Talk:River Great Ouse

message: Is there a definition of 'largest' for rivers?  The post said it was the 'largest' Ouse - it seems pretty clear it's the longest, but the outflow of the Yorkshire Ouse is much more (51m3/s v's 16m3/s) and the catchment area of the Yorkshire Ouse is bigger too - 10,000 km2 v's 8,000 km2.  I've just taken out the word 'largest' for now, but if there's a technical definition and it is larger, we should put it back.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atreic (talk • contribs) 19:22, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Size

message: An anon editor has added some text on a current flood warning.  It seems to me that this should be deleted.  A record of major historical floods might be a different matter. --Concrete Cowboy 16:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have deleted as this is transient information and Wikipedia is not a news service. --Concrete Cowboy 17:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flood warnings? 

message: To avoid Wp:trivia, it seems to me that tributaries that are too small to have their own article should not be listed.  I believe that this was agreed earlier.  So I shall delete. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor tributaries 

message: The header box read:
Length 	150 miles (240 km)
Source elevation 	115 m (380 feet)
I've swapped it so it reads 
Length 	240 km (150 miles)
Source elevation 	115 m (380 feet)
I think we should be consistent,  either "imperial measurement (metric measurement)" or the other way round in both.
--mgaved (talk) 17:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anyone have a source for the length? Hunter-Blair (The River Great Ouse and tributaries) quotes 260km, the EA (here) quote 240km of navigable waterway on the Great Ouse system (ie including tributaries). Most of the web sources seem to have copied one another, judging by the surrounding text. Bob1960evens (talk) 14:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Information consistency

message: Looking at the deposited plan for the railway that runs adjacent north of Ely (Lynn and Ely Railway Act 1845), I note that the river at this location is labelled Sandalls Cut, in the ownership of the South Level Drainage and Navigation Commissioners. This is up to the junction with the river Lark. However, this name does not appear in the wiki and there is only one reference on the wider internet. Does anyone have any more information, such as when Sandalls Cut was built? Pubwebmaster (talk) 10:32, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sandalls Cut 

message: That given in the lede and that in the infobox differ due to conversions - and I can't remember how to fix the problem!  Geopersona (talk) 20:02, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: assumes that trailing zeroes indicate precision, so 230; 2,300; 23,000; 230,000; 2,300,000 etc means "give the conversion correct to two significant figures". See debate at template talk:convert. Problem is fixed by adding a decimal point. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:27, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh, yes! thanks  Geopersona (talk) 20:58, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: And re the IP's changes to the length, I'd quibble with other lengths derived from that source (and indeed from various others!) but until we can find a better more accurate one it's all we've got to go on, given WP's (understandable if sometimes frustrating) longstanding policy re preferring reference-ability over accuracy. cheers Geopersona (talk) 10:21, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I have invited the IP editor to contribute a better source. How else can we know what is 'accurate'? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:25, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

text: Well indeed, but as I've been finding elsewhere, better sources are thin on the ground. It's a shame that a trusted body like OS (or the Environment Agency or its equivalents in other of the UK's four nations) isn't able to provide that sort of detail as a public service. There are sporadic references to river lengths in SSSI citations and the like, not least in those cases where the entire watercourse is protected in that fashion - they can be expected, though not guaranteed, to have a certain level of accuracy. Geopersona (talk) 14:22, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

text: I have taken quite some time to survey the river's entire length using the measuring tool available at the wheresthepath website and it gives a distance from the source to the point at which it enters the Wash at high tide of some 270km or 168 miles. I am fairly confident of the accuracy of that figure to within 1km but . . . it depends on channel choices at various points (besides islands, it boasts a few anabranches) and, more particularly in this context, it is very obviously original research (OR) on my part so entirely ineligible for inclusion in the Wikipedia article. What it does provide (at least for me, not necessarily for others of course as they can't be assured of my competence or care in this - and that's where the WP policy comes in) is a guide as to how accurate any referenced figure for the length that may be happened upon, actually is. See also discussion at Talk:River_Wye#Length_of_river.  Anyway, that remains the challenge, to find that reference for the Great Ouse. Oh, and we could also do with finding a reference/s for where the river is deemed to start and where it is deemed to end - I've yet to see ones that suitably pin either end down. Geopersona (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure you already know that your WP:OR can't be used. I suppose you might persuade the Environment Agency to publish something but frankly I would be astonished if they did. As for the source and without spending ages on it, the first place on the map that I can see the name used is south of Syresham, [here] (1952 6" map). But it all comes out in the Wash.  --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes John - as I very clearly stated, OR is ineligible for inclusion - we both know that! Nor had I imagined that EA would be overly interested in taking up that challenge; they've other things to do with their depleted workforce. But what we do have is an unsatisfactory situation here in WP - and hence in an awful lot of mirror sites and other web locations which derive their figures from WP without further thought. A quick trawl of over 60 of the main rivers featured in WP articles in England and Wales reveals that more than 50% of the given lengths are entirely unreferenced so we haven't even any established figure to go on and one or two more or less admit to being OR. I shall seek to remedy those more blatant ones first. Geopersona (talk) 20:53, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two different lengths given