Talk:London/Archive 2

message: I added a disambig at the top of the article to also refer to the newer 21 July article.  Is it possible to merge these two disambigs into one?  Not sure how to do that.  Also, added mention of 21 July in History section of article.  Stephenw77 15:57, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  London bombings of July 2005 

message: Duncanssmith writes:
Since size is an issue with this article, I have been breaking things down into bullet-point lists where possible. I am still working on improving the structure and logic as well. Its got a way to go. I think the New York City article is a pretty good example to follow. Its clear, concise and pithy. 
A request - please keep sentences short and uncomplicated where possible! I feel there is no need to go on at length about everything under the sun all the time - please keep to the subject headings, think about what you are writing, and if you want to stray off subject, look for an existing heading to put your contribution into!
Please feel free to change anything you like!
Thanks.
Duncan Smith 16:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  General Points 

message: I've just read the New York City article and realised that this article, which I thought was pretty close to done, is missing some fairly important things. Firstly two that should perhaps be main subsections:
*Education, especially higher education
*Media, including London as a centre of the international non-English language media
Other things that I think be covered that are wholly or almost wholly absent now, but should perhaps not have their own sections:
*Religion
*Police/crime/courts/legal London
*Cuisine
*Shopping
*Climate
*Redevelopment (there's more to it than Docklands}
*London's role as a preferred city for the international rich
*Charities and think tanks. Role as an opinion forming centre generally (ties in with education and media as above and also with politics). 
*relationship between London and the rest of the UK. ("Metropolitan values"; provincial resentment etc)
I don't want to make the article as long as New York's which is a little flabby in places, but we do seem to have quite a few omissions which I didn't spot until I read a comparable article. I'll start filling them in soon, but please help out if you agree that they matter. Wincoote 08:43, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Just read NYC article and found we are missing things

message: When I read the London article first I was appalled by the writing style. 
To be frank the article was full of needlessly dependency-ridden over-complicated run-on sentences, and horrific cliches!
The writer(s) of this article seemed to be trying to "big up" London with claims that London is the "biggest" "most important" etc city "in the world" throughout, with less emphasis on actual information! 
Superlatives abounding may be interesting to school children, but I felt that most people would be better off reading more interesting and informative content.
Duncanssmith 1 April 2005. 11:36 BST
*Please leave others to judge the quality of your contributions. Many of your additions were good, but I think you removed some useful information and weakened the context in places. It seems that by the term "value-laden" in your edit comment you mean politically incorrect, but Wikipedia is not a tool of the liberal establishment. Rather it is has a policy of neutrality, which is quite a different thing.
*London is widely regarded as one of the largest and most significant cities in the world. Perhaps this is a mass delusion, but none the less the existence of this perception is factual and relevant, and I think it may properly be stated. There is much more boosterism in Wikipedia's articles about many other famous cities than there is here. Articles which merely list facts without context are indigestible. As for the intellectual respectibility of claims about London's status, please note the first sentence of the London article in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica describes London as "the greatest city in the world". That would breach Wikipedia's neutrality policy, but it is a reminder that removing all comparatives is not necessarily good practice as it may leave the uninformed reader floundering for context.
Duncanssmith here:
Thanks for your comments. I will certainly leave others to judge the quality of my contributions, after all thats what this Wiki thing is all about isn't it? Voting with your feet or whatever. Anyone can rewrite anything I rewrite at any time! I actually don't think I weakened anything  -I made some of the previous author(s)'s contributions more readable and clearer. I removed a couple of irrelevant things like "Wealthy Londoners send their children to Eton, a famous school outside London" which I felt didn't add much to anyone's knowledge of London. 
Wikipedia might not be a tool of the liberal establishment (whatever that might mean!) but I think it should try to reflect actual facts rather than contain such claims as "there has been a lot of immigration in East London most of it Asian Muslims" or whatever. I don't think it is "PC" to want to correct that. Probably all writing is "value laden." I am for more factual info over subjective opinion. For example "Football is the most popular sport in London."  Obviously written by a football fan! You get my drift!
I look forward to reading all your edits!
Duncanssmith 5 April 2005. 10:50 BST
Duncanssmith 10:37, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Writing style 

message: "one source suggests a figure of 13,945,000 for 2001" any reference would be nice. Rich Farmbrough 11:28, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population 

message: In the intro 4 cities in comparison seems almost claustrophobic at this point.  How about London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Moscow?  Criteria could include population and the city's international nature.  I suppose substitutes would include Sao Paolo, Johannesburg, Bombay and ???.  I just feel impulsively that London looks even better when compared with more cities than just 4, and maybe 10 is a manageable number.  It would certainly be even more welcoming to visitors than the article already is.  As a non-native, thank you for reading.--McDogm 23:04, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: 10 Best

message: I put the panorama image back where it was previously. Its a bad image (more apparent when it was displayed at high resolution), understandably because its not the most convenient position for taking a panorama... but there are just too many seams to the picture, and very little info. 
I also put the Tower image further up for better presentation... A really cool image of the bridge would be a better choice for that position, but I am not an expert on London (by any stretch).
Hope this helps. --Spundun 19:56, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganised images. 

message: This article is 69KB, more than twice as large as 32KB. I want to see if there is any real way to get the sections into their own articles and I can't find one here. Georgia guy 23:05, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article splitting 

message: Anyone is welcome to contribute to the Wikibook guide on London. Find it at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/London . We especially need info on travel in the city. Thanks! Charlie123 14:07, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikibook on London 

message: The weather in London redirects to here. Considering it's used as an example in How to edit a page for a link that does not exist yet, should this be the case? Kawa 16:37, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove redirect? 

message: I have deleted the infobox recently added by user Cmc0 because infoboxes are relevant to articles dealing with administrative entitities (countries, states, regions, counties, cities, etc.). This article is about London, which is not an administrative entity, but a generic name that covers different realities (the small City of London, the Greater London Authority, or even in a broader meaning the London Commuter Belt), so an infobox is totally inappropriate in the London article (which is already an extremely long article). There are already infoboxes at the Greater London and at the City of London articles, and that's where they should be. Moreover, the infobox added by Cmc0 was a total mess: the flag and coat of arms were the flag and coat of arms of the City of London (not Greater London), while the map was the map of Greater London, and some information inside the infobox was about the London Commuter Belt. Hardouin 01:02, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid I don't know where to begin with what is wrong with this box. Which is probably why people are so keen to remove it. From the top down:
#The flag and seal are of the City of London which is a different thing to London and Greater London. Please read those articles to understand the difference and why it is totally incorrect and misleading to use these here.
#I have lived in London all my life and never heard of those nicknames.
#The Inner London and Outer London pages are not good starting points for a list of districts and some places are part of Inner London for some purposes and Outer London for others. For example, to some people East Ham would be Outer London but to others it would not.
#Population - the metropolitan area is not the same as Greater London - it is bigger (the name is misleading I know).
#Population - the figure for "city proper" is the figure for Greater London which is not "a" or "the" city.
#Mayor - What about the Lord Mayor of London ?
#Timezone - London is at GMT. 
#Website - that is the website of the Greater London Authority there is also a different website for the City of London which is a different thing.
I haven't checked the latitude and longitude but I will assume they are correct. I'm sorry to be so negative but the status of London, the City of London, Greater London and London commuter belt is unique and complicated and this box fails to accurately explain this. MRSC 10:33, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The region is in statute called "London", not "Greater London", which is the administrative area which has the exact same area and boundaries of it.  Confusing, eh?  Morwen - Talk 10:37, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The London region includes the City of London but the ceremonial county of Greater London does not (The City of London being a ceremonial county in its own right). Fabulously British. MRSC 16:44, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox 

message: This article is beginning to get rather obese, The TOC is almost as long as the article itself. I think it's probably time to consider moving some sections into their own sub-articles and leaving a summary on the main page, like has been done at Birmingham. Does anyone agree? G-Man 19:38, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well that was seven days ago and I see no-one's objected. If no-one objects within the next few days I will start to split the article. I was thinking that transport, educaion, culture and tourist attractions were obvious candidates for being moved into their own articles, and possibly the districts section. G-Man 20:35, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems like a good idea.  I agree that this article seems to be out-growing itself. -- Stephenw77 01:15, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Article getting very long

message: I cleared up some typos in this section, but may have inadvertantly changed the content. Should 'it is speculated that it will be the one of the world's longest tram' have been changed to 'the world's longest tram' or 'one of the world's longest trams?'? Can anyone confirm? Jenny 84.68.113.51 19:14, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transportation system 

message: London became capital 1042, according to History of London by Hugh Clout (-2). I guess that the discrepancy is a matter of definition of capital. Do anyone know in what regard London became capital 1042 and the 12th century respectively? Gunnar Larsson 19:46, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capital 

message: Hi folks - I think this article could be great - but does need quite alot of work - before rolling sleeves up and suggesting some larger-scale merging / revisions of sections, I've made a minor edit to the very beginning - the 'see also different names' (now removed)-  bit IMO seriously undermined the readibility, and set the article off on a bad foot...... Petesmiles 08:09, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: Removed the "londoners are informally known as 'cockneys" addition, because though all cockneys are londoners, not all londoners are cockneys - traditionally a cockney is born within the sound of tbe Bow Bells - so is from a small area of east london - people use the term generally to cover a broader range of east london now, but someone born and bred in kensington would never be a cockney! Hope that helps. Still think the article could be great, and keep putting off finding the time to hit it harder........ Petesmiles 03:31, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cockney Removed 

message: It might be good to move the disambiguation page under title "London" and current article under another name. I know that usually the most famous meaning for a word should be displayed first. But in this case the people who don't know about other Londons link to this article, which creates confusion. I ran into this problems at Talena Atfield article and started discussion at Talk:Talena Atfield. --Easyas12c 23:45, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you mad? --LiamE 13:34, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I can't see this gaining any support, much less a concensus for change. MRSC 14:23, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

text: hahahaha. Justinc 11:43, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation page 

message: There is no mention of the huge Polish immigration going on, there is ALOT of Poles living in London and i think it needs a mention in this article. I don't know the precise figures but it is somewhere in the six figure region. http://www.guardian.co.uk/immigration/story/0,15729,1433412,00.html <--- credible source --80.2.175.184 21:56, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poland