Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Somerset/Archive 1

Welcome to the Somerset Wikiproject

I have set up a few basic templates etc, but it need s alot more work and everyones ideas about the way in which this project can be taken forward.— Rod ^talk 22:01, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Photos

Once we get a few more members, it may be worth seeing if anyone has a digital camera and is willing to take requests for photographs of places in their area. We can isolate which large articles could be most improved (perhaps to GA status) by adding photographs, etc, perhaps creating a sub-page with a list of requested photographs, in priority order. Lethe 11:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

There is already a mechanism for this. Adding {{reqphoto|in=Somerset}} to the talk page this add them to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Somerset. There are already 50 requests in there!— Rod ^talk 11:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

*slaps forehead* You're much more organised than me :-) Lethe 12:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Both Rod and I have in the past added photographs from Geograph British Isles. All of the images on the site are made public under the Creative Commons attribution share alike 2.0 licence. For an example, together with appropriate attribution, see Image:HMP Shepton Visitors.jpg, which is an image in Somerset. --Cheesy Mike 21:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering about that site, but the small print there and here just blew my mind. Perhaps and explanation / how-to would be appropriate on the project page please? Like how to correctly attribute. Derek Andrews 14:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Derek take a look at Help:Contents/Images and media & see whether that helps?— Rod ^talk 14:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, now I know that it can be done, I persevered further. Figured it has to be uploaded to wikimedia commons, is that right? And that is a new login:) Stumped at selecting a license. Geograph is cc2.0, but only 3.0 is listed in the menu. In the Shepton example above, I see that 2.0 has been embedded somehow. So I copy a line of Cheesy Mike's code, sort of, and get this [1]. Right, wrong? Now what? I see that Mike's is in en.wikipedia.org, not commons. I guess my point is, there are so many options and ways to screw up, many editors like myself, just aren't going to bother. Which is a shame, and could probably be rectified with a few lines of step by step help on one page. Derek Andrews 16:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I've added pictures to Barrington Court and Quantock Hills (as well as Bridgwater Bay) -- How do you edit the "photos requested page" to take these off the list of requested photos? Or does that eventually happen by itself? forgive the hopeless newby... I do have digital camera in Somerset and will travel (hubby is getting a new motorcycle:-)) if you let me know, as per first comment, what y'all think are most in need of pix.Celia Kozlowski 10:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the photos - to remove them from the list click on "Discussion" at the top of the relevant article & then edit to remove {{reqphoto|in=Somerset}}. This will then remove them from the list.— Rod ^talk 11:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Admin

Rod, thank you for setting up WikiProject Somerset. Great job. I was hoping that someone who knew what they were doing would take this initiative. Derek Andrews 11:14, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Should the request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Somerset be deleted now? Derek Andrews 11:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and then added to Template:Announcements/Community bulletin board. We should also announce it on the rlevenat "parent projects" where I put the announcement of the proposal ie Wikipedia talk:UK Wikipedians' notice board, Wikipedia:UK Wikipedians' notice board, Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/Announcementsand Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England etc — Rod ^talk 11:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Done. Derek Andrews 14:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm amazed how quickly that it has been setup. I saw a Somerset flag this morning on one or two articles that I edited, so I joined; and now the flags are on many articles together with assessments. What we don't appear to have yet is a Somerset banner on put on the user page to go with, for example a Bristol, TrainsWP or UK waterwater's, etc, user (or member's) banner flag.Pyrotec 20:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The code to set up the members banner doesn't look very difficult but I think it would be useful to find or agree on an image to use first - I just grabbed the map as a quick & dirty icon.— Rod ^talk 15:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I was trying to do a bit of research on Butleigh Court, which the Wiki Page says the Family has died out, according to www.thepeerage.com they are still alive ! http://www.thepeerage.com/p3774.htm#i37733 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.20.149 (talk) 00:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Scope & assessment

Comment moved from project page:

I noticed a Somerset WikiProject template on the article about Trevor Pinch, whose only apparent association with Somerset is that he took a degree at the University of Bath. Isn't this spreading the net a little wide? Are you also going to include Tom Jones and The Wife of Bath? --RichardVeryard 13:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for that. I agree that alumni of the University of Bath may well be outside the wiki project. I should have checked the categories more closely before requesting the bot to run. I have now asked for it to exclude:

• Category:People associated with Bath Spa University (2 subcats)
• Category:People associated with the University of Bath (2 subcats)
• Category:Somerset cricketers (1 subcat)
• Category:Yeovil Town F.C. managers
• Category:Yeovil Town F.C. players
• Category:Bath Rugby
• Category:Alumni of Kingswood School, Bath
• Category:Railway stations in Bristol, Bath and South Gloucestershire which appear in Category:Transport in South Gloucestershire, Category:Transport in Bristol, Category:Transport in South Gloucestershire Category:Buildings and structures in Bristol or Category:Buildings and structures in South Gloucestershire

Also the Bot will now exclude articles in the Devon wikiproject which fall within the Exmoor category. Again apologies I should have checked. If anyone spots any other problems please post here so that we can resolve them.— Rod ^talk 14:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I have excluded (and removed where necessary) all except the last two listed subcats. Rich Farmbrough, 22:54 17 September 2007 (GMT).

I think this procedure omits quite a lot of important material relevant to Somerset. Perhaps there could be a category called Category:Fictional people from Somerset, which should certainly include The Wife of Bath. And a category called Category:Fictional works based in Somerset, which should include Tom Jones. And how can you possibly omit Cheddar cheese - do you need a category called Category:Food from Somerset? --RichardVeryard 16:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it should be Food and Drink from Somerset? I just added Babycham to the project and there must be a mention of cider somewhere. Other categories that I think are missing are Navigable Waterways, Agriculture, Industry, though perhaps they are buried deep and i haven't found them yet. Derek Andrews 20:21, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Food: wasn't Cadbury's Bourneville chocolate named for Bourneville near Bristol where they had the factory ? This is a long time ago of course, but this dark plain chocolate was one of their most popular staples. Sorry this is only anecdotal. Adrian Pollock (talk) 16:36, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Certainly not. It was named after Bournville in Birmingham, where the Cadbury's moved their factory in 1879.Pyrotec (talk) 21:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

You are probably thinking of the Keynsham factory which was built by Fry's, who were competitors of Cadbury's before they merged shortly after the end of World war I.Pyrotec (talk) 21:46, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The bot has identified and tagged 1778 articles as being relevant to this wikiproject. Hopefully this will make more editors aware of the project. Some of these may be wrongly tagged - please remove the {{Somerset}} or {{WikiProject Somerset}} banner if the page doesn't directly fit with the scope (if we are happy with the scope). A few have the class included eg FA & GA but the rest need to be assessed and then the appropriate tag added into the banner eg {{Somerset|class=stub}}, as described on Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Assessment (please feel free to edit those instructions as well if they are not clear). This will then put them into the appropriate category & enable us to include them in statistics updates.— Rod ^talk 19:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I have no first hand experience of setting it up, but User:Simply South set up the WP Transport Scotland and WP UK Waterways "quality pages", see for example Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Scotland Transport articles by quality statistics, so that the Version 1.0 Editorial team Bot updates the statistics every three or so days. I (and others) just do the assessments (class & importance) and the bot updates the log & statistics pages.Pyrotec 20:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I see Shaftesbury and Severn Beach railway station have been included. Is there some Greater Somerset of which I am unaware? Is Somerset seeking lebensraum? Oh damn. I lost the argument already. :) William Avery 20:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Yellowbellies, that's a new one on me. I deleted Shaftesbury, blame in on the bot. Not sure about Severn Beach railway station, perhaps it is in Greater Somerset.Pyrotec 20:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I've deleted the Severn Beach railway station one (it's in S. Glos). The bot simply applied it to everything which is in sub categories of Category:Somerset which includes Category:Railway stations in Bristol, Bath and South Gloucestershire as a sub set of Category:Bath and North East Somerset - which is teaching me lessons about the vagaries (and importance) of good categorisation.— Rod ^talk 21:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Chew Magna GA review

Chew Magna has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. The reviewer has raised several concerns which need to be addressed within a week if this is retain GA status - any help appreciated.— Rod ^talk 16:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I have done some work on this and left comments and suggestions at Talk:Chew Magna Derek Andrews 00:33, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help with this. All concerns now addressed and it stays as a GA.— Rod ^talk 10:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

To do items?

I just completed the merger of Brockley Coomb into Brockley Combe. See WP:Bold!! I left the item on the to-do list and simply crossed it off and put my name & date-stamp next to it. Is this the correct approach? Will the item be deleted from the list or should I do it myself? --Cheesy Mike 17:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I think its best to delete them when done (and add others which you think need doing) otherwise the list will get long & redundant - there is no automatic mechanism for doing this.— Rod ^talk 17:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems fair. I thought about maybe leaving them for a few days so others could check / contribute to the changes made. I think in this case I will do just that and delete the item next week. --Cheesy Mike 17:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I notice there is a request for lots of drains, ditches, rhines etc! What sort of information is required? Apart from the question of where does one draw the line with this list, I can't help but think that many of these (not all) are going to be difficult to find any significant information on. Aren't we in danger of creating a lot of stubs about things that aren't notable enough to justify an article? Would we be better to incorporate them into a smaller number of articles about draining particular areas? Derek Andrews 11:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to remove those you don't think are notable enough. I took them from List of rivers of England where they are currently redlinks.— Rod ^talk 11:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Most of them , if not all, are covered in: Williams, Michael (1970). The Draining of the Somerset Levels. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-07486-X. And yes, I have a copy; but I don't have the time at present to do anything. I have a 15,000 word dissertation to do first.Pyrotec 13:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Also there are a list of reservoirs in Somerset which are mostly redlinks - these could be added (NB some Somerset ones are listed under Avon!)— Rod ^talk 13:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the rivers and drains requests to Talk:Somerset Levels.— Rod ^talk 07:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Bath?

I notice Bath, Somerset isn't tagged by this project. Is that a conscious decision? If so, what about the rest of Bath & North East Somerset? I notice, for example, that Paulton is tagged so I also tagged Paulton Memorial Hospital. Feedback appreciated. --Cheesy Mike 20:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

bath should be tagged. The project page says 'historical county of Somerset', and Portal:Somerset includes the unitary authorities. So Paulton is in, and I presume anything to do with Paulton too, especially something major like a hospital. Derek Andrews 22:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I would agree that anything in Bath (or Paulton) should be in. The tagging system depended on the categories articles are in so feel free to add the project banner (& sort the categorisation!)— Rod ^talk 15:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Couple of things

• I guess that the inclusion/exclusion is sorted now? Or are there any subcats that still need removing wholesale?
• Have a look at Template:WikiProject Somerset (still need a little work) - if this is considered better than Template:Somerset we can either
  • Copy it over.
  • Replace the names.

Note that the template names "WikiProject XXX" seems to be near-standard, as does the stacking feature see Talk:Beast of Exmoor.
Rich Farmbrough, 10:13 22 September 2007 (GMT).

Thanks Rich, I like the suggestions bit of the new template, but I'm unsure whether this one would support importance ratings?— Rod ^talk 13:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Rich Farmbrough, 11:49 30 September 2007 (GMT).

Article assessment & Bishops etc

We have been getting on quite well with article assessment over the past week. There are still some more to do (at Category:Unassessed Somerset articles but I wanted to get some opinions...

• I've left in those which are the talk pages for categories or lists as I'm hoping these will be death with when the template is finally sorted using "na" & "list" as assessments.
• There are some people who are in the Category:People from Somerset but it doesn't say in the article where they were born - any ideas?
• I've taken out Somerset cricketers who played for the county for a couple of years but weren't born here - does that seem OK?
• If so what about Category:Bishops of Bath and Wells, Abbots of Glastonbury & Category:Lord-Lieutenants of Somerset if they were born elsewhere? are they significant enough in the history to be included in the scope of this wikiproject?
• There are also several kings & tribal leaders from the Middle ages when boundaries were different to historic counties - does anyone have the expertise to decide if they fall within our scope?
• What about roads which cross part of the county but are primarily elsewhere?

Any help or advice appreciated.— Rod ^talk 21:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

---

A can of worms! here are my thoughts:

• Regarding place of birth, do you have a list of those you are querying? Is it a case of doing more research for the article?
• Removing cricketers is ok with me, even if they were born here. I think the criteria should be that they made some notable achievement whilst playing for Somerset, or were born here and went on to great career elsewhere. I think it is always worth remembering that this is an encyclopaedia and not a directory. Notability and the need to cite references is key, otherwise are we not in danger of creating original research? Or ending up with a lot of stubs taht can't be expanded because there just isn't anything worth writing?
• Ditto, Re Bishops etc, the category where they are listed should be part of this project. Only include the person if they were born here, or made some notable contribution while here. I don't think we really want responsibility for a page if all it says about Somerset was that the person was bishop from xxxx-xxxx.
• I don't know what to say about roads, other than to observe that most of these articles are little more than route descriptions and have no references, no historical context etc etc.

Having looked at some of these articles, albeit very briefly, I think we could be making a rod for our own backs by trying to make this project all inclusive. Were do we stop? Do we include every article about plants and wildlife that may be encountered in Somerset? I think we need to be quite ruthless in excluding articles were the links are tenuous and the articles have little chance of making it to a reasonable quality. We can always add articles later if we find an important reason to do so, say if Somerset is the only place in the UK where a plant, animal is found. Derek Andrews 14:03, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

---

I agree it's a can of worms - but I avoid any thing which says "ROD for your own back". In respones to your first question "Regarding place of birth, do you have a list of those you are querying? Is it a case of doing more research for the article?". This includes: Abubakar Tariq Nadama, Alex Coomber, Amias Paulet, Auberon Herbert (landowner), Francis Cottington, 1st Baron Cottington, Harriet Acland, Harry George Crandon, Henry James Knight, Henry Strangways, Horace Batchelor, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jeffrey Archer (born London moved to WsM), John Collins (VC), John Hanning Speke, John Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton, John Palmer (Bath architect), John Skinner (archaeologist), John Wood, the Younger, Keith Floyd, Lucy Shuker, Michael Eavis, Oliver Brooks, Peter Hayman, Peter Hurford, Robert Burch, Sir Philip Miles, 2nd Baronet, Sir William Miles, 1st Baronet, Sir William Wyndham, 1st Baronet, Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Baronet, Thomas Thynne, 5th Marquess of Bath, William Bees, William Dampier, William Job Maillard, William Jolliffe, 4th Baron Hylton.

I will await comments from others on Bishops, roads etc.— Rod ^talk 20:34, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

A big list! I haven't had time to look at many, but here are comments from looking at a few. Abubakar Tariq Nadama is not notably about Somt, there are no references, but being so recent there must be some that could be added. 1st Baron Cottington this article seems to be taken directly from http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Francis_Cottington,_Baron_Cottington. Is this a copyright problem? Harry George Crandon,VC, I did find was born in Wells Somt. Michael Eavis, keep - most probably born on the family farm, but his impact on the county makes him worthy of a Somerset listing anyway. Derek Andrews 01:17, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Not that big a list compared with the 1700+ articles we started with last week! Thanks for your researches -I dealt with those (as indicated by strikethrough). The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica is now out of copyright & the article has the appropriate tag.— Rod ^talk 07:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio tag of Sally Lunn

A massive copyright violation tag has appeared on the article about Sally Lunn. Is anyone able to invetsigate?— Rod ^talk 14:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

---

Hi, I clicked through to the page that the Sally Lunn page was said to violate the copyright of (http://members.cox.net/jjschnebel/sallylun.html), and, sure enough, the text is lifted pretty much word for word from that page. It says at the bottom of the page "Who Cooked That Up? is copyrighted 2000 by J.J. Schnebel, all rights reserved for your pleasure and enlightenment." I followed on to a page that let me email the copyright holder. I told them about the offending page on Wikipedia and asked if Wikipedia might have permission to copy their material if we included a link to their page. I left my email address and, if I hear back from them I'll let you know and I guess we'll take it from there. For the time being, I think the page should be left in copyright purgatory -- or even deleted.

Stephen Clackson is on AfD

The article on Stephen Clackson who was born in Taunton is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Clackson if anyone wants to join the debate.— Rod ^talk 16:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Geography Help? Ambiguous reference?/ Westmoor Confusion

As a newbie, I'm not sure what do do about this, but on the List of locations in the Somerset Levels page, it lists Westmoor -- and I'm pretty sure there is a West Moor or Westmoor on the SL's, but the link takes us to this one -- "West Moor might nowadays best be described as a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne" or Westmoor high school/ West Moor disambiguation page. Maybe something needs to be added to the disambig. page and the link should be removed or altered somehow on the LoLotSL page???Celia Kozlowski 08:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Well done for spotting this. There were also errors with, South Moor, Stawell, Thorney, Berrow, Cossington, Weare, Oxmoor & River Axe links. I've done some temp fixes which makes many of them redlinks to South Moor, Somerset etc & I will go back & try to sort more of the links on the page asap.— Rod ^talk 13:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It should be West Moor SSSI, Somerset which I've fixed & will look at others.— Rod ^talk 13:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Peer review of Bath Abbey

Would very much like some feedback on this, having completed a total rewrite, before going to WP:GA about it.--Vox Humana 8' 23:41, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Beware spam links

A warning to keep an eye out for spam in external links sections of articles you edit. I have spent some time today cleaning up various articles relating to Exmoor and its towns / villages. A good number of them had spam links e.g. #1 & #2. Both of these are commercially run websites which have directories of business such as hotels and restaurants in Exmoor. Neither belong on Wikipedia. Do keep an eye out for similar links - they exist all over the place. I remember having quite a job getting them purged from the Glastonbury article. The links are probably back now. Must check... --Cheesy Mike 14:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It is possibly to greatly reduce the number of external links in an article by pointing to the appropriate category in the Open Directory Project by using the {{dmoz}} DMOZ template. e.g.

• Glastonbury at Curlie

--Cheesy Mike 15:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

---

Ok, just to help me a bit more... this ill-fated copyvio Sally Lunn article had a link (http://www.sallylunns.co.uk/new_web_site/All_Sally_web_pages/UntitledFrameset-5.htm) to Sally Lunn restaurant and museum in Bath. Would that likewise be spam? Thanks, CheesyMike p.s. have you seen in person the famous cheddar on the cheese cam? Celia Kozlowski 21:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry - I missed this comment. If the Sally Lunn article survives then a link to an official website about the subject in question wouldn't be spam. --Cheesy Mike 06:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Success against a spammer! I have just succeeded in getting 85.70.123.202 (talk · contribs) blocked for repeatedly spamming Exmoor. --Cheesy Mike 06:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Importance assessment

After lots of fiddling with complex code, I've now got the talk page banner for articles within the scope of this project to accept assessments of the articles importance to this project as described on Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Assessment. Please feel free to add to or change the examples given on that page, and to start adding "|importance=level" to the talk page banners (where level = top, high, mid or low). These will be updated every few days (when the bot runs) on the project page in the current status section. In the mean time you can see those which have received an importance assessment at Category:Somerset articles by importance.— Rod ^talk 19:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a problem with {{tl:WikiProject Somerset}} or it's operation & I can't work out what it is.... I originally created {{Somerset}} for Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset & had advice that is wasn't working properly & didn't "nest" on article talk pages. I also took ages to get it to handle importance ratings. Then {{tl:WikiProject Somerset}} was created & a redirect put on {{Somerset}} and I added a few importance ratings to several articles. The bot has now been round & is displaying the results in relation to class & importance at Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset#Current status. In the process we have now lost about 500 articles which had the original banner (including most of the FA, GA & B class) & I can't work out why. Some examples:

• Talk:List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset includes the line {{Somerset|class=FA}} and does show up in the current list
• Talk:Chew Valley includes {{Wikiproject Somerset|class=FA|importance=mid}} and does NOT show up in the listing
• Talk:Chew Valley Lake includes {{Somerset|class=FA|importance=mid}} & does NOT show.

So that gives the impression that anything with an importance ranking doesn't show up, however

• Talk:Kennet and Avon Canal which includes {{Somerset|class=GA|importance=mid}} does show up
• Talk:Chew Magna which includes {{Somerset|class=GA|importance=low}} does NOT.

I can not understand why some do & some don't appear, and would appreciate any help or advice. The best place for the discussion is probably Template talk:WikiProject Somerset.— Rod ^talk 19:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The bot has now run & updated the "Current Status" at Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset. We are back up to 1528 articles which includes all of those assessed as FA, GA, B etc class. However all of the importance ratings (which have been done for over 100 of the articles) have disappeared from the status report - I've asked for help to try to sort this.— Rod ^talk 08:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

DMOZ links on articles

DMOZ, otherwise known as the Open Directory Project is an Internet directory which provides categorised website links. Linking to the relevant DMOZ category from within a Somerset wikiproject article is a great way to add value as it gives article readers access to a wealth of other internet resources without having to list all those links within the article itself. It has a secondary benefit of focusing the article editors to allowing only the most relevant external links within an article.

Adding a DMOZ link to an article is really simple using the DMOZ template.

1. First identify the specific category you want to link to. Take a look at the Somerset entry in DMOZ and click the next-level category to get to where you want e.g. DMOZ entry for Cheddar
2. Look at the URL of the DMOZ category you want to add into your Wiki article - e.g. http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Somerset/Cheddar/ and copy to your clipboard everthing after dmoz.org e.g. /Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Somerset/Cheddar/
3. Use this string to contstruct the DMOZ template within your article which is used in the format {{dmoz|category-directory-tree|name }}. For Cheddar this would be {{dmoz|/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Somerset/Cheddar/|Cheddar}}.

Any questions, just ask. --Cheesy Mike 12:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines

Hello WikiProject Somerset participants,

Just a line trying to promote some trans-WikiProject guidelines for settlement articles. WP:UKCITIES are guidelines from the "mother" WP:UKGEO project based on those at WP:CITIES (A "global" WikiProject for settlements that is US driven). They have been employed by a number of articles to standardise content, obtain a consistent style and approach and drive them towards good and featured article status with considerable success, and are so far also endorssed by Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater Manchester, Wikipedia:WikiProject Cheshire, Wikipedia:WikiProject Yorkshire and Wikipedia:WikiProject Sheffield, amongst others.

Not too many users (or indeed projects) are aware of the guidelines, and thought it may be helpful if all the county WikiProjects had a link to them to help them get the results they want.

As it stands, the project mainspace has an empty section entitled "Guidelines" - it may be suitable if {{main|WP:UKCITIES}} was affixed to that section. Hope that helps, Jza84 02:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I think it will be useful and, without going so far as endorsing it at this stage, I have added a link to the guidelines, and suggested sources for other topic guidelines. I will use this to see how it works for Wells and other places I write about. Derek Andrews 11:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you for the addition to your mainspace. As a member a few of the sister projects of this one, I wish you every success with your work, and hope WP:UKCITIES helps! Jza84 17:20, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Wookey

The article on Wookey needs attention, please see Talk:Wookey. It has already been spotted (seeUser talk:Sujackman) by someone else back in April, but no action seems to have resulted. Derek Andrews 11:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Main Somerset article

I think it is important for this project to improve the main article about Somerset. I've put some comments and suggestions on the talk page and would welcome your comments there, (there is also a suggestion from User:Lethesl about the map). Perhaps we can work together on this?— Rod ^talk 21:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Somerset has improved over the last few days and I've Been bold and nominated it as a Good article candidate— Rod ^talk 19:33, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Banwell

I have created a new Banwell article from scratch, but have rescued some bits from the cached copy of the old article. The bits I have rescued are definitely not copyright violation as I have checked that the facts are in the public domain. Feel free to expand the article. --Cheesy Mike 08:34, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Museums

Nice to see so many museum articles created. Should we be making a distinction between free and non-free in each article? Personally I think we should. --Cheesy Mike 15:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm putting the Free/Non Free icon on List of visitor attractions in Somerset but we could add something to the articles. I don't think we should put admission prices though as this will change too often.— Rod ^talk 15:32, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Somerset now GA - what next

I'm pleased to let everyone know that due to the hard work of lots of members of this wikiproject & others the main Somerset is now rated as a Good Article. Now we need to think about what we want to concentrate on next... should we push on & get Somerset to FA - or work on other areas - perhaps History of Somerset, or develop articles on the Economy of Somerset or Culture of Somerset? What do the rest of the team think? While you are thinking you might be interested in a Somerset village article - Chew Stoke - which is currently a candidate for FA.. If you wanted to make any comments or support/oppose it at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chew Stoke that would be useful.— Rod ^talk 23:58, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

My instinct would be to work on the red links first, then try to bring as many of the most important articles up to GA. This would give a more coherent experience to readers, and probably be most useful to them.

Choosing which articles to work on is a problem. Is there any mechanism within WP that gives access to stats? This would enable us to work on articles that readers (not editors) are actually looking at the most. Failing that we could use the existing grading, or maybe work on articles that have the most links to them, either from within WP or externally.

I see from the table that there are 3 top importance articles that are B rated, 7 high rated start articles, and 6 mid importance stubs. Maybe the approach should be to empty out this diagonal line from the table (how do we find out which articles these are?) I also note that over 50% of our articles are stubs, so maybe we should each take a 'stub of the day' to work on during coffee breaks?

--Derek Andrews 11:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

It's simple. Pick the high importance articles and improve them. --Cheesy Mike 11:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I've been adding the redlinks I come across to the to do list. As far as i know there is no way of tracking which pages are most popular with readers. The existing grading system still needs some of the articles to be rated for both class & importance. Within the table you can click on "FA", "start" or "High", "Mid", "Low" etc to see which articles are included. In addition to the high importance category, I would also suggest top importance are the most important. It could also be that its time to start up the collaboration of the week/month & maybe choose one of the towns/cities or another topic to collaborate on?— Rod ^talk 12:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Project Image

I've just completed the importance assessments (please feel free to change them as I'm sure to have made some errors in the 1000+ I've done in the last few days) and am now thinking about doing the userbox for this project & a template to go on the user pages of those that edit Somerset articles inviting them to join the project. Before doing this I'd like thoughts on the image to use. The Somerset stubs use Image:Glastor.jpg of Glastonbury Tor, which works quite well at small size & is well known & central to the county. For the project template I used the map Image:EnglandSomerset.svg. Could people indicate which they prefer or suggest another image, which resizes well & represents the county?— Rod ^talk 21:11, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I've gone ahead & created a userbox for the project which you can add to your user page by adding {{User Somerset project}} & it produces this

This user is a member of the Somerset WikiProject - You can help!

which will automagically add you to Category:WikiProject Somerset members.— Rod ^talk 21:43, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've also taken the liberty of changing the assessment template {{WikiProject Somerset}} to use the Glastonbury Tor image. And I've created one which can be put on an editors talk page, if you notice they are editing relevant articles & might be interested in joining this wikiproject. You can either use {{WP Somerset invite}} for the generic version, or you can use, for example, {{WP Somerset invite|Bridgwater}} (or any other article title they have edited) to include the line "Thank you for editing the article Bridgwater". If anyone wants to suggest changes to these please do. I will add details of the templates available to the main project page.— Rod ^talk 22:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Re asses South West Coast Path

Could someone re asses South West Coast Path. I originally assessed it as start class but have worked with others to improve it since. It would be a conflict of interest if I re assessed it but I think it's up to B by now.— Rod ^talk 18:01, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Done - B class, but it could do with a bit more referencing.I've forgotten the name of the improve in-line ref template - its been changed since I last added one.Pyrotec (talk) 15:24, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the ....

Many projects have a collaboration of the week or collaboration of the month. We have shown how effective it can be when many editors work together in getting the main Somerset article to GA. If everyone thinks this would be useful please list suggestions on the project page Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset#Collaboration and review and discuss them here. We could choose a specific article - perhaps with a target of getting it to GA or FA status or a geographical or topic area (eg South Somerset or Category:Schools in Somerset and work on it for a week or a month. What do others think?— Rod ^talk 14:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of moving Celia's suggestion here to start the list but please add below.

• I would love to see a Somerset culture article on The Somerset Towers. There is a great poster about this by Tom and Jackie Murrow, sold at St Mary Magdalene, Taunton (benefits go to their Tower Restoration Fund) and sponsored by Impact Design and Public Relations, Taunton. They say their poster is based on the writings of Nikolaus Pevsner, Clifton Taylor, and A K Wickham. The poster states that The Somerset Towers include 90 late medieval towers, including 50 which "are great designs by any standard". They illustrate it with sketches of these towers: St Cuthbert, Wells, Evercreech, Batcombe, Mells, Chewton Mendip, Chew Magna, Dundry, St. Mary Magdalene, Bishops Lydeard, Ile Abbots, Kingsbury Episcopi, Huish Episcopi, and North Petherton. The poster says the designs are derived from the central and west towers of Wells cathedral. I'm not an architecture expert, but would be happy to contribute pictures and info from Pevsner. It would be great to have collaborators with ecclesiastical/architecture interests; a good eye for layout and wikiformatting savvy -- I see this piece being heavy on the graphics. Of course it would be especially great if anyone knows the Murrows or other folks from St. Mary Magdalene and could bring them aboard to lead this! cheers! Celia Kozlowski 22:16, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

• The good work on Somerset to get it to GA means it is not (in my opinion) far from FA & we could nominate this one.— Rod ^talk 14:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Acombe

I've been trying to provide infoboxes for all requests including all the villages & I've nearly got there but I'm having problems with Acombe - I can't find it on any mapping system. Can anyone provide further info, grid ref, coordinates or anything? — Rod ^talk 18:28, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

This is now resolved with Acombe redirecting to Alcombe.— Rod ^talk 14:18, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Bath v Bath, Somerset v....

If anyone is feeling brave you may wish to get involved in the discussion debate about the correct title for the wikipedia article about Bath which is currently going on at Talk:Bath, Somerset. NB if you are not familiar with them you may wish to look at previous discussion at Archive 1.— Rod ^talk 14:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Native speakers

Are any of the members of this project natives of Somerset who would be willing to record a pronunciation of the name of the county in a local accent? A discussion about adding the spoken word in "Received Pronunciation" & local accent is going on at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography#Embedded audio as a guide to pronunciation & a guide to how to do it is being written but a native speaker is needed.— Rod ^talk 14:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Ooou-Arrh! I think this is a great idea! I'm not a native, but I absolutely adore a rich Zomerzet accent! One of my favorite native speakers is Eileen, the grande dame who owns "Eli's" (Rose and Crown) in Huish Episcopi. Eileen is ailing these days, but perhaps I could talk with her "kids" who now run the pub and see if they think it might be possible to do a low-key recording session sometime when Eileen's feeling a little better. Celia Kozlowski (talk) 12:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

FAs, GAs & future work

As yu may have noticed Somerset is now a Featured article candidate - discussion and votes here. South West Coast Path and History of Somerset are both Good article nominations. I've done a bit of work on Exmoor -any help with this (& reassessment of class) would be great as I'd like to get that to GA as well. Are there other areas members of the project have been working, on or would like to work on, which others could help with?— Rod ^talk 14:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Now reassessed as B class.Pyrotec (talk) 21:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Not wishing to steel the credit that belongs to others, a lot of work has gone into the Grand Western Canal - it has the makings of a GA.Pyrotec (talk) 22:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Somerset FAC

The main Somerset article is now receiving comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Somerset the latest set of comments say that it needs for referencing and copyediting. If anyone is able to look at this and help it would be appreciated.— Rod ^talk 14:39, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Glastonbury Extravaganza

A stub for Glastonbury Extravaganza has been created which has natoability tag on it if anyone wants to comment?— Rod ^talk 20:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Move up the "See also"?

Hi, I went to add some details on Cecil Sharp to the Culture section and did so... only after I finished did I see that at the bottom of the page was a See also: Somerset music. I think it would be more reader-useful to have this See also moved up the page to where we are talking about music... but I didn't want to mess things up on this leading page if you all are happy with its current format... I reverted to the previous version of the Culture page and added my details to the Somerset Music page. cheers et happy holidays to all!Celia Kozlowski (talk) 14:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Bath and North East Somerset

I've had a go at expanding Bath and North East Somerset. If anyone fancied having a look & improving it that would be great - also it might be worth reassessing as I think it's moving beyond "start" class.— Rod ^talk 20:29, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Template Somerset

When I first set up the templates for this WikiProject I made a mistake in using the title Template:Somerset for the project template. This was soon replaced by {{WikiProject Somerset}} and both currently perform the same functions. I have asked for a Bot to replace all of the old style templates with the new one on talk pages of Somerset articles - without affecting the class & importance ratings. This is because I would like to bring Somerset in line with the rest of the UK & use Template:County in the standard way on articles to link them together see eg Template:Greater Manchester, Template:Warwickshire, Template:Cheshire, Template:Cumbria, Template:Merseyside, Template:Lancashire, Template:Wiltshire. I have done a 1st draft of this at: User:Rodw/Sandboxsomersettemplate for your consideration, comment etc. I will post again here before moving this new template to become Template:Somerset, for use on articles.— Rod ^talk 18:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. Uses of {{Somerset}} and applicable incoming links have been replaced with {{WikiProject Somerset}}. The history of the former has been merged into the latter.

The new navigational template has been moved into place at {{Somerset}}. --kingboyk (talk) 20:41, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I left some specific comments on the layout of the navbox itself on the template talk page. Using it is a great idea and as a minimum it should be added to all of the articles referenced within the template. --Cheesy Mike (talk) 09:40, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Abbey Ales

Note that per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abbey Ales, in which the article was kept per WP:SNOW, Abbey Ales was renamed to Abbey Ales (brewery) to prevent confusion with Belgian Abbey Ale. Cheers! —Travis^talk 04:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately it hasn't been renamed correctly. It should have been moved from Bath Ales to Bath Ales (brewery). Instead the latter has simply been created as a redirect to the original article. My account hasn't been active long enough for me to have permission to move the pages, so can someone else sort it out? --TimTay (talk) 08:38, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

This request is confusing. There is an article Abbey Ales; Abbey Ales (brewery) is a redirect to Abbey Ales; and Abbey Ale is a redirect to Trappist beer. Bath Ales is a completely different article to Abbey Ales; and there is no discussion on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abbey Ales about renaming Bath Ales to Bath Ales (brewery); so how Abbey Ales have been renamed incorrectly - its has not been renamed?Pyrotec (talk) 18:30, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Doh! Sorry, it was too early in the morning to post sensibly. You correctly point out that in fact it is Abbey Ales that has not been renamed correctly. Apologies for causing confusion. Can anyone fix it? As a new account holder I can't do it. --TimTay (talk) 18:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I've now correctly done the move & redirect from Abbey Ales to Abbey Ales (brewery). I've not touched Bath Ales (which needs tidying & expanding) although it would probably be sensible.— Rod ^talk 18:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)