Talk:Isle of Sheppey

sheppeyscum.com

[from my talk]

Hello, can you please clarify why a site which states "Some aspects of this site may offend the weak minded, especially the weak minded amongst the Sheppey natives, which is just about all of them. If you are squeamish or easily upset then we suggest you choose not to enter this site. You should probably go fuck yourself instead." is useful info on the island? Anárion 12:50, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Because it's by far the best-known site on Sheppey. Also #1 hit on Google. Leaving it out of the article would be ridiculous. - David Gerard 13:25, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

By that logic the Dubya article should link to http://www.bushorchimp.com/ . The links, if kept in, should be marked as anti-Sheppey and generally hostile. Anárion 13:51, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I didn't realise bushorchimp was quite so popular ;-) Hopefully the present marking is OK - David Gerard 13:58, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't think we need a link to a site that looks like it's been written by a disgruntled teenager whose mummy won't let him use the car to go somewhere exciting. DJ Clayworth 15:43, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Said site is just about the only fame Sheppey has. One could pretend otherwise, but one would nevertheless just be pretending - David Gerard 15:50, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There are two other sites on the page, and they will do fine. Also worth remembering that there is only one thing worse than no information, and that is wrong information. DJ Clayworth 17:17, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

May as well stick my oar in. I've once again removed the "Sheppeyscum" link. The only reason for an article to have an external link is if it is a home site or contains valuable information that cannot be easily included in the article itself. This site does not meet those criteria and, besides, is poorly written and offensive. If it was about a country, instead of a district, it would be considered racist. Deb 21:12, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's not informative as such, but it's meant to be humourous (hey, humour is a matter of individual taste), not informative anyway. Links to humourous sites, parodies etc. are allowed (e.g. the CamperStrike game on the Counter-Strike article), why not Sheppeyscum? Just keep it and put a 'warning, offensive' label on it. 16:52, 3 January 2006 - VJ Emsi

All historic now - sheppeyscum.com now points to a cybersquatter advertising porm. Brunnian (talk) 20:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Who in the hell let Sheppeyscum go down? I'm in America trying to show it to a friend and it's gone! That thing used to put us in tears as my wife is originally from that ungodly shithole. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.144.145 (talk) 00:18, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Sheppey Link site

Is that site really 'anti-Sheppey'? It looks more anti-the council, if anything - David Gerard 14:02, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

quote; Said site is just about the only fame Sheppey has. One could pretend otherwise, but one would nevertheless just be pretending - David Gerard 15:50, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Given this is so why do we need an article of Sheppy at all?, Just Delete the whole page confidant in the knowledge that Sheppey has no other fame. If not then no justification for the link can be made. Remove the link.. Faedra 08:12, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Incorrect map display

Maybe it's my computer, but I don't see any of Kent on that map as it displays in this article. Nurg 02:56, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Local Radio

This section is far from encyclopedic: it looks more like a message from involved individuals to the wider world, and thus comes perilously close to being promotional. I'd rather leave those who have an interest in it to try to bring it into line rather than wield an editorial axe myself: I'd be very tempted to make swingeing cuts to it... Kevin McE 00:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

More than 2 months later, and it looks no better. Do those who have an interest in this part of the article want to bring it more into line with Wiki standards? Kevin McE 19:24, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Still "enthusiastcruft" at best: are any of these stations actually broadcasting? Is there a certain schedule for when they will? If not, I move that this is speculation, and the whole section should be deleted. Kevin McE 10:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Go on Kevin - delete this lot. JonnyH 21:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

More than a year after suggesting that those interested in this section tidy it up, with no defence of its value to the article having appeared here, I've radically edited it. Kevin McE 16:08, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Foot Tunnel

I find this really hard to believe, so I'd be very interested to see some evidence of the existence of this tunnel posted. JonnyH 10:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I have it on the authority of senior official at Sheerness docks, although I have not been able to find an internet reference (but hey! Who is going to write a web page about a tunnel that no-one has been able to use for several decades?)Kevin McE 23:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah but ... That's just one man's word. Can he refer to evidence of any sort: a document, a bricked-up entrance on either side? This sounds seriously anecdotal, or else like a joke. The construction of such a feature beneath the mouth of the River Medway would have been a SERIOUS undertaking. I know that in wartime all sorts of serious things were done, but there must be some evidence for something like this. JonnyH 15:30, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds Napoleonic or even Palmerston, see other article on forts around the Medway for either time frame. i do have book on the subject back at home which I'll dig up sometime but even that IIRC says there were rumours of tunnels linking the forts around the Medway towns, and IIRC didn't go into much depth about Sheppy or the hoo peninsular Pickle 21:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

What does 'IIRC' mean? And I still don't believe any of this. JonnyH 14:08, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll answer my own question. Apparently it's 'If I Recall Correctly'. Hmmm.

I'm going to remove this foot tunnel thing if we don't get any verification soon. JonnyH 21:12, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Let's just keep the tunnel under wraps until we have some evidence. It's best to keep rumour at bay. JonnyH 14:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Ermmm: it was removed 4 days ago. Kevin McE 17:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

How high is the Sheppey Crossing?

Contradicting articles - 35m vs 20m for the height of Sheppey Crossing

This article says:

"The Sheppey crossing ... rises to a height of 20 m above The Swale"

Sheppey Crossing article says:

"The Sheppey Crossing ... crosses The Swale at a height of 35m"

One is nearly double the other.

Both are uncited anyone know which is correct and/or cite source. Carlwev (talk) 10:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

BBC reference says 35m. Highways agency reference says 29m. I'm inclined to favour the latter as being a more 'primary' source. Murray Langton (talk) 13:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarism?

Is it me, or is this entire entry lifted word for word from http://www.kentfind.co.uk/about/sheppey/history.php

Maybe it is the other way round, but surely one of the sites should be acknowledging the other.

62.253.200.30 (talk) 11:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)DD

Automated Peer Review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.^[?]
• As per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), dates shouldn't use ^th; for example, instead of (if such appeared in the article) using January 30^th was a great day, use January 30 was a great day.^[?]
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]^[?]
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, FM [ talk to me | show contributions ]  20:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Remark - the CMS advocates a very specifically US English style and violates WP:LQ (and thus jeopardizes WP:VERIFY), which is entirely unacceptable. There is no major MoS which runs against the rules and spirit of Wikipedia as much as the CMS. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Dispute warning

The source is very low-quality. Please use the actual scientific paper instead. The fossil was not unearthed "[in] 2008 [by] a team of palaeontologists" but found at an unknown date "a few years [before 2008]". And so on. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Sheppeyish language - c1700

anything on the (implausible) rumour that until around 1700-1800 a distinct language or dialect was spoken on Sheppey, unintelligible to Londoners ? a variant of Dutch or Frisian is often conjectured - is this possible ? how ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.198.18.165 (talk) 12:44, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Dutch occupation of 1667

Updated/ corrected this.

Sheppey is not the the most recent place in Mainland Britain to be invaded.

i. First of all it is not part of "mainland" Britain. It is not part of the island of Great Britain- (it is a natural island off the coast of Great Britain). (Although granted for legal purposes, "Great Britain" can include, the islands bridged with Britain like Sheppey, Skye, Anglesey and even ones unbridged with Britain, e.g. Isle of Wight or Mull- but geographically it is separate. More importantly the point is arguable so the claim shouldn't be made.

ii. A part of what is now the UK has been invaded/ occupied more recently parts of Pembrokeshire by the French much later in any case- and we are talking here the part of Pembrokeshire located in Great Britain- not any of the other islands, e.g. Caldey.

iii. It could very well be that Sheppey is the most recent part of England, or even England & Scotland to be occupied by a foreign power. (Sorry not sure enough to make this point- probably a job there for someone to check sources).

iv. Just to nip a potential argument in the bud, Sheppey is clearly part of England and the United Kingdom. So it would not be trumped by examples such as the WWII occupations of many pieces British Sovereign territory and later the Falklands by Argentina- none of them were part of the UK. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.106.75.206 (talk) 22:54, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Tremseth Bridge

I'm removing the whole paragraph about Tremseth Bridge. The original paragraph placed Tremseth bridge between Elmley and the mainland. The bridge was supposedly destroyed by a "tidal wave" during Edward I's reign. The source of the quotation is the website run by Queenborough Harbour citing Charles Igglesden. Unfortunately Igglesden's works do not appear to be on line, but this description of his "A Saunter Through Kent with Pen and Pencil" gives a flavour of the work.

Edward Hasted's "The The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent" or 1778-99 is recognised as an important source of information and a scholarly work. It has rather a different take on Tremseth Bridge:

... that there was formely a bridge leading from hence [Harty] into Shepey, then called Tremseth bridge, which had been broken down by a violent inundation of the sea, and the channel thereby made so deep, that a new one could not be laid; and therefore the inhabitants of Shepey, who before repaired it, maintained in the room of it two ferry-boats, to carry passengers to and fro.
There is now no bridge here, and the fleet which divided this island from that of Shepey is become so very narrow, and has for several years past been so much filled up, that, excepting at high tides and overflow of the waters, Harty has ceased to have any appearance of an island.

Tremseth bridge was therefore an internal bridge within the Isles of Sheppey, not an external one to the mainland. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:43, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

is/are

@Kevin McE: I'm reverting this back to "are". The confusion comes from determining which noun the verb applies to. Is the main sense that "there is a number" or that "there are schools"?

There is a number of schools... - and that number is 6.
There are a number of schools... - and the schools are called Alpha, Beta and Gamma.

I hope that clarifies it for you. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:48, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

There is a number of schools

There are several schools Kevin McE (talk) 23:21, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Your second version is correct and I have changed the main page accordingly. The fact that you can substitute "several" for "a number of" shows that the latter is an adjectival phrase which makes "schools" the object. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:42, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

"There is a number of schools" is grammatically incorrect in British English, and in particular this was parodied by Sacha Baron Cohen in his guise as Ali G : "Iz it cos I is black?" and generally using the third person singular conjugation in all cases. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:40, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea why you are trying to use 1st person singular errors to "prove" that 3rd person plural should be used. But there again given that the matter has been resolved on the page, and talk pages are meant to be about page content. I can only conclude that you are sniffing around my edit history trying to pick arguments because we have been in dispute at another article. Grow up. Kevin McE (talk) 17:03, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid its far more prosaic than that - this article, like Ashford, Kent, Faversham, and Mersea Island is on my radar to improve to good article status, when I can get the sources, as I think Sheppey gets a bad reputation for being full of chavs and druggies, (probably from everyone reading sheppyscum.com as suggested at the top of the talk page) which is rather wide of the mark as Minster Beach is quite nice IMHO. Plus in my real, off-wiki life I have appeared several times on Sheppey FM. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

In that case I retract and apologise: perhaps you can explain to Drmies that such things are possible. Kevin McE (talk) 18:05, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Isle/island

Hi Kevin. I'm not about to start reverting, but your assertion that "other than in place names, word 'isle' is obsolete" is dubious. You don't give any idea about your background on your user page – is this perhaps a UK/US thing? "Isle of Sheppey" is meant to be in British English and "isle" is certainly still in use on this side of the pond. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:50, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

But isn't its use in 'Isle of Sheppey', and 'British Isles' etc, just proving his point? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:55, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I don't follow your line of reasoning. Clearly it is used in place names (as you mention), but where we disagree is that he claims all other uses are obsolete. I would see nothing strange in "Sheppey is an isle off the coast of Kent". It may be less common than "Sheppey is an island off the coast of Kent", but hardly "obsolete". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:45, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Obsolete might have been overstating it (edit notes are brief), but it is so unusual as to be an extreme language choice as a common noun, and would need distinct justification. Usage is almost exclusively poetic rather than prose, except as part of a proper noun: Oxford Concise Dictionary (my own go-to) lists it specifically as poetic or part of place name. My approach is certainly not a US thing: in the 5 years I lived and worked on Sheppey I do not believe that I once heard "isle" used as a common noun, nor can I remember it at any time in my 55 years as a user of UK English, other than in clearly poetic/archaic applications. Kevin McE (talk) 23:14, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the above. When I read through the changes made, my first thought was that the word 'isle' had in some cases been used in the same way as 'island', and that sounded odd and needed to be changes as a matter of style, which is what had happened. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 02:04, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Two interesting points: first in the ten years that I lived in Milton Regis I heard Sheppey referred to as "the isle" (though that may of course simply be a shortening of its formal name), and second the full OED has a slightly less prescriptive entry. The main definition is "A portion of land entirely surrounded by water; an island. Now more usually applied to an island of smaller size, except in established appellations, as 'the British Isles'." There is however small text note giving examples of various isles which at the bottom contains the phrase "As a common noun, island is the ordinary prose word". I think that sums things up well. The word is significantly less common than "island" and would refer to a small island, somewhere between an island and an islet, but certainly does not qualify as obsolete yet. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:40, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

References