Grade i and grade II* makes for an interesting start, though I suspect we might already have most of them - apart of course from ones that we have no access to such as the grade II* listed cellar under a bank in the midlands. For future years when we broaden it I would like to suggest we extend it to scheduled ancient monuments as well.


On 20 August 2013 20:05, Maarten Dammers <maarten@mdammers.nl> wrote:
Hi Andrew,

Op 19-8-2013 22:21, Andrew Gray schreef:
Hi Maarten,

Some notes I made a while back on the problems with including Grade II (and equivalent):
I wondered if it was so much different than the Netherlands:

Total sites uk: 460000
Total area UK : 243610 km = 1,88 monuments/km2
Total inhabbitants UK: 63181775 = 1 monument / 137 inhabbitants

Total sites Netherlands: 63143 Rijksmonumenten and about 20.000 Gemeentelijke monumenten
Total area Netherlands: 41543 = 1,52 monuments/km2 (only RM) or 2,00 with Gemeentelijke monumenten
Total inhabbitants Netherlands: 16788973 = 1 monument / 256 inhabbitants (only RM) or 1 moment / 201 inhabbitants

So order of magnitude is about the same.

a) The lists become huge and difficult to maintain;
Yes, that's quite a bit of work. I ended up in some cities splitting it up by street. I'm still not done with https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Navigatie_rijksmonumenten_Amsterdam and https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Navigatie_rijksmonumenten_Haarlem . You really need local idiots like me for that ;-)

b) Grade II contains many of the "non-building" listings; looking at the 703 Grade II in Cambridge, the first few on the list include a statue, a boathouse, a couple of walls, and some gates. On my way to work, I cycle past two telephone boxes, an unremarkable river lock, some respectable terraced cottages... all grade II listed, and all within a few hundred meters on the same road. They're individually registered, but they're not what the general public would consider "listed buildings" (and personally I'd argue that a lot simply aren't very interesting from Commons' perspective)
I love the not "premier league" buildings. It is really an eye opener to see that these quite ordinary buildings have such a history. 
c) Because it contains so many buildings, a lot of them are still people's homes. This gets us into some complicated and concerning issues; I am not sure there's much benefit to running a contest encouraging people to go and take lots of pictures of relatively anonymous houses, and it's quite possibly going to backfire if we do. It's still something of an issue with WLM in general, but I'd argue that a Grade I or II* building is less likely to feel weird in this regard - if you live in it, you're a bit more used to the idea of public attention than if you live in a less distinctive building. Grade II almost certainly contains a much higher number of private residences both proportionately and absolutely.
Most of the Rijksmonumenten in the Netherlands (about 27.000) are homes (either normal house or farmhouse). We had some fun conversations during the "wiki takes ..." events, but I don't recall anyone running into any real problems.

Anyway, take this in account for the future :-)

Maarten

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