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Proposal for things all counties should have

I think this Wikiproject should have a few guidelines for what UK county articles should contain. Here are a few ideas to get things started:

Introduction:

  • Location in country (mandatory)
  • County Town with coordinates in intro (mandatory)
  • Bordering counties and waters (mandatory)
  • One paragraph summary of interesting or famous facts (mandatory)
  • Major cities and unitary authorites (recomended)

Sections:

  • History (mandatory)
  • Settlements (mandatory)
  • Geology (recomended)
  • Demographics (recomended)
  • Industry/economy (recomended)
  • References (mandatory)
  • With optional culture, education etc sections

A checklist like this would help people get an idea of what makes a good encyclopaedia article, and help get articles up to featured standard. Joe D (t) 18:40, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the "Industry/economy" section should always be called Economy as that's what it's called in the vast majority of articles
I'm also not sure of the county town and coordinates idea being mandatory, the co-ordinates of the county town seems to be too much information, they should be linked to from the article on the county town. There are also a few counties (well, ok, there's err.. Berkshire) which don't have any administrative centre as it only has unitary authorities. -- Joolz 18:39, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
There are also the six Metrpolitan counties which no longer have county councils. G-Man 20:42, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
The reason I suggested having coordinates of the county town is because I think coordinates are good basic data on location relative to the rest of the world, but the counties themselves are too large for coordinates to be useful. I'll leave this one out of the recomended guidelines until others have their say though. Joe D (t) 18:49, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Dont the county articles already have maps to show where they are?. There should probably be something about local government as well, i.e districts etc. G-Man 20:41, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Each county has a "list of places in.." page, many of which need much improvement, a while ago I made an effort to start all the pages and format them nicely etc., but it is obviously way too much effort for one person to actually finish the lists, let alone actually make articles for the places,. Anyway, they can be found at List of places in England (which links to NI, wales and scotland as well). thanks Bluemoose 12:54, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Black Mountains

Someone in the know should sort out the details of Black Mountains (Wales), Black Mountain (range), Wales and Black Mountains, Wales. There are a lot of links to the former Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Black_Mountains_(Wales) which should probably go to the latter. But the latter says that there is anoher range just as black that they maybe should link to. Rewards include:

  • Warm glow of satisfaction.
  • Er that's it

MeltBanana 20:03, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Just to thicken the mix, don't forget the singular Black Mountain. From Brecon Beacons, "In the east is another distinct range of hills called the Black Mountains, and in the west is a remote region known (confusingly) as the Black Mountain." Hours of fun.--Telsa 20:48, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've changed all the links from Black Mountains (Wales) to Black Mountains, Wales. If they are not about the mountains described in Black Mountains, Wales, that page will have to be turned into a disambiguation page, as we definitely shouldn't have two mountain ranges with the same name distinguished by punctuation alone (and geography articles tend to use commas rather than brackets anyway). Joe D (t) 21:18, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have a dream, a song to sing...

Ahem. Sorry been up too long, no sleep. I have an aim to fill out every county's List of places in... article so that all the places in that county are listed. the reason why I haven't is because I don't have a reliable resource for it. The only ones I have been able to do so far are List of places in Buckinghamshire, List of places in Cornwall and List of places in Northamptonshire. Just to confirm though I'm not aiming to write all the articles, just to provide the available red links. Does anyone know of a reliable resource? -- Francs2000 | Talk 30 June 2005 22:58 (UTC)

Just as an afterthought, what I used for Bucks was my own resources - I have a lot on Bucks history. For Northants and Cornwall I used a combination of the gazetteers at old-maps.co.uk and streetmap.co.uk. The latter method was extremely long and tedious. -- Francs2000 | Talk 30 June 2005 23:03 (UTC)
Oh, take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_UK_geography/tasks, I've made a table there listing each county with a checklist for ticking off when the "List of places.." lists are complete. I've completed the lists for Dorset and Somerset using the lists of parishes from the census data, and the tasks page also links to parish census data for Norfolk which can be imported. Joe D (t) 30 June 2005 23:26 (UTC)
I've added Bucks, Cornwall and Notts info. Joe D (t) 30 June 2005 23:30 (UTC)
Why is the list of places for Norhern Ireland based on traditional counties, the list of places for Wales based on unitary authorities, and the list of places for Scotland based on defunct regions? Surely to save having to refactor these lists every time there is a local government boundary change they should all be listed on traditional counties? Owain 1 July 2005 15:08 (UTC)

You know perfectly well why not. G-Man 2 July 2005 18:24 (UTC)

I know there is a reason why I did that but I can't remember what it was. I think it had something to do with how the areas were listed as current government areas in the respective country's parent article... -- Francs2000 | Talk 1 July 2005 22:20 (UTC)
I coped them from another page, probabaly List of places in the United Kingdom. Joe D (t) 2 July 2005 12:45 (UTC)

To answer the original question, for the County Durham stubs I made I used the Gazetteer of British Place Names, which claims to be the most comprehensive around and hasn't failed me yet. It's the work of the pro-traditional Association of British Counties, but gives information on a place's traditional, ceremonial and administrative counties, so it's no problem to use it if we are arranging things by ceremonial county. This leads me on to Owain's point. I realise I may be in a minority here, and I've tended to keep out of this argument when it's come up before, but I'd really much rather we did things by traditional counties, for guaranteed stability. I think we've arrived at the status quo somewhat arbitrarily. Because of 90s administrative changes and the creation of unitary authorities all over the place, many of the ceremonial counties with their origins in the 1974 reforms have no relevance anymore except for the obscure business of Lord-Lieutenancy. There are also anomalies all over the place, like Cleveland appearing in 1974 and then disappearing entirely in about 1996, ceremonial functions included. The constant chopping and changing of adminsitrative and to a lesser extent ceremonial boundaries is what makes me think the present arrangement of our coverage is untenable in the long run. We tend to concentrate on ceremonial and administrative divisions and their associated articles, but meanwhile our article on, say, Yorkshire is really short and neglected (I'd love to see it featured one day) because we treat it as effectively non-existent, instead prefering to talk about things like South Yorkshire (was created as administrative, is now ceremonial only) and the East Riding of Yorkshire (made a recent comeback as a ceremonial county, and as an administrative but with Hull taken out as a unitary). The decision to do the county articles the way they are must have been taken early in the history of Wikipedia, but we needn't stick with it. It might well take quite an effort to redo the county articles but something will have to happen with them eventually. The infoboxes and general structure are looking a bit dated for many of them. Meanwhile there are various other countries with more straightforward structures of local organisation that have impressive well-designed articles for municipalities and such on the English Wikipedia that put the UK's to shame. I don't feel particularly enthusiastic about trying to improve things when our county situation appears to be in a state of limbo. Either we should decide it's administrative counties that matter, and focus our efforts on them (in which case we end up saying silly things like "Derby isn't in Derbyshire") or we use the traditional counties as a reference frame and make them the basis for our county articles, with administrative and ceremonial differences noted of course. Up to now I've tended to think the best way of dealing with the situation in the case of individual town and village articles is to treat the three systems as seperate, and to say that somewhere is in such-and-such a county for traditional and ceremonial purposes, but in another one for administrative purposes, or it's in this one for traditional but was moved somewhere else for ceremonial and administrative purposes in 1974, but was later split off into a unitary authority which was subsequently abolished again, etc, etc. I've avoided POV-pushing by going along with the status quo for the County Durham stubs I did. There are villages on the southern side of Teesdale (traditionally in the North Riding of Yorkshire) I've categorised as villages in County Durham, places in "Tyne & Wear" (traditionally in Co Durham) I've left out as not being part of the county, and places in the districts of Hartlepool Darlington and Stockton I've categorised as Co Durham even though they are administered seperately by their respective unitary authorities, all according to Wikipedia's view of things. What gets me though is the inconsistency. We talk about places covered by unitary authorities as if they were part of various counties when as far as the state is concerned this is only for Lord-Lieutenancy. I do think ceremonial was a bad choice for our county structure. I would even prefer strict adherence to administrative boundaries, including unitary authorities and all the rest of it, but ultimately I think there is going to have to be a switch to arranging things by the traditional structure, so that our article on Yorkshire, to use the example again, is the one that matters, with the comings and goings of administrative and ceremonial divisions being noted in articles that talk solely about those functions, instead of us all having to write about absurdities like the "culture of Bath and North East Somerset", then having to rearrange everything when someone decides to redraw the map. Sorry about the length of the comment - there's more I could say on the matter but I've tried to restrain myself. I've seen in the past people come along and try to create seperate articles on Warwickshire, for example, to suit their pro-traditional counties point of view, and then getting quite obnoxious about it. I have no intentions of being unreasonable, I just think our article arrangements as they stand are often unsatisfactory and lead to anomalies. Now there's a push to fill out the "list of places in" articles it seems a good time to raise the question before we find ourselves with a rather odd situation on our hands, in which we appear to list places according to their 1974 administrative designations, with some subsequent amendments, on the grounds that these are the "ceremonial" counties, which strikes me as the least relevant and most counter-intuitive of the three possible ways of organising things. Any thoughts anyone? — Trilobite (Talk) 5 July 2005 15:39 (UTC)

There is no reason why Wikipedia has to choose one meaning of county over another. Wikipedia should describe each county in its traditional, ceremonial and administrative forms and point out where each one differs. "Examplecity and Exampleton are traditionally within in Exampleshire, but since 1996 have been administratively independent as unitary authorities" should be common in county articles. The "List of places in Exampleshire" articles should also deal with this, either by having an extra section--"Places formerly in Exampleshire"--or with an * or ¹ and a footnote pointing out that those places are in the traditional but not administrative counties. Joe D (t) 5 July 2005 15:49 (UTC)
I've just edited List of places in Hampshire to demonstrate this, adding Bournemouth and Christchurch (traditionally in Hampshire, ceremonially in Dorset and administratively independent) and a footnote for the unitary authorities. Joe D (t) 5 July 2005 15:57 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree though. We should certainly try to avoid choosing one meaning of county over another where possible, but sometimes we can't help but choose. We have List of places in Hampshire, where Hampshire primarily means the ceremonial county of Hampshire, with the traditional and administrative differences duly noted. I've often used the way you outline of describing what county a place is in by talking about the three forms, and this solves the problem for individual articles on places (except where categories are concerned), but causes problems when it comes to articles on the counties themselves. Note also that we title the article on Christchurch "Christchurch, Dorset" in order to disambiguate it, so we are certainly choosing the ceremonial option for article naming here. I believe this is written into policy. Now let's say I want to add something about an important historical event that took place in Christchurch in the 18th century, of the kind that's worth noting in the county article. Do I put it in the Hampshire article because Christchurch was in no way in Dorset back then (unless there's some anomaly I'm not aware of), or do I take the standard Wikipedia approach and put it in the Dorset article becuase that's its ceremonial county? What if we get all the ceremonial county articles up to featured status? This would involve history sections no doubt, so would we end up with things happening round Manchester being discussed in the Greater Manchester article and not mentioned in the Lancashire article? If we're taking traditional, ceremonial and administrative as seperate entities existing in parallel, this wouldn't fit, because the Lancashire article would only talk about the history of the area covered by the ceremonial county. As I see it, we can't help but choose one meaning over the others when it comes to county articles and connected pages like "list of places in". — Trilobite (Talk) 5 July 2005 17:02 (UTC)

I'm sure this issue has been discussed in detail before. A big problem with using traditional counties (amongst many), is that many of them have fallen into disuse as geographic reference, and there inclusion can only cause confusion amongst readers, most of whom dont understand the fine distinction.
The readers are even less likely to understand the distinction between the various esoteric areas used for local government, Lieutenancy, and so on. What's worse, is that just as people may be coming around to understand it all, the local government boundary commissions change it all again. Yet traditional counties live on - counties such as Rutland and Herefordshire may have fallen into disuse between 1974 and 1996, but it was largely the fact that people still new about them that led to their re-introduction as administrative areas. Owain 5 July 2005 19:16 (UTC)
Using traditional counties consistantly would throw up its own absurdities. Who for example speaks of Birmingham being in Warwickshire any more (eccept for Cricket) in fact for that matter, parts of Birmingham used to be in Worcestershire and Staffordshire just to make matters more comlicated, so if we were to use traditional counties consistantly we would have to say something like "Birmingham is in Warwickshire, with parts in Worcestershire and Staffordshire" I dont think that would last long before someone removed it. And what would average readers make of it? they would probably assume we were nuts.
Eccentricities like that are part of what's Great about Britain! Detached parts of counties, the imperial system, &c. Metropolitan areas are always crossing boundaries, but the city's centre never moves. The city's centre is still in the traditional county it was when the place was still a village. Birmingham is in Warwickshire, with various suburbs in Worcestershire, Staffordshire, &c. That's unavoidable with large urban areas, and quite easy to understand! Look at metro areas in the US - they cross state boundaries quite happily. Owain 5 July 2005 19:16 (UTC)
Yes unfortunately nobody apart from you uses these boundaries. G-Man 5 July 2005 19:22 (UTC)
Er, right. That is a straw-man argument. Nobody but me... just keep telling yourself that. Owain 5 July 2005 21:18 (UTC)
If we put "Birmingham is in Warwickshire" many readers would simply assume it was an innacuracy, as with many other articles. Also ceremonial counties seem to be the ones most commonly used as geographic reference (i.e Leicester is in Leicestershire). And administrative counties and ceremonial counties exist officially whearas traditional counties dont (whatever their supporters might claim).
Ceremonial counties are the ones most commonly used where they happen to co-incide with traditional counties. The Leicester example works because Leicestershire is a traditional county. People in the Wirral would rather be thought of as part of Cheshire, people in Bolton would rather be thought of as in Lancashire, &c. Ceremonial counties are just a half-baked measure. Owain 5 July 2005 19:16 (UTC)
That's a matter opinion. G-Man 5 July 2005 19:22 (UTC)
If people were happy with administrative areas being used for geographical purposes there would be no need for 'ceremonial counties' at all. The fact that they exist at all is proof that people want to belong to geographical areas irrespective of local government boundaries. Also the fact that most of them borrow the name and are close in area to traditional counties shows that those are the areas that people relate to. Unfortunately these ceremonial areas are sufficently different from traditional counties that they are a half-way house - a strange mixture of traditional and adminstrative. Surely we should either think entirely in terms of administraive areas, or traditional areas. Ceremonial counties are clearly a step in the right direction of separating people's notions of counties from local government, but they don't currently go far enough. Owain 5 July 2005 21:23 (UTC)
Regarding history articles It doesn't seem to be a big problem in my eyes to discuss the history of the historic boundaries but note that they have changed see History of Warwickshire for example. It would plainly be absurd to have a history of Warwickshire article without mentioning Coventry or Birmingham.
I agree that the government has messed things around so much in recent years, especially in regards to Avon and Cleveland It also strikes me that any system we use will create a certain amount of anomalies, as far as I can see traditional counties would create as many as any other. A certain amount of discretion and common sense is needed IMO G-Man 5 July 2005 18:41 (UTC)
I agree. Common sense is the way forward. The various infoboxes for England, Scotland and Wales state each type of county unambigiously. Also the county articles for Wales (where the traditional and administrative are combined) explain each area in the same article. No problems there. The problems occur with 'List of...' articles and categories. That's where we need some kind of compromise... Owain 5 July 2005 19:16 (UTC)
I agree with G-Man. It's absurd to claim Leicester is not in Leicestershire (as we would if we were using current administrative counties), it's absurd to claim that Bournemouth is currently in Hampshire (as we would if we were using traditional counties), and it's absurd (for some purposes, e.g. discussion of local politics) to claim that Weston Super Mare is currently in Somerset (as we would if we were using ceremonial or traditional counties). Each case needs to be taken on its merits, according to circumstances. There need to be some standards, but on the whole it seems to me that Wikipedia has rather a lot of policies and guidelines about this sort of thing, and if you're not careful you end up defending absurdity because "them's the rules". Let the individual cases sort themselves out by discussion, and if we end up with ceremonial counties in some areas, traditional ones in some, and administrative ones in others, so be it. None of the systems is entirely natural. I'm certainly not in favour of using traditional counties unless they coincide with current or recent administrative or ceremonial counties. --Andrew Norman 5 July 2005 19:42 (UTC)

(Replying mainly to G-Man since he was the last to comment when I started writing this.) Well I wouldn't advocate just saying "Birmingham is in Warwickshire" and leaving it at that. We would be silly to deny the existence of administrative and ceremonial counties. For Birmingham I'd say something like:

Birmingham is traditionally in Warwickshire, with parts in Worcestershire and Staffordshire, but has been part of the West Midlands for ceremonial purposes since 1974. It was also formerly part of the West Midlands for administrative purposes, but the county council was abolished in 1986 and Birmingham has since been administered as a unitary authority.
Do you not see the absurdity of this? G-Man 5 July 2005 20:16 (UTC)
Absolutely, but the counties mess isn't my doing! — Trilobite (Talk) 5 July 2005 21:38 (UTC)

The wording is relatively complex because the situation is relatively complex - this can't easily be avoided. You say: "Also ceremonial counties seem to be the ones most commonly used as geographic reference (i.e Leicester is in Leicestershire)." Much of the time this is true, but consider more complex circumstances. For example (note that this isn't an anomaly - there are loads like this), there's a place called Kingswood that is traditionally in Lancashire, found itself in Cheshire when things were reorganised administratively, and is now covered by the unitary authority of Warrington. Neither Lancashire nor Cheshire County Councils have anything to do with this place anymore. What county do the people of Kingswood consider themselves to be a part of? I imagine there is confusion, with differences of opinion along generational lines. Under the present policy Wikipedia will have to list them as being first and foremost in Cheshire because that's the ceremonial county that supplies their Lord Lieutenant. This is an arbitrary rule for determining a place's county. Another example: probably many people in what was formerly Cleveland still consider themselves to be in Cleveland, because that's how it was known for twenty-odd years. Wikipedia says that nowhere at all is in Cleveland because it no longer exists under any of the three definitions of a county, even though some people probably do still use it as a geographic reference frame. In reality though, the Cleveland situation is barely any different from the West Midlands: neither have county councils, and neither have a traditional status. The only thing that differentiates them is that the West Midlands has a Lord Lieutenant. I would contend that this is pretty irrelevant to most people. What I am trying to get at here is not so much the way we word our place articles, but the way we arrange our county articles. I don't see much to recommend the existence of a list of places in the West Midlands over a list of places in Cleveland. Arranging our articles by ceremonial county is not the happy compromise it appears to be at first sight. What it really means is that we indulge the reader's inertia in accepting administrative boudary changes, that leads them to have a very vague idea of what the different counties are, that very roughly approximates those established in 1974, even though these have been changed significantly as far as administrative functions are concerned in recent years. We avoid pedantic administrative interpretations that would have us say Derby is not in Derbyshire (which it isn't, if local government is what we consider to be the most important factor) on the grounds that it's people's geographical reference frame that matters. Traditional counties are the only relatively stable reference frame (I don't say they're completely unchanging because some of the 19th century reforms predate living memory - it's unreasonable to say that many people consider various enclaves to be part of counties they haven't been in for 150 years). When people think about what county they are in I think there are two main areas of consideration. First is who they pay their council taxes to and who provides them with public services. This is the administrative approach. Second is the cultural/traditional approach when thinking about things like cricket, in which case plenty of people in Birmingham most certainly would consider themselves to be in Warwickshire. I don't think many people ask themselves who their Lord Lieutenant is, particulary where this corresponds to a defunct '74 county that has no traditional status and whose administrative functions were scrapped in the late 1990s or before. Ceremonial is a bad choice. — Trilobite (Talk) 5 July 2005 19:55 (UTC)

The West Midlands is still legally an administrative county, and still has a police force, a fire service, and a Passenger Transport Executive for example. So to say that the West Midlands exists purely as a ceremonial entity is not quite correct. If people see police cars with "West Midlands Police" or fire engines with "West Midlands Fire Service" written on them, it is perhaps not unreasonable that they come to the conclusion that they are living in the West Midlands.
The fact that they have a fire service and police service is of no consequence. They are joint boards. The South Wales police force and South Wales fire brigade exist as joint boards, but there is no 'administrative county of South Wales'. The fact the people believe something to be true does not make it true. Owain 5 July 2005 20:35 (UTC)
But if enough people think it's true, it suggests there's something there worth commenting on in an encyclopedia. Something similar could be said about traditional counties: that lots of people think in terms of traditional counties, when they aren't official entities, makes them worth commenting on in an encyclopedia. Joe D (t) 5 July 2005 20:46 (UTC)
What do you mean, "does not make it true". Are you denying that the West Midlands exists?, the West Midlands still legally exists. IMO the fact that you believe that traditional counties exist does not make it true. G-Man 5 July 2005 20:49 (UTC)
What I mean is that the existence or not of joint boards for local government services is not proof that people think they belong to a certain area. That the West Midlands metropolitan county still exists legally is an anomoly. It is not a corporate body. It cannot be sued. It does not actually administrate anything itself. It is merely an area for which joint boards of other corporate bodies voluntarily provide services. That is not in itself a valid reason for the West Midlands geographical area taking precedence over any other geographical area. Owain 5 July 2005 21:14 (UTC)
Another point to take into consideration is that many unitary authorities are still covered by some county-wide services. For example Nottingham is still covered by Nottinghamshire Police and Nottinghamshire Fire Service, so taken together with the fact that Nottingham is ceremonially part of Nottinghamshire it is probably not unreasonable to say that Nottingham is in Nottinghamshire. This is the sort of common-sense judgements which I'm talking about.
Certainly ceremonial counties throw up a few anomalies but overall their IMO the best comromise option we have. G-Man 5 July 2005 20:29 (UTC)
Except they perpetuate some unliked 1974 areas such as Merseyside and Greater Manchester, as well as all the unliked 1974 areas in Wales, and areas in Scotland that are mostly traditional counties but with some bizarre differences. Ceremonial counties are just a half way house between adminsitrative areas and what they are trying to be - which is traditional counties. Owain 5 July 2005 20:35 (UTC)

Who says they are unliked, that is entirely your opinion. Most people who have been born since 1974, for that matter most people under the age of 40, are quite happy to use Merseyside, Greater Manchester etc. In fact I believe that the government considered abolishing the metropolitan counties as ceremonial counties in the mid 1990s but judged them to be a success. G-Man 5 July 2005 20:39 (UTC)

What about the Wirral campaign to be moved from the L postcode area to the CH postcode area? That change was effected even though it had nothing to do with efficently delivering mail. It was entirely to do with Wirral people not wanting to be associated with the other side of the Mersey. As for Greater Manchester - ask the average person in Bolton or Wigan if they live in Bolton, Wigan or Manchester. People are fiercely proud of their own town and county. Whether the government judged metropolitan counties to be a 'success' or not has absolutely no effect on how the average person in the street feels. Owain 5 July 2005 21:07 (UTC)
I was born since 1974 and do not consider these administrative and ceremonial divisions to be legitimate counties (I don't deny that they exist, just that they aren't 'proper' counties), thus I for one cannot be said to be quite happy to use them as if they were real counties. Furthermore, since Wikipedia is not written for those under the age of 40, and the proportion of Mancunians who consider themselves to be from Lancashire is likely to be rather higher amongst the over-40s, we can't just go listing Manchester as being in "Greater Manchester" as if that was the end of it. I am assuredly not trying to push a political POV about counties or argue about the wisdom of the various reforms that have been made or the relative merits of arguments on either side of the debate (I have enough experience of Wikipedia to know that this is pointless and irrelevant), merely pointing out the real inadequacy of the ceremonial system as a way of organising Wikipedia's articles on counties. Now what I would propose in the case of lists of places is that we do it by traditional county, with those places that have been hived off into unitary authorities or some other administrative county being marked as such, by having them in italics or putting an asterisk against them or something. This means we can take into account administrative differences without having to have things like "list of places in Bath and North East Somerset". Ceremonial counties are the least relevant and can be mentioned in the articles themselves where there are differences. I think this much better reflects the complex reality than just pretending that ceremonial counties are the only ones that matter. You mention various characteristicts of the West Midlands that lend credence to the view that it's a legitimate county, beyond having a Lord Lieutenant, but quoting from the Cleveland article: "However, the name has not been entirely abolished: Cleveland Police, Cleveland Fire Brigade, BBC Radio Cleveland, the Cleveland Family History Society and Cleveland College of Art and Design still exist." Cleveland, however, does not have a Lord Lieutenant and so doesn't get a "list of places in" article, nor should it, as it is hardly a real county. At present, having a Lord Lieutenant is the qualification needed to have "list of places" article. This is pretty silly. — Trilobite (Talk) 5 July 2005 21:38 (UTC)

I have no particular desire to continue this argument. Suffice to say we are never going to agree and that this matter has been discussed in detail already at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places). And the traditional counties approach was rejected by a large majority.

If you disagree with the present policy then I suggest you (Trilobite or Owain) raise it there. But for the time being the majority opinion seems to be that we use administrative/ceremonial counties. G-Man 5 July 2005 21:31 (UTC)

Reading the discussion so far has been interesting, but it provokes a sense of deja vu. I don't think anyone here has mentioned the exhaustive discussions and voting that took place a year ago to form a policy on British county names. We can't just ignore that debate, we should either accept the guidelines as they stand and use them as the basis for our county articles, or we should revisit it and if we can't come to a consensus view, take another vote.
At the very least, we should all read through what was written then and comment on it here. It's at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places).
Ha! I was pipped to the post on this by G-Man's last edit :-) Chris Jefferies 5 July 2005 21:37 (UTC)

I've already read through all the earlier discussion, and I just have not been convinced by the arguments for the prevailing way of doing things. At the very least I would like to see it clearly acknowledged that it's appropriate to talk about traditional counties in the present tense, provided of course that such references are qualified with the term "traditional county", so as not to mislead the reader about the administrative and ceremonial situation. It appears that some are quite happy with this. Joe D has for example said that "Examplecity and Exampleton are traditionally within in Exampleshire, but since 1996 have been administratively independent as unitary authorities" is to be prefered, and "list of places" articles should list places in the tradtional but not administrative county, with some way of marking them out as such. This is the formulation I always use myself and it hasn't been controversial, because the situation is made quite clear to the reader. The policy as it stands however is not quite clear enough, mostly maintaining that it's fine to talk about places being within the traditional borders of somewhere in the present tense (only prohibiting talk of traditional counties as counties without qualification, which I find reasonable) but saying that "Most of the pigeons were found at Abingdon, then part of Berkshire" is acceptable, when it misleadingly suggests that Abingdon is no longer in Berkshire, which is not the case, since as we're all aware the traditional counties were explicitly not abolished. This is not pro-traditional counties POV-pushing, but a desire to avoid simple inaccuracy in Wikipedia. The present policy is ambiguous when it comes to saying where a place is located, and woefully inadequate when it comes to writing articles about counties themselves, because for the reasons I've pointed out above and more, ceremonial borders are the worst of the three possible choices for defining counties. — Trilobite (Talk) 6 July 2005 07:20 (UTC)

I agree, the present policy of regarding administrative, traditional and ceremonial counties as single entities "whose borders have changed over time" is patently rediculous. Even the anti-traditional county contingent can't deny that there are at least two areas called counties that have different borders. In fact the infoboxes already acknowledge the fact that all three exist, so the policy as it currently stands is contradictory with the rest of Wikipedia. At the very least there should be differentiation in the "list of place is..." articles, and perhaps even separate articles where the is a wide difference in area, such as "List of places in Monmouthshire (administrative)" and "List of places in Monmouthshire (traditional)". Owain 6 July 2005 08:45 (UTC)
It's not logical to argue that a policy is wrong because a feature introduced since the policy (the infoboxes) disregard that policy. Clearly, as the policy was in place first, the infoboxes should have been designed in line with it or the policy reconsidered properly at that time.
This is exactly what I mean when I complain that the policy has been disregarded. This is not the Wikipedia way of doing things. 'Agree first and then act' is fine. 'Act in disregard of an existing 85% vote and then use your action to argue that the policy is wrong' is not fine. (Sorry, I forgot to sign - this was Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 sometime.)
I don't see how the infoboxes go against policy. I'm not entirely sure what you're all saying we should do, if we were to use traditional counties instead, should we move Abingdon, Oxfordshire to Abingdon, Berkshire (even though this is patently absurd), or what would be the effect? The ceremonial counties are the ones actually used by people, they're the ones that appear on maps, aren't they? -- Joolz 6 July 2005 14:08 (UTC)
The infoboxes go against policy because they list administrative, ceremonial and traditional counties, whereas the current policy states For the purposes of Wikipedia, these are treated as single entities which have changed their borders over time, so refering to the historic county area as a still existing entity is not acceptable, as is stated clearly above. If a county is still commonly used as an area name in its historic area, and is relevant, than that should be noted
And sadly, Joolz, there is little agreement on what we should do. In my opinion we should abide by the existing policy. But if enough people challenge it, we should discuss it until we can come to a consensus, or if necessary vote on it again. Then we should all agree to follow the new policy, whatever that might be.
I think the OS maps use administrative county boundaries. The 1:25 000 OS map for St Neots says, 'Cambridgeshire County', 'Huntingdonshire District', 'St Neots CP'. Chris Jefferies 6 July 2005 15:39 (UTC)
I disagree with your interpretation of the policy, which also states "We should mention historic counties in articles about places [...], but only as an afternote". The infobox doesn't make comment on whether the traditional county is still existing or not, merely that place A is in traditional county B; place A is in ceremonial county C, etc. -- Joolz 6 July 2005 18:30 (UTC)
If the policy really says For the purposes of Wikipedia, these are treated as single entities which have changed their borders over time, so refering to the historic county area as a still existing entity is not acceptable, as is stated clearly above. If a county is still commonly used as an area name in its historic area, and is relevant, than that should be noted then it is clearly absurd and needs to be addressed: not relevent and correct infomation removed from infoboxes! Yorkshire Phoenix (talk) 14:34, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

UK-geo-stub split

Currently, there are separate geography stub categories for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A separate category for England has been mooted in the past, but it would contain some 3800 stub articles, considerably more than is regarded as optimum according to Wikipedia: WikiProject Stub sorting guidelines (which roughly state that stub categories should have between 100 and 600 items to be of best use to editors).

In order to remedy this situation, all 3860 current unsubcategorised UK geography stubs have just been tallied to see whereabouts they refer to. Discussions are now underway with regard to splitting off regions or individual counties that have over 100 stub articles.

Understandably, given the confusion between traditional counties, ceremonial counties, and the split of city areas over the last few decades, this is a thorny issue. We at WP:WSS would welcome any input that this WikiProject's members may have, at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria#Further_split_of_UK-geo-stub. Grutness...wha? 03:19, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

This is such a difficult issue! I honestly don't know what to suggest :-( I can assure you that whatever decision you make will upset somebody. Can we avoid the counties issue altogether by using the English Regions as you suggest? Would this break them down far enough? If so I'd go for that. Chris Jefferies 11:51, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
There are over 200 places in Buckinghamshire alone, though fortunately they mostly have good articles now. I think regions though desirable may still be too populous by the guidelines above. -- Francs2000 | Talk 18:46, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Insane parish project

Hi. I've started an insane project to create articles about all parishes in England (and communities in Wales). See User:Morwen/alldab for a list of links to all parishes and communities starting with 'A' - I want to turn these all into blue links, then we can move onto the next letter. And for all the ones that are already blue links we need to verify that the parish is the same as the article that it points at (and if not, have a dab note). This is a huge project.

I've also constructed a list of parish names that occur more than once - these are at User:Morwen/dupes. There is a further list of parish names that occur more than once in the same ceremonial county/principal area at User:Morwen/dupes3.

After this, there are two parish names that occur twice in the same district - Welburn in Ryedale, North Yorkshire, and Flixton in Waveney, Suffolk. Morwen - Talk 11:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it's an excellent idea, just a couple of points - is this for civil parishes or ecclesiastical ones? Also, are you including non-parished areas?DuncanHill 14:33, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Civil. I'd tried to make a list of unparished areas at User:Morwen/unparished and User:Morwen/parish summary - any help identifying what is unparished would be good! Morwen - Talk 14:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I'm working on Shropshire's parishes. South Shropshire and Bridgnorth districts are still pretty much undone though. David 08:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I have decided to work on the parishes of Cheshire, since I know that county. I decided to do this as part of my wish to clean up and generally improve all articles about Cheshire and its constituent parts, which is decidely patchy in places. I will obviously base this work on stuff that has already been done  DDS  talk 19:21, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Wondering to what extent unparished areas have history as parished areas. For civil administration purposes all parishes in Scotland have been historic since 1975. However, I have listed parishes in "Caithness", deliberately not using names as links: instead I have gven for each a short description, with a link re a town, village or other feature fairly 'central' to the parish area. Getting all parish names to work reliably as links strikes me as a virtually impossible task. Laurel Bush 11:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC).

Caile Hill

User Sunfazed has questioned the veracity of this place which is supposedly a suburb of Wolverhampton at the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Given that a Google search for "Caile Hill" gets no Google results at all see [1], I am fairly certain that it is dodgy but am seeking the views of people with local knowledge to be sure. I have also posted about this at the UK Wikipedians board. Capitalistroadster 18:26, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

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