Talk:Reading (district)

Recent split

With respect to the recent split (which went against long-established convention on this issue, not that it's necessarily bad just for that reason), I ask people to read my question on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_subdivisions about this issue and invite comments. Morwen - Talk 23:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, if the article is kept split, then the scope of this article needs definining. It should be Reading (borough) to be consistent with other such articles: also, does it cover Reading as a borough since the start of recorded history? Do we impose an arbritrary cutoff in 1974 even though no border changes took place then? etc. Morwen - Talk 23:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to say this is somewhat of a symbolic split. All of the content is still in the other article and the body text is just as borough focussed.

This edit marked: "Changes to make the article about the town, following the creation of Reading (district) for the Unitary Authority" changes the infobox, opening line and category. The text of the article is unaltered.

As there hasn't really been a proper split I am minded to put things back while discussions take place. MRSC 06:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was about to concur, at least temporarily, but I see you have already done it. And it should never have been called district (Reading isn't a District; it is a Borough and a Unitary Authority). In the longer term I'm not so sure.

As a Reading resident, I know that in practice there are several different defintions of Reading in play, and you have only to read the letters column of the local papers to know that many people talk about Reading meaning a much bigger area than the borough. The fact that the self-same people oppose expansion of the borough for political and/or tax reasons is neither here nor there as far as WP is concerned. So what we have ended up with is a well defined, but for many purposes misleading, borough boundary, and some very ill-defined but often more realistic other definitions.

In principal, I think the best way to handle that is (as policy suggests) with a single article and plenty of text to explain the situation. What gets in the way of this solution is that ever so definative, but ever so misleading, info box that immediately draws attention to itself but brooks no definition other than the legalistic borough boundary. Perhaps the correct solution is to modify the info box to correspond to the article, or even drop the thing altogether (hint: I'm no fan of infoboxes). If that cannot be done, then I do think we need to consider segregating the infobox into an article that actually matches what is about, which means a seperate article for the borough. -- Chris j wood 14:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, how about moving the infobox downwards? The thing is, Reading's borders have been the same since 1919 (not in fact 1911 as I said elsewhere, but close). What exactly would Reading (borough) be about? Reading as a borough since 1835 when it was reformed? Reading as a county borough since 1889? Reading under its current boundaries since 1919? Reading as a non-metropolitan district since 1974? Reading as a unitary authority since 1998? Morwen - Talk 14:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]