User talk:Richardguk

A little late, but...

Welcome!

Hello, Richardguk, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially what you did for Lascelles Principles. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Sarcasticidealist (talk) 21:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gordon

Hi Richard, many thanks for that --Jimmydenham (talk) 12:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

	The Working Man's Barnstar
	I hereby award you the Working Man's Barnstar for your excellent and tireless reworking of the List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom with great coding to realise the suggestions. Well done! ---- Zangar (talk) 07:41, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol - Disambiguation bot

I'd appreciate you contributing to the consensus for the New Page Patrol disambiguation bot at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot Josh Parris 03:17, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

alt text for images in infobox

Hi, I noticed you removed alt=text from several articles using Template:Infobox UK place. The idea is for partially sighted users to be able to interpret the image (see WP:ALT). I've checked the template page & notice the correct syntax is static_image_alt =text. There is also a parameter map_alt = for maps. Would you be kind enough to change it to this if you find any others rather than removing the alt text?— Rod ^talk 09:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for looking at these again. The only ones with alt text are down to me as I think it's important & is now a requirement for featured status - so should increase. It might be worth putting a comment on the talk page of the template about static_image_alt being incompatible with static_image & possibly mentioning this on Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography where many (but by no means all) users of this template might spot it. Thanks again.— Rod ^talk 10:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

user subpages tip

When you're done with pages such as User:Richardguk/LE postcode area and User:Richardguk/ZE postcode area, you can ask that they be deleted by adding {{db-userreq}} to the top of each page. --Stepheng3 (talk) 20:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Richardguk. You have new messages at Ww2censor's talk page.
Message added 14:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

ww2censor (talk) 14:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Request

If I ask really really nicely, will you do me a huge favour? When you are doing your mass infobox tweaks, could you mark the edits as minor? I have most UK places on my watchlist, so it rapidly fills up! There is a hug in it for you if you do it :) Thanks, and keep up the good work! Jeni ^(talk) 21:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned non-free image File:Flag of the United Kingdom (compared).png

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Postcode districts transclusion test

I've experimented with User:MRSC/List of postcode districts, which transcludes the tables from three postcode area articles. I think we should use List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom to get the postcode area tables up to a decent standard and then construct the list article from transclusions to avoid duplication. Interested to hear your thoughts? MRSC (talk) 11:01, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some impressive work you've been doing on the postcode area articles. If it's any consolation for your hard work, I do feel guilty standing here on the sidelines idly waving! Though I have been experimenting with some map making.

Anyway, that said...

List content:

List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom is already a very large page and can be very slow to render. I'm concerned that if we replace its narrowly-defined (but complete) content with the more detailed (but less verifiable) content from transcluding the area article lists, we'll make a page that is too large to be usable – but which, being prominently linked from navboxes and related pages, unsuspecting readers will often find themselves loading and perhaps freezing their browser.

This is a dilemma and my unorthodox but pragmatic suggestion is to keep the content of the existing list article but to add a prominent link at the top to another page containing the detailed transcluded list, and a warning alongside the link that it leads to a very large page.

I've not seen any precedent for this on Wikipedia, so perhaps there is a more conventional solution. But the existing list is (on my PC) a test of patience, so I'd worry if we lost it to something that was an order of magnitude slower.

A penny for your thoughts!

Transclusion method:

Because editors are likely to insert hatnotes and other markup at the start and end of the article pages, I suggest that you replace:

<noinclude> <!-- Top of article -->
...before...
{{postcode area table start}}
</noinclude> <!-- Top of table -->
|-
! AB10
| ABERDEEN
...etc...
| Moray
<noinclude> <!-- Bottom of table -->
|}
...after...
</noinclude> <!-- Bottom of article -->

with:

...before...
{{postcode area table start}}
<onlyinclude>
|-
! AB10
| ABERDEEN
...etc...
| Moray
</onlyinclude>
|}
...after...

(Tentatively assuming that no linebreak issues arise with the onlyinclude tags being on lines of their own.)

An example (using an old version of the postcode area article) is at User:Richardguk/AB postcode area which has its district list transcluded into User:Richardguk/Postcode areas transcluded (along with lists for all other areas). Loading this latter page should give an idea of the server and browser delays for a full set of transclusions. (I'm using IE8 which I know is notorious for slow rendering, but still valid as a likely-use scenario!)

Incidentally, I notice that you experimented with sortable tables in {{postcode area table start}}. Perhaps it could take sortable as an optional parameter to allow for experimentation.

— Richardguk (talk) 01:12, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I took out sortable because the sort for postcode districts didn't work. It sorted AL1, AL10, AL2. I think there are technical workarounds for this, but will need to be repeated 100+ for very little gain. That said, I have no moral objection to it being there if it worked. Good call on the simpler code. I hadn't realised it could be done that way and anything that produces less code is good, especially as the top and bottom of articles can be dumping grounds. Your existing list rendered acceptably quickly on Chrome on a currently average spec PC.

We essentially have two different lists. List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom is exactly what it says on the tin. What we could produce via transclusion is a list with coverage (albeit only sort/searchable via browser searching) so it could exist at an article title such List of coverage of postcode districts in the United Kingdom or List of settlements in the United Kingdom by postcode district. Or something more snappy. The point is, it is a complete list of UK settlements sorted by postcode district and this does not exist elsewhere. I have a feeling that once the list is made it will enable editors to notice postcode area articles that are lacking, identify good practice, and generally will cause improvement. MRSC (talk) 05:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Great. You'll see in List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom how I use hidden text to make the postcode districts sortable, essentially padding single-letter areas and single-digit districts with zeroes (but note that E1W becomes E001W not E01W – so all the alpha-districts are expanded to 5 characters and all the ordinary districts are expanded to 4 if they do not already have 4 characters). For example:

!<span style="display:none">B001 </span>B1

I think there's a template for this but that would increase the burden on the rendering servers. Note that the space is to reduce the likelihood of search engines interpreting the text as a single word "B001B1". I think you already acknowledged that rowspans would also need to be removed for sortable tables to work.

Regarding the name, I like the way you're thinking; perhaps it might be helpful to insert the word "detailed", so people seeing links to both articles can deduce that the new one will be bigger. It certainly makes sense for you to continue to develop the prototype in your userspace and seek feedback until the transcluded list is working coherently there, and only then move it into article space with a name along the lines you've suggested. Then, if anyone were to propose a merger, there would be established articles for everyone to make a proper comparison.

I might be able to produce a near-comprehensive list of local authority areas and postally localities which could be checked against the new transcluded list, although clearly the Coverage column is never likely to be standardised given the ambiguity of most non-statutory non-postal boundaries. In theory, Royal Mail "postally-required locality" would be a subset of the places listed under "Coverage" and a superset of post towns.

I'll try to get round to tabulating this in my user space, perhaps with the list of sorting offices by postcode sector that I drew to your attention a couple of months ago.

By the way, did you notice that someone has rewritten KA postcode area to give sector-level details? Could be progress to be encouraged, or could be a bad thing to be too detailed and non-standard, or maybe vive la différence! In any case, it seems to be a work in progress but the Post town and Coverage columns have needlessly been transposed.

Is there an appropriate article or WP talk page we should move this discussion to? Not that postcoding seems to be a widely shared interest, but you never know.

— Richardguk (talk) 02:56, 1 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Replied at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about UK postal administration. When we're done we can use the project page to write up our guideline for these articles. MRSC (talk) 06:23, 1 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Breaking template switch

Thank you for your message! I will immediately fix it. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 05:55, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bug fixed. I run a script in order to find all affected pages and I found only 1 additional page affected. It was a well tested script, but not enough. I will avoid auto mode in templates. Your help was precious, thanks again. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 07:46, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

St. Helens:

Nice reply, thank you for the new Source. I have been trying to find something from the inbetween dates of 1800 and 1868 and you just hit the nail on the head. The 1848 places the onus straight on that Town Hall and the Council that existed within it. Cheers again.Koncorde (talk) 21:53, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP

RE: [1]

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		This Barnstar is awarded to Richard, thank you so much for your help. You are a real asset to the project! Keep up the wonderful work, and god bless. Adamtheclown (talk) 02:03, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

RE: [2]

Wow! very well written and easy to understand, that must have taken sometime for you to write. thank you again...

It is so well written, I will add it as an example of how to use default on mediawiki. Adamtheclown (talk) 16:37, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

your batting a million. thanks ;) If you ever want to move up in this project, you have my vote. Adamtheclown (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:46, 2 July 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks for nowiki fix!

Thanks for the fix to the knots infobox template. I was thinking nowiki would disable all markup, but apparently not. Regards, --Dfred (talk) 20:58, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that <nowiki/> thing is a nice little trick to know. I had intuited that some sort of nop was needed to prevent the '#' from appearing the first column and had tried various zero width spaces, but I don't think I was putting them in the right spot. I was familiar with the "<ref name="blah"/>" self-contained syntax, but hadn't thought to extend it to nowiki. Thanks for the explanation. --Dfred (talk) 21:24, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting browsing history

I discovered someone had changed the directions for Internet Explorer 8 on Wikipedia:Bypass your cache and I went back and reverted. Then you added a bunch of stuff but I'm not sure what it means. I don't have a "Delete Browsing History" option when I click on "Tools".Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:26, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

For your help sorting out SmackBot's task approval history (way back in June). Rich Farmbrough, 09:35, 21 July 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks for help

Thanks for the constructive feedback with the OS mapping (and the barnstar too of course!), I've found it very helpful. With things like file names and metadata, I'm not sure myself about a lot of it, but do want to keep things systematic. Feel free to edit the pages as appropriate, bear in mind I'm a Commons admin (and a bot op) so can rename files if needed as part of a systematic structure.--Nilf anion (talk) 20:49, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That '70s Show - Again

Hi, sorry to bother you, but I wondered if you could help again. I'm having trouble with this jump from the Lindsay Lohan page (filmography section). If you look back at our previous discussion, you explained to me how you fixed it, but I couldn't make it work. What I did was I edited the season 7 page, I selected all the text in the edit box, I cut all the text, pasted it back in, and saved it. In case it matters, I use Firefox (latest version) on Windows XP. Any ideas? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:13, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am really embarrassed. Sigh. Thanks for fixing it.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage

Hi. As you recently commented in the straw poll regarding the ongoing usage and trial of Pending changes, this is to notify you that there is an interim straw poll with regard to keeping the tool switched on or switching it off while improvements are worked on and due for release on November 9, 2010. This new poll is only in regard to this issue and sets no precedent for any future usage. Your input on this issue is greatly appreciated. Off2riorob (talk) 23:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Infobox power station

Hi. Thanks again for the fixes at the above template. Just have one more issue. ;) I don't want to clutter the help page so thought of asking you directly. In the above infobox, can you help me move display of Coordinates below Locale without moving the maps? I tried; no success. Rehman 01:53, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. Thanks for helping in the above; the template and its history can now be found in {{Infobox power station}}. Just want to know, is it possible to increase text indent in both the columns? Rehman 15:19, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Website and as_of

Hi, Richard. Do you know how to add the |website= and |as_of= fields to the above template as it is in Template:Infobox power station? Kind regards. Rehman 11:48, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! But, some of the infoboxes above are not displaying correctly... Rehman 13:52, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

		The Template Barnstar
		For your amazing help in fixing templates always! You are my official template guru! Rehman 14:22, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Small coords

Hi. One more, again ;) Do you know how to add the <small> formatting to the inline display of the coordinated? I tried but didn't work. If you get it right, could you also do the same to {{Infobox dam}}? Thanks! Rehman 14:28, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah! An active helpful editor who knows pywikipediabot!

Hello Mr. Richard.

I was interested, kind sir, if you maybe able to help me. :)

I was searching the archives of WP:VPT and found your very detailed and thoughtful response::Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 78#about PWB

The support structure for pywikipediabot is really not as strong as other mediawiki issues so I have had to branch out to plead for help.

The issue is here: Wikipedia:Village_pump (technical)#Pywikipediabot error

Thank you so much and have a restful weekend sir :) Adamtheclown (talk) 18:47, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ha. looks like I already gave you a barnstar above. Clearly you are a very valuable asset to wikipedia! Adamtheclown (talk) 18:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate all of your time, thank you. Adamtheclown (talk) 19:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsible headers for infoboxes

Hi again, Richard! Since you are an expert on templates, just want to know, is it really possible to add a function to {{Infobox}}, where if you add a Collapsible=yes into a header code, it should collapse that section of the infobox, as discussed here? Looking forward to your reply. Kind regards. Reh man 06:39, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Postcode maps

I've uploaded a test map for the ZE district, see commons:User:Nilfanion/Maps/Requests#Postcode boundaries. It will take me some time to process the whole of the data, but just want to check I'm on right track.--Nilf anion (talk) 12:34, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merge discussion for Winterbourne, Gloucestershire

An article that you have been involved in editing, Winterbourne, Gloucestershire , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Skinsmoke (talk) 10:20, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Help needed with InfoBox

Hi. I think I saw your name in association with an InfoBox template. If you are knowledgeable about it, could you shed some light on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._Supreme_Court_cases#How_remove_from_.22Flagged_U.S._Supreme_Court_articles.22_category.3F? Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 05:46, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Wikipedia category

It is not readily apparent to me why the default state of a category using {{Wikipedia category}} is for the category to not be hidden. It's opt-in, requiring the user to specify hidden=yes. It might make sense to retain a hidden option to disable the feature, but I htink the default is currently wrong. I didn't see any discussion of this on the template's talk page. Any thoughts on this? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it is counterintuitive when applied to maintenance categories intended to categorise articles (or templates transcluded into articles). Perhaps the template was written mindful mainly of categorising non-mainspace admin (categories intended for article talk pages, user pages, admin/project pages – where it can be helpful for everyone to see more metadata). Or perhaps it is a technical limitation: if a category's HIDDENCAT status is a property of the category page itself (not of the categorised page), then {{Wikipedia category}} has no way of choosing a default to reflect the intended namespace, since categories are implemented through special links not transclusions. Given the dichotomy, I can see how inadvertently showing some categories on article pages might be thought less worse than inadvertently hiding some categories on non-article pages. With over 7,000 transclusions of the above template, and assuming that the default cannot be dependent on the categorised namespace, I would suggest amending the documentation rather than boldly swapping the template default. But maybe I'm untypical in liking to see technical info! If the default isn't changed, perhaps a bot could list those transcluding categories which are overwhelmingly categorising mainspace pages, and maybe even fix the worst offenders. — Richardguk (talk) 03:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) Yes, HIDDENCAT is a property of the category page, and so is all-or-nothing... you can't have it pick and choose to hide on articles, unhide elsewhere. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:32, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

REPLY

This page WIKIPEDIA:Synthesis says what you are doing is not aloud. The cite has to say what you say.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amisom (talk • contribs) 17:22, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Editing {{Rating}}

Wikipedia:VPT#Suggested_edit_to_template_and_creation_of_tracking_category I hate to be a bother, but do you know if you can edit {{Rating}} as indicated at this thread? My fear is that this will be one of an indefinitely large number of requests that gets archived without ever being resolved. If you are willing and able to amend this for me, I greatly appreciate it. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:42, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to let you know, per your additions to the testcases page, that if you preview decimal input on an article page you can see the insertion of the tracking category Justin wants. Cheers, — Bility (talk) 07:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you

Thank you for notifying me of the template deletion discussion. Pigsonthewings failed to do so. Mabuska ^(talk) 12:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Location map help

hi, i saw some of your comments on the location map page and am assuming you have some knowledge about it. how do i make a name appear on mouseover to a marker:

you can see my code here http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User:Misconceptions2/sandbox, it has a part which says "link=Rayyis", but it does not say rayyis on mouse over to the marker which has the label=Exp. of Zaid ibn Haritha (Al-Is)--Misconceptions2 (talk) 21:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple post. Have responded at User talk:Misconceptions2#Location maps. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:18, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Response at Template talk:Location map#Location map mouseover help. — Richardguk (talk) 01:25, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Greater London

The discussions at Talk:Greater London may be of interest to you, especially the confusions with regards to postal counties (vs "real" counties)...--Nilf anion (talk) 17:45, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts on maps

I've had a couple ideas, that I'd like to bounce off someone:

Relatively straightforward - showing the towns/cities like in this map. Could break it down further to show successor parishes, charter trustees etc etc.
Much more complex, possibly highly rewarding. Its possible to go back in time from the modern boundaries in England/Wales. As a rather extreme experiment, I managed to recover (most of) Devon's hundreds from the modern CPs. More practically, I could create a series of time slices going back a year at a time showing the changes. I doubt there will be any major stumbling blocks to 1889, though it will be time consuming in the extreme. This could lead to maps like File:Canada provinces evolution 2.gif showing the development of the pre-1974 districts and their replacement with the modern ones. It won't be perfect, as I can't readily account for the minor changes like this but "calibration" against old OS maps should prevent anything serious.

I suppose this is partly duplicating the work at Vision of Britain, but this is a much simpler objective (and as they don't give out their boundary data...). Of course, that makes them a useful way to double check. Thoughts?--Nilf anion (talk) 23:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting – it would never have occurred to me that it would be possible to derive pre-1974 boundaries without institutional support, so if it can be done, even to an approximation, it would be an impressive achievement.

Perhaps Devon has been subject to less change at parish level than more urban parts of Britain, but civil parishes continue to comprise the majority of the area of the country outside Greater London (even though they no longer contain much of its population), so at least the larger building blocks are in place.

Do the colours on the Devon PNG correspond to administrative city/town status? I assume the political associations of the highlight colours is coincidental.

Do any cities elsewhere contain town councils within their boundaries, so that the district (or charter area) and parish tiers cause town/city status to overlap? Councils of cities like St Albans and Stirling sometimes claim that the legal extent of the city is less than the extent of the area governed by the council, though I am not sure how soundly based these claims are.

Is there a way for viewers to control the timing of multiframe images – something like the play/forward/back buttons on BBC weather maps? Animated GIF diagrams can seem very slow until you notice something of interest, and then it's often too late to digest fully what has changed before the next frame appears, but I think this is currently a technical limitation on Wikipedia.

Have you a talk subpage for this? You may have noticed that I'm enmired in enwiki talkpages whilst procrastinating over the postcode maps, but I aspire to cast aside sloth, one day!

— Richardguk (talk) 01:02, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re the Devon map, yep the red/blue doesn't relate to Lab/Con. (Red = city, blue = town is only significance). Clearly that aspect has to be borne in mind when selecting final colours. I'd guarantee there's towns within cities, just think of the absurd Cities like Carlisle (Carlisle's city status ought to be vested in charter trustees or a parish council, not the district council - but that's too sensible for local govt!). As City status is such an unusual thing in Britain, that suggests towns and cities shouldn't be mixed. An national map showing city by status (or by date) would be good and straightforward. Towns will still be a pain though, it would seem odd to show the towns of Devon without marking Exeter somehow....

Animated GIFs aren't really ideal for this sort of thing - the frame rate is preset by the author, its not possible to pause or rewind. And they are slow to start when big. That said a series of flat images with suitable cross-linking gives reasonable function. That's the plus of using GIS data - can ensure the base map is constant.

I suppose we could co-opt one of my maps pages on Commons (or create one) commons:User:Nilfanion/Maps/Historical for instance.

I think what I will do is upload a couple demonstration files to aid future discussion: Showing the districts of Devon just before the 1970s reorganisation and the hundreds (as they were in 19th C). Choice of Devon is partly personal, but its a good one to play with as its fully parished. Heavily urbanised areas are likely to be harder of course. My "end goal" will be able to place things like the creation of Dartmoor Forest in its place.

And I share that feeling about getting stuck in quagmire on talk pages and delaying productive work as a result...--Nilf anion (talk) 01:29, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) Brighton and Hove - one city, two towns. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:04, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Brighton and Hove can be separated by use of the ONS urban sub-divisions for instance. Problem is that only gives the boundary between them, not the entire boundaries for the two towns. Does the town of Hove have a precise boundary today?--Nilf anion (talk) 12:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've started a page at commons:User:Nilfanion/Maps/Historical - clearly it will take some time to compile data(!) The maps to the right show the districts abolished in 1974, as well as the hundreds in 1832. Or at least approximations of them - I would not recommend their use in articles. Check their file descriptions for known errors, there are annotations on the Commons pages to explain more clearly.

A more careful treatment, which is what I'm planning should handle the majority of these errors. For instance Brayford is a nuisance as it was two parishes High Bray and Charles in 1974, which were in different parishes. However, the boundary between High Bray and Charles is topographic and can be re-created by following the stream.--Nilf anion (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to post towns

(I don't know how all this works, sorry if I'm putting this in the wrong place)

When I moved into the Tibshelf area, I asked my neighbours what the postal town was, which was met with a resounding "Bolsover". That's where I got my knowledge from (obviously not very reliable knowledge).

However I have tried what you suggested and my address came up as "_____ Street, Tibshelf, Derbyshire". I have made a small revision to the page, in light of this, however if this is still incorrect, please tell me.

Thanks, Francisidents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FrancisIdents (talk • contribs) 18:23, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the feedback. I have replied at User talk:FrancisIdents#Post towns. — Richardguk (talk) 19:06, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Post towns

Hello again.

I have tried your postcode finder and it indeed said Alfreton. What I used was the Post Office equivalent (that was the one which said Derbyshire). Won't be using that one again!

As for Tibshelfian2102, that was my old Wikipedia account -_-

Thank you for clearing this all up anyway.

~ Francis.

FrancisIdents (talk) 10:18, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Any chance of looking over ?

http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_UK_geography

http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Trains ( Which appears to have a number of UK Releated locations )

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Lua

Oh, I forgot to mention, but I took your tip, which made it into today's edition. Thanks for the heads up! - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 12:22, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'll be making that automatic soon, now the design has gained a consensus. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 12:35, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

List of United Kingdom postcodes

It is nice to be slightly less busy IRL. I think the best thing to do is to make the article no longer a dab page. Could it be filled out a bit more? Perhaps providing maps or more prominent links to the postcode area articles. MRSC (talk) 19:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the best thing to do is expand it. I'm fairly certain hybrid article/dab pages are against the guidelines and are going to run into problems eventually. To make the page a bit different to List of postcode areas you might want to pipe the links - such as List of postcode districts AB10-AB99 - this deals with the problem of expectations and makes clear the postcode area articles are in fact list of postcodes. I'd keep the 'postcode district' nomenclature rather than 'postcodes' because that is reality vs. misconception and the job of an encyclopedia isn't to reinforce misconceptions, even common ones. MRSC (talk) 11:02, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. MRSC (talk) 14:19, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Lua / Signpost

Omitting the new milestone dates was entirely accidental and caused by me changing PCs midway through a sentence and thereby forgetting what I was going to write :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 21:10, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

SM postcodes

Why would they call it SM when SU isn't taken? It seems fairly obvious to me that they've called it SM as Sutton and Morden.--90.204.123.51 (talk) 11:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the message after I undid your good-faith edit.

"Sutton" does seem an odd name for the SM postcode area, but it's definitely the current official name. As shown in the cited sources (Address Management Guide and the map in the Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom), Royal Mail names all the mainland UK postcode areas after the main post town (e.g. FY is "Blackpool" not "Fylde"). So it is at least consistent of them to name SM after one town rather than two, even if it doesn't match up with the code.

Of course, aside from the current name, there's the separate question of "How were the code letters derived?" Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any reliable sources for this information. (As well as SM and FY, other oddities include IG/Ilford and SP/Salisbury. Also, UB is officially named "Southall" not Uxbridge! Maybe Uxbridge got demoted or Southall was too easily confused with other areas.) We could guess the most likely name, but that goes against Wikipedia's policy of requiring reliable sources. Some unofficial websites list plausible names like "Sutton and Morden", but they might well have just been guessing backronyms. Probably the only reliable way would be to find an old Post Office leaflet or newspaper report from when SM postcodes were first announced, or to visit the Royal Mail archives.

So I agree that your guess is a logical and likely one, but until it's more than a guess we shouldn't include it in the article.

Hope that clarifies things.

— Richardguk (talk) 12:47, 29 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) The Royal Mail was an early user of OCR technology, so as far as possible, postcodes were allotted to eliminate the potential for recognition errors. Certain letters (J and Q) do not occur at all, others are valid in certain positions but not others, and some combinations are deliberately omitted. There is also the possibility that somebody listening to an address read out over the telephone might mis-hear certain letters; this could explain the non-use of SU - it could be verbally confused for SW. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the addition. Since SW was created many years earlier and is nearby, it's plausible that the Post Office were particularly fearful of confusion if SU existed. Also, though U and W can both be used in the final part of a full postcode, there are no other area names where _U and _W coexist in the area name with the same first letter, which is consistent with your theory that they were treated as confusable when the initial area codes were assigned. — Richardguk (talk) 17:08, 29 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Thanks for tracking down that javascript thing in my monobook.js. Gigs (talk) 15:32, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Just wanted to say thanks with the template/magic words. i would have -never- figured that out on my own! Kevlar (talk) 21:40, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for December 6

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unicode

What do you think of the direction at User:ChristTrekker/UnicodeSymbol? Feel free to comment there. ⇔ ChristTrekker 15:58, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Birkenhead

Hello,

Thank you for correcting my screw-up of the Birkenhead article. I thought there was something wrong with the disambiguation link and tried to fix it. - Michael David (talk) 04:49, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for fixing my village pump edit

WikiThanks

Thank you for cleaning up my edit on Village pump (technical). I'm not sure how that got there... I checked "Show changes" on that edit before I saved, so it somehow got added between me checking the changes and saving the edit. Once again, thank you! – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome! Looks like an accidental paste. Some browsers paste with a middle-click of the mouse (or scroll wheel click), which is very easy to do unintentionally, so perhaps that (or Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Insert or MenuKey-Paste) was the cause. — Richardguk (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox power station

Hi, Richardguk. You have been one of contributors to the {{Infobox power station}} or its preceding templates. Therefore I notify you that there is a discussion about changes to the power station infobox template. Your contribution is appreciated. Beagel (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Post towns in the United Kingdom

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