Talk:List of islands of Scotland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	List of islands of Scotland is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
July 13, 2007 Featured list candidate Promoted

This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

WikiProject UK geography      (Rated FA-Class) This article falls within the scope of WikiProject UK geography, a user-group dedicated to building a comprehensive and quality guide to places in the United Kingdom on Wikipedia. If you wish to participate, share ideas or merely get tips you can join us at the project page where there are resources, to do lists and guidelines on how to write about settlements. United Kingdom Portal FA This article has been rated as FA-Class on the assessment scale. (Add assessment comments) High This article has been rated as high-importance within the UK geography WikiProject. WikiProject Scotland (Rated FA-Class) List of islands of Scotland is within the scope of WikiProject Scotland, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Scotland and Scotland-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page. Scotland Portal FA This article has been rated as FA-Class on the quality scale. Mid This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale. Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need. WikiProject Scotland To-do: edit  Peer review — general community input. Featured Portal Candidates — our ultimate short-term goal is to achieve Featured status for the portal. Featured Portal Candidate — 23 April 2007; result, Featured Portal Status awarded, 14 May 2007 (UTC) Scottish Islands WikiProject (Rated FA-Class) This article is within the scope of the Scottish Islands WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of islands in Scotland. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. FA This page has been rated as FA-Class on the quality scale. Top This article has been rated as top-importance on the importance scale. Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need. WikiProject Geography (Rated FA-Class) Geography Portal This article is supported by the Geography WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage on Geography and related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article Geography, or visit the project page for more details on the projects. FA This article has been rated as FA-Class on the assessment scale.

To the southern inhabitants of Scotland, the state of the mountains and islands is equally known with that of Borneo and Sumatra: of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest. Samuel Johnson, 1703.

Archives

Archive 1)

Contents 1 From the archives 1.1 South Walls and all that 1.2 Island population ranks 2 Wording in the lead section 3 Automatic addition of "class=FA" 4 What Highland group? 5 Eilean Dearg (or Eilean Dearg, Loch Riddon)

[edit] From the archives

[edit] South Walls and all that

The land areas used in both the list and the Infoboxes are all Haswell-Smith's estimates. We are, I think, agreed that his definition is flawed: "an Island is a piece of land or group of pieces of land which is entirely surrounded by water at Lowest Astronomical Tide and to which there is no permanent means of dry access" on the grounds that the last clause excludes Skye etc.

However, there area various islands on the article list which also fail his definition as they are tidal (e.g. Davaar, Baleshare, Shuna) .This only becomes an issue for the area rank of the islands after about No. 50, which is roughly where South Walls would be. My understanding is that until about the beginning of the 20th century South Walls was a tidal island but is now connected to Hoy by a causeway. For consistency it would ideally be treated as an island in its own right, but I can't find a reference that provides a separate land area for it. (Uncharacteristically Haswell-Smith does not supply one although he does for other tidal islands).

There are various options, but it seems to me that the most credible and consistent one is to:

• a) define an island as 'land that is surrounded by seawater on a daily basis, but not necessarily at all stages of the tide, excluding human devices such as bridges and causeways.'
• b) Provide South Walls with an assumed area of 'circa 850 ha'. (It is easy to see from any map e.g. [1] that it is very close in size to its immediate neighbour Flotta, which is 876 ha).

I will proceed on this basis unless there are objections. Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a good plan to me. Warofdreams talk 00:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Island population ranks

I have retrieved the ranked populations at Island populations by rank.

I will begin the ranking by area if flagging enthusiasm permits. Ben MacDui (Talk) 10:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Now begun here, which should allow consistent use of area ranks. I will fill in any missing blanks as required.

[edit] Wording in the lead section

"A feature of modern island life is the low crime rate and they are considered to be amongst the safest places to live in the UK."

Isn't this more of a lack of an undesirable feature?--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 11:56, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Depends which way you look at it I suppose. If you have an alternative suggestion for the phrasing, please feel free to present it for discussion. Ben MacDui^(Talk)/(Walk) 13:32, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic addition of "class=FA"

A bot has added class=FA to the WikiProject banners on this page, as it's listed as a featured lists. If you see a mistake, please revert, and leave a note on the bot's talk page. Thanks, _BOT Giggabot (talk) 06:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What Highland group?

I notice use of "Highland" under Group. There are various islands and groups of islands within the Highland local authority area, but I know of no single Highland group of islands. Laurel Bush (talk) 16:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC).

"Highland" islands seems to be a group created to include islands in the Highland region. It's an artifical group created because it is useful, nothing more. Lurker (said · done) 18:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

That is also how I view the group. Let's continue unless anyone can suggest a better name for the group. Of course the Summer Isles are in Highland Region, but have an established group name. Finavon (talk) 22:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Would make more sense to me to use another column in the table to link all the islands to local authority areas, and to use None under Group where this is approriate. Laurel Bush (talk) 11:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Eilean Dearg (or Eilean Dearg, Loch Riddon)

I'm not an islands expert, but someone might like to sort out this island. It appears in the Islands of the Clyde template, as redlink Eilean Dearg, and is listed in the Islands of the Clyde article, under Bute, as relink Eilean Dearg, Loch Riddon, but doesn't seem to be in this main List at all - except, presumably, under a different name, different spelling, English version, etc! Over to you, experts. PamD (talk) 16:05, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

See the reply on the talk page for Islands of the Clyde. Lurker (said · done) 17:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - but I'm still wondering why it isn't listed in this page too! PamD (talk) 23:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Now listed - as a Castle Island. It is somewhat smaller than most of us are working on just yet. Finavon (talk) 00:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)