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Seeking consensus

Well, reading the above arguments it seems like there is very little chance of finding agreement. But if we are to achieve our common goal of making the coverage of Leeds in Wikipedia be the best that it can be we need to see if we can find consensus on the way forward. In my assessment there are three options:

  1. Do nothing--I get the sense that even most of the non-merger proponents think that this is not a good option
  2. Implement DDStretch's compromise proposal under which the scope of the article at Leeds would be expanded but the article at City of Leeds would remain, though perhaps be renamed (DDStretch suggested Metropolitan District of Leeds. I would be OK with this but I would prefer Governance of Leeds, or Leeds City Council which currently redirects to City of Leeds anyway).
  3. Go with Chrisieboy's suggestion above and move this article to a new name, perhaps Leeds urban area of Inner city Leeds (both the name used and the definition of what area that name refers to need to be verifiable with reliable sources). Then per the sources cited above by both Jza84 and I, either Leeds can become a redirect to City of Leeds or the article at City of Leeds could be moved to Leeds and City of Leeds could become a redirect.

Any other options? —Jeremy (talk) 20:04, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

My own preferences are: 1) Merge this article with City of Leeds, City of Leeds to redirect here; 2) Merge the article currently at City of Leeds with Leeds City Council (or rename Local government in Leeds, Leeds City Council to redirect there), City of Leeds to redirect to Leeds; 3) Move this article to Leeds urban area. Chrisieboy (talk) 20:24, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Any combination of the current City of Leeds and Leeds City Council would be slightly problematic if the resultant article were ever called something like Leeds City Council, since Leeds City Council primarily describes the local government area's (second tier level) administrative body. That would mean that information about the civil parishes (third tier level) administrative areas and their administrative bodies (parish councils, parish meetings, town councils) might not fit so easily in with them. That assumes that any merger is still to go ahead.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:34, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Chrisieboy & DDStretch: Note that there is currently no article at Leeds City Council, it is simply a redirect to City of Leeds. I deliberately left a simple merger off my list as there is clearly no consensus to do that. —Jeremy (talk) 20:44, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't check that. That current redirect seems to be somewhat misplaced at the moment, then, in my opinion.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:57, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Part of the problem was that the headings in the City of Leeds article have been changed since the redirect was created. It's actually intended to go straight to the relevant section in the article--I have fixed that now. —Jeremy (talk) 21:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I think the most important thing that needs to be addressed is that the page leeds needs to reflect the most commonly interpreted usage according to WP:COMMONNAME . In its present state leeds talks about a statistical urban subdivision and pre-1974 historic borough, which is not the common or expected usage of the word "Leeds" as has been shown. --Razorlax (talk) 20:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
  • The solution? City of Leeds needs to redirect to Leeds as they mean the same thing in common usage, and leeds would mean the city and metropolitan borough. If there is a need to discuss the pre-1974 historic county borough of Leeds (which is also the same area as the ONS subdivision of Leeds), a duplicate copy of the existing Leeds page can be moved to Leeds Subdivision or Leeds pre-1974 Urban Area, which can be amended and made more concise ad hoc. It would be nice to use Leeds Urban Area however this is original research as no such thing exists, only an ONS defined statistical subdivision exists, (which maps the pre-1974 historic Leeds County Borough) and the West Yorkshire Urban Area. --Razorlax (talk) 20:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
I think you need to read the previous discussion on this topic as City of Leeds is not Leeds and the two should not be mixed up. The whole area should be delt with at the City of Leeds as per now, though that article needs clarification. The settlement Leeds also needs to be clarified and bits removed that do not apply to it. Other areas seem to have this sussed out without all of this continual arguing. Keith D (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
With all due respect, you also should re-read the above discussions as your statement "City of Leeds is not Leeds" is yet to be backed up with reliable sources. Indeed all reliable sources cited so far clearly show that Leeds is City of Leeds. —Jeremy (talk) 22:17, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Hi Keith. Leeds is the City of Leeds, that is its common usage. Virtually all references to the word "Leeds" imply the whole city and not a subdivision. See WP:NCGN (resolving placename conflitct) under the heading Widely Accepted Name. Type in the word Leeds in google. Leeds (nearly every single time) refers to the whole city, because Leeds and City of Leeds mean the same thing in commonly understood english interpretation, not a subdivision. Every news media outlet uses the word "Leeds" to mean the whole city, and most encylopedias (by a large margin) interpret the name Leeds to infer the city of leeds, not a subdivision, eg. encylopedia britannica[1], dictionary.com[2], Encarta[3]. No one is denying that there clearly is a statistical subdivision set out by ONS called the leeds subdivision, however this is not the popular interpretation of the word 'Leeds'. Just to give the smallest of examples. "NHS Leeds" is the NHS trust for the whole city of Leeds, because Leeds means the whole city, not a subdivision. There is no ambiguity. In comparison, "NHS Heywood, Middlton & Rochdale" is the Trust name for the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale. If the trust was called "NHS Rochdale" there would be ambiguity, because Rochdale most commonly refers to the town of Rochdale, not the metropolitan district that includes middleton and heywood. The reverse is true for Leeds. --Razorlax (talk) 23:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Common sense should be key. To effectively deny so many facets of the city on the basis of outdated boundary definitions should never have been allowed to happen; it can't be argued that the article in it's current incarnation is what the general reader is expecting. Whether there's a case for an article on the urban core is questionable in itself, but common usage of the term 'Leeds' would suggest not. Few (if any) sources refer to this beloved subdivision (as outlined so well by Razorlax above) so why the Leeds article ever came to represent anything other than the City of Leeds I'll never know. Thisrain (talk) 03:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

In reply to Razorlax, IMO it is incorrect to say that in "common usage" - as opposed to official usage - "Leeds" implies, say, Wetherby. In common-official usage, yes, but not overall, man-in-the-street usage. For example, the sentence: "She doesn't live in Leeds, she comes in from Wetherby for rehearsals" was said to me by someone who lived within the Leeds ring-road almost-instinct 15:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
With respect, WP:COMMONNAME applies to the greatest number of English speakers, not just to those over a certain age in Leeds ;-) Chrisieboy (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Hi almost-instict. Googling the phrase "wetherby near leeds" yields 523 results. Googling "wetherby in leeds" yields 1,790 results. That's over 3 times more. Not to mention "wetherby, leeds" yields a further 10,000. Wetherby is commonly understood to be in Leeds (because Leeds is commonly understood to mean the city of leeds), but I do a agree that for verbal geographical referencing you will sometimes hear "wetherby near leeds" to make an intended distinction that Wetherby is remote from the rest of Leeds. Also, it is only Wetherby Otley, and Garforth that are remote enough from the rest of Leeds so that this distinction is sometimes made amongst (older) people 'on-the-street'. These 3 settlements total around 50,000 people, out of 761,000 - the rest of Leeds (93% of it) is described as one lump where this distinction is not made. This means, just like sheffield, and birmingham, the popular and most common interpretation of the words "sheffield", "leeds", "birmingham" do actually very closely match their metropolitan city boroughs. --Razorlax (talk) 16:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure that quantity of google results proves anything, but in case it does: "Wetherby north of Leeds" gets another 464, "Wetherby between Leeds" gets 27, "Leeds and Wetherby" gets 1630, and "Wetherby and Leeds" gets 718. Add these to the 523 "Wetherby near Leeds" and you have 3362, almost double the 1790 for "wetherby in Leeds". almost-instinct 16:56, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
With respect, using "wetherby, leeds" and "wetherby in leeds" yields over 12,000 results. That's nearly 4 times as many, suggesting majority usage. --Razorlax (talk) 17:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
However: of those many thousand, how many are "using Wetherby, Leeds" to indicate Wetherby-in-Leeds, and how many are just including the two places in a list, eg: "York, Wetherby, Leeds and Harrogate"? We don't know, and won't until someone volunteers to look at all of them and count. This goes to show that using quantity of google results is a measure is pretty pointless. almost-instinct 17:30, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree with your sentiments, however a quick look of the first several pages shows at most 1 in 10 imply a list. With regards to "Wetherby, Leeds" to mean Wetherby in Leeds - well yes, this is precisely what is being shown here, that Wetherby is refered to as being in Leeds. Taking into account the 1 in 10 reffering to a list, that still leaves over 3 times as many references to wetherby meaning wetherby in leeds. So even the most distinct, isolated, and seperate town within Leeds, is still by majority usage reffered to as being in Leeds, as opposed to near Leeds. --Razorlax (talk) 17:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Leeds is like a car, not like a camel

I believe that in reality we are dealing with a hierarchical structure. Don't forget that Wetherby is governed by Leeds City Council plus Wetherby Town Council, while the urban parts of Leeds are governed only by Leeds City Council. If someone from Leeds asks me, I live in Headingley. If someone from outside Leeds asks me, I live in Leeds. I expect that for those living in Wetherby the situation is slightly different, the response being Wetherby near/in Leeds when asked by someone from Leeds, often just Leeds when asked in Australia by an American, and not easily predictable for anything in between.

This is a general linguistic phenomenon. Consider a camel collector. In most situations he might call himself just that, even though he specialises on dromedaries. But at a meeting of the International Camel Collectors' Society that would become incorrect: Here he is a dromedary collector. Similarly for car dealers and van dealers.

The way this is treated in Wikipedia depends on whether the "standard" case (such as Leeds, camel, car) is sufficiently dominant so that the main article can discuss mostly that. E.g. vans are of marginal relevance to the article automobile, which is mostly about passenger cars because they are dominant. But camel is equally about Bactrian camels and dromedaries.

In our case clearly the standard settlement within the City of Leeds is clearly the Leeds urban area. Therefore the best solution seems to be as in the case of cars/vans, not as in the case of camels/dromedaries (which is what we currently have). --Hans Adler (talk) 18:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Addition to your point

Collingham is governed by Leeds City Council, Wetherby Town Council and then Collingham Parish Council. Whether the parish council would be judged to have proper juristriction is open to debate. I live in Wetherby, I pay my rates to Leeds City Council, and in return they collect my bins, light my street and give me a free paper full of local government propoganda. As far as I'm aware the authority of Wetherby Town Council extends as far as issuing press releases regading 'worrying' crime increases, organising cancer research bake sales and cordening off playgrounds that are littered with smack-heads (does that warrent a hyphan, I'm not sure) needles, in other word trivia. Mtaylor848 (talk) 01:18, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

By the way, many people in Wetherby (and also Otley, which is the same in the fact it is a former rural(ish) market town swallowed up by the LMD, yet seperated by sparodic and short lived but none the less undeniable green fields from the main body of Leeds) refer to themsleves as living in Wetherby (as in close to (i.e. I suppose a commuter town of) Leeds) and as in Wetherby (a suburb of Leeds). Me personaly, I would probably describe it as an outer suburb, but nonetheless a fairly upwardly mobile one, perhaps a poor(ish) man's Roundhay.Mtaylor848 (talk) 01:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


Just in case people don't realise, but there is no difference in powers or status between a town council and a parish council. There is also nothing to stop previously unparished areas to decide they want their own council. This is a list of councils operating within Leeds [4] Quantpole (talk) 09:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Mtaylor848 wrote: "Collingham is governed by Leeds City Council, Wetherby Town Council and then Collingham Parish Council." This is simply not true. If one studies the OS 1:25000 scale maps for the area concerned, or one uses the Official Government Election Maps site with suitable choices for Elmet County Constituency, with boundaries marked for Westminster parliament and civil parishes shown, it can be clearly seen that Wetherby civil parish is a separate area, to the north west of Collingham civil parish. No civil parishes overlap. As Quantpole remarks, there are no differences in possible powers or in status between a town council and a parish council: the council has decided, in the case of the town council, to call itself a town council (and that decision was approved), whereupon the area it administers becomes known as a town, and the council has a mayor. The full list of parish duties and responsibilities which the over-arching district council allows the parish-level councils (or meetings) to have can be found in: The National Association of Local Council's website, in particular What is a town, parish, or community council, The powers of a council (a word doc file), Creating a council, All about parish and town councils , 2007 (PDF file, and All about local councils, 2008 (PDF file). I hope those links clear up any lingering uncertainty.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Heyup ddstretch. To be fair, whilst the above is certainly insightful, I do not feel it is relevent to the crux of the discussion here, that being the word "Leeds" is most commonly interpreted to mean the whole of Leeds (City of Leeds), and this has already been shown, and this is what needs to be addressed. When people click leeds they expect to be shown information about what is commonly understood to mean Leeds, not an ons subdivision that exists and is referenced in less than 1% of instances of "Leeds" on the web.
We need to move this forward imo. I too, am in favour of the excellent compromise proposition expressed by DDStretch and elaborated by several other editors, which I think will put an end to what appears to have been 4 years of confusing problem. :)

Just to get this right in my head. Does this make sense:-

  1. City of Leeds needs to re-direct to Leeds
  2. the existing page at Leeds will be widened from meaning an ons subdivision, to its most popular english interpretation, that being city and metropolitan borough
  3. the section within Leeds entitled Governance will be a summary like it already is now, but have a stem to the main article which will be located at Leeds Governance ( Leeds City Council will also redirect to Leeds Governance
  4. the information from the existing page City of Leeds (which is essentially Leeds Governance) will be moved to Leeds Governance

bobs your uncle! :-) --Razorlax (talk) 14:39, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the long discussion above indicates that there is no consensus for the concept that Leeds and City of Leeds are the same thing almost-instinct 14:44, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually, my message was entirely relevant for the following reason: Mtaylor848 based a lot of his point on his description of the facts concerning the local government arrangements of where he lived. In other words, the soundness of his argument depended on the description being correct. An argument is only as strong as its weakest link or component. Thus, given that his description was erroneous in a major way, it renders the soundness of his argument and point also weak. Consequently, it was entirely relevant so long as his point was judged to be relevant before I pointed out the error at its root. Your comment about my message would only have some force if you also agreed that his point was not relevant as well. You may think this is a trivial or too fine a point, but we are here attempting to arrive at the best solution we can, and it is quite right that our arguments and points are exposed to critical examination and their faults pointed out if they are discovered to have some relevant ones.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I do agree that whether an area has a parish or or not is not really relevent, because attempting to define leeds using are own interpretation based on parishes is original research and point of view. leeds can only be about a verifiable area. The only 2 verifiable areas are (1) Leeds - the whole city (the most popular interpretation of the word "Leeds" by over 99%), and (2) a subdivision. wp:commoname says the most popular english language interpretation should be used. The current incarnation of the WP [leeds]] page uses the subdivision, which is not the common interpretation of the word Leeds, and as such has been the root of years long confusion and discussion. --Razorlax (talk) 16:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually, having read through for well over an hour lol, a lot of the discussion constituted what people felt was Leeds, and whether certain more isolated towns were considered to be Leeds or not. This is all original research and point of view as it is people's own personal interpretations. All we can go by is the most common english interpretation of the word Leeds according to WP:COMMONAME (and the tests it suggests using when a naming dispute arises) and applying this to a an official and verifiable area (ie the official city of leeds, or the ons subdivision). Out of those two, there are less than 1% of instances where Leeds means an ons subdivision, which is why there has been so much confusion for years with leeds To give some examples:
  1. "Education Leeds" is the body that deals with education for the whole of Leeds, not an ons-subdivision. If the word "Leeds" only meant an inner subdivision, the body would have been called "Education Leeds District" or something similar.
  2. NHS Leeds is the trust that is for the whole of Leeds, because Leeds means the whole city.
  3. All media, from televison, to newspapers, to radio all use the word Leeds to mean the whole city of Leeds, because this is its most commonly understood interpretation. When the BBC states "the 7/11 bombers came from Leeds, a city in the north of England, with a population of 750,000" they are using the word Leeds to mean "city of leeds", because this is what "Leeds" means (city of Leeds)
  4. When people from the government say they are holding a meeting in Leeds, and actually hold this meeting in Harewood House, they are using the word "Leeds" to mean the whole city, not a subdivision, because Harewood House is outside this subdivision.
  5. When tens and thousands of literature and articles, printed, and across the web (in by far majority usage) use the word "Leeds" they mean the whole city, as this is its common interpretation. --Razorlax (talk) 15:16, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Do we have a source for the claim that "City of Leeds is not Leeds" yet? Chrisieboy (talk) 15:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
The number 99 bus goes from "Leeds to Wetherby" once an hour almost-instinct 17:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
In case anyone thinks I'm being merely facetious, contrast the number 99 that goes from "Leeds to Wetherby" and number 92 that goes from "Leeds to Headingley" with bus number 60 which is described as "Leeds (City Centre to Hyde Park)". Clearly for these people and their customers Leeds is different from Wetherby and Headingley, but not merely the City Centre almost-instinct 18:14, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
This, of course, demonstrates conclusively that Headingley is not part of Leeds, either. More seriously, I think it demonstrates what I said above: That "Leeds" as used in natural language is a cloud, most dense in the city centre, less so in Headingley, and barely existent in Otley or Wetherby. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I think you will find that the route of the No. 99 bus is "LEEDS Infirmary Street - WETHERBY - DEIGHTON BAR via Linton," the No. 92 "Tannery - Headingley Campus via Albion Street - University - Woodhouse - Meanwood Road" and the No. 60 "DUNCAN STREET - MERRION CENTRE via Hyde Park - Little London" according to the operator First Leeds (not First City of Leeds). Chrisieboy (talk) 20:53, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Does that make my source suddenly not exist? You asked for a source, I gave you a source. I was expecting a "thank you" not a "I think you will find" ;-) almost-instinct 11:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

More usefully, I think that this is merely continuing to support Hans Adler's point of varying densitys of Leeds-ness almost-instinct 11:40, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Hi Almost-instinct. The problem with the source you listed is that it also shows bus services from "Leeds to Alwoodly" or "Leeds to headingley" etc. Headingley, and Alwoodley are both well within this leeds subdivision that is spoken of so fondly on here lol. Likewise, the same source lists bus services from "Manchester to Didsbury" for example, where Disbury is also well within Manchester City Local Authority. It doesnt counter the evidence-backed observation that the word "Leeds" is most commonly interpreted as meaning the whole city (city of Leeds) by an overwhelming majority, from TV, newspapers, other encylopedias, the internet, the government, and the general population; and that our current WP Leeds page that interpets the word "Leeds" to mean a virtually unused statistical subdivision is quite clearly against what is outlined in WP:COMMONAME and is the very reason for years long confusion and discussion. The compromise solution mentioned by DDStretch really needs to be carried out as no one has brought forward a counter argument against the WP:COMMONAME line. --Razorlax (talk) 17:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh my life, using bus timetables as sources?! You could pick pretty much any big city and the name 'Leeds', 'Manchester', 'Nottingham' etc will usually mean the city centre. (I see Razorlax has just said a similar thing). This is getting a bit silly now. jza attempted to provide some sources to prove the existence of Leeds as described by the article, but did no such thing. (Only showing that there are areas within Leeds than could be described as having their own identity, which is usual for any settlement of reasonable size).

I've given this article a bit of breathing space to see if any decent sources or arguments are made against the proposed compromise but none have been forthcoming yet. Have we reached the point of consensus yet, or do we have to have another round of voting? Quantpole (talk) 17:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The point I'm trying to make is that on the one hand there is something very clearly defined: The City of Leeds. On the other hand there is also something more nebulous: Leeds. Official sources will, of course, deal with clearly defined things. The search for references to less clearly defined things will naturally have to look in less shiny and brash sources. Buses are important things for a lot of people - just because you don't personally rate them doesn't alter that. Because of this I cannot support the idea that there should be only one article to cover different things. I don't care whether is City of Leeds is a hundred times bigger than Leeds, as long as we admit the existence of a difficult-to-define area called Leeds. On a final note, calling me and/or my contributions to this discussion silly is outside the boundaries of civility. It might not appear so, but I'm perfectly serious. Difficulties in definition are frustrating, but willing them out of existence won't work; nor can you wish away those who insist on the recognition of those difficulties almost-instinct 18:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
As you will see from my contributions on this discussion, I don't particularly disagree with you regarding the difficulties of defining what Leeds is. However, as I have stated many times, trying to define a Leeds that is not City of Leeds is pretty much bound to be original research and POV. I wasn't calling your contributions silly, I was calling this ongoing discussion silly. But even if I was, I do think that even yourself will look back at the bus timetable thing with some regret. It's not a question of me 'rating' something, it's simply that a bus timetable is a really bad way to try and define a city. All they will do is point to a city centre and outlying suburbs. They could well be useful in some cases, but this isn't one. There is a time when it's right to admit you were wrong. If you're going to start on the 'civility' thing, you should also familiarise yourself with 'assume good faith'. Quantpole (talk) 21:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Please note: I'm not trying to use a bus timetable to try to define something, I'm using it to demonstate how difficult it is to define. I suppose the core question (which is what I'm really concerned with, if you're wondering why I'm not letting go of this is) is: are we (a) trying to define or (b) trying to reflect the complexities of reality or (c) both? As I understand WP, I think WP prob tends to (c) almost-instinct 22:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
I support the merger proposal (reminder: it's at #Possible compromise) because I think it's the right thing to do, but also because it implies a coordinated effort to improve the article. It's a shame this isn't a featured article yet.
We could also try to get some wider input from WP:UKGEO than what has happened so far at Wikipedia talk:UKGEO#Proposal to merge the article City of Leeds into the article Leeds. The result there seems to be not to merge, but their discussion concerning Leeds was very superficial. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
The precisely defined City of Leeds is one of the aspects of the nebulous "Leeds", and has only a tiny article. Geographically, it also describes (almost?) exactly the maximal extent of the "Leeds" cloud. It's perfectly normal for a city article to be formally about the entire city, but to discuss predomnantly the most prominent parts, i.e. usually the city centre and perhaps some parts around it. I still don't see what's so different about Leeds (and a few other English cities) that it must be treated differently. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi almost-instinct. You said you cannot support a compromise proposal because the word Leeds is nebulous. However it has already been shown that the common english interpretation of the word "Leeds" is the whole city. The word "Leeds" is most commonly interpreted as meaning the whole city (city of Leeds) by an overwhelming majority, from TV, newspapers, other encylopedias, the internet, the government, and the general population. Are you saying we should continue to go against this and maintain the confusion, and to continue to violate WP:COMMONAME, WP:OR, and WP:V (verifiablity) and leave the Leeds article in limbo.. confusing and hugely against common interpretation? Surely not? If the current incarnation of the WP Leeds page 'worked' this discussion would not have been carrying on for 4 years --Razorlax (talk) 20:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Can I quietly point that, contrary to what Razorlax writes here, I did not say that I "cannot support a compromise proposal"? I didn't express an opinion on that. Ta. almost-instinct 00:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, in all the above discussions I only see one person expressing opposition to DDStretch's compromise proposal. Does that mean that we have consensus to move ahead? —Jeremy (talk) 15:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I think that you need to clearly state exactly what is being proposed here so that people can air their thoughts on that proposal as it is not clear exactly what is and is not being proposed from the discussions above. Probably in a new section to keep it away from the above discussion. Keith D (talk) 01:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
DDStretch outlined his proposal in detail above (original diff). I summarised it in the section called Possible compromise. —Jeremy (talk) 02:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Nothing endures but change

DDStretch's attempt at finding middle ground has been on the table for over two weeks now, and through the extensive discussion I find only one person actually explicitly opposing it. Therefore, following the consensus building method discussed at Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, I am trying it out. Specifically I am expanding the scope of the article at Leeds, I am moving the article at City of Leeds to Leeds Metropolitan District and making City of Leeds into a redirect to Leeds. There is still a lot of work to be done to fully realise what DDStretch proposed, but this is a start.

Everything that I have done is easily undone, and this is likely not the final solution. However, the discussion has gone stale and I feel that trying out some ideas for solutions might help us move towards a consensus that everyone can live with. If these changes are accepted I hope that those that have put a lot of effort into the above discussions will channel that effort into bringing this article up to featured article quality. —Jeremy (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually DDStretch's proposal was to move it to Metropolitan District of Leeds, and I produced a supporting argument for using that title (rather than Leeds Metropolitan District, which had seemed instinctively better to me), above. So why the difference? PamD (talk) 16:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread your comment--I thought that you were suggesting the title I used. I'll fix it. —Jeremy (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

What is going on?

As far as I can see with recent changes Leeds and Metropolitan District of Leeds are now the same article. What happened to the Leeds area? Has it vanished off the map? ┌Joshii┐└chat┘ 17:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The content looks different to me. The only change I notice is that City of Leeds has been to Metropolitan Borough of Leeds to help remove some of this confusion. Nev1 (talk) 17:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Have you not noticed that the population of Leeds has been inflated to the same as the borough and someone has given the area of Leeds city status, is her Majesty on Wikipeida handing out city status? ┌Joshii┐└chat┘ 17:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It makes total sense to me. There has been no merger. The WP page Leeds now deals with the most common interpretation of the word "Leeds" in english language, that being the complete city, making it consistent with television, newpapers, other encylopedias, the internet, the government, and people, and also making it comply with WP:COMMONAME thus ending years of confusion, whilst the WP page Metropolitan District of Leeds will suitabley be what the old city of leeds page was, and deal with administration/governance of the City, and also have scope to discuss the pre-1974 historic county borough that exists only as a statistical subdivision now, as well as discussing other areas with Leeds within a 'district' context. --Razorlax (talk) 17:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

So where has the grey area in this map gone? Has Wikipedia decided to forget it exists and merge it with other areas? Why should Pudsey have an article but not Leeds which is clearly a component of the City of Leeds borough? ┌Joshii┐└chat┘ 18:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Is the grey area the same as the area referred to as "Leeds" on line 645 of the Excel document available here? almost-instinct 18:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
No, it isn't - quite. Despite repeated claims on here, the Leeds Urban Subdivision is NOT the same area as Leeds County Borough. The boundaries within the conurbation are based upon the pre-1974 district boundaries as that is the last time where administrative boundaries can be used in this way, whilst any places where Leeds (being on the edges of the conurbation in places) has expanded into previously rural areas are included as being part of Leeds. Fingerpuppet (talk) 11:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
So what are the reliable sources, again, that establish notability of this grey area? The word "Leeds" is generally used in a fuzzy way. If we want to define it in a precise way for Wikipedia, we need reliable sources that actually connect the word with the meaning we ascribe to it. Per WP:COMMONNAME a single source is clearly not enough for this kind of connection in the case of a frequently used word like this one. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I know myself that "Leeds" and "City of Leeds" are different, but have reluctantly agreed that the future of the article is safer if we agree to have the one article Leeds about the whole Met. District. After arguments over weeks, months, years, I hope we can now settle down to making it a Good or Featured article. I hope some of the energy spent on this debate can now focus on the article itself - and some of the related ones like History of Leeds and Architecture of Leeds. Please, Joshii, accept that there does seem to be a consensus in favour of this way forward. PamD (talk) 18:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi Joshii, you say Leeds is a component of City of Leeds, but in common english usage, be it people, government, TV, newspapers, encyclopedias, or the internet, Leeds means city of Leeds, the entire city. "NHS Leeds" is the NHS Trust that covers the whole city. Likewise with "Education Leeds". If "Leeds" meant this obscure, virtually unused inner urban area that only exists as a statistical ons subdivision, almost exclusively only referenced on WP, than "NHS Leeds" would have been called "NHS Leeds District", or something similar to "NHS Heywood, Middleton, Rochdale" which is the NHS Trust for Rochdale Borough.
A WP article about the obscure inner urban area of Leeds could be made, but it would need to be titled accordingly, be it pre-1974 historic leeds or leeds urban subdivision, however what you would find is it would really be duplicate to the Leeds page, as all coverage of the inner nebulous region of leeds, and its history into becoming a wider metro area will already be covered. Infact there is very little that talks about this inner leeds, other than in a historical context. --Razorlax (talk) 18:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I disagree with much of what you say - I still believe that when most people say "Leeds" they mean an urban area, and don't intend to include Otley or The Chevin! But I accept that it's so difficult to define the urban area in any way which would avoid future ongoing debates (Horsforth? Morley? Adel?) that we should at this stage give up the attempt and concentrate on improving the comprehensive article. I've already expanded the infobox entry for phone code and postal district, having established (by looking at the Leeds City Council libraries contact info web page) that there are several other phone codes for parts of "Leeds" and some WF postcodes too. And yes, County Borough of Leeds should be a short article describing this former entity. PamD (talk) 19:16, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
By claiming about 4 people = consensus you have managed to make List of towns and cities in England by population very confusing indeed. If one views that list and sees Leeds with the population of 443,247 and then clicks through to Leeds and sees 761,100 as the quoted figure this would lead to massive confusion. The ideas presented here that just because some people are too lazy to differenciate between the two are flawed. At the very least an article needs to be created called something like Leeds (settlement) or Leeds (area) instead of just rewriting the geography of the UK. ┌Joshii┐└chat┘ 19:44, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Seconded. Taking our cue from the Leeds entry in List of towns and cities in England by population the opening of Leeds (settlement) could perhaps go: "The settlement of Leeds is the urban area of the City of Leeds that exludes the areas of Bramhope, Guiseley, Yeadon, Garforth, Wetherby, Otley, Morley, Rawdon and Scarcroft." almost-instinct 20:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
The ONS key statistics for urban areas use a standardised statistical definition of what it is to be urban. The purpose as stated by the ONS is to allow study of the dynamics of urban areas across different censuses and between different areas. At no point to the ONS assert that these statistics define what Leeds is, so to go from these statistics to the statement "The settlement of Leeds is the urban area of the City of Leeds" without providing additional citations to reliable sources would be original research. As to consensus, as I stated above, the changes that I made to the articles are an attempt to build consensus not to apply consensus. I made the changes on the basis that after more than two weeks of discussion very little opposition had been expressed to DDStretch's compromise proposal—it seemed to me therefore that, per the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, the best way to assess whether that lack of opposition implied consensus to move forward was to make the changes and see how people reacted. —Jeremy (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
This isn't quite true - you need to read the introduction to the Key Statistics for Urban Areas data where it states that they are statistics for "places recognisable as towns and cities rather than administrative areas". Fingerpuppet (talk) 11:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
In addition, note that all areas of Leeds have second tier articles. So, in addition to Wetherby and Otley we have articles like Chapeltown, West Yorkshire and Blenheim, Leeds. So nowhere is 'left out'—Jeremy (talk) 20:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Here is a quote from our Chapeltown page: "Chapeltown does not have any official boundaries. It is not recognised by the Land Registry or the Post Office, but is widely recognised by residents of Leeds" almost-instinct 20:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
My point was that we already have articles covering all areas of Leeds. The fact that some of those articles may be sub-standard doesn't negate that point. —Jeremy (talk) 21:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Woah! What has been going on? There was no consensus to merge the two articles. I totally oppose it as have several others. WP:BRD please. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. As far as I can see, there's been constant requests for sources, such sources have been given, then those sources have been totally ignored and statements along the lines that "no sources have been given" have been made, despite the fact that several different ones have! Fingerpuppet (talk) 22:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi Fingerpuppet, what sources are you reffering to? As per WP:COMMONAME the word "Leeds" is most commonly interpreted to mean the whole city in 99% of instances, by television, newspapers, the internet, encylopedias, the government, people, and even ONS itself! Bizzarely, all of JzA's sources actually showed this too lol. Thus we are left with one single citation, the ONS subdivision. No one denies that a statistical ons subdivision exists, but it has not been shown that this subdivsion is the common english interpretation of the word "Leeds", and even more peculiarly, at no point do the ONS assert that this subdivision defines what Leeds is either. --Razorlax (talk) 22:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Not at all - there's been timetables, the Office for National Statistics, there's been news articles, and the use of "Leeds" as a shorthand form for the district as well as the settlement means that there are thousands of uses of "Leeds" that may well refer to the settlement that you claim mean the entire district. You may be right, of course, but it is a fallacy to so claim. As an aside, I was looking for something else entirely and it seems that ViaMichelin, zoom out one level believe that Leeds <> City of Leeds. And if at no point the ONS assert that Leeds (the subdivision) equates to Leeds (the settlement), then why does the introduction to the Key Statistics for Urban Areas state that the data refers to "places recognisable as towns and cities rather than administrative areas"? Fingerpuppet (talk) 11:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with this summary. I've actioned the restoration. Please remember folks that a) "Metropolitan District of Leeds" has been nullified in talk before as an option and, b) making "Leeds" a metropolitan borough article is contentious, and c) no consensus = no change. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Umm, what merger? There have been two articles all day. We have been exploring the middle ground that was proposed by DDStretch as specifically encouraged by WP:BRD. No consensus does no mean do nothing, no consensus means carry on trying to find consensus. Did you read the rewritten lead? Every statement of fact was cited to a reliable source. —Jeremy (talk) 22:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Leeds ain't a city - it does not have city status in the same way Rochdale doesn't have borough status. And the "Metropoltian District of Leeds" is called the "City of Leeds" - Metroplitan Borough of Rochdale isn't called the City of Rochdale because of a proposal on a Wikipedia talk page. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
That might be your opinion but Leeds City Council, Yorkshire Forward, and the Leeds Initiative disagree with you. —Jeremy (talk) 22:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
You didn't just say that did you? Where do they say the city is called "Metropolitan District of Leeds" and that it is the "City of Rochdale"? --Jza84 |  Talk  23:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what Rochdale has to do with Leeds. Anyway, the three sources I quote are all cited above (one of them by you). Leeds City Council call Leeds a city on many places e.g. "Leeds is a lively city" [5], Yorkshire Forward say that the population of Leeds is around 750,000 [6] and the Leeds Initiative report that you quote above states "Leeds is a unique city". —Jeremy (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
The Council sometimes use "Metropolitan District of Leeds" in formal documents such as this. PamD (talk) 23:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
- So does that mean it's not the City of Leeds? At primary source it is verfiable that it a metropolitan district with borough and city status and "has the title of City of Leeds". Come on, it's not Metropolitan District of Liverpool, this isn't adding value to our encyclopedia. --Jza84 |  Talk  00:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Hiya Jza, when the government say "Leeds is a one of England's core cities" it is because "Leeds" in its popular English interpretation means the entire city (city of leeds). Therefore to have an article entitled Leeds but not to actually be about Leeds, but about a sliced up statistical subdivision within Leeds, is why there has been such confusion. It's pretty simple, and how the Leeds page ever came to mean anything other than the city, against the government, televisions, other encylopedias, and newspapers is beyond me. To answer you question Jza why Rochdale and Leeds are very different, Rochdale, in its commonly accepted english interpretation means the town of Rochdale, not the borough of rochdale, and so to give just one example, the NHS Trust for Rochdale Metropolitan Borough is called "NHS Heywood, Middleton & Rochdale", because naming the borough NHS Trust as "NHS Rochdale" would leave ambiguity. The complete reverse is true for Leeds, "NHS Leeds" means the whole city, not a portion of inner leeds. --Razorlax (talk) 23:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
And your source to prove this is....?? 00:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I've found another source. "Collins English Dictionary - English Definition and Thesaurus" It says: "Leeds (1) a city in N England, in Leeds unitary authority Pop: 424194 (2) a unitary authority in W Yorks Pop: 724400" here How are we rating Collins as a source? almost-instinct 23:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Not ideal IMHO. --Jza84 |  Talk  00:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
A dictionary is a tertiary source. While these are not explicitly ruled out by WP:RS and WP:OR, where there is considerable debate as there is here, I agree with Jza84 that secondary sources are preferable. —Jeremy (talk) 01:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Ok. Thanks almost-instinct 12:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Editors need to get over the confusion of using "Leeds" as shorthand for the wider district. Sources do it. I know. But they do it with other places too. Leeds is a city - but the title is "City of Leeds" and refers to the whole district. Leeds is also a place and settlement in this district. Yes there is confusion about it being a city or not, and yes people have certain loyalities to its status, but is not coterminate with the whole district - it is verifiable that the district has other towns, and settlements - distinct ones. --Jza84 |  Talk  00:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

"Leeds is also a place and settlement in this district" -- there is a source for this? As far as I can see sources have been given that verify the calling places like Wetherby and Otley settlements within Leeds, but no source that has been cited thus far uses the term Leeds to describe a settlement within the city rather than the city itself.—Jeremy (talk) 00:18, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I think the above Collins source is a good one for that purpose. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Jza, currently I have the impression that there is no chance to ever find a compromise that most people can live with – without excluding you. Such an impression is usually wrong. You insist that the present article must be about the urban area, and I don't understand fully why that is so important to you. Could you please explain that. Further, I would like to know: What if the present article was renamed to Leeds (urban area) or to Leeds (settlement)? Are there scenarios under which you could live with that, e.g. Leeds being a redirect to that article, or Leeds being a disambiguation page? What if the present article was permanently hijacked by one of the other, related meanings, and a new and relatively short article just about the settlement was created to which you can link from the list of UK settlements?

The current situation is unstable, and you are its most active defender. I am sure after reverting the collective attempt to find a more stable version you have some ideas what we could try instead, even though they may represent a slightly less than optimal solution from your point of view. Please share these ideas. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

-- It works perfectly well for other places in England. I have proposed alternative lead sections, but what appear to be a close-knit, and highly comparable series of new users "inerested in Leeds" overturned this. Also, it's not me who seeks a change so the onus is not on me to obtain a consensus. --Jza84 |  Talk  00:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
As Hans Adler pointed out, you are the main editor opposing change, so I think that asking if there is any change that would not oppose is a reasonable question. Secondly, Hans Adler has been editing since 2007, I have been editing since 2005, I object to the suggestion that we are part of "a series of new users 'interested in Leeds'", please comment on the content and not the contributors. —Jeremy (talk) 01:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Jza isn't the only editor opposing the changes and you can't think that about 4 people, many from the area itself, is a consensus. ┌Joshii┐└chat┘ 01:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
But if we want to have two separate articles, how do we define the "Leeds" which is the town and not the met district? Where are its boundaries? Is Adel in in it? Horsforth? Pudsey? Morley? etc. Unless we have some agreed definition, we will continue to have the edit warring of places being added and removed, discussions and misunderstandings and confusions. Yes, I know Leeds is a place, and does not include Otley etc, but unless we can define "Leeds" unambiguously I'm prepared to put up with a combined WP article in the interests of peace and quiet and the hope that we can get on with improving what is at present a rambling and ill balanced article(s). PamD (talk) 00:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Does it need to have boundaries to exist? --Jza84 |  Talk  00:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Maybe we need to answer this question that WP:commoname asks when there is a naming dispute. Does the word "Leeds" most commonly refer to a statistical subdivision, or does the word "Leeds" most commonly refer to the shorthand for the City of Leeds, where it is used interchangeably, just like Manchester is used interchangeably to mean City of Manchester, and Birmingham is used interchangeably to mean City Of Birmingham etc? Sources suggest the latter by a massive margin. --Razorlax (talk) 00:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Manchester and Birmingham's "City of" are the same as the city. City status was given to the settlements but was not given to Leeds, just the the larger borough. WP:COMMONNAME should not be abused to change something to fit ones interests. The articles need to be different as they are talking about different things. ┌Joshii┐└chat┘ 01:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi Joshii, but with respect, this does not change the fact that the word "Leeds" in virtually all instances, from television, encyclopedias, the government, the internet, newspapers, and even ONS itself, means City of Leeds. This is the crux of the confusion. People expect the Leeds page to be about the city (the popular and common understanding of the word Leeds), not a virtually unused statistical subdivision. No one here is against two seperate articles, but the page Leeds needs to re-direct to City Of Leeds or vice-versa, whilst the current incarnation of the page [Leeds] needs to redirect to a page that reflects what it is really talking about and referring to (an ons subdivision), ending what appears to be years long confusion instantly --Razorlax (talk) 01:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Some references:-

Refutals of above references:

  • Pudsey, near Leeds[16]
In this news report first it says "Police are questioning a Leeds GP" then later it says.."his surgeory in pudsey, near Leeds" lol. Again, there are more google instances of "pudsey in leeds" than "pudsey near leeds".
  • Guiseley, near Leeds[17]
Again, bbc news also uses "guiseley in leeds"[18] and "guiseley, a leafy north west suburb of leeds"[19], whilst sources also use for example "gorton near manchester"[20] despite gorton being actually in manchester. Its the way the english language is used, contextual referencing. You will find virtually no articles at all that speak of just "Leeds" and imply it is an inner subdivision of the city of Leeds. The only article that exists if this WP page, and sites that unfortunately have referenced WP.
  • Otley, near Leeds[21]
Whilst in this instance, "otley near leeds" was used, "otley in leeds" is also used.[22] Infact "otley near leeds" appears on google 800 times, whilst "otley in leeds" appears 1,800 times. Not bad for the most remote, distinct settlement in Leeds.
  • Lofthouse, near Leeds[23]
Lofthouse is actually in Wakefield, and the lofthouse junction in Wakefield -is- near Leeds
  • Morley, near Leeds[24]
whilst in a different article, the same Yorkshire Evening Post uses the phrase "Morley in Leeds"[25]. That said, its the way the english language is used, contextual referencing. You would equally find "headingley near Leeds", or "Disbury near Manchester"[26][27]
  • Horsforth, near Leeds[28]
this report is from 1974, when horsforth was next to leeds, rather than just being a suburb as today.. eg "turned Horsforth from a quite little community with a village green, first into an industrial settlement, then into a suburb of Leeds"[29]

Summary of refutals:

Yes it is possible to find instances of "otley near leeds", just like you can find instances of "headingley near leeds", or "didsbury near manchester", this only highlights the way the english language can be used when referencing an area in context to another area, even if the area is actually a subset of referenced area. You need sources that use the word "Leeds" and intend it to mean a subdivision. A source saying something along the lines of "Leeds is the area that is in heart of the City of Leeds", would actually be the first source to back up the Leeds page and actually back up what some people are asserting here. The reality however, is that 99% of sources that talk of "Leeds" imply it to mean the city, not the obscure subdivision that is currently being interpreted as meaning "Leeds" on WP Leeds - hence the years of confusion. --Razorlax (talk) 03:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

All your rebutals are flawed. Firstly, the references establish the use of Leeds to refer to the urban area. Other uses elsewhere are irrelevent. The Leeds GP lives in Headingley and commutes to his surgery in Pudsey. Lofthouse and the interchange that the reference refers to are both in the Leeds MD [30]. The report dates from 1975 and is about a incident in Dec 1974. Horsfield became part of the City of Leeds on 1 April 1974.
You also didn't comment on the OS reference which clearly refers to Leeds and Wetherby as seperate areas and doesn't even include the entire Leeds MD. This clearly establishes the town of Leeds as a seperate entity to the City of Leeds. 87.114.132.78 (talk) 05:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is not a problem confimed solely to the UK, it seems this discussion on talk:Tokyo seems to be about a very similar issue. The point of direct relevance I want to re-mention here is that I think the problem is obscured by some poor choice of naming convention that isn't even applied consistently across wikipedia. I haven't done an exhaustive survey so far, but if one looks at List of cities in the United Kingdom, we have the following partial table for cities in England and Wales:

Type of areas that are cities with various statistics
Type of Area "City" is part of
article name, or
name of a redirect		 Number
Unparished area Yes 1
Unparished area No 1
Settlement Yes 1
Settlement No 2
Settlements
(jointly) 		Yes 1
Settlements
(jointly) 		No 0
Civil parish
(or equivalent) 		Yes 2
Civil parish
(or equivalent) 		No 7
Local Government District Yes
Local Government District No

There is no consistency in always having "City of X" even when it is present only as a redirect. The situation may be that all of the local government districts may be either "City of X" or have a redirect to that, but that would not remove the inconsistency. I suggest that this problem has arisen solely because at this level of "analysis", local government areas and settlements begin to become entangled so that some local government areas are coterminous with settlements, and some are not (some areas contain more than one settlement, and some settlements contain more than one area). It is inherently messy given the way things have evolved in local government in this country. The vagaries of how the queen or her advisors have chosen to bestow the title of "city" merely adds more confusion. It would be much much better to merely use the type of local government area as a disambiguator where necessary, and always have "City of X" as a redirect to the appropriate article (with the appropriate disambiguator as required.) The problem is that this is a wider issue than just this article, and I think it needs some attention.

If the compromise solution doesn't have a consensus, and I don't think it does from what I am seeing, then my position falls back to the following one, because I proposed the consensus action just as a way of moving forwards, that is all. My position is really this: that the local government areas are conceptually different things to settlements, and that they should be dealt with separately. People are invoking commonname, but if that dominates technical correctness, then we probably still would have Schizophrenia being about multiple personality disorder rather than the "splitting away from reality" (which is what the "schizo" refers to here) technically correct definition. We don't do that for Schizophrenia, and so I don't think we should do that for this situation. We need to handle the entanglement between the conceptual schemes of (a) local administrative areas and (b) types of settlements in a way that clearly distinguishes between them, because they are conceptually different, and in matters like this, the ordinary man-in-the-street's opinion (as in COMMONNAME) may count for less than that of the "experts" (though I know that wikipedia, to my unease, seems sometimes too ready to dismiss the experts.)  DDStretch  (talk) 01:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

As a so called expert in an entirely different field (but related to what you talk about, as that field is neuroscience) I am uneasy at dismissing expert opinion. My question in response to you then is, who are the experts here? I would have assumed that government agencies would be the best people to refer to on this, but the research I have done as a result of this discussion (and believe me I have devoted many hours of reading to trying to sort this out) suggests that there is not much agreement even in these sources. For example the ONS uses one formula to try to separate urban areas from local authorities, and the Department of Communities and Local Government uses a completely different one. Then, even within a single agency there can be ambiguity—for example Yorkshire Forward states "Leeds is the ‘capital city’ of Yorkshire & Humber", but then goes on to say "Leeds is surrounded by an extensive suburban and rural area containing free-standing towns such as Wetherby, Rothwell, Morley and Otley". Where even government sources can't agree I think that Wikipedia should reflect the ambiguity in its articles, something that I don't feel is achieved by the current situation. I also think that such ambiguities mean that it would be a mistake to try to find one scheme to apply uniformly to the country, it seems clear that this has not been done at the government level, indeed it looks like a mish-mash of different schemes have been incompletely adopted through the years leading to the confusion that we have now. —Jeremy (talk) 02:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Response to DDStretch

Hi DDStretch. Correct me if i'm wrong, but isnt Schizophrenia actually about the multiple personality disorder, which is what Schizophrenia is? This is the common english language interpretation. I am not sure if you have fully read WP:COMMONAME, but it is not really about 'common' on the street language, it is about finding the majority usage of a word through official sources, such as other encylopedias, newspapers, and internet instances, as well as official bodies such as eurostat as a way of settling a naming dispute, and if there is still ambiguity (there actually isnt - 99% of instances mean city of leeds), but if we pretend there is still ambiguity, then wp:commoname finally suggests to define the two disputed interpretations for the word "Leeds" and to find which one is referenced most commonly on google. Again, Leeds is most commonly referenced by google to mean the entire city (or district as you prefer to call it) not a subdivision, which explains the years of confusion :-
Using the google phrase '+leeds +population +443,247 -"leeds urban area" -"sub-division" -"subdivision" -wikipedia' Leeds, with its population of 443,247, exists on the web 58 times[31] The -wikipedia is to omit any search instances that are from wikipedia itself. The -'leeds urban area' and -subdivision are to omit any pages that contain those words. Why? Because we are looking at the interpretation of the word "Leeds" and whether this word on its own, refers to a shorthand to City of Leeds (750,000 pop.) , or does it refer to a short hand of what the "subdvision" or "leeds urban area" refer to (443,247 pop.)
Using the google phrase '+leeds +population +750000 -"city of leeds" -"metropolitan district" ' Leeds, when not being referred to as City of Leeds, or Metropolitan District in anyway, but just "Leeds" to mean the whole city (pop 750,000), exists on the web 18,300 times[32] (that's 99.68% of times)
Pretty conclusive. By all means, have an article that discusses the nebulous undefined centre bit of Leeds, but don't call it "Leeds", because "Leeds" in majority usage and official usage is the word that is used interchangeably and as a shorthand to mean "city of leeds". Even Eurostat and ONS uses "leeds" to mean the whole city. If they were not interchangeable, and Leeds just meant an undefined inner settlement, then official pages like this would make a distinction between "Leeds" and "City of Leeds" but they dont: Eurostat(EU official statisticts body)[33], Leeds Statistics[34], and here, ONS[35] refer to "Leeds" as being a city of 750,000, surely they mean "City of Leeds" or "Leeds district", not "Leeds" which on here is asserted to mean the subdivision of 423,000. --Razorlax (talk) 04:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
"Hi DDStretch. Correct me if i'm wrong, but isnt Schizophrenia actually about the multiple personality disorder, which is what Schizophrenia is?" No it isn't. I can state that quite categorically, having done three degrees in psychology (including two at postgraduate level) and having taught trainee psychiatrists in a medical school at postgraduate levels as a university lecturer in a psychological specialty for 16 years, as well as publishing research about subjects related to schizophrenia. Even the Schizophrenia article on wikipedia (not normally something I would trust so much on subhjects like this) states "Despite its etymology, schizophrenia is not the same as dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder or split personality; in popular culture the two are often confused." which is a fairly accurate statement. This tells me one thing: that you didn't actually check before making your response, which doesn't bode well if this is anything other than a simple slip up on your part as it would mean that we would definitely need to check the sources you provide as verification, and so I really hope and will assume for now that it is just a slip up. As for the other points, I will reply later.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Hiya DDStretch, I think you misunderstood me. WP:COMMONAME isn't about "popular culture" or what people may think on the street, or the colloquial street interpretation, it is about finding the majority usage of a word through official sources, such as other encylopedias, newspapers, and internet instances, as well as official bodies, such as in this case from medical journals as a way of settling a naming dispute. In this instance, the page at Schizophrenia has followed WP:COMMONAME to the bone. It has ignored POV opinions from contributors about what schizophrenia means, and has gone for the official widely accepted name. Even a google search of Schizoprehnia which wp:commoname suggests in a naming dispute, brings out 99% of instances to mean a mental disorder just like the WP page. This is the complete opposite to the current Leeds page, that has ignored WP:COMMONMAME and the 99.6% of instances of this, and has interpreted Leeds not on official widely accepted usage, but on minority point of view, and to make it worse, it doesnt even have a single source to back up this POV that Leeds is the settlement in the centre of City Of Leeds. Personal point of view and original research is taking precedence here over verifiability and commonname. --Razorlax (talk) 15:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The Solution

  • What are the concerns of those who do not want a merger? That the centre entity is different to the wider City of Leeds, and as such the two entities should have two seperate articles because they are not the same.
  • What are the concerns of those who were initially wanting a merger? That "Leeds" in majority usage and official usage is the word that is used interchangeably and as a shorthand to mean "city of leeds", not a virtually unused ONS subdivision as in the current Leeds page, which has been the cause of years long confusion.
  • The solution? The way forward is a solution that satisfies both camps who have been battling for 4 years, and addresses both of their concerns. The current Leeds page needs to be moved to an appropriately named WP page that leads to no ambiguity - eg Leeds urban subdivision. The City of Leeds page needs to re-direct to the Leeds page, and the content of the currentLeeds page needs widening to be about the complete city, its expected usage, like [36], or [37], or [38] etc, although within the main body a mention of the urban subdivsion, and link to Leeds urban subdivision would exist, thus not 'erradicating' mention of it.
Obviously I agree with this compromise, as with probably all other compromises that have been or will be proposed. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:18, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I would support a three article solution. But I suggest that the new article be neither about the City of Leeds (LEA) nor Leeds (the ONS urban area), but instead that it be about the cloud. People on both sides of the debate seem happy with the concept that what is really meant by the term Leeds is something in-between the ONS area and the LEA City, I think that we have enough good sources to write about that. Such an article could give statistics for both the urban area and the City--in fact, with tweaking, the current article at Leeds could be that article, so I think that a new article should be created at, say, Leeds (settlement) that deals with subjects that are limited to the inner city, this article be about the cloud and the current City of article could remain as being about governance. —Jeremy (talk) 14:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I understand exactly where the "three article solution" is coming from, but surely all medium and large cities have the same kind of "fuzzy" effect? Prestwich and Stretford, for example, are "fuzzily" part of Manchester, even though they're both outside both the Urban Subdivision and the local government district. This effect is more to do with things like Travel to Work Areas than the cities themselves necessarily, surely? I'd suggest that in Leeds's case, there may well be areas outside the City of Leeds local government district that are part of that "cloud" - I'm thinking of those places inside the Leeds TTWA specifically. Fingerpuppet (talk) 19:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

WP:BRD--attempt to locate things that we can agree on

After extensive discussions I think that we have reasonable agreement that the term Leeds can mean different things to different people, and even that people also use it differently depending on the context. I had hoped that my edit to the lead set the stage for a revamped article that could reflect all these concepts, both within the article itself and expanded upon within more detailed 'main articles' for the various sections of the article.

My opinion is that DDStretch's proposal would allow us to write group of articles headed by an article at Leeds that addresses the ambiguity head on and covers all bases as to what Leeds can mean when referencing a place in West Yorkshire. Can this be done? If the contention is over starting the lead "Leeds is a city" perhaps we can write a lead that better explains the ambiguity. This would take some careful wording which might involve several iterations. If the contention is over what to call the article currently at City of Leeds let's work towards a solution for that. As the article is mostly about governance, and is even listed as the main article for the governance section of the Leeds article, my preferred name would be Governance of Leeds, I used Metropolitan District of Leeds as that is what was proposed in the initial version of the compromise.

An alternative to using DDStretch's proposal as the starting point for a compromise solution would be to move the article at Leeds to a different name. The Leeds disambiguation page could then be moved to Leeds as is often the case when there are different articles that could lay claim to a particular title. If this were done, the main issue that I see would be choosing a name for the article and a wording for the lead that could not be accused of being original research. However, if this is the preferred solution then that is what we should work on.

WP:BRD suggests finding points of agreement and using them as the start of a solution. So, what do we agree on? —Jeremy (talk) 01:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I could live with a disambiguation page, though as you say the names of the two articles are difficult to come up with. I know it's not good, but how about Leeds (district) and Leeds (settlement)? I think also people need to understand that in common parlance "city" (with a small "c") refers to a large settlement, which may or may not be a "City", and be have formal city status. For example, Milton Keynes (to my endless irritation) is constantly referred to as a "city" by its residents, even though it isn't a City. Fingerpuppet (talk) 10:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi Fingerpuppet. I forgort to respond to your points earlier above. "it seems that ViaMichelin, believe that Leeds <> City of Leeds". That map doesnt show Leeds <> City of Leeds. It just places the word "Leeds" at the centre, and then shades in all parts of the whole page that have a population density higher than a certain marker. The result is that you end up with blobs. This doesnt correspond to what they believe to be "Leeds". Map companies do not assert what a city is or isnt, they just map areas; pan the map over to manchester and you will see the same. --Razorlax (talk) 17:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Really? If you are correct, then why are Manchester and Salford shown as they are, and by that I mean Salford, not City of Salford and, say, Stockport is not? And why is one of the most densely populated areas in the country, the Black Country, not shown in that style? Sorry, but it's shown that way for large cities, and is nothing to do with population densities. Fingerpuppet (talk) 19:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Manchester and Salford are shown as one lump, because the density of the urban area is continuous until the density drops on the extremities, just like, if you pan down to London, only the inner dense part of london is highlighted. Unless of course, you are saying that the map is asserting that only inner london is london, and the less dense outer regions are not? lol. As said before, map makers have never been in the habit of deciding what areas are considered part of what cities, they just print maps, highlighting urban areas according to the density level they have set. --Razorlax (talk) 19:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I feel strongly that a/the article has to be at Leeds, rather than this be a dab page. Perhaps City of Leeds needs to be a dab page, to point either to the Leeds article or to Metropolitan District of Leeds. So, no agreement as yet. PamD (talk) 10:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree that "addressing the ambiguity head-on" would probably be at the centre of a stable long-term solution almost-instinct 10:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Jeremy is being sensible here, and I feel it must be pointed out that those proposing the merge have been pretty consistent in acknowledging that there are differences in how the term 'Leeds' can be used, and that any article should reflect that variety of usage. Some of the sources given for the 'against' case would, I think, be useful in trying to explain this as part of the article. Of course, what hasn't been able to be found is source for the definition of Leeds as defined in the current article, other than the ONS data (dealt with ad nauseam) and the Collins reference (again discussed). The sources of proof that Leeds isn't coterminous with City of Leeds are pretty much all references to a place (e.g. Otley) that state it is different to Leeds, and are not a positive source for what Leeds actually is. It would be nice to have some acknowledgement of this situation from those opposed to a merge.

In terms of what to do, I would be very against a dismbiguation page. I do not think that would remove ambiguity, but rather make the situation more complicated to the general reader. I really do think that the best solution is what ddstretch originally proposed. Trying to decide what e.g. Leeds (settlement) is would continually run into the same complications that we have at the moment. Quantpole (talk) 12:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

regarding attempted addition of citation

(above title added by Razorlax)

Copied from my talk page:

Regarding your source on Leeds, I am surprised that you have chosen to use the Collins dictionary, given the discussions on the talk page. It is very easy to find other dictionaries or encyclodedia that define Leeds as being the whole city, but I have not chosen to use those, as I realise that would currently be against consensus opinion. For the moment I am reverting, but please discuss it on the talk page. Quantpole (talk) 13:13, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Copied from WP:RS:

Tertiary sources such as compendia, encyclopedias, textbooks, and other summarizing sources may be used to give overviews or summaries

almost-instinct 13:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


Hi Almost-instinct :-) Using the collins reference would firstly constitute original research. It says Leeds is a city and unitary authority (metropolitan borough in this instance). This doesnt actually support the sentance "Leeds is the administrative core that lies at the heart of the City of Leeds." Secondly, it also constitutes minority point of view because, along with 99.6% of google instances, pretty much all other encylopedias refer to "Leeds" as a city, not 'the area that lies at the heart of the city of leeds'.

(1) Encyclopaedia Britannica[39] "City and metropolitan borough (pop., 2001: 715,404), metropolitan county of West Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England"

(2) Dictionary.com[40] "noun a city in West Yorkshire, in N England. 749,000"

(3) Encarta [41] "Leeds, industrial city of 715,000 people."

(4) yourdictionary.com[42] "city in N England, in West Yorkshire: county district pop. 681,000" (clearly this is still the entire City pop. albeit based on old 1991 ONS data mid year estimates)

(5) Webster Dictionary[43] "city N England in West Yorkshire population 674,400" (again, clearly this is still the entire City pop. albeit old 1991 ONS data) --Razorlax (talk) 13:52, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

  1. How is looking in a book Original Research?! Please explain your accusation.
  2. Please look at what you quote before you quote it. The page doesn't say "Leeds is the administrative core that lies at the heart of the City of Leeds." It says: "It is the urban core and administrative centre of the wider metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds". Yours almost-instinct 13:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
(1) It is original research as already explained, because you are looking for a citation to back up the claim "It is the urban core and administrative centre of the wider metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds". Collins says Leeds is a city and unitary authority (wider metropolitan borough itself), and as such doesnt back up the claim, if anything, along with all the encylopedia references listed above, it shows the opposite. --Razorlax (talk) 14:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
  1. Please don't make claims to know what I'm doing. I provided an illustration, one within the bounds of WP:RS for the statement "It is the urban core etc", one which could also be used to illustrate "Leeds can also mean the City of Leeds". Collins has managed to do what some of us have suggested we attempt to do - point out that the term has more than one meaning
  2. I'm sorry but I still don't understand how quoting a Dictionary is contrary to the WP:OR statement Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source
  3. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it) I'm out of time, so I guess the final word is anyone's but mine almost-instinct 14:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
(1)I have not made any claims to know what you are doing. I have merely explained why using a citation that doesnt back up a sentance, but where you have drawn your own conclusions from the citation to back up the the sentance is what constitutes original research.
(2)Quoting a dictionary is certainly not WP:OR but quoting a dictionary to back up a claim that the dictionary doesnt actually say in any shape or form and infact says the opposite, is. Just to make this clear, a quote from WP:OR "Drawing conclusions not evident in the reference is original research regardless of the type of sourceItalic text."
(3) lol fair enough, cya later. Lunch break over heh? :P --Razorlax (talk) 14:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


POV notice

Please note that an entry has been raised at No original research noticeboad by Razorlax. Keith D (talk) 21:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Good. Perhaps that'll act as the catalyst to reach consensus at last. It'd be wholly beneficial to have views that aren't biased in any way, or agenda-led. This has gone on long enough. I, for one, agree with the summary, and would welcome further input; there's only so many times the same flawed arguments can be regurgitated. If someone were to come forward expressing clear and independent reasons why the article should continue in it's current incarnation (excluding as it does great swathes of the city) without referring to bizarre and outdated ONS data (let's call it the lifeline!), maybe we could start making some progress either way once and for all. Thisrain (talk) 22:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

hi guys, can either (or both) of you two please comment on my 'non merger proposal' after all your both interested parties lol, and feedback would be greatly appreciated. thnx --Razorlax (talk) 22:52, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Seperate side discussion about ons sub-divisions

Hi Fingerpuppet. I've noticed in numerous instances you have brought up the legitimacy of the ons subdivision, and I feel their is a lot of ambiguity over what such subdivisions try to assert (if at all they assert anything). And I think it needs to be discussed.

You have stated that "the introduction to the Key Statistics for Urban Areas state that the data refers to "places recognisable as towns and cities rather than administrative areas". However reading the full text it shows that this is not true in the way you have interpreted it. |ons subdivisions state: "Urban subdivisions: Major urban areas, (such as the West Yorkshire Urban Area), which contain more than one central focus are divided where possible to produce figures about localities within them. Previously separate urban areas, where urban land has merged, are also recognised by subdivisions where possible. Subdivisions often follow the boundaries of local authorities existing before reorganisation in 1974." Also "Major urban agglomerations are sub-divided to provide results about localities within them, and to enable broad comparisons to be made with previously published census results. Previously separate urban areas, where urban land has since merged, are also recognised by sub-divisions where possible. This means, even if two seperate urban areas have now merged to become one, they will still be recognised as two seperate subdivisions based on their old county borough boundaries. This means, even though pudsey has long merged into the rest of leeds like any other suburb, ons will still break up settlements and urban areas into their old constituent parts because at no point is ONS asserting that these statistical parts define what "Leeds" is but rather they break up larger urban areas into statisically manageable parts based on pre-1974 areas for comparisons, even if urban areas have grown and merged. You can actually, as I have done, ring up ONS and ask to be put through to the Population Estimates Unit, and then through to the Small Area Projection Estimates team on 01329 444 661, who deal with subdivisions, and ask them for further clarification. As said before, at no point do the ONS assert that these statistics define what Leeds is, so to go from this virtually unused statistic about a subdivision to the statement "The settlement of Leeds is the urban area of the City of Leeds" is wrong if we are being honest here --Razorlax (talk) 20:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I quoted directly from the introduction to the 1981 report, the first available of this kind. No one has made the statement that you claim. The settlement of Leeds is one of the settlements within City of Leeds, just like, say, Wetherby, not "the urban area of the City of Leeds" which is nonsensical and comparing apples with oranges. Pudsey and Leeds were part of the same conurbation prior to 1981, so your argument there is invalid. The whole of the Leeds local government district is smaller than the Urban Subdivision of Birmingham - there is no requirement for "statistically manageable parts" as you claim, so that argument is invalid.
Furthermore, I note that you have omitted the following text that further undermines your argument: Census reports with results for urban areas and the remaining 'rural' populations were first produced from the 1981 Census to meet a widespread interests in towns and cities as such when the administrative distinction between urban and rural areas disappeared after local government reorganisation in 1974. Similar reports have been produced from the 1991 and 2001 Censuses. Selective quoting does not help your case. Fingerpuppet (talk) 20:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
With respect, are you suggesting that you have greater authority over what ONS figures represent than ONS themselves? As said before, give them a call. They are very friendly and helpful, and they will explain, as they did to me, that your assertions are infact wrong.
  • You say "the settlement of Leeds is one of the settlements within City of Leeds" This may or may not be so, but so far not a single bit of evidence has been brought forward to show this, or to define it. The ons leeds subdivision is only represetative of the historical pre-1974 boundary of Leeds, nothing more. ONS do not assert that this is what they currently believe is the settlement of Leeds (ring them and ask them) -, they base urban subdivisions on static historic boundaries. This means they cannot change. Yes, the urban areas can grow, with the addition of new subdivisions, but not subdivisions that are already bordered by other subdivisions, as they are based on historic boundaries. To give an example, the size of the manchester subdivision will never change, because any new parts added to the urban area (greater manchester urban area) are added as seperate subdivisions. Therefore, how can such subdivisions be representative of what ONS believe is the current extent of the settlement.
  • With regards to the paragraph you say I omitted, it's actually because I didn't want to add further confusion, but I will address it now. The paragraph says data for urban areas was produced to meet the interests in towns and cities. The urban areas are what are represetative of towns and cities (and agglomerations), eg, Liverpool Urban Area, Reading Urban Area, Greater London Urban Area etc. Leeds doesnt have an urban area, nor does manchester. They are both part of the West Yorkshire Urban Area, and the Greater Manchester Urban Area, where both Urban areas are not towns or cities, but agglomerations. These agglormerations are broken up into identifiable parts based on pre-1974 boundaries. There is no assertion that these broken up parts based on historic boundaries are representative of towns, cities, or settlements. The assertion is that the urban areas in their entirity are representative of towns and cities (or agglomerations in a few cases). --Razorlax (talk) 22:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It does seem that after raking things up, Jza84 has done a runner again again. WP:BRD encourages being bold (as Jeremy was), reverting (as Jza did) and discussing. Unless anyone has anything new to add, I suggest we now restore Jeremy's excellent work. Chrisieboy (talk) 13:04, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I suggest there is no consensus for such a move, since there are a number of unresolved issues, and others have been making comments that hinder rather than help here. The edits should not be reinstated without another clear period of formal opinion gathering to see just what is the status. Also, your language to describe Jza84 as having "done a runner" is not compatible with a collaborative editing atmosphere.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:45, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I have to agree with ddstretch that there is definitely no consensus on the move that was unilaterally made and that the status quo remain until we have a full agreement on the way forward, probably for this article and others in a similar situation. Keith D (talk) 14:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

"As for the other points, I will reply later." When might that be DDStretch? Chrisieboy (talk) 16:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

When I have the time to spare. This is not the only article I have to devote some time to. In any case, it was merely an issue to do with Razorlax's comemnt that I was misunderstanding him about commonname: In fact, the reason I raised commonname was that (a) I do know what it says, and (b) Razorlax must have overlooked the fact that some editors in this discussion had relied on popular interpretations of "city" in the way that LozLeader referred to in a message. (The WP:COMMONNAME section does not actually make such specific comments as Razorlax seemed to suggest on his exegesis of the term. It states:

Convention: Except where other accepted Wikipedia naming conventions give a different indication, use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things; use the naming conflict guideline when there is a conflict. Where articles have descriptive names, the given name must be neutrally worded and must not carry POV implications.

The point is that in order to understand better what to do, we should assemble the best arguments in favour of and against each proposed solution, and then see just what quality of evidence there is that supports each argument. That way, we can have a better way of knowing how to proceed, and we can also better try to avoid the mere repetition of various entrenched positions both for and against the merger of the two articles. Nice of you to take on the job of trawling through the discussions to make comment about any editors you have had problems with in the past, though: it helped me to realise that I needed to respond. Thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I haven't "trawled through" anything; I've been a party to the discussion all along (as you know, because you canvassed several contributors, singling me out as the catalyst for change) and was patiently waiting for you to respond. Thanks for more of the snide remarks, although perhaps not conducive to a collaborative editing atmosphere...

Anyway, back to the job in hand—WP:COMMONNAME aside for the moment, those opposing the merger have yet to provide a single reliable source for the statement "City of Leeds is not Leeds," whereas several, not least Leeds City Council, have been provided to the contrary. I would very much like to see one please. Chrisieboy (talk) 18:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Chrisieboy is referring to three messages posted on users' talk pages on 15th January - well after discussion had been ongoing about the possible merger, and where those editors had already been engaged in the discussion. They occurred after you enquired about progress towards a consensus to merge the two articles, and such "wake up" calls from established discussants for ongoing issues are acceptable, and occur in areas which discuss wikipedia policy and guidelines, for example. I included editors who I saw had contributed but who might have missed Chrisieboy's enquiry. The three were Jza84, PamD and Keith D. If one looks at the messages, it makes no derogatory comments about Chrisieboy and merely says that extra input may be required, though it does comment about unhelpful additions by ip contributors, the disruption brought about by sockpuppets (who were blocked) and the possible need for a formal proposal. As it turned out, PamD was in favour of merger, I proposed a compromise solution, and Jza84 and Keith D opposed the merger, and so this further weakens the notion that it was a case of canvassing, which, if it was, would have involved trying to solicit support from editors who had not already engaged in the discussion. Such messages are acceptable, and do happen with no comment about their unsuitability. They were certainly not instances of WP:CANVASSing.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the correct term is votestacking, as the recipients would have been thought to have had a predetermined point of view or opinion. Anyway, back to the job in hand...a reference? Chrisieboy (talk) 20:09, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Well this is all getting a bit tetchy. Ignoring this, can we actually have a discussion on Jeremy's heading above? Let's all just assume for a moment that we're all trying to get this article as good as it can. Let's see what we can agree on. It would be good if people like jza and joshii could contribute to that. If we can't get consensus on what to do with the page immediately, could we ignore that for a moment and as jeremy say, try and find things to agree on? That could then lead on to a solution. Quantpole (talk) 20:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi all :-) Ok, things we could potentially agree on or look at differently. I'd just like to point out that there seems to be an interpretation on here, that i've never witnessed before, that Leeds really is a district in interpretation, ie lots of seperate settlements and areas that all fall into the same 'district'. This really isn't the case. Only wetherby, otley, and garforth are town like settlements that are distinctly away from the main urban area of Leeds. These 3 settlemets amount to 50,000 people out of 761,000. The rest of Leeds, for the most is all one urban and suburban lump, featuring a city centre, and its surrounding suburbs. Even the most outlying suburbs such as guiseley, are very much suburbs no different to any other, which is even described as such on the WP guiseley page as a 'north western suburb'. It seems something that is accepted as a given to us Leeds folk who live here, is being challenged here. Part of why this is challenged is because the government dealt with many other cities differently. Manchester and Liverpool, being larger cities in real terms, followed the same format as London.. A city local authority, surrounded by its boroughs. Leeds, perhaps was too small to do this, and so it was possible to put the entire city and its environs into one City. If all cities were done like this, would we be having this debate? If the City of Manchester was done in the same way, it would at the very least cover everything in the M60, and probably include outlying settlements like wythenshaw and wilmslow, which most consider are manchester - leaving the City of Manchester with a population of just around 1.3 million. Do you think the manchester wiki page would have ended up as Manchester to mean the historic urban core of 440k as opposed the City (1.3m) ? Ironically, Leeds has been bounded right, how a city should be, its centre, suburbs, and sattelite towns, similar to how its done round most of the world. Should the Leeds page suffer years of confusion becase we have deicded to make Leeds' be interpreted using the same contructs as manchester, or liverpool.

new non-merger proposal

Anyway, ignoring the above paragrah! lol. What about we just keep everything the same, but re-jig the leading sentance on the Leeds page, so it says the same thing as it does now, but is clearer, and allows the rest of the article to talk about Leeds in whichever way appropriate and most importantly removes the issue of verifiability with the paragraph we have at the moment. Ok, here goes.. "Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough located on the River Aire in West Yorkshire. The historical urban core and administrative centre that lies at the heart of Leeds had an urban subdivision population of 443,247 (2001, ONS), whilst the wider city itself had a population of 761,200 (2007 est.)
This proposal tackles the naming issue, with very little change. It involves a lot of compromise for those wanting change, and no compromise for those against merger. It's not what I would have liked personally, but I can live with it, and I would hope others can too. Everyones happy :D. Why dont we try this, and let those who want to, work on it like gerbils, and if after a few weeks it doesnt look right, we can revert back. --Razorlax (talk) 23:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


Are there any interested parties, who'd like to comment? :P This article conflicts with WP core policies of neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research; Should we really be allowing minority point of view to take precedence over these core policies. Correct me if i'm wrong but I get a feeling there are some editors who are quite happy leaving the article as it is in flagrant breach of core policies, and any attempts to address these issues is dismissed whereby minority point of view is being allowed to take precedence. --Razorlax (talk) 21:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


Unfortunately, I'm not sure this would appease opponents of a merge. It would probably create further confusion, if anything, as readers' expectations of the article actually being about the city would be cruelly dashed with further reading. "Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough located on the River Aire in West Yorkshire...." is the very thing I think proponents of the merge, like myself, are looking for; if the article is to continue to focus solely on this comical urban core, a lead such as this would be misleading, despite it making perfect sense. Thisrain (talk) 16:07, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not think that would be appropriate as the City of Leeds is the city and not Leeds itself as has previously been stated. A re-jig of the intro paragraph would probably work though if the word city is not used and the population details removed altogether. Something fairly simple such as "Leeds is a settlement in the City of Leeds metropolitan borough located on the River Aire in West Yorkshire...." which avoids all of the argument and is fairly clear as to what the situation is. It also removes things which are contentious such as the population figures. Keith D (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
KeithD, with respect, it has already been shown Leeds means City of Leeds, and I am quite shocked you are continuing to allow your minority point of view take precedence (constituting original research, whilst lacking in reliable source, verifiability, and neutral point of view). Yes there is a nebulous settlement in the centre of the City of Leeds, no one disagrees with this, but the word "Leeds" does actually mean the whole city. It is the shorthand to the word city of Leeds, just like Birmingham is the shorthand to the word city of birmingham. The fact that Leeds contains some outlying distinct settlments, that are diferent to the historical urban core, doesnt actually change the fact that the word "Leeds" means the city of leeds, this has been proven.. a staggering 99.6% of instances on google, the bbc, sky, cnn, the government, encylopedias, even ONS use the word "Leeds" to mean the whole city, not to mention Eurostat, and newpapers. By all means, if you want an article about the leeds ons urban subdivision, call the page just that, the name must reflect the content, but dont call it leeds which to avoid being flagrant POV and OR needs to be about the whole of leeds. I am struggling to see what you do not understand about this and I would greatly appreciate a response from you here, so that we can move forward. Thankyou --Razorlax (talk) 18:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The three article solution

It's been a week since I tried to use WP:BRD to resolve the problems with this article. Unfortunately, though the 'B' and the 'R' parts of the cycle happened, the 'D' has been lacking. However, the suggestion of a three article solution has re-emerged. Fingerpuppet raised the concern that 'surely all medium and large cities have the same kind of "fuzzy" effect', and a I agree, the difference I think with Leeds is that that fuzziness has led to the framing a precise definition of Leeds being the source of controversy. Jza84 asked 'Does it need to have boundaries to exist?', to which my answer is both yes and no. Outside of Wikipedia, no boundaries are not necessary, inside of Wikipedia people like to give statistics and the like which are not really possible without boundaries. The three article solution might enable us to answer both yes and no to this question. The proposal would be to have articles about the metropolitan district and the ONS-defined urban area—these would be the articles with well defined boundaries, but rather than either of these articles being the Leeds article, they would both be 'main articles' of a Leeds article that is about neither. I think that this Leeds article could essentially be a reworking of the article currently at Leeds. In order to try to elaborate further I had a go at a very rough draft of the sort of ideas that might go into the lead of such an article. (note that this is not a suggestion for the wording of the lead, just of how the fuzziness might be addressed, also apologies if I got the history wrong—it is tough to condense it into a few sentences): Leeds is a place in West Yorkshire, England. The name 'Leeds' originally referred to the market town that now is Leeds City Centre, and which received a town charter in 1207. In 1661 a larger borough was created with the town as its core, and over time this borough came to be know simply as Leeds. In 1974 the County Borough of Leeds was abolished and a larger Metropolitan District created. Today the name 'Leeds' is used both as a short form of the official tile of the Metropolitan District, the City of Leeds, and to refer to the largest urban area within that district, and area that roughly corresponds to the area of the former County Borough. —Jeremy (talk) 17:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but without wishing to appear awkward, I'd still like to see a reliable source. The threshold for inclusion on Wikipedia is, afterall, verifiability. Since the abolition of rural districts in 1974, almost all cities have previously separate outlying villages incorporated into them. The majority of articles recognise this reality and do not limit their scope to within historic boundaries. I do not think the case for treating Leeds differently has been made. Chrisieboy (talk) 18:51, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I think that Jeremy's "very rough draft" is already a very elegant suggestion. I agree with Chrisieboy that the search for a source should continue. (Personally, I expect it to be successful, but that's not relevant) almost-instinct 19:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
In the absence of a reliable source, I suggest reverting Jza84, per WP:OR. There is easily a consensus, amongst those continuing to participate in the discussion, for the merger proposal. Chrisieboy (talk) 14:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Unsure how a 3 article approach would work and it would probably complicate things even more. Though if that approach could be clearly defined then it may get round the current difficulties.
I would be against a revert out of Jza84 work until we reach a conclusion to the discussion. There is certainly no consensus her for a merge and as can be seen before City of Leeds and Leeds do not equal the same thing as City of Leeds includes other settlements to just Leeds. Keith D (talk) 17:00, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Keith, you cannot keep on simply asserting that "City of Leeds and Leeds do not equal the same thing as City of Leeds includes other settlements to just Leeds" without providing a reliable source. Many sources have been provided to the contrary, but not one has been shown to back up your statement. Chrisieboy (talk) 17:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
KeithD you keep insisting CityOfLeeds does not equal Leeds, but the word "Leeds" means the city, and this has been proven very strongly (99.6% of google instances, government, newpapers, media, encyclopedias, leeds council, eurostat, sky, cnn). Allowing minority personal point of view to take precedence over verifiable fact and reliable sources is original research. By all means, have an article about the historic core of leeds based on an ons subdivision, no one is denying you this, but calling it leeds makes it violate the core policies by a huge margin. Call it leeds ons subdivision and no core policies are beached because name of the article reflects the content. An article called "leeds subdivision" that is about.. you guessed it the subdivision. Right now we have an article called "leeds" that isnt about leeds, it is about an ons subdivision of leeds misleading visitors to the page, hence years of confusion. Do you not see this? If you do not see this it would be greatly appreciated if you could explain what bit is not making sense to you so that we can move forward on this, thankyou --Razorlax (talk) 17:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

"Inside out city"

I've just heard this splendid quote by Patrick Nuttgens (architect and director of the poly which becamse Leeds Metropolitan University), from his book Leeds: The Back to Front, Inside Out, Upside Down City:

I'd also heard recently that the ancient Parish of Leeds was unusually large, one of the largest in the country. So it's not surprising that we're having problems with the definitions of this unusual place. PamD (talk) 11:56, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

With respect, Leeds does have a clear definition, and few are having problems with it. Thisrain (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I think the issue is more complex: Leeds has multiple meanings, one of which has a very clear definition, and other ones, of which we clearly do have problems defining almost-instinct 20:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

...So perhaps it would make sense to move forward with this "very clear definition"? Or would that be too easy/involve the application of too much common sense? I feel we'll be waiting quite some time for those against a merger to disclose this wealth of information that's so obviously being withheld regarding definitions(!) Perhaps procrastination suits the status quo..?! Thisrain (talk) 21:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

AlmostInstinct has it right: the "Leeds" which is the modern local government area is very well defined. Some of us know that there are is at least one very different "Leeds" - the one which I know I've left if I head north a few miles from home, before I get to Bramhope. But that one, the one Nuttgens is writing about, is hard to define. Whether we can come up with a clear enough definition to justify a separate article is the crunch question. PamD (talk) 22:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
But Pam, do you not see that any such definition is original research, and minority point of view. We can like it or not, but the word Leeds in its official and common usuage means the whole city of leeds, and this has been exhaustively proven on this talk page. We cannot allow minority point of view to take precedence over the core policies of 'neutral point of view', 'no original research' and 'verifiability'. By all means we can have a WP page that is about the leeds ons subdivision, or the historic county borough of leeds, or the leeds urban area -and have that page named as such , but to name that page Leeds is original research. Do you not see this? I fully appreciate that there is a nebulous inner region, but this can very easily be explained and mentioned within the page leeds even within a few sentances within the leading paragraph. If you cannot see this please explain your concern so that we can try to address it and move forward, or, please provide a concluive rubuttal why Point Of View should take precedence of the core policies of wikipedia. thankyou --Razorlax (talk) 23:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
If you look back to 15Jan you'll see that I supported a merged article - I think it's wrong and ridiculous, but I also think it's the only way we'll ever get anything settled and I feel sickened by the waste of time and energy on this constant scrapping. Yes, it's giving in to the forces of ... let's just say of views I disagree with, but in the interests of getting some progress I've said I support it. One article, called Leeds, about the met district. All the "x in/of Leeds" articles and categories to apply to the whole met district. Lots of explanatory notes clarifying the scope of articles and categories to avoid future scrapping. Lots of separate articles about constituent settlements within the met district, both those which are within the core urban area and those which aren't. More attention to the Leeds city centre article. As much time and energy spent improving the articles as people have been spending fighting about them for months (some notable contributors to discussion don't seem to contribute much else to WP). Please. PamD (talk) 23:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course, everyone has different interpretations of what is meant by Leeds but in the absence of verifiable sources, I think precedence should be given to the one definition that crops up constantly. For the record, I would regard Bramhope as an inclusive consituent of Leeds, along with Guiseley, Horsforth, Pudsey, Morley etc. I firmly favour inclusion over exclusion, and whilst I agree that beyond Bramhope and towards Otley could be viewed as outside what most would regard as "Leeds", that THE Leeds article should continue to exclude so many of it's facets simply because one little known and outdated piece of data suggests so is simply unjustifiable. Effectively, Pudsey is more a part of Leeds than Otley isn't and that, for me, is a fundamental basis for change. Thisrain (talk) 23:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Lack of meaningful discussion

So after the merge there were a few people who jumped in and raised objections, as is there perogative. However, in the ongoing discussions, most of the objectors have been notable by their absence. There have been attempts to try and get to a middle ground, or at least get the discussion around to points that can be agreed on. However, it is a bit hard to do this if most of those you are trying to reach a compromise with aren't participating!

Part of the frustration for me is that it seems that the status quo is allowed to remain without much justification, and those proposing a change have to make most of the running.

So this is a plea really that all those interested in the outcome of this discussion actually come and participate. At the moment there doesn't seem to be much of the 'D' part of WP:BRD. Quantpole (talk) 17:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I've given up commenting and discussing as whenever things get brought to the table they're instantly dismissed, factual inaccuracies are claimed regarding those items, and then claims are made that nothing's been brought. I have better things to do with my time than deal with this hassle, though if this stops happening I'll join back in. Fingerpuppet (talk) 17:55, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. (As above comment by Fingerpuppet).--Harkey (talk) 08:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
No they have not been dismissed. They have been discussed. There has been lots of discussion over what the intention of the ONS data is. Razorlax has even rung thm up to ask them what they mean by it. Have you done that? There's a Collins dictionary definition, but if we tot up the dictionary/encyclopedia references we would come firmly down on the Leeds=City of Leeds side. What else is there? Lots of sources that say something about Otley, Morley etc (and so by inference they are not Leeds) but very little to define the Leeds that this article is talking about.
There hasn't been much engagement from those who want to leave the article as is, with the arguments for the merge. You have statements such as "Leeds is clearly not the City of Leeds", when there are lots of sources to say it is, so I don't know how it is supposed to be so clear! Moreover there have been attempts to reach a common ground that have seemingly been ignored. If you don't like some of the responses on here, respond to the reasonable ones instead. Quantpole (talk) 09:18, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
If he/she really has spoken to them, then why are there factual inaccuracies in his/her claims? Fingerpuppet (talk) 10:58, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Which claims contain what "factual inaccuracies" Fingerpuppet? Chrisieboy (talk) 12:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Fingerpuppet is probably referring to the bit where Razorlax said the ONS sub-divisions were to keep things in manageable chunks, which isn't correct. (You'll have to ask Razorlax why he/she said this, I presume it was a guess). However, the main thrust of Razorlax's point was that ONS make no claim that these sub-divisions are an accurate representation of settlements as they exist now. What they do is state a population within a given boundary, in this case basically the old county borough (yes, I know, with some bits added where new houses have been built and they have to decide to put them somewhere). Quantpole (talk) 14:38, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


Thanks Quantpole. Anyway, I dont think it helps trying to interpret what the ONS data means, because whatever it means doesnt actually change the fact that :-
  • When not specifically refering to "leeds urban subdivision", whenever ONS refer to just "Leeds" (the same name as the wiki page Leeds they are always refering to the city, not a subdivision of leeds.[44][45]. Thus to adhere to NPOV, NOR, V, if a wiki page is going to discuss the area defined by 'leeds urban subdivison', that page must be called leeds urban subdivision not misleadingley called leeds, which when ONS use they are reffering to the official city boundary.
  • "Leeds" is officially and widely accepted to mean the city of Leeds, not a virtually unused statistical construct mapped on historic boundaries that no longer exist. As such, defining "Leeds" on this subdivision constitutes original research and breaches neutral point of view given that it is a minority view point. Even ONS themselves, when refering to "Leeds" do not mean the subdivision[46]
  • Moreover, while there is an existance of this urban-subdivision, there no soucces that shows that "Leeds" exclusively means "leeds urban subdivision", and even if one was found, presenting Leeds to mean 'leeds urban-subdivision' would still conflict with Neutral Point of View, given that it would still be a minority interpretation of the word Leeds.
  • And finally there is still no Reliable Sources to back up the lede "Leeds is the urban core and administrative centre of the wider metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds" and there hasnt been for 4 years! 99.6% of sources that are in existance say "Leeds" = city of leeds, not subdivision.

Non-involved administrators tell us that minority point of view cannnot take precedence over core policies. There has to be a very convincing reason why we should ignore core policies, can anyone give one? I would particularly welcome some feedback on this finer point from editors such as fingerpuppet and keithD so that we can move forward. Thankyou --Razorlax (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Evidence for "Leeds" meaning urban core

I've just acquired an interesting book which seems to me to be incontrovertible evidence of "Leeds" being used to mean something smaller than the met district: Religion and place in Leeds, published by English Heritage (2007 ISBN 9781905624485) and with Leeds City Council logo on title page, foreword co-written by Cllr Ann Castle. Page 1: "The book's focus is on the suburbs rather than the centre." page 4 "Map of Leeds, showing the suburbs and motorways", which is roughly square and goes from Bramley and Hawksworth Wood in the west to Crossgates in the east (with an arrow pointing off to Swarcliffe), and from just south of Middleton to just north of Cookridge and Alwoodley. On a quick flip through the book there seems to be no mention of Pudsey, Horsforth, Morley, Otley, Wetherby. It "looks at what has happened to places of worship in Leeds over the 20th century and examines the buildings that have been constructed since 1900" (foreword, p vii). So either nothing happened to any churches etc in those outlying places, and no significant new buildings for worship were built, in the 20th century or this book is about the central urban core only and expects the reader to understand what is meant by "Leeds" in the title. If "Leeds" was understood to mean the whole metropolitan district, this book would make it explicit in the foreword or elsewhere that this book is only about a part of the district. PamD (talk) 11:27, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Pam. It's a historical book by 'English Heritage' looking at places of worship in Leeds from 1900. The outlying settlements that became a part of Leeds in 1974 are unlikely to feature given the historical context starting from 1900. Also, it seems strange hunting for years for little snippets of sources that may confirm the minority POV being pushed on here, when we have an overwhelming abundance of evidence and sourcs suggesting the opposite (about 99%) --Razorlax (talk) 15:22, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
No, it's a book about recent buildings and re-usings of buildings, and it seems highly unlikely that nothing noteworthy has happened to any buildings beyond the urban core in the last 35 years.PamD (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Is anyone able to tell me which governmental body is in charge of roadsigns in the City of Leeds? I'm wondering because I noticed that roadsigns on the A61 in Harewood (part of the City of Leeds) were offering directions to "Otley", "Wetherby" and "Leeds", not "City Centre" as they would do in, say, Harehills. Which body is making the decisions regarding what places are called? Once we know this, we might then ask: how are they differentiating between those places where Leeds city centre is referred to as "City Centre" and those places where it is deems to be more useful to call it "Leeds"? almost-instinct 14:38, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi almost-instinct, you find the same in many cities. There are signings saying Birmingham from sutton coldfield, as opposed to city centre. There are signs around Didsbury saying Manchester. There are signs around Manchester Aiport saying Manchester as opposed to City Centre. There are signs all over London's outlying areas saying "London" as opposed to City Centre. And moreover, with respect it seems strange hunting for years for little snippets of sources that may confirm the minority POV being pushed on here (in clear breach of core policies), when we have an overwhelming abundance of evidence and sourcs suggesting the opposite (about 99%). Serving up minority point means the article ceases to be Neutral, one of the core pillars of WP. (See sandbox for evidence .. Sansbox. There has yet to be a single compelling reason why minority point of view should take precedence over the core policies. --Razorlax (talk) 15:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Firstly, please don't mistake my interest in the complexities of meaning for a desire that anything "should take precedence over" anything else. Secondly, please don't comment on my behaviour ("it seems strange"). Thirdly, just because I'm not following your agenda doesn't mean I haven't already read the points you are repeating here and which you have made quite clearly previously.
The two questions I asked above remain unanswered; if anyone can enlighten me, I would be grateful almost-instinct 15:49, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Using the phrase "it seems strange" is not commenting on your behaviour, but rather asking why you a persuing a route that chooses to ignore the core policies - which is a perfectly valid question. And apologies if it sounds like "repetition", but it could be argued that it is you, not me, who is repeating a certain point, resulting in other editors having to keep re-refuting the same thing each time. --Razorlax (talk) 16:22, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Looking through the various pages on naming conventions, I can't find anything which says - explicitly or implicitly - that grappling with the concept that one word can mean two different things goes against core policies. Rather than my trying to guess exactly which words in the core policies you feel I am violating, please quote them here. Thank you almost-instinct 16:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure, read these stems of core policy - as per WP:Naming_Conflict, and as per WP:Widely_Accepted_Name As you can see, the content of an article must reflect its name. Following all the tests reccomended, Leeds does infact mean the city. Yet all this is being ignored here, in favour of a miniority point of view in stark breach of the core policies here WP:NPOV(please read them). You can see all the tests carried out at my sandbox sandbox. Half the tests are only needed where there is still ambiguity (there is not), but ive done them anyway. When you ignore all the majority evidence and look for scarce snippets that support your point of view, and to then present that as the only and mainstream opinion, it becomes original research (read here WP:OR ) that breaks the core policy of WP:NPOV --Razorlax (talk) 17:04, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm aware of which pages are in question. As I just asked, please quote those parts which indicate that recognising that one word can mean two different things is not permitted. almost-instinct 17:17, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
No one has said recognising that a word can mean two different things is a problem. It is only when that recognition is used to push minority view point. To take your previous posts as an example, they are an attempt to look at ways to help define what Leeds should mean, when we already have a widely accepted, verifiable and official defintion that is being ignored. It is in this context that minority POV cannot take precedence over core polices. And some quotes to back this up..

arbitary break

  • "Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as a majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject."
  • "Undue weight applies to more than just viewpoints. Just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements."
  • "Keep in mind that in determining proper weight we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors."
  • "Verifiability is only one content criterion. Neutral point of view is a core policy of Wikipedia, mandatory, non-negotiable, and to be followed in all articles."
  • "Concerns related to undue weight, non-neutral fact selection and wording, and advancing a personal view, are not addressed even slightly by asserting that the matter is verifiable and cited."
  • "Material that violates WP:NOR (Such as "Leeds is the urban core and adadministrative centre of the City of Leeds") should be removed."
  • "As per our undue weight policy, large sections of text expressing a minority or fringe point of view could hinder our primary purpose as an encyclopaedia by leaving the reader confused." It is no surprise that people have been confused with the Leeds article for 4 years."
  • "There is a point beyond which our interest in being a completely open project is trumped by our interest in being able to get work done without constantly having to fix the intrusions of people who do not respect our policies."

thanks --Razorlax (talk) 20:08, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, something to work with!
  1. The matter of undue weight does NOT imply that complexities of meaning should be ignored nor that a perfectly valid secondary, non-offical meaning should be completely ignored.
  2. The number of opposed voices earlier in these discussions show that using the term "Leeds" to mean the urban settlement rather than the unitray authority is far from a "tiny-minority"
  3. It is not possible to claim that people trying to find sources for non-official meanings are trying to upset NPOV - rather the accumulated actions of the community help that NPOV.
  4. "Material that violates WP:NOR should be removed" - this has nothing to do with editors trying to find sources for non-official meanings. Searching for sources has nothing to do with OR.
  5. Exploring and explaining the ambiguities of a term is entirely consistent with "our primary purpose as an encyclopaedia"
  6. Your final quote ("the intrusions of people who do not respect our policies") is, given my proven record on WP, thoroughly charmless
  7. Given all the above I still see no reason why you should query my right to ask the two questions that I did almost-instinct 20:46, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

To answer your points, numbered:

  1. A "perfectly valid secondary non official meaning" Is that a WP term, if not, it's Original Research. And more-over no one is ignoring this non official term, quite the opposite, this minority view (that conflicts with all the core policies) is taking full coverage of the page Leeds, whilst the official widely accepted name, that adhers to all core policies is being completely ignored.
  2. Number of opposed editors... See ...""Keep in mind that in determining proper weight we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors."
  3. By all means we can find sources to back up a minority point of view, but it is still just that, minority point, and as such, representing it in the way that the current Leeds page does breaks all core policies. See this statement "Undue weight applies to more than just viewpoints. Just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements". Therefore, we can find verifiable sourced statements, but they will still break core policies if it is still minority point of view.
  4. The primary purpose is as an enyclopedia that offers neutrality, no original research, and verifiability. Exploring and explaining ambiguities of a term based on ones own interpretation is original research.
  5. That was a quote from the core polices, not me myself lol !--Razorlax (talk) 21:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Viz "prevalence among WP editors" - you are confusing two seperate rules: the one for undue weight and the one about ignorable "tiny majorities"
  • Given that the possible meaning of Leeds as merely refering to the urban settlement is in the Collins dictionary, it is ridiculous to claim that its "my own interpretation". almost-instinct 22:16, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
It becomes your own interpretation (and hence original research) when you use just one source or a handful, and base the article on that one or select sources, against all other sources that are in a majority that suggest the opposite.. see here Evidence. and as per core policy states: "Just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements". Leeds is interpreted as being a city in 99.6% of instances on google, as well as nearly all encylopedia (as well as newspapers and government!). If this is not reflected in the page Leeds (so that the article is about the city, not a subdivision) it breaks the core policies as it is doing so now, and this has been the contention for change (which you opposed). By all means some sentences after the lead explaining that Leeds can sometimes mean urban core as opposed to the city is fine (as long as there is some semblance of proportion to this minority POV). --Razorlax (talk) 23:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Would this help?

A suggestion: first section after the lead of a single Leeds article to be something along the lines of:

Definitions of Leeds

Leeds is a metropolitan district created in 1974. It has city status and its formal title is "City of Leeds metropolitan district". (need to check that) It is one of the five such districts which constitute West Yorkshire, along with Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield.
Leeds gained its first borough charter in 1207, and this settlement centred on Briggate in Leeds city centre. The borough developed into a town which acquired a charter in 16xx, and its population increased rapidly during the period of the Industrial Revolution, recognised by Leeds being given the status of city in 1893.
Until local government re-organisation in 1974, Leeds was a county borough. The metropolitan district includes the whole of the former county borough of Leeds and all or part of a number of other former local authorities in the former West Riding of Yorkshire, including several smaller towns and many villages. The word "Leeds" is sometimes used to refer to the urban core of the city, which cannot easily be defined: as Patrick Nuttgens said in 1979(proper ref to be provided of course)

:


That's just a very rough first draft, but might help explain what this article is about, what "Leeds" is and has been, and why we've got the single merged article. I'm trying to work out a way we can move forwards. Any thoughts? PamD (talk)

  • Hi PamD, thankyou for making the effort to move things forward and having a stab at a new lede. It sounds good! However I would have issue with "Leeds is a metropolitan district". It would constitute original research and would conflict with neutrality given that Leeds is first and foremost a "city" rather than a "district" or indeed a "subdivision".. See my Sandbox for sources of Evidence . Bringing my own POV in here, I suspect the reason behind this is because very little of Leeds is 'district' in nature, with the exception of wetherby, otley, & garforth (which make up just 6% of the population). I think the phrase added "The word "Leeds" is sometimes used to refer to the urban core of the city, which cannot easily be defined" is great tho, as it addresses and acknowledges what some people on here feel. --Razorlax (talk) 19:34, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree. A much better lead than the current one. The "Leeds is a ??????" part has proven difficult to write in a way that would satisfy everyone. Britannica has "Leeds: urban area, city, and metropolitan borough"; something along those lines might satisfy everyone. —Jeremy (talk) 20:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)


At the risk of being pedantic, it would seem that the statement its formal title is "City of Leeds metropolitan district" is incorrect: according to HMSO's guide published at the time:

The formal name of a local authority may be either 'the County (City, Borough, District) Council of ..........' or
'the .............. County (City, Borough, District) Council.
The words 'metropolitan' and 'non-metropolitan' are not formally part of the name.

(Local government in England and Wales: A Guide to the New System. London: HMSO. 1974. pp. 2–3. ISBN 0117508470.)
That said the term is used (informally???). In any case, capitals seem to be required: City of Leeds Metropolitan District: I think it's what we called a proper noun at school. Lozleader (talk) 22:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
You're talking about the formal name of the authority, ie the council, not the place: surely they will be different? PamD (talk) 23:59, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Fair enough. However I believe "City of Leeds" (per the letters patent) and "Metropolitan District of Leeds" (per the Metropolitan Districts (Names) Order 1973 (S.I.1973/137)) are two names for the same thing. "City of Leeds Metropolitan District" is tautological and more importantly for us, not in use to any apparent extent, and therefore possibly WP:OR. Apart from this 2005 byelaw which refers to "the area of the City of Leeds Metropolitan District Council" [47] I can find no use of the term outside of Wikipedia derived sites. By contrast "Metropolitan District of Leeds" can be found all over the statute database and the city council's website. Therefore the bald statement that the formal title is "City of Leeds metropolitan district" doesn't seem to stand up. Lozleader (talk) 12:00, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
That's fine - we need then to include both the two official names (and of course have redirects from them to the article - and from every other plausible version, incorrect or not). (I did say "need to check" in my draft!). I was just concerned that you were talking about the name of the council, not the place. PamD (talk) 12:08, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I think this is very good. Do we have a source that tells us (a) the area of the City of Leeds (b) the proportion of it that is rural, not urban/suburban/etc? If so, do we think this information belongs anywhere in the lede? almost-instinct 15:14, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Twenty-first century Leeds: geographies of a regional city, Rachel Unsworth and John Stillwell (2004 ISBN 0853162425), includes on page 6 a range of stats: area 550.3 sqkm; 36.2% "Developed land - urban area"; 61.5% "Green belt"; 31.3% "Special landscape area". PamD (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  • To me that sounds interesting enough to be included, esp. as a helpful illustation of just what the "City" of Leeds includes! Does "Special landscape area" mean land which isn't built on, but still part of the urban community, like parks and sports grounds? almost-instinct 22:22, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Definitions of Leeds Part II

Leeds (pronunciationⓘ) is a city in West Yorkshire, England.[1] Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the recorded history of Leeds can be traced to the 5th century when the Kingdom of Elmet was covered by the forest of "Loidis", the origin of the name Leeds.[2]

Leeds has a population of (2022),[3] and is the economic, financial and commercial heart of the wider West Yorkshire Urban Area,[4][5][6] which at the 2001 census was shown to have a population of 1.5 million.[7] Leeds is part of the third most populous Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) in the UK with an estimated population in the 2004 Urban Audit of 2.4 million[8]


The historical urban core and administrative centre that lies at the heart of Leeds has an urban subdivision population of 443,247[9] (2001 UK census), and sometimes "Leeds" is used to refer to just this urban core, which excludes the adjoining urban areas that became a part of the city in 1974, such as Horsforth, and Pudsey; as well as the rural element of the city that contains outlying towns such as Otley and Wetherby.

During the Industrial Revolution, Leeds developed into a major industrial centre for the production and trade of wool,[2] before emerging as a centre for commerce and higher education, being the location of the University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University and Leeds Trinity and All Saints. Today Leeds is one of the largest financial and legal centres outside London.[10] --Razorlax (talk) 22:41, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

  • Can those editors involved in this discussion please comment. If you still feel "Leeds" does not mean the city of leeds, it must be stressed that such assertions have already been refuted with plenty of conclusive evidence showing that it is a minority POV that cannot take precedence over the core policies of no original research, neutral point of view, and verifiability. You can view a summarised tabulation of evidence at my sandbox. --Razorlax (talk) 23:31, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Comments on Razorlax's suggestion:
  • 2nd sentence ungrammatical - it's not the "history" which was historically part of the West Riding.
  • But in any case your version cuts out the early history of the city completely, jumping from a name for a vague forest area to the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial Leeds handled a sixth of England's export trade. The 1207 borough needs a mention in this brief summary.
  • to reduce the 18th/19th century development of the city half a sentence which is dominated by a list of the 3 HE establishments is to unbalance the story of Leeds. And it wasn't just wool, but flax, engineering and other industries.
  • 3rd para needsgrammar/punctuation tweaking, possibly splitting to 2 sentences
  • And I reckon the Nuttgens quote deserves a place, as it encapsulates our problems.
  • In short, I suppose, I prefer my own version! I had it in mind as a first section after the lead, but perhaps we can develop a compromise lead section which will suit everyone and incorporate some of my suggestions. PamD (talk) 00:11, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Hi Pam, thanks for the feedback. I thought your definition was the lede (oops lol)..but if that stuff is to go after the lede/introduction (which must presumebly mean the history section?) it seems fine by me as my contention (as well as the contention of those seeking change) has always been getting the lede to reflect the entire city as opposed to the subdivision, thus adhering to the core polices. The lede I gave was just an example but I'd be happy for it to be played around with as you suggested, as long as the bits of contention remain similar... ie, it should start with "Leeds is a city.." and the second paragraph should remain the same (but perhaps in a different paragraph order?). The 3rd paragraph I put, which addresses the urban core issue, could be removed, made less clumsy, and then stuck after the lede to combine with the bit you wrote above, combining with Nuttges quote as you suggested. --Razorlax (talk) 01:36, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I was suggesting that for Leeds we need a "definitions" section not found in most "settlement" articles, to come after the introduction and before anything else such as "history". It's non-standard, but many of us recognise that there is a non-standard situation here, and I think such a section would be useful. PamD (talk) 11:24, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
  1. ^ "About Leeds". Leeds City Council.
  2. ^ a b Fletcher, J. S. The Story of English Towns: Leeds. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. OCLC 221589888.
  3. ^ The mid-2022 population estimate for Leeds was according to the Office for National Statistics. It should be noted that this figure includes the whole area included in the city. Some population figures, for example those given at List of English cities by population use just the urban core of the city and therefore are lower.
  4. ^ "Leeds Tourism". Planet Ware Travel Guide. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  5. ^ "Leeds stakes it claim to financial hub". www.yorkshirepost.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  6. ^ "About Leeds". www.bookinghime.com. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  7. ^ National Statistics (2005). "Focus on people and migration: chapter 3 The UK's major urban areas" (PDF). p. 47. Retrieved 2007-10-20.
  8. ^ "Urban Audit - City Profiles: Leeds". Urban Audit. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
  9. ^ National Statistics. "KS01 Usual resident population: Census 2001, Key Statistics for urban areas". Retrieved 2008-10-14.
  10. ^ "History of the city of Leeds". Leeds.gov.uk. Retrieved 2008-10-14.
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