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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

Photograph of memorial brass in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

Hi, is there someone in Oxford who can help photograph Robert Hues' memorial brass in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, for the article about him, and upload it to the Wikimedia Commons? Thanks! — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Norfolk -> Norfolk, England & Norfolk (disambiguation) -> Norfolk

A requested move has popped up at WP:RM about moving Norfolk around. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 13:10, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to merge the article City of Leeds into the article Leeds

Any input at Talk:Leeds would be appreciated. Thanks, —Jeremy (talk) 20:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Announcement: The 2009 Structural Changes in Local Government in England: A Taskforce

  1. On 1 April, 2009, a number of changes will occur that will affect a number of counties and districts in England, including some which fall within the remit of your project and/or county.
  2. The changes will necessitate a large number of changes to various articles on wikipedia.
  3. New articles may have to be written, old ones may have to be changed because they will then describe abolished former districts, etc, and numerous changes will have to be made to templates, category names, and articles about individual settlements to update information about local government.
  4. Because of this the Uk Geography Project has set up a specific taskforce to identify the changes to be made and then to coordinate the work of preparing for the changes and then implementing them when the changes occur on 1 April.
  5. The name of the taskforce is Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/2009 local government structural changes task force or WP:2009ENGLAND.
  6. You are invited to join this taskforce to help us all improve wikipedia in these areas by making sure the information is kept updated, and accurate.

Many thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 21:47, 15 January 2009 (UTC) (on behalf of the taskforce)

Blockley

Keep an eye out on this article, I've twice had people insert POV into the article, calling it 'lovely' or 'a perfect tourist destination.' Example: [1]. Being someone who has driven through this place, I can tell you it is none of these things, but that's just my opinion. At least, me and everyone else I know who's been there. Anyhow, no OR. Zazaban (talk) 22:49, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

London

I'm a bit concerned about the London article. It's currently a GA, but even from a cursory glance at the lead I'm confident that this article would fail a GA-review. We have several outstanding "citation needed" tags, as well as dead links and uncited claims. London is a Top priority for this project, and is one of the most important cities in human history. Perhaps this project could apply some collective TLC? --Jza84 |  Talk  15:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Buckingham Palace at FAR

I have nominated Buckingham Palace for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. —Mattisse (Talk) 19:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiProjects for Counties

I am sure we are all aware that some counties have their own projects and some counties do not. Although the county projects are generally inactive (the ones I use are), they do provide a means of grouping together the appropriate articles. This is useful for someone looking for articles to work on, or with tools such as User:WolterBot.

My hypothesis is that they are people who want to take part in a local county project, but setting one up is a bit of a daunting task.

My suggestion is that we create a project for all Counties. Just a basic page, with all the necessary templates. MortimerCat (talk) 10:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Not all the county wikiprojects are inactive & setting up the basic templates is not really that difficult - getting them to work actively is more of the challenge. I think to set them up you need to propose them at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals & get support from several editors. Further info is available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide. Just setting them up when no-one uses them gets an "inactive" tag added. It may be helpful to put a note on the talk page of the county articles & see if anyone expresses interest before going through the proposal process.— Rod talk 10:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I thought that by default, WP:UKGEO was the one to fall back on if a specific county project was not in existence. At least, that is how I and many others have used it. I agree with Rodw that not al county-level projects are inactive, and it isn't all that difficult to set one up - I did one not too long after becoming an active editor on wikipedia, and there were templates to assist one, and other county projects to use as models.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
What I am really asking is what would happen if I went ahead and created the missing projects? I am working on articles lacking a county project, and I feel I could be starting to classify them, making it easier for future editors. I'll probably put a message on the appropriate county talk pages to see if there is any interest. MortimerCat (talk) 16:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Ok. I'd do them one at a time. Pick the one you think has most activity on the pages it would cover. Place a notice about possibly starting up a project on the main article pages for that project, and then keep watching those pages. If you see someone making good edits to pages on a number of occasions, send them a message on their talk page asking whether they would be interested in a project, and, if so, they should keep an eye out for a proposal on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. When you have about 5 positive responses, I would then make a formal proposal on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals and place a notice about that proposal on the talk pages which had the initial notice placed on it. You can update the people about this at the same time, and also place a notice on the more general project pages, such as WT:UKGEO and this one. Some people start an initial project page in a sandbox attached to their userspace as well. I would move the project to project space (i.e., set it up for real) once you get 5 positive supports on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. Does that help at all?  DDStretch  (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

New project proposal - Norfolk & Suffolk

Hi all

I have proposed a new project "Wikiproject Norfolk & Suffolk" and would appreciate any support that I can get for getting this through.

I did think of making it a task force, but that would limit action as it would have to belong to a parent.

Many thanks--Chaosdruid (talk) 04:38, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi again
Just to update - I have added a discussion page for the project scope as there has been call for both expanding and reducing it in the project proposals page.
Page to discuss the project scope here
Many thanks--Chaosdruid (talk) 03:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Wiltshire

Is there any interest in forming a sub-project for this county? I'm surprised to find it doesn't exist already, and considering it contains such notable topics as Stonehenge, Longleat and others, it would seem to be worthy of interested parties gathering together. --Rodhullandemu 18:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Oops, hadn't seen above discussion, but it seems to have petered out somewhat. --Rodhullandemu 19:00, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Still here but very busy at the moment! Still interested but won't be taking the initiative just now.Major_Clanger (talk) 21:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

J. R. R. Tolkien FAR

I have nominated J. R. R. Tolkien for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Battle of Barnet peer review

I have rewritten the Battle of Barnet, and plan to take it to FAC. In light that the battle saw the death of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, the "Kingmaker", and the securing of Edward IV of England's throne, I thought this project might be interested in the article. Please take a look and leave comments/suggestions at Wikipedia:Peer review/Battle of Barnet/archive1. Thank you. Jappalang (talk) 16:12, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:07, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Bruce Castle peer review

Bruce Castle is currently up for peer review. This is a somewhat unusual article in that, while as far as I know it covers the subject as comprehensively (within reason) as possible, there are large gaps where sources don't exist, so ideally I'd like any issues that can be fixed, fixed before it goes to any potential FAC. – iridescent 17:35, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

GA review of BBC

BBC has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. — Levi van Tine (t – c) 08:49, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Explore Kent

Soliciting input at the AfD. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 19:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Cornwall

So what's the status of Cornwall now then? From what I have gathered there is the ceremonial/shire county of Cornwall, which in it contains two unitary districts: the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall. Is this accurate? --Joowwww (talk) 16:35, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Gropecunt Lane

Hello there, I just joined :) I have a few English articles at GAN (Worsley, Eccles, and The Dark Side of the Moon) but wanted to draw wider attention to the above article. I'd like to get that to GA, and who knows, maybe FA one day. It makes me giggle slightly every time I look at it. Anyhow, if anyone has any books on rude words, or medieval history, and can contribute, feel free to do so. I'm reaching the end of what is possible online, so a visit to Manchester library will be in order methinks. Parrot of Doom (talk) 10:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

User WikiProject/User WP

Why do we have two User WikiProject Boxes Template:User WPEngland and Template:User WikiProject England

EnglandThis user is a member of
WikiProject England
This user participates in
WikiProject England.

:



Can we have one that does not over use the Flag of England and use a map of England like Template:User WPScotland

This user is a participant in WikiProject Scotland.

Mr Taz (talk) 13:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Local chapter for the Wikimedia Foundation

We are Wikimedia UK - the group of local Wikimedians helping the Foundation to create
"a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge".
Love Wikipedia? Based in the UK?
Can you support us in projects such as generating free-content photographs, freeing up archive material and media relations? Or are there other projects you'd like us to help with?
if so, please click here to Join up, Donate and Get Involved

AndrewRT(Talk) 21:03, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Wiki Project Nottinghamshire Proposal

I have proposed to the WikiProject Council that I create WikiProject Nottinghamshire. Please go to the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals/Nottinghamshire to add your support or comments. I have started a template page in my sandbox for this project too.KlickingKarl (talk) 02:21, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Ramblers

Hi, could I ask for some eyes on Ramblers, formerly Ramblers' Association, where a new user and spa is intent on inserting a negative POV into the article, please? Thanks, --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:29, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

People from <County> (before 1965)

Could somebody explain the purpose and criteria for membership of Category:People from Essex (before 1965), Category:People from Middlesex (before 1965), Category:People from Kent (before 1965), Category:People from Surrey (before 1965), and Category:People from Hertfordshire (before 1965). I don't mean explain to me here, I mean explain to the public at large on the relevant Category page. I presume it has something to do with 1965 county boundary changes, but the precise logic is obscure. jnestorius(talk) 23:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)


Graham Chapman needs cites

Graham Chapman is IMHO in serious need of cites. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 12:01, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

mormon temple in London

There is a Mormon temple in London. Should the article belong to this WikiProject? LDS-SPA1000 (talk) 18:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Although there's a Mormon temple called the London England Temple, it's not actually in London – it's in Newchapel, Surrey. It should be tagged as part of WikiProject Surrey, which is a daughter project of WPE – I've now tagged it as such. – iridescent 22:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

mormon temple in Preston

There is a Mormon temple in Preston, Lancashire. Should the article belong to this WikiProject. LDS-SPA1000 (talk) 20:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Technically yes (as Lancashire doesn't have its own project) although it's likely to be tagged as low-importance. I've tagged it as part of WP:LDS, who are far more likely to be in a position to improve it. – iridescent 22:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated Peterborough Chronicle for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 04:19, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Up at Featured Article Candidates: Battle of Barnet

Hail and listen to this lil request. The Battle of Barnet has come to challenge for a bronze FA star at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Barnet/archive1. Prithee to go and comment on the article, to decide if it deserves to be Wikipedia's best article. For Harry, England, and St George! Jappalang (talk) 08:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Anglophobia problems

I would appreciate input in the dispute which is occurring at Talk:Anglophobia. Some editors think that my edits regarding Welsh anglophobia are not in accordance with WP policy. I would value other perspectives on the version I have submitted: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anglophobia&oldid=290071633 BillMasen (talk) 11:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Village Signs

Is anyone interested in taking photos of village signs and adding them to Wikipedia? I've been adding some myself but it's a slow process and was just wondering if anyone else can help. See my userpage for some examples. If you've got a sign nearby to you then why not take a photo! -- Uksignpix (talk) 19:35, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Corton, Suffolk

This article is a mess. Virtually all that is encyclopaedic is said in the lead. I removed the entire External Links section as it was just linkspam but it still needs a good rewrite. Mjroots (talk) 05:54, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I suggest a severe pruning. Remove all the remaining sections which are just random lists. Lose the pictures too, except maybe the village sign. Leave the remaining lead as a stub. This will tidy up the mess and improve its chances for proper growth (going back to my gardening analogy). ++ MortimerCat (talk) 06:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Peer review for Battle of Bosworth Field now open

Hi all, here is an article on the battle (yet again) that killed a king and crowned his opponent. Henry VII of England, the winner, however, established the Tudor dynasty that lasted a century. I greatly appreciate it if you would take a look and offer your comments and critiques at Wikipedia:Peer review/Battle of Bosworth Field/archive1 to help this article to become a Featured Article. Thank you. Jappalang (talk) 08:08, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Doctor Who at FAR

I have nominated Doctor Who for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cirt (talk) 02:55, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

England at GA review

A range of issues have been identified with the England article, which was promoted to GA status a couple of months ago. The problems are detailed at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/England/1 and if anyone wanted to help improve the article to meet these concerns that would be great.— Rod talk 07:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, with the collaboration experiment underway, perhaps now is a good time to look at some of this project's most important articles. Quite frankly, I was surprised that England was promoted to GA and I'm not too surprised that it's been nominated at GAR. That said, the content is mostly there and finding sources for such a big subject shouldn't be too hard. Howveer, rewriting sections such as National symbols, insignia and anthems will be difficult. Nev1 (talk) 12:30, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm tempted to start the England article from scratch, in a sandbox page, where we can all develop the project's major article towards a befitting standard. I'm not confident there is a great deal of value in the article as it stands. --Jza84 |  Talk  21:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
I think working in article space would be better as the reader is benefitted from the changes straight away. Nev1 (talk) 13:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
Good point. :) --Jza84 |  Talk  16:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist

As talked about above I tried creating a watchlist for the project but there is obviously some limits on the links that Special:RecentChangesLinked can cope with.

A list of everything is at WP:WikiProject England/WatchAll, a list of just the articles is at WP:WikiProject England/WatchArticles and a list of talk pages with non-article entries is at WP:WikiProject England/WatchOther. I suggest that you do not view these pages as they are very slow to load and usually give a page load error. The Special:RecentChangesLinked appears to operate correctly on the article only list so that may be useful, on the everything and other lists it does not return any information.

This link shows you what you get with this recent changes linked function for the articles only list.

As the number of articles tagged increases there may be problems with the article only list.

Anyone any ideas?

Keith D (talk) 22:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it works very well. There must be a way of sorting articles by importance/class as there is a table on the project page (in the sidebar).Would this be of any use in making more manageable watchlists?--Harkey (talk) 09:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
The other list appears to be working today see here. May be it is dependent on server load. I have asked on the village pump to see if there is a known limit. Keith D (talk) 23:48, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

History of England

Having browsed the History of England article and some of its linked articles, I have to agree with the remarks made by User:Jza84, above. Most are in need of some TLC. Am I correct in thinking that there is no Wikiproject for British or English history? If I am correct most will benefit from being tagged by WP:England so that we can keep a constructive eye on them. As some of the articles purport to be part of a series they really need looking at as a whole, which is quite a daunting prospect.--Harkey (talk) 11:16, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe you are correct in thinking there is no WikiProject for British or English history. Is one needed? Depending on how the "series" is defined (the series link on the article goes to Category:England) several do need some work. It may also be useful to look at History of XX articles where XX=county or city eg History of Bristol is currently a GA candidate & History of Somerset is already GA - there may be others.— Rod talk 12:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
I think it might be a little too soon to think of having a WP:British or English history. However, I would appreciate some guidelines from experienced editors on writing on historical topics for England/Britain. I was thinking maybe a sub-page something along the lines of WP:UKCITIES.--Harkey (talk) 13:41, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Stop the 'break-up' of England!

Can all English Wikipedians stop starting WikiProjects for each of England's Counties etc and join together under for the English Regions WikiProjects Mr Taz (talk) 16:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Why? Some projects like WP:GM and WP:YORKSHIRE are some of the most productive throughout Wikipedia. I agree some of the shire county projects should probably be merged (so for example, a collaborative "WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria" would be more sustainable than seperate ones), but that this project has stalled is not a reflection on the county projects - it's through lack of leadership and organisation.
How I've envisaged this project is having a monthly newsletter and noticeboard, which draws members from each sub-project who can publish and share their progress, debates and successes.
Most of the history of England is quite dire, and English people is something of a scandal. --Jza84 |  Talk  17:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Jza84 Do you mean WP:Yorkshire Mr Taz (talk) 18:38, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject East Midlands England - Wikipedia:WikiProject East of England - Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater London - Wikipedia:WikiProject North East England - Wikipedia:WikiProject North West England - Wikipedia:WikiProject South East England - Wikipedia:WikiProject South West England - Wikipedia:WikiProject West Midlands England - Wikipedia:WikiProject Yorkshire and the Humber Mr Taz (talk) 17:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we know what the English regions are, but what advantage is to be gained by having regional rather than county Wikiprojects? I am in agreement with Jza84 here.--Harkey (talk) 17:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

As am I. What the hell would be gained by merging WP:London with WP:Surrey and WP:Kent, into WP:South East England, other than burying the smaller projects under the 6,283 current London articles? – iridescent 19:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

London has it's own region WP:Greater London and not in the WP:South East England Region Mr Taz (talk)

Fine; make the example "merging WikiProject Greater Manchester, WikiProject Merseyside and WikiProject Cheshire into WP:North West England". I think you're missing the point here. – iridescent 19:27, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
The WP:Greater London page has been created today by Mr Taz and redirects to WP:London.Glasshouse and stones come to mind here...--Harkey (talk) 19:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
I echo the sentiments of Jza84, Harkey, and Iridescent. The current structure works fine, and I don't see what benefits would be gained from regional projects. The scope, I would have thought, is too large; in a (fairly) recent survey I conducting of some WP:CHESHIRE members, they were interested in some subjects related to neighbouring counties, but there's no guarantee that they'd be interested in the entire region. What I think does need to be done is improve the lines of communication between projects so that the expertise and experience of established projects such as WP:GM, WP:LONDON, and WP:YORKS can be used to help less successful projects such as (a random example) WP:BEDFORDSHIRE (one GA and no FAs). They wouldn't do all the work, but would offer advice and point to what works. Nev1 (talk) 19:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
I echo the sentiments of Jza84, Harkey, Iridescent and Nev1 and suspect most English wikipedians feel more affinity for a county than a region. In the South West very few people edit South West England, but there is a fair amount of activity on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cornwall, Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset, Wikipedia:WikiProject Bristol, Wikipedia:WikiProject Devon etc with some communication & support between the projects particularly where the scope of an article crosses the county borders. Personally I have little interest in articles relating to Cornwall but have developed some expertise related to Somerset - why spoil this?— Rod talk 20:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Similarly to most of the other comments here, I think that the smaller county projects are best as people tend to be very parochial and only want to know about things that are local to their area of interest. We already have projects for places and districts, such as WP:Sheffield, which show that people are interested in a narrow scope for projects. Regional projects would be too big for most people and would put them off from getting involved. I would agree that we need to have more communication between the projects and support for those projects that are just starting or have stalled. We need active groups covering all areas if we are to improve and expand Wikipedia's coverage of the country as a whole. Keith D (talk) 21:57, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, consensus seems to be heavily against this idea, but what problems was it trying to address? (Some input from Mr Taz would be helpful here). What seems to have emerged from this discussion (being mentioned by at least three different people) is that communication between the existing projects needs to be improved. Many projects have a wealth of experience in a wide range of areas, yet there are some which are struggling.

So the question is, how can the current system be improved? Strength comes from diversity and experience, the more members a project has, the better it should be doing (in theory). At the moment, the most effective way of recruiting members is posting notes on editor's talk pages; I don't see that there's a hugh amount WP:E can do about that. What I think might be effective is helping editors to learn the skills of writing good articles (delibarate lower case, not every article has to be Good although hopefully the end product of trying to give editors more experience would be an increase in the numbers of GAs and FAs). The way I would like to see this happen is individual projects identfing a few articles and working on them. They could ask for suggestions within the project, then go to other projects with more experience in the relevant area. There are problems with this idea, but could it work?

I'm not sure what WP:E's role within this would be, perhaps as a central hub where people looking for help can come instead of other projects and a centralised place for discussion. Nev1 (talk) 22:25, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

One method which has worked with some projects is to have a ""collaboration of the week/month". Editors can nominate articles (with voting if necessary) then, once chosen, lots of people work together to improve the article (possibly up to GA/FA etc) & in the process people share their particular skills and interests.— Rod talk 22:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
I suppose that's what my suggestion boils down to, although I don't like arbitrary time periods. Enthusiasm waxes and wanes so one month might not be enough. Also, the main difference from the usual CotM would be the introduction of outside help from experienced editors. It might be worthwhile looking at some projects and see which could most benefit from this approach. Nev1 (talk) 13:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject United States is an interesting example, with many parallels to WP:ENGLAND. Rather than focussing on certain cities, suburbs, regional cultures, it takes direct responsibility and seeks to develop the major umbrella articles like Culture of the United States, Health care in the United States and History of the United States.
WP:SCOTLAND has actually been quite good at getting these sorts of articles off the ground and upto a very, very good standard; eg. Scotland in the High Middle Ages is an FA (not a great one by more recent standards, but an FA nonetheless). Where is England in the High Middle Ages? Who's advancing the History of England in general?
As for a collaboration of the month - England has got to be the article this project gets to FA and fast. It's scandalous that such an important place is not covered with pride to a high standard. --Jza84 |  Talk  14:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Regarding a collaboration of the month, I was thinking that WP:ENGLAND would encourage and help co-ordinate CotMs for county wikiprojects. That shouldn't be this project's only purpose though, and subjects such as those you've mentioned are important and need developing. Nev1 (talk) 14:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this project's importance in encouraging good article work from the ground up is as important as addressing the big articles such as history of England. I don't know how successful or practical my suggestion of collaborations for county projects is, but I think we should give it a try with one project. After looking quickly through the WP:UKGEO list of subprojects, there seem to be a few candidates which might benefit from such a scheme: WP:DERBYS is the only county level project I've seen without any Good or Featured Articles, WP:BEDS and WP:SURREY hava 2 GAs each, and WP:BERKS has 1 FL and 1 GA. WP:DERBYS seems most in need, and has a few active editors I think, but another good candidate IMO is WP:NOTTS; it has 1 FA and 2 GAs and was only started in April of this year. Hopefully, its members are more likely to be active/still around than some of the other projects and as WP:NOTTS is still expanding (only 196 articles ATM) I think it needs our help. I'd like to pick one, leave a note on the project's talk page and on the talk pages of all its members to see if we can get this off the ground. Nev1 (talk) 14:41, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm still concerned that such major topics are neglected. Although in theory WP:ENGLAND has many many FAs, in practice it has few, if any. The fact Category:Top-importance England-related articles is empty troubles me. Although I freely state WP:WALES and WP:SCOTLAND (and even WP:CORNWALL) are troubled with nationalism - a problem which holds their progress back - they have far more members, and are much better organised. Category:Top-importance_Scotland_articles might give us an idea what might be suitable priorities for this project. :) --Jza84 |  Talk  22:35, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
The reason that there are no articles in the Category:Top-importance England-related articles is that the project is not set up to assess articles for importance. The template does not currently have importance processing enabled and no articles have been assessed for importance. May be we need to address this and enable the importance processing and start the process of assessing articles. Keith D (talk) 00:12, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Update I've left a note on WT:NOTTS to see if there's any interest in trying this collaboration thing. Nev1 (talk) 11:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've just proposed an alliance, NOT a merger, between WikiProjects Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to promote a term I coined up: 'Constructive Colaboration'. These are not just random counties, they are the only counties in The East Midlands to have a WikiProject. Nev1 told me that this was an area trying to promote and discuss the number of shire counties setting up small WikiProjects etc., I felt it was the right place to view my beliefs outside these WikiProjects. I have also recieved only positive comments so far. 95jb14 (talk) 18:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC), a member of WikiProject Lincolnshire.
I think this is a really good move. I've long thought that county projects should interact more on a regional basis. If say someone from WP:CHESHIRE wanted impartial feedback, they should be able to get their cousins at WP:GM to have a look and suggest improvements. Regional noticeboards and newsletters are something I've thought of being one approach to encourage interaction, but another would be a national one for England. The county projects broadly seem interested in settlements and divisions of land (i.e. geography) however, whereas I've always envisaged WP:ENGLAND to be more about our culture and history. --Jza84 |  Talk  18:21, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Scope

Is it appropriate at this time to discuss the Scope of the WP:ENGLAND? If all articles from all other WPs are tagged it will make it quite unwieldy particularly as I would like to request that we have a 'Watchlist' to keep abreast of changes and patrol for vandals.--Harkey (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it's worth discussing, I don't really know what the scope is.
A watchlist is a good idea, but how would you go about making/requesting one? I've seen WP:YORKS, but didn't know where that came from, so when I set one up for each of WP:GM and WP:CHES it was done by hand (and is maintained the same way, which reminds me that they both need updating...). It's a laborious and boring process and not something I'd be willing to do for a project as large as WP:ENGLAND. Nev1 (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
I think User:Keith D sourced the WP:Yorkshire Watchlist. By Scope I meant do we include absolutely everything pertaining to England or limit ourselves to some priorities. I know that there are 6,000 articles+ on some project lists but they do include some very tenuous links with places, people, etc. as well as very low priority articles.--Harkey (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
From the project page, the aim seems to be "to improve articles and organise them which relate to England", that's a lot of articles. I think people (eg: English people, William I of England, Winston Churchill) places 9eg: York, Nottingham, Land's End) and events (eg: Battle of Hastings, Peterloo Massacre) should be covered by the project but the problem is where to draw the line. I mean, should Derker be part of this project? Sure, it's an English subject as it's a place in England but if every place in England was added to this project there'd simply be too many articles and none would benefit. So taking settlements as an example I don't think we need to add anything smaller than say a town (or perhaps villages) as the subject of places, settlements, and geography is already covered by WP:UKGEO. Nev1 (talk) 15:17, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
For a working definition of what to include and tag could we go with the first three categories at Wikipedia:WikiProject England#Importance?--Harkey (talk) 15:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, I'm not sure I like the term "recognised nationally", there's a lot of wriggle room there, but it would stop the project being swamped by biographies. For settlements, I'd feel happier with, as I suggested earlier, nothing smaller than a town being in the project, but I'm not sure about how to make it work for people and events. Nev1 (talk) 12:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Harkey is correct about the watchlist generation, I sourced this from Ganeshbot who had a similar thing for the India projects. I have versions to run on the Yorkshire, Lincolnshire & Warwickshire projects and usually regenerate them on a weekly basis. I was thinking of creating one for the Coventry project but they have a redirect to the template and so can have 2 possible entries on the talk page which will require modifying the script to handle this case. The Yorkshire one is a bit troublesome if there is any server load due to the number of articles tagged which may be a problem for this project. I could create a script and try with the England project if there is a single template with no redirects used on talk pages. If you want me to do this then let me know and I can try it and see what happens. Keith D (talk) 22:17, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
I have found the watchilsts I generated for WP:GM and WP:CHES to be very helpful in catching vandalism that slips through the nets of the recent changes patrols. I'd like to see every project to have one, and if there is an easy way to generate the lists, such as making a bot run the script, I think it would be worthwhile. I want to make it clear though that I'm not asking you to make a watchlist for every county project as that just wouldn't be fair! Besides, I'm not sure how many people use the GM watchlist (over at WP:CHES there are only a couple of active editors anyway). Nev1 (talk) 12:26, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Aunt Sally

Picking up on Nev1's ideas I have mulled it over and have put together an aunt Sally of an idea. It may not be appropriate or well thought out but it is a start. Comments welcome, but if you think it is rubbish then come up with something better to address the problem of dissemination information on article improvement to inexperienced editors. See User:Keith D/sandbox3 for details. Keith D (talk) 20:31, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I've asked WP:NOTTS if they'd be interested in taking part in experiment to see how this scheme can work. I posted the note to WP:NOTTS before I'd read Keith D's comments here. Reading through what's been written in his sandbox, I agree with pretty much everything Keith D said and that's essentially how I imagined it myself. While it may be tempting to choose big and important articles such as counties, it would be a lot of effort and would be throwing editors in at the deep end. Ideally, each project would choose one article at a time, but I think that once an article has been improved, the collaboration could move onto a harder, more substantial article. Nev1 (talk) 12:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
So far no response from WP:NOTTS, I'm thinking about leaving a note on the talk pages of the members, but would this be overkill? Nev1 (talk) 15:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

University of Cambridge GAR notice

University of Cambridge has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Skills for Care

There is no project on this "England" article and there is no edit to it since 2 years. Why can I not redirect "WikiProject England" to "Wikipedia:WikiProject England"? Is it reserved or something? ~ R.T.G 11:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It's also orphaned, needs wikifying, has no independent references, no valid categories; and reads like an essay. There are no other articles on Sector Skills Councils; might rate a paragraph there, or more likely a candidate for AfD.
"WikiProject England" is in the article space; "WP:" is a meta area for 'things about the encyclopaedia'. Article space should never link to 'meta-space', because they are independent. (For instance, when 'article space' is issued on CD, or sold to someone else to raise funds for the project). HTH Kbthompson (talk) 11:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Photo request: BMI headquarters

If anyone is in proximity to Donington Hall, Castle Donington, would someone mind photographing the BMI (airline) headquarters? WhisperToMe (talk) 21:17, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Where is this stained glass window located, and who created it?

I posted this at Reference desk, but perhaps there might be editors here who do not visit there.

The window in question can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayt47/3212958113/in/set-72057594129234850/. I have been in communications with the author, and he said that he forgot all the details about this photo. I doubt its location is at Husbands Bosworth: looking through the set of photos, this image was taken just less than 10 minutes from the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre (where the diorama is located). Hence, I suspect the window could be at Sutton Cheney or somewhere nearby. If anyone knows the church this window is at, please do tell. Information on the creator and period in which the window is created are also appreciated. Jappalang (talk) 02:23, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you had a look around Geograph? Parrot of Doom (talk) 08:15, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Geograph turned up 4 stained glass windows withing 30 km of the Heritage Centre but none are matches. Jappalang (talk) 09:12, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Was that a specific search including the term sgw, or just a generic search of local churches etc? Lots of images on Geograph aren't categorised as well as they might be. Parrot of Doom (talk) 10:51, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
From the regularity of the leading and the cod-gothic lettering, that looks very recent (as in, last 30 years); I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually commissioned for the heritage centre itself. – iridescent 11:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
I went with a "stained glass" search, which yielded 3000+ hits (I am not going to spend the whole day clicking "next and match"). Refinement with "Bosworth" or the Square coordinates dropped those down to the 4 mentioned. Iridescent's opinion could certainly be true. Does the heritage centre have a chapel or something? Jappalang (talk) 11:34, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Suggestion; try asking the Friends of Richard III. I imagine they have enough obsessive crackpots people with an unusually strong interest, to know the history of any material depicting their blue-eyed boy. – iridescent 16:20, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, neither the author nor Richard's friends have replied... I am tossing the link out at FAC to see if there are any who knows. Jappalang (talk) 08:48, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

The old Harry-Dick battle is at FAC

Come all! Your comments and critiques are welcomed for the Battle of Bosworth Field at its FAC. Please read the article and decide if it deserves the bronze star, or if it needs a wee push or more. Thank ye all. Jappalang (talk) 08:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Victoria History of the Counties of England

Could some template expert provide a moddable Cite book (or Cite web?) template for citing the Victoria History of the Counties of England, please? See talk:Victoria County History for background. It is a very useful resource for the histories of English villages. Thanks. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:53, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I think someone (possibly User:MRSC) developed a template for citing www.british-history.ac.uk - that may have some useful stuff. Not sure where the template is/ what it is called though. :( --Jza84 |  Talk  22:56, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Indeed he did, but it was promptly deleted!: Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2008_March_24#Template:Cite_british_history Lozleader (talk) 12:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
They'd probably be much the same result today. I agree some standardisation is desirable. but it probably needs to be on {{cite web}}. (I made a comment in the other place on bending it to be 'more wiki'). HTH Kbthompson (talk) 13:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Southport move suggestion

There is a discussion at Talk:Southport#disambiguation requesting to move Southport and replace it with Southport (disambiguation). Comments welcome! Jeni (talk)(Jenuk1985) 20:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

BBC television drama

I have nominated BBC television drama for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:31, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Natasha Bedingfield

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found a large number of concerns with the referencing which you can see at Talk:Natasha Bedingfield/GA1. I have de-listed the article which can be renominated at WP:GAN when these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

List of British bingo nicknames

Does anyone play bingo here? This list of bingo nicknames is up for deletion and could do with a little fattening up. Nick mallory (talk) 06:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

FAR for Penda of Mercia

I have nominated Penda of Mercia for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Cirt (talk) 18:35, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Talk:List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom#Lead image

I'm currently expanding the article on List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom and am pondering what should be used as the lead image(s). It's not the most important issue in developing the article, but I thought that as the list covers the whole of the UK that as many editors as possible should be given a say. I'll leave a note at the England and Scotland wikiprojects and see if the discussion goes anywhere. Please leave any comments on the article talk page. Thanks, Nev1 (talk) 19:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Portal:England

England has been nominated for a featured portal review. Portals are typically reviewed for one week. During this review, editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the portal from featured status. Please leave your comments and help us to return the portal to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, portals may lose its status as featured portals. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. — Kpalion(talk) 13:26, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Georgian Era

I have always been told that "Georgian" only applied to the first group of kings called George (I-IV) and have edited a couple of articles based on this. If I am wrong could someone point me the right way? Thanks. Britmax (talk) 19:01, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

As Georgian architecture says it is sometimes considered to go up to 1840 as in architectural terms it can take 10 years for a building to go through planning, funding etc to being finally built. Therefore something finished during the reign of William IV could still be considered a Georgian design.— Rod talk 09:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Durham requested move

Hi, there's a slightly disheartening discussion going on over at Durham at the moment about renaming the page to the fictional title "Durham, County Durham" to make way for a disambiguation, or even the US city. I was wondering if anyone could help? Bob talk 08:54, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Hull City A.F.C.

Hull City A.F.C. has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Malleus Fatuorum 15:24, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Letchworth Corset Riot

This article has recently been nominated for DYK, and before it appears on the Main page it would be nice to have some type of independent confirmation of the facts claimed in the article. As noted in the DYK discussion, this article has proven resistant to verification. A person with more local knowledge of Letchworth and its history, or merely access to the local interest publications cited by this article, and who could help clarify things it would be greatly appreciated. --Allen3 talk 10:48, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

As it is almost certainly a hoax, I've nommed it for deletion. Feel free to weigh in.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Wording of the Lincoln disambiguation page

There is currently a discussion at Talk:Lincoln#Attempts at a consensus regarding wording on the disambiguation page, extra opinions are needed to generate a consensus. Jeni (talk) 03:08, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Complete rewrite of Cornish people

Just a nudge that I plan to overright the Cornish people article with this draft very soon. That is, unless there is objection? If there is, or even any support, please direct it at Talk:Cornish people. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

lol will be intersting to see peoples views on the article, it may come as quite a shock to some. BritishWatcher (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

England at GAC!!!

Alerting all WikiProject England members that England is undergoing a reveiw for WP:GA status. Things you can help with are listed here. Please help if you can, thanks, --Jza84 |  Talk  14:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Ouch big list! lol BritishWatcher (talk) 14:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Should be easy to fix up with the collective wisdom and efforts of English or Anglophile editors, I'm sure! We should get this page to GA.... afterall, England expects that every man will do his duty.... :) --Jza84 |  Talk  14:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
The list is quite daunting isn't it? haha, I'll give the history a crack tonight. For Harry, England and Saint Geoorge. :p - Yorkshirian (talk) 19:24, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

England articles missing geographical coordinates

1292 articles about geographically locatable subjects in England are missing geographical coordinates. Finding the latitude and longitude of locations, and entering coordinates into articles is straightforwards, and explained at Wikipedia:How to add geocodes to articles. Having coordinates on articles using the {{coord}} template provides a link to the article's subject on a wide range of maps, and that links to the articles are provided in GoogleMaps, MultiMap and other such places which use wikipedia data. A breakdown of articles needing coordinates by county is found at Category talk:England articles missing geocoordinate data. All help in geo-coording them is welcome/urged/implored. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:30, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I have a quiet evening, so I'll start Wiltshire, and more later, depending on time. Rodhullandemu 18:40, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 Done. Am I the only one doing this? Meanwhile, I've found several anomalies, and I'm not sure they're addressed anywhere, so some guidance would be welcome:
  1. Parliamentary constituencies, pathways, and regions, do not necessarily have specific locations. What should we do about this?
  2. Rivers generally have starts and ends, and coords for both, even in general terms; so the "coords missing" template doesn't quite hit the target; perhaps a different tag might be considered- this applies also to pathways, but not necessarily circular ones.
  3. When establishments, such as schools and churches, have moved location in their history, I have used their last-used, or most notable location, but it has to be said that so many articles have been stubs that it's difficult to ascertain this.
Comments welcome, before I start on some other county. Rodhullandemu 22:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
The best suggestion I have for something as large as a region (it sort of applies to river and roads etc) is to take the co-ordinates of a mid-point of each place. Then again, the M62 motorway (an FA) doesn't have any co-ordinates. It doesn't seem there's any general policy or consensus with how to do it though as the M60 motorway, which encircles Greater Manchester has the co-ordinates of one point along the road. I think think with the schools the most recent location should be the one used in the geotag as most people will be more interested in where the school is now (my thinking is that the most recent location will be the more 'notable' one). Nev1 (talk) 22:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Good thinking. However, the M62 motorway could have coords that define its termini, as should rivers. The M60 motorway and similar cases are less amenable to strict analysis, and what I have done so far, in the absence of a claim in the article as to a start point, is to provide a ref for the centre, such that readers at least have some idea of its general location. Probably better than nothing, although some statistics as to how many readers click through the geocords to the GeoHack page would be interesting to see. Meanwhile, I've listed Category:Merseyside articles missing geocoordinate data for attention tomorrow. Rodhullandemu 22:56, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Assessment of an article

Hi there! I've recently made significant additions to the Capel St. Mary article. This was rated as stub-class by a bot in 2007, but I think that contributions since then, as well as my additions, have probably changed the article's class. I'd appreciate having someone impartial and more experienced than me check it over and re-rate it if they have the time. Sorry if I'm barking up the wrong tree; this is the first time I've dealt with a WikiProject.

Many thanks!

Brammers (talk) 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

No, no, this is certainly the right tree! I'll take a look at this for you, no problem :) --Jza84 |  Talk  23:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Importance

Is there any reason why {{WikiProject England}} does not generate importance scale categories? MRSC (talk) 07:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I dont think it's ever been set up. --Jza84 |  Talk  15:02, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
We should do it! (unless there are objections?) MRSC (talk) 15:07, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't have any objection to this proposal, but, as I've said in the past (at WP:UKGEO) the class (and possibly importance) ranking already given by county projects should be accepted and used by this project rather than having to assess thousands of articles again. It will however mean that some articles get yet another banner, so they should they be nested - otherwise the list of banner will get bigger than the article.— Rod talk 15:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I think it can be automated to pick up the importance from the other project. However, I'm not sure I believe that Maidstone will be the same importance ranking to the England project as it is to Kent? To be clear, I think class should be identical between projects - and I think this is general policy anyhow. MRSC (talk) 15:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
You are right I was thinking of the thousands of articles which have banners from county projects or WP:UKGEO which do not have the England project banner and may be able to automatically be tagged. Taking Category:FL-Class England-related articles as an example I know of dozens or lists which should be here but aren't. I also noted there are 1749 articles not assessed for class which need doing.— Rod talk 15:46, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
It looks like this almost got implemented: Template_talk:WikiProject_England#Too_many_missing_features. MRSC (talk) 18:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Do you want the template changing now as per the old editprotect request on the template talk page? Keith D (talk) 21:49, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes please! MRSC (talk) 09:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I have made the change, but it needs the categories creating that we will be using and the documentation updating appropriatly. Keith D (talk) 10:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Now that importance has been added to the template, would this be a good time to revisit the Priority Scale given on Wikipedia:WikiProject England/Assessment? (which may also involve reconsideration of the goals & scope of the project). We did some work on this at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/Assessment and although the projects have different scopes this might be a helpful starting point?— Rod talk 10:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

We should probably identify summary articles covering all of England or England-specific things, like Local government in England, Governance of England, Water privatisation in England, Tourism in England. Might be worth doing a search and create a list for such articles. MRSC (talk) 13:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Looking at the current importance classifications in Category:Top-importance England-related articles some are already identified (I've just removed a couple of tiny villages from that one). But Category:High-importance England-related articles also has some. Category:Mid-importance England-related articles and Category:Low-importance England-related articles are a bit of a mish mash & there are over 9,000 in Category:Unknown-importance England-related articles.— Rod talk 14:40, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

English districts task force

I would like to propose a task force as part of this project (and/or Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography). I want to include the 326 English local government districts. These are highly variable in quality and content, some are developed fully and others are barely stubs. I am particularly interested in this area and have a fair bit of knowledge on UK subdivisions. It is a fairly big task and I wonder if anyone is interested in joining me? MRSC (talk) 08:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Towns as categories

Category:Towns in Gloucestershire has (to me) wrongly included Category:Cheltenham and Category:Stroud, Gloucestershire. Is there any discussion/guidance on what parent cats these 'town category pages' should have? Eldumpo (talk) 13:38, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Both do, or should, refer to Category:Districts of England. We don't have categories for towns per se. MRSC (talk) 17:10, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Relevant AfD

Relevant AfD to this WikiProject, on the article Bethel Church, Mansfield Woodhouse. Cirt (talk) 05:19, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Project tools - article alerts, cleanup listing & popular pages

As this wikiproject seems to be getting active I had a look for some of the tools wikiprojects can use to help manage articles. Would other members like me to set up a monthly popular pages listing (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Popular pages for an example)? In addition Wikipedia:Article alerts can help to track any pages with the WikiProject England banner which are included in DYK, nominations for GA. FA etc and also any proposed for deletion or similar. Another tool is cleanup listings which are less frequently updated but highlight articles with problems such as {{unreferenced}}, {{uncat}}, or {{cleanup}}, or inline markers like {{fact}}. Would these be helpful?— Rod talk 19:49, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes to all three, they show which articles need attention. Nev1 (talk) 19:51, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Article alerts are now working for this project. The daily updates are at Wikipedia:WikiProject England/Article alerts and appears at the bottom of the project page. Others will take a little longer.— Rod talk 11:40, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I would also say yes. The popular pages is definitely interesting to see what pages are being viewed and where effort can be focused. I have just got the Yorkshire stats going this month and the most popular pages are not what I expected. Keith D (talk) 22:12, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
BTW, you can set this up on a per-taskforce basis too if you want. This way editors who would rather focus on say the West Midlands rather than London-related stuff can have reports specific for that taskforce (assuming it exists, and that the pages are tagged with the taskforce's banner). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 01:29, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

List of abbeys and priories in England

List of abbeys and priories in England contains at least 46 transclusions from of other articles. Needs work. MRSC (talk) 16:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Biographies

I have just joined this project. I see a very few biographies are included in the project. What are your guidelines on including biographies in this project? Also, what sort of historical articles are appropriate? Thanks! - PKM (talk) 18:17, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

My personal opinion - I don't know what the policy is - is that unless someone's a truly national figure, the biographies are better off as part of the more local sub-projects (WP:GM, WP:LONDON and the like). Otherwise, the list would be unmanageable (there are 2800 biographies in Category:Premier League players alone). – iridescent 22:55, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Welsh names on English Locations

eg - Ross-on-Wye and other towns in Herefordshire (mostly).

Numerous editors have removed the Welsh place names (they're not relevant - and isn't there a Welsh language Wikipedia?), yet user Hoary seems to be on a one man campaign to keep them in place. These areas are in England, and the Welsh name has no legal standing outside of Wales - particularly the placing of the Welsh namess in the infobox under the real names seems to suggest the names have any signifiance.

92.14.197.200 (talk) 22:10, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. I can see a case for mention of the Welsh name on towns where the English name derives from the Welsh, but not in the lead (we don't have "London (Latin: Londinium)", and so on). – iridescent 22:37, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
wow i agree, they should not be putting Welsh wording in the infobox or in the lead sentence. I have no problem with the article stating where the name came from, but to put it in the lead sentence or infobox like that makes it look like its the native language for the place. Totally unacceptable, and i support people removing such things although its not something im seriously concerned about, bigger problems these days sadly. BritishWatcher (talk) 22:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
There is also a comment on Talk:England#Welsh language in England about welsh in some English towns, however even in such cases i see no reason why the Welsh name should be put in the infobox or intro. BritishWatcher (talk) 22:49, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
There was once an attempt to create a project guideline at User:Jza84/Sandbox about this. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Good page, i like the table for usage. It seems reasonable. BritishWatcher (talk) 23:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Absolutely agree. Hopefully, this will prompt a policy decision; this has already resulted in at least three blocks of users removing the Welsh names. – iridescent 23:13, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
woops although looking at it more closely, the ? in the Welsh in infobox of England articles i do disagree with. Should be a cross as far as im concerned but i dont view this as a serious problem, so that would be ok with me. BritishWatcher (talk) 23:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
And now Hoary is inserting the Welsh names of towns into articles, then protecting them to get his way, despite consensus against putting them in. 86.128.32.170 (talk) 15:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
There is no consensus! You are constantly evading blocks to edit war, which has ultimately resulted in page protection, the only reasonable step. Jeni (talk) 15:34, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Right of course, I must be all of the IPs who are against this, because there's no possible way for more than one person to oppose it. And FYI, the majority of people agreeing on one thing = consensus. 86.128.32.170 (talk) 15:38, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
If there is consensus, why do your edits always get undone by various people? And its blatantly obvious you are the same person making these edits, doesn't take a genius to work that one out! Jeni (talk) 15:41, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Then request a checkuser on all the IPs involved if you're so sure you're right. I've been watching this topic for a while now and I think the fact that the original editor who started this has had the same IP for a year and a half proves that it isn't me, as that is obviously a permanent IP address whilst mine is dynamic. And the edits don't get undone by 'various people', they get consistently undone by two admins who are protecting each other. 86.128.32.170 (talk) 15:46, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Taking Ross on Wye as an example, 5 different people have reverted: User:Ghmyrtle, User:Jeni, User:Hoary, User:Nedrutland, User:Gwen Gale, to me that shows there is significant consensus for keeping them. Jeni (talk) 15:50, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

information Administrator note There appears to be significant anonymous meatpuppetry going on in this debate and edit war from the following (and possibly others):

These IPs all have very short contribution histories that mainly or only include edits related to this particular topic of discussion and edit war. This should be taken into account when determining consensus. Ioeth (talk contribs twinkle friendly) 16:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Ioeth, if you're alleging BritishWatcher and I are running socks, say so. Last time this came up, consensus was fairly clearly against including the Welsh names, but the same few people keep re-adding them. Unless you think Rodhullandemu is my sock as well. – iridescent 22:46, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Just for the record i do not intend to make any alteration to any article on this matter and i have not in the past, i just thought i would throw my support behind those seeking its removal because i do strongly oppose the idea people should be misled into thinking the Welsh name for the place is the native name, which is what putting it in the first sentence or infobox does. Sadly this is the least of my worries on wikipedia right now. BritishWatcher (talk) 23:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Iridescent, I didn't mean to imply that anybody is sockpuppeting, especially editors in good standing with quality work that ranges far outside of this topic area. I just wanted to point out that, for the purposes of this discussion, the IPs I listed above should probably be treated as a single, or possibly 2 (considering 271.39.132.9's longer contribution history) editors at most, rather than 12 separate editors. Pretty much all of those IPs have a very short (< 10) contribution history, basically all edits related to not only this topic area, but this debate in particular, and most never edited for more than a given 24-hour period. Ioeth (talk contribs twinkle friendly) 14:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This debate came up in various places last year, and the proposal at User:Jza84/Sandbox was, so far as I recall, the nearest we got to a consensus over it. In summary, my view (now - it might have moved slightly over the period) is that, where modern Welsh names exist for places close to the Welsh border they should be included (in my view there is absolutely no reason not to include them), and it may in some circumstances also add to the interest and content of an article to refer to historical and toponymic (=etymological) relationships (eg. between Eboracum (=York) and Welsh Efrog, and Devon and Welsh Dyfnaint). Unless it is very important to the article (as it may be, say, at Oswestry, which is close to a Welsh-speaking area), I don't necessarily favour including the reference in the introduction itself. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This is the English wikipedia, and these articles relate to English towns. The names of these places in foreign languages should never be included in the intro or infobox, and only included in a history section if it is relevant. Skinmeister (talk) 09:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

There are examples of exonyms being included in the lead in articles on places near other linguistic boundaries (Dutch for Lille and Calais, Italian for Menton and Nice, French for Trier), presumably on the grounds that the names are used by people living nearby. On this basis the Welsh name might be justified in the lead in Oswestry, but probably not the other cases. Mhockey (talk) 21:30, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater South East

I would like to propose the replacement of the following projects:

and extend the coverage to include, what would have been:

These projects are largely inactive and have much in common. It is possible to tag articles, creating task forces on a per-county basis and organise alerts assesment that way. I was thinking of doing a South East England / East of England split, but it seems a pretty arbitrary boundary. The functional region includes both areas. Do I have support for this? MRSC (talk) 21:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly, I've just suggested that the new Wikipedia:WikiProject Lancashire be altered to include Cumbria. It may even be worth including Wikipedia:WikiProject Cheshire for much the same reasons. The major metropolitan areas generate enough editors to produce their own, fruitful WikiProjects mind. --Jza84 |  Talk  21:42, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
This is the trouble in the South East. People from miles around work in and access London, so residency is not a requirement in order to have an interest in editing. The interest groups for suburban and rural counties is much smaller. MRSC (talk) 21:46, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. This may sound cold, but if a WikiProject Greater South East doesn't turn around the region's fortunes and produce results, I'm not sure how it can be saved from a merger in to this England project. I think two Government Office Region based Wikiprojects may appeal to editors personal affections above a Greater South East mind, at a guess. --Jza84 |  Talk  21:51, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I am slightly wary of an East of England/South East England split, but would support it if others do. MRSC (talk) 06:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm tentatively opposed to the proposal. Wikiprojects bring together people with a common interest. The main intention for merging these projects would be to create a more protective supraproject. I'm not convinced that someone from Kent would be interested in Cambridgeshire. There's more of an argument for neighbouring counties such as Lancashire and Cumbria, but it's the project members who produce content, and if they're not interested in other counties it's a non-starter. I'm not seeing anything new since Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England/Archive 3#Stop the 'break-up' of England! Nev1 (talk) 22:03, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I echo Nev1's thoughts and oppose this. The current system works, why try to change it? Jeni (talk) 22:32, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I tend to agree. Aged though I am, I have managed to live all over the UK and tend to concentrate my expertise on those areas with which I am most familiar, such as Category:North Yorkshire articles missing geocoordinate data, and the like, simply because it makes things easier to manage. Rodhullandemu 22:40, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
It doesn't work. Most of these projects are largely inactive and a large swathe of the south east has no project at all. By pooling resources we can create a viable project. People from the South East admittedly do not see themselves as a distinct region (in the same way as say the North East does), but the area shares common features (i.e. communication with London, rural to suburban change etc). Keeping the status quo is not an option, most of these projects have little or no activity and will just lapse like all the other county based projects. There is capacity to subdivide projects by tagging as Wikiproject Trains does, to maintain local interest. I accept that few editors will be interested in the entire region. But, by co-ordinating the functional region of the south east it will break down paper walls that prevent editors looking at articles in neighbouring counties that they might otherwise be interested in. The project area needs to be sufficiently large to generate as much interest as say the London project does. At the moment there is nothing setting priorities for articles in the region outside Greater London. There is a good deal of literature on the functional south east region and we can use it to set priorities for settlement articles, local government, media, infrastructure and geographical features. MRSC (talk) 06:44, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Instinctive oppose - Trying to impose an arbitrary region, which people are unlikely to relate to, is not (IMHO) likely to increase the activity of editors who may be interested in contributing. I occasionally edit Kent articles (as I lived there for 18 years) but would have no interest in Bedfordshire, therefore I would be more likely to contribute to articles about the county (which has a cultural identity) than a region (which, as admitted above, doesn't). Saying that the existing projects are not "sufficiently large" doesn't explain why other "county sized" projects can be active elsewhere in England, but those in the South East may not currently be as active as we may like. Editing WP is a voluntary activity and imposing a different wikiproject structure is unlikely to make them more active - I would suggest there may be other factors which influence the amount of time and effort people are willing to give - which are being identified throughout wikipedia (eg discouraging new editors by a self selected elite, who cite increasingly complex guidelines - often just by initials - to maintain their own view of the world). If the members of the projects concerned think this is a good idea then I would withdraw my oppose, but I'd like to see wider discussion before radical steps are taken (eg a notice on WP:UKGEO which is more active than this wikiproject, and possibly individual messages on the talk pages of those who have bothered to sign themselves up for the county projects). Suggesting that "Keeping the status quo is not an option" smacks of trying to impose change - Status Quo is always an option and there may be other actions which could be taken to help members of the identified wikiprojects, rather than subsuming/abolishing them.— Rod talk 09:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Instinctively strong oppose. I emmigrated to Kent 28 years ago- and 28 times I have taken a ferry from Dover and put 80.000 kilometers on the clock. In contrast I have visited Brighton 10 times and 4 times stopped in Essex while using the M25. Yes I have worked in London- in boroughs that were formerly Kent. The history is different, the Education system is different, you just don't find real secondary modern schools in Hertfordshire. As for transport into London, north of the river they don't use third rail. The project area should be big enough to generate the same interest as London- sure Kent alone is 3700 km sqkm- Gtr London 1600 sqkm. Is this suggestion a spoof? There are a multitude of artificial regions- Euroregion Trans-manche, Arc Manche Assembly, and the one you mention, and in those regions there are some very unloved département/counties see Category:United Kingdom articles missing geocoordinate data for an indication. But I fail see see how imposing an extra burden on the small team that attempt to look after Kent will do other than switch people off- and wont induce anyone to stray into the unloved counties. The Greater Manchester/Lancashire/Cumbria debate is not analogous as 50% of Gtr Manchester is still thought of as Lancashire- and the populous areas of Cumbria were traditionally in the County Palatine. A better example is that Kent still looks after Medway (which does have legacy secondary modern schools). It might look good on paper but its effect will hinder the goal of building an encyclopedia. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:04, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

OK. I'm sensing this it too radical for your tastes. I'll wait for the projects to lapse completely and look to do it then. MRSC (talk) 14:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I still think a WP:South East England and WP:East of England (WP:East Anglia and the East of England?) would be more appealing. At very least I think we should consider amalgamating some county projects in pairs or threes. --Jza84 |  Talk  15:01, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I clearly do, but I fear there is too much resistance to change. It might be better to wait until the projects are moribund (a few already are) and do it then. MRSC (talk) 15:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I think it would be a shame if we couldn't trigger somekind of improvement drive. A WP:Norfolk and Suffolk may have some appeal, and (perhaps still in the radical vein of things) a WP:South Midlands (Bucks, Berkshire, Herts?). There seems support at WP:LANCS for a switch to WP:Lancashire and Cumbria. --Jza84 |  Talk  15:13, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I understand the reasoning behind the proposal to have projects with wider scopes and task forces within them to focus on individual counties, but I think it's likely to replace a dozen more or less inactive projects with one inactive project. I don't see where the incentive for members would be. It's not enough to lump people together and assume they'll start working productively on articles. If we want these projects to become active, reorganising the projects isn't the way to do it. I'm not sure what is to be honest. I thought that trying to help projects develop their articles through a sort of inter-project adoption scheme might work (give a project a GA and they'll look after it for a day, but teach a project to write a GA and they'll write an end to this butchered proverb), but when I suggested it to a few projects it got no response and Keith D's more detailed proposal new got off the ground, although I thought it had merit. Nev1 (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I entirely agree that nothing should be forced upon anyone and project merges should be consensual. I'm driven mostly by a desire to widen scope to include places that don't already have coverage, without wasting effort setting up tiny projects that go nowhere. MRSC (talk) 15:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Here are some possible splits:

  • Cambs / Norfolk / Suffolk ("East Anglia")
  • Berks / Bucks / Oxon ("Thames Valley")
  • East Sussex / West Sussex / Hampshire / Isle of Wight ("South Coast")
  • Kent / Essex / Surrey / Herts ("Home Counties")

Not sure how well this will go down? MRSC (talk) 15:23, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I think that might work better than one (or two) mega regional projects. However I really think it would depend on what the project "members" want.— Rod talk 15:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
They hit the spot for me. It's worth pointing out too that WP:YORKSHIRE is effectively a merger of North, East, South and West Yorkshire, and that we also have a Wikipedia:WikiProject North East England at a regional scale. --Jza84 |  Talk  15:28, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
P.S. there is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Cambridge believe it or not. --Jza84 |  Talk  15:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
With an "inactive" label on the main page. I wonder if they fancy restarting it, and expanding their scope to all of East Anglia? :) MRSC (talk) 15:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
And with this related discussion on the talk page in 2008 highlighting the fact that we're still waiting for "critical mass" to be met... --Jza84 |  Talk  15:57, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Speaking from a Yorkshire perspective, people are already thinking the number of articles and the area covered is too large and find they are not interested in such a large area. One person is trying to revive a long dead WikiProject Leeds which is effectively a small sub-set of the Yorkshire project. We also have projects for Sheffield and Bradford, though I think Bradford is inactive. So in my experience the smaller the area covered the better. Keith D (talk) 17:13, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
This sounds like a case where task forces could be used to create smaller interest groups in the larger project, which is what I've been proposing all along, but for some reason is ignored. MRSC (talk) 17:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree. Task forces are very appropriate in these kinds of situations. Infact, I think when WP:GM was founded, it was intended that it would have a baby that would be named the Manchester Task Force. We haven't needed it really. WP:LONDON has task forces (I believe) for temporary improvement drives with defined scope. --Jza84 |  Talk  18:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for "inactive"

Before taking this further... Has anyone done an "audit" of he various county, city, town etc wikiprojects to see how "active" they are? I'm thinking of any DYK's new articles, lists, GA's FAs etc + how many active memebrs, whether they are in discussions, proposing guidelines, having collaborations or anything similar? Which ones have "lapsed" are moribund etc & how is this decided?— Rod talk 15:36, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I've just looked at the main page and talk page and consider anything over 6 months inactivity to be undesirable. I would support doing such an audit. MRSC (talk) 15:40, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
A start might be to update this project page to reflect current activity.— Rod talk 15:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm prepared to review the current projects. What are our criteria for "inactive"?

  • Low membership (<20?)
  • No original talk page activity for more than 6 months
  • No GA articles in last year
  • No FA articles in last year

Anything else? MRSC (talk) 16:04, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, as a general think I think that's fair enough, although I'd halve the membership requirement as new projects can have low membership. I'd also combine the no GAs/FAs criteria together. There will be exceptions though, for instance most of the discussion about Cheshire related articles takes place away from WT:CHES. Nev1 (talk) 16:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Shouldn't we use the same criteria as Template:Inactive which talks about 4 months and Template:Semi-active?— Rod talk 16:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
It might be worth running with both criteria and seeing what we come out with. Another, admittedly more brutal way would be just to have a glance and see how just inactive these are, or else ask the projects themselves who's around anymore. I strongly suspect that not much has gone on in any of those projects for months, if not years. --Jza84 |  Talk  16:33, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I've added a few more to the project page, which are recognised by the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Geographical/Europe#England. It might be worth including them in the audit.— Rod talk 16:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
See also definition of Inactive at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/WikiProject#When is a project inactive?.— Rod talk 17:01, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Started here: Wikipedia:WikiProject England/Projects. Please amend as you see fit. MRSC (talk) 17:15, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Findings:

  • No active projects in the East of England region!
  • In the South East only Kent is highly active, Isle of Wight is active; rest of South East there are no active projects!

Hardly a working system at all. I'll leave others to draw conclusions about other regions as I am most interested in London & the SE. MRSC (talk) 17:33, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I think there are still a few counties missing see List of counties of the United Kingdom.— Rod talk 18:34, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget the NE and Yorks are all one project each, that consumes quite a few. MRSC (talk) 18:41, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I would just like to add, that although a project may appear to be inactive, the classifications provided by the project are still being used. Although I am speaking for myself, I have used WolterBot listings, and lists of stubs to find articles in my county. I would not like to see these being eliminated by a merge. Putney Bridge (talk) 18:56, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Can I ask which project you are referring to? MRSC (talk) 19:00, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Although I live in Sussex, I have used various projects, when they have existed, as I have travelled around the country. Putney Bridge (talk) 20:39, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
FWIW, there was a proposed East Anglia project a few months ago that stalled through lack of interest. – iridescent 19:00, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Interesting. Thanks for that. Looks like small county groupings may not work either. Perhaps a "Rest of the South East", leaving out London and Kent would work best, divided into task forces for each county. Done this way, if a county gets enough members later it can easily break away as it will be tagged. Essentially the existing low or zero activity projects are retained as task forces as part of a larger project. The case of the south east is always going to be difficult, because of the primacy of London. MRSC (talk) 19:25, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Here is a suggestion for the pot: Keep the counties projects as they are, but redirect the talk pages to this page. This keeps the county classifications, but increases the audience for talk. Putney Bridge (talk) 20:39, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Interesting. The main pages of each project would in effect become task force pages of this project. MRSC (talk) 21:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
That's not such a bad idea. This project couldn't offer any location specific advice, but we could help out with more general stuff. It would have to be a soft redirect explaining that the project is inactive but that WP:England is more likely to be able to help (and that if someone feels like trying to reinvigorate the project the redirect can be removed). Nev1 (talk) 21:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I'd still like to hear from the members of the projects themselves - that's got to be central to any decision made. I'm still holding out for the East Anglia, Thames Valley, South Coast and Home Counties project's to be considered best! --Jza84 |  Talk  00:37, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I've marked all the inactive projects with {{inactive}}. That should wake up anyone who is still around. MRSC (talk) 06:30, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
How are you determining "inactive"? Are you just going by talkpage activity, or a broader "things that happen on their watch" remit? WP:THAMES, for instance, is moribund (no talkpage activity for a year) but on the "Low membership (<20?), No original talk page activity for more than 6 months, No GA articles in last year, No FA articles in last year" criteria you propose above, still qualifies as "active" due to a steady stream of FAs/GAs. I've no objection to killing off the smaller projects—WP:THAMES, for instance, would make more sense subsumed into WP:UKW—but if this isn't done consistently it'll just spark off revert wars. – iridescent 11:20, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
These tags are not tombstones, more an attempt to wake the dead! There could easily be (otherwise silent) members of these projects. We will know soon enough. If a project does not remove the {{inactive}} tag we'll know it definitely isn't still functioning. For those that are still active, any merger or expansion needs to be on a purely consensual basis. There is absolutely no point trying to force anything. MRSC (talk) 13:14, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I have recently become interested in improving Sussex-related articles as time permits. I noticed the existence of Wikipedia:WikiProject Sussex as well as WP:Brighton and Hove (linked from there) and would have added my name if both didn't seem inactive. I am doubtful if I would have added my name to a project with a larger title such as South East, South Coast, Home Counties etc. It would not seem relevant or worth the effort. Also, being new to this meta game, I am unsure what would be gained from having a larger project group, with a proportionately larger task list and not proportionately more members.

So I would not wish the Sussex project to be merged to a vaguely worded one: maybe "Sussex and Kent", "Surrey and Sussex" (or Hampshire), but to keep the name seeming local, include the county names. Sussexonian (talk) 20:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Follow up on "inactive" tagging

One project (Thames) has removed the inactive tag. Two, Hertfordshire and Coventry have replaced with "semi-active". I've put a note on the talk page of WikiProject Hertfordshire to see if there is any interest in any form of expansion in order to reinvigorate the project. MRSC (talk) 15:18, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Places formerly in pre-1974 counties

There is currently a CFD discussion here on Category:Places historically in Berkshire.

This raises the question of the best way of dealing with places which changed counties in 1974 (there have been other boundary changes, but it is the pre-1974 counties which readers are most likely to find references to). Put another way, what is the best way of helping users follow up a reference (in a pre-1974 text) to Abingdon, Berkshire or Pusey, Berkshire?

Possible methods include

  • redirects - but this would require a great many redirects, which currently tend to exist only for larger places
  • lists of boundary changes - may help some readers, but not those who are unaware of the boundary change. Such lists tend not to include every place which changed county.
  • mention the former county in the lead paragraph of relevant articles and then rely on the search facility
  • categories of places formerly in each county. This method seems to have generated some heat, e.g. in the CFD discussion here on Category:Places formerly in Lancashire, although that debate was about a category which had only one article and was itself uncategorised. Since that debate, a number of similar categories have been emptied and deleted, but the wider issue raised here has not been aired.

It seems to me that each method has drawbacks, but we really need all of them, because readers find articles in different ways. Any views? Mhockey (talk) 14:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I think any debate on this needs to take into account that, while 1974 was a big year in changing of county boundaries it was not the only one: 1844 and 1965 were very important and there were extensive changes in the 1880s/1890s and 1930s. Indeed there were constant adjustments by the way of borough extensions on the edge of counties and exchange of all or parts of parishes. Some places have been passed around a couple of times! This means that anyone interested in Halesowen before 1844 will looking for a place in Shropshire, but from 1844 to 1974 in Worcestershire and since then in the West Midlands. Plus what to do with towns and parishes historically split between counties, e.g. Mossley (which was in 3!). It is much more complicated than there being two sets of boundaries.Lozleader (talk) 15:02, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
The subject of this section sums up exactly why these categories are a bad idea. 1974 is just one date in a series of changes and any research into the subject will reveal that. Luckily we already have a policy to deal with this Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements)/Counties. This whole debate has had plenty of airtime and has been settled. MRSC (talk) 16:14, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
You really have to focus on how places are referred to in texts which people commonly read. Not many people read texts about Halesowen published before 1844. Plenty of people read texts published before 1974. Other boundary changes, although locally very important, do not have the same impact in the published material. I do not see that WP:UCC is particularly helpful - it is about article names (and content). It does say that historic counties should be mentioned in articles, which we can all agree on. But it does not help us to decide whether that (with the search facility) is sufficient to address the issue which I have raised.Mhockey (talk) 17:01, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
I still don't see exactly what it is you think that people cannot find because of a lacking in our search facility. If I read an old book and it mentions Brixton, Surrey and I come to Wikipedia and search for either "Brixton" or "Brixton, Surrey" I find the Brixton article. What problem is it that we need to solve? MRSC (talk) 17:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
That may be how you find articles. It may not be how other people do. Your argument would suggest that we do not need redirects, lists or categories at all. But let's see what other people think. Mhockey (talk) 17:13, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
What other way is there to search for anything without first using a text query? Redirects exist and are a good thing, we don't need any special agreement for that. Well structured lists of things, based on verifiable facts are also a good thing. These categories are vague and innacurate and are not an aid to navigation, they introduce error and hide complexity. They reinforce a misguided notion that everything was organised one way until 1974 and then everything changed. MRSC (talk) 17:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC) MRSC (talk) 17:22, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
The answer to your question is browsing. It's the difference between the Contents and the Index in a book. WP:CLN has some helpful guidance on this. Mhockey (talk) 16:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Browsing from where, if you are looking for say "Brixton, Surrey" because you read it in a book? You don't go to the main page and start clicking. MRSC (talk) 17:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I actually meant browsing in WP. As WP:CAT says: categorization allows "pages to be placed in categories which can then be used by readers to find sets of articles on related topics". The analogy with a book is that you might go to the Contents to find similar topics, or you might use the Index. Both are finding aids, and one does not displace the need for the other. Mhockey (talk) 20:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
But there are better, more productive edits that could be made. These categories are not going to be simple sets of articles, but incoherant, confusing mega-categories, with upwards of tens of thousands of settlements, moors, farms, suburbs etc etc. It's an un-necessary tier of categorisation that will open up debates about Hexhamshire and Islandshire, then how to deal with Wales and Scotland, and if split places need to go in and if we use postal counties.... a nightmare. --Jza84 |  Talk  20:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
What is incoherent or confusing about the existing (or the recently deleted) categories? You cannot reasonably call them mega-categories. No-one has proposed categories for Islandshire or Hexhamshire, because they do not have the same impact in the sources and are mostly known only to specialists. As for moors and farms, I don't think there are many WP articles about farms, and natural features are probably best not categorised as places. Wales is another matter: categorisation of places in Wales is a "can of worms" (see discussions here and here). It needs sorting, and part of the solution could well be categories of places formerly in the historic counties, but the situation there is different, and that's another discussion. I agree that split places, such as Mossley, are a special difficulty. I don't think they are that common, and there is the same difficulty with some places split between current counties, e.g. Whitchurch, Bristol. The solution there is to include the article in categories for both counties, which seems to work: that is, users browsing from either county can find the article. Mhockey (talk) 21:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, I think Wikipedia has managed just fine without them for the best part of a decade. I see no reason to introduce them without broad consensus first. --Jza84 |  Talk  21:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
And there clearly isn't any consensus to introduce these categories. MRSC (talk) 05:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
This would be such a huge job that we'd need a consensus in this project, and probably in UKGeography, and probably the county projects too, just to get it applied consistently. Perhaps we could open a discussion page and advertise it on all relevant wikiprojects? Totnesmartin (talk) 08:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
It might be worth advertising the CFD more widely, on a non-partisan basis. MRSC (talk) 11:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

A thought came to me that for these categories to be accurate and verifiable they would need to be of the form:

This is hopelessly too granular, but the only way to have any meaningful scope or accuracy. MRSC (talk) 11:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I have taken Totnesmartin's suggestion and opened a discussion here - with an attempt to assess the size of the task. It's quite interesting to see the differences in how the issue is handled for different counties, and at the least some consistency would be desirable. As I suspected, the trickiest bits would be the places transferred to some of the metropolitan counties, but overall the problems do not seem insurmountable. Mhockey (talk) 15:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Can someone please explain to me in simple terms what is so bad about redirects to identify a place? The article for the place itself should detail any historic boundary changes. Nothing wrong with a list, if someone wishes to maintain one. The advantage of a list is that it can concentrate on the matter in hand, whether the articles exist or not - many civil parishes currently have no articles. As for extra categories, why, why, why! Jan1naD - (talk) 16:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree! I'm not sure why redirects are brought up as an issue either. They already exist and are universally encouraged in Wikipedia; such as Staines, Middlesex and Staines, Surrey redirecting to Staines. It should go without saying. MRSC (talk) 17:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Restoration spectacular

I have left some concerns at Talk:Restoration spectacular#4 years on. Simply south (talk) 14:49, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Buildings and architecture of Bath - help with GAN comments

Hi all, I put Buildings and architecture of Bath up for GA and a reviewer has started the review, making several comments (at Talk:Buildings and architecture of Bath/GA1) about the structure of the article and areas for development. If any of you had any time to take a look and make any edits or comments you feel are appropriate that would be great.— Rod talk 20:05, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

George III FAR

I have nominated George III of the United Kingdom for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Marskell (talk) 17:23, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

County Borough of Leeds GA nomination

County Borough of Leeds is nominated for good article status. If you can make any improvements to the article please do. MRSC (talk) 19:06, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

City disambiguation

I want to make some bold but, I believe, effective and fair changes to those articles about districts that have city status which contain a freestanding settlement by the same name, in terms of their title.

That is to say, I would like the "settlement" articles moved to the form "PLACE, CEREMONIAL COUNTY" (per WP:PLACE) with the space presently occupied by the settlement becoming a disambiguation page.

Articles successfully using this system already include
There are 6 aticles that I'd like to propose to use this system (please let me know if there are more)

I believe there are several key benefits to this:

  1. This is more inline with WP:NPOV - I find it odd that we force primacy of the settlement on the reader when there is a clear case for legitimate disambiguation.
  2. We can avoid confusion to both readers and editors about city status immediately (see Salford as an example of good practice), an issue which causes distruption and edit wars from time-to-time.
  3. Readers can select which definition of the place they want.
  4. Disambiguation also allows the benefit of having non-English usage of settlement names to be shown.
  5. In the case of Westminster, we can include terms that readers may be looking for about parliament etc.

The disbenefits are:

  1. It would require a lot of redirects and pipelinks once it is put in to place.

Thoughts? --Jza84 |  Talk  11:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

In principle, it is a good move to distinguish between the settlement (the core urban area?) and the local government district, but it would be helpful to have guidelines on what goes in each article. The more controversial bit is whether the article on the settlement is the primary topic in the terms of WP:DAB. It may need to be determined case by case: e.g. I can anticipate some opposition to a move of Canterbury or Winchester. There is a similar issue with Newport (where there is no separate article on City of Newport). If the discussion here is anything to go by, there would be a riot if anyone suggested a move to Newport, Gwent or Newport, Monmouthshire! Mhockey (talk) 12:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

...or indeed Newport, Newport. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC) PS Hope we're not going to start discussing Wales issues on this page!!! Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
There is the obvious Leeds & City of Leeds assuming that a split is taking place. Keith D (talk) 14:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I support this. In the USA everywhere was set up as Placename, Statename which although applied even where disambiguation was not needed, had one advantage: it made clear it was the settlement being discussed. I see Salford/Carlisle/Lancaster as a good precedent. Over the years, these various city articles have caused confusion from time to time and proper disambiguation is the way to put this to a stop. MRSC (talk) 14:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree, and it is this which is the main part of my motivation to close this "loop hole". In response:
a) We can get Canterbrarian and Winchester-ish (?) users involved, that's no problem by me. I hope they will see the benefits.
b) I'm presently only proposing this format for English cities, so Newport is outside of scope (for me at least).
c) Yes, this would include Leeds if a split was to take place.
Are there any other points of contention? What do we need to do to make this happen? --Jza84 |  Talk  14:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I totally disagree, for what it's worth. If I were on the other side of the world, and looking for information on Salford, say, I would not expect to go to a disamb page with a myriad of different articles all about what is basically the same place. I would be likely to find that confusing. I realise that there are different boundaries for different functions, but to most readers I suspect that those differences are likely to be trivial. In my opinion (and I'm fully expecting to be opposed here by those with an undue fixation on admninistrative geography), it would be far clearer if there were one article on Salford which covered all aspects of the place, ideally with a map or two to show the different boundaries. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Surely you don't disagree that the Salford system is wrong, or poor? And I'd be puzzled if you thought Rochdale, Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, Rochdale (ancient parish), County Borough of Rochdale and Rochdale (UK Parliament constituency) should have a "catch-all" article? Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, which for me means we have the luxury of writing expansive and extensive articles for each entity.
But, really, I think that's out of scope anyway. I'm proposing alteration to the titles. I doubt there is enough desire to merge all these articles (which is your point?), bringing me back round to my point that we should force a particular and arbitary article on the reader. Agreed?... :S --Jza84 |  Talk  15:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
While I think this system would avoid confusion, it also adds confusion. I think a DAB page should only be used if it is clear under naming conventions and Widely Accepted Name, that the word in question, has a rough split between meaning a town and a metropolitan borough. For example, the word "Wigan" in 80% of instances on google is refered to as a town, rather than a borough. The instances on google reflect the popular interpretation of the word, which under naming convention is the word the article should refer to to under Widely Accepted Name. Therefore, it would imo seem counterproductive to force to a DAB page users looking up "wigan" given that most will want information about the town. If they *do* want information specfically about the metropolitan borough, they can easily click the "This article is about the settlement Wigan. For the larger local government district, see Metropolitan Borough of Wigan " at the top of the page. Even if they miss this DAB at the top of the page, Metropolitan Borough of Wigan would be referenced in the lead, and many times in the article too, therefore there is no doubt that those wanting to find the article specifically about the borough will easy find it. Secondly, looking at the Governance section in Wigan, it would then make much more sense for that section to be just a summary section, with the expanded article directing to Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, thus we are avoiding duplication. I personally think this system would benefit our readers more than the current system, and more than an unfriendly DAB page. This system, that could easily be applied to any settlement/local-authority, is fundamentally based on applying wiki policies on naming conventions which direct readers to what they actually want, rather than the current system of pigeon holeing that has a strong fixation on structure routines that editors on this project who edit multiple uk geography articles find beneficial, rather than readers - which is supposed to be our priority. Razorlax (talk) 17:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree to an extent, and would argue this for something like Wigan, but I'm still confident that this would be a change for the better for the cities. Why we assume the reader wants Bradford first, and that is the overwhelming desire of readers, I don't know, so I still think this meets meta-Wikipedian policy on NPOV. Also, it would avoid alot of confusion (apparently Sunderland is a city, but so is the City of Sunderland, which can't be best practice). --Jza84 |  Talk  20:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, Sunderland is a city (meaning a large urban area), and City of Sunderland is a City (meaning somewhere that has a piece of paper from the crown). They're different concepts, if somewhat awkward to phrase. 11:28, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
--That's a POV interpretation, not grounded in fact, and an obvious source for confusion to readers and editors alike. It also means Rochdale is a "c'ity", because it is a large urban area. --Jza84 |  Talk  10:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
That interpretation is perfectly legitimate and grounded in standard dictionaries of the English language that appeared in the UK. You should know, because this question has come up before on the Leeds talk page. Not every user of the English language is a pedant with an inflated interest in things like stamp collecting or arcane details of legal definitions, a condition that seems to make some people unable to accept the city/City distinction as obvious and verifiable fact. Claims that "city" only has a certain technical meaning (and hence some huge settlements are not cities), or that "tea" only refers to Camellia sinensis and its various products (but never to herbal teas), etc. are shibboleths that serve to distinguish members of an in-group from the rest of the world. Wikipedia is not part of that in-group. Hans Adler 12:04, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
But why not apply the same formula to bradford, and find what its most common interpretation is too? Looking on the internet shows virtually all websites interpret bradford as meaning the City&MetropolitanBorough as opposed to a settlement within. This is generally a very good indicater that suggests that this is the most popular viewpoint of what Bradford is seen as first and foremost and so a dab page is not neccesary. If it was seen more-so as a settlement within CityOfBradford, then there would be more articles reflecting that viewpoint. Wakefield is seen as a town first and foremost, and using the convention i proposed, "wakefield" would direct first to the town, rather than a DAB page. Take readers to what the want to see. Anyway its just ideas.. im not actually proposing anything. Razorlax (talk) 21:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Just coming back to this after a couple of days pause: putting aside the mergers (which for me is a different issue) may I assume there is enough support to start gearing up to move these articles? We may need users with the WP:AWB to help facilitate the transition. --Jza84 |  Talk  21:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Might be worth putting a note on some local projects. I think all these cases fall into active areas, except Winchester. I know it has had some issues in the past over naming, so maybe a good place to start to see if there is any reaction to being bold. MRSC (talk) 09:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I have raised this for the cities in southern England (Salford, Lancaster and Carlisle all being in North West England) to try and solidify a consensus for that part of the country ([2], [3], [4], [5]). I have faith that the change will be recognised as a positive move on this issue by users who edit these articles. --Jza84 |  Talk  11:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I think it's a good concept, and it certainly works well in the examples given. Ideally, I'd like to see it extended to everywhere where a settlement and a local government district share the same short form of the name and are sufficiently different to hold two articles, so say Stockport becoming Stockport, Greater Manchester and then Stockport becoming the disambiguation page to Stockport, Greater Manchester and Metropolitan Borough of Stockport - at a stroke removing any further issues surrounding primacy. That's to be done after this lot, though! Fingerpuppet (talk) 11:28, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I did think about this too. I wouldn't be opposed to such a move, but I think the cities are more of a pressing matter. It might be worth considering a later date for sure. I assume that is a note of support then for now though? :S --Jza84 |  Talk  12:02, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's a note of support. Fingerpuppet (talk) 05:30, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
For me, as a layman in this matter, the term City of Winchester continues to mean the historic city, currently at Winchester – I don't really care about local government entities, as their existence seems to be fairly unstable. It is unfortunate to say the least that the district council has decided to use City of Winchester, and the talk page shows how much confusion still exists, both here and in the material world. It doesn't help that the lead for the district includes this sentence: The current city boundaries were set on 1 April 1974 when the City of Winchester my emphasis merged with Droxford Rural District and part of Winchester Rural District. I know we have to deal with where we are, but life would we be so much simpler if they had followed the pattern of Lichfield, though I still think we should use Lichfield District rather Lichfield (district). Rant over. Jan1naD - (talk) 11:38, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree about the confusion. I think the same is probably true of Salford and Carlisle too. But, I do think that the disambiguation would actually go some way to alleviate this confusion anyway. Sure people think of Winchester (proper) as a city, but describing Sunderland "a city", within the City of Sunderland is comparable to calling Rochdale a metropolitan borough, within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale. Disambiguation can do just that - disambiguate the terms and confusion. --Jza84 |  Talk  12:02, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
No, it's not comparable. As I've pointed out before, "city" has more than one meaning. "Metropolitan Borough" does not. Fingerpuppet (talk) 05:30, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
I would absolutely oppose changing City of Westminster and City of London. "City of Westminster" or "Westminster" are the common usage; "Westminster, London" is a construction I've rarely if ever seen. "City of Westminster" has been the common name since 1541, and quite aside from everything else, for 90% of its thousand-year history Westminster has not been in London (it was only added to London in the boundary redrawing of 1889), and most of the significant events in its history and major buildings in it date from before this. We already have a messy separation between Westminster and City of Westminster in describing the difference between the historic town and the current legal boundaries; disambiguating "Westminster" from "Westminster, London" would be far more confusing with no obvious benefit. – iridescent 12:00, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure that's true. Certainly Salford uses this system ("Salford, Greater Manchester" is probably an even rarer construction): surely you don't think this causes confusion and has no benefit to readers at the moment? --Jza84 |  Talk  12:04, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I think I understand a bit more now (all you old hands, please be patient with me ;). Sticking with Winchester, the problem is not that the term Winchester needs disambiguation (though it does, of course), it's that the term City of Winchester needs the dab. Please correct me if I'm mistaken Jan1naD - (talk) 12:06, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Under my proposal both units/interpretations would be disambiguated. Previously, if you searched for Salford, or Carlise we forced "the settlement" on our readers, which I think is not NPOV, not helpful, but was arbitary (readers may consider these as both the district or the place). I say that a search for Winchester should allow for the reader to select which interpretation of Winchester they want. The benefit of this is the disambiguation page tells the reader the difference immediately. Again, I point to Salford as best practice (both City of Salford and the settlement are Good Articles). --Jza84 |  Talk  12:11, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for that clarification. I now feel, more strongly than I did, that Salford is the worst example to use when trying to generalise from the specific. If my sister says she is going to Winchester (or Leeds, or Carlisle), I don't assume she is going to the local government district with that name. I know she is going to the urban settlement that has grown around the city of Alfred (etcetera). Following WP:PLACE the term Winchester should continue to refer to the settlement, as it does. Now Salford is different in that, whatever local politocoes may like to claim, the former defined settlement no longer exists. Much of what was Salford is even assumed to be part of Manchester, by residents and outsiders alike. Please don't break what works to solve a problem somewhere else. Jan1naD - (talk) 12:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
It doesn't work though, and I think you've missed the list of benefits in the rationale above. There are regular edit wars on Leeds and Bradford content, and Sunderland is still called a city when that just isn't correct; verifiable evidence that the present POV system is arbitary and causes confusion. Wherever your sister opts to go and describe her journey has little baring on the situation here; its anedotal evidence not based on a reliable source. My sister says she's visiting Eccles in Salford and my brother says he's also visiting Eccles in Manchester - that doesn't make Eccles part of Salford or Manchester. Also, your argument is contradictorary: Winchester (place) exists but Salford (place) does not? Why? How? Regardless, these are issues already dealt with by things like WP:PLACE, WP:UKCITIES and WP:UKDISTRICTS, and so are out of scope of this debate and the proposal. It's not the value of the articles that's under proposal, just how we present them - we should not force one definition of an ambiguous place name on our readers. I therefore maintain that this proposal is strongly NPOV and well worth the change. --Jza84 |  Talk  12:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Just to point out, there is not regular edit wars on Leeds. From the second the article was merged not a single person has edited it in a manner which indicates confusion. However, prior to this when Leeds was split, and conflicting with NPOV, almost every few days people would edit the article out of confusion as to why Leeds was being called a settlement within CityOfLeeds, rather than Leeds refferring to a City & Metropolitan Borough. The current editing that has occured on Bradford appears to stem from the same issue of poor naming, rather than a lack of disambiguation.
With regards to implementing your proposal - I am in agreement with User:Jan1nad, a DAB page should only be used as a last result on articles where there is confusion (Salford for example - it works great), not on articles where the current system works just fine just. Razorlax (talk) 19:06, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Just been thinking about this more. If uniform policy is what some people seem to prefer on here, why not have a unform policy for settlements and LA's of the same name, where if it's a town, the primary page is about the town (rather than the LA), and if its a city, the primary page is about the city, rather than the settlemennt within. --Razorlax (talk) 19:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
City status is not always granted to the local government district. See Lichfield, for example. Fingerpuppet (talk) 05:30, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Chester and Durham are others too...
Before abandonning this proposal on the basis of no consensus (which I think is a real shame and based only on a strong POV whim), I want to reiterate the benefits of this proposal, again, because I think there's a little bit of misunderstanding and misfiring:
Again, the benefits of this proposal are:
  1. It is more inline with WP:NPOV - I find it odd that we force primacy of the settlement on the reader when there is a clear case for legitimate disambiguation.
  2. We can avoid confusion to both readers and editors about city status immediately (see Salford as an example of good practice), an issue which causes distruption and edit wars from time-to-time.
  3. Readers can select which definition of the place they want.
  4. Disambiguation also allows the benefit of having non-English usage of settlement names to be shown.
  5. In the case of Westminster, we can include terms that readers may be looking for about parliament etc.
I identified the first disbenefit, but I'll list two others that have appeared:
  1. It would require a lot of redirects and pipelinks once it is put in to place.
  2. This system breaks from a long tradition of having the settlement as the primary topic.
  3. Some users believe that these placenames primarily mean the settlement, not the city district.
Again, I want to try and appeal to users to see the advantages, and urge them against resistance to change. I'm confident the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages - there is a clear case of ambiguity in the names of these articles that can be made clearer for our readers. --Jza84 |  Talk  09:56, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
There are far to many disputes about primary topic on pages and I have recently changed to a different view to most on this one. I think that where there is conflict and more than one possibility for a topic then the primary topic should be the dab page. This solves the endless arguments over which article people are looking for and gives them a choice of where they go next. It also has the advantage that you can catch new incoming links easily and apply the appropriate dab to get people to the right article. How many incoming links to a article at a primary topic are meant for one of the other articles on the dab page is impossible to determine without checking every one individually. I think that this will be a productive move in the long run and will solve problems that exist with the present situation. Keith D (talk) 12:11, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Keith D. This is a very good point you raise. When Kbthompson (talk · contribs) carried out the disambiguation of the Salford pages, I believe he found about 1 in every 5 pages linked to "Salford" (i.e. what is now Salford, Greater Manchester) that should have been linked to the City of Salford. I suspect the same is true for our remaining city-settlement pairs. Disambiguation would help eliminate bad or idle linking and encourage good practice of piping. It is a major benefit. --Jza84 |  Talk  19:49, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Thank you too, Keith D. Your comment helps me to come round to Jza84's point of view as it strikes a particular chord with me. I have been trying to make sense of links to Polish towns and villages, and have found it near impossible to cope with the convention that a town is the primary topic, while there may be half a dozen other settlements with the same name. Many article writers have, of course, not bothered to be precise at the start. Jan1naD - (talk) 21:07, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Keith D. I have noticed lots of experienced editors sort through inbound links to dab pages, ensuring they go to the right place. MRSC (talk) 07:32, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
[out] Hi, I've been thinking about this carefully - as I can see that it has advantages - however, I also foresee drawbacks - not least the amount of work involved in implementation - which is why perhaps, I feel that that should be phased - allowing the more problematic areas to obtain a clear consensus for action before proceeding. Particularly, I don't feel myself qualified to comment (on this occassion), as I will not be able to share the work of implementation.
As to London, we have this problem with every single settlement-borough combination; just look at the myriad meanings of Hackney (and weep). That said, I'm not really in favour of complex and convoluted constructions - of the sort that "Westminster, London" is likely to lead to. That just seems to lead a competition as to how many different times we can get a 'hidden' London into the lead. We do have enough of that in London, as is - and it doesn't seem to me to solve the principle point of confusion in London - that between London (informal), City of London, and Greater London. No, I looked at Westminster and the hatnote and intro seems to summarise the issues. The only 'area' inadequately dealt with is that meaning of 'Westminster' in the sense of 'the political establishment' - we seem to have ducked that one. It's not helped by (as far as I am aware), all this City and Royal business having been informally adopted by the 'London Boroughs' themselves - which is what the 1964-5 legislation calls them! (Westminster 'annexed' the City designation when it became a metropolitan borough - based on a party favour from Henry VIII - none of the subsequent legislation actually appears to recognise it. It then applied it to the 1965 London borough - so, if you got a parking ticket from them, there could be a really interesting challenge!). That said, it's just pedantry ... to all intents and purposes they are a City.
London is always going to be 'unique' - not least because of the unique situation of the City of London itself. It predates every other formal institution in the country, is a City (despite its small size), is a real county - in its own right, and is within another county which has its own designated powers within the smaller county. So - by this - is it "City of London, Greater London"?
I think before WP:London embarks on this kind of exercise, we should really move to linking to the formal sub-regions of London, and Greater London itself - in too many articles, it still says "... is an area of London" - when it's "... an area of the London Borough of ... within Greater London". We also use defunct terms like inner London and central London ... the whole thing needs a consistent structure applied to it; and clarity as to what inner, central, east, south, etc means in formal planning terms (they don't, the sub-regions have changed). Anyway, I thought I should share my thoughts - and some of my own confusion. I'm sure some of that confusion exists in other areas of the country. There should clearly be a 'policy' - and where it is easily applicable, apply it - but, the reality is sometimes more complex, and we should be prepared to bend due to local circumstances. Kbthompson (talk) 09:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the lengthy reply Kbthompson. You raise good and valid points, particularly about London problems (I think WP:LONDON should have been a leader on such issues a long time back, but it seems to have lost alot of its userbase). Based on this, and the viewpoint of User:Iridescent, I'm confident that we postpone, if not eliminate Westminster and the City of Westminster from this proposal on the basis of no consenus coupled with seeing how the rest of England goes.
To be truthful, and speaking only with the 4 years of exposure I've had to WP, the confusion surrounding (if not outright resistance to) the reality of these settlements and city-districts seems to be particularly potent in northern England; the southern cities of Canterbury, Winchester and Westminster seem to attract users who are either (somehow, someway) more knowledgable about the situation or at least more comfortable with the arrangement we have on WP. The insistance that places (and I mean settlement places) like Salford, Bradford, Carlise, Lancaster, Sunderland are "cities" within an appropriate district with city status seems to stem from the fact that we force the settlement on the reader, who in turn expects the supposed "common named" article to include city status. That's not to detract from the point that we need consistency and that there are other issues lending to the fact the southern cities would benefit from disambiguation (I have seen references to "the city of Westminster"), but I do think that this proposal should be phased in from the north, downwards.
To summarise:
  1. Maintain the proposal, but suspend the inclusion of Westminster pending the work done to other cities and will and consensus of WP:LONDON.
  2. Carry out the propsal in phases (on a city-by-city basis).
  3. Start with the most northerly city (Sunderland) and work downwards to the south, (Bradford, Wakefield and so on through to Winchester).
Would this have more appeal to those who have reservations? --Jza84 |  Talk  10:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I would say start work on it as you suggest and see how it goes. If there are any serious objections, they tend to reveal themselves when something happens. MRSC (talk) 12:07, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
If I made such changes to Sunderland (an article in most dire need of enactment of this proposal) we would need some collective manpower (and users with WP:AWB access) to fix the incoming links. I will make a note on Talk:Sunderland with a link to this discussion before making changes shortly. --Jza84 |  Talk  12:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I have left notes at Wakefield, Bradford, and Sunderland, with a note at Talk:Sunderland that it may be the first to be affected. --Jza84 |  Talk  12:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
It may be best to do the work behind the scenes by going through all the links redirecting them to the proposed articles using the redirect to get to the existing article. Then once all of the links are in place the articles can be moved easily without disruption. The problem may be determining which article a link should go to especially on biographical type articles. Keith D (talk) 13:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I think it would be a good move to have a consistent approach. Even if the above recommendation is not followed we should have some consistent naming convention for districts with city status. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

(<--) It's coming up to 72 hours since I posted on Talk:Sunderland. I therefore plan to "test the water" with Sunderland within the next 24 hours. --Jza84 |  Talk  23:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, now who is going to fix the 1,300 or so other Wikipedia articles that used to link to the article about "Sunderland proper" but now link to the Sunderland disambiguation page? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:45, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I've formatted the main three pages, but yes, a bit of collective editing power is needed. I'm looking at those users who have WP:AWB. I'll apply to use it myself but may need someone to help use it for this purpose. --Jza84 |  Talk  10:58, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I've belatedly commented on this at Sunderland, Tyne and Wear. LevenBoy (talk) 12:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I have knocked the links back to about 1,000, but could do with some help in this task. Keith D (talk) 22:19, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I've just had a blast and nailed 250 links to "Sunderland". I don't know about you Keith D, but about 1 in every 6 should not have been linked to Sunderland, but either "City of Sunderland", Sunderland A.F.C. or the County Borough of Sunderland. It's confirmed a huge part of the concerns I raised with regards to this proposal. Anyway, there are still about 770 links, but I have to sleep right now. --Jza84 |  Talk  00:25, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
And please let's have no more of this disambiguation. I've commented on the matter in more detail at Talk:Sunderland, Tyne and Wear#Disambiguation of cities. LevenBoy (talk) 21:23, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Was there a consensus for this? I'm not sure I can see one above. FWIW, I think the effect on Sunderland has been disastrous from the point of the usability of Wikipedia for anyone who wants to find out about, well, Sunderland. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:05, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
And is Salford really being held up as an example of good practice here? If a random person in Australia was offered a job "with the BBC in Salford" and turned to Wikipedia to find out what it was like so that they could decide whether they wanted to move there, the page that's currently at Salford would be a fairly unhelpful start for them. I know the Manchester area reasonably well, have a map fetish and am pretty well-versed in UK geography, but am still struggling to work out what is in and out of scope for the Salford, Greater Manchester article. From the discussion above I was expecting it to cover the sense in which Salford is a relatively small district on the fringe of Manchester City Centre (analagous to Westminster covering a tiny area of Central London). In fact it seems to cover an area very similar to that of the City of Salford. How is anybody to know which article to look at to find which peice of information? We need to remember that Wikipedia is written to explain things for people who don't know the subject, not for the intellectual satisfaction of those who are experts. If you need an in-depth knowledge of the subject simply to find your way throught the navigational structure then we've written a pretty poor encylopedia JimmyGuano (talk) 07:51, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
These are arguements precisely for disambiguation! Nothing has changed with regards to what the articles cover! I repeat, nothing has changed with regards to what the articles cover! They were and always have been split.
If your random person in Australia was offered a "job with the BBC in Salford", then that's just it - which Salford? Because there are two entities which share its name. Infact, disamiguation tells you the difference! What's there to be confused or unhelpful about? Why should one be forced on the reader above another? --Jza84 |  Talk  10:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'm asserting that it's confusing because I'm confused. As I already know this area of the world reasonably well (a lot better than the average wikipedia reader worldwide, I'm sure), and I have read both articles several times, the fact that I'm still confused does seem to suggest to me there's a problem with the status quo here. What is Salford, Greater Manchester? How was it decided what was in and out of scope for the article? Maybe I'm just being stupid (in which case please explain, but gently :)) JimmyGuano (talk) 10:57, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps this map may help. Parrot of Doom 14:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
--There are three routes to this. 1) you could ask at WT:GM - they will assure you that we're mirroring real world practice. 2) you could pick up some books. Have a read of Glynis Cooper's 2005 book Salford: An Illustrated History - it outlines how the two are distinct. 3) What is Salford, Greater Manchester? -- what is Oldham? What is Morecambe? What is Denshaw? What is Croxton Kerrial? Your logic would have Blackburn be a redirect for for Blackburn with Darwen!
...but these are arguments out of scope of the proposal. Why? Because you're talking about why do we have two articles (the answer is because it's based on fact, as presented in the published domain...). I'm saying why do we force one on the reader over the other? --Jza84 |  Talk  20:42, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
So to understand the encyclopedia article, I should ask the people on the wikiproject or read a book? Aren't wikipedia articles meant to be self explanatory? Isn't that their point? Haven't you just highlighted exactly what is wrong with the situation you seem to be trying so hard to implement: that you have to already be an expert to even work out which article you should be reading? I understand that this proposal is about disambiguation not splitting, but it is you who are continually bringing up the Salford example as good practice, when it seems to be an example of how to use a naming structure to actively obscure the subject at hand. JimmyGuano (talk) 02:05, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think you're being honest, and I think I answered your questions pretty honestly and fairly, countering all the points. I'm not being flippant, but there seems to be a refusal to get the point with some users - points are countered and new, more obscure ones appear; it's a neverending chain of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. There is a fourth point in that you can just read the dab page for Salford. It tells you that the City of Salford is a met. district, and Salford proper is a settlement within it. It's not hard; it's really really clear. I don't think you really think it is all that confusing but instead are playing devil's advocate. My point above is that the split is grounded in fact and consensus (which is very important, meaning the merges are out of scope), and that Salford pages are evidence of good practice, because, Jimmy, they are both good articles. Leeds is a distgustingly bad article, so is Sunderland, and Bradford, etc, but the articles that have proper disamiguation, you will find, are really quite a lot better and a lot clearer to read. I urge you to have a look and rethink.--Jza84 |  Talk  11:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, but that's just rude. I'm most certainly not trolling here: I sincerely believe your suggestion to be a bad one, as it would appear do quite a few other people on this page. Heaping abuse at people who don't share your evidently strongly-held opinions isn't going to help us find a rational solution. I don't see how I've got a "POV whim" about this either (isn't that an oxymoron anyway?). I have no particularly strong feelings about Sunderland, or Salford, or Leeds, or Winchester as places, I just feel that Wikipedia should serve people trying to find out about them as well as possible. My own city - Birmingham - isn't really affected by this either way (I hope - just one Birmingham article please!)
(as an aside - all those links in the sentence above would need to be piped if your plan was put into effect. I couldn't talk about the place, I'd have to choose exactly which of the different possible definitions of the place I was talking about. "Mmm, when I say I don't have particularly strong feelings about Sunderland, am I talking primarily about the local authority or the settlement???" You must see that that is madness!).
As to Salford, there's clearly nothing confusing about the local authority, which is well-established and clear. I could understand it if there was an article on Salford the small innercity district around Chapel Street between Manchester City Centre and Pendelton. I'm not convinced such an article would be necessary, any more than we need an article on "the-small-bit-that-was-originally-Birmingham-before-it-grew-to-swallow-up-everything-around-it", but I could see how such an article could sit intelligibly next to articles like Ordsall etc . Even if such an article was necessary, though, it would clearly be so much less notable than the wider City/Met Borough that I don't see how it would require a dab at Salford.
I am still quite confused by this mysterious other "Salford" though. On one level User:parrot of Doom's map at least clears up what the article's talking about by simply drawing a line round it, but it doesn't really explain it. Why is Broughton Park "in" and Pendlebury "out"? Are we taking the pre-1974 boundaries as definitive? If so, why? The article describes the entity as a "settlement" but it's not clear what this means in this case at least - let's face it, they're all basically a collection of suburbs of Manchester anyway. JimmyGuano (talk) 20:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it is confusing. It's also unnecessary and not in line with process. For reference it might be helpful to read Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Is there a primary topic?. What am I advocating (response to User:Jza84's request at Talk:Sunderland, Tyne and Wear#Disambiguation of cites)? I'm advocating no more of this disambiguation for other locations, and maybe the reversal of what's happened with the Sunderland article. The reasons are as follows: If you were to say to the man in the street "Sunderland", what do think would first come into his mind? The local government area known as the City of Sunderland; hardly! One of the two parliamentary constituencies bearing the name of the city; not very likely. HMS Sunderland; probably not. Someone called Sunderland; only if he knew someone of that name. No, almost certainly it would be the city in northeast England that first sprung into his mind. Therefore this would be the primary topic, as per the link above. However, don't just take common sense for it. Let's carry out some sort of analysis to back up this claim. According to guidelines we should consider page traffic, inward links and Google Books to help us decide what's best (Google Books would be a difficult analysis in this case becasue the various topics are very closely related). Before looking at the Sunderland case it might be helpful to review the stats I've provided here, which relate to other areas. It is obvious from these page view stats that generally speaking readers are far more interested in the main conurbation than any other entity bearing the same name. In the case of Carlisle, the apparent exception to this trend is easily explained by the format of the disambiguation page. Readers looking for anything about Carlisle are taken to the disambiguation page. Have a look at it; you'll see that right at the top we have an outdented link called City of Carlisle. I would suggest that most people wanting to read about what they consider to be the city of Carlisle, i.e., the conurbation of that name, would immediately jump to that link (and then be frustrated to find that the article they went to was only of limited use).
So what about the specific case of Sunderland? Here are some facts we might use to analyse the situation, as recommended in the guidelines:
* Sunderland (conurbation), Oct 2009 hits - 10137, inward links - about 1300
* City of Sunderland, Oct 2009 hits - 1670, inward links - about 490
Again, these figures speak for themselves. Some inward links may be incorrect, but the trend is very apparent. It's so obvious that the conurbation should be the primary topic, with all else on a disambiguation page, that I'm amazed we are even having this debate; there should have been no change to the previous situation. The disambiguation has been carried out without any analysis of the situation, and on the basis of what would appear to be the preferences, forcefully put, of a single editor. Finally I draw your attention to the comment made above, which admirably sums up what our priorities should be. "We need to remember that Wikipedia is written to explain things for people who don't know the subject, not for the intellectual satisfaction of those who are experts." The latter point is what's happened here, without a shadow of a doubt. As for the argument that we a "forcing" readers to a certain article and that it is POV to do so; that’s bizarre! LevenBoy (talk) 15:16, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I find this lengthy post pretty weak in terms of evidence. What on earth are the hits meant to prove other than that we need disambiguation? If the settlement is receiving so much traffic, that is because of a chance arrangement in 2004 that placed it in the slot that hold's the commonname! If the cities had taken preference, would you be arguing the same? Look at the traffic for the Salford or Carlisle pages - each entity recieves a more balanced amount of traffic.
There are several benefits of the proposal:
  1. This is more inline with WP:NPOV - I find it odd that we force primacy of the settlement on the reader when there is a clear case for legitimate disambiguation.
  2. We can avoid confusion to both readers and editors about city status immediately (see Salford as an example of good practice), an issue which causes distruption and edit wars from time-to-time.
  3. Readers can select which definition of the place they want.
  4. Disambiguation also allows the benefit of having non-English usage of settlement names to be shown.
  5. In the case of Westminster, we can include terms that readers may be looking for about parliament etc.
--Jza84 |  Talk  20:42, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I see some arguments about how some articles should be merged and I would highly recommend starting a discussion at the talk page of WP:UKDISTRICTS, which deals with this exact thing. However, these *moves* are not intended to split or merge any articles. We've recently had a lengthy argument at Talk:Leeds about how "Leeds" primarily means the local government district, and now here we learn that "Sunderland" primarily means the settlement. Different people, different priorities, different ideas of primacy; and no solution will ever please all of them. We should focus our energy on making concise and useful disambiguation pages that direct the reader to the correct article. That, and fix all inbound links. MRSC (talk) 05:51, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I did post at WP:UKDISTRICTS, but nobody replied to me there!
In truth though, how we divide up our articles and what we call them are two halves of the same question: how do we arrange our content in a way that makes sense to our users? Part of the problem here is that we have essentially the same issue being debated in far too many different places (I got here through an absent-minded early morning comment on the Talk:Sunderland page).
As a good common sense starting point however, I'd suggest that having the names of major British cities pointing to disambiguation pages is a very bad thing to be avoided if at all possible. Similarly, users shouldn't be expected to master extremely subtle geographical distinctions before they can even begin to read an article on the well-known subject they're looking for. Subtle distinctions are things that the articles should explain to users after the users have found them, they should be information, not barriers to information. JimmyGuano (talk) 22:09, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Regarding the issue of primacy, when you talk of "different people" are you referring to editors or readers? I ask because the emphasis should be on readers, and readers will not be concerned about primacy, they merely wish to get to the right article, first time, ideally without a disambiguation page. In the light of this could you consider the stats I've presented and which have been dismissed by Jza84. They appear to show that on average, generally speaking, the articles about conurbations attract about 10 times more visits than articles about government districts. Yet another example of this can be found at Canterbury. It's significant that this is the case where there is no intermediate disambiguation page to add confusion to the mix - and this applies to the majority of English city articles. Where there is a disambiguation page the hit count is much closer between conurbation and district, so maybe (probably) the disambiguation page has something to do with this. It seems highly likely that the disambiguation page in these cases (Salford, Carlisle and to a lesser extent, Lancaster) is interfereing with the readers's ability to correctly choose an article. Again, I recommend that we have no more of this disambiguation. Primacy should be awarded to the most important article, and the readers are telling us it's the conurbation that is the most important; we should accept this. LevenBoy (talk) 11:33, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
My lord! LevenBoy, they only get more traffic because they are the common name!!!!! Ireland recieves double the traffic of the Republic of Ireland, because people searching for a country called "Ireland" are taken to an article about an island called "Ireland"! That does not indicate that most people are most interested in the island! Your stats have no meaning!
Let's turn it on its head: Carlisle gets 6k page views a month. City of Carlisle and Carlisle, Cumbria get 4k page views a month. What does that tell you? That most readers are interested in a dab page Carlisle? No. It tells you that 6k viewers go to the dab page; rougly half are interested in one topic, half another. There is likely a cross over of views (1k) of those who read both articles. It's clear that all 6k do not want a particular version. It actually supports disambiguation! --Jza84 |  Talk  12:29, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Well we'll just have to agree to differ on this. I've presented evidence to substantiate my assertions, of the type recommended by the guidelines. You, on the other hand, have presented no evidence to back up your assertions. There is no consensus for further disambiguation of the type carried out with Sunderland, so until such time as consensus is achieved, if it ever is, I would not expect to see similar changes to other articles. LevenBoy (talk) 16:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
This is really counter-productive and stonewalls the rationale. A blind objection, not grounded in evidence, certainly does not trump common sense or halt progress - therefore you should expect further changes. You're basing your argument on one single piece of flawed evidence about volumes of traffic to particular titles. It is fundamentally flawed, confused, and wrong. I really don't understand what your point is; that more page views equates to the status quo? Or something else? Because it definately doesn't come close to what your saying about readers and interests. What should happen to the Georgia page then?
Now you're asking for me to present evidence. Evidence for what? We've been through this at Talk:Sunderland, Tyne and Wear where your point about more traffic = more interest were nullified. --Jza84 |  Talk  18:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I've never heard of disambiguation pages interfereing with the readers's ability to correctly choose an article. I can't see how that is even possible. MRSC (talk) 18:08, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Let's take an example then. There are three different ways of delineating a Primary Urban Area - by Ward, by Local Authority or by "Tract" (a rather obscure measure that TBH I don't quite understand). The three different ways of defining them give very different results - the Primary Urban Area of Stoke-on-Trent is much bigger by some definitions than others, for example.
There are two ways we could represent this on Wikipedia.
If we were designing a database to represent this situation we'd probably choose the second model - strictly one logical entity per real-world entity - as this would make the more elegant data structure. As we're designing an encyclopedia, however, and the most important consideration is not modelling facts, but communinicating them in an easy and intelligable way to users who may have very little understanding of the subject, I'd suggest that the first way of structuring our coverage of Primary Urban Areas is the more effective, even if it is the less logically purist. Somebody who knew very little about the subject who landed on the dab page in model two, would probably think "I don't know which one I want, I don't really understand what any of them are yet - I need to read the article and understand the subject before I can make my chioce, not after". This, for me, is an example of a dab page obstructing rather than facilitating the understanding of the topic concerned.
Now to take the example of Sunderland. I can entirely understand how, to users like MRSC and Jza, with their encyclopedic knowledge of UK geography, the prospect of having an article for each of the possible definitions is satisfyingly precise way of modelling the reality they know so intricately. However, to a random wikipedia user who may have just heard Sunderland mentioned in passing in a conversation and may not know whether it's a town, a village, a county or a suburb of London, I'd suggest the differing definitions are sufficiently similar for it to be valuable to have a single article about the "place" (to choose a deliberately vague word), that then explained precisely and accurately what that place meant in terms of local authority, urban area, the extent to which it was or wasn't a city etc etc. There could still be a page for each definition for users wanting one, which could be linked from a dab page from a hatnote on the main page, but there wouldn't be any need for users to master complex and subtle definitions if all they're trying to find out is (for example) whether Sunderland has a catholic cathedral, or what its main railway station's called.
London is a very good example. There are a trillion different ways of defining it ranging from the tiny City of London to the huge London commuter belt, but I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting there shouldn't be an article at London, are they? People who want a precise definition can find one, people who want something other than that, don't find the need for a precise definition an obstruction to finding what they do want.
Where splitting and disambiguation is required (and it would clearly be wrong to take the above argument to an absurd extreme), I don't see why we need a single catch-all convention - isn't it all covered by Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Is there a primary topic?? It seems to be obvious that in some cases (eg Sandwell) the LA is far more significant than any other use and should occupy the primary name with hatnotes (Sandwell the tiny industrial area between Handsworth and West Bromwich isn't even significant enough to have an article yet), while in other cases (eg Canterbury), the LA is far less significant than what is in this case a very distinct and notable urban area, which accounts for less than 1/3 of the LA's population. In other cases it may be much less clear and we may conclude that having a dab page is indeed the least worst option.
Sorry this is such an essay. The wider debate here has got quite bad tempered at time (looks at Talk:Leeds in fear). Hopefully this clearly explains my strongly-held opinion in a way that respects the fact that other people may legitimately hold equally strongly-held but different ones, and furthers constructive debate.
JimmyGuano (talk) 10:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
That was very well put JimmyGuano and I completely agree. Articles should be for the benefit of readers - not for a small handful of (very good) editors who have an extensive and almost obsessive knowledge in geographic definitions. Its funny because all these split-method articles, rather than aid understanding, really just cause unneccesary confusion. Imo, an article about just "sunderland" is all that is needed for example, that discusses both the place, and the district local authority. Bringing users to a DAB page that lists 3 different versions of what is essentially the same thing but disccused from different perspectives imo only adds confusion. If they were very different topics then fine, but when one article is about sunderland the place, and the other article discusses that very same place but from a wider district/government/local authority perspective, why the need for two seperate articles? Why not one all encompassing article, that has summary sections with links to the full section, just like all other places. Even looking at City of Sunderland now, it is identical to Government of Birmingham for example example in its function, which is a subsection within birmingams main single article page.
A single article on a topic that has branches to the various definitions allows people in one paragraph to get an understanding of the different interpretations by tackling any ambiguiety head on, rather than an unfriendly dab page. Foreign readers looking up sunderland dont want 3 different places called sunderland where they are unsure of which one they want, they just want to know about sunderland.. where they are told it is a city with a wider metropolitan population of 280k at district level, and a core urban population of 177k.
Ultimately, all this discussion is about our personal opinions on how these cities should be presented. If we were to ignore personal opinion and look objectively then actually the answer or resolution to this issue is quite simple really...Given that wiki policy says articles should be written for the benefit and understanding of readers not editors, then if we want a uniform policy as some seem insistant upon (which i dont think there needs to be anyway, it should be done on a city by city basis) we should use the way that doesnt cause confusion, and it has been shown that virtually all articles that are split have caused confusion with endless discussions on their talk pages, whilst no combined articles have ever done anything of the sort. --Razorlax (talk) 14:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Try looking at Carlisle then. I've explained above how the format of that page is likely to divert people to the City of Carlisle article. As for Jza84 - no it is not stonewalling and how many more times have I got to tell you that I've presented evidence, it's just that you won't accept it. You are really trying my patience, and I'm normally a very patient person. You are the one whose views are fundamentally flawed, confused and wrong, and it appears that no matter what anyone says, or however valid their argument is, you won't budge. And what in heavens name has Georgia got to do with it? Georgia, USA and Georgia, the country, are obviously of equal importance so a disambiguation page is correct. In the case of Sunderland who, other than a minority of readers who might work for the local authority, will be remotely interested in an article like City of Sunderland, a concept dreamed up by bureaucrats, that will no doubt at some point in the future be abolished? It really does beggar belief that anyone could think that an article like that should be placed on an equal footing with an article about a real place. Why do you think the page hits for Greater Manchester are much lower than for Manchester? Could it just possibly be that fewer people are interested in GM than are interested in Manchester; yes, I think so. If you want to pursue your crusade of disambiguation then you’re going to have to get broad consensus, and that's for sure. In the mean time, I'm considering sounding out editors at Sunderland, Tyne and Wear about the current dog's breakfast we now have in relation to that article and whether it might be appropriate to reverse your disambiguation (with consensus, of course). LevenBoy (talk) 19:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
If a disambiguation page is not doing its job properly, the correct course of action is to edit it. Aside from this 'anti-government' rant, there is a rough consensus above to carry out these changes. MRSC (talk) 19:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
A rough consensus?? And what might that be then? You need a broad consensus and I see no consensus of any sort, rough, broad or otherwise. Several editors have registered their concerns and that's sufficient for the moment to stop this in its tracks until, or if, we can get some sort of agreement about the wider issue of relative article importance. However, rant (if it was a rant) over! One thing that did occur to me was that we could slightly re-work one of the disambiguation pages (suggest Carlisle) so that the City article does not have the prominence it currently enjoys (outdented, with the actual place a subordinate), and maybe a bit of rewording. We might try this for a month to see if it has any effect on page traffic. What do you think? LevenBoy (talk) 19:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see several editors had a discussion and brought together a variety of views. Through the course of the discussion a consensus was formed. The Carlisle disambiguation page needs to be edited to ensure it complies with layout detailed at Wikipedia:Disambiguation, that should be the overriding objective. MRSC (talk) 19:55, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

A quick scan of the above discussion shows several editors unhappy with the proposal, or with reservations. There is no consensus. As for the Calisle disambiguation, I'll put an idea forward at Talk:Carlisle. LevenBoy (talk) 20:13, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

This discussion does not have the authority to make name changes to various articles without wider consultation. There are far too many objections, and far too few overall participants in this discussion to make such fundamental changes. We shouldn't be using disambiguation as a default position if there is any doubt, we should be considering the evidence. This cannot be done on a uniform basis, but rather should be done article by article, where the evidence can be properly considered. In this situation, where there are generally 2 alternatives, I do not see the problem with hatnotes to the alternative article. That way it's still only one click away from the other article if the reader had gone to the wrong one, but those who were wanting the article get straight to it. The titles do not disambiguate one from the other - Salford, Greater Manchester could just as easily be about the administrative area as the settlement. If anything, it makes more sense for it to be about the administrative area, given that its disambiguator is another administrative area. As for evidence - the Leeds article had about 10 times the number of hits as the City of Leeds one, before they were merged, which is a pretty good indicator that that is what most people were after. The other problem is the names. City of Foo implies, an actual settlement, not some arbitrary administrative area that the good old 1974 reorganisation gave us. The city status thing in the UK is very peculiar, which few people in the country understand, let alone worldwide. People getting taken to a disambig page and seeing City of Foo at the top will likely think that is talking about a settlement, without reading what the explanation says. If we are serious in our aim to be helping readers, we should be thinking about changing the district article to something like Foo (metropolitan district). This makes it clear that it is different to what most people think of as a city. Quantpole (talk) 22:20, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The correct name of the cities is the formation "City of Foo", as established by charter. The formation "PLACE, CEREMONIAL COUNTY" is how we disambiguate our settlements (per WP:PLACE). If you disagree with that formulation, then fine, but that's out of scope of the proposal. And, really, this thing about traffic is definately the craziest thing I've ever, ever seen on Wikipedia: When you search for the US state of Georgia, what do you search? -- Georgia. No one in their right mind would add the brackets and US state in the search! This is precisely why we should have disambiguation. That Bradford is occupied by the settlement is like the Georgia page being occupied by the US state, then claiming that because Georgia gets the most page views that must be what readers were "most interested in". It's arbitary, crazy and not neutral!
We've got users saying that people want the city, users who say people want the settlement, users who say disambiguation pages confuse readers, users bizarrely saying that traffic equates to interest - you're all opposing a reasonable, fair, workable and beneficial system but all completely disagree with one another, and only based on a POV whim. The point is that when, for instance, the national media says "Oldham", it likely means the borough (infact it did it tonight on the news about the son of the Lesley Molseed murderer - "Shaw, in Oldham"), but when the local press say "Oldham", they mean a smaller and specific place. Thus, "Oldham" is ambiguous. The same applies to cities, but more so in that too many editors (and thus readers) think that "Sunderland is a city, in the city of Sunderland". A complete mess. This will be my final plea for logic to previal. Please, please reconsider all the factors, read the points by those who support it and their reasons why and come round to this system as good for Wikipedia. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:44, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Whenever news is produced about health outcomes, income inequality, demographic change, crime etc. it usually refers to the local government district. This is because most data is produced at that level. For this reason scholarly research is more likely to be interested in the districts. This is at least my experience. When I did some research on health outcomes I found an outlier for the City of Carlisle. The district that is, not the settlement. If I had been guided to the Carlisle article automatically, it would have been to the wrong area. Now, I realise I am smart enough to work out the distinction, but our readers will not necessarily natively understand the nuances of UK political geography and that is why we have disambiguation to provide clarity where there is ambiguity. MRSC (talk) 07:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
And how does the dab page help in your example? The distinction is clear in the lead and has a hatnote. As I explain below, this is clearer and less confusing than getting led to a dab page, where people still may not realise the difference and just click on the top example. Quantpole (talk) 09:03, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that's likely. The dab pages are pretty clear, and the volumes of traffic each are reciving are showing a much more balanced selection than before. It's also not necessarily so clear in the lead and hat note. Because these pages are occupied by a settlement, they're regularly editted by annoymous ips (and even the occational new, registered users) so that they say things like "The city of Carlisle is a city in the city of Carlisle district" and such. Then nobody spots the difference for a while, and the district articles become neglected - so much so that users don't see their point, and push for a merger. Then we have the unhelpful situation of all the settlements in a city having an article, apart from the main one. This is despite the fact that the districts were divisions of land helpful for administration, planning and raising taxes then given a name with reference to the human geography (Blackburn with Darwen, Brighton and Hove). Then users start to think that a "city" denotes a large settlement of itself, but it's not so. A "city" in the UK is merely an honorific title for these divisions.
If one thinks that the dab page is confusing, say on Salford, then by all means we can discuss how to change it and make it clearer, but certainly the automatic assumption that the majority of readers want the settlement over the district has no basis, and the split in traffic per day, week or month definitively shows that not all readers wanted the settlement afterall (which should be obvious to us). I do find this odd, Quantpole, from a user who opposed this system for Leeds, arguing that the settlements are no longer grounded in fact since the LGA74, and that "Leeds" definitively means the district. --Jza84 |  Talk  12:07, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
That is a complete misrepresentation of what I have said regarding Leeds, so no wonder you find it odd. I don't contend that the traffic means that everyone wanted the settlement, but for Leeds it seems that most people did. More people are probably going to the district than before because it's at the top of the dab page, it's called City of Foo, and the settlement is indented for some reason, making it look like a minor relation to the district.
We can't look just at the dab page, but also the names of the places. There are two entities, both commonly called Foo, one is the district and one the settlement. Dismabiguating the articles by calling them City of Foo, and Foo, Fooshire, doesn't dismabiguate between them. The settlement is commonly called a city (whether that is technically correct or not), and both are in Fooshire, so the names do not offer any disambiguation. This is intimately related to the whole issue of disambiguation so is not something to consider separately. Quantpole (talk) 13:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Just because something is ambiguous does not mean disambiguation is the default position. And how you can say the names of the places is a separate issue is absurd. You are suggesting changing numerous names to fit in with this system, so I don't see how that cannot be a consideration. I am well aware of what the legal name is for the boroughs, I contend that it is stupidly confusing and does not disambiguate, particularly for the vast majority of people who are not aware of the mess of city status in the UK. Names are often more important in disambiguation than disambig pages, considering how many inbound links will go directly to a page. It should be clear what the article is about. How you can say this is a separate issue is beyond me. And yes, page views are frequently used as part of the evidence for primary topic, amongst other considerations. You have so far not done anything to demonstrate that there isn't a primary topic, but instead relied on assertion and personal preference. Georgia is a good example incidentally - there the number of views is split about evenly. The official name of the US state is State of Georgia, whereas what is being used (Georgia (U.S. state)) is actually descriptive and helpful to the readers.
Going to a dab page in the instance of settlements vs districts is actually more confusing than going to subject page straight off. Take Sunderland for example. The first sentence says:
Sunderland (pronounced /ˈsʌndɚlənd/ ( listen) or /ˈsʌn(d)lən/) lies at the heart of the City of Sunderland, a metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. It is situated at the mouth of the River Wear.
It also has a hatnote directing people to the district if that is what they are after. That is less confusing than sending people to a dab page, and the very first line makes it clear what the difference is. This is a benefit to people, whereas the first thing people read on the dab page is:
The City of Sunderland, a metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, England
People are lazy - unless they are aware of what a metropolitan borough is (which is doubtful), they will just tend to click on that, especially as it starts "City of...". Can you tell me what is so wrong with the hatnote system - same level of inconvenience to some readers, no inconvenience to many - as opposed to inconvenience to all?
Your example of Shaw and Crompton is your opinion on the place also shows your own POV. How do you know that when the local media talk about Oldham they are only talking about the central bit, whereas when national media mention it they mean the borough? That is only your interpretation of it. Quantpole (talk) 09:03, 20 October 2009 (UTC) Comment refactored - wasn't meant to be an insult. Quantpole (talk) 13:03, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
This isn't grounded in an useful fact. It's irksome. Where is your evidence that "People are lazy" and that it is "doubful" they know what a metropolitan borough is and that it is less confusing to send them to a settlement that calls itself a city.
Then you have the audacity to say that I have POV on Shaw and Crompton? Are you serious? How on earth can I even spin that as a POV? I know when the local media (and local history books) talk about the town, because I live here, have written the articles, read the books. I know when the national media say "Shaw in Oldham" because I heard or read it myself. If this is what you think a POV is then, really, we've all got no chance. I'm up against people who don't know the difference. Are you saying that those featured articles are based on POV? And if I cite my sources about the two distinct entities, then what? No doubt you'll ignore it and find something new..... yep, been here before at Talk:Leeds, and all we get is bad articles and bad POV. I'm incredibly frustrated by how bad these articles are, and that more effort has to be spend combatting bad science than writing up more GAs and FAs. --Jza84 |  Talk  12:14, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Can you please stop asserting that Leeds is an incredibley bad article as if it is fact. It is just your personal opinion. The article was in split state for 4 whole years (whilst lacking a single source to back up the lead despite repeated requess), and in that 4 years, ample oppurtunity was there for it to improve on your watch, yet it remained in a worse state than ever, with very few people wanting to contribute efforts to what was a confusing and misleading article. Its the same with the Bradford article, and other articles you have pushed into splitting. The majority of contributions whilst Leeds was in split state was from different people weekly, editing what they saw as confusion. Since Leeds was merged at the beginning of this year not a single edit whatsoever has occured that has arisen from people being confused. On the contrary the article has improved and grown organicly from editors contributing enthusiaticly and positively - in stark contrast to the deadly state that existed prior. Sheffield has FA status too and is in a merged article. Whether an article is merged or not doesnt bear any relation to its potential to be FA. Good articles can exist with either system - the only difference being that if the wrong system is used which people find confusing, it discourages editors as was shown when Leeds existed in split state. --Razorlax (talk) 18:32, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:KENT member commenting. Canterbury does not need to be disambiguated. The use of the word to denote the city is the primary useage. City of Canterbury is the article about the council that has responsibility for the city and surrounding area, something completely different. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjroots (talk • contribs) 15:40, 20 October 2009


As a general point I think the 'place' should be the primary article, and thus I would disagree with the change whereby 'Sunderland' does not go direct to the place but to a dab page. I think this should be done on a place by place basis though, because as pointed out above, there may be times when it is appropriate for a dab. The separate question is whether the primary 'Sunderland' article should have a hatnote pointing to other uses of the name, or whether these are needed at all i.e. could the text for 'City of Sunderland' not just be merged back into 'Sunderland, Tyne and Wear' - although I again I feel this is a case by case issue. Eldumpo (talk) 12:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I too think the 'place' should be the primary article with a hatnote to a 'place'(disambiguation)page. The 'place' article can then, if it's appropriate, explain and link to other entities bearing the name of the place. We have to remember that a lot, possibly the majority, of readers are outside the UK and will be unfamiliar with the niceties of our administrative geography. --Harkey (talk) 10:21, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Conclusions?

Not sure where we got to with this? There seems to be quite a heavy weight of opinion against User:Jza84's proposal, but not really anything that could be described as a consensus for anything. I guess the changes to the Sunderland articles ought to be reverted. Should everything else be taken up on individual talk pages? JimmyGuano (talk) 21:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I've not heard a convincing argument for reverting Sunderland (or admittedly for 'converting' any others). So, I would say leave it as it is, but do no more. Related to this was a discussion at Talk:Durham (district) which led on to a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about districts#Naming. Based on this, I might (if I find time/mental stamina) come up with a proposal to rename the districts rather than the settlements in these troublesome city articles. MRSC (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject England to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject England/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 04:17, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Northern Counties

Could someone take a look at talk:Northern Counties? There's a discussion about what the content of the page should be, for example whether it should be a dab page. Nev1 (talk) 18:47, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Where should "Lord Byron" redirect?

To the poet "George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron" alone? Or to "Baron Byron" (of which title each holder has been addressed as "Lord Byron" in his own turn)? Currently under discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#Lord Byron. — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 01:43, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

John McAslan photo needed

If someone could take a photo of this architect's work that would be a nice addition to their article. I'm on th ewrong side of the pond. ChildofMidnight (talk) 23:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

When searching for John McAslan, flickr turns up three pictures; this is the only useful one. There's also this free photo of 25 North Colonnade. If you've got more info on what exactly McAslan & Partners are doing at Manchester Metropolitan University, some members of WP:GM might be able to help. Nev1 (talk) 23:13, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

UK

Hi, I wonder if anyone can point me at the discussion that we had about using the constituent countries rather than UK on articles? I am unsure which project it was on. Keith D (talk) 18:01, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[6] - this is the bulk of the original discussion/straw poll/consensus that we came up with on this topic. This is a subject that periodically comes up on UK geography articles, and this solution is probably less than ideal, but offends the fewest people. To summarise the current consensus, and to avoid as much POV as possible on this prickly topic, we were using both Home nations and sovereign state e.g. Berkshire, England, UK. To tackle POV pushing, it was also agreed to generally try and stop/revert editors batch converting large numbers articles to exclude Home nations, or to exclude UK, for POV reasons, which was happening a lot at one point. 159.92.6.201 (talk) 12:57, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
There is alot of information at Countries of the United Kingdom. I know there was also alot of debate in the Wales and Scotland article talk pages. BritishWatcher (talk) 18:03, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

To the Wonderful Wikipedians Here, on a related topic, I was recently trying to edit WP:MOSDAB#Places to show the top-level nation name just like the actual WP:DAB for Kimberley does. Some quickly verifiable research on modern English usage of the term "England" may be found in WT:MOSDAB/Archive 39#England. I would like to hear what viewpoints are espoused by editors on this project, WP:England. :)--Thecurran (talk) 13:18, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It is exactly what I would expect, use one of the 4 countries {England, Northern ireland, Scotland or Wales) rather than UK when dealing with places. Keith D (talk) 16:19, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Why should we give WP:UNDUE weight to the UK and the UK alone and claim WP:NPOV when that clearly contradicts our own policies and the conventions of international communications, diplomatic, and political bodies like the EU[1], IPU[2], ISO[3], ITU[4], UN[5],UPU[6], the UN List of Non-Self-Governing Territories[7], the Internet's ccTLD[8], the closely related ISO 3166-2[9], and the one specific to this occasion, ISO 3166-2:GB[10] even though much of the Anglosphere is already confused about the difference between Britain, England, Great Britain, and the UK? :)--Thecurran (talk) 23:25, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Because we follow general usage among English speakers rather than some orderly system or an international standard. Hans Adler 23:49, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
I actually checked general usage among English speakers with a WP:GOOGLETEST. You can read it at WT:MOSDAB/Archive 39#England. It does not refutes that English speakers usually can distinguish between England and the UK. :)--Thecurran (talk) 09:47, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Based on what you have said elsewhere I guess you meant the opposite of what your last sentence says.
I don't think that your Google tests shows what you think. Consider this:
Constituent country Population
England 50 million
Scotland 5 million
Wales 3 million
Northern Ireland 2 million
Clearly the UK is dominated by England, which makes up 5/6 of its population, and even more so by Great Britain (England + Scotland + Wales). That's why there is no separate English parliament, while there are parliaments for the other 3 countries. It's not necessarily a sign of confusion if people use the words "England", "Great Britain", "Britain" and "United Kingdom" synonymously in situations where they don't care about the difference. This is very similar to "European" as an abbreviation for "pertaining to the European Union/the Eurozone/the Schengen area". Look at this. The page also exists in a German version, which doesn't even so much as give a hint that the meeting was only for ministers of EU member states; it talks about "die europäischen Minister" ("the European ministers"). The translators at the European Union know very well that not all European countries are member states. But they also know that a German-speaking audience won't be confused if they use "European" as a synonym for "EU". Hans Adler 12:22, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for catching my mistake. It was careless of me to post so hastily. I understand what you mean about Europe but, considering that there was no unified polity called Europe before the creation of the EC/EU, it is not quite analogous. European is now the proper demonym for citizens of the EU but, beforehand, the boundaries of Europe varied between experts who drew different lines from the Bosphorus, via the Caucasus to the Arctic Ocean and may or may not have included the British Isles or Iceland. Language differences between the common meaning of America allow one to call a US citizen American and a citizen of the Americas, Pan-American in English but estadounidense and americano/a, respectively, in Spanish, the most official language of the Americas, and an official one of the UN. England however has had the same boundaries for centuries and if you want to ignore the confusion when Wales and to a lesser extent, Cornwall, became part of the Kingdom of England, England's boundaries were set millennia ago.
The reality among English speakers is unfortunately that the further one is distanced from the UK, the more likely it is for them to be confused about the distinction between England and the UK. If you are outside of the UK, try asking the average non-university-educated person on the street what the distinction is or even what the capitals of Cornwall, England, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the United Kingdom are. I have often done this test and even university-educated people only a few generations away from being British get the distinction wrong, cf. WT:MOSDAB/Archive 39#Arbitrary break.
Please also consider those users in English that are speakers of other languages. For example in Japan, the nation with the second highest GDP (after only the US), ja:イギリス (igirisu), is an approximation of the word English in Japanese but actually is the common term for the UK. Also consider that many English speakers say Holland when they really mean the Netherlands. This confusion is most likely the closest to that between England and the UK. Even though in Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation and formerly the Dutch East Indies, the largest Dutch colony, id:Belanda is an approximation of the word nl:Holland but actually is the common term for the Netherlands. It is not prudent of us to treat England as a separate nation when that will confuse foreign speakers. :)--Thecurran (talk) 23:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I doubt that the use of United Kingdom rather than England would, in itself, create all that many edit wars. However, the decision to use the constituent countries rather than United Kingdom largely arose as a consensus to stop the endless edit wars raging on articles about Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where nationalists objected most strongly to the use of United Kingdom. That, in turn meant that many English editors could see no reason why their country should be blanked while the other constituent countries were not. Cornwall is even more complicated, as the consensus reached among Cornish editors was to use Cornwall, United Kingdom rather than Cornwall or Cornwall, England, so as to avoid edit wars over Cornish nationalism. The present system does largely seem to work, and is probably best left as is. Skinsmoke (talk) 07:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Does it not matter that even though we consistently rank among the highest echelons of global search engine hits, we are intentionally misguiding our readers? What is wrong with simply following an international norm like the ISO_3166-2:UK#Country.2C_province.2C_principality and writing:
Xxx, GB-CON or Xxx, Cornwall, UK
Xxx, GB-ENG or Xxx, England, UK
Xxx, GB-NIR or Xxx, Northern Ireland, UK
Xxx, GB-SCT or Xxx, Scotland, UK
Xxx, GB-WLS or Xxx, Wales, UK
Surely doing so would neither negate the views of nationalists nor portray untruths to the global audience. Considering that during the fortnight plus prior to your remark, no one had disagreed with the previous remark, it neither seems contentious nor licentious.
Warmest Regards, :)--thecurran let it off your chest 08:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Cornish nationalists must be overruled. "England, UK" / "Scotland, UK", "Northern Ireland, UK" / "Wales, UK" are all good. Cornwall is not be treated as a special case. It is a county of England, nothing else. To treat Cornwall in a special way in line with the 4 Countries of the United Kingdom is grossly misleading and confusing. BritishWatcher (talk) 10:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
There is no need to use UK in any of the above, that avoids any such situations. The country is sufficient dab to know where we are speaking about the UK is superfluous. Keith D (talk) 23:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Wonderful User:Keith D, you are a celebrated admin, a significant editor of good articles, and an especially strong force within projects pertaining to topics throughout England. I commend your ardour and selfless efforts. I assume since you started this talk section that you must have read WT:MOSDAB/Archive 39#England by now and confirmed for yourself the validity of the WP:SETs therein. Perhaps you might agree that most global English speakers have not yet developed their geopolitical knowledge with the benefits you have had with your obviously intimate connection with England. I am sure that with all of your years volunteered in "tireless work creating, editing and improving Wikipedia's coverage of Britain" you would not want someone who came to Wikipedia seeking true knowledge to go away falsely believing that England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland are wholly disparate entities not together in any sort of union and that the UK is of little to no importance. Please show me if and how I have erred here and whether or not I am coming across as a WP:TROLL; if so I apologize in advance.
Warmest Regards, :)--thecurran let it off your chest 01:20, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Due to archiving, the discussion links WT:MOSDAB#England & WT:MOSDAB#Arbitrary Break above have been redirected to WT:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/Archive 39#England & WT:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/Archive 39#Arbitrary Break. Warmest Regards, :)--thecurran