Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/03/Counties of Northern Ireland

Counties of Northern Ireland

This discussion is for all categories involving Counties of Northern Ireland after 1972. According to en:Counties_of_Northern_Ireland#Government_and_modern_usage, for the most part, Northern Ireland has been organized under districts since 1972, 26 created in 1972 consolidated into 11 after 2015. Nevertheless, @Billinghurst and Lamberhurst: disagree and suggest greater discussion. It seems mighty odd to figure out which portions of Belfast would constitute County Atrium versus County Down because it was a split used almost 40 years ago. --Ricky81682 (talk) 11:10, 3 March 2021 (UTC) [reply]

List of all categories for discussion

Please do not state in this discussion what you think is my opinion. I stated that the existing empty categories that you wanted to have speedy deleted were part of a series, and needed to be dealt with collectively.

I will note that there are works that were created before 1972 and/or related to parts of Northern Ireland that need to be considered in this discussion. I will also note that counties of Northern Ireland were part of a unified Ireland prior to the 1920s when they may refer to, or for where they were created. So I hope that any solution created in this discussion is able to manage this broader discussion and look at how it will also be resolved in Wikidata. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:20, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What needs to be done for pre-1972 time? It seems fine to continue the county categories for centuries/decade/years before 1972 because that was the categorization used in Ireland. Pre-1920s are within Ireland itself since "Northern" didn't exist. Wales is similarly somewhat similarly under historic counties (pre-1974), preserved counties (1974-1996) and principal area (post-1996); Scotland similarly under shires (pre-1975), regions (1975-1996) and now council areas. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:30, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an easy question to answer. It seems obviously reasonable to me to keep Category:Counties of Northern Ireland and subcategories like Category:County Down at least for the sake of maps and such directly related to the counties. Categorizing by country pre-1972 also seems to make sense, but I think post-1972 categories like Category:2019 in County Armagh are confusing for the reasons stated above. I'm also not sure about categorizing other images of things within the historical borders of County Down in subcategories of Category:County Down (e.g. Category:Buildings in County Down. - Themightyquill (talk) 13:42, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The background history is complex: boroughs from 1921-1972, then 26 local government districts until 2015, subsequently reduced to 11. Sticking to this strict categorisation will involve a great deal of work in checking what was where, which I suggest is disproportionate. In addition, it strikes me as over precise to be categorising images on the basis of the local government borough/district in which they were taken. This isn't the case for English images and I would suggest there's even less for a case for it for NI images given that there are far less. Counties still exist in NI - the County Boundaries (Ireland) Act 1872 has not been repealed. This is reflected in Section 131 of the Local Government (Northern Ireland) Act 1972 which does not abolish counties, but merely removes their status for local government purposes. Counties remain well understood geographical entities. Lamberhurst (talk) 14:31, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lamberhurst: The same remains for England, Wales and Scotland as well. While it looks horrendous, many images are located within the correct Category:Geograph images in Northern Ireland by Council subcategory. I think it is easier than keeping counties as keeping track of images based on their current logical district categorization and the historic county categorization. I mean, it is much more logical that Belfast is its own district than that the two counties it used to belong to. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:15, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ricky81682: But it's not the same for the rest of the UK. Take for example the county of Surrey, following the NI approach we would be categorising according to the 11 boroughs and districts: Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Guildford, Mole Valley etc, and then checking back to see when and how these had changed over the course of time. Lamberhurst (talk) 08:14, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lamberhurst: Yes, pre-1972 it is chaos but I'm not saying to use boroughs and districts there since England uses "counties" (called ceremonial counties). There was some discussion about it at Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#England_by_county. Across the board I was looking at en:Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972 and en:Local government in Northern Ireland. For England, we can discuss that separately. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:53, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure where the problem arises. Wikipedia has contemporary categories for Northern Irish counties. I came here via the Wikimedia "County Down" category. For example, on Wikipedia the town of Bangor is disambiguated using "County Down". From a cursory reading of the info about County Down, it still exists, though the political administration is now at District level. Based on what categories Wikipedia has, I would definitely keep the County Down and other county categories on Wikimedia Commons. Sionk (talk) 20:34, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Retain by county - very large number of cats organised by county in NI (as in the rest of the UK and Ireland) and seems to be no reason to change. The counties exist physically and geographically. If people insist on putting files into council area cats (ie two sets: post 1972 and post 2015) they are welcome but it seems like a bit of a nightmare to me. Such Council area cats should then also be categorised into county cats which in all cases should be retained (not least of all to retain the historical run of county cats). Ardfern (talk) 19:40, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also noticed that the naming of the proposed new cats is incorrect eg March 2009 in Omagh (district) should actually be March 2009 in Omagh District Council area. The name of the Council area should be in every title. Ardfern (talk) 21:54, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also noticed a lot of cats titled 'by district' - these are all incorrect and should read 'by district council area'. Lot of problems to be fixed with all of this. Have to consider whether categorising files down to this level of local detail is actually worth it (or even possible), rather than just by county/town/city. Ardfern (talk) 00:35, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ardfern: Looking at en:Local_government_in_Northern_Ireland#Districts and en:List of districts in Northern Ireland (pre-2015) the term seems to be local government district so why district council area? A number seem to be articles on the council, the local authority, and not the area but en:Ards (borough), en:Castlereagh (borough), and en:Banbridge (district) amongst others call it the district. en:Omagh District Council (not the district but the council) is an article about the council which merged with another council to become a new council and does use council area though. Should that be a separate discussion? I don't know this stuff but we have Category:Council areas of Scotland so maybe that is the more consistent term. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:03, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Can live with districts. However, believe we should retain by county cats as they are relevant geographical areas with a vast number of files and a historical consistency. See no reason why if you insist on by district cats (eg Fermanagh (district), Fermanagh and Omagh etc they cannot co-exist with by county cats - one does not need to replace the other. Perhaps we could agree this approach and end this discussion to get on with the work. Ardfern (talk) 15:00, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But why would that be necessary when we don't do it for Ireland or GB? In fact, I'm having trouble finding another country where that is the case. It's not done for the US, Canada or France, so why NI? Is county/city categorisation not sufficient? Lamberhurst (talk) 20:08, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]