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Black Ball Camp location

The description of the location of Black Ball Camp in the Black Ball Camp article does not seem to match the coordinates placed in the article. Also, when I go to those coordinates in GoogleEarth I do not find anything resembling a hill fort. The article states that it is SW of Dunster. If you look SW of Dunster you will find what looks like a hill fort. The coordinates for that are 51.173930°, -3.454357°. Perhaps this is Black Ball Camp? If so, then the coordinates should be changed in the article. -- Brian

Thanks for your note, but I don't quite understand - which coords are you going to?. Within the article both the coordinates (top right) and the OS Grid ref take you to a point between Gallox Hill and an area marked in high resolution as Black Ball - so within a few metres of the coords you have given.— Rod talk 19:47, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
If you go to Google maps via the link in the OS grid reference, you end up right inside the hillfort (just to the east of its centre). The coordinates in the top right of the article are a little off, taking you a bit to the south-west of the fort, but pretty close. The coordinates are from Somerset Historic Environment Record, so we can assume it's the correct hillfort; I just doubled checked with Pastscape, run by English Heritage and they give the same grid reference. It's faint on the satellite view but it's a shadowed ring within a clearing, which is surrounded by forest east of where Whitswood Steep and Broadwood Road connect. Nev1 (talk) 20:26, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi Rod. I'm not a Wikipedia expert, just a GoogleEarth explorer. So please understand if my description does not use the correct language. ... When I look at the article, there are coordinates displayed way up at the top, just below my username. If I click on them, they take me to a location about 3 miles approximately south of Porlock and 7 miles approximately west of Dunster. I see nothing resembling a hill fort here and I don't see anything marked Gallox Hill or Black Ball. If I go 0.7 miles southwest of Dunster (the article describes Black Ball as being SW of Dunster) I find two rings that look like hill forts. One of them is at the coordinates I left in my previous note. I see nothing labeled Gallox Hill or Black Ball there, either, but I do see a Gallox Bridge.
While we're at it, I also went to the Bat's Castle article since they were claimed to be associated. When I clicked on the coordinate link at the very top right of the page it takes me to the same erroneous location as does the Black Ball coordinate link. So I looked at the second ring SW of Dunster. It is at these coordinates: 51.169475°m -3.448783°. When I turned on the Photos layer in GoogleEarth I see that two photos of Bat's Castle have been geotagged to this location.
Finally, in each of these articles there is a photo of a map along the right side. Below the map is another link that can be used to got to a map. (These links actually take you to a page where you can choose a mapping provider and I always use GoogleEarth.) Those links take me to the same erroneous location as does the coordinates link at the very top of the page.
I've done the best I can to describe what I'm seeing. It sounds like you are seeing something different. Computers are like that. Brian —Preceding undated comment added 20:41, 15 November 2010 (UTC).
Very strange & I wonder if it is something to do with google earth. I've tried the Bats Castle one as well and that takes me to a point about 500m south of Gallox Hill. Can you give the coords of the points the links take you to in Google Earth?— Rod talk 20:52, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Good question. I went to the Bat's Castle page and clicked the link. The coordinates on the page are 51.16914, -3.45029. Those are the coordinates defined by the "coord" statement in the code. Clicking on that link takes you to the GeoHack page and the GoogleEarth link on that page is http://maps.google.com/maps?&q=51.16914,-3.45029&spn=0.01,0.01&output=kml - the same coordinates as are displayed in the article. But when I click on those coordinates it takes me to in GoogleEarth are 51.165881°, -3.604980°. That is the location south of Porlock. Apparently those coordinates were processed through GoogleMaps into a .kml file for download to GoogleEarth and something is going haywire.
Below the map there are some other locating links. I don't usually use those and in fact if I click on the little earth icon a gray box just pops up. (That used to work, don't know what happened, but I don't really care as long as the problem is just on my computer since I don't use it.) Next to the little earth icon is a link that says "SS987421". I don't know what that means, but it is apparently another locating link. When I click it I go to GeoHack again and the GoogleEarth link there is http://maps.google.com/maps?&q=51.1696,-3.449594&spn=0.025,0.025&output=kml. If I click on that link it takes me to the location south of Porlock, but if I copy the link and then cut out just the lat/lon coordinates and plug them directly in to GoogleEarth it takes me to the correct location of Bat's Castle.
I know that we started off talking about the Black Ball Camp article, and I've now switched to Bat's Cave. Sorry, they both go to the same erroneous location and Bat's Cave is the one I have open at the moment.
As I said before, I'm not a Wikipedia expert. I'll also add that I'm not a geotagging expert, either. But it looks to me like Google Maps is changing the location at some point after I click the link. It doesn't look like a problem with your article and I now know for sure where both Bat's Castle and Black Ball Camp are, so I don't need to pursue this further unless you wish to. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FatBear1 (talk • contribs) 22:40, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Free Event: Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia, Talks in Bristol

Jimmy Wales is coming to talk at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol on 13 Jan 2011 as part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas. Details on this Connecting Bristol page. Maybe an opportunity for the 2nd Bristol wiki meetup?— Rod talk 09:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

AfD for Leisure Dome (Weston-super-Mare)

I have nominated Leisure Dome (Weston-super-Mare) for deletion (AfD link). I previously had it speedily-deleted as spam, but after an appeal from the author it was reinstated and I was advised that if I still had problems I should take it to AfD. My problem is essentially that this is a non-existent project. It hasn't been submitted to the planning authorities so it is nothing more than an idea at the moment. The original article was very spammy, and I suspect that there was some conflict of interest involved in its creation. I have toned down its promotional nature but fundamentally, based on the principles of WP:NOTCRYSTAL, I think it is too soon to have an article about it. Of course, others here in the wikiproject may have different ideas so I would encourage you to visit the AfD and make your feelings for or against deletion known. --Simple Bob (talk) 15:43, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Glastonbury Thorn

The Glastonbury Thorn was chopped down by vandals last night (see Daily Mail, Independent, BBC, Guardian & lots more). Currently Glastonbury Thorn redirects to Glastonbury Abbey#Glastonbury Thorn with a pic of an old tree in the Abbey Grounds. There is a pic on Geograph. Do others think it is worth doing a separate article?}— Rod talk 20:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Wookey Station and Wookey railway station

Two articles relevant to this WikiProject, Wookey Station and Wookey railway station, have been proposed for merge. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:39, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Two other merger proposals

In addition to the merger proposal described above there are two others within the scope of this project which editors may wish to comment on:

All contributions welcome.— Rod talk 19:50, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Photos of Stokeleigh Camp

Does anyone have any photos of Stokeleigh Camp in Leigh Woods? Its a new article I've started but I can't find any suitable images of the ramparts or anything.— Rod talk 17:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

There are lots of free-to-reuse piccies of Leigh Woods on flickr - use this search. However, I wouldn't mind betting that this picture is something to do with Stokeleigh having seen photos of other iron age forts. Shame it isn't geotagged. Also check out the next and next-but-two in the same photostream. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 18:22, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. this picture appears to show the 2nd and third ramparts & it would be great to have that one - however I'm not familiar with getting photos from flickr into commons & this one says "Request to license ChodHound's photos via Getty Images" so I'm not sure if we can use it or how?— Rod talk 18:38, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
The licence is CC BY-SA 2.0 which is compatible. I'll upload it for you. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 19:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
OK, here it is - File:Stokeleigh Camp in Leigh Woods.jpg. For future reference any Flickr image with CC-BY-2.0 or CC-BY-SA-2.0 licence is eligible for upload to Wikimedia Commons. If you use the search URL I specified above then it will only give you images that are eligible for upload. If you want to do things manually, click "Search" on Flickr, then "Advance" and ensure that you tick all the Creative Commons boxes so you only choose images which allow derivative work and allow commercial re-use. Ping me if you need any help. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 19:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Brilliant thanks - if you can find any more for those which don't have pics at List of hill forts and ancient settlements in Somerset that would be really great.— Rod talk 19:52, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Brent Knoll split

Using WP:BOLD I just split Brent Knoll into two separate articles. Brent Knoll is about the hill. Brent Knoll (village) is about the village of the same name, formerly called South Brent, that sits on the southern edge of the hill. I hope you agree with what I have done, and would appreciate your attention to the hill article - especially the geology bit which I'm weak on. I fixed some of the more obvious links in other articles to the village. Apologies if I have missed any, I will look again soon and try to fix. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 22:20, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup of members list

I'm doing some housekeeping tasks and have been looking at the membership list for this project. I have sent a message to all those listed who have not edited wikipedia for more than 6 months (whether Somerset related or not) asking if they still want to be included. This applies to: User:Lethesl, User:Dbown100, User:TimTay, User:Vox Humana 8', User:Kkarma, User:JR Watchet, User:MartinWheeler and User:Ron519098. If they have not responded in the next month or so I will delete them from the list - does this approach seem reasonable to everyone?— Rod talk 09:19, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

This sounds sensible to me. Derek Andrews (talk) 13:07, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Done.— Rod talk 10:35, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Suitability of Digital Digging as a reference

I suggest that digitaldigging.co.uk is not a suitable reference for our hill fort articles. Looking at it, it is just a fancy bit of web presentation together with some copy/pasted information from other sources. If you take Brent Knoll Camp, reference number 11 is to Digital Digging, but the section referenced is merely a copy/paste from Somerset HER, with no attempt to analyse or interpret the source - just copy it. As such I would propose that all references to Digital Digging should be removed from articles within the scope of this project and replaced with the correct source (which in most cases will be the appropriate section on Somerset HER) What do others think? --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 19:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that using the Somerset Historic Environment Record is better where possible. It is the official original source material & is used to support applications for Scheduled Ancient Monument status. The other place to look is Pastscape which is published by English Heritage and often (but not always) has the SHER data + other material related to ancient hillforts etc.— Rod talk 20:03, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Somerset Levels

Somerset Levels has been one of this projects good articles since 2007 & I've always meant to get it up to FA standard. I've recently fixed all the broken references etc & have now put it up at peer review. Would anyone be willing to take a look at the article and help improve it?— Rod talk 19:24, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm working on it, as and when time permits. Pyrotec (talk) 20:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Great - thanks for all your edits. As you've probably spotted the peer review has now closed and it is nominated for FA at FAC.— Rod talk 20:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Somerset

Portal:Somerset has been nominated at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Somerset since November and hasn't received many comments. Would you be willing to take a look and comment on whether you feel it meets the Featured portal criteria?— Rod talk 20:34, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Somerset has now been promoted to featured status.— Rod talk 09:03, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Help with cleanup list please

When a new bot was introduced back in November 2010 to identify articles within the remit of wikiprojects which needed various cleanup, this project had approx 350 articles included. This has now been significantly reduced and now includes around 1% (25) of our 2400 articles are included. This has started to rise again in the last couple of weeks and I'd like to ask for some help with some of them.

Any help with any of the above would be great and you can see the list, which changes weekly, for yourself here

The main thing I'd like to ask for help with is proposed merges. I don't feel I can do these without some sort of consensus therefore could you comment on each of these:

Any help with any of the above (& ongoing issues) appreciated. We will never get the list of articles needing cleanup to zero but it would be nice to get close.— Rod talk 11:18, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I regularly do a lot of work cleaning up backlogs. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:04, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Skull cups - fodder for a number of articles

Perhaps this and this about skull cups provide useful information for a number of Somerset articles e.g. History of Somerset, Cheddar and/or Cheddar Gorge, and Gough's Cave. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 09:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

There are lots more sources - all based on this from the Natural History Museum - the full paper is on PLOS (full text open access). I will not be able to do anything on this until this evening, if no one else has done anything by then I will try to put something together.— Rod talk 09:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I've asked about using the images on wp here.— Rod talk 09:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
CC-BY, regardless of version (e.g. 2.0/2.5/3.0) is a compatible licence so we are free to use both the images and the text of the article. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 10:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Butlins Minehead - article name

Any interested parties are invited to comment at Talk:Minehead_(holiday_camp)#Requested_move where I am suggesting that the article should be renamed, per WP:COMMONNAME to "Butlins Minehead". --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 15:48, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:Somerset is three and a half years old

Its now approximately 42 months since WikiProject Somerset was created and, as project veterans will know, it has become my custom to do a review every 6 months. Previous reviews are available: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36 months.

WikiProject Somerset was proposed on 14 September 2007 by User:Derek Andrews with this edit. 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.

Three and a half years later we have a much clearer focus on the 2598 articles currently tagged for this project (quite a few having been removed as not relevant, hamlets merged into their parishes & others added) including importance ratings which are automagically included in the "current status" table on the project page.

In the last six months we have gained several new members and those inactive for over 6 months removed from the list. Over 50 new articles have been started, with a few of them including Batman rapist, Battlegore Burial Chamber, Brent Knoll Camp, Burnett, Somerset, Burnham Area Rescue Boat, Burnham-on-Sea Lifeboat Station, Church of Saint Andrew, High Ham, Drove Cottage Henge, Ham Hill Hillfort, Herbie Hewett, List of Somerset cricket captains, Meare Lake Village, Old Orchard Street Theatre, RAF Weston-super-Mare, Taunton Town F.C. and Weston-super-Mare Tramways making it onto the front page in the Did You Know section.

Robert Burnell has become a featured article, while List of churches preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust in South West England became a featured list. Herbie Hewett and Somerset Levels are currently nominated for FA. Articles which achieved Good article status include: Berhtwald, Crewkerne, Cricket at the 1900 Summer Olympics, Herbie Hewett, Minehead and Worlebury Camp meaning we now have 50 GAs. William Arnold (settler) and Cheddar are currently nominated for GA. Portal:Somerset has also achieved featured portal status.

There have been improvements to a range of other articles, including lots moving from stub to start or C, as shown in the table below:

Summary table, showing state at Sept 07, Feb 08, Sept 08, March 09, Sept 09, March 10, Sept 10 and March 11

Date Number of articles
FA FL A GA B C Start Stub Unassessed Total Lists cleanup
Sept 2007 1 3 0 5 4 - 4 1 1760 1778 - -
1 Feb 2008 5 3 0 12 67 - 607 985 0 1691 12 -
8 Sept 2008 6 3 0 17 73 18 644 1027 0 1802 14 149
1 Mar 2009 8 3 0 21 66 56 1005 608 0 1794 27 217
1 Sept 2009 8 9 0 24 63 77 1099 850 0 2153 23 122
1 Mar 2010 8 11 0 29 64 98 1118 904 0 2410 22 30
1 Sept 2010 10 13 0 41 68 108 1138 926 0 2484 23 74
1 Mar 2011 11 14 0 50 70 144 1320 795 0 2597 27 38

In the summary table above class C was only introduced in autumn 2008.

The bot which previously provided the cleanup listing ceased working early in 2010. When a new bot was introduced in November 2010, this project had approx 350 articles included. This has now been significantly reduced and now includes around 1.5% (36) of our articles.

  • There are five articles (Bristol Airport, Children's Hospice South West, Culverhay School, Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance and The Kings of Wessex School) which contain "potentially dated statements". These are generally about current campaigns or pending changes and can probably not be resolved. NB the easiest way to find where they occur is to edit the article concerned and look for "{{As of" as these do not show up if just reading the article.
  • Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury contains various problems: Accuracy disputes, NPOV disputes and unsourced statements — this has been worked on over the last couple of months by editors with expertise in medieval nobility, but not all issues are yet resolved see Talk
  • Naish Priory has lots of unsourced statements and some duplication between sections
  • 14 incomplete lists are now included which is putting up the total number

The cleanup list, which is updated weekly is available here.

Articles rated top importance eg Geology of Somerset, Economy of Somerset & Culture of Somerset still need improvement and expansion. There are 142 articles still needing photographs (shown at: Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Somerset) so if anyone has a digital camera and time to visited these sites that would be useful. There are still several requests for articles, on the "to do" list, and loads of other articles still need work.

This is one of the most active projects nationally, (as shown in the table drawn up as part of the review of WikiProject England) and we are doing quite well in achieving the projects aims. However I would welcome any comments on the progress of this wikiproject so far & areas or priorities for further work.

WP Somerset has been scheduled for an interview in May for Signpost so we are likely to be asked questions in preparation for this late April/Early May.

I would welcome discussion of future priorities for the project and ideas for future collaborations.— Rod talk 16:59, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Hamlets and smaller settlements being merged

Inglesbatch is just the one of many Somerset articles being merged into other articles, but this puzzles me because a lot of hamlets do not come accross as just being 'places with names written on them', but rather they count as being settlements and do require their own importance for their own article. I understand how great and powerful Somerset is, but it confuses me on why smaller settlements are being merged into their civil parishes. This draws up an interesting question: is there any need for all this merging?

A hamlet is more than a few buildings according to WP:UKCITIES, to quote this: Writing about the smallest of settlements in the UK can be difficult due to the lack of source material, especially when compared with the country's major metropolises. But I think this would be fine if every settlement in Somerset were to be created because it doesn't have to be a stub, it can contain a lot of basic information if you make the most out of it.

There had already been a recent discussion about this on the talk page of WikiProject UK geography, but I thought it would be best to spring it up on WikiProject Somerset's talk page because Somerset is the only county I have known to have all their smaller settlements merged into civil parishes. Would it be best if smaller settlements (or anything else) no matter great or small should have their own recognition for their own articles? Jaguar (talk) 14:39, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I have been advocating merging articles on hamlets and very small villages for a long time, as it seems to me to be better to have a smaller number of more substantial articles than lots of tiny stubs which don't really tell the reader very much.
To finish the quote from WP:UKCITIES "some of the UK's smallest settlements may form part of a civil parish or council ward. Country hamlets and villages may mention significant places that might not be considered part of the village, but which lie within the parish or ward. Hamlets that are within another parish or council ward could have their own articles, but if there is no more than a couple of paragraphs that could be said about the hamlet it may be best practice to merge the articles."
Population data etc from the census is only reported down to parish (or electoral ward) level and other significant content eg governance, listed buildings etc etc is all done at the same level.
Somerset does have some hamlets or villages which are smaller than parishes with their own articles, but only where they have significant content, supported by reliable sources, which is unique to that place and means that the article can be more than a stub.— Rod talk 15:10, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the crunch issue here is WP:N. If it's notable, it can have its own page. If no more than a couple of paragraphs could be said about a hamlet, then it's probably not notable and it seems harmless for it to become part of a parent article, with suitable redirects left in place... although in my experience few English hamlets would be caught by that limitation ("no more than a couple of paragraphs could be said"). If a hamlet is merged for now, I suggest we keep an open mind about its developing its own page later, especially if it comes to take up a lot of space. Moonraker2 (talk) 08:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

WikiConference UK 2011 16 April 2011: Watershed Bristol

If you missed the Wikibanner, full details of the above at {http://wikiconferenceuk2011.eventbrite.com/} Jezhotwells (talk) 00:42, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Category:Villages in Somerset

Could I ask for some help or comments on Category:Villages in Somerset. Over the last few days, inspired by the work of User:Trident13 and User:Jaguar, the 400+ articles in this category have been moved into the relevant sub categories ie: Category:Villages in Bath and North East Somerset, Category:Villages in Mendip, Category:Villages in North Somerset, Category:Villages in Sedgemoor, Category:Villages in South Somerset, Category:Villages in Taunton Deane and Category:Villages in West Somerset. There are still 9 articles in the parent cat, most of which are either parishes containing one or more villages or suburbs of larger towns and I am unsure whether village in X applies. The others are Bruton which says town rather than village in the article, so I am unsure and Northover which covers more than 1 village!. Any edits or advice appreciated.— Rod talk 20:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that solving one article at a time would help rid of the Category:Villages in Somerset (obviously some articles in the category need a sorting out!).
  • Secondly, it hasn't been described what Northover is - could it be the name of a civil parishes are are they two seperate villages with the same name? Could they be split into two different articles or be merged into a civil parish article? I know it might sound confusing but if Northover are a name of a few villages scattered in the area, they could be either merged or split with the Category:Villages in South Somerset.
  • We could do a separate article for the village but (as with others in a similar position) it was created as part of getting all civil parishes in Somerset to have an article & as we've discussed elsewhere most data (poulation etc) is only down to civil parish level.— Rod talk 07:53, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

 Done Thanks to everyone for input all issues now resolved..

Should we do a similar process for the 412 articles at Category:Civil parishes in Somerset?— Rod talk 09:58, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm up for it. Would this mean that a category for all of Somerset's districts would have to be created again such as Category:Civil parishes in South Somerset, Category:Civil parishes in Taunton Deane and so on? Jaguar (talk) 12:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
It seems a lot of work for little point IMHO, but if you're up for it I won't object. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 13:03, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
This arose because of discussions about the Unitary Authority status of BANES (which then led to N.Somerset) as opposed to the 5 districts which fall within the area also covered by Somerset County Council. It all kicked off with a deletion proposal at Category talk:Villages in Bath and North East Somerset & I think may reflect wider discussions about ceremonial counties v UAs. If it is to be done (& there may be other Somerset cats which would benefit from the same approach) it would need 7 subcats in the same way villages have been arranged.— Rod talk 13:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Maybe we could start doing this for other counties outside Somerset? I'm up for it. The whole of England is on my to do list. Jaguar (talk) 11:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
I would consult with other county/regional projects before taking any action - perhaps WP:UKGEO would be the place to start a discussion for those outside Somerset.— Rod talk 11:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

WP Somerset in the Signpost

"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject Somerset for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 22:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Is everybody supposed to reply? Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Yep the idea is to get input from as many active members as possible.— Rod talk 07:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
OK! Thanks! Reaper Eternal (talk) 02:27, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
For those who have not yet seen up the report of the "interviews" is now available at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-04-25/WikiProject report.— Rod talk 12:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Removal of climate section from several articles

CLW (talk · contribs) just removed the climate section from several Somerset settlement articles. Rodw (talk · contribs) disagreed, and I also strongly disagree with this action so using WP:BRD (bold, revert, discuss), he/she was bold, I reverted, now let's discuss. I have invited CLW to discuss the deltions here on this talk page. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 08:22, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I have no comment on these specific removals, but I have done this previously to a hamlet article (see Talk:Inglesbatch#Climate section). I think "climate" is something that applies to a reasonably broad geographic area, although some more local variations in weather might be notable. Therefore I think most settlement articles can have a sentence or two linking to Somerset#Climate, with local variations also noted. I feel a lengthy paragraph containing nothing specific to the settlement but only general info about the climate of Somerset doesn't need to be repeated in every Somerset location article, that's what wikilinks are for.--Pontificalibus (talk) 08:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
This was added because WP:UKCITIES recomends that a climate section should be included and it is very similar in areas which are geographically very close to each other. We should not expect readers (who may be from very different parts of the world) to click on Somerset then South West England then Climate of south-west England to find out this information. Several of the articles have passed GA & FA assessments with this information included without any objection.— Rod talk 08:50, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
WP:UKCITIES says "A note/section on the settlement's climate (where figures are available)". I think we need to be careful about what we include. The real problem I see is that the only hard climate data we have comes from one source, Yeovilton, and that is now ten years out of date. I'm no expert on climate, but common sense says that taking data with three figure accuracy and applying it to a location twenty miles away is a bit of a stretch. Proximity to the coast, elevation, liklihood of fog, rainshadows and a number of other factors are going to come into play, and unless we have any citeable data for a specific location, I think it is mis-leading to present a bunch of authoritative numbers. I don't see the problem with merely referring readers directly to Climate of south-west England. This then makes the reader aware that it is not specific to a particular location. I'm just looking at Godney, and I think it would be enough to say that "Godney has a temperate climate similar to the rest of south-west England." What is there now is out of balance with the rest of the article, and really we have no evidence, one way or the other, to say much else. -- Derek Andrews (talk) 12:20, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Climate of south-west England is not the same as the climate of the villages in Somerset that had this section added. They would (or should?) have been based on Yeovilton. The south-west article makes it clear that there are variations across the very large south west region, as there are within Somerset itself. For that reason a simple entry such as the one you suggest isn't appropriate, although something that is shorter than the current one with a link to the south-west article might suffice. Frankly though I'm with Rod. I don't see what is wrong with what we have now given how many times it has been through GA/FA in different articles. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 14:19, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Bob, forgive me if I am misinterpreting your argument, but I think it goes like "there are variations in climate across the region, therefore each settlement needs its own climate section". I wouldn't disagree with that, but where is the data that we can cite? -- Derek Andrews (talk) 15:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
I think it also worth considering that any logic in favour of using detailed information on climate could also be extended to make a case for adding generalized content from other articles such as Economy of Somerset, Geography of Somerset, Geology of Somerset, History of Somerset, Somerset Levels etc. Would this really be an improvement? Derek Andrews (talk) 16:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Kennet and Avon Canal

The Kennet and Avon Canal article, which is tagged as being of interest to this project, has been a Good Article since 2006. A few editors have recently been expanding and improving this article in an attempt to get it up to Featured Article standard. Could you take a look and help to improve the article?— Rod talk 13:28, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but I'll take a look at it. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:01, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
The article has now been under review at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Kennet and Avon Canal/archive2 for some time but has not received many comments. I am worried that it will be archived soon unless more comments are received, therefore can I ask anyone interested to participate in the review.— Rod talk 19:19, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Oops! Forgot about this one! I'll take a look at the FAC right now! Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:56, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

River Parrett on front page 7 July

I've just found out that River Parrett will be on the front page of wikipedia on 7 July. Any help beforehand with ensuring it shows off our best work and then watching it on the day for vandalism etc would be great.— Rod talk 16:49, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Somerset & TFA

Following the appearance of River Parrett as Today's Featured Article (TFA) on 7 July (thanks for help with responding to issues raised on the day), I have just been informed that Somerset, which was promoted to FA in 2008, has been nominated for TFA. Any help with ensuring it still provides an example of our best work would be appreciated.— Rod talk 07:23, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the work on this so far - it is scheduled for the front page on 13 July.— Rod talk 06:56, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Issues on the cleanup listing

I've been looking again at the Cleanup listing for this project and have dealt with some of problems identified, but could I ask others to take a look and specifically if anyone is willing/able to address some of the problems:

There are also several articles listed as having: incomplete lists, unsourced statements, needing additional references, containing potentially dated statements or needing disambiguation but these may be long term issues. Any help with any of them appreciated.— Rod talk 20:24, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Museum of Somerset reopens 29 Sept ?collaboration

The Somerset County Museum (now Museum of Somerset) reopens on Thurs 29 Sept 2011 at Taunton Castle (owned by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society). Does anyone live close enough to visit and take pictures or have interest in expanding and updating those articles? Would it also be worth contacting the managers/curators of the museum to try to arrange some sort of collaboration with this project? This has been done with several museums (see Wikimedia UK Cultural partnership pages) including the British Museum Backstage pass, Derby Backstage pass etc. This are mutually beneficial enabling the improvement of wikipedia articles about items in the museums collections and helps with outreach activities of the relevant museums. If some sort of day visit and/or collaboration with museum staff could be organised would people be interested in participating?— Rod talk 19:41, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Since posting this message I have received an off wiki message from one of the museum staff, so some sort of development/collaboration may be a possibility.— Rod talk 09:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Would this lead onto some sort of meet up like the one in Bristol that happened earlier this year? Jaguar (talk) 20:06, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Quite possibly. If it were a daytime meeting/visit with museum staff we could certainly meet in a local hostelry afterwards. WP Somerset has never (to my knowledge) had a meet up so this should be possible if enough people are interested - we could even do it without the museum event.— Rod talk 20:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
My summer holiday involved a visit to the National Railway Museum to discuss a similar link up - there's a whole lot of this going on under the Wiki "GLAM" project. I'll happily help out in Taunton (I've been looking forward to the reopenin for ages now!) Geof Sheppard (talk) 13:20, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup, stubs & mergers

Recently I have been doing some work on this projects cleanup listing and stubs (particularly geography stubs and building and structure stubs) any help with these would be appreciated. In particular can I ask people to comment on the discussions about mergers of some hamlets (often no more than a couple of houses and no specific reliable sources):

Comments appreciated.— Rod talk 09:40, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

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