Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/Archive 17

Category:Post towns in the United Kingdom

Category:Post towns in the United Kingdom, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion, along with all its subcategories. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. — Richardguk (talk) 03:20, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• Discussion now closed. The result of the discussion was: delete. — Richardguk (talk) 13:51, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Bristol at FAC

I have nominated the article Bristol for featured article. Would you be willing to take a look and leave any comments about whether it meets the featured article criteria on the review page at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bristol/archive1?— Rod ^talk 17:37, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Please check for transcription errors

I've just made a significant edit to List of English districts by area, adding the area in square miles using {{convert}} [1]. There is a possibility I've accidentally changed a couple of figures through typos or thinkos along the way, so it would be good if someone could just check the diff above with a fresh set of eyes. Thanks, Thryduulf (talk) 23:06, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

• Test Valley was changed from 627.59 to 627.89.
• Staffordshire Moorlands was changed from 575.9 to 577.9
• Purbeck was changed from 404.42 to 404.32
• Dacorum was changed from 212.48 to 212.84
• Trafford was changed from 106.04 to 106.40
• Sandwell was changed from 85.56 to 85.46.

Alakzi (talk) 23:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, I've fixed all of the above. Thryduulf (talk) 01:26, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Newcastle upon Tyne CFD on Commons

Please see commons:Commons:Categories for discussion/2015/10/Category:Newcastle upon Tyne, which asks what content the Commons category for Newcastle upon Tyne should contain - should it be the metropolitan borough, or something else? If something else, what exactly?

Participation there would be appreciated, as Commons CFDs rarely get enough interest to generate consensus.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:26, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Bristol nominations

Hi, I would be grateful if you could comment on two nominations relevant to this wikiproject:

• Bristol is nominated at FAC here (criteria at Wikipedia:Featured article criteria)
• Portal:Bristol is nominated for featured portal here (criteria at Wikipedia:Featured portal criteria)

Any comments would be appreciated.— Rod ^talk 09:56, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Local history editathons

On 21 November there will be three editathons on the theme of local history, organised with Victoria County History. The events are in Gloucester, Leicester, and London. You can find more details in the links below:

• Wikipedia:Meetups/UK/Gloucester Archives Nov 2015
• Wikipedia:Meetups/UK/University of Leicester Nov 2015
• Wikipedia:Meetups/UK/Senate House Library Nov 2015

Come along and join the editing! Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:15, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata and administrative subdivisions of England

I've just created a tracking page with queries to try to take stock of what Wikidata currently knows about administrative subdivisions of England, here on Wikidata.

Things are pretty patchy at the moment, but it shouldn't take too much to fix, going down level by level with a good data extract and semi-automated tools.

One question is what things we should include for England in the main geo-political subdivisions structure, that is defined by items linked together by the property P131, "located in the administrative territorial entity of..."

For one to be able to ask "what <X> am I in" using repeated iteration of P131, or "who was born in <X> or its subdivisions", it is very helpful if the structure nests cleanly. This would seem to weigh against including ceremonial counties, otherwise there's the risk of any place in Lincolnshire effectively being treated (and counted) as if it were in both Yorkshire and the Humber, and the East Midlands.

At the moment, I'd be minded to include everything on en:Subdivisions of England plus civil parishes, wards of the City of London, and NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 areas, with the exception of ceremonial counties, based on the consideration of what geographical structures will nest cleanly.

But it may be that I have misunderstood the intention for P131, and the political aspect should be more dominant, linking each item to the immediately encompassing political area. (So not statistical units without administrative significance, like NUTS2 and NUTS3). I've asked for a steer at Wikidata's Project Chat (the equivalent of Village Pump), but it's not hugely well attended, so I may not get a definitive answer. Any thoughts therefore would be very welcome.

Finally I should mention that if anyone wants to know more about Wikidata, there's a Wikidata training/workshop tomorrow (Saturday) in London. Sorry not to have come and flagged it up sooner, but Wikidata is well worth getting to know about -- so if anyone can make it even at this last minute, it would be great to see you there.

Cheers, Jheald (talk) 21:47, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Where should we look for an introduction to all this P131-type nomenclature, so we can understand the problem at hand? Mr Stephen (talk) 22:07, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Specifically on P131, there's quite a lot on its talk page, d:Property talk:P131, which is perhaps the Wikidata page I should have posted to, rather than wikidata Project Chat page.

As to the nature of properties, etc on wikidata more generally, what it's about and how it all fits together, d:Help:Contents may be a reasonable place to start. Commons also has c:Commons:Structured data/Short introduction to Wikidata, which gives quite a crash-course introduction, though of course from a particularly Commons perspective. Jheald (talk) 22:28, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Ta, I'll look in the morning, time permitting. Mr Stephen (talk) 22:42, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

@Jheald: The following structure should be all that is required as it is the administrative hierarchy of England:

• England

• Regions

• Metropolitan county/Non-metropolitan county/Greater London/Unitary Authority

• London Borough/District (where relevant)

• Civil Parish (where relevant)

NUTS2 and NUT3 are irrelevant but harmless to add in a parallel scheme.

Ceremonial counties would be highly desirable, but would not fit into P131 (especially Stockton-on-Tees) and is not adminstrative. If wikidata can support them in a parallel scheme, great.

Wards (except maybe in the City of London) should not be used - they are too volatile. They may be useful for a parallel scheme for electoral purposes (England->Constituency->Ward).--Nilfanion (talk) 22:36, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Sorry can't make it tomorrow- if I had known earlier- or if it had been announced at the London Wikimeet-up 98....

But without researching this- if only it were that simple. In a county/district scenario, lowest level is the ward. Thats what one finds on the Electoral roll. The ward contains (or no) a civil parish which contains a polling district( which is equivalent to the box at the polling station. The polling district has a name and district letters as attributes. MNST3- is Banks, in Strood North, in Rochester & Strood, in Medway Unitary Authority, in European Electoral area South East.51.400918°N 0.504675°E / 51.400918; 0.504675

A ward can be parished, or unparished but not both. Thus Frindsbury Extra, the neighbouring Polling District 51.405456°N 0.503710°E / 51.405456; 0.503710 had to be put in Peninsula to keep it with other parished areas- and not in Strood North where it has more in common.

If only it were that simple. I believe that parts of Derbyshire, Lancashire are included in National Parks and a level of government (planning) is delegated to the Parks Authority. It is significant whether a village is in or out. Now what we do with powerhouses and elected mayors who have powers outside the principal county. I suppose this will be simple if an entity can have multiple P131s. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 22:54, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Wards are not administrative divisions though (there is no ward-level council, but there are parish councils). National Park boundaries do not follow any other structure. A good example of this admin structure is at the heritage gateway--Nilfanion (talk) 22:58, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody for the advice. I have now gone ahead and started trying to systematise some of the relations on the Wikidata items.

It's still work in progress, but the data is now good enough to extract a reasonably good structure with this query (scroll down to the link to load it into the query editor, then hit 'Execute' to run), the results of which can be compared with the page at en:Subdivisions of England. .

In the end I decided to include the ceremonial counties as full-status members of the tree, and to accept them as values for P131 statements.

I appreciate that the ceremonial counties have little administrative function; but equally the exact labels of Wikidata properties should only be taken as a rough guide as to how they are to be used, actual usage may be a little broader. In this case, looking at the P131 talk page, it does seem that people are happy for them to be used a little more inclusively than for purely administrative regions.

In the query I've coped with the nesting anomalies for North and North-East Lincolnshire etc by hard-coding filters at the end of the query to reject an authority being put with the wrong region. Yes, it's a trap for the unwary. But I thought it was worth it to include the counties. Since there are so few examples where the nesting fails, it should usually only take a few lines of query text to explicitly check for and reject incorrect associations. (Though you do have to be aware of the issue).

I have also started creating new "county council area" items, eg d:Q21272241, for parts of counties where the county council doesn't now administer the whole of the ceremonial county of the same name. These areas would be appropriate targets for the P1001 property for the items for county councils, like d:Q5399679. I have only done some so far -- progress summarised in this query (hit 'execute' to run), so I would welcome people's input as to whether they think this is on the right track, and whether it makes sense to introduce the possibility of making this distinction. Jheald (talk) 18:17, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Project related RM

Talk:Tor (disambiguation). Please see Talk:Tor#Requested_move_10_December_2015 In ictu oculi (talk) 20:14, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Requests for Comment

Two RfCs are ongoing at WikiProject Boxing. The first concerns use of Flag icons in professional boxing record tables here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Boxing#RfC: Flag icons in professional boxing record tables. The second concerns a proposed MOS for boxing articles Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Boxing#MoS:Boxing Final call, in particular whether UK should be added to locations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Editors are invited to comment. Daicaregos (talk) 14:14, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Request for comments

For info: Talk:Royal_Tunbridge_Wells#RFC --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 22:07, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation for villages in "town districts"

WP:UKPLACE states that when there are two localities within an English county, then the district should be used to disambiguate. Generally this is fine, however it produces a few oddities such as:

• Ash, Dover
• Angram, Harrogate
• Hayton, Carlisle

In these cases, the disambiguation is misleading and gives the impression the place within the town/city, when in fact they are no where near Dover, Harrogate or Carlisle respectively. They are in the district that takes its name from the settlement, and the disambiguator should reflect that. That would mean the above moved to:

• Ash, Dover District
• Angram, Borough of Harrogate
• Hayton, City of Carlisle

Titles of the form Ash, Dover (district) are no good - is Ash or Dover the district? I think there are 100-200 articles with this issue within England. There may be similar problems in Wales, for instance in Wrexham County Borough. I suggest any affected articles are moved as above, and possibly UKPLACE should be amended to encourage this as best practice. Thoughts?--Nilfanion (talk) 09:05, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Seems sensible, though in the specific case of Hayton, Carlisle I'm not sure the problem is solved - Hayton, City of Carlisle sounds just as much like it's within Carlisle, to the non-local reader at least. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:43, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

No disagreement there from me - something like "Carlisle District" would be clearer. I think concerns about the use of "City of Carlisle" in this context hint at an inadequacy in having that article at City of Carlisle in the first place.--Nilfanion (talk) 18:50, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

It look OK as it is to me. There is a district of Dover and a settlement of Dover. "Dover" is widely used for both. The first line of the lead should make it obvious which one is meant. Mr Stephen (talk) 19:14, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Outside of Wikipedia, it's quite common for a construction such as "Ash, Dover" to be interpreted as "Ash near Dover" and not necessarily "Ash in Dover" (e.g. in postal addresses), so I'm not convinced that there is a problem that needs fixing. In Wikipedia, the disambiguation only needs to be enough to distinguish this Ash from all the other Ashes, and doesn't need to be an unambiguous specification of inclusion. Of course if there were one Ash inside the town and another Ash outside the town but inside the district, there would be a problem.-- Dr Greg  talk  21:02, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Have to agree with Mr Stephen & Dr Greg. I do not think that there is a problem with this as it stands at the moment. Adding district, borough or other dab is only going to confuse things and is unnecessary complication.Keith D (talk) 21:46, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't see how adding an extra word confuses things, surely it clarifies which "Dover" is meant. That is as long as brackets are avoided! And the City districts are admittedly much more complex. In the case of Dover specifically, I am not convinced that the District is commonly referred to as just "Dover". "Dover District" is much more commonly used, by the District Council.

What happens once you have arrived as the article is not pertinent to the title (as any page title, no matter how ridiculous, is irrelevant once you can see article text). What matters is before the person arrives. When it comes to choosing a disambiguating term, the test I want to apply is: Would a wikilink give the correct impression when it displays the full article name in the body text of another article, and is not pipelinked?

"Ash, Dover" fails that test as "X was born in Ash, Dover" appears to suggest X was born in Dover. However, "X was born in Ash, Dover District" passes that test, as does X was born in Ash, Kent (which is how it would be piped in practice).

By the way, participants in this discussion may want to join in on the RM at Kingswood, Gloucestershire.--Nilfanion (talk) 20:28, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I would support the proposal, for the reasons given. Certainly in the case of "Harrogate", locals (and I live in the district) would usually understand the word to refer to the town, not the district, unless the context was local government services.--Mhockey (talk) 19:07, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I personally agree with Mr Stephen and others, that this is really a solution looking for a problem, and we should stick with the existing convention. The purpose of the term after the comma is to disambiguate, not to be part of the title itself, or particularly to convey information - if there weren't an ambiguity, then we wouldn't include that modifier at all. In the case of Ash, Dover, anyone who is looking for that article will probably already be aware that the village is not in Dover itself. And even if they aren't, they will soon find that out when they start reading, and calling it "Ash, Dover District" does not in any way provide more help to them in finding the article than the shorter version "Ash, Dover". The disambiguator should be as succinct as it needs to be to convey the disambiguation, and no more, to avoid clunkiness. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 11:17, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree avoiding clunkiness is good. The problem here is: The disambiguating term used should be a name that is used for the disambiguating concept. In this case, how is the district containing the town of Dover normally referred to? If the district is not generally known as "Dover", we shouldn't disambiguate with "Dover".

To look across at the States - USPLACE calls for monstrous constructions like Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina. It uses "Kershaw County", and not "Kershaw", because that's what the county is invariably called.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:45, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I sympathise with the proposal. Unqualified titles A, B make it seem A lies within B, within the normal meaning of B. Thus Ash, Dover suggests Ash is within Dover, not the unmentioned Dover District (an unusual meaning of "Dover") and not near Dover (articles aren't titled according to postal towns and sorting offices). It might be a little less clunky, a little less open to error when local authority boundaries change or are restructured, and a little more general-purpose to use a lower-case "district" such as Ash, Dover district, Angram, Harrogate district, Hayton, Carlisle district or even "near" (Ash, near Dover, Angram, near Harrogate, Hayton, near Carlisle), which links well without piping, but that would be quite a shift from established practice. NebY (talk) 12:23, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

OSNI maps now free

Newtownards

Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland has freely released a number of datasets under the OGL. The data is broadly similar to that has been released by OSGB, the vector mapping allows UK-wide maps to be created.

The datasets are available from here. An example of a raster map is shown to right.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:57, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Industrial archaeology categories

Industrial archaeology has been a topic of interest for many years, but we don't appear to have taken much notice of it in WP. I've started to diffuse Category:Industrial archaeological sites in the United Kingdom into county categories. I've specialised in my interest, Category:Industrial archaeological sites in Devon, but there's plenty of opportunity for adding articles to the appropriate cats throughout the country. For the record, for Devon, I'm using

• Bone, Mike; Stanier, Peter (1998). A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of Devon. Association for Industrial Archaeology. ISBN 0 9528930 1 0.

as a guide to what to include. —SMALLJIM  11:08, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Governance sections

I'm not sure if there is a template for pages about settlements, but many of them have a section titled "Governance". What I find odd is that often this section begins with information about the area's MP, even though that information doesn't have much to do with the governance of the place. This seems to be a (somewhat natural) misunderstanding on the part of users/editors.

As a rule, the Governance section should begin with information about how the settlement is governed. Usually this will be a local government district or county, and there are usually two or three levels of governance (e.g. parish<district<county). Although the MP for the area is not responsible for the governance of the area, I suppose their details can be included at the end of the section.

Is there an appropriate place on Wikipedia to discuss/agree thepolicy on this? Dadge (talk) 18:25, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

You may find Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements useful, but if it is about other areas eg districts, counties etc see Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography#Guidelines. All were developed following discussion some time ago , but these sorts of guidelines can always be revisited.— Rod ^talk 18:39, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Beyton

Hi - there are a few issues at Beyton (in Suffolk - it has some fine geese, as you'll perhaps disc over...) that I'd like a second opinion on if anyone could help. In my mind there's a POV push by a user (using, I think, two accounts at times) to push her particular hobbyhorse. I've tried to re-write neutrally and encourage better refs etc... but am getting undone on a fairly consistent basis.

If someone could take a look at some recent diffs and let me know if I'm on the right lines or not then that'd be appreciated. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:47, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

No one then? Shame as she's screwed up the article properly IMO. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:50, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Two days is nothing- when we are all wrestling with Chilcot, leadership elections, a flawed referendum. But I have had a look at Geesegate and agree that it breached WP:UNDUE and WP:POV so it needs a little bit of a trim! Have a look at Category:Civil parishes in Suffolk- Redlingfield has some good ideas. Looking at EHMap shows that there are 8 listed buildings to document and often those references will expose geography and history. Wikipedia:WikiProject_UK_geography/How_to_write_about_settlements suggests the headings that should be used, and describing the parish council would come under governance- but I have seen no precedence for describing one agenda item, or for describing one police call out. I hope that helps a little and you can use it to explain to the Goose Girl, that there are other ways she could contribute. --ClemRutter (talk) 17:24, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks -and sorry for my impatience (but I know what happens with project talk pages sometimes...). I've pretty much tried all that - I've reverted to my version just now (diff) although I have concerns that there's still too much of the geese in that. Any comment on the suitability of my diff would be really helpful. Thanks. Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:55, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/Portsmouth/archive1

Having reached Good Article status, Portsmouth is at the peer review stage. It's not had any feedback so far, so if any experienced hands could leave some comments I'm sure it would be appreciated. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 13:08, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Merge of Leeds and City of Leeds

It has been proposed that the two articles on Leeds, Leeds and City of Leeds, be merged. This has been brought up several times and it has been 6 years since a discussion resulted in retaining the split. Please share your thoughts here. Keith D (talk) 20:50, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Please write Hamsterley Mill

Please add also This article is within the scope of Xx236 (talk) 07:08, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Exploring Surrey's Past

I have been talking to someone from Exploring Surrey's Past. It is a website that's run by Surrey Heritage. Surrey Heritage brings together the Surrey county archive, archaeology unit, Historic Environment Record, and museum co-ordination service. All of which is part of Surrey County Council.

It has pages on various places in the county. How would people feel about including links to these pages from Wikipedia articles? So for example Pirbright could have an entry in the 'external links' section to the ESP page for the parish. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 13:32, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

It look OK to me. No commercial content on the page I looked at. It plants cookies on your computer, but you have to OK them; I saw the page just fine when I declined. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 17:02, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you BeenAroundAWhile. I'd like to get a few views on this to establish a consensus so am pinging a few people who might like to comment @Rodw: @Pigsonthewing: @WereSpielChequers: @ClemRutter:. Do feel free to ping others, these are just the first names that came to mind. The more the merrier. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 14:40, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Looks useful to me - similar to adding an External Link to Genuki page for Pirbright, a collection of information and links onwards to more, complementing the body of our article. PamD 14:54, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I can't see any reason not to link to such a useful site. If there are to be many such links, I suggest making a template (let me know if you need help with that). Also, bear in mind that some of the images there might be out of copyright, and so suitable for uploading to Commons. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:06, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

A template could be useful, what kind of thing are you thinking of? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 15:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Having sampled a few examples from the site it certainly seems useful. I'm slightly concerned by it not having an "about us" or similar mentioning who has editorial control or who provides the funding (apart from Heritage Lottery) but it does contain the historic environment record for the county and the contributing partners seem good. This makes me think it is like the South West Heritage Trust which is doing a similar role for Somerset & Devon. This appears to be a way of attempting to reduce the costs of county councils by getting the work done by charitable trusts.— Rod ^talk 15:18, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

They seem very coy about revealing the Council connection on the ESP website, and http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/credits/ has a broken link (https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/your-council/council-services/chief-executives-office-directorate/cultural-services/surrey-heritage) for "Surrey's Heritage", but I found https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/your-council/council-services/legal-democratic-and-cultural-services/cultural-services/surrey-heritage (looks as if Cultural Services has been shuffled around within the Council's hierarchy), which includes a link to a pdf leaflet about Surrey's Heritage, definitely looking like part of the Council. PamD 17:50, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I filled in their "Contact form" to report the broken link mentioned above, and also told them about this discussion. Had a nice reply today thanking me for pointing out the broken link - yes, there had been reorganisation and he thought he'd updated all the links but had missed that one. The mention of no "About us" has been noted as "useful feedback" which can be remedied, and he says that they are definitely not a charitable trust but part of the county council, and "Regarding the Surrey Heritage/Surrey County Council connection, I suspect because it's obvious to those of us that work in the service we miss the need to tell people outside, again, useful feedback". So I think we can confidently add these location-specific council-produced pages as ELs to our location articles. PamD 15:15, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the input everyone. I'll get back in touch with the person from ESP with the feedback and see where we go from there. The tack we will probably take is including a link in the EL section while leaving a short note on the talk page explaining why, perhaps with reference back to this discussion. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 15:44, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Might be useful to create a section about ESP in the Surrey County Council article, with a redirect from Exploring Surrey's Past (or even create an article about it if there is enough external coverage - probably find some announcement about its creation in local papers etc), and then create a template (as Andy suggested above) to make it simple to produce an elegant External Links entry to add to Surrey location articles. Seems simpler than cluttering umpteen talk pages. PamD 15:57, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

That does sound a lot tidier and much less effort. A template along the lines of that used for Pastscape should work. I've tried a couple of links and http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/pirbright/ resolves to http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/places/surrey/guildford/pirbright/ which means a template could be applied. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:06, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Would you be able to help with setting up a template? I've had a look at the code for the Pastscape template as an example, and while it doesn't look too complicated, there are definitely enough moving parts for me to get it wrong. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:21, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Coming back to this, I've prepared User:Richard Nevell (WMUK)/sandbox7 based on Template:Canmore. The sandbox page has some use cases so you can see how it would work. Would anyone mind if I moved it to Template:Exploring Surrey's Past? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 13:01, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Clydebank

I've initiated a discussion here if anyone would like to offer an opinion on which areas should be classed as part of the town of Clydebank. Jellyman (talk) 13:16, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to discuss separate local government district article for Redditch

I would appreciate some input on Talk:Redditch#Article for town and an article for the district. About half of the area covered by the district is a rural area outside the town, so I believe the two should not be treated as synonymous. — Dukwon (talk) 15:26, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Notice about adminship to participants at this project

Many participants here create a lot of content, may have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:40, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Northern England peer review

Hello! I'm currently trying to get the article on Northern England up to featured article status, and I've opened a peer review to get input. Any comments on it would be very welcome. Thanks, Smurrayinchester 15:49, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Subdivisions of England

The article Subdivisions of England has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Article says nothing constructive and repeats detail in many other articles

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.  Dr Greg  talk  00:27, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

OSM maps in Infobox English county

By way of a trial use of {{OSM Location map}} I have made a couple of replacements of the rather spare maps showing districts within the {{Infobox English county}} with a template that shows the relevant piece of the the Open Street Map, and adds an overlay of the county and district boundaries, along with numbers and a matching list of district names. Having tried Nottinghamshire I have also now done Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Somerset and Derbyshire, to give at least a bit of a range. Among the benefits is that the maps have a (rough) scale, and a proper context, so you can see the county settlement pattern, roads and landscape (a bit), and it becomes in effect a proper map of the county rather than a diagram of the districts (c/f Lincolnshire as a random example of the existing version). Among the drawbacks it has been suggested that it looks messy.

The scaling limitations of the underlying mapping stuff means you can only step up or down the scale in large chunks, so Somerset, as a wide county, is set to scale 8, to fit within a sensible width. The others, at scale 9 only just fit inside a 300px or so width, but would look rather small at scale 8. (Different levels of detail are included at the different scales). There is a 'full screen' link, which takes you to a more interactive version of the same map data, which also shows the relevant boundaries (or will, once the relevant OSM wikidata links have updated).

I have no experience of consensus-building, so simply ask is this a useful change, and should I carry on with further counties? RobinLeicester (talk) 23:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Potentially I think this is extremely useful (and better than earlier iterations I've seen of this sort of thing). My biggest concern the labelling on the background map. I'd be a lot happier if there were no labels at all because of a number of factors (using Derbyshire as example):

1. There's no control on the selection, the choices are odd: Why Chapel-en-le-Frith but not Buxton?
2. The relationship between the labels and the locations is not obvious. Where is Bakewell, its nowhere near as big as its label so where is it?
3. This particular map is attempting to show the districts, the towns aren't really relevant. The labels actually obscure the single most important thing to this map - the district boundaries.

As it stands with the labels getting in the way, I'd oppose a roll-out. If the labels could be removed, I'd strongly support. Manual labels can always be added in afterwards.

In terms of other feedback: IMO the background map is shows too many roads, all you can see a load of lines and the M1 and the B5056 are indistinguishable. The ideal would show motorways definitely, probably primary routes and perhaps other A roads, but no way on the B roads. The National Park is visible, but the urban areas aren't at all - is that the right priorities for our needs? The county is still clipped, I assume that's easy enough to fix. Finally, one easy to fix point - I don't think yellow is the right colour for the shading. Its too subtle and doesn't work well with OSM's colours, as yellow overlays really don't mix with yellow/orange roads.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:53, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd oppose a roll-out in its present form. Such a change is potentially beneficial, as the old maps are rather dreary, albeit they do show what they're supposed to. In addition to points raised by Nilfanion, problems that I see with the new maps are:

1) labels not presenting properly (on the Derbyshire example, several of the settlement labels are incomplete, with letters missing)

2) the colour overlay is potentially confusing (on Derbyshire, its effect when laid over the colour used to show the national park area is to end up looking like a slightly baffling relief map). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:51, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Being totally confused about the issue is a great benefit here! I looked at Nottinghamshire and coundn't find Nottingham though Long Eaton was prominent. The focus of the map is about showing districts but they didn't jump out at me. So I tried Leicestershire in the center of the map was I place I had never heard of Syston. Where? I clicked on the name- but of course no wikilink and hovering didn't help! (if we are to have labels they need to be mapped to wikilinks). It was in a district- I clcken on red-dot 1- nothing manually I went to Charnword in the key, clicked- Up came the article and in the infobox- was a map- but this was the traditional format and there were no place names there! Cntrl-F on the article game me a link to Syston population 11508- the home of Pukka Pies. So on the back of this little experiment I conclude that if we are going to use OSM we have to have far more editing control of the content of the map. WP is about hovering and clicking, OSM needs to have a layer we can use, whereby every spot on the map links back to a relevant WP article- and wikidata. Have you seen Wikishootme which suggest that a technique must exist. Look also at ColorBrewer for a link to a book on Designing Better Maps A guide for GIS users ISBN 1-58948-089-9.ClemRutter (talk) 08:45, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

The shortcomings of the OSM base map are a problem. The chopped up text is, to my mind the worst of these, and seems to be a problem particular to scale=9. I presume it will be resolved at some point - especially if the people who developed it can see that a resolution is wanted. It is the same map (with the same bug) as is used in wikivoyager, which I think was an early testbed. Does anyone have any knowledge on how to influence either the bug problem or the other content of this version of OSM? The details of the boundary overlays are all contained within wikimedia commons svg files which can be easily edited and improved. More labels, town markers etc are also possible using the system as it stands - if that is what is wanted - which might improve the content but wont reduce the clutter. The lack of clickable links is clearly a big shortcoming. The fact that it is not seen as a shortcoming in the existing diagrams seems like evidence that they look so feeble that you wouldn't expect them to do anything. A solution which has eluded me is to place an invisible second image over the top, with clickable hotspots. If a way to do this could be found, then the numbered dots could perhaps be made to work 'automatically' for all sorts of maps, using the data already included for fullscreen dots. Alternatively, for this specific map function, there would potentially be a solution using the svg boundary shapes, which would require a lot of hand-rolling to make it work. Again, if anyone knows how that could be made to work, that would be great. The strategic answer that seems to be proposed above is don't change anything until it has all been made perfect. I can understand that, but it carries a strong possibility that there will be no visible reason for any solutions to emerge. RobinLeicester (talk) 20:32, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd say there is only one thing which is a "blocking" problem: If we could suppress the OSM labels entirely, things would be fine. We can always to build our own labels up on top (including clickable links), but unless we can remove the OSM ones we can only add to the clutter and not improve it. It also shows on scale 8; Bath and Wells are labelled for Somerset but not Taunton??

One other issue I've picked up is the projection of the overlay does not match OSM's. The simple overlay done causes inaccuracy on the final product - the southernmost section of Derbyshire's border of Derbyshire is along the River Mease, it's not a mile to the north. I'm not even sure how to transform them to be compatible.

With regards to clickable maps - mw:Extension:ImageMap is the way forward. As an example see Template:NYC imagemap, or the dozens of others in Category:Wikipedia geographic image maps.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:54, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Should we take it that this is not yet ready to be implemented and should be removed from the few counties that have the map until a more agreeable solution is worked out? Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (palaver) 22:15, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I will undo my unhelpful edits and go and find something more useful to do. RobinLeicester (talk) 22:34, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@RobinLeicester: Whoa- undo the edits is helpful- but giving us such a large dataset to test the idea was extremely helpful too. ClemRutter (talk) 18:53, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Ancient Monuments website

I have just come across references to the Ancient Monuments website which combines information from Historic England and user input. It claims to be a companion to the BritishListedBuildings.co.uk website which is used extensively. There are some Welsh uses which indicate a source of Cadw, but unsure what that is.

What do people think about using this or should we just change the English ones to references to the National Heritage List for England directly. There are currently 149 uses so not too much of a task to change them over. Keith D (talk) 13:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I would always use National Heritage List for England in preference to the ancient monuments or listed buildings sites. It is clearly coming from a reliable source (an NGO) rather than a commercial site which may carry advertising in the future and any updates (I've managed to get Historic England to make a few) will appear on NHLE long before any "mirror sites".— Rod ^talk 14:02, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Agree with Rodw above. NHLE is preferable to the Ancient Monuments and British Listed Buildings sites (at least for English sites) for three reasons: a) it's official b) it's actively maintained (changes and additions to the lists and schedules are immediately reflected in the content) and c) NHLE now accepts user contributions including photographs so I would expect it (eventually) to be better populated than BLB and Ancient Monuments. BLB is based on a snapshot of the NHLE data and is already several years out of date (it contains buildings that have been delisted or demolished, and doesn't contain newly listed buildings), and it's not (in my experience) particularly actively maintained by the operator; I gave up adding pictures to BLB when I discovered that NHLE had started to accept contributions.

I know less about the Ancient Monuments site but it's run by the same guy, the same concerns apply about updates, and it doesn't seem to contain the useful scheduling content that the same Scheduled Monument has on NHLE (compare, for example, the single sentence "Barrow?; ritual deposit of ox/cow jaw-bone; frag of flint fd AD 1846" at BLB with the much more extensive information about the same site at NHLE). My policy is always to cite NHLE and only to cite BLB if I can be bothered. Where I find a citation to BLB only, I leave it in place, but add an NHLE ref (using Template:NHLE) before it. I feel similarly about Images of England which, although official, is also a snapshot. Where BLB and Ancient Monuments score over NHLE is that a) they cover Wales and Scotland as well as England, whereas NHLE is only England, and b) at the moment, BLB probably has more sites with photos than NHLE (but, as I said, I expect that to change, and I'm actively contributing myself). Dave.Dunford (talk) 15:01, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

In addition to the comments above, I'd like to add the question of whether we may not be adding a hidden circular citation loop here? For all we know, this site could contain information taken from wikipedia, and so we'd be doing something rather to be avoided if we included it without further checking. In matters like this, I would always tend to go to well-sourced hard copy references if possible, followed by electronic sites so long as they have some declared idea of quality control. We additionally need to avoid situations where we cite A to source some claim, but A used B to source its claim, and B used wikipedia. I have a hunch that well-sourced hard-copy references may be less prone to this problem, but it's just a hunch.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:59, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

United Kingdom buildings and structures templates

The vast majority of templates in Category:United Kingdom buildings and structures templates have buildings grouped by their heritage status. Template:Buildings in Southampton was one such template until recently, but one user decided to regroup the buildings by function, while keeping separate groups for Grade I buildings and demolished buildings. This causes some confusion as some buildings could be in more than one group (e.g. some religious buildings are also grade I listed or have been demolished) or have changed usage over time (large houses now occupied by schools, churches converted to pubs, etc.). I've so far only found one other template in the above category that tries to group by function (Template:Brighton and Hove buildings) but the groups used are different, and/or differently named.

There doesn't seem to be any good reason why these templates shouldn't be consistent - my suggestion would be to use heritage status as that's the predominant convention. It would be good to (a) establish a consensus here and (b) consider whether we need to write a guideline to that effect. WaggersTALK 10:47, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Some templates are organised by heritage listing, some are not: Template:Buildings and structures in Wigan Borough, Template:Brighton and Hove buildings, Template:Buildings and structures in Croydon, Template:Buildings and structures in Liverpool. Template:London landmarks. Heritage listing does serve a purpose, so I think it is worthwhile keeping some aspects of it. Those buildings which are of particular interest because of their listing would be useful to identify, though to list all buildings that way is not helpful, as it is not always clear from the names of the buildings what they are, and readers may be looking for articles on churches in Foo area, or tall buildings, or bridges, or interesting pubs, etc, and scattering building groupings around the listings makes if harder for readers to navigate through the navigation templates. We do make use of categories for listed buildings, such as Category:Grade II* listed buildings in England, so it is possible for readers who have a particular interest in the lesser listings to find them easily. It's worth noting that 92% of listed buildings are Grade II, and these are mostly people's houses (around 200, 000) or churches (around 14,000). Being Grade II is not reason enough for a Wikipedia article, so if we have an article on it then the building will be notable for some other reason. However Grade I buildings will be notable enough just for that listing, and regardless of if they are a postbox, lamppost, or bollard in the road, they would highly likely have a Wikipedia article, so identifying and grouping those seems worthwhile. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 11:41, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks SilkTork. Although I've expressed a preference for keeping the predominant status quo (heritage status) I can certainly see the merit in grouping similar types of structures together. However if that's the approach that's going to be adopted it should be done consistently, with clear distinctions between the different groups, and I fear that may not be achievable for the reasons I've already mentioned.

As a slight aside, I'm interested in the assertion that listed buildings aren't inherently notable other than Grade I; that's the first I've heard of that and I've previously understood, from other users, that all listed buildings are presumed notable. Are there any guidelines that confirm one way or another? WaggersTALK 11:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there has been a centralised discussion/decision/consensus about this, but I've seen various small discussions about it over the years; not sure if I can dig any up. I am quite heavily involved with writing articles about listed buildings—both individual articles and lists—and my view is that a Grade II-listed building with no sources but the NHLE listing documentation isn't notable enough for a standalone article; NHLE + Pevsner (more than a passing mention) should be enough; NHLE + another source of equivalent quality "should be" enough; and NHLE + Pevsner/equivalent + at least one other quality source is enough. It would be good to formulate a guideline about this. Happy to be involved. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 12:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

We generally put listed buildings on a list, and that's where Grade II* and Grade II buildings get mentioned. If a particular building has attracted coverage in reliable sources then we'll create an article on it, otherwise, the mention on a list is the consensus approach. Consensus has been that mere listing on a register is not enough for a standalone article - we require multiple independent reliable sources, as per WP:MAPOUTCOMES and WP:GEOFEAT.

We generally link to the local list of listed buildings from a buildings template, and that is what we do on the Southampton template - at the bottom is a link to Listed buildings in Southampton which puts all the buildings in their appropriate class groups. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 12:56, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I'll comment on Template:Brighton and Hove buildings, which I designed and which I am the main contributor to. There are two main reasons why this is broader in scope than the others: a greater range of buildings in Brighton and Hove, many of which are not statutorily listed, have articles; and there is an article (Buildings and architecture of Brighton and Hove) which covers the whole topic, very broadly considered, so it seemed appropriate to have a template with equally broad content. Heritage buildings in the city are covered separately in some depth—eventually there will be 12 separate lists for listed buildings (5 have not been started yet), plus conservation areas and locally listed buildings (in preparation)—but I have just included these at the top of the template rather than separately. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 12:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

The Brighton template is far from being unique in its structure - I listed several others above. Though there are some buildings templates which are organised purely by heritage status, the ones for major areas - such as London, Liverpool, etc, tend to group more broadly, though such areas will tend to also have a dedicated listed buildings template as they tend to have a significant number of Class I buildings. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 13:02, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I also write articles & list of listed buildings (among other things), however none of them include templates like this as they could get enormous. See (for example) Grade I listed buildings in Somerset (and its 7 sub lists) and Grade II* listed buildings in Somerset (and its 7 sub lists) which between them include about 2000 entries (Bath and North East Somerset has 663 Grade I on its own, mostly in Bath) - and this is without considering Category:Grade II listed buildings in Somerset for the 100 plus which are notable enough to have their own articles. If consensus emerges here then I could have a go but would need to be for small areas in the county (and the thought of doing this for Bath scares me).— Rod ^talk 16:36, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Things have gone quiet and we don't really have a consensus. The problem is a common one on Wikipedia - when a reader visits a page we have no way of knowing what it is they really want to see. But consistency is good and it would be great if we could settle on a standard format. WaggersTALK 15:37, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Thames Valley

The article Thames Valley has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Page is not notable. The area is synonymous with part of the M4 Corridor, listed on the disambiguation page. As a precedent, similar areas do not have their own articles. Once deleted, Thames Valley (disambiguation) should be moved here instead.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Dissidentplasterer (talk) 15:53, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Civil parishes and villages

A question has come up on Commons on the best way to handle categorisation for civil parishes, when they share the same name as the village at their core. This issue has come up, because there is a real need to separate the two concepts. As an example, the Commons category for Ugborough in Devon has 350 files, but only a handful are for the village itself. Splitting the category allows images of the village to be sensibly grouped together.

Please contribute to the discussion there. Thank you.

There is also a second Wikipedia-specific question: If Commons does split the categories, where should the article link to? The village, or the parish, or both?--Nilfanion (talk) 13:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments UK is looking for volunteers

Hi all. Wiki Loves Monuments UK is looking for some volunteers to help with reviewing this year’s entries and identifying a long list of images that are worthy to be submitted to the three judges who will pick the final winners. You don't need to be a top photographer to volunteer for this, but you should have a good understanding of what makes an exceptional photograph and be able to distinguish good from mediocre images. You'd need to be able to commit to something like four or five hours work, mostly during October but perhaps during September as well.

If you are able to help, please leave a note on my talk page, or alternatively contact me using the "email this user" feature. More details can be found here. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:09, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Improvement request for input for South Ayrshire

There is currently a push to attempt to improve the article South Ayrshire, and input from other editors in-particular those from this project is welcomed. The article is one of a number of similar articles, and it is hoped that this article can act as a standard for others in a similar vein, for being able to improve them all. Is it currently stands the article has a number of big issues, the largest being sourcing were as it stands over 85% of all sources are a primary source. There is also a lot of lists on the page, and a significant amount of over-detail of non-notable information. Thank you for your time. Sport and politics (talk) 08:52, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Isle of Portland

Although WP:FAR says that you should raise problems with an FA article on its talk page, it seems more appropriate to do it here. Basically, Isle of Portland does not deserve its star anymore. There are cn tags on the page, the page does include 2011 census data for its population and there other large quantities of uncited statements. I'm wondering if anyone can see any other problems. Thanks, ^{My name is}not^dave (talk/contribs) 18:23, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Need some referencing updating, e.g. the reference for the MP is from 2010 rather than one following the 2017 election. Keith D (talk) 20:12, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Coats of arms

Please see the discussion at Talk:Plymouth#Coat of arms, regarding what information (if any) should be included in the infobox of city articles in addition to the coat of arms.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:30, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation of article titles re built environment

Comma vs parentheses. Please see Talk:Statue of Margaret Thatcher (London Guildhall)#Requested move 2 October 2017. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:36, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_UK_geography

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod ^talk 19:48, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Neighbourhood Statistics

Hi folks, the ONS have closed down the Neighbourhood Statistics web site that is used for references on most of the settlement articles as the 2011 & 2001 census population, ethnicity etc. so leaving a large number of dead links. The links just point to this page, the notice for the closure is here. Keith D (talk) 18:46, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

That's dreadful. Information on population by ward is available at, for example, https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/ward2011/1140852674/report.aspx#pop but there seems no way to access parish populations. As the old links for parish populations were complex ones such as http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadKeyFigures.do?a=7&b=11127707&c=Preston+Patrick&d=16&e=62&g=6412289&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1457019047266&enc=1 , will it be possible to find them using internet archive systems? PamD 19:21, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

This is indeed bad news. Would it possibly be worth somebody from the project getting in contact with the ONS and explaining the large problem they have just created re references and pleading for them to bring it back, even if in some kind of archive format? Unlikely they'll listen but you never know. As for linking to the content using the Internet Archive, this doesn't work unless you saved a shot of the page to it before it was gone, which the majority of references did not do, so not a widespread solution. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (drone) 20:14, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

For information the external links search gives 12,029 instances of the site being used. Keith D (talk) 22:30, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I contacted them online and have had very helpful responses. You can access parish-level population figures for 2011 census (and vast amounts of other stuff) at NOMIS. Having found the figures you want, you can then create a permanent link to that Excel spreadsheet, if you first register as a user of NOMIS (freely available, no problem in signing up). That permanent link is then available to anyone. Have a look at the population of Preston Patrick here: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/livelinks/13842.xlsx . Please will someone let me know whether that link works smoothly for you: I get an error message telling me that the filetype and file extension are incompatible but allowing me the option of "yes" to open the file if I trust its source. Not ideal and I've sent a message enquiring about it ... but it might just be the way my computer has Excel configured?

I've added this as a second population link (ref no 4 at present) in Preston Patrick, but we might want to discuss how best to word the reference.

As an example I'll try to set out step-by-step one route to find the parish population for Arnside (having explored various different routes, and complicated by the fact that it remembers previous searches if you've registered!)

• Go to https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/
• Click on "Data downloads" in top bar
• Click on "Query Data"
• Select "Census 2011", then "Key statistics" then "KS101EW - Usual resident population"
• At this stage that you could click or unclick "Guide me step by step": I think it's possibly easier to go unguided, but do explore the options yourself.
• Click on "Geography" in left-hand column, or, if it already shows "Geography: This needs to be selected", click there
• Put placename, eg "Arnside", or postcode into the search box
• You will usually see a display of several entities: It's quite confusing where there are multiple places of same name (might do better to find and use a postcode). For "Arnside" there are various areas, but one is defined as " english parishes / welsh communities". Beside each one is a map icon: click there to see a map which might help confirm that you've found the right place. (Nice clear maps, but they don't name the adjacent parishes as the equivalent maps in old system helpfully did).
• Click the checkbox beside your chosen place
• You can choose to click "Variable" to define which data fields you want, or "Percent" to specify that you want percentages, or "Rural/Urban" (not quite sure what that one does). All optional.
• "Format/Layout" doesn't seem necessary in this context
• Then click on "Download Data".
• Click "View Data in Your Web Browser" to see the population figure
• To save the link, you need to select "Create a permanent link (live-link) to these results..."
• This opens a popup in which you can give it a name, and creates a link: here is Arnside: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/livelinks/13845.xlsx

So there you are. Please have a go, let us all know if you find a simpler route, and let's discuss how best to format the resulting references ... and then how to set about replacing the 12,029 instances. Aaaaaargh! PamD 19:53, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@PamD: The Preston Patrick .xlsx link works fine for me on Internet Explorer 11. "Usual" messages ("do you want to open or save live_link_13842.xlsx from nomisweb.co.uk?" and IE Security warning message) appear, as when opening any Excel link in a browser window. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 21:27, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

There are many 2001 references among that number, and things other than population figures such as ethnicity, travel to work etc. Are these types of figures available? Keith D (talk) 21:36, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, they are. WaggersTALK 12:18, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

The link retrieves from a database each time it is used, thus it could potentially change the returned data each time it is used. The date in the spreadsheet is the date it was retrieved thus changes each time the link is used on a different day. Keith D (talk) 19:25, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but if the source is Census 2011, for example, the data isn't going to change. PamD 22:19, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

• Good News! I had a wonderfully helpful email from NOMIS-Support (nomis.support@durham.ac.uk) back on August 11th which I've been slow in sharing with you:

Hi Pam,

We have put together a tool which produces Census data in a similar fashion to NESS. Please feel free to try it out – link below. Any feedback or comments that you have will be appreciated. The tool supports, wards, output areas and parishes. Any problems then give us a ring on 0191 334 2680.

Peter Dodds

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/sources/census_2011_ks/report

And it really seems to work - so https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/sources/census_2011_ks/report?compare=1170215054 is a permanent link to all the parish-level stats for Silverdale, Lancashire. Brilliant, and so much better than the messy situation earlier. PamD 16:33, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Pam, looks like this will cover most of the uses of the old site. Could do with creating a template to standardise on the output and cater for any changes they make as a result of comments on beta version. Keith D (talk) 22:09, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I have made a quick template {{NOMIS}} for this. If you have any suggestions/comments then I can make changes before it is used, other parameters as {{NHLE}}.

{{NOMIS|id=1170215054|title=Silverdale|accessdate=20 September 2017}} produces

UK Census (2011). "Local Area Report – Silverdale (1170215054)". Nomis. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 20 September 2017.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Keith D (talk • contribs)

Thanks, Keith D, nice work0. As Nomis is just the platform and will presumably in time have 2021 etc I suggest that this template should (a) have a name like {{NOMIS2011}} and (b) more importantly, display the title "2011 Census Key Statistics" to show the true source (and authority) of the data. PamD 05:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Pam, do you think that the "2011 Census Key Statistics" should be appended to the |title= parameter like "Silverdale – 2011 Census Key Statistics" or be part of the |work= parameter like "NOMIS – 2011 Census Key Statistics"? May be could be used as just the title if not supplied in the former case. Keith D (talk) 11:56, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@PamD: I have renamed template. Have you any thoughts on location for text?

Keith D (talk) 22:05, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Keith D: Shall we continue discussion at Template talk:NOMIS2011 to save a lot of pinging? PamD 22:21, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Can do, as the {{ping}} does not appear to be working as have had a number that have not notified me. I only pick-up on the watchlist entry. Keith D (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Wonder if there are any plans to do anything about 2001 census data as that one is used extensively, especially in the small parishes where the 2011 combines the data into an adjacent parish. Keith D (talk) 12:00, 20 September 2017 (UTC)