Talk:Harris

Merge into Lewis and Harris

I see the merger proposal on the page. I am not sure about this. For historical reasons Lewis and Harris are often treated as if they were separate islands, but other things do group them as Lewis and Harris. If we were starting from scratch either approach would be valid, but if we are going to change things then I think we need to look and see how other information that the traveller will see handles things. In any case I would wait a couple of months before doing anything. AlasdairW (talk) 10:27, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fuaran buidhe: A wait of a couple of months was done. After city-fy of the articles I saw no reason not to merge. Having a region with one city is not a good thing, particularly in this case were we are talking about one landmass. Do not think consensus was needed for the merge, but undoing without discussion is not friendly. --Traveler100 (talk) 13:16, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Alternatively merge Tarbert (Harris) and Leverburgh into Harris and Stornoway into Lewis.--Traveler100 (talk) 15:38, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

I did express my reservations above, and would not have expected the merger to be done without the arguments for doing so being advanced. I was travelling when I made my comments, so did not have access to the "other information that the traveller will see" - guide books, brochures etc. I would suggest that what is really needed is some articles on villages in Lewis maybe: Kershader (South Lochs), Ness, Back and Carloway. The problem is that in Lewis the population is really scattered about and there aren't the significant village centres, and so we need to group several small villages together to create an article. AlasdairW (talk) 20:04, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Then maybe roll-up the information to an article for Lewis and another Harris rather than a number of small articles with just a couple of entries. For the eat and sleep sections can have subsection for the towns. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:34, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

You didn't say why they should be merged. And as above, AlasdairW disagreed with it. Even if they are geographically connected, Lewis and Harris are nearly always considered to be separate 'islands'. Most other tourist guides consider them separately, as does Wikipedia. And there's plenty of tourist attractions scattered around both Lewis and Harris, which are not within the towns and villages. So its not very helpful to lump everything under Stornoway. --Fuaran buidhe (talk) 00:02, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

The reason for the merge was stated in December on the main page in the merge box. Basically 3 settlements for two regions does not make sense. As for alternative solution maybe I was not clear. What I am proposing as an alternative to creating Lewis and Harris with settlements under it, is to merge Stornoway into the Lewis article. As you say most attractions are scattered in remote parts of the area so will always be some on the Lewis page. Maybe better to be consistent with other Outer Hebrides islands and just have one article. Also not that organisation of Wikivoyage is not always by administrative structure or size of a region but more by what matches the traveller and the amount of content. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:19, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, articles should be useful for the traveller. So they should make sense for how the areas are generally known by anyone who actually lives there, or how they are described in other guides. Not just trying to force them to fit Wikivoyage "rules" for numbers of "cities". As for the amount of content, there is plenty of room for expansion. There are loads of attractions in Lewis or Harris that are missing. As Alasdair says, it would be useful to have more articles for separate areas of Lewis. --Fuaran buidhe (talk) 11:30, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

OK could you complete the undo of my work then. Thanks. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I am proposing reverting the partial undo to fix the current state. If the number of settlements under Harris and Lewis increases then we can look at splitting the region up again. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:46, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Six years later: Lewis & Harris are the Hispaniola of the Hebrides, a single land mass with two distinct entities by geography, history and traveller amenities. I'd like to check out if the present pages are optimum. We have no combined WV page for L&H, but a page for Harris (sub-pages Tarbert for the north and Leverburgh for the south) and Lewis (sub-pages Stornoway and Great Berneray).

It would be straightforward to create a combined page for L&H, sub-pages Stornoway, Lewis everything else, Great Berneray, Harris North = Tarbert, and Harris south = Leverburgh. This is not worthwhile just to tidy up the taxonomy, the criterion is utility to the traveller. All Scots and most Brits are aware that L&H are a single island, and their histories are sketched in the intros. Views please especially from those furth o' the realm on whether the present layout is clear or confusing. Grahamsands (talk) 19:59, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

If you do that, I would suggest splitting the Lewis article up, either into four as suggested above (Kershader (South Lochs), Ness, Back and Carloway) or West Coast Lewis (including the Butt and Ness due to the road layout) and East Coast Lewis. For Harris, I would keep the article names of Leverburgh and Tarbert. AlasdairW (talk) 20:49, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Grahamsands makes a convincing argument. There's no benefit to travellers in creating another level in the hierarchy just to have an article on the whole island. At most we could have an extraregion article (not in the hierarchy) on Lewis and Harris that says nothing more that "Wikivoyage has two articles on this island: Lewis and Harris." Ground Zero (talk) 13:40, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

The taxonomy isn't ideal but it doesn't sound like any travellers are being confused so I'm going to leave well enough alone here. Grahamsands (talk) 20:23, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

what does bt stand for????

It is unclear why the parts of the island have been bt different names. HushPuppie280 (talk) 22:17, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I have changed it to "have different names". AlasdairW (talk) 22:30, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you much! HushPuppie280 (talk) 22:39, 5 September 2023 (UTC)