not only because it is not necessary but because it was not done properly. Updating the opening line, infobox and categories but leaving the body text pretty much as-is and then creating a two-line article about the borough in effect turned one ok article into a badly written article and created a stub. This is similar to the problem we had with Manchester a while ago; the split was done badly but then edited by various people and we ended up with a mess for quite some time. Mrsteviec 06:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
It will be especially interesting if anyone tries to do this with Kingston upon Hull: the residents in Hull's western exurbs - Haltemprice - fiercely resist being considered part of Hull - same with Birmingham's eastern exurbs such as Castle Bromwich, which are included in the Birmingham urban sub-area ONS total. Morwen - Talk 08:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I have taken the liberty of cross-posting the following contribution (by myself) here. It is principally about the Reading situation, but I think it has a wider relevance here. I think the real issue isn't so much about what articles we have, but more about a mismatch between our current policy (which on the whole I agree with) and the use of standard infoboxes which just don't match up with that policy. Here is what I had to say on Reading:-
As a Reading resident, I know that in practice there are several different defintions of Reading in play, and you have only to read the letters column of the local papers to know that many people talk about Reading meaning a much bigger area than the borough. The fact that the self-same people oppose expansion of the borough for political and/or tax reasons is neither here nor there as far as WP is concerned. So what we have ended up with is a well defined, but for many purposes misleading, borough boundary, and some other very ill-defined but often more useful definitions.
In principal, I think the best way to handle that is (as policy suggests) with a single article and plenty of text to explain the situation. What gets in the way of this solution is that ever-so-definative, but ever-so-misleading, info box that immediately draws attention to itself but brooks no definition other than the legalistic borough boundary. Perhaps the correct solution is to modify the info box to correspond to the article, or even drop the thing altogether (hint: I'm no fan of infoboxes). If that cannot be done, then I do think we need to consider segregating the infobox into an article that actually matches what is about, which means a seperate article for the borough. -- Chris j wood 14:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I made the Reading 'split' to avoid confusing the readers. Some articles about a town are also about an administrative region with the same name. In other cases there are separate articles. This discrepancy is compounded by the two types of infobox. There are some esoteric arguments here in support of this, but most readers are not going to aware them. Alan Pascoe 21:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
how precisely does having an article about a borough which is supposedly smaller than the town it is within, saying "it is named after its main town, Reading" avoid confusing readers? Further, please address my question of the scope of Reading (district) - should it address Reading as a local government district since forever; since it adopted its current boundaries in 1919; since it became a non-metropolitan district in 1974; since it became a unitary authority in 1998? This is a severe structural difficulty which makes this split nonsensical, the fact that its something that most readers will be unaware of the precise reasons for the oddity is irrelevant. I would suggest the need for a a historical perspective here, and with a historical perspective we don't split this, and we don't make links to Wokingham (district) from 19th century articles. Morwen - Talk 07:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I'll just add for now that one of the major issues with Middlesbrough is that of identity and it become very easily tied up with names or terms such as Teesside, Cleveland, Tees Valley etc all of which Boro was/is the considered centre of and the continual urban area does very much merge into what is now officially the boroughs of Stockton and Redcar and Cleveland. Hence my main view is that we should still stick to an article about the official UA borough in its present form and then another about the town itself which for some is considered to cover a wider area. It really is a very touchy subject for a signigificant number of people living in the area and so Wiki should try and give the local government definiation lines but at the same time recognising the difference with town articles. As the Middlesbrough town article states it is different to other surrounding UA boroughs, which do indeed include settlements along with the major one giving the name, in that there still a few places which don't consider themselves 100% Middlesbrough (the town) but no where near as many. Ultimately it comes down to the issue of what or where local people consider themselves to be part of verses what government borders say and it is not for Wiki to be able to represent all these views and IMHO we should always concentrate on the government borders but at the same time represent that there is a difference, hence the need for seperate town articles. --Achmelvic 23:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
can you provide verifiabile sources for what or where local people consider themselves to be? also, why is noone addressing the issue that these aren't new boundaries for the boroughs, but generally very old ones (hence the problem). I made a big list of Wikipedia:List of English districts to disambiguate back in the day, and we've split a few after that; but at the time there was a feeling that this action would be opening a wormcan. It is. If there is a 'pro-split' camp here, can they review all districts and propose whether they would split the articles about them - special pleading for your local area to be treated differently is not going to help define a consistent convention. Of particular relevance are Birmingham, Reading, Hull, Ipswich, Leicester, Middlesbrough, Norwich and Preston : the ONS definitions of which all include areas outside the borough. There may well be others, which is why a full review is needed. Morwen - Talk 08:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Morwen, of course nobody can provide verifiable source for what or where local people consider themselves to be - the whole concept of what constitutes a town is far too vague for that. Indeed as I alluded in my post above, it is quite common for one individual (indeed in at least one case one local politician) to hold two contradictary views on what constitutes a particular town (in this case Reading) depending on who they are talking to and in what context. Which in many ways supports your view that ideally we should not split articles in this way.
However most of your arguments can also be quoted against the current single article. At the moment the infobox dominates this article, and effectively turns it into an article on the 'Borough of Reading', which is a geographic and temporal specialisation of the 'place of Reading'. It is confusing and arguably inappropriate for links for articles on topics in the 19th century to link to a page which is so heavily biased (by the infobox) to being about the 2006 Borough. Likewise it is confusing for links on the economics of Reading to do the same, as most of the companies which give their address as Reading are actually based on one of the buisness parks just outside the borough boundary. Etc.
Post towns don't necessarily bear much resemblance to local identity either. Morwen - Talk 13:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
So my suggestion is that we have a top level article on the generality of the place called Reading. This will not attempt to define a boundary, area or population for Reading; instead it will discuss the fact that there are various possible definitions, and how these have changed over time. It will be the target of all general links; for example your links from 19th century articles. In order not to bias the article towards one concept of Reading, it will *not* carry the local government area biased infobox template. Under a politics subsection, it will briefly summarise the local government situation, and will link a Borough of Reading article that will cover the current local government setup in more detail. The only article that will link to this directly will be ones on current local government issues. This article will carry the local government area biased infobox template.
But which article would county borough link to? Morwen - Talk 13:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest a similar solution may well apply in other places too, which is why I'm discussing it here. Yes it may well violate some current policy, but that policy was probably written before the effect of the local government area biased infobox template was properly understood. Shall we change the policy to allow this solution where it is appropriate?. -- Chris j wood 12:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that by splitting we are taking a firm stance that the town is not the borough; if we don't split we are not taking a firm stance the other way. What content would Reading (borough) actually have other than the infobox, and a restatement of information already at Reading, Berkshire? Reading Borough Council is the place for detailed local authority information such as wards and councillors. Is that people want the Template:infobox_England_place infobox rather than the district one, really the only sticking point? Perhaps we could redesign the infoboxes; so we have one infoboxes for unincorporated localitities, one for districts, and a kind of combined infobox for places which are both. Hey, we could even move the district infobox down into the "local government" section of the article. Any of these options would be better than splitting, I feel.
I could buy something like that as a solution. In fact the text of the article lede already describes the situation pretty well anyway, it is just that is almost contradicted by the adjacent infobox. My sticking point really is that template, rather than a deep desire to split the article. -- Chris j wood 13:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Incidentally, there is absolutely no need to call up those people in favour of this change in policy to review all districts and propose whether they would split the articles about them. All that is needed is a change in policy to permit this; the rest can safely be left to the (mostly) good sense of the WP community. -- Chris j wood 12:41, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
but nobody has put forward general principles for change - we've just had people saying "i think the article about the place [near] where i live should be split", effectively. I'd like there to be some sort of big picture thinking going on here, otherwise we get inconsistency. Morwen - Talk 13:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Maybe I didn't express myself that well. I was proposing that we change the policy for places where the 'place' is significantly bigger than the 'local-authority-boundary' to allow a principal article on the place, with a secondary article on the local government body. Much as we already do where the 'local-government-boundary' is bigger than the 'place'. That is not a request for a special case. However lets go with your suggestion above for now, and see how that flies. I'll try and make changes to the Reading article; perhaps you could take a look and see what you think. -- Chris j wood 13:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Sure, I have no objections to doing that in principle, where the case is clear enough - i have no problem with having separate London and City of London articles, for example ;) , it's just that I don't think that any of the specific examples have built a strong enough case, and would like to see the criteria being proposed, if we are going to revisit this. On what verifiable basis can we justify splitting Reading but not Hull? Morwen - Talk 13:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, I've just noticed that someone added a lot of nonsense to the Reading article which may have influenced people regarding this. As a result of this edit, the article was falsely claiming Reading's boundaries were artificially reduced in 1998. Morwen - Talk 13:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. It looks to me like that contributor is contrasting the situation after unitisation with their own private view as to what should have happened. At best that would be POV, but they have managed to make it sound like they are contrasting prior and post unitisation, which is not true. Unitisation had no effect on the borough boundaries. -- Chris j wood 14:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Regarding Middlesbrough. It is how you define a 'Town'. I thought the correct definition was of a continual built up area or large urban area of substantial size (such as over a certain population and land area). The Middlesbrough article for Town uses the definition for Urban area rather than based on wether it has a town charter. The article shows that Middlesbrough Urabn area spills out over the boundaries of the borough. As we know a borough is not a town and is simply a district for administration and local government. The area in question is Greater Eston which is coterminus with Middlesbrough Urban area (using the 200 metre rule) and that houses and residential areas are literally split down the middle with an invisible boundary. The Eston area is counted as Middlesbrough and not Redcar as the distance between is too different. The edge of Redcar town (as in the last bit of Urban/built up area) to the edge of Middlesbrough area is approx 2 miles, where the distnace between Middlesbrough & Eston is less than 200 metres at its furthest point. A lot of people outside of the Middlesbrough council area do consider themselves middlesbrough so it would be unfair to say they are wrong. Council areas dont mean anything really in trems of towns/yrban area. I think the borough article should be merged with the Town but state both figures (182,000 urban + 137,000 for Middlesbrough council area). I myself have family whole live in Eston (redcar & cleveland council area) who deem themselves Middlesbrough and council area just means where they have to pay there council tax to. dj_paul84 21:25 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but I'd just note that there is not one single correct definition of "town" - which is the entire problem here! If there was, it would be simple. Clearly, the urban area of Middlesbrough extends further than the borough boundary, using the 200 metre rule or otherwise. Nobody is disputing the bricks and mortar on the ground. However, the urban area there also includes Stockton and Thornaby and Redcar - and the decision of what part of that Teesside urban area to call Middlesbrough, what part to call Stockton, and which of the smaller entities on the fringe of Middlesbrough should be counted separately is an essentially arbritrary decision. The ONS definition of the Teesside Urban Area, by the way, identifies Middlesbrough and "Eston and South Bank" as separate urban sub-areas. Morwen - Talk 21:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
In fact, looking at lots of articles about places in Teesside, I notice many of them are claiming that the ONS recognises a "Middlesbrough Urban Area". I can't find any evidence of this at all. Morwen - Talk 21:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
A review of localities in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland shows the following problems with articles
  • Grangetown, North Yorkshire, spends a long first paragraph justifying the allegations that it is in Middlesbrough. much of this paragraph is patent nonsense : e.g. "was under the 'Rural Sanitary District of the County Borough of Middlesbrough' for parliamentary reasons." eh??? what on earth is this supposed to mean?
  • South Bank, Middlesbrough, doesn't actually mention that it is outside the borough boundaries, although vaguely hints at it
  • Greater Eston - no sources for this at all. it isn't an urban sub-area in the spreadsheet i have. is this a different name for the actual South Bank and Eston urban area the ONS identify?

i can go on. there's also all sorts of stuff about the supposed signifiance of parliamentary borough boundaries from 1867-1918, the old Middlesbrough Rural District - the name rural would kind of give it away, i would have thought, and a Middlesbrough area code (what on earth does that have to do with definining the differece between a town and country? everywhere in the damn country has an area code associated with a town)

when I get time i shall have at these with an axe. Morwen - Talk 21:41, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Greater Eston is on the Redcar & Cleveland council website. It basically refers to that portion of the borough which was under the Eston Urban district. 'Eston' refers to the village of Eston as well as the townships that made up the Eston districts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.11.17.113 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 17:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wigan

Watchers of this project may be interested at the debate currently on Talk:Metropolitan Borough of Wigan on whether Wigan should be a redirect to that article. This has broader implications for effectively all boroughs where we have a split. Morwen - Talk 23:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unnatural disambiguation names

I stumbled on this page when I saw that Swindon (borough) had parentheses, which always invite me to find a more natural alternative. I moved that to Borough of Swindon before I came here, and I tend to agree with Oliver; and that is also how I interpret the current guideline at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places). I think pipes almost always lead to extra typing, especially when a district has the same name as a town (or river or whatever.) As an example, it would be a mistake to type

South Marston is a village in the [[Districts of England|Borough]] of [[Swindon (borough)|Swindon]]

It is more natural to type this, and the user knows before clicking a link what article they are likely to see:

South Marston is a village in the [[Borough of Swindon]], just outside [[Swindon]] itself.

For Braintree, I see only two correct and natural alternatives Braintree district (lowercase 'd', no parentheses) and District of Braintree (uppercase 'd').

However, you (Morwen) have worked on the whole country - I only moved one district, so I am open to be persuaded otherwise. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. Exactly the same problem applies at the Borough of Milton Keynes/Milton Keynes (borough). As with Swindon, every instance of Milton Keynes (borough) is a pipe to Borough of Milton Keynes. Unfortunately, I didn't have the option to just move it as you did with Borough of Swindon because there was a redirect already in place. IMO, all the work described in this article is misconceived. Wikipedia uses the style "Name (disambig)" to disambiguate two subjects with the same name (e.g., Xscape (band) and Xscape (building)) and there is a disambiguation article to direct people to the correct one. But here we have a completely arbitrary application of the principle in the interest of uniformity, to cases where no such ambiguity exists. In the case of Swindon and Milton Keynes at least (probably many more), the respective Borough has never been called by the same name, so no ambiguity arises. In both cases, the Borough covers a substantially larger area than its main town, and the terms 'Borough of Swindon' or 'Borough of Milton Keynes' are the only terms ever used. In the case of Braintree above, "District of Braintree" is appropriate because "Braintree district" is ambiguous. But Braintree (district) is wholly artificial (and still ambiguous without a capital D). So Morwen's suggestion was right, pity it wasn't picked up.
So all the work to change '<Borough-name>' to '<Borough-name> (Borough)' needs to be redone, so that the change is to 'Borough of <Borough-name>' (or occasionally, 'Metropolitan Borough of <Borough-name>'.
Does anyone disagree? --Concrete Cowboy 12:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I would agree that 'Borough of X' or 'District of X' is far more natural and better then the current system. Nobody refers to the Borough of Rugby as 'Rugby' as it states in the article. London boroughs and Metropolitan boroughs are named in the 'Borough of X' format, so I see no reason why that format should not be used for non-metropolitan districts and unitary authorities etc. Even more odd, are the articles on historic rural districts, which usually didn't include the places they were named after. G-Man * 00:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Couple of reasons why the status quo might want to remain
  • sorting
  • pipe trick
  • tables and lists typically use just the short form, including locality infoboxes
  • actually, the media often use district names bare without noting they are districts
also, this then further entrenches the problems with City of Carlisle and suchforth: we periodically get people moving things from City of Carlisle to Carlisle (district) or Carlisle District. I'd previously advocated just abandoning this convention to use "City of ", and instead have Carlisle (district). Should we just have it at Carlisle (district) or District of Carlisle?
but hey, if someone wants to do the slog of moving all these pages, fixing up all the templates, redirects, and all the category sort keys, I'm not going to oppose this. Might even help! You might also wish to consider Avon (county) and West Midlands (county) at the same time.
What do other people think? Morwen - Talk 15:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

oh, and everyone does know about the wikipedia:pipe trick, right? with brackets in a name you can type [[Hello (greeting)|]] and then this gets expanded out in the article text as [[Hello (greeting)|Hello]] Morwen - Talk 15:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

  • On Sorting, it is far more sensible to sort the Boroughs together, then the cities/towns together, then the districts - because those are the more natural commonalities.
  • On the pipe trick, it doesn't produce the desired effect. [[Swindon (borough)|]] produces >Swindon, which is clearly not what is needed. It actually creates an artificial ambiguity. What is needed is Borough of Swindon. Furthermore, as noted above, every instance of X (borough) is a pipe to Borough of X. So the present arrangement just makes editors jump through hoops.
  • On tables, hard cases make bad law. If a table says Borough: Borough of Swindon, is it too terrible to have a little redundancy?
  • Yes, I accept that there might be a problem with districts (though I'd like a citation) and maybe the issue is specific to Boroughs. In UK usage at least, we haven't used the style "County of Buckinghamshire" in over 100 years, because "County of" is redundant. The particular issue with (County) Boroughs is that they contain towns outside the the major urban area that gives them their name. Can I watch while you stand in Olney market square and tell them that they live in Milton Keynes? :D (Perhaps that's why people move things out of City of Carlisle to District of Carlisle - it's because they are emphatically not in the City).
  • Does "West Midlands" need a "County of"? Isn't a Region? Oh no, I couldn't bear to set the Tradional County-ites going again!
Changing everything will need Admin privs because many of the desired names already exist as redirects to the undesired names.
But that's twice I've contributed, so back to Morwen's question - What do other people think? --Concrete Cowboy 18:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't quite understand what you mean by "it is far more sensible to sort the Boroughs together, then the cities/towns together, then the districts - because those are the more natural commonalities". I am thinking of Category:Shire districts. I'm sure you can't be proposing that this category should boroughs in the 'b' section', all the districts in the 'd' section, all the cities in the 'c' section, and all the districts with unique names sorted actually alphabetically! By the way, actually "county of Buckingham" or "Buckinghamshire" alone is the traditional non-redundant usage, "county of Buckinghamshire" is a recent 20th century thing. Morwen - Talk 20:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I've already said, I think it would be sensible to use the 'Borough of XX' format. I'm not sure that that sounds so good for districts though, I would prefer 'XX District' personally. i would help anyone if they were changing things around. BTW is the official name of the West Midlands county County of West Midlands if it is then we should consider moving it to that title along with Avon (county) to County of Avon. G-Man * 21:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
The name given in the 'name' column of the Act is 'West Midlands'. But then the Orders also gives the name in the 'name' column as 'Rugby' and 'Milton Keynes' and 'Pastonacres'. Just thought I'd bring it up since it seemed relevant. Morwen - Talk 21:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
The WMPTA website calls it County of West Midlands [3] so presumably the name must have some kind of official standing. Surely the act gives only the short version of the names? G-Man * 21:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
It provides only one set of names, and does not consider prefixes or affixes to be part of the name. If you want to make up your own long names, fine, but they are not officially part of the name, just as "Mister" is not part of your name. The usages "County of X" and "District of X" and "Borough of X" see most official usage, followed just by "X". "X County", "X District" and "X Borough" are rarely if ever seen in formal writing . Morwen - Talk 19:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if we are getting bogged down in excessive legalisms. I really don't see that we can have a one-size-fits-all rule. Clearly we need West Midlands (region)/West Midlands (county). Avon is more problematic, so is a disambig article with many variations (including Avon (county), River Avon but no Avon (river)). The terms "West Midlands" and "Avon" are used widely without qualification and you have to work out from context which one is meant. Conversely, "Milton Keynes" and "Swindon" are always the town and never the Borough (except in a list of Boroughs). So for e.g., we don't need Swindon (town) and Swindon (borough). So I propose that we accept the term that is most widely used - but I accept that there will certainly be cases of dispute, as in the City of Carlisle district council! --Concrete Cowboy 18:18, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely - I think we should use the most widely used names, in line with Wikipedia's normal naming conventions, particularly in uncontentious cases where the most widely used names are clear. Looking at the "official" name of a place is relevant, but should not be the overriding consideration in naming - just as the articles on people don't always follow the name on their birth certificate. This won't necessarily give totally consistent names, but at least the names should be unambiguous, recognisable and in line with actual usage. Enchanter 01:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Penmon (place)

Is this the correct place to ask for tips on how to improve the article above (Penmon) and how to get it rated (FA to Stub standard)? If it isn't please can you tell me where the request should go, and if it is then please could you rate it. -- Casmith 789 14:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category Naming

Interested editors may like to look at Category Talk:Merseyside, where there is a discussion ongoing about how to name categories for local government districts. Regan123 14:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 21:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Proposed Project (or sub-project) for Cheshire

(This section up to the end of copy comment is copied from Wikipedia: WikiProject Uk geography talk page, to enable people to comment on it here, if required.)

I hope I haven't trodden on any toes by doing this, but I took as a precedent the project about Cornwall. I've listed a proposed project concerning Cheshire on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. I think it can easily co-exist with this project, which I would not want to diminish or withdraw from myself at all. If you are interested in contributing to this, please add your name to list at the appropriate place. If you think it might be better placed as a sub-project of this project, please say so, and let us discuss it. Many thanks.  DDStretch  talk 17:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Given the support shown, I thought it useful to create an initial project page for Cheshire. It can be seen here. Obviously, I think it will be necessary for any project to continue to liase with this and other related projects, and so I was wondering what to do about the templates currently created by this project which are specific to Cheshire? Could someone just move them over to the Cheshire project? Once again, I do not want to cause any disagreement between this project and the Cheshire project at all.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

End of Copy  DDStretch  (talk) 22:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New infoboxes

A new infobox has been developed for use on UK places articles. If you have any concerns or appraisals, please make them at Template talk:Infobox UK place. Regards, Jhamez84 02:09, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox flag straw poll

Hello fellow editors. A straw poll has opened today (27th March 2007) regarding the use of flags on the United Kingdom place infoboxes. There are several potential options to use, and would like as many contrubutors to vote on which we should decide upon. The straw poll is found here. If joining the debate, please keep a cool head and remain civil. We look forward to seeing you there. Jhamez84 11:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disbanding this WikiProject

I propose disbanding this WikiProject because:

  • Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Parliamentary Constituencies deals with constituencies fine
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography is dealing with most (all?) other geographical areas
  • Those wikiprojects are more active -- actively developing standards, editing articles, rating articles, etc -- the UK geography wikiproject has far more guidelines on writing about subdivisions than this article.
  • No serious activity has occured here in a long time.
  • The main content on this page is infobox standards, with little (if any) guidelines on actually writing about subdivisions, but:
    • These infoboxes are way out of date, ignoring the advanced template code we now have
    • The new infobox used for settlements appears to have been developed outside the confines of a WikiProject. With multiple WikiProjects, there was no coordinated redevelopment of the templates.

IMO, with other WikiProjects doing the job of guiding writing about subdivisions far better than this one, we should streamline the WikiProjects, and use those projects to coordinate the modernisation of the infoboxes. Any objections? Joe D (t) 02:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree - shut it down and use the Geography wikiproject for all that doesn't come under Parliamentary constituencies. Regan123 13:39, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I think we should consider reconstituting this project just for UK admin divisions and get the tagging/assessment working. It would be handy to have all the UK admin division articles linked in this way as they are somewhat neglected. This will then become a sub-project of Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography. MRSC • Talk 09:35, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
A lot of the subdivisions are already tagged by WP:UK geo. I was considering suggesting "working groups" for the project, as a way to tackle areas which don't have/need their own project. An extra field could be added to {{WPUKgeo}} to specify the WG, and narrow down categories as required. I was thinking specifically of roads to begin win. Perhaps this could be one though? Joe D (t) 09:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)