Talk:List of youth hostels in England and Wales

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Page Needs a New Title[edit]

This page's title seems biased because it supposedly lists "present youth hostels", but the page content only lists YHA hostels. The page's title should reflect that it only lists YHA hostels and not all hostels. A good title would be "List of past and present YHA hostels in England and Wales" not "List of past and present youth hostels in England and Wales" Let99 (talk) 13:18, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've revised the list-article lede and added a section for independent hostels. On basis that we shouldn't have an encyclopedic list-article on just one association of hostels, omitting others. And I moved/renamed the article to "List of youth hostels in England and Wales". It should be all-inclusive and the title reflects that now. --doncram 20:17, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Grid References[edit]

A column in the spreadsheets giving grid references of the buildings would be very useful, especially on the closed hostels list. References used to be placed in all old YHA handbooks, so should be available fairly readily. Roger Kidd/Geograph.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.195.19.253 (talk) 13:43, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Past Hostels[edit]

Incorrect spelling for 'Bridgwater'. Incorrectly spelt as 'Bridgewater' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.153.197.204 (talk) 00:09, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

About ordering. Anyone watching?[edit]

The ordering within each table has not been clear. It comes across as random, because it covers several from one county, then goes to another, then comes back. Upon further consideration it seems like it has been mostly alphabetical by name of hostel within groups, where the groups are not defined, but perhaps the groups are the 9 Regions of England. In fact reviewing them within the now-linked OSM map, they seem to be in geographical groups that are perhaps those 9 groups or something similar. And there are a few inserted others out of the main order. I am guessing the original list was copied from some YHA directory book that was organized alphabetical within group.

The ordering should be explicit and clear. Unless I see other suggestions/comments, I'll plan to reorder it into the 9 regions then alphabetical by county then alphabetical by hostel name. Another alternative for the current ones would be to order them by region then from left to right, i.e. by longitude from west to east. Comments? I'm not aware if anyone is watchlisting this page. --doncram 20:25, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, should Wales be one region or should it be divided into 5 given in Outline of Wales: South West Wales, South Wales, Mid Wales, North Wales, and West Wales? --doncram 20:36, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Originally it was simply alphabetical by hostel name but subsequent edits seem to have screwed the ordering. If you want to do it any other way then regions gets complicated as YHA regions have changed numerous times over the years so which would you use. I'd stick to name, county or year of opening. Nthep (talk) 20:41, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As the columns are sortable I don't think it is too much of a problem, but I would agree that the nine YHA regions are unstable and unlikely to be recognised by many readers, so I would go with alphabetical by name of hostel.— Rod talk 20:50, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, thanks Nthep and Rodw for commenting! I did not expect anyone would. Actually i went ahead and have now added the region for each item to its row (i.e. Wales or the 9 Government Office Regions of England) and I see that it was pretty much in that order, then alphabetical within the group. I moved just a few rows that were out of that order. I gather that the YHA regions, however they have changed over the years, have nevertheless pretty much corresponded to those regions. So it seems we can group them in the 9 regions without having to reference any idiosyncratic YHA-only regions, and I am content to leave them in those groupings. Not sure now whether to re-order within the groupings to put them into ceremonial county order, then alphabetically by name of the hostel. But at least the big, first ordering is clear. --doncram 22:29, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The only problem with that is if I want to find all the hostels in Dorset & sort the "region & county" column. I have to know they are in the south west region.— Rod talk 08:01, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Rod. County only or two columns and I'd go for county only as a far more informative piece of data. Nthep (talk) 10:10, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
County is a column, you can sort on it. You don't have to know which region Dorset is in, to find it. Maybe something was changed before or after those comments were made back in November. --doncram 07:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Columns[edit]

I'd urge retaining opening and closing years as separate columns. Combining the two makes table unsortable by either criteria. Nthep (talk) 22:10, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for commenting. In fact after combining the two, the table is still sortable by the opening year (the first opening year, if a hostel was open during more than one date range). It was bothering me that there were multiple rows for some hostels that opened, closed, then opened and closed again....i want to combine those into just one entry for each hostel. It seems to me that showing, in one column, the one or two or three date-ranges during which a hostel was open, is efficient. If the opening and closing years are kept as separate columns, combining the multiple rows doesn't work, editing-wise. Given that they're still sortable by opening year, is this okay?
Overall, I am not completely sure that keeping the historical open and close years for closed hostels is so important. I can't quite imagine what readers would care so much. Current hostelers can't care. But it is data that is historical and maybe it is vaguely useful for an encyclopedia article to keep the info. It's all there still, and compacting the information slightly seems better to me than keeping the the close years sortable.
To lessen its appearance on the page, perhaps the closed YHA hostels table should be collapsible and collapsed by default again, as it was before I started editing. Because most readers would be interested in current ones only, I expect. But I am wondering if some more of those have reopened as independent hostels and should be rescued out of that table, still, before it is collapsed. I only rescued two so far. Is there a source identifying independent hostels anywhere? --doncram 22:44, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well it depends on how specific you want to get. Bridport for example has three rows because it has existed three times at different locations within the town so it was three separate entities unless you want to summarise "hostels in Bridport" in one row. The trouble with that approach is that it is easily inconsistent as it could be argued that most of London should be in one row as some of the hostels were replacements for earlier closed sites.
I think closure dates are encyclopedic and would keep them as a separate sortable criterion but there is a more radical solution which is to merge the two tables into one with extant hostels marked as such in the closed column (or by row highlighting?) This also has the advantage of making maintenance simpler as rows to not have to be moved from one table to another.
As for former YHA hostels that are now independent, I wouldn't separate them out that can be covered in the notes column. The problems with a separate table is duplication.
There's also now a much more comprehensive source available online here which will probably answer the question which became independent hostels. Nthep (talk) 23:33, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for link to the huge 400-page source, by YHA volunteer archivist John Martin. I have used it for a couple items just now, including verifying that Crowden location, which lacked a current YHA webpage, was closed. And to add Hareshaw independent hostel (found by searching on "independent"). It's worth searching it for other now-independent ones.
It seems to me that having a complete list of current hostels should be the priority, for this to be a comprehensive list-article about current youth hostels, and each deserves a table row. It does not suffice to just add a note in the table of former YHA ones, that one is now independent, IMHO. I don't have any issue with YHA, but I prefer for a Wikipedia list-article to be comprehensive about all things of a given type, without limiting it to one brand of things of that type. About how many tables to have, I think one for current and one for former works. The independent ones can be merged into the current YHA table eventually. Perhaps we could identify the YHA vs. non-YHA ones using a row coloring scheme?
A problem is that this is very slow to edit, because it is quite a large page. I am wondering about removing most of the "nbsp;" usages, i.e. where used within grid references, where they are not in fact needed because we can control the column width. Or removing other non-essential formatting that does not change the article's appearance. Just to reduce the page size. --doncram 17:59, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

when scrolling, keep table headers in view[edit]

Preferences -> Gadgets -> Testing and Development -> Make sure that headers of tables remain in view as long as the table is in view (Requires Safari or Chrome). This is useful for editors, would be useful for many non-editor readers too. --doncram 07:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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By the way[edit]

I did some cycling tours starting from Dover going up to East Anglia, to Cornwall, to North Wales and to Yorkshire, between 1979 and 1983. I enjoyed the places and met nice people, including nice wardens. In the evening I enjoyed seeing the place and joining people to a pub. In the morning I had breakfast, left the room, did my duty to make something clean and tidy, packed my bike and went on.

I have the 1983 HANDBOOK still which was wider and thicker than the booklets before but the maps for the last yards was smaller (you can contact me if you need a picture of the information). Some places were pure summer hostels, runned by people in their holidays, for few money. Epping forest was runned with camp beds only.

I see the net getting wider, too long distances for cyclists actually and even more for backpacker, however individual travellers. The German hostels have more support from the state... and are intensively used by school classes which gives it a different atmosphere than with smaller groups, families, single travellers from Britain and abroad.

In 1983 an overnight fee for a young in a simple non VAT hostel was 1.30 pounds, the most expensive price was London Highgate with 3.60 pounds for a senior. Some places had only gas lights and cold water. In one hostel the water for everything had to be taken with bins from a small river but there were bigsized Wellington boots to be used by everyone. The toilet at Hindhead was in the garden (which is quite uncomfortable in the rain at night).

The strangest thing (in my eyes), there was a bloke from Japan collecting different British bees and humbles on his journey. I find the association is also a movement for international understanding and for knowing one owns or another country. I am not happy to see going it down.

Thank you for the list! I did some edits in it. -- Willi The Kid (talk) 09:47, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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