Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-01-22 Status of traditional counties

Request Information

 * Request made by: Aquilina 20:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Where is the issue taking place?
 * Primarily Traditional counties of England, some dispute at Lancashire related.
 * Talk:Traditional_counties_of_England


 * Who's involved?
 * User:Aquilina,User:Owain,User:Proteus and User:IanDavies.


 * What's going on?
 * Traditional counties in England stopped being used for administrative purposes after local government reforms, but although they no official status they are used informally for sporting events (especially rugby and cricket), and in general non-technical use.


 * IanDavies claims that as they do not exist in a formal sense, any reference to a traditonal county is absurd, or must be backed up with explicit legal reference. As their use is (almost by definition) in informal settings, this is not forthcoming, however there is consensus between the other three users that this is the situation de facto.


 * Edits are being summarily reverted, with the side effect of losing much good work done simulataneously and unrealted to this point, and discussion has broke down.


 * ''What would you like to change about that?


 * I'd like a consensus on wording; even best would be some sort of replacement phrase for traditional county. I'd settle for an agrement to edit a lot more sympathetically and carefully, however(!).


 * If you'd prefer we work discreetly, how can we reach you?
 * This is an issue I feel would be best carried out in the open; use any relevant talk page you see fit!

Many thanks in advance for your assistance!

Comments by others
This had all been settled by August last year (see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places)), before User:IanDavies had even joined Wikipedia. He is welcome to re-start the debate before making PoV edits to pages which have already been discussed and agreed upon. Owain (talk) 14:45, 29 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I concur. We do not need this edit war re-starting at the moment, and I'm glad that we reached a truce (however uneasy) regarding English traditional counties.  IanDavies is not particularly well-informed on the matter - I gave him some friendly advice a while ago that he was entering a minefield - it's a shame he chose to ignore that.  Morwen - Talk 12:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * In my opinion this issue was never truly settled, at one point a vote was taken with, we thought, a clear result. But the argument broke out again later and raged for a while without a further vote. Rather than 'settled', I'd suggest the debate was abandoned due to participant exhaustion. The whole history is recorded, as Owain mentions, in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places). Owain, Morwen, and I were involved, along with many others, newcomers to the debate would do well to struggle through those arguments before adding more of their own. Chris Jefferies 09:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

IanDavies, the main protagonist in question, has been banned indefinitely for sockpuppetry.

Hopefully, this means we can return to the (albeit uneasy) truce state of earlier, as per wording in controversial articles - or at least find consensus through the talk pages without mediation.

As far as I'm concerned, the mediation case is now effectively closed (although the final decision rests with Fasten)- I look forward to working with all the other editors to agreeing consensus formulations for the previously contested articles, in a less stressful atmosphere than we had with IanDavies present.

Many thanks to Fasten for all his help in the mediation - the questions you posed helped crystallise the issues and took the sting out of the situation somewhat. Aquilina 01:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)