Barkleave09

Recent edit to Gateshead

Hello, and thank you for your recent contribution. I appreciate the effort you made for our project, but unfortunately I had to undo your edit because I believe the article was better before you made that change. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions. Thank you! Jennica✿ ^{talk / contribs} 14:11, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

RE: Gateshead (part 2)

Regarding the issue of Gateshead's previous civic history, my changes are mainly to follow consistency of other pages. One example I took is Sunderland, where the introduction mentions that it is historically in County Durham and the Governance section mentions that it became a county borough in 1889. To the best of my knowledge Gateshead has always been in County Durham, and its status in the historic boundaries "over-rides" (for want of a better word) its status as a municipal borough, because that is not "historic", if you get my drift. One of the edits I made was to re-add the "historically in County Durham..." whilst moving the citation you added to the history section further down the page. It's good that you suggested taking this to the talk pages because to be perfectly honest it's a pretty mundane thing to start an edit war over, but I thought going to you directly would be quicker than the Gateshead talk page. Samuel J Walker (talk) 21:18, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Samuel J Walker , it is good you do not want an edit war; neither do I. I agree it is a fairly mundane thing to fret over. However the citation exactly matches the premise, the match is valid and truthful, the source is authoritive and comes from the Tyne & Wear historical archive at gov.uk. Therefore, I cannot see any reason to remove it. So being respectful to you I still do not agree with removing it. If you would like a third party to decide or mediate please say so? edit: btw if you want a 3rd party mediation, could you please moves this to the talk page, my regards, Barkleave09 (talk) 15:38, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

So it looks like the mediation request was rejected. Did you see the potential compromise I listed, highlighting the Newcastle page as an example? If not, what I proposed was opening the lead with "historically in County Durham" (linking to the Government source I produced) and then listing the part you listed about the GCB. What do you think of that, because it would save us going round in circles again. Samuel J Walker (talk) 20:08, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

I think I went to the wrong place I should have gone here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Third_opinion I'll put that down to my lack of experience with the dispute resolution process. However I am always willing to compromise. How about this edit? 'Part of County Durham until 1835[1] when the town became a part of Gateshead County Borough,[1] part of Gateshead County Borough until 1974 when the town became part of Gateshead Metropolitan Borough;[1] Gateshead... and so on' I'd say that is neutral.Barkleave09 (talk) 08:53, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Personally I'd remove the "until 1835", because although many county corporates become independent of county council control they still remain in the county geographically. My proposal is "historically in County Durham[1], the town became a county borough in 1835[1]..." and so on and so forth. It may seem pedantic, but it's based on what I've seen in other pages. Other than that, I'm happy with your proposal. Samuel J Walker (talk) 11:14, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Samuel J Walker, my problem with the term 'historically' in your edit is this: The term is loose and vague, not descriptive enough; the term is also POV pushing, its as if something is more 'historical' than another thing in the past tense. Yet the term historically can be loosely prefixed to literally anything recorded in the past tense that has once existed. So someone says it is historically in 'abc,' but not 'xyz'??? Yet both 'abc' and 'xyz' have documents that prove they existed??? IMO this is a double standard. We have many historical documents that show historically this or that. Why should 'abc' get prefixed with historically and 'xyz' not? Regarding your edit: Someone could easily at a later date, switch it to, historically in xyz[1], or historically in the 'def'[1], and so on. All are equal in logic and the they would have an equal right to hold their place against your edit, and if you removed their edit, or they removed your edit that would be POV pushing either way... I believe what I have suggested, is neutral in tone as it respects all documents as historical. You could use the term historical three times but that would be repetitive. My proposed drafted edit also safely implies it has been historically in all boroughs anyway. I do not know what to do here. This is only a small edit but...Barkleave09 (talk) 16:07, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

When I say "historically", I mean in terms of the county. When I've added "historically in" in the past, I've usually linked to the historic counties page, because the term "historic county" is a Government term. I'll try and explain in a bit more depth:

In 2013, the Government announced that the historic county boundaries were unaffected by the Local Government Act 1974, so officially Gateshead is regarded as being in Durham (historically) and the MBoG in Tyne and Wear (administratively). In other words if you look at the Government or CountyWise website they would no longer list Gateshead as being a county borough but would still regard it as being in historic Durham. I personally don't think my edit is "POV pushing", that's why I did the research about the "official" view on the subject and why I suggested removing "until 1835", because someone in theory (if they were that concerned about it) could cross-reference, see it is incorrect and we'd be back where we started. Samuel J Walker (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Samuel J Walker, but Gateshead is part of Tyne & Wear Metropolitan County, your edit, imo, does not take in nuances that take in modern populations, law, urban centres, industrial revolution population movements and so on. This has to be a patch work edit with nuances. To get an idea for an edit, I have had a look at the Liverpool article. Taking a look at Liverpool, we can see that it is also part of a metropolitan county called Merseyside. We can also see how they have eventually handled nuances between edits, taking in things like law, urban centres, history and so on. Here is a snippet of the lead in from Liverpool:

'Liverpool and its surrounding areas form the fifth largest metropolitan area in the UK, with an estimated population of over 2.24 million in 2011.[5] The local authority is Liverpool City Council, which is the most populous local government district within the metropolitan county of Merseyside and the largest within the Liverpool City Region. Liverpool historically lay within the ancient hundred of West Derby in the south west of the county of Lancashire.[6][7] It became a borough from 1207 and a city from 1880. In 1889 it became a county borough independent of Lancashire.'

Here is a proposed edit I (Barkleave09) propose, (trying to patchwork the edit in to a neutral encyclopaedic way, similar to the Liverpool lead): 'The local authority of Gateshead is the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough. Gateshead lay in the County of County Durham. In 1835 it became part of the Gateshead County Borough.[1] In 1974 Gateshead became part of the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough local authority,[1] and part of the Tyne & Wear Metropolitan County. Gateshead... and so on'Barkleave09 (talk) 07:53, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

That sounds good. It's taken a while, but it seems we've finally got somewhere. Samuel J Walker (talk) 13:28, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok Samuel J Walker I'll put it in.Barkleave09 (talk) 08:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Good work. It's great that we've managed to reach this decision in a civil manner too, because truth be told it wasn't worth going over the top about. This should hopefully put the issue to bed now. Oh, and in future, to save you the mouthful of my username, just call me Sam. :) Samuel J Walker (talk) 16:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Gateshead". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 9 December 2016.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 08:01, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Request for mediation rejected

The request for formal mediation concerning Gateshead, to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.

For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:39, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)