Talk:Police box

message: Needs references, otherwise a neat article, scraping into B for the images and for making alot out of the topic.--SGGH 16:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In the UK, you can register a design under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. The TARDIS and the Police Box design are registered trademarks of the BBC. See http://dwas.drwho.org/news/20021023-tardis - I've corrected the article accordingly. --khaosworks 08:08, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: assessment

message: These are for the public to contact the police as opposed to the police using them for information, right? Jachra 05:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Kiosks 

message: This legal brief concerning the BBC vs. Metropolitan Police lawsuit refers to the designer of the blue London police box as "Gilbert MacKenzie Trench".  This academic paper on the history of police boxes calls him "George McKenzie Trench". This site calls him "G. Mackenzie-Trench", and this one says "G McKenzie-Trench".  Does anyone know what the man's name actually was? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:36, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Times always refers to him as "Mr G. Mackenzie Trench" in several articles published between 1929 and 1936 — reports of a murder in 1964 at a police building named after him refer to "Mackenzie Trench House", so it seems there's an 'a' and no hyphen, according to The Times anyway. That doesn't help you with the first name much admittedly. Angmering 07:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah — the Dictionary of Scottish Architects lists him as Gilbert Mackenzie Trench, so it looks like the University of Strathclyde lecturer got it wrong.  —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:07, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  G. Mackenzie Trench 

message: The caption for the Earl's Court police box image says that it's "bristling with new technology".  It looks as if it's a quote, but I can't figure out where it's from.  Is it from some press release or newspaper story from when it was built in 1997?  Does anyone know? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 11:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "bristling with new technology" 

message: This is still a little way from GA, the main stickler here is sourcing, it's written fairly well and useful ect. ect., but the whole lead is unsourced and there are numerous paragraphs with no refs at all. Work on sourcing before you send it back for a second go
†he Bread 3000 08:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought that the lead section was meant to be a summary of the article, with citations provided in the main article text.  The fact that information was cited in the lead section was a complaint in this featured article review, where the reviewer said, "The lead section is meant to be a summary of the article. All info there should also be in the body of the article and inline cited there, not in the lead section."  Is that inaccurate?  If so, it would be good if you could correct the reviewer (), so that he stops giving misleading criticisms. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

text: P.S. After a bit of research, I see that this was a subject of debate at Wikipedia:Lead section a few months back; based on the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Lead section, the consensus seems to be that lead sections should be cited just like the rest of the article.  I stand corrected. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi there - this is something I've also wondered about for a little while - would you easily be able to provide a link to the discussion? Cheers SeanMack 11:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It starts here and continues in the following sections.  The discussion isn't definitive, but to my eye it leans towards citations in the lead section. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA failing 

message: I am reviewing the article for GA and placing comments here as I go along. Please feel free to address any of these as I go. Johntex\talk 15:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: GA review by Johntex

message: A while back, 90.240.102.48 (talk • contribs • WHOIS) added "1950s style" to the caption of the image of the Earl's Court police box.  I removed it, because I thought that it was misleading, since the box isn't exactly 1950s style (most notably because of the CCTV camera on the top).  As you can see in the page history and on our respective user talk pages, we've had a little disagreement about it.  It's a pretty minor point, but we should try to reach a solution that's acceptable to everybody.  (If anyone else reading this is interested, please chime in — other opinions are welcome.)
I felt that "1950s style" was misleading because of the CCTV.  (I'm also not clear on how the design is more 1950s than it is 1940s or 1930s — it's basically the Mackenzie Trench design, with a few alterations.)  90.x feels that "modern" alone is misleading.  How would it be if we changed the caption to something completely neutral, such as "A police box outside Earl's Court tube station in London."  The article contains details of the construction and maintainance of that box, and I've been dubious of the "bristling with new technology" bit for a while now (see above).  Would a simpler caption be an acceptable compromise? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:34, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd go with the simpler one — "1950s style" is certainly misleading and shouldn't be used for that particular image, anyway. Angmering 11:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I dunt understand. No-one makes police boxes anymore, so you have to say what style it's been constructed in otherwise the implication would be that it is in a modern style. I got '1950s' from somewhere else in the article, and from what I can garner from pages referenced in the article it's probably incorrect - it could range anywhere from 1930s to 1960s - but there should still be some contextual comment on the style. --90.240.102.48 14:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about "A police box outside Earl's Court tube station in London, built in 1997 and based on the 1929 Mackenzie Trench design"? That indicates that the design isn't really modern, although the box is. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. --90.240.102.48 20:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  This gets rid of the problematic "bristling with new technology" bit as well. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:22, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (I'm not entirely comfortable with it, as obviously I'm of the opinion that the box is a novelty built by the Met on a whim, and you are of the opinion it is a real police box built with the intention of functioning as such, and your suggestion's tone reflects that - but it'll do.) --90.240.102.48 20:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I have no opinion about the Met's intentions in building that police box in 1997, and I'm not quite sure how the caption's tone suggests anything about their intentions.  But it's not a big deal. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:27, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

text: The page that mentioned "bristling" has now gone offline, and from what I saw thanks to the Internet Archive, it wasn't even properly quoted. It's probably best to get rid of it. --90.240.102.48 14:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caption for image of Earl's Court box 

message: :The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it.
An editor has placed a merger proposal in the article Koban (police box), suggesting merging it into Police box. The merger proposal suggests discussing here.
I oppose the merger. The article on Koban is on a Japanese police box. It is a building in which one or several members of the police force may be on duty. It appears unrelated to the British police box, which Police box describes as a special-purpose telephone booth. If a merger is to take place, merging Police box into Telephone booth seems more useful. Fg2 (talk) 10:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I oppose merging too. Koban is not only to refer physical box or style. It is a system of police service for more direct contacting of police and citizen.  It is said that Koban system is employed (exported) to Honolulu, Hawaii, Shanghai, and USA. Japanese edition of Koban describes more details and its function.　See newly added external link, about Koban system in Singapore on article Koban (police box).--Namazu-tron (talk) 15:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I also oppose a merging of these two articles, it is fine how it is. The Japanese idea is quite unique and it probably ends up sometimes named "Police Box" over here because of Wasei-eigo (small rooms often referred to as a box) instead of any direct connection to the British Police Box idea... and in any case, there is no need to smoosh these articles together when Koban can stand on it's own as an article. Nesnad (talk) 17:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I support either a merger or a renaming of this article to "British police box". It is both misleading and ethnocentric to have this article named "police box" and then ignore the occurrences of police boxes outside of the English-speaking world. The English translation for Koban is "police box". I came to this article looking to read about police boxes in general, not British police boxes. --JHP (talk) 22:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merger of Koban (police box) into Police box 

message: Why does this article refer to police boxes in the past tense? I don't know about Britain, but they still have police boxes in Japan. --JHP (talk) 22:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why past tense? 

message: Were there ever any red police boxes in Scotland, outside of Glasgow, where I think they were invented?  I remember as a kid in the 1980's, all the disused police boxes in Edinburgh were dirty blue.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.33.192 (talk) 23:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Red Boxes 

message: In the late nineties, at least two Edinburgh police boxes (Princes Street and the Royal Mile) were given touchscreens that provided the public with information about the police force, and could also be used to contact them in an emergency (similar to the Glasgow kiosks mentioned in the article). I believe this service has been stopped, but if anyone has better information than me, it might be worth adding to the article. 92.20.132.171 (talk) 21:09, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Edinburgh "Police Information Kiosks"

message: I note that a significant number of references simply refer to "Stewart: [insert random number here]."  For example, the reference preceded by the text, "British police boxes were usually blue, except in Glasgow, where they were red until the late sixties," (reference #2) states simply, "Stewart: 13."
There are seven such ambiguous "Stewart" references, some referred to more than once throughout the article.  I can't find any obvious explanation of what this is supposed to be referring to.  References must refer to the source of the material in detail so that one could locate that source using just the information provided in the citation; see Wikipedia:Citing_sources.
If someone could perhaps let me know what these "Stewart" references are referring to, I'll endeavour to make the necessary changes to the citations so that they properly reflect Wikipedia standards.  If that doesn't happen within a reasonable amount of time, I'll take it upon myself to try to find proper references for the material.  Failing that, I'll delete the reference and and a "citation needed" tag to those deleted references (as much as I loathe those "citation needed" tags, I do think they'd be appropriate in this case).
Any help in tracking down what these "Stewart" citations actually reference would be most welcome! --Schaea (talk) 07:21, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  References to "Stewart"—extremely ambiguous  

message: The article includes pictures of police boxes in the USA, though it is written as if all police boxes are British.  Apparently they are not.  Shouldn't this be corrected? --Trippz 10:33, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Theer are eleven picture, only two of which are American, and one of them is a post, rather than a box. Nobody would dispute that police telephones exist sporadically elsewhere in the world, but this page is about the British police box, which at one time was very widespread. There is an argument that maybe we should have a separate Police telephone page, and this one remains as it is, or moved to Police box (British) or British police box. Nick Cooper (talk) 12:32, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I have made the US info a bit more prominent. Synthetic Woolly Mammoth (talk) 12:42, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  British.  really? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Police box. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20081202131357/http://newtownlinford.leicestershireparishcouncils.org/neighbourhoodwatchpoliceteam.html to http://newtownlinford.leicestershireparishcouncils.org/neighbourhoodwatchpoliceteam.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 19:46, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Thailand also has mini police stations called "ป้อมตำรวจ" in Thai and "police boxes" in English. So far they are not mentioned either here or in the kōban article. — Hippietrail (talk) 15:53, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thailand 

message: The article notes that "none of the BBC [TARDIS] props has been a faithful replica of the original MacKenzie Trench model." Indeed, one of the main differences (apart from being dimensionally transcendemtal, and the ability to travel in Time and Space) is that wheras the original Police Box doors open outwards, the TARDIS doors open inwards. The mounting of the blue lamp on the roof also appears to be different. 2003:CB:7701:CA00:38DC:AAAC:3993:69B9 (talk) 13:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  TARDIS differences