Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 37

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.

Archive 30

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Archive 35

Reference tool

I recently found GooReader to find, read and source books scanned by Google. It is free, compact and easy to use. I'm finding it useful so I thought I would share. - Shiftchange (talk) 13:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Ken Henry

Some additional eyes on the Ken Henry (Australian public servant) article would be great. I'm concerned that it's being targeted by an IP-hopping editor wants to include unbalanced 'criticisms' of Henry sourced to right-wing blogs. Nick-D (talk) 10:25, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Katter's Lebanese ethnic background

Could we please have some more experienced eyes at Talk:Bob Katter#Lebanese Australian? regarding the statements about his ethnic background. It appears that Katter's father was born in Australia but had some degree of "Lebanese ancestry". I'm not sure whether this detail belongs in Katter's article though, given his parents were born here. Unless Katter draws attention to it, why would that be notable, especially in Australia where we're all a pretty mongrel lot? Donama (talk) 11:08, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

In case of interest at Wikisource for October

Just in case it is of interest to the broader community, this month English Wikisource has two Australian related works. The first is the Featured Text "The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders" by Ernest Scott and the second is the Proofread of the Month, it being Henry Lawson's Triangles of life, and other stories. billinghurst sDrewth 14:49, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Australia at the 2010 Commonwealth Games

Needs a cleanup, many people may visit it over the ntext ten days YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 06:19, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Tasmanian devil

More hands needed to help this iconic animal YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 02:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi Yellow Monkey, What are you looking at fixing, updating or adding? And while we're on apex predators, the Tiger Quoll (aka Spot-tailed Quoll) is the second largest living marsupial carnivore after the Tassie Devil (and the largest one on the mainland), and its article could use "more hands" too. Chris Belcher has a great write up about them and their current status here: Spot-tailed_quoll_Belcher_December_2009.pdf (it was submitted as evidence in a court case). Lots of good stuff to take from. —Pengo 08:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh Wikipedia:Featured article review/Tasmanian Devil/archive1. A general overhaul and expansion, mainly YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 08:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Another call for hands YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 06:43, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Zootober

It's Zootober!

More info at meta:Wikimedia Australia/Zootober 2010. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:01, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Portal Name change

A not so watched area is the portal territory - please note:-

12:02, 8 October 2010 (diff | hist) Category:Western Australia Portal ‎ (cfr) (top) [rollback] [rollback] [vandalism]
12:01, 8 October 2010 (diff | hist) Category:Victoria Portal ‎ (cfr) (top) [rollback] [rollback] [vandalism]
12:01, 8 October 2010 (diff | hist) Category:Tasmania Portal ‎ (cfr) (top) [rollback] [rollback] [vandalism]
12:00, 8 October 2010 (diff | hist) Category:South Australia Portal ‎ (cfr) (top) [rollback] [rollback] [vandalism]
12:00, 8 October 2010 (diff | hist) Category:Queensland Portal ‎ (cfr) (top) [rollback] [rollback] [vandalism]
11:59, 8 October 2010 (diff | hist) Category:Powderfinger Portal ‎ (cfr) (top) [rollback] [rollback] [vandalism]
11:59, 8 October 2010 (diff | hist) Category:Australian Capital Territory Portal ‎ (cfr) (top) [rollback] [rollback] [vandalism]

It is all to do with the uppercase 'P' on the word portal - some may wish to respond what looks like a massive rename in progress Satu Suro 04:13, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

City of Preston

An attempt was made based on some loosely formed "consensus" at Talk:Preston, Lancashire to make the English City of Preston, Lancashire a primary topic. I don't believe that it is as against City of Preston (Victoria) (they claim the Victorian one is "obscure"), especially noting the English city has only existed for 8 years and is only marginally larger in population than the Victorian one was. As I'm about to go to bed and will be busy tomorrow, I thought I'd leave a note here to alert others to what's going on. Orderinchaos 15:22, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Cultural sensitivity warnings

I note that User:Arthistorycohort has added, to the article on Dick Roughsey, the following warning notice:

"WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this website includes names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples."

Do we have any kind of policy or guideline on this? Maias (talk) 00:15, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles.--Melburnian (talk) 00:25, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

There is already a general Wikipedia content disclaimer - this applies in this situation as noted at WP:AUSTYLE#Deaths. Dl2000 (talk) 01:08, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

This is a reoccurring theme here at WP:AUS but the wider consensus across the entire encyclopedia about disclaimers is clear, even if this project felt differently. There was quite a large discussion about this topic on this page at one stage that would be sitting in the archives - not sure how we would go about finding it now, however. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 01:56, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Maias (talk) 02:02, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:Hunter Region places and items of interest is up for deletion

{{Hunter Region places and items of interest}} has been nominated for deletion. Comments would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 October 8#Template:Hunter Region places and items of interest. --AussieLegend (talk) 22:53, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Now that the discussion is closed I thought I'd mention here, for posterity, that this was yet another case of Australian editors (in this case the template creator) not being advised of a discussion that proposed significant change (in this case deletion) of an Australian article. I find it somewhat ironic that the expanded version of the new template is physically larger than the template that was originally proposed for deletion for being too large, but that's another story. --AussieLegend (talk) 23:00, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation of Australian regions

There is a discussion at Talk:Midlands (Tasmania)#Requested move about what should be the preferred manner of disambiguating articles about "unofficial" regions of Australia, i.e. New England (Australia), Central West (New South Wales), Western District, Victoria.

Given that there does not appear to be standard manner of disambiguating these articles (where disambiguation is needed), the discussion could probably use some more input from editors involved in this project. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 23:09, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

inaccurate maps on town articles

see Tenterfield, Tabulam and Casino for examples - the map in the infobox is rather hopelessly wrong - it may be something to do with the wrong co-ordinates being put in, or some other sort of problem - either ways, it's pretty poor, and hopefully some brave soul will know how to remove the maps pending a clean up :-) cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 03:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Tenterfield now OK, here is where to find coords to fix such problems; usually two sets per article- title and map (Crusoe8181 (talk) 03:29, 13 October 2010 (UTC))

hmmm... the co-ordinates are accurate - but the image is still very wrong on my screen - the map shows tenterfield as being on the NSW / Queensland border. I'll check on another machine if it happens there too, and then rattle this one again..... Privatemusings (talk) 02:26, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine on the PCs that I've checked. --AussieLegend (talk) 02:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

All OK now, Tabulam WAS wrong (a one-off typo by an editor)- The Tenterfield pin nearly touches the border but the centre of the pin is in the correct location. I've checked on IE, Firefox and Opera and all satisfactory (Crusoe8181 (talk) 02:44, 26 October 2010 (UTC)).

Yeah my Firefox places it south of the border. Orderinchaos 03:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Ted Howard

There is a move proposal for Ted Howard affecting this project and it hasn't as yet created much interest. I invite you to have a look at this. Schwede 66 04:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Checked it out, it's an NZ politician. My view isn't at odds with the way things are proceeding there. Orderinchaos 11:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Tasmanian rivers GIS?

Does anyone know if there is any freely available GIS data on the rivers of Tasmania? In particular, the Forth River? --Malkinann (talk) 20:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

OpenStreetMap has quite a bit of the Forth River as GIS data: [1], [2], [3]. May not be complete, but it's freely-licensed. --Canley (talk) 22:25, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, will experiment with this. :) --Malkinann (talk) 05:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Images of paintings held by Australian galleries

I am looking for some advice on the best manner to find electronic versions of historic paintings to include in Wikipedia articles. For example in Bailed Up and The Golden Fleece.

There are online versions of these paintings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales site here and here. I considered simply "ripping" them from the site and relying on the expiration of copyright (Life plus 70 years gives expiration as 2001). However, I am conscious that some editors are working hard to establish good relations with the GLAM sector and it may not be the done thing to just right click, download these images.

Has anyone got some bright ideas? I would also like an electronic copy of A break away! (1891) held by the NGV, if possible. Also, Wood cutters (1886) at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.

Many thanks in advance. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:33, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

well you can always ask the gallery, as they will often respect the copyright expiry. NLA is good that way, even though there is a generic copyright across the web site. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:43, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Mattinbgn,

Unfortunately, neither the AGNSW nor NGV are willing to actively share their images with Wikimedia at the moment - believe me, I've asked quite a few times! Wikimedia practice (whatever our personal opinions of that practice) of copying PD images from art gallery websites is well known and galleries actively turn a blind eye to it. They do this because they know we're non commercial and really good at contextualising their images in an educational way. Of course, it gets trickier when you start telling them that, whilst we're non-comercial, downstream users of Wikipedia might not be... In summary, neither of these galleries are going to give you the images in an official capacity to use on Wikipedia - even if you pay for it - because it will come with terms and conditions that aren't compatible with free-culture. If you want to copy the images yourself, doing so on a case-by-case basis (rather than mass-ripping their website) is going to be fairly uncontroversial. Witty Lama 15:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, in my understanding, you cannot "re-copyright" an image by photographing it. Whatever the web site says does not trump copyright laws. I would like see advice from an IP lawyer, but if the painting itself is PD, then so is any photograph you might take of it (and subsequently publish on a web site), so long as the image is only of the painting not, for example, of some people standing in front of or beside it or a general view of the room it is in. As another point, the gallery does not normally own the copyright anyway, if it is still in effect - the copyright belongs to the artist. This is the case for example for any painting someone might buy. I know of at least one case where a major corporation in Australia was successfully challenged for printing Christmas cards using the image of a painting they had purchased. The settlement included damages for the poor reproduction which was judged to be damaging to the reputation of the artist. The point was that they owned the painting, but not the copyright to it. - Nick Thorne ^talk 22:32, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. This "no new copyright just by scanning/photographing" the PD original concept is derived from the Bridgeman v. Corel case. Whilst we in the Wikiverse hold this principle very dear, standard practice in the museum world is to claim copyright in their digital reproductions. Often this is done without realising the whole debate going on about this practice (so it's not necessarily malicious) but it is definitely common practice. I'm slowing working with GLAMs to try to talk to them about our position on this (including the aforementioned organisations) but it is slow work as you can imagine. Witty Lama 00:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd just like to reiterate what Witty Lama has said above. Unfortunately museums don't see the PD original concept the same way that we do, and unless you're willing to tempt legal action (see National Portrait Gallery copyright conflicts, for instance), I wouldn't recommend mass downloads unless you're a lawyer or have access to a very good one. Even if you do get away from it in a legal sense, any GLAM institution that you do it to either without asking or after being told "no" is going to be less likely to cooperate with Wikimedia and the free culture community afterwards. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 23:04, 29 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks all. Uploaded File:Bailed Up.jpg and File:The Golden Fleece.jpg. If there anything more I need to do to recognise the source, please let me know. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:48, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I just added in their accession number to each of the image's metadata. All good. Witty Lama 20:46, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

ACT busted

this edit resulted in weird syntax appearing. I've stabbed wildly at trying to address the anonymous' concern, using 'Vice-regal representative'. Can we find someone more knowledgeable to look at this? Talk:Australian_Capital_Territory#Head_of_state may be of use. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 10:14, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Bushfire merger again

There is yet again another proposal to merge (Talk:Wildfire#Merge from Bushfire) Bushfire with North American centric Wildfire article. Bidgee (talk) 10:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

This is more critical in fact than may seem - as a volunteer firefighter in Western Australia - I cannot believe the US centrism in the firefighting articles - it is as though the rest of the world does not exist. There are other ways of looking at things, specially when it comes to fire in non-urban scanarios (anyone au fait with the Russians problems with their recent large scale agricultural region fires might understand) - fire control methods and fire types are not something that started and ended somewhere in the US Satu Suro 12:35, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy is to NOT have POV forks. An article on "Fire fighting in Australia" might be appropriate, but a bushfire is a wildfire and there should be a single article with a plurality of views. —Pengo 23:05, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not a POV fork, Bushfires are not wildfires (fact is the Canberra and Black Saturday bushfires are known as firestorms [due to the fact of the fire producing its own weather]). Again Wildfire is not a world-wide view. Bidgee (talk) 04:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

So bushfires are now all firestorms and wildfires never are? You better correct all three articles then. Anyway, I don't have a problem with how the articles have been renamed now (and not merged): Wildfire, and Bushfires in Australia (redirected from Bushfire). —Pengo 02:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Australian people

I've cleaned up Australian people a fair bit, but it could always benefit from some extra work as a fairly core article amognst Australian topics. I was also wondering if there'd be any controversy moving it to "Australians"? It doesn't seem there should be, but I never know with nationality articles. —what a crazy random happenstance 13:00, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't actually have any opposition, although others may, but I'd suggest that asking here at midnight when most Aussie editors aren't around and then making the move reguest only 12 hours later, claiming "No objection raised at WP:AWNB",[4] was somewhat premature and a little inappropriate. You need to give people time to respond. On a weekend this place is dead. --AussieLegend (talk) 08:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Last 2 UBLPs

There are currently only 2 unreferenced BLPs in the WP:AUSTRALIA project that aren't at PROD or AfD. Both appear to be notable, but buggered if I can find any reliable sources. So after referencing almost 200 UBLP (maybe more, as some appeared during the month), I'm going to let/hope/beg that someone out there can find a reliable reference for Paul Brasch, a Brisbane based comedian, who seems to have a page on every comedy bar and booking agency in town, but nothing online in what you'd call an independent reliable source, and Peter Ford (news anchor), apparently not the current entertainment reporter, but a former Ch 7/CNN newsreader, who may or may not be a computer programmer and disability rehab helper. I get suspicious when people with common names have two very different occupations. So if anyone can help... thank you very much. Only 22763 more UBLPs to go in all the other projects.The-Pope (talk) 16:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Joel Monaghan

A review of my actions at Joel Monaghan and Talk:Joel Monaghan would be appreciated. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 09:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Seems appropriate. Another article to be on permanent semi-pro and flagged rev if it ever gets implemented, me thinks.The-Pope (talk) 10:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Full protection of the article for now also seems appropriate to me. I assume that you're also the person who deleted a number of revisions, which also seems like a very good idea. The wording on the incident will need to be discussed on the article talk page and be carefully phrased - though there's no *good* way to write about something like this. Nick-D (talk) 10:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Yep, all revisions were poorly referenced and at the time speculative, and some were flat out inappropriate. Going to be a long term watchlist item I guess. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 10:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I concur with The-Pope and Nick-D. Actions taken seem appropriate given the circumstances. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:39, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, your actions seem entirely appropriate. Orderinchaos 10:57, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of The History of Western Civilisation

The article The History of Western Civilisation has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Single songs generally do not meet the requirements of WP:N, no mention of notability no references

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:57, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

It appears to be a single release rather than a "single song" - so I disagree with the nomination, but not strongly enough to remove the {{prod}} as I'm not honestly sure whether it qualifies or not. Orderinchaos 10:59, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

As a 18 year old from Melton when this album was released, this song was pretty much my anthem at the time - almost like a documentary! Not sure that makes it notable however. It did get some airplay on MMM at the time. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 11:11, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I've taken the plunge, and removed the tag. Lets see what happens. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC).

Category:19th-century establishments in Australia

Do we really want this category and all the sub-categories by year. There is also a parent category that takes you to similar nonsense for other countries. It seems like excessive categorization if all these redlink categories were actually filled. It will be a massive job to clean them up however. --Bduke (Discussion) 08:24, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

We do not!! particularly when they categoriZe OrganiZations, places or other things. There is a certain amount of silliness with the Australian places etc infoboxes establishment dates populating what I would consider a useless worldwide establishment date category, but that is for another discussion (Crusoe8181 (talk) 08:46, 14 October 2010 (UTC)).

A bit of a back-story on this: User:Meco has been creating a massive category hierarchy of "<year/century> establishments in <Foo>" categories after nobody opposed his suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Category:Establishments by country. I first became aware of it when he added Category:1977 establishments in the United States to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.[5] After some edit-warring, an editor took Category:Establishments in the United States by year to CfD but it was kept. I still maintain the category naming is ambiguous at best and the result is a zillion categories with a single article in each, as per Category:1977 establishments in the United States. If the USA can manage only an article per category, how do you think Category:Establishments in Australia by year is going to end up? I just don't see the usefulness of this tree. We need some Agent Orange. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Support - complete extermination with prejudice - we already have 1977_in_Australia - anything further is absurd Satu Suro 10:16, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree with all above. Orderinchaos 18:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

So, what are we going to do with this? Should we go ahead and nominate it for deletion? --AussieLegend (talk) 07:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I tried to nominate Category:1872 establishments in Australia the only nineteenth century one (so far) but it is more complicated than getting divorced so have given up for the time being; if anyone can manage a WP:Cfd it should get support here (Crusoe8181 (talk) 08:23, 26 October 2010 (UTC)).

I've nominated Category:1872 establishments in Australia for deletion. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 November 9#Category:1872 establishments in Australia. Also nominated Category:1878 establishments in Australia for the same reason. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:49, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Australian place name conventions (again)

To avoid undesirable edit wars, please refrain from making any further page moves until there is a clear consensus. Pages at [city, state] should remain as such for now, likewise for those simply titled [city].

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Australia has been edited by Kotniski without any reference to a particular consensus. Unless there is a verified consensus to change the policy, it can't really be changed. As far as I am aware, no administrator declared consensus (all that resulted was a heated debate).

The only discussions that I could find are here and here. OSX (talk • contributions) 05:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

See also the requested move at Talk:Whyalla, South Australia. OSX (talk • contributions) 05:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, there isn't even agreement over whether consensus is needed to change the policy, or if it suffices merely to show that there is no longer consensus to maintain it as is. I'll leave others to have that meta-discussion. I only observe that your statement is contestable. Hesperian 05:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Either way, we need to get to the bottom of this. Whether this results in a change to policy is another matter, but if the convention we are supposed to be following is unclear, then how are we supposed to:

Maintain a consistent style; and
Solve disputes over article tiles?

OSX (talk • contributions) 05:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

You are incorrect on several accounts. Firstly, any editor can edit a guideline - there is no special rights for administrators there. Kotniski was well within his rights to make that change if he saw fit - and he obviously thought there was sufficient grounds. Have you asked him about his reasoning and/or advised him of this discussion?. Secondly, we don't need a specific convention for every style matter. We have the general guideline WP:AT and we have talk page discussions where consensus can be found for individual cases. None of this requires a specific consensus for Australia. It may be desirable, but it is not a requirement. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:18, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Follow up question. Why is the discussion here and not at WT:NCGN? Wouldn't that be more appropriate. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

So what you're saying to me is that if I don't like a policy, I can change it without a proper consensus (as verified by an administrator in contentious situations such as this one)? Wow, I should go on a major editing spree and change all the policies and conventions that I don't like. To justify these changes, all I need to do is dig up an old heated discussion and find someone who agrees with me (even if most don't).

I am personally undecided on whether the convention should be changed. However, roughly half of those who participated in these debates were strongly against the change, so I don't see how "this seems to best describe the status quo".

One cannot claim consensus based on 51 percent support and 49 percent oppose. There is no specified figure, but a "consensus" by definition is a "general agreement". Not everyone has to vote the same way, but "most" participants do.

I do appreciate your work in trying to improve policy. I know how difficult obtaining a consensus can be. However, we can't push through changes without following the correct procedure. As I said above, I have yet to make up my mind, both sides make very good arguments, so this is not a reversion based on WP:I don't like it. Regards OSX (talk • contributions) 06:53, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, please stop performing page moves like you have just done (Dubbo, New South Wales ---> Dubbo). I am not going to revert any of the moves done previously, but please do not make any other similar page moves until this issue has been resolved. All you are going to do is get yourself into major edit wars, which is not what we want. Regards OSX (talk • contributions) 07:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Just a small point, but I was under the impression that the convention was that if there is an established consensus, and in subsequent discussions there is no consensus to change from that consensus, then the previous consensus stands. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

And another small point, no one seems inclined to fix the links when these moves are made, and it is getting slightly ridiculous to change the name of the Battle of Dubbo as it is described in the only reference (Outram) used in that article, to the Battle of Dubba just to vindicate the move of Dubbo, New South Wales to Dubbo. Kotniski, as we all are, is perfectly entitled to do as he/she did, but should be prepared for a robust argument if any disagreement (Crusoe8181 (talk) 07:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)).

You failed to do the same, so more like "pot calling the kettle black". Fact is Dubba is in far more books then Dubbo or Dabbo but you choose to ignore it. Bidgee (talk) 07:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Can I be clear - I haven't touched or done anything remotely connected with any articles called Dubbo or Dubba or similar. You seem to be speaking to someone else.--Kotniski (talk) 07:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Clearly he is. This comment isn't about your edits. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be some misunderstanding here - all I did was attempt to describe the status quo, following much discussion, not to introduce any new guidelines. Discussions have clearly indicated that there is no longer consensus for the old convention, so it seems rather disruptive and dishonest for other editors to try to force it back in. --Kotniski (talk) 07:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it would require a positive consensus in one direction or another to direct major changes. The fundamentalists' attempts to force the issue are only creating division - it's been a running battle for a month now over a wide range of fora. The standards battles always end up being fought on the same lines, a bunch of people insisting there should be worldwide consistency at the expense of local views and common sense which has worked fine up until now. The push has actually alienated some local editors (myself included) who were prepared to negotiate to some degree with those who supported change. In summary, if consensus needs to be used to beat good faith editors (and almost half the people in the room) over the head with, it is probably not actually consensus to begin with. Orderinchaos 07:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. In fact I don't see what all the fuss is about suddenly - the change to the wording of the guideline was found perfectly acceptable for a long time, various move discussions led to some articles being moved and some not, depending (I suppose) on the particular issues involved in each case, everything was very peaceful and proper, the guideline described the situation as it was - then today someone came along and tried to restore an old version of the guideline which certainly doesn't describe either present consensus or the present facts on the ground.--Kotniski (talk) 07:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Despite the perfectly clear explanations from AussieLegend and Orderinchaos, I'll repeat this again:

If there is a consensus in place and someone wants to change it, they must ascertain majority support to change it. Just because the debate resulted in a heated discussion does not overturn the convention. The suburb, state convention became policy from a majority decision. A majority decision is required to nullify this. OSX (talk • contributions) 10:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

There was certainly majority support for rejecting the old convention.--Kotniski (talk) 10:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

There was? If there had been then we wouldn't be having this discussion. The new proposal, which I supported, was rejected and no consensus for an alternative was able to be reached. The poll conducted here resulted in equal numbers for and against. I don't see a majority either way, certainly nothing to overturn previous consensus. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Back in August I didn't have a strong opinion either way. Now I am more inclined to support adding the state regardless for consistencies sake. Maybe others have changed or formed an opinion on the subject and another vote to settle the matter is appropriate. - Shiftchange (talk) 07:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It would seem so. (But "consistency" seems a strange argument to use in support of a rule which would make Australian article titles inconsistent with those of most of the rest of the world.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:44, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Not strange at all. All of the 7,000+ Australia articles were consistent with each other for a long time. Now we have a few articles that are consistent with articles in other projects but inconsistent with articles within the same project, and all because somebody has decided to go against the previous consensus because they don't believe the previous consensus is valid, despite having been unable to achieve consensus to abandon that consensus. Now that is inconsistent. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Kotniski, I noticed that you have now revised the wording, to require [suburb, state] in all instances, except for metropolitan areas (whether they are capitals or not, such as Toowoomba and Ballarat). I am very happy with that definition, and it probably does better match the status quo. However, there is no consensus to have a miss-match of titles, for example "Bondi" and the adjacent suburb of "Bronte, New South Wales", simply because there are other places named Bronte, but no other places named Bondi.

Lastly, if the article titled "Toowoomba" is for the metropolitan area composing over a dozen separate suburbs, including the suburb of "Toowoomba", shouldn't there be a separate article on the suburb located at Toowoomba, Queensland? At the moment, this simply redirects to the Toowoomba metropolitan article. OSX (talk • contributions) 10:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I too am happy with that definition as a compromise. OSX raises some good points. Orderinchaos 10:41, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I haven't revised the wording to "require" anything. I've simply stated what the current situation is. There is clearly no consensus on either one side or the other at the moment, so the guideline has no business trying to dictate what decisions editors are to make about individual articles.--Kotniski (talk) 10:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm willing to switch my support away from compulsory disambiguation just to be rid of this tiresome discusion. However, whats the plan then? Will all articles be moved? And who will do it?Calistemon (talk) 10:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Presumably for an article to be moved, it would have to be either obvious, or agreed, that it's the primary topic. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.--Kotniski (talk) 10:54, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

And trying to determine primary topic is often an impossible task, with people from one country claiming "the place is my country is clearly the most important" and "no, the town in my country is way more important than yours". Just look at the discussion at Talk:Plymouth: everyone from Britain claimed the UK city was primary topic, but those from the US claimed the city in Massachusetts was equally as important. It was a futile argument, I don't know why I bothered wasting my time.

I personally think it will result in many editors getting extremely frustrated and retiring from Wikipedia over something as trivial as primary topic. I certainly hope the same does not happen over this debate, whatever the outcome. OSX (talk • contributions) 11:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I certainly hope it never comes to that, because this really is nothing to be getting that worked up about. Astoundingly, we actually seem to be moving towards some sort of consensus here (I support this, for what it's worth), which can only be a good thing. As for primary topic, perhaps it's naive of me but surely anything that generates serious debate about that is by definition without a primary topic, and disambiguating both would make sense. Frickeg (talk) 11:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I always thought that as well, however, the discussion at Talk:Plymouth certainly proved otherwise. If the revised naming standard was to become the new convention, I think it would be wise to include a clause stating something along the lines of, "If another place of the same name exists, the article should be disambiguated by default." Obviously, there would have to be some exceptions (such as Sydney, New South Wales and Sydney, Nova Scotia). National preference often seems to get ahead of too many people on Wikipedia. Hence, I think the WP:Primary topic guidelines need to be overhauled significantly, as they aren't working in their current iteration. OSX (talk • contributions) 11:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

To avoid any more arguments, we could just take a step back here in the Australian project and not insist to have the primary topic full stop when there is a dispute. It may seem like giving up a resonable claim at times but a sensible, non-confrontational approach may save us a lot of grief! Lets not forget, Wikipedia is supposed to be fun! Calistemon (talk) 11:53, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

That's certainly a good approach, but it won't avoid "any more arguments" entirely, since there are people who would have the state included in the title even when there is no dispute about primary topic, for example when the place is uniquely named.--Kotniski (talk) 13:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I suggest we leave this for a while (maybe until the new year). Then each side can collaboratively create an argument for each view. From here, a vote should be made. Even though consensus is by definition not strictly a vote, neither side seems particularly willing to compromise, so I can't see any other means of creating change being successful. If there is a majority shift to adopt new policy, then it should be changed. Unfortunately for those who support the change, revising policy takes considerable more effort than retaining the status quo—a pesky attribute of bureaucracy. Since consensus should correspond with unity, let's hope we end up with a decision that at least remotely bears resemblance to this. If we can get say 70 percent of the vote in agreement, I think that should be suffice.

If not, then the original definition should be retained. Again, editors should refrain from moving articles, for example, from "Bondi, New South Wales" to "Bondi" and vice versa. I would be happy to initiate and oversee such a discussion in the new year. By this time new insights will hopefully be gained. Regards OSX (talk • contributions) 11:26, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you would be the right person to "initiate and oversee such a discussion", as it is fairly obvious you are not an unbiased party here. I certainly don't see supporters of change accepting your proposition that the status quo ought to survive on only 30% of the vote. Hesperian 12:15, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I am completely undecided on the change. I see great advantages to making the change (better compliance with WP:AT, removes unnecessary disambiguation), and I see advantages to retaining the current format (consistency/neatness). I am not fussed which way the argument goes, but it has to be authorised. I believe that many of the opposers have voted as such because they are simply used to the current convention—many people don't like change. If the revised policy was instated, I would think that after a few months many would actually support it (as often happens).

I brought this up here because I take issue with editors changing policy pages without a consensus to do so (it completely undermines the way Wikipedia works). I think you will find the the definition of "consensus" is not synonymous with "democracy". Definition: "agreement in the judgment or opinion reached by a group as a whole". A consensus is not based on 51 percent support or oppose. 70 percent is usually clear-cut; a slightly lower number—65 percent—would probably be fine as well, but I think 60 percent would be pushing it a bit too far. OSX (talk • contributions) 12:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

User:Gnangarra has offered his/her unbiased help as a "referee" in the matter before and done quite a good job, I think. Why not approach him/her if we need one again? Calistemon (talk) 13:11, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Hesperian, I think you misunderstand. I was not planning on determining the result of such a discussion. As I have said above, an administrator will have to close any discussion such as this. Firstly, because it affects a long-held convention, and secondly, because will almost certainly result in a very divided community. I was simply volunteering to initiate the discussion, and suggested that we take a different approach to it this time (that is, have each side create collaboratively, a short argument with good reasoning to back-up their point-of-view). A vote would then be held to attempt to find consensus (again, an administrator will be doing this). OSX (talk • contributions) 21:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I have tried to refrain from getting too involved in these discussions, lest it seem like a one-man crusade (it is pretty clear now that it is not, I trust). However, this attempt to frame the discussion needs some rebuttal.

Firstly, we don't need to have a consensus for everything we do. It may be desirable, but it is not mandatory. We clearly don't have a consensus and that's fine - as long as we don't pretend that we do.
Secondly, your statement here "revising policy takes considerable more effort than retaining the status quo" is entirely contestable too. Why should this be the case? Why should we allow a mere 30% to determine what consensus is? If we don't have a consensus, we don't have one - it doesn't mean the previous consensus stays in place until a new consensus arrives. You have not even begun to address Hesperian's point above - we have a encyclopaedia-wide policy that enjoys a wide consensus, there is a local exception that no longer enjoys wide consensus. Why should the guideline that no longer enjoys consensus override the policy that clearly does?
Thirdly, the concept that a change in direction is best made from a top-down approach rather than organically over a range of discussions is contestable too. Wikipedia guidelines are just the condensed results of a range of discussions tabulated in a single place for the ease of users. Guidelines are not supposed to be statute law, set by some Wikipedia "parliament", but merely the codification of current and accepted practice. If a range of RM discussions shows that the protocol for naming Australian place name articles has changed, that is just as legitimate a reason for modifying a guideline as the results of a discussion on the guideline talk page (and more legitimate than a discussion on a Wikiproject notice board - why is this discussion taking place here anyway?). We have had numerous centralised discussions without any clear outcome - what is wrong exactly with a decentralised decision process for article names?
Finally, your point about editors and change is one I agree with. With some exceptions, the support for mandatory and unnecessary disambiguation is based on nothing more that "we have always done it that way, why change" than any objective, positive rationale for why madatory disambiguation is better than the alternative. It has me stumped why this argument is given any weight at all. Mattinbgn (talk) 22:54, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

One more point - the idea that administrators (and I am one) get to determine what consensus is, is wrong. Administrators get to block, delete and protect - and with some minor exceptions that is pretty much it. Their opinion doesn't doesn't count for anything more than any other editor and they don't have some special consensus-granting power. I am happy enough to editors to agree on a trusted editor to arbitrate in cases of disagreement - but making changes to guidelines is not the sole reserve of admins. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 23:03, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia works on the simple premise of edit-revert-discuss, the discussions goal is to reach a consensus where there is no consensus the position has always been that the status quo remains. The only exception that has emerged has been with the closing of AFD's about a BLP article were no-consensus equals deletion is the default position. By all means discuss the merits of disambiguation but without a consensus to change the status quo is the appropriate wording for the guideline, thats doesnt mean that RFM discussions cant determine alternative names if the RFM does change the article title then editors should respect that change and not revert, as a courtesy to other editors time should be take to fix redirects from other articles. If editors want to start a discussion to look at the continued use of disambiguations then I happy to remain a neutral observor during that process. Gnan garra 01:33, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

So, having not been around, I'm not fully up to date on what's been happening on this issue. However, I've read the discussion above and I'd like to reiterate some of what Gnangarra has said. It seems that some people are effectively claiming that because the convention's wording no longer enjoys a strong consensus it is nullified. Now, unless there's been some radical recent change in thinking, that's never been the case. In the absence of a consensus for any alternative, the status quo stands. With good reason — so that we don't have the sort of back and forth illustrated at the Mudgee article. However, I also concur with Gnangarra's other point. WP:PLACE is a guideline, not policy. Editors have always been free to determine article titles on a case by case basis, and WP:RM is the appropriate process. But I'd plead with editors involved in this dispute to seek a solution to the convention in the first instance. The death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach to changing the convention seems thoroughly unsatisfactory from a productive and collegial perspective. Perhaps it's time for a moratorium on moving individual moves and a rededication to forming a new consensus? — cj | talk 15:26, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. More than anything, what I'm most worried about is the acrimony, bullying and gamesmanship that seems to be creeping in with some of this stuff. People so convinced they're right that they'll run roughshod over anyone who disagrees to "win". Irrespective of what the issue is, it's not how our project should be operating - historically, Australia's been a refuge from the ridiculous nonsense that goes on overseas. I'm starting to sense that changing, and not in a good way. The issue at the centre of this will not kill our project, but the battle to change it just might if it keeps on this way. Orderinchaos 15:37, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I just want to air my thoughts in this overdone discussion. This evening I've discovered four places (two Springfields and two Bellfields) in Victoria that have clashing names. The current policy is (a) in conflict with the existing WP policy (b) useless. I want to add to this for a moment. Some editors tell us how useful "Springfield, Victoria" is. But it isn't! We have places with disambiguation! You cannot, for an Australian placename, assume that seeing as NAME is in STATE, therefore the article is at NAME, STATE. You cannot even assume that NAME, STATE will get you there except by a soft redirect (i.e. person reading the text). So the argument that this dead consensus was "useful" is dead wrong and worse than useless because if you rely on it, links will end up going to the wrong place.

I've never liked it. I just never thought it would be possible to change the policy. If you want my opinion, I think we should just get rid of the policy and fall back on the Wikipedia default. (I wouldn't particularly care if that meant that we saw Albury (New South Wales) instead of Albury, New South Wales: it's what we do for Victoria (Australia); its much easier to read in a list; and I don't think "Albury, New South Wales" is really any sort of Australian convention. The only time you see the state name always written after the city is in an address, and then the official standard is quite specific: All caps, two spaces, Abbreviated state. But, fwiw, I also wouldn't particular care if that meant ambiguous names remain disambiguated with a comma—it may not be our convention, but that doesn't mean it's not a convention.) —Felix the Cassowary 21:56, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Mudgee

I just thought I'd put this forward as an example of what we shouldn't be doing.[6][7][8][9][10] What has happened to this project? --AussieLegend (talk) 12:41, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I was wondering if someone could explain how we would know that there is no other place called Mudgee? - Shiftchange (talk) 12:59, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

So long as there's not another article called Mudgee, would it really matter? Anoldtreeok (talk) 13:07, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOTBROKEN

There seems to be a lot of link fixing going on, which seems to go directly against the spirit of WP:NOTBROKEN, "There is nothing inherently wrong with linking to redirects." --AussieLegend (talk) 10:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Adding relevant Indigenous people's category to geographical articles

I'm interested in people's thoughts on adding the categories Indigenous tribes/clans to geographical articles. So for example, it would mean adding Category:Kaurna to Grange, South Australia and Category:Yolgnu to Yirrkala, Northern Territory. Do people think this would be worth doing? --Roisterer (talk) 12:19, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not too sure about adding tribes to locations but you may want to create say Category:Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory to Indigenous/Aboriginal communities. Bidgee (talk) 13:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Might be a better idea to note that fact in the article text? Strictly by the rules that's needed if the cat is to be there & it won't be otherwise obvious why it's in the cat.--Misarxist 10:35, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 21:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Train stations vs Railway stations

I'm coming out of retirement briefly, on Commons two categories (1 and 2) were renamed from Railway stations signs in X to Train stations signs in X, this got me thinking what should it be. Railway stations seems to be a far more common name used then Train station (which seems to be mostly used in Western Australia).

Views from others would be great as to see if a rename of the categories should be looked into or not, UK is similar to Australia (See: User talk:Foroa#Railway stations). Bidgee (talk) 08:44, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

In my experience, Train station is used (I'm in Sydney), I rarely ever hear railway station. Actually, most people would probably just say "Station", but they would say "Train Station" if they said anymore. Older generations tend to say Railway Station more often. Maybe this use of "Train Station" is an Americanisation? Maybe there is just a small number of people who use "train station" and I know a lot of them? Anoldtreeok (talk) 09:00, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

In a couple of hours I will be going to Greensborough railway station to utilise the services of a Long Silver Limo (vandalism and other unforeseen events permitting). Certainly all the Eastern states use railway station, exclusively, so I agree it needs renaming. Well I thought they did when I was in Sydney (see above), but I am a member of the Older generation.(Crusoe8181 (talk) 09:11, 10 November 2010 (UTC)).

@Anoldtreeok, Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle (Looks like Brisbane could be as well) seem to be just "Station" which could be due to most stations also having bus services (not sure about the light rail in Sydney). Bidgee (talk) 09:17, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

And Canberra Railway Station for another territory for what its worth. Station might mean radio station. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:32, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

And Darwin seems to be Darwin Train Station (Great Southern Rail) and Darwin Passenger Terminal (Northern Territory Government). "Station" would unlikely to be ever used since it could mean anything, as you say radio but also fire, police and Television just to name a few. Bidgee (talk) 09:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The fault seems at much with the actual authorities running them - here in WA Transperth I think calls its railway stations Train Station to differentiate from bus stations - I remember when they were all called railway stations (which I prefer) - there might also be something in WP:TRAINS about this problem Satu Suro 09:52, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Category:Railway stations in Australia would seem to be a good place to start. For a wider view Category:Railway stations is a hint as to the preference. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:14, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Victorian born and bred early baby boomer here. Railway station for me. HiLo48 (talk) 10:17, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I've worked in the rail industry for 22 years, and the term I've always heard used(and used myself) is "Railway Station". I would suggest seeing what local councils refer to them as, because they are the authority that has to approve the actual buildings themselves. The fact that land is set aside as Railway reserves, rather than "Train" reserves would tilt the scales in the Railway direction, IMHO.Johnmc (talk) 10:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

And to take that a step further back, what do Architects call them? If you design something, you generally get to say what it is. :-) Johnmc (talk) 10:35, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

They are railway stations but often get called train stations or simply stations. Even a news search doesn't help - the same source will sometimes alternate between the terms. Orderinchaos 12:49, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I've always viewed "train station" as an Americanisation.cj | talk 13:50, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I tend to use both interchangably. Not really fussed which version is used to be honest. "Railway Station" would be the more formal of the two, however. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 09:34, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary disambiguation in titles of some articles

I have moved a few articles recently (parks, gardens etc and more generally, the built environment) to remove city names as a disambiguation in their titles (per WP:AT), but have run into a bit of flak and dissent (politely expressed) recently, so have opened a requested move discussion for a few of them at Talk:Light Square, Adelaide, should anyone be interested in contributing an opinion. Before you ask, this has nothing at all to do with the ongoing discussion of compulsory dabs of populated places! (Crusoe8181 (talk) 08:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)).

Infobox Australian place appears to be broken

I am having a problem with {{Infobox Australian place}}. Adavale and other places where the "est" field is filled in such as Cowell, South Australia are appearing with a superfluous "{" above the infobox. Can someone take a look at this edit and please fix. Many thanks, Mattinbgn (talk) 09:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

It was caused by this edit, to do with getting the infobox to automatically place articles in those silly "xxxx establishments in Australia" categories. Yet another reason to delete them! Fortunately Bidgee has fixed it. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I know what is causing it but the other categories don't work. The cause was an extra }. I used this to test my changes (will be blanked in 15 minutes) but the categories that Vegaswikian wants doesn't work. Bidgee (talk) 10:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Victoria politics expert needed

Members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, 1935–1937 links to John MacDonald (Victorian politician). I'm fairly sure from context this is a typo and should be John McDonald (Victorian politician), but would prefer someone with real knowledge of the subject to confirm please. Anyone ? - TB (talk) 21:55, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Correct. [11] Interestingly the parliamentary website gives "MacDonald" as an alternative spelling, so a redirect may be in order. Frickeg (talk) 00:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Redirected. - TB (talk) 07:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Plain cigarette packaging and The Sunday Times leak and police raid‎

These two articles (Plain cigarette packaging and The Sunday Times leak and police raid‎) have been on my 'to create' list for a long time, but with the many projects I am working on at the moment, I don't have time to give these articles the time of day they need and deserve. Does anyone have the time to bring these articles alive? -- d'oh! _[talk] 08:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move - rail lines

The discussion at Talk:Ballarat to Daylesford railway line, Victoria#Requested move may be of interest to posters here. I know that some here will feel that this discussion is divisive and I apologise for that, but I think it is a discussion that needs to be had, in the interests of improving the encyclopedia and especially the Australian part thereof. Ignoring the issue won't make it go away. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 07:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

National Library's Digitized Newspapers, etc

In the last few days, the internet "address" of all of the digitized newspapers, etc. that are held by the National Library of Australia have changed their "address". Whilst the identification number of the passage remains the same, the "address" of the entire holding has changed. Is there someone available who has the skill and the time to create a BOT that changes the http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ segment of all of these now obsolete addresses that are stored within Wikipedia articles to the correct http://trove.nla.gov.au/ ? Lindsay658 (talk) 02:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

That shouldn't be too hard. There's currently 2352 such links at Special:LinkSearch/newspapers.nla.gov.au. –Moondyne 03:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:Botreq can help with that. Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 05:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

NLA is moving most of its collections (including Picture Australia's Flickr users collection) to the trove address. Bidgee (talk) 07:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

More from the NLA

Some other stuff I've been asked to pass on...

The standalone Australian Newspapers interface (blue) was taken down this week and the content is now available from Trove Newspapers zone only: http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper?q=
There are lots of features in the Trove zone that were not in the standalone version: full list here: http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/project_details/documents/ANDP_Differencesandsimilaritiesbetweenblueandgreen1Nov2010.pdf.
If Wikipedians referred to articles or pages by using the url from the standalone (blue version) of Australian Newspapers instead of the ‘cite this’ persistent identifier they will now be broken – going to a ‘whoops we can’t find it page’. Wikipedians should make sure they use the page or article persistent identifier. You can find this under the ‘more options’ cite this button. Redirects are in place on the domain name however. refers to above
On Monday there will be a press release on this page http://www.nla.gov.au/pressrel/ to let people know that the Australian Women's Weekly from 1933-1982 is now digitised, full-text searchable and available in the Trove ‘Newspapers and more’ zone. The 1930’s are particularly interesting with some fantastic artwork and covers.

–Moondyne 12:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

One more thing...

If you have any queries or need to contact the Trove team please use the 'contact us' form on the home page of Trove, alternatively the new Trove forum has discussion topics for users to discuss issues with other users. http://trove.nla.gov.au

–Moondyne 00:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all that information. Nick-D (talk) 10:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Penrith

FYI the usage of Penrith is under discussion, see Talk:Penrith,_Cumbria#Requested_move . -- 76.66.194.212 (talk) 09:19, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Newspaper cites from Trove/NLA

The National Library has added a block of pre-formatted WP {{cite news}} text in their newspaper article cite window. Once you've found your newspaper article, you can simply copy-paste the code into your article editor. For example, go to article http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/10975697 and at the top left, click on More options and Cite.

I think this is brilliant and thanks go to Rose Holley, Trove Manager at the NLA for promptly responding to the suggestion and Liam for coordinating. –Moondyne 08:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that's excellent. Is this a recent development? Nick-D (talk) 09:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It went live thisarvo. –Moondyne 09:22, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

That is really cool. They even have the newspaper parameter linking to the article about the right newspaper. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:58, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Zero

We finally got there. Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/DashBot unreferenced BLPs

There are no unreferenced BLPs tagged by Template:WikiProject Australia.

Thanks for everyone who chipped in, especially those who helped in the initial surge from 1600 down to 400.The-Pope (talk) 05:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

And a very hearty cheer for The Pope who worked on so many of the problems Satu Suro 10:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that The-Pope should be suitably acknowledged by all of us for taking on such a herculian task and seeing it through to the end. Dan arndt (talk) 04:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but of course the UBLP hidden iceberg is still being uncovered, so it only spent one day at 0 and is back up to 2 now! At least we beat [[New Zealand! The-Pope (talk) 04:56, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think that hearty congratulations are still in order, for the huge amount of invaluable work that you've done to date! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC).

Years in Aus

Hi. I'm currently drawing up templates for years for each country and have created Template:Years in Australia. I've formatted the first one for 1788 in Australia by tidying up the intro and placing a nav box at the bottom. Is this OK? The nav box of course can be shrunk if necessary but I think this format is a lot more useful for people browsing. I'm doing the same with other countries. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:49, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Orderinchaos 16:15, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

You might want to consider some individual years for the few events prior to 1788, per Timeline of Australian history? --Step hen 22:38, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Tillegra Dam

Some extra eyes at Tillegra Dam would be appreciated. This is a dam proposal that was scrapped (for now) yesterday and there's been a bit of disruptive editing by an IP. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:41, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

A dam infobox with capacities and surface areas and the like, for a non-existent dam and which the govt says isn't going to happen does seem a bit odd. Perhaps consider moving the article to Proposed Tillegra Dam or similar. The dam categorisation shuold be removed also, and possibly replaced with Category:Dam controversies, à la Franklin Dam. –Moondyne 12:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

As I explained to the IP, and is mentioned in the article, the proposal is not a new one. It was first suggested in the '70s and since then, Hunter Water Corporation has been purchasing land in the area in preparation for the dam. In the early '80s there were "No Dam" signs on most trees and fences in the area but, because there was no formal proposal, it was forgotten for 20 years until the Premier gave it the green light in 2006, by which time HWC already owned a lot of land.[12] There's nothing WP:CRYSTAL about anything in the infobox. This is a serious proposal that HWC has been working on for 30 years and just because it's been scrapped, for now at least, is no reason to remove an infobox containing information sourced from HWC's well documented proposal. Your points about the article name and cat are certainly valid. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Category:Australian adoptees

Forwarded from my talk page, as I really have no idea what to do with this request (nor time to figure out whether it's a good idea or not). I'm entirely neutral on it, so will go with the consensus here. Orderinchaos 16:13, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I noticed you deleted this back in 2007 citing WP:NOT#IINFO. I'd like to recreate it as I believe that being adopted is important enough to serve as the basis for categorising people. Judging by the content in Category:Adoptees, many would seem to agree. What are your thoughts? Regards, --Saforrest (talk) 16:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Mark Dapin vandalism

There appears to be ongoing vandalism to this BLP from more than one IP user. Maias (talk) 01:01, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a while. Step hen 03:46, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Dapin invited his readers to vandalise his Wikipedia article [13]. WWGB (talk) 07:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Koolie Club of Australia

The article Koolie Club of Australia has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references found only a minor mention of the subject in published (gBooks) works. Fails WP:N and WP:V

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Jeepday (talk) 17:00, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Victorian railway lines proposed moves

See Talk:Seymour railway line, Victoria for a proposal to rename a few railway line articles to V/Line services Trust a few will notice this if they are not fighting floods, locusts, or the Antipodean cricket team. (Crusoe8181 (talk) 10:44, 6 December 2010 (UTC)).

User changing templates with no consensus

I've just noticed that User:Danjel is going through Australian school articles and changing the template from {{Infobox Aust school}} to {{Infobox school}}. Apparently there's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Australia#Template:Infobox Australia school private involving only two editors, but there's no consensus to change the template. danjel appears to have decided to do this on his own. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Not on his own. It would be most useful if you could explain your concerns over there. –Moondyne 12:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, please. Join in by all means.

Moondyne did some excellent legwork listing the articles that use the various templates here: User:Moondyne/Australia_schools_templates.

Template:Infobox Australia school (163)

Template:Infobox Australia school private (265)

Template:Infobox school (206)

Template:Infobox secondary school (171)

From this it seems that the practice is to use {{Infobox school}} anyway. In any case, there's no real content difference between the two templates. There's no reason to have several templates doing the same thing.

Of course, people are welcome to join in the discussion over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Australia#Template:Infobox Australia school private. See you there. -Danjel (talk) 12:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

As I indicated on my talk page, it is a wide ranging issue if it affects hundreds of articles as this does. There was a discussion some time ago, after somebody else started changing the template and it was agreed then that we should continue using {{Infobox Aust school}}. It's not up to one or two editors to make an arbitrary decision to change without following the appropriate procedures. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Previous TfD discussion was at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 March 9#Template:Infobox Aust school --AussieLegend (talk) 12:45, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

This discussion is continuing over there. -Danjel (talk) 12:49, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Sydney class cruiser

Note, Sydney class cruiser, has been prodded for deletion. 184.144.167.193 (talk) 06:16, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

East Polynesian contact with mainland Australia

I'm thinking about writing an article on the initial settlement of New Zealand from East Polynesia about 1280 CE. The settlers spread from NZ to Raoul Island and from there to Norfolk Island. I'm trying to track down a reference for a brief mention in the 2009 The New Oxford History of New Zealand, p 27, which says "Norfolk Island settlers may have continued westward. Lord Howe Island was not discovered, despite its high visibility, but adzes of East Polynesian type have been recovered from the coast of New South Wales". The ref given by the New Oxford covers the lack of Polynesian artefacts on Lord Howe but not the adzes from NSW.

I've found Evidence of Polynesian Culture in Australia and Norfolk Island, but the age of the article and its lack of any scientific dating of the finds makes it unsuitable for a Wikipedia ref.

Can anyone point me to a more authoritative and up to date account of such adze finds? This will only be one line in the article I write, and can be left out if no such account is available.-gadfium 19:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it's probably better if I ask this at the Humanities reference desk. Please reply there.-gadfium 19:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Christmas Island disaster

Is there an article on this somewhere? There certainly should be. It should also be a main page candidate too. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 09:48, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You're right. Good luck keeping POV political rubbish out of it. HiLo48 (talk) 09:59, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Stub at Christmas Island disaster (If you can think of a better name ...) . Probably right about POV, will need a good eye and a firm hand. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 10:14, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Nice work. HiLo48 (talk) 10:18, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

This is going to sound pedantic but the lead in the disaster article refers to the boat occupants as asylum seekers. Given they hadn't claimed asylum at the point of the incident, shouldn't they be described otherwise? Hack (talk) 02:21, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

You have a point. Why not take it to the Talk page of the article? HiLo48 (talk) 02:30, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Alice Springs

Requested move. Discussion at Talk:Alice Springs, Northern Territory#Requested move. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Collaboration with State Library of Queensland

The State Library of Queensland has donated 50,000 images with 50,000 subject headings. See commons:Commons:State Library of Queensland for more info. If anyone is bored, we need to map the subject headings to one or more commons categories so the upload bot can categorise the images. Wikimedia Australia will be running a different banner each day, or more than one if we can. The only requirement is that the banners use the images supplied by State Library of Queensland. If you want an opportunity to have your work seen across Australia, now is the time to get creative. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This is a fantastic development - and well timed for editors to be available over the Christmas period ;) Nick-D (talk) 11:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Preferences banner suppression tick works thank heavens Satu Suro 11:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the edit that you changed,[14] I was quite content to have the banner pop up occasionally; a simple click on the x was all that was required to get rid of the banner after you'd seen it once. The recent Jimbo banner was stretching the friendship though. All too often it would pop up again and I'd have to click again. The state library of queensland banner was the straw that broke the camel's back - it wouldn't go away so, apparently like you, I've suppressed all banners by way of preferences. I was starting to think it was just me until I saw your post. Now whomever wants me to see a banner won't get through to me and it's all the state library of queensland's fault! --AussieLegend (talk) 12:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Hell it doesnt work - (the preferences tag) - while actually logging in - there is nothing notable about one state library doing the honours - it would be another matter if all 7 did - until that time please modify, specially if you want silent night holy night rather than ---expletives delted--- every time the damned banner intrudes into normal editing space Satu Suro 13:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

As a complete aside, the "X" doesn't work in the beta version of Mozilla Firefox. It did for the Jimmy banners, so I'm not sure what's different. Orderinchaos 13:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't work in the non-beta version either, or in IE8. --AussieLegend (talk) 14:15, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Nor in Chrome. The-Pope (talk) 14:25, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Regarding blocking images, Adblock Plus and AdBlock (Chrome) block adverts on the web and with a right click any other image you want to remove. - Shiftchange (talk) 14:58, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Likely a typo or something has been removed in the java script which is causing the issue. I use Adblock but using it also causes other issues when using Wikipedia and Commons. Bidgee (talk) 15:12, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now, never had a problem with any other banners.The-Pope (talk) 16:11, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

This was my mistake. Tim Starling fixed it.[15] Sorry about that.

With regards to showing the banner across Australia, we want this banner to hit eyes in other states and promote discussion about this. I recommend reading this paper, written by one of the SLQ staff members we have been working with. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 20:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The new banner for this evening and tomorrow (Banner SLQ new building.png) is disabled for logged in users. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I would like to run a banner+appeal which illustrates how far we have to go yet. See meta:Fundraising_2010/Messages/Chapter_Specific#Australia. I'd love some statistics on how few heritage listed buildings are covered by Wikipedia. My very quick analysis is that 5% of these buildings have an article on Wikipedia, and mostly where these buildings are in the capital cities. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how valuable that information would be. A lot of these buildings simply aren't notable and would probably only become so if they burnt down. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. A fair few WA ones are useful in that the writeup includes other information about the town or suburb they're in, but the building often isn't notable in and of itself. Orderinchaos 12:48, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Cootamundra and copyright violation

There has been an accusation of copyright violation/plagiarism regarding the article Cootamundra, New South Wales at Talk:Cootamundra, New South Wales#Plagarism. The allegation is that text from George Main's book 'Heartland' in particular has been added in large chunks. The editor who added this content to the article is GeorgeVM (talk · contribs) whose last edit was nearly three years ago. Any idea as to what to do from here? -- Mattinbgn (talk) 19:56, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have access to the book to check this? It's more than likely the Gundagai editor so they may just be stirring trouble, but they said to check page 20. I can't find the book in SLWA. Orderinchaos 04:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Looks like there's copyvios to me. Compare the bottom paragraph of this page with the article. (eg: find the text of the sentence "When the Great Southern Railway…" in the article).--Mkativerata (talk) 05:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

The first paragraph of this page is also lifted. Subject to other editors' views, I think the appropriate response would be to undo all of GeorgeVM's edits to the page. If there are two clear copyvios, everything else has to be presumed to be a copyvio too. But here's a good one - perhaps "GeorgeVM" is "George Main"? --Mkativerata (talk) 05:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Best to never assume it is them, I have seen a few editors trying to be someone who they are not. We would need an OTRS to have parts of copyrighted content to be placed within articles (ok if it is a quote as it would be fair-use). It is the Gundagai editor by they did raise a strong argument about the content, after requesting more information, I took a look at the history section of the article and thought that something didn't add up. Bidgee (talk) 09:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

For sure - nothing short of an OTRS would suffice. If no-one does it before me, I'll remove the content tomorrow morning (I think it is clear enough not to warrant going through WP:CP and GeorgeVM is no longer active to respond). --Mkativerata (talk) 10:00, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Reverted the history section back to 1 December 2007, hate doing it but safer to remove the copyrighted content then leaving it up. Bidgee (talk) 10:13, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Good move Nick-D (talk) 10:31, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Well if it wasn't for Mkativerata's speedy action today, I wouldn't be around any more! Bidgee (talk) 10:38, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Fees in Australian schools articles

I asked the question recently at WT:EIA, whether a |fees= parameter was appropriate for private school infoboxes. The consensus from the small group there was that it wasn't, but subsequently I found that we have about 200 articles (list here) which have such data recorded. This was much more than I expected when I asked the question. I hate deleting information which has been added in good faith, so I raise this here to seek a wider viewpoint before we start culling. Any opinions appreciated. –Moondyne 14:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Obviously, I agree with removing the fees information. It's never very accurate for a whole range of reasons and opens wikipedia up to becoming a bit spammy. -Danjel (talk) 15:42, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

We dont put entry prices in articles like Australia Zoo, Disneyland, Warner Bros. Movie World nor do we have bus/train/ferry fares or the cost of movie tickets see WP:NOTDIR Product prices should not be quoted in an article unless they can be sourced and there is a justified reason for their mention. there would need to be significant commentary on the fee's to warrant any inclusion in the article text, that would be associated with a specific point in time. I doubt there would be sufficient ongoing sourcing for any school to warrant inclusion/maintance in an info-box. Gnan garra 15:56, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

While I agree the field is unnecessary, if it's a valid field in {{Infobox school}} (and it is) then people are going to use it whether it's "|fees=", "|National_ranking=" or "|custodian=", regardless of what we decide. The compromise here is to leave the fees if they exist but not recommend use of the parameter in the template blank. The only alternative is to continue using {{Infobox Aust school}}, but expand it to include only the fields from Infobox school that we want people to use. Of course, that isn't going to stop people from Infobox school and any of the fields that it provides. --AussieLegend (talk) 16:00, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I personally think it is of interest that some schools charge 8 times as much as others. I'd agree that detailed numbers and full fee structures are unnecessary, but the general level of fees charged by a school is a significant fact about that school. If we don't show the fees at all, we're kind of implying that they're all pretty similar, which is a long way from the truth. HiLo48 (talk) 23:39, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

One problem is, schools don't have a standardised charging structure. There's tuition fees for each year level plus extras for building funds, enrolment fees, book hire, excursions, subject specific fees as well as boarding, etc etc. These can be as much as the base tuition fees, so comparisons are difficult. Also, they are quickly out of date. I have no objection to the information appearing in prose where it can be properly explained, but when relevant, sourced and dated. If a small number of schools are charging 8 times as much, that is notable and could be expanded in those handful of articles, preferably using WP:SECONDARY sources. If its a run of the mill school (95% of the 200 I'd suggest), how are fees encyclopaedic? "Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to be used to compare the prices of competing products, or the prices of a single product from different vendors." –Moondyne 01:47, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

A problem lies in the fact that there isn't going to be any good reliable sources for School Fees (and Revenue, and a couple of others as well), so we're going to be guessing at ranges that may or may not actually be accurate. The website that will go unnamed that some people might be thinking of to provide that information probably prohibits the use of that information in it's ToS. -Danjel (talk) 01:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Several private schools (I really don't know the extent so I'm reluctant to say "many") list fees on the school's website so there are reliable sources for fees. We never guess. If fees aren't verifiable, they don't get included. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The school website is a primary source and as the policy WP:NOTDIR requires a justified reason for their mention so I ask what is the justifiable(encyclopaedic) reason for the inclusion of fees in the infobox. Gnan garra 09:29, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Because it is a significant characteristic of a school. I had a look at that limited list referenced above, and fro a sample of six schools, found fees varying from ~$4,500 to ~$18,000. If that's not worth mentioning, I don't know what is. HiLo48 (talk) 11:11, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The school's website being a primary source doesn't exclude it from being used. WP:PRIMARY says "a primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source" and simply listing fees seems to be covered by that. That said, I don't see the point including fees in the infobox unless it's supported by text in the prose justifying inclusion. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

In the infobox - no. It's not a feature of the school. It's the same issue with housing prices in suburb articles (most of which are out of date, and inconsistently so, so aren't even comparative let alone useful). I see no problem with noting fees in article text, especially if it is getting more press than the school's own website (there are occasional media discussions/comparisons of this info in state papers). Orderinchaos 12:11, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The new version of the government Myschool website is planned to include information about schools' income (see: [16]) so may be a good source of comparable information on this topic to use in articles (though it's unclear on whether the income will be broken down by where this comes from). I'd suggest leaving this information out, however, as it would be a nightmare to maintain given how frequently fees change. Nick-D (talk) 11:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Nick (and others): take care. Using any information given with the MySchool website here would probably constitute a breach of (a) the IP of MySchool as it sees it [[17]]; and/or (b) the new ToS that goes with the use of that site [[18]]. I would argue strongly not to use information from that site.

Leaving aside the primary source issue, I think that there are too many permutations in respect to fees as given on school websites to use it reliably. Do the fees include equipment (laptops, textbooks, materials, etc.) or not, for example? Different private schools either include this in their overall fee or charge it separately. Exploring and answering to this example would require trawling through a lot of information and add a lot of disclaimers to the infobox. My vote stands to note include such information.

...and I had been trying really really hard not to mention that website. -Danjel (talk) 11:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

MySchool information should be used with care IMO. Last thing we want to see is editor(s) being taken to court over the use of MySchool information (remember the big thing over the publishing of the information in newspapers a year or so ago?) and we don't want to give Wikipedia a bad name over the use of MySchool data. Bidgee (talk) 09:20, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Moving On

I'm seeing that most people have come down in favour of removing fees from the infobox, where it's present, in Australian private schools. Of course, if anyone wants to add it in... Then we may need to talk about how to achieve that sensibly, but for now does anyone have any major objections to me getting back to work moving over to {{Infobox school}}? -Danjel (talk) 16:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Qui tacet consentire videtur –Moondyne 09:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I have no issues with you moving {{Infobox Aust school}} to {{Infobox school}}. Bidgee (talk) 09:10, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Moondyne - heh, well... yes. I was giving it a day. On I go. -Danjel (talk) 09:59, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Conversion completed. Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:Infobox Australia school. –Moondyne 07:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Serious issues

There are so many issues arising at Australia_–_New_Zealand_relations - I am not going to list them here - problem also it has been the playground of one of our most perennial sock makers - who may well be one of the current IP numbers on steroids if I am not mistaken. It will require an admin with some particular non-silly-season endless patience and tact to unravel what has become a playground beyond playgrounds - and a capacity to read the diffs very carefully - I wouldnt want to wish the article cleanup to anyone, let alone fellow Australian WP'ans, but as it is, it will constitute a disaster one way or other Satu Suro 06:29, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Can you please identify what the main problems are? There's nothing on the article's talk page about this and the article is not tagged as having problems. Nick-D (talk) 06:42, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

you have a gmail on the way Satu Suro 06:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Nick-D (talk) 06:50, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Please note my edit at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AAustralia_–_New_Zealand_relations&action=history - Satu Suro 07:12, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I've re-applied semi protection to the article as it's obvious that that IP address is the block evader. Nick-D (talk) 07:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Queensland floods

Does anyone see a problem with using 2010 Queensland floods to cover recent floods in Queensland or would a new article be best? - Shiftchange (talk) 07:00, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Should be a new article, maybe one which also includes the NSW flooding. Bidgee (talk) 07:06, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

may need to turn 2010 Queensland floods into a dab page or make it a parent article to cover both events Gnan garra 07:38, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Australian schools again

^ Suzannah Pearce, ed (2006-11-17). "BULL Catherin". Who's Who in Australia Live!. North Melbourne, Vic: Crown Content Pty Ltd. is being used as a reference to establish notability for recent alumni/alumnae of numerous schools. Does it exist? (Crusoe8181 (talk) 10:22, 29 December 2010 (UTC)).

Yes, it's an online version Who's Who in Australia [19] --Melburnian (talk) 10:44, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Category renaming

A category renaming discussion is underway at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 January 5#Category:Bishops of Ballarat. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:11, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

ABC Local Radio afd

Most of the ABC Local Radio stations have been put up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ABC Riverina. Hack (talk) 03:37, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Current move discussions.

Requested move discussions currently taking place that may be of interest to posters here.

Contributions would be welcome. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 07:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Redirect created

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Australia&diff=next&oldid=395408921 - not sure this is a valid move - perhaps it might be ok - but needs scrutiny Satu Suro 15:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

That page was turned into a redirect in May 2009, some text was added to the redirect page in November 2010, then the offending text was removed yesterday. Text that is placed after redirects can cause all sorts of problems with the database if it contains links, like #redirect [[Australia]] the [[greatest]] country; see bug 7304. Graham87 03:21, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a reasonable redirect. Very few people go there, and I usually ended up pointing people who were posting there to this place anyway. Orderinchaos 06:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Still, an edit summary would have been nice. Apparently they're not required at mhiji.wikipedia.org

Just to clarify, the edit referred to in SatuSuro's diff removed a comment, it did not create a new redirect. Indeed, an edit summary would have prevented the confusion. Melburnian (talk) 06:53, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

{{Metlink Display}} nominated for deletion

This is related to Melbourne bus routes. See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:Metlink_Display --Melburnian (talk) 07:07, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I left a comment over there. Orderinchaos 07:41, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Redundant templates

Some time ago, {{Cities of Australia}} was created and {{New South Wales cities}} was removed from several articles. There are other state specific templates such as {{Queensland cities}} and {{Cities of Victoria}} and there are other templates such as {{Queensland}}, {{New South Wales}}, {{Victoria}} etc that also list cities. It seems rather redundant to have so many templates all listing cities. Perhaps we should consider consolidating these templates. --AussieLegend (talk) 03:53, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Australian government categories

A discussion is taking place at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 January 10#Category:Government entities of Australia. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:35, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Sydney sandstone

I am new and have been working on Sydney sandstone. Before I began, it was assessed as a 'start class' article and I am wondering if it would now be rated higher than that. I intend to keep working on it but I wonder what others' opinions of its quality are. Also, does anyone have any recommendations for improvement? Could you please put feedback on the Discussion page of the article. Thanks, User: whiteghost.ink

I've rerated it B. You might consider putting it up got up for Peer review or as a Good article nomination, where you will get more advice on improvements eventually.--Grahame (talk) 00:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Featured portal review

New South Wales has been nominated for a featured portal review. During this review, editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the portal from featured status. Please leave your comments and help us to return the portal to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, portals may lose its status as featured portals. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Elekhh (talk) 02:22, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Premiers articles move discussion

The discussion can be found at Talk:Premiers of Victoria#Requested move. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 03:46, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

And another move discussion at Talk:Brisbane City Council#Requested move -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:39, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

template:Renewable energy in Australia

{{Renewable energy in Australia}} has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.14.196 (talk) 05:18, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated Emu for a Featured article review

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 "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 03:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Re-added the post and link to the issues is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Emu - even if it is out of order to revert - the article was worked upon by now at least 3 no longer editing persons - so it is only reasonable to post here rather than at the talk pages of inactive or long gone editors - at least the current active editors of the project tend to have this one on watch - Satu Suro 04:31, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Requested move of Victoria (Australia)

There is a discussion taking place about moving the article Victoria (Australia) to Victoria (state). Discussion can be found at Talk:Victoria (Australia)#Requested move - Victoria (state). -- Mattinbgn (talk) 19:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Qantas head office photo request

Hi! The photo request for Qantas head office at 203 Coward, Mascot, NSW (Building A) is still active

Would anyone in Sydney mind photographing it?

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 19:10, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Victoria Cross for Australia‎‎

There speculation in the media about the medal being given to a member of the SAS in Perth over the weekend, this has trigger a few edits to the article adding the speculation with n dtails, I've protected the article until sunday but can people keep a watch on it and on the BIO page that will spring up as more details are leaked(cough announced). Also it should be added to news section once officially announced, also if theres enough for a good bio article maybe a dyk during the week. Remember that editors who are at a lose end Wikinews welcome an article Gnan garra 06:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Australian Business Traveller and potential WP:REFSPAM concern

A couple of IP editors are adding citations from Australian Business Traveller (ausbt.com.au), for example the recent activity on Qantas. Not sure if it should be considered WP:RS, as ABT seems to be more than a blog and an apparently independent news source, but not notable enough for its own article yet. Nevertheless, there seem to be WP:REFSPAM concerns as the IPs involved seem to concentrate exclusively on adding ABT links. Dl2000 (talk) 02:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly it seems to be a single editor/group who is using a number of IPs (121.44.65.98 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), 121.44.120.50 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), 121.44.192.1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and 203.79.95.54 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), likely more IPs) as they have mass added AusBT to a number of articles and not just a few. I have done some searching on the "owner" and interestingly it has come back to an address which is a residential apartment. At the moment eleven references in the Qantas article are of AusBT, and I think we should use sources from the main stream media and not a small operation blog site. Bidgee (talk) 02:54, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

IP has admitted to be from AusBT, clearly the website should be blacklisted from Wikipedia. Bidgee (talk) 01:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Linksearch results. Post something at WP:WPSPAM. Those guys know how best to deal with this. –Moondyne 02:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Southern vs Indian Ocean

{{Geographic Location (8-way)}} has been added to several state articles. What is the opinion of the project as far as what body of water lies south of the continent? Surely, we should be employing the same principles as WP:TIES here, stating that the Southern Ocean and not the Indian Ocean lies south? --AussieLegend (talk) 19:41, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

This came up a few times in the past when addressing the body copy in the respective articles, and the established convention was to use the IHO terminology (Indian Ocean) with an associated footnote explaining the different use locally. (The footnote did not replace an explanation of the local terminology in the geography sections, but was placed by instances of "Indian Ocean" to avoid reverts.) --Ckatz^chat _spy 20:39, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

One comparison that (IIRC) was used in coming up with this was the international nature of the project. That is why, for example, Wikipedia presents the Northwest Passage as waters that Canada claims and others see as international, as opposed to Canadian waters that others consider international. (The local perspective in that case would be to use the latter description.) --Ckatz^chat _spy 20:55, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Is this like telling the Italians that their capital city is spelt Rome rather than Roma? HiLo48 (talk) 21:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Only if we also direct the Italian Wikipedia to use English... seriously, though, the discussions in the past centred on the idea that the international body responsible for such decisions uses the term "Indian Ocean". It is not ignoring or discounting the local terminology, but neither is it giving said local view precedence over the larger one. In a similar manner, the article People's Republic of China describes how the PRC considers Taiwan to be part of itself, but the article is not written from the perspective that Taiwan is part of the PRC. --Ckatz^chat _spy 22:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

It all just feels a bit odd. I live in Victoria. Does it mean that when I go to the beach I can tell my kids "Look out there. It's the Indian Ocean, but if you look a bit further it's the Southern Ocean"? There's a logic to the Australian perspective, and I really mean the word perspective. HiLo48 (talk) 22:47, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Not much different from walking east along Zero Avenue in the Metro Vancouver area; step to your left and you're in Canada, step right and you're in the US. (Or the nearby peninsula of Point Roberts, Washington, where the kids get driven up into Canada and back down into the US for school...) When it comes right down to it, how many of our borders and divisions actually respect physical rather than political perspectives? --Ckatz^chat _spy 23:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear the discussions in the past centred on the idea that the international body responsible for such decisions uses the term "Indian Ocean". - the endless debates at the Southern Ocean and other articles shows how a lot of time can get wasted in wikipedia pandering to interpretations of things that in reality have no real connection with local usage - the ocean south of Australia may well be the Indian for those who read the IHO reports - but state mapping agencies in Australia use Southern... anyone who gives Indian as anything east of Cape Leeuwin is obviously not Australian and should for all intents and purposes be allowed to do the reverse of what Ckatz has watched so meticulously over the last x years - usage should be Southern - and the footnote should show the dumbos in the IHO use Indian Satu Suro 04:00, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Perspective is a perspicacious term to apply to the evident bias here. When you look at (or visualize) representations of the globe from its orbital plane (i.e. from a position perpendicular to the equator) you see the three great equatorial oceans neatly separated by chunks of land extending southwards (only connected by a thin smear of water next to Antarctica), and it seems convenient, even logical, to divide the marine surface of the world thus. However, look at the globe from above Antarctica and the geographical integrity of the circumpolar Southern Ocean is apparent. Biologically too, the islands and the coasts of the Southern Ocean, washed by the waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, have much more in common with each other than with the tropical and subtropical regions to the north. It is really the changes in water temperature and salinity (along with the coastlines of the southern continents) that truly define the Southern Subtropical Front and thus the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean. Maias (talk) 05:03, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

David Bartlett

The succession boxes in the David Bartlett article need updating. I'll leave it to someone with more skill than me. WWGB (talk) 11:27, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Done — Preceding unsigned comment added by WWGB (talk • contribs) 11:34, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Simon McKeon

Interested editors might like to keep an eye on the article about Simon McKeon, the new Australian of the Year. An ISP-hopper keeps adding material comparing McKeon to a Holocaust denier. It's bound to be a popular page once the news of his award gets around. WWGB (talk) 12:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a while. Article needs expansion and will attract more vandals I'm sure, so more eyes over there would be welcome. –Moondyne 13:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Didn't ARBCOM place restrictions on "climate change" related articles? No doubt Simon McKeon's article could have restrictions if it is the case. Bidgee (talk) 13:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Link to sanction (3rd one from top). –Moondyne 15:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

List of cities/places in <state> by population

List of cities in Victoria by population and List of cities in Tasmania by population were created today by an editor who appears to be under the misconception that an "Urban Centre/Locality" is a city. I've renamed these articles to "List of places in (etc)" as most of the locations obviously are not cities. For example, List of places in Northern Territory by population, which was created by the same editor after I'd renamed the first two articles, includes Adelaide River, a quiet country town (I'm not even sure it qualifies as that) on the side of the Stuart Highway, population 190. Interestingly, the article doesn't include nearby Batchelor (pop 481).[20] The articles include only a single generic reference.[21] {{Census 2006 AUS link}} was used for each entry but it was useless, as no parameters were used meaning each link went to the same page, which was the primary reference. As yet, List of places in New South Wales by population has not been created, but appears to be on the editor's "To Do" list,[22] and will no doubt be a behemoth given the number of UC/Ls in this state. List of places in South Australia by population (previously List of cities in South Australia by population [23]) has existed since June 2008 but this article is similar in layout to List of cities in Australia by population and doesn't just list every UC/L in the state. However, even that has a merge proposal attached. The proposal hasn't been discussed since the template was added in February,[24] so now seems as good a time as any. So, do we really need these articles? The three created today are just indiscriminate lists and only serve to rank the places, which seems unnecessary. The author's original intent seems to have been to list cities, but we have List of cities in Australia by population and List of cities in Australia already, so do we need separate articles for each state, or should we expand the two just mentioned articles. Maintaining these articles separately requires a significant effort that could be avoided by merging into existing articles. This is especially the case with List of cities in Queensland by population, the contents of which could easily fit in either List of cities in Australia by population or List of cities in Australia, depending on how we proceed.

Affected articles

List of places in Victoria by population
List of places in Tasmania by population
List of places in South Australia by population
List of cities in Queensland by population
List of cities in Australia by population
List of cities in Australia
List of places in Western Australia by population (added 15 November 2010)
List of places in New South Wales by population (added 15 November 2010)

--AussieLegend (talk) 08:54, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Does wikipedia really need them? Lists seem to be ointment for flies. Lists of cities brings up what is/was/will be a city - by decree, or size, and then it goes on and on. Population is not static. I would defer to the argument that the Australian project does not really need more lists... and where possible either merges, reduce or discouragement are indeed worth pursuing Satu Suro 09:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we do need the articles, and there's probably some argument to bring forward the merge req on SA. The QLD one is hilariously inaccurate because the person has trouble distinguishing between SDs, UC/Ls and LGAs. Agree with both AussieLegend and SatuSuro's accompanying points. Orderinchaos 11:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

As there has been no opposition to deletion, or a desire to keep these articles, I have started the deletion process by prodding List of places in Victoria by population, List of places in Tasmania by population and List of places in Northern Territory by population. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

And I've just unprodded them because I think the justification was completely wrong. They gave a clear criteria for inclusion i.e. being an Urban Centre/Locality as defined by the ABS. And the "unnecessariness" of them is, I think, in your mind. If they are "unnecessary" I can think of many other lists on Wikipedia that are far more unnecessary (and, therefore, should be dealt with first); these ones are far more useful because at least everything in them is (necessarily) notable, something which can't be said of List of localities in Victoria. As for incompleteness, was that ever a criteria for deleting a list? If it is incomplete, you complete it, or wait for someone else to. Far from being "uncontroversial", your justification doesn't even seem to meet the criteria nominating an article for contested deletion. —Felix the Cassowary 18:33, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is never a good argument. The three articles I prodded serve only to rank places in the state/territory by size. There is no useful purpose for them as they stand and I have now sent all three to AfD. --AussieLegend (talk) 18:54, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:CAPITALLETTERSAREN'TANARGUMENTEITHER. —Felix the Cassowary 19:24, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm really not sure what the point of that statement is since it's a redlink, unlike WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, or WP:V, WP:OR, WP:OSE, WP:VAND and MOS:TV. I suggest you read WP:SHORTCUT --AussieLegend (talk) 19:34, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I know what a shortcut is. WP:OSE has in its lead "sometimes comparisons are valid, sometimes they aren't" (I paraphrase). You seem to think that just by linking to an article with WP namespace shortcut, you are showing you have the authority to be right and don't need to defend your claims any further—but the link you point to provides no backup for your argument. So my redlink was as useful to my claim as your bluelink was to yours. An argument from analogy, which is a valid form of reasoning. —Felix the Cassowary 20:28, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but from the wording of your redlink it seemed that you had more of a problem with me "shouting" more than anything else. In any case, you appear to have missed the point, which is that in any deletion discussion, claiming that there are other similar or worse articles is never a valid rationale for not deleting an article. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:41, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec) And this is probably off-topic but what is your (Cassowary) problem with List of localities in Victoria (Australia)? What exactly is not notable in that list? What arbitrary test do you plan to use to hive off the non-notable localities from the list. The Victorian list is the best (and best formatted) list of localities of any Australian state and territory. Note that the existence of the list does not mean that every item in the list will (or should) have an article - the only time when any notability test is relevant. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 19:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't looked at List of localities in Victoria (Australia) but it seems to have a useful purpose, unlike the articles that I prodded. --AussieLegend (talk) 19:40, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Who wrote the comment beginning "(ec)"? What is the useful purpose that article serves? Any argument you have against the ones you're trying to delete also stands against it. I'm not saying I actually have anything against the article; just that its less useful than the articles your trying to delete. It's less useful because it contains a cacophany of information that is not sortable or sorted in any useful way. It doesn't provide any indication on what sort of locality they are: a neighborhood? a rural district? a city centre? I think it's also misleading by having date ranges: it seems that places with a closed range no longer exist, as with a disincorporated town in the US. When a person reaches that list, they might read (more likely skim) the introduction and then turn around once they've seen how much information is there. I think the idea in principle of a list of localities in Victoria is a good one, but in needs to be in a Wikitable sortable, and prefererably include minimaps (roughly showing the location). I certainly have no desire to see the article deleted, but rather improved, and I am slowly building a script to do that. (But it's more complex than the other one because I need to take information from multiple sources, not all well-adapted to scripting.) —Felix the Cassowary 20:28, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I have seen your sandboxed list and it is no improvement at all in my opinion. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 20:36, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree entirely: there's a reason it's "sandboxed". I did say in my reply "I am slowly building a script to do that" which I think clearly implies "I'm not remotely finished". —Felix the Cassowary 20:46, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Purrum has been busy. Today he's created List of places in Western Australia by population and List of places in New South Wales by population. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:16, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

And just to point out the extent of these articles, if properly populated, here is the number of UC/Ls for each state/territory:

Queensland (364)
New South Wales (524)
Victoria (350)
Tasmania (105)
South Australia (162)
Western Australia (179)
Northern Territory (66)
ACT (omitted so far) (2)
Total - 1,752

OK, who wants to populate the tables? --AussieLegend (talk) 08:22, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

List of places in Tasmania by population has been recreated. I nominated it for deletion under CSD:G4, but as the article had been changed slightly, although not improved by any means, this was rejected.[25] Naturally, it's now back at AfD. --AussieLegend (talk) 03:59, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

People by town or city categories

There is a discussion taking place at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 January 30#Category:People by city in Australia. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 19:57, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Requested move discussion - Australian dioceses

Editors here may be interested in contributing to the discussion at Talk:Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne#Requested move. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 12:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Article titles for tropical cyclones

There is an editor who want to use a less common name for tropical cyclone articles which effects the Australian basin articles. Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tropical cyclones#Article names. Bidgee (talk) 02:22, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the discussion is about what is indeed the common name. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 02:52, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Can we only include images of heritage listed buildings?

Over at Talk:Vaucluse, New South Wales it has been brought to my attention that photographs of buildings may only be added to the article if they are individually notable. Now I don't want this to be an attack on other editors, I just want to find out why this is the case. This version of the article includes the offending images, while this version does not.

In the case of Vaucluse in Sydney, several heritage listed mansions populate the suburb. But these are by no means representative of most homes—a significant proportion of the homes are modern cement rendered dwellings. However, just because these homes have no heritage value, does that means they have no merit for inclusion? Doing so simply misrepresents the suburb entirely, which can be rectified by including a broader cross-section of images to better illustrate the styles of homes available in the suburb.

If only mansions or heritage listed homes can be shown, where does the leave us with the newer and "lesser" suburbs? In Sydney, the suburb of Kellyville is almost entirely comprised of new development houses (McMansions), none of which have heritage value or are "notable" aspects of architecture as standalone dwellings. But this is the predominant architectural style, so do we just not include any photographs illustrating this article? OSX (talk • contributions) 00:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOT is being cited out of context by Timmccloud. The actual wording is "Mere collections of photographs or media files with no text to go with the articles." It refers to an article that is just filled with images and little or no text to go with them, such as you find at commons. It doesn't apply in this case. Similarly, WP:N is being misrepresented. It specifically states, "These notability guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not directly limit the content of an article or list." That said, image galleries are generally discouraged and I have trouble seeing how inclusion of the four addressed houses and apartments in this version of the article can be justified. There just doesn't seem to be sufficient reason for them to be in the gallery. It's more appropriate for {{Commons category}} to be used to point to the additional images, unless justification to work the images into the prose can be made. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Sydney suburb articles are run by three editors who shoe-horn their weekend photos of buildings into these articles. I've locked horns with them a few times about their abuse of image galleries and their implied insistence that suburbs are collections of buildings that need to be photographed for wikipedia. It seems of late though, that they are feuding amongst themselves (and their respective sock puppets) about who has the better photos.[26] (one example only). It hasn't made for a particularly high quality or broad scope for these articles. I don't have time to improve them myself. However, it's good that this sorry group of articles is getting some more attention here. --Merbabu (talk) 11:10, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't put it quite so bluntly, but I basically agree with Merbabu here. Image galleries are being over-used in quite a few Sydney-related articles. Nick-D (talk) 11:30, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the Merbabu and Nick; these happen to be the personal photos of the people arguing for inclusion, which in my mind places them too close to the argument. You know, if at least a half-hearted attempt at adding content to match the photos was attempted I wouldn't have nearly the problem that I have with it now; as it stands, it appears like the photographer just want's a photo of his own house in the article. Timmccloud (talk) 00:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

My point wasn't necessarily about just those four photos of Vaucluse houses; it was regarding the inclusion of photographs of less notable homes in articles to better represent the suburb. Basically, if a suburb only contains average homes that aren't particularly special, should these suburbs not have any photographs at all simply because these homes will not be specifically referred to in the text? OSX (talk • contributions) 01:39, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the photos should be there to support the text, and positioned within the text rather than in galleries. If the text talks about certain historic properties, then it would seem reasonable to include photos of those properties. If the text mentions that the predominant style of residential architecture in a suburb is California Bungalow, then a picture of a house in the suburb of that style would seem appropriate. Melburnian (talk) 02:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Spot on Melburnian! Any photos (houses or whatever) should illustrate a point of the text of the article, not be a "random sample". Timmccloud (talk) 00:30, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no need to mention a structure by name to have it included in an article in many cases. For instance in a "City" article it would be fine to show a building or 2 in a section about architecture style without actually naming the building in the text. As the picture can be there to illustrate a style of architecture that is used heritage or not. As for galleries they have been discouraged for some time as we have WikiCommons that does just this (presents pics in a gallery). Moxy (talk) 00:40, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree that these collections of images unrelated to Wikipedia text shouldn't be on Wikipedia articles, and they can be commons:Commons:Galleries on the Commons projects, or simply categories on Commons. An image radically increases the download size of a Wikipedia page, and it is really annoying to be on a 21kbps modem in rural Australia and be forced to download unimportant images. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Roger Merrett and close paraphrasing of articles

At Talk:Roger Merrett there is an interesting comparison of our article about Mr Merrett and a recent article in the press. This is all very flattering that our article is worthy of being used for a news article. I know there are plenty of editors here that copy and paste from newspapers but at least we frown on it and remove it when identified. Is there a process or place where this sort of "close paraphrasing" without acknowledgement can be reported so Wikipedia can act on it? -- Mattinbgn (talk) 05:28, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is, but it may be worth dropping Media Watch a line here. They sometimes pick up on stuff like this. -- Lear's Fool 05:35, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Email (or do you have to tweet these days?) the sports editor first. It probably happens a lot. A few years ago Perthnow did a direct copy and paste from the Shane Parker and Troy Cook wikipedia articles when they retired. When I asked for the correct attribution to be made (after I made sure I archived the original version) they rewrote the story and hopefully gave the "reporter" a smack behind the ears. Media watch is unlikely to be interested in a one-off like this, but may use it if it is repeated by the same journo/paper.The-Pope (talk) 07:51, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Nothing new, I've seen a few media outlets lift content of some sort off Wikipedia and claim it as their own. Fact is Prime7 News has stolen my photograph of Wagga Wagga Base Hospital. Bidgee (talk) 10:07, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, Wikipedia and Wikicommons photos are rarely acknowledged when they're reused by the media (much less published media under compliant licenses as required!). You could use {{Online source}} to tag the article (noting the plagiarism!). Nick-D (talk) 10:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Its not uncommon for people to be lazy and just copy acouple yoears back an Irish Rugby team book was completely copied from here including the vandalism it wasnt discovered until after the book had been printed and released. Aside form that the article should be tagged with a link if available to the source so that it doesnt become a self reference. on a side note maybe we should be noting reporters who do it with a suggestion avoiding stories with their byline as they would be have questionable as to whether they are reliable. Gnan garra 01:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

New article: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

New article, created, at The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 13:40, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

lost archive

Why is the most recent archive not mentioned anywhere? Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Australian_Wikipedians'_notice_board/Archive_37. I don't know much about the archive bots. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/TOC needs to be updated manually. –Moondyne 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Leanne Clare

I would not mind a second opinion on this article. To me, it appears hopelessly POV and as a BLP in drastic need of a severe prune to remove the WP:UNDUE. The whole article reads like a WP:CRITICISM section. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:30, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The article is a trainwreck IMO. Orderinchaos 04:40, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I've done some quick research, and I've dug up quite a few stories regarding her through NewsBank, and they tended to be much more balanced. I'll try and do something with them asap. - Bilby (talk) 05:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks a lot better. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 20:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Australian battlecruiser categories

Category:Battlecruisers of Australia and Category:Battlecruisers of the Royal Australian Navy and Category:Indefatigable class battlecruisers of the Royal Australian Navy and Category:World War I battlecruisers of Australia have been nominated for deletion. 64.229.101.119 (talk) 04:10, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge request: Victoria Institute of Sport --> Victorian Institute of Sport

See Talk:Victorian Institute of Sport#Merge needed. Dl2000 (talk) 04:05, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I've completed the merge, but left off the "General" references list which appeared to be bogus. It needs some cites from reliable sources to establish notability.Melburnian (talk) 08:24, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Bondy

Apparently late last year Paul Barry published an article which wasn't very complimentary to Alan Bond. Bondy has just responded via a blog and the link was added by a new editor. Is this a keeper? –Moondyne 08:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

As it currently is written, not at all - it doesn't say anything notable. Barry wrote the books The rise and fall of Alan Bond in 1990 and Going for Broke in 2000, so there is old bad blood between the two. The new article and the rebuttal blog may be OK if they say anything interesting, reliable and relevant to the article here as a whole, keeping WP:UNDUE in mind. The-Pope (talk) 09:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

And the fact it is a blog (See: WP:BLOGS) is another reason and WP:BLP is another. Fact that it is a blogspot blog, it could have been created by anyone! Bidgee (talk) 09:27, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I felt I needed a second opinion. I reverted the edits and advised user. –Moondyne 12:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Ukrainian Artists Society of Australia

This article clearly needs an independent look by someone who reads Ukrainian. It is up for deletion at Afd but has been relisted. There are issues of off-line sources in Ukrainian and conflict of interest. The nominator has been madly enthusiastic at the AfD repeating himself time after time. The "keep" views are also repetitive and they are not improving the referencing. It needs someone to read the sources and add some inline citations. I can not judge it as I do not read Ukrainian, but it does look as if this might lead to the deletion of an article that should not be deleted. --Bduke (Discussion) 01:39, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Place names

There is (still) a rather dormant discussion about Australian place names at WT:NCGN#Clarifying the Australia section for those editors who are interested. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Category discussion: Former students by secondary school

The related Category:Former students by secondary school in Australia and relevant subcategories have been nominated for renaming. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Timrollpickering (talk • contribs) 15:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Yobbo

The article Yobbo has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

This is just a dictionary definition, and WP is not a dictionary

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Jaque Hammer (talk) 03:50, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Feature Article Review

Emu is now here. Tasmanian Devil will presumably go down soon, with YellowMonkey retired.--Grahame (talk) 02:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

YellowMonkey retired? That's bad news.--Roisterer (talk) 02:37, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Who else could be willing to put up with the pedantry of making sure that en-dashes and em-dashes are used in the right places? I feel most of our FAs are under threat. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC).

Western Australian maps

Australind, Western Australia etc for some reason has a new pin map which is incorrect and shows half of them in the sea. Not sure how as Template:Location map Western Australia displays the correct map80.3.26.54 (talk) 12:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Leahy v Attorney-General for New South Wales

Editors familiar with legal matters may be interested in expanding this stub about a significant 1959 court ruling. Dl2000 (talk) 03:15, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Alan Jones (radio broadcaster)

No fan of the guy but his article is a dog's breakfast. Someone with more patience and less bias than I would be welcomed there :) Orderinchaos 10:32, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Tony Martin (comedian)

This page could use some extra watching and BLP review/cleanup. In an apparent tweet from Martin himself around 13 Feb., he posted a call to "urge all to vandalise it", claiming it contained "errors and nonsense". Dl2000 (talk) 19:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Muttama, New South Wales

G'day. (Sorry—I always wanted to say that!) Ignorant non-Australian here wondering if someone would take a look at recent changes to this article. The cited source doesn't seem to help, and I can't find any other documentation. Thanks. Rivertorch (talk) 07:13, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Searching within the reference link I found "Muttama Reef PO 1/2/1876; renamed Muttama PO 1/8/1889" & "Muttama Renamed from Muttama Reef PO 1/8/1889; closed 12/10/1979" , so the IP does appear to be correcting a mistake based on the reference. Melburnian (talk) 07:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Still, it did need some cleanup afterwards. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:55, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Right, thanks. The linked ref wouldn't load properly for me, and I'm always a bit unnerved by IPs who change cited statements, especially when they don't use edit summaries. Rivertorch (talk) 09:34, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Photo request

Hi! I have a photo request for the head office of Qantas - It is at 203 Coward, Mascot, NSW

If anyone takes a photo of the head office, please let me know WhisperToMe (talk) 22:13, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Wayne Pigram rename proposal

There is currently a proposal to rename the Wayne Pigram article. 124.184.225.134 (talk) 07:04, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Cyclone article title standardization

There is a discussion going on about the names of cyclone articles, whether it should be at the official name, or the more commonly used name. For example, whether the recent destructive cyclone in Queensland should be at Cyclone Yasi or Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi. Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tropical cyclones#Article names. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 18:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Photo question

Would this photo of Antony Moynihan (a British peer with some interesting connections to Australia) be ok to use? I haven't uploaded anything for a while and wanted to get some advice... Hack (talk) 12:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

This image is provided for research purposes only and must not be reproduced without the prior permission of the State Library of NSW.

That seems like a pretty flat out 'no', unfortunately. -danjel (talk to me) 12:56, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Ambit claims to copyright protection by libraries, museums etc. without any legal justification are unfortunately common, although this may not be the case here. With some more information about the date and place the photograph was taken and perhaps some information about the photographer if available, someone with some knowledge about IP rights may be able to advise if SLNSW actually do have a legitimate claim here. Certainly I wouldn't necessarily take SLNSW's statement at face value. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 13:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems the photo was taken in 1957, [27] which places it a couple of years too late to be public domain (unless it belonged to a Commonwealth or State government agency). The photographer was Ken Redshaw for the Australian Photographic Agency. - Bilby (talk) 13:30, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Recent Changes Camp eXpanded

One of the attendees to RecentChangesCamp 2011, Canberra is going to host a follow up meetup at their Lonely Planet Footscray offices at 6PM next week, either on Wednesday or Thursday night depending on which suits the most people. If you would like to attend on either of these nights, leave a note at v:University of Canberra/RCC2011/RecentChangesCamp Expanded/Melbourne.

Similar meetups are being planned for Hobart (probably on the weekend of the 12th of March), and Sydney (venue and date still being finalised).

See v:University of Canberra/RCC2011/RecentChangesCamp Expanded for more details. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:41, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

And Perth - date not finalised yet Satu Suro 14:24, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

There are also two events in Canberra on March 10 (Thursday) and 12 (Saturday). See Wikipedia:Meetup/Canberra. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 17:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Evil Angels/A Cry in the Dark film rename proposal

The Lindy Chamberlain movie starring Meryl Streep. See Talk:A Cry in the Dark#Proposed name change to "Evil Angels". Barsoomian (talk) 06:13, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

FARC

Both Tasmanian Devil and Emu are in final stage of delisting as Feature Articles.--Grahame (talk) 01:05, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Tony Windsor

Can people please keep an eye on the Tony Windsor article given this story. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 03:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok Donama (talk) 04:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I was wondering why I couldn't edit the article, pity a few fools have to spoil it for the rest of us. Got to love the Daily Tele's use of "hacked" rather then "edited" or "vandalized". 124.183.163.127 (talk) 04:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Prior to the suspcious edits by EnidBlyton11 I was wondering if it was just a journalist who edited it to make a story. It really doesn't look like the vandalism was in place for very long! Donama (talk) 06:11, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it was there for a bit too long - about an hour before it was removed the first time, and about 30 minutes after it was put back. I suspect a couple of events caused it to last longer than normal, but per WP:Beans I'll let that sit. Related articles had it in for a bit less. - Bilby (talk) 06:41, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Enidblyton11 was a problem for a while - I'm actually not surprised that it's ended this way for them, and I strongly suspect they have been here before under the username User:KAPITALIST88. Had been watching them on and off, but haven't been around myself much in recent weeks. Orderinchaos 09:25, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure whether this helps, but Enidblyton11 edited while logged out here, and appears to have been vandalising as 144.136.101.108 and 144.136.100.47 (and possibly others). -- Lear's Fool 14:10, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Both Kent St (Sydney) Bigpond - consistent with what we know about the Stravin/Kapitalist accounts. Orderinchaos 11:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't surprise me though! Stravin/Kapitalist seems to have a habit of socking, makes me wonder whether Романов should be reblocked? 124.183.163.127 (talk) 21:10, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

He should never have been unblocked IMHO. His record nulls his apparently reasonable quality edits. Timeshift (talk) 00:05, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I actually became convinced over time that Romanov (formerly Watchover) was a different editor in collaboration with at least one of the other two. The fact that we've had a small but steady flow of Stravin socks over the time since Romanov reformed further suggests a distance between them. This is the first possible Kapitalist sock I've seen for a few months. Orderinchaos 09:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Lake Eyre basin and Category:Drainage systems of Australia

Someone else may be able to make more sense out of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 March 6#Drainage systems of Australia and this edit. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 19:06, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Bob Brown

Would Bob Brown be eligible for semi-protection, i.e. only edits by auto-confirmed users are shown immediately? It seems to me that every day I see there's been another revert of "he is gay" or some unamusing reworking thereof. Donama (talk) 03:00, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

It would have automatically qualified for the "flagged revisions", if the community ever decide what to do with that. I'll semi-protect it. Orderinchaos 06:36, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Category renames

A few categories have been proposed for renaming WP:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_March_8#Category:Australian_National_Heritage_List et al., should anyone care to express an opinion (Crusoe8181 (talk) 10:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)).

Species please?

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but can someone identify the species in File:Wahgunyah Spider.JPG. It is just about the fattest one I have ever seen! Obviously no shortage of food between the grasshoppers and the crickets ... -- Mattinbgn (talk) 08:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

If you have no joy here, an email to the Australian Reptile Park might get an answer. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:04, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea really, but perhaps put Australian garden orb weaver spider in the list of suspects. 23:18, 6 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Melburnian (talk • contribs)

Yep, an orb weaver, but it is doing a good job of imitating a Nephila edulis rather than an Eriophora transmarina particularly if the web was yellow as would appear, so you might find a pic of one to match. It is a female and its size may have something to do with the absence of smaller males in the web! (Crusoe8181 (talk) 08:10, 7 March 2011 (UTC)).

Thanks, the size is what threw me a little. It was two or three times bigger than the orb weavers I have seen before. -- 07:16, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Brisbane Pride Festival

Could I please get some assistance with keeping Brisbane Pride Festival encyclopedic, rather than a community forum or gossip page. - Shiftchange (talk) 04:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I've just removed the material and semiprotected the article. Making negative claims about people that aren't backed by a reliable source is a bad idea. Nick-D (talk) 05:09, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

WPENGVAR template:Australian English

{{Australian English}} use of the flag is in question, see Template talk:American English

184.144.160.156 (talk) 02:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Japanese tsunami and the Australian economy

We have an article Impact of the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami on the video game industry, should there also be one for the Impact of the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami on the Australian economy ? As Japan is the second largest trade partner of Australia, and the industrial shutdown of various portions of the Japanese economy would impact on various natural resources being imported by Japan from Australia. 184.144.160.156 (talk) 11:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

When/if it happens, and there are enough reliable sources, then go ahead. Don't make it a "if/may/could" type of article though. The-Pope (talk) 11:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

400 free Credo Reference accounts available

Another 400 free Credo Reference accounts have been made available for Wikipedians, kindly donated by the company and arranged by Erik Möller of the Wikimedia Foundation. We've drawn up some eligibility criteria to direct the accounts to content contributors, and after that it's first-come, first-served. The list will open on Wednesday, March 23 at 22:00 UTC, and will remain open for seven days. See Wikipedia:Credo accounts.

I'm leaving a special note here about it because 22:00 UTC is in the middle of the night in Western Australia, so I want to make sure editors there have plenty of advance warning if they want an account.

Feel free to add your name even if you're lower on the list than the 400th, in case people ahead of you aren't eligible, and good luck! SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 22:40, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Commons discussion - Pubs v Hotels

Hi all. There is a discussion at Wikimedia Commons about the best way to categorise Australian pubs and/or hotels. The opinions of editors familiar with the use of the term "Hotel" in Australia would be most useful. You can find the discussion at Commons:Commons:Categories for discussion/2011/03/Category:Hotels in Australia. Cheers, Mattinbgn (talk) 00:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Infobox protected area of Australia

Template:Infobox protected area of Australia has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bleakcomb (talk) 01:09, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Difference of opinions at Sydney gang rapes article

There has been a slow edit war at Sydney gang rapes. One editor (apparently a lawyer) cites a court judgement to suppress the name of one of the gang, a minor at the time of the offences. Another editor states that the name is/was in the public domain, and Wikipedia is not censored. Some further opinions are sought, rather than just stomping on the edit war. Thanks, WWGB (talk) 06:41, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Dracey Freeman

An article has recently been created on Dracey Freeman (for those who don't recognise the name, the article explains it). Anyway I have asked for advice at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Dracey Freeman (though I know it's not a BLP) and would welcome some input from fellow Australian editors. I'm honestly not sure what should be done about this, so any ideas would be appreciated. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 11:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Prodded!!, mention here as a courtesy Crusoe8181 (talk) 12:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, yes PRODing is a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure if this article should exist for the full seven days and wonder if it could somehow be speedied. Also note the article has now been moved to the correct spelling, Darcey Freeman. Jenks24 (talk) 12:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

And now the moved article is deleted, and I'm about to tag the redirect for speedy too. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 22:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Use of See Also

An editor would like to have a link to Media Circus inserted into the See Also section of Violence against Indians in Australia controversy‎. I dont' think this is an appropriate (ie, it's not neutral) use of a See Also section. I would most appreciative of other editors' comments at the article talk page. thanks --Merbabu (talk) 11:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Black Caviar requested move

Hi there, a requested move located at Talk:Black Caviar (horse)#Requested move may be of interest to members of this project. Feel free to voice your opinion there if you wish. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:03, 2 April 2011 (UTC).

Keys2drive

I found a reference to Keys2drive in, of all places, my local motoring club (Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania) newsletter. (Scan of article) The newsletter is oddly self referential - the article is specifically about the fact that "Keys2drive is now on Wikipedia", and oddly enough states some facts about Keys2drive by stating "According to Wikipedia, ...". Bar some copy-edits/MOS fixes, the article is completely written by one user (User:Chrispepper) who also happens to be the author of one of the references - I presume an employee of one of the Automobile Clubs involved. It appears they are just using Wikipedia as free web hosting, and/or using the article's existence on here to gain some sort of "Web 2.0 cred". Does anyone have any specific knowledge about the topic or should it go to AFD? -- Chuq (talk) 12:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Should be deleted as it is using Wikipedia as a promotion site and it isn't notable. Bidgee (talk) 12:41, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Very spammy article, no reliable independent sources. Someone hit the AfD kill switch! WWGB (talk) 12:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Chrispepper has uploaded a number of images with invalid licenses including some not used in Keys2drive like File:RAA Logo.JPG and File:Old raa logo resized.jpg. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:51, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Local Government Area article renaming

I just discovered, because of this edit to {{Infobox Australian place}}, that all of the Local Government Area overview articles (see list) were moved on 10 March, apparently without discussion, the mover justifying the moves with the claim that "Local Government Area" is not a proper noun. The main articles affected are:

The capitalisation is one issue, but while previously we had a consistent naming system for these articles, we now have two different formats, "Local government areas of" and "Local government in", and one article has "List of" thrown in for good measure. "In" was replaced with "of" back in 2007 to standardise naming and it has been a practice followed Wiki-wide for some time. Anyway, I thought I'd throw this out for discussion in case anyone has objections or comments since, as it affects the entire project and thousands of articles this is something that should have been discussed here first. --AussieLegend (talk) 18:01, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on the matter, but I have a feeling that things related to law and politics usually use capitals much more often and where they wouldn't normally be used (e.g. it's Local Government Act, not Local government Act). Seeing as LGA's are a political area, perhaps the capitalisation was actually correct? But, like I said, I'm not an expert, this is based on the knowledge I have. Plus, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and not a legal database. Anoldtreeok (talk) 08:50, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I've pinged the mover about this section. The only thing I have to add is that the QLD article has "List of" because Local government in Queensland already exists. We should probably, as a first step, standardise the way these articles work -- should the list be a separate article from the discussion about local government? bou·le·var·dier (talk) 09:06, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I've just moved one; as for the others Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and not a legal database as above would seem to apply; LGAs may be more commonly used by the LGAs themselves, but that is their misuse of a common noun and we don't need to inherit it; a few categories using CAPS would now also need changing. The editor didn't need to discuss the moves beyond giving a clear reason but might respond to any objections (Crusoe8181 (talk) 09:35, 23 March 2011 (UTC))

In NSW at least "Local Government Area" seems very common. However, the Local Government Act 1993 uses "Local government area",[28] so the new capitalisation seems supported by legislation, as well as WP:TITLEFORMAT. However, I disagree that the editor didn't need to discuss the moves. Over 3,500 articles link to the "Local Government Areas of" articles, 1,554 of those to Local Government Areas of Australia alone. It's been a long standing and obviously widely accepted practice to use upper case in the naming and if we're going to change, it's something that should be discussed as a project, just as we discussed the article naming conventions. Similarly, changing from the standardised "Local Government Areas of" to the three systems I mentioned above needed to be discussed. If editors are just going to go off and do their own thing then we may as well not have a project. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:21, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Aussie Legend, we have redirects. Having a link to a redirect is not a reason not to rename an article. It has never been. And as I have recently replied, there was no standard (well, except for Wikipedia's standards). And I don't understand your comments about a project. I am a member of Wikipedia and I will improve it as I see fit. It's a "tragedy of the commons" in reverse. I can make a change, and you can make another. As long as we avoid an edit/revert war, I don't see that there's anything to fuss about. I thought my actions improved Wikipedia, you thought they were questionable, we're discussing it! We'll see if we can get a consensus—but I don't think there could ever be a consensus for having "Local Government Areas of Queensland" and "Local government in Queensland" both existing with overlapping information, or the title "Local Government Areas of Tasmania". (See also the interaction between me and mdw0 on Local government in Australia—sometimes he made improvements to my changes, sometimes he made changes I didn't agree with; at the end of the day, we got something we both were happy with. But we weren't working together in a special subproject. We were just Wikipedians doing what we thought best.) —Felix the Cassowary 11:15, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

You've obviously missed my point, which wasn't about redirects. It was about the fact that we have a very obvious precedent, obvious because over 3,500 articles link to the articles listed above. Regarding projects, these articles are all part of WikiProject Australia. Of course you're entitled to improve articles as you see fit, but when you make changes that affect the way an entire project works, no matter how insignificant it may seem, it's always a good idea to communicate what you've done. Granted, WikiProject Australia is not the biggest project I've worked on but in my experience project size doesn't matter. I did not think your actions were questionable, that's a misrepresentation of my opinion. I merely pointed them out to the project because you didn't. In fact, I think most of what you've done is a step in the right direction, but there is room for improvement. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, AussieLegend, please don't misrepresent my actions. Local Government Areas of Australia was not renamed Local government in Australia, but the small amount of information from the first article was moved to the second article, and it was made into a redirect. Likewise, the Local Government Areas of Queensland article had its non-list content moved to the pre-existing Local government in Queensland article. We didn't have a standard. We had replication and confusion.

I removed the capitals because they're not proper nouns. Compare Australian states and territories, contrast the Commonwealth Constitution Act (which uses the capitalised "State" apparently as an honorific—"territory" is written with small t). This was a clear violation of the policy for capitalisation, which is strongly enforced throughout Wikipedia and ought to be uncontroversial.

But a second reason for the rename, is because I think Wikipedia systematically misrepresents "Local Government Area" as being an official term/category. It isn't. It is merely a very common descriptive term, used by numerous government agencies. But Victorian law, for instance, consistently uses the term "municipal district"; and "shire" is a perfectly sufficient term when it refers to a single shire. (That is, you can say, "Mansfield is the seat of the Shire of Mansfield"; to say "Mansfield is the seat of the Shire of Mansfield Local Government Area" is as though you said "Paris is the capital of the French Republic country".)

For these reasons, I strenuously object to the misuse of capital letters for the words "local government area" (at least with respect to Australia).

Concerning "list of", it was not thrown in for good measure, but added for a very specific reason. Under the previous systems, two people wrote essentially the same information in two different places—apparently in ignorance of the other. But the local government in Queensland article is, imho, long enough to justify a separate article which contains a list of LGAs. In order to adequately describe the purpose and content of the list article, I named it List of local government areas in Queensland. I think it would be cruel and misleading and a misapplication of consistency to call it Local government areas of Queensland.

So why have Victoria and Queensland had the one treatment, and the other jurisdictions had the other? Because I haven't got to them yet. I have seen that New South Wales has very little information in it and is mostly just a list. I decided that I wouldn't rename it (aside from correcting the policy violation) for the time being. I really can't remember what's included in any of the other articles.

Boulevadier asks: Should the list and detail be in one article or two? I don't think we should get our knickers in a knot about this. If the article is getting long, then two is justified. If the article is short, then one is sufficient. Redirects from similar title names and judicious use of hatnotes should solve the problem of finding the right article.

The change from "of" to "in" (in the Qld list title) was probably gratuitous. If I have contradicted a standard here, that was not my intention and I have no problems with people altering the preposition. Obviously in the title "Local government in Blah", "of" would make no sense and contradict Wikipedia conventions like Local government in the United Kingdom (there's a lot more than just one example in that page!).

Thank you Boulevadier for notifying me of this discussion. It's certainly a good idea to ask the person whose actions you find questionable why he did it!

—Felix the Cassowary 10:59, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I apologise for missing that Local Government Areas of Australia wasn't actually moved but, regardless of whether or not you moved the article or the content, the result is the same so I don't see your issue. As for the use of "local government area", in NSW the situation is apparently different that of Victoria. Local government areas are legally constituted areas, not "merely" a very common descriptive term. However, the term does apply Australia wide, which is why we had a standardised naming system for the articles, which is now not so standardised, and which is why it really should have been discussed here. Now that you've arrived, we can do that and look at improving the system and correcting any remaining issues. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Aussie Legend, my point is that there was no system, standard or consensus beforehand. I object to you saying "previously we had a consistent naming system for these articles, [but] now we have two different systems"—it's false. I also object to Crusoe's rv on the "back to the system" grounds he gave it. A system, perhaps, but not the only one, and not without its critics.

Because you walked in halfway through but didn't bother asking me what's up, you have misrepresented me as ruining a consensus and standard that didn't exist. The kind of problem we had was more obvious before I started making my changes, but I haven't finished yet, so we have a slightly different problem for the time being. (Of course, I've put my activities there on hold while we're discussing here.)

I had been working to standardise on the minority case (Local government in ...), because I believed it was better than the majority case (Local Government Areas of ...). I don't want to argue the case for it now, because I want to sort out the system/standard issue and the 3000+ articles issue first.

On which subject—I still don't understand what the issue about the number of articles which link to the old title is. I think you're referring to the fact that many articles say something like "[Benalla's] Local Government Area is the Rural City of Benalla". When I'm confused, I find it easiest to understand something if I can generalise from an example. Do either of these support your point more:

[Benalla's] [[Local Government Areas of Australia|municipal district]] is the Rural City of Benalla.
[Benalla's] Local Government Area is the Rural City of Benalla.

Alternatively, can you provide a minimal example of something which supports your point, and preferably with a minimal pair to something which wouldn't.

—Felix the Cassowary 23:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Despite your claims to the contrary, there was obviously a consistent naming system used, as evidenced by the fact that the main articles were all titled "Local Government Areas of <foo>". There was clearly a standard, albeit a defacto one, as evidenced by the fact that 3,548 other articles linked to those articles. There would have been no need to "walk in halfway" if you had simply discussed your proposal here first, even if it was just to mention it. The number of articles is relevant because the large number of articles that link to articles you have redirected or moved demonstrates that your changes affected the whole project. At the very least, notifying the project would have alerted other editors to the problems you saw and let them know not to link to "Local Government Areas of <foo>" in the future. --AussieLegend (talk) 00:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

So you're using the number of articles that linked to "Local Government Areas of x" as an argument that there was consensus? I don't think that any such existed. People linked to articles that existed, and the relatively low number of contributors to the articles—and regular criticisms of the LGA articles themselves on their talkpages—speaks strongly against them being satisfactory in my mind. [This para was rewriten immediately after posting. I ask that you don't read or consider the original form, which was phrased in a way that could increase the heat. FtC]

But did a consensus exist for the old titles, even a de facto one? No-one objected when I renamed "Local Government Areas of Victoria" to "Local government areas of Victoria" some months ago. No-one "fixes" articles that have "local government area" written in them (or other forms, like "seat for the local government for the y"). No-one objected when Orderinchaos created the article Local government in Queensland in 2008. And discussions about the duplication on the article talk pages themselves over the years have usually leant more towards articles of the form Local government in Australia. In my view, there wasn't even a defacto standard except on the basis that some well-meaning editor created a series of articles with the title form "Local Government Areas of x".

So, at this point, it seems to me that we must agree to disagree on some of the things that have already been said:

You think there was "obviously" a system before; I think there was a significant problem before (even a "cruel" one—a description I stand by), and a lack of consensus for the old article titles.
You think I need to check first before making certain changes; I think WP:SOFIXIT is still a valid approach to editing even if someone's put a stamp on the talkpage saying they're willing to edit and improve that article (because that's all it says...).

I don't think we've ever going to agree on those matters, but I also don't think it's relevant to the matter at hand.

Furthermore, there's no procedurally valid way to rename the articles to be consistent without having a formal rename discussion. (Because it is obviously more controversial than I would ever have guessed and because of the prior existence of two sets of articles for Aus and Qld, and because of the prior existence of the redirect Local government in New South Wales.)

Therefore, I propose we leave this conversation alone, which I don't think will ever go anywhere, and have that rename discussion (following the procedure for controversial renames) that focusses solely on whether the eight articles should be titled "Local government in x" or "Local government areas of x".

—Felix the Cassowary 12:09, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Local government areas of X is a fundamentally different topic to Local government in X. The latter is a title category that would cover a vast array of things (my QLD effort is nowhere near finished - I think the current page finishes before the 20th century!), the former deals exclusively with the names and forms of local government areas over time (a much more limited subject). It's an area which needs a fair bit of attention and time which nobody knowledgeable in the subject (myself included) actually seems to have. Re of/in - grammatically, local government is a "thing" which takes many forms and exists historically in various forms in a state therefore is an "in", while LGAs are a sub-unit of the state and hence an "of". Orderinchaos 07:56, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

New Australian English tag

{{Use Australian English}} is now available as an article body tag to help identify when Australian English is applicable. The tag (not seen unless editing) also puts the article into Category:Use Australian English as a status monitor. This is similar to what is already available for British and Canadian English. Questions and input can be directed to User talk:Ohconfucius who is doing most of the status monitoring and associated scripting. Dl2000 (talk) 03:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Rob Oakeshott + Andrew Wilkie

I'd appreciate some eyes on these two pages as Rugby8614 (talk · contribs) repeatedly adds negative statements I find irrelevant (in the Wilkie case) or poorly sourced (Oakeshott). I'm not going to revert again since I think I've already broken 3RR, but I think they need to be discussed before they're included. bou·le·var·dier (talk) 06:32, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Busselton region Photo-op

Thanks to Wikimedia-Australia I'll be in the Busselton, Western Australia area taking photographs to improve the visual cverage of the area. I've already identified a few articles that need photographs these are at User:Gnangarra/Sandbox/Busselton photo ops. If you know of any other articles within the region that are in need of photographs please add them to the list. Gnan garra 00:42, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Could I make a request for photographs of post offices, town halls, churches and war memorials in the area. They probably won't make it to an article but they do add to the coverage of these topics at Commons - and WA is not covered as well as the eastern states. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 01:20, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Any photos of flowering WA native plant species would be great.[29] --Melburnian (talk) 02:50, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

No problems though for flowers it'll be only if they are where I am rather than chasing...building memorials definitely will photo as many as possible.. Gnan garra 12:01, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Bust of Nicolas Baudin. Located near the jetty and similar to File:Nicolas Baudin Albany.jpg. If you get a chance. Moondyne (talk) 04:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Have uploaded a photo of Baudin bust to wikicommons. Dan arndt (talk) 05:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

There are 25 places in the Shire of Busselton that are on the State Heritage Register.
The Vasse-Wonnerup System, one of only 64 RAMSAR wetlands in Australia.
It's a bit out of town, but the Whicher Range is increasingly being recognised as an extremely important flora refugia with many endemic species.
The cliffs of Bunker Bay at Cape Naturaliste contain immensely interesting geological formations—late Proterozoic (550 million years ago) Leeuwin Complex gneiss unconformably overlaid with recent Tamala Limestone. Even if you don't care about the geology, it ought to probably make for some spectacular photography.

Hesperian 06:24, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

the Vasse-Wonnerup System I think is Vasse-Wonnerup Estuary but yeh I get som emore photos of that, there are 4 heritage listed items associated with that, though the original floodgates are lockedup in the Busselton Historical Societies museum they just declined my request to take photographs of it. Gnan garra 00:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, ta, now redirected. Hesperian 01:30, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I was just down there last week, took some pics of the Baudin sculpture and some of the jerry, river etc. Will upload them to wikicommons when I get back from Tasmania.Dan arndt (talk) 01:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Is there a picture of or from that lookout tower in Bunbury? You could get a good panorama of the Bunbury coastline. Hack (talk) 04:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Which lookout tower? I got to the top of that triangular building in the centre of Bunbury during my last visit there, there's only lookouts on two sides and it's through a very dirty window. Orderinchaos 05:45, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

It's where this [30] was taken... Hack (talk) 06:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, Boulters Heights. I'm not sure why that's described as a "tower", but anyway. From memory, the coastal angle is somewhat obscured from there. Orderinchaos 12:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I think we might be talking about different places - this is the one I meant - [31] Hack (talk) 05:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I know which tower you mean I'll see how I go for time with Bunbury besides a sojourn to the ABC SW studios I wasnt planning on stopping there to take photographs though there are a few places I want to get pict of as well. Gnan garra 14:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

We can always go there at another time, as it's closer to Perth. Orderinchaos 07:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

last chance I'm now formulating my plans and drawing maps noting photo points, speak up if theres anything else Gnan garra 14:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

many many photos obtained see This commons cat all will uploaded during the next few days, first images going in now Gnan garra 05:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

After you have done uploading, would you mind if I add my Canberra photos (Late January) to the category? As it would have been impossible for me to get the photos without the grant. Bidgee (talk) 06:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I dont mind, but maybe I should put mine in a subcat before i get to far into this. Whats your thought Gnan garra 07:14, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Subcat like Category:Photographs by foo sponsored by Wikimedia Australia? Bidgee (talk) 07:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, will run catalot to move mine when the current run of commonist ends Gnan garra 08:16, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I've moved all of the photos I took from Photographs by Bidgee to Category:Photographs by Bidgee sponsored by Wikimedia Australia, feel free to make some changes. Bidgee (talk) 09:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

The first days 139 photographs are at commons:Category:Photographs by Gnangarra sponsored by Wikimedia Australia Gnan garra 05:11, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Excellent work Gnangarra :) Orderinchaos 07:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

This is the first opportunity I've had to look at the results, and I'm really impressed both by the quality of the photographs, and your selection of subjects. Well done! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:55, 15 April 2011 (UTC).