London Wikia:Community Portal

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Alphabetical list of London County Council members

 * Is the list stable enough to divide up into pages of 'reasonable' length (allowing for a number of redirects for persons changing names or titles)
 * What 'other information' should be provided ('Mayor of...', 'Member of MWB, SBL...' etc)?
 * What else?

The same format can then be applied to other bodies. Jackiespeel (talk) 10:36, January 12, 2015 (UTC)


 * It will probably need dividing up as it will have 1,000+ entries (educated guess and rough arithmetic)
 * I envisaged the "notes" column for things like membership of parliament, later knighthoods/peerage and so on and membership (or at least chairmanship) of other London bodies
 * Lozleader (talk) 15:07, January 12, 2015 (UTC)
 * There are 1357 articles with 'Category:LCC members' - which may decrease when initials are expanded (and duplicates identified as a result). Jackiespeel (talk) 17:54, January 12, 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes I have found a few duplicates in the last few days, but I would say we will still be in quadruple figures. Lozleader (talk) 20:36, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

I have completed the "A"s! This will take a while: found some duplicates and incorrect info in articles so a worthwhile exercise. Someone (a relative?) had added a load of text to Mark Auliff's article in October 2013. A lot of it couldn't be verified so I took it away: "assumed to have worked in military intelligence during second world war" not likely to be verifiable :-) Lozleader (talk) 22:53, January 15, 2015 (UTC)
 * Given the number of people who served on the various local government bodies (including the vestries, local councils and other bodies which we haven't done) it is surprising that there aren't more genealogically-minded passers-through. Jackiespeel (talk) 10:56, January 16, 2015 (UTC)
 * Still plodding through the "B"s: this was a worthwhile exercise in that there was at least one individual (Godfrey Baring) who had slipped through the net entirely: my fault in that there was a batch of aldermen selected prior to the Great War most of whom had quietly retired and been replaced before their extended term of office was finally ended in the 1920s.
 * And it turns out the two Beaufoys were father and son and part of a vinegar manufacturing dynasty, although on different sides of the house, politically. Lozleader (talk) 21:42, January 23, 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a joke in there somewhere :) Jackiespeel (talk) 22:25, January 23, 2015 (UTC)

Plodding through the "B"s... Googled Muriel Bowen and found a partial obituary for a Washington Post journalist. I thought this was clearly just a namesake but a little bit of digging shows she was indeed the same person. Involved in politics in Ireland as well... another interesting local politician. Lozleader (talk) 20:31, February 4, 2015 (UTC)
 * And what about the Welsh Nationalist Mayor of St Pancras/LCC member?

Perhaps there should be a list of the range of professions - from astrophysicist to vinegar manufacturers. Jackiespeel (talk) 23:03, February 4, 2015 (UTC)


 * Well the "B"s are finally finished... inly 24 letters to go (I jest: there were no LCC members with surnames beginning in "X" or "Z").Lozleader (talk) 21:17, March 7, 2015 (UTC)
 * And probably few beginning with J or Q.

There may be a few more sometime mayors 'hiding' in the LCC members. Jackiespeel (talk) 23:28, March 7, 2015 (UTC) There is one "Q". Quite a few "J"s though: Jenkins, Jones, Johnson and the like. And yes I expect to unearth a few mayors on the long journey to reach Young, William Lawrence, later Sir William Young, 8th Baronet. Lozleader (talk) 00:23, March 8, 2015 (UTC)
 * Well slightly less than 2 months later and the "C"s are done at last.Lozleader (talk) 21:51, May 2, 2015 (UTC)

Glad to get the Daviess and Daviss sorted (or is Davii the correct plural?). David Davies and David Davis had got hopelessly muddled and swapped dates. It's these small things that encourage me to think that the process is not entirely futile. Lozleader (talk) 20:44, May 4, 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, well, it turned out that William Hayes Fisher and Cecil Urquhart Fisher were brothers. And their nephew was Bishop of Chichester so they were OK for officiating clergy at their funerals. Lozleader (talk) 16:44, July 26, 2015 (UTC)


 * Splendid work being done on that article. If the home page had a section for featured articles, that one should be on the list even while unfinished. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:48, July 29, 2015 (UTC)

Members of Boards of Works
For the present list anybody of note on the relevant Board of Works page. Jackiespeel (talk) 18:43, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

Staff and other personnel
What should be 'done' with people like and others who worked for the various organistations? Jackiespeel (talk) 19:01, January 12, 2015 (UTC)
 * Would they be "officers": I have list of the principal officers of both the MBW and LCC. Lozleader (talk) 20:38, January 12, 2015 (UTC)
 * Whatever we have time for (and whoever is notable enough to leave traces in the records can have more detail). What categories shall they be given - XYZ personnel? Jackiespeel (talk) 22:55, January 12, 2015 (UTC)
 * Something like that: obviously some passed from one body to another: Joseph Bazalgette started with the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers before going on to the MBW for instance.Lozleader (talk) 21:10, January 13, 2015 (UTC)
 * There are probably only going to be a few notable enough to justify separate articles - easier to decide earlier on. Category:XYZ official seem reasonable? Jackiespeel (talk) 22:30, January 13, 2015 (UTC)

And what category should 'defeated candidates of note' (eg William Henry Emilien Thornthwaite) be given? Jackiespeel (talk) 22:43, January 23, 2015 (UTC)

New articles

 * project:WikiNode

Initials
How many of the 'notable figures' are still known only by their initials?

Which publications have been checked - I have used Kelly's/Post Office Directories (where available); Local Government Yearbooks, Municipal Yearbooks; Whittaker's Almanac (in all cases 'volumes available') - in many cases 'merely initials' are given (but in some cases awards etc are provided). Jackiespeel (talk) 23:20, February 23, 2015 (UTC)


 * Mayors - collectively still 'too many to list.'

Mayors categories
The various mayors categories need reconsidering - there are 'Mayors of X' and 'Mayors of London Borough of X.' (There were quite a few 'accidental categories' - using upper and lower case initial letters and a few mistypings.) Jackiespeel (talk) 21:58, April 15, 2015 (UTC)
 * Use of Title Case for page names is, as I have noted on two other pages recently, a common source of duplication and fragmentation. In my look through the list of all categories, I found many examples, the most memorable being Bus Routes and Bus routes. Sentence case is the Wikia and Wikipedia standard for page names, with good reason. I should import the standard Category redirect as a quick way to indicate categories that should be merged, but in some cases there will need to be a consensus on which name (e.g. Mayors of X) should prevail. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:28, July 25, 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a concentration on developing the London administrators/elected persons with 'checking categories' being an occasional process (partly to do with 'not duplicating Wikipedia too much'). Jackiespeel (talk) 10:33, July 25, 2015 (UTC)

Last living member of London County Council?
Raine Spencer, Countess Spencer is apparently still alive. She's the only one I've found so far... Lozleader (talk) 20:33, May 4, 2015 (UTC)
 * While Xenia Noelle Field may have had the longest lifespan at 103+ years.... Lozleader (talk) 16:04, July 26, 2015 (UTC)

Template buttons
I have typed so many times in the last few days it's not funny. So many articles with whole sentences copied character-for-character (including en-dashes where we ordinary folk use hyphens) but no acknowledgment of the copying. The publishing license requires it.

Giving the required acknowledgment would be a darn sight easier if we could do it most of the time with just one click. And we could - if one of the green template buttons on the editing page could be changed to Wikipedia. At present the buttons are called Infobox, Delete, Navbox, and Disambig. I might use any of those at times (if they worked - which I haven't checked), but for the foreseeable future I would use Wikipedia much more often and would use AlsoWP more than the existing ones too.

Please reply saying which of the existing buttons you use and/or would not want changed to either of my two preferences.

-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:41, July 28, 2015 (UTC)

You will have to ask other participants on LW what they want. Jackiespeel (talk) 13:42, July 28, 2015 (UTC)
 * Putting a request on this page is probably the best start for asking participants what they want. I'll give them a while to respond, then I may post to non-responding active editors' pages. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:48, July 29, 2015 (UTC)

Bear in mind that 'a number' of the articles were set up as place holders for 'the theoretical person interested in that field' would take them up and develop them - and some articles were set up by 'the persons involved with the previous rounds of LW.' Jackiespeel (talk) 13:42, July 28, 2015 (UTC)
 * I take it from that response that you don't use any of the green buttons. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:48, July 29, 2015 (UTC)

What are these 'Green buttons' any how?Oniontree1 (talk) 02:11, August 16, 2015 (UTC)
 * Not something I use either :) Jackiespeel (talk) 09:34, August 16, 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't find them. not sure what I'm doing wrong? Lozleader (talk) 13:28, August 17, 2015 (UTC)
 * You're probably not doing anything wrong, but you probably are using one of the less useful Wikia editing page views. See Help:Editing for the view that shows four green buttons near bottom right. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:08, August 18, 2015 (UTC)

Righto, then. All of us who are the only significant-volume editors (over 20 edits) in the last few months have contributed to this section. You three all indicated that you don't use the buttons. You might use them if you had found them and if they were for templates you use (or should use!) often. I would very much like to have the default buttons changed to templates we all might use quite a bit.

Three that I think would save the most time are:
 * AlsoWP - it links to Wikipedia from an article that doesn't copy anything, saving you from typing or copying something like "More information on the Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/blah-blah-blah "
 * Construction - it says that a page is under construction (and puts it in a maintenance category so that someone can check its progress)
 * Wikipedia - it acknowledges that some material on the page has been copied from Wikipedia and it links to the WP page and that page's history (and you are in breach of Wikia terms of use if you copy without such an acknowledgment)

So would one of you two active admins please go to http://london.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Editor-template-list and replace three of the current list with those? You can choose which one remains - but I think one of you may think of a fourth useful one after you've tried those three for a while.

-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:25, August 20, 2015 (UTC)

Update
Actually, no one can edit that page until Staff “whitelist” it again. It is locked to everyone but Staff right now. However, once it is unlocked, it is very easy to update:
 * Go to MediaWiki:Editor-template-list
 * Open the page in the editor
 * Replace three of the lines with the following three lines:

This list creates the “green buttons” (more like green puzzle pieces) that Robin was talking about. They appear only in the Oasis skin, and only in the Oasis source editor and/or the Oasis RTE/CKE editor. Therefore, if you are editing in Monobook, or with Oasis’s new VisualEditor, you will not have seen them. But, for people who edit in those editors in which they appear, they are very useful. Thanks! :) — Spike  Toronto  23:43, August 27, 2015 (UTC)
 * The fourth line can be one of those already there, or any other template that admins here think frequently useful


 * Thanks for the detail, Spike! Those messages are again whitelisted on Familypedia, so they are presumably available here too. I hope Spike's recommendations can be implemented. One of this wiki's admins merely has to go to MediaWiki:Editor-template-list?action=edit, replace the first three lines with the lines Spike suggested above, then publish. Quicker than saying why you can't be bothered? -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 21:41, May 17, 2016 (UTC)

Handy site info

 * 1) http://london.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Insights/uncategorizedpages
 * 2) http://vstf.wikia.com/wiki/Report:Spam_filter_problems
 * 3) http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Video_Embed_Tool
 * 4) http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Community_guidelines
 * 5) http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Contacting_Wikia
 * 6) http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Contributing
 * 7) http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Getting_Technical
 * 8) http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Managing_Your_Account
 * 9) http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Uploading_files
 * 10) http://london.wikia.com/wiki/wiki/Help:Special_pages
 * 11) http://london.wikia.com/wiki/Special:RecentChanges - this appears on the bottom bar of most pages in the standard Wikia view
 * 12) http://london.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Leaderboard
 * 13) http://london.wikia.com/wiki/Special:SpecialPages

Oniontree1 (talk) 02:11, August 16, 2015 (UTC)


 * Handy but unnecessarily lengthy links, especially for help and London Wiki pages. Sure, it's easiest to copy the URL; but if typing it out you want a shorter version. See Help:Links. For http://community.wikia.com/wiki/, you can just type "" followed by the full page name and "". For help pages, it is better to type "Help:" followed by the page name and "" (because they are automatically transcluded into this wiki even if this wiki doesn't have a page of that name, and if it does have a page of that name there may be valuable London-related help on it as well). For anything on this wiki, including Special pages, you can just type the full page name inside double square brackets (even using the editing button for a one-click bracketing). For other wikia sites, you can type "w:c:" followed by the subdomain name (e.g. vstf or familypedia) and a colon and the full page name and "". I like the Special:Insights pages, although if you see Company of Merchant Adventurers of London with my name on it is wrongly included because it was uncategorized before I edited it and most of what I did was adding categories (on 14 August)!! -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:06, August 18, 2015 (UTC)

History of local government districts in Middlesex
The Wikipedia page is - can it be copied over. Jackiespeel (talk) 18:49, March 9, 2016 (UTC)
 * I worked on that with User:MRSC back in the day Lozleader (talk) 23:01, March 9, 2016 (UTC)
 * Tables (and references) do not readily transfer from WP ('some space or minor symbol' added or removed dislocates everything). Jackiespeel (talk) 10:31, March 10, 2016 (UTC)