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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of World Heritage Sites of the United Kingdom/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by The Rambling Man 19:23, 15 December 2010 [1].

List of World Heritage Sites of the United Kingdom edit

List of World Heritage Sites of the United Kingdom (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Nev1 (talk) 23:01, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This list follows the same pattern as the successful lists for Spain and Peru. It should certainly be comprehensive as it contains details of all the sites, details of the nomination process, and prospective candidates. There is a departure from those two as the UK list doesn't include a map; instead there's a prominent link to Bing and Google which does the job and is a method used in other FLs (eg: castles in Cheshire and Scheduled Monuments in Greater Manchester). Each site – there are 28 – has a brief description to make things interesting for the reader (hopefully). The tentative list (sites which are proposed to become fully fledged World Heritage Sites) is just a list of names as otherwise it would imbalance the article as there are more candidates than actual WHS. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read the list. Nev1 (talk) 23:01, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 18:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • I know we avoid bold links but I don't see a reason why you can't link UNESCO and World Heritage Site in the opening sentence of the lead.
  • Caption of Stonehenge image is a complete sentence so a full stop.
  • Would lower than expected be better as lower-than-expected?
  • You use WHS only once throughout. I wouldn't bother, or, be consistent and use the expanded version only once with (WHS) after it. And keep reminding me that it isn't WH Smiths.
  • Last sentence of lead, you link all of "Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast" - you've already linked Giant's Causeway (on its own) earlier, and in the table you do the same (i.e. don't link "and Causeway Coast") so I'd be consistent.
  • "Inaccessible Islands" links to just the singular. Which is correct?
  • Not sure the small text is really necessary nor desirable, but I won't complain if nobody else does.
  • UNESCO data - numbers over 999, why not have a comma to separate the thousand?
  • "five to ten year " would hyphenate myself.
  • There seems to be a variety of "Tentative list", "Tentative List" and "tentative list" so I guess we need consistency.
  • Ref 27 needs a {{cite web}}
  • Ref 51 needs an en-dash, not a spaced hyphen.
  • Ref 6 - inconsistent date formats in the refs.
  • FCO can be linked since you link other publishers.
  • Be consistent on linking UNESCO in the references.
  • Benvie's book has isbn number according to Amazon.

The Rambling Man (talk) 18:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • The opening sentence isn't bolded, so I've added the links in any case.
  • Full stop added. Nev1 (talk) 19:10, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think you're right about hyphenating.
  • Fair point about the abbreviation, since it's only used once I suppose it's a bit unnecessary and have expanded it.
  • It should now be consistent (ie:just "Giant's Causeway" linked in the lead and table).
  • The site's name is "Gough and Inaccessible Islands", individually they are Gough Island and Inaccessible Island. I can see there might be some confusion as it might sound like there's more than one Inaccessible Island, but even UNESCO does it that way.
  • I think the slightly smaller text makes the table look neater but would welcome other opinions.
  • Can't think of a good reason why there weren't any commas, so there are now.
  • I'm not sure about this. If five and ten were numbers I wouldn't mind either way, but MOS:NUM does encourage spelling out numbers below ten, and putting a dash in there doesn't look quite right. I'm not too fussed either way to be honest though.
  • I removed ref 27 as another editor introduced it while adding some info on the legend associated with Giant's Causeway. Many of the sites have legends attached to them but there just isn't space in this list for that kind of information. UNESCO mentions that the causeway has inspired legends of giants in Ireland, but I don't think it's worthwhile going into lots of detail about the legend of it being formed.
  • You're quite right about the hyphen in ref 51 (now 50).
  • The dates should now be consistent.
  • Didn't realise there was a link for the FCO, but I've added it now.
  • I've delinked the two times UNESCO was linked in a reference. I opted not to link it as it would make the reference section a sea of blue and distract from the hyperlinks; guess I forgot about those two.
  • ISBN added. Nev1 (talk) 19:10, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Comments by Doncram

Comments about site articles that are indexed

I'll collapse the following as i don't have time to develop my thoughts further, and there's no clear impact for this list article right now. --doncram (talk) 10:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • I would prefer to see the full official WHS name wikilinked, e.g. "Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast" rather than seeing "Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast". It should usually link to the one article which provides the WHS infobox, if one is used. In the Giant's Causeway case, there already is a redirect, so this could definitely be done, and I believe it would look better, clearly conveying that the full WHS description will appear at that one article.
  • About WHS listings that are not covered in a single article, but rather are covered in two or more separate articles, each with a similar WHS infobox, I am not completely happy. These ones have several separate wikilinks within one WHS title, as presented. I would rather, in a way, see a new combo article at the full WHS name, with info on the WHS designation, which could be linked to. This combo article could possibly reflect a merger of the material now in separate articles, in some cases, and in other cases would consist of a short statement and linking to the multiple separate articles that exist on each component of the combo WHS listing. But, i know that attempting to comply with this would cause complications as there do exist separate articles for many WHS combo listings. I have myself struggled with this in some drafted, not-yet-in-mainspace WHS list-article work.
  • Great looking list-article, overall! Maybe i will be able to comment more later. --doncram (talk) 21:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your points about name linking and articles for WHS are linked so I'll address them together. In the case of Giant's Causeay and Causeway Coast and Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal I have expanded the link to so that the whole name is linked as each article does discuss the site. For ease of reference, the remaining names which have multiple links are:
  1. Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine's Abbey, and St Martin's Church
  2. Durham Castle and Cathedral
  3. Gough and Inaccessible Island
  4. Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications, Bermuda
  5. Old and New Towns of Edinburgh
  6. Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey
  7. Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret's Church
  • Since there's no single article which covers the subject, there are multiple links. One option to address this would be to create a lot of stub articles, but I don't think it's a satisfactory solution. Some subjects lend themselves well to that approach. Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites is one such example where ideally the article would look at the ritual landscape of the sites and how they fit together; there's already a lot of literature on the subject and the monuments are rarely treated in isolation. However, taking an example I know, Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd is an example of the pitfalls. It's a poor article in any case, but as it explains Edward I built more castles in Wales than are included in the site. An article on Edwardian castles in Wales – a very valid subject and perhaps one I'll get round to some day – would need to include castles beyond those in the listing. Otherwise it would be difficult to fully understand the subject; once you include those extra castles, there'd be no point in giving the article the official name of the WHS as that would no longer adequately describe it. That's a particularly frustrating examples as I know there's a better way to treat the subject because I'm familiar with it, but a UNESCO site would give the appearance of being comprehensive to those who don't know otherwise.

    Another situation is that there are articles on both Durham Castle and Durham Cathedral, and both should ideally mention each other, but is there any point in having one article for both? They are separately notable and can be best addressed separately. Although occasionally overlapping, not all of the history of the castle is relevant to the cathedral and vice versa. An article at Durham Castle and Cathedral would be a mash of the two, doing neither justice. If it wasn't for the fact that UNESCO has grouped the two, you wouldn't even think about writing an article on the subject. I don't think we should fall into the trap of creating articles under UNESCO names if they are not the best way to address their subject, and I believe that would be the case for those listed above. There's something similar at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Crucible of Iron Age Shetland, although the result of that AfD was keep. Nev1 (talk) 22:31, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your thoughtful commenting. About the "Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd" one, I would think that the article title does not have to be kept at the WHS listing name, but the WHS name can be a redirect to a more broadly titled topic. If the article includes a WHS infobox, especially, then it should be very clear to readers that "This is the article where the WHS site of this name is covered!".
About the Durham Castle and Durham Cathedral separate articles, i actually like how the Durham Castle article uses a WHS infobox that displays title "Durham Castle and Cathedral", succinctly conveying that a) The WHS listing is the combo, by the complete title, and b) "This is the article covering the Durham Castle part" and c) See the linked Durham Cathedral article for that part. If the idea is to split the WHS coverage, then it could be elegant and complete if the Durham Cathedral article likewise had a WHS infobox with title "Durham Castle and Cathedral". There is a section late in the Durham Castle article on the WHS listing, but it isn't clear to me whether that is the place for the WHS to be officially covered, or if it is half and there should be an equivalent half over in a section over in the Cathedral article. The section itself does not name the WHS listing. And actually i notice that Durham Castle and Cathedral is a redirect to the Cathedral article, which does not clearly cover the combo WHS listing. Can you just clarify here, where is the WHS listing to be covered, in your view? If it is to be covered in a section in the Castle article, then at least the redirect should be changed to point to that article and specifically to that section. I'm still struggling to see what is best, how to treat these combos. In the U.S. National Register of Historic Places register, there are very few combo situations like this (and I dealt with several by setting up short combo stubby articles, which hold the corresponding NRHP infobox and proclaim "here is where the combo as a combo is addressed"). But I am aware there are many of these combos in the WHS register and that it is not clear how it is best to handle them. --doncram (talk) 00:56, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
About footnote locations
  • About the last column in the table "References", why not drop it, moving the UNESCO footnotes into the UNESCO data column (or into the description column) and moving the other footnotes to the description column. I do note some descriptions have a footnote and others do not. I know that References is a column in some other list-articles but i don't get that. It's not a column that i see as being useful for readers. In fact the footnotes should support specific material. There is not a separate references column in any U.S. historic sites list (only a couple of which are featured) that i am aware of. --doncram (talk) 10:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have been persuaded in the past that a Reference column is not really of much use, and I now usually add the citations at the end of the Description (or whatever) column.--Peter I. Vardy (talk) 12:13, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Originally I expected the vast majority of the information to come from the UNESCO website, so rather than adding a reference to each column, a new column was created to reduce clutter. Other sources have been used, but for the most part UNESCO is the key source. I do like that it would free up some space though, so I'm a bit torn. I could redistribute the references into each column if there's consensus; take a look at Blaenavon's entry in this link for roughly how it would appear (the last column would obviously be dispensed with). Nev1 (talk) 18:20, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I guess Nev was waiting for more comment, while i thot there was enough consensus on this point. The table's appearance varies according to your browser and your open window size, but on my fairly narrow window right now it looks like the appearance would be improved considerably by removing that almost-empty column, to let the description column widen out. I wouldn't actually oppose FL status about just this, but why not make the improvement? I hesitate to move the references myself as I am not sure exactly which info in other columns is supported by the footnote references that would be moved over. --doncram (talk) 18:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've had a go at it, what do you think? Nev1 (talk) 15:29, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is better, thanks! And collapsing. --doncram (talk) 16:07, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Seems even better than at start of this review; looks great to me. --doncram (talk) 16:07, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - I have no problems with the list. Afro (Talk) 19:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quick comments –
    • Blenheim Palace: Drop second "the" from "the residence of the John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough"?
    • Tower of London: "Additions were made by Henry III and Edward I in the 13th century made the castle...". Feels like "that" should be put in somewhere, because the sentence isn't flowing right at the moment. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 23:35, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I reckon this should fix those problems. Nev1 (talk) 23:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments by Rambo's Revenge (talk · contribs)
Comments
  • Country; of the four constituent countries that make up the United Kingdom" yet you have Bermuda and St. Helena etc in this column. - so key explanation needs more
  • Sorting by date gives 10th century, up to 19th century and then goes to (Bath Spa) 1st-19th, 2nd cent., 3rd millenia BC etc. Shouldn't these sort in date order?
  • Location. Should probably sort by COUNTY, TOWN/CITY etc. so all London ones group together etc. {{sort|Greater London, Tower Hamlets|[[Tower Hamlets]], [[Greater London]]}}

Rambo's Revenge (talk) 23:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Are the Pitcairn Islands and Saint Helena countries? Dealing with your first and last points, I think it may be worth considering merging the content of the country column into location given the trickiness of whether those two places are countries. Then it would make sense to sort by country/island, county, city. In the meantime I've tweaked the Greater London sites to group together when the location column is sorted as London and Greater London are basically synonymous.
  • The date column should sort correctly now. Nev1 (talk) 00:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at the talk pages, you'll find that there's a lot of heat (and not much light!) about using the word "country" or "constituent country" even within the UK - Northern Ireland in particular! Pitcairn Islands are an overseas territory, near-enough to being a country. St Helena isn't, it's an administrative area of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha following a name change a few months ago, and Tristan da Cunha is a separate administrative area within the same territory. One solution is change "country" to "country or dependency", change the text above the table, and change "Saint Helena" to Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. TheGrappler (talk) 05:08, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The isn't about the countries of the UK. I'm saying because the key says "Country; of the four constituent countries that make up the United Kingdom" you would expect to find NI/Wal/Eng/Sco in the Country column. So finding St. Helena is strange. Perhaps expand the key entry to "... of the the four constituent countries that make up the United Kingdom and its overseas terratories" (although there is probably a better wording) so it includes the possibility of having Bermuda etc. in the Location column. In fact, Nev, you correclty state Bermuda etc are not countries (but you 'have put them in the countries column). Perhaps "Territory" is actually a better heading although this is slightly strange and, for me, a better key explanation would suffice. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 22:58, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, as people seem to be leaning towards tweaking the heading and explanation rather than merging the columns, that's what I've done. Nev1 (talk) 23:03, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it needs to be "country or territory" not just "territory"; never heard England being called a "territory". Also "Saint Helena" needs to be changed, as Tristan da Cunha is now no longer in Saint Helena. TheGrappler (talk) 03:38, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And done. Nev1 (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have capped my comments. Sorry I kind of forgot about all this as I'm preparing to go off-wiki for a fair while. I can see no immediate problems and the list looks very good. That said, because I have not reviewed it fully (and won't have time) I would feel wrong in offering my support. So I'll leave it as "looks good", "see no problems". Best of luck, Rambo's Revenge (talk) 16:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]


  • Support - overall the list is very good, however I do have one suggestion. The order information is peresented in the lead is not what I expect when starting to read the article. For example:
"The countries of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales together form the country and sovereign state of the United Kingdom. The UK is also responsible for the governance of 12 overseas territories, although they are not constitutionally part of the UK.[2]"
  • These are the second and third sentences, but they provide no information about "World Heritage Sites of the United Kingdom". One might expect the second and third sentences to contain the second and third most important infomation about "World Heritage Sites of the United Kingdom". I would suggest a slight re-ordering of information, and will make an edit to demonstrate what I mean. Suicidalhamster (talk) 16:32, 30 November 2010 (UTC) Suggestions: [2][reply]
  • Additionally the alt text for the images could do with some improvement. [3]. Suicidalhamster (talk) 16:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • When I wrote the lead, I thought the immediate concerns would be first to explain what the United Kingdom is and what a World Heritage Site is. So my reflex was that the structure should remain like that, but your rewording mad it clear what the UK is (with the overseas territories). My one complaint would be that it doesn't immediately explain what a WHS is, but it's still done early enough (the second paragraph) so that the reader can take it in quickly. In a nut shell, I've restored your edit. Nev1 (talk) 00:56, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree with some of the points made above and a few novel points. The "Country" column shouldn't be described as the "four constituent countries that make up the United Kingdom" since e.g. Bermuda is included. The first few sentences of the lede are in a surprising order. The sorting order of some of the columns is unusual: for the dates it's just plain wrong, and for location unhelpful. My novel points: the coordinate templates aren't looking too healthy at the moment. In general they should be more specific for e.g. a building, and less specific for a large area... on that basis the Cornwall/Devon coords look overspecific; possibly St Kilda too. I can't work out why Canterbury is very specific for E but not for N, and so on. Secondly, can some of the other tentative list/applicants be given red links or explanatory notes. Fountain Cavern for instance surely deserves a redlink and eventually an article, if it's a potential World Heritage Site. "Bronte Landscape" - is there something that can be done to link "Bronte" somewhere useful? (Some readers will understand the reference, but many won't.) "The Birth of the Railway Age, England" really doesn't give much away about what that would have been like as World Heritage Site, perhaps it deserves a footnote? A wikilink would have to be to a vague "History of railways in Britain" type of article (I think there is a case for such a link). Other v minor stuff: the purpose of note 2 eludes me, since the meaning of column headings are detailed above. The redundant note just makes that table look messier. There's a typo "date" for "data" but I'll correct it myself. Overall I liked this, am I being horrible and unrealistic for regretting the lack of map? I can appreciate that some of the sites are hard to pin down to a single location, so it would require a bit of craft mapmaking (and in making the links clickable) but the external sites that are linked out to will only place single pins. We can do better than that, and it would add a lot to the list (to be fair, not enough to make it unfeaturable without, but it would have been great with!) TheGrappler (talk) 03:03, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've gone some way to addressing the concerns mirrored by those above (ie: date sorting and order of introduction) and your opinion on this suggestion would be helpful.
The co-ordinates are the ones UNESCO provide themselves, so I'm loathe to change them. As far as the 38 suggestions for the Tentative list, I don't want to go into too much detail as they're really not what the list is about (they're not even on the official Tentative list, which is the UNESCO proposal list). I think it would be worth adding brief one-sentence explanations for the most oblique; apart from the ones you've mentioned, are there any others you think are unclear? The second footnote was a relic from before the table had a key, but is now gone. As for the map, I'm afraid it's just not realistic; it's not a question of pinpointing sites, but making it useful to a reader. For the map to be useful, it would have to name each site. Take a look at this to get an idea of how cramped it would be. The Bing and Google links, which allow you to zoom in and out and are far more interactive than anything I've seen on Wikipedia, do the job in a much tidier way. Nev1 (talk) 01:13, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If those are the officially provided locations, then they're a little crazy, but you're probably right not to change them! You're right, the Indian map is awful. To be fair, it's probably achievable if it had numbers and a key instead (e.g. this county map, tho the numbers could be clickable the same way as the labels in the Indian map are). But it'd be unfair to expect it for FL, especially since the external maps are provided. For date sorting: it seems more natural that "18th century" should be sorted before "18th and 19th centuries" before "18th–20th century". (I think it's just Ironbridge Gorge that needs to move.) I'm having a look through the Tentative List. I know it's not the main thrust of the piece, but as a reader, I'd like to emerge with some idea of where a place is and (for the more abstract ones i.e. if it's not just the obvious "city", "hill", "defences" etc), some idea of what is actually meant. For example Darwin's Home makes sense because Down House is wikilinked. Trying to be exhaustive: Fountain Cavern should probably be wikilinked (may be a redlink for now, but shouldn't be in the long run). "North Norfolk Coast" should have some sort of link (particularly since Americans have a rather different idea about where Norfolk is!) - the North Norfolk administrative area doesn't actually seem to cover the entire northern coast of Norfolk, so maybe just Norfolk should be linked? "Shakespeare's Stratford" shouldn't be a single link - it's overspecific, I thought it was actually going to send me to a page about 16th-century Stratford! Perhaps link William Shakespeare and Stratford separately. "The Birth of the Railway Age" - as a reader I have no idea what this is, or where. Maybe link it to History of rail transport in Great Britain or even History of rail transport in Great Britain to 1830 if the site was intended to be specific to the earliest rail pioneers - don't assume all readers know that it was Britain that gave birth to the steam railways! Do you have any idea where this was intended to be, or what scope of things it would cover? I think this one may need a brief footnote. Perhaps the same for "The heroic period of civil and marine engineering in England 1822", although at least this is clearly located in Bristol. None of the others seem to need footnoting. "Malone" in "Malone and Stranmillis Historic Urban landscape" should be wikilinked, I tried searching Wikipedia and have no idea what the "Malone" refers to (which is generally a good sign that an internal link is needed!). "Isle of Man" should be wikilinked on first appearance. "Bronte" should be wikilinked to Brontë family if that's what it refers to. That's all! TheGrappler (talk) 05:08, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On the map (I did actually suggest including one on the Spain list, and by putting it in its own section at the end (unlike India) you can render it bigger and, therefore, reduce cramping. I agree with what you say about interactive Bing/Google being better but my only counter-argument would be how many people would bother to click through to these. My gut feeling is a much smaller proportion than those that would see an on-wiki map. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 23:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The county map you give as an example is one possibility, but given the cluster of sites in London I think it would still be too crowded even at a large size. To make it work I think you'd need about 4 mini-maps, one for each of the islands and a close up of Greater London, which would become unwieldy. I agree with you about Ironbridge, hopefully that's the last kink in the date sorting fixed. As far as the descriptions are concerned, I've added some details for the ones TheGrappler mentioned. Nev1 (talk) 23:24, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added descriptions much better thanks, perhaps the added descriptions should be in brackets to clearly distinguish them from the "official" descriptions? TheGrappler (talk) 03:38, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As part of one of the names on the Tentative list includes brackets (Manchester and Salford...), I don't think that would work. Nev1 (talk) 19:59, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, true enough! Footnoting them is another option, although that breaks the flow up. So I can't see any alternative that is clearly better than your dashes. The only outstanding complaint I have relates the "territory" issue, see above. TheGrappler (talk) 06:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Have any of these more recent comments been addressed? Rambo's Revenge (talk) 22:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Getting on it now. Nev1 (talk) 00:29, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What's the status of these concerns? Has Rambo's Revenge been asked to revisit? Dabomb87 (talk) 01:44, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just passing by and unfortunately no time for a full review. Just one question, why is the title: "List of World Heritage Sites of the United Kingdom"? As far as I can see other similar lists use "in" instead of "of". bamse (talk) 17:46, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Thanks. bamse (talk) 15:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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