Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England/Parishes RfC

In accordance with the information and questions below, what are your opinions on how to create/maintain articles on English civil parishes? Crouch, Swale (talk) 12:03, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

There has been some discussion about how to create/maintain articles on civil parishes in England. There has been discussion on having a bot create the articles but this hasn't yet been done due to not having the code or consensus (generating a code for this is needed so if anyone can that would be appreciated). Although this RFC is mainly aimed at page creation it does also talk about how the data can be added/maintained to existing articles. Previous discussions at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Civil parish bot, Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 79#Civil parish bot and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 160#Civil parish bot. There is also discussion at User talk:Crouch, Swale/England where I started a RFC but it was closed as the format etc was problematic.

Currently many articles here lack basic information such as their area and around 5-6 hundred are missing. This is quite shocking given that we are the largest Wikipedia and many other countries that have similar units (such as Italy, Germany and France though the units may be more important, parishes would still be expected to exist and are more relevant to the English Wikipedia) have had articles here for over a decade and the articles do have such data since they were often created by a bot or semi-automatically and so this was added while most parish articles here were created manually and while they may have more prose than the automatically created articles many parishes still lack the basic data though most current parishes do have data. Note that this project is aimed at current parishes but former parishes should also exist to though its more likely that they will have to be created/edited manually.

Note that I have removed NOMIS due to that fact that its boundaries shown seem to be inaccurate but if you look at this version you can see the boundaries since it the maps are better than City Population De's. Please answer each question in its section and make other comments in the "Discussion" section. My !votes are already at User:Crouch, Swale/England but yours should go here.

@PamD, Acabashi, Amakuru, SilkTork, Redrose64, Spike 'em, Headbomb, DannyS712, Keith D, and Rodw: who have made significant contributions, please feel free to ping anyone else.

Q1

• Should the articles be created manually, semi automatically or with a bot?
• Should we create templates (like {{English district population}}) for parishes?
• Should the data be transcluded?
• Should the data be added/updated by a bot?
• Create in draftspace
• Produce lists of missing articles for a said county when someone wants them

Q2 Do you agree with the following general rule?

In general if a settlement and civil parish have the same name Wikipedia should in general only 1 article for both and information for both the settlement and parish should be included in 1 article for example the Woodbury, East Devon article deals with the village of Woodbury plus other villages like Woodbury Salterton and open space. An exception to this is if the parish excludes the settlement it's named after completely (such as Scotforth/Scotforth (parish)) or (in some cases) if it excludes most of it. Similarly in general if the settlement and parish have different names then an article should generally exist for the settlement (as long as it's notable) as well as the parish. Joint parishes generally don't have separate articles and can normally redirect to the larger of the 2 (or more) parishes. Generally separate articles shouldn't be created for the parish council, if it's thought necessary just redirect to the parish's article. Parish articles shouldn't be merged or deleted simply because they have been abolished or merged with other parishes etc. An exception might exist if the parish existed very briefly like a couple of years and there is no census data for it.

If you want to give a more detailed answer you can give the letter you would favour from User:Crouch, Swale/England#Splits.

Q1

• I don't know what "transcended data" is - do you mean transcluded?— Rod ^talk 14:30, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Rodw: thanks that's what I meant, for example South Somerset uses {{English district population|GSS = E07000189}} and {{English district rank|GSS = E07000189}}. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:24, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't have any particular problem with articles being created by bots. Though would this proposed new template replace existing infoboxes on place articles which are also parishes, or would it only be used on parish only articles? I'm a bit confused. I agree that this needs further thinking though before we're sure exactly what the proposal is. G-13114 (talk) 17:52, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support (as RFD filer) a bot as long as errors/quality aren't an issue. Otherwise creating ~500 articles isn't incredibly difficult. Transclude a template if possible to avoid the need to manually update. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Q2

• Support (as RFC filer) this is a happy medium between having separate articles when the settlement has the same name and would result in unnecessary overlap and complicated disambiguation titles etc, while keeping settlements separate to a parish of a different name which would have distinctly named topics shoehorned in 1 article. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

General comments can go here.

• No and have an permanent moratorium on these England Parish RFCs At this point, I'm getting rather fed up with the constant ill-conceived, ill-defined, and ill-thought out proposals. "Should the articles be created manually, semi-automatically, or by bot" very much depends on what is being created and how. "By bot" or "Semi-automatically" is not a how. What are the sources? What database are used? How are these database parsed? How is each line ambiguity resolved? How does a bot/tool know that "Polstead Parish Council/Swilland and Witnesham" don't need articles? It's been nearly 2 years+ now, and probably the 5th or 6th RFC on this, and you still can't answer those basic questions. Maybe English Parish will have articles created by bots at some point in the future, but it won't be the result of these RFCs. Now this does not mean stop editing in thosen areas, but you have a deep-enough lack of understanding about automation and semi-automation that you don't understand the challenges involved. This is a bit like someone going to the post office to ask them to send flowers to everyone single person in the country on Valentine's day because they think it would be nice if everyone felt appreciated on that day. Is it possible? In theory. In practice, you'd need to source millions/billions of flowers, spend millions/billions on shipping costs, hire tens of thousands of people, figure out a way to determine who was single and who wasn't, clear legal hurdles related to privacy, etc. etc. etc.

Other topics like "Should we have a template that does X" very much depends on if existing templates can't do the job. No need for RFCs to create those. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:48, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

This is only the 2nd RFC which was started after discussion about the 1st one. The only other similar requests were at the BR where it was noted that I needed consensus or similar for it. The database used is likely City Population which specifies where the place is located. The councils are the governing body of the parishes similar to Suffolk County Council being that of Suffolk and these aren't shown on the sources, I was just pointing out that we probably don't need these at all. This anyway should be the last discussion on this since I should get the answer one way or another. And with respect to the point about manual v bot etc its likely better to add the data semi-automatically to the ~10,000 parish articles rather than manually which would be a huge task and would have a higher risk of human error. In addition such wide scale edits should probably be discussed at a RFC anyway? Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:24, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

• Agree with Headbomb: No and have an permanent moratorium on these England Parish RFCs, though with the coda that the moratorium should only apply to Crouch, Swale. Calling poorly thought out and poorly presented RfCs is a drain on people's time. SilkTork (talk) 17:49, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

  I thought I needed to start a RFC based on the previous comments on this matter. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:03, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

• I can't really comment on Q2 because I have trouble following the meaning of the question. G-13114 (talk) 17:57, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

  That if we need 2 articles when the village and parish has the same name such as Polstead and Polstead (parish) (which we probably don't) but when the parish name is different such as Nayland-with-Wissington and Nayland we should have separate articles. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:03, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

No need for two articles I would think, just note the different name of the parish in the article and create a redirect if necessary. An example would be Newton, Warwickshire, where the parish is called 'Newton and Biggin' for some obscure reason. G-13114 (talk) 18:10, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Your Newton, Warwickshire example is interesting. Presumably all stuff associated within the area of Newton and Biggin, and the parish itself, might be best under Newton as a village? How then would we deal with the geographical context for Europark and PERI Ltd UK, on the A5, major developments a half mile away from the village, definitely not in the village, and probably more important today than the village. The River Avon, a half mile south from the village, and not in the village, forms the southern boundary with Clifton-upon-Dunsmore. The history of the area within Newton and Biggin will reveal stuff, including old manors and landmarks, that could well be more extensive than that found for the limited boundary of the village. Should our hierarchy be made to suggest that these are all part of and subordinate to the village of Newton?

I agree with Crouch, Swale. Same name for village and parish: same article with perhaps sections indicating what pertains to parish and what to village. Different names for village and parish: two articles but only if enough can be found for both or either, per Hatfield and Newhampton with Hatfield, Herefordshire.

What I think is not appropriate is the settlement 'lazy stubs' that seem to litter Wikipedia—good for user number of articles created box-ticking I suppose—and that would would be further created by a bot. One line or short stubs, user or bot created, are of little or no use—and probably annoying—to a reader. Manual creations are potentially much better for the reader, but only if a substantial amount of text can be found on the subject, if it can't, why bother to waste time and space with an article at all? For me: no bots. Acabashi (talk) 13:16, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Newton/Newton and Biggin is an interesting case, most parishes called "X and Y" are named after 2 villages but "Biggin" appears to only be a manor north east of Newton[1] (change to 19th century map) as noted though the parish does include areas outside Newton and given the parish is named "Newton and Biggin" I'd be inclined to have a separate article for it and retarget Biggin, Warwickshire to it.

Most villages will have enough coverage to have a standalone article but yes in the case of Biggin we don't also need a separate article for "Biggin".

Yes we don't want one line or otherwise short stubs but that's not what is being proposed. The bot articles would contain 4 or 5 sentences (see User:Crouch, Swale/Bot tasks/Civil parishes (current)/Simple) and the articles I create tend to have around 10 sentences. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:02, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I'm not sure from your Rattlesden example what you are proposing any bot would do, or would be capable of doing. Presumably you are hoping it would add a necessary infobox. Could a bot also add wiki-links, sections with text (as you show it), population figures, and the necessary references? Could the bot add in templates, such as area and a miles to kilometres distance conversion templates to make the text understandable to those who don't use our system? Could it know what the adjacent parishes are, and recommended by guidelines, the county town, preferably I think with direction and distance? If a bot can't do these things—and even it could—then this would not be enough and would leave a mini-paragraph non-enlightening stub for the reader, the kind of thing we see quite a lot of anyway, I suspect with the idea that others should take the bother of improving the thing. Could you develop an example of something that you know a bot can automatically create?

Text for a bot article would need to be discussed—for example: the superfluous use of located/situated—perhaps under WikiProject UK geography (where I have added a link to this page), to make it conform to place guidelines. My view is that no article at all is better than an inadequate stub from one to a few sentences, and a bot will still only generate a stub, which I am sure irritates readers and doesn't give a good impression of Wikipedia. Acabashi (talk) 20:03, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

If its too difficult to determine the title of the surrounding parish's article it could just link to the plain name and would be fixed by WP:DPL. This kind of thing certainly has been done before, look at this article for example.

No article is better than an inadequate stub or a stub with errors but even if only location and population is included its still better than nothing and is acceptable with WP:STUB and provides the reader with some content than can be expanded. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• I’d go back to first principles and wonder why we would want to establish parishes as a primary unit for articles in the first place? I’d rather see articles for settlements. For example, take St Endellion, which is a parish in Cornwall named after a now obscure hamlet, with the principle settlements within the parish - Port Isaac, Port Gaverne, already having their own comprehensive articles. Read the lead of the Endellion page and you’d expect to find an article body about the parish, but as it happens it only contains a few sketchy points about the hamlet. If this had been created afresh as a bot-generated parish article it would run straight into duplicating information that already exists. The current situation - where the articles are by settlements, and the one for the hamlet notes that it is a parish but otherwise contains data for the hamlet is (with perhaps a rewritten lead) ideal. One where a parish article overlaps with the existing settlement articles would not be ideal. Or look at List of civil parishes on the Isle of Wight, which carries a nice map from which you can see that almost all of the parishes match up with single settlements already with their own articles. But some cover two settlements - for example Niton & Whitwell is a parish but both villages already have their own article. Adding an extra article for the parish adds no value whatsoever, and likely damages the encyclopaedia by reducing the chance of any one of the larger number of articles being comprehensive and up to date. Further, once you create these hundreds of new bot-generated articles, you create the impression that every parish should have an article and editors will start turning an article like St Endellion - or from the IOW Brighstone - into a parish article, duplicating information that currently sits on the settlement pages - in the latter case the parish covers Brook, Hulverstone, Limerstone and Mottistone, but aside from linking to them the Brighstone article sensibly steers clear of including any data about them. MapReader (talk) 22:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

  St Endellion seems correct, there is an article on the settlement/parish at St Endellion and then 2 other settlements also have articles, as I have noted I don't think village/parish should have separate articles when the name is the same. The only thing that would happen to that article is that the area and surrounding settlements would be added by a bot. In the case of Niton yes the parish named "Niton and Whitwell" should have an article as well as the 2 village because its a distinct named parish to its villages. The parish article would have facts about the parish and would link to the village. In the case of Brighstone that's like St Endellion in that the village and parish have the same name so probably shouldn't have separate articles. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  I disagree. I agree more with and would go further than Mapreader. We are globally in an age where academics and most of the educated, especially in lockdown, are trying to create incredible order, structure, fixed boundaries and so on. Rightly they are mindful of other forces conspire against this. But this is not the place to redress that disorder. This is not a specialist work. Civil parishes themselves are, with few notable exceptions - and I am using WP:NOTABLE as notable - such as beloved innovations for city/town districts inherently dynamic wet sponges and best covered by what the people there go by, and see achieved by true administration (i.e. the real tiers of power above). If people have two strong identities then great. But unless you have actually read the law on the powers of Civil Parishes (and not recommendatory reports of which anyone can pen, or any reasonably interested group), as I have, then I would suggest you are overstating the analogy with the French and German much more rigid system of boundaries and roles of governance. This is not to say that there are some exceptions, but increasingly civil parishes are a historical analysis tool; and indeed the census populations stray into adjoining villages frequently, their areas are largely based on medieval land ownership. Their entire lifeblood is best summarised as a section within an article, or left out other than by way of secondary reference. It would be best if a bot could add civil parishes for most rural villages that share a common name with the clear DISCLAIMER: "may not overlap". But the thing you have to appreciate is there is so little psychological resonance and reflection of green buffers between places with the parish definition these days - and I don't at all mean successful Anglican parishes, ecclesiastical parishes are in many cases more notable for a local community; that depends mainly on levels of use of the Church of England facilities - that it would be childsplay to write out articles on a backward, inherently disempowered, and may I add convoluted system which civil parishes present. That is not to say in some Counties/Districts they have played the odd role here or there in mobilising petitions and rearranging footpaths but really they are not the axiomatic definition of rural areas; it is most lamentable that Historic England of which I am an active contributor, deem CP to be "relevant" in their summarises but I had that explained to me that is so informal extra historical lenses and research can be applied.- Adam37 Talk 16:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  But, Crouch, Swale, you're setting out what would happen - if the proposal went ahead - without any justification or explanation of the benefits. Take Niton & Whitwell - both of them are modest settlements and they both already have their own articles. Anything of interest or notability relating to them (and there isn't much!) can happily slot into either of their pages. I see no benefit and clear disadvantages (or at least risks of disadvantage) in adding on top another article on the parish. MapReader (talk) 16:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  And some aren't as neat as enviable Niton & Whitwell, many such old mergers take in half a hamlet here or there extra. Even Built Up Areas or Output Areas tend to unite closer-bound entities, sociologically and geographically.- Adam37 Talk 16:51, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  @MapReader: facts relating to "Niton and Whitwell" parish belong in an article so titled. The parish of "Niton" absorbed "Whitwell" parish in 1933[2] and then was renamed to "Niton and Whitwell" later. Compare for example Blackburn/Darwen and Blackburn with Darwen, there are 3 articles, one about "Blackburn" the town (and former district), one about Darwen the town (and former district) and one about "Blackburn with Darwen" the current district. There is also Trinidad and Tobago about the country and the separate articles at Trinidad and Tobago for each island. While the 2 examples aren't that comparable since they would have articles even if the administrative division had the same name as one of the towns/islands it does show how the topics can co exist. The same apples to Niton and Whitwell all 3 topics are distinct topics with distinct names that merit separate articles per WP:GEOLAND. Now as I said I don't think we should generally split parishes from their settlement when they have the same name as the settlement like Brighstone and St Endellion but as part of the RFC I included it as an option since RFCs can (and should) include different options to what the nom supports.

  With built up areas they tend to correspond more to a settlement and is what should usually be used for a settlement (at least of it isn't a parish). The 2019 estimate of "Niton" BUA is 1178 (and 1162 for the 2011 census) while that of "Niton and Whitwell" parish is 2082 for the 2011 census (and 2144 for the 2019 estimate), "Whitwell" BUA is 675 for the 2019 estimate (and 619 for the 2011 census). Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  ISTM that you continue to try and argue your way out of a problem of your own creation. Missing is any good reason why we should jump into your lake in the first place? MapReader (talk) 18:20, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  My view is probably that of Crouch, Swale's, that civil parishes are notable enough in principle for articles, but for me only if a reasonable amount of verifiable stuff can be found over, above and for geographically outside any settlements—of a differing name—that are part of the parish. If such stuff can't be found, then it's best to not have an article at all. However, and this is my point and back to the question of the discussion, a bot would be indiscriminate in its creations, and would probably only present us with parish name, county, neighbouring parishes, recent population, and perhaps distance to a county town', much of this which could be found and repeated in any infobox, and which for me doesn't provide enough for reader satisfaction, but enough for reader irritation. My preference is therefore that parish new articles should be left to editor manual effort, not to wholesale bot creations. Acabashi (talk) 18:47, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  Yes my manual creations do tend to include location/distance from town etc, coordinates, (other) settlements in the parish, population/area, touching parishes, listed buildings, church name (if a village) or any other facilities/features, name origin/Domesday Book (not normally possibly if not a settlement) and changes to the parish its self such as formerly being a township/when the parish was created (most settlement parishes don't have this) and any boundary changes which I think people would agree is more than sufficient for articles. The other thing to consider regarding bots is about adding the population data and area/touching parishes to existing articles, should this task be done manually or should this be done manually? While it would be practical for me to create the ~500 missing parishes manually it would not be practical for me to add such data to the existing ~10,000 existing articles so even if we don't get consensus to create with a bot the missing ones with a bot the existing ones remains an option. To be quite honest I actually think adding the population data and area/touching parishes could be done semi-automatically with a user script but (1) I don't have the skills to create one and (2) I would expect to preform this across such a large number of articles would need some kind of community approval anyway. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:03, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  And for the record WP:GEOLAND says census tracts are an exception to the usual rule that legally recognized places are presumed notable One exception is that census tracts are usually not considered notable. this is because they are generally randomly selected areas that change and have no actual usage outside the ONS. Parishes on the other hand are generally stable for long periods and correspond to natural boundaries and are widely used by other sources. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:34, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  Since the radical changes in 1974, neither Blackburn nor Darwen has ever been a district on its own. In 1974, the Municipal Borough of Darwen (which was part of the administrative county of Lancashire) and the County Borough of Blackburn (which was not) were combined with each other (and several adjoining areas) to create the Borough of Blackburn, a district within post-1974 Lancashire. The inclusion of both former boroughs was recognised in council-owned vehicles, such as maintenance trucks, refuse wagons and buses - they were painted white with red roof and green lower panels (before 1974, Blackburn Corporation buses had been green and cream, those of Darwen Corporation were red and cream). Nevertheless, Darwen residents objected to the omission of their name even though they generated a good proportion of the council's income. This district was renamed "Blackburn with Darwen" in 1997 with no boundary changes; it became a unitary authority the following year. Blackburn and Darwen are still distinct towns - nowadays the M65 creates a division between the towns, but even before that motorway was built, the area that it was built through was all open fields. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:44, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

• Well I am posting a general No. The last thing WP needs is some random bot creating a stack of pointless new articles that achieve nothing other than actually damaging the chances of existing articles about geographical settlements being accurate and up to date. I have tried to engage in discussion above, but this has failed to prompt a single good reason why we should even think of proceeding down the proposed path. MapReader (talk) 15:29, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
• I think this is reasonably well talked out now, with points of view getting a good airing, and with quite a few more users being contacted than the original list above. Although this idea is not a direct proposal, I concur with your point of view, MapReader, its No to a Bot for me. Acabashi (talk) 15:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Acabashi and MapReader: thankyou for you're answers regarding bot/manual creation but what about the other thing about adding the data to existing articles, should that be done with a bot or (semi) automatically? Also noting that Bob Henshaw (talk · contribs) added 2011 data to many parish articles but sometimes this was from 2 parishes that the data had combine and sometimes he added incorrect post towns etc. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:46, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I have no particular axe to grind here, as I'm pretty non-conversant with this. But as you give Bob Henshaw as an example, would these cause some problem? Acabashi (talk) 16:34, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Not as long as I made sure that the parish I was adding data to was the same as the topic described, its possible information could be added to the wrong article if there are 2 places with the same name in a county etc and the article is about the place that isn't a parish[3]. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:37, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

• It's a regretful No from me. Civil parishes are the most local, approachable and often friendly of community forums but they have largely the same level of influence as a local environmental or archaeology group. In regards to academia and esoteric works references are rife but are in fact a way of alluding to their pre-1860s ecclesiastical forerunners (and of course, often, those counterparts today which very often have bigger budgets and schemes of events). These have not kept up with present end points (only in the country are there, about half the time, fairly indisputable ones), in much the same way as the randomness to census tracts does not do either. In fact there is no easy way to define precisely most towns and "villages" by which I include hamlets, in the modern style, as nothing has "kept up". That is why Historic England have to use CPs as an old mirror, and rather a fudge. Once again the now truly historic, obsolete nature of dragging in the odd sets of houses here and there, or even whole housing estates from neighbouring towns makes many of them a false picture, a strong selective bias, statistically and to a degree a misnomer.- Adam37 Talk 09:35, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for raising a point I never considered: the viability of civil parish articles themselves; I shall certainly think about this. Editors, including me, merrily create such articles I suppose because many other CP articles have been previously created. Most of the stuff found is almost entirely the historic, more or less constrained by current borders, or is just plain geographic; this is at best an easily digestible bite-sized chunk of a county district. Adding this stuff, if important, under a district, or, as in the case of Herefordshire, a county article would make those unwieldy, and would be an erroneous fit in any or various CP settlements. However I do take your point, and that is why there is a problem with a bot, even as proposed, that would find it impossible to comprehensively add all necessary, deep, detailed and tailored stuff, if notable, to warrant an article. The bot would only continue generating inadequate abysmal stubs, as Wiki-litter spawn, for areas of land that don't deserve them, something which has been done manually by some editors who I suspect think it is the job of others to polish them up. The viability of civil parishes as articles could be taken up at WikiProject England[4]. A proposal could be made to remove all (in principle) or some CP articles as not viable or notable, or to establish guidelines as to what might make them so, to stop indiscriminate creations. Acabashi (talk) 13:15, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

You're not proposing to get rid of existing parish articles are you (other than possibly the few that have the same name as a settlement) but just talking about the ones a bot has created. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:35, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

As there's 2 people with similar ideas, specify which (please). I think repeating someone's clear suggestion back to them (but CAVEATED through an England forum) is hardly anything but defensive of (and a rhetorical defence) of this recent proliferation of CP articles. And don't get me started on electorate-equalised things (WARDS). I would say the "litter spawn" term is perhaps a bit emotive but does the job.- Adam37 Talk 10:21, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Aiming to get WP:CONSENSUS, please contribute 3 rules (or less) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England and please keep them fairly brief. I've had an ideas-floating go.- Adam37 Talk 11:02, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

@Adam37: Civil parishes are acknowledged at WP:UKVILLAGES and WP:NGEO, so probably little likelihood of removing any under non-notability. What we are discussing is a bot to scatter inadequate stubs which will not give significant numerous coverage in reliable sources and verify information beyond simple statistics. Acabashi (talk) 16:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Acabashi: notability does not have to mean we have an individual page for an article. See WP:NOPAGE. Although of course there are sources covering civil parishes, the question is whether it is useful for Wikipedia to have an entirely separate page which covering an entity that has little significance for residents, and whose characteristics are already covered elsewhere. Articles such as Great Chart with Singleton serve no useful purpose to their readers, and should be merged.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:37, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Although I agree Great Chart with Singleton isn't is very good shape its distinct from the 2 settlements it contains and should be improved not merged though maybe the Singleton article should be merged. It looks like the parish was renamed and was formerly called just "Great Chart"[5][6] though I can't find when. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:22, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I don't know the history either, but as far as I can gather this parish is really just the village with a nearby housing estate bolted on. It's presumably an entity with a council, and it probably levies a minimal tax and does a few odds and ends. But I don't regard it as a significant geographic entity, with which many of its residents would identify. The article talks about the roads and footpaths that cross the parish, but for what purpose? Hikers and drivers in the area aren't likely to commemorate the moment in which they enter that parish. The parish doesn't as far as I know maintain those paths in any way. It's just padding, to fill up a page on a recent and arbitrary geographic division. Putting the parish-specific details in Great Chart and redirecting the parish link to that would be more than sufficient coverage.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:19, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Infoboxes

If we decide to have 1 combined article for both settlement and parish (as I've said we probably generally should) but there are population figures or other settlements in the parish what about the infobox? Draft:Great and Little Wigborough uses {{Infobox settlement}} so includes the information in the infobox that it includes the settlements of Great Wigborough and Little Wigborough. South Huish uses {{Infobox UK place}} so it doesn't include the fact that it also includes Galmpton and Hope Cove. Similarly Fulford, Staffordshire uses Infobox UK place and states the 650 BUA population not the 5,931 parish population. Should we modify the UK infobox to allow it to also do villages that are also parishes and accept data for both BUA and parish? Are BUAs too unstable to use figures for? Just for clarity the "Infobox UK place" is used for settlements while the "Infobox settlement" is used for administrative divisions as recommended by Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements#Infobox (don't get confused by the names v function!). Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:19, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

@Acabashi and Adam37: see User:Crouch, Swale/CP infoboxes for some examples, as can be seen from looking at the area a lot of the time the village only occupies a small percentage of the parish, Woodbury village is only about 2% of the area of the parish and Stanhope (the largest parish in England) is about a quarter of a percentage (and even that's generous since not all of the BUA is actually built up). Note that I have given the 2019 estimate for the BUAs since its possible that they have changed since the 2011 census but CPs tend to be static, we only tend to get around half a dozen total changes (such as boundary changes, renames, splits/merges and formation) to parishes a year. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:10, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Well we all have to eat and breathe something (food and oxygen). And you might wish to look at biocapacity before circumscribing the space in which people live. I don't think a measure of density that serves to differentiate the urban from the rural WITHIN a district is particularly useful.- Adam37 Talk 20:54, 9 December 2020 (UTC) The point on the semi-random size in the modern age of each parish does not add grounds to your proposal. Two thorn in your plan's side exist: ample agreement thus far by all the contributors to WP:UKVILLAGES supporting the policy of no separate article, if we can help it; a small minority of people nationwide have the happenstance fortune of having such an ultra-local campaign/advisory and petty funds group. I'm not berating people's hard work but really they are akin to a little local charity.- Adam37 Talk 20:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC) Now turning to the new infobox proposal - I tend to agree. This is far more thought through. BUAs are an abomination and in flux.- Adam37 Talk 21:07, 9 December 2020 (UTC) The census tables I used to like reading gave % water, % transport (land), % natural forest (or similar) all of which I find very helpful; after all telling or allowing someone to soundbite that a motorway-or reservoir, or lake hosting parish is mainly rural and stands out as such is missing the principle of buffer zones, or understanding of the level of fields versus intensely explorable/habitat land. Traditionally we have on wikipedia UK just put a ==localities== header for each part of a village but it was becoming increasingly dropped as most disparate communities dissipate still further. All of this calls for better infoboxes.- Adam37 Talk 21:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The kind of things like percentage of water etc were included in the RamBot articles[7] though I'm not sure how much information should be included per WP:INDISCRIMINATE how much of the municipality is water is probably more relevant than the percentage of households that have someone over 65. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Census-style demographics fraught and not needed per WP:NOTBOOK/hyperlinks instead. If you do gain sway for your new auto-articles, which I'd say I'm warming to a bit, certainly not manual ones, then transcluded land use would be helpful since some editors like to list every map named cluster of houses, I'd say pointing out the elephants in the room when looking at density and what is on offer is more helpful. You see unless you do that per WP:BIAS you're making the idea that CPs are a universal unit, when they aren't, they're overwhelmingly "under" populated and so the whole slew of new articles offends me, as suggests a French/Italian style system which simply is not the case, we have VERY few really urban ones. So it's all distortion and spin- Adam37 Talk 22:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to use the same kind of data that we already use for counties and districts at Category:Templates for UK subdivision lookups. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:15, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Couldn't you just upgrade the existing infobox to include extra relevant parameters rather than creating a new one? G-13114 (talk) 23:34, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes that would be a good idea, make it so that 2 different figures can be added and making it so that other settlements can be added. As a side note regarding the population figures maybe we should use templates like De:Vorlage:EWR and Da:Skabelon:Vis indbyggere DK so that they don't need to be updated manually. As noted with BUAs they change sometimes but parishes are usually very stable with around 6 changes a year so any changes could be sorted out manually if a template ID no longer worked because a parish had been renamed or merged/abolished. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:49, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

@Adam37 and G-13114: would a template similar to {{Scottish locality populations}} (like {{City Population}}) created by User:PinkPanda272 for the infobox work? For the article text {{City Population}} could produce the text "In 2019 the built up area had an estimated population of 645." for Woodbury Salterton as long as this doesn't violate WP:TG ("Templates should not normally be used to store article text").

If the place has BUA data as well as the parish then the template for the infobox should give both namely the population and area (and the resulting density) and there should be 2 article text templates in text, one giving the BUA and one giving the parish (in different sentences). For Woodbury we would use a single template for the infobox namely {{City Population|E34001536|type=built up area|E04003000|type=parish}} while we would put {{City Population}} and {{City Population}} to produce "In 2019 the built up area had an estimated population of 1739." and "In 2011 the parish had a population of 4360." I do however have a small concern, in both cases we would program the template to give the latest estimate while the parish would always use the census (the 2021 data probably won't be available for another 2 years or so) since its not clear how stable BUAs are namely the area might be different to a few years ago while parishes rarely change, note that City Population gives the data for the 2001 and 2011 for the area the place currently covers not the area it covered at that time. My concern is that presenting 2011 census data and 2019 estimates might confuse people due to the different in time though probably not a major concern. The other concern is if the place gets merged or abolished then the data would probably disappear since I know that former wards/parishes can't be found so presumably they are deleted from City Population. This shouldn't be a huge concern either since if that happens we can probably use a web archive or Google cache to find and add it back manually.

Per G-13114 yes the template for the infobox should be added to the infobox its self so I will post a message on its talk page. However part of the idea of the City Population template is that it could be used for anywhere in the world (as long as the correct parameters are used). Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:01, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

It sounds utterly indisputable to add 2011 census data of any unit, but "estimates" are just that, and based upon house/home building and estimated subdivision (like house/flat shares) which is totally hypothetical and should be eschewed at all costs in an encyclopedic context - once again your style is more niche or reading like a specialist angle into UK geography than than robust and iron-clad fact-based.- Adam37 Talk 19:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Most infoboxes that I'm aware of give estimates such as Essex. Maybe the BUAs should be added manually if they aren't consistently suitable but adding them when they are seems logical, while parish boundaries are generally stable for long periods and correspond to natural boundaries it still seems useful to casual readers to give the settlement its self as well but if you (and others) don't think its a good idea to include it in most I have no objection to leaving it out if we mass add stats to the infoboxes/text. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

@Crouch, Swale: I'm happy to make a template similar to the Scottish one if needed, but don't think it would be practical to use City Population, as the figures would need to be manually copied for each of 9,000 parishes. The original data seems to be from the ONS, probably this dataset, which I could transfer to machine-readable format and upload to Commons. PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 22:41, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

@PinkPanda272: wouldn't the lookup work similar to the Scottish ones work? Is it possible to create a template that looks up rather than needing to copy the data for each to a template or article text? Maybe the lookup could be from the ONS for English parishes if needed. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:52, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

@Crouch, Swale: The Scottish template's data comes from a National Records for Scotland spreadsheet that I converted to Commons data here, which required little manual effort (I used this external program to do the heavy lifting). I can use the same process for the ONS spreadsheet if we decide that something like this would be useful. PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 20:08, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, let's see what others think then. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)