Talk:Areas of Sheffield

Question

Heading added by Oranjblud (talk) 14:20, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

This may be a silly question but does "district" have any special definition in this context? Do the districts have defined boundaries and do they line up with the ward boundries? Andreww 9 July 2005 01:45 (UTC)

Not a silly question, but more complicated than you might think. I think that we are using a very loose definition of the word district. This article was broken out from the Sheffield article back in April. Before that the list of districts on the Sheffield page referred to them as localities and settlements rather than districts. Prior to that time I had decided that something needed to be done about the fact that the articles relating to the districts were for the most part nonexistent (the list mostly contained red-links) and, where articles did exist they were mostly very short stubs. After a discussion with the user who had originally added to list to the Sheffield article I decided that it was easier to write articles about the political wards as these were easier to define than the districts. So, when this article was created I hijacked it (apologies to the creator) and structured it as a hub for the ward articles that I had written. The creator of this article used the term district and I chose not to argue. My take on the districts is as I have tried to explain in the indroductory paragraph for the article—that is for the most part that they don't really exist as such. They have no well defined boundaries, no political standing, and are really just an artifact of the history of the city and the way the city grew—engulfing small villages and hamlets and filling in the gaps with housing estates. I think that some of the districts that were originally villages (e.g. Dore and Norton) are pretty well defined (you could pribably even draw boundaries for them). Many of the others though have an obvious centre, but then just merge into the surrounding districts without there being obvious boundaries. A few districts, like Abbeydale (for which I might one day attempt to write an article), are almost impossible to define. In the case of Abbeydale I think that if you asked 10 different locals where it is you would get 10 different answers. JeremyA 9 July 2005 04:24 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I think your comment about the districts being an artifact of the history of the city hits the nail on the head. The only problem, as I see it, is that some links are redirected to wards and that is sometimes suprising if you follow the link. For example in History of Sheffield article notes that Gleadless may be a Saxon settelment but this is redirected to Arbourthorne and this opens with:

Arbourthorne ward is one of the 28 electoral wards in City of Sheffield, England. It is located in the southeastern part of the city. It covers an area of 4.5 square kilometres and includes the districts of Norfolk Park, Arbourthorne and Gleadless.

which can be a bit of a suprise. What I sugest is that the districts should always be noted in the first paragraph for the ward article and where possible we should have a sub section on each "district" - I thnk you have done this already - and that the district names should be emboldend in the first paragraph. This should let the reader know at once that they are in the correct place. I'll do this for the Arbouthorne article - let me know what you think. Andreww 10:52, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• • • I agree with you that a redirect from Gleadless to Arbourthorne is a suprise for readers. However, I hope that you agree that this is better than a redlink (which is what Gleadless was before I made the redirect). My original hope was that the ward pages would grow and that I would be able to break out district articles into full articles (see, for example Ecclesall, and the sub-article Millhouses). Unfortunately this project is running out of steam a little for me because I am running out of source material and as I now live in the US it is a little difficult to get more sources. I have re-adjusted the introduction of the Arbourthorne article to give the district names as early as possible, and I have linked the word district to this article—see what you think. JeremyA (talk) 01:29, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

A bit late perhaps but I've only jst noticed the rename, is there a reason the article was moved to district to neighbourhood? Was Sheffield ported to America last year? The areas of Sheffield are called districts, not neighbourhood. A district, electoral district or postal district is an urban area comprising many streets whilst a neighbourhood is more or less a group of houses.

I don't see Heeley being a neighbourhood.

Neighbourhoods, then, are the spatial units in which face-to-face social interactions occur - the personal settings and situations where residents seek to realise common values, socialise youth, and maintain effective social control."

"Districts are a type of administrative division, in some countries managed by a local government" which is what this list was always about, can we move it back to a less cross-Atlantic theme? Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 23:16, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Upon reading the contents of the list, I've simply been bold and moved it back to its original name. Every link on the page points to an electoral ward article which all use the term district. It seems illogical to have the list article not using the same word. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 23:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

District links

I have started adding the links to the various districts of Sheffield which have their own article. As I go through these districts and populate them I'll then add the link here. It would be nice if ultimately all districts with substantial information about them had their own article outside of the political Wards articles. Captain scarlet 10:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; that was what I had hoped for when I created the ward articles. Things have progressed slower than I thought they would, but I agree that the ultimate goal would be to have articles for most districts (some named districts are actually quite small and so it may be difficult to write substantial articles about them). JeremyA 15:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup wards

(Note - I should also point out that Category:Districts of Sheffield is now more detailed, with subcategories)

Category:Wards of Sheffield - there a some issues with these articles - Firstly grouping places by electoral wards may not be a good idea - these do not have the historical longlevity that say - civil and ecclesiastic parishes do.

• There are multiple incoming redirects to these articles eg in Beauchief and Greenhill there are redirects from : Batemoor, Beauchief Greenhill, South Yorkshire, Jordanthorpe, Low Edges, Beauchief Hall, Chancet Wood - many of these (in particular all villages/suburbs/large estates) should have there own article. In many cases these could be split as stubs fairly easily, others need more work.
• There is some over bolding and over-sectioning eg Beauchief and Greenhill again - bolded in section heading, and in text (twice) in Ecclesall the topics are bolded in the presence of a main link
• The articles keep using the heading "Districts of xxx ward" - this is confusing or not helpful - the places are not "districts" they are specifically - villages, towns, suburbs or housing estates etc. Some may be districts - many are specifically not.
• The places after which the wards are named should generally be separate from the description of the electoral ward, unless the two are practically the same. Squashing two topics into one adds a lot of potential to confuse or mislead.

I have cleaned up Stocksbridge and Upper Don and Stannington (ward), including writing or splitting the relevant subarticles when they didn't exist (with the exception of Wharncliffe Side which still lacks a proper article). I also recommend using Template:GeoGroup and an ordered list of coordinates.

Are there any volunteers to do something to some of the other articles (many of which are essentially unchanged since around 2005/6) - Oranjblud (talk) 16:17, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 16:27, 5 October 2012 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

Districts of Sheffield → Areas of Sheffield – (see talk page) Green Giant (talk) 23:42, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

This article was moved from "Neighbourhoods of Sheffield" to the current name by Cap'n Scarlet in April 2011 with a summary of "Every article in the list uses the word district". Before that it was moved from "Districts of Sheffield" to "Neighbourhoods of Sheffield" in July 2010 by JeremyA with the summary stating "Title to better reflect article's subject". Having read through the article I am intrigued by the lack of consistency over the use of the words "neighbourhood" and "district". "Neighbourhood" is used ten times in the text of the article, whereas "district" is used three times, once in the article name, once in the template at the bottom, and once in the category listing. Whatever the reasoning, I think it is high time this issue was resolved because it demonstrates a lack of consistency and clarity. "Neighbourhoods" appears to be a commonly used word but it is an informal use generally and it is unclear whether in the UK it can refer to areas of more than a few streets. "Districts" is a very contentious usage because Sheffield is an officially defined district in itself. It is inappropriate to then use the word for subunits (official or informal) of Sheffield and indeed any other local government district, whatever the colloquial uses maybe. I would also point out that "district" is also used for much larger areas such as "Peak District" and "Lake District". I believe that other terms can present their own problems, e.g. "suburbs" which can have a very "American" connotation and "places" which is confusing because the word is used as part of some street names. Therefore I think the only unambiguous term is "Areas of Sheffield". Green Giant (talk) 23:42, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Generally support. In my opinion "district" (particularly in British english, may be difference elsewhere) sounds formal and suggests some sort of official status - this is not the case in all the examples. As I noted above at Talk:Districts_of_Sheffield#Cleanup_wards - the use of the term "district" in the sub articles is in some cases - just plain wrong.
• From my experience the articles linked to include - suburbs, villages, and a few uninhabited areas. - "Areas" is a common sense solution. As I mentioned above, many of the articles in Category:Wards of Sheffield need cleanup - mostly tidy, the ad naseum use of the term 'district' in those articles is one of the problems, amongst some WP:MOS and other issues.Oranjblud (talk) 00:32, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.