Talk:List of United Kingdom locations: A

Is this list too dynamic?

 * I have serious doubts about whether this list is maintainable, and thus whether it is useful. It would be lovely to have, in theory, but I think we have to be practical. Jdcooper 15:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, place names and coordinates are fairly stable things. County designations change but that is rare.  The key issue that I can see is the sheer size of the list, but Wikipedia is not paper and it is a work in progress so even if the list moves slowly towards completion it is an extension of our knowledge. Ultimately, this list is better suited to wikipedia than to any other wikimedia project and I am loathe to delete it from wikisource without recording it somewhere. &mdash;Theo  (Talk) 16:25, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair play, I will help you with it, but it looks incredibly daunting. Jdcooper 17:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as I'm aware the majority of these (mostly small) settlements have been around for centuries under the same or similar names. And they don't tend to move around much. As Theo pointed out, the only thing that is likely to change, apart from the odd re-naming, is the county designations, but these usually stay the same for decades.


 * I will gladly help sort the lists out when I have a bit of time. (And my home village is finally red-linked from another article - perhaps it's notable enough for me to bother writing an article about it) -- Gurch 22:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Every village is notable enough to write an article about! BE BOLD!! And yes, to be fair, dynamic was a poor choice of words. I was just referring to the initial (and considerable) effort it will take to wikify this series of lists. I cannot, even with the best will in the world, see them ever being complete. Jdcooper 02:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that it is unlikely to be the most extreme piece of eventualism in Wikipedia. Perhaps I am too great an optimist! &mdash;Theo  (Talk) 11:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh no, I agree with that eventualism thing as well. There are three of us now, it will be easy! Jdcooper 11:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm going to start wikifying the place names in these pages, in line with what you have already done. Where articles don't exist yet, I will link only to the place name (e.g. A Bhrideanach) unless there are two places with the same name, then I'll include the county (e.g. Abbeydale). This seems to be the convention so far (if it's not right, feel free to correct me). I expect there will be a need for disambiguation pages at some point (where there are three or more places with the same name), but there's no point worrying about that when there aren't any articles to disambiguate.


 * I have also noticed that there seem to be quite a large number of stub articles that merely say "Such and such a place is a village in the English/Scottish/Welsh county of Somewhere-shire." with a stub template underneath. If this is enough information to satisfy notability and avoid AfD, which they seem to be doing, then presumably there is enough information here to create an article on every village in the UK, RAMBOT-style. But I'm not about to attempt that. -- Gurch 17:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC) Edited 19:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I have been checking every link I made to make sure it pointed to the right page. The "Show Preview" page is our friend! And i thought of that as well, the fact that when this is done it will double as a handy "Missing UK location articles" list. I think towns and villages are inherently notable, so it shouldnt be a problem. Jdcooper 20:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm gonna go ahead and linkify every link here. I wrote a little perl script to do so.  A question I have is whether the counties, or other "container places" should be made into links as well.  There also could be some way to keep track of which links are all verified. --Snargle 22:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't see any particular reason that all the counties should be linkified as well, but the way I've been "verifying" the links so far (I dont know about the other contributors) is by checking as I go along, using the preview button primarily. It seemed like tedious work, but wasnt when I got into it. I don't see any other way, and the whole process becomes kind of futile if all the links are added without disambiguation or checking... Jdcooper 02:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Not so. By just adding brackets to each item, one can avoid at least some of the tedious work. and when there's more than one of a name, my script checks wikipedia for articles named $place, $county .  That alone found 196 existing articles on the W list. I plan to verify them too, using bookmark comments. Snargle 06:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The idea of automating the linking is appealling. I do have reservations about the disambiguation of near duplicates, however.  For example: Ash, Somerset can be one of two settlements: Ash (near Taunton) and Ash (near Yeovil).  I cannot imagine that the script handles this sort of problem and once, run, it masks the problem.  I think that I simply need reassurance that there is rigourous manual checking of the script output. &mdash;Theo  (Talk) 11:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Even bracketing them as they are is an improvement, right? I'll help fix the links in a bit. I'll paste the script at /script. &mdash;Snargle 23:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

A few thoughts
First, if you haven't already thought of this, it should speed up the process of wikifying all these locations. Copy the source markup into a word processor (e.g Microsoft Word or Wordpad), use the search and replace function to replace "* " with "* " and then " -" with " -". (Be careful to get the spacing right). When copied back, all the words will be links; this just leaves the task of checking them and adding county names as appropriate.

On a more content-related note, some of these 'locations' appear to be rivers (all the Avons for example). Should these be linked to the corresponding river articles? Also, what do the co-ordinates next to the names of rivers mean? Rivers start in one place and end in another. If the co-ordinates specify the source of the river, we should clarify that somewhere. -- Gurch 23:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I suppose there must be a town called Avon on the river? If so, it doesn't have an article, I think its probably fine directing to the river until it does. Good call with the short-cut, I'll try it out next time! Jdcooper 01:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I have a feeling it may not be quite as simple as that. For example, the village of Brean definitely exists because I have been there, and Brean Down (whose co-ordinates place it about half a mile away) is not a village, it is most definitely a hill - if you don't believe me, see the article. I have also been to Baggy Point, which is just a patch of coastal grassland. And while Chew, Chew Magna and Chew Stoke are all small villages within a few miles of each other (see co-ordinates), Chew Valley Lake is undeniably a lake. Fifth largest reservoir in England, in fact. But no village named after it. (Very nice area of the country, though).
 * Consequently the title of these articles, List of United Kingdom locations, will need to be taken literally -- Gurch 13:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Remaining pages
When do you plan to have pages I-Z available? (Or if they're still available on Wikisource, tell me where and I'll copy them myself). Gurch 13:12, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, it says so in the edit history. Why didn't I see that before? Gurch 13:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Format
Great set of pages. Can I make a suggestion though - this would be a lot easier on the eye if it was in tabular format. SP-KP 00:15, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I've converted the first section to illustrate how this could be done. Any views? SP-KP 22:52, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


 * My personal opinion is that it is a lot of work for essentially no gain. Articles like this aren't designed for casual reading particularly, but are hardcore reference material. I would be happy for them to remain as list format; the pure length generated by the tabular format would make it no easier on the eye, to me at least. Jdcooper 05:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that view. On this basis, do you believe the list in is the correct wiki project? Isn't "hardcore reference material" more the sort of thing we use Wikisource for, whereas at Wikipedia presentation & readability matter as well as content? SP-KP 10:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Well possibly. I think as long as it is somewhere it isnt important where, but i think there was a specific reason for moving it here from wikisource originally, though i cant find the exact conversation now. That aside though, I don't think the tabular format is any easier on the eye than a list, and certainly much harder to edit. Jdcooper 14:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I have made a couple of changes to the table to throw into this discussion. I arrived here by the wikify listings, and since all these lists are now moving fairly close to the coal face it would make sense to at least have a standard to wikify to.  I would agree with SP-KP that if these things just remain as dead data lists then it would make more sense for them to be on WS rather than WP.  If it is on WP then it should be easily readable and interactive to a user.  The tabular format is a bit more work, but at least separates out the data into a readable form.  I have added in the grid reference linkage to the first entry - at the very least it would make sense for that to be there, allowing users to be only one click away from a map of the place.  It seems that discussion is advisable just now, and these lists can be made more useful, because once they move to the front of the wikify listings then I am betting some editors will jump in and request for all of this stuff to be shuffled off to wikisource. SFC9394 00:07, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Several things pop out of all this. The table format is much more legible than plain text but I am not sure that this merits the labour involved unless that is what it takes to ensure the survival of this material.  Lists like this are part of the infrastructure of the encyclopedia.  We have long used lists of this nature to identify 'missing' articles and to standardise names.  This list came from Wikisource because it does not meet that project's criteria: it is not previously published material that is in the public domain.  Wikisource is a library of source documents. A new gazeteer does not fit that aim. If we move this list away from WP, it will be lost.  If this list has no place on WP then I cannot see that any other list has a place. &mdash;Theo  (Talk) 11:01, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, how is a table any easier to read than a list? I don't find it so at least. It is a hell of a lot of work for what i see as no real gain in information or presentation. I don't think it needs to be particularly wikified apart from linking and disambigs, the bunch of people who are working on this article already can sort the linking out ourselves, i dont see why we even need the wikify tag at all.
 * Also, I support linking the GR numbers, assuming this article stays on wikipedia, but don't see the value in the extra work that would be needed to make "n" "s" "e" and "w" bold or italic. Jdcooper 15:07, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It doesn't have to be that difficult, 5 minutes in a spreadsheet manipulating columns gives me this. Once I had the filters all properly setup (which took about 20 minutes) then an entire page of these things could be done in one operation of 5 minutes of transposing in the various extra bits and bobs (the entire A-Z could happily be done in half an hour or so).  The table solution would require some thinking due to having to have "|-" between each entry, but some dashes (or other punctuation) between the various components and bolding of the NESW is super easy with some spreadsheet work.  I accept that an element of this work (the disambiguation process) is always going to be slow and methodical, but there is no reason that the formatting component needs to be difficult. SFC9394 00:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, well i am useless and braindead, formatting-wise, so if you want to go ahead and do your changes, then be bold! I should have learnt by now that other people are better at things than me :P Your example looks fine! Jdcooper 12:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I have begun to tabulate all of the pages. This is increadsing the size so more splitting is required. Most current talk related to these pages is now taking plave here Talk:List of United Kingdom locations GameKeeper 22:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Small/insignificant places
Not every places on the map deserves a page. Lots of named places here are only one or two houses. It's not helpful to encourage contributors to create loads of pages for places they have no knowledge of nor can be bothered to do the most basic research on. One contributor has created lots of pages for places in Scotland all described as towns. e.g., I've just changed Achosnich which on the OS map has one building and a phone box! --JBellis 20:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia, and places are one of the major areas that we can capitalise upon that. I personally would love to see articles about all the towns on this list, and I'm sure eventually we will have that. I think all towns are notable, however small they are. Jdcooper 02:56, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Aye. Snargle 06:37, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Isle/Island
I've finished wikifying the I section. I left Isle and Island as found except for a couple (eg Island of Skye) that Wikipedia grated at. Mr Stephen 21:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

What about Northern Ireland?!
These are impressive collections - but 'United Kingdom locations' is a bit of a misnomer given that Northern Ireland places are not included...