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Archive 1Archive 2

Project template: Additional assessment categories

I have modified the Template:WikiProject Worcestershire to include categories Category:Worcestershire articles needing attention and Category:Worcestershire articles needing infoboxes - this should automatically generate lists on those category pages; the default settings are 'no'. I wish I had known about this feature earlier, it will make the comments on the project's page at special 'to do' largely redundant.
However, any articles in need of very serious/urgent treatment (e.g. articles that I or someone has tagged as PROD, AfD, Merge, blatant POV, or blatant NOT, will be put on the priority to do lists on the project front page.--Kudpung (talk) 01:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Invite other editors to improve articles

Here's a banner that we can place on other editors'/contributors' talk pages (The editor's name will change automatically, just change the link to the article):

Thanks for joining...

Here's a message for new member talk pages thanking them for joining the project:

You might want to tweak that template, it's using the Greater Manchester coat of arms! Nev1 (talk) 13:00, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks - that's what comes from copying and pasting, and using Firefox on Mac - a combination that won't display images from Wiki pages!--Kudpung (talk) 15:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Good luck with getting the project up and running and recruiting members. You may want to go to WP:BOTR (bot requests) to ask someone to tag Worcestershire related articles. If you're not sure how it's done, leave a note on the talk pages of WikiProjects UK Geography or England and it's members will try to help. Nev1 (talk) 15:25, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

DELETION - places with names...

I'm in a bit of a quandry: As I work through all the Worcs stubs, I come across some that have been PRODed and AfD'd for lack of notability. The paradox is that it appears that the Wiki policy is to create a stub for every square metre of land that has a name.
Can someone come up with an official line on this please? Otherwise I'll have to start by creating a page for every 2-street housing estate in the Barnards Green & Poolbrook area! --Kudpung (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to be butting in again as I'm not a member and don't know much about the area. WikiProject UK Geography hasn't got a notability guideline, but a de facto policy some projects have adopted (such as the Cheshire WikiProject) is that in rural areas such as civil parishes, settlements which are borderline notable or whose entries are likely to be permanently stubs because there's so little to say should be redirected to the civil parish. This could be extended to areas of towns and cities etc and is something this project might need to decide for itself. Changing the articles in question into redirects or merging them would probably be preferable to deleting them. Nev1 (talk) 15:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
As a note, I'm against the idea of focussing on the civil parishes rather than the villages themselves, the villages are more historically important. I've already had to revert several moves/edits in the past from one editor who decided that little-known civil parishes are more important. Jenuk1985 | Talk 15:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I think with one or two sentence "perma-stubs" we have to be practical; they're not a huge benefit to the reader and can easily be dealt with within another article such as, but not necessarily, a civil parish. For more developed articles on villages etc and when there are sources available they should of course have their own aritlce. Nev1 (talk) 22:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes#Places suggests the common outcome of deletion discussions is "Cities and villages are acceptable, regardless of size, so long as their existence can be verified through a reliable source" Jenuk1985 | Talk 15:45, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

This discussion may be of interest. Nev1 (talk) 22:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to thank Nev1 again for his input here. I followed his links and found some more - in WP one cannot sometimes see the woods for the trees. There has been a lot of good debate and this seems to be the (more or less) official policy: Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements:

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. 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.

I'm not especially focusing on the CPs, but they are a starting point because their parish council websites are the first source that will mention the villages and hamlets they group. I'll plod on through the 800 or so places on the list and tag any possible mergers based on common sense following the help we have been given. That won't mean that I personally want them merged - it just means we should look at them collectively and reach a consensus.--Kudpung (talk) 11:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
There's been some chat on user talk pages about this but as I think its best to keep it together, I'm copying this from RHaworth:

"I have a personal policy that English villages should be written up at the civil parish level and was preparing to redirect Queenhill and Holdfast, Worcestershire to Longdon. But I cannot find the official name for the parish. The council website is no help..." RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 18:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I still don't really care either way, but I do think the Guideline in the box above sums it up rather nicely - which may mean discussing individual occurrences rather than unilateral action. --Kudpung (talk) 21:34, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I've just stumbled on more discussions about the notability of small places with unofficial names, and the Cities Project wanting evry place listed as a 'city'. It would seem that there are varying opinions but it would help our work on Worcs if we could establish a firm pattern:

Shortcut

Hello everyone. I see on the main Project page that the shortcut is given as "WP-Worcs", but the convention for these things is that the names are of the form "WP:ALLCAPSNAME". For example, we already have the likes of WP:CHES, WP:HERTS and WP:NOTTS. Any objection to making our own shortcut WP:WORCS? Loganberry (Talk) 13:53, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no objections. I wasn't aware of such a convention anyway. We just need to be sure that the template works - and that the shortcut in the Project template works too - it's still red.--Kudpung (talk) 20:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I've set up the shortcuts: WP:WORCS to the project page and WT:WORCS to the project talk page. It's not important and if anyone raises objections I'll happily remove them. I think the idea is they're useful as a shorthand for conversations and it saves writing out the entire name of the project when searching for it. Nev1 (talk) 21:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks; that's great. I find myself using these shortcuts a lot (eg WP:CRIC for WikiProject Cricket), especially when leaving messages on User talk pages, so it's very handy to have this available. Loganberry (Talk) 11:12, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Reference materials via library membership

Just thought I'd remind any editors who are members of Worcestershire County Libraries that a number of reference works are available free of charge via their membership, including the Times archive up to 1985. Most (but not all) of these works are also available to them from home via their library ticket numbers. They're available via this Worcestershire hub page. Other libraries may well have similar arrangements, but naturally the Worcs one seems most relevant to us! Loganberry (Talk) 11:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. I'm coming back to Europe for a month soon so I'll certainly be squatting the reading room at Malvern library for several hours - and pestering the people in the council house. --Kudpung (talk) 12:12, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe its me...

I'm having a discussion with user Kudpung regarding the actions at Hindlip Hall that led up to the martyrdoms at Red Hill, Worcester and the later beatifications. User Kudpungs has deleted this part of the Halls story apart from a reference to a "gunpowder plot event" in the lede. (This certainly breaks WP policy). Its your county. You decide. But can someone offer arbitration as I can't remember the last time someone took referenced material out of a Start class article that had already been peer reviewed (by DYK admins); placed that material in their own Sandbox and left the remaining article as a stub. I have always tried to do the exact opposite. I'm told its to avoid duplication, but these events are not ducumented at all in the Gunpowder Plot articles. Anyone care to be Solomon? Victuallers (talk) 14:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

- Or maybe it's me... but I think if we stick to the facts, the other members of the Worcs project may get a clearer picture:
  1. No previous discussions concerning this article.
  2. No discussion has taken place with me about Red Hill martyrdoms or beatifications, and if it had, I would have insisted that they too belong in an article about English history, and not in an article that exists essentially to describe an English manor house.
  3. No previous rating template.
  4. No article in this discussion has been reduced to a stub.
  5. Removal of a history of the Gunpowder Plot that accounted for 75% of the article, although the G.Plot has its own article.
  6. Preservation of removed material (according to WP Guidlines) in a user space for re editing and inserting into the article it belongs in.
  7. As you so neatly explain: these items are not documented whre they should be, so you are welcome, as was my intention, to go here: User:Kudpung/gunpowder (from Hindlip) edit it, and put it where it belongs.
    In my opinion, Hindlip Hall (I come from 8 miles away) has its own history, and does not need to be used as an extension platform for general English history.
    I may of course be completely wrong in all this... --Kudpung (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
It seems as if this has been resolved on another talk page.--Kudpung (talk) 18:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Infoboxes

All village articles should now have infoboxes. Jenuk1985 | Talk 23:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Category: History by location.

Although it now has 51 entries, I do not understand why the category was created; the history of a place seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable section for a main article, and that's where I would expect to find it. Would not creating separate History articles for every place just makes more work, and possible duplication?--Kudpung (talk) 01:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Some places, such as large towns and cities, have a detailed history that is best covered in their own article and prevents the history section from dominating the main article on a place. For example, if the history of Manchester article was inserted into the main Manchester article it would take up too much space. Nev1 (talk) 01:55, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree with your point, Nev. However my comment was precipitated on finding a stub about a town, and yet another stub about its history. I felt that perhaps merging them would at least make one start-class article.--Kudpung (talk) 05:34, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Really? That does seem like overkill. In those cases, I'd say it's safe to merge the history of... article back into the main article. Nev1 (talk) 11:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Article statistics

I thought the members of this project might like to see the breakdown of its articles by quality, ranging from stub-class to Good Articles.

Index · Statistics · Log

Worcestershire articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 1 1 4 6
FL 1 1
GA 4 3 6 13
B 2 5 14 14 1 36
C 1 5 21 76 3 106
Start 16 51 395 35 497
Stub 6 579 19 604
List 3 7 29 39
NA 1 1 22 340 364
Assessed 3 35 104 1,126 340 58 1,666
Unassessed 3 10 13
Total 3 35 104 1,129 340 68 1,679
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 6,667 Ω = 5.28


Anyone can rate articles up to B-class, but higher ratings such as Good Articles require submitting the article to a review process. Featured Articles are the best content that wikipedia has to offer, and GAs are just below that standard although still require good referencing and a broad coverage of the topic. FAs can be difficult and much more time consuming to write than Good Articles because of the stricter criteria, but GAs are certainly something to aim for, so it's worth bearing this in mind when expanding an article. In short, the Good Article critera are that an article should be:

  1. Well-written
  2. Factually accurate and verifiable (per WP:V, everything that could be challenged should be sourced)
  3. Broad in its coverage (no important aspects are left out)
  4. Neutral (it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias)
  5. Stable (there are no edit wars)
  6. Illustrated, if possible, by images

More details on the criteria can be found here. Nev1 (talk) 17:21, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Nev - that's extremely helpful. I'm about 1/2 way through (groan) putting project banners on all the Worcs article, so we'll need it again in a few weeks.--Kudpung (talk) 15:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
The table will update automatically every few days as instead of copying the contents of the table to this page I've transcluded the source which is updated by a bot every so often. It would be interesting to see the overall results once all the tagging is done though. Nev1 (talk) 15:57, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Whooo I have the only Worcs GA :P Sorry, I'll shut up now! Jenuk1985 | Talk 17:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm hoping to be close on your heels soon with my home town - although it's far from all my own work :) --Kudpung (talk) 15:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Which article is it? Perhaps people here could help, maybe with sourcing a particular section they're interested in or making suggestions? I've had experience writing a lot of demography and economy sections for articles and should be able to throw together some statistics for the article. Nev1 (talk) 15:57, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Malvern, Worcestershire. Most of the project members have lent a hand where they could. All I'm really looking for to complete it now are climate and population tables. Be great if you could come up with something. Population tables are likely to be difficult as the town, district, and parish boundaries have changed so often that there are no standard criteria for objective reporting. --Kudpung (talk) 09:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, you've picked a tough one! The sources I usually use are spreadsheets available from the statistics.gov.uk website with the results of the 2001 census. Unfortunately it doesn't have data for Malvern (not every settlement is covered, for example the tiny villages are included in their local parish stats) but Great Malvern is. They're very close to each other, but I'm assuming they are separate places. That needs to be clarified as there's currently a merge tag on both articles. If Malvern is a part of Greater Malvern (I'm not familiar with either place I'm afraid), I could make a demography section with the stats for Great Malvern with the caveat that the details for Malvern won't be the same, but are likely to be similar. Nev1 (talk) 01:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I guessed you'd say that! It is tough. Not least because a lot of the discussion was spread over several Malvern related talk pages (one of the main reasons why I called the Worcestershire project into being). I put those merge tags on the articles myself, and GyroMagician and I seem to have agreed on the best way to go for the time being. FYI: neither Great Malvern, nor Malvern, have formal boundaries as such, and neither of them is the name of a civil parish or a ward. Great Malvern is the traditional town center, but ward 6 of the Malvern District Council covers practically the entire area we locals (and most people) just call Malvern, and if the Town council wards cover the same area as MHDC ward 6, those are likely to be the demog stats. However, for the purpose of an encyclopedia, the major article has to be Malvern, Worcestershire, with Great Malvern pruned down to strict, basic, town centre essentials, and get the same treatment as, say, Malvern Link. The councilors seem to pick and choose whatever seems to siut them. Bottom line is that 'Great Malvern' could cover the entire parish for the council, but for the local population that would be a very inacurate surmise. The town centre ward is in fact called 'Priory' ! To get the full picture, you would need to read both articles closely and see how I have tried to expalin it all. There is still someobvious duplication of content in both articles, but as I said, I'm trying to shift most of it into the 'Malvern, Worcestershire' article, so that readers get the global picture.--Kudpung (talk) 14:48, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, what I think I'll do is use the stats here to make a section. The data statistics.gov provides for civil parishes is nowhere near as detailed as wards or urban areas, so rather than a section like in Partington, Greater Manchester#Demography, the best I can manage is something like Little Bollington#Demography. Would that be ok? I don't think there are enough stats on statistics.gov to make an economy section I'm afraid. Nev1 (talk) 20:15, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I think that sounds fine. I wouldn't worry too much about economy - there isn't much. Based on some national statistics, Malvern has a high third-age population. The few significant factories, commerces, and employers are mentioned in the text.--Kudpung (talk) 05:28, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
I've had a go, see what you think Malvern#Demography. Nev1 (talk) 11:10, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
I think that is excellent. I've had a go at expanding some of the population counts. if you think what I have done is rubbish don't hesitate to say so.--Kudpung (talk) 05:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Schools

I'm about to embark on an attempt to clean up the school articles. If anyone has any advice for us on this please discuss it here.--Kudpung (talk) 07:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't spend much time editing articles about school, but from my limited experience they are some of the articles most likely to be vandalised on wikipedia. Most articles on schools are stubs and vandalism can easily slip through the cracks, whether it's one disgruntled student who wants to tell the world that their teacher sucks or a couple of friends in an IT lesson changing the article in turns and giggle about the results. The best course of action, in my opinion, is to remove any unsourced information that looks remotely unencyclopedia, not notable, or defamatory. For privacy reasons, wikipedias guidelines state that timetables shouldn't be included, neither should names of current pupils. There's no need for a roster of staff, although the headmaster is worth noting. Some are bound to have lists of notable alumni. My preference is to remove the unsourced entries (which is usually all of them), but bear in mind that someone may return later and re-add them. It's also important to be balanced when writing about schools; if you see an opinion feel free to remove it immediately. As the summer holidays are here, this is probably the best time to embark on a clean up of the school articles. Nev1 (talk) 00:33, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dines Green

Hi! You might be interested in the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dines Green. Thank you. Qwfp (talk) 12:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}}) Qwfp (talk) 12:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning, I have already started improving the article. Jeni (talk)(Jenuk1985) 13:14, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
I only just saw this, well done Jenuk for the effort you put into saving the article. Nev1 (talk) 17:58, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Village articles without images

Right, for each village in Category:Villages in Worcestershire I have added at least one picture, and they have their own commons category (in many cases, there are a load more pictures in that category). I've found all the images on Geograph, however, the following articles are still missing images/commonscats:

Unless anyone beats me to it, I'll try and go out for a drive sometime in the week to fill in the gaps! Jeni (talk)(Jenuk1985) 01:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

You are doing a great job :) I won't beat you to it because I'm not coming to Europe until 27 Aug. --Kudpung (talk) 04:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Of these, I am far from sure that Axborough merits an article, since it is not in fact a village: see artoicle as amended. The ancient parish of Wolverley contained a number of townships. Kingsford, Austcliffe, Blakeshall, and Caunsall would certainly merit having articles; possibly also Horseley and The Lowe. Woodhamcote has been absorbed into Wolverley village and Upton by the Broadwaters suburb of Kidderminster; these shouyld be dealt with by articles on those areas.
Partly supported: It's not a place, but it might fit into some other category; if not it should be deleted as it seems not to meet any particular criteria for notability (not an archeological site), and it might set a new precedent for listing every bump in the landscape.--Kudpung (talk) 11:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Parish list template navboxes

I am copying this to here as it is a general project issue and will receive more attention than on my personal talk page:

It is a bad idea to have parish navboxes, as they are designed to provide navigation between existing articles. In Worcestershire we have articles on settlements, not civil parishes. I have started work on improving List of civil parishes in Worcestershire which can be linked to from the settlement navboxes. When I am finished with the Redditch district articles, I'll be doing the same for the Malvern Hills district articles. WP:NAVBOX makes good reading in this regard. Thanks! Jeni (talk)(Jenuk1985) 18:03, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I am familiar with the [[WP:NAVBOX]: article, unfortunately, I have already created a similar navbox for Wychavon parishes (see Evesham - this has created a lot of red links that are indicative of settlements that may need their own articles, and will shortly be removed again from the page). There are articles in Wikipedia about various parishes, and there are suggestetions about what to do with one-line articles about extremely small settlements that are destined to become perma-stubs. These issues may require a consensus that may even need further discussion with parent projects, or a closer look at how other county projects are managing similar issues. Please see the discussions above on this talk page.--Kudpung (talk) 05:26, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I am also adding this from a message to me on Nev1's talk page:

I've never seen a civil parish with "town council" in the name. The reason the website says "Malvern town council" is because the website is about and belongs to the town council which runs the civil parish. For example, Trafford's official name is "Metropolitan Borough of Trafford", but the website (the council's wesite) very prominently at the top of the page says Trafford Council. I think in Malvern's case, the official name of the civil parish is Malvern rather than Malvern Town Council. I've not touched the categories, so I have no conflict with Jenuk and even if I did we could always discuss it on the talk page; however since the council asserts it's right to being a town council I'd say that the ciivl parish is a town. Parishes can also be towns as demonstrated by Shaw and Crompton and Partington, Greater Manchester. There is a category for civil parishes which can be added aswell. Nev1 (talk) 20:52, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Please understand everyone, that I'm just trying to keep the comments in one place so that we can reach a consensus on some of these issues.--Kudpung (talk) 06:20, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I suspect that the correct name of the parish is actually Great Malvern, though the parish also includes Malvern Link. Malvern Wells and Little Malvern are spearate civil parishes. A town with a "Town Council" is a civil parish, whose parish council has adopted that name. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:23, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
The 2001 census lists the parish as "Malvern Town" [1], I'd suggest that's the most accurate source we have? Malvern, Worcestershire probably should be moved to Malvern Town to adequately reflect the name of the civil parish. Though to be honest, I'm still in favour of merging Malvern, Worcestershire into Great Malvern. Jeni (talk)(Jenuk1985) 16:31, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Preceding two posts copied to the Malvern, Worcestershire talk page.--Kudpung (talk) 12:06, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Civil Parish or settlement

I'm not so sure that it is a good idea for the encyclopedia to have articles on both civil parishes and settlements when they are one and the same; that would appear as going for redundancy or duplication. Moreover, there is a Wiki policy that in the case of small settlements that constitute a parish, they should be grouped into an article about their parish - but I don't interpret this as meaning that every parish should have an article of its own. I think that's what the List articles are for.--Kudpung (talk) 13:10, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

In reality articles in this country are organised by village, not civil parish, regardless of what WikiProject guidelines suggest (note: WikiProject guidelines cannot overrule Wikipedia guidelines). Most civil parish articles will generally immediately fail WP:N, whereas village articles will pass WP:N 99% of the time, namely due to the history behind them. Its worthless creating civil parish articles if they are duplicating information found within the appropriate village articles. Jeni (talk)(Jenuk1985) 15:25, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Which is, of course, precisely what I was implying. However, there are borderline cases which have been discussed in great depth in other places, and I would personally tend to follow precedent reached by consensus: WP:UKTOWNS, rather than interpret a new set of rules for the Worcestershire project.--Kudpung (talk) 16:47, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Some parishes contain more than one village. Some parishes are vast in area, others more modest in size. Wolverley and Cookley Parish has about 5 village articles and could legitmately have more. I would suggest that a list of Civil Parishes article should also indicate the names of other villages in the parish (with their own articles); similarly articles on particular suburbs or areas of towns. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
I modified the list last week to add a col to list the villages within the parish, it just needs populating. Jeni (talk)(Jenuk1985) 17:02, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Very good ideas:) I'll have a bash at populating too, but at the moment I'm concentrating on the school articles.
Archive 1Archive 2

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought we could do with an icon (after seeing the Manchester pawn), so I drew a quick pear. Wadayathink? Useful? We could add it to various banners, userboxes (I live in Worcs, not WP:Worcs), etc. The file is an SVG, so it rescales to whatever size you need. GyroMagician (talk) 08:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Project prioritising and overlapping interests

Greetings. While the degree to which I will be able to consistently contribute to the Worcestershire project in the foreseeable future remains currently in doubt, I can at least offer some observations.

With regards the question of 'where to start' and which articles to prioritise first, we might consider starting with articles that in terms of category or taxonomy, encapsulate other articles. So, the Worcestershire article shows a map containing six districts. As a non-native, the first thing I found myself looking for was something giving me an overview of the map and its six districts, rather than have to go to each article separately, read up, then come back to the parent article. In general, it would be easier for me to read an overview of Worcestershire and the districts which it encompasses, and then follow links for more information. Obviously, the way we read articles in practice is that sometimes something specific catches our attention, and we pursue that link. But not always, and I'd suggest it's good for the reader to have a choice of reading the overview, or pursuing their own little direction.

Now while we wouldn't necessarily want to dominate the structure of the article with an elaboration on the districts, we could capitalise on this by creating sections for each district, and providing an overview paragraph for each section. In doing so, we could first pay attention to the district articles containing the least development. Of these, Bromsgrove (district) appears the least developed. So we could kill two birds with one stone. Create a section for Bomsgrove, and simultaneously work on the Bomsgrove article, tacking back and forth as necessary. Similarly with Wychavon. As for the other districts, a section would be similarly useful, but they are all better developed. So if we've got their leads roughly right, we can just pinch the gist of those for yor paragraphs, and so concentrate our energies on the lesser-developed articles.

A similar strategy could be employed for any of the other articles in the Worcestershire project. That is, for each of the least developed articles, go up taxonomically to the broadest parent article, develop sections within that article or those articles, and simultaneously flesh out the sections whilst developing the the undeveloped articles. Thats essentially the strategy I employed when developing the Captain R.T. Claridge article, launching into other articles, and contributing to their development, the process of which helped me further develop the Claridge article, either directly or indirectly. Indeed it was that very process which led me to Malvern Water, and thence to the Malvern project, the process of which was rewarding in itself, but which also helped me with the article which I was trying to develop.

Just food for thought. Nothing revolutionary, and probably nothing that hasn't already occurred to others, and which isn't already done to a greater or lesser degree. But it sometimes helps to formalise these thoughts. Regards Wotnow (talk) 11:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for those excellent observations Wotnow. Please go HERE and do a small tweak, then come back and change every use of the word you in the above message to we :-)
--Kudpung (talk) 11:25, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 Done I hope I'm not thereby inviting Murphy's Law to kick in, whereby my life circumstances cause me to drop out of Wikipedia completely. Time will tell. Wotnow (talk) 17:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Project infrastructure

Hello all! As some of you have probably noticed, I've been creating some pages for WikiProject Worcestershire. I've created a sidebar (top right, main project page), which we should put on all project pages to aid navigation. I've worked a bit on our templates, to try to create a bit of an identity. I added some extra tags to the main Worcestershire banner (needs-refs and needs-photo), but I'm not sure these are a good addition - they look neat in the banner, but they only show up in the Worcestershire categories, rather than globally (Great Malvern Station, for example, is also a member of WikiProject Trains, who might also help sorting out the references). I also (after brief discussion with Kudpung) removed the B-class checklist. I don't find it useful, but I don't have a strong feeling (Jeni, I just noticed that you added it - if you find it useful, maybe we should re-add).

I added a black pear to the userboxes for lives in/is from Worcestershire. It seems like a suitable mascot, and is within my limited drawing skills! I created a couple of templates to welcome new users, or suggest that an editor join WikiProject Worcestershire - please use them as we have the opportunity. I've also started a page that will be, but isn't yet, about how to reference articles. I imagine this page being about both about Wikipedia technicalities, and how to find sources. We have a few members who are pretty hot on this, so it would be good to share the knowledge - how you find historic texts, useful websites, sources within the county, etc. I'm hoping some of you will add to this page.

We've made a good start on the county (Jeni - I've only just realised how many infoboxes you've added!), especially now we have a GA, but we should keep the momentum going.

Waddayathink folks? GyroMagician (talk) 18:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

What I think is that it's fantastic that others are now mucking in more actively .And I do like that side bar thingy. I founded the project and started all the main project pages and to-do lists and stuff, but I wasn't really very good at it (especially all those templates and things), and it was never my intention to continue by micromanaging the project. It is possible that the recent hard work on Malvern was the catalyst that spurned us into action, and it certainly showed what teamwork can achieve. If the collaboration continues by taking things now in priority order, Worcs could be the best Wiki county project of 2010 - well, maybe ;)
--Kudpung (talk) 10:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Restructuring of project pages

Gyro started the ball rolling by adding a sidebar to all the project pages for better navigation. The project now has a cleaner main page for a better overview of project aims and content, and a completely new To Do page of articles needing urgent attention, listed by kind of action required. Other tasks remain listed in the comments on the lists of every Worcs article by category as shown with their links on the project main page. These lists are far more comprehensive than those items listed on theWP:WORCS/ToDo page which is really only for the very urgent items. The lists enable editors to pick and choose what they are good at improving if they can't find anything on the urgent list that they can offer immediate help with.--Kudpung (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

DYK

Did You Know that a lot of flap is made on Wiki about the WP:DYK articles? Never having contributed to one, I'm not so sure about their importance. Nevertheless, some of them are quite interesting and many editors appear to feel that gathering laurels for creating them is one of the paths to adminship - excuse my typical cynicism ;)

None of the regular Worcs project members appear to have created one (I may be wrong), so does anyone think it would be a good idea to have some DYKs about Worcs? Maybe we can come up with some ideas. --Kudpung (talk) 15:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Biography of Living Persons

There is great consternation and much debate (too, too much) about tens of thousands of BLPs that have been left, unreferenced, in a poor state, abandoned by their creators, and left to rot in full public view in defiance of Wikpedia's strict rules about BLP. The problem of a clean up is obviously the sheer quantity of pages to be vetted and decisions taken whether to improve them or delete them. Everyone wants to talk about it but only a dedicated few, particularly those with the 'special' tools and whose judgement can only be opposed without further straining the resources of the server, are prepared to dig in and do something. What they do is still nly a drop in the ocean. It's been suggested that perhaps some action could be organised at project level. I'm guilty of not even having got round to putting the WP:WORCS banner on the talk pages of all the cat 'people connected with Worcs', but I did create the task list at All Worcs related articles about people by ABC. It might be a great gesture if the Worcs project could do its bit and check out any unreferenced BLPs, and either rescue them, or PROD them. with a message to the major contributors. If the PROD doesn't help after the seven days, we just delete them.
Anyone for/against, or simply ready to roll up their sleeves?
--Kudpung (talk) 16:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh boy, that's a big list! From quickly skimming it, most of those aren't still living though. Maybe a first step would be to flag the living ones on the list? Is there a reason you've not been tagging people for WikiProject Worcs, other than trying to cut down a mammoth task to something manageable, like a WP policy that says we shouldn't (this isn't meant to be a critisism, I just don't want to start and then have to revert them!)? I would hesitate to delete articles so quickly, but certainly flagging them is a good start - maybe we can act as a filter for another project, such as WikiProject Biography, Living persons. GyroMagician (talk) 17:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I haven't done anything with that list yet as the mere work of setting up the project and all its anciullary pages last year somewhat sapped my energy and I needed a change of wallpaper (such as the Malvern Hills). As usual, the 'central discussion' - not unlike your 'central discussion' on refs & templates (OMG !) - has lost its focus and has simply become just a page where the more eloquent can play with words and sidetrack everyone as much as they can. The real issue is that any registered user, and better any project can help by practically doing what it likes without a secondary consensus by Ena Sharples, Martha Longhurst, and Minnie Caldwell from their snug at the village pump.
Yes, by all means, the very first task is to get WP:WORCS banners on all the talk pages and assessed as stubs/start/ or whatever class, add the new 'todo' template to the talk page, flag the article page with ugly banners and inline tags if absolutely necessary, then we can call up the robot lists of those problem pages and then make a decision on what to do with them.

That decision, if I have anything to do with it, would be to either improve and clean up the article without necessarily xpanding it, or PRODing it. A PROD is good because it we think, even vaguley, that the article is not worth keepiing, if the original author(s) don't come along and do something after 7 days, we can delete it as per:

Proposed deletion is a process used for nominating pages for uncontroversial deletion, and deleting such pages after 7 days if no objections are raised. It is a way to suggest deletions that no editor would disagree with, and should not be used to side-step AfD discussion for articles that an editor may wish to keep. Its purpose is to reduce the load on the Articles for deletion process, for cases where articles are uncontestably deletable, yet fail to meet the criteria for speedy deletion.

--Kudpung (talk) 09:27, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

It's interesting to watch - tagging biographies appears to be generating some interest. I guess it's useful to push pages back onto other editors watchlists every now and again. GyroMagician (talk) 10:51, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
There is now a new Worcs Project page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire/Unreferenced BLPs which will be populated and regularly updated by a bot. It will (should) contain all the unreferenced BLPs in the Worcestershire Project category. please check this page from time to time to see if the bot is working, and to attemp to find references for the article. If you can't, it will be tagged by us later with the new WT:STICKY banner that is currently under development.--Kudpung (talk) 13:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

County research

I have booked my flight for 1 April to the UK and will be staying in Malvern again for one month. if any one has a wish list for photos or sources in books or the WRO please don(t hesitate to let me know on my talk page Acoupl of project members a re looking forward to meeting up somewhere in the county whiule I am there, and I sincerely hope that this time round we'll b able to make it happen.--Kudpung (talk) 02:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Hanbury, Worcestershire - COPYVIO

Hanbury, Worcestershire: if somebody has time, could they please look into this article and find out where the COPYVIO comes from. The whole thing is so smooth and detailed, I don't believe it to be from the hand of a Wikipedian.--Kudpung (talk) 03:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Newsletter

What did I do to receive that newsletter? I haven't significantly contributed to any articles about Worcestershire, but I've probably made minor edits to them. Many users, including myself, don't appreciate unsolicited newsletter postings like that. Also, please put your signature somewhere in the message. Graham87 15:11, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

An author's name was included in the template. The newsletter is issued in the interests of encouraging active participation in improving Wikipedia articles. Thank you for your help in improving the encyclopedia with your edits to articles monitored and maintained by the WP:WORCS. If you have a profound interest, you are most welcome to join the project.--Kudpung (talk) 15:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Fixes have been made, based on suggestions, that avoid the listing of individual newsletter headers in the contents box of users' talk pages.--Kudpung (talk) 13:19, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The right place

Please take note that I do not really want to receive comments on my talk page about the newsletter, or anything else to do with the Worcs project that is not of a very personal nature. I firmly believe in keeping discussion in the right places, where everyone who may be concerned, has a fair crack at being kept up to date. Watching watch lists is a practice that still needs to be adopted by many Wikipedians. Please respect, but do not be offended or agressive by this request. Comments made to my tp will be moved to here.--Kudpung (talk) 13:19, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Biographies

Addiing the project banners to the talk pages of places took about 30 hours - not non-stop of course ;) The main thing is that once the banners are on and assessed at least as stub/low, then they will be picked up by bots that will make work lists of them for us. The other thing of course, is to check for categories.I don't know how she does it, but Jeni has a remarkable way of being able to infoboxes to articles at (it seems) a rate of several hundred an hour. Maybe we're missing out on a lot of automations. --Kudpung (talk) 04:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Notabilty of local politicians

Because most of the WP:WORCS articles are about places, there is often a section on local politics. The usual header is 'Governance'.
It's been noticed that a lot of non notable polticians have been creeping into the pages. Just to remind WP:WORCS participants who are actively cleaning up articles, that they can and should delete any politicians' names who do not meet the the notability criteria at WP:POLITICIAN. That generally means paractically anyone below the MP of a parliamentary constituencey, such as most town and parish councillors, with the exception perhaps, of the mayor of a city or large town if he is also notable for other things.--Kudpung (talk) 22:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Those guidelines refer to articles about politicians; not mentioning lesser politicians in articles on other subjects. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I have just come across this Talk:Hanbury, Worcestershire#COPYVIO?. Checking it seems that someone has been a busy beaver. Looking at the history of the editors I have listed and the articles they have edited I think that this needs to be discussed by a wider audience and as they are nearly all Worcestershire related this is an obvious place to post this message. -- PBS (talk) 09:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I've left a comment at Talk:Hanbury, Worcestershire#COPYVIO?. GyroMagician (talk) 11:58, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The article concerning Fort Royal Hill ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Royal_Hill ) plagiarizes blatantly from the article about the Battle of Worcester ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Worcester ). Paragraph 2 under the "History" section of the Fort Royal Hill article is clearly copied and pasted from Paragraph 5 under "The Battle" on Battle article.

Kidderminster mapping party, April 17th

OpenStreetMap is holding a mapping party in this area on 17 April 2010 to make a creative commons licensed map that may be used in Wikipedia articles.

Everyone is invited, no special skills are required and GPS equipment will be provided. See OpenStreetMap for more details.

If you know of Wikipedia articles that need particular photos from this area, leave a message here or on the OpenStreetMap wiki

This sounds like a very cool event. I won't be able to make it, but please turn up if you can. For more details, go to Mappa Mercia or see the Kidderminster talk page (despite what the banner says, leave any requests on the Kidderminster page, not here). Thanks to Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) for originally posting! GyroMagician (talk) 10:19, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Worcestershire bus route 144

I've just started Worcestershire bus route 144, which has a long history, particularly in its past life of heading to Malvern. I was wondering if any of the guys from the Malvern area care to help me expand it? Jeni (talk) 11:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject Herefordshire

I was wondering whether anyone would be interested in helping to start a Herefordshire WikiProject. I got WikiProject Edinburgh off the ground a few months ago and am looking to start a few others so we can get better coverage of some of the UK's cities and counties. As Hereford has a long and interesting history I think it could be a useful collaboration. Any thoughts? TheRetroGuy (talk) 12:14, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Also, would anyone be interested in a project for Shropshire? I hope it's all right to post these questions here. I thought as Worcestershire borders both counties it would be an appropriate place to ask. Cheers. TheRetroGuy (talk) 12:20, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I've started very basic pages for WikiProject Herefordshire and WikiProject Shropshire to get them up and running. Feel free to help if you can. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 19:28, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Good Article nominations

I'm probably goibng to be nominating a few shorter WP:WORCS articles for GA in the next few days. If anyone can make any last minute improvements or suggestions please go ahead. Comments on the article talk pages please:

--Kudpung (talk) 03:07, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

I find myself more and more fighting vandalism on Worcs pages. This does not mean that there is necessarily more vandalism, but it means that I have all the Worcs pages on my watchlist and based on the edit summaries and user names/IPs, it is easy to identify what are probably vandalism and inappropriate edits.
This is using up a lot of my valuable content editing time. If would be great if project members could help look out for such disruptions. Some pages, particularly schools and Redditch are more susceptible to attack than others. Any pages you visit will automatically be added to your watchlists. If you find any damage, you can use any of the automated and semi-automated tools such as WP:Friendly and WP:Twinkle, but as those tools do not always fully complete those tasks, do please also remember to add a warning or a vandal-welcome on the culprit's page. In so doing, it will help to get regular miscreants blocked. Thanks.--Kudpung (talk) 02:22, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Malvern water GA

CONGRATULATIONS! - and thanks to everyone who worked so hard over the past few weeks to get Malvern water to GA. --Kudpung (talk) 23:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Worcestershire articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Worcestershire articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Worcestershire demographics

The 20o1 UK census website has moved and the links to it in many of our pages are returning a 404. Detailed demographic info is now available for districts, towns and neighbourhoods on this page at Worcs County Council: http://c/cms/community-and-living/research-and-intelligence/census-and-where-i-live/2001-census/area-profiles.aspx --Kudpung (talk) 03:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

The site with a problem is only Worcs County Council one, not ONS. I would always prefer to use ONS because if they move they are going to be systematic, and we have a site wide template for them, which means one edit fixes everything. Rich Farmbrough, 06:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC).

WORCS project banners on talk pages

I'm still coming across a lot of Worcs related pages without the template on the talk pages. (This comes also from a massive stint I've been doing recently on NPP and various BLP backlogs). We can track some, but not all of them by taking an occasional look at the bot generated lists of Worcs related stubs and Worcs related cats.--Kudpung (talk) 06:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

GAC for Evesham?

I've done some tweaks lately to the Evesham page. Surprisingly, it's looking quite good already and it could be a fairly easy nom for GA. Anyone interested in checking it over? --Kudpung (talk) 06:36, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

It's a promising article - it still needs a few tweaks, but nothing major. I'm pretty busy until November, but I'll try to help out if you push ahead ;-) GyroMagician (talk) 10:27, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
What it needs is some info on demographics, so local political history (§without of cour(s a tedeitous list of every town councillor), a compass, and a short section on transport. i'll ask Wotnow if he can do the honours qwith the references, in the menartime I'll run the link check tool. --Kudpung (talk) 05:23, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Importance

I've just notice that Malvern College is rated as high importance, while Malvern Water is only of Mid importance. Can this be so? A toff's school is more important than Nature's own million-year-old water clarification plant? (kidding, KIDDING!). But still, given my apple and your orange, which is more important? GyroMagician (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You're right - apples and oranges! Done. BTW, you are perfectly allowed to assess, reassess anything you like. Of course, I might not agree... --Kudpung (talk) 00:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Sometimes I like to discuss. It's easy to think an article is important because it's a good article, rather than an important topic. But I'm glad you agree :-) GyroMagician (talk) 10:48, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Malvern

It has been suggested that the name of the Malvern, Worcestershire page be moved to Malvern, to bring it in line with Wikipedia policy at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Everyone is welcome to express their opinion.--Kudpung (talk) 13:21, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The article Malvern Link railway station has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references found two published (gBook) minor mentions of the station, fails WP:N and WP:STATION

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Jeepday (talk) 11:52, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Dodford page

I've done quite a lot of work on the Dodford, Worcestershire page. It would be great if someone could check it, and and perhaps review the quality / importance. scale I think it's quite important from a national social history POV. Jim Killock (talk) 12:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Reviewed and reassessed from stub to start class. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:15, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Redditch

- is one of the largest (if not the largest) towns in the county and its Wikipedia article is a target for frequent spam and vandalism. Good faith edits from anon users also occasionally need correcting or tweaking. Please let's keep Redditch on our watchlists and intervene as necessary. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:58, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I posed that over three and a half years ago and for some reason Redditch is still a major target for disruptive editing. It would be good if participants in the Worcs project could keep it on their watchlists. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Requesting peer review before nominating for FA

Malvern, Worcestershire: A peer review has been requested here prior to eventual nomination for FA. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Unassesed articles

As of July 2011 there are around 70 unassessed Worcestershire articles listed at Category:Unassessed Worcestershire articles. If anyone has a moment, it would be good to have a look at these. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:35, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Article alerts

Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire/Article alerts has been created; generating Article alerts for this WikiProject. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:23, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Peer review

List of Old Malvernians has been submitted for peer review. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:29, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

List of Old Malvernians has now been peer reviewed. The reviewer pointed out some FL aspects tat will be impossible to comply wit as the data is not available and never likely to be. (pupils' houses, dates of attendance, images, etc.). Unfortunately it looks as if its potential for Fl is thus limited. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:20, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Lines family sketchbook

There are some Worcestershire images in Commons:Category:Lines family sketchbook which you might enjoy, or whose subjects you might be able to identify. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:32, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Voysey

Dear Worcestershire Wikipedians: I am sure you are familiar with the village of Colwall; you may also know of the work of the English architect CFA Voysey. Curiously, one of Voysey's greatest creations 'Perrycroft' on the Malvern Hills is not mentioned on the Colwall page and gets only the briefest of mentions in the Voysey article. Please could I offer to do a definitive article about the house, which has recently been the subject of a careful restoration? CORREZE CORREZE (talk) 09:36, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

In theory, yes. In practice however, it may not be easy to establish sufficient notability for a standalone article about a house unless it is a listed building for example See [2]. Notability must be affirmed through multiple, reliable independent sources WP:RS. Failing that, you could consider expanding both the Colwall nd Voysey articles to include information about the house, bearing in mind however, that the claims must also be referenced. If you are searching for old records, do bear in mind though that while Colwall is practically a suburb of Malvern, it is in Hereforshire, and not in Worcestershire (although there was a short period where the two counties were merged). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:03, 23 June 2013 (UTC).

Evesham - ready for GA?

Something on my watchlist recently drew my attention to Evesham. A couple of years ago several of us spent some time improving and expanding this article, and on further review, I believe it is very close to GA. The review will of course reveal areas for further improvement, but what do we think about nominating it? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:38, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Evolution of Worcestershire County Boundaries

Hi

Just to let you know that I (with contributions from others) have been working on an article known as Evolution of Worcestershire County Boundaries, which could help clear up the 'Local Government' section on the Worcestershire page. Maybe some parts of the Worcestershire page dealing with historical boundary changes to the Local Government structures can be deleted in favour of a brief overview and concentration on the present local government structures of the county.

This page is already linked from the Worcestershire page and other associated pages.

Evolution of Worcestershire county boundaries

Bellow558 (talk) 14:43, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Please help get Worcestershire ready for the start of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition on 1st September

This September the UK is taking part for the first time in the international photography competition Wiki Loves Monuments. Participants will be invited to submit pictures of listed buildings of significant importance (grades I or grade II*), as recorded by English Heritage. The main external website for competitors can be found here, and you can leave a message there if you have queries about competing. Do please join in, and let people in your local area know of this excellent way in which both existing and new Wiki users can help improve the encyclopaedia by contributing photographs of local listed structures. What about organizing a local Wikimeet to attract new people?

In preparation for the start of the competition on 1st September there is still quite a lot of work to do, and we would like to ask for the help of members of this wikiproject. Your local and expert knowledge will be invaluable in ensuring that the lists of eligible buildings are up to date and correctly formatted. If you look at Listed buildings in the United Kingdom you will see how many structures are included. If you then follow the link to Listed buildings in England, you can get to the detailed lists for your area. Alternatively have a look at the WLM planning table. Can you help to ensure that the lists for your area are up to date and well presented?

Some of the lists have been semi-automatically generated from data provided by English Heritage. These use pre formatted templates (eg EH header) which will make it much easier for competition participants to upload their photographs to Commons as an automated process. Please don't change the template structure, as we need to ensure that the templates are properly compatible with the WLM standards that are in use worldwide. The format will allow a bot automatically to collect the information and to put it into the international Monuments Database.

The data still needs the attention of local editors:

  • The "title" may need wikilinking to a suitable article name (whether we currently have that article or not). If there are several buildings in one street all of the wikilinks point at an article about the street; however each entry has a separate line in the list.
  • The "location" column looks and sorts better if just the parish or town is included (& wikilinked).
  • The "date completed" column sometimes has eg "C19" for 19th century, and "C1850" for c. 1850 when the date is uncertain - these need to be corrected manually.
  • The "grid ref & lat & long" (which is occasionally missing) may be given to 8 characters — only 6 (grid ref) or 5 (lat & long) are really needed.
  • Clicking on the "list entry number" should take you to the data sheet for that entry on the English Heritage database which can be checked if needed for details.
  • The image column should have a picture added if we already have a suitable image on Commons. (N.B. if you are going to be taking photos yourself for inclusion in the competition don't upload them until September)
  • References may be added according to normal WP practice.

For further information, please see Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom.

If you have any queries, please post them not below but on the Organizers' help page on Commons.

Anything you can do to help improve these lists will be much appreciated. The final deadline for cleaning up is 31st August.

--MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:02, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Evolution of Worcestershire county boundaries

Hi there

I've been working (along with a few others) on the "Evolution of Worcestershire county boundaries" page for the last three years, hoping that it could assist in cleaning up some of the local government part of the main Worcestershire page. I'm just wondering if this page can be rated and added to the Worcestershire WikiProject at some point, as I feel it could add some value to the project.

Plus I've put it forward for consideration as a good article nominee...

Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)

Thanks

Bellow558 (talk) 14:52, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Excellent article. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:17, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Old maps and views of the West Midlands

As you might have seen in the Signpost last week, there's currently a drive to go through the million 19th century images released by the British Library last year, and identify all the maps, with a view to their being georeferenced by BL volunteers, and then uploaded to Commons early next year. After the first week, over eight thousand new maps have been identified, with 40% of the target books looked at -- see the status page for the latest figures, and more information.

A part that may specifically interest this project is

c:Commons:British Library/Mechanical Curator collection/Synoptic index/England - West Midlands

which currently shows pink templated links for 134 Flickr book pages still to be looked at. (Though there are lots of other parts of England, and indeed of the world, still to be looked through as well).

Any help looking through these would be very much appreciated -- as well as the maps (and ground plans) for tagging, you may well also find other interesting or useful non-map views that may be worth considering or uploading for articles on Worcestershire and elsewhere in the West Midlands. (If uploading, please use the ingestion template described here, which sets up some appropriate image templates and categories).

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Worcester

Participants of the Worcestershire project are invited to jpoin the discussion at Talk:Worcester#Requested move. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

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