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The Birmingham article page is poor

The Birmingham article page is really not very good, the population figures are wrong (I don't no where people get these figures from,they are wrong!)and need correcting. The page suggests that only a "few people here and there think Birmingham is the second city. If you didnt know Birmingham was the second city the article page certainly would not help. It should also be made clear that most people in the UK refer to Birmingham, meaning the entire West midlands conurbation, in the same way that people refer to greater London. If know body objects then I am going to change it and put the facts. --User:Ashley2020 22.41, 24 August 2005 (UTC)


Andy Mabbots reverts war history

Andy, you have deleted the first part of my war history, I have not reverted yet, please try and provide me with a reason for your edit at least. Thanks Nick Boulevard 22:53, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Copywright Violations

Andy Mabbett is now officially spying on me, he has weeded through many of my contributions and is now listing them as copyright violations, instead of helping by simply removing the violation or re writing from scratch the part that is in question he has set about another snake like endevour to destroy my work, it won't wash Andy, I am sorry but you simply are not going to do this, I will remove myself what is copywright violation and completely re-write to save so much effort and not just on my part (sigh), I have written to Virtual Brum to see if they mind me using a few sentences from their site as a start. Nick Boulevard 19:33, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

    • OK, but remember that neither are V-brum necessarily in the position to grant use of a text that appears elsewhere. Recent texts are copyrighted by default; the onus is on the copier to show explicitly that they're not. The new versions are looking pretty good so far - but do remember to Cite sources! If you write "Birmingham produced 35,003 brass trundling widgets in 1776", say where this fact came from. 195.92.67.75 19:03, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Sections

The "History" section and the History of Birmingham article are an excellent demonstration of how to write a separate linked article while maintaining some information in the main article (as are the "Politics", "Transport" and "Sport" sections and their linked articles, and Birmingham military history, at least before User:Nick Boulevard introduced copyright material and shut the article down until he or someone else rescues it). The "Economy" section illustrates a problem - the section in the main article has slightly more information than Economy of Birmingham, while being substantially identical to it - and the same applies to the (over-long) "Arts" section and Arts in Birmingham. The Architecture of Birmingham article is longer than the section here, but covers much of the same information in very slightly different and divergent ways. Education in Birmingham is a verbatim copy of "Education" , and Science and invention in Birmingham is a verbatim copy of "Science and invention" (with some minor improvements). If people are creating this sort of linked article, most of the information needs to be removed from the main article, and placed in the new one so that people will add to the new article rather than the main one. If they aren't going to do that, the new articles need to be merged back into the main article. Sub-articles shouldn't just be created because we can, they need to be created for a reason (usually because a section has got too long and needs to be substantially removed to a page of its own).

For the record, I actually created the Birmingham military history and it will be saved do not worry.
I strongly disagree with watering down the sub sections on the main page any further at present, surely the idea should be that the sub pages are there to elaborate further on what exists on the brum main page, also any major new material should be added to the sub page with a brief addition on the main page. Regardless, I sincerely hope that any changes will be duscussed here first and agreed, p.s. why do you feel nervous about adding a signature? Nick Boulevard 17:54, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Nobody needs your prior agreement to edit this page, and if you keep reverting to remove my changes (including corrections of factual errors and sentences which don't make sense) you are going to find yourself in even more trouble. Drop all this Andy Mabbett paranoid rubbish (you can't even spell his name correctly most of the time) and start to deal with the mess you've made here. Wikipedia isn't a chat board.

  • "Nobody needs your prior agreement to edit this page" ~ you are removing my work not editing it.
  • "if you keep reverting to remove my changes (including corrections of factual errors and sentences which don't make sense) you are going to find yourself in even more trouble." ~ why is that?
  • "Drop all this Andy Mabbett paranoid rubbish (you can't even spell his name correctly most of the time) ~ pathetic creature.
  • "Wikipedia isn't a chat board." ~ you are extremely arrogant and ignorant to others work here, you delete work willy-nilly without discussion and then when you lose an argument or edit war on a page you/Andy Mabbett/whoever attempts in some snake like way to discredit others work, listing whole pages as copyright problems when you could so easily remove the sentence in question as oposed to the entire article. The work I do here is constructive, all I have seen from you? is destructive, correct spelling etc fine but discuss before deleting vast swathes of others work, work. 195.92.67.76 13:03, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

And again, nobody needs your prior agreement to edit this page. Nothing is being deleted, it is still on the sub-pages. Reversions are not a tool for you to decide that the page is finished and block any further progress. If I make a change to correct the mistruth that the St Patrick's day parade is the third largest in the world, or that there were D-notices during the second world war, you must:

  1. Put your evidence here.
  2. Discuss.
  3. If there is agreement that the old version was right, then you are allowed to modify the new page to correct only those sections which it is agreed should be restored.

And finally, all this Andy Mabbett stuff is just making you look like a paranoid fool.

"nobody needs your prior agreement to edit this page" ~ when have I ever said they do?
"Nothing is being deleted, it is still on the sub-pages." ~ actually several of the sub pages have been listed as copyright and if I had not have noticed by chance they would have probably dissapeared, also parts of the sub pages are now being deleted also, I have had to restore several attacks of deletion like for instance the top of the science and invention section.
"Reversions are not a tool for you to decide that the page is finished and block any further progress." ~ I revert to protect the many deletions that you are making otherwise months of peoples hard work here will be lost.
"all this Andy Mabbett stuff is just making you look like a paranoid fool." ~ the fact that you take great enjoyment from editing so much of my work entertains me, personally I couldn't care less whether you are Andy Mabbett or not, you are the same in kind, sneaky and destructive :)

Copyright, number of visitors, bias

Could you please have a look at the entry for birmingham, the information is copied word for word from the web site >>>> [encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Birmingham] Also just over 20 million people visit the U.K each year you have my assurance that not every single tourists visits birmingham, It is of no tremendous or significant historical value, like york, except being mentioned in the doomsday book and not as great of commercial importance compared to Manchester and London or not like cities like Liverpool, Brighton and Oxford i don't see how this person claimms that 22 million people visit the city each year, its a completely bias and grand opinion of the city. it's a very industrial city though it is 'getting there' and fast this is a bias opinion of this city .... added at 04:46, 2005 May 25 by Babyoil

I think youlle find that [encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Birmingham] is a clone of Wikipedia. G-Man 20:52, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Please add a new comment at the end, not the beginning, of a relevant section, and sign it with four twiddles: ~~~~. And if it doesn't seem to belong in an existing section, create a new one for it. Thank you.
You have made this or a similar comment on my user page, and Hadal kindly moved it to my "talk" page and there answered the part about alleged copying. (Do please note the difference between user pages and user talk pages. You get to the user talk page by clicking on "Discussion" in the user page.) To summarize what Hadal wrote, you've got it the wrong way around: laborlawtalk.com copied the stuff about Birmingham from Wikipedia, as it was free to do.
You ask about numbers. I don't know. But it's entirely possible for 20 million people to visit Britain and for 22 million to visit one city within Britain: the number for the nation is of people coming from outside Britain, and the number for the city could be of people coming from either outside Britain or from elsewhere within Britain.
Lastly, if you have various questions about an article, it might be better to ask them separately, and under appropriate headings. You posted this within "Article is very long", and pretty clearly your questions are unrelated to the length of the article. -- Hoary 07:13, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

Abusive reverts

What is to be done about the one user who repeatedly reverts any edits to "his" (sic) page, claiming to be reverting "vandalism", but actually reinstating typos, spelling- and factual errors? Andy Mabbett 08:07, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Keep editing, revert back to the improved article after Nick has restored all the spelling mistakes and errors, refuse to take part in personal arguments. That is what I think he's after - I think if you added up the number of words he's put on talk pages and compared them to the number of words he's put into Wikipedia articles, there would be very many more of the first lot, especially if you ignored all the stuff copied and pasted from other places and the obvious factual errors and stuff that doesn't make any sense. He's using this place as a substitute for usenet or a chat board. He'll be lucky to escape a ban for all those copyright violations, so the problem might just go away.

Oh Andy (both posts), lsten to yourself, you take this place way too seriously like it's your own magazine that you need to have full and total control over and yet you actually contribute little to the Bham page other than question everything I add and delete what you don't care for like the canal wall and selly park graffiti gallery etc, I probably have made copyright errors along my travels here but of those you have painstakingly sifted through (which must have been enjoyable) I have removed the text in question, I have added barrels of original material to this page and others which many people have edited and re-worded better IMO and I do get a little over protective at times due to the fact that alot of it (mainly culture) is of my own doing, no big deal and I won't stand in the way of progress but I will stop vandelism and deletion of relevant articles whether I have written it or not, I can't even be bothered to go into why you are pretending to be lots of different people and regards being banned, I see you have already been banned for deleting others work you even tried reverting my own personal user page at one point? (see your talk page) and the fact that you tried to force me into mediation on the Brummie page didn't work either as it was regarded as serious enough. Nick Boulevard 20:07, 25 May 2005 (UTC)


Note User talk:Nick Boulevard#Vandalism. Andy Mabbett 23:47, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Andy Mabbett deletions

Please can somebody give Andy Mabbett a warning again, he's deleting work left right and centre without any discusion, I am positive he is also going under the ip address of 82.96.100.100 as edits by this user are frequently followed by Pigs on the wing (Andy Mabbett) and vice versa I will list a few examples of deletion:

1. He listed it as copyright which is fine although he could have re-worded it rather than list it and then when I write afresh he deletes half the page without reason http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Ridgway/Temp&diff=14038887&oldid=14030040

2. Removal of my inclusion that has stayed on the page for ages about people in the west mids (of which Birmingham is by far the largest city) being the most innovative with source to patents office in london, he has also removed this from the brum science sub page http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Birmingham&diff=14104940&oldid=14104888

3. Removal of "celluloid allowing the development of film", I think also removed from sub page? take a look at Celluloid as to why this needs to stay and why i placed it there see http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Birmingham&diff=14136024&oldid=14104940

4. Removal of D-notice in war section, claiming it is a false statement http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Birmingham&diff=14038157&oldid=14037728, read this Andy, you might like to restore what you have deleted proof of censorship you might like to also restore your removal of the war section which was whittled down to a few lines with a link to my military history.

5. Removal of claim that many brummies do actually speak quite clearly. http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Brummie&diff=14041472&oldid=14040462

6. Removal of sentence about steel knib trade and it's impact on world literature, he claims this should be in history section but it is relevant to what the city has given the poor of the world in cheap mass produced pens. http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Arts_in_Birmingham&diff=0&oldid=14151494

7. Unexplained removal of text and relevant link to most prolific graffiti artist in Brimingham. http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Birmingham_Hip_Hop_scene&diff=13856960&oldid=13785627

8. Not content with that he goes back and removes the west midland graffiti web site link showcasing many Brummie artists like zuki etc. http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Birmingham_Hip_Hop_scene&diff=13993247&oldid=13889154

9. Constant removal of Nick Mason from people born in Birmingham which he has already been warned for I think? http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=List_of_famous_residents_of_Birmingham%2C_England&diff=13795819&oldid=13653925

Need I go on, many removals seem to come from user 82.96.100.100 followed shortly by Pigs on the wing tidying up (andy mabbett), these are just the tip of the ice-berg and it is a bit unfair that he can just delete other peoples work and then have the audacity to list pages here for copyright without as much as attempting to sort the page out first? Nick Boulevard 23:00, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

  1. You are positive and (not unusually) wrong.
  2. The West Midlands are not Birmingham, and it is a fallacy to assume that a fact about the larger area is also applicable to a district within it. If you have a figure for patents granted to Brummies, include it and show the source.
  3. Parkes's plastic was not what we now call celluloid, as you'd know if you had looked into Parkes's history.
  4. Your BBC site says nothing about D-notices. There were no D-notices during the second world war, see this for proof. (Please don't cut and paste that site into the D-notice Wikipedia article, it is Crown copyright).
  5. Other points are irrelevant to Birmingham and will not be dealt with here. I will just say that as Angela has told you, listing articles as copyright violations is the right thing to do when they are.

Hi Andy, let me address your points,

1. The West Midlands are not Birmingham, and it is a fallacy to assume that a fact about the larger area is also applicable to a district within it. If you have a figure for patents granted to Brummies, include it and show the source. ~ The comment was about the west mids and Brum is the largest city in that region and makes up a massive proportion of the population, I do not state that the west mids IS brimingham just that brum is centrally located and is the largest city in that region. Regardless you deleted it even after I reworded anyway so you do not understand compromise.

2. Parkes's plastic was not what we now call celluloid, as you'd know if you had looked into Parkes's history. ~ I can asure you that the first celluloids (although not by name) were invented by parkes in Brum, his mentioning of the use of camphor in his patent was later picked up by Hyatt who later patented the "celluloid" which was more or less just the name, hyatt was later taken to court and the judge ruled that parkes was the true inventor, hyatt later went on to use "celluloid" for photographic film, read it: hereyou have deleted something which I added and that is true, please restore on all pages.

3. Your BBC site says nothing about D-notices. There were no D-notices during the second world war, see this for proof. (Please don't cut and paste that site into the D-notice Wikipedia article, it is Crown copyright). ~ The BBC link states the city devastating air raids were censored, if no D-notices were issued then fine but don't just delete the statement, discuss it here first so that we can all understand why its gone, you might like to add the bit about censorship of the air raids.

4. Other points are irrelevant to Birmingham and will not be dealt with here. ~ They are not discussed anywhere, you just delete what you like when you like without discussion Andy. Thats how I know it's you.

5. I will just say that as Angela has told you, listing articles as copyright violations is the right thing to do when they are. ~ Yes, well no one is perfect and I can asure you that I have added massive contributions to Brum pages (not always under the same ip address as my p.c. is so naff that the temp memory clears often) and I am more interested in adding my own material here, sometimes when writing an article I may have added a small amount of text from somewhere else but that was pointed out and I have re-written the articles so that Wikipedia is not effected.

All this considered you have no right to delet other people work sneakily hoping that we don't realise, and if you are so innocent why did you delete my initial discussion here, get frustrated that I was pointing out your vandalism did you. Nick Boulevard 18:41, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Nick and 82.96.100.100: I'm sorry that this has turned into such a deathmatch. I also don't see anything in Wikipedia guidelines saying that minor edits and deletions need prior discussion - especially if they're matters of clear factual error. The edit summary system is quite sufficient. It'd help, though, if 82.96.100.100 could be more assiduous about providing summaries. 195.92.67.75 19:25, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
I have deleted nothing from this talk page. The only deletion from this page was Nick's edit at 18:49, which removed my previous addition, and I restored it at 19:10. I do provide edit summaries, except for the cases where I'm restoring Nick's frequent reverts, as you can see from the page history.
Yeah, I do know. I just think that given the situation, it'd be safer for everyone to cover their backsides by documenting even trivial reverts, so that the changes are seen to be rational.
BTW I think it should be vigorously resisted, any suggestion that changes need prior discussion. I've seen it on other pages, and it's invariably a guilt-tripping technique for asserting 'ownership' and personal veto over a page. We need to go back to Wikipedia basics: as the Wikipedia:Introduction says (their bold type, not mine): Don't be afraid to edit pages on Wikipedia—anyone can edit, and we encourage users to be bold! - and every edit page says at the foot If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly ... do not submit it. 195.92.67.67 23:32, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
That has been pointed out to Nick, more than once, previously. He seems to refuse to accept it, and resorts instead to false allegations, abusive and whole-scale reverting (even to the point of restoring typos and removing new material) and paranoid ranting. Andy Mabbett 09:30, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

> Three reverts

It seems that G-Man has decided to ignore [1] the "three reverts" policy :-( Andy Mabbett 23:02, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You know you've lost the argument and now your throwing a huff. If you look I changed one of the versions slightly so it was not reverting to the same revision. G-Man 23:04, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
"you've lost the argument" - I see you can't stop telling lies. Andy Mabbett 23:07, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now Andy your revealing your immaturity, I've seen this type of behavior from you so many times. I see you cant think of an answer to my point about NYC and Manchester, but you cant stand "loosing face" either. So you loose your temper and resort to making petty accusations against me.

But to get back to the point, why exactly do you believe that the wider metropolitan area should not be mentioned. It has been there almost since the article was started and you have never objected to it before? G-Man 23:21, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

First lies, now personal abuse. :-( Andy Mabbett 23:33, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would like to point out the irony of that comment, but I'll leave you to work it out. I would actually like to have a calm rational debate with you about subjects of dispute, but as can be seen from the acres of talk page above, that appears to be almost impossible with you, I and many other people have tried to be reasonable but to little avail. I see you still havn't responded to my points above. G-Man 23:44, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Andy, G-Man: you've both made good contributions to this page and I'd hate to see either of you break the three revert rule. It seems to me to be dishonest to claim the population figure for the WM county as having any relevance to Brum - a figure for the Birmingham/Wolverhampton conurbation might possibly be relevant as long as it's clear that Birmingham only contributes about half of the population, but the WM county also contains Coventry (not by any stretch of the imagination part of the conurbation). Andy's version seems like the sensible one to me, with an addition to state that Birmingham, Wolverhampton etc form the largest conurbation in the UK outside London. Regarding the Birmingham Alabama thing, this is what disambiguation pages are for, so it doesn't need to be specifically mentioned here. I agree with G-man that "highly ethnically diverse" is better than a claim to be the second highest (my father often says that you can claim to be the second-biggest or best at anything, and nobody will ever want proof). Can we sort this out here rather than having yet another revert war, please? I suggest we leave things as they are for a few days and then approach this with cooler heads. --Brumburger 09:34, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with you there, The West Midlands is the officially defined metropolitan area used in government statistics. Whether or not we agree or disagree with the boundaries is irrelevant we are here to report things as they are (Personally I agree that Coventry should never have been part of the WM county). However saying that Birmingham has a population of 992,000 gives a misleading impression without mentioning that is is part of a much larger conurbation. Just as it is misleading to say that Manchester has a population of 400,000 without mentioning Greater Manchester.
Secondly Birmingham, Alabama is the largest city in Alabama, and one of the most important cities of the American south. Surely it deserves special treatment. A few months back some Americans were complaining about the English Birmingham having the 'Birmingham' name to itself whilst B'ham AL was a disambiguation Here. If were going to have the English B'ham here then surely it is only fair to have a prominent link to B'ham AL?.
Thirdly here is a list of districts by ethnic diversity List of English districts by ethnic diversity. Technically speaking if we are talking about places with city status then Birmingham is the second most diverse city after Leicester. However several London boroughs are more diverse. So it is not quite so straightforward. G-Man 15:08, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Game is up Andy Mabbett, I have noted all your new user names including the above, it's pathetic. I do as G-Man suggests and lay off your back with reverts etc and after taking an inch you don't just go for the mile you steam right ahead with negative, snide additions to articles that have been battled for to be portrayed in a balanced way, if something is incorrect discuss it and delete it and that is what this page is surely for, I am sorry but I am going to revert sections that you are deleting and not including on sub pages etc etc, why is it that I can get on with anyone else here (in the end) but with you I just find you so pathetic. Nick Boulevard 11:41, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
G-man, if your wondering why I have been so annoyed with reverting go see Birmingham military history, Andy listed it for copyright violation, I made the effort to contact the source from where I took the info and turned out it was from a plaque in the gun quarter, without getting into further dispute I solved the problem by removing and writing afresh the text in question, Andy then removed the copy vio listing and then under his many aliases removed every last minute detail (non of which is copyright violation). Please do not be fooled by all these new aliases he is conjuring 195.92.67.208 13:21, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Brumburger: Amen to that. Personally I don't see how you can assign a number to ethnic diversity. Obviously Birmingham is more ethnically diverse than, say, Okehampton. But if we're talking two major cities, what's the criterion? Raw number of ethnic groups? Number of ethnic groups above a certain population threshold? Number of ethnic groups with high visible profile? It gets silly. It's enough to say it's seriously diverse. RayGirvan 13:51, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unprotected

There has been absolutely no discussion on talk since this article was protected well over a week ago, so I have unprotected it. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 08:19, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Outer Circle

Surely, as we drive on the left in Britain, the 11C alone (not the 11A too) is the longest 'bus route in Yurp? Phlogistomania 19:42, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

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