Talk:Shirley, Southampton

Merge
I am against the proposed merge of articles suggested it would cause a loss of information in many cases and an overloading of the main page. Notably a similar set of proposals was made by an anonymous user to disrupt the Portsmouth page and those of its schools information is here and also here -- Drappel 21:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Naming of articles about city suburbs
Can someone explain why the articles about the city suburbs have the suffix Hampshire rather than Southampton? e.g. Shirley, Hampshire rather than Shirley, Southampton (which is now a re-direct). As a Shirley resident, I don't consider that I live in Hampshire but rather in the City of Southampton, and I'm proud of it. On looking at the edit history, most of the articles were re-named in November 2006, with the edit summary "correct form of disambiguation". Where is this policy set out? Can you imagine renaming say, Edge Hill, Liverpool to Edge Hill, Lancashire simply because it falls within the boundaries of the old county of Lancashire? Daemonic Kangaroo 10:31, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Move districts of Southampton

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was moved. No editors here seem to actually object to the move itself; the only objection made is that the current naming convention states differently. However, since the naming convention appears to be largely ignored, there is no real point in adhering blindly to it. Other places in Southampton can also be moved to the new style.-- Aervanath (talk) 16:41, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Although this has already been discussed here and I believe that there is consensus for a move, User:waggers has taken exception on my talk page to my attempt to move Southampton districts, as he believes that WP:NC:CITY should override the normal usage of people in Southampton. I believe that we should employ WP:COMMON and WP:IAR and move Southampton districts from "district, Hampshire" to "district, Southampton" VJ (talk) 12:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Haven't got anything to add to this, but agree with everything said above. -- Fluteflute Talk Contributions 16:51, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is an international encyclopaedia, not an encyclopaedia of local usage in Southampton. See WP:LOCAL.  We have standards and naming conventions for a reason.  Besides, we've been through all this before, many times, including at:
 * Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(settlements)/Archive_18
 * Talk:Southampton
 * Talk:Redbridge,_Hampshire
 * I'm not opposed to the idea of changing the naming convention, but it has to be a wholesale change across the project. There's no reason why Southampton, or indeed Shirley, should be treated as a special case. waggers (talk) 19:45, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems as if in most of those links (bar the last) there is a majority (maybe even consensus) to changing Southampton names. Currently the naming convention makes no sense for places like Shirley and Bitterene etc. which are (and always have been) part of Southampton. Outside of wikipedia I've never seen a reference to "Shirley, Hampshire" always to "Shirley, Southampton". I understand the reason why the naming convention is the way it is. It's written to protect places like Chilworth, and Eastleigh which are slowly being absorbed into urban sprawl, but remain distinct from Southampton proper. It's not there to protect districts that are part of a City. As such I repeat we should invoke WP:COMMON and WP:IAR so that the article titles actually make sense. As things stand at the moment an outsider could easily mistake all these districts are separate from Southampton, and not part of it. Without the jargon, I'm saying let's ignore the naming convention for the sake of common sense; Wikipedia policy says this is acceptable and good practice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by VJ (talk • contribs) 13:27, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid you're wrong: Bitterne and Shirley, just like Chilworth and Eastleigh, are separate settlements that grew up independently of Southampton. The same is true for Woolston, Swaythling, Redbridge, Mansbridge and many other settlements within the modern city council boundaries.  While they are today governed by the modern city council, that was not always the case.  As I said above, I don't oppose the idea of changing the naming convention, but it must be a project-wide decision to use district level disambiguation instead of county level disambiguation, (whether for all districts or just for UAs) rather than having one rule for the whole of England and a separate rule just for Southampton.  Southampton is NOT a special case and does not warrant an exception. waggers (talk) 22:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Please cite your claim that Shirley, Swayling etc. were seperate settlments, and even if they were, they have been part of Southampton for hundreds of years and are now just local names for parts of the city. Many don't even have any sort of formal boundry or recognition (if as you assert they once did) aside from the fact that local residents decide to include them on the address. There are even parts of the city where residents on the same road will put different districts down because they think "Peartree" sounds posher than "Woolston" or similar. I don't think the WP:Names policy was intended for protecting semi-informal names of city districts. I'm quite sure that it was actually intended to counter people mistaking urban sprawl for city boundaries and deciding to use blunt methods like postcodes to say that Separate villages and towns are part of their larger neighbours. VJ (talk) 09:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Pick any local history book you like on the area, or perhaps read the WP articles, and you'll find the origin of the places I listed were as distinct settlements, not as suburbs of Southampton. You still haven't addressed the issue of why Southampton is a special case, and why you're not persuing a project-wide change instead.  As for the "hundreds of years" comment, that's just laughable. waggers (talk) 10:53, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * According to the WP article on the history of Southampton, Many districts have been part of Southampton since Victorian times,Woolston since the 1840s for example; Shirley since 1895, so whilst "Hundreds of years" was hypebole, it was by no means ridiculous. To address your other point, Southampton isn't "a special case" it's just the place I have knowledge of. All I know is that if somone told me that they live in "Shirley, Hampshire" or "Portswood, Hampshire" etc. I would be confused and assume that there's probably a village called Shirley or Portswood etc. that I'd not heard of before. If I'm confused and I live in this part of the world, imagine the confusion of people from other parts of the UK, Europe or the world. Furthermore if this is a widespread problem in cities of the UK (I've no idea if it is or not), we can solve our part of it here in Southampton and use it as a case study to help change wikipedia naming policy. VJ (talk) 17:48, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I should also note that after giving myself five minutes of research, Southampton wouldn't be the only City to go by "district, city" if we proceed with this change. Coventry, for example has already done this as has Blackpool (see: Category:Suburbs_of_Coventry and Category:Geography_of_Blackpool) VJ (talk) 18:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I've always felt that to disambiguate city areas by ceremonial county rather than city is ludicrous, but in previous discussions I and other users have been beaten into submission by the mantra "it's against the consensus" or "it must be a project-wide decision". Eventually, it's easier to go away and find something more useful to do with one's time. Following on from VJ's comment above, I've done a quick analysis of the categories contained within Category:Districts in England - the results are quite interesting:

Disambiguated by:		   Town/City	County Districts of Bath 	 		 5	  0 Areas of Bedford 	 		  4	  0 Geography of Blackpool  		  7	  1 Districts of Bristol 	 		 46	  2 Districts of Cheltenham 		 3	  3 Suburbs of Coventry 			 11	 0 Districts of Derby 			 3	  6 Districts of Gloucester 		 2	  2 Districts of Leeds 			 25	 8 Areas of Leicester 			 3	  9 Districts of Liverpool 		 9	  7 Districts of Northampton 		 0	  6 Districts of Norwich 			 2	  0 Districts of Nottingham 		 12	 3 Districts of Oxford 			 6	  7 Suburbs of Plymouth 			 11	 2 Suburbs of Reading 			 1	  8 Districts of Sheffield			 2	 10 Suburbs of Shrewsbury 			 4	  4 Suburbs of Slough 			 3	  2 Districts of Southampton 		 1	 15 Towns in Southend-on-Sea 		 0	  1 Metropolitan Borough of Walsall 	 3	  7 TOTAL					163	103

As you can see, one thing there's not and that's a consensus to disambiguate by ceremonial county. If a consensus is created by usage, quite the reverse. --Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 19:15, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * - which is exactly why we need a project-wide approach rather than everyone doing their own thing. If there's consensus to change the naming convention then great, but if not we should abide by it. waggers (talk) 21:45, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Setting aside the guidelines for a moment, what is your personal opinion? If I were to start a discussion in WP:Names argueing for a change, would you support or oppose it? Certainly clarification of the guidelines are needed, and as the above table proves, in many places they are being outright ignored. VJ (talk) 11:36, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally I would very much support the change, I don't quite understand why the wikiproject's guidelines are as they are for cities, when suburbs like ours are locally considered part of the city first and foremost. I think an exception for cities makes a lot of sense, but it's a fairly inconsequential one so I've never gathered up the energy to argue for it ;) Playclever (talk) 09:56, 28 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't object to a change, but it has to be done carefully, making sure we fully define what each term means. What counts as a city?  Which boundaries do we use?  For example, villages like Otterbourne and Colden Common, and parts of Whitely, are all within the City of Winchester, but are certainly not suburbs of Winchester; Chartwell Green and Chilworth are outside of Southampton, but are (arguably) physically suburbs of the city.  And that's just two local examples, I'm sure there are other connotations to consider in other parts of the country too; any proposed change needs to be carefully thought through.  If a proposal is put forward that covers every eventuality and makes sense in each case, I'd certainly support it. waggers (talk) 20:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

What should the guideline say?
Following the successful RM, it's important that the national naming convention isn't left in the lurch. Input at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names) would be most appreciated. waggers (talk) 13:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Hollybrook
Is Hollybrook officially in Shirley? If so, should the very weak Hollybrook page be included here instead of struggling on its own? Northernhenge (talk) 13:23, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120207215438/http://www.southampton.gov.uk/Images/Listed%20Buildings%20in%20Southampton%20-%20List_tcm46-161808.pdf to http://www.southampton.gov.uk/Images/Listed%20Buildings%20in%20Southampton%20-%20List_tcm46-161808.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150101013609/http://southampton.adventistchurch.org.uk/site_data/1528/assets/0005/9004/ravenswood_approx_1900_large.jpg to http://southampton.adventistchurch.org.uk/site_data/1528/assets/0005/9004/ravenswood_approx_1900_large.jpg
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060103171645/http://www.southernlife.org.uk/shirley.htm to http://www.southernlife.org.uk/shirley.htm

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