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List of islands of Scotland

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page. No further edits should be made to this page. The closing editor's comments were: 12 days, 4 support, 0 oppose. Promote. Buc 09:01, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe this list is now comprehensive enough to make it a credible candidate for featured status. This is its first nomination. It is also a self nomination. Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose
    • There shouldn't be 4 sections for different criteria (normal, population, size, heigth). Tables are supposed to be used *specifically* for that!
    • "Bridged islands" is verging on the irrelevant ("List of bridges from Scottish Islands" is the real topic there), and it's 5 sub-headers make the section take too much place in the Table of Content.
  • Circeus 19:58, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure I follow your first point. Are you saying the tables should not be in separate sections? This is easy to fix, but the first list in particular is very long and it would make navigation problematical. The List of London Underground stations has 26 alphabeticised sections. List of molecules in interstellar space has several short tables in one section, but different tables in separate sections. List of defense of marriage amendments to U.S. state constitutions by type has tables in four separate sections. These are all featured lists.


Re the second point, 'Bridged Islands' is actually a rather an important section and the focus is on listing the islands connected, not the bridges themselves. The Churchill Barriers are one of the more notable features of island life and there is minor controversy as to whether bridged islands should actually be considered to be islands (see footnote 1). However, these sections are very short, and I have removed the sub-sections. Hopefully that helps. Ben MacDui (Talk) 09:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that this list, contrary to the ones you link, lists items multiple times, which, when you can do something like this (an example mockup with the first 4 items), is totally unnecessary. I have nothing against "tidal" or "former islands" (thought I think the main list needs renaming to "Sea islands" because of "Freshwater islands," but I'm getting sidetracked), however, relisting the elements multiple times for the sole purpose of changing the order is unnecessary. Circeus 22:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well I understand the general idea and indeed there is a sortable table for 'Inhabited Islands' but the sorting only works with one field (population). The same is true for the new table you kindly provided above, which sorts alphabetically, but not otherwise. Furthermore, as mentioned on the Talk page, I began a new table similar to the one you suggest (its still here [[1]] but abandoned it for the reasons specified i.e. the very large number of islands (perhaps 790 in all) would mean that there would have to be a first list of all islands larger than an arbitrary number (say 100 acres) followed by a second list of smaller islands because for most of the smaller ones there would be no population and no area measurement available. Height would be available, but it would involve an enormous amount of original research checking maps. Thus, you end up with two lists anyway, which would make it harder for anyone looking for a name without knowing how large the island was, and (unless the sortable function can work in a more intelligent way than I am aware of), you couldn't sort by population and area and height etc. anyway. Ben MacDui (Talk) 08:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've had a look at the Mediawiki page 'Help:Sorting' and it certainly indicates that multiple sorting is possible, although its not clear to me how this is created yet. Nonetheless, this approach would still require two separate tables to make sense and a huge amount of additional information, and there are further complications (a few inhabited islands are very small for example.) Ben MacDui (Talk) 13:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I have misunderstood something, or have a browser problem. If I take a look at List of United States cities by population I can toggle the list up or down by rank by clicking in any of the table column headings, but I can't create an alphabetical list by city name or state. Without this feature a large list of islands simply wouldn't work as you couldn't rank them by more than one category. Any assistance gratefully received. Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:10, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is really strange, you should be able to sort with any column (And I have no problem obtaining alphabetical sortings for List of United States cities by population), at least as there are no multi-row or multi-column cells. What browser are you using? Circeus 20:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Safari & OSX. I have downloaded Firefox and, hey presto! - it works. I wonder how many other users have the same problem though. I will track a few down and ask.

Re the freshwater islands issue, they are numerous but few are 'notable' in that they have their own article and none would make it into the first one or two hundred islands in terms of size or height. Its only population where there are a few that would be on an 'fresh plus salt' list. Nonetheless the existing nomenclature is ambiguous and I will add 'offshore' in a couple of places to clarify this. Ben MacDui (Talk) 07:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In the meantime, re the main list, clearly it is possible to have 'multi-toggling', but there are still problems with this approach, principally I suppose because it is a list of natural features, which so inconveniently fail to correspond to our human desire for neat categorisations (which is one of the reasons I am drawn to it). It would be quite possible to amend the main list to include (say) the first 100 islands in terms of size with the addition of height and population, but this would certainly exclude some inhabited islands - perhaps they could be included at the end and the list would be of 'larger and inhabited islands', followed by a long list of 'smaller islands' per the existing list. I will look into this and find out how many islands not in the first 100 are either populated or amongst the higher ones. This would make 2 (non-overlapping) lists instead of the existing four. Ben MacDui (Talk) 07:52, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I never said anything against "Freshwater island" as is. It just seemed obvious that it would require the renaming of the first section as "sea islands" (because otherwise, you have one section that is "list of islands" and one "freshwater islands" which is a bit confusing).
As for the main list, I was thinking that the base order would still be alphabetical, and only when relevant would elevation and area be mentioned. I don't even expect it to be possible that all of them will be traceable. Circeus 14:40, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully the 'freshwater' issue is now fixed. Re the main list I understand what you are suggesting, although my concern is that re-creating the data in this way will create objections to FA status that the main list has blanks for 30% or more of the fields. I realise that you can only offer a singular opinion, but are you saying that you could support the list if re-drawn in this fashion? Are you aware of any similar featured lists? Thanks for continuing to engage with this issue. Ben MacDui (Talk) 08:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing wrong with setting a threshold for size or height, as long as that is indicated somewhere (likely in a note for the header cell). For similar situations, see List of United States cities by population (inclusion threshold is set at 100,000) or the singles table in Goldfrapp discography. List of volcanoes in Indonesia also has "unknown" in a number of place for last eruption. Circeus 16:34, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To continue the above dialogue with Circeus, the choices appear to be:
  1. A list which attempts to have a main list which is as inclusive as possible with subsidiary lists showing the main criteria individually (per the current list) or,
  2. A list which limits the inclusivity to islands meeting certain thresholds. That is not this list, and if it were, there would need to be a second article so that notable islands not meeting these criteria could be listed, or
  3. An article with a main list of larger/inhabited islands with sortable criteria and a secondary list of smaller islands without, or
  4. A large list of all islands sortable by all criteria.

The first is the current list, and obviously I am happy with it. The second makes no sense to me. Islands are not like cities, for which by and large bigger = more notable. Staffa is one of the more famous isles, but it is tiny. The fourth strikes me as being logically credible, but likely to result in lots of empty boxes (for about 120 islands on the existing lists no data is easily available for area or height and they are no longer populated). The third is possible and to me an option, but I'd need to know there was a genuine purpose in undertaking the significant effort involved. I realise the FL criteria cannot be expected to cover every contingency, but I can't see any obvious guidelines or references that require this approach. Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment - informative and comprehensive; you've put in some great work on this category. But I do agree with Circeus about the presentation of multiple lists which could probably be nicely combined. Perhaps we could do a quick mock-up to see whether it would work? If it does, then I'll support, and if we try it and it doesn't, then I'll support the current list.
As a minor point, it would also be good to have articles for a few more of the red links - at least the inhabited islands. Warofdreams talk 18:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments - its not by any means just my work btw. There is a draft mock-up of A-F for no 3 (above) here [2]. The remaining islands that would either be in the second list in option 3, or in the same list but with blank entries for the numerical fields can be found in the A-F section here User:Ben MacDui/Sandbox2. As you can see, 40 plus per cent of the islands are in the latter category.
Re the red links, you are quite right of course. There were still two inhabited offshore islands in this state. I have created Eilean Shona. Flodaigh/Flodda is a bit tricky as although the Census figures list it as a separate island it is one of these beastly charming but hard to define tidal islets by Benbecula and as there are several 'Flodda/Flodday' type names with variant spellings it may be difficult to create a properly researched article in short order. If I can't make any substantial progress I'll just create a stub.
I've drawn up a sample table at User:Warofdreams/Scottish Islands. How does it look to you? I've included all the islands currently listed up to Boreray, although there are a few with no current article which do not seem to meet any current criteria (which appear to broadly be area > 40ha, population > 0 or notable prominence). The islands too small for Haswell-Smith I've marked as "< 40"; the heights I've taken from the Ordnance Survey maps (which admittedly are not guaranteed to mark the highest point on the island, but generally do, so a note could explain this). Warofdreams talk 00:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That is pretty much what I had in mind when I suggested the merge. Circeus 01:06, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, understood. The table itself makes sense to me and the logic is a modified 3. I imagine the smaller islands with no articles and very little data over and above their name still need to be listed. Perhaps this is a separate page per List of fresh water islands? I will get onto this asap but I have along standing engagement to meet a friend for a couple of days (The Old Man of Hoy), who lacks broadband. I should have it done by the weekend. Ben MacDui (Talk) 07:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don,t think 2 different pages are needed. Just make sure the two parts of the main list are labelled as "freshwater" and "sea" Islands. rather than sea islands not being identified formally. Circeus 07:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The lists with offshore islands only will be identified. However the two lists are not 'sea' and 'fresh', but 'large' and 'small' offshore - plus inhabited freshwater water. This structure, which is now in draft form here allows the 'inhabited' and 'area' lists to vanish, but I would intend to keep the list of highest islands as this contains additional information about the name of the peak which won't comfortably fit on the main list. Ben MacDui (Talk) 18:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
\me likes, and I'll happily support that. Circeus 18:44, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have updated the article with these changes. There are a small number of blank fields where the height data will have to be extracted from Ordnance Survey maps, which I will get tomorrow and an untidy footnote about South Walls that may need some further thought. Ben MacDui (Talk) 22:12, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - well written, comprehensive, factually accurate (there can be few better sources than Haswell-Smith) and neutral. Even better if table combination is possible, although I have my suspicions that "not available" may spoil that. Thanks for the work you have put in. Finavon 20:38, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The new layout looks great! I just have two small naggle before I support: make all the images next to the main table the same size (the larger ones overlap with in in my browser), and remove extra links from the "smaller island" list. Circeus 23:08, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank-you. Re the former I have reduced the size of the images to 200px. For the latter I have removed a duplicate in the smaller list. There may be one or two I have missed here. I will double check that later today and treble check the list is complete (re Warofdreams'comment below). Thank-you both for your patience. Ben MacDui (Talk) 08:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - new table is working well. Are you confident we now have all the islands over 40ha? I found a few more yesterday. I'm aware that you have added many more since; have you now checked as exhaustively as possible? I've also done a touch of tidying, and raised a query on the talk page. The article is now one of Wikipedia's most reliably sourced and well presented lists. Warofdreams talk 02:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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