Category talk:Rivers of the United Kingdom

Rivers and Streams

Having done some tidying up of rivers and streams in the UK, I wanted to check my understanding of what goes in which category before going any further. The current scheme (with some variation) seems to be…

• Rivers - only includes named rivers (River X), (Y River) or (Afon Z) eg Category:Rivers of England by name
• Streams - all brooks, becks, burns, nants or waters etc., eg Category:Streams in Scotland

It would be useful to know if this is the consensus view on how rivers and streams in the UK should be categorised.--Jokulhlaup (talk) 13:20, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

@Jokulhlaup: That's the approach I've taken over the last six or seven years, and nobody has complained yet! Rodhullandemu (talk) 13:53, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Rod, thanks for the quick response. I thought it was worth asking the question (and putting up a definition) to see if there were any issues.--Jokulhlaup (talk) 14:32, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I think brooks and waters are tricky ones. I wrote about a few recently which I certainly felt to be minor rivers (examples Kirklees Brook or Pendle Water). Though I'm not really sure that adding a minor rivers category would help much.Trappedinburnley (talk) 14:59, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I've worked on river categorisation in the past, and my preference was simply to treat everything as a river (so many of the brooks and becks in Category:Rivers of England by name are probably my doing). My rationale was that there's no hard division between streams and rivers and some "brooks" or "becks" are longer and bigger than some "rivers". Perhaps merge under "Rivers and streams..."? Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:54, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm uneasy about using the name as the distinguishing feature between rivers and streams. My thoughts on this:

1. Are any major watercourses excluded, because they aren't called river? What's the most substantial?
2. Some watercourses named "river" are truly minor, and obviously smaller than nearby non-rivers. eg The Strane River near Princetown on Dartmoor is <2km long, while the nearby Cherry Brook is at least three times longer.
3. This scheme means that the headwaters of a river as called a river, not a stream, but they are hydrographically identical to any other nearby stream (and distinct from the lower reaches of the river). This watercourse is much more similar to this one than it is to this one.

My opinion is that as long the categories for rivers and streams are closely linked (ie streams are a sub-cat of rivers), then there isn't a problem. If they are not parent-child, the distinction needs to be meaningful and not simply the name.

I'd also oppose introducing "rivers and streams", that's a poor title analogous to the deprecated "towns and villages". Instead use some generic overarching title, not two of the specific names given to natural watercourse.--Nilfanion (talk) 20:59, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Nilfanion, just to answer your first question I used the NRFA search page to find the largest measured Waters, Brooks, Burns and Becks by catchment area (in sq.km to the gauging point), which were

Whiteadder Water (503)

West Beck (242)

Alconbury Brook (201)

Tarset Burn (96)

Of course the gauging points are rarely at the bottom of the catchment so the true area will be larger, but it does give a reasonable indication of the relative sizes.--Jokulhlaup (talk) 15:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, the data confirms my uneasiness. There are lots of rivers with catchment areas ranging from 100 to 500 sq km (from the Devon Avon through the Ystwyth to the Falkirk Avon). Seems odds to treat the Whiteadder as being different from any those, or other major Tweed tributaries like the Till and Teviot. The smallest "rivers" have catchments of <10 sq km, and seems downright bonkers to treat them as more significant than the Whiteadder...--Nilfanion (talk) 18:49, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

So if the current categories are unworkable, is the best option to combine rivers and streams as Natural watercourses (or some other title) or simply as Rivers (which has been the approach on Wikipedia since 2016) see this lengthy discussion.--Jokulhlaup (talk) 11:33, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree, that's something for a CFD at the global (not just UK) level. I could support "natural watercourses" or "rivers". Plain "watercourses" is out, as that category already exists and includes canals too (and ought to include aqueducts).--Nilfanion (talk) 22:41, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

I have raised an appropriate CfD at Commons:Categories for discussion/2018/04/Category:Rivers to discuss the issue.--Jokulhlaup (talk) 11:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)