Thank Goodness something to ramble about

Colin Spiller kindly sent us this article from the BBC via the site feedback. He thought I might find it interesting and he wasn't wrong, apart from anything else it gives me something to ramble on about here.

I figured I would use Pubs Galore to analyse their report, this is in no way scientific as I realise that Pubs Galore has a long way to go to become an absolute list, but it is coming on in leaps and bounds thanks to the members efforts.

Anyway towns they mention claiming most pubs, our counts are of opened pubs, someone else will have to supply the population, the number in brackets excludes the outlying regions that we put lower down the town screens, that will be even less correct though:
Glasgow - 601 (492)
Bewdley - 19 (18)
Bollington (sub of Macclesfield) - (12)
Weymouth - 86 (73)
Witney - 64 (27)
Saffron Walden - 33 (14)
St. Albans - 92 (53)
Rugby - 94 (48)

Also they say there are 5 pubs in Manningtree, so someone needs to let us know which one we are missing! Along with the 2 in Otley, 1 in Beeston and 75 in Brighton and Hove (a well researched area) which we are apparently missing.

Actually to be honest it was the body of the article that I found more interesting as it touches on some of the problems we have running the site.

What is a town? My goodness if I had a penny for every person who tries to correct our geography (well I wouldn't have that much, but it is a popular question). We are frequently told towns should be separated out, and that some town is in a different county, or indeed the old classic that there is no more Avon (just in case we still use that one to avoid having to put Bristol in 3 different counties). We do constantly try and improve this bit of the system, but it is quite difficult with so many perceptions of how it should work. In general we stick with the old Postal Counties and now with the addition of Google Maps that has made it a lot easier for everyone. But if you do know the magic solution, let us know as we have had no end of beer fueled debates about how to improve it.

What is a pub? Another one that foils us, our lists were build off some badly constructed data, and occasionally included weird community centres, a lot of hotels, and other weirdness. That is now being eradicated by constant correction by our members, but we are also seeing oddities creeping in, our members aren't sure if Hotels are allowed or not (we are letting them decide), also night clubs. The whole thing is a mine field we will have to wait and see how it all evolves, feel free to contribute to that though, we welcome your opinions on our forums.

A brief editorial comment before I move on to the and finally, I try not to name the member if they have informed me through feedback as it can be more private, whereas if I am plucking the information off our forum or pubs galore site I will copy the name, so if you send me feedback and don't mind me crediting you, please let me know. We try and give credit wherever possible.

And finally they mention most popular pub names, we only have 703 pubs with names like Red Lion (another challenge for our members to find the 53 we are missing), but our top 5 are (I know the Red Lion is only saying 462 there, but that is because for my original count I just looked for any pub with Red Lion in the name, this time I went for [The] Red Lion, there is also things like Red Lion Coaching House, Red Lion On the Green, etc.):

The Red Lion - 462
The Royal Oak - 442
The New Inn - 291
The Crown Inn - 290
The White Hart - 245