London Postcodes

[NickDavies]

Looking at it again the broadest brush approach would be as follows

SW1A, E, H,P and Y - Westminster. The big area bounded by the river, Vauxhall Bridge Road, Grosvenor Place, Piccadilly to near Piccadilly Circus then down to Hungerford Bridge. A big chunk of this area is of course devoid of pubs.
SW1V - Pimlico. I know it includes Victoria Station but so be it
SW1 W and X - Belgravia. OK so Harrod's is in Knightsbridge but it's they who insisted on being in the same district as the queen.

[Conrad]

Looking at it again the broadest brush approach would be as follows

SW1A, E, H,P and Y - Westminster. The big area bounded by the river, Vauxhall Bridge Road, Grosvenor Place, Piccadilly to near Piccadilly Circus then down to Hungerford Bridge. A big chunk of this area is of course devoid of pubs.
SW1V - Pimlico. I know it includes Victoria Station but so be it
SW1 W and X - Belgravia. OK so Harrod's is in Knightsbridge but it's they who insisted on being in the same district as the queen.

Ok, we have Westminster as W1, does that sound right?

[NickDavies]

Ok, we have Westminster as W1, does that sound right?

West End would be better - which is divided in four easily by Oxford St and Regent St into Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Soho and Mayfair.

[oldboots]

West End would be better - which is divided in four easily by Oxford St and Regent St into Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Soho and Mayfair.

I was just thinking it's mainly the names that confuse people who know London. If I was told a pub was in Westminster and it was actually up by Oxford Circus I'd never find it. Of course as a non Londoner I find SE11 and Manor Park equally opaque.

[NickDavies]

I was just thinking it's mainly the names that confuse people who know London. If I was told a pub was in Westminster and it was actually up by Oxford Circus I'd never find it. Of course as a non Londoner I find SE11 and Manor Park equally opaque.

The local authority of most of the West End being City of Westminster, which I guess is why WC1 (Bloomsbury, St Pancras, Gray's Inn) is styled Camden here as at least some of WC1 is in that borough though none of it is remotely near Camden.

[Rex_Rattus]

Why do I think adding places to the site will make it less usable? Compare Central London to Greater London. Greater London is our worst sinner with 142 "Postal Towns" (a bad name for our London listings, but just to give it the name used elsewhere in the site) I find that page completely unusable personally, whereas Central London has 35 currently, far more manageable chunks. So in our worst case scenario, Central London suddenly multiplies from 35 Postal Towns to 300+ Postal Towns.

Also lets imagine RogerB works in a pub he tells his friend it is in Westminster, but some helpful soul has known better and put it in St James Park, his friend successfully find Westminster in the list of places in Central London but can't find the pub. Admittedly arguably that problem is already there, but I think it is less of a problem than the proposed open it up completely approach.

.

Fair enough Conrad, if you want to keep the number Central London names down to the bare minimum then so be it. But I would offer the following points. I don't see why Greater London is a sinner for having 142 place names. I agree that if someone wants a list of all London pubs then it won't work for that, but what use would a list of 2 or 3 thousand pubs be? Greater London does have these places, so why is having a list of them unusable? The other day I wanted a list of pubs in both Poplar and Wapping; ask anyone who knows London and they will agree that these are legitimate places. But they are not listed as places. I eventually found the Wapping pubs in Whitechapel (because I know the geography of that part of London I was able to make an educated guess as to where they might be listed). But someone who didn't know London might be hard pressed to find them. I suppose it depends on how you expect users to use these location names. You probably have more experience than me in this matter, but I would have thought that most people would want search for pubs in a particular location. I suppose a member might want to search for pubs in a more general area like the East End, and it might be difficult for them if they were all listed separately in Whitechapel, Stepney, Bethnal Green, Wapping, etc etc. But listing them all under,say, Whitechapel wouldn't help much. If that is how you think people want to use the search facility then it might be necessary to lump the appropriate postcodes together and call the place (say) the East End. I'm really just thinking out loud, I suppose. I have to say that it is not really an important issue for me; I have no axe to grind as I know my way round London's pubs. But it's something to chew on. Whatever you decide to do, the SW1 and W1 split is much better than the present situation, and I would support it as a definite improvement.

Now to that hardworking publican, RogerB! Are you really saying a pub should remain wrongly attributed to Westminster because if someone had been told erroneously it was in Westminster they would not be able to find it where it really is - i.e. under St James's Park? What about all those people who want to look for it under its correct location? What I've said is just one bloke's opinion of course!

[Conrad]

Don't worry, I am not interpreting it as anyone with an axe to grind here, and I don't know London so I am legitimately looking for help. I don't like Greater London as it just has too much information on it, as you saying having a list of 1,000's of pubs is just as bad and means we have got the locations too big (unavoidable sometimes sadly).

I suppose what I am saying is that in these place lists it should for me be fairly easy and reasonable to just drill down the site quickly without doing huge scrolls down the screen. Whereas if you know where you are going the search should be used. If you type Wapping in you get a list of Google matches and then click on the London match and you get a map with the nearest pub to the center listed, and a similar logic should work with most locations.

Now that logic will work whatever locations we use, so it is fine to change Central London around, but we need to be able to administer it, the postcode method is the only way me and Dave can manage that. I am happy enough to split it up, but I suppose I need the interested members to be invested enough that we can sort out the locations, and I would like to keep the quantity of locations discrete so that we don't get carried away and end up with a Central London that is multiple screens long.

Unless anyone disagrees (and please do if you can see an issue) I will try and degrade the SW1 and W1 listings in the way suggested by Nick towards the end of the week (may need help on sorting out the W1 split). For now I am busy sorting out a few other things.

[NickDavies]

As I said I'd suggest splitting W1 - the West End into four quarters centred on Oxford Circus

W1 G, H and U - Marylebone
W1 T and W - Fitzrovia
W1 D and F - Soho
W1 J, K and S - Mayfair

W1B is Regent St itself
W1C is Oxford St itself.

I would suggest putting any pubs in B and C in the correct 'quarter' manually. There's only a few on Regent St/Portland Place and one I think on Oxford St.

[Conrad]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for that, I will sort that out on Friday as you have described, will post up the ones I don't know where to put at that point.

[Rex_Rattus]

As I said I'd suggest splitting W1 - the West End into four quarters centred on Oxford Circus

W1 G, H and U - Marylebone
W1 T and W - Fitzrovia
W1 D and F - Soho
W1 J, K and S - Mayfair

W1B is Regent St itself
W1C is Oxford St itself.

I would suggest putting any pubs in B and C in the correct 'quarter' manually. There's only a few on Regent St/Portland Place and one I think on Oxford St.

Great work Nick. There is only one pub on Oxford St (The Tottenham - reviewed by yours truly only the other day). If W1C has only got the one pub in it, maybe simpler for Conrad to just allocate W1C to Fitzrovia?