User talk:Rileyrob

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Previous discussions from mid 2017 and earlier can be found at User talk:Rileyrob/archive

Class III road disambiguation pages

Hi Rob,

Thanks for all your hard work putting on the Scottish Class III roads. Just a small request though (which given the number you've done, is actually a big request...) - would you mind adding the relevant links into the disambiguation pages (like C149) please? You've put the nice template at the top of each page but they don't link up your nice Scottish pages.

Ta! Steven (talk) 16:35, 19 September 2017 (BST)

Fear not, its on my list, but as you say with so many I don't want to be doing them all 20 times. I have Aberdeenshire to finish, then Borders and D&G to do, after which I intend to use the 'roads numbered' categories to go through and update all the disambig pages. Obviously if anyone else wants to jump in in advance, they are more than welcome!!
I think that as the Highland ones seem to be unique with 4 digits it is probably best to simply remove the dabs, and I also need to change the Moray pages, as think I included the suffix in the dab links.Rileyrob (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2017 (BST)
TBH, I've gone down the route of always putting the disambig in place, as there's a LOT of highway authorities, and you never know how, say, Barnet LBC do theirs - and it might well match the Highland numbers. Steven (talk) 20:14, 19 September 2017 (BST)

OK, I've had a little play around, and got something working on C1. Can someone with some more technical expertise have a look and see it it's all screwed together properly, then it can be rolled out more widely? It could perhaps do with an if statement on the authority, to display the county on defunct routes. Rileyrob (talk) 12:05, 20 September 2017 (BST)

I think that's all of the dab pages (that were required in the C1-C999 range) updated, so hopefully they should all automatically update when a new C road is added from now on. If a red link is generated on the C road page, then it's just a cut & paste job for the new dab page. Rileyrob (talk) 13:20, 22 September 2017 (BST)
That's brilliant - thank you Rob! I'll roll out the changes to the other Class III disambiguation pages - primarily U, I think. Steven (talk) 13:42, 22 September 2017 (BST)


Thanks for the Cambridgeshire ones, Rob -it's a much better idea than having to manually add all the DAB details. Have you come across any unrelated duplicates in the same authority yet? I have with C190 (Cambridgeshire) - the main C190 page seems happy... Cambridgeshire's C roads seem a bit more of a mess than those I did in Hertfordshire! C2r (talk) 14:12, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
No, the only duplicates I've come across have suffixes already added by the authority, as in Aberdeenshire, or cross and re-cross council boundaries, as I'm currently having fun with in Ayrshire - C117 (East Ayrshire) and C117 (North Ayrshire) for example! That's not to say that there won't be some more to find, but probably not in Scotland (until SG change all the boundaries...). Rileyrob (talk) 14:54, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Haha, yes I like that - I wonder by what quirk of history the boundary was caused to be defined around Buistonhead like that...? C2r (talk) 15:04, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Straying completely off subject here, but the boundaries between the 3 Ayrshire authorities all seem very artificial, and make little sense when seen on the map. It was obvioulsy to create 3 authorities with similar splits of urban-rural and similar populations, but to create what is almost an enclave around Dalrymple - much like Newmarket in Suffolk - seems utter madness. Considering Fife, with a very similar population figure (albeit over double the land area), was left as a single authority, I do wonder why Ayrshire was split up in 1996. Rileyrob (talk) 15:13, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Snow Gates

It's so easy to get sidetracked... One minute I was tidying some templates to include helpful information, the next moment I was on geograph collecting images of snow gates! C2r (talk) 11:05, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Too true. I was over an hour in the bookshop yesterday looking at the old maps, and have already spent over 3 more poring over them and trying to get all of the details into the wiki. Then I spot you've been editing snowgates and think 'oh yes, I spotted a couple of them last weekend, now where were they again?'! I was slightly bothered when I went in to my cupboard this morning to see if any of my other early Landrangers had anything interesting on them and found 3 duplicates from yesterdays purchases, but they are all different versions and all have different changes on them, so no money wasted! I do now have Perth mapped in 1976,80,82 and 84 which is quite exciting (it is shown on three different sheets). Rileyrob (talk) 11:12, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I'd seen your map extracts - very good! I've got a few that I need to re-check based on the new copyright rules as some of these may be eligible. I try and pop into charity bookshops when I'm travelling around the country, although I'm still paying for my last holiday and redecorating the house, so I'm low on the disposible income at the moment to buy more maps with! C2r (talk) 11:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Well, I've just had an argument with Sky and cancelled my contract, so along with another subscription coming to an end I have a little extra money. I've been told not to spend it on toy cars (my other passion), but nobody said anything about maps - I spent a months worth of sky yesterday on maps! It is a couple of years or more since I last bought any old maps though, as I keep forgetting to take my list with me, yesterday I just took a gamble, which thankfully paid off. Rileyrob (talk) 11:32, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
If it helps, I hear that some people are really sad and have their map collections on an Internet-facing Wiki so that they can just look on their phone when in a second-hand bookshop.  ;-) Steven (talk) 08:46, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

You couldn't possibly be referring to this page could you User:Rileyrob/maps? Fortunately I don't need to admit I had forgotten about it because I was mainly looking at first series Landrangers which aren't listed there. I must put my full list onto Dropbox though (I thought I had) so that I can find it easily when out. Rileyrob (talk) 08:56, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Lol! I didn't realise you had that page either! Good to see that great minds think alike at least... Steven (talk) 09:09, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
I need to get myself one of those! C2r (talk) 14:22, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

SubRouteBox

Hi Rob, I've made a couple of changes to this:

1. Change the generated category to be Category:Pagename rather than Category:Roads numbered Pagename

2. Change the Category:Roads to Category:Road Sections

I've then altered the navbox to include a separate Sections heading to separate the sections of a road from the related roads bit.

I'm testing this out on the A4 and A9 Navboxes and it seems to work - at the moment the pages are only being added when you edit them, but I'd expect that overnight or something they might all appear.

We've also got a bit of a mess of sandboxes being used in live - the navbox certainly does it - see https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38585 but I think that other templates might also. I'm going to try and fix the navbox one tonight (and put this change live at the same time) which means we should then see if any others are also.

C2r (talk) 08:38, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

All looks good. As you say, I think it will take a while for everything to trickle down through the job queue. I note for instance that A9/Strathtay and Strathspey are both in the road sections category, but only one is appearing on the A9 Sections part of the navbox - because only one has updated the categorisation for the road number bit.
One thing that springs to mind is that the category:roads numbered bit might have ramifications elsewhere? I'm thinking of working with links and the gallery and so on? I don't really understand it enough, but worth keeping an eye on. Rileyrob (talk) 08:54, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks - the pages do appear to still be working correctly as far as I can see, but yes, let's keep an eye on it - we can easily add it back in as well if necessary - it's just a matter of adding the following additional line back in, in addition to the other line: -->[[Category:Roads numbered {{#if: {{{number|}}} | {{{number|}}} | {{PAGENAME}} }}]]<!-- - I don't think there will be an enormous impact on the job queue as it's only used in a limited number of places at the moment. C2r (talk) 09:20, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

MapInList zoom

Zoom isn't a valid parameter for Template:MapInList.

We can add it though, but we'll need to test in the sandbox. Do you want me to look later? C2r (talk) 13:40, 1 May 2018 (BST)

Talk about service, that was bloomin' quick! I was still playing around with it before asking you if you could take a look, so yes please! Rileyrob (talk) 13:41, 1 May 2018 (BST)
OK - so we've got two options here, as I designed Template:MapInList to be lightweight...
Currently, it is called in this format {{MapInList sandbox|52.1|0.5|The cat sat on the mat}} and the parameters are then used sequentially using {{{1}}}, {{{2}}}, and {{{3}}}. This format is good because it is fairly short, but bad because the parameters have to be added in sequential order, missing none out (other than the final parameter). So, if we wanted to add a zoom, and potentially a layer and keep the currently format, we'd have to add the additional parameters at the end for backward compatibility and they'd therefore need to be mandatory - which is a bit of a faff and not very lightweight.
Alternatively, we could do something like {{MapInList sandbox|lat=52.1|lon=0.5|notes=The cat sat on the mat|zoom=14|layer=whatever}} - however, we would need to alter existing lists to make this work so that they referenced the name , e.g. {{{lat}}} rather than {{{2}}}.
Or we could do the above but on a new template to avoid having to alter existing ones.
Finally, and I think I prefer this option, we could amend the Mapbox so that it has a flag to render the under-map links that MapInList has, and call Mapbox directly. C2r (talk) 17:15, 1 May 2018 (BST)

If the pre-existing mapbox template can be made to work, then using that would seem the obvious answer.

Also, I think that adding zoom at 4 is possible without causing major problems - if no caption is needed I believe that || will bypass that? Rileyrob (talk) 17:39, 1 May 2018 (BST)

Ha, good idea, I must have been really tired earlier when thinking about it all. I've made the changes to the sandbox and put the different variants here User:C2r/Sandbox Could you look it over and if you agree we can make it live - it'll need to be done late at night as the impact on the job queue of changing that template is significant! Could possibly do it tonight or later this week (not tomorrow or the day after) C2r (talk) 20:53, 1 May 2018 (BST)
Yes, that looks like it works, except that the caption isn't displaying anywhere, but I'm not sure how much it would be used anyway. Rileyrob (talk) 21:43, 1 May 2018 (BST)
The caption is very subtle... it only displays when you click the geohack link, at the top of the page (following the wiki name page). This is why I pass a name or location or something that is already used within the list (that's why we've got this separate mapinlist template rather than mapbox, which you'd use if you were using the map outside of a list). If we didn't do this, we'd only display something rubbish at the top of geohack, like "list of level crossings", which wouldn't be altogether that useful! I'll put this live later tonight then C2r (talk) 21:59, 1 May 2018 (BST)
Ah, that makes more sense then, so the caption is actually worth including most of the time anyway. Rileyrob (talk) 22:03, 1 May 2018 (BST)
Yes, it's worth stealing a parameter from the parent template to include, but not the end of the world if it isn't included; Template:Geohack is designed to cope without it being passed. as you can probably tell, I was very pleased with myself for making all that work at the weekend! C2r (talk) 22:06, 1 May 2018 (BST)
Done - less smug now; there were all sorts of unforeseen complications - I've had to use a particularly ugly set of replaces to make it work! Still, seems to work now; I've tried junction lists, level crossings, and passenger ferries! C2r (talk) 23:07, 1 May 2018 (BST)

Ferries

I'd love to automate some of this, i.e. to have a control page per imo number, and keep route lists, dates, and ship characteristics attached to the ferry and then populate the ferry route pages as well as company pages, but I don't think it's possible without installing further mediawiki extensions, so manual probably is the way forward with it at the present time C2r (talk) 18:40, 1 August 2018 (BST)

Yes, some automation would be useful, but compared to roads, junctions etc, the amount of data is tiny, so it can hardly be a priority! I also think that a wiki page per IMO / vessel might be a bit too WP for Sabre?!
The sandbox page is intended to be a 'hidden' control page which can be used to store raw data. It would be useful maybe if the table was sortable, and I'm not entirely sure that Boat/Boat Head are really the right columns for the data, but at least it's there now, and we can adapt it in the future if required (You probably already do this, but copy and past into notepad for find/replace functions makes changing things very easy!) Rileyrob (talk) 08:57, 2 August 2018 (BST)
there you go, I've made boat head and boat head2 into sortable tables. I agree that a wiki page per boat would be too offtopic; Calmac appear to be the ones who have swapped their fleet around more than most of the other operators anyway... We could do with more pages for the Irish islands - I'll see what I can put together there next - it looks like most of the Calmac cast offs head west!
Yes, copy and paste into notepad++ is good (you can get a mediawiki plugin for it to do the bracket matching for template work), as is AWB. There's a commercial tool called beyond compare that is also fantastic for checking differences between pages of text - really useful for template sandbox work. C2r (talk) 10:23, 3 August 2018 (BST)

B753

Hi Rob,

I noticed your speculation regarding the B753 in Coatbridge, and its possible temporary upgrade to Class I. So, as my daughter has academic access to Edina, I looked over her shoulder whilst she looked at Coatbridge. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any appropriate mapping to answer your question. However, on the available 1:1250 OS Plans of the area from all of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the eastern section of B753 is quite clearly shown as B758 - a duplicate from the extant B758 which seems to date from 1922. Have you seen any evidence that this might have actually been the case? Steven (talk) 18:20, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Steven, Yes I picked up on the B758 'error' from old-maps, but only on one sheet - the 1939/40 1:2500, so interesting to see it was repeated for a period of time. The mid 1950s 1:2500 sheet is a poor scan, so the number is illegible, but the 1:10560 from 1938 and again in 1958 clearly shows B753. I am therefore reasonably confident that it was a mapping error / copyright trap. Rileyrob (talk) 09:11, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Bridge of Avon (Ballindalloch)

Hi - I edit at Wikipedia, and am writing an article about the Bridge of Avon (Ballindalloch) at the moment. Searching for sources, I came across the article here, which contains a photograph of the new bridge there. I'd like to use it in the article (with attribution, if you like), but I can't find any information here about the copyright status, or whether you have released it under a Creative Commons license or similar. I'm afraid I'm a total newb here, so apologies if all this information is available somewhere already, but in short - would you be happy with me using it? Thanks Girth summit (talk) 20:17, 5 July 2019 (BST)

Needs images

Hello, I've just put a reply on my talk page :) C2r (talk) 10:11, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

A896 (Wick)

Hi Rob,

Couple of things for you about the Wick version of the A896, and the timing of all the various numbering changes in the 1930s.

We have a number of editions of Sheet 1 of the Ten Mile Road Map on SABRE Maps, and you're quite right, it doesn't appear at all on the 1932 edition.

However, by the time of the 1936 edition, it's shown as part of the A882. The 1937 edition also shows it as A882 (and not A8002 on that map as stated in the text), but A8002 does make an appearance on the 1939 edition.

But... what really grabbed my attention here was talk of the 1935 edition, which we don't have on SABRE Maps! Is that in your personal collection? And if so, can I beg some scans please? Steven (talk) 16:56, 27 April 2022 (BST)

Hi Steven, The 1937/39 error is an old one I hadn't spotted, so thanks for noticing that.
As for the 1935 map, I don't have any of the 10 mile maps at all. I'm almost 100% positive I have seen an image / extract from it somewhere, and spent ages scouring through the forums looking for a reference to prove that the A896 had ever existed in Wick. I finally came across this thread: https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2761&hilit=A896+wick where on page 2 a member called Graham appears to own the map. He last logged on earlier this month, so I guess he is still active, and hopefully still has the map. No extract though, and there is no other map online that I can find showing the A896 in Wick. Rileyrob (talk) 18:16, 27 April 2022 (BST)
Ah yes, I know Graham! Thanks for confirming the source. Steven (talk) 19:13, 27 April 2022 (BST)

Steven - You are probably aware of this, but NLS have the 10 mile map revision 1544 online https://maps.nls.uk/view/230556474, which I think must be 1938? They list it as 1935 though, which got me quite excited for a few minutes! Rileyrob (talk) 14:51, 17 June 2022 (BST)

Hi Rob,
Thanks for checking! However, it's the 1944 revision, the same as we have on SABRE Maps, except we have both sheets! They actually had it listed as a second copy of the 1932 edition at one time before I pointed out that it wasn't, but it was as I was leaving so I just described it as "post-1935" based on the A9 as I didn't have time to double-check. The real 1935 Sheet 1 has the revision code 800/35; whilst the 1938 Sheet 1 has the code 1838.M38.R38. Revision codes for Ten Mile sheets are captured on the relevant Coverage Project page. Steven (talk) 15:25, 17 June 2022 (BST)
Sorry, I'd forgotten you had all the revision codes listed! I couldn't find any obvious differences between it and the 1939 edition, but the revision code looked closer to the 1937 one (1537) than 1939 (1040). Obviously, as I type this, I see that the last two numbers are (more or less) the year! Rileyrob (talk) 15:43, 17 June 2022 (BST)

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