Big Renaming
You may have noticed in your travels around the Open Guide to London that many pages here have postcodes in their titles. The idea behind this practice was that it would help distinguish between different places with the same name (most notably pubs).
Whilst this worked to some extent, it's not all that easy to deal with (and not very pretty, either). So we've decided that we'd like to change policy - when naming a page like that, use the area the page refers to in the title to distinguish it. For example: [Hole In The Wall (Cheapside)]? and [Hole In The Wall (Waterloo)]?.
We're also intending to fix all the existing occurrences of the old practice, and we need your help. Any time you come across a page with a name in the old style, please spend a moment and do the following:
- Firstly, consider if the page name needs to have a locale appended: if it is a unique institution, or the name of the institution mentions the area it is in, then it does not.
- Create a new page with a name in the new style if necessary, otherwise just a simple name.
- Copy across all the information from the old page.
- Empty out all the information from the old page.
- Replace the content of the old page with "#REDIRECT" and then the new page name in double brackets, just like how you normally make a link.
- Save both pages.
There are quite a few pages to get through - about 600, in fact - but this is quite achievable if we work at it slowly but surely. In the end, the result will be a Guide that is easier to use.
If you'd like to lend a hand, we have a list of renaming candidates available that is updated on a nightly basis.
Thanks as always for your participation in this project.
-- the Admins
If you're not in the habit of coming across pub-pages you can always take a look at "View all pages in Category Pubs", which will provide you with an overview of which pages have been changed to the new naming conventions and which haven't. --KaiMichaelPoppe
How to do it
Some tips for the less technical. The control key functions are for a Windows PC. --IvorW
It's probably easiest to use two browser windows (or two browser tabs), one to edit the old page, one to edit the new.
In browser 1, bring up the old page. Click on "Show pages linking here". Make a note of all pages that link in, each of which should be changed to link to the new page without the post code. Click your browser's back button.
Click on "edit this page".
In browser 2, click on "create new page" and type in the new form node title.
Cut and paste the old page content into the new page content edit window. A hint here is that you can use the keyboard to do most of the work, just using the mouse as a pointer. Click into the content box, Ctrl/A (hold down Ctrl and press A) to select all the text, Ctrl/C to copy, click into the other window, Click into the empty box, Ctrl/V to paste the text.
Read through the text of the content, and look for other links with post codes. Correct them to use the new form of page title, and add these to your list of pages needing renaming.
Cut and paste all the metadata. These are the remaining text boxes: "Locales" down to "OS Y coordinate". You can use the tab key to move forward between boxes (shift-tab to move back).
In both windows, set "Type of edit" to "Minor Tidying", and enter the text "Big Rename" in the box "Comment about your changes".
Click "Preview Changes" in browser 2. Check that you are happy with how the new page looks, then click "Save Changes".
Use the mouse (click & drag) to highlight the title from the top of the page in browser 2. Ctrl/C to copy.
In browser 1, click into the main content window. Ctrl/A to select all text, Overtype this with #REDIRECT [[ Ctrl/V to paste in the new title and ]] .
Clear out all the metadata text boxes. (click into box, Ctrl/A, Delete). Or, you can use the tab key to move forward between boxes - single line text boxes will already be highlighted, so you don't need Ctrl/A.
Click "Save Changes". This will perform the redirect and show you the new page.