User talk:MRSC/Archive 1

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Hello, MRSC/Archive 1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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NW11

thanks for the reply... I think your ideas are on the right track...maybe NW11 was originally going to be part of NW3 and maybe also has something to do with the building of a main post office for the area?? The Tube reached G.G. in 1907 so ten years until the area got it´s postal number is not that long... Parts of NW11 weren´t completely built up until the late twenties early thirties... greetings from Berlin IsarSteve 13:43, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

GL for Greater London

Hello again... I´ve always thought that it´s a shame that there´s not a "Greater London" Postcode, e.g. GL ....thus doing away with Middx, Herts, Essex, Surrey & Kent within the GLC area.. The whole of the London Postal System seems like a typically "british" botch-up (meant politely) to me... As someone now used to "German" orginisation..I do find the whole thing unsatisfactory...I´d like to know your views on this..!! thanks Steve IsarSteve 13:53, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mailsort

thanks for the info...I didn´t know about Mailsort... that is the same or similar to the system we have here in Germany... our parcels are delivered with bar-code type labels on them...

e.g. for my address 10827-025-155

10827 (postcode)> 025 street>(alphabetically) > 155 House Number

although there has been some talk lately about an extra (sixth) digit on the postcode to make them more precise..

IsarSteve 15:02, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

London postal district

It was (originally) my edits that you reverted, not IsarSteve's, but I understand why. Just thought I'd point you to the comments I just left on User talk:IsarSteve#Main sorting office, in case you're not watching that page. — OwenBlacker 18:31, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Hi S! thanks for your comments, before moving to Deutschland I lived at Woodford Green for ten years...I distinctly remember receiving a booklet sent by the Post Office notifying us of our "new postcode" It definately refered to IG as Ilford & Barking.... anyway until I can find evidence of that, shall we leave IG as just Ilford??? ... greetings from Berlin IsarSteve 15:15, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ah. That leaflet was probably referring to the the coverage of the IG postcode area rather than the sorting office. I am trying to find some evidence of why IG=Ilford and SM=Sutton. I read somewhere about the post office realised even before optical character recognition that some letters could easily be confused so the use of some must be avoided in postcodes (the reason almost every other country chose to use number and not letters!). Mrsteviec 16:04, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Postcodes Programme on Radio Four

Hello! I caught the back end of a programme on Radio Four this week which was solely about British Postcodes and their introduction, including some Jingles on postcodes. Of course the Royal Mail representative thought that the British system was "the best in the world" and of course it was "the first"..... Did you hear the programme?? I´ve tried to find it on "Listen again" on the BBC website but to no avail.. greetings from Berlin IsarSteve 15:33, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Misleading 'xxx tube station' article names.

Hi.

I notice you reverted my move of Mansion House tube station to Mansion House underground station and I wondered why. To me the name seemed to be an obvious error, after there is no tube station at Mansion House, just a sub-surface station on the Circle and District lines. I've discussed further at Talk:List of London Underground stations. -- Chris j wood 10:21, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've responded to the above, and another similar post from rbrwr, on Talk:List of London Underground stations. -- Chris j wood 12:41, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Infobox widths & minor edits

Hi. IMO, infoboxes such as that you put on Battersea should be narrower. A 300 pixel box on an 800 ixel width screen looks ugly and leaves precious little space for the article. I've shrunk Battersea to 210 pixcels. The words wrap, but the article is more easily readable. Also, perhaps the addition of an infobox is not a minor edit. YMMV, of course. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Oh lord, you've done about 300 of the damn things. Sigh. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Hello. I don't see the problem they are the exactly the same width as the borough boxes and remove the need for long paragraphs that give conflicting information about what county a place is or was in. TBH the box looks naff now you have shrunk it as nothing fits on a line.

Hi, I don't want to comment on whether they should be there or not (I think they will be more useful when other info such as population is added), but I do think there should be a forced margin to the left of the box so that the article text doesn't get too close. 10 pixels would probably be enough - see Tonbridge, where I've added style=margin-left:10px to the main table tag. However, this seems to be an issue throughout Wikipedia where these boxes are used!

Hello. I totally agree with you. Tonbridge looks much better now. Shame infoboxes throughout wiki aren't done like that. Mrsteviec 18:42, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have the same problem with Borough boxes ... most that I've seen can be slimmed from 300 to 250 pixels without /any/ wrapping whatsoever. This being the case, why are they 300px wide? It isn't exactly as is horizontal width is not at a premium. I have the sad suspicion/prejudice that infobox builders are focussed on their infoboxes at the expense of anything else - especially the text of the article. Most borough boxes, in 800.600, constrain the text of the article to a 300 pixel column, and render near impossible the placing of images in the article, for lack of space. I'm far from convinced that their placement as a column to the right or the article is as useful as would be their placement at the foot of the article. I guess in part it all depends upon whehter you prefer articles or text boxes. As to Battersea, the main objection I had was that there were two infoboxes of different widths ... surely the article is better with two equally wide boxes, so as to avoid a stepped right margin in the article? I've once again modified the box, this time to drop the repetitious "County" label (substituting "County" for "Other" in the subheader) ... no wrapping, and /still/ horizontal whitesapce which could be removed (per Tonbridge, what exactly is the point of the whitespace between "County" and "Kent"...). There is no policy on infobox widths, but I note the policy on image widths [1] is In articles, if you wish to have a photo beside the text, you should generally use the "thumbnail" option available in the "Image markup", or approximately 200-250 pixels of width if you're doing it manually. I suggest that policy arises out of exactly the consideration I'm seeking to bring to your attention; that space should be left for the article. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Whetstone

Thanks for fixing the info-box on Whetstone. The spacing was really annoying me but I had no idea how to fix it! sars 16:42, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

Postal codes

Whilst I know that if an article is too short it usually gets the stub addition, I am puzzled as to what else can be said about a postal district, other than xxxx covers the district of yyyy. The article about yyyy presumably says all there is to say about it. Isn't it a trifle pedantic, and an unnecessary addition to the huge list of stubs? I'm asking you, since I was doing a random page check and came across London SW4, not because I thought you were the arbiter of such things! Peter Shearan 07:03, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I see you are another early bird!!! Peter Shearan 07:16, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

fare zone x -> Zone x

Hi.

I was wondering why you had changed link text 'fare zone x' to 'Zone x' (x=2 or 3) on Canning Town station and Limehouse station.

I originally wrote (or in these cases probably changed it) that way because I thought it was more informative. A reader not already familiar with the London fare system would have no clue what the sentence 'Station is in Zone 2' was telling him or her. At least 'fare zone' gives them enough context to decide whether they need to follow the link or not. I've already made this change to most DLR stations as I've been working on them.

On a related subject, I've been contemplating moving the fare zone articles. Currently they are called London Underground Zone x, which isn't strictly the whole story as they also apply to DLR stations and (for Travelcard usage only) to National Rail stations within London. I'm not sure of a better title though. At least some TfL documents call them Travelcard zones but again that doesn't tell the whole story, as they are used for basic fares on LU and DLR. Any thoughts?.

-- Chris j wood 11:12, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I'm going to copy this discussion to the articles on zones 1, 2 & 6, with rename to Travelcard Zone x as a proposal. Hopefully flush out any objections before starting on what will be a fairly time consuming change. -- Chris j wood 22:45, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You might care to take a look at the discussion that has now developed on Talk:Travelcard Zone 1, if you havn't already. -- Chris j wood 15:22, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

North London Line

Sorry not to get back to you quicker. Yes, of course it ought to be done the same way throughhout. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:40, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Postal district spam

Have you seen Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Postal district? -- 80.189.58.246 08:29, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Template:Rail line

Hi.

I've noticed this template, which I think is great, and I have started adding it to some station articles. I have one question; is there is a standard for the line colours that I should be using?. National rail lines don't really have line colours in quite the way LUL lines do, although National Rail's 'London and South East' and 'London Connections' maps do use a consistent set of colours to denote lines that reach London. -- Chris j wood 14:14, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Same question! For example, there is a christmas tree of colours at Birmingham New Street. Is the idea to have a colour per company or a colour per line (as in the London Undergound lines). There's not a lot of point in creating a template if you don't document it in the corresponding "Discussion" page. --Concrete Cowboy 14:46, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, company colours, as I guessed. Maintenance will be fun... --Concrete Cowboy 15:07, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Line font as at Euston

Agree with your mods to Euston. But an observation on your "font small" (which is a good idea and replicates practice on the tube lines): wouldn't it be better to update the template to provide the formatting? I'm sure this issue is not unique to Euston.

(btw, I cheated with the ScotRail colours by using generic blue. If it amuses you to go photoshopping again, feel free to correct.) --Concrete Cowboy 22:50, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be a problem with using the small font for the line. The alignment of the rightmost cell gets knocked out. Compare Leighton Buzzard railway station with Cheddington railway station. --Concrete Cowboy 15:03, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Watford Junction

And thanks for fixing my mistakes at WJ. Serves me right for relying om memory rather than checking. --Concrete Cowboy 23:12, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Preceding/Following

Is there any convention about which precedes and which follows? North/south? East/West? London/"Provinces" (only as far as the Border of course!) --Concrete Cowboy 23:17, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template:PostcodeIG

I've just reformatted Template:PostcodeIG, for a handful of reasons:

The width of 800px was too wide for my browser window. Many users use smaller browser windows than their entire screen resolution (or have smaller resolutions), so it's generally considered bad practice to make things that wide on the Web.
Aligning table cells to center never appears to show in Internet Explorer (for me, at least), and most content is (and should be, imho) left-aligned anyways, so I removed that.
One of the principles of accessible Web design is to avoid using HTML tables, except for with tabular data. A very similar look and feel can be achieved with a <div>, which doesn't sacrifice accessibility.

I hope none of this was contentious to do; feel free to drop me a note on my Talk: page or on Template talk:PostcodeIG if you wanna chat about any of it. — OwenBlacker 20:47, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

PS: Just looked at your recent contributions. Wow! :o)

Hi Owen. No problem with your changes, however in the skin I am using (Cologne Blue) the box appears to hug the text and makes the layout look crushed together. Inserting a line either at the start of the template (or on each article) would get rid of this. I think I'd prefer it in the template. I see you also saw the BBC report about "Ilford tries to change it's postcode". Mrsteviec 05:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. An extra line or two shouldn't make too much of a difference in Monobook, so feel free to pop the spacing back in. The only templates I managed to edit last night, before the Wikipedia started being too slow to use last night, were Template:PostcodeIG and Template:PostcodeKT. I guess there's a full set for London, if not for the UK, so I'll get to changing them all, using Ilford as a base, if you don't beat me to it.

Yeah, a friend of mine emailed me a link to the BBC article, which made me giggle. It's a running joke between my friends that they think I live in Essex and I point out my Council tax goes to LB Redbridge. :o) — OwenBlacker 06:34, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

User Susvolans vandalism

Fair point on this small village - although I have not checked what there is in the US, but the point he has systematically changed all of the clarifying names that I had set up (it looked like he was working down my contributions page)- from England and even Australia - where a local resident there had requested that we move "Snowtown" to "Snowtown, South Australia" - he clearly didn't look at the discussion page where this had been requested - and just moved it back from where it had started from. There are various Daventry's, Corby's etc. This was a systematic change - rather than a reasoned move. Northampton which was part of my scheme has about 10 places of that name in the US + the Australian place as well. Brookie:A glow in the dark 19:25, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Template:Infobox England place

Hi, I noticed that you just added some telephone/post code info to the Sunbury article. You might be interested to know about Template:Infobox England place which contains rows for all of these things in much the same format. If you like it you are welcome to use it. 80N 06:39, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Middlesex

Why have you been adding this to London suburb pages? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:01, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]