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There seem to be at least two groups of people, those who think 'county' means the current, administrative entity, and those who think it means a traditional or historical entitiy.

In itself this isn't a problem, but Wikipedia needs to have a policy on which county a particular place is in. Maybe such a policy has already been debated and agreed; if so I'd be grateful if someone could point me to it. There's no discussion about the article Counties of England, though the article itself mentions that the different meanings exist.

It's a problem because someone has gone through the article on St Neots and moved it from the current, administrative county of Cambridgeshire to the historical county of Huntingdonshire, which will confuse the reader. For now I've returned the article to its original form. And this is happening on a wide scale, articles on towns and villages are being modified wholesale.

Is there any guidance on this sort of thing, other than to kick off the talk page, debate the topic and see if we can come to a consensus view? Advice anyone? Chris Jefferies 10th December 2003

Common sense should prevail. The St Neots article should say it is in Cambridgeshire, but was formerly in Huntingdonshire, because the article is about the village both in the past and the present. An article about Junipero Serra should say he lived in Alta Mexico not the US state of California. The Romans invaded Gaul, not France, but Tabo M'Beki is the president of the Republic of South Africa, not of the Cape Colony. I can't for the life of me understand why this seems be be contentious in so many places (cf the enteral Danzig debate...). There can be few places that haven't been parts of many countries, or have had many names. -- Finlay McWalter 00:19, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ah, yes. I've been trying to keep out of that mess apart from protecting Warwickshire overnight in one of the early outbreaks of the edit wars. It appears to me that the traditionalists, if I can name them that, are only one or two people, but they're very determined in their point of view! It'e even worse with the Welsh counties where the old names have mostly been reused to cover areas with little territorial commonality with the pre-1974 counties. My view is that all the county articles are currently untrustworthy, but for practical purposes the current administrative counties are the ones that an encyclopaedia ought to be concentrating on, with just a note on the former history such as e.g. "Stoke-on-Trent is now a unitary authority but was formerly in Staffordshire". In my view the only current relevance of the old traditional counties is to determine which cricket club covers the area! -- Arwel 00:27, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Finlay, and Arwel, I appreciate your input. I'm afraid the person who altered St Neots has changed it back again. I don't particularly want to have a 'change war' (how childish, what a waste of time) and I'm trying to discuss it on his/her Talk page. There's also been an exchange of views on the Godmanchester Talk page and I can't say I'm encouraged. Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003

Clearly Finlay stated it perfectly. The current, on the ground, designations are the proper ones, but reference to historical standings are important contributions to the articles. I'm preparing a "Style" page for Proper names at Wikipedia:Proper_names and will use Finlay's sage advice there as well. - Marshman 01:09, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The encyclopedia should definitely concentrate on the current administrative divisions of the United Kingdom (and everywhere else) -- not to the exclusion of historical data, but certainly with much greater prominence. Granted, the UK has been IMO way too obsessed with messing with administrative boundaries in the last 30 years or so (it's crazy that somewhere like the United States has it all MUCH more settled) but we must document what is not push what we wish was. --Morven 01:15, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Quite. I can't remember if Chigley is in Trumptonshire, or Trumpton is in the Chigley unitary authority :) -- Finlay McWalter 01:29, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"The current, on the ground, designations are the proper ones". Well, I wasn't being quite as sweeping as that, for the encyclopedia as a whole. I really mean that the context of the article determines the correct usage of placenames, languages, social groups, etc. This article should mention both counties, as its scope spans the period where each prevailed. If Alfred the Great had done something interesting there, it would be perfectly reasonable to mention it was in Mercia, or Wessex, or whatever. Equally, if an article were about a battle in the english civil war, the prevailing county at that time should be the dominant one in the article's text. -- Finlay McWalter 01:29, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I understood what you were saying. That first sentence was really intended for the discussion of the counties situation, and the point next made by Morven. - Marshman 01:59, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

OK guys, thanks for all your comments. I think there's a great deal of common sense in what you say, especially about the historical county relevant to the article being the correct one to use in each case.

So what are we going to do about User:80.255 who is throwing his weight around, aggressively changing dozens of articles without consideration for either other editors or indeed (and more importantly) for the poor readers. He is damaging the Wikipedia and will also damage its reputation with readers if he's allowed to continue.

I don't mind having a dialogue with him, but if (as I suspect) he proves resistant to both reason and the majority view, what then? If that happens, maybe we should consider having his IP address blocked, though it would probably have only a temporary effect. Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003

The "80.255 vs everyone else" battle has been going on for some time (the particular battleground for my tussle was Kent). 80.255 has a particular view point, and argues for it in a consistent and eloquent manner. This is rather different from childish vandalism and I wouldn't support banning him at this time (despite having gone through the same sense of frustration as you, Chris). It is time however to formulate a policy on the specific issue of county names. If this policy can be rolled into a more general policy of historic place names then so much the better. Once this policy is in place, if 80.255's sense of how Things Should Be is so strong that he flauts the policy (in addition to common sense and the majority view) over several articles and over a reasonable period of time, then we may have to say "sorry 80.255, but this just isn't the community project for you". Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:22, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I believe we should have a wide and open debate with the aim of formulating the policy on current and historic place names mentioned by Pete above. And I think we should begin sooner rather than later to minimise the damage to Wikipedia.

I know there are correct procedures for doing this, but I'm going to need help from someone wiser and more experienced in the world of Wikipedia. What's the first step? Where should the discussion take place? Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003

Seconded. I've been trying to reason with some people over Oder/Odra for a last few days, and some just don't seem to give up. A clear policy on names, their use in text generally as well as in historical contexts, is definitely needed. Zocky 20:54, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You may wish to take this discusion to the Talk: page for Wikipedia:Proper_names - Marshman 03:27, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I just started Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) before reading your comment. Comments are sorely required before that page can become policy. 80.255's input is obviously particularly required if the process is to work. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:13, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My feeling is to use Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) as there's quite a large discussion going on and the final description of the convention will probably be fairly lengthy.

I'm therefore copying this discussion to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places) - please continue there, not here! Chris Jefferies 11:14, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The maps also need some standardization.

The following map appears on Dorset:

While the following map appears on Northumberland:

File:Uk-northumberland.png

Note that, in the second map, that peninsula at the tip of Scotland appears as all one county, while in the first, that peninsula appears as several counties. And that's just one of many differences between the maps.

Someone needs to figure out which map is correct, and fix the incorrect map. I'd do it if I knew more about British counties.

LuckyWizard 01:36, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The ones that don't have the Shetlands or Orkneys are the 'traditional' counties; see Warwickshire for an example of both for one place.

James F. (talk) 23:43, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Maybe the above could be reformatted into a policy page on how to deal with the counties of England?