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Disagreement on Christchurch article re:settlement definition

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There is a dispute at the article for Christchurch, Dorset over whether, how, and in how much detail, the article should cover Bournemouth Airport – a major employer which was in the now defunct borough of Christchurch, but some distance outside the built-up area in a neighbouring parish. This is essentially a difference of opinion on how to handle the ambiguity around defining settlements. If you think you can help resolve this, join the discussion at Talk:Christchurch,_Dorset#Bournemouth_airport. Thanks, Joe D (t) 10:38, 3 April 2022‎ (UTC)[reply]

British Isles vs. Great Britain & Ireland?

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IP editor seems a bit WP:POINTY in his/her edits, e.g. here and associated talk page edit, plus other contributions. Is there consensus on the naming? 10mmsocket (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@10mmsocket, hmn technically under MOS:GEO we should use the title as used in its article British Isles but many significant articles like Castles in Great Britain and Ireland do ignore it. So appears due to the controversial nature, there is apparently a case-by-case approach? Unless they should be made consistent as British Isles or at least until local consensus decides otherwise at each?
May be there’s an old discussion somewhere. DankJae 16:22, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Understood, thanks. In that case I'll leave this IP to his one man/woman crusade. There's bigger problems to solve! 10mmsocket (talk) 16:46, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Many discussions (such as Talk:British Isles/Archive 41 that go nowhere because two traditions hold diametric opposing views. See also MOS:ERA, MOS:ENGVAR and there must be one about SI units v US Customary. And lots of WP:SOAPBOX edit wars such as that one. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:03, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Really good of you to look that up. It reinforces my thought to stay well away. If anyone else wants to start black pudding wars then fill your boots! 10mmsocket (talk) 17:05, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pre 1974 (and similar) districts

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Perhaps we should have some guidence added to WP:UKDISTRICTS about pre 1974 districts (and similar for Scotland and Northern Ireland). See older discussion with User:Stortford at User talk:Stortford#Hertfordshire former parishes

In terms of separate articles or not.

  • Rural districts that contain more than 1 parish like Eastry Rural District should always have separate articles from the settlement/parish of the same name Eastry. Those that formerly included multiple parishes but only contained 1 when abolished like Tintwistle Rural District normally have separate articles though I'm not sure if there are any other examples.
  • Urban district (including MBs and CBs) like Ware Urban District and County Borough of Huddersfield that have the same name as a settlement are normally covered in the settlement but may have separate articles if there is enough content to have separate articles like Municipal Borough of Buckingham and County Borough of Carlisle. Other factors that support having separate articles though it may still be best not to include;
    • The boundaries of the settlement compared to the district, we can also factor in today's boundaries so we might think it doesn't make sense to split when a district included a settlement that was distinct at the time the district was abolished but has since become part of the settlement.
    • The district contained multiple parishes, I would give less weight if all the parishes in X district were called things like X St Peter or X All Saints (especially if they were later merged to form a single parish called X like Maldon) than if they are names of other settlements like Exning in Newmarket Urban District or there are parishes in addition to the parish of X.
    • The district had boundary changes, I'd give more weight to significant ones like the whole of a large part of a parish (and especially a whole or large part of a district being abolished and merged to it) than small changes.
    • The current parish/unparished area has different boundaries to the former district. For example Witham was later divided into Rivenhall and Silver End, Lancaster unparished area no longer includes Aldcliffe-with-Stodday, Saffron Walden parish no longer includes Sewards End and Northampton parish excludes areas the county borough included. Obviously I'd put more weight on Witham because those other places are clearly distinct settlements than Northampton which was probably split mainly because of its large size.
  • Rural districts that only ever contained 1 parish should normally be covered in the settlement/parish but may have separate articles similar to urban districts/MBs/CBs with the same name as settlements and can use the same tests (obviously the 2nd test won't apply).

No. None of this. We should follow basic wiki practice and write articles on an individual basis that have potential for substantive content rather than try to come up with complex rules that cannot possibly apply to hundreds of places. MRSC (talk) 07:11, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. While much of the above describes the general pattern that will fall out of following project-wide policies, guidelines and conventions anyway, spelling it out in this much detail feels like instruction creep. Nobody's going to want to read that much detail when creating or editing an article, and in general it isn't necessary. WaggersTALK 10:04, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also agree this is excessive for instructions. For pre-1974 urban districts and boroughs I wouldn't want to encourage a proliferation of stub pages - the topic is usually quite capable of being briefly summarised on the page for the settlement. That way you can also set it in the context of what came before and after, on a page where it is helpful for understanding the overall history of the settlement. For those handful of urban districts which covered something other than a single settlement, and for rural districts (and perhaps those cases where an editor has amassed so much material that it would be disproportionate for the settlement page) separate pages can be created under normal rules of notability etc.
One point to flag for rural districts is that quite a number of those created in 1894 were effectively accounting fictions, always being administered as part of a rural district in a neighbouring county, but they had to keep separate accounts for the parts in each county. I'd argue that such rural districts, although listed in sources such as Vision of Britain and Youngs' Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, would be better covered on the page for the rural district which actually administered them. I therefore wouldn't want to have policies effectively inviting the creation of lots of pages for rural districts which, on a proper understanding of their actual functioning, weren't really that notable. Stortford (talk) 07:10, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Prestolee

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Dear folks, please source this stub. Thanks in advance. Bearian (talk) 03:03, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unref since 2009! At first I wondered if it was a long-standing hoax, but it's on OS maps and the church is grade II liste. It's now only "needs more refs", as I've added the NHLE listing. That's one small contribution for now. Scope for other editors to chip in. PamD 09:38, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we could do with a cleanup project: a listing of UK Geography articles unsourced pre-2010 would be an interesting start. PamD 09:40, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Categories for parishes

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Do we really need a category for each parish, especially when the parish hasn't even got its own article or redirect, as was the case when Category:Hadley and Leegomery was created? There is going to be nothing in the category which is not already mentioned and linked in the article on the parish, when created, or on one of the component villages. PamD 21:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I think if there are enough articles then it is appropriate to have them. Parishes are legally recognized and its surprising we don't already have more categories for them though I agree they are probably less useful when they form part of urban areas like Hadley and Leegomery but still appropaite. I mentioned this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/Archive 21#Category for every parish?. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:56, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fully agree. To take your Shropshire example, there are 208 individual parishes listed in Category:Civil parishes in Shropshire and 19 parish subcategories. That's 19 too many. Looking at some of the categories they have so little in them they are pointless and should be deleted. 10mmsocket (talk) 00:24, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OS grid ref to {{Coord}}?

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Is there a straightforward way to create {{Coord}} details from an OS Grid Ref?

@Aizoaceae2: is doing a great job of creating articles on SSSIs in Cumbria, but Natural England's information, both the database entry and the full citation only uses grid refs for locations. NY 266 136 in this case.

My usual route to find lat and long is to locate a place on UK Streetmap and then use its "convert coordinates" link, and the OS grid ref can be used to search UK Streetmap (after you remove the spaces), so that should work, but has anyone got any better recommendation? PamD 16:33, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PamD Looked into this a couple of days ago and found this website,[1] Only used it a couple of times - but the results were accurate - albeit the names on the aerial map are jumbled and unintelligible at some zoom levels. The base map can be changed to OS maps. Copy the grid reference to the appropriate box on the left and click Go and coordinates are shown. Rupples (talk) 17:17, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PamD: I also use Streetmap.co.uk, but sometimes nearby.org.uk and gridreferencefinder.com are useful. Dave.Dunford (talk) 17:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another vote for Grid Reference Finder Murgatroyd49 (talk) 18:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, all: GridReferenceFinder looks very useful and I'll bookmark it. It has the advantage that it isn't fussy about spaces in grid refs, so you can copy and paste from a source, like the English Nature SSSI records, which has spaces or one which doesn't.
But it would be very helpful if there was a version of the {{coords}} template which could take an OS grid ref, with or without spaces, as input and produce output as lat and long. Is there a template editor out there who'd like to take up the challenge? PamD 23:35, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Probably a daft question, but does {{oscoor}} (officially, Template:Ordnance Survey coordinates) not do what you need? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:53, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The template output is the Grid Ref, rather than as Decimal or DMS. However, if displaying in one of these formats is preferable then the template can be used to help with conversion. I have mostly done it using the gbmapping template, but oscoor would also work. On the page I was editing I put the grid ref into the template, then previewed the page allowing me to open the link to the GeoHack page on which it gave the numbers needed for the coord template, I then replaced gbmapping with the coord template before saving. EdwardUK (talk) 15:48, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Places and their unitary authorities

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Given the intent of HMG to create a lot more UAs, I suggest we need to think about our current various (and at times illogical) ways of describing them. I am opening this discussion more to get editors to begin to give some thought to the topic (especially of the many special cases) rather than rushing to judgement.

I will begin by stating what I believe to be the problem: there are articles about places which describe them as unitary authorities, which is not correct. It is their governing local authority that is the UA, not the place governed. Sometimes we have recognised this using the phrase "Unitary Authority area", which is more accurate though rather awkward to my eye. Much of the problem arises in the cases where we have one article that is trying to do everything, which inevitable for smaller places. But there are others that have a separate article for the local authority, which I think helps resolve the issue. Take for example North Yorkshire (district), where the current opening sentence reads:

which used the awkward "UA area" syntax. IMO, it would read better (and be more useful and informative because it introduces the LA) if it said

Another example, which also uses the "UA area" syntax is the City of Peterborough article, which begins:

I would rewrite that as

Borough of Swindon confuses me because half of it seems to be a wp:CFORK of Swindon Borough Council, so it is only a matter of time before someone proposes that the two articles be merged. It too uses the "UA area" syntax. (I would just remove the cfork material.)

I guess that is enough to 'seed' the discussion: I suggest we start by identifying the awkward cases where the solution is not obvious. The floor is open. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would just add that the ONS and ISO 3166-2:GB make no distinction between the area and the authority - both are termed 'unitary authority'.
According to the ONS and ISO 3166-2:GB, a second-level subdivision can be a two-tier county, a London borough, a metropolitan district, a district (NI), a council area (Scotland), or a unitary authority (England and Wales).[1][2] Encyclopaedia Britannica also makes no distinction.[3][4]
I'm not particularly animated whether it is decided to use a different term from the official terminology or not. But I do think it should be noted that we would indeed be straying from the official terminology and making something up just for Wikipedia. Personally, I think it's bad practice for an encyclopaedia, but there is precedent. Dgp4004 (talk) 18:28, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, the white paper has only stated that HMG wants to reduce the bureaucry of the so many levels of local government to make it easier to facilitate the decentralisation of power, and in theory reduce cost. However, the paper says that central government won't force UAs onto areas, it will be down to the local authorities to come up with the solution. That means, us trying to put foward a process of how to word them now is pointless as we cannot predict what us going to happen. If you look at Essex alone, the Times predicted that it would be one council based upon the CC, while the BBC put forward mergers of local areas. Basildon Council's leader is stating they would fight any merger into an Essex UA, and want to take Thurrock on (without the debt lol). Rochford Councillors are already trying to fight talk of a merger of Rochford and Castle Point with Southend. Thats just Essex! Let's leave as is until we see what happens. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • "North Yorkshire is a unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire" should work fork NY, I have questioned the use of "county" as confusing, see the talk page. With Peterborough would something like "Peterborough is a unitary authority area with city and borough status in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire" work. As I've suggested before we should probably merge Swindon Borough Council with Borough of Swindon but others have said that top local authorities should have separate articles. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:03, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The advantage of having XYZ Council articles is that provides a home for the obsessive detail about which party topped the poll in the nnnn local elections, which wards etc. And the Council infobox can have all the wonderful detail about who the (ceremonial) mayor is, who is the leader, who is the Chief Exec etc etc. That leaves the location article to be about the location. And yes, I really think that the term "PQRST Unitary Authority area" is ugly and prolix and we shouldn't use it any more than we have to. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:03, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's honestly a lot of clutter going on, with over-definition and often subtly incongruous verbiage that I'm hard pushed to think anyone cares about in the first sentence. We seem averse to simple statements. i.e. "Peterborough is a city and unitary authority in the county Cambridgeshire, England". or "The City of Peterborough is a unitary authority in the county of Cambridgeshire, England" - we can explain all the statuses conferred in subsequent paragraphs. Koncorde (talk) 01:54, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Except that neither Peterborough nor City of Peterborough is a Unitary Authority, so let's not make deliberate errors. We can cut the clutter and incongruous verbiage by saying simply that "Peterborough is a city in Cambridgeshire, England" and "The City of Peterborough is a borough with city status in Cambridgeshire, England". The details of their administration is of marginal interest to most readers but a subsequent sentence could add "It is administered by Peterborough City Council, a unitary authority." 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:12, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I began this discussion by saying that there are many special cases. In places like City of Carlisle and City of Milton Keynes, there is a large hinterland that merits a separate article. City of Peterborough has a rather small area outside the city and this is one where maybe the "City of ABC" and "ABC City Council" could be combined. Borough of Swindon and Swindon Borough Council might be another (local consensus applies, of course). But in each case, the primary settlement merits its own article with minimum detail on the local authority. IMO of course. Fundamentally, there won't be a "one size fits all" answer. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • While 'unitary authority area' isn't the most elegant wording, I think it's a reasonable compromise given the fairly complex administrative situation. Unitary authorities are either county councils with the responsibilities of a district council or district councils with the responsibilities of a county council, and the areas they govern almost always consist of a non-metropolitan county and a non-metropolitan district with identical boundaries. I believe this is because local government in England is still structured within the framework of the Local Government Act 1972, which requires an area to have two tiers of local government.
If we were being entirely accurate then we would open North Yorkshire with something like 'North Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan county and coterminous non-metropolitan district in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. It is governed by North Yorkshire Council, a unitary authority with the powers of a non-metropolitan county council and non-metropolitan district council.'
I'm something of a stickler for describing local government arrangements as accurately as possible, but even I don't think we need to go that far. A.D.Hope (talk) 14:12, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And that is an excellent illustration for why the details of the administrative arrangements belong in the relevant local authority article, not the location article. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:03, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The whole reason most of these Frankenstein areas exist is for administrative purposes. It's hardly irrelevant to the area article. What it is is right up there with where it is.
I suppose unitary authority area would work so I'd back that. It's only one word off the official terminology and separates the area from the council for those who place importance on that. Dgp4004 (talk) 17:11, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The term used by the government for all types of local government subdivision in England is 'local authority district'.[5] That's another option. Once all authorities are either unitaries or metropolitan districts, their exact status beyond an area for local government will be less important. Something like:
'X is a local authority district in Y, England. It is administered by X Council, a unitary authority.'
Dgp4004 (talk) 17:44, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[edit conflict with my 17:45 reply] "local authority district" reads well to me. It would side-step the awkward cases of artificial counties created for HMG's administrative convenience, to avoid having to search and revise 1000 years worth of acts of Parliament. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:02, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, absolutely it is relevant and should certainly be mentioned in the first few sentences. Geography includes economic, demographic and political as well as physical. What I'm trying to achieve is accuracy, that we don't say that a place is an authority. If there is a convenient hook to hang it on, like a council, we can record that it [the council] is a UA but if not, then I agree that we have to say that the place is in XYZ UA area (but definitely not in XYZ UA). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would be happy enough with this suggestion though the current use of "unitary authority area" may still be best. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:30, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that referring to both North Yorkshire (the UA area) and North Yorkshire (the lieutenancy area) as "counties" is confusing, but that's the confusion in real life. One is legally the "County of North Yorkshire" (and in my experience is almost always referred to as a county and hardly ever as a "district"), and the other is commonly referred to as a "ceremonial county". To my mind it is much less confusing to explain the position in a single article, as we always did before the unitary authority was created (or, to be accurate, given the powers of the predecessor district councils and then renamed). We are dangerously close to saying "North Yorkshire is an area in North Yorkshire".
There was an extensive discussion on this here. I thought there was more or less a consensus there that in cases such as North Yorkshire, Shropshire, Somerset and Dorset, where the unitary authority covers most of the area of the ceremonial county, it was best to treat both in a single article, which would explain the position. Mhockey (talk) 20:31, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Standard: ISO 3166 – Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions". ISO. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  2. ^ "Mid-Year Population Estimates, UK, June 2022". Office for National Statistics. 26 March 2024. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
  3. ^ "Milton Keynes". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 30 December 2024. Retrieved 1 January 2025. Milton Keynes, town and unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Buckinghamshire, south-central England.
  4. ^ "Government and society". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2 January 2025. Retrieved 2 January 2025. England's internal subdivisions and administrative units include distinct historic, geographic, and administrative counties; districts; unitary authorities; metropolitan counties and boroughs; and other specialized entities... England currently contains 56 administrative units called unitary authorities, so named because, unlike administrative counties, they are not subdivided into districts... Some cities in England are designated as unitary authorities.
  5. ^ "A Beginners Guide to UK Geography (2023)". Open Geography Portal. Office for National Statistics. 24 August 2023. Retrieved 9 December 2023.

An article on the council could usefully be a home for a list of the wards from which the councillors are elected, and there could then usefully be redirects from ward names rather than articles, for those wards with invented or generic names ("Castle", "North", "Memorial" etc) as opposed to actual places (villages, parishes, and other actual OS-mapped places) which also give their name to a ward which can be mentioned in their article. PamD 19:40, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are wards specific to the council rather than the district? I'd say not particularly given districts are devided into wards (and often parishes) so they're essentially subdivisions of the district even though they may be used for elections. So I'd argue the wards could be put in the district article. What would be relevant to the unitary councils (and other district councils) is the parish councils and meetings that the district has however if you look at say Uttlesford#Parishes this can usually be easily covered in the district its self. Obviously when you have the likes of Nottingham where there is no separate article on the district then an article at Nottingham City Council is clearly justified, similarly Isles of Scilly deals with the island group as well as the district so Council of the Isles of Scilly is clearly needed. With the likes of Brighton and Hove and Thurrock thought there aren't OS settlements with the name the names the names are it seems used for more than just the district thus separate articles may well be helpful. With the likes of Westmorland and Furness Council where the name only exists as a district and Milton Keynes City Council where the district is split from the settlement Milton Keynes it might be better to just merge. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:51, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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