Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cheshire/Archive 1

message: I've made a start at writing the main project page. It would be good if it could be fleshed out a bit more by others, as I don't want this to be a one-man show. As I see it, there are already a number of people working on entries for various towns and villages in Cheshire, as well as work on various other Cheshire-related things. If these people could list what they are working on here, then we can decide how to list them on the main page.
We want, I suggest, as many articles as possible to get to Featured article status. People might therefore also consider listing what needs to be done to achieve that aim for an article they are particularly involved in, or, at least, listing what is needed get a review of the article nearing what they think might be that status. If they can then say what help, if any, they may require to reach that status, then we should be able to see how the work in this project could pan out.
Other work, not specifically about writing complete articles, might also be of interest to people. For example, (a) converting all old-style InfoBoxes to new style ones; or (b) making sure that all towns in Cheshire have a wikipedia entry, if only a stub and an InfoBox; or (c) any others that might occur to you. These can also be listed. It might help if we listed them as separate sections here. I'll start us off, but if you have any comments or suggestions about this suggestion, then please feel free to make them.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: First things to do

message: I'm in the process of looking at all Cheshire towns and villages that have entries, and converting any old InfoBoxes into new ones (the ones which have Latitude and Longitude). You can an example of a new one in Haslington if you haven't seen one yet. For articles that do not have any InfoBoxes yet, but which could do, I'm creating them with as complete information as I can.
I'd welcome anyone helping by doing the same thing as I am - that way, we can finish the job more quickly. If you create an article about a town or village within Cheshire, please consider adding an InfoBox to that entry, even if you can't complete it yourself. You can ask for help here to see if people would be able to find the missing information for you. Any comments or suggestions about this?  DDStretch  (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Converting all old-style InfoBoxes to new ones

message: Back to the maps - National Statistics website has some maps if you type in a postcode - these were the ones that I remember seeing.  There is also some stuff on the Boundary Commission website. Pixie2000 22:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks - all of the information you give is useful. I think I have what I was looking for, though. Click on the district you want and you will get a summary map of the different parishes. I think these should be re-drawn (to avoid copyright) and put on the entries for the relevant districts. I may work on that myself.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Maps

message: I've noticed that there are some omissions in List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire, for example Lower Peover doesn't appear, although it does appear on the Cheshire County Council web site.  So one good first task would be update List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire.  I'll add in any that I can spot. Salinae 23:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll try to do the same.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure what is the correct name of that parish. Macclesfield BC's website has it as Peover Inferior and not Lower Peover. . -- Phildav76 15:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The county council map (PDF file can be got here) gives two parishes adjacent to each other: Peover Superior and Peover Inferior. the [  Macclesfield (Borough) list of Parish Clerks] also talks about Peover Superior and Peover Inferior, but not Lower Peover. So I suggest that giving Lower Peover as a civil parish is a mistake. Lower Peover is a settlement, but I'm not sure which parish it is in yet. I'll get an OS explorer map of the area tomorrow and see what they say.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Ok. What I've done now is to check the entries in List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire for Congleton, Crewe and Nantwich, Ellesmere Post and Neston, Vale Royal, and Macclesfield. I am taking the County Council maps as being the definitive source for the parishes. I only found two errors, both in Macclesfield. The first one, we know about. So I have removed Lower Peover from the list, replacing it with Peover Inferior. For the second one, the wikipedia entry gives "Lyme Handley" as the name, whereas the Council site states just "Lyme". I've changed this entry on wikipedia and disambiguated it where necessary (including putting a link on the disambiguation entry). I now just have the most numerous district to check: that of the City of Chester.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've changed back Lyme to Lyme Handley, since the County Council map and the Borough of Macclesfield's list of parish clerks disagree over its name. I'll try to find out more.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text: City of Chester - potential problems I've now checked the county council map against the List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire for the City of Chester. One point is that the map misses out an "oddity" of a civil parish: Chester castle which the list includes. I think it will be represented on any map of the district by a dot! Now, onto the main point, which is a bit troublesome, and needs to be sorted out more. Apart from minor name differences (the map generally has shortened names of the longer names given in the list), the map given by the county council agrees with the list. However, neither appears to agree with the official website of City of Chester. It appears that some amalgamation of parish councils has taken place, given the number of councils listed on the official website of City of Chester which have "and District" after their name, or which run together names of separate parish councils as given in the county council map and the List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire. One is directed to a website known as the Chester Portal, but when one gets there, the list towards the end of that page ("Parish Council Details") states that "This section contains information on all the Parish Councils in the Chester District. Just select the Parish you want details of and you will find information on how to contact the Council via the Parish Clerk.", and yet it does not. There are omissions, which can be seen by the fact that if one selects a particular parish from the list, one goes to a page which supplies the contact details for the parish selected, but which also contains a thumbnail map of the district and the shape of the parish and its position within the district. There are distressing blank bits in this map, within which we have no idea what is going on. For example, Malpas is omitted from this "complete list", and its position is in the middle of one of those blank bits. I think a phone call or a visit to the District council buildings is in order here. If the number of parishes has been reduced by amalgamation, it will help us produce a map containing regions which are not too small (an advanatge), but it will increase by a large amount the number of composite parishes (a potential problem - see the relevant section on this talk page.)  DDStretch  (talk) 00:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Omissions on the list of Civil parishes

message: One possible topic would be the canal systems of Cheshire.  A rough outline could be cribbed together from existing pages History of the British canal system, Trent and Mersey Canal, Shropshire Union Canal, Macclesfield Canal, Ellesmere Canal, Llangollen Canal, Chester Canal, Manchester Ship Canal, River Weaver, Rochdale Canal, Ashton Canal, Peak Forest Canal, Bridgewater Canal, Cheshire Ring  etc. Salinae 23:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this would be a really good topic to do. Are you interested in doing some work on it? Would anyone else be interested in assisting?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't forget the Anderton Boat Lift  YDAM TALK 14:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I put our template on its talk page a few days ago.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've started an article Canals in Cheshire, please feel free to add to it Salinae 23:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible topic

message: Perhaps we also need to consider Hundreds of Cheshire as a topic area?  The History of Cheshire page lists there as being, in the end, seven: Bucklow, Eddisbury, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Northwich, and Wirral.
However, not all of these have specific Hundred pages - thoughts anyone? Pixie2000 17:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have on order a fairly detailed book about the History of Cheshire as one source of expanding the History of Cheshire article. My idea was that, as part of the history section, we might consider doing a timeline kind of thing, giving dates at which hundreds were added to or taken from Cheshire. If we could additionally give outline maps alongside this, showing "before" and "after" outlines of Cheshire after each addition/subtraction, it would give people a good idea of how the shape of the county changed and evolved into what we have today. If they are all to be given entries, perhaps we need to create a category for them as well as adding (Hundred) after their name, as some seem to already have. But I'm not sure of the machanics of creating categories in a way which ensures some (overly-)zealous admin bots won't just delete them.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with your idea of the timeline although I have not seen it done anywhere before on Wikipedia - is there an example we can base it on?  I also like your "map through time" idea - for example the Wirral (see Hundred of Wirral) used to be part of Cheshire.  Is there specific tools that have been used to produce the existing map images on Wikipedia? Pixie2000 20:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The timeline idea just came to me, though I wasn't thinking of anything grand or graphical, really. An example that would be well within the formatting capabilities of Wikipedia would be this one which Ive just found, of the second world war. it could even be just a table, with links to maps given in one or two columns of the table (thus combining this with the "map through time" idea.) For this "map through time" idea, I thought of it just as a set of related thumbnails to each event on the "time line" which gave Cheshire before the event and after the event. I had this idea that removals from Cheshire could be given one colour (say red) on the before thumbnail, and additions to Cheshire could be given another colour (say green) on the after map. The good thing about doing it like this is that we can keep some dates a bit vague if we need to, and just put in extra rows on the table to fill out some of the events if we know the dates more accurately. I thought myself or someone else could draw up maps that illustrate the changes, and upload them here to be used.  DDStretch  (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  As regards examples of timelines, There are plenty of WW2 related ones eg Timeline of World War II not to mention the ones listed in that articles see also section that give good examples of what other wikipedia timelines look like. If we could get historical maps to go along side it that would look awesome.  YDAM TALK 22:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  Agreed - anything specific you need done with this timeline idea, or are we better completing the list of stub places first? Pixie2000 22:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the stub places should probably be the first things done. The Timeline stuff can come along after we have some more actual historical dates at which things happened.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Hundreds]] 

message: I think my edits to kettleshulme deserve a mention. I started that article and have been adding to it for a long time. JFBurton 08:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kettleshulme 

message: I've created a new page, which is a child-page of this one. You can see it here. I've done this to make more clear information we have about civil parishes and settlements, allowing us to see how the two lists relate to each other.
Can I ask whether as many people as are able to could spend some time filling in the blanks in this table? I've given some brief guidelines at the top of the page, and you can also see how existing entries have been done to assist you as well.
I think we need such a set of tables so that we can begin to sort out more the potentially looming confusion that could arise between civil parishes and settlements. If we are to make the administrative structure of Cheshire more transparent, we do need to address this issue, and knowing which settlements fall into which civil parishes will help us identify holes in the coverage we currently have. It will alsoprovide an update to show progress we are making on offering a comprehensive coverage of civil parishes and settlements in Cheshire. At the moment, the names for the civil parishes have not been given any special addition to indicate that they are civil parishes, but this may change in the future, depending on what we decide to do. I hope we can find time to complete this task, and I will certainly be working on it over the next few weeks, as it may take time to complete.  DDStretch  (talk) 02:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tables of Settlements by Civil Parishes

message: I've now created new categories for civil parishes for each district, almost, in Cheshire. I've yet to do Ellesmere Port and Neston (since it has only one parish, I think it is not necessary), and I've yet to sort out the definitive list of parishes in City of Chester (see earlier sections for problems). If what I've suggested so far about all this is largely acceptable, I think we can now formulate some guidelines about what categories and templates to include in articles about (a) civil parishes, (b) settlements, and (c) settlements that are the sole settlements of the civil parishes in which they are located.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New Categories

message: I note that on the Project page there is a heading for new articles (to which I have made one addition).  How about significant additions to previous stubs and short articles.  I have recently extended Round Tower Lodge, also Robert Spear Hudson (which may or may not be revelant - see "How far do we go?" above).  Should this/these be added to "New articles"; if not, do we need a new heading? Peter I. Vardy 17:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok - I've added a new heading. It is probably a good idea, as some people may object to an old article being substantially reworked being described as "new".  DDStretch  (talk) 00:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Please go ahead and do so. It might be an idea to have clearly fixed in your mind whether you want the articles to be about the civil parishes that are given those names (though Lyme is sometimes known as Lyme Handley, I understand, and the civil parish name for Macclefield Forest is actually Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough). If you want to write about the civil parishes (you probably should do this if there is more than one settlement within the civil parish) then I suggest you add "(civil parish)" after the name to help prevent confusion. This would then allow articles to be written about the civil parish separately from articles about the settlement that gives this civil parish its name and the other settlements within the civil parish. If you want to write just about the settlements given those names, then fine. Keeping these things separate is a good idea, because then we can have very accurate and informative categories for settlements and for civil parishes in Cheshire. If you at all uncertain about any of this, please feel free to ask, and good luck and happy writing.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh, Ok, now I know what all that Civil Parish stuff is about. Thanks. JFBurton 16:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a few templates to your new article about Lyme Handley. (I've also added a redirection so people can get to it either by typing in Lyme, Macclesfield or the more complete name for the parish of Lyme Handley). I also added a category that will be useful. If you can see what I've done, it should be fairly easy to edit those into any others you create. And well done.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

text: You may like to add a link to Lyme Park, which has an article to itself, in the article for Lyme, Macclesfield. Incidentally, there are a few places that could be candidates for articles given in this list of Historic Houses in England (though the link goes directly to the ones in Cheshire.)  DDStretch  (talk) 10:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "New articles"

message: Members of the project might like to know that I have just received this message:
	On January 24, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Round Tower Lodge, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.
 
so it was worth having a go!  Peter I. Vardy 16:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Congratulations! What it means is that the article concerned was selected for the "front page" or "maqin page" section called, unsurprisingly, "Did you know?" I think it is a good acheivement, and well done, Peter.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Good Job! JFBurton 19:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Well done indeed Peter - I would love to take all the credit though, for creating the one-and-a-half line stub article that you then turned into the current piece! He He!! Pixie2000 21:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  PS: Spot my jealousy? Pixie2000 21:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  Mine Too. JFBurton 08:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Did you know...?

message: I have started the Mottram St. Andrew and Pott Shrigley pages now. Im hoping to bring them up to the same standards as Kettleshulme in the near future. JFBurton 19:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mottram St. Andrew & Pott Shrigley 

message: To my amazement I received this message today:
	On January 24, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Robert Spear Hudson (businessman), which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.
So a Cheshire article in the WikiProject Cheshire hits the main page again. It's all because of the encouragement given by  DDStretch  (talk).  Thanks for the suggestion.  It's well worth a go!  (And there's one more in the pipeline which I think is the best - so it probably won't feature.) Peter I. Vardy 09:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Congratulations again! And thanks for the comment, but the work has really been all yours. I've been held up a bit by "real life" recently, so haven't done as much as I wanted on the project. But, I have some new information that will help the project, I think. I will be writing about it soon.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Getting it once I was jealous of; getting it twice and I don't know what emotion to show - well done though!! Pixie2000 22:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Done it again!

message: I noted that the Cornwall project / portal has a List_of_topics_related_to_Cornwall article.  It seems a good style of article to act as a "content page" into 'our' pages rather than just randomly coming across them.  Perhaps we should have one too? Pixie2000 22:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's because it is a portal. I, too, think we need to have a portal, but we will need to work towards getting a represnetative set of articles that could be pieced together to make one. May be we are at that stage now? What do people think?  DDStretch  (talk) 23:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are "bits and pieces" about Cheshire all over the place but they do not seem to be held together in any way.  I think a portal could be a "good thing" - at least it would be somewhere to place all the articles and stubs we have identified with our template.  Initially it would be a bit incomplete but if we all add items as we come across them it should end up as a fairly comprehensive point of reference for the county.  Peter I. Vardy 17:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: List of Topics Article

message: I've edited the project page a bit. What do people think of it? I've tried to make the progress towards Featured Status a bit more explicit. And, because of that, at some stage we may be advised to start a system of reviewing and assessing articles for quality (see Template:WikiProject Wales for an example of what the template on the talk page could change into).  DDStretch  (talk) 23:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The project page is beginning to look good, but I see that WikiProject Wales has breached some technical conditions - perhaps they are trying to be too clever! Pixie2000 21:39, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I've now added a bit more, about how I see articles progressing to get Good Article status. I'll try to get the Featured Article stuff sorted out soon, and then, perhaps we all need to think about and discuss the ways in which the project can assist its articles gain Good Article status, as well as Featured Article status. I'm thinking of such things are in-house peer review and assessments. We need to remain alert for vandalism as well now.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project Page 

message: ===The Issue===
If we ignore for the moment the case of Warrington, Halton, and Ellesmere Port and Neston, then I discovered a slight complication when I checked  and tried to sort out some issues to do with the civil parishes within the different boroughs. It initially began with City of Chester, which has numerous extremely small civil parishes, it appears. Then I discovered the same problem with parishes within the Boroughs of Congleton, Macclesfield, and Crewe and Nantwich. I am satisfied I know the situation for Congleton and Crewe and Nantwich now, after a series of emails and phone calls to their respective council offices, but I have a view from Macclesfield that doesn't fit in with other information from, say, Ordnance Survey, the Office for National Statistics, and  Cheshire County Council (so it is still being worked on by myself, and, now the inconsistency has been drawn to their attention, by some people within Macclesfield Council). As yet, I have heard nothing from City of Chester council, which is a shame, since the problem there has some features unique to it, and so I cannot make any informed guess as to what is going on there yet.
Basically, the problem is that, from the point of view of parish councils, some civil parishes do not effectively exist independently anymore. They have not merged, and yet they share a parish council with one and sometimes a few more adjacent civil parishes. This is not the same as the situation where a civil parish has "parish wards" which have a certain number of parish councillors allocated to them.
====Examples====
For example, Haslington civil parish has three parish wards: Haslington Village, Oakhanger, and Winterley. These correspond to the three largest settlements within that civil parish. However, they are officially still parish wards. So, the two civil parishes of "Newbold Astbury" and "Moreton cum Alcumlow" in Borough of Congleton have a joint parish council, which is called the "Newbold Astbury-cum-Moreton Parish Council". Similarly, the two civil parishes also in Congleton borough, of "Hulme Walfield" and "Somerford Booths" have a joint parish council named "Hulme Walfield and Somerford Booths". I was told by a representative from Congleton that these are all still distinct parishes and not parish wards, and that they have had these joint parish councils for a "large number of years". There are numerous examples of this in the Borough of Crewe and Nantwich. For example, "Doddington and District Parish Council" covers the parishes of Blakenhall, Bridgemere, Checkley cum Wrinehill, Doddington, Lea, and Hunsterston (6 in all). Furthermore, "Minshull Vernon and District" covers Leighton, Minshull Vernon, and Woolstanwood. This last example illustrates that these parishes are not the same as parish wards, since Leighton has two parish wards: "Leighton Urban" and "Leighton Rural". Getting on for half the civil parishes in this borough hold joint parish council meetings with one or more other civil parishes. Crewe and Nantwich sent me part of their handbook which described all the parishes including who if any they were joined with, together with the joint parish council names. Incidentally, they had made two minor errors in mistaking the parish wards of two civil parishes as being separate civil parishes. They were happy to be able to clarify and correct these when I questioned them about the problems.
The case of Macclesfield is more uncertain, as the person I spoke to at first told me that the civil parishes I enquired about were just parish wards: On their account, "Tabley Parish" consists of two parish wards: Tabley Inferior and Tabley Superior; similarly, "Plumley with Toft and Bexton", they said, had three wards: Plumley, Toft, and Bexton; and "Ollerton with Marthall", they said, had two. However, I pointed out that the most recent Ordnance Survey Maps, and the Office for National Statistics. in their maps and in their published tables of census information, all had them down as separate parishes and, furthermore, they didn't treat parish wards in the same way. So, on the basis of Congleton and Crewe and Nantwich, I said that I suspected that they were still parishes. This will be looked into more, as the council employee who should know the actual state of affairs is away on leave at the moment. I don't think they can have been abolished or merged, since this requires action by the Secretary of State and, possibly, the Electoral Commission, and I can find no evidence that this has been sought or an order has been issueed to abolish them.
====The case of City of Chester====
The situation of the City of Chester is that even more small civil parishes have joint parish council meetings with adjacent parishes; and some exteremely small civil parishes (in the south of the borough) have joint parish meetings with adjacent civil parishes. However, some parishes appear neither to elect parish councils nor to hold parish meetings. Nevertheless, they still appear on the Ordnance Survey maps, and the Office for National Statistics with census data for population, etc. Unfortunately for us, some neither have parish councils nor hold parish meetings, and, although they appear on the most recent Ordnance survey maps, etc, they do not appear to exist according the to Office for National Statistics, but they do, according to the Boundary Commission's latest, (2002), review. If you look at the 1:25000 Ordnance Survey maps, they seem to exist and have buildings on them consistent with people living there, and so this needs to be sorted out. If a civil parish exists, but the population is so small as to make a council or meeting unfeasible, then the borough council has to take over the duties normally held by a parish council or meeting (you can read about this in various places, such as NALG.
===The Particular Problem===
The particular problem in all this is what do we use as the basis for articles about civil parishes? On the one hand, we should perhaps take the existing civil parishes as the basis, and by some combination of mentioning it in those articles and linking, show how they relate to other civil parishes by holding joint parish council meetings. On the other hand, may be we should pay more attention to the hierarchy we are trying to make clear to people, and write articles based around the parish councils, with sections in there for the separate civil parishes that have joined together.
My own favoured solution is to take the second option. This would mean a more clear separation becomes necessary between civil parishes and settlements, but it would make the hierarchical structure of local government more clear, prepare the way if these joint parish councils are going to be merged in some way after a review that I know is currently underway about local government in Cheshire, and it would make certain other administrative jobs for us potentially easier (thumbnail maps, for example). Luckily, Vale Royal has not suffered from this problem and so User:Pixie2000 has not had to delay the work already done there, nor have to redo any work already done. So, shall I just go ahead and implement my own favoured solution? 
Incidentally, I suspect this issue may not be restricted to Cheshire, but I don't know if anyone writing about local government in other counties is aware of it. The whole depth of the issue of civil parishes and the logical distinction between them and settlements does not seem to have been realised, except perhaps to some extent in the Cornwall project.  I somehow feel the twists I have written about here and in other sections here could do with being better known on wikipedia, but where?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some Civil Parish Problems, Recently Discovered 

message: The particular problem in all this is what do we use as the basis for articles about civil parishes? On the one hand, we should perhaps take the existing civil parishes as the basis, and by some combination of mentioning it in those articles and linking, show how they relate to other civil parishes by holding joint parish council meetings. On the other hand, may be we should pay more attention to the hierarchy we are trying to make clear to people, and write articles based around the parish councils, with sections in there for the separate civil parishes that have joined together.
My own favoured solution is to take the second option. This would mean a more clear separation becomes necessary between civil parishes and settlements, but it would make the hierarchical structure of local government more clear, prepare the way if these joint parish councils are going to be merged in some way after a review that I know is currently underway about local government in Cheshire, and it would make certain other administrative jobs for us potentially easier (thumbnail maps, for example). Luckily, Vale Royal has not suffered from this problem and so User:Pixie2000 has not had to delay the work already done there, nor have to redo any work already done. So, shall I just go ahead and implement my own favoured solution? 
Incidentally, I suspect this issue may not be restricted to Cheshire, but I don't know if anyone writing about local government in other counties is aware of it. The whole depth of the issue of civil parishes and the logical distinction between them and settlements does not seem to have been realised, except perhaps to some extent in the Cornwall project.  I somehow feel the twists I have written about here and in other sections here could do with being better known on wikipedia, but where?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The Particular Problem

message: Started the Tytherington High School page today. JFBurton 22:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tytherington High School 

message: I've just started a Cheshire Portal. You can see the skeleton here. You can type Portal:Cheshire in the Find Box to go to it. If we can start to fill in bits and pieces of it, I think we should begin to have a centralised source of all things related to Cheshire quite quickly. I've listed it in the Portal Directory, where I've put myself down as the creator, and the project as the Maintainer. I hope that is all right with people. I've also put entries in the Community Bulletin Board which announces the two projects and invites new people to contribute to them.
To expand the entries in the Portal, I suggest people might like to look at Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions, where I have arrived at step 7 of section 1. I have, however, changed the default colours round a bit, but perhaps people have a view about whether these should be changed, and I've also started to edit a few of the boxes. If you are able to contribute, let's try to get this filled out a bit more. I suggest that only the highest rated articles get mentioned in the portal, which means we may have to tackle the issue of peer review and assessment soon.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Portal looks great - I have added to a couple more of the "portlets" (what do you call them?)  Looks like it is a great shop window into what we are doing here. Pixie2000 21:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I've now added a bit more to the contents of the boxes in the portal. All the contents can be changed so as to give a lot of varied content on a (semi-)regular basis. I decided that the Middlewich article might go in first as an example article. I also added a few more quotes I found about Chester, though more would be good. Additionally, I made a new box in which we can place the most recent articles that have been written. That way, we are showing what we are achieving, as well as balancing out more the two columns of boxes. Remember, if there are better choices for any of this, put them in! I finished it like this now so we could move the portal from the category of "Still under construction" to the full-blown online version - which means it can get listed in various publically accessible ways, rather than just by editors on here. I hope it looks all right.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: See my comments under Templates discussion above - a suggestion over adding Cheshire Portal links to the templates. Pixie2000 (talk) 10:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been reading around about portals, and it seems we need to take care that  we regularly maintain the portal, updating and rotating articles as required. Some projects have an extremely elaborate way of doing this, which I think may be too off-putting and complicated perhaps for us. However, we do need to discuss this, and I suggest we have two possible places where we could hold the discussion. First, we could hold it on the portal discussion page. Second, we could make a sub-page of this project discussion page, using that for our portal discussions. This might allow for a more "in house" discussion. Any comments?   DDStretch  (talk) 00:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cheshire Portal 

message: I discovered a redirect about Woodhey which went from Woodhey, Cheshire. The actual article at fiest claimed it was a town in Cheshire, but it is now a suburb of Bebington (which took a bit of tracking down). I removed all the incorrect information from the entry, and thought that the redirect required some attention. There is now no settlement in Cheshire called Woodhey, though there is a Woodhey Hall, and an extremely small hamlet nearby it (no more than about 3 houses) called Woodhey Green, about 8km west of Nantwich. Multimap doesn't find either, but streetmap does, though you can obviously find them both on multimap. I decided the the redirect could be considered for deletion, because as it stands it is simply quite misleading, and so I proposed it here. When I proposed it, I hadn't found the two small places I've just mentioned. It appears that two separate people argue that it should be retained, one on the grounds that it used to be in Cheshire, and the other also mentions that there are other wrong redirects on wikipedia, and so its incorrect status is not particularly a bad point. If it is retained, I am considering changing the redirect to point to an entry about Faddiley civil parish (within City of Chester borough) which I will make sure mentions Woodhey Green and Woodhey House. I'd welcome comments about (a) my proposed deletion request for the redirect, and (b) what I am considering doing if the deletion request fails. I do think the redirect needs somes erious attention, as Woodhey itself is just a suburb of Bebington now. Firthermore, what do we do if we discover other rediects that are now similarly incorrect? Thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi.  On this one I would leave the redirect only because it was once in Cheshire.  It helps people writing historical articles, especially biographies. Alternatively we could turn it into a disambigation page for the three possible items you mentioned above. Regan123 11:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The disambiguation page is a good idea, as it would allow us to point out the change in the county that Woodhey in Wirral underwent, along with pointing to the other two places.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:03, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Regan123 - keep the redirect - people may legitimately search for Woodhey, Cheshire - there will be many historical documents referring to this I'm sure. Richard B 13:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, if you think the link should be kept, I strongly receommend you make your views known at the relevant place where it being discussed as being up for deletion: here. As you can see, I'm weakening now, in favour of making it an disambiguation page. I'll officially record my changed views in a while.   DDStretch  (talk) 13:29, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The results for this were to keep the redirection. I tend to think we should change it into a disambiguation page on the grounds that it would be ultimately extremely misleading to have pages like "Altrincham, Cheshire", "Stockport, Cheshire", "Birkenhhead, Cheshire", or "Bebington, Cheshire" on wikipedia, even though all these places are much bigger and more notable than the "Woodhey, Cheshire" that is being pointed to (indeed, "Woodhey, Cheshire" is but a suburb of Bebington). I'm not sure how many of people who commented and argued for it being kept had any real knowledge of the local geography and the relative notability of Woodhey in comparison to other places on The Wirral now not in Cheshire, but which do not have similar redirects, though some probably did. A disambiguation page seems to make much more sense, given that there could legitimately be two entries (or one combined entry) for Woodhey Green and Woodhey hall that are still in Cheshire. However, I wonder whether a change to the redirect page after a RfD would be viewed as subverting things a bit. What do people think?  DDStretch  (talk) 09:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest, I'm not sure what the problem is in having an Altrincham, Cheshire redirect in place. It is an undenyable fact that Altrincham was in Cheshire prior to the 1974 reorganisation. There is countless documentation referring to Altrincham in Cheshire (most from pre'74 but I know many people who still quote their address as Altrincham, Cheshire and a google search for "Altrincham, Cheshire" received around 28 times as many hits as "Altrincham, Greater Manchester"). We must not assume that readers will know of recent boundary changes. Someone might have found a document about Altrincham that suggests that it's in Cheshire (say a pre'74 one - or even a recent example like all of those google hits) - goes to Wikipedia and doesn't get taken to their chosen article. My thoughts are that if it's reasonable that someone might search for the article title - then it's ok to have a redirect. Similarly for Sale, Greater Manchester - we should include a redirect from Sale, Cheshire (and in fact we do). It's not misleading - Altrincham, Sale etc. all used to be in Cheshire. Wikipedia doesn't present only the view of what currently is the situation. The article itself can then explain that Altrincham is in Trafford MBC, Greater Manchester, is within the historic boundaries of Cheshire. Richard B 13:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirects that are misleading - the case of [[Woodhey, Cheshire]]

message: I started the Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough article and then realised there was also an article for Wildboarclough. Shall I keep the article or delete it? JFBurton 20:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the article about Wildboarclough is about the settlement. Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough would primarily be about the civil parish, in which Wildboarclough is but one settlement. Indeed, the Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough article gives Langley as one other settlement in it, and also mentions a number of smaller hamlets. There may well be other features within this civil parish that are separate from the Wildboarclough village. So I suggest keeping it, and writing about its features, the villages and settlements contained within it, and then provide links to the villages, and any major features (which would require articles writing about them) as appropriate.  DDStretch  (talk) 17:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wildboarclough And Macclesfield Forest 

message: I've today created an article about the Chester Shot Tower, which is probably the oldest such building in the world. I think it might be the kind of topic that's interesting for DYK, but looking at the comments there, it seems to be rather shorter than the moderators seem to go for. Does anyone know anything about the structure, or have any printed references on shot towers? Espresso Addict 15:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Chester Shot Tower]] as a potential 'Did You Know...' 

message: This has been successful as a DYK today and also placed on our project page.  But it's not in Cheshire.  Should it be deleted?  Peter I. Vardy 18:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm removing them as soon as I've posted this message. I've left a message for the editor on his talk page. If you read that, you will see that the Bull Ring is mentioned in a book about Prehistoric Monuments in Cheshire (I also have this book), but not in any major substantial way, and in half of its references, it makes the point that The Bull Ring is in Derbyshire, and only included as a site of a place not in Cheshire but which might be conjectured by some to have had an impact on people living in Cheshire at that time. As I've noted, there is a similarly-named Ancient Monument in Cheshire: The Bullstones. Its location is close to Macclesfield and it is dealt with in some detail in the book I mentioned. I think this could have led to some confusion along the way.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[The Bull Ring]]