Template talk:Infobox UK place/Archive 23

Archive 20

Archive 21

Archive 22

Archive 23

Mapframe within infobox

Hi all, when I use the second image caption parameter with an {{Infobox mapframe}} I get a line break above (scenario 1), but with an image it is ok (scenario 4). There is a workaround as scenario 2 but it feels a bit hooky and would have to be changed if properly implemented. Is this a known bug, I mean mapframe is for use in infoboxes, right? Nothing in the talk archives. Scenario 3 looks to be a mapframe bug but included to show I can't use that parameter as an alternative.

Scenario 1
Box 1 Civil parish Houses Caption 1 | static_image_2_caption = Caption 1 | static_image_2_name = {{Infobox mapframe |id=Q7270550}}

Scenario 2
Box 2 Civil parish Houses Caption2 Caption 1 | static_image_2_caption = Caption 1 | static_image_2_name = {{Infobox mapframe |id=Q7270550}} Caption2

Scenario 3
Box 3 Civil parish Houses | static_image_2_name = {{Infobox mapframe |id=Q7270550 |mapframe-caption=Caption2}}

Scenario 4
Box 4 Civil parish Houses Caption 1 | static_image_2_caption = Caption 1 | static_image_2_name = Houses in Hardwick Village (geograph 4497561).jpg

The Equalizer (talk) 20:07, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

For some clunky reason, probably to fix a weird bug from the deep, dark past, there is a <br /> inserted before the static image caption. I adjusted the sandbox to wrap the caption in <div>...</div> tags instead, which should achieve the same line-wrapping effects, but without undesirable spacing. I added a test case and checked the other existing test cases to ensure that I haven't broken anything, but there may be an edge case out there that depends on the br tag. Comments are welcome. If there are none, I will be happy to implement this change in a few days, at which point the edge cases might come to light and we can fix them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:22, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for checking this so quickly. Regards, The Equalizer (talk) 21:36, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The first image parameter was added here and the second over here, the break always having been a part of the code, so seems it was a standard implementation and your recode will continue to do the same actions. The Equalizer (talk) 23:59, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I have made this change. Please report any problems that this causes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:23, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Nice. Had a search for random pages using variations of those image, caption and infobox parameters (there aren't a lot), and all so far look good. Fingers crossed it will remain so. Thanks again. The Equalizer (talk) 21:08, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

"established" date

The article says what to do if the place has "established", "founded", "opened" or similar dates, but the template syntax doesn't seem to include anything suitable. What does this section refer to? Aoeuidhtns (talk) 09:32, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Could add some free text in a text field like local_name or in a caption field under a coat of arms pic such as at Chichester. The Equalizer (talk) 14:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Is it really needed? With the exception of New towns in the United Kingdom, mill towns and railway towns, very few settlements in the UK have well-defined foundation dates, afik. The infobox is for "at a glance" essential info, a tabular form of the WP:LEAD. (How many settlement articles have that confidently asserted date in the lead?). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:29, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Have to agree, unlike the US where their history is more recent and their areas are littered with dates of incorporation, UK places less so and the focus was the types John mentions above, also historically boroughs for which many are now districts and the template used for them is the same as the US one anyway and so allows a founded field. The Equalizer (talk) 18:10, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

The nice thing about {{Infobox UK place}} is that it does not have lines for miscellaneous trivia. They are in the minority but there are still a fair few UK town and city articles that use {{infobox settlement}} and the result is a mess. IMO, obviously!

Indeed it might well be worth asking why UAs, Boroughs, Districts etc have to resort to the messy {{infobox settlement}}? Do we need a {{infobox UK local authority}}? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:10, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. What does {{Infobox UK place}} lack that articles for UAs, Boroughs, Districts etc. need to show? This infobox can be changed if necessary; one of my very early template suggestions (just ten weeks after regitering) was to handle local government hierarchy, it may be found at Template talk:Infobox UK place/Archive 7#Community in Wales (although I didn't carry out the actual edit). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:01, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

{{Infobox UK place}} is better now it has had improvements. The original instruction on {{Infobox settlement}} for upper level authorities comes from Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about districts#Article structure, and it is admittedly a more flexible template, if as said before, 'messy'. The Equalizer (talk) 21:05, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

@JMF The guidance says nothing specific about putting historical details in the lead, so articles for towns with a specific start date (such as Flint and Saltaire) tend to put it in the history section instead.

If there was a field, I would expect to see a lot of things like "ca. 1140", "6th Century CE" and "before 1086", as well as start dates for a local authority with the same name. I'm ambivalent towards the idea, though. My question was really why the article implies that there is a field along those lines, but the template doesn't include one.

The infoboxes for local authorities do seem to include a lot a things like "field_name1 = colour | field_value1 = yellow", so I support the idea that the template doesn't support people well in what they do with it for articles on UK districts. Aoeuidhtns (talk) 21:07, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

No, I meant the opposite. If we wouldn't normally put a detail in the lead, then IMO we shouldn't put it in the infobox either. One reason I don't like infobox settlement is its American obsession with racial profiling. And that it has been used here to beat the historic counties drum yet again (see Reading, Berkshire, for ex.) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:10, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Some types of UK settlement may have an event (not necessarily the date when people first began to build houses) which may be datable: cities usually have a royal charter, and boroughs have a date of incorporation. Finding out when Jebediah Springfield reined in his horse and declared A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man (or equivalent happening) would be more difficult. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:01, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

True but is the date of charter the same as the date of foundation? Generally not. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:11, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Er, I thought that my phrase "not necessarily the date when people first began to build houses" covered that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:11, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it did (I suspect we may be looking at different sides of the same coin). So we don't in general have "foundation dates" as in America, we have charter dates (market charter, parish creation, Borough status, city charter – milestones in the life of a settlement rather than staking a claim. My point is that we don't have any use for a established= in the sense of a foundational event. (Maybe a charter= with charter-type= ?) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:05, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Historic county

The {{{historic_county}}} param was deleted from the checklist in August 2021, so the code for it at row 45 should probably be removed as well — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 09:38, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

 Done. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

And for your next trick, stop infobox settlement from using them. Should be trivial.

(I suspect strongly that, in more than a few cases, the existence of that facility is the primary reason to choose that template rather than this one.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:15, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Yep, it should be removed from the settlement infobox as well. I think we've had enough of the disruption from that parameter (see WP:ANI cases ad nauseam). Black Kite (talk) 18:16, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I was being too clever by half. The historic county fans use one of the "local use" parameters such as subdivision_type4 = [[Historic counties of England|Historic county]]. See for example Reading, Berkshire. So even someone with Jonesey95's skills is unlikely to be able to fix it in a few minutes, even with a few clever ChatGPT prompts. The only real solution is to deprecate infobox settlement for places in the UK, making infobox UK place mandatory. Good luck with that. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:48, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The exception for using {{infobox settlement}} for civil parishes and community councils was removed from Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements in May 2022. Therefore, any civil parish or community council articles still using {{infobox settlement}} can be converted to {{infobox UK place}} without further discussion. This just leaves the one exception that would need discussing. Keith D (talk) 20:18, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

This petscan search (105 results at this writing) attempts to list civil parishes and community councils in the UK that are using {{Infobox settlement}}. There are likely to be results missing because I failed to include some relevant categories, and there are likely to be false positives, because the category tree sometimes includes categories like "Former civil parishes of Busking-on-Cheddar". It gives a willing editor a place to start, however. If a better search is desired but you can't figure out petscan, post here with additional category names to include or exclude, and I'll see what I can do. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:34, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Is that a gauntlet I see on the ground before me? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:48, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Good to see I managed to pickup all the Yorkshire ones. Keith D (talk) 22:00, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

A bunch of those parishes in Derbyshire and Notts towards the latter half of the db query list I originally added {{infobox settlement}} before the guidelines were changed, and have been slowly converting them anyway. @Crouch, Swale has a parish articles creation project and might have a tool/format which could potentially help here. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser could also perform multiple changes in a short time if editors have that installed - I have it but not at home at present. The Equalizer (talk) 08:45, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of a tool that may help though maybe searching for the template in parish (or settlement) categories may help. I don't know of anyway because the templates don't populate any categories. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:21, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

The way to reign in the historic county fans and put a stop to the endless time wasting edits is, I respectfully submit, not to make equally endless adjustments to templates, but instead to alter the guidelines. As long as we have contradictions and anomalies; as long as we have the government, legislation and many quality sources saying the opposite to Wikipedia, the historic counties fans will never settle down. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:23, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Blank section

Hello, have we some template expert who can look at why we are getting a blank section between the last section and the embedded templates. I have tried a few things in the sandbox but my attempts just adjust the height of the blank section. You can see the problem on Bath, Somerset, it follows the UK Parliament section and before the embedded {{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}}. Regards Keith D (talk) 14:04, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I've made a change to the sandbox versions css file which seems to work if you try on the Bath page. I'll not make the change straight away so that other can review as well for any issues with it. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:44, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@WOSlinker: Thanks for that fix, it works for Bath. It does not work for what triggered me to look at the template, which was creating a wrapper for the template. Currently code is in User:Keith D/sandbox2. Keith D (talk) 22:23, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@WOSlinker: Just in case you missed reply above. Keith D (talk) 20:10, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I did see your reply but don't have any suggestions for fixing it for those other situations unfortunatly. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and put change live as appears to partly solve problem. Keith D (talk)

Unparished area parameter

Should we add an unparished area parameter to the infobox? In the vast majority of cases defining it is straightforward in that any urban district (including those with borough status) that didn't have a successor parish became an unparished area for example Melton Mowbray in Melton, in some cases like Bath there may be a charter trustee by the name that runs the unparished area. In some cases like Hastings they may be concurrent with a current district and in other cases a district may contain several as well as parishes like Bolton district containing 7 unparished areas and 3 parishes. In a few cases such as in County Durham or Torbay there are some unparished areas that are harder to define due to parts of a former urban district being parished but not all so we may just be better leaving those out.

Many sources like UKBMD only refer to the whole district by its current name as being an unparished area but it used to until a few years ago specify the individual unparished areas, see Canterbury in 2017 under "Herne Bay" and "Whitstable" rather than just "Canterbury" Similarly Mapit does this but in both cases it would seem reasonable to say they are referring to unparished part of Canterbury district rather than saying its all 1 unparished area. Thoughts? Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:15, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

If you want to indicate it, just use the Type parameter? Regards, The Equalizer (talk) 19:24, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't see the point. It's not something someone would want to look up. An unparished area has absolutely no status in local government or statistics because it's literally just the lack of a parish in parts or the whole of a district. It would add clutter and length. Rcsprinter123 (gossip) 19:33, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, unparished areas don't have any official or legally defined names, they are simply areas that don't contain any official, legally defined parishes.  Dr Greg  talk  20:21, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Two examples:

• the City of Westminster is mostly unparished (map at MapIt), apart from its westernmost extremity, Queen's Park (map at MapIt), but the unparished area is simply called Westminster
• Cheshire West and Chester is partially parished (list at MapIt), but includes two non-contiguous unparished areas - one in the north-west, and one in the west (map showing both at MapIt). The second of these corresponds with the city of Chester, except that (a) it doesn't have a special name; and (b) it has an enclave - Chester Castle (parish), which has a population of zero (map at MapIt).

MapIt is a very useful tool: this list includes all parishes in England and communities in Wales; this list includes all unparished areas in England (there are none in Wales). In the second of these, note that all of the London boroughs and metropolitan boroughs are listed under their own names, as are many other districts.

Be aware that MapIt has a rate limit (to discourage bots and data scrapers) of 50 calls per day if you're not a paid subscriber (pricing info), and that visiting the same page twice counts as 2 calls. You can check your current count here, without using up one of your 50. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:55, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Briefly scannning the MapIt list of England & Wales unparished areas mentioned above, it seems to me that they name the areas after the local authority, not any settlements within it. E.g., the unparished area that corresponds to Lytham is named in the list as "Fylde". "Rossendale" unparished area is listed as a single area covering almost the whole borough, which they have not subdivided into each of the pre-1974 districts/boroughs within it. This contrasts with Wikipedia's Civil parishes in Lancashire article which lists four unparished areas within Rossendale, which I think is misleading.  Dr Greg  talk  14:45, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

MapIt don't assign a name to the unparished area at all; on the page Fylde, unparished area, this should be read as a description - i.e. these are the unparished areas lying within Fylde borough. This link lists parishes within Fylde borough. On all MapIt pages showing a map, the map is sized to suit the area described, not to fit the enclosing entity since there could be many - this particular unparished area is not just a subdivision of Fylde borough but also of Lancashire, of North West England, of England, and of the UK. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:23, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree that "this should be read as a description". Therefore we can't have an "unparished area name" infobox parameter. If there was consensus that it's important enough to record that a settlement lies in an unparished area, I suppose this could be achieved by |civil_parish=None or maybe |civil_parish=Unparished or something similar.  Dr Greg  talk  18:45, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I have a list of all the individual unparished areas at User:Crouch, Swale/List of unparished areas. An example would be say Woodlesford would use |unparished_area=Rothwell, West Yorkshire. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:07, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

@Crouch, Swale, in which reliable sources did you find names for those unparished areas?  Dr Greg  talk  20:55, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

@Dr Greg: See the discussion at Commons:User talk:Skinsmoke#Unparished areas (who also wrote the Civil parishes in Lancashire article's content) for the mention about the legislation (though I've never been able to find it). See UKBMD in 2019 for the Rossendale area where it uses the former urban districts for defining the unparished area. See Leeds in 2017 though as noted UKBMD changed its say of doing it to be like Mapit and just list the current district as the whole unparished parts. As noted when a former urban district gets partly parished it can be more difficult to define but when nothing has changed since 1974 its easy. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:36, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I've searched for the word "unparished" within pages whose URL ends in "legislation.gov.uk" and the first page of matches shows several pages in which unparished areas are identified not by a name but by the parishes that surround it. See, for example, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/2098/schedule/4/made where an unparished area is specified as "The unparished area(2) bounded by the parishes of Treverbyn, St Blaise, Mevagissey, St Ewe and St Mewan". If the unparished area had a name, surely the legislation would use it instead?  Dr Greg  talk  19:51, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't see why it would be necessary. In fact I don't really see why it is mentioned in many opening sentences on settlement articles. Would it not just be better in a governance section where parish councils might be mentioned. It's a bit "niche".Esemgee (talk) 14:54, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Oppose per the arguments from Dr Greg, Rcsprinter123 and Redrose64. Mertbiol (talk) 14:03, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

'Lieutenancy' and 'shire' for England parameters

I'm just wondering whether the above terms are the best to use for the England-specific parameters which currently use them. The English lieutenancy counties are usually called 'ceremonial counties', so would it not make sense to change the parameter name to that? Similarly, could 'shire' be changed to 'non-metropolitan county/district'?

Apologies if there's some obvious reason why the current terms are used, they just struck me as anomalous given we don't widely use either term elsewhere. A.D.Hope (talk) 17:16, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

If an entity has an alternate term they are both usually referred to in the template notes. Users can refer to either to see the parameter usage and the displayed output, eg.:

Principal area {{{unitary_wales}}}

Preserved county {{{lieutenancy_wales}}}

Ceremonial county {{{lieutenancy_england}}}

Ceremonial is the preferred common usage as you've found from all the previous discussions had so the template has that as the displayed term, but the alternate term is now reused as the parameter to use in the template, the notes make it clear when it should be used:

| lieutenancy_england =     <!-- (not required where shire or metropolitan is the same) -->

Also, would need to change the term in all articles that use it, which is a bit of an exercise.

Regards, The Equalizer (talk) 22:22, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Didn't even answer the second. Common usage favours the terms shire and district. Metropolitan and its derivatives has nowhere the same reach and articles still should maintain a certain simplicity to effectively educate and inform, especially the infobox which is a summary of the article. The Equalizer (talk) 06:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I can't find 'ceremonial' anywhere in the documentation except as the term displayed when {{{lieutenancy_england}}} is used. The term doesn't appear when editing, either in in visual or source mode. I do think that's an oversight, as 'ceremonial county' is the term we generally use and is a term editors are likely to be familiar with.

I disagree with you on 'shire', it's an imprecise colloquial term and we shouldn't use it when we're referring to a specific type of county, in this case non-metropolitan counties. I can live with 'ceremonial counties' rather than 'counties for the purpose of the lieutenancies', but we really should use 'non-metropolitan'. A.D.Hope (talk) 10:24, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

It's not quite the place to have those naming discussions yet again, this is a maintenance template and editors are more likely to know the multiple terms used and there are links in the template to articles that explain further if editors are not sure. All this is compounded by the complexities of local government structure and compromises with naming conventions are done to make it relatively user accessible and functional. Regards, The Equalizer (talk) 11:28, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, the reason I've asked about these changes is because aligning the parameters more closely with the terms used on the rest of Wikipedia will improve user accessibilty. I wouldn't be confident that an editor without experience of editing English place articles would know that an English lieutenancy area and ceremonial county are the same thing, for example. A.D.Hope (talk) 12:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

All-caps

This template should stop using SCREAMING ALL-CAPS for post town. There is no reason for this to read "LONDON", for example, when our own article London postal district renders it "London". This is not a sanctioned use of all-caps at MOS:ALLCAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:38, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

It's mainly at the article that it will need fixing as forcing CAPS was removed from the template in June 2021. Over 14,000 pages will need editing. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:54, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I have now removed a specific case for London which was still in the template though. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:05, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Is there any way to fix the 1000s of articles where the post town has been entered by hand in block caps? Other than by redoing them all the same way? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:34, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

A bot request is probably easiest. It will need to avoid edge cases like "WESTON-SUPER-MARE", "STOCKTON-ON-TEES", and values with references. Maybe a bot or patient AWB editor could run through every entry that consists of ALLCAPSONEWORD, probably 98% of them, and human editors could clean up the remaining couple hundred. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:21, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Are you not from the UK and/or young and never written a letter? Post towns are written in capitals in the UK, a quick look at the post town article would have explained this and the styling was simply emulated in the articles. Just because writing in uppercase has in latter days come mean something else on the internet does not mean it isn't valid. I have no issue with the change to sentence case but let's not jump to conclusions here, if capitals are really that offensive, I do worry about the temperance of some. The Equalizer (talk) 16:39, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

The Royal Mail says to write the name of the town in all capital letters (see the section "Address format in detail"), but we do not always follow other entities' style guidelines. In this case, the question is whether the value of "post town" should be the name of the town as it would normally be written (e.g. "London" or "Weston-super-Mare"), or whether ALL CAPS should be applied. The consensus at this talk page, based on guidance from MOS, is that post towns should be rendered as normally capitalized (or capitalised, if you prefer) proper nouns. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:09, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

See the CO postcode area article for example. I'd argue that the ALL CAPS version of towns should actually redirect to a postcode article such as BURES, COLCHESTER, FRINTON-ON-SEA, HALSTEAD, HARWICH, MANNINGTREE, SUDBURY (even though not primary for the lower case) and WALTON ON THE NAZE. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:13, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Take a look at the incoming likes to COLCHESTER and LONDON, the only mainspace link to COLCHESTER is Wissington, Suffolk, linked in the post town, there are 9 mainsapce links to LONDON, one namely Diamantis Stagidis looks like a clear MOSCAPS issue but the other 8 are post towns namely Colliers Wood, Wimbledon Park, Merton Abbey, London, Summerstown, London, Bushey Mead, Cannon Hill, Merton, Copse Hill and Cottenham Park. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:20, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

And also see this article mentioning "only affecting what was capitalised". Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:31, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

How to address mail at Post Office is clearer, because you don't have to open up a subsection - Town (please print in capitals) is above the fold on my setup. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:09, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Rendering the post town in all-caps nowadays isn't so much a style consideration as it is practical – block capitals both stand out better to the human reader and are more easily interpreted by optical character recognition (especially older forms of the technology), which is the same reason they're insisted upon both for postcodes and also the destination country on international items. Realistically though it's of very little importance so long as the postcode is legible. XAM2175 ^(T) 22:15, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

but the request (for good reason) is that handwritten addresses on envelopes use caps. What happens elsewhere is of no interest to them and here on WP, MOS:CAPS applies. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 07:57, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree (though I failed to actually state it). XAM2175 ^(T) 10:15, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I support this. ~TPW 13:56, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

• I had generally understood that if you write a town in all caps in running text it is generally understood that you're referring to a post town even though towns may be written in all caps in atlases or road signs generally in running text. That said the consensus in 2021 was not to and evidence was presented to show that even Royal Mail doesn't always use all caps. That said we could look at if we should see if consensus has changed. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:09, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

  Is that a UK-only convention? Documented some place? Dicklyon (talk) 18:08, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  It is not even a UK convention, let alone a UK-only one. It is simply an advice to expedite delivery of post with a handwritten address.

  When the Royal Mail introduced its first OCR equipment for automatic sorting, it asked users of handwritten envelopes to use caps for the post town, because of technical limitations of the OCR equipment. Envelopes that could not be read automatically got pushed aside for manual sorting and thus subject to delay. The post town became redundant (as in useful backup, not superfluous) when they introduced post codes. But again, they asked that the alphabetic part of the postcode be in caps, due to the same technical limitation. [I suspect that this would not have arisen if they had gone for all numeric postcodes, like most of the rest of the world.]

  As others have already said, this is a Royal Mail style guide that applies only to envelopes submitted for postal delivery. It does not override MOS:CAPS on Wikipedia. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:45, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Playing devil's advocate, but as that is the official advice, as an education source Wiki should reflect the styling as it will be a reminder to someone feverishly looking up a post town for a letter and coming across it on an article, the uppercase will remind such a soul I think - a good article balance would be to stylise as full caps in the infobox, but sentence case in the body prose (although the regional post code articles list the towns as uppercase). Also we do follow many styling cues as mandated, postcodes when written in articles are all caps for instance. The Equalizer (talk) 23:06, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Where is this official advice documented, and why would it influence what we do on Wikipedia? Dicklyon (talk) 03:29, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  It's mentioned in the chat further back - How to address mail and in the Post town § Usage article. An article on a topic should reflect as much detail from the source as is reasonable, a styling expectation on said topic would be an important part of the translation from source to article and hence to the everyday Wiki reader. The Equalizer (talk) 09:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  The Royal Mail went for an alphanumeric postcode instead of a purely numeric postcode for several reasons:

  • London was already divided into alphanumeric postal districts like N1, W2, EC4 etc.
  • Alphabetic codes for postcode areas allowed easily-interpreted mnemonics (B Birmingham, CV Coventry, OX Oxford etc.)
  • It's easier to memorise a full postcode if it's mixed letters and digits, rather than all digits
  • For the same number of characters, many more unique codes were possible - seven digits permits 10,000,000 possibilities, but for seven characters in the format AA99 9AA there are (26*26*10*10*10*26*26)=456,976,000 possibilities; and even if you restrict the letters so that only 121 permutations are permitted for the first two positions and six are forbidden in the last two (as the Royal Mail do) you still have 48,400,000

  Conside a French postcode, these are purely numeric like 38420 - where is that? If you know the system of départements, you can work out that 38 is Isère, but where within Isère is 420? It can't be a street, because there are many more streets than that in a town like Grenoble (which is the major town in Isère). In fact, 420 refers to the post office handling deliveries for an area to the east of Grenoble encompassing no fewer than five communes. Not very practical for your satnav - "You have arrived at your destination" when you are still 2 or 3 km away. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:13, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I wasn't arguing for numeric v alphanumeric postcodes (this is the wrong talkpage to have that WP:NOTFORUM discussion in ) but only that numeric-only posed a less significant technical challenge for early OCR systems. This is no longer true: indeed I read somewhere recently that OCR plus AI is being used to "read" charter rolls and similar medieval manuscripts, complete with their abbreviational diacritics etc. So at least in principle, it's a 1960s problem that is no longer extant. Though tbf to decode cursive handwriting at high speed is probably still a challenge – sometimes I struggle to read my own writing! --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:47, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Post town in caps

Following the discussion on this page in May, the London post town is no longer converted automatically to uppercase. This has put London post town articles out of line with the standard, which looks messy on articles in more than one post town (e.g. Enfield, London). The question is - should we go ahead and stop capitalising all post towns, or reverse the change made to the London post town? PlatinumClipper96 (talk) 13:39, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

It looks like that May 2023 change was inadequate and has led to inconsistency. The test could instead check for a string of letters with no spaces or hyphens and then convert that to title case. Edge cases like WESTON-SUPER-MARE would have to be converted manually. I can try to implement that change in the sandbox if there is consensus to do so. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:18, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 To restore consistency, could this change perhaps be reversed until there is consensus on whether post towns should be converted to title case? PlatinumClipper96 (talk) 16:34, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Pinging WOSlinker, who made the change. I'm not in the habit of reverting other template editors except in the case of obvious errors, having been dragged to (and through) ANI over it by unpleasant admins. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:38, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I think I only made that edit due to the previous discussions about the post towns in caps. I'm ok reverting it (and have done that now), and then saying that all the post town updates need to be done at the article level. -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have adjusted the sandbox to convert all single-word (no spaces or hyphens, only letters) post towns to Titlecase. You can see the results at {{Infobox UK place/testcases}}. I will leave it up to the group as to whether this is worth deploying. All post towns containing non-letters will have to be converted manually (a few hundred, I think), or I can work on more complex code that will probably have bugs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:24, 28 October 2023 (UTC)