Category talk:People from Wolverhampton by settlement

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Can I ask what the point is of a totally empty category? This was round really doesn't make sense to me at all. Fingerpuppet 22:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Wolverhampton is a town within the Wolverhampton local authority area. This is standardised wording being rolled out across the whole of the England People From. Wolverhampton is a town as well as an LA district. They need to be kept apart which is one of the template reasons. It also covers towns which have moved county. Your changes have removed Bilston from the appropriate Staffordshire cats again. Regan123 22:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

No, it isn't. It isn't like Walsall and Metropolitan Borough of Walsall where the town is a subset of the like-named local authority district, but in this case the local authority district is a subset of the city, like Reading. People from suburbs such as Perton are within the Urban sub-area boundaries, but outside the Local Authority boundaries. It therefore makes no sense for this person to be said to be "within the local authority", as it is simply untrue. However, they are quite happily within the city itself.

I'd be more than delighted for the categories to end up within a traditional Staffordshire category, as pretending that hundreds of years of history prior to 1974 never sits particularly comfortably with me. Fingerpuppet 23:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Bilston is a town is the first line of the Bilston article. It is therefore a separate settlement from Wolverhampton. Same with Wednesfield. The standard template puts every People from into the same structure improving navigation for interested readers. Regan123 23:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

If you go back in time, the situation is even worse, with areas such as Willenhall and Sedgley being wholly within the boundaries of, for example, the Parliamentary Borough of 1832, and back before then with the land granted by Wulfrun for the founding of the town. Someone at the time from within those boundaries would be said to be "from Wolverhampton", though they would not be within the modern local authority boundaries.

If you are insisting on treating this entirely by the modern local authority boundaries, then I will point out that not all of the old Bilston Municipal Borough is within the modern boundaries of Wolverhampton CC's area - some is in Dudley, and some is in Sandwell. Wednesfield Urban District was also split between Wolverhampton CB, Walsall CB and Cannock Rural District. It is therefore untrue to suggest that all individuals from those towns by your own arguments should be in the category of "People from Bilston" or a "People from Wednesfield" as you are stating that those places are "Within the local authority district of Wolverhampton". This is why "People from Bilston" should be simply a sub-set of "People from Wolverhampton", as traditionally this has always been the case. Fingerpuppet 23:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

People from Bilston was originally created with the England people message. The whole point of this template is to standardise all the People from cats. Category:Wolverhampton is for LA area which contains three towns/settlementss hence the parent cat. The only dividers used are Staffordshire/not Staffordshire which covers all the scenarios you mention. People from Bilston is about the town not the former UD. Same with Wednesfield. Wolverhampton wasn't always the parent LA and the town doesn't cover the whole area. People from Wolverhampton by Settlement then brings them together for the LA area, same as in Stoke, Brighton and Hove and so on. Regan123 23:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Category:Wolverhampton isn't just for the LA area at all, just like Wolverhampton isn't for just the LA area. You appear to have a rather peculiar idea that towns and cities are entirely held within a single local authority area, which I have already shown you is untrue. I would also like to know how you define Bilston "the town" as different to the former Bilston Municipal Borough - in particular which areas in the former Borough are "in Bilston" and which are not.

Let me give you another example then. Portobello is a part of Willenhall. According to your phrasing, anyone notable from Portobello would be held, quite reasonably, in a potential "People from Willenhall" category, with "Willenhall in the district of Walsall" phrasing. That category would then be part of a larger "People from Walsall by settlement". The fly in the ointment for your arguments and phrasing is the fact that Portobello is in Wolverhampton. You would also deny, as I mentioned above, that notable people from Perton should be included in any "People from Wolverhampton" category, due to the fact that Perton is outside the Local Authority area, and despite the fact that it is within the Urban Sub-Area as defined by the Office for National Statistics, and the individual themselves would self-identify as being "from Wolverhampton"!

To take an example from nearer to yourself, Blythe Bridge is outside the Stoke-on-Trent LA area, but is part of the Urban sub-area of the city. Many other towns and cities also have this issue such as Reading, Hull, Preston, Norwich, Watford and Leicester. Fingerpuppet 00:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

There are lots of issues here. I don't think WP articles should be categorised by 'Urban Sub-Areas' and certainly this isn't what has happened elsewhere. It is unfortunate that there is local resentment to local government districts named after smaller settlements, but they are a good way to categorise things (and have been used for a variety of other purposes in category schemes - especially all the Greater London categories) most importantly because they have certain boundaries that are easily understood and checked (they appear on maps) and, more importantly, they cover the whole country. They are also about the right size for a healthy category. If we had categories based only on 'settlements' there would be thousands and they would overlap. It would be a disaster with lots of small categories with one or two items that also appear in another and several ridiculously large categories (imagine London or Manchester). It would become a mix of local government districts, ONS data and postal geography with no structure at all. MRSC • Talk 09:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I can cope with that, fair enough. I can also cope with the fact that if there's an agreed standard for "People from...", then that's what we should deal with as far as is practical - which isn't to say slavishly!

I am, however, still concerned by this issue, as I know of one individual (at this time - there may be more) included on Category:People from Bilston who are verifiably from the town, but who come from the part that is currently administered by Dudley MBC - hence the article heading "within the local authority of Wolverhampton" is false for this individual. However, trying to recategorise them somewhere in the Dudley MBC "People from..." categories would be confusing at best. There's also the potential issue that the main hospital in Wolverhampton is within Wednesfield - hence most people born within the city since about 1970 are technically "from Wednesfield". Am I worrying too much? Do we really care about this?

Fingerpuppet 11:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

When there was issue with Category:People from Penge a second cat was manually added. If this is straddling both then we could add it into Category:People from Dudley by settlement manually. Actually Category:People from Dudley is another example of a split personality Cat. I noticed you have been categorising like crazy recently - it truely is a thankless task but a very useful one, so if I seemed a bit blunt last night then I apologise. Regan123 18:21, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

No problem - I shot my mouth off at poor MRSC this morning, then had to go back and apologise.

I think it would be quite sensible to do this - I'll compose a list of suggestions as across the whole Black Country and Wolverhampton area there's a lot of this sort of thing going on, and then if that's OK with people, we can do the manual adding. Fingerpuppet 18:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Drop me a line when you've got the list. Regan123 18:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)