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Archive 1Archive 2

The future of this page - request for opinions

The future of this page requires the emergence of a consensus. It would be helpful for individual editors to register a concise opinion as to what - if anything - should be done, and to read a little background information before doing so. The question at issue is whether the page should remain as it is, be reduced in size, or split into smaller pages.

Below is a brief summary of how the present situation has been arrived at.

History

  • Prior to 1st March 2011, the page comprised just a list of names, with nothing to indicate which were substantial buildings and which had vanished without trace, with sites considered by some editors to be inappropriate continually being added and removed. It was rated as Start Class.
  • Between 1st March and 15th June the page was transformed into its present form. On 15th June it was submitted for assessment for B Class, at which time it was 151,125 bytes in size. At that time every building and site which did not have its own wikipage was referenced. This version can be viewed here [1].
  • It initially failed B class assessment on the grounds that buildings should be referenced even if the user could go to the building's own page for more information - with which I disagreed. Adding the additional references increased the size to 199,826 bytes on 18th June.
  • The page was subjected to peer review [2] between 6th July and 3rd August. During this time, the page increased in size from 205,973 to around its present size as a consequence of reviewers' comments: an edit by MarcusBritish on 9th July increased the size from 208,525 to 228,260 bytes, through adding support for sorting by dates. During this time none of the reviewers suggested that the page was too long and should be split.

Rationale

The rationale behind the development of this page has been to provide a comprehensive overview of castles in England, with images and brief notes to allow the reader to identify those of most interest, with more detailed information to be available on individual county pages as well as pages for individual sites. Several of these county pages already exist, e.g. List of castles in Cheshire. As there are differing views as to what buildings should be included in a list of castles, the introduction has been designed with the aim of stabilising the list. Since it was written, there has not been a single contentious addition.

Current situation

  • A move to split the page has been driven by MarcusBritish, whose contributions have been largely confined to relentless criticisms and disagreements on the review page [3] and this talk page. His last reponse to me, above, begins "Overly defensive, aren't we?" in which he has made openly personal attacks on me which do not address the issue of what is best for this page, suggesting some other agenda. His current recommendation is that the page be split into 49 or so separate pages, one per county.
  • Individual pages for each county can be created without discontinuing the present page.
  • The benefit of being able to browse castles throughout England without being required to move from page to page may be weighed against the disadvantage of the size of the page. Removing unnecessary references and other content - which would reduce the size to around 180k - would be an alternative to splitting the page.
  • Splitting into regions would offer the advantage of smaller pages, disadvantages include the loss of the ability to perform searches for castles and types of sites on a single page, the loss of a single coordinative introductory text, and the increased difficulty of keeping separate lists consistent in their coverage, given differing views as to what types of buildings should be included.
  • The present state of the page, for better or worse, is the result of a great deal of work by me. Creating new pages will require someone's continuing commitment to their maintenance.
  • Currently the page ratings at the bottom are all 5.0, with the number of ratings respectively 3,2,3,2 in the 4 categories - none of which has been contributed by me. Paravane (talk) 23:33, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
I urge editors not to respond to the consensus at this time. Paravane's last remarks were in bad faith, with false insinuations, in an attempt to sway opinion, or gain sympathy votes. Such actions are disapproved of under WP:CANVAS and are being challenged, and possibly reported - until this consensus is opened with a Neutral tone, it is not in anyone's interest to comment. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 01:17, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts

Some thoughts from me.

  • The existing page has taken substantial work to create; although a number of us have given thoughts and comments along the way, the vast bulk of the hard graft to get it there has been conducted by Paravane. While no-one "owns" a page, we're all human and that naturally influences how we feel about subsequent changes. From my perspective, Paravane's built the page with a reasonably clear vision, both in terms of what to include (e.g. what is a "castle") and what they would like the end result to look like (a very comprehensive, visually attractive, list in tabular form). There's been discussion around that along the way, which may look more or less like consensus from different perspectives.
  • Length is an issue. The guidelines are driven by two factors: readability, in terms of number of words etc. where the guidelines are fairly flexible, and technical accessibility. Here, although 100k is the usual target, the guidance also notes that articles of about 200 K "are not uncommon" for some subjects, although it recommends sub-dividing at this stage. Technical accessibility, as MarcusBritish notes above, is not a simple result of article length, but also of the type of wikitext the browsers are having to work through. A hundred small pictures are much harder to process than a hundred vanilla words, which is a problem for this sort of article. Unluckily each of our systems does this slightly differently, which can again influence how we see the problem - I think MarcusBritish's system hit trouble before mine, but clearly the maps were too much, and I think from the commentary above that the current length is still causing trouble for MarcusBritish's. The guidelines emphasise that we should be aiming to accommodate users who are having trouble accessing an article for reasons of size.
  • References and citations are not optional, but an integral part of an article. We can't "trim down" an article by simply removing them, unless the article was over-cited (unusual, and not the case here).
  • Bearing in mind that no wiki-page could list all the castles in England - due to technical limitations rather than our ability to write it! - any list will be partial. The question is, therefore, how partial, not whether the list should be abbreviated - it already is a partial list in fact, using the benchmark established by Paravane early on in the expansion process.
  • The article already distinguishes between more important castles (given a photograph and more information), lesser castles (just linked, but no photograph etc.) and even lesser castles (not listed at all).
  • My proposed solution is:
  • We work together to create county lists from the existing list material. There are already three "county lists". This fits the typical breakup of castles in country-wide gazetteers, and most county's have "histories of castles" that can be drawn upon for intro material. I'm happy to help with this if we've consensus. If anyone wishes to in the future, they can then expand the county lists to include the castles we didn't include in the current list (and there are plenty of them!).
  • We cut and paste the maps into the county lists.
  • We keep the existing formatting for the current lists in this article, but up the bar for notability/inclusion, "picture listing" perhaps only the "major" castles in England and reverting the less significant to the bullet point, non-image format, which would save a lot of space while still maintaining links. None of the images etc. are lost, because they're now also in the county lists.
  • Transfer some of the "exclusion" lists into simple list articles of their own, e.g. "list of follies in England", adding value to the wiki, but also reducing size further.
  • This would, in my opinion, leave us with an attractive and substantial "list of castles in England" article that would parse better for more users, and a comprehensive and attractive list of county castles. I'm happy to help with that if we've got consensus. Hchc2009 (talk) 08:25, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
"I think MarcusBritish's system hit trouble before mine" - I don't know what you mean by "system"? If you mean date sorting, it was going to be needed one way or another. A Peer review is normally requested with an intent to develop an article so that it can be later promoted, from B- to A-class, for example. Therefore such wikitable-standard changes were required, and Paravane accepted then as "to do", so there's no disputing that it was going to be added one way or another. The fact that it had to be done via hidden display spans, rather than shorter {{dts}} (Date Table Sorting) is because there are multiple date formats in those columns that prevent its use.. the further fact that Paravane is using it as a moot point of contention now is either his lack of understanding of that, or his disrespectful disregard for others input against his "preferred" methods. The system, if I'm on the right track, is per wiki's "wikitable sortable" practice, and not mine - I suggested it, Paravane accepted it, I implemented it. One of the systems at fault is the Key, it is impractical and bloated, and the large number of images that you mentioned can slow down some of the older browsers. You are right to say references cannot be removed. There is a way of trimming quite a lot of data from them without losing any information, but I have no intention of doing it due to the slowness of the server, amount of references, and deplorable attitude of one particular editor. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 10:33, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
By "system" I just meant that different users (with different PCs, bandwidth, distance from the cache etc.) seem to have encountered slowness with the page at different points as it has hit different sizes. I note it purely because I remember getting (unfairly, under the circumstances) tetchy with someone myself a while back who said a page was loading slowly due to size, when on my computer it seemed to be loading fine (or, at least, no more slowly than usual, since my computer still depends on having adequate steam power and shouting loudly down a pair of tin-cans!). Hchc2009 (talk) 10:59, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
My current laptop and PC are both about 1 year old, built by myself, Windows 7 64-bit, using the latest Firefox, with lots of memory and good processors, and I am on 10meg Broadband - and being in England that is not not far from the wiki-servers in The Netherlands. I would not expect it to take a minute or longer for this article to load, or 3+ minutes to retrieve for editing, and upto 5 minutes to save edits, usually resulting in an Error because wiki-servers cannot take that much data - my guess is the PHP memory is exceeded, or the SQL server, and it causes a timeout. Indeed, the maps did make it worse, but I had experienced issues long before, so they're not directly to blame. The issue is affecting both sides - server and browser - which is why editors need to deal with it before someone in wiki's server admin pulls up the crash logs and starts doing it for us. They won't tolerate it forever - when their server lags due to excessive data to process, it affects more than just this article for a few moments. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 11:12, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree, it's clearly causing a problem. Hchc2009 (talk) 11:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Interesting comment... Ma®©usBritish [talk] 04:05, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
There is no denying that this is is a long article, but it is as comprehensive as is needs to be for a "good" list. To split it would be detrimental in my opinion. I would add that with my mediocre home laptop and sub-urban broadband I have not had any significant problems in loading the page, generally between 10 and 20 secs. There are a lot of references to WP:Sizerule here, and I would remind all concerned parties of No need for haste before comitting to any decision. Just my twopenneth Pahazzard (talk) 21:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Which reads: "there is no need for haste in splitting an article when it starts getting large" - so looking at this objectively with that in mind:
  • Paravane started on the article from 1 March 2011 when it was about 50Kb in size: [4]
  • On 19 March it had reached 100Kb, and had both tables and lengthy lead plus 74 Refs: [5]
  • Paravane says he took it to Peer Review on 15 June. It was almost 150Kb on that day, 144 Refs: [6]
  • I tagged it {{very long}} on 29 August, at approx 315Kb with almost 500 Refs: [7]
  • I retagged it due to COI removal on 3 September, at 250Kb: [8]
So are we really to assume that when it started getting large on 19th March to reaching over 3x the sizerule guideline on 29 August - a total of over 5 months - is... hasty? Let's try a WP:COMMON SENSE approach, should we?
Even discussing splitting this article has clearly become too much of a "personal attack" to some, who are seeking to defend it left, right and center, with no care for accessibility issues or other readers - in essence, limiting it to themselves - this bubble should have been burst a long time ago and wheels set in motion to get it better organised and more collective-interest involved, than a one-man band effort. There is little to be gained when one editor is willing to pile on the coal but does not recognise that the train is out of control. There is no logic to this article per se anymore - it's like an "Argos catalogue" - a heavy burden to flick through just to find a toaster. That is my frank observation of things, and others have expressed similar concerns in fewer words - so size is an issue here. Accessibility is always an issue concern, for any article, whether it be technology or disability. For example: this article has hundreds of photos of castles, yet no alt= text to allow blind people to know what is shown through their browsers. That alone is a few dozen Kb of data - although (WAI is not all policy yet - when the time comes, how on Earth is this article expected to take on all that extra weight - as "alt" text is sent to normal browsers as well as text-only reader ones - it is just as important to consider the future of any large article, not just suck-up to the editors who work on it and "not hurt their feelings" because it isn't going as well as they seem to think. As the web evolves, Wiki evolves, and so must articles.. can't stay stuck in the past or it'll just become ruins too. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 00:06, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes it is a hefty article but as a list article that is less of a concern than it might otherwise be. If people want simple plaintext lists that is what the category system is for. If you are going for a "list of X" article that means there should be value added even if it comes with a fair bit of heft. They should also be fairly dirrect. If you look for "List of castles in England" you should get a list of castles in england rather than a bunch of dirrections to sub pages.©Geni 15:59, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Having a list of castles in England in a table format that includes some additional information is very useful. It provides useful functionality not available from a category list and allows for the listing of castles that do not have their own wikipedia page. The content of this page I agree with and would like to commend those who have worked on it. I do however have a few questions an suggestions.
  • This should be a single list with a single format.
    • Castles with condition of little or no trace should also be in the table format
    • Should not be ordered by county. The sort function is useful but only if I can order castles by date or condition no mater what its location is. (this is a list of castle in England not list of castles by county).
  • Should just be a list
    • To reduce its size the sections at the start should be moved to a separate page.

--Traveler100 (talk) 19:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately there is no achievable ideal layout for this page, some compromise or other is necessary. A single table including all the vestigial castles would be around twice the size of the current tables, probably too big to survive as a single page, and certainly so unless the pictures were jettisoned. Ordering by county is a feature of many other list pages, including castles in Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland, hillforts in England and in Wales, and gardens in Wales to name a few. It is conveniently browsable, the pictures make a useful contribution, and a text search should find any but the more obscure castles on a single page. A more comprehensive, sortable (and pictureless) table can be found elsewhere on the web - at the Gatehouse. Paravane (talk) 21:01, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
indeed a lot of the more minor castles lack articles.©Geni 22:48, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Tag

Currently the page is tagged with template {{very long}}. Since it was last tagged, the page has been reduced in size by 25%. I have asked the editor who inserted it to remove it, but he has declined to do so.

Advice at Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates#Request for advice has included the following comments:

  • "Demands that an article be reduced in size to 'comply' with SIZERULE are, at present, simply a misuse of the guideline."
  • "I don't believe there is any problem whatsoever with reading or navigating the article. The template {{very long}} at the top is spouting nonsense and needs to be removed and mothballed as not-fit-for-purpose."

Is there a consensus for the removal of the tag? Paravane (talk) 11:36, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

No, not from me, and it seems to this observer like you're still feeling bitter at the suggestion that the great length of the article is a problem (which you appeared to take as a personal criticism of your work as an editor). The way you've presented exactly two comments above gives me the feeling that you are trying to present a one-sided case, namely, that the tag was clearly inappropriate before and obviously should be removed now. I try to AGF and I've been watching you work hard on the page, but it seems this attempt to gain consensus is really something of a bad-faith attempt to sweep the size issue under the rug so you don't have to tear apart your article any more. The article is still enormous, and the removal of maps, certain castles, etc., hasn't made the article better (IMHO) and it's still hard to edit, resize, etc., as discussed in some of the other comments you chose not to include here. It takes me 54 seconds just to preview the page with no edits, for example. I think it still needs more work, of some kind. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 15:47, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
however those issues only arrise if you don't use section editing (and even then it is only 21 seconds here).©Geni 17:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
It's now running okay at my location but - as per my comments above - that doesn't necessarily mean everyone will be having the same experience in loading/editing etc. Hchc2009 (talk) 17:17, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
the loading time from preview is largely driven by server side rendering no?©Geni 17:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree it's mainly server side; distance and location from the cache etc. seem to be key factors here. Hchc2009 (talk) 18:03, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't see what more could reasonably be done to reduce load times. I can't see a potential split that would be logical: I'm sure someone will suggest that we split this 48 ways, duplicating large parts of the prose, sourcing and keys for good measure, but I respectfully disagree that this would constitute progress. As there is little more that can be done, I support removing the tag. —WFC— 16:24, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
As this is a shameful topic opened by Paravane, with selective quotes to advocate a POV, not baring his near claim to ownership of the article, I'm calling for a clear and official consensus. Having reviewed the comments made I have taken the following into consideration:
  • Length
  • Layout
  • Possibilities
  • Wiki guidelines
  • Flexibility
I note that whilst the majority support a split, many concede to limitations on splitting effectively. Some say that it could be done by county, but that 49 separate articles would be acceptable. I have projected a way it could be split into 3.

Paravane, you are ignorant and I'm tired of your possessive behaviour, against ownership guidelines. Also of failing to work with other editors directly, of canvassing, advocating your own opinions, non-neutral POV pushing on various other wiki boards, and manipulating editors comments to support your own needs. Clearly you are not competent in terms of reasonably developing an article to support the wider community and this article needs pushing forward by wiki-standards, not holding back per your own ego and lack of regard for others opinions. I am taking this to a proper consensus. And if it supports a split, I will split it without haste. This article is a sham - a bloated mess, with weak keys, many images, and shoddy management. You have done nothing in terms of AGF of those making edits, or suggestions and continue to pursue your own mis-guided approach, leaving everyone out of the equation but bowing to 2 minor subjective comments from another board, which you have driven by putting my in bad light and suggesting I have a motive, yet so far you cannot say what that motive is, because you are evidently talking bollocks and making personal attacks that you hope won't go noticed by editors commenting on this page. Clearly your methods are not working in favour of the community or the article and you are at risk of making this worse by starting to use COI - if you can't recognise that nearly every other editor on THIS page has spoken in favour splitting, versus your 2 off-page comments, then how do you expect to cite sources? Take a wiki-break.. you're clearly getting too personal in your editing, and need to distance yourself. Consensus is a collaborative approach to making a controversial decision. Time to make one. Splitting, imo, is not a destructive process, it is an administrative one that will make this article easier to read, edit and manage for everyone concerned, not just you alone.

Consensus follows.

Ma®©usBritish [talk] 20:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)


Consensus to split List of castle in England

Given that this article seriously exceeds 100KB and that trimming texts and references is achieving very little headway, my proposal is to split the article based on the method successfully applied to Lists of Victoria Cross recipients (note how each is FA-class whilst this current article barely scrapes B, and has no chance of growth due to its over-bearing size). This would effectively turn List of castles in England into an index linking to counties, similar to the following:

List of castles by county

By splitting approx 180KB into three, we would get, on average, ~60KB per article. The lead section could be the same in each, as could the layout. Maps should be reintroduced from previous incarnations instead of being dumped into an uncoordinated page which holds little or no encyclopedic value in itself, and does not follow Wiki standards in terms of each article being self-contained. The professional attitude towards the current article has been lost to ego, and cleanup attempts have neglected to support accessibility standards, whilst provoking self-interest of its primary editors. Clearly a consensus is required to get this article back on track in line with Wiki guidelines, from which it has deviated too far and editors are looking for excuses to follow those guidelines from external wiki boards whilst fully ignoring the people who have worked closely with the article. All interested in seeing the future development of this article are welcome to comment and !vote, below.

Please keep initial comments to a minimum to allow consensus to be followed easier, as there are other sections above for longer discussion.

Consensus to split article into three "by county" articles

Support

Oppose

  • Current length is within acceptable bounds and I don't think our readers expect to go digging through an alphabetical index for the castles in england.©Geni 01:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Define "acceptable" to the people above who find it impractical to load and/or edit. Is its accessibility acceptable also?
  • How is 180KB "acceptable" vs the 100KB SIZERULE guideline? Or the ~450 images acceptable for all browsers to handle?
  • How does 3 articles constitute "digging" when if this were a huge book, it would probably do the same - i.e. split in volumes?
  • Explain why this article only gets a B-class, when the 3 VC articles get FAC despite being split?
  • I know it when I see it. Anyone having problems editing needs to learn about section editing.
  • Guidlines are just that. Guidlines. And things move on. Used to have a 32K limit. As for the images I'm sure Lynx users are used to the issue by now. Other than that I can't think of any modern browser that would have in issue witht he number of images.
  • Wouldn't need to be. Check your local libaries oversized book section some time.
  • I don't belive this list has applied for featured list status so I'm not sure what the article ratings have to do with anything.©Geni 19:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I note that this poll has been started due to dissatisfaction with the wording of the previous section. While I do not in any way condone the comments towards Paravane, I understand a desire to achieve balance, so do not criticise you for starting another section. But whether by accident or design, you've attempted to quantify rather than qualify discussion, and while requesting that comments be kept to a minimum, you've said more in this thread before my post than all other supporters and opposers combined.

    Onto matters directly related to this list, 100KB refers to "readable prose size", not "article size". Given the necessary level of duplication that would be required if this list is split into three, the fact that the leads would contain three sets of images rather than one, and the fact that if split FLC would expect you to discuss in more detail the contents of each specific list (more generic introductions are acceptable when the entire subject is covered in one list), I would suggest that each would be far higher than 60KB. In response to the bullet points above, 1. we have sections. 2. See my remark earlier in this post. 3. Wikipedia is not paper. 4. Because Milhist has assessed incorrectly. This is not a B-class article, it is a list, and pending consensus on this matter one way or the other, there is nothing barring the list(s) from a shot at FLC.

    I conceed that if the list were to be split, your proposal is as sensible a way of doing it as we have, but as I do not agree with the need to split at all, that's a redundant statement. —WFC— 10:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

  • I'm not interested if you condone or support my comments to Paravane - a consensus has been required for a while - instead he sneaked of to other boards looking for supporters - despite the fact ~80% said "split it", he came back with 2 little quotes and tried to manipulate the views of editors here.. which I do not condone. As for my comments above, they are legitimate questions to Geni. Consensus is about quality, not quantity, of opinions. Simply stating something is "within reasonable bounds" is akin to saying "acceptable loses" in a war - wtf defines 180KB as "acceptable" when Wiki considers 100KB unacceptable? 100KB refers to the FULL page from top to bottom, not just the prose - how on Earth have you made that interpretation when history gives one size? By your interpretation, an article could have 50KB of prose, and 5000KB of data in a list and be "within guidelines" - what a pile of baloney, and total misconception of the guidelines - is it any wonder people try to get away with articles this ridiculous and hope no one notices? In response to your nonsensical replies: 1. Sections swell - pagesize swells. We don't have alt= for ANY images; whilst wiki does not demand alt yet, oneday they might, and article will swell again vastly - there re 450+ images and is no room for expansion or flexibility - you're nor supporting a flexible community article here, you're supporting a few egotistic editors who want to keep it to themselves, and run it like a regime of their own outside of wiki guidelines. 2. Self-interpretation for which I can't AGF, more like wiki-lawyering to get own way. 3. No, it's not paper - moot point - anyone can pick up a thick book and selectively read any page/chapter/section - on Wiki you have to have the whole lot dumped on your browser, 450+ images and all text, and have to dig through table after table in an over-sized mess! This article makes a joke of wiki and web standards. Period. 4. No this is NOT a list, it ceased being a list when the bullet-pointed castle names became huge multi-column tables with keys, images, sortable data, notes, etc - lists are basic, vertically traversable forms of info - this is a ton of bloated tables, with half of War and Peace placed at the top and called a "lead". As for FLC - they wouldn't touch this with a barge pole, accessibility is paramount to Featured level - no alts, over-sized, top-heavy, very inappropriate, it wouldn't get over the first hurdle! And Paravane, who hates taking suggestions, would never survive the FL review process, he's too stuck in his own ways, and would never accept the changes required. I maintain that if the VC articles can split, and become FA, so can this - but only when people stop playing ownership games with it and give it a chance to develop in the right direction. And FYI, MILHIST does not support the List-class garde yet, to have made a mistake, and even then its doubtful they would consider it a list either. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 11:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks for keeping your response brief and civil.

    I'm too busy to respond fully until this evening, but if what you say is correct, MILHIST is quite simply behind the times (play on words not intended). Lists are recognised as being a separate class on a project-wide basis. —WFC— 13:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

  • I started discussions on adding List-class, as well as individual criteria for Lists, to MilHist assessment a short while back, and a !vote/consensus is currently on their discussion boards, but producing very little interest from members. Either way, I do not see this article as a List per se, it's far too involved for that simple class identification. Lists, to me, are bullet-pointed one-liners that are simple to read and maintain whilst complex tables with lots of prose are an article because they can be reviewed under ACRs, FAs, GA criteria, etc. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 13:20, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I don't have as much time right now as I would have liked. But to briefly respond to your size point, I am going by the guideline as written, there is no interpretation involved. WP:SIZEGUIDE has said "readable prose size" for at least as long as I have been editing [9]. And what does "readable prose size" mean? This section of that guideline defines it succinctly. —WFC— 18:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC):::::*So, create a far >100KB article with only lists and images - list all ~60m names who died in WW2, for example, on one page. See if WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:ACCESSIBILITY don't have something to say about it. I expect if you remove the tables, and keep all the waffle in between, there is a great deal of prose remaining. Also Wikipedia:SIZEGUIDE#Technical issues reads differently, and within good reason - it considers the technical issues of accessibility, without allowance for pushing huge articles onto readers computers and expecting them to wait more than a few seconds for the page to load. Personally, I don't care whose machine this works on or not, as Wiki says, "it's not about you" and every page should aim to work for everyone - that is what "accessibility" stands for - non-discriminative accessibility. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 20:18, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Perhaps not, I suppose FA vs FL can be a bit subjective in some cases. Comes down to the reviewer, perhaps. That page only has a dozen or so items in a table, and is fairly small. But a page with 490 castles on it, with 48 tables, is not a list, except in name. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 20:18, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Other

  • I don't think I feel as strongly as MarcusBritish does about the current length, probably as it is now loading okay for me, but accessibility is important. I'd vote in preference of continuing to shorten the number of images in the main article (e.g. in longer sections like Cumbria) until a user such as MarcusBritish can access the article in a suitable fashion, and backing that up with county articles. This would maintain a single list article, but still keep the detail somewhere, in a format aligned with the academic literature. Hchc2009 (talk) 06:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Hchc2009 - I think of this article as "a cake with too many ingredients" - but once mixed are hard to separate. I think cutting it into 3 or 4 slices is harmless and effective - more effective than into 49, as I noted from earlier comments and rethought alternatives using VC as an example of how an article can be split and achieve FA standards. Either way, the current attempts to create a smaller article from this are failing, referencing has become convoluted - all the R1-R5 with a key is utter rubbish - Paravane could have simply verified them all on one day, and put one date. The maps were removed - he made it clear in the peer review that he didn't like them; imo he didn't remove them as part of the reduction, it was an opportunity. But one that is far from successful. Anyone with half a brain can edit 3 or 4 articles, without being held back by size, or another editor undoing everything they dislike or selectively "prefer". Whilst 450+ images is a lot, I think removing them would make the article dull, tables would have gaps and start to look shoddy. By splitting into 3 or 4, that would divide those images into ~100-150 per page, and be far less invasive to browsers. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 12:30, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks. My original suggestion was to split into ceremonial counties, which would require 48 articles, but there was a lot of opposition to that, even from those supporting a split, as many of the county tables are very short, they don't like the imbalance of some articles ending up as 2-3 row Stubs whilst some would be very detailed nearer A-class content. Although it would make every county article very small in terms of KB, and room to add plenty more background info per county, I'm not sure if anyone is really up to working on 48 different articles, from what I've read above. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 13:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • A county list can be tailored to that particular grouping, hence list of castles in Cheshire talks about the Anlgo-Welsh border. An overview list such as this omits some of the smaller sites that would be included in county lists but is still valuable as it provides a country-wide analysis and allowing easy comparison between the counties. Its different purpose necessitates a long lead explaining the criteria for inclusion. There is space to have both this list and county lists on Wikipedia. Eventually I would like to see separate lists for each county, but the purpose of this list is different to those. Nev1 (talk) 13:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • We're not talking about what a list is here, we're taking about when a list exceeds WEB standards as a list and becomes tabular, therefore more comprehensive, therefore requiring more markup, resulting in more data being sent between servers and browsers. Of course it's a bloody list, just a very very involved one.. not one.. 48.. a list of lists, Argos is a catalogue. The amount of data contained within a list should determine the difference between being "just a list" and "more an article" - and when you have 490*7 cols, we're not in basic ordered HTML lists any more, are we? When we're sending 490 images, refs, and 48 maps (currently aside) to a browser, we're beyond HTML-101. And this article has far more accessibility issues than just size and layout, which it cannot currently support without inflating by many KB. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 20:44, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • If that is what you meant, perhaps that is what you should have said. The statement "a page with 490 castles on it, with 48 tables, is not a list" suggested a severe misunderstanding of what is going on here. Nev1 (talk) 20:57, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • My phrasing was fine, perhaps you took it out of context, or did not follow-through from the rest of the discussion to understand the particular quote you extracted, which was more a summary of my comments than a full repetition. Did it sound condescending, or was it to indicate that this fork in the discussion does not relate to the consensus and is little more than being picky? Regardless of whether it's an article, or "list", or even a catalogue - it's inaccessible, inflexible and bloated. It has no potential, and the more editors have to keep chipping and trimming it to make it accessible the less detailed it becomes. At least splitting retains the full content, spread across a few smaller articles, and allows for better development. At the moment this is like cramping 490 people into a room made to fit 150. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 21:20, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • You have been confusing FAs and FLs, which is distinctly worrying. I can't make up my mind whether it's sloppy communication skills or a misunderstanding. Nev1 (talk) 21:27, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Comment
  • I think the lists such as churches preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust in Southeast England show pretty well how a division could work. Perhaps this could be turned into a dab page and a regional format adopted? In any case, I'm not yet convinced that all avenues to slim this list down have been exhausted. I have a feeling it won't be a popular suggestion, but how about reducing the number of images? There are hundreds and are contributing to some people experiencing a long loading time (I can't say I'm one of them and my connection isn't even very good). A select few could be added down the side as a ribbon so that the list doesn't become an interminable wall of text. Having this list in one place is valuable, and I wouldn't want to see it broken up except as a last resort. In the long run county lists are meant to hold more detailed descriptions, so why not leave the images for those lists too? Nev1 (talk) 21:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Because this is a "List of castles in England" - for anyone not English, like tourists or researchers, may still have to come via this page to find where they need to be. Hell, even I don't know all 48 counties in England, and I live there! Really this page needs to be more of an index, I think the example given earlier, List of abbeys and priories in England is a good example of that - there's no need for a long list if it can be cut into regions, counties, etc - because editors may edit one, but not another, creating conflicting articles. I don't see how it is valuable if it is not easy to navigate. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 21:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I think removing images would have negative effects - firstly, how do you decide which are appropriate to remove? How will removing images not make the article look gappy and unprofessional? And how will it speed up server-side parsing? Given my experience in web dev, I know that templates and tables take longer for a PHP server to process, whilst browsers simply download images as they are from the HTML they receive - they take longer to render tables, and 48 is a lot to render. Also in terms of editing this article, it takes a very long time for Twinkle to load because it uses Javascript to highlight the edit box, which is one reason mine might be slower than some editors. Whilst removing images will cut down some of the weight, it won't solve matters in the long run. All the remaining images are still missing alt= in their descriptions, btw, which is very poor accessibility support for text-reader browsers used by the blind, for example. Whilst alt are not mandatory yet, given the way WAI are moving forward, they soon could be. Also, lack of alt descriptions are one of the reasons why this article is not FA/FL material - Featured articles must support MOS very closely, and alt descs are valued accessibility requirements. I think, based on my earlier comments, that the means justify the end and splitting justifies making the article more accessible for a dozen reasons. And also removes the current possessive ownership attitudes which haunt the article and halt its development, because it went too far in the first place. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 22:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Comment

I have stayed away from this discussion for a couple of days, minded to retire from Wikipedia. I'll postpone that idea a while. There is an important issue here.

Does anyone wonder why this page suddenly became the focus of attention? From 2003 until July 17 2011 the length of this talk page grew to 17,726 bytes. Since August 29 it has grown by 74,997 bytes (before this post). Meanwhile the List of castles in Wales remains rather neglected, and there is no sign of new individual county pages of castles in England getting extra attention.

A glance up this talk page to see what was written here before August 29 2011 will reveal unfailingly polite discussion. Here is a sample of what has been written recently:

"The professional attitude towards the current article has been lost to ego... As this is a shameful topic opened by Paravane... Paravane, you are ignorant and I'm tired of your possessive behaviour, against ownership guidelines... Clearly you are not competent in terms of reasonably developing an article to support the wider community... This article is a sham - a bloated mess, with weak keys, many images, and shoddy management. You have done nothing in terms of AGF of those making edits, or suggestions and continue to pursue your own mis-guided approach... As for FLC - they wouldn't touch this with a barge pole... splitting... removes the current possessive ownership attitudes which haunt the article..."

Two points in particular deserve consideration:

  • Some editors, faced with what appears very plainly to be a personal campaign against them, will opt to retire from Wikipedia, and especially if personal attacks are seen to achieve their purpose.
  • If reason is not the sole - or even the principal - mechanism of advancing a campaign, it cannot be depended upon that reason will ever be sufficient to counter it. If the campaign is obsessive, every line of reasoning will be dismissed by every possible means, and the campaign may be carried for no better reason than its opponents weary of arguing.

A practice of ignoring the breakdown of mutual respect, as a basis for cooperation in the community, can hardly fail to be damaging to Wikipedia. Paravane (talk) 00:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

And I suppose running round FLC and Village Pump making back-handed slurs against editors (me), being told you should split the article by ~80% of them, then returning with just two comments and trying to push them as a consensus (whereas the other 80% ARE a consensus) is not disruptive? Advocating your own POV, spin doctoring, call it whatever - I call it lies. You've proved only one thing - you care more about yourself than the article. You don't respond to criticism, talk page comments, or suggestions. You seek favours from admins, and canvas others who have sided with you before in hope they will again. I consider those actions disruptive. Moreso than 200KB+ data. From the minute you started a Peer Review several months ago you made it clear you only wanted people to worship the ground you walk on, and not criticise, contribute or do anything to affect "your" article. I've never known anyone so damn stuck-up, priggish and childish about the idea of splitting a page of data, on a server, in a metal box, in a data centre. It's less painful than taking a book you wrote and physically ripping it into 3 parts - but as I said, you can't handle criticism. At least I aim to get results and support accessibility for all. What do you do - keep adding and adding and adding and adding until the article is so inflated it has to stop - and then you blame everyone but yourself - "oh, he added sort code... bla bla", BS finger-pointing exercises. If you're going to be a hypocrite and talk about the "community" you should have thought of working with it, not against it, months ago. Where was your "mutual respect" when you were creeping round VP/FLC making accusations, or failed to add "alt" code for blind people, or continue to fail to reduce page size so anyone can edit the page with ease? Or is it that you only want respect, but can't give it? Either way, I don't think you're competent because you don't collaborate or communicate, except on your own terms, and you're too quick to take advantage of opportunity, to stem distrust, and lack good spirit. All this "I might retire" bollocks is just another mind-game, which only a prat would attempt in the hopes we'd all be "boo hoo, please don't go, grovel grovel". Truth is, we don't "need" anyone on Wiki - for everyone that leaves, there are plenty of others willing to fill their boots. In the case of this article, you simply try to make it only fit your boots. As was noted by JohnFromPinckney earlier, you took the "too long" issue way too personally, like an attack on "your" work. You still do. Holding a grudge like a spoiled child is hardly constructive - if a consensus is the only thing to kerb your behaviour, so be it. Your points don't deserve any consideration, whatsoever. You know why not? Because you have not given consideration to the fact the article is too big! Article creators are supposed to react to cleanup tags with a positive attitude - not turn it into an attack, make it look like the tagging was unneeded, make false accusations, seek sympathy and then hope it'll all go away after a long-winded plea. Doesn't work like that! To conclude: Retire. Couldn't care less. Buh-bye! Ma®©usBritish [talk] 07:08, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Comment
First of all, I'd like to state that I like the idea of a single list article for castles in England and my first instinct is to look for ways to preserve that. Nevertheless, I know that there is a good reason for summary style articles and it may be that daughter articles are necessary to allow this article to be accessible by as many readers as possible.
I'd like to slay some myths though.
  1. The server served the article to me in 85 milliseconds because it retrieved it from its squid cache, and that is what 99% of all readers will experience. Look at the last line of the html page source in your browser: Served by srv209 in 0.085 secs.
  2. The time taken for the page to load fully in such cases will only depend on the user's bandwidth and their proximity to a server, At present the full size of the article is 664 kB (see User talk:Dr pda/prosesize.js for a tool to display document statistics) and a 2 MB connection is capable of loading that in 3 seconds, but images load asynchronously so those on a slow connection can still start reading the article well before all of the images have loaded. Users on very slow connections will probably turn off images anyway, so it's not true that having many images necessarily causes a usability issue. It is true that the overhead for hundreds of http requests (the images) adds significant overhead. Turn off images and see the difference for yourself.
  3. Editing the article requires the server to re-create the page on preview or save, and this can introduce large delays, particularly if templates have to be parsed. Try editing the whole article and pressing [Show preview]. Then check the last line of the html page source: Served by srv274 in 15.984 secs. (although when it used 460 citation templates, that used to take 50+ sec).
So, should this article have a box telling readers that it may be too long to read and navigate comfortably? My computer is four years old and searching the page in FF6 using ctrl-F is instantaneous; clicking on any of the county names in the 'Contents' box takes me to the sub-section immediately. My experience is that the article is not too long to read, nor too long to navigate comfortably. The template is simply inaccurate and does the article a disservice.
In summary, I'd like to see the page kept as a whole in principle; but I wouldn't argue with a well-designed split into two or three. You can count me as agreeing to either option. : @Paravane and @MarcusBritish: please consider stepping back from this discussion for a while. There comes a point where arguing with every other contributor and each other becomes counter-productive and stifles discussion rather than encouraging it. This issue will still be live in a week's time and we may be a little closer to reaching a consensus one way or the other. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 01:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Comment

Around 2001/2002 I was the originator for many of the "List of" articles. Generally, they seem to have stood the test of time. RexxS has some good points: most PCs will still be able to cope with large articles (including mine - seven years old), and a split is not really necessary. Renata (talk) 11:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

With respect, your original article was very basic to its current form - it did not have 48 full tables, and perhaps 48 smaller tables, making 96 tables to render, and certainly did not have around 490 images to download. Age of computer is not a strong argument in itself,only one consideration of many and given that nearly everyone has a different machine is a moot point, Wiki does not cater for individuals - browsers, connection speed and platform makes a difference too - can you see this loading on a mobile device? PCs aren't everything, in fact they are a small market now if you consider Macs, or laptops and iPhone devices with less power and speed. Did you click "Edit" at the top to see how long it takes the full wiki markup to load. And try saving it, that is far worse. Lot has changed in 10 years, but Wiki servers aren't capable of processing the massive amount of data every time, especially when Wiki is busy, nor are browsers super-devices they have limitations too - it's a simple fact that software often moves faster than hardware, and that hardware costs far more to upgrade. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 12:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Hmm the problem with the mobile argument is that you seem to view List of Victoria Cross recipients (A–F) as an acceptable list. It doesn't render on mobiles.©Geni 19:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
I've just tried several Wiki pages on that - none of them work 100%, suggesting the program that converts pages from full-scale HTML to mobile platforms, sucks. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 20:02, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Follow on from RexxS

As of this post, it takes 0.099 seconds to receive the list from the server, compared to 0.088 seconds for this talk page. When I edit, preview and do the test RexxS has outlined in his third point, it takes 17.1 seconds for the list, 19.8 seconds for the talkpage. Draw your own conclusions. —WFC— 12:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Conclusion
The talk page was only edited 5 minutes ago - by me - it has not cached yet and must be fully loaded (including geo-location maps) server and browser side.
The article was last edited 5 days ago - by someone - it has cached and needs less server processing. As it is unchanged the cache on your browser is loading images rather than downloading them.
Weak argument. Caching is a variable also. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 12:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
My point was more in relation to this page (although I've just edited the main article if you wish to do a more accurate comparison). —WFC— 13:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
So I saw - nice little edit summary there to advocate a POV to readers. Well done. And what would be the purpose of my testing? One machine on one internet connection, a few hundred miles from the server, on 10Meg broadband, 18 month old machine, etc. What about someone in Australia, one of the slower countries for example, lets say in a TAFE college library, on a router with 20+ machines, bit older, not updated with Firefox every so often given than the campus may have 500 machines. What of them? So far I haven't seen a decent argument for the wider-world community, all "me me me" and "MY computer". I don't intend to provide a benchmark for "my" own standards, nor do I intend to be impressed just because a few opposers "claim" (because we have know way of knowing if people are BS'ing or not, we can only AGF) their PC is handling it just fine. We have to set a standard that allows virtually anyone, anywhere, reasonable levels of access. There's really nothing anyone can say to dispute that. I you can find a reason to dispute it - Wiki isn't the place for you. Period. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 13:18, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
A comparative test can be of some use regardless of equipment, provided that the same equipment is used throughout.

FWIW, even if your accusations about myself and others were 100% accurate, it is never acceptable to unilaterally tell people to leave Wikipedia. You have done so directly to Paravane and indirectly at least one further time. I suggest that you refrain from doing so going forward. If you believe that one or more users should no longer be editing on this site, your best bet is probably ANI. —WFC— 13:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I beg to differ, disruptive editors should be told to follow wiki trends or leave, and your reproach is over-stepping your own bounds. Plus you're off topic and I'm not interested - he suggested on "retiring", I called it, it's not my place to beg that he remains. End of. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 13:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm still of the view that there are three issues at work here, reflected in the wiki guidelines. I still think they are:

  • Readability. Is an article of readable length? Is an article too long to be read easily at one sitting, for example. This aim underpins the 100k of readable prose guideline, as I understand it.
  • Accessibility. For whatever reason - length, number of images, etc. - can an article load in such a way as to be accessible to a wide range of users?
  • Style. Is it organised in an effective way to communicate the topic?

I don't think readability is a problem in this case, although others might disagree. There are various opinions on style; I don't think the style is perfect (i.e. not quite how I'd have written it), but I think generally its rather good, and represents a useful list. Indeed, my own preferred style would have problems as well. In terms of accessibility, I'm uncertain from the above if particular groups are still having problems loading and editing or not. If accessibility remains an issue for some users, then I'd still favour reducing the size of the main page until it is accessible, and supporting the main article with sub-articles. Incidentally, I'd certainly not wish any editor to retire from editing as a result of the debate on this page. Hchc2009 (talk) 17:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

The short version is that of the three main issues you only take the accessibility case seriously, and that's pretty similar to my own view. But there is nobody I respect more on accessibility than RexxS, and while he concedes that the list is on the long side, he doesn't consider it so big an issue as to mandate a split. The biggest potential barrier to entry would have been having to edit one giant table, but that simply isn't the case here. I'm fairly confident that no section is above the 32KB that Wikipedia once tried to keep below. —WFC— 17:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Stylistic issues, British v. American

I have twice reverted changes made by user 75.0.184.69 on 13th March and would like to invite comments. In particular, do British editors consider the replacement of 'which' by 'than' to be preferable, or would there be any preference in British English for 'which' over 'than'?

Some points:

  • The proposed changes are wholly stylistic, seemingly made from an American standpoint. They correct no obvious errors, but they introduce three obvious errors. They are claimed to be UK/US neutral, but that seems to me open to question.
  • As this is a British page, what is accepted as good style in British English should not be subordinated to American stylistic preferences.
  • What is good style in British English is best decided by British rather than American editors.
  • Where there is a preference in British English - for instance if 'which' is preferred to 'than' - that usage should stand. Where there is no preference in British English, but there is in American English, then American usage might reasonably prevail.
  • This text has remained virtually unchanged for two years. During that time it has been viewed around half a million times. One might expect that any significant issues would have been corrected before now. Paravane (talk) 20:49, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
Er, I think you meant "that", not "than". This isn't a UK vs. US issue. I didn't check every word of 75.0.184.69's edit, but most of the changes seemed correct, in British English, to me. A quick Google found these UK sources: http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2011/oct/17/mind-your-language-that-which , http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-t, http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv313.shtml and http://cmcopywriters.co.uk/which-that-or-who that confirm this. -- Dr Greg  talk  21:32, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure it is a UK vs US issue either, but (despite being a Brit) I often get this wrong! The editing feels slightly more "US" than "UK", I'll grant you - but I've taken a quick look at some Brit v. US guides, and I'm not sure it's running against any formal UK guidelines. Hchc2009 (talk) 03:54, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

---

I was the one who made the which-that change that was reversed. (My IP address changes daily because of my Internet provider.)
US English distinguishes between which and that in non-restrictive vs. restrictive clauses (which, —preceded by a comma, for non-restrictive—and that for restrictive). Some American writers regard this as more of a convention than a rule, but recognize it nonetheless. I would never charge into a Wikipedia article—especially on a UK subject—and change UK spellings to US. On the other hand, changing which in restrictive clauses to that makes it correct in US grammar and doesn't matter in UK grammar. None of my changes had anything to do with 'Americanizing' anything, just with making it neutral where possible. Other changes had to do with toning down passive voice to make less wordy—again, nothing to do with UK-US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.0.185.1 (talk) 20:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Plymouth Castle

I thought of adding Plymouth Castle (what I wrote) to the Devon section of the list, but a) the only option for Devon is "only earthworks remain" rather than "only earthworks or fragments remain" - Plymouth Castle's remains consist of a short piece of wall in an urban side street - and b) I don't know if Plymouth is included in "King (1983)" to which everything else is referenced. I hesitate to tinker with such a finely tuned article and would appreciate your help. Alansplodge (talk) 18:10, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

At the very least it's mentioned by King, though I don't have the book to hand to see exactly what it says. Would be worth including in the list. Richard Nevell (talk) 23:04, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks Richard, now done. Alansplodge (talk) 00:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

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