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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Photographs of courts

If any Somerset-based photographers could take snaps of courts in their neck of the woods (e.g. Taunton Crown & County Court, Bath County Court, local magistrates courts) and add them to commons:Category:Courthouses in the United Kingdom, the photographs would be very much appreciated for List of courts in England and Wales and List of county courts in England and Wales. I'm also working on a list of closed courts, so photographs of former court buildings would be useful too. Thanks, BencherliteTalk 22:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Wells Cathedral

Could someone re assess Wells Cathedral - I think its a bit more than start class now.— Rod talk 18:06, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Done, reassessed it to B class. However, will probably do some minor editing on it later.Pyrotec (talk) 18:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

North Somerset Cricket League AfD

The article North Somerset Cricket League has been nominated for deletion. If anyone wants to join in the debate it is at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bristol & District Cricket Association League.— Rod talk 10:59, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Quantock Hills

Could someone re asses Quantock Hills, I think its more than a start now. Obviously any further help to improve it appreciated.— Rod talk 21:31, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

6 months on - achievements & work to do

It is almost exactly 6 months since this wikiproject started and I thought it would be a good point to review progress, debate future direction & let you know I will be reducing the time I spend on wikipedia.

WikiProject Somerset was proposed on 14 September 2007 by User:Derek Andrews with this edit [1]. Within a few days the basic project page and templates had been set up and 1778 articles had been identified as possibly relevant to the project. Of these 4 were FA standard and 5 GA.

6 months later we have a much clearer focus on the 1756 currently tagged for this project (quite a few having been removed as not relevant & others added) including importance ratings which are automagically included in the "current status" table on the project page. 179 new articles have been created (90 in 2007 & 89 in 2008 so far). Somerset, Bath, Exmoor and Chew Stoke have been promoted to FA and Grand Western Canal, History of Somerset, Roman Baths (Bath) and South West Coast Path have been promoted to GA (with several of the FAs passing through this stage as well). 13 Somerset related articles have appeared on the front page in the DYK section. Of the 5 articles given a top importance rating 1 is FA, 1 GA, 1 B & 2 rated start.

There is still a great deal of work to do ....1047 articles (60% of the total) are stubs, & 608 are start class. Articles rated top importance eg Geology of Somerset, Economy of Somerset & Culture of Somerset need improvement and expansion, as do all of the major settlements at Category:Towns in Somerset, rivers at Category:Rivers of Somerset & the districts ie Mendip, Sedgemoor, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset, South Somerset, Taunton Deane and West Somerset. There are still several requests for articles, and pointers to those needing verifying references and cleanup, on the "to do" list, and loads of other articles still need work - perhaps members of this wikiproject would like to suggest the areas they think are most important to work on?

I have really enjoyed working with all of you on these over the last six months, however I now need to let you know that I will be reducing the time I spend on wikipedia. I've reached a crucial stage in my doctoral studies and, at work, we about to sign a major contract for a 2 year development which I will be project managing - therefore I'm going to be a bit busy! I will still monitor my watchlist & help out where I can, but will not be as active as I have been in the first 6 months. I would welcome any comments on the progress so far & areas for further work.— Rod talk 21:17, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the review Rod, and all your work on the project. I have been rather absent lately; first a trapped nerve limited the time I could spend sat at a computer, then I got involved in other projects including a wiki for woodworkers. But I hope to be able to make more of a contribution soon. I am coming home to Wells to visit family in a week or so's time, and hope to get out and about to take some photographs. So if anyone has requests, other than (or more specific than) the list at Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Somerset, please leave a note on my talk page. I'd like to get some walking in and some cider drunk, but have no specific ideas where I will be, but most easily Cheddar through Shepton M.

I would like to see Wells rated better than it's current B. Does anyone have thoughts on any local research that I could in Wells that would make a meaningful contribution? Derek Andrews (talk) 17:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Derek, Hope you are feeling better & looking forward to your trip home. Just from the locations given you could look at the articles listed at Quarries of the Mendip Hills. I was reminded about this collection of articles recently when I came across info on Doulting Stone Quarry. As far as Wells goes, we could work it into the structure in the guideline Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements which might require expansion of history & governance sections, & new sections on Geography, Demography, Economy, Transport etc. There are also several unreferenced sections - perhaps we could all do some bits on this article & make it a "collaboration of the month" or similar to meet the Wikipedia:Good article criteria? By the way I've added loads of references (and a few poor pictures) to Wells Cathedral - there is a discussion on it's talk page about what would be needed to bring it to GA with User:Amandajm (who is an expert on gothic cathedrals) offering a radical overhaul. Welcome back to the project.— Rod talk 19:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Re-use outside WP licence?

I just came across a couple of domains, www.rowberrow.co.uk and www.comptonbishop.co.uk which both redirect to www.any-village.co.uk. These pages have a mirror of the relevant WP pages. My guess is that there are thousands of such pages. Oddly enough www.croscombe.co.uk does not (yet) have a copy.

They do acknowledge the source, but don't reiterate the licence. Does anyone here know if this is a violation, and what to do about it. I have spent ages looking through WP docs and still can't find any definitive answers, or anywhere to report it. Any thoughts? Derek Andrews (talk) 18:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The relevant rules & regulations about the reuse of wikipedia articles is at Wikipedia:Copyrights under "Reusers' rights and obligations"— Rod talk 18:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I saw that but wasn't sure about the interpretation and implementation of it. Derek Andrews (talk) 16:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Is it time to set up automatic archiving of this talk page? I think so, but concensus is needed. Derek Andrews (talk) 16:17, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Added bot. Simply south (talk) 21:02, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Funnily enough I was just reading through this page thinking "it needs to be archived" and I came across this section. Yes, it should be archived, keeping maybe two months worth of posts - or at least back to the 1st of the preceding month. Simply south - what bot did you setup already? --TimTay (talk) 09:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I added MiszaBot at the top, set it at 50 k and archiving things older than 30 days. Just check the top of the page. Simply south (talk) 11:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Back to assessment and others things

Just saying, i have added some basics including a featured-list category and copied the grading system, which maybe should be altered so it is related to Somerset. I also added the log.

Should lists be added to the front page? Simply south (talk) 21:02, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that but I don't understand the question about lists.— Rod talk 21:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
This is not so much related to assessment. Some projects add to their front pages Lists related to their areas. I was wondering whether this should be added here? Simply south (talk) 21:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
What sort of lists?— Rod talk 21:45, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
List lists. For example, see Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Railways/Lists. Simply south (talk) 22:53, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
On we have 14 listed at Category:List-Class Somerset articles could be useful. I thought you might be talking about the thing like an infobox for projects which links to all sub pages.— Rod talk 08:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

3d photos - link spam?

I just noticed that this user Special:Contributions/The_Captain has been systematically adding links to a website (presumably his own) with 3d photos of places in Somerset. Can we get some consensus as to the usefulness of this, (bearing in kind that you need the red and green filters to be able to see these) or is it just link spam? Derek Andrews (talk) 14:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I quite like them, although I haven't looked at any for a while. It isn't like he is trying to sell anything and the photos are genuinely interesting IMHO. --TimTay (talk) 11:58, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Bath Abbey GA comments

Bath Abbey is currently a GA candidate & reviewers have made various suggestions for improvement on the talk page. If anyone could help with satisfying these issues that would be great.— Rod talk 09:57, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Bath Stone & Somerset Towers on Peer Review

Two local articles Bath Stone & Somerset Towers are currently up for peer review if anyone felt like commenting.— Rod talk 18:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Would anyone fancy taking a look at Monmouth Rebellion, Battle of Sedgemoor & Bloody Assizes. I've been doing a bit of editing on them over the last week or so (further edits welcome) & although they are all rated start class, one or two might be worth a bit more than that now?— Rod talk 16:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Somerset articles needing cleanup

I have used a bot to generate a list of Somerset related articles needing cleanup - which can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Cleanup listing. Details of how the list is generated is at User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings. It includes all articles which have this WikiProjects banner and one or more of the cleanup tags eg Articles needing additional references, Articles that may contain original research, Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with unsourced statements, Articles with unsourced statements, Articles contradicting other articles, Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases etc. It would be really great if we could tackle some of these (& then remove the cleanup tags) before the bot runs again after the next database dump in a month or so.— Rod talk 17:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

  • The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
  • The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
  • A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 20:51, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Exmoor to appear on main page

Exmoor is scheduled to appear as the featured article on wikipedia's main page on 24 July 2008.— Rod talk 20:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Simonsbath

I am copying this question, originally asked at Rod's talk page, here at Rod's request...

As Exmoor will shortly be on the main page as Today's Featured Article, I am going to do a spoken version of it. I have had a quick look through it for difficult or strange pronunciations, and the only one I'm a bit concerned about is Simonsbath. Do any project members know if it is pronounced intuitively with a long "i", or if is pronounced "Simmons-bath"? Thanks, Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 18:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Help with Severn Barrage

Is anyone able to take a look at the Severn Barrage article. It covers an important and topical issue, but the article is stuffed full of cleanup tags. Attention from those with engineering, environmental, economic or other relevant interests, or those who can give editing help to bring it within the Manual of Style, would be great.— Rod talk 12:53, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Geology of Somerset GA review

Hi all, Can I ask if you might have a few minutes to look at Geology of Somerset, it's currently up for GA & has just received the first set of comments from the reviewer. I've dealt with many of them but am going to be away for a long BH weekend & then out of the country for work so I'm not sure I'm going to be able to address all the comments in time - anyway one of the comments was: "There are a lot of short sentences, which tend to make the prose choppy. Take a run through the article and try to combine some of these to make the article flow more." Another comment was that the book references need page numbers & I'm not going to be able to get to a local library. Any help you could offer would be great.— Rod talk 23:18, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll start tonight.Pyrotec (talk)

Monarch's Way

Hi, Can I ask for some help, from the experts in this WikiProject, with the Monarch's Way article. It is a 615 miles (990 km) long-distance footpath in England that approximates the escape route taken by King Charles II in 1651 after being defeated in the Battle of Worcester to Shoreham-by-Sea and passes through the area covered by this WikiProject. The article is a stub at present but some of us are trying to expand it and give details of the route (along the lines of the South West Coast Path which is currently a GA). We are using Talk:Monarch's Way as a communal sandbox for this and if anyone was able to add description, settlements, places of interest etc along the route for their local area this would be really helpful.— Rod talk 12:51, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Possibly, I might be help on the Wiltshire bit, but this is a Somerset WP! Pyrotec (talk) 18:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Any help with the Wiltshire bit would be good - but I put the request here as the route goes through Somerset - twice! From Keynsham west through the Chew Valley to Abbots Leigh, then south across the Mendips to Wells (the bit I know) & on Castle Cary, South Cadbury, Ham Hill, Crewkerne (which I don't know). Then after going to Dorset it re-enters Somerset at East Coker, Charlton Horethorne & Wincanton, before going into Wiltshire.— Rod talk 19:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes. I'll do South Cadbury, but it was the Hindon Great Wishford bit in Wiltshire that caught my attention. Pyrotec (talk) 19:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Review for Avon Gorge

Just a note to let the project know that Avon Gorge has been placed on hold following its GA Sweeps Review, which can be found here. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 12:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Avon Gorge has had its issues resolved and keeps its GA status.— Rod talk 21:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Review for Cheddar Gorge and Caves

Just a note to let the project know that Cheddar Gorge and Caves has been placed on hold following its GA Sweeps Review, which can be found here. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:37, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Using the principle of WP:BOLD I have just renamed the article to Cheddar Gorge. It has bugged me for a long time that an article which is primarily about the gorge also featured the caves in the title. The article's former title was too close to the name of the commercial company which operates some of the gorge's tourist attractions – Cheddar Caves & Gorge. I will, of course, go fix the redirects that this has generated. --TimTay (talk) 09:33, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
All redirects now fixed. --TimTay (talk) 19:34, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
And it has passed it's GA review. Just to let others know in case they want to help Avon Gorge is also on GA review & still has some issues to address at Talk:Avon Gorge/GA1.— Rod talk 20:13, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Somerset WikiProject is 1 year old

It is almost exactly a year since this wikiproject started and I thought it would be a good point to review progress, debate future direction & let you know I will be reducing the time I spend on wikipedia.

WikiProject Somerset was proposed on 14 September 2007 by User:Derek Andrews with this edit [2]. Within a few days the basic project page and templates had been set up and 1778 articles had been identified as possibly relevant to the project. Of these 4 were FA standard and 5 GA.

12 months later we have a much clearer focus on the 1801 articles currently tagged for this project (quite a few having been removed as not relevant & others added) including importance ratings which are automagically included in the "current status" table on the project page.

Current status

Somerset articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 5 5 15 25
FL 14 22 36
GA 3 7 60 120 190
B 1 4 21 84 3 113
C 2 3 65 274 4 348
Start 8 96 2,375 11 2,490
Stub 5 591 14 610
List 1 16 42 59
Category 649 649
Disambig 3 3
File 22 22
Portal 120 120
Project 13 13
Template 50 50
NA 1 20 33 54
Assessed 6 28 283 3,543 890 32 4,782
Unassessed 9 9
Total 6 28 283 3,543 890 41 4,791
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 18,221 Ω = 4.83


225 new articles have been created (90 in 2007 & 135 in 2008 so far). Somerset, Bath, Exmoor and Chew Stoke have been promoted to FA, with Locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal becoming a featured list, and Grand Western Canal, History of Somerset, Roman Baths (Bath), South West Coast Path, Geology of Somerset, Reginald Fitz Jocelin, Somerset Coal Canal, Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard and Quantock Hills have been promoted to GA (with several of the FAs passing through this stage as well). 16 Somerset related articles have appeared on the front page in the DYK section.

Of the 5 articles given a top importance rating 1 is FA, 2 GA, 2 rated C. The 19 identified as high importance include; 3 FAs, 4 GAs, 3 rated as B, 1 at C and 7 at start with 1 list.

Summary table, showing state at Sept 07, Feb 08 & Sept 08

Date Number of articles
FA A GA B C Start Stub Unassessed Total Lists cleanup
Sept 2007 4 0 5 4 - 4 1 1760 1778 - -
1 Feb 2008 8 0 12 67 - 607 985 0 1691 12 -
8 Sept 2008 9 0 17 73 18 644 1027 0 1802 14 149

There is still a great deal of work to do ....1025 articles (approx 60% of the total) are stubs of which 540 are geography stubs and 72 are building and structure stubs, & the rest are mostly biography articles. 645 articles are start class.

In June 2008 a new tool was developed showing articles related to this project which require cleanup. This originally identified 177 (10%) of articles with cleanup tags of various sorts. This has been reduced to 149 by the beginning of August and has been further reduced since, however the list has not been updated recently. The worst article identified as having at least 7 cleanup tags is Severn Barrage.

Articles rated top importance eg Geology of Somerset, Economy of Somerset & Culture of Somerset need improvement and expansion, as do all of the major settlements at Category:Towns in Somerset, rivers at Category:Rivers of Somerset & the districts ie Mendip, Sedgemoor, North Somerset, South Somerset, Taunton Deane and West Somerset, which also need the Template:Infobox Settlement adding. An article on the Geography of Somerset has also been requested. There are still several requests for articles, and pointers to those needing verifying references and cleanup, on the "to do" list, and loads of other articles still need work - perhaps members of this wikiproject would like to suggest the areas they think are most important to work on?

I have really enjoyed working with all of you on these over the last year, however I now need to let you know that I will be reducing the time I spend on wikipedia. I've reached a crucial stage in my doctoral studies and, at work, we have signed a major contract for a 2 year development which I am be project managing - therefore I'm going to be a bit busy! I will still monitor my watchlist & help out where I can, but will not be as active as I have been in the first year. I would welcome any comments on the progress so far & areas for further work.— Rod talk 08:48, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, well the year seems to have gone in no time. It is worth remembering that C-class articles are quite new, I think the new class came in in June 2008. So, hopefully some of the current start-class articles will become C-class articles; and (may be) some B-class articles might get down graded - usually due to lack of in-line citations / verifiability. We need to look at our B-class articles (GA-class as well) to ensure that there is sufficient verifiability so that they remain, at least, in their current class; or even better can be raised up a class; and we need to look at which of the older Start-class articles can be regraded as C-class.Pyrotec (talk) 13:08, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Somerset

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:17, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I have nominated a series of articles which fall within the Physical geography of Somerset as a featured topic. This is a new procedure for me and no geography topic has managed to achieve this before.

The nomination which is at Wikipedia:Featured topic candidates includes:

Main page Articles
Somerset Avon Gorge - Blackdown Hills - Cheddar Gorge - Chew Valley Lake- Exmoor - Geology of Somerset - List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Avon - List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset - Mendip Hills - Quantock Hills - Somerset Levels

It will be interesting to see what happens and any comments will be at Wikipedia:Featured topic candidates/Physical geography of Somerset.— Rod talk 20:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Updated clean up listing

A new version of the clean up listing for the Somerset WikiProject has just been made available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Cleanup listing. Based on that data, 1815 articles are assigned to this project, of which 151, or 8.3%, are flagged for cleanup. If anyone fancied having a go at any of these - that would be great.— Rod talk 10:44, 13 October 2008 (UTC)


An old Somerset custom - some help requested

As the person who created the article on Punkie Night, which I see the article has now been declared orphaned. I wonder whether any one who has direct experience of this custom could help me out here? As I say on the talk page of this article, I have never lived in Somerset, but I have visited Somerset - but never at the time of Punkie Night. I believe the custom of Punkie Night to be confined to Somerset, especially Hinton St. George, so if any residents about Punkie Night know more about the custom than me, I shall be extremely grateful if it could be expanded. Many thanks, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:15, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Interesting tradition. Never heard of it before. Google shows up this link, which looks useful. --TimTay (talk) 19:26, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
This link too. --TimTay (talk) 19:27, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
And a few references in Google Books. --TimTay (talk) 19:33, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
I've added some refs to the article & linked it from the villages + Culture of Somerset so its no longer orphaned.— Rod talk 19:49, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Bridgwater and Taunton Canal nomination for GA status

Following suggestions from others, I am thinking of nominating this article for GA status. Any suggestions for improvements that might help that process gratefully received! Bob1960evens (talk) 22:01, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Appreciative comments for WikiProject Somerset

I wish to give a sincere vote of thanks to WikiProject Somerset. Last night (October 19 2008), I put in my request for help with the article on Punkie Night, and had the quickest response I have ever had after requesting help from a WikiProject group. The article is looking better now, and it seems that the WikiProject Somerset group are an active project group, extremely dedicated to contributing good work for Wikipedia. Keep up the good work, and a big round of thanks for help with article on Punkie Night. You must be one of the outstanding examples of a WikiProject group! Thank you again for your help, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:19, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Articles with multiple coordinates

Geographic articles such as canals, rivers, railways, towns etc. can benefit from two rather useful templates.

  • {{PoI}} or {{PoIgb}} allow a table of points of interest to be built, together with coordinates and appropriate comments. The latter template differs in that it also allows OSGB grid reference to be given.
  • {{kml}} displays a small infbox on the right side of the page which links to a Google map with all of the coordinates listed in the article e.g. all the points of interest listed using the {{PoI}} template.

Use the two together and you have a nice addition to an article. For an example, see what I just did to Cheddar_Valley_line. --TimTay (talk) 13:44, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks that looks great - (if a bit complex). Following recent work on providing coords there are 2 Somerset articles (that I'm aware of) which still don't have one or more coords - Galton's Canal (at ST446436) & Glastonbury Canal - if you could have a stab at them that would be great.— Rod talk 20:58, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
With reference to Glastonbury Canal, having read the descriptions, do you think this could be it on this old OS map? There is an "Old canal" at the centre of this map, very close to Meare. Will take a look at the other one in the meantime, but from the description it is hard to identify on any satellite pics or old maps. --TimTay (talk) 21:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Fits the description - for more on Galton's see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Waterways#Missing_coordinates & the next item Cheddar Canal.— Rod talk 21:37, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
OK. That's one done! See Glastonbury_Canal#Route. This site http://www.ponies.me.uk/maps/osmap.html is very useful and also fascinating. Also used old OS maps at Somerset County Council (good old Clare Gathercole!) to verify some points. --TimTay (talk) 22:24, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Help please with West Country

I could do with some help on West Country. We have a disruptive editor who keeps insisting that Bristol, Somerset, Gloucs, Wilts etc aren't part of the West Country - this is despite there being no consensus on the talk page to support his/her claim. (Talk:West_Country#are_you_taking_the_mickey.3F). The user's style is quite disruptive and insulting so rather than get into an edit war and risk 3RR I would appreciate some people from here who I know have contributed to Somerset and other south west articles to contribute to the talk page or to patrol the article to stop this blatant vandalism. --TimTay (talk) 22:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Wincanton Primary School at AfD

Wincanton Primary School has been nominated for deletion. If anyone wants to comment go to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wincanton Primary School.— Rod talk 15:22, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up Rod. Well it has gone from one line to being a start class article that is now better than many of the other school articles in the county. On that one mythical happy day when I have more time I'll take the opportunity to review all the school articles in Somerset and boost them up to a similar quality or better. --TimTay (talk) 18:22, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to your edits and those of others I don't think there is now any chance of this being deleted - it's probably even long enough for a DYK nomination (but I don't know if articles can be at both AFD & DYK at the same time). I agree that many other school articles are in a sorry state & many secondary schools don't have articles yet see Template:Schools in Somerset. Perhaps as a wikiproject we should have a schools collaboration week/month when every member of the project takes a few schools & imporves their articles - what do others think?— Rod talk 18:54, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Now that the nomination has been effectively withdrawn I have closed the AfD so the DYK nomination can go ahead. Since this is not a new page include the percentage increase in size. TerriersFan (talk) 20:29, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
It is a new page. Started 18.34 7th Dec, speedy deletion attempted & rejected, then AfD, now closed & expanded - not bad for just over 24 hrs!— Rod talk 20:43, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Education in Somerset

Rod has invited me to share some views. Though Wincanton Primary has survived, the present consensus is that secondary schools are notable but primary schools are not. The exception is those primaries that have an Ofsted Grade 1. Most primaries that come to AfD get folded into their locality. Looking at the template, I presume it is complete for secondary schools but obviously missing a whole bunch of primaries.

My suggestion of the way forward to create two new pages; Education in Somerset and List of schools in Somerset. 'Education in Somerset' can start with the material at Somerset#Education but organise it better. For its part, Somerset#Education would then benefit from the removal of the individual schools and being rewritten as a prosed summary. 'List of schools in Somerset' should, of course, include a comprehensive list of all schools. In addition, it can include a section on each of the primaries that don't merit their own page; I would consider merging in the other exisitng primary school pages (assuming none are Grade 1s). HTH. TerriersFan (talk) 20:17, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. The list of secondaries may not be complete - we keep coming across more of them. Do you have any good examples of "Schools in X" or "List of schools in X" which could be followed as examples of good practice? Is it worth dividing it by district/Unitary Authority - for example Bath and North East Somerset#Education has some stuff.— Rod talk 20:40, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
I would structure it by LEA. There aren't many good examples. Education in Aberdeen follows this approach but it is a rather poor and incomplete page. TerriersFan (talk) 21:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Elegant solution for articles with large number of references

Most articles are hard coded with a references section that uses the following: {{reflist|2}}, which creates two columns of references. On a large screen - typically greater than 1400 pixels wide, this section can be made to look better with three columns. However, you should avoid using {{reflist|3}} as this forces three columns for all users and looks terrible on a laptop with a 1024px wide screen. A much more elegant solution is to use {{reflist|colwidth=30em}}. This selects the number of columns based on the screen/browser's width. Forcing it to three columns See the solution for yourself on the Somerset article by reducing/increasing the width of your browser while looking at the references section. --TimTay (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

The downside is that on my desktop, that I run in 800x600, the references appear in a single column. TerriersFan (talk) 20:55, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Pardon my apparent ignorance but

how could "The Queen of Cathedrals" be rated as of less than "high importance" in the Somerset project? What extraordinary treasures are you hiding that are greater than Wells Cathedral? Amandajm (talk) 10:14, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Queen of Cathedrals is very much your point of view. To a non-Christian it might be looked upon as an obscene waste of money, or at best is just an old building located in a small town that calls itself a city because the cathedral is there. My personal point of view is that the article is of mid importance in Somerset - just like Bath Abbey and Glastonbury Abbey. I don't see why the cathedral should be rated by you as mid importance as a cathedral but high importance within Somerset. --TimTay (talk) 10:30, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I would suggest any changes should refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Assessment & refine those guidelines. I would see Wells Cathedral as one of the 600ish List of Grade I listed buildings in Somerset in the county, but not any higher than the rest of them.— Rod talk 11:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Rod, the guidelines could use some work. When I look it up, Landmark seems to have several interpretations:) I also note that Mendip Hills is given as an example of a mid-importance article, but is in the High category.
However, I am not sure that the Grade of a building is all that we should consider. This afterall is just one way of looking at a structure, presumably from its architectural, and perhaps historic, significance. Wells cathedral is a major tourist attraction, well known throughout the world, and as such is likely to get many more readers than say Rook Lane Chapel. It has played a major role in the history of Wells which would be a very different place today if the cathedral had never been built. Derek Andrews (talk) 12:24, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

In the light of these discussions I've made some major changes to the Importance Scale at Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset/Assessment adapted from Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/Assessment. Further edits & comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Somerset/Assessment welcome. Specific discussion of the importance rating of "The Queen of Cathedrals" (I'm assuming this means Wells Cathedral) could go to Talk:Wells Cathedral.— Rod talk 17:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

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