Wikishire:Guide to town and village articles

For general guidance on editing in this wiki, see Wikishire:Editing Guide.

This Guide is intended to assist the creation and editing of articles about cities, towns and villages on Wikishire.

The content of a town article is generally up to the contributor, with a few caveats drawn from Wikishire's policies and those listed here:

• As Wikishire's geographical scope is limited to British and Irish lands, a town or village article need only refer to the appropriate county and need not state that that county is part of the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland as this is covered in the respective county articles.

• It is helpful to use a town infobox in each case at the beginning. The infobox will give some summary detail of the town. If the infobox is used then the article will automatically be categorised within "Towns and villages of [county]. If it is not used then:

• • Add at the end:

[[Category:Towns and villages in (county name)]]

• • Add at the top somewhere the template code:

{{county|(county name)}}

(The template tags the county for the article, so that things like the map links using {{wmap}} and {{map}} know which map system to use. If an infobox is added later, the category line and the {{county}} tag can be deleted as the infobox will supply both.)

Infobox town

See also Infoboxes

{{Infobox town}} is a template looks for certain data fields, and it does not matter is they are not all completed, as long as "county=" is completed in order that the box can properly categorise the town.

The "latitude" and "longitude" fields expect an absolute value in degrees and fractions of a degree north and east, not minutes and seconds, and without "N" or "S" nor "E" or "W", which may be added by the infobox. This means, for example, that 3° 45' W should be written "-3.75"

Towns and settlements in British overseas territories

The same {{Infobox town}} may be used for a town or settlement in a British overseas territory. In that case, the "county" field may be replaced by a "territory" field, for example for Hamilton, Bermuda:

| name=Hamilton

| territory=Bermuda

One could just as well write:

| name=Hamilton

| county=Bermuda

We recognise that the overseas territories are not "counties", but whether one uses |county= or |territory=, it makes no difference to the operation of the infobox and the word "county" or "territory" will not appear in the text.

For Guernsey and Jersey, one can likewise use |bailiwick=.

The fields

The available fields are:

Usage

Fields (blank template)

{{Infobox town
| name=
| welsh=
| gaelic=
| irish=
| scots=
| cornish=
| jerriais=
| dgernesiais=
| manx=
| county=
| riding=
| island=
| picture=
| picture caption=
| latitude=
| longitude=
| os grid ref=
| population=
| census year=
| post town=
| postcode=
| dialling code=
| LG district=
| constituency=
| website=
}}

Completing the fields

All of the fields above are optional apart from "county=" (which may be given as "territory=" or "bailiwick=" as appropriate. For general guidance see Guide to town and village articles. For specific key fields:

Name, county etc:

• name - The name of the town as it will appear at the head of the box. It can be left out if the article has the same name but it is usually filled in.
• cornish, gaelic, jerriais, welsh etc - the name in the appropriate language, if it is appropriate to the particular village to have another language's version, for example for a Gaelic-speaking village (or one which was Gaelic speaking in recent history).
• county - The county in which the town lies. If it is on the boundary, the county it is mainly within. Alternatively the fields county 1 and county 2 can be employed where appropriate. For an overseas territory or crown dependency, the field territory or bailiwick may be used instead. They are functionally interchangeable.
• island - Do not use this field if the island on which the town is found is Great Britain or Ireland nor if it is Anglesey or the Isle of Man as the "county" field deals with that.

Picture

• picture - The file name of a picture on Commons, without the "File:" element.

Location fields

For these fields we recommend finding the place on Streetmap as it has a tag at the bottom "Click here to convert coordinates." which will give you the grid reference, latitude and longitude and nearest postcode all in the right form for use in the Infobox:

• • os grid ref - do not put spaces in the grid ref. It will create a link directly to Ordnance Survey
  • latitiude and longitude - use a decimal number (as Streetmap provide). The programme will convert it to degrees, minutes and seconds.
  • postcode - just the first half of a postcode should do.

Townland

A town or village in Ulster or the Republic of Ireland might also be a townland or share its name with a townland. For these, there is the optional "townland" field:

|townland=yes

- will categorise the place also in "Townlands of [county]".

Examples

Example 1: Abingdon

Abingdon
Berkshire
The River Thames at Abingdon looking towards St. Helen's parish church
Location
Location:	51.667 N, -1.283 W
Grid reference:	SU4997
Data
Population:	36,626
Post town:	Abingdon
Postcode:	OX14
Dialling code:	01235
Local Government
Council:	Vale of White Horse
Parliamentary constituency:	Oxford West and Abingdon
Website:	Abingdon Town Council

Example 2: Youghal

Youghal Irish: Eochaill
County Cork
The Clock Gate
Location
Location:	51.951671 N, -7.845612 W
Grid reference:	X102781
Data
Population:	6393
Local Government
Website:	www.youghal.ie

Using references

Where references are used within braces (<ref>(text)</ref>), always add a "References" section at the end, containing the code {{Reflist}}