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WP:Article Incubator

Maybe I've been living in a cave, but I have just discovered that Wikipedia:Article Incubator exists and found the article for one of the top 10 highest profile current AFL adminstrators, Brian Cook, had been moved to Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Brian Cook (football administrator). I only found this as I randomly decided to check my edit count and it listed my top edited pages by section, and this page showed up in the otherwise little used Wikipedia Talk namespace. It seems like they are still in the conception stage of the incubation project (pun intended - only about 50 pages moved there so far). Despite this page being moved for not having any references, they seem to be leaning more towards making it a preferential location instead of WP:Userfication following an AFD or contested PROD. Regardless of why pages are moved out of article space, I think it's essential that the projects are notified of any incubation moves - I'd suggest either using the Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Article alerts page or some other automated method of category intersection of the project pages with the incubator pages. In this Cook case, I'll probably tidy/ref it up in the coming days, but we need to keep an eye out for what's happening out there. We can't just rely on hoping someone has it in their watchlist. The-Pope (talk) 15:34, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

My cave has a terrific view, but no power to run an incubator. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:53, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Nah thats under the mushroom stuff that - probably go the way of other projects with dubious means and odd ways SatuSuro 15:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, the article incubator concept is an odd one; the idea is to give articles which have been found to be unviable a second chance, but this is obviously dependent on there being editors who wish to work on these topics. As a result, the lack of cooperation with relevant Wikiprojects is something of an oversight and I also suspect that this will run out of steam. I find it much less annoying than WP:RESCUE though, as there is an emphasis on developing viable articles rather than spamming references found via Google and moving on. Nick-D (talk) 05:04, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
And given that the article would have showed in the prod and AFD lists of interest to this project, that is the point to pay an interest. Any one is welcome to fix the article up to a keepable standard, so you are lucky to find it in the incubator rather than the rubbish bin of deletion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
The point in the Cook case is that it never went anywhere near a PROD or AFD, it was moved as it was a unreferenced BLP. An overly positive one at that too - no controversial/negative points at all. If that was a one-off bad move by an overly enthusiastic editor, then fine. If that class of articles are going to be their targets, then we have a problem. Feedback I've had to date tends to be that it was a mistake/rarity to move articles like that, for that reason, without having them go through a PROD or AFD process. Either way, they need to get the projects involved, and the automatic Article Alerts system would be the easiest way to do it, IMHO.The-Pope (talk) 13:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
  • The problem is bigger than one article being moved from mainspace, there are 50,000+ unreferenced BLP's out there the Foundation is working on finding a solution to these as each is a potential problem. Moving these out of mainspace means that "nofollow" tags can be added preventing them appearing on google type searches which mitigates some of the potential issues but such moves are only a temporary solution whats needed is for editors to check BLP articles and ensure they are referenced. When you link to a BLP check the article has references, if it doesnt do something about it obviously you have a source otherwise you wouldnt be adding the person to another article. Gnangarra 15:34, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for this info Gnanga, I guess for us mere mortal editors, we don't know what's going on out there in the back rooms, but it's good to know someone we know is involved. Of those 50000, I'd guess at least 2000 2028 are WP:Australia related, judging by the listing at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Cleanup listing#BLP articles lacking sources and Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Cleanup listing#Unreferenced BLPs, based on an intersection of Category:WikiProject Australia articles and Category:Unreferenced BLPs (using the AWB list comparer- output is at User:The-Pope/Aussie Unref BLPs). I have to wonder, though, what real benefit is gained by the encyclopedia with an edit like this. It gets the WP:AFL's oldest unreferenced BLP of the list, but doesn't really add anything except a little bit of (mainly offline) verifiability. In the AFL realm, we could fairly easily add that sort of AFL Tables/AFL Encyc of Players ref for every single unrefed BLP... but is that really the best use of our time? To do it properly would take a much longer time.The-Pope (talk) 09:14, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Wow - now if only we had the people and time :( - well done The-Pope - at least we can see what we are standing in - so to speak SatuSuro 12:28, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Category problem

Yesterday I tried to remove cities with a sub-category of their own from the Category:Cities in Queensland page. Today some of them, for example Cairns, Queensland are still appearing in that category even though I removed it from the article. I thought it might have been a template such as {{Queensland cities}} automatically placing it in the category but that doesn't appear to be the case. Can anyone explain this considering that Charters Towers, Queensland, Caloundra, Queensland and Ipswich, Queensland were fixed but another 7 were not? - Shiftchange (talk) 06:23, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The categorisation is built into {{Infobox Australian place}}. I suggest removing all auto-categorisation from the infobox as I consider it causes more problems than it solves and it reduces editor flexibility. Personally I would leave the main cat and the sub cat in the articles anyway. -- Mattinbgn\talk 06:37, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Maybe we shouldn't have our own infobox template and just use the international infobox settlement one? <ducks and runs away> The-Pope (talk) 06:43, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Bidgee whacks The-Pope with a cricket bat! ;) :P Bidgee (talk) 06:44, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Personally I think the autocat is problematic. There is a hidden parameter to disable autocat in an individual article (| _noautocat = yes), but "cities in" should not be a default. I've knocked "cities in" out of the code - it should flush out over a few days. Orderinchaos 08:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreviewed FACs

Both are at the bottom of the page after about a month without many takers YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:22, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Great Eastern Ranges

Anyone know more about it? Needs a cleanup. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:53, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks to be an environmental program along sections of the Great Dividing Range. Bidgee (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletion review

Chinese immigration to Sydney, Australia - Filed by Privatemusings regarding the 27 December deletion of this article. Orderinchaos 04:31, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

State Theatre (Sydney)

Thought this'd be a good DYK - but hard to expand further without books...anyone have any? Have got it from 97 to over 300 words today....Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:51, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

A vote to move Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom to Elizabeth II is being held at Talk:Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. —what a crazy random happenstance 02:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

GA drive

Is this still happening? YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It would be good if in a year, each state could have the capital city or the state article to GA, or at least both a solid B-class. But I think I'm dreamin'. Aaroncrick (talk) 03:05, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

FAR for History of the Australian Capital Territory

I have nominated History of the Australian Capital Territory for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.) –Grondemar 04:40, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. Orderinchaos 05:38, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Inevitable and finally happened. And more on the way, judging by all the Australian stuff in the 2005 section of WP:Unreviewed featured articles YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 06:39, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Out of the 69 oldest unreveiwed FAs on that list, 8 are Australian and all look decidedly wobbly to say the least YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 06:42, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
Indeed - Australia seems a suitable priority as it probably isn't at FA standard at present, but should be. I'm planning on giving Australian Defence Force (a class of '07 FA) a major overhaul this weekend, as much of it is now out of date or doesn't meet current FA requirements. Nick-D (talk) 06:45, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It would be more efficient if folks, especially if they have background knowledge on wildlife and the ACT to pre-empt the FAR, instead of everyone, clueless uninitiated and topic enthusiasts alike, panicking or rushing things when the shoulder-tap comes and little/no work has been done for five years YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 06:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about the content, but the citations thing is pretty glaring already compared to normal standards, although people familiar with the topic may not find the cites thing hard if they know where to look. I don't know about the content, but when Lake Burley Griffin, Australia at the Winter Olympics, Cane toad and Shrine of Remembrance came up the content had to be overhauled heavily, so 2005 stuff may need the same YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 09:24, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

List of Prime Ministers of Australia

Notice of a proposal for a new format for this list now posted at Talk:List of Prime Ministers of Australia#New Format. BartBassist (talk) 13:37, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

David Tweed article being whitewashed

Hi all, as this is an Australia related article I was wondering if other editors might like to look at the edit history of David Tweed? It seems that someone is trying to whitewash the article. I'm trying to discuss, but to no avail. - Tbsdy lives (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) talk 21:44, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2009 Barack Obama visit to China (2nd nomination)

This AfD covers 2009 Kevin Rudd visit to Japan.--Grahame (talk) 11:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Our friends accross the Pacific voted to delete the Rudd article but keep the Obama article.--Grahame (talk) 23:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Didn't the original and main author put the Rudd article on AFD? Bizarre. - Tbsdy lives (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) talk 12:11, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

A challenge

Right, you drongos, you have work to do. Toyota Land Cruiser (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is a crap article, it is basically a one para intro and then a list of models (which should probably be split out into a separate sub-article). Until I added a single sentence today it didn't even mention how iconic it is in Australia. We all know that there are only two 4x4s in the world, the Land Cruiser and the Hilux (bugger!). Australian pride is at stake! And I can't fix the problem because I'm a bloody Pom. So, get yer editing boots on and head over there. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 16 January 2010 (UTC) What a lot of bushie crap - it was once said there were more toyota land cruisers in the northern territory than there were people, and anyway nissans are much more prominent in the southern states now anyways - whats with the pride rubbish - drongoes indeed - SatuSuro 13:04, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Maybe in the West (or do they call it the Wait Awhile state :P) but in the rural NSW the land cruiser and Hilux is popular but not like the Northern Territory, even the NT Police only use Toyota for the 4x4 in its fleet. I've left a message on User:OSX's talkpage, as they have great knowledge in the Australian car industry. Bidgee (talk) 13:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Silly sign or locations

I though when I seen this and this I thought it couldn't get any stranger but to day this school zone sign takes the WTF award! Surely there has to be more? Bidgee (talk) 11:42, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Haha, there is actually one not too far from where I live (it's not even a cul-de-sac). Doesn't have a "40" helpfully painted on the road though. It could also be something to do with the fact that driving instructors seem to enjoy using it to teach reverse parks and U-turns. Lankiveil (speak to me) 12:08, 17 January 2010 (UTC).
Got no idea why this is one is in that location though! Bidgee (talk) 12:18, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Localities or (tiny) towns?

There is a deletion debate on Category:Localities in New South Wales.--Grahame (talk) 00:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Who gets to decide what is a town, what is a village, what is a locality etc? There is no formal basis for determining what would belong in what category and therefore splitting will lead to endless disputes about whether Oaklands, New South Wales and Daysdale, New South Wales (for example) are "towns" or "villages". Easier to keep the status quo of "Towns" with a broad reach covering everything that is not a "city". A flat category tree for localities is much to be preferred than a complex multi-layered, subjective tree. -- Mattinbgn\talk 00:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Sounds sensible, Mattinbgn. Would suggest in case of dispute that if a place name search at http://www.ga.gov.au/place-name/ shows a LOCB ("Locality (bounded), Town, Village, Populated place, Local government town, Town site (no population)") in the results (for that actual location) then consider it a town/locality (i.e. one category name indicating a bounded locality). Donama (talk) 01:03, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree it is easier not to make a distinction, but I know that some of the articles that are being created relate to places that once had a railway station, a silo and a few houses, but they have now all gone.--Grahame (talk) 01:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Well thats when the ghost town category comes in handy :)
I thought this had been thrashed out years ago at Australian places - orderinchaos - where ever he is is likely to want to say something on this as well - in western australia and tasmania there is an endless issue over this - and in most cases there is what they have been ascribed by government authority - townsites such as Crotty, Tasmania apparently still exist despite being under water... surely there is a NSW governmental attribution... ? If the answer is no, the tendency in western australian and tasmanian places that I have had to deal with - locality is far more sensible (which seems to agree with Donama above) - towns indeed - must be eastern siders claiming such bizarre status for 2 horse localities - btw the use of the word 'village' is anachronistc POV and should never be used for any locality - having just read the category for discussion I am appalled at the lack of collective memory in this project of the issues when they arose at Australia Places and various other points over the last couple of years. Settlements and villages should imho be eliminated from any discussion - and locality utilised whereever possible - SatuSuro 01:29, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
We have some odd problems in content organisation. Ideally we would just have Cities, Towns, Suburbs, and when in doubt use Towns. The only time this is a problem is when we have a bounded locality which is not a town and not close enough to a metro area to be a suburb (one example that comes to mind is Wilbinga, Western Australia). Agreed with Grahamec re LOCB being useful - I use that myself.
Agreed with Satu that "villages" are anachronistic and rarely used in Australian English; the only time I ever see it now is in some NSW land titles and in real estate advertisements to try and promote a "village lifestyle" in what is really a cookie-cutter urban suburb. "Settlements" is just stupid, as I've argued before. Orderinchaos 01:32, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Spot the town
Here's a new article today: Brindabella, New South Wales. This is a a place I've driven through many times but I have never seen the town.--Grahame (talk) 01:39, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Brindabella is officially designated as a locality, not a town.[1]. According to the Glossary of designation values in the Geographical Names Register the following definitions apply:
  • LOCALITY A bounded area within the landscape that has a ‘Rural’ Character
  • SUBURB A bounded area within the landscape that has an ‘Urban’ Character
  • TOWN A commercial nucleus offering a wide range of services and a large number of shops, often several of the same type. Depending on size, the residential area can be relatively compact or (in addition) dispersed in clusters on the periphery.
  • VILLAGE A cohesive populated place in a rural landscape, which may provide a limited range of services to the local area. Residential subdivisions are in urban lot sizes.
From this it would seem clear that a locality is the rural equivalent of a suburb, not a town. The only real difference between a locality and a suburb is that the houses are a lot further apart. --AussieLegend (talk) 05:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Well Harefield near Junee is a locality and not a town according to the GNB. Bidgee (talk) 06:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, what makes Illabo, New South Wales a "locality" rather than a "town"? Continuing down this path of hairsplitting (even using the GNB) seems to me to be opening up a series of POV arguments about what should be a town. I strongly urge retaining our current flat and simple category structure. From my part of the world I can see issues with drawing a line from the following example (listed in order of size):

I can clearly see the first as a locality and the last as a town but the rest could conceivably be listed as towns, villages or at the smaller end localities. Other than my own personal POV, how can I draw a line? Note I have a similar problem with places such as Echuca, Victoria and Maryborough, Victoria, former LGA cities that are now part of "Shire" LGAs. Are these places "towns" or cities". Continuing to split the "settlement" category will only magnify this problem, while achieving (IMO) very little in improved comprehension for the reader. -- Mattinbgn\talk 11:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking about raising this issue on this notice board, since I was the first to oppose deletion. But I can thank Grahamec for drawing attention to the issue. However to be constructive, how about we have categories called Localities in state for each state. This would be used for places with names that do not qualify for town, ghost town, city, suburb or region. Official types could be used to determine what category the name is, but for Tasmania, calling everything a suburb sounds weird, and does not seem like actual practice. In ACT there would be a couple of Villages, and several localities eg Top Naas with a farm, Lanyon, with a farm and an art gallery, Ginninderra, Picadilly Circus with no houses at all, Pierces Creek with one house left. The Villages could be localities in ACT. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Pity the ACT Planning and Lands Authority doesn't say what the locations are! Bidgee (talk) 12:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Well Tharwa gives us "LOCALITY (BOUNDED), TOWN, VILLAGE, DIVISION " from the same web site, plenty of choice here! I would have classified it as a village. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Geographic nomenclature is a state responsibility, not a federal one, and every state has its own schema and terminology. Some states distinguish between towns and localities; some do not. The Gazetteer of Australia, faced with the impossibility of federating such disparate data, lumps them all into a "bounded locality" class. It also recognises an "unbounded locality" class, for vaguely defined places like surfing spots. This implies that not all localities are settlements, and it makes the use of "Localities in... " categories somewhat problematic unless they are going to be catch-alls for virtually any place that is not a geographic feature. My preference would be to call any population centre a "town" and be done with it. Hesperian 12:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

There are 67 places in NSW with "illabo" in their name but only #36, 37 and 38 are "Illabo" and nothing else. The GNB has it registered as both a locality[2] and a village.[3] With 190 people, village seems right. Not knowing the place myself, I assume it's like Karuah, New South Wales, which is also both a locality[4] and a village.[5] The village of Karuah, which had a population of 857 before the Karuah bypass was built, covers an area of ~0.7km². It lies within a much larger locality of 74.7km², also called Karuah, that has a population of ~1,200-1,500. There are many such places in NSW. One is Daysdale, New South Wales from the list provided by Mattinbgn.[6][7] Others are Rand, New South Wales,[8][9] and Oaklands, New South Wales,[10][11], also from the list. From comments here and at the CfD, I get the impression that some people think localities are at the small end of the scale and that's not always the case. They can be small, like Tahlee, New South Wales or large, like Karuah. Localities can contain one or more towns or villages, or none at all. As I've pointed out previously, localities are the rural equivalent of a suburb. Some localities, like Bobs Farm, New South Wales and East Seaham, New South Wales are actually registered as suburbs.[12][13] --AussieLegend (talk) 16:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Tony Whitlam

Tony Whitlam got speedily deleted. I restored it and stuck in a couple of refs. There are likely to be other MPs going the same way. I am not good at sourcing politician articles, if anyone can help that'd be great. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I think Whitlam and Heather McTaggart were the only two to get hit in that batch. It would be helpful if anyone with a big watchlist of MP articles could keep an eye out over the next few days - we need to spot these as they happen so we can get them fixed. Rebecca (talk) 04:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Will do. Hopefully this lunacy will be dealt with soon. Frickeg (talk) 07:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
As a backup to having thousands of items on your watchlist, I use the Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject_AFL/Articles to keep track of all AFL related articles. The downside is that the it isn't automatically updated, but I manually generate it every now and then using the recursive category functions of WP:AWB. The good thing with the latest BLP deletion craziness is that they are focusing on old articles, so this sort of RecentChangesLinked should pick up the deletions. This section should also be watched closely for redlinks {Ian McFadyen from the old Comedy Company was a another notable victim), or as a target to remove the very old unreferencedBLPs from the deletionists sights. The AFL project had two articles deleted and recovered.The-Pope (talk) 11:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

AAERI

Given that Indian students have been in the news lately, I was wondering if anyone would like to have a stab at cleaning up AAERI? - Tbsdy lives (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) talk 03:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a scary one. A quick check revealed some parts are from a press release, other parts are from aaeri.org while other parts may be copyright violations. There's also a chicken/egg situation with the 1 December 2009 version. It was uploaded to scribd.com that day,[14] but the source document's origin isn't stated. It's licensed under CC3.0 but is attributed as "Government Docs" which, as far as I'm aware, aren't CC3.0. I don't have an account there, and really don't want one, so I couldn't log in and check the source so I'm not sure. Regardless, it needs a fair bit of work. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:39, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
It's also BY-NC, which means that if the text originated from the scribd article then it's technically copyvio due to the incompatible license. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 00:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Aquinas College, Perth

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns with the article which you can see at Talk:Aquinas College, Perth/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Ben Oxenbould

This article was recently moved to Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Unreferenced BLPs/Australia/Ben Oxenbould despite being clearly notable. Can an administrator please move it back to mainspace. User:Ikip is attempting to have the Ben Oxenbould redirect deleted. -- Mattinbgn\talk 11:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

In fact all these moves and deletions here of clearly notable Australian articles should be reversed immediately. -- Mattinbgn\talk 11:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
See #Incubator above. Ikip 12:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Tasmanian Devil

Capitalisation issues on talkpage. Article has been changed in the article here. What do others think? Aaroncrick (talk) 10:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment uses a lowercase "d" extensively here and here, except for the title and the first word of sentences. So does http://www.tassiedevil.com.au, so it would seem that's correct. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Those websites aren't very convincing sources. The Australian Faunal Directory uses upper case.[15] But looking the sources cited there, there seems to be a preference for lower case. Hesperian 12:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Being a Tasmanian myself I would spell it with lower case d! Capital D refered to The Devil. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:06, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
The WikiProjectTasmanian Project has utilised both the online version - http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/T/Tas%20devil.htm and the print copy mentioned Companion to Tasmanian History and both utilise capitalisation - but interestingly the index to the print copy uses lower case, and website html title has lower case - so it is not so cut and dried regardless of who you check against, or what part of their system .... SatuSuro 11:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

It appears that there is a similar "discussion" (with some edit-warring in the article) at Talk:Thylacine --AussieLegend (talk) 10:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC) What a waste of time - inconsistent usage in well regarded sources requires something like consensus and moving on SatuSuro 12:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

For those

Either ignoring the current BLP issues- a DeadPerson variety has been boosted by the following story from the beeb http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8477482.stm - re convict records - at least dead people cannot.... and anyone interested in convict bios has a very short window of time to access for free SatuSuro 04:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Happy Australia Day

Tad late but I had a reason! I left for Canberra in the early hours (I've not slept for the last 24 hours to give you an idea how early) and only just got back at about 15 minutes to midnight. I was lucky enough to get a few photos of our Governor-General (File:Quentin Bryce after an interview with Sky News Australia.jpg and File:Quentin Bryce after an interview with Sky News Australia 01.jpg). I also have photographs of the indigenous protest and I may upload one or two on request. I missed out on the Chief Minister's boat regatta (Became overcast making it impossible to get the photographs I wanted) and fireworks (leaving the ACT at the time :( ). Time to get some needed sleep, been a busy day. Bidgee (talk) 14:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Nice work. Aaroncrick (talk) 01:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Great work - thanks for this. Nick-D (talk) 07:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
The photos of the Indigenous request would also be great by the way - photos of protests are invaluable for illustrating otherwise dry articles on politics and legal matters. Nick-D (talk) 07:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks guys, I missed the main part (File:Invasion Day protest over Commonwealth Avenue Bridge in Canberra.jpg) from a distance, by the time I got over the Commonwealth Bridge they had almost made it to the Tent Embassy (1, 2 and 3). I'll upload a few more later (At this stage those four images maybe my only original resolution I'll upload) as I've got to be up at 7am and have a busy day ahead! I would love to visit Canberra more often (for event, protests ect) however it comes down to cost (I fund all of the costs). Bidgee (talk) 14:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I'll upload a few more later today, I'm currently trying to get a few panoramas done ATM (Can be pain staking if the program refuses to help you). I'm also looking at doing another quick trip on Tuesday to photograph the Farmers protest in Canberra over land clearing laws but my funds could be a little too tight. Bidgee (talk) 15:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent edits to St James Station article

An editor has expressed concern that this article has been copied an pasted. In an attempt to fix the article this user has deleted large amounts of text from the article [16] in this diff and a few others. Shouldn't the text be reworded instead of completely deleted from the article. I though I would seek advise before I try to put some of the information back after I reword it. The article is barely a quarter of the size that it used to be. ***Adam*** 01:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Copyright violations need to be removed as quickly as possible, so this seems reasonable. Nick-D (talk) 06:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Building in Portland

What is this?

Does anyone recognise this building. It is in Portland, Victoria between the old Post office and the old Town Hall. I did not take notes of what this building was at the time and it looks somewhat historic. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk 11:53, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It's the Watch House Lounge Bar [17], so it's a pub, but from the name I guess it was a police watch house at some stage. --Canley (talk) 12:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
You beat me too it, LOL! According to the SMH's travel site the building dates to 1850 when it was built as a watch house and then became a police residence. Bidgee (talk) 12:48, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Also was a Tourist Information Centre (Victorian Heritage Database) so no idea when it became a bar/pub/lounge. Bidgee (talk) 13:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you both! -- Mattinbgn\talk 13:29, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Heads-up

Hi all. At least one editor is planning to revamp and expand Cyclone Larry (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch in an attempt to get it up to featured quality. However, since it will be quite an enormous project, I think the help of some veteran Australia editors would be great. Who's interested? :) Cheers. –Juliancolton | Talk 23:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Me, content aside YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 23:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Cluttered category space

I have encountered some recent edits at Category:Shipwrecks_of_Western_Australia and I have responded to Category:Shipwrecks of Tasmania to what I consider it to be reduced to - I would like any opinion if possible here about category space and the extra bits. Some might think there is no harm in such items being added - I would simply appreciate any response that might clarify which way to go with category space. I am prepared if there is sufficient reasoning given by other editors to revert my revert - but I would like others to check - thanks SatuSuro 14:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I've cleaned them both up. Every category has its place in the category tree. Every category is a subcategory of each of its parents. I think it makes little sense to explicitly designate a category "a subcategory of the main category X". Hesperian 12:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Our friend has reached Category:Shipwrecks of New South Wales, using strange sortkeys and adding OR to the categories. He's created a lot of stub articles that are badly referenced with incorrect layouts and many have dubious notability. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Public domain images - clarification required

Regarding the PD-Australia template and Australian public domain law, what exactly defines government-held as outlined under condition E? For example, is File:Felix Dittmer.jpg in the public domain? And how can this be clarified further? Frickeg (talk) 06:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/LABS/Copyright+status+service worth looking at - might not answer it all but its a start SatuSuro 09:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

From my reading of the template, it should be OK as the NLA record says that it was created by what appears to be a government agency. Nick-D (talk) 09:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
File would have been still copyrighted. Works created after 1 January 1955 is still copyrighted and will be until 1 January 2025 as the time a file remains copyrighted was upped from 50 years to 70 years in 2005 (Please read the ACC Information Sheet G23 (Duration of copyright)) but works that have gone into the public domain will remain in the PD (Pre 1 January 1955). So from the information given of the image above it was created in 1958 so this would have bern copyrighted until 2028 if it was non-Government.
I did a search to double check that the Australian News and Information Bureau was indeed a Government agency, so it is in the PD! Bidgee (talk) 10:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Hurrah! Thanks very much. Frickeg (talk) 23:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Helen Razer

Look at the history on the 4th of Feb (today). Anyone know what (supposed) offline event triggered this ? Peripitus (Talk) 11:08, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

This Twitter account, which claims to be Razer's (it's not marked as being a 'verified' account and none of the many articles she's written which I found through a quick Google search listed a Twitter account, but she's written quite a bit on the internet and social networking, so I'd be surprised if she didn't have a Twitter account) tracks the progress of the changes to the article today, so whoever is behind the account is behind the changes. Nick-D (talk) 11:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually, from further reading of that Twitter account, whoever writes it made some changes and asked for their followers to help out with changing the article. Nick-D (talk) 11:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Aaaaah....thanks for that. Sometimes I think that twitter is simply highway noise fed through google translate - Peripitus (Talk) 19:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I like that description :) Orderinchaos 05:07, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Road infobox clutter

Is it just me, or are articles like Newell Highway (there are plenty of them in the highways and major roads) suffering from more than a bit of excess weight? My view of infoboxes is pretty much that they should be summary info only. Orderinchaos 03:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Not just you! Rebecca (talk) 03:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. A lot of that material can and should be removed from the infobox and into the article itself. The usual rule of thumb I use for these things is that if the infobox is longer than the article, then the infobox is too large. Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC).
I tried fixing this (Infobox clutter) over a year ago but another user kept on reverting the changes, so I ended up giving up. I also tried to remove the guide like (Per WP:NOTGUIDE) table (See: Hume Highway#Freeway section exits and major intersections) but same editor and same problem. Bidgee (talk) 08:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Wasn't Rom_rulz424 by any chance? I had much the same experience a while ago, although he largely seems to leave my state alone. Orderinchaos 08:33, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Yep, I assumed good faith with them for too long, sadly they are nothing but disruptive POV-pushing editor. Bidgee (talk) 08:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Question I guess, then, is what do we do? Orderinchaos 17:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Use of the "Icons"

Most of that clutter appears to be coming from the icons used within the InfoBox (Using the Newell Highway example), could we perhaps cut them out and add the appropriate information from them in plain text if we gain value form having it there? I know there is Manual of Style (icons) to be taken into account, which as has several sections which may help (For example the "Encyclopaedic purpose" and the "Do not use too many icons" sections). Also have the Copyright/PD issues been checked, I know our local files are PD but what about the actual designs being used? Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 05:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

GLNG

There is a discussion about the article's name of GLNG, a Santos-led Gladstone-based LNG project. Your input is appreciated. Beagel (talk) 16:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

proposed merge of Australian Postal Commission into Australia Post

See Talk:Australia Post#Proposed merger of Australian Postal Commission; Australian Postal Commission may be a wee bit small to stand on its own. Dl2000 (talk) 01:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd merge them. It's just a name - it's not a predecessor organisation. Warrants all of one sentence in Australia Post. Rebecca (talk) 02:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Indeed. Merge/redirect. Orderinchaos 04:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd go for merge as well, they are both the same organisation, so they should be in the same article. Not that much difference to the Brisbane/Bris Vegas/Edenglassie merge proposals. Johnmc (talk) 10:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 Done Dl2000 (talk) 20:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Proof that Unreferenced BLPs aren't the problem

What do we do about this? I wonder if I wrote down every single thing I've ever done if I could make up a 60kb article too! The-Pope (talk) 13:41, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Good catch - but what the ?? how to edit something like that ?? - not only a WP:COI, WP:SELF BIO, and WP:Etc etc - I can see reasons for various tags, but where to start? Thats using WP for self promo, and also self advertising - but ironically the actual subject is probably notable... but the ed clearly hasnt got the sense of what might fit into WP:ABOUT and WP:NOT issues. SatuSuro 13:59, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Have tagged the art and given a autobiography template to the user - will wait and see SatuSuro 14:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

It is quite extraordinary isn't it? What if we can harness the editors 'energy' for other articles? I suggest as a start to change the section titles to proper Headings so that it at least has a "Table of Contents". Hope the author doesn't have 'ownership' issues. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 16:19, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I've fixed the headings as above, also made a lot of wiki-links (many red links) and fixed a few errors. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 18:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Self advertising is hardly an energy to be harnessed SatuSuro 01:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
True, but did they know the policy on this? Probably not. He can obviously write and likes writing, and as I said for other articles. Apparently he also has Archaelogical knowledge, which I'm sure can help improve Wikipedia. Do we want to scare him away? No. Lets get in there and help fix the article. If the original editor comes back, talk to them (as you already have on the articles talk page), assume good faith and help improve the article.--220.101.28.25 (talk) 03:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

"uggs", or "UGG® boots"

A(n) RFC at Talk:Ugg boots has attracted comments from remarkably few people; perhaps some of you here would like to contribute. -- Hoary (talk) 03:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced Articles

Could we perhaps set-up a page to list unreferenced articles like we currently have for BLPs, Since I know there would be a few other articles, like Sweat, that would come under our scope that would be missing references. I'm sure there would be a few people that would be probably willing to work on stuff like this but aren't in BLP-like articles. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 05:21, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/Cleanup_listing has all of the cleanup cats, but hasn't been updated since December, as it works of a database dump, not the live project.The-Pope (talk) 07:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Rudd now at Prime Minister's Avenue

It would be much appreciated if anyone passing through the area could take a photo of it to add to the page. Thanks. Timeshift (talk) 13:03, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Luna Park, Cairo

I've just added Luna Park, Cairo (site of an amusement park for four years before becoming Australia Auxiliary Hospital Number 1 in 1915) as essentially a stub article. While there is a decent summary for both the amusement park and hospital (both could use expansion and pictures), it does have a 84 year gap in its post World War I coverage (I've asked WP:EGYPT for help from local sources. Should anybody feel interested in improving the article, please be my guest! B.Wind (talk) 01:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Dannii Minogue GA Sweeps: On Hold

I have reviewed Dannii Minogue for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 02:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Black people in Australia

Rather dubious article.--Grahame (talk) 06:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

VERY dubious. Aren't we all of African descent? Classifying by skin colour sounds like South Africa in 1960. Not a good title or definition. HiLo48 (talk) 02:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Black people in Australia. Digestible (talk) 03:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Despite the AfD outcome, the article is back again as Afro-Australians in Australia. Still a poor article without agreed definitions. WWGB (talk) 22:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I've subsequently deleted most of the text as it was all copyvio. WWGB (talk) 22:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Tagged as CSD G4. Bidgee (talk) 00:54, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Don Kendell

I've added Don Kendell, the former chairman of Kendell Airlines as an article you may be interested in. Hope that helps! Wikiwoohoo (talk) 21:07, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Cheers! I'll get to work and get some newspaper clippings to help cite and expand the article, also have to find the plaque which is located in Baylis Street (Wagga Wagga). Bidgee (talk) 22:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
While doing some research for sources I came across stats for the 1968 NSW Elections figures for the Murray electorate and found that Don Kendell had ran as a Country Party candidate. Bidgee (talk) 12:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

NWS

Resolved
 – Ks0stm (T•C•G) 15:29, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm probably afflicted with US-centric thinking, but isn't NWS better known worldwide to be the National Weather Service rather than a television station in South Australia? This would, as I recall, mean NWS got redirected to National Weather Service with a notice at the top of that page pointing back to the television station. Any objections to me moving NWS to NWS (TV station) and redirecting NWS to National Weather Service? Ks0stm (T•C•G) 23:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps make NWS a disambig page, and have it list both? Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 01:13, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree. As indicated at NWS (disambiguation) there are several notable entities that relate to NWS. It's better that no one "owner" of the initials be put forward. WWGB (talk) 01:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm an Australian who knows about the National Weather Service, but that's because I used to work at the BOM - Bureau of Meteorology (Australia), a body of equal global significance to the National Weather Service. BOM on its own points to a basic disambiguation page. So should NWS.
(Never heard of that South Australian TV station) HiLo48 (talk) 02:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Also agree with making the NWS as the disambig page. While I know that the National Weather Service is notable other organisations may have the same notability. Bidgee (talk) 02:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I would think that WP:COMMONNAME would suggest that all of the Aussie TV stations should be moved to Channel Nine (Adelaide) or similar, not their official, but rarely used codes.The-Pope (talk) 05:09, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Are there any objections if I take the NWS disambig suggestion? I will let everyone else sort out the Channel 9 part, but for the time where should I put the NWS tv station page? Ks0stm (T•C•G) 13:05, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
The-Pope, that solution would become difficult (a) in markets where there is no common name for the station, or (b) where there may be a POV issue - e.g. Nine in Perth is not owned by the Nine Network. Orderinchaos 13:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
But Channel Nine (Perth) is still Channel nine and carries the network programming even to the point of delaying delayed telecasts, its just the owners. Then presuming theres no channel nine based in Tassie, Scotland, Canada, oh well dab away I'd never think to use STW9 when editing......... Gnangarra 14:17, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Sam (koala)

Interested editors may like to keep an eye on Sam (koala) (the bushfire survivor), especially the Controversy section. A trade mark litigant is using the article to present a particular position. WWGB (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

There's clearly a COI here and, since nobody else has, I've warned the editor of this. Having read the article though, I wonder it would survive AfD if the Koala had been called Corey Worthington. --AussieLegend (talk) 01:59, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
The koala didn't go on a vandalism rampage either YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 02:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
When Corey's carcass is stuffed and placed in the Melbourne Museum, I will write the DRV myself! -- Mattinbgn\talk 02:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Classic response :D Orderinchaos 00:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Matt Tilley

An IP user has put an AFD on Matt Tilley and it would seem the job hasn't been done properly (it links to a previous AFD discussion). Could someone have a look at this? Hack (talk) 11:33, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

IPs can't finish the process, which is why it was left unfinished. The IP also nominated Cereal Pest: The Gotcha Calls, Cereal Pest: Gotcha Calls – The Double Album, Cereal Pest: Gotcha Calls – Three's a Crowd and The Final Call (CD), but in those cases the IP didn't provide a reason, so I've removed the tags. If someone else feels like renominating them, that's their call. - Bilby (talk) 11:53, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

GA sweeps

Not sure this note will attract a lot of attention where it is ... -- Mattinbgn\talk 21:14, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Some of these have been languishing for more than a week without furhter comment YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Andrew Strauss (cricketer)

Hi,

Is there any reason why Andrew Strauss is tagged for WP:AUS? It appears that it was bot tagged a couple of years ago (somebody has just changed the importance to low yesterday), but apart from playing some cricket matches against AUS, he's English born in South Africa... —MDCollins (talk) 12:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Beats me. There is a few - we found about 6 or 7 "huh?" cases during the recent BLP sweep. Orderinchaos 12:59, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
No Idea if this is actually why, but this is his personal info section from March 31 08 (few days after the bot tagging) and I can't guarantee if this why he got tagged but it's the best I could find. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 13:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

After being born in South Africa, his parents (his mother is English) moved back to England when he was aged six. Strauss first played cricket in Australia, where his parents lived for a short period. During this time he attended the Malvern Campus of Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne. He was also educated at Caldicott Preparatory School, Farnham Royal, and later at Radley College and Hatfield College, Durham University. He married the Australian actress Ruth McDonald in October 2003 and they have settled in Ealing, with their son Samuel David Strauss (born 4 December 2005), Ruth is pregnant with their second child. He has a variety of nicknames ranging from the predictable Straussy, Levi and Johann, to the more obscure Lord Brocket, Mareman, Jazzer and Muppet.

Well spotted - I forgot there were some references in there, but they're quite minor aren't they! Up to you what you do with it, just thought I'd flag it up for you!—MDCollins (talk) 23:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

IMHO, project tagging and scope is very arbitrary and subjective. Basically you can take whoever/whatever you want with whatever tenuous link that you consider sufficient. Bots of course just do it from text matches. The real question is can this project help that article or should it be left to others?The-Pope (talk) 03:26, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras

An unregistered person is trying to diminish parts of the lead section establishing notability in relation to tourism and the economic benefit to Sydney of the event. I've just added to refs from the Sydney Morning Herald as sources for the statements but someone keeps removing it. Can others help keep an eye on it? - Shiftchange (talk) 12:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month suggestion - Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Unreferenced BLPs

After the goings-on of the last day or so, we can either sulk and be amazed at the arrogance of people admins deleting or proding articles on former deputy Prime Ministers, high profile actors and sportsmen, or we can achieve what they want us to achieve - rid our project of unreferenced BLPs - but in a calm, non-WP:POINTy, community spirited way. From a category comparison on 4 Jan, the WP:Aust project had just over 2000 unreferenced BLPs. They are also listed in the Wolterbot Cleanup listing. I know the AFL subproject has it's own cleanup list, I don't know about the other Aussie subprojects, but I think that Australia could lead the wikiworld by actually working together to reference all 2000 known unreferenced articles by the end of February. 500 per week, 10-20 per person per week. It's do-able - I did 10 myself last night after reading about all of the drama. Not all will survive the examination and some should be CFD/PROD/AFD candidates, some might already have some references and can be moved into the refimprove pile. But lets quit the teeth nashing over the inappropriate behaviour of others (despite what ArbCon and Jimbo think) and just get the job done. I'm willing to knock off all of the Aussie rules ones, and then work on sorting the list (I'd just use AWB and the list comparer to trim it down as we go unless someone else thinks that we get a bot or auto-code or whatever to do some smarter). Sure it leaves 48000 other unrefed BLPs remaining, but it might show people that it can be done. Opinions? The-Pope (talk) 13:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like there's some that have had references added, but haven't removed the Unsourced tag. I've found 5 of them already, and that's after only 15 minutes. This reminds me of the Great Betacommandbot Crisis of '08, where images were being removed not because there was anything intrinsically wrong with them being, but because i's weren't dotted, and t's weren't crossed. I agree that there's a lot of one-line articles in your list that probably deserve the chop, but there's quite a few that could do with a second chance. I'll help where and when I can. Johnmc (talk) 14:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea, but this whole mess has me pretty disenchanted with the whole bloody project once again. It's a typical Wikipedia fuckup - the goal is fine, but the implementation is exactly what happens when you give young men with the social skills of a poorly developed three year old responsibility over a community project. Rebecca (talk) 16:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Rebecca's response wraps up my feelings pretty well. Timeshift (talk) 00:33, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I've started (but haven't finished) sorting out the politicians from the rest at the bottom, and internally sorting the politicians, as they're likely to be sourceable from handbooks and parliamentary websites. I guess as we proceed we can do that with more categories. Orderinchaos 03:25, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
politicians now sorted. Sorry I could only do the meta-work; I'll be unavailable for about 24 hours for offline reasons. Orderinchaos 03:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Late last night/early this morning I added cites Doug Anthony (which had been Proded again) and Bob Cameron (which hadn't been proded). Bidgee (talk) 04:23, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Is it ok to drive by a BLP and source one or two statements and remove the "no sources" template?--Commander Keane (talk) 05:18, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Many sources as possible, though I just change the {{BLP unsourced}} to {{BLP sources}} if the article is supported by one or two sources or if it is a large article and has still got unref content. Bidgee (talk) 05:25, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
There are a few articles with no refs, but a lot of external links. I've been adding {{No footnotes}} to some of the more obvious ones.Johnmc (talk) 06:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


Gosh, what an unpleasant job. It has taken me 40 minutes to source 5 unsourced scientist BLPs. And I did a crappy job of it too. :-( Hesperian 13:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

meh, I only got sources (as many I could to cite the content that needed to be cited) and add them. Though they will come up with some other crap just so they can keep the prodding addiction alive, though maybe a Prod'ers Anonymous is needed! Bidgee (talk) 14:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I can imagine... especially knowing that by doing it you're implicitly approving of prods/afds based on non-genuine grounds... Timeshift (talk) 18:16, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
We should apply WP:trout to people who prod articles like Doug Anthony. Any way Rebecca has done a good job motivating improvements in our project. So please don't be discouraged! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Kinda violates AGF and civil though. People who prod/afd articles like Doug Anthony have explicitly said they couldn't care less about the article and whether it's deleted, and have implicitly admitted using prod/afd to blackmail the community in to adding refs. Prod/AfD is NOT for noteable articles with no refs, and for it to be used in such an extensive way, followed up by the reaction by some of caving in and adding refs to everything. Why should their wrong and non-guidelines means to achieve the end be allowed to flourish, simply by reffing these pages. Yes, I know that in a perfect world, all BLP pages have refs, and it's good in theory that we've been motivated to fix the issue. Reflecting upon it all, I just cannot condone their actions by adding refs which gives an implicit approval of such nefarious behaviour. But, honestly, good on others for being able to put this behind them and concentrate on reffing countless numbers of articles. Timeshift (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
It just took me about 15 minutes to reference everything in the De-Anne Kelly article (there were no problems whatsoever with content, though I would appreciate other editor's views on whether I should have added the material about her son being jailed - the news story mentions her political career as being related to it and focuses more on her than her son, so I guess so). I guess this demonstrates that it's easier to prod articles than it is to take the time to reference the current content or chop it back to a referenced stub... Nick-D (talk) 04:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Am I correct in that there is potential for uncommon pages created by by-gone users whose pages have been left watched by only a few or none, and slip between the cracks in a prod/afd because nobody saw it tagged...? Timeshift (talk) 06:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and that's one of my major concerns with using deletion nominations as a strategy to drive article improvements. IMO, this simply isn't an appropriate process; articles on notable people aren't going to be deleted through AfDs due to a lack of sources (though they might be chopped back to a basic and referenced stub) and using prods as a way to get around this is a missuse of process. The basic premise of this crusade seems to be to delete articles rather than bring them to a minimum standard, and this simply doesn't work within the confines of Wikipedia's deletion processes, which aim to preserve and improve viable articles in the first instance. The basic goal of preventing BLP violations is highly worthwhile, but it's been approached in entirely the wrong way. Nick-D (talk) 10:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


One strategy is to watchlist the talk pages of prolific former contributors — PDH and Adam Carr leap to mind. Doing so will have little impact on your watchlist because there will be virtually no traffic other than bot notices of FAC reviews, BLP notifications, etc. Hesperian 12:38, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking at PDH's talk page, I see that some drongo prodded Charles François Dupuis in 2008. It Somebody declined, having found entries for him in Nuttalls and the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica; but this could easily have been an example of a good solid sourced article getting deleted simply because no-one knew that it needed to be saved. (It isn't an unsourced BLP, but I think it illustrates the danger Timeshift is talking about all the same.) Hesperian 12:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Am prepared to add references to any music related article (or suborn a few fellow editors) on the BLP list - so if you find any them post them on my talk page and I'll see what I can do. Dan arndt (talk) 08:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Incubator

Now we have an editor moving an article with sources to the Incubator! Unref'ed? Don't worry just with the unsourced BLP but also the sourced ones! Bidgee (talk) 05:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I dunno. "Article incubator" (Is this new? I've never heard of it before.) sounds a lot better than "Delete". By the sounds of it, articles that get incubated do so with the intent of being "hatched" at some point. Might be a way of saving some articles that we can't find references for (yet). Johnmc (talk) 05:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm pretty fine with the idea of the incubator - the material's still available to be sourced, it just takes it out of the mainspace (and Google); it's the solution that should have been taken before the brainfart of these idiots in the last couple of days. Rebecca (talk) 05:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
The user in question as been moving them based on our list by the look of the small discussion on Talk:Alec_Jenkins, Someone should perhaps have a gentle word with him about checking articles before they are moved? Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 10:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello Aussies. Hello again Rebecca, nice to see you. Just one second. Ikip 12:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Australia Wikiproject member User:The-Pope approached us at Wikipedia_talk:Article_Incubator#BLP_discussions he mentioned Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Unreferenced BLPs (which is inspired, I found out by Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Unreferenced BLPs).
As one editor said on the talk page of Wikipedia_talk:Article_Incubator:
"Seems like a good idea. Wikipedia is facing a major crisis here. If incubating many thousands of articles is going to be the only way to avoid inappropriate mass deletions so be it, but we'll need some system of sorting and organisation to deal with them here, and we need to recruit more people."
The page Wikipedia:Article_Incubator/Unreferenced_BLPs/Australia#Incubated_articles redirects to Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Unreferenced BLPs#Incubated_articles That section is a collapsed category of all articles that have been incubated.
We really could use some help. RFCs last 30 days, we have less than 26 days to take care of these articles. Ikip 12:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
You've missed the point Ikip. We believe that it can be solved by normal editing, if we all work together and focus on it. Moving them out of article space causes just as many problems, and, as I was told a few weeks ago, the incubator was meant to be used as a result of a PROD/AFD, not pre-emptively as a knee jerk reaction to someone thinking that this is a major problem. Please stop and allow the RFC to proceed. Once it's completed, we'll see how many we have left, and what the "agreed" solution is and then we'll work to that system. Hopefully the "delete them all" proponents won't win and we'll get a workable solution. We (should) have much longer than 26 days to take care of the articles.The-Pope (talk) 12:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
The delete them all proponents will win. If your project feels you can source 1800 1670 articles in 26 days I commend your efforts, if you are interested in viable alternatives, please let me know, because I am truly here to help, I want ever notable Australian article to be keep. 130 articles are now at no risk. Ikip 12:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Trust us, we'll get all of the truly notable ones done. The ones in the incubator are outside of our normal view and we don't know what will happen over there. Please leave us to have more than a few days of trying in the normal way before you implement a "save" mentality. And if you've read what some high profile Australian editors have said on the RFC/ArbComm/etc, the delete them all proponents will not win. We've got Admins with undelete powers too, you know.The-Pope (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Ikip is quite right; in fact, the delete-them-allers have already won. ArbCom have issued an amnesty to the delete-them-allers for whatever evil deeds they perpetrate whilst on this crusade, and have threatened anyone who "interferes" with them.[18] The delete-them-allers having been relieved of the burden of accountability, they have done the obvious thing: they have gone rouge, formed a militia, and are rampaging through our policy pages and content as we speak.[19] Ikip's actions may seem extreme, but desperate times call for desperate measures. The articles will be deleted, and very soon, and you won't be able to do or say a thing about it. Hesperian 13:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Indeed. Ikip's actually on our side on this one, even if his methods at first seem unconventional. He has argued loudly against the people and methods that brought this to bear at the relevant ArbComs and elsewhere. I also believe we'll get all the key ones done. I plan on going through all the uncat ones tonight and picking out those which are basically substubs or stubs so we can clear them out regardless of category. To Ikip: the manpower and size of this project as well as the scary number of good faith admins around who generally work together well will generally ensure the project meets its timelines - I hope in fact that we can set an example for other wikiprojects looking for a solution to this problem which has been dropped on all of our collective heads. Orderinchaos 14:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Best wishes in sourcing the roughly 1670 articles. I need to remove the main space tags from the remaining 80 more articles today.
I want everyone to know that I was indefinetly banned yesterday evening.[20] The administrator incorrectly thought I was using a bot to do this, I was unbanned 4 minutes later,[21] and I ended up giving both editors barnstars for their diligence in patrolling wikipedia. It is important again to emphasize: this was a good faith mistake. I bring this up because I would have never put my account at potential risk if I didn't want the very best for the notable articles in Wikipedia:Wikiproject Australia.
Thank you for your valuable input User:The-Pope. I find the rarest most valuable commodity on Wikipedia is the ability to change ones mind (which I must admit, I often fail to do myself). I would truly love to work with you in the future User:The-Pope, if you decide the number of articles is simply too high in the time permitted.
If you do run out of time, you could create links that people only need to click on, to watch list everyone of the new articles. With a firefox app, you can simply highlight those links, and open all of them once in your browser, watch listing the articles all at once. Let me know if you are interested in doing this.
Thank you again User:The-Pope for your hard work and dedication to this project, that goes for everyone here, my very best wishes.Ikip 17:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot ready to be made: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Bot_to_move_articles_from_main_space_to_Wikipedia:Article_Incubator just waiting for consensus, if you folks decide to do this, please let me know. Ikip 19:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

"Incubation" is an awful idea that causes more disruption than than deletion and does not fix the underlying issues. It is silly and self-defeating to fight out-of-process deletions with out-of-process moves, and just adds to my perception that the whole kerfufle is not about policy but about two groups prepared to bulldoze through policy so long as their version of the encyclopedia is the result. A pox on both their houses, I say. Further, a defamatory claim in an unreferenced BLP is still defamatory regardless of whether it it made in article space, user space or Wikipedia space. If I was summarily deleting articles in article space, why would I hesitate to delete so-called "incubated" articles? Make no mistake, that is what will end up happening if all the unreferenced articles are "incubated". Sigh ... -- Mattinbgn\talk 23:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Well said. I wouldn't want my "desperate times call for desperate measures" comment to be read as an endorsement of what is being done to oppose the delete-them-all militia. A pox on both their houses, indeed. Hesperian 00:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Indeed - one small problem - when established editors in the Australian project point out the obvious and actually read as good sense - do the t'othersiders (of the pacific) actually comprehend or consider what is said? SatuSuro 00:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
My only problem at the present is that we're actively working on the articles. I'd say give it a week or two and then look at "incubating" any that we haven't by then done. Otherwise (and looking at my own edit history demonstrates this I believe) it creates more work for those currently working down the list. Orderinchaos 01:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I bet this will just peter out into a gimmick. A lot of times when ancient FAs with no cites are around the place, people will just add a random web ref at the end of a para and hope that nobody checks and only sees that the ref doesn't match up at all, or only covers the last sentence. A lot of people at FAR/FAC don't check at all and just AGF, let alone these spot-checks. ArbCom is about politics so they have to put on a brave face like the leader of a sports team or a political party, unless they are in the unconventional minority, they aren't going to say that there are major problems with nonsense content etc or that there needs to be a leadership change, so they will do this fluff, sabre-rattling etc, but it will just go unenforced and so forth. Heaps of people including admins fake sources etc or bend them out of shape or just cite blogs and rubbish anyway. I know PHG got knocked on the head for having info not match up with refs, but let's face it, look who was complaining about him? Durova, Elonka, Jehochman, Shell Kinney and others. All people who attract a lot of eyes when they campaign for something, so the ArbCom had to react with all the eyes on them. But many other established users including admins are career POV-pushers and have ethnic blocs to protect them. Who's going to bother manning them all the time? And a lot of aggressive admins, despite what they say, only crack down on people who show dissent, although ostensibly it is for POV pushing. They have no interest in the content and any smart POV pusher knows that the only thing they will care much about is their ego massage. I predict that people will just randomly attach fake refs or refs with incomplete coverage to get their stuff out of danger. Many of these sweeping pronouncements have little effect on anything without anything serious on the ground. Wikipedia is a lot about gaming metrics and feeling better about oneself by tricking the casual observer with some meaningless stats so that one's prestige increases. Like Robert S McNamara and his silly stats, so all the lieutenants, captains and majors report gamed body counts to get a promotion or being removed from command. A lot of smaller wikis create empty articles with blank infoboxes, section headers only with no prose, or copy the same meaningless sentence over; someone on the Marathi.wp created about 100 cricket biographies which all had the exact same sentence about something cut and pasted. They do this to move up the rankings so that the leaders of the said project look more prestigious and get more praise from the outsider who doesn't look beneath the surface. Or subdivide their edits or let lots of tweaking bots loose so that the # of edits per article skyrockets or create lots of meaningless bureaucracy pages so that their "depth" rating goes up on the meta:List of Wikipedias so that their articles appear more sophisticated, when they aren't. Or simply doing the bare mininum to pass GA/FA (and never improving the article again until it gets hauled to FAR/GAR) or choosing the easiest targets to inflate the WikiProject or personal FA/GA count, because the casual observer will assume that 100 FAs is better than 50 FAs when the 100 FAs could just be 5kb long about a small thing, while the 50 could be all 60kb long about complicated prime ministers or presidents who ruled for a long time. Or simply writing a FA/GA that is not comprehensive enough in the comfort that nobody else on wiki knows about the content and getting a cheap milestone. And so on. People have always added fake references, and there isn't any reason why they won't continue to do so here to pass the token screening. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Still, we can just take this as a positive and do the right thing YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
120+ AFL articles could get deleted, *sigh* Aaroncrick (talk) 02:02, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I guess the only good thing about this is that it will create a lot of red links to encourage new editors ;) More seriously, I agree with YellowMonkey - this campaign appears to be being driven by people addicted to Wikidrama rather than serious editors, and has a hysterical edge to it. Nick-D (talk) 02:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree. I'll try and help out on sourcing some articles but I'm heading off for a nap before I head off to Canberra for the day but I'll be back on the 27th. Bidgee (talk) 10:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm in agreement as well. My ongoing concern is that this is an extremely pointless exercise: it reflects a desire by people to act to solve a problem, irrespective of the effectiveness of the action, simply because of a desire to do something. Yet the problem has nothing to do with the lack of references in BLPs. Anyway, I'll source what I can. - Bilby (talk) 07:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
A lot of them are only 2-3 sentences and can be cleared in 2 minutes each with a raw url from google. Other people could just randomly add fake book refs if they couldn't be stuffed, and I can see one guy who had an article prodded, he just cut and pasted a web-bio with some consecutive sentences completely un-paraphrased and the rest not mixed up enough to avoid copyvio [it hasn't been noticed yet] YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 07:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Have fixed/referenced the article for Adam Brand could someone arrange for it to be reinstated out of the incubator and back at Adam Brand. Dan arndt (talk) 09:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Can a helpful admin do a history merge from Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Unreferenced BLPs/Australia/Ashley Naylor into Ashley Naylor. Looks like a cut and paste and blank, rather than a move. One of the problems will occur when the incubator is used by some editors.The-Pope (talk) 11:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Done. Orderinchaos 16:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

This is easy

If you have a book of profiles of people for a given topic. I happened across Holmesby and Main's profile of every AFL player book, and then you can find everyone's profile alpahabetically and just cut and paste in the same book cite over and over with only the page nnumber changed. If we break the articles into categories for different sports, politics etc, then this becomes easy, especially with those logbooks of every MP. That easily gets everyone who meets a specific bar, such as MP, sportspeople who were first class, etc YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

17 AFL dudes in 40 minutes without having to concentrate intensely or anything YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:50, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Update?

Could someone with a good knowledge of the RFC process explain what the situation is now and where WP:Australia is at in terms of Unreferenced BLPs? Hack (talk) 05:19, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's any need to panic at all. The first wave of hysteria came after a banned user famous for needling nominally high-ranking Wikipedians did a stunt to mess up some BLPs; now we knew for ages already that many established editors including admins are pov pushers etc, including on BLPs they don't like, and every one was pretty apathetic about it, but once a famous banned user does something everyone reacts, including the usual career politicians and self-appointed intellectuals. They've gotten bored already. I doubt anything will happen, and of course fake refs will always exist, and none of them ever bother to check. The reffing process should continue nevertheless I think YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars photo poll) 06:05, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
We've dropped as a project from 2100 unref'd to a bit over 700. I encourage everyone to help out and help get it down to 0 :) (well, as close as feasibly possible) Orderinchaos 07:57, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
After the initial burst (removing some non-Australians, ones that were already referenced etc) we've been tracking at about 25 per day for the past few weeks - at this rate it will be all done by mid March. But we're left with a bunch of borderline notable actors, TV & radio personalities, journos and minor sportspeople... along with a few more significant people remaining, so it might get slower/harder to ref. Would be good to have a final burst and see how much we can do before the end of Feb. Great effort by all so far. As for the RFC... the whole idea of this collaboration is to show that we don't need to worry about any changes to anything but our focus.The-Pope (talk) 11:26, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
It also depends if they are all tagged so they can be found to be added to the list. I've been finding and tagging a whole pile the last few days by selecting local (popular) australian T.V. shows and going though the cast lists and tagging as apprioate with BLP unsourced, which later in some time I will probably nom some of the one/two line articles for deletion. I'm also awaiting to see how a current RfD is doing (for one I'd nom'ed) because I'm adverse to a Actor/Actress's name redirecting to a single "List of X characters" list. Peachey88 (Public) (talk) 23:48, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree with you although I think the argument for them is that it is a reminder to people to not create them as articles. Orderinchaos 00:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 February 28#Category:Australasia

Your input is welcome. Cheers, postdlf (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Category:Australian education organisations proposed for renaming

See the CfD. No specific target name has been proposed. Orderinchaos 03:24, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Photo request

Hi! For those of you in the Sydney area, would someone mind photographing the Qantas Building A on Coward Street in Mascot, NSW? The article needs a photo of the Qantas head office. Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 23:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

National Parks of Australia

A good portion of the content of Category:National parks of Australia could do with the {{Infobox protected area}} template. Some of the articles (based on my random sampling) have a section called "Fact sheet". This is not in keeping with WP style and the template should be used instead. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:57, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Someone ran through and created a stub on every national park way back in 2002, well before infoboxes were invented. Hesperian 23:53, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I had an inkling that that was the case. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:59, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Jolimont, District of Melbourne

This seems an odd one out. Should it be moved to Jolimont, Victoria, which is a redirect to East Melbourne, Victoria? Should it be merged? Should it be deleted? If kept, it needs work. --Bduke (Discussion) 10:33, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Started as a copy of text from East Melbourne, Victoria pretty much, but a bit more added. Jolimont is part of East Melbourne (not Melbourne) and the redirect would appear to be correct. A good faith edit but does need to be merged and deleted. (Crusoe8181 (talk) 10:41, 7 March 2010 (UTC)).
As a one time nearby resident, I've always regarded Jolimont as that distinct triangular area south of Wellington parade, north of the Melbourne - Richmond rail line, and west of Hoddle Street. It does contain the MCG. East Melbourne is entirely north of Wellington Road. All the preceding is pure original research (or historical memory, to be more precise) on my part, but, based on the efforts of another editor, a view not unique to me. A check with the online Melway supports my view. To merge it with East Melbourne is to bury a locality distinct to at least two of us. HiLo48 (talk) 11:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
There should be no theoretical problem as long as it doesnt pretend to be a suburb. The other Melbourne one of note is Westgarth, Victoria - note the lack of an infobox, and the note at the bottom, and it's full enough to justify having an article. Orderinchaos 12:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It's a locality, a part of a suburb. You'll often find them where there is an area with a distinct historical identity but which has been subsumed into another suburb, or where a suburb crosses council boundaries and they have been created to distinguish different parts of the suburb within different council areas. It would probably make sense to merge any new material there back to the East Melbourne article; compare, for example, Port Melbourne, Victoria and the way it treats localities. --bainer (talk) 13:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Do we have articles on ...

... the 2010 Queensland floods and the 2010 Melbourne storm (as opposed to the Melbourne Storm in 2010)? Seems like a sign of the times when instead of being concerned about multiple articles about a current event, I can't even find a single article on two rather large current events. There also does not appear to be an article on the Energy Efficient Homes Package either. -- Mattinbgn\talk 02:18, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

See 2010 Melbourne thunderstorm. Cuddy Wifter (talk) 02:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguating train stations??

I know that we are expected to disambiguate all Australian localities using Name, State — even those place names (such as Deniliquin and Tocumwal) that are entirely unambiguous. (Why this is still required is another question ...) But do we really need to extend this policy to train stations? Surely Condobolin railway station, New South Wales could simply be Condobolin railway station? Thoughts please? -- Mattinbgn\talk 07:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that seems sensible - it's pretty unlikely that there's a Condobolin railway station, Texas which people could get confused with! Nick-D (talk) 10:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I think it should be kept for those within cities (eg , Sydney; , Perth) but should be dropped for those within states unless genuinely ambiguous. Orderinchaos 17:11, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Support orderinchaos'es comment - Perth already has a large number in that format SatuSuro 09:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Not wanting to be argumentative but what is the benefit of disambiguating Wooloowin railway station, Brisbane for example? The name is not ambiguous and the article states in the first sentence the city in which it is located. Of the five principles for article naming at Wikipedia:Article titles#Deciding an article title, using the disambiguated title violates the first four. The only advantages I can see are that it does allow for all article titles to be consistent and it does give editors some confidence when linking. Consistency, to me, does not outpoint ease of use, and for the second point, the encyclopedia is supposed to be designed for readers, not editors. I just can't see what unnecessary disambiguation achieves, other than making it more difficult for readers to find what they want. -- Mattinbgn\talk 09:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Mattinbgn except for the "not wanting to be argumentative" bit. I wouldn't mind another good stoush over our ridiculous preemptive disambiguation policy. Hesperian 10:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I think with the cities it actually makes things easier to find. I've looked at countries where disambiguation is not used, as well as with politicians which generally follow a more "standard" path of disambiguation, and there's a sort of "scattergun" approach with no consistency. Furthermore, when a new one actually does get an article, we end up with linking chaos with about half the links going to the wrong one. The great majority of hits are for city train stations, and people seem to be able to find them easily enough (looking at the hits, the redirects are only getting the odd hit here and there whereas the articles are sometimes getting dozens per day). The rest are arguably more likely to have unique names anyway. Orderinchaos 11:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I find that redirects often have never been made e.g. Wooloowin railway station, Lilydale railway station, Nunawading railway station etc. Melburnian (talk) 12:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
With "hits", I suspect the vast majority of these for railway station articles come from Wikipedia editors themselves or readers directed there through links from other articles. While I take your point about "linking chaos", I would say that the "chaos" occurs because of our non-intuitive naming policy. Editors, especially new ones, find themselves confused about WP:AUSTRALIA's idiosyncratic disambiguation policy and therefore disambiguate titles that should not be disambiguated and vice versa. Rivers and other geographical features are quite often unnecessarily disambiguated by analogy with our convention for localities. If we followed the general practice throughout the rest of the encyclopedia and only disambiguated where required, then the issue would much clearer for editors and readers alike. Secondly, other parts of the world seem to cope just fine without compulsory disambiguation for rail stations, (UK, NZ etc, etc) Surely we can too? I am considering taking the railway stations to Requested Moves to allow for a test of the current consensus, what do others think? -- Mattinbgn\talk 00:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
The elimination of pre-disambiguation is second on my hit-list. First is settling on a single convention so we don't end up with ridiculousnesses like Margaret River, Western Australia and Margaret River (Western Australia).

I'm not sure an RM will settle this. Won't the RM participants just follow our guideline? If the RM results in a title that contradicts our guideline, will that render our guideline null and void? Hesperian 01:04, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

It may not render "our guideline" null and void but it certainly would make it untenable in practice. The alternative is to get the guideline changed directly. Some hunting around appears to find Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Australia as the relevant guideline for localities but I can't find a corresponding guideline (as opposed to informal convention) for railway stations. How else would I change this convention for stations except through RM? Note that I am interested in removing pre-emptive disambiguation from locality articles eventually too, but I see the railway stations convention as more in need of an immediate change and shake-up. Quite happy to propose a change for locality articles too, however, if there appears to a trend that way. -- Mattinbgn\talk 01:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
It's an informal guideline; consensus here is pretty clear, so I have no problem with tossing it. Rebecca (talk) 02:10, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

As to pre-disambiguation of localities, we did this for a reason, and it's a reason that stands just as much now as it did then. Prior to that rule being introduced, we had links firing all over the place to Suburb, Suburb, Australia, Suburb, State, Suburb, State, Australia, and even more varieties; it was an absolute mess, and it was a pain in the hiney when trying to find an article you wanted to link to - inadvertent duplicate articles were frequent as a result. All of that hasn't been a problem for years since we instituted that guideline. Rebecca (talk) 02:10, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

  • I support bringing Australian railway stations (and lines) into line (pardon the pun) with standard disambiguation practice. I think it's best to deal with this prior to and separately from the question of pre-disambiguation of localities.Melburnian (talk) 02:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
  • As the person who made the article on Condobolin railway station, it seemed to me when creating the articles that the suffixes, eg. "Y railway station, Melbourne" and "Z railway station, Victoria" distinguish stations in city and country areas - all the Australian cities, like NZ where i come from have city and country trains. The only differences are where the station name is the same as the city, e.g. Canberra railway station, Canberra, Adelaide railway station, Adelaide and Perth railway station, Perth would be silly. There are so many stations in England and the UK which all have Wikipedia pages that the Australian suffixes clearly distinguish the two - and many of the stations here seem to have been derived from English names too. If there is no page with just the ordinary name, then create it and redirect it, but don't waste time changing them all. I'm only new here but I can't find anything trawling through the histories where it seems to have been a problem in the past. Why change it now? If i didn't create the redirected page, I'm sorry but please don't change something that seems to have worked well. Bookscale (talk) 10:29, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
    • Having just trawled through a lot of Melbourne stations trying to redirect them, i would estimate that a quarter to a third of all the ones I did already have another railway station (open or closed) by the same name, almost always in England (and it seems to be one of the countries covered well by station pages). We should continue to populate the original page where it is available, but it really seems to me to be a big hassle to have to change them all. Do we really want people to be directed to an English railway station when we mean an Australian one? Bookscale (talk) 11:24, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
But that's exactly whats happening right now. Typing Camberwell railway station in the search box right now, I get an article about a disused railway station in England (created in February 2008) with no hatnote for Camberwell railway station, Melbourne an article created in May 2004 about a major railway station in Melbourne, and the subject of a much publicised redevelopment controversy over the last decade. Melburnian (talk) 12:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
We shouldn't be using article titles to clarify the location of a station, that should be a job for the article text - preferably the first sentence in the lede. We don't name articles Ricky Ponting (cricketer) just so that we know Ricky Ponting is a cricketer and not a nuclear physicist! Disambiguation should only be used when there is a genuine ambiguity to be addressed. As for "wasting time" correcting the situation, that what we do here! It would not be the biggest project the encyclopedia (or even this project has undertaken) when policy or consensus has changed. -- Mattinbgn\talk 19:14, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
But there are so many stations that disambiguating each one seems pointless - why not just do them all, link properly from the unsuffixed pages, and leave it at that. We seem to have a simple system for Australia that makes sense - suffix with state when a non-suburban railway station, suffix with city when a capital city suburban railway station. If it ain't broke, don't change it. It doesn't need fixing up. Bookscale (talk) 10:47, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The dreaded bindii

The reasonably wet month or two we have had down my way (not as wet as Queensland, however) has seen a explosion in bindii growth, scourge of the cyclist and the barefoot alike. Looking for articles on bindii, I note that Bindii redirects to Soliva sessilis, which is not what I would call bindii. Bindii to me is something more like Tribulus terrestris.

Am I alone in thinking this and if so, what do others think bindii is? Is it a common name for a variety of thorny weeds and perhaps in need of a disambiguation page? Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk 03:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Both species that you mention have that as one of several common names, so I made a disambiguation page as you suggested.Melburnian (talk) 04:25, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks heaps. Very efficient :) . -- Mattinbgn\talk 04:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I never knew there were multiple varieties, but Soliva sessilis looks like the bindis that I grew up with. Odd that we don't have a free picture, but I'm sure I'll be able to get many from my lawn over the next couple of weeks! Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC).
That would be great, some pictures are much needed to show which plant is which. Melburnian (talk) 06:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Tribulus terrestris is called "Goathead" up here. I've got some in my yard, and believe you me, they make their presence known if one should be so foolish as to wander out barefoot. I can also confirm that they scoff at bicycle tyre tubes, even the so-called "thorn proof" ones. To me, "bindii"'s are the more "civilized" type of prickle which merely annoys you, as opposed to violating the Geneva Convention. Johnmc (talk) 06:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Much the same where I come from: T. terrestris are the dreaded "doublegee", S. sessilis are the mildly annoying "bindi". Hesperian 12:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
... I've always called T. terrestris "doublegee", but now I see that "doublegee" usually refers to Emex australis. I'm not sure whether this is my personal error, or yet another case of the vagueness of common names. Oh well, you learn something new every day.... Hesperian 12:11, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
My feet feel sore just reading this thread - and it was so many decades ago that they pierced the feet :( SatuSuro 13:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Shouldn't we add another mildly annoying bindi to the disambig? ;) --Stephen 00:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Reliable Source?

Is Green Left a reliable source? Hack (talk) 08:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it depends upon the context - there's some where it's really quite a useful source (for things within its purview that the MSM doesn't necessarily pick up, for example), but there's other cases in which I'd be wary about using it. Did you have an example in mind? Rebecca (talk) 08:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I was looking to add some references to Russell Cooper in relation to his encounter with the CJC ‎and had come across some contemporary coverage by Green Left Weekly. While it does provide some pertinent information, it does seem to be a little biased against him (not that surprising given the ideological differences). Hack (talk) 09:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
If you like, I can look up Factiva for you and also check Political Chronicles from the period if you can send me details of what you're looking for. I'd agree GLW probably isn't great as a source for that sort of thing. Orderinchaos 09:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I would recommend against GLW apart from really mundane things for more obscure topics that isn't covered, but it should be avoided if at all possible YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 23:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree with YM, given the incident there would/should be signifiacnt coverage in mainstream media even for me from this side of the country the event has a familiarity to it so I'd expect that it had some national coverage. Gnangarra 00:05, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

CFD Settlements etc

When we had an active Places crew - most long evaporated into the ether:-

The following discussion might kindle long lost interest on the part of some: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_March_14#Cities.2C_towns_and_villages

Important in that it goes back to the heaps of discussion about what settlements/towns/localities mean to us happy little Australians SatuSuro 02:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed as well that the Australian education organisations one was improperly closed Rename, too. Have approached the closer and will probably be taking it to DRV. Orderinchaos 03:26, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
By its very definition, a settlement can not include a city, since just about every definition of settlement that I could find indicates that a settlement is small. Given the number of online dictionaries available, I wonder why people bother making such silly suggestions. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Categorising human settlements might also be of some interest. Lankiveil (speak to me) 23:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC).

DashBot uBLP is Go!

Thanks to User:Okip's request and User:Tim1357, the owner of User:DASHBot coding, the automated updating of the unreferenced BLPs program is now running. There is a problem with the overall Australia project, because the ubercat of Category:WikiProject Australia articles doesn't actually have any articles in it, just subcats. I have asked at the Template for the ubercat to be included, but for now, the auto lists are located at the following locations. I'll add most of the other subprojects tonight, and I think that these links should be shown on the ToDo list at the top of this page.

Hope someone gives you a gong or barn or star or something for all that SatuSuro 07:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks #1, In case anyone wonders where some of these pages have gone, I've removed some of the state/place related ones as either there aren't many BLPs in them, or all of the place related projects have done a really good job at referencing. The main overall Australia article page (top link above) will of course catch all of the subproject ones, and only has 630 odd pages, so it isn't too overwhelming. I've also added the links to the ToDo box above.The-Pope (talk) 16:06, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Murray-Darling basin

Two requests:

  1. Interested editors are invited to comment at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 20#Murray basin
  2. Can an administrator please move Murray-Darling Basin to Murray-Darling basin in line with MoS capitalisation requirements.
    1. And Lake Eyre Basin as well, please.

Many thanks, Mattinbgn\talk 01:00, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Moved --Stephen 23:45, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. -- Mattinbgn\talk 00:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

A little more controversially, can I get Pipers River (Tasmania) (an article on the river) moved to Pipers River. There is a town article at Pipers River, Tasmania but a hatnote at the river article is more than enough disambiguation. -- Mattinbgn\talk 00:59, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Controversial? Nah. Done. Rebecca (talk) 01:11, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks again. -- Mattinbgn\talk 01:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Need to watch

We need to keep an eye on those blanking the incidents and accidents section of the Airnorth article, as we have had one IP do it so far. I feel for the families but sadly this is notable (though the media's possible cause shouldn't be added unless the ATSB state it). Bidgee (talk) 14:43, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey Dad..!

Given the recent accusations, some articles that need to be watched include Robert Hughes (Australian actor) (now semi-protected), Sarah Monahan, Ben Oxenbould and Hey Dad..!. I am not entirely against adding something brief on the topic in any of those articles, but it will require care and for editors to remember that this is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. -- Mattinbgn\talk 19:27, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Child molestation is "tabloid", now? Rebecca (talk) 22:56, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
If you choose to read the above in the worst possible light, you could come to the conclusion that that is what I meant, I guess but hopefully a reasonable person would not take that view. Do I really need to start every statement I make on this topic by making the obvious point that sexual abuse is criminally and morally wrong and that perpetrators, when found guilty should be punished to the full extent provided in the law?
My point was, of course, that inclusion of the accusations should not be in the "A Current Affair" mode but in a reasonable, balanced format that includes the point that this is an untested allegation and makes prominent Hughes' denial. Being accused of child molestation does not mean that this encyclopedia should ignore its obligation to treat the living subjects of its articles in a fair and decent manner. -- Mattinbgn\talk 23:35, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
In agreement. It's not the what but the how. Let's not forget too that it hasn't come before a court or seen charges laid. Orderinchaos 00:42, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I'd add that quite a bit of the material being added was incorrect and very much POV. For example, Delta Goodrem was not involved and police have not opened an investigation. At this stage the sources are mostly reporting on what was in A Current Affair, so there's a lack of clarity. - Bilby (talk) 02:48, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Another

Every now and then one wonders about Afd, sort of like bunfights that may well have nothing to do with the subject - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Australia-New_Zealand_and_Australasia_topics looks like a classic, find some cakes and join in? Then again - it does relate to similar Australasia issues, and as a consequence it could be considered serious business SatuSuro 03:34, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

There's something very, very strange about that AfD. There is a few very active parties on one side who all appear to be SPAs, and possibly are the same individual. Orderinchaos 05:33, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Cannabis in Australia

Hey, just created a new page about cannabis in Australia to line up with Wiki information regarding cannabis in the US and UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Australia Thanks. bessmorris 05:57, 26 March 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bessmorris (talk • contribs)

That's an impressively well-researched article. In case you didn't know, you can refer to previous references by adding name="asdf" to the <ref> tag - I've done a few to show you how. TRS-80 (talk) 08:18, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Interesting, well done :) —Aaroncrick (talk) 10:07, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Protection of Albert Namatjira

Apparently Albert Namatjira is on the school curriculum as the last 100 or so edits to him has either been anon vandalism or reverting of such. Could someone with the authority please protect poor old Namatjira? --Roisterer (talk) 11:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I've semi-protected the article for a week to give him a rest for a while. --Melburnian (talk) 12:11, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. The main image of Albert on his page is the look of a man wearied by the sheer number of edits claiming he ate mud pie. This may cheer him up a bit. --Roisterer (talk) 12:39, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Speaking of which, do you think that the photo really is a personal collection one as claimed? YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:44, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
It was uploaded by one of our most prolific contibutors, I'd have no reason to doubt it. Melburnian (talk) 01:05, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not really surprised at anything I find in private collections any more.[22] --AussieLegend (talk) 01:16, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

CFD

Notification - Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_March_29#Category:Australian_rugby_league_teams. "Propose merging of Category:Australian rugby league clubs and Category: Australian rugby league teams" I have no opinion whatsoever on it as I know nothing about rugby league (being from an AFL state) but it seemed sensible to ask here for input as I know we have a few NSWers :) Orderinchaos 22:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

The categories definitely need tidying up but the proposed merge suggestion is a poor one. New South Wales rugby league team, for example, is certainly a rugby league team and just as certainly not a rugby league club. -- Mattinbgn\talk 22:43, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Bloody vandals!

I've heard about Sulphur-crested Cockatoos being rather bad vandals but of late I noticed some holes forming on the Historic Council Chambers and some foam on the ground along wall of a local shopping centre, a week ago I found who was the culprits!

File:Damage to Polyurethane on a tin roof caused by Sulphur-crested Cockatoos.jpg, File:Sulphur-crested Cockatoos damaging a shopping centre facade.jpg and File:Sulphur-crested Cockatoos damaging a shopping centre facade 4.jpg.

Well at least Wiki vandals don't do this! Bidgee (talk) 11:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

And at least if they do, you can revert it to its previous state. Doesn't work too well with shopping centres, unfortunately. Orderinchaos 11:44, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
If they did, you would want to rollback too far! ;) Bidgee (talk) 12:04, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes. "Centro, your expansion of this shopping centre without consultation or any form of consensus is completely out of process and looks like vandalism to me. REVERT!" *crash* Orderinchaos 12:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Do you have a WP:RS that the cockatoos were responsible? Looks like WP:OR or WP:SYNTH to me. They may have just been inspecting the damage. Beware, you don't want to get the Cocky Cabal offside.The-Pope (talk) 11:55, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Cockatoos vandalise Wagga - iPrime and Armed with a sharp destructive weapon Wagga's newest villains are scaling - The Daily Advertiser. ;) :P Bidgee (talk) 12:04, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Cockatoo attacks in Australia?The-Pope (talk) 12:10, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
They haven't attacked humans yet, only man-made objects! ;) Bidgee (talk) 12:40, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Hmmmm. I had to do first aid on a colleague who had been helping students feed cockatoos at a Dandenongs reserve. Cue The BIrds. HiLo48 (talk) 01:57, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
classic photo bidgee, I've been looking for a photo like this for a while, and now duly added to Cockatoo article. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:37, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Somewhere in my archive of photos I have photos of white cockies actually in the cbd of melbourne (2009) attacking a hotels false facade - it was raining styrofoam - literally onto the footpath 8 floors down - only ave fotos tho SatuSuro 02:00, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Wonder what the EPA has to say about the littering! ;) Mean while I'm still wondering if this is an april fools joke, just doesn't right IMO. Bidgee (talk) 13:07, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Updated ABS population statistics

For those that are interested, the ABS has released updated Regional Population Growth statistics. These are used here on Wiki for assessing the population of LGAs and SDs. -- Mattinbgn\talk 01:51, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks heaps for that - been waiting for that to show up!! Orderinchaos 22:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Just painstakingly updated the list but can't be stuffed doing the capital cities (excluding Darwin and Brisbane). See User:Bidgee/2010 pop update as all that is needed it to fix Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart Adelaide and Perth before it can be added to the List of cities in Australia by population article.
Now I've got a headache! Bidgee (talk) 13:46, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject's flagship article up at FAR

Nominated by Tony1 (talk · contribs) YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 23:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Nominated because it's missing "alt" information on images. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
There are also some clear problems with the prose and some of the sources, or so it seems to me. Given that this is one of the very early FA articles, this is probably an opportunity to give the article a bit of a tidy. Not sure how FAR works; does the article need to meet the existing FAR standards, or the standards at the time the FA star was awarded? -- Mattinbgn\talk 07:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Current standards, but the FAR people are friendly, so you get time and support. Mostly it involves fixing referencing, making sure it is consistent and to current standards, and making sure that coverage and prose are complete, current and good quality. - Bilby (talk) 07:44, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes there are other sources, but I found the official nominating rationale a bit odd. It needs to meet current FA standards, although truth be told, most of the most serious reviewers only hang around FAC. And the FAR can last six months if there is steady work. Canada has been there six months with dribs and drabs coming in each week YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 07:46, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
(ec) yes the monkey doesn't bite, and won't be closing this one anyway YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 07:46, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
And Raul seems to have better things to do, so this could be around for a while, I guess. —Aaroncrick (talk) 08:58, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

And Canberra is a sitting duck as well YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

More hands on deck are needed. It will be rather embarrassing if the main article gets punted off YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:51, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I have started buffing the article Australia but it is heavy going - if anyone else can help with political references it would be greatly appreciated. I am sure most can be reffed by trawling through federal parliament website. I just need a break from it and will return later to do more enviro stuff on it. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:39, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Politics seems to be all sourced (Indeed, all sections prior to Demography are okay). Culture is a disorganised and unsourced mess though. We are missing a section on Health. We definitely need more people to help out; Australia should not be demoted without a fight :) —Dark 11:23, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Merge stations (rail, bus and ferry) into three articles

See here. Gerry (talk) 07:38, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

2010 Barrier Reef oil spill

Started an article on yesterday's/today's oil spill following a ship running aground off Rockhampton. The oil is threatening the Great Barrier Reef, specifically the area around Great Keppel Island. Article is at 2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill: hopefully, I'm not duplicating anyone else's efforts. -- saberwyn 07:28, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I hate these early news articles, while inital articles are calling it an oil spill thats not really a descriptive of the event from what I'm hearing the real damage is going to occur when they try to salvage the vessel. would suggest something more towards Grounding of the Shen Neng One... Gnangarra 13:44, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I know where you are coming from, but atm there is a small oil spill, it is on the GBR, and that is what news headlines are describing it as. So I think the current name is apt. - Shiftchange (talk) 14:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
What is our article on Pasha Bulker called? That's what we should be using as a model Orderinchaos 11:45, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Answering my own question - it's at MV Pasha Bulker and is in the following categories: Ships of Panama | Maritime incidents in 2007 | 2007 in Australia | History of New South Wales | 2006 ships Orderinchaos 11:46, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Someone else had the same idea:-MV Shen Neng 1 Melburnian (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
(EC) What about the other oil incident in QLD a few months ago? Melburnian found it! :P Bloody slow mobile broadband! Bidgee (talk) 12:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
There's also 2009 southeast Queensland oil spill Melburnian (talk) 12:23, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, how did I forget about that article! Bidgee (talk) 12:25, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmmmmmm. Never one to claim that I am normal, but I wouldn't have remembered the above incidents by the names of the ships. I tend to recall place and approximate year. That Pasha Bulka one - I remembered it was at Newcastle, a couple of years ago, but only recalled the name when I saw it in print here. So, ship names wouldn't work for me. Places and dates do. Maybe it's different if the event is more local to you. HiLo48 (talk) 17:58, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The Pasha Bulker article is linked from June 2007 Hunter Region and Central Coast storms, which was the major event that resulted in me losing my pristine 2000 Dark Mica Red Subaru Outback, and also during which that red boat stuffed up surfing at Nobbys Beach. I drove 2.6km that night without leaving knee deep water....sigh.... Anyway, the ship article is easily found through the major event (although getting AAMI to pick my car up and then getting my stuff back was far more of an effort than pulling the boat off the beach and cleaning up the damage in the lower Hunter combined!) so all bases are covered there, and should be here. I miss my car. --AussieLegend (talk) 19:09, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Awww. Sorry to hear that. (And lol re AAMI - typical insurance...) Orderinchaos 19:19, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
On the article's talk, Mjroots has proposed a logical split for the two articles: grounding- and oil spill -specific info in the oil spill article, ship-specific info in the ship article. -- saberwyn 21:47, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Harris Scarfe

Would just like to get some input at this discussion. Thanks -- sk8er5000 yeah? 21:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:Australian rugby league clubs

Category:Australian rugby league clubs, which is under the purview of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. -- Black Falcon (talk) 00:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

World Sudoku Championship

In case anyone's wondering, World Sudoku Championship, which was the subject of a fine documentary screened yesterday, does actually exist. Andjam (talk) 08:46, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Just in case someone wants a reliable source for the Australians winning the drinking competition at Goa - [23] Hack (talk) 03:38, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/Gough Whitlam/archive1

Gough is probably one of the more hotly-debated and provocative topics in Australian society, so a specific heads-up YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 01:06, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Wombat attacks in Australia

I am sure we once had an article on this topic!!! :) -- Mattinbgn\talk 00:13, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

According to our Wombat article they "may display acts of aggression ... if they are simply in a bad mood" Melburnian (talk) 00:31, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I think I must be a wombat because that's what I do. --AussieLegend (talk) 00:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
What about Fatso the Wombat from A Country Practice? (Bidgee is on the Irrigation Way in Yanco, so can't post for long ;) ) Bidgee (talk) 00:45, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Can't add anything in the way of proper, reliable sources, but I know from a lifetime of personal experience (classical OR!) in the hills of Gippsland, that the common story is that of a young wombat, still in the wild, occasionally being hand fed by humans, then growing into a 40 kg adult with sharp claws and teeth who sees all humans as potential sources of food. Bad enough with adult humans, but really bad with 10kg toddlers around! (This is when the (generally understandable) OR ban is Wikipedia is very frustrating.) HiLo48 (talk) 01:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Are you referring to Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat from the 2000 Summer Olympics, or a different wombat called Fatso? Andjam (talk) 12:21, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Totally different but I have a feeling that Fat-Arsed (self OR warning) was based on Fatso the wombat(s) on A Country Practice. ;) Bidgee (talk) 12:28, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
You have to give it to Roy & HG. 10 years on, noone remembers the silly, cartoonish official mascots of the Games but everyone remembers Fatso. I'll always remember the diving competition on The Dream - epic. :) Orderinchaos 23:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Need a Fatso fix? Watch the 10m Bomb Diving on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8YSKc6pgc. (Can YouTube count as a reliable source? I want to add Jatz Crackers to the Australian English vocabulary article. Watch it and you'll see what I mean.)
It might be appropriate to mention Mattinbgn's article or this (ABC article) in the Wombat article, as those are not WP:OR. Donama (talk) 22:52, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Checked out Melbourne's two daily newspapers today. The Herald Sun found an expert who said that wombats never hurt people, and The Age found one who said quite the opposite. We normally regard both as reliable sources. HiLo48 (talk) 08:26, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Senate inquiry

I was wondering if anyone knows if Senate inquiries are open to the public? I'm wanting to photograph a few visiting senators[24]. I don't know the workings of an Senate inquiry. ;) Bidgee (talk) 09:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

its listed as a public hearing[25] so it should be open for you to attend, nt sure what the position will be on day but if your there early you should be able to photograph them as they arrive. Since its tomorrow just arrive early and ask for an organiser to get permission first. Gnangarra 09:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
Cheers for that Gnangarra! I have some photos but those which were taken while the Senate inquiry may not make it online (need to read the policy regarding Senate inquiries but was told what I could take and couldn't). Also Scott Ryan is willing to let us use his photograph (I'm sending him an email, so he can send the copy and the OTRS). Bidgee (talk) 07:52, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Suburbs and localities

An editor has proposed a rewrite and renaming of Suburbs and localities (Australia) at Talk:Suburbs and localities (Australia)#Proposed rewrite. His proposed version, with new name, is at User:Cassowary/Location in Australia. Aside from what I consider to be a horrible name, the article has a decidedly Victorian slant. --AussieLegend (talk) 23:13, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, a Victorian slant. Is it perhaps an indicator that Australia does not have a uniform approach over all states and territories, and perhaps having one article for all of Australia is an inappropriate aim? (I also learnt my word for the day - salience. Now, I'm not the world's most literary person, but we mustn't aim too academically in the readability stakes.) HiLo48 (talk) 02:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it's different in WA - we have Suburbs in urban areas and Localities elsewhere (noting that localities only exist where they have been established and in many remote/outer parts of the state, they haven't) - "town" has its own meaning in WA legislation independently from this (equivalent to "townsite" elsewhere). Orderinchaos 05:25, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Just something related to the 'low saliance' of LGAs. Do you think the council boundaries should be removed from the new state location maps that are on most towns? like NSW. It's not usual to show them on general use maps.Roke (talk) 09:12, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, drop the municipal boundaries. Roads and rivers would be much more help. HiLo48 (talk) 07:55, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Yeah - we do need something to give people an indication of where in the state something is beyond merely location, but I agree LGAs is probably not it. Orderinchaos 08:14, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
LGA boundaries are used for determining regional boundaries in NSW so they are relevant in articles on the various regions. --AussieLegend (talk) 23:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Agreed entirely (WA's the same) - but what they're meaning is simply the location maps for towns and suburbs. I support the LGA maps being there over the plain ones, but would support a better alternative over the LGA maps. Orderinchaos 23:39, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I uploaded versions without the LGAs, which still show some rivers and lakes so they aren't completely plain. They can always be changed back if people want. Roke (talk) 02:26, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Deborah Abela Australian author nominated for deletion

I would be grateful if someone could support keeping take a look at Deborah Abela which has been relisted. I genuinely have no personal interest in this article (even though some of the books are published by Random House Australia). It just seems to me to be ridiculous that a well-established reputable award nominee Australian author should be regarded as not notable when two-book wonders from larger countries seem to pass PROD without much difficulty. I'm clearly going to have to pause what I'm doing to beef up the article (which is ok) but I think a supporting "keep" on the AfD discussion page from someone other than me would help and I thought someone over here might like to take an interest.--Plad2 (talk) 06:45, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Ooops! Suddenly remembered that one's not supposed to canvass support. Apologies. Still would be grateful if somone could take a look.--Plad2 (talk) 07:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
Consider it done! - not that I'm a particular fan (never read any of the books) but article/author is sufficently notable to be retained. Dan arndt (talk) 08:44, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for prompt response.--Plad2 (talk) 12:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Gulf St Vincent???

There seems to be some cult that would have us believe that St Vincent's Gulf should be called Gulf St Vincent. I suggest it be moved back.--Grahame (talk) 02:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I would have encouraged the same - but... that is what it is known by officially at geoscience australia, so the aka is what we knew and loved it by - it now has a different name :) SatuSuro 02:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Australian geographic names lists Australian geographic names; Gulf St Vincent is listed there. Gulf Saint Vincent (from which I moved this article recently), St Vincent's Gulf, St Vincents Gulf (remembering that no Australian placenames use the possessive apostrophe) and any other possible alternative are not. I prefer the older name, but it has been changed. Always a good idea to check the official list when dealing with placenames; can save someone an afternoon correcting the name of just one place- see my contributions. Cheers (Crusoe8181 (talk) 02:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)).

Listing in the Gazetteer of Australia Online is here. Hesperian 02:40, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a shame the Gazetteer doesn't say when the name change (if there actually was one) occurred. A look through the maps I have in OziExplorer shows that it was certainly called Gulf St Vincent before 2004. --AussieLegend (talk) 03:18, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Issues with adequate history of term/usage tends to be with state authorities maybe someone needs to dig into SA govt websites to see if a date is on the change - http://www.placenames.sa.gov.au/pno/searchResults.jsf is of no help - the st vincents gulf must have been a common usage name that countered the actual naming for whatever reason SatuSuro 04:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

"Gulf St Vincent" is not a new name; it has been in usage since the 1800s. There seems to be an assumption here that the official name has changed from "St Vincents Gulf" to "Gulf St Vincent". That may well be the case, but I see no evidence for it. Possibly the official name has been "Gulf St Vincent" all along. If there has been a name change, then it would have been gazetted in the South Australian Government Gazette, and that is where you would have to look to find a date and (if you're lucky) a rationale. Hesperian 04:15, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Apparently it was named "Gulph of St. Vincent" by Matthew Flinders on 30 March 1802.[26] Prior to then, according to the South Australian State Gazetteer, it was called "Golphe Josephine" --AussieLegend (talk) 04:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Sure. I'm just saying the "Gulf St Vincent" has a long pedigree. e.g. this from 1840. Hesperian 05:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
then Gulf (as above), then St (or St.) Vincent's Gulf generally from the mid nineteenth century, then St Vincent Gulf (5 December 1940??- same date Darke's Peak, Norton's Summit, Leigh's Creek changed names?)- earliest modern of use Gulf St Vincent seems to be 2000. Maybe someone could research this accurately. Golphe (Golfe? more likely) Josephine was the name given, I believe, by Nicolas Baudin.(Crusoe8181 (talk) 05:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)).
Being a bit of a bower bird, I have a ton of old books and maps here. My 1991 Readers Digest Motoring Guide to Australia shows "Gulf St Vincent", as does a map that I purchased in South Australia in January 1987. If I could just find that old atlas..... --05:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
(Blows away dust) The BP Rigby Australian Road Atlas of 1977 has "Gulf St. Vincent" too. Melburnian (talk) 06:18, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
"Golphe Josephine" is oviously French word order, which may have influenced Flinders. It is curious that Geoscience don't say River Murray, which many in the 19th century would have regarded as its "official" name.--Grahame (talk) 07:38, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

More fun with places

Category talk:Suburbs of Melbourne for a discussion on what constitutes a Melbourne suburb, which I admit to starting. (Crusoe8181 (talk) 12:09, 12 April 2010 (UTC)).

Template talk:Mapit-AUS-suburbscale

Discussion currently occurring after a user tried to change it into an instance of {{coord}}. My stance there is a reflection of an earlier consensus but it has been years since we discussed it - it started as a much more comprehensive template but with improvements to Geohack it was pruned back.

I personally think they should stay, and if that's everyone else's view then that's fine, but if we end up agreeing the template is to be superseded, we need to fix the instances of it so that we don't have awkward empty looking "External links" sections. Additionally, it would be better to move them near the top of the article as Google Maps layer seems to have a little trouble picking them up if they're too far down the page. It really comes down to whether people believe the top right corner coordinates are sufficient for our readers to know that maps lie behind the clickable links. Orderinchaos 15:55, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced living people articles

User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects provides a list, updated daily, of unreferenced living people articles (BLPs) related to your project. There has been a lot of discussion recently about deleting these unreferenced articles, so it is important that these articles are referenced.

The unreferenced living people articles related to your project will be found here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/DashBot_unreferenced_BLPs. There are currently 528 Australian articles. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 18:37, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Delete bus routes Discussion

See here. Gerry (talk) 09:00, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Australia/News

I just updated Portal:Australia/News it has 9/10 events at anyone time, surely it can be updated more frequenlty than is currently occuring two of the item on there are from December 2009. Gnangarra 14:10, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Christine Nixon

All the uncited content in Christine Nixon needs citing or removing. The article contains mostly uncited (although widely reported) claims and then, in an attempt at balance, uncited claims of studies showing support. It reads simply like a battle between supporters of Mullet and Nixon and does this encyclopedia no credit at a time when Nixon is in the news. I intend to remove all the uncited content. I do expect to be chipped about it. Others are welcome to add back cited information if they wish. -- Mattinbgn\talk 09:06, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

You may well "be chipped about it", but not by me. A wise, positive and brave approach. I may even be activated into adding some properly referenced material myself. HiLo48 (talk) 09:11, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Would some form of edit protection be necessary? Hack (talk) 10:29, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Semiprotected for a year. I expect to be chipped about it. :-) Hesperian 10:34, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Strange Cockatoos without a crest

While watching a flock of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, destroying the lawn at the Victory Memorial Gardens, I spotted two without the crest (looks like it to me), first one (this photo shows back of its head/neck) and the second one. I doubt they are Cacatua alba nor a Corella but it has me stumped! Bidgee (talk) 13:39, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't claim to be a bird doctor, it might be a case of Psittacine beak and feather disease or maybe he's just had a hard life.Melburnian (talk) 14:03, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Maybe, second bird does show signs of Psittacine beak and feather disease. Bidgee (talk) 16:10, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd guess they're sulphur-crested cockies missing crests for some reason. Maybe victims of Cockatoo attacks in Australia? --GenericBob (talk) 01:14, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Photos required from New South Wales

I am currently working on many various articles for which I require photos from around the world. I am currently requiring photos from New South Wales for these articles, and I was hoping that this message would reach a photographer who can take the photos for me. The photos I currently require are listed at User:Russavia/Required_photos#Bombala.2C_New_South_Wales, User:Russavia/Required_photos#Dungog.2C_New_South_Wales, User:Russavia/Required_photos#Sydney and User:Russavia/Required_photos#Wollongong.2C_New_South_Wales. If any photographers can assist with this, I would be most appreciative. Please leave any comments or questions for me on my talk page at User_talk:Russavia as I am unlikely to read replies. Thanks in advance for any assistance which can be provided. Cheers, --Russavia I'm chanting as we speak 06:20, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

(Copy and pasted from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New South Wales#Photos required from New South Wales by 07:43, 19 April 2010 (UTC)) -- Mattinbgn\talk 07:43, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for updating notice board header

Current problem
  1. "PROJECTS" links to category, not main project page.
Australian Wikipedians' notice board

Board | List | Portal | Projects | To-Do

Proposed
  1. Link "PROJECT" to main project page, link "CATEGORY" to main project category.
Australian Wikipedians' notice board

Board | Category | List | Portal | Project | To-Do

Comments
Any suggestions/improvements are welcomed. --Funandtrvl (talk) 17:47, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 Done --Funandtrvl (talk) 14:49, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article review/Australia/archive1‎

More input needed on a few issues and things that may be missing YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 05:07, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Need some help on Australia. Now how embarrassing would it be if our main article gets delisted? Get your acts together, peoples. —Dark 04:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Change

A significant number of category changes have occurred today by an outsider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Funandtrvl) (well I dont see the editor as a regular visitor to this noticeboard - to explain what is happening and as far as I can tell no discussion has preceded this moving. I happen to think such a process of this change shows a lack of good faith (some mention of the rationale might have been forthcoming) - as it has ramifications for the project and I do not personally think that the tree re-structure actually shows any sense of what and how the Australian project has functioned for the last few years - (there may be wisdom in the change, I am not sure why or how though - as Australian places is a moribund and ineffectual part of the whole shmozzle - It seems odd to bind it in to this 'new unnanounced mode'. I would like others to prognositicate on it - as I imagine there are not that many editors who have australian state project category pages on their watchlists. I may have got it all wrong - others opinions would be appreciated. SatuSuro 12:29, 18 April 2010 (UTC) One big problem is our old gang (2 others?) of category maintenance people seem no longer active here - may they rest in peace or pieces whichever SatuSuro 12:33, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi- Yes, I definitely think you may have misinterpreted my actions on the recent cleanup of Category:Australia-related WikiProjects and its sub-categories, and I wish your focus would be more on "what to do to cleanup the category trees", rather than to criticize "how it was done without telling anybody" (who??) and to insist that this process was conducted with a "lack of good faith" (which it wasn't). About my background, I've recently been working on cleaning up and reorganizing Category:Regional WikiProjects, including the African, European, North American and Australian-related WikiProjects, by adding the missing WikiProjects' cats and main project pages to each top-level geographical WikiProject category and its relevant sub-categories, with the intent of enabling project members and outside editors to be able to find the relevant projects more easily. --In regards to the Australia projects, I do wish to bring to your attention the organization chart at the top of this very noticeboard, that shows that the Australian states are listed under the Australian places WikiProject. Also, the Australian states' article categories have been listed under Category:WikiProject Australian places articles, since between December 2006 and October 2007, and also for the concurrent sub-project cats, like WP Victoria, WP Queensland, etc. The only ones that were not listed under Aus. places were the ones I added yesterday. There is a WP Country subdivisons project that we could list the states under, but that project is currently inactive. But we could make a category similar to Category:WikiProject Australian cities for the states, that is a catch-all cat, but doesn't have a concurrent project pg. Any ideas you have are always welcome! --Funandtrvl (talk) 17:51, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Fact is you just done changes without any discussion(consultation) with the affected parties (the projects). Bidgee (talk) 04:54, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
I hadn't commented only because the changes seem reasonable from what I could see. Orderinchaos 07:24, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
I can see on that they are trying to do but in the process it is some what making things worse. For an example [27], This page is supported by WikiProject Riverina? it is the project so it seems rather silly and infact it would be supported by the WikiProject Australia. The other problem is the categories, it classes the projects as articles when they aren't, it puts them into NA-importance category as well. A new way of making it simple, easy and clean (IE: category system) rather make a problem into more of complex issue. Bidgee (talk) 04:22, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
That's a good point about the wording "supported by", maybe you could suggest a better phrase, and I can ask the {{WPBM}} people if it's able to be changed. Although, I don't understand what you mean about the page being categorized as an article, because it gets placed into "Project-Class" articles, not the main namespace project categories, like "Start-Class", "Stub-Class", etc. I think the word "articles" is just used as a generic phrase. --Funandtrvl (talk) 04:55, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
It's not the "XXXX-Class" but the "articles" (IE: Project-Class Australia articles) as a project is not an article but a page. Also the "NA-importance" on project pages is pointless as you can't rate projects, maybe something needs to be added to the template so that it is just rated as "Project-importance"? Bidgee (talk) 05:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
That was discussed here [28] back in January 2009, the class categories are either titled all "articles" or all "pages", but can't be both, due to the lack of flexibility in the WPBM code at the current time. Also, "NA-importance" currently is the default category for the non-article pages, and that can't be disabled either at this time, see: [29]. But you can always leave suggestions at Template talk:WPBannerMeta, if you want it changed. --Funandtrvl (talk) 13:05, 21 April 2010 (UTC) --Note: you can also override the NA-importance for the non-article pages, such as putting |importance=Top for a project's main talk page (which I've seen several projects do). --Funandtrvl (talk) 13:14, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Our gnomes seemed to have vanished - the lists of participants at state and country level are full of blocked, long inactive and in some cases never started users - I think it would be a very good reality check for editors who read this noticeboard to go to their state participant list - either at country level - or state level - and have a quick check - if your details are correct - good - otherwise if you see a known blocked or long inactive user - perhaps you could help the cleanup - we might then realise how thin on the ground we have become  :) SatuSuro 02:41, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Also I am suggesting no edits for over 12 months - and participants should be simply removed from lists - (there are a few seasonal editors but they would have edited within the last 8 months or so) - I see no reason for archival lists of long departed editors - if they return (and most seem to simply dissappear rather than come back - it seems pointless to list who we have lost :( SatuSuro 02:49, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Indeed - otherwise we end up with lists full of people who, if msgd, will never get the msg. Orderinchaos 07:24, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
  • even more disturbing is that the last time Wiki-editors met up was in August 2009(Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra) that was because fo GLAM-Wiki it was even earlier for Perth, Adelaide(though a minor meet occured in August 2009 when some Sandgroppers were between flights on their way to canberra) and Brisbane all of which last met in 2008. Gnangarra 02:36, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
there was a snap meetup in adl in sept last year. hwne jessica coates came here. However, I don't regard lack of meetups as a problem as the ones I went to, most people don't edit apart a handful of edits per month. Unless meetups provide stimulus to WikiProject's economy, which I doubt highly, then not having them doesn't really do anything. I'd say the suspected decline in real work is much more alarming, especially as more hands are needed on the Australia FAR YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 02:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Some attention

Is needed by a australian admins at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Williams_(criminal) - the contribs history has lit up this evening - it would be possibly a good candidate for semi protection imho SatuSuro 13:16, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Apologies - 14:56 (Protection log) . . Ged UK (talk | contribs) protected Carl Williams (criminal) [edit=autoconfirmed] (expires 06:56, 22 April 2010 (UTC)) [move=autoconfirmed] (expires 06:56, 22 April 2010 (UTC)) (Excessive vandalism) - already happened SatuSuro 13:20, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Rogue Australian Antarctic Territory work group?

Not sure how or why (my understanding of template code is limited), but Category:Australian_Antarctic_Territory_articles is showing up on a heap of unrelated articles - including a bunch of AFL pages. Can someone decipher {{WP Australia}} and work out why things are being mis-assigned.The-Pope (talk) 12:17, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

That is weird - a whole lot of writers as well SatuSuro 12:23, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AWikiProject_Australia&action=historysubmit&diff=357594848&oldid=350192285 SatuSuro 12:28, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Have left a comment at the last person to edit the template - hope they can help SatuSuro 12:30, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Undone last edit. See also Template_talk:WikiProject_Australia#Corrections_and_updates —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:34, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the info SatuSuro 12:39, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Correction note: two pipe "|" characters were missing on the AAT task force and have been replaced. The corrected version to copy is now at: [30]. Thanks to everyone who caught the mistake, much appreciated! (Who said wikicode was easy??) --Funandtrvl (talk) 13:41, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

WA Earth Quake

Owyagoin? Djaveagoodweegend? I take it this quake is not notable enough for an article,(couldn't find one) or is it included in a "list of" somewhere? Thanks mates! --220.101.28.25 (talk) 08:38, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You are obviously not an Australian with greetings like that? FYI it is at the top of this page - also at - wikinews http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Earthquake_in_Kalgoorlie,_Western_Australia - the main list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Australia and the WA list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquakes_in_Western_Australia SatuSuro 08:43, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks SatuSuro, much appreciated! [Not Australian? I bloody well am! ;-) ] --220.101.28.25 (talk) 08:59, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be "I bloody well am cobber! May all your chickens turn into emus and kick your bloody dunny door down."? --AussieLegend (talk) 09:49, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Well, I wasn't going to go that far! Maybe I should have offered to 'knock his block off'? (Bit too uncivil! ). How about Footballs, Meat Pies, Kangaroos and Holden cars? Felix the Cat, Louie the Fly, Joe the Gadget Man(red link!), Spyforce and Pavlova! Struth! And surely it's chooks, not 'chickens'! (Or maybe even wombats!) :-o --220.101.28.25 (talk) 13:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
When such usage occurs I assume it is a national of another race (north american etc) trying to feign local identity :| SatuSuro 09:53, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Americans are another race ?,(Homo Sapiens Americanus?). I always gave them the benefit of the doubt! Well my uncle admittedly is now a North Americano. I'll have to hang around here more to prove my Aussie-ness! :-P (I even know that 'rooting' has nothing to do with cheering for a footy team!) Gotta nick off now, chook dinner! Oo-roo! --220.101.28.25 (talk) 13:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
I believe you, from doing Vandalism patrol, I checked your IP, and it says location: Sydney, Australia. I don't think you can get anymore Australian than that -- to all those non-believers out there. :) --Funandtrvl (talk) 13:45, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Nah we west coasters - we're the real oztrylians - all the east coasters are nothing like the quality of us west oz'ns :) SatuSuro 15:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
(Laf-ter...) --Funandtrvl (talk) 15:17, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

This article has been created at the somewhat miss-named 2010 Australia earthquake. I tend to agree with the above comments that it's not notable. Nick-D (talk) 08:03, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I would think it would be based on the amount of damage caused. They're facing the prospect of having to demolish some of the oldest buildings in Kalgoorlie due to the structural damage. Rebecca (talk) 09:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Have notifed creator of wide scope title issue - and also note that Bidgee has helpfully renamed it - however due to the level of outsiders refs - it might as well stay unchallenged - problem with these style articles - they do not even acknowledge Australian links and articles that already exist SatuSuro 08:47, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Stupid question time (probably in the wrong place) - are earthquakes measured in Australia by the Richter magnitude scale or the Moment magnitude scale? Hack (talk) 03:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Australia still uses Richter magnitude scale[31]. Bidgee (talk) 08:50, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Populations of Australian cities

Anonymous editor has been changing populations of Australian cities today - no edit summaries, no refs. contribs here. I've reverted all so far, but I have the feeling there are still a few strange figures about even after I have done so (estimates with links to 2006 census??). Worth a look by someone with an interest in this area (Crusoe8181 (talk) 06:50, 23 April 2010 (UTC)).

Association football/soccer in Australia

I think CFD could benefit from some Australian participation at this discussion regarding what to call the sport of association football/soccer in the Australian context. Right now we have a clash between an article name and a category name. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services

I think is a rare and interesting document and deserves an article but it apparently needs a wider audience for development or it's scheduled for deletion. I think (though this argument isn't in the article) that it's approximately the only document of it's kind. It's certainly the only one I've heard of except that New Zealand modeled one based on it. I'd welcome any thoughts as to the viability of the article. Smkolins (talk) 11:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the PROD tag, as it can't be PROD'd twice (and it was originally prod'd back in 2007). However, whilst it could the only document of it's kind, you need to see if you can find any independent, third party articles that use the book as a key subject - as per the book notability requirements. If you can find some, then it should pass the AfD. If not, then it is likely that it will be deleted.The-Pope (talk) 12:10, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Photo request

I have made the photo request for the Qantas headquarters in Mascot. It still needs to be fulfilled.

WhisperToMe (talk) 18:44, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

National Library of Australia launches Trove

The National Library of Australia has launched Trove a searchable database of materials including archived websites, library books, newspaper articles from 1803-1954. Its about page states "Trove is a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. It supplements what search engines provide with reliable information from Australia's memory institutions.

If you are researching in the fields of the social sciences, literature, local or family history, or need inspiration for your school assignment, then this is the tool for you."

...

"For example if researching images relating to Edmund Barton, our first Prime Minister, results will include descriptions such as people, book, manuscript, map and newspaper articles. A researcher searching for information on Nellie Melba will be presented with a range of results including biographies, pictures, music, newspapers, books etc."

It should be a very useful resource for Wikipedians. Capitalistroadster (talk) 02:41, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

IMHO Trove - rather than google - should be used in Australian AFD discussions as to whether something exists, has notability or whatever - it is probably better than any one of the state reference library catalogues - and should be used at every opportunity by Australian editors interested in historical perspectives SatuSuro 02:57, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

dubious IPA transcriptions

I'm a bit dubious about some of the IPA transcriptions of some of the smaller Australian towns I've come across, and am unable to confirm. Some are rather long but don't have any stress apart from the first syllable (the transcriber may perhaps have confounded 1ary & 2ary stress), and many have an "ng", as in "Feingold", which I suspect is a typo for either /ŋ/ or /ŋg/. Perhaps s.o. here can confirm some of them?

  • THAR-go-MIN-da
  • THAN-gool, not THANG-ool
  • TAN-gam-BAL-an-GA (the last like "anger" i.e. "g" is sounded
  • MUN-gin-DI "gin" with a hard g, i.e. not like "gin" the drink.
  • JAN-dow-AE "dow" like "cow", not "tow"
  • BOR-ee CREEK, "bor" like "for"
  • COLL-in-GULL-ie, like "Colin Gully"

Also,

And then there's,

— kwami (talk) 22:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I started by removing the one for Yerong Creek - it seems intuitive and hardly needs a pron guide. :) The others will probably need to be reviewed by our NSW people. Orderinchaos 01:01, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
It needs a guide for me! I have no idea how you'd say it. I can think of three reasonable pronunciations. — kwami (talk) 01:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
*OR Alert* The way I pronounce Yerong Creek is Year rong (best way I can describe the way it is said/pronounced) Creek. Bidgee (talk) 01:23, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Like "year" plus the -ong of "wrong": YEAR-ong ? Makes sense. I figured it might be YAIR-ong or YUR-ong. — kwami (talk) 03:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I would have gone for YUR-ong (to rhyme with fur, not year), but I've never been there or heard of it, so definitely WP:OR. Got any West Aussie ones I can help with? The-Pope (talk) 07:22, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
In regards to your edit summary, the Riverina folk say it like Year rong but not Yer wrong. The Yer has a Year sound but the rong is as it is and doesn't have a w sound in its pronunciation. Bidgee (talk) 07:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I say "yure-ong creek" with "yure" rhyming with "cure". My cousin is marrying a man from Yerong Creek - I will ask him for an authentic, if somewhat OR pronunciation. -- Mattinbgn\talk 10:24, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
My favourite WA location is Koongamia - I once heard some one call it koon - game - ea, common usage is koonga - mia SatuSuro 07:54, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
No IPA needed for that, it's obviously pronounced exactly as it's spelled. --AussieLegend (talk) 08:44, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Problem is, what's obvious for you may not be obvious for non-Aussies. For instance, I would've assumed it was pronounced KOONG, not KOON, and GAM, not GAME. — kwami (talk) 09:09, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
If you listen closely to some - the kwami point is a valid point - some do say koon-ga-mia - the koon - game - ea was an english person with no understanding of local usage - we could always get into the classic word for west australians - Derby - is it d-err-by, or d- arr -by SatuSuro 09:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Too easy. Forget the IPA stuff and learn Aussie. Problem solved. ;) --09:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I've heard "Caboolture" pronounced as "Kab-ool-tew-ray", but there might have been an element of class snobbery in that. We pronounce words strangely sometimes so it's good to have a guide there, if only so I never hear my home referred to as "Bris-bayne" by a well-meaning American again! Lankiveil (speak to me) 10:07, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

Victoria

Just a quick reminder to everyone that the Australian state is located at Victoria (Australia), not at the undisambiguated title Victoria. It seems sometimes like I'm the only one ever actually cleaning up links that are incorrectly pointed to the dab page, and I'm a Canadian — would it be possible for someone here to start monitoring this on a more regular basis? WP:AWB really does make it a fairly simple task, if anybody already has that (or would like to try it out.) Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 06:25, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Glenn Druery

This was raised on my talk page by The-Pope a while ago, and I thought I'd put it out here in case someone else can help. Does anyone know if Glenn Druery the cyclist is also Glenn Druery the political aspirant, who was responsible for this monstrosity, and also ran for a few other elections? Frickeg (talk) 09:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Well lets see the article says he's one of the best ultra cyclists in the world, surely a politikal aspirant would have that in his bio somewhere even if just to take mickey out of the cliche "I'm in for the long haul if you elect me ". Gnangarra 02:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
They appear to be the same person. In this Hansard, Druery the Candidate is described as "living in Hunters Hill" [32]. In this media article, Druery the Cyclist is described as a "Hunters Hill resident" [33]. I haven't yet found a reference that includes "candidate" and "cyclist". WWGB (talk) 03:49, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Boring

There has been a somewhat boring event in the 2020 Hobart bid for the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Summer_Olympics olympics (what you hadnt heard of that? shame...) - my comment for the record:-

Ahah legitimacy - a few people in Tasmania are capable of creating a semblance of legitimacy by having a web page presence, facebook page and a few newspaper articles on an item - I would suggest information is never particularly straight forward - the actual proposal was in fact an april fools joke (the state of Tasmania has less than 500.000 population - the prospect of an isolated state on the outer side of the planet being capable of attracting either the money, facility or infrastructure for such a bid is close to absurd) - to give credence to the gullible - facebook, and newspaper cites alone may look 'good' and 'valid' - but ahh, I used to live in a part of Tasmania that had the marvellous total population of less then 5,000 people at any one time in the last 50 years.

The interesting thing is it did start out as a joke - see http://www.gamesbids.com/eng/olympic_bids/future_bids_2016/1216135135.html - and like chinese whispers and good media stories that run beyond the original intent and take on a life of their own - there are people who move it up a rung to try to keep the story going - I would suggest that any inclusion of such an item needs to be qualified specifically as to what it started out as - and that the probability of anyone in Australia being prepared to support the bid as being next not nothing and not even something a betting person could even start to make odds on - Tasmanians cannot even vote on a clear majority government Tasmanian state election, 2010 due to the Hare-Clark system, I suspect they will be preoccupied with many other things other than finding the finance for Olympic bids in the near future SatuSuro 13:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Reminds me a bit of the Smiggin Holes 2010 Winter Olympic bid... Hack (talk) 14:01, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Anyway it is hardly an event as there hasn't even been a bid nor has it even been held. I love to add more to it (the discussion) but I would be adding a few swear words as well. Bidgee (talk) 14:09, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Ahh my favourite line in some AFD debates WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL prevent my being able to say anything further on this current matter :| SatuSuro 14:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Next we will have the Canberra 2020 Winter Olympic bid, bit like Kangaroo attacks on humans! ;) Bidgee (talk) 14:54, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I do think it warrants a brief mention on the Tasmania article though, as there are reliable references stating that the Olympic bid is serious. Although it should be explicitly mentioned that it started as an April Fools joke. I can't see anything criminal or against notability guidelines with this. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 02:24, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I can its against the MOS WP:TRIVIA and Wikipedia:Handling trivia makes it dubious in Hobart but it definitely doesnt warrant any mention in Tasmania Gnangarra 02:45, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Serial prankster BIO

Well it seem we have an article on the serial prankster David Thorne, the article needs to have a major clean-up such as rewriting, finding RS and making the article more neutral. Bidgee (talk) 14:21, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Template:Location map Australia Sydney

Just so you know I've created a Template:Location map Australia Sydney. See it in use in the The Newport Arms Hotel, Newport Australia article. You may use it as a pin map to display buildings and landmarks on. I think it will be useful for you. If anybody wants a similar map for pin of any other cities such as Perth, Canberra or Cairns, Adelaide etc let me know. Dr. Blofeld White cat 16:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it's useful but my only complaint would be at the size it's used, it's got too much detail (which grows the size of the file) and there isn't enough contrast. If those two issues could be addressed this map would be fantastic. Orderinchaos 22:47, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Also, regarding the metadata of the image on Commons: is this a custom render of OpenStreetMap data or is it a straight screengrab of the OSM tiles? If it's the OSM tiles I wouldn't list yourself as the Author, and you should hyperlink to OpenStreetMap.org as well. According to the OSM Legal FAQ, the preferred attribution statement is "(c) OpenStreetMap (and) contributors, CC-BY-SA", or "Map data (c) OpenStreetMap (and) contributors, CC-BY-SA" if you've done a custom render from OSM data. --Canley (talk) 04:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

ABS Regional Profile

A little bit of promotion for my employer here: an updated version of the National Regional Profile has been put online, covering data at many levels from national down to Statistical Local Area / Local Government Area, as defined by the 2008 ASGC, and covering data from 2004-2008. A Google Maps interface makes it easier to find the region you're looking for, and there are some new sources of data compared to the previous version, including things like estimates of household wealth and Indigeneous estimated resident population. You can find it here, or go to the ABS home page and look down the left sidebar for "National Regional Profile". Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 01:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Australian military history task force merger

Hi all :) As a result of protracted discussions at milhist, we've merged the above task force with the New Zealand military history task force to form the new Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history task force. The now defunct Australian military history tf had categories that were partially populated from your {{WP Australia}} banner template, which will now need to be updated. I haven't looked in any detail at it, but basically I think it just means changing any reference to "Australian military history" in your template to read "Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history" instead (but your own experts will know best). If there's anything I can help with or you need further explanations, please drop me a note. EyeSerenetalk 13:57, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if I'm an expert :-), but I'll work on syncing the project template and categories w/WPMILHIST. --Funandtrvl (talk) 15:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Sorted it all now I think, regards, Woody (talk) 23:21, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Looks great from this end. Thank you very much for your hard work (especially since it was rather dumped on you!) EyeSerenetalk 16:52, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Betty King

Justice King also told the Young Lawyers Journal she was also opposed to judges being celebrities and had a Wikipedia posting in her name taken down.

How did she manage that, she seems clearly notable in my eyes. I did not know judges in Australia had that sort of power. Or perhaps she may be exaggerating a little ... -- Mattinbgn\talk 20:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Deletion log says it has been deleted twice. [34]. I feel like creating a new article about her just because of this. She's just given us a reliable source too. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Done: Betty King. I agree she's clearly notable given the features that have been written about her. This article can be expanded quite a bit further I think. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:02, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
In neither case btw are the deletions likely to have been because of her. One was part of a sweep against nanostubs where literally hundreds of insufficient articles got deleted, the other was simply because the version at the time was a copyvio of The Age. Orderinchaos 21:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
The Age article btw is at [35] Orderinchaos 21:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see. If this article can get over 1500 characters, I'd be half-tempted to nominate a very cheeky DYK hook (DYK that Victorian Supreme Court judge Betty King claims to have had her biography deleted from wikipedia?) --Mkativerata (talk) 21:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
I've added a bit of information to the article. I'm still trying to think of an encyclopaedic way of including her quote that she was the "queen of banning things"[36]... Hack (talk) 03:18, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm hoping to get a hold of the Young Lawyers' Journal article that has her interview where she said she had her WP page deleted. --Mkativerata (talk) 03:45, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
You had any luck? It's available to Law Institute of Victoria members on their website. Anyone know a Victorian lawyer? Hack (talk) 06:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately no, the subscription services I can access can't get this journal. Ordering it through the National Library of Australia seems to be the only option available.--Mkativerata (talk) 06:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Your local unis or state libraries should be able to stock it but I expect there'd be a wait. Hack (talk) 06:35, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Have you tried the LIV website? Bidgee (talk) 06:40, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, registering on the site only gives you limited access. You have be a paid up member to view their current journal articles. Hack (talk) 08:38, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
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