Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cornwall/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 22:08, 26 March 2012.

List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cornwall

 * Nominator(s): Jowaninpensans (talk), Zangar (talk) 20:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list, on behalf of Jowaninpensans and myself, because I feel it meets all criteria. This list has been significantly upgraded over the last few months, modelled on the other SSSI featured lists, with all of the entries now being blue-linked. All feedback welcomed! Cheers, Zangar (talk) 20:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Good work so far on this list, guys. I have a question before expressing an opinion on this article's eligibility for featured list status. Could you tell me how many of the blue links point to (a) an article solely about the SSSI in question or (b) a section on the SSSI in a broader article. If the majority of them do then I think we're well on the way to featured list status. I ask because for a few articles that I checked, the link just appeared to take me to an article on a nearby village or one that has the same name as the SSSI, with minimal mention of the SSSI, still less its wildlife or geological interest, in the article. My concern is that the bluelink-count is artifically inflated. SP-KP (talk) 12:32, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the question. After going through the articles I've worked out that they fall like this:
 * (A) 77 (46%) Own article
 * (B) 25 (15%) Detailed in relevant "parent" article
 * (C) 24 (14%) Given own section in a relevant article
 * (D) 41 (25%) Detailed in article of the civil parish or island that the SSSI is located
 * Category (B) are SSSI's such as Lynher Estuary, or Upper Fal Estuary and Woods which have direct parent articles on the river and we felt was best served by residing in these articles. Category (C) are the SSSIs that we felt were given better context by being given their own section within a slightly wider-scoped article (or covered a very similar area), such as Belowda Beacon or Gwithian to Mexico Towans. We put SSSIs that were either very small, or had little information, in category (D) articles, but these do include quite well expanded information, such as those within Bryher, Isles of Scilly.
 * You can see how we came to these loose decisions on the talk page. I was hoping to keep cat (D) SSSIs down to 20% or under. Although we put these here in the attempt to avoid very short stubs such as Friar's Oven from List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset FL.
 * But I do feel that those in cat (B) are right to reside there to give better context to both the SSSI and the parent article, or else you are leading to unnecessary content forking, the same goes for most of cat (C). So that does mean that over 60% of the SSSIs are rightfully (IMO) located. If you would like us to turn some more over to their own articles to get cat (A) up to 50% or more, let me know and I'm happy to do that (I'll be away over the weekend though). Thanks for your input, cheers, Zangar (talk) 16:15, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the explanation. I don't think that having Category A covering less than 50% is necessarily an issue. Category B is a pragmatic solution that's been adopted in other counties. I think that Category C is OK as an interim status - other counties have created stub articles but both approaches seem equally OK while there is little content. I feel you need to link the entry in the list to the section on the article, rather than just the article itself though, for clarity. Category D is the problem category in my mind - but if you were to upgrade all the Category D articles by creating a new section for each SSSI within the article, then I think we're on to a winner. SP-KP (talk) 18:05, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * &#x2713; Good suggestion. All those SSSIs in category D should now be detailed in their own section, either headed under their own name or a heading akin to "Protected areas". For those SSSIs in village parent articles, I've put them under the heading "Geography" to keep inline with WP:UKGEO's guidelines on writing about settlements. All those entries in the list now link to the section (either through piping or their redirect). Cheers, Zangar (talk) 15:09, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose
 * Link Cornwall in the lead.
 * Zangar (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * No real need to UK.
 * This is added as per a long-standing guideline of WikiProject Cornwall, to avoid Cornish-nationalist/English-nationalist edit warring. The discussions suggest a compromise wording of "Cornwall, England, UK" for all Cornwall location articles, and has generally lead to a much greater stability in Cornwall-related articles than prior to this wording. Therefore I am reluctant to change this here, but am willing to reconsider if you think it really is a major obstacle in obtaining FL. Zangar (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Do you really think we need the level of accuracy of acres you have in the lead?
 * Zangar (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Not sure I see the link between "least dense counties" and "ceremonial counties" since there's no explanation in either case. Maybe you mean "least densely-populated"? In either case that link is confusing to me.
 * - This was linked to give the reader a more information as to the precise standing of Cornwall in the population-density ranks of English counties, without unnecessarily stating it in the text. But I see that the title article linked is confusing - there's a merge suggestion with another article with a better title and I think that if that goes through that would be a better target link. But I've fixed as per your suggestion. Zangar (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You split the SSSIs arbitrarily, why not one table which is sortable? (this is a key for me)
 * I think we were keeping to the precedent that set by the other SSSI featured lists that any lists with greater than 50 SSSIs (Avon, East Sussex, Somerset, Wiltshire) are broken down into alphabetised sections - this was even a requirement at East Sussex's FLC - and Cornwall is by far the largest at the moment with 167 sites. But your suggestion can be implemented if you think there is a benefit, but I'm a little unsure of whether it can be made sortable (having 2 levels of headings), as I've had a quick go myself and failed and couldn't be implemented at the Isle of Wight's FLC. Zangar (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This featured list has two levels of headings and sorts correctly. You can then use anchors to create a navigable TOC like in this current FLC. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:36, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for those examples; I've condensed it all into one table, with TOC and anchors, and followed the example for sorting the table, but the column heading sorting arrows are aligned wrong and do not show up for the sub-headings, even though I've followed the example exactly (as far as I can see). Any suggestions? Cheers, Zangar (talk) 17:33, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right, it's not functioning correctly. I think it's a result of the use of both rowspan and colspan in the headings (which the FL I pointed to didn't have)... I've made a test edit to remove that and all functions correctly.  What do you think? You may need another footnote to explain the "Interest" columns, but I think that's a reasonable compromise for such comprehensive naviagability and sortability... The Rambling Man (talk) 09:08, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I've added the footnote. Thanks for the edit - I think this is the best compromise. I'll still try to have a go at getting the original to sort in my sandbox, as your FL example did have a rowspan in it's last column (so I've added a dummy heading & column that I'll hide later - but that still doesn't seem to work). But thanks for your help! Zangar (talk) 11:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, so it did. I wonder if had no effect though because it wasn't sortable?  There's a bit of wizardry involved sometimes with the sorting, the wiki markup language is best geared up for it, especially with mildly complex table structures...! All help welcome by the way. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * "Reason for Designation" why is Designation a proper noun?
 * Zangar (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The Rambling Man (talk) 19:17, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments and good spot with your suggestions! Please have a look at the comments that I provide with the ones I'm a little unsure as whether to proceed with or not, and see if you agree with my explanations. Your feedback is appreciated! Thanks, Zangar (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments The Rambling Man (talk) 12:17, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Check the area conversion for Hawkstor Pit. And Phoenix United Mine.
 * Compare conversion of Ottery Valley with Greenamoor.
 * It may be just as well to merge the area columns and use a convert template. Although, having said that, it'll slow the load time down.  Just a thought.
 * I've fixed the Phoenix United Mine area, I see that the Hawkstor Pit one doesn't convert properly, yet those numbers are the areas stated (both in hectares and acres) in the referenced citation, but as it has to be a mistake, I've fixed that as well. The same is true for Greenamoor (Ottery Valley was correct), so I've kept to this guideline. I feel that with 167 entries using the conversion template maybe a bit overkill, plus I've gone through all the conversions manually, fixing them where appropriate and comparing with the sources (allowing for rounding differences). Cheers, Zangar (talk) 13:54, 28 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Support I found it a challenge to find anything wrong in the first place, well done. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:05, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Quick comments –
 * In the first sentence, England and United Kingdom are such common terms that they really don't need wikilinks. All the links really do is make the lead more blue than it needs to be. I could say the same for items like tin, copper, and lead later on.
 * Usually, the prose gurus wouldn't like the hyphen in "densely-populated". Minor point, but worth addressing all the same.
 * See also should go before Notes. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 23:44, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * All fixed, thanks for the comments. I kept arsenic linked as that's slightly more uncommon. Thanks, Zangar (talk) 14:05, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments
 * I would remove the notes and instead place them above the table in bullet points, so the reader is aware what they are referring to before they read the table. The reason I say this is because i missed them until I scrolled down to the notes section.
 * I'm not too sure if this is a good idea, as they are not really a key, they are notes (extra information and clarification), and notes belong at the bottom, as described in the Manual of Style. Also, as a reader, you do expect to see the information from superscript characters to appear below, not above. Zangar (talk) 12:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I notice you have a lot of PDF refs, normally they would have include the parameter  but that would be a lot of work and would look silly considering they're all PDFs. I would consult one of the FL directors for clarity on this in case. An alternative would be to add a note near the refs stating they are all PDFs. NapHit (talk) 23:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * How about this for a fix? The  parameter only adds the text "pdf" in parentheses after the title, which it now does in the first line, and all the pdfs are covered in the single reference. Thanks for your comments, Zangar (talk) 12:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Support NapHit (talk) 22:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Support - poked through the article, and am unable to find anything to object to. That said, you should consider archiving your references via webcite or web archive (and the |archiveurl= and |archivedate= paremeters in the references) - while not an FLC criteria, if the websites you are linking to ever go away or change drastically, you'll be left with a bunch of uncited information. -- Pres N  00:04, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Image review: All images used appear to be free and are properly tagged.  Good raise  23:49, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.