Talk:Oxford

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Date	Process	Result
May 5, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed

This article is written in British English with Oxford spelling (colour, realize, organization, analyse; note that -ize is used instead of -ise) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Cities

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Archives

Archive 1

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Governance

I saw that this page did not have a 'Governance' section. As such sections are fairly normal, being encouraged at WP:UKCITIES, I drafted one and added it this morning. However, my edit has been reverted without explanation by @MrDemeanour. I'd be grateful if the reason for its removal could be provided please - as far as I can see it was reasonably informative, uncontroversial and had adequate sourcing. I'm aware that there's a fuller article at Oxford City Council, which I signposted, but I still think there's value in having a short summary on the Oxford page too. From a quick sample of other English cities with similar local government structures, I see that Cambridge, Norwich, Worcester and Exeter all have governance sections on the page for the city as well as separate pages for their city councils. I'd like to reinstate a governance section for Oxford, but given that my previous attempt was reverted I would like to check here that there isn't consensus as to why such a section might be inappropriate for Oxford. Many thanks Stortford (talk) 17:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Stortford That would be a cock-up, sorry. I was trying to revert something else. MrDemeanour (talk) 10:39, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for confirming - and I see someone else has already reverted the section. Stortford (talk) 12:06, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The High

There's an unreffed claim that High Street is normally referred to as 'The High'. While this was common usage within the University in times past, it's rarely employed today - I don't think I've ever heard an actual Oxford resident use it in the 35 years I've been living there. It has connotations of Bertie Wooster and Brideshead Revisited. If the claim is going to stay in the article it needs a specific ref. Ef80 (talk) 09:48, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's easy enough to find references showing it has been referred to as The High for a considerable time such as this from 1898 and this from 1988, but referencing whether that's still the case now, or conversely that the term has since fallen out of use, would be much harder. Waggers TALK 10:36, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, when I was a graduate student in the late 70s the term was already seen as archaic and was little used even in the University. I suspect it's just obsolete public school / undergraduate slang, but as you say, finding good refs to support this is difficult. --Ef80 (talk) 10:51, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"The High" is still fairly commonly used within the University, and survives in names such as "Honey's Of The High". Other similar names are definitely disappearing: "The Broad" is getting rare, and "The Turl" is almost unheard of these days. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 12:33, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hidden Figures - Jesus College

Just dropping a note in case any page-watchers feel like creating an article for one of these women that Jesus College is celebrating later in the year: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Women_connected_to_Jesus_College,_Oxford Lajmmoore (talk) 21:14, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oxford Panorama Suspiciously Like Image Generated Art

Hi, I was trying to read about Oxford and started looking through the images and noticed that the panorama looks suspiciously like an image generation algorithm. The walls and tiles of buildings look like they're made of playdough or melting. Most of the grass and bushes have a "smeared" quality. Portions of the image do not appear to color match with other portions of the image, and buildings appear to have been sloppily overlaid on each other. The entire image looks "cartoonish" or like it was drawn with oil paint.

I believe the motivation is like the same as much of the rest of the world wide web, easy achievements, notoriety, and praise, without actually visiting locations.

The picture in question is:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/1_oxford_aerial_panorama_2016.jpg

Araesmojo (talk) 03:12, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I can see what look like compression artefacts the image appears to me, based on having lived and worked in Oxford for 40 years, to be entirely genuine. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 08:27, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not AI-generated, it's 8 years old. Instead, it's a stitched image, and very badly stitched one at that. It's such bad quality I am removing it from the article. Of course if other's put it back in then we can discuss further here. 10mmsocket (talk) 09:45, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]