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Latest comment: 2 years ago by Black Kite in topic RfC on adding a field for historic county to the Template:Infobox UK place
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RfC on adding a field for historic county to the Template:Infobox UK place

Latest comment: 2 years ago315 comments36 people in discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Note This RfC is closed. See this ANI thread. Black Kite (talk) 21:55, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Should a field for the historic county in which a settlement is located be added to the Template:Infobox UK place? --Songofachilles (talk) 18:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

  • Support The Index of Place Names (IPN) in Great Britain is published by the Office for National Statistics. The latest version of the IPN (2019) includes several types of ‘place’, including the Historic County (IPN Place Name Type Code: CTYHISTNM), the Lieutenancy County (CTYLTNM), and the county name as of 2019 where the term ‘county’ is still used for the purposes of local government (CTY19NM). The current Template:Infobox UK place has fields for the Lieutenancy County and the local government counties. Historic County data for UK places could be automatically populated from Wikidata, where it has already been recorded.--Songofachilles (talk) 18:55, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Are we going to have this discussion every year until somebody breaks? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:46, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
    - The addition of this field to the template was suggested on this page in July 2020. The suggestion received more overall support than opposition. One editor suggested that an RfC was the best approach to reach a broader audience. This, albeit belatedly, is that RfC.Songofachilles (talk) 21:45, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak Support The muddled interconnected use of the word county is slowly being unravelled across the country. This latest IPN appears to be part of that unravelling. If this change is adopted, there will be apparently unrealistic and possibly non-notable, uses of the field (eg Deptford noted as being in Kent), that might lead to edit spats, but these will be few and can be explained in the history section. However, having such a field would go a long way towards removing the current never ending series of edit wars so for that reason alone this suggestion gets my support. I agree that some people will have to 'break'. They will be from the old school who wrote the current flawed guidelines. That is an unfortunate result of some people digging their heels in and refusing to accept what is written in statute (and quality RSSs) that historic counties were never changed. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose the infobox is already suffering from infobox bloat and there is row upon row of different county options. I'd support rationalising those first before we consider adding any more. Adding anything else will increase the likelihood of confusing readers. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:22, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
    • This is not the problem of this Infobox or of Wikipedia, but (alas!) the reality of local government in the UK: it is extremely confusing, because it is constantly changing. Five new local government areas have emerged in England alone since only 2019 (including Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole, North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire) and more changes are in the pipeline. The simplicity, in my view, of the historic counties is that they are independent of, and pre-date, counties as administrative units and the massive confusion caused by constant local government reform. As, especially in England, more and more unitary authorities are created (which do not use the word 'county' in their council title or claim to be counties), instances of the erroneous and confusing use of the word 'county' for local government purposes will hopefully become less.--Songofachilles (talk) 16:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per Blue Square Thing and in addition that the historic counties are only significant in some sports. For the vast majority of articles, they would just duplicate existing content. In the very few cases where it matters, explanatory body content would be needed anyway. Let's not let a few hairs on the tail wag the dog. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:07, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose - I see the explanation one can do it... but no major reason why one should do it. So avoiding bloat seems enough reason to not have it. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support There is no logical or procedural reason not to add this field that is not WP:POV. If the UK government is considered a reliable source (it is), and the IPN has data for three types of "county" (it does), then what possible reason could there be for not adding it? Perhaps some logic could be added to the infobox to reduce the number of rows when the the fields are the same? It already does not display the county for the purposes of the Lieutenancies Act 1997 if it is the same as the county for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1972 for instance. Owain (talk) 09:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose per John Maynard Friedman. In the very few cases where it doesn't duplicate the ceremonial county and/or administrative county it would need prose content to be meaningful and not confusing, in every other case it's just bloat. There is no reason why we can't do this, but there are many things we can do that we don't do because they're not encyclopaedically justified for some reason, this is just another example. Thryduulf (talk) 13:19, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
    • One could say the same thing for the so-called 'ceremonial county' too: The presence or otherwise of a Lord Lieutenant has very little meaning to the geographical context of places. I don't see why, say an article on Bexleyheath having "Historic county: Kent' in the infobox would be in the least bit confusing. Owain (talk) 13:48, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
      • To a reader who doesn't understand the technical differences between all the different sorts of county I'd suggest it would be a touch confusing. Tbh it's confusing enough anyway - one parameter called county is probably what's needed for a standard reader most of the time. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
        • Blue Square Thing, I hear what you are saying. But the point of an encyclopedia is not to withhold information because of the risk that readers might be confused, but to present all of the information and give readers the tools and opportunity to inform themselves, especially, as here, on the differences between things which, at first glance, seem alike but are different. Thryduulf, you are not correct when you say that there are "very few cases" in which the historic county does not duplicate the lieutenancy or administrative county. There are 92 historic counties in the UK, of which only 48 share their name with a current local government area (although with different borders, with the exception of, I think, only two: Ceredigion/Cardiganshire and Rutland). Added to this, there are countless settlements which are now in a lieutenancy (called the 'ceremonial county' in England; the 'preserved county' in Wales and the 'lieutenancy area' in Scotland) such as Tyne & Wear, West Midlands, Bristol, Cumbria, East Sussex, Merseyside, Greater London, Tweeddale, Gwent, Clwyd, Dyfed, Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Stirling and Falkirk, etc. that is different to the historic county.Songofachilles (talk) 16:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
          • And as has been said repeatedly before, such rare cases need to be described in the body text. A terse annotation in the infobox adds nothing but clutter. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:34, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
            • But they are not rare cases, that's what I'm saying in my paragraph above.Songofachilles (talk) 17:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
          • But as it seems it does need to be said again, the historic counties are just that. History. 125 years ago. Completely meaningless to a modern readership unless they follow county cricket in those counties that still play.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:39, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
            • I respect that this is your view, but many, many people do not share it. The 92 historic counties are not relevant only to cricket! They are an objective fact: independent of, and pre-dating, 'counties' as administrative units and the massive confusion that has ensued since. They were never 'abolished' and this is stated in the relevant statutes that reformed local government throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not 'completely meaningless' to many people that they live in or are from, e.g. Westmorland, Cumberland or Lancashire; not Cumbria, or from Huntingdonshire, Middlesex, or Caithness, Warwickshire and not 'the West Midlands', or Lancashire and not Blackburn with Darwen, Kent and not Medway, Essex not Thurrock, etc. No one ever had a local identity based on or loyalty to the council that takes away their bins with their ever-changing names and borders, nor to the non-sensical 'ceremonial' counties that hijacked historic county names and preserved many of the abolished local government ones.Songofachilles (talk) 17:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Seems reasonable but as noted this may largely overlap with current counties anyway. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:13, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
    • All three entities could be referred to as 'counties'. As per the IPN User Guide: there are the historic counties, counties for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1972 and counties for the purposes of the Lieutenancies Act 1997. All three are 'current counties', which is why to avoid confusion, all three should be presented to the reader. Owain (talk) 17:22, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your input, Crouch, Swale. The historic counties overwhelmingly do not overlap with the remaining UK local government entities that still refer to themselves as 'counties', e.g. in the term 'County Council'. Please see my response to Thryduulf above. Thanks! :)Songofachilles (talk) 19:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support: This is an element of place identity recognised as important by government publications, thinking specifically of the MHCLG Guidance of 16 July 2019. As such as it would be a useful resource to display for each town or village. The guidance treats the historic counties as current geographical / cultural divisions, the guidance observing "The Act did not specifically abolish historic counties, but they no longer exist for the purposes of the administration of local government". If local authorities are being required to consider this element, it would be useful to show it on Wikipedia. LG02 (talk) 19:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose They are historical, H:IB says about infoboxes, They quickly summarize important points in an easy-to-read format. The historic county isn't an important point in the summary of a UK place. Historic county should be covered in the article's history section, and if needed readers can be refered to external sources, such as The Index of Place Names (IPN) in Great Britain is published by the Office for National Statistics. Sciencefish (talk) 19:57, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
    • You do not understand what historic means. It means with a lot of history, not in the past, the correct word for that being historical. If you prefer we could use the label ancient county as coined by the General Register Office. The ONS added both the historic county and lieutenancy information to the Index of Place Names in 2016, noting that the historic counties are "recommended as a stable, unchanging geography which covers the whole of Great Britain". The IPN is a contemporary gazetteer, not a historical work and it has seen fit to add this information, so why should Wikipedia not do likewise? Owain (talk) 07:30, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
      • Thank's for spotting that, I've corrected it. Sciencefish (talk) 08:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
      • From a practical point of view they are "in the past" from the perspective that we're looking at them from - i.e. their relationship to the place. That perspective is crucial here. I must admit I didn't realise that the addition to the index was so recent. I'll be totally honest: that looks like political nudging by the Tory governments rather than any recognition that these things are still relevant on a day to day basis. From that perspective I'd argue very strongly from holding off doing anything that suggests that they have any official status - which is what adding them to the infobox does. As I've said above, there's too much stuff in the ib anyway. If we add something, what three things do we remove? Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:41, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
      • Blue Square Thing But the counties do have official status. You are coming at the issue as if the historic counties no longer existed or were abolished. This is not the case, nor was it the practical effect or intention of the relevant statutes that reformed UK local government in the 19th and 20th centuries. Please see the definition of 'administrative county' on p. 80 of the Local Government Act 1888 (The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 and Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 created similar administrative areas in Scotland and Ireland) and consider this statement from the Government at the time the Local Government Act 1972 came into force: "They are administrative areas and will not alter the traditional boundaries of counties, nor it is intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change" (quoted in The Times, 1 April 1974). It was only resulting confusion over the decades that led to many people incorrectly assuming that historic counties (especially where a name had disappeared for administrative purposes, e.g. Cumberland, Glamorgan, Middlesex, Merioneth, Berwickshire, Caithness, Wigtownshire, Sutherland, Westmorland, Huntingdonshire, Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire, etc) had been abolished and that they had been subsumed by administrative entities which in many cases bear little or no resemblance to the historic county proper. On a personal note, I'm very far from a fan of the current government and, in my view, its revisionist nationalism. But I am someone with principles who believes in what is correct and factual. I especially believe that an encyclopedia should reflect the truth and give all the information. I also, like many others, think that local frames of reference are important for geographical and cultural reasons. The units of local government in the UK are transient and run like corporations. The historic counties, on the other hand, are above politics and administration and I think there's something great about that that's worth recognising. Thanks for reading!--Songofachilles (talk) 10:55, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
        • Please bear in mind this is a discussion about adding it to an infobox template, which is populated from the article. Historic counties can still be part of an article and in many cases are. There is guidence on doing so in WP:UKCITIES. Sciencefish (talk) 14:38, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, having looked at the Wolverhampton article yesterday on behalf of someone who wanted to know which county it had been in... (I think he wanted to check which volume of a county-based book series was relevant, or something like that). As it happens, that article uses {{Infobox settlement}} with one of the subdivision type/name pairs of fields for "Historic county" so we found our answer quickly. There are probably a lot of readers both inside and outside the UK for whom a historic county identifies an area of the country more easily than some of our modern county names, perhaps especially in Wales and Scotland. PamD 20:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Totally agree, including the growing numbers of people (especially in the U.S. and Canada) who need to know the historic county of a UK town/village for the purposes of family history research. --Songofachilles (talk) 22:09, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Yes, there is an overload of infobox template parametres, but so what? They do not all have to be used at the same time. All that is needed to avoid overlap is a guideline note that if the HC (or LC) is the same as the the admin county for a given place then the HC is not to be used. That is quite simple and not contentious. It would not add to an overload on the visible infobox of virtually any place in the UK. And even if there was a need to thin out the infox there are plenty of other parametres that could be removed as not relevant or of less relevance than the HC. In terms of relevance of the HCs, this and countless other wiki discussions is evidence enough of their relevance. If some editors have trouble visualising something's notability or relevance unless it can be seen or touched then the United Nations disagrees. For that reason alone, the arguement that HC no longer exist is irrelevant: even if they did not exist they meet the notability standard. Nearly all I can see from the oppose arguments above is good faith superficial personal opinion being used to justify the current arrangement about HCs. Closer examination rips those arguments to shreads. By continuing to deny the relevance, and therefore significant use, of HCs in placename articles, infobox or not, we are doing a disservice to this encyclopedia. The current approach is amateur and we should be looking in the mirror and telling ourselves off. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:30, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support It is an important context for every place. The traditional counties are the primary identifiers of places; in Scotland and Northern Ireland practically exclusively and elsewhere they are the underlying geographical context. I don't know who would locate themselves according to bureaucratic structures, but round here we don't. Listing a former local government region in the infobox but not a thousand-year old county is bizarre. Hogweard (talk) 06:42, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong Support The historic counties are used in various aspects of life, not just in county cricket. It is used by administrators, players and organisers of sports as the governing bodies, in the majority, using the same borders as the historic counties. If Wikipedia is to fulfil its role to provide knowledge to the people then the historic counties must be offered to those seeking information on this area of British life. Ceremonial counties are NOT the same as the historic counties and can be altered or changed on Parliament's whim. The unchanging boundaries of the historic counties are used by local historians, genealogists and the UK Government's Office of National Statistics. NOT to use the historic counties is to drive away many followers of Wikipedia who use it as a source for geography, history and so much more. It is a 'must'. Thank you.
  • Support This proposal would be a simple but effective way to ensure a comprehensive and consistent treatment of the historic counties of the UK within Wikipedia, the lack of which has been a serious deficiency for many years. The fact that the Office for National Statistics considers the historic counties to be an important set of geographical and cultural entities should be argument enough for their inclusion in Wikipedia. Britannica also refers each place to its historic county, alongside modern administrative areas. To a large extent whether you consider the historic counties to be relevant entities in the current day is a matter of personal perspective. They certainly are still relevant in many contexts and are important to many people. No doubt to many others they are not relevant at all. However, the plain fact is that the historic counties were the primary divisions of the country throughout most of recorded history and consequently the basis of the description of location throughout most of recorded history. One cannot understand anything about British history at a local level without understanding what the historic counties are. To study the local history of any place without understanding its place within its historic county would be a nonsense. Our primary reference work for local history, the Victoria County History, is firmly based on the historic counties. To study family history or search for historical records or artefacts without understanding the historic counties would be impossible. We cannot pretend that Wikipedia is providing a comprehensive insight into British history until we are have a consistent, comprehensive treatment of the historic counties. Peterjamesb (talk) 16:08, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
    Nobody is suggesting that this info should be deleted from the body text of articles where it is useful or even mildly interesting. The question is whether it is needed as yet another line in an infobox that is already pretty bloated. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:35, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
    I honestly don't understand the argument that one more line in the Infobox is a huge issue/tax on the reader. I don't think there are any or many readers who sit and read an entire Infobox from start to finish (and if there are, I assume they'd only welcome the addition of more relevant information to it). The Infobox provides 'at a glance' information on headline topics that may be of interest to the reader. It is for ease of reference, without the reader having to dig around in the article itself to find it. If the local authority and the Lieutenancy are already listed, there is no reason not to also list the historic county. Take for instance the article on Bournemouth, the Infobox for which uses the 'Settlement' template and not the UK place template. The historic county, Hampshire, is therefore listed in the Infobox (as this template is not locked as the UK place template is). Please take a look at that article and ask yourself this question honestly: do you feel that the addition of this one line on the historic county is causing this infobox to be 'bloated'?--Songofachilles (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
    Honestly? The Bournemouth infobox has far too many other issues to be able to judge - the sheer length of the infobox is a problem for starters. If someone can mock up a test infobox (I really don't have time I'm afraid) then we might be able to make some sort of judgement. Preferably somewhere complex. Like Lewisham. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:31, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
    I think it might just be a case of looking at the existing Infobox for Lewisham and imagining that there is one more entry in it for the historic county.--Songofachilles (talk) 07:09, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
    In fact, now that the European Parliament information has been removed from Infoboxes, adding a historic county field would mean the Infoboxes would have the same number of fields as they always had prior to 31 January 2020.--Songofachilles (talk) 16:22, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
    The "Shire county" field is also becoming relevant to fewer places each year as further two-tier local government areas are replaced by unitary authorities. The Government has signalled it wants to replace the remaining two-tier areas with unitary LG which would make this field completely redundant. Peterjamesb (talk) 07:51, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support As mentioned by others, this is important and helpful information to the reader in establishing background and context for a place. Certainly will help the reader and perhaps provide more information where the information provided is ambiguous.Deathlibrarian (talk) 06:31, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support strongly– The historic counties are an important part of the cultural heritage and social cohesion of the United Kingdom. Whilst separated into different administrative counties, many people throughout the regions recognise the arbitrary nature of the administrative divisions and still refer to themselves as being part of the historic county. The cultural ties that cross the new boundaries come in the form of food, accents, dialect, lifestyle to name but a few. Finally, as the Historic Counties are legally recognised, isn't it only right to fully recognise and respect the location people live in? Cosmicsqueaker (talk) 20:27, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support strongly One consults these pages for definitive, exhaustive information, if looking up the background to Bolton for example, there is nothing to be gained from not knowing that it lies in historic Lancashire but one who is unaware of its history will at least understand its association with the county when the information clearly states its historic status. The same circumstance applies across the country, why, for example, teams residing within the remits of London Borough councils compete in Middlesex designated tournaments or belong to Middlesex associations. The value and usefulness of this information is seemingly very obvious. 92.25.89.39 (talk) 09:31, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, As per user Cosmicsqueaker . BristolTreeHouse (talk) 19:10, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Notice of end of RfC: I intend to close this RfC by removing the RfC tag from this post tomorrow evening (12 June 2021), at which point it will have been open for discussion for one week.Songofachilles (talk) 12:52, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

  • Oppose Unnecessary IB bloat. ~ HAL333 18:21, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support In my mind, the fact the information may be importantly relevant, albeit historical, outweighs any concerns of infobox bloat. (Also, RfCs typically run for more than a week.) SportingFlyer T·C 20:35, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Historic counties are not only relevant to the history of the county but also for people undertaking research about a specific place. For example genealogy, where county records for a town or village may differ from the current administration __Looke__ (talk) 19:09, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request 2021-06-21 - Addition of historic county field

Please add a field for 'Historic county' to the Template:Infobox UK place. The RfC on adding a field for the historic county to the Template (item 12 above) has resulted in a clear consensus that this field should be added. I have added the necessary code to the sandbox for the Template:Infobox UK place (lines 272 to 275). This code pulls the relevant data directly from Wikidata, without the need to edit every individual page. Songofachilles (talk) 10:04, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

  Done if I may make a couple of suggestions: (1) remove noicon=true to give a link to edit this information, (2) are local parameters actually needed, if step (1) is done?
Also, please update the documentation — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:57, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
And can the documentation advise editor discretion in its use. What we don't want is nonsense like

Aylesbury

Unitary Authority: Buckinghamshire
Ceremonial county: Buckinghamshire
Historic county: Buckinghamshire
IMO, the historic county only needs to be given when it is different from the Lieutenancy. And how should they be wlinked? In this case, the UA is described at Buckinghamshire Council, about 80% of the modern (ceremonial) county, Buckinghamshire, The historic county doesn't have article (nor need more that a section at most in the modern county article) is about 105% of the modern county, give or take a few enclaves and exclaves. I accept the conclusion of the RfC but it didn't (and shouldn't) say that it should now be obsessively populated in every article regardless of necessity. If in doubt, leave it out.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Users don't get a choice. It's added by default, which really wasn't part of the discussion above fwiw (and which is disappointing - it at least needs a switch to turn it off or override it imo). Better hope the data is actually accurate and that it deals with all those Buckinghamshire exclaves properly. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:02, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
The local government area, lieutenancy area and historic county are three independent things and are presented as such in the ONS Index of Place Names. I am in favour of all three being presented all the time. In some cases the the lieutenancy can be derived from the local government area, but in many cases it can not. If a reader is looking for a lieutenancy area then that information should be readily to hand in the infobox. It should not be up the them to know which area has a lieutenant by virtue of having a county council, or which has one as a combination of other local authority areas. In Scotland and Northern Ireland they bear no resemblance to local authority areas. Likewise, if a reader is looking for a historic county then that information should be readily to hand in the infobox. Readers should not need to know that in some cases a local authority has the same name as a historic county, so it is implied (e.g. Cambridge) and in some cases it does not, so it needs listing separately (e.g. Huntingdon). For the sake of one extra line in the infobox (which takes us back to the same number we had with European Parliament constituencies), readers are spared the need to work things out and are just presented the information they want. That is the point in an encyclopædia after all. It is not supposed to be a test of logic! Owain (talk) 08:43, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
@Owain: sorry, I meant editors don't have a choice. So we have no editorial ability to decide whether or not to include this field. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:11, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I can add the documentation; but if I may add a note about edibility: The data comes from the ONS' Index of Place Names, so is not subject to change (as per their own documentation). The local parameter is not strictly needed, but for completeness with the rest of the template it has been provided. Owain (talk) 12:06, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

There is a map here (the one on the right) which shows the differences between the historic and ceremonial counties. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:32, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
BSqT - If the HC were not added automatically, would it not continue to be the source of continued edit wars? Who would decide if inclusion of the HC was justified? I can see the point raised by JMF, but again, that too would lead to confusion and edit wars. Although the current auto-included HC might appear at times to be unnecessary overkill, it is at least fixed and not open to personal preferences. For the sake of one parameter line in the infobox, I think that is worth it. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 07:48, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
@Roger 8 Roger: my main concern is that the automatic addition of the field - with no ability to remove it at all - was not discussed at all in the RfC above. There are some complex cases that if there's no ability to edit we may be completely screwed with. Donisthorpe, I think, was an exclave of Derbyshire until 1889. There are other places which have been in more than one historic county. We need to be able, as editors, to add notes, for example, to the field to explain the complexities that we've got with some of these places. We can't do that - so Bedlington, for example, is begging for a simple note adding to the infobox field to explain what the heck is going on - cause the article sure as hell doesn't. (e2a: and that's before we get to the errors, the infoboxes where, for some reason, it's not been added where it's needed and the 99% of cases where it's been added when it's not needed at all. Glorious, because we can't change any of these) Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:11, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
I agree. A new RFC will be required if this field is to be populated automatically, universally and unalterably. In the vast majority of cases, it is irrelevant because it is obvious, as in the Aylesbury example above. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:02, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@Roger 8 Roger and Owain: I see that the change (to add the field that is populated automatically, universally and unalterably) has already been made without any RFC to permit it. The above RFC did not authorise this extreme change. Please revert to WP:STATUSQUO and open the RFC first. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:10, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't see what the fuss is all about. The Aylesbury example might look slightly odd, but only very slightly, and that is outweighed by the indisputable fact that it is true and relevant! Auto-fixed HC fields? Great, it prevents the insersion of personal opinion. Not being specifically mentioned in the initial proposal is not really that important: the point of the proposal was patently obvious and that has now taken place. We don't need to bother ourselves with how exactly the proposal is implemented. What next? Will someone complain that the HC field should come one line higher up in the IBX template, or should be in italics? I think it is fine. We should let it be. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:56, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
The fuss?
  • the automatically adding of the data wasn't part of the RfC - that was specifically about adding a field to the infobox. I would strongly suggest that to most editors that means a field we can edit. Automatically adding it was mentioned once - and there was no response to that. This implementation of the RfC is beyond it's scope - and, actually, that's a pretty big deal I'm afraid. Sorry, but it is;
  • in the majority of cases it creates redundancy. Stoven, Sittingbourne and Strumpshaw have never moved counties. A huge majority of places won't have. We were assured that we'd only be replace the EU parliament field - well, yes: but at least that was different to fields already in place;
  • the county name isn't linked. Why not? If it were possible to edit it manually I could do that; I can't now. If it were linked then there are OLINK issues, of course, to consider with the same place being linked multiple times in the infobox;
  • the "edit wars" you're suggesting (above) will occur, will occur in regard to wording and, frankly, it's really easy to simply replace the infobox with an instance of infobox settlement - as at Slough;
  • there are a hilarious number of errors and/or omissions: Stowmarket, Herringfleet, Fritton and St Olaves and Thetford, for example - as well as the ones I've already signposted. If a human editor made that number of errors you'd think about leaving a note on their talk page or simply reverting them;
The fuss? It doesn't work and it's way beyond the consensus which was agreed. I'd support a reversion based on that. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:29, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

−

[edit conflict] The fuss is that you made a major change to a heavily used template without consensus. You abused your admin privileges to over-interpret the RFC in a way that you think is appropriate. If you don't understand how wrong that is, you need to consider your position. Now would be a good opportunity to back off, implement what the original RFC approved and then open a new RFC for the version you think should be done. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:38, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
As a short term fix while this is discussed, I've updated the infobox to include the wikidata icon link when the data for historic county is coming from wikidata. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:37, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
@WOSlinker: No, the short term fix should be to implement the actual RFC as actually agreed and not a grossly expanded version of it which has introduced nonsense and errors. This really should not need escalation to WP:ani: a simple, easily made over-enthusiastic error was made and we really don't need uninvolved all all-and-sundry telling us what we already know. It was a simple mistake, just undo the mandatory element of it pending a new RFC. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:44, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
I have removed the wikidata call from this new historic county field. It was implemented incorrectly. My edit summary was: "rm unsourced wikidata call; not in RFC consensus, and implemented contrary to Wikidata infobox RFC". The new |historic_county= parameter should continue to work fine when it is inserted manually. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:08, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman and Jonesey95: The change was not made "without any RFC to permit it": Pulling data from Wikidata is explicitly mentioned by the proposer at the start of the RFC process; it is explicitly mentioned by the proposer at the end of the process, and the code provided in the sandbox did exactly that. I understand that there are some editors opposed to using Wikidata (as discussed in the Wikidata/2018 Infobox RfC) but that RFC did not ban the use of Wikidata, so the removal of that part of the template that was agreed in this RFC is not "contrary to Wikidata infobox RFC" and it is not an "extreme change". Owain (talk) 07:43, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

@Owain:: the exact words of the RFC are these:

Should a field for the historic county in which a settlement is located be added to the Template:Infobox UK place?

Most fields in the infobox are optional and editor-populated. I see no reference in the RFC to a field that is populated automatically, universally and unalterably. That is what is extreme and would need a further RFC. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:14, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
It is not unalterable, as it is editable on Wikidata. The way the field was coded means that it can also be overridden by entering the field manually in the infobox. The other automatic universal fields (Police, Fire, etc) cannot be altered this way as the lookup template is locked, so it is more user-editable than those fields previously added. The argument seems to be an ideological one against Wikidata which is more flexible than the plain-text lookups currently employed. Owain (talk) 08:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
My perspective is that, for the vast majority of articles, this field is redundant duplication, so in fact the ideological position is to demand it everywhere. I accept the consensus reached on the RFC that there are many places where that is not the case and thus the field should be available for those cases. I do not accept, and the RFC did not ask, that it must be enforced on all UK place articles irrespective of necessity or relevance. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:03, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
It is not duplication because the fields in question are completely different things. The fact that two fields may share the same name in certain instances does not make it any more a duplicate than "Unitary authority: Buckinghamshire", "Ceremonial county: Buckinghamshire" (as seen at Aylesbury for example). As per the ONS description in the Index of Place Names, it is one of the only fields that can apply to the entirety of GB, so it is not taking an ideological position to apply it to every place in GB. Owain (talk) 09:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
As previously discussed, I would be more than happy to have all three (historic county; county for the purposes of LGA 1972; county for the purposes of LA 1997) displayed everywhere. Hiding one or other because they share the same name is just confusing for the reader. We don't hide "Ambulance: Scottish" just because we have "Fire: Scottish", for instance. Owain (talk) 09:56, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
We are just going to have to agree to differ in that case. Continued reiteration of the same arguments is pointless. The issue has been resolved: the RFC as written has been implemented. If you want to make the field mandatory, open another RFC. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:20, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I'll just add, per points made up and down from here, that there are clearly a bunch of places where the Wikidata is wrong. By automatically adding that, without checking, you're increasing the unreliability of the project. That's a very bad thing I'm afraid. Fwiw I think I looked at 20, maybe 25 pages of places where the county has changed. I found 7 or 8 obvious errors. That's a hilariously (sic) high percentage. If you, as a user, did that by hand I'd open a conversation about deliberate factual errors on your talk page.
The problem with this is that it's not being checked before it's added. That's a really crap way to do this. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

IMO the real problem here isn't the inability to edit the HC field, it is the false assumption that pervades everything to do with counties and which BSqM, you illustrate well above by saying: "in the majority of cases it creates redundancy. Stoven, Sittingbourne and Strumpshaw have never moved counties." Regarding HCs, nowhere (excluding very few exceptions), has ever changed counties. Places are having other counties laid on top of them. The sooner we stop using terms like changed, transferred, absorbed into, the better for us all because they create a false impression of what has happened. The first step to doing that is to change the uk geography guidelines on how to talk about counties, which says 'we don't take the view that the HCs still exist'. Incidentally, the use of this new field, fixed or not, makes those guidelines absurd because it confirms, with ONS, that HC do exist. If that shift in thinking takes place then there is no real reason to make the HC field open to interpretation. So, this seems to be the root of the problem, not whether or not the consensus decision was exceeded. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:05, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Re: making the guidelines absurd: from the RfC close: "The key supporting arguments are that the historic counties (i) are essential to an understanding of British history at a local level, having been the basis for the description of locality for UK places throughout most of recorded history; (ii) are still relevant geographical entities in many contexts and important cultural entities to many people, being actively promoted by the Government for cultural and tourism purposes; (iii) are included in other major references sources including in the Office for National Statistics' Index of Place Names and in Britannica". Not, I note, that they still "exist" in any meaningful way.
The actual problem is nothing to do with interpretation. It's a combination of redundancy and that the data is simply not correct in a number of cases - perhaps the ONS data is better than Wikidata, I don't know. Maybe that'll deal with Outwell properly. Or Thetford. I mean, Thetford. How on earth does wikidata get that one so wrong?
But that's by the by. You have your field. Populate infoboxes with it. Write good articles explaining what it means (please! Some of them are as confusing as heck). Tell people why it's a big deal that Surrey play at The Oval or Kent at Beckenham - just don't repeat that old lie about the county boundary once running through The Nevill Ground... Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your above post. I admit I had not looked thororoughly through many place names with the fixed HC template. I assumed by error you were talking about the very few oddities where the HC is ambiguous, not referring to simple mistakes. What did the field say about Thetford (it has now been removed). Did it put Thetford in Suffolk? You raise an important point about redundancy. Something can be assumed to be extinct if it has disappeared from use, even if no official end point exists, such as county hundreds. The question then is are HCs still in use? In use to me means far more than having a practical use: hundreds have virtually no current use, even in the thinking of people, but HCs certainly do. I agree with your last paragraph. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:22, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, Thetford had just Suffolk. That may be based on the coordinates that someone has put into Wikidata which have the town on the west of the Ouse - when everything old and important in the town is on the east bank. But, yeah, coordinates that are crap are another of my bugbears... But, as I've said above, clearly too many errors to auto-add in my view.
The redundancy point is more nuanced of course. Do people in Deptford think they're in Kent? Some might, but gut feeling says most don't - and I would say that's even more so with younger people. How about Bromley or Beckenham? More would use Kent there I'd say, but I don't know how many. The bit of Tunbridge Wells that used to be in Sussex - how many people living on the other side of that road identify with Sussex? Hmm... I can go further - I work in somewhere that was part of another county until 1974. One person I work with knows it used to be in that county. >99% of adults don't (seriously - there's absolutely no identification with the other county in that part of the area that changed - certainly young people don't have a clue and would never identify as anything other than their current county). So I reckon it depends on a bunch of stuff - I don't think it's clearcut either way. It is historically interesting, of course. But to me only that (and, fwiw, I can find reference to the hundred that people used to live in being lamented as disappearing as well - in recent press articles!). Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
If there are clearly some errors with the Wikidata, then thank you for pointing these out and I agree that needs to be looked into further before auto-add is appropriate. Blue Square Thing: your points here would have been more appropriate to the (now closed) RfC above, and I think in any case you already made them there, but, fwiw, it's not relevant to consider whether, for example, people in Deptford think they're in Kent or not or whether people in the the parts of Tunbridge Wells that are in Sussex 'identify' with Sussex. It is a fact that Deptford lies in Kent and some parts of what is now considered Tunbridge Wells (e.g. Broadwater Down) are in Sussex (and you're absolutely right the Kent/Sussex border doesn't run through The Nevill Ground - it is just to the south of it). That never changed. What did change is that local government boundaries (always intended to be distinct from what we now are forced to term the 'historic' counties) were established and re-drawn over the 20th and current centuries, but this never affected the historic counties and it was never intended to. People have merely become confused over time as local government areas (and, more recently, lieutenancy areas) have conflated themselves with the (historic) counties. My main motivation for suggesting the introduction of this infobox field is to educate people on that, as an encylopedia should. I get that there is an argument to be made to say that "well, that may be the case, but it's too late now and it just doesn't matter anymore", but that wasn't the overwhelming feeling shown by the RfC above which explored the issue. Songofachilles (talk) 20:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
That's one interpretation of what has happened to county boundaries. But it's only one interpretation. A perfectly valid alternative view is that the boundaries moved. To be honest, I think if you surveyed people living in places like this that would actually be the general feeling - certainly this article would support that view, as would this document. It may be worth being aware that I think it's possibly to interpret this emphasis on historical counties from politicians such as Eric Pickles as being politically motivated, with a very specific type of cultural identity politics surrounding the belief that historical counties never went away - why would Pickles have to "assert", in a formal government announcement, if they had actually existed in any practical sense beyond where people play cricket? The assertion suggests to me that there was no prior belief that that boundary off of Warwick Avenue in Tunbridge Wells still existed. Your interpretation is that it always existed. Both are interpretations. Neither is fact - well, unless you're going to take Pickle's word for it (which, frankly, I'm not prepared to do) Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:08, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't have anything to add that I didn't already write in my comment to you of 10:55, 8 June 2021 in the above RfC - but we can agree to disagree! :) I think there is an interesting debate to be had (probably not here, though) about whether public perception can actually change something that, in this case, was never changed in law. And by the way, I wouldn't take any politician's word for anything, least of all one from Pickles' party (and I actually had to Wiki him as I wasn't even that sure who he is). But it's okay, because I don't have to, I can do my own research and reach my own conclusions - just as everyone should be able to with a comprehensive Wikipedia. Just out of interest, and following the logic of what you write above, do you consider that, for instance, Bedford is not in Bedfordshire, Reading is not in Berkshire, Coventry is not in Warwickshire, Darlington is not in Co. Durham and York is not in Yorkshire? The newspaper articles you cite are really interesting because they show how, at the time, it was absolutely in the interests of local authorities collecting taxes from residents newly under their jurisdiction from a different county to make them mistakenly believe that they had been 'transferred' into a different county or, in many cases, that their county had been 'abolished' altogether. Songofachilles (talk) 21:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Fwiw almost everything that I read about 1974 talks about transferring. I think the weight of usage is clearly in that camp. And clearly those places are in those counties - that's clearly the way in which we still describe them in just about every way - mainly because of the recent nature of the changes, partly because of the whole ceremonial thing clearly existing. But no one still describes Hopton-on-Sea as still being in Suffolk, or Canterbury as still being a county corporate or county borough because those changes were so long ago. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:33, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
From what I have seen over the years, that discussion about what weight if any should be given to public perception (of what county someone is in) has never happened. In fact, I would say it has been intentionally ignored because I have tried to raise it in as many ways as I can. However, I accept the fault might lie with me for not raising in a way that registers. Whatever, I agree that another debate about the role of HCs within wikipedia is needed, but not here. I would participate if such a debate was started but I do not feel inclined to be the one starting it. This latest addition to the ibx is excellent but it is only a part solution to a deeper problem. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 23:47, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Absolutely agree. Songofachilles (talk) 08:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
The issue has been contentious for years'. See:
I've not looked for the related discussions, but I expect that they were hotly debated. BTW has anybody informed Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography about this? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:00, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
The purpose of an RfC is to provide interested editors with a forum to discuss a proposal and it is also is a mechanism that provides notice of the proposal to interested editors. I don't think there is an after-the-fact obligation to inform potentially-interested editors who have not already taken the opportunity to express their support or opposition. —Songofachilles (talk) 20:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 Y Courtesy FYI — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:47, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
@Songofachilles: GhostInTheMachine refers to this edit. I don't see why that couldn't have been done weeks ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:00, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
@Roger 8 Roger: I'd be surprised if there's not been any academic work done on the imagined geography of county identity. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:33, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
If there has been I have not come across it. I believe there are one or two books around about historic county culture but they look to be written by ABC supporters, making them good but less than ideal to use as references. I do know that there is an enourmous amount of low grade references being used to back up our current, slightly anti-HC, position. There is also a lot of misreading of references, leading to editors not properly reproducing what the reference actually says. Of the better quality academic works about counties, they all appear to focus on the local government aspect of counties. Unfortunately I do not have access to most of them which makes it imposssible to check some of the statements made in wiki articles that use those works as references. Anyway, I'd be happy to see an academic book about county identity if one exists. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:31, 27 June 2021 (UTC

Just chiming in to say this is a long standing content dispute that is well documented. The field should be removed. MRSC (talk) 09:55, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you MRSC for chipping in: your presence is welcome and required. Yes, we know you do not want the field there. It would be helpful if you could elaborate as to why instead of giving one liners. You have done the same at North Woolwich with this equally informative comment: "It isn't in Kent now". I do however partly agree with some of your changes to the North Woolwich article, but further discussion there is needed. Your comments in subsection 4 above should be down here I think. In any case, now that some further heavyweights have begun to enter the ring (no offense intended to anyone) I hope we can begin discussing how to iron out some of the thorny issues that will arise with this reinstated HC ibx field. Over zealous editting that gives, to use your term, 'primacy' to HCs in articles is one issue, but that is easily dealt with. A new section might be useful, perhaps in the project page talk:UK geography,? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 11:09, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
User:Roger 8 Roger, I could do with some help with some of the articles being edited by User:PlatinumClipper96. They are including information about the historic county in the lead paragraph. Not everyone knows what is meant by a "historic county" and some will read that as belonging to a county that has existed for a long time and I think could lead to confusion. A number of examples include: Leytonstone, Walthamstow, and Stratford, London. WOSlinker (talk) 20:38, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
WOSlinker, I have commented on the Stratford, London talk page. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:49, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Hi there, @WOSlinker and @Roger 8 Roger. My edits make a clear distinction between and makes obvious the fact there are different types of county. It would be far be more confusing and, in fact, misleading if we say a place "was" in its historic county as WOSlinker did when changing my edits, or by only attributing ceremonial or non-metropolitan/metropolitan counties to the word "county". The term "historic county" refers to a specific definition of English counties, as do the terms "ceremonial", "non-metropolitan" and "metropolitan". The fact the ancient counties of England in their traditional form are not used for administrative purposes does not mean they no longer exist, are insignificant, should be referred to in the past tense or not mentioned at all. I fail to see any reason as to why the historic county should not be mentioned in the lead. Roger 8 Roger, regarding your message to me on the Stratford talk page, I am happy for the ceremonial and historic counties to be mentioned in a ceremonial county-first order, in accordance with the established structure you mentioned. My view is that we must make the fact places remain in their historic counties whilst also in other definitions of the counties (i.e. those currently used for administrative purposes) clear to the reader. Recent administrative changes have for decades caused confusion with regard to counties. PlatinumClipper96 (talk) 17:56, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

How has this happened? An RFC was opened while there was an ongoing discussion on the same topic immediately above it, relevant wikiprojects were not informed, a significant number of longstanding editors opposed the proposal but an editor who hadn't made a single wikipedia edit for 4 years nonetheless declared that a consensus had been reached (when it clearly hadn't). Apart from being a terrible idea which is going to populate articles with misleading historical fictions, this is also a complete abuse of process, as well as contradicting longstanding guidance. I agree with the editors above that this field should be removed. There was and is clearly no consensus for its addition. JimmyGuano (talk) 21:55, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Bot request

This bot request by Owain was denied, but this was simply ignored and automated population of the field continued at a rate of several thousand edits a day, in direct contravention of the denial, resulting in mass-populating every UK settlement article with data for which there was and is no consensus, and which in many cases is highly misleading or downright wrong. How can this be reverted? JimmyGuano (talk) 06:10, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
May be the easiest way would be to comment out the field in the template so the field is not shown, until some consensus on its content can be reached. Keith D (talk) 10:43, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea - thank you. Given the refusal to publicise the RfC, its closure by a likely sockpuppet/meatpuppet in the absence of an actual consensus, and the subsequent automated population of the field in direct contravention of a denied bot request, I've taken this to WP:ANI - it's a hell of a mess. JimmyGuano (talk) 13:27, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland seems to have been completely overlooked in this discussion. Unlike in Britain, the counties of Northern Ireland haven't changed since the last of them were created in 1613. Every settlement in Northern Ireland already showed the county in the infobox. Owain has been adding the new field, so now they all show "County" and "Historic county", which are always the same (see Armagh for example). This is not needed. Also, although none of the Northern Ireland counties are used for governance, they're not "historic" either. I suggest Northern Ireland settlements be left alone and the "Historic county" field be removed from them. ~Asarlaí 12:51, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

True but it is not only in Northern Ireland where Owain (mainly) has been doing that, despite being requested in the strongest terms to stop adding redundant information. This field is only relevant to places where the boundary has been moved or significantly changed (like the London boroughs). It is just chaff in other articles. Owain, please stop making these wholesale changes while discussion is still in progress. @Asarlaí:, you would be fully justified to revert pending agreement on appropriate use. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Asarlaí Thanks for raising; I agree this needs more discussion specific to Northern Ireland. John Maynard Friedman Please refrain from trying to re-open arguments that have already been considered in the RfC. You yourself above write: I accept the consensus reached on the RFC that there are many places where that is not the case and thus the field should be available for those cases and We are just going to have to agree to differ in that case. Continued reiteration of the same arguments is pointless. The issue has been resolved: the RFC as written has been implemented. If you want to make the field mandatory, open another RFC and yet you are still constantly bringing up the same arguments over and over again. The RfC has concluded that the addition of the historic county to the Infobox is not 'redundant information'. This is your opinion. Automatic populating of the field has been removed as you wished. As for the field being added to articles, to use your own words again, where the boundary has been moved or significantly changed, this is very far from just the London boroughs, as detailed and set out above multiple times. To reiterate, and repeating what I have written above: There are 92 historic counties in the UK, of which only 48 share their name with a current local government area (although with different borders, with the exception of, I think, only two: Ceredigion/Cardiganshire and Rutland). Added to this, there are countless settlements which are now in a lieutenancy (called the 'ceremonial county' in England; the 'preserved county' in Wales and the 'lieutenancy area' in Scotland) such as Tyne & Wear, West Midlands, Bristol, Cumbria, East Sussex, Merseyside, Greater London, Tweeddale, Gwent, Clwyd, Dyfed, Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Stirling and Falkirk, etc. that is different to the historic county. Please don't make me have to go over old ground again. You say you accept the conclusions of the RfC. Thank you :) —Songofachilles (talk) 20:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Where it is clear that field is being pushed into hundreds of articles, robotically and algorithmically without any evidence of editorial judgement being exercised, it is indistinguishable from the automatic population that you agreed should stop. There is clearly no consensus for that, so please call a halt to it. I accepted the result of the RFC which said, and only said that the field should be made available, nothing more. Nothing in the RFC justifies gross errors like North Woolwich and City of London, nor self-evident silliness like Armagh/Armagh/Armagh. And no, it doesn't need discussion "specific to Northern Ireland" because there are similar examples in England like Buckinghamshire/Buckinghamshire/Buckinghamshire right at the start of this discussion. Time to pause and reflect. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Why does an editor who hasn't made an edit for 4 years suddenly pop up to close an RfC at 5 in the morning and declare a consensus has been reached in a debate with significant opposition and which he hasn't taken part in, despite an edit history of pushing Association of British County viewpoints? And then the terms even of this non-existant consensus are then completely ignored and editors run amok filling infoboxes with blatant falsehoods. This is not the correct way for decisions to be taken on wikipedia. This is an opportunistic putsch on the part an organised long term campaign. JimmyGuano (talk) 23:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Suggestion: perhaps they have two accounts, so that they can have two watchlists; but normally only edit from one of the two accounts. Maybe they forgot to log out of Graham Shipley and log into the other account before making the close. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Even taking that charitable interpretation, a marginal, unannounced straw poll, judged by an undeclared alternative account, on an unadvertised RfC on an unrelated talk page, is not the correct process for overturning wikipedia guidance that has been in place for over 15 years. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:00, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
The 'County' displayed in the Infobox for places in Northern Ireland relates to the field lieutenancy_northern_ireland which is the same as the historic county for all places other than those within the two county boroughs. Clearly including the historic_county field for places outside the two county boroughs is redundant and confusing. Peterjamesb (talk) 08:34, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Apologies for that -- that was an oversight when I was creating the lists of articles to amend. As discussed, I had excluded all those places where the lieutenancy_england and shire_county were the same as the historic county, but neglected to consider Northern Ireland where they are almost all the same. Happy to remove the redundancy! Owain (talk) 08:38, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

How about Scotland? Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I will work on that too. Owain (talk) 09:10, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Avoiding misrepresentation of history

So why is Ullapool listed under Cromartyshire rather than Ross-shire, which is was in before it was in Cromartyshire, or Ross and Cromarty, which it was in afterwards? If we accept the need to include former counties, surely we should include all of them? Why does only one of them count? This is misleading information that is obscuring history, not revealing it. JimmyGuano (talk) 19:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC) In fact (I've learned a new thing today) before it was in Ross-shire it was in Inverness-shire. So the infobox here should list four historic counties. JimmyGuano (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Ullapool is listed in Cromartyshire because this is what the ONS Index of Place Names states. The IPN includes the counties as determined by the OS, not any administrative areas (e.g. Ross & Cromarty) that were subsequently based on them. Owain (talk) 20:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
OK, so the county history of Ullapool is as follows: Inverness-shire (1207-1504), Ross-shire (1504-1690), Cromartyshire (1690-1890), Ross & Cromarty (1890-1975 - or present day if you want to argue continuity with incarnations of Ross and Cromarty since, though I accept you may not). You are arguing that "Historic county: Cromartyshire" is a fair and representative summary of that, that will quickly give wikipedia readers a good and balanced understanding of Ullapool's history? JimmyGuano (talk) 20:47, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Great question JimmyGuano. As the editor above writes, the 92 historic counties of the UK are basically a re-statement of the definition of the historic counties which was used by the General Register Office (GRO) and the Ordnance Survey, after the Local Government Act 1888 and the Local Goverment Act (Scotland) 1889 were passed. The GRO coined the phrase ‘ancient or geographical county’ to distinguish between the historic counties and the new, administrative local government areas (known as ‘administrative counties’ and ‘county boroughs’) created by the Act. Ross and Cromarty was an 'administrative county' created by the 1889 Act and is therefore not a historic county. For ease, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire have often been considered together in other contexts too, though, mainly because Cromartyshire is unique among the counties for being one small area and an extensive and complicated set of exclaves. But the two are separate counties.—Songofachilles (talk) 20:56, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Regarding Ullapool more specifically, it was part of Inverness-shire and then Ross-shire during the period when the Scottish counties were still evolving into the historic counties as generally accepted today (including by the ONS and its IPN, the OS, and the Government). I expect the editor who has made edits so far is sticking to the Historic Counties Trust's Historic Counties Standard which you can read about here: https://historiccountiestrust.co.uk/Historic_Counties_Standard.pdf. —Songofachilles (talk) 21:21, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 says in article 39 - "From and after the passing of this Act, the counties of Ross and Cromarty shall cease to be separate counties, and shall be united for all purposes whatsoever, under the name of the county of Ross and Cromarty" [1]. You are arguing that this doesn't mean that they ceased to be separate counties, and that they were not united for all purposes whatsoever? And you are arguing that it secretly made a distinction here between "historic counties" and "administrative counties" that it cunningly disguised by using the phrase "for all purposes whatsoever". And you also disagree that Ullapool wasn't in Cromartyshire until it was added to Cromartyshire in 1690? And quite aside from all of this, you seem to now be arguing that the infobox should not inform wikipedia readers about the county history of a settlement? JimmyGuano (talk) 21:23, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
It seems entirely sensible to use same the definition of the historic counties as used by the ONS for the purposes of the historic_county field. Where there have been changes in the county of a place over many centuries these should surely be dealt with in the main body of the article for that place, as should issues relating to detached parts, counties corporate and so on. In this way, the whole story can be told and the value in the historic_county field put in context where that is necessary. The article also provides a place where modern local government etc. can be put in context in relation to its historic county. The purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place. I suggest that debates about which historic county should be listed for a given place would be better held on the Talk page for that place. More general discussions about the historic counties of Scotland would be better held on the talk page for that article. Peterjamesb (talk) 21:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
No it doesn't. Listing one historic county in an infobox for a settlement that has been in four different counties over its history, and has been not in that county for far longer that it has been in that county, is actively misleading. As is taking a snapshot at one moment in time and presenting it as eternal and unchanging, which as you can see in the case of Ullapool at least it certainly is not. And this is a discussion about what goes in the infobox, so the infobox talk page is an entirely appropriate page to have this discussion on. JimmyGuano (talk) 21:50, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
I'd agree. It really makes no sense to use a single point in time to define something that has happened historically - and certainly not if part of the reason for doing so is to present information succinctly for readers. If it's that complex we'd be better off with prose and possibly leaving it out of the infobox entirely. Certainly the ABC, for example, dates Scottish counties to the early 12th century rather than using a single data point as the ONS may be doing.
Part of the problem might be the use of "historic" in all of this. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:06, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Yes, in an ideal world we'd be able to just call them 'counties' (as in Northern Ireland, which never had the chaos which resulted from administrative entities being termed 'counties' in the rest of the UK), but it's not currently possible, although as more and more unitary authorities appear (which, with a few exceptions, don't claim to be counties or call themselves a 'county council'), I'm hopeful one day it might be possible.—Songofachilles (talk) 22:15, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Peterjamesb is right. And this page is not for discussion about the actual data that goes in the Infobox; it is for discussion of the parameters that comprise it. The historic_county field has been added per the consensus reached during the RfC period. Discussion about the precise contents of the field for a specific place is indeed best discussed on the talk page for that place. I'd also refer you to p. 13 of the Index of Place Names in Great Britain (IPN) User Guide 2019 (not available as a weblink, unfortunately) which lists the 92 historic counties (including Ross-shire and Cromartyshire separately) and states that the administrative counties introduced by the LG(S)A 1889 were separate to the historic counties in Scotland and that it was these administrative counties that were abolished by the LG(S)A 1973, and not Scotland's historic counties. —Songofachilles (talk) 22:15, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
You've got to admire the powers of irony of someone who can state that "The purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place." and then argue that the best way of telling that whole story is to omit three of the four counties that collectively make up the majority of that story. And this isn't an argument about Ullapool, or about Scotland, it's an argument about an infobox field and what information should go in it. And no there wasn't a consensus in the RfC, and as you can see there still isn't. JimmyGuano (talk) 22:22, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
The problem is that that dataset appears to be a) unable to cope with places at a full settlement level in many cases (see Thetford) and b) can only apply one historic county properly to the data - so Outwell has two separate rows in the csv file (yeah, it's downloadable from here as a zip - took me maybe 30 seconds to find). So which one do you use - the locality or the parish? One says historically it was in Cambs, the other Norfolk when, in reality, it was in both. St Olaves is even worse. Just trying to use that data without significant research would lead to significant errors. I'm not even sure it's trustworthy, let alone the level of effective OR required to actually use it - as a user I'd have to make a judgement about what I included within the article on St Olaves. Taking the ONS line, I'd have to include parts of South Norfolk (Haddiscoe Parish) within the article about the village. Although that's technically correct (I drive through it every working day) it opens a can of worms the size of some very large worms. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:40, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Still haven't had anybody explain which of these statements they disagree with.

  • Ullapool has been in several counties over its history: Inverness-shire (1207-1504), Ross-shire (1504-1690), Cromartyshire (1690-1890), Ross & Cromarty (1890-1975)
  • Putting "Historic county: Cromatyshire", (or any other single county) in the infobx is misrepresenting that history
  • Wikipedia should not have misleading summaries in its infoboxes.JimmyGuano (talk) 06:40, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
On your first point: Agree. Except that the last entity (Ross and Cromarty) is not comparable with or equivalent to the other three. It is an administrative-only creation that was and is distinct from Ross-shire and Cromartyshire. On your second point: Disagree. The historic county for Ullapool is Cromartyshire according to the ONS and its IPN (and, by extension the UK Government) and the OS. A different, additional parameter would be required to include Inverness-shire and Ross-shire for Ullapool (something like 'county timeline' or 'county evolution') as a 'historic county' is a term with an accepted definition and following that definition was the intention behind me suggesting the parameter in the RfC (see my supporting comment underneath the RfC question). On your final point: Agree. We're talking about data though really for this parameter, not 'summaries'. And the ONS data is not misleading.—Songofachilles (talk) 20:53, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
In 1890 Cromartyshire and Ross-shire explicitly "ceased to be separate counties" and were explicitly "united for all purposes whatsoever" as you know perfectly well because we discussed it above. The only difference between them is that one of them succeeded the other two. Repeating the same myths over and over again doesn't make them true. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:14, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
Songofachilles, please don't insert your replies in another editor's post. It would have been legitimate to replace JimmyGuano's bullet pointing (*) with numbering (#) and then reply in your own post using those numbers. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
Redone as requested, thank you, that is clearer. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that the only way to resolve this is to date the "Historic county" item. Is it as at 1888 or as at 1974 or when? That would resolve a lot of these issues. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Neither. The Historic County Standard says "the boundaries as existing immediately before the passing of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844". Except that's not true, it accepts the exclaves removed by that act. And its not the boundaries immediately after the passing of the act either - as it rejects those changes that were not about true exclaves. So in simple terms: The historic counties presented by the historic county movement do not match the real counties at any point in history. They are instead modern-day areas analogous to the historic regions.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 19:33, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
But the Historic Counties Trust (which drew up this so-called 'standard') is just a lobby group with no standing and so may safely be ignored. The more this can of worms gets exposed, the stinkier it gets.
We are being told repeatedly that this field is valid because the ONS reports it (where?). Which definition do they use? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
Taking the Historic Counties Trust's advice here is like asking the Birmingham City Supporters Club whether Aston Villa are a big club, or asking the Pope which is the best religion. JimmyGuano (talk)
The ONS data being referred to is the Index of British Place Names, which explicitly refers to Definition A of the Historic County Standard. The IPN contains ~100,000 entries saying which county for each place, but has no map of the exact boundaries. OS has generated boundaries for the historic counties, and there are thousands of cases where the historic county in IPN does not match the OS-generated boundaries. Some are data quality issues, some are substantive differences in the county borders. This means ONS data disagrees with OS data!--51.7.92.61 (talk) 09:55, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

A compromise proposal?

OK, we've very clearly established in the case above that there are places whose county has changed over time, often multiple times over multiple centuries. And that in such cases picking one of these counties at an arbitrary point in time and putting it in an infobox is clearly wrong and would result in readers being given actively misleading information. Note that in the Ullapool example above I am not engaging in a pointless theological argument about which of those four counties should be represented as "correct", they are clearly all "correct". I am pointing out that as a matter of principle we can only fairly represent Ullapool's history by including all of them. History didn't start in 1888 and it didn't stop in 1890. As many of the large number of reasoned objectors pointed out in the non-consensus which wasn't reached in the improperly-managed RfC above, the logical conclusion of that is that potentially complicated and nuanced historical information is best kept out of info-boxes. However in the interests of reaching an actual consensus, maybe we can build on the objective given by a proponent of this infobox field above, that "The purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place". Presenting the whole story of a place feels like something that we can all agree on as a commendable objective. On that basis listing all of the counties that a place has been in in the past in a field in an infobox wouldn't seem a terrible outcome? Not my preferred one, but a reasonable compromise? JimmyGuano (talk) 05:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

The above RfC on whether the field 'historic_county' should be added to the Infobox:UK place was followed pretty much to the letter of the rules and guidance on conducting an RfC. Two thirds of those who participated in the RfC supported adding the field to the Infobox. This is a majority view and many decisions are taken on a majority view (e.g. referenda, elections, etc.). What you are talking about here is a debate about what a historic county is, not which parameters should comprise the Infobox:UK place (the issue relevant to this talk page). I think your debate is best taken to the talk page for Ross-shire, Cromartyshire, Ullapool and/or Historic counties of the United Kingdom, Shires of Scotland. My view personally is that the generally accepted definition of historic county per the Government, the ONS, the INS and the OS is preferable, but debate on that (in the appropriate place) is always welcome (and really interesting, too). —Songofachilles (talk) 09:01, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
This is not the case:
  • The purpose of a Request for Comments is that you request comment, that's the point, and you do so from a wide, impartial range of participants by publicising the RfC, as it clearly says in the guidelines. Informing Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography after the RfC closed doesn't really count. The RfC was improperly managed.
  • As you say, elections run on majorities. However Wikipedia doesn't, it runs on Consensus. The RfC was closed by somebody who didn't appear to know this, who popped up from nowhere and declared a consensus on the basis that slightly more people had expressed support than opposition during the unpublicised two weeks that the RfC had been open. There was and still is are large amount of reasoned objections from a large body of experienced editors who edit wikipedia broadly. The RfC was improperly closed.
This was not a properly run RfC and there was, and remains, no consensus for the change that was made. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:23, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
I have no problem with this idea. As I said, the purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place. No irony intended. I do think though that this is a discussion to be had on the Talk page for the Ullapool article or the Cromartyshire article or the Historic Counties of Scotland article. Peterjamesb (talk) 09:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
The infobox is not meant to be a history lesson -- surely that information is better dealt with in the Cromartyshire and Ross-shire articles themselves, not added to every infobox with "Historic county: Cromartyshire (from 1690) Ross-shire (Until 1690)”? We don’t list out the previous local government districts or lieutenancies: We don’t have things like “District: Somerset West and Taunton (from 2019) Taunton Deane (until 2019)” or “Ceremonial county: Lincolnshire (from 1996) Humberside (until 1996)” We don’t do it with counties of the same vintage either, e.g. “County: County Londonderry (from 1613) County Coleraine (until 1613)”. The infoboxes should list the things as they stand now, not provide a chronology of previous values which would end up making the whole thing unwieldy. Owain (talk) 09:07, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
An article is supposed to represent the history of a place though, and the infobox is supposed to summarise it. This proposal would result in the actual history of a place being actively misrepresented. Whether or not an infobox is there to present history, it clearly shouldn't present myth. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:31, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
In that case, the (visible) field name should be "1887 county". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:48, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
If the infobox is for "things as they stand now", that naturally implies not showing any historic county detail in the infobox. I realise it isn't quite that simple, primarily because of the recognition the government has shown.
The whole historic county movement is primarily a reaction to the changes of 1974, with the aim of saying the historic counties still exist. In order to preserve the traditional Middlesex/Surrey boundary it had to go back further and arbitrarily fix the borders in 1889. Legalistic arguments were then created to justify that date (which may or may not be correct).
The county boundaries were never static and eternal, and there were plenty of changes before and after both 1889 and 1974. Fixing the boundaries at a specific date introduces problems, which the Historic County Standard acknowledges. It makes choices about how to handle complexities like exclaves and moving river courses. By making choices, it means the precise boundaries derived from the standard are not the actual boundaries at any point of history, but original creations by a pressure group.
If a place is affected by a change of county in 1844, that is just as important to that place as a change of county in 1974. Both situations should get identical treatment, such as a sentence describing the change. Pretending there is a single set of historic counties is an oversimplifcation of reality.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 13:30, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
51.7, even assuming merit in your reasoning, how does that apply to the 1889 changes in England where a conscious effort was made to exclude the counties as they stood then from being affected by the 1889 legislative change? That has had a run on effect in later legislation, including 1974, because in order to create the new 1974 administrative counties one needed to cancel the existing administrative counties, meaning the 1888 counties were still not being changed. You could say that the 1889 parliament, in bowing to the wishes of the countryside lobby and consciously not changing established HC boundaries, was unknowingly creating an horredous mess for the future. If that is all true, and I see no reason to doubt it, so what? It is not our problem to solve, we just report what is. Your reasoning, that county boundaries have been changing since 1889, as they had done many times before that date, is nothing more than your original research which you are trying to make out as citable fact. By insisting that your opinion is actually fact you and your buddies from the early days have caused this never-ending debate about HCs on wikipedia. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:34, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
The 1889 legislation made a concious effort to exclude the counties from being changed? That seems extremely unlikely. There was no logical reason for the laws to deliberately exclude that change, and if it was deliberate they would have spelled it out. That fact was not made explicit; but I fully agree that yes, the exact phrasing of the law means that could have happened.
The boundaries adopted by the HC movement are not exactly the boundaries of 1889, and to draw a precise line the modern organisation has to make a decision with no reflection on the reality of 1889 (when the river moves does the boundary move - yes or no?). For 99% of places it makes no difference.
My point is the counties were not unchanging before 1889. Further while I freely admit this is original research, but had the 1974 changes NOT happened, its likely that minor changes like Tredington in 1931 would have been fully accepted. Tredington's change is lost in the bigger battle to protect the identity of Lancashire, Middlesex and the rest.
Back to the actual point here: We should acknowledge the FULL history. Not cherry pick the one bit of this a significant group want to be able to say. And yes, that does mean mention of the daft 1974 creations like Humberside.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
At least for England and Wales, a distinction was drawn between the (then) new, 'administrative counties' and the centuries-old 'geographical counties' in both the final wording of the Local Government Act 1888 and during the debating of the Bill in Parliament. See, for example, the report of Lord Balfour's speech (section roughly between Columns 915 and 916). —Songofachilles (talk) 23:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I say conscious effort because the insertion of the word 'administrative' before county in the act was one step further than just the boundaries noted in the act. If 'administrative' had not been inserted we would be in an ambiguous situation about whether new areas of administartion had been created or whether the existing administrative areas (ie the HCs) were still being used but with altered boundaries. However, by taking the step consciously to insert the word 'administartive' before county the act removed any ambiguity and made it indisputably clear that what the act was doing not touching the HCs, including their boundaries. I think this extra step to consciously insert 'administrative' taken by parliament is legal principle creating compelling evidence that would stand up in a court. Hansard also puts beyond doubt the thinking of parliament and the countryside lobby, who wanted to preserve the existing HC boundaries, at the time beyond any doubt whatsoever. When you speak of river boundaries I think you are refering to the Thalweg principal, which crops up at times with internation boundaries. See Sedudu as an example. Interesting though it is, any county boundaries affected by it would be negligable, if any at all, which makes the whole argument in a legal sense trivial, making it not worth even considering as a realistic argument. My understanding is that the ABC uses 1853 default boundary position, but I might be wrong on that and others might choose to comment. Whatever, if there is to be a fixed position for HCs I do not see the problem in using the current govt used boundaries for HCs. That removes all argument and person opinion and refers back to a source (not quite a RSS but close enough for use in WP).Roger 8 Roger (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Due to the various changes in county boundaries, the historic counties as presented today are not the counties from time immmemorial until 1889. But these are more like the counties for a much shorter period before 1889.
With regards to the rivers there are a number of minor changes that have to result from this, another other necessary changes may be in place around offshore islands etc. These do not affect the overall picture but do exist. What these mean it is impossible for the modern boundaries to precisely match the historic boundaries at any point in history. Its likely that OS-supplied boundaries subtly differ to those from other sources (including ONS) due to differing interpretations of these points, the OS boundaries incidentially have a clear error as Rumney is not in any county.
The historic counties are important, but are a snapshot of history, not the whole history. For most places either the county for all purposes is unchanged (eg Exeter), or a single change happened in 1974 which can be effectively summed up as modern = X, historic = Y (eg Carlisle). Those 2 situations aren't the problem.
But there are many places which are more complex and this fails. I have already mentioned Rumney, the Rumney/Roath boundary (and therefore that of Glamorgan/Monmouthshire) was adjusted in 1883. All of Rumney was added to Cardiff in 1938. This means: The boundary between historic Glamorgan and Monmouthshire was an active administrative boundary for less than 10 years (if the historic counties lose all admin meaning in 1889), Rumney saw 2 changes that affect its county alignment and Cardiff as a whole is NOT purely Glamorgan - it includes part of Monmouthshire. These complexities cannot be simply handled by the premise of modern = X, historic = Y.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 04:30, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

While I am not going to repeat the shenanigans of the RfC and claim there is consensus here as there clearly isn't yet (as there wasn't then) but there is clearly some support for this. Having a simple list of the major counties a settlement has been in in the past (where different to the current one, to avoid redundancy) would give people a brief representative overview of the story of the settlement, and if they wanted more information such as dates and the myriad complexities that these things can involve, they could read the body text, or click through to the articles for the county itself. This would often just be a single county (eg Abingdon) or indeed be empty (eg Dover). As mentioned above we would need to include all of the former subdivisions (Cleveland is part of Middlesbrough's history, like it or not) but even in complex cases it shouldn't get too out of hand as long as it was kept to a simple list. Ullapool, for example, a relatively extreme example, would just be "Inverness-shire, Ross-shire, Cromartyshire, Ross and Cromarty". This would be an interesting starting point for people to begin to explore the rich and varied history of our counties and other subdivisions. Hard to see too much of a downside to this? JimmyGuano (talk) 07:21, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Unhelpfully, User:Peterjamesb and User:Owain, despite enthusiastically taking part in this discussion up to this point, seem to have decided not to take part in this attempt to find consensus about this infobox on this infobox talk page, and are trying to find their own consensus about a field in this infobox at Talk:Historic counties of the United Kingdom. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:17, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Just chiming in again to say this discussion has been had on here many times before and is being rehashed yet again. The field should be removed as it is misleading. The alternative would be to give a detailed history of the administrative history of each location, but that is even more overkill for an infobox. MRSC (talk) 08:21, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

For the record I agree with this. I am just trying to see if we can find a "least worst for everyone" option, on the basis that grudging support from a broad base of wikipedians is better than endless to and fro. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:33, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm afraid that since my previous contribution was dismissed as irony I haven't felt like making a further contribution here. I have, however, taken some time to read back through the source information and think through the issues involved in populating the historic_county field in the ukplace infobox. I have posted my thoughts on what the issues are and my views on how best to deal with each on Talk:Historic_counties_of_the_United_Kingdom. I suggest that page is a more appropriate place to discuss this subject, especially since there will be an ongoing need to discuss aspects and specific examples of this issue from time to time. Peterjamesb (talk) 11:41, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

OK I apologise for my possibly excessive frustration that led me to describe your earlier post as ironic, though I stand by my contention that it was highly contradictory. I also acknowledge your constructive post further up this section, and your right to move away from this attempt at a consensus position as well as towards it, as you seem to have done since. However if we are to reach a consensus on this (and we haven't yet, either for the original proposition or for my attempted compromise), one discussion in one place would help that process. Discussion started on this talk page, is about the subject of this talk page, was enthusiastically embraced by both you and Owain when it seemed to be delivering a result you wanted on this talk page, and the infobox in question does not even appear on the page that you have started discussing it on. Suddenly having the same discussion somewhere else is not going to help resolve this problem in a way that meets broad satisfaction, which is what we need to try and do here. JimmyGuano (talk) 12:10, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
A key point is the utility of the information. The historic counties are a fixed, defined and stable geography. We know the Highland shires were not finalised until the days of Charles II, but that hardly matter when most of the land the counties were fixed a thousand years ago. The utility is multifarious: one would want to know the historic county of any place for referencing such works as the Victoria County Histories, GENUKI and other records, but also current systems organised by historic county. I am far more likely to need to look up the historic county of a place than to know which police authority or which fire and ambulance authorities it comes under or its local government office region. Hogweard (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
I agree that utility is a key point, which is why it is so important that we don't present misleading oversimplifications of sometimes complicated history. To pick up directly on your Victoria County History example - Harborne seems to sport "Historic county: Staffordshire" in its infobox. This is actively unhelpful information if you want to track it down in the Victoria County History, because it is covered there under Warwickshire,[2] the county it was in as part of Birmingham from 1891-1974, which is not mentioned in the infobox because it is deemed theologically "incorrect". So your example illustrates my point perfectly: to be useful an infobox should either represent the county history of a settlement properly, or it should not at all. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:00, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
This to me is a show-stopper. VCH is the reliable source for the history of counties and their settlements: it is unacceptable to misdirect readers based on the self-proclaimed "standard" of an advocacy group. I really can't help thinking that Wikipedia has been a victim of a successful WP:ADVOCACY campaign. Infoboxes should always and only contain information that is as unarguable as we can make it, because it is the 'at a glance' summary: if there are any ifs, buts and qualifications, they can only go in the body text and not in the infobox. The mechanistic population of this field needs to stop. In any cases where the settlement has had multiple counties – such as Ullapool or Harborne – the field must say "various, see History section". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:07, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
It's not just the VCH though. If you were an American researching an ancestor who lived in Deptford in the 1890s, you might reasonably conclude from having "Historic county: Kent" in Deptford's infobox that you should go to the Kent County Record Office in Maidstone to research this. You might be quite annoyed to discover that Deptford was actually in the County of London at the time, a fact completely unmentioned in the infobox and airbrushed out of history by this bizarre determination to present a single "correct" historic county as eternal and unchanging. JimmyGuano (talk) 10:52, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Deptford was partly in Kent and partly in Surrey, so the infobox is wrong. The place for these details is in the prose of the article. When is the field being removed? MRSC (talk) 11:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

You can make the same argument about including postcode district in the infobox. Plumstead is partly in SE2, but mostly in SE18, but the infobox says it is in SE18. Would you remove postcode district from the infobox too?
All you can hope to do in an infobox is provide a quick overview of the salient facts about a place. Qualify info with "Mostly.." if you need to, but if you get bogged down in too much detail it destroys the point of an infobox.--Mhockey (talk) 18:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
You are mistaking 'historic' for 'historical'. The latter means 'in the past' but 'historic' means 'with longstanding behind it'. For that there is an understood, fixed standard, adopted by the Office for National Statistics. That is what is to be reflected. Hogweard (talk) 17:32, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
I'd be really interested to find out when this definition was adopted by the ONS. It seems impossible to find online copies of their data prior to 2016 or so. Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:43, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
And I'd like to know the exact definition of this specification (it is not a standard unless someone can quote the BSI number and, given that it has so many silly errors, I would be astonished to see such). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
The historic counties were added to the ONS's index of place names in July 2016.
The definition of the specification has been linked a few times above, we are talking about the Historic Counties Standard, Definition A is the one that was copied to ONS's dataset. s4.1, 4.2 and s4.9 are the pertinent sections. Its not a straight copy of the historic boundaries.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 23:37, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for that. On page 13 of the User Guide, the ONS says "The boundaries of the historic counties used here are those defined in Definition A of the Historic Counties Standard published by the Historic Counties Trust, whereby detached parts of counties are not separately identified, but are associated with their host county". So it would seem that we have to accept the ONS's decision, warts and all. The ONS hasn't maintained its usual standard of precision here, I can't help wondering if they were given a political direction and did it with bad grace. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:49, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes. The ONS's decision was to import the Historic County Standard. But we don't have to follow the ONS on this, just because its ONS. The other obvious reliable source on the matter is OS. OS has produced its own boundaries stating "produced by Ordnance Survey in collaboration with the Department of Communities and Local Government: The output from OS has the explicit backing of the government department. The two chief reliable sources on British geography give different data.
My preference is strongly towards the OS data. The reasons for that are the actual boundary set was produced by the reliable organisation, not imported blindly from an outside organisation. Unlike the HCT data, the OS data is based on a definite snapshot in time. And the key date for OS is 1889, which is the key date to the HC movement.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 00:00, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
Do you happen to know when the OS established their definition? I'm concerned about the very recent adoption by the ONS, especially given the political background to it. I'm not sure that it's something that should be accepted as gospel in quite the way it is being Blue Square Thing (talk) 00:03, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
Not sure when OS did its work on this, but it will be a similar timeframe to ONS. I believe that the DCLG instigated the actions by both ONS and OS here, in light of the lobbying (and Eric Pickle's agreement with it).--51.7.92.61 (talk) 00:18, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
I agree and strongly support using the OS definition. For anything to do with maps and mapping, the OS is the obvious go-to: we should rely on professional cartographers not a lobby group. And the fact that the OS declares an unambiguous date for the snapshot (which should be made visible in the infobox) is enormously attractive. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:10, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Returning to a comment further up by 51.7.92.61, where she/he says Due to the various changes in county boundaries, the historic counties as presented today are not the counties from time immmemorial until 1889., I need to try to dispel a misconception. That reasoning is being repeated here constantly and a lot of time is spent fending it off. IMO, it is spurious, probably in good faith but spurious nevertheless. The point is the IBX field is about the HC, not the HC boundaries. By all means discuss how to deal with those ambigiuous cases or the ONS mistakes, but don't use it to undermine the very existance of, and mention of in the IBX, of the HCs themselves. To use an analogy: Germany's boundaries are not the same now as they were in 1988, or 1948, or 1943, or 1938 or 1933, or 1917, or 1912, or 1872. Does that mean Germany was not Germany at those earlier dates? The HC of say Essex was the same HC in 1888 that it was in 1788 or 1688, (and was in 1988 too), irrespective of any tweeks to the boundaries that might have occurred. (But the HC of Essex is most certainly not the same as the admin county of 1899 or the one of 1999. Incidentally, the admin county called Essex of 1899 is also not the same as the admin county called Essex of 1999 because the first was ended and the second started, as opposed to the first one being altered.) Roger 8 Roger (talk) 03:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

This infobox is about the individual locations, not the county itself. The equivalent problem is not "did Germany exist from 1872 to today" but "Do we mention that Strasbourg, Vienna or Gdansk is in the historic country of Germany". To answer that question you need to determine if those places fall within the boundaries of the "historic country". With the counties, the fact boundaries have changed is irrelevant to having the article Westmorland, but before we can put Warwickshire in the HC infobox field of Tardebigge we need to determine if it is within the boundaries of the HC. Having boundaries is critical to the correct use of this parameter.
As the boundaries have not been completely stable, there are places which have multiple counties of historical relevance. It is questionable if singling out just ONE of those is appropriate in the infobox at all; or if that should be best handled in the body text. To resolve issues around the boundary, if we retain the parameter: We can give one special privilege (which should be the boundary at a specific date, and have that date stated), list the lot or put "Various" when multiple apply.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 05:16, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
Agree that the boundaries are critical to this infobox issue specifically, but not necessarily to the subject of historic counties in other contexts where it's possible to cover nuance and complexity more adequately. We can argue for ever about Todmorden, but nobody is arguing that Wikipedia should assert that "Yorkshire doesn't exist". The Black Country has never had defined boundaries and even the general understanding of it has changed over time, but equally it's hugely, if variably, important as a local identity. If you ask somebody from Dudley where they are from, they are far more likely to say "The Black Country" than either the West Midlands or some combination of Worcestershire/Shropshire/Staffordshire. Wikipedia should certainly have an article about it, and it's very important that it should be discussed to a suitable degree on relevant settlement articles, but equally it should certainly not appear in any infoboxes. Boundaries and identities are not the same thing, and treating them as if they are is part of the problem here. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:43, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
I agree with you. Drawing lines on map is about making precise something that isn't. That precision is a problem here (its necessary for an infobox to state X in Y). A single source should only be used if its definitive, and that simply doesn't apply here - no-one is the definitive "owner". The body text can handle all the nuances. I personally view the historic counties as having fuzzy borderlands, with people in border areas likely to identify with either county; this is an inevitable consequence of the areas not being active for local government for so long--51.7.92.61 (talk) 09:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems fairly clear that this attempt to find a compromise position that both sides of the argument could agree on hasn't achieved consensus. As the previous proposal that led to the current situation didn't achieve consensus either, and there don't seem to be any other suggestions being proposed, then the field clearly should be removed until a consensus can be found. Does anybody know the correct procedure for doing this? JimmyGuano (talk) 08:51, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I think there a qualified consensus emerging for keeping the parameter, provided its used correctly. I believe a real compromise could be based on any of the 3 points I suggested (giving 1 county privileged status but providing explicit date, listing all, saying various in complex cases). IMO for the majority of places, there isn't much of a problem. The only real issues are those places historically in multiple counties, or ones that became part of their "modern" county at a non-standard time.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 09:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
OK happy to keep going as long as we're not Flogging a dead horse. Thank you for separating out these three options, which is useful and thought-provoking. To go through them individually - (1) seems awkward, in some cases it's not that obvious even which should be privileged and I suspect it would just cause the issue to fragment into millions of little edit wars about whether each change happened in 1888, 1974, before, after or never (multiply by a million for pretty much every settlement in the country). It's hard to see a sustainable compromise involving dates that would satisfy the ABC dogma (2) seems the most promising to me, on the assumption that in the majority of cases there would be zero or one entries here and the absolute maximum number listed even in rare extreme cases is not going to be more than 4-5. We should probably stress-test this assumption though, even one settlemen's infobox having 10 counties listed would clearly be bad. (3) seems to be just wasting space, having "various" in an infobox is adding no information and is just noise. More generally I agree that a lot of cases it's unproblematic and am very happy to try to find a set of guidelines that would allow us to have "Historic county: Lancashire" on Barrow's infobox and "Historic county: Berkshire" on Abingdon's, both of which seem to convey important and useful information accurately, as long as it doesn't mean that we have partial and misleading infobox entries like "Historic county: Kent" for Deptford's or "Historic county: Cromartyshire" for Ullapool's or "Historic county: Gloucestershire" for Bristol's, which hide more than they reveal. JimmyGuano (talk) 10:02, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Why not keep it simple which is the whole point of the infobox - 1/ Use ONS as the default 2/ have an attached note tag to summarise any nuance or ambiguity that is dealt with in the body below. Nothing ambiguous goes into that field unless it has a note attached. So, Deptford would be put in Kent with a note mentioning the Surrey connection that is explained further in the body. If there is no attached note the field is left empty or can be made empty by the removal of 'Kent'. This is not really any different from the way we deal with unreferenced comments in any article. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:28, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

It is good to be simple but it is important not to be simplistic. Deptford has been part of Surrey, Kent and the County of London at various points in its history - we should either reflect all of that or none of it. The existence of a field in a database does not over-ride our requirement for "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". There are people who apparently genuinely believe that there is a single set of county boundaries that has remained unchanging over time, but the weight of historical evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. We need to find a way to represent the very real persistence of county identity (in some places at least - if you told most people in Deptford they lived in Kent they'd look at you the same way as if you told them they lived in Wales), without traducing actual history. JimmyGuano (talk) 11:08, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
The ONS data clearly requires too much interpretation to use properly. It's simply not good enough as a definitive source in too many cases. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:30, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
JG - where did that quote come from please? My proposal does not override those requirements anyway. Don't forget, this is the ibx, not the body. The boundary changes in relation to the overall need to identify a place as in a HC in the infobox (note my suggestion on how to do this) amount IMO to de minimus objections. I agree that most people in Deptford would probably not have a clue in which HC they were. But so what? They also would probably not know in what electorate they were. The presense of Deptford in Kent (or Surrey) is relevant to an encyclopedic artical about Deptford whether most people know or care about it. And don't forget, this is about HSs in general, not about specific places. So even if Deptford in a HC is not too notable it does not matter because places in a HC in an overall sence is most certainly a notable and relevant topic. Your mention of Septford being in the county of London is off topic and not relevant here, except that it illustrates the difficulty most people have of getting this debate into context. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:13, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
I have absolutely no quibble with historic counties being notable. However the relationship between the County of London and Deptford is more then relevant here - it is pivotal to this whole discussion. The determination to censor history into convenient history that can go in an infobox, and inconvenient history that can't, is exactly the root of the problem here. We should either present all of history or none of it. JimmyGuano (talk) 09:03, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
That's the lead sentence on WP:NPOV, one of WP's core policies. NPOV definitely applies to infoboxes. The difference to text in the body is an infobox doesn't have space for nuance, so it requires the entry is concise. If an entry cannot comply with NPOV and be concise, it doesn't belong in the infobox.
I do think that as Government advice on historic counties highlights the boundaries developed by OS, we ought to follow use that data. Those boundaries are a lot more consistent than the ONS data, and that consistency reduces issues in its use. One additional benefit is the timestamp that gives. That allows a standard footnote which could be incorporated into the infobox (on the lines of "county immediately prior to the 1889 local government changes"): That addresses both those places with a load of changes and sidesteps arguments about the current status of historic counties.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 23:17, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
"All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic" is the full sentence of the policy. This can be read in conjunction with the guidelines descibing the content of the ibx, quoted here: "When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored, with exceptions noted below). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content." There is little room for doubt that the encyclopedic content of the article is the body, not the ibx. Therefore, the wp policy is not breached. The ibx guidelines would be breached if the ibx did not summarise the body. In the case of Deptford (Kent, with a tagged note) the ibx would summarise the body if in the body it was shown that on balance Deptford is more associated with Kent than with Surrey using RSSs, which is likely to happen. We only need to reach that lower standard of 'on the balance of probability', not what appears to be your standard of 'beyond reasonable doubt'. I think there would be very few, if any, cases where it is really 50-50 in which county a place was in. Which default source to use? I am less concerned about ONS or OS but I would be uneasy using the position in 1888 just before the 1889 LGA because there is too close an association with local govt counties, which we need to get away from. After the ??1847 detached parts act might be more suitable. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia's core policies applies to all information that face the readers, including all templates. Infobox guidelines do not trump overall policy and infoboxes don't get out of NPOV because they need to be short. - the detail is absolutely required for that infobox.
Wikipedia works on consensus, not any legal test, and there is nothing in what I've said about legal standards of proof. The only legal-style arguments on this page are those justifying the continued existence of historic counties, by saying that the 1889 legislation didn't affect them. There aren't cases where it is "50-50 in which county a place was in", but are plenty where the place was in two counties at different times. There are also places were two counties apply at the same time, and if significant both should be listed together. If we ignore the county corporate, Bristol is best example. The city centre may be on the Gloucestershire bank, but just saying Gloucestershire would be downright misleading as Redcliffe has been part of Bristol from the 14th C.
A major reason for me preferring the later date is that best reflects the position of the historic county movement. If the historic counties still exist today, that's because they weren't abolished by the 1889 acts (or subsequenctly) and so the borders that persist today are the ones just prior to 1889. Other benefits are that the quality of the source data for 1889 is clearly higher and those are the borders that the government signposts.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 05:35, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

From the perspective of complying with the MHCLG initiatives on local county heritage, the county identity is vital data, and this is the 'ancient or geographical county' as the ONS once put it, or the 'historic county' as appears in the ONS's current dataset.

The emphasis is on centuries-long heritage (or indeed millennium-long), not past administrative arrangements.

The mixture of ancient counties and areas deemed to be counties for particular purposes predates the creation of county councils in 1889. In the Over Darwen case that went up to the Court of Appeal in 1884 you can almost hear the frustration of the judges a Parliament's confusing use of 'county' for innumerable contrasting areas, including or excluding boroughs and franchises etc. (The Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough of Over Darwen v The Justices of the Peace for the County Palatine of Lancaster' (1884) 15 QBD 201 (CA)). They concluded that a 'county' in the absence of any other indication was as meant as 'a geographical division, and not to any jurisdiction to be exercised'. That stable, 'geographical expression' is what the initiative is getting at.

Some towns, like Todmorden, will have a historic county boundary running straight through the middle, and it would be useful to have that joint heritage reflected. LG02 (talk) 07:40, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@51.7, I will overlook your post pervading pique and address directly the points you raise. 1/ Wikipedia's core policies applies to all information that face the readers, including all templates. I never said it did not. However, that information must be read in full and in context otherwise we are left with absurd isolated words and phrases being analysed. 2/ Infobox guidelines do not trump overall policy. I never said they did. 3/ If Balaklava's infobox said just "Ukraine" that's clearly not a neutral summary, even though that might match the majority of sources. You are confusing neutrality with reality. To be neutral and balanced we can assign greater weight to one side if needed, which might appear to be biased, but it is not. Both Russia and Ukraine are in the infobox because both claims are strong based on different principals with roughly equal weight given to both claims: sovereignty as established and accepted internationally post USSR disintegration; and sovereignty as established by effective occupation and control post 2014 invasion. If Russia had just had a loudly expressed claim but had not invaded, the ibx would quite rightly only say Ukraine, because Russia's sovereignty position would be much weaker. We would not, for example, give equal weight to the claims of the USA and of Haiti in the Navassa Island article because Haiti's claim is merely words. 4/ Wikipedia works on consensus, not any legal test, and there is nothing in what I've said about legal standards of proof. I agree and I never said there was. 5/ The only legal-style arguments on this page are those justifying the continued existence of historic counties, by saying that the 1889 legislation didn't affect them. Perhaps true for this page but not for the wider discussion. Something can exist if enough people think it exists even if there is no tangible evidence nuts and bolts evidence to prove it. This is a difficult concept to understand and to express and it is lost on many editors here, unfortunately, who focus on the far from unimportant fact that the HCs were not officially abolished. Hundreds were not officially abolished either but they no longer are part of the daily thought process of most people, meaning it is hard to claim they still exist. If we say hundreds are do not currently exist it is due to their becoming obsolte, not because they were formally ended. Hence, two ways to become non-existant, not just one. 6/ There aren't cases where it is "50-50 in which county a place was in". 50-50 refers to the number of people arguing for one county over another; it does not mean that a place is equally in two counties, like a condominium. 7/ If the historic counties still exist today, that's because they weren't abolished by the 1889 acts (or subsequenctly) and so the borders that persist today are the ones just prior to 1889. First part addressed in point 5 above. I can see you make valid points here which I can consider. I said I was uneasy about it, not that I was against it. I hope this helps clarify matters. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:49, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
"Something can exist if enough people think it exists even if there is no tangible evidence nuts and bolts evidence to prove it." This is a very important point - see the Black Country example further up for example. Kurdistan is another example. No official existence whatsoever at any point in history, but certainly considered a reality by a lot of very real people, and it's not wikipedia's job to tell them they are wrong. However this doesn't mean we should invent or misrepresent tangible evidence or nuts and bolts to justify them either. Or suggest a precision where there is none. Or suggest that things are consistent through time when they very clearly aren't. In terms of nuts and bolts, nobody is suggesting that the 1888 act abolished any counties - it didn't - it just changed a lot of their borders and it did create one - the County of London - which very explicitly completely replaced its predecessors in its own areas, and is thus as much part of Deptford's reality as Kent is. And the 1889 act for Scotland also changed a lot of county borders, and very explicitly abolished Cromartyshire and Ross-shire. This doesn't mean that people can't identify with whatever they like though (as a proud midlander I have quite a strong affinity for Mercia), it just means that popular geography is rarely cut-and-dried and thus makes a bad subject for infoboxes. JimmyGuano (talk) 09:18, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Could we adopt a solution whereby:

  • There is a field labelled "Historic county", or possibly "Pre-1974 county"
  • This field is used where there is an unproblematic historic county (eg Arnside was in Westmorland, with no complexities as far as I know)
  • Where the situation is more complicated, there is a standard note displayed in that field, saying "See text of article", perhaps linking to an anchor "Historic County" which will be put in whichever section is appropriate. There could be some boiler-plate text available to insert for groups of cases where the same history applies ("Was in X until nnnn and then in Y until 1974", or whatever).
I have no basis for saying so but just a hunch, that a fairly high proportion of UK places were only in one historic county and the reader will be well served if we include this in the infobox so that they can quickly identify (a) where it is geographically if they haven't kept up with changes, and (b) which volume/chapter/branch of various sources, book series, organisations, is relevant to the area. For the simple cases, we can help the reader easily. For cases where an infobox one-liner would be an incorrect oversimplification, we should explain the situation in the text. (Or perhaps as a footnote, if for some reason it is not felt appropriate in the article text?) PamD 15:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Probably the most constructive suggestion so far! Simple but still accurate, which are both needed in an infobox. Your hunch is probably right - the main exceptions are likely to be places which were detached parts before 1844 (or 1931), and places absorbed by expanding conurbations before the 1965 and 1974 reforms. The idea of linking to an anchor in the text is good, with the added benefit of encouraging some uniformity in where and how we treat the history of local government in articles.
We would need to agree on places which were in the County of London, every one of which might be labelled "See text of article." If you can regard Greater London as an expansion of the County of London (the clue is in the name), perhaps we could just show the pre 1889 county.--Mhockey (talk) 21:25, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
I'd support PamD's suggestion. Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:50, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Having the pre-1974 county, lebelled pre-1974 county; or the pre-1888 county, labelled pre-1888 county; or the pre-1844 county, labelled pre-1844 county, would all be proposals i could support. Choosing an arbitrary date still feels a bit absurd, but it would not be actively wrong. JimmyGuano (talk) 22:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
If "pre" is controversial as asserting too strongly that they changed when they, er, changed, maybe 1973, or 1887, or 1843? JimmyGuano (talk) 23:02, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
In principal I can accept PamD's proposal, which is a more refined version of what I had earlier suggested. However, it will not work unless some of the detail is not changed. Yes, Jimmy, there is indeed too close a link to the administartive counties. By leaving that implied link in place we are simply inviting more disputes. The very few places where the HC is ambiguous, I think (might be wrong) that most of those relate to detached parts and urban sprawl, and all we therefore need is a default date to account for the detached parts (1850?) and a default spot within a place to say which county it is in - town centre perhaps? For the others that are ambiguous for other reasons (very few) then yes, some sort of note referring the reader to the body below. If we start using admin county dates we are just asking for trouble. IMO we need to seperate completely from our thinking any connection between the HCs and these various administrative entities. Another reason why I cannot fully agree with PamD's idea is that it still allows for person opinion. Who is going to decide if a place's HC is ambiguous? For that reason we do need a outside standard to refer to (similar to a RSS, -which is critically important to an WP policies). OS or ONS are those external sources. They may not be perfect but we can refine their use. What we must avoid is not using them, as outside sources, and start adding what we think should be in the ibx field. I also think other, pro-HCs, editors should comment on this proposal. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:34, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Isn't the principle of PamD's suggestion that if it's complex or contentious at all, that we deal with it in the body properly rather than leave it hanging in the infobox. When it's neither complex or contentious we put it in the infobox (if it doesn't involve redundancy). There are lots and lots of places where it's neither complex or contentious.
This approach has the advantage that it will improve articles by insisting that where things are complex we're going to want them explained properly. Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:14, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
As when it was suggested before, having "various" in infoboxes seems pretty nasty and does tend to suggest the content shouldn't be in an infobox in the first place, but it's certainly better than having misrepresentative information in infoboxes (and thanks PamD for the constructive suggestion). And I agree with all the posters above that there are many examples where it's all pretty unproblematic, because there is only one county other than the current one that a settlement has ever been in (eg Arnside, Barrow-in-Furness, Abingdon). We'd need to include "inconvenient history" too - before they were in their current counties Bedlington was in County Durham, Winchcombe was the county town of Winchcombeshire, Oakham was in Leicestershire and Weston-super-Mare was in Avon. None of these facts would require more than a single line in the infobox, linked through to their articles for people who wanted to find out more. And the County of London has no more reason to be airbrushed out of history than Huntingdonshire. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:11, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I don't think anyone wants to airbrush the County of London out of history. But it existed for less than 80 years, and is it really a "historic county" any more than Avon or Humberside or Hereford and Worcester? If you want to read about the complicated history of local government in London, WP will oblige, but not in an infobox. But the example does strengthen the case for using an actual date (pre-1974 or whatever) to avoid endless debates.--Mhockey (talk) 11:16, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Good point by BSqT about improving the detail in the body, I had not thought of that. I would like to see comments from Owain, Peterjamesb, Hogweard and others about this proposal. JimmyG, when I see comments about airbrushing the county of London out of history I find it hard to believe that we are all not talking in our own language, talking loudly to each other but all speking different languages. What has the county of London got to do with a field about historic counties? Why not mention Londinium in case its memory gets lost in space?
The County of London was a purely administrative convenience that lasted just 76 years. It was never a historic county. In the text of an article it may be relevant to the administrative history of an area, but the county heritage of any neighbourhood in that area, the sense of place in which it formed, is in the county which has been established for a thousand years before anyone thought of such things as county councils. Hogweard (talk) 12:28, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
"The County of London was a purely administrative convenience" This widely-repeated myth is straightforwardly incorrect. The 1888 Act explicitly and unambiguously goes out of its way to say exactly the opposite. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

We don't need to consider adding chronological information in the infobox for historic_county, any more than we have to for any other field. Whether we agree with it or not, there is a single current verifiable historic county for a place, in the same way that there is a single current verifiable ceremonial county for a place. Interestingly enough, the ONS Index of Place Names is the reliable source for both, and it uses the terms "historic county" and "ceremonial county" for both and uses very specific definitions. Prior to 2016, there was no source that used the latter term, so this is good verifiable information for that part of the infobox too. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Owain (talk) 15:41, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Owain. I introduced the RfC on adding the field ‘historic_county’ on the basis that it is a term defined by a verifiable source (the ONS). In addition:

  • Our job as editors at Wikipedia is to report from verifiable sources (see Wikipedia:Verifiability), not to present information in a way we would like it to be presented or believe it to be best reflected. As stated here, "Wikipedia's content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors.”
  • The clear intent of the RfC was that the new historic_county field should be tied to the definition of 'historic county' used by the ONS. If we cannot accept the UK Government's statistics agency as a reliable, verifiable source then what can we accept as one? So long as this source is clearly referenced, then clarity will be given to the reader about the contents of this parameter. The result of the RfC should be respected.
  • The parameter itself is already subject to a compromise, which is that the data has not been added to articles which already have the correct historic county name as a shire_county or lieutenancy.
  • It is ironic to say the least that the main objection voiced to adding this field during the RfC was that it would cause ‘bloat’ to the Infobox, because it is now being suggested that additional information that is not relevant to the field (e.g. the County of London, Avon, etc. which are not historic counties) is added. Aside from being irrelevant to the parameter, this additional data would surely actually add the ‘bloat’ which some were so fearful of.
  • Arguments about whether people are actually aware of which historic county a place is located in are irrelevant. As has been pointed out above, I’d wager very few people could name, for example, the civil parish, OS grid reference, the ambulance service NHS trust or parliamentary constituency of their village, town or city. But that does not mean we do not report it. In fact, this is part of the purpose of the Infobox. Wikipedia wouldn’t have many articles if it only reported on what people already know.
  • Although detached parts, a place being part of a different historic county over time and counties corporate are all important parts of a place’s story, these aspects are not defined as part of the historic county by the source material and are therefore best dealt with in the body of the article itself. Similarly, names of entities that are only relevant to the administrative history of a place (e.g. Avon, Cleveland, Ross and Cromarty) are not historic counties per the ONS definition so, again, these need to be reported in the body of the article itself. —Songofachilles (talk) 17:01, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm afraid that the RfC did not state, in it's base, that we'd have to use the ONS source. You introduced it as a source in your vote. The term historic county was defined way before the ONS began to use it. We can present whatever sources we like, so long as they're reliable etc... Given that the ONS source clearly requires substantial interpretation, bordering on synthesis, to be able to make any sense out of in a number of cases, and relies on a single definition out of a number produced by a pressure group, I'm unconvinced it's reliable to the exclusion of all others, let alone usable.
A good faith compromise was suggested. It won't add bloat - indeed, it'll probably reduce it at the same time as encouraging the development of reliably sourced information in the article body. Bit of a shame about that really. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:49, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

What is wrong with my earlier suggestion that we use ONS as the default source for the HC field and if there is any ambiguity it is mentioned in an attached note or a spot somewhere in the main body? This would not stop anyone using any source they wanted (which would be used in the note or main body) and it would also allow us to keep ONS as the source to be used in the field, due to a consensus decision, a consensus decision that would not override WP policy. It would also remove any connection with LG entities from the HC field. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not entirely clear on the details you are proposing here, but if I've understood correctly, the problem is that it is still selecting a single county out of several in a county's history and presenting it in an unqualified capacity as the "correct" one. The issue isn't about which the best source is for determining the "correct" one, it's the very idea that there is a "correct" one. The advantage of PamD's "see article text" proposal above is that it maintains the "show all the history or show none of it" principle in a way that still allows unproblematic cases where a single line can show all of the history. The downside is that having "see article text" in an infobox is rather contrary to what in infobox is for. If I've misunderstood your proposal then I am happy to be put right. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion: "as of" years

There seems to be continuing debate with no end in sight. One thing that I don't see above is a suggestion to supply a year, or year range, to indicate just when the HC was relevant. So we might have 
| historic_county = Ross and Cromarty
| historic_county_years = 1890–1975
This should clarify, I don't expect that anybody under 30 is necessarily aware that counties have changed; even if they are aware, would they know just how long ago a HC refers to? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
As I said above, speculating about what people may or may not already know or realise is irrelevant. I am not that far over 30 years old and I was the one who initiated the RfC.—Songofachilles (talk) 10:45, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support especially because I don't see that we should accept the opinionated and inaccurate specification of a pressure group. The reliable source when it comes to maps and mapping is the Ordnance Survey. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:53, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Good faith accepted but this amounts to a front door attempt to overturn the new consensus. Frankly, I am speechless. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 06:31, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm fairly speechless that you can read the pages above and see a consensus that this is overturning! JimmyGuano (talk) 07:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak support Picking out one county from several in a settlement's history still feels misrepresentative and wrong in principle, but this would at least qualify the scope of what is being claimed, and mean we weren't asserting any active falsehoods. And qualified information seems better than "see article text" in terms of meeting the purpose of an infobox. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:57, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

It's interesting, but I can't really see it flying. There is it seems to me, very little difference between the main proposal and the compromise suggestions. If it is just Ullapool that is a concern, that was (as I read it) the result of 17th century post-civil war reconstruction, not a general state of flux. The remarkable stability of the geographical system is what makes it attractive for modern-day heritage projects. LG02 (talk) 07:29, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

This doesn't help clarify cases where the administrative history is complex, where the information is best detailed in prose with the article. Of course for the vast majority of places the county has never changed and this field is redundant. It should be removed. MRSC (talk) 11:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Not the case. As I wrote above (and also repeated above once already): "There are 92 historic counties in the UK, of which only 48 share their name with a current local government area (although with different borders [...]). Added to this, there are countless settlements which are now in a lieutenancy (called the 'ceremonial county' in England; the 'preserved county' in Wales and the 'lieutenancy area' in Scotland) such as Tyne & Wear, West Midlands, Bristol, Cumbria, East Sussex, Merseyside, Greater London, Tweeddale, Gwent, Clwyd, Dyfed, Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Stirling and Falkirk, etc. that is different to the historic county."—Songofachilles (talk) 12:04, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
In many places 'administrative history is complex', but this is not about administrative history. If it were, we would have to deny the very existence of Yorkshire (stand twenty feet away from any Yorkshireman if you do) and slice from any county the various boroughs, liberties cinque ports etc they had or have. It is a purely geographical division. That has been a fixed element over many centuries. Hogweard (talk) 12:14, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Both good arguments for removal and explanation of the history in prose. MRSC (talk) 14:15, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I disagree. The historic county is a term with a clear definition backed by verifiable data from a recognised source and, as can be seen from the above RfC, for many it is an important aspect of a UK place and, for those unaware of it, a way of ending the confusion that has been caused by ever-changing administrative entities.—Songofachilles (talk) 14:36, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

"That has been a fixed element over many centuries.". And therein lies the root of the problem. These "historic counties" haven't been fixed over many centuries. This attemnpt to take a set of borders created in 2016 and present them as somehow "fixed over centuries" is pure Invented tradition, and a perfect example of myth-making over truth that Wikipedia should not be asserting. Where things haven't changed we should of course reflect that. And where things have changed we should reflect that too. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:08, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

This historic county stuff is absolute garbage. It was resolved over 10 years ago on Wikipedia - it didn't stand up then (under the laughable term traditional counties) and stands up even less so now - almost half a century after reforms introduced a modern arrangement to replace "counties of any other description", all of which are entirely understood, accepted, logical and verifiable. What next, historic boroughs? Wapentakes? Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms? The compromise - and a very good one at that - was agreed after enormous debate, that historic county information would (or even must) feature in the introduction of all UK place articles, but not in the infobox. And to be fair this is what most people read and refer to anyway. Traditionalists need to get real. Historic counties (a neologism) are ex-counties, former counties, just like ex- and former boroughs (supplant the word "county" for "borough" and re-read traditionalist arguments and it just simply doesn't stand up). It's fantasty psuedo-geography for weirdy beardies. Get it off the infobox. 208.127.199.33 (talk) 08:46, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I've updated two articles to give the full county history in the infobox. Romford and Penge. If we are going to show accurate information it would be good to find a way to support this fully otherwise the field should be removed as it is incapable of summarising the article. MRSC (talk) 11:27, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

You have to ask yourself, and this is key to conceptualising it: during the long ages that Romford was part of the Royal Liberty of Havering, excluded from all interference by the Justices of Essex, would a villager of Romford every have claimed that his home was not in Essex? The ancient counties are geographical, not administrative concepts. Record the changing forms of administration all you will, but no one in all that time would deny Romford as an Essex town, any more than a Yorkshireman would ever claim Yorkshire has never existed. Hogweard (talk) 13:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
@MRSC: Please don't use <br> tags to create a pseudo-list, it is bad for accessibility. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:47, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Surely nobody can argue with a straight face that those two articles would be improved by replacing those fields with "Historic county: X"? That this would somehow be wikipedia doing its job better? (I had no idea about Penge, either, and I used to live about a mile away - it's genuinely interesting) JimmyGuano (talk) 15:51, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
I was about to say exactly the same thing - I assumed Penge would simply have been Kent and then London. How interesting. Blue Square Thing (talk) 17:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I won't be engaging further on this issue on this page as the standard of debate has reached rock bottom with the above post in which the historic counties have been labelled 'absolute garbage' and those that are in favour of the parameter being in the Infobox (which is the majority of those who participated in the above RfC) labelled 'weirdy beardies' (whatever one of those is). To reiterate: 1/ The term historic county is a defined term (namely, the 92 historic counties of the UK) by the ONS in the IPN, and, by extension, the UK Government. 2/ The RfC, initiated in good faith, showed clear support for this field being added to the Infobox and was closed for discussion when only one additional comment had been received over the space of its final week. 3/ The ONS data is a verifiable, reputable source suitable for Wikipedia, the purpose of which is to report information published elsewhere only. —Songofachilles (talk) 15:00, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

The RFC did indicate consenus was starting to form in favour of the change. 2:1 majority is not consensus, and there were objections not properly addressed, so it should have been left open longer. But that's done. All the discussion since is actually the RFC de facto continued, not an attempt to overturn it. This end of this discussion will be the correct closure of the RFC, which may or may not be the same as the initial close.
The historic counties (ie the 92) are clearly something WP should be discuss; and we should also discuss other units like the County of London. There is no definitive source on the historic county boundaries, the government would need to pass primary legislation to do that - just as it has for unitary authority areas.
What this means is that while ONS is a reliable source, so is OS and other potential sources. None of those are definitive, and there is no reason to arbitrarily choose one over the others. I personally feel more comfortable with using the OS data than the ONS, as data quality is clearly higher and its clearer what it actually represents (for example, it has a more robust solution to the exclaves).--51.7.92.61 (talk) 22:04, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
A reminder: The RFC was closed thus: "Consensus was reached that a field for the historic county in which a settlement is located should be added to the Template:Infobox UK place." The parameter has been added to the template. The code that displays the parameter value is: {{#if:{{{historic_county|}}}|{{Unbulleted list|{{{historic_county|}}}|{{{historic_county1|}}}}}}} Unless the RFC closure is to be overturned, which looks unlikely based on the trend of the discussion, all of the above discussion is about what should be placed in the template documentation as guidance related to the contents of |historic_county= in individual infoboxes within individual articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:06, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Fortunately, I am speechless no longer. Does anyone have a map showing boundary changes to HCs over time? For example, showing HCs of England in 1600, in 1700, in 1800 etc. My guess is that if there are were changes they would have been so minor, relative to England as a whole and to the time spans involved, that there would be not real point creating such a map or diagram, meaning we should not be too concerned because de minimis non curat Wikipedia. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:40, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Just as an example - there is an entire article just about one county, with multiple maps and 188 footnotes at Evolution of Worcestershire county boundaries since 1844. JimmyGuano (talk) 05:58, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
That article demonstrates very well that is misleading to show a "historic county" without qualifying it with a timeframe. Do we have more similar articles? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:29, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Unfortunately not, to my knowledge, and there are plenty of counties for which similarly-complex accounts could be given. That is what improving the coverage of historic counties looks like though, not hiding such history behind nostalgic myths. JimmyGuano (talk) 05:51, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
The boundary changes of the counties are relatively small at the national scale. That means there is no need to quibble about the exact boundaries of maps used in articles like Westmorland. However this template is not about the big picture, but the local situation for individual towns and villages. If the specific village is close to a boundary, these things become of key importance to the article. A boundary change in 1790 might affect 0.01% of England, but it is a major point to a specific location in that area.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 13:42, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

As shown above the inclusion of this field as it currently stands makes the infoboxes contradict the articles themselves. No amount of discussion is going to change that. It is also contradicts our longstanding position that we do not take the view that the historic/ancient/traditional counties still exist with the former boundaries. Time to remove it. MRSC (talk) 06:35, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

The Worcestershire article above is thorough but based on the assumption that the admin counties are the same as the HC. The two periods when the HC boundaries were possibly altered were middle to late middle age and the 1844 detached parts act. A more detailed analysis of the sources used would be interesting. The importance of getting this right for the boundary villages is accepted, but this fades when the same reasoning is applied to the villages affected by the assumption that HCs were only administrative areas: there are vast swathes of communities currently finding themselves in a sort of no man's land. This has often bemused me: we do not take the view that the historic/ancient/traditional counties still exist with the former boundaries. It is ambiguous to the point of being misleading. The best unambiguous rewrite of it is : Some HCs do still exist, eg Lancashire, but their boundaries have changed and they are no longer called HCs. Other HCs no longer exist, eg Yorkshire. I see no problem with using the date when the ONS list was created (?2016) as the default date. Remember this is the ibx not the body. If any town is contentious the ibx field can be left empty or an explanatory note attached. It is hard to see how many of the above comments are not spurious. I agree with Jonesey95 above that we need to refocus on how to implement the consensus, not try to overturn it, which is what looks to be happening. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:12, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
I have no major issue with including the historic county in the infobox, as long as its handled correctly. In England, for most places there is only ever one county (eg Penzance); or there are only two counties that ever covered the place (eg Liverpool). The problems arise when that simple picture is lost.
If we accept the logic that admin counties got split from historic counties in 1889, boundary changes before that affect the historic county (especially 1844, but also other changes in the 19th C or earlier) are problematic. If we reject that logic, then that means all the later changes become an issue too. I am fine with all such cases having a 'see article' historic county field. But even this can still cause problems.
As an example: Icomb was transferred from Worcs to Glos in 1844. Glos is both the ceremonial county and the historic county in modern datasets, so that would get a blank historic county field. However it was unambiguously in Worcs for hundreds of years. Ignoring its relationship to Worcs is the same as ignoring Liverpool's to Lancs. The utilitarian justifications for adding historic county apply just the same here, so it should get "Historic County: Worcs". But that bare statement is misleading as its not considered part of the historic county. The easiest way to resolve that is to include the date.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 21:52, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
Roger 8 Roger yet again, the outcome of the dubiously managed RFC was only that a field called "historic_county" be added. Some editors have chosen to interpret this to mean the self-styled 'standard' of the Historic Counties Trust (and please don't call it the ONS list): other editors have pointed out clearly that to do so blindly would [and already has] introduce serious errors. If it comes to a consensus, it is abundantly clear that a majority of editors oppose that idea. The discussion now is about how to implement the RFC sensibly since to use the HCT 'standard' uncritically is deliberately to introduce information that we know to be inaccurate. Redrose64's suggestion provides a way to do that. I don't understand why anyone would oppose that idea unless they are intent on making the HCT 'standard' a Wikipedia baseline. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:41, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
@Roger 8 Roger:The argument that 1890 and later changes only affected "administrative counties" is complete fiction I'm afraid. All of the changes affected both the "administrative county" and the "entire county" (by definition, as the the "administrative county" was just the "entire county" minus any "county boroughs" within the county administered separately). The Act made no distinction between these counties and "historic counties", a concept completely unmentioned in the act, and which legally speaking doesn't exist and has never existed. "Historic counties" is just an informal description for counties as they did exist at some arbitrarily-chosen point in the past, most commonly pre-1974 but you can obviously choose any date you like (which is why it's so important to be clear what date is being chosen!). In terms of the 1888 Act, it was completely explicit that new county boundaries and the new county it created were to be used for "all purposes". JimmyGuano (talk) 06:09, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
For the benefit of others reading the above post, see here [3]. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 08:25, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

If we have to include a historical account of counties we should include the full history, as per the two examples above. If that is unreasonable we should include none. The infobox up until now has only included current, not historical information. It is peculiar to my mind to include only this one historical field, why not ancient parish as well? This would quite interesting for the London articles at least. But would also require the ability to show any changes over time. MRSC (talk) 15:43, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

JG, I am not too sure what point you are making. Are you saying that the act does not deal with 'historic counties' because it does not mention the term? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:11, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
R8R, are you agreeing that definitive date is 1888 due to the 1888 Act (which did not apply to Scotland or Ireland)? and not 1974 or whatever the HCT exactly wants it to mean no more and no less? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:49, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

So which is it to be? Remove the field or officially support showing a full history? MRSC (talk) 08:18, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

The 1888 date makes sense: that was when the Ordnance Survey finally completed the British Isles and so definitively recorded the 'counties as they appear on the map', as the Court of Appeal put it. To emphasise, these are geographical areas only, not administrative areas, which were different in that year and for centuries before that. LG02 (talk) 18:14, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
I won't object to the 1888 OS if it moves things forward. JimmyGuano, clarification of your post above would be appreciated . Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Apologies - had a lot of "real life" over the last week. It does seem unlikely that the 1888 and 1889 acts can have somehow created two separate sets of borders and an entirely new sort of counties called a "historic county", previously unmentioned in law and completely distinct from an "entire county", without even mentioning it. And it seems even more unlikely that it would restrict new borders and new counties to just being used for administrative purposes while explicitly stating exactly the opposite. There is nothing in the 1888 or 1889 acts to suggest that counties somehow stopped changing at that point, and that the changes that had taken place up to that point became frozen in time - quite the opposite. Which brings us back to the core point: choosing a definitive date for something that has changed many times over centuries is inherently absurd, is actively misrepresenting history, and is something we clearly shouldn't be doing. Where things have been stable, we should reflect that, and where they have changed, we should reflect that. I'm slightly baffled how anyone can really disagree with this principle? JimmyGuano (talk) 10:21, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Redrose64 - given that MRSC's changes to Penge and Romford are clearly improvements from a content perspective, and in fact are pretty much the minimum content that the field could contain to not misrepresent the subject in those cases, but equally are problematic from a markup/accessibility perspective, do you know what the correct way of marking such content up would be? JimmyGuano (talk) 10:23, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I answered that in my post of 14:47, 8 July 2021 (UTC). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:21, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Apologies Redrose64, I missed this. I've used the plainlist template for MRSC's data for Penge, is this correct now? JimmyGuano (talk) 14:34, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
Yes, or you could have used {{ubl}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:56, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
Thank you JG for coming back and explaining your views. I haven't got time now to rummage around for sources but I have seen them so let me comment on your views. There was considerable debate in parliament in the mid 1880s about LG reform that was intertwined with other political considerations. Debates in Hansard confirm all this as do quality history secondary sources. Getting the 1889 bill through parliament was not without resistance, especially from MPs from rural constituancies whose electorate did not want county boundaries played around with. That is why the new 'administrative counties' were created - they were a sort of compromise. They are most definitely newly created entities and not variations of the counties already in existance. Historic counties were not mentioned because they did not need to be. They were then the only counties so calling them historic counties was meaningless. As time has gone on the word administrative was dropped from common usage so we are now left with people saying Maidstone is in Kent which could mean either Maidstone is in Kent (what we now call historic Kent for clarity) or they mean Maidstone is in (the administrative county of) Kent, dropping the administrative bit in common speach. Both are correct but that does not solve the confusion. The only way historic counties can be treated as 'no longer' is to prove they have become obsolete and serve no meaningful purpose - because they were never officially abolisshed. That has happened with lathes and hundreds that were similarly not abolished, but not so with historic counties, as the endless discussions here will testify to their continued use in society. What is very sorely missing from many of these discussions is a grasp of what has happened in the past. Far too many people (many, I presume to guess, with a scientic background) assume that history can be understood using conterporary opinions and values. This discussion here about the changing boundaries over time of historic counties is based on a fundemental misunderstanding of history, which makes for spurious reasoning. We cannot treat historic county borders in the same way as local govt boundaries: they are completely different and ne'er the twain shall meet. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 11:23, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes "administrative counties" were an entirely new idea - no disagreement there - though Reading might be a better example than Maidstone which to my knowledge was never a county borough so was always unambiguously in Kent in all senses. Having "county boroughs" administered separately from the rest of their county, and thus not being part of the "administrative county" despite remaining part of the "entire county", hadn't happened before. But "administrative counties" were distinct from "entire counties", the counties including the "county boroughs", used for purposes other than administration, not from some mythical unmentioned but somehow eternal "historic county". And just in case that wasn't clear enough, the Act goes out of its way to make it clear that any settlement that was part of a county for administrative purposes was part of that county for every other purpose too (with a few specifically stated exceptions), and that new creations such as the County of London completely replaced their predecessors. The Act states all of this unambiguously and explicitly. I completely agree that we should avoid anachronism, which is why suggesting that a set of borders that didn't exist until 2016 should be used to represent all of history seems a bad idea! Do you agree with the principle that while we should reflect continuity where continuity exists (which when it comes to counties is certainly a remarkably large number of places) we should also reflect change where change exists? JimmyGuano (talk) 13:16, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
I thought we had got to the point of defining and possibly relabelling "historic county" to "county as at 1888 Ordnance Survey" – in other words, prior to the 1888 and 1889 Acts but after any earlier changes such as those the JG has already mentioned. That makes it an unambiguous, verifiable and consistent moment in time. For complicated cases, the field would say "see [[#section in body|below]]". So what has changed? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:05, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Picking any one date still falls foul of the "selective representation of history" problem and remains inherently absurd, particularly for an infobox, but labelling it as such at least would mean that the infobox wouldn't be actively implying untruths. And as we all agree (I think?), there are lots of places with only one previous county that are entirely unproblematic. Using it for these and nothing else remains an option too I suppose. MRSC's summary immediately below seems pretty definitive to me though. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:22, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Every attempt to improve this infobox ends up rehashing old arguments. Can we add the additional fields to provide a full history or remove it altogether and allow the article text to do the work? (The second of these is my preference). In the meantime a bot can remove all the fields that have been added to UK articles as they have introduced innaccuracies. The full history can be entered manually by editors who know the history. MRSC (talk) 07:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

However I have seen your edit, and you were not adding any element of the historic county. You added into the infobox for Romford a history of administrative arrangements. That is an entirely different concept. The concept described in the MHCLG guidance, the ONS data and the Court of Appeal in the Over Darwen case I referred to is a purely geographical concept. In 1880, Romford was as you say administered as part of the Liberty of Havering and not as part of Essex, but were you to ask anyone at that time, anyone who lived in Romford or anywhere else in the country, which county Romford was in, they would have replied 'Essex'. That is what is to be reflected. LG02 (talk) 17:05, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
If you ask people in Deptford which county they are in they approximately zero would answer "Kent", are you arguing we should reflect that too? More seriously, liberties are a grey area, some were very much separate to their surrounding counties, some very much weren't, and many were ambiguous in between. They are still part of a settlement's history either way though - we should be drawing attention to ambiguities, not hiding them. More generally, the "administrative arrangements" argument is a red herring for the reasons discussed above. Reading was not in the "administrative county" of Berkshire after 1888, but it was still in Berkshire for all other purposes, and nobody is arguing to the contrary. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:48, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Just out of interest, thinking of Deptford, what is the full, legal name of the Corporation of Trinity House? Hogweard (talk) 14:31, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
If you are arguing that the Kentish status of Deptford is similar to the existence of the the other geographical unit in that title - the parish of Trinity and St Clement, Deptford Strond - ie it ceased to exist a long time ago, then i am inclined to agree. Deptford was severed from Kent, for all purposes, administrative and non-administrative, by the 1888 Local Government Act, as was everywhere else in the County of London. There is no ambiguity, and the evidence for it is in black and white on legislation.gov.uk. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Time for a straw poll

This looks to have dried up. I can see multiple options and suggest a straw poll is best way forward. I can see following options:

  1. List all that apply, with dates; include counties corporate and liberties (ie if the area is administratively independent, list it)
  2. List all that apply, with dates; exclude counties corporate or liberties
  3. If there is one county state it with dates, and if not say something like "see article"
  4. State a fixed date in the parameter itself and then state the county at that date (ie "Historic county (as of 1888)")
  5. List a single county with no date qualification
  6. Drop the field entirely

In all the above cases, I believe there is consensus to not use the historic county parameter if the current ceremonial county is the only county. If it helps to resolve, could generate a table to show how various examples would look with each option. Are there any other options?--51.7.92.61 (talk) 07:28, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I have detected no such consensus. There has been plenty of confusion between the concepts of counties for the purpose of local administration and the geographical concept, the latter being the subject of the Community initiative from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. It is that which I am keen to see provided for. LG02 (talk) 20:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
@LG02: The consensus I refer to is solely about the trivial case, where only one county is relevant. For example, Penzance lists Cornwall as its ceremonial county. So there is no need to also add a historic county as well. A similar story applies to most places in England.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 20:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
  • IMO: (1) no, use option 3; (2) no, use option 3; (3) reluctant yes; (4) yes; (5) strong no; (6) strong yes. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:44, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
  • I am tempted not to bother anymore with this discussion because of a fundemental misunderstanding of what it is all about by certain editors. In fact, and to give credit to those editor's level of understanding as well as to act in good faith, I will assume I am wrong and that the point of this discussion has not been overlooked by certain other persons, meaning that...well. let's leave it there for now. If I were to give a preference it would be to give a single HC, even if it had the same name as a CC, with no date noted in the lead but have a default date noted in the guidelines somewhere, and that date should be the OS date as mentioned before, but other dates might be acceptable too, as per discussion earlier. The sooner this is sorted the better IMO. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:25, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong support for 6. Strong oppose for 5. MRSC (talk) 11:55, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
@MRSC: How do you feel about 1-4?--51.7.92.61 (talk) 13:20, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Per Help:Infobox, infoboxes only summarise material present in the main article. Surely the field should be blank and filled in when the info and refs are added to the main article. The info shouldn't only be in the infobox as they aren't always shown. If multiple lines are needed to show a history for example, most use {{Unbulleted list|YYYY [[Name1]]|YYYY [[Name2]]}}. Have I misunderstood populating infoboxes? Sciencefish (talk) 13:00, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
@Sciencefish: I think your understanding is right, the infobox summarises the article. The reason for the massive mess here is that the infobox was changed, but not the underlying guidance.
With the question at hand: If the article has correctly sourced detail on the info on historical counties, how much of that should we show in infobox?--51.7.92.61 (talk) 13:20, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
In Help:Infobox it says

...and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.

So editors can add as much info as they see fit per "What should an infobox contain?" - Comparable, Concise, Materially relevant to the subject, Already cited elsewhere in the article. If others disagree, it goes to the talk page for consensus. My confusion here is that there seems to be a one size fits all field system here, where the guidelines say not. Sciencefish (talk) 14:04, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Instead of thousands of discussions on the individual talk pages, it makes to have a central discussion. The use should be consistent across the board. All the articles using this template should have the full history of the location's historic counties in the text and cited. What should the "rule-of-thumb" case be, should we look to list everything or not? What is the guidance telling the editors what the parameter should state? Does the template need additional parameters built in, or have the existing parameter changed? That won't deal with every case, and the exceptional ones may need discussion on the relevant talk pagee, but we need gudiance for the general situation.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 14:20, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

It is pretty clear this information is not suitable for an infobox and should be removed. We've got the article prose to tell the story. MRSC (talk) 15:28, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

  • My view:
  • If current ceremonial county is the only "historic county", do not add historic county. (eg Cornwall for Penzance)
  • Elseif there is a simple history of one former county, add it (eg Westmorland for Arnside as far as I know)
  • Else ... Probably option 2. Simple list of changes of with dates. (Though I admit I don't know the first thing about Liberties or counties corporate)
My aim is that we should help the reader who (a) doesn't know where "modern" counties are but knows older ones, or (b) needs to use a multivolume reference work / consult a family history society / check GENUKI etc which still uses traditional counties and needs to know which volume / group / section is relevant, and in both cases looks at the infobox for quick and simple guidance. PamD 16:07, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

This straw poll is a bad-faith attempt to undermine the field by people who are wilfully misrepresenting what it is for. None of this is suggested for any other field, e.g. ceremonial county or local government district, to which it equally applies. The data for historic county and ceremonial county is as stated in the reliable source which is the ONS Index of Place Names. There is no equivocation in the IPN, no "dates", no footnotes offering alternatives, just a single reliable value. Whether we agree with it ot not is irrelevant. No wonder Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says "Nobody should trust Wikipedia, as it has been taken over by left-wing 'volunteers' who write off sources that don't fit their agenda as fake news". This is disgraceful. Owain (talk) 17:22, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Can I ask how the field connects to the reliable source. I'm not disputing that it does, it's just when I click on Historic county (field name), it takes me to the wikipedia page on Historic counties. If I click on the actual historic county, it takes me to the county page. So where is the reference to the source? It's not in the article body or the infobox. what do I click to show the reference? Sciencefish (talk) 17:42, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
The data is here, but it needs careful treatment (there isn't 1 listing for 1 place). It also conflicts with other reliably sourced information, such as that provided by OS.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 18:04, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm going to ignore the ad hominems. My personal view is I want to include historic information, but I want it done properly. I don't want to provide misleading information. I'm inclined to option 4 above. My real problem are those cases where the boundary changed at an unexpected time. Why should a town that switched in 1844 be shown in the "new" and not even mention the old; and a town that switched in 1870 be shown in the "old"? Why aren't both treated the same, sspecially when the legal arguments of the historic county movement are based on 1889 act?
The IPN is not definitive on this matter, and needs careful treatment because its data isn't a simple 1:1 mapping. As you might expect the governemnt points to councils to signposts Ordnance Survey for mapping of the boundaries. So why shouldn't we use OS data? 2 reliable sources with different data shows the complexity.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 18:04, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
The OS do not provide a gazetteer which shows in plain text which places are in which historic county, but the ONS does. That makes it much easier to incorporate. And it is a 1:1 mapping for each individual place, parish, district and every other entity that they have in the IPN. Your arguments equally apply to ceremonial counties too, but an infobox field is not the place for a detailed history of ceremonial arrangements. The ONS IPN lists its methodology very clearly in the user guide. Owain (talk) 18:15, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Easier isn't the same as better, its easy enough to work this out with a map. You don't pick one reliable source when there are discrepancies without resolving them.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 18:24, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Resolving discrepancies between datasets is one thing, but that is not what the straw poll is about. You have framed it as a completely different problem that involves convoluted dates, qualification and other options when all you need to do is pick one of two reliable sources and use that. Owain (talk) 18:33, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
The options in the poll are all those I felt had some support. I might have missed some options, which is why I asked. I do not support all 6 choices myself (I strongly oppose 5 and dislike 6). My preference (4) effectively is "Use OS", as its only the OS data that actually corresponds to a date. My biggest problem with using ONS HCT data (I'm not going to pretend ONS created it) is why base it on the 1845 boundaries? Its the 1889 acts that justify the historic counties as modern entities, so why aren't we using those? And if its to support the idea of unchanging counties, why accept some (but not all) of the 1845 changes?--51.7.92.61 (talk) 18:56, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
It is not really up to us to question the motivation of the creation of the dataset. Either it is from a published reliable source or it is not. Having read the ONS User Guide and the HCT guide, there are two definitions of the data, with detached parts or without. The ONS have chosen the data without the detached parts, presumably because they are simpler. It is important to note that the OS data also excludes all the detached parts too, so it does not correspond to a particular date either. Their polygons also contains obvious errors such as the total lack of Morayshire, which is merged with Nairnshire into a single 'Nairn' polygon. This renders the OS data unsuitable. Owain (talk) 19:08, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Those complexities are why a significant proportion want option 6 (drop it). If the reliable sources don't truly reflect the history, how can we use them? If data is junk it shouldn't be used as-is. If it can be salvaged with qualification, then that should be done. The need to accurately present the history is the driver for all the qualification. You can't simply say "the source says X" and have everything be fine, if saying X ourselves presents a misleading view of the past. As for actual errors in the sources, you can correct that with other sources. For instance, go back to primary sources from the period (eg 19th C maps or even parish records). You can't do that if you don't have a date.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 19:17, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
There is no complexity: it is not meant to be a history lesson any more than the ceremonial county field is. Why are you not calling for that field to have the history of the lieutenancy area in the same way? The only "complexity" is whether to show a detached part or not. As I have previously pointed out, stating "County X, detached in County Y" is perfectly acceptable. What you are describing is a great idea for the main body of the article, but for the infobox "County X" or "County X, detached in County Y" is all that is necessary, given that this is "timeless" information. Owain (talk) 19:45, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
The currrent administrative areas (and by extension the ceremonial ones) have definitive boundaries from currently active legislation.
That simply doesn't apply to historical counties,. The sources can provide boundaries, but no single source is definitive. The ONS data is comphrensive, but it has its problems. So does any other single source. If you can't express it simply, and can't qualify it in a satisfactory manner, it doesn't belong in the infobox. I can happily run with saying "X: In county Y on this date". This is a fact that can easily be verified in multiple reliable sources.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 20:02, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
-51.7.92.61, you are correct when you sid above that the underlying reason for this mess is that the guidelines have not been changed. I have consistently said for months, no years, that that is the underlying cause of all these HC problems. Seeing as we are all here now, why don't we go the whole hog and get those guidelines changed? Who wants to get the process started? It should be in the UK geography article, not here. Who said this current discussion is barely disguised bad faith by some? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:12, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
My motivation for the straw poll is its a way to draw a line under this discussion, as I feel that it might get to identify a solution all can live with. I firmly believe a review of the guidance itself is a separate discussion that should wait until this is closed off.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

The historic county of a place is an entirely separate concept from the administrative arrangements, even if they share a name. We have a separate line in the infobox for the local government district and the parliamentary constituency even where they share a name, as they frequently do. It must be kept separate, whether it shares a name or not, just as the constituency is kept separate. Hogweard (talk) 23:00, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I will repeat here what I have already written above (often multiple times): The Historic County is a term defined by the ONS which is a verifiable, reliable source. The definition does not include administrative local government entities created from the end of the nineteenth century and onwards including up to today's new unitary authorities, nor does it include entities such as counties corporate and liberties, which were always seen as a distinct concept from that of the county. The listing of the Historic County in the Infobox has been incorrectly labelled as 'cherry picking' by some, but that can only be the case when one is picking out of a bowl of cherries (i.e. items of the same type). That is not the case here because, as already mentioned, the Historic County is a distinct concept. As far as the entering of this data into the Infoboxes for UK places currently stands, a concession has been made whereby it has only been entered where the Historic County's name is different from the name of the current ceremonial county and/or shire county. Even though this is not necessary because the Historic County is in no way related to either of these fields (many data fields in the Infobox ultimately share their name with another data field (e.g. council areas cf. lieutenancy areas; ambulance service cf. fire service), but we do not exclude or delete the other field on that basis). It is not our job as WP editors to question the reliability or ideology of the ONS definition and data. We merely report it. Roger 8 Roger is absolutely correct in stating that much of the confusion here relates to the fact that WP's guidelines on this issue require a refresh and update. —Songofachilles (talk) 10:00, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Songofachilles: Please drop the obsession with the ONS data. ONS is one of many reliable sources on the matter and it isn't authoritative. The OS dataset is another contemporary resource, Royal Mail's PAF is another. There are a vast number of pre-20th C documents (anything from birth certificates to a map to a 1820 newspaper article mentioning what county a town is in), and plenty of more recent sources (history books). These are all reliable sources. They are likely to their own problems, and have differences between them, and there is no reason per se to put one of them above the others. This is different to current administrative areas, where a definitive source clearly exists (legislation). So instead of arbitrarily picking one source, have a logical position on which sources to use.
Picking a date is an approach with logic behind it, and c. 1889 is a natural choice as that is when the administrative counties diverge from the historical areas. This justifies giving a specific county for each specific case. If we say X was in county A in 1889, that is easy to verify without reliance on a single source. It explains why another source saying it was in B from 1066 to 1875 is ignored (because we are fixed on 1889). And by saying X was in A in 1889, we are not saying it is no longer in A today.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 15:32, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Agree with 51.7.92.61 on that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:07, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Me too. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:19, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Hi @51.7.92.61: I’m not ‘obsessed' with the ONS data. It’s just that that is the source I had in mind when I posted the RfC and I believe it fits all the criteria for a WP source. That said, of course I appreciate that there are other verifiable sources on the topic of the historic counties and I don’t have a problem with those being referred to as well, where appropriate. Do you know what the precise differences between the ONS and OS data for historic counties are? I expect any differences are very minor because they purport to represent the same thing. I know that the Royal Mail PAF data for 'traditional county’ is identical to the ONS data because both are based on the Historic Counties Trust’s Historic Counties Standard (HCS).
We are in agreement that the late nineteenth century legislation is 'when the administrative counties diverge from the historical areas’ and that is the heart of what underpins the idea of the Historic County. The problem with labelling the field, for instance, ‘1889 County’, though, is that (i) we are creating new terminology that is not recognised elsewhere and doing that runs contrary to the purpose of WP and (ii) it implies that the historic counties ‘changed' after that date, which they did not.
Volume IV of the General Report to the 1891 Census (C. 7222) makes this last point clear: "The use of the term county in two different senses has long caused much confusion and inconvenience. There has been the ancient or geographical county, that is to say the county of our maps, being the area which in ordinary speech is meant when the term “county” is used; and the registration or union county, which is an aggregation of poor law unions… when the Local Government Boundaries Commission of 1888 was appointed, it was hoped that some way would be found of causing one or other of these two counties to disappear… But it has turned out otherwise. The ancient county and the registration county both remain, and a third county, called the administrative county had been added to them, differing from each”.
We could use the expression 'Ancient county' or 'Ancient or geographical county' as per the General Report, but, according to the HCS, "The phrase ‘ancient or geographical county’ has declined in popularity. In its stead the phrase ‘historic county’ has become popular.” Wikipedia uses the phrase “historic county” elsewhere, as does Britannica, the ONS, and the OS.
The birth certificates and/or newspaper articles that you mention as further examples of sources would, if they did differ from the ONS data, just agree with Definition B of the HCS, which I - and I think many others here - have always been more than happy to accommodate (e.g. 'County X detached in County Y'). —Songofachilles (talk) 17:43, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
The historic counties are recognisable in all, as you'd expect. The OS data is somewhat different to the ONS. The differences are driven by the OS data intended to be a simple tracing of the boundaries in effect at 1888, as opposed to the rather complex Historic County Standard (a modern creation). Both may have errors, and so may other sources (ABC's Gazetteer disagrees with ONS in some cases!)
My thinking is the parameter would be something like "Historic County (as of 1889)". That introduces no new term, but eliminates all ambiguity in what the term describes. That resolves any potential dispute between individual sources, and allows a way to correct errors in a source. The link to the historic county article explains what historic counties are, but adding the date indicates that at different points in history, different counties may be relevant to the location. It does not inherently imply the county boundaries changed.
Another bonus to adding a date is eliminating confusion between "the" Historic County and counties that applied historically. Its not obvious to a causal reader why the County of London would be ignored from a "Historic County" field. Its much easier to understand why it is excluded from a "Historic County (as of 1889)" field.--217.32.153.153 (talk) 18:43, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
At the risk of beginning to sound like Dave and Gordon, I agree with 217.32.153.153. "As of" is a widely used construction and will work well for almost all articles. --— Preceding unsigned comment added by John Maynard Friedman (talk • contribs) 19:49, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with using 1889 in the ibx field. It will without any doubt imply that the HC boundaries changed then as a result of the 1889 act. I appreciate and generally agree with the argument that having a fixed date will iron out any differences in different sources, but, why does that date need to be put into the ibx? That date can be noted in any re-written guidelines for anyone interested enough to query a place's HC as noted in the ibx field? If 'it is not obvious to a casual reader why the county of London is omitted from the HC field', well then let that casual reader look further into this encyclopedia to find out that London is not an HC: it is not rocket science, we must assume a level of intelligence of the 'casual reader'. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:54, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
@John Maynard Friedman: Yes, but the legislation didn't take effect on 1 January (our article Local Government Act 1888 says It came into effect on 1 April 1889, except for the County of London, which came into existence on 21 March), so does "as of 1889" refer to the period ending in 1889, or the period beginning in 1889? This is why I suggested a year range in my post of 22:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:56, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
Any date arrangement will have side effects, just none as serious as the HCT cherry-picking. By choosing (in effect) 31/12/88, we have a definitive cut-off and the historic county for the purposes of the infobox is the county in effect on that date. A date range should be reasonable but it risks opening up to exceptions and hobby-horses again. Special cases should be in the text, not the infobox. I don't have a major objection to the range idea, I just worry that about loopholes being exploited. [PS, thank you for fixing my sig, I have no idea how that happened.] --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:15, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
Adding a date to the name of the field would introduce ambiguity, not remove it. The exact same logic could be applied to any other field, yet you are not proposing this for any other field. For instance, at different points in history different "ceremonial counties" could apply to a location, yet you are not proposing "Ceremonial county (as of 1997)". I need to point out again that the infobox is not a history lesson, but summarises information about a place as it stands now. A casual reader who is familiar with the county of London already knows it was an administrative entity that existed between 1889-1965 so would not expect to see it in an infobox showing present-day information. The infobox field names are links to articles which explain the topic in great detail, so anyone unfamiliar with a term can easily find out more, in a much clearer way than clumsily adding dates to them. A casual reader unfamiliar with the term "historic county" is equally likely to be unfamiliar with the term "ceremonial county" or "shire county" but there are extensive articles for each explaining their differences. The simple fact is that there are contemporary gazetteers that list places with all three different "county" fields which even use the same non-statutory names that Wikipedia has adopted (i.e. historic county and ceremonial county). We should simply state them as per the source, using the same terms as the source, rather than make things less clear and more ambiguous with a "solution" to a problem that does not exist. Owain (talk) 08:37, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
I totally agree with Owain. Adding dates or date ranges would not only create confusion and ambiguity, it is also unnecessary. If a discrepancy between, say, the ONS data and the OS data for a place's Historic County is identified (and it's really only detached parts that could bring up any discrepancies): note it in the Infobox by listing the alternative and reference it. I imagine it would be a very small number of articles that would require this. The bottom line is that this is the appropriate way to deal with this in WP; not to create new data categories that do not exist elsewhere. —--Songofachilles (talk) 09:30, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Assuming good faith, that these pro-date arguments are genuine, I cannot help but wonder that I am reading the makings of a disaster. If people think putting in a date is simplifying matters I am astounded. Was this what happened way back in the 2003-2005 period when the current guidelines were created, the ones that have caused nearly twenty years of turmoil and achrimony? I feel I too have been caught up in this by sort of agreeing we should use a date marker. Not only is there no need for a date, to have one will open a can of worms leading to yet more squabbling. If I see in the ibx HC field for Crayford "Kent (as of 1888)", I will simply remove the date as totally pointless as well as being misleading. What then? Someone else comes along, wags a finger and says "follow the guidelines and don't be disruptive". And off we go again with another decade of edit wars. I now feel that agreeing not to use the HC field if the CC name is the same as the HC was possibly a consession too far. It too can be misinterpreted. They are different entities so keep them separate, same name or not. To finally kill this misuse of HCs on Wikipedia I would start another RFC to get the guidelines changed, or something similar, if I had the time or if the steps involved flowed from my keyboard as easily as they do for many other editors. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:45, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
@Roger 8 Roger:Also assuming good faith, but that is a strange interpretation of the discussion and a bit of a straw man argument. The proposal was that infobox field would display as Historic county (1888): Kent and the field documentation would say "as at 31/12/1888". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:38, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
@Owain: Adding a date to the name of the field would introduce ambiguity, not remove it. @Songofachilles: Adding dates or date ranges would not only create confusion and ambiguity - how do both of you work that out? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:18, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
It is fairly obvious: It suggests that the historic county in 1888 is different to the historic county now, which it is not. No other field has a date, even though local government areas and lieutenancy areas have changed massively since 1888. The reason none have dates is because the infobox displays contemporary information. Adding them would cause confusion and solve no problem. Owain (talk) 18:16, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
No, it is not at all obvious. There is no historic county now! Counties existed in various forms at various times in history: the proposal is to snapshot the status at the end of 1888, before the changes in March and April '89 took effect. The choice of this date is determined by completion of the Ordnance Survey. Special cases will be explained in the body. Much as you like to insist otherwise, the boundaries of any given county did not change continuously but had clearly discrete changes. History is a process of continuous change, administrative and taxation boundaries [and that is exactly what they were] underwent step changes. Correct! no other field has an explicit date nor does it need one because it states the current position: the implied date is 'today', as best we can manage it (which is pretty fast, see Northamptonshire UAs). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:42, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
@Owain:,were any boundary stones being moved on New Year's Eve, 1888? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:38, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Is this a serious question? What possible relevance does that have? Have you even read the General Report the to the 1891 Census? Nothing happened to the historic counties on New Year's Eve, 1888, or at any time thereafter. The census reports were reporting the area and population of the ancient counties, administrative counties (+ county boroughs) and registration counties for the succeeding censuses. This is getting silly now -- there is no cogent argument for what you are proposing at all. Owain (talk) 18:16, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Exactly! Nothing happened, which means that is a precise moment in time with boundaries at a precise status. Nothing was being changed. There is no ambiguity. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:42, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
It creates confusion, because you could quite easily put 1888, 1966 or 2021. What purpose does it serve? The 'precise moment in time with boundaries at a precise status' is the present time, just as with the local government district, post town, area code, lieutenancy area and everything else listed in the infobox. Owain (talk) 10:53, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
In contrast to local government districts (which are precisely defined by active legislation), the historic counties simply do not have definitive boundaries in 2021. That is the whole reason for the creation of Historic County Standard. Its hard to campaign for things like marking borders if you can't agree on the precise borders. The standard creates a methodology and uses it to create "present-day" boundaries, and present them as a standard. It states that the 1844 and 1877 acts "might be considered to have affected a real change in the historic counties". In order to proceed, it is forced into making a choice to ignore both acts. This means the boundaries generated are therefore based on the historical boundaries before the passing of the 1844 Act.
The OS dataset is based on the 1889 boundaries. By doing do, it has made a different choice (it accepts both acts changed the boundaries). This is consistent with how OS itself treated the acts at the time. Both of these approaches are consistent with the historical facts.
HCT Standard A (that adopted by ONS) then deviates from this historical grounding, by making some of the changes of the 1844 Act. This means Standard A boundaries are not the historical boundaries at any point of the 19th C, and they were created in the 21st C.--217.32.153.153 (talk) 13:35, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Any given place will be in one of three categories:
  • Uncontroversial: historic county = ceremonial county: eg Penzance No need to display historic county
  • Uncontroversial: historic county differs from ceremonial county but is straightforward: eg Arnside Display historic county This is the enormous group of places where the reader will be helped by a simple solution.
  • Complex: multiple changes, and/or OS and ONS disagree. Perhaps we should list both the OS and ONS "historic county", sourcing each one directly in the infobox and annotating:
"Xshire (OS)(ref)
Yshire (ONS) (ref)"
linking both OS and ONS, and supplying refs to the two sources. And agreeing to list those counties in A-Z order. Please don't let the relatively small number of complicated cases stop us from helping the reader in the majority of cases. PamD 10:38, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
This all seems sensible to me, PamD. (Just FWIW, and as previously stated, I don't agree with your "historic county = ceremonial county" analysis because the two are unrelated, but, for the sake of harmony, I was and still am happy to agree to the concession that was made whereby the historic county is not listed where it shares its name with the administrative shire county and/or ceremonial county.) —Songofachilles (talk) 10:52, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
In England, I estimate the actual area of disagreement between the OS and ONS data sets in England is comparable to Rutland, and this all along county boundaries (not detached areas). IMO, there isn't value in listing twice for these discrepancies - we should instead understand the difference to make an informed choice.
Using two sources in this way actually makes matters worse than using a single source. It keeps the problems of a single source (but doubles them). If the canonical source has a clear error, we can only repeat it, and cannot remove it despite dozens of other sources showing the error. Both datasets have these errors, we are doing it twice. It would be better to act on what the sources actually represent.
Consider how the modern boundary sets were actually generated. Three datasets have been mentioned: (1) The OS data, (2) the ONS data (which is HCT Standard A) and (3) HCT Standard B. These were effectively made by (1) tracing the 1889 boundaries, (2) tracing the boundaries at 1844, making some tweaks then removing the exclaves, (3) tracing the boundaries at 1844, making some tweaks then keeping the exclaves. That effectively means that all 3 datasets are based on the boundaries at different dates: The OS at 1889, HCT Standard A is 1845 and Standard B is 1843. The differences between OS and ONS are the changes between 1844 and 1888.
What this means is that using one (or two) of these sets is actually picking a date (or two), whether we tell the reader that or not. But by actually being clear about the fact we are using the date, instead of a specific source, that allows us to bring multiple sources into play - which is the best way to overcome mistakes in the data.
My personal view is the 1888 boundaries most clearly reflect the modern concept of the historic counties. That is because if the historic counties were protected by omission from the 1889 acts, then its the boundaries that were in effect prior to those acts that were preserved. Not the boundaries of some earlier time. Any date prior to 1889 could be used but the further back you go, the minor tweaks build up more and more.--217.32.153.153 (talk) 14:44, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
What PamD says makes sense to me, but in "complex cases" it would be more helpful to the reader to show the years of each change, rather than referring to two datasets and leaving the reader to investigate which is "right" for whatever period the reader is intrested in. Let's try and focus on what readers are likely to be interested in. For many readers, the pre-1974 (or pre-1965) county is most relevant, because of the amount of written material which still refers to those counties. 1889 is relevant to places now in Greater London. Other dates are relevant to a few places (1931 and 1844 for former exclaves, various dates for places absorbed by larger cities and conurbations). All those dates can be reliably sourced. And let's agree with this: "Please don't let the relatively small number of complicated cases stop us from helping the reader in the majority of cases."--Mhockey (talk) 20:35, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
I say only use the 1888 info by default (that makes most sense nationally). This is effectively the OS dataset, but its clearer to the reader what's going on and allows other sources to fill in any problems in the OS info. I'd prefer to keep this transparent to the reader by specifying the date in the parameter, but I could deal with just calling the parameter "Historic county". What matters is more is that the actual data populating is based on a specific date, and not derived from a single source, and this is covered in guidance.
That completely eliminates complexity by default. But by using date-based logic, we have the scope to expand to include other information should the specific case justify it. IMO, not one of the cases where OS and ONS differ need that higher detail.--217.32.153.153 (talk) 21:28, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
That appears logical. LG02 (talk) 19:17, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

This all sounds like an extremely overengineered solution to the problem. MRSC (talk) 16:33, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Go away for two weeks, come back ... nothing changed. The very fact that it takes this much discussion and we are still no closer to an agreement about what should go in the field should be enough indication that this shouldn't be in an infobox. JimmyGuano (talk) 14:23, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
Welcome back, I thought you'd gone walkabout. Whatever, I see the lack of any further discussion as clear evidence there's no need for anything to change because everything is ticking along hunky-dory: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There will always be a few who add fuel to dying embers, intentionally muckrake or, as has been happening here, over-engineer a procedural step to create a problem out of nothing. In my view, a productive next step is for someone to start the process of changing the wording of the guidelines that state historic counties are no longer exist. That would neatly follow the insertion of the now re-inserted infobox HC field and create a level of conformity, and reduce edit wars across all place name articles. The excellent summary of the real, minor, exclaves problem of which default source to use might need a quick vote, but that is all. Let's move on. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:26, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
The above discussion illustrates the complexity, and the detailed issues here are primarily not the exclaves. There is a real risk of inaccuracy should we have a default source. The historic counties, and especially their boundaries, are somewhat fuzzy - and mean different areas to different people. How the field is populated is more a problem than its existence.--217.32.153.153 (talk) 23:00, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
Roger 8 Roger Lack of further discussion? Am I imagining the 56 posts in the straw poll section above? It is very clear that there is widespread and well-argued opposition to the use of a single entry in an unqualified field in any cases other than the basic ones where there is only one previous county. There is clearly nothing even approaching a consensus in favour of that. The only question is what the best solution is to replace it is, which is where there is genuine debate, because there is no particularly good solution. Maybe it should just be left empty in those cases? JimmyGuano (talk) 06:48, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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