User talk:JMF/Archive1

My talk Archive for 2005

MK Dons
Although the article has had a lot of questionable edits recently, I don't think it needs to be locked just yet - that's only for quite drastic circumstances; at the moment there is a fair bit of POV material being added, but that's not vandalism per se (in my book). I might ask the UK Wikipedians noticeboard for help doing a neutral rewrite. Qwghlm 23:37, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Template:Rail line
Hi. Its been a while since I've done any of those. I think I used the logos from the website and took them in to Photoshop to find the colour used by the company. In the case of c2c and 'one' this was the same as on the map you mentioned. It is documented here Mrsteviec 15:01, 27 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Hello & Good afternoon. The rail line template doesn't like any line breaks in it - will fix the problem. Mrsteviec 15:22, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Watford Junction "old bakerloo"
The Silverlink all stations stopping service from Watford Junction to Euston is commonly known as the "DC lines" Mrsteviec 15:07, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Milton Keynes Dons F.C. (again)
OK - I was just toning down what were quite strong words, not attempting for a final NPOV reportage of everything. As for what you wrote, my thoughts are...


 * In June 2004, Winkelman announced that Wimbledon would change its name to Milton Keynes Dons, having previously promised fans a vote on the issue.The committee of the official supporters' club had voted unanimously for the word "Wimbledon" to be retained in the name: Winkelman claimed that he had accepted the spirit of this by including the word "Dons".

This is fine.


 * When the club formally emerged from administration under the new name and ownership on July 1, he also announced new team colours and a new badge without consultating the fans (though no other club management does this either).

Strongly disagree with the addition of the caveat in brackets - Arsenal definitely consulted fans on their new crest; I believe Man City did as well. Many clubs with good relationships with their fans consult and discuss with their fans on a variety of issues, such as naming of new stands (like City), or choosing a new nickname (like Sunderland did when they moved from Roker Park). Qwghlm 09:36, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Nuneaton station
In response to your message, you could add another line, and have one for Birmingham-Leicester local services (with Water Orton), and one for Birmingham-Leicester-Peterborough services (with BNS) - both linking to the Birmingham to Peterborough Line article. Our Phellap 16:44, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dead Links?
Hello Concrete Cowboy. Can you explain why the pictures of Milton Keynes and Information page are "dead links". The former actually allow people outside the city to see high resolution images of the city and are slowly being added to. The facts are actually more up to date than the offical web sites and are taken straight from the official publications for the city. --81.136.47.24 09:52, 12 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Do you mean from Adstockweb.com? The whole domain disappeared - it was no longer registered. But I see that it is back again and so I've re-instated it. --Concrete Cowboy 10:46, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
 * By the way, the population figures on your site are for Borough of Milton Keynes : this article is about the designated area only. --Concrete Cowboy 12:12, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Will update and correct. (and get out there and update those photographs!) --217.39.118.221 16:14, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

MK Dons (yet again)
Hi. I noticed you removed my edit of MK Don's history, claiming it was mostly conjecture and that any additions should be based on knowns facts. I am not trying to use Wikipedia as a soapbox, but rather attempting to give more background to MK Dons (i.e. how the groundwork was laid). As you seem rather pro-MK yourself, may I suggest that perhaps your reaction is a little over-dramatic?

Anyway, here is a list of known facts (see The Beautiful Game by David Conn for more) that I added but were then deleted:
 * Winkleman plans to use the stadium development to get planning permission for an Asda store amons others (the backers of which provided the cash for the whole project)
 * Winkleman approached several other clubs (Barnet, Luton, QPR) with a view to moving to the city before getting Wimbledon
 * Milton Keynes City FC already existed but Winkleman needed a League Club

In addition, the part of the history where it says "Pete Winkelman, who had previously helped finance the Hockey Stadium's conversion for football, agreed to take the club over and save it from liquidation;" is inaccurate. Winkleman only helped finance the conversion after he had agreed to take over the club. Otherwise the conversion would have been pointless.

Could you please reinstate these facts. Thank you.

City status
Fair enough (re: city status in the United Kingdom) I suppose. If you think Milton Keynes is in a bad spot in respect of city status (being designed to be a city but without the official status of a city) try thinking about what a mess Rochester has got itself into! Rochester has been a City for centuries, but then in 1998 when the Medway Towns district was created a bureaucratic blunder meant that Rochester lost its official City status! Now it is technically a town... David "dpaajones"

Milton Keynes pronunciations
I'm afraid my grasp of IPA is just about good enough to read dictionary entries and no more. I didn't actually change the IPA in the Milton Keynes article, all I did was turn the XML unicode entities into UTF-8 while I was fixing up a spelling mistake. Cmdrjameson 00:48, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Re: Talk:Buckinghamshire
80.255 pulls this weird shit on a regular basis. He is either a member or supporter of the Association of British Counties, which exists to promote an idyll of when Britain was split into "proper" counties and doesn't appear to get the point despite being talked down on more than one occasion. I have already added my 2p to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places) -- Francs2000 | Talk 23:17, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * 3RR - it won't get that far. If an edit war breaks out it will be protected pretty sharpish - there is more than just the one admin watching what's going on! -- Francs2000 | Talk [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px|  ]] 23:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)


 * FYI: Their website appears to be down at the moment, but I got this from the Google cached version of the association's website:


 * The Association of British Counties (ABC) is a society dedicated to promoting awareness of the continuing importance of the 86 historic (or traditional) Counties of Great Britain. ABC believes that the Counties are an important part of the history, geography and cultural life of Great Britain. ABC contends that Britain needs a fixed popular geography, one divorced from the ever changing names and areas of local government but, instead, one rooted in history, public understanding and commonly held notions of cultural identity. ABC, therefore, seeks to fully re-establish the use of the Counties as the standard popular geographical reference frame of Britain and to further encourage their use as a basis for social, sporting and cultural activities.


 * Totally POV, you understand... -- Francs2000 | Talk [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px| ]] 23:28, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, the POV of the United Kingdom Parliament.
 * "Association of British Counties, which exists to promote an idyll of when Britain was split into "proper" counties"
 * The ABC exists to educate people as to what laws have been passed and what the government has to say about the counties. In all cases, all the evidence confirms that the traditional counties exist. The evidence is there for anyone who wants to find it; sucessive governments have taken the same view, and it is therefore a mainstream legal view. For all the flapping around carried out by those users on wikipedia who disagree with the government in this matter, not one single piece of evidence have they presented in defence of this POV. All I ever hear are comments like "Well, our old milkman didn't know nuffin about this 'ere traditional counties existence lark.", when I, in my defence, have reproduced, word for word, legislation and official government statements! The anti-traditional county argument just isn't convincing.
 * Sorry for butting in, Croncrete_Cowboy, but I felt I was being misrepresented here.80.255 00:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


 * You still don't get it, do you. Nobody is saying that the trad counties should be erased from consciousness, á la 1984 (book). The issue is pre-eminence and proportionate content.  It is interesting that Alphaton used to be in Gammashire, but only to the same extent that it was Alfraeston in the Domesday book and Deltium in Roman times.  It does not deserve to have pole position, it does not even deserve equal status with the current data, it does not deserve to swamp the article such that it becomes very difficult to put in other images to the right.  --Concrete Cowboy 09:20, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Without getting bogged down in some nonsensensical 'hierachy of counties', I agree that articles about ABC entity should not be swamped with information on XYZ entity. This is why they both need seperate articles. I am not advocating giving traditional counties a 'pole position'; there should be an article about the administrative county of Buckinghamshire, and it should contain only information on this entity; there should be an article about the traditional county of Buckinghamshire, and it should contain only information on this entity. Places that lie in administrative Bucks should be linked to the former; places that lie in traditional Bucks should be linked to the latter. What exactly do you disagree with here? 80.255 12:32, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Counties, etc.: A suggestion for consensus
I've posted a suggestion that should help resolve this dispute at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places). Please have a look. Thanks, 80.255 18:47, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Castlethorpe
Your changes to Castlethorpe are not really in accordance with anything being discussed at present. The current suggestion it to confine all mentions of all counties, etc. in the infobox. Whereas I agree that using terms like 'Mercia' instead dosen't help matters, perhaps a simple geographical description could appear on the first paragraph - e.g. XYZford is a town in the South West of England? I'd be quite happy with this, and it would avoid the silly use of long-gone kingdoms, too! Either way, it needs more discussion, so please avoid making controversial edits like this until we have agreed on a course of action, and I'll do the same. Thanks, 80.255 16:50, 22 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I've added an infobox to the Castlethorpe article, but haven't changed anything else. Now, just imagine if it said:


 * "Castlethorpe is a village in central Southern England, about 3 miles north of Stony Stratford, 4 miles west of Newport Pagnell and 7 miles north of Milton Keynes. It has a population of around 1000."


 * With all the county information in the infobox, don't you think that this would be simpler? 80.255 17:24, 23 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I do, but then I'm not from C'thorpe and don't feel I have to but every bit of text I can think of into the article about it.

On the subject of the "everything in one article" debate, look at Wolverton, Milton Keynes, Wolverton railway station, Wolverton railway works. It underlines my point about a hypertext encyclopedia - clearly the railway buffs have a different perspective from the gographers! --Concrete Cowboy 12:18, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Firstly sorry about screwing up your article about Wolverton when I shifted some text out to the works page. What was your point about "everything in one article"?. The Wolverton railway works article is I think long enough to stand by itself. If merged into the town it would be too big. Some shorter articles for other works e.g. one paragraph, I included in the regular town's page, and in one case got chucked out. People will be coming to the pages will be coming in different directions, hence someone interested in a town's history may or may not want to read about the works, others will be coming from articles about particular railways or locos. The station articles may accessed by travellers, but also could build up a history of the line as in North Midland Railway. Chevin 14:13, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Wolverton railway station
"The Advanced Passenger Train failed its trials here but the new Virgin Trains Pendolino tilting trains passed theirs" Do you mind if I insert "with another decade of development." Chevin 10:26, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Open University
Okay, I've changed it so that it says that it's the largest academic institution in the UK. Saying that it's the largest university may make some people think that MK has some huge campus with 180'000 (nearly the actual population of the place!) students around. I hope you see what I mean... David 17:11, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

RE: Milton Keynes Dons F.C., Wimbledon F.C.
I just reverted both articles and I'll keep my eye on them as well. Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to disregard the 3 revert rule in this case since the POV edits are so clearly inaccurate. - Pal 15:33, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Sure, I'll try and keep an eye on the MKDFC and WFC pages over the next few days. Qwghlm 17:10, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Parishes
It's unusual because it is. If you look at User:Morwen/unparished you can see a list of unparished areas I'm building up - towns that are about the size of Milton Keynes are generally unparished or have one or two parishes. There is no urban area as large as Milton Keynes which is entirely parished - the next nearest (that isn't a single parish in itself, like Weston-super-Mare and suchforth) is Burton-upon-Trent which was parished in 2003.

I'm going to partly revert your edit to List of civil parishes in Buckinghamshire, because "joint town council" and stuff actually means something specific that doesn't apply to these parishes - it is where two or more parishes share a council whilst remaining seperate parishes. Something that does not apply with Bletchley and Fenny Stretford.

As to Parish Councils, I'm not sure it would be useful at this stage to have articles about them. There's very little verifiable information about them, certainly the small ones, what there is available is about the geographical parishes themselves. If, say, Keighley got too big we could split out Keighley Town Council from it, but if X and its town council are to share one article it should be at the shorter form, just for brevity. Can you imagine lists of civil parishes that go

*Beeby *Crosby *Dalby with Earby *Freeby *Garston-cum-Hoby *Ily-Jalby
 * Ashby

It would be unmaintainable. Morwen - Talk 19:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Battle of Edge Hill
Thank you for your contribution. It was one more step in the right direction. But there is a long way to go.:-) (RJP 22:19, 19 November 2005 (UTC))

Homes of celebs
It's fairly well known around here where certain people live - although I am willing to put the issue up for debate if need be. -- Francs2000 18:18, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes but it's already out there anyway: we're not the first people by any means to publish where the celebs live:    -- Francs2000 [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px|  ]] 21:21, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Just to let you know though I have brought it up here. -- Francs2000 [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px| ]] 21:33, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

2006 estimates
(a) all the pages are being updated. do you propose to revert them all?

(b) what makes you think that the 2003 estimate wasn't made in 2002? Morwen - Talk 10:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Merry Christmas
I'm not expecting to be online as much over the next few days so...