Talk:Portesham

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Shouldn't the hardy stuff be at Blackdown if that's where the monument is? quercus robur 00:21, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Blackdown is not a village but the hill above Portesham. The Hardy stuff should be at Thomas Masterman Hardy and Hardy Monument. Joe D (t) 22:02, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Hardy connection is a notable thing about the village and merits a mention in this article, particularly as many guides do not mention Blackdown Hill, merely saying that Hardy was a Portesham man or that the monument is on a hill near, or overlooking, the village. I have also removed the Blackdown link from the previous post as it refers to a place in Warwickshire, some distance from the article village in Dorset. Britmax 13:53, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Description of village size

An anonymous editor (or, perhaps, editors) has repeatedly changed the introductory description of Portesham from being a "village" to a "small village". The table below, compiled from data provided by Dorset County Council here, lists all the parishes within the West Dorset administrative district and ranks them according to the size of their populations. It illustrates why I believe the description of "small village" should be reverted, which I have done. Out of 138 parishes, Portesham is the 27th largest. If all parishes which are described as towns are removed, Portesham is the 21st largest out of 132. If Bradpole, Bothenhampton and Allington are also removed due to their being part of the built-up area of Bridport, Portesham parish has the 18th largest population out of 129 stand-alone villages and hamlets, placing it in the top 14%. Seeing as the description "small" only has value when used comparatively, it doesn't make sense to use it here. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 05:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Rank	Parish	Population	Current Wikipedia description
1	Dorchester	19,060	County town
2	Sherborne	9,523	Market town
3	Bridport	8,332	Market town
4	Chickerell	5,515	Town
5	Lyme Regis	3,671	Coastal town
6	Beaminster	3,136	Small town
7	Charminster	2,940	Village
8	Bradpole	2,339	Village
9	Crossways	2,267	Village
10	Bothenhampton	2,131	Village
11	Puddletown	1,405	Village
12	Broadwindsor	1,378	Village
13	Charmouth	1,352	Village
14	Netherbury	1,314	Village
15	Broadmayne	1,204	Village
16	Maiden Newton	1,119	Village
17	Yetminster	1,105	Village
18	Symondsbury	1,059	Village
19	Bradford Abbas	975	Village
20	Burton Bradstock	948	Village
21	Thornford	939	Village
22	Cerne Abbas	784	Village
23	Allington	766	Village
24	Winterborne St Martin	755	Village
25	Thorncombe	687	Village
26	Chideock	686	Village
27	Portesham	685
28	Whitchurch Canonicorum	684	Village
29	Osmington	673	Village
30	Piddletrenthide	647	Village
31	Buckland Newton	622	Village
32	Mosterton	604	Village
33	Stratton	592	Village
34	Halstock	546	Village
35	Frampton	524	Village
36	Loders	518	Village
37	Bincombe	514	Village or hamlet
38	Cattistock	509	Village
39	Abbotsbury	481	Large village
40	Leigh	480	Village
41	Longburton	470	Village
42	Owermoigne	467	Village
43	Puncknowle	466	Village
44	Tolpuddle	452	Small village
45	Corscombe	445	Village
46	Sydling St Nicholas	414	Village
47	Piddlehinton	403	Village
48	Bishop's Caundle	398	Small village
49	Shipton Gorge	381	Village
50	West Knighton	375	Village
51	Bradford Peverell	370	Village
52	Holwell	369	Village
53	South Perrott	367	Village
54	Litton Cheney	359	Village
55	Powerstock	358	Village
56	Winterbourne Abbas	355	Village
57	Marshwood	346	Village
58	Wootton Fitzpaine	345	Village
59	Chetnole	344	Village
60	Holnest	342	Village
61	Folke	339	Parish/hamlet
62=	Evershot	334	Village
62=	Stinsford	334	Village
64	Nether Compton	328	Village
65	Hilfield	324	Hamlet
66	Trent	317	Village
67	Toller Porcorum	307	Village
68	Winterbourne Steepleton	297	Village
69	Cheselbourne	296	Village
70	West Stafford	291	Village
71	Dewlish	284	Village
72	Langton Herring	240	Village
73	Stoke Abbott	238	Village
74	Tincleton	236	Village
75	Purse Caundle	221	Village
76	Long Bredy	208	Village
77	Melbury Osmond	199	Village
78	Wynford Eagle	186	Hamlet
79	Minterne Magna	184	Village
80	Over Compton	183	Village
81	Sandford Orcas	180	Village
82	Alton Pancras	175	Small village
83	Winterborne Herringston	174	(no article)
84	Frome St. Quintin	171	Village
85	Rampisham	163	Village
86	Warmwell	161	Hamlet
87	Hooke	157	Small village
88	Godmanstone	156	Village
89	Castleton	155	Civil parish
90	Askerswell	154	Small village
91	Frome Vauchurch	149	Parish / hamlet
92	Melcombe Horsey	141	Village
93	Poyntington	128	Village
94	Littlebredy	121	Small village
95	Burstock	120	Village
96	Ryme Intrinseca	115	Village
97	Swyre	102	Village
98	Oborne	101	Village
99-138	Athelhampton, Batcombe, Beer Hackett, Bettiscombe, Burleston, Catherston Leweston, Caundle Marsh, Chedington, Chilcombe, Chilfrome, Clifton Maybank, Compton Valence, East Chelborough, Fleet, Goathill, Haydon, Hermitage, Kingston Russell, Leweston, Lillington, Mapperton, Melbury Bubb, Melbury Sampford, Nether Cerne, North Poorton, North Wootton, Pilsdon, Poxwell, Seaborough, Stanton St. Gabriel, Stockwood, Toller Fratrum, Up Cerne, West Chelborough, West Compton, Whitcombe, Winterborne Came, Winterborne Monkton, Woodsford, Wraxall	100 or less (no data)	These are the parishes with the smallest populations, currently described by Wikipedia as: Village - 3 Small village - 7 Very small village - 1 Hamlet - 14 Other - 7 Redirect - 2

An excellent, thorough and clear analysis. I'm not really sure how it can be made any clearer that this village is not small !! Unless maybe Winterborne Herringston is a city. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:57, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Record of edits

I had previously considered these IP edits to be the actions of a local resident who wasn't looking at the wider picture, hence my construction of the above table and my numerous attempts on the different IP talk pages to direct the editor to this page. A closer look at the article history however reveals something more disruptive. The first insertion of "small" was made by a registered editor on 25 July 2012 (here). An inspection of that editor's own talk page is illuminating, as is the edit they made here. Back to the history of this article, on 16 April 2013 an IP editor who geolocates to Calne in Wiltshire at first changed the 2001 Census population figure from 708 to 4 (see here), then almost immediately completely removed the whole sentence about the village's population (here). Subsequently a number of different IPs, geolocating to several towns in Wiltshire or Hampshire, have repeatedly inserted "small" and sometimes also removed the sourced sentence about the parish of Portesham being quite large:

1. 5 May 2013: Diff IP geolocates to Winchester, Hampshire.
2. 11 June 2013: Diff IP geolocates to Marlborough, Wiltshire.
3. 13 June 2013: Diff and Diff IP geolocates to Winchester, Hampshire.
4. 14 June 2013 Diff Same IP as for 13 June
5. 20 June 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Marlborough, Wiltshire.
6. 22 June 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Salisbury, Wiltshire. This edit also changed "West Dorset administrative district" to "South Dorset administrative district", which doesn't actually exist.
7. 24 June 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire.
8. 6 July 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Salisbury, Wiltshire.
9. 7 July 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire.
10. 14 July 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire.
11. 16 July 2013 Diff Same IP as for 14 July.
12. 17 July 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire.
13. 20 July 2013 Diff Same IP as for 17 July.
14. 23 July 2013 Diff Same IP as for 17 July.
15. 2 August 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire.
16. 11 August 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire.
17. 14 August 2013 Diff Same IP as for 11 August.
18. 15 August 2013 Diff Same IP as for 11 August.
19. 15 August 2013 Diff Same IP as for 11 August.
20. 22 August 2013 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire. Also delighted us with this edit.
21. 22 February 2014 Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire. Also seems to have made these recent contributions

Seeing as several of those IP edits geolocate to Calne, which is where those early vandalising edits geolocate to, I'm inclined now to view these edits as vandalism, particularly as the edit on 16 July was made after I'd posted a note on that IP's talk page, suggesting they discuss the issue here, which so far they have failed to do. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:57, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

So looks like a simple range block will not work here? Maybe article protection is needed. And also looks like we have Wiltshire/Dorset gypsy who's also a keen wiki-vandal! Martinevans123 (talk) 08:32, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

17 July 2013: Diff IP geolocates to Calne, Wiltshire. This edit was made on the BT network, not sure about all the others. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hm. Well, the thing is that I feel that it would be a shame to semi-protect an article over something that the IP is doing in good faith (albeit annoyingly persistently). Y'all have a well-established case for your version, but this is, in a sense, a content issue, and admins aren't really supposed to use protection, blocking, etc. to decide content issues. That said, I'm not totally averse to protecting in this instance; it's a low-traffic article, and the signal-to-noise ratio is very low on IP edits, judging by the article history, so collateral damage should be at a minimum. How about this: we put up a big edit notice on the page for a week or two, inviting the IP to come to the talk page to discuss it. (You can look at the edit notice on my user page for the kind of thing I have in mind.) If we still get multiple edits like this, we can move on to temporary semi-protection (while keeping the edit notice). How does that sound? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:48, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

That sounds very reasonable to me. Without ever seeming any kind of edit summary or talk thread in defence of these edits, it seems to border on vandalism to me. If anything good has come of this it is the very useful table above constructed by PCW. He has put a lot of effort not defending this "small" article. I'd be very interested to see any kind of argument and/or sources from the IP. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:23, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems worth a try, even if it will make the article look a bit odd for a while. (Maybe the IP has tried to post here but hasn't worked out how to do it; maybe they're waiting for the introduction of "Flow" before they indulge in these baffling Wikipedia shenanigans, which we call talk pages....) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:53, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Update: the IP added "small" again this morning, having one minute earlier made this edit to an article about a nearby settlement. This can only be seen as disruptive vandalism, and I now favour some kind of page protection. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:19, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Seems he or she has no sources or arguments to offer and yes, it's just mindless vandalism. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:24, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, in which case reverting them is acceptable, albeit a little bit tedious. If the editor persists, perhaps making another request for page protection is the way to go? Either that or just report them as a vandal and/or disruptive editor? (although of course they use various different IP addresses, which complicates that approach) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:09, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with the murky back-streets of the great metropolis, so I fear unilateral vigilante action is out of the question, even from the safety of my Bournemouth taxi. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:35, 22 February 2014 (UTC)