Talk:List of United Kingdom locations

Source
The first upload of this list as a single enormous file on Multilingual Wikisource was a compilation of material researched by Mike Simpson of Penrith, NSW, who posted the same list in subfiles at rootsweb.com. He says "I am happy for you to use the data any way you wish, however, please do not attribute it to me, as I collected it from a lot of sources, and so much of the work was not mine." &mdash;Theo (Talk) 12:18, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Reorganize/reformat
The subpages for this series of articles are extremely large, most show up on the list of long pages. I looked through some of the pages to think about how to reorganize, but I didn't come up with any great ideas. Anyone else? RainbowCrane 19:59, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I am not sure that I agree with "extremely" large and in my opinion the subpages are not too large to be effective. The longpage limit is largely a historical issue that has been superceded by browser improvements.  Are you having problems with load times? &mdash;Theo  (Talk) 20:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Load time for me is ~20-30 seconds. We've got a T6, so the slowness is probably not on my end of the connection :-).  That's quite a bit of time for load, possibly worse if users have a modem connection, but the big issue for me is usability.  When a page is more than a few screens long users tend to get frustrated.  RainbowCrane 15:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You have convinced me. &mdash;Theo (Talk) 16:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The pages are indeed very large - W is currently 258 Kb. They need to be split further by at least the first two letters, in the same way that B, C, and S currently are. I think around 100Kb is probably a useful size. We, for example is 78Kb on its own. -- zzuuzz (talk) 15:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I congratulate Zzuuzz on this. They need splitting up further; Hi-Hz is itself quite massive.--Holdenhurst 12:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd agree that the pages need splitting to make them smaller and easier to edit - more sections would be helpful too eg sections at the third letter rather than the second. There's also a huge amount of Disambig Link Repair to be done, I'm doing bits and pieces as I come across them, but all help would be appreciated! DuncanHill 21:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I also think splitting up the articles more is a good idea. For ease of finding the article for a particular place as long as the index is good, then having a large number of smaller articles is not a problem. I cannot really think of any good reason to have a smaller number of large articles. Think this is a great resource by the way, should greatly aid the addition of coords to UK places. GameKeeper 23:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Categories
This set of articles deserves a category of their own. Any objections if I move all the articles into Category:List of United Kingdom locations by name and place this category into Category:Geography of the United Kingdom Category:Lists of places in the United Kingdom Category:Lists of coordinates? GameKeeper 23:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with this - they belong in their own category because they are otherwise getting spread all over the place - and they are probably going to multiply in number. I was going to do it, but was uncertain of the best name. I'm still uncertain, but your suggestion is the most obvious and quite appropriate, and we can always rename it later. -- zzuuzz (talk) 23:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It makes sense to me.&mdash;Theo (Talk) 01:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Minor amendment, taking a look at similarly organised categories Category:Lists of people by name . Is a popular one. That is plural so I think Category:Lists of United Kingdom locations by name. GameKeeper 08:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * it is done now GameKeeper 19:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Oddity
Take a look at List_of_United_Kingdom_locations:_M, I see the 'coor d' and 'gbmappingsmall' as red text. If I edit and preview it looks OK. but when I save its wrong again. If this just me? Anyone know what is happening? GameKeeper 21:19, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Weird. I get it too, starting at Mynachdy, but only 'coor d' in red for three lines, then gbmappingsmall too. Tried a few things to no avail. Maybe splitting the page will help :) -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I saw this again, when I formated S into table format, so I split it up and it seems to have solved the issue. GameKeeper 20:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I think there is a limit to how many templates you can use on one page - obviously quite a few! -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:08, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * M is now split so it no longer occurs. I am sure your diagnosis is correct. GameKeeper 22:38, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Welsh Location, Counties

 * These should be listed  ().
 * At present the Welsh counties are listed with the Welsh name, followed by the English name. I think the wikipedia standard is to use English most prominently. See Naming conventions (use English) . GameKeeper 21:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Counties
A lot of the entries under County are not actually counties. For instance Kirklees is a metropolitan borough. Furthermore, the former county of Hereford and Worcester has now been separated into separate counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The most correct list of counties would be a combination of Council Areas of Scotland, Ceremonial counties of England and Principal areas of Wales. these could be derived from the current entries, but if we replace them , we lose information. Any ideas what is best? GameKeeper 23:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, the former county of Hereford and Worcester has now been separated into separate counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.43.49.140 (talk • contribs) 21:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

To do list
I have been making a few changes and thought its best to list what I think needs to be done. Because there are an awful lot of lists to revert if you don't like what I have done. Any extras welcome too. GameKeeper 23:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Split all lists over 100kb (see Special:Longpages, note this is cached and may be outdated). to do Sa-Sm Ll-Ly Hi-Hz Ba-Bn La-Li Ha-Hh Sn-Sti
 * 2) tabulate all lists done Keith D 12:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) wikilink all gbmapping templates done Keith D 12:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Reverse welsh county naming.
 * 5) WP:DAB all the links (will take the rest of my life!)
 * 6) Add Northern Ireland places
 * 7) Design and use a template to show sub-letter headings, complementing Template:A-Z multipage list done by User:Bryan Derksen see Template:Lists of United Kingdom locations
 * 8) Identify and add === === for large 3 letter groups

Lists too long
A quick survey (sample size=1) suggests that these lists have as many as 800, if not more, places listed per page. I contend that that's too many, and should be split to a maximum of 200 per page,. for two reasons. I propose to request a bot do the splitting and, if necessary, some recombining, to make pages of max. 200 names (checking that there are no orphans), with a forced split for each new letter of the alphabet. Any comments, concerns or objections? Andy Mabbett 11:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Its user-unfriendly and unwieldy to edit
 * 2) We're about to replace coor d with coord, which adds extra functionality and a Geo microformat (see Project Microformats). This breaks down at ~247 (now ~640) examples per page; and microformat parsers are also caused problems by such high numbers.


 * I would suggest about 500 per page is more appropriate, as you do not want too many pages to scan through. Though we should not be strict on the number per page as we should be going on a logical split of the enties not on count of entries. You need to produce a compact list of pages to select from. I would think that we are about getting to the limit on the number of splits that are desirable from a readers point of view. Keith D 20:06, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Changes to coord mean that it now works up to 640+ times on one page, so that's no longer an issue, but I still think that 500 is too many for a user to take in in one go - do others have any opinion on the optimal numbers? Andy Mabbett 08:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * If you are increasing the number of pages you need to modify Lists of United Kingdom locations to have more space between items. It is sometimes difficult to determine what is a range when it is displayed as it is now. Keith D 12:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * How does it look, now? I've marked it up as a proper (HTML) list, using flatlist (you may need to "refresh" your browser to see the new format properly). Andy Mabbett 16:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If you really want to know - awful. The use of verical bars all over the place that do not line up in my view is certainly no improvement. If you want to use vertical bars then make them line-up across all of the lines, probably use a table it will look much better. Keith D 19:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I just did a check, the longest page at the moment is the List of United Kingdom locations: Ba-Bd at a huge 2343 entries. Article size suggests anything over 60Kb should be split up. So I agree this should be split, 60Kb is about 1/4 of the file size 236Kb so corresponds to about 500 entries. This seems a good number to me on that basis. GameKeeper 18:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Just did some more exploring
 * is an old version on the M page it contains 2000+ links and still works with coords!
 * I like the new flatlist effect on the title. It makes it more readable
 * When splitting I would like to keep to as short as possible section names for neatness so if split can occur at 1,2,3 or even 4 letter changes that would look neatest.
 * Another thing to think about when splitting is that you should make sure the list is inclusively named ie. there is a section that would contain any names beinging Bz ie List of United Kingdom locations: Bru-Bz even though there are not actually any places listed with this. This serve 2 purposes. 1) it means the list can be added to easily if new places are added. 2) It allows readers to be sure that the page they are looking at is the page they would expect to find the location if it existed. GameKeeper 18:23, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Ba-Bd is already sub-divided into six sections, so it would make sense to use those subdivisions. Did you happen to check or count the other longest pages? the old "M" page may work with 2000 of the current coor template, but the proposal is to replace that family of templates with coord, which has added functionality, and seems to have a maximum of ~640 per page. Andy Mabbett 13:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Bot requested. Andy Mabbett 17:04, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Please note newly re-started discussion at the above bot-request page. Andy Mabbett 15:04, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Bot count was produced User:ST47/UKLC GameKeeper 09:30, 7 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I would agree that some of the pages are to long and should be split. Homan's Copse   talk to me   My contribs  15:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Accuracy
I came across this admirable list via Google as I was looking for an OS grid ref for Tideswell. Following the 2 links given here for Tideswell to Google maps gives 2 different locations; both are in the general vicinity of Tideswell but neither is in it. I was wondering if this was a concern. (http://www.magic.gov.uk/ gives both coords and OS grid refs rather neatly.) It would be something of a challenge to check all these references but might it be possible to translate the coords into grid refs so that the 2 pieces of info coincide? -- roundhouse 14:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot request to add microformat markup and use templates for boilerplate text
Having now split all of the pages with >~545 entries, I now plan to request a bot to add hCard microformat mark-up, and to use two new templates instead of the boilerplate text which is repeated on every page. I've detailed my proposal at /botreq - any comments, before I proceed? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 19:14, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Now requested. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ~ I've found a few more need doing. It shouldn't matter if that's before or after the above request is fulfilled. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:11, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Done, I think. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Entry count
I thought people might like to know that there are 42,718 places listed in these pages. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Template layout
Is there any objections to changing the template at the top of this series of articles to use a bullet character rather than the vertical bar character as the separator? The vertical bar is rather intrusive and confusing in the list, something small like a bullet character (•) would be less intrusive and make the list a lot easier on the eye.

Keith D 15:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I see that your proposal was implemented in my absence. I propose to reverse it, The previous version did not use a "vertical bar" character, but a CSS border; ans was marked up in a semantically correct and accessible manner, as a list (which the contents of the template undoubtedly is). The new version introduces characters which are spoken by assistive software, and which are semantically unhelpful. Andy Mabbett (aka Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 20:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This was changed in line with other similar lists in templates to remove the what looks like a vertical bar that makes the list difficult to read, the much more unobtrusive bullet point is much more appropriate and easier to read. Keith D (talk) 20:55, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * "easier to read" for whom? Please note my above comments about assistive technologies, which render the current style, audibly, as "one dot two dot three dot..." Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 20:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You need to come up with a character that is small and unobtrusive for sighted readers that will readout for the non-sighted reader. Anything like the bullet would be in order but the vertical bar type character is not good for sighted readers as it is not truly vertical in all cases and makes you go cross-eyed looking at it. Keith D (talk) 21:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * No: separators between list items are decoration, not content, and as such should be applied using CSS, not as in-line characters. See discussion at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility


 * It does not matter how it is applied it needs to be small and unobtrusive so that you do not go cross-eyed viewing it. Use of a large vertical bar type character is not very helpful in this matter. Keith D (talk) 22:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Of course the method of application matters. Again, please note my above comments about assistive technologies, which render the current style, audibly, as "one dot two dot three dot..." There is no "vertical bar type character" Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 22:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot request to add microformat markup 2
The final part of the to request of July 2007, referred to above, was to convert the coordinates templates to coord, allowing users to set their own preferred display format; and emitting a Geo microformat to make the coordinates parsable by machines. I now propose to submit another request, to complete that task for this set of pages. Andy Mabbett (aka Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 20:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Extracting red links for a specific county
Does anyone know if there is a way of identifying/extracting all the red links for s single county. I'd like to think that for Somerset we are getting close either having articles for all villages etc or redirects to their parishes for hamlets etc (although I keep finding more) and it would be nice to be able to identify those which still need doing?&mdash; Rod talk 11:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand what you mean about redirects: for hamlets it is good practice for a ==Localities== section, and subsections for nearly all hamlets (unless exceptionally large or remote). See how to write about UK settlements.  May I suggest you and others simply hover over the county at OS Map with Listed Buildings and Parks marked, from English Heritage, you can remove heritage features on that map too.-  Adam37   Talk  18:49, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

2009 changes to local government structures
As a result of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England (which took effect on 1 April 2009), Bedfordshire and Cheshire are no longer local authorities as listed on this gazetteer. Instead, these have been replaced with Bedford (borough), Central Bedfordshire, Cheshire West and Chester, and Cheshire East.

Locations listed under Bedfordshire or Cheshire, therefore need to be updated on this gazetteer. Is there any way of doing this quickly, rather than manually one at a time? Bleaney (talk) 20:40, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Simplistic. They are both ceremonial counties of England. This means they can be and are legitimately used for not just sports but a host of other purposes, from fire services to health services to various other administrative uses. -  Adam37   Talk  18:52, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Northern Ireland
It's been a very long time since these articles were started, and there still doesn't seem to be any mention of Northern Ireland or its settlements. Since this is places in the "United Kingdom" as opposed to "Great Britain", I'm going to try and make a start using List of towns and villages in Northern Ireland. --MrHistorianDude (talk) 00:28, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Organization
Surely the organization of this into arbitrary alphabetic sections (e.g, To-Tq (in reality every single one of them starting with To)) isn't ideal. It would be a lot of work (but could probably be made easier using a spreadsheet or script, and I would be willing to do it), but I think it would be better to split into, say, council areas (like the current "Locality" column), ceremonial counties, or historic counties. (In addition, this could make it easier to remedy the above-mentioned Northern Ireland issue-- it seems that the only Northern Irish places on the list are Belfast, Crumlin, County Antrim, and Bangor, County Down.) However, that has the problem of being "set", and therefore possibly creating lists that are too long again. In addition, many of these articles like List of places in Derbyshire already exist, though they also look like they need some care as well. Any suggestions? Thanks, ev iolite   (talk)  07:30, 15 May 2021 (UTC)


 * (Paging, who has most recently edited these pages)  ev iolite   (talk)  07:34, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Navigation by area is already possible by starting at List of places in England, List of places in Scotland etc or Category:Lists of places in the United Kingdom. I'm not sure what questions are answered by these whole-country alphabetic lists, but people must have had uses in mind when they went to the trouble of creating this gazetteer in 2007. Wire723 (talk) 07:54, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. It just seems odd is all. ev iolite   (talk)  22:21, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Redlinks
This list has a lot of unsourced redlinks. In fact, nothing in any of this set of pages is sourced as far as I can see. The two that caught my eye are Newbiggin, Blanchland and Newbiggin, Copeland. Both of these have map references pointing to empty countryside. We should have some inclusion criteria here; "location" can mean a farm, a street, a field, or an individual house. None of those should be included. Redlinks should have a reference unless they are obvious populated places. I'm going to remove those two, but there are clearly many more. SpinningSpark 18:37, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The map references are coarse, generally giving the 1km square containing the place. Those two settlements can be found on OS mapping: SD2669 and SD0994 respectively.
 * The source used to build these pages was/is the Ordnance Survey placenames list. Someone might be able to help with a pointer to the official list, but I often consult https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/election-maps/gb/. Wire723 (talk) 18:59, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * That makes the map references worse than useless. The first one is 30 km off.  When locating small towns and villages, that's not just "course".  That's what I normally call "plain wrong". Spinning<b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 19:35, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * There may be a few errors but I though the inclusion criteria is OS settlements but rivers and islands and a few other things sometimes show up, rivers are generally removed though. OS settlements called "Newbiggin" are listed here. Regarding the Copeland one (and many other OS settlements) there is some debate about if they're notable (and should have separate articles) or if the aren't notable (and should be redirected to their parish which is Waberthwaite for this one) but I tend to just leave them as red links and leave others to decide. With the Blanchland one it was formerly a parish in its own right so would definitely be notable.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 21:28, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I only looked at three. All three coords pointed to a bunch of nothing.  Three is not a large sample, but that's not a few errors, that's pointing to almost 100% errors.  The coords are cited to 1/100 of a degree.  That resolution should get to within half a mile.  That clearly isn't happening.  I restored the three I deleted and added failed verification to the coords.  However, it looks very much like there is a much wider problem. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 11:44, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, if you click on the Copeland one and zoom in you can see Newbiggin is about 500 metres north east of the coordinates linked similarly the Blanchland one is just over 1km north west of the coords linked. I think we could delete the Newbiggin Burn entry at least that's what Wire723 has removed a lot of in the last few years. Perhaps a bot may need to look at trimming the coords (as long as they haven't been edited by manually since creation).  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 11:57, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

New London places
can you say what source you're using for coordinates of the many new London places? E.g. Kevington at TQ420651. I've been slowly auditing these lists against OS linked data and Kevington is not listed there. -- Wire723 (talk) 10:46, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The coordinates point to Keston Mark, which is in the same list, so they have probably just been added in the wrong place. According to the Kevington, London article "Some old maps show two distinct places here - Kevington and Kevingtown - however this distinction has since been lost" - both names are on a 19th century map on the National Library of Scotland site (one of the GeoHack links from the coordinates in the article) but not at TQ420651; it looks like Kevingtown is the hamlet at the coordinates in the list and Kevington is the house nearby. Peter James (talk) 20:24, 18 October 2023 (UTC)