Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cheshire/Archive 2

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Feedback

I must say I'm quite jealous of the amount of progress and organisation that is evident on this project! It seems better than that of the wider UK geo project! - shame I'm north of the border however!

Was wondering if I could have some feedback with regards to an ammendment I'm proposing about settlement article structuring; I think the proposal is a positive one, but would like consensus and feedback if pos. The proposal is found here. Hope you guys can help! Jhamez84 22:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

"Thematic" articles

We are putting in some good work on the administration and the Settlements of Cheshire, and User:Salinae has done some good work on Salt Mining in Cheshire and Canals in Cheshire, So, I wondered if it would be a good idea to produce a list of more "thematic" topics which might be put on some wanted list for articles? In that way, we might be able to get a better skeleton structure for what work needs to be done. Some ideas that spring to my mind are these:

• Canals in Cheshire (already started)
• The Salt Industry in Cheshire (already started)
• Public Footpaths of Cheshire
• Roads of Cheshire
• Rivers of Cheshire (possibly closely linked with the canals article)
• Railways of Cheshire
• Archeological Sites of Cheshire
• The Silk Industry of Cheshire
• Public Parks and Gardens of Cheshire
• Religion in Cheshire

Are there any others that spring to people's minds, and should any which I have listed so far be discarded? If we can build up a list of possible themes that we can arrange in order of priority and number of people willing to give them a try, we can start to fill out bits on the main project page more. What do people think?  DDStretch  (talk) 16:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Good idea - perhaps these need to be posted on the main page. There are a number of railway station pages, plus a number of road articles, so putting this together under a larger umbrella of "transport in cheshire" would be relatively easily initially. We could then "grow" these themes. Pixie2000 18:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I had been thinking of a Firsts in Cheshire, listing inventions, structures etc. However, I could only think of three things (polythene, Anderton Boat Lift and the Bridgewater Canal), so I thought it would be a bit sparse. Salinae 21:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Just came across the fact that (apparently) Mollington was the first place to have a Neighbourhood Watch scheme. That is four "firsts" then. Pixie2000 22:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to find out if there are any more "Firsts" for Cheshire which might be added to any article. So, I think it should be added to the list. We can always decide to put it in as a prominent section of, say, the main Cheshire article if it still seems a bit sparse after some hard searching around.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok - I'll put all these possibles for articles on the main page in the "Open Tasks" section. I'll put in some more tasks which I know some are already doing as well. If people are working on something themselves which has not already been mentioned, feel free to add them. I'll also put in a section where requests for help can be put if anyone would like some help with some of the tasks they are working on.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Templates

I've added some more templates on the main project page. They have been designed for the civil parishes within each borough. I've got Ellesmere Port and Neston, and City of Chester still to do. I've tended to neglect Warrington and Halton for now.

I've undoubtably missed out some "principal settlements" within each template, so would welcome changes made to add in the towns that people think should be added. I'd also welcome other comments about them.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I've thought about adding a [[Category Cheshire]] and [[Category {{PAGENAME}}]] to the Cheshire template. This would mean that each town in Cheshire would automatically have a category - the same as Category:Middlewich. For example Castle Park House, Frodsham could then go in the Frodsham category. What do people think? Salinae 23:15, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately this doesn't quite work - although the page (for example Northwich) has category links to Category:Northwich and Category:Cheshire, the Northwich and Cheshire Categories dont have a back link to the Northwich page. Does anyone know how to fix this? Salinae 12:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I thought this would initially be a good idea, but now I'm not so sure having seen it work to some extent and thought about what is exactly happening. May be I am missing something here? This is what I understand now happens: The Cheshire Template is added to all settlements in Cheshire as well as some other places. This means that these would all attempt to have a category created for them - even villages in Cheshire would have an attempt made to create their own category. Now, if I have this correct, I am not sure that this would be welcomed by the wikipedia admin people nor would it be what we want to happen. Perhaps I am missing or misunderstanding something here, though? Could you comment, please?  DDStretch  (talk) 13:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct. Everything which included the Cheshire template (basically towns and villages) would have a category created under its own name. Having tried it I can see that it could cause a problem if everything (villages etc) wanted to use that template. Maybe drop it for now, and put them in by hand where its worthwhile (e.g. towns)? Salinae 21:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Would it be "tidier" to place a reference to the Cheshire Portal inside the {{cheshire}} template (Template:Cheshire)? I think this would be a cleaner look for all the places, and also save us having to update the individual articles. This is how they have done it for Template:London and Template:Cornwall. I would do it myself, but I cannot figure out how with our template!  Pixie2000 (talk) 10:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I added {{portalpar|Cheshire}} to Template:Cheshire yesterday (28th January 2007). However, since this template doesn't get put on all Cheshire-related articles, there will still be a need to add the portal to some other articles. Last night, I tried to think of how we could select all articles that were concerned with Cheshire, and add the portal to them, but I couldn't think how. That is, unless we had a global category in which all articles were routinely placed, or had some kind of "bot" that trawled through adding the portal link to all Cheshire related articles it found. I don't think Category:Cheshire has any way of "propagating down" any additional stuff placed in its top level, and I don't know enough about bots to know how to do, whether we can do it on our own, or how we might specify "all Cheshire-related articles" to it in a way a program could interpret. My solution was to do what you've suggested, but may be we can specify a few other places to add the portal link which would increase the amount of "automatic coverage".  DDStretch  (talk) 16:52, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I have started a discussion point on the County template talk page to make it easier and cleaner to add the portal link into the template on which the Cheshire template is based. I think it will end up with a cleaner look than we currently have, but this change does not resolve the problem of Cheshire-related articles that do not include the Cheshire template as they are not "place" articles.

Would it therefore also be worth considering a new second Cheshire Template that contains links to "topic areas", and include a portal link on this new template too? I was thinking of something like the bottom part of the Cornwall template. This could be added to every Cheshire article.  Pixie2000 (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree with you about the ugliness of the present placing of the Cheshire portal link. I remember playing around with it a bit when I was considering putting on various templates, and none of the now readily available solutions looked any better. I agree with you about the advantages that might be had by having a second Cheshire template. If we had one that gave topic areas, as you suggest, then it could be added to every Cheshire-related article, thus doing away with the necessity of the Cheshire template (for placea and settlements) being edited at all. The new template idea would be perhaps a better solution as well, as it would not mix up so much the distinction that can be drawn between a template containing purely "settlement/local administration information" and more "internal wikipedia-topic information". I hope such a move would not be in opposition to any guidelines or perceived guidelines that other, non-Cheshire Project editors, might think are more set in stone than they are. I mention this as I have a vague recollection of some discussion somewhere about this sort of thing, but I can't now recall exactly where on wikipedia it was. I personally would say "go for it" and let us as a project for Cheshire just deal with the people who object if and when that happens.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I have updated Template:County and Template:Cheshire to improve the link through to the portal. If anyone thinks they can do a better job then please do have a go!!  Pixie2000 (talk) 21:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

How far do we go?

I am fairly new to Wikipedia and note that initially you wanted the template just on towns and villages. Now interest seems to be spreading to canals etc. I have written a few new articles and added to some older ones, almost all with a Cheshire basis - Cheshire people, buildings, structures, etc.(see my user page). Should they be included in the project? Should I add the template to the talk pages of all of these? Are the talk pages containing the template integrated somewhere (like lists of...)? It's a worthwhile project and something we Cestrians should take pride in. Peter I. Vardy 21:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for the comment and your work already on articles concerned with aspects of Cheshire. Please feel free to add your name to the list of participants on the main project page. I think the template should go on all articles that are concerned with Cheshire. I saw the first task of the project as getting a start on sorting out the county, district, town, and village articles, but the project should also work on other aspects as stated in its aims. So, if you would like to add templates to any of your projects, please feel free to do so. As far as I know, the record of where the template has been used is not recorded in a permanent list, but it is possible to construct a list "on the fly" by going to the template page and clicking on "What links here" in the menu (the Context bit of the menu on my setup). So, one would go to Template:WikiProject Cheshire by typing that into the "Find" box and pressing go. Then one would click on "What links here". I think at some point, we may be able to think about having a "Cheshire Portal", just as Cornwall and London do. We would need to know about a few more "thematic" articles existing on Wikipedia before that could happen convincingly, though. If people think the project should be restricted, though, let's discusss this. I agree we should take pride in our County (even though I was born in it and don't live in it at the moment, I still think of myself as someone from Cheshire.)  DDStretch  (talk) 00:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - anything Cheshire related can be included as far as I am concerned. Pixie2000 08:27, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I have just extended an article on Robert Spear Hudson who was born in West Bromwich and whose business activities were in that town and in Liverpool. However he lived for some 9 years at Bache Hall, Chester and during this time played a prominent part in the civic and religious life of Chester. Do you think that he (and others similar) should be included in the project? Then how about Joseph Crosfield, subject of a recent new article? He was the founder of Crosfield's, the chemical business in Warrington, now in Cheshire but throughout his life he and his business were in Lancashire. Peter I. Vardy 16:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Schools in Cheshire Template

This template is a good idea, but I'm a bit confused about some of the entries. I know that Altrincham, Trafford, and Stockport at least used to be in Cheshire, but they aren't any more. So, it made me think that this list was based on the Historic County of Cheshire. But if that is the case, shouldn't there be some schools for places like Birkenhead and Wallasey as well? I'm not sure what others think, but it seems to me that if we want to include places that were historically in Cheshire, it would be best to include places like Birkenhead and Wallasey (along with any others) as well, perhaps structured along the old lines of the county boroughs, municipal boroughs, rural districts, etc. My own opinion is that perhaps we should stick with the places that are currently in the Ceremonial County, which would include schools in Warrington and Halton, but exclude the others unless there are intrusions into Cheshire by the other schools' catchment areas (which I doubt). However, others may have a different, more consensual view. If my view is adopted, then perhaps they should be structured along the lines of the current boroughs a bit more clearly?  DDStretch  (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - I found it so included it without giving it much of a look - it seems "overly big" to me in layout and includes the wrong boroughs. Do we edit it ourselves or do we raise a comment on the template page itself? Pixie2000 18:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I originally created this as a test to see how it looked, following on from the creation of the Cheshire template, and so the schools list is not definitive. I think the main problem with it is that even correcting only for schools in Cheshire, it is likely to be too large, and could dominate a lot of schools entries. Maybe the right way is to just have the different districts in the template, with links to pages for Schools_in_Cheshire_(Helsby), Schools_in_Cheshire_(Northwich) etc as entries Salinae 21:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - and a general note of caution - there can be a lot of confusion caused unless you are sourcing from current government sites. Schools in Altrincham belong in Trafford not Cheshire. They need to be removed but I was unclear how to do this.

So far as schools in the current county of Cheshire are concerned:

• This is the list of all the current secondary schools in Cheshire- (its from CCC's Education and Leaning website) Might it not be better to use this instead ?
• This is a list of all the primary schools - and links to their catchment areas

Maybe they could be linked to the template in some way.

Cosmopolitancats 13:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The lists of schools on these two links are not complete, for example St Mary's primary school in Middlewich isn't included, as are none of the schools in Warrington etc. Salinae 23:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers, links, and comments. And welcome to the project. I agree with you about going by current government sites (which is why I've appeared so obsessive about issues concerning the civil parishes in Cheshire, where the "official" government sources aren't always clear, and sometimes seem to disagree with each other.) The big box thing is a template, and so you can edit it by first finding out its name. One then goes to it using the "Find" box, and then one chooses to edit the page. Its name can be found out by looking at the source of where it appears if in doubt. In this case, you can do it this way, or look at the instructions of how to insert it into an article. Its name is {{Cheshire Secondary Schools}}, and so you would type in Template:Cheshire Secondary Schools in the find box, and then choose to edit the page as normal. I hope that helps, though you may need to understand some of the wiki formatting rules to do the actual edit.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I have produced User:Pixie2000/Sand3 as a list of schools in Cheshire. It's sources are council-maintained schools and private schools. Some of the private schools may well be outside Cheshire so this needs revising. I have also produced User:Pixie2000/Sand2 as a possible option for secondary school templates. Any comments? Any thoughts on how to proceed with this?  Pixie2000 (talk) 19:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I suppose it depends what the purpose of it is - is it to provide a factual list of schools, or is it to also to answer the question "I wonder what schools there are in Northwich" (for example) ? Salinae 23:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - would it be better to add the borough to the left to "split the list up" in a better way, like the original had?  Pixie2000 (talk) 17:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Right, i have updated my template to include the areas - see User:Pixie2000/Sand2. If nobody objects I will replace the template with this?  Pixie2000 (talk) 20:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks quite good, and nicely smaller. I'd go ahead and just do it straight away.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks nice, and better for being divided into areas. I've got a few comments: why is it restricted just to council maintained schools (and how is this delineated since VA schools are partially funded by churches etc so should they be covered); why are Halton and Warrington not included; and some of the links from the old page no longer work (e.g. St. Nicholas Catholic High School). I don't want to knock it, I just think that putting all the secondary schools in Cheshire on one template will always look a bit too big. Salinae 21:11, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

All constructive critisism happily received! This is only council maintained schools, as I understand it. I guess we need to add links to other templates for other types of schools? Halton and Warrington were not included because they were not off the list from the Cheshire County Council website that I used - I will hunt down the others and add them. I am trying to be careful not to go back to where we started with a huge template, but it might be where we end up!  Pixie2000 (talk) 08:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Right, I have updated the secondary school template and also produced a page List of schools in Cheshire.  Pixie2000 (talk) 19:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The list of private schools in "Cheshire" now includes schools which are not located in Cheshire i.e. all those which are located in Trafford. I think the confusion may arise because Cheshire is one of those counties which continues to be referred to as the place where a place is, even if a legal change occurred decades ago. Can the project please be very clear somewhere near the very beginning of the project page which "Cheshire" it is dealing with. Is it the current adminsitrative county or Cheshire in all its forms in the past or both. I think clear and specific guidance is required. Please note I've not edited the list - I'll leave that to Pixie

On a separate point, I would prefer to see the Private Schools included under the area where they are located - as a sub-heading like 'primary schools'. I think this would generally be more helpful if a geographical categorisation is the primary determinant of the way the list is organised Cosmopolitancats 06:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I took the list off some website somewhere without really reviewing it. I will do some more digging and tidy up the list.  Pixie2000 (talk) 07:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I have updated the list now - up to you lot to check it is correct!! :-)  Pixie2000 (talk) 17:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm reviving this sectiont o add some information: a discussion has opened on Template talk:Cheshire Secondary Schools about the number of redlinks in the navigation template. The suggestion is that they should be removed as their presence is not a agood idea. if you want to comment on it, please do so. I've already added my views.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Keep – on balance. There are points for and against of course. At least we have a comprehensive list of the schools on the template which is easy to consult. If the red links were removed and someone writes an article on a red-linked school without realising the template exists, it will remain unlinked, whereas if the red link were there it would automatically turn blue. And the red links are a good reminder for those perusing the template that maybe they should write at least a stub. I have found the red links in List of places in Cheshire a stimulus to write at least a few words when I have been writing some of the church articles. Peter I. Vardy 10:24, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Peter, could you put this message on Template talk:Cheshire Secondary Schools? I'd do it, but I wouldn't want to be said to be editing other people's comments. I think that is where the discussion is probably going to be most. Thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. Peter I. Vardy 13:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Outline map for Cheshire

A new InfoBox is being sorted out for UK places (the discussion, etc can be seen here), and, in the course of this, a discussion about maps has happened. Jhamez, who has done really good work on constructing a new outline map for Manchester has very kindly constructed an outline map for Cheshire. This could be used as well as, or in place of, the thumbnail map in the infobox so as to give a more accurate placement of settlements within Cheshire. I think the size of the current thumbnail map and the size of the red marker makes it of comparatively little use. We may be able to specify a better marker than the large red dot that is currently used, but that is less clear at the moment. He would like suggestions and discussions of how it could be improved upon, and, once we are happy with it, we can start to introduce it into articles about Cheshire. It will make a good adddition to articles about, say, ancient monuments or other structures which are not settlements, within Cheshire, I think.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:50, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind comments. Any suggestions for improving the map (it may have some minor errors due to my unfamiliarity with the area), please feel free to contact me; they will be easy to impliment. I'd like to see each county (at least for the North West to begin with) have a map like this. Jhamez84 22:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Have a Go at Did You Know?

If you write an article greater than a stub or contribute significantly (more than 1,500 characters) to a pre-existing article it's worth finding an interesting fact from it and submitting it for the Did you know? feature on the Main Page - but do it within 5 days. The threshold seems to be low; in fact I've submitted 5 (4 on Cheshire-related subjects) and all have appeared. It's a way of getting Cheshire-related topics on the main page and gives one a bit of kudos too. Peter I. Vardy 15:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Templates for talk pages for settlements

First off - can I just draw people's attention to the fact that at the top of this page it now says the following "This page is 122 kilobytes long. It may be helpful to move older discussion into an archive subpage. See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page for guidance." I've just tried to skim read it and am having difficulty sorting out key points from things which might be archived - so have not touched it. Who organises the archiving of this page?

I assume that the purpose of wikipedia should be supported by the way in which it works and I'm suggesting below that maybe the way in which it works at present when developing geographical information might be better organised. What I'm finding as I'm trying to contribute to geography and place articles more generally (Cheshire and elsewhere) is that the discussion pages can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help and that the principle of new text always following older text maybe needs to be revisited. Wikipedia seems to assume that everybody has the time to read through every last sentence - which I'd suggest rarely happens in reality.

Would it not be possible when setting up discussion pages for settlements to also have a template for the discussion page which initially corresponds to the template for items which should be included so that it acts as a bit of a prompt for people who may be able to contribute. At the moment wikipedia operates on the basis that people should know a template or policy exists (eg in relation to settlements types), know where to look for it and then apply it. It doesn't happen! Instead contributors start to make contributions on a common sense basis. Guiding them as to how to help might reduce the need for subsequent edits and would save time and effort and I would suggest would also make contributing a more positive experience for new contributors.

I've been using this approach to develop the pages relating to Bowdon and Hale (yes, I know they are no longer in Cheshire - but they are a good example of what I mean). The article on Bowdon had had mammoth changes over time - none of which were recognised at all on the discussion page. Using this approach of templating the discussion page also means I can make notes of things that need to be done or what still needs to be added even if I don't get round to it on one visit.

I think it's possible to archive sections of a page so that would mean that older sections might be archived as and when required without upsetting the overall template for discussion. In other words newer following older discussions could still be followed - but within standard sub-headings rather than for the page as a whole.

Would it be possible to get this issue discussed at a wider/higher(?) level within wikipedia? I have no idea where to raise the topic. Just as I had no idea that there were any templates for settlements when I started...... Cosmopolitancats 07:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for the comments. As for who archives the pages and its current length, we do not have any one person whose job it is to do that, as the project is still fairly new. The talk page was slightly long, so I've now sorted out two archives in which a lot of the old stuff is now placed. Can I ask that everytone avoids editing on those archive pages. If they wish to revive an old archived topic, they can do so on this talk page, together with an appropriate link to the old stuff on the archive page it can now be found. I suppose that means I am now the archiver.

Now, onto your suggestions about changing the format of the talk pages. They currently conform to the guidelines given on WP:TALK. I think it would be best to discuss your proposals there before changing any other talk apges, and I think it would be best to leave the one here as it is until comments have been got on WP:TALK's talk page.

With respect to your suggestions about knowing where resources are, this problem has plagued myself. I think it may have been a problem for others, including some on this project. I did try to make a suggestion about re-vitalising the UK Geography WikiProject to have a greater role as a centralised reference for resources that can be used to write about UK places, etc. You can find it on the project's talk page (direct link to the section). As you can see, there has been a somewhat limited response, including one expressing the idea that there is no need to do this, which I find very surprising. May be you could contribute there, and perhaps even begin to gather together resources that could be placed somewhere on that project's pages for all to see? It would have the effect of letting a greater number of people contribute than just having our own project do something that might be quite limited to particuloar issues surrounding Cheshire. I'm happy to help out where I can, but recently I've had to attend to other "real life" issues, and so I'm not sure how much more time I could contribute to that tyhan the time I am already planning to use for the Cheshire project work, and so on. The UK geography project does seem, otherwise, rather moribund, and I think it would be good to see it rise, phoenix-like, from it now quiet state.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I have in fact already contributed on the UK geography talk page about the difficulty not having structure/guidance on the talk page was having for contributions. It strikes me that rather too much debate about what is required in wiki is conducted by people who are wiki 'old hands' and who are not maybe thinking enough about how to make wiki more accessible to the ordinary man in the street who may have something valuable to contribute. Without doubt, it's likely to be local people who have the most to contribute to any geography project - they just need good simple guidance on how to do that.

I can try looking at what are the basics that should be on every discussion page for geography items. Has anybody got any suggestions as to what should be included Cosmopolitancats 01:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Cheshire article rewrite

I have re-structured the Cheshire page and added some more content. Please review and amend as you see appropriate - it still needs plenty of work, particularly around its History.  Pixie2000 (talk) 21:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

New InfoBox to be used for all Settlements, replacing "Infobox England place"

There's a new, unified infobox that has been developed aftermuch discussion and editing. It is smaller and automates the entry of certain fields (like Fire, Ambulnace, and Police fields). Now that is it able to be used, the old England place infobox may soon be up for deletion. We need to make sure if we add an infobox to any new or existing articles that we use the new one. We may also like to consider changing any we come across, though I believe there is a move to try to automate the changeover. The new template can be added as I have done for the Haslington entry. It is used by referring to "Infobox UK place" inside the double curly brackets.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:02, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

People from X, where X at the time was neither in Cheshire at the time of birth nor the period of their residence

At least two people have been listed in the "Famous People" section of Cheshire whose criteria for inclusion may not be clear. Kim Cattrall was born in Widnes, and Tim Curry was born in Warrington. Both were born in those places. However, Kim Cattrall left Widnes when she was less than a year old (i.e., 1956/1957), and Tim Curry left Warrington for South London in 1958 (information for both of these facts taken from Wikipedia.) So, given that they were born in an area that became part of Cheshire only after they had left, should they be listed in the "Famous people" section of Cheshire? Being notable, they certainly could be listed in the corresponding "Famous people" sections of their birth towns, but I think they should not be placed in the Cheshire article's "Famous people" section. What do others think? The reaaon I ask is that there is some dispute starting about this.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

See my comment on the Cheshire talk page. I suppose in these cases the answer might be no, but rewording "famous people" could allow for a more useful section. Salinae 12:54, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Or you could have "Famous Cheshire People (boundaries since 1974)", "Famous Cheshire People (boundaries pre 1974)", "Famous Cheshire People (Boundaries pre-Norman Invasion)" :-) Salinae 12:54, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Along with claiming some role for the project in editing Liverpool, Flint, Burnley, etc, because they were at some point claimed to be in Cheshire? 8-) I've altered the name of the section to "Notable Residents", following the guidance you pointed me towards.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:04, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you looked at (for example) Category:People from Wigan which shows how the structure that has been rolled out works. I can do the same for Cheshire from if you all want.Regan123 22:53, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

New infoboxes

Apologies if I am duplicating DDStretch's comments above...

A new infobox has been developed for use on UK places articles. If you have any concerns or appraisals, please make them at Template talk:Infobox UK place. Regards, Jhamez84 01:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello

Sorry I havent been around lately, I couldnt come on for one reason or another. Just to let you know, if there are any articles needing doing, dont hesitate to let me know. JFBurton 19:58, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Urgent: Assessments Needed

We are not at the stage in this project where we need to urgently begin to assess the articles that fall within our remit. The assessments are of two kinds: the quality of an article, and its importance. I've summarized my own thoughts, below, but if some people have differing views or other ideas, please let's hear them.

• Guidelines of how to do this can be seen on the relevant sub-page of the main project page (also accessible via the new "sub-page box" I've put on the main page, as well as by some links there.)

• For examples of some assessments that have been done (I've done some over the past two days when trying to sort some issues out involving the system), the towns of Cheshire should all have assessed by myself now, and random villages as well, though most villages whose names begin with "A" have also been done. So these can be used as "models".

• You'll notice that the template that gets put on all talk pages of Cheshire-related articles has been altered slightly and has had space created on it to record assessments in the manner you can see in the examples.

• I've also started to include an "Assessment Report" (Some early assessments may not have this, or may not have them under that name.) I think if we can do this, structured as I have done, it will help us specify in some detail what needs to be done for an assessed article, as well as record when the assessment was done, in case "stale assessments" need to be updated.

• New categories have also been created so we can see what articles have been given what kind of assessments. We need to move as many articles out of the unassessed categories as soon as possible (See details of the categories used on the assessment sub-page, and I'll record them on the main project page too.)

• We also need to begin to be more ruthless in asking for references and citations for articles.

I'm a member of the England WikiProject as well, and they are in the middle of a big drive to mark all England-related pages and assess them so as to get to work on them, and this spurred me into action for our own project. Please let's give them a go, and we can discuss any issues or problems on the talk page associated with the Assessments sub-page.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:54, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I've altered the "importance" rating into one visibly called "Priority" (though the categories still get called "Importance" at the moment as its a bind to rename them). I thought "priority" would be a more useful way of categorizing articles than "importance" which is far tolo subjective, I think. The aim of the priority assessment is to assign a level of priority to articles in terms of the need they have for work being carried out on them asap.

All we need to do is now agree on what requires a Top Priority in sorting it out. I've initially assessed Cheshire as being in need of this, because it seems the most useful first article to get to as Featured Article status as possible. I will go and alter Middlewich now, after User:Salinae's welcome submission of it for "Good Article" status. Why not have a list of articles that should be of Top priority given here?

1. Cheshire
2. Middlewich
3. (add to this list)

I hope that is useful.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Nominating Middlewich for GA

It's probably been long enough, so I've nominated Middlewich for Good Article. The page is pretty stable now, and although there's still more which could be added it'll be worthwhile getting feedback on where it can be improved. Salinae 22:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Obviously theres much to do Salinae 21:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that. However, would setting up a kind of "task force" for us all on the project to work on to help this article gain GA status help at all? We could divide up some tasks between ourselves and work together in that way. I can see that Runcorn may be also a suitable candidate for a kind of "task force" as well. What do you think?  DDStretch  (talk) 01:10, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I think many of the things highlighted were formatting issues - especially with ref to (now earlier) versions of How to write about settlements. I'll go through the article and do a sub-editing job later and let people have a look Salinae 12:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

There's been quite a bit of changes since the unsuccessful GA nomination. Could someone please have a look and point out what areas Middlewich could be improved in? Thanks Salinae 21:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I've made a few minor edits to the article and placed some suggestions on Talk:Middlewich which I hope are helpful. Peter I. Vardy 21:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I've updated according to the suggestions and resubmitted - see how this goes! Salinae 22:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Failed again! A large number of administrivia. Salinae 21:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Project Page Reorganisation

I thought the project page was getting a bit too big, so I'm in the middle of reorganising it. Expect a few sections to be moved into their own sub-pages which can be accessed by means of the box at the top of the page. If people think this is a bad move, or want something specific, please let me know.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessment Categories being proposed for renaming!

Quite surprisngly, many of the categories I have recently set up have been proposed for renaming here. I'm neither sure what is going on, nor why we have had ours singled out when some othershave not, nor what the good reasons are for them being renamed. I've asked for the renaming to be put on hold until the reasons and the advantages, etc have been explained to us. Let's see what happens.  DDStretch  (talk) 17:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

They should be being renamed soon. It seems that I was "caught out" by an inconsistency in two different guidelines concerning the naming of categories, and the one concerned with naming assessment categories was not explicit. I, of course, used the one that has become the "non-standard one". Oh well...  DDStretch  (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

District Categories

I have finally started categorising them as promised many moons ago. I have used the settlement templates to automatically add categories. I will then go through all the other Cheshire articles and put them into the correct district cat. Cheers, Regan123 22:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

No problems. The auto cats can take up to 24 hours to update, so they may take a small while to complete. --Regan123 23:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Infobox flag straw poll

Hello fellow editors. A straw poll has opened today (27th March 2007) regarding the use of flags on the United Kingdom place infoboxes. There are several potential options to use, and would like as many contrubutors to vote on which we should decide upon. The straw poll is found here. If joining the debate, please keep a cool head and remain civil. We look forward to seeing you there. Jhamez84 11:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Cheshire talk page template

Is there a {{WikiProject Cheshire}} talk page template, as there is for several other projects? Chris 03:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Guess so, writing this answered my own question, this is not shown on the front page of this project. Chris 03:27, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

But if you look, there is a box containing important sub-pages, and in that is a link to Templates and so on. Following that link will give you the template you were looking for (amongst others).  DDStretch  (talk) 10:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Roman Tours - (Website)

The Link to Deva Victrix Roman Tours Continues to keep getting removed from the article, stating it is "Commercial" Albeit it may be (but I am not stating that it is), but it is relevant to the article, it offers educational information to viewers.

Can this please go to an independant discussion ? //Melonite 21:57, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I replied to the message which was also posted on the article's talk page. I include my response below:

I have removed the link once. I can't see where it has been removed before then from this article, and so I'm not sure why you think it "continues to keep getting removed". If the link were to be added along with a suitable relevant and real contribution to the article for which it was a refence or citation, I think it could be justified in being kept.

The greater problem at the moment is that a substantial amount of material has been added by users, one in particular who has not responded to messages on his/her talk page, nor to emails sent to him/her to provide references and citations to the material added. In the absence of this, we are left with a list of material which might be verifiable, but for which we cannot decide, and which would probably be extremely difficult to provide references or citations for retrospectively by people who were not the original editors who added the material. In the light of this, the addition of yet more material that is not justified or (in the case of the external link we are discussing) not referred to in the main text as a reference or citation has seemed to me to be giving us yet more of a mess to sort out. However, as I've said, if the link is referred to sensibly in the text, I see no reason why it could not be kept. The rest of the uncited information may well have to more radically edited to help conform to the requirements of wikipedia (WP:CITE, WP:References, and WP:A.)

 DDStretch  (talk) 22:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just noticed that it isn't clear what article is being discussed here. It is Deva Victrix, an article that is, in my opinion, fatally flawed by the almost complete absence of citations for almost all of it, meaning that, according to the guidelines of Wikipedia, it could be justified in being removed, and the article would then be reduced effectively to a stub with some photos. We need, as a project, to discuss what to do about this article, and so the next section is pecifically about this article.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

What to do about Deva Victrix?

Deva Victrix, was originally under a different name, and before that, was a part of another article. It has had a large amount of information, possibly the great majority of it added by User:Chestertouristcom with effectively no citations or references. User:Chestertouristcom has no user page, but does have a talk page: User talk:Chestertouristcom. There seems to be a very strong link with an external site: Chester Tourist External Site. I tagged the article as being in need of references back in January 2007. Nothing was done, and the user continued to add a lot of unsourced and unreferenced material. I left a message on the user's talk page on 25th February 2007, asking for citations and references to be added, and this was followed up by an email to the user, but no response was received and new unreferenced material continued to be added up to the middle of March when it stopped.

The problem is, what to do? We are supposed to require entries to be adequately sourced and referenced, and yet hardly any of the material for Deva Victrix is. It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attempt to produce references for this material retrospectively when one isn't even the original author, especially so if one does not have a specialised knowledge of this topic. I have asked for assistance on the other wikiproject that has a template on the talk page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Archaeology but as yet received no response. I've also asked for advice about what to do on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources with, as yet, no reponse.

My feeling is that we could simply delete all the material, but I imagine this would cause some consternation in certain quarters (the removal of an external site whose inclusion had not been justified has already caused some negative comment, as the previous section shows.) If we did delete the unreferenced material, the article would then probably be almost just a stub article with a lot of photos.

However, what other way forward is feasible? Unless someone or some people can begin to go through the article checking and sourcing the stuff, adding citations and references where necessary, we are seemingly stuck except for waiting until someone who can do that comes along. Could I ask for some comments on what to do here? Many thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

And all the rest...

I know that the state of the state of the Deva Victrix article is probably the same as many articles on wikipedia, and there will be other articles that fall within the Cheshire project that are in a similar state, but I do feel we urgently need to begin addressing these issues, because the fact that other articles are deficient should not affect our own desire to have articles within our project's remit improved according to the guidelines. So, what do we do in this case? And, what can we do in the wider case of other Cheshire-related articles? Perhaps establish a priority list of articles that need work doing on them, or what? If we want to stop the Cheshire Portal from going "stale", we certainly should be trying to address this problem.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

If anyone wants a set of references for Roman Chester so they can update the Deva Victrix article please feel free to steal the set I used on the timeline page of the site we are not supposed to mention. An additional set of references can be found here: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=19183

You mean, of course, The Chester Wiki - no need to feign shyness in mentioning it. Thanks for the pointers. I hope someone can spare the time to get around to updating it soon.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Chester Wiki

I came across Chester Wiki when a link was made to it from Chester Castle, having been previously unaware of it. Does anyone know anything about Chester Wiki, and how it relates to Wikipedia and the Cheshire WikiProject? Peter I. Vardy 12:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Peter, please see the discussion here for some information when I asked for advice whether it would be generally good to have such an external link in place. On reading the advice, I think I am inclined to delete the links where they occur unless some serious work is done to improve the quality and verifiability of the content on the Chester Wiki. After all, we have a large enough job trying to bring the articles up to standard with respect to references and citations, without new external links that point to a different wiki with no verifiable content on it.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:53, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Well hello there, I created Chester Wiki in February and I must admit did add some links at the bottom of the Chester page to my site. I can honestly say that I didn't mean to cause any annoyance, hinderance to anyone, indeed, I didn't honestly comprehend the amount of effort that you guys put into Cheshire over here. And on that bombshell I will not try and add anymore links and will advise other ChesterWiki users not to either. Sorry for the bother —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.214.9.147 (talk) 22:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

After some discussion, I've added the Chester wiki external link back to just the Chester article. The situation is not clear-cut, but it would seem better to have the link there than not, on balance.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Runcorn achieves GA status

The good news is that, after a lot of very hard work by Peter I. Vardy, Runcorn has now achieved Good Article Status. Congratulations all round, but especially to Peter.

Now we probably need to think about some other articles. Middlewich must be near to being able to get it now, and I think we need to turn our attention to Chester and Cheshire itself, probably. What do people think?  DDStretch  (talk) 12:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations again. I'll use Runcorn as a template and try again with Middlewich. Salinae 21:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

BBC Online Cheshire coverage

Not sure if anyone has seen this but I wondered if it might be worth doing something on? It looks quite interesting. Purpleprose 22:08, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Brighton Belle, Winsford

When wikifying the new page on the Brighton Belle pub in Winsford, I've created a new category "pubs in Cheshire" (sub cat of Cheshire). I'm not suggesting that every pub is notable and should be included, but some will be (because of age, architecture or links to notable trains!), and so could be included. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Salinae (talk • contribs) 22:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

I see there's already a "Public Houses in Cheshire" category! Salinae 22:58, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Using the navbox generic template

I switched Template:Cheshire, Borough of Crewe and Nantwich over to the {{navbox generic}} template the other day, mainly to reduce excess whitespace but also to make the navbox more standardized and easier to maintain. It was pointed out that in the process I made it look less like a number of other Cheshire-related navboxes, so I've rejiggered the styling to match the original more closely (before: [1], after: [2]). If it's still a problem may I offer my services to convert over the other navboxes to navbox generic in the same manner? I encountered this navbox via random paging but I don't mind sticking around to help make my drive-by fit in better. Bryan Derksen 06:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Given that the modification now looks and fits in with the other navboxes, and more than happy myself, top accept your kind offer to help us convert them - as you say, it saves a lot of white space, and so everyone wins! Thanks for the offer and work.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Getting started on a few more. BTW, in case anyone wonders why the navboxes are automatically "hiding" on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cheshire/Templates and Images, it's because the default behavior of navbox generic is to autocollapse whenever there are two or more navboxes in the same article together. This default behavior can be changed but I'm leaving it as default for the time being since IMO it's generally a good idea. Bryan Derksen 23:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

People from Categories

A discussion has been opened at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject London#Category:People from Ealing by district about upmerging local area categories for People from... into current local government boundaries only. This could have implications across the whole of England if carried through. Your are invited to join the discussion. The proposer is planning a massive merge by 22nd June if no objections are received. --Regan123 11:22, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Vale Royal Abbey

I have received a request from an editor working on Vale Royal Abbey for a current or recent photograph. Does anyone have such a photograph they could add to the article? Peter I. Vardy 08:23, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Cheshire gazetteer

I'm not sure if the Cheshire WikiProject would be interested in moving its List of places in Cheshire forwards, by creating a stronger, gazetteer type article more akin to List of places in Greater Manchester and List of places in London?

As one of the strongest and most active county WikiProjects, I think this would be a great addition to your aims and acheivements. Jza84 20:46, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

This would be a great addition to the project. I would like to assist in any work towards doing this. It would help bind together a number of other lists already in existence and also help highlight where extra work is required. I've added a link to an extra table on the main project page that might also be included in such a revised article. Some points I've made on a reply on your talk page to a message from you on mine may also be useful.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:37, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Cheshire Portal

Is there any protocol for updating the Cheshire Portal? It doesn't seem to have been changed since January and there have been lots of new articles & DYKs since then. Can any project member wade in and change it, or is there a single maintainer? Espresso Addict 10:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

We haven't discussed it really. I set it up, but it was never my intention that only I should edit it - Far from it, as I wouldn't have the time to maintain it like that along with all the other things I want to do. At least, that was my understanding. So, my opinion is that you should certainly add to it if you see a need to update or expand it. If a need comes for there to be some coordination to the edits of it, I am sure that it could always be discussed as would be the case for any other articles, I think. But I wouldn't want to presume too much myself in thinking the time is now, but perhaps others have a different view?  DDStretch  (talk) 11:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I think, decent Cheshire articles willing, we should aim to update it every month. (At least then if we miss, it will still get updated every few months...) I'll have a think about a shortlist for the various slots, and post some thoughts to the portal talk page for discussion. Espresso Addict 11:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Good idea! Thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Now posted, for those project members who aren't watching the portal page. Espresso Addict 16:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

A bout of assessment

I've just removed the backlog of tagged but unassessed articles. (The 7 remaining are all glitches in the system of one form or another.) I haven't left comments, as I was keen to get through all the articles in search of portal fodder, but if anyone wants comments on something let me know here or on my talk -- I didn't watch all the articles, so I won't see queries on their talk pages. I'm guessing that my standards might be slightly tighter than previous reviewers (I've assessed a lot for WikiProject Biography, which has rather high standards, particularly with regard to referencing), so do correct me if you feel hard done by.

I don't know if it's worth producing some generic comments on typical stubs & starts and linking them from the template, as a high proportion of them had much the same problems?

We should probably get a bot to summarise the totals for us, but so far, we have:

• GA: 5
• B: 44
• Start: 196
• Stub: 336
• List/dab/other unrecognised: 7
• Total: 588

There seems to be some confusion over the importance tag, as I suspect some articles (Cheshire, for instance) have been put in high when they should be in top, and others the converse (eg Middlewich).

Now there's just those hundreds of untagged articles languishing unloved in the Cheshire categories... Espresso Addict 02:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Chester City Council website

Just a heads-up that the CCC website now has a 'new look', which looks to have trashed all the urls. Sigh. Why do they do these things? Espresso Addict 02:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

request for help @ The King's School, Chester

hello WP Cheshire. i don't believe that the CCF section of one given Cheshire school merits a big list of its past commanders in the school's article. it is too narrowly focussed, an "indiscriminate collection of information" in contravention to WP:NOT, and the people written about are completely non-notable and non-encyclopedic in wikipedia terms. However, an enthusiastic old boy seems to be disagreeing with me and repeatedly re-adding this trivia. i pointed out that if you kept this, you might as well have a big list of former head boys. He agreed with me, saying i was "proving [his] point" and that this would indeed be a good idea, rather than just an insidious case of crap-creep. Would members of the project please have a look at the page and see what you think? thank-you. tomasz. 13:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

On a quick view, my initial thoughts are that it is under-referenced. That is even before the issue of the structure and the content (referenced or otherwise) is included. Given that it has been tagged as being in need of references since January 2007, and nothing has improved, bar the paltry few we see now, I wonder why people who were viewing this article have not been challenging and removing inadequately referenced claims made after January 2007 as soon as possible after they were added. This would seem to be a good way of countering what is emerging here, as one then never lets it "get out of hand" if one correctly pays attention to the requirements of wikipedia for adequate verification of claims (WP:V.) For content that was added before January 2007, and which remains unreferenced, I think one needs to consider whether it should be simply removed and a fresh start made, adding references immediately as one goes along. There is an even more chronic problem like this with Deva Victrix, so this article is certainly not alone in suffering from this kind of thing within the remit of our project. I think the issue of inadequate references needs to be tackled in a robust and strong manner. If the ultimate aim is to produce articles that achieve Featured Article Status or even Good Article Status, then unreferenced stuff will never get through the hurdles, and attempting to insert appropriate in-text references afterwards, possibly when one wasn't the editor who added the unreferenced stuff in the first place, is so difficult as to be almost impossible. We should insist on editors trying very hard to be as professional in their editing as possible, which is why I've made the comments above. However, others may have different views. In terms of the other structural issues, a lot of that can be resolved at the same time as the under-referencing, and, insisting on good referencing practice may well reduce the problem of "crap-creep" - or at least, allow it to be sorted out more easily.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

By the way, there is a big danger of violation of 3rr for this article today.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:40, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I rated the article B-class rather than Start because (1) it does have some inline references and the school websites listed could be assumed to cover much of the material; and (2) it includes a high proportion of the material that a school article should have. I did feel it was borderline, so if someone wants to demote it, that's fine by me.

I'm not sure I agree with User:Ddstretch that all unreferenced material should be removed. As far as I'm aware, that policy only applies to biographies of the living, particularly where the material could conceivably be defamatory. I've found that putting a fact tag on new unreferenced material, combined with asking on the talk pages of the article & of the editor who added it, sometimes (though not always) produces the reference, and often it's possible to find it by Googling. Relevant Wikiprojects can also sometimes help. Much of this material may well be covered on the school's website, which is linked.

I agree that the past commanders section is definitely unnecessary and should be removed. Of the other disputed material, I'd be inclined to keep the Achievements section, as this is similar to that of other school clubs & associations and likely to be referencable via local papers etc, though it needs shortening and rendering into prose. The present commanders I'm ambivalent about; I don't find it interesting but others conceivably might. Perhaps a compromise would be to include just the three highest level, in a brief prose format?

I'll copy the relevant parts of this comment to the talk page for reference there. Espresso Addict 17:41, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that one should attempt to get the references produced, but my own experience with Deva Victrix has not succeeded. I guess this has coloured my view of the matter. In the case of Deva Victrix, i asked on the editor's talk page, emailed him, and then asked on the relevant project talk pages for help in adding appropriate references, and nothing has happened except the editor who had added a whole lot of information added some more! Given that one of the aims we have is to get articles to Featured Article status, in a situation like that, what else can one do but propose to delete the material and start again! I have added a message about deleting unreferenced stuff on the King's School talk page, and I hope this will produce the appropriate references without having to go to any further step.  DDStretch  (talk) 17:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've come across the main contributor of that article on Geograph, and not been particularly impressed by the quality of his/her contributions compared with their volume. I think it's usually best, though, to assume good faith (sometimes through gritted teeth), and only remove material that's clearly trivial or could never be referenced. Much of the material in the King's School article may well be in the school website somewhere, and with a school of that age there may well also have been books written about its history. What seems to me a particular shame with this article is that the fascinating material on history has been neglected, while the material on clubs and associations in general, not just the CCF, has proliferated. Recentism, I suppose. Let's hope your warning and my review comments produce a positive effect without having to wade in and delete chunks. Espresso Addict 18:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Updating the Cheshire Portal for September

I suggest that we have the goal of updating the featured article/bio/picture on the portal for September. (I've already completely refreshed the New articles & partially refreshed the DYKs.) I've created a formal Suggestions sub-page, and copied the above suggestions there, so I'd suggest we try to come up with a decision somehow (voting?) there over the next week. (Copied from the Portal talk page for those project members who don't watch the portal page.) Espresso Addict 10:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I've made three suggestions for the proposed September update at the Portal talk page. Everyone's thoughts most welcome! Espresso Addict 10:28, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

The History of Cheshire

In between other work on wikipedia, I'm coming to the end of a long period of reading about the origins and early history of Cheshire, and have started to do some initial writing around the subject. I want it to go in the History of Cheshire article, and it could then be used to modify the short summary section in Cheshire. It is possible that a number of articles may be split off from an expanded "History of Cheshire" article, but that will be for the future.

There is a common view that in the early years of Cheshire, its northern border was the River Ribble. For example, we see it in Cheshire and Historic counties of England and it was in History of Cheshire, until I made an early edit partially correcting it, though not entirely in wikipedia-style. I think this oversimplifies a rather uncertain state of affairs, and it isn't a consensus view in the available published literature, which I'm gathering together now. I've been thinking how to represent this in articles. One really needs to almost duplicate a lot of the content of the relevant parts of Volume 1 of Victoria History of the County of Chester (VCH) to get an accurate and authoritative extended argument about the state and origins of this uncertain situation. At the moment the articles that discuss it (apart from the one I've already edited) give a misleading picture of a strength of consensus amongst the various sources that discuss the history of Cheshire. My personal conclusion is that, if one has to say yes or no to the idea that the northern border was the Mersey rather than the Ribble during this period, then yes would be the more accurate answer, contrary to the views expressed in the wikipedia articles and in a very few sources. That is because I think the VCH is likely to be the more accurate, and it explains how an administrative issue to do with binding the Domesday book may have given rise to the idea that there was a closer asssociation between Cheshire and the land "Inter Ripam et Mersham" (what was later to become South Lancashire) than was actually the case. However, there is a need to give a neutral, balanced view of what the sources say. Over the next week, I'll be beginning to write about this and other aspects of the History of Cheshire. I raised the issue of the northern border some time ago on Talk:Historic counties of England and got effectively no feedback, except that another editor raised a similar issue of that article also not giving a true picture of the state of affairs for Rutland, which I have also partly verified by reading various sources (F.A. Youngs 1991 "Guide the Local Administrative Units of England: II Northern England" was useful in this case.) Let me work on it for a bit, and then see what you think.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

• This is certainly an article that is top priority for expanding! It was a little galling to have to link the current version from the portal, but perhaps it might encourage others to contribute. Have you got A New Historical Atlas of Cheshire? It seems to be saying that the northern boundary in the 10th C was the Mersey, but the county also included a panhandle to the north east reaching up to the Pennine watershed, in what had been Northumbria. Espresso Addict 12:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The paltry state of that article was the main thing that set me off in thinking about massively expanding it. Yes, I do have that book, and it forms part of the body of sources that dispute the idea that the northern border was the Ribble. I have (quite) a few others. My first task is adding all the references to the books I possess that are relevant and will be used by me in a section at the end. That way, I can easily put in-text references as Notes to the individual page numbers in a Notes section. I know about the "panhandle" as it was in existence up to 1974. Given that I was born in 1953, it formed part of the old borders of Cheshire that I knew well, but is now is just a fading memory or something new to younger editors. There have been other border changes as well: the border was changed to follow the Manchester Ship Canal rather than the Mersey, and a huge chunk dangling down from Manchester was given to Manchester at around the same time. Taxal was originally in Cheshire, but was transferred to Derbyshire some time ago, and, in return, Cheshire got Kettleshulme. There are a few other interesting border or jurisdictional issues (Threapwood springs to mind). I'm toying with an idea of having a series of outline maps giving the changing borders in a kind of time-line, so they can be seen in context a bit.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding the references is certainly a good first step. I guess you might have to be careful of OR in interpreting the different sources. I don't know how far one can go in saying 'A is more reliable than B', or 'the consensus of reliable sources is x' before getting into murky OR waters. I'd be far more comfortable doing it in my real-life specialism than in local history/geography which is just a hobby. The maps would be simply great, if you can produce them in a way that doesn't infringe anyone's copyright. Espresso Addict 13:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Featured articles

One of the goals of this project is to make "as many [articles] as possible become Featured Articles". Members of the project may be interested (and amused) to follow the "progress" of Runcorn. The first attempt was soon rejected here. So I went for a peer review. As its prose was criticised I submitted it for copyediting which, as you may see, seemed to make it worse rather than better. It is now suffering its second attempt as a FAC here. After many hours of work (?play) and a bit of "Wikistress" I'm beginning to wonder if it's all worth it. It would be great to get at least one article on a Cheshire subject featured, but it may be harder than I had expected. I must say I have had good support from other project members, especially  DDStretch  (talk) and Espresso Addict, so many thanks to them. Should I pull out or persevere? It seems that in order to get an article as a FA you must (1) have more hours available than there are in a day/week/month and (2) a pretty strong mental skin. There's a challenge for project members! Peter I. Vardy 20:11, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Having tried to get Middlewich to GA status twice, and having it pulled up on trivial points I don't think I'll bother again. This is because (in my view) getting an article to GA status (or FA) involves lots of jumping through linguistic and stylistic hoops without adding anything to the quality of the article. None of the comments I received were about what was said, rather about how it was said. GA (at least) in no way represents a journal peer review, rather it's a sub-editing job. The time is better spent improving the quality of the articles without thought about whether it would or wouldn't get the nod from the FA/GA reviewers. Salinae 20:38, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a pity because I think Middlewich is pretty good. And I managed to get a non-Cheshire article, Grand Crimean Central Railway, acceped as a GA without any trouble (I think there's a lot of luck in which assessor happens to pick up your article). I agree that our first goal ought to be to get as many Cheshire articles "good-enough" (and there's plenty of scope for that!) rather than go for the virtually-unobtainable FA "badge" – or even GA. What do others think? Peter I. Vardy 20:52, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately its the luck thing which I find most irritating. You wait for about 3 weeks while someone picks it up, and then it gets reviewed against "How to write about large US cities" rather than "How to write about small UK towns". I'm not bitter though! Maybe if the review process wasn't so long winded it would be worth another go. 21:28, 2 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Salinae (talk • contribs)

I agree with many of the comments here. My own feeling is that the so-called review process is often more about the idiosyncratic stylistic preferences of whomsoever one gets reviewing than about anything which is really copy-editing (and I speak as someone who has had some experience of copy editing and working with copy editors in a professional capacity.) The criteria state that the standard of writing required should be of professional and "brilliant" level. All I would say is that I am sad that sometimes, the standard of some reviewers who are advancing such stringent standards seem not to be requiring such standards in their own comments. I think I must apologise for encouraging people to put articles in to this process, now, given some of the comments I have seen. However, what should we now do? I think the best we can do is to get as many articles into a state which we feel are well-sourced, well-written, and as accurate and informative as possible. That means, amongst other things, trying to ensure that all articles contain good citations. I, too, think Middlewich and Runcorn are good articles compared with many. and gently suggest that may be they could be set aside a little, apart from editing the usual vandalism or misplaced editing that one routinely sees in many articles. I think the "luck of the draw" effect has tended to bring the GA and FA processes into some disrepute in my eyes now. I personally would like to see the coverage of all civil parishes in Cheshire to be raised above stub level (and for all of them to have an article about them), preferably before the new local governments changes proposed start to be implemented, if they are going to be. I'm also keen to see more good articles about various historical issues in Cheshire—for example, I've recently spent some time correcting a misleading idea that had spread across many articles about the northern boundaries of Cheshire during the Norman Conquest, and this error largely came from one editor in the past who relied on one webpage source, which they didn't really cite properly anyway (see Hundreds of Cheshire, History of Lancashire, and Blackburn (hundred) for examples of what had to be edited to get the correct picture across.) Deva Victrix is a big bug-bear for me, as a couple of prolific editors have added masses of totally unreferenced stuff to it, and, despite being left messages and even sent emails, have not responded in any way to the idea that they should try to go back and help the project by putting in-text citations to the text. Its an almost impossible task for another editor to go back and do it now, and so we may have to start from scratch, using what has been written so far as just a guideline. So, for me, I intend to spend my time making sure the coverage of civil parishes is enhanced, and also in writing about various historical issues in Cheshire. Some others are writing articles about other matters: parish churches, various industries and canals in Cheshire. Perhaps declaring our general areas and concentrating on enhancing all articles within the scope of a few general areas chosen individually by editors would help generally for now?  DDStretch  (talk) 22:21, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I'd intended to concentrate on History of Middlewich and History of salt in Middlewich, and the efforts in trying to get Middlewich to GA have been a distraction. Of other articles Winsford seems like a good one, since IantheLibrarian has put quite a lot of work into this but not really provided sources (other than a couple of books). Also Rail accidents in Winsford for which there is lots of background material. Salinae 22:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

So Runcorn has failed again as a FA – it's almost a relief! On the advice of one assessor I spent the equivalent of 2 days over the weekend just adding information to the references. Ironically the FA on the main page yesterday, John Millington Synge, did not have a single inline citation (Runcorn has 109, all now fully detailed). How did it get accepted as a FA? And how did it get on to the main page? Still I learnt a lot about the referencing process in the meantime which will be valuable for the future. I shall not be trying for FA again, although I may have the occasional go at GA. It all got rather irritating to be told such things as I should have used an ndash rather than a hyphen, or I put an mdash in the wrong place; things were in the wrong section; sections were too long, too short or in the wrong order.

Rather than this project going for FAs (and the resultant external adulation) I agree that we ought rather to be working at steadily improving the Cheshire-related articles we have and filling the gaps; and always aiming for high standards of accuracy and good referencing. After all this is an encyclopaedia for people to consult and learn from, not a platform for showing how clever one is at making and following rules (many of which are inconsistently applied and frequently arbitary). So I agree that we should work particularly in the areas of of our special interest; mine at the moment is the Grade I and II* listed churches in the county (I happen to have borrowed the standard book on the subject, and it interests me). I feel this is a valid area for the project (and how much more suitable for an encyclopaedia than the latest album of some pop star, or the latest episode in some soap opera). Good luck to all members in the process. In my opinion the overall quality and scope of Cheshire-related articles and stubs has improved in the last few months and I feel the existence of this project has played a part in this. Peter I. Vardy 08:32, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Back from holiday to contribute my tuppence on FAs/GAs... I'm sorry Runcorn failed, Peter, as I think it met almost all the standards, and I agree that the rounds of 'improvements' haven't done much for the article. I believe that getting:

• the majority of high–medium priority articles to B class (ie, accurate, appropriate and adequately referenced text of decent length, with illustrations)
• the lower priority ones beyond brief stubs
• all relevant topics included

should be a more important aim for the project than the rather erratic external recognition associated with GA/FA class. If no-one disagrees, perhaps we should amend the project page to state this?

The only reservation I have is that we do need a set of high quality articles for refreshing the portal, where we're particularly short of biographies at the moment. Perhaps we should start a project collaboration to improve a few articles for the portal, concentrating in the first instance on biographies?

As to Cheshire subject areas on which I'm concentrating, I'm interested in half-timbered buildings, SSSIs, hills (not that we have many!) and walking, the Gaskell family and William Bowman. In the short term, I hope to improve the coverage of secular listed buildings in the Crewe & Nantwich area and to fill in some gaps in William Gaskell. Espresso Addict 14:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the improvement of all articles up to B class would be the best general aim to have now. On a point of information, I've never been clear whether the sequence of qualities by which articles can be assessed is as straightforward as it might seem on a cursory glance. Is it intended that a GA class article is of lower quality than an A class article, or, conversely and more relevant to what I'm thinking, to what extent would it be difficult for an article to be assessed as being A class if it had not been previously awarded GA class? My reason for asking this is for the long-term and also for getting an idea of how to modify the project page. As I see it, if A class is not dependant on a prior GA class assessment, we can alter the project page to state that getting all articles up to B class with as many as possible attaining A class. We might even explicitly state that we feel these aims are more realistic than chasing after a set of variable and capricious administrative and bureaucratic assessment processes to get GA or FA status.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:19, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that GA & FA are independent of the Stub–Start–B–A sequence. I don't think getting a Good assessment is a necessary prerequisite for getting an A class assessment. Following the Biography WikiProject's example (which has its own team of assessors for A class: see Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/A-class review) we could even perhaps create a formal assessments team within this project, which might then be able to award A class. I don't know how many hoops we'd have to jump through to get approval to do this, though. Espresso Addict 16:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

From my comments above you will not be surprised to hear that I am broadly in agreement with the above. A general overall improvement of Cheshire articles would be a big step forward; B would be a good start and much better than where we are today. I must say, though, it's rather good to be able to put a "badge", ie. , against articles both on the portal page and, if, one is the main/sole editor, on one's user page. It also shows a degree of external approval. Pity there's no "badge" for A grade! Let's go for as much general improvement as possible, rather than a few outstanding articles. After all we're really here to provide information for people consulting an encyclopaedia, rather than personal adulation for editors or projects (although that's nice too).

Is there any way of getting the message across about inline citations? Not all the members of the project are doing this. I have some sympathy because for a novice it's all rather complicated and confusing until you've had a bit of practice. But as already been said, developing articles where this has not been done is vitually impossible — and you often have to start again from scratch. Peter I. Vardy 17:19, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Re badges, we could always create our own for use on the portal and personal user pages. If we don't put them on articles and they are clearly distinct from GA/FA badges, then I don't see anyone complaining.

Re inline citations, I fear I was one of the offending people until relatively recently. Though I'm a medical writer (among other things) in real life, I got the impression when I started editing as an anon back in 2005 that Wikipedia didn't want proper referencing and it was better just to cite a general source. The change in climate has been slow and subtle, and I think it's still less than clear from all the help guidelines &c that inline referencing to reliable sources is now a requirement. One thing we could do within the project is to create some guidelines for the various article grades, where inline referencing is an absolute requirement for progressing beyond, say, Start. Espresso Addict 17:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of a sort of Cheshire "kite-mark" or something of that sort (we could have a Cheshire cat with its smile as the icon). This could go on the talk page but, more importantly, the portal could have a link guiding the reader to the articles we think are of particular interest, quality, etc. How we work out the criteria, etc. would have to be discussed — something broader than just the Start-B-GA-A-FA sequence, I suggest.

Initially I did not include inline citations but following (1) encouragement from  DDStretch  (talk) and (2) my experiences with attempting FA, I have been persuaded that they are necessary — and really from the outset of an article. Even a "Start" can go quite a long way, and to extend it further could be difficult. You may have noticed that I have been converted to including them even in stubs. It is true that the standards for citation have been raised; I had this explained this when I complained that, on the day Runcorn was failed as FA, the FA article in the Main Page had only one inline citation. Peter I. Vardy 19:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of the Cheshire (cat) kite-mark, with a link from the portal to the list of articles we recommend. Agree that in the context of the portal it would be more useful based on interest as well as quality. The Cheshire project template would probably need to be modified to include it (no idea how that works!). If others are interested in doing this, we should probably start up a sub-page of the project to thrash out the details.

I've been labouring on improving and in particular referencing Peak District for nearly a year, when the Featured National Park articles, at least when I started working on the article, frequently had no references at all save an external link to the park authority website! Espresso Addict 21:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

(unindenting to stop too much LHS white space)
I also like the idea of a Cheshire kite mark: the cheshire cat might even have varying broadness of grin to indicate some kind of quality differences—a plain straight line for a stub class, up to a really toothy grin for the highest quality, though may be this would be too much. Let's have a separate sub-page to sort all this out a bit more.

About referencing: I've got the habit of using references and have been using it professionally since the early 70s. So it is second nature to me now. I didn't use references in wikipedia edits for about 3 months of my serious use of it, mainly because I didn't own or have access to any sources that were relevant to the kind of articles I was editing (I avoided any mathematical psychology, statistical, (child) psychiatric, and philosophical articles, which were my professional research fields, or close to them because I didn't want to dive into the morass of poor quality biased articles I saw on those topics) Once I got some sources, I started referencing in earnest.

One thing might be to see whether any (a) style of referencing might be preferred (my own professional life has favoured what is commonly known as "Harvard style", which I know as APA style (American Psychological Society style) and find easy through many years of exposure, though in my later years, I had to use the footnote form for the medical journals I wrote stuff for. In terms of the (b) particular markup technique used, apart from a small amount of time, I haven't used the cite templates at all. Perhaps I should, and perhaps we all should, though the relevant pages say their use can be controversial? I've also now settled on using a separate "Notes and References" section and a "Bibliography" section to help reference in different places in an article, different pages from the same book. I'm happy to help out with all of this. My time may be a little limited at times, as I need to give a bit more time over to assist my wife and son learn more English more quickly (their first language is Mandarin Chinese, whereas Mandarin is just about my second language.)  DDStretch  (talk) 21:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd stick to just one level of recommendation, otherwise I fear it risks getting over-complicated. I've only occasionally had to use Harvard style and found it rather clumsy; it definitely feels more distracting than numerical markers. Personally, I'd be against standardising on the cite template, as I feel it can make articles almost impossible to comprehend in the edit box. Espresso Addict 21:55, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough about levels of recommendation. I know many find Harvard referencing distracting, and that has acted as a deterrent for myself using them on wikipedia. My many years of exposure to it, however, means I can't comment on it in any unbiased way, as I've grown used to it now. All I can say is that I find it easy to read, and the numerical markers a bit more distracting. I have no strong feelings either way about this really. Actually, I don't recall ever using Harvard referencing on wikipedia myself. I stopped using the cite templates as I also found it difficult to edit the text with them in, and I didn't like the formatting of the fields that they produced as well. So, I switched over. The means I have of making different page number references to the same book is less distracting when editing than the alternatives I could think of, I found. If the consensus was that we should use them, however, I would comply.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I have done no professional writing and the only referencing I have done previously was for OU courses (ie. hardly any). Initially I did not use the cite templates as they seemed too daunting. However during the full weekend I spent in bringing the Runcorn references up to what was "required" I became used to them and now use them regularly — and when I come across my older references, I usually convert them. The advantage is that they look pretty good in the article and if everyone used them, there would be consistency. Yes, they do look awkward on the edit page, but that's never a pretty sight anyway; and you get used to it when doing further edits. You can see what I've been doing in the church articles in settlements in the first half of the alphabet. (The latest example is St Michael's Church, Macclesfield.)

The other thing I've been doing in longer articles is to have a main heading of "References" followed by a sub-heading of "Notes" for the numbered references, and then another sub-heading of "Bibliography" giving details of the books to which the notes refer. And in the Runcorn article I have another section of Bibiography/Further reading for relevant books to which I have not made direct reference. I saw this idea in a featured article and it semeed to work much better than the rag-bag of "Notes" and "References" we normally see, which does not make sense to me. Peter I. Vardy 08:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This is a sensible idea. The arts/humanities system of having footnotes with pages and a separate References list in my opinion works better where the footnotes fall at the bottom of each physical page. It becomes very odd here where the two lists are back to back. Also, it seems odd to me that it's mainly citations of books that get into the proper References list; journal articles & web references are usually excluded. I've used a Further reading section a few times as well; I think it can provide a useful quick entrance into the literature on a subject without delving into an often extensive Reference list. Espresso Addict 19:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I have started doing something similar to Peter's method, as it is a feasible way (as explained above) of referring to different pages of a book in different places in the main text of the article. The main difference is that i don't subsume all under one section named "References". Instead, I use two separate sections, one after the other: "Notes and References" and "Bibliography". I'll happily change to make my use consistent if it was thought Peter's method would be better. In truth, I sometimes think it is a big enough step to get editors to put references in at all, and the fact that some are added is the main issue, as opposed to presentational matters, which, though important, is perhaps of a lesser importance here.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a greater impetus to not go for GA or FAC status at this time?

I now see that WP:UKCITIES has been flagged up as being only an essay, and not a guideline or policy (as it hasn't gone through some difficult-to-find process which relies on consensus to apply). This means that proposals up for GA or FAC status can possibly fail because they do not conform to WP:CITIES, which can be inappropriate for UK settlements (see later about a possible "Catch 22" situation).

Since the problems of using WP:CITIES for UK settlements prompted the writing of WP:UKCITIES in the first place, I can see that things may well become more difficult for a while. However, reading WP:PG, Help:Modifying and creating policy, and WP:Policy, including WP:Policy#How are policies started? shows what I think is a worrying amount of equivocation over what is being talked about: "Policy" or "Guideline".

However, what I glean from reading the documents suggests that a way to provide a justification for a future proposal of a guideline or policy is to show how it has been successfully used by editors. And so, I suggest that this should encourage us to avoid the potential problems of GA and FAC proposals at this time and merely provide evidence for successful implementation of WPUKCITIES by making use of it in all our settlement articles.

Unless a Catch-22 situation is imposed upon us, i.e. "WP:UKCITIES can't have been successfully used if articles using WP:UKCITIES have not yet achieved GA or FA status articles. And articles cannot achieve GA or FA articles unless they use WP:CITIES, rather than WP:UKCITIES", then all will be well in the end.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:23, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Too many churches!

As is obvious from the project page, I have been writing a series of short articles and stubs on the Grade I and II* listed churches in Cheshire (which I think includes some fascinating material) and there are more to come. However it is making the project page and portal rather cluttered and unbalanced. I propose deleting the individual entries for churches, at least from the project page and maybe the portal, and replacing them with something like – "A number of short articles (stubs) on Grade I and II* listed churches in the county. Details of these can be found at Category:Churches in Cheshire." Are other members happy with this? Peter I. Vardy 08:13, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy with it, but there isn't, I think, any need to delete all the individual entries. Why not keep a few of the ones you feel particularly pleased with and have the pointer you suggested direct readers to the full list? An alternative view also might be that your hard work should be taken by the rest of us to get moving and write many more articles on other topics to redress any imbalance that way!  DDStretch  (talk) 09:04, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest leaving them all on the project page, as I've certainly found your prolific work to be a useful spur, Peter! Perhaps we could archive the list on the project page, or just delete the older items?

When I updated the New articles section of the portal, I included all the new articles which had developed beyond a few-line stub, but I wouldn't object if we decided to cap the number of articles on any one subject to display only the best few on the portal. Espresso Addict 14:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Titles of Church articles

Following the above, I am in some conflict with User:Vox Humana 8' who has changed the title of at least two of our church articles from the format "St xxxxxx's Church, Somewhere" to "Church of St xxxxxx, Somewhere". We do need to have consistency in this, not only within our own project but in church articles generally.

I think there are arguments on both sides. I looked hard and long for guidance on naming churches when I started doing articles on Cheshire churches and found no guidance. So I followed Wikipedia:Naming conventions which says "Generally, article naming should prefer what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize" and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) which says "Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things." Most English people say "St xxxxx's church", rather than "Church of St xxxxx". The majority of titles of British church articles follow the former style, as do the vast majority of articles on US churches. There is no WikiProject on churches so I think we should continue with the common format unless there is an authoritative convention on the other style. Do other members agree?

There are of course counter-arguments (English Heritage in [3] generally states "Church of xxxxx"). And there are times when the common version does not work; for example Church of St Mary-on-the-Hill, Chester does not really work as "St-Mary-on-the-Hill's Church" (perhaps it should be "St Mary's Church on the Hill"!) – but that's an exception. Peter I. Vardy 13:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I would do what you are suggesting, Peter. "The Church of xxxx" seems to me to be a naming style I think I would mainly see in old documents, and so might represent an old, ultra-traditional naming style; though, as you note, it is perhaps a preferred naming style when an apostrophe s would be clumsy or inelegant. It might be an idea to revert the changes and invite User:Vox Humana 8' to discuss any page moves for Cheshire Churches in the relevant articles' discussion pages before doing any more. If the issue becomes major (i.e., with more people supporting his viewpoint), one could always consider having a disambig. page giving the alternative name, but I think that may be a bit much unless there are a larger number of people arguing that the common name used was wrong or in dispute. Well, that's my view, anyway.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that support. I have place the following message on the talk page of User:Vox Humana 8':-

"I do not think that "an admin once told me" adequately reflects consensus or that it is authoritative enough to form a policy for Wikipedia. What I have said above represents what I see as the current consensus. I therefore, with support from other editors, intend to continue to use the format "St xxxx's Church" and I will change back the titles of those in the Cheshire category. I shall not of course change any of the titles on the articles you have contributed, and I hope you will not change any more of mine."

and I hope that will do the trick. Peter I. Vardy 09:03, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the general exhortation to use the most commonly recognised name means that we should use 'St X's Church, Y', unless there's some cogent reason not to. I suspect that users would be far more likely to type that form into the search box, which seems to me to be the most important criterion.

In the absence of specific guidance from a churches project or the manual of style, I'd say the consensus of Cheshire project members takes priority over the views of any particular editor for Cheshire churches, so I'd support reversion to the original form. If a consensus emerges to change the usual form, then all churches should be changed simultaneously to the preferred form. Redirects are cheap, so I don't think it matters if an editor wants to create redirects for other forms.

I don't know the procedure for editing the naming conventions document. A unilateral addition from the Cheshire project might be one way of eliciting a broader community consensus on the topic, although it might be less controversial to raise the question on the talk page. Espresso Addict 15:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Canal-related potential problem

If you take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Waterways#Lock, tunnel names, etc, you will see that an editor has embarked upon making a very large number of contentious edits and page-moves to canal-related topics without prior discussion. Despite the contentious nature of them, edits and page moves have continued to be made, even after their contentious nature have been pointed out to that editor. Anderton Boat Lift (within the scope of our project) has already suffered from such editing, and it may well be that other lock-structures within the scope of this project may be affected. Can I ask that people be alert to any such edits and attempt to revert them? The problem is of edit-wars beginning, but I thought a warning here may well be appropriate.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I've watched Anderton Boat Lift. Checking my style guides has not provided any canal-specific guidance, but normal UK English usage would be to capitalise words occurring after the proper noun in geographical names (the lock at Foxton; Foxton Lock). I suspect, however, this is an area where style varies in different countries, so complete consistency across an international project might not be possible. Espresso Addict 14:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree. In the discussion, in which I have played a major part, I provided a set of authoritative sources showing that "Foxton Locks" (and, incidentally, "Foxton Inclined Plane") were the correct capitalization scheme, but this evidence was ignored and his own opinion was merely repeated along with yet more page moves and editing of articles. This has caused some considerable unhappiness in the Waterways project, and sorting out the mess that has happened is not easy, and, in at least one case, will require admin intervention to undo a clumsy page-move that demonstrates the user making the contentious edits and page moves simply does not have a clear enough understanding of English naming schemes to know what to do when operating unilaterally. We need to be a bit vigilant for a while, as it is still not yet clear that the editing and page-moving without prior discussion will stop.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Cheshire cat(kite)-mark

Playing around with the Cheshire cat in I have come up with and File:Cheshire cat 2.jpg – not very good but my Photoshop skills are minimal; I should have preferred something circular but it would not work for me. Do you think that something like this could be added to Cheshire articles which we think might be of interest to the visitor to the project page and/or portal? Peter I. Vardy 15:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

(Being mischievous) There could be some copyright problems. I don't know how old the window is but if it's not >100 years old then the original image is probably still in copyright (since by taking a picture of it you've copied it rather than creating a new work). Irrespective of the age of the window if you were inside the grounds of the church to take it then you'll also need a property release from the vicar to put it on Wikipedia. Other than that - no problems. :-) More practically I think the idea of a "Cheshire cat" symbol is a good one, could just do with someone drawing one from scratch to avoid these sort of issues (also could be smaller and more iconic). Salinae 21:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

As I've said earlier, I think that project flagging of interesting articles is an excellent idea -- thanks for bringing it up again, Peter! Before we decide on an image, we should probably decide how exactly we're going to use it.

• I don't think we're allowed to put graphics on the article page, and I'm not even sure if we'd get away with adding a category of Cheshire project-recommended articles.
• On the article talk page, it might be clearest incorporated into a banner, which would explain what it meant. A small kitemark image might not work so well here. The banner probably should auto-add a category (like the article grading) but this would of course link back to the article talk page, so wouldn't be the best way of presenting the recommendations to readers.
• The Cheshire Project is really intended for people constructing articles, not for readers, so I'm not sure the recommendations should be included as part of these pages.
• The Portal would be the obvious place, though there's a sense in which every article included on the portal is meant to be recommended! We could add a small kitemark to the new articles that the project considers particularly interesting under Newest Articles and/or have a separate box containing recommendations (the latter wouldn't necessarily need a kitemark).

Re Salinae's point, the image copyright position might be clearer based on the original Tenniel illos (eg alice23a.gif @ Project Gutenberg [4]), as Tenniel has been dead for more than 70 years. I think one would need a jot of artistic talent to adapt them, though, which I am sadly lacking.

One point I've been wondering about -- how are the recommended articles to be selected? I don't think it would be sensible to allow anyone to affix recommended to their own articles. Would we need a (formal or informal) sub-committee of the project to make the calls, and/or a page where project members (and perhaps also readers) could recommend? However, the similar pages for selecting features for the portal have received very little traffic. Espresso Addict 06:30, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear, I had not realised there might be a copyright problem. Perhaps the image should be removed from the articles on Daresbury church etc. The windows were dedicated in 1935 and designed by Geoffrey Webb who died in 1954 [5] so I suppose they are still in copyright. I clearly had not fully thought through the use of the icon. Pity we cannot use it on the article page, but that's understandable. The talk page would be the place for something like it, although as you say it would be a banner rather than an icon (although an icon could be incorporated for fun). I think a section on the Portal for articles of particular interest "recommended" by the project members could be a good idea, although again it would not need an icon. Such articles would not be self-nominated but we could have a page for recommendations and invitations for "support" or "oppose", but this would need project members to take an more active part. From the point of personal vanity it would feel good to have an icon to place on one's own user page against the articles to which one has made a significant contribution and which had been "approved" by the project. These thoughts are a bit rambling and unfocused and the idea may come to nothing. Peter I. Vardy 08:55, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about copyright on the article pages. For a start, the position on photos of 2D art works is at best obscure in the UK, and the use to illustrate the church article could probably be argued under fair use. I think we should progress the idea of how such a recommendations scheme might work, without worrying too much about the details of the image(s) for now. I hadn't thought of the case of icons on the creator's user page, but that's certainly somewhere where an icon could be used; we'd have to be trebly sure on copyright in that case, though. Espresso Addict 09:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

To summarise, I think the idea of setting up a recommendations scheme has a consensus here -- unless anyone wants to object? So... details...

The suggested output of the scheme would be:

• a section and/or subpage of the portal for recommended articles -- if we get more than a few, both will probably be needed
• banner to go on the talk page of recommended articles
• icon which creators of recommended articles could use on their personal pages, possibly with other applications

I second Peter's suggestion of a support/oppose system. Some questions...

• should selection be only by signed up members of the Cheshire Wikiproject or should other readers be allowed to participate?
• in particular, do we want to allow non-project members to suggest items (their own or other people's)?
• should the article creator be able to suggest items? if so, should a self-nomination count as a support vote or not?
• should suggestions and voting be done as part of the Wikiproject subpages or as part of the Portal subpages?

Espresso Addict 12:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• Partial comments on the above. I initially thought that only project members would nominate and vote, but why not let anyone do it (although there may be little interest from non-members)? If we do the former I guess it would be better on a project subpage; if the latter on the Portal.
• On the first sweep it might be best if one did not nominate the articles in which one has been the main editor, or vote on them. However after that, if someone starts or expands an article to a level they think suitable, they could self-nomiate, but not vote.

I do not feel strongly about the above two points.

• We shall have to be careful to clearly define the criteria – something like articles relating to Cheshire which are considered to be of particular interest to the reader (from Cheshire or elsewhere) AND of a reasonably good quality with good referencing (but they do not necessarily need to be long articles).
• Ideas for a Tenniel source for an icon – these are the full pictures which would need cropping and enhancing, and which should not cause copyright problems. (1) [6] I like the smile but don't understand the copyright restrictions at the bottom of the page. (2) [7] I don't like this so much; it's more of a leer than a smile. (3) [8] The duchess picture has a nice smiling cat at the bottom left hand corner. The page also includes (1) and (2) but I don't understand the author's comment at the bottom about hot-linking. Peter I. Vardy 15:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• I rather like the cat up the tree one, but it's probably best with the whole cat, not just the head. The comment about hotlinking just means you're not supposed to link directly to the image on the site (because it uses up their bandwidth), but we'd have to upload it to enwiki or commons anyway. The complete set of illos is up at Project Gutenberg, linked from here (zipped): [9] Espresso Addict 17:26, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Portal links

I note that there is not a "read more" link from the articles on the portal page. People can of course click on the title but most other portals and the main page have a link at the end of the extract to the full article. Should this be added?

Incidentally, as a matter of interest, what are the deprecated templates which every portal seems to have in its categories? Peter I. Vardy 09:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah, that would be my fault -- I removed the Read more... link back in c. August, because it seemed hard to accommodate into the text boxes with the new archive & suggest links without resulting in a lot of white space. I surveyed all the then-existing UK geography portals and, as I recall, some used 'Read more...', while others just used the link in the headword as we have currently. It could be added just run on with the text as is done on the main page without adding too much white space, if that would be a good compromise?

Not a clue on the deprecated templates, I fear. I didn't change the templates that DDStretch used in creating the portal. I notice the same category appears on several geography Featured Portals, so it's probably a recent change that might well sort itself out as a bot goes round and updates one of the template names. Espresso Addict 09:34, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

On the subject of the portal, I've suggested at the talk page over there that we should try to update it every month. I've also created pages within the portal for suggesting content to feature there and for organising suggestions into an update 'queue', but so far there's been little feedback, I suspect because there's only a few project members watching the portal. Thoughts welcome on how to make the portal updates work better! Espresso Addict 09:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for my intermittent use at the moment: other, more pressing family matters are occupying me just now. I will try to get a few articles suggested in a while. I'll be shortly working some more on historical subjects to do with Cheshire, and will add those if they seem allright as I write them. One that I will be expanding next is Diocese of Chester. Next will probably be an expansion of Hundreds of Cheshire or a new article on the Ancient Parishes of Cheshire. These will then allow a more rapid expansion of History of Cheshire until I need to read more. With respect to getting more people making more use of the suggestions pages, I wonder if there is a need to revitalise the membership a little: we do have a lot of members, but no so many apparently contributing. We could try a mass-mailing in the form of a newsletter (some other projects do this), but if that would require a lot of work, then it might not be cost effective.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:34, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

A newsletter is an excellent idea -- we do seem to have a lot of members who rarely stop by the discussion page, though they may well be writing and improving Cheshire pages quietly in the background. It would be relatively simple to knock up a short newsletter at the beginning of the month, welcoming new members, listing those new articles that we know about, as well as that month's featured content etc. Is there an existing bot delivery system that we could sign up for? I fear I know nothing of the world of bots. Espresso Addict 11:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of a monthly newsletter sent to all those who claim to be project members, provided someone is willing to do it. It might stimulate some of those who seem to be sleeping members to do more; or encourage those who are not really interested to leave. We could for example ask all members to nominate cat-mark articles and vote on them. Peter I. Vardy 15:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd be willing to knock something simple up, if someone could appropriate a delivery bot (preferably which just sent the link to the newsletter on a page here). Espresso Addict 17:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

From User talk:Malleus Fatuarum#WPGM New Monthly Newsletter it would seem that there is an automatic way of sending a newsletter to project members. Perhaps User:Onnaghar could advise us. Peter I. Vardy 11:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Wholesale removal of Cheshire templates and the changing of Cheshire-related categories for Warrington-related articles

I have just spent a large amount of time reverting a very large number of edits that seemed to be intent on removing all Cheshire-related templates and renaming all Cheshire-related categories from various village and parish articles for settlements and places within Warrington. The user who did this was User:DShamen. I'm not sure how to view these edits. I certainly felt they should be reverted, but the number of them and the effects that the edits took struck me as being quite disruptive, though I have not reported them anywhere, thinking that an assumption of good faith might still be made. You can see how many were involved by viewing my own contributions (there were around 27, and Peter also reverted one for similar reasons to the ones I gave.) I think we need to be alert to such changes, and wonder if there is any means by which a mass-revert can be carried out that would not be so time-consuming.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:29, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I've just noticed that the changes are much more extensive, extending over many other places (like parks, parliamentary constituencies, and so on) of Warrington-related articles. The pattern of edits is reminiscent of an historic-counties advocate (because of the removal of Cheshire templates and categories from Warrington-related articles), but I'm not too sure. What do others think? I don't have the time to go through look at each of them and revert the inappropriate ones.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I have also dropped him a note, though it might be a bit heavy handed as I think he might now have stopped. I'm not sure what to do other than go down his contributions list, reverting all the changes manually; I'm not aware of a mass revert tool and I think rollback should not be used for them as they are not simple vandalism. If he starts up again, then there might well be call for requesting a block, but it would probably be best applied by someone outside this project. Espresso Addict 00:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

If one looks at the editing history of Culcheth and Glazebury and then on User talk:DShamen, you will see that he anonymously re-imposed the edits in one case and then posted a message on his talk page that complains that we were "rather touchy people". I have robustly replied, as I think, given his prior editing experience of wikipedia, it is reasonable to expect that he should have realised that such radical edits would be better discussed first.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:17, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Middlewich peer review

Could someone give Middlewich a peer review? I'm thinking of submitting it for GA again (despite what I've said previously) and would appreciate it if someone else could take a look. Thanks. Salinae 22:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I could have a look at it if you like, Salinae, but I don't have a handle on how the GA review system works, so it would be a general look. Espresso Addict 23:34, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

That would be good, thanks. I think I'm a bit too close to it now. Salinae 11:32, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Any more new articles for November portal update?

I've just updated the portal for November, but there were only five new articles/stubs listed on the main project page. I'm sure there have been more? Espresso Addict 11:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Attention needed for Chester and related articles

I'm now back from a succession of funerals, etc within my family, and have noticed that a large number of edits have been made to Chester which may have resulted in some problems with the article. Given its importance within our project, I wondered if we could take a closer look at it and try to sort it out a bit more. A major task would be to make the structure fit exactly within the guidelines given in WP:UKCITIES. I've tried to tidy some of the changes up, but I'm still not fully with it, given the things I've had to do over the past few weeks, and so any extra eyes would be a good idea. There may be an issue to do with the inclusion, removal, etc of the city coat of arms, where it might be added, and how to deal with a viewpoint that states that some kind of disclaimer is required to it (sdee the article's history for some background to this, as well as User talk:Twinney12 and User talk:Excirial for a bit more background.)  DDStretch  (talk) 13:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)