Farringdon, Sunderland edit
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Hi there. I am requesting some support and reviews from established editors on moving this article forwards. Over the past year I've worked hard in setting out the comprehensive history of this subject and expanding the page. However, I need some help in organizing the references and setting out the basic style. Once this has been evaluated, I will be looking to nominate it for a GA.
Thanks, Sunderland Renaissance (talk) 04:03, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
- Let me take a look at it and I'll perhaps do some copyediting, then tell you what I think. Daniel Case (talk) 04:39, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
OK, having brought it up to code ...
I can see that while you've been editing here for three years, it hasn't been too regularly yet, so it's good that you recognized that the PR process might be helpful ... I wish it were more often. You might want to look at the changes I made so you can see some things, like what citation templates to use and how to use them, that you could do better going forward.
It's a small article that I'm going to upgrade to start-class. Or maybe C. I was surprised at how sparse it was at first, but as I began digging into the sources I could see there isn't an awful lot to write about a medieval farm/estate that wasn't developed into a seriously populated place until the mid-20th century. You certainly squeezed what you could out of them. I would just have tried to add more detail, since it's not like you have a lot of story to tell and it would somewhat ameliorate the scattered feel of the article.
The beginning of the property's development probably offers the best chance for expanding the article's history section. We learn that the original landowners were dissatisfied with its pace ... in the source I read that they were mad that the government just up and decided to take the property to build housing without even at least privately letting them know beforehand (in their account, at least). That should be in the article. Along with some followup ... could they have sued over this? Did they? Can we find out? I think you've only scratched the surface of what's in those newspaper archives. There could be a lot more history there.
Like, I'd like to know, how fast was the land developed? How quickly were the houses sold? Were there any unforeseen problems? And did the planners say, if anything, what sort of principles were guiding them? What sort of place did they want to create, for what kind of people? Did the plans change from plat to shovel and if so, why? (I think I should add this to the urban planning project's worklist as well). It might be interesting to look at the archived minutes of the local council from that time, if you can find them.
One thing in this context I do find interesting ... as an American having visited Britain on some occasions, I have always been struck by the tendency in so many smaller English towns to have built attached, as you would call them, single-family terrace houses, as compared to over here where I see so many neighborhoods with detached single-family houses in demographically and economically-situated similar towns. But looking at Farringdon through Google, I see predominantly detached houses. Why might this be so, I ask myself? Perhaps because the terrain seems so generally level? That might be but again, perhaps the record has the answer (And in any case I usually begin articles like this, about a place that fills a lot of area, with a geography section, including remarks on the terrain and how flat it is or not (In the UK, I think you can find Ordnance Survey maps (the equivalent of the USGS maps I use over here) online to source this information with through {{cite map}})).
OK, gotta take a quick break here ... Daniel Case (talk) 21:01, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
I did not expect that break to last pretty much all weekend ... Sorry.
Alright, what the above brings me back to is, since Farringdon's history really begins, as such, in the mid-20th century, that's what this article needs to bulk up on. We need to look through newspaper archives, preferably the Echo's for any and all interesting news events that have happened there. Any interesting crimes? Fires? I mean, of course not just bad stuff, but it can't be that dull over 50 years.
We also should have some statistics on Farringdon, assuming the city or the National Statistics Office or whoever keeps them at a discernible level where we can say, this applies to Farringdon. Demographics, especially. What's the ethnic composition of the area? How old are people? How many people live in each housing unit? Things like that, which over here I'd find in census data ... does the census over there attempt to find the same information.
And what about economics? How well-off are Farringdonians? Where do most of those who work work? In a place like Sunderland that has seen considerable industrial transformation in the last few decades, this is an important question to answer. We learn from the history section of the main article on the city both that unemployment in Sunderland reached 20% during the mid-80s as its mining and shipbuilding industries wound down ... what effect did that have in Farringdon? And since then Nissan has built what is now the UK's large auto plant in the area ... does it, or any other of the newer industries employ people in Farringdon (I mean, it doesn't look like it would be a terribly long commute to the Nissan plant.
This also made me wonder what the long-term effect of Brexit will be on Farringdon, if indeed Nissan is a significant employer, since it depends a lot on parts made in Europe. And ... in the politics section, we might want to know, if it's possible to do so, how the Brexit referendum did in Farringdon (I would guess Leave won pretty handsomely, since it took the constituency quite comfortably. But this doesn't seem to have affected Bridget Philippson's political career any).
Lastly it strikes me that we could have better photos:
- First, the lede image. It looks like any other residential neighborhood and it's a bit dark. I suggest instead that we get a picture of what looks like the center of Farringdon here ... it's across from the school and has a bunch of businesses, including the local post office. With the students hanging out, it sure looks like something we'd see as the local hub.
- Second ... the article shows the local pride in the Dolphin pub. Well ... why not take a picture of it for us then? Perhaps both outside, and inside, to show us that it's popular and a place where people have a good time.
- Third and last is that picture of the A690 road, which while geographically it mainly bounds the area on one side, seems to be its most important transport link. As it is it isn't really a picture of the road, which is mainly in the background. Why not see if you can get out onto the median strip (OK, as you say over there, central reservation) in similar light and weather conditions and shoot something like a lot of our other pictures of roads, where the road is front and center as subject?
OK, it's got a way to go to get to GA but there's a way, even if it's only marked by ax slashes at the moment. Good luck and happy editing on your way! Daniel Case (talk) 02:41, 7 June 2021 (UTC)