Talk:List of statutory instruments of the United Kingdom, 1996

What to do yet??
If there was no consensus, now what can we do?? Please try to think of something to do so it can look more like a real encyclopedia article. Georgia guy 21:18, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll try to remove some space on all these long pages to make it look better, and save some server space as well. Whopper 18:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Define the problem
I notice from the notes above that this page has previously been up for deletion and that many of the people that voted to keep it also suggested that it be tidied up or reorganised in some way. I also notice that Georgia guy's attempts to improve the situation have now been reverted. The only way I can see this avoiding a future nomination for deletion is if we come to some sort of compromise on how to take this forward. I feel that the first step to any compromise is if we define exactly what it is that is objectionable about this page. For the moment, I would prefer it if we keep subjective comments like "this page is non-notable" and "it has no encyclopedic value" to one side. Those arguments can be dealt with once we have at least tried to improve the situation. Therefore, I would like any interested parties to list below any problems you have with this page that wont involve outright deletion of the content. I will invite everyone who voted or commented in the deletion proposal to this discussion page so we can try to resolve this. Road Wizard 23:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The page is too long (Wikipedia's automatic warning when you try to edit the page) Road Wizard 23:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The page is simply a list (What value does this page provide that a page with a single link to the search engine on the Office of Public Sector Information website can't?). Road Wizard 02:00, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Improvements
Please add any ideas you have to solve the problems listed above. Road Wizard 00:05, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * 1. Split the contents of the page into sub-pages Road Wizard 00:05, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 2. Completely reorganise the content. Instead of simply having lists split by years, split the content by subject (e.g planning law, health, education, transport, etc.). This would then allow articles to form around the subjects and allow relevant links to be placed to existing articles. Road Wizard 10:00, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * To help explain this proposal better, I have created a rough draft of what the planning law page might look like. It is currently residing in a Sandbox on my user page. Please leave any comments you have on this proposal somewhere on the current article's talk page. Thanks. Road Wizard 21:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 3. Remove external links for individual SIs. This will reduce the size of each page. (Suggested by Kurando). Road Wizard 17:33, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

General discussion
Just tossing an idea out, how would someone use this page? Design from the perspective of making the information useful and accesible to the proposed audience. Why would someone be looking for this on Wikipedia? How can it be made user-friendly? KillerChihuahua?!? 00:54, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It can't be. It should be deleted. Last time it was 9 to 5 in favour of deletion, which is 9 to 4 excluding the creator. It should be renominated. This is raw data, not an encyclopedia article.CalJW 01:23, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Renomination may be necessary in the long run if no solution is found. However, I would ask everyone to avoid flagging the page for deletion until after this discussion has ended. Renominating this page without first trying to resolve any of the outstanding issues will only produce a 'no consensus' result again. Road Wizard 01:43, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * And what decides when the discussion should end?? Georgia guy 01:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * A reasonable time period with no resolution to the situation perhaps? Certainly not just a few hours after the discussion starts anyway. Road Wizard 01:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the headsup on my user talk page. I wish you luck and commend your effort to bring this article into line with what an encyclopedia article should be, and I agree that you should have at least a few weeks to try. However, sorry to say I can't think of any way to make it enyclopedic. As CalJW said "This is raw data, not an encyclopedia article." --kingboyk 07:37, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This article is a structured list. It is structured by placing the SIs in order by their number. That very much falls within the remit of Wikipedia and since it is ordered it is not just raw data. These lists may be obscure, but they are not exactly unprecedented. In fact about 10 days before the original SI list was started someone started a list of executive orders of the US President. There are some 13-14,000 of those and if that list were anything like complete it would be far bigger than any single year SI list. Add in any local SIs that people are able to find out about and these lists become more than is available on the OPSI website. In fact since we have lists for earlier years than are covered on the OPSI website they are already more than is available elsewhere on the web. David Newton 12:01, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


 * My opinion is that it ought to be deleted along with others like it, but… if you must keep it, I suggest splitting them into articles listing the "Instruments" by month rather than by year. --Quentin Smith


 * There is a real problem with splitting them up by months: how do you define which SI goes into each month? With the older SIs that we don't have access to the full text of: how do you find out which month the SI was made in (if that's the basis chosen)? SIs have up to three dates that they could be categorised by: when they were made, when they were placed before Parliament and when they came into force. If we were to go down that route I would favour most out of those, which would be by date of the SI being made then we come across some interesting problems. One good example is the North West Water Authority (Solway Firth) Trout Close Season Order 1985. That comes in the 1987 SI series because it came into force on 2 February 1987. However, as the name suggests it was made in 1985. The problem with using the date of an SI coming into force is that some of them have multiple dates of coming into force, which raises the question of which date of coming into force to use. Using the date of laying before Parliament would also be problematic because far from all SIs actually need laying before Parliament (commencement orders being a good example of that category). David Newton 11:48, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Until just before the discussion began, I split this particular article into 4 articles, but then someone reverted me. Here's a useful question I want to know: What does it mean that the 2071 being mentioned in the article's top sentence and the 3300 or so that the numbers of the instruments go up to are different?? (Specifically, what do missing numbers indicate??) Georgia guy 13:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Good question. David Newton provided the answer in the original debate about the delete proposal. I am not 100% sure that I interpreted his argument correctly, but I think he said that the missing numbers relate to SIs created by Local Government bodies in the United Kingdom (e.g. Town Councils, County Councils, etc.) and the numbers listed on the OPSI website only relate to Central Government (i.e. UK Parliament). I had not heard this reason for the missing numbers before reading David's comment, so I can't deny or verify if what he said is correct. Road Wizard 14:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * That is exactly what I said about the missing numbers. I know of no easily accessible complete list of local SIs at all. In fact so far as I know there isn't actually a complete list of local SIs actually in existence. Even the British Government doesn't have one since local SIs are so hard to track down. We also have many earlier years at least partially covered on the pages that OPSI does not list. 1986 and earlier have many SIs listed and OPSI doesn't go back earlier then 1987. If you want to see an example of one of these lists that covers more than is on the OPSI website see the list of SSIs for 2001. They have thrilling names like A1 Trunk Road (Haddington West Interchange to Haddington East Interchange) (Temporary Prohibition of Traffic) Order 2001 and most of them cover things like speed limit changes, whether temporary or permanent, or shutting of roads for road works.


 * There are some local SIs on the OPSI site. The thing which determines whether they are on the site or not is whether they are published by OPSI. It can be a little difficult sometimes understanding exactly why on SI is published by OPSI and one isn't, but that's why some are there and some are not. David Newton 11:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That is interesting. The example you gave of the A1 Trunk Road would have been created by the Highways Agency, a branch of central government. For those missing ones at least, I have a few sources I can try to locate the numbers. However, I think I will wait till we have agreed on how to proceed before tracking them down. Road Wizard 13:03, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I was the person who reverted that change. The reason I did it was because I felt the drawbacks outweighed the benefits. The split pages were still large in and of themselves and so didn't come a great deal closer to solving that problem and the list suddenly became a whole lot harder to navigate. I felt that the loss of navigability outweighed the benefits gained by reducing the size of the page. I did have a whole long reply setting this out unfortunately my computer seems to have eaten it! David Newton 11:51, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Just to float an idea, what if the individual url links to the SIs were removed? This would reduce the amount of text in the article. As David Newton has pointed out, the OPSI site does not have SIs for all years. Having a list for the 1940s, 50s, 60, 70s and 80s would be providing a service to readers. I did start adding some from the 1940s, but I hadn't realised that the numbers did not run consecutivetly and got rather confused. Kurando | ^_^ 12:05, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well as of now the 2006 list is 52 kb in size. That's one third of the way through the year with SIs in the 1100s in the list. Based on that a full year's list would be approximately 150-160 kb give or take without the links to the OPSI website. That's roughly half the size that the 1996 list is now. David Newton 21:44, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

One week on
We have now had a week to discuss the problem, and we have come up with a few possible improvements. I think it is now time to move to the next stage and take action. As a first step, I am planning to remove all of the external links from the page tomorrow so that we can see what effect that has. Any objections? Road Wizard 21:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Make sure the improvement also takes care of the article's size. It is 299KB. Georgia guy 21:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Judging by things like the 2006 list this action should reduce the size of the article by about half. David Newton 22:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Remember, shortly before this discussion began, I split this into 4 articles, but just before the discussion began, someone put it all back into this big article. However, studying What Links Here, the 4 lists I split this into are also still available. Georgia guy 22:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Once we have decided whether or not the split option is a good idea, we can then decide what to do with those pages. If we don't need them then they can be put up for deletion in a few weeks. Road Wizard 22:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think there's anything to be done to save the article. It should be deleted.  A page Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1996 could discuss the significant ones and link to the government's list; this would be much more useful and shorter. --CRGreathouse 22:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * So, just move the page and either delete or make internal links out of the items of the lists, depending on how notable they are. Georgia guy 22:06, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input, it is an interesting idea. However, can you expand it a little by saying what would be your criteria for defining an SI as a significant one? Also, what is your opinion on the pages before 1987 where there is no list outside of Wikipedia? Thanks. Road Wizard 22:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, the links have now been removed and the page has reduced to 182KB. Its a great improvement, but still a fairly large article. Any suggestions on where we go from here, or do you think we have done enough? Road Wizard 22:23, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Keep or Delete?
Whilst I am waiting for a response on whether people think enough has been done to improve the article, I thought I would introduce a more complete debate on the subject of deletion. Earlier I asked everyone to avoid subjective comments, but now that we are over one week into the discussion it might be a good time to reintroduce them. Hopefully by revealing all of the concerns people have about this article, the editors who want to keep it will have the opportunity to either clarify the issues involved or correct oustanding defficiencies. At the very least, it will provide voters on any future AfD a quick list of the pertinent arguments.

I have made two sections below, one for keep and one for delete. Please place your arguments in the corresponding section unless you are responding directly to another user's argument. Thanks. Road Wizard 20:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Reasons to Keep
Please add any arguments for keeping this article here. Road Wizard 20:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Reasons to Delete
Please add any arguments for deleting this article here. Road Wizard 20:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) It is over 100KB and splitting it into 4 separate articles doesn't appear to work.
 * 2) There are no valid Wikipedia links I can make anywhere in the list of more than 2000 items. Georgia guy 20:31, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed mergers
I see there was a long debate about this article some time ago. I note that there are 4 orphaned subpages with duplicate information that essentially I propose should be deleted. However, as I haven't analysed the content I have termed it a merger. These subpages are not linked properly from the appropriate template, unlike this page. welsh (talk) 13:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1996 (1–1000)
 * List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1996 (1001–2000)
 * List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1996 (2001–3000)
 * List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1996 (3001–4000)