Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England

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	England portal v • d • e This page is within the scope of WikiProject England, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.  NA  This page does not require a rating on the project's quality scale.

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Contents 1 Stop the 'break-up' of England! 1.1 Scope 1.2 Aunt Sally 2 Nominated English football champions as FLRC 3 England at GA review 4 Watchlist 5 History of England 6 University of Cambridge GAR notice 7 Skills for Care 8 Photo request: BMI headquarters 9 Where is this stained glass window located, and who created it?

[edit] Stop the 'break-up' of England!

Can all English Wikipedians stop starting WikiProjects for each of England's Counties etc and join together under for the English Regions WikiProjects Mr Taz (talk) 16:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Why? Some projects like WP:GM and WP:YORKSHIRE are some of the most productive throughout Wikipedia. I agree some of the shire county projects should probably be merged (so for example, a collaborative "WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria" would be more sustainable than seperate ones), but that this project has stalled is not a reflection on the county projects - it's through lack of leadership and organisation.

How I've envisaged this project is having a monthly newsletter and noticeboard, which draws members from each sub-project who can publish and share their progress, debates and successes.

Most of the history of England is quite dire, and English people is something of a scandal. --Jza84 |  Talk  17:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Jza84 Do you mean WP:Yorkshire Mr Taz (talk) 18:38, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject East Midlands England - Wikipedia:WikiProject East of England - Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater London - Wikipedia:WikiProject North East England - Wikipedia:WikiProject North West England - Wikipedia:WikiProject South East England - Wikipedia:WikiProject South West England - Wikipedia:WikiProject West Midlands England - Wikipedia:WikiProject Yorkshire and the Humber Mr Taz (talk) 17:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we know what the English regions are, but what advantage is to be gained by having regional rather than county Wikiprojects? I am in agreement with Jza84 here.--Harkey (talk) 17:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

As am I. What the hell would be gained by merging WP:London with WP:Surrey and WP:Kent, into WP:South East England, other than burying the smaller projects under the 6,283 current London articles? – iridescent 19:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

London has it's own region WP:Greater London and not in the WP:South East England Region Mr Taz (talk)

Fine; make the example "merging WikiProject Greater Manchester, WikiProject Merseyside and WikiProject Cheshire into WP:North West England". I think you're missing the point here. – iridescent 19:27, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The WP:Greater London page has been created today by Mr Taz and redirects to WP:London.Glasshouse and stones come to mind here...--Harkey (talk) 19:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I echo the sentiments of Jza84, Harkey, and Iridescent. The current structure works fine, and I don't see what benefits would be gained from regional projects. The scope, I would have thought, is too large; in a (fairly) recent survey I conducting of some WP:CHESHIRE members, they were interested in some subjects related to neighbouring counties, but there's no guarantee that they'd be interested in the entire region. What I think does need to be done is improve the lines of communication between projects so that the expertise and experience of established projects such as WP:GM, WP:LONDON, and WP:YORKS can be used to help less successful projects such as (a random example) WP:BEDFORDSHIRE (one GA and no FAs). They wouldn't do all the work, but would offer advice and point to what works. Nev1 (talk) 19:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I echo the sentiments of Jza84, Harkey, Iridescent and Nev1 and suspect most English wikipedians feel more affinity for a county than a region. In the South West very few people edit South West England, but there is a fair amount of activity on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cornwall, Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset, Wikipedia:WikiProject Bristol, Wikipedia:WikiProject Devon etc with some communication & support between the projects particularly where the scope of an article crosses the county borders. Personally I have little interest in articles relating to Cornwall but have developed some expertise related to Somerset - why spoil this?— Rod ^talk 20:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Similarly to most of the other comments here, I think that the smaller county projects are best as people tend to be very parochial and only want to know about things that are local to their area of interest. We already have projects for places and districts, such as WP:Sheffield, which show that people are interested in a narrow scope for projects. Regional projects would be too big for most people and would put them off from getting involved. I would agree that we need to have more communication between the projects and support for those projects that are just starting or have stalled. We need active groups covering all areas if we are to improve and expand Wikipedia's coverage of the country as a whole. Keith D (talk) 21:57, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, consensus seems to be heavily against this idea, but what problems was it trying to address? (Some input from Mr Taz would be helpful here). What seems to have emerged from this discussion (being mentioned by at least three different people) is that communication between the existing projects needs to be improved. Many projects have a wealth of experience in a wide range of areas, yet there are some which are struggling.

So the question is, how can the current system be improved? Strength comes from diversity and experience, the more members a project has, the better it should be doing (in theory). At the moment, the most effective way of recruiting members is posting notes on editor's talk pages; I don't see that there's a hugh amount WP:E can do about that. What I think might be effective is helping editors to learn the skills of writing good articles (delibarate lower case, not every article has to be Good although hopefully the end product of trying to give editors more experience would be an increase in the numbers of GAs and FAs). The way I would like to see this happen is individual projects identfing a few articles and working on them. They could ask for suggestions within the project, then go to other projects with more experience in the relevant area. There are problems with this idea, but could it work?

I'm not sure what WP:E's role within this would be, perhaps as a central hub where people looking for help can come instead of other projects and a centralised place for discussion. Nev1 (talk) 22:25, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

One method which has worked with some projects is to have a ""collaboration of the week/month". Editors can nominate articles (with voting if necessary) then, once chosen, lots of people work together to improve the article (possibly up to GA/FA etc) & in the process people share their particular skills and interests.— Rod ^talk 22:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose that's what my suggestion boils down to, although I don't like arbitrary time periods. Enthusiasm waxes and wanes so one month might not be enough. Also, the main difference from the usual CotM would be the introduction of outside help from experienced editors. It might be worthwhile looking at some projects and see which could most benefit from this approach. Nev1 (talk) 13:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States is an interesting example, with many parallels to WP:ENGLAND. Rather than focussing on certain cities, suburbs, regional cultures, it takes direct responsibility and seeks to develop the major umbrella articles like Culture of the United States, Health care in the United States and History of the United States.

WP:SCOTLAND has actually been quite good at getting these sorts of articles off the ground and upto a very, very good standard; eg. Scotland in the High Middle Ages is an FA (not a great one by more recent standards, but an FA nonetheless). Where is England in the High Middle Ages? Who's advancing the History of England in general?

As for a collaboration of the month - England has got to be the article this project gets to FA and fast. It's scandalous that such an important place is not covered with pride to a high standard. --Jza84 |  Talk  14:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Regarding a collaboration of the month, I was thinking that WP:ENGLAND would encourage and help co-ordinate CotMs for county wikiprojects. That shouldn't be this project's only purpose though, and subjects such as those you've mentioned are important and need developing. Nev1 (talk) 14:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this project's importance in encouraging good article work from the ground up is as important as addressing the big articles such as history of England. I don't know how successful or practical my suggestion of collaborations for county projects is, but I think we should give it a try with one project. After looking quickly through the WP:UKGEO list of subprojects, there seem to be a few candidates which might benefit from such a scheme: WP:DERBYS is the only county level project I've seen without any Good or Featured Articles, WP:BEDS and WP:SURREY hava 2 GAs each, and WP:BERKS has 1 FL and 1 GA. WP:DERBYS seems most in need, and has a few active editors I think, but another good candidate IMO is WP:NOTTS; it has 1 FA and 2 GAs and was only started in April of this year. Hopefully, its members are more likely to be active/still around than some of the other projects and as WP:NOTTS is still expanding (only 196 articles ATM) I think it needs our help. I'd like to pick one, leave a note on the project's talk page and on the talk pages of all its members to see if we can get this off the ground. Nev1 (talk) 14:41, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm still concerned that such major topics are neglected. Although in theory WP:ENGLAND has many many FAs, in practice it has few, if any. The fact Category:Top-importance England-related articles is empty troubles me. Although I freely state WP:WALES and WP:SCOTLAND (and even WP:CORNWALL) are troubled with nationalism - a problem which holds their progress back - they have far more members, and are much better organised. Category:Top-importance_Scotland_articles might give us an idea what might be suitable priorities for this project. :) --Jza84 |  Talk  22:35, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

The reason that there are no articles in the Category:Top-importance England-related articles is that the project is not set up to assess articles for importance. The template does not currently have importance processing enabled and no articles have been assessed for importance. May be we need to address this and enable the importance processing and start the process of assessing articles. Keith D (talk) 00:12, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Update I've left a note on WT:NOTTS to see if there's any interest in trying this collaboration thing. Nev1 (talk) 11:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've just proposed an alliance, NOT a merger, between WikiProjects Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to promote a term I coined up: 'Constructive Colaboration'. These are not just random counties, they are the only counties in The East Midlands to have a WikiProject. Nev1 told me that this was an area trying to promote and discuss the number of shire counties setting up small WikiProjects etc., I felt it was the right place to view my beliefs outside these WikiProjects. I have also recieved only positive comments so far. 95jb14 (talk) 18:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC), a member of WikiProject Lincolnshire.

I think this is a really good move. I've long thought that county projects should interact more on a regional basis. If say someone from WP:CHESHIRE wanted impartial feedback, they should be able to get their cousins at WP:GM to have a look and suggest improvements. Regional noticeboards and newsletters are something I've thought of being one approach to encourage interaction, but another would be a national one for England. The county projects broadly seem interested in settlements and divisions of land (i.e. geography) however, whereas I've always envisaged WP:ENGLAND to be more about our culture and history. --Jza84 |  Talk  18:21, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Scope

Is it appropriate at this time to discuss the Scope of the WP:ENGLAND? If all articles from all other WPs are tagged it will make it quite unwieldy particularly as I would like to request that we have a 'Watchlist' to keep abreast of changes and patrol for vandals.--Harkey (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it's worth discussing, I don't really know what the scope is.

A watchlist is a good idea, but how would you go about making/requesting one? I've seen WP:YORKS, but didn't know where that came from, so when I set one up for each of WP:GM and WP:CHES it was done by hand (and is maintained the same way, which reminds me that they both need updating...). It's a laborious and boring process and not something I'd be willing to do for a project as large as WP:ENGLAND. Nev1 (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think User:Keith D sourced the WP:Yorkshire Watchlist. By Scope I meant do we include absolutely everything pertaining to England or limit ourselves to some priorities. I know that there are 6,000 articles+ on some project lists but they do include some very tenuous links with places, people, etc. as well as very low priority articles.--Harkey (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

From the project page, the aim seems to be "to improve articles and organise them which relate to England", that's a lot of articles. I think people (eg: English people, William I of England, Winston Churchill) places 9eg: York, Nottingham, Land's End) and events (eg: Battle of Hastings, Peterloo Massacre) should be covered by the project but the problem is where to draw the line. I mean, should Derker be part of this project? Sure, it's an English subject as it's a place in England but if every place in England was added to this project there'd simply be too many articles and none would benefit. So taking settlements as an example I don't think we need to add anything smaller than say a town (or perhaps villages) as the subject of places, settlements, and geography is already covered by WP:UKGEO. Nev1 (talk) 15:17, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

For a working definition of what to include and tag could we go with the first three categories at Wikipedia:WikiProject England#Importance?--Harkey (talk) 15:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure I like the term "recognised nationally", there's a lot of wriggle room there, but it would stop the project being swamped by biographies. For settlements, I'd feel happier with, as I suggested earlier, nothing smaller than a town being in the project, but I'm not sure about how to make it work for people and events. Nev1 (talk) 12:01, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Harkey is correct about the watchlist generation, I sourced this from Ganeshbot who had a similar thing for the India projects. I have versions to run on the Yorkshire, Lincolnshire & Warwickshire projects and usually regenerate them on a weekly basis. I was thinking of creating one for the Coventry project but they have a redirect to the template and so can have 2 possible entries on the talk page which will require modifying the script to handle this case. The Yorkshire one is a bit troublesome if there is any server load due to the number of articles tagged which may be a problem for this project. I could create a script and try with the England project if there is a single template with no redirects used on talk pages. If you want me to do this then let me know and I can try it and see what happens. Keith D (talk) 22:17, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I have found the watchilsts I generated for WP:GM and WP:CHES to be very helpful in catching vandalism that slips through the nets of the recent changes patrols. I'd like to see every project to have one, and if there is an easy way to generate the lists, such as making a bot run the script, I think it would be worthwhile. I want to make it clear though that I'm not asking you to make a watchlist for every county project as that just wouldn't be fair! Besides, I'm not sure how many people use the GM watchlist (over at WP:CHES there are only a couple of active editors anyway). Nev1 (talk) 12:26, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Aunt Sally

Picking up on Nev1's ideas I have mulled it over and have put together an aunt Sally of an idea. It may not be appropriate or well thought out but it is a start. Comments welcome, but if you think it is rubbish then come up with something better to address the problem of dissemination information on article improvement to inexperienced editors. See User:Keith D/sandbox3 for details. Keith D (talk) 20:31, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I've asked WP:NOTTS if they'd be interested in taking part in experiment to see how this scheme can work. I posted the note to WP:NOTTS before I'd read Keith D's comments here. Reading through what's been written in his sandbox, I agree with pretty much everything Keith D said and that's essentially how I imagined it myself. While it may be tempting to choose big and important articles such as counties, it would be a lot of effort and would be throwing editors in at the deep end. Ideally, each project would choose one article at a time, but I think that once an article has been improved, the collaboration could move onto a harder, more substantial article. Nev1 (talk) 12:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

So far no response from WP:NOTTS, I'm thinking about leaving a note on the talk pages of the members, but would this be overkill? Nev1 (talk) 15:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Nominated English football champions as FLRC

I have nominated List of English football champions for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.

[edit] England at GA review

A range of issues have been identified with the England article, which was promoted to GA status a couple of months ago. The problems are detailed at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/England/1 and if anyone wanted to help improve the article to meet these concerns that would be great.— Rod ^talk 07:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, with the collaboration experiment underway, perhaps now is a good time to look at some of this project's most important articles. Quite frankly, I was surprised that England was promoted to GA and I'm not too surprised that it's been nominated at GAR. That said, the content is mostly there and finding sources for such a big subject shouldn't be too hard. Howveer, rewriting sections such as National symbols, insignia and anthems will be difficult. Nev1 (talk) 12:30, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm tempted to start the England article from scratch, in a sandbox page, where we can all develop the project's major article towards a befitting standard. I'm not confident there is a great deal of value in the article as it stands. --Jza84 |  Talk  21:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I think working in article space would be better as the reader is benefitted from the changes straight away. Nev1 (talk) 13:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Good point. :) --Jza84 |  Talk  16:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist

As talked about above I tried creating a watchlist for the project but there is obviously some limits on the links that Special:RecentChangesLinked can cope with.

A list of everything is at WP:WikiProject England/WatchAll, a list of just the articles is at WP:WikiProject England/WatchArticles and a list of talk pages with non-article entries is at WP:WikiProject England/WatchOther. I suggest that you do not view these pages as they are very slow to load and usually give a page load error. The Special:RecentChangesLinked appears to operate correctly on the article only list so that may be useful, on the everything and other lists it does not return any information.

This link shows you what you get with this recent changes linked function for the articles only list.

As the number of articles tagged increases there may be problems with the article only list.

Anyone any ideas?

Keith D (talk) 22:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it works very well. There must be a way of sorting articles by importance/class as there is a table on the project page (in the sidebar).Would this be of any use in making more manageable watchlists?--Harkey (talk) 09:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The other list appears to be working today see here. May be it is dependent on server load. I have asked on the village pump to see if there is a known limit. Keith D (talk) 23:48, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] History of England

Having browsed the History of England article and some of its linked articles, I have to agree with the remarks made by User:Jza84, above. Most are in need of some TLC. Am I correct in thinking that there is no Wikiproject for British or English history? If I am correct most will benefit from being tagged by WP:England so that we can keep a constructive eye on them. As some of the articles purport to be part of a series they really need looking at as a whole, which is quite a daunting prospect.--Harkey (talk) 11:16, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe you are correct in thinking there is no WikiProject for British or English history. Is one needed? Depending on how the "series" is defined (the series link on the article goes to Category:England) several do need some work. It may also be useful to look at History of XX articles where XX=county or city eg History of Bristol is currently a GA candidate & History of Somerset is already GA - there may be others.— Rod ^talk 12:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it might be a little too soon to think of having a WP:British or English history. However, I would appreciate some guidelines from experienced editors on writing on historical topics for England/Britain. I was thinking maybe a sub-page something along the lines of WP:UKCITIES.--Harkey (talk) 13:41, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Cambridge GAR notice

University of Cambridge has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Skills for Care

There is no project on this "England" article and there is no edit to it since 2 years. Why can I not redirect "WikiProject England" to "Wikipedia:WikiProject England"? Is it reserved or something? ~ R.T.G 11:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It's also orphaned, needs wikifying, has no independent references, no valid categories; and reads like an essay. There are no other articles on Sector Skills Councils; might rate a paragraph there, or more likely a candidate for AfD.

"WikiProject England" is in the article space; "WP:" is a meta area for 'things about the encyclopaedia'. Article space should never link to 'meta-space', because they are independent. (For instance, when 'article space' is issued on CD, or sold to someone else to raise funds for the project). HTH Kbthompson (talk) 11:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Photo request: BMI headquarters

If anyone is in proximity to Donington Hall, Castle Donington, would someone mind photographing the BMI (airline) headquarters? WhisperToMe (talk) 21:17, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where is this stained glass window located, and who created it?

I posted this at Reference desk, but perhaps there might be editors here who do not visit there.

The window in question can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayt47/3212958113/in/set-72057594129234850/. I have been in communications with the author, and he said that he forgot all the details about this photo. I doubt its location is at Husbands Bosworth: looking through the set of photos, this image was taken just less than 10 minutes from the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre (where the diorama is located). Hence, I suspect the window could be at Sutton Cheney or somewhere nearby. If anyone knows the church this window is at, please do tell. Information on the creator and period in which the window is created are also appreciated. Jappalang (talk) 02:23, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you had a look around Geograph? Parrot of Doom (talk) 08:15, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Geograph turned up 4 stained glass windows withing 30 km of the Heritage Centre but none are matches. Jappalang (talk) 09:12, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Was that a specific search including the term sgw, or just a generic search of local churches etc? Lots of images on Geograph aren't categorised as well as they might be. Parrot of Doom (talk) 10:51, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

From the regularity of the leading and the cod-gothic lettering, that looks very recent (as in, last 30 years); I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually commissioned for the heritage centre itself. – iridescent 11:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I went with a "stained glass" search, which yielded 3000+ hits (I am not going to spend the whole day clicking "next and match"). Refinement with "Bosworth" or the Square coordinates dropped those down to the 4 mentioned. Iridescent's opinion could certainly be true. Does the heritage centre have a chapel or something? Jappalang (talk) 11:34, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion; try asking the Friends of Richard III. I imagine they have enough obsessive crackpots people with an unusually strong interest, to know the history of any material depicting their blue-eyed boy. – iridescent 16:20, 24 June 2009 (UTC)