Template talk:WikiProject UK geography

To do categories, please

Could a template expert upgrade this template so that if the todo parameter is populated, the categories Category: To do and Category:To do, priority undefined or Category:To do, priority X are added to the page. That is, it would be helpful to see the same category functionality as {{to do}}. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:45, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Template improvements

• The template is rather big and ugly.
• There's too much whitespace in the Todo section. I was gonna fix it myself but don't want to break your conditional code.
• Using quality= rather than the standard issue class= isn't a great idea, as you lose the ability to have your template parsed by bots and tools without modifying them (e.g. my plugin).
• The Todo comments are a nice idea, but why on earth didn't you go with the Wikipedia 1.0 /Comments scheme? Then you'd get the comments appearing in your Wikipedia 1.0 worklists (if you had one, it looks like you haven't even got that set up properly! - These links shouldn't be red: Index · Statistics · Log) Really if you don't know what you're doing you should have asked an expert to set it up for you. I'll try and get it patched up best I can now so the bot picks you up.
• Please make sure you understand the importance ratings. Somebody rated Cheltenham as Low importance. Low is for cruft and peripheral stuff. Cheltenham is a historic spa town and a major centre for business in the South West. It would get into any reasonable print enyclopedia, so should be High or Mid (probably High). "Low" would be something like Piffs Elm. --kingboyk 10:13, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• I've fixed up your categories so that Mathbot should pick them up now and your articles will be known to the Wikipedia 1.0 team. These links should turn blue overnight: Index · Statistics · Log
• I've disabled "by priority" for now until you fix your ratings. Clue: England should be Top. What is more important in British geography than England?! Manchester should be higher than Mid (High or Top). Cheltenham should be higher than Low. It's such a mess it's best to turn it off for now (many WikiProjects don't even bother assessing by importance). Oh, by the way, perhaps you're confused about what "priority" means: it's just a politically correct way of saying "enyclopedic importance". If these ratings are meant to be the priority your project wants to assign to them for your workload, you'll need some new categories like "Todo priority". The scheme you're using is reserved specifically for Wikipedia 1.0 assessments of enyclopedic importance.
• Please reduce the size of the template and fix the whitespace issue. --kingboyk 10:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Again, please? - Dudesleeper / Talk 12:11, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

To do list broken

{{editprotected}} Somehow the to do list functionality has been broken. For example, there is a 'todo' parameter in the template at Talk:Corsham. Yet it doesn't display (on Firefox - perhaps other browsers too.) Could someone knowledgeable in template syntax please investigate to see if the template needs to be fixed, or if the transcluding pages need to be changed in some way? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 13:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks like |todo= is not supported by the template any more, and hasn't been since November 2007. It's probable that the WikiProject simply no longer wants to use this feature - try asking on WT:UKGEO if they still plan to use it. Happy‑melon 15:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone object to reverting the template back to November 2007 when the todo parameter was deleted? Please speak up now, as who knows how many uses of the template were broken back then. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 21:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to object to a revert, but only in the sense that the template since this time has an article assessment system built into it. However, I wouldn't mind a "To do list" being reinstated at all, if that is the issue. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:14, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The new method for displaying the todo list appears to be putting the remarks into the comment subdirectory. See Talk:Hastings for an example. However, the WPUKgeo template does not show the comments, but the Sussex one does. I do not know if they are both supposed to show the comments, or just one? MortimerCat (talk) 00:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I prefer the sub-page method too, for new to do lists. However, that won't fix all the pages with broken to do lists, as we don't know which pages are affected. The only repairs would be a database search to find the broken lists, or a fix of the template. I propose that we revert to the November version, and those that made changes since then add them back again, testing for breakages on the way. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 21:18, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Add Category

{{editprotected}} Could the following be added to the template:

<noinclude>
[[Category:WikiProject banners|{{PAGENAME}}]]
</noinclude>

Thanks -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

 Done Happy‑melon 19:40, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

add switch for C-class

{{editprotected}} A new line e.g.: "| C = [[Category:C-Class UK geography articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]" is needed between the corresponding lines for B-class and Start-class to enable the use of C-class articles.

Note: the new line needs to be read in edit mode.Pyrotec (talk) 16:51, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. --- RockMFR 17:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks.Pyrotec (talk)

Documentation

Why is this template undocumented? --Dr Greg (talk) 12:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Featured list parameter

{{editprotected}} Could a "featured list" parameter be added to this template. UKGEO has over 20 featured lists. A few are included in Category:FA-Class UK geography articles but many are not. I believe it needs code something like:
|fl=[[Category:FL-Class UK geography articles]]
based on the edit someone kindly did for me at WikiProject Somerset but I'm definitely not a template expert. This would also require the creation of a new Category:FL-Class UK geography articles and then I believe it should show up in the project assessment table.— Rod ^talk 17:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

• The Featured List parameter has now been added. Epbr123 (talk) 12:37, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

2009 local government structural changes task force

Can someone please add a parameter that allows certain articles to have "This article is also within the scope of the 2009 government structure changes task force." or something similar. Jolly Ω Janner 18:10, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

 Done. I took the opportunity of updating the banner to {{WPBM}} as well. Currently the trigger parameter is 2009=yes, and it will categorise articles into Category:2009 local government structural changes task force articles. Let me know if you would like to change any of this. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Template edit causing problems

{{editprotected}} The change made to this template is creating a problem with photo requests. Instead of being placed in the county/region specified in the photo= parameter they are being placed directly in the top level Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in the United Kingdom. This category is starting fill up. Should be placing image requests in sub-categories to make it easier for people to address them.Traveler100 (talk) 12:22, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, sorry about that. I think I have fixed it now. It will check the existence of Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in {{{photo}}} and if it doesn't exist it will use United Kingdom. Is that okay? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:32, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the quick response, good solution too. Traveler100 (talk) 12:59, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 21 April 2019

Remove italics from MAIN_TEXT. Introduced in Special:Diff/169274478/next, I suspect that the italics in the example given in Template:WPBannerMeta/doc may have been the cause. Sam Sailor 06:36, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

I guess you mean these italics? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:56, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that's the MAIN_TEXT. Sam Sailor 10:10, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Borsetshire [...] comprises Borsetshire and Felpersham

Despite a long debate at my talk page, @A.D.Hope and I have reached an impasse over how to deal with ceremonial counties that have been divided between separate Unitary Authorities, but one of which has retained the name of the overall county. Immediate examples are Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Cornwall, North Yorkshire, Shropshire and Wiltshire. (For the purposes of this discussion, I am using the fictional ceremonial county of Borsetshire just as a proxy for any of these. Please don't do as I do and leap up to turn the radio off at this point .) We have agreed to use UKGEO to invite others to comment and see if we can reach a compromise or at least a broad consensus.

A.D.Hope considers that the construction

• For local government purposes the county [Borsetshire] comprises two unitary authority areas, Borsetshire and Felpersham,

which is the construction currently used. My view is that it should be replaced with

• the county is governed by two independent unitary authorities, Borsetshire Council and Felpersham City Council.

I hope I have set out the issue neutrally. My argument for change follows separately and I leave A.D.Hope to set out the argument for the status quo. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk)

Case for change

My case for change is that the current construction is needlessly – even perversely – ambiguous and confusing to anyone not intimately familiar with our terminology.

My equivalent of the man on the Clapham Omnibus is someone who lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and is invited by that article to read about Buckinghamshire, from which the name of his home county derives. For someone coming to it cold, it is is utterly confusing to be told that Buckinghamshire and Buckinghamshire are two different places – without any further explanation. WP:think of the reader and WP:EGG: we should not require someone to read a sentence three times (and dive down into the link nest) before they work out what on earth is going on.

Consider how our terminology looks to someone unfamiliar with the topic: to understand the lead of our article as it stands, you will need first to know that

• that there are two different Buckinghamshires.
• the (Wikipedia created) term ceremonial county,
• another (Wikipedia created) term "unitary authority area" (long before any mention of the term Unitary Authority).

But you won't be given any explanation of this, let alone any "sharp bends ahead" sign to ease you in gently. It is all just taken as read, everybody knows, just follow the wikilinks. But we are writing for the man on the Pittburgh Omnibus (or even the Clapham Omnibus for that matter, because the minutiae of local government in England escapes most people), not for Wikipedia editors. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:47, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Case for the status quo

JMF has summarised our previous discussion well, so my thanks for that. It seems fair to give the other side of the debate in the same format as above.

The discussion covers two issues, which are really distinct from each other. The first is that some unitary authority areas share their name with a ceremonial county, and the second is that the terminology used for English local government terminology on Wikipedia can be confusing.

On the first, the structure of the ceremonial county articles implicitly differentiates ceremonial counties from those used for local government. The first sentence of a given article introduces the ceremonial county, and its local government arrangements are mentioned in the second paragraph. The sentence covering local government follows a similar pattern, for example Buckinghamshire reads "for local government purposes the county comprises two unitary authority areas, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes." As the ceremonial county is introduced first and the unitary authority areas second, and then explicitly as a local government entities, I do not think readers will easily confuse them despite the shared name.

The second issue is more difficult to resolve, because 'ceremonial county' and 'unitary authority area' are the terms used for those entities on Wikipedia and no better alternative has garnered widespread support. They must be referred to somehow, and the above terms are the best we have. JMF's proposal does not resolve the potential confusion caused by the terms, because if a reader does not know what a unitary authority area is they are not likely to know what a unitary authority is. A.D.Hope (talk) 16:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Discussion

At this point, it is best that we stand back and encourage others to contribute before we say more.

• It's not an issue peculiar to the UK. The man on the Pittsburgh omnibus is presumably aware that New York (the state) and New York (the city) are different. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:24, 25 November 2025 (UTC)
  • I agree entirely. (Well, I would, wouldn't I?) My essence of my challenge is that the differences should be overt, not covert. When there is any doubt, Americans say "New York City". --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:45, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Notes