Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography

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09 Oct 2024 – River Parrett (talk · edit · hist) will be Today's Featured Article; see blurb

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22 Sep 2024 – Knapps Brook (talk · edit · hist) PRODed by Russss (t · c) was redirected to Houghton Brook (talk · edit · hist)

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21 Sep 2024 – Category:Southend-on-Sea (district) (talk · edit · hist) was CfDed by Davidstewartharvey (t · c); see discussion

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04 Jun 2024 – Wymington (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by Nfutvol (t · c); see discussion

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08 May 2024 – Abbey Mill, Reading (talk · edit · hist) is proposed for merging to Reading Abbey by Tim Landy (t · c); see discussion

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06 Jan 2024 – West Lothian (talk · edit · hist) is proposed for splitting by Crowsus (t · c); see discussion
06 Jan 2024 – Midlothian (talk · edit · hist) is proposed for splitting by Crowsus (t · c); see discussion
25 Sep 2021 – Totton and Eling (talk · edit · hist) is proposed for splitting by Crouch, Swale (t · c); see discussion

Did you know? articles

Wellesbourne, Brighton (2024-07-01) • Rosal, Sutherland (2024-05-25) • Newlyn Tidal Observatory (2023-11-20) • Godalming (2023-09-20) • Reigate (2023-09-10)

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Featured pictures

A591 road, Lake District - June 2009 Edit 1
Aerial View of Edinburgh, by Alfred Buckham, from about 1920
Canary Wharf from Limehouse London June 2016 HDR
City of London skyline from London City Hall - Oct 2008
Lancashire 1610 Speed Hondius - Restoration

In the News articles

Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City (2021-07-22) • 2009 Great Britain and Ireland floods (2009-11-21) • February 2009 British Isles snowfall (2009-02-06)

Main page featured articles

Coventry ring road (2023-07-23) • Combe Hill, East Sussex (2023-01-11) • Brownhills (2022-03-03) • Abberton Reservoir (2021-09-05) • Shaw and Crompton (2021-08-15)

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List of scheduled monuments in South Somerset (2023-12-22) • List of castles in Greater Manchester (2023-04-07) • List of Shetland islands (2022-05-20) • List of freshwater islands in Scotland (2020-04-24) • List of scheduled monuments in Taunton Deane (2018-10-26)

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This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject UK geography}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

Watch

Disagreement on Christchurch article re:settlement definition

There is a dispute at the article for Christchurch, Dorset over whether, how, and in how much detail, the article should cover Bournemouth Airport – a major employer which was in the now defunct borough of Christchurch, but some distance outside the built-up area in a neighbouring parish. This is essentially a difference of opinion on how to handle the ambiguity around defining settlements. If you think you can help resolve this, join the discussion at Talk:Christchurch,_Dorset#Bournemouth_airport. Thanks, Joe D (t) 10:38, 3 April 2022‎ (UTC)[reply]

Ilford, for example

I'm puzzled by where the default definition of UK places comes from. Ilford provided an example of what I'm trying to get at: A reference says "Ilford is made up of 12 wards in the London Borough of Redbridge: Aldborough Hatch, Barkingside, Cranbrook, Clementswood, Fairlop, Gants Hill, Vicarage, Loxford, Mayfield, Newbury Park, Seven Kings, Hainault and Valentines." I followed the link and found no explanation of the make up of Ilford by ward - the wardsare of London Boroughs.

Also "Ilford is divided between the UK Parliament constituencies of Ilford North and Ilford South." This is v unclear. Ilford South constituency includes places that are clearly not in Ilford, but the wording suggests that 'Ilford' comprises the two consituencies. There's no definition of Ilford given or sourced with which to compare the other information given. 82.45.172.71 (talk) 15:04, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for querying that. We don't improve if we don't challenge. There's a guide at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements which may or may not have been followed in the case of Ilford. Maybe you should take a look and see if you can see any glaring issues – then either fix them or report on the article's talk page? 10mmsocket (talk) 16:46, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the population figure in the infobox of Ilford (which that reference is supposed to explain) is problematic. It seems to be derived by totalling the populations of selected wards, but I see no reference indicating that Ilford is made up of exactly those words in their entirety. Random checking shows Catford, Wembley, Twickenham and Feltham have similar issues, in the latter case with significantly more wards included than is justified by the description in the body of the article. Some other London districts don't have population figures and that might be for the best.

I disagree on the second point. If we wrote that Ilford is divided into two constituencies, that would suggest that 'Ilford' comprises the two consituencies, but the article says it is divided between two, fully allowing for the possibility that those two contain more besides. NebY (talk) 17:35, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for River Don Navigation

River Don Navigation has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 03:13, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A6 road (England)

This is a pretty poor article, with very little content apart from a mile-by-mile route description (obtainable from any good road atlas). There's nothing about its history - Romans? Turnpike roads? Importance pre-M6? Current developments? PamD 08:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at it while joining the discussion about road length sources at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Websites for road lengths as I wondered how it treated the non-existent stretch of A6 in my local area ... but was shocked by what a poor article I found so thought I'd alert potentially interested editors who might like to have a go at improving it, posting here and also at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Highways#A6 road (England). PamD 09:57, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone thinking about tackling this would do well to read Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A508 road first. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:55, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could we do something where we gather all of the information that needs to be factchecked, added, removed etc onto a table on one page, and then when we have a spare minute or two, just go through and do some, and that way things are slowly improving. Would that work? Just a suggestion. Roads4117 (talk) 21:14, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be useful to have one or more examples of a well-written UK road article - but they seem thin on the ground. Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Highways#Recognized_content, there are a few UK Featured Articles - but all for bridges or short streets. There are just 5 Good Articles for UK A roads. Perhaps someone should draw up a guideline as to what an article on a UK road shouuld look like? Perhaps starting with "What makes a road notable?" PamD 22:30, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I will start an article on this topic immediately. Roads4117 (talk) 15:10, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The page can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/Road article improvements. Roads4117 (talk) 15:32, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That page is now at Draft:WikiProject UK geography/Road article improvements as it has not yet been accepted as part of this Wikiproject. NebY (talk) 15:41, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PamD, @10mmsocket and @NebY: do you guys have any more ideas of things that I could put on this page? Roads4117 (talk) 15:44, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for England

England has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 20:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ward articles

It's been brought to my attention by @PamD that @DragonofBatley has created a few articles about wards within towns, e.g. Trinity, Louth. I don't have any inherent problem with this where a ward is notable, but it seemed wise to open a discussion to see what the general consensus is and save potential wasted effort.

To make the discussion easier I'll frame it as a question – what's the overall plan with these articles? A.D.Hope (talk) 12:20, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I had a discussion a while back about this on Westborough Ward with User:Crouch, Swale. If they are notable, then yes but in reality most wards are not. Your example that was created Trinity, Louth to me doesn't not shout notable (a minor mention in a BBC article about wildlife murals, stats from city population which are not always accurate, a source that actually doesnt mention Trinity as a place (just the church) and a directory!). Davidstewartharvey (talk) 13:42, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@A.D.Hope, did this recent discussion on the same topic reach a conclusion? Seems divided between WP:GNG and WP:GEOLAND arguments, but no consensus reached? Dank Jae 14:00, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There seemed to be a consensus there that wards aren't inherently notable. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:07, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that's the half-remembered discussion I was asking @A.D.Hope about.

Looking at it again, that discussion didn't even seem to take account of the situation where ward names are not settlement names - the wards like "North" or "Harbour", or the ones like "Lancaster Rural North". A ward is a boundary drawn on a map to define a group of voters to elect one or more councillors for one or more councils. It doesn't have any other significance, as far as I know. As I said in that previous discussion, we have treated them very inconsistently, and I really don't see the point in these articles.

What would be much more useful would be a "List of wards of Xyz" (clearly defined as "As of date yyyy") for each "Xyz" which has elected councillors representing wards. This could be part of the article on "Xyz", probably in the governance section, or could be standalone if there was some good reason for it to be so. It could have incoming redirects or dab page entries for those ward names. It would possible be useful for the reader if it described which settlements, or areas of Xyz (eg "the area east of the river A", or "an area including the town centre and extending to the north east") were in which ward, with a map.

I suppose we could have a few AfDs for wards of questionable notability, but it might be helpful to discuss it here, again, in a calmer atmosphere (and among people who understand UK geography, rather than AfD enthusiasts!) PamD 18:03, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PamD: That discussion did talk about the issue with wards named after settlements v those that aren't in the sense option A would support having articles on the likes of Lower Lune Valley that only exist as a ward as well as having separate articles on Silverdale, Lancashire (village and parish pop 1,559) and Silverdale (Lancaster ward) (pop 1,900) while C would still support having Lower Lune Valley but would have Silverdale, Lancashire covering both the village/parish and the ward. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:20, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is first necessary to decide what type of content is desired in the articles. Is it information that is relevant to the precisely defined area of the ward (such as election results) or is it description that that is applicable to a vaguely defined part of a local-government district (such as everything that would go in an article about a settlement)?

Consider the case of Luton, a large town with a population of about 227,000. The navbox lists 19 wards and 21 areas of the town.

The local editors have written almost all of the ward or area articles as if each article covers a village. There are some problems.

The navbox list of wards is slightly different from that at Luton Council website. This probably shows a Wikipedia maintenance problem: not enough editors to keep it up to date.
The South, Luton article talks as if there is a place called "South", but I do not remember seeing that name used outside of Wikipedia.
The wards and the areas are both trying to cover the whole town. These articles therefore have some duplicated content.
Although most of the "area" articles have a name that I would recognise as a place in Luton, some of the articles define a boundary that is perhaps just the personal opinion of one editor, and perhaps some of the names are not widely used.

JonH (talk) 18:57, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

South, Luton shows several reasons why ward articles are not a good idea:

It's virtually unsourced. Two "refs" are verifying the existence of local newspapers - but now redirect to the same shared page. The other ref links to the list of councillors, conveniently allowing us to check whether the list of 3 councillors is correct: no, there are now two councillors for South, both elected 2023, while the article lists 3 other names of councillors. Listing named councillors always seems dangerous unless we can be confident that "someone" will still be taking an interest in the article after the next local elections, and the next.
There is a map of the wards, potentially useful except that it is hand-drawn by an editor and shows the wards in 2006-07
The list of "local attractions" includes the Chiltern Hills and Whipsnade Wildlife Park (now Whipsnade Zoo) which isn't in the ward or even in Luton district, according to Mapit which puts it in Whipsnade parish in Central Bedfordshire. So the list is presumably repeated in every Luton ward article. It looks appropriate for a local tourism leaflet but is not useful here. A similar list appears at Luton#Local attractions where it seems much more appropriate, though even there it could usefully distinguish betwwen attractions which are in Luton and those which are nearby.

That article really isn't a credit to the encyclopedia.

Looking at South (disambiguation) illustrates our inconsistent approach to wards: there are entries for South (Cardiff electoral ward), South (Newham ward) (with a blue link to Newham London Borough Council, though the only mention of "South ward" is in specific-year articles like 1964 Newham London Borough Council election), and South, Luton. So what form of disambiguation should we use? It's a mess. PamD 20:51, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My favourite hobby horse I know but this is yet another reason to have separate articles about the County Council/UA council/city council/whatever, separate from the settlement or District articles that is. Wards are inherently transient, their boundaries are determined principally to equalise electorates. They are purely administrative and belong in an article about the administration. Mostly there is not a lot to say about them that is encyclopedic and will withstand time and tide. I recognise that this is easy for me to say when I come from a UA that is fully parished but parishes do have longevity – future as well as past. So to get to the point: no, we should not have independent articles about wards, they should be sections of the relevant LA article. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I said in the discussion linked above by DankJae, wards are notable per GEOLAND. I am not opposed to them being included as part of an article on Xyz County/District/Borough Council or in a List of wards of Xyz County/District/Borough Council article though. I've destubbed/created a few ward articles and my thinking has always been that a brief history, boundary details and election results was a reasonable way to structure them. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 13:31, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wards guidance?

Wards is a topic I've been wrestling with recently with the Bristol wards. I'm afraid I don't have strong feelings either way on the question of whether wards are inherently notable, so I'm taking the opportunity to hijack this conversation slightly and add a few random thoughts related to a slightly different question: should we have some guidance on whether/when to create a ward article, and more importantly, what it should look like when you do? I ask this because:

Many of the established Bristol ward articles read like generic UK place articles, with UK place infoboxes and roughly following the "how to write about settlements" guidance. That makes sense when the name of the ward is in general usage as the name of a neighbourhood, but probably doesn't if it's only used as an electoral ward. E.g. I recently rewrote Ashley (Bristol ward) (old version) to refocus it on details relevant to an article about an electoral ward, using the ward infobox and making sure it's not written as though it's just about a neighbourhood of the city.
I think some people perhaps have the mindset that because wards are "official" entities, they have more encyclopaedic legitimacy than other geographies that are more informally defined. This might be what led to one editor in the mid-00s merging a lot of Bristol neighbourhood articles into their ward articles – something I've had to undo recently with e.g. the Cabot ward neighbourhoods (because Cabot was abolished) and the Ashley ward neighbourhoods like Montpelier, Bristol (because of the rewrite).
Where the name of the ward is in common usage as a neighbourhood, things get complicated. Eastville, Bristol is a good illustration of that – where the common usage of "Eastville" and the electoral ward are a Venn diagram, neither one entirely within the area of the other, and it's very difficult to find good reliable sources explaining the difference (but I've done my best!). I don't know whether it would be better just to split articles in this scenario (my instinct is against splitting, but the double infobox certainly makes things messy).
A lot of people seem to be pre-emptively disambiguating ward articles with a "(ward)" suffix (e.g. Cornwall wards and Dorset wards), when more than half the time there is no need for disambiguation. I assume this is inspired by the convention for UK constituencies (which I also think is bad, but accept had a consensus behind it), but in the absence of any such consensus for wards should default to WP:TITLE which has a presumption against suffixes.

Back to the question of whether we should have ward articles at all, I know that should be a question of notability and shouldn't really be influenced by this issue, but List of electoral divisions and wards in Cornwall illustrates that having ward articles is inherently a big maintenance burden. Some years ago somebody put in a heroic effort to create articles on all of the Cornish wards, but the map was redrawn in 2021 and everything is very out of date now. Similarly, I'm still working my way through updating the Bristol ward articles and boundary maps eight years after the boundary changes happened! I don't know if having guidance and other supportive structure might help with keeping them up to date? Cheers, Joe D (t) 11:19, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Curlie (DMOZ)

Those who have been around a while may remember that DMOZ and subsequently Curlie were recommended in WP:EL as a way of reducing excessive external links. This was done in a lot of UK settlement articles and a number links to Curlie remain today. Over the years Curlie became less useful and more spammy, to the point where it now looks like Curlie has been shut down. I have nominated the {{Curlie}} template for deletion as it is no longer useful, and having the template deleted should hopefully mean it will then be robotically removed from any article that contains it(??).

Here's a link to the TfD discussion if you would like to comment Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 September 20#Template:Curlie. Thanks. 10mmsocket (talk) 15:09, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Media sections guidance

Do we need to add "Media" sections to our guidance articles? I'm starting this discussion here, rather than on the guidance pages, because this applies to both How to write about counties and How to write about settlements. Thoughts:

The settlements guidance briefly mentions the option of including media (under culture). The counties guidance doesn't mention media at all. But a lot of county and settlement articles have media sections, many of them added systematically over the past few years.
Surprisingly, I can't see that this topic has ever come up before in the UK geography archives.
But I regularly see disagreements about what is notable/encyclopaedic vs trivia in edit histories for UK places.
And a lot of current media sections are poor quality with common issues (unreferenced/low quality sources, lists instead of prose, etc)
There appears to be a community of editors who are extremely interested in the minutiae of TV and radio – what can be received where, on what frequencies, and from which transmitters – who add information to articles that would be of interest to that niche community, but which I suspect is unlikely to be useful to the general reader of an encyclopaedia.
Often those edits get tidied up afterwards by UK geo editors to keep them on topic to the place article, but not always/sometimes after a long delay, and we're not consistent in our decisions as to what is/n't relevant for a place article.
Often the county and settlement articles duplicate information that is contained in articles about individual stations etc, so there is a question of what details are relevant enough to be included in the county/settlement article (vs just linking to the station article without duplicating such details).
Many of our best articles, e.g. Dorset which has FA status, omit media sections entirely (relegating it to a brief subsection of the Economy article) – in the Dorset case, it did have a "Television" section, but that was deleted because it contained poorly sourced trivia. Others (Weymouth, Dorset, also FA) do have them (though I haven't trawled the page history to work out how much post-dates FA status).
Some media sections – e.g. in Bristol – cover aspects of the creative industries (e.g. TV/film production in the area). That could equally be considered to be part of "economy" or "culture", and I'm sure examples could be found where we cover creative industries in those sections. Do we care that we're inconsistent, or do we want to agree a guideline on where creative industries belong?
This discussion is prompted in particular by edits by 1.140.233.171 (talk · contribs) adding lots of unsourced material to county/settlement articles – e.g. in counties, BBC local radio stations which can be received in (parts of) the county (because obviously radio signals don't obey county boundaries), even when that station's editorial remit does not include the county – something that I consider trivia, but which it might be useful to have an established position on in our guidance?

cheers, Joe D (t) 12:54, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Long unreferenced list of newspapers, TV and radio stations, and worse still whether they try to explain whether have Points West or Westcountry Tonight (or whatever they're called) as their local news programme. Example South West England#Local media, which by coincidence had that section updated in the past couple of hours. It's as trivial, dull, and irrelevant as most "In Popular Culture" sections, which at least have strong guidance (WP:IPC) to justify pruning them. Perhaps that's what we need - a UK-specific guideline on the inclusion and content of "Media" sections for UK settlements and regions. In the meantime, nuke-em-all™ 10mmsocket (talk) 13:36, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My instinct is that most settlements and counties don't have significant enough media to justify a standalone section. Lists of which radio stations etc. can be received in a given settlement are, unless actually produced in said settlement and of note, trivia and should be removed. A.D.Hope (talk) 19:34, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]