User talk:Steven

Steven's Gossip Column

Chat away! I'm usually listening....

Old Murmurings of Discontent

• Up to June 2010
• Up to Feb 2012
• Up to June 2013
• Up to Nov 2016

Queen Square

It's been a while since I've created a new page on here. Can you check over Queen Square (Bristol) and beef up the routebox a bit? Ta. User:Ritchie333 (talk) 23:15, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

No problem - I can do that! Steven (talk) 08:33, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Tipperary County Council

Hi, Steven. Would it be possible to remove from the Tipperary CC trace the old North Tipperary CC / South Tipperary CC dividing line? (The latter two councils were abolished in May 2014.) TIA -- Viator (talk) 13:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Kevin! I'd love to, but the Irish Government haven't published new boundary traces (or at least not that I've found), since the 2011 Irish Census. There's at least one other "new" authority that has the same problem - I'm thinking Wexford? If you can find ESRI Shapefiles later than the 2011 census ones, then please point me in the right direction. If not, then when I get chance I'll have a go at creating one manually. Steven (talk) 16:45, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Addendum - it's Waterford, not Wexford that has the boundary shown as a combination of the old Waterford County Council and Waterford City Council. I often get the two similar names confused, sorry. Steven (talk) 16:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I had a feeling that might be the case (I'm ignorant of the technicalities of ESRI shapefiles and as to how easily they are amendable, if at all). The only thing I can add to the discussion is that the 2014 boundary changes involved only amalgamations – namely those of

• North Tipperary County Council and South Tipperary County Council
• Limerick City Council and Limerick County Council
• Waterford City County and Waterford County Council

– with no changes to the external boundaries of the new combined entities, so that essentially the only mapping change involved is the removal of three redundant internal boundaries. Doubtless much easier said than done!

I wonder if another proposal that I have would be more easily realizable, though, and that is the lightening of the grey shading -- or perhaps its replacement with a very pale version of the orange that already features in the infobox headings. It's great to have the roads authority areas clearly delineated – and many thanks for your work on that – but I can't help subconsciously feeling, everytime I see that very sombre shade of grey as currently used on each of the maps, that what's being depicted is a Chernobyl-type disaster / exclusion zone...! -- Viator (talk) 18:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I second this concern about the grey - it also obscures somewhat the map inside it. My preference would be clear, but very pale orange also works for me. Si404 (talk) 19:11, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, I'll take these in turn!

The way boundary files work is literally that - they describe the actual boundaries and are georeferenced so as to appear in the correct place. Hence, there isn't a concept of "internal boundary" within the file. Once I worked out that the 2014 Irish council boundary changes were simple amalgamations, all I could do (without the Irish Government publishing up to date boundary files) is to literally take the two boundary files, then export them together into the correct .OSM XML format to show up on SABRE Maps. It's also why the few English councils with "holes" in their juristiction appear oddly - there doesn't seem to be a way of describing a "hole", so all I can do is do the combination trick, which is why, say, Leicestershire County Council has a darker (but clearly different) area where Leicester City Council are the Highway Authority. Whilst it is possible to create your own shapefiles - it's something I've done precisely once and it takes a while to do, so whilst it's on my list as a "nice to have" item, it's not at the top as the correct boundaries are shown, just with the irritating join.

As for the colours, it's something I've looked into, but I haven't figured out how to do it at this point. OSM XML files appear to be appallingly badly documented, and so I've had to look into it by "reverse engineering" some of the road traces to try to work out how it's done. I'm not there yet, but rest assured that I'm not keen on the over-dark grey - I had a much paler colour in mind to allow the map to show through better, and also if possible to allow for transparent areas where "holes" appear. Steven (talk) 19:47, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Grey - I got it from the new A556 junctions between the M6 and M56/A56

A838

Hello, I've just reverted your revert on the A838 page as I can't see anything wrong with Rob's edits and assumed you clicked the rollback button by accident - happy to discuss if you had meant to do it! C2r (talk) 18:34, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Oopa! Thank you for fixing it. Steven (talk) 19:44, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Class III Galleries

Hello, seems we've got two places for these currently, most are under Gallery:Class_III_Roads and then a subgallery for their respective HA - so I'll move those from Gallery:Unclassified C2r (talk) 14:54, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan to me! Steven (talk) 14:57, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Road list template and not(s)

Yes, sorry about my boo-boo re the two "nots" in the Road list template included in the Central Bedfordshire Council article: I should have scrolled down the whole page when reviewing my edit! It's a pity, though, that this was a solution that didn't work, since the highway authority articles are or should be, as I see it, snapshots of the now. A quick check of a few other randomly selected highway authority pages doesn't reveal any articles showing defunct classifications in the lists, so I wonder how this has happened in the case of Central Bedfordshire. I've amended the wording in the article from "are" to "are or were" as a stopgap solution for now. -- Viator (talk) 10:59, 29 March 2018 (BST)

That's because the road article is incorrect. Defunct roads don't exist as a live road, so don't have a Highway Authority currently managing them, so should have that field empty, which will then fix the problem on the HA article. Steven (talk) 11:13, 29 March 2018 (BST)

Ah, ça s'explique alors! Merci, Steven.

Not sure I agree with you about the "administrative county" question you raised in your edit comment concerning Central Beds (I've hitherto used https://www.gazetteer.org.uk/lamap.php as my main reference point) but I'll leave that argument for another day! -- Viator (talk) 11:19, 29 March 2018 (BST)

That map is interesting. All references to "unitary district" or "unitary county" are in quotes as they are made up terms to describe legal arrangements on this map that excellently shows the de jure differences between single-tier councils (or "unitary authorities" in common jargon) despite there not being any de facto differences. It's a shame they only apply 'administrative county' (itself a made up term) to 2-tier councils as that is not true - eg Central Bedfordshire is a non-metropolitan county. Si404 (talk) 12:16, 29 March 2018 (BST)

Market Deeping Bypass Bridge

You expressed a doubt about the name of the bridge, but I’m struggling to think why??

Bearing in mind this was a new-build Bridge, it simply did not exist before 1998. If it didn’t have this name, presumably it would have no name at all. As far as I’m aware, it’s never taken the name of the adjacent Welland Gate Roundabout. Berk (talk) 23:56, 29 August 2018 (BST)

Perhaps it doesn't have a name at all - the page exists with no references for a bridge that is pretty much entirely without note and the 'name' to be a description of what it is, rather than anything of note. C2r (talk) 00:41, 30 August 2018 (BST)

That's exactly why - is its name actually "Market Deeping Bypass Bridge", or is it a bridge without a name - which isn't at all unusual. If no-one can be bothered to give it a real live name, then it's not notable and the article needs to go. If we've made up the name via a descriptive term, then it needs to go as well for that reason. Steven (talk) 08:14, 30 August 2018 (BST)

Unless of course there was some other reason for it to be notable, even if it didn't have a name, but this bridge is so bland you can hardly even notice it on GSV C2r (talk) 09:26, 30 August 2018 (BST)

Market Deeping Bridge

And the same here, too. This time, I can say it is sometimes, or more often known as Town Bridge, Market Deeping. Berk (talk) 23:58, 29 August 2018 (BST)

In this case, we need to get the name changed to the proper name! Thanks for finding that out. Steven (talk) 08:09, 30 August 2018 (BST)

former highway authorities

Evening, Would you like me to alter the Highway Authority template to allow for former ones? Or are we simply going to redirect the pages in the end? Given the choice, I think I'd opt to maintain a history rather than redirect (i.e. to have a former authority flag), but of course there are other editorial methods of doing this as well.... Any thoughts? C2r (talk) 19:03, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

TBH, I'm not sure what to do with the Bournemouth and Poole Council pages. And of course, technically Dorset County Council is also being abolished and a new authority (now called just Dorset Council) is being set up, but given how we name pages, that's not to be worried about.

Once the new authority is in place, what would we have left on the old pages - would it be any more than "Bournemouth Council looked after the roads in Bournmouth between XXXX and April 2019"? Steven (talk) 20:52, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, something like that; it would also retain its historic galleries to avoid us needing to move images and logos - of course, things become more interesting with the Class III roads - does the new authority renumber them? If not, what about duplicates? If they're already unique, do we move them? or do we defunct them under the old LA and recreate under the new LA? Of course, we've not got very far with Dorset anyway yet, so perhaps it doesn't matter at all! I hate local government boundary review ;) C2r (talk) 01:26, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Four Ashes Junction

Are you sure the signalised junction was created in the 1970s? I distinctly remember it being an uncontrolled crossroads before the speed limit was reduced to 60 and I'm sure the lights at Standeford was also uncontrolled. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Truvelo (talk • contribs) 19:56, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, you're right - serves me right typing quickly before eating! They were put in at both Four Ashes and Standeford in 2006 - fortunately I've found a post of mine on here from back then! Steven (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

NOCACHE

Adding NOCACHE magic word to the auto generated page has done the trick - I think it would have updated by itself, given time - however, NOCACHE forces it to requery on load. C2r (talk) 11:03, 2 April 2020 (BST)

Aha! I was looking through the code and just couldn't see why, but when it wasn't updating overnight that just bemused me even more. Steven (talk) 11:24, 2 April 2020 (BST)

It's a 'feature' of dpl3 - I'm not sure why it didn't do it overnight though.... I've added it to a couple of templates, like the gallery ones C2r (talk) 11:54, 2 April 2020 (BST)

Great, thanks! Looking through the list, it's amazing how far Maps has come since last time I went through Wiki:Defunct roads without a map. Other than the occasional tiny road in a town centre, almost all the other "Roads x 10" roads that existed within the realms of map reuse now have some form of labelled mapping on Maps!

Comet Roundabout

Thanks, I'd just logged in to do exactly what you've just done, as I valued my sleep last night so put it in the "for tomorrow" pile! C2r (talk) 08:42, 16 April 2021 (BST)

You're welcome! I think I've caught everything, but best to double-check with fresh eyes. Steven (talk) 09:22, 16 April 2021 (BST)

Irish Places and Destinations

Is Castlecomer an intermediate destination since it is kind of "halfway" between Kilkenny and Athy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Midletonperson (talk • contribs) 14 November 2021 06:57

No, it's not set in legislation as being one - see definitive list here: Terminal Destination C2r (talk) 07:04, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Indeed - Intermediate Destinations are a published list by the Irish Government, and nowhere that's not on the official list is one - they're just regular Places. Thank you for your hard work adding Places though, but one thing to bear in mind that we have a policy regarding which towns should have articles as we're not Wikipedia and so places are not automatically worthy of a page.

Help:Wiki Guides/Places has a bunch of valuable information for anyone creating Place pages, and includes this:

If a place is the focus of the road network over a significant area (such as Ludlow), then it should probably have an article. If a place is important enough to be a former County Borough (such as Smethwick), then it should probably have an article. If a place does not fall into either of those two categories, then it basically comes down to a simple question: Can I write something interesting about the town's road network that's more than just a table of roads, or not? The answer to that should tell you whether the article should exist or not.

I notice that most of your created Places are basically a sentence or two long, so have a think about what can be added to them - we have a collection of historic Irish mapping on SABRE Maps, so perhaps use them to help talk about the history of each town's road network a little more rather than trying to create pages for what are, quite frankly, pretty insignificant places as far as the road network is concerned - Rathkeale for example is basically a medium sized village with a population of less than 2,000; it isn't a particular focus of the road network over a large are; and doesn't seem to have a particularly interesting roads history - simply being bypassed by a major route (the N21 in this case) isn't particularly significant when there are literally thousands of places in the same situation. Steven (talk) 10:02, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Former Cities

Was there any former cities in Ireland?

From User:Midletonperson

Not as far as I'm aware. Steven (talk) 19:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

B8055

Hi Steven, Good Spot! I forget to look on that layer on NLS, partly because there are very few sheets for most of the Highlands, and even in the urban areas, very few have road numbers. But it is there, looks like a 1937/39 sheet: https://maps.nls.uk/view/82874346

That narrows down any search for an earlier B8054 to the north Glasgow area too.

Rileyrob (talk) 11:20, 6 July 2022 (BST)

Excellent stuff! And at least with an NLS sheet, we can reference it too. Steven (talk) 11:46, 6 July 2022 (BST)