This is an archive of past discussions about London Borough of Croydon. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
cur) (last) 01:35, 18 March 2006 Dieter Simon m (Reverted edits by 82.40.188.233 (talk) to last version by 203.152.122.109)
Have reverted edits by 82.40.188.233 to the last version by 203.152.122.109, as that para looked terribly incomplete. Can someone in the know check the data 82.40.188.233 included? If all OK please edit to what it should read. Couldn't leave it like that, as it looked wrong. Dieter Simon01:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Religion
I have reverted this section, at least for the time being, as it looks to me very much like some kind of vandalism. This broad statement, that Islam is the largest religion in the town just cannot be correct, as the number of Christians, practising or non-practising, as well as those who come from Christian background, together with other-religious members of the Croydon population, must still be much higher than the number of Muslims in the borough. It is true, Muslims do attend religious services frequently and consistently, but you really have to support these statements with evidence and substantiate the actual number and percentage of the population attending services within each religion. Bald statements without these figures to support them will not do, I am afraid. Sorry. Dieter Simon00:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Facts are always valuable, such as the number of mosques and their attendances, but they need numbers of actual people practising which then need to be compared with the actual numbers of people of other religions. Dieter Simon00:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Croydon's main town centre is Croydon itself?
Is someone making a distinction here between one part of Croydon and another? Where would you expect Croydon's main town centre to be? In Bromley? People who live in Thornton Heath live in Croydon, so do people in Selsdon, Sanderstead, Addiscombe and Purley, as well as many other former "villages". I used to live in Purley and never was there any doubt in all my many years there that I was living in Croydon. Dieter Simon23:41, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Not a well crafted statement, but I think it alludes to the district known as Croydon being the principal district of the London Borough of Croydon. A problem faced all over London where one district has the same name as the borough. I don't read it as (intentionally) derogative to other areas, it's where the larger shopping areas, the town hall and highest density of office space is. Kbthompson11:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I think these two articles, Croydon and London Borough of Croydon, need a good old edit, or at least need to be co-ordinated. When you look at the sections of well-known people, do we really need two lists of people associated with Croydon in the articles? In the list "Notable people from Croydon town" (Croydon article) for example, I am sure you are not following that same principle. I am sure they don't all come from Central Croydon, and almost certainly come from all over the various "villages", most unlikely that any of them either live or were born in the centre of Croydon. If so then someone should have the courage of their conviction and say so. I don't think we can have it both ways. Dieter Simon01:09, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, I've long doubted the suitability of notable people listed in the town article, but never got round to sorting it out. A good example is Ronnie Corbett: he just should not be there as I think he's only ever been associated with Shirley. I think all the people should be moved into the borough article.--A bit iffy08:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
I would agree, create a referenced list (some of these associations are more than just a bit iffy), recording any specific association with local districts. If it gets long enough, spin it out into a separate article. Kbthompson10:56, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, whichever way we do it, I think, we need to make sure that people aren't going to be associated - wrongly - with the inner or outer parts of Croydon. It seems, that some of the more historical personages seem to be linked with the inner parts, which is probably quite natural, the town being much smaller in their days. Cicely Mary Barker, Peggy Ashcroft, D. H. Lawrence and Alfred Russell Wallace are more of the inner areas, although there again Samuel Coleridge Taylor lived in Selhurst, Will Hay in Norbury, etc. I think, there is no harm in putting all well-known people into one list with annotations - where we know them - such as inner or outer districts into one list. I don't thiink we should lose people such as Ronnie Corbett only because they happened to live in Shirley only because it has its own article. In the long analysis all the outer districts belong to Croydon, even Purley, why not annotate the people with that info? Wherever we would put the list, it would be quite impressive with the added information. Dieter Simon00:03, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Vandalism to this article
An anonymous user keeps vandalising the council election result section, the names of the elected members, and the name of the mayor in this article. If this continues, the user's IP will have to be softblocked. Dieter Simon23:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
That is quite annoying, it took some time to make that, so can whoever is doing it, go off and express their rage on a strees ball, instead of this article, please! Pafcool218:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
As you can see, I've changed the writing which said the name of the party, to the logos of the parties, since some of the writing is hard to see. There are still links to the respective parties, on the numbers, which I hope will be clear enough. I have also put the Liberal Democrats on the table with 0 number of councillors, as this is seen as a major party, and is important to note that there is no longer a Lib Dem councillor. Pafcool218:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi. After a schools in Croydon template appeared on this page, I moved the lists of primary and secondary schools in the article to separate lists, as to have them in: a template, a list in the article and the separate lists is somewhat overkill. I've been trying to create lists of schools for borough pages (where they didn't exist), and it is necessary to produce articles for each school. However, listing them in three places is creating a rod to beat your own back with - as any maintenance will need to be done three times.
Generally, when there's a lot of information to be shown, it is better to cut it out to another page; otherwise, it will make this page impossible to read for other readers. Also, education sections in other districts of Croydon, can then point to the main lists for the borough (rather than a section heading here, which I've now been told is not good practice), leaving only notable local schools to be mentioned under the district heading. Kbthompson13:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with you now, after the GA Review did'nt materilise I noticed that the list is quite innapropiate and is not needed at all, so I've moved it to a new article at Schools in Croydon, so all of the schools can be on just one page. Pafcool215:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I think you've done a lot of good work here, and the review (below) is a model of how to improve the article. I don't think another London Borough has even offered itself upto the process - so, kudos. Be patient, follow the guidelines and I'm sure you'll get article to GA. It's an ongoing process, so work through the points and give it another go later - maybe give it 6 months too!
I've taken on this article for review under the Good Article criteria, as nominated on the Good Article candidates page. I've been categorizing the article and making substantial improvments for a long time and belive that it's up to the GA standard. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a message on my talk page. Pafcool216:20, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
That is a guideline, not Gospel, adjust the to local needs. My comment would that some of the sections - e.g. politics are overly lengthy, without showing much information. Some of that material could be dealt with in detail in an external article and summarised here (it's Wiki, after all). (Also, see my point about having two long lists of schools in the article).
You will need to pay particular attention to reference format (Labour Market Profile shows all the required details, the others are deficient).
History may help with extending details on the borough's history.
I didn't know someone had previously reviewed this because they didn't mark it as being on hold at WP:GAC (only on the talk page, which I didn't check before looking at the article text). Anyway, after reviewing the article, I don't think this article meets the existing Good Article criteria at this time, so it cannot be listed. In fact, there are some very significant issues with the organization and content, and I don't think that placing the article on hold (which is generally for a period of one week or less) will help address all of these issues, so instead, this article will be listed as failed. It can be renominated at WP:GAC once all of the issues are addressed.
First, the lead section is too short. The lead should be an adequate summary of the article; a good lead is probably 2-3 paragraphs. See WP:LEAD for tips on improving this section and writing a good introduction.
Second, referencing (citations) are way too inadequate. Several sections are unsourced, and most other sections have largely unattributed information. Per guidelines, any information that is challenged or could be challenged, needs to have a source, preferably using inline citations. This include any figures and hard data. The references themselves should also include more information than just the external link. Full citation information should be included in inline citations (e.g. author, title, publisher, date of publication, date of retrieval for web references). This is so that, if the link disappears, the reference is not rendered completely useless and could be used to track down and verify the information.
The geography section has some serious organizational issues. There's too many subsection headers and short sections. Demographics (demography) is usually not included under the geography section, and usually goes in a separate section. Postal codes are usually not considered very encyclopedic, as you can look these up in an almanac of on the web, and really don't tell us anything about the city. 'Parks and green spaces' really doesn't go under geography either; it can go in its own section, or in a section with sports & recreational activities. The geography section could use a description of roads, highways, and layout.
Consider renaming the 'croydon council' section to 'government' or 'administration'. The section is also poorly organized, also with too many subsection headers. The tables in the section break up the text and make it hard to read. They also don't really tell us much; it's very trivial to tell us merely that conservatives or labour party candidates won an election, without actually telling us the candidate. Who cares? Listing all of the council members is largely unnecessary, too -- and the table doing it is way too long! I don't know what to make of the 'councillors' section? What are they? What are their significance? This section is too short and the table doesn't tell me anything; plus, it looks a bit too flashy with the graphics in it.
Move the discussion of education and health out into their own sections, and not in 'community facilities'. It is usually not necessary to list all K-12 schools in cities, towns, and boroughs, and not a GA-class attribute. Lists are highly discourage unless absolutely necessary. It may be better to move these lists to another page, or link to a list of schools in the greater city of London, not just a page listing schools in one borough.
The 'religion' section is way too short, and contains an 'under construction' tag, which is a HUGE red flag for GA status. This MUST be addressed.
The 'sport and leisure' subsection seems pretty well written, well sourced, and well covered. Recommend moving this into its own main section. Throw the material on parks into this section, and that would be good.
Move 'crime' to the demographics section.
Combine 'economy' and 'industry and commerce' into one main section. I would also recommend promoting the section; a good order of sections, at least for the beginning of the article, is: intro, history, geography, demographics, economy,... The economy section also has zero references.
'Shopping and Exhibitions' is just a list of shopping centers. Barely notable. You might want to have a 'culture' section, which includes a description of some cultural attractions as well as some of the major shopping centers and streets. This should be written as prose, not a list, though. Lists are generally a characteristic of B-class articles, not GA. 'Places of interest' and 'districts' are also just lists.
The media section looks reasonably good; recommend getting rid of the two subsection headers, as they're not really necessary here. The 'future' section could be merged into the 'history' section, near the end.
It might be wise to move the list of famous people near the end to a separate List of famous people from Croydon article. These lists tend to be very long, and it's difficult to get citations for each individual. They also tend to be vandalized more often as well. It's best to put these in separately linked articles.
The 'see also' section is a bit long. Links in this section should only be for links that are not previously mentioned in the article text beforehand, so that might get rid of a few links.
It would be very helpful to review information in the manual of style, as there are several copyediting and wikifying issues in the article. I'd also look at WP:CITE and WP:LEAD. While the article is not necessarily a city itself, and just a part of one, it still might be useful to review the UK (and US) city examples provided at WP:CITIES.
Thank you, very much for your comments on the article, this will really help me get along to addresing the major issues of the article. I've just finished puting in full references, as you suggested, and yesterday I had a major overhaul of the article addresing most of the lists and changing them into prose or into a different article. Plus i've cut down the see also and external links (which can now be seen on the Croydon page) sections which I agree were to long and contained some unencyclopedic links.
The main differences you will see is that the Districts section has gone in favor of Neighborhoods and areas which contains all the same information plus a small summary of the area and where it is located from Central Croydon. Other differences you will see is that the short sections in Geography has gone, in fact the whole of Geography has gone in favour of Geography and Climate (which now only contains 2 subsections, Climate and Neighborhoods and areas). Croydon Council has gone in favour of Governance and it now contains less headings, with some scraped altogether and some have been merged. The long table has also gone (although that can still be found on two other articles involving Croydon local elections), i thought of what you wrote and it really was annoying to scroll through all of it. Plus it probably belongs on the other pages than this one.
The 'glitzy' logo table under councillors is now gone and can be found under Wards and Councillors as a modest grey table. In education, the schools list has been absorbed into the newley formed Schools in Croydon article. And the underconstruction sign has gone from the Religion subheading - although to be fair the heading had only been there since the 23rd, a day before the review - has gone, and the subsection is much longer now. Plus as you suggested the fantastic Sport and Leisure section has been spawned into it's own section, which is looking great. I've decided not to merge Economy with Industry and Commernce as I feel they are seperate issues. Overall I'm glad that you've given me this information, and I will keep on editing to what you said. Thank You. Pafcool218:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Fair use rationale for Image:Sitelogo.gif
Image:Sitelogo.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
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Some of the links to London Borough of Croydon are inadequate, some links don't go to the correct pages and some language wikipedia's don't even have all of the language distinction links, for example:
Which links to the town of Croydon, this issue needs to be addressed. I've already done a few, but don't have the time or patience to carry on. Plus i've added a new article for the borough at et:Croydon, a new language link that i've added plus i have formalised the article for the french entry at fr:Croydon.
Also, if anyone has any language experiance in languages that don not yet have an London Borough of Croydon article, create one now! Of course (don't bug me on NPOV), we all want the Croydon article to be the best London borough article, so we need to raise the profile of the borough on some other languages and formalise in others. Thanks. Pafcool214:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
great news! This article is now avaliable in 20 different languages, the most for a London Borough at the moment, thanks to new enties in Latin, Italian, Spanish and Indonesian. Pafcool212:49, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that, praises such as this really make working on Wikipedia the more worth while. And thanks for your hard work on creating and expanding the fantastic Croydon Airport page, which has really helped me on the maiun borough article.
The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.
Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.[?]
Please convert tables from HTML syntax to Help:Table wiki-markup.
Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space - between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 000m2, use 000 m2, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 000 m2.[?]
Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style.[?]
There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view.
it has been
might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).[?]
Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: neighbour (B) (American: neighbor), meter (A) (British: metre), recognise (B) (American: recognize), criticize (A) (British: criticise), ization (A) (British: isation), isation (B) (American: ization), aging (A) (British: ageing), any more (B) (American: anymore).
The script has spotted the following contractions: doesn't, don't, didn't, if these are outside of quotations, they should be expanded.
As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2][?]
Hi, since this is based on the weather stats for Gatwick (?) and generalised to the whole of London, would it not be better to make this a London-wide template, but then since the figures are only recorded from one location, would it not be even better to create a separate London climate article that could be referred to from every London borough article? Kbthompson14:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. But because of Croydon as a whole is closer to the weather base at Gatwick than the London based one at Greenwich, I think that it's more appropiate to have one for seperate articles as this may vary. The London Borough of Brent climate wouldn't be the same as Croydon or Gatwick, West London will vary from East so maybe is better to yet indivical articles have climate charts if they need one. Pafcool216:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I missed your reply. Accepted, but I believe the weather observations for all of them are done at Gatwick. Maybe it's something that requires further investigation. Kbthompson (talk) 23:27, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I note that pafcool has recently reverted image size changes made by Reagan. I have no particular view on this, but larger images will certainly dominate 840 px width screens (less of them, these days, but a lot of smaller screens in - say - libraries and schools); there must be some compromise that will work on 840, 1040 and 1200 screens? Kbthompson14:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I use a mixutre of 20" iMac, 12" iBook and 17" Vista / XP machines. The only way everything displays properly is when it is put in thumb or frames with no pixel sizes. From the WP:MOS 'Some users need to configure their systems to display large text; forced large thumbnails can leave little width for text, making reading difficult.' This is the mess the images and article are now in - see right. and If people are happy with that, so be it, but the lack of accessibility and poor readability that leaves will preclude a GA or FA status. And these shots are on a clean Firefox 2 installation (latest version) with no extensions. They don't happen when desized and thumbed. Regan12315:06, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
You forgot to mention that the default size applied when the set size is not specified can be user defined! But the problem ultimately lies with the HTML specification itself, not with pafcool trying to design 'a good user experience'. Kbthompson15:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Indeed it can, which is why the MOS calls for no article defined image sizes - leave it up to the user to define it for themselves is the principle. I have edited articles where the image size issue has annoyed me, but the MOS is there and we can't just ignore it. This article has multiple problems with the layout at the moment, which have been mentioned in the peer review above. I was trying to resolve them in the simplest way. Yes HTML is not perfect, but there are plenty of FA articles that work with it well. At the moment, this article cannot be described as a good user experience, sadly. Regan12317:29, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
For my part, I have begun to accept the advice in articles I have edited (when I saw you start doing this). I take it under advisement as to whether it should be a rule though. Kbthompson17:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to hold off for a week, but if the layout is still causing problems by then, I will come back and have another go to resolve the problems. Regan12317:47, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I know that some screens may have there pages layed out in a different way, and respect that. But again, unless it is made a rule in the MOS on wikipedia, nothing needs to happen. I'm sorry if you have an older computer, but that's not my issue. Maybe if you use internet explorer instead of the actually companies internet program (i.e. AOL), that's what happened to me, so I changed and my sizes have been perfect since. Pafcool216:45, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually the MOS is quite clear. There has to be a specific reason not to do it. And my four week old iMac is perfectly new as well. We don't write for one browser. The page layout is a mess and it needs fixing using the standardised guidelines from the MOS. I will look at this at the weekend. Regan12318:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Some pruning needed
This article is too long and two repetitive. I think I counted three separate references to Taberner House being compared to the Pirelli tower.
Also some of the paragraphs are way too long. I've split one of them up, but several of the others need attention. --rossb13:11, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Archive
I think it's about time we archive this talk page again. After the GA review which is kind of...well...big. I would do it but just to make sure someone else should. Also add to the new archive box i've added to the first section. Pafcool2 (talk) 19:46, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
