Xteejx

List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom

Welcolm to Wikipedia! Thanks for editing List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, I've reverted it because Rainham, Kent is not a post town, it is covered by Gillingham, Kent (not to be confused with the other Rainham, Rainham, London in RM13, which is a post town). Royal Mail usually assign post towns according to the location of the main delivery office, so they aren't always the same as the local town name or council area. That's why, if you check any ME7 or ME8 address at http://www.royalmail.com/postcode-finder you'll see that the official postal address contains "GILLINGHAM", as Royal Mail shows the post town in capitals.

Similarly, ME99 comes under MAIDSTONE, as "DWP" is not a post town.

Hope that makes sense now.

— Richardguk (talk) 03:15, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Richard.

I appreciate you taking the time to message me.

I fully understand the way in which Royal Mail works, as I am an employee at the Medway Mail Centre in Strood.

Rainham indeed is not a postal town, as you rightly state, it is covered by Gillingham. Rainham would be a locality, which is ME7.3 and all of ME8. I know that the way it is done can be confusing, but I thought that adding this information to Wikipedia would make it more comprehensive and would help avoid the dreaded missing postcode ;-)

If I can help you out with any postal stuff, I'd be more than willing to help as I have a vast knowledge and experience on this subject. Anything else I can always find out from work :-)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Xteejx (talk • contribs) 04:57, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful reply! (By the way, you can sign talk page posts by typing ~~~~ at the end. It gets automatically converted to your name and time when you save the page. I've signed this for you in your reply above. Also, you can indent replies underneath the previous post by typing : at the start of each paragraph.)

To keep the table at List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom manageable, it only lists the post town and former postal county for each district (a lot of people confuse these with the council area or non-postal locality, so apologies for my excessive explanation to you!).

Articles about individual localities usually include {{Infobox UK place}} which includes fields for linking to the postcode_area and indicating the postcode_district and post_town. (If you click the Edit link at Rainham, Kent, you can see an example of how the wikitext gives the infobox details.)

In addition, there are summary tables at List of postcode areas in the United Kingdom and List of post towns in the United Kingdom, though of course these rarely change (many edits are mistakes by people not realising the difference between a town and a post town).

But if you click the ME link in the first column of the list of postcode districts, it links to the ME postcode area article. There's a separate article about every postcode area, with much more detailed information about the places covered by each postcode district. So you could add Rainham (and any other dependent localities) to the ME7 row there if it extends beyond ME8.

For consistency, postcode sectors within each district are not specified, and I think it might cause confusion to put "ME7.3" in the table, as other articles only give district-level detail, and readers unfamiliar with postcode sectors might think it means ME7 & ME3. Also, sectors change more often than districts, so it would be harder to keep Wikipedia accurate and up to date if we tried to list both. To avoid confusion, it's probably better to be consistent and show just the districts in all the articles (or to update all the articles to show sectors, but that would need tens of thousands of edits!).

Having said that, I can't find any ME7 3 postcodes with a Rainham postal locality, and it's not listed beyond ME8 in the Address Management Guide (5th ed, 2007) or recent updates at http://www.poweredbypaf.com/sp/news-updates/paf-statistics/

Looking at http://britishpostcodes.info/sector/ME7-3 the sector includes Hempstead but stops at Hoath Way, west of Rainham itself. Does Rainham delivery office cover non-Rainham addresses in ME7, or have some new ME7 3 postcodes been added to the Rainham locality?

— Richardguk (talk) 10:56, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Hopefully I've got this formatting right, thanks to your help :)

Rainham is served by the Gillingham DO, there is no Rainham Office, but as confusing as it seems "ME7 3" is Rainham, not Gillingham, as well as ME8 of course. Medway itself is a confusing one because it is its own Unitary Authority, and the boundaries for each town are very badly defined (probably why RM has trouble).

Considering the vast changes that would be required to add these first numbers for the inward code, I think I'll leave this one for the time being, but if/when it is added, feel free to buzz me and I'll lend a hand.

It's a real shame that the PAF wasn't publicly accessible because this would be so helpful for porting over to Wiki.

Xteejx (talk) 13:18, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the further reply, great to see you getting the hang of the wikitext!

It would be a great help if you could add some or all of the postcode area articles to your watchlist to undo any incorrect changes to post towns or district numbers.

I've used the free monthly locality updates and 6-monthly non-geographic sectors lists on the PAF website, plus the 6-monthly Postcode Updates, to try to keep the 124 area articles and the List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom up to date. The main changes in recent years have been the creation of non-geographic PO Box sectors, some of which cover more than one post town.

Fortunately, the 6-monthly OS OpenData list of postcode coordinates has provided a free and complete source of all current postcodes, so it is at least possible to check which districts and sectors are in use.

Royal Mail is covered by the Freedom of Information Act, so it might be possible to get them to publish a full list of localities, but there could be copyright issues if too much information was included here without their permission. On the other hand, the placenames covered are common knowledge and I've recently uploaded maps of each area so that people can check which places are in which district.

— Richardguk (talk) 17:08, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure anything released under a FoI request is legally allowed to be used as it is publicly accessible (albeit a little more difficult with paperwork than just Googling it). I will indeed add the CT, DA, ME and TN codes to my watchlist as well as the main list as it links to those code areas.

I assume the OS OpenData stuff you're referring to is the CodePoint data? That is pretty cool, but it still only gives the centre-point for a postal code (unfortunately). I'll see what info I can grab from work on the numbers for the inward codes. Placenames and postal towns/districts etc are common knowledge so can't technically *be* copyrighted. The rest can be done by research (think Google StreetView and company listings with their postcodes etc), but I agree, a little too much could be deemed borderline on those kind of issues.

Xteejx (talk) 18:45, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

September 2016

Please do not add or change content, as you did at The Beach Boys, without citing a reliable source. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. Mlpearc (open channel) 18:13, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I was adding verifiable information and content to the article which is not on the current one. With the greatest of respect, rather than slapping someone down like a naughty child with an abrupt Wiki-God-like message when all they are doing is helping to create more detailed content, the time would be better served doing something productive, like citing a reference which is easily found online. Being mobile and having just learned and confirmed this myself, I thought it information that the world could use. I'll rethink my actions next time by not bothering to contribute again. Thanks for the welcome.

Where is this verified ? Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability#Responsibility for providing citations and Help:Referencing for beginners Mlpearc (open channel) 18:50, 16 September 2016 (UTC)