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[add comment] [edit] Colonial Status [20 November 2012]The hierarchical list of places in England includes 635 places within Plymouth Colony which are "also contained" in England. Why is [[Place:Plymouth Colony, Kingdom of England]] to be found amongst places located in England? If it is appropriate that Plymouth Colony is/was considered to be a place in England, why are there no other references under England for the other 12 original American colonies, for places in post-1784 British North America, or for places in Australia and New Zealand? --goldenoldie 17:01, 3 November 2012 (EDT)
Jennifer Your message wasn't advised to me by email although I thought I had all appropriate pages ticked for watching. I got brave just now and removed the "Also located" line from Plymouth Colony (just the one place page) and this has followed through to the 635 "hangers on". I assume that "Kingdom of England" was a place name designed for the purpose and takes the time scale into consideration. I may put a slight revision of the second para of my original question on the Watercooler tomorrow. Too late for the brain tonight. It's worth people thinking about. --goldenoldie 16:40, 6 November 2012 (EST) The Oversight Committee discussed this recently, and our consensus was that those colonies which cannot be unified with entities from 1900 (of English colonies, that probably means Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay) should probably be top-level entities (like Scotland and Wales) and that we should investigate whether the Kingdom of England could be unified with England. But now I see that we have the whole set of historical entities which purport to be the top-level domains for the British Isles. --Pkeegstra 21:04, 17 November 2012 (EST) I don't know how best to proceed here. The underlying principles are
In order to achieve both of these principles, the approach has been that we don't create multiple place pages for places that cover essentially the same geographic area, and that we title places according to the jurisdictional hierarchy in which they appeared around 1900, with other hierarchies recorded as also-located-in places. Given this, how do we proceed here?--Dallan 12:25, 20 November 2012 (EST) By "here", do you mean the pages for various colonies, or the pages for the various entities which constituted the top-level domains for the British Isles. I have a fairly clear vision for the colonies. The ones which can be identified with states should be, and the ones which can't should be top-level domains. I was waiting for a bit of feedback before undertaking that. n.b. this directly contradicts the paragraphs in the FAQ, which use Connecticut as an example of a colony which cannot be unified, and locate it under "Kingdom of England". (I looked in the page history for Place:Connecticut (colony), Kingdom of England at the elided text in case it explained why it could not be unified, but saw nothing of that sort. So I stand by my opinion that it can be unified. For those aware of the Connecticut Western Reserve, if that is considered, that can be done independently of Connecticut proper, i.e. a historical territory under "United States".) The domains for the British Isles are a different matter. I think they miss the point of the "1900 rule", but since the British Isles aren't one of my particular geographic areas of interest and expertise, I was deferring to those who were. P.S. Are all occurrences of "US Navy" under "United States" improper use of the place field like this? All the territories listed under "United States" are probably candidates for unification; "Louisiana Purchase" is a plausible candidate for a distinct identity like the "Western Reserve". --Pkeegstra 12:55, 20 November 2012 (EST)
I just checked the status of "Isle of Man" and "Bermuda", and they are both top-level domains with a type of "Dependant state". So absent objections, I'll go ahead and do the analogous for historical colonies, and update the FAQ accordingly. --Pkeegstra 14:59, 20 November 2012 (EST) I'm stuck on Dominion of New England in America. Many of the references to it seem to be non-historical, just using it as an equivalent for "New England" since we have no other definition for "New England". Two possibilities:
--Pkeegstra 15:34, 20 November 2012 (EST) |