Archives

September - December 2006 January - April 2007 April - June 2007

I'm bringing this conversation across from my talk page to see if we can get a broader consensus. Basic summary: I've completed the categorisation-by-location run as discussed above, but most counties don't have a separate category for disused stations - can anyone think of reasons for/against breaking up Category:Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom by county as has been done for the open stations? — iridescenti (talk to me!) 20:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Iridescenti,

I'm confused, but let me clarify: you added the Cat:Railway stations in Renfrewshire to a couple of closed railways on my watchlist, Georgetown railway station and Houston railway station, as per discussion on WP:UKT. I agree that they are located in Renfrewshire, but should they not be Cat:Disused (or closed) railway stations in Renfrewshire? It seams strange to Categorise them as Disused railway stations in Scotland and as Railway stations in Renfrewshire.Pyrotec 19:56, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree entirely, but at the moment we only have separate "Disused stations in..." categories for a few of the largest English counties (you can see the full list here); everything else just gets lumped into Category:Disused railway stations in Scotland, Category:Disused railway stations in Wales, Category:Disused railway stations in Northern Ireland or Category:Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom (for some reason, we don't have a Category:Disused railway stations in England).

As per the discussion on adding location categories, I've done the automated run adding the "Stations in..." category for places where no "Disused stations in..." category exists. It's not an ideal solution, but I think it's better than no category at all; at least this way, someone with an interest in (for example) Perthshire railways but with no knowledge of Renfrewshire can track down the stations without having to go through "Disused stations in Scotland".

Personally, I think we ought to have a "Disused stations in..." category for every county and wipe out the UK/Scotland/Wales/NI categories (as has been done for the open stations), but I don't want to carry out such a fundamental change without a very strong consensus. Some counties (notably Gwynedd and North Ayrshire) have more closed than open stations, and I absolutely agree that it's messing up the categories. For what it's worth, I do have an AWB script pumped-and-primed to add the "disused" in front of "railway stations in" if/when the broader categories are split up — iridescenti (talk to me!) 20:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Further to the above, I'm going to copy-and-paste this discussion to WP:UKT to see if we can get a consensus either way — iridescenti (talk to me!) 20:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds eminently sensible to me - I'd say go for it! Regards, Lynbarn 21:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a potential downside to this, which is why I'm waiting for consensus rather than being bold and going ahead - it will leave a lot of categories such as Category:Disused railway stations in Rutland or Category:Disused railway stations in Clackmannanshire with only one or two members. I'm going to be away for a couple of days, so will take a look when I get back to see what consensus is and act/not act accordingly — iridescenti (talk to me!) 21:19, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I think having a 'disused' category for every county is overkill. How about English regions and Sotland/Wales/Northern Ireland instead? Categories than can never have more than a handful of entries are a) unhelpful and b) likely to get deleted. DrFrench 22:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

County-based categories are unlikely to be deleted, even if not very full, as they comprise a cohesive set of categorisation (empty cats might be more of a problem!) The current Category:Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom is of little practical use since the stations should all be listed within List of closed railway stations in Britain and its subpages anyway. If the cat is subdivided into counties, the user is presented with an alternative way of finding and examining the data.

EdJogg 00:14, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you seriously trying to convince me that Category:Disused railway stations in the East Riding of Yorkshire is a good way for users to find information?! If you are, then it ain't doing no good. I was going along fine with counties, but this is taking matters beyond the pale.Canterberry 00:25, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I created disused stations categories for the South West of England a long time ago on the principle that people using the ordianry station categories to search for artciles are most probably looking for an open station. With the Disused stations in ... showing at the top of the page as sub-categories, it is easy to expand your search. The same applies to heritage stations. If we do this for all the counties it will have the added advantage of reducing the number of pages listed at Category:Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom.

BTW I agree that there ought to be a Disused railway stations in England category so that the hierarchies match the normal practice seen in other county categorisations. That definetly sounds like a job for a bot!Geof Sheppard 07:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've split ...in the United Kingdom into England, Wales etc, leaving only the genuinely nationwide articles such as Beeching Axe in the parent category. (Unfortunately, non bottable, unless someone can write a bot capable of working out which country Portobello railway station is in...) Unless someone says otherwise over the next couple of days, I'll remove the "Railway stations in..." from the disused stations and split "Disused stations in England/Scotland/Wales" into counties (because the counties are within the regional areas, they can always be bot-changed from county to region if the county-by-county lists turn out to be unworkable). I won't split NI into counties, as there are so few disused stations there and those that are are almost all in Antrim — iridescenti (talk to me!) 14:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good start, but I think that the sub-categories under Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom should only be ...England, ... Northern ireland, ... Scotland, ... Wales, plus Beeching Axe. The counties now have duplicate parent categories of, for instance, both England and UK whereas just England would be sufficient as this is a sub-category of UK. Geof Sheppard 15:14, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As and when we have a final consensus, I'll take "...in the UK" out of both "Railway stations in..." and "Disused railway stations in..."; for the moment, I left them both in place pending a final decision on what structure the category trees will take. (My personal preference is for both open and closed stations to follow UK --> country --> county as the structure, but some people might prefer UK --> region --> county.) As part of this restructuring I intend to empty Railway stations in the United Kingdom of everything that isn't genuinely nationwide, as I've just done with Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom, with everything going into the appropriate local subcategory, and (if we decide to split them into counties) empty the "...in England", "...in Scotland" into counties or regions as well; this way, we might end up with lists small enough to work with. It will need to be done manually, as someone will need to work out which county each station goes into. As per my comments above, if noone raises any objections by then I'll perform the split on Thursday or Friday. Unless more people speak up in favour of doing it into regions, I'll do it into counties for reasons outlined previously — iridescenti (talk to me!) 15:25, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any consensus here for the changes you have proposed - but you seem to have decided to go ahead and make them anyway. That's rather disappointing. DrFrench 19:01, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll stop pending consensus in that case - so far only England's been done. I didn't see any particular objections; (if I've misconstrued anything I apologise). Nothing's been lost - the disused stations are still in Category:Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom, just tucked away in subcategories (eg Category:Disused railway stations in the West Midlands), and because the county tag is now in the "Disused" category, they no longer need the parallel Category:Railway stations in (county) to provide a geographical fix, meaning that the "Railway stations in..." lists only show open stations. (This was making the lists very long in areas such as London and Derbyshire, where disused stations outnumber open ones; look at the not-yet-sorted Category:Railway stations in Gwynedd to see what I mean.)

If anyone wants the England stations reverted to their previous state, let me know - because the counties are still listed, deleting the "disused stations in..." and replacing them with "Railway stations in..." and "Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom" as things previously stood will be a mechanical operation a bot can do in 15 minutes — iridescenti (talk to me!) 19:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've worked very hard ensuring that all the stations in the West Midlands are categorised into the relevant city/borough category, which is then linked both to the "Transport in City/Borough" and "Railway Stations in the West Midlands" categories. Now I find that all my work has been completely undone and suddenly there is no path to the articles from the relevant city/borough category. Can you please revert them all. In future, could you please let us know at WP West Midlands or Template:West Midlands railway stations what you're planning. Fingerpuppet 20:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow that's a big template! I picked Daisy Bank railway station at random, to see what the issues were, and found that 15/16ths of the article is template: 3/4 being the big West Midlands template, 1/8th the line template, and 1/16th the stub template -- in fact the 'article' is only really a single sentence (and is good example of why the disused South West England stations now have been redirected so effectively into grouped articles... But I digress....

I'm sure that Iridiscenti will gladly recreate the necessary Disused stations in Wolverhampton (etc) categories that you are missing, since this will meet your needs without wrecking the necessary rationalisation that he has put into place elsewhere.

EdJogg 21:01, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the cats have all changed now and they look and work much better than previously.

It is a huge template, and we're trying all sorts of ways to reduce the size, but with little success. And there's loads of disused stations in the area that still don't have articles for them... Fingerpuppet 22:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As per conversation on User talk:Fingerpuppet, I'll re-split the West Midlands unless someone raises an objection, since there are so many disused stations there I agree it does make sense to split them. What I do want to avoid is setting a precedent for breaking up London and Merseyside, which will leave a lot of empty shells with only one or two entries.

However, I'll give it a few more days before carrying on to Scotland and Wales in light of DrFrench's opposition above to try to build a broader consensus for or against splitting them — iridescenti (talk to me!) 21:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because of the smaller population densities, in both Scotland and Wales, outside the large towns and cities, splitting them into small areas might be beneficial. In the case of Scotland, in particular, should that be by historic county, the now abolished Regions (e.g. Highland, Strathclyde, etc), or the current local system of government. My preference would be to use the historic counties? That would nicely accommodate Beeching's axing of whole lines and duplicated link lines. Pyrotec 21:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be in favour of going by the current administrative regions for Scotland and Wales, eg Rhonda Cynon Taff, Highland etc; first of all, that's what the open stations categories use so it could get really confusing; secondly, it'll be harder to work out the correct region for some of the stations (could you tell me off the top of your head what historic county Methven Junction railway station was in); thirdly, it will make a really messy situation for Gwynedd, where the historic boundaries don't follow the 1960s boundaries. Also, for England we don't use Avon, Humberside, Middlesex etc

Incidentally, I've split West Midlands into Disused railway stations in Sandwell etc with them all as subcategories of both Disused stations in the West Midlands and of their respective "Railway stations in" category - hopefully that will prove stable — iridescenti (talk to me!) 22:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Realistically, you have to look at how much is going to actually be in any category. If it's only one or two, then it may well be worth leaving them in the relevant national category. I would suggest that there should be a minimum of five for a category to be formed - and those categories should be local authority based, which would fit nicely into the geographical categorisation system. Fingerpuppet 22:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would normally be stretching a point to have a category containing only one or two members, but they do exist. And, where there is a precedent for subdividing by area, for example all the '... by county' cats for England, readers will expect to find the same cats for each county, even if they're virtually empty. This would also be preferable to moving pages up into the national category, as someone navigating at the county level will be unable to find them easily. (Incidentally, two of the new Disused...WM cats are actually empty at present, although I presume this is a transient situation.)

EdJogg 23:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm slowly working south and east (a line at a time) - hence Coventry and Solihull don't have anything in them yet. Fingerpuppet

There may be nothing to fill them - I created a "disused in..." for each of the six W Mids districts on the assumption that - since the 1890 railway atlas has lots of wiggly lines there and the 2007 one doesn't, the lines presumably did exist. I also created a couple of empty county categories (eg Rutland) where I knew the stations did exist and just don't have articles yet (Ashwell, Seaton & Uppingham, Wakerley & Barrowden, Luffenham, Ketton, Ryhall & Belmisthorpe and Essendine, if anyone feels the urge). As a general note to everyone arguing the "the categories will be half empty", remember we don't have even a stub articles on a lot of disused lines, let alone stations, yet (I only created the Hammersmith and Chiswick branch last week, and that's a five-station line in - relatively - central London, not an obscure Welsh mineral railway), so it will be possible to fill out all those categories — iridescenti (talk to me!) 23:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer the sorting to match current counties (and sub-categories to these where required), as this makes for logical matches with open stations and other non-railway category hierarchies, although I have come a cross a few odd ones e.g. Category:Railway stations in Bristol, Bath and South Gloucestershire which has tried to recreate the old Avon, but missed out all the stations in North Somerset. Instead these find themselves in Category:Railway stations in Somerset, which is an even older "historic" county. But then that is local politics for you, and seems much less contnetious than some of the issues discussed on the Cornish pages! Geof Sheppard 07:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I might be to blame for at least some of that - I manually categorise stations when I come across them that don't already have a county, and have only the vaguest notion of where the Gloucestershire/South Gloucestershire/Bristol/Bath/Somerset boundaries are. I suspect there are probably some stations that should be in Category:Railway stations in the Tees Valley that have found their way into the wrong counties, too, and probably some in Staffordshire/Warwickshire that should actually be in West Midlands (and vice versa) — iridescenti (talk to me!) 15:23, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed a few articles for disused stations in the Tees Valley were in the North Yorkshire category, so moved them in, based on this map of the Tees Valley. The map had railway lines on which made it simpler. People from the area can't even agree whether they're from County Durham/Yorkshire, Cleveland or the Tees Valley, so many changes, so much confusion!--Simmo676 15:49, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A further thought if we're going to use historic boundaries instead of the current ones - it would lead to an almighty mess in categorising the outer London suburbs. Picture explaining to a bemused American armed with a map of London precisely how we've categorised North Woolwich ("Yes, I know the map shows it in central London but historically, it was a part of Kent. Yes, I agree it's completely surrounded by Essex but William the Conqueror redrew the boundaries. Well, obviously it was part of the Borough of Woolwich. What do you mean, it's nowhere near Woolwich? That's why it's now part of Newham. Although obviously, it was under direct administration by London Docklands in the 1980s.") Just look at the minor storm at Talk:Tottenham#Public transport for a small sample — iridescenti (talk to me!) 16:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Been away for almost 2 weeks, but a very belated i haven't got a problem with this, My patch (the south east - kent, sussex, surrey and london) really benifits from a county (and in london a borough level) in these matters. So thank you! Pickle 03:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As there seems to be a broad consensus in favour of going ahead (and this conversation is getting very long), I'll split Scotland and Wales - on the basis of current counties (to match "Railway stations in...") in a couple of days time unless someone raises an objection. I'll also try to add a couple of articles (even if they're just "one-line and an infobox" stubs) to any of the new categories that are left empty. I don't propose splitting Glasgow, London, Manchester & Merseyside in the same way that's happened with the West Midlands unless anyone makes a good case for it — iridescent (talk to me!) 19:53, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pyrotec (contribs) and Douglasnicol (contribs) have been working on this on Scottish stations. See Neilston (Low) and Troon (Harbour) as examples. --Stewart 21:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wonderful - that's exactly what I had in mind (and what I've done for England). In that case I'll go ahead and split Wales as well to complete the mainland set - I propose to leave Northern Ireland untouched, as there are so few disused stations there — iridescent (talk to me!) 21:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a set of categories around Category:Railway stations by year of disestablishment with individual years such as Category:Railway stations closed in 1964. The strucuture exactly matches that used for the existing Category:Railway stations by year of establishment. I have already created a couple of dozen individual year categroies, but if you find yourself needing a new one, the links that you need to put in your new category page are:

{{Cat topic in year| topic=Railway stations closed| year=1961}

[[Category:Railway stations by year of disestablishment]]

[[Category:1961 disestablishments]]

[[Category:1960s in rail transport|Stations closed 1961]]

Then change the three years and one decade to the correct numbers.

This has created a problem in the Decades in rail transport categories as the sorting on the open stations is coded as

[[Category:1960s in rail transport|Stations 1961]]

This really needs to be changed to sort as "Stations opened 1961" etc. Can this be done by a Bot? Geof Sheppard 07:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hi!

I was looking at the number of pages without this template: {{TWP}} (edit: using {{tl}} here so this page is not listed as unassessed. Slambo (Speak) 11:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

the other day, and i did quite a lot, but now my bot, ACBot is going through the request for approval process, i was wondering, if when it is approved, you might like it to help out by putting that template on? ACBestMy ContributionsAutograph Book 06:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the effort in adding the project banner to rail transport related articles. I add it to applicable article talk pages as I come across them. I've been working through Category:Unassessed rail transport articles for some time now adding this template's parameters as appropriate, but the work load seems to increase faster than it decreases. While I have no disputes with bot-tagging appropriate articles, I would like to request that project members take some time to assess a few articles periodically. Right now there are 1,371 articles that do not have a quality assessment. The general importance parameter is used to indicate the article's importance to rail transport on a worldwide basis; project specific importance ratings have been created for some related projects, and we can easily create a set of UK-importance categories here too. Thanks. Slambo (Speak) 11:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about everyone else, but I find it hard to assess most railway articles - with "importance to rail transport on a worldwide basis" as the criteria, virtually every loco article other than Rocket and Mallard (and possibly Olton Hall) are of virtually no importance on a worldwide basis; ditto for every TOC (historic and current) other than the GWR, and virtually every station apart from a couple of major hubs like Waterloo, a few of particular architectural significance, and the earliest Underground stations. I seriously think we should consider either splitting our assessment criteria away from TWP's or adding a second assessment line so, for example, Birmingham New Street can be simultaneously of low worldwide significance but of very high UK significance — iridescenti (talk to me!) 15:16, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can easily add a UK-specific importance tag like is currently done for others such as WP:NYPT (see Talk:A (New York City Subway service) for an example). Are there any objections to adding a UK-importance parameter? Slambo (Speak) 15:39, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you hadn't gathered from the above, I strongly support the idea — iridescent (talk to me!) 10:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been doing a lot of UK (and NZ) tagging with TWP mainly in the south. The scope is vast (what 2,000+ stations alone) so I've not got very far. The UK-importance rating thing is a good idea, the London transport project (formerly tube) have it and i think it works well. Pickle 03:11, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hope to have the new parameter working in the next day or two; my current plans are to put in some time testing things either today or tomorrow. I'm also watching another discussion at WP:NZR that could affect this. Optimal would be to add appropriate parameters for both projects at the same time to reduce the number of times the template is updated, but there's less surety about the parameters over there (current discussion relates to which picture should be used as the project icon). Slambo (Speak) 12:56, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've got UK-importance working in my test area now for the four standard importance levels (low, mid, high and top), but it throws errors if the value is mistyped. I'm about to go offline for the evening, but I had one quick question... Do you want to have the class parameter sort articles into UK Railways specific quality categories too? A couple of the other projects do this too, so it wouldn't be that much more to add. Slambo (Speak) 02:31, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surely anything that helps accelerate the processing of articles must be a good thing? EdJogg 10:31, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised I've only just noticed this section but looking back through the page history it seems its been there since the project was started in April 2006. Whilst I am sure this is well intentioned, I am slightly concerned about it and feel it should probably be discussed. I don't feel it is appropriate for named editors to adopt articles in this way. I would be concerned that this could leave some editors with wrong impressions about article ownership.

In the past, some editors have seen the wording of WikiProject banners along the lines of "This article is maintained by..." as some claim that a particular project has or should have a higher influence over the content of the article. This has led to many banners being reworded to what I feel is a more appropriate wording that refers to the article being within the scope of the project.

I do of course welcome editors focussing their efforts on a particular article to try to improve it but feel that there shouldn't be declarations of articles being adopted. I would of course like to hear others opinions on this issue. Adambro 20:44, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're quote right. Andy Mabbett 20:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, someone ^^^^ always comes along and spoils things. Canterberry 21:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So you mean it should be more a case of fostering an article, perhaps? Regards, Lynbarn 15:29, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like the wording on {{maintained}}. It says that the named editors are knowledgeable and active in editing a specific article and that they can be contacted for further assistance while not being "owny". Slambo (Speak) 15:43, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe move it off the main page into a subpage, with lists for "Articles we're actively working on/intend to work on" and "Articles we're watching"? That would solve the problems I assume it was originally meant to address, of two people simultaneously expanding the same article without others' knowledge, or of fifteen people vandal-watching Manchester Victoria and no-one watching Manchester Piccadilly, while not looking so much like particular editors are claiming to WP:OWN the articles — iridescenti (talk to me!) 15:44, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]