Talk:West Midlands (region)

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"Regions"[edit]

The West Midlands does not have regions. It is a region. -- (WT-en) Picapica 19:50, 23 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Is this some special British or Irish use of the word region I'm unfamiliar with? In geometry, any time you subdivide a region you have a bunch of smaller regions, and one could descibe the supraregion as "having" (i.e. containing) the subregions. So I'm at a loss to understand what you are trying to convey. -- (WT-en) Colin 01:17, 24 Jun 2005 (EDT)

England is divided into regions (see: Regions of England). The West Midlands is one of these (see: West Midlands (region)). So, whatever happens in geometry, it's a bit confusing to start talking in a travel guide about a region's regions.

Herefordshire, Shropshire, etc. are not regions. They are counties. Together they make up the region. That is why I wrote that the West Midlands does not have a region; it is a region.

  • The United Kingdom is made up of countries. One of these is England.
  • England is made up of regions. One of these is the West Midlands.
  • The West Midlands is made up of counties. One of these is Herefordshire.

-- (WT-en) Picapica 11:04, 24 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Ok, so I think we're getting a bit het up here.... It's true, England has regions and each region is further divided into counties and (these days) administrative districts, these latter usually based on urban areas. For the sake of consistency within Wikivoyage, however, I think we can get our heads around the equivalency "regions = counties (when in England)". Best practice, I believe, would be to use the heading Regions (even inside a larger Region), then make the English practice explicit by saying something like: "The xx region is divided into the following traditional / historic counties:" (WT-en) Pjamescowie 11:15, 24 Jun 2005 (EDT)
Ok. I get it now. Region is used as a descriptor for a Specific, non-arbitrary subdivision of England which contains an integral number of counties. Ouch. In the US, Region only means a contiguous area of land, and you can subdivide any region into more regions. And this is what the Wikivoyage article templates mean when they say region... which makes in problematic. -- (WT-en) Colin 11:34, 24 Jun 2005 (EDT)
I've started a discusion at Project:Article templates suggesting we changethe Region header for at least England, and maybe some US cases too. -- (WT-en) Colin 11:45, 24 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Problem with West Midlands, advice appreciated[edit]

Archived from the Pub:

I'm currently working on a map of the West Midlands (part of what will hopefully become a full UK map), and have run into a significant problem, namely that there's two West Midlandses. The West Midlands listed on here is the common, everyday sense of the term, ie the region made up of the five counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. The problem comes with the fact that West Midlands also refers to the administrative area made up of Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton and the surrounding towns. This page illustrates the problem quite nicely, listing the local councils in the West Midlands area, with the West Midlands being one of the listed sub-regions, and there's also a map here. So we've got a West Midlands in the West Midlands. Naturally this presents problems both on the technical side (IsIn) and the confusion side. So I'm not sure what to do about it.

Do I go ahead and move the current West Midlands to something like West Midlands region and use to old West Midlands for the sub-area? Another option is to ignore it and use the old pre-1974 map (here's a map of the old boundaries, compare with [1], which would solve the problem but would be out of keeping with other urban regions (like Merseyside). Or I could rename the smaller West Midlands area, but all I can think of is the horribly unweildly "Birmingham, Black Country and Coventry". Or just move Coventry to Warwickshire and make a "Birmingham and Black Country" region. The other solution is to move all of the larger regional stuff to Midlands, but I'd really rather not do that as the West and East Midlands are really quite distinct areas. Basically I can see a lot of options but none of them seem completely satisfactory, so I figured I'd ask for advice here in the hope that someone else has faced similar problems and can offer advice. --(WT-en) Paul. 10:58, 12 October 2006 (EDT)

Would Project:Disambiguation pages help? West Midlands (region) and West Midlands (county) (or whatever it should be called), with West Midlands being a disambiguation page?--(WT-en) justfred 12:10, 12 October 2006 (EDT)


That makes an awful lot of sense. The only reason I was hesitant is because I thought having region in the title was frowned upon but looking more closely at Project:Article naming conventions I guess it should be ok in parenteses. The only remaining issue is the confusion of having the West Midlands in the West Midlands, but most people will probably be able to understand "West Midlands (county) IsIn West Midlands (region)". --(WT-en) Paul. 17:11, 12 October 2006 (EDT)

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