Talk:List of castles in England

Maiden Castle

Does Maiden Castle count? It's more of a hill fort than a castle, but... --Steinsky 22:48, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Winchester Palace

Is Winchester Palace a palace or a castle? It seems to be a Palace... Ian Cairns 10:58, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Colchester Castle

Colchester Castle is listed on this page as being "Privately Owned", which is incorrect. The article states ownership correctly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Merenta (talk • contribs) 18:14, 20 October 2004 (UTC)

Counties

This listing should be under the Traditional Counties of England, for most of the castles were built in feudal times and before the recent changes in government administration over boundaries. Castles are as useful today as the archaic address system, whereby one can write in the Trad. Co. form. The castles had a territorial system based upon the T.C. and this article is ignorant of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ScapegoatVandal (talk • contribs) 23:39, 11 June 2005 (UTC)

I disagree - the medieval counties were actually very different to the "traditional counties" anyway, and changed significantly over the medieval period. VivaEmilyDavies 20:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Categories

Does this page carry the same information that Category:Castles_In_England carries? Seems that there are two different areas with roughly the same information. Ianmccurdy 16:22, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I guess the advantage of a list is that these include mentions of castles that aren't really worthy of an article of their own accord.

Castle text

There is a big chunk of text on the castle page, headed 'Influence of castles in Britain' [[Castle#Influence_of_castles_in_Britain], which seems out of place on the general castle page. As it deals only with England (not Britain), from the 11th to 13th centuries, I wondered if there was any scope for moving the section onto this page. Any thoughts/suggestions? ::Supergolden:: 11:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the section should be made a standalone article linked from that article and from the relevant England historical articles. Saga City 12:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, move to Influence of castles in England then? Or, as an alternative, move this list page to List of castles in England, and move the section to Castles in England, with a view to expanding it into a proper overview of the subject. This is an idea that has been discussed regarding Castles in Scotland, and was generally met favourably, though not yet implemented. ::Supergolden:: 13:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I prefer the alternative you suggest, moving this page to List of castles in England (which fits better with the rest of the pages in Category:Lists of castles) and moving the section to Castles in England. There's much more to say about English castles (history, architecture, etc.) than simply their influence.

In any case, the section needs to be reworked - it seems to be taken from the 1911 Britannica (judging by the original diff. (Assuming it wasn't taken from this page which has the same content...) --David Edgar 17:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

You're right, its from EB 1911 [1]. Definitely a need to expand, but its a start. I may just have to be bold and move this.::Supergolden:: 10:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:EH icon.png

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Greater Manchester

Would anyone object if I were to make a separate table for the castles in Greater Manchester and move into it the castles that are now in the historic county of Cheshire, etc.? Peter I. Vardy (talk) 10:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 13:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Fort or castle ?

Not sure of your terms of reference, if a fort is classed as a castle then you have the Roman fort in Castlefields, Manchester. Forgive me if I am way off topic.......... Phil aka Geotek (talk) 02:10, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be there as Manchester Castle. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 12:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Not quite, Manchester Castle is different to the Roman fort in Manchester. It depends what your definition of a castle is. My own opinion is that Roman fortifications should not be included in this article, although the word castle derives from castellum, Latin for 'little fort' or 'refuge'. Nev1 (talk) 22:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Overhaul

In its present state, this article isn't very helpful, it's not much more than a list of names. I think maybe new tables need to be introduced with more information such as the dates of construction and perhaps the type of castle. Any thoughts on what else could be done to improve this? Nev1 (talk) 22:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The format used on the List of Castles in Scotland page might be a good starting point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Findan (talk • contribs) 20:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hadlow Castle

Should Hadlow Castle be added to the Kent section? Mjroots (talk) 20:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

As Hadlow dates from the late 18th century it is not a castle.

On a related note, what is and is not a castle is a slightly wooly area, but I think if this list goes by D J Cathcart King's Castellarium Anglicanum (a gazetteer of castles in England and Wales) there should be little room for arguement as the decision of what is and is not a castle is taken away from editors. That said, the list is incomplete and pretty poor really. Nev1 (talk) 20:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Question on artillery forts

It's great to see Paravane giving the article some much needed TLC. The list currently includes artillery forts/Henrican castles and I was wondering what people's thoughts are on this. I'm in two minds. Castellarium Anglicanum includes them, but D. J. Cathcart King was criticised for doing so. However, he argued that as his attempt was to create a comprehensive index, it was better to be as inclusive as possible, which may be analogous to what this article should be attempting. Nev1 (talk) 11:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I think, like tower houses, they are on the cusp, and should be included. They were considered castles at the time, and most volumes I've read on English castles end with a chapter on them. I'd not include the post-Civil War coastal forts though, which seem to me to fall the wrong side of the line (even if architecturally similar). Hchc2009 (talk) 12:34, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad my efforts have been noticed! I'm not significantly changing what's listed, except to try to reduce the impact of castles of which little or nothing remains. My view is that the list should - as it already does - cover all types of buildings that are commonly described and accepted as castles, rather than hold to a strict definition, especially since there will now be an outline description and date for each building. So for instance I've added Peckforton Castle - again - but I plan to remove Barbury and Castle Ashby. Paravane (talk) 15:39, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I can only agree with the above sentiments. Could we go further and flag, for example, follies as such and make it clear that they're not castles? The advantage of doing so would to stop well-intentioned others from adding entries to the list that would not be so flagged. S a g a C i t y (talk) 15:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless we list every building that includes the word 'castle' in its name, there'll always be a problem with spurious entries being added. There very much needs to be a preamble to the list which outlines the kinds of buildings included, and that could incorporate a simple listing of buildings that do not belong in the main list, such as Maiden Castle, Severndroog Castle and any faux ruined castles built as garden ornaments. Paravane (talk) 16:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The other problem that will continue to be an issue, I suspect, is the sheer number of castles in England (even on a conservative basis!) - if the list here was fully fleshed out, particularly if it including those castles where earthworks remain (which in some cases are quite significant), I worry that it would become unmanageably long. I have wondered in the past if the list might not ultimately work better if it broke down by county, but then left each county list page to provide the details of the individual castles. But in the meantime, nicely done! Hchc2009 (talk) 17:03, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm more than happy with the answer to my question on scope. This looks to be shaping up very interestingly. As images are being integrated in the tables, we can probably remove the ribbon of images down the right hand side of the list which I added mostly as decoration (it was also a way of highlighting the more interesting castles in what at the time was a pretty drab list). The issue of length has put me off having a go at the list before. Paravane's approach of excluding those of which little remains is an interesting approach; sub-lists, such as list of castles in Gloucestershire could then go into much greater detail as Hchc2009 says and of course include these vanished castles. Would it be useful to have a co-ordinates column? As the list has been significantly changed already, this may be a pain to go back and do but I'd be happy to help with that if we can decide on how to do it. Nev1 (talk) 14:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I've excluded a Location column because of the extra work! If added I'd favour it being the last column. I agree that sublists, as exist for Cheshire and others, are a good way to provide extra details and pursue completeness. Most of the images in the ribbon will be included in the lists though smaller, I plan to remove them when/if I get to the top of the list, possibly retain a few alongside some introductory text. Paravane (talk) 15:05, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Isle of Man

There seems currently to be an anomaly in that there are lists of castles for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the Channel Isles, together covering all of the British Isles, but not the Isle of Man. Since there are, I think, only 2 castles in the Isle of Man, ignoring mock castles, a separate list would seem inappropriate. One possibility would be to include the IOM in one of the other lists, and arguably the most appropriate would be the list for England, on the grounds of historical and of popular association. The list could be renamed List of castles in England and the Isle of Man. Since Castle Rushen in the IOM is considered one of the finest in the British Isles, it is a pity for it not to be listed somewhere, other than the global List of castles page. Does anyone have any thoughts? Paravane (talk) 23:03, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Created new list for Isle of Man with 6 entries. Paravane (talk) 20:45, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

ones missing in hampshire and IOW

• Possibly St Andrew's castle at Hamble-le-Rice although its unclear if it was actualy a castle
• Godshill castle very little left
• merdon castle some walls remain
• Two castles in Crondall (see Crondall#Barley_Pound.2C_Motte_and_Bailey) very little left

Taken from The Castles of Hampshire & Isle of Wight.©Geni 00:33, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I've added all those at the top of the Hampshire list. St. Andrew's Castle is listed as a Henrician fort, so the Hamble-le-Rice page should perhaps be edited. The Hursley entry also seems misleading, Merdon castle is listed as a motte and bailey with earthwork remains, as well as a building at risk. Paravane (talk) 20:57, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

since we now have an article on Warblington Castle and it has a fair bit of stonework standing could be promoted into the list proper?©Geni 07:10, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Done. It's a marginal case I think, a single slender turret is not much and it seems less than certain that it was actually a fortified building, but it's remarkably tall and we now have a photograph! Paravane (talk) 20:00, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Location maps

Location maps would be more valuable if each site on the map could be made clickable to access Geohack mapping. This would solve the problem of providing location data for all the castle sites. Currently the whole map image is clickable to access the larger image. All that is necessary in the html is to provide the same clickable feature for each of the red/green location images, supplying the required href for each. This feature seems not to be currently available in {{Location map~}}, but it should be very straightforward to implement. Does anyone know whether this facility is available, or has been requested, or how best to go about requesting it? Paravane (talk) 17:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

The maps look good, although - as ever! - I worry about the length of the article if they're done for all of the counties. Cumbria and Northumberland and some of the "busier" maps are going to be hard work, I think - but we can deal with that when we get there. Hchc2009 (talk) 18:52, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

The geohack facility looks set to be implemented, it will probably require using the {{Location map+}} template, which is rather different from the {{Location map}} used so far. See Template talk:Location map‎. Paravane (talk) 21:07, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Since Northumberland was one of the counties for which maps might be too densely populated, I have tried programming it in (the old method for now I'm afraid).

As expected, the map is extremely busy so I'm not at all convinced that it will work. I've done one with labels and without labels. I haven't put any on the main page.

As the list of castle remnants for such counties are quite long, we can at least use a larger map. I've included the list and map below so you can see the size comparison.

What do you think?

Widdrington

West Lilburn

Welton

Wark

Warden

Thornton

Tarset & Dally

I
I
I
I
Staward & Willimoteswick

Simonburn

 Ponteland

Swarland

Lowick

Thockrington

Kyloe

Howtel

Hethpool

Hepple

Heiferlaw

Gt. Tosson

Duddo

Cornhill

Burradon

  Whitton

Whittingham

Warkworth

Twizell

Thirlwall & Blenkinsop

Shortflatt

Shilbottle

Nafferton & Prudhoe

Prior Castell's

Preston

Norham

Morpeth

Mitford

Lindisfarne

Lemmington & Edlingham

    Langley

Longhorsley

Hexham

       Haughton

Harbottle

Halton & Aydon

Haggerston

Ford ×2

Featherstone

Etal

Embleton

Elsdon ×2

Dunstanburgh

I
I
Beaufront & Dilston & Corbridge

Cresswell

Crawley

Craster

Coupland

Cocklepark

Cocklaw

Chipchase

Chillingham

  Cartington

Callaly       

Bywell

Bothal

Bitchfield

Berwick

Belsay

I
I
Haltwhistle & Bellister

Barmoor

Bamburgh

Alnwick

  Alnham

class=notpageimage|

Castles in Northumberland

Castles of which little or nothing remains include:

• Burradon Tower,
• Cornhill Castle,
• Dally Castle,
• Duddo Tower,
• Ford Parson's Tower,
• Great Tosson Tower,
• Haltwhistle Castle,
• Heiferlaw Tower,
• Hepple Tower,
• Hethpool Tower,
• Howtel Tower,
• Kyloe Tower,
• Little Swinburne Tower,
• Lowick Castle,
• Nafferton Castle,
• Overgrass Tower,
• Ponteland Castle,
• Simonburn Castle,
• Staward Peel,
• Tarset Castle,
• Thornton Tower,
• Warden Castle,
• Wark Castle,
• Welton Hall,
• West Lilburn Tower and
• Widdrington Castle

class=notpageimage|

Castles in Northumbria

The one without labels does look neater, if that is preferred, should more colours be used to denote different types of castle? Or we could use the symbols used in the tables as I've done for Berkshire below? Just thoughts if labels won't work...

And I know I need to use the new location map code, I haven't done here because I'm just fielding ideas...

Mjb1981 (talk) 20:22, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I have increased the width of the labelled version from 450 to 550, which does improve the appearance. Perhaps a little tweaking can improve it again, e.g. Cornhill and Whittingham. A mammoth effort! It's much more useful with labels than without. Looks like Burradon belongs in Tyne and Wear. Paravane (talk) 20:54, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Tweaked. Converting to {{Location map+}} will reduce font size slightly. Paravane (talk) 23:05, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I quite like the one with the labels, but it is large; it would work nicely in a specific "List of castles in Xshire" article, I think, but it might be too big combined with a lot of other maps in this article. I couldn't really make out the one with just the symbols on it. Hchc2009 (talk) 05:05, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Other big maps will be needed for Cumbria, Herefordshire and Shropshire in particular. I suspect that the majority view will be that a full set of around 40 maps, a number of them large, added to a page that is already ~1MB, is going to overload the page. One possibility might be to create a new page to put all the maps on, say Maps of castles in England by county, and link to it from the List of castles in England page, county by county. Paravane (talk) 15:56, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I've put a couple more of the smaller maps up but I tend to agree that it probably isn't workable for bigger maps. I like the idea of a maps page which we can link to, although it could be something like Maps of castles in Britain by county which could be linked to from the pages of the respective countries.

Mjb1981 (talk) 20:28, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Better Maps of castles in the United Kingdom by county than Maps of castles in Britain by county, a lot of castles, a lot of maps. Paravane (talk) 20:50, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

As you've no doubt noticed, I've been hiding some maps to make the page appear neater, I think perhaps all maps should be hidden in this way (example below). I've also used two maps for Lancashire as there was a lot of castles in one part. What is the consensus on the second map idea?

Although I've been doing a few of these maps each week, I won't be able to do so many over the next few weeks but I still intend to continue.

Two maps together take a lot of space anyway, I think I'd prefer one map given that it's hidden. Others' experience may vary but I find this page now desperately slow to load, given limited memory (1GB), it may be better to transfer the maps to a new page as discussed, and replace the 'Map [Show]' with a link to the map on a separate page. Good progress, there's a lot of maps now! Paravane (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Example of hidden map Castles of which little or nothing remains include: Minor castle site 1 Minor castle site 2 Minor castle site 3 Minor castle site 4

Map Rye Pevensey Glottenham class=notpageimage| Castles in East Sussex

Mjb1981 (talk) 16:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

East Riding of Yorkshire

I've just done the map for this county, and it would appear that two castles listed in this section are actually in North Yorks... Mjb1981 (talk) 16:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Both used to be in the East Riding, now apparently in North Yorkshire, I have moved them. Paravane (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Tagged: Very long

I've tagged this as {{very long}} - what with all the prose, references, tables, images and maps this article now exceeds 322,000 bytes - even on my 10MB Broadband the page takes ages to load, and the edit page often crashes on submitting new contribs suggesting that even Wiki servers have some difficult with this much data. Instead of piling more are more data into the article, common sense needs applying, and the article should probably be split into smaller articles to make it more manageable for everyone. See WP:SIZERULE which recommends splitting at 100KB - this article is more than 3x that and in danger of becoming carried away with itself. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 09:57, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• It's creaking badly on mine as well. One option would perhaps for us to start splitting off the county lists (e.g. like the List of castles in Somerset, etc.) in a systematic way, allowing us to trim back the parent article. Hchc2009 (talk) 10:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't plan on helping with splitting, because there are a few primary contributors who are best suited to determine what needs doing precisely who should discuss it soon and come to an agreement before someone uninvolved takes an axe to the article and starts slicing it up without consensus. All I can suggest is if you split one off, you split all - anyone searching for "castles in 'X' county" either needs to be presented with one accessible page (which this article is not due to its size) or a list of ALL counties - not "counties 'A', 'F' and 'L'" whilst the rest are still muddled up in "Castles in England", because it would be confusing and sloppy. A series of articles, one per county, with a lead, map and table, would be better suited to this: a mini Castles project, in a way - with a uniform set of articles, all of which could be managed easily. Perhaps even a Portal would benefit that many articles, if it's permitted to create one for that purpose, to act as an index for all those counties. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 10:47, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree it's too long: on my computer the reflist and the bibliography are not being transcluded correctly; all I am seeing is "Template:Reflist" and "Template:Cite book". In fact, the article is in the hidden category Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, so a fix is needed fairly urgently. An alternative to splitting by county could be splitting by region, e.g. East of England, North West England, etc. (When splitting, ensure an attribution history is maintained, e.g. by use of {{splitfrom}} and {{split-to}} on the talk pages.) -- Dr Greg  talk  13:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

It got put into that category as a result of the {{very long}} tag, no one put it there, it's automatically added. And yes, the Refs/Books templates are screwed up.. maybe due to the page length exceeding wiki server limits, to prevent DoS attacks, etc. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 14:49, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I do not recall any complaints about length prior to the addition of the maps. If the length was - just about - acceptable before any maps were added, they could all be moved to a separate page as has been suggested above. Maps apart, the page had reached a stable state and should not grow any further. The maps could also be added to individual county pages as has been done for Somerset. Existing county lists perform a different role, splitting into counties would lose the overview that this list provides. If there are no objections, I will move the maps and see where that leaves us. Paravane (talk) 15:28, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

It will still leave it over 100KB - it was slow before the maps were added, it's worse now. It's not just the maps to blame - there are hundreds of images and nearly 500 references being loaded - that's a lot for the server to parse, and hard for browsers to take, hence why wiki has a size limit, to keep things smooth running. This article is bound to put a lot of strain on the server, and really needs making more manageable, for all parties concerned. Besides that, they're not "complaints", they are valid "concerns". Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 15:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

It did parse better before the maps though. I'd agree with you that these aren't complaints - Paravane and Mjb1981 have built up the material here in a tremendous way: it's wonderful that we've so many maps and images now that we can even be talking about the options for splitting material! Hchc2009 (talk) 15:40, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, don't get me wrong they've done a fookin-fantastic job on getting it done - but it's a BIG subject, really worthy of a WikiProject or Task Force of it's own - thousands of castles, and ruins - but we have to be realistic here - one page is not enough for them all, especially if you want to provide details, a key, tables, maps, etc - it's just too much for one article to handle. Heck, it's too much for most books to publish in one volume, let alone a server. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 15:45, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

At 256,221 bytes article is still approx. 2.5x in excess of Wiki's 100Kb (102,400 bytes) WP:SIZERULE, despite reduction attempts. Maps of castles in England by county also seems pointless per se - a disassociated page of maps, with no reference points or prose to support them - or as wiki puts it - unencyclopedic - {{very long}} should not have been removed by a principal author, but an uninvolved or new reviewing editor, due to potential COI issues associated with the tag and authors. As it stands it is still an impractical page of too much data to load, edit, and save despite its presentation. Removal of maps has not really helped the matter.. it's like cutting your speed down from 80mph to 60mph when the limit is still 25mph - at the end of the day it's still over, and it's a bit backhanded to presume otherwise over other editors. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 22:07, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Some points:

• Your edit [2] of 9th July increased the size from 208,525 to 228,260 bytes, simply to support sorting by dates, but you gave no indication then - or at any time prior to 29th August, although the issue of size has been discussed above in connection with the addition of maps - that you regarded this as an 'impractical page'.
• The maps are referenced systematically by county on this page.
• WP:SIZERULE includes the advice that "These guidelines... apply less strongly to list articles".
• This page has reached a stable state. Aside from edits associated with the addition of maps, almost all edits in recent months have been in response to comments by reviewers, including yourself. If the page is edited relatively rarely, then any inconvenience of editing owing to size will be relatively rarely experienced.
• When first submitted for review in June, the page was less than 150k in size. Almost all of the increase in size since then has been in response to reviewers' comments. My understanding was that those comments were intended to improve the page, not bring about its destruction. Paravane (talk) 23:15, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Overly defensive, aren't we?

• My edit on 9th of July was in reply to your Peer Review, but also before I was even aware WP:SIZERULE existed. Moot point.
• This is not a "list article" per se, only in name - I would call it more an "Index of castles in England" due to the format. Fact is, it has a very long prose lead and is heavily tabular; lists are bullet pointed articles with short leads and usually one or two lines of text after the bullet. These are concise tables with images - not found in lists. And not just one or two tables, but dozens - if you know anything about web browsers, you will know it takes a lot more html code, and therefore memory to render a table. Evidenced by basic example List HTML:
  

<ul> <li>Item 1</li> <li>Item 2</li> <li>Item 3</li> </ul>

Compare that to basic example Table HTML:

<table> <tr> <td>&bull; Item 1</td> </tr> <tr> <td>&bull; Item 2</td> </tr> <tr> <td>&bull; Item 3</td> </tr> </table>

They will look nearly identical once rendered, only tables are often bulkier, hence why they are less commonly used these days in preference of divs and floating elements:

List	Table
Item 1 Item 2 Item 3	• Item 1 • Item 2 • Item 3

• Fact is, WP:SIZERULE exists for a reason. To make pages manageable, to prevent slow loading, to reduce server strain, etc. All of which I mentioned earlier, and all but yourself agreed there were issues in terms of the page becoming laggy. Again, you were defensive, considering the {{very long}} tag a personal attack, rather than a genuine issue - which it is, and remains - rather than find a solution, and join in discussion.
• Maybe we should look at the growing ownership concerns here.. a few of your edit summaries:
  • removed overlong tag after reduced in size by 25% - article is still very long, per SIZERULE and removal is questionable
  • please do not delete 'duplicates' without asking - asking? since when do editors need permission if you won't partake in consensus
  • Restored bibliography+references, well-established and preferred terminology - "preferred" speaks for itself
  • Undid revision 441499845 by Wharton, Cumbria (talk) Unadjust! - snappy
• Needless to say I really don't think you're in any position to criticise my contribs or assessment of the situation, given that I opened up a discussion, and sought consensus regarding the size issue on this article - which you chose to ignore, whilst others agree there is an issue. Crying about other editors concerns based on legitimate reasons doesn't solve the matter, it just makes them worse.
• Solutions have been presented by myself, and other editors as to alternative approaches to this subject - the common one being to use this article as a summary, and move each table into its own article. My suggestion would be to start a consider a new WikiProject Castles or Task Force under MilHist and create a portal, under which this, and castle lists for countries, counties and individual sites could be allocated and managed by a team, on which you might find a place as a coord, given your knowledge and input. As that was ignored also, in preference for this code-boated page, I'll assume it's out of your league, despite the potential a project of such magnitude holds.
• "This page has reached a stable state." - not per SIZERULE, it isn't. Not when it takes 1 minute to load on 10Meg broadband it isn't. Not when it almost always returns an Error page upon saving edits, it isn't.
• "almost all edits in recent months have been in response to comments by reviewers, including yourself" - indeed - but I recall that I suggested a Key using a 2 or 3 letter code. Instead you adopted an icon based Key, which introduces yet more imagery, and longer code [[File:image name.png|size]] compared with "NT". Again, it's just more bloat and not really user-friendly given that once you're half way down the page, with the key at the top, it's not easy to navigate. On a county per page setup, at least there would be less scrolling required.
• The Referencing is ridiculous in terms on length.. about 500 citations. Necessary, but too much for one page. Again, should be split for the same reason - it bloats the Kb pagesize by necessity, you can't ditch refs unfortunately.
• If it was 150Kb then, it should have been better assessed and managed then - to make less work now. Can't blame others for that. Or maybe you too were unaware of WP:SIZERULE - in which case, you have no place knocking my contribs.
• "not bring about its destruction" - since when is "splitting" destruction? How is taking one vast subject packed into one page, and moving it into smaller articles anything that even resembles "destruction"? Is knocking down one over-crowded house to build a block of self-contained flats in its place destructive? I think you're taking your defence of the article too it's limits, and forgetting common sense here.. and taking the matter far too personal. If a policy-hardfast admin were to review this article, it'd probably be chopped into bits in minutes, per SIZERULE and you wouldn't get a say on the matter. You should respect the fact that a discussion was opened, rather than adopt point and blame retorts - because, without a doubt, they're not constructive, and we all know you're capable of better than that.
• I think you need to consider that SIZERULE is a wiki policy editing guideline, that this is not a list article by any means, and that a 256,000b article - that is just the raw code you see in the Edit box by the way, that is a 250Kb having to be processed by Wiki's servers, which then gets parsed and sent to a webrowser - including every castle image thumb. Perhaps you don't understand the technicalities, perhaps you do, either way it's a heavy load - hence why SIZERULE exists. Which is nothing personal, nor aspersions, it's a global policy editing guideline, with a few exceptions. I doubt this i one of them given that there are several alternatives.
• Just to point out here, I have studied Web Design and PHP Web Development at Uni, hence my understanding of what is going on "behind the scenes" in terms of how code is processed. Even though Wiki caches pages to reduce server load, there are too many edits going on at once here to make a cached copy last long. Every time you save a full article edit, you add a further copy to the article history. Consider that if this was broken into counties, if sensible proportion, it would be easier on everyone to use and manage.
• The maps article is still worthless by itself - self-contained county articles would allow each map to be properly integrated into a page alongside their counter-part table. Furthermore, individual pages would allow more room for prose based on the history of that county - which feudal lords and princes were there, why they built in certain geographic locations, battles and sieges, etc. Seems you don't seem open to thinking things out, though. As I said, a WikiProject Castles might establish a great deal of support, for historians, and such in Britain and some of Europe. Perhaps even American's and their forts. Who knows? Answer to that being, no one, because you'd rather "keep flogging this fat horse than raise a batch of ponies".

Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 01:49, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have time to read every word in this discussion, and this point may have already been made (somewhere). The list is too long and should be split. Splitting into counties would make some lists ridiculously short. So why not split into regions, as I did with the lists associated with Churches Conservation Trust? --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 08:58, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Well I found there is a WikiProject History: Fortifications Task Force last night, shortly after typing my last post. I see no reason why one or two principal members there cannot utilise it to achieve bigger goals than a hefty one page article, or as I said expanding into the realms of a new WikiProject Castles (or Fortifications or cover international sites). I recommend splitting into English administrative counties, of which there are 49. Yes, some articles would be small, "stub" form - but it's the range of stub, small, promoted (B/A), GA and FA articles that makes a project diverse and interesting - because interested members are on hand to create and expand stubs/small articles. This is the "Areas of Search" template for SSSIs in the UK: Template:SSSI AOS lists, SSSIs being Scientific Sites of Special Interest which I recently waved under Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected areas scope, and that project covers areas of conservation, national parks, etc round the world. No reason why someone can't look to take up the task of creating a similar project for all the Castles and Forts in the world. But first this article does need looking into, with currently 4 editors in favour of splitting, and 1 clearly not interested in the idea. If this article keeps going the way it is, it'd be like trying to juggle too many balls with one hand.. and back to where it was a few days ago when I tagged it "very long". Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 10:32, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Greetings from a tourist who has just wandered in here after seeing the signpost over at Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. First of all, I think the article looks pretty great, although I have to say I have not read it all, not even the entire intro. Its greatness in quality is matched by its greatness in size, and I agree it needs reducing. It simply takes too long to fully load, and even just resizing my browser window causes a long delay on my PC.

I have the impression, after reading the comments here, at WT:FLC, and at the VP Policy page (don't know where else discussions are ongoing), that some editors have the idea of just deleting some refs to decrease page weight. That'd clearly be unacceptable; we need good refs always. 500 refs is too many, but it's not the refs' fault; it's just a symptom of contentual obesity.

I see that a new page with separate maps has recently been started, so that the images could be extracted from there respective sections in this page. I think this doesn't help individual display of this list much, and improves its page code weight even less. It also gives us two pages, neither of which is very clear. The sum of the two is less useful than the combined whole.

How about if we rename this article from List of castles in England to the plural Lists of castles in England? Then we can more logically split off worthy sections as needed. (Are the sections English counties? There's no indication of such, except at Durham, and I'm a geographical ignoramus.) We wouldn't have to split off all the sections, just the biggest ones, where they are long enough to justify it: Herefordshire, Kent, North Yorkshire, etc., but probably not West Midlands.

This page of lists would then keep its fine intro and much of the sectional lists, but for the more heavily populated sections would link to the respective "main article", e.g., List of castles in Kent. The maps would come back to their sections where they belong (and Maps of castles in England by county deleted). This page would still shrink but give an encyclopedic treament of the topics of English castles as well as lists of castles. (The intro seems to currently talk a wee bit much about castles in general; is this a place where we could/should trim the text a little?)

FWIW: Just the thoughts of a tourist (who, I'm afraid, is unlikely to actually help, although I might wander by again and snap some photos of you sweating while you work). — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 23:17, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. There are widely different suggestions as to what to do about this page. There are already a few lists by county, e.g. List of castles in Somerset (with map), the plan has been for a full set, independently of this page. There are differing opinions about references also. The point is that a reference for an item in the table with a link to its own wikipage really does not do anything particularly useful, but helps bloat the page. Paravane (talk) 14:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

What? Just because there's a link to a Wikipedia article doesn't mean we don't need references for the facts asserted here on the list page. The individual ref is still necessary. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 23:27, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I have been casting around to try to establish what the practical options are, and there seems to have been some bad advice! There has been an update at VP Policy page. Paravane (talk) 23:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

"Colin" is 100% correct. If you just had a bog-standard list - that is one bullet point, name of castle, done - you could easily get away with a few general books, because Wiki says as long as a place is legally-recognised it is usually notable in itself. The very moment it becomes tabular with even one extra column, with a "built" date for example, each and every row can be challenged and an easy target for vandals who cunningly alter uncited facts to cause disruption. There's no way round it, and you get inevitable bloat - because WP:V then applies to that "factual data" on a higher level than any inherited notability. But adding one new column means a list of 500 sites quickly goes from 500 cells, to 1,000 to 1,500 to 2,000, etc, that fast. He's also correct that Wiki is not a reliable source - WP:RS has said that for as long as I know - but you can't expect readers to click back and fourth between 500 wikilinks either to double check everything, which is why RS' are required in the first place. This article has clearly gained more columns (and therefore markup) over time, and more data in some than may have been originally intended. As time goes on there might become reason to add new columns, for example it might become policy that anything geographical must have a geolocation, or a castle expert historian might know a piece of information relevant to each one, such as designer, or first lord and want to add it - even if it's just in the Notes. Or a new system might be created by archaeologists to categorise or grade castle ruins. Again, we never know.. which is why all Wiki articles need to be open-minded about future expansion. Someone might note here that browsers are expanding too - which is true, but an entire new study of English castles could be published tomorrow, whilst the internet take months to move in steps that big. And server technology isn't that fast moving either, nor is it cheap. I read many a good book where the author uses the term "due to publisher limitation", meaning he could only write 600 pages or whatever. Whilst wiki is a little more flexible, it too has limitations that need respecting for good reasons, beyond "who worked on it". Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 04:33, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The future of this page - request for opinions

The future of this page requires the emergence of a consensus. It would be helpful for individual editors to register a concise opinion as to what - if anything - should be done, and to read a little background information before doing so. The question at issue is whether the page should remain as it is, be reduced in size, or split into smaller pages.

Below is a brief summary of how the present situation has been arrived at.

History

• Prior to 1st March 2011, the page comprised just a list of names, with nothing to indicate which were substantial buildings and which had vanished without trace, with sites considered by some editors to be inappropriate continually being added and removed. It was rated as Start Class.
• Between 1st March and 15th June the page was transformed into its present form. On 15th June it was submitted for assessment for B Class, at which time it was 151,125 bytes in size. At that time every building and site which did not have its own wikipage was referenced. This version can be viewed here [3].
• It initially failed B class assessment on the grounds that buildings should be referenced even if the user could go to the building's own page for more information - with which I disagreed. Adding the additional references increased the size to 199,826 bytes on 18th June.
• The page was subjected to peer review [4] between 6th July and 3rd August. During this time, the page increased in size from 205,973 to around its present size as a consequence of reviewers' comments: an edit by MarcusBritish on 9th July increased the size from 208,525 to 228,260 bytes, through adding support for sorting by dates. During this time none of the reviewers suggested that the page was too long and should be split.

Rationale

The rationale behind the development of this page has been to provide a comprehensive overview of castles in England, with images and brief notes to allow the reader to identify those of most interest, with more detailed information to be available on individual county pages as well as pages for individual sites. Several of these county pages already exist, e.g. List of castles in Cheshire. As there are differing views as to what buildings should be included in a list of castles, the introduction has been designed with the aim of stabilising the list. Since it was written, there has not been a single contentious addition.

Current situation

• A move to split the page has been driven by MarcusBritish, whose contributions have been largely confined to relentless criticisms and disagreements on the review page [5] and this talk page. His last reponse to me, above, begins "Overly defensive, aren't we?" in which he has made openly personal attacks on me which do not address the issue of what is best for this page, suggesting some other agenda. His current recommendation is that the page be split into 49 or so separate pages, one per county.
• Individual pages for each county can be created without discontinuing the present page.
• The benefit of being able to browse castles throughout England without being required to move from page to page may be weighed against the disadvantage of the size of the page. Removing unnecessary references and other content - which would reduce the size to around 180k - would be an alternative to splitting the page.
• Splitting into regions would offer the advantage of smaller pages, disadvantages include the loss of the ability to perform searches for castles and types of sites on a single page, the loss of a single coordinative introductory text, and the increased difficulty of keeping separate lists consistent in their coverage, given differing views as to what types of buildings should be included.
• The present state of the page, for better or worse, is the result of a great deal of work by me. Creating new pages will require someone's continuing commitment to their maintenance.
• Currently the page ratings at the bottom are all 5.0, with the number of ratings respectively 3,2,3,2 in the 4 categories - none of which has been contributed by me. Paravane (talk) 23:33, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I urge editors not to respond to the consensus at this time. Paravane's last remarks were in bad faith, with false insinuations, in an attempt to sway opinion, or gain sympathy votes. Such actions are disapproved of under WP:CANVAS and are being challenged, and possibly reported - until this consensus is opened with a Neutral tone, it is not in anyone's interest to comment. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 01:17, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts

Some thoughts from me.

• The existing page has taken substantial work to create; although a number of us have given thoughts and comments along the way, the vast bulk of the hard graft to get it there has been conducted by Paravane. While no-one "owns" a page, we're all human and that naturally influences how we feel about subsequent changes. From my perspective, Paravane's built the page with a reasonably clear vision, both in terms of what to include (e.g. what is a "castle") and what they would like the end result to look like (a very comprehensive, visually attractive, list in tabular form). There's been discussion around that along the way, which may look more or less like consensus from different perspectives.
• Length is an issue. The guidelines are driven by two factors: readability, in terms of number of words etc. where the guidelines are fairly flexible, and technical accessibility. Here, although 100k is the usual target, the guidance also notes that articles of about 200 K "are not uncommon" for some subjects, although it recommends sub-dividing at this stage. Technical accessibility, as MarcusBritish notes above, is not a simple result of article length, but also of the type of wikitext the browsers are having to work through. A hundred small pictures are much harder to process than a hundred vanilla words, which is a problem for this sort of article. Unluckily each of our systems does this slightly differently, which can again influence how we see the problem - I think MarcusBritish's system hit trouble before mine, but clearly the maps were too much, and I think from the commentary above that the current length is still causing trouble for MarcusBritish's. The guidelines emphasise that we should be aiming to accommodate users who are having trouble accessing an article for reasons of size.
• References and citations are not optional, but an integral part of an article. We can't "trim down" an article by simply removing them, unless the article was over-cited (unusual, and not the case here).
• Bearing in mind that no wiki-page could list all the castles in England - due to technical limitations rather than our ability to write it! - any list will be partial. The question is, therefore, how partial, not whether the list should be abbreviated - it already is a partial list in fact, using the benchmark established by Paravane early on in the expansion process.
• The article already distinguishes between more important castles (given a photograph and more information), lesser castles (just linked, but no photograph etc.) and even lesser castles (not listed at all).
• My proposed solution is:

• We work together to create county lists from the existing list material. There are already three "county lists". This fits the typical breakup of castles in country-wide gazetteers, and most county's have "histories of castles" that can be drawn upon for intro material. I'm happy to help with this if we've consensus. If anyone wishes to in the future, they can then expand the county lists to include the castles we didn't include in the current list (and there are plenty of them!).
• We cut and paste the maps into the county lists.
• We keep the existing formatting for the current lists in this article, but up the bar for notability/inclusion, "picture listing" perhaps only the "major" castles in England and reverting the less significant to the bullet point, non-image format, which would save a lot of space while still maintaining links. None of the images etc. are lost, because they're now also in the county lists.
• Transfer some of the "exclusion" lists into simple list articles of their own, e.g. "list of follies in England", adding value to the wiki, but also reducing size further.

• This would, in my opinion, leave us with an attractive and substantial "list of castles in England" article that would parse better for more users, and a comprehensive and attractive list of county castles. I'm happy to help with that if we've got consensus. Hchc2009 (talk) 08:25, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

"I think MarcusBritish's system hit trouble before mine" - I don't know what you mean by "system"? If you mean date sorting, it was going to be needed one way or another. A Peer review is normally requested with an intent to develop an article so that it can be later promoted, from B- to A-class, for example. Therefore such wikitable-standard changes were required, and Paravane accepted then as "to do", so there's no disputing that it was going to be added one way or another. The fact that it had to be done via hidden display spans, rather than shorter {{dts}} (Date Table Sorting) is because there are multiple date formats in those columns that prevent its use.. the further fact that Paravane is using it as a moot point of contention now is either his lack of understanding of that, or his disrespectful disregard for others input against his "preferred" methods. The system, if I'm on the right track, is per wiki's "wikitable sortable" practice, and not mine - I suggested it, Paravane accepted it, I implemented it. One of the systems at fault is the Key, it is impractical and bloated, and the large number of images that you mentioned can slow down some of the older browsers. You are right to say references cannot be removed. There is a way of trimming quite a lot of data from them without losing any information, but I have no intention of doing it due to the slowness of the server, amount of references, and deplorable attitude of one particular editor. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 10:33, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

By "system" I just meant that different users (with different PCs, bandwidth, distance from the cache etc.) seem to have encountered slowness with the page at different points as it has hit different sizes. I note it purely because I remember getting (unfairly, under the circumstances) tetchy with someone myself a while back who said a page was loading slowly due to size, when on my computer it seemed to be loading fine (or, at least, no more slowly than usual, since my computer still depends on having adequate steam power and shouting loudly down a pair of tin-cans!). Hchc2009 (talk) 10:59, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

My current laptop and PC are both about 1 year old, built by myself, Windows 7 64-bit, using the latest Firefox, with lots of memory and good processors, and I am on 10meg Broadband - and being in England that is not not far from the wiki-servers in The Netherlands. I would not expect it to take a minute or longer for this article to load, or 3+ minutes to retrieve for editing, and upto 5 minutes to save edits, usually resulting in an Error because wiki-servers cannot take that much data - my guess is the PHP memory is exceeded, or the SQL server, and it causes a timeout. Indeed, the maps did make it worse, but I had experienced issues long before, so they're not directly to blame. The issue is affecting both sides - server and browser - which is why editors need to deal with it before someone in wiki's server admin pulls up the crash logs and starts doing it for us. They won't tolerate it forever - when their server lags due to excessive data to process, it affects more than just this article for a few moments. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 11:12, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree, it's clearly causing a problem. Hchc2009 (talk) 11:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting comment... Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 04:05, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

There is no denying that this is is a long article, but it is as comprehensive as is needs to be for a "good" list. To split it would be detrimental in my opinion. I would add that with my mediocre home laptop and sub-urban broadband I have not had any significant problems in loading the page, generally between 10 and 20 secs. There are a lot of references to WP:Sizerule here, and I would remind all concerned parties of No need for haste before comitting to any decision. Just my twopenneth Pahazzard (talk) 21:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Which reads: "there is no need for haste in splitting an article when it starts getting large" - so looking at this objectively with that in mind:

• Paravane started on the article from 1 March 2011 when it was about 50Kb in size: [6]
• On 19 March it had reached 100Kb, and had both tables and lengthy lead plus 74 Refs: [7]
• Paravane says he took it to Peer Review on 15 June. It was almost 150Kb on that day, 144 Refs: [8]
• I tagged it {{very long}} on 29 August, at approx 315Kb with almost 500 Refs: [9]
• I retagged it due to COI removal on 3 September, at 250Kb: [10]

So are we really to assume that when it started getting large on 19th March to reaching over 3x the sizerule guideline on 29 August - a total of over 5 months - is... hasty? Let's try a WP:COMMON SENSE approach, should we?

Even discussing splitting this article has clearly become too much of a "personal attack" to some, who are seeking to defend it left, right and center, with no care for accessibility issues or other readers - in essence, limiting it to themselves - this bubble should have been burst a long time ago and wheels set in motion to get it better organised and more collective-interest involved, than a one-man band effort. There is little to be gained when one editor is willing to pile on the coal but does not recognise that the train is out of control. There is no logic to this article per se anymore - it's like an "Argos catalogue" - a heavy burden to flick through just to find a toaster. That is my frank observation of things, and others have expressed similar concerns in fewer words - so size is an issue here. Accessibility is always an issue concern, for any article, whether it be technology or disability. For example: this article has hundreds of photos of castles, yet no alt= text to allow blind people to know what is shown through their browsers. That alone is a few dozen Kb of data - although (WAI is not all policy yet - when the time comes, how on Earth is this article expected to take on all that extra weight - as "alt" text is sent to normal browsers as well as text-only reader ones - it is just as important to consider the future of any large article, not just suck-up to the editors who work on it and "not hurt their feelings" because it isn't going as well as they seem to think. As the web evolves, Wiki evolves, and so must articles.. can't stay stuck in the past or it'll just become ruins too. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 00:06, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes it is a hefty article but as a list article that is less of a concern than it might otherwise be. If people want simple plaintext lists that is what the category system is for. If you are going for a "list of X" article that means there should be value added even if it comes with a fair bit of heft. They should also be fairly dirrect. If you look for "List of castles in England" you should get a list of castles in england rather than a bunch of dirrections to sub pages.©Geni 15:59, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Having a list of castles in England in a table format that includes some additional information is very useful. It provides useful functionality not available from a category list and allows for the listing of castles that do not have their own wikipedia page. The content of this page I agree with and would like to commend those who have worked on it. I do however have a few questions an suggestions.

• This should be a single list with a single format.
  • Castles with condition of little or no trace should also be in the table format
  • Should not be ordered by county. The sort function is useful but only if I can order castles by date or condition no mater what its location is. (this is a list of castle in England not list of castles by county).
• Should just be a list
  • To reduce its size the sections at the start should be moved to a separate page.

--Traveler100 (talk) 19:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately there is no achievable ideal layout for this page, some compromise or other is necessary. A single table including all the vestigial castles would be around twice the size of the current tables, probably too big to survive as a single page, and certainly so unless the pictures were jettisoned. Ordering by county is a feature of many other list pages, including castles in Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland, hillforts in England and in Wales, and gardens in Wales to name a few. It is conveniently browsable, the pictures make a useful contribution, and a text search should find any but the more obscure castles on a single page. A more comprehensive, sortable (and pictureless) table can be found elsewhere on the web - at the Gatehouse. Paravane (talk) 21:01, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

indeed a lot of the more minor castles lack articles.©Geni 22:48, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Tag

Currently the page is tagged with template {{very long}}. Since it was last tagged, the page has been reduced in size by 25%. I have asked the editor who inserted it to remove it, but he has declined to do so.

Advice at Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates#Request for advice has included the following comments:

• "Demands that an article be reduced in size to 'comply' with SIZERULE are, at present, simply a misuse of the guideline."

• "I don't believe there is any problem whatsoever with reading or navigating the article. The template {{very long}} at the top is spouting nonsense and needs to be removed and mothballed as not-fit-for-purpose."

Is there a consensus for the removal of the tag? Paravane (talk) 11:36, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

No, not from me, and it seems to this observer like you're still feeling bitter at the suggestion that the great length of the article is a problem (which you appeared to take as a personal criticism of your work as an editor). The way you've presented exactly two comments above gives me the feeling that you are trying to present a one-sided case, namely, that the tag was clearly inappropriate before and obviously should be removed now. I try to AGF and I've been watching you work hard on the page, but it seems this attempt to gain consensus is really something of a bad-faith attempt to sweep the size issue under the rug so you don't have to tear apart your article any more. The article is still enormous, and the removal of maps, certain castles, etc., hasn't made the article better (IMHO) and it's still hard to edit, resize, etc., as discussed in some of the other comments you chose not to include here. It takes me 54 seconds just to preview the page with no edits, for example. I think it still needs more work, of some kind. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 15:47, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

however those issues only arrise if you don't use section editing (and even then it is only 21 seconds here).©Geni 17:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

It's now running okay at my location but - as per my comments above - that doesn't necessarily mean everyone will be having the same experience in loading/editing etc. Hchc2009 (talk) 17:17, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

the loading time from preview is largely driven by server side rendering no?©Geni 17:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree it's mainly server side; distance and location from the cache etc. seem to be key factors here. Hchc2009 (talk) 18:03, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see what more could reasonably be done to reduce load times. I can't see a potential split that would be logical: I'm sure someone will suggest that we split this 48 ways, duplicating large parts of the prose, sourcing and keys for good measure, but I respectfully disagree that this would constitute progress. As there is little more that can be done, I support removing the tag. —WFC— 16:24, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

As this is a shameful topic opened by Paravane, with selective quotes to advocate a POV, not baring his near claim to ownership of the article, I'm calling for a clear and official consensus. Having reviewed the comments made I have taken the following into consideration:

• Length
• Layout
• Possibilities
• Wiki guidelines
• Flexibility

I note that whilst the majority support a split, many concede to limitations on splitting effectively. Some say that it could be done by county, but that 49 separate articles would be acceptable. I have projected a way it could be split into 3.

Paravane, you are ignorant and I'm tired of your possessive behaviour, against ownership guidelines. Also of failing to work with other editors directly, of canvassing, advocating your own opinions, non-neutral POV pushing on various other wiki boards, and manipulating editors comments to support your own needs. Clearly you are not competent in terms of reasonably developing an article to support the wider community and this article needs pushing forward by wiki-standards, not holding back per your own ego and lack of regard for others opinions. I am taking this to a proper consensus. And if it supports a split, I will split it without haste. This article is a sham - a bloated mess, with weak keys, many images, and shoddy management. You have done nothing in terms of AGF of those making edits, or suggestions and continue to pursue your own mis-guided approach, leaving everyone out of the equation but bowing to 2 minor subjective comments from another board, which you have driven by putting my in bad light and suggesting I have a motive, yet so far you cannot say what that motive is, because you are evidently talking bollocks and making personal attacks that you hope won't go noticed by editors commenting on this page. Clearly your methods are not working in favour of the community or the article and you are at risk of making this worse by starting to use COI - if you can't recognise that nearly every other editor on THIS page has spoken in favour splitting, versus your 2 off-page comments, then how do you expect to cite sources? Take a wiki-break.. you're clearly getting too personal in your editing, and need to distance yourself. Consensus is a collaborative approach to making a controversial decision. Time to make one. Splitting, imo, is not a destructive process, it is an administrative one that will make this article easier to read, edit and manage for everyone concerned, not just you alone.

Consensus follows.

Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 20:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Consensus to split List of castle in England

Given that this article seriously exceeds 100KB and that trimming texts and references is achieving very little headway, my proposal is to split the article based on the method successfully applied to Lists of Victoria Cross recipients (note how each is FA-class whilst this current article barely scrapes B, and has no chance of growth due to its over-bearing size). This would effectively turn List of castles in England into an index linking to counties, similar to the following:

List of castles by county

• List of castles in England (A–F)
• List of castles in England (G–M)
• List of castles in England (N–Z)

By splitting approx 180KB into three, we would get, on average, ~60KB per article. The lead section could be the same in each, as could the layout. Maps should be reintroduced from previous incarnations instead of being dumped into an uncoordinated page which holds little or no encyclopedic value in itself, and does not follow Wiki standards in terms of each article being self-contained. The professional attitude towards the current article has been lost to ego, and cleanup attempts have neglected to support accessibility standards, whilst provoking self-interest of its primary editors. Clearly a consensus is required to get this article back on track in line with Wiki guidelines, from which it has deviated too far and editors are looking for excuses to follow those guidelines from external wiki boards whilst fully ignoring the people who have worked closely with the article. All interested in seeing the future development of this article are welcome to comment and !vote, below.

Please keep initial comments to a minimum to allow consensus to be followed easier, as there are other sections above for longer discussion.

Consensus to split article into three "by county" articles

Support

• Per my comments. I am willing to do the split, create the index, and get this congealed mess of tomes back within wiki-norms. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 20:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
• List is unwieldy in its current form. It would benefit from some sort of splitting, I'm not particularly fussed what form that takes though. --LiamE (talk) 22:24, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
• I think this is the best option. Having work on List of castles in Somerset I think this provides a coherent approach and may get "local" interest.— Rod ^talk 07:21, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

• Current length is within acceptable bounds and I don't think our readers expect to go digging through an alphabetical index for the castles in england.©Geni 01:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Define "acceptable" to the people above who find it impractical to load and/or edit. Is its accessibility acceptable also?
• How is 180KB "acceptable" vs the 100KB SIZERULE guideline? Or the ~450 images acceptable for all browsers to handle?
• How does 3 articles constitute "digging" when if this were a huge book, it would probably do the same - i.e. split in volumes?
• Explain why this article only gets a B-class, when the 3 VC articles get FAC despite being split?

• I know it when I see it. Anyone having problems editing needs to learn about section editing.
• Guidlines are just that. Guidlines. And things move on. Used to have a 32K limit. As for the images I'm sure Lynx users are used to the issue by now. Other than that I can't think of any modern browser that would have in issue witht he number of images.
• Wouldn't need to be. Check your local libaries oversized book section some time.
• I don't belive this list has applied for featured list status so I'm not sure what the article ratings have to do with anything.©Geni 19:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• I note that this poll has been started due to dissatisfaction with the wording of the previous section. While I do not in any way condone the comments towards Paravane, I understand a desire to achieve balance, so do not criticise you for starting another section. But whether by accident or design, you've attempted to quantify rather than qualify discussion, and while requesting that comments be kept to a minimum, you've said more in this thread before my post than all other supporters and opposers combined.

  Onto matters directly related to this list, 100KB refers to "readable prose size", not "article size". Given the necessary level of duplication that would be required if this list is split into three, the fact that the leads would contain three sets of images rather than one, and the fact that if split FLC would expect you to discuss in more detail the contents of each specific list (more generic introductions are acceptable when the entire subject is covered in one list), I would suggest that each would be far higher than 60KB. In response to the bullet points above, 1. we have sections. 2. See my remark earlier in this post. 3. Wikipedia is not paper. 4. Because Milhist has assessed incorrectly. This is not a B-class article, it is a list, and pending consensus on this matter one way or the other, there is nothing barring the list(s) from a shot at FLC.

  I conceed that if the list were to be split, your proposal is as sensible a way of doing it as we have, but as I do not agree with the need to split at all, that's a redundant statement. —WFC— 10:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not interested if you condone or support my comments to Paravane - a consensus has been required for a while - instead he sneaked of to other boards looking for supporters - despite the fact ~80% said "split it", he came back with 2 little quotes and tried to manipulate the views of editors here.. which I do not condone. As for my comments above, they are legitimate questions to Geni. Consensus is about quality, not quantity, of opinions. Simply stating something is "within reasonable bounds" is akin to saying "acceptable loses" in a war - wtf defines 180KB as "acceptable" when Wiki considers 100KB unacceptable? 100KB refers to the FULL page from top to bottom, not just the prose - how on Earth have you made that interpretation when history gives one size? By your interpretation, an article could have 50KB of prose, and 5000KB of data in a list and be "within guidelines" - what a pile of baloney, and total misconception of the guidelines - is it any wonder people try to get away with articles this ridiculous and hope no one notices? In response to your nonsensical replies: 1. Sections swell - pagesize swells. We don't have alt= for ANY images; whilst wiki does not demand alt yet, oneday they might, and article will swell again vastly - there re 450+ images and is no room for expansion or flexibility - you're nor supporting a flexible community article here, you're supporting a few egotistic editors who want to keep it to themselves, and run it like a regime of their own outside of wiki guidelines. 2. Self-interpretation for which I can't AGF, more like wiki-lawyering to get own way. 3. No, it's not paper - moot point - anyone can pick up a thick book and selectively read any page/chapter/section - on Wiki you have to have the whole lot dumped on your browser, 450+ images and all text, and have to dig through table after table in an over-sized mess! This article makes a joke of wiki and web standards. Period. 4. No this is NOT a list, it ceased being a list when the bullet-pointed castle names became huge multi-column tables with keys, images, sortable data, notes, etc - lists are basic, vertically traversable forms of info - this is a ton of bloated tables, with half of War and Peace placed at the top and called a "lead". As for FLC - they wouldn't touch this with a barge pole, accessibility is paramount to Featured level - no alts, over-sized, top-heavy, very inappropriate, it wouldn't get over the first hurdle! And Paravane, who hates taking suggestions, would never survive the FL review process, he's too stuck in his own ways, and would never accept the changes required. I maintain that if the VC articles can split, and become FA, so can this - but only when people stop playing ownership games with it and give it a chance to develop in the right direction. And FYI, MILHIST does not support the List-class garde yet, to have made a mistake, and even then its doubtful they would consider it a list either. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 11:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for keeping your response brief and civil.

  I'm too busy to respond fully until this evening, but if what you say is correct, MILHIST is quite simply behind the times (play on words not intended). Lists are recognised as being a separate class on a project-wide basis. —WFC— 13:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• I started discussions on adding List-class, as well as individual criteria for Lists, to MilHist assessment a short while back, and a !vote/consensus is currently on their discussion boards, but producing very little interest from members. Either way, I do not see this article as a List per se, it's far too involved for that simple class identification. Lists, to me, are bullet-pointed one-liners that are simple to read and maintain whilst complex tables with lots of prose are an article because they can be reviewed under ACRs, FAs, GA criteria, etc. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 13:20, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• I don't have as much time right now as I would have liked. But to briefly respond to your size point, I am going by the guideline as written, there is no interpretation involved. WP:SIZEGUIDE has said "readable prose size" for at least as long as I have been editing [11]. And what does "readable prose size" mean? This section of that guideline defines it succinctly. —WFC— 18:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC):::::*So, create a far >100KB article with only lists and images - list all ~60m names who died in WW2, for example, on one page. See if WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:ACCESSIBILITY don't have something to say about it. I expect if you remove the tables, and keep all the waffle in between, there is a great deal of prose remaining. Also Wikipedia:SIZEGUIDE#Technical issues reads differently, and within good reason - it considers the technical issues of accessibility, without allowance for pushing huge articles onto readers computers and expecting them to wait more than a few seconds for the page to load. Personally, I don't care whose machine this works on or not, as Wiki says, "it's not about you" and every page should aim to work for everyone - that is what "accessibility" stands for - non-discriminative accessibility. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 20:18, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• BTW, leaving aside the length issue for a moment, lists on the wiki don't simply have to be "bullet-pointed one-liners" - see List of National Treasures of Japan (castles) for an example of a Featured List with pictures and selected information.Hchc2009 (talk) 18:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps not, I suppose FA vs FL can be a bit subjective in some cases. Comes down to the reviewer, perhaps. That page only has a dozen or so items in a table, and is fairly small. But a page with 490 castles on it, with 48 tables, is not a list, except in name. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 20:18, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• One of the definitions of a list is a "catalogue". A catalogue is "a complete enumeration of items arranged systematically with descriptive details". This looks a hell of a lot like a list to me. Nev1 (talk) 20:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - The article is long but does not warrant a split. In its present form it provides a very high standard of summarised information for a very large subject area. To split would be detrimental and as WFC succinctly stated, it would not constitute progress. There is a big difference between 'guidance' and 'rules'. Pahazzard (talk) 20:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Paravane (talk) 00:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Loaded quickly, easy to navigate by county or Ctrl-F, good to have a single list. Has the peer review been summarised for "to do" tasks; I had a quick search on "split" and neither usage (there were only 2) advocated splitting the article. Or did I miss something? Folks at 137 (talk) 08:58, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Unnecessary to split. Perfectly manageable on one page,♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:01, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose alphabetical split. The list is rather large, and if split, it should be into English regions. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 11:16, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Other

• I don't think I feel as strongly as MarcusBritish does about the current length, probably as it is now loading okay for me, but accessibility is important. I'd vote in preference of continuing to shorten the number of images in the main article (e.g. in longer sections like Cumbria) until a user such as MarcusBritish can access the article in a suitable fashion, and backing that up with county articles. This would maintain a single list article, but still keep the detail somewhere, in a format aligned with the academic literature. Hchc2009 (talk) 06:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Hchc2009 - I think of this article as "a cake with too many ingredients" - but once mixed are hard to separate. I think cutting it into 3 or 4 slices is harmless and effective - more effective than into 49, as I noted from earlier comments and rethought alternatives using VC as an example of how an article can be split and achieve FA standards. Either way, the current attempts to create a smaller article from this are failing, referencing has become convoluted - all the R1-R5 with a key is utter rubbish - Paravane could have simply verified them all on one day, and put one date. The maps were removed - he made it clear in the peer review that he didn't like them; imo he didn't remove them as part of the reduction, it was an opportunity. But one that is far from successful. Anyone with half a brain can edit 3 or 4 articles, without being held back by size, or another editor undoing everything they dislike or selectively "prefer". Whilst 450+ images is a lot, I think removing them would make the article dull, tables would have gaps and start to look shoddy. By splitting into 3 or 4, that would divide those images into ~100-150 per page, and be far less invasive to browsers. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 12:30, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• I've not read all of the arguments above, but for comparison of different possible approaches I would suggest looking at:
  • List of abbeys and priories in England which was split for similar reasons to the article.
  • List of English Heritage properties
  • Churches Conservation Trust (with its 5 regional lists)
  • List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest by Area of Search
• All of which provide alternative ways of splitting the content. My personal opinion (for accessibility and readability/visual effect) is that it should be split, and my preferred option would be by Ceremonial counties but regional approaches also have merit.— Rod ^talk 13:32, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. My original suggestion was to split into ceremonial counties, which would require 48 articles, but there was a lot of opposition to that, even from those supporting a split, as many of the county tables are very short, they don't like the imbalance of some articles ending up as 2-3 row Stubs whilst some would be very detailed nearer A-class content. Although it would make every county article very small in terms of KB, and room to add plenty more background info per county, I'm not sure if anyone is really up to working on 48 different articles, from what I've read above. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 13:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• A county list can be tailored to that particular grouping, hence list of castles in Cheshire talks about the Anlgo-Welsh border. An overview list such as this omits some of the smaller sites that would be included in county lists but is still valuable as it provides a country-wide analysis and allowing easy comparison between the counties. Its different purpose necessitates a long lead explaining the criteria for inclusion. There is space to have both this list and county lists on Wikipedia. Eventually I would like to see separate lists for each county, but the purpose of this list is different to those. Nev1 (talk) 13:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• We're not talking about what a list is here, we're taking about when a list exceeds WEB standards as a list and becomes tabular, therefore more comprehensive, therefore requiring more markup, resulting in more data being sent between servers and browsers. Of course it's a bloody list, just a very very involved one.. not one.. 48.. a list of lists, Argos is a catalogue. The amount of data contained within a list should determine the difference between being "just a list" and "more an article" - and when you have 490*7 cols, we're not in basic ordered HTML lists any more, are we? When we're sending 490 images, refs, and 48 maps (currently aside) to a browser, we're beyond HTML-101. And this article has far more accessibility issues than just size and layout, which it cannot currently support without inflating by many KB. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 20:44, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• If that is what you meant, perhaps that is what you should have said. The statement "a page with 490 castles on it, with 48 tables, is not a list" suggested a severe misunderstanding of what is going on here. Nev1 (talk) 20:57, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• No - it just comes down to the fact that some of you editors would rather impetuously split hairs, than constructively split articles. :) Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 21:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Phrasing yourself clearly helps others understand you. Was your comment meant to be as condescending as it sounded? Nev1 (talk) 21:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• My phrasing was fine, perhaps you took it out of context, or did not follow-through from the rest of the discussion to understand the particular quote you extracted, which was more a summary of my comments than a full repetition. Did it sound condescending, or was it to indicate that this fork in the discussion does not relate to the consensus and is little more than being picky? Regardless of whether it's an article, or "list", or even a catalogue - it's inaccessible, inflexible and bloated. It has no potential, and the more editors have to keep chipping and trimming it to make it accessible the less detailed it becomes. At least splitting retains the full content, spread across a few smaller articles, and allows for better development. At the moment this is like cramping 490 people into a room made to fit 150. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 21:20, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• You have been confusing FAs and FLs, which is distinctly worrying. I can't make up my mind whether it's sloppy communication skills or a misunderstanding. Nev1 (talk) 21:27, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• No confusion at this end, so I'm not worried. Best check your own wires aren't crossed. This article ain't FA or FL material. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 21:35, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• I bow to your superior knowledge of Wikpedia's review processes. Any comment on the suggestion at the bottom? Nev1 (talk) 21:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• "Was your comment meant to be as condescending as it sounded?" Taking Admin privileges? Replied below. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 21:45, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Shame, I was shooting for sarcastic rather than condescending. Nev1 (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• The page should be a list of castles in England. The preamble should be in an article page not a list page (maybe can have a background information sub-page). And it should be a single list with county (I assume what it is now in, not when it was built?) as a sortable column. Started editing a test here.--Traveler100 (talk) 16:58, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • See suggestion in response on your talk page. Paravane (talk) 15:00, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Comment

• I think the lists such as churches preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust in Southeast England show pretty well how a division could work. Perhaps this could be turned into a dab page and a regional format adopted? In any case, I'm not yet convinced that all avenues to slim this list down have been exhausted. I have a feeling it won't be a popular suggestion, but how about reducing the number of images? There are hundreds and are contributing to some people experiencing a long loading time (I can't say I'm one of them and my connection isn't even very good). A select few could be added down the side as a ribbon so that the list doesn't become an interminable wall of text. Having this list in one place is valuable, and I wouldn't want to see it broken up except as a last resort. In the long run county lists are meant to hold more detailed descriptions, so why not leave the images for those lists too? Nev1 (talk) 21:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Because this is a "List of castles in England" - for anyone not English, like tourists or researchers, may still have to come via this page to find where they need to be. Hell, even I don't know all 48 counties in England, and I live there! Really this page needs to be more of an index, I think the example given earlier, List of abbeys and priories in England is a good example of that - there's no need for a long list if it can be cut into regions, counties, etc - because editors may edit one, but not another, creating conflicting articles. I don't see how it is valuable if it is not easy to navigate. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 21:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• So to clarify, you don't approve of removing images to make the page easier to load? Nev1 (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• I think removing images would have negative effects - firstly, how do you decide which are appropriate to remove? How will removing images not make the article look gappy and unprofessional? And how will it speed up server-side parsing? Given my experience in web dev, I know that templates and tables take longer for a PHP server to process, whilst browsers simply download images as they are from the HTML they receive - they take longer to render tables, and 48 is a lot to render. Also in terms of editing this article, it takes a very long time for Twinkle to load because it uses Javascript to highlight the edit box, which is one reason mine might be slower than some editors. Whilst removing images will cut down some of the weight, it won't solve matters in the long run. All the remaining images are still missing alt= in their descriptions, btw, which is very poor accessibility support for text-reader browsers used by the blind, for example. Whilst alt are not mandatory yet, given the way WAI are moving forward, they soon could be. Also, lack of alt descriptions are one of the reasons why this article is not FA/FL material - Featured articles must support MOS very closely, and alt descs are valued accessibility requirements. I think, based on my earlier comments, that the means justify the end and splitting justifies making the article more accessible for a dozen reasons. And also removes the current possessive ownership attitudes which haunt the article and halt its development, because it went too far in the first place. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 22:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment

I have stayed away from this discussion for a couple of days, minded to retire from Wikipedia. I'll postpone that idea a while. There is an important issue here.

Does anyone wonder why this page suddenly became the focus of attention? From 2003 until July 17 2011 the length of this talk page grew to 17,726 bytes. Since August 29 it has grown by 74,997 bytes (before this post). Meanwhile the List of castles in Wales remains rather neglected, and there is no sign of new individual county pages of castles in England getting extra attention.

A glance up this talk page to see what was written here before August 29 2011 will reveal unfailingly polite discussion. Here is a sample of what has been written recently:

"The professional attitude towards the current article has been lost to ego... As this is a shameful topic opened by Paravane... Paravane, you are ignorant and I'm tired of your possessive behaviour, against ownership guidelines... Clearly you are not competent in terms of reasonably developing an article to support the wider community... This article is a sham - a bloated mess, with weak keys, many images, and shoddy management. You have done nothing in terms of AGF of those making edits, or suggestions and continue to pursue your own mis-guided approach... As for FLC - they wouldn't touch this with a barge pole... splitting... removes the current possessive ownership attitudes which haunt the article..."

Two points in particular deserve consideration:

• Some editors, faced with what appears very plainly to be a personal campaign against them, will opt to retire from Wikipedia, and especially if personal attacks are seen to achieve their purpose.
• If reason is not the sole - or even the principal - mechanism of advancing a campaign, it cannot be depended upon that reason will ever be sufficient to counter it. If the campaign is obsessive, every line of reasoning will be dismissed by every possible means, and the campaign may be carried for no better reason than its opponents weary of arguing.

A practice of ignoring the breakdown of mutual respect, as a basis for cooperation in the community, can hardly fail to be damaging to Wikipedia. Paravane (talk) 00:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

And I suppose running round FLC and Village Pump making back-handed slurs against editors (me), being told you should split the article by ~80% of them, then returning with just two comments and trying to push them as a consensus (whereas the other 80% ARE a consensus) is not disruptive? Advocating your own POV, spin doctoring, call it whatever - I call it lies. You've proved only one thing - you care more about yourself than the article. You don't respond to criticism, talk page comments, or suggestions. You seek favours from admins, and canvas others who have sided with you before in hope they will again. I consider those actions disruptive. Moreso than 200KB+ data. From the minute you started a Peer Review several months ago you made it clear you only wanted people to worship the ground you walk on, and not criticise, contribute or do anything to affect "your" article. I've never known anyone so damn stuck-up, priggish and childish about the idea of splitting a page of data, on a server, in a metal box, in a data centre. It's less painful than taking a book you wrote and physically ripping it into 3 parts - but as I said, you can't handle criticism. At least I aim to get results and support accessibility for all. What do you do - keep adding and adding and adding and adding until the article is so inflated it has to stop - and then you blame everyone but yourself - "oh, he added sort code... bla bla", BS finger-pointing exercises. If you're going to be a hypocrite and talk about the "community" you should have thought of working with it, not against it, months ago. Where was your "mutual respect" when you were creeping round VP/FLC making accusations, or failed to add "alt" code for blind people, or continue to fail to reduce page size so anyone can edit the page with ease? Or is it that you only want respect, but can't give it? Either way, I don't think you're competent because you don't collaborate or communicate, except on your own terms, and you're too quick to take advantage of opportunity, to stem distrust, and lack good spirit. All this "I might retire" bollocks is just another mind-game, which only a prat would attempt in the hopes we'd all be "boo hoo, please don't go, grovel grovel". Truth is, we don't "need" anyone on Wiki - for everyone that leaves, there are plenty of others willing to fill their boots. In the case of this article, you simply try to make it only fit your boots. As was noted by JohnFromPinckney earlier, you took the "too long" issue way too personally, like an attack on "your" work. You still do. Holding a grudge like a spoiled child is hardly constructive - if a consensus is the only thing to kerb your behaviour, so be it. Your points don't deserve any consideration, whatsoever. You know why not? Because you have not given consideration to the fact the article is too big! Article creators are supposed to react to cleanup tags with a positive attitude - not turn it into an attack, make it look like the tagging was unneeded, make false accusations, seek sympathy and then hope it'll all go away after a long-winded plea. Doesn't work like that! To conclude: Retire. Couldn't care less. Buh-bye! Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 07:08, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment

First of all, I'd like to state that I like the idea of a single list article for castles in England and my first instinct is to look for ways to preserve that. Nevertheless, I know that there is a good reason for summary style articles and it may be that daughter articles are necessary to allow this article to be accessible by as many readers as possible.

I'd like to slay some myths though.

1. The server served the article to me in 85 milliseconds because it retrieved it from its squid cache, and that is what 99% of all readers will experience. Look at the last line of the html page source in your browser: Served by srv209 in 0.085 secs.
2. The time taken for the page to load fully in such cases will only depend on the user's bandwidth and their proximity to a server, At present the full size of the article is 664 kB (see User talk:Dr pda/prosesize.js for a tool to display document statistics) and a 2 MB connection is capable of loading that in 3 seconds, but images load asynchronously so those on a slow connection can still start reading the article well before all of the images have loaded. Users on very slow connections will probably turn off images anyway, so it's not true that having many images necessarily causes a usability issue. It is true that the overhead for hundreds of http requests (the images) adds significant overhead. Turn off images and see the difference for yourself.
3. Editing the article requires the server to re-create the page on preview or save, and this can introduce large delays, particularly if templates have to be parsed. Try editing the whole article and pressing [Show preview]. Then check the last line of the html page source: Served by srv274 in 15.984 secs. (although when it used 460 citation templates, that used to take 50+ sec).

So, should this article have a box telling readers that it may be too long to read and navigate comfortably? My computer is four years old and searching the page in FF6 using ctrl-F is instantaneous; clicking on any of the county names in the 'Contents' box takes me to the sub-section immediately. My experience is that the article is not too long to read, nor too long to navigate comfortably. The template is simply inaccurate and does the article a disservice.

In summary, I'd like to see the page kept as a whole in principle; but I wouldn't argue with a well-designed split into two or three. You can count me as agreeing to either option. : @Paravane and @MarcusBritish: please consider stepping back from this discussion for a while. There comes a point where arguing with every other contributor and each other becomes counter-productive and stifles discussion rather than encouraging it. This issue will still be live in a week's time and we may be a little closer to reaching a consensus one way or the other. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 01:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment

Around 2001/2002 I was the originator for many of the "List of" articles. Generally, they seem to have stood the test of time. RexxS has some good points: most PCs will still be able to cope with large articles (including mine - seven years old), and a split is not really necessary. Renata (talk) 11:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

With respect, your original article was very basic to its current form - it did not have 48 full tables, and perhaps 48 smaller tables, making 96 tables to render, and certainly did not have around 490 images to download. Age of computer is not a strong argument in itself,only one consideration of many and given that nearly everyone has a different machine is a moot point, Wiki does not cater for individuals - browsers, connection speed and platform makes a difference too - can you see this loading on a mobile device? PCs aren't everything, in fact they are a small market now if you consider Macs, or laptops and iPhone devices with less power and speed. Did you click "Edit" at the top to see how long it takes the full wiki markup to load. And try saving it, that is far worse. Lot has changed in 10 years, but Wiki servers aren't capable of processing the massive amount of data every time, especially when Wiki is busy, nor are browsers super-devices they have limitations too - it's a simple fact that software often moves faster than hardware, and that hardware costs far more to upgrade. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 12:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm the problem with the mobile argument is that you seem to view List of Victoria Cross recipients (A–F) as an acceptable list. It doesn't render on mobiles.©Geni 19:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I've just tried several Wiki pages on that - none of them work 100%, suggesting the program that converts pages from full-scale HTML to mobile platforms, sucks. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 20:02, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Follow on from RexxS

As of this post, it takes 0.099 seconds to receive the list from the server, compared to 0.088 seconds for this talk page. When I edit, preview and do the test RexxS has outlined in his third point, it takes 17.1 seconds for the list, 19.8 seconds for the talkpage. Draw your own conclusions. —WFC— 12:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Conclusion

The talk page was only edited 5 minutes ago - by me - it has not cached yet and must be fully loaded (including geo-location maps) server and browser side.

The article was last edited 5 days ago - by someone - it has cached and needs less server processing. As it is unchanged the cache on your browser is loading images rather than downloading them.

Weak argument. Caching is a variable also. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 12:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

My point was more in relation to this page (although I've just edited the main article if you wish to do a more accurate comparison). —WFC— 13:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

So I saw - nice little edit summary there to advocate a POV to readers. Well done. And what would be the purpose of my testing? One machine on one internet connection, a few hundred miles from the server, on 10Meg broadband, 18 month old machine, etc. What about someone in Australia, one of the slower countries for example, lets say in a TAFE college library, on a router with 20+ machines, bit older, not updated with Firefox every so often given than the campus may have 500 machines. What of them? So far I haven't seen a decent argument for the wider-world community, all "me me me" and "MY computer". I don't intend to provide a benchmark for "my" own standards, nor do I intend to be impressed just because a few opposers "claim" (because we have know way of knowing if people are BS'ing or not, we can only AGF) their PC is handling it just fine. We have to set a standard that allows virtually anyone, anywhere, reasonable levels of access. There's really nothing anyone can say to dispute that. I you can find a reason to dispute it - Wiki isn't the place for you. Period. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 13:18, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

A comparative test can be of some use regardless of equipment, provided that the same equipment is used throughout.

FWIW, even if your accusations about myself and others were 100% accurate, it is never acceptable to unilaterally tell people to leave Wikipedia. You have done so directly to Paravane and indirectly at least one further time. I suggest that you refrain from doing so going forward. If you believe that one or more users should no longer be editing on this site, your best bet is probably ANI. —WFC— 13:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I beg to differ, disruptive editors should be told to follow wiki trends or leave, and your reproach is over-stepping your own bounds. Plus you're off topic and I'm not interested - he suggested on "retiring", I called it, it's not my place to beg that he remains. End of. Ma®©usBritish ^[talk] 13:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm still of the view that there are three issues at work here, reflected in the wiki guidelines. I still think they are:

• Readability. Is an article of readable length? Is an article too long to be read easily at one sitting, for example. This aim underpins the 100k of readable prose guideline, as I understand it.
• Accessibility. For whatever reason - length, number of images, etc. - can an article load in such a way as to be accessible to a wide range of users?
• Style. Is it organised in an effective way to communicate the topic?

I don't think readability is a problem in this case, although others might disagree. There are various opinions on style; I don't think the style is perfect (i.e. not quite how I'd have written it), but I think generally its rather good, and represents a useful list. Indeed, my own preferred style would have problems as well. In terms of accessibility, I'm uncertain from the above if particular groups are still having problems loading and editing or not. If accessibility remains an issue for some users, then I'd still favour reducing the size of the main page until it is accessible, and supporting the main article with sub-articles. Incidentally, I'd certainly not wish any editor to retire from editing as a result of the debate on this page. Hchc2009 (talk) 17:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

The short version is that of the three main issues you only take the accessibility case seriously, and that's pretty similar to my own view. But there is nobody I respect more on accessibility than RexxS, and while he concedes that the list is on the long side, he doesn't consider it so big an issue as to mandate a split. The biggest potential barrier to entry would have been having to edit one giant table, but that simply isn't the case here. I'm fairly confident that no section is above the 32KB that Wikipedia once tried to keep below. —WFC— 17:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

HELLO!- I would like to make a comparison list of castles in Scotland and the quality of the page and the list of castles in Wales please look at the difference. I counted 145 castles in Wales and only ONE aweful "un-flattering" picture at the top. It needas more pic's :) and info cheers xxx