Talk:Clutha River/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Clutha River. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

INCORRECT ENTRY

There is a completely FALSE entry in the "flood" details of Alexandra. For the 1878 flood.. DID actually flood the lower portions of Alexandra. And until the higher flood of 1999 .. there was a PLAQUE .. in Tarbert Street.. MARKING THE NEAR ENOUGH EXACT SPOT.. That the waters had entered the lower end of Alexandra's MAIN STREET.

Therefore.. YOUR ENTRY IS TOTALLY INCORRECT.

re: [quote] A major flood in 1999 caused serious damage to river communities, especially Alexandra. The flooding in Alexandra was attributed to a rise in the riverbed, resulting from silt loading in the Roxburgh reservoir behind the Roxburgh Dam downriver from the town. The 1878 flood had not flooded the town, but the 1999 did, despite being only 80% of the volume of the 1878 flood. [2]. [unquote]

YES IT DID FLOOD INTO ALEXANDRA. How do I know? I have lived nearly all my life.. In & near to.. Alexandra. And my 99 yr old Dad.. has lived nearly all of HIS LIFE.. there too.

Plus: The NZ Governmental records.. ALSO PROVE THIS FOR A FACT.

Re: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/disasters-and-mishaps-flood-hazards/page-3 re: Clyde and Alexandra were flooded and the wide Manuherikia Valley resembled an inland sea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.237.40.89 (talk) 13:58, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I've modified it. If this isn't satisfactory, feel free to post here again, or make changes yourself directly to the article.-gadfium 19:35, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

maximum recorded flood volume for Clutha / MataAu river in 1999 extreme flooding event has been OFFICIALLY established as being in excess of 5,100 cumecs.

The data given here is INCORRECT, as the maximum recorded flood volume for Clutha / MataAu river during the November 1999 extreme flooding event has been OFFICIALLY established as being in excess of 5,100 cumecs. PLUS the greatest flood ever recorded in 1878 delivered a "massive" quantity of 5,700 cumecs into the lower reaches of the clutha river. re: [quote] South Island rivers

In the South Island, many major eastern rivers originate in the Southern Alps. Weather conditions in their mountain headwaters often produce floods in their lower reaches. The greatest flood ever observed on the Clutha River, New Zealand’s largest river in catchment area and volume of flow, occurred in 1878. It was the result of a succession of weather systems bringing in warm rain and warm wind, which melted the winter snow cover. At the height of this flood, more than 5,700 cubic metres of water poured down the lower reaches of the river near the coast every second.

[unquote]

Hence your INCORRECT assumption that the 2015 flood had a higher level when it was a mere trickle compared to the 5,100 cumecs during the 1999 flood event, or the 5,700 cumecs of the 1878 flood event. It is recorded here that at ALEXANDRA the flood was only 80% of the 1878 flood volume, however the total volume by the time it reached Balclutha was ADDED TO, by the volume of waters exiting other tributaries BELOW ALEXANDRA, (such as the Pomahaka River & the Teviot River) to create the full 51,000+ cumecs at Balclutha..

Also - somewhere in this article's main page, is reference to the 1878 flood that washed away the bridge at Clydevale, which was washed downstream, where it collided with the Balclutha Road Bridge, destroying the latter.

HOWEVER - absolutely NO MENTION has been made to the FACT, that as well as washing away the Clyde bridge (AND KILLING A BUTCHER WHO WAS CROSSING IT AT THE TIME) that Clyde bridge debris also washed away the bridge at Roxburgh when it's debris came hurtling down - during the same 1878 flood event. The "body" of the BUTCHER who died at Clyde, was washed up at Horseshoe Bend, downstream from Millers Flat, and was buried nearby at the site of the LONELY GRAVES.

So - a "lot" of your earlier entries here, DO NOT ACCURATELY RECORD THE FULL FACTS of the major flooding events of this river. 115.188.58.87 (talk) 06:09, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

I see your quote comes from Te Ara. It would be helpful if you could identify your other sources.-gadfium 07:50, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 15 September 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. per discussion consensus and WP:NCNZ. There may be an ongoing discussion about changing that convention, but for now, the current guideline is how we adjudicate and close discussions. When/if that guideline changes to not support dual names here, this can be revisited. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 13:00, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Clutha River → Clutha River / Mata-Au – official name [1], see Avon River / Ōtākaro for reference Gryffindor (talk) 06:53, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Support As per naming conventions. I moved the page to Clutha River / Mata-Au almost two years ago. 4 months after that it was reverted back. There are many usages of the dual name in multiple sources. Usage is also becoming even more common over time. ShakyIsles (talk) 10:38, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
Oppose I outlined some reasoning in the above section following ShakyIsles' inappropriate move, but maybe it's best that this is formalised by a requested move process because what happened earlier was a mess. Simply: Wikipedia article title policy does not support official names over common names. The river is located at "Clutha River" because that's the name that 95% of people know and use. Most people don't know the river's dual name, and far fewer use it. You can see usage of the current title in reliable sources, without any use of the dual name: RNZ 1 and RNZ 2; ODT; Stuff. — HTGS (talk) 03:07, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
Comment There are also articles in every major NZ and local news outlet that use the dual name. See here:

The naming conventions state: "If there are sources that indicate that a dual name has usage beyond mandatory official usage, put the article at the dual name". As I said above there are many usages of the dual name in multiple sources. ShakyIsles (talk) 05:50, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Support - follows precedent of using the dual name on articles where the subject has an official dual name, as is the case here. The dual name has usage from a wide variety of respected local organisations, such as Fish & Game and Land, Air, Water Aotearoa, as well as GIS services, research articles, and Encyclopedia Britannica. Turnagra (talk) 08:43, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
Oppose The guidelines are very clear that the official name of a place is not sufficient to change the title of a Wikipedia article. As per WP:NCGN, WP:RECENTISM, and WP:COMMONNAME, there is not sufficient evidence to show that the requested name is commonly used to the point were an article name change is required. Spekkios (talk) 08:56, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment let's take a look at those. WP:NCGN states that articles should use the widely accepted name (WP:WIAN), and that sources which can be used include:

Major English language encyclopedias - Encyclopedia Britannica uses the dual name
widely used atlases - I can't find digital versions of these
gazetteers - the NZGB Gazetteer uses the dual place name
databases - both the above gazetteer and the US Board of Geographic Names database use the dual name, only referring to the current title as an old form of the name.
Maps - topo maps of the area use the dual name
Government agencies to standardise place names - the NZGB is responsible for this, and recognise the dual name as the official name as above in the gazetteer. The US BGN above is also cited by this row as a source to use
Modern country names - not relevant in this instance
Spelling of place names - the example cited is out of date, and other sources above are consistent on their spelling.

Further down in the guidelines, WP:MPN says to use the modern name for the feature, which in this instance is the dual name. As to WP:RECENTISM, this explicitly states that it's not wikipedia policy or part of the guidelines. A better, actual policy in this case would be WP:NAMECHANGES, which states that extra weight is given to sources used after the name change. At any rate, given that this change happened over 20 years ago, I'm curious as to how long your criteria for recent changes is.

I'd also like to check whether, in copying this across the various move requests, that you actually considered the points which had been previously made? Both ShakyIsles and myself highlighted several sources which collectively demonstrate common usage of the dual name, which you seem to have ignored with your comment. Turnagra (talk) 20:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment Yes, I did in fact look at the points which you raised. HTGS provided some examples so I didn't feel the need to press the case further as this opposition should be uncontroversial. Further, if more Wikipedia guidelines or conventions are required, we can also look at other conventions that which are relevant for this topic, such as WP:CONCISE. I think I have to reiterate that official names have no influence on Wikipedia article titles. Spekkios (talk) 02:32, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@Turnagra: While we quibble over the technicalities of the guidelines, it's important to remember the simple, human reasoning behind a preference for the common name: the full official name adds nothing functionally. No English speaker searching for the Clutha River will be aided in finding it by adding the dual name. Everyone—even those handful of people who use the dual name in real life—know the name "Clutha" just as well, or better, than Clutha / Mata-Au. The easy comparison is the United Kingdom; adding "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" may be the full name, but it adds nothing but length. The shorter name is just as clear for all users.

Further, and this may be a small concern, but anyone who doesn't know that the place has a dual name may be confused by the full name, and think that it refers to some place other than the Clutha River they are searching for. — HTGS (talk) 02:57, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment Doing a google news search limited to the last year there are much less examples of the Mata-Au usage than just Clutha River [2] vs [3]. The claim that usage is becoming more common over time does not seem to have been passed on to the national media. The guideline says it needs usage beyond official sources, and while there is some evidence of that, it is not very strong in this case. Aircorn (talk) 20:34, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
Support as per dual / bi lingual use in New Zealand English. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
Comment: It might be worth noting these ongoing discussions:

There may be some question of whether the relevant aspect of NZ naming conventions actually reflect[s] the consensus of the community. While these discussions are ongoing, I decline to present my own opinion on this proposed move. BilledMammal (talk) 07:17, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment. There is a current RfC proposal draft on the guidelines for dual names. Spekkios (talk) 23:52, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
Support As per naming conventions,and there's plenty of common use for Mata-Au and the full dual name.

While we're discussing it, does anyone want to give a source for the statement that a reason for using only the English half of the dual name is for ease of finding the article? Surely that would depend on how users search for content on Wikipedia; wouldn't a Google search on either half of the name easily find a page that has the dual name as its title? Somej (talk) 09:09, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment Keeping in mind WP:ENGLISH we can look to WP:CRITERIA to find the guidelines on naturalness. Emphasis is mine: The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English. Spekkios (talk) 09:40, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Port Pegasus / Pikihatiti which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 02:03, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 24 June 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 01:30, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Clutha River / Mata-Au → Clutha River – Per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE. Ngrams shows no significant use of the dual name, Google News shows 210 results for the proposed title in the past year, compared to 15 results for the current title, and Google Scholar shows 191 results for the proposed title since 2018, compared to 33 results for the current title BilledMammal (talk) 01:19, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Support per proposal. As I noted in an above RM, and as supported by BilledMammal’s statistics, the major national and local news organisations do not use the dual name, and the dual name is not well known in general. The previous move was made according to an erroneous guideline that was read as supporting the use of dual names whether or not they were sensible as article titles. The guideline at WP:NCNZ was corrected late last year. This page has been left alone, following a (dubious) moratorium on moves, but it’s time to put it back. — HTGS (talk) 03:00, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
- The moratorium was to prevent the exact sort of exhausting back and forth which is now going on with dual names - almost none of the proposals have actually resulted in a consensus (with the exception of moving Codfish Island / Whenua Hou to its dual name) and yet the nominator continues to push the issue. Turnagra (talk) 03:51, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
  - Both Milford Sound and Hauraki Gulf were recently moved due to an RM. --Spekkios (talk) 05:58, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
    Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana was closed as no consensus, which is not the same thing. Turnagra (talk) 06:01, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
    And also moved. --Spekkios (talk) 06:06, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
    
    Hauraki Gulf (/ Tīkapa Moana) was closed as moved (here). — HTGS (talk) 01:13, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Expanding on my existing comment: Like Stewart Island, very few people know the Māori name, or the fact that the river has a dual name. I just asked a friend this weekend “What's the longest river in Otago?”, and the answer was “the Clutha”. Various levels of prompting—for the full name, official name and for the Māori name—did not jog memory for Mata-Au, let alone knowledge of the dual name or its particular format. And this is from someone well-educated, extremely considerate of Māori culture and language and with a professional integration of understanding of the Treaty... and someone who has lived in Otago for over 20 years.

I know this is just anecdote, but these dual names really aren't known by the public. It is absolutely our place on Wikipedia to educate readers on the full name, but it is not our place to pretend that Clutha River / Mata-Au is already the common name or a "widely accepted English name". — HTGS (talk) 20:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Oppose for the exact same reasons I seem to give on every single one of these moves. The specific naming conventions for geographic articles state that we should use the widely accepted English name, in a modern context, and that sources which can be used to determine this include encyclopedias, gazetteers, maps, and databases - all of which use the dual name. See also the variety of sources supporting the dual name provided in the previous requests. There's a bizarre and frankly conspiratorial fascination from some opposed to dual names with attempting to discredit any source which uses them as somehow being paid off by the NZ government, which will no doubt happen here as well, but that doesn't escape the fact that reliable sources use the dual name, instead of relying upon fallacious reasoning to support the argument. Turnagra (talk) 03:51, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
- WP:WIAN asks for the name most often used for this entity; the most widely accepted name. It provides a list of sources that may be suitable for determining this, including English-language news media, Google Scholar results, and Google Ngram Viewer, and it's not clear why you are dismissing the fact that the vast majority of suitable sources prefer the proposed name over the current name. If you believe that these results are fallacious, can you explain why?
I do disagree with your use of two non-independent sources, but even when we include those two sources (the fourth source, Geonames, does not appear to have a recorded name for this river) the results still overwhelmingly prefer the proposed name, so I am not going to debate that point here. BilledMammal (talk) 04:41, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
This is exactly my point - google maps isn't independent? Come on. Turnagra (talk) 06:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
As I said, I'm not going to debate that point here as it is irrelevant - even including both LINZ and Google Maps as suitable sources, suitable sources overwhelmingly prefer the proposed name. However, you haven't explained why you are dismissing sources from English-language news media and Google Scholar. BilledMammal (talk) 06:23, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
Support: This one isn't even close. "Clutha River" quite clearly is the common name for the river. --Spekkios (talk) 05:57, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
Support per nom. Common name in English-language sources. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:02, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Name change was not in line with the convention for dual and alternative names

The New Zealand convensions on dual names clearly states that there has to be clear evidence that the second name has usage beyond mandatory official usage. Wikipedia also has clear guidelines on using common names over official names.

Because the article has been renamed against official guidelines I request that either clear sources be provided that the second name has common use, or that the article be renamed back to it's common name in line with both the aforementioned policies. Spekkios (talk) 23:09, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

You have raised the same question on Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board - please use that notice board page for any further discussion of the request to change page's name back to Clutha River Somej (talk) 04:48, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and change this back to Clutha River / Mata-Au. There was a large discussion on the Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board about dual names. Mata Au is clearly used in many sources and meets the criteria set out in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (New Zealand). If there is still desire for a move I suggest using the WP:RMCM process. ShakyIsles (talk) 08:51, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

To suggest that there was a resolution to the discussion at the notice board is disingenuous at best. The move to the dual name was controversial, especially after Somej sought guidance at the naming conventions talk page last year and was advised against moving it. The page should be moved back, and any attempt to move it to the dual name should seek consensus, or indeed go through WP:RMCM.

Not only does the NZNC not override Wikipedia guidance on using common names over official names, but it does not support a move in this case. Please understand, the preference for "Clutha" over the dual name is not an attempt to assert any sort of moral authority of English over Māori, or an affront against NZ as a multilingual country. It is simply following Wikipedia guidance for naming policy. The title of the article should be clear to readers, and reflect common usage. While the government does refer to the river by its offical name, the English-speaking people of New Zealand do not (see here for a very recent, reputable source using "Clutha"). This is the same policy that results in our using North Korea over "the Democratic People's Republic of Korea", and many other examples. — HTGS (talk) 23:12, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Support change. Dual names are becoming increasingly more common in NZ English (I note NZ news outlets incl. Radio New Zealand, The Spinoff and Otago Daily Times use the name in their reports).[4][5][6] — Preceding unsigned comment added by VolcanicMan (talk • contribs) 21:24, 16 January 2023 (UTC)