MediaWiki talk:Place types

Place type "Historical inhabited Place" [11 November 2011]

Can you change the "Historical inhabited Place" to "Historical inhabited place"? As it is now, it appears in the drop-down with capital "P", but when I try to save the page the software changes it to a small "p" and gives me an error which prevents saving the page. Moverton 17:53, 11 November 2011 (EST)

Oops - my mistake. I've changed it. Thank you for letting me know.--Dallan 21:04, 12 November 2011 (EST)

Changes for future consideration [29 August 2012]

Each of the changes below requires renaming the types on existing place pages.

• remove "Historic county" because we have "Historical county"
• change "Town or village" to "Village or town" because villages grow into towns
• change "City or town" to "Town or city" because towns grow into cities

--Dallan 10:27, 29 August 2012 (EDT)

Former places [19 November 2016]

At the moment we have
Former administrative division
Former borough
Former community
Former county
Former district
Former municipality
Former national district
Former nation/state/empire
Former parish
Former province
Former regierungsbezirk
Former region
Former state
but Village (former)

Any chance of making "ghost" villages uniform with other past places? --goldenoldie 10:22, 13 April 2013 (EDT)

I just made this change. However, we will also need to edit the pages that currently say "Village (former)" by hand. If you search Places for keyword="Village (former)", you get about 101 results. Many of those results are not because the place itself has that type, but because one of its contained places does. Is that a task you would like to do? If you want any help with this, just let me know! --Jennifer (JBS66) 14:17, 14 April 2013 (EDT)

Admin follow up (Nov 2016): all Village (former)s have been changed to Former village. --cos1776 20:29, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

So pleased you didn't think impossible. Changing a maximum of 101 "village (former)"s is a small price to pay. Something to do when my eyes aren't exactly being kept open with toothpicks, but after a few more Scottish Borders parishes (of which there are also about 101). <smile>. --goldenoldie 14:30, 14 April 2013 (EDT)

Add "Shire" as a Type [5 July 2014]

It is the most widely-used term for Australian local government areas.--Wongers 21:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Another addition, or alteration to a type of place:

wapentake

A wapentake is a Yorkshire equivalent of a "hundred", but a Yorkshireman would prefer to use wapentake. Changing "hundred" to "hundred or wapentake" would be fine. These terms were used in England until the early 1800s. --Goldenoldie 06:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Add "Shire" as a Type [5 July 2014]

It is the most widely-used term for Australian local government areas.--Wongers 21:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Another addition, or alteration to a type of place:

wapentake

A wapentake is a Yorkshire equivalent of a "hundred", but a Yorkshireman would prefer to use wapentake. Changing "hundred" to "hundred or wapentake" would be fine. These terms were used in England until the early 1800s. --Goldenoldie 06:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Bump--Wongers 00:38, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Why is this page hidden? [13 March 2015]

I have spent the past 10 minutes trying to find "MediaWiki talk:Place types". Why isn't it on the Special Pages list? It is sometimes useful to check all the possibilities together in order to choose the best one. --Goldenoldie 19:37, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Inhabited place, et al [28 June 2016]

We have "Inhabited place", "Inhabited location", and "Populated place". Is there a reason for the distinction? The former predominates and seems to be the natural choice since we have "Historical inhabited place" to match. There aren't too many of the latter two choices, but maybe someone with a bot could consolidate those into just "Inhabited place". -Moverton 17:51, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I go along with your feelings on "Historical inhabited place", "Inhabited location" and "Populated place".

"Inhabited place" is the default or combined name for "town" and "village" in the list of places on a county or state page. Since towns and cities can vary so much in size depending on the definition of these words in the country in which they are located, I tend to avoid using any one of the three types if I can.

--Goldenoldie 19:02, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Possible improvements to this page [13 January 2018]

1. How could we suggest to any person seeing a part of this page (it is provided in groups by initial letter) that more than one description can be used for any one place?
2. Could we remind users that places should be described as they were in 1900?
(a) This means that a place which no longer fits a category should not be described as a "former [type of place]" if it existed as such in 1900.
(b) It also means that using a place type that has come into existence since 1900 definitely requires a "creation" date and a bit of explanation in the text. Equivalently for place types that died out before 1900.
3. Some countries have a much narrower definition of a city that does the US and Canada.

--Goldenoldie 11:43, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

New place types for consideration [23 September 2019]

Once again I have forgotten the official name for the list of place types, so I can't add anything for myself.

Most churches in England can be described as "parishes" and cause no problem, but there is a closely related group which doesn't quite fit the definition. I would like to add "place of worship" or "place of worship (non-parish)" to the list. This would include St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, churches of other denominations, and even synagogues and mosques. All of these can provide data on adherents: baptisms, marriages, burials within the building, or even a pointer to someone's residence.

Meanwhile, they are left as "unknown".

--Goldenoldie 14:47, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

I just added "Place of worship". Would "Church" be better?--Dallan 18:20, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I was trying not to use church. We may be dealing with non-Christian faiths.

Just as a matter of interest. The last of the 2019 UK series of "Who Do You Think You Are" aired last week with someone who thought his ancestors might come from Italy. Instead they came from Spain and there were Jews and Arabs amongst them, caught up in the Spanish Inquisition.

--Goldenoldie 19:07, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

A light bulb moment! [7 October 2023]

The list of places in a county gets longer and longer, one reason being that many places are given two descriptions and thus get duplicated in the list. For years I have been describing most places as "ancient parish" and "civil parish", but why don't we add "ancient and civil parish" and reduce the size of the lists? Some places will fit into only one category because they are too new or too old, but most fit the composite description.

Don't worry about the time alterations will take, I think I'll be doing most of it. --Goldenoldie 12:51, 7 October 2023 (UTC)