Template talk:Infobox UK place

Type

Of 23,927 uses of the template only 377 have type set. Is there an agreed list of standard types?

Please could somebody add type to the documentation with some guidance about valid values and not including links. — GhostInTheMachine (talk) 11:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

It was added by Plastikspork (talk · contribs) in this edit at 22:47, 8 October 2011 (UTC). The idea was that pages where the {{Infobox England and Wales civil parish}} was replaced by {{Infobox UK place}} would have |type=Civil parish added. Other pages were mostly left alone, but I have seen the following:

• |type=[[City]] - see St Davids
• |type=Town - see Didcot
• |type=Village - see Red Roses
• |type=[[community (Wales)|Community]] - see Eglwyscummin

The parameter presently has two purposes: (i) it adds a pale blue bar between the placename and the image and adds text to that; (ii) in conjunction with |country= it amends the short description from "Human settlement in the United Kingdom" to e.g. "Village in England", "City in Wales", etc. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. We have a mix of |type=City, |type=[[City]] and |type=[[City status in the United Kingdom|City]] and about 8 variants of "Town"!

So, rather than setting an explicit SD template for every UK village, a better way forward would be to ensure that the infobox has |type=village and also update the infobox template to output the county where known. (?) — GhostInTheMachine (talk) 16:13, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I assume you mean Country, not County. These should already be set. Be careful of adding |type=Village, not all will be appropriate. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:17, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

The infobox currently uses the country, but it needs to use the county as well. e.g. Village in North Yorkshire, England  ———  Yep. "Village and civil parish" crops up a fair bit. — GhostInTheMachine (talk) 19:47, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Countries are an absolute breeze compared to counties, the meaning of which doesn't just vary from one country to another, but also between different parts of England. We presently have these parameters:

| lieutenancy_scotland = 
| lieutenancy_scotland1 =              <!-- (if place part of more than one lieutenancy)-->
| lieutenancy_wales = 
| lieutenancy_wales1 =                 <!-- (ditto) -->
| lieutenancy_northern_ireland = 
| lieutenancy_northern_ireland1 =      <!-- (ditto) -->
| lieutenancy_northern_ireland2 =  
| manx_sheading = 
| metropolitan_county =     <!-- (use link, e.g. [[Tyne and Wear]]) -->
| metropolitan_county1 =    <!-- (if place part of more than one metropolitan country) -->
| shire_county =            <!-- (use link, e.g. [[Devon]]) -->
| shire_county1 =           <!-- (if place extends to more than one shire county) -->
| lieutenancy_england =     <!-- (not required where shire or metropolitan is the same) -->
| lieutenancy_england1 =    <!-- (if place extends to more than one lieutenancy) -->

even assuming that people use them correctly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Then I guess we are all doomed - we have to stay with a manual SD if we want something better than "Village in England". However - we do still need something in the documentation about the "type" parameter. I will get all bold in the morning ... — GhostInTheMachine (talk) 22:17, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

{{Infobox settlement}} is related, and it has a parameter |settlement_type= which seems to do much the same job, perhaps we could pinch the documentation for that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:37, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

I take it no one would object if I added type to the TemplateData documentation at this point, per Ghost’s request? I assume it just got left out because the wizard misses it for some reason. It would certainly help in getting more places adequately labelled. I also assume we’re agreed that it should not contain links? — HTGS (talk) 10:11, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

— GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:29, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Is there any parameter to add flag or coat of arms?

I don't see any specific parameter for this. -- Great Brightstar (talk) 03:42, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Only 2 image parameters |static_image_name= & |static_image_2=, you could use one of these for a flag or CoA. Or may be you could put at end using the |embedded= by using an appropriate infobox. Keith D (talk) 11:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Flags. Flag icons should generally not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they are unnecessarily distracting and give undue prominence to one field among many. - H:IB Sciencefish (talk) 09:16, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion to add "historic county" parameter to template

I propose the addition of a 'historic county' parameter to the 'UK place' template.

The 92 historic counties of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have never been altered by the myriad boundary changes and re-namings of local government entities that have occured in the UK throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. For more information, please see the work of the Association of British Counties: https://abcounties.com/.

To reflect this geographical and historical fact, I suggest that a "historic county" parameter should be added to the Infobox 'UK place' template. The historic county already appears in the Infobox for some UK place articles, although this information can currently only be added where the Infobox template is 'settlement' (which allows bespoke parameters) as opposed to 'UK place'.

"County confusion" (as the ABC terms it) has primarily occurred since local government reorganisation in the 1970s, the reorganisations that established now defunct local authorities such as 'Avon', 'Humberside', 'West Midlands' and 'Cleveland' that were administrative-only and were never intended to alter the historic counties in any way. The addition of a 'historic county' parameter would record the correct historic county of many settlements for posterity, while at the same time raising awareness of the UK's correct geography and heritage.

--Songofachilles (talk) 13:02, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as clutter for almost all articles. The ceremonial county is good enough. In those very few articles where boundaries that ceased to be used 126 years ago are still notable, the information can go in the body. This looks like an attempt to reopen a campaign that failed to achieve consensus about ten years ago. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:16, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose The historic counties (as shown at Template:England Counties 1851 Labelled Map) are not useful to show in the articles infobox. This information could be added in articles though as part of the history of the place if not already there. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:49, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

  John Maynard Friedman; WOSlinker —Thanks for your thoughts. The 'ceremonial county' (or 'preserved county' in Wales) is not good enough in my opinion: it is meaningless (Tyne & Wear and West Midlands are both 'ceremonial' counties). The boundaries of the historic counties never "ceased to be used": these entities remained unchanged by new administrative bodies that appeared (and disappeared) over the last century or so. You are conflating administrative 'counties' (including areas covered by county councils, metropolitan boroughs, unitary authorities, etc.) with the historic counties. As the government stated on 1 April 1974, upon implementation of the Local Government Act 1972: The new county boundaries are solely for the purpose of defining areas of … local government. They are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of Counties, nor is it intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change.

  For example, the town of Christchurch is in the historic county of Hampshire. In 1974, for administrative purposes only, it came under Dorset County Council (and see the quotation above). Since 1 April 2019, Christchuch no longer comes under Dorset County Council for administrative purposes, instead being part of the newly established unitary authority of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. I (now, especially) see no good reason to refer to Christchurch as being in Dorset merely because for four decades it was administered by an authority named 'Dorset County Council', when it has been in Hampshire since around the sixth century A.D.

  In short: the confusion that exists around counties, though never the government's intention, will not cease to persist unless, as a very first step, the historic county can be allowed to be recorded in reference works such as Wikipedia.--Songofachilles (talk) 16:00, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

  We have definitely been over all that before (see the archives of this page and of WT:ENGLAND), and pushing this matter could be seen as a case of WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

  Redrose64 Personally, I think comparing a good faith suggestion to record something that many people consider to be an important aspect of the geography and cultural identity of the UK to seeking to "Expose a popular artist as a child molester; or [v]indicate a convicted murderer you believe to be innocent" (WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS) is very wide of the mark. However, your thoughts do give me an insight into the kind of thinking that the previous advocates of this cause that you mention were up against. Songofachilles (talk) 14:46, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

  User:Songofachilles, that kind of reply to a wp:good faith response is hardly conducive to a discussion between adults. More importantly, I see that you have already started to insert Historic County into infoboxes, as you have done at Bournemouth and many others. Please stop these edits while discussion is underway as it is poor practice in any case and furthermore it would be a pity to have spent all that time only to have it reverted. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:35, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

  John Maynard Friedman That is noted about not editing while discussion is underway; thanks. Although, talking of being adult, you accuse me of making edits that I did not make. I added, yesterday, the new(ish) unitary authority (Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole) to the Infoboxes for Christchurch, Poole and Bournemouth (the historic county was already referenced in this article). The only article in which I have added the historic county to the Infobox is the article for Highcliffe-on-Sea. The many edits you may see on my contributions page for places in Somerset were merely to change the incorrectly capitalised reference to 'Unitary Authority' to small caps. All other text additions about the historic county that I have made (7 in total) are made in the body of the text, as you yourself suggest above. Songofachilles (talk) 15:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

  @Songofachilles:, in that case, I admit to having jumped to a conclusion. I withdraw the allegation and apologise for having questioned your good faith. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:18, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

  @John Maynard Friedman: Apology accepted. I would also just point out, to direct this thread back towards its original topic, it would not have been possible for me to make such edits even if I had wanted to. This is because the 'UK place' template does not permit the addition of bespoke parameters; hoping to amend this fact was the purpose of my original suggestion.

  That was a deliberate decision, since it has been observed that those infoboxes that do permit customisable parameters attract all kinds of indiscriminate junk. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:54, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• Support There is no reason not to support this, as all information is readily verifiable in the Government's own Index of Place Names Any opposition to this is dogmatic and definitely not NPoV. Owain (talk) 11:57, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support There is official recognition of the importance of the historic counties, lately in an MHCLG paper 'Celebrating the historic counties of England'. In that Guidance, 'local and national partners' are encouraged to promote the historic counties. (In Scotland it's hardly necessary as the counties are often preferred use anyway.) It would help these initiatives if the historic county were given in a line in the infobox. Hogweard (talk) 21:34, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
• Strong support: a good example is how letters are addressed and how strongly some residents feel about this: Dagenham is still Essex as well as part of London, Milton Keynes is still Buckinghamshire, Stockport is still Cheshire and the locals will tell you they are certainly not Lancastrians nor Greater Mancunians. Also the example of Middlesex, or the capital of Surrey being Kingston-upon-Thames despite being in Greater London. There's probably hundreds of other examples that I am not familiar with. People in the UK really strongly identify with the historic counties, as part of their identity, culture, language, much more so than the current administrative divisions. Abcmaxx (talk) 20:24, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

  It may be how some letters are addressed, but it is not correct, and so is a bad example. The Post Office have not required counties in addresses for over fifty years, and for at least thirty years have advised against their use. Try using the Postcode Finder and see whether you can find an address that includes a county after the town or city. I've tried several, and can't find any - even for similar addresses in different towns that are in widely-separated areas, such as High Street, Newport - which might be on the Isle of Wight (e.g. postcode PO30 1SS), in Shropshire (postcode TF10 7AN) or in Wales (NP20 1FQ). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:14, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Milton Keynes is still in Buckinghamshire, but in the ceremonial county, not the part controlled by Buckinghamshire Council. Likewise Bedford and Luton are still in Bedfordshire, even though there is no such county council any more but there is certainly a Lieutenant.

There are of course special cases but these are best handled in the body of the few articles concerned. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:21, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

@User:Redrose64 surely the fact that it is widespread despite the fact it shouldn't be is very telling surely. @User:John Maynard Friedman I think you will find that it is much more than a few articles concerned and seeing as I believe you are from the region, then what you said is common knowledge; Luton and Bedford will be considered Bedfordshire for all eternity even if the councils are not named so nor whether the administrative borders change. It is also linked to issues regarding devolution or things like federalisation and why the English regions failed. Point is, as per nomination and the other posts, is that the historic counties are still considered very significant, regardless whether one concurs whether they should be significant or not. Abcmaxx (talk) 23:19, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Support strongly–[1] So should they be re-added under the name as traditional county. Chocolateediter (talk) 15:16, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

There is overall more support for the initial proposal than opposition. Please can somebody more familiar with the correct procedure than I indicate what the appropriate next steps are? Songofachilles (talk) 22:19, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Would suggest a broader advertisement than this. Holding a discussion only on the talk page of the template itself might exclude the feedback of editors who take part. It certainly flew under my radar until some changes were reverted. A true RFC is probably the better way for this to have been conducted. Koncorde (talk) 18:27, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Newer editors such as myself rely on your help to float potential changes according to the correct procedures. I'll look into how to put an RFC in motion. Songofachilles (talk) 21:32, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Support A patently obvious and non-contentious way of minimising the endless edit wars. Those that oppose this suggestion are acting with a hidden agenda in my opinion. I am surprised I had not seen this page before, so my thanks to JMF for pointing it out.Roger 8 Roger (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Strong Support The historic counties are used in various aspects of life, not just in county cricket. It is used by administrators, players and organisers of sports as the governing bodies, in the majority, using the same borders as the historic counties. If Wikipedia is to fulfil its role to provide knowledge to the people then the historic counties must be offered to those seeking information on this area of British life. Ceremonial counties are NOT the same as the historic counties and can be altered or changed on Parliament's whim. The unchanging boundaries of the historic counties are used by local historians, genealogists and the UK Government's Office of National Statistics. NOT to use the historic counties is to drive away many followers of Wikipedia who use it as a source for geography, history and so much more. It is a 'must'. Thank you.

Support. Historic counties are not only relevant to the history of the county but also for people undertaking research about a specific place. For example genealogy, where county records for a town or village may differ from the current administration. __Looke__ (talk) 12:35, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Strong oppose The geographical history of a place is important, but reducing this to a single field is going to encourage misleading and unhistorical over-simplification. Different areas of Birmingham, for example have been at different times parts of Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire, some areas have moved backward and forwards between them several times. Coventry has been in and out of Warwickshire multiple times over centuries. Putting "Historic county: Warwickshire" in an infobox for either - which is what a field like this would encourage - would be actively obscuring this history. JimmyGuano (talk) 05:04, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Strong Support Historic Counties were never abolished and continue to exist, as evidenced in many UK Government statements, including one from Eric Pickles, then Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government on 23 April 2023. Here, he acknowledges that, although a significant number of counties were ‘administratively abolished’ by the government in the Local Government Act 1972, England’s historic and traditional counties still exist, and are recognised by the government. (See more Government statements supporting historic/traditional counties here.) It therefore makes no sense that such an important piece of UK geographical information is omitted from the template, which was actually amended to include Historic County earlier this week but, within days, reversed. It seems to me entirely sensible to include the historic/traditional county in the template and I suggest this is executed without delay.24may1819 (talk) 11:02, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Strong Support Adding historic counties to the template would be adding them as they are TODAY, that is why the word is historic (important throughout time), not historical (something in the past). This is actually what the many Government statements about the importance of historic counties refer to. So, using the latest 2021 information from the UK Government on historic/traditional counties is a sensible way forward in including this important, currently omitted, information. 24may1819 (talk) 11:23, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Strong oppose and remove There is no such thing as a fixed historic county for each location and presenting this as such is incorrect. The field should be removed as it is incapable of summarising the history of each location. MRSC (talk) 04:53, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Also note this change is being used to rewrite articles to give primacy to this data field in the text itself. [2] MRSC (talk) 05:08, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request 2020-09-21

Moved from Template talk:Infobox UK place/doc/London

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:41, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

It should exist where the main Template:Infobox UK place and the other subtemplates of the latter are, please change Category:United Kingdom city infobox templates to Category:United Kingdom place infobox templates.

It is the only one in Category:United Kingdom city infobox templates - WP:OVERCAT. TerraCyprus (talk) 20:50, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Done It was not protected, but I have done the edit requested. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:08, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Population density

All, is there an option to turn off the density automation so that it doesn't show? I have looked at the options and there doesn't appear to be one on the templates, have also searched the Talk archives for previous questions on this. Reason being, with certain small civil parishes the population is combined with one or more others to get enough for a census OA area, but if you still report the area size of the single parish then this will skew the figure. I have been blanking the figure for now when I populate the infobox, but removing altogether would be best. Or, maybe disable the automation if new options are added which detect multiple parishes being added for the population figure. The template allows multiple parish entries but these are for boundary usage. Thank you for your worldly advice on this matter. Regards, The Equalizer (talk) 05:50, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

You could calculate the density manually and put it in |population_density= or you could get a blank density by setting it to a non-breaking space. May be need a flag like |show_density=no or |hide_density=yes to hide the row. Keith D (talk) 12:59, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Keith. I fear however that we'll never get the true population count for those single low-count parishes where those have been combined (not for a hundred years at least) so the density for the single parish will never be right, unless you report the size for the combined area - but then the figure is not specific to the parish and at a risk of an aware editor not appreciating this and changing it back to the correct area size. So yes, I've used the 'nbsp' trick so far, but it leaves the density field displayed, which I'd like to get rid of ideally. I look forward to waving such a flag!
The Equalizer (talk) 15:13, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

... or if |population_density= is set to "-", then do not output row 7 — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 19:27, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Am I missing something obvious here? If the ONS has combined a couple or three low population parishes to make a single Output Area, where are you getting the population of any one of those parishes? Are you omitting the population figure? (because one would hope that whatever is doing the density automation is clever enough not to assume that omission means zero). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:57, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Good concern there John. Short answer is that you can't get a specific figure for low populated parishes due to 2011 census restrictions. Affected settlement articles instead get away with prose such as 'population includes places x and y'. I don't mind this as I think most readers of an article want a semblance of local population, even if unaware that it goes beyond the border. However, 2 wrongs don't make a right and to also put a matching total area figure that covers multiple parishes to get a correct local area density, when the article is typically about a single one is stretching it a bit I think.

The density calculation only appears if both population and area figures are given. It isn't smart enough to realise the people numbers don't always match the area on such occasions.

The ONS have a disclaimer on their site if you want to have their word on it. ONS site

The Equalizer (talk) 05:36, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, I knew that, ref

The minimum OA size was 40 resident households and 100 resident people, but the recommended size was rather larger at 125 households. These size thresholds meant that unusually small wards and parishes were incorporated into larger OAs.

and a good thing too, since anything smaller has a very high risk of allowing information about individuals to be inferred.

So surely if an editor is "deriving" a population number for a given parish from the population of an OA that includes other parishes, that has to be a rather gross OR violation at best - and deliberate disruption at worst? People numbers should match the area on every occasion, otherwise we are lying. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:54, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Councillors not working

Councillors= produces an unknown parameter "Councillors" warning and I can't seem to get it to work (tested on Perivale). It's not in the full syntax and seems to be part of Councillors (merged from {{infobox UK ward}}. Can anyone help? Sciencefish (talk) 09:25, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

You need to use a lowercase C as the params are case-sensitive. |councillors= -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:15, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, it wasn't clear to me Sciencefish (talk) 11:38, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request 2020-12-23 - Spurious accuracy in distance conversions

The documention says

<!--------------DISTANCES--------------> <!-- As crow flies, i.e. straight-line. Miles may be converted to km via {{convert|(distance)|mi|0}}. -->

but, for the foo_distance_mi and foo_distance_km parameters, the conversion happens automatically. This seems to be OK for larger numbers but, for smaller ones, an extra decimal place is added. For example, in Tottenham,
|charingX_distance_mi = 6
gives
Charing Cross 6 mi (9.7 km).
Changing the parameter to
|charingX_distance_km = 10
would give
Charing Cross 10 km (6.2 mi).

If the input has no decimal places, the output shouldn't either. --Cavrdg (talk) 09:49, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. How exactly should this be fixed? DannyS712 (talk) 12:02, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't know the technical aspects but Template:Convert is mentioned as one of the trancluded pages. I think that, if there is an entry X in one of the foo_distance_mi parameters, this template currently sends X to {{Convert|X|mi}}. I want it to use {{Convert|X|mi|0}} instead so what appears never has a decimal place. Similarly, Y in foo_distance_km should use {{Convert|Y|km|0)). --Cavrdg (talk) 18:09, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that would be desirable, because some editors may wish to specify the distance more precisely, e.g.

• {{convert|5.8|mi}} → 5.8 miles (9.3 km)

Under your suggested change, this precision would be lost when converted:

• {{convert|5.8|mi|0}} → 5.8 miles (9 km)

I think, on balance, that the default rounding is probably the most appropriate. To give you a silly example, which illustrates the problem with your suggestion, 1 km would be converted to 1 mile

• {{convert|1|km|0}} → 1 kilometre (1 mi)

I'm sure you agree this is not right! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:41, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Area reference parameter

Hi, would it be possible to add an |area_ref parameter (similar to the |population_ref) please? Mertbiol (talk) 18:14, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Answering my own request - I see that there is an |area_footnotes parameter, in which a reference can sit. Please ignore. Mertbiol (talk) 18:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Adding Scottish Health Board area parameter

Hi, I would like to add a parameter to the template to list a settlement's Health Board area. This is one of the more widely-used administrative divisions in Scotland, as it bridges a gap between the 32 smaller council areas and Scotland as a whole, and serves as a successor to the similarly sized 1974-96 regions. The only other administrative division (apart from Council areas) currently supported by the template is the Lieutenancy areas, which are largely irrelevant as they are based off the old, pre-1974 counties, and are now only used for local representatives of the Queen. I have made the required changes to the sandbox (adding a health_board_scotland set of parameters after lieutenancies_scotland, and moving the subsequent row numbers up by one), and have demonstrated the change in the testcases here. It would be great if someone could make this change to the main template, pending any queries or objections. Thanks, PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 21:23, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Population template

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England/Parishes RfC#Infoboxes about possibly adding census templates to places using this infobox. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:03, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Elevation

Was kind of surprised to find that despite having a vast number of parameters, this infobox does not appear to have one for elevation. I'd have thought that elevation is a fairly fundamental attribute of a place, on a par with coordinates, and the equivalent infoboxes for other countries do seem to have it. Have I missed something somewhere, or is it really missing. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 01:22, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I knew I'd seen max and min elevation figures for City of Leeds, but on checking I see that it uses the "settlement" infobox rather than this one. PamD 06:46, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Cannot see any mention of elevation. Would be easy to add if that is what people want. Keith D (talk) 14:26, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Well obviously I think it would be a good idea. Cannot speak for anybody else. - chris_j_wood (talk)

@Chris j wood and PamD: I have put something in the sandbox if you want to try it out and see if there are any problems. I have used similar parameters and location to {{infobox settlement}}.

For basic elevation

• |elevation_link=
• |elevation_point=
• |elevation_ft=
• |elevation_m=
• |elevation_footnotes=

For a maximum elevation

• |elevation_max_point=
• |elevation_max_ft=
• |elevation_max_m=
• |elevation_max_footnotes=

For a minimum elevation

• |elevation_min_point=
• |elevation_min_ft=
• |elevation_min_m=
• |elevation_min_footnotes=

Keith D (talk) 23:40, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

• @Keith D: Thanks for this, but it's not quite working - see this where the max elev is displayed as the min. (Yes, I realised too late that I shouldn't have tested it on the live file, upsetting people's watchlists - should have copied the article into a sandbox. Self-trout.)

I wasn't sure what you expected for the "point" or "link" fields, which don't seem to be in the {{Infobox_settlement}}.

I see that the reference displays alongside the measurement rather than the field name, so it's different from the Settlement infobox, which seems unfortunate - surely we should offer the reader a consistent experience where there's no good reason not to - compare Leeds. PamD 15:45, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, I've just added "area" to the infobox in Silverdale, Lancashire (I remembered it's given in the nomis info, and it seemed useful to include), and sourced it, and I see the reference shows against the value, so I'm not sure what's standard here. PamD 15:58, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@PamD: Thanks for spotting the error, I did not change max to min for the metric version when I copied the code. I made that fix now.

Both the point & link fields are in {{Infobox settlement}}. The link field is to add a link to the word "Elevation" in the basic set so you get a link to an article describing it, probably not used much but I was being consistent. The point field is used to indicate where the reading was taken, could be the name of a hill or some other place in the entity.

The positioning of the reference was to be consistent with the population field in this infobox that goes after the field rather than in the headings column. ({{Infobox settlement}} also puts the population reference in the header column). Keith D (talk) 16:09, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

It's inconsistent within the Leeds infobox, see the location of refs for the GDP values. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:33, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Area

I noticed PamD's reference to 'area' above, in particular using the ONS (via Nomis) to source it. I'm a little worried by this, because the 'area' as defined by the ONS is the 'actually built-on' area, so it doesn't include public open space. This gives a misleading figure for density. I wonder if there is any (generic) alternative source?

Of course this is only ever really going to become an issue if someone decides that it would be a great idea to make a bot to do it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:03, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

• @John Maynard Friedman: Where does that info come from? At https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/localarea?compare=E04005204#section_9 it says:

Area

"For area measurements, census statistics use Standard Area Measurements (SAM), created by ONS Geography for key geographies in the UK using standard methodologies. SAMs are land measurement figures defined by topographic boundaries (coastline and inland water) as at the end of 2011.

"Area measurements are in hectares - the metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres or approximately 2.47 acres - there are 100 hectares in 1 km2.

"Each area measurement used in census results is calculated by aggregating the SAM (measured to two decimal places) for each output area that has been best-fitted to each higher area."

No mention of "built-on". PamD 18:47, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Places separated by open space > 200 metres are not deemed contiguous, which is the criterion for a single built up area – and thus obviously this open space (>200m wide in every direction) is not included. [ref: somewhere on the ONS site from years back.] Thus see, for example, the NOMIS map of the Milton Keynes urban area at UK Census (2011). "Local Area Report – Milton Keynes built-up area (E34005056)". Nomis. Office for National Statistics. (admittedly an edge case because of its unusually high ratio of public open space). The 1967 New Towns Act designated area was almost 8,900 hectares (22,000 acres), which was filled long ago and has since been expanded out of. The NOMIS figure for the area is 6,520 ha (16,100 acres), which is certainly consistent with the map if the open space is excluded. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:31, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I'm not convinced that your quote about defining the area of a "built up area" has any relevance to nomis's data about a civil parish. Compare the maps in the two records for Silverdale parish and for MK BUA. PamD 06:19, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Adding link to Silverdale parish on nomis: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/localarea?compare=E04005204. Map includes lots of Morecambe Bay, certainly not built up. PamD 08:58, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@PamD: Yes, you are correct about CPs. I noticed that the mudflats (?) are included in Silverdale. I also looked at Walton, Milton Keynes, a CP that contains a large balancing lake and a linear park. Nokia reports these in its area. https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/localarea?compare=E04001275 These are excluded in the BUA definition. (!)

Well as I began by saying, it is not a problem until someone makes it one. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:17, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

So your worries, in opening this section, are now calmed. Success. Fascinating map of MKBUA. And yes, Silverdale extends out onto the sands, which are passable at low tide on wonderful guided walks led by the Queen's Guide to the Sands who knows where the channels are wadeable and how to avoid the quicksands - a strange and splendid place. PamD 09:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

If anyone is interested in the geography/geology that explains the MKBUA map, see Milton Keynes#Parks and environmental infrastructure. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

• There is a more general point: many articles start "XXX is a village and civil parish...": it might be useful if the "area" field could be annotated to show that it's the area of the civil parish rather than just the village. PamD 09:00, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Agree, especially for rural parishes, any automatically calculated density could be very misleading. Silverdale, for example, probably has a higher density of snipe. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC on adding a field for historic county to the Template:Infobox UK place

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus was reached that a field for the historic county in which a settlement is located should be added to the Template:Infobox UK place. Around two-thirds of contributing editors supported adding a field for the historic county. The key supporting arguments are that the historic counties (i) are essential to an understanding of British history at a local level, having been the basis for the description of locality for UK places throughout most of recorded history; (ii) are still relevant geographical entities in many contexts and important cultural entities to many people, being actively promoted by the Government for cultural and tourism purposes; (iii) are included in other major references sources including in the Office for National Statistics' Index of Place Names and in Britannica. Only one opponent believes that the historic county isn't an important point in the summary of a UK place. Almost all of the opposition relates to the need to avoid 'bloat' in the infobox. Several supporters have pointed out that European Parliament information has recently been removed from the infobox and that "Shire County" is becoming relevant to fewer places as unitary local government is introduced. This proposal does not preclude a wider consideration of the contents of the infobox. Graham (talk) 05:09, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

---

Should a field for the historic county in which a settlement is located be added to the Template:Infobox UK place? --Songofachilles (talk) 18:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support The Index of Place Names (IPN) in Great Britain is published by the Office for National Statistics. The latest version of the IPN (2019) includes several types of ‘place’, including the Historic County (IPN Place Name Type Code: CTYHISTNM), the Lieutenancy County (CTYLTNM), and the county name as of 2019 where the term ‘county’ is still used for the purposes of local government (CTY19NM). The current Template:Infobox UK place has fields for the Lieutenancy County and the local government counties. Historic County data for UK places could be automatically populated from Wikidata, where it has already been recorded.--Songofachilles (talk) 18:55, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Are we going to have this discussion every year until somebody breaks? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:46, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

  - The addition of this field to the template was suggested on this page in July 2020. The suggestion received more overall support than opposition. One editor suggested that an RfC was the best approach to reach a broader audience. This, albeit belatedly, is that RfC.Songofachilles (talk) 21:45, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

• Weak Support The muddled interconnected use of the word county is slowly being unravelled across the country. This latest IPN appears to be part of that unravelling. If this change is adopted, there will be apparently unrealistic and possibly non-notable, uses of the field (eg Deptford noted as being in Kent), that might lead to edit spats, but these will be few and can be explained in the history section. However, having such a field would go a long way towards removing the current never ending series of edit wars so for that reason alone this suggestion gets my support. I agree that some people will have to 'break'. They will be from the old school who wrote the current flawed guidelines. That is an unfortunate result of some people digging their heels in and refusing to accept what is written in statute (and quality RSSs) that historic counties were never changed. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:24, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
  • FWIW, before Deptford was converted to use this template, it used Template:Infobox London place, which did have a field noting Traditional = Kent. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deptford&action=edit&oldid=116748320 and even before that, a manual table added in February 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deptford&diff=10633813&oldid=10092563 Owain (talk) 12:10, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose the infobox is already suffering from infobox bloat and there is row upon row of different county options. I'd support rationalising those first before we consider adding any more. Adding anything else will increase the likelihood of confusing readers. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:22, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
  • This is not the problem of this Infobox or of Wikipedia, but (alas!) the reality of local government in the UK: it is extremely confusing, because it is constantly changing. Five new local government areas have emerged in England alone since only 2019 (including Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole, North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire) and more changes are in the pipeline. The simplicity, in my view, of the historic counties is that they are independent of, and pre-date, counties as administrative units and the massive confusion caused by constant local government reform. As, especially in England, more and more unitary authorities are created (which do not use the word 'county' in their council title or claim to be counties), instances of the erroneous and confusing use of the word 'county' for local government purposes will hopefully become less.--Songofachilles (talk) 16:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Blue Square Thing and in addition that the historic counties are only significant in some sports. For the vast majority of articles, they would just duplicate existing content. In the very few cases where it matters, explanatory body content would be needed anyway. Let's not let a few hairs on the tail wag the dog. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:07, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose - I see the explanation one can do it... but no major reason why one should do it. So avoiding bloat seems enough reason to not have it. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support There is no logical or procedural reason not to add this field that is not WP:POV. If the UK government is considered a reliable source (it is), and the IPN has data for three types of "county" (it does), then what possible reason could there be for not adding it? Perhaps some logic could be added to the infobox to reduce the number of rows when the the fields are the same? It already does not display the county for the purposes of the Lieutenancies Act 1997 if it is the same as the county for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1972 for instance. Owain (talk) 09:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per John Maynard Friedman. In the very few cases where it doesn't duplicate the ceremonial county and/or administrative county it would need prose content to be meaningful and not confusing, in every other case it's just bloat. There is no reason why we can't do this, but there are many things we can do that we don't do because they're not encyclopaedically justified for some reason, this is just another example. Thryduulf (talk) 13:19, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • One could say the same thing for the so-called 'ceremonial county' too: The presence or otherwise of a Lord Lieutenant has very little meaning to the geographical context of places. I don't see why, say an article on Bexleyheath having "Historic county: Kent' in the infobox would be in the least bit confusing. Owain (talk) 13:48, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
    • To a reader who doesn't understand the technical differences between all the different sorts of county I'd suggest it would be a touch confusing. Tbh it's confusing enough anyway - one parameter called county is probably what's needed for a standard reader most of the time. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
      • Blue Square Thing, I hear what you are saying. But the point of an encyclopedia is not to withhold information because of the risk that readers might be confused, but to present all of the information and give readers the tools and opportunity to inform themselves, especially, as here, on the differences between things which, at first glance, seem alike but are different. Thryduulf, you are not correct when you say that there are "very few cases" in which the historic county does not duplicate the lieutenancy or administrative county. There are 92 historic counties in the UK, of which only 48 share their name with a current local government area (although with different borders, with the exception of, I think, only two: Ceredigion/Cardiganshire and Rutland). Added to this, there are countless settlements which are now in a lieutenancy (called the 'ceremonial county' in England; the 'preserved county' in Wales and the 'lieutenancy area' in Scotland) such as Tyne & Wear, West Midlands, Bristol, Cumbria, East Sussex, Merseyside, Greater London, Tweeddale, Gwent, Clwyd, Dyfed, Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Stirling and Falkirk, etc. that is different to the historic county.Songofachilles (talk) 16:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
        • And as has been said repeatedly before, such rare cases need to be described in the body text. A terse annotation in the infobox adds nothing but clutter. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:34, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
          • But they are not rare cases, that's what I'm saying in my paragraph above.Songofachilles (talk) 17:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
        • But as it seems it does need to be said again, the historic counties are just that. History. 125 years ago. Completely meaningless to a modern readership unless they follow county cricket in those counties that still play.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:39, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
          • I respect that this is your view, but many, many people do not share it. The 92 historic counties are not relevant only to cricket! They are an objective fact: independent of, and pre-dating, 'counties' as administrative units and the massive confusion that has ensued since. They were never 'abolished' and this is stated in the relevant statutes that reformed local government throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not 'completely meaningless' to many people that they live in or are from, e.g. Westmorland, Cumberland or Lancashire; not Cumbria, or from Huntingdonshire, Middlesex, or Caithness, Warwickshire and not 'the West Midlands', or Lancashire and not Blackburn with Darwen, Kent and not Medway, Essex not Thurrock, etc. No one ever had a local identity based on or loyalty to the council that takes away their bins with their ever-changing names and borders, nor to the non-sensical 'ceremonial' counties that hijacked historic county names and preserved many of the abolished local government ones.Songofachilles (talk) 17:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Seems reasonable but as noted this may largely overlap with current counties anyway. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:13, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • All three entities could be referred to as 'counties'. As per the IPN User Guide: there are the historic counties, counties for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1972 and counties for the purposes of the Lieutenancies Act 1997. All three are 'current counties', which is why to avoid confusion, all three should be presented to the reader. Owain (talk) 17:22, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your input, Crouch, Swale. The historic counties overwhelmingly do not overlap with the remaining UK local government entities that still refer to themselves as 'counties', e.g. in the term 'County Council'. Please see my response to Thryduulf above. Thanks! :)Songofachilles (talk) 19:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support: This is an element of place identity recognised as important by government publications, thinking specifically of the MHCLG Guidance of 16 July 2019. As such as it would be a useful resource to display for each town or village. The guidance treats the historic counties as current geographical / cultural divisions, the guidance observing "The Act did not specifically abolish historic counties, but they no longer exist for the purposes of the administration of local government". If local authorities are being required to consider this element, it would be useful to show it on Wikipedia. LG02 (talk) 19:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose They are historical, H:IB says about infoboxes, They quickly summarize important points in an easy-to-read format. The historic county isn't an important point in the summary of a UK place. Historic county should be covered in the article's history section, and if needed readers can be refered to external sources, such as The Index of Place Names (IPN) in Great Britain is published by the Office for National Statistics. Sciencefish (talk) 19:57, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • You do not understand what historic means. It means with a lot of history, not in the past, the correct word for that being historical. If you prefer we could use the label ancient county as coined by the General Register Office. The ONS added both the historic county and lieutenancy information to the Index of Place Names in 2016, noting that the historic counties are "recommended as a stable, unchanging geography which covers the whole of Great Britain". The IPN is a contemporary gazetteer, not a historical work and it has seen fit to add this information, so why should Wikipedia not do likewise? Owain (talk) 07:30, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Thank's for spotting that, I've corrected it. Sciencefish (talk) 08:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
    • From a practical point of view they are "in the past" from the perspective that we're looking at them from - i.e. their relationship to the place. That perspective is crucial here. I must admit I didn't realise that the addition to the index was so recent. I'll be totally honest: that looks like political nudging by the Tory governments rather than any recognition that these things are still relevant on a day to day basis. From that perspective I'd argue very strongly from holding off doing anything that suggests that they have any official status - which is what adding them to the infobox does. As I've said above, there's too much stuff in the ib anyway. If we add something, what three things do we remove? Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:41, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Blue Square Thing But the counties do have official status. You are coming at the issue as if the historic counties no longer existed or were abolished. This is not the case, nor was it the practical effect or intention of the relevant statutes that reformed UK local government in the 19th and 20th centuries. Please see the definition of 'administrative county' on p. 80 of the Local Government Act 1888 (The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 and Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 created similar administrative areas in Scotland and Ireland) and consider this statement from the Government at the time the Local Government Act 1972 came into force: "They are administrative areas and will not alter the traditional boundaries of counties, nor it is intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change" (quoted in The Times, 1 April 1974). It was only resulting confusion over the decades that led to many people incorrectly assuming that historic counties (especially where a name had disappeared for administrative purposes, e.g. Cumberland, Glamorgan, Middlesex, Merioneth, Berwickshire, Caithness, Wigtownshire, Sutherland, Westmorland, Huntingdonshire, Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire, etc) had been abolished and that they had been subsumed by administrative entities which in many cases bear little or no resemblance to the historic county proper. On a personal note, I'm very far from a fan of the current government and, in my view, its revisionist nationalism. But I am someone with principles who believes in what is correct and factual. I especially believe that an encyclopedia should reflect the truth and give all the information. I also, like many others, think that local frames of reference are important for geographical and cultural reasons. The units of local government in the UK are transient and run like corporations. The historic counties, on the other hand, are above politics and administration and I think there's something great about that that's worth recognising. Thanks for reading!--Songofachilles (talk) 10:55, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
      • Please bear in mind this is a discussion about adding it to an infobox template, which is populated from the article. Historic counties can still be part of an article and in many cases are. There is guidence on doing so in WP:UKCITIES. Sciencefish (talk) 14:38, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support, having looked at the Wolverhampton article yesterday on behalf of someone who wanted to know which county it had been in... (I think he wanted to check which volume of a county-based book series was relevant, or something like that). As it happens, that article uses {{Infobox settlement}} with one of the subdivision type/name pairs of fields for "Historic county" so we found our answer quickly. There are probably a lot of readers both inside and outside the UK for whom a historic county identifies an area of the country more easily than some of our modern county names, perhaps especially in Wales and Scotland. PamD 20:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Totally agree, including the growing numbers of people (especially in the U.S. and Canada) who need to know the historic county of a UK town/village for the purposes of family history research. --Songofachilles (talk) 22:09, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, there is an overload of infobox template parametres, but so what? They do not all have to be used at the same time. All that is needed to avoid overlap is a guideline note that if the HC (or LC) is the same as the the admin county for a given place then the HC is not to be used. That is quite simple and not contentious. It would not add to an overload on the visible infobox of virtually any place in the UK. And even if there was a need to thin out the infox there are plenty of other parametres that could be removed as not relevant or of less relevance than the HC. In terms of relevance of the HCs, this and countless other wiki discussions is evidence enough of their relevance. If some editors have trouble visualising something's notability or relevance unless it can be seen or touched then the United Nations disagrees. For that reason alone, the arguement that HC no longer exist is irrelevant: even if they did not exist they meet the notability standard. Nearly all I can see from the oppose arguments above is good faith superficial personal opinion being used to justify the current arrangement about HCs. Closer examination rips those arguments to shreads. By continuing to deny the relevance, and therefore significant use, of HCs in placename articles, infobox or not, we are doing a disservice to this encyclopedia. The current approach is amateur and we should be looking in the mirror and telling ourselves off. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:30, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support It is an important context for every place. The traditional counties are the primary identifiers of places; in Scotland and Northern Ireland practically exclusively and elsewhere they are the underlying geographical context. I don't know who would locate themselves according to bureaucratic structures, but round here we don't. Listing a former local government region in the infobox but not a thousand-year old county is bizarre. Hogweard (talk) 06:42, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
• Strong Support The historic counties are used in various aspects of life, not just in county cricket. It is used by administrators, players and organisers of sports as the governing bodies, in the majority, using the same borders as the historic counties. If Wikipedia is to fulfil its role to provide knowledge to the people then the historic counties must be offered to those seeking information on this area of British life. Ceremonial counties are NOT the same as the historic counties and can be altered or changed on Parliament's whim. The unchanging boundaries of the historic counties are used by local historians, genealogists and the UK Government's Office of National Statistics. NOT to use the historic counties is to drive away many followers of Wikipedia who use it as a source for geography, history and so much more. It is a 'must'. Thank you.
• Support This proposal would be a simple but effective way to ensure a comprehensive and consistent treatment of the historic counties of the UK within Wikipedia, the lack of which has been a serious deficiency for many years. The fact that the Office for National Statistics considers the historic counties to be an important set of geographical and cultural entities should be argument enough for their inclusion in Wikipedia. Britannica also refers each place to its historic county, alongside modern administrative areas. To a large extent whether you consider the historic counties to be relevant entities in the current day is a matter of personal perspective. They certainly are still relevant in many contexts and are important to many people. No doubt to many others they are not relevant at all. However, the plain fact is that the historic counties were the primary divisions of the country throughout most of recorded history and consequently the basis of the description of location throughout most of recorded history. One cannot understand anything about British history at a local level without understanding what the historic counties are. To study the local history of any place without understanding its place within its historic county would be a nonsense. Our primary reference work for local history, the Victoria County History, is firmly based on the historic counties. To study family history or search for historical records or artefacts without understanding the historic counties would be impossible. We cannot pretend that Wikipedia is providing a comprehensive insight into British history until we are have a consistent, comprehensive treatment of the historic counties. Peterjamesb (talk) 16:08, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

  Nobody is suggesting that this info should be deleted from the body text of articles where it is useful or even mildly interesting. The question is whether it is needed as yet another line in an infobox that is already pretty bloated. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:35, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

  I honestly don't understand the argument that one more line in the Infobox is a huge issue/tax on the reader. I don't think there are any or many readers who sit and read an entire Infobox from start to finish (and if there are, I assume they'd only welcome the addition of more relevant information to it). The Infobox provides 'at a glance' information on headline topics that may be of interest to the reader. It is for ease of reference, without the reader having to dig around in the article itself to find it. If the local authority and the Lieutenancy are already listed, there is no reason not to also list the historic county. Take for instance the article on Bournemouth, the Infobox for which uses the 'Settlement' template and not the UK place template. The historic county, Hampshire, is therefore listed in the Infobox (as this template is not locked as the UK place template is). Please take a look at that article and ask yourself this question honestly: do you feel that the addition of this one line on the historic county is causing this infobox to be 'bloated'?--Songofachilles (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

  Honestly? The Bournemouth infobox has far too many other issues to be able to judge - the sheer length of the infobox is a problem for starters. If someone can mock up a test infobox (I really don't have time I'm afraid) then we might be able to make some sort of judgement. Preferably somewhere complex. Like Lewisham. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:31, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

  I think it might just be a case of looking at the existing Infobox for Lewisham and imagining that there is one more entry in it for the historic county.--Songofachilles (talk) 07:09, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

  In fact, now that the European Parliament information has been removed from Infoboxes, adding a historic county field would mean the Infoboxes would have the same number of fields as they always had prior to 31 January 2020.--Songofachilles (talk) 16:22, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

  The "Shire county" field is also becoming relevant to fewer places each year as further two-tier local government areas are replaced by unitary authorities. The Government has signalled it wants to replace the remaining two-tier areas with unitary LG which would make this field completely redundant. Peterjamesb (talk) 07:51, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support As mentioned by others, this is important and helpful information to the reader in establishing background and context for a place. Certainly will help the reader and perhaps provide more information where the information provided is ambiguous.Deathlibrarian (talk) 06:31, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support strongly– The historic counties are an important part of the cultural heritage and social cohesion of the United Kingdom. Whilst separated into different administrative counties, many people throughout the regions recognise the arbitrary nature of the administrative divisions and still refer to themselves as being part of the historic county. The cultural ties that cross the new boundaries come in the form of food, accents, dialect, lifestyle to name but a few. Finally, as the Historic Counties are legally recognised, isn't it only right to fully recognise and respect the location people live in? Cosmicsqueaker (talk) 20:27, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support strongly One consults these pages for definitive, exhaustive information, if looking up the background to Bolton for example, there is nothing to be gained from not knowing that it lies in historic Lancashire but one who is unaware of its history will at least understand its association with the county when the information clearly states its historic status. The same circumstance applies across the country, why, for example, teams residing within the remits of London Borough councils compete in Middlesex designated tournaments or belong to Middlesex associations. The value and usefulness of this information is seemingly very obvious. 92.25.89.39 (talk) 09:31, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support, As per user Cosmicsqueaker . BristolTreeHouse (talk) 19:10, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Notice of end of RfC: I intend to close this RfC by removing the RfC tag from this post tomorrow evening (12 June 2021), at which point it will have been open for discussion for one week.Songofachilles (talk) 12:52, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Unnecessary IB bloat. ~ HAL333 18:21, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support In my mind, the fact the information may be importantly relevant, albeit historical, outweighs any concerns of infobox bloat. (Also, RfCs typically run for more than a week.) SportingFlyer T·C 20:35, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support Historic counties are not only relevant to the history of the county but also for people undertaking research about a specific place. For example genealogy, where county records for a town or village may differ from the current administration __Looke__ (talk) 19:09, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Template-protected edit request 2021-06-21 - Addition of historic county field

Please add a field for 'Historic county' to the Template:Infobox UK place. The RfC on adding a field for the historic county to the Template (item 12 above) has resulted in a clear consensus that this field should be added. I have added the necessary code to the sandbox for the Template:Infobox UK place (lines 272 to 275). This code pulls the relevant data directly from Wikidata, without the need to edit every individual page. Songofachilles (talk) 10:04, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

 Done if I may make a couple of suggestions: (1) remove noicon=true to give a link to edit this information, (2) are local parameters actually needed, if step (1) is done?

Also, please update the documentation — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:57, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

And can the documentation advise editor discretion in its use. What we don't want is nonsense like

Aylesbury

Unitary Authority: Buckinghamshire

Ceremonial county: Buckinghamshire

Historic county: Buckinghamshire

IMO, the historic county only needs to be given when it is different from the Lieutenancy. And how should they be wlinked? In this case, the UA is described at Buckinghamshire Council, about 80% of the modern (ceremonial) county, Buckinghamshire, The historic county doesn't have article (nor need more that a section at most in the modern county article) is about 105% of the modern county, give or take a few enclaves and exclaves. I accept the conclusion of the RfC but it didn't (and shouldn't) say that it should now be obsessively populated in every article regardless of necessity. If in doubt, leave it out.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Users don't get a choice. It's added by default, which really wasn't part of the discussion above fwiw (and which is disappointing - it at least needs a switch to turn it off or override it imo). Better hope the data is actually accurate and that it deals with all those Buckinghamshire exclaves properly. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:02, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

The local government area, lieutenancy area and historic county are three independent things and are presented as such in the ONS Index of Place Names. I am in favour of all three being presented all the time. In some cases the the lieutenancy can be derived from the local government area, but in many cases it can not. If a reader is looking for a lieutenancy area then that information should be readily to hand in the infobox. It should not be up the them to know which area has a lieutenant by virtue of having a county council, or which has one as a combination of other local authority areas. In Scotland and Northern Ireland they bear no resemblance to local authority areas. Likewise, if a reader is looking for a historic county then that information should be readily to hand in the infobox. Readers should not need to know that in some cases a local authority has the same name as a historic county, so it is implied (e.g. Cambridge) and in some cases it does not, so it needs listing separately (e.g. Huntingdon). For the sake of one extra line in the infobox (which takes us back to the same number we had with European Parliament constituencies), readers are spared the need to work things out and are just presented the information they want. That is the point in an encyclopædia after all. It is not supposed to be a test of logic! Owain (talk) 08:43, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

@Owain: sorry, I meant editors don't have a choice. So we have no editorial ability to decide whether or not to include this field. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:11, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I can add the documentation; but if I may add a note about edibility: The data comes from the ONS' Index of Place Names, so is not subject to change (as per their own documentation). The local parameter is not strictly needed, but for completeness with the rest of the template it has been provided. Owain (talk) 12:06, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

There is a map here (the one on the right) which shows the differences between the historic and ceremonial counties. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:32, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

BSqT - If the HC were not added automatically, would it not continue to be the source of continued edit wars? Who would decide if inclusion of the HC was justified? I can see the point raised by JMF, but again, that too would lead to confusion and edit wars. Although the current auto-included HC might appear at times to be unnecessary overkill, it is at least fixed and not open to personal preferences. For the sake of one parameter line in the infobox, I think that is worth it. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 07:48, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

@Roger 8 Roger: my main concern is that the automatic addition of the field - with no ability to remove it at all - was not discussed at all in the RfC above. There are some complex cases that if there's no ability to edit we may be completely screwed with. Donisthorpe, I think, was an exclave of Derbyshire until 1889. There are other places which have been in more than one historic county. We need to be able, as editors, to add notes, for example, to the field to explain the complexities that we've got with some of these places. We can't do that - so Bedlington, for example, is begging for a simple note adding to the infobox field to explain what the heck is going on - cause the article sure as hell doesn't. (e2a: and that's before we get to the errors, the infoboxes where, for some reason, it's not been added where it's needed and the 99% of cases where it's been added when it's not needed at all. Glorious, because we can't change any of these) Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:11, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree. A new RFC will be required if this field is to be populated automatically, universally and unalterably. In the vast majority of cases, it is irrelevant because it is obvious, as in the Aylesbury example above. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:02, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@Roger 8 Roger and Owain: I see that the change (to add the field that is populated automatically, universally and unalterably) has already been made without any RFC to permit it. The above RFC did not authorise this extreme change. Please revert to WP:STATUSQUO and open the RFC first. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:10, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't see what the fuss is all about. The Aylesbury example might look slightly odd, but only very slightly, and that is outweighed by the indisputable fact that it is true and relevant! Auto-fixed HC fields? Great, it prevents the insersion of personal opinion. Not being specifically mentioned in the initial proposal is not really that important: the point of the proposal was patently obvious and that has now taken place. We don't need to bother ourselves with how exactly the proposal is implemented. What next? Will someone complain that the HC field should come one line higher up in the IBX template, or should be in italics? I think it is fine. We should let it be. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:56, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

The fuss?

• the automatically adding of the data wasn't part of the RfC - that was specifically about adding a field to the infobox. I would strongly suggest that to most editors that means a field we can edit. Automatically adding it was mentioned once - and there was no response to that. This implementation of the RfC is beyond it's scope - and, actually, that's a pretty big deal I'm afraid. Sorry, but it is;
• in the majority of cases it creates redundancy. Stoven, Sittingbourne and Strumpshaw have never moved counties. A huge majority of places won't have. We were assured that we'd only be replace the EU parliament field - well, yes: but at least that was different to fields already in place;
• the county name isn't linked. Why not? If it were possible to edit it manually I could do that; I can't now. If it were linked then there are OLINK issues, of course, to consider with the same place being linked multiple times in the infobox;
• the "edit wars" you're suggesting (above) will occur, will occur in regard to wording and, frankly, it's really easy to simply replace the infobox with an instance of infobox settlement - as at Slough;
• there are a hilarious number of errors and/or omissions: Stowmarket, Herringfleet, Fritton and St Olaves and Thetford, for example - as well as the ones I've already signposted. If a human editor made that number of errors you'd think about leaving a note on their talk page or simply reverting them;

The fuss? It doesn't work and it's way beyond the consensus which was agreed. I'd support a reversion based on that. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:29, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

−

[edit conflict] The fuss is that you made a major change to a heavily used template without consensus. You abused your admin privileges to over-interpret the RFC in a way that you think is appropriate. If you don't understand how wrong that is, you need to consider your position. Now would be a good opportunity to back off, implement what the original RFC approved and then open a new RFC for the version you think should be done. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:38, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

As a short term fix while this is discussed, I've updated the infobox to include the wikidata icon link when the data for historic county is coming from wikidata. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:37, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@WOSlinker: No, the short term fix should be to implement the actual RFC as actually agreed and not a grossly expanded version of it which has introduced nonsense and errors. This really should not need escalation to WP:ani: a simple, easily made over-enthusiastic error was made and we really don't need uninvolved all all-and-sundry telling us what we already know. It was a simple mistake, just undo the mandatory element of it pending a new RFC. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:44, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I have removed the wikidata call from this new historic county field. It was implemented incorrectly. My edit summary was: "rm unsourced wikidata call; not in RFC consensus, and implemented contrary to Wikidata infobox RFC". The new |historic_county= parameter should continue to work fine when it is inserted manually. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:08, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman and Jonesey95: The change was not made "without any RFC to permit it": Pulling data from Wikidata is explicitly mentioned by the proposer at the start of the RFC process; it is explicitly mentioned by the proposer at the end of the process, and the code provided in the sandbox did exactly that. I understand that there are some editors opposed to using Wikidata (as discussed in the Wikidata/2018 Infobox RfC) but that RFC did not ban the use of Wikidata, so the removal of that part of the template that was agreed in this RFC is not "contrary to Wikidata infobox RFC" and it is not an "extreme change". Owain (talk) 07:43, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

@Owain:: the exact words of the RFC are these:

Should a field for the historic county in which a settlement is located be added to the Template:Infobox UK place?

Most fields in the infobox are optional and editor-populated. I see no reference in the RFC to a field that is populated automatically, universally and unalterably. That is what is extreme and would need a further RFC. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:14, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

It is not unalterable, as it is editable on Wikidata. The way the field was coded means that it can also be overridden by entering the field manually in the infobox. The other automatic universal fields (Police, Fire, etc) cannot be altered this way as the lookup template is locked, so it is more user-editable than those fields previously added. The argument seems to be an ideological one against Wikidata which is more flexible than the plain-text lookups currently employed. Owain (talk) 08:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

My perspective is that, for the vast majority of articles, this field is redundant duplication, so in fact the ideological position is to demand it everywhere. I accept the consensus reached on the RFC that there are many places where that is not the case and thus the field should be available for those cases. I do not accept, and the RFC did not ask, that it must be enforced on all UK place articles irrespective of necessity or relevance. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:03, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

It is not duplication because the fields in question are completely different things. The fact that two fields may share the same name in certain instances does not make it any more a duplicate than "Unitary authority: Buckinghamshire", "Ceremonial county: Buckinghamshire" (as seen at Aylesbury for example). As per the ONS description in the Index of Place Names, it is one of the only fields that can apply to the entirety of GB, so it is not taking an ideological position to apply it to every place in GB. Owain (talk) 09:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

As previously discussed, I would be more than happy to have all three (historic county; county for the purposes of LGA 1972; county for the purposes of LA 1997) displayed everywhere. Hiding one or other because they share the same name is just confusing for the reader. We don't hide "Ambulance: Scottish" just because we have "Fire: Scottish", for instance. Owain (talk) 09:56, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

We are just going to have to agree to differ in that case. Continued reiteration of the same arguments is pointless. The issue has been resolved: the RFC as written has been implemented. If you want to make the field mandatory, open another RFC. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:20, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I'll just add, per points made up and down from here, that there are clearly a bunch of places where the Wikidata is wrong. By automatically adding that, without checking, you're increasing the unreliability of the project. That's a very bad thing I'm afraid. Fwiw I think I looked at 20, maybe 25 pages of places where the county has changed. I found 7 or 8 obvious errors. That's a hilariously (sic) high percentage. If you, as a user, did that by hand I'd open a conversation about deliberate factual errors on your talk page.

The problem with this is that it's not being checked before it's added. That's a really crap way to do this. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

IMO the real problem here isn't the inability to edit the HC field, it is the false assumption that pervades everything to do with counties and which BSqM, you illustrate well above by saying: "in the majority of cases it creates redundancy. Stoven, Sittingbourne and Strumpshaw have never moved counties." Regarding HCs, nowhere (excluding very few exceptions), has ever changed counties. Places are having other counties laid on top of them. The sooner we stop using terms like changed, transferred, absorbed into, the better for us all because they create a false impression of what has happened. The first step to doing that is to change the uk geography guidelines on how to talk about counties, which says 'we don't take the view that the HCs still exist'. Incidentally, the use of this new field, fixed or not, makes those guidelines absurd because it confirms, with ONS, that HC do exist. If that shift in thinking takes place then there is no real reason to make the HC field open to interpretation. So, this seems to be the root of the problem, not whether or not the consensus decision was exceeded. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:05, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Re: making the guidelines absurd: from the RfC close: "The key supporting arguments are that the historic counties (i) are essential to an understanding of British history at a local level, having been the basis for the description of locality for UK places throughout most of recorded history; (ii) are still relevant geographical entities in many contexts and important cultural entities to many people, being actively promoted by the Government for cultural and tourism purposes; (iii) are included in other major references sources including in the Office for National Statistics' Index of Place Names and in Britannica". Not, I note, that they still "exist" in any meaningful way.

The actual problem is nothing to do with interpretation. It's a combination of redundancy and that the data is simply not correct in a number of cases - perhaps the ONS data is better than Wikidata, I don't know. Maybe that'll deal with Outwell properly. Or Thetford. I mean, Thetford. How on earth does wikidata get that one so wrong?

But that's by the by. You have your field. Populate infoboxes with it. Write good articles explaining what it means (please! Some of them are as confusing as heck). Tell people why it's a big deal that Surrey play at The Oval or Kent at Beckenham - just don't repeat that old lie about the county boundary once running through The Nevill Ground... Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your above post. I admit I had not looked thororoughly through many place names with the fixed HC template. I assumed by error you were talking about the very few oddities where the HC is ambiguous, not referring to simple mistakes. What did the field say about Thetford (it has now been removed). Did it put Thetford in Suffolk? You raise an important point about redundancy. Something can be assumed to be extinct if it has disappeared from use, even if no official end point exists, such as county hundreds. The question then is are HCs still in use? In use to me means far more than having a practical use: hundreds have virtually no current use, even in the thinking of people, but HCs certainly do. I agree with your last paragraph. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:22, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, Thetford had just Suffolk. That may be based on the coordinates that someone has put into Wikidata which have the town on the west of the Ouse - when everything old and important in the town is on the east bank. But, yeah, coordinates that are crap are another of my bugbears... But, as I've said above, clearly too many errors to auto-add in my view.

The redundancy point is more nuanced of course. Do people in Deptford think they're in Kent? Some might, but gut feeling says most don't - and I would say that's even more so with younger people. How about Bromley or Beckenham? More would use Kent there I'd say, but I don't know how many. The bit of Tunbridge Wells that used to be in Sussex - how many people living on the other side of that road identify with Sussex? Hmm... I can go further - I work in somewhere that was part of another county until 1974. One person I work with knows it used to be in that county. >99% of adults don't (seriously - there's absolutely no identification with the other county in that part of the area that changed - certainly young people don't have a clue and would never identify as anything other than their current county). So I reckon it depends on a bunch of stuff - I don't think it's clearcut either way. It is historically interesting, of course. But to me only that (and, fwiw, I can find reference to the hundred that people used to live in being lamented as disappearing as well - in recent press articles!). Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

If there are clearly some errors with the Wikidata, then thank you for pointing these out and I agree that needs to be looked into further before auto-add is appropriate. Blue Square Thing: your points here would have been more appropriate to the (now closed) RfC above, and I think in any case you already made them there, but, fwiw, it's not relevant to consider whether, for example, people in Deptford think they're in Kent or not or whether people in the the parts of Tunbridge Wells that are in Sussex 'identify' with Sussex. It is a fact that Deptford lies in Kent and some parts of what is now considered Tunbridge Wells (e.g. Broadwater Down) are in Sussex (and you're absolutely right the Kent/Sussex border doesn't run through The Nevill Ground - it is just to the south of it). That never changed. What did change is that local government boundaries (always intended to be distinct from what we now are forced to term the 'historic' counties) were established and re-drawn over the 20th and current centuries, but this never affected the historic counties and it was never intended to. People have merely become confused over time as local government areas (and, more recently, lieutenancy areas) have conflated themselves with the (historic) counties. My main motivation for suggesting the introduction of this infobox field is to educate people on that, as an encylopedia should. I get that there is an argument to be made to say that "well, that may be the case, but it's too late now and it just doesn't matter anymore", but that wasn't the overwhelming feeling shown by the RfC above which explored the issue. Songofachilles (talk) 20:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

That's one interpretation of what has happened to county boundaries. But it's only one interpretation. A perfectly valid alternative view is that the boundaries moved. To be honest, I think if you surveyed people living in places like this that would actually be the general feeling - certainly this article would support that view, as would this document. It may be worth being aware that I think it's possibly to interpret this emphasis on historical counties from politicians such as Eric Pickles as being politically motivated, with a very specific type of cultural identity politics surrounding the belief that historical counties never went away - why would Pickles have to "assert", in a formal government announcement, if they had actually existed in any practical sense beyond where people play cricket? The assertion suggests to me that there was no prior belief that that boundary off of Warwick Avenue in Tunbridge Wells still existed. Your interpretation is that it always existed. Both are interpretations. Neither is fact - well, unless you're going to take Pickle's word for it (which, frankly, I'm not prepared to do) Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:08, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't have anything to add that I didn't already write in my comment to you of 10:55, 8 June 2021 in the above RfC - but we can agree to disagree! :) I think there is an interesting debate to be had (probably not here, though) about whether public perception can actually change something that, in this case, was never changed in law. And by the way, I wouldn't take any politician's word for anything, least of all one from Pickles' party (and I actually had to Wiki him as I wasn't even that sure who he is). But it's okay, because I don't have to, I can do my own research and reach my own conclusions - just as everyone should be able to with a comprehensive Wikipedia. Just out of interest, and following the logic of what you write above, do you consider that, for instance, Bedford is not in Bedfordshire, Reading is not in Berkshire, Coventry is not in Warwickshire, Darlington is not in Co. Durham and York is not in Yorkshire? The newspaper articles you cite are really interesting because they show how, at the time, it was absolutely in the interests of local authorities collecting taxes from residents newly under their jurisdiction from a different county to make them mistakenly believe that they had been 'transferred' into a different county or, in many cases, that their county had been 'abolished' altogether. Songofachilles (talk) 21:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Fwiw almost everything that I read about 1974 talks about transferring. I think the weight of usage is clearly in that camp. And clearly those places are in those counties - that's clearly the way in which we still describe them in just about every way - mainly because of the recent nature of the changes, partly because of the whole ceremonial thing clearly existing. But no one still describes Hopton-on-Sea as still being in Suffolk, or Canterbury as still being a county corporate or county borough because those changes were so long ago. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:33, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

From what I have seen over the years, that discussion about what weight if any should be given to public perception (of what county someone is in) has never happened. In fact, I would say it has been intentionally ignored because I have tried to raise it in as many ways as I can. However, I accept the fault might lie with me for not raising in a way that registers. Whatever, I agree that another debate about the role of HCs within wikipedia is needed, but not here. I would participate if such a debate was started but I do not feel inclined to be the one starting it. This latest addition to the ibx is excellent but it is only a part solution to a deeper problem. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 23:47, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. Songofachilles (talk) 08:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

The issue has been contentious for years'. See:

• Wikipedia:Counties of England/Traditions vs Administrative (2003)
• Wikipedia:Counties of England (2004)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about counties (2005-2007)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/Counties (historical) (2009)

I've not looked for the related discussions, but I expect that they were hotly debated. BTW has anybody informed Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography about this? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:00, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

The purpose of an RfC is to provide interested editors with a forum to discuss a proposal and it is also is a mechanism that provides notice of the proposal to interested editors. I don't think there is an after-the-fact obligation to inform potentially-interested editors who have not already taken the opportunity to express their support or opposition. —Songofachilles (talk) 20:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Y Courtesy FYI — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:47, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

@Songofachilles: GhostInTheMachine refers to this edit. I don't see why that couldn't have been done weeks ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:00, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

@Roger 8 Roger: I'd be surprised if there's not been any academic work done on the imagined geography of county identity. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:33, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

If there has been I have not come across it. I believe there are one or two books around about historic county culture but they look to be written by ABC supporters, making them good but less than ideal to use as references. I do know that there is an enourmous amount of low grade references being used to back up our current, slightly anti-HC, position. There is also a lot of misreading of references, leading to editors not properly reproducing what the reference actually says. Of the better quality academic works about counties, they all appear to focus on the local government aspect of counties. Unfortunately I do not have access to most of them which makes it imposssible to check some of the statements made in wiki articles that use those works as references. Anyway, I'd be happy to see an academic book about county identity if one exists. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:31, 27 June 2021 (UTC

Just chiming in to say this is a long standing content dispute that is well documented. The field should be removed. MRSC (talk) 09:55, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you MRSC for chipping in: your presence is welcome and required. Yes, we know you do not want the field there. It would be helpful if you could elaborate as to why instead of giving one liners. You have done the same at North Woolwich with this equally informative comment: "It isn't in Kent now". I do however partly agree with some of your changes to the North Woolwich article, but further discussion there is needed. Your comments in subsection 4 above should be down here I think. In any case, now that some further heavyweights have begun to enter the ring (no offense intended to anyone) I hope we can begin discussing how to iron out some of the thorny issues that will arise with this reinstated HC ibx field. Over zealous editting that gives, to use your term, 'primacy' to HCs in articles is one issue, but that is easily dealt with. A new section might be useful, perhaps in the project page talk:UK geography,? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 11:09, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

User:Roger 8 Roger, I could do with some help with some of the articles being edited by User:PlatinumClipper96. They are including information about the historic county in the lead paragraph. Not everyone knows what is meant by a "historic county" and some will read that as belonging to a county that has existed for a long time and I think could lead to confusion. A number of examples include: Leytonstone, Walthamstow, and Stratford, London. WOSlinker (talk) 20:38, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

WOSlinker, I have commented on the Stratford, London talk page. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:49, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi there, @WOSlinker and @Roger 8 Roger. My edits make a clear distinction between and makes obvious the fact there are different types of county. It would be far be more confusing and, in fact, misleading if we say a place "was" in its historic county as WOSlinker did when changing my edits, or by only attributing ceremonial or non-metropolitan/metropolitan counties to the word "county". The term "historic county" refers to a specific definition of English counties, as do the terms "ceremonial", "non-metropolitan" and "metropolitan". The fact the ancient counties of England in their traditional form are not used for administrative purposes does not mean they no longer exist, are insignificant, should be referred to in the past tense or not mentioned at all. I fail to see any reason as to why the historic county should not be mentioned in the lead. Roger 8 Roger, regarding your message to me on the Stratford talk page, I am happy for the ceremonial and historic counties to be mentioned in a ceremonial county-first order, in accordance with the established structure you mentioned. My view is that we must make the fact places remain in their historic counties whilst also in other definitions of the counties (i.e. those currently used for administrative purposes) clear to the reader. Recent administrative changes have for decades caused confusion with regard to counties. PlatinumClipper96 (talk) 17:56, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

How has this happened? An RFC was opened while there was an ongoing discussion on the same topic immediately above it, relevant wikiprojects were not informed, a significant number of longstanding editors opposed the proposal but an editor who hadn't made a single wikipedia edit for 4 years nonetheless declared that a consensus had been reached (when it clearly hadn't). Apart from being a terrible idea which is going to populate articles with misleading historical fictions, this is also a complete abuse of process, as well as contradicting longstanding guidance. I agree with the editors above that this field should be removed. There was and is clearly no consensus for its addition. JimmyGuano (talk) 21:55, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Bot request

• For the information of editors here, there is an open bot request related to this parameter. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:19, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland seems to have been completely overlooked in this discussion. Unlike in Britain, the counties of Northern Ireland haven't changed since the last of them were created in 1613. Every settlement in Northern Ireland already showed the county in the infobox. Owain has been adding the new field, so now they all show "County" and "Historic county", which are always the same (see Armagh for example). This is not needed. Also, although none of the Northern Ireland counties are used for governance, they're not "historic" either. I suggest Northern Ireland settlements be left alone and the "Historic county" field be removed from them. ~Asarlaí 12:51, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

True but it is not only in Northern Ireland where Owain (mainly) has been doing that, despite being requested in the strongest terms to stop adding redundant information. This field is only relevant to places where the boundary has been moved or significantly changed (like the London boroughs). It is just chaff in other articles. Owain, please stop making these wholesale changes while discussion is still in progress. @Asarlaí:, you would be fully justified to revert pending agreement on appropriate use. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Asarlaí Thanks for raising; I agree this needs more discussion specific to Northern Ireland. John Maynard Friedman Please refrain from trying to re-open arguments that have already been considered in the RfC. You yourself above write: I accept the consensus reached on the RFC that there are many places where that is not the case and thus the field should be available for those cases and We are just going to have to agree to differ in that case. Continued reiteration of the same arguments is pointless. The issue has been resolved: the RFC as written has been implemented. If you want to make the field mandatory, open another RFC and yet you are still constantly bringing up the same arguments over and over again. The RfC has concluded that the addition of the historic county to the Infobox is not 'redundant information'. This is your opinion. Automatic populating of the field has been removed as you wished. As for the field being added to articles, to use your own words again, where the boundary has been moved or significantly changed, this is very far from just the London boroughs, as detailed and set out above multiple times. To reiterate, and repeating what I have written above: There are 92 historic counties in the UK, of which only 48 share their name with a current local government area (although with different borders, with the exception of, I think, only two: Ceredigion/Cardiganshire and Rutland). Added to this, there are countless settlements which are now in a lieutenancy (called the 'ceremonial county' in England; the 'preserved county' in Wales and the 'lieutenancy area' in Scotland) such as Tyne & Wear, West Midlands, Bristol, Cumbria, East Sussex, Merseyside, Greater London, Tweeddale, Gwent, Clwyd, Dyfed, Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Stirling and Falkirk, etc. that is different to the historic county. Please don't make me have to go over old ground again. You say you accept the conclusions of the RfC. Thank you :) —Songofachilles (talk) 20:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Where it is clear that field is being pushed into hundreds of articles, robotically and algorithmically without any evidence of editorial judgement being exercised, it is indistinguishable from the automatic population that you agreed should stop. There is clearly no consensus for that, so please call a halt to it. I accepted the result of the RFC which said, and only said that the field should be made available, nothing more. Nothing in the RFC justifies gross errors like North Woolwich and City of London, nor self-evident silliness like Armagh/Armagh/Armagh. And no, it doesn't need discussion "specific to Northern Ireland" because there are similar examples in England like Buckinghamshire/Buckinghamshire/Buckinghamshire right at the start of this discussion. Time to pause and reflect. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Why does an editor who hasn't made an edit for 4 years suddenly pop up to close an RfC at 5 in the morning and declare a consensus has been reached in a debate with significant opposition and which he hasn't taken part in, despite an edit history of pushing Association of British County viewpoints? And then the terms even of this non-existant consensus are then completely ignored and editors run amok filling infoboxes with blatant falsehoods. This is not the correct way for decisions to be taken on wikipedia. This is an opportunistic putsch on the part an organised long term campaign. JimmyGuano (talk) 23:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion: perhaps they have two accounts, so that they can have two watchlists; but normally only edit from one of the two accounts. Maybe they forgot to log out of Graham Shipley and log into the other account before making the close. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Even taking that charitable interpretation, a marginal, unannounced straw poll, judged by an undeclared alternative account, on an unadvertised RfC on an unrelated talk page, is not the correct process for overturning wikipedia guidance that has been in place for over 15 years. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:00, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

The 'County' displayed in the Infobox for places in Northern Ireland relates to the field lieutenancy_northern_ireland which is the same as the historic county for all places other than those within the two county boroughs. Clearly including the historic_county field for places outside the two county boroughs is redundant and confusing. Peterjamesb (talk) 08:34, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for that -- that was an oversight when I was creating the lists of articles to amend. As discussed, I had excluded all those places where the lieutenancy_england and shire_county were the same as the historic county, but neglected to consider Northern Ireland where they are almost all the same. Happy to remove the redundancy! Owain (talk) 08:38, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

How about Scotland? Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I will work on that too. Owain (talk) 09:10, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Avoiding misrepresentation of history

So why is Ullapool listed under Cromartyshire rather than Ross-shire, which is was in before it was in Cromartyshire, or Ross and Cromarty, which it was in afterwards? If we accept the need to include former counties, surely we should include all of them? Why does only one of them count? This is misleading information that is obscuring history, not revealing it. JimmyGuano (talk) 19:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC) In fact (I've learned a new thing today) before it was in Ross-shire it was in Inverness-shire. So the infobox here should list four historic counties. JimmyGuano (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Ullapool is listed in Cromartyshire because this is what the ONS Index of Place Names states. The IPN includes the counties as determined by the OS, not any administrative areas (e.g. Ross & Cromarty) that were subsequently based on them. Owain (talk) 20:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

OK, so the county history of Ullapool is as follows: Inverness-shire (1207-1504), Ross-shire (1504-1690), Cromartyshire (1690-1890), Ross & Cromarty (1890-1975 - or present day if you want to argue continuity with incarnations of Ross and Cromarty since, though I accept you may not). You are arguing that "Historic county: Cromartyshire" is a fair and representative summary of that, that will quickly give wikipedia readers a good and balanced understanding of Ullapool's history? JimmyGuano (talk) 20:47, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Great question JimmyGuano. As the editor above writes, the 92 historic counties of the UK are basically a re-statement of the definition of the historic counties which was used by the General Register Office (GRO) and the Ordnance Survey, after the Local Government Act 1888 and the Local Goverment Act (Scotland) 1889 were passed. The GRO coined the phrase ‘ancient or geographical county’ to distinguish between the historic counties and the new, administrative local government areas (known as ‘administrative counties’ and ‘county boroughs’) created by the Act. Ross and Cromarty was an 'administrative county' created by the 1889 Act and is therefore not a historic county. For ease, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire have often been considered together in other contexts too, though, mainly because Cromartyshire is unique among the counties for being one small area and an extensive and complicated set of exclaves. But the two are separate counties.—Songofachilles (talk) 20:56, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Regarding Ullapool more specifically, it was part of Inverness-shire and then Ross-shire during the period when the Scottish counties were still evolving into the historic counties as generally accepted today (including by the ONS and its IPN, the OS, and the Government). I expect the editor who has made edits so far is sticking to the Historic Counties Trust's Historic Counties Standard which you can read about here: https://historiccountiestrust.co.uk/Historic_Counties_Standard.pdf. —Songofachilles (talk) 21:21, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 says in article 39 - "From and after the passing of this Act, the counties of Ross and Cromarty shall cease to be separate counties, and shall be united for all purposes whatsoever, under the name of the county of Ross and Cromarty" [3]. You are arguing that this doesn't mean that they ceased to be separate counties, and that they were not united for all purposes whatsoever? And you are arguing that it secretly made a distinction here between "historic counties" and "administrative counties" that it cunningly disguised by using the phrase "for all purposes whatsoever". And you also disagree that Ullapool wasn't in Cromartyshire until it was added to Cromartyshire in 1690? And quite aside from all of this, you seem to now be arguing that the infobox should not inform wikipedia readers about the county history of a settlement? JimmyGuano (talk) 21:23, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems entirely sensible to use same the definition of the historic counties as used by the ONS for the purposes of the historic_county field. Where there have been changes in the county of a place over many centuries these should surely be dealt with in the main body of the article for that place, as should issues relating to detached parts, counties corporate and so on. In this way, the whole story can be told and the value in the historic_county field put in context where that is necessary. The article also provides a place where modern local government etc. can be put in context in relation to its historic county. The purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place. I suggest that debates about which historic county should be listed for a given place would be better held on the Talk page for that place. More general discussions about the historic counties of Scotland would be better held on the talk page for that article. Peterjamesb (talk) 21:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Listing one historic county in an infobox for a settlement that has been in four different counties over its history, and has been not in that county for far longer that it has been in that county, is actively misleading. As is taking a snapshot at one moment in time and presenting it as eternal and unchanging, which as you can see in the case of Ullapool at least it certainly is not. And this is a discussion about what goes in the infobox, so the infobox talk page is an entirely appropriate page to have this discussion on. JimmyGuano (talk) 21:50, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I'd agree. It really makes no sense to use a single point in time to define something that has happened historically - and certainly not if part of the reason for doing so is to present information succinctly for readers. If it's that complex we'd be better off with prose and possibly leaving it out of the infobox entirely. Certainly the ABC, for example, dates Scottish counties to the early 12th century rather than using a single data point as the ONS may be doing.

Part of the problem might be the use of "historic" in all of this. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:06, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, in an ideal world we'd be able to just call them 'counties' (as in Northern Ireland, which never had the chaos which resulted from administrative entities being termed 'counties' in the rest of the UK), but it's not currently possible, although as more and more unitary authorities appear (which, with a few exceptions, don't claim to be counties or call themselves a 'county council'), I'm hopeful one day it might be possible.—Songofachilles (talk) 22:15, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Peterjamesb is right. And this page is not for discussion about the actual data that goes in the Infobox; it is for discussion of the parameters that comprise it. The historic_county field has been added per the consensus reached during the RfC period. Discussion about the precise contents of the field for a specific place is indeed best discussed on the talk page for that place. I'd also refer you to p. 13 of the Index of Place Names in Great Britain (IPN) User Guide 2019 (not available as a weblink, unfortunately) which lists the 92 historic counties (including Ross-shire and Cromartyshire separately) and states that the administrative counties introduced by the LG(S)A 1889 were separate to the historic counties in Scotland and that it was these administrative counties that were abolished by the LG(S)A 1973, and not Scotland's historic counties. —Songofachilles (talk) 22:15, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

You've got to admire the powers of irony of someone who can state that "The purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place." and then argue that the best way of telling that whole story is to omit three of the four counties that collectively make up the majority of that story. And this isn't an argument about Ullapool, or about Scotland, it's an argument about an infobox field and what information should go in it. And no there wasn't a consensus in the RfC, and as you can see there still isn't. JimmyGuano (talk) 22:22, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that that dataset appears to be a) unable to cope with places at a full settlement level in many cases (see Thetford) and b) can only apply one historic county properly to the data - so Outwell has two separate rows in the csv file (yeah, it's downloadable from here as a zip - took me maybe 30 seconds to find). So which one do you use - the locality or the parish? One says historically it was in Cambs, the other Norfolk when, in reality, it was in both. St Olaves is even worse. Just trying to use that data without significant research would lead to significant errors. I'm not even sure it's trustworthy, let alone the level of effective OR required to actually use it - as a user I'd have to make a judgement about what I included within the article on St Olaves. Taking the ONS line, I'd have to include parts of South Norfolk (Haddiscoe Parish) within the article about the village. Although that's technically correct (I drive through it every working day) it opens a can of worms the size of some very large worms. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:40, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Still haven't had anybody explain which of these statements they disagree with.

• Ullapool has been in several counties over its history: Inverness-shire (1207-1504), Ross-shire (1504-1690), Cromartyshire (1690-1890), Ross & Cromarty (1890-1975)
• Putting "Historic county: Cromatyshire", (or any other single county) in the infobx is misrepresenting that history
• Wikipedia should not have misleading summaries in its infoboxes.JimmyGuano (talk) 06:40, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

On your first point: Agree. Except that the last entity (Ross and Cromarty) is not comparable with or equivalent to the other three. It is an administrative-only creation that was and is distinct from Ross-shire and Cromartyshire. On your second point: Disagree. The historic county for Ullapool is Cromartyshire according to the ONS and its IPN (and, by extension the UK Government) and the OS. A different, additional parameter would be required to include Inverness-shire and Ross-shire for Ullapool (something like 'county timeline' or 'county evolution') as a 'historic county' is a term with an accepted definition and following that definition was the intention behind me suggesting the parameter in the RfC (see my supporting comment underneath the RfC question). On your final point: Agree. We're talking about data though really for this parameter, not 'summaries'. And the ONS data is not misleading.—Songofachilles (talk) 20:53, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

In 1890 Cromartyshire and Ross-shire explicitly "ceased to be separate counties" and were explicitly "united for all purposes whatsoever" as you know perfectly well because we discussed it above. The only difference between them is that one of them succeeded the other two. Repeating the same myths over and over again doesn't make them true. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:14, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Songofachilles, please don't insert your replies in another editor's post. It would have been legitimate to replace JimmyGuano's bullet pointing (*) with numbering (#) and then reply in your own post using those numbers. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Redone as requested, thank you, that is clearer. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that the only way to resolve this is to date the "Historic county" item. Is it as at 1888 or as at 1974 or when? That would resolve a lot of these issues. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Neither. The Historic County Standard says "the boundaries as existing immediately before the passing of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844". Except that's not true, it accepts the exclaves removed by that act. And its not the boundaries immediately after the passing of the act either - as it rejects those changes that were not about true exclaves. So in simple terms: The historic counties presented by the historic county movement do not match the real counties at any point in history. They are instead modern-day areas analogous to the historic regions.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 19:33, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

But the Historic Counties Trust (which drew up this so-called 'standard') is just a lobby group with no standing and so may safely be ignored. The more this can of worms gets exposed, the stinkier it gets.

We are being told repeatedly that this field is valid because the ONS reports it (where?). Which definition do they use? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Taking the Historic Counties Trust's advice here is like asking the Birmingham City Supporters Club whether Aston Villa are a big club, or asking the Pope which is the best religion. JimmyGuano (talk)

The ONS data being referred to is the Index of British Place Names, which explicitly refers to Definition A of the Historic County Standard. The IPN contains ~100,000 entries saying which county for each place, but has no map of the exact boundaries. OS has generated boundaries for the historic counties, and there are thousands of cases where the historic county in IPN does not match the OS-generated boundaries. Some are data quality issues, some are substantive differences in the county borders. This means ONS data disagrees with OS data!--51.7.92.61 (talk) 09:55, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

A compromise proposal?

OK, we've very clearly established in the case above that there are places whose county has changed over time, often multiple times over multiple centuries. And that in such cases picking one of these counties at an arbitrary point in time and putting it in an infobox is clearly wrong and would result in readers being given actively misleading information. Note that in the Ullapool example above I am not engaging in a pointless theological argument about which of those four counties should be represented as "correct", they are clearly all "correct". I am pointing out that as a matter of principle we can only fairly represent Ullapool's history by including all of them. History didn't start in 1888 and it didn't stop in 1890. As many of the large number of reasoned objectors pointed out in the non-consensus which wasn't reached in the improperly-managed RfC above, the logical conclusion of that is that potentially complicated and nuanced historical information is best kept out of info-boxes. However in the interests of reaching an actual consensus, maybe we can build on the objective given by a proponent of this infobox field above, that "The purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place". Presenting the whole story of a place feels like something that we can all agree on as a commendable objective. On that basis listing all of the counties that a place has been in in the past in a field in an infobox wouldn't seem a terrible outcome? Not my preferred one, but a reasonable compromise? JimmyGuano (talk) 05:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

The above RfC on whether the field 'historic_county' should be added to the Infobox:UK place was followed pretty much to the letter of the rules and guidance on conducting an RfC. Two thirds of those who participated in the RfC supported adding the field to the Infobox. This is a majority view and many decisions are taken on a majority view (e.g. referenda, elections, etc.). What you are talking about here is a debate about what a historic county is, not which parameters should comprise the Infobox:UK place (the issue relevant to this talk page). I think your debate is best taken to the talk page for Ross-shire, Cromartyshire, Ullapool and/or Historic counties of the United Kingdom, Shires of Scotland. My view personally is that the generally accepted definition of historic county per the Government, the ONS, the INS and the OS is preferable, but debate on that (in the appropriate place) is always welcome (and really interesting, too). —Songofachilles (talk) 09:01, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

This is not the case:

• The purpose of a Request for Comments is that you request comment, that's the point, and you do so from a wide, impartial range of participants by publicising the RfC, as it clearly says in the guidelines. Informing Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography after the RfC closed doesn't really count. The RfC was improperly managed.
• As you say, elections run on majorities. However Wikipedia doesn't, it runs on Consensus. The RfC was closed by somebody who didn't appear to know this, who popped up from nowhere and declared a consensus on the basis that slightly more people had expressed support than opposition during the unpublicised two weeks that the RfC had been open. There was and still is are large amount of reasoned objections from a large body of experienced editors who edit wikipedia broadly. The RfC was improperly closed.

This was not a properly run RfC and there was, and remains, no consensus for the change that was made. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:23, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

I have no problem with this idea. As I said, the purpose of including the historic county information is to help tell the whole story of a place. No irony intended. I do think though that this is a discussion to be had on the Talk page for the Ullapool article or the Cromartyshire article or the Historic Counties of Scotland article. Peterjamesb (talk) 09:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

The infobox is not meant to be a history lesson -- surely that information is better dealt with in the Cromartyshire and Ross-shire articles themselves, not added to every infobox with "Historic county: Cromartyshire (from 1690) Ross-shire (Until 1690)”? We don’t list out the previous local government districts or lieutenancies: We don’t have things like “District: Somerset West and Taunton (from 2019) Taunton Deane (until 2019)” or “Ceremonial county: Lincolnshire (from 1996) Humberside (until 1996)” We don’t do it with counties of the same vintage either, e.g. “County: County Londonderry (from 1613) County Coleraine (until 1613)”. The infoboxes should list the things as they stand now, not provide a chronology of previous values which would end up making the whole thing unwieldy. Owain (talk) 09:07, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

An article is supposed to represent the history of a place though, and the infobox is supposed to summarise it. This proposal would result in the actual history of a place being actively misrepresented. Whether or not an infobox is there to present history, it clearly shouldn't present myth. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:31, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

In that case, the (visible) field name should be "1887 county". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:48, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

If the infobox is for "things as they stand now", that naturally implies not showing any historic county detail in the infobox. I realise it isn't quite that simple, primarily because of the recognition the government has shown.

The whole historic county movement is primarily a reaction to the changes of 1974, with the aim of saying the historic counties still exist. In order to preserve the traditional Middlesex/Surrey boundary it had to go back further and arbitrarily fix the borders in 1889. Legalistic arguments were then created to justify that date (which may or may not be correct).

The county boundaries were never static and eternal, and there were plenty of changes before and after both 1889 and 1974. Fixing the boundaries at a specific date introduces problems, which the Historic County Standard acknowledges. It makes choices about how to handle complexities like exclaves and moving river courses. By making choices, it means the precise boundaries derived from the standard are not the actual boundaries at any point of history, but original creations by a pressure group.

If a place is affected by a change of county in 1844, that is just as important to that place as a change of county in 1974. Both situations should get identical treatment, such as a sentence describing the change. Pretending there is a single set of historic counties is an oversimplifcation of reality.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 13:30, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

51.7, even assuming merit in your reasoning, how does that apply to the 1889 changes in England where a conscious effort was made to exclude the counties as they stood then from being affected by the 1889 legislative change? That has had a run on effect in later legislation, including 1974, because in order to create the new 1974 administrative counties one needed to cancel the existing administrative counties, meaning the 1888 counties were still not being changed. You could say that the 1889 parliament, in bowing to the wishes of the countryside lobby and consciously not changing established HC boundaries, was unknowingly creating an horredous mess for the future. If that is all true, and I see no reason to doubt it, so what? It is not our problem to solve, we just report what is. Your reasoning, that county boundaries have been changing since 1889, as they had done many times before that date, is nothing more than your original research which you are trying to make out as citable fact. By insisting that your opinion is actually fact you and your buddies from the early days have caused this never-ending debate about HCs on wikipedia. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:34, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

The 1889 legislation made a concious effort to exclude the counties from being changed? That seems extremely unlikely. There was no logical reason for the laws to deliberately exclude that change, and if it was deliberate they would have spelled it out. That fact was not made explicit; but I fully agree that yes, the exact phrasing of the law means that could have happened.

The boundaries adopted by the HC movement are not exactly the boundaries of 1889, and to draw a precise line the modern organisation has to make a decision with no reflection on the reality of 1889 (when the river moves does the boundary move - yes or no?). For 99% of places it makes no difference.

My point is the counties were not unchanging before 1889. Further while I freely admit this is original research, but had the 1974 changes NOT happened, its likely that minor changes like Tredington in 1931 would have been fully accepted. Tredington's change is lost in the bigger battle to protect the identity of Lancashire, Middlesex and the rest.

Back to the actual point here: We should acknowledge the FULL history. Not cherry pick the one bit of this a significant group want to be able to say. And yes, that does mean mention of the daft 1974 creations like Humberside.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

At least for England and Wales, a distinction was drawn between the (then) new, 'administrative counties' and the centuries-old 'geographical counties' in both the final wording of the Local Government Act 1888 and during the debating of the Bill in Parliament. See, for example, the report of Lord Balfour's speech (section roughly between Columns 915 and 916). —Songofachilles (talk) 23:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I say conscious effort because the insertion of the word 'administrative' before county in the act was one step further than just the boundaries noted in the act. If 'administrative' had not been inserted we would be in an ambiguous situation about whether new areas of administartion had been created or whether the existing administrative areas (ie the HCs) were still being used but with altered boundaries. However, by taking the step consciously to insert the word 'administartive' before county the act removed any ambiguity and made it indisputably clear that what the act was doing not touching the HCs, including their boundaries. I think this extra step to consciously insert 'administrative' taken by parliament is legal principle creating compelling evidence that would stand up in a court. Hansard also puts beyond doubt the thinking of parliament and the countryside lobby, who wanted to preserve the existing HC boundaries, at the time beyond any doubt whatsoever. When you speak of river boundaries I think you are refering to the Thalweg principal, which crops up at times with internation boundaries. See Sedudu as an example. Interesting though it is, any county boundaries affected by it would be negligable, if any at all, which makes the whole argument in a legal sense trivial, making it not worth even considering as a realistic argument. My understanding is that the ABC uses 1853 default boundary position, but I might be wrong on that and others might choose to comment. Whatever, if there is to be a fixed position for HCs I do not see the problem in using the current govt used boundaries for HCs. That removes all argument and person opinion and refers back to a source (not quite a RSS but close enough for use in WP).Roger 8 Roger (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Due to the various changes in county boundaries, the historic counties as presented today are not the counties from time immmemorial until 1889. But these are more like the counties for a much shorter period before 1889.

With regards to the rivers there are a number of minor changes that have to result from this, another other necessary changes may be in place around offshore islands etc. These do not affect the overall picture but do exist. What these mean it is impossible for the modern boundaries to precisely match the historic boundaries at any point in history. Its likely that OS-supplied boundaries subtly differ to those from other sources (including ONS) due to differing interpretations of these points, the OS boundaries incidentially have a clear error as Rumney is not in any county.

The historic counties are important, but are a snapshot of history, not the whole history. For most places either the county for all purposes is unchanged (eg Exeter), or a single change happened in 1974 which can be effectively summed up as modern = X, historic = Y (eg Carlisle). Those 2 situations aren't the problem.

But there are many places which are more complex and this fails. I have already mentioned Rumney, the Rumney/Roath boundary (and therefore that of Glamorgan/Monmouthshire) was adjusted in 1883. All of Rumney was added to Cardiff in 1938. This means: The boundary between historic Glamorgan and Monmouthshire was an active administrative boundary for less than 10 years (if the historic counties lose all admin meaning in 1889), Rumney saw 2 changes that affect its county alignment and Cardiff as a whole is NOT purely Glamorgan - it includes part of Monmouthshire. These complexities cannot be simply handled by the premise of modern = X, historic = Y.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 04:30, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

While I am not going to repeat the shenanigans of the RfC and claim there is consensus here as there clearly isn't yet (as there wasn't then) but there is clearly some support for this. Having a simple list of the major counties a settlement has been in in the past (where different to the current one, to avoid redundancy) would give people a brief representative overview of the story of the settlement, and if they wanted more information such as dates and the myriad complexities that these things can involve, they could read the body text, or click through to the articles for the county itself. This would often just be a single county (eg Abingdon) or indeed be empty (eg Dover). As mentioned above we would need to include all of the former subdivisions (Cleveland is part of Middlesbrough's history, like it or not) but even in complex cases it shouldn't get too out of hand as long as it was kept to a simple list. Ullapool, for example, a relatively extreme example, would just be "Inverness-shire, Ross-shire, Cromartyshire, Ross and Cromarty". This would be an interesting starting point for people to begin to explore the rich and varied history of our counties and other subdivisions. Hard to see too much of a downside to this? JimmyGuano (talk) 07:21, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Unhelpfully, User:Peterjamesb and User:Owain, despite enthusiastically taking part in this discussion up to this point, seem to have decided not to take part in this attempt to find consensus about this infobox on this infobox talk page, and are trying to find their own consensus about a field in this infobox at Talk:Historic counties of the United Kingdom. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:17, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Just chiming in again to say this discussion has been had on here many times before and is being rehashed yet again. The field should be removed as it is misleading. The alternative would be to give a detailed history of the administrative history of each location, but that is even more overkill for an infobox. MRSC (talk) 08:21, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

For the record I agree with this. I am just trying to see if we can find a "least worst for everyone" option, on the basis that grudging support from a broad base of wikipedians is better than endless to and fro. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:33, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm afraid that since my previous contribution was dismissed as irony I haven't felt like making a further contribution here. I have, however, taken some time to read back through the source information and think through the issues involved in populating the historic_county field in the ukplace infobox. I have posted my thoughts on what the issues are and my views on how best to deal with each on Talk:Historic_counties_of_the_United_Kingdom. I suggest that page is a more appropriate place to discuss this subject, especially since there will be an ongoing need to discuss aspects and specific examples of this issue from time to time. Peterjamesb (talk) 11:41, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

OK I apologise for my possibly excessive frustration that led me to describe your earlier post as ironic, though I stand by my contention that it was highly contradictory. I also acknowledge your constructive post further up this section, and your right to move away from this attempt at a consensus position as well as towards it, as you seem to have done since. However if we are to reach a consensus on this (and we haven't yet, either for the original proposition or for my attempted compromise), one discussion in one place would help that process. Discussion started on this talk page, is about the subject of this talk page, was enthusiastically embraced by both you and Owain when it seemed to be delivering a result you wanted on this talk page, and the infobox in question does not even appear on the page that you have started discussing it on. Suddenly having the same discussion somewhere else is not going to help resolve this problem in a way that meets broad satisfaction, which is what we need to try and do here. JimmyGuano (talk) 12:10, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

A key point is the utility of the information. The historic counties are a fixed, defined and stable geography. We know the Highland shires were not finalised until the days of Charles II, but that hardly matter when most of the land the counties were fixed a thousand years ago. The utility is multifarious: one would want to know the historic county of any place for referencing such works as the Victoria County Histories, GENUKI and other records, but also current systems organised by historic county. I am far more likely to need to look up the historic county of a place than to know which police authority or which fire and ambulance authorities it comes under or its local government office region. Hogweard (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree that utility is a key point, which is why it is so important that we don't present misleading oversimplifications of sometimes complicated history. To pick up directly on your Victoria County History example - Harborne seems to sport "Historic county: Staffordshire" in its infobox. This is actively unhelpful information if you want to track it down in the Victoria County History, because it is covered there under Warwickshire,[4] the county it was in as part of Birmingham from 1891-1974, which is not mentioned in the infobox because it is deemed theologically "incorrect". So your example illustrates my point perfectly: to be useful an infobox should either represent the county history of a settlement properly, or it should not at all. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:00, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

This to me is a show-stopper. VCH is the reliable source for the history of counties and their settlements: it is unacceptable to misdirect readers based on the self-proclaimed "standard" of an advocacy group. I really can't help thinking that Wikipedia has been a victim of a successful WP:ADVOCACY campaign. Infoboxes should always and only contain information that is as unarguable as we can make it, because it is the 'at a glance' summary: if there are any ifs, buts and qualifications, they can only go in the body text and not in the infobox. The mechanistic population of this field needs to stop. In any cases where the settlement has had multiple counties – such as Ullapool or Harborne – the field must say "various, see History section". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:07, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not just the VCH though. If you were an American researching an ancestor who lived in Deptford in the 1890s, you might reasonably conclude from having "Historic county: Kent" in Deptford's infobox that you should go to the Kent County Record Office in Maidstone to research this. You might be quite annoyed to discover that Deptford was actually in the County of London at the time, a fact completely unmentioned in the infobox and airbrushed out of history by this bizarre determination to present a single "correct" historic county as eternal and unchanging. JimmyGuano (talk) 10:52, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Deptford was partly in Kent and partly in Surrey, so the infobox is wrong. The place for these details is in the prose of the article. When is the field being removed? MRSC (talk) 11:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

You can make the same argument about including postcode district in the infobox. Plumstead is partly in SE2, but mostly in SE18, but the infobox says it is in SE18. Would you remove postcode district from the infobox too?

All you can hope to do in an infobox is provide a quick overview of the salient facts about a place. Qualify info with "Mostly.." if you need to, but if you get bogged down in too much detail it destroys the point of an infobox.--Mhockey (talk) 18:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

You are mistaking 'historic' for 'historical'. The latter means 'in the past' but 'historic' means 'with longstanding behind it'. For that there is an understood, fixed standard, adopted by the Office for National Statistics. That is what is to be reflected. Hogweard (talk) 17:32, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd be really interested to find out when this definition was adopted by the ONS. It seems impossible to find online copies of their data prior to 2016 or so. Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:43, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

And I'd like to know the exact definition of this specification (it is not a standard unless someone can quote the BSI number and, given that it has so many silly errors, I would be astonished to see such). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

The historic counties were added to the ONS's index of place names in July 2016.

The definition of the specification has been linked a few times above, we are talking about the Historic Counties Standard, Definition A is the one that was copied to ONS's dataset. s4.1, 4.2 and s4.9 are the pertinent sections. Its not a straight copy of the historic boundaries.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 23:37, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for that. On page 13 of the User Guide, the ONS says "The boundaries of the historic counties used here are those defined in Definition A of the Historic Counties Standard published by the Historic Counties Trust, whereby detached parts of counties are not separately identified, but are associated with their host county". So it would seem that we have to accept the ONS's decision, warts and all. The ONS hasn't maintained its usual standard of precision here, I can't help wondering if they were given a political direction and did it with bad grace. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:49, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes. The ONS's decision was to import the Historic County Standard. But we don't have to follow the ONS on this, just because its ONS. The other obvious reliable source on the matter is OS. OS has produced its own boundaries stating "produced by Ordnance Survey in collaboration with the Department of Communities and Local Government: The output from OS has the explicit backing of the government department. The two chief reliable sources on British geography give different data.

My preference is strongly towards the OS data. The reasons for that are the actual boundary set was produced by the reliable organisation, not imported blindly from an outside organisation. Unlike the HCT data, the OS data is based on a definite snapshot in time. And the key date for OS is 1889, which is the key date to the HC movement.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 00:00, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Do you happen to know when the OS established their definition? I'm concerned about the very recent adoption by the ONS, especially given the political background to it. I'm not sure that it's something that should be accepted as gospel in quite the way it is being Blue Square Thing (talk) 00:03, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Not sure when OS did its work on this, but it will be a similar timeframe to ONS. I believe that the DCLG instigated the actions by both ONS and OS here, in light of the lobbying (and Eric Pickle's agreement with it).--51.7.92.61 (talk) 00:18, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree and strongly support using the OS definition. For anything to do with maps and mapping, the OS is the obvious go-to: we should rely on professional cartographers not a lobby group. And the fact that the OS declares an unambiguous date for the snapshot (which should be made visible in the infobox) is enormously attractive. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:10, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Returning to a comment further up by 51.7.92.61, where she/he says Due to the various changes in county boundaries, the historic counties as presented today are not the counties from time immmemorial until 1889., I need to try to dispel a misconception. That reasoning is being repeated here constantly and a lot of time is spent fending it off. IMO, it is spurious, probably in good faith but spurious nevertheless. The point is the IBX field is about the HC, not the HC boundaries. By all means discuss how to deal with those ambigiuous cases or the ONS mistakes, but don't use it to undermine the very existance of, and mention of in the IBX, of the HCs themselves. To use an analogy: Germany's boundaries are not the same now as they were in 1988, or 1948, or 1943, or 1938 or 1933, or 1917, or 1912, or 1872. Does that mean Germany was not Germany at those earlier dates? The HC of say Essex was the same HC in 1888 that it was in 1788 or 1688, (and was in 1988 too), irrespective of any tweeks to the boundaries that might have occurred. (But the HC of Essex is most certainly not the same as the admin county of 1899 or the one of 1999. Incidentally, the admin county called Essex of 1899 is also not the same as the admin county called Essex of 1999 because the first was ended and the second started, as opposed to the first one being altered.) Roger 8 Roger (talk) 03:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

This infobox is about the individual locations, not the county itself. The equivalent problem is not "did Germany exist from 1872 to today" but "Do we mention that Strasbourg, Vienna or Gdansk is in the historic country of Germany". To answer that question you need to determine if those places fall within the boundaries of the "historic country". With the counties, the fact boundaries have changed is irrelevant to having the article Westmorland, but before we can put Warwickshire in the HC infobox field of Tardebigge we need to determine if it is within the boundaries of the HC. Having boundaries is critical to the correct use of this parameter.

As the boundaries have not been completely stable, there are places which have multiple counties of historical relevance. It is questionable if singling out just ONE of those is appropriate in the infobox at all; or if that should be best handled in the body text. To resolve issues around the boundary, if we retain the parameter: We can give one special privilege (which should be the boundary at a specific date, and have that date stated), list the lot or put "Various" when multiple apply.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 05:16, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Agree that the boundaries are critical to this infobox issue specifically, but not necessarily to the subject of historic counties in other contexts where it's possible to cover nuance and complexity more adequately. We can argue for ever about Todmorden, but nobody is arguing that Wikipedia should assert that "Yorkshire doesn't exist". The Black Country has never had defined boundaries and even the general understanding of it has changed over time, but equally it's hugely, if variably, important as a local identity. If you ask somebody from Dudley where they are from, they are far more likely to say "The Black Country" than either the West Midlands or some combination of Worcestershire/Shropshire/Staffordshire. Wikipedia should certainly have an article about it, and it's very important that it should be discussed to a suitable degree on relevant settlement articles, but equally it should certainly not appear in any infoboxes. Boundaries and identities are not the same thing, and treating them as if they are is part of the problem here. JimmyGuano (talk) 08:43, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you. Drawing lines on map is about making precise something that isn't. That precision is a problem here (its necessary for an infobox to state X in Y). A single source should only be used if its definitive, and that simply doesn't apply here - no-one is the definitive "owner". The body text can handle all the nuances. I personally view the historic counties as having fuzzy borderlands, with people in border areas likely to identify with either county; this is an inevitable consequence of the areas not being active for local government for so long--51.7.92.61 (talk) 09:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems fairly clear that this attempt to find a compromise position that both sides of the argument could agree on hasn't achieved consensus. As the previous proposal that led to the current situation didn't achieve consensus either, and there don't seem to be any other suggestions being proposed, then the field clearly should be removed until a consensus can be found. Does anybody know the correct procedure for doing this? JimmyGuano (talk) 08:51, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I think there a qualified consensus emerging for keeping the parameter, provided its used correctly. I believe a real compromise could be based on any of the 3 points I suggested (giving 1 county privileged status but providing explicit date, listing all, saying various in complex cases). IMO for the majority of places, there isn't much of a problem. The only real issues are those places historically in multiple counties, or ones that became part of their "modern" county at a non-standard time.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 09:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

OK happy to keep going as long as we're not Flogging a dead horse. Thank you for separating out these three options, which is useful and thought-provoking. To go through them individually - (1) seems awkward, in some cases it's not that obvious even which should be privileged and I suspect it would just cause the issue to fragment into millions of little edit wars about whether each change happened in 1888, 1974, before, after or never (multiply by a million for pretty much every settlement in the country). It's hard to see a sustainable compromise involving dates that would satisfy the ABC dogma (2) seems the most promising to me, on the assumption that in the majority of cases there would be zero or one entries here and the absolute maximum number listed even in rare extreme cases is not going to be more than 4-5. We should probably stress-test this assumption though, even one settlemen's infobox having 10 counties listed would clearly be bad. (3) seems to be just wasting space, having "various" in an infobox is adding no information and is just noise. More generally I agree that a lot of cases it's unproblematic and am very happy to try to find a set of guidelines that would allow us to have "Historic county: Lancashire" on Barrow's infobox and "Historic county: Berkshire" on Abingdon's, both of which seem to convey important and useful information accurately, as long as it doesn't mean that we have partial and misleading infobox entries like "Historic county: Kent" for Deptford's or "Historic county: Cromartyshire" for Ullapool's or "Historic county: Gloucestershire" for Bristol's, which hide more than they reveal. JimmyGuano (talk) 10:02, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Why not keep it simple which is the whole point of the infobox - 1/ Use ONS as the default 2/ have an attached note tag to summarise any nuance or ambiguity that is dealt with in the body below. Nothing ambiguous goes into that field unless it has a note attached. So, Deptford would be put in Kent with a note mentioning the Surrey connection that is explained further in the body. If there is no attached note the field is left empty or can be made empty by the removal of 'Kent'. This is not really any different from the way we deal with unreferenced comments in any article. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:28, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

It is good to be simple but it is important not to be simplistic. Deptford has been part of Surrey, Kent and the County of London at various points in its history - we should either reflect all of that or none of it. The existence of a field in a database does not over-ride our requirement for "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". There are people who apparently genuinely believe that there is a single set of county boundaries that has remained unchanging over time, but the weight of historical evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. We need to find a way to represent the very real persistence of county identity (in some places at least - if you told most people in Deptford they lived in Kent they'd look at you the same way as if you told them they lived in Wales), without traducing actual history. JimmyGuano (talk) 11:08, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

The ONS data clearly requires too much interpretation to use properly. It's simply not good enough as a definitive source in too many cases. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:30, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

JG - where did that quote come from please? My proposal does not override those requirements anyway. Don't forget, this is the ibx, not the body. The boundary changes in relation to the overall need to identify a place as in a HC in the infobox (note my suggestion on how to do this) amount IMO to de minimus objections. I agree that most people in Deptford would probably not have a clue in which HC they were. But so what? They also would probably not know in what electorate they were. The presense of Deptford in Kent (or Surrey) is relevant to an encyclopedic artical about Deptford whether most people know or care about it. And don't forget, this is about HSs in general, not about specific places. So even if Deptford in a HC is not too notable it does not matter because places in a HC in an overall sence is most certainly a notable and relevant topic. Your mention of Septford being in the county of London is off topic and not relevant here, except that it illustrates the difficulty most people have of getting this debate into context. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:13, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I have absolutely no quibble with historic counties being notable. However the relationship between the County of London and Deptford is more then relevant here - it is pivotal to this whole discussion. The determination to censor history into convenient history that can go in an infobox, and inconvenient history that can't, is exactly the root of the problem here. We should either present all of history or none of it. JimmyGuano (talk) 09:03, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

That's the lead sentence on WP:NPOV, one of WP's core policies. NPOV definitely applies to infoboxes. The difference to text in the body is an infobox doesn't have space for nuance, so it requires the entry is concise. If an entry cannot comply with NPOV and be concise, it doesn't belong in the infobox.

I do think that as Government advice on historic counties highlights the boundaries developed by OS, we ought to follow use that data. Those boundaries are a lot more consistent than the ONS data, and that consistency reduces issues in its use. One additional benefit is the timestamp that gives. That allows a standard footnote which could be incorporated into the infobox (on the lines of "county immediately prior to the 1889 local government changes"): That addresses both those places with a load of changes and sidesteps arguments about the current status of historic counties.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 23:17, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

"All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic" is the full sentence of the policy. This can be read in conjunction with the guidelines descibing the content of the ibx, quoted here: "When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored, with exceptions noted below). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content." There is little room for doubt that the encyclopedic content of the article is the body, not the ibx. Therefore, the wp policy is not breached. The ibx guidelines would be breached if the ibx did not summarise the body. In the case of Deptford (Kent, with a tagged note) the ibx would summarise the body if in the body it was shown that on balance Deptford is more associated with Kent than with Surrey using RSSs, which is likely to happen. We only need to reach that lower standard of 'on the balance of probability', not what appears to be your standard of 'beyond reasonable doubt'. I think there would be very few, if any, cases where it is really 50-50 in which county a place was in. Which default source to use? I am less concerned about ONS or OS but I would be uneasy using the position in 1888 just before the 1889 LGA because there is too close an association with local govt counties, which we need to get away from. After the ??1847 detached parts act might be more suitable. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia's core policies applies to all information that face the readers, including all templates. Infobox guidelines do not trump overall policy and infoboxes don't get out of NPOV because they need to be short. - the detail is absolutely required for that infobox.

Wikipedia works on consensus, not any legal test, and there is nothing in what I've said about legal standards of proof. The only legal-style arguments on this page are those justifying the continued existence of historic counties, by saying that the 1889 legislation didn't affect them. There aren't cases where it is "50-50 in which county a place was in", but are plenty where the place was in two counties at different times. There are also places were two counties apply at the same time, and if significant both should be listed together. If we ignore the county corporate, Bristol is best example. The city centre may be on the Gloucestershire bank, but just saying Gloucestershire would be downright misleading as Redcliffe has been part of Bristol from the 14th C.

A major reason for me preferring the later date is that best reflects the position of the historic county movement. If the historic counties still exist today, that's because they weren't abolished by the 1889 acts (or subsequenctly) and so the borders that persist today are the ones just prior to 1889. Other benefits are that the quality of the source data for 1889 is clearly higher and those are the borders that the government signposts.--51.7.92.61 (talk) 05:35, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

From the perspective of complying with the MHCLG initiatives on local county heritage, the county identity is vital data, and this is the 'ancient or geographical county' as the ONS once put it, or the 'historic county' as appears in the ONS's current dataset.

The emphasis is on centuries-long heritage (or indeed millennium-long), not past administrative arrangements.

The mixture of ancient counties and areas deemed to be counties for particular purposes predates the creation of county councils in 1889. In the Over Darwen case that went up to the Court of Appeal in 1884 you can almost hear the frustration of the judges a Parliament's confusing use of 'county' for innumerable contrasting areas, including or excluding boroughs and franchises etc. (The Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough of Over Darwen v The Justices of the Peace for the County Palatine of Lancaster' (1884) 15 QBD 201 (CA)). They concluded that a 'county' in the absence of any other indication was as meant as 'a geographical division, and not to any jurisdiction to be exercised'. That stable, 'geographical expression' is what the initiative is getting at.

Some towns, like Todmorden, will have a historic county boundary running straight through the middle, and it would be useful to have that joint heritage reflected. LG02 (talk) 07:40, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@51.7, I will overlook your post pervading pique and address directly the points you raise. 1/ Wikipedia's core policies applies to all information that face the readers, including all templates. I never said it did not. However, that information must be read in full and in context otherwise we are left with absurd isolated words and phrases being analysed. 2/ Infobox guidelines do not trump overall policy. I never said they did. 3/ If Balaklava's infobox said just "Ukraine" that's clearly not a neutral summary, even though that might match the majority of sources. You are confusing neutrality with reality. To be neutral and balanced we can assign greater weight to one side if needed, which might appear to be biased, but it is not. Both Russia and Ukraine are in the infobox because both claims are strong based on different principals with roughly equal weight given to both claims: sovereignty as established and accepted internationally post USSR disintegration; and sovereignty as established by effective occupation and control post 2014 invasion. If Russia had just had a loudly expressed claim but had not invaded, the ibx would quite rightly only say Ukraine, because Russia's sovereignty position would be much weaker. We would not, for example, give equal weight to the claims of the USA and of Haiti in the Navassa Island article because Haiti's claim is merely words. 4/ Wikipedia works on consensus, not any legal test, and there is nothing in what I've said about legal standards of proof. I agree and I never said there was. 5/ The only legal-style arguments on this page are those justifying the continued existence of historic counties, by saying that the 1889 legislation didn't affect them. Perhaps true for this page but not for the wider discussion. Something can exist if enough people think it exists even if there is no tangible evidence nuts and bolts evidence to prove it. This is a difficult concept to understand and to express and it is lost on many editors here, unfortunately, who focus on the far from unimportant fact that the HCs were not officially abolished. Hundreds were not officially abolished either but they no longer are part of the daily thought process of most people, meaning it is hard to claim they still exist. If we say hundreds are do not currently exist it is due to their becoming obsolte, not because they were formally ended. Hence, two ways to become non-existant, not just one. 6/ There aren't cases where it is "50-50 in which county a place was in". 50-50 refers to the number of people arguing for one county over another; it does not mean that a place is equally in two counties, like a condominium. 7/ If the historic counties still exist today, that's because they weren't abolished by the 1889 acts (or subsequenctly) and so the borders that persist today are the ones just prior to 1889. First part addressed in point 5 above. I can see you make valid points here which I can consider. I said I was uneasy about it, not that I was against it. I hope this helps clarify matters. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:49, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

"Something can exist if enough people think it exists even if there is no tangible evidence nuts and bolts evidence to prove it." This is a very important point - see the Black Country example further up for example. Kurdistan is another example. No official existence whatsoever at any point in history, but certainly considered a reality by a lot of very real people, and it's not wikipedia's job to tell them they are wrong. However this doesn't mean we should invent or misrepresent tangible evidence or nuts and bolts to justify them either. Or suggest a precision where there is none. Or suggest that things are consistent through time when they very clearly aren't. In terms of nuts and bolts, nobody is suggesting that the 1888 act abolished any counties - it didn't - it just changed a lot of their borders and it did create one - the County of London - which very explicitly completely replaced its predecessors in its own areas, and is thus as much part of Deptford's reality as Kent is. And the 1889 act for Scotland also changed a lot of county borders, and very explicitly abolished Cromartyshire and Ross-shire. This doesn't mean that people can't identify with whatever they like though (as a proud midlander I have quite a strong affinity for Mercia), it just means that popular geography is rarely cut-and-dried and thus makes a bad subject for infoboxes. JimmyGuano (talk) 09:18, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Could we adopt a solution whereby:

• There is a field labelled "Historic county", or possibly "Pre-1974 county"
• This field is used where there is an unproblematic historic county (eg Arnside was in Westmorland, with no complexities as far as I know)
• Where the situation is more complicated, there is a standard note displayed in that field, saying "See text of article", perhaps linking to an anchor "Historic County" which will be put in whichever section is appropriate. There could be some boiler-plate text available to insert for groups of cases where the same history applies ("Was in X until nnnn and then in Y until 1974", or whatever).

I have no basis for saying so but just a hunch, that a fairly high proportion of UK places were only in one historic county and the reader will be well served if we include this in the infobox so that they can quickly identify (a) where it is geographically if they haven't kept up with changes, and (b) which volume/chapter/branch of various sources, book series, organisations, is relevant to the area. For the simple cases, we can help the reader easily. For cases where an infobox one-liner would be an incorrect oversimplification, we should explain the situation in the text. (Or perhaps as a footnote, if for some reason it is not felt appropriate in the article text?) PamD 15:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Probably the most constructive suggestion so far! Simple but still accurate, which are both needed in an infobox. Your hunch is probably right - the main exceptions are likely to be places which were detached parts before 1844 (or 1931), and places absorbed by expanding conurbations before the 1965 and 1974 reforms. The idea of linking to an anchor in the text is good, with the added benefit of encouraging some uniformity in where and how we treat the history of local government in articles.

We would need to agree on places which were in the County of London, every one of which might be labelled "See text of article." If you can regard Greater London as an expansion of the County of London (the clue is in the name), perhaps we could just show the pre 1889 county.--Mhockey (talk) 21:25, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd support PamD's suggestion. Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:50, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Having the pre-1974 county, lebelled pre-1974 county; or the pre-1888 county, labelled pre-1888 county; or the pre-1844 county, labelled pre-1844 county, would all be proposals i could support. Choosing an arbitrary date still feels a bit absurd, but it would not be actively wrong. JimmyGuano (talk) 22:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

If "pre" is controversial as asserting too strongly that they changed when they, er, changed, maybe 1973, or 1887, or 1843? JimmyGuano (talk) 23:02, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

In principal I can accept PamD's proposal, which is a more refined version of what I had earlier suggested. However, it will not work unless some of the detail is not changed. Yes, Jimmy, there is indeed too close a link to the administartive counties. By leaving that implied link in place we are simply inviting more disputes. The very few places where the HC is ambiguous, I think (might be wrong) that most of those relate to detached parts and urban sprawl, and all we therefore need is a default date to account for the detached parts (1850?) and a default spot within a place to say which county it is in - town centre perhaps? For the others that are ambiguous for other reasons (very few) then yes, some sort of note referring the reader to the body below. If we start using admin county dates we are just asking for trouble. IMO we need to seperate completely from our thinking any connection between the HCs and these various administrative entities. Another reason why I cannot fully agree with PamD's idea is that it still allows for person opinion. Who is going to decide if a place's HC is ambiguous? For that reason we do need a outside standard to refer to (similar to a RSS, -which is critically important to an WP policies). OS or ONS are those external sources. They may not be perfect but we can refine their use. What we must avoid is not using them, as outside sources, and start adding what we think should be in the ibx field. I also think other, pro-HCs, editors should comment on this proposal. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:34, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Isn't the principle of PamD's suggestion that if it's complex or contentious at all, that we deal with it in the body properly rather than leave it hanging in the infobox. When it's neither complex or contentious we put it in the infobox (if it doesn't involve redundancy). There are lots and lots of places where it's neither complex or contentious.

This approach has the advantage that it will improve articles by insisting that where things are complex we're going to want them explained properly. Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:14, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

As when it was suggested before, having "various" in infoboxes seems pretty nasty and does tend to suggest the content shouldn't be in an infobox in the first place, but it's certainly better than having misrepresentative information in infoboxes (and thanks PamD for the constructive suggestion). And I agree with all the posters above that there are many examples where it's all pretty unproblematic, because there is only one county other than the current one that a settlement has ever been in (eg Arnside, Barrow-in-Furness, Abingdon). We'd need to include "inconvenient history" too - before they were in their current counties Bedlington was in County Durham, Winchcombe was the county town of Winchcombeshire, Oakham was in Leicestershire and Weston-super-Mare was in Avon. None of these facts would require more than a single line in the infobox, linked through to their articles for people who wanted to find out more. And the County of London has no more reason to be airbrushed out of history than Huntingdonshire. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:11, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anyone wants to airbrush the County of London out of history. But it existed for less than 80 years, and is it really a "historic county" any more than Avon or Humberside or Hereford and Worcester? If you want to read about the complicated history of local government in London, WP will oblige, but not in an infobox. But the example does strengthen the case for using an actual date (pre-1974 or whatever) to avoid endless debates.--Mhockey (talk) 11:16, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Good point by BSqT about improving the detail in the body, I had not thought of that. I would like to see comments from Owain, Peterjamesb, Hogweard and others about this proposal. JimmyG, when I see comments about airbrushing the county of London out of history I find it hard to believe that we are all not talking in our own language, talking loudly to each other but all speking different languages. What has the county of London got to do with a field about historic counties? Why not mention Londinium in case its memory gets lost in space?

The County of London was a purely administrative convenience that lasted just 76 years. It was never a historic county. In the text of an article it may be relevant to the administrative history of an area, but the county heritage of any neighbourhood in that area, the sense of place in which it formed, is in the county which has been established for a thousand years before anyone thought of such things as county councils. Hogweard (talk) 12:28, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

"The County of London was a purely administrative convenience" This widely-repeated myth is straightforwardly incorrect. The 1888 Act explicitly and unambiguously goes out of its way to say exactly the opposite. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

We don't need to consider adding chronological information in the infobox for historic_county, any more than we have to for any other field. Whether we agree with it or not, there is a single current verifiable historic county for a place, in the same way that there is a single current verifiable ceremonial county for a place. Interestingly enough, the ONS Index of Place Names is the reliable source for both, and it uses the terms "historic county" and "ceremonial county" for both and uses very specific definitions. Prior to 2016, there was no source that used the latter term, so this is good verifiable information for that part of the infobox too. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Owain (talk) 15:41, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Owain. I introduced the RfC on adding the field ‘historic_county’ on the basis that it is a term defined by a verifiable source (the ONS). In addition:

• Our job as editors at Wikipedia is to report from verifiable sources (see Wikipedia:Verifiability), not to present information in a way we would like it to be presented or believe it to be best reflected. As stated here, "Wikipedia's content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors.”
• The clear intent of the RfC was that the new historic_county field should be tied to the definition of 'historic county' used by the ONS. If we cannot accept the UK Government's statistics agency as a reliable, verifiable source then what can we accept as one? So long as this source is clearly referenced, then clarity will be given to the reader about the contents of this parameter. The result of the RfC should be respected.
• The parameter itself is already subject to a compromise, which is that the data has not been added to articles which already have the correct historic county name as a shire_county or lieutenancy.
• It is ironic to say the least that the main objection voiced to adding this field during the RfC was that it would cause ‘bloat’ to the Infobox, because it is now being suggested that additional information that is not relevant to the field (e.g. the County of London, Avon, etc. which are not historic counties) is added. Aside from being irrelevant to the parameter, this additional data would surely actually add the ‘bloat’ which some were so fearful of.
• Arguments about whether people are actually aware of which historic county a place is located in are irrelevant. As has been pointed out above, I’d wager very few people could name, for example, the civil parish, OS grid reference, the ambulance service NHS trust or parliamentary constituency of their village, town or city. But that does not mean we do not report it. In fact, this is part of the purpose of the Infobox. Wikipedia wouldn’t have many articles if it only reported on what people already know.
• Although detached parts, a place being part of a different historic county over time and counties corporate are all important parts of a place’s story, these aspects are not defined as part of the historic county by the source material and are therefore best dealt with in the body of the article itself. Similarly, names of entities that are only relevant to the administrative history of a place (e.g. Avon, Cleveland, Ross and Cromarty) are not historic counties per the ONS definition so, again, these need to be reported in the body of the article itself. —Songofachilles (talk) 17:01, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the RfC did not state, in it's base, that we'd have to use the ONS source. You introduced it as a source in your vote. The term historic county was defined way before the ONS began to use it. We can present whatever sources we like, so long as they're reliable etc... Given that the ONS source clearly requires substantial interpretation, bordering on synthesis, to be able to make any sense out of in a number of cases, and relies on a single definition out of a number produced by a pressure group, I'm unconvinced it's reliable to the exclusion of all others, let alone usable.

A good faith compromise was suggested. It won't add bloat - indeed, it'll probably reduce it at the same time as encouraging the development of reliably sourced information in the article body. Bit of a shame about that really. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:49, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

What is wrong with my earlier suggestion that we use ONS as the default source for the HC field and if there is any ambiguity it is mentioned in an attached note or a spot somewhere in the main body? This would not stop anyone using any source they wanted (which would be used in the note or main body) and it would also allow us to keep ONS as the source to be used in the field, due to a consensus decision, a consensus decision that would not override WP policy. It would also remove any connection with LG entities from the HC field. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not entirely clear on the details you are proposing here, but if I've understood correctly, the problem is that it is still selecting a single county out of several in a county's history and presenting it in an unqualified capacity as the "correct" one. The issue isn't about which the best source is for determining the "correct" one, it's the very idea that there is a "correct" one. The advantage of PamD's "see article text" proposal above is that it maintains the "show all the history or show none of it" principle in a way that still allows unproblematic cases where a single line can show all of the history. The downside is that having "see article text" in an infobox is rather contrary to what in infobox is for. If I've misunderstood your proposal then I am happy to be put right. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion: "as of" years

There seems to be continuing debate with no end in sight. One thing that I don't see above is a suggestion to supply a year, or year range, to indicate just when the HC was relevant. So we might have

| historic_county = Ross and Cromarty
| historic_county_years = 1890–1975

This should clarify, I don't expect that anybody under 30 is necessarily aware that counties have changed; even if they are aware, would they know just how long ago a HC refers to? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support especially because I don't see that we should accept the opinionated and inaccurate specification of a pressure group. The reliable source when it comes to maps and mapping is the Ordnance Survey. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:53, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Good faith accepted but this amounts to a front door attempt to overturn the new consensus. Frankly, I am speechless. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 06:31, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm fairly speechless that you can read the pages above and see a consensus that this is overturning! JimmyGuano (talk) 07:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

• Weak support Picking out one county from several in a settlement's history still feels misrepresentative and wrong in principle, but this would at least qualify the scope of what is being claimed, and mean we weren't asserting any active falsehoods. And qualified information seems better than "see article text" in terms of meeting the purpose of an infobox. JimmyGuano (talk) 06:57, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

It's interesting, but I can't really see it flying. There is it seems to me, very little difference between the main proposal and the compromise suggestions. If it is just Ullapool that is a concern, that was (as I read it) the result of 17th century post-civil war reconstruction, not a general state of flux. The remarkable stability of the geographical system is what makes it attractive for modern-day heritage projects. LG02 (talk) 07:29, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Post town case

Why does post_town convert to capitals? I see no documented reason for this to do so. Pinging Kevin McE who raised the same question in 2018, but never got a reply. — O Still Small Voice of Clam 11:01, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm guessing, it's because the Royal Mail guidelines ("Address format in detail" section) state that the post town should be written in captials. -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:06, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes post towns are supposed to be in all caps which is why its used here. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:27, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I know that post towns should be in caps for addresses, but that is no reason why they need to be in caps in an infobox. — O Still Small Voice of Clam 13:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

How do people feel about formatting it using {{sc}} (small caps), then it wouldn't be so shouty? Compare

• Post town: BEDFORD
• Post town: BEDFORD

Comments? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

No, forget that idea. On some platforms, it is too small. (And not easy to fix: see long discussion at Template_talk:Unichar#Corrected smallcaps output (so it is fixable with effort if anyone really thinks it worth the effort). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:55, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

If anyone wants to pursue this idea, the solution is to use span style="font-size:85%", which produces BEDFORD It has the advantage of being easily retrofitted to the existing template and wouldn't require thousands of articles to be updated, and complies with MOS:ACCESS. It would need an RFC, which I won't initiate unless there is some evidence of interest. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:27, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

That code is not permitted within that infobox field, where text is already reduced to 88% of nominal, per MOS:SMALLFONT. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:24, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you for pinging me. We are not writing on an envelope. The postal town for where I live is Colchester, and when writing anything other than the address of an envelope, that word is rendered with one capital letter and nine lower case ones. The field is for the name of the post town, not for direction of what the Royal Mail would like you to put on an envelope. Did anybody here ever look up the post town of a location specifically for the purpose of writing an envelope? I'm going to estimate less than one in 100,000 of visits to articles about UK locations. If a post code is correct and legible, the post town on an envelope is ignored by Royal Mail anyway. The field serves some purpose as indicating the nearest large town/city, but similar, and usually more precise, info is easily available in the infobox anyway; the field could be dropped with no real inconvenience to the reader, but even if it is retained, there is no good reason for it not to be written according to the norms of the English language,not those of a company. Kevin McE (talk) 13:25, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, I agree. The intro to MOS:CAPS would seem to apply. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:55, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that very many people use capital letters for post towns do they? Certainly the mail I have in front of me just now doesn't, apart from one case where everything is in caps. I'd be perfectly happy to go to non-caps - but I'm sure there are a great many examples where it's been typed in using caps. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:44, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Well I thought in a letter only the post town's supposed to be in all caps so for the Co-op in Hadleigh you would use "72 High Street, Hadleigh, IPSWIHC, Suffolk, IP7 5EF" in other words "Hadleigh" the smaller town is not written in all caps but the post town (Ipswich) is. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:17, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

That may be so, but virtually no one appears to write the caps. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:04, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Proposal - remove automatic capitalisation from post towns

From reading the above, I still cannot see any reason why this infobox needs to automatically capitalise post towns. This is not a how-to guide on writing envelopes, which is not necessarily followed by everyone anyway. Therefore I propose that that the automatic capitalisation is removed. At present I am not proposing that all articles should be updated if the field is written in capitals; this can be debated later. Please add your comments below. — O Still Small Voice of Clam 08:37, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. — O Still Small Voice of Clam 08:37, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose all Royal Mail publications show post towns in all caps. Why deviate from the source material for your own personal preference? MRSC (talk) 13:17, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

  Because a) MOS:CAPS, and b) we extrapolate data from source material, not formatting. — O Still Small Voice of Clam 14:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nom, per MOS:CAPS, that on Wikipedia, the WP MOS has precedence over external styling rules, and because there is no need to shout. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:13, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support: We are giving the name of a town, we are not obliged to provide the publicity for a private company (that they singularly fail to invest in) as to their preferred presentation of that town's name. Kevin McE (talk) 16:12, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support for the reasons I gave above. Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:51, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Isle of Wight update required

This template needs to be updated with regards to the fire and ambulance services on the Isle of Wight. Currently the template (e.g. at Newport, Isle of Wight) links to Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service for fire and Isle of Wight Primary Care Trust for ambulance. But neither of these exist anymore, as they are the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service and Isle of Wight NHS Trust respectively. I do not have permission to edit this myself so can someone who does please do so. Elshad (talk) 22:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

@Elshad: I have updated template. Keith D (talk) 23:01, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

@Keith D: Thanks, however I notice that in the infobox the piped text/link still shows fire as "Isle of Wight" when it should say "Hampshire and Isle of Wight". Could you fix this as well please? Elshad (talk) 10:01, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

@Elshad: I have made the change - though it does wrap now. Keith D (talk) 10:06, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

@Keith D: Thanks. Elshad (talk) 10:30, 1 July 2021 (UTC)