Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography

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Archives

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• /UK or home nations in introductions – August 2006
• /Archive 2 – 2006 - Feb 2007
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• /Archive 5 - Feb 2008 - March 2008
• /Archive 6 - March 2008 - June 2008
• /Archive 7 - June 2008 - Dec 2008
• /Archive 8 - Jan 2009 - May 2009
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• /Archive 10 - August 2009 - February 2010
• /Archive 11 - March 2010 - January 2011
• /Archive 12 - January 2011 - March 2012
• /Archive 13 - April 2012 - current

Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about rivers

In the river guideline there is a section which suggests listing tributaries. Lists without explanatory text are discouraged per WP:Embed. The Waterway routemap template provides a suitable means to present the tributaries, along with other data, in context. The decision as to if a river article needs to include information on tributaries could be left to editors' discretion in the developing of the article; when it is felt that such information is relevant and significant, then advice should be to either create an appropriate prose section, and/or to utilise the routemap depending on circumstances. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion has started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers#Lists / Route maps are optional. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:45, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Advice please

In some place article "Transport" sections I've noticed timetable ref links to mentions of bus services, for example, something like this - here, and sometimes web sites such as this. I usually remove timetabling written directly into articles per WP:NOTDIRECTORY or WP:NOTGUIDE, although these guidelines don't specifically mention rail or bus timetables - I can't imagine why people would come to a encyclopedia to get the times of trains anyway. Would a link to this timetabling fall under any sources, or other, guidelines, and is there a consensus whether or not these linked timetables should be accepted. Thanks. Acabashi (talk) 12:04, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

@Acabashi: If we do include them they should go in a separate external links section per WP:EXTLINK. I would say that works well for specific "Transport in X" articles or individual transport operator articles but less so for "place" articles. I can see both points of view - if you go back to Wikipedia's founding principles of "making the internet not suck" and making information easy to find, then it certainly makes sense to link to the timetables; but I agree that's not really encyclopaedic information and now that Wikivoyage is now in the Wikipedia fold the info really belongs there, with a {{Wikivoyage}} link included in the Wikipedia article. WaggersTALK 07:15, 3 June 2013 (UTC) Please use {{Replyto|Waggers}} when replying so that I receive a notification.

Many thanks for that Waggers. It seems, therefore, that whether or not to add timetables is a matter of judgement, as there appear no guidelines which exclude them, except if they are rich media or subscription. I suppose the addition of lots of links of this type might fall under WP:LINKFARM. A Wikivoyage link temp is a good idea, but as Wikivoyage seems embryonic, there would be a need to write a new place article there before adding timetables - there are only four WV village articles in my interest, Lincolnshire. Do you have an example I can look at where a WP article has a {{Wikivoyage}} link, so I can get an idea how to format it in WP articles ? Thanks again. Acabashi (talk) 12:10, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

@Acabashi: I've just added one to the Lincoln, England article; you're right though, this only tends to work for "big" entities like counties, cities and larger towns; I'm not sure if the plan with Wikivoyage is to have a guide for every village and hamlet. That said, I guess if they're sufficiently notable to have a WP article there must be something worth visiting! WaggersTALK 14:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for that. Gives me something else to do. Acabashi (talk) 14:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

2011 census release of Built-up Area (Urban Area) data

Last week the ONS released data for Built-up Areas (previously named Urban Areas) in England and Wales. Because of this a large number of articles now need updating. I have already updated a number of articles including: Greater London Urban Area, Liverpool Urban Area, The Potteries Urban Area,Aldershot Urban Area, Blackpool Urban Area, Teesside, Sheffield urban area, Greater Bristol, Luton/Dunstable Urban Area, Coventry and Bedworth Urban Area, Tyneside, Wearside, Greater Manchester Urban Area, West Midlands conurbation, Leicester Urban Area, West Yorkshire Urban Area and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom. What follows is a list of some of the articles that need updating:

I propose that the Portsmouth Urban Area and Southampton Urban Area articles be merged into the South Hampshire article and that new articles should be created on the Newport built-up area and the Birkenhead built-up area.

I also think that the articles on urban areas on England and Wales should be moved from Name Urban Area to Name Built-up Area and have names consistent with what the ONS calls them although there is a case for keeping some like Tyneside and Teesside as they are.

I also propose that articles on smaller urban areas should be deleted this is currently true for the following three articles Aylesbury Urban Area, Cannock/Great Wyrley Urban Area and Nuneaton Urban Area. The latter of which had a substantial population decrease from the 2001 census because the boundaries of the buit-up area are now much smaller than before.

What also needs updating is a large number of articles on towns and cities in England and Wales which currently use the 2001 census data on urban areas.Eopsid (talk) 12:47, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

@Eopsid: Rather than updating each built up area article, would it not be sensible to create a lookup template similar to those in use for districts, so the information can be update for all articles from a central point? WaggersTALK 09:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't know how to use lookup templates and it may not be of that much use because each article on built-up areas usually list the subdivisions of the area and there has been quite a few changes to the names of these subdivisions. Eopsid (talk) 10:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

In fact, they're so massively different in some areas (particularly the West Midlands conurbation) where everywhere that appears in capitals on OS Landranger mapping is suddenly a separate BUASD meaning that most of the previous USDs have been split several ways - for example, Walsall has suddenly dropped in population from 170,000 to the frankly ridiculous 67,000 and Bloxwich has been made a separate BUASD despite being part of Walsall County Borough since 1888, and part of Walsall parish before that!

You can't even use the same table realistically. There will need to be a new table, an explanation of the differences between 2001 and 2011 data. ONS themselves are admitting the the changes mean that is difficult to impossible to compare between 2001 and 2011. Still, at least the ONS are using the word "town" now in the guidance notes rather then the previous dancing around the issue. Fingerpuppet (talk) 16:52, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and whilst I think about it, a lot of the previous UAs now have different names as BUAs, generally simply named after the largest settlement, so The Potteries Urban Area is now Stoke-on-Trent BUA, Coventry and Bedworth Urban Area is now Coventry BUA and so on. Fingerpuppet (talk) 16:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the BUA's with 'smaller populations' I don't agree that this is a legitmate rationale for mass deletion. BUA's, if included in the ONS database are presumably notable as far as Wikipedia is concerned and the specific population is therefore not relevant in determining notability. I also see you have deleted a large number of BUAs from the list of BUAs and redefined the article as about the 'most populous'. However, the critera of 'most populous' is arbitrarily set and is also set at different levels England/Wales and for Scotland and Northern Ireland.Tmol42 (talk) 18:51, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The article was always a list of the most populous BUAs or UAs. I deleted the areas with populations between 50,000 and 100,000 in England and Wales mainly because I couldn't be bothered to put them on there although I may do so in the future or you could do it. There was an arbitrary limit in the article of 50,000 before and if there wasn't one then they list could potentially run to thousands of entries (the ONS has data on BUAs for areas with populations of only a few hundred). I disagree with your assertion that all BUAs in the database are notable enough to have articles many are just one village (and the article on the village itself is enough in my view) or a conurbation consisting of a couple of a distinct villages, similarly that a conurbation exists could just be written about in articles relating to parts of this hypothetical small conurbation and no article solely on the conurbation need exist. The three articles I proposed to delete are larger than just a couple of villages but I still think they should be deleted because of my view that we don't need articles on small conurbations and that the articles on the components on said conurbation are enough mainly because if we didn't do that then there would be potentially lots of articles on British conurbations that are notable enough that don't currently exist. However you could make a case for an article on a small conurbation if it consists of a large number of distinct parts with no one area dominating and possible has it's own name which doesn't relate to the areas that already form part of the conurbation as in the case of Deeside or Levenmouth. Eopsid (talk) 20:23, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Eopsid on this. There is no need for separate articles on many of the BUAs, because they are already covered in articles on towns, conurbations/metropolitan areas, and/or, in some cases, local authority areas. And, there is no need even to list all the ONS-defined BUAs, because they number in their thousands. The list here - which specifically relates to one particular definition, out of many definitions - should have a reasonable cut-off point of, say, 50,000, and decisions should be made in each case as to whether a separate article on each BUA is justified or whether there would be too much overlap with other articles in doing that. For Aylesbury, to give one example of Eopsid's proposed deletions, the article on Aylesbury Urban Area should simply be merged in with the article on Aylesbury, with an explanation in the text of the different definitions that give rise to different population totals. Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:45, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

All the articles relating to urban areas except the ones I proposed to delete or merge have now been updated. Also I was going to update the Deeside article the problem is the 2011 census I've been using mentions a built-up area called Buckley the map of it shows that it includes most of the settlements mentioned in the Deeside article but the Deeside article makes no mention at all of Buckley which is the largest part of this built-up area so I am not sure whether I should update that article with the 2011 census figures. Eopsid (talk) 18:25, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I've decided it would probably be better to merge the following three articles into the articles on the largest settlement in the urban area rather than delete the articles. These articles are Nuneaton Urban Area, Cannock/Great Wyrley Urban Area and Aylesbury Urban Area. Eopsid (talk) 17:46, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Ethnicity table

I cannot find clarification in the project's guidelines, so came here to ask. I recently added 2011 ethnicity data to the city of Plymouth. At first I added a collapsable list to the infobox and now I have instead added a table to the demography section. The table seems a little large and blanks out quite a bit of space for an article otherwise full of prose. My question is whether or not all this information should be included? Perhaps a table or list of the five main ethnic groups, with prose detailing notable ethnic groups and their changes in recent years? Jolly Ω Janner 01:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Jolly, adding all the ethnic group categories as a table is too much detail. Also expressing data just as %s and %changes between census dates is not of much value and is open to misinterpretation.. Adding in population and % in brackets of just the major ethnic groups including the Mixed and Other groups in the info box is OK and then providing a consise commentary perhaps just focussing on specific changes with either a small table of numbers and % change since 2001 again for all the main categories. II found several differences between %s in the text and the table so might be worth checking the source table on ONS or neighbourhood statistics again. Also the graphics of change over time is not very easy to read so you might want to remove this unless just focussing on the reasons behind the major historic blips in the population. Perhaps reorganising the section so that historical data comes first and current census data last.- Other editors may disagree with me so worth seeing what also is suggested but hope this helps.Tmol42 (talk) 02:08, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. The percentage change in the text is based upon change in absolute population, whereas the table is change in relative population. I think change in relative population might be more useful, so will change the text to that. Jolly Ω Janner 02:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Population within a postcode area

Hi, I would like to know if there is any reliable source to know how many people live within postcode areas. Unlike other cities like Sydney where a suburb is clearly defined, London is confusing. Sydenham is defined by the borough councils and locals alike as being every street within the SE26 postcode area. However, its within many wards: Sydenham, Forest Hill, Penge & Cator, College, Perry Vale and the Bellingham wards so accurate population figure of the suburb its self is pretty much impossible to work out. The same goes for places like Crofton Park and Honor Oak nobody is really sure where it starts or ends because there is no clear definition by any authority and they share postcode their areas with other suburbs. Likelife (talk) 20:00, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, like most UK statistics you can get postcode area data out of NOMIS, by using their Advanced Query Options. NOMIS is a bit forgotten about because if its "Official Labour Market Statistics" subheading, and the fact that it's a pretty daunting interface, but it's a brilliant resource for all sorts of ONS data. According to it, the population of SE26 from the 2011 census was 28,378. Fingerpuppet (talk) 16:46, 29 July 2013 (UTC)